Introduction

Abstract This Introduction provides an overview of the book, as well as summaries of the individual chapters, and highlights some of the key claims. The central thesis of the book is that those who suffer gross violations and injustices that result in or constitute not being known due to invisibility, vilification, or systematic distortion are wronged in distinctively epistemic ways and have the right to be known as epistemic reparations. Epistemic reparations are understood as being process-based rather than act-based, they are politically and legally weighty in the same way that other kinds of reparations are, and they can be owed to both individuals and groups.