ONLINE FIRST
published on July 17, 2019
Karen C. Adkins
https://doi.org/10.5840/socphiltoday201971660
Gaslighting by Crowd
Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting (Abramson, ¡°Turning up the Lights on Gaslighting¡± [2014]; McKinnon, ¡°Allies Behaving Badly: Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice¡± [2017]; Ruiz, ¡°Spectral Phenomenologies¡± [2014]) by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement.