Critical Realism, Feminism, and Gender: A Reader

Michiel van Ingen, Steph Grohmann, Lena Gunnarsson, Michiel van Ingen, Steph Grohmann, Lena Gunnarsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351621113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Genderforschung

In assessing the current state of feminism and gender studies, whether on a theoretical or a practical level, it has become increasingly challenging to avoid the conclusion that these fields are in a state of disarray. Indeed, feminist and gender studies discussions are beset with persistent splits and disagreements. This reader suggests that returning to, and placing centre-stage, the role of philosophy, especially critical realist philosophy of science, is invaluable for efforts that seek to overcome or mitigate the uncertainty and acrimony that have resulted from this situation. In particular, it claims that the dialectical logic that runs through critical realist philosophy is ideally suited to advancing feminist and gender studies discussions about broad ontological and epistemological questions and considerations, intersectionality, and methodology, methods, and empirical research. By bringing together four new and eight existing writings this reader provides both a focal point for renewed discussions about the potential and actual contributions of critical realist philosophy to feminism and gender studies and a timely contribution to these discussions.

Part I

Philosophical preliminaries

Critical realism, feminism, and gender

The first section of this reader – consisting of five chapters – examines those features of critical realist philosophy that are of most general relevance to feminism and gender studies. In accordance with this aim it begins with Tony Lawson’s early insistence on the urgent need for greater ontological reflection in these fields. As Lawson shows, ‘explicit ontological analysis is conspicuously […] down-played in much of feminist theorizing’ (p. 15). This is unfortunate, as ‘ontology matters for any would-be projects of illumination and emancipation’ (p. 37). Such claims – claims for ontology – are the nuts-and-bolts of critical realist philosophy. Rather than stopping there, however, both Lawson’s chapter and the four chapters that follow it (by Carrie Hull, Caroline New, Lena Gunnarsson, and Angela Martinez Dy) also argue for a new ontology; an ontology, that is, which places centre-stage notions like depth, structure, emergence/stratification, differentiation, complexity, systemic openness/closure, and process.

As the abovementioned authors make clear, their focus on the importance of (developing/adopting a new) ontology unequivocally does not amount to a wholesale rejection of the epistemological stance that significant parts of the feminist and gender studies literature have adopted in recent decades. Lawson stresses, for instance, that ‘there is nothing essential to scientific or ontological realism that supposes or requires’ that knowledge ‘is other than fallible, partial and itself transient, or that scientists or researchers are other than positioned, biased, interested, and practically, culturally and socially conditioned’ (p. 17, emphasis removed). Rather, the proponents of critical realist philosophy have commonly regarded ‘the necessity of knowing from a particular place as enabling knowledge rather than hindering it’ (New, p. 82). In Lawson’s chapter this epistemological stance takes the specific form of a theory of contrastive explanation which ‘does not merely support the thesis […] that interested standpoints are inevitable’ but ‘goes further in suggesting that interested standpoints […] are […] actually indispensable aids to the explanatory process’ (p. 29). More generally, critical realist feminism and gender studies clearly does not negate the views of standpoint feminists in favour of epistemological foundationalism or absolutism and it rejects the idea that a god’s-eye view is achievable; its various advocates subscribe, though admittedly in a qualified sense (see e.g. New 1998), to the epistemological perspective that standpoint feminists favour and – in some cases (e.g. Lawson’s) – they have sought to build on it.

Instead, perhaps the primary motivation behind the critical realist emphasis on (developing/adopting a new) ontology is to both oppose and overcome the pernicious influence of the epistemic fallacy, or the view that ‘statements about being can be reduced to or analysed in terms of statements about knowledge’ (Bhaskar 2008 [1975], p. 26). In Hull’s chapter this opposition results in a compelling critique of the nominalism and relativism which – despite time-honoured but well-worn protestations to the contrary – is an inherent feature of much post-structuralist feminist and gender studies work.¹ In particular, Hull takes issue with the work of third wave feminist authors like Judith Butler and Anne Fausto-Sterling who – inspired, in part, by the idea that the category of ‘race’ is very largely a scientific fiction, a social construct that lacks any morally significant biological referents – reject dimorphic understandings of sex differentiation in favour of the idea that sex should be understood as a continuum, a rainbow, or akin to the colour spectrum. While Hull – like New, Gunnarsson, and Martinez Dy – accepts that intersexuality is real and significant, she disputes both the scientific evidence of which post-structuralist authors have made use to accentuate the prevalence of this phenomenon and the nominalist and relativist philosophical orientation that has caused them to be ‘too deeply vested in uncovering relatively high rates of sexual nondimorphism’ (p. 61).

In contrast, critical realist feminist and gender studies authors have generally maintained (1) that ‘human beings are (almost all) sexually dimorphic, female and male’, and (2) that ‘[t]his dimorphic structuring is active, causally powerful, enabling (in certain contexts) different reproductive roles and certain (hetero and homo) sexual possibilities and pleasures, while rendering others less likely (elbow as erogenous zone) and ruling others out (male parturition)’ (New, p. 83). In the prevailing intellectual climate – which, despite an ever-expanding range of alternatives to it, continues to be dominated by approaches to feminism and gender studies that are rooted in the cultural turn – such assertions are likely to be received with scepticism or even hostility. As Hull remarks, ‘any expression of doubt about the figures or the leap in logic’ can either ‘land the sceptic in the camp of reactionaries’ (p. 59) or at least expose them to risk of being ridiculed as the sort of person who is ‘somehow against freedom itself’ (p. 49). And yet, as she adds, ‘larger philosophical and scientific points’ are ‘being promulgated in these feminist arguments’ (p. 49). As such, Hull’s chapter does not just provide its readers with a powerful critique of the nominalism and relativism that inheres in many examples of post-structuralist work, but it also takes them on a whistle-stop tour of intellectual terrain that is occupied both by natural scientists and by prominent philosophers/social theorists like Quine, Goodman, Foucault, Kant, and Hegel.

If an opposition to the epistemic fallacy results in a rejection of third wave claims about sexual non-dimorphism, however, this emphatically should not be mistaken for warm feelings regarding the determinism of reductionist approaches to evolutionary biology. Such approaches are wholeheartedly rejected by critical realists. Rather, the aforementioned opposition to post-structuralist feminist claims – which, importantly, is a feature of Martinez Dy’s chapter on gender theory non-conforming, trans-politics, and affordance theory as well – reflects a commitment to the emergentist version of ontological realism that critical realist philosophy favours; specifically, it reflects a commitment to (1) the realist claim that reality exists, for the most part, independently of the individual researcher/scientist who seeks to understand/explain it, and (2) the emergentist claim that biological powers/mechanisms, while real, only ever co-determine outcomes alongside physical, chemical, psychological, sociocultural, etc. powers/mechanisms. In line with this perspective, all five authors take seriously the thoroughgoing complexity that characterises concrete (sexed and gendered) reality, especially by giving psychology (and hence agency/intentionality, consciousness, reflexivity, etc.) and the social/cultural sciences (and hence rules, relations, positions, discourses, ideologies, etc.) pride of place in their work. While they suggest that the dimorphic structuring of biological sex is ‘active’, these authors therefore repeatedly insist on extending the same privilege to a wide range of other causal factors as well.

Further to this, and in contrast with the post-structuralist feminist tendency to reduce discourse to a phenomenon which is formative or constitutive of reality, the ontological realism that informs the work of these authors points to the possibility of reference. In so doing they echo, albeit implicitly, Bhaskar’s claims about referential detachment, or ‘the detachment of the act by which we refer to something from that to which it refers’ (2010 [1994], p. 12). As Bhaskar notes, referential detachment ‘is a presupposition of discourse which must be about something other than itself, of praxis which must be with something other than itself or of desire which must be for something alterior to itself’ (ibid., p. 198). To be sure, such references are never simple, direct, or socially/culturally unmediated; this is why, in addition to making the case for ontological realism, critical realist feminists also subscribe to the idea of epistemic relativism, or the notion ‘that all beliefs are socially produced, so that all knowledge is transient and neither truth-values nor criteria of rationality exist outside historical time’ (Bhaskar 1998 [1979], pp. 62–63). Not only does critical realist philosophy insist that the sociocultural context in which knowledge-production takes place has significant effects on this process, therefore, it also stresses that ‘[t]here are no self-evident criteria, [and] no uncontested standards’ because ‘what constitutes good evidence for an account is, of course, itself part of the argument’ (New 1998, p. 366).

Despite this – or, rather, because of both their opposition to the epistemic fallacy and their partnering of ontological realism with epistemic relativism – critical realist feminists also endorse the principle of judgmental rationalism; that is to say, they subscribe to the idea that there are rational grounds for preferring one explanatory account over another. This claim is rooted in the realist position that ‘the real world puts limits on knowledge so that not all interpretations are equally plausible’ (McCall 2005, p. 1793) and hence makes for a significant contrast with the judgmental relativism of much post-structuralist work. Rather than conceiving of judgmental rationalism as a reckless attempt to reinstate the ‘philosopher/scientist king’ that is now commonly associated with hubristic forms of modernism, however, this principle should be understood as an alternative both to such perspectives and to the post-structuralist merger/collapse/inversion of ‘active knowing subject’ and ‘passive object known’. Specifically, critical realists tend to conceive of the subject-object relationship in dialectical terms. As such, they both separate them – by stressing the non-identity of knowledge/knowledge claims (the ‘transitive dimension’) and the largely independent reality to which they refer (‘intransitive dimension’) – and connect them by stressing that knowledge (claims) are always part of this same reality; knowing, from the anti-anthropocentric perspective which critical realist philosophy favours, is a particular way or state of being. This means both that causal interactions between subject and object are likely to occur and that the lines which divide them are often blurry or fuzzy; the transitive dimension has an intransitive aspect, and vice versa. In contrast, this does not mean that submitting to the either/or (dualism/identity) logic that characterises much of the modernism/post-structuralism debate is required; rather, the both/and logic of epistemological dialectics provides the proponents of critical realist philosophy with a robust alternative to such dichotomous framings.

Gunnarsson’s chapter shows the value of this alternative; it begins by highlighting that, when it comes to the use of categories like woman/female (and man/male), feminist theorising has increasingly resorted to a framing which relies on a dualistic contrast between a universalising ‘before’ and a particularising/singularising and intersectional ‘after’. This is, from Gunnarsson’s perspective, a fruitless stand-off. At an historical level she counters that ‘much of the rhetorical force of intersectional arguments has come to depend upon caricature-like representations of “earlier”, “Western” or “hegemonic” feminist theories’ (p. 101). At a philosophical level she develops an alternative approach to theorising the abovementioned terms that, first, conceives of them as abstractions and, second, is rooted in the work of Bertell Ollmann and Andrew Sayer. As a result, Gunnarsson claims – in a statement that is developed in much greater detail in her second contribution to this reader – that ‘[w]e must question the very dualism between sameness and difference that rejections of commonality are so often premised upon’ (p. 103). More generally, and reflecting the both/and logic that characterises critical realist philosophy, she stresses that theorising is unavoidably messy, often paradoxical, and necessarily takes place ‘in the dialectic between the concrete and the abstract, the subjective and the objective, the specific and the general, and […] the fundamentally processual character of concrete reality and the irredeemably static quality of the words and signs which we employ to understand and explain it’ (p. 110).

Overall, the picture of critical realist feminism and gender studies that emerges from these five chapters is both preservative and heterodox. This is the case, primarily, because it provides both natural scientific (especially biological/bio-chemical) and human/social scientific (especially psychological and sociological/anthropological/etc.) approaches to understanding reality with a ‘seat at the table’. For instance, critical realist philosophy allows us to talk – as both Lawson (ch. 1) and New (ch. 3) do – of human nature without succumbing to biological determinism, and it allows us to talk of socialisation/enculturation – as all five authors do – without deconstructing the subject into a haphazard collection of fragmented identities. As such, an approach to feminism and gender studies that is rooted in critical realism is able to incorporate the strengths of earlier approaches (or waves) into an ontologically grounded synthesis that (1) avoids their weaknesses, and (2) provides valuable resources for those who wish to circumvent or bypass the antinomies inherent to the ‘problem-field’ (Bhaskar 1998 [1979], p. 21) which currently curbs progress in these fields. Of particular importance in this regard is what is now increasingly referred to – plainly tongue-in-cheek – as the ‘holy trinity’ of critical realism: ontological realism, epistemic relativism, and judgmental rationalism. As the second and third parts of this reader will show, this trinity – along with the depth ontology that results from critical realist critiques of the epistemic fallacy – form a robust support structure that allows us to develop a sophisticated understanding of, and approach to, both intersectionality and methodology/methods/empirical research.

Note

1 While the larger book (2006) from which it is taken does explicitly reference the epistemic fallacy, this concept does not feature in the chapter that is reproduced here.

References

Bhaskar, R. 2008 [1975]. A Realist Theory of Science. London and New York: Verso.

———. 2010 [1994] Plato Etc. The Problems of Philosophy and their Resolution. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

———. 1998 [1979]. The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, third edition. London: Routledge.

Hull, C. 2006. The Ontology of Sex: A Critical Inquiry into the Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Categories. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

McCall, L. 2005. “The Complexity of Intersectionality.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30(3): 1771–1800.

New, C. 1998. “Realism, Deconstruction and the Feminist Standpoint.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 28(4): 349–372.

1 Feminism, realism, and universalism¹

Tony Lawson

Introduction: the practice of a priori universalising

Feminist contributions can claim a good deal of the credit for modern social theory displaying increasing sensitivity to the dangers of overgeneralising. Fundamental here is the recognition that values, experiences, objectives, and common-sense interpretations of dominant groups may be merely that; there is nothing especially natural or necessarily universal about them. All claims, whether made from within the ...