Abstract
This article analyzes the workings of epistemic injustice regarding race, more specifically, the epistemic injustice inherent in the predominant conceptualization of the freedom of speech and the freedom of movement. For this purpose, the author juxtaposes the commemoration for the victims of the Berlin wall with the silencing of the migrants at the European border, and, secondly, the international JeSuisCharlie solidarity campaign with the absence of any commemoration of the victims of the Boko Haram massacre in Northern Nigeria. Drawing from the epistemic resistance in these two cases, and from works by Judith Butler (2010) and Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2007; 2012), this article looks into how white/European lives, agency and aspirations are framed as universal, as simply human, while Black/Brown/Muslim lives, agency and aspirations are either silenced or demonized. It questions to what extent scholarship on testimonial injustice can separate the epistemic injustice inflicted on a person as a bearer of knowledge from the epistemic injustice which denies agency and subjectivity in the first place and concludes that future research needs to engage with theories of subject formation and epistemic violence in order to grasp some of the differentiation along racial lines which renders Black/Brown/Muslim lives non-existent, disposable, and which denies them their most basic testimony of living meaningful lives.
Recommended Citation
Appeltshauser, Laura
(2016)
"The Berlin Wall vs. The European Border, OR #JESUISCHARLIE VS #JESUISNIGERIA – On The Workings Of Epistemic Injustice In Race Matters,"
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies: Vol. 15:
Iss.
1, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/wagadu/vol15/iss1/3