Kristie Dotson

Agora

Kristie Dotson

contemporary

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Silencing is not only failing to listen: when listeners are unwilling or unable to hear, speakers learn to cut short what they say – and whole ways of knowing are shut out.

Placement

Analytic Philosophy · Epistemology, Society & History, Gender & Feminism

Black feminist epistemologist at the University of Michigan: silencing works not only by not listening (“testimonial quieting”) but by making speakers cut short their own testimony (“testimonial smothering”); some epistemic oppression is built into knowledge systems themselves.

Key ideas

Testimonial quieting and smothering
Contributory injustice
Irreducible epistemic oppression

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Influence

Influenced by 2

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

influenced by
Dotson took the term ‘epistemic violence’ from Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ (1988) and analysed it as a failure of audiences to take up speakers’ testimony (2011). K. Dotson, “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing”, Hypatia 26 (2011); G. C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (1988)
Evidence: AI draft
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak › b. 1942
Patricia Hill Collins

influenced by
Dotson illustrated ‘testimonial quieting’ with Collins’s analysis of controlling images that deny Black women the standing of knowers (‘Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing’, 2011). K. Dotson, “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing”, Hypatia 26 (2011); P. H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought (1990)
Evidence: AI draft
Patricia Hill Collins › b. 1948

Criticism

Criticizes 1

Miranda Fricker

criticised
Dotson argued that Fricker’s two forms of epistemic injustice miss ‘contributory injustice’: marginalised groups have interpretive resources, but dominant knowers wilfully ignore them (‘A Cautionary Tale’, 2012). K. Dotson, “A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic Oppression”, Frontiers 33 (2012), 24–47; “Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression”, Social Epistemology 28 (2014); M. Fricker, Epistemic Injustice (2007)
Evidence: AI draft
Miranda Fricker › b. 1966

Position

“Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing” distinguishes two forms of testimonial silencing. “Testimonial quieting” occurs when an audience fails to recognise a speaker as a knower at all – as Patricia Hill Collins showed for the controlling images imposed on Black women. “Testimonial smothering” occurs when speakers, anticipating that their audience is unwilling or unable to take up what they say, truncate their own testimony; the silencing then works through the speaker’s self-censorship, but its source is the audience’s “pernicious ignorance”. The term “epistemic violence” she takes from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Further papers widen Fricker’s account of epistemic injustice: “contributory injustice” occurs when marginalised groups do have concepts for their experience but dominant knowers wilfully refuse to take them up, and the deepest, “third-order” epistemic oppression is irreducible, because it is built into epistemological systems themselves and can only be addressed by changing them. In “How Is This Paper Philosophy?” she criticises a “culture of justification” in academic philosophy that requires work by diverse practitioners to prove its legitimacy against narrow standards.

Life & context

Kristie Dotson came to philosophy late: she studied African American studies, business and English at Coe College and literature at the University of Illinois Chicago before taking her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Memphis in 2008. She taught at Michigan State University from 2008, latterly as professor of philosophy and of African American and African studies, and in 2021 moved to the University of Michigan, where she is University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Philosophy and of Afroamerican and African Studies. In 2023 she shared the Lebowitz Prize of the American Philosophical Association and Phi Beta Kappa with Susanna Siegel. Her work centres on Black feminist thought and epistemic oppression.