Obstruction of expertise performance as epistemic injustice: the case of lived-experience experts in mental health

In pursuing epistemic projects (ie, forming judgements, solving problems, making decisions), we rely on the evidence provided by other agents who have the relevant expertise. Agents can perform as experts if they receive engagement: their potential to contribute to the epistemic project must be acknowledged, an opportunity to contribute must be offered to them and uptake must be given to their contribution. In this paper, I propose that these three stages exemplify the form of engagement that is the goal of epistemically just interactions, and I characterise some forms of obstruction to the performance of expertise using the conceptual tools developed in the literature on agential epistemic injustice, offering examples from the case of lived-experience experts in mental health. The epistemic injustice framework helps to understand how agents subject to identity prejudice are prevented from performing as experts and what can be done to remedy this.