Black Feminist Epistemology or Bust: Challenging White Masculinist Thought-Models in Scientific Inquiry
The philosophy of science is concerned with epistemology – “the study of the nature of knowledge” (Pavitt, 2001, p. 10). What is known and how knowledge is created is central to epistemic concerns. Throughout European or Western history the philosophy of science and related epistemological claims are steeped in realist ideations of a ‘so-called’ mind-independent reality and objective scientific inquiry (Pavitt, 2001). That is, for realists, there is a reality or ultimate truth out there to be studied and understood through and within abstract conceptualizations and theoretical frameworks. The goals in the realist endeavor – universal claims, governable laws, and mass generalizations. Therefore, within this paradigm, subjectivity, time and context, ideology and values are viewed as things to dominant and to control. Further, this ontological and epistemological preserve has been created and dominated for centuries (and still is) by White males (Hill-Collins, 2000). Even though scientific realism, explored within a philosophy of science, presents itself in many, seeming different forms (logical empiricism, empiricism, rationalism, idealism, positivism), they all have emerged from within a White masculinist psyche, reflect this experience of the world, and are validated within a community of like minded individuals (Pavitt, 2001; Wartofsky, 1968; Hempel, 1956). Most of these participants do not like having the authority of their knowledge claims and validation processes challenged. Still, a great many understand that any challenge to this philosophy of science has the potential to undermine its domination of how reality is created and represented to the masses. In Foucault’s opinion whoever controls the discourse controls how we think and what is claimed as knowledge (Foucault, 1977). Thus, the Eurocentric philosophical tradition in scientific inquiry functions as a form of power and is discursively acted out within the social sciences (Wright, 1997).