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On Epistemic Freedom and Epistemic Injustice

Today's post is from Karl Landström on his paper 'On Epistemic Freedom and Epistemic Injustice', recently published in Inquiry.



Karl Landström


‘Seek ye epistemic freedom first’ is how Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni begins his book Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (2018, 1). Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s book is a detailed study of the politics of knowing and knowledge production with emphasis on what he calls ‘the African struggle for epistemic freedom’. He locates the struggle for epistemic freedom in the continued entrapment of knowledge production in Africa within colonial, Euro- and North America-centric matrices of power. 

The central contribution of the book is the development of a general account of epistemic freedom. For Ndlovu-Gatsheni, epistemic freedom entails the right to think, theorise and develop one’s own methodologies to interpret the world, and write from where one is located unencumbered by Eurocentrism. Further, he argues that questions of epistemic freedom stand in direct relation to cognitive justice. That is, proper recognition of the diverse ways of knowing by which humans from across the globe makes sense of their experiences.

In my article, I examine the relationship between Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s account of epistemic freedom and a different set of theories pertaining to justice and injustice in our epistemic lives, namely those of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007) and epistemic oppression (Dotson 2014) developed in analytic feminist epistemology. I argue that we ought to think of the relationship between epistemic freedom and epistemic injustice and oppression in two closely related ways. One which centres epistemic injustice and oppression as infringements on epistemic freedom, and one which centres the ameliorative role of epistemic freedom in redressing and eliminating existing epistemic injustice and oppression. 

For example, Emmalon Davis (2021) has argued that epistemic injustices introduce barriers to the participation in particular epistemic communities for the victims, which I contend ought to be thought of as type of infringement on epistemic freedom. The ameliorative role of epistemic freedom has been emphasised by Veli Mitova (2020) who position the epistemic freedom of the subjects of epistemic oppression as a key dimension in the struggles against the coloniality of knowledge and existing epistemic oppression. 

Being epistemically free would allow the subjects of oppression and coloniality to pursue their own epistemic agendas and projects, and thus offer a potential path to redress. Beyond these direct links between epistemic freedom and epistemic injustice and oppression, the different sets of theory share a number further intersections and further concerns. These include for example silencing, wilful ignorance and close-mindedness, and epistemic exploitation as widespread ethical, political and epistemic problems.

Lastly, I draw on the literature on epistemic oppression to sharpen Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s (2018) general conception of epistemic freedom, and I develop a tripartite structure for what substantial epistemic freedom entails. On my account, being epistemically free entails being able to choose the aims and methods of one’s epistemic endeavours and having the ability and freedom to pursue them. Further, being epistemically free requires the ability to freely and meaningfully partake in the epistemic communities that one belongs to and gaining appropriate uptake when doing so. 

This more nuanced conception of epistemic freedom accounts for the many different factors that can infringe upon one’s epistemic freedom to differing degrees, while at the same time preserving the original emphasis and strengths of Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s (2018) conception. 

As the literatures on epistemic decolonisation, epistemic injustice and oppression illustrate, structural, material, social and political factors all can limit one’s ability to pursue the epistemic endeavours of one’s choosing and one’s ability to meaningfully contribute to the epistemic communities one is a member of. Thus, the manner in which we conceive of epistemic freedom ought to reflect that complexity.
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