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Call for Publications
Theme: Liminal Identities and Epistemic Injustice
Publication: Social Epistemology
Date: Special Issue (2024)
Deadline: 30.6.2023
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Research on epistemic injustice investigates the epistemic harms and
wrongs that people belonging to marginalized groups suffer because of
stereotypes and prejudices connected to their social identity
(Fricker 2007). The concept of identity is central in it. Yet, its
presuppositions and implications have perhaps not received full
consideration. For instance, the role of belonging in relation to
identity is still undertheorized. With this special issue of Social
Epistemology, we would like to promote a deeper investigation of
epistemic injustice, by addressing in particular liminal, mixed,
non-binary, interstitial, and complex identities (we will use
“liminal identities” as an umbrella term). Sometimes, indeed, it is
not the membership within a social group, but the denial of
belonging, the refusal to belong, or multiple and complex ways of
belonging, that generate prejudice, silencing, violence, and
oppression, coming from multiple directions. Examples include
children with parents of different races or ethnicities, who are not
accepted as “real” members in either social groups; second-generation
immigrants who are not welcomed and do not feel to belong in either
the country in which they are born, or the country of origin of their
families; intersex and trans individuals who challenge the binarism
and/or the immutability of the classification of women and men;
persons with bisexual and pansexual orientation who question the neat
separation between gay and straight, often facing invisibility and
erasure in both the straight and gay communities.
To be sure, the theme of identity, including liminal identities, is
not a new topic in several areas of research, such as feminist
philosophy, social epistemology and ontology, philosophy of race and
critical race theory, gender studies, and queer epistemologies (as
well as in fiction, literary theory, and other academic fields).
Feminists for instance have at the same time reasserted and
problematized the identity of women. While reasserting it against the
alleged sexless and genderless “subject” of much scientific and
philosophical research and the implicit oppression and silence that
come with it, they (or at least some of them) have also problematized
both the idea that sex and gender are binary, and the very
availability of a concept that is not already also imbued with other
traits such as race, ethnicity, age, class, and so forth. In fact,
the employment of a seemingly unproblematic concept of “women” in
feminist perspectives has been contested at least since Butler’s
Gender Trouble (1990), which has led to a deep rethinking of the
nature of feminism itself. Similarly, non-white feminists and Black
Feminist Thought have unmasked the predominance of white thinkers in
mainstream feminism and shown how it largely reflected the
experiences and interests of white, middle/upper class women (Davis
1981, hooks 1981, Moraga and Anzaldúa 1981, Collins 1990). The
concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989) also broadened the
agenda and put to the fore the necessity of looking at multilayered
and complex identities, in which Black women’s oppression is
reinforced precisely because it comes from different directions.
Additionally, notions such as the “outsider-within”, border-dwelling,
mestizaje, hybridity, liminality, but also mimicry and passing, all
point toward the same conceptual territory, revealing the
insufficiency of monolithic notions of identity and belonging for
understanding the concrete and multifarious experiences and
narratives of individuals and social groups, as well as the specific
forms of oppression they suffer (see for instance Collins 1986,
Anzaldúa 1987, Alcoff 2006, Lugones 2006). The Foucauldian and
post-structuralist heritage, likewise, has promoted a deep rethinking
of the traditional categories of sexuality, showing their roots in
the medicalization of sex and pathologization of sexual “deviance”,
and more generally their dependency on a heteronormative and binary
framework; this, together with LGBTQ activism, paved the way for
queer and non-binary perspectives (Foucault 1976, Hacking 1985,
Sedgwick 1990).
Therefore, in broad terms, research on identities has already been
present in the philosophical debate for quite some time. However, in
our view, its relevance, especially with reference to liminal
identities and the complexities of belonging, still has to be fully
taken into account in social epistemology, and in the area of
epistemic injustice in particular. This special issue of Social
Epistemology wants to be a contribution in this direction, by making
the problematization of identities matter in contemporary research.
Although Fricker and others have occasionally taken into
