Feminist Thought
Feminist Method, Feminist Epistemology

METHOD: i.e. our method of scientific investigation; theory generation

EPISTEMOLOGY:
Etymology: Greek epistEmE knowledge
from epistanai to understand, know
from epi- + histanai to cause to stand

the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially
with reference to its limits and validity
our way of knowing; how we know what we know

Anne Fausto-Sterling
Biology/Scientific Method and Gender

Sandra Harding
Feminist Method, Epistemologies

Sara Ruddick
Maternal Practice, Thinking, Ethics

Carol Gilligan
Moral Decision Making of Women/Girls

What do these authors have in common?
What is their common project?

challenging science as traditionally defined
establishing new methods, standards, and PARADIGMS

Thomas Kuhn
The Nature of Scientific Revolutions
theorizing, hypothesis testing, establishing a paradigm, then more testing, leads to questioning the paradigm, then to paradigm shift new paradigm (e.g. Copernicus)

Feminists theorists, natural and social scientists are engaged in the process of

critiquing old paradigms, inventing new ones

Harding
Whose Science?  Whose Knowledge?

questions existing paradigms of "Western, white male dominated, heterosexual" science

Its assumptions, methods, stnds.

What are assumptions does

W science make?

that scientists can be objective

that there is truth, right answer, linearity, order, regularity, "laws" of physics, etc.

How do fem theorists like Harding, Fausto-Sterling challenge this?

They reveal how the very questions we ask and how we seek to answer them

Even assuming that they are answerable are products of our particular social world

Which is specifically Euro- or Anglo-centric, androcentric, classist, racist, sexist

Harding list three kinds of feminist inquiry:

      1. Feminist empiricism

            Bad science is the problem,

not science as usual

            Feminist lens the solution

            Subjugated are more likely to produce unbiased results

            Does Harding agree?

      2. Feminist standpoint

            Women’s standpoint: a morally and scientifically preferable grounding

for interpretations and explanations of social life

            Based on Hegel’s “master-slave” dichotomy;

later Marx, Lukacs

            Anti-hierarchical, participatory values

     Thus, it is NOT value-free, but rather more explicit about

what its values are

            Problem or “tension”:  women’s experience NOT universal;

Rather, it is filtered through racial, class, ethnic identities

            Thus, “situated knowledge” risks becoming ever more

unique, specific, not generalizable

A problem for theory building?

            Problem of relativism

      3. Feminist post-modernism

            Semiotics, deconstruction, psycholanalysis

            Defy binaries

            Embrace contradictions, complex

Jaggar, “Love and Knowledge:  Emotion in Feminist Epistemology,”  in Jaggar, 2008, 378-391.

Jaggar is arguing for a rethinking of the idea that

Reason and Emotion are anti-thetical

That Emotion “clouds” reason, prevent “reason from prevailing”

In the Western, DUALISTIC tradition
Reason, the mental, the cultural (in the sense of high culture/civilized), universal, the public, the male

Has been contrasted with:

Emotion, the irrational, the physical, the natural, the particular, the private, and the female

How does she call this assertion into question?

By showing that emotion is not a concrete, tangible entity

      Varies across cultures

      Therefore, Western notions of emotion are culturally specific, not universal

It follows then

that not only do emotions vary across cultures, but the human interpretation of their effects, purposes vary as well

Rather than being antithetical to reason, it may, in fact, drawing upon emotion may be a vital part of reasoning

Because reason involves judgment, values

In order make judgments, we have to sense, feel things, feel that they are or are not in keeping with our values

Examples of how the dichotomy of emotion keeps emotion from the public sphere

Examples of how allowing emotion to affect our judgment allows us to make better, more well-reasoned decisions

“Value-free science?”  Story about US sponsored syphilus infections in Guatemala