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Home , Feminist empiricism, Feminist epistemology, Feminist philosophy, Standpoint feminism

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Feminist and the politics of : questions of marginality

Lorraine Code

Epistemology was a late-comer to feminist silence the sceptic. Any hint of and critique. Although various such as is implicit in the suggestion that sex – a explanations for its tardiness might be non-intellectual, non-rational, individual advanced, central among them must surely characteristic of putative knowers – could be the intransigence of a conviction that, play a constitutive part in the production of while and politics might well be knowledge threatened to undermine the shaped by relations and human founding principles of ‘the epistemological ‘differences’, knowledge worthy of the project’. It unsettled taken-for-granted beliefs (honorific) title must transcend all such spe- about human sameness across putatively cificities. Thus, although feminist ethical incidental and inconsequential bodily differ- and political theory were rapidly growing ences, and thus appeared to contest the very areas of inquiry during the 1960s and 1970s, possibility of achieving knowledge worthy only in the 1980s was a set of questions and of the name. It is no surprise, therefore, that proposals articulated to address the possi- few epistemologists, feminists or other, bility that there could, after all, be so seem- would have given an affirmative answer to ingly oxymoronic an area of inquiry as my 1981 question: ‘Is the sex of the knower . In twentieth-century epistemologically significant?’ (Code, 1981). Anglo-American there were Indeed, to some interlocutors the implica- good reasons for such resistance. Episte­ tions of responding in the affirmative seemed, mologists sought to establish universal, in those early days, to suggest that if indeed necessary and sufficient conditions for the the sex of the knower were declared episte- of knowledge in general: knowl- mologically significant, then it would be to edge that could serve as a model at which the detriment of women’s aspirations to knowledge-seeking as such should aim – knowledgeability. It would consolidate the that could yield empirical , and time-worn assumption that women could not

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know in the well-established, descriptive usually in token substitutions of female for and normative, sense of the word. male pronouns: instead of ‘Sam knows that Yet whether such a confirmation would the book is green’ we read ‘Sally knows that amount to reaffirming women’s epistemic the book is green’. Ordinarily, such knowl- marginality is a more subtle issue. So long edge claims are made about perceptual ‘sim- as the view prevails that women cannot ples’: they refer to medium-sized physical know according to the highest criteria for objects that are presumptively part of every- establishing knowledge, it seems that they day life in the materially replete are in fact not just marginalized but tacitly taken for granted as the backdrop for excluded, confined somewhere beyond the references to such knowing. Normally, too, limits of both marginality and centrality. the sex of the knower would in such circum- This way of putting the point may exceed stances be regarded as of no greater the parameters of an analysis designated significance than the size of her or his feet, specifically to address marginality, but I while her or his race, ethnicity, sexuality, think it does not stretch the purpose of the age would figure not at all in the analysis. In discussion to observe that in at least one short, the formal structure of empiricist/ sense of the word, in one central exclusion- post-positivist twentieth-century Anglo- ary preserve – namely, universities and American epistemology prior to the feminist other institutions of higher education – challenges of the 1980s was such as to rein- when women are refused admission then the force settled presumptions of human homo- implication seems to be that they cannot geneity. know, that they are incapable of, not mar- The idea that the sex of the knower could ginalized within, the kinds of knowledge be epistemologically significant gives rise to disseminated there. So even moving to the a range of questions about knowledge and fringes in the form of women’s colleges, subjectivity which were just as startling at colleges of ‘home economics’, nursing first posing, but have come to be integral to schools is, in the institutions of knowledge- subsequent feminist inquiry. No longer is production and validation, already a move ‘the knower’ imaginable as a self-contained, to the margins – if indeed only there. When infinitely replicable ‘individual’ making uni- women are restricted to studying/learning in versally valid knowledge claims from a such institutions, which claim less prestige ‘god’s eye’ position removed from the inci- than universities, they clearly are marginal- dental features and the power and privilege ized, both institutionally and epistemologi- structures of the physical–social world. Once cally (cf. Rossiter, 1982: esp. 65–70, 240). inquiry shifts to focus (following Haraway, Nonetheless, with respect to the content 1988) on ‘situated ’, it is no and methodology of the empirical knowl- longer feasible to assume before the fact edge that functions as exemplary for early- which aspects of situatedness be signifi- to-mid-twentieth-century epistemologists, cant for the production, evaluation and circu- both descriptively and normatively, the con- lation of knowledge. Inquiry opens out into tention that women are marginalized is apt in analyses of multiple intersecting specificities the sense – and this is no small point – that of subjectivity and positionality in their the subject S, in the standard S-knows-that-p social, political and thence epistemological formula in which propositional knowledge implications for the production of knowledge claims are ordinarily stated, is presump- and knowers; and into questions about credi- tively male to the extent that there is no need bility, marginality, epistemic responsibility even to mention his maleness. That he is and the politics of testimony, none of which white and of the privileged classes is also an would have been meaningful in the discourse uncontested given. Thus women enter the of orthodox epistemology. My analysis in philosophical scene as would-be knowers this essay pivots on these questions.

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BEGINNINGS not individuals, who are the knowers: their background assumptions shape knowledge In the mid-1980s , in The as process and product. In genetic research, Science Question in (Harding, Longino shows how assumption-(value-) 1986), began to map the developing theoretical driven differences in knowledge-production divisions in feminist epistemological inquiry, contest the possibility of value-. Yet first distinguishing between feminist empiri- she endorses community respect for evidence cism and feminist . and accountable, collaborative cognitive Empiricists, on this analysis, sought to develop . Similarly, Lynn Hankinson Nelson a method of evidence-gathering that would be (1990) develops from (Quinean) ‘naturalised cleansed of , paying attention to epistemology’ a neo- for which evidence neglected or discounted as worthy of again communities, not individuals, are the notice in received theories of knowledge. The primary knowers; and knowers come to evi- idea was that an empiricism committed to dence through webs of , open to com- objective evidence-gathering and justification, munal endorsement and critique. Because yet informed by feminist ideology, could pro- those who are socially marginalized cannot duce more adequate knowledge than classical realize their emancipatory goals without empiricism, which is ignorant of its complicity understanding the intractable aspects and the in sustaining a ubiquitous sex/gender system. malleable, contestable features of the world, An enhanced sensitivity to such issues enables they have to achieve a fit between knowledge feminists to enlist empiricist tools to expose and ‘’, even when ‘reality’ consists in the , and other ‘isms’ that (often such social artefacts as racism, power, silently) inform knowing. Such exposures or pay equity. Because an empiri- often depend on examining the so-called cism alert to gender-specificity (and, latterly, ‘context of discovery’, where aspects of a situ- a range of other specificities) is well equipped ation, inquiry or experiment are singled out for to achieve just such knowledge, politically investigation, yet where sex/gender specific informed inquiry, according to Harding, features may be ignored or deemed irrelevant yields a better empiricism than the received from the get-go, so to speak. A well-known view allows, based in what she has called example from the 1990s is the tardy recogni- ‘strong ’. tion in cardiac medicine that symptoms sig- Standpoint theorists, by contrast, were nalling heart disease in women commonly turning their attention to the historical– failed to show up in standard tests developed material positioning of women’s practices from testing male patients alone. Only in con- and . For such theorists as sequence of persistent feminist lobbying were (1983) and Hilary Rose testing practices revised to address specifi- (1983), empiricists do not have at their dis- cally female manifestations of the disease posal the conceptual tools required to (Harvard 1994). Investigating assumptions address the historical–material diversity that structure and pervade processes of from which people produce knowledge. experimental design – contexts of discovery – Standard-setting knowledge in western often expose limitations whose effects are societies derives from the experiences of analogously gender-specific. The ‘strong white, middle-class, educated men, with objectivity’ feminist empiricists and standpoint women (like the marxian proletariat) occu- theorists demand, if differently, opens the way pying underclass epistemic positions. As to generating more inclusive, and hence more capitalism ‘naturalizes’ the subordination of just, inquiry than older conceptions of objec- the proletariat, ‘naturalizes’ the tivity had allowed (cf. Harding, 1993). subordination of women; and as examining Hence, for example, in ’s material-social from the standpoint social empiricism (1993), it is communities, of the proletariat denaturalizes these

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assumptions, so starting from women’s lives methods of inquiry. Among its commendable denaturalizes the patriarchal order. A femi- aspects are an acknowledgement of the pro- nist standpoint is a hard-won product of ductive, innovatively postmodern implica- consciousness-raising and social-political tions of feminist inquiry that distances itself engagement in which the knowledge that from the ‘essentialisms’ that characterize enables the oppressed to survive under modernity, with its convictions about the oppression becomes a resource for social singularity of method, the replicability of transformation. knowers, the affect-free nature of knowledge- While these two positions seemed to cap- production and the universality of knowledge ture the principal differences between feminist worthy of the name. approaches to epistemology in the late 1980s, I have noted that a commitment to ‘strong neither empiricist nor objectivity’ seems to inform both feminist succeeded in resolving all of the issues. empiricism and standpoint theory, albeit dif- Empiricists were unable fully to address the ferently. Indeed, cross-fertilizations across power-saturated circumstances of diversely disciplines and methods have often proven located knowers or to pose interpretive ques- more productive than adherence to any meth- tions about how evidence is discursively odological orthodoxy. Nor do all feminists constituted and whose evidence it suppresses cognizant of the differences that in the process. Nor, in the absence of a unified makes hope to achieve a unified standpoint, feminism, could standpoint theorists avoid given that it is impossible to aggregate such obliterating differences. The theory’s ‘located- differences either in their empirical detail or ness’ offered a version of social reality as their effects, and imperialistic to attempt to specific and hence as limited as any other, do so. Hence, (1990) albeit distinguished by its awareness of that advocated an ‘outsider-within’ black feminist specificity. But empiricism’s commitment to standpoint: an Afro-centered epistemology revealing the concealed effects of gender- which she adduces as exemplary of how specificity in knowledge-production cannot knowledge produced in a subordinated and be gainsaid; nor can standpoint theory’s marginalized group can foster resistance to production of faithful, critical, analyses of hegemonic norms while producing knowledge women’s experiences, with its focus on how good of its kind; and Maria Lugones, writing hegemonic values legitimate oppression. from within a different difference from an Thus, in the years since empiricism and stand- uncontested white-affluent advocates point theory seemed to cover the territory, with ‘world travelling and loving ’ addressing anti-epistemological (1987) as a practice that can afford a way of challenges to both, feminists have found these escaping too-particular, self-contained and, alternatives neither mutually exclusive, nor indeed, self-satisfied locations. Donna Hara- able, separately or together, to explain the way (1991) recasts both the subject and the of knowledge-production and object of knowledge as radically located and circulation. Indeed, perhaps a more accurate unpredictable, conceiving of knowledge- reading of the positioning of all three construction as an ongoing process of learn- approaches – , standpoint ing to see, often from positions discredited theory and postmodernism – would be to or marginalized in dominant accounts of emphasize the postmodern implications of all knowledge and reality. Pertinent here is three as they are manifested, for example, in Evelyn Fox Keller’s (1983) biography of a sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit rejec- Nobel laureate geneticist Barbara McClintock, tion of the very possibility of dislocated where she shows a hitherto marginalized (=un-situated) knowledge, epistemic indi- scientist attuned to unexpected differences vidualism, perspective-less a-political know- and anomalies in her objects of study, dwelling ing and top-down positivistic–empiricist with those differences to initiate a major

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theoretical breakthrough. Lorraine Code privileged in the sense that, simply in order (1991; 1995) examines how power and to survive, they must know the structures and privilege yield asymmetrically gendered implications of lives at the centre more accu- standards of authority in medical knowledge, rately than those at the situated at the centre in the experiences of welfare recipients, in have to know their (=marginalized) lives. testimonial credibility and in women’s Thus, for example, workers have to know responses to sexist and racist challenges. how to navigate and negotiate the structures Her ecological model of knowledge and sub- and strictures of the social–political order in jectivity (2006) challenges the hegemony of which they occupy the underclass positions the model of ‘mastery’ that governs main- far better and in greater detail than those at stream Anglo-American epistemology. Taking the centre need to know their (=the work- women’s cognitive experiences seriously ers’) lives. For those at the centre the work- enables feminists, in these diverse ways, to ers are mere place-holders, cogs in the wheel: eschew the and universalism of the detail of their situations beyond their mainstream theory and to examine specifi- place in keeping the machinery, both literal cally located knowing, where theory and and metaphorical, operating smoothly is of practice are reciprocally constitutive and no consequence. Yet standpoint epistemolo- knowers are diversely positioned and active gists, as they came to be called, maintained within them. that starting epistemic inquiry from the posi- Conceptions of ‘margin’ and ‘centre’ have tion of the workers’ lives – and subsequently functioned variously in feminist epistemology, for feminist epistemologists speaking from from critical analyses of the situations of within patriarchy, starting epistemic inquiry putative knowers at the centre or at the mar- from the standpoint of women’s lives – made gins of the social order to the marginalization it possible to see, understand and ultimately of women as philosophers and to the margin- unsettle the structures of centre and margin alization of feminist epistemology within that had been hitherto invisible in ‘one-size- epistemology as such, to name only the most fits-all’ epistemological inquiry. Hence Hart- salient variations. These factors may operate sock, for example, maintains: ‘(L)ike the separately or in concert, but either way they lives of the proletarians according to Marx- work to reinforce a cluster of hierarchical ian theory, women’s lives make available a divisions and evaluations whose effects are particular and privileged vantage point on to sustain patriarchial structures of centre and male supremacy … which can ground a margin within philosophical practices that powerful critique of the phallocratic institu- mirror those within the larger in the tions and ideology which constitute the affluent western–northern world. capitalist form of patriarchy’ (1983: 284). In a landmark analysis of the politics of While such claims have not been univer- marginality in feminist theories of knowledge, sally accepted by feminist theorists, they Bat-Ami Bar On engages critically with the have generated productive debates in the contention that living on the social–political development of a feminist politics of knowl- margins affords in the edge. Following Marx, Bar On notes the sense that ‘subjects located at the social mar- basic idea is that although all knowledge is gins have an epistemic advantage over those perspectival, some perspectives ‘are more located at the social center’ (1993: 85). The revealing than others … [especially] the central idea, derived from Marxist theory and perspectives of [those who] … are socially endorsed in the late 1970s and early 1980s by marginalized in their relations to dominant such socialist feminists as Nancy Hartsock groups’ (1993: 83). The claim, then, would (1983) and Ann Ferguson (1979), is that peo- be that a feminist standpoint gives access to ple who live at a distance from the social– epistemic privilege by of removing epistemological centre are epistemically the blinkers that inhibit a clear view of the

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unnaturalness of the entrenched patriarchal possibilities ‘are of little relevance when order in knowledge, as elsewhere in gen- practical–political processes … clearly struc- dered social–political–epistemological ture the situations under analysis’ (1991: power–knowledge structures. 251). Women’s Ways of Knowing initially These claims are both provocative and garnered some feminist approval for its care- contentious in bringing feminist issues into ful charting and analyses of women’s experi- the hitherto putatively neutral domain of ential reports as these had routinely been epistemology. Noteworthy and in some ways silenced, marginalized in and indeed definitive for thinking, now, about standpoint excluded from the of the is Alison Wylie’s (2003) analysis of ‘why mainstream. Ironically, however, the promise standpoint matters’, especially in social sci- of the analysis was truncated in ways that ence. Numerous questions arise, many of work inadvertently to reproduce women’s which bear on issues of epistemic marginal- marginal status even as they endeavour to ity. Among the most probing is the question contest and challenge it. As I have observed, of whether standpoint really is a theory, or the book ‘risks making of a tyr- more properly a methodology. Wylie writes: anny equivalent to the tyranny of the univer- ‘[T]o do as a standpoint femi- sal, theoretical, and impersonal expertise it nist is to approach inquiry from the perspec- seeks to displace’ largely in the ways the tive of insiders rather than impose upon them authors assume that ‘autobiographical evi- the external categories of professional social dence can be read “straight”, unequivocally, science, a managing bureaucracy, ruling without subtexts, hidden agendas, or gaps in elites’ (2003: 27). Here there is no place, and the narrative line’ (1991: 256). The point is indeed no residual longing, for any idea(l) of not that women’s experiential knowledge a view from nowhere, a god’s eye view, as claims should not be accorded a fair hearing the vantage point from which accurate, neu- after all: the purpose of the project was to tral vision and hence the best objectivity pos- open spaces for just such a hearing. But over- sible can be achieved, nor can ‘the knower’ arching assumption of experiential validity any longer be conceived as a faceless, disem- refuses to bring those experiences into the bodied place-holder in old and now-tired ‘S kinds of conversation, the debates among knows that p’ formulaic knowledge claims. putative ‘equals’, into which experiential Taking subjectivity into account becomes a claims among colleagues and other interloc- worthy and indeed an urgent practice for utors would ordinarily enter. The idea that no feminist epistemologists and moral–political one’s experience can be called ‘wrong’ closes theorists (see Code, 1995). the door on potentially productive discus- Noteworthy and initially promising in the sion: indeed, on the interpretations and 1980s, among attempts to contest the puta- debates feminist consciousness-raising prac- tive neutrality yet tacit of estab- tices sought to foster. Such closure counts lished conceptions of knowledge worthy of among the practices a viable standpoint the name, and the consequent invisibility/ approach aims, I believe, to avoid. erasure of female subjectivity and women’s The question remains open, then, as to experiences, was Belenky et al.’s Women’s whether or how speaking and knowing from Ways of Knowing (1986). In my discussion of the social–epistemic margins truly counts as the text (Code, 1991) I note its appearance on a situation from which epistemic privilege the epistemological scene as a challenge to can be claimed. As Bar On rightly notes, established convictions that it is logically ‘Both the assumption of a single center from possible for every human , at least in which the epistemically privileged, socially principle, ‘to attain knowledge defined as the marginalized subjects are distanced and the ideal product of closely specified reasoning grounding of their epistemic privilege in processes’. Yet I also observe that such logical their identity and practices are problematic’

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(1983: 91). Part of the problem is the pre- in the history of , from the sumably guilt-infused view on the part of at writings of Mary Astell in the eighteenth cen- least some of ‘the privileged’ that, once those tury through to such twentieth-century ­ from the margins speak, because they have sophers and theorists as , hitherto been silenced, there is a tacit obliga- and . Being left tion on the part of the erstwhile silencers to out in this respect involves more than a sim- take them at their word, to refrain from cri- ple (or not so simple) failure to take note of tique or challenge. Yet Elizabeth Spelman women’s contributions to the philosophical aptly reminds us that: ‘… white women canon: it also, and frequently, involves figur- marginalize women of color as much by the ing women as unknowable, mysterious, enig- assumption that as women of color they must matic and, hence, located ‘beyond the pale’ of be right as by the assumption that they must who or what needs to be, or is worthy of be wrong’ (1988: 182). An analogous being, known, addressed, taken into account. assumption restricts the promise of practices Notable is Beauvoir’s caustic reference in that attest to a conviction that ‘granting’ the to the ‘myth’ of feminine subaltern a place to speak simultaneously ‘mystery’, whose pervasiveness enables a confers a presumption of upon her/his man who ‘does not “understand” a … every utterance. On such a view she or he instead of admitting his ignorance’ to recog- remains excluded, if now differently, from nize ‘a mystery exterior to himself’, thus full participation in the deliberative spaces allowing him ‘an excuse that flatters his lazi- where knowledge is made, remade, con- ness and vanity at the same time’, offering tested, established, put into circulation. what, for many men, is ‘a more attractive As I have noted, marginality has many experience than an authentic relation with a aspects. At the very least, it includes being human being’ (2009: 268–9). Variations on left out as known or knowable and being left such exclusions and ignorings are well docu- out, side-lined, as a putative knower; being mented. Throughout the so-called ‘second diminished or damaged by/in bodies of wave’, from Genevieve Lloyd’s detailed knowledge; being denied credibility in testi- mappings in The Man of Reason (1993) of monial and other epistemic processes and how ideals of reason and of masculinity have practices; being discredited within a certain mirrored one another in their historical evolu- hegemonic formula or set of directives for tion and consistently defined themselves by what counts as bona fide knowledge. exclusion of ‘the feminine’, feminist philoso- Although these aspects may appear to oper- phers have, variously, chronicled women’s ate singly in some instances, often they absence/exclusion from or denigration within overlap or are interwoven in silencing, the panoply of reason, and knowl- ignoring or discrediting certain voices and edgeability. Peculiarly significant, in this points of view. In the next section of this regard, has been women’s lack of knowledge essay I endeavour to elaborate these modali- of their ‘own lives and experiences as women’ ties of marginality singly and in some of (Langton, 2000: 131). From Betty Friedan’s their intersections. (1963) reference to ‘the problem that has no name’ to Nancy Tuana’s (2006) analysis of the significance of epistemologies of igno- MULTIPLE MARGINALITIES rance for the women’s health movement, startling lacunae have been exposed in wom- Particularly insightful is ’s analysis en’s knowledge about their lives, bodies, of how ‘when it comes to knowledge’, as she selves and subjectivities: lacunae famously puts it, women get left out, or women get hurt addressed in 1973 in the politically remarka- (2000: 129). These are large claims, yet ble publication by the Boston Women’s Langton amply illustrates their pervasiveness Health Collective of Our Bodies, Ourselves

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(OBOS), since republished numerous times, an elaborated case in point: ‘She is deter- with ‘A New Edition for a New Era’ appear- mined and differentiated in relation to man … ing in 2005 (see Davis 2007). she is the inessential in front of the essential. According to Tuana, a major task facing He is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is women’s health activists is still that of show- the Other’ (2009: 6). And, in a similar vein, ing how women’s bodies were ignored and/ Langton aptly cites Marilyn Frye’s powerful or their health issues misrepresented, partly image of ‘the arrogant eye’, where, as she in consequence of sedimented androcentric puts it: or sexist beliefs about female sexuality, reproductive health issues and/or responsi- the arrogant perceiver … coerces the objects of bility for contraception, many of which per- his perception into satisfying the conditions his sist even after OBOS. When women are perception imposes. … How one sees another and how one expects the other to perceive are in constructed as ‘objects of knowledge not as tight interdependence, and how one expects the authorized knowers’ (2006: 9) the situation is other to behave is a large factor in determining not significantly better, epistemologically, how the other does behave. (Frye, 1983: 67) than it is in the passage from The Second Sex Langton cites. Here issues of women being Such patterns of conformity to the left out and women being hurt overlap and expectations of the powerful, even when reinforce one another: either way, a mode of these are not strictly codified or enforced, are marginalization is being enacted. Ignorance, apparent throughout the social structures of as Tuana reminds us, is often constructed, patriarchal, white, class-based and other maintained and disseminated. It is linked to power–privilege differentiated societies and issues of cognitive authority, doubt, trust, social groups, from the family to the wider silencing and . But Langton’s society. Women, blacks, other non-white overarching point also needs to be under- persons, children, slaves and servants are scored: ‘Women may fail to be counted as enjoined to ‘know their place’ and to occupy knowers … because of a spurious universality that place as befits one variously subject to ascribed to a merely partial story of the world the expectations and limitations that infuse as told by men …’ (2000: 132–3). These sins the social–political imaginary of a given of omission, as Langton calls them, translate society or segment thereof. Failing to do so or evolve readily into sins of commission, routinely invites censure, or worse. Yet when especially when it becomes apparent that their place is defined and monitored by traditional ‘norms of knowledge’ that leave others, knowing their place can hurt and women out can also have the effect of objec- diminish women and Others (from the white tifying women simply by assuming that male norm), truncating their potential for whatever needs to be known about them can achieving well-realized lives. be known without their participation or input, The imperative to ‘know one’s place’ oper- or can be derived without remainder from ates unevenly and with multiple degrees of knowledge about or made by men. In this hurting and discrediting across western/north- regard, Langton draws the reader’s attention ern societies. So far, and presumptively, I have to circumstances in which the world can be referred to ‘women’ generically in ways that said to ‘arrange itself’ to fit what the power- fail to capture the complexity and indeed the ful believe – as, for example, in situations involved in adducing such where ‘believing women to be subordinate a unified category. It may indeed be true that can make women subordinate: thinking so women ‘as such’ are hurt, diminished, left out can make it so, when it is backed up by in the epistemologies of the Anglo-American power’ (2000: 139). Beauvoir’s phenomeno- mainstream and in the knowledge produced logical analysis of what we might call the under their aegis, but the identity ‘woman’ is ‘making’ of woman into/as the second sex is never uninflected: poor women, black women,

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old women, Hispanic women, uneducated women’s ‘unrapeability’ was written into law women, highly educated women, indigenous in a racial ideology that defined them as women, eminent women, to name just the naturally lascivious and promiscuous; and smallest sampling, are hurt and left out differ- portrayals of women in pornographic and ently, required to ‘know their place’ differently mainstream media as enjoying, and therefore across all known social orders. These so- consenting to, forceful, violent sex reinforces called ‘identities’ rarely come singly: they these stereotypical assumptions and tells intersect and function in complex intersec- against according women’s testimony the tional ways across every society however credibility it otherwise merits. Ann Cahill large or small, where the term ‘intersection- rightly observes: ‘rape must be understood ality’ derives from a metaphor coined in the fundamentally … as an affront to the embod- late 1980s by US critical legal theorist ied subject … a sexually specific act that Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw to explain destroys (if only temporarily) the intersub- how race oppression and gender oppression jective, embodied agency and therefore per- interact in black women’s lives (see Cren- sonhood of a woman’ (2001: 13). In my shaw, 1991). More recently, theorists have view, such a victim’s epistemic subjectivity expanded and elaborated the term to capture and agency is likewise fundamentally a greater range of the multiple aspects of destroyed: an extreme form of marginaliza- ‘identity’ that may operate in diverse social– tion in its erasure of a woman’s capacity to political–epistemological situations (see, for know her ‘own’ experiences. (Germane is example, Bailey, 2010; Garry, 2012). Wittgenstein’s remark: ‘If I were contra- Some or all of these differences will dicted on all sides and told that this person’s undoubtedly be salient in all of the many name is not what I had always known it was situations where women are hurt, discred- (and I use ‘know’ here intentionally), then in ited, left out, ignored in knowledge and in that case the foundation of all judging would their knowing practices. Here I will start with be taken away from me’ (1969: §614).) one particularly urgent example which brings Patterns of incredulity are widespread together questions about knowing, testimony across social–epistemological exchanges and and epistemic agency that cut generically events: they are especially intransigent blocks across the category ‘woman’ and specifically to credibility and to claiming epistemic status across diverse, intersecting groups of women. in the rhetorical spaces of any society. In their The issue is the testimony of female rape intransigence they install and enforce mar- victims, which has notoriously and routinely ginal status, and are exceptionally difficult to been discounted and discredited universally, dislodge. Thus, for example, in Ecological but is more viciously and egregiously dis- Thinking (Code, 2006) I read Rachel Carson’s counted across certain targeted groups of epistemological–scientific practice to show women, who are exceptionally vulnerable to how she, as a knower who did not fit easily incredulity, indeed of the crassest kind. All of within the received scientific orthodoxy of these practices reflect profoundly sexist her day, was and continues to be marginal- assumptions: that rape happens only to sexu- ized, discredited within ‘normal science’ for ally ‘pure’ or ‘virtuous’ women or that it aspects of her life and work that were open to matters only when it happens to them; that criticism as variously ‘irregular’. That she women are likely to lie about having been had no PhD and no accredited academic posi- raped; that women who are raped ‘have tion clearly counted against her, as did her asked for it’. Demeaning references to a practice of drawing just as respectfully on woman’s appearance, attire, status, location, testimonial reports from lay people about sexual history or relationship to the alleged ecological damage as she drew on reports of rapist may be cited as evidence of consent, of laboratory findings. Admittedly, Carson lived ‘asking for it’. Moreover, in the USA black and worked at a time and in an epistemic

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climate where (prior to the advent of social uneven place in the epistemologies of the epistemology) testimony as such counted as a mainstream well beyond its egregious dis- lowly and unreliable source of knowledge by crediting in the politics of rape. That uneven- contrast with the putatively greater certainty- ness is exacerbated in places and achieving perception and memory favoured circumstances where the putative ‘knower’ in empiricist orthodoxy. Many scholars now can, for a range of personal and situational applaud the place she accords to lay testi- reasons, be discounted because of who he or mony in documenting damaging practices. In she is. Emblematic in this regard is black her time, Carson was rarely discredited feminist legal theorist Patricia Williams’s because she was a woman, although subse- response to the incredulity she encountered quent scholars have shown that such forms of in response to her attempt to publish an denigration hovered just beneath the surface account of a blatantly racist incident at a in evaluations of her life and work (Lytle, Benetton’s shop in New York City: ‘I could 2007; Sideris and Moore, 2008; Oreskes and not but wonder … what it would take to make Conway, 2010; Code, 2012a). But the larger my experience verifiable. The testimony of point is to confirm what can reasonably be an independent white bystander? … The blind called the methodological tyranny of a scien- application of principles of neutrality … tific orthodoxy that discounts valuable and acted either to make me look crazy or to indeed life-enhancing knowledge claims that make the reader participate in old habits of have not been derived in purified laboratory cultural bias’ (1991: 47, 48). There can, I conditions. Biologist Karen Messing, whose suggest, be no contest to the claim that being work I also discuss in Ecological Thinking, treated as crazy or viewed through lenses documents a politics of knowledge and exclu- tainted with persistent cultural bias count as sion wherein women’s experiential reports of forms of blatant social–epistemic marginali- workplace illness, suffering and long-term zation. The incident is continuous with a damage are routinely discounted as anecdo- well-known history of testimonial marginali- tally unreliable by contrast with statistical zation in which, in the western world, only analyses in which, because of their rarity and men counted as bona fide testifiers and at idiosyncracy, the symptoms such women least in the southern USA blacks could not report often fail to register. Too briefly sum- testify at all, in the sense that their testimony marized, these examples tell of kinds of could not claim acknowledgement as evi- knowing that are readily sidelined, margin- dence. I mention these facts not to ignore or alized in analyses where they simply (or not discount the significance of ‘taking subjec- so simply) fail to fit within an uncontested set tivity into account’ in evaluating testimonial of assumptions about how valid knowledge evidence, but to show how recognitions of will look. It is by no means fanciful to sup- subjectivity can be misused, can be turned pose that some of Messing’s subjects were into damaging ‘ad feminam’ dismissals and not taken seriously because they were women: discrediting of a woman’s testimony on the many were poor, uneducated, working in jobs basis of her female identity alone. Analogous that carried little prestige or status and thus, in claims of a black or Hispanic, unemployed or view of the intellectual climate of the time too-old person’s evidence (to name just a few and place, minimal presumptions of testimo- of the options) can readily be cited and nial credibility. invoked to justify or excuse acts of epistemic marginalization. Such practices have acquired a new THE POLITICS OF TESTIMONY vocabulary and claimed new rhetorical spaces in consequence of ’s Testimony as such, on which both Carson innovative work in introducing into circula- and Messing rely, occupies an unstable and tion the discourse of epistemic injustice

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(Fricker, 2007). The conceptual apparatus individualism recedes from centre stage and Fricker articulates and others have elaborated knowledge-construction becomes a commu- puts in place new resources for addressing nal, interpretive and deliberative practice. practices of epistemic marginalization as they Developing practices of epistemic responsi- are enacted in gendered, raced or classed bility and trust involves moving away from a social spaces. Among other examples, Fricker spectator epistemology to situations where details practices of discounting the testimony speakers and hearers make, deliberate, take up of a black witness in a courtroom, of conceal- or contest attempts to know as well as pos- ment consequent upon the of a sible within and across situations and popula- society where a young homosexual man is tions where knowing takes place. Shifting deterred from acknowledging his nascent from a perceptual, top-down model of sexuality, of perhaps inadvertent silencing knowing to a horizontal model of knowledge- when women cannot name behaviours that making as a communal activity requires violate their personal, physical space prior to rethinking some of the dominant assump- the conceptual breakthrough effected by tions of Anglo-American epistemology, inventing the language of . especially those about the interchangeability Traditional adherents to epistemological of knowers, situations and subject matters. It orthodoxy who were sceptical about testi- opens the way to tacit or explicit reconsidera- mony from the outset will undoubtedly con- tions of centrality and marginality: the issues tend that such unresolvables are inevitable that concern me here. once testimony, with its subject-specific Although the language of margin and cen- , is accorded a respectable place tre has been the point of entry for some of the in epistemic inquiry. But feminist and other issues I have been discussing, especially in social–political epistemologists welcome its indebtedness to the title of ’s this new focus which, in effect, promises to landmark text Feminist Theory: From Mar- relocate epistemology down on the ground, gin to Center (1984), it is worth reconsider- in the world, with its inevitable variations, ing whether so seemingly linear a formula as instabilities and diversity. It opens the way to the one about the superiority of and the epis- moving subjectivity and questions of credi- temic privilege attached to knowledge from bility, responsibility and trust onto the the margins can make sense, without merely epistemic terrain. Testimony will, inevitably, replicating or reversing older hierarchical be someone’s testimony, and will vary quali- structures. It is with such cautionary thoughts tatively (as well, perhaps, as quantitatively) in mind that I turn to revisiting these thoughts according to who that knower is/those about ‘the centre’, thinking that while there knowers are; to how well she, he or they can be little doubt about the centrality adhere to principles of responsible epistemic claimed for and occupied by white western inquiry which, variously, go beyond straight- affluent masculine lives and the knowledge forward truth-telling, accuracy, to ensure that made there, it also needs to be acknowledged the knowledge conveyed is good of its kind that, of the many margins surrounding and (see Code, 1987). None of these admittedly excluded by this multifaceted – indeed, oddly vague requirements can be spelled out in a shaped – centre, not all are equivalently checklist of rules to be followed and errors to privileged epistemically, if they are privi- be avoided, but thinking about epistemic leged at all; nor are knowers who are indeed responsibility moves close to the realm of commonly privileged by a single distancing– where, indeed, no hard decentering aspect of their ‘identity’. In short, and fast rules are to be found, but where vir- it is important to contest the tacit assumption tues are social attributes realizable by emula- in western societies that there is only one tion and aspiration in social deliberative ‘centre’, since it is clearly apparent that there practices where the idea of epistemological are multiple forms of marginalization and

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oppression that intersect variously and are Racial Contract (1998), which has been variously distant from and occluded by the inspirational in generating creatively innova- concerns of ‘the centre’. tive feminist and post-colonial work in the Given the radical shifts in global politics new ‘epistemologies of ignorance’ (Sullivan during the first decades of the twenty-first and Tuana, 2007). century, with their exposure of global igno- An ‘estrangement’ or bracketing project, rance, and given the innovatively unsettling in my view, amounts, provocatively, to a developments in feminist theory and practice, plea for ignorance: indeed, to an acknowledge- the very idea of ‘the centre’ is increasingly ment of the need to know our ignorance so troubling, to the point where a new beginning as to engage well with some of the most seems to be in order. Such a beginning might urgent conundrums of our time. It could not be something akin to a quasi-Cartesian be addressed in disingenuous disavowals radical doubting, a phenomenological brack- analogous to those white western women, eting, or what Charles Mills calls ‘an operation historically, were trained to utter in defer- of Brechtian defamiliarization, estrangement, ence to the superior cognitive powers of the on [y]our cognition’ (2005: 169). Mills’s white men of their time and station. Yet it recommendation derives from his distrust of points toward ways of counteracting the ‘ideal ethical theory’ and the dislocated pre- arrogance of white western suppositions on which it rests, but such a (thinking of Marilyn Frye, 1983) while pro- project has as much to recommend it with ceeding, if the lesson is well learned, with a regard to ideal epistemological theory, in renewed, but not deferential, humility. (As itself and in its uneasy relationship with the an aside, it is worth noting that humility is ethics and politics of knowledge. The thought an intellectual virtue often attributed to is not new to feminist epistemologists, but Rachel Carson.) It is about acknowledging taking it seriously involves recognizing that and countering white ignorance but, follow- a significant component of responsible epis- ing Alison Bailey (2007: 81–2), not only temic agency, now, across a range of issues, about knowing and deploring injustices done is for ‘us’ to come to know, responsibly and but about learning – in her words – from in its existential–ecological detail, the extent ‘strategic uses of ignorance by people of of ‘our’ ignorance. Such ‘estrangement’ – color’, which is achievable, she maintains, such acknowledgement of ignorance – need not by moving out from the local with its not paralyse inquiry. In response to the chal- presuppositions and its intact but ‘by lenge early naysayers posed to Genevieve learning to think in new … develop- Lloyd’s The Man of Reason, asking her what ing (following Maria Lugones) an account she proposed putting in the place of Reason, of subjectivity that centers on multiplicity’, she observed that it had taken so long to which turns away from the abstract individual understand the changing historical inter- of classical liberal ethics and epistemology, mappings of reason and masculinity that it and the punctiform, monological proposi- would be facile, irresponsible, to offer up a tional knowledge claim. new construct, at once, to take their place. Epistemologically, certain narratives evince Yet, equipped with the understandings her a capacity to map knowledge-enhancing and analysis made available, feminist and other knowledge-impeding structures and forces, post-colonial philosophy has proceeded with structures of ignorance and knowing, to derive new, provocatively cautionary assessments normative conclusions that – deliberatively, of its own local character. An analogous situ- negotiably – translate from region to region, ation could evolve from the kind of estrange- not without remainder, but as instructively ment Mills proposes, as is evidenced more in the disanalogies they expose as in the dramatically in the myriad debates generated analogies they propose. In my essay ‘They out of his pathbreaking publication of The Treated Him Well’ (Code, 2012b) I take as

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exemplary of an ordinary ignorance that fails was, she might have been better able to see to see itself for what it is the situation of a the presumptuousness of merely stretching woman named Maureen, the hitherto affluent its scope and terms of reference to explain white South African protagonist of Nadine the less local, the hitherto more remote, now Gordimer’s novel July’s People. She, in her right before her eyes. She fails to understand everyday life, takes universal human same- the value of engaging with July and with ‘his ness for granted: sameness of relationships place’, of constructing a narrative that would and feelings, of conjugal arrangements and enable her to know how it is for him and his gendered divisions of labour, of the signifi- people. That failure to move away from the cance of places and objects. She persists in tenacity of life at ‘the centre’ is ultimately these assumptions even when she is uprooted her undoing. from her affluent life to the village of her black African servant, July, and does so despite her avowed commitment to acquir- MARGINALIZATION WITHIN ing a sense of how it is for him and the people of his village, where he has provided refuge So far I have been discussing centrality and for her and her family from racial riots in the marginality as they are internally operative in city. For her, Gordimer writes, ‘The human cognitive practices within the feminist episte- creed depended on validities staked on a mologies of the late twentieth and early twenty- belief in the absolute nature of intimate rela- first centuries. But it is crucial, too, to turn tionships between human . If people our attention to a quasi-meta-epistemological don’t all experience emotional satisfaction issue that is also of notable concern: the mar- and deprivation in the same way, what claim ginalization of feminist epistemology as can there be for equality of need?’ she wonders such, within the epistemologies of the main- (Gordimer, 1981: 64). Even when she is stream. For many feminists and other post- removed from the taken-for-granted certain- colonial theorists, epistemology is not a ties of her then-time life she cannot recog- self-contained philosophical pursuit engaged nize the specificity of her conceptions of in for the sake of resolving perennial intel- sexual loyalty, ‘suburban adultery’ and love lectual puzzles. Indeed, Heidi Grasswick to the white middle-class society where she (2012b) rightly observes that many feminist learned them; cannot wonder self-critically social epistemologists are committed to whether these apparently universal verities establishing connections between knowledge- might not count as universal after all. Such a producing practices and democratic social– move is beyond the scope of her imagining. political social orders. For my purposes here, My aim in reading the novel is, in part, to one of the most telling implications of such show how little this white woman is able to a commitment would be in its (learned) realize of the sheer local character of the capacity for addressing and countering some local, even in human intimacy: how ill- of the modalities of marginality I have articu- placed and ill-advised she is to make of that lated, with the injustices they produce. Such ‘local’ a touchstone from which to imagine overarching goals do not dispute the more the world from his position, for July, her narrowly epistemological principle that erstwhile black servant, her ‘boy’. (Bailey knowledge pursuits have to be evaluated notes ‘Ignorance flourishes when we confine for their empirical-historical-situational our movements, thoughts, and actions to adequacy, although they do contest the nar- those worlds, social circles, and logics where rowness with which ‘adequacy’ has often we are most comfortable’ (2007: 90)). A been conceived. Thoughts such as these quasi-Cartesian bracketing might have prompt my contention in Ecological Thinking served this woman well: had she been able that ‘thinking ecologically carries with it a to realize how narrow the range of the local large measure of responsibility – to know

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somehow more carefully than single surface critical-contestatory practices. Hence, for readings can allow … ecological thinking is example, when Elizabeth Anderson proposes about imagining, crafting, articulating, that and equality of respect are crucial endeavouring to enact principles of ideal for realizing the goals of higher education, in cohabitation’ in epistemic and moral–political an article entitled ‘The Democratic deliberation (Code, 2006: 24). Crucial here is University: The Role of Justice in the the challenge such an exhortation presents to Production of Knowledge’ (1995), I am pro- traditional divisions between ethics, politics posing that the title can and indeed ought to and epistemology. Many feminist analyses of be read two ways, where the second reading the social implications of knowing suggest would be ‘the role of knowledge in the pro- that there are choices to be made in matters duction of justice’, thereby signalling the of knowledge-production that go beyond multiply entangled nature of these issues and simple verification or falsification of S knows the difficulty of determining which of these that p claims (and sometimes even there). requirements is fundamental. The inquiry Eschewing epistemic individualism opens feminist epistemologists are engaged in has inquiry into larger and arguably more com- to go both ways. plex questions about credibility, testimony, These thoughts refer back to the ignorance and trust where decisions have to quasi-meta-epistemological issue I have be made that are responsible to the subject mentioned. In a sobering and wholly persua- matters under investigation – be they animate sive diagnosis of ‘the marginalization of or inanimate – and responsive to the specifi- feminist epistemology’ Phyllis Rooney cities and larger commonalities between and observes that, in the eyes of mainstream epis- among knowers and known. None of this is temologists, the conviction persists that fem- easy, but all of it is richly promising and seri- inist epistemology is not epistemology ously challenging. Such thoughts underscore ‘proper’ (2012: 3). Startling within the body the imperative of ‘taking subjectivity into of significant evidence she adduces in sup- account’ I have referred to earlier: knowing port of this claim is the observation that people well, whether singly or in groups, critics of feminist epistemology commonly requires knowing them at least in some develop their critiques without adhering to aspects of their specificity, their distinctness the norms of research, reading and reasoning from and their commonalities with others; they would bring to bear on critiques of their circumstances of privilege and/or positions and subject matters they were pre- oppression: knowing what matters to them, pared to take more seriously. Rooney’s apt the detail of their ‘situations’. Episte­ observation conjures up a reversal of mologically, once testimony moves onto the Spelman’s contention about marginalizing a epistemic terrain as a recognized source of woman of color by assuming she must be knowledge, aspects of subjectivity – testifiers’ right (cf. supra, p. 11): clearly, from such a trustworthiness, their credibility, reliability – dismissive point of view feminist epistemol- come to play a part in how their testimony is ogy has no claim even to be taken seriously received, evaluated, acted upon. Such factors enough to demonstrate why or how it must pertain variously in specialized scientific and be wrong. To suggest that this issue is meta- social scientific inquiry, and variously again epistemological has a certain plausibility, for in a range of everyday circumstances from the marginalization of feminist epistemology quotidian to legal to medical exchanges of seems to derive from some intransigent knowledge and information, and beyond. assumptions about the ‘nature’ of epistemol- For feminist epistemology, with its commit- ogy as such, so to speak, in standing above ment to fostering deliberative democratic and remaining impervious to issues of human knowledge exchanges, it matters to nurture specificity and/or embodiment in an ongoing inclusive knowledge-making and respectful if tacit commitment to the goal of determining

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necessary and sufficient conditions for the grapes’ argument to the effect that the inside existence of knowledge ‘as such’. The very is so uncomfortable that no woman would attribute ‘feminist’ vitiates the project. But want to be there anyway. But it is important this issue is also, and equally significantly, not to undervalue what women – many ‘sub-epistemological’ in a perhaps curious women, of multiply intersecting colours, sense, for the very act of ignoring the claims races, classes, capacities, nationalities and of feminist epistemology to occupy a posi- other Otherings – have achieved in their/our tion on the epistemic terrain seems to rely on excluded situations. certain antiquated and sedimented subterra- nean convictions about the very possibility of there being, in women (here generically REFERENCES conceived), a capacity for reason, rationality, judgement, objectivity, clarity, discrimina- Alcoff, L. and Potter, E. (eds) (1993) Feminist tion, intellectual authority. Hence Rooney Epistemologies. New York, NY: Routledge. notes that feminist work in epistemology ‘is Anderson, Elizabeth (1995) ‘The Democratic University: still regularly framed as an attack or “assault” The Role of Justice in the Production of Knowledge’, on reason and objectivity, as something hos- and Policy, 12(2): 186–219. tile to the very ground of epistemology Bailey, A. (2007) ‘Strategic Ignorance’, in Shannon “proper”’ (2012: 12): a point Carla Fehr Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (eds), Race and underscores in her subtle analysis of diver- Epistemologies of Ignorance. Albany, NY: SUNY sity in epistemic communities, where she Press. pp. 77–94. Bailey, A. (2010) ‘On and the Whiteness offers impressive arguments in support of her of ’, in Yancy, G. ed., The Center contention that, for women, ‘uptake and Must Not Hold: White Women Philosophers on the equality of intellectual authority prove to be Whiteness of Philosophy. Lanham, MD: Lexington particularly challenging criteria to meet’ Books. pp. 51–75. (2012: 135). Women, Fehr notes, tend still to Bar On, B.-A. (1993) ‘Marginality and Epistemic be ‘in marginal positions within the acad- Privilege’, in Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (eds), emy’ (2012: 151) now, more than three dec- Feminist Epistemologies. New York, NY: Routledge. ades since questions about the sex of the pp. 983–1000. knower were first articulated. Beauvoir, S. de (2009) The Second Sex [1949]. Trans. Rooney returns to the question of margin- Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. ality and epistemic privilege with which we New York, NY: Random House. Belenky, M.F., McVicker Clinchy, B., Goldberger, N.R. began, to contend that ‘being on the margins and Tarule, J.M. (1986) Women’s Ways of Knowing: is not all bad – especially when one has good The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New company there!’ (2012: 14); and she allows York, NY: Basic Books. that there may indeed be some advantages to Cahill, A. (2001) Rethinking Rape. Ithaca, NY: Cornell this location. Cautioning against the implau- University Press. sibility of claiming that epistemic privilege Carson, R. (1962) Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton automatically follows from or counts as an Mifflin. adjunct benefit of marginality, she nonetheless Code, L. (1981) ‘Is the Sex of the Knower observes ‘the lived experience of marginali- Epistemologically Significant?’ , 12 zation can enable one to see and understand (July/October): 267–76. things that are quite ‘invisible’ to those not Code, L. (1987) Epistemic Responsibility. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. marginalized’ (2012: 14), here referring Code, L. (1991) What Can She Know? Feminist Theory again to Patricia Hill Collins’s claims for the and the Construction of Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: value of the ‘doubled consciousness’ availa- Cornell University Press. ble to the ‘outsider within’ with the creative Code, L. (1995) ‘Taking Subjectivity Into Account’, in tensions it generates (2012: 14). It would be Code, L., Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on (Gendered) a mistake to revalue marginality with a ‘sour Locations. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 23–57.

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