In this I see ontological, but also ethical, and political planes (and their interconnections) within situated knowledges.

It is well-aware of how standpoints are constructed and how contingent they are, but it does not accept one of the consequences that it is simply all a matter of opinion. Situated knowledges is thus thought to be 'a strong tool' (578) that preserves claims to objectivity but without performing 'the god trick'. Social constructionists played a major role in uncovering how the 'god trick' is constructed.Īgainst this dualist background Haraway explains: 'We wanted a way to go beyond showing bias in science' (578), because uncovering bias does not provide us with a theory of the 'real' world that would enable anchoring feminist ethical and political stakes. In consequence all standpoints are seen as equally constructed and all claims to objectivity are annihilated. Relativism is denied any claim for objectivity by promoting a vision of differing opinions all rendered equal. This move described by Haraway as 'the god trick' has deep ethico-political consequences: it renders all other positions invalid and subjective and – on this ground – denies subjectivity, voice, and presence. Furthermore, objectivity understood as impartiality and a 'view from above, from nowhere' (589) is a perspective that under the guise of neutrality, or nowhere (but embracing all), hides a very specific position (male, white, heterosexual, human) and thus makes this position universal. On the one hand objectivity was compromised as only seemingly neutral and in fact overburdened by power relations. On an epistemological level the notion of situated knowledges is an effort to think outside the duality of objectivity-relativism that is both ineffective and harmful for feminist purposes. Demonstrating also that such planes are interrelated and not separate. The notion works on four planes simultaneously: epistemological, ontological, ethical, and political.

581) but continues to have far-reaching theoretical consequences that render it a useful and vibrant notion for thinking-with in many recent feminist debates. The term was born of a specific situation: 'in scientific and technological, late-industrial, militarized, racist, and male-dominant societies… in the belly of the monster, in the United States in the late 1980s' (Haraway, 1988, p.

Donna Haraway coined the term 'situated knowledges' in a 1988 essay entitled Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.

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