Helpsheet on Patricia Hill COLLINS

Helpsheet created for Phi 383W, Spring 2002.

Helpsheet on

Patricia Hill COLLINS:

-- ***An alternative EPISTEMOLOGY poses a far greater challenge to dominant views than do alternative knowledge-CLAIMS.
-- Collins draws on two, distinct alternatives to Eurocentric, masculinist epistemologies: Afrocentric epistemologies and feminist epistemologies. She finds several points of commonality between these two. One important difference, however, is this: the Afrocentric epistemologies have greater institutional supportwithin the black community than feminist epistemologies have within the dominant, white community.
-- She leaves open the question of whether there are any knowledge-claims which hold up in translation from one epistemology to another.
-- Major differences between positivist (Eurocentric/ masculinist) epistemological assumptions and Afrocentric/feminist epistemological assumptions (contrast 1. with [1]; 2. with [2]; 3. with [3]):
EUROCENTRIC/MASCULINIST: 1. inquirer must be detached 2. emotion and values must be removed from the knowledge validation process 3. adversarial debate is thought to be the path to truth
AFROCENTRIC/FEMINIST: [1] inquirer must engage concrete experience [2] an ethic of caring and an ethic of personal accountability must be applied in the knowledge-validation process: (a) emotions and empathy are central to the knowledge-validation process; (b) personal credibility is relevant; (c)inquiry always has an ethical aim [3] dialogue is regarded as the way to assess knowledge-claims; connection and caring lead to truth