Comment on Hekman's "Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint ...

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<strong>Comment</strong> on Hekman's "Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited": Where's the Power? Patricia Hill Collins Y READING OF STANDPOINT THEORY sees it as an interpretive framework dedicated to explicating how knowledge remains central to maintaining and changing unjust systems of power. While the main arguments in Susan Hekman's article (in this issue) contain surface validity, because standpoint theory never was designed to be argued as a theory of truth or method, Hekman's article simply misses the point of standpoint theory overall. By decontextualizing standpoin theory from its initial moorings in a knowledge/power framework while simultaneously recontextualizing it in an apolitical discussion of feministruth and method, Hekman essentially depoliticizes the potentially radical content of standpoin theory. First, the notion of a standpoint refers to historically shared, groupbased experiences. Groups have a degree of permanence over time such that group realities transcend individual experiences. For example, African Americans as a stigmatized racial group existed long before I was born and will probably continue long after I die. While my individual experiences with institutionalized racism will be unique, the types of opportunities and constraints that I encounter on a daily basis will resemble those confronting African Americans as a group. Arguing that Blacks as a group come into being or disappear on the basis of my participation seems narcissistic, egocentric, and archetypally postmodern. In contrast, standpoint theory places less emphasis on individual experiences within socially constructed groups than on the social conditions that construct such groups. I stress this difference between the individual and the group as units of analysis because using these two constructs as if they were interchangeable clouds understanding of a host of topics, in this case, the very notion of a group-based standpoint. Individualism continues as a taproot in Western theorizing, including feminist versions. Whether bourgeois liberalism positing notions of individual rights or postmodern social theory's celebration of human differences, market-based choice models grounded in individualism argue that freedom exists via the absence of constraints of all sorts, including those of mandatory group membership. Freedom occurs when individuals have rights of mobility in and out of groups, much as we join clubs and other voluntary associations. [Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1997, vol. 22, no. 2] ? 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/97/2202-0005$01.00 Winter 1997 SIGNS 375 This content downloaded from 212.175.32.130 on Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:55:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Collins COMMENT But the individual as proxy for the group becomes particularly problematic because standpointheory's treatment of the group is not synonymous with a "family resemblance" of individual choice expanded to the level of voluntary group association. The notion of standpoint refers to groups having shared histories based on their shared location in relations of power-standpoints arise neither from crowds of individuals nor from groups analytically created by scholars or bureaucrats. Take, for example, the commonality of experiences that emerges from long-standing patterns of racial segregation in the United States. The degree of racial segregation between Blacks and Whites as groups is routinely underestimated. Blacks and Whites live in racially segregated neighborhoods, and this basic feature generates distinctivexperiences in schools, recreational facilities, shopping areas, health-care systems, and occupational opportunities. Moreover, middle-class Blacks have not been exempt from the effects of diminished opportunities that accompany racial segregation and group discrimination. It is common location within hierarchical power relations that creates groups, not the results of collective decision making of the individuals within the groups. Race, gender, social class, ethnicity, age, and sexuality are not descriptive categories of identity applied to individuals. Instead, these elements of social structuremerge as fundamental devices that foster inequality resulting in groups. To ignore power relations is simply to misread standpoint theoryits raison d'etre, its continuing salience, and its ability to explain social inequality. Hekman's treatment of groups as an accumulation of individuals and not as entities with their own reality allows her to do just this. Note the slippage between individual and group standpoint in the following passage: "If we take the multiplicity of feminist standpoints to its logical conclusion, coherent analysis becomes impossible because we have too many axes of analysis. Ultimately, every woman is unique; if we analyze each in her uniqueness, systemic analysis is obviated. So is feminist politics: we lose the ability even to speak for certain categories of women" (359). Hekman clearly identifies the very construct of standpoint with the idea of individual perspective or point of view. This assumption allows her to collapse the individual and group as units of analysis and proceed to reason that individuals and collectivities undergo similar processes. But because she remains focused on the individual as proxy for the group, it becomes difficult to constructhe group from such "unique" individuals. Arriving at the dead end of the impossibility of systemic analysis that leads to systemichange appears as the result. By omitting a discussion of group-based realities grounded in an equally central notion of groupbased oppression, we move into the sterile ground of a discussion of how effectively standpoin theory serves as an epistemology of truth. In contrast to Hekman's view that attention to multiplicity fosters in- 376 SIGNS Winter 1997 This content downloaded from 212.175.32.130 on Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:55:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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