Abstract: Philosophy is often imagined as a universal and inclusive discipline, open to all who seek truth through reason. Yet for many African philosophers, participation in global philosophical discourse is structured by profound epistemic asymmetries. This chapter identifies and analyses the burdens that African scholars face when attempting to contribute to a field that purports to be global, but remains shaped by the norms, infrastructures, and priorities of the Global North. Drawing on feminist social epistemology and decolonial critique, I examine two interrelated burdens borne by African philosophers. The first is an epistemic burden evident in the demand to constantly contextualise and justify African philosophical traditions, the linguistic hegemony and the narrow stylistic norms in academic philosophy. The second is the material burden to participation, such as visa restrictions, underfunded institutions, and inequitable publishing economies. I argue that these burdens are not peripheral challenges, but central features of a global philosophical structure that undermines its own epistemic ideals.

Abstract: When someone experiences an epistemic wrong, all else being equal, we ought to rectify the wrong. This intuition underpins the increasing interest in epistemic reparation. Epistemic reparations are intentional actions that provide epistemic goods to those who have been wronged, aimed at addressing acknowledged epistemic wrongs. While it is accepted that perpetrators have a duty to offer epistemic reparation, I argue here that the victims possess an imperfect duty to remember and recount their stories, with significant discretion. This duty is not grounded on the reparations owed to them. It is based on broader epistemic obligations, such as the duty to utilise their epistemic advantage to promote justice, etc. Arguing for this point trains our attention on the victims and their various expressions of epistemic agency under conditions of oppression.

Abstract: Apologies often create expectations of meaningful change and repair. Yet when institutions or states deliver apologies for past wrongs that lack substantive reparative action, they risk deepening, rather than redressing, the harms they acknowledge. In this article, I examine what I call ‘botched apologies’ that can be performative, temporally disconnected from the ongoing effects of harm, and ultimately serve the interests of perpetrators. I argue that these botched apologies inflict distinct epistemic harms: they gaslight the victims, silence them, appropriate their hermeneutical resources, and exploit them. Using an epistemic reparations framework, I propose four non-exhaustive conditions for epistemically responsible apology: truthfulness, testimonial uptake, hermeneutical openness, and reciprocal epistemic labour.

Abstract: In typical instances of epistemic injustice, the victims and perpetrators are distinct across social groups – as marginally or dominantly situated. When epistemic injustice happens, the dominantly situated typically rely on prejudicial stereotypes to prevent the marginally situated from participating in epistemic activities. This is a manifestation/ exercise of their social power. However, with anonymity on the internet, a marginally situated person can effectively pose as a dominantly situated person and vice versa. When this happens, we cannot always tell who is behind a post. Consequently, relying on differential power relations, as in typical cases of epistemic injustice, might be ineffective online. In this paper, I argue for three ways that anonymity might complicate instances of epistemic injustice online.

Abstract: The internet provides easy access to a wealth of information that can sometimes be false and harmful. This is most apparent on social media platforms. To combat this, platforms have implemented various methods of content moderation to flag or block content that is inaccurate or violates community standards. This approach has limitations – from the epistemic injustices that might occur due to content moderation practices to the concerns about the legitimacy of these for-profit platforms’ epistemic authority. In this paper, I highlight some of the epistemic challenges of online content moderation with a focus on how it harms internet users and moderators. If we are to moderate content effectively and ethically, we must attend to these challenges. Hence, I map out an epistemic compass for online content moderation that looks to attend to these challenges. I argue for a pluralistic model of content moderation that categorises content online and distributes the task of content moderation between human moderators, automated moderators, and community moderators in a way that plays to the strengths of each content moderation model. My compass is beneficial for two reasons: first, it allows room for the internet to realise its potential as a democratising force for knowledge, and second, it helps minimise the epistemic downsides of relying on profit-driven companies as epistemic authorities.

Abstract: Instances of epistemic injustice elicit resistance, anger, despair, frustration or cognate emotional responses from their victims. This sort of response to the epistemic injustices that accompanied historical systems of oppression such as colonialism, for example, is normal. However, if their victims have internalised these oppressive situations, we could get the counterintuitive response of appreciation. In this paper, I argue for the phenomenon of appreciative silencing to make sense of instances like this. This is a form of epistemic silencing that happens when the accepted hegemonic intuitions of the oppressed are formed/influenced by the ideologies of the oppressors over time. Here, we have a resilient, oppressive and hegemonic epistemic system. Put together, it creates a variant of epistemic injustice and silencing that is obscure since its victims are neither resistant nor aware of the injustice they face but are appreciative.

Abstract: When an agent suffers in their capacity as a knower, they are a victim of epistemic injustice. Varieties of epistemic injustices have been theorised. A salient feature across these theories is that perpetrators and victims of epistemic injustice belong to different social groups. In this paper, I argue for a form of epistemic injustice that could occur between members of the same social group. This is a form of epistemic injustice where the knower is first a victim of historical and continuing oppression. Secondly, they internalise and appreciate the systems that harm them as a knower. This is possible because the victim subscribes to perniciously formed epistemic systems. This form of epistemic injustice is a valuable explanatory tool for non-standard and obscure instances of epistemic injustice where the victim a) accepts and appreciates the injustice they experience and b) is even the seeming perpetrator of the injustice against themselves.

Abstract: As a site of colonial conquest, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced colonialism’s historic and continuing harms. One of the aspects of this harm is epistemic. In the analytic philosophical tradition, this harm can partly be theorised in line with the literature on epistemic injustice, although it does not fit squarely. I show this by arguing for what can be understood as a colonial state’s specific manifestation of epistemic injustice. This manifestation takes into account the historical context of colonisation and the continuing coloniality of sub-Saharan African countries. From this, I argue for an approach to remediating this epistemic injustice that relies on the fair-minded pursuit of knowledge. This approach, I briefly argue, gains valuable insights from African epistemological traditions and can be beneficial to other epistemic injustice instances that result specifically from historical cases of oppression.

Abstract: Why should we decolonise knowledge? One popular rationale is that colonialism has set up a single perspective as epistemically authoritative over many equally legitimate ones, and this is a form of epistemic injustice. Hence, we should take different epistemic perspectives as having equal epistemic authority. A problem with this rationale is that its relativist implications undermine the call for decolonisation, which is premised on the objectivity of the moral claim that ‘epistemic colonisation is wrong’. In this paper, I aim to provide a rationale for epistemic decolonisation that avoids the shortfalls of this relativist rationale. I develop a distinctly epistemic rationale for epistemic decolonisation that positions the imperative to decolonise knowledge as an epistemic virtue.

‘How Beliefs Harm’, with Gontse Lebakeng.

Abstract: The argument for doxastic wronging states that the very act of believing something about a person can be morally problematic, regardless of truth, because it can objectify, disrespect, or undermine their dignity. This view challenges the traditional view that beliefs are morally neutral simply because they are ‘private’ mental states. While arguments for doxastic wrongs are valuable, they fall short of claiming that beliefs can harm others. We aim to make this argument. There are two related reasons we take this to be the case. The first is that since beliefs are formed in social contexts, biased and prejudicial beliefs are not a secret. Second, as a result of this, we see that the existence of these beliefs in any social context places harmful burdens on the targets of these beliefs to be silent, conform, or be in a state of constant angst.

‘Epistemic Occlusion’.

Abstract: I introduce the concept of epistemic occlusion to describe a form of epistemic harm that occurs when certain knowledges, frameworks, or epistemic agents are systematically rendered invisible within dominant epistemic practices, not through active silencing or exclusion, but through processes that pre-emptively block their recognition. Unlike testimonial strands of epistemic harms, which concern the unfair downgrading of a speaker’s credibility, or hermeneutical strands, which arise from gaps in collective interpretive resources, epistemic occlusion names a prior and more elusive mechanism. It is a structurally produced condition in which certain knowledges or epistemic agents are rendered imperceptible. I argue that epistemic occlusion operates through mechanisms that shape what is seen, taken seriously, or even conceivable as knowledge.

‘Deep Disagreement and Epistemic Oppression’.

Abstract: This paper challenges a core assumption in theories of deep disagreement, the power of ‘rational discourse.’ These theories often hold that well-reasoned arguments should persuade any rational person, with failure indicating unshakable hinge commitments. I interrogate this very definition of rational discourse, arguing it can be epistemically oppressive. Drawing on standpoint epistemology, I argue that the ideal of a disinterested, logical agent is a fiction. Insisting on this narrow form of discourse has historically excluded marginalised viewpoints and reinforced oppressive systems. While this critique doesn’t render the debate futile, it demands a re-examination of its foundations. Doing so may not only reveal new persuasive avenues but also show what is truly foundational in human disagreement.

‘Relational Epistemic Agency’.

Abstract: If the insights of social epistemology are correct, then we cannot think of epistemic agency in individual terms. I present a more apt relational account of epistemic agency. This account of epistemic agency is grounded in African relational conceptions of personhood and feminist social epistemology. Rejecting the dominant view of the epistemic agent as an autonomous, self-sufficient individual, I argue for a relational account of epistemic agency where our epistemic capacities are constituted through and sustained by our interactions with others. Ultimately, I argue that a relational view of epistemic agency not only aligns with the insights of social epistemology but also provides a richer framework for addressing contemporary challenges in the ethics of knowing.

Email me for drafts of works in progress.