“I like everything about standpoint – except the ‘standing’ and the ‘pointing’”

In this episode, we speak with Linda Martín Alcoff, professor of philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). As a PhD student working in epistemology, right at the time when Sandra Harding and Nancy Hartsock published their first articles on standpoint theory, Linda was immediately drawn to these emerging feminist and socialist theories.

Standpoint theorizing for Linda has always been deeply connected to her political work: she explains how her 1970s civil rights and anti-war activism has influenced her work and why, for her, identity politics has never been formulaic, or opposed to her Marxist views. In this context, she tells us about her close friendship with Charles Mills and how their political genealogies–rooted in Panama and Jamaica–shaped their philosophical thinking.

We also discuss why ‘standpoints’ are a better conceptual tool than “women’s ways of knowing” and what remains troublesome about the individualist notion of “standing and pointing”; and why it’s vitally important to look beyond our disciplinary silos and to rebuild the threads of connection to earlier generations of standpoint theorists and political movements.

Works discussed TBD.

Edited by Karoline Paier, Alex Bryant

Mixed by Lilith Charlet

Illustrations by Rachel Cripps

Music by The Years from the ⁠⁠Free Music Archive⁠⁠ licensed under an ⁠⁠Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License⁠⁠.