The Affective Dimension Of Epistemic Injustice

This essay focuses on the affective dimension of epistemic injustice — specifically, the affective harms and burdens of epistemic injustice on individuals and groups — and examines how pedagogy may help disrupt the affective injustice that epistemic injustice entails. This theorization facilitates the ability to recognize that affective wrongs are not separate from epistemic wrongs but are instead embedded in them. Here, Michalinos Zembylas brings recent philosophical inquiry on affective injustice into conversation with considerations of epistemic injustice in order to discuss how affect-related conceptions of epistemic injustice help education scholars to illuminate the entanglement of the epistemic and the affective in the wrongs of testimonial, hermeneutical, and other forms of epistemic injustice. His analysis outlines how some theoretical concepts concerning “affective goods” — including affective freedoms, affective resources, and affective recognition — have important pedagogical implications for the role educators can play in rupturing epistemic-affective injustices.