Abstract

Since the late twentieth century, feminist analysis of science and technology has been criticizing not only the absence of women as epistemic subjects and objects, but also their rather problematic presence as stereotyped and devalued other. Therefore, feminist analysis is challenged to find, first, innovative epistemic ways to empower those who are dis-empowered by gender hierarchies, racism, classism, homophobia and other ideological conditions that classify persons in structural hierarchies. Second, feminist analysis can investigate the epistemic ground on which persons counteract those structural hierarchies. I will argue that epistemological reasoning within feminist science and technology studies has to clarify the methodological and conceptual question of how to investigate gender. How does gender work as a conceptual framework? How does gender function as a social institution and an interactive apparatus? What happens if we investigate gender, including sex and sexuality rather as diffraction patterns than as differences? The paper wants to contribute to an epistemology of gender in scientific processes by way of analyzing the gendered entanglement of matter and meaning. The goal is to find innovative research methods for constructive interdisciplinary engagements between technosciences and humanities.