Donna Haraway

Situated Knowledges: The Question of Science for Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective

In the text Situated Knowledges: The Question of Science for Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, Donna Haraway presents a feminist project of objectivity defined by situated knowledges.

To begin, she addresses what she refers to as “the two poles of a tempting dichotomy in relation to objectivity” that have influenced feminist thought. These poles are the successor science projects (or radical constructivism) and postmodern explanations about difference (or feminist critical empiricism).

“Feminist academic and activist research has repeatedly tried to answer the question of what we mean by the term, intriguing and inescapable, ‘objectivity.’ We have spent much toxic ink and trees turned into paper slandering what they meant by the term and how it hurts us. The ‘they’ imagined constitutes a kind of invisible conspiracy of male-dominated scientists and philosophers, endowed with research grants and laboratories; the ‘we’ imagined are the embodied others, who are not allowed to be without a body, a finite point of view, and therefore a disqualifying and polluting bias in any relevant discussion, outside of our small circles, in which a ‘mass’ circulation journal may reach a few thousand readers, mostly with a hatred for science.”

Beyond the already established dichotomy, Haraway does not deny the importance of objectivity for feminists, but she defines what focus is necessary for this objectivity and what its starting point should be.

“Feminists do not need a doctrine of objectivity that promises transcendence, a story that loses track of its mediations precisely when someone should be held accountable for something, and unlimited instrumental power. (…) We need the power of modern critical theories about how meanings and bodies are constructed, not to deny meanings and bodies, but to live in meanings and bodies that have the possibility of a future.” (p. 16)

“Feminist objectivity simply means situated knowledges.” (p. 18)

Haraway identifies in the eyes and vision the “perverse ability (…) to distance the knowing subject from everyone and everything in the interest of unrestrained power,” an ability she defines as central to many of the necessary critiques of the objectivity of militaristic, male-dominated, capitalist, and colonial science.

“Vision in this technological feast turns into an unregulated gluttony; all perspectives give way to an infinitely mobile vision, which seems to be no longer just about the mythical trick of a god seeing everything from nowhere, but about the transformation of the myth into common practice.” (p. 19)

In contrast to a vision that aims to be disembodied, central, universal, and omniscient—which Haraway categorizes as an illusion of becoming god—the central proposal of the text is that of objectivity based on situated visions and the corresponding situated knowledges.

“Thus, not very perversely, objectivity reveals itself as something related to specific and particular embodiment and not, definitively, something about the false vision that promises transcendence of all limits and responsibilities. The moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision.” (p. 21)

“These prosthetic devices show us that all eyes, including our organic eyes, are active perception systems, constructing translations and specific ways of seeing, that is, ways of life.” (p. 22)

Clearly, adopting the situated perspectives of the subjugated should not be an uncritical action:

“The perspectives of the subjugated are not ‘innocent’ positions. On the contrary, they are preferred because, in principle, they are the ones least likely to allow the denial of the critical and interpretative core of all knowledge.” (p. 23)

Finally, Haraway distances situated knowledges from relativism, positioning them instead as opposites:

“But the alternative to relativism is not totalization and the singular vision that, ultimately, is always the unmarked category whose power depends on systematic narrowing and obscuring. The alternative to relativism is partial, locatable, critical knowledges, supported by the possibility of networks of connection, called solidarity in politics and shared conversations in epistemology.” (p. 23)

“Relativism and totalization are both ‘god tricks’, promising, equally and entirely, vision from everywhere and nowhere, common myths in the rhetoric surrounding Science. But it is precisely in the politics and epistemology of partial perspectives that the possibility of a firm, rational, objective critical assessment lies.” (p. 23)

“The topography of subjectivity is multidimensional, as is vision. The cognizing self is partial in all its forms, never finished, complete, given, or original; it is always constructed and stitched together in an imperfect manner and, therefore, capable of joining with another, of seeing together without pretending to be the other.” (p. 26)

“Positioning oneself is, therefore, the key practice, the foundation of knowledge organized around the images of vision; it is how much of Western scientific and philosophical discourse is organized. Positioning oneself implies responsibility for our enabling practices.” (p. 27)

“Feminism is concerned with the sciences of multiple subjects with (at least) double vision. Feminism is about a critical vision, consistent with a critical positioning in a non-homogeneous social space marked by gender.” (p. 31)

This definition of the double vision of multiple subjects engages with Paul Gilroy’s analysis of the double consciousness of Du Bois, Wright, and many other Black individuals who find themselves in a position of tension between racial particularity and the modern universal appeal that transcends race.

A good example brought by the author regarding tensions between different views of objectivity and their discard is found in the definition of “sex” as a biological object:

“For example, ‘sex’ as an object of biological knowledge commonly appears under the guise of biological determinism, threatening the fragile space of social constructionism and critical theory, with the possibilities they carry of active and transformative intervention, put into practice by feminist concepts of gender as socially, historically, and semiotically located difference. However, to lose the authorized biological descriptions about sex, which created productive tensions with its binary pair, gender, seems to imply losing a great deal; it seems to imply losing not only analytical power within a specific Western tradition but the body itself as something other than a blank page for social inscriptions, including those of biological discourse. The same problem of loss accompanies a ‘radical reduction’ of the objects of physics or any other science to the ephemeral nature of discursive production and social construction. (…) Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be seen as an actor and agent, not as a canvas, or a terrain, or a resource, and, ultimately, never as a slave to the master who confines the dialectic only in its agency and in its authority of ‘objective’ knowledge.” (pp 35 - 36)