Olson, Gary and Elizabeth Hirsch. Women Writing Culture. New York: SUNY Press, 1995.

 

"Introduction"

 

"Starting from Marginalized Lives: A Conversation with Sandra Harding"

Sandra Harding is concerned with both the meaning and method of science, and uses a transdisciplinary approach which she labels "cross-field appropriation" (p.4) to develop "strong objectivity". She argues that rather than presuming the traditional "view-from-nowhere", objectivity is optimized by starting at specific lived locations. Futhermore, these specific lived locations should be those of people and groups who have traditionally been excluded from the production of knowledge. For already privileged groups, she calls for self-reflexive theorizing which critically interrogates their role within relations of power. Calling her model "standpoint epistemology", Harding proposes that this ethically and socially informed framework will produce knowledge that is not only more useful, but more "objective". In this way she steers a course between what Haraway calls the "god-trick" of objectivity and the endless slippage of complete relativism. 

Although because of its necessarily partial location, standpoint theory is inherently limited in what it can do and to whom it can speak. However, if knowledge-making is conceived of as an ethical and collective process, then these small located knowledge projects can be seen as contributing to a larger whole, acting as members of a knowledge community rather than standing alone as the products of individual "genius".

In examining the meaning of science, Harding looks at "science-as-text", and using a variety of academic disciplinary theories, performs textual interpretation as a scientific project. For example, she applies the history of colonialism and European expansionism to an exploration of global scientific practices and discourses. She argues that "[t]hese are not universal voices; our voices emerge out of a particular historical tradition that has a determinate relationship with a variety of other scientific traditions…"(p.12) Although she is concerned with the development of a more strongly objective method, she notes the importance of examining "the paradigms, the conceptual frameworks, within which methods are defined."(p.15) She analyzes the project of making theoretical methods and frameworks; how they come to be developed and informed by various social assumptions; what strategic implications they hold, and so forth. As Code has indicated, much of traditional epistemology and scientific practice has encoded relations of masculinity and femininity in its methods and discourse, such that the problem is not the sexism of individual theorists, but rather an entire set of structural relations predicated on the exclusion and derogation of women.

Having noted these structural relations informed by hierarchy, Harding then turns her attention to an examination of the role of marginality in making good theory. As she argues, "The problem is that we've had subjective accounts--or ethnocentric accounts… So, strong objectivity is an issue, to put it in an extremely simplistic way, of learning to see ourselves as others see us… It's an argument for stepping outside of the conceptual framework, starting off research projects, starting off our thought about any particular phenomenon, from outside the dominant conceptual framework." (p.16) Harding feels that the perspectives of those who have traditionally been marginalized will provide good critical inquiry into the values and epistemologies of hegemonic theory and practice.

This emphasis on science as a holistic and multifaceted project leads Harding to link together "strong forms of three terms: reflexivity, objectivity, and method." (p.17) These three terms develop through mutual engagement and frame the question of how to do research. Strong reflexivity is produced through an active understanding and interrogation of the researcher's role in making theory, "that the observer changes, interacts with the object of observation…"(p.17) Strong objectivity requires not only acknowledging the specificities of one's own subject positioning, but critically engaging with that subject positioning to analyze assumptions and conceptual frameworks which inform one's inquiry. Significant here is the acknowledgement that dominant groups can use their privilege as a resource to make critically informed social theory.

What, then, does a feminist standpoint look like? Harding takes issue with feminists who argue that there is one feminist method, proposing instead that what defines a feminist method is, in part, its refusal to be categorized. However, a feminist method is one that remains a consciously articulated political approach which does not presume theoretical neutrality. Returning to the notion of a standpoint, a method grounded in a feminist standpoint is one which tries to use women's experiences as a basis for generating knowledge that is generally useful and ethically informed. Harding does identify two limitations to standpoint theory: its situation within a particular historical and social context (e.g. post-Enlightenment, Europe-based, etc.); and that it is difficult to "convince" empirical researchers of its validity if they do not see the value of relating cultural practices and frameworks to scientific knowledge projects. She acknowledges that like feminism, science has both regressive and progressive potential, and she sees "objectivity" as one such potentially progressive aspect, which has strategic advantages within Western culture.

 

"Writing, Literacy and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing"

Writing and the play of language is central to the work of Donna Haraway. She proposes that literacy has a political dimension in its implication in the relations of knowledge and power, such that "literacy projects… are freedom projects."(p.46) Literacy, in Haraway's model, need not be restricted to linguistic literacy, but encompasses the power of critical engagement with a variety of social and cultural institutions and meanings. Scientific practice is one such institution that comes under such scrutiny. Casting this practice as a narrative which has, for the most part, obliterated other stories while pretending they do not exist, "the crucial political action that women and people of other marginalized groups must take is to 'refigure the terms of that story', to re-narrate, to 'produce a female symbolic where the practice of making meanings is in relationship to each other, where you're not simply inheriting the name of the father again and again.'"(p.47)  In Haraway's model, new forms of narrative do not simply subsume the old, but "widen the number and kinds of stories that get told and the actors who tell them."(p.47)

Thus Haraway is significantly concerned with literacy and writing as a political project. She proposes "cyborg writing" as a form of oppositional consciousness. Writing, for Haraway, involves a conscious acknowledgement of "our own implication in meaning-making materiality."(p.49) As both material work and imaginative process, writing bridges the gap between desire and experience. Critical literacy work is fundamental to critical engagement with larger structures of ideology and discourse, and to applying lived experience to an examination of relations of power. Returning to the subject of scientific literacy, Haraway notes that "the political project, the freedom project, the democracy project in science and technology is about the engagement of people whose ways of life are at stake in the apparatus of the production of knowledge and systems of action."(p.54) Echoing Hill Collins' "outsider-within" model, and Harding's marginal standpoint model, Haraway also states that "[t]he interesting epistemological, emotional, political position is from the point of view of those who must live in relation to systems of commensurability that cannot be theirs, ever."(p.55) However, Haraway is careful to note that while she also is interested in producing situated knowledges, her project is much more postmodern than that of Hartsock and Harding. She is concerned that the standpoint remain dynamic, always remain in process of constant negotiation, rather than "mistaking these irreducible narrative and generic immersions for the thing itself; the thing I'm against is a kind of idolatry that mistakes the sign for the thing."

 

"Composition, Collaboration, and Women's Ways of Knowing: A Conversation with Mary Belenky"

 

"Feminist Praxis and the Politics of Literacy: A Conversation with bell hooks"

 

"'Je-Luce Irigaray': A Meeting with Luce Irigaray"

 

"Resisting a Discourse of Mastery: A Conversation with Jean-Francois Lyotard"

 

"Writing the Space of the Public Intellectual: Afterword to Women Writing Culture"