In The Epistemology of Resistance, José Medina sets out to analyze and counteract
the inability of oppressors to acknowledge their own prejudice. This “metaignorance,” or ignorance of one’s ignorance, puts a stopper on societal discourse
in that it makes it all but impossible for participants to agree on the fundamental
problems that need to be addressed. Medina’s analysis brings to the fore the need
for a theoretical model in which agents and communities are able to surmount such
meta-ignorance with virtuous dispositions that are compatible with respecting and
affirming manifold voices.
Nevertheless, this sort of model is insufficient in that it calls on discursive
partners to respect and internalize diverse perspectives without itself offering a
way to adjudicate between them. Virtues cannot be extracted from the lived
traditions that give them meaning and direction; traditions that typically disagree
with one another regarding their catalog and conceptualization of the virtues. Thus,
the primary desideratum is a method of adjudication that can arbitrate between
competing narratives without itself producing hegemony. I submit that a
MacIntyrean analysis of such tradition-constituted inquiry, combined with
Medinean insights, yields the most promising proposal for overcoming metaignorance and producing fruitful polyphonic discourse
