Donna Haraway's essay on situated knowledge was an intriguing read. Her point, which she clarifies using the simple metaphor of our own limited and particular vision, is to avoid the "God Trick" or trap of thinking that the secret to true objectivity lies in accounting for all perspectives. She argues that it would be smarter to adopt a limited and particular perspective from which we can acquire knowledge, dictated by factors such as race, gender, and so forth. Reflecting on this afterwards, I found that it does seem like a proper way to think about rational knowledge. Maybe it is more practical to obtain knowledge through “passionate construction”? While limited in scope, wouldn’t a more comprehensive view emerge after multiple rich, critical standpoints are distilled to create objective knowledge?
As opposed to say, an individual‘s supposedly external (objective) and therefore “pure” point-of-view?
References
Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14:575-99.
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