What does victim testimony about injustices tell us about justice?

In this thesis, I show that most claims of injustice are socially repressed, and that one of the ways in which injustices are perpetuated is through our failure to recognise them. Then, I argue that victim testimony provides a unique epistemic entry point to knowledge of social phenomena we are likely to judge unjust. This epistemic access is made reliable if processed through the feminist method of consciousness raising. Thus, apart from the strong moral case for attending to victim testimony, namely avoiding testimonial injustices, there is also a strong epistemic case for attending to victim testimony. In this context, it is worth asking why victim testimony hardly, if ever, figures in contemporary analytic political philosophy, which is otherwise preoccupied with determining the features of a just society. I argue that the reasons for political philosophers not to attend to victim testimony do not hold up to scrutiny, and that all available methodologies in analytic political philosophy, as they currently stand, are incapable of adequately engaging with victim testimony. This leaves the theories they produce vulnerable to status quo bias. Finally, I argue that victim testimony, as processed through consciousness raising, provides a method through which it becomes possible to conceptualise justice while avoiding status quo bias.