Extra Credit Blog: Epistemic Injustice in comic Jessica Jones: Alias

Miranda Fricker, in her book Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, inducts a conceptual deviation in the conventional practices of epistemology. She introduces the notion of “epistemic injustice,” or a situation in which a “speaker is wrongfully undermined in her capacity as a knower” (Fricker 17). Not only are instances of this injustice observable in our reality, but these instances also bleed through to universes of fiction. We can observe how epistemic injustice, or, more specifically, testimonial injustice, translates into the Marvel Universe through the comic Jessica Jones: Alias. The social identities maintained by Jones— particularly those of a private investigator, a superhero, and a self-identified female— intersect in ways which render her vulnerable to testimonial injustice in the form of credibility deficit.

This is regarded most visibly in the interaction between Jessica and Detective Paul Hall. Following the murder of Miranda Pritchett, which was witnessed by Jessica as a result of her being hired to locate Miranda, Jessica is excessively questioned by the detective who assumes she played some role in the homicide. While the police were anonymously tipped to believe that she had something to do with Miranda’s death, when an officer tells Jessica that “[he] hopes [she is] smart enough to know that using [her] powers at [that] point would be a real mistake,” we can infer that her interrogation is more a product of her being a superhero than a potential murderer (Bendis, Issue #2). This is further fortified at the police station where Detective Hall superfluously queries Jessica about her powers, asking her questions such as “what can you do?” “so, you don’t bother with a costume anymore?” and “so you use . . . your special super-powers to get work as a private dick?” (Bendis, Issue #3). While this is happening, Jessica aims to convince Detective Hall that she has been set up, but he still strives to extort a confession from her, purporting that Jessica suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which means that she has “multiple fucking personalities” and thus asserting that she did actually murder Miranda Pritchett (Bendis, Issue #3). Not only is this testimonial injustice in that Detective Hall discredits her claim of being framed on the basis of her identity as a superhero, constructed by the collective conception of heroes which is almost entirely negative, but it is also a form of gaslighting: Detective Hall clearly “feels something with which he is uncomfortable, and unable to acknowledge. So he attributes it to someone else,” which, in this case, is Jessica (Abramson 6). Although this is a failed attempt on the part of Hall, as Jessica refuses to allow him to insinuate such things about her, it is evident that Hall was aiming to manipulate her into confessing. While this case of testimonial injustice and gaslighting is largely a result of her status as a superhero, it must be acknowledged that this case also operates under the fact that Jessica maintains a female gender identity, and Detective Hall, a male one. It is assertable that we observe another instance of gender identity-induced testimonial injustice perpetuated by Jessica against Malcolm. While Jessica’s past traumas are not explicitly divulged within volume 1 of Jessica Jones: Alias, it is not implausible to assume that she opposes the aid of Malcolm on the basis of his identity as a white man— two identities which are likely shared by her assaulter.