Standpoint Epistemology

This contribution focuses on interrogating the definition of bias in information systems. It serves as a discussion starter and asks what we could learn from approaches to bias analysis in the field of gender studies and how the methodologies developed in gender studies can be beneficial to understanding, analysing and managing bias in information systems. We look at two specific theories originating in gender and feminist science and technology studies – “situated knowledges” (Haraway) and “strong/weak objectivity” and “standpoint theory” (Harding). The paper closes with pointing out the possibilities of a societally shared accountability for biased systems.

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by the power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought.

[WORKSHOP] Knowing the Distance: Intersectional, Decolonial, and Affective Approaches to Knowledge
May 19th 2022
10.00-16.00h (CEST)
at the Messerli Research Institute (Vienna), and online.
with Kelly Agra (UCD (Ireland) & University of the Philippines), Taynna Marino (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań), Tường Vi Nguyễn (FU Berlin), and Ruadhán J. Flynn (University of Vienna).

To attend online, register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intersectional-decolonial-and-affective-approaches-to-knowledge-tickets-323414400177

Full workshop details, session abstracts, and information on speakers available in this document or at the event page.

We consider feminist positionality as a congenial starting point to enter/open the debate on the imbricated power relations. This presentation aims to conceptualize the “triple positionality” of the feminist activist-researcher, to explore the nomadic movement between the spheres of the university and the social and political struggles and to focus on their frontier/borderline.
Departing from our personal experiences and from epistemological debates, we want to discuss the contradictions, the continuities, the barriers, the impasses and the new paths that we come across in this “coming and going”, especially when we propose to analyse realities that we are implicated in. What happens to the standpoint and to the self-consciousness/ definition of the feminist researcher when she/ he goes down to the arena of conflicts? How does she/he react when she/he encounters these two spheres - traditionally perceived and treated as separate entities from both a militant and academic
perspective?
In the era of the expansion of radical and critical studies and in the European context of the economic and political crisis, we find crucial to revisit these troubled trajectories. It is essential to wonder if the young, precarious activists researchers who rise a critical feminist knowledge rooted both in past and contemporary movements, have something new to bring to light concerning the ways we make theory in, within and for the struggles.

This article explores the relationship between statelessness and refugeeness over time and space. It does so by drawing on how Palestinian refugees from Syria in Sweden navigate the various stateless and refugee labels imposed upon them before, during and after their flight from Syria to Sweden. Standpoint theory was deployed as the basis for understanding how this group of stateless refugees related to these labels. While the research found that, even though the labelling process was largely non-participatory, both as a manifestation for epistemic agency and a vehicle for epistemic justice in statelessness and refugee research, standpoint theory has offered an indispensable lens through which we have accessed the multiple strategies that the interviewees adopted to accept, reject, resist or negotiate their re/de-labelling throughout their journey.