Whose Hermeneutical Marginalization?

Abstract

AbstractAccording to Miranda Fricker, being hindered from rendering something significant about oneself intelligible to someone constitutes a hermeneutical injustice only if it results from the hermeneutical marginalization of some group to which one belongs. A major problem for Fricker's picture is that it cannot properly account for the paradigm case of hermeneutical injustice Fricker herself takes from Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love. In order to account properly for this case, I argue that being hindered from rendering something significant about oneself intelligible to someone can constitute a hermeneutical injustice so long as it results from the hermeneutical marginalization of some group – whether or not one belongs to that group. One upshot is that Fricker's distinction between systematic and incidental cases of hermeneutical injustice needs redrawing, and I show how this can be done. Another is that hermeneutical injustice is more widespread than Fricker recognizes.