Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of Colonialism

Abstract

In this article I consider the epistemic injustice of colonialism. I define epistemic injustice as a form of cultural injustice that occurs when the concepts and categories by which a people understand themselves and their world is replaced or adversely affected by the concepts and categories of the colonizers. A deep problem today for the sufferers of epistemic injustice is that western categories both have an undeniable universal potential and they are fully intermingled with the specificity of western practices; worse, they bear a deep imprint of western domination and hegemony. I thus argue that we can neither ignore western ideas nor fully show how they can be rescued from the pernicious effects of their own imperial imprint. © 2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.