The Epistemology of Protest

José Medina is Walter Dill Scott Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He previously taught at Vanderbilt University and has held visiting appointments at Carlos III University, Princeton University, and University of Johannesburg. His first three books were on Wittgenstein and theories of meaning, identity, and agency. His fourth book, The Epistemology of Resistance is winner of the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award.

• Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: Protest as a Matrix of Communicative Resistance Chapter 1. Toward a Radical Epistemology of Protest1.1. Protest as Democratic Communicative Resistance1.2. Our Duties to Protest and to Listen to Protest: Expressive Harms and Communicative Resistance1.3. Managing the Duty to Protest and to Give Proper Uptake to Protest1.4. Uncivil Protest, Civil Death, and Liberation Movements Chapter 2. No Justice, No Peace: Uncivil Protest and the Politics of Confrontation2.1. Social Spaces without Political Resistance? Stifling Dissent and the Difficulties of Protests in Sports2.2. Arguments for Protesting Injustice: <"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.> "2.3. Toward a Politics of Confrontation: Uncivil Direct Actions and Counter-protests Chapter 3. Silencing and Protest3.1. Protest as Complex Communication that Demands Uptake3.1.a. Expressive and Speech Acts within the Matrix of Communicative Resistance3.1.b. Felicity Conditions and Proper Recognition of the Complex Illocution of Protest3.2. Defective Uptake and Different Kinds of Silencing3.3. Proper Uptake and Echoing3.4. The Road Ahead: Radical Agency and the Four Communicative Dimensions of Protest Part II: Forging Communicative Solidarity and Re-Making the Polis: Changing Ourselves and Changing the World through Protest Chapter 4. Whose Streets? Our Streets! The Making of a Protesting Public4.1. Standing Together and (Re-)Shaping the Polis: The Group-Constituting Power of Protest 4.2. Protest as a Complex Matrix of Interpellation: The Performative Power of Protest4.3. Group Silencing, Epistemic Activism and the Constitutive Polyphony of ProtestCoda: You are so vain so think that this protest is about you, don't you? Chapter 5. Radical Testimony: Resisting Communicative and Epistemic Injustice through Protest5.1. Silencing and Downgrading of testimonial protest acts5.1.a. Communicative Injustice: Kinds of Silencing of Testimonial Protest Acts5.1.b. Epistemic Injustice: Kinds of Epistemic Downgrading of Testimonial Protest ActsA. Group Testimonial InjusticeB. Group Hermeneutical InjusticeC. Agential Epistemic Injustice5.2. Radical Testimony5.2.a. My Body as a WitnessHands Up, Don't ShootThe Die-Ins of ACT UP and BLM5.2.b. Our Suffering has No Name: Look at This!Documentary and Testimonial Images in the Anti-Lynching MovementCounter-Images and Image-Based Online Activism5.2.c. Our Suffering has No Name, and yet We Won't be Silent: I Can't Breathe!(On How Protesting Voices Echo the Silenced and Smothered Voices of their Brothers and Sisters with New and Old Language) Chapter 6. Protest as Critique: Emotional Expressivity and Critical Discourses6.1. Emotions and Social Criticism6.2. Conventional Emotions and Meliorative Critique in Protest Movements6.3. Outlaw Emotions and Radical Critique in Protest MovementsCoda: White Rage (or <"Wonderland is not for everyone!> ") Chapter 7. Protest as a Source of Demands: Polyphony and the Radical Imagination of Liberation Movements7.1. Different Kinds of Demands and the Communicative Injustices They Face7.2. The Radical Imagination: Radical Demands and Communicative Obligations to Listen to Them ReferencesIndex

This is an immensely important book for our times. Medina provides new critical analyses of how dissent can be silenced and subtly disarmed in ways that escape the charge of censorship. He explores how protests challenge standard ideas about both knowledge and communication. And he also demonstrates, more hopefully, how social movements transform public spheres in a productive manner that outlives the current moment.