The Epistemology of Resistance

José Medina is Walter Dill Scott Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He works primarily in Gender & Race Theory, Philosophy of Language, and Social Epistemology. His writings on language and identity have focused on gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Medina's books include Speaking from Elsewhere (SUNY Press, 2006) and Language (Continuum, 2005).

Jose Medina has written an original book which masterfully combines continental and American traditions and which addresses important topics in contemporary social and political philosophy, showing why we should pay more attention to the epistemic dimension of our everyday interactions.

• Acknowledgements ; Foreword: Insensitivity and Blindness ; Introduction. Resistance, Democratic Sensibilities, and the Cultivation of Perplexity ; A. The Importance of Dissent and the Imperative of Epistemic Interaction ; B. Resistance, Perplexity, and Multiperspectivalism ; C. Overview ; Chapter 1. Active Ignorance, Epistemic Others, and Epistemic Friction ; 1.1. Active Ignorance and the Epistemic Vices of the Privileged ; 1.2. Lucidity and the Epistemic Virtues of the Oppressed ; 1.3. Resistance, Epistemic Responsibility, and the Regulative Principles of Epistemic Friction ; Chapter 2. Resistance as Epistemic Vice and as Epistemic Virtue ; 2.1. The Excess of Epistemic Authority and the Resulting Insensitivity ; 2.1.1. Epistemic Justice as Interactive, Comparative and Contrastive ; 2.1.2. Differential Authority, Systematic Injustice, and the Social Imaginary ; 2.2. The Vice of Avoiding Epistemic Friction, Hermeneuticalal Injustice, and the Problem of Meta-Blindness. ; 2.3. Striving for Open-Mindedness: Epistemic Friction and Epistemic Counterpoints as Correctives of Meta-Blindness ; Chapter 3. Imposed Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities ; 3.1. Silences and the Communicative Approach to Epistemic Injustice ; 3.2. Communicative Pluralism and Hermeneutical Injustice ; 3.3. Our Hermeneutical Responsibilities with respect to Multiple Publics ; Chapter 4. Epistemic Responsibility and Culpable Ignorance ; 4.1. Responsible Agency, Knowledge/Ignorance, and Social Injustice ; 4.2. Betraying One's Responsibilities under Conditions of Oppression: Social Contextuality, Interconnectedness, and Culpable Ignorance ; 4.2.A. Pig Heads, Burning Crosses, and Car keys ; 4.2.B. The Social Division of Cognitive Laziness ; 4.2.C. Blindness to Differences ; 4.2.D. Blindness to Social Relationality and the Relevance Dilemma ; 4.3. Overlapping Insensitivities, Culture-Blaming, and Gender Violence against Third-World Women ; Chapter 5. Meta-Lucidity, Epistemic Heroes, and the Everyday Struggle Toward Epistemic Justice ; 5.1. Living Up to One's Responsibilities under Conditions of Oppression: Meta-Lucidity ; 5.2. Promoting Lucidity and Social Change ; 5.3. Echoing: Chained Action, "Epistemic Heroes", and Social Networks ; 5.3.1. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Epistemic Courage, Critical Imagination and Epistemic Friction ; 5.3.2. Rosa Parks: Counter-Performativity, Chained Agency, and Social Networks ; Chapter 6. Resistant Imagination and Radical Solidarity ; 6.1. Pluralistic Communities of Resistence ; 6.2. Normative Pluralism and Radical Solidarity ; 6.3. Epistemic Friction and Insurrectionary Genealogies ; 6.4. Guerrilla Pluralism, Counter-Memories, and Epistemologies of Ignorance ; 6.5. Resistant Imaginations: Toward a Kaleidoscopic Social Sensibility ; 6.6. Conclusion: Network Solidarity ; Coda ; References