ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that feminist epistemology mirrors traditional epistemology in privileging the subject at the expense of recognizing the constitutive, resistant qualities of the object of knowledge. Feminist epistemology furthers the materialist tradition that argues for a sustained sense of self and location as one makes a claim to know the world. In the tradition of Marxian critical theory, and therefore attentive to critiques of objective reality as an ideal form or substance that exists prior to historical construction, feminist epistemologists argue that the material situation of the subject is central to her potential to create emancipatory theory. Feminist epistemology thus contributes to feminist struggles to bring women onto the historical screen as subjects for ethical and historical reasons. The historical variability, the resistance of those constituted as the feminine objects of male desire, is not, in the last instance, the politically significant moment for Hennessy.
