Epistemology and methodology

Several authors link the modern imaginary to inadequate approaches to epistemology, theory of science and methodology, and develop alternative feminist approaches. An extensive outline of this sort is Kunnskapens kjønn. Minner, refleksjoner og teori (1995)⁴⁹⁰ by Karin Widerberg, professor in sociology. Inspired by the memory-work method developed by the German feminist sociologist Frigga Haug, Widerberg presents, in the first part of her book, personal memories about gender, sexuality and knowledge. Her conviction is that a feminist approach – to anything – needs to remain connected, even if in subtle and complex ways, to women’s experiences, also Widerberg’s own experiences as a woman. Widerberg

490 The Gender of Knowledge: Memories, Reflections and Theory.

characterizes her memories of her childhood and adolescent experiences of “reading” as memories of a “room of pleasure”; “body and brain” are “one” (op.cit.: 65). “Reading” is connected with becoming “wiser” through community and intersubjective “understanding”;

the feeling of “pleasure” and interconnectedness between body and brain can be “shared” and

“strengthened” through this sharing (ibid.). The sharing is gendered: Reading, understanding, becoming wiser and “the intimacy based upon” these practices, happen in “a room of women”

(op.cit.: 65-66). In contrast to this room of female intimacy, collectivity, desire, wisdom and understanding, there is in Widerberg’s memories of childhood and adolescence “a room of knowledge” closely connected to her “classroom” experiences (op.cit.: 66). In the room of knowledge to succeed is “an individual and lonely project”, what matters is to distinguish oneself from the crowd, not to share and understand one another (ibid.). Moreover, in the room of knowledge there is no place for the female body. To enter this room as a woman is to

“choose” to be “brain”, “to leave the body behind” (op.cit.: 67). The room of knowledge is a patriarchal, heterosexualized room where women are not granted the privilege of having equal intellectual authority and a concrete, sexual body at the same time.

The division between the two rooms, “brain and body, knowledge and sexuality” within an overall framework of “women’s oppression”, still haunt her, she says, as a grown-up academic woman (op.cit.: 112). Because even if Widerberg has chosen to be brain, in becoming a sociology professor, she has never accepted the price, that is to leave her body behind. Also, even if she had accepted it, the division would still inevitably haunt her. At the university, where female bodies are not cared for, women “expect” to be “treated as brains”

only (op.cit.: 111-112). “We know”, however that

[…] men just like women cannot totally exclude what they see and how things are outside the university walls. I know that at the university a man can, from one moment to the next, think about me or treat me as a body. [And] what I experience outside the university setting reminds me continually of this; that I am, in the end, woman = body (op.cit.: 112).

Widerberg’s adult memories feed this knowledge: She experiences the contradiction of being female and intellect at the same time. However, her adult memories are also memories of non-acceptance of this division, of feminist struggle and optimism. Inspired by “feminist theory and politics” women have developed “a room of women” within “the room of knowledge”, materialized in the development of feminist studies at universities, “women’s organizations, female networks and so on” (op.cit.: 109, 110). This room of women has, Widerberg says,

[…] much in common with the room of women I had during childhood and adolescence. Here we were once again friends that chatted about what concerned us, based on intimacy. To share and give and understand were a common project. It was like coming home, to a place where body and brain were one. And this also shed light on the room of knowledge that I had entered, a room that I had perceived to a certain extent as a room of understanding. Not only were men in focus in this room, but also the ways of understanding reached were male and identical with those [ways of understanding] that had dominated the class rooms of childhood and adolescence (competition and individualism) (op.cit.: 110).

The latter part of Kunnskapens kjønn is a discussion of how this “room of women”, the

“feminist academic project”, can progress (op.cit.: 17): Widerberg wants a female enclave within the “room of knowledge” that is fundamentally hostile to it, in order to change the room of knowledge itself (op.cit.: 113). Recent developments in feminist theory might facilitate this project, by highlighting and clarifying how women can start “producing knowledge on their own terms”, being “body” and “brain” at the same time (op.cit.: 117).

This requires inquiry guided by “principles of intimacy” not “principles of distance”; feminist scientific investigation should remain close to women and their everyday experiences (op.cit.:

118).⁴⁹¹ Because, Widerberg argues, women are in fact positioned to share certain experiences of oppression. We can talk about a common “female subjectivity” (op.cit.: 147):

1. The relations of work in developed capitalist societies “position women in concrete work that they mediate into abstract work” (op.cit.: 149). “Most women” in “our society” have experiences with work of this sort, in the labor market, or “at least as mothers or heterosexual partners” (ibid.). These are experiences of intimacy, with others and with the material. They influence what women “want and wish for […] [them]selves, others and society”, how and for what they are “struggling”, and the scope of their “solidarity”: Whereas male workers typically care for themselves and each other, female workers care also for the dependent, those who rely on them as care workers (op.cit.: 150). Moreover, in their concrete work women meet other women. This is another way of experiencing intimacy among women.

491 Roughly speaking, Widerberg says, there are two understandings of the notion of experience. Either experience is thought of as something corresponding to “reality (sense impressions etc.)”, this is the “positivist”

notion, or it is equated with our “interpretation” of it; with what it “means” to us (as “text”), or one tries to synthesize the two understandings by means of a “dialectical maneuver” of one kind or another (1995: 119).

Widerberg aims for the latter, relying on the somewhat different mediating maneuvers of Frigga Haug, Dorothy E. Smith, Ann Game and Joan Scott.

2. Women are socialized to be subordinate. The female body is put under stricter social control than the male body, Widerberg argues. This peculiar “normalization” of women’s bodies causes women’s subordination to become “internalized” (op.cit.: 151). Women are not only oppressed by others, they also participate actively in their own oppression, since the role of being subordinate is internalized into a part of their selves.

3. Women are sexually vulnerable. This is “an experience women in many cultures are positioned to share”; “the female subject is constituted by this” sexual “asymmetrical”

vulnerability (op.cit.: 152). Sexual violence is an extreme expression of this vulnerability.

Other expressions are fear of violence, and the persuasive repression and normalization of female sexuality.

4. Women are physically vulnerable. Men are physically stronger than women – this gives women an experience of a peculiar physical vulnerability.⁴⁹²

5. Women are psychologically vulnerable, as a result of their sexual and physical vulnerability, but also because they give birth; “the vulnerability […] of having children is an experience women in our culture are positioned to share” (op.cit.: 157).

Even if these five points all refer to experiences of oppression, they are at the same time experiences that might give women “power and strength to […] struggle for change and emancipation” (ibid.). Women’s vulnerability and their experiences with concrete work and its mediation, might enable them to be emotionally equipped for intimacy, make them more open to others, and thus endow them with “strength” and “well-being”, Widerberg notes (op.cit.: 158). Moreover, women’s experiences of being close to other women might give

492 Widerberg refers in this connection to the sociology of Georg Simmel. He connects women’s physical vulnerability, and their fear of being abused economically and personally as an implication of this, to women’s conservatism; their defense of traditional conventions. More than formal law such conventions of decency and respectability protect the weaker part by holding back “the pure natural relation” (1995: 153). Simmel wrote about this in 1908, in “Der Streit” in Soziologie. Is his analysis still relevant today? Cultural conventions might still have more to say than formal juridical norms, Widerberg says. However, contemporary conventions are less protective of women. On the one hand, “family life, school, sport and the military position men as physically strong and women as physically weak”; “the institutions of society” contribute towards making “the natural difference” far more “natural” than it is (op.cit.: 155). On the other hand, the protective conventions are erased by “the ideology of gender equality”: It is no longer politically correct to subscribe to the idea that men, because of their superior physical strength, should protect women. Thus, egalitarian “ideology” combined with the retreat of the traditional ethos about what is decent and respectable, might in fact make contemporary women more physically vulnerable than Simmel’s female contemporaries (ibid.). See also 5.4.8.

them “pleasure, power and strength – despite their oppression. Memories of intimacy are part of our bodies, we know how it can be, and this makes us […] try to make things so” (ibid.).

In addition to the dimensions of female subjectivity listed above, there is, moreover, a meta-dimension, she says, that “cuts through”, “interacts with” and “neutralizes” the other five (ibid.):

[…] not […] to feel at home in one’s position (Woman) or in the alternative (Man), but instead search for and want to be ‘another’ other or another in ‘another’ way, I think is what most characterizes […] female subjectivity in a society committed to the idea of gender equality (ibid.).

It is the five dimensions and this meta-dimension of female subjectivity which together constitute a basis for female “solidarity” (op.cit.: 159),⁴⁹³ and which, according to Widerberg, should have an impact on how feminists conceptualize “objectivity” (op.cit.: 160).

“Traditionally” objectivity has been linked to a “positivist” approach to knowledge production (ibid.). This approach has “distance” as one of its aims; from the topics, from the research

“objects” (as they are not considered to be “subjects”) and in the analysis (ibid.).

“Intersubjectivity and reliability” are other aims: The researcher should try not to “influence”

the research process and the outcome of it, so that other researchers would come to similar conclusions (ibid.). Furthermore, the approach is characterized by a lack of interest in the research subjects’ subjectivity: One is interested in what they actually do, not in what they say they do, and different techniques are thus used to control the “validity” of their answers, in order to find out “how things really are” (ibid.). The ideal is “the natural sciences”; the difference between producing knowledge about things and knowledge about human beings is not addressed critically.⁴⁹⁴ Objectivity from “a feminist perspective” looks different, Widerberg argues (op.cit.: 162.). She elaborates four suggestions, which in her opinion are faithful to women’s experiences and the feminist aims of solidarity and emancipation, and which look forward to a different scientific practice based on the interconnectedness of

“body” and “brain” and on “principles of intimacy”:

493 Widerberg stresses, however, that we need to be aware of changes in the basis of this solidarity, as well as generational and class differences in the development of female subjectivity, in order to avoid “static analyses”

and “essentialism”: “Solidarity that has different experiences and differences in the same experiences as a point of departure, is the only fruitful strategy if we are to build and use female subjectivity in a society where women live different lives” (1995: 159).

494 This was addressed, Widerberg notes, on a meta-theoretical level by the critics of positivism during the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary postmodernists are addressing it even more radically. Both groups of critics have, however, been reluctant to spell out the implications of their critique for research practice, in her opinion.

1. Embodied objectivity is a notion developed by Donna Haraway, and by this Haraway means “quite simply situated knowledges” (ibid.). Objectivity does not refer to “the false vision of limitless transcendence” (ibid). All perspectives are “partial”, “specific” and

“embodied”: To be objective is to recognize and address the situatedness of one’s knowledge claims, and to take “responsibility” for the consequences of one’s claims (ibid.). Haraway talks about this as a perspective “from below” (ibid.). However, this does not mean that subordinate positions do not also need to be critically examined. There are no “innocent”

positions (ibid.). Rather, positions from below are preferable because “they are least likely to allow a denial of the critical and interpretative” aspect of all knowledge (ibid.). According to Widerberg, this does not lead to relativism. Haraway stresses that “partial, […] critical knowledge claims are embedded in networks based on political solidarity and common epistemological conversations” (op.cit.: 163). This is, Widerberg concludes, a prescription for intimacy modified by “critical methods and interpretation” in a collective (ibid.).

2. The collective aspect of knowledge production is further elaborated by Helen Longino:⁴⁹⁵ She talks about collective objectivity as a standard of valid knowledge. Longino’s point of departure is a criticism of feminists who equate rationality and masculinity; this is “to grant rationality to men”, and to rob women of a “human quality” (ibid.). Rather than dismiss concepts of rationality and objectivity, feminists should reconstruct them. Scientific knowledge is produced in an interactive collective, not by isolated individuals. Scientists modify each others’ “observations, theories, ways of reasoning etc:” Objectivity depends on a

“social context” (ibid.) Accordingly, what is more or less objective is “the community of inquirers, not the individual inquirer” (ibid.), Widerberg notes. To produce objective knowledge, a community must fulfill at least four requirements, Longino argues: There must be common standards of criticism, commonly accepted ways of living up to these standards, real critical dialogue, as well as “equal distribution of intellectual authority among qualified practitioners” (op.cit.: 164). However, “emotions” also play a crucial role in knowledge production. (op.cit.: 165). Emotions are the foundation of understanding. The point is that they are not reliable as the only basis for action, as they too are “one-sided” (ibid.). This is why critical dialogue is so crucial. We do not have to choose between “autonomy” and

“attachment”, we can opt for “intersubjectivity”, understood not as a “gender neutral term”

495 Widerberg refers to the article “Feminist Critiques of Rationality: Critiques of Science or Philosophy of Science?”.