#  Harvard Review of Philosophy Colloquium Lecture: José Medina (Northwestern University), "Resisting Under Conditions of Oppression: Silencing, Protest, and Epistemic Activism" 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **September 18, 2025** 

 05:00PM - 07:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Emerson Hall 305**  



 

 



 

Resisting under Conditions of Oppression: Silencing, Protest, and Epistemic Activism

Dr. José Medina

Walter Dill Scott Professor of Philosophy

Northwestern University

  
Abstract: In this talk I will discuss some of the communicative and epistemic challenges that oppressed groups face when they try to resist their oppression. I will focus on stigmatized social groups, such as queer communities, which are subject to targeted social silencing and invisibilization. I argue that, for these communicatively marginalized groups, resisting oppression requires silence-breaking actions, such as the kiss-ins and other visibility actions of queer activism. My analysis will elucidate how stigmatized protesting voices can empower themselves through what I call epistemic activism, that is, through practices of resistance in which oppressed subjects give communicative and epistemic support to each other. I will discuss how social silences are resisted by grassroot liberation movements, and how marginalized subjects use public protest as a mechanism of epistemic self-empowerment. My central claim will be that overcoming the history of silencing and social invisibility of stigmatized groups requires self-empowerment and “a revolution of our sensibility” through epistemic activism.

 ![jose medina lecture](/sites/g/files/omnuum4436/files/2025-09/jose%20medina%20lecture-2%20%281%29.png)

 



 

 



 

 

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