Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology

Kirsten Campbell

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134419616
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Ciencias sociales
• Sous-sujet: Feminismo y teoría feminista

This book outlines a compelling new agenda for feminist theories of identity and social relations. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis with feminist epistemology, the author sets out a groundbreaking psychoanalytic social theory. Campbell's work offers answers to the important contemporary question of how feminism can change the formation of gendered subjectivities and social relations. Drawing on the work of third wave feminists, the book shows how feminism can provide new political models of knowing and disrupt foundational ideas of sexual identity.Kirsten Campbell engages the reader with an original intepretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis and offers a compelling argument for a fresh commitment to the politics of feminism. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology will be essential reading for anyone with interests in gender studies, cultural studies, psychoanalytic studies or social and political theory.

1 Feminist epistemologies

The emergence of ‘feminist epistemology’

Yesterday, ‘feminist epistemology’ was an oxymoron; today, it has name recognition, but its referent is not yet clear.

(Alcoff and Potter 1993a: 1)

What is ‘feminist epistemology’? When the second-wave theorists first began to use the term ‘feminist epistemology’, it did not refer to a recognizable body of work. Rather the term referred to a set of theoretical and political problems concerning accounts of knowledge. These problems focused upon whether there are ‘distinctive feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science’ (Harding and Hintikka 1983a: ix). In the 1980s, a number of works appeared which began explicitly to take up these issues, such as Rose (1983), Jagger (1983) and the anthology Discovering Reality (Harding and Hintikka 1983b). Contributors to this anthology included Sandra Harding, Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Evelyn Fox Keller, Naomi Scheman, Nancy Hartsock and Jane Flax, all of whom have since become significant theorists in the area. The mid-1980s saw the publication of influential key texts which were to shape the contemporary field, including Haraway’s ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs’ (1985), Harding’s The Science Question in Feminism ([1986] (1991)) and Dorothy Smith’s The Everyday World as Problematic (1987).

In the early 1990s, ‘feminist epistemology’ became a recognizable term that named a distinctive area of research and an emerging body of work, which included theorists such as Lorraine Code (1991), Patricia Hill Collins (1991), Jane Duran (1991), Harding (1991), Susan Hekman (1990), Helen Longino (1990) and Liz Stanley (1990). During this period, several influential anthologies on the theme of feminism and knowledge were also published, such as Gender/Body/Knowledge (Bordo and Jagger 1989), Feminist Knowledge (Gunew 1990), Feminist Epistemologies (Alcoff and Potter 1993b), and Knowing the Difference: Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology (Lennon and Whitford 1994b). By the mid-1990s, the sociological and philosophical mainstream came to recognize feminist epistemology as a field of research, even if only to decide ‘Feminist Epistemology: For and Against’ (Haack 1994). By 1999, Alessandra Tanesini’s Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies could assume that feminist epistemology constitutes an established and substantive body of work that has gained ‘name recognition’. Less than twenty years after Harding and Hintikka asked whether feminism provides a distinctive perspective on epistemology, Jane Duran (2001) could legitimately conceive ‘global feminist epistemologies’ as an affirmative answer to that question.

The theoretical field of feminist epistemology

While the term ‘feminist epistemology’ may have ‘name recognition’, it remains true that its referent is still unclear. For example, like other commentators Tanesini stresses the plurality of this area, emphasizing its interdisciplinary formations and the different political and epistemological models that its theorists deploy (1999: 4). ‘Feminist epistemology’ represents a complex and heterogeneous area of research. How then can we define ‘feminist epistemology’?

Most commentators, such as Tanesini or Duran (1998), classify feminist epistemologies according to their philosophical traditions, such as ‘naturalized feminist epistemology’, their disciplinary object of study, such as ‘science’, or their disciplinary themes, such as ‘objectivity’. However, it is not helpful to define feminist epistemology according to these categories. For example, it is not possible to confine feminist epistemologies to a single academic discipline such as philosophy, as do Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (1993b: 1). Feminist epistemology may appear to be a philosophical enterprise because it often deploys the language and concepts of philosophy, and because epistemology has traditionally been regarded as a strictly philosophical concern. Moreover, influential theorists such as Addelson (1993) and Code (1991) engage with epistemology as philosophy traditionally defines it. However, while this research often utilizes philosophical terms and uses them as analytic categories, it also reshapes and recasts those terms and uses them as conceptual markers rather than as disciplinary claims. Code points out that her work:

sits uneasily with epistemologists . . . because [its] questions are thought not to be properly epistemological at all, but to belong to ethics, or to the softer fringes of everyday talk about knowledge, rather than to the hard center of serious epistemological analysis.

(1994: 3)

For theorists such as Code, feminist epistemology is necessarily political and interdisciplinary because it asks questions of epistemology which philosophy traditionally excludes from a theory of knowledge, or which conventional philosophy does not wish to answer. Philosophical feminist epistemologists thus present a critical engagement with the ‘philosophical’ enterprise rather than a simple continuation of its project.

This area of research is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, because it draws upon philosophy, social theory, sociology, literary theory and political theory that together form feminist theory. This can be seen in the diversity of the disciplines of its leading theorists: historians and philosophers of science, such as Donna Haraway (1991); philosophers such as Lynne Hankinson Nelson (1995); political theorists such as Jane Flax (1993); sociologists such as Patricia Hill Collins (1991); and cultural theorists such as Teresa de Lauretis (1988). For this reason too, it is not possible to identify this body of research with a dominant theoretical movement or ‘master’ thinker. It is not reducible to a theoretical movement such as ‘poststructuralism’ or ‘deconstruction’ or to ‘Foucauldian’ or ‘Derridean’ models. So, for example, Haraway draws on standpoint theorists such as Hartsock (1983) as well as philosophers of science such as Bruno Latour (1993).

If feminist epistemology emerges from a confluence of thinkers, theories and texts, how then is it possible to describe what appear to be widely disparate theories and thinkers? We require another means of describing a body of research besides the inadequate categories of academic discipline, theoretical model, or master thinker. None of these categories satisfactorily explains why we should classify these theories, as opposed to any other, as ‘feminist epistemology’. We need to be able to describe the distinctive nature of research that fits within the ‘category’ of feminist epistemology, while also acknowledging its heterogeneity. Tanesini argues that ‘there are many partly overlapping accounts of knowledge which rightly could be called “feminist” [because] of the characteristics and aims that feminist epistemologists appear to share’ (1999: 4). What, then, are those characteristics and aims that mark feminist epistemology as distinct from other areas of research?

A less reductionist and more productive approach to the definition and analysis of areas of related research is to be found in the work of the intellectual historian Fritz Ringer. Ringer provides an account of intellectual fields, those related areas of concepts and theorists that emerge in the history of ideas. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of a field as ‘a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions’, Ringer’s approach focuses upon the ‘positional or relational attributes of ideas’ (1992: 5–7).¹ For Ringer, ‘the field is not an aggregate of isolated elements; it is a configuration or a network of relationships’ formed in related theoretical positions (1992: 5). An intellectual field describes a group of thinkers and ideas, which are united by a shared set of political and intellectual engagements and a set of common theoretical positions. The usefulness of Ringer’s concept of the intellectual field is that it provides a means of analysing how heterogeneous work can constitute a unified body of research.

While Ringer’s work provides a useful conceptual frame, he develops his concept of the ‘intellectual field’ and empirical methodology in the context of the discipline of intellectual history. However, the purpose of my analysis of feminist epistemology is not to provide an intellectual history of this area, but rather to understand a body of related research. For this reason, I use my concept of a ‘theoretical field’ rather than Ringer’s ‘intellectual field’. I define a ‘theoretical field’ as a diverse group of theorists and research projects that coalesce around shared political and theoretical engagements.

The concept of a theoretical field permits us to understand how feminist epistemology is a body of related ideas and theorists that forms a distinct area of research. It focuses upon how the relationship between these thinkers, ideas and problems forms a theoretical field. Conceiving feminist epistemology as a theoretical field reveals how its diversity of political and epistemological models forms a network of theoretical positions. This network of theories shares both an epistemic object and a project. The conflicts and negotiations of conceptual and political positions around that object and project constitute feminist epistemology as a theoretical field. The field of feminist epistemology therefore can be delineated by (1) its object of study, (2) its project or collective aims and (3) its set of common political and theoretical positions.

The object of the field of feminist epistemology

In their early formulation of feminist epistemology’s object of study, Harding and Hintikka ask: ‘[a]re there – can there be – distinctive feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science?’ (1983a: ix). This question does not take epistemology qua epistemology as its object, that is, it does not study epistemology as such. Instead, it examines the epistemological implications of feminist politics. For example, Harding argues that the focus of feminist epistemological theory is not ‘to justify the truth of feminist claims to more accurate accounts of reality. Rather it is the relations between power and knowledge that concern these thinkers’ (2000: 50). Feminist epistemology, then, explores the difference that feminism makes to our models of knowledge. In this sense, its object of study is feminism, and in particular, the difference that feminist politics makes to how we understand the world.

For this reason, it is not possible to simply ‘name’ the object of the field of feminist epistemology, for it is as large and diverse as feminism itself. It studies that heterogeneous body of research and activism which feminist politics inform, encompassing the interdisciplinary body of work named ‘feminist theory’ as well as the many knowledges that feminist activism generates. Against the claim of analytic philosophy that there is only one way to give an account of what and how we know, the productivity of feminist epistemology (like the theory and politics from which it derives) lies in the diversity and hybridity of the knowledges which form its object, and in the plurality of the accounts of that object.

For this reason too, it is not possible to simply fix the object of the field. Feminism is not singular but plural, as it emerges from debates concerning what its politics is or should be. It is therefore also a temporal object, which changes and shifts in relationship to those changing and shifting debates. For example, Tanesini argues that ‘[w]hat characterises feminist epistemology in its broadest sense is the belief that gender is a category which is relevant to the study of knowledge’ (1999: 38). However, in the last twenty years our understanding of ‘gender’ has itself changed, with shifts in notions of feminist politics. An example of this shift can be seen in the influential work of Sandra Harding, her focus changing from the woman-centred analysis of The Science Question in Feminism (1991) to the intersectional analysis of Is Science Multicultural? (1998). Feminism may be the object of the field of feminist epistemology, but it is a heterogeneous and changing object.

By taking ‘feminism’ as its object of study, this field may appear to collapse the numerous and otherwise disparate epistemologies which inform feminist work into a single model of knowledge. However, the field of feminist epistemologies includes many different models of knowing. Moreover, the alternative approach of only analysing narrow and discrete areas of research does not address the pluralism of feminism for two reasons. First, if it is possible to posit our models of feminist knowing only in relation to the particular area of research or practice that generates them, then those working in other areas cannot utilize them. For a model of feminist knowledge to be useful, it must be sustainable in relation to different areas of feminist work. For this reason, an epistemological theory necessarily implies a sufficient level of generality to enable feminists working in many diverse areas to use it in relation to their own practices. Second, concepts of the ‘nature’ of politics and knowledge inform all our truth-claims. A coherent account of feminist epistemologies permits the explicit, reflexive and sustained examination of those otherwise implicit models.

Despite the complexity of its object, feminist epistemology proposes that it is necessary and possible to provide a coherent account of feminism as epistemic practice. For example, Helen Longino identifies what she calls ‘theoretical virtues’, which are epistemic practices that she argues feminism privileges (1997: 21). Longino proposes a theory of feminist knowledge qua knowledge and so develops a model that it is possible to apply across a broad range of feminist research and practice. Longino shares with other feminist epistemologists a commitment to feminist politics, and from that commitment arises the central project of the field of feminist epistemology: how do we understand our epistemic practices as political practices?

The project of the field of feminist epistemology

The project of the field of feminist epistemology is to produce feminist models of knowing. This project is not primarily epistemological, that is, its aim is not to provide a new and better model of feminist knowledge or of knowledge itself. For example, Alcoff and Potter argue that ‘a general account of knowledge, one that uncovers justificatory standards a priori . . . is precisely the premise that feminist epistemologists have called into question’ (1993a: 1). These theorists do not aim to provide an account of the conditions of universal truth but instead to provide an account of epistemic practice as feminist practice. This project is political, in the sense that it focuses upon feminism as a potentially transformative knowledge that can change not only how we understand objects, but also subjects and their relationships.

That potential lies in the disruption of dominant knowledges that give particular meanings to the world. Lennon and Whitford rightly argue that feminism’s most powerful epistemological ‘insight’ is ‘the recognition that legitimation of knowledge-claims is intimately tied to networks of domination and exclusion’ (1994a: 1). Because networks of power form knowledge-claims, feminist epistemology aims to construct new models of knowing the social world in order to understand that world differently. For this reason, it aims to reconstruct epistemic practice as political practice. It links the production of knowledge to the transformative values of feminism and hence to the production of new models of epistemic practice.

This central project falls into two subsidiary projects that, while overlapping, have different aims. The first (earlier) project focuses upon deconstructive critiques of masculinist knowledges. Alcoff and Potter describe how early epistemological research of the late 1970s and early 1980s began with a critical engagement with masculinist forms of knowledge and knowing (1993a: 2). These deconstructive theories focus upon ‘masculine’ forms of knowledge. They argue that these knowledges presuppose a masculine subject whose dominating, instrumental and objectifying relation to what is known derives from cultural models of masculinity. This engagement continues in the influential work of Naomi Scheman (1987) on masculinity and Cartesian epistemology, and Genevieve Lloyd (1984, 1993) on the masculine tropes of reason.

The second area of research, which emerges in the late 1980s and early 1990s, engages with the reconstructive project of theorizing feminist knowledges. A narrow interpretation of that project perceives its aim as the reconstruction of traditional philosophical models of epistemology in terms of feminist values. For example, Alcoff and Potter characterize the phrase ‘feminist epistemologies’ as marking ‘the uneasy alliance between feminism and philosophy’ (1993a: 1). In contrast, a broader conception of its aim is the construction of new epistemological models from epistemic and political practices of the feminist movement. Those models have characterized these practices as women’s styles of knowing and knowledges, or, more recently, as feminist activities and knowledges.²

This broader project addresses two key issues: first, how to describe feminist knowledges, and second, how to understand them as epistemic practices. Theories that address the first issue focus upon describing feminism as a social and political knowledge. The standpoint theories of Hartsock (1983) and Harding (1991), and Haraway’s (1991) work on situated knowledges, have been particularly influential examples. This research focuses upon theorizing feminist knowledge as ‘a critical vision consequent upon a critical positioning in inhomogeneous gendered social space’ (Haraway 1991: 195). These theorists ask how can we understand the distinctive nature of feminist knowledge in terms of social and political relations.

The most recent area of reconstructive theoretical work analyses the epistemic practices that produce feminist knowledges. It is possible to divide these accounts according to distinct ‘foundational’ categories. The first set of theories contends that the foundational epistemic practice of feminist knowledge is reason, focusing upon models of rationality and objectivity. A good example of this work is the anthology, A Mind of One’s Own, edited by Antony and Witt (1993). The second group of theories takes as their ‘foundational’ category the knowing subject, whether conceiving it as an individual female, a feminist, a female feminist, or as the collective feminist community. Grosz (1993), Code (1991), de Lauretis (1988) and Longino (1997) are respective examples of these different approaches to the knowing subject.

Theoretical positions of the field of feminist epistemology

This field represents an emerging area of theoretical work that is still in the process of constituting itself. However, it is possible to trace a shared set of theoretical positions or assumptions that emerge from the key debates in this area. In particular, there are three key positions that the diverse works of this field share:

1. we need to understand the models of knowing which we use to construct truth-claims so that we can make their politics explicit;
2. feminist theory and practice has important implications for epistemological theory;
3. we should construct new feminist models of knowledge from that theory and practice.

We need to understand the models of knowing which we use to construct truth-claims so that we can make their politics explicit

This first position contends that it is necessary to make explicit the models of the subject, politics and knowing which inform our accounts of the world.³ It argues that we need to articulate these otherwise implicit and unexamined foundational models in order to reveal their gender politics. Typical examples of this argument can be seen in the deconstructive work of feminist epistemology. For example, Fox Keller ...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Feminist epistemologies
• 2 Lacanian epistemologies
• 3 Knowing subjects
• 4 Feminist discourses
• 5 Feminism’s time
• Notes
• Bibliography