Affective injustice from anger gaslighting to grief gaslighting Associate Professor Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University

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Grief Project Lecture

If gaslighting makes its target doubt herself, anger gaslighting makes its target doubt herself about her anger. Scholarship on gaslighting in feminist philosophy has tended to analyze it as epistemic injustice (an injustice that concerns knowledge and credibility). Focusing on anger gaslighting as a paradigm case, Shiloh argues that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (an injustice that concerns emotions and affective influence). Adapting Marilyn Frye’s notion of “uptake,” Shiloh identifies the uniquely affective dimension of anger gaslighting and what’s unjust about it. Shiloh turns to the case of grief gaslighting to show how other episodic emotions can be gaslit, but also to raise questions about what the case of grief gaslighting in particular can teach us about affective injustice. 

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