Making feminist claims in the post-truth era: the authority of personal experience

Abstract

The increased visibility of feminism in mainstream culture has recently been noted, with the presence of both online and offline campaigns embedding feminist claims in a variety of everyday spaces. By granting recognition to women’s experiences, these campaigns continue the feminist practice of generating critical knowledge on the basis of gendered experience. In the post-truth era, however, the norms governing claims-making are being significantly reconstructed, with significant consequences for critiques of gender inequality. It is argued here that these norms are linked directly to a wider context of anti-feminism in which dismissing women’s claims is consistent with the goal that opponents of gender equality have of seeking and consolidating epistemic power in the face of what is perceived as systemic male disadvantage and victimhood. Returning to earlier debates within feminism, it is argued that the kinds of post-truth rhetoric used to dismiss women’s experience provide a challenge that feminism must confront. This rhetoric is often grounded in the authenticity of individual experience; however, experience cannot provide unmediated access to truth and, therefore, cannot provide the foundation for feminist claims. On the other hand, experience cannot merely offer one of many contested versions of ‘reality’. The excesses of both foundationalist and anti-foundationalist epistemology are countered with the argument that cognition is a human practice mediated by theoretical propositions which illuminate the question of what can be known. This is the role played by feminist theory in defending the role of experience.

On the verge between the scientific and the alternative: Swedish women’s claims about systemic side effects of the copper intrauterine device

“…The current ‘post-truth’ condition, where many counter-establishment knowledge claims are based on affective dispositions disconnected from any serious quest for knowledge ( Budgeon, 2021 ; Lynch, 2017 ), raises new challenges for the prospect of bridging lay and established knowledge. It risks diminishing the possibilities for groups such as the one studied in this article to be taken seriously and is likely to reinforce polarizing representations of ‘anti-scientific’ lay knowledge versus ‘scientific’ established knowledge.…”

“…Relatedly, the movement towards ‘epistemic democracy’ ( Lynch, 2017 ), through which expert knowledge increasingly competes or co-exists with other knowledge claims due to the democratization of the ability to access and spread information, increases the possibilities for marginalized groups to voice concerns and partake in knowledge production ( Rentschler, 2014 ). While epistemic democratization has been pointed out as paving the way for a ‘post-truth’ era ( Budgeon, 2021 ; Lynch, 2017 ), the ‘misinformation’ model, assuming a sharp epistemic divide between established medical expertise and lay knowledge production online, has also been placed in question ( Maslen and Lupton, 2019 ; Vuolanto et al, 2020 ). Scholarly attention has been directed at the ‘expert patient’ and a ‘blurring of the lines between lay and expert knowledges and scientific and non-scientific expertise in the health and medical realm’ ( Maslen and Lupton, 2019 : 1637).…”

Narrative Metaphors as a Qualitative Analytical Tool: Networked Webs of Oppression and Pedagogical Care for People of Colour in Academia

“…As Zimmerman and Dickerson (1994) wrote of narrative metaphors, they are “personal stories that persons have created” that allow them “to make meaning out of their experience as they interact with one another in a reciprocal meaning-making process” (p.233). By reflexively recounting the relational connections between educator and student as well as personal experience and “larger cultural stories” (ibid; Maclean et al, 2017), narrative metaphors tap into the webs of meaning not only as a therapeutic device, but as a vindication as much as an excavation of the authority of personal experience from the standpoint of a person of colour (Budgeon, 2021).…”

Gender equality mainstreaming and the Australian academy: paradoxical effects?

“…Indeed, any serious mainstream discourse on gender equality in the academy must be located in women's experientially based knowledges. As Budgeon [13], (p. 259) rightly argues, "In the post-truth era, feminism must continue to defend the importance of what women name as their experience and theorise what this tells us about the gendered structure of everyday life". In the section that follows we provide anecdotes that capture some of the everyday gender inequities we have each experienced as deeply embedded and woven into the everyday practices of academic life; pointing to what Lipton [25] has argued is the 'trauma' of the gender 'crisis' in the academy.…”