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RECENT WORK

Recent Work in Standpoint Epistemology

Briana Toole

Within the last decade, burgeoning interest in the intersection of epistemology and
social issues has generated a new set of research questions. These questions range
from the relevance of social identity, to peer disagreement, to debates on the signifi-
cance of moral considerations to epistemic evaluations, to discussions of our epistemic
practices and how those practices exclude certain agents and certain bodies of know-
ledge. Central in this new and emerging body of work is the realization that epistem-
ology has more to do than simply answer questions about what knowledge consists in;
it must also acknowledge that our answers to these questions might be influenced by
features we have previously failed to make space for. It is in this respect that we are
witnessing a renewed interest in a theoretical approach long consigned to the margins
of epistemology – that of standpoint epistemology.
Standpoint epistemology can be understood as a family of theses that have been
interpreted in various ways, but all of which have in common the claim that features
of an epistemic agent’s identity – features that have been ignored or occluded in trad-
itional discussions of epistemology – may be epistemically significant. As I understand it,
the principal claim of standpoint epistemology is that what we are positioned to know is
sensitive to a number of features traditionally thought to be non-epistemic, and therefore
epistemically irrelevant, by those working in mainstream epistemology. There is no ca-
nonically precise distinction between those features that are epistemically relevant, but
paradigm examples provide some indication: evidence, justification, reliability and other
factors that feature in post-Gettier characterizations of knowledge. In short, we might
think of epistemic features as those factors that make it more likely that a belief is true.1
Crucially, these epistemically relevant features are traditionally understood as being,
in principle, equally available to anyone. Thus, when we assess whether an agent has
knowledge, we must attend to what evidence or justification she has, but we do no
similarly have to attend to who the agent is.
Standpoint epistemologists reject this constraint – they claim that social identity is a
central feature in assessing the epistemic status of an agent. An example may help to
motivate this claim:
Elsabeth and Janie are both students at Bovie College, a vertical campus located in
a busy district in the heart of Manhattan. Elsabeth and Janie both have classes on
the top floors of the building, which requires they take stairs, escalators, or eleva-
tors. Elsabeth, who uses a wheelchair, finds the trek especially tedious, as she can

1 Thus, mainstream epistemologists may deny that social identity is an epistemic feature in that
it does not make it more likely that a belief is true. However, standpoint epistemologists
argue that social identity is epistemically significant in that it makes a difference to what an
epistemic agent is in a position to know.

Analysis Reviews Vol. 81 | Number 2 | April 2021 | pp. 338–350 doi: 10.1093/analys/anab026
C The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust.
V
All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]
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use neither the stairs nor escalator, and must wait for the elevator. Particularly
problematic for her is the lack of ‘activation switches’, or ADA push buttons, that
open the heavy doors she must pass through en route. As there are no such buttons
on the floor where her class is located, she often must wait for someone else to open
the door for her. When the college sends around an accessibility survey to its
students, Elsabeth responds that the building is not accessible to people with dis-
abilities, and offers specific steps the college can take to improve. Janie responds
that she doesn’t know if there is any accessibility problem on campus, but notes
that things seem fine to her.
The standpoint epistemologist argues that facts about Elsabeth’s situatedness – as
someone living with a disability – enable her knowledge of some proposition (i.e.
that Bovie College is not accessible), knowledge that Janie lacks. Thus, as this example
makes salient, the central idea of standpoint epistemology is that knowledge is situated.
In other words, what one knows reflects the particular perspective, or in our case,
standpoint, of the knower. The task for the standpoint epistemologist is, then, to
explain the relationship between one’s standpoint and the knowledge this standpoint
makes available. That is, how and why does one’s social identity play an epistemic role,
and, what role (if any) it ought to play.
As is perhaps already evident, standpoint epistemology is in tension with much of
how epistemology has traditionally been conceived. Hence, its confinement to the
margins. There is a notable division between the mainstream of traditional epistemol-
ogy – which takes knowledge-acquisition to be an objective, value-neutral process in
which only paradigmatically ‘epistemic’ features are relevant to knowledge – and theses
in social epistemology, like standpoint epistemology, that take knowledge acquisition
to be a subjective and value-laden process, and which attribute some role to features
presumed to be non-epistemic.2 Elsewhere (Toole forthcoming) I’ve argued that what
we learn from standpoint epistemology is that we ought to reconsider this division
between the epistemic and non-epistemic, and perhaps re-evaluate the epistemic sig-
nificance of social identity.
Here, however, my goal is not to vindicate standpoint epistemology or to defend it
against detractors. Instead, more modestly, my aim here is to provide an overview that
establishes the plausibility of the view and its relevance to new issues arising in the
epistemological literature. I’ll begin by fleshing the view out in more detail, answering
questions regarding what a standpoint is, how it is achieved and the relationship be-
tween standpoints and knowledge-acquisition. With these finer details in place, I’ll then
examine the debate between traditional and standpoint epistemology, so that it is clear
exactly what the tension between these (apparently) competing views is. Finally, in
adjudicating between these views, I’ll note that there is an explanatory value in stand-
point epistemology that traditional epistemology lacks – namely, standpoint epistem-
ology illuminates phenomena, like epistemic oppression, that traditional epistemology
leaves obscure.

2 Code (1995) defines ‘subjectivity’ in knowledge as taking into account ‘factors that pertain
to the circumstances of the subject’. Thus, an account of knowledge that makes space for
subjective features is one that suggests that what we (are in a position to) know depends on
facts about who we are.
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1. The three theses of standpoint epistemology
Standpoint epistemology is comprised of three theses: (i) the Situated Knowledge thesis,
(ii) the Achievement thesis and (iii) the Epistemic Privilege thesis. What these theses are,
and how they interact, is the subject of this section. I’ll explore these theses in greater
detail and, along the way, I’ll answer questions regarding what a standpoint is, how it is
to be achieved and examine the normative implications of the standpoint thesis.

1.1 Situated knowledge thesis

The thesis of standpoint epistemology that is perhaps most familiar is the claim that
knowledge is situated. I propose understanding this thesis as a view according to which
what one is in a position to know depends on facts about that person’s social identity
(Hartsock 1983, Collins 1986, Harding 1991, Wylie 2004).
Early accounts developed the thesis of situated knowledge from the perspective of
class (Marx 1867/1976, Lukacs 1923/1971, Marx and Engels 1932/2001) and later,
gender (Hartsock 1983, Harding 1991, 2004). Later analyses expanded the scope of
their accounts to acknowledge the influence of a wide range of social features, empha-
sizing the role that unjust power relations might play in structuring enquiry (Collins
1990, Crasnow 2009, Rolin 2009).
Why might one think that social relations influence enquiry and knowledge acqui-
sition? The situated knowledge thesis takes on plausibility once we understand the
relationship between one’s situatedness and the epistemic resources one uses to make
sense of one’s experienced world. Following Gaile Pohlhaus, I define epistemic resour-
ces as the language, concepts and their associated criteria for sorting. Woomer (2017)
observes that our epistemic resources can be further classified as access or interpretive
tools. She writes ‘our access tools, then, roughly determine what we see, while our
interpretive tools determine how we see it’ (Woomer 2017: 77). Importantly for our
discussion here, what epistemic resources we possess is determined in part by what
aspect of the world we need to understand.
Consider a toy case. Louis is an amateur ornithologist and avid bird-watcher. Given
his interest in bird-watching, Louis has become familiar with distinguishing birds based
on their colouring, wingspan, beak shape and so on. That he is now attuned to these
distinctions and possesses the resources needed for distinguishing birds, allows him to
determine that the bird he is currently observing is a downy woodpecker (rather than a
hairy woodpecker, which looks similar). Here we might think of Louis’s access tools as
those resources that render salient, or bring to the foreground, his object of enquiry.
Thus, access tools might include those conceptual distinctions that allow him to attend
to birds in his environment rather than squirrels. The interpretive tools Louis makes use
of, however, are those features that allow him to interpret the markings of the particu-
lar bird he is looking at as markings, which distinguish it as a downy woodpecker. In
short, his interpretative tools are those resources that shape how he attends to and
makes use of the evidence he has.
In this example, that Louis possesses these particular epistemic resources is sensitive
to his particular interests in bird-watching. Anyone who lacks this interest (as I do!) is
unlikely to possess these resources, and so is equally unlikely to be able, as is Louis, to
distinguish a hairy from a downy woodpecker. To my untrained (and uninterested) eye,
they are just birds. Epistemic resources are developed, maintained and updated in
response to an agent’s experiences, circumstances, interests and motives. Thus Louis,
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who has an interest in bird-watching, has resources that, given my uninterest in this
hobby, I lack. Even if my eyesight is just as good as Louis’s, and even if we both look up
into the trees under similar lighting conditions, Louis will be in a position to acquire
knowledge that I will not acquire.3
The lesson here is two-fold. First, the epistemic resources we are in possession of
affect what we attend to and how we interpret it – in short, these resources shape how
we engage and interact with our world. Second, these resources often are shaped by
social forces – ranging from the interests of the particular individual to the culture and
community in which that individual is a member.
This analysis can be fruitfully extended to suggest that aspects of our social identity
similarly shape the resources we are in possession of, which in turn shape what we are
in a position to know. Such an approach, as advanced by the standpoint epistemologist,
suggests that what aspects of the world are salient to us, and how we interpret what we
notice, depends in some part on the resources available for interpretation; that which
resources we develop depends in part on the experiences that we need to describe; and
that what experiences we need to describe will depend on facts about our situatedness.
It is on this basis that the standpoint epistemologist defends the situated knowledge
thesis, claiming that what an epistemic agent knows may be, in some cases, sensitive to
the social situatedness of that agent. To return to the example above, facts about
Elsabeth (that she is a person with a disability) structures what she attends to in her
environment, e.g. the lack of activation switches or the excessive queues for the eleva-
tor, and how she interprets that to which she attends, e.g. as posing an obstacle to
students with disabilities. By contrast, Janie, who is not similarly situated, may either
fail to attend to what Elsabeth must notice, or if she does, she may interpret as a mere
inconvenience what Elsabeth sees as an obstacle. Hence, what Janie and Elsabeth are in
a position to know is sensitive to facts about their social identity.
The situated knowledge thesis encapsulates the idea that there is some extent to
which knowledge-acquisition is a fundamentally social practice. And because it is a
social practice, what we know depends on what our social practices look like. And just
as our social practices can be unjust, so too can the resulting practices of knowledge
acquisition that they produce. I’ll return to this idea in §3, where I suggest that our
existing social practices have resulted in the unjust exclusion of some knowers and
bodies of knowledge.
For now, let us explore further how the standpoint required for situated knowledge
is achieved.

1.2 Achievement thesis

The process of acquiring situated knowledge first requires the achievement of a stand-
point from which such knowledge is made available. A standpoint is not reduced to an
individual’s social location but emerges through a collective process of political struggle
with those who are more or less similarly situated. Thus, a standpoint is not given but
must be achieved through a process known as consciousness-raising.

3 To be clear, much of what I’ve said here is compatible with claims in traditional epistemol-
ogy that background beliefs and knowledge affect what one is in a position to know. The
controversy arises in the standpoint epistemologist’s extension of this analysis to social
identity. I will return to a further examination of the tension between traditional and stand-
point epistemology in §2.
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Consciousness-raising refers to the development of a critical perspective on one’s
material or social conditions (Wylie 2004). Sheila Ruth, in discussing consciousness-
raising in early women’s liberation groups, describes it as a process wherein one devel-
ops a ‘profound sensitivity and comprehension of the conditions of women’s lives –
social, political, economic, psychological, and more’ (Ruth 1973: 291–92). Thus, con-
sciousness-raising involves a sort of breakthrough, a realization that one has previously
seen and interpreted the world from the perspective of the dominantly situated, and a
newfound awareness that this way of engaging with the world does not accurately
represent one’s own experiences, or allow for a proper understanding of those
experiences.
Through the process of political struggle that leads to the development of a stand-
point, alternative conceptual frameworks can be developed that better attend to and
make sense of the experiences of the individuals who form the basis of the standpoint.
Collectively working with those who are similarly situated also leads to the develop-
ment of alternative epistemic resources – including access and interpretive tools – that
better attend to and make sense of the world from the perspective of that standpoint. To
borrow a popular illustration from the epistemic injustice literature, prior to the devel-
opment of the concept of sexual harassment, one might have witnessed such an event
and, through the dominant framework, understood it as innocent or harmless flirta-
tion. Equipped with tools developed from the feminist standpoint, however, we are able
to interpret such instances as inappropriate workplace behaviour.
A standpoint thus emerges as a critical perspective on the social world that takes as
its starting the point the social location of some particular group. For instance, women,
and the experiences of women qua women, form the basis of a feminist standpoint.
However, inclusion in a standpoint is not limited to those who form the basis of that
standpoint; a feminist standpoint may include men who have participated in feminist
consciousness-raising and may exclude women who have not. Thus, the situated know-
ledge made available from a particular standpoint is in principle accessible to those who
do not occupy the social location that forms the basis of that standpoint.
The achievement thesis tells us by what process, and by whom, a standpoint can be
achieved. It is the achievement of a standpoint that, in turn, enables situated know-
ledge, or knowledge that is derived from that standpoint and acquired using the access
and interpretive tools of that standpoint. The final thesis of standpoint epistemology –
that of epistemic privilege – asserts that the situated knowledge developed from margi-
nalized standpoints is somehow ‘better, or more objective’, than knowledge developed
from the standpoint of the dominant centre (Kukla 2006: 81). I turn now to an exam-
ination of this claim.

1.3 Epistemic privilege thesis

The situated knowledge and achievements theses go hand-in-hand with the third and
final thesis in the standpoint epistemologist’s arsenal: the epistemic privilege thesis. The
most controversial of the standpoint theses, epistemic privilege is the view according to
which some epistemic advantage can be drawn from positions of powerlessness or
marginalization (Hartsock 1983, Collins 1986, Kukla 2006, McKinnon 2015).
What this epistemic advantage amounts to is the source of much debate.
Elsewhere (Toole ms), I have proposed understanding epistemic privilege in terms of
evidential superiority or cognitive superiority. S1 may be evidentially superior to S2
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with regard to some subject matter just in case S1 has greater evidence with respect to
that subject matter. Or, S1 may be cognitively superior to S2 with respect to some body
of evidence just in case S1 is better able to reason with that evidence. To illustrate, given
Louis’s access tools, he is able to gather better and more evidence than I can with respect
to distinguishing species of birds. Moreover, he is cognitively superior in that he can
actually make use of this information.4
Arguments to the effect that those who are marginalized socially are privileged
epistemically can be found in the works of Du Bois (1903), hooks (1984) and
Collins (1986), among countless others. Thus, feminist thinkers who wish to develop
the idea that some standpoints are epistemically privileged turn to Black scholarship to
motivate this claim. In particular, many take as their starting point Du Bois’s work on
double consciousness. Du Bois (1903: 9) describes the phenomenon of double con-
sciousness as a ‘warring between two ideals’, a ‘warring’ created, in part, by the ex-
perience of ‘always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others’. In feminist
scholarship, this concept has taken on a life of its own. Jaggar (1983), Harding
(1991) and Pohlhaus (2012) each describe double consciousness as a phenomenon in
which one must perceive the world from two distinct perspectives – that of the ruling
class and that of the oppressed. As Pohlhaus observes, the development of this dual
perspective arises in virtue of the fact that those who are socially marginalized and
therefore vulnerable to others, must, in order to survive, be able to see and anticipate
the way in which those to whom they are vulnerable see the world (Pohlhaus 2012:
717).
This works finds resonance with scholarship from Collins (1986), who observes that
Black women occupy positions as ‘outsiders-within’. Taking Black domestic workers as
the starting point for her analysis, Collins writes of the particular bodies of knowledge
afforded to Black women who both occupy positions as ‘insiders’ – ‘privy to the most
intimate secrets of white society’ (Collins 1986: S14) – but remain outsiders, nonethe-
less, in virtue of their race.
Drawing on this body of work, feminist scholars argue that phenomena like ‘double
consciousness’ and the ‘outsider-within’ facilitates marginalized individuals possessing
more robust epistemic resources, as ‘the resources required for knowing from vulner-
able situations must answer to more experiences’ (Pohlhaus 2012: 721). In short, those
who occupy marginalized positions must possess greater epistemic resources – those
needed for knowing the social world from the dominant perspective and those needed
for knowing the world from their own marginalized perspective.

1.4 Theses in (inter)action

Bringing these three theses together in a unified account, the standpoint epistemologist
argues that in some cases some knowledge is such that it can be accessed only by those
who have achieved a certain perspective, or standpoint, on certain bodies of know-
ledge. This achievement in turn facilitates an epistemically privileged perspective on
that knowledge.

4 In response to claims from detractors, like Pinnick (1994, 2005: 108) and Hekman (1997:
355), that the epistemic privilege thesis lacks support, I have intentionally developed this
thesis in such a way that it retains the structure of traditional epistemology, which seems to
acknowledge the existence of both cognitive and evidential privilege. But, I offer a new view
of how such superiority might be attained – viz, by occupying marginalized standpoints.
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These theses work jointly to support such an analysis. Consider first the relationship
between the situated knowledge and achievement theses. As standpoint theorists ob-
serve, the collective pool of resources from which we all, as members of a shared
community, draw, have been largely shaped by dominant experiences. They will
thus be wholly inadequate to making sense of the experiences of the socially marginal-
ized. However, it is through the process of consciousness-raising that one is able to (i)
recognize the inadequacy of these resources and (ii) develop epistemic resources more
sensitive to one’s own experiences qua marginalization. Thus, a body of knowledge
emerges that is distinct from (and sometimes in tension with) those bodies of knowledge
produced from the perspective of the socially dominant.5
These two theses in turn provide support for the claim of epistemic privilege. The
achievement of a standpoint, along with the development of epistemic resources from
that standpoint, affords those who occupy these standpoints ‘the potential to see truths
that are inaccessible from the point of view of the dominant center’ (Kukla 2006: 81–
82). In part, this is because of the dual epistemic resources available to those who have
achieved a standpoint.
To see these theses in action, let’s return for a moment to the example from the
preceding section. I suggested there that Elsabeth has access to some body of knowledge
regarding the accessibility of her college, knowledge that Janie lacks. What explains this
is Elsabeth’s situated perspective (as someone living with a disability). In virtue of being
a wheelchair user, Elsabeth is primed to notice certain elements of her environment,
which Janie need not attend to (or that she may not interpret as an obstacle). That
Elsabeth must notice these features (and speak to them in the college survey) provides
the basis for a standpoint and affords her an epistemically privileged perspective on
questions pertaining to the accessibility of the college. Put simply, in virtue of facts
about her situatedness, Elsabeth is better positioned to notice, to understand and to
speak to questions of accessibility, than is someone who is differently situated.
For all its apparent plausibility, standpoint epistemology is not well-loved. To better
understand the lukewarm reception of this view in contemporary epistemology, let us
turn now to a discussion of the tension and debate between standpoint epistemology
and traditional epistemology.

2. The debate
Standpoint epistemology has origins in Marx and has been greatly influenced by Black
scholarship; here, however, standpoint epistemology is examined primarily as a fem-
inist epistemology.6 The very term ‘feminist epistemology’ may strike some as oxymor-
onic. After all, epistemology is concerned with standards for knowing, and the
standards prescribed by traditional epistemologies centre on ‘objectivity’ and ‘value-
neutrality’. That is, these epistemologies suggest that our methods of enquiry and the
process of knowledge acquisition are, or at least ought to be, free of the limiting biases
and distorting idiosyncrasies of individual perspectives. There is an obvious sense, then,
in which standpoint epistemology is in tension with traditional epistemology. In this

5 I say more on this tension in §3.

6 There are several other feminist epistemologies not discussed here, including feminist em-
piricism and feminist postmodernism.
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section, I aim to sketch out the main source of tension between these two epistemolo-
gies. To do so requires a brief foray into traditional epistemology.
Traditional epistemology, I argue, is committed to intellectualism. Intellectualism, as
defined by Stanley (2005), is the view that knowledge is sensitive only to epistemic, or
truth-relevant, features – like evidence, truth, reliability and so on. Elsewhere, I have
argued that intellectualism is motivated by a commitment to two further theses –
aperspectivalism and atomism. The former is a thesis regarding evidence, while the
latter is a thesis that pertains to epistemic agents. Briefly, aperspectivalism suggests that
if one has knowledge of P given some body of evidence, E, then if E is to count as
evidence at all, it must be accessible to any epistemic agent, irrespective of any particu-
lar facts about that agent (Kukla 2006).7 Atomism is the view that features that are
particular to individuals – like their circumstances or interests – are epistemically ir-
relevant to the acquisition of knowledge (Grasswick 2004). It thus suggests that
knowers are interchangeable – place S1 in the epistemic position of S2, and despite
any facts about S1 or S2, they should arrive at the same epistemic judgements provided
that they possess the same epistemically relevant features. Both theses are in direct
contrast to the situated knowledge thesis, which suggests that evidence for some prop-
osition may be accessible only to those who have achieved the requisite standpoint, and
that features of an epistemic agent are relevant to what that agent knows.
Altogether, traditional epistemology’s commitment to these theses is motivated by
the notion that objectivity is required for knowledge. Thus, these theses are meant to
function jointly so as to ensure that knowledge is achieved by taking a ‘view from
nowhere’.
Standpoint epistemology, by contrast, might be understood as the view that know-
ledge reflects a ‘view from somewhere’. Standpoint epistemologists thus propose
reconceiving of how best to achieve the objectivity desired by the traditional epistem-
ologist. Where traditional epistemologists argue that objectivity must be achieved by
abstracting away from epistemic agents on the assumption that recognizing the social
location of those agents would disrupt enquiry, standpoint epistemologists propose a
new conception of objectivity on the understanding that all attempts to know are, in
fact, socially situated. Incorporating these considerations, standpoint theorists propose
‘strong objectivity’.
Strong objectivity, as developed by Sandra Harding suggests that objectivity can be
achieved when we ‘start thought from marginalized lives’ (Harding 1992: 438). On
Harding’s view, we must reconceive both what objectivity is and how it is to be
achieved. Harding argues that ‘stronger’ objectivity can be achieved when we acknow-
ledge and reflect on the ways in which positionally affects knowledge, rather than
denying the influence of such features.
This stands in contrast with the traditional epistemologists’ conception of objectiv-
ity. In fact, a principal motivation for standpoint epistemology is the worry that talk of
objectivity elides the fact that some perspectives, rather than others, are presumed to be
objective, when those perspectives are themselves inflected with the very biases and
interests they claim to eliminate. To more fully understand the worry, let me turn now
to a discussion of the relationship between standpoint epistemology and epistemic
oppression.

7 Note that I explore what accessibility amounts to in Toole forthcoming.

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3. Epistemic oppression
In the preceding section, I proposed understanding the debate between traditional and
standpoint epistemology as centred around questions of whether social features make a
difference to what we are in a position to know. Where standpoint and traditional
epistemology differ is that the former, but not the latter, makes space for the influence
of features thought to be epistemically irrelevant, features like social relations of power
etc. To understand why the standpoint theorist makes space for these features, let us
explore what happens when we take on board the claim that enquiry requires the
achievement of an impartial, disinterested and neutral standpoint.
I have suggested elsewhere (Toole 2019) that traditional epistemology can account
for a distinctly epistemic form of oppression, what Kristie Dotson has called epistemic
oppression. Epistemic oppression, as defined by Dotson, refers to the unwarranted and
unjust exclusion of certain epistemic agents from the practices of knowledge produc-
tion (Dotson 2012, 2014). These exclusions occur for a number of reasons, reasons that
standpoint epistemology sheds light on but that traditional epistemology obscures.
To see this, let me return once more to a discussion of the relationship between
knowledge, epistemic resources and social power. As I mentioned previously, our col-
lective resources are shaped by dominant experiences. These resources will often be
inadequate for attending to or understanding the experiences of those who sit at the
social margins.8 As such, marginalized standpoints must develop their own resources
suitable to attending to and describing their experiences qua marginalization.
Epistemic oppression can arise when those who are dominantly situated lack either
the access tools or the interpretive tools for understanding the claims made by those
who are marginalized, claims which may require resources developed from the margi-
nalized standpoint to understand.9 Without these tools, dominantly situated knowers
may either fail to attend to the phenomenon that those who are marginalized are trying
to describe, or they may interpret that phenomenon in such a way that is consistent with
the dominant standpoint.
Take, as an illustration, the concept of a microaggression. Microaggressions pick out
subtle forms of discrimination that invoke aspects of a person’s identity (Sue 2010). As
an example, asking someone in the USA who presents as Latino, ‘Where are you really
from?’, constitutes a microagression, as it implies that only those who are white are
really from here (and so are exempt from being asked such questions). As Gaile
Pohlhaus notes, such resources can seem to the dominantly situated individual to
pick out or attend to nothing, since their own situated resources will not make salient
the aspects of the world picked out by this resource (Pohlhaus 2012). In short, those
who occupy the standpoint of the dominant centre may either fail to notice micro-
aggressions when they occur, or deny that the act picked out by the concept constitutes

8 This produces what Fricker (1999) has termed an hermeneutical injustice – an epistemic
injustice in which one’s experiences are excluded from collective understanding and are thus
made obscure, perhaps even to one’s self.
9 As Quill Kukla and Louise Antony note, the dominant perspective is often presumed, with-
out argumentation, to be an objective standpoint. As Kukla notes, the claims advanced from
marginalized standpoints will be inaccessible from the dominant-centre. Kukla’s assertion
can be understood once it is clear that this standpoint will view as illegitimate resources
developed from alternate perspectives.
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any harm. As such, they can pre-emptively dismiss the concept of a microaggression
(and other such resources more broadly).10
Traditional epistemology makes possible this denial. Recall the two features that I
claim comprise intellectualism – aperspectivalism and atomism. It is open to the trad-
itional epistemologist, in such cases as I describe above, to make the following move.
They can deny that the concept of a microagression picks out any real-world phenom-
enon, because if it did, the evidence for that claim should be accessible to all individuals,
irrespective of their particular situatedness. But, as the standpoint epistemologist
observes, it is precisely in virtue of the situatedness of the individual – their socially
dominant or marginalized status – that evidence of this phenomenon is accessible to
some individuals and not others.11
Let’s return once more to the example of Elsabeth and Janie’s diverse reactions to
their college’s accessibility survey. Elsabeth, in virtue of her situatedness, knows that
her college is inaccessible to those with disabilities. It is similarly true that in virtue of
Janie’s situatedness, this fact about the college may be obscured from her view, such
that she does not know that the college is so inaccessible. Without the resources that
standpoint epistemology makes available, traditional epistemologists seem unable to
account for the fact that two people, who have access to the same epistemically relevant
features, might reach different conclusions.12
To see why this could be problematic and harmful, let’s add in some assumptions.
First, let’s assume that the college sends the accessibility survey to its entire student
body and manages a completion rate of 100%. Moreover, let’s assume that only 12%
of enrolled students have physical disabilities that make navigating the campus diffi-
cult. Let’s further assume that only those 12% of students report that the building is
inaccessible. The college might justifiably think, on the basis of these results, that it need
not take any steps to improve the building. In part, this failure is the result of thinking
that all students are equally capable of speaking to the accessibility of the building,
when, as I’ve suggested in §1, those with disabilities are epistemically privileged with
respect to such questions.13

10 Articles dismissive of the concepts developed by the socially marginalized (including micro-
aggressions, but also the concept of ‘trigger warnings’ or ‘safe spaces’) have gained signifi-
cant attention in recent years, such as two pieces in The Atlantic (Friedersdorf 2015,
Lukianoff and Haidt 2015).
11 The standpoint epistemologist’s claim here, then, is this: those who have not developed the
requisite standpoint for fully understanding or appreciating the concept of microaggressions
will thus lack access to evidence regarding microaggressions. When a microaggression
occurs, they may fail to register it as significant or attend to it at all. Of course, even
when the concept is brought to one’s attention (as in the case of The Atlantic pieces) those
in the dominant-centre may be dismissive of the concept and deny that it picks out anything
distinct. As Pohlhaus writes, it’s open to the dominant to simply claim that the marginalized
are making mountains of molehills.
12 Thus, given that Elsabeth and Janie navigate the same spaces they have access to the same
epistemic features. The traditional epistemologist would predict that Elsabeth and Janie
should arrive at the same epistemic position regarding the accessibility of their college.
13 Note that my claim is not that this sort of knowledge is inaccessible to those who are not
similarly situated, but that it requires consciousness-raising. Caregivers, close friends and
family of those with disabilities are, for instance, more likely to have their consciousness-
raised on disability-related subjects in virtue of their relationships to someone with a dis-
ability. Thanks to Elizabeth Barnes for drawing my attention to this point.
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The traditional epistemologist is unable to explain such issues without acknowl-
edging, as does the standpoint epistemologist, that our social situatedness affects
what aspects of the world we attend to (and so what evidence is accessible to us),
how we weigh and interpret that evidence and so on. It is only by attending to the
fact that one’s dominant situatedness occludes certain phenomena from view that we
can understand their failure to attend to or appreciate those phenomena, and the
inverse capability of those who are marginalized to see it for what it is.
The pervasiveness of the epistemic norms of traditional epistemology against the
epistemic significance of social features contributes to the epistemic oppression – the
exclusion of those bodies of knowledge developed from a marginalized standpoint –
that I have been describing. The question of interest to the standpoint epistemologist is
this: what conditions make such epistemic oppression possible? To fully appreciate the
answer to this question requires that we return to the previous discussion of objectivity
and its centrality in traditional epistemology.
The starting methodology of epistemology, from which the concept of objectivity is
developed, is itself inflected with the biases and interests of the group that developed
that methodology. As Antony (2006: 58) writes, contained within the ideal of object-
ivity is the ‘general and uncritical belief that the ideal is actually satisfied by at least
some individuals. . .’. The individuals presumed to actually satisfy this ideal are those
who hold or occupy socially dominant positions. Thus, as Antony argues, objectivity
‘functions ideologically to safeguard and reinforce the political status quo’ (2006: 58)).
Kukla (2006: 82–83) echoes this sentiment in her own work, writing that objectivity is
not a ‘“politically neutral” option in epistemology; rather, it is a piece of ideology,
fuelled by a history of specific interests and usually accepted without any argument or
critical interrogation’.
Essentially the concept of objectivity functions both so as to privilege those bodies of
knowledge developed from the dominant standpoint and to disappear this fact from
view. It then follows that any bodies of knowledge that conflict with or deviate from
these dominant bodies of knowledge – a body of knowledge I claim is itself derived
from a particular standpoint – fails to be objective. This then provides a presumably
objective basis from which to deny those bodies of knowledge developed by those who
are marginally positioned. Traditional epistemology, through its talk of objectivity,
elides this fact and dismisses the influence of those social features that they take to
distort – but that the standpoint epistemologists argue enables – the projects of know-
ledge acquisition.

4. Concluding remarks
While in graduate school, a professor and mentor remarked that he, on occasion, would
jot down pretty words and phrases that he came across in reading. One such phrase that
he had written down centred around the deconstruction of an old building with Doric
columns and described the unconcealed structure of the column once dismantled. To his
mind, thinking of the column as ‘unconcealed’ better communicated the experience than
did saying that its internal structure was revealed. To reveal is to share something inten-
tionally, but to unconceal is to uncover what was never meant to be seen, to expose the
inner working of something that is usually, by design, obscured from view.
In this respect, the project of standpoint epistemology is one of unconcealing.
Feminist epistemologists are keen to uncover the ways in which our traditional
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assumptions about knowledge reflect and conceal existing power relations. The goal of
standpoint epistemology, in particular, is to empower those epistemic agents and to
give legitimacy to those bodies of knowledge excluded by these traditional practices.
Where ordinarily we might take ourselves to be providing answers to questions in
epistemology – questions like what knowledge consists in, what counts as evidence or
what it is to be rational – independent of any particular social milieu or cultural con-
text, our answers to these questions in fact reflect our social structures and power
relations. Standpoint epistemology shines light on this fact and, moreover, makes a
powerful case that traditional epistemology has attended to these questions from a
particular standpoint – that of its practitioners, who, historically, have been those
who are situated dominantly. The project of standpoint epistemology thus reveals
that some of our assumptions about evidence and knowledge acquisition actually
make knowledge less objective, less accurate and less reliable.
If enquiry aims at knowledge, then to accomplish these goals, we must take seriously
the insights of standpoint epistemology in reconfiguring knowledge.

Claremont McKenna College

Claremont, CA, USA
[email protected]

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