EPIC Women in Philosophy Workshop

At Birmingham, we are lucky to receive funds from the school for Women in Philosophy events, workshops, meetings and other activities. Last Thursday, we held a workshop for Early Career Women in Philosophy who work on epistemic injustice.

We were kicked off by Sally Latham who defended the value of non-narrativity about one's illness experiences. Sally argued that people who do not, or cannot, narrate their illness experiences in a particular way are vulnerable to a variety of epistemic injustices. 

We then heard from Eleanor Byrne who spoke about the relationship between epistemic injustices and affective injustices. She discussed the complex intentional structure of our affective lives to shed light on the variety of ways that we can give or deny "uptake" to people's emotions, moods and feelings. 

After lunch, Ellie Palafox-Harris then told us about hypervigilance and the psychiatrist. She presented on the absence of trust in patients in psychiatric encounters, and argued that psychiatrists exhibit epistemic hypervigilance which she takes to be persistent unwarranted distrust.

Kathleen Murphy-Hollies then dissolved the so-called trade-off in our interpersonal interactions with others between the desire to receive accurate information and the desire to be kind. Kathleen argued that the way our description of our experience is received by others shapes that very experience, and that we need to feel that others see us as having agency in order for us to have that agency. 

Jodie Russell then warned us that pluralism about models is not sufficient to bring about a more feminist psychiatry. In the spirit of Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology, Jodie argued that science should also be 'queered', seeking a more radical 'table-flipping' approach to a plurality of perspectives and epistemic practices in science. 

Alice Moneypenny, whose blog will feature next week, spoke to us about testimonial smothering that patients with conditions like chronic pain can be victim to. She argued that being able to navigate and resist being dismissed through tactical adjustment of one's tesitmony illustrates a special form of agency in patients. 

Last but certainly not least, Francesca Bellazzi motivated how we make sense of the so-called human right to science. She argued that truth-seeking is related to epistemic justice, and that active engagement with science allows people to resist a variety of epistemic injustices.