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White Feminist Gaslighting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2020

Nora Berenstain
Nora Berenstain*
Affiliation:
Philosophy, and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program, University of Tennessee, 801 McClung Tower, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996
*
Corresponding Author. nberenst@utk.edu
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Abstract

Structural gaslighting arises when conceptual work functions to obscure the nonaccidental connections between structures of oppression and the patterns of harm they produce and license. This article examines the role that structural gaslighting plays in white feminist methodology and epistemology using Miranda Fricker's discussion of hermeneutical injustice as an illustration (Fricker 2007). Fricker's work produces structural gaslighting through several methods: i) the outright denial of the role that structural oppression plays in producing interpretive harm, ii) the use of single-axis conceptual resources to understand intersectional oppression, and iii) the failure to recognize the legacy of women of color's epistemic resistance work surrounding the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. I argue that Fricker's whitewashed discussion of epistemic resistance to sexual harassment in the United States is a form of structural gaslighting that fails to treat women of color as knowers and exemplifies the strategic forgetting that is a central methodological tactic of white feminism.

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Articles
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Hypatia , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Fall 2020 , pp. 733 - 758
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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