Traditionally, shame has been characterized within the disciplines of philosophy and psychology as an emotion of global negative self‐assessment, in which an individual necessarily accepts or assents to a global negative self‐evaluation (that is, a negative evaluation of the whole self) (for example, Reference LyndLynd 1961; Reference LewisLewis 1971; Reference TaylorTaylor 1985; Reference WilliamsWilliams 1993; Reference LewisLewis 1995; Reference Tangney and DearingTangney and Dearing 2002; Reference NussbaumNussbaum 2004; Reference VellemanVelleman 2006; Reference Deonna, Rodogno and TeroniDeonna, Rodogno, and Teroni 2012; see Reference Gilbert, Gilbert and AndrewsGilbert 1998, 21–22, on “internal shame”).Footnote ¹ I refer to these accounts as standard accounts of shame. In nonstandard accounts of shame, which are more commonly found within the philosophical discourse on shame, what defines shame is not the fact that one holds a global negative self‐assessment, but the fact that one's assessment of one's identity is susceptible to the criticisms of others (for example, Reference DeighDeigh 1983; Reference CalhounCalhoun 2004; Reference Zahavi and ZahaviZahavi 2012/2013; see Reference Gilbert, Gilbert and AndrewsGilbert 1998, 21–22, on “external shame”). It is this liability to hold such negative self‐assessments that gives experiences of shame their intentional content.Footnote ² Gilbert characterized this disagreement as a disagreement over whether a global negative self‐evaluation is necessary for an experience of shame (Reference Gilbert, Gilbert and AndrewsGilbert 1998, 21). I argue here in favor of nonstandard accounts of shame over standard accounts by providing additional reasons to question the legitimacy of standard accounts of shame as an adequate account of shame, and by arguing in support of Adrian Piper's account of shame as a nonstandard account of shame (Reference PiperPiper 1992/1996). My reasons against standard accounts of shame can be generally summarized as highlighting the problems with the closed conceptual structures of standard accounts of shame.Footnote ³

First, I begin with a detailed discussion of standard accounts of shame, focusing primarily on Gabriele Taylor's standard account (Reference TaylorTaylor 1985). Second, I illustrate how Adrian Piper's experience of groundless shame can be portrayed as 1) both a rational and an irrational experience of shame, in accordance with Taylor's account as a paradigm model of standard accounts of shame, and 2) as a rational experience of shame when taken in its own right as a legitimate, rational account of shame (Reference PiperPiper 1992/1996). Third, without denying that some experiences of shame either are or can be irrational experiences of shame,Footnote ⁴ I elucidate how standard accounts of shame can act as mechanisms of epistemic injustice, and in doing so can transmute the righteous indignation of the marginalized by recasting their experiences as shameful (that is, by recasting them as experiences of the righteous shame of the marginalized).

More specifically, given that our understanding of the rationality of an individual's emotional experience depends in part on what is identified as an emotion's intentional content,Footnote ⁵ I rely on Miranda Fricker's, Christopher Hookway's, and Kristie Dotson's accounts of different kinds of epistemic injustice (Reference FrickerFricker 2007; Reference HookwayHookway 2010; and Reference DotsonDotson 2011; Reference Dotson2012) in order to illustrate at least one way in which standard accounts of shame, as exemplified by Taylor's standard account, can be used as mechanisms of testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice (Reference FrickerFricker 2007), contributory injustice (Reference DotsonDotson 2012), and epistemic silencing (Reference HookwayHookway 2010 and Reference DotsonDotson 2011), such as testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering (Reference DotsonDotson 2011). This article, therefore, is intended to help those who have, perhaps unwittingly, advocated standard accounts of shame to more clearly comprehend their potentially detrimental effects. Furthermore, because this article is intended primarily to address the discourse on shame rather than the discourse on epistemic injustice, I do not provide an in‐depth, detailed explication of the various kinds of epistemic injustice in occasions of shame.Footnote ⁶ I hope, however, that this article will inspire others to take on the task of doing so, and I may do so later on.

Taylor's Standard Account of Shame

Gabriele Taylor's account of shame is a paradigmatic model of standard accounts of shame (Reference TaylorTaylor 1985). According to Taylor's account, like pride, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment, shame is constituted by at least two types of beliefs: identificatory beliefs and explanatory beliefs. An identificatory belief is not simply a belief that is associated with an emotional experience; it is a particular belief that is constitutive of a particular emotional experience in the sense that it identifies that experience as a specific type of emotional experience (for example, shame, guilt, and embarrassment) (2).Footnote ⁷ An explanatory belief is constitutive of a particular emotional experience in the sense that it causally explains why an individual would hold a particular identificatory belief without necessarily being a reason for that individual's holding of that particular identificatory belief, and therefore without necessarily being a reason for that individual's experience of a particular type of emotion (36).Footnote ⁸ Taylor also speaks of explanatory beliefs that are reasons for an individual's experience of a particular type of emotion (that is, that are reasons for the holding of a particular type of identificatory belief); these are explanatory beliefs (and so are causally constitutive in the same sense that all explanatory beliefs are), but they also make a particular emotional experience rationally intelligible (3).Footnote ⁹ For the purpose of clarity, I refer to explanatory beliefs that provide only causal explanations for an emotional experience—without being a reason for an emotional experience, and thus without being a reason for an identificatory belief—as merely causal beliefs. I will refer to explanatory beliefs that provide both causal explanations and are reasons for an emotional experience as beliefs of rational intelligibility.Footnote ¹⁰

For Taylor, the identificatory belief of shame involves a global negative self‐assessment in which an individual judges oneself to be defective and degraded (66, 68). What explains the rational intelligibility of an individual coming to hold such an identificatory belief—shame's beliefs of rational intelligibility—are the belief that there is a discrepancy between what one uncritically, unself‐consciously thought or assumed about oneself and a possible detached observer‐description of oneself or one's action, and the belief that one ought not be seen under such a detached‐observer description (66). Therefore, a sufficient condition for experiencing shame, according to Taylor's standard account, is the identificatory belief (T6), that one is defective and degraded (a global negative self‐assessment). Furthermore, these three conditions for the rationality of shame, according to Taylor's standard account, can be made more precise through the following scheme of beliefs:

In Taylor's account, beliefs (T1)–(T5) are the beliefs of rational intelligibility for any experience of shame, and therefore are independently necessary and jointly sufficient for rationally holding belief (T6), that one is defective and degraded. Thus, an experience of shame in which one did not hold beliefs (T1)–(T5) would be regarded as an “irrational” experience of shame. Furthermore, because it would be impossible for one to have an experience of shame without holding the identificatory belief that one is defective and degraded, an experience of shame that does not include this identificatory belief would be regarded to be an “irrational” experience.Footnote ¹¹ In the next section, I demonstrate how Adrian Piper's experience of groundless shame can be characterized as being “irrational” in both these ways (Reference PiperPiper 1992/1996), but I begin by demonstrating how her experience of shame can be understood as a “rational” experience of shame, in accordance with Taylor's standard account.

The Rationality of Groundless Shame

In “Passing as Black, Passing as White,” Piper tells her readers about her experience during her first graduate‐student reception, in which she met for the first time a prominent, white, male professor whom she admired and who, based on her admissions application, assumed that she would be dark skinned since Piper identified herself as black. Piper is in fact black and has light skin. Piper recounts her experience of shame in response to the prominent, white, male professor's remark that Piper was just as black as he was in the following way:

We can redescribe Piper's experience of shame in accordance with Taylor's standard account of shame by fitting Piper's experience into the scheme of necessary and jointly sufficient beliefs that were listed in the previous section:

The intentional content of Piper's notion of groundless shame—what groundless shame represents—can be understood as being‐marked‐as‐being‐wrong‐in‐some‐way.Footnote ¹² The intentional content of groundless shame can also be understood in terms of Taylor's account of shame as the content of the identificatory belief of being defective and degraded, which constitutes the experience of shame. The necessary and jointly sufficient beliefs of (TP1)–(TP5), as Piper's token beliefs of rational intelligibility, both logically and causally entail her experience of shame (that is, her token, constitutive, identificatory belief that she was marked as being wrong in some way). Piper's experience of groundless shame, according to this interpretation, would therefore be characterized as a “rational” experience according to Taylor's standard account.

Lifting the Constraints on the Rationality of Shame

One should consider, however, whether Piper's experience of groundless shame ought to be understood in such a way as to make it fit Taylor's standard account. Although Taylor's standard account of shame renders Piper's experience of groundless shame as a “rational” experience of shame, one ought to ask why one would regard Piper's shame as a “rational” experience of shame. Why should Piper be ashamed—have the experience of being marked‐as‐being‐wrong‐in‐some‐way—when it was the professor who falsely believed that Piper fraudulently identified herself as black, and then ridiculed her based on his false belief? One would think that the prominent, white, male professor is the one who should have been appropriately ashamed!Footnote ¹³

In response to the above question, I propose an alternative reading of Piper's experience, one that presumes a kind of irony in her description. The irony in Piper's description, I propose, lies in her apparent adoption of the prominent, white, male professor's perspective, which is evident in her calling her experience an experience of “the groundless shame of the inadvertent impostor,” and in her response after being ridiculed by the prominent, white, male professor's remark that she was as black as he was. I propose that in Piper's experience of groundless shame, she in fact did not hold any global negative self‐assessment. What brought about her experience of shame is, as she said, her concern for how the prominent, white, male professor identified her—a concern for his image of her (Reference PiperPiper 1992/1996, 2)—and the vulnerability of having her identity be susceptible to the interpretations of others.Footnote ¹⁴ As Cheshire Calhoun suggests, insofar as we are co‐participants in a shared moral practice, “one's own self‐conception does not decisively determine who one is” (Reference CalhounCalhoun 2004, 145), although one should note that others’ conceptions alone also fail to decisively determine who one is.Footnote ¹⁵ Thus, as Piper stated, the ridicule to which she was subjected (the remark that she was as black as the prominent, white, male professor), after she failed to reinforce his positive image of himself (I assume as an accurate assessor of race), turned her into something bogus relative to his criterion of worth and into something false relative to his criterion of authenticity (Reference PiperPiper 1992/1996, 275–76).

Given this second reading of Piper's experience of groundless shame, we can reconstruct Piper's experience, in accordance with Taylor's standard account, in terms of the following scheme of beliefs:

This second reading of Piper's experience, however, renders, in accordance with Taylor's standard account, Piper's experience into an “irrational” experience of groundless shame. It does so for two reasons: First, Taylor's account postulates that the operative normative standard in belief (T4) be the standard that the subject of shame would use in order to derive the imperative in belief (T5). And, according to the second reading of Piper's description of her experience, belief (TP4*) is not constituted by a normative standard from which belief (TP5) can be logically derived. It is instead constituted by a belief that a co‐participant in a shared moral practice holds a normative standard to which the subject does not subscribe.Footnote ¹⁶ Thus, what would be identified as the beliefs of rational intelligibility for Piper's experience of shame, beliefs (TP1)–(TP3), (TP4*), and (TP5), would not reasonably justify her experience (that is, her identificatory belief for shame). These beliefs would therefore be merely causal beliefs for Piper's shame, according to Taylor's standard account.

Second, belief (T6), in the scheme of beliefs for Taylor's account of rational shame, constitutes the identificatory belief that identifies the subject's experience as an experience of shame, and according to Taylor's account, this belief is necessarily a global negative self‐assessment, specifically the belief that one is defective and degraded. Belief (TP6*), however, is not a negative self‐assessment. It is instead a belief that a co‐participant in a shared moral practice perceived or judged one to be defective and degraded. Thus, given my second reading, Piper's experience of groundless shame would be characterized by Taylor's standard account as an “irrational” experience of shame. It would be irrational because, according to Taylor's standard account, 1) the beliefs of rational intelligibility that Piper would have held would not have appropriately justified her experience of shame, and 2) Piper would not have held the identificatory belief that she was defective and degraded and yet, according to Piper's testimony, she would have had an experience of shame.

This characterization of Piper's experience of shame as being “irrational,” in accordance with a standard account of shame, may seem to be a perfectly accurate or acceptable conclusion. One might argue that one ought not experience shame if one did not believe oneself to be defective and degraded, and that to experience shame when one did not hold such a belief is in fact irrational or that my description of her experience is inaccurate, especially given Piper's own words. For example, one might note that calling Piper's experience an experience of “groundless shame” betrays her belief that her experience was an irrational experience. Yet, my second reading of Piper's description of her experience would suggest an alternative explanation of why Piper referred to her experience as “groundless”: it suggests that what Piper believed to be groundless in her experience of shame—the identificatory belief that was constitutive of her experience—was the prominent, white, male professor's belief that Piper was marked as wrong in some way rather than Piper's belief that she was marked as wrong in some way.Footnote ¹⁷ It is also consistent with other readings of Piper's experience (see Reference CalhounCalhoun 2004, 137), and it is more accurate to the extent that it gives significant weight to all of Piper's words and not just some. For example, the first reading of Piper's experience, presented in accordance with Taylor's standard account as beliefs (TP1)–(TP6), fails to acknowledge the significance of Piper's testimony that “All you need to do is care about others’ image of you, and fail in your actions to reinforce their positive image of themselves” for an experience of groundless shame (275; italics added for emphasis); these alone may be sufficient conditions for shame.

Some might observe that the “problem” with my second reading of Piper's description of her experience of groundless shame is that when analyzed in accordance with Taylor's standard account of shame, Piper's experience is rendered an “irrational” experience. I argue here that this problem lies not with Piper's experience of shame, her description of her experience, nor my second reading of Piper's description of her experience, but instead with standard accounts of shame, of which Taylor's account serves as a paradigm example, through which Piper's experience can be interpreted. When we remove the restrictions on rationality imposed by Taylor's standard account, take Piper's epistemic authority on her experience for granted, and accurately attend to her testimony, what is revealed is Piper's rational, nonstandard account of shame. And when we include the fact that Piper committed no wrong, we can understand her experience of shame as an experience of the righteous shame of the marginalized.Footnote ¹⁸

I began the process of removing the restrictions on rationality imposed by standard accounts of shame at the beginning of this section by questioning the legitimacy of the interpretation of Piper's experience through the framework of Taylor's standard account of shame. We must now take Piper's epistemic authority for granted, which requires that we take Piper's experience as a rational experience, especially given the fact that Piper's description of her experience actually depicts her as one who was calm, level‐headed, and witty in response to the prominent, white, male professor's unjustified remarks, even if her response—that she hadn't known that he was as black as she was—was “automatic” (275). Doing so should motivate us to accurately attend to her testimony—her description of groundless shame—by giving each of her words a significant amount of epistemic weight,Footnote ¹⁹ which entails ensuring that each word plays a significant role in an explanation of how Piper's experience is a rational experience of shame. Doing so reveals the following scheme of beliefs for Piper's experience of groundless shame:

The above depiction of Piper's experience of groundless shame necessarily takes her experience to be a rational experience, since the presumption of acknowledging her epistemic authority would force us to acknowledge her experience as a rational experience. The above depiction of Piper's experience thus takes Piper's epistemic authority on her experience for granted—it does not commit any testimonial injustice. It therefore lifts the constraints on rationality that were previously placed on Piper's experience by the application of Taylor's standard account of shame—by the testimonial injustice enabled by standard accounts of shame. We can therefore derive the following general scheme of beliefs for Piper's notion of groundless shame—covertly named, as I suggested above, the “groundless shame of the inadvertent impostor” (275)—as a rational experience of shame:

Any experience of shame that fits the above scheme of beliefs for groundless shame would, according to standard accounts of shame (such as Taylor's), be regarded to be an “irrational” experience of shame. Yet, when such experiences are taken in their own right, as legitimate, rational experiences of shame, they stand as rational accounts of shame that are consistent with other nonstandard accounts of shame. Furthermore, upon closer examination, if we include the fact that Piper did nothing wrong, what Piper has given us is a depiction of a rational experience of shame that is a rational response to an unjustified punitive action, committed by a co‐participant of a higher status or rank, against one's status as an epistemic knower within a particular group. As such, rational responses of this kind can be understood as experiences of the righteous indignation of the marginalized (as it is experienced from the subject's, rather than the shaming co‐participant's, perspective).

In the following sections, I will further explain how such experiences can be transmuted into experiences of the righteous shame of the marginalized (as it is experienced from the subject's, rather than the shaming co‐participant's, perspective) (for example, the groundless shame of the inadvertent impostor) through the constraints on rationality that are placed upon one's experiences in virtue of standard accounts of shame (such as Taylor's standard account). I argue that, at the social‐practical level of analysis, some acts of shaming and being shamed (rather than being ashamed)Footnote ²¹ are acts of testimonial injustice, including acts of systematic testimonial injustice. And these acts are enabled by standard accounts of shame. Furthermore, at the social‐conceptual level and the practical‐theoretical level of analysis, the transmutation of the righteous indignation of the marginalized into experiences of the righteous shame of the marginalized, in virtue of standard accounts of shame, are occasions of hermeneutic injustice, contributory injustice, or epistemic silencing (specifically, testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering). At the social‐conceptual level, standard accounts of shame permit the transmutation of the righteous indignation of the marginalized into the righteous shame of the marginalized, and thereby socially authorize acts of hermeneutic or contributory injustice. At the practical‐theoretical level, standard accounts of shame permit occasions of testimonial quieting, by prompting co‐participants standard occasions of shame (from the perspective of the shaming co‐participant), and they compel subjects to censor their testimony, thereby occasioning acts of testimonial smothering. In such cases, the righteous indignation of the marginalized is transmuted into the righteous shame of the marginalized (from the perspective of the subject) and a standard case of shame (from the perspective of the shaming co‐participant).

A Taxonomy of Epistemic Injustice

Epistemic injustice can be generally defined as an injustice that harms an agent as a knower. Applying Dotson's distinction between instances and practices (241) mutatis mutandis to the various kinds of epistemic injustice, such harms can be differentiated into at least four kinds of practices of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice (see Reference FrickerFricker 2007; Reference HookwayHookway 2010; and Reference DotsonDotson 2012); contributory injustice (Reference DotsonDotson 2012); and epistemic silencing (Reference HookwayHookway 2010 and Reference DotsonDotson 2011).

Testimonial injustice is a wrong committed by a hearer within the context of information‐centered, communicative exchanges in which some prejudice leads the hearer to discount the epistemic credibility of the speaker (Reference FrickerFricker 2007, 1). This harms the speaker's capacity as a giver of knowledge by discounting the speaker's credibility as a reliable testifier. In short, the speaker suffers a “credibility deficit” (61). Thus, his or her status as a legitimate member of an epistemic community is harmed. Miranda Fricker defines hermeneutic injustice as “the injustice of having some significant area of one's social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to a structural identity prejudice in the collective hermeneutical resource” (155). Such an injustice is regarded to be a structural injustice, according to Fricker, since it involves a deficiency in the shared hermeneutic resources that results in members of relevant social groups being unable to or denied the ability to make meaningful contributions to relevant hermeneutical resources due to their marginalized status (155).

Contributory injustice is comparable to Fricker's notion of hermeneutic injustice, since both involve the harm of “thwarting” an epistemic agent's ability to meaningfully contribute to shared hermeneutical resources due to “structurally prejudiced hermeneutic resources” (Reference DotsonDotson 2012, 32), although contributory injustice differs from hermeneutic injustice in that 1) it does not presuppose a closed conceptual structure (37); 2) it does not ignore the availability of alternative hermeneutical resources, especially to members of marginalized communities, by acknowledging the fact that epistemic agents can be denied the ability to meaningfully contribute to shared hermeneutic resources without always being denied the ability to make sense of their own experiences as consequences of such harms (31–32); and 3) contributory injustice is enacted by individuals rather than the relevant community in general.Footnote ²²

Epistemic silencing is an epistemic injustice committed by an epistemic agent due to a failure to recognize or admit the participatory value of an agent as a member of an epistemic community, which may engage in a variety of activities that include but are not limited to epistemic activities, due to the holding of some prejudice (see Reference HookwayHookway 2010, 154; Reference DotsonDotson 2011, 241).Footnote ²³ Dotson identifies two kinds of epistemic silencing: testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering (Reference DotsonDotson 2011, 242).

Testimonial quieting, which is consistent with Hookway's notion of epistemic silencing (Reference HookwayHookway 2010), is observed by Dotson as occurring “when an audience fails to identify a speaker as a knower” (Reference DotsonDotson 2011, 242). Testimonial smothering occurs when epistemic agents “smother” or “truncate” their own testimony “in order to ensure that the testimony contains only content for which one's audience demonstrates testimonial competence” (244). Dotson notes three circumstances that are typical in cases of testimonial smothering, and all three circumstances together provide an explanation for why epistemic agents would smother their own testimony:

1. 1 the content of the testimony must be unsafe and risky;

2. 2 the audience must demonstrate testimonial incompetence with respect to the content of the testimony to the speaker;

3. 3 and testimonial incompetence must follow from, or appear to follow from, pernicious ignorance. (244)

Although there are various ways to distinguish differing kinds of epistemic injustices,Footnote ²⁴ we can differentiate both testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice from both contributory injustice and epistemic silencing, including the two forms of testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering, by appealing to Hookway's notions of the informational perspective and the participant perspective (Reference HookwayHookway 2010, 157).Footnote ²⁵ An informational perspective is one in which participants engage one another from the perspective of taking one another, and themselves, as reliable sources of knowledge, whereas a participant perspective is one in which participants engage one another from the perspective of judging whether or not other participants, and perhaps even themselves, are competent pursuers of some activity (and not just epistemic activities). Given this distinction, we can understand both contributory injustice and epistemic silencing as going beyond the boundaries of testimony—as going beyond the informational perspective espoused by both testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice—and instead espousing the participant perspective, which concerns more than the epistemic activities of giving and taking knowledge.

We can differentiate testimonial injustice, contributory injustice, and testimonial quieting from both hermeneutic injustice and testimonial smothering by the fact that the first three are harms committed necessarily by a particular person against another particular person, and so can typically be characterized in terms of a dyadic relation, whereas hermeneutic injustice and practices of testimonial smothering are effects of a shared system of meanings or values on a particular person, within the context of a triadic relation among people, their selves, and members of their community, and are mediated by a system of meanings and values that are shared among relevant members of their community (that is, hermeneutic resources). As such, it is the community in general that perpetrates practices of contributory injustice and testimonial smothering.

Despite these differences among testimonial injustice, hermeneutic injustice, contributory injustice, and epistemic silencing, all four kinds of epistemic injustice, which include the two categories of testimonial quieting and testimonial silencing, share the essential feature of being harms to agents as knowers: testimonial injustices harm epistemic agents by unduly subjecting the agents to an epistemic credibility deficit; both hermeneutic injustices and contributory injustices harm epistemic agents in their ability to make epistemic contributions to shared hermeneutical resources or practices; testimonial quietings harm epistemic agents through the failure to recognize their status as knowers; and testimonial smotherings harm epistemic agents through coercive circumstances that compel them to censor their participation as epistemic agents. All these harms can, therefore, be understood as harms to agents as knowers since each type of harm implicates the agent's knowledge, ability to transmit knowledge, or ability to create knowledge within some shared practice. Yet, given the foregoing, all five harms can be understood as distinct kinds of epistemic injustices.

In the following sections, I will illustrate how standard accounts of shame act as mechanisms of testimonial injustice, hermeneutic injustice, contributory injustice, testimonial quieting, and testimonial smothering, in that order.

Shaming, Being Shamed, and Testimonial Injustice

Standard accounts of shame enable at least two kinds of experiences: shaming and being shamed. They therefore enable acts of epistemic injustice. In the context of both shaming and being shamed, standard accounts of shame can act as mechanisms of epistemic injustice. This can be illuminated by an analysis of how standard accounts operate in cases of groundless shame. At the social‐practical level of analysis—at the surface level on which the object of analysis is the communicative act between co‐participants in a shared social practice—acts of shaming members of a marginalized community in the way that the prominent, white, male professor shamed Piper are themselves acts of testimonial injustice. In Piper's experience, the prominent, white, male professor sought to discredit Piper's epistemic authority through his shaming remark that Piper was as black as he was, which was not black at all. His remark sought to diminish Piper's general epistemic status by challenging her credibility as someone who knows the socially circumscribed differences between someone who is black and someone who is white, as well as Piper's credibility in her self‐knowledge as someone who is black. Such challenges subject epistemic agents to credibility deficits and harm their capacity as givers of knowledge; they inhibit the target of shaming from conveying their knowledge to the shamer, and potentially or actually inhibit the target from conveying their knowledge to any other co‐participant. As Piper attested:

Such acts of shaming can be understood as constituting a practice of “systematic testimonial injustice,” which is regarded as “systematic,” because, according to Fricker, they are injustices that track the subject of such injustices through a system of associated injustices that occur within the context of various types of activities (Reference FrickerFricker 2007, 27). At the social‐practical level of analysis, the testimonial injustice in Piper's experience of groundless shame was a consequence of what Fricker referred to as a “negative identity‐prejudicial stereotype” (35), which prompted the prominent, white, male professor to shame Piper. The prominent, white, male professor would not have thought it appropriate to shame Piper in such a way if not for the fact that he regarded her as being subordinate in some way: by being black, a woman, or a graduate student. Such dispositions were made possible not only by the problematic, negative, identity‐prejudicial stereotypes held by the professor, but by an understanding of shame that reflects a standard account.

These negative identity‐prejudicial stereotypes (that graduate students, women, and black people are necessarily subordinate to prominent professors, males, and white people) are aspects of an emotion's feeling rules that confer a sense of appropriateness to the shaming practices that are motivated by, and therefore reinforced by, the conditions that sustain such negative identity‐prejudicial stereotypes.Footnote ²⁶ Standard accounts of shame encourage co‐participants, especially those who may be regarded as having a higher status, rank, or place of privilege, to resort to shaming not only to mark others as being defective and degraded, but to attempt to cause others to believe that they are defective and degraded. They provide the conceptual resources (that is, hermeneutic resources) that, when understood as feeling rules (Reference HochschildHochschild 2012), enable such acts. As such, standard accounts of shame, understood as espousing feeling rules for shame (including shaming, being shamed, and experiences of shame), are mechanisms for the practice of systemic testimonial injustices at the social‐practical level of analysis.

Such systematic testimonial injustices are prevalent in many societies, especially those that rely on a hierarchy of status or class. For example, in the United States and the United Kingdom, such systematic testimonial injustices can be understood in terms of what Rachel McKinnon refers to as “gaslighting” (Reference McKinnonMcKinnon 2017), as well as what are often referred to as “micro‐aggressions.” One might also argue that the lack of diversity within academic disciplines, such as philosophy, is partly a result of such deliberate or inadvertent attempts of testimonial injustice. The prevalence of using shame as a mechanism of epistemic injustice is an extension of its effectiveness as a general mechanism for establishing a ranking order among members of a hierarchical community (Reference Cohen, Vandello, Rantilla, Gilbert and AndrewsCohen, Vandello, and Rantilla 1998, 274; Reference Deonna, Rodogno and TeroniDeonna, Rodogno, and Teroni 2012). Yet, although such shaming is often successful in oppressing those of a lower rank, it does not necessarily do so. As evidenced by Piper's experience of groundless shame, such acts of shaming can backfire, and instead embolden the marginalized subject to challenge, and at times illegitimize, the authority of the higher‐ranking co‐participant—a lesson to be kept in mind by those who hold positions of authority.

Shame, Rationality, Hermeneutic Injustice, and Contributory Injustice

By permitting Piper's experience of groundless shame to be rendered an “irrational” experience, standard accounts of shame (such as Taylor's) act as mechanisms of practices of hermeneutic or contributory injustice at the social‐conceptual level of analysis, on which the object of analysis is a concept, including the analysis of its application by members of a hermeneutic community, outside of communicative acts. Recall that Piper experienced shame without also holding the global negative self‐assessment that was required by Taylor's standard account in order for Piper's experience to be regarded a rational experience of shame. Thus, Taylor's account marks Piper's experience as being “irrational.” In doing so, standard accounts of shame can deny subjects of such experiences of groundless shame, or members of their community, the ability to make sense of these experiences since these experiences are characterized as “irrational” experiences in accordance with standard accounts. Understanding standard accounts of shame in this way is to understand them as mechanisms of hermeneutic or contributory injustice at the social‐conceptual level of analysis.

At the social‐conceptual level of analysis, standard accounts of shame—as illustrated in the first three sections, by the example of Taylor's standard account—encourage agents to locate the “irrational” inconsistency between the criteria for shame established by standard accounts of shame and experiences of shame (such as Piper's) in some aspect of the target of shaming/the subject of shame (for example, the target or subject's cognitive or emotional system) rather than something “external” to the target/subject (for example, standard accounts of shame or a deficit in a shared system of meanings or values/hermeneutic resources).Footnote ²⁷ As such, when standard accounts successfully permit the attribution of irrationality—when the criticism sticks—they act as mechanisms of hermeneutic or contributory injustice by practically diminishing one's capacity to convey one's emotional intelligence or knowledge, or by practically diminishing the reliability of one's general cognitive capacity to process emotional, social, or other relevant information (for example, in terms of a loss in one's trust of one's cognitive or emotional system, or a loss in trust by others of one's cognitive or emotional system).Footnote ²⁸ Thus, the attribution of irrationality, made possible by standard accounts of shame, can subject epistemic agents to credibility deficits, which work to incapacitate or debilitate individuals as knowers within their epistemic communities.

In cases in which one has no alternative hermeneutic resources to turn to, such as nonstandard accounts of shame or the alternative epistemologies, counter‐mythologies, and hidden transcripts that Dotson notes (Reference DotsonDotson 2012, 31), we can understand such harms that are made possible by standard accounts of shame as occasions of hermeneutic injustice. Yet as I have argued, rather than interpreting Piper's experience as an “irrational” experience, and thereby converting it into an “irrational” experience, in accordance with standard accounts, we can instead interpret Piper's experience as a “rational” experience in accordance with what I derived as Piper's rational account of groundless shame. Doing so provides us with a way of understanding how standard accounts of shame can be mechanisms of contributory injustice rather than hermeneutic injustice: What I derived as Piper's criteria of a rational experience of groundless shame can act as an alternative hermeneutic resource that epistemic agents can use in order to make sense of their experience of groundless shame, while standard accounts like Taylor's can continue to act as a mechanism that keeps at least some co‐participants in a shared social or moral practice from accessing the rationality of the experiences of some epistemic agents due to these co‐participants’ “willful hermeneutical ignorance in maintaining and utilizing structurally prejudiced hermeneutical resources” (for example, standard accounts of shame). Thus, standard accounts of shame can help “thwart” the ability of a subject of groundless shame (such as Piper) “to contribute to shared epistemic resources” (Reference DotsonDotson 2012, 32), especially within a community in which some of its members advocate standard accounts of shame over nonstandard accounts of shame.

Besides illustrating how Piper's experience of groundless shame can be understood as an occasion of hermeneutic or contributory injustice, my foregoing explanation suggests that experiences of hermeneutic injustice may in fact be at least equally, and perhaps more, detrimental to nonmarginalized nonminorities or marginalized nonminorities who do not have access to alternative hermeneutic resources, compared to marginalized minorities who do have access to such hermeneutic resources since nonmarginalized nonminorities or marginalized nonminorities may not have any recourse to any alternative hermeneutic resources to help them make appropriate, and perhaps liberatory, sense of their experiences of shame. Furthermore, this point might be further extended in order to encourage nonmarginalized nonminorities and marginalized nonminorities to form alliances with marginalized minorities in order for all to gain access to resources that may allow them to overcome such incapacitating or debilitating injustices although it is the nonmarginalized nonminority or marginalized nonminority who has the responsibility to open their minds to and accept the authority of the marginalized in order to be able to learn from them.

Shame and Epistemic Silencing

Whereas testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice are restricted to the domain of testimonial exchanges, and contributory injustice, which is perpetrated by the willful hermeneutical ignorance of a co‐participant in a shared social practice, is enacted by an individual person, epistemic silencing (such as testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering) can occur outside strictly testimonial exchanges, within practices in which epistemic agents take a participant perspective (Reference HookwayHookway 2010). Furthermore, although practices of testimonial quieting are similar to practices of testimonial injustice, in that both are acts that produce a credibility deficit in a speaker, practices of testimonial quieting are especially perpetrated by individual co‐participants’ failure, due to their willful ignorance of alternative hermeneutical resources. In contrast, testimonial smothering is a response to the forces of shared, prejudicial, hermeneutic resources, which coerce epistemic agents to censor their testimony, in content or style of presentation, in order to make their testimony more palatable to their audience, primarily out of both fear and being overburdened by their co‐participants’ willful hermeneutical ignorance.

Given these categories of epistemic injustice, we can understand how proponents of standard accounts of shame, either intentionally or unintentionally, contribute to occurrences of testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering. Such understandings are achieved at the practical‐theoretical level of analysis, in which one of the aims of the analysis is to understand the consequences of theoretical practices.Footnote ²⁹ In regard to occurrences of testimonial quieting, proponents of standard accounts of shame—in reinforcing standard accounts of shame as adequate accounts of shame—fail to acknowledge the legitimacy of nonstandard accounts, and as such contribute to the failure of recognizing testifiers of nonstandard accounts as knowers. In the first three sections, I illustrated how proponents of standard accounts of shame do so.

At the practical‐theoretical level of analysis, we can understand Piper's testimony as her response, including the naming of her account as an account of “groundless shame of the inadvertent impostor,”Footnote ³⁰ to the coercive forces of the prejudicial, hermeneutic resources that she shared with her co‐participants, such as the prominent, white, male professor, as a consequence of the promotion of standard accounts of shame among members of an epistemic community. As a black, female, graduate student, and perhaps even later as a prominent black, female, philosopher and artist (at the time of her testimony's first publication), one might suggest that there were good reasons for Piper to 1) regard the content of her testimony as being unsafe or risky, 2) regard her co‐participants (such as the prominent, white, male professor) to be too incompetent to sufficiently accept Piper's testimony if given straightforwardly, without irony, and 3) to regard the incompetence of her co‐participants (such as the prominent, white, male professor) as following from their “pernicious ignorance,” which Dotson defines as a “reliable ignorance or a counterfactual incompetence that, in the given context, is harmful” (Reference DotsonDotson 2011, 242).Footnote ³¹ As such, Piper's testimony can be understood as an occasion of the practice of testimonial smothering. Piper “censored” her testimony through an ironic, covert presentation of her experience, in which she seemed to have taken the perspective of her shamer (the prominent, white, male professor, and the white, educated, upper‐class society of which he and she were both a part in virtue of being members of an elite educational institution). Yet, it is clear that her testimony was an ironic presentation since she did not wholeheartedly agree with such an interpretation of herself or her actions. As she continued in her testimony about African‐American experiences:

The Righteous Indignation and Shame of the Marginalized

In conclusion, given all of the foregoing, one can understand how Piper's experience of groundless shame can be an experience of the righteous indignation of the marginalized that has been transmuted into an experience of the righteous shame of the marginalized in virtue of standard accounts of shame: Piper's experience can be understood to include the fact that she did nothing wrong, her experiences of the “wrenching grief and anger” that one of her “intellectual heroes” had “sullied himself” in her presence, as well as her ensuing experience of guilt and remorse. When we do so, we can understand her experience as a rational response to an unjustified punitive action, committed by a co‐participant of a higher status or rank, against one's status as an epistemic knower within a particular group—an experience of the righteous indignation of the marginalized.Footnote ³² A standard account of shame, however, may regard such an experience as something like “shame‐rage” (see Reference LewisLewis 1971, 41, 198). This turning of the experience of the righteous indignation of the marginalized into an experience of irrational shame (“shame‐rage”), illustrates how standard accounts of shame, as mechanisms of epistemic injustice, can transmute such experiences when these experiences are considered from the social‐practical, social‐conceptual, and practical‐theoretical levels of analysis. Furthermore, at all three levels of analysis, standard accounts of shame work as mechanisms through which such experiences are seen as instantiating inauthentic rational experiences of shame (as with my first reading of Piper's account) or authentic irrational experiences (as with my second reading of Piper's account) that ought to instead be understood as instantiating rational experiences of shame (as with my final reading of Piper's account)—they ought to be understood as occasions of the righteous shame of the marginalized (in short, righteous shame).Footnote ³³