Affective Injustice from Anger Gaslighting to Grief Gaslighting

Title: Affective Injustice from Anger Gaslighting to Grief Gaslighting

Abstract: 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, I argue that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (an injustice that concerns emotions and affective influence). Adapting Marilyn Frye’s notion of “uptake,” I identify the uniquely affective dimension of anger gaslighting and what’s unjust about it. I turn 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.

About the speaker: Shiloh Whitney is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. Her research lies at the intersection of Feminist Philosophy, Critical Phenomenology, and Philosophy of Affect and Emotion. Her current book project is on affective injustice and emotional labor.

To book: https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/public-lectures/autumn-2022/affective-injustice/