What has come to be referred to as second wave feminism of this century began in the 1950's and 1960's with the attempt to address some practical problems of professional women. Betty Freidan's germinal The Feminine Mystique saw that women were differentially treated as a matter of fact. The feminism that developed out of this was racist, classist, and heterosexist. It was concerned with the problems of white, straight bourgeois women - those who graduated from Wellesley and Radcliffe. But it was still a political movement. It was also open to criticism so that today in general feminists are concerned with the axes of oppression rather than a single one. In fact one of the bastions of this early movement the NOW has moved to e concerned with issues that effect persons, especially women, on the basis of other axes of oppression such as race, sexual orientation/preference, and class. That is, feminism has responded to criticism from radical, socialist, lesbian, black, separatist feminists who claim that the point of view of the beginning of this wave was inadequate. That is, there seem to be standpoints rather than a single standpoint that is adequate for addressing the concerns of all women.
Another important preliminary point is that while the experience of women is the starting point of standpoint epistemology, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for possessing or helping to develop a feminist standpoint at least according to feminists such as Harding.
I want to claim that this political claim/mission is the core of feminism as well as other liberatory movements from gay liberation to liberation theology. That is, there are structures of oppression that should be eliminated. Thus, that which is antithetical to such movements ought to be rejected. this would include "theory" that purports to be fundamentally liberatory. In particular I see that this needs to be the case with regard to postmodernism. the claim that we cannot know or that there is no ultimate reality undermines the very possibility of political goals and political action. Thus, a postmodern feminism is fundamentally peculiar, if not oxymoronic. On at least one occasion Harding notes that we cannot give the game away to postmodernism. This is not to say that postmodernism lacks any insight whatsoever. I do not think that this is the case. It is extremely insightful in many areas within in and without feminism. However, a robust postmodernism seems unable to sustain claims that are necessary for political action like oppression exists and that it is morally a bad thing.
I shall attempt to defend standpoint epistemology; some versions of which, especially Harding's, I have great sympathy.
Nielsen:
Nielsen, Joyce McCarl ed. Feminist Research Methods. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 1990.
Nielsen notes (1) that much of feminism seems to be anti-empiricist in that it claims that science is fundamentally and irreducibly biased. Descartes' cogito is an example of this - it was cogito ergo sum not amo ergo sum. Rationality is what is trusted here. She does not consider reflexivity here. That is, here claim is and seemingly must be rational in order to be understood.
She (3) claims that on one extreme there are those who assume that there is an objective reality and at the other are folks like Feyerabend and the sophists who say we cannot know there is a reality. She does not note that the former is an ontological claim while the latter is an epistemological one. She does this again when noting that most social science texts make the assumption that the social world is knowable and later calls this the objectivity assumption - "that there is an objective (independent of the knower) reality to be known" (4). This seems to be a central confusion in her introduction.
She does note 4 assumptions of traditional social science especially as they appear in textbooks. The social world is knowable which she wants to say includes the claim that there is a social reality. There is a separation between the knower and the known. Verification should be based on the senses. There is order in the social world. And there is a unity of science. that is, all sciences have the same method and this is the best if not the only legitimate method for conducting scientific (i.e., legitimate) research.
Feminism wants to challenge these central assumptions in the social (and for that matter other) sciences. Ann Oakley's study of women's parenting is where Nielsen begins. Classical techniques like keeping distance between the interviewer (knower) and the interviewee (the known) were ineffectual. Feminist research is contextual and as such its results are not necessarily replicable. The problem here is that then it is possible to hide bad data or bad data interpretation. If there is no need/possibility for replication perhaps male bias can been hidden in the data. This is certainly not a result we want. Within feminist work it is possible that racist, heterosexist, etc. bias can be hidden.. The response that is open here is this is precisely why a standpoint is necessary. A standpoint will seek to eliminate such bias as much as possible. As will be discussed below Harding thinks that standpoint with the inclusion of democratic values actually increases rather than diminishes the extent to which we have objectivity.
There is then a post-empirical (or as friends in sociology say post-positivist) crisis in knowledge. She (8) is here intimating that the hermeneutic claim that we be "objective" in social science with regard to personal matters is unjustified. The goals of traditional social science are to predict and control. The goal of hermeneutics is to understand. And the goal of critical theory is to emancipate. Critical theory rejects the notion of objective knowledge. All people and all groups are socially situated. There is no possibility of a neutral epistemic position. Knowledge is therefore a social construction. This is reminiscent of Neurath's raft. Certainly not a radically postmodern idea.
Nielsen (10) then claims that standpoint is generated out of this tradition. Even if this is the case and I am in no position to give an opinion on this - it would be mere opinion, it does not follow that standpoint is committed to follow its ancestor fully. That is, there still may be significant differences between the two so that standpoint is not fundamentally postmodern in nature even if it is postmodern in origin. This is the move that I think Harding should make, but does not make fully enough.
Nielsen (10) describes standpoint as starting "with the idea that less powerful members of society have the potential for a more complete view of social reality than others, precisely because of their disadvantaged position." Again feminist philosophers of science want to extend this to the other sciences. There are several premises developed by Hartsock that Nielsen explicates:
1. One's material life - life circumstances, etc. "structures and limits one's understandings of life" (10)
2. Members of powerful and powerless groups will have opposing views.
3. "The dominant group's view will be "partial and perverse" in contrast to the subordinate group's view, which has the potential to be more complete" (10-11). It is important to recognize that the claim is that it is the view of groups here that matter; it is not concerned primarily with individuals. And more importantly that while oppression is a necessary condition of a groups developing a standpoint it is not a sufficient one.
Nielsen (12f.) then goes on to discuss Kuhn. The conclusions that she wants to draw is "that data and observations are theory-laden (that is, the scientist only sees data in terms of their relevance to theory); that theories are "paradigm-laden" (explanations are grounded in worldviews); and that paradigms are culture-laden (worldviews, including ideas about human nature, vary historically across cultures). Thus, our observations are in some way dependent upon our cultural position. She (13) also wants to conclude that Kuhn's work challenges the idea of a single objective reality. She brings in here implications from quantum mechanics.
In looking at the feminist challenge again, Nielsen (16f) describes the difference in approaches to evolutionary biology that men and women have. On the traditional view males and male traits are seen as essential to evolution. Feminist emphasis skills like cunning instead of fighting. But all of these views seem to suffer from the error of confusing normative and descriptive claims. Even if it is the case that evolution in prehistoric times did depend centrally on men (which commonsensically does seem to be at least exaggerated), this does not mean either that this is the case now or more importantly that this gives any normative privilege to brawn and other "male" characteristics. The same holds true for the feminist claims; even if it is the case that female or androgenous traits are those that were necessary for evolution, this does not give them normative force without further argument.
Feminist inquiry is fundamentally a paradigmatic shift. Feminist inquiry creates anomalies for science. It is also to see familiar things differently. Resistance to feminist work is thus predictable on a Kuhnian account. Eventually a Kuhnian conversion occurs and the world is seen differently.
This Kuhnian influence is relevant for the notion of standpoint. Nielsen (21) points out that those on the margins, those who are not in power are more likely to initiate paradigmatic shifts. It is young interdisciplinary persons who are more likely to do this. The discipline or "interdiscipline" of women's studies is a prime location then for such occurrences. Coupled with the notion that the oppressed have, qua informed group, the possibility of a privileged place with regard to notion, feminist locations such as women's studies are places where knowledge that is "truer" or "more adequate" are likely to develop.
Nielsen (24) then moves to discuss standpoint more directly. As I have noted above she claims here that standpoint begins from, but moves beyond the experience of women. The perspectives of women and men are very different and frequently at odds with one another. Women, by virtue of their position as oppressed, are able to see within both perspectives. thus, her understanding has the potential to be more complete. This issues in more accurate or complete knowledge. Nielsen (25) notes that this entails "that one groups perspective is more real (better or more accurate) than others. And "more accurate" implies that there are some criteria for accuracy. So again we are confronted with the problematic of objective reality. . . . A second problem with standpoint epistemologies in general and feminist standpoints in particular is that they imply that the more oppressed or more disadvantaged group has the greatest potential for knowledge construction. . . . When carried to its logical conclusion, however, the implication of this notion is that the greater the oppression, the broader or more inclusive one's potential knowledge is, a conclusion that few scholars can agree with. This conclusion leads one into a discussion that is not very productive about who is more oppressed (and how to prove it) and therefore potentially more knowledgeable."
Nielsen does want to move beyond a standpoint to a "fusions of horizons" that will purportedly be a middle ground between foundationalism and relativism. To do this she (27f.) wants to begin to look at the possibilities for anthropologists studying other cultures.
The first possibility is that we use our own culture's standards to evaluate another culture; that is, we are ethnocentric. A second possibility is that we bracket our own beliefs. This is the approach that hermeneutics says is not possible. A final approach is to go native - to adopt the view of the other culture. This is in a sense a relativism because it acknowledges the existence of more than one view, she claims. In needs to be noted that this is merely an epistemological relativism and as such is true but trivial. Of course there are multiple ways in which the way we can understand the world. Relativism is more properly applied to the ontological realm and the claim that there is more than one world to which our knowledge claims refer or that our knowledge claims themselves. She may be claiming that our knowledge claims make the world, but if so I do not see where. If she is doing this then of course her sort of epistemological relativism entails an ontological one.
These alternatives are not attractive to Nielsen. That is, she wants to neither go the route of "objectivism" or relativism. Instead she (28) with Gadamer notes that prejudice is then our state. We cannot arrive at anything approaching the truth. In fact, we use our prejudgements as building blocks for new knowledge. She claims that what we should do is move between the two traditions and create a new and more adequate one. I take it that this is similar to what MacIntyre claims that Aquinas did with Aristotelianism and Augustine. MacIntyre claims that Aquinas created a new tradition out of two competing and in some senses incommensurable ones. When these two traditions are fused there is new knowledge is created. It is a knowledge that takes more into account than did either of its predecessors. She (29) notes that there is an underlying assumption that this is a good thing.
This seems to be one possible way of avoiding the problems of multiple standpoints. To the extent that two standpoints differ, especially radically, the are like competing theories. On her account here it seems that we may then dialectically combine the two to form a more adequate theory where theoretical adequacies is measured in terms of inclusiveness of perspective. Nielsen (29) claims that "[t]he fusion of horizons concept carries the double, or dual, vision and dialectical notions a step further than do standpoint epistemologies because it indicates a transcendent third and new view, or synthesis. This next step in knowledge generation is captured in expressions like beyond- or post-feminism." there is no reason to think here that we need to stop here. Perhaps it is the case that each newly discovered or created oppression can be synthesized into this view. Our view would then be constantly improving because it is expanding.
She (31) does acknowledge the problem that there seems to be something contradictory in both finding all knowledge to be theory-laden and claiming that feminist knowledge is better. "To the extent that it is more complete, more inclusive, more comprehensive, and more complex, feminist work comes closer to realizing, or at least better exemplifying, the fusion of horizons process we have been described here. Further, there are several reasons for preferring some form of empiricism to presentations that are empty of empirical reference" (31). Empiricism guards against superstition and simple personal biases. It also offers a different definition of 'objective' as Nielsen and as we shall see later Harding construe the term. That is, it is not the objectivism which is seen as problematic. It is outside of the actor and thus concerns evidence that is available to all. Finally since the rest of the world is empirical feminism must be too.
Nielsen then does offer a test of theoretical adequacy that is absent in her postmodern counterparts. Namely, a theory must appeal to having taken into account the most evidence possible, especially that evidence that is customarily overlooked.
Harding:
Harding, Sandra. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell UP. 1986.
Harding and other feminist philosophers of science want to maintain that at least some of Nielsen's claims apply to the life and physical sciences as well as to the social sciences.
Chapter 1: From the Women Question is Science to the Science Question in Feminism
Feminist epistemology is often dismissed as making outrageous claims. If one asks what these claims are the response is often some evasions such as "feminists think that reality is different for different groups of people." This is especially the case when something like the possibility of a standpoint is introduced. While such claims undoubtedly do surface from time to time, the fact that there are Cartesian dualists is no reason to dismiss all of analytic philosophy either. Harding is an example of someone who, properly understood, is making radical claims, but not in a way that is necessarily antithetical to analytic philosophy. For instance, she claims that the direction that science takes is determined by social considerations. That is, science is socially constructed in that those who are involved in decision making are not socially denuded Cartesian selves, but socially embedded persons.
Harding (167) makes a general claim that is central to the work that she and other feminists want to do here. She claims that gendering is the most ancient, universal and powerful origin of many morally valued conceptualizations in the world. That is gender is at the center of our conceptualizations of the world. Thus, when we talk of standpoints a feminist one, that is, one out of the concerns and locations of women, must be present. We then see that gender is a category that we apply to the world rather than present in the world. Thus, we can then see that gender is infused into the world by us. She notes that this does not mean that other oppressions such as race, heterosexist, classist are not present. In fact, she (17) notes that they are often more oppressive and that how gender oppression is cashed out often depends on the other location one finds oneself in. But gender is a vital term of categorization and thus oppression in virtually all cultures. Harding (18) thus wants to ground epistemology and politics in solidarity among those who are involved in liberatory struggles.
One possibility here that does not seem to be raised is to run a dialectic with these various standpoints to issue in a single standpoint that is at least temporarily adequate. It would be subject to revision as new oppressions and new ways to oppress occur. But this might relieve some of the worries we seem to be having about the simultaneous existence of multiple standpoints.
There are 5 different projects among which feminist critiques of science operate. They are not necessarily compatible with each other. (21f)
1. Equity Studies:
Historically there has been massive resistance to equally able women gaining access to scientific education, credentials and jobs. This has been done in both formal and informal manners. Thus, when official barriers are removed as they are for the most part in the US there are still massive informal barriers to be overcome. Here the question arises as to whether in order to gain access women ought to become like the men with whom they are competing. That is, should women be involved in oppressive research, military research and the like.
2. Studies in the uses and abuses of biology and the social sciences:
These studies demonstrate some of the oppressive uses to which science is put. These range from oppressive reproductive technologies to the "curing" of homosexuality. There are two problematic assumptions that operate in such studies. First, it is assumed that there is a value-free, purely scientific context that can be distinguished from such social projects. Second that there are proper versus improper uses of science. he wants to question both of these assumptions.
It should be noted here as it will be elsewhere that Harding does want to say that there is something to which we can ultimately appeal when making decisions within (and without) science. Namely, she claims that we ought to maintain strong objectivity - the idea that democratic values are inappropriately removed from scientific inquiry while oppressive values are not (see her Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? : Thinking from Women's Lives. Ithaca: Cornell UP. 1991.) Thus, she is not moving toward the unbridled relativism that some claim feminism moves toward or embraces (as in fact some feminist do as we saw last week).
3. Challenges to the very possibility not just the actuality of pure science:
The selection and definition of problematics in science as elsewhere has and irreducibly social aspect. If the problems themselves are value-laden, then it seems the research must also be value-laden.
4. Literary criticism. historical interpretation and psychoanalysis:
Some want to read science as a text. Again, this is what we saw last week especially with Flax's article.
5. Epistemological inquiries:
The claim here is that there is a relationship between metaphysics and epistemology. Knowledge depends upon experience and our experience is not given to us in a value neutral way. Thus, it seems that Harding is claiming that this position is radically relativistic with regard to ontology.
The problem as she sees it is how can openly politicized epistemological claims be justified. How can they increase objectivity as she wants to claim feminist epistemology does. Harding (24f.) gives a guide to the two relatively well-developed solutions to this problem and what she refers to as an agenda as a solution.
Feminist Empiricism:
As we shall see in the next two weeks (Longino is a feminist empiricist) the claim here is that correction is needed in the current modes of doing science. While deep change may need to be done, it is not a radical change. The methodological norms of science are perfectly adequate. What we need is better science. The claim here is often summed up that the problem with current science as practiced is that it is bad science.
Feminist Standpoint:
This issues from Hegel's insights generated from considering the relationship of a master and slave. "[M]en's dominating position in social life results in partial and perverse understandings, whereas women's subjugated position provides the possibility of more complete and less perverse understandings. feminism and the women's movement provide the theory and motivation for inquiry and political struggle that can transform the perspective of women into a "standpoint" - a morally and scientifically preferable grounding for our interpretations and explanations of nature and social life" (26). It should be noted here that it is the political struggle that is primary here. It is that which drives the epistemology.
There are tensions in this view however:
1. Those who are committed to empiricism do not want to admit that the identity of the observer affects objectivity. Thus, pragmatically standpoint is less viable than feminist empiricism, since it is less acceptable to those to whom these theories are supposed to appeal.
2. The more significant tension I hold is that an explanation must be given as to whether there can be one standpoint or whether there must be many. That is, must there be a lesbian, feminist standpoint and a male African American working class standpoint since each is oppressed in different ways. If we do say that there are multiple standpoints how do we adjudicate among them especially when they compete with each other. The postmodernist wants to claim that reality does not have a structure until we give one to it. Harding notes that postmodernism influences both feminist empiricism and standpoint.
Neither feminist empiricism nor standpoint assert that objectivity is increases via value neutrality as does "normal science". Rather a commitment to democratic values is what increases objectivity. As I noted above she will later call this strong objectivity in her Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?
Feminist Postmodernism:
This approach challenges the assumptions on which the other two feminist epistemologies are based. Universal claims (and thus all of science) are viewed with great suspicion. However, it allows one to accommodate the fractured lives that was noted above. That is, that one can be identified along many axes of oppression. "From this perspective, feminist claims are more plausible and less distorting only insofar as they are grounded in a solidarity between these modern fractured identities and between the politics they create."
Harding (28) notes the tension here that this approach gives up speaking of a reality. I want to claim that this makes it fundamentally unacceptable for feminism qua political movement. To give up talk of reality is to give up talk of oppression occurring anywhere but in my imagination and that is surely a counterproductive move for a liberatory movement to make. That is not to say that interesting and important insights cannot be garnered from postmodernism, but it is to say that it cannot be primary in a liberatory politics. Harding later (137) notes that "feminists who deny the possibility of access to a real world and an objective standpoint appear to cut off the possibility of a degendered science at all. It all comes down to struggles for power. If so the case is extremely bleak for the feminist since those who are adamantly anti-feminist seem to be in ascendancy. Certainly we want to have in our arsenal the claim that they are just simply wrong.
Chapter 6: From Feminist Empiricism to Standpoint Epistemologies
A central question of concern is whether feminism can offer a generalizable epistemology. That is, can it offer an epistemology that is adequate for various uses and persons. Relativistic responses as I've noted are inadequate.
Harding (142f.) gives 5 reasons why inquiry from feminist standpoints can provide understandings not possible from a traditional perspective.
1. The unity of hand, brain and heart in craft labor:
This reason is developed by Hilary Rose.
Feminist science is craft labor rather than industrialized labor. The mystifying abstractions of bourgeois science result from the separation of mental and manual labor in capitalism. This is obviously a Marxist analysis. But feminism wants to go further and note that much female labor is simply unacknowledged. The beginnings of feminists knowledge is in these subjugated knowledges - those that have been submerged in and marginalized by society as a whole.
In locations where craft science is still possible such as biology and the social sciences Rose detects more complete and "truer" knowledge.
2. Women's subjugated activity - sensuous, concrete, relational:
This is developed by Nancy Hartsock and is also post-Marxist.
Women's activity is sensuous - childbearing and rearing. Women care for the body. The inadequacies of Marxist analysis are evident here because Marxism too ignores the "production of persons" which is performed mainly by women. Hartsock uses object relations theory to show that women and men are made and not born. That is we are shaped into the roles that we have.
Hartsock's grounds for a standpoint are both narrower and broader than Rose's. It is narrower in that Hartsock sees the tendency toward a feminist epistemology in political struggle and theory and not simply in the characteristic experience of women. That is, while women's experience may be a necessary condition it is not a sufficient one for standpoint. It is broader than Rose in that any engaged inquiry that starts form the categories and valuations of women's domestic labor provides a grounding for epistemology. Here it seems implicit that men may participate and this is not the case with Rose.
The result is an epistemology that is based in the lived experience of women's subjugation for which being a woman in neither necessary nor sufficient for attaining and helping to develop a standpoint.
3. The "Return of the Repressed" in Feminist Theory:
As we saw last week this approach is developed by Jane Flax.
Feminist philosophy is the return of the repressed. The male self is frozen in an infantile need to dominate others. Flax's analysis shows the limitations in the ability of traditional philosophy to take into account the experience of women and children because it takes the male to be paradigmatically human. The infantile dilemmas in which men are caught are more easily resolved for women than they are for men.
Flax finds the notion of a single standpoint to be problematic. Standpoints are necessarily partial on her view. Harding (155) notes that a problem with Flax is that she is making claims about social relations and yet denies any objective basis for knowledge. There is then a reflexivity problem here.
A possible response is that the whole move of Flax's is a political one. Yet if so this is a response that cannot be publically made since that would not be politically efficacious. Thus, we are forced to take her at her word and this too seems to be politically inefficacious.
4. The Bifurcated Consciousness of Alienated Women Inquirers:
This is a view developed by Smith. Harding first notes that Smith is context specific although she claims she is generalizable.
There are 3 aspects of women's work here that are important.
1. The work of women relieves men of responsibility to care for their own bodies and physical existence.
2. The labor of women shapes men's conceptions. I.e., it allows men to be and to think about the abstract rather than the concrete.
3. The labor of women is incomprehensible to men and thus invisible from the male point of view.
5. New Persons and the Hidden hand of history:
It is historical changes that make feminist epistemology possible. 18th and 19th century feminisms were utopian in nature. Their diagnosis of the causes of sexism and prescriptions for change show that they did not grasp the complexity of domination. Liberal, Marxist, radical and socialist feminisms do not have a conceptual framework that is large enough or flexible enough either. Relations between genders had to change first.
Understanding the historical moment had to occur; the feminization of poverty, the rise in divorce, civil rights movement and other radicalisms are important to understanding standpoint.
Feminist empiricism challenges traditional empiricism in at least 3 ways:
1. It questions the assumption that the social location of the observer is not relevant. Women as a group are more likely to select representative problems.
2. It notes that the norms of science themselves seem biased.
3. It argues that there is and must be politics in science - a politics of emancipation.
These problems in traditional science lead, Harding (162) thinks to standpoint epistemology.
Chapter 7: Other "Others" and Fractured Identities: Issues for Epistemologists.
Harding here looks at some of the problems and inconsistencies in standpoint epistemology. There are three questions that she asks here. Is a standpoint possible only for women? Are who and especially feminists a group in the relevant sense necessary for a standpoint? And Is their a single feminist standpoint or are there multiple ones? Harding's strategy here is to embrace this as a conflict about which she feels ambivalence. That is, especially with regard to the question of whether there is one or multiple feminist standpoints she does not want to claim one valence and reject the other. But such indecision and ambivalence is not necessarily bad she wants to claim.
"At this point, I need to remind the reader that from the theoretical perspective of this study, tensions, contradictions, and ambivalences within and between theories are not always bad. Coherent theories in an obviously incoherent world are either silly and uninteresting or oppressive and problematic, depending upon the degree of hegemony they manage to achieve. Coherent theories in an apparently coherent world are even more dangerous, for the world is always more complex than such unfortunately hegemonous theories can grasp. These homilies for a postmodern consciousness are anathema to the modernist consciousness, especially to philosophical modernism; but it is the modernist consciousness that is the problem in this study. The ambivalences within feminism are fruitful guides to the regularities and underlying causal tendencies in the social world within which such theory construction occurs." (164).
Feminism then on Harding's account is willing to live with contradictions and inconsistencies. While at first this does seem to be anathema to "modernist philosophy", it needs to be noted that Harding is also claiming a realism for feminism. Feminism uses such (seeming?) contradictions and ambivalences as "fruitful guides to the regularities and underlying causal tendencies in the social world." Thus, these contradictions seem to be a result of epistemological problems and not some sort of ontological claim - at least on Harding's part.
She goes on to note that there are similarities here between feminist and African worldviews (165f.). Women and Africans share a very similar ontology, ethics and epistemology. Both views reject the denuded self that has been the object of recent communitarian critiques from the conservatism of MacIntyre to the radicalism of Hoagland. In general Europeans and men tend to see the self as individualistic and self-interested. The community is then a collection of autonomous individuals. Nature is something that is other and is to be controlled. With regard to ethics men and Europeans tend to be rule governed and concerned with the competing rights of individuals. In epistemology there is a radical separation of the knower and the known. Africans and women tend to see the self as dependent and relational. The community is ontologically and morally more important than the individual. The ethics of women and Africans emphasizes responsibility. Their epistemology contextualizes the knower.
There are problems with pointing out these commonalities between these two groups. The first is that they are in fact socially constructed groups. They do not occur or exist in isolation. Thus, 'African' is a construct of the west that was used for centuries in colonialization. There is also a problem of ahistoricity. 'African' refers to hundreds of vastly different cultures over time. Its use can intimate that colonialization effected little change. (It should be noted here that Harding is greatly concerned with the legacy of colonialization and its continuation in new and insidious forms. See her new anthology The "Racial" Economy of Science : Toward a Democratic Future . Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1993.)
An additional problem with a comparison between these two worldviews is that they are what she calls 'contrast schemas'. That is, there were developed in the attempt of western white bourgeois men to define and control the other. She notes that neither Africans nor women acknowledges the dichotomies of the other one. African women of all continents then disappear since the idealized subject of Africans is African and male and that of feminists is a white women.
Harding considers and rejects three possible explanations of this "coincidence". It is not the case that there is a biological explanation. This is not an essentialism that she is claiming here. It is not the case that women and Africans are essentially different from whites and men. Both race and gender on her view are social constructs and thus certainly not a matter of biology.
It is not the case that the difference between folk thought and scientific thought gives us this coincidence. That is, it is not the case that women and Africans are engaged in folk thought and men and whites engaged in scientific thought. Folk thought she claims is often an implicit appeal to authority; it would thus be a tool of whites and males and not Africans and women. She also notes that the other possibility scientific thought is socially constructed in that our very notions of rationality are socially constructed.
Finally, it is not the case that all of this is a consequence of gender relations. Some radical feminists, especially those influenced by object relations theory hold that gender distinctions is primary - that it is the basis of all other oppressive distinctions.
There needs to be the equivalent of a "unified field theory" here to explain the commonalties and differences that she has explicated above. Both 'woman' and 'African' need to be "categories of challenge". They developed as the mirror image of 'man' and 'European'. They did not refer to anything but rather referred to an absence to lapse into postmodern-speak. Both Afro-centrist and feminist qua female-centered movements try to define the respective other without reference to what is (or rather what has been thought to be) "primary'.
She claims (187f.) that common to the oppression of both groups is domination understood in Marxist terms. That is, that conceptualization is transferred to the dominant while the oppressed are executors of the wishes of the dominant.
Harding (191) moves back to a consideration of postmodernism.
Since women are oppressed they have a better conception of reality. European men thus have a doubly distorted view of reality. One can add here that the distortion is even more severe for straight and bourgeois men. The standpoint of African women would then be better and, a fortiori , that of lesbian poor Africans. Harding notes that there is no 'woman' to whom anyone can appeal in their effort to make and epistemology (or for that matter, anything else). Rather, there are women who are located in multiple and complex locations. She (193) notes that postmodernists like Flax then go on to claim that there can be (or perhaps, keeping Devitt's demand that we do metaphysics before epistemology, that we can know) no structure to reality without a falsely universalizing perspective.
Harding (194) notes that postmodern feminism is political unlike much other strains of postmodernism. This points to tensions in postmodernism which she does not discuss in any detail, but which I shall discuss below. Harding claims that nonetheless postmodernism and especially feminist postmodernism offers valuable tools for feminism.
Standpoint "epistemologies appear committed to trying to tell the "one true story" about ourselves and the world around us that the postmodernist epistemologies regard as a dangerous fiction" (195). To do otherwise is to give up science and the tools that are present in science. That is, to give up telling one true story is a politically dangerous move - to do so leaves science in modernist hands. "Feminists cannot afford to give up the successor science projects; they are central to transferring the power to change social relations from the "haves" to the "have-nots.""
Postmodernism can help us envisage a future, but we need to avoid a full-fledged postmodernism that cannot effect its own vision.
Chapter 10: Valuable Tensions and a New "Unity of Science"
Traditional science is full of tensions. Here again Harding notes that this is not necessarily a problem since stability and coherence are not necessarily desirable features in a theory. Our social life, from which theories issue, changes faster than our theories can. Therefore, there is no possibility of "normal science" in a Kuhnian sense.
There are three essential tensions (sorry for the pun, but it was irresistible) in feminism here. The first is that central strains of feminism present it as a totalizing theory. Gender domination is ubiquitous. Others take that there can be no totalizing theory. Once we deconstruct the notion of 'woman' were are left only with various "hyphenated phrases" e.g., African-woman, poor-woman, lesbian-(woman), etc. All on this view is "hyphenated". If there were the case, it seems to me to be a wonder that we can communicate at all.
The second tension concerns whether we should construct a successor science or deconstruct science altogether. Harding (246) wants to claim that this is an apparent opposition. There are good reasons to pursue both projects - "Each requires the success of the other, for an adequate successor science will have to be grounded in resources provided by differences in woman's social experiences and emancipatory projects; and an effective deconstruction of our culture's powerful science requires an equally powerful solidarity against regressive and mystifying modernist forces" (246). But as I shall discuss below this seems to be the very sort of thing that a postmodernism cannot do. Harding above intimates this point as well. Her position here seems to be inconsistent. To the extent that the postmodernist is attempting to show that there is no possibility of stable knowledge she seems to be in a project one of whose aims must be to eliminate science. Perhaps Harding's point is a repetition of her earlier one that postmodernism has useful tools to offer, but if so she does not say so here.
The third tension is between a unitary or a fragmented voice for feminism. "I argue for the primacy of fragmented identities but only for those healthy ones constructed on a solid and nondefensive core identity, and only within a unified opposition, a solidarity against the culturally dominant forces for unitarianism" (247). Harding is then arguing for her position by referring and appealing to an independent criterion; thus, her position is not ultimately a postmodern one.
Harding (249) claims that objectivity is not maximized by value-neutrality. Rather, only coercive values - sexism, racism, heterosexism, classism, etc. have a negative impact on objectivity. Elsewhere (Whose Science? Whose Knowledge - chp. 6 especially if memory serves me right) she expands on this point. Here central claim with regard to science seems to be as follows: "It has been and should be moral and political beliefs that direct the development of both the intellectual and social structures of science. The problematics, concepts, theories, methodologies, interpretations of experiments, and uses have been and should be selected with moral and political goals in mind, not merely cognitive ones" (250). Thus, physics is at the apex if we assess value via cognitive criteria and at the nadir if we use moral and political criteria. Furthermore, she wants to claim that it is liberatory democratic values that should direct our science.
Harding too then has criteria for deciding theoretical adequacy. We must appeal to democratic values and realize that these enhance rather than interfere with objectivity.
Standpoint is better because it leads to better knowledge, if one holds that knowledge is a fundamentally social endeavor. That is, this or that women is not in a better epistemic position in virtue of being a woman, but the group woman is in a better position in virtue of their ability to understand more of the world. That is, women know what is relevant and important from their perspective and from the masculine one. This is not to say that this changes the fact that hydrogen has one electron or even influences the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. I do not and I think Harding does not want our epistemology to determine our metaphysics, that is, she seems at least to be nominally a realist. The influence that standpoint plays is one in what is valued in science. To claim that we value nothing is to already have an implicit value system. Since it is implicit it is not recognized or challenged by the mainstream science. Thus, both the negative and positive effects of such a value system are imported into science. Since society is sexist, racist, heterosexist, classist, etc. this leads to a science that reflects these axes of oppression. Her alternative is to be open about the values we import into science and to make sure that they are democratic values. These are values that are explicit and thus open to criticism and correction.
As a political endeavor is successful. It highlights the oppression that women and other "minority" groups have faced and continue to face. It claims that these axes of oppression are deep. that is, it is not the case that a one day seminar will rid any one of sexism. Rather, it is an ongoing struggle. It seeks to include voices and ideas that have been lost or silenced through this oppression. The chief problem is in describing it as an epistemological struggle. But many of these objections are specious. How is it that women qua women have access to special or different knowledge. But this is not the claim. It is rather that as a group that has been oppressed and seen what the oppressor has relegated to the margins that the oppressed have the ability to see and work with that which had been relegated to the margins. Thus, being a women is neither necessary nor sufficient for having a feminist standpoint. The experience of being oppressed generates a possibility that is not always actualized for their being new opportunities for knowledge.
The main problem is that an epistemology may be unnecessary to a robust feminism. Feminists can use the techniques that have been developed by epistemologists to show their points. This then avoids controversy that is often accompanied by discussions of feminist epistemology and thus would be a politically wise move. This moves us toward a consideration of feminist empiricism.