“Stories That Wrong and Stories That Repair”
Abstract: Stories are as important as they are ubiquitous, depicting everything from the origin of the universe to the driving force behind an isolated act by a single individual. But stories do not just depict what has actually occurred—they can also exert tremendous power over what does or even can occur. How the unfolding of events is presented in a narrative, for instance, or the layers of a person’s character are sketched, can have monumental consequences for the people involved in them. In this talk, I will focus on one dimension of this, exploring how stories can epistemically wrong a person in life-altering ways and yet also be the source of the corresponding epistemic reparations that are called for in response.
Jennifer Lackey is Professor at Northwestern University.