1st Edition
Epistemic Justice and Creative Agency Global Perspectives on Literature and Film
Foundational theories of epistemic justice, such as Miranda Fricker's, have cited literary narratives to support their case. But why have those narratives in particular provided the resource that was needed? And is cultural production always supportive of epistemic justice? This essay collection, written by experts in literary, philosophical, and cultural studies working in conversation with each other across a range of global contexts, expands the emerging field of epistemic injustice studies.
The essays analyze the complex relationship between narrative, aesthetics, and epistemic (in)justice, referencing texts, film, and other forms of cultural production. The authors present, without seeking to synthesize, perspectives on how justice and injustice are narratively and aesthetically produced.
This volume by no means wants to say the last word on epistemic justice and creative agency. The intention is to open out a productive new field of study, at a time when understanding the workings of injustice and possibilities for justice seems an ever more urgent project.
Introduction: Changing the story? Epistemic shifts and creative agency
Sarah Colvin and Stephanie Galasso
PART I On the Promise and Peril of Stories
1 Narratives, social justice, and the common good
Chielozona Eze
2 Divine justice, epistemic crisis, storytelling
Galili Shahar
3 ‘The notation of a silent lament’: Hermeneutical injustice and Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses
Stephanie Galasso
PART II Uncovering Injustice
4 Representational epistemic injustice: Disavowing the ‘other’ Africa in the imaginative geographies of Western animation films
James Odhiambo Ogone
5 Farmers’ self-representation and agency: Protest music in the agitations against India’s farm laws
Shambhavi Prakash
6 The postmigrant critique of the Bildungsroman and the epistemic injustice of the educational system in Deniz Ohde’s Scattered Light
Kyung-Ho Cha
Part III Literary Strategies of Resistance
7 The ludic impulse: Race narratives ‘at play’ in Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark and Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light
Aretha Phiri
8 Narrative pilgrimage and chiastic knowledge. Olivia Wenzel’s 1000 Coils of Fear and Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Ada’s Realm
Sarah Colvin
9 Tell the truth but tell it slant: Mo Yan’s aesthetics of indirection
Shiamin Kwa
Biography
Sarah Colvin is the Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge, UK. She has a DPhil, MA, and BA in German from the University of Oxford, UK, and held chairs at the universities of Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Warwick before moving to Cambridge. Her current research focuses on alternative epistemologies and literary aesthetics.
Stephanie Galasso is the Schröder Research Associate and an Affiliated Lecturer in German at the University of Cambridge, UK. After completing her BA in German and English at the University of California, Davis, USA, she completed her MA and PhD in German Studies at Brown University, USA. Her doctoral research was partially supported by a Fulbright grant to study at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Her research focuses on intersections between racialization and aesthetics.
