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Testimonial Smothering and Domestic Violence Disclosure in Clinical Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2021

Jack Warman Open the ORCID record for Jack Warman [Opens in a new window]
Jack Warman*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile
*
Email: jack.warman@alumni.york.ac.uk
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Abstract

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are at last coming to be recognised as serious global public health problems. Nevertheless, many women with personal histories of DVA decline to disclose them to healthcare practitioners. In the health sciences, recent empirical work has identified many factors that impede DVA disclosure, known as barriers to disclosure. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology on testimonial silencing, we might wonder why so many people withhold their testimony and whether there is some kind of epistemic injustice afoot here. In this paper, I offer some philosophical reflections on DVA disclosure in clinical contexts and the associated barriers to disclosure. I argue that women with personal histories of DVA are vulnerable to a certain form of testimonial injustice in clinical contexts, namely, testimonial smothering, and that this may help to explain why they withhold that testimony. It is my contention that this can help explain the low rates of DVA disclosure by patients to healthcare practitioners.

Keywords

Testimonyepistemic injusticesilencingdomestic violencehealthcare
Type
Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 107 - 124
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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