Critical Social Epistemology and the Liberating Power of Dialogue

In recent years, in particular since the publication of Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing in 2007 (Fricker, 2007), analytic philosophers (working broadly in the field of social epistemology) have been reflecting more systematically on moral and political wrongs and harms occurring in epistemic processes, and more generally on the intersections between political and epistemic phenomena. Through the notion of testimonial injustice in particular, they have been investigating how epistemic injustices can occur in conversational situations. But conversation and dialogue can also be the locus for resistance and liberation from oppression, not just for injustice. This is one of the main insights in the work of Brazilian educator and scholar Paulo Freire (1921–1997), who investigated the role of dialogical forms of education for the empowerment of traditionally oppressed groups. Indeed, Freire’s work contains valuable ideas that, in our opinion, should be included in the debates on epistemic injustice and related topics. Our goal with this contribution is to present some aspects of his thought that are relevant for these debates, thus showing that social epistemologists have much to benefit from engaging with Freire’s work.