Nick Clanchy
Research
My research centres on hermeneutical injustice: roughly, the sort of injustice you suffer when you are unfairly hindered from satisfying an interest you have in something about yourself being intelligible to someone. In my DPhil thesis I offered new accounts of a number of key notions, including what it means for a concept to be well-fitting and what it means for a concept to be available. I argued contra the consensus in the literature that you can suffer a hermeneutical injustice even if you are not yourself hermeneutically marginalized, i.e. excluded from and/or subordinated within practices that generate and propagate concepts. Finally, I outlined a novel, more materialist sort of strategy for tackling hermeneutical injustices. Along the way I examined the influence horror films have had on how people think about stalking, made a new case for implementing a universal basic income, and argued in favour of an informed consent model for the provision of gender-affirming healthcare. One paper from the thesis has been published at Episteme, while another is forthcoming at Hypatia. Links to these can be found below, along with a book review published in the Journal of Moral Philosophy.
Journal Articles
Tackling Hermeneutical Injustices in Gender-Affirming Healthcare in Hypatia (forthcoming)
Abstract Previously proposed strategies for tackling hermeneutical injustices take for granted the interests people have in certain things about them being intelligible to them and/or to others, and seek to enable them to satisfy these interests. Strategies of this sort I call interests-as-given strategies. I propose that some hermeneutical injustices can instead be tackled by doing away with certain of these interests, and so with the possibility of their unfair nonsatisfaction. Strategies of this sort I call interests-in-question strategies. As a case study in when an interests-in-question strategy ought to be pursued, I look at how to tackle hermeneutical injustices arising in the context of gender-affirming healthcare as provided to adults by the National Health Service in the UK. I argue that considerations of trust, privacy, and respect all support pursuing such a strategy. One way to do so, I suggest, would be by replacing the existing gatekeeping model with an informed consent model for the provision of gender-affirming healthcare. Hence considerations of hermeneutical justice can be added to the already-impressive case for undertaking this shift.
Whose Hermeneutical Marginalization? in Episteme Vol.20 no.3 (2023) pp.813-832
Abstract According to Miranda Fricker, being hindered from rendering something significant about oneself intelligible to someone constitutes a hermeneutical injustice only if it results from the hermeneutical marginalization of some group to which one belongs. A major problem for Fricker’s picture is that it cannot properly account for the paradigm case of hermeneutical injustice Fricker herself takes from Ian McEwan’s novel Enduring Love. In order to properly account for this case, I argue that being hindered from rendering something significant about oneself intelligible to someone can constitute a hermeneutical injustice so long as it results from the hermeneutical marginalization of some group - whether or not one belongs to that group. One upshot is that Fricker’s distinction between systematic and incidental cases of hermeneutical injustice needs redrawing, and I show how this can be done. Another is that hermeneutical injustice is more widespread than Fricker recognizes.
Book Reviews