Donna Haraway
“Chapter Nine Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and
the Privilege of Partial Perspective” from
Background before Reading
In her own way,
Haraway is almost as dense as Quine if you don’t have the background in the area of
discourse. In Quine’s case it is analytic
epistemology. In Haraway’s case it is
feminist theory. I recommend reading Elizabeth Anderson’s “Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science” at
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ first. You
may be surprised how similar many of the points that Quine and Haraway make are once the
different discourse styles are stripped away.
To learn more about
Haraway see: Biographical Information about
Haraway at http://www.egs.edu/faculty/haraway.html and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yxHIKmMI70&feature=channel_page,
a youtube video of Haraway’s
lecture “Birth of the Kennel: Cyborgs,
Dogs, and Companion Species”
Reading and Discussion Questions
Introduction
1. After reading the entire chapter, unpack two of
Haraway’s statements:
“It has seemed
to me that feminists have both selectively and flexibly used and been trapped by two poles
of a tempting dichotomy on the question of objectivity.” (185) (Hint one pole is related to social constructionism
and postmodernism and the other to feminist versions of objectivity (successor science
projects/empiricisms.)
“So I think my
problem and ‘our’ problem is how to have simultaneously
an account of radical historical
contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for
recognizing our own 'semiotic technologies' for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts
of a 'real' world, one that can be partially shared and friendly to earth-wide projects of
finite freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering, and limited
happiness.” (187) [She also uses the
image of a greased pole on p.188 to describe the dichotomy.]
2. What characterizes the social constructionist
argument? (184-186) How does it view science? What does Haraway find useful and troubling about
social constructionism?
3. How do standpoint theory and feminist empiricism
seek to contribute to a feminist version of objectivity and a successor science? (186-87) Why are ways to establish “enforceable,
reliable accounts of things” (188), of meanings and bodies, important?
The
Persistance of Vision
4. Why does Haraway choose the metaphor of vision? How does it help her to establish that “feminist
objectivity means quite simply situated knowledges”(188). See especially the last paragraph on p. 189,
continuing on through all of page 190. Why did
walking with her dogs teach her a lesson? (190)
5. What pluses and minuses does Haraway identify in the
standpoints of the subjugated? (191-93) What alternative does she see to relativism? (191-192, 194)
Note she rejects relativism and totalism.
What does she mean by each?
6. How and why are feminists be committed to both
“mobile positioning” and “passionate detachment.” (192-94) Why is “splitting, not being, the privileged
image for feminist epistemologies of scientific knowledge”(193)? Why should they prefer resonances? (194-95)
7. Unpack her statements: “I am arguing for politics and epistemologies
of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the
condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims” (195) And “The goal is better accounts of the world,
that is, ‘science.” (196)
8. Why does Haraway introduce “translation”
at the end of her section on vision?
Objects as Actors:
The Apparatus of Bodily Production
9. Why is it a problem that science has often viewed
the objects of knowledge as passive and inert, as resources? Why should we picture them as actors/agents?
(197-99) Why has the notion of the world as an
active subject been attractive to eco-feminists? (199)
How are reconstructions in primatology a good example? (199-200) Why is it good to think of the world as coyote?
(200-201)
Discussion on Quine and Haraway
1. Given their different historical and social contexts, it seems remarkable that Quine and Haraway both focus on studying the knower and how the knower actually goes about knowing. They also want to look at how science works. What key points of agreement do you find between Quine and Haraway? Points of disagreement? What do you think Quine would make of Haraway's idea that we should picture the objects of knowledge as actors/agents?
2. What do you see useful in each for the development of an environmental epistemology?