Abstract

Is there a basis for understanding across differences of social position and cultural context? Feminists have treated this question in attempting to build a coherent analysis of gender that does not elide such differences as race, nationality, class, and sexual orientation. Yet there has been much difficulty in articulating a theory of knowledge in which understanding and difference are compatible. After examining Lorenzo Simpson's hermeneutic account of cross-cultural understanding and Sandra Harding's diversified standpoint epistemology, I argue that the resources available in the later work of Wittgenstein are particularly suited to describing understanding across difference. Drawing on his work, I argue that understanding is best described not in terms of something held in common, but rather in terms of building relations with others within which we know the world. In particular, I detail how Wittgenstein's arguments against representational and psychologist theories of meaning show the sociality of language and knowing in a way that is particularly helpful for describing understanding that recognizes difference. I then bring together Lugones' idea of a world and Wittgenstein's notion of a language-game to show how our actions and relations with one another comprise a terrain within which we know the world. Neither the concept of a world in Lugones' sense nor Wittgenstein's idea of a language-game require that all stand in the same position in order to know; in fact, that each does not stand in the same position with regard to what is known may be necessary for building of communities within which we know. These differences will affect not one's ability to know, but rather how one knows and the modes of acknowledgement open to each knower