What knowers know well: standpoint theory and gender archeology

Abstract

In this article, I argue that – in exposing the androcentrism of taken-for-granted framework assumptions and calling into question the reliability of entrenched norms of justifi cation – gender archaeology is best understood as a form of reluctant social constructivism. It inadvertently exposes the contingency of foundational commitments, of content and of practice, that had been presumed to be neutral with respect to the situated interests of practitioners, context-independent and trans-historically stable. But, far from fatally undermining the objectivity of the enterprise, I argue that these more radical implications of gender archaeology illustrate the value of social constructionist analysis as an epistemic resource. We should attend to the positive epistemic role it can play as a catalyst for the kinds of transformative criticism that are essential to well-functioning science. I argue that a commitment to ongoing constructionist analysis should be a central component of proceduralist conceptions of objectivity that take seriously the need to mobilize rather than marginalize the diverse epistemic resources of situated knowers