Inaudible and invisible
Epistemic injustice and the failure of recognition as a single intersubjective relation. Pain as particularly illuminating case
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22422658 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Helmar Bornemann-Cimenti (0000-0002-1201-3752, Medical University of Graz, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-14 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Medicine Health Care and Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1386-7423 • E-ISSN: 1572-8633 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11019-026-10371-1 |
| PMID | 42446858 |
| OpenAlex | W7168283076 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice and Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition have each been applied, separately, to chronic pain. The relationship between them is usually construed as sequential: epistemic injustice is thought to produce failures of recognition, or prior misrecognition to ground later epistemic marginalisation. This article rejects that reading. It argues that, in the clinical encounter with a person in pain, the relation between the two is not exhausted by causal succession. They are analytically separable dimensions of a single intersubjective relation, dimensions that cannot, in that encounter, be treated apart without descriptive and practical loss. The act by which a clinician withholds credibility from a patient’s testimony is the same act by which recognition is refused to that patient as a suffering subject. The claim is offered as a heuristic rather than an ontological thesis. Pain is presented not as uniquely paradigmatic but as a particularly illuminating case within a broader class of testimonially dependent suffering, since its privacy, its dependence on testimony, and the mediating role of diagnostic language converge in it with unusual clarity. The argument bears on recognition theory; on medical ethics, where remedies addressed to one dimension alone prove insufficient; and on clinical practice, where diagnostic classification operates as a technology of recognition.
Credibility · Injustice · Neutrality · Philosophy of biology · Philosophy of medicine · Philosophy of science · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Race, Genetics, and Society
Phenomenology of Illness
The revised International Association for the Study of Pain definition of pain
Epistemic injustice in psychiatry
The looping effects of human kinds
Investigating Trust, Expertise, and Epistemic Injustice in Chronic Pain
The Need for a New Medical Model
Chronic pain patients’ need for recognition and their current struggle
Epistemic injustice in psychiatric research and practice
Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression
Epistemic injustice in healthcare
Epistemic Injustice and Illness
Recognizing epistemic injustice in healthcare
Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing
Pain Dismissal and the Limits of Epistemic Injustice
The role of clinicians in the looping effect
Fundamental issues in epistemic injustice in healthcare
Menstrual pain and epistemic injustice
Misunderstanding Epistemic Injustice
I feel like I'm being stabbed by a thousand tiny men
| Highly cited | No |
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