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Haraway: conocimiento situado — Transcript · YTtoTranscript

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Haraway: conocimiento situado

Heterocronías Feminismos y Epistemologías del Sur · 3,202 words · 16 min read · EN

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Below is the complete, readable transcript of Haraway: conocimiento situado by Heterocronías Feminismos y Epistemologías del Sur on YouTube. Read the full text, copy any part you need, or generate a transcript for any video with our free tool.

Good evening. This video is about Haraway's text, the chapter on situated knowledge. Here we're going to see a notion of subject different from the one we've been working with in Cannes, and I'd like you to read this text comparing it with the notion of subject in Cannes to see the difference. Hardwicke is going to point out that there's a

big difference between what science textbooks say scientists do and what scientists actually do. These texts are fundamentally believed by those who aren't scientists and some philosophers, particularly epistemologists, but in reality, scientific practice is very different from what these texts describe. So what she's going to propose is that we have to reconstruct a

notion of objectivity, which is the one we already saw when we studied Kahn—an objectivity produced by a single subject, which we compared to the fixed eye. So, it's because we have to reconstruct that objectivity. She's going to call it a disembodied objectivity because that objectivity is based on abstractions; if it 's a universal subject, it's not an embodied subject.

So, she argues that a new version of Objectivity, which will be a feminist version, that is, a feminist version of objectivity, and what is needed to construct this feminist version of objectivity? First, it is to recognize, that is, our semiotic technologies. What does that refer to? It refers to the production of meaning, to

those technologies that allow us to produce meanings. And this must be studied from a critical perspective; that is, we must critically analyze how we produce our meanings. Another thing needed for this new version of objectivity is the capacity to translate knowledge between communities. This will be a very important idea because it will

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allow dialogue between communities. If you think, for example, in the case of Kun, where there is a plurality of scientific communities, but dialogue between these communities is difficult, the proposal here is precisely the possibility of translation in order to engage in dialogue. So what is needed are critical theories to see how meanings are created

and, with this creation of meanings, how bodies are also created. She says that this critical theory is not to deny meanings. Not the bodies themselves, but rather that signal so that we can have new meanings, new bodies, and that those meanings and their bodies can have some possibility in the future. So let's look at the issue of the translation

of translations. When science has spoken of translation, when it has thought about how to translate a language, whether from one scientific theory to another, or from one scientific community to another, it has always thought in terms of reductionism. What is reductionism? Reductionism is when a language is established as the norm for all translations; that is to

say, it is a kind of pattern that everything has to be translated into, into that language. That is reductionism. That is to say, reductionism works more or less the same way as capitalism. They operate the same way. Capitalism: money will have a pattern for making exchanges, the dollar, for example, or gold, for example.

And here, the same thing happens. There is a pattern from which everything will be translated. That is reductionism. Yes, and whenever translation has been considered, it has been thought in terms of reduction. And this has been considered, for example, among the different sciences, among the different theories. Well, that's to draw attention to

our capacity for sight, to see. Yes, and we have already used It is in this sense of the sense of sight, when we were talking precisely about this model that the saints also have, that the sense of sight has been the model upon which all knowledge has been modeled, particularly in modernity. Fundamentally, what sight gives us is

what allows us to mark a leap outside the body of what we see; it is as if outside the body, and this is also the basis for separating the subject from the object. The subject is the one who sees, and the object is what is seen. And that's what I'm going to say. Well, but

objectivity... we are going to continue using the sense of sight to understand, but we are going to use it in another way, and we are going to begin to do a critical reading of this sense of sight because what we are looking for is an embodied objectivity, and if we are looking for an embodied objectivity, we cannot

leave aside power, and sight cannot be analyzed without including power because seeing has to do precisely with the power to see. Yes, and the Kantian subject is a subject that has the power to see and not to be seen, and why? Because it does not enter the frame of the world, it does not enter space, it

cannot be known. If it is the one who sees but cannot be seen, it is the eye that can see but not itself and cannot enter that frame. Then the objectivity we have based on the subject's perspective is an unembodied objectivity because it does n't allow us to see the subject. So Jaragua's proposal

is that of a feminist objectivity, and feminist objectivity must necessarily be embodied. And what does embodied mean? It means that it has to refer to situated knowledge; that is, it is knowledge where there will not be a universal subject. All the metaphors that have to do with sight, and the way we have been treating them, will lead us

to understand everything that this subject hides from us. When would we adapt this unembodied objectivity of this subject who cannot enter the frame? For example, what are the elements, or what are the ideologies, or what are the places of power that are behind this subject who can see but is not seen? For example, when we have the ideal of

precision, then we have everything that would be militarism, because for whom is precision important, precisely to be able to be precise, where is going to be... To throw a bomb or a bullet, then precision is a value for militarism, also production, the production of knowledge thought as production, and the production of papers, the production

of experiments, the whole idea of production, which has to do with capitalism, the idea of reduction that we saw a while ago, which has to do with colonialism, because it has to do with colonialism, reductionism, because precisely all the languages that are translated into that language that has been imposed as the norm are colonized

by that language, yes, and it also has to do with male supremacy, and that sees that it is active, so we have an eye in this model of unembodied objectivity, a cannibalistic eye, yes, an eye that wants to see everything but from nowhere, which is the fixed eye that we have seen, Alberti's fixed eye,

so he says, well, this is a model that plays at being innocent, and we have to lose our innocence because we are only going to know, we are only going to achieve, excuse me, an objective vision, if we do it from a partial perspective, because the partial perspective takes us out of the innocence of believing that what

we see is universal and that we are part of that universal subject, but rather it is precisely about making ourselves The fact that we are seeing from a certain place, well, this partiality is precisely what will set responsibility in motion. Notice that responsibility is also an element present in Sousa Santos, not for the new epistemology. So,

partiality, because of responsibility, as I was saying, because it is precisely taking responsibility from where we are seeing, fundamentally from the place of being able to see. And here, this will allow us to get out of dualism. Remember that the whole model of this unembodied, dualistic objectivity, mind-body, subject-object, natural, that culture of all that

was in Khan, the human order, the natural order—if all that is the key to dualism, that this duality and those organisms traverse it, is the logic of colonialism, it is the logic of patriarchy, it is the logic of this model of science. So, what is the logic of capitalism? So, how do we get out of that

dualism, how do we get out of those logics? And precisely through this partiality. So, one of the things we have to recognize is that the eyes are active perceptual systems and construct specific ways of seeing. That is to say, the eye is not a passive organ where They occur where the external world, let's say, wants to see the

eye, and the eye doesn't produce anything. No, the eye is active. So it's fundamental to understand how visual systems work. It's a critique of relativism, and we can take this critique here because it's precisely a way of not being anywhere. That is, yes, well, it's relative to the disciplinary matrix where I am, it's relative to the

place, to the order in which I am. So I'm not responsible for anything, and there's no critical search. So she criticizes both relativism and totalization because neither allows us to see well. Only partiality allows us to see well because partiality is seeing from a perspective, that is, being able to recognize that I'm

seeing from a perspective. So we're going to have here a theory that will be feminist, of objectivity and also of rationality, and the basis of that theory is that vision has to be equitable, a lens to the power of seeing. That is to say, one cannot think of vision as something neutral, and that power of seeing has a violence, a

violence, and there is an implicit violence in all our visual practices. So that's what we have to take responsibility for, and that's the responsibility we have to have. This will compare the subject we study to the Kantian subject, that single eye that looks like this and constitutes space. Is that a cyclopean eye, or is it dominant?

And Hardwicke, in opposition to that cyclopean eye, will proclaim an opening of the subject. If she no longer denies the notion of the subject, what she means is that there has to be an opening of the subject. And what does that mean? It means that there is no longer one subject, but a

multiplicity. They are heterogeneous, they are different, and they cannot be synthesized into a unity. Therefore, objectivity will be related to the position of the subject, and these multiplicities will be able to dialogue, but no longer from a reductionist perspective, but precisely from new capacities that will have to be developed, which will allow

a dialogue where each of these different parts will be on equal footing. So we have a position of the subject to determine this objectivity, and we must not confuse this position of the subject with identity, because identity presupposes something that is maintained over time, that is identical to itself. The passage of time is

not the point; rather, it's the subject's position, the place from which the subject is, let's say, having their perspective. And that subject, let's say, can change to a fixed subject. Identity doesn't produce science; the subject's position does. What needs to be understood is that one cannot be in all positions. There are different perspectives, and one

can only be in one perspective; we cannot be in all of them. So what is needed is to try to understand optics as a politics of positioning, that is, precisely optics as a politics of this position of the subject. Not as a politics from where one sees, that I can see this because I am seeing it

from here. I know what it implies. It was said here that everything that allows me to see is because I see it from here, from this perspective. From another perspective, I will be able to see other things, and perhaps I won't be able to see what I am seeing from here. So, reject that

idea of a self- identical subject because that is precisely the position of domination. That is, self- identity has to do with what is embodied, with the transcendent. That is, we must not think of the subject in that way. That is, the subject is not self-identical. With this, she rejects what they call this point, this fixed eye,

this single universal subject, as the master's point of view, because it wants to impose itself as a master when speaking of that subject, as man, if the human being, God, one, the fixed eye, if they are all places of love, and that is precisely what we must not do, that is, we must not

fall into that type of subject, but rather open the subject to all its multiplicity. It is a subject that is even contradictory, a subject that does not have the truth, a subject that dialogues and recognizes that there are other perspectives and takes responsibility for the perspective in which it is situated. So, to

occupy a place and to know that we occupy a place, to take responsibility for occupying a place, that leads to responsibility. So, thinking of rationality as something universal is something, it is an illusion, she says, it is an optical illusion. Well, then, from this new framework, we can see the histories of science,

of the different sciences, all the histories as histories of technologies. And what are these histories of technologies? What are technologies? They are ways of living, they are social orders, they are practices of visualization. These ways of living must be seen in a discourse that is moral and political. So, the histories The sciences are histories

of social orders, of ways of life, of practices of visualization. So this new objectivity, we had seen, has to do with this embodiment, and feminist embodiment—we don't have to understand it simply because it's feminist, we don't have to understand it as a fixed location in a body. That is, it's not about that, but rather it's

precisely about the embodiment of knots in fields of meaning. That is to say, these knots, these links of meaning that are given and that these bodies produce, allow us to orient ourselves in our responsibilities for differences. Differences are results of our practices of visualization. If I see something different from something else, it's

precisely not because there is a difference in those things, but because there is a practice of visualization that allows me to see them as different. So I have to take responsibility for seeing those differences. In that sense of leaving innocence, then, in a feminist science, the subject is multiple. The first thing we must keep in mind is

this openness of the subject. Space is not homogeneous. In each space, it was homogeneous, yes, because, as we had said, all objects are homogeneous. They constructed in the same way, following the same laws, in those mathematical laws. In the case of Can, in that space produced by the subject, which was in the

subject, which was a form of the subject, now the space is not homogeneous because the subject is multiple, because the subject is heterogeneous. So there is no homogeneity. This subject is not fixed but multiple, it is dynamic, and fundamentally, rational knowledge now has to be knowledge, because of all this that we were saying,

linked to responsibility. It has to be sensitive to power. It has to be clear that power is in our practices of visualization. So we also advance in this way, in this framework, in the deconstruction of this dualism of subject-object. We deconstruct the subject a little; we saw that it is multiple, that it is heterogeneous, that

these multiplicities dialogue, this plurality is... and now we see the object. The object was always thought of as passive, as inert, that it is the subject of people, and the object was passive. For example, when sex is thought of as an object of knowledge, it only thinks in terms of biological determinism, that is, from the

cause-and-effect relationships of biology, and the world is objectified; it is like a thing, that is to say, like something inert. Passive and the agent in the subject, that world is homogeneous, that there is a homogenization of the world, and this benefits colonialism, it benefits capitalism because precisely a world thought of as something

living, inert, homogeneous is a world that can be molded and can be thought of as a resource, which is embodied in the proposal of objectivity. This idea is abandoned if knowledge, in situated knowledge, the object is also an agent, that is, the world is not something still, inert, waiting to be read, to be decoded, to be

transformed into a resource. The world is not passive, it is not inert, it is an agent. If she is going to say that it is precisely not a resource, then from this new framework we have to reformulate all the notions we live by of sex and gender, and that is why we are talking about a

feminist epistemology, but also all the dichotomies, all the boundaries that we have seen will begin to erase: the boundaries between sex and gender, between machine and organism, between nature and culture, between subject and object. So what we have to think is that now the world ceases to be thought of as a resource, it ceases to be By no longer being

conceived as a resource, the way science and capitalism have conceived it,

these boundaries disappear when the world is no longer seen as a resource. This is because all the elements of this dualism are agents, not passive. Sex is not a passive object, nor is gender, nor the machine, nor the organism, nor nature, nor culture. Therefore, the boundaries begin to be ambiguous. This is why there are also many

links between feminism and vegan movements. That's why she speaks of an ecofeminism, because precisely by not seeing the world as a resource, and by recognizing the natural world as beings that exist, that have their own capacities to act, we cannot treat them as things, we cannot objectify them as things. In this new objectivity,

what we will fundamentally have is a responsibility, a politics, an ecofeminism, to be able to move beyond this conception of the world as a resource. And she sees in this responsibility, in this politics, in this ecofeminism, the possibility of visualizing a world that is no longer a fixed world, a world that is there for

us, the two of us, to control. But now it's a world we're going to have to converse with, and I think that's the most important idea of this text—not that change in the conception of the world, but rather that from this new idea of objectivity... well, that's what this text about hardware is about, and we'll see you in

future videos. Good night.