Lorraine Code

Taking Subjectivity into Account

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.

Experience, Knowledge, and Responsibility

Two central, interconnected tasks that face feminist philosophers working in theory of knowledge are that of finding appropriate ways of knowing women’s experiences and the structures that shape them; and that of developing theoretical accounts of knowledge which retain continuity with those experiences. To perform the first task adequately, it is necessary, among other things, to break out of stereotyped perceptions of woman’s ‘nature’ which work, persistently, to constrain possibilities of knowing well. In this connection, I shall argue that ways of knowing can be judged ‘appropriate’ partly on the basis of responsibility manifested by cognitive agents in making knowledge claims, and in acting upon assumptions that they know. Adequate performance of the second task requires a shift in perspective about the purpose of ‘the epistemological project’. It involves moving away from theoretical positions which advocate a purity in knowledge that would leave experience behind in a search for an epistemic ideal of unrealisable clarity.

The Power Of Ignorance

Abstract Taking my point of entry from George Eliots reference to ‘the power of Ignorance’, I analyse some manifestations of that power as she portrays it in the life of a young woman of affluence, in her novel Daniel Deronda. Comparing and contrasting this kind of ignorance with James Mills avowed ignorance of local tradition and custom in his History of British India, I consider how ignorance can foster immoral beliefs which, in turn, contribute to social-political arrangements of dominance and subordination. Yet I ask, too, how judgements of culpability can be sustained when ignorance is culturally induced.

‘They Treated Him Well’: Fact, Fiction, and the Politics of Knowledge

In this paper I show how fact and fiction, collaboratively, can inform a moral epistemology that moves toward deriving principles for understanding difference; responding well to alterity. Specifically, I examine impediments to knowing, from positions of white privilege, how it is to live racial inequality. Starting from Nadine Gordimer’s novel, July’s People, written when South African apartheid was moving violently toward its dissolution; yet where polite, concepts/ideals integral to liberal enlightenment discourse, such as emancipation, equality, and welfare, were under strain, I examine the phrase ‘they treated him well’ for how it permits the novel’s white protagonists to ignore the extent of an Otherness that is allegedly erased in the provisions they make for the comfort and welfare of July, their black servant. The language is neutral, well-intentioned, self-confessedly liberal, and oblivious to the barriers and exclusions it sustains. Yet contains the “white folks” within an epistemological-ethical imaginary of sameness where they cannot understand the need to relinquish taken-for-granted distinctions, taxonomies and assumptions about “natural kinds” through which they know “their” world, even when those distinctions lose their pertinence. July knows their world and their ways far better than they know his, yet their failure to recognize the extent of his epistemic privilege ultimately leads to disaster. The paper will elaborate the epistemological consequences of this apparent incommensurability.

A New Epistemology of Rape

Abstract In this essay I take issue with entrenched conceptions of individual autonomy for how they block understandings of the implications of rape in patriarchal cultures both ‘at home’ and in situations of armed conflict. I focus on human vulnerability as it manifests in sedimented assumptions about violence against women as endemic to male-female relations, thwarting possibilities of knowing the specific harms particular acts of rape enact well enough to render intelligible their far-reaching social-political-moral implications. Taking my point of departure from Debra Bergoffens call for ‘a new epistemology of rape’, I consider what such a call can amount to within an instituted social imaginary where male domination and female subordination are taken for granted—naturalized.

The Myth of the Individual

Reading is a hobby to open the knowledge windows. Besides, it can provide the inspiration and spirit to face this life. By this way, concomitant with the technology development, many companies serve the e-book or book in soft file. The system of this book of course will be much easier. No worry to forget bringing the the myth of the individual book. You can open the device and get the book by on-line.

Doubt and Denial: Epistemic Responsibility Meets Climate Change Scepticism

The analysis in this essay is indebted to the analysis of climate change scepticism developed in Naomi Oreskes’s and Eric Conway’s Merchants of Doubt where they expose the vested interests that produce a degree of doubt with respect to climate change science. The argument addresses the appeal to an inflated conception of human freedom - Liberty - that is allegedly threatened by injunctions to control pollution in the interests of ecologically conscious behaviour across a range of human practices of consumption. The essay draws on and advocates rethinking issues about epistemic responsibility and testimonial injustice in working toward developing ecologically informed climate change advocacy. El analisis de este ensayo esta en deuda con el analisis sobre escepticismo ante cambio climatico desarrollada por Naomi Oreskes y Eric Conway en Merchants of Doubt, donde exponen los intereses creados que producen un grado de duda con respecto a la ciencia del cambio climatico. El argumento se refiere a la apelacion a una concepcion exagerada de la libertad humana - la Libertad - presuntamente amenazada por medidas cautelares para controlar la contaminacion en los intereses de la conducta ecologicamente consciente a traves de toda una gama de practicas humanas de consumo. El ensayo se basa en, y aboga por repensar las cuestiones acerca de la responsabilidad epistemica y defiende replantear las cuestiones acerca de la responsabilidad epistemica e injusticia testimonial en el trabajo hacia el desarrollo ecologicamente informado de la defensa del cambio climatico.

Epistemological Diversity: A Roundtable

The participants in this conversation are all philosophers or philosophers of education with different perspectives on the issues, and all (with the exception of Lynda Stone) have contributed other chapters to this volume. The substantive conversation opens with a statement by Code expressing discomfort with thinking of “multicultural epistemologies” as “alternatives,” as if one can pick and choose between them. Rather, all concerned are focused on the epistemic issue of “knowing well.” Furthermore, epistemology is a field that has changed over time and is doing so today making this a “conflicted historical situation.” Siegel argues that these “alternatives” are best seen as “claims for the legitimacy of the experiences, views, and presence of members of marginalized groups”, for clearly they are not epistemology. Stone raises some issues relating to seminar-room practice with doctoral students, including the problem that what constitutes knowledge has become politicized. Phillips expresses his long-standing puzzlement as to why the important educational and political concerns of marginalized groups have come to be expressed in ill-fitting epistemological language. Ruitenberg responds to some of these concerns expressed by the roundtable participants by arguing that the effort must be made to understand what advocates of multicultural epistemology are trying to achieve by resignifying the term; her hypothesis is that they are objecting to narrowing “knowledge” to refer to propositional knowledge to the exclusion of knowledge by acquaintance.