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Pictures, Pluralism, and Feminist Epistemology: Lessons from “Coming to Understand”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Letitia Meynell
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Abstract

Meynell's contention is that feminists should attend to pictures in science as distinctive bearers of epistemic content that cannot be reduced to propositions. Remarks on the practice and function of medical illustration—specifically, images Nancy Tuana used in her discussion of the construction of ignorance of women's sexual function (2004)—show pictures to be complex and powerful epistemic devices. Their affinity with perennial feminist concerns, the relation between epistemic subject and object, and the nature of social knowledge, are of particular interest.

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Type
Research Article
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Hypatia , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by Hypatia, Inc.

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