Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T00:42:58.473Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From Standpoint Epistemology to Epistemic Oppression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Abstract

Standpoint epistemology is committed to a cluster of views that pays special attention to the role of social identity in knowledge‐acquisition. Of particular interest here is the situated knowledge thesis. This thesis holds that for certain propositions p, whether an epistemic agent is in a position to know that p depends on some nonepistemic facts related to the epistemic agent's social identity. In this article, I examine two possible ways to interpret this thesis. My first goal here is to clarify existing interpretations of this thesis that appear in the literature but that are undeveloped and often mistakenly conflated. In so doing, I aim to make clear the different versions of standpoint epistemology that one might accept and defend.

This project is of significance, I argue, because standpoint epistemology provides helpful tools for understanding a phenomenon of recent interest: epistemic oppression. My second goal is to provide an analysis that makes clear how each of the readings I put forth can be used to illuminate forms of epistemic oppression.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2019, Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Elizabeth. 1995. Feminist epistemology: An interpretation and a defense. Hypatia 10 (3): 5084.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Moya. 2013. New terms of resistance: A response to Zenzele Isoke. Souls 15 (4): 341–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1957/1972. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Noonday Press.Google Scholar
Berenstain, Nora. 2016. Epistemic exploitation. Ergo 3 (22): 569–90.Google Scholar
Brownmiller, Susan. 1990. In our time: A memoir of revolution. New York: Dial Press.Google Scholar
Code, Lorraine. 1995. Rhetorical spaces: Essays on gendered locations. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1986. Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems 33 (6): 1432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crasnow, Sharon. 2009. Is feminist theory a resource for feminist epistemology? An introduction. Hypatia 24 (4): 189–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crasnow, Sharon. 2013. Feminist philosophy of science: Values and objectivity. Philosophy Compass 8 (4): 413–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dotson, Kristie. 2012. A cautionary tale: On limiting epistemic oppression. Frontier 33 (1): 2447.Google Scholar
Dotson, Kristie. 2014. Conceptualizing epistemic oppression. Social Epistemology 28 (2): 115–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El‐Alayli, Amani, Hansen‐Brown, Ashley A., and Ceynar, Michelle. 2018. Dancing backwards in high heels: Female professors experience more work demands and special favor requests, particularly from academically entitled students. Sex Roles 79 (3–4): 136–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fricker, Miranda. 1999. Epistemic oppression and epistemic privilege. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (supp. 1): 191210.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Taylor. 2015. 8 cases where a black celebrity was whitewashed for a magazine cover or ad campaign. Atlanta Black Star, February 19. https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/02/19/8-cases-where-a-black-celebrity-was-whitewashed-for-a-magazine-cover-or-ad-campaign/2/.Google Scholar
Guarino, Cassandra M., and Borden, Victor M. H. 2017. Faculty service loads and gender: Are women taking care of the academic family? Research in Higher Education 58 (6): 672–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1988. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1993. Rethinking standpoint epistemology: What is “strong objectivity”? In Feminist epistemologies, ed. Alcoff, Linda and Potter, Elizabeth. New York and Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy. 1983. The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology, and philosophy of science, ed. Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill B. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2008. Changing the ideology and culture of philosophy: Not by reason (alone). Hypatia 23 (2): 210–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1985. The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell, and Machung, Anne. 1989. The second shift: Working families and the revolution at home. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Intemann, Kristen. 2010. 25 years of feminist empiricism and standpoint theory: Where are we now? Hypatia 25 (4): 778–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaggar, Alison M. 1983. Feminist politics and human nature. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Joseph, Tiffany D., and Hirshfield, Laura E. 2011. “Why don't you get somebody new to do it?” Race and cultural taxation in the academy. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34 (1): 121–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kukla, Rebecca. 2006. Objectivity and perspective in empirical knowledge. Episteme 3 (1): 8095.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukács, Georg. 1923/1971. History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. London: Merlin Press.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catherine A. 1991. Toward a feminist theory of the state. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Manne, Kate. 2018. Down girl: The logic of misogyny. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. 1932/2001. From economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. In The Norton anthology of theory and criticism, ed. Leitch, Vincent B. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1867/1976. Capital: A critique of political economy. Trans. Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Müller, Mirjam. 2018. Emotional labour: A case of gender‐specific exploitation. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: 122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nair, Shelia. 2014. Women of color faculty and the “burden” of diversity. International Feminist Journal of Politics 16 (3): 497500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Onyejiaka, Tiffany. 2017. Hollywood's colorism problem can't be ignored any longer. Teen Vogue, August 22. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/hollywoods-colorism-problem-cant-be-ignored.Google Scholar
Pohlhaus, Gaile. 2011. Relational knowing and epistemic injustice: Toward a theory of willful hermeneutical ignorance. Hypatia 27 (4): 715–35.Google Scholar
Pratto, Felicia, Sidanius, James, Stallworth, Lisa M., and Malle, Bertram F. 1994. Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67 (4): 741–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Railton, Peter. 1994. Truth, reason, and the regulation of belief. Philosophical Issues 5: 7193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rolin, Kristina. 2009. Standpoint theory as a methodology for the study of power relations. Hypatia 24 (4): 218–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. 1975. The traffic in women: Notes on the “political economy” of sex. In Toward an anthropology of women, ed. Reiter, Rayna. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Ruth, Sheila. 1973. A serious look at consciousness‐raising. Social Theory and Practice 2 (3): 289300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, Rebecca M. 1995. The sex right: A legal history of the marital rape exemption. Law & Social Inquiry 20 (4): 9411001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sidanius, Jim, and Pratto, Felicia. 1999. Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1974. Women's perspective as a radical critique of sociology. Sociological Inquiry 44 (1): 713.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Interest Group. 2017. The burden of invisible work in academia: Social inequalities and time use in five university departments. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 39: 228–45.Google Scholar
Spaapen, J., and van Drooge, L. 2011. Introducing “productive interactions” in social impact assessment. Research Evaluation 20 (3): 211–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, Claude M. 2010. Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Sue, Derald Wing. 2010. Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.Google Scholar
Toole, Briana. 2017. “Demarginalizing standpoint epistemology.” PhD Diss. University of Texas.Google Scholar
Valian, Virginia. 1998. Schemas that explain behavior. In Why so slow?: The advancement of women. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Velleman, J. David. 2000. On the aim of belief. In The possibility of practical reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Alice. 1983. In search of our mothers' gardens: Womanist prose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Walzer, Susan. 1996. Thinking about the baby: Gender and divisions of infant care. Social Problems 43 (2): 219–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Cherry. 2018. Colourism: Do light‐skinned black women have it easier in show‐biz? BBC News, June 4. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44229236.Google Scholar
Wylie, Alison. 2003. Why standpoint matters. In Science and other cultures: Diversity in the philosophy of science and technology, ed. Figueroa, Robert and Harding, Sandra G. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Young, Iris. 1980. Socialist feminism and the limits of dual systems theory. Socialist Review 10 (2/3): 169–88.Google Scholar