Their naive empiricism masks social inequality through evidence blindness-this card will deal them a statistically significant blow

(Mary, Prof @ Rutgers, Policy discourse as sanctioned ignorance: theorizing the erasure of feminist knowledge Critical Policy Studies Vol. 3, Nos. 3–4, October–December 2009 )

Feminist accounts of the politics of knowledge offer a new way to understand intractable debates within disciplines, identifying new strategies of critique and new mechanisms for engaging controversies over contentious evidence and explanations. Feminist scholars encourage investigation of the contentious parameters of debate set by dominant paradigms. They insist on interrogating the categories of analysis established by prevailing theories, examining how those theories draw boundaries to demarcate their objects of inquiry, how terms are operationalized within those boundaries, and how gendered metaphors and analogies limit understanding. Indeed, feminist scholars have suggested that failure to contest contentious theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches can contribute to forms of evidence blindness that involve more than misperception or deception. In his discussion of extrinsic racism, Anthony Appiah (1992) introduced the problem of evidence blindness as a manifestation of a ‘cognitive incapacity’ to perceive evidence contrary to one’s beliefs. Although Appiah worried about the policy implications of a psychological account of evidence blindness, he suggested that racism so systematically deforms the psyche that a racist’s ability to integrate new information into his/her cognitive framework is literally impaired. The feminist conception of knowledge as a theoretically constituted human practice provides an alternate account and a richer resource for understanding evidence blindness. It not only avoids the difficulties of attributing psychological defects to those with intransigent views, but also provides an alternative to conspiracy theories of error associated with naïve versions of empiricism, which suggest that the mind is a mirror that accurately reflects objects in the external world (Watkins 1957, Rorty 1979). If our minds faithfully record and store objective depictions of all that happens, error becomes difficult to explain without resorting to a cynical imputation of manipulative motives. J.W.N. Watkins (1957, p. 95) pointed out long ago that certain versions of empiricism give rise to a conspiracy theory of error: ‘A certain intolerance of error is implicit in . . . empiricism as classically formulated . . . It implies that if two people are in serious factual or moral disagreement, at least one of them must be either the direct or indirect victim of some else’s willful deception or a willful deceiver.’ On this view, evidence blindness is a ruse for deceit. It marks the ‘will to power’ that manipulates, lies, distorts, and misrepresents in order to promote a particular agenda. While the intransigence of evidence blindness may make a conspiracy theory of error attractive, it also offers too facile an account. Relying on a mistaken account of knowledge, the conspiracy theory of error explains away a problem that it is important to take seriously. Naïve accounts of knowledge, which mistakenly assume the mind is passive and observation is direct and unmediated, neglect the critical role of language, culture, and theory in structuring perception and cognition. Feminist scholars suggest that the multiple mediations of knowledge that stem from language, culture, society, history, and complex theories about the world provide much richer resources for understanding problems of evidence blindness. The conception of cognition as a human practice suggests that evidence blindness may stem from tacit assumptions that structure perceptions, making some things appear normal, natural, unquestionable, given. Precisely because these assumptions are widely shared, they insulate beliefs from critical scrutiny. Rather than assuming that evidence is manifest, that facts speak for themselves, feminist analysis begins from the premise of plurality, acknowledging the existence of multiple perspectives, the partiality and incompleteness of accounts, and the role of theories in structuring perception and cognition. By examining tacit presuppositions of alternative accounts, feminist inquiry helps make visible sources of error overlooked by mainstream approaches, probing how such errors may preclude perception of evidence advanced within alternate theoretical frameworks. Approaching evidence blindness with a sophisticated understanding of the complex interaction of theoretical assumptions, social values, and discipline-specific methods in the constitution of facticity enables feminist inquiry to examine dimensions of contention over evidence by interrogating value-laden presuppositions that structure perception and cognition, but which are open to critical reflection, and change. Feminist accounts of objectivity offer rich resources for identifying, understanding, and rectifying error. Given the advantages of analytical strategies that dispel the myth of the given, probe the tacit presuppositions of dominant discourses, challenge the naturalization of oppressive relations, engage difference and plurality, and avoid reductive explanations, one might well ask why these analytic tactics have not gained wider purchase within dominant academic disciplines, which embrace a conception of science as critical, non-dogmatic, committed to falsification, and open to correction through intersubjective contestation. Feminist attunement to the politics of knowledge suggests an answer to this question which challenges the openness of mainstream approaches to systematic critique. Few mainstream scholars read feminist work. Even fewer PhD-granting institutions offer courses that incorporate feminist scholarship or require familiarity with feminist methodology in qualifying examinations. Mainstream scholars refusal to engage feminist scholarship individually and collectively violates the norms of scientific inquiry that they purportedly embrace, norms that require engagement with conjectures, refutations, and counterevidence (Popper 1972a, 1972b, Lakatos 1970). Far from rooting out distortion and error, bias is replicated as erroneous accounts of the world are accredited. In this way, whether wittingly or unwittingly, mainstream scholars reproduce and legitimate particular modes of raced and gendered power. In marked contrast to their claims of neutral, objective inquiry, mainstream scholars are complicit in fostering a mode of evidence blindness better understood as sanctioned ignorance. Indeed, precisely because of mistaken notions of value-neutral inquiry, they insulate certain power hierarchies from investigation. In his essay on ‘The Uses and Disadvantages of History’, Nietzsche (1983, p. 76) offered an explanation of this mode of intellectual complicity with sanctioned ignorance: ‘It requires a great deal of strength to be able to live and to forget the extent to which to live and to be unjust is one and the same thing.’ In contrast to an ‘inability to perceive’, Nietzsche suggests that evidence blindness may involve an active process of forgetting, social amnesia as a protective camouflage that confers strength. Nietzsche’s insight is richly evocative of disciplinary dynamics in mainstream knowledge production. By assuring themselves that they offer neutral descriptions and explanations of empirical events, mainstream scholars insulate themselves from recognition of modes of injustice embedded in their own research technologies, while affording themselves a means to forget the injustice constitutive of life. Erasure of feminist knowledge within mainstream studies of politics and policy, then, may be part of the infrastructure of forgetting, sanctioned ignorance that masks and perpetuates constitutive power relations. To the extent that this is the case, social amnesia should not be allowed to masquerade as scientific knowledge. (283-5)