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1 Foucault’s Deconstruction of the Subject: A Feminist Epistemological Critique Introduction In this paper, I examine the merits of a feminist standpoint epistemology as a response to Foucault’s argument for a self-referential, autonomous discourse which he gives in The Order of Things and the 1969 lecture What is An Author? Foucault initially presents the idea of autonomous language in The Order of Things as a natural progression of epistemology in the modern era. He expounds upon this claim in the lecture What is an Author?, stating that the author exists as nothing but a function within the textual experience of discourse rather than as a subjective consciousness which infuses text with meaning. I will examine Foucault’s claims in relation to political discourse about power and ultimately refute them as being too abstract and remote from contemporary society to fully encompass the manner in which power dynamics function. Additionally, I will argue that although Foucault’s presentation of subjectivity dismantles certain forms of social hierarchy, it does not address a complete analysis of the interplay of power structures. In other words, he fails to recognize that certain standpoints cannot afford to minimize subjectivity if the discourse concerning power is to be genuine. I will make this argument using Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding’s feminist epistemological critiques, as well as support from Calvin Schrag’s theory of the subject’s importance in community after postpostmodernity. To solve Foucault’s issue of subjectivity, I assert that feminist standpoint theory provides a consideration of author which is not completely ahistorical nor excessively relative, but rather, sufficiently appropriate in terms of recognizing the value of subject within political discourse. Foucault’s argument for language as self-referential appears in the book The Order of 2 Things, where Foucault states that “language becomes object”1 in comparison to the more representative function language possessed during the Classical and Renaissance eras. He argues that “to know language is no longer to come as close as possible to knowledge itself; it is merely to apply the methods of understanding in general to a particular domain of objectivity.”2 In other words, language has no value other than being a function of the text. For Foucault, the knowledge of language simply becomes the knowledge of how to utilize that particular tool, rather than the knowledge of any epistemological truth. In the lecture What is an Author?, he wants to eliminate questions which infer a subjective consciousness within text, seeing as this would establish language as epistemically valuable instead of as an objective tool.3 Instead, Foucault poses the question of “how, under what conditions, and in what forms can something like a subject appear in the order of discourse?”4 However, through the avoidance of questions such as how a subjective consciousness can infuse text with meaning, Foucault ignores certain power structures which social and political location can exert on an author or which an author can exert on the audience. It is true that when Foucault deemphasizes the author, the objective in mind is to eliminate the possibility of any social hierarchy through the erasure of its constituents. However, although this can be successful in some cases, the lack of emphasis on the subject contains a danger of not sufficiently addressing certain types of power. From the position of feminist standpoint epistemology, the ability to extract the author from the text is nearly impossible and any success in doing so could be regarded as ignorance. Standpoint theory refutes the idea that language “was to be an idealized agent who performed the ‘God trick’ of speaking 1 Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books, 1971, 294. 2 Ibid., 296. 3 Foucault, Michel, and James D. Faubion. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. New York: New Press, 1998 294. 4 Ibid., 221. 3 authoritatively about everything in the world from no particular perspective or location at all.” 5 Alternatively, standpoint epistemology views the consideration of social and political views as a form of enrichment of the text and a rightful acknowledgment of power structures inherent in knowledge and writing. Thus, the lack of a sovereign author in Michel Foucault’s presentation of discourse provides a starkly limited and remote examination of discourse, which does not take into account the significance of social and political locations. A more subversive and realistic form of political discourse can be achieved through the consideration of the author’s experience and identity, as exemplified by feminist standpoint theory. Foucault and the Deconstruction of the Subject Foucault’s earliest and most foundational works include notions of man as “an invention of recent date” which will promptly “be erased like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.”6 He further elaborates on such statements both in The Order of Things and What Is An Author? to mean an eventual deconstruction of the author. However what exactly does Foucault’s erasure of subjectivity entail? First and foremost, Foucault’s notion of the subject/author can be defined as “the privileged moment of individualization in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences.”7 In other words, he defines the subject to be a source of identity which prevails over a text during “privileged” moments. It is also important to keep in mind that Foucault’s notion of the subject/author is a sovereign one, meaning that he doesn’t deny a presence of individuality altogether but rather one that holds all the power of meaning within a 5 Harding, Sandra G. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. New York: Routledge, 2004, 30. 6 7 Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books, 1971, 387. Foucault, Michel, and James D. Faubion. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. New York: New Press, 1998, 205. 4 text. He continues on to commence the deconstruction of the subject with the question posed by Beckett, “‘what does it matter who is speaking, someone said, what does it matter who is speaking.’”8 By commencing the discussion with such a question, Foucault points to a lapse of authorship within writing which has become an “immanent rule”9 for discourse and impedes any attempt at attributing meaning to the individual. Simply put, according to Foucault, the lack of sovereign subject isn’t simply a choice or tendency, but rather a fundamental status in language. In The Order of Things, Foucault defines the aversion to authorial power as a shift from the Romantic mode of writing during the Renaissance to the self-referential status which discourse holds currently. By self-referential status, he means that a state of language which finds meaning solely within the functions of itself rather than any sort of power from the author. “From the nineteenth century, language began to fold in upon itself, to acquire its own particular density, to deploy a history, an objectivity, and laws of its own. It became one object of knowledge among others, on the same level as living beings, wealth and value, and the history of the events and men.”10 In other words, language no longer depends a human referent to give the text meaning. The discourse exists independently of any such character, stripping the author of any responsibility other than that of simply being a function. Thus, any sort of sovereign subject becomes irrelevant and Foucault poses the “question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.”11 Simply put, Foucault argues that writing and language isolated tools which do not depend on the power of a single individual (the author) for meaning. 8 Ibid., 205. Ibid., 206. 10 Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences. New York Pantheon Books, 1971, 296. 11 Foucault, Michel, and James D. Faubion. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. New York: New Press, 1998, 207. 9 5 There are however some instances where Foucault accepts counter-examples to the idea that all subjects are presented as ideological authors, such as instances of transdiscursive writers, such as Karl Marx. By transdiscursive writers, Foucault means the individuals who have created a new discipline altogether and thus, have an influence which spans across discourses. He calls such examples “discursive incarnations,”12 due to the fact that these writers have constructed a particular genre of discourse which gave birth to writing within that field. Writers such as Karl Marx created their respective discourses and withdrew into the language, replacing the notion of authorship with genre or theory in general. However, even with examples such as transdiscursive writers, Foucault argues that the entire presence must be deleted to the point where the name Karl Marx carries no leverage whatsoever, regardless whether the text is a work of fiction or non-fiction and if the author is presented in an ideological manner or not. “The author is not an indefinite source of situations which fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, the free decomposition and recomposition of fiction,” Foucault states.13 By stating this, he reasserts the idea that the author should not be the primary source to consult when searching for the meaning of a text nor does authorship provide any conditions for how to make sense of the text. Therefore, even with the examples of transdiscursive writers, Foucault exhibits hesitation to attribute any meaning whatsoever to the identities themselves. Karl Marx did not precede the discourse of Marxism; he is simply a function of it, a presence which must be acknowledged but not consulted to determine understanding. 12 13 Ibid., 218. Ibid., 221. 6 Furthermore, Foucault warns against the cult of personality which occurs when the subject is valorized to an excessive extent and becomes an idolized. “We are used to thinking that the author is so different from all other men, and so transcendent with regard to all languages that, as soon as he speaks, meaning begins to proliferate, to proliferate indefinitely.”14 In other words, the weight of an author’s name can engender meaning not only disingenuously, but to a progressively heightening degree which has no true foundation other than the identity of the subject. According to Foucault’s analysis, the danger of such an idolization not only falsely attributes meaning to the author, but additionally limits the meaning of a text solely to the author’s intention. Thus, an excessive amount of credit given to the subject of discourse has a high potential to distort the language and sense of discourse. Subsequently, Foucault reacts to the dilemma of the proliferation of meaning by predicting an inevitable lapse of sovereign author in the near future. He argues that the constraints that an author imposes on text renders subjectivity obsolete and eventually, any notion of defining individuality will no longer exist. “I think that, as our society changes, at the very moment when it is in the process of changing, the author function will disappear, and in such a manner that fiction and its polysemous texts will once again function according to another mode but still with a system of constraint – one that will no longer be the author but will have to be determined, or perhaps, experienced.” 15 Thus, Foucault firmly asserts the deconstruction of subject as an undeniable future outcome. However, the lecture What is an Author? never delves into an explanation of the mechanisms which would push forward such a change. 14 15 Ibid., 221. Ibid., 222. 7 Through assertions of the inevitability of self-referential discourse, Foucault not only provides a descriptive analysis but also attributes the lack of sovereign author to a status of language which is already unfolding. He does this while utilizing Nietzsche’s death of God/man as a reference. In The Order of Things, Foucault states: …Nietzsche rediscovered the point at which man and God belong to one another, at which the death of the second is synonymous with the disappearance of the first, and at which the promise of the superman signifies first and foremost the imminence of the death of man. In this, Nietzsche, offering this future to us as both promise and task, marks the threshold beyond which contemporary philosophy can begin thinking again; and he will no doubt continue for a long while to dominate its advance…It is no longer possible to think in our day other than in the void left by man’s disappearance. 16 By the “disappearance of man,” Foucault of course does not mean the literal disappearance of man, but the figurative deconstruction of the subject. Through the utilization and agreement with Nietzsche’s philosophy, he presents his analysis as not only descriptive but prescriptive. In fact, although Foucault gives no solutions or alternatives to the space left behind the subject, he argues that there is no other framework within which to think. Thus, the deconstruction of subject is not only a status which Foucault argues for, but also believes is inherently necessary and present within the modern and post-modern era. It is important to note that Foucault initiates the project of deconstructing the subject with the objective of eliminating any room for power structures. The de-valorization of the subject would entail an equalization between all texts, seeing no one author could be privileged over another. However, such an analysis of the relationship between subject and power structures is too limited and remote. In order to fully understand the different interplays of forces and power, 16 Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books, 1971, 342. 8 it is essential to look as the social and political location of the subject, such as feminist epistemology. The Importance of the Self in Community According to Feminist Standpoint Epistemology Elizabeth Anderson, a noted professor of social and political philosophy at the University of Michigan, writes in Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a Defense, that feminist epistemology is “the branch of social epistemology that investigates the influence of socially constructed conceptions and norms of gender and gender-specific interests and experiences on the production of knowledge.”17 In other words, feminist epistemology provides an account of knowledge in which the proper construction of truth and meaning relies on the social and political position of the knower. Although the feminist epistemological critique specifies gender as a principle influence of knowledge, the action of considering the perspective of gender points to the manner in which Foucault’s deconstruction of subject falters in terms of defying power structures overall. First and foremost, the main principle to highlight within feminist standpoint epistemology is the fact that standpoint epistemology does not focus on the female subject solely as a single individual, but more significantly, as a single individual participating and reflecting in the larger community of womanhood. In Defense of Ignorance: Its Value for Knowers and Roles in Feminist and Social Epistemologies, Cynthia Townley states “that understanding relationships is integral to understanding epistemic practices…An adequate epistemology must pay attention to epistemic interactions, both for theoretical completeness, and in order to be useful, since most 17 Anderson, Elizabeth. "Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a Defense." Hypatia 10, no. 3 (1995): 50-84. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.1995.tb00737.x, 54. 9 dealings with knowledge are dealers with other knowers.”18 In other words, feminist epistemology not only accounts for the political and social position of the female knower, but also the female knower in regards to other female knowers. Thus, feminist social epistemology highlights the importance of the subject in regards to community and how community founds the manner in which meaning can be found within a text. When analyzing the self, it is important to remember that the subject does not exist within a vacuum, but also in relation to other subjects which reflect a larger reality. As Calvin Schrag states, “community is constitutive of selfhood.”19 There is no consideration of the community without the consideration of the self and subsequently, Foucault’s deconstruction of subject lacks a crucial aspect of understanding the power structures between communities within political discourse. In Habermas and Lyotard on Post-Modernity¸ Richard Rorty states that Foucault’s analysis contains: a dryness produced by a lack of identification with any social context, any social communication. Foucault once said that he would like to write ‘so as to have no face...’ There is no ‘we’ to be found in Foucault’s writings, nor in those of many of his French contemporaries. It is this remoteness which reminds one of the conservative who pours cold water on hopes for reform, who affects to look at the problems of his fellow citizens with the eye of the future historian.20 Rorty also goes on to describe Foucault as “a stoic, dispassionate observer of the present social order, rather than its concerned critic.”21 In other words, the lack of acknowledgment for the self within Foucault’s writing puts him in a position where he no longer engages with discourse on a practical level. The level at which Foucault writes comes from one which is detached and inconsiderate of the relationships between knowers, e.g. community. In what 18 Townley, Cynthia. A Defense of Ignorance: Its Value for Knowers and Roles in Feminist and Social Epistemologies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011, X. 19 Schrag, Calvin O. The Self after Postmodernity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997, 78. 20 Rorty, Richard. "Habermas and Lyotard on Post-Modernity." Praxis International 4, no. 1 (April 1984): 32-44. http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2012_11.dir/pdfra52oWH3FA.pdf, 40. 21 Ibid., 40. 10 manner could community exist without an acknowledgment of the subject? Subsequently, how could an examination of power structures, such as hierarchies between genders, be examined if there is no acknowledgment of community? Foucault hopes to endorse a universal equality within discourse when he argues to cease turning to the author to for meaning. However, ignorance of the author is in effect, ignorance of the relationship between the author and other subjects, and consequently, the power structures at play within a text. Feminist standpoint epistemology allows for a consideration of the subject through community which no longer partakes in the false dichotomies of subjective versus objective or the absolute versus relative, which Schrag calls “conceptual constructs of a theoretical positiontaking that are no longer compelling, options bereft of practical consequences for an understanding of ourselves and the world.”22 On the contrary, the theory provides a solution to the polarized view of discourse which Foucault promotes, though the notion of “situated knowledges,” first coined by Donna Haraway in 1988 to synthesize the states of subjectivity and objectivity.23 The term “situated knowledge” refers to a feminist epistemological approach to objectivity which extensively takes into account the social construction of knowledge/meaning as well as the manner in which perspective shapes the nature of knowledge.24 Haraway poses the problem which situated knowledge seeks to answer as such: ‘our’ problem is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own ‘semiotic technologies’ for making meanings and a nononsense commitment to faithful accounts of a ‘real’ world, one that can be partially shared and that is friendly to earthwide projects of finite freedom, 22 Schrag, Calvin O. The Self after Postmodernity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997, 108. Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-99. doi: 10.203/3178066. 24 Grasswick, Heidi. "Feminist Social Epistemology." Stanford University. 2006. Accessed October 8, 2016. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-social-epistemology/. 23 11 adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering and limited happiness…We also don’t want to theorize the world, much less act within it, in terms of Global Systems, but we do need an earthwide network of connections, including the ability partially to translate knowledges among very different – and power-differentiated – communities.25 In other words, the problem which Foucault’s deconstruction of the subject presents is one of favoring the objective side of the false dichotomy when in reality, meaning is much more nuanced. Situated knowledge provides an acknowledgment of “semiotic technologies” which reside internally, through the identification and recognition of individuals in relation to larger communities, rather than externally, through the practice of defining autonomous systems, as Foucault does. By de-emphasizing the subject, Foucault restricts the meaning of a text to the self-referential system of language and discourse. However, discourse on its own cannot account for the power dynamics which the subject faces on a daily basis and in each aspect of reality, including the aspects which have driven the author to not only write and know, but the manner in which they write and know. Thus, Haraway emphasizes the fact that Global Systems are not sufficient forms for identifying meaning within a text and proposes that a network of connections is necessary, particularly one which possesses the ability to translate knowledge between powerdifferentiated communities. The feminist epistemological tool of situated knowledge provides the resources for such a network. Situated knowledge answers Foucault’s deconstruction of subject issue by providing a form of “partial” vision or partial perspective. It is a manner in which to position the individual within a larger community and to recognize that positions are crucial to meaning and knowledge claims. As Haraway states, “only those occupying the positions of the dominators are self- 25 Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-99. doi: 10.203/3178066, 579-580. 12 identical, unmarked, disembodied, unmediated, transcendent, born again.”26 Thus, the solution is to recognize an individual’s position in political discourse as not simply a function of the text, but an embodiment of certain truths or meanings. Haraway’s situated knowledge does so in a series of steps: an initial identification of the partial perspective27, a recognition that subdued voices possess a more telling account of reality than those in dominant positions28 and an application of the said partial perspective to the larger web or spectrum of community rather than a dichotomy. For example, we must not approach one female’s perspective as an embodiment of all femininity, but rather as a point on the spectrum of female experience.29 Haraway writes that “situated knowledges are about communities, not about isolated individuals…Its images are not the products of escape and transcendence of limits (the view from above), but the joining of partial views and halting voices into a collective subject position that promises a vision of the means of ongoing finite embodiment, of living within means and contradictions – of views from somewhere.”30 Therefore, situated knowledge evades the vapid approach of relativism as a solution to the deconstruction of subject by claiming that simply the identity of an individual is not grounds for locating the meaning of text. The subject becomes valuable when put in context of the community which it reflects and embodies inevitably, seeing as individuals do not exist in a vacuum, free of all influence. As Calvin Schrag claims, “the space of such truth claims and effective critique is the space of communicative praxis, transversely textured, enabling a transhistorical assessment to guide a fitting response that is neither ahistorically absolutist nor historically relativistic.”31 Through the construction of political unifications and participating in 26 Ibid., 586. Ibid., 585 28 Ibid., 584. 29 Ibid. 587 30 Ibid., 590. 31 Schrag, Calvin O. The Self after Postmodernity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997, 109. 27 13 epistemic dialogues concerning situated knowledge, it is possible to achieve certain meanings and truths about reality, though Haraway does not argue that by doing so, all difference will be eliminated. Rebuttals to Situated Knowledges/Standpoint Theory In Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick provides a structuralist account of homosexuality as an evolving historical context rather than a form of standpoint. If she is successful, her work could be seen as a counterexample to the utility of standpoint theory. On page 47 she writes: for someone who lives…in a state where certain acts called ‘sodomy’ are criminal regardless of gender, never mind the homo/heterosexual ‘identity’ of the persons who perform them, the threat of the juxtaposition on that prohibition against acts of an additional, unrationalized set of sanctions attaching to identity can only be exacerbated by the insistence of gay theory that the discourse of acts can represent nothing but an anachronistic vestige. The project of the present book will be to show how issues of modern homo/heterosexual definition are structured by…the relations enabled by the unrationalized coexistence of different models during the times they coexist.32 In other words, the elimination of the author does not completely eradicate the significance of oppressed voices, but in fact, does away with certain complications which arise from prescribing set conditions to identity, such as the identity of the homosexual. In response, Sedgwick addresses the problem by providing the approach that homosexuality should not be viewed as an identity attributed by the subject but rather as a culmination of relationships between differing, simultaneous models of homosexuality. Wendy Brown posits a similar critique of standpoint theory in States of Injury: Power and Freedom of Late Modernity, stating that “contrary to its insistence that it speaks in the name of the political, much feminist post32 Sedgwick, Eve K. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1990, 47. 14 modernism betrays a preference for extrapolitical terms and practices: for Truth (unchanging, incontestable) over politics (flux, contest, instability).”33 Simply put, according to Sedgwick and Brown, feminist standpoint theory places too much value on the status of identity and by doing so, constructs a view of meaning which relies too heavily on absolutes. Sedgwick’s emphasis on the relationships between historical contexts of homosexuality eliminates any room for such absolutes and builds the meaning within political discourse to be one where the recognition of subject is no longer necessary. If the historical contexts of certain modes of being (homosexuality, gender, etc.) are to be the main sources of meaning within discourse, as Sedgwick argues, the need for subject no longer stands and does so in a manner which evades any problem of absolutism. Thus, Foucault’s deconstruction of subject would no longer be disembodied, remote and limited, but instead a logical progression for balanced discussion. First and foremost, the initial problem to address with Sedgwick and Brown’s claims is that an emphasis on subject inherently implies an essentialist approach to identity. Haraway makes no claims about having the standpoint of the author be the grounds for defining that particular identity. The consideration of a female author as a reflection on some aspect of the female experience does not account for the entirety of the female experience. In fact, Haraway’s approach of situated knowledge focuses on the splitting of perspective and recognizing that it truly is a partial vision; one which becomes epistemically valuable in relation to other identities and communities. The social and political location of a subject does not define one identity and is instead a complex web of relationships and contradictions. In Situated Knowledges, she writes “…female embodiment resists fixation and is insatiably curious about the webs of different 33 Brown, Wendy. "Postmodern Exposures, Feminist Hesitations." In States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity, 30-51. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, 37. 15 possibilities. There is no single feminist standpoint because our maps require too many dimensions for that metaphor to ground our vision. But the feminist standpoint theorists’ goal of an epistemology and politics of engaged, accountable positioning remains eminently potent.” In other words, the feminist standpoint has no essentialist foundation because a situated knowledge lays no claim to a single Female Truth. Wendy Brown points out that feminist epistemology favors fixed immutable truths over states of flux, but Haraway specifically argues against such a utilization of standpoint. Therefore, the idea that standpoint theory “betrays a preference for extrapolitical terms and practices” is simply false. However, how does standpoint theory stay relevant in face of the argument for historical context which Sedgwick provides? Standpoint theory provides a degree of an engagement which a focus on historical context does not. Therefore, the insight into a subject’s perspective accounts for a real account of experience which can be more telling than simply looking for the historical context surrounding the subject. In Postmodernism and Political Change: Issues for Feminist Theory, Nancy Hartsock states: in addition, the knowledge of marked subjectivities opens possibilities that may or may not be realized. To the extent that these knowledges are self-conscious about their aspects and assumptions, they make available new epistemological options. The struggles they represent and express, if made self-conscious can go beyond efforts at survival to recognize the centrality of systematic power relations; they can become knowledges that are both accountable and engaged…As knowledges that recognize themselves as those of the dominated and marginalized, these selfconsciously situated knowledges must focus on changing contemporary power relations and thus point beyond the present.34 In other words, what gives standpoint theory its uniqueness is the focus on location specifically. Haraway and Hartsock both explicitly highlight the importance of rejecting the 34 Hartsock, Nancy. "Postmodernism and Political Change: Issues for Feminist Theory." Cultural Critique, no. 14 (1989): 15-33. doi:10.2307/1354291, 30. 16 “god-trick” or view from nowhere which the rejection of subject attempts to achieve due to the fact that the god-trick works to dismantle power structures in a manner which does not take into consideration all dynamics involved. 35 If one were to accept Sedgwick’s theory of historical context, it would be yet another form of pushing forward this view from nowhere. There exists no self-consciousness when regarding historical context solely without the acknowledgement of standpoint. Therefore, as Hartsock describes, what standpoint provides which detached history cannot is a sense of accountability and engagement within knowledge and thus work to change power relations as they are currently in effect. One must remember that the very act of considering historical context is one which is reflexive; it is a consideration of power structures and relationships after the fact. A more effective form of considering Sedgwick’s account of homosexuality would be an account of the social context of those individuals, which would subsequently be an account of the community those individuals compose and in effect, the subject and standpoint once again come into play. Hartsock makes a poignant point by stating that “situated knowledges must focus on changing contemporary power relations and thus point beyond the present.”36 The focus on contemporary relations and a focus on the future are both factors which standpoint theory provides that historical context sans subject cannot. Conclusion In conclusion, it is evident that the tools of feminist social epistemology, such as standpoint theory and situated knowledges, provide an account of subject which works forward to dismantle power structures more effectively than Foucault’s elimination of author. Although Foucault’s attempt to separate the subject from the text possesses the goal of disassembling 35 36 Ibid., 17. Ibid., 30. 17 certain power dynamics, it works toward such a goal without any sense of action or engagement. In fact, any investigation into the human condition is another form of participating in and adding to the “discourse of power.” Thus, all subject must be removed. However, by doing so, Foucault does not take into account power structures as they unfold in real time and the manner in which the experience of individuals contribute to knowing. Standpoint theory does so through an emphasis on the subject in relation to the community around it, highlighting suppressed voices and relating them to the larger web of implications. Therefore, feminist social epistemology supports an investigation of power structures in a more contemporary manner as well as in a manner that can take into account the voices which are most frequently not allowed to speak. 18 Bibliography Anderson, Elizabeth. "Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a Defense." Hypatia 10, no. 3 (1995): 50-84. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.1995.tb00737.x. Brown, Wendy. "Postmodern Exposures, Feminist Hesitations." In States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity, 37. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books, 1971. Foucault, Michel, and James D. Faubion. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. New York: New Press, 1998. Grasswick, Heidi. "Feminist Social Epistemology." Stanford University. 2006. Accessed October 8, 2016. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-social-epistemology/. Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-99. doi: 10.203/3178066, 579-580. Hartsock, Nancy. "Postmodernism and Political Change: Issues for Feminist Theory." Cultural Critique, no. 14 (1989): 15-33. doi:10.2307/1354291. Rorty, Richard. "Habermas and Lyotard on Post-Modernity." Praxis International 4, no. 1 (April 1984): 40. http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2012_11.dir/pdfra52oWH3FA.pdf. Schrag, Calvin O. The Self after Postmodernity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Sedgwick, Eve K. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1990. Townley, Cynthia. A Defense of Ignorance: Its Value for Knowers and Roles in Feminist and Social Epistemologies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011.