Limits of Epistemic Injustices: Reconsidering the Finniss River Land Claim (1981)

• In Event: Democratic Deficits and Developments in Indigenous Politics

Abstract

Epistemic injustices purport to diagnose harms done to persons in their capacity as knowers. But three assumptions of epistemic injustices––1) dyadic model comprising listener/s and speaker, 2) objective truth, and 3) shared norms––fail to hold in situations of severe power imbalances, such as settler colonial contexts, thus leading to the under-diagnosis of epistemic injustices, and making the framework an easy accomplice to existing unjust colonial political-economic structures. Studying Indigenous Australian land claims processes, I show how epistemic injustices, currently conceived, fail to grasp epistemic problems that far exceed a lack of representation in a common hermeneutical pool and encompass asymmetrical terms of discourse. I expand on the epistemic injustices that pervade the Finniss River Land Claim (1981), which was the first time the Australian High Court had to adjudicate between rival Indigenous claimants: the Marranunggu, Kungarakany and Warai. Drawing on court findings, I focus on the claims put forward by the unsuccessful Gungarakayn majority-women claimants against the successful Marranunggu claimants, and find that while both testimonial and hermeneutical injustices are inflicted against the Gungarakayn, assumptions about categories such as culture, truth, and recognition, lead the theorist of epistemic injustices to miss the operation of a competitive speaking environment and thus, the fuller extent of harms done to all Indigenous peoples. I reformulate epistemic injustices from three perspectives––neoliberalism, psychoanalysis, and anthropology,––to better account for the construction of a competitive institutional climate.

Author

• Qian Qian Ng, University of Michigan