Border Communities and Royce: The Problem of Translation and Reinterpreting Feminist Empiricism

Abstract

Contemporary feminist epistemologists have been concerned with understanding how knowledge is construed within empiricist frameworks (science) of knowl edge or developing (anti-empiricist) epistemologies. Latina feminist theorists, such as Ofelia Schutte and Gloria Anzaldua, have contributed much to the discussion calling for a kind of consciousness, which seeks a way to understand the experiences of the marginalized without falling into the concep tual pitfall of assimilation, which has been a concern in standpoint epistemology. Additionally, this perspective seeks to maintain a coherent theory of knowledge that avoids relativism. My main attempt in this article is to bring feminist border politics into discussions with feminist empiricist theories of knowledge through the works of Josiah Royce. I show how Royce's theory of the role of interpretation in the processes of knowledge offers a theoretical interpretive tool for feminist empiricism to understand the issues raised in feminist border politics. This article examines the works of W. V. Quine and Royce in light of the questions raised from the works of Schutte and Anzaldua regarding the problem of translation and understanding difference. I first introduce the concerns raised by Schutte and Anzaldua as to how theories of knowledge operate in a dyadic structure utilizing a binary logic. I argue that these theorists come from a particular theoretical location, namely, the borderlands, which seeks to discursively under mine the dichotomization of knowledge and create new ways of understanding the incommensurabilities of experience. Second, in light of Lynne Hankinson Nelson's attempts to use Quine's holistic theories in feminist empiricism in order to challenge current scientific methods, I discuss as Quine understands it, and the implications of this type of experience, as seen in his discussion regarding the problem of translation and the indeterminacy of language. Third, I introduce Royce's theory of interpretation as a necessary third process in order to understand recalcitrant experience in generating knowledge claims. This challenges Quine's dyadic formation in the processes of knowledge and also avoids the assimilation of recalcitrant experience. Finally, I argue that Royce's