Entanglements for Visualization: Changing Research Outcomes through Feminist Theory

A growing body of work draws on feminist thinking to challenge assumptions about how people engage with and use visualizations. This work draws on feminist values, driving design and research guidelines that account for the influences of power and neglect. This prior work is largely prescriptive, however, forgoing articulation of how feminist theories of knowledge — or feminist epistemology — can alter research design and outcomes. At the core of our work is an engagement with feminist epistemology, drawing attention to how a new framework for how we know what we know enabled us to overcome intellectual tensions in our research. Specifically, we focus on the theoretical concept of entanglement, central to recent feminist scholarship, and contribute: a history of entanglement in the broader scope of feminist theory; an articulation of the main points of entanglement theory for a visualization context; and a case study of research outcomes as evidence of the potential of feminist epistemology to impact visualization research. This work answers a call in the community to embrace a broader set of theoretical and epistemic foundations and provides a starting point for bringing feminist theories into visualization research.