Abstract
This chapter is a shortened version of the essay “Taking Subjectivity into Account,” in Lorraine Code’s (1995) book Rhetorical spaces: Essays on gendered locations (New York: Routledge, pp. 23–57). Code argues that the subjectivity of the knower in the well-known epistemological formulation “S knows that p” matters a great deal more than the dominant positivist-empiricist perspective suggests. In spite of the appearance of neutrality and universalizability of the knowing or knowledge-producing subject “S,” Code argues that most knowledge production is politically invested, and that the social and historical locations of “S” (such as gender, race, and class) affect the range of topics likely to be selected for investigation. Moreover, taking subjectivity into account also means examining political and other structures for the ways in which they direct research to focus on certain lines of inquiry rather than others.
This is a shortened version of the essay “Taking Subjectivity into Account,” in Lorraine Code’s (1995) book Rhetorical spaces: Essays on gendered locations (pp. 23–57). New York: Routledge. It is included here by permission from the author and Routledge (Taylor & Francis).
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Notes
- 1.
I allude here to the title of Thomas Nagel’s (1986) book, The View From Nowhere.
- 2.
I owe the phrase “surrogate knower” to Naomi Scheman (1990).
- 3.
For an account of the central tenets of logical positivism, a representative selection of articles, and an extensive bibliography, see Ayer (1959).
- 4.
Mary Hesse (1980) advisedly notes that philosophers of science would now more readily assert than they would have done in the heyday of positivism that facts in both the natural and social sciences are “value-laden” (pp. 172–173). I am claiming, however, that everyday conceptions of scientific authority are still significantly informed by a residual positivistic faith.
- 5.
For classic statements of this aspect of the positivistic program, see, for example, Rudolf Carnap, “Psychology in Physical Language,” and Otto Neurath, “Sociology and Physicalism” in A. J. Ayer (Ed.), Logical Positivism.
- 6.
I discuss such responsibilities in my Epistemic Responsibility (1987).
- 7.
See Joan Scott (1989) for an elaboration of what it means to see gender as an analytic category.
- 8.
Paul Moser in his review of Epistemic Responsibility takes me to task for not announcing “the necessary and sufficient conditions for one’s being epistemically responsible.” He argues that even if, as I claim, epistemic responsibility does not lend itself to analysis in those terms, “we might still provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the wide range of typical instances, and then handle the wayward cases independently” (Paul Moser, Review of Epistemic Responsibility, p. 155). Yet it is precisely their “typicality” that I contest. Moser’s review is a salient example of the tendency of dominant epistemologies to claim as their own even positions that reject their central premises.
- 9.
These aims are continuous with some of the aims of recent projects to naturalize epistemology by drawing on the resources of cognitive psychology. See especially Quine (1969), Kornblith (1990, 1994), and Goldman (1986). Feminist epistemologists who are developing this line of inquiry are Jane Duran (1991) and Lynn Hankinson Nelson (1990). Feminists who find a resource in this work have to contend with the fact that the cognitive psychology that informs it presupposes a constancy in “human nature,” exemplified in “representative selves” who have commonly been white, male, and middle class. They have also to remember the extent to which appeals to “nature” have oppressed women and other marginal groups.
- 10.
For an extensive bibliography of such critiques up to 1989, see Wylie et al. (1990).
- 11.
For an analysis of the androcentricity, the “masculinity” of these ideals, and their “feminine” exclusions in theories of knowledge, see Genevieve Lloyd (1993) and Susan Bordo (1987). For discussions of the scientific context, see Evelyn Fox Keller (1985), Sandra Harding (1986), and Nancy Tuana (1989).
- 12.
I borrow the idea, if not the detail, of the potential of case-by-case analysis from Roger Shiner (1984).
- 13.
See Antonio Gramsci (1971).
- 14.
I cite the newspaper report because the media produce the public impact that concerns me here. I discuss neither the quality of Rushton’s research practice nor the questions his theories and pedagogical practice pose about academic freedom. My concern is with how structures of knowledge, power, and prejudice grant him an epistemic place.
- 15.
Commenting on the psychology of occupational assessment, Wendy Hollway (1984) observes: “That psychology is a science and that psychological assessment is therefore objective is a belief which continues to be fostered in organizations” (p. 35). She notes: “The legacy of psychology as science is the belief that the individual can be understood through measurement” (p. 55).
- 16.
The phrase is Richard Schmitt’s (1990, p. 71). I am grateful to Richard Schmitt for helping me to think about the issues I discuss in this section.
- 17.
- 18.
The best-known contemporary discussion of utilitarian-controlled sexuality is in Michel Foucault (1976/1980), The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction. Sexuality, in Foucault’s analysis, is utilitarian both in reproducing the population and in cementing the family bond.
- 19.
Clifford Geertz (1989) comments: “It is not…the validity of the sciences, real or would-be, that is at issue. What concerns me, and should concern us all, are the axes that, with an increasing determination bordering on the evangelical, are being busily ground with their assistance” (p. 20).
- 20.
Philippe Rushton has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Guggenheim Foundation in the USA: agencies whose status, in the North American intellectual community, confers authority and credibility. He has also received funding from the Pioneer Fund, an organization with explicit white supremacist commitments.
- 21.
Helen Longino (1990) observes: “…how one determines evidential relevance, why one takes some state of affairs as evidence for one hypothesis rather than for another, depends on one’s other beliefs, which we can call background beliefs or assumptions” (p. 43). And “When, for instance, background assumptions are shared by all members of a community, they acquire an invisibility that renders them unavailable for criticism” (p. 80).
- 22.
Here I am borrowing a turn of phrase from Michel Foucault (1966/1971), when he writes, in quite a different context: “And it was this network that made possible the individuals we term Hobbes, Berkeley, Hume, or Condillac” (p. 63).
- 23.
I owe this point to the Biology and Gender Study Group (1989, p. 173).
- 24.
Here I borrow a phrase from Susan Bordo (1990, p. 145).
- 25.
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the American Philosophical Association conference at Los Angeles and to the Departments of Philosophy at McMaster University and McGill University. I am grateful to participants in those discussions – especially to Susan Dwyer, Hilary Kornblith, and Doug Odegard – for their comments and to Linda Alcoff and Libby Potter for their editorial suggestions.
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Code, L. (2012). Taking Subjectivity into Account. In: Ruitenberg, C., Phillips, D. (eds) Education, Culture and Epistemological Diversity. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2066-4_5
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