“Epistemically Exploitative Bullshit: A Sartrean Account” by Thomas Szanto: Summary and Critique

1. Introduction
Szanto identifies a gap in current literature on both epistemic injustice and the philosophy of bullshit (especially Frankfurt’s). He argues that these frameworks neglect a politically and ethically distinct form of discourse—Epistemically Exploitative Bullshit (EEB)—which is prevalent in discriminatory contexts but under-theorized.

2. Defining EEB
EEB is characterized by two features:

• Alethic insouciance: the speaker displays indifference toward the truth of their statements.
• Epistemic exploitation: the speaker provokes marginalized people into epistemic labor (explaining, defending, educating), only to disregard or dismiss that labor.
  This differs from both lying and ordinary bullshit, as it weaponizes engagement while feigning neutrality.

3. The Sartrean Framework
Szanto draws on Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 work Anti-Semite and Jew to offer a philosophical foundation. Sartre describes anti-Semitic discourse as:

• Intentionally irrational and provocative.
• Structured by bad faith: self-deceptive evasion of responsibility.
• Unwilling to be refuted by reason.
  Szanto parallels this with modern EEB: speakers retreat from responsibility, hide behind collective prejudices, and sabotage good-faith dialogue.

4. EEB’s Mechanisms
Key structural elements of EEB include:

• Feigning objectivity or intellectual curiosity, while acting in bad faith.
• Burden reversal: marginal groups are compelled to justify their identity or experiences.
• Dismissive outcomes: even good-faith responses are neutralized by indifference.
• Epistemic asymmetry: the dominant party refuses vulnerability or self-reflection.

5. Political and Ethical Implications
EEB functions as discursive domination. It reinforces systemic injustice by:

• Masking prejudice as reasoned skepticism.
• Draining emotional and cognitive energy from those it targets.
• Delegitimizing marginalized voices while appearing “rational.”
  Szanto argues this form of discourse is especially dangerous in political, media, and academic contexts.

6. Critique of Existing Theories
Szanto critiques:

• Frankfurt’s bullshit: too focused on truth-indifference, not relational or political dynamics.
• Epistemic injustice theories: often overlook the affective labor and the strategic insincerity involved in EEB.
  He insists that EEB needs to be theorized as a power-laden, insidious form of communicative harm, not just poor reasoning.

7. Conclusion
Szanto calls for a Sartrean ethics of responsibility in epistemic interactions. He advocates:

• Holding speakers accountable for bad-faith engagement.
• Recognizing collective and structural aspects of epistemic harm.
• Viewing EEB as a moral failure that weaponizes others’ truth-telling while avoiding one’s own responsibility.

🎭 Expanding the Terrain of Discourse Analysis

• Introduces a new discursive form—epistemically exploitative bullshit (EEB)—that bridges pragmatic linguistics, existentialism, and critical theory.
• Unlike Frankfurt’s classic notion of bullshit, Szanto argues EEB is “strategically indifferent to truth” but not simply careless—rather, it’s instrumentally deployed to burden marginalized interlocutors (Szanto, 2023, p. 3).
• Implication for literary criticism: offers a new analytic lens for interpreting dialogic manipulation, particularly in postcolonial, feminist, and trauma literature where characters are “made to explain” but never believed.

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😶‍🌫️ Reactivating Sartrean Existentialism in Literary Ethics

• Szanto brings Sartre’s concept of bad faith back into focus, grounding it not in personal psychology but in collective discursive behavior.
• Literary theory gains a tool for interpreting characters, narrators, and institutions that engage in self-deceptive but socially sanctioned communicative evasion.
• Example quote: “In line with Sartre’s depiction of the anti-Semite, EEB speakers cultivate a disingenuous refusal of reason while securing their ideological comfort” (Szanto, 2023, p. 9).

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🔁 Reframing Epistemic Exploitation as Affective Labor

• Builds on Kristie Dotson and Nora Berenstain but extends the concept into literary analysis: characters are not only denied credibility, but their explanations are weaponized against them.
• Szanto: “The labor demanded is not only disregarded but retroactively deployed to undermine the speaker’s credibility” (p. 12).
• This has deep resonance in trauma literature and postcolonial narratives, where “testimonial fatigue” and “distrust of disclosure” become aesthetic forms.

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🛡️ Introducing Discursive Domination as a Literary Trope

• The paper formulates EEB as a tactic of domination cloaked in debate—where the form of dialogue mimics openness, but the function is suppression.
• Szanto: “EEB is a political technique masquerading as critical engagement, designed to sustain discursive control” (p. 16).
• Useful for identifying hegemonic speech patterns in satire, propaganda, courtroom drama, and digital discourse genres.

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👥 Foregrounding Structural Epistemic Asymmetry in Dialogue

• Literary theory traditionally focuses on plot and character agency; Szanto’s concept of epistemic asymmetry reveals power embedded in questions themselves.
• He writes: “EEB turns the act of asking into a performance of dominance—an interrogation masquerading as curiosity” (p. 14).
• Applicable in literary genres involving interrogation, authority-figure speech, colonial questioning, and pedagogical violence.

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🧊 Recasting Alethic Indifference as Narrative Strategy

• “Alethic insouciance” is described as a deliberate disinterest in the truth, which frames many unreliable narrators and “rational” antagonists in literature.
• Szanto states: “Insouciance is not epistemic laziness—it is a method of rhetorical insulation” (p. 10).
• Literary theorists can use this to study narrators or institutions that deploy “truth-y” language to avoid real truth (e.g., dystopias, colonial texts, war narratives).

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⚖️ Critiquing the Limits of Epistemic Injustice Theory

• Szanto critiques Fricker’s testimonial injustice model for being too focused on credibility deficits, ignoring strategic discrediting through affective labor.
• Quote: “EEB renders traditional models of epistemic injustice analytically insufficient; it combines emotional parasitism with discursive evasion” (p. 17).
• Opens new space in literary theory to examine affect as epistemic harm, not just representational failure.

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🎯 Highlighting Instrumental Dialogue in Literary Conflicts

• Szanto draws attention to how some dialogue simulates inquiry but aims at rhetorical domination, a move seen in Socratic parody, satire, and political drama.
• He explains: “In EEB, the question does not seek an answer—it seeks to entrap or deflate the respondent” (p. 13).
• Key tool for literary scholars analyzing interrogative violence and false discourse communities.

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🧠 Contributing to Literary Ethics and Responsibility

• Central to Szanto’s account is ethical responsibility in speech, which aligns with Levinasian and Ricoeurian theories of communicative ethics in literature.
• He argues: “To confront EEB is to demand responsibility not just for what is said, but for the conditions and aims of saying it” (p. 18).
• Strengthens interpretive strategies that treat literature as an ethical event, not just aesthetic artifact.

🧱 Overextension of Sartrean Framework

• Critics may argue that applying Sartre’s mid-20th century existentialism to 21st-century discourse (e.g., online bigotry, institutional epistemic violence) stretches Sartre’s framework beyond its philosophical utility.
• Sartre’s account of bad faith and anti-Semitism, while powerful, was not designed to address the complexities of intersectional oppression, neoliberal media, or algorithmically mediated discourse.

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🧊 Conceptual Redundancy with Existing Theories

• The paper risks reinventing terms already addressed in epistemic injustice theory. For instance:
  • Alethic insouciance may overlap with Miranda Fricker’s testimonial injustice.
  • Epistemic exploitation is already well-developed in the work of Kristie Dotson and Nora Berenstain.
• Critics could argue Szanto’s “novelty” lies more in rhetorical repackaging than in new conceptual insights.

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🛠️ Ambiguity in Operational Criteria

• The line between bullshit, lie, and strategic discourse remains fuzzy in the paper.
• Szanto claims EEB is distinct due to its combination of indifference and exploitation, but the threshold for identifying EEB in real-world or literary contexts is not always clear.
• Critics might ask: When does ordinary polemic become EEB?

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🔍 Insufficient Engagement with Feminist & Critical Race Theory

• While the article references epistemic injustice, it arguably under-engages with foundational works in Black feminist thought, critical race theory, or decolonial discourse, where themes of epistemic violence have been explored for decades.
• This omission could make the theory feel disconnected from existing activist epistemologies or reduce its intersectional applicability.

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🎭 Over-theorization of Discourse

• Some may criticize Szanto for being overly theoretical and abstract, offering insightful but impractical tools for real-world engagement.
• Practitioners or educators dealing with actual discursive violence (e.g., in classrooms, activism, or media) might find the diagnosis rich but the intervention weak.

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📚 Limited Literary Application

• Although the theory is promising for literary criticism, Szanto himself does not develop any literary examples, leaving it to others to test applicability in cultural texts.
• The lack of concrete case studies may limit its uptake among scholars in literature and cultural studies.

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⚖️ Risk of Pathologizing Disagreement

• Some may worry that the EEB framework could be used to discredit any form of critical or skeptical questioning as exploitative, thus chilling discourse.
• If not carefully applied, the concept may blur the line between epistemic violence and genuine inquiry, especially in politically charged settings.