What We Owe to Our Audience: The Hermeneutical Responsibility of Fiction Creators

ABSTRACT As audiences demand better and more diverse representation in the fictions they consume, there is a question of how that demand should be placed on fiction creators. In this article, I answer this question by arguing creators of fiction have a hermeneutical responsibility to include diverse...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied philosophy 2023-02, Vol.40 (1), p.150-165
Main Author: Wojtkiewicz, Kate
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Epistemology
Exegesis & hermeneutics
Fiction
Literary characters
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Writers
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:ABSTRACT As audiences demand better and more diverse representation in the fictions they consume, there is a question of how that demand should be placed on fiction creators. In this article, I answer this question by arguing creators of fiction have a hermeneutical responsibility to include diverse characters in their creations, and to do so without relying on harmful stereotypes. I cast this responsibility as the epistemic virtue of due diligence, offset by epistemic laziness and epistemic paralysis as the corresponding vices of absence and excess, respectively. Practicing either vice can constitute a type of hermeneutical gap described by Katharine Jenkins, in which harmful stereotypes (conceptions) become more accessible to epistemic agents than the more accurate concept. By blocking the agent's access to the accurate conception, such stereotypes create a hermeneutical gap and can contribute to hermeneutical injustices, as described by Miranda Fricker and José Medina.
ISSN:0264-3758
1468-5930
DOI:10.1111/japp.12620