Being in the Room Privilege

Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference

November 17, 2022

The call to listen to the most affected or center the most marginalized is ubiquitous in many academic and activist circles. But from a societal standpoint, the most affected by the social injustices we associate with politically important identities like gender, class, race, and nationality are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated, underemployed, or part of the 44 percent of the worlds population without internet access and thus both left out of the rooms of power and largely ignored by the people in the rooms of power.

In this talk, Ol繳f廕嘐mi O. T獺穩w簷, associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, discusses problems of elite capture and deference epistemology and proposes constructive epistemology as an approach to organize new rooms that focus on structural, practical change.