In Memoriam: Sandra Harding (1935-2025)

Signs. A Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Rosi Braidotti, Sarah Bracke and Iris van der Tuin

2025

7 April 2025

In the history of feminist theory, there is a before and an after Sandra Harding. She has structured the language and the categories of feminist collective thinking, introducing the founding principles of what it means to think politically about feminist knowledge production. Harding revolutionized the notions of epistemological rigor, scientific objectivity, and accountability. She played a leading role in transforming feminist theory from the expression of activist politics and pains to the laboratory of robust and credible knowledge claims. In the course of time, Harding became all the more radical as she set the framework for what was to become a new institutional practice: feminist theory put to work in women’s and gender studies curricula, research, and publications.