A concept devised by Haraway, Donna in response to two epistemological break trends in critical theory, particularly in feminism: the first, which is generally attributed to postmodernism and/or post-structuralism, is the relativist idea that there are no absolute forms of knowledge; the second, generally attributed to empiricism, is the realist idea that there are only absolute forms of knowledge. Both these positions are problematic in Harawayâs view: the first, because it rules out the possibility of calling anything to account because one cannot say with certainty that a particular thing or event exists or happened; the second, because it demands objective verification, i.e. a form of verification that is somehow independent of all human subjectivity. As Harawayâs work shows, both of these positions are untenable---she classifies them as âgod-tricksâ. Situated knowledge occupies the middle ground between these two extremes: it is at once historically contingent, deeply subjective, aware of its own meaning-making capabilities and potentialities, and committed to a faithful, no-nonsense (as Haraway puts it) account of the real world. Rather than trying to systematize the world and parcel it up and represent it as a machine, situated knowledge conceives the world as an earth-wide network of active connections and partial truths. Fundamental to the notion of situated knowledge is the idea that the world is active: it is not simply there waiting to be mapped. Further Reading: D. Haraway Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991).