Challenging Testimonies as a Tool for Epistemic Diversity in Deliberative Democracy

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2023-11

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en

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Giving testimony is understood as an important tool for inclusion of marginalised groups in deliberation ever since Iris Marion Young critiqued deliberative democracy for how its centralisation of reasonable argumentation excluded groups with different speech cultures. This article reframes the exclusion of marginalised groups from deliberation as an issue of epistemic injustice. Doing so illustrates how current argumentation for the inclusion of testimonies does not challenge the epistemic injustice which led to the exclusion of marginalised groups in the first place. The article argues giving testimony can only be an emancipatory and transformative practice of deliberation if it can result in not-understanding for the dominant group. This not-understanding can force the dominant group to recognise the limits of their knowledge and challenge their hermeneutical framework which is at the basis of the exclusion of the marginalised group.

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Faculteit der Filosofie, Theologie en Religiewetenschappen