Radical self-silencing is a particular variety of speech act disablement where the subject silences themselves, whether knowingly or not, because of their own faults or deficiencies. The paper starts with some concrete cases and preparatory comments to help orient and motivate the investigation. It then offers a summary analysis, drawing on a small number of basic concepts to identify its five individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions and discriminating their two basic forms, ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’. The paper then explicates and (...) defends what has been proposed, where the most salient and pressing objections concern the use of two basic concepts: ‘uptake’ and ‘silencing’. Finally, the paper gives a longer-term motivation for deepening our understanding of radical self-silencing, what it is and what it implies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSilencing is a practice that disrupts linguistic and communicative acts, but its relationship to knowledge and justice is not fully understood. Prior models of epistemic injustice tend to c...

Much of feminist philosophy of language so far can be described as critical—critical either of language itself or of philosophy of language, and calling for change on the basis of these criticisms. Those making these criticisms suggest that the changes are needed for the sake of feminist goals — either to better allow for feminist work to be done or, more frequently, to bring an end to certain key ways that women are disadvantaged. In this entry, I examine these criticisms. (...) I also examine work by feminists that seems to suggest some of the criticisms are misplaced: that, for example, philosophy of language is better able to help in feminist projects than critics suppose. My focus in this entry will generally be on the analytic tradition. For continental approaches, see the entries on feminist approaches to the intersection of analytic and continental philosophy , feminist approaches to the intersection of pragmatism and continental philosophy. (shrink)