While „decolonizing knowledge“ becomes a buzzword and ideas around alternative knowledge production are entering mainstream discourse within academic structures, feminist researchers have long been discussing the reform of practices within universities. By introducing certain feminist theories and connecting them to historical conditions, the authors of the blog post aim to highlight new aspects of feminist research.

The production of knowledge in academia has historically gone largely unquestioned. Thinkers and scientists were often placed at the center of discourses, while little attention was paid to the system of domination that allowed only a narrow group of individuals, typically wealthy white men, to thrive.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge – how it is constituted and what it is made up of. It is about understanding how we differentiate between what is considered true and what is merely believed. Therefore, epistemic domination refers to the control exerted by certain groups over what is viewed as ‘valid knowledge,’ often marginalizing or excluding other perspectives. In order to understand why feminist perspectives in Social and Political Science are often sidelined,  we need to examine the history of knowledge production. This article will explore the origins of this epistemological bias and focus on feminist research ethics.

The Tradition of Western Universities

To understand how knowledge is produced, it’s crucial to consider the historical context of academia. Historically, academia has been dominated by white men, particularly those with wealth and access to universities/educational institutions. This allowed them to shape and promote their interests and ideas, while contributions from women and people of color were often marginalized or ignored.

In his article The Structure of Knowledge in Western Universities, Ramon Grosfoguel (2013) argues that the knowledge structure of Western universities is fundamentally racist and sexist. Grosfoguel claims that white men benefit from an epistemic privilege rooted in four major historical injustices: the persecution of women during the witch hunts, the subjugation of Indigenous peoples during colonization, the enslavement of Black people in the Americas, and the persecution of Jews and Muslims during the conquest of Al-Andalus. These injustices have been internalized by Western universities, creating a Eurocentric structure of knowledge where primarily men from a few countries (e.g., Italy, France, England, Germany, and the USA) set the standards for global academia.

Somos las nietas de las brujas que no pudiste quemar – We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn

The feminist philosopher Silvia Federici highlights how the patriarchal system has influenced knowledge production. In Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004), Federici describes how the so-called witch hunts were not just a form of gendered violence and structural femicide, but also a way to suppress ancient and collective knowledge. Federici explains that many of the women accused of being witches were actually ‘wise women,’ who held valuable knowledge about reproductive health and natural medicine (Federici 2004, pp. 182-183). The destruction and criminalization of this knowledge during the 17th and 18th centuries reflects a broader pattern of dispossessing certain groups of their cognitive contributions. This racial and patriarchal bias in epistemic structures continues to devalue the knowledge of women, Africans, Indigenous peoples, Muslims, and Jews today.

Feminist Challenges to Epistemic Domination

For centuries, this hierarchy was largely accepted, until feminists began to challenge its normalization. They recognized that the supposedly ‘objective’ and universal knowledge produced in universities was actually shaped by white male perspectives. Feminist researchers sought to address topics overlooked or dismissed by the dominant white male academic community. This led to the development of intersectionality by Kimberlé Crenshaw, which critiques the tendency of some feminists to impose their own experiences as universal, while ignoring the experiences of other marginalized groups.

Reform of Academia: The Need for Feminist Reflexivity

The persistent marginalization of certain perspectives in fields such as Political and Social Science reflects deep-seated historical power dynamics. Reform of knowledge production in academia involves various approaches, one key point being a commitment to a feminist ethics, which focus on being attentive to power dynamics and imply an ongoing concern about boundaries, silencing, absences, and marginalization. Such progress is a constant process of challenging authority, research practices and academic power dynamics.

Brooke Ackerly and Jacqui True developed a reflection on feminist research ethics (2010) by underling three major ways forward in comparison to racist patriarchal research. Firstly, the researcher has to state her positionality. She needs to pursue a critical self-reflection regarding her situatedness as a researcher by being transparent about her belief system and the multiple identities relevant to the research context. In these circumstances, the researcher is no longer artificially presented as a (omniscient) knower, but as a subjective interpretation of a phenomenon. This allows readers to take into consideration the standpoint of the researcher and understand certain analyses.

Secondly, feminist ethics imply attentiveness to the context of the research. The reflection the researcher applies to herself can also be applied to the research process itself. For example, she can be transparent about her train of thought, analysis, reflection, etc. and incorporate it into the study itself.

Thirdly, a crucial point of feminist ethics is to alleviate boundaries between the researcher and the subject-participant. Since the term ‘research subject’ appears no longer relevant, this allows for the breakdown of the artificial hierarchy between the researcher and the subject-participant. As Bina d’Costa stated, “subject-participants are co-creators of the meaning of their experience” (2006, as cited in Ackerly, Stern and True 2010, p. 710).

Or, as Laila Kadiwal suggests, reforming starts with how researchers engage with their participants. Rather than focusing solely on data protection, Kadiwal advocates for ‘learning from each other,’ where researchers adopt a more passive role. She emphasizes this approach, noting that when researchers request interviews on topics like activism, they should remember: “You are not data. They want to learn from you” (Kadiwal 2024, personal communication).

 

Bibliography

Abu Moghli, M., and Kadiwal, L. (2021). Decolonising the Curriculum beyond the Surge: Conceptualisation, Positionality and Conduct. London Review of Education, 19 (1), pp. 1-16.

Ackerly, B., and True, J. (2010). Back to the Future: Feminist Theory, Activism, and Doing Feminist Research in an Age of Globalization. Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 464-472.

d’Costa, B. (2006). ‘Marginalized Identity: New Frontiers of Research for IR?’ In Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, ed. B. A. Ackerly, M. Stern, and J. True. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 129-152.

Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia.

Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The Structure of Knowledge in Westernised Universities: Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-knowledge, 1(1), pp. 73-90.

Kadiwal, L. (2024). Personal communication with the authors. (14.06.2024)

 

Bahar Cati is studying MA Social Science at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her bachelor’s thesis was about the Jîna Uprising in Iran and Rojhelatê Kurdistanê, where she applied a Mixed Method Approach to analyze the European discourse on the uprising by using text mining and qualitative interviews. Her research interests include the intersection between Migration and Authoritarian Studies, as well as women’s movements in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and the Global South. 

Roxane Pauli is a master’s student at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, specializing in Sociology and Gender Studies. She graduated from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris with a research master’s in Sociology, where her thesis analyzed how workshops for children in contemporary art museums were participating in social reproduction. Her current work focuses on diversity in various organizations in Berlin. She uses interviews with diversity experts and document analysis to understand the work of diversity specialists.