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Social Epistemology

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Knowing communities: An investigation of Harding's standpoint epistemology

Gaile Pohlhaus

To cite this article: Gaile Pohlhaus (2002) Knowing communities: An investigation of Harding's standpoint epistemology, Social Epistemology, 16:3, 283-293, DOI: 10.1080/0269172022000025633

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0269172022000025633

Published online: 26 Nov 2010.

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SOCIAL EPISTEMOLO GY, 2002, VOL. 16, NO . 3, 283–293

Knowing communities: an investigation of Harding’s standpoint epistemology

GAILE POHLHAUS

In describing feminist standpoint theory, Sandra Harding seeks to show that gender divisions impact what we can know, but to do so in a way that does not homogenize women. SpeciŽ cally, in her later work Harding attempts to diversify the notion of a standpoint in order to account adequately for differences in social positions among women. Yet, Harding uses language that undermines this project and gives rise to potential problems within her account. In fact, I will argue that it is because the standpoint account is not social enough that these problems arise. In the following paper, I begin with a brief sketch of feminist standpoint theory1 and consider some of the ways Harding attempts to make women’s diversity central within a standpoint framework. In considering Harding’s arguments for the standpoint framework as a resource for recognizing differences among women, I question speciŽ cally the relationship between a knower’s actual social position and that knower’s ability to forge a critical standpoint. That is, must one in fact occupy a given social position in order to develop a critical standpoint? While Harding clearly wants to say ‘no’, the very idea of a standpoint prevents her from giving a consistent account of how this is possible. In attempting to articulate ways in which shared understanding among knowers of different social positions may take place, I use the idea of intersubjectivity to compliment Harding’s notion of strong objectivity. Focusing on intersubjective relations among cooperative knowers of different social positions avoids some of the difŽ culties that arise in Harding’s account and brings into focus a new set of productive questions with regard to understanding and diversity.

1. Diversity and feminist standpoint theory

Drawing on a Lukácsian interpretation of Marx, standpoint epistemology argues that knowledge is the product of our active engagement with the world through labour. Harding explains: ‘knowledge is produced through ‘craft’ procedures, much as a sculptor comes to understand the real nature of the block of marble only as she begins to work on it’ (1991, p. 127). In contrast to an empiricist model of everyday knowing that takes as paradigm cases basic passive perception of the world (such as

Author :

Gaile Pohlhaus is a PhD candidate in the department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA; e-mail: [email protected]

Social Epistemology ISSN 0269-1728 print/ISSN 1464-5297 on line # 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/0269172022000025633

observing that the cat is on the mat), standpoint epistemology takes its paradigm from knowledge acquired through interaction with the world. Knowledge on this account is always interested; I come to know the world for a reason (e.g. to grow better crops, to cure myself of illness, etc.). In addition, the way the world is transformed through human labour gives rise to modes of living that are compatible with the world that humans have created. In other words, the relationship between self and world is dialectical: human beings transform their environment that in turn transforms them. We come to know the world by shaping it to our needs and by shaping the world to our needs we give rise to new selves. So, for example, if I come to know and shape the world through farming and irrigation practices, I may become more sedentary since I no longer need to hunt for food or look for water.

It is a biological fact about humans that they cannot survive on their own; an infant left in the forest with no one to care for it will die. In order to meet our needs effectively, humans must work together to transform the world. Therefore, it is not alone (as an observational model might suggest) that I come to know the world through shaping it, but rather the shaping of the world to meet human interests is a social project. Since shaping our world, which in turn shapes us, is a social project: ‘[t]he conceptual framework by which we make sense of ourselves and our world is shaped by the interests and values of the society we inhabit’ (Jaggar, 1983, p. 358). Therefore, even though the sculptor may work on her block of marble independently, she does so as a sculptor, which is a socially recognized category, and the techniques she employs will be understood within the context of those that have historically been used within her society. In this manner, social organization and interests always shape knowledge on the standpoint account. In a capitalist society, however, where labour is distributed unequally and where interests differ according to social hierarchies, knowledge, both of society and of the world generally, will depend upon the point at which one stands within the division of labour. This is true in two senses. First, since working on the world is how we know it, groups who are engaged in different kinds of labour will come to know the world differently. Second, because the relationship between self and world is dialectical, a social distribution of labour that is driven by only part of that society’s interests will affect the nature of the individuals in the society both deeply and differently depending upon where in the hierarchy they stand. Yet, if knowledge is always situated and different depending on where one is positioned in the social order, how are we to discern between more and less objective claims? Objectivity is traditionally attributed to knowledge that appears to come from a value neutral and non-situated position. On the standpoint account, however, all knowledge is situated and grows out of particular human interests. Because knowledge will always be informed by particular interests and desires, it is only when these interests are made explicit that we can move toward objectivity, a system in which the social production of knowledge incorporates the perspectives and interests of all of society’s members. Harding argues that objectivity in the traditional sense, what she calls ‘weak objectivity’, is a Ž ction; instead, we need to investigate those interests that are driving the knowledge we produce in order to move toward what she calls ‘strong objectivity’. Strong objectivity requires ‘a scientiŽ c account of the relationship between historically located belief and maximally objective belief’ (1991, p. 142).

In examining the relationship between interest, labour and knowledge, the standpoint theorist contends that knowledge coming from the standpoint of the working class has the potential to be more objective than that of the capitalist class. The working class is necessary for the production of society, i.e. the physical world within which we live is produced through the working class’s physical labour. At the same time this work is seen as inessential: it is devalued insofar as workers do not receive the full exchange value for the products of their labour and insofar as the fact that the capitalist beneŽ ts from this situation without engaging in physical labour is seen as a ‘natural’ function of economic relations. Because the idea that work can be necessary yet inessential is a contradiction, those exploited by the social division of labour may come to see that their lived experience belies the dominant ideology used to justify their exploitation. They may come to recognize, for example, that the work they do is required by a system that simultaneously downplays the importance of that work. Moreover, because the social system causes them great suffering via exploitation, the interests of the working class will be at odds with the social order. They may come to recognize that justiŽ cations for the ‘naturalness’ of a system of labour that exploits them are incommensurate with their interests and what they know through their daily life. The gap between the lived reality of the exploited and the accepted ways of describing reality may lead to a recognition of one’s place in the whole of society as well as an understanding of how the whole within which they know the world shapes their lives. It is important here to emphasize that those exploited by a social system do not just happen to have more objective knowledge. Rather, it is only when they grapple with the social arrangement that exploits them and how this social arrangement informs knowledge that they can achieve a more objective standpoint. Under Harding’s standard of strong objectivity, the standpoint developed from the contradictions growing out of the situations of the oppressed move toward more objective knowledge.

In contrast, the standpoint of the privileged, insofar as their interests are in direct opposition to those whose exploitation beneŽ ts them, will be distorted and less objective (1991, p. 120). Those who beneŽ t from a socially stratiŽ ed society will experience the world more smoothly and live in a social system commensurate with their interests. Because their lived experience gives no cause for scrutinizing how social relations inform their knowledge, those who are privileged within social relations are not led to see the whole within which they stand. It is in fact in their interest not to recognize how the division of labour privileges them by exploiting others, since to do so would undermine their privilege. Therefore, knowledge that begins here lacks the critical purchase that would move toward objectivity. In this way standpoint epistemology maintains that all knowledge is situated without forgoing the possibility of discerning among more and less objective claims: accounts of the world obtained from the situations of the oppressed may be said to be more objective than those obtained from the situations of the privileged. To summarize, standpoint epistemology is social in two ways. First, the social position of the knower is epistemically signiŽ cant; where the knower is socially positioned will both make possible and delimit knowledge. Second, more objective knowledge is not a product of mere observation or a disinterested perspective on the world, but is achieved by struggling to understand one’s experience through a critical stance on the social order within which knowledge is produced. This latter point is emphasized in particular by Harding’s notion of strong objectivity.

Feminist standpoint theorists move from this account to talk about knowledge and the position of women drawing on the notion of a sexual division of labour. In maintaining that women are expected to engage in work both that is necessary yet inessential and that primarily beneŽ ts men, feminist standpoint theorists propose that women constitute a class, moreover, a class from which the world may be seen more objectively. The labour that is traditionally ascribed to women is necessary for the maintenance of society. Women are traditionally responsible for such things as the production of new citizens through pregnancy, birth and childrearing. They are often expected to care for the elderly in their families. Much of the work traditionally allotted to women serves to shape and maintain the spaces within which men work and relax, for example, secretarial work, nursing and housekeeping. At the same time, this labour is treated as inessential work. It is either unpaid (housekeeping, childrearing) or paid considerably less than those jobs that depend on this labour (nurses as opposed to doctors, secretaries as opposed to business persons). Moreover, these kinds of activities are naturalized by a gender ideology that maintains that they are not really work but rather what women are naturally inclined to ‘do’ or are ‘best at’. Following the Marxist logic of standpoint and Harding’s notion of strong objectivity, knowledge achieved by recognizing the paradox of women’s position within a sexual division of labour should lead to more objective knowledge. Feminists, therefore, should work to achieve a woman’s standpoint.

There is much that is helpful for feminists in this account. For one, it describes knowing as something that always happens within a particular social context without slipping into a relativism from which we could not judge knowledge claims. Moreover, it gives an account of knowledge in which gender is epistemically signiŽ cant, but does not depend on the claim that men and women are naturally different, which could reinforce gender ideology. Rather gender is epistemically signiŽ cant because, on the standpoint account, knowledge is social and gender is one of the axes along which society is divided.

Still, in understanding women as a class from which more objective knowledge must begin, feminist standpoint theory runs the danger of erasing such differences among women as race, sexuality and economic class. Within the Marxist account the epistemically signiŽ cant difference is a difference between only two classes, the opposition of which will eventually lead to class consciousness on the part of the working class. However, understanding the working class as a uniŽ ed group obscures the social divisions produced by gender relations. It was precisely this point that led feminists to criticize the Marxist account and supplement it with an understanding of a sexual division of labour. Yet, in replacing the binary of working class/capitalist class with a binary of woman/man, differences among women that may also be epistemically signiŽ cant are left unrecognized. The importance of making women’s diversity central is at least twofold. First, failing to account for such differences as race, sexuality and economic class reinforces relations of oppression by obscuring the different interests created by social hierarchies other than gender. Second, failing to investigate relations of power among women gives an inaccurate account of the oppressions faced by many women and the privilege held by other women in relation to them. It therefore leads to a distorted understanding of all women. Recognizing this possibility, Harding attempts to make room for diversity by explicitly including in her account the additional thesis that women are not a homogeneous group. Instead, she emphasizes that women stand at different points in relation to each other due to various social hierarchies. Moreover, Harding contends that resources for making evident women’s diversity are contained within the standpoint framework itself. To understand how women can constitute a group that matters epistemically while still having differences among them that also matter epistemically, Harding highlights two aspects of the standpoint account: its emphasis on re� exivity and the distinction between experience and standpoint.

Harding notes that because the standpoint account recognizes all claims as socially situated and furthermore requires that these situations be examined, it brings the observer onto the same critical plane as the observed (1991, p. 178). Bringing the situation of the observer or knower into view will involve investigating the social relations within which the knower knows; these would include, for example, those of race, sexuality and economic class as well as gender. Thus, Harding contends that the re� exivity called for in standpoint theory leads to an examination of differences generally and not just that of gender. It should lead, therefore, to a recognition and examination of differences among women. Still, in order for this re� exivity to manifest itself properly, we need to know where to look, that is, which social relations might be informing our knowledge. Yet, according to standpoint theory itself, knowledge of the relations operative in forming one’s view might not be readily available to some (including some women) due to their position in society. For on the standpoint account, not only do those privileged by social divisions have little incentive for recognizing the relations that privilege them, but also it is in their interest not to see these relations clearly as constructed and oppressive to some. It would seem that we need an account here of what it would mean to remain attentive to or open to the possibility of recognizing the social relations that might be epistemically signiŽ cant in particular situations. 2

Harding continues her argument for the compatibility of standpoint theory with women’s diversity by recalling the distinction between women’s experience and a standpoint—that a standpoint does not re� ect ‘mere’ experience but must be forged. Thus, Harding emphasizes that being a woman does not yield a ready-made critical stance on the world, but rather the situation of women provides the questions from which one must start in order to produce more objective knowledge. Here, Harding shifts emphasis from being exploited to noticing exploitation as it occurs. Gaining a critical standpoint involves noticing something about the situation of women and starting knowledge from there. This leaves room open for recognizing differences among women’s experiences and situations and hence for giving an account that recognizes women’s diversity. Moreover, because a standpoint is not equal to a social position, but rather is an engagement with the kinds of questions found there, persons from different positions in society may participate in moving from these questions to forge a critical standpoint. Highlighting these aspects of the standpoint account along with women’s diversity, Harding talks not of a woman’s standpoint but rather of a feminist standpoint. On this account, women’s differences do not foreclose the possibility of a feminist standpoint, but instead provide sources for more questions from which feminists may struggle to forge more objective knowledge. Hence, ‘to ground claims in women’s lives is to ground them in differences ‘within women’ as well as between men and women’ (1991, p. 180). The point here is not that one be female, or that all women experience the same thing, but rather, to use Harding’s words, that knowledge ‘starts from women’s lives’ and this includes the diversity therein. Yet, it remains unclear what exactly ‘starting from women’s lives’ would entail. While Harding is careful to indicate what it is not—for example, it is not what women merely say, nor is it even to focus more carefully on women (1998, pp. 157–163), still she does not detail explicitly what it is. Leaving this process unclear does not help us to understand the real difŽ culties that prevent women of different social positions from understanding one another. Surely, if anything, Harding ought to explore the possibility that different kinds of difŽ culties might arise for persons of different social positions in attempting to forge a feminist standpoint.

These concerns might be coupled with my earlier query regarding the achievement of re� exivity to form the following question: What is the relationship between my actual social position and the ability to forge a critical standpoint? Indeed, Harding does explore this difŽ cult terrain when she takes up the relationship between experience and standpoint in one of the closing chapters of her book Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Here in particular she makes the argument that men can be feminists. That men can forge a feminist standpoint follows directly from the assertion that a feminist standpoint can grow out of the diverse experiences of women, for if the social positions of women do not prevent them from theorizing about the oppressions facing women as a diverse social group, the social positions of men ought not to prevent them from theorizing about the oppressions of women. Yet, Harding ends up saying both ‘it matters who says what’ and ‘the validity of our claims must be largely independent of who says them’ (1991, p. 283). Harding is fully aware of the contradiction in bringing these two assertions together; in fact, she is trying to say something with it. I think, however, that there may be better ways of saying it and that the difŽ culty in getting a point across here is brokered by tensions produced in the language of standpoint theory itself.

2. Standpoint as starting from the perspective of women’s lives

One place where such tensions arise is within the metaphors used to describe standpoint epistemology, metaphors that are contained within the very name itself: ‘standpoint’, or place where I stand in order to view things. That Harding relies heavily on spatial and visual metaphors to describe knowing obscures the aspect of knowing that is active. On the one hand, Harding is very careful to distinguish between a perspective and a standpoint, the former being tied to where one is positioned, the latter having to do with how knowledge is forged. On the other hand, she continually returns to phrases like ‘to begin with the perspective’ and ‘to view from the perspective’ in order to describe what standpoint knowledge is.3 Moreover, her reasons for starting from

women’s lives oscillate between how these lives have been devalued and what is gained from being in the position of women in our society (1991, pp. 121–133).4 Emphasizing

the importance of being somewhere in order to know suggests the importance of ‘being’ generally (as opposed to ‘doing’) with regard to knowledge. This emphasis is closer to the empiricist observational model that standpoint theory was meant to replace. In other words, that we stand in the same place or start from the same place (regardless of our actual social positions) is what seems to make possible the kind of knowing that is advocated on Harding’s account. That each knower starts from the same place slides us back into a picture that in order to know with others I must know as them in some way—it is in knowing as someone who stands or looks on from this point that I have more objective knowledge. This, too, is suggested by the title of Harding’s chapter on experience and standpoint, ‘Reinventing Ourselves as Other’. To be fair, Harding does note in this chapter and in a later essay that she does not mean this phrase in the sense of reinventing ourselves as someone of a different social position but rather in the sense of ‘being disloyal to civilization’ (invoking Adrienne Rich), deŽ ning ourselves in opposition to an oppressive order (1995, p. 131, p. 133). Still, in using the standpoint framework to make diversity epistemically important while not preventing us from knowing one another, Harding ends up saying in the very same essay, that ‘[m]embers of dominant groups, too, can learn how to see the world from the perspective of experiences and lives that are not theirs’ (1995, p. 131, emphasis added). In basing her account on a perceptual model, Harding ends up having to say that knowers who know the same thing must start from the same position (even if it is ‘not theirs’). This emphasis on starting from the same place draws attention away from examining how differences in social position may operate in signiŽ cant ways in knowing (without making knowledge impossible from certain social positions).

Metaphors of knowing by seeing from a certain place, which are closely tied to the empiricist account of knowledge, downplay the importance of differences in social position among those who are attempting to know the world together. When knowers do not share the same social position, what is known may have different consequences for each depending on her position in the social order and in relation to those with whom she knows. For example, our appropriate affective responses may be different; what it leads each of us to discover further and how our disposition toward the world is affected may be different.5 Furthermore, the same knowledge may lead us to have reasons to follow through with different kinds of actions depending upon differences in our relationship to what is known. While it might be argued by some that these are not properly epistemic considerations, at the very least a theory of knowledge should not make it difŽ cult to make sense of such considerations as does the standpoint account by focusing on knowers as knowing from the same place in forming a standpoint.6

Instead, the metaphors of activity that arise in Harding’s work are better suited to describe knowing when thinking about the possibilities for persons of different social positions sharing knowledge. These metaphors include knowledge as struggle and knowledge as forged. Here, what is important is not where one stands or views the world but rather the activities in which one engages. Indeed, it is precisely where Harding comes closest to the danger of sounding as if we can move from position to position in a kind of disembodied knowing that she relies on the importance of activity in knowing. She states, ‘one must be engaged in historical struggles—not just a disembodied observer of them—in order to ‘occupy’ such social locations’ (1991, p. 185). It is interesting to note that Harding has scare quotes around the word ‘occupy’ as she states this. There are two ways we may interpret the scare quotes: either to caution us against taking her use too literally or to indicate a double meaning to the word ‘occupy’ in this instance. If we interpret the scare quotes as warning us against understanding the word ‘occupy’ too literally, we may take this as an indication that Harding, too, realizes that the spatial metaphors she employs are misleading in some way. This interpretation would lend credence to my thesis that the metaphors Harding uses prevent her from saying something she is trying to say with them. If, on the other hand, we interpret her use as an instance of double meaning, we may read the word ‘occupy’ as indicating both ‘to stand in the place’ and ‘to take over and defend a place as one’s own’ as in the military sense. This interpretation would be consonant with the idea that a critical or feminist standpoint is forged through revolutionary struggle. In other words, in order to be in a place of knowing (to forge a standpoint), I must be engaged in historical struggle against an oppressive social order. This interpretation Ž ts with the quote taken as a whole, but leads us back to the problems described earlier. On this interpretation, engaging in revolutionary struggle creates the space from which we all know together, but still it is in ‘occupying’ the same spaces that we are able to know more objectively.

Being engaged in certain activities is tied to knowledge but not because doing so will allow me to ‘occupy’, either by being in or taking over, a certain place. Rather, engaging with others is part of what it means to know, that is, knowing always happens within a community in which I engage with others. It is this kind of engagement, however, that is obscured by the observational model of knowing as being in or starting from a particular place. Following Wittgenstein’s private language argument, knowledge is not something I can confer on myself irregardless of others; criteria for justiŽ cation require a community. That is, ‘to justify’ is to give reasons that can be recognized by someone else. This does not mean that just because certain criteria are recognized by a particular group that the group is correct in holding those criteria for justiŽ cation as in a conventionalist account. Rather, it means that if we are to call something criteria for justiŽ cation (proper or not), it will be something that operates within a group. The problem, of course, with an unjust social order is that epistemic authority is often distributed inequitably as part of the injustice that characterizes it and so knowledge claims that should be recognized may not be. Standpoint theory, in analysing divisions of intellectual labour, describes this situation well. What it does not describe well is how to formulate a new, broader ‘we’ in which to know the world. Pace Marx, the mere fact of dismantling current oppressive regimes will not necessarily lead to an as of yet undetermined but truly egalitarian society. Likewise, occupying a certain place by engaging in struggle against an oppressive order is not what it means to engage cooperatively with others in order to know more objectively. So, while engaging in a struggle against social injustice may be a necessary condition for knowing the world more objectively, it is not a sufŽ cient one. I must also engage with others in attempting to build and be part of a community in which I can know. If we draw our attention to knowing as an intersubjective activity that depends on what the community will accept or acknowledge as a knowledge claim, coming to know the world will require building relations with others. A description of knowledge that takes diversity seriously should highlight not my ability to start from or view from a certain place, but rather my ability to forge relations with others. To engage with another in order to know the world requires not only that I interact with another, but that I do things that facilitate and that are constitutive of our interacting. Certain kinds of relations need to be established, for example, those of trust, credibility and responsiveness. Building these relations is complicated by the fact that we live within a society that has systematically and historically assigned epistemic authority unequally and which has socially stratiŽ ed members materially. As such, building relations may also require concrete actions depending on what our institutionalized historical relationships already are. These kinds of engagements are brought to the fore when we consider the intersubjective aspects of knowing. Focusing on intersubjective relations among knowers from different social positions also makes salient the possibility that what I now know may have different consequences for me because of where I stand in relation to what is known, as noted earlier. So, acknowledgement, or the act of publicly recognizing what I know, may require different sorts of actions depending on who I am.

That I stand in the same place with, or look on from the same perspective as others, cannot be what it would mean to know with them, so much as it might be an attempt to know as them. Yet, the attempt to know with others may very well be lost if we confuse it with an attempt to know as another. If we recognize knowing as an activity, or relating with others, rather than a location or view, then it is not something that occurs when we are all, as it were, standing in, or starting from, the same place. Instead knowing

happens within communities in which I struggle together with others. Aiming toward objective knowledge does not require that we all look from a particular place, but rather that we continue to establish certain kinds of relations with others that facilitate our knowing in the world together. This would allow for recognizing that acknowledgment may be played out differently for various members depending on their actual position in society and in relation to what is known. It would also include striving toward conditions in which I am able to hear what others have to say. Thus, knowing involves that I continually do something rather than arrive (or even begin) at any one particular place. This doing may require working to change social conditions that maintain an inequitable distribution of general epistemic authority, that limit our ability to answer responsibly to others, or that do not allow for relations of epistemic trust.7 Indeed, Harding indicates the importance of many of

these activities. She might even counter that these are precisely the kinds of political engagements in which one must be involved in order to forge a feminist standpoint. These activities, however, are more properly understood in terms of building co operative communities. Harding’s reliance on metaphors of place and perspective (even when associated with ‘starting from’) obscures the community building aspect of these concerns by focusing on the state of individuals rather than the formation of (and difŽ culties in forming) diverse communities. Instead, placing a heavier emphasis on relations of knowing intersubjectively within diverse communities brings these kinds of activities to the fore in a way that makes more sense and that maintains a stronger emphasis on differences in social position.

Focusing on the intersubjectivity of knowing lends insight to the questions I raised earlier. To describe knowing in this way does not determine knowledge according to social position, but recognizes that different difŽ culties will be present in attempting to build knowing relations with others, from different social positions. Moreover, because it does not focus on knowing as so much as knowing with, we need not postulate a commonality among knowers of the community, but rather look to the kinds of relations that would facilitate knowing in particular cases.

3. Standpoint as social struggle

Still, understanding knowing as an activity that requires a certain degree of struggle may lead to a kind of homogenization depending on what signiŽ cance we accord to struggle in relation to knowing. Here I would distinguish between knowing as a struggle-against and knowing as a struggle-with. Because the standpoint account develops from a Marxist account drawn in particular from Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, the type of struggle it most often refers to for gaining knowledge is a struggle-against. That is, in struggling against a social order that disadvantages some, we may come to know the world more objectively. The struggle highlighted here does not involve connection with others so much as it involves deŽ ning myself and coming to know the world against others or against a particular social order. Only consequently, in virtue of this fact held in common, is community understood. However, deŽ ning myself against someone or something does not necessarily facilitate my relations with someone else, particularly given that this struggle-against may require different responses from each of us depending on where we stand in relation to whom or what is struggled against. Alternatively, if we consider community, not as an aggregate of persons holding something in common, but rather as constituted by relations among members,

struggling together with the community becomes as important as struggling against a particular system or group of people.8 To struggle-with would involve building relations with others by which we may come to know the world and understand one another, that is the project of building knowing communities. So while it is important to note as Harding does that, ‘the subject of liberatory feminist knowledge must be the subject of every other liberatory project’ (1991, p. 285), we must also note that this is a struggle with certain others that requires building relations just as much as it is a struggle against an oppressive social order. Engaging in liberatory struggle does not automatically put one in a position or standpoint where by virtue of my opposition to systems of domination, or ‘good will’ on my part, relations that facilitate and are produced by struggling-with can be assumed to be in place. 9

All of this may be another way of saying that, while drawing our attention to knowledge as a socially situated process, standpoint theory is not social enough. That is, in emphasizing my relations with others as where I stand in opposition to particular aspects of the social order, my knowing is still an individual knowing (albeit of an individual in relation). However, it is not just in opposition to certain others that I come to know, but rather knowing requires relations with others as well. Yet, this latter sense is precisely where the language of standpoint dwindles. Thus, I suggest that while noting where individuals stand in relation to others is important, more emphasis needs to be placed on how diverse communities may move together in knowing relations with the world. In understanding communities to be constituted by a set of signiŽ cant relations within which we know (rather than something held in common by members), discovering the world differently from within different communities does not require those communities to be homogeneous. Moreover, understanding knowledge as always formed within the relations of a particular community leaves open the possibility of new members entering that community by forming relations within it. Our questions concerning how to understand the world more objectively will require us to ask, not how I might see from a particular standpoint, but rather how I may move with (or forge) new knowing communities.

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank Rita Nolan for initially suggesting that I frame my arguments in terms of intersubjectivity and Heidi Grasswick for her helpful comments. I am especially grateful to John R. Wright for reading and making suggestions on several drafts of this piece as well as engaging in countless hours of discussion on this topic.

Notes

1. For a more detailed account of standpoint theory, see Harding (1991), Hartsock (1998), Jaggar (1983) and Tanesini (1999).
2. It is in attending to this difŽ culty that Lugones suggests friendship as a necessary component in facilitating this kind of knowledge (1990, with Spelman 1986).
3. Examples include (but are not limited to): ‘starting research from the perspective provided by women’s personality structures’ (1991, pp. 121–122), ‘look at the world from the perspective of women’s lives’ (1991,
   1. 124), ‘start thinking and researching from the perspective of the lives of oppressed people’ (1991, p. 126), ‘the view from women’s lives’ (1991, p. 269), ‘Ž nd the perspective from their lives’ (1991, p. 270).
4. See in particular sections 2, 3 and 7.
5. I use the word ‘appropriate’ here with caution, since emotions experienced by subordinated individuals are
   • ften deemed inappropriate, or, to use Jaggar’s term, as ‘outlaw emotions’ (1996). I would argue, however, that when differences in relation to what is known are taken into consideration, we can properly see ‘outlaw emotions’ as utterly appropriate. For a detailed analysis of the role of emotions in understanding across differences, see Narayan (1988).
6. Many have argued that these are in fact proper epistemic considerations. For examples, see Code (1995), Jaggar (1996) and Narayan (1988). To make these arguments here, however, is beyond the scope of my paper. That these considerations are obscured by a focus on knowing from the same standpoint is enough to warrant serious concern.
7. For an elaboration on these kinds of relations in knowing, see Code (1995).
8. Frye has articulated precisely such a notion of community based in relation among members rather than in
   • pposition to non-members (1996).
9. For a discussion of difŽ culties in forming such relations despite ‘good will’ on the part of the privileged, see Narayan (1988).

References

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