Crenshaw:

• Uses an "intersectional framework" to make analyses from the standpoint of persons subject to multiple oppressions--specifically, here, a black feminist standpoint.

• Distinguishes three types of intersectionality:
• structural intersectionality: oppressive social and institutional structures intersect
• political and rhetorical intersectionality: persons caught at the intersection of multiple oppressions may find that a discourse that purports to liberate from one oppression may explicitly or implicitly legitimate other forms of subordination (e.g. anti-sexist discourse may implicitly legitimate racism).
• representational intersectionality: images stereotyped in keeping with one form of oppression intersect with images stereotyped through another form of oppression to create specific stereotyped images and narratives of persons caught at the intersection of multiple oppressions (e.g stereotypes of blacks intersect with stereotypes of women to create specific stereotypes of black women, and specific narratives supposedly representing the lives of black women). Consequently the narratives told by multiply marginalized persons themselves are not heard; the stereotyped narratives get in the way.

•  Re. "2 Live Crew":
•  the prosecutors' "antisexism" was a cover for their racism
•  the defendersí "antiracism" was a cover for their sexism

• An alternative epistemology poses a far greater challenge to dominant views than do alternative knowledge-claims.

• Collins draws on two, distinct alternatives to Eurocentric, masculinist epistemologies: Afrocentric epistemologies and feminist epistemologies.
• She finds several points of commonality between these two.
• One important difference: the Afrocentric epistemologies have greater institutional support within the black community than feminist epistemologies have within the dominant, white community.

• She leaves open the question of whether there are any knowledge-claims which hold up in translation from one epistemology to another.

• Major differences between positivist (Eurocentric, masculinist) epistemological assumptions and Afrocentric feminist epistemological assumptions:

• Ancient Greece: (e.g. Aristotle) ? male rationality is different from female rationality
• 17^th century:
• Descartes:  reason is associated with the male; emotion, with the female
•  reason is "methodized"--start with self-evident, rational intuitions and proceed by deductive method to reach conclusions
• emotion viewed negatively
• Spinoza:  "passive emotion" viewed negatively; "active emotion," positively
• 18^th century "philosophes" (Voltaire, Diderot, et al.):
• "popularized" reason by denying that it requires special training in deductive method
• saw a positive role for passions: they motivate action
• 19^th century "romantics":
• exalted imagination and feeling; tended to repudiate reason
• but put women on a pedestal (away from politics)
• 20^th century: now seeing attempts to expand, not repudiate, reason

• We can distinguish (as Harding does) between structural gendering and symbolic gendering--that is, between the gendering of individual women and the gendering of concepts (the association of certain concepts with a certain gender).

• Once we differentiate structural and symbolic gendering, then we can more clearly see how the two interact.

• Furthermore, we can see more clearly the nature of the symbolic operations that constitute our thinking:
• Making distinctions is itself a symbolic operation (something we do, using language).
• Metaphor is a more complex symbolic operation.
• Much of our thinking is constituted by a complex web or metaphors.
• Furthermore, the distinction between literal and metaphorical uses of language is an "unstable" distinction.
• NB: Lloyd herself, in this article, both uses and undermines the distinction between structural and symbolic gender.

• Lloyd agrees with feminists who say we must affirm, valorize the multiplicity and indeterminacy which were rejected by the "Man of Reason" tradition with its insistence on unity and stability.

• However, she is hesitant to associate multiplicity and indeterminacy with a feminine principle of any sort. She fears that doing that would reinstall old polarities.
• Hence she is reluctant to accept Irigarayís association of multiplicity ("difference") and indeterminacy with the "feminine Imaginary."
• Lloyd sees in Irigarayís deconstructionist position a complex metaphor created by the "crossing" of two traditional, masculinist metaphors:
• 1^st metaphor: reason is male / emotion is female
• 2^nd metaphor: body is differenced, gendered / soul is neutral, ungendered
• new "crossed" metaphor:    soul is neutral and male / body is differenced (multiple) and female

• Descartesí use of the idea of mind as motion, seeking the stability of self-evident intuitions and deductive conclusions, serves as another example of the impossibility of deciding whether his language is literal or metaphorical--and hence an example of the instability of the literal/metaphorical distinction.

JAGGAR:

• Ancient Greek philosophers saw need for both rationality and passion (the charioteer and the horse, to use Platoís metaphor). The point was to keep them in the proper ratio.
• The 17^th century redefined reason. It took the distinctions among reason, emotion, and sense, and regarded them in this way: "reason" now meant deductive, inferential reasoning; "emotion" was regarded as irrational. "Sense" if taken as "sensuality" was assimilated with emotion as irrational, but, at the same time, "sense" was rehabilitated by regarding sense perception as the raw data for inferential reason to act upon.
• Jaggar's project can be seen as a (limited) attempt to "rehabilitate" emotion, which the tradition has continued largely to associate with irrationality, and to devalue.

• Contrary to the positivist tradition, emotions are:
• intentional: they are "about" something, not just "dumb" physiological disturbances
• social constructs, not just individual physiological responses: our cultureís linguistic and cognitive resources influence what emotions we think there are, as well as what sorts of emotional expression we think are appropriate.
• active engagements with the world: in fact, for the study of emotion, the distinction active/passive is inadequate. Emotions are better thought of as habitual responses?and this means they can be re-constructed.
• (a) implicated in observation                                                                                                                                            (b) the experiential basis for values

• NB: This means that emotion:
• reveals something about the world
• reveals something about society and is influenced by society
• is a potential force for change
• is a link between observation and valuation

• The "Myth of Dispassionate Observation" is the idea that knowing results from detached, dispassionate observation, while emotion has no place in the validation of knowledge. The results of these beliefs include the following:
• Males are trained to be lacking in emotional awareness and flexibility, and, at the same time are granted epistemic authority. Thus dominant [masculinist] values are "naturalized" (made to seem natural or inevitable).
• Women also assume these dominant values--but not entirely; they alsoexperience dissonant, "outlaw" emotions.

• Functions that "outlaw emotions" can have include:
• They can motivate inquiry
• They can allow us to perceive things differently
• They can lead to the articulation of the standpoint of the oppressed, which usually provides less distorted knowledge than the standpoint of the dominant.

• Conclusions:
• Emotions are "epistemologically indispensable, but not indisputable."
• Reconstructing knowledge is a process that requires a simultaneous reconstructing of the self.
• Hence, attention to emotion, critical self-examination, and time spent developing emotional acumen are essential parts both of social theorizing and of political practice.

• Shiva largely rejects the agenda of science, on grounds that it is patriarchal, capitalist, and reductionist.
• She re-examines the origins of modern science in the 15^th and 17^th centuries, focusing especially on Bacon (1561-1626), whom she contrasts with the alternative tradition represented by Paracelsus (the "hermetic" as opposed to Baconís "mechanical" worldview).
• She also contrasts the Baconian, mechanical worldview with traditional Indian views of nature as Pakriti,a feminine principle.
• Note the confluence of these developments, in the 15^th-17^th centuries:
• The rise of modern science, with its replacement of organic metaphors by mechanistic metaphors. (E.g., earth is no longer Mater [mother] but rather matter.)
• The rise of capitalism and the exploitation of nature as a resource for human industry.
• Witch-hunting and violence against women.
• Rise of nation-state, which steps in to turn the new myths into institutionalized ideology.
• Hence we get a variety of forms of reductionist thinking:
• Organism reduced to mechanism
• All value reduced to money value
• Diversity reduced to homogeneity
• Knowledge reduced to context-free abstraction
• Contemporary fruits of these processes:
• "mal-development" posing as economic progress
• ecological destruction (violence against nature)
• imperialism and violence against subsistence economies
• violence also against women

• Harding addresses the question: What attitude should a feminist take toward the Enlightenment tradition with its foregrounding of epistemology, and specifically of an epistemology that valorizes science and scientific progress?
• NB: There is a broad debate going on today about the relative value of Enlightenment philosophy and its valorization of science, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the set of anti-Enlightenment critiques roughly grouped under the term "postmodernism."
• To put it all too crudely, the current debate pits science, epistemology, modernism and "Enlightenment" philosophy (18^th c. philosophy) over against postmodernist critics of Enlightenment thinking, epistemologyís attempts to justify some knowledge claims above others, and "the science agenda" which claims to be one of progress.

• Harding sees this broader debate, between Enlightenment critics and the science agenda as being recapitulated to some degree within feminism. After all, there are postmodern feminists and feminists who reject postmodernism and more or less accept the science agenda.
• Some of the postmodern feminists she discusses: Flax, Haraway
• Some of the anti-postmodernist feminists she discusses: Irigaray, Hartsock, DiStefano

• However, she also sees the conflict as less stark, once it is brought within feminism. After all, even feminist postmodernists can see the need for justificatory strategies?i.e., for epistemology; and even feminists who support some kind of science agenda move away from Enlightenment versions of that agenda.
• Why feminists need to develop justificatory strategies (i.e., epistemologies):
• * Neither objectivism nor interpretationism is tenable
• Since a new epistemology must be generated by feminists, they will need a decision procedure for "internal" use, i.e. for choosing the best alternative among those they generate.
• A feminist epistemology is needed as a resource for developing less distorted knowledge and ending male domination.

• What is Hardingís own position on the debate?
• She argues for a "robust, principled ambivalence.
• Why? Because there really are conflicting needs among women today, and the "pomo versus science-agenda" debate is a reflection of these real conflicts. To deny the ambivalence, the tension, would be to deny an important social reality today.

• Major feminist stances on epistemology today:
• Postmodernists: reject epistemology as "grand theorizing
• Feminist Empiricists: say the problem isnít science, itís badly done science.
• Feminist Standpoint theorists: make a deeper critique of science agenda than feminist empiricists, but do not reject that agenda entirely
• feminist standpoint epistemologists give some degree of epistemic privilege to the standpoint of the oppressed, arguing that the latter are in a position to develop a "double vision" that yields a more comprehensive view.

• Comparison of femnist empiricism and feminist standpoint epistemology:
• Empiricists think stricter adherence to scientific method can solve the problem; standpoint epistemologists disagree, claiming instead that no ahistorical principle of inquiry (including "scientific method") can adequately solve the problem, and also that science is permeated by political life. I.e., adherence to method doesnít mean we can be blind to history or to politics.
• Feminist empiricists are less likely to insist explicitly on the value of a bifurcated consciousness (versus the Enlightenment ideal of the unified consciousness, the self-identical self as knower). They are also less likely to have a clear explanation of why women of color, e.g., must be explicitly brought into science if a less distorted body of knowledge is to be generated (since empiricism does not grant epistemic privilege to the standpoint of subordinate groups as standpoint epistemology tends to do).

• Nelson, like Harding, rejects both the "objectivism" with traditionally associated with science and the "interpretationism" often associated with postmodern thought. We see this in her statement of commitment to all three of the following: realism, empiricism, and feminism.
• As an empiricist and a naturalistic realist, she must reject postmodernism, at least in its more exaggerated forms of unrestricted relativism and/or claims to the "incommensurability" of alternate scientific theories.
• But as a feminist, she must reject the traditional objectivist beliefs that the agent of knowledge (the knower) is an isolated individual, and that evidence is simply?well, evident! (self-announcing, unproblematic).

• Over the last four decades, Nelson claims, we have certainly learned these things:
• That "truth has no signpost":
• Current science will doubtless be abandoned eventually
• Science might have evolved differently (and in this sense, multiple theories are possible)
• Weíve no reason to think our sense organs are refined enough to let us discriminate which among several theories is the "best
• That the factors relevant to the construction of knowledge include social relations, politics, and values.

• But itís not enough to know that knowledge is socially constructed. We need a theory of evidence.
• Her thesis: our evolving theories, standards, and practices shape the nature of the evidence available to us.
• Note what is involved in that thesis:
• There are two general constraints on knowledge and claims:
• First, experience (which is largely structured, we must grant, by our theories)
• Second, a larger system of accepted theories and standards (which make possible the experiences out of which new theories and standards can be generated).
• In other words, there are two general constraints, and those constraints are in a dialectical relationship to one another: they are mutually constitutive.

• With Nelson's thesis as the beginning of a theory of evidence, we can see why it is false to say that the error of basing a developmental psychology on the experience of males alone has always been "obvious."
• The "containing theories" and standards prevailing among psychologists and other scientists made the tacit assumption that it was ok to take males as the norm.
• The experiences researchers had were therefore experiences with unrepresentative samples (being all male).
• But it is the combination of experience and containing theory that constitutes evidence--so the error was not evident, i.e., not obvious.