Abstract: 

Jennifer Lackey has recently argued that victims of gross injustices and epistemic harms not only have a right to know, but also a right to be known, i.e., to share and have their experiences heard. This right is associated with a duty to provide epistemic reparations, notably in bearing witness to victims. The epistemic harms with which Lackey is concerned are features of settler colonialism that call for such epistemic reparations. I seek to raise caution about the pursuit of epistemic reparations, however, especially through bearing witness and testimony, in settler colonial contexts. I argue that settler colonial epistemic environments constitute morasses of unknowing, where settlers are subjectified in ways that severely burden their capacity to properly understand and know victims of epistemic harms. In settler colonial contexts, I argue, epistemic reparations through bearing witness and testimonies risk being both unproductive and pernicious. They risk being unproductive precisely because victims are at risk of not being properly understood without transforming the material and subjective features of the settler colonial epistemic environment. They further risk being pernicious given settler colonial dynamics that tend to defuse the critical potential of testimonies. To ensure a more thorough pursuit of the right to be known, we must therefore also consider the required decolonial transformation of the structures and subjectivities that make epistemic harm possible.

Yann Allard-Tremblay is an Associate Professor of Political Science in McGill University, Montreal, Canada.