From Verbatim Illusion to Epistemic Collapse: Knowledge, Authority, and Testimonial Injustice in Dennis Kelly's Taking Care of Baby

Pretension as Epistemic Performance: Madness, Genius, and the Verdict of Uptake in Don Quixote

Background: Readers of Don Quixote have long divided between two verdicts: the knight is mad, or the knight is a martyr to a disenchanted world. Both readings assume that the truth of his acts lies inside the acts themselves; this paper argues that it lies in the world’s answer. Methods: The paper develops pretension as an epistemic category and constructs a three-term reading grammar — frame, uptake, and aftermath — through Austin, Butler, Goffman, Schechner, and related theories of performance and recognition. It applies this grammar to two structurally opposed scenes in Cervantes’s novel: the inn where Quixote is dubbed a knight and the windmill plain where his wager is refused, and a third, where the verdict is neither granted nor refused but held in dispute. Analysis: At the inn, the keeper grants sanction without belief: the rite is completed, the designation acquires social currency, and Quixote leaves with a standing conferred by others. On the plain, Sancho refuses endorsement of the frame, and the same kind of wager returns to Quixote as error and madness. Conclusion: Madness and genius are not simply differences of content or psychology; they are also verdicts rendered by audiences before whom claims are staged. The paper extends this structure to scholarship itself, where knowledge is never ratified privately but waits on uptake. Novelty: The article reclaims pretension from its moral weight and proposes it as a technical term for performance with consciousness of performance, tested by social uptake.

Can democracy heal epistemic injustice?

This paper responds to the rather vague recurring hope in current research on epistemic injustice, that ‘democracy’ could be a remedy for knowledge-related forms of oppression. It takes this idea as a starting point and elaborates on it from a perspective that interlinks democratic theory, institutional analysis and social epistemology, by asking: Can democracy heal epistemic injustice? What would it take and how does this translate into institutions? In the paper’s first part, Miranda Fricker’s original distinction between hermeneutical and testimonial epistemic injustice is complemented by ‘access-denying’ forms of epistemic injustice that are caused by being excluded from knowledge acquiring, production and dissemination regimes. The paper then explores the remedies that democratic principles, procedures and institutions provide for these different forms of epistemic injustice. It discusses how more inclusive norms of communication can be institutionalised, how knowledge production practices can be opened up without jeopardising knowledge quality, and how civic organisations can be supported in conveying marginalised perspectives.

Speaking, Knowing, and Becoming: Epistemic Authority, Power, and the Production of Marginalized Identities

This article develops a critical account of the relationship among speaking, knowing, and becoming in the production of marginalized identities. It argues that epistemic authority is not merely a property of competent individuals but a socially organized relation through which some speakers are recognized as credible knowers while others are discounted, translated, over-scrutinized, or rendered unintelligible. Bringing feminist social epistemology into dialogue with critical race theory, postcolonial theory, sociology of language, and theories of subject formation, the article proposes an Epistemic Authority Identity Production Cycle. The model explains how social position shapes credibility allocation; credibility judgments condition uptake and participation; unequal participation structures collective interpretive resources; and those resources, in turn, stabilize or contest the identities through which people are socially recognized. A critical interpretive review of foundational and contemporary scholarship identifies four recurrent mechanisms: credibility deficit and excess, hermeneutical marginalization, willful ignorance and epistemic exploitation, and institutionalized standards of intelligibility. The article further shows that marginalized identity is neither a fixed antecedent of epistemic injustice nor merely an outcome of discourse. Rather, identity and epistemic authority are recursively co-produced across interactional, organizational, and structural levels. This framework clarifies why inclusion understood only as “giving voice” is insufficient: speech without uptake, participation without interpretive power, and representation without authority can reproduce marginality. The article concludes by outlining principles for epistemic justice centered on accountable listening, plural interpretive infrastructures, redistribution of epistemic labor, institutional reflexivity, and the protection of dissenting and liminal knowers.

Os “fantasmas da verdade”

This article analyzes the constitution of the enunciative subject and the polyphonic management of responsibility, examining how points of view (POV) are staged in discourse. Situated within the framework of Integrated Discourse Analysis (IDA) and building on Ducrot's polyphonic theory, Berrendonner's linguistic pragmatics, and Rabatel's Theory of Points of View, the study employs a pragmatic framework to investigate dialogic interactionism. The study adopts a qualitative, enunciation-based analysis of heterogeneous textual fragments. The findings reveal the dynamics between locutors and dialogic enunciators, showing that the imputation and implicit validation of contents (quasi-PEC) give rise to what the paper calls the "phantoms of truth" - an enunciative spectrality through which subjects naturalize presuppositions and validate assertions via enunciative erasure and disinscription, without taking direct responsibility for what is said. The study concludes that command of enunciative postures and the exercise of empathic mobility not only structure textual asymmetries but also serve as fundamental ethical principles for dialogic decentering and the dismantling of dogmatism.

Two truths and one aporia: a Madhyamaka model of agency in dialogue with Western philosophy of action

Epistemic and Linguistic Injustice in Research: Sharing Experiential Knowledge

This article discusses a rarely addressed yet pivotal issue in academia: the epistemic hegemony of the English language and its detrimental effects on non-English-speaking researchers. Drawing on existing literature, ethical theoretical concepts, and our own experiential knowledge, we illuminate some of the epistemic and linguistic injustices embedded in academic systems. This linguistic domination undermines scholarly credibility, perpetuates exclusion, and affects knowledge production. We integrate thought experiments based on personal experiences to illustrate how this linguistic hegemony penalizes those compelled to write, present, and publish in a language other than their mother tongue. Such practices heighten feelings of shame, erode self-confidence, and restrict access to funding, honours, and reputable publication venues. We employ Stephanie Nixon’s coin model to underscore how unearned privileges are conferred on native English speakers while non-English-speaking academics face myriad invisible barriers. Although English may serve as a unifying medium, its disproportionate dominance curtails the diversity of perspectives needed to address pressing global crises. Linguistic and epistemic injustices harm not only individual researchers’ careers but also the collective scientific endeavour by excluding vast bodies of knowledge published or shared in other languages. Building on Amano et al., we advocate for multilingual dissemination, conscious engagement with non-English literature, and recognition of non-English-speaking researchers’ contributions. There needs to be broader dialogues aimed at upholding and celebrating linguistic and cultural diversity in research.