Journal of Gender Studies

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Gender and knowledge

Kathleen Lennon

To cite this article: Kathleen Lennon (1995) Gender and knowledge, Journal of Gender Studies,
4:2, 133-143, DOI: 10.1080/09589236.1995.9960600

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Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1995 133

Gender and Knowledge

KATHLEEN LENNON

ABSTRACT This paper reviews the claims that areas of knowledge have been masculine and the
attempt to develop feminist alternatives which followed from them. The idea of a feminist standpoint onto
knowledge has been subject to hefty criticisms and this paper assesses the impact of these. Drawing on
the recent work of Sandra Harding and Edward Said it redraws the project of standpoint epistemology
to accommodate the significant impact of marginality, without making a fetish of difference. In doing so
it provides an encounter between materialist and deconstructionist tendencies within contemporary
epistemologies.

One of feminism's most compelling insights lies in the connections it has made
between knowledge and power. This, not simply in the obvious sense that
access to knowledge enables empowerment; but more controversially through
the recognition that legitimation of knowledge-claims is intimately tied to
networks of domination and exclusion. This recognition has moved issues of
epistemology from die world of somewhat esoteric philosophy to the centre-
stage of contemporary culture. Not only philosophers, but also social scientists,
political theorists, historians and literary theorists are now urgently addressing
epistemological questions. Work widiin feminist epistemology therefore shares
preoccupations and critical moments widi other important strands of recent
diought: the writings of Marxists and critical dieorists, who for decades have
argued diat much of contemporary culture reflects bourgeois interests; south-
ern scholars who have pointed to die Eurocentrism of contemporary knowl-
edge production; radical philosophers of science, who have highlighted the role
of value judgments in scientific practice; and importantly in the contemporary
context, the theorists of what is now called postmodernism, who point to the
contingency and locatedness of all our knowledge claims.
Feminist work in epistemology also shares with at least some of these
intellectual movements a commitment to social change and links with other
emancipatory struggles against oppression (not only the traditional left, but also
Black, gay, ecological, peace and odier movements). This generates a tension
diat is apparent in current feminist theorising. Feminism is a movement rooted

0958-9236/95/02/0133-11 Journals Oxford Ltd

134 K. Lennon

in Enlightenment ideals of justice and freedom. It tries to understand the social

order, so as to devise effective strategies for change. Nonetheless it shares, with
the odier directions of thought referred to above, a critique of these ideals and
an awareness of the power/knowledge nexus which they so effectively disguise.
(Lennon & Whitford, 1994) [1]

A few years ago feminist writing on epistemology was concerned to expose the masculinity
of different areas of knowledge. Social and natural sciences attracted a good deal of
attention, but also literature, history and philosophy, among others. The claims that what
passed for knowledge was 'masculine' came in several forms; and it is worth paying
attention to these different forms in order to see what is involved in the claims. (I don't
suppose my list is exhaustive, nor are the categories exclusive.) Most straightforward was
the claim that the problems discussed and the theoretical solutions proposed reflected
only male experiences of the world. This could be an empirical claim, that the theories
reflected the actual experiences men had, or more complexly that the theories reflected
in some way the experiences/characteristics which men ought to have according to our
norms of masculinity. What was frequendy at issue here was the partiality of theories
which were presented as having universal validity. Detecting the origins of the theories
produced in the gendered experiences of the producers suggested the contingency of
theories with claims to universality, and the possibility of alternatives. Frequendy,
attention to the experiences of others produced data which the tfieory could not
accommodate. Well-known examples here would be Gilligan's work on Kohlberg's
theory of moral development (Gilligan, 1982), or feminist critiques of liberal political
theory [2]. Feminist critiques, however, often demonstrated the masculinity of knowledge
claims in more damaging ways. In many cases the narratives of the world which
masculine theories presented were structured around the legitimation of the positions of
domination which their originators held. They were, I would say, ideologically patriarchal.
Here examples abound, philosophical accounts of rationality, psychological sex difference
research, sociological accounts of the family, primatology and other animal studies,
anthropological accounts of huntergatherer societies, parts of sociobiology, medical
accounts of premenstrual syndrome, and so on (Bleier, 1986; Tuana, 1989; Haraway,
1989). Most far reaching of the attributions of masculinity is the claim that the symbolic
order by means of which knowledge claims are articulated privileges the male and
conceptualizes die female as that which lacks masculinity and consequently is less than
'human', less than 'rational' [3]. Such a symbolic order is, moreover, informed by male
imaginaries, detectable in images, metaphors and patterns of associations in which the
female is imagined, for example, as irrational, chaotic and disruptive. Such imaginaries
underlie die orderly pattern of rationalisations by means of which we justify our
judgements and actions [4].
In claiming diat areas of knowledge are masculine in these various ways it is not
necessary to assume a single masculine identity. The masculinity which Virginia Woolf
characterized in A Room of One's Own witii its unthinking mantle of authority and
correctness reflects the middle- and upper-class gender characteristics of her day. It is
distinct from that displayed in a Clint Eastwood movie and crucially different from the
masculinity with which lesbian women are now engaged when they debate the
 Gender and Knowledge 135

reappropriation of the word 'queer'. Masculinist discourses are multiple and can be used
to critique each other, as well as being subject to critique from feminist sources.

II
One response to the recognition that much of our knowledge is masculine in one or more
of the ways outlined above might be to reaspire to an ideal of knowledge in which gender
and other differences are not reflected in the knowledge produced. Feminist epistemolo-
gists have not usually taken this line. In common with many other strands in contempor-
ary thought, they no longer regard knowledge as a neutral transparent reflection of an
independently ordered reality, with truth and falsity established by ahistorical and
universal procedures of rational assessment. Rather it is accepted that all knowledge is
situated knowledge, reflecting the position of the knowledge producer at a particular
historical moment, in a particular culture, of a certain colour, gender and sexuality
(Harding, 1986; Haraway, 1988).
If we accept the partiality of knowledge production and the difference that differences
make to our epistemological enterprises, but also reject the possibility of simply tran-
scending such differences to put together a perspective transcendent story of the social
and natural world, where does this leave feminist epistemological projects? One thought
would be that if knowledge reflects a gendered subjectivity we should ensure for feminist
purposes that the subjectivity implicated be in some sense a female one. There are a
number of ways in which, we might think, female subjectivity could be reflected in our
epistemological projects. Such projects could derive from women's experiences of the
world; or reflect feminist normative viewpoints, accountable to feminist ethical and
political objectives; or even find articulation via a female imaginary and symbolic.
There are, however, a whole host of now well-rehearsed problems with a project of
producing knowledge which in some sense implicates a female subjectivity. First is the
issue of differences between women. Knowledge cannot reflect a female subjectivity
because there is no such thing to be reflected. Women, due to the variety of other social
locations they occupy, in addition to their gendered one, have diverse experiences, life
histories, perceptions, modes of agency, and so on. Arising out of these are diverse ethical
and political objectives. It is not possible to abstract from these differences a line of
communalities which reflect the function of 'female' in these lives. The subjectivity of a
white woman in South Africa is different from that of a white man, that of an African
woman different from an African man, but there is no isolatable strand of 'femaleness'
in common between the two groups of women (Mohanty, 1992; Amos & Parmar, 1984).
This line of argument opposes certain strands of essentialism running through some
versions of feminist thought. Such thought assumed that certain bodily forms yielded
common experience/life expectations/modes of knowledge collecting which could find
expression in female ways of knowing. For some writers the absence of such communal-
ities, which the differences between women make apparent, undermines the coherence
of feminist epistemological projects altogether.
A second strand of objection centres around the notion of experience. Feminist
knowledge is often taken to involve an articulation of, or be grounded in, female
experience. Where such experience is thought to carry with it a dimension of self-auth-
entication, the concept is fraught with all the difficulties that beset traditional empiricist
conceptions. Experience itself reflects and is partially constructed out of the self-under-
standings yielded by the imaginary and symbolic dimensions of our conceptual appar-
atus. These are determined by, and themselves play a determining role in, the structural

.
136 K. Lennon

and power differences of our social order. Experience, per se, even that of a marginalized
group is not necessarily a source of undistorted knowledge (Lazreg, 1994).
Both these points link to another made forcefully by the writer Edward Said (1993).
The insistence on difference between male and female perspectives or between colonizing
and colonized viewpoints was not something which simply originated in critiques by
marginalized others of falsely universalizing perspectives. It was already implicit in the
dominant discourses. Their presentation of the 'feminine' or the 'African' as an 'Other'
to norms of the 'human' or the 'rational' played a central legitimating function for
structures of domination and colonization. The danger here is of making a fetish of such
otherness. Insisting on difference keeps this opposition intact, dividing the world along
predetermined fault-lines. Feminist epistemological projects can therefore be seen as in
danger of promoting oppositions which should be contested, recognized as historically
created and a result of interpretation. For Said, working within such binaries also
encourages the attribution of a spurious homogeneity to the categories, the dangers of which
were mentioned above. It also, and this is very important, suggests the radical incommen-
surability and impermeability of perspectives to each other. Feminist perspectives onto
knowledge, it is sometimes suggested, are only accessible to women, African perspectives
to African people and so on. The result is 'to defend the essence of die experience itself
rather than to promote full knowledge of it and its entanglements and dependencies on
other knowledges' (Said, 1993, p. 36).
Further, but connected points are made by deconstructionist writers who challenge the
coherence of feminist epistemological projects. Within the poststructuralist accounts of
language which such writers use, the content of the category women is exhausted by its
oppositional position to the category male; a binary and hierarchical structure in which
the male is privileged. Woman is dius a lack, what is not male, not rational, cultured, and
so on. Within such a framework to attempt to articulate a female subjectivity is not only
to fetishize such binaries, but also to indulge die illusion that diere can be sometiiing
essential which lies behind them which could be made present. Within this framework
the possibility of distinctively feminist epistemological projects which attempt to challenge
die hierarchical opposition of 'man' and 'woman' are fundamentally misconceived. If we
use these categories we have to buy the oppositional structure within which they are
placed. To assume diis can be changed (by, for example, the articulation of a different
female Imaginary and Symbolic) is, it is argued, to assume there is something which it
is to be female, independendy of a mode of categorizing; a biological or psychic essence.
The dissatisfaction we may feel when faced with binary oppositions can be addressed
only by trying to undermine the binaries altogether, e.g. by parody, irony or displace-
ment. That would take us beyond the categories 'man' and 'woman' and leave no room
for distinctively feminist projects (Derrida, 1978, 1982). Julia Kristeva, for example, has
written of diree phases of feminism. The first asserts equality (a demand for equal rights),
the second asserts difference, (a celebration of specificity), but in die third phase, which
Kristeva recommends, 'the very dichotomy man/woman as opposition ... may be
understood as belonging to metaphysics. What can "identity" even "sexual identity"
mean in a new theoretical space where the very notion of identity is challenged'
(Kristeva, 1986, p. 209) [5].

Ill
In the light of this list of pitfalls what possibility remains of specifically feminist
epistemological projects? The deconstructionist conclusion that, if we use die categories
 Gender and Knowledge 137

'man' and 'women', we have to buy the ideological framework in which they are placed,
has to be resisted. Without the use of these categories we can provide no explanatory
account of the lives of actual men and women, lives which have been structured by the
category to which they have been assigned. It is of course the case that the ideological
content of these terms has had a material effect in the lives of those subject to them. It
is however possible to recognize this and use the terms, while contesting the symbolic and
imaginary content with which they are associated. In any case the content of each of our
gendered categories is much more variable, ambiguous and conflictory than the post-
structuralist binaries often suggest. Moreover, our categories are not static and closed.
Attention to the lives and subjectivities of those whose bodies have been inscribed as male
or female provides resources also to challenge what being male or female consists in. We
cannot accept 'woman' as a natural kind whose extension is fixed independently of our
categories, with sets of essential characteristics which could be used to challenge our
discursive articulation. But, neither can we accept that the content of the category
remains static, exhausted in the hierarchical oppositions to which poststructuralists draw
our attention. Our inability to do without the category 'woman' does not mean that we
cannot simultaneously contest the content which has been provided for it. As Teresa de
Lauretis insists, in engaging in feminist epistemological projects anchored in the lives of
women we are not only producing new knowledge we are also contesting and reconsti-
tuting the category 'woman' itself (de Lauretis, 1981, p. 121).
(Similar points can be made with regard to some of the other categories Said
mentions: 'Jewish', 'African' or 'Black'. Pointing to their historical contingency and lack
of an essentialist anchor does not mean that we can do away with them. We need the
terms to explain the distinctive consequences of being assigned to these categories.
Indeed, as migration and integration make any ontological basis to these identities utterly
fragile, nationalist movements utilize them ever more firmly, with terrible results. There
may, however, be a difference between gender categories and these other examples. The
historical contingency of some of these groupings make it possible to foresee the situation
in which they lose their social and epistemological significance. In the case of gender the
historical and social moment serves to distinguish the content of the categories, but it is
more difficult to foresee the divisions themselves as being of no significance.)
Even if we reject the deconstructionist constraints on our feminist projects, how do we
fare with the other problems? Can we attend to the specificity of female subject positions
without falsely homogenizing women's lives and experiences, arresting our thought at the
articulation of experience and closing off" feminist knowledge from interaction with
knowledges of other kinds? Some feminists clearly think we can. Sandra Harding,
particularly in her work, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (1991; see also 1993) defends the
legitimacy of feminist epistemological projects in a way that attempts to avoid the pitfalls
we have outlined. The starting point for such projects, for Harding, are women's lives,
which includes but is not exhausted by women's own articulations of their experience.
These lives are diverse, no one is just a woman, but they are structured by gender so that
they are different from the lives of men who share other aspects of women's subject
positions. This does not assume that there is a single form of gender differentiation which
can be isolated out and interacts with other abstractable axes such as colour and class,
which clearly is not true. What it does assume is that in each social grouping there is a
difference in the lives of men and women as a consequence of their being assigned to the
category 'man' and 'woman'.
For Harding these diverse women's lives form the starting point of our epistemological
projects, but not the end-point. Our project is to construct our theories from this point
138 K. Lennon

in an attempt to provide explanatory narratives of these lives. The narratives which we

construct in order to understand our starting point will not be restricted to accounts of
what happens to women. They are attempts to theorize the natural and social order to
explain these phenomena. Such narratives will therefore, necessarily, involve reflection
on the structure of gender relations and the consequent differences in male and female
life experiences. Because of the diversity of female lives such explanatory narratives may
well be diverse and mutually contestory. Feminist epistemological projects therefore
involve an engagement with other narratives, both from other marginal positions and
those which are dominant in our culture. Crucially for Harding, adopting feminist
standpoints does not yield closed perspectives. The insights produced are valuable for
everyone, not just women. Indeed she suggests that such feminist projects are ones which
men can also engage in, if they are prepared to make their starting point women's lives.
Similarly, she suggests women from colonizing groups can engage in epistemological
projects anchored in the lives of colonized women; by attending to them. (I will return
to this below.)
Harding therefore appears to be offering an account of feminist epistemological
projects which respects diversity, moves beyond experience and resists the closure of
perspectives. The need for seeing interconnections between diverse perspectives is a point
insisted on by Edward Said, especially in his work on culture and empire:
If at the outset we acknowledge the massively knotted and complex histories of
special, but, nevertheless, overlapping and interconnected experiences; of
women, Westerners, of Blacks, of national states and culturesthere is no
particular intellectual reason for granting each and all of them an ideal and
essentially separate status ... Yet we would wish to preserve what is unique
about each so long as we preserve some sense of ... the actual contests that
contribute to its formation ... A comparative, or better, a contrapuntual
perspective is required ... That is we must be able to think through and
interpret together experiences that are discrepant. (Said, 1993, p. 36)
The essential point for Said is that very discrepant accounts are a product of
interconnected histories and it is essential to our epistemological enterprises to recognize
these connections. The very different accounts from masculine and feminine perspectives
reflect structures of gender differentiation in which both men and women live; the
disparate accounts from colonizing and colonized a consequence of the history of empire
of which they are both a part.
What are the epistemological consequences of this recognition of interdependence, this
insistence on contrapuntal readings? They vary on different accounts. Few now share the
aspiration, perhaps, implicit in Marxist epistemology, of the production of a new master
discourse. Within at least some strands of Marxist theory, the position of the proletariat,
marginalized in the production of dominant knowledges, but central to the economic
processes, gave them epistemic superiority, enabling them to go beyond the appearances
available to the bourgeoisie and articulate the real causal structures underlying pro-
duction. In the contemporary scene those who are engaged in epistemological projects
from the margins have usually abandoned any such totalizing goals. The ambition to tell
the one true story of the world has receded. Nonetheless, feminists working in the
direction that Said suggests have moved beyond the partiality of single perspectives to
provide narratives of larger scale structures, without the vanity of assuming complete
accounts of them. (Much of the pressure for such a move has come from African or
African/American feminists; see Mangena, 1991; Hil-Collins, 1990). Have our projects,
 Gender and Knowledge 139

therefore, reached a point where we can no longer regard them as explicitly feminist
ones? A .shift marked perhaps in academic circles by the move in many places from
women's studies to gender studies? Understanding die way gender structures women's
lives involves simultaneously grasping die way it structures masculine ones, and engaging
with die masculinist discourses in which this finds expression. Haven't we dierefore
moved away from explicidy feminist perspectives back to a position of (perhaps limited)
transcendence analysing gender and multiple gendered perspectives? [6] In a parallel
way it might seem diat we must take die perspectives of die colonized and diat of the
colonizers and weave from diem an account of die history of colonization in which bodi
are placed. In which case standpoint epistemologies have delivered us back to transcen-
dent epistemological subjects.
But diis does not work. Although the lives of colonized and colonizers are connected
by die history of empire, and men and women by the structure of gender relations, the
narratives of diat history and diose relations constructed from die alternative subject
positions are conflictory and contested. Placing these narratives alongside each other is
nodiing like standing back and fitting togedier the different bits of a jigsaw (die same can
be said of the relations between different masculinist discourses, e.g. gay and straight,
middle and working class; or different feminist ones liberal/Marxist, white/black, and so
on). These discourses are connected and their subjects stand in important relationships
to each other, including, crucially, power relations. But this doesn't make it possible to
weave them into a unitary account. Moreover, the difference in power between the
subject positions, which these discourses articulate, effects the way the epistemological
conflicts are to be negotiated. It therefore makes a difference whedier gender relations
are being analysed from a feminist standpoint or from some odier position.
On the other hand die point of contrapuntual readings is not simply to draw our
attention to plurality, multiple readings of a situation, following a recognition of which
we can simply rest. The point is to recognize the interconnections between die positions
and consequently to challenge and transform the accounts which are placed next to each
other. When a feminist account of sexual harassment is placed next to a 'bit of fun'
perspective, the goal is not just to provide additional perspectives. It is radier to challenge
and discredit the masculine account. When women from colonized countries enter the
debate over reproductive technologies, it is not simply to add diversity, but also to
challenge other accounts. When feminists working on historical research attended to
womens lives, it was not simply to add extra dimensions to historical research. The
results challenged accepted accounts of historical periods and the understanding of
moments of progress.
Reading contrapuntally, dierefore, can serve to discredit certain accounts, and a
recognition of diis brings us back to normative and justificatory issues within epistemol-
ogy. So it is back to tiiese that we must now turn.

IV
One aspect of Harding's work which addresses justificatory issues is her insistence diat
our epistemological practices require 'strong reflexivity'. Our evaluation of knowledge
claims requires us to reflect on the situation of knowers, and their entidement, given their
situation, to make knowledge claims. But such a proposal needs supplementing to guide
us in die assessment of entidement. The supplement provided by Harding bestows
epistemic privilege on claims that derive from marginal perspectives. For Harding,
narratives from marginalized lives, when counterposed to dominant narratives, serve to
140 K. Lmnon

expose the assumptions and exclusions in these latter, required to bring about their
transformation. Maintaining feminist perspectives on gender relations gives us a critical
edge. (Not die only one of course.) There are a number of questions to be raised about
such privileging of marginality, and it is important to remind ourselves that what is
marginal or central varies according to context (Bar On, 1993). Moreover, mere
marginality doesn't necessarily yield privilege. (Men have been marginal to childcare, but
we don't regard their position as epistemically privileged as a consequence.) Harding
frequendy writes as if the basis of marginal privilege lies in its making visible data which
diose in dominant positions normally did not have available to them, and which their
Uieories could not accommodate. This is clearly an important aspect of much work
which has emerged from paying attention to the lives and subjectivities of women or
colonized peoples. It doesn't seem possible, however, to regard the issue as simply one of
empirical adequacy; if only because the marginal lives and experiences themselves
require interpretations which are themselves contestory.
There may, however, be other ways of defending die claim that marginality provides
us widi a critical edge. Marginality can provide die standpoint from which not only the
empirical inadequacy, but also die ideohgical structuring of explanatory narratives
becomes visible; for example die use of symbolic and imaginary oppositions between
'male' and 'female' in a way diat serves to legitimate hierarchical relations between them.
The marginalities at issue here are from these groups who in terms of die dominant
discourse have been constructed as 'odier'. Such a construction of otherness has then
informed the content of the dominant dieories. Where such ideological narratives are in
place attention to die materiality of the lives of such 'odiers' provides the 'fault-line'
(Smith, 1987) from which diese ideological principles can become visible. Nonetiieless, it
frequendy requires a great deal of hard work, careful unpicking, and explicit strategies
of resistant readership (Barwell, 1995) to make them visible.
Some examples will make diis clearer: in a recent lecture on Heidegger the lecturer
remarked, "They are even reading Heidegger in China". I was attending the lecture widi
two visiting academics from China, visiting our department to work on collaborative
projects in philosophy of mind and feminist dieory. Listening to the remark as if through
dieir ears made transparent die hierarchical creation of odierness the lecturer himself
appeared to miss. Other examples come from the discussions of resistant reading. Ismay
Barwell (1995), following Judith Fetterley (1978) asks diat we consider 'what is involved
for an actual reader who is a woman when confronted widi die task of interpreting many
novels, short stories and movies'. Bodi Barwell and Fetterley discuss Rip Van Winkle.
'Rip Van Winkle's desire to escape work, autiiority, and difficult decisions is made in the
story specifically male ... for example, by making his wife symbolise all the disagreeable
tilings he wants to avoid'. If an audience wishes to engage widi and enjoy die story it
needs to adopt certain cognitive and emotional attitudes. However, 'what is an essentially
simple act of identification when the reader of die story is male becomes a tangle of
contradictions when die reader is female'. This is not 'just a matter of having her point
of view left out ... but comes from identifying widi a point of view which is everyones
but not hers, which is simultaneously normal and typically human, and male and not
hers' (Barwell, 1995). Here the ideological structuring of the narrative becomes apparent
from explicidy adopting die position of a woman reading it.
Here diere is an encounter between materialist standpoint epistemologies and critical
moments in deconstructive philosophies. Within deconstruction we are required to attend
to die marginal positions within the discourse in order to render visible die structures of
hierarchical oppositions implicit in the multiple meanings of the text. Within standpoint
 Gender and Knowledge 141

epistemology such deconstructive moves are prompted by attention to the lives and
experiences of those whose 'otherness' is implicit in the discourses, attention which can
also prompt challenges to die oppositional categories which it uncovers and seeks to
transform.
A defence of the privilege of marginality anchors such privilege at die critical moment
of theorising. Reading contrapuntally exposes gaps and ideological legitimations which it
is then the job of our epistemological projects to transform. In the reconstructive process
it is not clear tiiat prior marginality provides any particular edge. Instead each new
theory produced has to be subject to a deconstructive critique from its own marginalities,
in a process without closure or finitude [7].
Yielding such epistemic privilege to marginality rests on assumptions about epistemic
values. It assumes that our epistemic goals require not only some kind of empirical
adequacy, but also the construction of non-ideological knowledge. The on going critical process
initiated by attending to marginal standpoints is a means of promoting both epistemic
goals.

I would like to end with some further questions about die progressive epistemological
project as Harding outlines it. The focus in die account as I have so far described it is
on die standpoints from which our epistemological projects begin, rather than on the
situation of dieir initiators. Indeed, Harding urges men to start their theorizing from
women's lives, and urges white women to start their dieorizing from the lives of
ex-colonized women. There are some important advantages of such an approach. It
prevents us seeing difference as yielding closed and homogeneous perspectives. It also
prevents us reifying difference into radical alterity. Reading contrapuntally as Said
suggests bodi highlights specificity and allows for the recognition of communalities. This
aspect of Harding's work is linked to her requirement of'strong reflexivity'. In the further
characterization of this requirement it becomes clear that encounters with marginal
standpoints enable us to become aware of the salient features of our own situation which
merit critical attention (e.g. my whiteness and heterosexual practices).
What we must be wary of, however, is any assumption of the availability and
transparency of standpoints to others which might encourage a picture of a transcendent
subject who could somehow choose die most appropriate standpoint to adopt to advance
their knowledge. Attending to the standpoints of women or colonized people is not just
making them an object of our study. (There has been no shortage of men dieorizing
about women or white people about black.) Naomi Scheman has highlighted die danger
of appealing to the 'experiences of people of color to provide die raw material for a more
adequate theory, which it would remain the prerogative of people like me to create and
authorise' (Scheman, 1993, p. 230). Harding is herself aware of the problems to her
project caused by differentials of power. She 'challenges members of dominant groups to
make themselves "fit" to engage in collaborative, democratic, community enterprises
with marginal peoples' (Harding, 1993, p. 68). But adopting a particular standpoint is not
just a matter of good will. A standpoint is more than a perspective, but it is anchored
in perspectival knowledge. Attending to perspectivity requires attending to how the world
is, as experienced from a certain point within it, something not articulatable from
elsewhere. Recognizing the nature of perspectival knowledge requires acknowledging the
defeasible privilege of those occupying the situations to which it is tied, in its articulation.
Attention by men to the perspectivities of women and by colonizers to die perspectivities
142 K. Lennon

of ex-colonized groups, is parasitic on, and follows on from such self-articulation. More
discussion is needed concerning what is required to make perspectives available from
other situations. Mutual understanding is not an all or nothing affair. It is experimental,
often partial, sometimes unexpected, rarely impossible and rarely complete. Especially
where there are differentials of power it is a process fraught with pitfalls [8].
Recognizing the nature of perspectival knowledge forces a particular understanding of
the progressive epistemological projects outlined in the previous sections. It is not possible
to view the subjects of such projects in individualistic terms; as subjects testing the validity
of their theories against a marginality which they adopt at will. Rather epistemological
progress is made by communities consequent upon opportunities for marginal voices to
become heard. The search for epistemological progress then issues in practical and
political imperatives to create the spaces for such articulations. Naomi Scheman urges
'concrete programs of affirmative action and other forms of increasing access ... We
need, that is, not just to understand the world, but to change it, and until and insofar
as we have done that, no theoretical fancy dancing, no addition of more voices filtered
through our word processors, will be an adequate response to those who charge us with
abusing in fact the very privilege we deconstruct in theory' (Scheman, 1993, p. xiv).

NOTES
[1] This paper is indebted to my co-editor Margaret Whitford and the contributors to the volume Knowing
the Difference (Routledge, 1994). This first paragraph is from the jointly written introduction to that book.
[2] See for example, Jagger, 1983.
[3] See for example Irigaray, 1987 or Lloyd, 1984 and 1993.
[4] See Whitford, 1991 especially Chapter 2.
[5] Thanks to Roger Luckhurst for this quote and to the Postmodernist Reading group at Hull for
illuminating discussions in this area.
[6] I am grateful to Annette Fitzsimons for clarifying this dilemma for me.
[7] For an informative discussion of this process see Strickland, 1994.
[8] For an illuminating discussion of these see Seller, 1994.

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