The Right to Be Known.
Epistemic Reparations and the Making of Rounder Stories
Lecture 1: Epistemic Reparations and the Right to Be Known
This lecture provides a philosophical discussion of the epistemic significance of the phenomenon of “being known” as well as the relationship it has to reparations that are distinctively epistemic. Drawing on a framework provided by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, it is argued that victims of gross violations and injustices not only have the right to know what happened, as the UN maintains, but they also have a right that is altogether absent from these discussions—the right to be known. The case is made for expanding the standard conception of reparations to include actions intended to redress distinctively epistemic wrongs. An account is then provided of how to best understand these epistemic reparations that capture both the right to know and the right to be known possessed by survivors of gross violations and injustices.
Lecture 2: Stories That Wrong and Stories That Repair
This lecture focuses on how stories themselves can wrong a person in ways that rise to the level of inflicting a gross violation or injustice. This is supported by the introduction of the concept of “misknowing,” which applies when only a narrow, one-dimensional set of facts is centered on a person or persons, often focusing on those that are most injurious. It is shown that misknowing is often fueled by “flat stories,” which are agentially closed and depict a person in static, one-dimensional, and psychologically simplistic terms. When such stories are grounded in or constitute gross violations or injustices, epistemic reparations require “rounder stories,” which are agentially open and portray a person in dynamic, multidimensional, and psychologically complex terms. In this way, while stories can epistemically wrong a person in life-altering ways, they can also be the source of the life-restoring epistemic reparations that are demanded in response.
Lecture 3: Talking, Listening, and Learning
When we talk about victims of gross violations and injustices having the right to be known, traditional epistemological theories push us toward understanding this as involving either wholesale deference to their testimony, on the one hand, or autonomous, firsthand inquiry, on the other. In this lecture, it is shown that there is a third, powerful option available to us: knowing someone through the interpersonal process of talking, listening, and learning. This process can lead to coconstructed narratives that are epistemically generative for both those who are telling their stories and those who are appropriate listeners, leading to the repairing of epistemic wrongs, the creation of new narratives and new identities, and, ultimately, the development of new selves.
The lectures are based on a book with the same title, forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
