February, 19 2014 - minutes

Theresa Lee

February 19, 2014

Outline

v Business

v Pre-modernity, modernity, postmodernity

v Feminist critiques of objectivity

v Review of feminist empiricism and feminist standpoint

Reading: Iris Marion Young, “The Ideal of Impartiality and the Civic Public” (1990)

• Business
• Paper due Friday, 2/21
• Include pdf file in e-mail for paper
• Do not forget to include article selection on research blog
• Two readings for Monday are of feminists trying to revise objectivity in order to make it a better knowledge
• 
  
• Pre-modernity (in the eyes of those during modernity)
• Religion
• Superstition
• Myths
• Prejudice
• Egoism 

• Modernity
• Objective
• Partial/neutral
• Universal
• Truth – how is it proved, where is it derived?
• As perspectival – no point of view
• Some believe it began with Dick Hardt (I think, therefore I am) – rationalism (thinking)
• Empiricism (truth through sense and data)
• Industrialization
• Capitalism
• Rise of secularism
• Experience as a form of data – becomes the support of a claimed truth
• Enlightenment – period around the French revolution, when trying to find truth outside of religion, science, and human knowledge
• Reformation – individual will
• Young is critiquing “modernity” – distinguishes the time period, in addition to the ideas that arose
• Foundations: (example) rationalism, empiricism 

• Postmodernity
• Can be dated from late 1900s-20^th century
• Truths are perspectival/inter-subjective – created through relations and interactions between people
• Historical
• Contingent
• Multiplicity/heterogeneous
• Post-foundationalist
• Contingent foundations (so-called by Judith Butler)
• Opens up arguments about how knowledge is produced and used – is there power behind created knowledge?
• Contestable
• Partial 

DAVSC model

• Describe
• The modern ideal of impartiality – the civic/public
• Ignores the perspectives of those who are powerless
• Harmful because it ignores the powerless and universalizes the ideas behind dominant groups
• Abstracts
• Generating dichotomies – both exclude and ignore differences, which creates a hierarchy
• Doomed to fail, because it is impossible: sees modernity as “view from nowhere”

• Analyze
• Logan has difficulty understanding what young means when she speaks about “real participatory structures” and authenticity (p.116) – professor Holloway responds by stating that she goes into provides more detail about this in later chapters.
• Young emphasizes the importance of participation and revealing of differences
•  Can her argument be made within a two-party political system – identity politics
• Attacks hegemony of having knowledge within a pre-modernity period
• Black female literature course – butting other minority groups within a box

• Vision/solution
• Not the view from nowhere
• Not the view from everywhere
• Young: heterogeneous public
• Participatory dem. decision making
• Mark everything: Shakespeare is a white male. Foucault is a French male.
• 
  

Make sure to take a look at the Artifact for Wednesday 2/19 (on Blogger)

http://wgs302spring2014.blogspot.com/2014/02/artifact-for-wednesday-219.html?zx=f028c42a01d7e720