Towards a Liberatory Epistemology

Deborah K. Heikes is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA. She has published three other books: Rationality, Representation, and Race (2016); The Virtue of Feminist Rationality (2012), and Rationality and Feminist Philosophy (2010). Her main area of interest lies in feminist epistemology and the ethical implications of this epistemology.

This book offers a compelling examination of our moral and epistemic obligations to be reasonable people who seek to understand the social reality of those who are different from us. Considering the oppressive aspects of socially constructed ignorance, Heikes argues that ignorance produces both injustice and epistemic repression, before going on to explore how our moral and epistemic obligations to be understanding and reasonable can overcome the negative effects of ignorance.

Through the combination of three separate areas of philosophical interest- ignorance, understanding, and reasonableness- Heikes seeks to find a way to correct for epistemological and moral injustices, satisfying needs in feminist theory and critical race theory for an epistemology that offers hope of overcoming the ethical problem of oppression.