Two, three, many epistemologies
There was a call for papers on the Women’s Studies List yesterday, for a Women’s and Gender Studies conference in March 2009 in conjunction with an Association I hadn’t heard of before, called the Association of Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies. That’s a lot of things to be in one Association, especially when they’re all plural. Out in the conventional world of course there’s just epistemology, but this Association gets to have lots of them (of the Feminist variety). One wonders how that works. One also wonders what this Association is like.
FEMMSS (Feminist Epistemologies, Metaphysics, Methodology and Science Studies) continues to be concerned about the importance and difficulty of
translating knowledge into action and practice. Ours is a highly interdisciplinary group of feminist scholars who pursue knowledge questions at the interstices of
epistemology, methodology, metaphysics, ontology, and science and technology studies.
Ah, that’s what it’s like. Wordy, jargony, self-admiring, and – clueless. It apparently doesn’t even know what ‘interstices’ means – it seems to think it’s a more elegant version of ‘intersections.’ Anyway, what the hell would an intersection or an interstice ‘of epistemology, methodology, metaphysics, ontology, and science and technology studies’ be? What on earth is that absurd formula supposed to mean? Anything? Does this highly interdisciplinary group of feminist scholars know anything about all those subjects, or is it just deploying vocabulary?
FEMMSS 3 seeks to deepen the understanding of the politics of knowledge in light of the increasing pressures of globalization, neoliberal
restructuring, and militarization. Calling an array of theoretical frameworks including transnational feminism, post-colonial theory, cultural studies, epistemologies of ignorance, feminist epistemologies, and feminist science studies, this conference works to understand the ways in which knowledge is politically constituted and its material affects on people’s lives. The politics of knowledge can be discerned through the allocation and the appropriation of intellectual and natural resources, through the allocation of research funding, the control and commodification of the health sciences and health care by multinational corporations, and the
dominance of Western knowledge over that of the Two-Thirds world. Furthermore, the politics of knowledge can be seen in the way groups and
communities actively resist troubling affects (sic) of knowledge production through grass-roots organizations such as the Third World Network, community
action groups, the citizens’ science movement, environmental justice groups, and the various women’s health movements.
Why do I get the feeling that one can figure out in advance what the ‘array of theoretical frameworks’ will end up understanding? I guess because that paragraph pretty much says it will. Why does that paragraph make me feel slightly ill? I guess because I think every single one of the cited ‘theoretical frameworks’ is tendentious bullshit rather than any kind of scholarship or inquiry – that’s why. (What the fuck is ‘epistemologies of ignorance’ you wonder? Google it. I can’t bring myself to go into it. It’s a phrase some guy used in a paper once [no, excuse me, he ‘introduced’ it] that people latched onto with squawks of glee as if it were the key to all mythologies, the way they always do, the sheep.) Because if I really wanted to know something about the politics of knowledge and globalization I wouldn’t go to someone in postcolonial theory or cultural studies to find out.
Whose Knowledge Matters?
How do class, gender, race and ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and other formations of difference shape what counts as expertise, what questions are
considered relevant, and which outcomes emerge from clashes and negotiations between different forms of expertise?
How have epistemologies of ignorance emerged as important conceptual and political approaches to not only reveal patterns of active unknowing, but
also to point to strategies for resistance?
And so on. Do you feel a keen curiosity to know the answer to those questions? I’m guessing you don’t. I know I don’t. I’m confident they’ll be all too familiar, and written in a style all too similar to the style of the questions themselves, and above all predetermined by the questions themselves.
‘Feminist Epistemologies’ is a genyoowine academic subject though, don’t you think it isn’t.
Mainstream epistemology seeks to found universal theories of Truth, to develop the means to achieving objectivity, and to discover a deep structure of human language and an intelligible reality. Feminist epistemologists, on the other hand, argue that knowledge is always partial, situated, and embodied. In this course, we will study several themes and theories of knowledge developed by feminists working out of analytic, pragmatist, continental, queer and postcolonial contexts: standpoint theories, situated knowledges, the matrix of power/knowledge, the workings of epistemic privilege, the pragmatist link between knowledge and action, and the role of emotions, embodiment, and desire in knowledge.
There’s mainstream epistemology, and then there’s Feminist Epistemology (except when there are Feminist Epistemologies). To put it another way, there’s rational and then there’s raving bat-loony. There’s even a course in Feminist Theory: Epistemologies of Ignorance. It’s about reading memoirs. They use the word ‘Epistemologies’ in the title so that it will sound more academic-like. Or something.
They used to say that NASA had cornered the market in unwieldy acronyms (e.g. MESSENGER on its way to Mercury), but I’d have to put FEMMSS right up there.
Speaking of jargon, this is the first time I’ve heard of the term “Two-Thirds world”.
This is part of an abstract for an article by Nancy Tuana:
“Lay understanding and scientific accounts of female sexuality and orgasm provide a fertile site for demonstrating the importance of including epistemologies of ignorance within feminist epistemologies. Ignorance is not a simple lack. It is often constructed, maintained, and disseminated and is linked to issues of cognitive authority, doubt, trust, silencing, and uncertainty. Studying both feminist and nonfeminist understandings of female orgasm reveals practices that suppress or erase bodies of knowledge concerning women’s sexual pleasures.”
There you have it, epistemology of ignorance. I think people like the sound of the word ‘epistemology,’ forgetting the episteme part of it. Is that an epistemology of ignorance?
One of the most annoying things about this kind of stuff is that they don’t actually do the things they says they’re going to. They just repeat their intentions over and over as if saying is the same as doing.
They all talk as if things like “post-colonial theory” actually exist rather than just being a jargon phrase they trot out to prop up weak arguments.
They say they’re going to “study several themes and theories of knowledge developed by feminists working out of […] postcolonial […] contexts.” But what they really mean is that they’ll assert that western foreign policy is evil and then move on.
What is the maximum number of Google entries that balderdash can support?
“the importance of including epistemologies of ignorance within feminist epistemologies.”
Okay. You’re leaders in the field of epistemologies of ignorance. Is that really what you want to hear?
Dare one ask whether, in the light of their impeccable “feminist credentials”, we ought really to be referring to this stuff as “Cowsh*t”, rather than the more traditional (but also phallo-centric/authoritarian/oppressive), “Bullsh*t”?
I’m just asking…
:-)
How about the tastefully gender-neutral batshit? Works for me.
Batshit crazy seeming perhaps, but I suspect it and similar has funded a LOT of humanities positions over the last 20 years.
Spiralling competitive bullshit has some important applications, if not real implications.
Clearly it has, but that’s just what’s so irritating. There are plenty of real scholars doing real (and interesting) work out there, why should all these preening frauds keep flourishing like the green bay tree?
Hmm, I don’t know–why do you assume that all of this is bullshit? Some of it probably is, simply by law of averages, but the “Whose Knowledge Matters” course, for instance, sounds potentially interesting.
Because class, race, gender, etc. DO shape what counts as expertise, and what questions are asked and answered by scientific (or historical, or philosophical) inquiry. And I do think it’s worth exploring HOW they shape these questions.
Saying that science has been influenced by gender issues isn’t the same as saying that there’s no such thing as an objective scientific fact, after all.
Anyway, what the hell would an intersection or an interstice ‘of epistemology, methodology, metaphysics, ontology, and science and technology studies’ be?
I’ll take a stab at this: “interstice” means a space or crack or gap, right? So these feminist scholars will be exploring questions that fall through the cracks of traditional epistemology, metaphysics, etc.
I’m not informed enough to know exactly what questions these would be, mind you. I’m not a philosopher. So I can’t conclusively say it’s not nonsense. But I wouldn’t assume that it is.
Because I looked at it, and I’ve looked at lots of stuff like it before. Of course the subject is worth exploring, but not in the way epistemologists of ignorance do it.
By all means try to find something good, and if you succeed, let me know. But I have read quite a lot of the kind of thing, and I have yet to see anything even remotely good.
The thing is, when one has read this kind of thing a thousand times before, it’s all too obvious how predictable and how empty the new batch is. As Jakob said, it’s all promise and no delivery.
Oh and the interpretation of interstices doesn’t work, because that would be interestices in, not at. It’s pretty clear that they have the word confused with intersection.
Quote: “FEMMSS…continues to be concerned about the importance and difficulty of translating knowledge into action and practice.”
And I’m sure this conference will resolve that problem!
BINGO!
Oh wait, we weren’t playing buzzword bingo? Because I swear that sounds like someone just strung together all the phrases they didn’t understand in a current sociology journal.
Heh, yes, I do see how long experience with this kind of thing might develop a certain skepticism in you.
I have a tendency to give academic feminists the benefit of the doubt, simply because there are so many foolish conservative reactionaries who respond to feminist criticism with cries of “mumbo-jumbo” and “jargon” and “you’re polluting our children’s minds with relativist nonsense!” (and by “relativist nonsense” they mean the notion that patriarchal Christian beliefs about morality may not be held by everyone, and perhaps ought not to be imposed on everyone). So I may be a bit knee-jerk defensive. But I will certainly admit that “epistemologies of ignorance” is one of the more ridiculous phrases I’ve ever heard.
Oh, but I do have another nit to pick:
There’s mainstream epistemology, and then there’s Feminist Epistemology (except when there are Feminist Epistemologies). To put it another way, there’s rational and then there’s raving bat-loony.
Why do you think that class summary was raving bat-loony? Do you think it’s always raving bat-loony to think, as these feminist epistemologists apparently do, that “knowledge is always partial, situated, and embodied”?
I ask because I myself lean towards thinking that human knowledge is always “partial, situated, and embodied”–there may be an objective truth, but any one of us can only have a small piece of it, which does not relieve us of our obligation to keep *trying* to achieve objectivity (like an asymptotic graph).
I was amused by the reference to ‘a deep structure of human language’. Chomsky used the term ‘deep structure’ roughly from 1965 to 1975. I would be amazed if these people had the slightest idea of what the term meant, but of course ‘deep structure’ sounds deep, so lets use it.
So many good and interesting ideas hidden amongst the jargon, really. But because they are professional jargoneers, nothing ever comes of their perpetual self-satisfied jawing except the occasional sprained shoulder from patting themselves too vigorously on the back. It’s all very, very aggravating. I am inspired to repeat for the umpteenth time: Feminism is far too important to be left in the hands of postmodernists.
And do sheep ever squawk, in glee or otherwise? I know OB is very annoyed when she hits the “puree” button on her metaphor mixer…
;-)
N.B asks, in response to a previous posting above from yours truly:
>What is the maximum number of Google entries that balderdash can support?< Well, Googling “Jesus + ‘son of God'” gives around 3,700,000 entries. I suggest that secularists regard this tenet of Christianity with the kind of disdain that precludes their bothering to spend time examining it, so the vast majority of the entries are likely to be favourable to the notion. I submit that the very notion of the creator of the Universe and all the many billions of star systems therein having a “son” turn up on our very own earth and then being miraculously resurrected comes under the heading of balderdash. So the answer I would give is “indeterminate, but certainly several million”.
I agree that ‘epistemology of ignorance’ is infelicitous, but as far as I can see it covers, infelicitously or not, a worthwhile subject of exploration – that which one is not to discuss, that one is not supposed to know about, that to admit knowledge of is problematic, that of which declarations of ignorance are deemed praise-worthy. The construction of intellectual ‘shadow-worlds’ of the not-known, not-avowed, not-declarable… In sexual contexts, particularly, that would seem to be a wide and thorny field for theorists and practitioners to wade across.
That’s Theorywang!
Re What kind of shit….
(Andy and OB)
I think I’ll side with Andy on this one. Admittingly “batshit” can have this nice gender-neutral quality, but “cow-shit” gives a better “mental picture” of the stuff….I mean physical appearance, and not the least: the shere volume :-)
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Jenavir writes:
>I don’t know–why do you assume that all of this is bullshit? Some of it probably is, simply by law of averages, but the “Whose Knowledge Matters” course, for instance, sounds potentially interesting.< As Ophelia says, she knows whereof she writes. And having read a fair amount representative of the material in question, I’d argue that it’s not a case of any “law of averages” but of the nature of the beast. I can see why some of the declared aspirations of the proponents of “feminist epistemology” sound attractive, but by its fruits should it be judged. A rough analogy: The Soviet system was predicated on high-sounding principles emanating from its proponents, but we judge it by its results, not the rhetoric. In the post-WW2 period Arthur Koestler suggested that apologists for the Soviet regime be sentenced to a year’s hard reading. I suggest that those inclined to take the aims of feminist studies “discourse” at face value should undertake a similar task on “real existing” feminist studies. >I have a tendency to give academic feminists the benefit of the doubt, simply because there are so many foolish conservative reactionaries who respond to feminist criticism with cries of “mumbo-jumbo” and “jargon” and “you’re polluting our children’s minds with relativist nonsense!” (and by “relativist nonsense” they mean the notion that patriarchal Christian beliefs about morality may not be held by everyone, and perhaps ought not to be imposed on everyone).< If you think the cogent criticisms of feminist epistemology studies have anything to do with sympathy for patriarchal Christian beliefs, may I suggest you do some reading around the subject. (And I don’t think that the implicit notion that my enemy’s enemy is my friend is valid as a general principle in intellectual debate any more than in politics.) It’s impossible to begin to do justice to the positions taken by people like Ophelia and me on this issue in a short space, but I’ll give a concrete example in relation to this posting by Jenavir: >Why do you think that class summary was raving bat-loony? Do you think it’s always raving bat-loony to think, as these feminist epistemologists apparently do, that “knowledge is always partial, situated, and embodied”? I ask because I myself lean towards thinking that human knowledge is always “partial, situated, and embodied”–there may be an objective truth, but any one of us can only have a small piece of it, which does not relieve us of our obligation to keep *trying* to achieve objectivity (like an asymptotic graph).< I don’t think anyone here is going to take issue with the last sentence, but, leaving aside the mind-numbing indecipherability of much of the writings to which Ophelia alludes, here is an example of where they lead: “Feminist science studies scholars are interested to know the historical and social contexts in which scientific laws and theories are developed. It is important for students to understand that the second law of thermodynamics is not self-evident, but evolved out of the context of the industrial revolution and, as such, is a product of that era and reflects its dominant values…”
[From “Frequently Asked Questions about Feminist Science Studies”, published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.]
Leaving aside that no one would ever suggest that the second law of thermodynamics was self-evident, this statement can only mean that in a society where there were different “dominant values” a different law of physics might have been derived that was inconsistent with the second law of TD. (Note that a law developed on the basis of valid physical principles but differing in its conceptual expression would be equivalent to the second law of TD, in the same way that Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics was shown to be equivalent to Schrödinger’s quantum mechanics.)
Some references for critiques of feminist epistemology theory:
“Why Feminist Epistemology Isn’t”, Janet Radcliffe Richards. In *The Flight from Science and Reason*, ed. P.R. Gross et al, pp. 385-412.
*Professing Feminism*, Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge. The subheading “Education and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies” gives a good idea of the contents.
Incidentally, I think you’ll find that any women who publicly criticize “real existing” feminist studies (as against its professed basic notions) and associated positions are liable to be labelled as “conservative”, by definition:
http://www.thefire.org/pdfs/4299_3425.pdf
For a light-hearted (but heartfelt) account of life in a counter-hegemonic studies classroom:
http://www.thevarsity.ca/article/2901
What Allen said.
Jenavir – “Why do you think that class summary was raving bat-loony?”
Largely because I have read quite a lot of this kind of thing, and that means that I can recognize the code. That’s not much of an accomplishment: it’s unmistakable enough. And it’s all code and no substance, or at least it’s very little substance. Part of the point of the whole enterprise, I’m sorry to say, is to inflate reasonable observations and discoveries (such as how funding is allocated etc) into something that will be long enough for a publishable article or a conference paper. It’s also to decorate reasonable observations and discoveries with deep-sounding ‘theoretical’ verbiage; it’s also to signal to other initiates. Tragically little of the enterprise is to find anything out or to increase any understanding of anything. There is such a thing as good sociology of knowledge, also good sociology of science, but there’s very little reason to think that’s what’s going on here. (People who do good sociology of knowledge wouldn’t be attracted to this conference – that’s one reason it’s possible to be so confident that there won’t be any good sociology of knowledge there.)
Still – by all means find good stuff that they do and show me to be wrong. I would be delighted if they did good stuff! (If they did do good stuff, they would have no further need for the inflated decorative language, so they would drop it. The inflated decorative language is a dead giveaway that nothing real is happening.)
G,
Wull…I didn’t say the sheep squawked! I said people squawked – and then went on to say that they always latch onto things in a sheeplike manner. In other words ‘the sheep’ was a disguised adverb that governed ‘latched onto’ rather than ‘squawks.’
[tiptoes away carefully]
Ophelia–thanks for the explanation.
Allan Esterson–I do not think cogent criticism of feminist epistemology is done out of sympathy for patriarchal Christianity, no. I do think a lot of the buzzwords that set off the critics are the same ones that set off the National Review types, and also the buzzwords that are used by the critics are used by the National Review types. I am not claiming that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Rather, I’m saying that if we notice our behavior is similar to our enemies’, it’s best to take a second look and make sure we really know what we’re doing.
On the whole I think I agree with G.: lots of potentially good ideas, draped in unnecessary jargon.
Jenavir: you wrote
>I have a tendency to give academic feminists the benefit of the doubt, simply because there are so many foolish conservative reactionaries who respond to feminist criticism with cries of “mumbo-jumbo” and “jargon” and “you’re polluting our children’s minds with relativist nonsense!” (and by “relativist nonsense” they mean the notion that patriarchal Christian beliefs about morality may not be held by everyone, and perhaps ought not to be imposed on everyone).< My point was that I don’t regard this as a valid (or even reasonable) basis for giving a specific academic approach the thumbs up (or benefit of the doubt). In my view the *only* valid basis for assessment is from an examination of the work itself – and not the abstract aims divorced from the actual product, as I also argued above.
My point was that I don’t regard this as a valid (or even reasonable) basis for giving a specific academic approach the thumbs up (or benefit of the doubt).
I see. I think this depends on exactly how and where the benefit of the doubt is being given. When I said I give academic feminism the benefit of the doubt, what I mean is that I will take criticism of the subject–especially criticism that centers on the subject’s use of incomprehensible jargon and/or relativism–with a spoonful of salt and refrain from viewing the discipline with a jaundiced eye until and unless I actually read some of the scholarship myself. Obviously this is good practice anyway–don’t place too much trust in critics, read the criticized thing yourself–but I make an especial point of it with academic feminism because of the unfair criticism I have often seen.
FEMMSS, you’ve been Wangytheored.
dirigible, you’re today’s* Theorywang!
*(well, four months ago’s)