[RSCJW] Who Are Our Own People (Hames-Garcia)

Michael R. Hames-Garcia

.... wno l\Ie vu1 vvvu �....,Y ........ .L

:e that can guarantee certainty for all knowledge. Premise founda­ nalism seeks the discovery of foundational premises that can form the frock justification for all claims deduced from them. The will-o'-the­ ;p for all kinds of foundationalism is absolute, error- and presuppo" on-free certainty of knowledge (justified, true belief).

Twentieth-century positivism (also called logical empiricism) sought further its foundationalist project by discounting talk of anything 1etaphysical" or "theoretical," that is, not empirically verifiable. Its proach, like other positivist projects (e.g., the transcendental phe­ menology of Husserl so rightly critiqued by Derrida and others), was search for immediate experience, that is, experience of the world that .n no way mediated by theory or presupposition. In contrast to a foun­ tionalist approach, postpositivist realism puts us in the world with ,thing but our theories to make sense of things. There is thus an ele­ �nt of contingency and uncertainty in a postpositivist realist approach. ::>wever, unlike the. conceptual-scheme relativism that characterizes me other reactions to positivism, postpositivist realism considers a eory-independent reality .to exist and assumes that our theories of the JCial) world can help us to understand it and are, to some extent, de­ :ndent on it.

Instead of giving up on reference to reality, this kind of realism seeks , replace the quest for immediacy entailed by correspondence theories ith the mediated knowledge of a causal theory of reference. For ex­ nple, if I have a theory that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, I at­ mpt an experiment to verify that theory. If the water· does not boil, >mething independent of my theory (e.g., altitude) has acted on my ex­ eriment. I therefore revise my theory to take altitude into account. If ltitude were not a theory-independent causal feature of the world, I ::>uld not be forced to revise my theory to improve its accuracy. This is simplified example of what postpositivist rd1lism means by "gaining pistemic access to reality." Using this kind of causal theory of re-fur­ nce, realism avoids the pitfalls of correspondence or representational­ ;t theories. 6 Whereas a correspondence theorist might claim that the 6. In bridging the split between so-called continental philosophy and so-called ana­ rtic philosophy, it is important to remember that most "analytic" postpositivists recog­ ,ize that the question of water boiling is as much a metaphysical issue as that of "iden­ ity." One of the theses of postpositivist realism is in fact that the distinction (held by many .nalysts and continentalists alike) between empirical and metaphysical questions (and be­ ween epistemic and ontological questions) is to some degree arbitrary, a position with upporters and detractors among both analysts and continentalists.

term "T" corresponds to kind "K" "out there in the world," a causal theorist would claim that the causal powers of "K" "out there in the world" condition the social use of "T." This social use is therefore at least partly conventional and must continually be interrogated, as al­ ternative usages are debated and evaluated within a social framework laden with power relations.

Thus postpositivist realism does not claim that one can have un­ mediated knowledge. Instead, it claims that, through interpretation and theory mediation of the world, one can more or less accurately grasp the complexity of the social processes and multiple conditiqning that make up the "truth" of experience. At issue in realism's understanding of so­ cial identity are the coherence and accuracy with which theories about groups account for the real social features of the systems of exploitation that give those social groups their political salience. Applying a realist analysis to social identity in a passage on feminist standpoint epistemology, Mohanty writes, The theoretical notion "women's lives" refers not just to the experiences of women, but also to a particular social arrangement of gender relations and hierarchies that can be analyzed and evaluated. The standpoint of women in this society . .. is based in "women's lives" to the extent that it articulates their material and epistemological interests. Such interests are discovered by an explanatory empirical account of the nature of gender-stratification, the ways in which it is reproduced and regulated, and the particular social groups and values it serves to legitimate. ("Epistemic Status" 51)

i

This kind of realism entails a recognition of the causally significant factors of the social world in which group memberships are experienced (69). What distinguishes this realism from "naive'' realist philosophical positions (like positivism) is its recognition that all knowledge is theory dependent, that is, dependent on our theories of the world. This marks it as postpositivist and nonfoundational. Postpositivist realism sees that there are different ways that knowledge can be constructed and seeks a dialectical mediation of experience with the understanding that "theory­ laden and socially constructed experiences can lead to a knowledge that is accurate and reliable" (48). It contends that an adequate account of causal features of the social world (e.g., colonialism, racism, sexism, or homophobia) can yield an accurate, reliable, and revisable understandf ? ing of the reality of experience and its construction, instead of taking reified constructs as "given." This distinguishes it from cultural relativism.

Key to the process of obtaining this more or less "accurate and reli­ able" knowledge is realism's understanding of error. Rather than fear it