Annotated Bibliographies

March 20, 1996

Haraway, Donna J. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge: New York, 1991. 183-201.

Haraway begins this chapter by examining the ways in which academic and activist feminists have defined and situated themselves in debates over "objective" knowledge. She argues that Western science (which for her includes the metaphysical and physical sciences) has traditionally aspired to and assumed the status of a disembodied, transcendental, and "objective" truth. According to Haraway, women's points of view have not been taken seriously in an academic and scientific community in which women were (and are) viewed as embodied objects. Throughout the remainder of this chapter, Haraway discusses the polar opposite stances which feminists have taken to undermine the position that objective, unmediated knowledge exists (to which women have no access). Haraway offers feminists a re-envisioned model through which they can achieve some objectivity which is not marred by the weaknesses and critical shortcomings of traditional conceptualizations of objective knowledge.

The first feminist criticism of objective knowledge that Haraway articulates is that of social constructionists. Feminists who align themselves with this paradigm argue that there is no relationship between knowledge and absolute truth. Accordingly, knowledge is socially constructed and is influenced by outside factors which are continually contesting for power. Science is rhetoric: the objective is to convince people that your "manufactured knowledge" is transcendental and objective.

Haraway argues that late twentieth-century critical theory has helped to substantiate the notion that knowledge is situated and mutable. However, Haraway is concerned with the implications of the social constructionist position. More specifically, feminists, political feminists in particular, need to be able to discuss "reality" in concrete terms in order to effect change in their lives. If no such thing as knowledge exists, then feminists interested in making categorical claims about the state and nature of women are placed in a theoretically precarious position. Consequently, some feminists have reacted against the social constructionist position by espousing a Marxist feminist paradigm which is diametrically opposed to the brand of postmodern feminist theory outlined above.

According to Haraway, Marxist feminism has given way to standpoint/"empiricism" theories. In this brand of feminism, the material realities of women's lives are privileged, and theoretical ruminations about objective knowledge become secondary (at best) in importance. Although "empiricism" theories attempt to construct a "successor" science which is open to a multitude of positionings, the primary concern of Marxist feminists is to make categorical, political claims about the state and nature of women in today's society.

However, Haraway argues that there are also significant shortcomings to the standpoint/empirical approach. She suggests that such models are ultimately reductive (for example, the problems facing women today can not all be explained in terms of wage differentials).

Haraway attempts to address the shortcomings of both the social constructionist and empiricist feminist approach. She is interested in deconstructing oppressive knowledge claims but at the same time allowing women the agency that they need to make political claims. In Haraway's words: "We need the power of modern critical theories [social constructionist ones] of how meaning and bodies get made, not in order to deny meaning and bodies, but in order to live in meanings and bodies that have a chance for the future [a call of feminist empirical theories]." In order to achieve this goal, Haraway suggests that feminists "switch metaphors" in their discussion of objective knowledge. The metaphor that Haraway forwards is not bounded by binary oppositions; the metaphor that she explores is that of vision.

Contrary to common critical belief, the eyes, for Haraway, do not allow the viewer direct mastery over the object which they subsume. Instead, "the particularity and embodiment of all vision" leads to what Haraway calls "situated knowledges."

Because vision is mediated, we can only gain access to a particular, specific reality. This particular, specific reality is the location from which some objective knowledge can be achieved: "Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge . . . . In this way, we might become answerable for what we learn to see."

According to Haraway, the self is comprised of split, contradictory and multifarious layers; the same is true of vision. Haraway suggests (as does Delany in Tales of Neveryon), that you can never occupy all the privileged or subjugated positions at once; consequently, there is some overlap between your partial, limited positioning and that of others. Objective knowledge is located in these positionings. Moreover, it is through the intersection of these positionings that we connect and communicate with one another.

As Haraway complicates her model, she argues that not all partial positionings are equal. Accordingly, feminists (and scholars generally) must try to identify those subject positions which are "less organized by axes of domination." Such standpoints are passionately detached. More specifically, the notion that one person's partial positioning is better than another's because she/he is a member of a suppressed/oppressed gender or racial group is severely questioned. Haraway argues that such a move is as totalizing as traditional arguments for objective, a priori scientific knowledge.

Because the location of one's partial positioning is important, Haraway begs the question of how feminists should locate themselves. She restates her earlier position that objective knowledge is achieved through positionality rather than universality. Positionality involves vulnerability; it resists closure. Consequently, science and objective knowledge is marked by contest rather than closure.

In the closing analysis this chapter, Haraway concentrates her discussion on a debate which has preoccupied feminists from the inception of the women's movement: namely, biological determinism and gender. One of the ways in which feminists can move their discussion beyond the sex/gender split is to consider the active elements in the sex/gender binary. More specifically, both poles of the dialectic are agents with interlocking concepts. The polar opposites speak to one another; there are not static. According to Haraway, feminists need to learn how to converse through "partiality, objectivity, and situated knowledges." By engaging in such a conversation (through limited positionings), objective knowledge can be achieved.

Flax, Jane. "Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 12.4 (1987): 621-641.

Flax opens her essay with the assertion that Western culture is in the midst of a profound transformation, and that feminist theory needs to re-negotiate its place in this new world order by questioning the assumptions undergirding its own ideological positioning. Accordingly, feminist theory needs to re-envision the ways in which it theorizes itself and issues of gender construction. In her contribution to this critical dialogue, Flax weds postmodern and feminist theory. Consequently, she undermines the premises of cultural feminism with its emphasis on the biological differences between men and women. She also complicates Marxist/socialist feminism which makes categorical claims about the state, nature, and role of women in society. Ultimately, Flax forwards a postmodern feminist paradigm which embraces ambiguous and multiple identities.

According to Flax, psychoanalytic, feminist, and postmodern theory best "present and represent" feminist theory during the transitional times in which we live. Although these theoretical paradigms are derived from Western enlightenment thought--which Flax questions throughout her analysis--these theoretical positionings do "offer ideas and insights" in making some sense of the historical moment in which we live.

In her analysis, Flax primarily concerns herself with feminist debates over the construction of gender. She examines the ways in which gender relations are re-envisioned within the context of postmodern theory. In short, Flax argues that feminist theory could be strengthened by an appropriation of some of the "wider philosophical contexts [postmodernism] of which it is both a part and a critique."

According to Flax, postmodern theory attempts to severely question enlightenment assumptions which are "still prevalent in (especially American) culture." More specifically, Flax challenges the notion that reason is an objective knowledge (to use Haraway's term). Additionally, Flax undermines the premise that there exits a stable, coherent self, that science is neutral and transcendental, and that truth can be reached through reason.

She goes on to argue that gender relations, like reason and truth, are not neutral or natural: "Gender relations thus have no fixed essence; they vary both within and over time." More specifically, gender is defined by a multitude of factors including class, race, and sexuality.

According to Flax, postmodern theories have problematized gender relations. She maintains that there is no longer a general feminist consensus as to what gender entails: "Gender can no longer be treated as a simple, natural fact." But having said this, Flax claims that feminist theory has traditionally explained gender relations in a diametrically opposed fashion: gender relations have been either biologically or socially determined. For Flax, those feminists who embrace the position that gender is defined by biology align themselves to a "deeply flawed, inadequate, and overly deterministic" model. However, Flax also argues that women cannot be explained or understood solely in relation to the type of labor that they perform. Consequently, socialist feminism' totalizing, reductive gestures about the "sexual division of labor" are ultimately indefensible.

In her analysis, Flax also critiques French feminists with their emphasis on language and gender relations. According to Flax, French feminists, like their socialist counterparts, make totalizing statements about gender relations which are often as exclusionary as those which are forwarded by men.

Flax claims that cultural, socialist, and French feminist formulations of gender relations are driven by power relations, and she asks feminists to consider the relationship between power, gender relations, and knowledge. Postmodern theory enables such questioning, and Flax concentrates the remainder of her critique on postmodern reformulations of gender categories.

According to Flax, women initially thought that they could simply separate the terms sex and gender. However, placing sex and gender on opposite sides of a binary seems to re-inscribe a power relationship which Flax seeks to undermine. According to Flax, males and females are more similar than they are different. Flax argues that we should not reduce complex, changing relations to "undifferentiated wholes."

In order to achieve this goal, feminists must not view gender as oppositional and based on inherent difference. Moreover, feminists need to reconsider their need to praise the opposite side of the binary which essentially keeps the binary of sex/gender and male/female in place: "In our attempts to correct arbitrary (and gendered) distinctions, feminists often reproduce them."

One of the ways to question the binary structure is to identify the overlap between male and female subject positions. Gender relations, in Flax' estimation, are relational ones. Although it is important to distinguish which category occupies the power position of the binary, both men and women suffer as a result of categorical claims made on behalf of their gender category.

Like Haraway, Flax suggests that "any feminist standpoint will necessarily be partial." According to Flax, "Feminist theories, like other forms of postmodernism, should encourage us to tolerate and interpret ambivalence, ambiguity, and multiplicity as well as to expose the roots of our needs for imposing order and structure no matter how arbitrary and oppressive these needs may be." By encouraging "ambivalence, ambiguity, and multiplicity," feminists can re-envision a binary structure which reproduces, rather than deconstructs, enlightenment thought.