Comment on Hekman's "Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited"

Abstract

I HAVE WRITTEN THIS grudgingly. Susan Hekman's (in this issue) interpretation of my work is so systematically out to lunch that it is difficult to write a response that does not involve a replication of what I have already said, at length and in various versions, elsewhere. But that would interest neither me nor readers. So I have asked myself: Apart from lack of care and thought, what is she doing that leads to her systematic misreading? And what might be systematic about other mistakes such as the chronology of "standpoint theory"'s development (a work published in 1979 is attributed to the decade following, 1983), or that its roots were in Marxism (Where's the women's movement?), or that it is less used and interesting currently (speak for your own discipline, Susan; in sociology it flourishes), or that feminist standpoint theory has become identified with "object-relations" theory (news to me). A major problem is the reification of "feminist standpoint theory." Feminist standpoint theory, as a general class of theory in feminism, was brought into being by Sandra Harding (1986), not to create a new theoretical enclave but to analyze the merits and problems of feminist theoretical work that sought a radical break with existing disciplines through locating knowledge or inquiry in women's standpoint or in women's experience. Those she identified had been working independently of one another and have continued to do so. In a sense, Harding created us. I do not think there was much interchange among us. As standpoint theorists, we became identifiable as a group through Harding's study. And as a construct of Harding's text, we appeared as isolated from the intellectual and political discourses with which our work was in active dialogue. I cannot speak here for Nancy Hartsock, Patricia Hill Collins, or others mentioned in Hekman's article, but, for myself, I am very much aware of being engaged with the debates and innovations of the many feminist experiments in sociology that, like mine, were exploring experience as a method of discovering the social from the standpoint of women's experience. But Hekman goes beyond Harding to constitute us as a common theoretical position, indeed as a foundationalist theory justifying feminist theory as knowledge. A coherence is invented for us: "Despite their significant differences, all of these accounts share the conviction that the feminist standpoint is rooted in a 'reality' that is the opposite of the ab-