Volume 19, Number 2
February 2021
ARTICLE

Resisting Wrongful Explanations

Volume 19, Number 2, February 2021, Pages 168–191
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v19i2.1202
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Abstract

In this paper I explore a method for refusing uptake when explanations are morally and epistemically troubling. Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. has shown that imploring marginalized people to “understand” marginalizing practices amounts to a request that they legitimize their own marginalization. In this paper, I expand upon this analysis with the aim of describing a method for withholding understanding. First, I analyze understanding through its association with explanation. Drawing on pragmatic theories, I describe explanations as speech acts whose success depends on the explainee granting the explainer uptake by revising their background assumptions. Those background assumptions sometimes reference troubling generalizations, and in those cases, the explanation must be blocked. Accordingly, I formalize a form of explanatory resistance in which the explainee feigns misunderstanding to corner the explainer into exposing the problematic assumptions upon which their explanation depends. Second, I situate wrongful requests for understanding within the epistemic injustice schema as “explanatory injustices,” emphasizing the fact that marginalized groups are also specifically marginalized within the explanation economy. I conclude that we should be more cognizant of the way in which explanations track power, and be prepared to undertake resistance in order to expose moral and epistemic shortcomings in how we explain.
Copyright © 2021 Arianne Shahvisi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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