The Limits of Standpoint Epistemology for Politics
In her book Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez repeatedly refers to the time Bernie Sanders said: “it’s not enough to say ‘I’m a woman, vote for me.’” This line seemed to irritate her. Later in the book, she concludes that it is enough to say such a thing, because having more women in power leads to greater attention to women’s issues. This is also the rationale behind Biden claiming the VP he chooses will be a woman, and the sentiment behind the phrase “elect women” in general. There is an implicit consensus here that i) women’s issues need particularized recognition and attention in politics, ii) women are more likely to address issues that are uniquely female and iii) therefore we need to, in the interest of women, elect more women.
This is not a line of reasoning I am particularly sympathetic to; particularly in electoral politics. It is meaningless to me, for instance, if a woman fights for a particular class of women within her own state while advocating for bombing or sanctioning women in another state. But I do think it relies on a particular line of thought that requires acknowledging and addressing: namely, what philosophers have called “standpoint epistemology.” Like most frameworks, standpoint epistemology has legitimate uses and has also been perverted to gain an upper hand in political discourse. Its prevalence is significant enough to merit unraveling this phenomenon.
While we rarely invoke the term “standpoint”, it’s implicit in identity politics discourse. To grasp what I mean, consider the use of the term “lived experience” where one centers on the experience of oppressed people when discussing the features of the oppression they face. For instance, when discussing sexism, women may counter men’s theorizing by claiming that men’s social situation qua men, doesn’t let them fully grasp sexism. We are all, to an extent, epistemologically deficient when it comes to understanding how others experience structural barriers. We do not have the lens that gives us the same insight into how oppression is experienced phenomenologically in every circumstance.
Theorizing that centers experiential knowledge is not a new feature of contemporary identity politics or of “postmodernism.” Early modern philosophers also spoke of socially situated knowledge. In Discourse on Method, René Descartes argued that diversity of opinion arises from different experiences. As such, those with different experiences will bring us different perspectives about how they experience the world and how we relate to each other.
Other theorists of this era made a more explicit connection between experience and theorizing. For example, renaissance humanist Mario Equicola argued in De mulieribus (On Women) in 1501 that male theorists’ failure to consult women while theorizing about women’s natures caused them to commit naturalistic fallacies and moralistic fallacies. In this way, institutional metaphysics and epistemology were compromised as a result of women’s exclusion.
One of Descartes’ arguments is that simple facts are self-evident; we start with them, then move to complex knowledge. For example, a woman possesses experiential knowledge of simple facts relevant to her life as a woman that men cannot experience. This does not mean that men cannot access any knowledge about women’s experiences. It simply means that they are methodologically limited in accessing one kind of knowledge; namely, experiential knowledge.
Importantly, incorporating experiential knowledge and social situation into our lines of thought helped us depart from earlier superstitions about different groups’ innate capacities.
Descartes warned against theorizing about knowledge in a vacuum. Instead, we must acknowledge that our judgments are both motivated by earlier circumstances and contribute to future ones. He points out, for instance, that we should look at the stakes certain people hold in making truth claims.
These stakes are relevant. Slave owners used to believe slaves were naturally constituted for slavery as a matter of metaphysical fact. Obviously, this was not through careful scientific examination. Instead, this ‘truth claim’ was made on the basis of social interests (and social standpoint). This observation brought us to Hegel’s classic Master/Slave dialectic, which shifted how we understand power relationships by bringing in the viewpoint of the slave as well as the master.
Although standpoint theory has brought about both social and philosophical usefulness, it has been overzealously adapted in politics. Some of its adaptation has been disingenuous; some has been genuine. Motives aside, the way standpoint theory typically gets wielded in politics today is ridiculous, and manifests on all regions of the political spectrum.
The use of standpoint in politics typically individualizes the experience of oppression, which should instead be understood to refer to systemic barriers people with shared characteristics face in virtue of how they are consistently perceived. What a standpoint analysis should do is give us epistemic access to otherwise private and personal experiences. Someone’s lived experience can contain valuable information about particular ways systemic inequalities manifest. However, while standpoint can give one unique epistemic access in certain domains, it doesn’t necessarily dictate the terms of structural oppression or make anyone of any oppressed group morally infallible.
The left will sometimes use standpoint theory for social capital within leftist circles to avoid accountability. They will take criticism of a marginalized person as an attack on the group(s) they belong to rather than a criticism of their personal views or behaviour. Kai Cheng Thom articulated this problem by recalling discourse she observed:
“Online, I sometimes see arguments in which people try to shut each other down using identities as weapons, ie “You can’t talk to me that way! I’m trans and you’re being transphobic!” “Oh yeah? Well I’m a femme and you’re a masc! Shut your misogynist, femme-phobic mouth!”
The left’s abuse of standpoint is bad for marginalized people because it puts them on a moral pedestal and expects them to be saintly while acting like only people with privileged identities can hurt other people. This is off the mark. Standpoint should draw on marginalized voices to explain why marginalized people are systematically subject to violence and economic subordination, but it doesn’t give us information on the character of every individual marginalized person and how morally good their actions are. Creating a virtuous/vicious category to parallel oppressed/oppressor is profoundly condescending and dehumanizing. Recognizing the humanity in another—and recognizing them as an equal—includes an acknowledgement of their capacities to act cruelly, deceptively, and immorally. For example, treating women as saintly beings that cannot do as much wrong as a man is the act of an outdated chauvinist, and not of anyone genuinely interested in advancing equality.
The liberal misuse of standpoint epistemology is exemplified in Criado Perez’s disagreement with Sanders’ comment. The notion that the election of Hillary Clinton over a more progressive male would be a feminist victory simply because she is a woman is absurd. It postulates a universal “woman” and declares “women’s interests” to be the interests of white, upper-middle-class American women in order to avoid Clinton’s less progressive history with women that fall outside of these lines. Further, like the left, liberal standpoint abusers take criticism of a politician and their record as an attack on their entire racial or gender identity. Unfortunately for the state of our girl power, Iraqis, Libyans, and Syrians are not moved by the gender of those that advocate bombing them.
Typically, identity victories like the election of Barack Obama or the would-be election of Hillary Clinton are offered as appeasements to those concerned with racial and gender politics. Meanwhile, politicians of this sort are just as capable of advancing reactionary policy as their white male counterparts. The celebration of “identity victories” is especially common during election season where progressive liberals celebrate the “first women,” “first woman of color,” and “first Muslim” in the imperial core. Standpoint might dictate that it’s good to have diverse voices legislate on issues that pertain more strongly to the groups they belong to. For instance, more women might mean better legislation on reproductive health. This, however, is a limited approach. It assumes, first, that anyone that occupies a particular identity will serve the interests of all that belong to that identity. Reproductive health is an apt example: In America, for instance, women are less likely to be pro-choice than men are despite the fact that pro-life politics has broadly been antagonistic to women. It is important, in general, not to disqualify someone for office based on their gender, religion, class, or race, but identity is not a sufficient qualifier for office, either.
Perhaps the most amusing abuse of standpoint comes from those that explicitly claim to disdain identity politics. This often comes in the form of using one’s status as a minority to claim something that ostensibly impacts one’s group is not a problem. The kind of standpoint epistemology embraced by numerous ideological groups has paved the way for people of various identities to believe that their identity makes them individually authoritative on a given subject.
Unlike the liberals that openly embrace identity politics, others in the center tend to be part of circles that typically reject it but make use of it when they need to silence their way out of being challenged. In other words, they will still try to claim rightness based on their identity but will not hesitate to condemn others doing the same.
Ironically, the right’s tactics here mimic the problem with leftists who use identity as social capital and act like marginalized people can’t be morally blameworthy or complicit in oppression. But there is no reason this should be the case.
Other right-leaning commentators take liberal abuse of identity politics to make their own case. Liberals typically limit themselves to lauding any woman who is also a liberal (though not always). They will, at the very least, not support a far-right woman that supports Trump, but the conservatives’ interpretation of their politics sees that this ought to be the case. This results in calling for women to support their candidate of choice because here, identity politics would actually suit their cause.
In sum, we can’t speak authoritatively about some things we don’t have access to e.g. epistemic access via lived experience, phenomenology. But having that access and phenomenology also does a limited amount of work.
In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a character claims: “There would be no civilization if God hadn’t been invented. And there would be no cognac either. But even so, we will have to take your cognac away from you.” There would be a lot missing from philosophy and politics if standpoint epistemology hadn’t been invented. But there are parts of it that will just have to be let go.
Featured image is an allegorical painting of Elizabeth I
