Feminist ‘epistemology’

Tong’s categories have led us on a long journey. While this has been a speedy journey and we are left rather breathless, our fleeting glimpses of feminist landscapes along the way bring home to us the richness and diversity of feminist thought. We may well feel moved to retrace our steps and study these vistas at our leisure.

For the moment, however, we need to consider something that caught our attention at the start. Notwithstanding our gratitude to Tong’s categories, we recall the reservations many feminists evince about any categorisation of feminist thought—or, for that matter, about the categorisation of any thought whatsoever. Tong herself warns that her categories can prove limiting and distorting. What she has in mind in saying this is that some of the theorists she presents are difficult to fit under one label and may need to be dealt with under several. This notwithstanding, she believes her categories serve a useful analytic purpose. In her own case, they have helped her to locate herself on the spectrum of feminist thought and serve to reveal inconsistencies, or points of growth, or both, in her own understanding of feminism (Tong 1995, p. 8).

Others are much more sceptical about the development of typologies. As we have already seen, Stanley and Wise consider it a quintessentially male thing to do. This is not their only concern. In the typologies they study, they find the types presented in very clear-cut terms with each so definitely separated from the others that there is no overlapping. Moreover, the various positions come to be laid out one after the other, stretching from the ‘most correct’ to the ‘least correct’. Stanley and

Wise, quite rightly, take issue with these forms of typologising. Tong, however, would have to be acquitted of both charges. On the one hand, she explicidy recognises overlaps, acknowledging ‘just how artificial are the boundaries between the various feminist perspectives’. On the other hand, she expresses respect and gratitude for all the perspectives, emphasising that each ‘has made a rich and lasting contribution to feminist thought’ (1995, pp. 7-8).

What, then, about the further charge that making clear-cut classifications of this kind is a very masculine thing to do? That this form of categorising is carried out overwhelmingly by males goes without saying. It reaches its peak in empirical science as we know it, itself a very male affair, and it embodies the desire to have control of things and to know what is likely to happen. It issues in the kind of binary opposites we have found feminists, especially postmodernist feminists, decrying so vigorously—antinomies such as thought/language, nature/culture, reason/emotion, theory/practice, white/black, and especially men/women. Not that all males do such categorising or create these hierarchical oppositions without question. As we have already seen in Chapter 6 and will see again in Chapter 9, there are male thinkers aplenty who have argued, for quite some time and in quite radical fashion, against categorisation of this kind. Theodor Adorno, for one, never failed to assail the view of the ‘concept’ that lies at the root of all such categorisation.

Feminists arguing against this categorising and these oppositions do so from a special standpoint, however. Where, for others engaging in this debate, the male/female antinomy is one binary opposite among many, for feminists it tends to be the binary opposite, serving as a synecdoche for all the others. Thus, in a paper delivered at the University of Leicester in 1978 and cited by Stanley and Wise (1983, p. 29), Dale Spender asserts that ‘few, it appears, have questioned our polarisation of reason/emotion, objectivity/subjectivity, reality/phantasy, hard data/soft data and examined them for links with our polarisation of male/female’. The emphasis in this citation is ours, not Spender’s. It is added because it is the linking of the issue to the feminist question and feminist critique that distinguishes the questioning of binary oppositions by feminists from the questioning that has taken place in modernist and postmodernist thought more generally.

Needing to be viewed in much the same light is Chester’s claim that radical feminism offers ‘a much more optimistic and humane vision of change than the male-defined notion of the building towards a revolution at some point in the distant future, once all the preparations have been made’ (1979, p. 15). Chester believes that one of the most important attitudes she has learned from radical feminism has been to ‘bring revolutionary change within the realm of the possible’. The notion of building towards a future revolution is indeed found in male thinkers and may well be seen as male-defined. Once again, however, it has to be said that not all males have thought in this fashion. Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed, considered in the last chapter, is a praxis requiring the oppressed to reflect and act now and he denies that it ‘could be divided into a prior stage of reflection and a subsequent stage of action’ (1972a, p. 99). Freire is forever underlining that revolution is possible. In his ‘problem-posing’ pedagogy, as we have noted, the oppressed come to understand their situation, not as ‘a dense, enveloping reality or a tormenting blind alley’ (Freire 1972a, p. 81), not as ‘fetters or . . . insurmountable barriers’ (1972a, p. 72), but as a challenge that can and must be met.

It may therefore be important to qualify claims like Chester’s about specifically feminist insights. Perhaps there is place for a caveat like that entered by Seigfried when writing of the feminine traits she finds within pragmatism. Seigfried is careful to note that these ‘can be understood as the expression of a feminine style without implying that all women think this way or that no men do’ (1991, p. 11). Similarly, we find Assiter expressing scepticism about the role assigned to ‘feminine desire’ by Irigaray, that is, its capacity to reveal as illusory ‘the hypothesis that the symbolic realm gives us access to knowledge and certainty’. We do not need female desire to reveal the impossibility of acquiring certain knowledge, Assiter insists (1996, p. 47). ‘This claim has been questioned by “phallocentric” male philosophers as diverse as Hegel, Wittgenstein and Feyerabend (and this is to exclude Derrida and Lacan).’

Qualifying such feminist claims—or, better, making clear what is distinct about them—has importance. If feminist insights are seen as hinging on their being in themselves uniquely feminine insights, the claims themselves may be facilely dismissed and the value of the insights unappreciated if it can be shown that few women share them or that a number of men do. The real point is, not that feminists gain insights never glimpsed by others, especially not by males, but that, as feminist insights, they are grounded in, and stem from, a specifically feminist standpoint. Adorno may rail against classification but he does so on different grounds. His is a different critique from that of Spender, therefore. Chester’s awareness of the need to see change as possible and to take action now is different from Freire’s awareness of this need. Hers has been taught to her, as she states, by radical feminism. It stems from a specifically feminist standpoint, is set against a feminist backdrop, and for that reason is to be seen as a critique distinct from that of Freire.

A specifically feminist standpoint? That is surely more correct than any talk of the specifically feminist standpoint. Assiter concurs with Jane Flax in arguing that, because there cannot be just one way in which patriarchy permeates thinking, there cannot be just one women’s standpoint. Where Assiter locates feminist unity is not in a single standpoint, for ‘it is certainly the case that there is a multiplicity of standpoints, values, oudooks amongst feminists’, but in ‘collective commitment to the undermining of oppressive gender-based power relations’. This commitment constitutes ‘a shared set of values that makes feminists feminist’ (Assiter 1996, p. 88).

Here Assiter is casting doubt on ‘the idea of a specifically women’s epistemological standpoint’ (1996, p. 88). She does not hold that women ‘know’ in a different way from men so that a group of women would, together, inevitably have a specifically women’s form of knowledge. ‘Rather than suggesting that an epistemological stance follows from the identity of the group holding it’, writes Assiter (1996, p. 89), ‘my own position allows for a multiplicity of individuals to come together, in an epistemic community, so long as the members of that community share certain values in common’.

In adopting this position, Assiter is setting herself against what has been a very strong current in feminist thought. Alcoff and Potter write of ‘feminist epistemology’ and of how feminist theorists ‘have used the term variously ‘to refer to women’s “ways of knowing”, “women’s experience”, or simply “women’s knowledge’” (1993, p. 1).

The use of the word ‘epistemology’ in this context is problematic. Alcoff and Potter recognise that the usage is ‘alien to professional philosophers and to epistemology “proper”’ (1993, p. 1). If talk of women having their own epistemology is taken to mean that the fundamental act of knowing is different for women, this has enormous, and unwelcome, consequences. How does one know what one knows? What is the relationship between the knower and the known? What status is to be ascribed to knowledge? In other words, what truth claims can be made on its behalf? These are epistemological questions and, if one must answer them in a radically different way when referring to women, women emerge as alien beings indeed and one wonders how there could ever be dialogue of any kind between them and males.

‘Feminine epistemology’ can, however, be understood in another sense—one that suggests, not that women know in a way fundamentally different from that of men, but that they theorise the act of knowing in a way different from that of men. In ‘doing’ epistemology, they express concerns, raise issues and gain insights that are not generally expressed, raised or gained by male epistemologists. Few would want to quarrel with that.

Still, many feminists would not be content with that version of ‘feminine epistemology’. They insist that women’s knowing is, in important respects, different from that of men. Some might accept that they are talking about women’s psychology, or their philosophical anthropology perhaps, rather than women’s epistemology. Their sociology, even? Fonow and Cook, after all, take epistemology to mean ‘the study of assumptions about how to know the social and apprehend its meaning’ (1991, p. 1). Yet it would be impoverishing to let semantics impede our engagement with this important stream of feminist thought.

Gilligan (1982) has been very influential in suggesting that women speak ‘in a different voice’. She believes women and men have different ways of perceiving the world and relating to it. Their concept of the self is different. In particular, their mode of addressing moral issues is different. For this reason, she takes issue with Kohlberg’s stages of moral development and proceeds to rewrite them so that they take account of the way in which women approach the task of moral reasoning. In all of this, men are seen to set a premium on autonomy, generality, abstract impartiality. Women, on the other hand, prize caring, nurturing, bonding and the formation of interpersonal community. Harding too (1983) is found ‘suggesting (in a way quite similar to that of Gilligan) that the rational is gendered, that is, that it varies according to sex’ (Farganis 1986, p. 181).

Characteristics of the kind postulated by Gilligan and Harding have been used to set women’s forms of research over against male forms of research. Some have gone as far as identifying quantitative research as male and qualitative research as female. In introducing their symposium of writings on ‘feminist scholarship as lived research’, Fonow and Cook (1991, p. 8) reject this point of view. They agree ‘that carefully designed research grounded in feminist theory and ethics is more useful to understanding women’s experiences than an allegiance to any one particular method as more “feminist” than another’. ‘A well crafted quantitative study’, they add, ‘may be more useful to policy makers and cause less harm to women than a poorly crafted qualitative one’.

What Fonow and Cook do see as a ‘major feature of feminist epistemology’ is attention to the affective components of the research act. They refer to ‘women’s greater familiarity with the world of emotions and their meaning’ and the ‘notion that “women care” at both a practical and an interpersonal level’. Then, drawing on the outcomes of Gilligan’s research, they point to the emphasis on caring that emerges in different ways in the essays they have edited. What all this suggests to Fonow and Cook is ‘an attempt among feminist scholars to restore the emotional dimension to the current concepts of rationality’. While recognising similar endeavours within the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, Fonow and Cook see this attention to emotions as part of the critical reflexivity that ‘characterizes feminist approaches to knowledge’ (1991, pp. 9-11).

In this linking of emotion and knowledge, Fonow and Cook look to Alison Jaggar. Jaggar identifies ‘a continuous feedback loop between our emotional constitution and our theorizing such that each continually modifies the other and is in principle inseparable from it’. To recognise this is to embrace an ‘alternative epistemological model’, one that ‘shows how our emotional responses to the world change as we conceptualize it differendy, and how our changing emotional responses then stimulate us to new insights’. In this model an important role is ascribed to what Jaggar calls ‘oudaw’ emotions. These are conventionally unacceptable emotional responses, as when people of colour respond to a racist joke with anger rather than amusement, or when women experience discomfort and even fear, instead of flattery, in the face of male sexual banter. Oudaw emotions can inspire new investigations, Jaggar feels, and may lead to different perceptions of the world (1989, pp. 144-8).

As a feminist, Jaggar has particular interest in the oudaw emotions of women. This is not because she accepts ‘the stereotypes of cool men and emotional women’. There is in her essay no parallel to Fonow and Cook’s talk of women’s greater familiarity with emotions and their meaning. To the contrary, as she sees it, ‘there is no reason to suppose that the thoughts and actions of women are any more influenced by emotion than the thoughts and actions of men’. The stereotypes continue to flourish, however, and they lead to the myth of ‘the dispassionate investigator’. This is a very powerful myth. It is classist, racist and especially masculinist.

It functions, obviously, to bolster the epistemic authority of the currently dominant groups, composed largely of white men, and to discredit the observations and claims of the currendy subordinate groups, including, of course, the observations and claims of many people of color and women.

The more forcefully and vehemently the latter groups express their observations and claims, the more emotional they appear and so the more easily they are discredited. (Jaggar 1989, p. 142)

It is above all to counter this myth and its consequences that Jaggar proposes her ‘alternative epistemological model’ with the key role it assigns to emotions in general and oudaw emotions in particular. As she points out, ‘some, though certainly not all, of these outlaw emotions are potentially or actually feminist emotions’. How do emotions become feminist emotions? Jaggar’s answer is unequivocal. ‘Emotions become feminist when they incorporate feminist perceptions and values’ (Jaggar 1989, p. 144). In this way, Jaggar comes close to what we have already found Assiter asserting, that is, that a group’s ‘epistemological stance’ does not stem from the identity of the group members (the sheer fact, in this case, that they happen to be women) but arises from their sharing certain values in common (in this case, their collective commitment to undermining oppressive gender-based power relations). As Stanley and Wise point out (1990, p. 27), a feminist standpoint is ‘a practical achievement, not an abstract “stance”’. It demands, Harding tells us (1987, p. 185), an ‘intellectual and political struggle’. Farganis agrees (1986, p. 196): ‘Feminism is a movement to change the way one looks at the world and feminist theory is part of that struggle’.

Source: Michael J Crotty (1998), The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, SAGE Publications Ltd; First edition.