Repository logo
 

TALKING BACK: SHARON DODUA OTOO’S HERR GRÖTTRUP SETZT SICH HIN AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF RESISTANCE

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

No Thumbnail Available

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Abstract

Otoo has called the artistic production of Black and of Colour writers in contemporary Germany ‘eine Praxis des Widerstands’. Here I read her Bachmann-prizewinning story Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin through the lens of Jamika Avalon’s conception of a fugitive archetype of resistance which is, I argue, simultaneously a working definition of a literary work of art. I also read the story as a literary investigation of the phenomenon Miranda Fricker has called epistemic injustice (‘a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower’). Fricker’s articulation of epistemic injustice has helped spark an ‘epistemic turn’ across disciplines. I refer particularly to José Medina’s development of her work in his Epistemology of Resistance (2013). Subaltern subjects, argues Medina, can gain an epistemic advantage because they have to work harder cognitively, maintaining ‘two cognitive perspectives simultaneously’. Theorists of epistemic injustice strikingly often rely for their arguments on literary fiction, which has long been alerting its readers to epistemic injustice and its painful or lethal consequences. Otoo, I argue, uses storytelling and humour to offer both the epistemically privileged Gröttrups and her epistemically privileged readers opportunities to understand and transcend their cognitive limitations.

Description

Keywords

Journal Title

German Life and Letters

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0016-8777

Volume Title

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Publisher DOI

Publisher URL

Rights

All rights reserved