Epistemic Agency Under Oppression Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. (This is a preprint. Please cite the final version published in Philosophical Papers.) Abstract The literature on epistemic injustice has been helpful for highlighting some of the epistemic harms that have long troubled those working in area studies that concern oppressed populations. Nonetheless, a good deal of this literature is oriented toward those in a position to perpetrate injustices, rather than those who historically have been harmed by them. This orientation, I argue, is ill-suited to the work of epistemic decolonization. In this essay, I call and hold attention to the epistemic interests of those who are epistemically marginalized on account of relations of dominance and oppression. To do so, I draw on Kristie Dotson’s work, which uses a systems approach focused on epistemic agency. I develop Dotson’s insights further to argue that epistemic inclusions may be just as pernicious as epistemic exclusions Specifically, I highlight some of the ways in which epistemic agents can be included in epistemic systems in a manner that is epistemically exploitative—extracting epistemic labor coercively or in ways that are distinctly non-reciprocal. I then turn to María Lugones’ distinction between horizontal and vertical practices to discuss avenues of resisting both exclusions and inclusions that thwart the epistemic agency of marginalized knowers. 1 The literature on epistemic injustice has been helpful for highlighting some of the epistemic harms that have long troubled those working in area studies that concern oppressed populations. Nonetheless, a good deal of this literature is oriented toward those in a position to perpetrate injustices, rather than those who historically have been harmed by them. For example, in her work Epistemic Injustice, after treating the question of whether there are some wrongs that are distinctly epistemic, Miranda Fricker (2007) turns to the question of what sorts of virtues might help a knower to avoid committing these sorts of wrongs. In attempting to address the latter question, her model specifically takes on the perspective of those who (potentially) do harm and moves away from the perspective of those who are targeted by the harms of epistemic injustice and oppression. While those who benefit from systems of dominance and oppression ought certainly to try to dismantle those systems, delineating what it means to be a ‘good’ knower is less pressing to those who face systematic epistemic harm than the question of how to contend with that harm. Moreover, the concern to avoid committing harm is oriented toward harms not yet committed (and so potentially avoided). Insofar as this concern is future-oriented it may serve to distract from a harmful present and to obscure a past in light of which there may be serious need for repair. For these reasons, the question of how to be a virtuous knower in light of epistemic injustice seems akin to what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang call ‘settler moves to innocence,’ strategies that serve to alleviate guilt or responsibility for settler colonialists without disrupting settler/colonial relations of domination (2012: 10). In contrast, staying with the perspective of those who endure epistemic wrongdoing would ask questions such as how to survive in the face epistemic harm and how it might be resisted. In this essay I want to call and hold attention to the epistemic interests of those who 2 are epistemically marginalized on account of relations of dominance and oppression. In so doing, I hope to highlight not only how structures of oppression impede epistemic agency, but also how marginalized knowers nonetheless find ways of resisting these impediments, regardless of whether privileged subjects become ‘virtuous’ knowers or not. In contrast to Fricker, Kristie Dotson has developed a framework that uses a systems approach focused on epistemic agency. Dotson’s attention to the relationship between systems and epistemic agency, I argue, makes her account more suited for dealing with epistemic concerns associated with decolonization. While Dotson’s work has focused on how systemic exclusions impede epistemic agency, I develop her insights further to argue that epistemic inclusions may be just as pernicious as epistemic exclusions. Specifically, I highlight some of the ways in which epistemic agents can be included in epistemic systems in a manner that is epistemically exploitative—extracting epistemic labor coercively or in ways that are distinctly non-reciprocal. I then turn to María Lugones’ distinction between horizontal and vertical practices to discuss avenues of resisting both exclusions and inclusions that thwart the epistemic agency of marginalized knowers. I. Epistemic Agency and Exclusion Dotson identifies three levels on which systemic exclusions can operate to impede agency by asking the question: when a system is impeding the epistemic agency of a targeted group of knowers, how would the system need to change so that it no longer impedes? On a first-order level, a person may be excluded from participating within an epistemic system on account of a problematic exclusion that manifests in an inconsistency in how the system is utilized or run. Examples of first order exclusions include what Dotson (2011) calls epistemic silencing, what 3 Miranda Fricker (2007) calls testimonial injustice, and what Christopher Hookway (2010) calls participatory injustice. All three involve pre-emptively regarding a person as unreliable or incapable of participating in particular epistemic systems and so impede epistemic agency by barring them from full participation in those systems. In contrast, a second order exclusion occurs when there are gaps in an epistemic system resulting from prior exclusions in the system’s development where these gaps consistently obscure what it is in the interests of particular knowers to know and have known. In such cases, a system will need to be more fully developed so as to facilitate epistemic agency more equitably. Fricker’s notion of hermeneutical injustice would qualify as a second-order system exclusion. As Fricker, notes in cases of hermeneutical injustice there is a gap in collective epistemic resources because certain knowers whom those resources ought to serve have been marginalized in the process of resource development. Here, the system can be used consistently yet still impede agency. To rectify the problem the system needs to be further developed. While the system’s under-development is a problem, the system itself is not. Finally, a third-order exclusion occurs when an entire system is inapt for attending to the epistemic interests of particular knowers. In such cases, developing the system further will not suffice to solve the problem. Instead, there is need for a new epistemic system altogether. For example, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989) work on the U.S. judicial system highlights how tying discrimination law to individual classes (e.g. race or sex, but not simultaneously both) makes it impossible in some instances to establish that Black women have been subject to unjust discrimination. Here the problem cannot be solved through further development of the system, for example, by adding more individual classes that may have previously been missed. Rather a different epistemic system is needed to track discrimination against Black women. Drawing on 4 the U.S. Black feminist tradition, Crenshaw noted that to understand Black women’s oppression we need to replace a system that considers single axes of oppression in isolation with one that attends to the ways multiple axes of oppression intersect to thwart particular groups. Importantly, I would note that where a second-order exclusion inhibits epistemic agency passively through what it lacks, a third-order exclusion actively inhibits agency by directing attention in the wrong way or on the wrong sorts of things with respect to particular epistemic interests. As such a third-order exclusion requires an entirely new system to remedy the problem. This may further entail the need to dismantle an epistemic system that actively excludes. As noted at the outset, in her work Fricker specifies a wrong and then moves to the question of how individuals can avoid enacting the wrong, whereas Dotson identifies how systems can impede epistemic agency by considering how the system would need to be changed in order to facilitate agency. For this reason, Dotson’s model holds attention on epistemic harm as actual (something that needs to be fixed) rather than potential (something that ought to be avoided). In addition, by focusing on systems rather than agents as the source of harm, Dotson’s framework remains focused on how to make the world better for those who are oppressed, rather than how to make oppressors better people. Finally, Dotson’s focus on epistemic systems importantly leads her to identify the possibility that an epistemic system can actively perpetuate harm, not because it is insufficiently developed, but because the system itself prevents something from being known. This kind of insight is important for understanding processes of colonization, since epistemic institutions have long been deployed in the service of colonization, from maintaining histories that whitewash the violence of colonization to residential schools aimed at destroying communities that resist being colonized. Thus, an approach that brings into focus how 5 epistemic systems can actively (and not just passively) harm is critical to decolonizing epistemology. In light of these differences, it should come as no surprise that Dotson uses the language of epistemic oppression rather than epistemic injustice. Dotson is not identifying individual (or what Fricker would call ‘one-off’) harms, but rather focusing attention on how the systems that organize our lives situate whole groups of people in relation to one another so that, structurally speaking, benefits are secured for some and harms are directed at others. For this reason, her work on epistemic agency resonates well with recent work in philosophy of disability. In what follows, I make some connections between Dotson’s model and what disability theorists call the social model of disability. In doing so, I make evident further insights into epistemic agency that ultimately lead me to recommend that we pay close attention to how pernicious inclusions can cause as much epistemic harm as epistemic exclusions. Focusing on what individual agents can (and cannot) do within epistemic systems highlights the manner in which knowing and even knowers themselves are collectively constituted. This further suggests that knowers may be constituted in ways that not only impede agency but that serve the agency of others. To investigate this possibility further, I draw on work in disability studies that locates both ability and disability, not in individuals, but rather in the relationship between individuals and their environments. This will lead me to a concern with not only exclusions from but also pernicious inclusions within epistemic systems. Moreover, the possibility of pernicious inclusions suggests that certain strategies for resistance may be less helpful than others, a question to which I turn at the end of the paper. Within disability studies the social model of disability offers a way of understanding ability as a relationship between bodies and environments (Wendell 1996). So for example, if a 6 building is constructed with three foot ceilings, it will enable those under three feet tall to move through its spaces considerably more than it will enable bodies that are over three feet tall. If environments tend to be shaped in relation to those who regularly access them, when new bodies that were previously excluded from those spaces enter them, it is more likely that those new bodies will encounter features of the environment that are disabling. For example, a woman who entered medical school at a time when women were first being admitted entrance to medical schools might have found that the classroom buildings at her medical school had very few women’s washrooms, or perhaps none at all. While the buildings may have served those who worked there prior to the entry of women students quite well, the entrance of new bodies into the building reveals that it is not suited for enabling all bodies. Moreover, including new bodies into the building does not itself remedy the problem; worse yet, those bodies can appear to produce (rather than simply reveal) a problem. If one does not pay attention to the environment itself as something designed to serve some bodies and not others, the inclusion of new bodies can appear to reveal these new bodies as lacking in themselves, rather than being disabled by an environment that is suited to enable only certain bodies. Importantly the social model of disability shifts our attention from individuals who may appear disabled in themselves to environments and systems that disable some while enabling others. Similarly, the systems we utilize to know the world contribute to the epistemic environment within which we move, epistemically speaking. If those systems have been formed in relation to some epistemic agents and not others, they are likely to have disabling features as well. This is one reason why a systems approach is critical for understanding epistemic harm in light of histories that include such things as domination, oppression, and colonization. A framework that begins with ‘the’ (unmarked) epistemic agent will tend to position agents who 7 are enabled by socially maintained epistemic systems as ideal capable knowers in their own right while simultaneously characterizing agents who are not enabled by those same systems as incapable knowers who fall short of the ideal. In other words, considering epistemic agents independent of systems where structures of oppression are in fact present will tend to frame knowers within the oppressing class as ideal capable knowers and knowers within the oppressed class as less able or incapable knowers. Attending to the systems that constitute agents in relation to one another is a crucial reminder that what knowers can do is a function of relations among knowers (not some quality within knowers themselves). Ideal ‘unmarked’ knowers are one of the hallmarks of the European Enlightenment that accompanied European colonial expansion and domination. Moreover, enlightenment ideals were used to justify colonization by positing European peoples as ideal knowers and prototypes of civilization while casting non-European people as ‘less than ideal’ (Alcoff 2017, Mignolo 2012). In contrast, a systems approach highlights the structural conditions that constitute epistemic agents in relation to one another, debunking the notion that there are knowers unmarked by their situation in relation to others. Holding attention to structures is also critical insofar as how we direct our attention to a problem will shape and inform the sorts of solutions we can envision for that problem. If we see a wrong as being caused by an agent’s failure of perception, we will seek to change the agent. However, if we see the wrong in how such an agent is utilizing a system, where an agent’s actions are just one part of that system, we will not only look at the actions of the individual but also at the whole system within which those actions take place. With respect to first-order exclusions we might ask, for example, is there something about this system that lends itself to being misused in this way? Is it best to correct the individual within the system or are there ways of recalibrating the system so that it cannot be misused in this fashion? In the case of testimonial 8 injustice this may shift us away from solutions that rely on individuals to self-correct and toward changes that prevent testimonial exchange from being discounted based on identity prejudice, such as anonymous review. Thinking about epistemic agency as a relation between epistemic agents and their environments reveals specific challenges in remedying imbalances in second-order exclusions. For example, gaps in epistemic systems will press upon some more urgently than others, since they are gaps that are experienced on account of how the lived world of those who have been previously excluded from influencing epistemic systems differs from those who have historically interacted, utilized, and shaped those systems. While those who have previously been excluded are uniquely positioned to identify gaps in the system, individual knowers can only do so much. This is owing not only to the fact that knowers are finite beings, but also to the fact that others may not find the gaps particularly pressing, because their epistemic needs are met by the system as it stands. This can lead to cases of what I have previously identified as willful hermeneutical ignorance (2012), which can occur when knowers refuse to acknowledge whole parts of the world that do not press upon them where their ability to ignore is aided by gaps in the system working in conjunction with knowers’ interest in not knowing what those gaps hide. Knowers on whom gaps in the system do exert epistemic pressure may therefore have trouble filling those gaps insofar as doing so may require cooperative efforts from others who do not notice the gaps in their epistemic systems as keenly. Finally, calling attention to the epistemic systems that facilitate epistemic agency, as systems, reveals the possibility that some epistemic systems may be irreparable as in the case of third-order exclusions. That an epistemic system can actively exclude raises the question as to whether some epistemic systems ought to be abandoned altogether. In such cases, particular 9 epistemic systems may attend to the world accurately, while simultaneously preventing the concerns of whole groups of knowers from being known (Táíwò 2017). Investigating epistemic systems as actual structures that may have targeted harmful effects is unsettling to European philosophy conceived as the investigation of eternal structures. It raises the question of whether conceiving some epistemic structures as universal and ideal might be a way of establishing the concerns of particular knowers as unassailably central to ‘human’ thought while simultaneously excluding from the realm of knowability the concerns of other knowers. It also raises the question of whether universal inclusion is a desirable goal or remedy to the problems posed by systemic exclusions. II. Epistemic Agency and Inclusions While targeted exclusions from epistemic systems can impede epistemic agency, inclusions can impede epistemic agency and epistemic autonomy as well. Dotson notes that the resilience of epistemic systems can serve to maintain exclusions in epistemic systems. In other words, resilience considered independently of social relations is an important aspect of epistemic systems. If epistemic systems are to serve knowers well, they must be sustainable over time. However, when exclusions are built into the system itself, this resilience can serve oppressive epistemic relations. I turn to a different element of epistemic systems to consider how epistemic inclusions can serve oppressive epistemic relations. I argue that the normative force of epistemic systems in conjunction with targeted exclusions can produce inclusions within epistemic systems that are exploitative, leading to infringements on epistemic autonomy and exhausting of epistemic agency. In other words, while epistemic resilience gives epistemic systems the sort of consistency and stability necessary for bringing sustained attention to the world over time, the normative force of epistemic systems serves to coordinate epistemic agents within those systems. 10 Epistemic coordination allows agents to benefit both from the stability that epistemic systems provide and from an expansion of the experienced world available to them. When the systems themselves are deployed inconsistently, contain targeted gaps, or are altogether inapt for attending to particular parts of the world that are experienced by marginalized groups, partial inclusion and even full inclusion in such systems can produce substantial epistemic harm. This is because inclusion within normatively governed systems may coercively direct the epistemic agency of marginalized knowers in ways that asymmetrically serve the epistemic interests of dominantly situated knowers while undermining their own. Such inclusions can, therefore, be epistemically exploitative, extracting epistemic labor from some solely for the benefit of others. For example, cases of testimonial injustice, or viewing a speaker as less credible on account of an identity prejudice, are cases of first order exclusions. However, in many cases lessening of credibility is not wholesale, but targeted. As I have argued elsewhere (2014), credibility deficits tend to occur when testimony troubles or calls into question the experienced world of those dominantly situated but not when testimony confirms what is expected from dominant social positions. For example, Rachel McKinney (2016) examines cases such as the Central Park Five, in which five male juveniles of color were compelled to give false confessions and were consequently wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting and attacking a white woman jogging in New York City’s Central Park. In this particular case, epistemic agents, who would normally be subject to testimonial injustice are forced to produce testimony which is then received as credible. This McKinney calls ‘extracted speech.’ Here, coercive inclusion produces an epistemic dysfunction that serves to confirm falsely the experienced world in ways that maintain axes of power serving dominant interests. More recently, Jennifer Lackey (2019) has argued that a focus on how knowers may be excluded from epistemic practices owing to 11 credibility deficits fails to attend to the ways in which affording too much credibility at the moment of forced confession can impede epistemic agency. This sort of coercive inclusion in epistemic testimonial practices she calls ‘agential testimonial injustice’ (2019). In addition to McKinney’s ‘extracted speech’ and Lackey’s ‘agential testimonial injustice,’ however, even the sorts of testimonial injustices that Miranda Fricker examines can be understood as inclusions that exploit the epistemic labor of marginalized subjects. Specifically, Fricker defines testimonial injustice as not just seeing a person as less credible (which emphasizes exclusion, pushing their testimony out) but as less credible because incompetent or untrustworthy. Competence and trustworthiness are adjectives properly applied to epistemic subjects, so we can see testimonial injustice as an exclusion that depends upon an inclusion in the norms of judgment that govern testimonial exchange. Thus, at the first-order level, epistemic agency can be thwarted by way of a semi-inclusion. Given that this semi-inclusion serves to exclude claims that disrupt while including claims that serve to stabilize the dominantly experienced world, we can see this semi-inclusion as asymmetrically serving the needs of some by exploiting others. An example of inclusions that occur in conjunction with second order exclusions can be found in cases where those who have been historically excluded from knowledge production are called upon continually to remedy the gaps that are remnants of historical exclusion from those systems. While knowers whose experienced world reveals gaps in epistemic systems are uniquely positioned to contribute to identifying those gaps, calling upon them to do so can precipitate an infringement on epistemic autonomy. This is particularly the case when those who call upon others to identify gaps may be in the habit of not listening with care when gaps are explicitly identified by those on whom systemic gaps exert pressure. To call upon another is to 12 direct them, but to listen is to be directed. That dominantly situated knowers may be in the habit of the former but not the latter speaks to habituated forms of epistemic domination. In addition, expecting those whose experienced world reveals systematic gaps to devote their epistemic labor (when directed) entirely to rectifying those gaps might be similar to expecting those who utilize wheelchairs to move through the world to be architects engaged in making buildings more universally accessible. While those who use wheelchairs can certainly become architects, it seems just as unwarranted to expect them automatically to be architects as it is to expect that they cannot be architects. Such expectations can be seen not only as an infringement on epistemic autonomy, but also can be deployed in ways that disregard the epistemic labor involved in remedying systemic gaps. For example, Emmalon Davis (2016) notes that marginalized knowers are subject to what she calls ‘compulsory representation’ in which a speaker’s epistemic subjectivity ‘is recognized only insofar as the speaker might provide some informational service, where the information in question is perceived by dominant hearers to be inaccessible from their own epistemic position.’ (2016, 490). Davis notes that in such cases there is a de dicto inclusion of marginalized speakers that simultaneously functions as a de re exclusion insofar as inclusion is predicated upon providing epistemic labor but does not allow for the epistemic subjectivity of marginalized knowers explicitly to shape the direction of their labor (2016: 490). Similarly Uma Narayan (1997) notes that academics in the U.S. who are from the global south are often included in epistemic projects in ways that simultaneously exploit and discount their epistemic labor. Lastly, these sorts of expectations can turn into a particularly pernicious sort of epistemic exploitation when the recognized systems available are inapt for attending to the experienced world one is expected to represent. For example, Saba Fatima (2017) notes that often when 13 people of color articulate experiences of microaggressions, they are asked to justify their certainty of each and every instance in isolation and particularly with respect to whether each individual instance was perhaps a misunderstanding of intention. However, Fatima argues, the force of microaggressions cannot be properly understood by viewing incidents in isolation. Moreover, focusing on the intentions of perpetrators shifts epistemic attention away from the experienced world of those who are the target of patterned microaggressions to the experienced world of those who are the source of them. Nora Berenstain (2016) notes that when those who are inept at noticing targeted social harms repeatedly call upon those who are subject to them to ‘prove’ the harm they endure, this can produce double binds from which it is extraordinarily difficult to extract oneself. In other words, solicitations to ‘prove’ that things like sexism and racism exist can often leave one with the choice of either engaging in fruitless and tiresome epistemic labor or appearing to be complicit in the view that one’s experiences simply do not exist. Moreover, as Jeanine Weekes Schroer (2015) argues, responding to such solicitations can have the effect of reinscibing epistemic hierarchies insofar as continuing to scientifically document the harms of oppression may reinforce the background assumption that the expressed experience of harm by some groups is not plausible or reliable on its own. III. Resisting Epistemic Oppression While a focus on epistemic exclusions might suggest that the remedy to epistemic injustice and oppression should come in the form of more inclusion, the manner in which inclusions can be deployed to stymie epistemic agency suggests that we ought to proceed here with caution. In considering the ways in which oppressed subjects can resist what she calls ‘dominant worlds of sense’ the philosopher María Lugones recommends what she calls ‘horizontal practices’ as practices that resist ‘two related injunctions: the injunction for the 14 oppressed to have our gazes fixed on the oppressor and the concomitant injunction not to look to and connect with each other’ (2003: 80). If we think of attending as the practice of directing one’s epistemic energies, we can understand the injunction to gaze solely towards oppressors, that is, to engage vertical attention, as the compulsion to devote one’s epistemic energies toward those who are already privileged within epistemic systems. Resisting injustices by trying to make those injustices evident to those who are not harmed by them fixes attention on (and in the service of) those privileged by systems of oppression by assuming the experienced world of those who are already privileged as a starting point. Specifically, it is an approach that is preoccupied with how those who are dominantly positioned experience the world such that they do not notice injustice and one that seeks to expand the dominantly experienced world so as to recognize systemic injustices. For this reason, vertical attention maintains a dynamic in which those who are oppressed devote their epistemic energy towards those who are oppressors. In directing epistemic energy toward the project of making injustice evident to those who are privileged, vertical attention can undermine resistance to oppressive systems insofar as it prioritizes the agency of those who are empowered by relations of dominance and oppression. In contrast, horizontal attention directs one’s epistemic energy toward and in connection with other non-dominantly situated subjects. It resists impediments to agency by withdrawing one’s epistemic energies from those who are dominantly situated and enlisting those energies to enable agencies elsewhere. The difference between vertical and horizontal attention can be illustrated by thinking about the epistemic work of the hashtag #MeToo used initially by Tarana Burke as part of an organization she founded in 2007. Tarana Burke, an African American woman in the U.S., recounts on her website the experience that inspired her to use the words ‘Me too’ as the name 15 for a movement to help survivors of sexual violence in the U.S., especially survivors who are Black women and girls. Prior to starting her own organization in 2007, Burke was part of another organization that worked primarily with Black children from low income homes, during which time one of the girls Burke was mentoring confided experiences of sexual violence to her. Concerning this encounter, Burke writes, ‘I listened until I literally could not take it anymorewhich turned out to be less than 5 minutes…. As much as I loved her, I could not muster the energy to tell her that I understood… I couldn’t even bring myself to whisper…me too’ (Burke The Inception). Within this context, the words ‘me too’ do a very specific sort of epistemic work that mark them as horizontally directed. To begin, the words are contextualized in a particular relation and are directed from one survivor of sexual violence to another. The words recounting Burke’s experience are also directed at a broader audience, given that they appear on the website of her organization. Nonetheless, that broader audience is still inscribed in a manner that does not shift attention away from the experienced world of those who are harmed by sexual violence and toward the experienced world of those who perpetrate and/or are unaware of the harm of sexual violence. Instead, attention is directed to and valorizes the exchange between survivors. As such, the recounting of this experience places value on horizontal (as opposed to vertical) attention. Moreover, by valuing horizontal attention, Burke’s words value survivors of sexual violence in a manner that does not depend upon those who perpetrate and/or ignore it. In recounting that this experience gave rise to her coining of the term ‘me too’ for a movement to help survivors of sexual violence, Burke signals the importance of forging relations with other survivors of sexual violence for the sake of survivors alone and not in service to a world that does not care about violence against women for its own sake. This is not about calling the 16 attention of the powerful or privileged to oppression but about forming relations among those who are marginalized and oppressed so as to sustain and enable them in resistance. In addition, by calling her experience ‘The Inception,’ Burke is articulating her motivations for starting her organization. That is, her original utterance is the beginning of her epistemic work, not the conclusion of that work. By emphasizing that this experience was one of great difficulty, one in which she was literally unable to whisper these two words, she bears witness to some of the epistemic labor involved in sustaining horizontal attention. Often those who share experiences of oppression are imagined to automatically know the same things on account of sharing particular experiences. However, the image of ‘automatic knowing’ among oppressed persons maintains the illusion that such persons are interchangeable and not unique epistemic agents in their own right, even while being disempowered systemically. Moreover, the idea that oppressed persons know in a way that is ‘automatic’ discounts their epistemic labor, and in particular the epistemic labor involved in removing oneself from the injunction to serve those who are privileged and in forging new systems with others in resistance. The difficulties of engaging in this sort of epistemic labor are distinct from those that result from attending across differences in social hierarchies. Burke’s words suggest instead a difficulty in acknowledging sameness; it matters that the interlocutors in the instance she recounts are both not only survivors of sexual violence but also positioned as Black and female. If we think of ‘me, too’ as an epistemic tool, it may be that when ‘me, too’ comes too easily we need to look towards differences in social positioning, but when ‘me, too’ is particularly hard we need to consider what makes affinities so difficult to acknowledge. These sorts of considerations (of where speakers feel ease and difficulty, are responding to affinities or attending to distinctions) are important for analyzing how epistemic systems function in the nonideal world. Moreover, it 17 is precisely these sorts of considerations that are erased when efforts at resistance are vertically directed. Insofar as vertical attention directs epistemic energy in support of those who are privileged by relations of dominance and oppression, this sort of attention may do very little to disrupt the epistemic systems that maintain epistemic oppression, allowing those systems to fade into the background as ideal or universal structures necessary for knowing in general while hiding the manner in which those same systems enlist all knowers towards the interests of only some. In contrast to Burke’s horizontally directed movement, the popular use of this hashtag following a tweet made by Alyssa Milano in 2017 is vertically directed. The 2017 tweet made by Milano read ‘If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.’ It continued, ‘If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.’ In contrast to Burke’s use of these words, Milano does not direct her words at a particular person, nor does she identify exactly the ‘people’ who are in need of a ‘sense of the magnitude of the problem.’ In this sense, the ‘people’ referenced in Milano’s tweet function as an unmarked (and so generic) population suspiciously similar to the unmarked ideal knower. However, the people who are to be served epistemically by the tweet are not generic at all, but rather those for whom the widespread nature of sexual assault and harassment is not already apparent. By positioning those who remain unaware of sexual violence as a general and generic population the tweet valorizes one experienced world (in which persons do not face sexual violence) over another (the experienced world of those who endure such violence). Insofar as the epistemic labor of the hashtag #Metoo is understood as a resource that will help those who are (imagined to be) unaware of the magnitude of sexual violence and 18 harassment, it is vertically directed. Moreover, the vertical directedness of the tweet serves the interests of those who are privileged by systems of oppression in more than one way. For example, Milano’s tweet assumes that those who are not working to end violence against women are simply unaware of a problem, that if the epistemic labor of bringing the problem to their attention were successful, people would do something. This further suggests that if people in fact do not do anything to end systems that enable violence against women, that the fault resides in those individuals who have not made this problem evident to those who are enabled in remaining ignorant. However, it is just as possible that awareness will do nothing to alleviate the problem. Moreover, the turn towards ‘raising awareness’ ignores the possibility that there are systems in place that perpetuate an ability to ignore. Painting those who do nothing to end sexual violence as simply unaware of a problem (one that they need others to bring to their attention), rather than as persons who are enabled by systems of oppression, is a way of mitigating guilt and responsibility for privileges afforded by relations of oppression. Finally, the move toward ‘raising awareness’ makes the epistemic work of resisting oppression seem too easy. ‘Raising awareness’ can be as simple as revealing facts and providing information but does not actually end violence. Moreover, the apparent ease with which this revelatory work might be facilitated (updating statuses, tweeting) belies the immense amount of everyday epistemic labor involved in contending with a world that is structured at odds with one’s interests (Pohlhaus forthcoming). Even worse, the illusion that raising awareness is all that is needed to end violence against women may coercively add to women’s epistemic labor, as they then may be called upon to engage in fruitless (but very taxing and often time consuming) epistemic labor akin to what Berenstain (2016) calls epistemic exploitation. For this reason, 19 vertical attention runs the risk of producing and maintaining pernicious epistemic inclusions of the sort identified in section two of this paper. Returning to the questions with which I began, we can see that some approaches to epistemic injustice itself may be more vertically directed and so undermine the project of ending epistemic oppression. Insofar as work on epistemic injustice assumes as its starting point the experienced world of those who are enabled by systems of oppression, it engages in vertical attention. Importantly, vertical attention is often unmarked as such, but can be seen to operate in seemingly innocuous moves such as the move from identifying epistemic injustice to developing virtues so as to remain innocent of it. This sort of vertical attention primarily notices how knowers who are excluded from participation in systems can be harmed, but does not see the need to dismantle those systems themselves. Dismantling those systems would divest those who are privileged by them from the power (epistemic and otherwise) that they enjoy on account of oppressive systems. Thus, inclusion is regarded as the only solution. However, as I have argued, epistemic inclusion can serve to oppress just as surely as epistemic exclusions. For this reason, an approach to epistemic injustice that is vertically directed, that focuses on agents independently of the systems that situate differently positioned agents in relation to one another, and that does not interrogate how actual non-ideal epistemic systems are deployed in the service of epistemic oppression, may very well be an oppressive epistemic system itself. 20 Works Cited Alcoff, Linda Martín. 2017. Philosophy and Philosophical Practice: Eurocentricism as an epistemology of ignorance. In I. Kidd, J. Medina, and G. Pohlhaus, Jr. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (pp. 397-408). NY: Routledge. Berenstain, Nora. 2016. Epistemic Exploitation. Ergo 3(22): 569-590. Burke, Tarana. The Inception. 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