The Case for Epistemic Reparations

This chapter provides a discussion of epistemic reparations, which are intentionally reparative actions in the form of epistemic goods given to those epistemically wronged by parties who acknowledge these wrongs and whose reparative actions are intended to redress them. The chapter pays particular attention to the epistemic significance of the phenomenon of “being known” and the relationship it has to reparations that are distinctively epistemic. Drawing on a framework provided by the United Nations of the “right to know, ” the chapter argues that victims of gross violations or injustices have not only the right to know what happened but also a right that is altogether absent from these discussions—the right to be known, or to be a giver of knowledge to others about their own experiences.