ABSTRACT

The chapter begins by developing an understanding of epistemological communities and how they form under conditions of oppression. It then explores how these epistemic communities become 'communities of epistemic resistance'. It provides a more robust understanding of epistemic injustice and illuminates how individuals and communities actively resist epistemic injustice. The epistemic agency of communities and the formation of communities have played an important role in late twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy by raising critical questions about how knowledge is constituted, who counts as a legitimate knower, and how conditions of epistemic injustice shape communities and individuals. In her initial formulation of epistemic agency and epistemic virtue in Epistemic Injustice, Miranda Fricker's approach was an individualistic one, even though she acknowledges that hermeneutical injustice results from the ignorance of communities' and institutions' lack of collective understanding of the experiences of oppressed communities. The chapter presents with an example of a community of epistemic resistance generated via a prison writing group.