Epistemic violence - A refusal of an audience to acknowledge and accept my self-assessed superior position.

From The Boy Who Inflated the Concept of ‘Wolf’ by Spencer Case.

One of Aesop’s fables is about a shepherd boy who, out of boredom, repeatedly cries “Wolf!” when no wolf is present. As a result, the villagers lose faith in his testimony, and no one listens to his warnings when a real wolf shows up to devour his flock. The story shows why it’s bad to lie and why it’s in our interest to be honest. But lying is not the only manipulation of language that degrades trust. Consider a slightly different story.

Suppose that instead of one shepherd boy, there are a few dozen. They are tired of the villagers dismissing their complaints about less threatening creatures like stray dogs and coyotes. One of them proposes a plan: they will start using the word “wolf” to refer to all menacing animals. They agree and the new usage catches on. For a while, the villagers are indeed more responsive to their complaints. The plan backfires, however, when a real wolf arrives and cries of “Wolf!” fail to trigger the alarm they once did.

What the boys in the story do with the word “wolf,” modern intellectuals do with words like “violence.” When ordinary people think of violence, they think of things like bombs exploding, gunfire, and brawls. Most dictionary definitions of “violence” mention physical harm or force. Academics, ignoring common usage, speak of “administrative violence,” “data violence,” “epistemic violence” and other heretofore unknown forms of violence. Philosopher Kristie Dotson defines the last of these as follows: “Epistemic violence in testimony is a refusal, intentional or unintentional, of an audience to communicatively reciprocate a linguistic exchange owing to pernicious ignorance.”

It is an interesting article but this opening grabbed me. I am shocked again and again as I hear students at universities and people in general equating the existence of contrary facts, different goals, alternate opinions, and different interpretations as the equivalent of violent of violence, oppression and genocide.

It requires powerful self-control not to shout. The profound anti-intellectualism on display beggars belief. And in particular the self-centeredness that dictates that the free speech and opinions of others must be subordinated to some callow know-nothing's delicate self-regard is almost beyond belief. What are our universities doing. Or more critically, not doing. They clearly are not educating these people.

A variant of Dotson position might be:

Epistemic violence in testimony is a refusal of an audience to acknowledge and accept my self-assessed superior position.

Its all about demanding power over others.