ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the phenomenon of communicative and epistemic neglect, that is, the phenomenon of being disregarded in communicative and epistemic practices. It elucidates this phenomenon through the case study of the neglect of inmates in a county jail in Durham, North Carolina. The chapter address the kinds of activism needed, inside and outside an institution such as a county jail, in order to produce effective transformations. The chapter also aims at drawing a distinction between capital and non-capital or venial epistemic vices of subjects and institutions as they appear in cases of epistemic neglect. Victims of communicative and epistemic neglect still have communicative and epistemic agency, but their speech acts are ignored or receive defective uptake, and their potential contributions to knowledge and understanding are blocked or diminished.
