POLS PLF Seminars Series
Chronicity chronicles: epistemic injustice in Chronic Pelvic Pain patients
Lucia Cucchi
(NASP-Unimi)
15 May 2024, h.9.30
Seminar Room Passione
Via Passione 15 - Milan
Abstract
This paper focuses on Chronic Pelvic Pain (CPP) in people Assigned Female At Birth (AFAB) using the lenses of epistemic injustice. Given the multifaceted nature of CPP in terms of causes, healthcare specialists involved, and medical or lifestyle changes required of patients, especially in terms of its lack of diagnostic criteria, it constitutes a crucial area of inquiry for investigating the role of patients' epistemological credibility. While women and AFAB persons are already subject to other forms of injustice such as medical gaslighting, delays in receiving diagnoses, malpractice, pain-related injustice, and emotional injustice, employing the concept of epistemic injustice captures a type of oppression that happens at the same time before the other phenomena listed and is also co-constitutive of all of them. I hold that the epistemic injustice perpetrated in the case of CPP makes intelligible the wrong of being violated in one's capacity of rational person, a capacity which hindrance amounts to social marginalization and exclusion. Patients suffering from CPP deal with epistemic injustice in several ways: the main one is the organization in online communities, which have progressively constituted as epistemic communities and where patients share and generate knowledge. By doing so, they form resistance niches where epistemic injustice is recognized and addressed from peers. Nevertheless, the lack of recognition by the medical establishment still fails patients. I conclude that a rectification of the epistemic injustice happening in the case of CPP could involve a higher integration between patients' lay knowledge and medical knowledge.
For information please write to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This seminar is part of the POLS Permanent seminar in Political and Legal Philosophy
(Organizing Committee:Giulia Bistagnino, Alessandra Facchi, Beatrice Magni, Francesca Pasquali, Nicola Riva)
For an overview of the PhD Political Studies Seminar Series, click HERE
