8 - CAMBRIDGE Hermeneutical Injustice

Hypatia (2022), 37, 343–363
doi:10.1017/hyp.2022.4
ARTICLE
Hermeneutical Injustice: Distortion and

Conceptual Aptness
Arianna Falbo
Department of Philosophy, Brown University, 45 Prospect Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA
Corresponding author. arianna_falbo@brown.edu
(Received 8 March 2020; revised 2 January 2021; accepted 2 March 2021)
Abstract
This article develops a new approach for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice.
According to a dominant view, hermeneutical injustice results from a hermeneutical
gap: one lacks the conceptual tools needed to make sense of, or to communicate, impor-
tant social experiences, where this lack is a result of an injustice in the background social
methods used to determine hermeneutical resources. I argue that this approach is incom-
plete. It fails to capture an important species of hermeneutical injustice which doesn’t
result from a lack of hermeneutical resources, but from the overabundance of distorting
and oppressive concepts which function to crowd-out, defeat, or pre-empt the application
of a more accurate hermeneutical resource. I propose a broader analysis that better
respects the dynamic relationship between hermeneutical resources and the social and
political contexts in which they are implemented.
I. Introduction
Scholarship on epistemic injustice has highlighted the importance of hermeneutical
resources in facilitating the intelligibility of socially significant experiences.1 Notably,
Miranda Fricker has defended a species of epistemic harm that she calls hermeneutical
injustice. On her analysis, hermeneutical injustice arises when one attempts to make a
socially significant experience intelligible, but can’t because one lacks the required her-
meneutical tools (Fricker 2007, 1). There is a gap in the inventory of hermeneutical
resources that are used to render important social experiences intelligible, where this
gap is the result of an injustice in the background social methods used to determine
hermeneutical resources (Fricker 2006; 2007; 2016; 2017).
Despite various points of disagreement and further developments concerning
Fricker’s analysis, one key assumption appears to have gained widespread acceptance
in the literature. This is that hermeneutical injustice requires a lacuna in the stock of
hermeneutical resources used to interpret socially significant experiences.2 The lacuna
requirement imposes a necessary condition on the occurrence of a hermeneutical
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation. This is
an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecom-
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344 Arianna Falbo
injustice. A hermeneutical resource is absent from the hermeneutical repertoire, and

had the needed concept been available—had this lacuna been filled—the injustice
would no longer persist.3
In what follows, I argue that a lacuna-centered approach to hermeneutical injustice is
incomplete. The lacuna requirement entails an overly narrow analysis of hermeneutical
injustice and, as a result, it fails to capture an important species of hermeneutical injustice
that merits more careful investigation. In particular, this approach fails to recognize a spe-
cies of hermeneutical injustice that doesn’t result from a dearth of hermeneutical
resources, but from the overabundance of distorting and oppressive concepts that func-
tion to crowd out, defeat, or preempt the application of an available and more accurate
concept. Focusing on cases of hermeneutical injustice without hermeneutical lacunae
helps to make salient important social dimensions of this epistemic injustice. It highlights
the need for not only for novel hermeneutical resources—that is, the need to fill in her-
meneutical gaps—but also the importance of acknowledging how those same resources
are integrated into extant conceptual frameworks within an overarching social milieu.
In the next section, I develop the lacuna-centered approach in more detail. Following,
in section III, I argue that, in addition to facilitating intelligibility, hermeneutical resources
also serve crucial productive functions—they organize and coordinate individuals within a
social milieu. In light of this, in section IV, I defend cases of hermeneutical injustice that
don’t arise from a conceptual lack. In section V, I develop a broader framework for the-
orizing about hermeneutical injustice and highlight its advantages. This framework rec-
ognizes two distinct species of hermeneutical injustice: what I call positive and negative
hermeneutical injustice.4 I end by sketching an approach to hermeneutical justice that
naturally flows out of this more expansive framework.
II. The Lacuna-Centered Analysis

Fricker draws our attention to the emergence of the concept sexual harassment in the
early 1970s. She details the case of Carmita Wood, who quit her job at Cornell
University’s Nuclear Physics Department after experiencing persistent and unwanted
sexual advances from her boss. He would “jiggle his crotch” while passing her desk
and would “deliberately brush against her breasts while reaching for some papers”
(Fricker 2007, 150).5 When applying for unemployment insurance, Wood was required
to explain why she had quit, but she found herself at a loss for words. It wasn’t shame-
less flirting or mere office humor that caused her to leave; what she experienced was
flat-out sexual harassment. But, since this concept had yet to make its way into collec-
tive understanding—let alone onto unemployment insurance forms—Wood couldn’t
articulate her experience as such. She reported that she had quit for “personal reasons”
and was subsequently denied insurance.
Fricker describes Wood’s case as a paradigmatic instance of hermeneutical injustice.
She says: “Here is a story about how extant collective hermeneutical resources can have
a lacuna where the name of a distinctive social experience should be” (150–51).
Accordingly, the hermeneutical injustice Wood faced resulted from a gap in the avail-
able stock of hermeneutical resources; there was a lacuna where the concept sexual
harassment should have been. Moreover, this lacuna is a consequence of an injustice
in the background social methods that are used to determine hermeneutical resources.
In Fricker’s terminology, women like Wood faced hermeneutical marginalization: they
were not equitably included in the political and legal contexts that serve to define the
conditions for unemployment.

Hypatia 345
According to this approach, the primary harm of hermeneutical injustice concerns a

lack of intelligibility resulting from one’s hermeneutical marginalization. Fricker says:
“the subject is rendered unable to make communicatively intelligible something
which it is particularly in his or her interests to be able to render intelligible” (162).
The secondary harms of hermeneutical injustice, Fricker argues, concern the down-
stream negative consequences that result from this unintelligibility. In Wood’s case,
this includes, among other things, her being denied unemployment insurance as well
as her increased levels of stress and anxiety.
The case of Carmita Wood and the emergence of the concept sexual harassment
has now become the stock example of hermeneutical injustice in the literature, but
it’s important to highlight that this injustice, as it’s understood on a lacuna-
centered model, can be illustrated using many other examples. Consider the recent
emergence of the concept genderqueer as a hermeneutical resource for understand-
ing and giving recognition to the identities of nonbinary people. Robin Dembroff
argues that:
without the resources for understanding nonbinary gender identities, we sustain a

conceptual lacuna surrounding nonbinary persons. This lacuna does not only
reflect a gap in philosophical understanding: it contributes to a hermeneutical
injustice that arises from the failure to spread and charitably analyze the concepts
and practices underlying nonbinary classifications. (Dembroff 2020, 2, italics
added)
Another example is the concept of disability pride as it emerged in the disability

rights movement in the 1960s. Elizabeth Barnes has discussed the importance of this
concept in challenging dominant associations of disability with tragedy, inferiority,
and shame. Barnes says: “As disabled people, we are forever being told that there is
something about our bodies that is lacking, that is less than. Disability pride says it
doesn’t have to be that way. Disability pride says that we may have minority bodies,
but we don’t have—we refuse to have—tragic bodies” (Barnes 2016, 186). For disabled
and nondisabled people alike, Barnes argues that the concept of disability pride has
helped to make intelligible that disability can be the subject of genuine pride.
Recent scholarship has also highlighted significant limitations of Fricker’s analysis
and has further expanded upon it. Gaile Pohlhaus develops the valuable notion of will-
ful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated individuals refuse
to adopt the hermeneutical resources of marginalized groups (Pohlhaus 2012). Willful
hermeneutical ignorance functions to maintain hermeneutical gaps at the intercommu-
nal level—that is, though such resources may be utilized, even widely, among members
of one’s own community or social group (that is, they are intracommunally available),
lacunae nevertheless persist at the level of the dominant or collective hermeneutical rep-
ertoire, which is used to interpret and communicate one’s experiences across social
groups more broadly.6
Building upon the work of Pohlhaus and others, Kristie Dotson has developed an
analysis of contributory injustice. This is an epistemic injustice resulting from willful
hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated individuals choose
to employ prejudiced hermeneutical resources when they could have used more accu-
rate resources that have already been developed by those in marginalized communities
(Dotson 2012). Contributory injustice concerns the refusal among those in dominant
positions to allow marginalized individuals to exercise their epistemic agency by

346 Arianna Falbo
contributing to the dominant hermeneutical repertoire. As a result, hermeneutical gaps

persist within the dominant (or intercommunal) hermeneutical inventory.
Relatedly, Luvell Anderson has analyzed how hermeneutical gaps may be actively
cultivated through the suppression of extant hermeneutical resources. Anderson gives
the example of postracial movements aimed at eradicating and “moving beyond
race” (Anderson 2017). Attempts to promote color-blind politics, he argues, function
to erase the concept race and the indispensable role it plays in understanding the expe-
riences of people of color (145–46). Anderson thus enriches the lacuna-centered
approach to hermeneutical injustice by illustrating how some lacunae are actively cre-
ated by the removal of available hermeneutical resources.
A common thread that unites these otherwise distinct analyses is an adherence to a
lacuna-centered framework for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice. Although
Anderson highlights a different way for hermeneutical gaps to emerge, lacunae feature
prominently in his analysis. And though Dotson and Pohlhaus articulate how needed
hermeneutical resources may be available and utilized within marginalized communi-
ties, they highlight how lacunae may persist more broadly, within the stock of dominant
or collective conceptual resources used to communicate across social groups. Hence,
here too we find a similar background assumption, namely, the lacuna requirement.
A lacuna-centered approach has also influenced prominent conceptions of herme-
neutical justice. Fricker discusses the overcoming of hermeneutical injustice in the
case of Wendy Sanford, a woman who suffered from postnatal depression after the
birth of her child in the 1960s, prior to the emergence of the concept postnatal depres-
sion. She describes Sanford’s experience during a consciousness-raising session:
Wendy Sanford’s moment of truth seems to be not simply a hermeneutical break-

through for her and for the other women present, but also a moment in which
some kind of epistemic injustice is overcome. . . . If we can substantiate this intui-
tion, then we shall see that the area of hermeneutical gloom with which she had
lived up until that life-changing forty-five minutes constituted a wrong done to her
in her capacity as a knower, and was thus a specific sort of epistemic injustice—a
hermeneutical injustice. (Fricker 2007, 149, italics added)
Influenced by a lacuna-centered model, great importance is routinely placed upon

the initial naming and subsequent intelligibility that hermeneutical resources help to
facilitate (cf. McKinnon 2016, 441; Davis 2018, 720). If hermeneutical injustice results
from lacunae, the thought goes, then hermeneutical justice naturally calls for herme-
neutical "plugs", as it were, concepts that function to fill in the gaps.
To summarize: a lacuna-centered framework proposes that hermeneutical injustice
stems from one’s inability to make a significant social experience intelligible (to oneself
or to others) owing to a gap in the stock of hermeneutical resources, where this gap is a
result of hermeneutical marginalization. According to this approach, hermeneutical
injustice is perpetuated by the persistence and/or cultivation of hermeneutical lacu-
nae—had such lacunae been filled (intra and intercommunally), hermeneutical injustice
would be overcome.
Although a lacuna-centered framework for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice
has been widely adopted and endorsed across much of the recent literature, I will now
argue that it’s incomplete and that a more expansive framework is needed. The lacuna-
centered model is overly narrow and, as a result, it fails to capture an important species
of hermeneutical injustice that doesn’t arise from a hermeneutical gap.

Hypatia 347
III. The Productive Function of Hermeneutical Resources

In order to motivate a more expansive framework, and to explain a species of herme-
neutical injustice without lacunae, it is important to first aknowledge the productive
function and power of hermeneutical resources. This idea is prominent in the pioneer-
ing work of Patricia Hill Collins, in particular, her notion of a controlling image (Collins
1986; 1990).7 According to Collins’s analysis, controlling images function to distort
social reality by perpetuating oppressive stereotypes and by fueling the normalization
of unjust social arrangements. Collins says, “[C]ontrolling images are designed to
make racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of social injustice appear to be natural,
normal, and inevitable parts of everyday life” (Collins 1990, 76–77). Collins analyzes a
number of controlling images that have been used to distort the experiences of Black
women, thereby contributing to their oppression. These include concepts such as the
welfare queen, matriarch, Jezebel, and mammy. Collins discusses the mammy control-
ling image as follows:
[T]he faithful, obedient domestic servant. Created to justify the economic exploi-
tation of house slaves and sustained to explain Black women’s long-standing
restriction to domestic service, the mammy image represents the normative yard-
stick used to evaluate all Black women’s behavior. By loving, nurturing, and caring
for her White “family” better than her own, the mammy symbolized the dominant
group’s perceptions of the ideal Black female relationship to elite White male
power. Even though she may be well loved and may wield considerable authority
in her White “family,” the mammy still knows her “place” as an obedient servant.
(Collins 1990, 72-73, italics added)
The controlling image of the mammy functions to limit Black women’s participation
in the hermeneutical practices of influential meaning-making by relegating them to
domestic household roles.8 The mammy controlling image supports the construction
and normalization of Black women as complacent domestic workers, and functions
to place them into submissive roles with expected behaviors. Crucially, Collins argues
that controlling images function as “normative yardsticks”—they help to set the
terms for what counts as an appropriate allocation of praise or blame. Accordingly,
Black women who transgress and seek work outside of the domestic roles associated
with the mammy image are prone to be interpreted as violating the prescriptions
and roles imposed upon them via this social categorization.
The productive potential of hermeneutical resources is also salient in Lynne Tirrell’s
work on epithets. Tirrell examines the use of “inyenzi” (cockroach) and “inzoka”
(snake) by Hutu soldiers to describe Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide. She describes
these epithets as exhibiting the following key features: they mark insider/outsider rela-
tions, they attribute negative properties to their target (which are presumed to be essen-
tial to them), they are embedded in social networks of subordination and oppression,
they set boundaries for what constitutes permissible behavior toward the target, and
they are action-engendering insofar as they facilitate and purport to justify nonlinguistic
behaviors. The widespread use of these epithets, Tirrell argues, contributed greatly
to the dehumanization of Tutsis and the legitimization of horrific acts of violence
against them (Tirrell 2012, 192–93).9
Additionally, Katharine Jenkins has recently developed an analysis of ontic injustice,
a kind of injustice that concerns a wrong done to one in virtue of being constructed as a

348 Arianna Falbo
member of a particular social kind. Jenkins defines ontic injustice: “An individual suf-
fers ontic injustice if and only if they are socially constructed as a member of a certain
social kind where that construction consists, at least in part, of their being subjected to a
set of social constraints and enablements that is wrongful to them” (Jenkins 2020, 191,
italics added). The notion of ontic injustice helps to shed further light upon the
productive function and power that conceptual resources can have. Jenkins considers
the example of being socially constructed as belonging to the category wife in
England before 1991, prior to the emergence of marital rape laws. As such, under
the law, wives in England were denied full control over who had sexual access to
their bodies. Jenkins argues that those who were socially constructed as belonging to
the category wife during this time were morally wronged, given the constraints and
enablements that this social categorization imposed upon them—they faced a kind of
ontic injustice.
Prevailing analyses of hermeneutical injustice have understood the function and
value of hermeneutical resources as primarily interpretive—hermeneutical resources
help to facilitate the intelligibility of socially significant experiences. However, herme-
neutical resources can do so much more than render social experiences intelligible.
They often serve crucial productive functions as well: they organize members of society
and cast them into certain roles and relations with expected behaviors. Collins’s discus-
sion of controlling images, Tirrell’s work on epithets, and Jenkins’s discussion of ontic
injustice help to reveal an overly narrow focus across much of the literature on herme-
neutical injustice by highlighting the productive dimensions of conceptual resources.
In addition to intelligibility, we ought to also recognize the productive function of
hermeneutical resources, namely, the significant value and potential they have in help-
ing to support the equitable coordination and organization of members of society
(cf. Haslanger 2020a, 14–15). Thus, an analysis of hermeneutical injustice must
acknowledge that some concepts have serious productive power—that they can serve
to sustain, normalize, and justify oppressive social practices and unjust social arrange-
ments. Once the productive function of hermeneutical resources is salient, this opens
the door to theorizing about hermeneutical injustice in a more comprehensive and
more deeply social way; it draws our attention to the complex relationship between her-
meneutical resources and the broader social and political environments in which they
are embedded and implemented.
A lacuna-centered approach toward hermeneutical injustice fails to appreciate the
potential for hermeneutical injustice to manifest not just from a dearth in conceptual
resources, but also from the way in which concepts interact with one another given per-
vasive cultural assumptions and social conventions. In other words, it is not just that we
need to fill in hermeneutical gaps, but we also need to consider how newly introduced
concepts are operationalized and how they cohere (or fail to cohere) with other extant
concepts when situated within a social milieu. Hermeneutical resources are not intro-
duced to collective understanding in a vacuum, but against the backdrop of longstand-
ing and often deeply rooted conceptual schemes—schemes that too often include
distorting concepts and oppressive controlling images. Zooming out and taking a
broader perspective on hermeneutical injustice, namely, a perspective that acknowl-
edges the interpretive as well as the productive value of hermeneutical resources, is
vital not only to understand the myriad ways in which hermeneutical injustice can
manifest, but also to gain a deeper understanding of what hermeneutical justice
demands.

Hypatia 349
IV. Hermeneutical Clash

Consider the following case of what we might call a hermeneutical clash. First, consider
the concept golden boy. What—or who—comes to mind? Most likely the following: this
person is probably white, cis, heterosexual, nondisabled, hyper-privileged, athletic, pop-
ular, educated (perhaps at an elite institution), some might describe him as
“all-American,” and so on. Next, consider the concept rapist. This concept has been
operative in collective understanding for decades. In mainstream media, rapists are typ-
ically construed as creeps, loners, strangers, deviants, monsters, or savage animals (Gray
2016; O’Hara 2012; Murphy 2017; and Schwark 2017).10
Now ask yourself: what happens when the so-called “golden boy”—in all his glory
and esteem—is accused of rape? That is, what happens when we attempt to apply the
concept rapist to someone who seamlessly fits the profile of a golden boy? This is pre-
cisely what happened in the case of Brock Turner, a former student-athlete at Stanford
University who was discovered raping an unconscious woman, who we now know to be
Chanel Miller, behind a dumpster.11 Turner is your quintessential golden boy. This is
more than apparent in his father’s letter to Judge Persky, the judge who presided
over his case. In the letter, Turner’s father writes: “Brock has an inner strength and
fortitude that is beyond anything I have ever seen. This was no doubt honed over the
many years of competitive swimming. . . . Brock has always been an extremely dedicated
person whether it was academics, sports, or developing and maintaining friendships
and relationships. . . . Brock was equally talented in athletics, participating in baseball,
basketball, and swimming” (Xu 2016). The majority of the letter discusses Turner’s ath-
letic and academic achievements. But one might ask, why in the world would this ever
be relevant to Turner’s acquittal? Here’s why. Turner’s father is attempting to probe a
distorting image of Brock as a golden boy: the kind of kid who could do no wrong and,
hence, who clearly couldn’t be guilty of the felony sexual assault charges against him.
Furthermore, in this case the golden boy image is contrasted with the distorting,
yet all too common, portrayal of a rapist as a creepy stranger, loner, monster, or animal.
In another letter to Judge Persky, Turner’s childhood friend, Leslie Rasmussen,
writes: “Brock is not a monster. He’s the furthest thing from anything like that”
(Paiella 2016, italics added). Judge Persky seems to have sympathized. He sentenced
Turner to a meager six months in jail, out of a possible fourteen. Turner was released
on probation after serving just three months.
This is not a one-off case. In 2017, a sixteen-year-old boy was charged with raping a
heavily intoxicated girl who had been noticeably slurring her words. The boy had filmed
himself having sex with her and afterwards sent the video to his friends along with a text
that read: “When your first time having sex is rape” (Ferré-Sadurní 2019). Judge
Troiano denied the prosecutor’s motion to have the boy tried as an adult. He had jus-
tified this decision by citing the fact that the boy “comes from a good family,” that he is
“clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college,” and that he was
an Eagle Scout—the highest rank achievable in the Boy Scouts of America (Mosbergen
2019). As before, we find that the golden boy image directly clashes with the stereotyp-
ical image of a rapist as a deviant and debased monster, stranger, creep, or loner.
Kate Manne discusses the common inference pattern made in such cases:
1. Golden boys are not rapists.

2. So-and-so is a golden boy.
3. Therefore, so-and-so is not a rapist.

350 Arianna Falbo
Similarly:
1. Rapists are monsters.

2. So-and-so is not a monster.
3. Therefore, so-and-so is not a rapist. (Manne 2017, 198)
Manne argues that exonerating narratives—such as the “golden boy” narrative—

function to excessively inflate the credibility of men who commit violent, misogynistic
acts against women, and thereby deflates the credibility of women who speak out
against them. In cases of he said/she said testimony, there is only a fixed amount of
credibility to go around, and believing him directly discredits her as either lying or con-
fused (and vice versa) (cf. 294).12
In her recent memoir, Miller, the survivor from the Turner case, describes how the
media commonly depicted Turner as having been “misconstrued as a criminal.” She
discusses how even well after his conviction, many refused to admit the fact that
Turner had sexually assaulted her. She says:
The stories about Brock running from police with a backpack full of Coors, rub-
bing up on girls, smoking weed, tripping on acid, photographing tits, were all
absent from the image his loved ones and the media projected. The Washington
Post called him squeaky clean and baby-faced, a rosy-cheeked cherub. The letter
writers insisted he was misconstrued as a criminal. They called him an innocent
man, fighting for his freedom. . . . Gracious, caring, talented. Humble, responsible,
trustworthy. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Even after the conviction, they believed he
remained entitled to impunity. Their support was unwavering, they refused to
call it assault, only called it the horrible mess, this unfortunate situation. (Miller
2019, 463)13
The hermeneutical clash between the concept rapist and the concept golden boy is
also salient in the seemingly paradoxical statements in a letter from Leslie
Rasmussen, Turner’s friend:
[R]ape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists. . . . This is completely
different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car
in a parking lot. That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and
girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and hav-
ing clouded judgment. (Paiella 2016, italics added)
When privileged men (typically, cis, white, heterosexual, upper-class, and so on)
commit acts of violence against women, there is a persistent tendency to explain
away their behavior as an aberration or deviation from one’s “normal” or “true” char-
acter—Turner might have done this, but he isn’t a rapist.14
Reflecting upon these cases helps to uncover an important, yet underexplored, spe-
cies of hermeneutical injustice. The case of Carmita Wood is strikingly different from
the case of Chanel Miller. In the former case, the concept sexual harassment was wholly
absent from the collective hermeneutical repertoire—it wasn’t available for use within
social, political, or legal settings in general. In the latter case, the concept rapist was
widely available and, importantly, was present within legal settings. However, there is
a crucial difference between a concept being sufficiently acquired and broadly

Hypatia 351
disseminated such that it occupies a place in the collective stock of hermeneutical

resources, and its actually being effectively operationalized such that it is utilized and
accurately applied in high-stakes cases where it genuinely describes social reality, for
example, the concept rapist being readily applied to actual perpetrators of rape in a
legal setting, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Conceptual Acquisition and Conceptual Aptness

A needed concept might exist in the hermeneutical inventory at large (as the concept
rapist did in the previous example), but in particular social contexts, a concept’s appli-
cation might be severely limited. And, as a result, its productive function and power is
thwarted—it is restricted in its ability to robustly latch onto the social world in a way
that is conducive to stimulating social and political change. Such cases call our attention
to the complex ways in which concepts are integrated into extant conceptual frame-
works and the dynamic relationship between hermeneutical resources and the broader
social milieu in which they are embedded.
The introduction and sheer presence of a concept within the dominant hermeneu-
tical repertoire, and more specifically, one’s being competent with some concept, is not
enough to ensure that the concept will be accurately deployed in socially significant
contexts. There is thus a need to sharply distinguish between the initial processing or
acquisition conditions of a hermeneutical resource, on the one hand, and its proper
application conditions, on the other. When a concept is initially grasped, one thereby
becomes (more or less) competent with the concept. However, conceptual competence
does not always, and more often does not, translate into a perfect ability to identify all
instances where the concept accurately applies.
Consider the following example. One might be competent with the concept fruit yet
fail to accurately identify an avocado as a fruit. Common associations of fruit with
sweetness, and avocados with savory cooking, may hinder one’s ability to properly clas-
sify an avocado as a fruit. Yet it’s clear that one can still retain their conceptual com-
petence, even to a very high degree, despite failing to accurately apply the concept in
all cases. We could imagine someone saying: “Of course I know what fruit is . . . I
just didn’t know that was a fruit.” If conceptual competence demands the ability to
accurately apply a concept in each and every instance, then there would be very few con-
cepts that one was genuinely competent with.15
Jack Balkin discusses how certain concepts, while falling short of being outright log-
ically contradictory, can nonetheless be rendered opposites when embedded into certain
social contexts; he calls such cases nested oppositions and gives the following examples:
If we say that red and green are opposite colors in a traffic light, we are not saying
that they logically contradict each other. Rather, they are opposed with respect to
the meanings these colors are given in traffic signals. The context of conventions
concerning traffic signals makes them opposites. In another context, they may be
seen as similar to each other. For example, red and green are both colors of the
natural spectrum, or colors associated with Christmas, while lavender and
brown are not. Thus red and green are seen as different in some contexts, and
are seen as having similar properties in others. (Balkin 1990, 6–7)
We can apply Balkin’s insights to cases of hermeneutical injustice without lacunae.

For example, in a social milieu where patriarchal ideology and its attendant conventions

352 Arianna Falbo
and social practices, along with other overlapping systems of oppression, are prevalent,
the golden boy concept is prone to be interpreted as clashing or as in opposition to the
bad boy, or the scoundrel. Furthermore, in such social settings rapists are readily char-
acterized as creepy strangers, reclusive outsiders, deviant monsters, or savage animals.
Accordingly, those who fit the profile of golden boy are commonly taken to be the
kind of people who could do no wrong, for the very meaning—what it is to be a golden
boy in this social context—precludes this. It’s creepy strangers and deviant monsters
who rape women; golden boys are “good guys”; they’re Eagle Scouts and are awarded
swimming scholarships. These two concepts—golden boy and rapist—when embedded
into certain social environments, are susceptible to being construed as opposites or as
clashing.
Hermeneutical Defeat and Preemption

A hermeneutical resource can be collectively available yet fail to be applied in socially
significant contexts where it matters the most. Other distorting concepts may defeat or
preempt the application of an available and more accurate concept.16 To develop this
idea further, let’s return to the Turner case. Because the concept golden boy readily
applied to Turner, it functioned for some as a strong defeater of, or may have altogether
preempted, his classification as a rapist. This partly because the concept golden boy is
distorting. It purports to justify and supports the legitimization of oppressive social
practices, namely, practices that sustain and reinforce elite, white, male dominance by
portraying such men as incapable of wrongdoing, and hence, as incapable of rape.17
Couple this with the misguided, yet all too common, depiction of rapists as strangers,
creeps, savage animals, and unhinged monsters, and you get the perfect hermeneutical
storm: golden boys simply couldn’t be rapists. Hence, even if one were (more or less)
competent with the concept rapist, one may still fail to identify actual rapists as such
in particular instances owing to hermeneutical defeat or preemption.
Thus we need to be attentive not only to the initial conceptual dissemination and
acquisition of a hermeneutical resource, but also to the broader social environments
in which a concept is operationalized and implemented. We need to consider how
hermeneutical resources interact with one another when embedded into certain social
contexts with entrenched social conventions and background ideologies (for example,
sexism, racism, classism, xenophobia, ableism, transphobia, heteronormativity,
capitalism, and so on), especially when such background social environments are partly
constituted and reinforced by the widespread use of oppressive distorting concepts and
controlling images.
In a social context where distorting images like the golden boy are widespread and
reinforced by dominant narratives and social scripts, it becomes increasingly hard to
meaningfully apply the concept rapist to individuals, like Turner, who fit the mold of
a golden boy. So, although the needed concept rapist may exist in the dominant
hermeneutical inventory, it is prone to unwarranted defeat and preemption. What’s
more, those who attempt to apply this concept to an individual like Turner, as
Miller did, are far less likely to be believed, and thus are less able to share their crucially
important knowledge. This, in turn, will limit the concept’s productive function and
influence in society—the concept is unable to robustly latch onto the social world in
a way that can stimulate and support social and political progress.
Contrary to what a lacuna-centered framework suggests, filling in hermeneutical
gaps and garnering collective conceptual competence—though undeniably important

Hypatia 353
—is not enough to overcome hermeneutical injustice. Conceptual competence does not
ensure the accurate application of a concept, especially in high-stakes social contexts
where privileged groups stand to gain from conceptual distortion and oppressive ideo-
logical practices. The application of the needed concept may be defeated or preempted
when pernicious background ideologies and social practices dictate that some other
opposing and distorting concept is more applicable. Hence, even if the concept is avail-
able and widely used across social groups and communities, this is not enough to secure
its accurate application, and importantly, not enough to reap the productive value of the
concept in important social contexts.
Let’s take stock. So far, I have outlined the productive function and power of herme-
neutical resources—how they serve to organize members of society and how some dis-
torting concepts or controlling images purport to justify and normalize unjust social
arrangements. This drew our attention to an important, yet often overlooked, value
of hermeneutical resources, namely, their productive value and potential to support
social and political change. Thus, the value of hermeneutical resources is at least two-
fold: they have productive as well as interpretive value. Recognizing this, in turn, helped
to uncover a species of hermeneutical injustice that does not result from a hermeneu-
tical lack. Reflecting upon concrete examples of hermeneutical injustice without lacunae
made highlighted a critical need to consider how concepts are operationalized within a
given social milieu—how they combine with other extant concepts and how they are
integrated into preexisting hermeneutical frameworks. The need for this is especially
pressing when extant hermeneutical frameworks contain negative controlling images
and oppressive distorting concepts. Such concepts have the potential to crowd out,
defeat, or preempt the application of an available and more accurate hermeneutical
resource.
In the next section, I begin to develop a more expansive and more socially situated
framework for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice. This approach aims to accom-
modate cases of hermeneutical injustice both with and without hermeneutical gaps.
V. A More Expansive Framework: Positive and Negative Hermeneutical Injustice

Why do the cases described thus far capture a distinct species of hermeneutical injus-
tice? Recall that according to Fricker the primary harm of hermeneutical injustice “con-
sists in a situated hermeneutical inequality: the concrete situation is such that the
subject is rendered unable to make communicatively intelligible something which it
is particularly in his or her interests to be able to render intelligible” (Fricker 2007,
162). We can break down Fricker’s analysis more precisely as requiring the following
necessary conditions. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when: (i) one’s experience fails
to be intelligible (either to oneself or to others), (ii) the hermeneutical tools needed
to make one’s experience intelligible are not collectively shared by those in the relevant
social context, and (iii) this is due to a lacuna in the collective hermeneutical repertoire
resulting from one’s hermeneutical marginalization.
Consider the perspective of Chanel Miller, the survivor in the Turner case. Miller
was clearly in a position to render her experience intelligible—she wasn’t hindered in
her ability to understand that she was a victim of rape. This was unmistakably and pain-
fully obvious to her. Others, however, were reluctant, or altogether failed, to apply the
concept rapist to Turner. This, of course, is not to say that such individuals lacked the
concept rapist; this concept was available and intelligible to them. Instead, others failed
to accurately apply this concept to Turner because he exemplified many of the

354 Arianna Falbo
hallmarks of a golden boy. So, though others could render intelligible the fact that
Miller and her defense team were accusing Turner of rape, they failed to apply the con-
cept rapist to Turner because of the presence of distorting and oppressive concepts.
Let’s return to the three conditions needed to establish a hermeneutical injustice on
Fricker’s lacuna-centered analysis. Given that the concept rapist was intelligible to
Miller and those in the relevant social context, and moreover, given that the concept
rapist was broadly available in the hermeneutical repertoire at large (there was no
lacuna), this case does not satisfy any of the three conditions. So, according to the
lacuna-centered framework, it follows that Miller isn’t a victim of hermeneutical injus-
tice. Is this the right result? I think it would be a serious mistake to draw this conclu-
sion. Instead, cases like these highlight a need to revise and expand upon the analysis of
hermeneutical injustice and the range of harms that it may give rise to.
Defenders of a lacuna-centered framework are right to note that across a range of
cases, the primary harm of hermeneutical injustice concerns an inability to make an
important social experience intelligible (either to oneself or to others). However, this
is not the sole way in which hermeneutical injustice can manifest. The hermeneutical
injustice that Miller faced didn’t involve a lack of intelligibility, but instead resulted
from a failure of conceptual application or conceptual aptness. Others were reluctant
to apply the concept rapist to Turner because they didn’t view this concept as fitting
or appropriate for a man like him. Furthermore, this failure of application doesn’t
trace back to any hermeneutical gap. It’s the very opposite: it was the positive presence
of distorting and oppressive concepts that served to prop up Turner’s innocence and to
prevent the concept rapist from applying to him. Taken in this way, we can
explain Miller as having suffered a kind of hermeneutical injustice, not because of a
lack of intelligibility, but because others in her social context were unable to accurately
apply the concept rapist to Turner owing to the presence of oppressive concepts.
This, in turn, resulted in the denial of Miller’s credibility and thus diminished her status
as a knower—specifically as a contributor of important and socially significant
knowledge—in the given social context.
Reflecting upon these features of Miller’s situation suggests a more expansive frame-
work for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice. This framework encompasses the
explanatory successes of the lacuna-centered analysis, while also capturing an important
species of hermeneutical injustice that doesn’t result from lacunae. According to this
broader approach, hermeneutical injustice can manifest in at least two distinct ways,
what we might call positive hermeneutical injustice and negative hermeneutical injus-
tice. Negative hermeneutical injustice is the more familiar kind of injustice that is cap-
tured by the lacuna-centered account. It’s negative because at its core it results from a
lack of hermeneutical resources. A paradigm example is the much-discussed case of
Carmita Wood and the absence of the concept sexual harassment. In cases of negative
hermeneutical injustice, the primary harm consists in an inability to render important
social experiences intelligible (either to oneself or to others).18
On the other hand, positive hermeneutical injustice results from the presence of
oppressive and distorting concepts that crowd out, defeat, or preempt the application
of an available and more accurate concept. Positive hermeneutical injustice is the
kind of injustice exhibited in Miller’s case and the failure to apply the concept rapist
to Turner, given that he fits the profile of a golden boy. Because of the hermeneutical
marginalization of certain groups—specifically, the unequal authority and power con-
cerning not just the initial creation and dissemination of conceptual resources, but
also their revision, reinforcement, and overall influence and applicability in high-stakes

Hypatia 355
social contexts—oppressive concepts remain operative within one’s social milieu. In

cases of positive hermeneutical injustice, the primary harm concerns a failure of con-
ceptual aptness or applicability that results from oppressive concepts limiting or alto-
gether blocking the accurate application of a concept. This can result in one’s
diminished status as a knower in the relevant context, and more specifically, as a
giver of knowledge.
It is important to emphasize the epistemic dimensions of positive hermeneutical
injustice. This injustice is epistemic insofar as it involves an unwarranted infringement
and limitation upon one’s capacity to contribute knowledge in a socially significant con-
text. In Miller’s case, the presence of distorting and oppressive concepts functioned to
significantly undermine her credibility with respect to a crucially important subject.
Everyone could understand her accusation against Turner, but many nonetheless failed
to gain knowledge as a result of her testimony. Distorting and oppressive concepts func-
tioned as defeaters of, or altogether preempted, the uptake of her testimony and under-
cut her attempt to classify Turner as a rapist.
This broader framework for theorizing about hermeneutical injustice gives rise to a
host of new and interesting questions concerning the relationship between hermeneu-
tical and testimonial injustice. Fricker discusses the connection between (negative) her-
meneutical injustice and testimonial injustice on the lacuna-centered model:
“testimonial injustice becomes not simply likely but almost inescapable when the per-
sistence of hermeneutical gaps renders certain voices less intelligible (and hence less
credible) than others on certain matters, and their attempts to articulate certain mean-
ings are systematically regarded as nonsensical (and hence incredible)” (Fricker 2007,
159; cf. also Medina 2012, 96). Relatedly, we can begin to understand how positive her-
meneutical injustice impinges upon the credibility of testifiers. When speakers offer tes-
timony that is incongruent with the oppressive concepts operative within their social
milieu, their testimony is more easily prone to defeat and preemption. As a result,
one’s testimony is less likely to gain uptake and to be believed.
It is also important to acknowledge a further series of secondary and more practical
harms that Miller confronted as a result of positive hermeneutical injustice. We can
understand the failure to apply the concept rapist to Turner as symptomatic of an over-
all failure of operationalization—a failure to effectively integrate a hermeneutical
resource into a broader social milieu owing, in part, to the presence of oppressive con-
cepts in the dominant hermeneutical repertoire. As a result, the productive function
and value of this concept—its potential to support meaningful social and political
change—is significantly diminished across a range of important sociopolitical contexts,
as is evidenced by the lenient jail sentence given to Turner.
Introducing a concept into collective understanding facilitates intelligibility in the
form of conceptual competence (that is, a lacuna no longer persists), but, as I’ve argued,
this does not guarantee that the concept will actually be used and applied in important
and socially significant scenarios. In particular, it does not guarantee that the needed
concept is immune to unwarranted defeat or preemption by an oppressive controlling
image or distorting concept that is operative in one’s social milieu. Overcoming negative
forms of hermeneutical injustice—by filling in hermeneutical lacunae—does not entail
that positive forms of hermeneutical injustice will be guarded against and rectified as
well. Hermeneutical injustice isn’t overcome unless hermeneutical resources that accu-
rately depict social reality robustly gain an influential and authoritative grip on the
social world—a grip that positively influences and improves the lives of those in mar-
ginalized communities. Only then can hermeneutical resources support meaningful

356 Arianna Falbo
change in helping to reform our social and political landscapes for the better. The sheer
existence of a concept, even if it has been disseminated both intra and intercommunally,
though vitally important, is not enough to ensure this.
Theorizing about hermeneutical injustice using this more expansive framework
helps us to reveal significant limits of a lacuna-centered model by illustrating how her-
meneutical injustice may persist well after lacunae are filled. Additionally, an expansive
framework supports a characterization of hermeneutical injustice as an appropriately
social phenomenon by highlighting the overarching social environments in which her-
meneutical resources are embedded and implemented. A more expansive framework—
one that recognizes both positive and negative forms of hermeneutical injustice—is
more complete and possesses more explanatory depth to the extent that it acknowledges
the aptness or applicability of socially significant concepts within specific social con-
texts, and relative to their operationalization within a given social milieu.
This expansive framework also has important connections to Pohlhaus’s analysis of
willful hermeneutical ignorance, as well as Dotson’s account of contributory injustice.
Recall that willful hermeneutical ignorance occurs when dominantly situated knowers
refuse to acquire the hermeneutical tools of those from marginalized groups, and, as
a result, sustain hermeneutical lacunae at the level of the dominant (or intercommunal)
hermeneutical repertoire. On a more expansive approach, we can begin to describe a
phenomenon adjacent to willful hermeneutical ignorance. Even after a concept is col-
lectively available, that is, even after the dominantly situated have acquired the concepts
needed to make the experiences of marginalized members of society intelligible, they
may still willfully refuse to adopt the proper application conditions for such concepts.
This will directly affect the overall productive function and value of such concepts
within one’s social milieu. In such cases, those in dominant positions may acknowledge,
acquire, and even widely utilize a concept—yet they may refuse to apply it in particular
situations because of their continued use of controlling images and oppressive distorting
concepts.
In a related vein, recall Dotson’s notion of contributory injustice that occurs when,
because of willful hermeneutical ignorance, the dominantly situated refuse to adopt
the hermeneutical resources of those from marginalized groups and instead use
other, often prejudiced, resources instead. When this happens, the epistemic agency
of marginalized individuals is frustrated and undermined; they are unable to positively
contribute to the dominant hermeneutical repertoire. In light of the more expansive
framework, we can begin to explain a related way in which the epistemic agency of mar-
ginalized groups may be compromised. This happens when the dominantly situated fail
to properly apply and utilize a socially significant concept accurately and for its
intended productive purposes. Systematic failures of conceptual application, particularly
when this is the result of endorsing and maintaining the use of oppressive concepts or
controlling images, can serve to undermine the epistemic agency of marginalized indi-
viduals insofar as it limits their capacity to influence how hermeneutical resources are
implemented and utilized within a social milieu. When this happens, marginalized indi-
viduals are unjustly undermined in their ability to contribute hermeneutical resources
with robust productive value and influence, that is, resources that are able to effectively
support social and political change.
Oftentimes, when disadvantaged communities develop hermeneutical resources,
they do so not only because they are valuable interpretive tools needed to understand
and communicate their experiences, but also because they are vital productive resources
that are needed to help improve their material circumstances. The hope is that these

Hypatia 357
resources will be accurately and effectively deployed in society to improve the lives of
individuals within these communities (for example, to help survivors of sexual vio-
lence). However, if members of society continue to engage in oppressive social practices,
specifically, those that make use of and reinforce the influence of oppressive controlling
images and distorting concepts, then these hermeneutical contributions will be signifi-
cantly diminished.
VI. Hermeneutical Justice

What might it take to overcome hermeneutical injustice? Here I will begin to sketch a
path forward. A more expansive framework suggests that hermeneutical justice requires
more than filling in hermeneutical lacunae. More plausibly, combating hermeneutical
injustice demands collective social movements aimed at disrupting and reforming dom-
inant conceptual frameworks and social scripts. Hence, it’s not only important to
develop and widely disseminate novel concepts needed to understand socially signifi-
cant experiences. But equally (if not more) important is unlearning and dislodging
the distorting ideological grip of controlling images and oppressive concepts that are
operative within one’s social milieu.
This is unlikely to be effective if done piecemeal, individual by individual, concept by
concept. Instead, hermeneutical justice is more likely to be achieved with collective
social action—movements that center the voices and experiences of marginalized indi-
viduals and that aim to disrupt and expose systemic patterns of oppression and exploi-
tation.19 We can look to the gay rights movement and the fight for marriage equality in
North America as an illustrative example. The concept marriage is now (to a great
extent) routinely applied to gay couples in social and legal contexts. This movement
helped to support the intelligibility of gay marriage, but additionally, it enabled gay cou-
ples to enjoy benefits and privileges afforded by legal unions (for example, health insur-
ance benefits, immigration and residency benefits, Social Security programs, and so on).
Having marriage readily apply to gay couples was productively powerful—it helped to
improve the material conditions of many gay couples across North America.
Another example is the #BodyPositivity movement, which has gained a global online
following over the past decade (Baker 2015; Crabbe 2017; Taylor 2018). The overarching
mission of this movement is to combat mainstream narratives that promote unhealthy
and downright unattainable standards of beauty, body image, and health, targeting pri-
marily young women and girls. By centering bodies that are marginalized in main-
stream media—disabled bodies, fat bodies, and bodies of color—and with slogans
like “‘Fat’ is not a bad word” (Shackelford 2019) and artists like Cinta Tort Cartró
who embraces the beauty of stretch marks by painting them vibrant colors (Park
2017), this movement aims to problematize dominant social assumptions and narratives
that deem fatness and other marginalized body features to be a cause for embarrass-
ment, shame, or inferiority.20
Combating hermeneutical injustice is thus not simply a matter of filling in
hermeneutical gaps. Hermeneutical justice demands something much more radical and
far-reaching. More plausibly, it demands large-scale social movements aimed at disman-
tling oppressive ideologies and social practices. Without question, part of this will involve
cultivating and propagating novel conceptual resources—for example, concepts like gen-
derqueer, disability pride, body positivity, and sexual harassment—that is, it will require
filling in hermeneutical lacunae. But, as we’ve seen, much more is needed beyond this
to sufficiently guard against and overcome the harms of hermeneutical injustice.

358 Arianna Falbo
So, where does this leave us? In closing, I want to emphasize what I take to be the
best way forward in theorizing about hermeneutical injustice and epistemic injustice
more broadly. The main thrust is this: we need to broaden our horizons and engage
in a more socially embedded way.21 Contrasting cases of positive and negative herme-
neutical injustice serves to illustrate how concepts don’t exist and operate independently
from each other, but are deeply interconnected. The productive value of hermeneutical
tools is both constrained and enabled by their place alongside other concepts within an
overarching social milieu. Moreover, the sheer fact that many concepts were and still are
needed to make sense of the socially significant experiences of marginalized communi-
ties should be extremely suggestive of the current state of collective hermeneutical
frameworks and the strong influence of unjust social practices and oppressive concepts
and controlling images therein.
It is thus imperative that we pay close attention to how concepts can function to
sustain and promote pernicious background ideologies and unjust social arrangements,
and how this in turn can restrict the productive function and power of liberatory
concepts, both old and new. The intelligibility gained from the introduction and
widespread dissemination of a hermeneutical resource is undeniably important.
However, this is just one dimension of hermeneutical progress that ought not distract
us from others. We must also recognize the productive function and value of
hermeneutical resources and how they come to be deemed applicable and utilized, or
more important, not applicable and not utilized, across diverse social environments.
Successfully overcoming hermeneutical injustice likely requires full-fledged social
movements—it requires organization, mobilization, and activism. It requires challeng-
ing and disrupting the status quo narrative and dislodging ingrained assumptions
and ideologies that normalize and purport to justify oppressive social arrangements.
Introducing into the collective hermeneutical repertoire a hermeneutical resource that
is needed to understand the experiences of disadvantaged groups is clearly a move in
the right direction—it is progress toward hermeneutical justice. However, if prevailing
social conditions aren’t conducive to the concept’s gaining a meaningful grip on the
world—that is, to its being broadly applied in important social contexts where it accu-
rately describes social reality and where it stands to do productive work to help improve
the material conditions of those in marginalized communities—the concept’s potential
to combat hermeneutical injustice will be undermined. Contrary to what a lacuna-
centered analysis suggests, filling in hermeneutical gaps is not enough to ensure herme-
neutical justice; it is just one part of a much broader, comprehensive, and socially
embedded process.
Acknowledgments. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Summer Immersion Program in
Philosophy at Brown University (2019), the Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy at the University of
Cincinnati (2019), the Pacific Division of the APA (2021), and the Words Workshop (2021). I’m grateful to
audience members for their feedback. I would also like to thank Zach Barnett, Endre Begby, Thomas
Brandt, David Christensen, Corbin Covington, Sally Haslanger, Jonathan Ichikawa, and Elizabeth Miller,
as well as two anonymous referees.
Notes
1 Hermeneutical resources include interpretive tools such as tropes, narratives, stories, scripts, and con-
cepts. For simplicity, and following much of the literature, I will talk mostly in terms of conceptual
resources.

Hypatia 359
2 This requirement is argued for in Fricker 2006; 2007; 2016; and 2017. Although much of Fricker’s orig-
inal 2007 discussion frames hermeneutical injustice as centrally involving hermeneutical lacunae, it’s nota-
ble that she includes the example of Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story (White 1983). This is a
semi-autobiographical novel that describe White’s experiences in the 1950s as a gay young man battling
dominant stereotypes of homosexuality as unnatural or as a sickness. Thus, Fricker’s discussion of herme-
neutical injustice is sensitive to how oppressive stereotypes—and not just conceptual gaps—can influence
hermeneutical injustice, yet she remains focused largely upon lacunae throughout her discussion (see, espe-
cially, Fricker 2007, 161–62, as well as the initial definition of hermeneutical injustice given at the start of
her book: “hermeneutical injustice occurs . . . when a gap in collective resources puts someone at an unfair
disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences” [1]).
3 This requirement for hermeneutical injustice is adopted widely across recent literature. See, for example,
Beeby 2011; Medina 2011, 2012; Dotson 2012; Dotson 2014; Anderson 2017; Goetze 2017; Medina 2017;
Toole 2019; Vasilyeva and Ayala-López 2019; Beverley 2020; Dembroff 2020; Dembroff and Whitcomb
forthcoming.
4 Thank you to an anonymous referee for suggesting this terminology.
5 Fricker draws from Susan Brownmiller’s memoir of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960s
when discussing the case of Carmita Wood (Brownmiller 1990). For other early uses of the concept sexual
harassment, see Rowe 1974; Nemy 1975.
6 Criticisms of Fricker’s analysis of hermeneutical injustice have pointed out a failure to distinguish
between intra and intercommunal dissemination of hermeneutical resources. See, for example, Mason
2011; Medina 2012; 2013. It is worth noting that even the inter/intracommunal dissemination distinction
is fairly idealized. The boundaries here are likley not as crisp as this distinction might suggest. For a related
discussion, also see Ashley Atkins’s distinction between resistant understanding and dominant or collective
understanding (Atkins 2018).
7 In developing her analysis of controlling images, Collins cites the work of Mae King and Cheryl Gilkes
(King 1973; Gilkes 1981). In discussing the work of these two scholars, Collins notes:
King suggests that stereotypes represent externally-defined, controlling images of Afro-American

womanhood that have been central to the dehumanization of Black women and the exploitation
of Black women’s labor. Gilkes points out that Black women’s assertiveness in resisting the multifac-
eted oppression they experience has been a consistent threat to the status quo. As punishment, Black
women have been assaulted with a variety of externally-defined negative images designed to control
assertive Black female behavior. The value of King’s and Gilkes’ analyses lies in their emphasis on the
function of stereotypes in controlling dominated groups. (Collins 1986, 17, italics added)
8 Note: as was mentioned previously, this does not necessarily mean that Black women are unable to
develop and use hermeneutic resources intracommunally.
9 We can also compare similar influential rhetoric during World War II that described Jewish people as
“vermin.” For example, this language is prevalent in The Eternal Jew, a 1940 Nazi propaganda film. For
further discussions on the productive function of pernicious social concepts see, for example, Young
1990, chapter 2, on cultural imperialism, Kukla 2018 on the relationship between slurs and ideology,
and Neufeld 2019 on slurs and essentialization.
10 It is also important to note that “monstrosity” and “animality” are also deeply racialized notions in a
United States context, associated primarily with Black people and people of color. Consider, for example,
the rhetoric surrounding the 1989 “Central Park Five” case where five Black teenagers were wrongfully
accused of raping a white woman who was jogging in Central Park. These boys were described as a
“wolf pack,” “animals,” “bloodthirsty,” “savages,” and “wilding” (Hinton 2019).
11 At the time of the trial, the victim’s name was kept anonymous and listed under “Emily Doe.” However,
Chanel Miller has recently shared her story with the broader public in a memoir: Know My Name (Miller
2019).
12 Manne’s discussion of the Brock Turner case engages primarily with Fricker’s account of testimonial
injustice, a kind of epistemic injustice wherein a testifier’s report fails to gain uptake owing to an identity
prejudice that the testimonial recipient has against the testifier. It’s noteworthy that Fricker focuses primar-
ily upon credibility deficits when developing her analysis of testimonial injustice (that is, giving too little

360 Arianna Falbo
credit to a testifier because of an identity prejudice that one has against them) (Fricker 2007). However,
recent scholarship has persuasively argued that credibility surpluses—giving a testifier too much credit
owing to some prejudice—can also perpetuate testimonial injustice. See Medina 2012; Davis 2016; Yap
2017; and Lackey 2018; 2020 for further defenses of this point.
13 Parts of this passage are quoted and discussed in Manne 2020, 38. See Manne 2020, chapter 3, for an
insightful further discussion of this case.
14 Another telling example concerns how Muslim men who commit violent acts against civilians are rou-
tinely labeled terrorists across United States media channels. But, when non-Muslim, white men commit
nearly identical acts, their behavior is routinely attributed to nonessential features of their psychology
(for example, mental illness) or exogenous features of their environment (for example, poor childhood
upbringing or a bad neighborhood). White terrorists are typically interpreted as hapless victims of circum-
stance and as not acting in accordance with their “real” selves. Across many cases, in a North American
context, being a white man can, and often does, undermine one’s classification as a terrorist—even
when one has committed blatant terrorist acts. See Kunst, Myhren, and Onyeador 2018 for further discus-
sion. This relates to what psychologists have called the “fundamental attribution error.” For further discus-
sion see, for example, Sarah-Jane Leslie’s work on generics and essentialization (Leslie 2017).
15 Cf. Haslanger 2020b, who draws upon Yalcin 2016, when defending the view that the content of a con-
cept is a partition of logical space. To possess a concept, in her view, is to have a disposition that responds to
that partition in certain ways. However, one’s ability to attend to the partition correctly (that is, to separate
the X’s from the non-X’s) may vary depending upon a number of factors. Haslanger provides the following
illustrative case:
For example, we may have the same concept of cat—the informational content of the concept cat is
the same for each of us—but our possession of it occurs in somewhat different ways so that certain
inferences are more direct for me than they are for you, or that I am more ready to apply the concept
than you. Or it may be that because you know more about cats, you have a sensitivity to different
kinds of cat, so your partition of logical space is more fine-grained. (Haslanger 2020b, 240)
This analysis helps to capture the idea that merely possessing or being competent with a concept is not, and
usually isn’t, an indication that the individual can accurately apply the concept across all cases (that is, that
they have a perfect ability to sort the X’s from the non-X’s).
16 Cf. Endre Begby’s analysis of evidential preemption in the context of testimonial exchange, especially
what he calls “epistemic grooming” (Begby 2020).
17 Ishani Maitra outlines different ways in which concepts might be distorting using the concepts statutory
rape and sexual harassment as case studies (Maitra 2018). I hope to remain neutral on the ways in which
concepts might be distorting; I believe that the phenomena in question are diverse and complex. Offering a
taxonomy of the various ways in which concepts distort social reality is beyond the scope of this article;
however, Maitra’s work is helpful in outlining two potential ways this happens: through eliciting inappro-
priate inferences or eliciting inappropriate analogies. Also see Jenkins 2017 for a related and illuminating
discussion of the relationship between rape myths and hermeneutical injustice. Jenkins considers cases
where a victim of rape is unable to understand her experience as rape owning to operative and distorting
rape myths.
18 It is important to note that in some cases of negative hermeneutical injustice, the presence of negative
controlling images might very well serve to sustain and reinforce hermeneutical lacunae. In classifying this
species of hermeneutical injustice as negative, I don’t want to in any way to rule out this possibility. Cf.
Dotson’s related discussion of contributory injustice (Dotson’s 2012). These two categories—negative and
positive—are somewhat idealized, and in practice the lines between them might be fuzzy and imprecise.
Moreover, once we consider the broader relationship and interaction among hermeneutical resources within
a social context, we might find cases that involve combinations of both positive and negative forms of her-
meneutical injustice. I don’t mean to rule out this potential either. Teasing apart the details here is an impor-
tant project that merits further careful investigation, but that is beyond the scope of this article.
19 Fricker acknowledges the important role of social movements and political change in challenging the con-
ditions that give rise to hermeneutical injustice, namely, in challenging hermeneutical marginalization, but she
doesn’t wholly embrace this as a necessary component of combating hermeneutical injustice itself. She says:

Hypatia 361
Shifting the unequal relations of power that create the conditions of hermeneutical injustice (namely,
hermeneutical marginalization) takes more than virtuous individual conduct of any kind; it takes
group political action for social change. The primary ethical role for the virtue of hermeneutical jus-
tice, then, remains one of mitigating the negative impact of hermeneutical injustice on the speaker.
From the point of view of social change, this may be but a drop in the ocean; still, from the point of
view of the individual hearer’s virtue, not to mention the individual speaker’s experience of their
exchange, it is justice enough. (Fricker 2007 174–75, italics added)
However, once the productive function of hermeneutical resources is brought to the fore, I hope we can
begin to marshal persuasive reasons that individual-level interventions focusing on intelligibility are
unlikely to be “justice enough” when it comes to combating hermeneutical injustice.
20 A few major beauty brands have slowly begun to take notice and have shown some signs of change for
the better, but there is without question a long way to go. See, for example, Dove’s Self-Esteem Project:
https://www.dove.com/us/en/dove-self-esteem-project/our-mission.html.
21 Elizabeth Anderson, Kristie Dotson, Sally Haslanger, and Nadya Vasilyeva and Saray Ayala-López,
among others, have also emphasized the importance of thinking about whole social systems and
institutional-level phenomena when theorizing about epistemic injustice (Anderson 2012; Dotson 2012;
2014; Haslanger 2016; Vasilyeva and Ayala-López 2019; Haslanger 2020a; 2020b).
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Cite this article: Falbo A (2022). Hermeneutical Injustice: Distortion and Conceptual Aptness. Hypatia 37,
343–363. https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4

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Hypatia (2022), 37, 343–363

Hermeneutical Injustice: Distortion and

(Received 8 March 2020; revised 2 January 2021; accepted 2 March 2021)

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

injustice. A hermeneutical resource is absent from the hermeneutical repertoire, and

II. The Lacuna-Centered Analysis

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

According to this approach, the primary harm of hermeneutical injustice concerns a

without the resources for understanding nonbinary gender identities, we sustain a

Another example is the concept of disability pride as it emerged in the disability

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

contributing to the dominant hermeneutical repertoire. As a result, hermeneutical gaps

Wendy Sanford’s moment of truth seems to be not simply a hermeneutical break-

Influenced by a lacuna-centered model, great importance is routinely placed upon

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

III. The Productive Function of Hermeneutical Resources

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

IV. Hermeneutical Clash

1. Golden boys are not rapists.

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

1. Rapists are monsters.

Manne argues that exonerating narratives—such as the “golden boy” narrative—

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

disseminated such that it occupies a place in the collective stock of hermeneutical

Conceptual Acquisition and Conceptual Aptness

We can apply Balkin’s insights to cases of hermeneutical injustice without lacunae.

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Hermeneutical Defeat and Preemption

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

V. A More Expansive Framework: Positive and Negative Hermeneutical Injustice

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

social contexts—oppressive concepts remain operative within one’s social milieu. In

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

VI. Hermeneutical Justice

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

King suggests that stereotypes represent externally-defined, controlling images of Afro-American

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2022.4 Published online by Cambridge University Press

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