Feelings
Member
- Confused, then clear
- Not giving it a fair shot
- Really, really bad at the end → Conflicted
Member
- Like the main argument
- Assigning the degrees of injustice
- Uneasy feeling → why do you say this specifically
- Finished also negatively → Disappointed
Member
- The text was very clear, sharp
- Tend to agree
- Could be more
- I buy it, you could have more → resignation → Unimpressed
Member
- Uncomfortable
- The entire paper is a derivative of Miranda's Fricker
- Quickly said
Member
- Unfulfilled
- Left wanting move
- Blue balls
Style
Member
- Did not like the style
- Critique the orthodoxy how science is done, how it is thought of
- You do not have to write that complicated; you need to strike the balance between stylized language
- What is the purpose of such a complex description
- Defeating the purpose
- They gave you a guide in the text
- Very rationalist and positivist language
Member
- It is more accessible than other critical theory
- It went more to the oversimplification
- Especially with the examples
- They did not talk about the oppressors
- Comparative to critical security studies
- Quote: “Our immigrant worker is in a point of total epistemic opacity.” → very paternalistic, simplification for the sake of the argument
- You are not respecting the subject who…
Member
- Like the style
- Like this way of reasoning
- Asks a lot, but it is clear
- Incompatible with the very purpose
- You are not giving epistemic by publishing in a journal anyways
Member
- First injustice, then pattern then structure
- Later different three stages of opacity
- Very poorly chosen → they are not connected
- Someone should have pointed it out
- Entire paper hinges on political responsibility → is not defined in the text
- The paper is not worth an entire paper
- Slightly journalistic → pretends to do definition work, but it does not do
Theory
Member
- Talking about total opacity example of the immigrant worker → you have the immediate needs (feed, live)
- It does not engage with any other types of literature
- It is the disempowered who have actually pushed this debate forwards
- The point is that you actually find agency there
- You do not see it, you misjudge the causes
- It is not valid → just because it has not been done before → very positivist
- Such a surgical and hygienic language is not valid
- It should have been in a different tone
- Calling everyone an agent
- Make it clearer, why are you afraid
- Who is it helpful to?
- You are just not a victim, but you are also responsible
- Paper hinges on the difficult question of how you talk about the oppressed
- Can the Subaltern speak (Spivak) → usually comes from a place of collective care
- It is much more political → goes against the language of exact science
- It is not even that novel
- Felt detached, you need to embrace
Member
- The example is ahistorical, it is not an effective heuristic device
- Extrapolate to the whole epistemic opacity → did not really buy it
- Awareness is created
- Is there even an objective structural?
- The level of the system and individual → struggles
- You feel helpless at the grandness of the…
- Bogonia → no spoilers, No Lanthimos
- They think that Emma Stone…
- Tension → let down, but it depends on how aware you are
- If you are structurally oppressed –
- Friend knows an artist → working class, black, queer → they also deserve to get money
- Do you need to be morally absolute in all instances?
Member
- Assuming fixed structural injustice
- In defense of the text:
- It is not the case that the immigrant worker is inept and passive → but she does not frame what they feel as something against justice
- Lea goes out in the…
- Can be helpful to some people
Member
- Defense: not much merit of critiquing the example so much
- The discursive aspect is emphasized later on → helpful to point it out
- How it feels difficult and ascribe to them lack of agency
- Ascribe it to the system, as the method of the system
- It is designed in such a way
- It does not feel so wrong → you will not object to it emotionally
- Hinges on how you define responsibility?
- You can view it in an empowering sense → what do you have the power to influence
- What other attitude would you hope for? → to Laura
Critique
Member
- The immigrant who joins the anti-immigrant party → speaks more to…
- The point of the paper is that structural injustice exists → you cannot just blame Kissinger, but you have to act on it!
- Everyone has the responsibility to engage
- If you buy the exceptionalism → access to a larger platform → you should sell to Deutsche Bahn
- The master's house will not be disrupted by the master's tools
- Does structural injustice hinge on being one system?
- Here more one system
- But more parallel
- They are assuming away a lot of the problems
- How do we make this happen in the real world?
- Example of referenda failing in Italy
- What happened that mostly people from the left turned out → but still people from the left did not care so much about
- Answer is to find a common enemy
Member
- Every communist reading group → you just talk about it and that's it
- Dependency theory → periphery vs. core → structural inequality that perpetuates itself
- Elites within the periphery are very much perpetuating it
- Struggle with blaming the external force
- In Cyprus blaming the great power
- Historical narratives that find lazy excuses
- You cannot just blame Kissinger for the fucked up
- Competing identities
- Some gay men are super misogynistic → how does it clash? (Frido)
- Multiple structural injustices
Member
- Some of Sara's critique should have been in the spirit of the text → you cannot just blame an out-group
- The text kinda sets out to do exactly this
- It failed → because of the position of the text
- The authors read epistemic injustice → “I want to write a paper here — where can I apply this?”
- If you look at the problems and ask what theory helps us to navigate them
- As a person who likes philosophy → poorly
- Does the person who is part of an oppressed group who manages to succeed
- In comparison to the oppressor group!!
- Total opacity: they don't fucking matter
- Intersectionality is not really a problem for the paper
- It would be a problem if the argument would degrade → but the argument is not valuable, but does not degrade
- Slider of opacity → responsibility based on where you are
- It gets more complicated with the more injustices you have against yourself
Member
- Does the epistemic part even matter?
Member
- Did you like this? → Yeah
- How are you going to define what structural injustice is
Member's Preparatory Notes
- All victims have a responsibility to engage in activities "directed at transforming those structures [that contribute to structural injustice]" → it is a reasonable starting assumption, sets up the exploration of the direct content very nicely
- Very reasonable issue of "demandigness" → was it disspelled entirely by the last section?
- Epistemic Opacity → I very much enjoyed this concept, the question of course depends on what it takes → people are trying to deliberately keep the opacity in place (so it is not just a one way process of epistemic engagement, but rather a systemic battle over the epistemic space)
- What I do not like that much → this necessarily puts more pressure on the better educated (kinda Leninist) → hierarchizes the movement from the start
- Injustice is not pre-political
- Interesting interplay of being the victim and victimizing → related to example from Naomi Klein – Doppelganger, where she talks about the reaction of the Jewish people to oppression by oppressing others
- "Impossibility of Justification" (p.7) → the whole metaphor of opacity rests on this, that because it is so deeply ingrained into the social existence, it precludes the need to justify itself
- I like the interplay between uncovering and organization
- Particularly in Academia there is so much focus on uncovering of injustice and other issues, but very little effort on linking this to organization of resistance
- HOW CAN WE GET PEOPLE OUT OF EPISTEMIC OPACITY?
- Is it possible as long as the structural injustice is in place?
- Is the story sort of critical mass, that as long as enough stories accumulate things will change? → are not most issues past that stage?
- Partial Epistemic Opacity:
- I wonder how much difference the extra step will make for the actual steps being taken
- Rather would this not be nowadays transgressed very quickly, with how available information are?
- Voicing of Dissatisfaction in the "usual sites of socialisation"
- I have an issue with this, since people might be placated by the very act of voicing, which is not public enough
- The example of Hospoda during Communism
- Case of Exceptionalism
- I really wonder how far it is realistic to persuade people who fall into this category → are they not "too far"?
- Although the point of "fracture moral systems" is interesting, I am not sure that this is actually how most people perceive this specific issue
- Reaction from the community? this is a mute point in most settings
- The last section
- Could it not be argued that the other considerations always override the issue of epistemic involvement?