Is Standpoint Theory a Resource for Feminist Epistemology? An Introduction

Abstract

Like most questions, the title of the session on which this collection of papers is based delineates a particular set of options and shapes the space of possible answers.1 In this sense, it is a loaded question that reflects the shift in focus as standpoint theory has been revisited in recent literature. As Janet Kourany notes in her contribution, the question is not whether standpoint theory is the resource for feminist epistemology; the question is whether, and if so how, it might be a resource to serve the goals of feminist epistemology successfully. Sandra Harding's anthology, The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader, both documented and fueled this shift (Harding 2004). The fundamental ideas underlying the more recent conversation about standpoint theory begin with its successes as a methodology, particularly in the social sciences. These successes strongly suggest that there is something worth exploring in standpoint theory, even if it is not possible to develop it fully as a feminist epistemology. Some of these successes also raise questions about knowledge production in the sciences more generally and thus about the broader implications of feminist epistemology and research.2 Each of the contributors to this collection has responded to the title question affirmatively, although not without ambivalence. Each offers sugges tions for how standpoint theory might be a resource for feminist epistemology and philosophy of while at the same time indicating its limits. In her contribution, Harding notes, It is reflection on its [standpoint theory's] uses in feminist research ... that informed its initial formulations as an epistemology and philosophy of science (emphasis added). Harding notes that this makes the philosophical version of standpoint theory a naturalized epistemology. However, as Harding now sees it, this abstract version of standpoint theory becomes controversial in part because of the diversity of its uses as a logic of inquiry. Rather than resolving these controversies through further abstraction, Harding welcomes the controversies as a means of furthering feminist knowledge projects. For Harding, the plurality of standpoint theories and the controversies to which they give rise are themselves a resource for feminist epistemology.