Postscript
Harding’s edited volume The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies (2004) is a valuable collection of essays relating to standpoint theory - some classic expositions of the theory, others pursuing divergent lines of argument and criticism.
Sandra Harding’s introduction (as well as her contribution to Turner and Roth’s The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences - Harding 2003) reviews the development of standpoint theory, presents its main arguments and defends it from a range of familiar criticisms. She goes on to outline the practical prescriptions in it for research practice. Nancy Hartsock’s pioneering article advocating a materialist standpoint theory (originally 1983) is included together with a selection of her other essays in feminist theory in Hartsock (1998).The challenge of post-structuralist modes of thought to feminism, as it had been understood and practised, has produced a number of responses. Caroline New (1998, 2003) provides a valuable assessment of the issues raised from the standpoint of critical realism. Lawson (1999, 2003b) sparked a lively debate in the journal Feminist Economics on the value of critical realism for feminist research. See also Barker (2003), Harding (1999) and Peter (2003).
Sharon Crasnow (2014) offers a very clear analysis of versions of feminist standpoint theory, distinguishing three main claims: that knowledge is socially situated, that certain (subordinate, or oppressed) social positions carry ‘epistemic privilege' and that knowledge can be understood as ‘achieved' when a group consciousness that is political has come into being. She illustrated the first thesis with some clear examples of the way concepts in the prevailing culture/practice of orthodox social science are called into question on the basis of research into practices that mainly involve women (defence against the risk of assault, domestic labour, in particular).
The next step of the argument is how to justify assigning superior cognitive status to what is revealed in this way. Crasnow criticizes two approaches to this question (by Harding (2004) and Wylie (1992)) and provides an alternative, which places the interests of researcher and researched at the centre of theory construction. Objects for study are to be defined selectively in terms of the goals of the project, but this is subject to empirical constraints: that the properties modelled are real, and that ‘the modelled objects... provide us with knowledge that will work to achieve those goals' (Crasnow 2014: 155).This is an explicitly political account of objectivity that envisions the formation of communities between researchers and researched, with knowledge conceived as a tool for emancipation of the oppressed:
Feminist standpoint theory highlights the collective and, hence, political, interests of women, and so those features of the social world that contribute to maintaining the power relations that keep women in subordinate positions are relevant given the goal of transforming those power relations.
(Crasnow 2014: 156)
Knowledge produced in this way is both ‘by' and ‘for' the subjects of the research.
This approach does avoid the ‘reduction' of situated knowledge to a myriad of subjectivities, and it does avoid the common misrepresentation of standpoint's claim of epistemic superiority as somehow deriving automatically from a social position. However, it does suffer from unresolved difficulties. One of these is that ‘interests' themselves are open to contestation and may be (will be!) thought of differently by participants in any such project. Crasnow's solution to this is a process of negotiation coordination and coalition-building through which a sense of shared interests may develop. This has much in common with the position developed elsewhere in this book (e.g. Chapters 7 and 8), but this poses questions about the breadth and depth of the proposed coalition (all women, or, perhaps, other groups oppressed, exploited or marginalized by the system of power relations that needs to be transformed (sometimes she speaks as if the relevant interests are those of women, at other times of ‘African-Americans, Latinos, the poor')? Of course, this issue arises for all radical cognitive-politically radical programmes.
Any (provisional) solution would, it can be argued, depend on the prior development of theoretical knowledge about the social and economic structure, the power relations distributed through it and so on. This, it seems to me, is implicit but not fully acknowledged in Crasnows argument.In an influential article in the Journal of Critical Realism Flatschart (2017) argues for a realignment between the ‘new materialism' and feminist standpoint and ‘difference' theorists, in which critical realism could play a constructive role (while also learning from the ways feminists understand ‘difference'). The reintroduction of such topics as nature, embodiment and the role of non-humans as actors is welcomed, but the monist materialism derived from Deleuze and the anti-anthropocentric post-humanism of Haraway provide a ‘flat ontology' of contingent assemblages that call for critical questioning. (See Chapter 12 and postscript to Chapter 10.)
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