GENDER AND KNOWLEDGE

This paper reviews the claims that areas of knowledge have been mascul ine and the attempt to develop feminist alternatives which followed fr om them. The idea of a feminist standpoint onto knowledge has been sub ject to hefty criticisms and this paper assesses the impact of these. Drawing on the recent work of Sandra Harding and Edward Said it redraw s the project of standpoint epistemology to accommodate the significan t impact of marginality, without making a fetish of difference. In doi ng so it provides an encounter between materialist and deconstructioni st tendencies within contemporary epistemologies.