The Foundations of a Queer Philosophy of Science – Is Archaeology the Answer?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Despite a long history in the philosophy of the science that has defended the gendered, subjective, and value-laden nature of knowledge production, few (if any) inroads have been made into the formulation of an explicitly queer philosophy of science. In this paper, I argue that archaeologists are uniquely situated to develop such a queer philosophy of science. Ever since the groundbreaking and influential special edition of World Archaeology edited by Thomas Dowson in 2000, there has been a growing corpus of queer archaeological works. While these works have predominantly focused on a critique of heteronormative (and other normative) practices in archaeology, they lay the foundation for a newer, more empathetic, more human, and queerer science. Drawing on queer archaeology and feminist philosophies of science, I assert that a queer philosophy of science requires us to change the evidentiary requirements that are still rooted in Enlightenment positivist science, without abandoning our intellectual rigor. We should apply queer theory’s deconstruction of stable categories (identity and otherwise) as well as its political influences and goals, to our analysis of archaeological evidence. Only then can we produce a more queer and diverse understanding of the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33271