Re-storying sexual harassment in academia: The power of storytelling in combating epistemic injustice

Abstract

Increasingly, sexual harassment in academia is identified as a problem. In this article, we take issue with the kind of problem sexual harassment in academia is usually held to be. We argue that by dealing with sexual harassment as a legal issue, institutions obscure and evade their moral and epistemic responsibilities toward their members, notably victim-survivors, bystanders, perpetrators, and those working to end sexual harassment. Drawing upon Dotson’s three-order framework of epistemic injustice, we argue that institutional definitions and responses to sexual harassment routinely exclude survivor experiences, thus perpetuating epistemic oppression. Our philosophical analysis of the problem of sexual harassment in academia points to the importance of storytelling: it matters epistemically who gets to tell their story, and which stories receive institutional uptake. We especially stress the epistemic harms that arise when victim-survivors’ accounts are non-paradigmatic: that is, they deviate from the standard story of sexual harassment within academia. To counteract this standard story and to supplement the legal approach, we argue for the importance of telling, and hearing, stories that convey non-paradigmatic experiences of sexual harassment from the survivor’s perspective. These narratives provide invaluable tools in rectifying the three forms of epistemic injustice perpetuated by processes of institutional silencing. This article endeavors to introduce new concepts to the institutional discourse on sexual harassment, urging universities to assume not just legal, but also moral responsibility and to confront the epistemic harms engendered by sexual harassment in academia.