EPISTEMOLOGIES – AN ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE HETERO-PATRIARCHIAL ANCIENT REGIME
THE PERSPECTIVE OF FEMINIST AND TRANSPHILOSOPHERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
KEYWORDS: PHILOSOPHY, EPISTEMOLOGY, FEMINISM, SITUATED KNOWLEDGES, TRANS-THEORY, COLLECTIVITY, CLIMATE CHANGE
”Paradoxically, in pragmatic terms, becoming the speaker of a language means that one progressively stops hearing the history that vibrates in it, so that one can utter it and hear it only as it sounds today, and now. Thus, using words is repeating the historicity they contain while being unaware of the process of political domination or social repetition that have forged their significations.”
Paul B. Preciado
ABSTRACT: This essay explores the ideas of feminist epistemology by Donna Haraway written in America’s 1990s Postfeminist epoch, as well as a critical analysis of Paul B. Preciado’s work based on his columns published in the French newspaper “Liberation” from 2013 to 2018 informing and criticising our current epistemology; its effects on our current society. Then, the Essa will integrate these concepts of epistemology into interdisciplinary thinking methods, approaching the discussion of our binary hierarchy structure through looking at our current political climate and issues at the forefront of our socio-political debates around sexism, imperialism, capitalism and the climate crisis.
VOCABULARY LIST
Binarism
Binary means that something is thought in exactly two mutually exclusive opposites. So that gender exists only as either “male” or “female”, and in each case one represents the opposite of the other.
Cis
Cis* means individuals whose gender identity is the same as their sex as recorded in the birth register (the birth sex).
Patriarchy
The Patriarchy is a social order in which the man has a privileged position in the state and the family and in which the male line is decisive in succession and social status.
Techno-science
Techno-science is a neologism for social practices in which technology and science are inextricably linked and can no longer be distinguished conceptually.
Heterosexuality
Heterosexual people are sexually or romantically attracted to people of the opposite sex.
Homosexuality
Homosexual people are sexually and romantically attracted to people of the same sex.
Non-binary
Non-binary gender identity is a collective term for gender identities from the transgender spectrum that do not identify exclusively as male or female, i.e., are outside of this two-divided, binary gender order
Intersex
Intersexuality refers to a clinical variation with different biological embodiments, such as deviations of the sex chromosomes or genitals.
People of Color
People of Colour, is term used to describe those individuals and groups who are confronted with multiple forms of racism; who share the common and unequal experience of being defined as ‘different’ because of physical and cultural assumptions by the white majority society.
EXPLANTATION OF THE TERM EPISTEMOLOGY
Epistemology is a primary study in philosophy that encompasses the questions for the preconditions of knowledge, so to say, the formulation of rules, the nature and limits of human knowledge or otherwise described “factual” information (A.P. Martinich, 2022). Epistemology falls back on its Latin origin consisting of Greek epistėmė (“knowledge”) and logos (“reason”). This discourse is also understood as “Theory of Knowledge”; in German “, Erkenntnistheorie” translating to “belief-theory” or in French philosophy the term developed as – Théorie de la Connaissance – (“theory of the understanding”) that is characterised by epochal based knowledge analysis titled “Episteme” ((A.P. Martinich, 2022)
Along with the fields of ethics, logic and metaphysics, epistemology is one of the four main subjects of western philosophy and still profoundly relevant to most historical and current philosophers, as it builds on the foundation of philosophy: the concept of understanding our world in general terms by constructing theories that are accurate and transmittable onto our social and political societies (A.P. Martinich, 2022).
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) phrased this as nearly all human beings wish to comprehend the world they live in, and many of them construct theories of various kinds to help them make sense of their existence and purpose. Because many aspects of the world defy a simple explanation, most people ceasing their efforts and to content themselves with the degree of understanding they have achieved (A.P. Martinich, 2022).
Philosopher Paul B. Preciado has analysed many structures of epistemology that have been defined in our current time through a historical timeline, following the idea of french Episteme. He suggests a current shift (he names Micro-Revolutions) that is forming as it has happened during the development of the Renaissance in the 16th century and the Enlightenment period in the 19th century.
As such, there are so many subsidiaries of epistemology theories I will be focussing on two philosophers: Paul B. Preciado and Donna Haraway, out of the programmes of subjects of feminist and trans studies, which have analysed cultural, political and social epistemologies bleeding over into scientific and identity epistemologies.
DONNA HARAWAY
Donna Haraway is an American professor for feminist studies at the University of California. She is a historian of science and women’s studies and became known through her writings in the 1990s on feminism and postmodernism. One of her defining works and a central concept of feminist objectivity is her definition of “Situated Knowledges”, first published in 1988.
She outlines “Situated Knowledges” as a relational practice of situating the self in the construction of knowledge formation across all fields of science. Instead of approaching knowledge with the perception that it was constructed through the lens of objectivity and pure rationality by an all-knowing, powerful thinker, we should position and situate the subjugation of our research fields and the researcher’s position. She defines this all-knowing perspective as the “god complex” or the “masculine approach” as it is a construction grounded in a one-sided perspective of the topic, historically by the white male coloniser inspecting and objectifying and reducing other cultures or genders.Instead of trying to relativise a research topic, we should strive for specificity, as knowledge is more powerful when constructed not through a synopsis of its information but factual and intrinsic consciousness (Haraway, 1988; 574).
As the voices of minorities: people of colour, queer, disabled people and all genders outside of the male one have been excluded, oppressed and dehumanised in the canon of history, a bias in our epistemologies has formed. At the present moment, the voices of minorities are still being dismissed as “inevitably disqualified and polluting bias in any discussion they partake in”. The definition of knowledge and epistemology has traditionally been policed by philosophers who had the power of cognitive and institutional law, which has only begun to change over the past 100 years (Haraway, 1988; 576). According to recent social studies in science, technology and constructivist theory, no insider’s knowledge is more valuable in knowledge production than that of the outsider (Haraway, 1988; 576). The thing that decides the knowledge discourse is not truth but power. To sum up, it is not necessarily the truth that informs our knowledge construction but the power of the most authoritative individuals that reach us (Haraway, 1988; 575).
Situating one’s perspective towards a topic, challenging the idea of a “one-knows-it-all” position and suggesting a multitude of perspectives on which one topic can be discussed opens the space for a democratic discussion amongst themes and topics. It is blending and connecting issues and themes to construct knowledge that connects different ideas and topics and is available for change instead of stagnation and underdeveloped concepts (Haraway, 1988; 576). It much better reflects a constructive discussion or conversation in society as a whole, opposed to an authoritative or dictating way of constructing knowledge as it has been done so far (Haraway, 1991,c.)
Haraway suggests to deconstruct the truth claims of science by showing radical historical specificity that may enforce a more truthful and diverse construct of multiple personalities of social organisation (Haraway, p. 579). Haraway (1988; 579) phrases a potent allegory between our capitalist economic structuring and an epistemological one, saying, what money does in the exchange orders of capitalism, reductionism does in the powerful mental orders of global sciences as our systems unequally contribute power not based on balance but exclusion.
All knowledges of the world should not be theories of unlimited broadness or interchangeability but instead of elaborate specificity and difference and the care people may take to understand how to see and respect others’ points of view and ways of living. That is not alienating a distance but alternately a possible symbolism of original adaptations of new objectivity (Haraway, 1988; 584). Haraway (1988) then warns to critically question and reflect such preferred position as it can become as hostile to various modes of relativism as to the most explicitly totalising version of claims to scientific authority (Haraway, 1988; 584)
Exemplified is this, for instance, in our internet personas and social media platforms such as Twitter or Instagram, where information is spread through subjugated positions that work independently but can lead to quite negative and exclusionary or wrong assumptions around topics and knowledge. Relativism and Totalitarianism are ideologies of objectivity; both can be identified as “god complexes’ promising vision from everywhere and nowhere.
Feminism is also profoundly interested in the sciences of language and the interaction between translations and interpretations. The translation can always be identified as critical, allegorical and very limited (Haraway, 1988; 589). Therefore feminists have criticised the practice of scientific objectivity. The idea is that an object of knowledge is an inactive entity even though such objects are not passive and often instrumentalised by western societies and supposed to be predetermined according to the researchers of interest to dominate the oppressed unconsciously. The object of knowledge is finally in itself only standing in for the matter of the seminal power of the knower. Therefore the object both proves and reinforces the power of the researcher (Haraway, 1988: 590).
This mode of knowing in techno-science is noted as “resourcing”, as the homogenising of all the world’s bodies into resources for human projects. Nature is only the raw material of culture, appropriated, preserved, enslaved and differentiated, altered or otherwise made flexible by the human culture and, more specifically, the epistemology of capitalist hierarchical binary colonialism (Haraway, 1988: 590). Situated knowledge ought that the object of knowledge is being defined and pictured as an agent, not as a resource. Therefore, it should never be excluded from the dialectic of the boundless action of knowledge.
“Indeed, coming to terms with the agency of the “objects” studied is the only way to avoid gross error and false knowledge of many kinds of social sciences (Haraway, 1988; f. 582). A ‘real’ world does not, then, depend on a logic of ‘discovery’ but a power-charged social relation of conversation. The world is not raw material for humanisation; it is a changing agent in our life.” (Haraway, 1988; 597).
PAUL B. PRECIADO
In the words of trans theorist and philosopher Paul B. Preciado, an epistemology can also be referred to as “a closure of our cognitive system “and subsequently can determine our thinking process as it “not only offers answers to our questions but determines the very questions we can prose according to a pre-established interpretation of (…) data” (Preciado, 2019;).
The issue for Preciado arises when the time comes when more problems ensue through the current epistemology than solved. Therefore epistemology tends to be conservative as it develops slowly through establishments can only become refractory, harmful and reach the state of deleteriousness when it is time to find a replacement that applies to the changing world (Preciado, 2019; 35).
To understand Preciado’s idea of a new trans epistemology, he deconstructs various aspects of our current binary understanding of knowledge through autobiographic writings. As Preciado references Donna Haraway’s writings on feminist epistemology, her influences on his writing and knowledge practice are incredibly evident in his columns, which he published in the French newspaper “Liberation” from 2013 to 2018.
Before analysing Preciado’s ideas, I have to admit that his work thrives through the process of subjugating knowledges, as previously explained as a feminist practice by Haraway. I was deeply touched and highly enlightened by Preciado’s readings of our epistemology and the detailed, situated knowledge he brought forward; however, to summarise and relativise the ideas, in summary, is sheer impossible to do. Therefore, my criticism against the practice of subjugated knowledges would be that even though it is incredibly beneficial to one’s understanding and examination with knowledge, it is impossible to summarise or reiterate quickly. Therefore I would urge the reader to confront Preciado’s word by themselves as this recount of his intrinsic analysis will ultimately lose some of Preciado’s magic.
Preciado has analysed the development of Episteme throughout history leading up to our current theory of knowledge in the West, which he defines continuously as a racist, capitalist hetero-patriarchial epistemology. He accentuates that our binary epistemology has defined and formed the first machines of the industrial revolution not as steam engines, printing presses or guillotine, but slave labour on plantations, sexual and reproductive female workers, and animals as commodifications. Humanism was invented in the style of very exclusionary definition as that “human” was and often still is seen only as of the sovereign, white, heterosexual, healthy, seminal body (Preciado, 2021; 100).
The time of the enlightenment, modernity, the invention of the sciences, the rise of technology, machines, capitalism and nation-states all established and influenced each other equally to contribute to the formation of binary hierarchy structure between oppressor and oppressed. Capital is no longer the abstract reference of equivalence between work and goods: it has become the function of risk and criminality, dispossession and violence” (Preciado, 2021; 133).
As Preciado and Foucault have analysed, these developments were primarily established by the research apparatus. The studies of medicine, psychiatry and psychoanalysis went through a development of normalisation and integration. Therefore their definitions were embedded as factual knowledge. Out of the practice of knowledge construction based on sex, gender and sexual difference (concepts of active-passive roles, castration anxiety, bisexuality, androgyny, perversion, homosexuality, heterosexuality – the list is almost endless) was born a construct that defines oppression, inequality and a constant struggle of competition, which is based on constructions meaningless outside of our epistemology. As for the acknowledgement of the trans body, Preciado defines the integration of the trans body as a challenge to a society that puts into question our binary structure of masculine and feminine genders, sexualities and characteristics.
The trans experience suggests living on the stage of fluidity and interdisciplinary body and identity. It challenges not only the construct of the body but our construct of binary oppositions on the scale of our knowledge production. It acknowledges the construction that our sex is defined by identifying an oppressor and an oppressed; when one can move from one sexuality and gender to the other, it lifts the curtains of our epistemological barriers and inequalities to challenge the construct of binary oppositions and questions our epistemology of oppositions and hierarchies at the core.
Our concept of the body and sexual difference depends on what we can phrase a scientific-cultural paradigm. Since the early eighteenth century, the paradigm of sexual difference in the West has been formulating into a crisis with the invention of chromosomal analysis and genetic data. 1.3 newborns out of 1,000 are born with genital organs regarded as neither masculine nor feminine in a study from 2019 suggesting that out of around 385.000 newborns born every day (average 2022), approximately 385 babies are born with intersex genitals ( Aydin et al.; 2019). They have the right to be a boy without a penis or a girl without a uterus and to be neither girl nor boy. (Preciado, 2021; 83).
Like gender, the nation does not exist outside of shared codes and etiquettes, that construct it. Cross out the map, erase the first name, propose other maps and first names whose collectively imagined fictional nature is evident. Fictions that might allow us to fabricate practices of liberty” (Preciado, 2021; 112). National identity and gender identity must be neither foundation nor goal. In nations like gender, we cannot look for truths or empirical necessities that allow people to decide who belongs where or behind which borders.
A trans epistemology would have tremendous effects on the politics of reproduction and the processes through which a human body is constituted as a sovereign subject. What characterises the position of men in our society is defined by the use of techniques of violence and oppression. This government practice does not take the form of law but of an unwritten norm, a transaction of gestures and codes that establish a division between what can and cannot be done. This form of sexual servitude rests on the aesthetic of seduction and desire and is historically constructed and eroticising the difference of power (Preciado, 2021; 273). The politics of desire is what keeps the ancient sex-gender regime alive and deposits all the legal process of democratisation and empowerment of women (Preciado, 2021; 273). Preciado (2021; 273) says, “we must modify desire. We must learn to desire sexual freedom. However, two different elements separate queer aesthetics from that of the hetero-norm of the ancient regime: consent and the non-naturalisation of sexual positions”.
Instead of challenging or freeing ourselves from this position through moving to the position of power, we need to completely displace and untangle this epistemological understanding of the opposition between sexes, genders, nationalities, skin tones, and bodies.The reaction of our institutions is essentially criminalising all practices of crossing. Nevertheless, whenever the passage is possible, the map of a new society begins to be outlined. With new forms of production and reproduction of life, which is where trans epistemology finds its beginnings. (Preciado, 2021; 41)
Our roles in society and how we construct our goals: The things we strive towards are all organised on one of the two halves of the binary structure: the oppressed or the oppressor, may that be feminine and masculine, heterosexual and homosexual, or structures between nationalities and borders trans epistemology asks us to cross these lines, to live on both sides and dismantle binary oppositions. Preciado urges us to dis-identify with, not defend what we are but reject it from the political constraint that forces us to desire it.
If this construct is broken down, we need to completely rethink how we organise society, politics, and the body as a whole. It would lead us to what Preciado characterises as a revolution of our entire knowledge construction and, therefore, institutions: One based not on differentiation but all-inclusivity.
INCORPORATION OF EPISTEMOLOGIES
Preciado and Haraway deeply enforced the analysis of our world that it is not possible to separate Patriarchy from capitalism or the climate crisis or to separate it from racism because these systems are interrelated and mutually reinforcing.
So the critics of our epistemology through the lens of feminist and trans studies have broadened my outlook. The power our binary epistemology has on our understanding of positions of humans and goals is terrifying, especially if such conception of ideas is taken as truthful knowledge and turns out to be more difficult to challenge than expected and decided for many people between life and death. The process of breaking through these epistemological structures takes effort and much time.
Similarly, now people are confused by the challenges that trans people bring to their definition of the human experience as they cannot envision a fulfilling life outside the epistemological construction of the binary. This way, the construction and the negatives of the construct of knowledge and the imbalances it creates and often the illogical senses and actions it leads to can be recognised and changed for the better. Many feel threatened by their unknowingness or confusion towards such ideas, as they challenge someone’s comfort and hierarchical position as we know and has recently become more and more aware of as the role and the critic of the white cis-man has become more visible in society. He benefits from our cis-hetero epistemology the most as he sits at the top of this binary power construction.
Nevertheless, as we now know, inequality does not lead to happiness or equality; imbalances in our life only benefit the very few and can not only lead to human existentialism and death amongst refugees, people of colour, trans-people, but in the times of the climate crisis can lead to a planetary crisis that has already proven that a binary capitalist organisation of our world based on profit, power and competition, and resourcing instead of care and communal distribution leas to the extinction of many and hopefully not all living species as the records of the recent climate report of the IPCC has for-seen (IPCC, 2022).
There are several forms, such as white supremacy, which puts whiteness above everything else in terms of intelligence, beauty, rationality, trust, empathy = who deserves empathy, and other forms such as the Patriarchy and the discussion about gender, male versus female, also different levels of hierarchy also include nature or what we call nature. It is very problematic to differentiate between nature at all or better, where do we draw the line between nature and non-nature.
In modernity, the world was classified to understand nature vs technology and nature vs science; rationality vs emotion which also led to “nature” the animals and everything organic as valueless, and classified them in a hierarchy as something that can be taken as possessed, as property, as use. This is a very patriarchal and colonialist way of thinking, that is, “to have a claim on something”. Furthermore, it is absurd that there is no single person in the world who does not depend on intact ecosystems, yet the belief that humans are not part of nature and do not interrelate with nature prevails. An essential aspect of Patriarchy and oppression: the highest level of development from our western perspective means to be as far away from nature as possible. For a long time until the middle of the 20th century, black people were considered animals, treated as subhumans rather than humans.
Similarly, women were defined as subhuman long before modernity. Masculine science especially Oppressed and dehumanised them as they were assorted to be closer to natural processes due to the reproductive possibilities of many of them. We still feel this inequality is due to unavoidable natural characteristics and biological traits. The problem is a justification, naturalisation of oppression against women and other minority groups in society because collectively, we will not realise that these power differences have nothing to do with nature and all to do with historical, social pressures and knowledge construction.
These epistemologies have destructive, competitive ways to normalise masculinity and ignore vital elementary perspectives. This fixation on hierarchies, differences, and competition puts power, profit and economic growth through exploitation in the centre of our thinking. As a collective, we have to free ourselves from these binary hierarchical power epistemologies and structures. We need to love ourselves more; the power differences and seclusions feed our lack of self-love. Many men need the system of the Patriarchy to feel their importance, power and worth above others, a lot of white people need the exclusion of people of colour to put themselves above someone, and a lot of cis people need to put themselves above queer people to feel like a part of something superior. The logic behind it is that if a system tells us “you can find a place in this hierarchy”, many will focus on finding it and will accept it as the only truthful answer. If we remove this hierarchy and become aware that from the moment we are in a world, we are worth as much as all other people and creatures; then we are on the right path.
For example, in a forest, there are many trees and many different types of plants and animals. No one in this ecosystem thinks they are superior to all other species; therefore, all live together and are needed to grow a forest; why can’t we do the same? Disabled bodies, black bodies, woman bodies, queer bodies, men’s bodies, trans bodies, non-binary bodies, animals and plants, and recourses previously labelled as different or lesser would find their place. It is an unstoppable revolution. This development has been released, and it will not be held back or stopped. It is moving and will continue to move.
Antonia Scharr 