Feminist Epistemology: Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Knowledge

This paper endeavours to analyse feminist epistemologies and the main ideas propounded by various philosophers and theorists associated with them, delving into the historicity of how subjugated positions of females have been systematically incorporated into the mainstream bodies of knowledge through the process of ‘othering’ and the positing of such knowledge as being universal and objectively neutral and how this rooted bias has been unearthed and ‘deconstructed’ by various feminist epistemologies which strive to arrive at a ‘reconstructed’ frame of knowledge which aims at providing more accommodative spaces for those relegated to the margins and positions of subjugation, in this case- the females. The paper also analyses the tensions between the traditional and classical notions of knowledge production and the new emergent epistemologies, how the latter fill in the lacunae in the former and their quest to arrive at a conciliatory picture between them both through the lens of various positions in feminist epistemologies.