The case for epistemic reparations for sexual violence

This article aims to develop a framework for epistemic reparations (Lackey, McCain and Stapleford (eds), Epistemic duties: New arguments, new angles, Routledge, 2020) for sexual violence, hoping to (i) expand the existing scholarship on reparations for sexual violence; (ii) address the distinctly epistemic harms engendered by sexual violations and the possibility of repairing them; and (iii) argue that the framework of epistemic reparations, and the notion of “imperfect epistemic duties” in particular, can promote transformative and future-oriented reparations (Palacios, Philosophia 6:93–108, 2016; Gready, 2022; Taiwò, Reconsidering reparations, Oxford University Press, 2022) that go beyond strictly individual redress, and that can address the intimate, relational and structural harms of SV. This article will claim, in other words, that we have an imperfect duty not only to bear witness to and repair the individual and relational epistemic harm endured by survivors, but to fight the structural forms of epistemic oppression that underpin and keep reproducing SV. As reparations, much like apologies, become meaningful when they include a robust promise “not to do it again.”