II. The Lacuna-Centered Analysis

Fricker draws our attention to the emergence of the concept sexual harassment in the early 1970s. She details the case of Carmita Wood, who quit her job at Cornell University's Nuclear Physics Department after experiencing persistent and unwanted sexual advances from her boss. He would “jiggle his crotch” while passing her desk and would “deliberately brush against her breasts while reaching for some papers” (Fricker Reference Fricker2007, 150).Footnote ⁵ When applying for unemployment insurance, Wood was required to explain why she had quit, but she found herself at a loss for words. It wasn't shameless flirting or mere office humor that caused her to leave; what she experienced was flat-out sexual harassment. But, since this concept had yet to make its way into collective understanding—let alone onto unemployment insurance forms—Wood couldn't articulate her experience as such. She reported that she had quit for “personal reasons” and was subsequently denied insurance.

Fricker describes Wood's case as a paradigmatic instance of hermeneutical injustice. She says: “Here is a story about how extant collective hermeneutical resources can have a lacuna where the name of a distinctive social experience should be” (150–51). Accordingly, the hermeneutical injustice Wood faced resulted from a gap in the available stock of hermeneutical resources; there was a lacuna where the concept sexual harassment should have been. Moreover, this lacuna is a consequence of an injustice in the background social methods that are used to determine hermeneutical resources. In Fricker's terminology, women like Wood faced hermeneutical marginalization: they were not equitably included in the political and legal contexts that serve to define the conditions for unemployment.

According to this approach, the primary harm of hermeneutical injustice concerns a lack of intelligibility resulting from one's hermeneutical marginalization. Fricker says: “the subject is rendered unable to make communicatively intelligible something which it is particularly in his or her interests to be able to render intelligible” (162). The secondary harms of hermeneutical injustice, Fricker argues, concern the downstream negative consequences that result from this unintelligibility. In Wood's case, this includes, among other things, her being denied unemployment insurance as well as her increased levels of stress and anxiety.

The case of Carmita Wood and the emergence of the concept sexual harassment has now become the stock example of hermeneutical injustice in the literature, but it's important to highlight that this injustice, as it's understood on a lacuna-centered model, can be illustrated using many other examples. Consider the recent emergence of the concept genderqueer as a hermeneutical resource for understanding and giving recognition to the identities of nonbinary people. Robin Dembroff argues that:

Another example is the concept of disability pride as it emerged in the disability rights movement in the 1960s. Elizabeth Barnes has discussed the importance of this concept in challenging dominant associations of disability with tragedy, inferiority, and shame. Barnes says: “As disabled people, we are forever being told that there is something about our bodies that is lacking, that is less than. Disability pride says it doesn't have to be that way. Disability pride says that we may have minority bodies, but we don't have—we refuse to have—tragic bodies” (Barnes Reference Barnes2016, 186). For disabled and nondisabled people alike, Barnes argues that the concept of disability pride has helped to make intelligible that disability can be the subject of genuine pride.

Recent scholarship has also highlighted significant limitations of Fricker's analysis and has further expanded upon it. Gaile Pohlhaus develops the valuable notion of willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated individuals refuse to adopt the hermeneutical resources of marginalized groups (Pohlhaus Reference Pohlhaus2012). Willful hermeneutical ignorance functions to maintain hermeneutical gaps at the intercommunal level—that is, though such resources may be utilized, even widely, among members of one's own community or social group (that is, they are intracommunally available), lacunae nevertheless persist at the level of the dominant or collective hermeneutical repertoire, which is used to interpret and communicate one's experiences across social groups more broadly.Footnote ⁶

Building upon the work of Pohlhaus and others, Kristie Dotson has developed an analysis of contributory injustice. This is an epistemic injustice resulting from willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated individuals choose to employ prejudiced hermeneutical resources when they could have used more accurate resources that have already been developed by those in marginalized communities (Dotson Reference Dotson2012). Contributory injustice concerns the refusal among those in dominant positions to allow marginalized individuals to exercise their epistemic agency by contributing to the dominant hermeneutical repertoire. As a result, hermeneutical gaps persist within the dominant (or intercommunal) hermeneutical inventory.

Relatedly, Luvell Anderson has analyzed how hermeneutical gaps may be actively cultivated through the suppression of extant hermeneutical resources. Anderson gives the example of postracial movements aimed at eradicating and “moving beyond race” (Anderson Reference Anderson, Kidd, Medina and Pohlhaus2017). Attempts to promote color-blind politics, he argues, function to erase the concept race and the indispensable role it plays in understanding the experiences of people of color (145–46). Anderson thus enriches the lacuna-centered approach to hermeneutical injustice by illustrating how some lacunae are actively created by the removal of available hermeneutical resources.

A common thread that unites these otherwise distinct analyses is an adherence to a lacuna-centered framework for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice. Although Anderson highlights a different way for hermeneutical gaps to emerge, lacunae feature prominently in his analysis. And though Dotson and Pohlhaus articulate how needed hermeneutical resources may be available and utilized within marginalized communities, they highlight how lacunae may persist more broadly, within the stock of dominant or collective conceptual resources used to communicate across social groups. Hence, here too we find a similar background assumption, namely, the lacuna requirement.

A lacuna-centered approach has also influenced prominent conceptions of hermeneutical justice. Fricker discusses the overcoming of hermeneutical injustice in the case of Wendy Sanford, a woman who suffered from postnatal depression after the birth of her child in the 1960s, prior to the emergence of the concept postnatal depression. She describes Sanford's experience during a consciousness-raising session:

Influenced by a lacuna-centered model, great importance is routinely placed upon the initial naming and subsequent intelligibility that hermeneutical resources help to facilitate (cf. McKinnon Reference McKinnon2016, 441; Davis Reference Davis2018, 720). If hermeneutical injustice results from lacunae, the thought goes, then hermeneutical justice naturally calls for hermeneutical "plugs", as it were, concepts that function to fill in the gaps.

To summarize: a lacuna-centered framework proposes that hermeneutical injustice stems from one's inability to make a significant social experience intelligible (to oneself or to others) owing to a gap in the stock of hermeneutical resources, where this gap is a result of hermeneutical marginalization. According to this approach, hermeneutical injustice is perpetuated by the persistence and/or cultivation of hermeneutical lacunae—had such lacunae been filled (intra and intercommunally), hermeneutical injustice would be overcome.

Although a lacuna-centered framework for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice has been widely adopted and endorsed across much of the recent literature, I will now argue that it's incomplete and that a more expansive framework is needed. The lacuna-centered model is overly narrow and, as a result, it fails to capture an important species of hermeneutical injustice that doesn't arise from a hermeneutical gap.

III. The Productive Function of Hermeneutical Resources

In order to motivate a more expansive framework, and to explain a species of hermeneutical injustice without lacunae, it is important to first aknowledge the productive function and power of hermeneutical resources. This idea is prominent in the pioneering work of Patricia Hill Collins, in particular, her notion of a controlling image (Collins Reference Collins1986; Reference Collins1990).Footnote ⁷ According to Collins's analysis, controlling images function to distort social reality by perpetuating oppressive stereotypes and by fueling the normalization of unjust social arrangements. Collins says, “[C]ontrolling images are designed to make racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of social injustice appear to be natural, normal, and inevitable parts of everyday life” (Collins Reference Collins1990, 76–77). Collins analyzes a number of controlling images that have been used to distort the experiences of Black women, thereby contributing to their oppression. These include concepts such as the welfare queen, matriarch, Jezebel, and mammy. Collins discusses the mammy controlling image as follows:

The controlling image of the mammy functions to limit Black women's participation in the hermeneutical practices of influential meaning-making by relegating them to domestic household roles.Footnote ⁸ The mammy controlling image supports the construction and normalization of Black women as complacent domestic workers, and functions to place them into submissive roles with expected behaviors. Crucially, Collins argues that controlling images function as “normative yardsticks”—they help to set the terms for what counts as an appropriate allocation of praise or blame. Accordingly, Black women who transgress and seek work outside of the domestic roles associated with the mammy image are prone to be interpreted as violating the prescriptions and roles imposed upon them via this social categorization.

The productive potential of hermeneutical resources is also salient in Lynne Tirrell's work on epithets. Tirrell examines the use of “inyenzi” (cockroach) and “inzoka” (snake) by Hutu soldiers to describe Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide. She describes these epithets as exhibiting the following key features: they mark insider/outsider relations, they attribute negative properties to their target (which are presumed to be essential to them), they are embedded in social networks of subordination and oppression, they set boundaries for what constitutes permissible behavior toward the target, and they are action-engendering insofar as they facilitate and purport to justify nonlinguistic behaviors. The widespread use of these epithets, Tirrell argues, contributed greatly to the dehumanization of Tutsis and the legitimization of horrific acts of violence against them (Tirrell Reference Tirrell, Maitra and McGowan2012, 192–93).Footnote ⁹

Additionally, Katharine Jenkins has recently developed an analysis of ontic injustice, a kind of injustice that concerns a wrong done to one in virtue of being constructed as a member of a particular social kind. Jenkins defines ontic injustice: “An individual suffers ontic injustice if and only if they are socially constructed as a member of a certain social kind where that construction consists, at least in part, of their being subjected to a set of social constraints and enablements that is wrongful to them” (Jenkins Reference Jenkins2020, 191, italics added). The notion of ontic injustice helps to shed further light upon the productive function and power that conceptual resources can have. Jenkins considers the example of being socially constructed as belonging to the category wife in England before 1991, prior to the emergence of marital rape laws. As such, under the law, wives in England were denied full control over who had sexual access to their bodies. Jenkins argues that those who were socially constructed as belonging to the category wife during this time were morally wronged, given the constraints and enablements that this social categorization imposed upon them—they faced a kind of ontic injustice.

Prevailing analyses of hermeneutical injustice have understood the function and value of hermeneutical resources as primarily interpretive—hermeneutical resources help to facilitate the intelligibility of socially significant experiences. However, hermeneutical resources can do so much more than render social experiences intelligible. They often serve crucial productive functions as well: they organize members of society and cast them into certain roles and relations with expected behaviors. Collins's discussion of controlling images, Tirrell's work on epithets, and Jenkins's discussion of ontic injustice help to reveal an overly narrow focus across much of the literature on hermeneutical injustice by highlighting the productive dimensions of conceptual resources.

In addition to intelligibility, we ought to also recognize the productive function of hermeneutical resources, namely, the significant value and potential they have in helping to support the equitable coordination and organization of members of society (cf. Haslanger Reference Haslanger2020a, 14–15). Thus, an analysis of hermeneutical injustice must acknowledge that some concepts have serious productive power—that they can serve to sustain, normalize, and justify oppressive social practices and unjust social arrangements. Once the productive function of hermeneutical resources is salient, this opens the door to theorizing about hermeneutical injustice in a more comprehensive and more deeply social way; it draws our attention to the complex relationship between hermeneutical resources and the broader social and political environments in which they are embedded and implemented.

A lacuna-centered approach toward hermeneutical injustice fails to appreciate the potential for hermeneutical injustice to manifest not just from a dearth in conceptual resources, but also from the way in which concepts interact with one another given pervasive cultural assumptions and social conventions. In other words, it is not just that we need to fill in hermeneutical gaps, but we also need to consider how newly introduced concepts are operationalized and how they cohere (or fail to cohere) with other extant concepts when situated within a social milieu. Hermeneutical resources are not introduced to collective understanding in a vacuum, but against the backdrop of longstanding and often deeply rooted conceptual schemes—schemes that too often include distorting concepts and oppressive controlling images. Zooming out and taking a broader perspective on hermeneutical injustice, namely, a perspective that acknowledges the interpretive as well as the productive value of hermeneutical resources, is vital not only to understand the myriad ways in which hermeneutical injustice can manifest, but also to gain a deeper understanding of what hermeneutical justice demands.

IV. Hermeneutical Clash

Consider the following case of what we might call a hermeneutical clash. First, consider the concept golden boy. What—or who—comes to mind? Most likely the following: this person is probably white, cis, heterosexual, nondisabled, hyper-privileged, athletic, popular, educated (perhaps at an elite institution), some might describe him as “all-American,” and so on. Next, consider the concept rapist. This concept has been operative in collective understanding for decades. In mainstream media, rapists are typically construed as creeps, loners, strangers, deviants, monsters, or savage animals (Gray Reference Gray2016; O'Hara Reference O'Hara2012; Murphy Reference Murphy2017; and Schwark Reference Schwark2017).Footnote ¹⁰

Now ask yourself: what happens when the so-called “golden boy”—in all his glory and esteem—is accused of rape? That is, what happens when we attempt to apply the concept rapist to someone who seamlessly fits the profile of a golden boy? This is precisely what happened in the case of Brock Turner, a former student-athlete at Stanford University who was discovered raping an unconscious woman, who we now know to be Chanel Miller, behind a dumpster.Footnote ¹¹ Turner is your quintessential golden boy. This is more than apparent in his father's letter to Judge Persky, the judge who presided over his case. In the letter, Turner's father writes: “Brock has an inner strength and fortitude that is beyond anything I have ever seen. This was no doubt honed over the many years of competitive swimming. . . . Brock has always been an extremely dedicated person whether it was academics, sports, or developing and maintaining friendships and relationships. . . . Brock was equally talented in athletics, participating in baseball, basketball, and swimming” (Xu Reference Xu2016). The majority of the letter discusses Turner's athletic and academic achievements. But one might ask, why in the world would this ever be relevant to Turner's acquittal? Here's why. Turner's father is attempting to probe a distorting image of Brock as a golden boy: the kind of kid who could do no wrong and, hence, who clearly couldn't be guilty of the felony sexual assault charges against him. Furthermore, in this case the golden boy image is contrasted with the distorting, yet all too common, portrayal of a rapist as a creepy stranger, loner, monster, or animal.

In another letter to Judge Persky, Turner's childhood friend, Leslie Rasmussen, writes: “Brock is not a monster. He's the furthest thing from anything like that” (Paiella Reference Paiella2016, italics added). Judge Persky seems to have sympathized. He sentenced Turner to a meager six months in jail, out of a possible fourteen. Turner was released on probation after serving just three months.

This is not a one-off case. In 2017, a sixteen-year-old boy was charged with raping a heavily intoxicated girl who had been noticeably slurring her words. The boy had filmed himself having sex with her and afterwards sent the video to his friends along with a text that read: “When your first time having sex is rape” (Ferré-Sadurní Reference Ferré-Sadurní2019). Judge Troiano denied the prosecutor's motion to have the boy tried as an adult. He had justified this decision by citing the fact that the boy “comes from a good family,” that he is “clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college,” and that he was an Eagle Scout—the highest rank achievable in the Boy Scouts of America (Mosbergen Reference Mosbergen2019). As before, we find that the golden boy image directly clashes with the stereotypical image of a rapist as a deviant and debased monster, stranger, creep, or loner.

Kate Manne discusses the common inference pattern made in such cases:

1. 1. Golden boys are not rapists.

2. 2. So-and-so is a golden boy.

3. 3. Therefore, so-and-so is not a rapist.

Similarly:

1. 1. Rapists are monsters.

2. 2. So-and-so is not a monster.

3. 3. Therefore, so-and-so is not a rapist. (Manne Reference Manne2017, 198)

Manne argues that exonerating narratives—such as the “golden boy” narrative—function to excessively inflate the credibility of men who commit violent, misogynistic acts against women, and thereby deflates the credibility of women who speak out against them. In cases of he said/she said testimony, there is only a fixed amount of credibility to go around, and believing him directly discredits her as either lying or confused (and vice versa) (cf. 294).Footnote ¹²

In her recent memoir, Miller, the survivor from the Turner case, describes how the media commonly depicted Turner as having been “misconstrued as a criminal.” She discusses how even well after his conviction, many refused to admit the fact that Turner had sexually assaulted her. She says:

The hermeneutical clash between the concept rapist and the concept golden boy is also salient in the seemingly paradoxical statements in a letter from Leslie Rasmussen, Turner's friend:

When privileged men (typically, cis, white, heterosexual, upper-class, and so on) commit acts of violence against women, there is a persistent tendency to explain away their behavior as an aberration or deviation from one's “normal” or “true” character—Turner might have done this, but he isn't a rapist.Footnote ¹⁴

Reflecting upon these cases helps to uncover an important, yet underexplored, species of hermeneutical injustice. The case of Carmita Wood is strikingly different from the case of Chanel Miller. In the former case, the concept sexual harassment was wholly absent from the collective hermeneutical repertoire—it wasn't available for use within social, political, or legal settings in general. In the latter case, the concept rapist was widely available and, importantly, was present within legal settings. However, there is a crucial difference between a concept being sufficiently acquired and broadly disseminated such that it occupies a place in the collective stock of hermeneutical resources, and its actually being effectively operationalized such that it is utilized and accurately applied in high-stakes cases where it genuinely describes social reality, for example, the concept rapist being readily applied to actual perpetrators of rape in a legal setting, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence.

V. A More Expansive Framework: Positive and Negative Hermeneutical Injustice

Why do the cases described thus far capture a distinct species of hermeneutical injustice? Recall that according to Fricker the primary harm of hermeneutical injustice “consists in a situated hermeneutical inequality: the concrete situation is such that the subject is rendered unable to make communicatively intelligible something which it is particularly in his or her interests to be able to render intelligible” (Fricker Reference Fricker2007, 162). We can break down Fricker's analysis more precisely as requiring the following necessary conditions. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when: (i) one's experience fails to be intelligible (either to oneself or to others), (ii) the hermeneutical tools needed to make one's experience intelligible are not collectively shared by those in the relevant social context, and (iii) this is due to a lacuna in the collective hermeneutical repertoire resulting from one's hermeneutical marginalization.

Consider the perspective of Chanel Miller, the survivor in the Turner case. Miller was clearly in a position to render her experience intelligible—she wasn't hindered in her ability to understand that she was a victim of rape. This was unmistakably and painfully obvious to her. Others, however, were reluctant, or altogether failed, to apply the concept rapist to Turner. This, of course, is not to say that such individuals lacked the concept rapist; this concept was available and intelligible to them. Instead, others failed to accurately apply this concept to Turner because he exemplified many of the hallmarks of a golden boy. So, though others could render intelligible the fact that Miller and her defense team were accusing Turner of rape, they failed to apply the concept rapist to Turner because of the presence of distorting and oppressive concepts.

Let's return to the three conditions needed to establish a hermeneutical injustice on Fricker's lacuna-centered analysis. Given that the concept rapist was intelligible to Miller and those in the relevant social context, and moreover, given that the concept rapist was broadly available in the hermeneutical repertoire at large (there was no lacuna), this case does not satisfy any of the three conditions. So, according to the lacuna-centered framework, it follows that Miller isn't a victim of hermeneutical injustice. Is this the right result? I think it would be a serious mistake to draw this conclusion. Instead, cases like these highlight a need to revise and expand upon the analysis of hermeneutical injustice and the range of harms that it may give rise to.

Defenders of a lacuna-centered framework are right to note that across a range of cases, the primary harm of hermeneutical injustice concerns an inability to make an important social experience intelligible (either to oneself or to others). However, this is not the sole way in which hermeneutical injustice can manifest. The hermeneutical injustice that Miller faced didn't involve a lack of intelligibility, but instead resulted from a failure of conceptual application or conceptual aptness. Others were reluctant to apply the concept rapist to Turner because they didn't view this concept as fitting or appropriate for a man like him. Furthermore, this failure of application doesn't trace back to any hermeneutical gap. It's the very opposite: it was the positive presence of distorting and oppressive concepts that served to prop up Turner's innocence and to prevent the concept rapist from applying to him. Taken in this way, we can explain Miller as having suffered a kind of hermeneutical injustice, not because of a lack of intelligibility, but because others in her social context were unable to accurately apply the concept rapist to Turner owing to the presence of oppressive concepts. This, in turn, resulted in the denial of Miller's credibility and thus diminished her status as a knower—specifically as a contributor of important and socially significant knowledge—in the given social context.

Reflecting upon these features of Miller's situation suggests a more expansive framework for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice. This framework encompasses the explanatory successes of the lacuna-centered analysis, while also capturing an important species of hermeneutical injustice that doesn't result from lacunae. According to this broader approach, hermeneutical injustice can manifest in at least two distinct ways, what we might call positive hermeneutical injustice and negative hermeneutical injustice. Negative hermeneutical injustice is the more familiar kind of injustice that is captured by the lacuna-centered account. It's negative because at its core it results from a lack of hermeneutical resources. A paradigm example is the much-discussed case of Carmita Wood and the absence of the concept sexual harassment. In cases of negative hermeneutical injustice, the primary harm consists in an inability to render important social experiences intelligible (either to oneself or to others).Footnote ¹⁸

On the other hand, positive hermeneutical injustice results from the presence of oppressive and distorting concepts that crowd out, defeat, or preempt the application of an available and more accurate concept. Positive hermeneutical injustice is the kind of injustice exhibited in Miller's case and the failure to apply the concept rapist to Turner, given that he fits the profile of a golden boy. Because of the hermeneutical marginalization of certain groups—specifically, the unequal authority and power concerning not just the initial creation and dissemination of conceptual resources, but also their revision, reinforcement, and overall influence and applicability in high-stakes social contexts—oppressive concepts remain operative within one's social milieu. In cases of positive hermeneutical injustice, the primary harm concerns a failure of conceptual aptness or applicability that results from oppressive concepts limiting or altogether blocking the accurate application of a concept. This can result in one's diminished status as a knower in the relevant context, and more specifically, as a giver of knowledge.

It is important to emphasize the epistemic dimensions of positive hermeneutical injustice. This injustice is epistemic insofar as it involves an unwarranted infringement and limitation upon one's capacity to contribute knowledge in a socially significant context. In Miller's case, the presence of distorting and oppressive concepts functioned to significantly undermine her credibility with respect to a crucially important subject. Everyone could understand her accusation against Turner, but many nonetheless failed to gain knowledge as a result of her testimony. Distorting and oppressive concepts functioned as defeaters of, or altogether preempted, the uptake of her testimony and undercut her attempt to classify Turner as a rapist.

This broader framework for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice gives rise to a host of new and interesting questions concerning the relationship between hermeneutical and testimonial injustice. Fricker discusses the connection between (negative) hermeneutical injustice and testimonial injustice on the lacuna-centered model: “testimonial injustice becomes not simply likely but almost inescapable when the persistence of hermeneutical gaps renders certain voices less intelligible (and hence less credible) than others on certain matters, and their attempts to articulate certain meanings are systematically regarded as nonsensical (and hence incredible)” (Fricker Reference Fricker2007, 159; cf. also Medina Reference Medina2012, 96). Relatedly, we can begin to understand how positive hermeneutical injustice impinges upon the credibility of testifiers. When speakers offer testimony that is incongruent with the oppressive concepts operative within their social milieu, their testimony is more easily prone to defeat and preemption. As a result, one's testimony is less likely to gain uptake and to be believed.

It is also important to acknowledge a further series of secondary and more practical harms that Miller confronted as a result of positive hermeneutical injustice. We can understand the failure to apply the concept rapist to Turner as symptomatic of an overall failure of operationalization—a failure to effectively integrate a hermeneutical resource into a broader social milieu owing, in part, to the presence of oppressive concepts in the dominant hermeneutical repertoire. As a result, the productive function and value of this concept—its potential to support meaningful social and political change—is significantly diminished across a range of important sociopolitical contexts, as is evidenced by the lenient jail sentence given to Turner.

Introducing a concept into collective understanding facilitates intelligibility in the form of conceptual competence (that is, a lacuna no longer persists), but, as I've argued, this does not guarantee that the concept will actually be used and applied in important and socially significant scenarios. In particular, it does not guarantee that the needed concept is immune to unwarranted defeat or preemption by an oppressive controlling image or distorting concept that is operative in one's social milieu. Overcoming negative forms of hermeneutical injustice—by filling in hermeneutical lacunae—does not entail that positive forms of hermeneutical injustice will be guarded against and rectified as well. Hermeneutical injustice isn't overcome unless hermeneutical resources that accurately depict social reality robustly gain an influential and authoritative grip on the social world—a grip that positively influences and improves the lives of those in marginalized communities. Only then can hermeneutical resources support meaningful change in helping to reform our social and political landscapes for the better. The sheer existence of a concept, even if it has been disseminated both intra and intercommunally, though vitally important, is not enough to ensure this.

Theorizing about hermeneutical injustice using this more expansive framework helps us to reveal significant limits of a lacuna-centered model by illustrating how hermeneutical injustice may persist well after lacunae are filled. Additionally, an expansive framework supports a characterization of hermeneutical injustice as an appropriately social phenomenon by highlighting the overarching social environments in which hermeneutical resources are embedded and implemented. A more expansive framework—one that recognizes both positive and negative forms of hermeneutical injustice—is more complete and possesses more explanatory depth to the extent that it acknowledges the aptness or applicability of socially significant concepts within specific social contexts, and relative to their operationalization within a given social milieu.

This expansive framework also has important connections to Pohlhaus's analysis of willful hermeneutical ignorance, as well as Dotson's account of contributory injustice. Recall that willful hermeneutical ignorance occurs when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acquire the hermeneutical tools of those from marginalized groups, and, as a result, sustain hermeneutical lacunae at the level of the dominant (or intercommunal) hermeneutical repertoire. On a more expansive approach, we can begin to describe a phenomenon adjacent to willful hermeneutical ignorance. Even after a concept is collectively available, that is, even after the dominantly situated have acquired the concepts needed to make the experiences of marginalized members of society intelligible, they may still willfully refuse to adopt the proper application conditions for such concepts. This will directly affect the overall productive function and value of such concepts within one's social milieu. In such cases, those in dominant positions may acknowledge, acquire, and even widely utilize a concept—yet they may refuse to apply it in particular situations because of their continued use of controlling images and oppressive distorting concepts.

In a related vein, recall Dotson's notion of contributory injustice that occurs when, because of willful hermeneutical ignorance, the dominantly situated refuse to adopt the hermeneutical resources of those from marginalized groups and instead use other, often prejudiced, resources instead. When this happens, the epistemic agency of marginalized individuals is frustrated and undermined; they are unable to positively contribute to the dominant hermeneutical repertoire. In light of the more expansive framework, we can begin to explain a related way in which the epistemic agency of marginalized groups may be compromised. This happens when the dominantly situated fail to properly apply and utilize a socially significant concept accurately and for its intended productive purposes. Systematic failures of conceptual application, particularly when this is the result of endorsing and maintaining the use of oppressive concepts or controlling images, can serve to undermine the epistemic agency of marginalized individuals insofar as it limits their capacity to influence how hermeneutical resources are implemented and utilized within a social milieu. When this happens, marginalized individuals are unjustly undermined in their ability to contribute hermeneutical resources with robust productive value and influence, that is, resources that are able to effectively support social and political change.

Oftentimes, when disadvantaged communities develop hermeneutical resources, they do so not only because they are valuable interpretive tools needed to understand and communicate their experiences, but also because they are vital productive resources that are needed to help improve their material circumstances. The hope is that these resources will be accurately and effectively deployed in society to improve the lives of individuals within these communities (for example, to help survivors of sexual violence). However, if members of society continue to engage in oppressive social practices, specifically, those that make use of and reinforce the influence of oppressive controlling images and distorting concepts, then these hermeneutical contributions will be significantly diminished.

VI. Hermeneutical Justice

What might it take to overcome hermeneutical injustice? Here I will begin to sketch a path forward. A more expansive framework suggests that hermeneutical justice requires more than filling in hermeneutical lacunae. More plausibly, combating hermeneutical injustice demands collective social movements aimed at disrupting and reforming dominant conceptual frameworks and social scripts. Hence, it's not only important to develop and widely disseminate novel concepts needed to understand socially significant experiences. But equally (if not more) important is unlearning and dislodging the distorting ideological grip of controlling images and oppressive concepts that are operative within one's social milieu.

This is unlikely to be effective if done piecemeal, individual by individual, concept by concept. Instead, hermeneutical justice is more likely to be achieved with collective social action—movements that center the voices and experiences of marginalized individuals and that aim to disrupt and expose systemic patterns of oppression and exploitation.Footnote ¹⁹ We can look to the gay rights movement and the fight for marriage equality in North America as an illustrative example. The concept marriage is now (to a great extent) routinely applied to gay couples in social and legal contexts. This movement helped to support the intelligibility of gay marriage, but additionally, it enabled gay couples to enjoy benefits and privileges afforded by legal unions (for example, health insurance benefits, immigration and residency benefits, Social Security programs, and so on). Having marriage readily apply to gay couples was productively powerful—it helped to improve the material conditions of many gay couples across North America.

Another example is the #BodyPositivity movement, which has gained a global online following over the past decade (Baker Reference Baker2015; Crabbe Reference Crabbe2017; Taylor Reference Taylor2018). The overarching mission of this movement is to combat mainstream narratives that promote unhealthy and downright unattainable standards of beauty, body image, and health, targeting primarily young women and girls. By centering bodies that are marginalized in mainstream media—disabled bodies, fat bodies, and bodies of color—and with slogans like “‘Fat’ is not a bad word” (Shackelford Reference Shackelford2019) and artists like Cinta Tort Cartró who embraces the beauty of stretch marks by painting them vibrant colors (Park Reference Park2017), this movement aims to problematize dominant social assumptions and narratives that deem fatness and other marginalized body features to be a cause for embarrassment, shame, or inferiority.Footnote ²⁰

Combating hermeneutical injustice is thus not simply a matter of filling in hermeneutical gaps. Hermeneutical justice demands something much more radical and far-reaching. More plausibly, it demands large-scale social movements aimed at dismantling oppressive ideologies and social practices. Without question, part of this will involve cultivating and propagating novel conceptual resources—for example, concepts like genderqueer, disability pride, body positivity, and sexual harassment—that is, it will require filling in hermeneutical lacunae. But, as we've seen, much more is needed beyond this to sufficiently guard against and overcome the harms of hermeneutical injustice.

So, where does this leave us? In closing, I want to emphasize what I take to be the best way forward in theorizing about hermeneutical injustice and epistemic injustice more broadly. The main thrust is this: we need to broaden our horizons and engage in a more socially embedded way.Footnote ²¹ Contrasting cases of positive and negative hermeneutical injustice serves to illustrate how concepts don't exist and operate independently from each other, but are deeply interconnected. The productive value of hermeneutical tools is both constrained and enabled by their place alongside other concepts within an overarching social milieu. Moreover, the sheer fact that many concepts were and still are needed to make sense of the socially significant experiences of marginalized communities should be extremely suggestive of the current state of collective hermeneutical frameworks and the strong influence of unjust social practices and oppressive concepts and controlling images therein.

It is thus imperative that we pay close attention to how concepts can function to sustain and promote pernicious background ideologies and unjust social arrangements, and how this in turn can restrict the productive function and power of liberatory concepts, both old and new. The intelligibility gained from the introduction and widespread dissemination of a hermeneutical resource is undeniably important. However, this is just one dimension of hermeneutical progress that ought not distract us from others. We must also recognize the productive function and value of hermeneutical resources and how they come to be deemed applicable and utilized, or more important, not applicable and not utilized, across diverse social environments.

Successfully overcoming hermeneutical injustice likely requires full-fledged social movements—it requires organization, mobilization, and activism. It requires challenging and disrupting the status quo narrative and dislodging ingrained assumptions and ideologies that normalize and purport to justify oppressive social arrangements. Introducing into the collective hermeneutical repertoire a hermeneutical resource that is needed to understand the experiences of disadvantaged groups is clearly a move in the right direction—it is progress toward hermeneutical justice. However, if prevailing social conditions aren't conducive to the concept's gaining a meaningful grip on the world—that is, to its being broadly applied in important social contexts where it accurately describes social reality and where it stands to do productive work to help improve the material conditions of those in marginalized communities—the concept's potential to combat hermeneutical injustice will be undermined. Contrary to what a lacuna-centered analysis suggests, filling in hermeneutical gaps is not enough to ensure hermeneutical justice; it is just one part of a much broader, comprehensive, and socially embedded process.