On Good Scholarship: Reflecting on Epistemic Appropriation and Epistemic Responsibility

It’s the summer, the season of reading, writing, and thinking, among other things, for academics. While attempting to resurrect long-dormant writing projects in solitude, I’ve been struck by the collective nature of scholarship. For instance, an upcoming publication has been read and shaped by no less than five other individuals (excluding informal readers of earlier drafts): two anonymous peer reviewers and three editors, each with a distinct shepherding role in the process. Yet, the communal nature of research goes deeper than this. Scholarship requires robust engagement with various epistemic resources, such as “individual items of propositional knowledge…evidential standards, perceptual sensibilities, and the overarching perspectives that include beliefs, standards, and sensibilities together,” which are produced by many others.¹ Scholars do not think and write in isolation but always, whether acknowledged or not, in conversation with other people and their work. 

One appropriate response to this recognition is gratitude, a thankfulness for the shared resources to which we hope to contribute. Yet, vigilance is also warranted. As philosopher Emmalon Davis highlights, real harms can accompany the dissemination and use of epistemic resources, particularly when shared across different communities and groups, some possessing “more social, material, and political power than others.”² In particular, Davis identifies the harm of “epistemic appropriation,” which involves “epistemic detachment,” when the epistemic resource is used but “the participatory role of marginalized contributors in the process of knowledge production is obscured” and “epistemic misdirection,” when the benefits associated with the epistemic contributions of the marginalized are misdirected toward the comparatively privileged.”³ While misuse of any knowledge resource is problematic, epistemic appropriation is particularly harmful as it takes advantage of power imbalances and can perpetuate the delegitimization and exploitation of certain marginalized communities. In truth, I have struggled with how to navigate the challenge of epistemic appropriation as I’ve returned to neglected writing projects, some of which depend heavily on queer thought and disability studies.⁴

To counter epistemic appropriation, greater clarity about our own epistemic responsibilities is needed, particularly regarding intercommunal resources.⁵ So what might epistemic responsibility, particularly in regards to scholarship, entail? What values or principles ought to guide decision-making? The pioneering insights of religious scholars Mary E. Hunt and Judith Plaskow as well as the Cite Black Women Collective, “an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collective that includes queer, femme, and gender-nonconforming people,” may be helpful here.⁶ Hunt, for instance, urges adoption of borrowing ground rules when drawing on the work of other traditions for one’s own. She writes that one ought to only borrow what is needed, understanding that the act is “not the norm but the exception, what one does in a pinch, not something that is programmatic.”⁷ Further, there is an expectation of reciprocity, in “giving back more than one took as a sign of goodwill and thanks.”⁸ Alternatively, Plaskow emphasizes the importance of acknowledging boundaries and difference to avoid “swallowing up and rendering invisible” another’s work.⁹ She suggests including language that recognizes that one’s own use of the term or concept may be different than originally intended. This step is critical to ensure that the materials and sources used are properly contextualized and can also express genuine solidarity across difference. Finally, the Collective highlights the importance of citing Black women’s work to acknowledge and honor their often-ignored intellectual labor.¹⁰ This requires not only including ample references in one’s scholarship but also critically engaging the work cited. They write that one must “take the time to let it soak in and shift your thinking…[and] let our ideas transform your thinking and let them lead, not follow, traditional, hegemonic approaches to your field.”¹¹ In contrast to “performative” openness, the Collective insists on an authentic receptivity to the work cited to prevent de facto co-optation and theft.¹² 

In her reflections on epistemic responsibility, Davis reinforces and expands upon several of the aforementioned themes. Aligned with the Collective, Davis insists on proper citation practices and the need “to publicly acknowledge nondominantly situated knowers as contributors in the processes of meaning making.”¹³ Further, Davis picks up on Hunt’s calls for reciprocity, though she does so by emphasizing that “the benefits associated with the epistemic contributions of the marginalized should not disproportionately advantage those already occupying advantaged social positions.”¹⁴ Whereas the previous point focuses on equitable credit in connection to specific resources, the subsequent one emphasizes equity in outcome. Greater parity should result from the intercommunal exchange of resources, not increased disadvantage. Most importantly, Davis reminds readers that structural inequalities overlap and are interconnected. Thus, epistemic appropriation is and ought to be a foundational concern for any scholar committed to justice as “removing epistemic barriers that prevent marginalized persons from fully participating in collective efforts to dismantle structures of oppression is imperative if those efforts are to succeed.”¹⁵ Insofar as we have epistemic agency, that is the capacity to know things and contribute epistemic resources, we have the obligation to ensure that the contributions of marginalized communities not be “systematically ignored, appropriated, or exploited.”¹⁶ Hunt, Plaskow, the Collective, and Davis all offer insight into how we might enact our epistemic responsibilities. Our task is to envision more ways we can do so as scholars and as ones involved in the production and publication of knowledge. Such considerations will be foremost on my mind as I continue in my research and writing.

References:

Davis, Emmalon. “On Epistemic Appropriation.” Ethics 128, no. 4 (2018): 702–727. https://doi.org/10.1086/697490. 

Edidin, Aron. “Beyond Testimony: Sharing Epistemic Resources.” Episteme 22, no. 4 (2025): 992–1002. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2024.34.

Eugene, Toinette M. Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Pui-lan Kwok, and Judith Plaskow. “Appropriation and Reciprocity in Womanist/Mujerista/Feminist Work.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 8, no. 2 (1992): 91-122.

Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M. Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics. Pilgrim Press, 2006.

Kao, Grace Y., Ramón Luzárraga, Darryl Trimiew, and Christine E. Gudorf. “Managing Diversity in Academe.” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 28, no. 2 (2008): 75–95. 

Smith, Christen A., Erica L. Williams, Imani A. Wadud, Whitney N. L. Pirtle, and The Cite Black Women Collective. “Cite Black Women: A Critical Praxis (A Statement).” Feminist Anthropology 2 (2021): 10-17. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12040.

Notes:

1. Edidin, “Beyond Testimony: Sharing Epistemic Resources,” 992.
2. Davis, “On Epistemic Appropriation,” 703.
3. Ibid., 705.
4. One reason conversations about queer thought and disability studies, to name a few, are particularly complex is because the scholarship is rooted in and accountable to a particular identity and social circumstance. For instance, though queer studies attends to a wide range of questions, it emerged and continues to draw insight from LGBTQ+ experiences. I appreciate how Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas has aimed to navigate this challenge with respect to womanism. In her book, Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics, she suggests that while only black women may claim the identity of womanist scholar, all scholars can adapt womanist methods to enrich their respective projects. That said, I think important questions related to epistemic appropriation remain unaddressed.
5.  While I focus on the epistemic responsibilities one may have to others in this piece, Davis provides helpful insight into epistemic responsibilities one may have to oneself, particularly if belonging to a marginalized community. She writes that “thinking of ourselves as epistemic agents specifically draws our attention to our responsibilities and capacities as knowers, what we are capable of and what we are owed in these capacities. By recognizing ourselves as epistemic agents, we can come to understand the importance of being perceived to be credible by our peers, of communicating our experiences to a wide range of others utilizing common epistemic resources, and of contributing to the processes through which knowledge is developed and disseminated without fearing that those contributions will be systematically ignored, appropriated, or exploited” (Davis, “On Epistemic Appropriation,” 726).
6. Smith et al., “Cite Black Women,” 11.
7. Eugene et al., “Appropriation and Reciprocity,” 113. Mary E. Hunt’s comments are found in the Respondents section of Toinette M. Eugene, et al., “Appropriation and Reciprocity in Womanist/Mujerista/Feminist Work.”
8. Ibid., 113.
9. Ibid., 108.
10. Smith et al., “Cite Black Women,” 11. I am extending their insights to include other marginalized knowledge traditions, though I recognize that the level of labor exploitation experienced can differ greatly.
11. Ibid., 14.
12. Ethicist Grace Y. Kao offers a helpful account of what I mean by “performative” citation practice and its costs. She writes that if we cite work “to give the appearance of openness and political correctness ‘all the while maintaining the model, dynamic and framework that belong to the dominant culture into which have been shoved ideas and images that do not emerge from it’—we will have compromised the integrity of their work, engaged in intellectual theft, and accordingly done a great disservice to those we have co-opted for our purposes” (Kao et al., “Managing Diversity in Academe,” 78).
13. Davis, “On Epistemic Appropriation,” 725.
14. Ibid., 725.
15.  Ibid., 727.
16. Ibid., 726.
    

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