Reply to Hartsock, Collins, Harding, and Smith

Abstract

Y PURPOSE IN WRITING Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited (in this issue) was to reopen the debate over feminist standpoint theory and to refocus the discussion of the central issues raised by the theory. The comments in this issue by Patricia Hill Collins, Sandra Harding, Dorothy Smith, and Nancy Hartsock on my article indicate that I have been at least partially successful in that purpose. I welcome the opportunity to further extend this discussion. Patricia Hill Collins, Sandra Harding, and Nancy Hartsock all raise an objection that goes to the heart of the approach that I develop in the article. They argue, although in different ways, that I, as Collins puts it, depoliticize feminist standpoint theory. Claiming that standpoint theory was not designed to be argued as theory of truth and method, Collins asserts that my apolitical discussion of feminist truth and method (375) denies the potentially radical content of standpoint theory. Similarly, Harding argues that I distort the central project of standpoint theorists by characterizing the approach as an attempt to justify the truth of feminist claims to more accurate accounts of reality. Against this she claims that it is relations between power and knowledge that concern these thinkers (382). Finally, Hartsock argues that I read feminist standpoint theory through a kind of American pluralism that prefers to speak not about power or justice but, rather, about knowledge and (367). It is precisely the relation between power and knowledge that concerns me in the article. I begin my analysis of feminist standpoint theory with an assumption that is also the centerpiece of Hartsock's approach: politics and epistemology are inseparable. I argue that the central question of feminist standpoint theory has been how we justify the truth of the feminist claim that women have been and are oppressed. My claim is that women cannot resist oppression and gain political power unless they can legitimate this claim. I further argue that the shift in the theory that occurred in the 1980s had political origin: the demand for recognition of differences among women. Finally, I turn to Weber's ideal type because it is an approach that explains and justifies the necessarily engaged (political) role of the social analyst. I do not think that this approach either distorts or depoliticizes feminist standpoint theory. On the contrary, I think it