Hypatia

In this concise and challenging monograph, Sharyn Clough defends a non-representational pragmatist approach to the practice of feminist science. Relying on Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty, Clough argues that problems accompanying representational epistemology are so debilitating for feminists that we would be better off adopting a more Davidsonian program. She does not go so far as Rorty, however, to argue that epistemology itself be abandoned (although in places she seems tempted by this view). Her target is representationalist epistemology, which she argues should be replaced with a Davidsonian pragmatized philosophy of language.

Concerns borrowed from Davidson and Rorty are that representational epistemologies invite global skepticism and relativism. Applied to feminist science studies, the consequences are twofold. First, feminists are no more likely to solve the problems of skepticism and relativism than are any other philosophers. Second, and more important, global skepticism and especially relativism undermine the empirical and political goals of feminist science studies. Those who are unconvinced by Davidson's and Rorty's lateral moves away from epistemology are unlikely to be satisfied with Clough's appropriation of them for feminist purposes. Theories of meaning like Davidson's will give feminists a new set of equally serious problems. However, Clough's useful insights are worth considering and developing further independently of such matters.

The book's argument contains two main threads, which are further subdivided into smaller critiques. The overarching thread is Clough's claim that representationalism is a conceptual problem for feminist epistemologists, and that we ought to conceive of beliefs and evidence, and the relationship between them, differently. Positioning the issue as a conceptual one, in which one (representational) idea of the relationship between beliefs and evidence is to be replaced with a new (nonrepresentational) idea, of course invites problems of its own, including some of the very concerns Clough identifies. These problems will already be familiar to Davidson-watchers. In addition, the argument is probably not robust enough to persuade readers who share Ian Hacking's opinion that homo depictor is just the kind of creature we humans are, and representation is what we do. In wielding Davidson's triangulation model of speakers and their experiences, Clough employs his insistence that there is no metaphysical [End Page 216] bifurcation between an inner and outer world. There is only a web of belief. The question of the ontological status of the web of belief is not addressed. Clough does not articulate its status explicitly, but we can infer from her repeated insistence that this is a conceptual solution to a conceptual problem that there may be some residual representationalism in her own position.

Clough's identification of a dangerous representationalism and critique of its attendant problems for feminist epistemology is a major contribution to feminist science studies. She proceeds in stages, identifying a commitment to representationalism and correspondence theories of truth across a range of influential feminist scientists and philosophers of science. She draws new attention to such early second-wave feminist scientists as Ruth Bleier and Ruth Hubbard. These allegedly representationalist epistemological views are contrasted with what Clough sees as the more desirable project, the empirical criticisms of first-wave feminist scientists like Helen Montague and Leta Stetter Hollingworth. Clough persuasively demonstrates that Bleier and Hubbard's own accounts of their work do evince commitments to representationalism. What she does not show is that such autobiographical observations are epistemologies. This makes it difficult to compare the relative strengths of the two projects. It is possible that many or even most feminist scientists would, when prompted, offer up a representationalist/correspondence story about how their results were achieved. We know something of Bleier and Hubbard's empirical work, but we learn too little about Montague and Hollingworth's self-descriptions to know whether they might not have told representational stories, too. In any case, the empirical adequacy of the results wouldn't change on a more pragmatist self-description, but for Clough, their defensibility and political impact would.

In the ensuing stages of her argument...