RIP Seminar Wednesday 8 November 2017

Alison Wylie (University of British Columbia)

What Knowers Know Well: Why Feminism Matters to Archaeology – and to Philosophy

Neglected questions about women, gender, and sexuality have been on the archaeological agenda since the late 1980s, and gender-inclusive archaeology has transformed what we know about the past. But some of its strongest advocates deny that they are engaged in feminist scholarship or in any way influenced by feminist politics. I question their conviction that research is only credible if it is ostensibly ‘value free’, and argue that the critical insights of a feminist standpoint are a crucial resource, and not just in archaeology. I make the case for rethinking ideals of objectivity in terms that counter epistemic injustice and mobilise the situated interests and experience of diverse knowers, a conclusion that applies as much to philosophy as to the social and historical sciences.

(Part of Just Philosophy 2)