Testimonial Justice: An Introduction to Feminist Epistemology
What is distinctive about feminist epistemology, and what makes it worthy of further study? In this essay, we will explore feminist epistemology as distilled by no fewer than five prominent feminists in this growing academic discipline, accruing not only the knowledge necessary to comprehend these works, but, more importantly, the tools necessary to free ourselves and our fellow animal from the epistemic marginalization to which we so often succumb.
In her essay, “What is Distinctive about Feminist Epistemology at 25,” Phyllis Rooney discusses the ways in which feminist epistemology-and, by extension, women knowers—are marginalized. Women, as Rooney argues, are subject to a longstanding pattern of “epistemic subordination," whereby women's status as epistemic agents is undermined or even dismissed (345). Rooney considers this epistemic subordination to be connected to women's social and political subordination (345). For example, the assumption that women lack the same intellectual acumen as men reinforces the view that women are unqualified for high-ranking jobs in traditionally male-dominated fields, from business to physics (345).
Rooney's analysis is perhaps most interesting in the case of Western philosophy, which she claims reinforces broader patterns of women's epistemic disempowerment in our society. As Rooney argues, the association of feminist epistemology with women triggers unacknowledged, implicit assumptions about the quality of work performed by women, such that feminist epistemology is viewed as inferior to mainstream epistemology (345). The implicit assumption of inferiority leads to less attention being given and less credibility being assigned to the project of feminist epistemology and the concerns it addresses (345).
Rooney associates this failure with philosophy's history of misogyny. As Rooney writes, “women literally or metaphorically represented embodiment, emotion, passion, instinct, or nature, that which 'the man of reason' must control or transcend in order to become the ideal reasoner and knower” (349). According to Rooney, feminist epistemology takes into account these historical associations and their impact on knowledge whereas mainstream epistemology distances itself from such considerations (349). Mainstream epistemology consequently offers a more limited view of knowledge that fails to consider the historical and political situatedness of knowledge. This limited view can privilege certain groups of knowers while disenfranchising other groups, especially women (349).
In her essay, “Silence and Institutional Prejudice,” Miranda Fricker develops another account of epistemic marginalization worthy of exploration at this juncture. This account begins with the notion of negative silence, in which a knower is suppressed from delivering their testimony and having that testimony fairly considered (287). Negative silence can result from the “social crushing” associated with power, with Fricker maintaining that “the social world in which such crushings take place will be in an unhelpfully partial perspective, the perspective of the powerful” (288). Since men as a group hold more power than women, knowledge that women possess is, mutatis mutandis, more liable to being marginalized.
While negative silence can owe to an “innocent error" on the part of the listener, Fricker is more interested in exploring testimonial injustice that owes to prejudice (291). This prejudice on the part of the listener can deflate the credibility of the speaker; for example, a young woman could suggest a meaningful way to improve a service a company provides only for no one to lend her statements credibility on account of implicit bias against women (291). Fricker also supplies the example of Duwayne Brooks, who was denied the opportunity to share his knowledge and have that knowledge taken seriously by the police because of the prejudicial leanings of the officers on duty.
After describing her notion of testimonial injustice, Fricker revisits the example of Duwayne Brooks to consider what made the police department that handled his case institutionally racist. This institutional racism is distinct from the attitude of individuals; the police department could contain many individuals inclined toward anti-racism and yet still maintain racist policies or attitudes as a collective entity (296-7). Fricker next notes that we have a number of practical identities that alter how we behave and feel in certain environments and that produce “we-attitudes” (299). Being part of a particular group also involves a certain commitment to and identification with that group, and it can come at a significant personal cost to dis-identify with that group, in turn incentivizing epistemic negligence, malfeasance, and groupthink. This “internally coercive power” can in turn sustain a racist occupational culture (300).
Fricker's analysis also applies to the epistemic marginalization of women. Prior to women's suffrage in the US, women could not even vote to express their political will. Women were also actively discouraged from expressing their political views—as well as expressing anything else that might be potentially controversial—in the company of others. Women were often presumed to be too emotional and irrational to attend to such matters. Such views marginalize women as knowers by not only perpetuating a negative silence in which women are not wholly free to express their political views, but also deflating the credibility of any political testimony offered as the result of such sexist stereotypes.
Halfway around the world, Vandana Shiva also explores the epistemic marginalization of women in her essay, “Women and the Gendered Politics of Food." Core to Shiva's assessment is the view that, historically, women have served not only as the primary agricultural producers, but also the primary knowers of agricultural production. This knowledge typically involves an appreciation for diversity in the way that food is grown, cooked, and served and an emphasis on food sharing and agricultural sustainability (19). Despite women's central role in agricultural production, Shiva maintains that women's labor, overall, has remained largely invisible; economists fail, for example, to recognize the diverse tasks women perform to sustain their families and communities as actual work (19).
This economic underappreciation is also tied more generally to epistemic marginalization of women as food producers. Large, industrial monocultures, for example, fail to incorporate the diversity of most small-scale farms maintained by women. Yet these same small-scale farms are often drastically more productive (20). This tendency toward large, industrial farms thus discounts the “innovation” of biological diversity steadily cultivated by generations of women, as well as the knowledge involved in sustaining these highly productive, biodiverse farms.
Women's agricultural knowledge is also appropriated by multinational seed corporations that claim Intellectual Property Rights to certain seed genomes, rendering biodiversity the “property" of corporations such as Monsanto (22). Women must now pay royalties to use this seed, even though these "advanced cultivars” do not pass their vigor on to the next generation, defeating the “self-reproducing character” of seeds traditionally maintained by women through communal seed reserves (21-2). Women's knowledge of sustainable agricultural production is even further marginalized when these same multinational conglomerates insist that large-scale industrial agricultural production is the only way to feed the world (23).
Meanwhile, the work of Lanre-Abass in her essay, “Feminist Epistemology and Human Values in an African Culture," provides a framework for overcoming the epistemic marginalization to which women are so often subject. Lanre-Abass argues, for example, that we should recognize that knowledge is socially constructed (59). Once we view knowledge as socially constructed, we can recognize how different experiences owing to one's “social location” within society can impact the knowledge thereby generated. Members of privileged groups, for example, are often prone to discounting the experiences of less privileged groups, in part because privileged individuals might lack firsthand experience of oppression. In arguing against the “abstract individualism” that permeates mainstream epistemology, Fehr also argues in favor of embracing values, such as emotional connectedness, love, care, concern, involvement, attachment, and solidarity (62). These values are conducive to healthy, functioning societies that respect the differing knowledge produced across various social strata.
Carla Fehr further elaborates on how we can overcome such epistemic marginalization in her essay, “What Is in it for Me? The Epistemic Benefits of Diversity in Scientific Communities." In this essay, Fehr discusses how we can obtain epistemic benefits associated with increased diversity in the academy, arguing that situational diversity is insufficient for deriving epistemic benefit. Instead, we must perform "diversity development work” that cultivates dissenting voices and rewards dissenting individuals for their contributions (145). Fehr's analysis also suggests several other ways we can address women's epistemic marginalization. Fehr, for example, calls attention to the fact that women are often considered less qualified than their male counterparts, and that we should view everyone as capable of making meaningful contributions, regardless of their social identities.
Taken together, all five accounts herein examined not only provide a framework for understanding the social phenomenon of epistemic marginalization, but also adumbrate the tools necessary for solidifying the status of oppressed individuals as full-fledged, equal members of our social, moral, and academic communities.
