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There's an interesting issue raised by some of @RebeccaBuxton's comments in this interview, namely the use of fictional versus real-life examples in social/applied/feminist philosophy of the sort done by Fricker and Manne: https://fivebooks.com/best-books/philosophy-women-lisa-whiting-rebecca-buxton/
My view (I think expressed on here) used to be that Fricker's use of fictional examples was a bit distracting - and a bit strange, given that there didn't seem to be any dearth of real cases to examine.
I've become less sure about that as I've looked more at the cases in the literature, and what others have had to say about them. Probably a mixture of real and fictional cases would have been better. But this is tied up with something else that's been puzzling me recently.
The fictional cases are a feature of the book, not of Fricker's earlier discussion in her 1998 paper. There she used a real example, Patricia Williams's account of failing to be believed about a racist incident in which she was denied entry to a shop.
This example has had some play in the subsequent epistemic injustice literature (e.g. McConkey, Giladi), but Fricker drops it in favour of Robinson and Sherwood. In the earlier paper she credits the example to Lorraine Code and in a footnote stresses the relevance of Code's work.
But all the references to Code and the example are gone by 2007. And I don't have any idea why. Anyway, I think the general issue of the role of fictional examples in these debates is a good one, and should get more explicit attention.
The same goes for other (possibly related) questions about the methodology of such areas of philosophy - there's a lot of work that just kinda gets on with things, which has advantages for sure, but raises lots of questions that could use some discussion: https://twitter.com/AidanMcGlynn/status/1147186002760536064
One thing to add this morning - sometime there's a worry that the use of real cases can look a bit insensitive or exploitative. It depends, of course, on the context and the larger purpose. But it can be a concern.
Fricker herself got at this nicely in her talk in Glasgow last December. She talked a lot about her experiences of talking to survivors of SGBV in Colombia, and hearing these moving and *horrifying* stories and coming across like "Great, I've got a theory that explains that!".
I've just spotted that @arendtienne raised this latter issue last night in some comments I'd missed: https://twitter.com/arendtienne/status/1296992230159208448
