All knowledge is positional, shaped by the thinker’s formation

Evidence

I am committed to the idea of a politics of location. This does not mean all thought is necessarily limited and self-interested because of where it comes from, or anything like that. I mean something rather looser—that all thought is shaped by where it comes from, that knowledge is always to some degree “positional.” One can never escape the way in which one’s formation lays a kind of imprint on or template over what one is interested in, what kind of take one would have on any topic, what linkages one wants to make, and so on. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1190

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: The politics of location and positional knowledge prefigures standpoint theory and the situated analysis central to critical race and Islamophobia studies.
• DEFINE: Defines ‘politics of location’ — knowledge shaped by formation, not necessarily self-interested.