Summary: Book 4. The arena of knowledge: Virginia Woolf and the Feminist Practice
of Situated Knowledges / Kathrin Thiele (2018)
Elena van Hattum
Why was Virginia Woolf concerned with women, writing and fiction in her writing and how is
this linked to the value of ‘doing gender’ and the question of knowledge? → Feminist authors
have claimed that the question of knowledge is always also a question of fiction, it is
never not related to politics. Virginia Woolf said “Think we must!”; ‘we’ need to again pay
attention to the question of thinking in a new way.
Knowledge is produced. However, it is not merely a question of having (more) knowledge
about women or (more) women participate in the production of knowledge: it involves a
fundamental issue of who produces what kinds of knowledge for whom and from where.
‘Women’ and knowledge production
For the largest part of human history ‘women’ have been absent(ed) as the subjects of
knowledge production. I n A Room of One’s Own, Woolf proves this by collecting historical
data which shows that women were on the other side, as objects of knowledge production.
Women were absent as producers of knowledge but were objects of study. They are rarely
authors of book themselves, and they are not presented very positively in the books written
on the topic of ‘women’.
Knowledge and/as power
These situations do not and never did afflict only women: we need to embed discussion of
feminist epistemologies in a broader geopolitical and social scenery. It is important to
integrate into this narrative the sociopolitical transformations that have occured in a respect
to who is represent(ed) and is absent(ed) in knowledge in the last century, especially
after WWII and the official decline of colonialism and with this the realization that the claim of
‘universal humanism’ (Enlightenment) was only enjoyed by very few (western white mostly
male subjects). With this, the ‘truth’ is also not simply universal, neutral or objective, but
rather represents only a fraction of the assumed referent ‘we’ or ‘all’ that is claimed to be
addressed. It became evident that western scientific and public discourse on great
achievements of modernity and humanism were actually based on illegitimate
universalisation and the objectification and exclusion of many other lived realities.
The history of ‘universal knowledge’ and ‘objective science’ needs to be contextualised and
is to be seen as a harshly embattled terrain. World history has been narrativised according
to a Eurocentric perspective, hiding the violence that has enabled many forms of knowledge
and science. → Post-, de-, and anticolonial writers make clear that the question of
knowledge cannot be separated from the questions of where it speaks from, whom it
represents and how it is produced. Knowledge and its results (‘truths’) never emerge within a
political vacuum. Knowledge is therefore a question of power: supposedly universal, neutral
and objective is marked by a long history of colonialism, slavery and gender inequalities.
-Michel Foucault (French post-WWII poststructuralists): recognise production of
knowledge as always linked to questions of power. However, power is not only
top-down. As subject everybody becomes both subjected to power and receives agency.
Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in the same manner shows how claims of knowledge as
truths are woven into a net of established power relations that reproduces itself. She argues
of Situated Knowledges / Kathrin Thiele (2018)
Elena van Hattum
Why was Virginia Woolf concerned with women, writing and fiction in her writing and how is
this linked to the value of ‘doing gender’ and the question of knowledge? → Feminist authors
have claimed that the question of knowledge is always also a question of fiction, it is
never not related to politics. Virginia Woolf said “Think we must!”; ‘we’ need to again pay
attention to the question of thinking in a new way.
Knowledge is produced. However, it is not merely a question of having (more) knowledge
about women or (more) women participate in the production of knowledge: it involves a
fundamental issue of who produces what kinds of knowledge for whom and from where.
‘Women’ and knowledge production
For the largest part of human history ‘women’ have been absent(ed) as the subjects of
knowledge production. I n A Room of One’s Own, Woolf proves this by collecting historical
data which shows that women were on the other side, as objects of knowledge production.
Women were absent as producers of knowledge but were objects of study. They are rarely
authors of book themselves, and they are not presented very positively in the books written
on the topic of ‘women’.
Knowledge and/as power
These situations do not and never did afflict only women: we need to embed discussion of
feminist epistemologies in a broader geopolitical and social scenery. It is important to
integrate into this narrative the sociopolitical transformations that have occured in a respect
to who is represent(ed) and is absent(ed) in knowledge in the last century, especially
after WWII and the official decline of colonialism and with this the realization that the claim of
‘universal humanism’ (Enlightenment) was only enjoyed by very few (western white mostly
male subjects). With this, the ‘truth’ is also not simply universal, neutral or objective, but
rather represents only a fraction of the assumed referent ‘we’ or ‘all’ that is claimed to be
addressed. It became evident that western scientific and public discourse on great
achievements of modernity and humanism were actually based on illegitimate
universalisation and the objectification and exclusion of many other lived realities.
The history of ‘universal knowledge’ and ‘objective science’ needs to be contextualised and
is to be seen as a harshly embattled terrain. World history has been narrativised according
to a Eurocentric perspective, hiding the violence that has enabled many forms of knowledge
and science. → Post-, de-, and anticolonial writers make clear that the question of
knowledge cannot be separated from the questions of where it speaks from, whom it
represents and how it is produced. Knowledge and its results (‘truths’) never emerge within a
political vacuum. Knowledge is therefore a question of power: supposedly universal, neutral
and objective is marked by a long history of colonialism, slavery and gender inequalities.
-Michel Foucault (French post-WWII poststructuralists): recognise production of
knowledge as always linked to questions of power. However, power is not only
top-down. As subject everybody becomes both subjected to power and receives agency.
Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in the same manner shows how claims of knowledge as
truths are woven into a net of established power relations that reproduces itself. She argues
