Making oneself known and the ethics of epistemic reparations

Abstract

Jennifer Lackey has argued that victims of gross violations and injustices are owed epistemic reparations and have the right to be known. This is roughly the right for these victims to have their stories heard and to be givers of knowledge. Recent work in the field has focused on ways we fail to listen to the stories of victims. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which oppressive systems, like colonialism, distort victims’ self-understandings and the narratives they convey. I argue that genuine epistemic reparations within oppressive contexts require conditions that enable victims to come to know themselves on their own terms. I call the process of individual and collective self-recognition made possible by those conditions making oneself known. Drawing on critiques of the colonial politics of recognition, I show why this self-knowledge must precede being known by others. Only by establishing this epistemic foundation can genuine reparative work begin, rather than reproducing the very epistemic violence such reparations are meant to repair.