Identity K – MAGS
contributors
Anish Dayal
Jaden Lessnick
Ryan Powell
Zack Schnall
Andres Gannon
notes
A lot of the links/impacts under the identity politics header are also independent Ks that
you can read on case, but I didn’t want to double up and put cards in multiple places, so
if you wanna read something short against a K aff, that’s the place to look.
***Negative***
1NCs
1NC Identity politics
Beginning discussion with identity is essentialist – even if they
acknowledge identity’s fluidity, identity as a starting point lapses
into essentialism. They also over-determine autonomy which
ignores group conditions that aren’t predicated upon
individualism
Mowbray, 10 - PhD, Senior Lecturer at Sydney University and Co-Director, Sydney
Centre for International Law (Jacqueline, “Autonomy, Identity and Self-knowledge: A
New ‘Solution’ to the Liberal-Communitarian ‘Problem’?” January 2014 Sydney Law
School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 14/02)//jml
The problem of identity In bridging the gap between liberal and communitarian positions with the concept of self-
the recent literature assigns a critical role to identity, of which selfknowledge is to be gained. My concern with this approach is that taking identity as a
starting point for discussion results in a tendency to essentialise
identity . In other words, the relevant literature tends to assume that identity is
an object of some sort, with a fixed content, which we are capable of
discussing and discovering. In fact, however, work in many fields has shown
identity to be fluid, dynamic, negotiated and contested. Psychologists and
knowledge,
psychoanalysts from Freud onwards have deconstructed our notion of ‘the self’ to demonstrate the way in which our
identity is shaped by our life experiences. Sociolinguists have shown that we construct our identity, at least in part,
through language.12 Anthropologists have shown that ethnic identity is not fixed or ‘primordial’, but is constructed as a
result of social interactions with other groups. 13 As Judith Butler concludes in her book, Gender Trouble, identity is ‘a
Identity is not, therefore, something
pre-existing or ‘given’, which we can then discover, but something which is
constructed and subject to change. Of course, the recent literature which I am discussing does not
normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience’.14
deny this. In fact, to some extent, it specifically acknowledges the uncertainties associated with identity. Hague, for
example, in arguing that autonomy should be the process by which we develop our identity, treats the ‘multiple and
changing’15 nature of identity as the basis for an argument that individuals need to take control of that identity
while the literature acknowledges the complexities
associated with the concept of identity, in taking identity as the
starting point for discussion, it inevitably tends to lapse back
into an essentialist treatment of the concept. Arguably, this tendency to
essentialism was inherent also in the earlier communitarian view, given the
central role played by the concept of identity within communitarian thought. However, the early
communitarian literature was less prone to critique on this basis, as that
literature focused on what we might term ‘objective’ aspects of identity –
unchosen aspects of identity, such as gender and ethnic origin. In seeking to
overcome the gap between autonomy and identity by including more
individual, ‘chosen’ aspects of identity within the concept, the recent
literature leaves itself more open to questions about the objective existence
of the identity with which it is concerned. In other words, by constructing identity
themselves. Nonetheless,
as the concrete, tangible creation of individual choice, the literature invites
questions about whether identity in this sense really exists. This highlights
another aspect of identity which is, I think, inadequately accounted for in the
recent literature, namely that identity has not only individual but also
group elements. And group identity is not constructed solely by
autonomous individuals, but by social dynamics over which individuals
may have little control. The recent literature of course acknowledges the importance of collective identities.
However, in seeking to bridge the gap between autonomy and identity, it
focuses largely on the fact that individuals can choose between the various
collective identities available to them. The implicit or explicit argument here is that, as put so
elegantly by Sen: The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with
African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance-runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a
novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis
fan, a jazz musician, and someone who is deeply committed to the view that there are intelligent beings in outer space with
whom it is extremely urgent to talk (preferably in English). ... Given our inescapably plural identities, we have to decide on
this
account again risks simplifying the concept of identity , in that it
tends to position the individual as ultimately in control of his or her
identity. In fact, as noted above, identity is highly contingent, and this is particularly
the case when we are concerned with group identities, which emerge and
evolve as a result of social interactions with other groups, and within the
group itself.17
the relative importance of our different associations and affiliations in any particular context.16 But
Making the debate about identity politics diverts attention from
structural inequalities – makes oppression inevitable because it
uses a flawed starting-point
Smith 13 – intellectual, feminist, and anti-violence activist (Andrea, “The Problem with
‘Privilege’,” August 2013, http://anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-problemwith-privilege-2013.html) //AD
This kind of politics then challenges the notions of “safe space” often prevalent in many activist circles in the United States. The concept of safe space flows
once we have confessed our gender/race/settler/class
privileges, we can then create a safe space where others will not be
negatively impacted by these privileges. Of course because we have not
dismantled heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, settler colonialism or
capitalism, these confessed privileges never actually disappear in “safe
spaces.” Consequently, when a person is found guilty of his/her privilege in
these spaces, s/he is accused of making the space “unsafe.” This rhetorical
strategy presumes that only certain privileged subjects can make the space
“unsafe” as if everyone isn’t implicated in heteropatriarchy, white
supremacy, settler colonialism and capitalism. Our focus is shifted
from the larger systems that make the entire world unsafe, to
naturally from the logics of privilege. That is,
interpersonal conduct . In addition, the accusation of “unsafe” is also levied against people of color who express anger about
racism, only to find themselves accused of making the space “unsafe” because of their raised voices. The problem with safe space is the presumption that a safe
space is even possible. By contrast, instead of thinking of safe spaces as a refuge from colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, Ruthie Gilmore suggests that
safe space is not an escape from the real, but a place to practice the
real we want to bring into being . “Making power” models follow this suggestion in that
they do not purport to be free of oppression, only that they are
trying to create the world they would like to live in now. To give one smaller
example, when Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, organized, we questioned the assumption that “women of color” space is a safe space. In fact, participants
began to articulate that women of color space may in fact be a very dangerous space. We realized that we could not assume alliances with each other, but we would
actually have to create these alliances. One strategy that was helpful was rather than presume that we were acting “non-oppressively,” we built a structure that
would presume that we were complicit in the structures of white supremacy/settler colonialism/heteropatriarchy etc. We then structured this presumption into our
organizing by creating spaces where we would educate ourselves on issues in which our politics and praxis were particularly problematic. The issues we have
in this
space, while we did not ignore our individual complicity in oppression, we
developed action plans for how we would collectively try to transform our
politics and praxis. Thus, this space did not create the dynamic of the
confessor and the hearer of the confession. Instead, we presumed we are all
implicated in these structures of oppression and that we would need to
work together to undo them. Consequently, in my experience, this kind of
space facilitated our ability to integrate personal and social
transformation because no one had to anxiously worry about whether
they were going to be targeted as a bad person with undue privilege who
would need to publicly confess. The space became one that was based on
principles of loving rather than punitive accountability . Conclusion The politics of
privilege have made the important contribution of signaling how the structures of oppression constitute who we are as persons. However, as the rituals
of confessing privilege have evolved, they have shifted our focus from building social
movements for global transformation to individual self-improvement.
Furthermore, they rest on a white supremacist/colonialist notion of a subject that
can constitute itself over and against others through self-reflexivity. While trying to
keep the key insight made in activist/academic circles that personal and social transformation are interconnected, alternative projects have
developed that focus less on privilege and more the structures that create privilege.
These new models do not hold the “answer,” because the genealogy
of the politics of privilege also demonstrates that our activist/intellectual
projects of liberation must be constantly changing . Our
imaginations are limited by white supremacy, settler colonialism, etc., so
all ideas we have will not be “perfect.” The ideas we develop today also do not have to be based on the complete
disavowal of what we did yesterday because what we did yesterday teaches what we might do tomorrow. Thus, as we think not only
beyond privilege, but beyond the sense of self that claims privilege,
we open ourselves to new possibilities that we cannot imagine now for the
future.
covered include: disability, anti-Black racism, settler colonialism, Zionism and anti-Arab racism, transphobia, and many others. However,
Their form of politics fractures any meaningful change – the
atomization of social movements has created a form of “mesearch” rather than research which makes the aff’s impacts
inevitable
Chandler, 9 - Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster
(David, Questioning Global Political Activism”, What is Radical Politics Today Edited by
Jonathan Pugh, 81-82)//jml
politics is no less important to many of us today. Politics still gives us
a sense of social connection and social rootedness and gives meaning to many of our lives. It is just that
the nature and practices of this politics are different. We are less likely to engage in the formal
politics of representation - of elections and governments - but in post-territorial politics,
a politics where there is much less division between the private sphere and
the public one and much less division between national, territorial, concerns and global ones. This type of
politics is on the one hand ‘global’ but, on the other, highly individualised:
it is very much the politics of our everyday lives – the sense of meaning we get from thinking
However,
about global warming when we turn off the taps when we brush our teeth, take our rubbish out for recycling or cut back on
our car use - we might also do global politics in deriving meaning from the ethical or social value of our work, or in our
when
we do ‘politics’ nowadays it is less the ‘old’ politics, of self-interest, political
parties, and concern for governmental power, than the ‘new’ politics of
global ethical concerns. I further want to suggest that the forms and content of this new global approach to
subscription or support for good causes from Oxfam to Greenpeace and Christian Aid. I want to suggest that
the political are more akin to religious beliefs and practices than to the forms of our social political engagement in the
past. Global politics is similar to religious approaches in three vital respects: 1) global post-territorial politics are no longer
concerned with power, its’ concerns are free-floating and in many ways, existential, about how we live our lives; 2) global
politics revolve around practices with are private and individualised, they are about us as individuals and our ethical
the practice of global politics tends to be non-instrumental, we do
not subordinate ourselves to collective associations or parties and are more
likely to give value to our aspirations, acts, or the fact of our awareness of an issue, as an end initself. It is as if we are upholding our goodness or ethicality in the face of an
increasingly confusing, problematic and alienating world – our politics in this sense
choices; 3)
are an expression or voice, in Marx’s words, of ‘the heart in a heartless world’ or ‘the soul of a soulless condition’. The
practice of ‘doing politics’ as a form of religiosity is a highly conservative one. As Marx argued, religion was the ‘opium of
this is politics as a sedative or pacifier: it feeds an illusory view
of change at the expense of genuine social engagement and
transformation. I want to argue that global ethical politics reflects and
institutionalises our sense of disconnection and social atomisation and
results in irrational and unaccountable government policy making . I
the people’ -
want to illustrate my points by briefly looking at the practices of global ethics in three spheres, those of radical political
activism, government policy making and academia. Radical activism People often argue that there is nothing passive or
conservative about radical political activist protests, such as the 2003 anti-war march, anti-capitalism and antiglobalisation protests, the huge march to Make Poverty History at the end of 2005, involvement in the World Social
these new forms of protest are highly
individualised and personal ones - there is no attempt to build a social
or collective movement. It appears that theatrical suicide, demonstrating, badge and bracelet wearing are
Forums or the radical jihad of Al-Qaeda. I disagree;
ethical acts in themselves: personal statements of awareness, rather than attempts to engage politically with society. This
It is as if people are
more concerned with the creation of a sense of community through
differences than with any political debate, shared agreement or collective
purpose. It seems to me that if someone was really concerned with ending
war or with ending poverty or with overthrowing capitalism, that political
views and political differences would be quite important. Is war caused by capitalism,
by human nature, or by the existence of guns and other weapons? It would seem important to
debate reasons , causes and solutions, it would also seem necessary to give those political
differences an organisational expression if there was a serious
project of social change. Rather than a political engagement with the world, it seems that radical political
is illustrated by the ‘celebration of differences’ at marches, protests and social forums.
activism today is a form of social disengagement – expressed in the anti-war marchers’ slogan of ‘Not in My Name’, or the
assumption that wearing a plastic bracelet or setting up an internet blog diary is the same as engaging in political debate.
it seems that political activism is a practice which isolates individuals
who think that demonstrating a personal commitment or awareness of
problems is preferable to engaging with other people who are often
dismissed as uncaring or brain-washed by consumerism. The narcissistic aspects of the
In fact,
practice of this type of global politics are expressed clearly by individuals who are obsessed with reducing their carbon
footprint, deriving their idealised sense of social connection from an ever increasing awareness of themselves and by
giving ‘political’ meaning to every personal action. Global ethics appear to be in demand because they offer us a sense of
social connection and meaning while at the same time giving us the freedom to construct the meaning for ourselves, to
pick our causes of concern, and enabling us to be free of responsibilities for acting as part of a collective association, for
While the appeal of global ethical politics
is an individualistic one, the lack of success or impact of radical activism is
also reflected in its rejection of any form of social movement or
organisation. Strange as it may seem, the only people who are keener on global ethics than radical activists are
winning an argument or for success at the ballot-box.
political elites. Since the end of the Cold War, global ethics have formed the core of foreign policy and foreign policy has
tended to dominate domestic politics. Global ethics are at the centre of debates and discussion over humanitarian
intervention, ‘healing the scar of Africa’, the war on terror and the ‘war against climate insecurity’. Tony Blair argued in
the Guardian last week that ‘foreign policy is no longer foreign policy’ (Timothy Garten Ash, ‘Like it or Loath it, after 10
years Blair knows exactly what he stands for’, 26 April 2007), this is certainly true. Traditional foreign policy, based on
strategic geo-political interests with a clear framework for policy-making, no longer seems so important. The government
is down-sizing the old Foreign and Commonwealth Office where people were regional experts, spoke the languages and
were engaged for the long-term, and provides more resources to the Department for International Development where its
staff are experts in good causes. This shift was clear in the UK’s attempt to develop an Ethical Foreign Policy in the 1990s
– an approach which openly claimed to have rejected strategic interests for values and the promotion of Britain’s caring
and sharing ‘identity’. Clearly, the projection of foreign policy on the basis of demonstrations of values and identity, rather
than an understanding of the needs and interests of people on the ground, leads to ill thought-through and short-termist
policy-making, as was seen in the ‘value-based’ interventions from Bosnia to Iraq (see Blair’s recent Foreign Affairs article,
‘A Battle for Global Values’, 86:1 (2007), pp.79–90). Governments have been more than happy to put global ethics at the
top of the political agenda for - the same reasons that radical activists have been eager to shift to the global sphere – the
freedom from political responsibility that it affords them. Every government and international institution has shifted from
strategic and instrumental policy-making based on a clear political programme to the ambitious assertion of global causes
– saving the planet, ending poverty, saving Africa, not just ending war but solving the causes of conflict etc – of course, the
more ambitious the aim the less anyone can be held to account for success and failure. In fact, the more global the
problem is, the more responsibility can be shifted to blame the US or the UN for the failure to translate ethical claims into
concrete results. Ethical global questions, where the alleged values of the UN, the UK, the ‘civilised world’, NATO or the
EU are on the line in ‘wars of choice’ from the war on terror to the war on global warming lack traditional instrumentality
because they are driven less by the traditional interests of Realpolitik than the narcissistic search for meaning or identity.
Governments feel the consequences of their lack of social connection, even
more than we do as individuals; it undermines any attempt to represent
shared interests or cohere political programmes. As Baudrillard suggests, without a
connection to the ‘represented’ masses, political leaders are as open to ridicule and exposure as the ‘Emperor with no
clothes’ (In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, New York: Semiotext(e), 1983, for example). It is this lack of shared social
goals which makes instrumental policy-making increasingly problematic. As Donald Rumsfeld stated about the war on
terror, ‘there are no metrics’ to help assess whether the war is being won or lost. These wars and campaigns, often alleged
to be based on the altruistic claim of the needs and interests of others, are demonstrations and performances, based on
ethical claims rather than responsible practices and policies. Max Weber once counterposed this type of politics – the
‘ethics of conviction’ – to the ‘ethics of responsibility’ in his lecture on ‘Politics as a Vocation’. The desire to act on the
international scene without a clear strategy or purpose has led to highly destabilising interventions from the Balkans to
Iraq and to the moralisation of a wide range of issues from war crimes to EU membership requirements. Today more and
more people are ‘doing politics’ in their academic work. This is the reason for the boom in International Relations (IR)
study and the attraction of other social sciences to the global sphere. I would argue that the attraction of IR for many
people has not been IR theory but the desire to practise global ethics. The boom in the IR discipline has coincided with a
rejection of Realist theoretical frameworks of power and interests and the sovereignty/anarchy problematic. However, I
would argue that this rejection has not been a product of theoretical engagement with Realism but an ethical act of
rejection of Realism’s ontological focus. It seems that our ideas and our theories say much more about us than the world
we live in. Normative theorists and Constructivists tend to support the global ethical turn arguing that we should not be as
concerned with ‘what is’ as with the potential for the emergence of a global ethical community. Constructivists, in
particular, focus upon the ethical language which political elites espouse rather than the practices of power. But the most
dangerous trends in the discipline today are those frameworks which have taken up Critical Theory and argue that
focusing on the world as it exists is conservative problem-solving while the task for critical theorists is to focus on
Critical thought then becomes
a process of wishful thinking rather than one of engagement, with its
advocates arguing that we need to focus on clarifying our own ethical
frameworks and biases and positionality, before thinking about or teaching
on world affairs. This becomes ‘me-search’ rather than research. We
emancipatory alternative forms of living or of thinking about the world.
have moved a long way from Hedley Bull’s (1995) perspective that, for academic research to be truly radical, we had to put
The inward-looking and
narcissistic trends in academia, where we are more concerned with our
reflectivity – the awareness of our own ethics and values – than with
engaging with the world, was brought home to me when I asked my IR students which theoretical
our values to the side to follow where the question or inquiry might lead.
frameworks they agreed with most. They mostly replied Critical Theory and Constructivism. This is despite the fact that
the students thought that states operated on the basis of power and self-interest in a world of anarchy. Their theoretical
preferences were based more on what their choices said about them as ethical individuals, than about how theory might be
used to understand and engage with the world. Conclusion I have attempted to argue that there is a lot at stake in the
Politics has become a religious activity,
an activity which is no longer socially mediated; it is less and less an
activity based on social engagement and the testing of ideas in public
debate or in the academy . Doing politics today, whether in radical activism,
government policy-making or in academia, seems to bring people into a one-to-one
relationship with global issues in the same way religious people have a one-to-one relationship with
their God. Politics is increasingly like religion because when we look for
meaning we find it inside ourselves rather than in the external
consequences of our ‘political’ acts. What matters is the conviction or the act in itself: its connection
radical understanding of engagement in global politics.
to the global sphere is one that we increasingly tend to provide idealistically. Another way of expressing this limited sense
of our subjectivity is in the popularity of globalisation theory – the idea that instrumentality is no longer possible today
because the world is such a complex and interconnected place and therefore there is no way of knowing the consequences
The more we engage in the new politics where there is an
unmediated relationship between us as individuals and global issues, the
less we engage instrumentally with the outside world, and the less we engage with our
of our actions.
peers and colleagues at the level of political or intellectual debate and organisation.
Using the ballot as a referendum on identity cedes agency to the
sovereign, which recreates the violence against social
movements that they kritik
Campbell, 98 - Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle
(David, “Performing Politics and the Limits of Language” 1998)//jml
Those who argue that hate speech demands juridical responses assert that
not only does the speech communicate, but that it constitutes an injurious
act. This presumes that not only does speech act, but that "it acts upon the addressee in an injurious way" (16). This
argumentation is, in Butler's eyes, based upon a "sovereign conceit" whereby
speech wields a sovereign power, acts as an imperative, and
embodies a causative understanding of representation. In this manner, hate speech
constitutes its subjects as injured victims unable to respond themselves and in need of the law's intervention to restrict if
This idealization of the speech act as a
sovereign action (whether positive or negative) appears linked with the idealization of
sovereign state power or, rather, with the imagined and forceful voice of that
power. It is as if the proper power of the state has been expropriated,
delegated to its citizens, and the state then reemerges as a neutral
instrument to which we seek recourse to protects as from other citizens,
who have become revived emblems of a (lost) sovereign power (82). Two elements of this are paradoxical. First, the
sovereign conceit embedded in conventional renderings of hate speech
comes at a time when understanding power in sovereign terms is becoming
(if at all ever possible) even more difficult. Thus the juridical response to hate speech helps deal with an onto-political
problem: "The constraints of legal language emerge to put an end to this
particular historical anxiety [the problematisation of sovereignty], for the law requires that
we resituate power in the language of injury, that we accord injury the
status of an act and trace that act to the specific conduct of a subject" (78). The
not censor the offending words, and punish the speaker:
second, which stems from this, is that (to use Butler's own admittedly hyperbolic formulation) "the state produces hate
speech." By this she means not that the state is the sovereign subject from which the various slurs emanate, but that within
the frame of the juridical account of hate speech "the category cannot exist without the state's ratification, and this power
of the state's judicial language to establish and maintain the domain of what will be publicly speakable suggests that the
state plays much more than a limiting function in such decisions; in fact, the state actively produces the domain of publicly
acceptable speech, demarcating the line between the domains of the speakable and the unspeakable, and retaining the
The sovereign conceit of the
juridical argument thus linguistically resurrects the sovereign
subject at the very moment it seems most vulnerable, and reaffirms the
sovereign state and its power in relation to that subject at the very moment
its phantasmatic condition is most apparent. The danger is that the
resultant extension of state power will be turned against the
social movements that sought legal redress in the first place (24)
power to make and sustain the line of consequential demarcation" (77).
Reject their focus of identity in place of analytical categories –
identity-based politics forego the possibility for institutional
change
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
*we do not endorse ableist language
aspects of what I term
"Paradigmatic Intersectionality". Only when brought together do all five aspects of
intersectionality effectively address the dilemmas posed by the Oppression
Olympics. ** Figure 3 about here ** Intersectionality takes seriously race, gender,
sexual orientation and class as analytical categories rather than just as
identities /" Why? If we focus solely on race as an identity, we are limited to
identity-based policy solutions that get bogged down in debates about the
legitimacy and humanity of the individuals themselves, which ignores the
role of institutions in shaping politics. The previous section on Individual-Institutional
Interactions, however, taught us that we can't simply focus on the structure in response. Intersectionality's
approach to politics can illuminate new ways to think about longstanding
debates such as affirmative action and multiracial identity. Focusing on
gender, race, class and sexual orientation as identities ushers in the
reification of lived experience^" which often leads to paralyzing claims of
"uniqueness," "incommensurability," and the dreaded Oppression
Olympics. Using sexual orientation, gender, class and race as analytical
categories accepts the lived experience of people without making it a
condition of group formation, epistemology, or agenda setting, further
opening opportunities for deep political solidarity. This expansion beyond
the limits of identity politics in no way dismisses identity as irrelevant or downright
pernicious, as some advocates of colorblindness would do. Instead the work opens up space for
the first benefit of intersectionality: creating diverse coalitions that are
non-identity based but may still generate identity-based benefits.
Intersectional approaches neither eschew identity nor remain mired in it.
Multiple planes of interaction (the organizational, intersubjective, experiential and representational)liv
and Categorical Multiplicity open up avenues of agency without ignoring the role of
Individual-Institutional Interactions. Take, for example, the news media's
longstanding overdependence on single black mothers as prototypes of
welfare recipients.lv Intersectional analyses can certainly describe this problem,
Analyzing American Politics From an Intersectional Perspective Figure 3 shows all five
but it can also offer innovative solutions. A 20th century identity politicsladen solution might be civil rights driven: getting more Black faces in our
newsroom to counter this overdependence. Not only is that a very indirect solution to this
particular problem, one strategy to achieve it, affirmative action, has been
eviscerated by the Supreme Court in recent years, thanks in part to Movement
Backlash. A 20th century approach to this problem would pour most resources into defending and attempting to
resuscitate the rollbacks of affirmative action programs at the state and federal levels. A noble effort, perhaps, but is it the
A 21st century intersectional
analysis instead comprehensively attends to Time Dynamics and
Individual-Institution Interactions in order to identify an unlikely and
previously unidentified site of action for welfare activists: the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), whose decisions about consolidation of
media ownership can dramatically affect the diversity of images portrayed
of women on welfare.lvi Here they might encounter new and largely
counterintuitive allies in an effort to more accurately represent their stories
and change the size of their microphone relative to the very large ones
carried by political elites. This kind of simultaneous attentiveness to Time Dynamics and Individualmost appropriate allocation of resources for this particular challenge?
Institutional Interactions follows in the footsteps of many scholars, including Iris Marion Young in her thinking of
categories as serial collectives. Unfortunately Young followed 20th century practice by discussing only one category,
gender, in depth. Intersectionality integrates all of the analytical categories as interlocking categories of difference. lvii
Black female athletes endure a
tremendous amount of surveillance and pressurelviii to conform to a "Black
Lady" public imagelix that is simultaneously liberating (from the "nappy-headed hos"
stereotype) and constraining (preventing complete autonomy of personal expression, including its
Returning to the example of the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights,
heterosexism). Significantly such athletes experience that pressure from coaches who are themselves often Black women.
Time Dynamics improves Young's original formulation by acknowledging
the accrual of power over time by multiple centers of power, and Diversity
Within recognizes the multiple centers of power as sites of struggle for the
power of self-definition. Whether through U.S. census categories,
discriminatory policies like segregation, detention and internment, or incentivedriven policies like affirmative action, government and its agents play
a significant role in the access we have to freedom of
identification and equality of opportunity in the United States. One final
example of the relationship among the five prongs of intersectionality can
illuminate the need for all five aspects in American political discourse.
Millennial-generation driven identity movements like the
Multiracial Movement have sought complete freedom of selfidentification in all aspects of their lives. From the perspective of Categorical
Multiplicity and Time Dynamics it is important to recognize the politically
charged practice of "passing" and its legacy as part of the resistance to
the idea of a multiracial identity and its goals.
1NC Modules
1NC – Wounded Attachments
Narratives of suffering reinscribe oppression - exclude anyone
who does not fit the model
Brown 96 - Professor of Women's Studies and Legal Studies, and is Co-Director of the
Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. (Wendy, The
University of Chicago Law School, Roundtable, 1996) //AD
If, taken together, the two passages from Foucault we have been consider- ing call
feminists to account in our compulsion to put everything about women into discourse,
they do not yet exhaust the phenomenon of being ensnared 'in the folds of our own
discourses.' For if the problem I have been discussing is easy enough to see--indeed,
largely familiar to those who track techniques of co-optation--at the level of legal and
bureaucratic discourse, it is altogether more disquieting when it takes the form of
regulatory discourse in our own sub- and counter-cultures of resistance . . . when
confessing injury becomes that which attaches us to the injury, paralyzes us within it,
and prevents us from seeking or even desiring a status other than injured. In an age of
social identification through attributes marked as culturally significant--gender, race,
sexuality, and so forth--confessional discourse, with its truth-bearing status in a postepistemological universe, not only regulates the confessor in the name of freeing her as
Foucault described that logic, but extends beyond the confess- ing individual to
constitute a regulatory truth about the identity group. Confessed truths are assembled
and deployed as "knowledge" about the group. This phenomenon would seem to
undergird a range of recurring troubles in feminism, from the "real woman" rejoinder to
post-structuralist deconstructions of her, to totalizing descriptions of women's
experience that are the inadvertent effects of various kinds of survivor stories. Thus, for
example, the porn star who feels miserably exploited, violated and humiliated in her
work invariably monopolizes the truth about sex work; as the girl with math anxieties
constitutes the truth about women and math; as eating disor- ders have become the truth
about women and food; as sexual abuse and viola- tion occupy the knowledge terrain of
women and sexuality. In other words, even as feminism aims to affirm diversity among
women and women's ex- periences, confession as the site of production of truth and its
convergence with feminist suspicion and deauthorization of truth from other sources
tends to reinstate a unified discourse in which the story of greatest suffering becomes the
true story of woman. (I think this constitutes part of the rhetorical power of MacKinnon's
work; analytically, the epistemological superiority of confes- sion substitutes for the
older, largely discredited charge of false consciousness). Thus, the adult who does not
suffer from her or his childhood sexual experi- ence, the lesbian who does not feel
shame, the woman of color who does not primarily or "correctly" identify with her
marking as such--these figures are excluded as bonafide members of the categories
which also claim them. Their status within these discourses is that of being "in denial,"
"passing" or being a "race traitor." This is the norm-making process in feminist
traditions of "breaking silence" which, ironically, silence and exclude the very women
these traditions mean to empower. (Is it surprising, when we think in this vein, that
there is so little feminist writing on heterosexual pleasure?)But if these practices tacitly
silence those whose experiences do not parallel those whose suffering is most marked (or
whom the discourse produces as suffering markedly), they also condemn those whose
sufferings they record to a permanent identification with that suffering. Here, we
experience a temporal ensnaring in 'the folds of our own discourses' insofar as we
identify ourselves in speech in a manner that condemns us to live in a present
dominated by the past. But what if speech and silence aren't really opposites? Indeed,
what if to speak incessantly of one's suffering is to silence the possibilities of overcoming
it, of living beyond it, of identifying as something other than it? What if this incessant
speech not only overwhelms the experiences of others, but alternative (unutterable?
traumatized? fragmentary? inassimilable?) zones of one's own experience? Conversely,
what if a certain modality of silence about one's suffering--and I am suggesting that we
must consider modalities of silence as varied as modalities of speech and discourse--is to
articulate a variety of possibilities not otherwise available to the sufferer?
Identity politics recreates the politics of resentment –
Bhambra and Margree 10 – U Warwick—AND—Victoria Margree—School of
Humanities, U Brighton (Gurminder K, Victoria, “Identity politics and the Need for a
‘Tomorrow’,” academia,
http://www.academia.edu/471824/Identity_Politics_and_the_Need_for_a_Tomorrow
_) //AD
2 The Reification of Identity We wish to turn now to a related problem within identity politicsthat can be best described as the problem of
the
reification of politicised identities . Brown (1995) positions herself within thedebate about identity politics by
seeking to elaborate on “the wounded character of politicised identity’s desire” (ibid:
the problem of “wounded attachments” whereby a claim to identity becomes
over-invested in its own historical suffering and perpetuates its
55); thatis,
injury through its refusal to give up its identity claim. Brown’s argument is that where politicised
identity is founded upon an experience of exclusion, for example, exclusion itself
becomes perversely valorised in the continuance of that identity .
group activity operates to maintain and reproduce the identity created by injury
(exclusion) rather than– and indeed, often in opposition to – resolving the injurious
In such cases,
social relations that generated claims around that identity in the
first place. If things have to have a history in order to have af uture, then the problem becomes that of how history is con-structed in order to make
To the extent that, for Brown, identity is associated primarily with (historical) injury, the
future for that identity is then already determined by the injury “as both
bound to the history that produced it and as a reproach to the present which embodies that history” (ibid 1995: 73). Brown’s sugthe future.
gestion that as it is not possible to undo the past, the focus back- wards entraps the identity in reactionary practices, is, we believe,too stark and we will pursue this
Politicised identity, Brown maintains, “emerges and obtains its unifying coherence through
the politicisation of exclusion from an ostensible universal , as a
protest against exclusion” (ibid: 65). Its continuing existence requires both a belief in the
legitimacy of the universal ideal (for example, ideals of opportunity, and re- ward in proportion to effort) and enduring
exclusion from those ideals. Brown draws upon Nietzsche in arguing that such identi-ties, produced
later in the article.
in reaction to conditions of disempowerment andinequality, then become
invested in their own impotence through practices of , for example, reproach,
complaint, and revenge . These are “reactions” in the Nietzschean sense since they are substitutes for
actions or can be seen as negative forms of action. Rather than acting to
remove the cause(s) of suffering, that suf-fering is instead
ameliorated (to some extent) through “the estab-lishment of suffering as
the measure of social virtue ” (ibid 1995:70), and is compensated for by
the vengeful pleasures of recrimi-nation . Such practices , she argues, stand in
sharp distinction to –in fact, provide obstacles to – practices that would seek to dispel
the conditions of exclusion. Brown casts the dilemma discussed above in terms of a choicebetween past and future, and
adapting Nietzsche, exhorts theadoption of a (collective) will that would become the “redeemer of history” (ibid: 72) through its focus on the possibilities of creating different futures. As Brown reads Nietzsche, the one thingthat the will cannot exert its power over is the past, the “it was”.Confronted with its impotence with
respect to the events of thepast, the will is threatened with becoming simply an “angry spec-tator” mired in bitter recognition of its own helplessness. The onehope
for the will is that it may, instead, achieve a kind of mastery over that past such that, although “what has happened” cannotbe altered, the past can be denied the
power of continuing to de-termine the present and future. It is only this focus on the future, Brown continues, and the capacity to make a future in the face of
human frailties and injustices that spares us from a rancorous decline into despair. Identity politics structured by ressentiment – that is, by suffering caused by
past events – can only break outof the cycle of “slave morality” by remaking the present againstthe terms of the past, a remaking that requires a “forgetting” of that
past. An act of liberation, of self-affirmation, this “forgettingof the past” requires an “overcoming” of the past that offers iden-tity in relationship to suffering, in
favour of a future in whichidentity is to be defined differently. In arguing thus, Brown’s work becomes aligned with a posi-tion that sees the way forward for
emancipatory politics as re-siding in a movement away from a “politics of memory” (Kilby 2002: 203) that is committed to articulating past injustices andsuffering.
While we agree that investment in identities prem-ised upon suffering can function as an obstacle to alleviating the causes of that suffering, we believe that Brown’s
we share a concern about any turn to the future that
is figured as a complete abandonment of the past. This is because for those who have suffered
oppression and exclusion, the injunction to give up articulating a pain that is still felt may seem
cruel and impossible to meet. We would argue instead that the “ turn to the future ” that theorists such as Brown and
argument as outlined is problematic. First, following Kilby (2002),
Grosz callfor, to revitalise feminism and other emancipatory politics,
need not be conceived of as a brute
rejection of the past . Indeed, Brown herself recognises the problems involved here, stating that [since] erased histories and
historical invisibility are themselves suchintegral elements of the pain inscribed in most subjugated identities[then] the counsel of forgetting, at least in its
unreconstructedNietzschean form, seems inappropriate if not cruel (1995: 74). She implies, in fact, that the demand exerted by those in painmay be no more than
the demand to exorcise that pain throughrecognition: “all that such pain may long for – more than revenge– is the chance to be heard into a certain release,
recognised intoself-overcoming, incited into possibilities for triumphing over, and hence, losing itself” (1995: 74-75). Brown wishes to establish the political
importance of remembering “painful” historical events but with a crucial caveat: that the purpose of remembering pain is to enable its release . The challenge then,
according to her,is to create a political culture in which this project does not mutate into one of remembering pain for its own sake. Indeed, if Brown feels that
this may be “a pass where we ought to part with Nietzsche” (1995: 74), then Freud may be a more suit-able
companion. Since his early work with Breuer, Freud’s writ-ings have suggested the (only apparent) paradox that remember-ing is often a
condition of forgetting. The hysterical patient, who is doomed to repeat in symptoms and
compulsive actions a past she cannot adequately recall, is helped to remember that traumatic past in order then to move beyond it: she must remember inorder to forget and to
forget in order to be able to live in the present. 7 This model seems to us to be particularly helpful for thedilemma articulated
by both Brown (1995) and Kilby (2002),insisting as it does that “forgetting” (at least, loosening the holdof the past, in order to enable the future) cannot be
achieved without first remembering the traumatic past. Indeed, this wouldseem to be similar to the message of Beloved , whose central motif of haunting (is the
adult woman, “Beloved”, Sethe’s murderedchild returned in spectral form?) dramatises the tendency of theunanalysed traumatic past to keep on returning,
constraining, asit does so, the present to be like the past, and thereby, disallow-ing the possibility of a future different from that past. As Sarah Ahmed argues in her
in order to break the seal of the past , in order to move away from attach-ments that
are hurtful, we must first bring them into the realm of political action ”
response to Brown, “
the task of analys-ing the traumatic past, and thus opening up the
possibility of political action, is unlikely to be achievable by individuals on their own, but
that this, instead, requires a “community” of participants dedicated to the serious epistemic work of
rememberingand interpreting the objective social conditions that made up thatpast and continue in the present. The “pain” of historical
injury is not simply an individual psychological issue, but stems from objective social
conditions which perpetuate, for the most part, forms of injustice and inequality into the
present. In sum, Brown presents too stark a choice between past andfuture. In the example of Beloved with which we began thisarticle, Paul D’s acceptance
(2004: 33). We would add that
of Sethe’s experiences of slavery asdistinct from his own, enable them both to arrive at new under-standings of their experience. Such understanding is a way of
partially “undoing” the (effects of) the past and coming to terms with the locatedness of one’s being in the world (Mohanty 1995). As this example shows, opening
up a future, and attending to theongoing effects of a traumatic past, are only incorrectly under-stood as alternatives. A second set of problems with Brown’s critique
of identity poli-tics emerge from what we regard as her tendency to individualise social problems as problems that are the possession and theresponsibility of the
the problems associated with identity politics can be overcome
through a “shift in the character of political expression and politi-cal claims common to much politicised identity”
(1995: 75). She defines this shift as one in which identity would be expressed in terms of desire rather
“wounded” group. Brown suggests that
than of ontology by supplanting the lan-guage of “I am” with the
language of “I want this for us” (1995:75). Such a reconfiguration, she argues, would create an opportu-nity to
“rehabilitate the memory of desire within identificatory processes…prior to [their] wounding” (1995: 75). It would fur-ther
refocus attention on the future possibilities present in the
identity as opposed to the identity being foreclosed through its
attention to past-based grievances .
1NC – Tuck and Yang
Beginning with a politics of pain centered research is dangerous
– the academy displaces marginal populations by including their
narratives of pain but not their subjectivity
Tuck and Yang, 14 – *PhD in Urban Education, Assistant Professor of Educational
Foundations, and Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New
York **Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies (Eve, and K.W., “R-Words: Refusing
Research,” In “Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and
communities” academia.edu)//jml
educational research and much of social
science research has been concerned with documenting damage, or
empirically substantiating the oppression and pain of Native communities, urban
communities, and other disenfranchised communities. Damage-centered researchers
may operate, even benevolently, within a theory of change in which harm must be
recorded or proven in order to convince an outside adjudicator that reparations are deserved. These reparations
presumably take the form of addi- tional resources, settlements,
affirmative actions, and other material, political, and sovereign adjustments. Eve has described this
theory of change1 as both colonial and flawed, because it relies upon
Western notions of power as scarce and concentrated, and because it
requires disenfranchised communities to posi- tion themselves as both
singularly defective and powerless to make change (2010). Finally, Eve has observed that “won”
Elsewhere, Eve (Tuck, 2009, 2010) has argued that
reparations rarely become reality, and that in many cases, communities are left with a narrative that tells them that they are broken.
Similarly, at the center of the analysis in this chapter is a concern with the fixation social science research has exhibited in eliciting pain
Academe’s demon- strated
fascination with telling and retelling narratives of pain is
troubling, both for its voyeurism and for its consumptive implacability.
Imagining “itself to be a voice, and in some disciplinary iterations, the
voice of the colonised” (Simpson, 2007, p. 67, emphasis in the original) is not just a rare historical
occurrence in anthropology and related fields. We observe that much of the work of
the academy is to reproduce stories of oppression in its own voice. At first, this may
stories from com- munities that are not White, not wealthy, and not straight.
read as an intolerant condemnation of the academy, one that refuses to forgive past blunders and see how things have changed in recent
decades. However, it is our view that while many individual scholars have cho- sen to pursue other lines of inquiry than the pain narratives
novice researchers emerge from doctoral programs eager to
launch pain-based inquiry projects because they believe that such
approaches embody what it means to do social science. The collection of pain narratives and
typical of their disciplines,
the theories of change that champion the value of such narratives are so prevalent in the social sciences that one might surmise that they are
indeed what the academy is about. In her examination of the symbolic violence of the academy, bell hooks (1990) portrays the core message
No need to hear your voice when I can
talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No
need to hear your voice . Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to
from the academy to those on the margins as thus:
you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself anew. I am still author,
authority. I am still colonizer the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk. (p. 343)
Hooks’s words
resonate with our observation of how much of social science research is
concerned with providing recognition to the presumed voiceless, a
recognition that is enamored with knowing through pain. Further, this passage describes
the ways in which the researcher’s voice is constituted by, legitimated by, animated
by the voices on the margins. The researcher-self is made anew by telling
back the story of the marginalized/subaltern subject. Hooks works to untangle the almost
imperceptible differences between forces that silence and forces that seemingly liberate by inviting those on the margins to speak, to tell
the forces that invite those on the margins to speak also say, “Do
not speak in a voice of resistance. Only speak from that space in the margin
that is a sign of deprivation, a wound, an unfulfilled longing. Only speak
your pain” (hooks, 1990, p. 343). The costs of a politics of recognition that is rooted in naming pain have been critiqued by recent
their stories. Yet
decolonizing and feminist scholars (Hartman, 1997, 2007; Tuck, 2009). In Scenes of Subjection, Sadiya Hartman (1997) discusses how
rec- ognizing the personhood of slaves enhanced the power of the Southern
slave- owning class. Supplicating narratives of former slaves were deployed effectively by abolitionists, mainly White, wellto-do, Northern women, to generate portraits of abuse that ergo recognize slaves as human (Hartman, 2007). In response, new laws
afforded minimal standards of existence, “making personhood coterminous with injury” (Hartman, 1997, p. 93), while simultaneously
authorizing necessary violence to suppress slave agency. The slave emerges as a legal person only when seen as criminal or “a violated body
Recognition “humanizes” the slave, but is
predicated upon her or his abjection. You are in pain, therefore you are.
“[T]he recognition of humanity require[s] the event of excessive violence,
cruelty beyond the limits of the socially tolerable, in order to acknowledge
and protect the slave’s person” (p. 55). Furthermore, Hartman describes how slave-as-victim as human
in need of limited forms of protection” (p. 55).
accordingly establishes slave-as-agent as criminal. Applying Hartman’s analysis, we note how the agency of Margaret Garner or Nat Turner
can only be viewed as outsider violence that humane society must reject while simultaneously upholding the legitimated violence of the
state to punish such outsider violence. Hartman asks, “Is it possible that such recognition effectively forecloses agency as the object of
punishment . . . Or is this limited conferral of humanity merely a reinscription of subjugation and pained existence?” (p. 55). As numerous
many social science disciplines emerged from the need to
provide justifications for social hierarchies undergirded by White
supremacy and manifest destiny (see also Gould, 1981; Selden, 1999; Tuck & Guishard, forthcoming). Wolfe
scholars have denoted,
(1999) has explored how the contoured logic of settler colonialism (p. 5) can be mapped onto the microactivities of anthropology; Guthrie
The origins of
many social science disciplines in maintaining logics of domination, while
sometimes addressed in graduate schools, are regularly thought to be just errant or inauspicious beginnings—much like the ways in which the genocide of Indigenous peoples that afforded the founding of the Unites
States has been reduced to an unfortunate byproduct of the birthing of a new and great nation. Such amnesia is required
in settler colonial societies, argues Lorenzo Veracini, because settler
colonialism is “characterized by a persistent drive to supersede the
conditions of its operation,” (2011, p. 3); that is, to make itself invisible, natural,
without ori- gin (and without end), and inevitable . Social science disciplines have inherited the persistent
(1976) traces the roots of psychology to the need to “sci- entifically” prove the supremacy of the White mind.
drive to supersede the conditions of their operations from settler colonial logic, and it is this drive, a kind of unquestioning push forward,
We are struck by the pervasive silence on
questions regarding the contempo- rary rationale(s) for social science
research. Though a variety of ethical and procedural protocols require researchers to compose statements regarding the objectives
and not the origins of the disciplines that we attend to now.
or purposes of a particular project, such protocols do not prompt reflection upon the underlying beliefs about knowledge and change that
The rationale for conducting social science
research that collects pain narratives seems to be self-evident for many
too often go unexplored or unacknowledged.
scholars, but when looked at more closely, the rationales may be
unconsidered, and some- what flimsy. Like a maritime archaeological site, such rationales might be best
examined in situ, for fear of deterioration if extracted. Why do researchers collect pain narratives? Why does the academy want them?
Desire is a particular and contextual refusal of settler
colonialism – this space of refusal creates new ways to approach
epistemology
Tuck and Yang, 14 – *PhD in Urban Education, Assistant Professor of Educational
Foundations, and Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New
York **Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies (Eve, and K.W., “R-Words: Refusing
Research,” In “Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and
communities” academia.edu)//jml
refusal is
particular, meaning refusal is always grounded in historical
analysis and present conditions. Any discussion of Simpson’s article would need to attend to
At this juncture, we don’t intend to offer a general framework for refusal, because all
the significance of real and representational sovereignty in her analysis and theorizing of refusal. The particularities of
We caution
readers against expropriating Indigenous notions of sovereignty into other con- texts, or metaphorizing
sovereignty in a way that permits one to forget that struggles to have
sovereignty recognized are very real and very lived. Yet from Simpson’s example, we
are able to see ways in which a researcher might make transparent the
coloniality of academic knowledge in order to find its ethical limits, expand
the limits of sovereign knowledge, and expand decolonial representational territories. This is in addition to questions her work helpfully raises about who the researcher is,
who the researched are, and how the historical/ representational context for research matters. One way to
think about refusal is how desire can be a framework, mode,
and space for refusal . As a framework, desire is a counterlogic to the
logics of settler colonialism. Rooted in possibilities gone but not foreclosed,
“the not yet, and at times, the not anymore” (Tuck, 2010, p. 417), desire refuses the
master narrative that colonization was inevitable and has a monopoly on
the future. By refusing the teleos of colonial future, desire expands possible
futures. As a mode of refusal, desire is a “no” and a “yes.” Another way to think about refusal is to consider using
Kahnawake sovereignty throb at the center of each of the three dimensions of refusal described above.
strategies of social sci- ence research to further expose the complicity of social science disciplines and research in the
There is much need to employ social science to turn back
upon itself as settler colonial knowledge, as opposed to uni- versal, liberal,
or neutral knowledge without horizon. This form of refusal might include
bringing attention to the mechanisms of knowledge legitimation, like the Good
project of settler colonialism.
Labkeeping Seal of Approval (discussed under Axiom III); contesting appropriation, like the collection of pain narratives;
and publicly renouncing the diminishing of Indigenous or local narratives with blood narratives in the name of science,
such as in the Havasupai case discussed under Axiom II.
1NC – Novel DA
The affirmative’s strategy writes the novel of the radical hero, only to
find the novel is unwritten by the time the next debate starts –
politicized identity is ultimately a placebo that fails to achieve their
demands
Davis 1 – Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Illinois, leading author in
the field of disability studies (Lennard, “Identity Politics, Disability, and Culture,” 2001,
isc.temple.edu/neighbor/ds/read/identitypolitics.pdf)
identity of the novel, if we can see the novel as having an identity, revolves around a simple
plot. The situation had been normal, it became abnormal, and by the end of the
novel, the normality, or some variant on it, was restored. We can put this simplistic paradigm into the language that
Wendy Brown (1995) uses and say that the identity of the novel is therefore a "wounded
identity." Like Philoctetes, the novel must have a wound. And like that of Philoctetes, the wound is
necessary because without it, the novel would not be able to perform its
function. Yet, also like that of the mythical character, the wound must be healed or cured. I return to the notion of
identity because I want to tie the novel, disability, and identity politics together around the issue of cure. The novel as a form relies
on cure as a narrative technique. Protagonists must "change," we are told, for their character to be believable.
In this sense, the
Interestingly, this aspect of believability flies in the face of probability since most "real" people do not change easily, if at all. When characters
change, they undergo a kind of moral or perceptual transformation that cures them of their problem. So, Emma is cured of her self-centeredness
or Darcy is cured of his pride. Likewise, the plot is cured of its abnormal initiating events. The narrative, at its end, is no longer disabled by its
The process of narrative, then, serves to wound
identity—whether individual, bourgeois, national, gendered, racialized, or
cultural. Readers read so that they can experience this wound vicariously, so they can
imagine the dissolution of the norms under which they are expected to labor.
As a temporarily wounded person, the reader can see the way that society oppresses various
categories of being. At the same time, the reader can rejoice in the inevitable return to the comfort of bourgeois norms, despite
the onus that these norms place on its beneficiaries as well as those excluded from the benefits of bourgeois identity. 14 Yet the
desire for a cure is also the desire for a quick fix. The alterity presented by
disability is shocking to the liberal, ableist sensibility, and so narratives involving
disability always yearn toward the cure, the neutralizing of the disability. This
desire to neutralize is ironic because in a dialectic sense, the fantasy of normality needs the
abjection of disability to maintain a homeostatic system of binaries. However, since this
lack of conformity to imagined social norms.
desire is premised on the denigration of disability, it will of course be invisible to the normate15 readers who prefer the kindly notion of cure to
the quick fix presented by issues concerning race,
class, and gender is equally characteristic of the bourgeois imagination. The conflict
the more dramatic notion of eradication. Likewise,
between classes can be nicely reconciled in novels, so that in North and South, a kind of utopian factory emerges that bypasses labor unions and
is achieved by rerouting surplus value through the benevolence of a female captain of industry in the form of Margaret Hale, or, in Hard Times,
the working class struggle is seen as a "muddle" only soluble by Christian charity toward the poor who "will always be with you." All of
these cures are placebos for the basic problem presented to capitalism and
its ideological productions in the form of modern subjectivity, which dons the
form of the normal, average, citizen protagonist—that bell curve–generated fantastic being who reconciles the
promise of equal rights with the reality of unequal distribution of wealth. However, the quick fix, the cure, has to be
repeated endlessly , like a patent medicine, because it cures nothing . Novels have to
tell the story over and over again , as do films and television, because the patient never
stays cured, and the disabled, cured individually, refuse to stop reappearing as a group.
Indeed, modern subjectivity is a wounded identity that cannot cure itself without
recourse to cure narratives, which means that it cannot cure itself at all since
the disability of modern subjectivity is inherent in the environment, not in the
subject. The problem with the notion of wounded identities , as Brown (1995) postulates, is that
the ontology of their coming into being is best characterized by Nietzsche's notion of resentment as an
"effect of domination [that] reiterates impotence, a substitute for action, for power, for selfaffirmation that
reinscribes incapacity, powerlessness, and rejection" (Brown 1995:69). Thus, identity is
dependent for its motivation and existence on remembering and reinvoking
the pain caused by oppression. Politicized identity "installs its pain . . . in the very
foundation of its political claim, in its demand for recognition as identity . . . by entrenching, restating, dramatizing,
and inscribing its pain in politics" (Brown 1995:74). Like the novel, identity is rooted in its wounds, and plot
is a form of pain control . Thus, its solution must be to heal the wound and end
the pain. However, like the novel that offers a cure to the oppressions of
modernity, the cure offered to wounded identity spells the end of identity
because identity is created by the initializing wound, just as the cure offered
in novels spells closure for that novel. The answer to novels is more novels,
not a cure offered to the actual ills of society. Likewise, the proliferation of
politicized identities is symptomatic of the problem, and the addition of more
identities will no more solve the problem of oppression than the proliferation
of novels will solve the same problem. I want to add that we have needed the idea of
identity to help combat racism, sexism, ageism, and so on. However, the limits of this kind of
politics are now becoming increasingly evident . The solution is not to do without identity or to denigrate the
identities involved. Rather, a reconsideration of oppression based around other
parameters that can , at this point, create solidarity while maintaining
difference is essential. I have tried to make the case briefly that disability, as an identity, can legitimately be seen as the
foundational model on which to argue the origin and theory of the novel. As a foundational origin, I can then say that all other identities—class,
race, gender, sexual preference—should be subsumed under the hegemonic identity category of disability. In other words, I contend that the
novel belongs to a history of ableist domination (while it has also tried to resist that domination). If I do that, I place myself in a line of critics
who have argued for the centrality of their identity as foundational for the creation of modern subjectivity. By doing so, I can now make two
by adding my identity to the
roster and even by claiming the greater adequacy of my identity (which can be seen as
including and therefore superceding other identities), I have only rearranged the chessboard
without creating a strategy for winning the battle . Neither will
scholarship, like this chapter, propel disability into the forefront of identity politics for
the simple reason that the other identity groups will not cede their place of
priority. The reason for this reluctance is also relatively simple—to acknowledge truly that the existence of another identity dilutes the
observations. First, I clearly have not solved the problem of identity politics. Second,
general category of identity, as well as to create a priority of identities, places some identities further down the line as significant. As an
amplification of this point, disability will have difficulty being seen as having a primary place in identity politics because most academics are
deeply implicated in ableism without, of course, realizing it. Disability is still routinely ignored, marginalized, or patronized by the very people
The answer is not to keep creating newer and newer categories of
identity or to claim that cultural institutions are uniquely created by the
oppression of one or other identity. The advantage that disability studies gives us in this regard is
that it is an identity that interrogates and can help transform the very idea of identity.
Disability, by the unstable nature of its category, asks us to redefine the
very nature of identity and of "belonging" to an identity group. Only
when identity is stripped of its exclusive nature and becomes part of the
larger reformation of oppression can we all safely feel that we have truly
regained our identity .
most active in identity politics.
Identity politics bad
Impacts
Anti-solidarity
Identity-based politics cannot produce change – regresses into
anti-solidarity through purism and apathy – refusing complexity
is reductionist
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
While intersectionality theory started in
identity politics, it has not remained there.lxii Identity politics cannot
transform the United States on its own; institutional change beyond
identity politics is critical to 21st century politics. Attention to the five
prongs of the intersectional approach - Categorical Multiplicity, Categorical Intersection, Time
Dynamics, Diversity Within and Individual-Institutional Interaction - directly challenges the
Oppression Olympics. Specifically, it offers us three hallmark contributions
to our politics in the 21st century, each of which will be explored in the case studies to come. A
unitary approach (e.g. focusing on race OR gender) cannot handle the complex
processes of self-integration that must take plce [sic] in order to avoid
harmful, anti-solidarity actions like self-deception,lxiii which undergirds the
Willful Blindness, Defiant Ignorance, and Compassion Deficit Disorder elements of the Oppression
Olympics. As I've noted throughout the chapter, intersectionality forces a direct
confrontation with Willful Blindness and Defiant Ignorance through
attention to Time Dynamics and Diversity Within to engage the role that
privilege plays in all Americans' lives. There are no longer any pure victims
in our political context. In the absence of any pure victims we must
examine new ways for us to stand in solidarity with each other as
individuals who are simultaneously marginalized and privileged. Chapter two will
Benefits of the expanded form of intersectionality:
take up this directly, by examining the individual-level preparation necessary to pursue deep political solidarity. Second,
the intersectional approach provides
the chance for new kinds of counterintuitive coalitions. Turning the
discussion away from zero-sum questions using Categorical Multiplicity and Categorical
Intersection eludes the threat of Leapfrog Paranoia. Along with such a turn, confronting
Willful Blindness and Defiant Ignorance will facilitate the eradication of
Compassion Deficit Disorder, as apathy gets confronted as the exercise of
privilege that it is in these contexts. Similarly, new domains for attention to the
roles of gender, race, sexual orientation and class are revealed by the
attention to Diversity Within and Individual-Institutional Interactions. The
political agendas of marginalized groups and their allies are transformed
I've also mentioned in passing throughout the chapter that
based on a different approach to the process by which the agenda gets set
and ultimately new kinds of egalitarian coalition building within as well as
between groups to achieve such an agenda. We'll examine these more egalitarian coalitionbuilding opportunities with regard to a specific political issue in chapter three. Last but certainly not least, throughout the
an emphasis on complexity that is often challenging for
mainstream portrayals of American politics. Returning to "The Matrix," recall that Morpheus'
chapter there has been
offer to Neo of a choice between the red pill (of liberatory knowledge) or the blue pill (to remain mired in Willful Blindness
and Defiant Ignorance) is one that only Neo can make for himself; it cannot be impressed upon him. Similarly,
this
book is addressed to those who have elected to take the red pill, who are open to the
complexity and nuance that are rarely in evidence throughout most of our
current public discourse. For those of us interested in and committed to
justice, the causal complexity of our political context is not something that
can be avoided in the 21st century. Attention to intersectionality provides a
structured way to engage this complexity without being as reductionist as
past approaches. We will see this attention to complexity throughout the rest of the chapters.
Biopolitical
Identity political movements are biopolitical --- constrains
freedom by forcing people to conform to norms
Hayward and Watson 10 - Associate Professor of Political Science at Washington
University in St. Louis; doctoral student in Political Science at Washington University in
St. Louis,(Clarissa Rile, Ron, “The Politics of Identity after Identity Politics: Identity and
Political Theory,” January 2010, 33 Wash. U. Journal of Law and Policy,
http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=law_journ
al_law_policy) //AD
identities constrain freedom - because they define
"others" whose exclusion they can promote and at the same time legitimize
- "the mobilization of identity categories for the purposes of politicization
always remains threatened by the prospect of identity becoming an
instrument of the power one opposes." 93 Hence the Foucaultian emphasis
on genealogizing and more generally on "refusing" identity , rather than urging states
B. Identity's Burdens Still, because
to recognize it via group rights, accommodations for minority cultures, or "external" protections. As our discussion in Part
III suggests, the Foucaultian focus is the cost of identification: its burdens, more so than its benefits. [*30] What is worth
underscoring, however, is that neither strong multiculturalists nor liberal theorists of recognition quarrel with the claim
that, very often, collective identities have costs. To the contrary, both sets of theorists acknowledge that groups exclude,
and that groups often limit the freedom of members. Both acknowledge that some forms of recognition, because they give
those who are dominant within groups power over those who are subordinate, can promote coercion and enable the
restriction of freedom. It is this worry that drives Taylor's insistence that states protect minority group members'
"fundamental rights," such as their rights to habeas corpus. 94 It is this worry that informs Kymlicka's claim that states
should only rarely allow "internal restrictions" by groups. 95 Practices of restricting religious freedom, or of discriminating
against female group members, Kymlicka writes, "are inconsistent with any system of minority rights that appeals to
individual freedom or personal autonomy." 96 They "cannot be justified or defended," he continues, "within a liberal
conception of minority rights." 97 The principal differences between the multiculturalist and the Foucaultian positions
are, first, their emphases - multiculturalists stress the benefits of identification, Foucaultians the burdens - and, second,
their assumptions about the likely effects of state recognition. Multiculturalists underscore that well-being is closely
bound up with a sense of collective belonging. The costs of identity, they suggest, are well worth the goods identity
provides. As long as "fundamental rights" are protected, as long as protections are "external," rather than restrictions on
important rights and freedoms, people gain more than they lose when states recognize identity-constituting collectivities.
The Foucaultian claim, by contrast, is that identity's substantial harms outweigh
its benefits. Even those identities which liberals view as entirely beneficial namely, the identities of autonomous, rational modern selves - subject, and they discipline human beings. Because
people never perfectly fit any identity-category, and because efforts to
make them fit are a kind of violence, state recognition, even when [*31] it promotes
solidaristic feelings of trust and belonging, always also fosters exclusion
and nontrivial forms of unfreedom.
Diverts focus
Making the debate about identity politics diverts attention from
structural inequalities – makes oppression inevitable because it
uses a flawed starting-point
Smith 13 – intellectual, feminist, and anti-violence activist (Andrea, “The Problem with
‘Privilege’,” August 2013, http://anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-problemwith-privilege-2013.html) //AD
This kind of politics then challenges the notions of “safe space” often prevalent in many activist circles in the United States. The concept of safe space flows
once we have confessed our gender/race/settler/class
privileges, we can then create a safe space where others will not be
negatively impacted by these privileges. Of course because we have not
dismantled heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, settler colonialism or
capitalism, these confessed privileges never actually disappear in “safe
spaces.” Consequently, when a person is found guilty of his/her privilege in
these spaces, s/he is accused of making the space “unsafe.” This rhetorical
strategy presumes that only certain privileged subjects can make the space
“unsafe” as if everyone isn’t implicated in heteropatriarchy, white
supremacy, settler colonialism and capitalism. Our focus is shifted
from the larger systems that make the entire world unsafe, to
interpersonal conduct . In addition, the accusation of “unsafe” is also levied against people of color who express anger about
naturally from the logics of privilege. That is,
racism, only to find themselves accused of making the space “unsafe” because of their raised voices. The problem with safe space is the presumption that a safe
space is even possible. By contrast, instead of thinking of safe spaces as a refuge from colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, Ruthie Gilmore suggests that
safe space is not an escape from the real, but a place to practice the
real we want to bring into being . “Making power” models follow this suggestion in that
they do not purport to be free of oppression, only that they are
trying to create the world they would like to live in now. To give one smaller
example, when Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, organized, we questioned the assumption that “women of color” space is a safe space. In fact, participants
began to articulate that women of color space may in fact be a very dangerous space. We realized that we could not assume alliances with each other, but we would
actually have to create these alliances. One strategy that was helpful was rather than presume that we were acting “non-oppressively,” we built a structure that
would presume that we were complicit in the structures of white supremacy/settler colonialism/heteropatriarchy etc. We then structured this presumption into our
organizing by creating spaces where we would educate ourselves on issues in which our politics and praxis were particularly problematic. The issues we have
in this
space, while we did not ignore our individual complicity in oppression, we
developed action plans for how we would collectively try to transform our
politics and praxis. Thus, this space did not create the dynamic of the
confessor and the hearer of the confession. Instead, we presumed we are all
implicated in these structures of oppression and that we would need to
work together to undo them. Consequently, in my experience, this kind of
space facilitated our ability to integrate personal and social
transformation because no one had to anxiously worry about whether
they were going to be targeted as a bad person with undue privilege who
would need to publicly confess. The space became one that was based on
covered include: disability, anti-Black racism, settler colonialism, Zionism and anti-Arab racism, transphobia, and many others. However,
principles of loving rather than punitive accountability . Conclusion The politics of
privilege have made the important contribution of signaling how the structures of oppression constitute who we are as persons. However, as the rituals
of confessing privilege have evolved, they have shifted our focus from building social
movements for global transformation to individual self-improvement.
Furthermore, they rest on a white supremacist/colonialist notion of a subject that
can constitute itself over and against others through self-reflexivity. While trying to
keep the key insight made in activist/academic circles that personal and social transformation are interconnected, alternative projects have
developed that focus less on privilege and more the structures that create privilege .
These new models do not hold the “answer,” because the genealogy
of the politics of privilege also demonstrates that our activist/intellectual
projects of liberation must be constantly changing . Our
imaginations are limited by white supremacy, settler colonialism, etc., so
all ideas we have will not be “perfect.” The ideas we develop today also do not have to be based on the complete
disavowal of what we did yesterday because what we did yesterday teaches what we might do tomorrow. Thus, as we think not only
beyond privilege, but beyond the sense of self that claims privilege,
we open ourselves to new possibilities that we cannot imagine now for the
future.
Exclusion
Identity politics based movements fail – they serve to retrench
violence and foster exclusion
Hayward and Watson 10 - Associate Professor of Political Science at Washington
University in St. Louis; doctoral student in Political Science at Washington University in
St. Louis,(Clarissa Rile, Ron, “The Politics of Identity after Identity Politics: Identity and
Political Theory,” January 2010, 33 Wash. U. Journal of Law and Policy,
http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=law_journ
al_law_policy) //AD
litical theorists like Wendy Brown58 and William Connolly,59
cultural theorists like Judith Butler,60 and legal theorists like Richard
Thompson Ford61 draw on Foucaultian insights about subjectification to
highlight the harms identities produce .62 Collective identities, their claim
is—not only those of cultural minorities, but also those of the racial, ethnic, gendered, sexual, and other groups that
stand at the center of identity politics—exclude at their boundaries,
and internally, they normalize . What is more, working together, the universe of
recognized identities defines what counts as intelligible ways of living and
being, thus rendering unintelligible those who fall within no identitycategory. For people who conform, identities serve as mechanisms of
power that constrain freedom. For people who do not, they are
mechanisms of power that legitimize violence and coercion . Of those who
Stated crudely, po
contribute to this third line of political theorizing about identity, William Connolly is the most explicit about its ontological
Against strong multiculturalists, who assume that recognizing
authentic identities promotes well-being, and against liberal multiculturalists who assume that
presuppositions.
fostering practices of autonomy, or promoting state neutrality vis-à-vis conceptions of the good, does the same,
Connolly makes the case for regarding all identitarian practices as
―ambiguous goods.‖63 Humans need identity, he agrees with Taylor and other
multiculturalists.64 Yet it may be the case, he underscores, that they do not fit naturally
and perfectly into any actual or, for that matter, any conceivable identitycategory. If so, then every identity, every form of subjectivity—not
excluding that of the modern, autonomous self—creates ―others‖ whose
exclusion and/or whose normalization it legitimizes . In Connolly‘s words,
―If humans are not predesigned, and if they therefore are ill suited to fit neatly into any particular social form, then any
set of enabling commonalities is likely to contain corollary injuries,
cruelties, subjugations, concealments, and restrictions. . . .‖ 65 Consider, again, Charles
Taylor‘s insight that, for moderns, ―misrecognition‖ can be an important harm.66 Connolly and other theorists in this
pressure to conform to naturalized and other
deeply entrenched identities constitutes a separate, and a no less
significant, harm. Such pressure harms, first of all, people who do not
third group might respond by arguing that
perform their ascribed identities well: people who fail to conform to
identitarian norms, and as a result, are excluded or marginalized or
otherwise sanctioned . Richard Ford illustrates with the example of a
―strong and assertive woman‖ who fails to perform well her gendered role
on the dance floor.67 She will be encouraged by dance instructors, parents, potential partners, and friends to
conform to the female role: [to] learn to accept the guidance of the male, [and to] develop grace at the expense of strength.
If she does not conform, her friends will sanction her by telling her that she could get a date easily if she were a bit ―nicer‖
or ―more feminine.‖ Men will silently punish her by refusing to ask her to dance. If she wants to dance, she will
pressure to conform to collective identities harms those
who do fit, theorists writing in this tradition emphasize—or rather, those who
seem, based on their behavior and observable patterns of action, as if they
fit. It harms those people, that is, who live their lives more or less as
established identities prescribe. Imagine a woman who, unlike the woman
in Ford‘s example, performs her gender identity in an exemplary fashion.
She exhibits ―niceness‖ and grace and femininity. She fails to develop her strength, or at
least she hides it. She is rarely, if ever assertive. This woman is not obviously better off, the
claim is, than the woman who refuses her gendered role. Granted, the conforming
behavior wins her social approbation, along with the rewards that accompany a good performance. But still, the cost
is nontrivial. ―Normalization‖—discipline, that is (including self-discipline), which aims at
conformity to social norms—is an important loss of freedom .69
Conformity to collective identities damages that in the self that is resistant
to definitions of ―normal individuality‖ and/or ―harmonious
community.‖70 Third and finally, pressure to conform to collective identities harms
those who do not fit identity categories at all. Judith Butler‘s autobiographical illustration of
conform.68 Second,
this third point is worth quoting at length: I grew up understanding something of the violence of gender norms: an uncle
incarcerated for his anatomically anomalous body, deprived of family and friends, living out his days in an ―institute‖ in
the Kansas prairies; gay cousins forced to leave their homes because of their sexuality, real and imagined; my own
tempestuous coming out at the age of 16; and a subsequent adult landscape of lost jobs, lovers, and homes.71
onstructed norms defining the identities female/feminine and
male/masculine fuel violence, not only to those who perform their identities poorly (and those who
C
perform them well), but also to those—here gays, the intersexed—whom norms define out of constructed categories
Social actors construct identities, by this third view. The identities they
construct never neatly fit the human beings they claim to describe. Still,
people essentialize identity. They experience it as the root cause of
traits, behaviors, dispositions, and desires: a deep truth about the self,
rather than a set of norms and standards that might be otherwise. This
essentialization depoliticizes identity . In Wendy Brown‘s words, ―‗differences‘
that are the effects of social power are neutralized through their
articulation as attributes.‖72 Hence, on balance, state recognition of identities does
not promote well-being and freedom. It does not prevent violence and
cruelty. Instead, it exacerbates normalization and coercive
subjectification. What is worse, recognition lends the authority of the state to those who police identity.
altogether.
According to Brown: While the effort to replace liberalism‘s abstract formulation of equality with legal recognition of
protection‖
for a certain injury-forming identity discursively entrenches the
injury-identity connection it denounces.73 ―Might such protection codify
within the law,‖ Brown asks, rhetorically, ―the very powerlessness it aims
to redress? Might it discursively collude with the conversion of attribute into identity, of a historical effect of power
into a presumed cause of victimization?‖74 In ―recognizing‖ identity, in fighting for
identity‘s affirmative acknowledgment by agents of the state, the worry is we risk
invitingthe construction of a ―plastic cage,‖ which ―reproduces
and further regulates‖ the very subjects it claims to protect, while
remaining (unlike Weber‘s ―iron cage‖) ―quite transparent to the ordinary eye .‖75
Hence, the poststructuralist emphasis on what many argue is the politically
urgent and potentially liberating task of destabilizing identities: drawing
attention to their constructedness and fluidity, and opening up
possibilities for new ways of living and being. Foucault urged not the recognition but
the ―refusal‖ of identity. 76 Many contributors to this third strand of theorizing about identity
injurious social stratifications is understandable, what such arguments do not query is whether legal ―
politics view his archaeological and genealogical methods as key means to that end.77 Many advocate as well the
promotion of agonistic engagement, or contestation, among constructed identities.78 The value of new social movements,
by their view, is less the securing of recognition for (authentic or autonomy-promoting) identities, than the unsettling of
prevailing definitions of ―who we are.‖
Fracture
Identity politics causes fracturing and cedes the political
Gitlin 93 – American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator (Todd,
“The Left, Lost in the Politics of Identity,” Harper’s Magazine, September 1993,
http://harpers.org/archive/1993/09/the-left-lost-in-the-politics-of-identity/3/) //RGP
the consequence of a
transformation in the core idea of the left: the weakening, even breakdown, of
the ideals of a common humanity that have animated it for more than two
centuries. Some, though not all, of the right’s attacks are disingenuous. For example, we hear much from
the right about the dangerous “politicization” of English and women’s studies,
but no complaint when it comes to economics or business. But this shouldn’t obscure a
The continuing dispute over “political correctness” in the academy is, in significant part,
troubling irony: the right, traditionally the custodian of the privileges of the few, now speaks in an apparently general language
much of the left is so
preoccupied with debunking generalizations and affirming the differences
among groups–real as they often are–that it has ceded the very language of
universality that is its birthright. Instead, the left in recent years has had trouble going
beyond what has come to be called “identity politics”–a politics that is rooted
more in group self-assertion than in attempts to create broad alliances. Of course,
oppressed groups must always struggle to overcome their second-class status; equality demands no less. But what
began in the late 1960s as an assertion of dignity by various groups, a remedy
for exclusion and denigration and a demand by the voiceless for
representation, has developed its own habits and methods of silencing . At the
extreme, in the academy but also outside it, standards and traditions are now viewed as
nothing more than camouflage for particular interests. Many a dispute is
premised on the idea that there is a fundamental difference between X (women,
say, or people of color) and Y (white males); that X has been oppressed or silenced by Y and
should therefore be hired, promoted, and specially represented on reading
lists and at conferences. The precursors of today’s advocates of identity politics were those scholars who, in the
of merit, reason, individual rights, and virtue that transcends politics, whereas
1960s, were active in the civil-rights and antiwar movements-movements predicated on the universal values of equality,
justice, and peace. These political campaigns and their underlying universalist assumptions shaped the work of these scholars
in the early 1970s–making women’s history and literature legitimate, bolstering labor studies, rethinking slavery and the
most
of today’s young academics had no political experience in mass movements
for general change and, for that matter, no contact with a successful left-ofcenter Democratic Party. For them, fighting over appropriate language, symbolic representation (whether in
slaughter of the Indians, opening up the canon to hitherto silenced traditions. But unlike this generation of professors,
the syllabus, curriculum, or faculty), affirmative action, or even musical styles is an end in itself, the principal way of claiming
ost-Sixties radicals found universalism empty or–worse–a cover
for white, straight, male power. The intensification of identity politics is
inseparable from a fragmentation of what I will call “commonality politics”–a
frame of understanding that acknowledges “difference” but sees it against the
their politics. These p
background of what is not different, what is shared among groups. In large measure,
things fell apart for the left because the center could not hold. For chronologically, the
breakup of commonality politics predates the thickening of identity politics. The centrifugal surge, on campus and off, is
obviously, in part, a product of the last quarter century of American demographic trends: growing immigration from Latin
America, Asia, and Africa; white flight from cities; the integration of campuses in the wake of civil-rights victories; growing
competition for scarce resources. These upheavals have taken place within the longer history of emancipatory politics that has
snaked forward through the West since the revolutions of 1776, 1789, and 1848. During the last two centuries, believers in a
common humanity clustered around the two great progressive ideals: the liberal ideal enshrined in the Declaration of
Independence and, later, in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens; and the radical ideal that crystallized as
Marxism. Such legitimacy as the left enjoyed in the West rested on its claim to a place in the story of universal human
emancipation. Whatever its immense failures, defaults, and sins, the left aspired to address itself not to particular men and
women but to all, in the name of their common standing. Whether liberals or socialists, reformers or revolutionaries, the men
and women of the left aimed to persuade their listeners to see their common interest as citizens. Liberals emphasized the
“unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”–ideals that, however trampled in practice by those who
were white and male and propertied, nevertheless could at least in principle be appealed to by oppressed groups. Marx, too,
framed his politics in universal terms, arguing that a universal class, the workers, were destined to overcome their particular
differences and realize a common identity: the human being as maker, realizing his “species being” in the course of
the intellectual radicalism of the early 1960s can
be seen as a search for a universalist politics that might take the place of a
Marxism that by then had lost its legitimacy. The left turned to participatory democracy and civil
transforming nature. From this point of view,
rights. But participatory democracy, though theoretically available to everyone, was in practice tailored to students who had
the time and energy to spend at endless meetings. And the civil-rights movement, initially framed in universalist terms, could
unify the left only until legal segregation was defeated in 1964–65. Once integration and voting rights had been secured, at
least on paper, the alliance between liberals and radicals, integrationists and separatists, was strained to the breaking point.
Blacks began to insist on black leadership, even sometimes on exclusively black membership in the movement. Soon, too, the
One grouping after another demanded
the recognition of its difference. Difference came to be felt more acutely than
commonality. The crack-up of the universalist new left was inevitable, though it was muted for a while by the
pioneers of women’s liberation rose against male supremacy.
exigencies of the Vietnam War and the commonalities of youth culture. If there seemed in the late 1960s to be one big
movement, it was largely because there was one big war. But the divisions of race and then gender and sexual orientation
proved far too deep to be overcome by any language of unification. There was a lingering rhetorical style of universalist
radicalism, but the political passion broke up into separate caucuses. The resulting identity politics deserves credit for
inspiring powerful studies in history, literature, and all manner of ideas. It has also proved more exciting and more energizing
to activists than the politics of commonality–especially in the 1980s, with fights over hiring, requirements, curricula, and so
forth taking place during a time of increasingly scarce resources, For the participants in these post-Sixties movements, the
benefits of identity politics have been manifold: they provide experiences of solidarity and belonging, and remedies for specific
injustices, along with ready-made reservoirs of recruits. As advertising, marketing, cable TV, and popular music have grown
more and more specialized, dividing the mass audience into progressively narrower segments, so has university politics.
The left’s attention is now paid to group self-assertion rather than, say,
campaigns against poverty or the bankrupting of public education. As once-excluded
territories have been recognized in the academy, any lingering aspiration for the universal has
been largely abandoned. Whatever universalism now remains is based not so much on a common humanity as
on a common enemy=-the notorious White Male. While defenses of group rights often have a powerful logic, the idea of a
common America and the idea of a unified left, both great legacies of the Enlightenment, have lost their force. As a result, we
find ourselves today in a most peculiar situation: the left and right have traded places, at least with respect to the sort of
Unable to go beyond the logic of identity
politics, the disparate constituencies of the cultural left have ceded much
political high ground to the right . Today, here and there on the left, one hears a half-whispered
universalist rhetoric that can still stir the general public.
recognition that, beyond necessary demands for racial representation, feminist principles, gay rights, and so on, some common
ground must be found: in campaigns for more economic equality and against poverty, unemployment, ecological depredation,
Unless it
learns to speak its own language of commonality, the shards of the left will
and educational erosion. Ronald Reagan’s genius lay in his ability to demarcate common ground on the right.
be condemned to their separate sectors, sometimes glittering, sometimes
smashed, and mostly marginal.
their attempt to strengthen identity politics backfires - ethnic
division fail to recognize whiteness as an identity
Lipsitz 6 - Professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the Univeristy of California,
Santa Barbara (George, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, Temple University
Press, ebrary, pg. 66-69) //AD
Unity and Division We live in an age of painful contradictions. Mass communication and mass migration bring the people
of the world closer together in unprecedented ways, uniting diverse populations through common participation in global
markets, investments, and mass media. Yet the practices and processes that affect everyone do not affect everyone equally.
At the very moment that we find the people of the world becoming more united, we also find that economic inequality,
racial rivalries renew old antagonisms and
engender new conflicts, leaving us paradoxically more divided than even before.
Ethnic divisions and racial conflicts have a particularly poisonous presence at the present
cultural insecurity, and ethnic, religious, and
moment. From Bosnia to Belfast, from Rwanda to Russia, from East Timor to Tel Aviv, we see the destructive
consequences of ethnic antago- nisms everywhere. It is understandable that under these circumstances people might be
wary of any kind of “identity politics” in which racial, religious, and ethnic identities become the basis for political
solidarity and cultural practice. Writers arguing from a variety of political perspectives have critiqued identity politics as
encouraging allegiance to group interests rather than a sense of civic responsibility extending across racial and ethnic
lines, as an assault on the traditions and values most responsible for human progress, and as a diversion from real social
problems that have nothing to do with social identities. Alarmist articles in major news magazines bemoan the erosion of a
“common” culture in the United States, while neoconservatives sneer about the emergence of “victim studies” in academia.
Critics attack minority artists and intellectuals as guilt-mongering whiners demanding special privileges and seeking to
elevate inferior works in order to elevate their own self-esteem. On a broader front, ambitious politicians demagogically
dismantle the antidiscrimination mecha- nisms established as a result of the civil rights movement, mislabeling antiracist
remedies as instruments of “reverse racism.” All around us, we see evidence of a fundamentally new era for the possessive
once we remember that
whiteness is also an identity, one with a long political history, contemporary attacks on
“identity” politics come into clear relief as a defense of the traditional privileges and
priorities of whiteness in the face of critical and political projects that successfully
investment in whiteness, fueled by ferment over identity politics. Yet
disclose who actually holds power in this society and what has been done with it. Contrary to the claims of neoconservatives that they stand for universal interests, the politics of whiteness as exemplified by attacks on immigrants and
on affirmative action amount to little more than a self-interested strategy for preserving the possessive investment in
the best ethnic studies scholarship, cultural
production, and community organizing aims at opening up an understanding of ethnicity
as hybrid, heterogeneous, and multiple (in the eloquent formulation of Lisa Lowe)—as a political project aimed at
whiteness, a politics based solely on identity. Conversely,
creating identities based on politics rather than politics based on identities. These projects rely on egalitarian politics and
struggles for social justice to counter the identity politics of whiteness that generates identities based on the defense and
perpetuation of inequality.28 Different ethnic groups have different histories and experiences; as long as that is the case,
organizing along ethnic lines will always ma.ke sense. Yet ethnic groups stil.l must decide which things bring them
together and which things divide them, which groups offer them useful alliances and which do not. Mobilizing around a
common group identity does not preclude forming strategic and philosophical alliances with other groups. Under current
conditions, defending immigrants requires solidarity among Asian, Latino, and Caribbean communities. Attacks on
linguistic diversity cre- ate opportunities for coalitions between Latinos and Asians, while incidents of racially motivated
police brutality bring together immigrants and citizens. Ef- forts to organize trade unions among low-wage workers
require coalitions that include African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and European Americans.
The Committee against Anti-Asian Violence in New York defends Asian victims of vigilante violence and police brutality,
but it also unites with the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights to stage a Racial Iustice Day rally and march, while
publicizing the activities of Project REACH, a multicul- tural organization established to provide drop-in centers that offer
safe havens to gay and lesbian youths, support HIV-positive youth, help women defend themselves against sexual assaults,
and train youth leaders.29 Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) in Oakland, California, brings together secondand third-generation Asian American women united in their commitment to help empower Asian immigrant women
working in the electronics, hotel, and gar- ment industries. AIWA’s members come from different national backgrounds,
speak different languages, and belong to different classes, yet their shared con- cern about the l.ives of low-wage women
workers from Asia leads them to political actions that address the class problems that women face as workers, the gen- der
problems they confront as women, the legal problems they experience as immigrants, and the racial problems they
encounter as members of racial.ized groups.3° Organizing efforts among Latino workers at the New Otani Hotel in Los
Angeles have drawn upon ethnic solidarity in Mexican and Salvadoran communities, but they have also fused a strategic
alliance with Korean veterans of Iapanese slave labor camps with longstanding grievances against the hotel’s Iapanese
owner, the Kajima Corporation, for its role in Iapanese imperialism during Wvorld War II.31
The Bus Riders
Union in Los Angeles originated in problems with public transportation in the city that affect all ethnic groups. Yet the
group’s analysis showed that the transportation routes favored by inner-city residents gener- ated funds for the transit
system that subsidized the commuter trains used by suburban residents. Arguing that neighborhood race effects
accounted for the disproportionate resources made available to commuters from mostly white suburbs, the union brought
suit against the transit authority on civil rights grounds. In this case, the 10 to 20 percent of white bus riders in the inner
city experienced violations of their civil rights because they relied on services utilized disproportionately by minorities.
The Bus Riders Union reached an impressive settlement with the transit authority Their strategy demonstrated the
mobilized a struggle that did not
revolve around racial identities, but rather one that united members of all
races in a common struggle for social justice.32 Action within and across ethnic groups in
centrality of race in determining access to public services, yet they
these struggles is made possible by what the participants know, not who they are. Their situated knowledges, historical
experiences, and current struggles with power give their ethnic iden- tities their determinant meanings. Li.ke scholars in
Chicano studies and other ethnic studies fields, their knowledge comes from their experiences, their strate- gic insights
from the ways in which having less power than your enemies makes it important to know the truth and dangerous to deny
reality. Political struggle, social analysis, and social theory are mutually constitutive; each is better when linked to the
other. As Iames Baldwin pointed out years ago, “People who cling to their delusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to
learn anything worth learning: a
people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine
everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water. A people still held in bondage must
believe that lk shall know the truth, and the truth shall make yefreejm
Intersectionality
Individual differences block identity politics effectiveness –
intersectionality proves
Minow 96 - Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (Martha, “Not Only for Myself:
Identity, Politics, and Law,” The Colin Ruagh Thomas O'Fallon Memorial Lecture,
University of Oregon School of Law, 3-7-96, 75 Or. L. Rev. 647, Fall 1996) //AD
The second, related difficulty is the tendency of identity politics to neglect
"intersectionality." 21 This notion refers to the way in which any particular
individual stands at the crossroads of multiple groups. All women also have a race; all
whites also have a gender; and the individuals stand in different places as gender and racial politics converge and diverge.
the meanings of gender are inflected and informed by race, and the
meanings of racial identity are similarly influenced by images of gender.
Moreover,
Black women have confronted male violence and white domination in ways quite different from the experiences of either
white women or black men. 22
Black women and black men have different experiences
and interests, argues Kimberle Crenshaw. She provides vivid illustrations with black women's responses to the
obscenity prosecution of the music group 2 Live Crew and to the Senate's treatment of Anita Hill during the confirmation
Men who are black may experience racial
discrimination while also participating in harassment or discriminatory
practices toward women. Women who are white may experience gender
discrimination while simultaneously participating in exclusionary practices
against blacks and Hispanics. 24 Neither gender nor racial identity
groupings alone [*656] can describe common experiences, standpoints, and relationships
hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas. 23
with others. 25 Is it adequate, then, to identify a group representative who shares a race with other members, but a gender
only with some of them, or a gender with other members but a race with only some of them? What about sharing a gender
The challenge to a conception of representation based on one
shared trait compounds with the recognition of further intersections.
Individuals manifest not only race and gender but also other bases for
potential group membership, such as age, disability, religion, immigrant status, and sexual orientation.
Then political affiliation, music preferences, favored sports, and other
commitments further bisect and realign groups. Some of the intersections seem
to invite new "identity groupings," such as black women, Chicana lesbians, and male bikers. They
but not a religion?
may also expose and perhaps solidify the self-affirmations of other intersectional groups, such as "white men" or "married
recognizing intersectionality threatens to complicate
identity politics with a proliferation of new , and old, identity groupings.
women." 26 At a minimum,
Oppression Olympics
Oppression Olympics entrench injustice and discrimination –
only intersectionality can break the trend
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
Exactly one week after well-known "shock jock" Don
Imus called the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappyheaded hos," he was fired by CBS News Radio. The controversy, which
simultaneously characterized the women in sexist and racist terms, targeted a
CHAPTER 1: INTERSECTIONALITY TO THE RESCUE
team that was runner up in the 2007 NCAA women's basketball championship. That Scarlet Knights team included eight
Women's rights and civil rights organizations
immediately came to the Scarlet Knights' defense. National Organization for Women
women of color and two white women.
president Kim Gandy joined civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to stand in solidarity with the
National Congress of Black Women and the National Council of Negro Women to demand termination of Imus' radio
This moment of convergence - the simultaneous attention to race and
gender - produced solidarity instead of the Oppression Olympics and its
attendant Leapfrog Paranoia, Willful Blindness, Defiant Ignorance,
Movement Backlash or Compassion Deficit Disorder. Demonstrating the
best of coalition politics, leaders of both communities acknowledged the
dual causes of this episode - racism and sexism; sexism and racism. This analysis allowed
for people who believe in either form of equality to join in a unified effort
to oust Imus. This moment of convergence, produced in part by the recognition of Categorical
Multiplicity, a term I define below, represents a taste of what intersectionality can bring
to our public discourse about race, gender, class and sexual orientation in
American politics. Unfortunately, Imus' period of contrition included a $20 million contract settlement and a
show.
new contract with ABC Radio only months later. Clearly, Categorical Multiplicity is necessary but not sufficient to turn the
page for good. Likewise, the call for attention to Categorical Multiplicity is a long-standing part of intersectionality
intersectionality doesn't end there. This chapter will outline five aspects of
an intersectional approach to politics that can thwart the lure of the
Oppression Olympics. In contrast to the debilitating Oppression Olympics,
intersectional approaches provide new ways for the privileged to stand in
solidarity, foster egalitarian coalition building among groups and enhance
our attention to complexity in politics. We will return to these prongs in the case study chapters to
research - but
come. Most Americans recognize that race and class are socially defined concepts with little to no biological meaning.
Gender and sexual orientation, on the other hand, remain categories with presumptions of biology implicated as
justifications for how people are treated/ Intersectionality scholars analyze all four categories as social constructions that
retain political influence far beyond any actual meaning of the biological, phenotypical and chromosomal differences
among us. Many scholars recognize this claim as a constructivist one - based on the conviction that humans cognitively
construct the world around them in order to best navigate a complex society. While
intersectionality starts with
recognizes the material reality that these social
constructions impose on us. Despite our best efforts we learn norms of racialized, gendered, classed and
this constructivist premise, it
sexualized behavior as children through observation and imitation of the adults to whom we are exposed, whether directly
Although we live in a nation with a strong commitment
to individual freedom, these norms interact to produce a web of patterned
rewards for norm- conforming behavior and punishments for behavior that
doesn't. While we might want that patterned reward system in place for criminal justice purposes, extending them
beyond that domain socializes Americans into an acceptance of injustice
and discrimination. Think of these intersecting behavioral norms as analogous to the threat that
or virtually through the media.
Morpheus and Neo discuss when they first meet in the movie "The Matrix:"" Morpheus: Do you believe in fate, Neo? Neo:
No. Morpheus: Why not? Neo: Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life. Morpheus: I know exactly
what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't
explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it
is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know
what I'm talking about? Neo: The Matrix? Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all
around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television.
You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled
over your eyes to blind you from the truth. Neo: What truth? Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you
were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind....iii In the
movie the matrix rewards Willful Blindness and Defiant Ignorance. From a 21st century political perspective, so too does
an Oppression Olympics orientation attempt to force people to pretend
that race, gender, class and sexual orientation don't exist when individuals,
groups and institutions interact with each other as if they do.iv
Intersectionality adds a daunting but critical layer of complexity: the
categories themselves interact with each other, teaching us how to overlook
invisible norms and spotlight what is different as normatively dysfunctional. This chapter illuminates
a path through the matrix by revealing the intellectual roots of intersectionality. v "To
combine gender with race, language, sexual orientation, concrete
interpersonal relations, and a host of other dimensions of identity is no
easy or uncomplicated thing. But it is from the recognition of this
complexity and these contradictions that we must start.”vi Categorical Multiplicity: The
Foundation of Intersectionality As I noted in the introduction, the idea that only the marginalized
dimensions of categories matter and the bias towards compartmentalizing
categories as mutually exclusive for political purposes both contribute to
the Oppression Olympics. For example, the African-American women on the
Rutgers team aren't Black on Monday- Wednesday-Friday, and female on
Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday. What would they do about Sunday? Yet most analyses of
American politics proceed as if this is the case. This allows the privileged
dimensions of categories to which people belong to remain invisible norms,
as we saw in the cases of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. Certainly, the mainstream sexism we observed in
the 2008 election must be addressed. But we must also recognize the racism, classism and homophobia within the gender
equality community. Moreover we must also address the sexism, classism and homophobia in the civil rights
intersectionality scholars draw
upon two of the most useful contributions of multicultural feminist theory:
that multiple categories are significant and due to the multiplicity of such
categories, there are multiple sites of power that need to be reformedviii The
communityvii By acknowledging the role of Categorical Multiplicity,
"intersectional turn" builds on cross-disciplinary work by feminist scholars and activists of color around the world.
The
impact of an intersectional approach to race, sexual orientation, gender, and class as analytical
categories has emerged from over 50 years of scholarship/* Originally formulated as a
personal identity-laden theory, early on intersectionality theory focused solely on the identities of women of color. African
American feminist theorists such as Patricia Hill Collins, Joy James, bell hooks and many others articulated a both/and
identity to locate Black women's sociopolitical situation as one that is, variously, "doubly bound" or featuring "multiple
jeopardies." This claim, evident across numerous disciplines of Black women's studies evolved from the both/and claims
of 18th and 19th century writers such as Maria Miller Stewart and Anna Julia Cooper. Latina and Asian American
feminists have also made similar claims about the multiplicity of identity and claimed an inseparability of race, gender,
sexuality and class in the lives of women of color. Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga have similarly talked about the
A related focus on
hybridity has similarly energized European approaches to intersectionality as a
paradigm that shapes analyses of public education, social welfare policy,
and immigration studies. These convincing claims in the U.S. context have been joined by postcategorical multiplicity of Latinas' lives in a racialized context of hybridity termed mestizaje.
colonial feminists who add the importance of North-South identity as a politically relevant category of analysis for
The impact of this work has been tremendous,
filtering into more generalized academic and international human rights
work. International feminist and UN NGO forums have gradually put issues of intersectionality more centrally on their
women's international movements.x
agenda.xi Since then equality legislation in many countries as well as the EU has moved from focusing on single category
approaches to intersectional approaches. As well, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's recent book, Identity and Violence: The
The
multicultural feminist claim of multiple jeopardies has traditionally been
interpreted to mean that some women have a larger number of multiple
marginalized categorical memberships that therefore deserve a larger share
of the policy solutions. I call this logic the additive oppressions argument,xiii
and it is easy to see where this logic leads - directly to the Oppression Olympics
question of "Who has it toughest?" In addition to the normative concerns about the desirability or
Illusion of Destiny (2006) recognizes the role of multiple identities in civil wars and contexts of ethnic violence.xii
usefulness of such a debate, two specific problems emerge from the additive argument.
Oppression Olympics gets commodified by the legal system –
only intersectionality can work within the law to achieve social
justice
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
categories of
race, gender, class and sexual orientation all present equal but not identical
threats to our democracy as one nation with liberty and justice for all. Work produced by
intersectionality researchers has characterized the relationship between
categories in a variety of ways. Faced with the incompatibility of the additive oppressions approach
with existing civil rights jurisprudence, legal theorists like Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, xviii Mari
Matsuda, Adrien Katherine Wing, Patricia Williams and Margaret Montoya identified
Categorical Intersection: The Central Metaphor of Intersectionality I've mentioned twice that
numerous gaps in the American legal framework left unaddressed after
mid-20th century movement activism on behalf of women and
racial/ethnic minorities. Within the legal domain, these women argued
that a gap persists between the lived experience of women of color and the
opportunity for legal remedy against discriminatory pay structures, work rules
or protection from domestic violence. Their convincing explanations of a relationship
among political categories of difference such as race, class and gender preserved the
claims for justice based on Categorical Multiplicity, but on substantively
different grounds than multicultural feminist theory. Categorical Intersection
emphasized the invisibility of women's lived experiences in a legal
system that constructed race and gender as mutually exclusive.
Characterizing the relationship between categories as intersectional rather than
additive turned these scholars away from the Oppression Olympics and
toward the possibilities for transformative politics. Crenshaw, recognizing this
"tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis,"xix coined the
metaphor of intersecting streets to describe the legal location of women
with multiple marginalized identities. This formulation has been encapsulated in the law by
Canadian courts.xx Each category is taken to be an intersecting "vector" and society occurs at the point of intersection for
Content Intersectionality" because of
its emphasis on three central categories of difference as substantively, not simply analytically critical to
U.S. politics. More specifically, each of the categories in figure 1 has the same color because, particularly
in the legal arena due to the role of signals and spillover across movements ,
each category has been construed to require not simply equal, but more importantly identical legal
remedies.xxii Content intersectionality has focused primarily on rendering the invisible visible - that is, enlightening
all people.xxi Figure 1 displays the original metaphor, herein called "
the world about the lives of people (primarily women to date) who politically, socially, and/or legally exist at the
intersection of race, class and gender. Yet as intersectionality as an analytical framework has gained popularity, two
central shifts have emerged, based on a deep theoretical and jurisprudential engagement with Crenshaw's original
metaphor. ** Figure 1 About Here ** In the 20+ years since the landmark interventions of multicultural feminists like
Gloria Anzaldua, Patricia Hill Collins and Crenshaw's original metaphor,xxiii intersectionality research has progressed to
more explicitly include class and sexual orientation along with the initial categories of race and gender identified by
Crenshaw and others.xxiv The two-dimensional intersecting street metaphor must now accommodate this change in
Categorical Multiplicity. We might first want to just add more streets - instead of a two-street intersection, we'd presume
more of a British-style roundabout. Unfortunately this move is flawed because it violates the spirit of Crenshaw's original
formulation, which emphasizes the indivisibility of multiple categories in our lives - by removing the intersections
completely. It is indeed impossible to be only white on Mondays, only gay on Tuesdays, and so forth. So how might we
capture the power relationships that exist along the North-South spectrum in international or transnational contexts?
How might we account for religion or disability as categories of difference? In her forthcoming article and recent book,
Rita Dhamoon quite helpfully walks through the multiple images and metaphors that have emerged from the serious
consideration of additional categories, and cites several standards for selecting the relevant categories within any
particular political context for study. Table 1 lists several of them. ** Table 1 about here ** Dhamoon notes that all of the
While this step of
selecting which intersections to study allows us to incorporate previously
ignored categories, it also potentially dislodges the hegemony of the racegender-class triumvirate of categories that have dominated intersectional
scholarship for decades. Some scholars question this turn as a move to
delegitimize race as a central component of the intersectional approach
standards of choice are driven by the analysis and critique of how power operates and its effects.xxv
Dhamoon reminds us that however unsatisfactory this
possible outcome might seem, "there are no universal grounds on which to know which
interactions should be studied."xxvi It is important to note that the absence of universal
grounds does not give us license to engage in Willful Blindness, Defiant
Ignorance or even Compassion Deficit Disorder but instead recognizes that
as political contexts vary, so too does the relevance of certain categories. To
talk about race in India, for example, might not be nearly as legible as talking about caste. Further, to assume
that caste is simply a proxy for race in India also presents a host of problems
(whether methodological, in terms of validity or theoretical, in terms of conceptual clarity) for research design
or policy prescriptions. Nevertheless, the central benefit of content
intersectionality is its ability to make the "invisible" visible. It produces
historically, politically, and socioeconomically accurate information that
has several benefits. Canadian public health scholar Olena Hankivsky argues that
intersectionality has "the potential to.. .in the final analysis, contribute an important
conceptual advancement in expanding policy discourse in relation to social
justice."xxvii In this regard, we can think of intersectionality as a justiceoriented analytical tool. If we are committed to that part of our pledge of allegiance to the flag that says,
(others have said similar things about gender).
"with liberty and justice for all," then in addition to our focus on the invisible - overcoming Willful Blindness, Defiant
Ignorance, and Compassion Deficit Disorder in the process - we must also attend to Movement Backlash, another aspect
By reframing the intersection as a dynamic center of both
invisibility and hypervisibility, we can expand intersectionality's utility as
an antidote to the Oppression Olympics. Visibility for marginalized groups
and individuals, particularly from a political or public policy perspective, is contingent and mediated by
what I have elsewhere called a "politics of disgust." Welfare recipients, undocumented
immigrants, prison populations, and terror suspects are usually identified
with often disturbing inaccuracy by authorities based on their memberships
in multiple intersecting categories: single poor black mothers, Latino/a working class Spanish
speakers, Black and brown working class men, young Arab American men. The perversion of
democratic attention in a politics of disgust involves elites using a warped
version of such populations' public identity as an ideological justification
for outrageously invasive public policies. Second, among these subsets of larger groups,
elites' power in a communicative context of gross inequality - their bigger
microphones and megaphones - make contestation and the relationships
with logical allies difficult to the point of impossibility. Most ironically, for these
intersectionally disadvantaged groups, sometimes the best one can
immediately hope for is invisibility. The panopticon of surveillance, to
use Foucauldian terms, often feature egregious and intense Movement
Backlash. Consider the following examples: The 1960s and 1970s activism of the
National Welfare Rights Movement led a 1980s President Ronald Reagan to lay the
economic ills of the United States at the feet of the Cadillac-driving
of the Oppression Olympics.
"welfare queens" - a fabricated image. The successful push for the
Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 was countered by states
like California, which passed Proposition 187 in 1994 after immigrants
were targeted as the cause of California's recession. While sadly
scapegoating is nothing new, the idea that such groups are intersectionally
identified through a justice-oriented focus on power is new and such efforts
have met with varying levels of success. In his recent analysis of
intersectional court claims, Francisco Valdes found that among nine different
categories of intersectional claims, only those that exclusively involved
protected classes got relief from the courts. The remaining challenge for advocates is the larger
set of cases where claimants were members of both protected and unprotected
classes. In such situations the court's logic subsumed claimants' protected status
(e.g. one's race) under their unprotected status (e.g. their class). Valdes' finding is a
clear example of how the legal structure fosters or facilitates Willful
Blindness to a claimant's own privilege (a clear link to the final dimension of intersectionality
discussed below). In matters of legal strategy, claimants are incentivized to
downplay or ignore their privilege. Valdes contends that while this juxtaposition
reveals the continuing dysfunction of the U.S. legal system, it also
provides a road map for future strategic litigation.
Links
Me-search link
Their form of politics fractures any meaningful change – the
atomization of social movements has created a form of “mesearch” rather than research which makes the aff’s impacts
inevitable
Chandler, 9 - Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster
(David, Questioning Global Political Activism”, What is Radical Politics Today Edited by
Jonathan Pugh, 81-82)//jml
politics is no less important to many of us today. Politics still gives us
a sense of social connection and social rootedness and gives meaning to many of our lives. It is just that
the nature and practices of this politics are different. We are less likely to engage in the formal
politics of representation - of elections and governments - but in post-territorial politics,
a politics where there is much less division between the private sphere and
the public one and much less division between national, territorial, concerns and global ones. This type of
politics is on the one hand ‘global’ but, on the other, highly individualised:
it is very much the politics of our everyday lives – the sense of meaning we get from thinking
However,
about global warming when we turn off the taps when we brush our teeth, take our rubbish out for recycling or cut back on
our car use - we might also do global politics in deriving meaning from the ethical or social value of our work, or in our
when
we do ‘politics’ nowadays it is less the ‘old’ politics, of self-interest, political
parties, and concern for governmental power, than the ‘new’ politics of
global ethical concerns. I further want to suggest that the forms and content of this new global approach to
subscription or support for good causes from Oxfam to Greenpeace and Christian Aid. I want to suggest that
the political are more akin to religious beliefs and practices than to the forms of our social political engagement in the
past. Global politics is similar to religious approaches in three vital respects: 1) global post-territorial politics are no longer
concerned with power, its’ concerns are free-floating and in many ways, existential, about how we live our lives; 2) global
politics revolve around practices with are private and individualised, they are about us as individuals and our ethical
the practice of global politics tends to be non-instrumental, we do
not subordinate ourselves to collective associations or parties and are more
likely to give value to our aspirations, acts, or the fact of our awareness of an issue, as an end initself. It is as if we are upholding our goodness or ethicality in the face of an
increasingly confusing, problematic and alienating world – our politics in this sense
choices; 3)
are an expression or voice, in Marx’s words, of ‘the heart in a heartless world’ or ‘the soul of a soulless condition’. The
practice of ‘doing politics’ as a form of religiosity is a highly conservative one. As Marx argued, religion was the ‘opium of
this is politics as a sedative or pacifier: it feeds an illusory view
of change at the expense of genuine social engagement and
transformation. I want to argue that global ethical politics reflects and
institutionalises our sense of disconnection and social atomisation and
results in irrational and unaccountable government policy making . I
the people’ -
want to illustrate my points by briefly looking at the practices of global ethics in three spheres, those of radical political
activism, government policy making and academia. Radical activism People often argue that there is nothing passive or
conservative about radical political activist protests, such as the 2003 anti-war march, anti-capitalism and antiglobalisation protests, the huge march to Make Poverty History at the end of 2005, involvement in the World Social
Forums or the radical jihad of Al-Qaeda. I disagree;
these new forms of protest are highly
individualised and personal ones - there is no attempt to build a social
or collective movement. It appears that theatrical suicide, demonstrating, badge and bracelet wearing are
ethical acts in themselves: personal statements of awareness, rather than attempts to engage politically with society. This
It is as if people are
more concerned with the creation of a sense of community through
differences than with any political debate, shared agreement or collective
purpose. It seems to me that if someone was really concerned with ending
war or with ending poverty or with overthrowing capitalism, that political
views and political differences would be quite important. Is war caused by capitalism,
by human nature, or by the existence of guns and other weapons? It would seem important to
debate reasons , causes and solutions, it would also seem necessary to give those political
differences an organisational expression if there was a serious
project of social change. Rather than a political engagement with the world, it seems that radical political
is illustrated by the ‘celebration of differences’ at marches, protests and social forums.
activism today is a form of social disengagement – expressed in the anti-war marchers’ slogan of ‘Not in My Name’, or the
assumption that wearing a plastic bracelet or setting up an internet blog diary is the same as engaging in political debate.
it seems that political activism is a practice which isolates individuals
who think that demonstrating a personal commitment or awareness of
problems is preferable to engaging with other people who are often
dismissed as uncaring or brain-washed by consumerism. The narcissistic aspects of the
In fact,
practice of this type of global politics are expressed clearly by individuals who are obsessed with reducing their carbon
footprint, deriving their idealised sense of social connection from an ever increasing awareness of themselves and by
giving ‘political’ meaning to every personal action. Global ethics appear to be in demand because they offer us a sense of
social connection and meaning while at the same time giving us the freedom to construct the meaning for ourselves, to
pick our causes of concern, and enabling us to be free of responsibilities for acting as part of a collective association, for
While the appeal of global ethical politics
is an individualistic one, the lack of success or impact of radical activism is
also reflected in its rejection of any form of social movement or
organisation. Strange as it may seem, the only people who are keener on global ethics than radical activists are
winning an argument or for success at the ballot-box.
political elites. Since the end of the Cold War, global ethics have formed the core of foreign policy and foreign policy has
tended to dominate domestic politics. Global ethics are at the centre of debates and discussion over humanitarian
intervention, ‘healing the scar of Africa’, the war on terror and the ‘war against climate insecurity’. Tony Blair argued in
the Guardian last week that ‘foreign policy is no longer foreign policy’ (Timothy Garten Ash, ‘Like it or Loath it, after 10
years Blair knows exactly what he stands for’, 26 April 2007), this is certainly true. Traditional foreign policy, based on
strategic geo-political interests with a clear framework for policy-making, no longer seems so important. The government
is down-sizing the old Foreign and Commonwealth Office where people were regional experts, spoke the languages and
were engaged for the long-term, and provides more resources to the Department for International Development where its
staff are experts in good causes. This shift was clear in the UK’s attempt to develop an Ethical Foreign Policy in the 1990s
– an approach which openly claimed to have rejected strategic interests for values and the promotion of Britain’s caring
and sharing ‘identity’. Clearly, the projection of foreign policy on the basis of demonstrations of values and identity, rather
than an understanding of the needs and interests of people on the ground, leads to ill thought-through and short-termist
policy-making, as was seen in the ‘value-based’ interventions from Bosnia to Iraq (see Blair’s recent Foreign Affairs article,
‘A Battle for Global Values’, 86:1 (2007), pp.79–90). Governments have been more than happy to put global ethics at the
top of the political agenda for - the same reasons that radical activists have been eager to shift to the global sphere – the
freedom from political responsibility that it affords them. Every government and international institution has shifted from
strategic and instrumental policy-making based on a clear political programme to the ambitious assertion of global causes
– saving the planet, ending poverty, saving Africa, not just ending war but solving the causes of conflict etc – of course, the
more ambitious the aim the less anyone can be held to account for success and failure. In fact, the more global the
problem is, the more responsibility can be shifted to blame the US or the UN for the failure to translate ethical claims into
concrete results. Ethical global questions, where the alleged values of the UN, the UK, the ‘civilised world’, NATO or the
EU are on the line in ‘wars of choice’ from the war on terror to the war on global warming lack traditional instrumentality
because they are driven less by the traditional interests of Realpolitik than the narcissistic search for meaning or identity.
Governments feel the consequences of their lack of social connection, even
more than we do as individuals; it undermines any attempt to represent
shared interests or cohere political programmes. As Baudrillard suggests, without a
connection to the ‘represented’ masses, political leaders are as open to ridicule and exposure as the ‘Emperor with no
clothes’ (In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, New York: Semiotext(e), 1983, for example). It is this lack of shared social
goals which makes instrumental policy-making increasingly problematic. As Donald Rumsfeld stated about the war on
terror, ‘there are no metrics’ to help assess whether the war is being won or lost. These wars and campaigns, often alleged
to be based on the altruistic claim of the needs and interests of others, are demonstrations and performances, based on
ethical claims rather than responsible practices and policies. Max Weber once counterposed this type of politics – the
‘ethics of conviction’ – to the ‘ethics of responsibility’ in his lecture on ‘Politics as a Vocation’. The desire to act on the
international scene without a clear strategy or purpose has led to highly destabilising interventions from the Balkans to
Iraq and to the moralisation of a wide range of issues from war crimes to EU membership requirements. Today more and
more people are ‘doing politics’ in their academic work. This is the reason for the boom in International Relations (IR)
study and the attraction of other social sciences to the global sphere. I would argue that the attraction of IR for many
people has not been IR theory but the desire to practise global ethics. The boom in the IR discipline has coincided with a
rejection of Realist theoretical frameworks of power and interests and the sovereignty/anarchy problematic. However, I
would argue that this rejection has not been a product of theoretical engagement with Realism but an ethical act of
rejection of Realism’s ontological focus. It seems that our ideas and our theories say much more about us than the world
we live in. Normative theorists and Constructivists tend to support the global ethical turn arguing that we should not be as
concerned with ‘what is’ as with the potential for the emergence of a global ethical community. Constructivists, in
particular, focus upon the ethical language which political elites espouse rather than the practices of power. But the most
dangerous trends in the discipline today are those frameworks which have taken up Critical Theory and argue that
focusing on the world as it exists is conservative problem-solving while the task for critical theorists is to focus on
Critical thought then becomes
a process of wishful thinking rather than one of engagement, with its
advocates arguing that we need to focus on clarifying our own ethical
frameworks and biases and positionality, before thinking about or teaching
on world affairs. This becomes ‘me-search’ rather than research. We
emancipatory alternative forms of living or of thinking about the world.
have moved a long way from Hedley Bull’s (1995) perspective that, for academic research to be truly radical, we had to put
The inward-looking and
narcissistic trends in academia, where we are more concerned with our
reflectivity – the awareness of our own ethics and values – than with
engaging with the world, was brought home to me when I asked my IR students which theoretical
our values to the side to follow where the question or inquiry might lead.
frameworks they agreed with most. They mostly replied Critical Theory and Constructivism. This is despite the fact that
the students thought that states operated on the basis of power and self-interest in a world of anarchy. Their theoretical
preferences were based more on what their choices said about them as ethical individuals, than about how theory might be
used to understand and engage with the world. Conclusion I have attempted to argue that there is a lot at stake in the
Politics has become a religious activity,
an activity which is no longer socially mediated; it is less and less an
activity based on social engagement and the testing of ideas in public
debate or in the academy . Doing politics today, whether in radical activism,
government policy-making or in academia, seems to bring people into a one-to-one
relationship with global issues in the same way religious people have a one-to-one relationship with
their God. Politics is increasingly like religion because when we look for
meaning we find it inside ourselves rather than in the external
consequences of our ‘political’ acts. What matters is the conviction or the act in itself: its connection
radical understanding of engagement in global politics.
to the global sphere is one that we increasingly tend to provide idealistically. Another way of expressing this limited sense
of our subjectivity is in the popularity of globalisation theory – the idea that instrumentality is no longer possible today
because the world is such a complex and interconnected place and therefore there is no way of knowing the consequences
The more we engage in the new politics where there is an
unmediated relationship between us as individuals and global issues, the
of our actions.
less we engage instrumentally with the outside world, and the less we engage with our
peers and colleagues at the level of political or intellectual debate and organisation.
Shared experience link
Their form of politics fails to recognize the diversity within
groups – ‘linked fate’ empirically fails
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
Diversity Within Following Don Imus' statement, Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer held a press conference to introduce
the world to the women Imus had impugned. Designed specifically to confront the characterization of "hos," the women
were dressed in business attire and spoke about their academic pursuits, in an effort to take back their power to define
Expanding
upon the commonplace idea that "not all stereotypes are true of all group
members," intersectionality theory demonstrates the Diversity Within all
groups to combat both mainstream stereotypes from both outside and
within the group itself.xxxv More specifically, Diversity Within emphasizes how
intersecting categories produce subgroups within the groups, who often
have divergent political agendas. For example, within the group of African Americans, no one
would dispute that Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan are not
disadvantaged in the same way as unemployed African Americans living on
the south side of Chicago, based on the intersecting category of
socioeconomic class. Indeed scholars of African American politics have
long argued that African Americans share a sense of "linked fate" that can
transcend politically relevant distinctions like class and gender in political
attitudes and behavior.xxxvi Yet while linked fate may persist among Black
political attitudes, it does not significantly affect Black political
participation.xxxvii Unfortunately, our political and public policy discourse
is not always sufficiently nuanced to capture this complexity. Thus
subgroups of populations remain disadvantaged with broad debate
focusing on why exactly such diverse outcomes exist, overlooking the
common sense reality that many longstanding policies were designed to
benefit a specific slice of a group (like middle class blacks or white women) based on the
assumption that what was good for this slice was good for the entire group.
xxxviii Building on the idea that there is no pure victim, Diversity Within
recognizes the differential power relationships and multiple centers of
power in American politics. The late political theorist Iris Marion Young attempted to
reconcile the recognition of within-group diversity for practical politics,
asking the question, on what grounds, then, can women claim to speak
for women as a group? This question has emerged over the past 20 years not simply in response to
who they were, instead of allowing Imus and his producer Bernard McGuirk to do it for them.xxxiv
women of color charging second-wave feminists with racism, but among conservative, independent, and moderate women
We can't
always spin our wheels, Young concludes, searching for what we have in common,
because there will always be the chance that someone will be excluded.xl But
if that's the case, then how do we form groups to get things done politically? Young
recommends we think of race or gender categories as "serial
collectives." xli When we think of women as a serial collective, there is no
requirement that we must all have something in common beyond a
relationship to a material object and the social practices in relationship to
it.xlii If we think in terms of serial collectives, we set aside the paralyzing
question of what we must have in common before we can speak and focus
instead on what we can do to change our world. Drawing upon the work of Jean-Paul Sartre,
Young highlights the way in which politically, we can think of women as analogous to
commuters taking the bus. Commuters need not all be a specific race,
gender, class or sexual orientation, of course, but they do share a
relationship to the commuter busxliii and the practices that are associated
with it - including its route (over which they have little direct control), whether it's on time
(something they may or may not have some control of), and how far they choose to ride (something
who state that the feminist movement doesn't speak for them. So it's more than an idle question.xxxix
they have more but not complete control over). Surveying the variety of cars and buses and other forms of transportation,
individuals forming groups is a matter of choice and
opportunity; where individuals have embarked and have elected to follow the journey of the bus itself. Prior to
embarking, potential riders represent a serial collective - a collection of individuals with
we can envision the degree to which
the potential for group action. Once embarked, however, the individuals have elected to "link their fate"xliv with those of
their fellow passengers, however temporarily, episodically or contingently (e.g. solely for the purposes of arriving at a
The members of this collective may spend most days never actually
thinking of themselves as a "group," until something very specific happens
- like the bus has an accident or doesn't show up at its scheduled stop one day. There may then
be a specific block of time where commuters join together to address some
specific task (like finding an alternate route to work or school). Intersectionality's
commitment to addressing Diversity Within focuses our attention on the process by which
the task gets defined and achieved. Too often, a small subset of the
serial collective decides among themselves what the task at hand
should be, under the assumption that their decision sufficiently covers the
entire group. Yet this agenda-setting process falsely assumes that what's
good for them is what's good for the entire group. Intersectionality scholars
have proposed new and different ways to set the agenda for the
collective.xlv Once that associated task is completed, they can then elect to dissolve the collective (and return to
destination).
daily life as an individual commuter) or they may choose to remain together as a non-political entity (socially saying hello,
playing card games on the bus during the ride) or as a formally organized political entity (forming a Straphangers
the future of the group is to be set by more than
the privileged members of the collective. At any particular time some, one or all may attempt to
Campaign or Bus Riders Union).xlvi Again
veer "off-road" in order to reach their intended destination. The final aspect of intersectionality returns us to Crenshaw's
new metaphor of the Grand Canyon. It will focus on the seriality of categories like race, class, sexual orientation and
gender to examine the dynamic relationships across individual and institutional levels of analysis.
Standpoint epistemology link
Standpoint epistemology reinforces a type of “insider research”
that produces inaccurate understandings of the world – reject
their starting point of identity
Innes, 9 - assistant professor in the Department of Native Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan (Robert, Wait a Second. Who Are You Anyways?" American Indian
Quarterly 33:4)//jml
Insider scholars, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, challenge the research conducted by outsiders for its colonial nature,
which ignores, silences, [End Page 441] and/or diminishes insider perspectives.3 This critique originated with African
American scholars in the 1960s and led to an emergence of what Robert Merton describes as the "Insider doctrine,"
namely, that members of a particular group should research their own group.4 Feminists, for example, advocate that
women should research women's issues. As Sherna Gluck and Daphine Patai state, it should be "by, for, and about
women."5 The result of these assertions has been the development and implementation of research methods designed for
scholars have
questioned what actually constitutes insider research, the validity of the
data obtained by insiders, and to what degree the insiders are, in fact, insiders.
Over thirty years ago sociologist Robert Merton addressed the research conducted by insiders. According to Merton, the
central notion of the insider doctrine—that only members of a particular
group possess the ability to undertake research of their group—is
"solipsistic." The solipsism of the insider doctrine, Merton believes, "can be put
in the vernacular with no great loss in meaning: you have to be one to
understand one."6 For Merton, a major shortcoming of this exclusiveness is that it leads to fragmentation, for
groups necessarily contain additional subgroups: Thus, if only whites can understand whites,
and blacks, blacks, and only men can understand men, and women, women, this gives rise to the
paradox which severely limits both premises: for it then turns out, by
assumption, that some Insiders are excluded from understanding other Insiders
insider researchers, which, in turn, has generated discussion among scholars. Specifically,
with white women being condemned not to understand white men, and black men, not to understand black women, and
so through the various combinations of status subsets.7 The issue of insider research validity has also garnered much
Insider researchers' bias has been a frequent target due to
alleged close ties to the research group. Insiders' close ties have led some scholars to point out "the
dangers of over-rapport." Over-rapport occurs when a researcher closely identifies
with the research group's perspectives and fails to approach research
situations in a critical manner .8 That is, as John L. Aguilar states, "the conduct of research
from home often inhibits the perception of structures and patterns of social and cultural life.… [T]oo much is too
familiar to be noticed or to arouse the curiosity essential to research."9
Insider researchers' close relationship with the researched group means
that significant observation can "easily be overlooked, including many taken-for granted
discussion among scholars.
assumptions about social behavior and the blindness to common, everyday activities; these are hazards of intimate
Scholars have additionally argued that insider researchers, unlike
outsiders, are more likely to have difficulty "intellectually and emotively"
distancing themselves from the research group.11 In contrast to insider researchers, outsider
familiarity."10
researchers see themselves as being better equipped to provide objective accounts of the research population. Merton cites
Georg Simmel, who states that an outsider or stranger to the research group is "freer, practically and theoretically. . . .
[H]e surveys conditions with less prejudice; his criteria for them are more general and more objective ideals; he is not tied
down in his action by habit, piety, and precedent." Merton adds, "It is the stranger, too, who finds what is familiar to the
group significantly unfamiliar and so is prompted to raise questions for inquiry less apt to be raised at all by Insiders."12
While insider researchers have to contend with obstacles that prevent them
from probing into some areas, outsider research "involves a comparative
orientation in which contrast promotes both perception and curiosity. The
researcher undergoes a kind of heuristic culture shock that
operates through curiosity as an impetus to understanding."13 These views
emphasize the idea that "only outsiders can conduct valid research on a given group; only outsiders, it is held, possess the
needed objectivity and emotional distance … [and that] insiders invariably present their group in an unrealistically
favorable light."14 Some feminists have become critical of the insider research favored by many feminist scholars. Melissa
Gilbert's research experience led her to question the feminist research methodology: "The fact that I was not doing my
research in the 'Third World' or in any other country, and yet felt like an 'outsider' suggests that we need to question the
assumptions underlying much of 'feminist' methodology." For Gilbert, "the insider/outsider dichotomy is not useful
because the very act of conducting research places an 'insider' in an 'outsider' position."15 Other insider researchers like
Gilbert have found that simply being a member of the researched community does not guarantee insider status. Class,
gender, sexuality, nationality, age, education, ethnicity, race, culture, [End Page 443] level of familiarity, physical
appearance, types of clothing, and lingering distrust of research could all prevent insider researchers from obtaining the
Insider researchers have
also identified physical appearance as a barrier to gain insider status with
some research participants. These researchers found that, like outsider researchers, they went
through a period in which they and the research participants had to
negotiate their relationship, a period whereby the researcher had to gain the confidence of his or her
participants.17 These researchers reached the same conclusion set out by Merton many years ago: "We are all, of
course, both insiders and outsiders, members of some groups and,
sometimes derivatively, not of others; occupants of certain statuses which
thereby exclude us from occupying other cognate statuses."18 Unlike Gilbert, however,
trust and credibility necessary for gaining access to research participants.16
these recent scholars maintain that their status as an insider was not completely undermined by factors that made them
an outsider. They were aware or were made aware of these differences and had to navigate their way in a research
relationship to enhance their insider status so that their research participants accepted them and their differences.
Standpoint epistemology devastates coalition building – identity
politics devolves into insularity
Kruks, 95 – PhD, Robert S. Danforth Professor of Politics (Sonia, “Identity Politics
and Dialectical Reason: Beyond an Epistemology of Provenance” Vol. 10, No. 2
1995)//jml
As a political critique of global-difference feminism, identity politics is indubitably valid. Since women are never women
tout court, but are always situated also as members of a class, a race, an ethnic grouping, a sexual orientation, an age
grade, and so on, it is dangerous to assume that the inequities and power relations that pertain to those other dimensions
in its attempts to refute falsely
universalizing knowledge claims, identity politics sometimes tends to
replicate those aspects of global-difference feminism which have stressed the radical
incommunicability of women's experience to men. Identity politics tends toward an excessive
particularization and partitioning of knowledge, but now along the lines of race or ethnicity,
for example, as well as gender. For such experience-based accounts of knowledge imply an
epistemology of provenance: that is, the claim that knowledge arises from an
experiential basis that is fundamentally group-specific and that others, who
are outside the group and who lack its immediate experiences, cannot
of social situation will not play out also between women. However,
share that knowledge. As a corollary it is generally claimed that outsiders have no basis from which they can
legitimately evaluate the group's claims about its knowledge, or those political or moral positions that it takes on the basis
of that knowledge. In short, only those who live a particular reality can know about it; and only they have the right to
Many groups that practice identity politics also advocate a politics
of alliance or coalition with other groups, invoking the ideal of "bridging"
differences once they are recognized and respected.5 Commitments to coalition work, to
speak about it.
alliance, to solidarity across groups are, I believe, vital for any effective progressive politics in this day and age. However,
the implications of an epistemology of provenance, if consistently pursued,
threaten to undercut coalition politics or other forms of solidarity among women. The
unintended end-point of an epistemology of provenance can be an acute
and politically debilitating subjectivism, which belies the possibility of
communication and common action across differences. It is this apparent contradiction
within identity politics (and other forms of multiple-difference feminism) that concerns me in this essay. Some identity
politics has tended to assert global identities for a particular kind of women, arguing for example that all black women
share culture, experience, and ways of knowing (Collins 1990; Brown 1988). However, such assertions tend in turn to be
There is thus a tendency for identities increasingly to
subdivide. For example, many lesbian women of color have come to
identify themselves as having an identity distinct from that of other women
of color and of other lesbians. Or, within the lesbian community, those who accept sado-masochistic
practices proclaim themselves to have a different identity from those who do not (Phelan 1989, esp. Chap. 6). Since
no woman can avoid living a plurality of identities, a central dynamic of
identity politics is to move toward ever-shrinking identity groups, for which the
challenged as falsely universalistic.
logical terminus would have to be not merely subjectivism but solipsism, since no one person's set of experiences is
Identity politics, as an epistemological position, thus threatens to leave
us without the possibility of having the kind of common knowledge, or
forming the kind of collective judgments, necessary for the development of
broadly organized, feminist coalition politics such as its adherents often advocate. To exemplify: some
identical to another's.6
consistent end-points of an epistemology of provenance would be to say, among other things, that those who do not
experience domestic violence, or incest, or rape, or unwanted pregnancy, or even unequal pay, have no experiential basis
from which to evaluate and speak about such issues. Statements such as these, which I think very few feminists would
want to endorse, are not of a different propositional order than the statements, commonly heard today, to the effect that
white women have no basis or right to discuss the issue of sexism in black heterosexual relationships, or that Western
. The challenge identity
politics now presents us with is this: to find a way to recognize the powerladen dangers of global-difference feminism and to affirm the importance
of the existence of radical experiential differences, but to do so without
embracing an epistemology of provenance. The problem is to find a way of acknowledging the
women should take no position on clitoridectomy in Africa or the Middle East
claims to knowledge of particular identity groups without thereby wholly evacuating claims for a more general basis for
knowledge, or more general visions and projects of emancipation.
Starting point link
Beginning discussion with identity is essentialist – even if they
acknowledge identity’s fluidity, identity as a starting point lapses
into essentialism. They also over-determine autonomy which
ignores group conditions that aren’t predicated upon
individualism
Mowbray, 10 - PhD, Senior Lecturer at Sydney University and Co-Director, Sydney
Centre for International Law (Jacqueline, “Autonomy, Identity and Self-knowledge: A
New ‘Solution’ to the Liberal-Communitarian ‘Problem’?” January 2014 Sydney Law
School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 14/02)//jml
The problem of identity In bridging the gap between liberal and communitarian positions with the concept of self-
the recent literature assigns a critical role to identity, of which selfknowledge is to be gained. My concern with this approach is that taking identity as a
starting point for discussion results in a tendency to essentialise
identity . In other words, the relevant literature tends to assume that identity is
an object of some sort, with a fixed content, which we are capable of
discussing and discovering. In fact, however, work in many fields has shown
identity to be fluid, dynamic, negotiated and contested. Psychologists and
knowledge,
psychoanalysts from Freud onwards have deconstructed our notion of ‘the self’ to demonstrate the way in which our
identity is shaped by our life experiences. Sociolinguists have shown that we construct our identity, at least in part,
through language.12 Anthropologists have shown that ethnic identity is not fixed or ‘primordial’, but is constructed as a
result of social interactions with other groups. 13 As Judith Butler concludes in her book, Gender Trouble, identity is ‘a
Identity is not, therefore, something
pre-existing or ‘given’, which we can then discover, but something which is
constructed and subject to change. Of course, the recent literature which I am discussing does not
normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience’.14
deny this. In fact, to some extent, it specifically acknowledges the uncertainties associated with identity. Hague, for
example, in arguing that autonomy should be the process by which we develop our identity, treats the ‘multiple and
changing’15 nature of identity as the basis for an argument that individuals need to take control of that identity
while the literature acknowledges the complexities
associated with the concept of identity, in taking identity as the
starting point for discussion, it inevitably tends to lapse back
into an essentialist treatment of the concept. Arguably, this tendency to
essentialism was inherent also in the earlier communitarian view, given the
central role played by the concept of identity within communitarian thought. However, the early
communitarian literature was less prone to critique on this basis, as that
literature focused on what we might term ‘objective’ aspects of identity –
unchosen aspects of identity, such as gender and ethnic origin. In seeking to
overcome the gap between autonomy and identity by including more
individual, ‘chosen’ aspects of identity within the concept, the recent
literature leaves itself more open to questions about the objective existence
of the identity with which it is concerned. In other words, by constructing identity
as the concrete, tangible creation of individual choice, the literature invites
themselves. Nonetheless,
questions about whether identity in this sense really exists. This highlights
another aspect of identity which is, I think, inadequately accounted for in the
recent literature, namely that identity has not only individual but also
group elements. And group identity is not constructed solely by
autonomous individuals, but by social dynamics over which individuals
may have little control. The recent literature of course acknowledges the importance of collective identities.
However, in seeking to bridge the gap between autonomy and identity, it
focuses largely on the fact that individuals can choose between the various
collective identities available to them. The implicit or explicit argument here is that, as put so
elegantly by Sen: The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with
African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance-runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a
novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis
fan, a jazz musician, and someone who is deeply committed to the view that there are intelligent beings in outer space with
whom it is extremely urgent to talk (preferably in English). ... Given our inescapably plural identities, we have to decide on
this
account again risks simplifying the concept of identity , in that it
tends to position the individual as ultimately in control of his or her
identity. In fact, as noted above, identity is highly contingent, and this is particularly
the case when we are concerned with group identities, which emerge and
evolve as a result of social interactions with other groups, and within the
group itself.17
the relative importance of our different associations and affiliations in any particular context.16 But
Survival strategies link
Focus on individual survival strategies brackets off collective
questions and is used to justify structural violence
Giroux, 3 – (Henry, “Pedagogies of Difference, Race, and Representation: Film as a
Site of Translation and Politics Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking Education for
Social Change,” p. 95-96)//jml
public pedagogy would have to analyze the largely
privatized and individualized analysis that shapes this film and how it resonates with the ongoing
privatization and depoliticization of the public sphere. As neoliberalism has gained momentum since the
1980s, one of its distinguishing features has been an assault on all those public
spheres that are not regulated by the language of the market. Under the onslaught of
Any attempt to address Baby Boy as a form of
neoliberal ideology and its tum toward free market as the basis for human interaction, there is an attempt to alter radically the very
Individuals are now defined
largely as consumers, and self-interest appears to be the only factor
capable of motivating people. Public spaces are increasingly displaced by commercial interests, and private utopias
become the only way of understanding the meaning of the good life. It gets worse. As public life is emptied of its
own separate concerns -importance of public goods, civic virtue, public debate, collective agency, and social provisions
for the marginalized-it becomes increasingly more difficult to translate private
concerns into public considerations. The Darwinian world of universal
struggle pits individuals against each other while suggesting that the
misfortunes and problems of others represent both a weakness of character
and a social liability. Within such a system, the state gives up its obligations to provide
collective safety nets for people and the ideology of going it alone furthers
the myth that all social problems are the result of individual choices.
vocabulary we use in describing and appraising human interest, action, and behavior.
Unfortunately, Baby Boy not only refuses to challenge the myth of individual motivation and pathology as the source of unemployment,
it actually reinforces
this well rehearsed stable of conservative ideology. It does so by suggesting
that collective problems can only be addressed as tales of individual
survival , coming of age stories that chronicle either selfishness, laziness, and lack of maturity or individual perseverance. By
violence, welfare dependency, bad housing, inadequate schools, and crumbling infrastructures,
suggesting that Jody 's life is colonized by the private, cut off from larger social, economic, and political issues, Baby Boy both renders hope
private and suggests that communities in struggle can only share or be organized around the most private of intimacies, removed in large
part from the capacity to struggle over broader issues. Dependency in this film is a dirty word, and seems to ignore the ways in which it
resonates with right wing attacks on the welfare state and the alleged perils of big government. Granted, Baby Boy is supposedly about the
refusal of immature African-American youth to grow up, but the film 's attack on dependency is so one-sided that it reinforces the myth that
it supports this ideology, in part, by refusing to
acknowledge how dependency on the welfare state has worked for those
millions for whom it has "made all the difference between wretched
poverty and a decent life."41 Similarly, if Jody 's dreams are limited to the demands of the traditional family structure
social safety nets simply weaken character, and
and the successes associated with the market ideology, there is no room in Baby Boy to recognize democracy, not the market, as a force of
dissent and a relentless critique of institutions, as a source of civic engagement, or as a discourse for expanding and deepening the
possibilities of critical citizenship and social transformation. In the end, Baby Boy fails to offer a space for translating how the private and
it reinforces rather than ruptures those racially
oppressive trends in American society that disfigure the possibility of racial
justice, democratic politics, and responsible citizenship.
public mutually inform each other; consequently,
Alternative
Analytical categories alt
Reject their focus of identity in place of analytical categories –
identity-based politics forego the possibility for institutional
change
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
*we do not endorse ableist language
aspects of what I term
"Paradigmatic Intersectionality". Only when brought together do all five aspects of
intersectionality effectively address the dilemmas posed by the Oppression
Olympics. ** Figure 3 about here ** Intersectionality takes seriously race, gender,
sexual orientation and class as analytical categories rather than just as
identities /" Why? If we focus solely on race as an identity, we are limited to
identity-based policy solutions that get bogged down in debates about the
legitimacy and humanity of the individuals themselves, which ignores the
role of institutions in shaping politics. The previous section on Individual-Institutional
Interactions, however, taught us that we can't simply focus on the structure in response. Intersectionality's
approach to politics can illuminate new ways to think about longstanding
debates such as affirmative action and multiracial identity. Focusing on
gender, race, class and sexual orientation as identities ushers in the
reification of lived experience^" which often leads to paralyzing claims of
"uniqueness," "incommensurability," and the dreaded Oppression
Olympics. Using sexual orientation, gender, class and race as analytical
categories accepts the lived experience of people without making it a
condition of group formation, epistemology, or agenda setting, further
opening opportunities for deep political solidarity. This expansion beyond
the limits of identity politics in no way dismisses identity as irrelevant or downright
pernicious, as some advocates of colorblindness would do. Instead the work opens up space for
the first benefit of intersectionality: creating diverse coalitions that are
non-identity based but may still generate identity-based benefits.
Intersectional approaches neither eschew identity nor remain mired in it.
Multiple planes of interaction (the organizational, intersubjective, experiential and representational)liv
and Categorical Multiplicity open up avenues of agency without ignoring the role of
Individual-Institutional Interactions. Take, for example, the news media's
longstanding overdependence on single black mothers as prototypes of
Analyzing American Politics From an Intersectional Perspective Figure 3 shows all five
welfare recipients.lv Intersectional analyses can certainly describe this problem,
but it can also offer innovative solutions. A 20th century identity politicsladen solution might be civil rights driven: getting more Black faces in our
newsroom to counter this overdependence. Not only is that a very indirect solution to this
particular problem, one strategy to achieve it, affirmative action, has been
eviscerated by the Supreme Court in recent years, thanks in part to Movement
Backlash. A 20th century approach to this problem would pour most resources into defending and attempting to
resuscitate the rollbacks of affirmative action programs at the state and federal levels. A noble effort, perhaps, but is it the
A 21st century intersectional
analysis instead comprehensively attends to Time Dynamics and
Individual-Institution Interactions in order to identify an unlikely and
previously unidentified site of action for welfare activists: the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), whose decisions about consolidation of
media ownership can dramatically affect the diversity of images portrayed
of women on welfare.lvi Here they might encounter new and largely
counterintuitive allies in an effort to more accurately represent their stories
and change the size of their microphone relative to the very large ones
carried by political elites. This kind of simultaneous attentiveness to Time Dynamics and Individualmost appropriate allocation of resources for this particular challenge?
Institutional Interactions follows in the footsteps of many scholars, including Iris Marion Young in her thinking of
categories as serial collectives. Unfortunately Young followed 20th century practice by discussing only one category,
gender, in depth. Intersectionality integrates all of the analytical categories as interlocking categories of difference. lvii
Black female athletes endure a
tremendous amount of surveillance and pressurelviii to conform to a "Black
Lady" public imagelix that is simultaneously liberating (from the "nappy-headed hos"
stereotype) and constraining (preventing complete autonomy of personal expression, including its
Returning to the example of the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights,
heterosexism). Significantly such athletes experience that pressure from coaches who are themselves often Black women.
Time Dynamics improves Young's original formulation by acknowledging
the accrual of power over time by multiple centers of power, and Diversity
Within recognizes the multiple centers of power as sites of struggle for the
power of self-definition. Whether through U.S. census categories,
discriminatory policies like segregation, detention and internment, or incentivedriven policies like affirmative action, government and its agents play
a significant role in the access we have to freedom of
identification and equality of opportunity in the United States. One final
example of the relationship among the five prongs of intersectionality can
illuminate the need for all five aspects in American political discourse.
Millennial-generation driven identity movements like the
Multiracial Movement have sought complete freedom of selfidentification in all aspects of their lives. From the perspective of Categorical
Multiplicity and Time Dynamics it is important to recognize the politically
charged practice of "passing" and its legacy as part of the resistance to
the idea of a multiracial identity and its goals.
Solidarity alt
Our alternative is solidarity – internalization of affect is key to
break down the us/them dichotomy
Ananth 14 – writer, activist, and trauma-therapist currently living in Toronto
[Sriram, M.S. in Public Health and Geography from Johns Hopkins University,
completing PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota, “Conceptualizing
solidarity and realizing struggle: testing against the Palestinian call for the boycott of
Israel,” Interface, November 2014, JSTOR, Accessed 7/23/15]//schnall
where orthodox Marxism (and many other strains of left thought) faltered, transnational
feminist thought valiantly endeavored to advance. Political solidarity, identity, and
difference Feminist thought continues to critically define and call for
egalitarian modes of political engagement, especially with regard to
understanding the notion of political solidarity while concurrently juxtaposing it against
other ideas like sisterhood. Most importantly, this notion of solidarity has crucially brought
understandings of differential privilege and power within solidarity-based
movements to the fore. This is something that Marxist trends failed to do, as their notions of classBut
solidarity/internationalism were predicated on a homogeneous class narrative. No matter, because a brief examination of
Dean calls for a reflective solidarity
that acts as a "bridge between identity and universality" defined as "the
mutual expectation of a responsible orientation to relationship" (Dean, 1996: 3).
Dean models solidarity as interaction involving three actors in two
moments of action, where one is asked to "stand by [another] over and
above a third". This is not unlike calls for workers-solidarity and proletarian internationalism where workers are
asked to stand in solidarity with each other over and above the forces of capital. Dean, however, further
expands on this by stating that "rather than presuming the exclusion and
opposition of the third, the ideal of reflective solidarity thematizes the voice
of the third to reconstruct solidarity as an inclusionary ideal for
contemporary politics and society." She goes on to state that reflective solidarity
provides for difference "because it upholds the possibility of a universal,
communicative 'we'" rather than one that is "conceived of oppositionally,
on the model of 'us vs. them'" and indeed anchored in a mutual respect for
difference (Ibid.: 8. 16). Listing the problems of conventional solidarity as that
of time, exclusion, accountability, and questioning critique, she posits
reflective solidarity as a step forward, one that "take[s] seriously the historical conditions of value
a few feminist thinkers quickly addresses this problem. Jodi
pluralism, the ever present potential for exclusion, the demands of accountability, and the importance of critique" through
In calling for reflexivity, the solidarity we see
being talked about above has a strong affective moment in it that brings engaging
with difference in an open, empathetic manner without ultimately aiming
for "sameness" (Gray, 2004: 415, 422-426). Sandra Bartky pointedly asks whether there is some "special
ties that are "communicative and open" (Ibid.: 21-30).
affective repertoire necessary for the building of solidarities across lines of race and class that is not necessary when these
lines are not crossed?" (Bartky, 1997: 180) It is important here to state that
Marxist calls for internationalism
have equally affective moments in them, slogans like "workers of the world unite!" for instance,
but the emotive aspect of the call is not acknowledged because of an
assumption of class homogeneity. There is a difference, however, between
an affective call to solidarity (which Marxist calls for internationalism produce), and affect as
utilized by feminist calls to solidarity. I would like to write a couple of lines on this "affective
repertoire" in building solidarity, as the importance of it is often unacknowledged, much more so in Marxism than
In Marxist calls, the affective element is rendered to make the actual
call based on common material conditions, rather than one that is meant to
(also) work affectively. The assumption is that workers of the world indeed
can and should unite based on a fundamentally common material
relationship to the modes of production, and hence what is in fact a very affective call, is seen as a
universal truth. In other words, affect is used to make the call, but the way in which
that call can produce affective results among those the call is being made to is ignored.
This is unlike many calls for political solidarity made by feminist thinkers,
who see the affective element in them as one of the key ways of engaging
with difference. Bernice Johnson Reagon comes to mind here. Chandra Mohanty states that Reagon's
notion of coalition, transnational or cross-cultural, "underscores the significance of the
traditions of political struggle, what she calls an 'old-age perspective'.forged
on the basis of memories and counter narratives, not on an ahistorical universalism" (Mohanty, 2003:
feminism.
117). This also shows how the notion of internationalism is not just a Marxist deployment, but a feminist one as well, albeit
It is a more heterogeneous internationalism that is being called for
rather than a homogeneous one. Feminists do it by acknowledging difference, often
through engaged affective moments, rather than subsuming them. In
acknowledging that difference, reflexivity is the manner that Dean chooses
to address the differences between actors in solidarity with one another, and
it can be seen that she writes this specifically for those actors who are in a
significantly more privileged socioeconomic position than those they might
be in solidarity with.
in very different ways.
Solidarity is transformative – BDS movement proves
Ananth 14 – writer, activist, and trauma-therapist currently living in Toronto
[Sriram, M.S. in Public Health and Geography from Johns Hopkins University,
completing PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota, “Conceptualizing
solidarity and realizing struggle: testing against the Palestinian call for the boycott of
Israel,” Interface, November 2014, JSTOR, Accessed 7/23/15]//schnall
On July 9 th, 2005, an unprecedented coalition of
Palestinian civil-society organizations, activists, academics, intellectuals,
and trade-unions called for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
of the state of Israel . They urgently requested the international community "in the spirit of international
The Palestinian call for BDS
solidarity, moral consistency, and resistance to injustice and oppression" to implement this call "until Israel meets its
obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts
of international law by: 1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; 2.
Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab- Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and 3. Respecting, protecting
and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution
^."(Palestinian United Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, July 2005) The call for BDS was
endorsed by over 170 Palestinian organizations, collectively referred to as "representatives of Palestinian civil society"
This was
reminiscent of and derived directly from the solidarity-calls issued by
South African anti-apartheid activists calling for the boycott of apartheidera South Africa, which were in turn derived from Gandhian civil
disobedience and strategic non-violence aimed at gaining the moral high
ground in resistance to British colonialism. The Palestinian call for BDS was taken up by
within the Occupied Territories of West Bank and Gaza as well as the national territory of Israel.
numerous Palestine-solidarity movements, primarily in the Global North, to implement campaigns that struggled for the
the BDS movement represents, and is calling for, is a
transformative political praxis of emancipatory resistance that matches the
evolving socio- spatial apparatus of structural oppression. This structural oppression
boycott of Israel. What
is identified as the Israeli state which is strongly supported by numerous international allies, the United States being the
most powerful of them, and a large Israeli lobby outside the national territory of Israel that constantly works on bolstering
The call understands that
the political-economic sources of this oppression exist beyond the specific
geographic boundaries of the state of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and thus is an
attempt to overcome the particular socio-spatial apparatus of Israeli oppression
through emergent solidarities. The call thus represents an urgent attempt,
among many others, to create an alternative socio-spatial imaginary that strives to
match and struggle against that oppression through a call for solidarity.
This alternative socio- spatial imaginary is framed in the three demands
shown above that the call clearly states, with the idea that solidarity-based
BDS measures must be implemented until the demands are met. At play in
the Palestinian call for BDS are two clear notions of solidarity. One, it
defines the Palestinian people as a single cultural-national entity against a
tripartite structure of oppression consisting of colonialism , racist apartheid and military
occupation that has been suffered by them as a cultural-national entity. This is not unlike, say,
frameworks of black liberation struggles in the United States (Shelby, 2005). Two, in
lieu of this historic injustice, it makes an emotive call for solidarity from clearly
defined "international civil society organizations and people of conscience
all over the world" outside of that cultural-national entity, to boycott, divest from, and
continued support for Israel, resulting in the ongoing oppression of Palestinians.
sanction Israel until the oppression ends with the implementation of their three demands. This includes a specific
Thus there are
three entities - an oppressed people defined, an oppressor institution
identified and everyone else called to stand in solidarity with said
oppressed people. Yet it is not without contradictions as it is a movement whose success is primarily
predicated on a perceived solidarity emerging from the traditional power-centers of the Global North. The call
emerges from Palestine but it is focused on garnering solidarity from those
occupying positions of immense socio-economic privilege over
invitation to "conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace".
Palestinians, i.e. people and institutions that are not directly impacted by
that specific form of oppression. Most of the key BDS movements that have emerged out of this call
are in places like New York, Toronto, London, San Francisco and other major cities of the Global North , and organized by
residents of these areas who do not face the oppression that Palestinians face. Further, there is a homogeneous notion of
"Palestinians" themselves in the call that does not take into account the differences of class, gender, and so on among
these points don't make the call any less viable for a transformative political
praxis based on solidarity, but they offer spaces for further examination. Both of
the contradictions are strategic for it can certainly be argued that voices from the Global North in
solidarity with Palestinians could play a huge role in making interventions
in mainstream discourse in the Global North and, furthermore, that it might not make any
Palestinians. Both of
political sense (at least for now) to explicitly talk about differences among Palestinians in a solidarity-call that is issued in
this call offers the
richest points for further exploration of the socio-spatial politics of
solidarity and the possibilities it offers. While in-depth research into the BDS collectives/groups
that are emerging from this call is beyond the scope of this paper, I discursively utilize the call itself
to examine questions of solidarity and transformative political work by
support of their collective liberation. It is in the spaces of these contradictions that
juxtaposing it against selected Marxist and Feminist threads on the same.
--Solves cap
Solidarity overcomes capitalism
Ananth 14 – writer, activist, and trauma-therapist currently living in Toronto
[Sriram, M.S. in Public Health and Geography from Johns Hopkins University,
completing PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota, “Conceptualizing
solidarity and realizing struggle: testing against the Palestinian call for the boycott of
Israel,” Interface, November 2014, JSTOR, Accessed 7/23/15]//schnall
The idea of solidarity is a powerful one. Often symbolized, bodily and illustratively,
with the quintessential raised fist, it is an idea that travels across many seas, crosses
many borders, results in countless actions and, when realized effectively, can help
bring down the most oppressive of forces. It is an idea that has produced
inspiring chapters in human history that defy the assumption of individual
self-interest capitalism insists we're all motivated by, and instead brings to
bear the more sustainable notion of our collective liberation, forcing us to
understand that one is not free until all are free. Of course, there is always an attached
Introduction
romanticism to the idea of solidarity that is rarely realized in actual struggle. Many have explored how and why. This
The idea of solidarity and its potential in liberatory
struggles has been intensely debated in feminist thought for at least a couple of
decades now (Dean, 1996; hooks, 2000; Mohanty, 2003). Feminist debates on solidarity have
frequently centered around questions of identity, difference, and location.
These debates have derived from understandings of gender and sexuality
that reject essentializing notions of a universal feminist identity (Whelehan, 1995;
Butler, 1995). Transformative political work infused with an abiding sense of
solidarity usually takes place via coalitions and alliances, among other forms of struggle
paper seeks to give it a shot as well.
. Solidarity and its complexities when realized in struggle has been theorized in much feminist thought, especially those
strands which strenuously adhere to understanding gender against multiple contours of oppression like race, class etc.
Prior and unrelated to these debates, a specific notion of solidarity and
proletarian internationalism was espoused by Marxist political trends
assuming class (i.e. ones relationship to the modes of production) under a universalizing logic
of capital as the material basis for the same (Marx and Engels, 1848, 1872). Marxist
notions of solidarity/internationalism were perceived under a unitary
historical narrative of capital as an ultimately universalizing force
producing the two broad subjects of proletariat and bourgeoisie with some
complications therein (such as the lumpen proletariat, national bourgeoisie, labor aristocracy and so on).
The solidarity espoused thus often subsumed other forms of oppression such as gender, race etc. into
class-solidarity, which was theorized as the most important path of struggle under
rapidly universalizing capitalist modes of production that was assumed, for
the most part, to determine social relations. The relationship between
commonality of experience or material conditions and the politics of
solidarity has been quite fundamental, albeit in very different ways, to both Marxist and
debates. While the recurrent theme in Marxist examinations on
solidarity is its emphasis on class, the recurrent theme in feminist thought (and specifically the texts I
feminist
examine) has been an emphasis on identity and difference. However, despite the widespread implications and applications
the scope of these themes has rarely been
systematically explored in the context of real-life struggles , which lends
greater theoretical rigor to understanding the relationship between
solidarity and transformative political work. I take a first step in doing that by putting
selections from two bodies of literature that have specific discussions surrounding solidarity in conversation
of these two strands of thought,
with each other, along with a few others that provide some helpful additions. The selections of these texts have been made
specifically take up the notion of solidarity, and two,
they have been written with transformative political work in mind. The texts that I
keeping in mind two things. One, they
take up have been primarily from writers situated in the Global North. This is in part due to my own position as an activist
and writer based in the Global North, which determines the texts that I have primary access to, but also because I believe
these texts offer rich explorations on solidarity, in addition to pertinence for the specific case study on the Palestinian BDS
they focus on coalitions/alliances across difference resulting from
solidarity. Finally and very crucially, as with any selection of literature, they are texts that have, to varying
degrees, played a role in influencing my own evolution in political thought and
praxis (barring a couple that were suggested as part of the peer-review process for this paper).
call, since
Time dynamics alt
Our alternative is time dynamics – their refusal of progress
made precludes the possibility of progress becoming – only the
alternative reconciles the past with the future to generate a new
form of politics and coalition building
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
Along with Hankivsky and Dhamoon's work, Valdes' analysis demonstrates that Categorical Multiplicity and Categorical
Intersection are by now the most well-known aspects of intersectionality theory among scholars. However, three
emerging from the latest intersectional research. The first of these is
attention to Time Dynamics. Time Dynamics In a recent keynote speech, Crenshaw
adjusted her metaphor from a pair of intersecting streets to a consideration
of how the Grand Canyon evolved. Instead of streets, rivers have flowed in such a
way as to craft the Grand Canyon, and rivers still flow, but not as they did
thousands of years ago. The "intersectionality canyon," as it were, includes both
the dynamic, time-oriented aspects embodied by the rivers that run
through it and the institutional rock formations that change ever slowly
based on the rivers' flow. Time Dynamics focuses on the river-based aspects of the metaphor.
Intersectional attention to Categorical Multiplicity revealed in the introduction that there are
no pure victims. Therefore we must acknowledge both where disadvantage
yet remains and where privilege has emerged. Acknowledging the changing demography of
the United States in the 21st centuryxxviii, Time Dynamics refers to the idea that the
membership of the privileged group and the disadvantaged group are not
static throughout United States history. Unlike pluralism, which assumes
that everyone has an equal chance at any point in history to land in the
privileged or disadvantaged group, the Time Dynamics aspect of
intersectionality recognizes the changes in the river's path over the course
of time and humans' ongoing complicity in such changes at any point in
time. In light of the critiques of standpoint theory, scholars have argued for a more fluid,
contingent approach to thinking about categories of race, gender, class and sexual
orientation. As we learned in the introduction, everyone is not either black or white;xxix
moreover by 2025 more than half of all families will be multicultural.xxx A
more fluid approach to race as a category is needed in the 21st century.
additional tenets are
Theorist Cristina Beltran also argues for greater attention to time-based contingencies in race and sexual orientation
theorists of mestizaje must retain an attentiveness to
historical specificity and inequality in tandem with an increased awareness
that all human subjectivity is plural, contradictory, socially embedded and
categories: "Put another way,
mutually constitutive." (emphasis mine)xxxi Time Dynamics recognizes: first, that
tremendous progress has been made by excluded groups in American
politics. If no progress had been made, Movement Backlash wouldn't exist.
If the chance for additional progress didn't exist in 2010, Leapfrog Paranoia would never emerge. Thus the second,
more controversial claim of Time Dynamics, directly challenges the Defiant
Ignorance practiced by excluded groups: pretending such progress
hasn't occurred, whether rhetorically or strategically, is false and
disingenuous. The third, less controversial but equally important recognition confronts the Defiant Ignorance
of groups with power: evidence of progress made does not necessarily equal all of
the progress that needs to be made. Together the two claims suggest that
pre-existing policies may have outlived their usefulness and need to be
replaced with a better mousetrap to accurately reflect a 21st century
political reality. Time Dynamics breaks down Defiant Ignorance on all
sides of the political community, which makes it more difficult and controversial than Categorical
Multiplicity or Categorical Intersection, because entrenched elites on opposing sides of policy
debates have to let go of the "pretending not to know" posture. Chapters two, three
and four will wade directly into this controversy by calling for a shift from calls
for public service to a call for "deep political solidarity." This aspect of
intersectionality contributes directly to the potential for counterintuitive
coalitions that are egalitarian and have the power to transform politics.
Instead of asking whether the other position is right according to your side's standards, the question instead is "How is the
other side right?"xxxii At that point dropping the Defiant Ignorance can slowly, carefully, begin. Figure two reflects the
shift from content intersectionality in its more static, limited form, to a more dynamic, process-oriented image of
This aspect of intersectionality theory also addresses the
pragmatic reality of generation gap politics in the 21st century by acknowledging
the dynamic nature of privilege and disadvantage without ignoring the role
of either historical patterns or humans' ability to intervene in their own
lives. The political ramifications of the current generation gap emanate from
the dually troublesome overestimations made by each end of the
generational divide: the 60's Generation, who tend to overestimate the importance of history,xxxiii holding on
intersectionality.
tightly to it as the reason for political action or inaction; and the Millennial Generation, who overestimate the irrelevance
of history, dismissing the old ways as dust that can be swept out of the house without making anyone sneeze [consider an
Time Dynamics is possibly the most difficult but also
potentially productive aspect of intersectionality theory.
example of living feminism here].
Tranversalism alt
Their identity politics necessitates exclusionary essentialism
that forecloses the search for truth – the alternative is a
transversal politics of intersectional dialogue
Yuval-Davis 12 – Director of the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and
Belonging at University of East London [Nira, has written extensively on theoretical and
empirical aspects of intersected nationalisms, racisms, fundamentalisms, citizenships,
identities, belonging/s and gender relations in Settler Societies, Professor in Gender and
Ethnic Studies, former President of the Research Committee 05 (on Racism, Nationalism
and Ethnic Relations) of the International Sociological Association, founder member of
the international research network of Women In Militarized Conflict Zones, “Dialogical
Epistemology—An Intersectional Resistance to the “Oppression Olympics”,” Gender &
Society, pp. 50-53, February 2012, Sage Journals, Accessed 7/20/15]//schnall
transversal
politics has been developed as an alternative to the assimilationist
“universalistic” politics of the Left on the one hand and to relativist identity
politics on the other. The first has proved to be ethnocentric and
exclusionary (Balibar 1990), assuming a Westocentric commonality of interests
and viewpoint. Identity politics was a result of resisting such politics.
However, in their turn, they proved to be essentialist, reifying
boundaries between groups and, via homogenizing and collapsing
individuals into collective identities, undemocratic within groups.
Transversalism, on the other hand, as Guattari (1974) envisioned it, was about the
politics of the construction of a radical political group as a collective
subject, in which there is a constant flow of communication both
horizontally and vertically—hence the name “transversalism”—without such processes of
reification taking place. Bologna’s tradition of transversal politics expanded it
beyond the boundaries of the political group and developed it into a more
general politics of dialogue and cooperation. Transversal politics is based,
first, on a dialogical standpoint epistemology, the recognition that from each
positioning the world is seen differently, and thus any knowledge based on
just one positioning is “unfinished” (to differentiate it from “invalid”) (Collins 1990, 236). Thus,
the only way to approach “the truth” is by a dialogue between people of
differential positionings, and the wider the better. Second, transversal
politics follows the principle of the encompassment (Dumont 1972) of difference
by equality (Yuval-Davis and Werbner 1999), the recognition, on one hand, that differences
are important but, on the other, that notions of difference should be
encompassed by, rather than replace, notions of equality. Such notions of
difference are not hierarchical and assume a priori respect to others’
TRANSVERSAL DIALOGICAL POLITICS Similarly to Collins’s construction of Black feminist thought,
positionings—which includes acknowledgement of their differential social, economic,
and political power. Third, transversal politics differentiates—both conceptually and politically—between positioning,
identity, and values. People who identify themselves as belonging to the same
collectivity or category can be positioned very differently in relation to a
whole range of social divisions (class, gender, ability, sexuality, stage in the life cycle, etc.). At the
same time, people with similar positioning and/or identity can have very
different social and political values. Several implications can be drawn from this. First,
feminists and other community activists cannot (and should not ) see
themselves as representatives of their constituencies (unless they
were democratically elected and are accountable for their actions). Rather,
they are advocates, working to promote their cause. However, even as
advocates, it is important that the activists should be reflective and conscious
of the multiplexity of their specific positionings, both in relation to other members in their
constituencies and in relation to the other participants in the specific encounter.
One of the problems with both identity politics is that such activists and
“community leaders” too often become the “authentic voice” of their communities.
This is often harmful to women and other marginal elements within these
communities (Sahgal and Yuval-Davis [1992] 2001). The second implication is that such advocates do
not necessarily have to be members of the constituency they advocate for.
It is the message, not the messenger, that counts. This avoids the necessity
to construct fixed and reified boundaries to social categories and groups. It
does not mean, of course, that it is immaterial who the “messenger” is, but
it does avoid becoming involved in exclusionary politics. Feminists in Bologna
introduced the concepts of “rooting” and “shifting” to aid in explaining how this could be done (letter of invitation to the
each such
“messenger” and each participant in a political dialogue would bring with
them the reflective knowledge of their own positioning and identity. This is the
“rooting.” At the same time, they should also try to “shift”—to put themselves
in the situation of those with whom they are in dialogue and who are
different. This follows the same principle of Elsa Barkley Brown (1989, 922), quoted by Collins (1990, 236), that
“all people can learn to center in another experience, validate it, and judge
it by its own standards without need of comparison or need to adopt that
framework as their own.” It is here where situated imagination is especially
important to be acknowledged as a necessary complement to situated
knowledge in dialogical politics. Transversal politics, nevertheless, does not
assume that the dialogue is boundary-less, and that each conflict of interest is reconcilable—
although, as Jindi Pettman points out (1992, 157), “There are almost always possibilities for
congenial or at least tolerable personal, social and political engagements.”
Similar, compatible values can cut across differences in positionings and
identities. The struggle against oppression and discrimination might (and
conference in Bologna of Israeli and Palestinian feminists, December 1990). The idea is that
have a specific categorical focus but it is never confined to just that
category. Transversal politics, unlike “rainbow coalitions,” however, depends
on shared values rather than on specific political actions , as
differential positioning might dictate prioritizing different political actions
and strategies. Transversal politics encompasses difference by equality and, while continuously crossing
collectivity boundaries, the transversal solidarity is bounded by sharing common values. While politics of
solidarity can be directed by care and compassion to defend any victim of
racialization, discrimination, inferiorization, and exclusion, transversal solidarity is an alliance of
mutual trust and respect, recognizing but transcending decentered
differential positionings of power. Transversal dialogical political solidarity
does not fall into the trap of “oppression olympics” (Hancock 2011), in which
contested unidimensional constructions of oppression compete with each
other, but rather uses dialogical collective knowledge, imagination and judgment,
aided by intersectional analysis, in its ongoing political struggles. Collins’s work
mostly does)
has been a guiding light to such kind of politics.
Intersections are complex and nuanced – the alternative solves
Yuval-Davis 12 – Director of the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and
Belonging at University of East London [Nira, has written extensively on theoretical and
empirical aspects of intersected nationalisms, racisms, fundamentalisms, citizenships,
identities, belonging/s and gender relations in Settler Societies, Professor in Gender and
Ethnic Studies, former President of the Research Committee 05 (on Racism, Nationalism
and Ethnic Relations) of the International Sociological Association, founder member of
the international research network of Women In Militarized Conflict Zones, “Dialogical
Epistemology—An Intersectional Resistance to the “Oppression Olympics”,” Gender &
Society, pp. 48-50, February 2012, Sage Journals, Accessed 7/20/15]//schnall
Various intersectional axes of social, political, and economic power have
been identified by different theorists and social movements. 3 Class, gender,
ethnicity, and race have been the most common ones, although sexuality,
ability, and stage in the life cycle, for instance, have also often been mentioned. The
debate, both sociological and epistemological, about whether or not, or to what degree, knowledge
and meaning are bound to particular social locations can be perceived both
in relation to systems of power and in relation to traditions and genealogies
of meanings and culture: Sandra Harding (1997, 385) also mentions differences among women that “were
not initially centred [sic] in standpoint logics and epistemologies” of “mere difference”—the cultural
differences that would shape different knowledge projects even where there
were no oppressive social relations between different cultures. However, even
more than many other central concepts in the social sciences, the definition and meaning of the term
“culture” has been contested. Over the past decades, under the influence of both Gramsci
and Foucault, cultures have become conceptualized increasingly as dynamic
social processes operating in contested terrains in which different voices
are more or less hegemonic in different times, highlighting selectively different elements from the rich
resources that various cultural traditions and customs offer (Bhabha 1994; Bottomley 1992; Friedman 1994; Yuval-Davis
1997, chap. 3; 2011, chaps. 3 and 4). To the two dimensions Harding relates to we need to add a third, which is not
epistemic
communities,” in which political values, rather than location along
intersecting/intermeshed axes of power or cultural perspectives, become the unifying factors.
Such “epistemic communities” shape their access to knowledge collectively rather than
individually. Such collective access to knowledge can be carried out in a variety
of ways. Assiter talks about relations of teachers and pupils, artisans and apprentices. Other feminists
(such as those who have developed the notion of “transversal politics”; cf. Cockburn and Hunter 1999;
Yuval-Davis 1994, 1997) put the emphasis more on the dialogical process that is
required in order for participants in the “epistemic community” who are
positioned differentially to establish common narratives. Before discussing this
further, however, it is important to point out that there is an element that is
missing in the various discussions on standpoint theory: there is little
discussion as to how the transitions from positionings to practices,
practices to standpoints, knowledge, meaning, values, and goals actually take place. In
necessarily implied in either of the other two: Alison Assiter’s (1996, 2000) notion of “
my earlier work (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis 2002), it is argued that one of the central ways in which these transitions and
transformations take place is by various processes of imagining. Feminist epistemology has to extend the discussion of
(situated) knowledge to include also the notion of the (situated) imagination . At the same time, imagination itself needs to
be understood as situated as much as knowledge does. Such a notion would be closely related, first , to Castoriadis’s (1994)
notion of the imagination as “creative” of both the category “society” itself and of the processes through which we perceive
and know of it. Crucially, the imagination in this context is not straightforwardly a faculty of the individual but it is (also,
or even primarily) a social faculty. Second , the situated imagination also encompasses Adorno’s (1978) concept of fantasy
that preserves the wish and the (bodily) impulses in thought and knowl - edge. In Adorno’s concept, we see a reflection of
a line of thought that reaches back via Freud ([1911] 1958) to Spinoza ([1670] 1989). This tradi - tion rejects the one-sided
rationalist elimination of fantasy from mental processes and sees its epistemological importance as a gateway to the body
The emphasis on the concept of imagination thus
allows for an additional critical perspective on epistemology that should be
particularly relevant to feminist discussions on corporeality and criticisms of
one- sided, abstractly rational notions of understanding. It is in this double
sense that our (creative) imagination is situated. Such an epistemological
approach is assumed in transversal politics of solidarity.
on the one hand and society on the other.
at: Permutation
The permutation is just “adding on” – that doesn’t access the
thesis behind intersectionality
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
The multicultural feminist claim of multiple jeopardies has traditionally
been interpreted to mean that some women have a larger number of
multiple marginalized categorical memberships that therefore deserve a
larger share of the policy solutions. I call this logic the additive oppressions
argument,xiii and it is easy to see where this logic leads - directly to the Oppression
Olympics question of "Who has it toughest?" In addition to the normative concerns about the
desirability or usefulness of such a debate, two specific problems emerge from the additive argument. First, "adding
on" race or other categories to claims of gender oppression falsely limits our attention to
matters of quantity, ignoring the way that incorporating race, class or
gender into a single analysis qualitatively changes the characteristics of
subordination.xiv Second, those steeped in the quantitative approach have
expressed serious concerns about the infinite quantity of possible
categories and combinations thereof. Slicing the group of women or men into ever thinner, more
politically isolated slivers is of particular concern in majoritarian political
systems where numbers matter.xv The additive oppressions argument creates
significant obstacles to framing claims in a way that brings people together
rather than drives them apart. In contrast, intersectionality theory uses
Categorical Multiplicity as a way to recognize that race, class, gender and
sexual orientation all can represent equal but not identical threats to the
values of freedom and equality embraced by all Americans. For example, earlier I
mentioned the role of biology in constructions of gender and sexual orientation. Interestingly, these biological
justifications have cut both ways - to thwart gender equality (women are "naturally" weaker and more nurturing) and to
promote LGBT equality (LGBT identity is genetic, not a choice). This example clearly demonstrates the assumption that
multiple categories function identically isn't tenable under all circumstances; we will address this reality in subsequent
the question isn't is America more racist or more
sexist, which leads us to Leapfrog Paranoia and Willful Blindness. Instead intersectional
approaches to categorical multiplicity focus on illuminating the ways in
which categories emerge as politically relevant based on processes
operating at multiple levels - the self, the group and government / society. This
conceptualization changes, in other words, the first order question. How do
racism, sexism, classism and homophobia interact and emerge to threaten
our democracy in 2010?xvi We will return to this point when we discuss Time Dynamics.
dimensional discussions below. So
Intersectionality research has stepped away from the assumption of a
priori equal quantitative weight of the categories in research outcomes
without stepping away from the central belief that such categories must be
addressed in empirical research.xvii Yet as we saw in the case of the response to Don Imus mere
recognition of multiple categories is necessary but not sufficient for
substantial societal transformation. Beyond identity politics, beyond the number of
categories we discuss, the character of the relationship among these categories is
also important. Intersectionality theory has expanded beyond late 20th century multicultural feminist theory to
address this political reality.
at: “You’re privileged”
Knowledge from the center is a precondition for social
movements – identifying their social position as uniquely key
colludes with hegemonic surveillance
Yuval-Davis 12 – Director of the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and
Belonging at University of East London [Nira, has written extensively on theoretical and
empirical aspects of intersected nationalisms, racisms, fundamentalisms, citizenships,
identities, belonging/s and gender relations in Settler Societies, Professor in Gender and
Ethnic Studies, former President of the Research Committee 05 (on Racism, Nationalism
and Ethnic Relations) of the International Sociological Association, founder member of
the international research network of Women In Militarized Conflict Zones, “Dialogical
Epistemology—An Intersectional Resistance to the “Oppression Olympics”,” Gender &
Society, pp. 46-48, February 2012, Sage Journals, Accessed 7/20/15]//schnall
I first met Patricia Hill Collins in Vienna during a conference in the 1990s, which happened to be her first trip
outside the United States. However, I had already “met” her years earlier when I discovered her
wonderful book Black Feminist Thought (1990). Patricia Hill Collins the woman proved to be
even more wonderful than her book, and we’ve continued since to interact in a sporadic way, especially
whenever we are in the same corner of the globe, with overlapping interests in racism, feminism,
citizenship, motherhood, belonging, and intersectionality. In this short piece, however, I want
to focus on the crucial importance that Collins’s writing has had on my
thinking concerning standpoint theory, situated knowledge and imagination, and
transversal politics of solidarity. 1 I quote Collins from two of her writings. In Black Feminist Thought,
she says, Each group speaks from its own standpoint and shares its own
partial, situated knowledge. But because each group perceives its own truth
as partial, its knowledge is unfinished [my emphasis]. . . . Partiality and not universality is the
condition of being heard; individuals and groups forwarding knowledge claims without owning their position are deemed
Dialogue is critical to the success of this
epistemological approach. Nevertheless—resisting power inequities must be addressed . . . [and]
less credible than those who do. . . .
“decentering” the dominant group is essential. (1990, 236-37) And in her comment on Hekman’s article on standpoint
she comments, Although it is tempting to claim that Black women are
more oppressed than everyone else (. . .), this simply may not be the case. (1997,
74) In these two quotes, Collins establishes the ontological basis for a
dialogical standpoint theory as well as an intersectional analytical
framework that resists what Ange-Marie Hancock (2011) calls the “oppression olympics,” both
theory,
of which are a necessary, although not sufficient, basis for transversal dialogical politics of solidarity. DIALOGICAL
One of the cornerstones of feminist theory, in all its varieties, has
been its challenge to positivist notions of objectivity and truth. There is a large
variety of positions among feminists concerning these issues, starting from— in Sandra Harding’s term—
STANDPOINT THEORY
“feminist empiricists” (Harding 1993, 51), who do not intend to challenge or reinvent the framework of “science” as such
but rather to do a better job in the existing one, up to post-modernist theorists like Jane Flax (1990), who rejected any
notion of objectivity and “truth.” Despite their differences, they
have all challenged “the god-trick of
seeing everything from nowhere” (Haraway 1991, 189) as a cover and a
legitimization of a hegemonic masculinist positioning. Among those
feminist theorists who did not reject completely any notion of truth as
such, standpoint theories were developed that claim, in somewhat different ways, that it
is vital to account for the social positioning of the social agent. This
accounting of the situatedness of the knowing subject has been used
epistemologically in standpoint theories in at least two different ways. One
claims that a specific social situatedness (that in itself has been constructed in several different
ways) endows the subject with a privileged access to truth. The other,
developed among others in Collins’s as well as my own work, rejects such a position and
views the process of approximating the truth as part of a dialogical
relationship among subjects who are differentially situated. In virtually
all variations of standpoint theory, however, the reduction of knowledge to
a simple reflection of its social basis has been rejected. Experiences, social practices,
social values, and the ways in which perception and knowledge production are socially organized have been seen as
The standpoint that
is expected to emerge from a specific positioning has sometimes, especially in earlier
versions of standpoint theory, been expected to provide a privileged access
to liberating insight, while the more common position—more modest and closer to
the general academic debate on “sociology of knowledge”—seems to be that
it produces merely different insights. The “stronger” claim, as it has
sometimes been made in the context of “identity politics,” has been
(polemically) summed up by Collins as saying that “the more subordinated
the group,” the “purer” its “vision” (Collins 1990, 207). Some standpoint feminists,
such as Zilla Eisenstein (1993), recommended, for example, specifically taking the positioning of
women of color and their multiple oppression as an epistemological
starting point. This, however, was not intended to imply that only
those who share a certain marginal or oppressed positioning
would be able to really understand it (and therefore only women
should study women, only Blacks should study Blacks, etc.), or even enjoy
thereby a privileged access to understanding society as a whole. The
“ethnocentrism” of such a position has been rejected by Harding (1993, 59):
The claim by women that women’s lives provide a better starting point for
thought about gender systems is not the same as the claim that their own
lives are the best such starting point. (1993, 58; emphasis added) Harding points out that Hegel
was not a slave, 2 Marx and Engels not proletarians. She and other feminist theoreticians
advocated that people from the center use “marginalized lives” as “better places
from which to start asking causal and critical questions about the social
order” (1993, 59). However, as valuable as this exercise is in imagining oneself into what one believes is the worst
conceivable social positioning, two problems remain. First, as Collins rightly comments (in the second quote above), the
mediating and facilitating the transition and transformation of situatedness into knowledge.
one worst positioning simply does not exist. She rejects any mechanistic
construction of hierarchies of oppression and her resulting call for a dialogue of people from
different positionings as the only way to “approximate truth.” Second, even prioritizing
nonhierarchically the “view from the margins” might lead to
underestimating the relevance of the knowledge of the dominant center.
Although the view from the margins produces other kinds of knowledge that are
valuable (and often also more attractive to study), it is crucial for any
emancipatory movement to understand the hegemonic center and the ways
people situated there think and act. After all, it is this most powerful
position from which most political decisions affecting the largest number
of people in society come. Not surprisingly, however, access to the study of hegemonic
positions of power is the most difficult to attain. Emphasis on the
importance of the lives of the most marginal elements in society
can sometimes collude with the attempts of hegemonic centers
to remain opaque while at the same time maintaining the
surveillance of marginal elements in society.
Just because we are privileged does not mean we can’t engage in
this conversation – taking personal experience as undeniable
fact is precisely the problem with status quo identity politics
because it makes it impossible to make generalizations that can
guide courses of action – we should listen to particular
experiences but that cannot be an excuse to avoid
argumentation
Reilly-Cooper 15 – Teaching Fellow in Political Theory at PAIS; BA in Politics from the
University of Leeds; MA and PhD in Political Theory from the University of Manchester
(Rebecca, “INTERSECTIONALITY AND IDENTITY POLITICS,” More Radical With Age,
4/15/2013, http://moreradicalwithage.com/2013/04/15/intersectionality-and-identitypolitics/) //RGP
this desire to listen to oppressed people’s testimonies and respect their
particular experiences, although motivated by only good intentions, often seems to lead to a
wholly counterproductive and self-defeating approach to politics that can’t
offer any practical guidance, and can’t do anything to make oppressed
people’s lives any better. Listening to people’s stories is important. But if it is to have any value, besides
satisfying people’s desire to be heard, then we need to do more than listen. We need to be
able to generalize from those stories to more abstract principles, which
then inform our action and guide policy. Particular experiences and
personal testimonies are of political importance because they can help to illuminate general principles; they
cannot trump those general principles. Suppose two women disagree about
But
whether a certain action is sexist or not – one experiences it as discriminatory or oppressive,
while the other does not feel this way about it. While it is useful to know how they feel about it, it doesn’t get us very far in
If we want to do more than satisfy
people’s desire to be listened to – if we actually want to eradicate unjust practices – then we
need to determine who is right and who is wrong. The two women presumably don’t think
deciding how to judge that action and whether to allow it or not.
they are merely expressing their personal preferences about the action in question, in the way they might express a
preference for tea over coffee. They both believe there is a right answer about whether the action is sexist, and that the
They can’t resolve this by reference to their personal
testimonies and experiences alone. They will inevitably have to appeal to
some beliefs they share, some general principles about what makes an
action sexist. And as soon as they do this, they are having a discussion that
anyone can contribute to, including men . They are appealing to abstract
other is mistaken.
considerations and invoking a general argument that is in principle available to anyone, regardless of their personal
Once we’re doing that, men can contribute to a conversation about
whether something is sexist, white people can contribute to a conversation
about whether something is racist, cisgendered people can contribute to a
conversation about whether something is transphobic – and they won’t
necessarily be wrong, just because they lack personal experience of these
forms of oppression. Some intersectionality advocates seem to jump from the
reasonable and probably true premise that people are best placed to recognize their own oppression to the
unreasonable and clearly false premise that people can never be mistaken about
their own oppression. It may well be true that women are best placed to define and recognize sexism, and
that non-white people are best placed to identify racism. What is clearly not true is that women
can never be mistaken about whether a particular phrase or action is sexist
or not, or that whenever a non-white person thinks she has been the victim
of racism, then she has. I may be accused here of erecting a strawman argument, that no intersectionalist
experience.
actually thinks this. And yet in practice, I see this assumption at work all time, when men who question whether
something is sexist are dismissed as ‘mansplainers’, or when accusations of racism are believed without evidence because
The danger with this line of thinking is that it
really does lead to an Oppression Top Trumps, where we have to preface all
our arguments with extensive details of our identities and past experiences
to prove our oppression credentials before we are entitled to an opinion,
and where personal feelings and experience trump abstract arguments and
general principles. While we ought to begin with listening to people’s stories, we cannot stop there, for on their
own, people’s stories tell us nothing about what we ought to do, what policies we ought to prefer. And yet the logic
of the intersectionalist’s identity politics tells us that we must stop at
listening to people’s testimonies, because to do any more would be
oppressive and unjust in itself. As soon as we start to abstract away from
those stories, and form general principles, we risk oppressing the people who would
disagree with those principles because they don’t quite fit with their own experience. But this is a totally
fruitless and nihilistic approach to politics. On this logic, we couldn’t implement laws
against sexual assault, for example, as all victims of assault will experience the
it is a person of colour making the accusation.
harm of it differently, and indeed some victims might not experience it as harmful at all. On this logic, we
couldn’t have a rule that punished breaking someone’s leg more severely than pinching someone’s arm, because there may
Taken to its ultimate
conclusion, in this vision of politics there could be no room for movements
like feminism at all. For feminism assumes some degree of commonality
among women, which the logic of this identity politics must deny. As soon as you
call yourself a feminist, you are identifying yourself as part of a movement that speaks for and represents others. And yet
these others are all radically and irreducibly different, from you and from
each other. It’s not obvious to me why speaking for others is inherently oppressive. Perhaps it would be better if all
be some people who find arm-pinching as distressing as a broken leg.
people could clearly and accurately express their views and experiences. But some people are always going to be more
For some especially weak and vulnerable people, it
may be physically impossible for them to speak for themselves. And crucially, it’s
skilled at doing that than others.
inevitable that some people are going to be better than others at highlighting the relevant connections between different
stories, at drawing out the general features of people’s experiences that will enable us to construct our principles and guide
it’s possible that
others will be in a better position to draw general conclusions from those
experiences about what we ought to do. Recognizing that there are multiple
and interacting forms of oppression, and wanting to work to eradicate the
negative effects of this on the most oppressed people, can and must divorce
itself from this incoherent, self-defeating, nihilistic identity politics. It we are
going to do anything to make people’s lives better, we have to be able to draw general
conclusions from people’s experiences, and be allowed to represent those
who cannot represent themselves. The implication of this is that sometimes, we may
have to tell an oppressed person that they are mistaken in their judgement
about particular cases of injustice. But the payoff is a vision of politics that
allows us to do more than just listen to people’s stories, but actually
implement policies and engage in action that makes people’s
lives better .
our action. While one person may well have the best understanding of her own experiences,
Pain centrism
Wounded attachments
1NC
Narratives of suffering reinscribe oppression - exclude anyone
who does not fit the model
Brown 96 - Professor of Women's Studies and Legal Studies, and is Co-Director of the
Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. (Wendy, The
University of Chicago Law School, Roundtable, 1996) //AD
If, taken together, the two passages from Foucault we have been consider- ing call
feminists to account in our compulsion to put everything about women into discourse,
they do not yet exhaust the phenomenon of being ensnared 'in the folds of our own
discourses.' For if the problem I have been discussing is easy enough to see--indeed,
largely familiar to those who track techniques of co-optation--at the level of legal and
bureaucratic discourse, it is altogether more disquieting when it takes the form of
regulatory discourse in our own sub- and counter-cultures of resistance . . . when
confessing injury becomes that which attaches us to the injury, paralyzes us within it,
and prevents us from seeking or even desiring a status other than injured. In an age of
social identification through attributes marked as culturally significant--gender, race,
sexuality, and so forth--confessional discourse, with its truth-bearing status in a postepistemological universe, not only regulates the confessor in the name of freeing her as
Foucault described that logic, but extends beyond the confess- ing individual to
constitute a regulatory truth about the identity group. Confessed truths are assembled
and deployed as "knowledge" about the group. This phenomenon would seem to
undergird a range of recurring troubles in feminism, from the "real woman" rejoinder to
post-structuralist deconstructions of her, to totalizing descriptions of women's
experience that are the inadvertent effects of various kinds of survivor stories. Thus, for
example, the porn star who feels miserably exploited, violated and humiliated in her
work invariably monopolizes the truth about sex work; as the girl with math anxieties
constitutes the truth about women and math; as eating disor- ders have become the truth
about women and food; as sexual abuse and viola- tion occupy the knowledge terrain of
women and sexuality. In other words, even as feminism aims to affirm diversity among
women and women's ex- periences, confession as the site of production of truth and its
convergence with feminist suspicion and deauthorization of truth from other sources
tends to reinstate a unified discourse in which the story of greatest suffering becomes the
true story of woman. (I think this constitutes part of the rhetorical power of MacKinnon's
work; analytically, the epistemological superiority of confes- sion substitutes for the
older, largely discredited charge of false consciousness). Thus, the adult who does not
suffer from her or his childhood sexual experi- ence, the lesbian who does not feel
shame, the woman of color who does not primarily or "correctly" identify with her
marking as such--these figures are excluded as bonafide members of the categories
which also claim them. Their status within these discourses is that of being "in denial,"
"passing" or being a "race traitor." This is the norm-making process in feminist
traditions of "breaking silence" which, ironically, silence and exclude the very women
these traditions mean to empower. (Is it surprising, when we think in this vein, that
there is so little feminist writing on heterosexual pleasure?)But if these practices tacitly
silence those whose experiences do not parallel those whose suffering is most marked (or
whom the discourse produces as suffering markedly), they also condemn those whose
sufferings they record to a permanent identification with that suffering. Here, we
experience a temporal ensnaring in 'the folds of our own discourses' insofar as we
identify ourselves in speech in a manner that condemns us to live in a present
dominated by the past. But what if speech and silence aren't really opposites? Indeed,
what if to speak incessantly of one's suffering is to silence the possibilities of overcoming
it, of living beyond it, of identifying as something other than it? What if this incessant
speech not only overwhelms the experiences of others, but alternative (unutterable?
traumatized? fragmentary? inassimilable?) zones of one's own experience? Conversely,
what if a certain modality of silence about one's suffering--and I am suggesting that we
must consider modalities of silence as varied as modalities of speech and discourse--is to
articulate a variety of possibilities not otherwise available to the sufferer?
Identity politics recreates the politics of resentment –
Bhambra and Margree 10 – U Warwick—AND—Victoria Margree—School of
Humanities, U Brighton (Gurminder K, Victoria, “Identity politics and the Need for a
‘Tomorrow’,” academia,
http://www.academia.edu/471824/Identity_Politics_and_the_Need_for_a_Tomorrow
_) //AD
2 The Reification of Identity We wish to turn now to a related problem within identity politicsthat can be best described as the problem of
the
reification of politicised identities . Brown (1995) positions herself within thedebate about identity politics by
seeking to elaborate on “the wounded character of politicised identity’s desire” (ibid:
the problem of “wounded attachments” whereby a claim to identity becomes
over-invested in its own historical suffering and perpetuates its
55); thatis,
injury through its refusal to give up its identity claim. Brown’s argument is that where politicised
identity is founded upon an experience of exclusion, for example, exclusion itself
becomes perversely valorised in the continuance of that identity .
group activity operates to maintain and reproduce the identity created by injury
(exclusion) rather than– and indeed, often in opposition to – resolving the injurious
In such cases,
social relations that generated claims around that identity in the
first place. If things have to have a history in order to have af uture, then the problem becomes that of how history is con-structed in order to make
To the extent that, for Brown, identity is associated primarily with (historical) injury, the
future for that identity is then already determined by the injury “as both
bound to the history that produced it and as a reproach to the present which embodies that history” (ibid 1995: 73). Brown’s sugthe future.
gestion that as it is not possible to undo the past, the focus back- wards entraps the identity in reactionary practices, is, we believe,too stark and we will pursue this
Politicised identity, Brown maintains, “emerges and obtains its unifying coherence through
the politicisation of exclusion from an ostensible universal , as a
protest against exclusion” (ibid: 65). Its continuing existence requires both a belief in the
legitimacy of the universal ideal (for example, ideals of opportunity, and re- ward in proportion to effort) and enduring
exclusion from those ideals. Brown draws upon Nietzsche in arguing that such identi-ties, produced
later in the article.
in reaction to conditions of disempowerment andinequality, then become
invested in their own impotence through practices of , for example, reproach,
complaint, and revenge . These are “reactions” in the Nietzschean sense since they are substitutes for
actions or can be seen as negative forms of action. Rather than acting to
remove the cause(s) of suffering, that suf-fering is instead
ameliorated (to some extent) through “the estab-lishment of suffering as
the measure of social virtue ” (ibid 1995:70), and is compensated for by
the vengeful pleasures of recrimi-nation . Such practices , she argues, stand in
sharp distinction to –in fact, provide obstacles to – practices that would seek to dispel
the conditions of exclusion. Brown casts the dilemma discussed above in terms of a choicebetween past and future, and
adapting Nietzsche, exhorts theadoption of a (collective) will that would become the “redeemer of history” (ibid: 72) through its focus on the possibilities of creating different futures. As Brown reads Nietzsche, the one thingthat the will cannot exert its power over is the past, the “it was”.Confronted with its impotence with
respect to the events of thepast, the will is threatened with becoming simply an “angry spec-tator” mired in bitter recognition of its own helplessness. The onehope
for the will is that it may, instead, achieve a kind of mastery over that past such that, although “what has happened” cannotbe altered, the past can be denied the
power of continuing to de-termine the present and future. It is only this focus on the future, Brown continues, and the capacity to make a future in the face of
human frailties and injustices that spares us from a rancorous decline into despair. Identity politics structured by ressentiment – that is, by suffering caused by
past events – can only break outof the cycle of “slave morality” by remaking the present againstthe terms of the past, a remaking that requires a “forgetting” of that
past. An act of liberation, of self-affirmation, this “forgettingof the past” requires an “overcoming” of the past that offers iden-tity in relationship to suffering, in
favour of a future in whichidentity is to be defined differently. In arguing thus, Brown’s work becomes aligned with a posi-tion that sees the way forward for
emancipatory politics as re-siding in a movement away from a “politics of memory” (Kilby 2002: 203) that is committed to articulating past injustices andsuffering.
While we agree that investment in identities prem-ised upon suffering can function as an obstacle to alleviating the causes of that suffering, we believe that Brown’s
we share a concern about any turn to the future that
is figured as a complete abandonment of the past. This is because for those who have suffered
oppression and exclusion, the injunction to give up articulating a pain that is still felt may seem
cruel and impossible to meet. We would argue instead that the “ turn to the future ” that theorists such as Brown and
argument as outlined is problematic. First, following Kilby (2002),
Grosz callfor, to revitalise feminism and other emancipatory politics,
need not be conceived of as a brute
rejection of the past . Indeed, Brown herself recognises the problems involved here, stating that [since] erased histories and
historical invisibility are themselves suchintegral elements of the pain inscribed in most subjugated identities[then] the counsel of forgetting, at least in its
unreconstructedNietzschean form, seems inappropriate if not cruel (1995: 74). She implies, in fact, that the demand exerted by those in painmay be no more than
the demand to exorcise that pain throughrecognition: “all that such pain may long for – more than revenge– is the chance to be heard into a certain release,
recognised intoself-overcoming, incited into possibilities for triumphing over, and hence, losing itself” (1995: 74-75). Brown wishes to establish the political
importance of remembering “painful” historical events but with a crucial caveat: that the purpose of remembering pain is to enable its release . The challenge then,
according to her,is to create a political culture in which this project does not mutate into one of remembering pain for its own sake. Indeed, if Brown feels that
this may be “a pass where we ought to part with Nietzsche” (1995: 74), then Freud may be a more suit-able
companion. Since his early work with Breuer, Freud’s writ-ings have suggested the (only apparent) paradox that remember-ing is often a
condition of forgetting. The hysterical patient, who is doomed to repeat in symptoms and
compulsive actions a past she cannot adequately recall, is helped to remember that traumatic past in order then to move beyond it: she must remember inorder to forget and to
forget in order to be able to live in the present. 7 This model seems to us to be particularly helpful for thedilemma articulated
by both Brown (1995) and Kilby (2002),insisting as it does that “forgetting” (at least, loosening the holdof the past, in order to enable the future) cannot be
achieved without first remembering the traumatic past. Indeed, this wouldseem to be similar to the message of Beloved , whose central motif of haunting (is the
adult woman, “Beloved”, Sethe’s murderedchild returned in spectral form?) dramatises the tendency of theunanalysed traumatic past to keep on returning,
constraining, asit does so, the present to be like the past, and thereby, disallow-ing the possibility of a future different from that past. As Sarah Ahmed argues in her
in order to break the seal of the past , in order to move away from attach-ments that
are hurtful, we must first bring them into the realm of political action ”
response to Brown, “
the task of analys-ing the traumatic past, and thus opening up the
possibility of political action, is unlikely to be achievable by individuals on their own, but
that this, instead, requires a “community” of participants dedicated to the serious epistemic work of
rememberingand interpreting the objective social conditions that made up thatpast and continue in the present. The “pain” of historical
injury is not simply an individual psychological issue, but stems from objective social
conditions which perpetuate, for the most part, forms of injustice and inequality into the
present. In sum, Brown presents too stark a choice between past andfuture. In the example of Beloved with which we began thisarticle, Paul D’s acceptance
(2004: 33). We would add that
of Sethe’s experiences of slavery asdistinct from his own, enable them both to arrive at new under-standings of their experience. Such understanding is a way of
partially “undoing” the (effects of) the past and coming to terms with the locatedness of one’s being in the world (Mohanty 1995). As this example shows, opening
up a future, and attending to theongoing effects of a traumatic past, are only incorrectly under-stood as alternatives. A second set of problems with Brown’s critique
of identity poli-tics emerge from what we regard as her tendency to individualise social problems as problems that are the possession and theresponsibility of the
the problems associated with identity politics can be overcome
through a “shift in the character of political expression and politi-cal claims common to much politicised identity”
(1995: 75). She defines this shift as one in which identity would be expressed in terms of desire rather
“wounded” group. Brown suggests that
than of ontology by supplanting the lan-guage of “I am” with the
language of “I want this for us” (1995:75). Such a reconfiguration, she argues, would create an opportu-nity to
“rehabilitate the memory of desire within identificatory processes…prior to [their] wounding” (1995: 75). It would fur-ther
refocus attention on the future possibilities present in the
identity as opposed to the identity being foreclosed through its
attention to past-based grievances .
Tuck and yang
1NC
Beginning with a politics of pain centered research is dangerous
– the academy displaces marginal populations by including their
narratives of pain but not their subjectivity
Tuck and Yang, 14 – *PhD in Urban Education, Assistant Professor of Educational
Foundations, and Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New
York **Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies (Eve, and K.W., “R-Words: Refusing
Research,” In “Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and
communities” academia.edu)//jml
educational research and much of social
science research has been concerned with documenting damage, or
empirically substantiating the oppression and pain of Native communities, urban
communities, and other disenfranchised communities. Damage-centered researchers
may operate, even benevolently, within a theory of change in which harm must be
recorded or proven in order to convince an outside adjudicator that reparations are deserved. These reparations
presumably take the form of addi- tional resources, settlements,
affirmative actions, and other material, political, and sovereign adjustments. Eve has described this
theory of change1 as both colonial and flawed, because it relies upon
Western notions of power as scarce and concentrated, and because it
requires disenfranchised communities to posi- tion themselves as both
singularly defective and powerless to make change (2010). Finally, Eve has observed that “won”
Elsewhere, Eve (Tuck, 2009, 2010) has argued that
reparations rarely become reality, and that in many cases, communities are left with a narrative that tells them that they are broken.
Similarly, at the center of the analysis in this chapter is a concern with the fixation social science research has exhibited in eliciting pain
Academe’s demon- strated
fascination with telling and retelling narratives of pain is
troubling, both for its voyeurism and for its consumptive implacability.
Imagining “itself to be a voice, and in some disciplinary iterations, the
voice of the colonised” (Simpson, 2007, p. 67, emphasis in the original) is not just a rare historical
occurrence in anthropology and related fields. We observe that much of the work of
the academy is to reproduce stories of oppression in its own voice. At first, this may
stories from com- munities that are not White, not wealthy, and not straight.
read as an intolerant condemnation of the academy, one that refuses to forgive past blunders and see how things have changed in recent
decades. However, it is our view that while many individual scholars have cho- sen to pursue other lines of inquiry than the pain narratives
novice researchers emerge from doctoral programs eager to
launch pain-based inquiry projects because they believe that such
approaches embody what it means to do social science. The collection of pain narratives and
typical of their disciplines,
the theories of change that champion the value of such narratives are so prevalent in the social sciences that one might surmise that they are
indeed what the academy is about. In her examination of the symbolic violence of the academy, bell hooks (1990) portrays the core message
No need to hear your voice when I can
talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No
need to hear your voice . Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to
from the academy to those on the margins as thus:
you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself anew. I am still author,
authority. I am still colonizer the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk. (p. 343)
Hooks’s words
resonate with our observation of how much of social science research is
concerned with providing recognition to the presumed voiceless, a
recognition that is enamored with knowing through pain. Further, this passage describes
the ways in which the researcher’s voice is constituted by, legitimated by, animated
by the voices on the margins. The researcher-self is made anew by telling
back the story of the marginalized/subaltern subject. Hooks works to untangle the almost
imperceptible differences between forces that silence and forces that seemingly liberate by inviting those on the margins to speak, to tell
the forces that invite those on the margins to speak also say, “Do
not speak in a voice of resistance. Only speak from that space in the margin
that is a sign of deprivation, a wound, an unfulfilled longing. Only speak
your pain” (hooks, 1990, p. 343). The costs of a politics of recognition that is rooted in naming pain have been critiqued by recent
their stories. Yet
decolonizing and feminist scholars (Hartman, 1997, 2007; Tuck, 2009). In Scenes of Subjection, Sadiya Hartman (1997) discusses how
rec- ognizing the personhood of slaves enhanced the power of the Southern
slave- owning class. Supplicating narratives of former slaves were deployed effectively by abolitionists, mainly White, wellto-do, Northern women, to generate portraits of abuse that ergo recognize slaves as human (Hartman, 2007). In response, new laws
afforded minimal standards of existence, “making personhood coterminous with injury” (Hartman, 1997, p. 93), while simultaneously
authorizing necessary violence to suppress slave agency. The slave emerges as a legal person only when seen as criminal or “a violated body
Recognition “humanizes” the slave, but is
predicated upon her or his abjection. You are in pain, therefore you are.
“[T]he recognition of humanity require[s] the event of excessive violence,
cruelty beyond the limits of the socially tolerable, in order to acknowledge
and protect the slave’s person” (p. 55). Furthermore, Hartman describes how slave-as-victim as human
in need of limited forms of protection” (p. 55).
accordingly establishes slave-as-agent as criminal. Applying Hartman’s analysis, we note how the agency of Margaret Garner or Nat Turner
can only be viewed as outsider violence that humane society must reject while simultaneously upholding the legitimated violence of the
state to punish such outsider violence. Hartman asks, “Is it possible that such recognition effectively forecloses agency as the object of
punishment . . . Or is this limited conferral of humanity merely a reinscription of subjugation and pained existence?” (p. 55). As numerous
many social science disciplines emerged from the need to
provide justifications for social hierarchies undergirded by White
supremacy and manifest destiny (see also Gould, 1981; Selden, 1999; Tuck & Guishard, forthcoming). Wolfe
scholars have denoted,
(1999) has explored how the contoured logic of settler colonialism (p. 5) can be mapped onto the microactivities of anthropology; Guthrie
The origins of
many social science disciplines in maintaining logics of domination, while
sometimes addressed in graduate schools, are regularly thought to be just errant or inauspicious beginnings—much like the ways in which the genocide of Indigenous peoples that afforded the founding of the Unites
States has been reduced to an unfortunate byproduct of the birthing of a new and great nation. Such amnesia is required
in settler colonial societies, argues Lorenzo Veracini, because settler
colonialism is “characterized by a persistent drive to supersede the
conditions of its operation,” (2011, p. 3); that is, to make itself invisible, natural,
without ori- gin (and without end), and inevitable . Social science disciplines have inherited the persistent
(1976) traces the roots of psychology to the need to “sci- entifically” prove the supremacy of the White mind.
drive to supersede the conditions of their operations from settler colonial logic, and it is this drive, a kind of unquestioning push forward,
We are struck by the pervasive silence on
questions regarding the contempo- rary rationale(s) for social science
research. Though a variety of ethical and procedural protocols require researchers to compose statements regarding the objectives
and not the origins of the disciplines that we attend to now.
or purposes of a particular project, such protocols do not prompt reflection upon the underlying beliefs about knowledge and change that
The rationale for conducting social science
research that collects pain narratives seems to be self-evident for many
too often go unexplored or unacknowledged.
scholars, but when looked at more closely, the rationales may be
unconsidered, and some- what flimsy. Like a maritime archaeological site, such rationales might be best
examined in situ, for fear of deterioration if extracted. Why do researchers collect pain narratives? Why does the academy want them?
Desire is a particular and contextual refusal of settler
colonialism – this space of refusal creates new ways to approach
epistemology
Tuck and Yang, 14 – *PhD in Urban Education, Assistant Professor of Educational
Foundations, and Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New
York **Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies (Eve, and K.W., “R-Words: Refusing
Research,” In “Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and
communities” academia.edu)//jml
refusal is
particular, meaning refusal is always grounded in historical
analysis and present conditions. Any discussion of Simpson’s article would need to attend to
At this juncture, we don’t intend to offer a general framework for refusal, because all
the significance of real and representational sovereignty in her analysis and theorizing of refusal. The particularities of
We caution
readers against expropriating Indigenous notions of sovereignty into other con- texts, or metaphorizing
sovereignty in a way that permits one to forget that struggles to have
sovereignty recognized are very real and very lived. Yet from Simpson’s example, we
are able to see ways in which a researcher might make transparent the
coloniality of academic knowledge in order to find its ethical limits, expand
the limits of sovereign knowledge, and expand decolonial representational territories. This is in addition to questions her work helpfully raises about who the researcher is,
who the researched are, and how the historical/ representational context for research matters. One way to
think about refusal is how desire can be a framework, mode,
and space for refusal . As a framework, desire is a counterlogic to the
logics of settler colonialism. Rooted in possibilities gone but not foreclosed,
“the not yet, and at times, the not anymore” (Tuck, 2010, p. 417), desire refuses the
master narrative that colonization was inevitable and has a monopoly on
the future. By refusing the teleos of colonial future, desire expands possible
futures. As a mode of refusal, desire is a “no” and a “yes.” Another way to think about refusal is to consider using
Kahnawake sovereignty throb at the center of each of the three dimensions of refusal described above.
strategies of social sci- ence research to further expose the complicity of social science disciplines and research in the
There is much need to employ social science to turn back
upon itself as settler colonial knowledge, as opposed to uni- versal, liberal,
or neutral knowledge without horizon. This form of refusal might include
bringing attention to the mechanisms of knowledge legitimation, like the Good
project of settler colonialism.
Labkeeping Seal of Approval (discussed under Axiom III); contesting appropriation, like the collection of pain narratives;
and publicly renouncing the diminishing of Indigenous or local narratives with blood narratives in the name of science,
such as in the Havasupai case discussed under Axiom II.
Standpoint epistemology bad
Including identity and standpoint epistemology into the
academy replicates academic domination and settler
colonialism – any radical potential of the affirmative is
domesticated by the academy
Tuck and Yang, 14 – *PhD in Urban Education, Assistant Professor of Educational
Foundations, and Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New
York **Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies (Eve, and K.W., “R-Words: Refusing
Research,” In “Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and
communities” academia.edu)//jml
Though one might read these cases as instances of misconduct with which only those in the biomedical or biological
sciences must be concerned, it is important to point out that the misuse of human cells, blood, or tissue is not only about
the handling of such materials, but also about the ways in which those materials are used to construct particular stories
and narratives about an individual, family, tribe, or community. The misconduct is in the fabrication, telling, and retelling
Academe is very much about the generation and swapping of stories,
and there are some stories that the academy has not yet proven itself
responsible enough to hear. We are writing about a particular form of
loquaciousness of the academy, one that thrives on specific representations
of power and oppression, and rarefied portrayals of dysfunction and pain. One might ask what is meant by
of stories.
the academy, and by the academy being undeserving or unworthy of some stories or forms of knowledge. For some, the
academy refers to institutions of research and higher education, and the individuals that inhabit them. For others, the
term applies to the relationships between institutions of research and higher education, the nation-state, private and
When we invoke the academy, or academe,
we are invoking a community of practice that is focused upon the
propagation and promulgation of (settler colonial) knowledge. Thus,
when we say that there are some forms of knowledge that the academy does not deserve, it is because we have
observed the academy as a community of practice that, as a whole: x
Stockpiles examples of injustice, yet will not make explicit a commitment to social justice x
Produces knowledge shaped by the imperatives of the nation-state, while
claiming neutrality and universality in knowledge production x Accumulates intellectual and
financial capital, while informants give a part of themselves away x Absorbs or repudiates
competing knowledge systems, while claiming limitless horizons Like the previous axiom’s question—
Why collect narratives of pain?—we ask nonrhetorically, what knowledges does the
academy deserve? Beyond narratives of pain, there may be language,
experiences, and wisdoms better left alone by social science. Paula Gunn Allen (1998)
governmental funders, and all involved individuals.
notes that for many Indigenous peoples, “a person is expected to know no more than is necessary, sufficient and congruent
with their spiritual and social place” (p. 56). To apply this idea to the production of social science research, we might think
Not everything, or even most
things, uncovered in a research process need to be reported in academic journals or
settings. Contrasting Indigenous relationships to knowledge with settler relationships to knowledge, Gunn Allen
remarks, In the white world, information is to be saved and analyzed
at all costs . It is not seen as residing in the minds and molecules of
human beings, but as—dare I say it?— transcendent. Civilization and its attendant virtues of freedom
of this as a differentiation between what is made public and what is kept sacred.
and primacy depend on the accessibility of millions of megabytes of data; no matter that the data has lost its meaning by
the white world has a different set of values [from the
Indigenous world], one which requires learning all and telling all in the interests of
knowledge, objectivity, and freedom. This ethos and its obverse—a nearly neurotic distress in the
virtue of loss of its human context . . .
presence of secrets and mystery—underlie much of modern American culture (p. 59) As social science researchers, there
are stories that are entrusted to us, stories that are told to us because research is a human activity, and we make
At times we come to individuals and
com- munities with promises of proper procedure and confidentialityanonymity in hand, and are told, “Oh, we’re not worried about that; we
trust you!” Or, “You don’t need to tell us all that; we know you will do the right thing by us.” Doing social science
This is not just a question of getting permission to tell a story through a signa- ture
on an IRB-approved participant consent form. Permission is an individualizing discourse—it
situates collective wisdom as individual property to be signed away. Tissue
meaningful rela- tionships with participants in our work.
samples, blood draws, and cheek swabs are not only our own; the DNA contained in them is shared by our relatives, our
ancestors, our future gen- erations (most evident when blood samples are misused as bounty for biopiracy.) This is equally
power is protected by such a collapse of ethics into
litigation-proof relationships between individual and research institution.
Power, which deserves the most careful scrutiny, will never sign such a permission slip.
There are also stories that we overhear, because when our research is going
well, we are really in peoples’ lives. Though it is tempting, and though it would be easy to do so,
these stories are not simply y/ours to take . In our work, we come across stories,
true of stories. Furthermore,
vignettes, moments, turns of phrase, pauses, that would humiliate participants to share, or are too sensationalist to
publish. Novice researchers in doctoral and master’s programs are often encouraged to do research on what or who is
People who are underrepresented in the academy by social
location—race or ethnicity, indigeneity, class, gender, sexuality, or ability—frequently experience a
pressure to become the n/ Native informant, and might begin to suspect that some members of
most available to them.
the academy perceive them as a route of easy access to communities that have so far largely eluded researchers. Doctoral
programs, dissertations, and the master’s thesis process tacitly encourage novice researchers to reach for low-hanging
fruit. These are stories and data that require little effort—and what we know from years and years of academic colonialism
is that it is easy to do research on people in pain. That kind of voyeurism practically writes itself. “Just get the dissertation
or thesis finished,” novice researchers are told. The theorem of low- hanging fruit stands for pretenured faculty too: “Just
This is how the academy
reproduces its own irrepressible irresponsibility. Adding to the complexity, many of
us also bring to our work in the academy our family and community
legacies of having been researched. As the researched, we carry stories from
grandmothers’ laps and breaths, from below deck, from on the run, from inside closets, from exclaves.
We carry the proof of oppression on our backs, under our fingernails; and we carry the proof
of our survivance (Vizenor, 2008) in our photo boxes, our calluses, our wombs, our dreams. These stories, too,
are not always ours to give away, though they are sometimes the very us of us. It needs to
be said that we are not arguing for silence . Stories are meant to be
passed along appropriately, especially among loved ones, but not all of them as social science research.
publish, just produce; research in the way you want to after tenure, later.”
Although such knowledge is often a source of wisdom that informs the perspectives in our writing, we do not intend to
share them as social science research. It is enough that we know them. Kahnawake scholar Audra Simpson asks the
following questions of her own ethnographic work with members of her nation: “Can I do this and still come home; what
am I revealing here and why? Where will this get us? Who benefits from this and why?” (2007, p. 78). These questions
force researchers to contend with the strategies of producing legitimated knowledge based on the colonization of
knowledge. Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars of Native education have queried the dangers of appropriation of
Native knowledge by mainstream research and peda- gogical institutions (e.g., Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Lomawaima &
McCarty, 2006; Richardson, 2011). Lomawaima and McCarty (2006) describe the “safety zone” as ways in which
Indigenous knowledges are included into even overtly anti- Indian spaces
such as boarding schools designed to assimilate Native children.
Indigenous knowledge is made harmless to settler colonial pedagogies by
relegat- ing it to the safety zone of the margins. Troy Richardson extends this analysis by
discussing “inclusion as enclosure” (2011, p.332), the encircling of Native education as part of a well-intentioned
multiculturalist agenda. Such gestures, he contends, reduce the Indigenous curriculum to a supplement to a standard
some narratives die a little when contained within the
metanarrative of social science. Richardson (2011) theorizes Gerald Vizenor’s concept of trickster
curriculum. Moreover,
knowledge and the play of shadows to articulate a “shadow curriculum” that exceeds the material objects of reference—
where much meaning is made in silence sur- rounding the words, where memories are not simply reflections of a referent
experi- ence but dynamic in themselves. “The shadow is the silence that inherits the words; shadows are the motions that
mean the silence” (Vizenor, 1993, p.7). Extending Richardson’s analysis of Vizenor’s work, beneath the intent gaze of the
. The stories extracted from
the shadows by social science research frequently become relics of cultural
anthropological descriptions of “tradition” and difference from occidental
cultures. Vizenor observes these to be the “denials of tribal wisdom in the literature of dominance, and the morass of
social science theories” (Vizenor, 1993, p. 8). Said another way, the academy as an apparatus
of settler colonial knowledge already domesticates, denies, and
dominates other forms of knowledge. It too refuses. It sets limits,
but disguises itself as limitless. Frederic Jameson (1981) writes, “[H]istory is what hurts. It is what
social scientific lens, shadow stories lose their silences, their play of meaning
refuses desire and sets inexorable limits to individual as well as collective praxis” (p. 102). For Jameson, history is a
master narrative of inevitability, the logic of teleos and totality: All events are interconnected and all lead toward the same
. The relentlessness of the master narrative is what hurts
people who find themselves on the outside or the underside of that
narrative. History as master narrative appropriates the voices, stories, and
histories of all Others, thus limiting their representational possibilities, their
expression as epistemological paradigms in themselves . Academic knowledge is particular
and privileged, yet disguises itself as universal and common; it is
settler colonial; it already refuses desire; it sets limits to potentially
dangerous Other knowledges; it does so through erasure, but importantly
also through inclusion, and its own imperceptibility. Jameson’s observation also
horizon of progress
positions desire as a counterlogic to the history that hurts. Desire invites the ghosts that history wants exorcised, and
compels us to imagine the possible in what was written as impossible; desire is haunted. Read this way, desire expands
personal as well as collective praxis.
--Turns case
Damage-centered politics allows violent interventions into
communities – turns the aff
Tuck and Yang, 14 – *PhD in Urban Education, Assistant Professor of Educational
Foundations, and Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New
York **Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies (Eve, and K.W., “R-Words: Refusing
Research,” In “Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and
communities” academia.edu)//jml
As long as the objects of research are presumably damaged
communities in need of intervention, the metanarrative of social science
research remains unchallenged: which is that research at worst is
simply an expansion of common knowledge (and therefore harmless), and that
research at best is problem solving (and therefore beneficial). This metanarrative
justifies a host of interventions into communities, and treats
communities as frontiers to civilize, regardless of the specific
conclusions of individual research projects. Consider, for example, well- intended research on
achievement gaps that fuels NCLB and testing; the docu- mentation of youth violence that provides the rationales for gang
injunctions and the expansion of the prison industrial complex; the documentation of diabetes as justification for
by making the settler
colonial metanarrative the object of social science research, researchers
may bring to a halt or at least slow down the machinery that allows
knowledge to facilitate interdictions on Indigenous and Black life. Thus, this
form of refusal might also involve tracking the relationships between social
science research and expansions of state and corporate violence against
communities. Social science researchers might design their work to call attention to or interrogate power, rather
than allowing their work to serve as yet another advertisement for power. Further, this form of refusal
might aim to leverage the resources of the academy to expand the
representa- tional territories fought for by communities working to thwart
settler colonialism.
unauthorized genomic studies and the expansion of anti- Indigenous theories. Instead,
Habitus alt
Our alternative is to conceptualize identity through the frame of
the “habitus” – this allows a more particular understanding of
identity and avoids the essentialism of the aff
Mowbray, 10 - PhD, Senior Lecturer at Sydney University and Co-Director, Sydney
Centre for International Law (Jacqueline, “Autonomy, Identity and Self-knowledge: A
New ‘Solution’ to the Liberal-Communitarian ‘Problem’?” January 2014 Sydney Law
School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 14/02)//jml
One possible approach is to conceptualise identity along the lines of what
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has termed the ‘habitus’. Bourdieu uses the term habitus
to refer to the set of social and cultural dispositions which incline
individuals to act in particular ways (for example, to speak a particular language, to wear particular
national dress, to comply with certain social customs).19 As a result of the dispositions which form the
habitus, we tend to reproduce the same social and cultural attributes and
behaviour which we have experienced in the past. However, at the same time, we
remain free to act otherwise, and will do so in response to changes in
external conditions – economic, social, political or otherwise – or changes in our own
perception and understanding of the social world. The concept of the
habitus thus covers those things which we intuitively
understand as intrinsic to our identity: our values, beliefs,
social and cultural allegiances, and behaviours . But it requires us to
describe and analyse the various elements of this identity with greater
particularity , by reference to the specific dispositions which shape our
ideas and actions, our different ways of being in the world. This prevents
us from viewing identity in monolithic or essential terms . At the same
time, analysing identity in terms of habitus allows us to give some relatively stable content to the concept of identity,
it allows for processes of
construction and change, because the habitus can be altered in response to
different factors, including the individual’s experiences in different social and cultural
fields. Understanding identity along the lines of the habitus
therefore offers a more nuanced framework for discussions of
autonomy and identity , one which avoids the dangers of essentialising
identity, while also recognising that identity has some fixed content and
meaning for individuals. In the rest of this chapter, I therefore adopt this approach to the concept of
because the habitus tends to endure and to reproduce ideas and behaviour. Yet
identity as a basis for exploring and questioning the identity-related issues raised in the recent literature.
Self-knowledge and self-creation constrain the possibility for
subject formation – understanding identity as “habitus” is
necessary to reformulate our relationship towards autonomy
Mowbray, 10 - PhD, Senior Lecturer at Sydney University and Co-Director, Sydney
Centre for International Law (Jacqueline, “Autonomy, Identity and Self-knowledge: A
New ‘Solution’ to the Liberal-Communitarian ‘Problem’?” January 2014 Sydney Law
School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 14/02)//jml
Assuming that we can give some
relatively stable, meaningful content to the concept of identity, the next question I
want to raise is whether self-knowledge of that identity is possible. In other words, can we treat our identity
as an object of study, or is it inextricably part of us, such that we cannot
truly know it as a separate object of inquiry? Is it possible for the one individual to be both the
inquiring subject and the object of that inquiry? Understanding identity in terms of habitus is
helpful in exploring this issue, as Bourdieu’s work is particularly enlightening on the mechanisms by
which the habitus operates to shape our consciousness and behaviour. For Bourdieu, the habitus is a set of
dispositions which operate at a subconscious or preconscious level.
The habitus functions at the level of ‘practical sense’20 or a ‘feel for the game’,21 that is, a
sense of what behaviour is appropriate or expected in particular circumstances. It is not something we
consciously choose, but is part of our general framework of subjectivity. As
a result of the dispositions which form the habitus, therefore, we tend to act in
ways which are socially and culturally similar to those which we have
experienced in the past, because the habitus conditions our understanding of the possibilities for action.
Our identity, our habitus, therefore shapes the very way that we see the
world. As a result, it is not possible to have objective knowledge of the world, or
of oneself, free from the constraints of the habitus. And the dispositions which constitute
Is self-knowledge, and self-creation, of identity possible?
the habitus are particularly difficult to discover, as they generally seem self-evident to the holder of them. This suggests
that, contrary to the way in which it is characterised in some of the recent literature, the process of gaining self-knowledge
because there is no one,
simple truth about our identity, and because it is not open to us to discover
the dispositions of the habitus. Nor is the process of gaining self-knowledge
simply a matter of overcoming ‘false consciousness’, stepping outside the dispositions of
the habitus to gain a clear understanding of oneself. For the factors which shape our identity do
not operate at the conscious level. As Bourdieu noted in his now famous interview with Eagleton, the
world ‘doesn’t work in terms of consciousness; it works in terms of practices, mechanisms,
and so forth’.22 This highlights a further impediment to individuals gaining
self-knowledge of their identities, namely the social mechanisms by which knowledge itself is
constructed. The categories and terms by which we understand and make sense
of our identity are not pre-existing or natural, but are social constructs. We
is not a simple matter of uncovering ‘the truth’ about oneself. This is both
think of ourselves in terms of being homosexual, Christian, Australian and so on because social processes have created
these categories of identity. Yet they appear to have a natural or pre-given status; they seem self-evident. This is what
Bourdieu terms ‘doxa’: propositions and ideas which are arbitrary or constructed, but which appear ‘as self-evident, as
beneath consciousness and choice’.23
These ideas and values are assumed and ‘taken for
granted’ by all,24and affect the ability of individuals to gain unmediated knowledge of themselves and of the
world. In Bourdieu’s terms, ‘[b]y using doxa we accept many things without knowing them’.25 The operation of doxa, like
the habitus, influences our view of the world (and of our own identities) without us being aware of it. Bourdieu’s analysis
self-knowledge, in the sense of conscious understanding of our identity, is, if possible at
all, severely constrained by the subconscious mechanisms of the habitus and
therefore suggests that
doxa. This undermines the idea, central to much of the recent literature, of the autonomous individual, consciously
if self-knowledge of our identity
is constrained by the operation of the habitus and principles of doxa, so too are
the possibilities for self-creation of that identity. Since the
dispositions which constitute the habitus operate at a subconscious or
preconscious level, our ability to shape them would seem limited. Further, on
Bourdieu’s account, the habitus tends to be self-perpetuating and self-reproducing.
And changes in the habitus result from interactions between the habitus
and the social world, rather than as a result of the conscious determination of an autonomous individual. At
gaining knowledge of his or her identity. Taking this a step further,
the same time, doxa shapes and constrains individuals’ ideas about possible identities and the appropriateness or
the extent to which there is
choice in relation to our identities is much more limited than is suggested
by much of the recent literature on identity and autonomy. This analysis
reveals that it is not only the concept of identity itself, as discussed in the previous
section of this chapter, but also the concepts of self-knowledge and self-creation of
that identity which are problematic. Bourdieu’s insights undermine the idea, central to much of the
otherwise of creating new identities for themselves. This suggests that
recent literature, of the autonomous, knowing individual, who has knowledge of his/her identity and the means to control
Self-knowledge and self-creation of identity, if possible at all,
have a much more limited scope of operation than the recent scholarship
assumes.
its development.
Self-creation through the process of “habitus” allows an
examination and understand of the contingencies of identity
while avoiding the essentialising tendencies of self-knowledge
Mowbray, 10 - PhD, Senior Lecturer at Sydney University and Co-Director, Sydney
Centre for International Law (Jacqueline, “Autonomy, Identity and Self-knowledge: A
New ‘Solution’ to the Liberal-Communitarian ‘Problem’?” January 2014 Sydney Law
School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 14/02)//jml
I have raised a number of concerns with recent
scholarship which seeks to bridge the gap between autonomy- and identitybased accounts of human rights with the concept of self-knowledge. While this body of work suggests
An alternative formulation Thus far,
that self-knowledge is necessary both to remain faithful to one’s identity and to engage in the acts of self-creation which
I have challenged this by interrogating the concept
of identity; questioning the possibilities for self-knowledge and selfcreation of that identity; and suggesting that self-knowledge is not , in fact,
necessary for the acts of self-creation which constitute an
autonomous life. Does this mean that recent attempts to bridge the gap between autonomy and identity, or,
constitute the exercise of autonomy,
more fundamentally, between liberal and communitarian views, are ultimately flawed? Not necessarily. By returning to
Bourdieu, I want now to suggest an alternative way of bridging the gap between these two positions that builds on some of
I want to draw on the ideas of selfknowledge and self-creation, which this literature positions as central, and to reformulate
the relationship between these two concepts in what I believe may be a
more productive way. Throughout this chapter, I have interrogated the concept of identity, and the
the insights of the recent literature. In particular,
possibilities for self-knowledge and self-creation, and I have suggested that these phenomena are more complex than is
acknowledged in the recent literature. In particular, I have raised concerns about the fact that this literature tends to
essentialise the concept of identity, and thus not to account for the difficulties associated with self-knowledge and self-
identity is of central importance in the lives of individuals. And
while true self-knowledge and self- creation may be impossible, human
nature is still to strive towards these ideals. Is it possible, then, to approach
these concepts in a different way, so as to recognise their value but without
falling into the trap of essentialising them? I have suggested a partial answer to this question
creation. Yet
above, in that I argue that identity can be usefully reconceived along the lines of Bourdieu’s habitus, not as a fixed entity
self- knowledge and self-creation can be
thought of as processes, in terms of individual efforts towards these ideals.
This approach involves acknowledging the difficulties associated with selfknowledge and self-creation, while nonetheless recognising the
significance of these processes to individuals. Adopting such an approach
overcomes many of the problems with the recent literature identified
above. Yet the problem of the relationship between self-knowledge and self- creation remains. The relevant
but as a process of construction. Similarly, I think
scholarship seeks to bridge the gap between autonomy- and identity-based accounts of human rights by arguing that selfknowledge opens up the possibilities for self-creation, a proposition I have questioned above. But what if the link between
identity, in the form
of the habitus, is shaped by social processes, by our past actions and
experiences, which shape our understanding of the possibilities for action
in the future. For present purposes, there are two critical points which flow from this. The first is that the
habitus is continually open to change: identity is a process ,
shaped both by the social world and by the actions of individuals in
engaging with that social world. This being the case, the process of seeking self-knowledge is
ultimately also an act of self-creation: if the habitus is shaped by our past actions and
experiences, then our actions in seeking self-knowledge themselves shape
the habitus. Self-knowledge and self-creation are thus inextricably
connected; they are part of the same process by which the individual encounters the social world. The second
critical point here is that the habitus is shaped by social processes. It is in the
interaction between the individual and social fields that the dispositions of
the habitus are reinforced or, conversely, challenged and changed. The
habitus is a social phenomenon, and knowledge of the habitus cannot therefore be obtained by
engaging in solitary acts of introspection, but only by gaining an understanding of concrete social processes. So acts
of self-creation, which require engagement with the social world, will enhance an individual’s
self-knowledge, for it is in the concrete interaction between the habitus and
the social field that the dispositions of the habitus, which generally operate at a
subconscious or preconscious level, are open to be revealed. Once again we see that selfself-knowledge and self-creation is more fundamental? For Bourdieu, as we have seen,
knowledge and self-creation are part of the same process: there is no
logical progression from one to the other, rather, they are intertwined. Selfknowledge and self-creation are thus inextricably connected. In seeking selfknowledge, individuals also, in many ways, create the self they are seeking to discover. And engaging in acts of
self-creation will inevitably enhance self-knowledge. This being the case, the liberal and
communitarian approaches have more in common than first appears. The liberal view favours autonomy and self-creation,
while the communitarian view favours identity and self- knowledge. But if the processes of self-knowledge and selfcreation are connected, then the purpose of human rights, on both views, is the same: to protect individuals’ ability to seek
self-knowledge and self-creation. This insight reveals the true potential of the recent literature on autonomy and identity
to bridge the gap between these different views of human rights. And it suggests how this new literature can make a real
contribution to the old liberal- communitarian debate.
Referendum Ks
Impacts
Agency
Using the ballot as a referendum on identity cedes agency to the
sovereign, which recreates the violence against social
movements that they kritik
Campbell, 98 - Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle
(David, “Performing Politics and the Limits of Language” 1998)//jml
Those who argue that hate speech demands juridical responses assert that
not only does the speech communicate, but that it constitutes an injurious
act. This presumes that not only does speech act, but that "it acts upon the addressee in an injurious way" (16). This
argumentation is, in Butler's eyes, based upon a "sovereign conceit" whereby
speech wields a sovereign power, acts as an imperative, and
embodies a causative understanding of representation. In this manner, hate speech
constitutes its subjects as injured victims unable to respond themselves and in need of the law's intervention to restrict if
This idealization of the speech act as a
sovereign action (whether positive or negative) appears linked with the idealization of
sovereign state power or, rather, with the imagined and forceful voice of that
power. It is as if the proper power of the state has been expropriated,
delegated to its citizens, and the state then reemerges as a neutral
instrument to which we seek recourse to protects as from other citizens,
who have become revived emblems of a (lost) sovereign power (82). Two elements of this are paradoxical. First, the
sovereign conceit embedded in conventional renderings of hate speech
comes at a time when understanding power in sovereign terms is becoming
(if at all ever possible) even more difficult. Thus the juridical response to hate speech helps deal with an onto-political
problem: "The constraints of legal language emerge to put an end to this
particular historical anxiety [the problematisation of sovereignty], for the law requires that
we resituate power in the language of injury, that we accord injury the
status of an act and trace that act to the specific conduct of a subject" (78). The
not censor the offending words, and punish the speaker:
second, which stems from this, is that (to use Butler's own admittedly hyperbolic formulation) "the state produces hate
speech." By this she means not that the state is the sovereign subject from which the various slurs emanate, but that within
the frame of the juridical account of hate speech "the category cannot exist without the state's ratification, and this power
of the state's judicial language to establish and maintain the domain of what will be publicly speakable suggests that the
state plays much more than a limiting function in such decisions; in fact, the state actively produces the domain of publicly
acceptable speech, demarcating the line between the domains of the speakable and the unspeakable, and retaining the
The sovereign conceit of the
juridical argument thus linguistically resurrects the sovereign
subject at the very moment it seems most vulnerable, and reaffirms the
sovereign state and its power in relation to that subject at the very moment
its phantasmatic condition is most apparent. The danger is that the
resultant extension of state power will be turned against the
social movements that sought legal redress in the first place (24)
power to make and sustain the line of consequential demarcation" (77).
Can’t refute it
We should not be forced to refute the content of their personal
experience because it’s impossible for us to do so – people are
victimized, the core question is “what do we do?”
Subotnik 98 — Professor of Law at the Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center at Touro
College, holds a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law(Daniel, “What's Wrong
With Critical Race Theory?: Reopening The Case For Middle Class Values,” 1998, Cornell
Journal of Law and Public Policy (7 Cornell J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 681), Spring, Lexis-Nexis)
//AD
Having traced a major strand in the development of CRT, we turn now to the strands'
effect on the relationships of CRATs with each other and with outsiders. As the foregoing
material suggests, the central CRT message is not simply that minorities are being
treated unfairly, or even that individuals out there are in pain - assertions for which there
are data to serve as grist for the academic mill - but that the minority scholar himself or
herself hurts and hurts badly.
An important problem that concerns the very definition of the scholarly enterprise now
comes into focus. What can an academic trained to [*694] question and to doubt n72
possibly say to Patricia Williams when effectively she announces, "I hurt bad"? n73 "No,
you don't hurt"? "You shouldn't hurt"? "Other people hurt too"? Or, most dangerously and perhaps most tellingly - "What do you expect when you keep shooting yourself in the
foot?" If the majority were perceived as having the well- being of minority groups in
mind, these responses might be acceptable, even welcomed. And they might lead to real
conversation. But, writes Williams, the failure by those "cushioned within the invisible
privileges of race and power... to incorporate a sense of precarious connection as a part
of our lives is... ultimately obliterating." n74
"Precarious." "Obliterating." These words will clearly invite responses only from fools
and sociopaths; they will, by effectively precluding objection, disconcert and disunite
others. "I hurt," in academic discourse, has three broad though interrelated effects. First,
it demands priority from the reader's conscience. It is for this reason that law review
editors, waiving usual standards, have privileged a long trail of undisciplined - even silly
n75 - destructive and, above all, self-destructive arti cles. n76 Second, by emphasizing
the emotional bond between those who hurt in a similar way, "I hurt" discourages fellow
sufferers from abstracting themselves from their pain in order to gain perspective on
their condition. n77
[*696] Last, as we have seen, it precludes the possibility of open and structured
conversation with others. n78 [*697] It is because of this conversation-stopping effect
of what they insensitively call "first-person agony stories" that Farber and Sherry deplore
their use. "The norms of academic civility hamper readers from challenging the accuracy
of the researcher's account; it would be rather difficult, for example, to criticize a law
review article by questioning the author's emotional stability or veracity." n79 Perhaps, a
better practice would be to put the scholar's experience on the table, along with other
relevant material, but to subject that experience to the same level of scrutiny.
If through the foregoing rhetorical strategies CRATs succeeded in limiting academic
debate, why do they not have greater influence on public policy? Discouraging white
legal scholars from entering the national conversation about race, n80 I suggest, has
generated a kind of cynicism in white audiences which, in turn, has had precisely the
reverse effect of that ostensibly desired by CRATs. It drives the American public to the
right and ensures that anything CRT offers is reflexively rejected.
In the absence of scholarly work by white males in the area of race, of course, it is
difficult to be sure what reasons they would give for not having rallied behind CRT. Two
things, however, are certain. First, the kinds of issues raised by Williams are too
important in their implications [*698] for American life to be confined to communities
of color. If the lives of minorities are heavily constrained, if not fully defined, by the
thoughts and actions of the majority elements in society, it would seem to be of great
importance that white thinkers and doers participate in open discourse to bring about
change. Second, given the lack of engagement of CRT by the community of legal scholars
as a whole, the discourse that should be taking place at the highest scholarly levels has,
by default, been displaced to faculty offices and, more generally, the streets and the
airwaves.
Commodification
The claim that oppression should be the basis for winning a
debate round commodifies the ballot – the round devolves into
oppression olympics
Enns 12—Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University (Dianne, The Violence of
Victimhood, 28-30) //AD *we don’t endorse ableist langauge
Guilt and Ressentiment We need to think carefully about what is at stake here. Why is this perspective appealing, and
what are its effects? At first glance, the argument appears simple: white, privileged women, in their theoretical and
practical interventions, must take into account the experiences and conceptual work of women who are less fortunate and
less powerful, have fewer resources, and are therefore more subject to systemic oppression. The lesson of feminism's
mistakes in the civil rights era is that this “mainstream” group must not speak for other women. But such a view must be
interrogated. Its effects, as I have argued, include a veneration of the other, moral currency for the victim, and an insidious
competition for victimhood. We will see in later chapters that these effects are also common in situations of conflict where
otherness discourse in feminism appeals
both to the guilt of the privileged and to the resentment, or ressentiment, of the
other. Suleri's allusion to “embarrassed privilege” exposes the operation of guilt in the misunderstanding that often
divides Western feminists from women in the developing world, or white women from women of color. The guilt of
those who feel themselves deeply implicated in and responsible for imperialism
merely reinforces an imperialist benevolence , polarizes us
unambiguously by locking us into the categories of victim and
perpetrator , and blinds us to the power and agency of the other.
Many fail to see that it is embarrassing and insulting for those identified as
victimized others not to be subjected to the same critical intervention and
held to the same demands of moral and political responsibility. Though we
are by no means equal in power and ability, wealth and advantage, we are
all collectively responsible for the world we inhabit in common. The condition of
the stakes are much higher. ¶ We witness here a twofold appeal:
victimhood does not absolve one of moral responsibility. I will return to this point repeatedly throughout this book.¶
Mohanty's perspective ignores the possibility that one can become attached
to one's subordinated status, which introduces the concept of ressentiment,
the focus of much recent interest in the injury caused by racism and colonization. Nietzsche describes ressentiment as the
ressentiment itself becomes
creative and gives birth to values. 19 The sufferer in this schema seeks out a cause
for his suffering—“ a guilty agent who is susceptible to suffering”— someone on whom he can vent his
affects and so procure the anesthesia necessary to ease the pain of injury. The
overwhelming sentiment of “slave morality,” the revolt that begins when
motivation behind ressentiment, according to Nietzsche, is the desire “to deaden, by means of a more violent emotion of
any kind, a tormenting, secret pain that is becoming unendurable, and to drive it out of consciousness at least for the
moment: for that one requires an affect, as savage an affect as possible, and, in order to excite that, any pretext at all.” 20
ressentiment acts as the “righteous
critique of power from the perspective of the injured ,” which “delimits a
In its contemporary manifestation, Wendy Brown argues that
specific site of blame for suffering by constituting sovereign subjects and events as responsible for the ‘injury’ of social
Identities are fixed in an economy of perpetrator and
victim , in which revenge, rather than power or emancipation, is
sought for the injured, making the perpetrator hurt as the sufferer does. 21¶ 30¶ Such a concept is useful for
subordination.”
understanding why an ethics of absolute responsibility to the other appeals to the victimized. Brown remarks that, for
the triumph of a morality rooted in ressentiment is the
denial that it has any access to power or contains a will to power .
Politicized identities arise as both product of and reaction to this condition;
the reaction is a substitute for action — an “imaginary revenge,” Nietzsche calls it.
Suffering then becomes a social virtue at the same time that the sufferer attempts to
displace his suffering onto another. The identity created by ressentiment, Brown explains,
becomes invested in its own subjection not only through its discovery of
someone to blame, and a new recognition and revaluation of that subjection, but also through the
satisfaction of revenge . 22¶ The outcome of feminism's attraction to theories of difference and
otherness is thus deeply contentious. First, we witness the further reification reification of the
very oppositions in question and a simple reversal of the focus from the
same to the other. This observation is not new and has been made by many critics of feminism, but it seems to
Nietzsche, the source of
have made no serious impact on mainstream feminist scholarship or teaching practices in women's studies programs.
Second, in the eagerness to rectify the mistakes of “white, middle-class, liberal, western” feminism,
the other has
been uncritically exalted, which has led in turn to simplistic designations of marginal, “othered”
status and, ultimately, a competition for victimhood. Ultimately, this approach has led to a new moral
code in which ethics is equated with the responsibility of the privileged Western woman, while moral immunity is granted
to the victimized other. Ranjana Khanna describes this operation aptly when she writes that in the field of transnational
the reification of the other has produced “ separate ethical
universes ” in which the privileged experience paralyzing guilt
and the neocolonized, crippling resentment . The only “overarching
imperative” is that one does not comment on another's ethical context. An
ethical response turns out to be a nonresponse . 23 Let us turn now to an
feminism,
exploration of this third outcome.
Discursive militarism
Tying pedagogy to our identities reinforces discursive
militarism
Jay and Graff, 95 - * Professor in the department of English at University of
Wisconsin ** professor of English and Education at University of Illinois at Chicago
(Gregory and Gerald, “Critique of Critical Pedagogy” Higher Education Under Fire, p.
207-9)//jml
The premise that teachers should unmask the ideologies of their students—
or that they should teach them how to unmask the ideologies of everyone else—has disturbing ethical and
political consequences. One consequence is to efface or trivialize the
status of personal agency . According to Morton, "persons" must be
"distinguished from their 'discourses' " (82) so that those discourses can be
effectively critiqued. This distinction removes the critique of discourses
from the realm of the ethical, where relationship between persons require attitudes such as tolerance,
respect, responsibility sympathy, justice, and humility. Most students will not readily perceive a
distinction between the professor's contempt for their discourse and
contempt for their person, as many women and people of color can testify. By treating
persons as discourses , critical pedagogy applies poststructuralist theory
in a reducing manner that is shallow theoretically and harmful
strategically . By depersonalizing critique and pedagogy, oppositional theorists underestimate the emotional
and psychological ties that individuals have to knowledge and power. The connection of persons to
discourses is an ethical one that cannot be reduced to ideology. The person takes
responsibility for negotiating the relationship between discourses and institutions of knowledge and power, on the one
hand, and the experience of the individual on the other. An ethic, like a discourse, is precisely a set of principles that is not
coincident with the person, but rather something he or she embodies only imperfectly and individually. Keeping the
connection of persons to discourses is vital to an effective theory of agency and a coherent view of injustice and
The kind of alienation effect produced by oppositional pedagogy
overstates the determination of persons by discourses, and so opens the
way both to irresponsibility and social fragmentation. A relentless
critique of every student's and every teacher's bad faith leads to
contempt for the idea of community . Real political opposition and
change cannot be accomplished by isolated individuals or random acts
of critique . Unlike critique, politics is a social enterprise. It requires that persons form communities based on
responsibility.
some degree of trust and faith and mutual respect-even for those will whom one is ideologically at odds. It is just such
notions of respect, trust, and faith that critical and oppositional pedagogies reject, usually out of a fear of being "co-opted"
by the dominant social institutions. A political community depends upon mutual recognition of common interests, which
must be understood in part by testing discourses against persons and ideas against experiences. It is difficult to imagine
how the students in an oppositional classroom are to form a bond with each other, much less with those who oppose their
Critique can succeed only by resorting to persuasion, and
persuasion has no chance unless it is willing to respect the resistances of
those who are not yet converted. At some point, critique has to turn into a positive program that those
point of view.
not yet persuaded will find intellectually satisfying, emotionally desirable, and ethically acceptable. In the end, then an
ethical pedagogy, which poses questions about the relationship between individual good and social good, and between
personal character and potential action, will be more helpful in orienting a way through and beyond opposition.
Persuasion is political because it aims to address a community about problems and interests that are vital to how people
conduct themselves towards each other. Persuasion recognizes the social nature of human life and the necessity of
attending to the improvement of the organization of society. Persuasion accepts the plurality of goods, that is, the
existence of many different notions of the good life among its audience. Politics is not the implementation of a single truth,
but the process of structuring the negotiation between differing truths in a manner that respects their claims as much as
possible. We grant that critical pedagogy has its place at the level of individual teaching practices, at least when it is willing
to respect the resistance of students. But as long as education is an institution in an overlapping system of democratic
processes, the school cannot and should not enforce a program that commits everyone to a predetermined worldview,
however just we may believe it is. Theorizing the practice of entire institutions of higher education means thinking from
This
calls for a model of education in which we engage with those who hold the
"wrong" politics and will not take our assumptions for granted, that is, a
model in which ideological opponents not only coexist but cooperate. This in
the viewpoint of conservatives, liberals, and others with whom we work, not just from the viewpoint of radicals.
turn means thinking of models beyond that of the single classroom with the single instructor, the model that still
If educational institutions
hope to be true communities of intellectual inquiry, reforming them will
require models that respect the ethical and political dimensions of
community life. This means respecting those with the "wrong" politics, and
even accepting the risk that they may change us.
dominates critical pedagogy, in spite of its unorthodoxy in other respects.
Solipsism
Solipsism
their argument re-entrenches oppression by precluding a goaloriented strategy – doesn’t allow coalitions
Bridges 01 - Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia
(David, “The Ethics of Outsider Research,” 2001, Journal of Philosophy of Education,
Vol. 35, No. 3) //AD
it is argued that only those who have shared in, and have been part of, a
particular experience can understand or can properly understand (and perhaps `properly' is
particularly heavily loaded here) what it is like. You need to be a woman to understand what it is like to live as a
First,
woman; to be disabled to understand what it is like to live as a disabled person etc. Thus Charlton writes of `the innate
inability of able-bodied people, regardless of fancy credentials and awards, to understand the disability experience'
(Charlton, 1998, p. 128). Charlton's choice of language here is indicative of the rhetorical character which these arguments
tend to assume. This arises perhaps from the strength of feeling from which they issue, but it warns of a need for caution
in their treatment and acceptance. Even if able-bodied people have this `inability' it is difficult to see in what sense it is
`innate'. Are all credentials `fancy' or might some (e.g. those reflecting a sustained, humble and patient attempt to grapple
with the issues) be pertinent to that ability? And does Charlton really wish to maintain that there is a single experience
which is the experience of disability, whatever solidarity disabled people might feel for each other? The understanding that
experience is unique
any of us have of our own conditions or
and special, though recent work on personal
narratives also shows that it is itself multi-layered and inconstant, i.e. that we have and can provide many different
understandings even of our own lives (see, for example, Tierney, 1993). Nevertheless, our own understanding has a special
status: it provides among other things a data source for others' interpretations of our actions; it stands in a unique
relationship to our own experiencing; and no one else can have quite the same understanding. It is also plausible that
people who share certain kinds of experience in common stand in a special position in terms of understanding those
However, once this argument is applied to such broad
categories as `women' or `blacks', it has to deal with some very
heterogeneous groups; the different social, personal and situational characteristics that
constitute their individuality may well outweigh the shared characteristics;
and there may indeed be greater barriers to mutual understanding than
there are gateways. These arguments , however, all risk a descent into
solipsism : if our individual understanding is so particular, how can we
have communication with or any understanding of anyone else? But,
shared aspects of experience.
granted Wittgenstein's persuasive argument against a private language (Wittgenstein, 1963, perhaps more
we cannot in these circumstances even describe
or have any real understanding of our own condition in such an isolated
world. Rather it is in talking to each other, in participating in a shared
language, that we construct the conceptual apparatus that allows us to
understand our own situation in relation to others, and this is a construction which
involves understanding differences as well as similarities. Besides, we have good reason to treat with
some scepticism accounts provided by individuals of their own experience and
straightforwardly presented in Rhees, 1970),
by extension accounts provided by members of a particular category or community of people. We know that such
accounts can be riddled with special pleading, selective memory, careless error, selfcentredness, myopia, prejudice and a good deal more. A lesbian scholar
illustrates some of the pressures that can bear, for example, on an insider researcher
in her own community: As an insider, the lesbian has an important sensitivity to offer, yet
she is also more vulnerable than the non-lesbian researcher, both to the pressure from the heterosexual
world--that her studies conform to previous works and describe lesbian reality in terms of its relationship with the
to pressure from the inside, from within the lesbian community
itself--that her studies mirror not the reality of that community but its self-protective
ideology. (Kreiger, 1982, p. 108) In other words, while individuals from within a
community have access to a particular kind of understanding of their
experience, this does not automatically attach special authority
(though it might attach special interest) to their own representations of that experience.
Moreover, while we might acknowledge the limitations of the understanding which
someone from outside a community (or someone other than the individual who is the focus of the
research) can develop, this does not entail that they cannot develop and
present an understanding or that such understanding is
worthless . Individuals can indeed find benefit in the understandings that
others offer of their experience in, for example, a counselling relationship, or when a researcher adopts a
outside-and
supportive role with teachers engaged in reflection on or research into their own practice. Many have echoed the plea of
the Scottish poet, Robert Burns (in `To a louse'): O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!3 --
even if they might have been horrified with what such power revealed to
them. Russell argued that it was the function of philosophy (and why not research too?) `to suggest many possibilities
which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom . . .It keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing
familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect' (Russell, 1912, p. 91). `Making the familiar strange', as Stenhouse called it, often
requires the assistance of someone unfamiliar with our own world who can look at our taken-for-granted experience
through, precisely, the eye of a stranger. Sparkes (1994) writes very much in these terms in describing his own research, as
a white, heterosexual middleaged male, into the life history of a lesbian PE teacher. He describes his own struggle with the
is it possible for heterosexual people to undertake research into
homosexual populations?' but he concludes that being a `phenomenological
stranger' who asks `dumb questions' may be a useful and illuminating
experience for the research subject in that they may have to return to first principles in reviewing their story. This
question `
could, of course be an elaborate piece of self-justification, but it is interesting that someone like Max Biddulph, who writes
People from
outside a community clearly can have an understanding of the experience
of those who are inside that community. It is almost certainly a different
understanding from that of the insiders. Whether it is of any value will depend among other things on the extent
from a gay/bisexual standpoint, can quote this conclusion with apparent approval (Biddulph, 1996).
to which they have immersed themselves in the world of the other and portrayed it in its richness and complexity; on the
empathy and imagination that they have brought to their enquiry and writing; on whether their stories are honest,
responsible and critical (Barone, 1992). Nevertheless, this value will also depend on qualities derived from the researchers'
externality: their capacity to relate one set of experiences to others (perhaps from their own community); their outsider
perspective on the structures which surround and help to define the experience of the community; on the reactions and
responses to that community of individuals and groups external to it.4 Finally, it must surely follow that if we hold that a
researcher, who (to take the favourable case) seeks honestly, sensitively and with humility to understand and to represent
the experience of a community to which he or she does not belong, is incapable of such understanding and representation,
then how can he or she understand either that same experience as mediated through the research of someone from that
The argument which excludes the outsider from understanding a
community through the effort of their own research, a fortiori excludes the outsider from that understanding
through the secondary source in the form of the effort of an insider researcher or indeed any other means. Again, the
point can only be maintained by insisting that a particular (and itself illdefined) understanding is the only kind of understanding which is worth
having. The epistemological argument (that outsiders cannot understand the experience of a
community to which they do not belong) becomes an ethical argument when this is taken to entail the
community?
further proposition that they ought not therefore attempt to research that community. I hope to have shown that
this
argument is based on a false premise . Even if the premise were
sound, however, it would not necessarily follow that researchers should be
prevented or excluded from attempting to understand this experience,
unless it could be shown that in so doing they would cause some harm. This is indeed part of the argument emerging from
disempowered communities and it is to this that I shall now turn. III
OUTSIDERS IMPORT DAMAGING
FRAMEWORKS OF UNDERSTANDING Frequent in the literature about research into
race and homosexuality is the claim that people from outside
these particular communities will import into their research, for example, homophobic, sexist or
racist frameworks of understanding, which damage the interests of those being researched. In the
case of research into disability it has been argued that outsider researchers carry with them
assumptions that the problem of disability lies with the disabled rather than with the society which frames and
disability, women's experience,
defines disability. `The essential problem of recent anthropological work on culture and disability is that it perpetuates
outmoded beliefs and continues to distance research from lived oppression' (Charlton, 1998, p. 27). By contrast: `a
growing number of people with disabilities have developed a consciousness that transforms the notion and concept of
disability from a medical condition to a political and social condition' (Charlton, 1998, p.17). Charlton goes on to criticise,
for example, a publication by Ingstad and Reynolds Whyte (1995), Disability and Culture. He claims that, although it does
add to our understanding of how the conceptualisation and symbolisation of disability takes place, `its language is and
perspective are still lodged in the past. In the first forty pages alone we find the words suffering, lameness, interest group,
incapacitated, handicapped, deformities. Notions of oppression, dominant culture, justice, human rights, political
Discussing the neocolonialism of outsider research into Maori experience, Smith extends this type of
claim to embrace the wider methodological and metaphysical framing of outsider
research: `From an indigenous perspective Western research is more than just research that is located in a positivist
movement, and selfdetermination are conspicuously absent' (Charlton, 1998 p. 27).
tradition. It is research which brings to bear, on any study of indigenous peoples, a cultural orientation, a set of values, a
different conceptualization of such things as time, space and subjectivity, different and competing theories of knowledge,
highly specialized forms of language, and structures of power' (Smith, 1999, p. 42).5
This position requires, I
qualification
think, some
. First, researchers are clearly not immune from some of the damaging and prejudicial
attitudes on matters of race, sexuality, disability and gender which are found among the rest of the population, though I
might hope that their training and experience might give them above-average awareness of these issues and above-average
alertness to their expression in their own work. Even where such attitudes remain in researchers' consciousness, this
intelligent self-awareness and social sensitivity mean on the whole that they are able to deploy sufficient self-censorship
not to expose it in a damaging way. Researchers may thus remain morally culpable for their thoughts, but, at least,
communities can be spared the harm of their expression. It is also a matter of some significance that researchers are more
exposed than most to public criticism, not least from critics from within these disempowered communities, when such
prejudices do enter and are revealed in their work. If they employ the rhetoric of, for example, anti-racist or anti-sexist
conviction, they are at least in their public pronouncements exposed to the humiliation of being hoisted by their own
petard. It is difficult to see the fairness in excluding all outsider researchers on the a priori supposition of universal
prejudice. It is better, surely, to expose it where it is revealed and, if absolutely necessary, to debar individuals who ignore
such criticism and persist in using the privilege of their research position to peddle what can then only be regarded as
it is plainly not the case that Western
research is located exclusively (as is implied) in a positivist tradition,
even if this tradition has been a dominant one . Phenomenology,
ethnography, life history, even, more recently, the use of narrative fiction and poetry as forms
of research representation, are all established ingredients of the educational research worlds in
damaging and prejudicial propaganda. Secondly,
the UK, USA or Australasia. Contemporary research literature abounds with critiques of positivism as well as examples of
I have placed much weight in these considerations on the
importance of any research being exposed to criticism --most
its continuing expression.
importantly, perhaps, but by no means exclusively by the people whose
experience it claims to represent. This principle is not simply an ethical
principle associated with the obligations that a researcher might accept
towards participants in the research, but it is a fundamental feature of the
processes of research and its claims to command our attention. It is
precisely exposure to, modification through and survival of a process of vigorous
public scrutiny that provides research with whatever authority it can claim . In
contemporary ethnographic research, case-study and life-history research, for example, this expectancy of
exposure to correction and criticism is one which runs right through the
research process. The methodological requirement is for participants to have
several opportunities to challenge any prejudices which researchers may bring with them: at the
point where the terms of the research are first negotiated and they agree to participate (or not); during any conversations
or interviews that take place in the course of the research; in responding to any record which is produced of the data
engagement with a researcher
provides any group with what is potentially a richly educative opportunity: an
opportunity to open their eyes and to see things differently. It is, moreover, an
opportunity which any researcher worth his or her salt will welcome. Not
all researchers or research processes will be as open as are described here to that educative
opportunity, and not all participants (least of all those who are self-defining as `disempowered') will feel the
confidence to take them even if they are there. This may be seen as a reason to set up barriers
to the outsider researcher, but they can and should more often be seen as
problems for researchers and participants to address together in the interests of their
mutual understanding and benefit.
gathering; in response to any draft or final publication. Indeed,
Notwithstanding these considerations, one of the chief complaints coming out of disempowered
communities is that this kind of mutual interest and benefit is precisely what is lacking in their experience of research. It is to this consideration that I shall now turn. IV OUTSIDERS EXPLOIT
INSIDER PARTICIPANTS IN THE COMMUNITIES THEY RESEARCH Ellen describes how fieldwork has become `a rite of passage by which the novice is transformed into the rounded
anthropologist and initiated into the ranks of the profession'Ða ritual by which `the student of anthropology dies and a professional anthropologist is born' �Ellen, 1984, p. 23). This is a reminder
that research can carry benefits to the researcher which go beyond those associated with the `pure' pursuit of understanding. As participants in research become more aware of this, their attitudes
towards research and researchers can, understandably, change. The following observation was made by a woman from a community that had experienced several waves of enthusiastic researchers:
The kind of behaviour researchers have towards locals tells us that they just want to exploit them and take from them their ideas and information. It also tells us that they don't really care at all.
They want the information to use in front of a group of people at home, so that they can be seen as clever academics. Then in the end they publish books, reviews, articles etc in order to spread their
popularities. So what is this, and what is research really about? Not all researchers are exploiters, but most are, and I think it is time up now for this, and that these researchers should also be
exploited by local people. �Florence Shumba, quoted in Wilson, 1992, p. 199) Researchers who are sensitive to this issue typically look for ways to counter the imbalance of benefit. They will
sometimes discuss with participants ways in which the research could be designed to benefit all parties, by, for example, ensuring that it addresses issues on which the participants need
information as well as the researchers or by providing data that the research participants can use independently and for their own purposes. In the absence of any other perceived benefit, some
schools in the UK have responded to researchers' requests for access and time for interviews by proposing to charge by the hour for teachers' time. Of course sometimes participants will be
persuaded to participate on the grounds that some other people whose interests they care aboutÐ pupils in schools, for example, or children currently excluded from educationÐwill secure the
benefit of the research, but there has to be the link between something which they perceive to be a benefit �albeit altruistically) and the commitment which they are asked to make. These
illustrations of the terms of engagement between researchers and their participants present a picture of a trade in benefit, the negotiation of a utilitarian equation of mutual happiness and,
perhaps, pain, though one in which higher satisfactions �e.g. new insights and the improvements to the future education of children) have a place alongside lower ones �a bit of self-publicity or
cash in the school fund). Questions of exploitation, in Kantian terms of treating people as means rather than ends �see Kant, 1964)6 come in if, as is sometimes alleged, researchers use their
positions of authority or their sophistication to establish relationships in which the benefits are very one-sided in their favour. This distinction between the utilitarian principle and the Kantian one
is crucial here. The utilitarian principle might require us to measure in the scales a much wider community of benefit. If, for example, the researcher could show that, even though the Maori
community he or she was researching experienced the inconvenience of the research without the benefit, thousands of other people would benefit from it, then the utilitarian equation might
provide justification for the research. But this is precisely one of the weaknesses of the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest numberÐat least when it is applied with this sort
of simplicity. It requires either a broader take on the utilitarian principle �which might observe that a programme of action which allocates all the benefits to one group and all the `pain' to
another will not be conducive to the greatest aggregation of happiness) or the invoking of something closer to the Kantian principle, which would demand that we do not exploit one group of
people to the exclusive benefit of another. Researchers seeking collaboration with participants in disempowered communities have essentially two forms of appealÐto their self-interest or to their
generosity. Either they need to see some benefit to themselves which is at least roughly commensurate to the effort that is required of them �or in some cases the value of what they have to offer);
or they need knowingly to contribute out of their own benevolence towards the researcher or others whom they believe the research will benefit. In this second case, the researcher is placed in
something of the position of the receiver of a gift and he or she needs to recognise consequently the quite elaborate ethical apparatus that surrounds such receipt. There is a particular `spirit' in
which we might be expected to receive a gift: a spirit of gratitude, of humility, of mutuality in the relationship. There may also be a network of social expectations, which flow from such givingÐof
being in thrall to the giver, of being in his or her debtÐbut on the whole anyone contributing to an educational research project would be naõÈve to assume that such `debts' might be repaid. Most
of the time, researchers are in fact inviting the generosity of their participants, and perhaps there is something more ethically elevated in responding to such generosity with a true spirit of
gratitude and a recognition of the mutuality of relationship which binds giver and receiver, than in seeking to establish a trade in dubious benefits. Smith �1999) provides a wonderful picture of
the combination of spirit and benefits that might be involved in establishing this relationship �as well as a whole new angle on the notion of `empowerment'!) when she outlines the range of
issues on which a researcher approaching a Maori community might need to satisfy them: `Is her spirit clear? Does he have a good heart? What other baggage are they carrying? Are they useful to
us? Can they fix up our generator? Can they actually do anything?' �Smith, 1999, p.10). Perhaps all educational researchers should be required to satisfy participants on these questions. I conclude
that the possibility that outsider educational research may be conducted in an exploitative manner is not an argument for obstructing it comprehensively, but it is an argument for requiring that it
be conducted under an appropriate set of principles and obligations and in a proper spirit. `Qualitative researchers', argued Stake, `are guests in the private spaces of the world. Their manners
should be good and their code of ethics strict' �Stake, 1998, p.103). Any community may legitimately reject a researcher �insider or outsider) who fails to establish and conduct relationships
under these requirements. In this field, ethics is never far removed from politics. This essay has focused on the relationship between educational researchers and communities that are self-defined
as `disempowered' but has not really addressed the issue of power. At the heart of the objections to outsider research is a view that such research, far from challenging and removing such
disempowerment, operates to reinforce it. It is this argument which I shall now address. V OUTSIDERS' RESEARCH DISEMPOWERS INSIDERS At least one of the arguments against outsider
research into self-defined `disempowered' sections of the population is made independently of the measure of sensitivity and care, which the outsider researchers demonstrate in its conduct. `If we
have learned one thing from the civil rights movement in the US', wrote Ed Roberts, a leading figure in the Disability Rights Movement �DRM), `it's that when others speak for you, you lose'
�quoted in Driedger, 1989, p. 28). Roberts' case is in part that for so long as such groups depend on outsiders to represent them on the wider stage, they will be reinforcing both the fact and the
perception of their subordination and dependency as well as exposing themselves to potential misrepresentation. They have to break the vicious circle of dependencyÐand that means taking
control for themselves of the ways in which their experience is represented more widely: The DRM's demand for control is the essential theme that runs through all its work, regardless of political-
economic or cultural di�erences. Control has universal appeal for DRM activists because their needs are everywhere conditioned by a dependency born of powerlessness, poverty, degradation,
and institutionalisation. This dependency, saturated with paternalism, begins with the onset of disability and continues until death. �Charlton, 1998, p. 3) Outsider researchers sometimes
persuade themselves that they are acting in an emancipatory way by `giving voice to' neglected or disenfranchised sections of the community. Their research may indeed push the evident voice of
the researcher far into the background as he or she `simply presents', perhaps as large chunks of direct transcription and without commentary, what participants have to say. But, as Reinharz has
warned, this is by no means as simple as it might appear: To listen to people is to empower them. But if you want to hear it, you have to go hear it, in their space, or in a safe space. Before you can
expect to hear anything worth hearing, you have to examine the power dynamics of the space and the social actors . . . Second, you have to be the person someone else can talk to, and you have to
be able to create a context where the person can speak and you can listen. That means we have to study who we are and who we are in relation to those we study . . . Third, you have to be willing to
hear what someone is saying, even when it violates your expectations or threatens your interests. In other words, if you want someone to tell it like it is, you have to hear it like it is. �Reinharz,
1988, pp. 15±16) Even with this level of self knowledge, sensitivity and discipline, there is a significant temptation in such situations to what is sometimes called ventriloquy: the using of the voice
of the participant to give expression to the things which the researcher wants to say or to have said. This is a process which is present in the selection of participants, in the framing of the questions
which they are encouraged to answer, in the verbal and visual cues which they are given of the researcher's pleasure or excitement with their responses, and, later, in the researcher's selection of
material for publication. Such ventriloquy, argues Fine, disguises `the usually unacknowledged stances of researchers who navigate and camouflage theory through the richness of ``native voices'''
The argument that insiders within `disempowered' communities (or
any other communities for that matter) should be researching and, where appropriate, giving public
expression to their own experience is surely uncontroversial. In a context in which
insider research has been negligible and hugely subordinated to waves of outsider research, there is a good
case for taking practical steps to correct that balance and spare a
community what can understandably be experienced as an increasingly oppressive relationship
with research. There are, however, at last three reasons in principle for keeping
the possibility of outsider research open : (i) that such enquiry might
enhance the understanding of the researcher; (ii) that it might enhance the
understanding of the community itself; and (iii) that it might enhance the
understanding of a wider public. There is no doubt a place for researching our own experience and
that of our own communities, but surely we cannot be condemned lifelong to such social
solipsism? Notwithstanding some postmodernist misgivings, `There is still a world out there,
much to learn, much to discover; and the exploration of ourselves, however
laudable in that at least it risks no new imperialistic gesture, is not, in the
end, capable of sustaining lasting interest' (Patai, 1994, p. 67). The issue is not, however, merely
one of satisfying curiosity. There is a real danger that if we become persuaded that we
cannot understand the experience of others and that `we have no right to
speak for anyone but ourselves', then we will all too easily find ourselves
epistemologically and morally isolated, furnished with a
comfortable legitimation for ignoring the condition of anyone but
ourselves . This is not, any more than the paternalism of the powerful, the route to a more just society. How, then
�Fine, 1994, p.22).
can we reconcile the importance of (1) wider social understanding of the world of `disempowered' communities and of the
structures which contribute to that disempowerment, (2) the openness of those communities and structures to the
outsider researcher, and (3) the determination that the researcher should not wittingly or unwittingly reinforce that
disempowerment? The literature (from which a few selected examples are quoted below) provides some clues as to the
character of relations between researcher and researched which `emancipatory', `participatory' or `educative' research
we need to re-examine the application of the notion of
`property' to the ownership of knowledge. In economic terms, knowledge is not a
competitive good. It has the distinctive virtue that (at least in terms of its educative function) it can be infinitely
distributed without loss to any of those who are sharing in it. Similarly the
researcher can acquire it from people without denying it to them and can
return it enriched. However, it is easy to neglect the processes of reporting back to people and sharing in
might take. To begin with,
knowledge and the importance which can be attached to this process by those concerned. For Smith, a Maori woman
working with research students from the indigenous people of New Zealand, `Reporting back to the people is never a oneoff exercise or a task that can be signed off on completion of the written report'. She describes how one of her students
took her work back to the people she interviewed. `The family was waiting for her; they cooked food and made us
welcome. We left knowing that her work will be passed around the family to be read and eventually will have a place in the
living room along with other valued family books and family photographs' (Smith, 1999, pp. 15±16). For
some,
what is required is a moving away from regarding research as a
property and towards seeing it as a dialogic enquiry designed to
assist the understanding of all concerned: Educative research attempts to restructure the
traditional relationship between researcher and `subject'. Instead of a one-way process where researchers extract data
Research encourages a dialogic process where
participants negotiate meanings at the level of question posing, data collection and analysis .
. . It . . . encourages participants to work together on an equal
basis to reach a mutual understanding. Neither participant should stand apart in an
aloof or judgmental manner; neither should be silenced in the process. (Gitlin
from `subjects', Educational
and Russell, 1994, p. 185)
Their strategy limits politics to the personal – doesn’t assume
difference in experiences and increases oppression
Scott 92 - Harold F. Linder Professor at the School of Social Science in the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (Joan W, “Multiculturalism and the
Politics of Identity” October 1992, Vol. 61, The Identity in Question, p. 16-19)
//AD
The logic of individualism has structured the approach to multiculturalism in
many ways. The call for tolerance of difference is framed in terms of respect for
individual characteristics and attitudes; group differences are conceived categorically and not
relationally, as distinct entities rather than interconnected structures or systems created through repeated processes of the
enunciation of difference. Administrators have hired psychological consulting firms to hold diversity workshops which
teach that conflict resolution is a negotation between dissatisfied individuals. Disciplinary codes that punish "hate-speech"
justify prohibitions in terms of the protection of individuals from abuse by other individuals, not in terms of the protection
of members of historically mistreated groups from discrimination, nor in terms of the ways language is used to construct
and reproduce asymmetries of power. The
language of protection, moreover, is conceptualized
in terms of victimization; the way to make a claim or to justify one's protest
against perceived mistreatment these days is to take on the mantle of the victim.
(The so-called Men's Movement is the latest comer to this scene.) Everyone-whether an insulted
minority or the perpetrator of the insult who feels he is being unjustly accusednow claims to be an equal victim before the law. Here we have not only an extreme
form of individualizing, but a conception of individuals without agency. There is
nothing wrong, on the face of it, with teaching individuals about how to behave
decently in relation to others and about how to empathize with each other's pain.
The problem is that difficult analyses of how history and social standing, privilege, and subordination are involved in
personal behavior entirely drop out. Chandra Mohanty
puts it this way: There has been an
erosion of the politics of collectivity through the reformulation of race and
difference in individualistic terms. The 1960s and '70s slogan "the personal is political"
has been recrafted in the 1980s as "the political is personal." In other words, all politics is
collapsed into the personal, and questions of individual behaviors, attitudes, and
life-styles stand in for political analysis of the social. Individual political struggles
are seen as the only relevant and legitimate form of political struggle.5 Paradoxically,
individuals then generalize their perceptions and claim to speak for a whole
group, but the groups are also conceived as unitary and autonomous. This
individualizing, personalizing conception has also been be- hind some of the recent identity politics of minorities; indeed
it gave rise to the intolerant, doctrinaire behavior that was dubbed, initially by its internal critics, "political correctness." It
is particularly in the notion of "experience" that one sees this operating. In much current
usage of
"experience," references to structure and history are implied but not made
explicit; instead, personal testimony of oppression re- places analysis, and this testimony
comes to stand for the experience of the whole group. The fact of belonging to an identity group is
taken as authority enough for one's speech; the direct experience of a group or culture-that
is, membership in it-becomes the only test of true knowledge. The exclusionary
implications of this are twofold: all those not of the group are denied even intellectual
access to it, and those within the group whose experiences or interpretations do
not conform to the established terms of identity must either suppress their views
or drop out. An appeal to "experience" of this kind forecloses discussion and
criticism and turns politics into a policing operation: the borders of identity are patrolled for
signs of nonconformity; the test of membership in a group becomes less one's willingness to endorse certain principles
and engage in specific political actions, less one's positioning in specific relationships of power, than
one's ability
to use the prescribed languages that are taken as signs that one is inherently "of"
the group. That all of this isn't recognized as a highly political process that produces identities is troubling indeed,
especially because it so closely mimics the politics of the powerful, naturalizing and
deeming as discernably objective facts the prerequisites for inclusion in any
group. Indeed, I would argue more generally that separatism, with its strong insistence on an exclusive
relationship between group identity and access to specialized knowledge (the
argument that only women can teach women's literature or only African-Americans can teach African-American history,
for example), is
a simultaneous refusal and imitation of the powerful in the present
ideological context. At least in universities, the relationship between identity- group membership and access to
specialized knowledge has been framed as an objection to the control by the disciplines of the terms that establish what
counts as (important, mainstream, useful, collective) knowledge and what does not. This has had an enormously
important critical impact, exposing the exclusions that have structured claims to universal or comprehensive knowledge.
When one asks not only where the women or African-Americans are in the history curriculum (for example), but why they
have been left out and what are the effects of their exclusion, one exposes the process by which difference is enunciated.
But one of the complicated and contradictory effects of the implementation of programs in women's studies, AfricanAmerican studies, Chicano studies, and now gay and lesbian studies is to totalize the identity that is the object of study,
reiterating its binary opposition as minority (or subaltern) in relation to whatever is taken as majority or dominant.
Links
Autobiographies bad
Trading autobiographical narrative for the ballot commodifies
one’s identity – when autobiographical narrative “wins,” it
subverts its own radical intentions
Coughlin 95 – associate Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School (Anne,
REGULATING THE SELF: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PERFORMANCES IN OUTSIDER
SCHOLARSHIP, 81 Va. L. Rev. 1229) //AD
Although Williams is quick to detect insensitivity and bigotry in remarks made
by strangers, colleagues, and friends, her taste for irony fails her when it comes to
reflection on her relationship with her readers and the material benefits that
her autobiographical performances have earned for her. n196 Perhaps Williams should be
more inclined to thank, rather than reprimand, her editors for behaving as readers of autobiography invariably do. When we examine this
literary faux pas - the incongruity between Williams's condemnation of her editors and the professional benefits their publication secured
her - we detect yet another contradiction between the outsiders' use of autobiography and their desire to transform culture radically.
autobiography is a lucrative
commodity . In our culture, members of the reading public avidly consume personal
stories , n197 which surely explains why first-rate law journals and academic presses have been eager to market outsider narratives.
No matter how unruly the self that it records, an autobiographical
performance transforms that self into a form of "property in a moneyed
economy" n198 and into a valuable intellectual [*1283] asset in an academy
that requires its members to publish. n199 Accordingly, we must be skeptical of the assertion
that the outsiders' splendid publication record is itself sufficient
evidence of the success of their endeavor . n200 Certainly, publication of a best seller may
Lejeune's characterization of autobiography as a "contract" reminds us that
transform its author's life, with the resulting commercial success and academic renown. n201 As one critic of autobiography puts it,
While writing a successful autobiography may be
momentous for the individual author, this success has a limited impact on
culture. Indeed, the transformation of outsider authors into "success
stories" subverts outsiders' radical intentions by constituting them as
exemplary participants within contemporary culture, willing to market even themselves to
literary and academic consumers. n203 What good does this transformation do for
outsiders who are less fortunate and less articulate than middle-class law
professors? n204 Although they style themselves cultural critics, the [*1284]
storytellers generally do not reflect on the meaning of their own
commercial success, nor ponder its entanglement with the cultural values
they claim to resist. Rather, for the most part, they seem content simply to take advantage of the
peculiarly American license, identified by Professor Sacvan Bercovitch, " to have your dissent and make
it too ." n205
"failures do not get published." n202
Alternatives
Whatever being alt
Our alternative is “whatever being” – this rejects the ballot as a
referendum on inclusion and exclusion and rather blurs the
distinction between inclusion and exclusion
Shimakawa, 4 – PhD in English literature from U of Washington (Karen, “The
Things We Share: Ethnic Performativity and "Whatever Being" 2004)//jml
"whatever being" offers a possible alternative way to conceive
of (communal) subjectivity that does not depend on stable political identity
categories for its integrity, without requiring one to dispense with
categories altogether. Unlike the common English parsing of whatever, Agamben's use of the term is
differently nuanced: "[whatever being] is not 'being, it does not matter which,' but
rather 'being such that it always matters'" (Agamben 1993, 1).3 The impulse
to include/be included is retained, though not assigned to a particular or
stable grounds of inclusion: "such-and-such being is reclaimed from its
having this or that property, which identifies it as belonging to this or that set, to this or that class (the
reds, the French, the Muslims)—and it is reclaimed not for another class nor for the
simple generic absence of any belonging, but for its being-such, for
belonging itself" (1-2, emphasis in original). Belonging itself, according to Agamben, is a state of
being that acknowledges the (social and affective efficacy of the) desire for inclusion
while, at the same time, resisting the concretization of static categories
(defined racially, nationally, sexually, religiously, or otherwise) that would afford not only
inclusion, but also exclusion. What would it mean, Agamben asks, to acknowledge the [End Page 151]
Giorgio Agamben's
desire to belong to identity categories as that which binds us across the boundaries of such categories? To define
subjectivity as "being as such," that is, at the level of the impulse to belong (belonging itself), rather than at the point of
inclusion in an established social category/community?4 It is important to emphasize that
Agamben does not
advocate a dissipation of belonging per se—his is not a dismantled universalist/humanist
leveling program. "It is the Most Common that cuts off any real community," he writes; "[whatever being] is neither
apathy nor promiscuity nor resignation" (10), Instead,
whatever being constitutes a mode of
subject formation that achieves some of Kristeva's deject's ends (that is, the rough
articulation of a subject position) without producing a concretized, jettisoned abject;
and for those who might otherwise find themselves on the "wrong" side of
that (nationalizing/racializing) abjection equation, perhaps Agamben's conception of "being as such"
describes a strategic response to abjection that does not simultaneously reaffirm its logic; that is, it offers an
alternative to abjection that does not result in simply "claiming a place" at
the dejects' table. Indeed, Agamben articulates "whatever being" in terms that are provocatively complementary
to Kristeva's: whereas Kristeva's abject is "simply a frontier," Agamben situates whatever being
precisely at the border or "threshold" between inside and outside, "a point
of contact with an external space that must remain empty" since, in order
to locate a recognized "outside" one must claim (even if only implicitly) a particular
"inside," the zone/community in/to which one belongs (and from which an "outside" is distinguishable). Rather, he
(prospective)
the outside is not another space that resides beyond a determinate
space ... it is, so to speak, the experience of the limit itself" (68). By locating
subject's formation in whatever being, that is, in the impulse to belong, he creates a
concomitantly concretization-resistant zone of not-belonging. That is, just as
argues, "
Kristeva's abject is less a particular object/concept than a function (i.e., explusion/differentiation), so Agamben's "outside"
is simply that which is implied by whatever being/belonging itself: the impulse to not-belong otherwise/elsewhere (always
resisting the temptation to locate that otherwise/elsewhere in concrete terms). "Whatever, in this sense," Agamben
writes,"is the event of an outside" (67, emphasis in original).
Other
Islamophobia K
1NC
Resistance to islamophobia reifies essentialism of Muslims – the
opposition between West and Muslim portrays Islam as a single,
unifying characteristic that effaces a multiplicity of identities
Halliday, 99 - professor of international relations at the London School of
Economics (Fred, “Islamophobia reconsidered,” Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 22,
Number 5 Taylor and Francis)//jml
No subject in contemporary public discussion has attracted more confused
discussion than that of relations between ‘Islam’ and the West. Whether it be the
discussion of relations between Muslim states and non- Muslim countries, or that of the relations between non-Muslims
the tendency has on both sides been, with some exceptions ,
towards alarmism and simplification. Alarmism has concerned the ‘threat’
which, from one side, ‘Islam’ poses to the non- Muslim world, and on the
other, which ‘the West’ poses to Muslims. Non- Muslim simplification
involves many obvious issues: terrorism – as if most Muslims are terrorists or most terrorists are
and Muslims within Western countries,
Muslims; the degree of aggressiveness found in the Muslim world and the responsibility of Muslims for this; the
willingness of Muslims to allow for diversity, debate, respect for human rights. It is not only the sensationalist media, but
also writers with an eye to current anxieties of the reading public, such as V. S. Naipaul and Samuel Huntington, who
Muslim simplification is itself two-sided: on the one
hand, a stereotyping of the ‘West’; on the other, the assertion of a unitary
identity for all Muslims, and of a unitary interpretation of text
and culture. The core simplification involves these very terms
themselves: ‘the West’ is not a valid aggregation of the modern world and lends
itself far too easily to monist, conspiratorial presentations of political and social interaction. But nor is the
term ‘Islam’ a valid shorthand for summarizing how a billion Muslims,
divided into over éfty states, and into myriad ethnicities and social groups,
relate to the contemporary world, to each other or to the non-Muslim world. To get away from such
reinforce such misrepresentation.
simplifications is, however, virtually impossible, since both those opposed to ‘Islam’ and those invoking it adhere to such
, those who are most intent on critiquing
standard Western prejudices about the Muslim world themselves fall back
on another set of simplifications. Instead of fearing or hating anti-Muslim stereotypes, we are
now invited to respect, understand, study ‘Islam’. Islamophobia, Eurocentrism,
labels. Moreover, as much of this literature shows
stereotyping The literature under review here ranges across several aspects of this question. The Runnymede and Wilton
Park reports identify misinterpretations, above all in the West, of the Muslim world and advocate a more tolerant,
informed, relation to the Muslim world. They reèect an approach derived, on the one hand, from race relations and, on the
other, from inter-faith dialogue. They both set current frictions in the context of the long historical relations between
Muslims and the Christian world, both identify the role of the media in reinforcing stereotypes, both advocate greater
Most significantly, perhaps, they accept the term
‘Islam’ as a denomination of the primary identity of those who are
Muslims; they avoid discussion of the diversities within Muslim societies,
on ethnic grounds or on the interpretation of the Muslim tradition and on
its application to the contemporary world.
discussion between communities.
Centering their movement on islamophobia obscures other
causes of oppression and marginalization – this recreates
oppression by essentializing experience into the category of
islamophobia
Malik, 5 – Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts, history, and philosophy of science at
Imperial College (Kenan, The Islamophobia Myth,”
http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/prospect_islamophobia.html)//jml
Pretending that Muslims have never had it so bad might bolster
community leaders and gain votes for politicians, but it does the rest of us,
whether Muslim or non-Muslim, no favours at all. The more that the threat of
Islamophobia is exaggerated, the more that ordinary Muslims come to
accept that theirs is a community under constant attack. It helps
create a siege mentality, stoking up anger and resentment, and making
Muslim communities more inward looking and more open to
religious extremism . Muslim leaders constantly warn that Islamophobia is alienating Muslims and
pushing many into the hands of extremists. However, it's not Islamophobia, but the
perception that it blights lives, that is often the bigger problem . In
making my Channel 4 documentary I asked dozens of ordinary Muslims across the country about their experience of
Islamophobia. Everyone believed that police harassment was common though no one had been stopped and searched.
What is
being created here is a culture of victimhood in which 'Islamophobia' has
become one-stop cause of the myriad of problems facing Muslims. Take, for
Everyone insisted that physical attacks were rife, though few had been attacked or knew anyone who had.
instance, the social problems which beset Muslim communities. The figures are truly appalling. Bangladeshis and
Pakistanis (who comprise most of Muslims in this country) are two and a half times more likely to be unemployed than are
whites. Average earnings among Muslim men are 68 per cent that of non-Muslim men. 65 per cent of Bangladeshis are
semi-skilled manual workers compared with 23 per cent among other ethnic minorities and 15 per cent among white
Britons. Fifty four per cent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi homes receive income support. In 2000, 30 per cent of Pakistani
students gained five or more good GCSEs, compared with 50 per cent in the population as a whole.
It has become
common to blame all of this on Islamophobia. According to the Muslim News, 'media
reportage and public discourse on Islam and Muslims have a huge impact on Muslim labour market performance'.
Islamophobia shapes 'how Muslim children are treated in schools', the 'self-esteem on Muslim children' as well as 'their
educational achievements'. Unemployment, poverty and poor educational standards is not, however, a new phenomenon
in Muslim communities in this country. And the causes are myriad. Racism certainly plays a part. So does class. The social
profile of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis is closer to that of Afro-Caribbeans than it is to Indians or Chinese. That is because
while the latter are often from middle class backgrounds, most Banglandeshis, Pakistanis and Afro-Caribebans originally
came from poor working class or rural, with few resources, especially to combat the intense racism they faced in this
Class plays as important a role as race or religion in explaining the
poor performance of Muslims. Indeed, Indian Muslims tend to be far better of than those from
Bangladesh or Pakistan - and conversely Bangladeshi and Pakistani non-Muslims tend to be worse off. Some also
point the finger at cultural practices within some Muslim communities. 'By
country.
and large', the journalist Yasmin Alibhai Brown acknowledges, 'the lowest achieving communities in this country are
When you talk to people about why this is happening the one reason
they give you, the only reason they give you, is Islamophobia.' It's not an argument
Muslim.
that Alibhai Brown accepts. 'It is not Islamophobia that makes parents take 14 year old bright girls out of school to marry
illiterate men, and the girl has again to bring up the next generation who will again be denied not just education but the
value of education.' Alibhai Brown disagrees with me about the extent of Islamophobia, believing that it is a major force
it has also become 'a convenient label , a figleaf, a
reason that is so comfortable for Muslims whenever they have to look at
why they aren't in the places that they have to be. All too often Islamophobia is used as an
shaping Muslim lives. But, she adds,
excuse in a way to kind of blackmail society.' What all this suggests is the need for an open, frank debate about Muslims
and their relationship to wider British society. There is clearly prejudice and fear of Islam in this country. Muslims do get
harassed and attacked because of their faith. At the same time the degree of hatred and discrimination is being
exaggerated to suit particular political agendas, stoking up resentment and creating a victim culture. The likelihood of
'Islamophobia' has become not just a
description of anti-Muslim prejudice but also a prescription for what may
or may not be said about Islam. Every year, the Islamic Human Rights Commission organises a mock
such a frank, open debate is, however, not very high.
awards ceremony for its 'Islamophobe of the Year'. Last year there were two British winners. One was the BNP's Nick
Griffin. The other? Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. Toynbee’s defence of secularism and women’s rights, and criticism
of Islam, was, it declared, unacceptable. Isn't it absurd, I asked the IHRC's Massoud Shadjareh, to equate a liberal antiracist like Polly Toynbee with the leader of a neo-fascist party. Not at all, he suggested. 'There is a difference between
disagreeing and actually dismissing certain ideologies and certain principles.
We need to engage and
discuss. But there’s a limit to that.' It is difficult to know what engagement and discussion could mean when leading
Muslim figures seem unable to distinguish between liberal criticism and neo-fascist attacks.
Beginning with Islamophobia is inaccurate – it suggests fear of
islam as a religion and not fear of the people who follow islam. A
discourse of “anti-muslimism” is necessary
Saeed, 7 - Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at University of Sunderland
(Amir, “Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in
the Media,” Sociology Compass Volume 1, Issue 2, p. 443-462)//jml
a distinction must be made between
Islamophobia and anti-Muslimism. The tone of this rhetoric is often
alarmist, and encompasses racist, xenophobic and stereotyping elements.
The term ‘anti-Muslimism’ is used here to signify such a diffuse ideology, one
rarely expressed in purely religious terms but usually mixed in with other rhetoric's and ideologies ... It involves
not so much hostility to Islam as a religion ... But hostility to Muslims, to
communities of peoples whose sole or main religion is Islam and whose
Islamic character, real or invented, forms one of the objects of prejudice. In this sense
anti-Muslimism often overlaps with forms of ethnic prejudice, covering peoples
Halliday (1996, 160), however, notes that
within which there may be well a significant non-Muslim element, such as Albanians, Palestinians or even Caucasians. In
short, it appears that what Halliday is arguing is that ‘anti-Muslimism’ is almost a new form of racism that discriminates
not only on physical traits but also religious characteristics. For Halliday,
the term ‘Islamophobia’ is
inaccurate because it is too uniform. Halliday (1999) points out that usage of this term implies that
there is only one Islam and that all Muslims are homogenous. In short, Halliday (1999, 898) is proposing that
Islamophobia as a term suggests fear of Islam as a religion not
fear of the people who follow Islam.
2NC cards
The conception of islamophobia is problematic – it essentializes
and leads to unpractical results
Halliday, 99 - professor of international relations at the London School of
Economics (Fred, “Islamophobia reconsidered,” Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 22,
Number 5 Taylor and Francis)//jml
Use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ may also convey two other, mislead- ing
associations. One is that the term reproduces the distortion, already discussed,
that there is one Islam: that there is something out there against which
the phobia can be directed. This serves not only to obscure diversity, but
also to play into the hands of those, within the Muslim com- munities, who wish to reply
to this attack by offering their own selective interpretation of the tradition, be this on
women, rights of free speech, the right to renounce religion or anything else. ‘Islamophobia’ indulges
conformism and authority within Muslim communities: one cannot avoid the sense, in
regard to work such as the Runnymede Report, that the race relations world has yielded, for reasons of political
Use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ also challenges the
possibility of dia- logue based on universal principles. It suggests, as the
Runnymede and Wilton Park reports do, that the solution lies in greater dialogue, bridgebuilding, respect for the other community: but this inevitably runs the risk
of denying the right, or possibility, of criticisms of the practices of those
with whom one is having the dialogue. Not only those who, on universal human rights grounds,
convenience, on this term.
object to elements in Islamic or other traditions and current rhetoric, but also those who challenge conservative readings
The advocacy of a dialogue, one that
presupposes given, homogeneous, communities places the emphasis on
understanding the ‘other’, rather than on engaging with the ways in which
communities, national and religious, violate uni- versal rights. The danger in these
from within, can more easily be classed as Islamophobes.9
reports is that they are de�ned, if not monopolized, by representatives of religious bodies, and of community
organizations, who apply to them the conventions of inter-faith dia- logue:10 the churches have a role, in educating their
own people about the faith, but also about the everyday lives and political grievances, of other faiths, Muslims included.
This cannot and should not be at the expense of a critical examination of how these religions treat their members.
Islamophobia’ may also have confusing practical results.
‘
The griev- ances voiced by
Muslims in any society may relate directly to religious matters: of school curriculum, dress, diet, observance of ceremonial
But much of what is presented as the Islamic critique of the
West has little or nothing to do with religion : it is secular, often
nationalist, protest and none the less valid for that. Support for Palestine, denunciations of
days.
Western hegemony in the oil market, solidarity with Iraq, opposition to Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, denunciations
of cultural imperial- ism, protests at double standards on human rights –these are all part of the ‘Muslim’ indictment of
the West, but are not necessarily religious in content, or speci�c to the Muslim world. The Chinese denunciation of
Western human rights interference, on the ground that it violates sover- eignty, is the same as the Iranian.
It has
little to do with belief, and a lot to do with political power in the
contemporary world. Similarly, within Western society, issues of immigration, housing, employment, racial
prejudice, anti-immigrant violence are not speci�cally religious: the British term ‘Paki’ can, in a racist attack by white
youth, as easily denote a Hindu, a Sikh or a Christian from Tamil Nadu as a Muslim.
Their politics is neither anti-racist or anti-imperialist – it's
essentialist Muslim history and differences within islam
Plummer, 13 – PhD from Cornell, historian whose research includes race and
gender, international relations, and civil rights (Brenda Gayle, "Reviews: Sohail
Daulatzai, Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom
beyond America," Journal of American Studies, Volume 47. Issue 03, pp 839-840)//jml
Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam (NOI) dominate much of the book, and they are made to stand in for the Muslim
challenge to the West as a whole. Drawing heavily on the work of Melani McAlister, Daulatzai traces how the NOI and its
most noted orator stood the “moral geography” and symbolism of Christendom on its ear to craft oppositional discourses
and practices that provided alternative pathways to personal and collective emancipation for African Americans. He
recuperates the Nation’s use of the term “Asiatic black man,” explaining that blacks should not limit themselves to Africa
These sweeping claims, however, bury as
much history as they reveal. We learn very little of the substantial history
of Islam in America before the NOI, nor are the black American Muslims who did not belong to the Nation or
as the exclusive site of what is actually a global identity.
who disagreed with its tenets acknowledged or described. It is also odd that the author sees little contradiction in
bequeathing Louis Farrakhan, a lethal enemy of Malcolm X, the mantle of Malcolm’s internationalist energy and
commitment. No specific examination of Farrakhan’s views is found in this account. Farrakhan’s opportunism is
Black
Star, Crescent Moon could use less of the author’s irritatingly essentialized
appeals to the “Muslim International” and the “Muslim Third World.” While
the author describes the former as “a parallel space to the state,” the “Muslim Third World” is never
defined. It includes variously Saudi Arabia and the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, although neither
of the two leading conference luminaries, Nehru and Zhou Enlai, were Muslims or represented Muslims. If the
“Muslim International” and the “Muslim Third World” are meant to
connote spaces of anti-imperialist popular resistance, the inclusion of
certain polities is indeed puzzling. Are people who grew up in refugee camps or confront brutal
Israeli apartheid policies to be conflated with those who secretly tipple fine scotch in Jeddah mansions? In reality
there is no neat equation between Islam as currently practiced and antiimperialism and antiracism. Just as Islam has been the principal religion
in some revolutionary regimes that resisted domination, in other places it
has proven compatible with slavery, racism, and exploitative capitalism,
now as in the past. The same may be said for all of the “universal” religions.
forgotten, and he is praised for making peace among various hip hop artists and for being cited in their lyrics.
Essentialism turns the aff and is anti-Muslim
Hassan, 9 - Associate Research Fellow and a PhD research student at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore (Muhammad Haniff, “Interpreting Islam and Plural Society”
www.iais.org.my/icr/index.php/icr/article/download/248/241)//jml
One ought to be careful
with ideas that generalise Muslims or non-Muslims as one monolithic or
homogeneous group. Such ideas are often reflected in a form of
binary vision , which sees this complex phenomenon through a ‘blackand-white’or ‘us-versus-them’ perspective only. Such generalist views also do not fit with the
The overall message of the Qur’ān essentially leads us to one important point:
they produce stereotypes which portray all nonMuslims as inherently hostile, which is forbidden (49:12). Prejudice of this kind is not
different from the misconception among some non-Muslims that all
Muslims are ‘terrorists’ or ‘fanatics’. It therefore is contradictory for
Muslims to complain of being discriminated against by non-Muslims when
the former, on the other hand, stereotype non-Muslims as being ‘villainous’. Such
double standards not only expose Muslims to criticism, but, more
importantly, negate the very principles of justice and equity in Islam. It is
also important to understand both verses by understanding the particular
context of their revelation. Al-Qurtubī and al-Ṭabarī cite a view from Mujāhid that the verse “[Your
teachings of the Qur’ān because
enemies] will not cease to fight against you [...]” (2:217) was revealed with regard to the Quraysh of Mecca and their
extreme hostilities towards the Muslims.12 In other words, the verse has to be seen in the light of the historical contexts of
the time. Thus, verses in the Qur’ān that call upon Muslims to disdain non-Muslims ought to be interpreted as referring to
only non-Muslims opposed to the former’s faith, as indicated in the verse “O ye who believe! Take not my enemies and
From the perspective of Islamic hermeneutic
methodology, the blanket view towards non-Muslims is arguably flawed
because of its over-reliance on generalities (‘āmmah) found in the Qur’ān, on the
yours as friends (or protectors)” (60:1).
ḥadīths and the failure to observe the rule of takhṣīṣ (specification) as required and observed by Muslim exegetes. A
there is no generality without exception’ (lā
‘āmmah illā wa huwā makhṣūṣ).13 Thus, Muslim scholars suggest that no generalities
(‘āmmah) in the Qur’ān and the ḥadīths should be applied as the basis of a ruling or
judgment before making an exhaustive search for other verses that could
qualify its interpretation.14 By following this methodology, scholars would be able to determine the limits
maxim commonly held by Muslim scholars says ‘
with regard to the scope in which such verse is to be applied. Consequently, a verse so qualified would have to be
interpreted within that scope only. This is what the proponents of the previous category have emphatically failed to do.
Their scholarship essentializes islam
Semati, 11 – Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication at
Northern Illinois University (Mehdi, “Communication, Culture, and the Essentialized
Islam” Communication Studies Vol. 62, No. 1, January–March 2011, pp. 113–126)//jml
to engage religion and religious identity by scho- lars in
communication and cultural studies are undoubtedly welcome. However, with
rewards for addressing religion come difficulties and pitfalls. In this article, I argue
that a major pitfall in this endeavor is the problem of essentializing
religion, parti- cularly Islam. On the one hand, there has been a tendency by
some scholars to embrace Islam as an overriding explanatory framework.
This is the case of what we might call a positive essentialism. On the other hand,
Against this backdrop, attempts
there has emerged a tend- ency by some scholars to vilify religion and to attribute to it a whole gamut of issues that are not
supported by empirical evidence or a careful scrutiny of the analysis that produce such an attribution. This is the case of
negative essentialism, and it is most troubling when exercised by a scholar’s foray into the religion and society of an
what is important about this development
is the logic that structures such a discourse: A logic that insists on cultural
and religious distinctions in order to bestow on Islam the status of an ontological category. This is a characteristic of the writings by Orientalists on the right (e.g., Bernard Lewis, Daniel
‘‘other’’ without the requisite diligence. In either case,
Pipes) and right wing media pundits (e.g., Pamela Geller). In this article, I focus on a book by James Lull as an illustrative
example. What is unique about Lull’s writing is that he seems to be writing from a liberal and a progressive point of view.
Relying on popular wisdom, utilizing popular writ- ings on controversial popular authors such as Irshad Manji, and failing
to acknowl- edge the counterarguments to the writings of Orientalists render Lull’s work a polemic. Although Lull wants to
there is little to no mention of international politics,
political Islam, or the history of Euro-American involvement in the affairs
of these countries in the Middle East. In this article, I will argue there is no Islam
that can be recuperated outside representation. The task for critical
explain ‘‘globalized Islam,’’
scholarship is to see what the terms of this representation are and who benefits from such representation.
Misc K stuff
Cap root cause
Prejudice is founded not on race but economic inequality – a
historical analysis that results in redistribution of resources is
key
Hollinger 8 – Preston Hotchkis Professor of History emeritus at UC Berkeley [David,
former president of the Organization of American Historians, “Obama, the Instability of
Color Lines, and the Promise of a Postethnic Future,” Callaloo, pp. 1034-1037, 2008,
JSTOR, Accessed 7/20/15]//schnall
To understand why the immigrant-originating blackness of Obama is so significant, we need to view it in relation to other
That well over one-third of African Americans doubt that the black
population of the United States is any longer a single people was revealed
in a November 2007 report by the Pew Research Center. Although the gap in
values between middle-class and poorer African-Americans was the focus
of the study, black immigrants and their children are especially likely to be
identified as middle-class. A study by the Princeton University sociologist
Douglas S. Massey and his collaborators shows that black immigrants and their children
are overrepresented by several hundred percent among the black freshmen
at Ivy League colleges. Such statistics are common at many other
institutions, including Queens College of the City University of New York, a public university
whose campus is located near a large population of African-Americans.
Many studies tell us that black immigrants and their children do better
educationally and economically than do the descendants of American
slavery and Jim Crow. These studies demonstrate that educational and
employment opportunities can be available to black people, even in the
context of continued white racism. This reality calls into question
the credibility of blackness as our default standard for
identifying the worst cases of inequality, and for serving as the
focal point of remedies . [italics in original text] Slavery ended in the British Caribbean
three decades before it ended in the United States, and black Caribbeans experienced a better
postemancipation educational system than did most black people in the
United States. Perhaps the force keeping so many black Americans down is
operative not so much in the eye of the empowered white beholder as in that legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, in
the form of diminished socioeconomic capacity to take advantage of
educational and employment opportunities? To proceed down the
theoretical and policy roads offered by this idea is not to doubt the power
of white racism, but to locate more precisely its harmful effects. Our colleges and
happenings.
universities and our remedies for employment discrimination have generally assumed that white prejudice—a legacy,
indeed, of slavery and Jim Crow—is the problem.
That black people face prejudice today is
beyond doubt, and numerous studies show that darker-skinned black people are more likely to be mistreated than
But skin color does not tell the whole story. If it did,
the immigrant / non-immigrant distinction within the black population
would not have shown itself to have such striking consequences. The Africanthose with lighter skin.
American descendants of slavery and Jim Crow are the only population group in the United States with a multicentury
legacy of group-specific enslavement and institutionalized debasement, including hypo-descent racialization ("one drop of
blood" makes a person black) and antimiscegenation laws (black-white marriages were against the law in most states with
large black populations until 1967), carried out under constitutional authority. Neither Obama nor any other AfricanAmerican of immigrant background is a member of this population group. The success of Obama in becoming the
presidential nominee of one of the nation's two major political parties is, like the success of other black immigrants in
other domains, an indication that something other than color-prejudice in the eye of empowered white people is at the
To be sure, many immigrants from the
Caribbean have slave ancestors, too, and slavery also has a history in Africa
itself. Other groups have been mistreated in other ways, in this country and in the countries of origin of many
immigrants. But the segment of the African Diaspora enslaved under American
constitutional authority has a unique history, the awareness of which was vital in creating the
root of structural inequality in the United States.
political will in the 1960s and early 1970s to deploy federal power against racism in general, and to produce the concept of
The differences in history and circumstances among
various descent groups were largely ignored during the era when our
conceptual and administrative apparatus for dealing with inequality was
put in place. As John D. Skrentny, a sociologist at the University of California at San Diego, has shown—in his
important 2002 book, The Minority Rights Revolution—conflating Asian-Americans, Latinos,
and American Indians with African-Americans was a largely unconscious
step driven by the unexamined assumption that those groups were "like
blacks"; that is, they were functionally indistinguishable from the Americans who
experienced slavery and Jim Crow. Such conflation was officially perpetuated as late as 1998, when
affirmative action in particular.
President Clinton's Initiative on Race, One America in the 21st Century: Forging a New Future, systematically and willfully
obscured those differences. That was done by
burying statistics that disproved the all-
minorities-are-alike myth, and by fashioning more than fifty recommendations to combat racism, not a
single one of which spoke to the unique claims of black people. If we are now going to recognize
that even some black people—people like Obama—are not "like blacks," how can
Mexican-Americans and Cambodian-Americans be "like blacks"? Can the
latter be eligible for entitlements that were assigned largely on the basis of
a "black model" that suddenly seems not to apply even to all black people? If black people with
immigrant backgrounds are less appropriate targets of affirmative-action
and "diversity" programs than other black people, a huge issue can no longer be
avoided: What claims for special treatment can be made for nonblack
populations with an immigrant base? Can the genie of the immigrant/nonimmigrant distinction be
put back in the bottle, or are we to generate new, group-specific theoretical justifications for each group? That
prospect is an intimidating one, trapping us by our habit of defining
disadvantaged groups ethnoracially Employers and educators are
asked to treat the Latino population as an ethnoracial group, yet the
strongest claim that many of its members have for special protections
and benefits is specific to economic conditions. The history of mistreatment of
Latinos by Anglos is well documented, but the instances most comparable to antiblack racism predate the migration of the
One need not deny the reality of prejudicial treatment
of Latinos to recognize another reality as more salient: immigration
policies and practices that actively encourage the formation of a lowskilled, poorly educated population of immigrant labor from Mexico and
other Latin American nations. As the recent debates over immigration confirm, the United
States positively demands an underclass of workers and finds it convenient to
obtain most of them from nearby Mexico. But the service institutions
obliged to deal with the needs of that population are held accountable on
the basis of ethnoracial rather than economic classifications. Colleges and
bulk of today's Latino population.
universities are routinely asked to recruit more Latino students and faculty members, and are accused of prejudice if they
do not. People who are encouraged to immigrate to this country, legally or illegally, because they are poorly educated,
willing to work for low wages and likely to avoid trade unions, do have a powerful claim on our resources, but it is an
In the Latino case, more than any other,
ethnorace is widely used as a proxy for dealing with economic
inequality The widely debated issue of whether Latinos ought to be regarded as a separate "race" would lose
economic, not an ethno-racial claim.
much of its point if the economic circumstances of this immigration-based population were confronted honestly rather
than through an ethnoracial proxy. The Asian-American section of our color-conscious system is even more anachronistic.
There are historical reasons for the relatively weak class position of immigrants from Cambodia and the Philippines, but
our category of Asian-American conceals the differences between those groups and those who trace their ancestry to
Korea, whose adult immigrants to the United States are overwhelmingly college graduates. Institutions eager to assist the
poorest immigrants sometimes do so through the hyper-ethnic step of breaking down the Asian category, enabling them to
establish programs for Cambodians but not for Japanese. For example, the undergraduate-admissions forms for the
University of California system will soon ask Asian and Pacific-Islander applicants to classify themselves in 23 ethnic
a historical approach to understanding the
dynamics of inequality in American life has much to recommend it. Obama
categories. These considerations suggest that
himself pointed in this direction in his epochal speech on race, delivered in March of 2008 in the wake of publicity given
to the inflammatory sermons of his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. "Many of the disparities that exist in the
African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that
suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," Obama declared in a crucial turn in that speech. Before taking
that turn, Obama surprised many people by alluding sympathetically to white workers who, damaged by economic
turndowns, tended to blame affirmative action for their problems. Even while describing his own childhood pain upon
hearing his white grandmother articulate negative stereotypes about black people, Obama turned the spotlight for a few
minutes on whites. Obama offered sympathy and legitimacy to a variety of group-specific complaints without fostering an
Obama at once
urged Americans to look upon inequality in historical terms, and reached
out across the black-white color line, confirming his image as a black
politician who did not offer a black-centered message. Yet we can expect that
circumstances will push Obama back and forth between images of "more
black than we thought" and "not as black as we thought." When, prior to Wright's
oppression Olympics, and without indulging the sentimental falsehood that all pains are equal. Hence
having persisted in outrageous public behavior, Obama defended Wright's ministry, there was some buzz that he was
farther to the black side of the color spectrum than his previous image had been. Once he renounced Wright, exited from
Wright's congregation, and increased the frequency with which photographs of his white grandparents were displayed,
there was some buzz that he was farther on the white side of that spectrum than some had supposed. These
oscillations do not mean that Obama is lacking in authenticity; they mean
that once his blackness is destabilized, it can intensify or diminish in a variety of contexts, including
trivial ones. Does the analysis sketched here mean that blackness is no longer
relevant to the dynamics of mistreatment in the United States, and is no
longer an appropriate basis for solidarity? Of course not. Black people have
plenty of reasons to look to each other for mutual support, and to form
enclaves strategically, while refusing to have their lives confined by color.
The central postethnic principle, after all, is affiliation by revocable consent. But attention to skin color
alone will not carry the United States very far toward diminishing the
inequalities for which the extraordinary overrepresentation of black men in
American prisons is a commanding emblem. A new, more realistic way
to distribute resources and energies, calculated to diminish even those
inequalities that owe much to a history of prejudice and violence, is needed. Whether it can be created
remains to be seen. The Obama phenomenon makes a real conversation more possible than ever before. The United States
is still a long way from the cosmopolitan society that I sketched as an ideal thirteen years ago in my book Postethnic
America: Beyond Multiculturalism. I have written this essay in response to many suggestions that I address the Obama
Today we are closer than before to
engaging inequalities that are too often understood in ethnoracial rather
than economic terms. The energies and ideas flourishing around the Obama
presidency may promote a long overdue breakthrough. Obama's illustration in his own
person of the contrast between immigrant and nonimmigrant black people,
and of the reality of ethnoracial mixing, presents a compelling invitation to
explore the limits of blackness especially, but also of whiteness, and of all colorcoded devices for dealing with inequality in the United States. In the long run, the
phenomenon in the context of my ideas about postethnicity.
fact that Obama is the son of an immigrant may prove to be almost as important as the fact that he is the son of a black
man and a white mother. Obama's destabilization of color lines will be hard to forget.
United States will never be the same again.
Identity politics in the
Psycho
The symbolic structures oppression – language dictates our
subject positions in the world but simultaneously makes
completeness impossible – however, this social order is neither
natural nor inevitable – individuals produce the social order
through language and by imagining that it exists and conforming
to its rules
Edkins 3 – Professor of International Politics, MA St Anne’s College, University of
Oxford, MSc The City University, London, BA The Open University, PhD University of
Wales, Aberystwyth (Jenny, “Trauma and the Memory of Politics,” p. 11-14)
the subject is formed around a lack, and in the face of trauma. We
become who we are by finding our place within the social order and family
structures into which we are born. That social order is produced in symbolic
terms, through language. Language does not just name things that are already there in the world.
Language divides up the world in particular ways to produce for every
social grouping what it calls 'reality'. Each language - each symbolic or social order has its own way
of doing this. Crucially, none of these are complete; none of them can find a place
for everything. This is a logical limitation, not a question of a symbolic or social order being insufficiently
developed. Completeness or closure is impossible . There is always,
inevitably, something that is missed out, something that cannot be
symbolised, and this is one part of what psychoanalytic theory calls 'the
real'. In its birth into the symbolic or social order, into language, the subject is
formed around, and through a veiling of, that which cannot be symbolized the traumatic real. The real is
traumatic, and has to be hidden or forgotten, because it is a threat to the
imaginary completeness of the subject. The 'subject' only exists in as
far as the person finds their place within the social or symbolic order.
In the psychoanalytic account
But no place that the person occupies as a mother, friend, consumer, activistcan fully express what that person is. There is
always something more. Again, this is not a question of people not fitting into the roles available for them and a call for
more person-friendly societies. Nor does it concern multiple or fragmented identities in a postmodern world. It is a matter
of a structural impossibility. If someone is, say, a political activist, there is always the immediate question of whether they
are sufficiently involved to count as an activist: don't activists have to be more committed, to take part in more than just
demonstrations, shouldn't they stand for office? On the other hand, are they perhaps more than an activist does that
description do justice to what they are, to their role in the party? There is always an excess, a surplus, in one direction or
we choose on the whole to ignore this - to forget this
impossibility, and to act as if completeness and closure were possible . We hide
the other. However,
the traumatic real, and stick with the fantasy of what we call social reality. As I have argued elsewhere, the political is that
which enjoins us not to forget the traumatic real but rather to acknowledge the constituted and provisional nature of what
we call social reality. Politics refers to the sphere of activity and institutions that is called 'politics' as opposed to
Politics is part of what we call social reality. It exists within
the agendas and frameworks that are already accepted within the social
order. The political, in its 'properly traumatic dimension', on the other hand, concerns the real. It refers to events in
'economics' or 'society'.
which politics of the first sort and its institutions are brought into being. This can be the day-to-day production and
reproduction of the social and symbolic order. This continual process has to take place;
the social order is
not natural, it doesn't exist unless it is produced continually . The
political also takes place at moments when major upheavals occur that replace a preceding social and legal system and set
up a new order in its place. At such points, the symbolism and ideology that concealed the fragile and contingent nature of
authority collapse altogether and there is a brief interregnum before the new order imposes a different form of
concealment. The way that time figures in the psychoanalytic account is interesting. A certain non-linearity is evident:
subjects only
retrospectively become what they already are - they only ever will have
been. And the social order too shares this retroactive constitution. The subject
and the social order in which the subject finds a place are both in a
continual process of becoming. Neither exists as a fixed entity in the
present moment, as the common-sense view in western culture
mightlead us to expect. Both are always in the process of formation. This is because the two are so intimately
related. The person is formed, not through a process of interaction with the
social order (since that would mean thinking of the social as already there), but by imagining or
supposing that the social order exists . This supposing by the individual is what brings
time no longer moves unproblematically from past through present to future. In a sense,
the social into being. We have to imagine that others will respond to us before we speak, but it is only our speaking, of
supposing that the social exists does not only
produce the social order, it also, simultaneously, brings the individual into
existence too. When our speaking elicits a response, we recognise ourselves as subjects in that response. This
course, that enables them to respond. But
recognition is belated when viewed through the lens of a linear temporality: it is not at the moment we decide to speak
that we see who we are, but only a moment later, when we get a response. The response tells us not who we are now, since
we are no longer that - we have already changed. It tells us who we were, at the moment when we spoke. This is the sense
in which we never are, we only ever will hazy been. Like the distant stars, whose past we know from the light that has
taken millions of years to reach us but whose present we can only guess at, we can only know what we were, not what we
are. And even that is also a guess, of course. In a similar way, when we listen to a sentence being spoken, we can predict
what is being said, but we cannot be sure we were right until the sentence is completed and over. Some forms of speech rhetoric and jokes for example - play on that unpredictability. The uncertainty and unpredictability that this involves can
be unsettling. In the rational west, we tend to seek certainty and security above all. We don't like not knowing. So we
pretend that we do. Or that if we don't we could, given sufficient scientific research effort and enough money. We forget
the uncertainties involved and adopt a view that what we call social reality - which Slavoj Zizek calls social fantasy -- is
basically knowable. We adopt an ontology– a view of being and the nature of things - that depends on a progressive linear
notion of time. Things can 'be' in our modern western sense only in the context of this temporality. They 'are' because they
have a history in time, but they are at the same time separate from that history. But central to this solution to doubt is
The fantasy is only convincing if, once it has been put in
place, we can forget that it is a fantasy. What we are forgetting some would
say deliberately - is the real, that which cannot be symbolised, and that which is
produced as an excess or surplus by any attempt at symbolisation. We do not remember the trauma
that lies at the root of subjectivity, the lack or gap that remains, even within
what we call social reality. This position leads to a depoliticisation. We
forget that a complete, non-antagonistic society is impossible . We
strive for completion and closure, often at any price. There are a number of ways in which
forgetting, as we have seen.
this is done, according to Zizek.'' The first is communitarian attempts to produce a close homogeneous society archepolitics. Political struggle disappears because everyone agrees on everything. 'The second, most common in the liberal
the political is replaced by politics
west, Zizek calls para-politics. Here
. Standardised competition
takes place between accepted political parties according to pre-set rules, the prize being a turn at executive control of the
state bureaucracy. Politics has become policing or managerial control. In the third meta-politics, political conflict is seen
as a shadow theatre, with the important events taking place in another scene, that of economic processes. Politics should
be cancelled when economic processes have worked themselves out (as scientific materialism predicts) and matters can be
decided by rational debate and the collective will. Finally, we have ultra-politics, where
political struggle
becomes warfare, and the military are called in. There is no common
ground for debate and politics is militarised . If we are to resist such
attempts to 'gentrify' or depoliticise the political we have to recall the
constituted, provisional and historically contingent nature of every social
order, of every ontology. This position, which Zizek calls 'traversing the fantasy', 'tarrying
with the negative' or fidelity to the ontological crack in the universe, is uncomfortable." It involves an
acceptance of the lack of trauma at the centre of the subject and the nonexistence of any complete, closed social order.
Performance bad
Abstraction
Privileging performance detracts from substantive action –
devolves into theoretical abstraction
Simpson 2 English @ UC Davis (David, Situatedness, “Why We Keep
Saying Where We’re Coming From,” p. 218-221) //AD
The Persistence of Ethics The assertions of belonging that inform declarations of
situatedness can then be read partly as wish fulfillments - for how else could their reiteration be so
effectively ensured? Michael Sandel has specified the potential of the "multiply-situated" selves that he sees us to be to
collapse into "formless, protean, storyless selves, unable to weave the various strands of their identity into a coherent
whole" (Democracy's Discontent, p. 350). The maximizing of personal opportunities for some is shadowed by the
melancholy of a lost or vanishing community even among those able to profit from flexible subjectification procedures.
Others are presumably consigned to pure insecurity or to the imagined consolations of residual traditional groups of the
sort that tend to go by the name of communities. Such groups as we do belong to or affiliate with are themselves insecure
both as experienced and in their relation to anything identifiable as a general history. Lukacs may have been one of the last
to believe that the "self-understanding" of a group, which was in this case a class, the proletariat, could also be
"simultaneously the objective understanding of the nature of society," so that all conscious furtherance of class-specific
aims was also the truth of history (History and Class Consciousness, p. 149). A more common contemporary experience is
the declaration of group interests as ... group interests, and those of groups to which one only partly or temporarily
belongs anyway. So the
debate over the feminist "standpoint epistemology" that was derived from
acknowledged the problem of there being no visibly coherent groups,
or too many of them, to belong to.20 Postmodern theory can sometimes declare itself comfortable enough with
Lukacs rapidly
the predicament of fractured identity as itself a source of knowledge and oppositional energy, making a virtue of the
condition that so concerns Michael Sandel. But there are still
many of us who punctuate the narrative
with regular declarations of situatedness, obeying an ethical mandate not to be a
mere individual by way of a hoped-for connection with some interpersonal or
impersonal identity-forming principle. Which leads us, at last, to the matter of ethics, and to a discussion I
have withheld until now. What is at work in these assertions of the determining power of
situatedness - positive for Benhabib and Sandel, and also for Hollinger when rendered subject to revocable
consent-seems to be an instance of what Glen Newey has described as "the major project in modern liberalism ... to
use ethics to contain the political." 21 What is actually going on in these addresses to
the current condition, in other words, is an ethics, or an exhortation to certain sorts of ethical behavior,
largely on the part of individuals. What is being said is not that I am in some clearly explicable sense situated
here or there or then or now, but that l should or should not be so situated, in order to authorize what I am saying as the
property of something beyond just myself. And that in
being thus situated I am not responsible for
what I am saying or doing: the responsibility is collective. And that in challenging or
denying me in what I affirm or desire, you are opposing not just me but a group
that I represent, which is an unethical thing for you to do. The claims and assumptions are
muddled, even to the point of appearing by some definitions quite unethical (for this is hardly the Kantian subject doing
rigorous justice on itself): notice that it is mostly a virtue to situate oneself but a sort of diminishment or accusation to ask
someone else to do the same. But it is ethical
argument that often pops up to fill the space
abandoned by epistemology: what we cannot know for sure is supplanted by what
we ought to be or do. So in the Goldhagen case the central hypothesis is about choice: how the Germans could
have refused (without fear of reprisal) to kill Jews, but killed them anyway. In the exposition of the history standards, the
gaps in our knowledge that come from the sheer proliferation of possible knowledges are filled by encouraging students to
make moral choices. The scientism of The Bell Curve hardly conceals its address to the question of whether we should be
in the business of maintaining (racial) preferences. And the Littleton summit and its ongoing rehearsal have a good deal to
do with what we call in the last commonplace instance family values and community standards. It is for good reasons that
Alain Touraine has characterized us as giving
up on "scientism" in favor of a "return to
moralism." 22 Touraine himself seems quite happy with this. Notwithstanding his rigorous critique of identity crisis
as a social-historical phenomenon, it is to another such category, that of the creative subject, to which he turns for solace:
"If we are to defend democracy, we must recenter our social and political life on the personal subject ... hence the growing
importance of ethics, which is a secularized form of the appeal to the subject." 23 It is now twenty years since Fredric
Jameson wrote about ethics as a
"historically outmoded system of positioning the
individual subject" and as "the sign of an intent to mystify" by way of the
"comfortable simplifications of a binary myth." 24 These remarks are even more timely now than
when they were first recorded, and Jameson himself has again recently reminded us that ethical speculation is
"irredeemably locked into categories of the individual" and that "the situations in
which it seems to hold sway are necessarily those of homogeneous relations
within a single class." 25 This need not be always and in principle the case, and one would hardly wish to
discourage attention to questions that are ethical in the broadest sense: questions about how one should act, how one
might best live one's life, how one might limit the damages one does to others. But my very use of the impersonal pronoun
here indicates the problem: that ethics for most of us most of the time means
subjective meditation.26
The return to or persistence of ethics is a form of what Jameson has called "pastiche," which is "the
blank and non-parodic reprise of older discourse and older conceptuality, the performing of the
older philosophical moves as though they still had a content, the ritual resolution
of 'problems' that have themselves long since become simulacra, the somnambulistic
speech of a subject long since extinct" (p. 99). This could be said too of the "problem" of the subject that the rhetoric
of situatedness is designed both to repackage and to "resolve." Those of us in the
habit of situating ourselves on a regular basis might stop to investigate the
peculiar feeling of virtue we have as we do so, and ponder whether we have deserved it by any active
connection with anything (some of us of course can pass this test, but not all of us). Niklas Luhmann has written of the
tendency whereby ethical prescriptions apply to others rather than to oneself: "One can formally subject oneself to them,
but self-application is not an option because of the lack of any consequential authority for action." He sees them as
symptoms of an "irritation" in the social sphere that can only take the form of pure "communication" (Observations on
Modernity, p. 78). In its turning
from "cognitive to normative" ethics then becomes itself
"an unethical kind of doping" (pp. 91, 94) whereby one confesses one's own limits itself a form of authority ("let me tell you where I am coming from")-only in order
to expose everyone else's. The imperative to situate oneself is perceived as ethical
even as (or perhaps because) it is usually devoid of critical content and without
consequences beyond the moment of utterance. Meanwhile the ethics of situatedness
promises to restore to the individual a satisfaction that in its profound loneliness
it can no longer derive from the metaphysics of individuality itself.
Queer Theory K
1NC – Ruffolo
Queer theory has reached its peak – its supposedly radical
opposition to binaries has created a dyad wherein queerness is
meant to challenge heteronormativity. This binaristic
opposition stagnates queer theory and precludes its fluid
potential
Ruffolo, 9 - professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of
Toronto (David, “Post Queer Politics” Department of Theory and Policy Studies in
Education)//jml
Queer has reached a political peak. Its theoretical movements have become
limited by its incessant investment in identity politics and its political outlook has in
many ways attained dormant status due to its narrowed interest in heteronormativite.
This is, of course, not to suggest the end of queer but instead a potential deterritorialization
of queer as we know it today. Over the past two decades, a significant body of work has contributed to
what is referred to as queer studies. Queer theorizations are at the heart of this anticanonical genre where the intersection of bodies, identities, and cultures
continue to be a central focus.1 Although queer theory informs much of this
work vis-à-vis the queering of theory and the theories of queer, important feminist,
postcolonial, and ability theorizations have more recently informed the
body of queer studies. So while I consider queer studies and theories to be interconnected (and at times
interchangeable), the theoretical and philosophical movements of queer studies are certainly not restricted to or by queer
What remains consistent amongst these various theorizations, however,
is a shared politics embedded in significations, representations, and
identifications where language has become somewhat of a unified
trajectory for thinking through experience. These important works without question
theories.
continue to offer many insightful ways to account for the intersection of bodies, institutions, cultural practices, social
traditions, political movements, and economic initiatives. Michael Warner’s introduction of heteronormativiy in the early
1990s monumentally framed the ways in which we think about how subjects are subjected to the normative discourses of
As a
result of this and many other significant contributions, queer theory has
become almost exclusively interested in challenging heteronormative
ideologies by examining and exposing how subjects come into being through discursive interactions. It offers a
critical politics for thinking about how subjects are constituted through heteronormative discourses. Most
notable, perhaps, is bringing to light how subjects become intelligible
through binary identity categories such as male/ female,
masculine/feminine, and straight/gay.3 It queers—disturbs, disrupts, and
centers—what is considered “normal” in order to explore possibilities
outside of patriarchal, hierarchical, and heteronormative discursive
practices. We see this, for instance, in the works of Butler (1990), Fuss (1995), and Mufloz (1999) as they explore a
heterosexuality and in doing so created the important spaces to challenge and reimagine these productivities.2
shift from identities to (dis)identifications. I outline elsewhere (Ruffolo 2006a) how such readings confront binary
identities so as to appreciate third spaces: fixed and stable identities are reconfigured as mobile and fluid identifications,
where the “I” is no longer determined by the Other but is discursively negotiated through others.
Queer theory
critically redefines the relationships amongst bodies, identities, and culture
through a particular commitment to subjectivity as seen through
significations, representations, and identifications. The vigor of queer is its commitment to
disrupt ideologies, practices, concepts, values, and assumptions that are essentially normal in order to expose what is
normatively essentialized. Having said this, what, you might ask, are my post-queer intentions? In the Fall-Winter 2005
issue of Social Text, David Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Munoz ask a necessary question of queer studies
today: “What’s queer about queer studies now?”4 In the introduction, Eng, Halberstam, and Munoz provide an overview
of queer that sets a foundation for my critique of queer: Around 1990 queer emerged into public consciousness. It was a
term that challenged the normalizing mechanisms of state power to name its sexual subjects: male or female, married or
single, heterosexual or homosexual, natural or perverse. Given its commitment to interrogating the social processes that
not only produced and recognized but also normalized and sustained identity, the political promise of the term resided
specifically in its broad critique of multiple social antagonisms, including race, gender, class, nationality, and religion, in
By asking the question “what’s queer about queer studies no”
this edition explores the purpose and value of queer in a time of global
economics marked by a post-9/ 11 politics embedded in war and terror. It
addition to sexuality. (1)
offers a critical comparison between the “broad social concerns” of queer studies in the past with the more intensely
interconnected focus of queer studies in the present—work interested in “theories of race, on problems of
transnationalism, on conflicts between global capital and labor, on issues of diaspora and immigration, and on questions
of citizenship, national belonging, and necropolitics” (2). Post- Queer Politics engages Eng, Halberstam, and Munoz’s call
for a “renewed queer studies” by taking into consideration the various interconnections amongst the wide range of
It is well known that queer theory is interested in
challenging binaries through an interrogation of heteronormative practices
using queer as a verb (a radical process of disruption) rather than a noun (an umbrella term
contributors of this edition.
encompassing multiple identities). My introductory comments on the peaking of queer are situated in this relationship
that the
queer/heteronormativity dualism is unproductive considering
the contemporary complexities of neoliberal capitalism and
globalization. PostQueer Politics is primarily interested in challenging the
queer/heteronormative dyad that has informed much of the theorizations of
queer and the queering of theories over the past few decades. I consider the
“peaking” of queer as a plateau that negotiates contemporary queer
theories and post-queer theorizations. Post-Queer Politics is interested in examining the current
between queer and heteronormativity. I make the argument here and throughout this book
politics of queer and the queering of politics through a renewed sense of queer that is differentiated from queer’s current
implications in subjecdvity Its vision is twofold: to consider what something post might do for queer and what queer might
do for something post. I am interested in the doings of post-queer rather than the beings of it so as to avoid unnecessary
This project is about the politics
around “post-” and “queer” rather than a post-identitarian landscape that
would situate “post-” and “queer” as binaries . Despite my explicit intention to avoid a
binaries that have resulted in the current desire for something post.
reading of “post-” as a definitive time and space that come after something, I must draw a somewhat stark delineation
here: the “post-” of post-queer is in many respects post-subjectivity. I say this not because queer is subjectivity and post-
in the plateaus that
follow, notions of becoming (Deleuze and Guattari) and dialogism (Bakhtin) can speak
to the creativities and potentialities of contemporary politics that can not
be accounted for in the representations, significations, and identifications
inherent to subjectivity. I am therefore not suggesting that post-queer
comes after subjectivity but that it functions within a creative terrain of
potentialities that functions quite differently from subjectivity of which the
queer is not. This, of course, would produce an unnecessary binary. Rather, as I will argue
queer/ heteronormative dyad is a part of. In other words, the current politics
of queer , as seen through its relations to subjectivity, are limiting for the future of
queer studies because of its unequivocal commitment to the
queer/heteronormative binary where the politics of such discourses
are restricted by the endless cycle of significations that reposition subjects
on fixed planes—bodies that are either resituated in predetermined
significations (moving from one identity category/ norm to another) or are represented through
differentiated significations (new representations that differ from already emerged significations). My
use of bodies extends beyond the ways in which queer theories think about
“the body,” embodiment, corporeality, and flesh in terms of subjectivity where, for instance, movement is often
accounted for through resignifications. These readings more often than not limit
bodies to physical or abstract binary representations .
Consequently, my use of “bodies” reaches the virtualities of politics
through a consideration of bodies of theoretical work, bodies of knowledge,
institutional bodies, bodies of thought, systemic bodies, and cultural
bodies. I am not so much arguing for the desire to maintain or favor the terms “body” and “bodies,” but instead to
challenge how these terms are read through significations, representations, and identifications and therefore the overall
privileging of subjectivity.
Our alternative is a deterritorialization of politics – this is not an
a priori opposition to any structure but rather creates new lines
of flight to escape the affirmative’s territorialization of identity
Ruffolo, 9 - professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of
Toronto (David, “Post Queer Politics” Department of Theory and Policy Studies in
Education)//jml
Post-queer rhizomatic politics is one that is directed outwards rather than
inwards. The continuous flows of dialogical-becomings--_-the indefinite breaks and
connections—are always moving forward where something new is always created
out of something given. Unlike the arborescent-subject that is directed inwards, rhizomatic
dialogical-becomings are always deterritorialized as they maintain an
ongoing state of becoming a body without organs (BwO). The complex flows of
desiring-machines described above persistently strive to become a BwO as
their connections try to reach pure deterritorialization. In this section, I want to
consider how the BwO is a virtual affect of dialogical-becomings. It does not encapsulate desiring-machines but is an
The BwO is a fundamental aspect of
post- queer politics because it speaks to the production of intensities that
emerge when the flows of desiring-machines stop. Deterritorializations
are not finalized states or binary oppositions . They offer an
important strategy for contemporary politics because they do not directly
oppose a structure (such as the queer/ heteronormative dyad) but instead
remap a system through creative lines of flight (the plateauing of queer and post-queer).
additional (anti-)production together with desiring-machines.
We can think of the BwO as a limit that continuously seeks to
deterritorialize without ever reterritorializing (even though, as you will see belo
reterritorializations are often coupled with deterritorializations). As Brian Massumi writes: Think of the body
without organs as the body outside any determinate state, poised for any
action in its repertory; this is the body from the point of view of its
potential, or virtuality. Now freeze it as it passes through a threshold state on the way from one determinate
state to another. This is a degree of intensity of the body without organs. It is still the body as virmality
but a lower level of virtuality, because only the potential states involved in
the bifurification from the preceding state to the next are effectively
superposed in the threshold state. (1992, 70) The BwO is therefore not opposed
to desiring-machines but is instead in a constant tension with them. The
term itself—Body without Organs—is not in opposition to the
organism . It is against what the organism stands for: organization. We can
think of the subject as such an organization where all meaning refers back to a central core and all movement corresponds
The BwO not only challenges the arboreal structures of life
but also works within a different realm as that of the rhizome where it does
not break flows (rhizomatic breaks and connections) but desires continuous flows. Unlike the
subject that requires external agencies for meaning such as language structures or discursive realms, the BwO is
pure intensity: The body without organs is nonproductive; nonetheless it is
produced, at a certain place and a certain time in the connective synthesis, as the identity of producing and the
with a central tendency.
product: the schizophrenic table is a body without organs. The body without organs is not the proof of an original
it has nothing
whatsoever to do with the body itself, or with an image of the body. It is the
body without an image. This imageless, organless body, the nonproductive, exists right there where it is
produced, in the third stage of the binary-linear series. It is perpetually reinserted into the
process of production . (Deleuze and Guattari 1983, 8) We can think of the BwO
as a plane of immanence rather than stratification .’3 It may seem as if
nothingness, nor is it what remains of a lost totality. Above all, it is not a projection;
desiring-machines and BwO are a part of two different systems. They are in fact two forms of the same principle: desiring-
It is through the tension
that they share that every production becomes an anti-production because
dialogical-becomings, for instance, can not maintain a multiplicity of
desiring-machines and are unable to fully become a BwO. Dialogical-becomings are
schizo. Capital is perhaps the most widely referenced example of a BwO. It is
the becoming-BwO of capitalism that creates the illusion that everything is
produced through it. Although capital can be transformed into something concrete (i.e., money can purchase
machines and BwO are both a part of the productions of productions of life.
goods) it can not do anything on its own. Capital is a miraculating machine that creates the desire for a BwO to overcome
the BwO deterritorializes the organization of
capitalism by opting for flows and smooth spaces . The capitalist machine
the flows of desiring-machines:
transforms desiring- machines into BwO by creating the ultimate schizophrenic that “plunges further and further into the
realm of deterritorialization, reaching the furthest limits of the decomposition of the socius on the surface of his own body
without organs” (35). The capitalist-schizo becomes the surplus product of capitalism as it seeks the limits of capitalism
itself. Although the BwO is unachievable, it becomes a seemingly preferred state: “
You never reach the
Body without Organs, you can’t reach it, you are forever attaining it, it is a
limit” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 150). It is not a heightened awareness of the self, nor is it a fully embodied self.
Unlike in significations, representations, and identifications, the BwO is no self at all. In fact, the
BwO is prior to such a subjective capacity. The tension between desiring-machines
(reterritorializations) and BwO (deterritorializations) works within a different realm than, say, the subjective limits of
identities categories where subjects become intelligible through their associations with identity norms. Everything for
desiring-machines and BwO is pure difference. The intensities involved in such a relationship are before the coding
It is the abovementioned intensities that make
post-queer politics so creative because they challenge the structured
organization of organs and biologically defined bodies . Desiringstructures of subjectivity that stratify subjects.
machines and BwO offer a new language for thinking about life itself without reducing the experiences of such
The creativity of post-queer dialogicalbecomings rests in the potential to deterritorialize stratified structures that
limit life to predetermined organizations. Despite the BwO existing prior to the subjective
capacities of, say, psychoanalysis and discursive norms, this certainly does not imply that
deterritorializations can not offer strategies for rethinking life as it is
accounted for through representations, significations, and identifications.
We can, for example, think of the various codings of subjectivity that have
permeated identity politics and subsequently the queer/heteronormative
dyad as territorialized stratifications that are in concert with BwO.
Stratifications , or strata, take hold of intensities by territorializing
them. For instance, they appropriate the BwO’s flows of pure difference by
organizing dialogical-becomings as subjects of reiterative norms. The
strata codes and territorializes such becomings but the BwO constantly
attempts to deterritorialize these territorializations. Despite queer’s
interest in a politics of identity that seeks to consider bodies as
mobile and fluid, these movements can never escape the
territorializations of identity norms because they are always in
relation to heteronormative coding and the overall arboreal organization of bodies that
relationships to the stratification of language.
are directed inwards. Deleuze and Guattari describe three types of strata that help to think through the territorializations
of the queer/heteronormative dyad: the organism, signifiance, and sub jectification. The surface of the organism, the angle
of signiflance and interpretation, and the point of subjectification or subjection. You will be organized, you will be an
organism, you will articulate your body—otherwise you’re just depraved. You will be signifier and signified, interpreter
and interpreted—otherwise you’re just a deviant. You will be a subject, nailed down as one, a subject of the enunciation
recoiled into a subject of the statement—otherwise you’re just a tramp. To the strata as a whole, the BwO opposes
disarticulation (or n articulation) as the property of the plane of consistency, experimentation as the operation on that
plane (no signifier, never interpret!), and nomadism as the movement (keep moving, even in place, never stop moving,
motionless voyage, desubjectification). (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 159) This call to dismantle the organism does not
e BwO and
all its intensities comes before the subject and the organization of the body
as an organism and so a politics of becoming calls for a return to these
productive flows of desire: “opening the body to connections that presuppose an entire assemblage,
imply that we just get rid of the subject or cut the body from stratification. We recall from above that th
circuits, conjunctions, levels and thresholds, passages and distributions of intensity, and territories and
Post-queer dialogical-becomings
seek to deterritorialize the three great strata that territorialize life through
deterritorializations measured with the craft of a surveyor” (160).
significations, representations, and identifications. This project is but one line of flight that
can plateau subjugated sub jectivities. Its intent is to map various intensities so as to
smooth these assemblages by moving towards a plane of immanence. The
first step is to identify the strata involved and then consider the
assemblages that constitute such strata. For example, the organism codes an
aboreal life by creating various assemblages that define what it means to be
“human”; sigmflance codes meaning through discourse where language has become the primary means for thinking
about experience; and subjectification creates subjects by coding them through social norms. The purpose of this is to
locate flows of intensities—not by discovering a BwO but by creating one in the process of deterritorializing the strata.
The queer/heteronormativity dyad has resulted in an arboreal
dyad . The extensions of an arboreal tree go through its central root that supports the whole tree. The
queer/heteronorrnative dyad is such a root where all politics emerge from
it. Post-queer rhizomatic politics, in contrast, do not strictly move or
extend from a main root such as the queer/heteronormative dyad. With
that said, dialogical-becomings can engage this binary by plateauing it
through its rhizomatic connections that can spout from any point. The
arboreal organization of queer/heteronormativity prohibits a politics of
becoming because movement stops when there is a need to refer back to
this dyad. In other words, the queer/heteronormative dyad halts queer
politics when the politics of queer is predominantly concerned
with disrupting heteronormative structures. Post-queer
rhizomatic politics is about deterritorializing politics itself
rather than opposing an a priori structure. This project is one line of flight amongst
many that can remap contemporary politics as we know it today. Despite queer’s keen investment in
a conceptualization of identity through mobilities and fluidities, its politics
can only go so far because of its arboreal references to heteronormativity. Let
me be clear that I am not demanding an outright rejection of the
queer/heteronormative strata for, as we recall from above, this can result
in further territorializations. I am also not suggesting an absolute denunciation of this relationship nor
am I disputing the important developments that queer politics have made. I am instead calling for the
production of different lines of flight and new assemblages that can
smoothen the strata so as to not be limited by structural organizations.
Munoz
Queerness is not something one can necessarily be – rather, it is
an ideality that propels us into a positive future
Muñoz, 9 – professor and chair of performance studies at NYU (José Esteban,
Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity)//jml
Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet
queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon
imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an
ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future.
The future is queerness’s domain . Queerness is a structuring and
educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the
quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house. We must strive in the past of the here and
now’s totalizing rendering of reality to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of
this moment, but we must never settle for minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other
Queerness is a longing that propels us
onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the
present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not
enough, that indeed something is missing. Often we can glimpse the world’s
proposed and promised by queerness in the realm of the aesthetic. The aesthetic,
especially, the queer aesthetic, frequently contains blueprints and schemata of a
forward-dawning futurity. Both the ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is
queerness. Turing to the aesthetic in the case of queerness is nothing like an
escape from the social realm, insofar as queer aesthetics map future social
relations. Queerness is also a performative because it is not simply a being
but a doing for and toward the future. Queerness is essentially about the
rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete
possibility for another world.
ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.
Signifiers bad
1NC
The affirmative’s identification with specific identity categories
paradoxically reinforces the dominance of existing power
structures – race and gender are not pre-determined but instead
are social constructs – rather than building identities around
these constructs we should interrogate the existence of those
categories in the first place
BatTzedek 99 – MFA in poetry at Drew University, Feminist critic and activist (Elliot,
“Identity Politics and Racism: Some Thoughts and Questions,” Rain and Thunder Issue
#5, Winter Solstice 1999, http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/iprace.htm) //RGP
II) Identity Politics: Structural Flaws Yet--and a very large "yet" it is-from here and now, my mid-30's in the late 90's, I
Identity Politics (at least the versions I learned and lived within): we messed up, at
the beginning, first by choosing to reify identities as they were already
defined in the world, and then by describing these identities as if they were
inherent to us in some way instead of as descriptions of positions within
extremely hierarchical, preexisting social structures of power. "Woman," for
know this about
example, was one of the main identities of IP, as a statement of biology. "Of color" was another main category, with groups
, as if those categories were
physical features and not a colonial classification system. "Class" was another group,
dividing around the racial categories recognized within the US. at the time
although its boundaries were never as tightly guarded because it couldn't be treated only as a physical or inherited "true"
self. "Jewish" was a group; "Muslim" should have been, too, as people "oppressed by the tyranny of X-tianity," but there
was only silence around the different but overlapping categories of Muslim and Arab women.(3) "Lesbian," as opposed to
"heterosexual," was the other main identity of Feminist IP, although not until after years of skirmishes around defining
"lesbian" as a statement of feminist politics, when it settled into being a "sexual orientation" or a "sexual identity"
So what was wrong with these categories, since
all of them do describe who we are in the world? What they describe are
places within a broader society which, at its very foundation, uses gender
and racial categories to establish and maintain a small powerful
elite . The problem with them is that simply restating the categories ignores the deeper
truth that all of these categories are a creation and expression of
social power . Race and gender aren't pre-existing reality; they are
socially constructed categories .(4) By choosing to build identities
around these constructions instead of choosing to attack the ways the
categories had been constructed, IP from the outset seemed destined to be more
concerned with establishing new boundaries than with eliminating the
establishment. From this initial choice has grown years of skirmishes
around defining those pre-established categories. If you've worked within Feminist and
determined in early childhood or at birth.
Lesbian groups, you know what I'm talking about. Who exactly is or isn't a woman of color? Are Jewish women "of color,"
or are we white? Is a woman with a Latina mother and white father, who was raised as white in a white world with no
these questions felt like
life and death issues, felt like we were defending thin boundaries of
Radicalness. But looking back, I have to ask what ultimate change was served by dividing into "white" and "of
Latina culture an "authentic" woman of color? And on, and on, and on. Within IP,
color" when the social meaning of "white" was rarely explored, and both identities were treated as if they were actually
Imagine, instead, if we had taken all that insight and work
and decided to explode "race" as a category. Not to ignore it, to be
"color-blind," but to no longer honor definitions that grew from
and continue to uphold colonialism ?(6) What if we had been doing
thousands of workshops that went beyond saying that racism is learned to
saying that race itself is learned? What if we pushed white people not only to try to stop being racist,
but to try to stop being white, to actively become race resistors and race traitors? But Identity Politics wasn't
willing to say that race itself either is learned or is a social construction.
Activists within the world of IP relied instead on seeing race, gender, and other identities as
inherent, immutable categories from which to wage a battle for a place at
the table of power in broader U.S. society. Even groups that were mainly or entirely Separatist
about the color of skin? (5)
from their onset used this understanding, because, I think, it was the most successful strategy anyone had seen in a long
granted a position from which to
fight while taking away our best weapons - questions. As long as we could ask questions
about how power around us was constructed, we stood a chance of cracking open the foundation. But after we
began to think of our social positions as identities that were "real" or
"'inherent," the question of how they were built, or why, became unnecessary,
maybe even unthinkable. Once Identity Politics became the organizing structure
of our social change groups and communities, the question of how
whiteness could be taken apart all but disappeared . Anyone reading this
time. Such a position was a strong base for fighting, but in the end,
knows without thinking about it that racism is learned, and can cite at least a hundred racially offensive words, phrases, or
ideas, but could we, together, list more than five things we might do to actually stop Whiteness? I know that Rain and
Thunder, like other Feminist journals, is likely to get few or no articles in response to their call for contributions for an
issue about fighting racism. Our entire dialogue around racism has become anthologies of women writing almost
exclusively about individual racist words or actions directed at them. These are valuable, both for the women writing for
them and for those of us who are always struggling to understand more about racism's details and women's lives. But the
profusion of detail should not be confused with having new ideas about what to do. Another important problem created by
If we were going to argue that social
categories of race and gender were inherent identities, what in the world
were we going to do about maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality? To talk about
Identity Politics was what to do with "oppressor" categories.
these "identities" within the framework of IP would be to say either: 1) those people were also born that way, inherently
flawed or 2) those people were not born that way. The first option wasn't going to work 100%, because then the ultimate
for those of us
who like to fantasize about a world without men, this answer was too
genocidal, too ugly, and too simplistic. For those of us who are white feminists, this argument was
answer to social wrongs would be to get rid of all of the members of certain categories. Even
particularly ironic, unless we actually believed that only white men ever benefited from racism and that it would die with
them, thus preventing us from being the next on the list to be destroyed in the name of ending oppression. The second
option would, of course, lead to revealing IP identities as socially constructed, undermining the very base IP was built on.
Because either option would lead to uncomfortable questions, I think that IP simply chose not to engage with these
In the years that Identity Politics was being
constructed, white men dropped out of political activism in droves, and
white women either invested heavily in a universal view of womanhood or
choose to talk about themselves only as victims of gender oppression.
"oppressor" identities at all.(7)
This investment in the signifiers of [x identity] versus [y
identity] is an essentialist categorization that is pre-condition
for domination
Newman 1 – British political theorist and central post-anarchist thinker (Saul, From
Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, p. 3-4)
Essentialist ideas seem
to govern our political and social reality. Individuals are pinned down
within an identity that is seen as true or natural. Essentialist identities limit
the individual, constructing his or her reality around certain norms, and
closing off the possibilities of change and becoming. There is, moreover, a
whole series of institutional practices which dominate the individual in a
multitude of ways, and which are brought into play by essentialist logics.
One has only to look at the way in which social and family welfare agencies
and correctional institutions operate to see this. The identity of the
“delinquent,” “welfare dependent,” or “unfit parent” is carefully
constructed as the essence of the individual, and the individual is
regulated, according to this essential identity, by a whole series of rational
and moral norms. The changes that have taken place on a global scale seem only to have denied the individual
the possibility of real change. Not only does essentialist thinking limit the individual to
certain prescribed norms of morality and behavior, it also excludes
identities and modes of behavior which do not conform to these norms.
They are categorized as “unnatural” or “perverse,” as somehow “other” and
they are persecuted according to the norms they transgress. The logic of
essentialism produces an oppositional thinking, from which binary
hierarchies are constructed: normal/abnormal, sane/insane,
hetero/homosexual, etc. This domination does not only refer to individuals who fall outside the category of
However, the problem of essentialism is broader than the problem of nationalism.
the norm [homosexuals, drug addicts, delinquents, the insane, etc]; it is also suffered by those for whom certain fragments
We all suffer, to a
greater or lesser extent, under this tyranny of normality, this discourse of
domination which insists that we all have an essential identity and that
that is what we are. We must not think, though, that this domination is entirely forced upon us. While this is
no doubt true to a certain extent—think of prisons, mental institutions, the army, hospitals, the workplace— an
essentialist identity is also something that we often willingly
submit to. This mode of power cannot operate without our
consent, without our desire to be dominated. So not only will this discussion
of their identity—for identity is never a complete thing—would be condemned as abnormal.
examine the domination involved in essentialist discourses and identities—the way they support institutions such as the
we participate in our own
domination. The problem of essentialism is the political
problem of our time. To say that the personal is the political, clichéd and
hackneyed though it is, is merely to say that the way we have been constituted as
state and the prison for example—it will also look at the ways in which
subjects, based on essentialist premises, is a political issue. There is really
nothing radical in this. But it is still a question that must be addressed. Essentialism, along with the
universal, totalizing politics it entails, is the modern place of power. Or at least, it is something around
which the logic of the place of power is constituted. It will be one of the purposes of this
discussion to show how essentialist ideas, even in revolutionary philosophies
like anarchism, often reproduce the very domination they claim to
oppose. Modern power functions through essentialist identities,
and so essentialist ideas are something to be avoided if genuine forms of
resistance are to be constructed and if genuine change is to be permitted.
The changes of recent times, dramatic as they were, were still tied to these
essentialist ways of thinking, particularly with regard to national identity,
and to forms of political sovereignty like the state. They did not at all challenge or disrupt
these categories, often only further embedding them in political discourse and social reality.
This use of geo-paradigmatic borders results in racial and sexual
purging – the failure of identity politics is attributed to
scapegoats that are endlessly excluded in order palliate the
desire for change
BatTzedek 99 – MFA in poetry at Drew University, Feminist critic and activist (Elliot,
“Identity Politics and Racism: Some Thoughts and Questions,” Rain and Thunder Issue
#5, Winter Solstice 1999, http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/iprace.htm) //RGP
VI) What all of this has taught me about how NOT to deal with oppression There are many kinds of boundaries around
groups. Some are physical: our land goes from the mountain to the river. Some are cultural: our people are the ones who
With the arrival of the nation-state, boundaries became geopolitical: invented lines on maps which states enforced with armies. Without
state power, nor a common culture, nor physical boundaries, Identity Politics used what I call geoparadigmatic borders, ideology-based but still clear and enforced
boundaries around groups which are defined by their political and
theoretical approaches. These new boundaries were built upon the preexisting chaos of our lived experience of identity : a crossroads of social
dress and speak like us.
meaning, personal meaning, personal and social history, and spiritual, emotional and theoretical understandings.
Having boundaries tidied the chaos, gave us a clear sense of purpose and a
way to tell "us" from "them." As Douglas explains, "Rituals of purity and impurity create unity in
experience ... [I]deas about separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions have as their main function
to impose system on an inherently untidy experience." Out of the chaos of our lives rose answers based in our experience,
this process of
separating came with a strong need to defend boundaries, for two reasons: 1)the
chosen identity categories really aren't inherent, but are built on the lies of
existing social power, and 2) many of the identities were mainly defined by
what they were not, so didn't have a strong center. Because these underlying, organizing
explanations for what happens to us, suggestions for gaining our own kinds of power. But
structures were not to be spoken of, calling them into question in any way was sure to invoke pollution behavior. As part of
all challenges and transgressions were met with intense
boundary-setting and defending, including separating out
and/or purging those seen as a threat . This drive toward purity and
punishment almost always happened in the name of addressing
"oppression," of eliminating 'bad" knowledge and attitudes and replacing
them with the "truth" which would, as the saying goes, set us free. But is achieving ideological
purity and conforming within well-defended boundaries the same thing as having equality and freedom? Did all of
our purging of "oppressive" people and ideas change anything? From the window
this pollution behavior,
into my own culture offered by considering pollution behavior, I've been thinking about how I've seen charges of being
tension builds
within the group, sometimes around an actual problem, but usually, I think,
around leadership and position within the group pecking order. Everyone in the
group has the feeling that something is wrong. Then someone who either has power within the
group or is trying to gain power names the problem. Within Leftist/Feminist IP groups,
the problem is often identified as "racism." Racism is, after all, an easy target because the
"oppressive" function within IP groups. This is the scenario played out time and time again:
effects of racism are always present, because theorists of color have worked so hard to make visible its working, and
classism, anti-Semitism, ageism,
etc also work. However, no matter the charge, whether or not it is taken seriously is
more about the social status of the accuser within the group than about the
presence or absence of discrimination. Now, sometimes, when the charge is leveled, the point is to
because we do honestly want to be anti-racist. Of course, charges of
actually describe and interrupt racism or classism, or whatever the problem at hand is. When this is the case, and the
accusation isn't about defining personal or group power, positive change can actually happen. I saw this in effect at the
"Intersections and Parallels" anti-racism conference in Iowa in the late 80's, when the established social norm was that we
would all make mistakes, and that doing so did not prove you weren't dedicated to ending racism. In this setting, I
watched as a Jewish daughter of immigrants sang the song 'We all came over on different boats, but we're on the same
boat now," and Native women raised a completely justified complaint. Because there was no power to be gained by
purging anyone, the singer had social space to say, "You're absolutely right. I hadn't thought about," the Native women
had a chance to educate everyone, and no one left the conference in tears only to be written up in national Feminist press
too often these rituals are about
establishing or maintaining power within a group. Often, the exact nature of
what "racist" thing has happened is not clear. Or, if it is, the "degree" of the
problem becomes defined by how much status the accuser has in the group;
as a "danger to Feminists." However - and this is a BIG However -
not all women of color are granted equal authenticity, so some can stop a festival with a sentence, while others are simply
, it is not the clarity of oppression that matters, but rather the
sheer fact that the "problem" has been named at all. If the charge is granted power, the
ignored. Regardless
group must act to fix the problem; members must choose a path, either changing something within the group or within
group members, or by identifying the source of the "threat" and purging it. The former can happen, bringing real change.
some marginal person-someone who never quite "fit" in
the group anyway-or some outsider, is identified as the "racist" one and is
publicly purged. "Ah, triumph" the group then sighs with relief, "see, we've
addressed racism!" Or, if the accuser doesn't have power within the group, she herself is purged, as a way of
But usually the latter happens;
"proving" that the accusation wasn't real. Sheer pollution behavior, this is. If all of this purging was ever actually about
we have endless reenactions of the scapegoat ritual, except that in this actual ritual, the group
solving the problem of racism, it would be long since solved. Instead
members knew that they were putting their "sins" onto the goat and
sending it into the wilderness; they didn't pretend that the goat itself was the source of "sin" in the
community. Within the boundary-defending war games of IP, where our social
group is our inherent identity, it is far too easy to confuse the "sins"
and the goat. This confusion has cost us precious time, over and over again, as we've used pollution rituals to make
the group feel better without actually addressing racism or race, or age, or ability, or economic privilege. Purging
has actually kept us, time and time again from being able to challenge
oppression and exploitation by focusing on one person's "bad" words or
action instead of asking questions about power. Purging has also cost us our most precious
resource--women of good intention who actually do want a different, more just world. The point of a purging ritual as
we've enacted it is not only to make the group feel clean, but to make the "guilty" party believe in her guilt. If, for example,
a lesbian group could only get Susie to admit that she was, in fact horribly oppressive and would leave for the good of the
group, then the lesbians who remain never have to question themselves about their relationship to oppression or their role
in banishing Susie. She admitted to the charge, so off with her head and everything is peachy again.(11) Getting someone
to confess and withdraw is the ultimate signal that pollution behavior is in full force for, as Douglas writes: "Pollution
rules, by contrast with moral rules are unequivocal. They do not depend on intention or a nice balancing of rights and
duties. The only material question is whether a forbidden contact has taken place or not."(12) If Susie confesses to being
oppressive, the problem of "oppression" is solved, clearly and absolutely, with no left-over, messy issues of intention or
meaning. "A polluted person" Douglas writes, "is always in the wrong." Even if she doesn't confess, a public campaign
against her can work to convince everyone that she is the source of the pollution, so that no one has to look any further
upstream. Once Susie has been identified and purged, she is gone forever, there is no way for her to become "ritually pure"
again. This is another function of IP's denial that it is engaging in pollution behavior. In societies with conscious pollution
rituals, there were clear rules for how the ritually impure person could re-enter. Within Hebrew tribal laws as described in
Leviticus, for example, people who had become impure would wait outside of the camp until nightfall (that is, the
beginning of a new day by the Hebrew calendar), do ritual cleansing with water, and then return, understood by all to no
longer be polluted. Within our Feminist and Lesbian communities, where we leave all of this unspoken, there is no way
back in for Susie once she's been labeled as racist or classist or ableist. Her status of polluted will follow her from
community to community, long after anyone cares to remember what happened, as if she personally had the power to
bring social, economic, and spiritual oppression to any place she enters. Nothing she has ever done, or will ever do, to
bring justice into the world will matter to her status as impure. And so we have lost women, one at a time or in groups,
sending them into the wilderness bearing what should be our responsibilities. We've done this for years, then we wonder
why there are so few of us left in "the fight," blaming those who are gone for having "sold out." VII) And in Conclusion, as
such.... So, where does all of this leave us? I don't have a solution to offer, clear actions to take. I see a direction to go,
We have to start scheming about
how to disrupt the meaning AND power of Whiteness ; we have to figure
out how to be at least as courageous in the face of white as we have been in the face of male. We need to
become deeply focused on how we think and talk about race and other
oppression: do we understand difference and privilege as a source of
inevitable conflict, or do we see the chance to learn something new, to work
together with other wonderful creative women to find new pathways out of the trap of
who we were raised to be? For those of us who are white-are we willing, in the name of forming bonds
toward more action and less searching for a purity of form.
across divides of race or class or age, to be in spaces with women who don't share all of our answers or opinions, or will we
roll our eyes, laugh to one another about them, or feel the need to "confront" them about their use of word X or image Y?
what I'm asking, as much of myself as of anyone else, is whether we're
willing, finally, to let our dream of a just and safe world be bigger than the
little kingdoms of our identities. And, if we are willing to do this, can we do so
in a way that has nothing to do with feeling ourselves compromised and
everything to do with a life of integrity.
Maybe
Vote negative to endorse a mode of subjectivity that is no longer
tied to identity categories
Bryant 14 – professor at Collin College (Levi, “Three Models of the Subject,”
1/16/2014, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/three-models-of-thesubject/#more-7537)
the category of subject has shifted register. Subject is
no longer thought primarily as an epistemological category, as a knower, but as a
political category. The “negative thought of the subject”, the subject that must be “deconstructed”, is here a site
In these discussions, it’s clear that
of illusion where we mistake ourselves for sovereign agents possessed of an essence (as man or woman or AfricanAmerican or straight or gay, etc) that fails to recognize how, even in the exercise of its alleged agency, it is in fact enslaved;
an effect of power, a subjected being, that is both trapped in a prison of social forces it does not recognize and that actually
contributes to the reinforcement of the iron threads of this spider web of power through enacting these impersonal
“scripts”. Subject must here be deconstructed so as to reveal the real mechanisms of power so that genuine emancipation–
rather than illusory emancipation –might be possible. Alternative ly, following Heidegger, subject is a figure of mastery
and domination that subjugates being and persons, “enframing” them so as to transform them into beings of “standingreserve” available for further control and mastery. Subject here must be deconstructed to put an end to this nihilistic and
In the contemporary wave of thought, subject is once
again a political rather than epistemological category, but is now conceived in positive terms.
destructive will to power premised on mastery.
Exemplified by the work of thinkers such as Zizek, Badiou, Johnston, perhaps Ranciere, and a number of others,
subject is now no longer an illusion and an effect, but is rather a site of “truth”, signifying the
possibility of emancipation, functioning as the seat of agency, and marking
the condition for the possibility of rupture with oppressive systems. In the
Enlightenment frame, subject is the site of the problem of knowledge. In the
post-structuralist frame, subject is the site of the problem of the site of subjugation arising as a result of something akin to
subject is the site of the problem of
emancipation. If our identities are formed through anonymous social forces
“ideological misrecognition”. In the contemporary phase,
that exceed any individual agency whether in the form of power as conceived by Foucault, ideology as conceived by
Althusser, the cultural structures of language or economy or something else besides, then how as any emancipation
If the very stuff that we are is formed by these social forces,
how does our “agency” do anything but reproduce these very
structures of subjugation? I italicize “identities” above advisedly, for the desuturing of the
possible?
equivalence between subject and identity is the key move of contemporary political thought regarding the subject.
Subject will no longer denote an identity, a “substance”, but rather denotes that which breaks with
any identity and which is therefore a capacity to break with technologies of
subjectivization. Setting aside the Enlightenment conception of subject as seat of the problem of knowledge, we
thus get two distinct concepts of subject: 1) The Post-Structuralist Concept of Subject: Subject is an identity, a series of
different identities, produced by social forces that mistakes itself for being a seat of agency and believes that it has an
essence as man, woman, white, black, straight, gay, etc.; when, in fact, this agency is an effect of an impersonal social
agency of subjugation. Subject therefore must be deconstructed if we are to get at the real sources of subjugation and not
merely reproduce these forces. But who does this if we are but an effect of these social forces. Ergo… 2) The Contemporary
Concept of Subject: Subject names, like the “number” zero, that which is non-identical to itself– a sort of void, emptiness,
or negativity –for which no predicates (of identity) ever fully lodge, for which every predicate of identity is a sort of
dishonesty or lie. We could call this subject the “Lacano-Sartrean-Hegelian” concept of subject (I realize many will object
to including Sartre in this series, but as my good friend Noah Horwitz once observed to me, there’s a way in which the
Zizekian subject is a sort of crypto-Sartrean or existential subject). This is the subject for whom the epithet “I am what I
am not and I am not what I am” holds. I am not the predicates with which I identify– e.g., if I say “I am depressed” there’s
already a sort of bad faith or dishonesty in this self-description –yet I am also these very predicates. I am the perpetual
inability to be what I take myself to be and to not be this. Subject then names something that is in excess of all predication,
something off of which all predicates slide, and therefore something for which there is never any substantiality. In short,
subject is a
sort of void or nothingness, that nonetheless can be “marked” or that has a
sort of quasi-being. Subject would thus also be a name for the ineluctable
failure of every technology of subjectivization precisely because predicates
of subjugation necessarily fail (as Miller tries to demonstrate in his own way in “Suture“). In
response to the post-structuralist question of who deconstructs the subject
of identity (subject^i), the contemporary phase of thought seems to say nothing and no-one. Yet this nothing and noone is nonetheless marked, is
nonetheless an excess, that marks the ruin of any identity, interpellation,
subjectivization, or predication opening a space of resistance and and
contestation where emancipation might be possible. Subject as void
(subject^v) becomes the site of freedom, resistance, agency . It
marks the space of an agency that is not overdetermined by the field
of social structure, social forces, or power, precisely because it is
that which necessarily evades all of these forces and technologies; precisely
because it is that which is in excess of all subjectivization.
subject is the intrinsic failure of all identity as discussed by the post-structuralists. And for this reason,
Binaries link
Returning to bodily marks to understand identity creates a
binaristic opposition between different forms of identity that
reproduces violence
Hsaio, 10 - Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures National Taiwan
University, Taiwan (Li Chun, “Color (Un)conscious: Psychoanalysis, Resistance, and the
Specter/Spectacle of Race*” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 36.1 159-187)//jml
As mentioned above, Fanon’s excruciating self-analysis of the racial drama played out throughout Black Skin, White Masks, particularly in
the chapter titled “The Fact of Blackness,” reveals that the radical intellectual and revolutionary is more profoundly petrified by the
biological fact of his blackness, as an immutable work of nature, upon finding himself rendered a spectacle of blackness under the white
gaze, than he is by “the ‘idea’ that others have of me,” which is to say those myths of white supremacy and black inferiority that he may
judge to have been sufficiently challenged and debunked through his work and actions. It is an impasse that extends well beyond the sight
of his immediate presence under white eyes and leaves virtually no sign of escaping, as Fanon recounts: “When people like me, they tell me
it is in spite of my color. When they dislike me, they point out that it is not because of my color. Either way, I am locked into the infernal
circle” (116). Without trivializing the anguish Fanon and any black person of his time (or even in our time) must have experienced under a
racist gaze, nor taking lightly the extreme difficulty in coping with such a visual violence, I would nonetheless elaborate on the theoretical
implications of psychoanalysis that have been misrecognized by Fanon or might not have been available to him in his efforts of
Fanon derives from
Lacan’s notion of the mirror stage an image of the Other which is caught up
in the Manichean black/white opposition. If the Other for the white has to
be the black, and vice versa, and if otherness is to be perceived and accentuated
“on the level of the body image” which demonstrates the absolute incommensurability and unassimilability of
the terms of the duality (black vs. white), then this conception of the Other can be faulted, on
Lacanian grounds, by its positing an all-too-concrete Other, one that lacks the “enigma of the Other,”
namely, the lack in the Other which is the necessary precondition for the
constitution of the subject. Pervasive in the racial drama depicted by Fanon is the omnipresent gaze of the Other,
understandably conceived as white, from whose confirmation of the fact of blackness Fanon suffers. Yet in Lacanian
theory, the gaze of the Other is not the all-seeing, panoptical perspective
that film theory, as Joan Copjec points out, misrecognizes and appropriates by reading Foucault into Lacan
(see Chapters 1 and 2 of Read My Desire). The gaze, as established earlier, is the problematic object
of race (objet a) that enables the regime of visibility by its localization in a
series of bodily marks. If the gaze is cast by the omniscient, panoptical
Other, forestalling every sign of resistance and defining the meaning of the subject’s each move, then the fate of the
raced subject is either to identify with and thus “coincide with” the gaze, or
to assume a total alienation of the raced subject from its Other. The
theoretical consequence of both scenarios is the annihilation of
the subjec t. Based on Lacan’s well-known formulations in the second section of Seminar XI (entitled “Of the Gaze as Objet Petit
a”), Copjec elucidates that the Lacanian gaze is the point (in the field of vision) “at which
something appears to be invisible .. something appears to be missing from
representation.” This point of the gaze “marks the absence of a
signified ; it is an unoccupiable point, not . . . because it figures an
unrealizable ideal but because it indicates an impossible real” (Read 34-35; original
italics). Not only can the subject not occupy nor be located at the point of the
understanding race and racism in psychoanalytical terms. In the long footnote quoted earlier,
gaze—which would spell “its very annihilation” (Read 35)—but the Other does not possess the gaze
either. For the horrible truth revealed in Lacan’s anecdotal telling of his personal encounter with a character named “Petit-Jean”
(Seminar XI 95), as well as his theoretical speculations on the gaze, is that “the gaze does not see you” (Copjec 36). Contrary to
the panoptical gaze of the Other who “is supposed to know,” who is posited by the subject as consisting in
certainties, determinants, and sources of confirmation, the gaze of the Other in the Lacanian sense is
characterized by the impossibility of “any ultimate confirmation from the
Other,” which, however, is crucial to subject constitution (Copjec 36). Owing to such a constitutive
impossibility, the reticence of the Other, asking a final confirmation from the Other is
essentially impossible, because it is something the Other cannot give. The
trap of race as a regime of visibility is that this impossibility is now
“visualized” and localized on the body image, as an effect of nature, thereby
promising to fulfill the raced subject’s ultimately unrealizable desire for
race—which is to say, for the erasure of race, since whiteness functions as a signifier without signified, as a result of its disavowal of
being one term of the signifying chain, a disavowal correlative to whiteness’ disavowing of its own historicity that Seshadri-Crooks points
Under a racist regime where the raced subject perceives itself to be
in antagonistic relation with the Other, to demand recognition from the
gaze of the Other as the precondition for the subject’s subjectivity is
already to presuppose that the Other takes up the point of the
gaze it cannot occupy . Furthermore, recognizing the Other’s confirmation of
racial difference by accepting, even if in protest and with reluctance, the taxonomy of race (black,
colored, etc.) as biological fact is to tantamount to conceding to the Other
something it does not have, hence something it cannot grant: It is an
impossibility the raced subject is doomed to seek after in its enterprise of
desiring whiteness. Its secret lure lies precisely in the fact that the prospect
of accessing the “jouissance of the Other” is “within reach,” as it were, due to the
visibility of racial difference as given, pre-discursive; the catch, however, is that the
moment the raced subject encounters the objet a of race (as bodily marks) is also
the moment it is to experience the case of racial anxiety, as discussed earlier, because
the hole in the Other (constitutive impossibility) is now filled and the lack is lacking.
out (21, 45).
Their dichotomies of progress and accountability entrench the
status quo – only the alternative can dismantle systems of
oppressions and revive political movement
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
Crenshaw's original intersecting streets metaphor
was deeply American in the sense that it was tied to a modernist sense of
Individual - Institutional Interactions
"progress" that is deeply deterministic and limiting. Using streets as proxies suggests that
only two directions, forwards and backwards, exists, with little attention to where the road begins or ends. Theoretically,
Pragmatically,
limiting politics to either forward progress or backward regress facilitates
the entrenchment of political positions, making compromise and
bipartisanship ever less likely in the 21st century. What if we could create a
space for moving sideways instead of simply backwards and forwards? Luckily
the intersectionality canyon metaphor alleviates some of these issues
without losing the central points that remain so valuable to a 21st century
political context. Whether intersecting streets or rivers crossing, intersections are sites of
motion. Those who might get "stuck" in the intersection may be able to turn around and go home or return to the
riverbank, but far too frequently their ability to act on such a choice is constrained.
this limitation highlights the need to add the Time Dynamics dimension for historical specificity.
The Individual Institutional Interactions dimension of intersectionality allows for the idea that race, gender, class and
sexual orientation are constructed and enacted at multiple levels - the individual, the group, and the institutional. In other
institutions are the rock formations created within the Grand
Canyon by the rivers. They are created by the rivers, worn away after
decades and centuries, and created in such a way that anyone traveling
down or across the river must avoid colliding with them. From a pragmatic
political point of view, this dimension also gives a more accurate sense of the
amount and duration of effort required to completely dismantle systems of
oppression like racism, sexism, homophobia and classism without
rendering them ahistorical phenomena. The complexities of these Individual Institutional
words, the
Interactions occur on multiple political planes: the organizational, intersubjective, experiential and representationalxlvii
If we continue to use Crenshaw's metaphor and place a justice-seeking
group in a craft to navigate the river, we can embrace both the serial
collective agency that Young embraces, as each person has in some way elected to get on the boat
(in however contingent a manner), but in doing so they recognize the route, the presence
of rock formations (which we can suggest represent political institutions) and the presence of other vehicles
(which we can suggest represent other groups both similar to and distinct from our focus group) are three semipermanent and dynamic forces with which those in our original rivercraft must contend, a fact largely out of their control.
In other words
agency exists in embarkation and throughout the
journey , but in ways that carry risks of close calls, crashes and confrontations with other passengers and rock
formations. I've deliberately used the word "craft" rather than specify a type of vehicle to indicate the mutually constitutive
While some
may have access to either a yacht or a jetski to get from point A to B, others
may only have a piece of driftwood or a river raft to navigate the same
journey. What is an open question and subject for politics, however, is which craft will best navigate that section of
the rivers' crossing and for whom. This new metaphor allows us, therefore, to contend
with the ways in which individuals and groups contend with multiple
centers of political power and institutions. Most recent intersectional work recognizes that the
categories of race, class, gender and sexual orientation shape both
individuals' relative locations within political systems and macro-level
roles of both Diversity Within and Time Dynamics in traversing the river in any particular direction.
phenomena such as international human rights compliance standards as
well.xlviii This move to embrace a full commitment to the focus on
Individual-Institutional Interactions sheds light on the organization of
political power more generally. xlix Thus political power is not presumably
located in either structures or individuals, and it flows in multiple
directions instead of remaining static. Unlike prior approaches to race,
gender, class, and sexual orientation, intersectionality recognizes that
power should not be conceptualized in a zero-sum framework. The zerosum framework contributes to the Oppression Olympics. Intersectionality's focus on
relational power highlights the dynamic interactions and distributions of power within and between individuals and
groups, institutions and nation states/ The Individual-Institutional Interactions element of intersectionality theory also
avoids thinking of the structure as undifferentiated power that completely dominates the individual's ability, or vice versa.
All too often in U.S. politics, opposing debates of public policy are
grounded in disagreement concerning the locus of power and therefore
accountability in government policies and practices (aka structure) or in citizens'
individual behaviors. One common area where such discussions focus either on systemic or on individual
explanations is the role of fathers in poor households. Liberals focus on the systemic causes of absentee fathers unemployment, poor education and poor availability of a social safety net more generally. On the other hand,
If we were to set
aside Defiant Ignorance in an intersectional framework, we would
acknowledge that there is an interaction between individuals and
institutions that points us toward reform of both elements, rather than just
one or the other. Yet without setting aside Defiant Ignorance, there
is no room for this higher-order conversation in our broader
American political discourse. The complex interactions between
individuals (as both individuals and members of groups) and the institutional practices, norms and
structures produce the culture in which we live. More often than not this
interaction is neither neat nor unidirectional in its influence. As we know,
cultural production is a dynamic process that involves elements of
opportunity for liberation and oppression at multiple levels of analysis. It is in
fact possible that even as individuals are exercising their freedom to participate in
American cultural discourse the cultural impact at the group or institution
level reinforces the oppression of their compatriots. This tension continues
to haunt our political discourse, which tends toward the reductionist and
the polarizing rather than toward complexity and nuance. For example,
presenting oneself as the "anti-nappy-headed ho" plays into multiple dominant
norms of respectability and uplift ideology that disciplines women athletes of color into cookie-cutter images
conservatives focus on the role of personal responsibility among the fathers themselves.
pre-designed for them.li We will continue this discussion of complexity in the next section's examples.
Multiracialism link
Status quo conceptions of multiracialism get co-opted by the
black-white binary – intersectionality is key
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
Recent research on multiracial identity laments the hegemony of the
African American and white parentage as a dominant prototype used to
define the agenda of all multiracial individuals, a troubling legacy of the
black-white paradigm's dominance of race-relations discourse. Clearly there is
Diversity Within the multiracial community, which must be acknowledged
in building models of identity development, agendas for political action
and egalitarian coalitions. What is perhaps most relevant to the discussion here is that an
intersectional analysis that attends to both Time Dynamics and Diversity
Within better helps the movement than a unitary model. Fuller recognition of
Diversity Within and Time Dynamics by the movement itself might counter the image of the
movement as one seeking its own share of white privilege, reducing the
likelihood of sparking the Oppression Olympics. Without an
intersectional analysis, much of the complexity required for full
consideration of these issues drops out. Each political debate representations of welfare recipients and the multiracial census movement
- gains deeper clarity from the five dimensions of intersectionality theory.
The intersectional approach can be applied to policy debates of all kinds , as
we will see in chapters three, four and five. But before analyzing each case study, let's examine the benefits of the 21st
century intersectional approach.
at: Trigger warnings
Their framing destroys educational spaces – creates a chilling
effect that precludes dialogue necessary to foster democracy
Kipnis 15 – professor in the department of radio, television, and film at Northwestern
University [Laura, “My Title IX Inquisition,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May
29, 2015, ProQuest, Accessed 7/17/15]//schnall
*Laura Kipnis has been cleared of wrongdoing in the two Title IX investigations
discussed in this essay.
Things seemed less amusing when I received an email from my university's
Title IX coordinator informing me that two students had filed Title IX
complaints against me on the basis of the essay and "subsequent public statements" (which
turned out to be a tweet), and that the university would retain an outside investigator to handle the complaints. I stared at
the email, which was under-explanatory in the extreme. I was being charged with retaliation, it said, though it failed to
explain how an essay that mentioned no one by name could be construed as retaliatory, or how a publication fell under the
province of Title IX, which, as I understood it, dealt with sexual misconduct and gender discrimination. Why Colleges Are
on the Hook for Sexual Assault When Congress passed a gender-equity law more than 40 years ago, no one expected it to
Title IX was enacted by Congress in 1972 to deal
with gender discrimination in public education -- athletics programs were the initial culprits
make colleges responsible for responding to rapes.
-- and all institutions receiving federal funds were required to be in compliance. Over time, court rulings established
sexual harassment and assault as forms of discrimination, and in 2011 the U.S. Department of Education advised colleges
colleges have
been scrambling to show that they're doing everything they can to comply,
but still, more than 100 of them are under federal investigation for violating Title IX policies. Anyone with a
grudge, a political agenda, or a desire for attention can easily leverage
the system. I should pause to explain that my essay included two paragraphs about a
then-ongoing situation on my campus involving a professor who was
himself the subject of two sexual-harassment investigations involving two
students. This professor subsequently sued university officials and one of the
students for defamation, among other things. The charges had occasioned a flurry of backand-forth lawsuits, all part of the public record, which had been my source for the two paragraphs. My point in
citing this legal morass was that students' expanding sense of vulnerability ,
and new campus policies that fostered it, was actually impeding their educations as well as their chances
of faring well in postcollegiate life, where a certain amount of
resilience is required of us all. The email from the Title IX coordinator provided a link to
to "take immediate and effective steps to end sexual harassment and sexual violence." Since then,
information about our university's Title IX policies, which brought me to a page containing more links. Clicking around, I
found information about the rights of accusers and what to do if you've been harassed, though I couldn't find much that
Title IX protects individuals who've reported sexual
misconduct from retaliation -- characterized as "intimidation, threats, coercion, or discrimination" -but I failed to see how I could have retaliated against anyone when it wasn't
me who'd been charged with sexual misconduct in the first place. I wrote back to
related to me. I did learn that
the Title IX coordinator asking for clarification: When would I learn the specifics of these complaints, which, I pointed
out, appeared to violate my academic freedom? And what about my rights -- was I entitled to a lawyer? I received a polite
response with a link to another website. No, I could not have an attorney present during the investigation, unless I'd been
charged with sexual violence. I was, however, allowed to have a "support person" from the university community there,
though that person couldn't speak. I wouldn't be informed about the substance of the complaints until I met with the
investigators. Apparently the idea was that they'd tell me the charges, and then, while I was collecting my wits, interrogate
me about them. The term "kangaroo court" came to mind. I wrote to ask for the charges in writing. The coordinator wrote
back thanking me for my thoughtful questions. What I very much wanted to know, though there was apparently no way of
finding it out, was whether this was the first instance of Title IX charges filed over a publication. Was this a test case?
From my vantage point, it seemed to pit a federally mandated program against my constitutional rights, though I admit
my understanding of those rights was vague. A week later I heard from the investigators. For reasons I wasn't privy to, the
university had hired an outside law firm, based in another Midwestern city an hour-and-a-half flight away, to conduct the
investigation; a team of two lawyers had been appointed, and they wanted to schedule "an initial interview" the following
week. They were available to fly in to meet in person -- the phrase "billable hours" came to mind -- or we could
videoconference. The email contained more links to more Title IX websites, each of which contained more links. I had the
feeling that clicking on any of them would propel me down an informational rabbit hole where I'd learn nothing yet not reemerge for days. I replied that I wanted to know the charges before agreeing to a meeting. They told me, cordially, that
they wanted to set up a meeting during which they would inform me of the charges and pose questions. I replied, in what I
hoped was a cordial tone, that I wouldn't answer questions until I'd had time to consider the charges. We finally agreed to
schedule a Skype session in which they would inform me of the charges and I would not answer questions. I felt the flush
of victory, though it was short-lived. I said I wanted to record the session; they refused but said I could take notes. The
reasons for these various interdictions were never explained. I'd plummeted into an underground world of secret tribunals
and capricious, medieval rules, and I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about it. Because I strongly believe that the Title IX
process should be far more transparent than it is, let me introduce some transparency by sharing the charges against me.
Both complainants were graduate students. One turned out to have nothing whatsoever to do
with the essay. She was bringing charges on behalf of the university community as well
as on behalf of two students I'd mentioned -- not by name -- because the essay had a "chilling
effect" on students' ability to report sexual misconduct. I'd also made deliberate
mistakes, she charged (a few small errors that hadn't been caught in fact-checking were later corrected by the editors), and
The other complainant was
someone I'd mentioned fleetingly (again, not by name) in connection with the
professor's lawsuits. She charged that mentioning her was retaliatory and
created a hostile environment (though I'd said nothing disparaging), and that I'd omitted
information I should have included about her. This seemed paradoxical -had violated the nonretaliation provision of the faculty handbook.
should I have written more? And is what I didn't write really the business of Title IX? She also charged that something I'd
Please pause to note that
a Title IX charge can now be brought against a professor over a tweet. Also that my tweets were
apparently being monitored. Much of this remains puzzling to me,
including how someone can bring charges in someone else's name, who is
tweeted to someone else regarding the essay had actually referred to her. (It hadn't.)
allowing intellectual disagreement to be redefined as retaliation, and why a professor can't write about a legal case that's
been nationally reported, precisely because she's employed by the university where the events took place. Wouldn't this
mean that academic freedom doesn't extend to academics discussing matters involving their own workplaces? Since the
investigators had refused to provide the charges in writing, and I can often barely read my own handwriting, I'd typed
notes during the Skype session, though I'd wondered if they'd object to that, too -- could they? The extent of their powers
was mysterious to me. (I'd briefly considered furtively recording the session despite the ban but decided against it -- I'm a
law-abiding type, I realized to my chagrin.) I made what sense I could of my wildly mistyped notes and emailed the
.I
wrote up a peevish statement asserting that the essay had been political
speech, stemming from my belief, as a feminist, that women have spent the
past century and a half demanding to be treated as consenting adults; now
a cohort on campuses was demanding to relinquish those rights, which I
believe is a disastrous move for feminism. I used the words "political" and "feminist" numerous
investigators a summary, adding that I'd answer only questions related to the charges I'd been informed about
times. Let me interject that I don't think my university necessarily wanted to be the venue for a First Amendment face-off - indeed, the president himself had recently published an op-ed in defense of academic freedom. As I understand it,
any
Title IX charge that's filed has to be investigated, which effectively
empowers anyone on campus to individually decide, and expand, what
Title IX covers. Anyone with a grudge, a political agenda, or a desire for attention can quite easily leverage the
system. And there are a lot of grudges these days. The reality is that the more colleges
devote themselves to creating "safe spaces" -- that new watchword -- for
students, the more dangerous those campuses become for
professors. It's astounding how aggressive students' assertions of
vulnerability have gotten in the past few years. Emotional discomfort is
regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be
remediated. Most academics I know -- this includes feminists, progressives, minorities, and those who
identify as gay or queer -- now live in fear of some classroom incident spiraling into
professional disaster. After the essay appeared, I was deluged with emails from
professors applauding what I'd written because they were too frightened
to say such things publicly themselves. My inbox became a
clearinghouse for reports about student accusations and sensitivities, and
the collective terror of sparking them, especially when it comes to the dreaded subject of
trigger warnings, since pretty much anything might be a "trigger" to
someone, given the new climate of emotional peril on campuses. I learned that
professors around the country now routinely avoid discussing subjects in
classes that might raise hackles. A well-known sociologist wrote that he no
longer lectures on abortion. Someone who'd written a book about incest in her own family described
being confronted in class by a student furious with her for discussing the book. A tenured professor on my
campus wrote about lying awake at night worrying that some stray remark
of hers might lead to student complaints, social-media campaigns, eventual
job loss, and her being unable to support her child. I'd thought she was
exaggerating, but that was before I learned about the Title IX complaints
against me. My Midwestern Torquemadas were perfectly pleasant at our on-campus meeting -- they'd indeed flown
to town to meet in person -- so pleasant that I relaxed and became overvoluble, stupidly gratified by their interest and
There I was, expounding on my views about power and feminism;
soon I was delivering a mini-seminar on the work of Michel Foucault.
Later, replaying the two-and-a-half-hour session in my mind, I thought, "You chump," realizing that I'd
probably dug a hundred new holes for myself. They'd asked endless questions about
attentions.
particular sentences in the essay, the sources for my ideas and claims, and what I'd meant in that fateful tweet. They didn't
record any of it, nor was there a stenographer. One of the lawyers typed notes on her laptop; they'd send me a summary of
my remarks, they said, which I could correct or add to, if I chose. I found these procedures utterly mystifying.
What's being lost , along with job security, is the liberty to publish ideas that
might go against the grain. Toward the end, I asked how the complainants
could possibly know that my essay had created a "chilling effect" on
campus. One of them, I was told, had provided the lawyers with the names of
students and staff members who'd testify that the essay had chilled them. I,
too, could supply names of witnesses to interview, if I liked. That was our only face-to-face meeting, though there were
numerous phone calls, emails, and requests for further substantiation, including copies of emails and tweets. I tried to
guess what all this was costing -- two lawyers flying back and forth to conduct interviews of the complainants, myself, and
an expanding list of witnesses, review the sources for a 5,200-word article, adjudicate their findings, and compose a
thorough report. I'm no expert on legal fees, but I was pretty sure the meter was ticking in $10,000 increments. I'd been
shortly before my campus
meeting with the investigators, a graduate student published an article on a
well-trafficked site excoriating me and the essay, and announcing that two students had
asked to keep the charges confidential, but this became moot when,
filed Title IX retaliation complaints against me. She didn't identify her source for this information or specify her own
relationship to the situation, though she seemed well versed on all the inside details; in fact, she knew more about the
She also excoriated our university's
president for his op-ed essay on academic freedom, which, she charged,
was really a veiled commentary on the pending Title IX charges against me
and thus subverted the process by issuing a covert advance verdict in my
favor. (He'd obliquely mentioned the controversy over the essay, among other campus free-speech issues.) She
didn't seem particularly concerned that she herself was subverting the
process by charging that the process had been subverted, and by revealing the
process than I did. It wasn't me alone on the chopping block.
complaints in the first place. She was also surprisingly unconcerned about how effectively her article demolished its own
If a graduate student can publicly blast
her own university's president, mock his ideas, and fear no repercussions, then
clearly the retaliatory power that university employment confers on anyone
-- from professors to presidents -- is nil. Nor had my own essay exactly had a chilling effect
on anyone's freedom of expression. An academic friend and I disagreed about whether the graduate
premises about the asymmetry of institutional power.
student's article would be seen as a good career move on her part (a courageous example of "punching up") or a selfwounding one ("collegiality" is still a factor considered by hiring committees; no one wants a high-drama potential
colleague). He thought the former; I wasn't so sure, though we agreed that given the shifting political winds on campuses
At the end of the interrogation, the investigators
asked if I wanted to file my own retaliation complaint against the student
who'd revealed the charges. I said that I believed all parties involved were using the process for political
purposes. I declined to press charges against anyone. They'd issue a report on their findings
these days, it was impossible to call.
within 60 days, they said, though on what basis I had no idea. The standard that applied was "preponderance of evidence,"
they'd explained -- "more likely than not" as opposed to "beyond a reasonable doubt" -- but that seemed pretty vague.
Note that I was never actually presented with any of this evidence. Given that the investigators doubled as judge and jury,
and the extralegal nature of the proceedings, I wished I'd been more ingratiating. The Title IX bureaucracy is expanding by
the minute. A recent emailed update from my university announced new policies, programs, hires, surveys, procedures,
websites, and educational initiatives devoted to sexual misconduct. What wasn't quantified is how much intellectual real
estate is being grabbed in the process. It's a truism that the mission of bureaucracies is, above all, to perpetuate
themselves, but with the extension of Title IX from gender discrimination into sexual misconduct has come a broadening
of not just its mandate but even what constitutes sexual assault and rape. Ambivalent sex becomes coerced sex, with
charges brought months or even years after the events in question.
Title IX officers now adjudicate
an increasing range of murky situations involving mutual drunkenness, conflicting stories, and
relationships gone wrong. They pronounce on the thorniest of philosophical and
psychological issues: What is consent? What is power? Should power differentials
between romantic partners be proscribed? Should eliminating power differences in relationships even be a social goal -wouldn't that risk eliminating heterosexuality itself? Nothing I say here is meant to suggest that sexual assault on
My concern is that debatable and ultimately conservative
notions about sex, gender, and power are becoming embedded in
these procedures, without any public scrutiny or debate. But the
climate on campuses is so accusatory and sanctimonious -- so
campuses isn't a problem. It is.
"chilling," in fact -- that open conversations are practically
impossible. It's only when Title IX charges lead to lawsuits and the usual
veil of secrecy is lifted that any of these assumptions become open for
discussion -- except that simply discussing one such lawsuit brought the
sledgehammer of Title IX down on me, too. Many of the emails I received from people teaching
at universities pointed out that I was in a position to take on the subjects I did in the earlier essay only because I have
tenure. The idea is that once you've fought and clawed your way up the tenure ladder, the prize is academic freedom, the
general premise being -- particularly at research universities, like the one I'm fortunate enough to be employed at -- that
there's social value in fostering free intellectual inquiry. It's a value fast disappearing in the increasingly corporatized
Adjuncts, instructors, part-timers -- now
half the profession, according to the American Association of University Professors -- simply don't have
the same freedom s, practically speaking. What's being lost, along with job security, is the liberty
to publish ideas that might go against the grain or to take on risky subjects
in the first place. With students increasingly regarded as customers and
consumer satisfaction paramount, it's imperative to avoid creating potential classroom
friction with unpopular ideas if you're on a renewable contract and wish to stay employed. Selfcensorship naturally prevails. But even those with tenure fear getting caught up in some
university landscape, where casual labor is the new reality.
horrendous disciplinary process with ad hoc rules and outcomes; pretty much everyone now self-censors accordingly.
When it comes to campus sexual politics, however, the group most constrained from speaking -- even those with tenure -is men. No male academic in his right mind would write what I did. Men have been effectively muzzled, as any number of
my male correspondents attested. I suspect that most Americans, if pushed, would go to the mat for the First Amendment,
which is what academic freedom is modeled on. You can mock academic culture all you want, and I've done a fair amount
unconstrained intellectual debate -- once the
ideal of university life, now on life support -- is essential to a
functioning democratic society. And that should concern us all. I also find it
beyond depressing to witness young women on campuses -- including aspiring
intellectuals! -- trying to induce university powers to shield them from the
umbrages of life and calling it feminism. As of this writing, I have yet to hear the verdict on my
of it myself, but I also believe that
case, though it's well past the 60-day time frame. In the meantime, new Title IX complaints have been filed against the
faculty-support person who accompanied me to the session with the investigators. As a member of the Faculty Senate,
whose bylaws include the protection of academic freedom -- and believing the process he'd witnessed was a clear violation
of academic freedom -- he'd spoken in general terms about the situation at a senate meeting. Shortly thereafter, as the
attorneys investigating my case informed me by phone, retaliation complaints were filed against him for speaking publicly
about the matter (even though the complaints against me had already been revealed in the graduate student's article), and
he could no longer act as my support person. Another team of lawyers from the same firm has been appointed to conduct a
new investigation. A week or so earlier, the investigators had phoned to let me know that a "mediated resolution" was
possible in my case if I wished to pursue that option. I asked what that meant -- an image of me and the complainants in a
conference room hugging came to mind. I didn't like the visual. The students were willing to drop their complaints in
exchange for a public apology from me, the investigators said. I tried to stifle a laugh. I asked if that was all. No, they also
wanted me to agree not to write about the case. I understand that by writing these sentences, I'm risking more retaliation
complaints, though I'm unclear what penalties may be in store (I suspect it's buried somewhere in those links). But I
refuse to believe that students get to dictate what professors can or can't write about, or what we're allowed to discuss at
our Faculty Senate meetings. I don't believe discussing Title IX cases should be verboten in the first place --
the
secrecy of the process invites McCarthyist abuses and overreach. For the record,
my saying this isn't retaliation. It's intellectual disagreement. If more complaints are
brought, I suppose I'll write another essay about them. To my mind, that's what freedom of
expression means , and what's the good of having a freedom you're afraid to use?
Trigger warnings teach a bad form of politics and risk retaliation
Kipnis 15 – professor in the department of radio, television, and film at Northwestern
University [Laura, “My Title IX Inquisition,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May
29, 2015, ProQuest, Accessed 7/17/15]//schnall
*Laura Kipnis has been cleared of wrongdoing in the two Title IX investigations
discussed in this essay.
students at my university had staged a protest over an essay
I'd written in The Chronicle Review about sexual politics on campus -- and that
When I first heard that
they were carrying mattresses and pillows -- I was a bit nonplussed. For one thing, mattresses had become a symbol of
student-on-student sexual-assault allegations, and I'd been writing about the new consensual-relations codes governing
professor-student dating. Also, I'd been writing as a feminist. And I hadn't sexually assaulted anyone. The whole thing
the mattress-carriers were
marching to the university president's office with a petition demanding "a
swift, official condemnation" of my article. One student said she'd had a
"very visceral reaction" to the essay; another called it "terrifying." I'd
argued that the new codes infantilized students while vastly increasing the
power of university administrators over all our lives, and here were
students demanding to be protected by university higher-ups from the
affront of someone's ideas, which seemed to prove my point. The president
announced that he'd consider the petition. Still, I assumed that academic freedom would prevail. I also sensed the
students weren't going to come off well in the court of public opinion,
which proved to be the case; mocking tweets were soon pouring in.
Marching against a published article wasn't a good optic -- it smacked of book
burning, something Americans generally oppose. Indeed, I was getting a lot of love on social
media from all ends of the political spectrum, though one of the anti-PC
brigade did suggest that, as a leftist, I should realize these students were my
own evil spawn. (Yes, I was spending a lot more time online than I should have.) Being protested had its
seemed symbolically incoherent. According to our campus newspaper,
gratifying side -- I soon realized that my writer friends were jealous that I'd gotten marched on and they hadn't. I found
myself shamelessly dropping it into conversation whenever possible. "Oh, students are marching against this thing I
wrote," I'd grimace, in response to anyone's "How are you?" I briefly fantasized about running for the board of PEN, the
international writers' organization devoted to protecting free expression. Things seemed less amusing when I received an
email from my university's Title IX coordinator informing me that two students had filed Title IX complaints against me
on the basis of the essay and "subsequent public statements" (which turned out to be a tweet), and that the university
would retain an outside investigator to handle the complaints. I stared at the email, which was under-explanatory in the
extreme. I was being charged with retaliation, it said, though it failed to explain how an essay that mentioned no one by
name could be construed as retaliatory, or how a publication fell under the province of Title IX, which, as I understood it,
dealt with sexual misconduct and gender discrimination. Why Colleges Are on the Hook for Sexual Assault When
Congress passed a gender-equity law more than 40 years ago, no one expected it to make colleges responsible for
responding to rapes. Title IX was enacted by Congress in 1972 to deal with gender discrimination in public education -athletics programs were the initial culprits -- and all institutions receiving federal funds were required to be in
compliance. Over time, court rulings established sexual harassment and assault as forms of discrimination, and in 2011
the U.S. Department of Education advised colleges to "take immediate and effective steps to end sexual harassment and
sexual violence." Since then, colleges have been scrambling to show that they're doing everything they can to comply, but
still, more than 100 of them are under federal investigation for violating Title IX policies. Anyone with a grudge, a political
my essay
included two paragraphs about a then-ongoing situation on my campus
involving a professor who was himself the subject of two sexualharassment investigations involving two students. This professor
subsequently sued university officials and one of the students for
defamation, among other things. The charges had occasioned a flurry of back-and-forth lawsuits,
all part of the public record, which had been my source for the two paragraphs. My point in citing this
legal morass was that students' expanding sense of vulnerability , and
new campus policies that fostered it, was actually impeding their educations as well as their
chances of faring well in postcollegiate life, where a certain amount
of resilience is required of us all.
agenda, or a desire for attention can easily leverage the system. I should pause to explain that
Their hypersensitive climate suppresses education and kills
preparedness for the real world
Cooke 15 – staff writer at the National Review [Charles, “The New ‘McCarthyism’
Exists, but It Has Nothing to Do with Ted Cruz,” National Review, March 25, 2015,
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415932/new-mccarthyism-exists-it-hasnothing-do-ted-cruz-charles-c-w-cooke, Accessed 7/17/15]//schnall
Less than an hour elapsed between Ted Cruz’s announcing that he would
be running for the presidency and the beginning of the oh-so-predictable
“McCarthy!” taunts. On Twitter, the comedian Bill Maher sardonically endorsed Cruz’s candidacy, asking,
“What’s not to love about a guy who acts like Joe McCarthy and sweats like Richard Nixon?” On MSNBC, meanwhile,
Chris Matthews revived his old critique, charging that Cruz was “deliberately channeling McCarthy again today.” This,
All is fair in love, war, and politics
alas, is a line that has been trotted out before.
, and as illiterate as
the comparisons to McCarthy may be, I suppose I would almost be disappointed if someone, somewhere, did not choose to
But for the more serious-minded among us, it is truly peculiar to
see the specter of McCarthy dragged into quotidian party politics when it is
so desperately needed elsewhere. Certainly, Cruz’s style can rub the wrong
way. Certainly, his debate-champion mien is occasionally
inappropriately deployed. But the truth is that if Arthur Miller were
writing The Crucible today he would likely be less interested in effusive
senators from Texas and more interested in the more modern pathologies
that the Cruzes of the world tend typically to disdain. Presumably, Miller
would look at our universities and our media, at our malleable “speech
codes,” our self-indulgent “safe spaces,” our preference for
“narrative” over truth , and at our pathetic appeasement of what is little
more than good old-fashioned illiberalism, and he would despair. Ted Cruz, frankly, wouldn’t
advance them.
a Purdue-based doctoral student and teacher named
Fredrik deBoer took to Twitter to rail bitterly against the toxic climate that the
advocates of “tolerance” have created on his campus. “Students,” deBoer wrote, are “very
quick learners,” and they have realized that they can use our present hysteria to advance their interests. Indeed, far
from helping to educate, deBoer added, our current penchant for hypersensitivity is having a deleterious effect on the quality of the critical
training he is expected to provide. “If you question even the most obviously
dishonest and self-interested invocation of trauma/triggering/etc,” deBoer
lamented, “you will be criticized severely.” And if you don’t? Well, then the
growing cast of hecklers is permitted its intellectual veto. “The chilling
effect is very real,” deBoer confirmed in frustration, “and I hear that from my very
large network of academic friends across the country. It’s real and
powerful.” How powerful? Certainly powerful enough that deBoer admits that he has taken to “selfcensoring.” “The terrible job market leaves everyone in fear of accidentally giving offense,” he fretted, and so, afraid
of losing his job, he now avoids teaching “anything that might be remotely
triggering . . . like discussions of genocide, racism, or historical
violence.” To sum up, then: Because his students insist that they are not to be
challenged in any way, deBoer is unable to teach what he needs to teach for
fear of losing his job. And he can’t criticize this arrangement because to criticize it is . . . to risk losing his job.
enter into his thinking. Over the weekend,
Welcome to Salem, 1692. Writing anonymously on the “White Hot Harlots” blog, a “passionate leftist” friend of deBoer’s
painted a disquietingly similar picture. “Saying anything that goes against liberal orthodoxy,” he declared, “is now grounds
if you so much as cause your
liberal students a second of complication or doubt you face the risk of
demonstrations, public call-outs, and severe professional consequences.” You
for a firin’.” Indeed, “even if you make a reasonable and respectful case,
will note, perhaps, that it is not Ted Cruz who is causing these problems. Quite the opposite, in fact. “I would not get fired
for pissing off a Republican,” our anonymous friend insists. Rather, “liberal students scare the shit out of me,” for: all it
even momentarily
exposing them to any uncomfortable thought or imagery — and
that’s it, your classroom is triggering, you are insensitive, kids are bringing
mattresses to your office hours and there’s a twitter petition out demanding you chop
off your hand in repentance. For a prime example of this tendency in action we need look no further than
the weekend edition of the New York Times, in which Judith Shulevitz offers up a bizarre story
about a Brown University senior named Kathryn Byron who sought to involve the university’s
authorities when she thought she might have to hear arguments that contradicted her beliefs: When she heard
last fall that a student group had organized a debate about campus sexual
assault between Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, and Wendy McElroy, a
libertarian, and that Ms. McElroy was likely to criticize the term “rape
culture,” Ms. Byron was alarmed. “Bringing in a speaker like that could serve to invalidate people’s experiences,”
she told me. It could be “damaging.” Ms. Byron and some fellow task force members secured a
takes is one slip — not even an outright challenging of their beliefs, but
meeting with administrators. Not long after, Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, announced that the university would
hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide “research and facts” about “the role of culture in sexual assault.”
student volunteers put up posters advertising that a “safe space”
would be available for anyone who found the debate too upsetting. Later in the
piece, a fellow student of Byron’s is shown condensing this peculiar attitude into an almost impossibly perfect
sound bite. At college, she complained, she was “feeling bombarded by a lot of
viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs.” Well,
good? These attitudes have — funnily enough — found their way into the
real world. In November of last year, Rolling Stone published an explosive “investigative” piece in which it was
Meanwhile,
alleged that a freshman student named “Jackie” had been “brutally assaulted by seven men at a frat party.” At first, the
story garnered an outpouring of outrage and sympathy. But then, slowly but surely, it all began to fall apart. At first,
observers began nervously to suggest that the details didn’t quite add up, and to ask skeptical questions of the sourcing
and its corroboration. For their trouble, they were accused of being “rape apologists.” Next, a number of conscientious
reporters looked into the question, and they did not like what they found. For this diligence, they were slammed as “idiots”
and “misogynists.” And finally, after the considerable interest in the case prompted the police to conduct their own
investigation, it became clear that there was no evidence that anything had happened at all. The “Rolling Stone story,”
declared an irritated Washington Post yesterday, “is a complete crock” — “built on a mix of naiveté and advocacy.” And
what, pray, was the reaction from those who had sold the story to this final piece of news? Alas, it was precisely the same
as was Kathryn Byron’s: denial, dissembling, distraction. In the Guardian, the tirelessly obtuse Jessica Valenti proposed
pathetically that the story was ultimately likely to be fake but accurate, and suggested that the confusion as to what
happened ultimately falls “at the feet of a culture that fundamentally distrusts women” rather than on the shoulders of the
people who made up the lie. On CNN, meanwhile, Sunny Hostin submitted that we should not be focusing on this
particular question, but on the broader rape statistics instead; and her co-host wondered irrationally whether the collapse
of Jackie’s story was in fact bad for other women. What seems to be really “important in this case,” Hot Air’s Noah
Rothman wrote sarcastically yesterday, is not whether the accused are innocent or not — in other words, the facts — but
as Kathryn Byron might
have put it, what is important here is that we do not permit reality to
“invalidate people’s experiences.” At its root, The Crucible is such a terrifying and illuminating piece
“the Greater Cosmic Truth that exists independent of objective truth.” Or rather,
of work not because it involves witches and because witches do not exist, but because it depicts the gradual victory of
a putatively civilized
community elects to abandon the vital traditions that have been slowly
built up over centuries and to hand over its institutions to the transient
anxieties of an unruly and jealous mob. “It were better that ten suspected witches should escape
delirium over reason and of passion over truth. In the heat of a hysterical moment,
than one innocent person be condemned,” warned Increase Mather, a critic of the trials. “Not on your life,” replied the
Free expression? Damn you to hell.
Presumption of innocence? Hie thee to a monastery. All that we have held dear? Abandon it
now, for there are monsters at the gate, and they need to be destroyed post
haste. There is a McCarthyite panic in America, alright, and it is scouring the land
at a frightening pace. But the virus has jumped from Salem’s lips to Purdue’s ears directly — and Ted Cruz
crowd; for we have some evils to spike.
has been nowhere to be seen.
Reject their framing – protects a model of society in which the
privileged upper echelon frame themselves as suffering to justify
future acts of evil
Smith 15 – writer at SMBIVA [Michael, “Giddyup, Trigger,” Stop Me Before I Vote
Again, May 8, 2015, http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2015/05/giddyup-trigger,
Accessed 7/17/15]//schnall
Ovid tells his story, and a number of other equally appalling ones, in the Metamorphoses, a text continually read and
immensely loved since Ovid’s own day. Ovid is omnipresent in Dante, and Shakespeare, and… everywhere, really; or at
Mean old Ovid, however, is too strong for
the stomachs of certain sensitive souls at Columbia University: During the week spent on
least was, until the the fashion came in for illiterate writers.
Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” the class was instructed to read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, both of which include
vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault. As a survivor of sexual assault, [a] student described being triggered while
reading such detailed accounts of rape … [T]he student said her professor focused on the beauty of the language and the
splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text… [T]he student completely disengaged from the class discussion as a
means of self-preservation. She did not feel safe in the class. I feel very grateful to have bailed out of Academe when I did.
The piece linked above
deploys just about every buzzword associated with the current cult of hysterical
hypersensitivity: safe, self-preservation, triggered, survivor, share,
concerns, offensive, marginalize, identity, intervention, transgression (this one
not at all in a good sense, but an unambiguously bad one); insensitive, traumatize, silence,
facilitate, support, training, best practice, framing, engage, effective,
feedback, addressing (‘issues’, not letters). The only one missing is ‘inappropriate’.
In general, the impression one receives is that Columbia undergraduates are
hagridden, traumatized, oppressed, disadvantaged, suffering souls, shying from
a trigger a minute like a skittish pony in rattlesnake country; easily intimidated and silenced, and so
distressed by the coarseness of their teachers that they can barely force
themselves through the classroom door. I must say they do not make this
impression in the places, numerous in my neighborhood, where they customarily
resort. There, they comport themselves with an assurance bordering on
insolence, and a very conspicuous air of self-satisfaction and entitlement.
My idea of a classroom is one in which nobody ever feels safe — least of all, the teacher.
Perhaps initiatives like the one quoted above are best regarded as a kind of consumer advocacy. The kids are shopping in
the Columbia mall, and somebody is going to foot a pretty hefty bill for it. There is therefore every reason why they
shouldn’t be inconvenienced or aggrieved by the clerks behind the counter. The customer is always right. If they find Ovid
yucky and out of date, they shouldn’t have to read him. Of course it’s overdetermined. There’s also the elite-as-victim
Columbia and all the Ivies are very much in the business of
credentialling the future management cadre of the empire; these are
people many or most of whom will be dishing out a lot more shit in their
future managerial or professional lives than they will ever have to eat. No
doubt there’s an element of self-absolution for them in seeing
themselves as suffering, ill-used victims.
angle.
***Affirmative***
Identity politics good
Perm
Permutation do both – incorporating identity into movements
does not preclude unity but rather is necessary to ensure
equality – ignoring difference ensures racist and sexist
inequalities are reproduced
Alcoff 5 – philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes in
epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism (Linda, “THE POLITICAL
CRITIQUE OF IDENTITY,” 2005, http://www.alcoff.com/content/chap2polcri.html)
//RGP
maintaining unity requires a careful attending to
difference . For example, in a recent contract negotiation that I observed at a hospital in Syracuse,
New York, the issue of preferences for internal hiring or in-house
advancement came up for discussion among members of the SEIU bargaining committee, each of whom was
In my experience,
an elected representative from a particular sector of the hospital. In the process of preparing the negotiating points that
the union will put forward to management,
priorities have to be set and some issues must
be left aside, and the question on the table was, how much of a priority would the union give the issue of in-house
advancement in its negotiations? The members of the professional tradesÑelectricians, plumbers, and so forth, who are
almost entirely white menÑinitially saw no reason to fight for this provision in the contract or to make it a priority.
an African American woman on the bargaining team spoke up for the
importance of in-house advancement, pointing out that almost all of the
minorities in the hospital worked at the relatively lower skilled and lesser
paid jobs. Given the difficulty minorities still have in entering the trades, the outside hiring of minorities is a slim
bet. It is much more likely that a minority person will be hired into
housekeeping or dietary departments, for example, but be stuck in those
departments unless preferences are given for in-house hiring into the trainee positions available
in the more lucrative departments. In this particular bargaining sub-committee, if the tradesmen had
voted as a bloc against this woman's proposal, and if the mostly white male
union leaders had supported them, then the conditions of work for
nonwhite workers at that hospital would continue to be unrelievedly at the
bottom of the hierarchy during the next three or five year contract period. Fortunately, in this case the
However,
white workers united in supporting in-house advancement because they came to recognize the relevance that racial
These kinds of discussions are an everyday
occurrence in labor organizing and contract battles. It is no accident that SEIU is
difference made to union members' work lives.3
today the largest union in the United States, the fastest growing, and that it has the most pro-active policies in support of
one cannot either imaginatively or practically pursue
"class demands" as if the working class has one set of united and
homogeneous material interests. It makes neither political or
theoretical sense to imagine an undifferentiated working class
demanding a larger share of the pie, to be divided among them with the
same ratios of remuneration as currently exist based on racism
and sexism. Just as black workers cannot stand in for the whole, neither
racial and gender democracy. Thus,
can skilled white workers. Each group is exploited in a specific manner, and to different degrees. Certainly,
there is a motivation for unity, but unity will have to be negotiated in piecemeal terms,
such as the bargaining committee in Syracuse discovered. Redistribution demands will either reproduce or subvert the
neither class demands nor
class identity can be understood apart from the differences of social
identity. The very possibility of unity that Gitlin aims for will require that, for
example, the minority members of a union feel connected to it and feel that
it is addressing their conditions. But this requires the exploration and
recognition of difference , as well as making a space in union meetings for sometimes extensive
discussions about the different situation of the various workers, and accommodating their different
demands, interests, and needs.
inequalities among workers, or, what is often the case, do some of both.4 Thus,
Agency
Identity politics is to key to agency and transformation
Alcoff et al, 6 - professor of philosophy at City College of New York and Hunter
College, PhD in philosophy from Brown University (Linda, Identity Politics
Reconsidered: Future of Minority Studies, 2006)//jml
While I harbor no illusions about transgressive “identity politics,” insofar as ultimately effecting transformative social
while I recognize that “identity politics” can be manipulated by
hegemonic forces, I will argue that a critical politics of identity can play a
part in political organizing and in challenging hegemonic discourses, even if
change, and
structural transformation is not the issue at hand in the short term. Political agency, after all, can always sim- ply lead to
without agency there can be
no emancipation. Structural social transforma- tion will require, then,
reflexivity and entail many battles along the way, of different types and at different levels,
that can prepare us for larger struggles. In today’s stratified and divided context, I believe, retaining a critical
politics of identity makes political sense and is strategically practical. There
is, then, a strategic rationale for a politics of identity and that is: developing
critical political agency. For this reason we need to go beyond issues of inclusion/exclusion and an
the perpetuation of existing structures (Bhaskar, 1993, 279). Yet,
exaltation of difference as difference to engage in an exploration of events, relations, and structures that have a con-
Identity, though discursive in nature, is ultimately grounded in
social reality, that is, social structures and relations; unfortunately in recent times, we
stitutive role in identity formation.
have in many instances boxed ourselves into a discursive corner, positing discourse as itself constitutive over and above
social structures.7 Is “the word the medium in which power works” as Stuart Hall affirms?8 I think that we need to look at
this formulation closely and say that it is a medium but not the only one, for power works at all levels of our social
structures, including, but not exclusively, within the cultural terrain. By contrast,
reality is most definitely
not limited to the discursive domain. Let us not incur, then, in the linguistic fallacy, confusing
reality with our discourses about reality. Nor should we define reality in terms of knowl- edge—the epistemic fallacy
while recognizing that discourses mediate our knowledge
and intuition about the world, it is also important to bear in mind that
reality is not reducible to our discourses—or to our knowledge of it—nor can any
(Bhaskar, 1991, 33). Thus,
transformational social struggle be reduced to a negotiation over meaning.9 Reality is not, then, lim- ited to the way we
construct it or theorize it. We, although cognizant and sentient beings, are not the litmus test of reality. What we call
reality, as noted by Prigogine, is nevertheless “revealed to us only through the active construction in which we
participate.”10 And, yet, clearly we don’t all par- ticipate in this process of construction on an equal footing, an issue that,
our knowledge of
reality is itself constantly changing; knowledge itself is productive and
transformative and conditions the emergence of new social identities, that,
by virtue of being constituted in tension with other identities —that is, as nonidentities, as differentiations— always are already political. Identity formation, then,
takes place at a conjuncture of external and internal, contingent and
necessary , processes that interconnect and emerge within specific
historical conditions that are in good measure not of our own making. It would
be foolhardy, then, to explore identity formation outside the complex web of social-structural rela- tions. What is
needed is a critical theory that is grounded in a fuller recogni- tion of how
though crucial, is all but avoided by some knowledge theorists. Let us recall, furthermore, that
particular social structures and relations condition a diversity of social and
historical experiences and generate concrete social spaces that give rise to
social, political, and cultural identities. In turn, these social spaces are
themselves productive sites , enabling the construction of new and
potentially radical/transformative political subjects.
Intersectionality fails
Identity politics makes collective action impossible – focus on
articulating differences between identity categories stagnates
politics and results in endless exclusions and divisions
Rectenwald 13 – Ph.D., Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University,
M.A., English Literature, Case Western Reserve University, B.A., English Literature,
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA (Michael, “What’s Wrong With Identity Politics
(and Intersectionality Theory)? A Response to Mark Fisher’s “Exiting the Vampire
Castle” (And Its Critics)” The North Star, 12/2/2013,
http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=11411) //RGP
operating under the same schema as a more simplified identity politics,
intersectionality theory serves to isolate multiple and seemingly endless
identity standpoints, without sufficiently articulating them with each other,
But
or the forms of domination. The upshot in political practice is a static pluralism of reified social categories, each vying for
more-subaltern-than-thou status on a field of one-downsmanship. While it may be useful for sociologists attempting to
as a political theory, it is useless, or worse. This
is because, by ending with the identification and isolation of its various
constituencies, it in fact serves to sever the connections that it
supposedly sought to understand and strengthen. The practical upshot of intersectionality
theory is the perpetual articulation of difference, resulting in fragmentation
and the stagnation of political activity that Fisher bemoans. Theory as Historical Practice But
theory like this, or any other, as the author of “I am a Woman” suggests, does not appear out of thin air. Rather, it is
produced in relation to the social relations of production and the overall
social relations themselves: There was no revolution in the US in 1968. The advances of Black Power,
describe groups and their struggles with power,
women’s liberation, gay liberation, and the movements themselves, have been absorbed into capital. Since the 1970s,
academia has had a stronghold on theory. A nonexistent class struggle leaves a vacuum of theoretical production and
academic intellectuals have had nothing to draw on except for the identity politics of the past. Identity politics and its
variants developed during a moment when the Marxist critique of capitalism had lost a degree of credibility due to the
fiascos of the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere. Labor movements had given way to the New Left movements that
attracted students and others toward liberal variants of political activism. Housed in the academy, theory became
abstracted from social relations and the social totality. In a field of free play, divorced from working class politics, it
focused on various kinds of putative determinations, including those of language, rationality, identity, “power” (vaguely
conceived), and other “prison houses,” as Frederic Jameson referred to the categories of poststructuralist containment.
Identity politics marked the limits of postmodern political engagement. But, identity politics has not since “been absorbed
into capital,” as suggested in the quote above. As forms of alienated labor, capitalist relations have always determined
By treating such categories as ends
in themselves, therefore, a politics based on identities necessarily leads
down the blind alley of reification. That is, such politics, even when
“successful,” necessarily ends at the limits of identity itself . The problem
them. They have been the products of capitalism from the outset.
is, while theoretically, we might all wake up tomorrow to changed identities, or to changed conditions for our identities,
we would still be exploited under capitalism. Running the circuits of capital from production through consumption,
identity can only lead us back to the office, the factory, or the streets,
allowing at best our coalescence around particular consumer cultures. Why is
Identity Politics Individualistic? Finally, as I mentioned above, Fisher claimed that while promising a
politics of collectivities, identity politics is actually individualistic . One might
wonder how he arrives at such a statement, especially since he merely asserts it rather than arguing it. He could have
because identity politics and intersectionality focus on difference
and its articulations, the divisions are potentially endless, but necessarily
extend to differences not only between groups, but also between
individuals. One’s “display” of the characteristics becomes a requirement for the politics of identity. Identity
politics requires identification, which requires signaling of individual
membership by virtue of particular characteristics. The understanding and appreciation of
argued that
individual difference is surely not a liability in itself, by any stretch. Nor does understanding and appreciation necessarily
because identity is the object rather
than merely the starting point, the ends rather than only the means of
collectivity, identity politics continually devolves into the articulation of the
requirements for group membership, and thus, to the individual. This
individualism extends to those whose “privilege” differentiates them from
the identity groups in question. That is, each encounter with the group
involves the articulation of the characteristics of the group, and the
evaluation of all comers on the basis of such characteristics .
entail an individualistic ideological and political agenda. But
Whether or not this involves the imputation of guilt to non-members is a question of particular circumstances, and
likewise, cannot be generalized without qualification. But identity politics does involve a linguistic policing around various
identity formations, not only to determine eligibility for membership, but as importantly, to guard against the ill treatment
of said group and its members as representatives thereof. Of course, any political movement on the left worthy of support
in the case of identity
politics, the defense is of the group and its individual members as such, as
particular identities, for the maintenance and continuation of said
identities, and not for their liberation from the liabilities that all identities
necessarily entail. Thus, identity politics is exclusionary and divisive,
continually falling back on difference in order to establish group identity
and cohesion.
will defend those subject to various forms of discrimination and abuse. But
Individual differences block identity politics effectiveness –
intersectionality proves
Minow 96 - Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (Martha, “Not Only for Myself:
Identity, Politics, and Law,” The Colin Ruagh Thomas O'Fallon Memorial Lecture,
University of Oregon School of Law, 3-7-96, 75 Or. L. Rev. 647, Fall 1996) //AD
The second, related difficulty is the tendency of identity politics to neglect
"intersectionality." 21 This notion refers to the way in which any particular
individual stands at the crossroads of multiple groups. All women also have a race; all
whites also have a gender; and the individuals stand in different places as gender and racial politics converge and diverge.
the meanings of gender are inflected and informed by race, and the
meanings of racial identity are similarly influenced by images of gender.
Moreover,
Black women have confronted male violence and white domination in ways quite different from the experiences of either
white women or black men. 22
Black women and black men have different experiences
and interests, argues Kimberle Crenshaw. She provides vivid illustrations with black women's responses to the
obscenity prosecution of the music group 2 Live Crew and to the Senate's treatment of Anita Hill during the confirmation
hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas. 23
Men who are black may experience racial
discrimination while also participating in harassment or discriminatory
practices toward women. Women who are white may experience gender
discrimination while simultaneously participating in exclusionary practices
against blacks and Hispanics. 24 Neither gender nor racial identity
groupings alone [*656] can describe common experiences, standpoints, and relationships
with others. 25 Is it adequate, then, to identify a group representative who shares a race with other members, but a gender
only with some of them, or a gender with other members but a race with only some of them? What about sharing a gender
The challenge to a conception of representation based on one
shared trait compounds with the recognition of further intersections.
Individuals manifest not only race and gender but also other bases for
potential group membership, such as age, disability, religion, immigrant status, and sexual orientation.
Then political affiliation, music preferences, favored sports, and other
commitments further bisect and realign groups. Some of the intersections seem
to invite new "identity groupings," such as black women, Chicana lesbians, and male bikers. They
but not a religion?
may also expose and perhaps solidify the self-affirmations of other intersectional groups, such as "white men" or "married
recognizing intersectionality threatens to complicate
identity politics with a proliferation of new , and old, identity groupings.
women." 26 At a minimum,
Solves oppression
Identity politics are key to accessing the valuable insights of the
oppressed – negation of identity politics leads to racism and
precludes any positive hope of reform
Moya, 2 - cultural writer for the University of California Press (Paula, “Learning from
Experience,” “The Epistemic Significance of Identity Politics,” 2002,
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=kt8t1nd07c&chunk.id=ss1.16&t
oc.id=ch03&brand=ucpress)//jml
critics and activists alike often take for granted
that identity politics as such are essentialist, theoretically retrograde, or even politically
dangerous. I want to suggest that absolute dismissals of all kinds of identity politics are
premature—even though such dismissals are frequently motivated by political convictions similar to those that
motivate my own arguments. (To reiterate: I define identity politics as a social practice in
which a person who identifies or is identified with a recognizable group such
Within politically progressive circles today,
as “Chicana/os” or “lesbians” makes arguments or takes action with the purpose of affecting social, economic, or
educational policy relative to that group. Within this social practice, the identity of the political practitioner both
Without defending those forms of
identity politics that are predicated on the disenfranchisement of others, and
motivates and is a central facet of the claim, argument, or action.)
with full awareness that all identities are somewhat reductive and potentially cooptable, I nevertheless contend that
some forms of identity politics that are undertaken by members of
marginalized groups in the service of creating economic, social, and
political equity between different groups are epistemically and morally
justifiable.[28] ― 131 ― Embedded in my argument is the idea that identity politics cannot be an
end in themselves, but should be seen as a necessary step on the way
toward creating economic, social, and political equity between different
groups.[29] My reasons for defending the practice of identity politics by members of marginalized groups are
primarily epistemological. To the extent that we, as cultural critics, are interested in gaining a more accurate
we must give greater weight to socially marginalized
identities and non-dominant perspectives. My postpositivist realist defense of the principle of
understanding of our social world,
epistemic privilege draws on the idea, common to much feminist and marxist theory, that the major obstacle to the
Insofar
as the perspectives of people in positions of privilege and authority are
refracted through distorting lenses that naturalize the existing social order,
the epistemic norm of “objectivity” requires that such partial and distorted
perspectives be critically examined from the standpoints of the
subordinated. The idea here is not that subordinated people know better about everything, but rather that
their well-being (and sometimes even survival) requires that they attend to the
dynamics of the particular forces by which they are subordinated. This is in
contrast to people in positions of privilege or authority, whose interest in
maintaining the status quo often fosters (moral and political) blindness with regard
to those institutional structures on which their privileges are based. What this
achievement of objective knowledge is blindness regarding the epistemic consequences of social location.[30]
means is that, to the extent that we want to have a more objective understanding of the dynamics of socially significant
scholars , regardless of their own particular identities,
would do well to attend to the identities and experiences of
people who are located on the lower levels of a socially and economically
stratified society. Unless we have access to alternative perspectives—perspectives that are formed through
interpretation of personal experience—we risk being arrested in the process of our intellectual and moral growth. Since
identities are indexical—since they refer outward to social structures and embody social relations—they
are a potentially rich source of information about the world we share.
phenomena like racism, sexism, or heterosexism, all
at: Fracturing/exclusion
Identity politics is not a form of special interest groups but rather it is a
method of exploring difference and personal experience in order to find
commonalities and linkages between historical memory
Alcoff 5 – philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes in epistemology,
feminism, race theory and existentialism (Linda, “THE POLITICAL CRITIQUE OF IDENTITY,”
2005, http://www.alcoff.com/content/chap2polcri.html) //RGP
The notion that identities lead to separatism or mutually exclusive political
agendas seems to be based on the idea that identities represent discrete and
specifiable sets of interests. Identities, it is assumed, must therefore operate on the model of interest group
politics: a specific set of interests is represented by lobbyists or movement leaders in order to advance that specific agenda.
That agenda may, naturally, come into conflict with other agendas put forward, or even with the "majority's interests," and
The notion of
interest groups has gotten a very bad reputation in U.S. political discourse,
where "special interest groups" are viewed as single-mindedly advancing one
agenda and as incapable of considering other points of view or a larger frame of
thus there will be a conflict that can be addressed through compromise but never completely resolved.
reference in which the "common good" is considered. "Special interest groups" have particular pre-set agendas for the
promotion of which reason becomes attenuated to the instrumental calculation of advancing that cause, without the possibility
of calling the cause into question or of modifying it in light of larger public concerns. Minority constituencies have often been
characterized as like special interest groups in these ways. Social identities can and sometimes do operate as interest groups,
that is not what identities essentially are . On the basis of analyzing a
wide sample of identity based movements, sociologist Manuel Castells'
describes identity as a generative source of meaning, necessarily collective
rather than wholly individual, and useful as a source of agency as well as a meaningful
but
narrative.(Castells 1997, 7). This account accords with the research by Cruz, Encarnacion, and Rosaldo as well. In analyzing
identity based political movements, Castells offers a typology of identity constructions corresponding to a variety of political
agendas and historical contexts. His work provides a model for the kind of contextual analysis I called for earlier that would
analyze the operation of concepts within contexts rather than assuming that concepts operate uniformly across contexts. I will
turn to Castells later on for more help in developing an empirically adequate description of identity, but here it is enough to
note that Castells' work also strongly counters the view that identity politics always tends toward the same political forms or
In a more philosophical
account based more in his readings of contemporary literature, Satya
Mohanty argues that identity constructions provide narratives that explain
the links between group historical memory and individual contemporary
experience, that they create unifying frames for rendering experience
intelligible, and thus they help to map the social world .(Mohanty 1997) To the extent that
that the political relevance of identity always is cashed out in similar fashion.
identities involve meaning-making, there will always be alternative interpretations of the meanings associated with identity,
Mohanty explains, but he insists that identities refer to real experiences. Of course, identities can be imposed on people from
the outside. But that is more of a brand than a true identity, or more of an ascription than a meaningful characterization of self.
Identities must resonate with and unify lived experience, and they must
provide a meaning that has some purchase, however partial, on the subject's
own daily reality. Supporting Mohanty's realism about identity, Anuradha Dingwaney and
Lawrence Needham explain identity's lived experience as that which
"signifies affective, even intuitive, ways of being in, or inhabiting, specific
cultures....it is perceived as experience that proceeds from identity that is given or inherited...but it is also, and more
significantly, mediated by what Satya Mohanty calls Ôsocial narratives, paradigms, even ideologies.'"(Dingwaney and
although experience is sometimes group-related (and thus
identity-related), its meaning is not unambiguous. Dingwaney and Needham go on to say, following Stuart
Hall, that: What we have are events, interactions, political and other
identifications, made available at certain historical conjunctures, that are then
worked through in the process of constructing, and/or affiliating with, an
identity. However, to say that identity is constructed is not to say that it is available to any and every person or group who
Needham 1996, 21) In other words,
wishes to inhabit it. The voluntarism that inheres in certain elaborations of the constructedness of identity ignores, as Hall also
notes... Ôcertain conditions of existence, real histories in the contemporary world, which are not exclusively psychical, not
simply journeys of the mind'; thus it is incumbent upon us to recognize that Ôevery identity is placed, positioned, in a culture,
a language, a history.' It is for this reason that claims about Ôlived experience' resonate with such force in conflicts over what
does or does not constitute an appropriate interpretation of culturally different phenomena.(Dingwaney and Needham 20-21;
This is an account of identity that holds both that identity
makes an epistemic difference and that identity is the product of a complex
mediation involving individual agency in which its meaning is produced
rather than merely perceived or experienced. In other words, identity is not merely
that which is given to an individual or group, but is also a way of inhabiting,
interpreting, and working through, both collectively and individually, an
objective social location and group history. We might, then, more insightfully
define identities as positioned or located lived experiences in which both
individuals and groups work to construct meaning in relation to
historical experience and historical narratives. Given this view, one might hold that, when I am
identified, it is my horizon of agency which is identified. Thus, identities are not lived as a discrete and
stable set of interests, but as a site from which one must engage in the process
of meaning-making and thus from which one is open to the world. The
hermeneutic insight is that the self operates in a situated plane, always
culturally located with great specificity even as it is open onto an indeterminate future and a
Quoted from Hall 1987, 44-45).
reinterpretable past, not of its own creation. The self carries with it always this horizon as a specific location, with substantive
contentÑas, for example, a specifiable relation to the holocaust, to slavery, to the encuentro, and so on---but whose content
The holocaust is one dramatic example that
not only exists as an aspect of every contemporary Jewish person's horizon
but also of every Christian European. But there will be a difference in the way that these two groups are
only exists in interpretation and in constant motion.
situated vis-a-vis this narrative: the one as knowing that he or she could have been the target of the "final solution," and the
Each must react to or
deal with this event in some way, but to say this does not presuppose any pregiven interpretation either to the event or to its degree of significance in
forming a contemporary identity. There is even a vibrant debate over the degree of significance the
other as knowing that this event occurred within the broad category of their culture.
holocaust holds for Jewish identity today. But, obviously, for some time to come, it will remain a central feature of the map of
our collective Jewish and Gentile horizons.
Identity politics does not necessitate exclusion or separatism –
there’s zero empirical basis and studies go aff
Alcoff 5 – philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes in
epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism (Linda, “THE POLITICAL
CRITIQUE OF IDENTITY,” 2005, http://www.alcoff.com/content/chap2polcri.html)
//RGP
The critique of identity politics is based on a certain picture of what identity is, a
picture that begins to become visible once from the three assumptions listed above. This picture, however, does
not actually correspond to either the actual lived experience of
identity or its politically mobilized forms. In this section I will begin to develop an alternative
A More Realistic View
account of identity, and will further develop this in the following two chapters. This alternative account will be used to
Let's start with the assumption
that identities are inherently exclusive and thus tend toward separatism.
When one goes beyond the anecdotal to the empirical, there is simply not sufficient
evidence for the absoluteness with which the critics of identity have
assumed that strongly felt identities always tend toward separatism. Of course
show the inadequacy of the assumptions behind the critique of identity.
there are problems with essentialist constructions of identity and overly narrow formulations of political alliances, and
there are serious problems with the view that identity itself constitutes innocence or culpability or that only those sharing
these positions are the result of certain
kinds of construals of identity rather than the automatic effect of a strong
sense of group solidarity and group cohesiveness. In the National Black
Politics Survey conducted in 1993-1994, the first survey of mass political opinion among African Americans
conducted in the United States, one of the most striking findings was a very high degree
of belief in what political theorists call "linked fate": the belief that what
generally happens to people in your identity group, in this case your racial group, will
significantly affect your life.(Dawson 1994; Holliman and Brown1997) Researchers found that over 80%
of respondents felt a strong sense of linked fate with African Americans as a whole. The idea of linked fate
means that African-Americans will tend to use group data as a kind of
proxy to understand how a given event might impact them or to predict
how a given choice might work out for them as individuals. A belief in linked fate has
obvious political ramifications for alliances, organizing, and one's ability to trust the analyses of political leaders. Yet
researchers also found that less than 40% of their respondents agreed with
such proposals as "blacks should control the economy in mostly black
communities," or "blacks should control the government in mostly black
communities." Even fewer than this (by about a third) agreed with the proposal that "blacks should have their own
separate nation." Thus, the very high level of group identification that exists
among African Americans showed no evidence of having a
correlation to a racially separatist political approach or a
tendency to reject coalition efforts.
an identity can unite together in common cause. But
at: Precludes reasoning
The idea that identity precludes effective reasoning is a
misunderstanding of identity politics – knowledge claims are
necessarily shaped by social location – we cannot attempt to transcend
identity – instead we should understand identity as a horizon from
which to view the world – this allows for dialogue between differing
identity categories that is necessary for effective knowledge production
Alcoff 5 – philosopher at the City University of New York who specializes in epistemology,
feminism, race theory and existentialism (Linda, “THE POLITICAL CRITIQUE OF IDENTITY,”
2005, http://www.alcoff.com/content/chap2polcri.html) //RGP
There is also an important epistemic implication of identity, which Mohanty describes as
follows: "...social locations facilitate or inhibit knowledge by predisposing us to
register and interpret information in certain ways. Our relation to social
power produces forms of blindness just as it enables degrees of
lucidity ."(Mohanty 1997, 234) On this account, identity does not determine one's
interpretation of the facts, nor does it constitute fully formed perspectives,
but rather, to use the hermeneutic terminology once again, identities operate as horizons from
which certain aspects or layers of reality can be made visible. In stratified societies,
differently identified individuals do not always have the same access to points
of view or perceptual planes of observation. Two individuals may participate in the same event, but
have perceptual access to different aspects of that event. Social identity is relevant to epistemic
judgement, then, not because identity determines judgement but because
identity can in some instances yield access to perceptual facts that
themselves may be relevant to the formulation of various knowledge
claims or theoretical analyses. As Mohanty and others have also argued, social location can be correlated with certain
highly specific forms of blindness as well as lucidity. This would make sense if we interpret his account as correlating social
identity to a kind of access to perceptual facts: to claim that some perceptual facts are visible from some locations is
Social identity operates then as a rough
and fallible but useful indicator of differences in perceptual access. This kind of
correlatively to claim that they are hard to see from others.
hermeneutic descriptive account of social identities is more true to lived experience and more helpful in illuminating their real
As a located opening out onto the world, different
identities have no a priori conflict. Aspects of horizons are naturally shared across different positions,
epistemic and political implications.
and no aspect comes with a stable ready-made set of political views. What is shared is having to address in some way, even if it
is by flight, the historical situatedness and accompanying historical experiences of a given identity group to which one has
some concrete attachment. Because of this, and because identities mark social position, the epistemic differences between
identities are not best understood as correlated to differences of knowledge, since knowledge is always the product in part of
the epistemic
difference is in, so to speak, what one can see, from one's vantage point. What
one can see underdetermines knowledge or the articulation of interests, but
the correlation between possibilities of perception and identity mandates the
necessity of taking identity into account in formulating decision making
background assumptions and values that are not always grouped by identity categories. Rather,
bodies or knowledge producing institutions. Such an idea is implicit in the concept of
representative government. The second assumption at work in the identity critique that I listed in the last section was the idea
that social identity is inherently constraining on individual freedom because it is imposed from the outside. Judith Butler
makes this point in The Psychic Life of Power: "Vulnerable to terms that one never made, one persists [i.e. continues as a
subject] always, to some degree, through categories, names, terms, and classifications that mark a primary alienation in
sociality."(Butler 1997, 28) Western thought has developed two sharply conflicting lines of argument over the last 200 years.
enlightenment calls on individuals to think for themselves, and
holds that autonomy and thus the capacity of reason (which requires autonomy)
necessitates that the individual be able to separate from all that is externally
imposed on it in order to evaluate and consider these imposed ideas. To the extent that one has features that are
dependent on others, in the way Butler describes for example, this is necessarily a weakening of the
self and a loss of freedom. On the other hand, since Hegel every major
psychological account of the self has placed its dependence on the other at the
center of self-formation. For Hegel, one needs the Other to recognize one's status as a self-directing subject in
On the one hand, the
order to create the conditions for the self-directing activity; one's self image is mediated through the self-other relation not
only in terms of its substantive content but also in terms of the self as bare capacity. For Freud, the other is internalized to
become a central organizing principle for one's desire, one's needs, and one's life plans. Feminist and postcolonial theories
on the one hand freedom
requires reason which requires the ability to separate from the other, while
on the other hand, the self is ineluctably dependent on the other's
interpellations. If both of these traditions are broadly correct, it would seem that we are doomed to unfreedom,
have emphasized the deformations of the self in hostile environments. Thus,
because freedom is defined as precisely that which we cannot have. I will look at these traditions in some detail in the next
The Other is internal to the self's
substantive content, a part of its own horizon, and thus a part of its own
identity. The mediations performed by individuals in processes of self-interpretation, the mediations by which individual
chapter. A hermeneutic account again has advantages here.
experience comes to have specific meanings, are produced through a fore-knowledge or historical a priori that is cultural,
is less true to say that I am dependent on
the Other---as if we are clearly distinguishable---than that the Other is a part
of myself. Moreover, one's relation to this foreknowledge is not primarily one of negation; it makes possible the
historical, politically situated, and collective. In this sense, it
articulation of meanings and the formulation of judgement and action. One's relation is better characterized precisely as
absorption, generation, and expansion, a building from rather than an imposition that curtails preferred possibilities. Whether
this fact about the self necessarily limits our capacity for reason brings us to the final assumption I listed, that the capacity of
reason requires a transcendence of identity. One way to approach this would be to say that transcendence is simply
impossible, and there is abundant evidence that because reasoning in all but deductive arguments (and even those have to
start with a premise) involves phronesis or a judgement call which invokes background assumptions and values, identity is
The wholesale repudiation of identity attachments is often
itself a form of tribalism under cover, as in Schlesinger's argument against multiculturalist "cults of
always operative in reasoning.
ethnicity" on the grounds of Europe's unique cultural values. When Teddy Roosevelt painted a contrast between
"Americanness" on the one hand, and polyglot hyphenated ethnic associations on the other, he failed to realize that his view of
the very notion that
transcendence of identity is necessary for reason is itself a mistake .
Elshtain argues that social identities are and should be private, even though they are obviously constructed largely
through social relations. And she assumes that private identities cannot follow rules of
civility or pursue public ends but are reduced to narrow self-interest group
calculations. For Elshtain, the importance that Lieberman attaches to his identity might well render him a problematic
political candidate. But the reason why identity is argued to be in conflict with reason is
"Americanness" was just as ethnic as those he opposed. However,
because identity is conceptualized as coherent, uniform, and essentially
singular, as if what it means to be Mexican American is a coherent set of
attributes and dispositions shared by all members of the group and essentially closed or stable.
If this were the case, and to the extent there are people who believe this to be the case and who act on that belief,
there is indeed a conflict, since the closed nature of such an identity will close one off to the new possibilities
that rational deliberation can make evident. But once one understands identity as horizon, an
opening out, a point from which to see, there is no conflict. How could there
be reason without sight, without a starting place, without some background
from which critical questions are intelligible? The mistake made by Richard Rorty and
some others like him, who do accept the importance of cultural identity in setting out background for thought, is to think
that, because horizons can be mapped onto identities, we are bereft of
communication across the expanse, doomed to incommensurable paradigms; in short, we will never be
able to understand one another, and therefore we will never be able to resolve conflict through dialogue. This is
simply a profound mis-characterization of culture and of identity, as if they
were closed systems with no intersections. Of course there will always exist some common ground
from which to chart a disagreement. Of course understanding across wide differences will never be complete, but of course it
will always be partially possible. Moreover, given the dynamic nature of identity, existing gulfs are not likely to remain forever.
The true route to understanding across difference is a literal movement of
place, which will require a change of social institutions and structures. I have
endeavored to make a case in this chapter that there is yet a case to be made about the nature of identity and its political and
epistemic implications. It is certainly not the case that the work we need to do is finished; there are numerous "authentic"
problems of identity that need attending, but we don't need to overcome as much as to more deeply understand identity. Let
the recognition of the
political relevance of identities is required for, rather than opposed to,
unity and effective class struggle . The attempt to form a Labor Party in the
U.S. in the 1990's was heralded by many of us who maintain hopes in deconstructing the two-party bloc on U.S. electoral
me end with another example that illustrates the practical implications of my claim that
politics. But I decided not to work for the party for the following reason. The national leadership organization of the party was
being organized exclusively through union membership. Thus, it would be composed only of representatives from unions.11
This might appear to make sense for a party calling itself a Labor Party. But in reality, not only is it the case that less than
twenty per cent of U.S. workers are organized, but also, a number of nonwhite workers do not necessarily see their union as
the most reliable spokesperson for their needs. They may see the local NAACP chapter, their church or other community
By
refusing to seat such groups at the top, the Labor Party was not effective in
breaking from the traditional white dominance of the Labor movement. By
refusing to recognize the salience of social identities like race and gender,
they undermined the possibility of unity and weakened class struggle in the
United States.
organization based around a shared ethnic identity as more reliable and also as a place where they have more of a voice.
at: Solidarity
Solidarity still has binaries
Ananth 14 – writer, activist, and trauma-therapist currently living in Toronto
[Sriram, M.S. in Public Health and Geography from Johns Hopkins University,
completing PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota, “Conceptualizing
solidarity and realizing struggle: testing against the Palestinian call for the boycott of
Israel,” Interface, November 2014, JSTOR, Accessed 7/23/15]//schnall
Yet it is not without contradictions as it is a movement whose success is
primarily predicated on a perceived solidarity emerging from the
traditional power-centers of the Global North. The call emerges from
Palestine but it is focused on garnering solidarity from those occupying
positions of immense socio-economic privilege over Palestinians, i.e. people
and institutions that are not directly impacted by that specific form of
oppression. Most of the key BDS movements that have emerged out of this call are in places like New York,
Toronto, London, San Francisco and other major cities of the Global North , and organized by residents of these areas who
Further, there is a homogeneous notion of
"Palestinians" themselves in the call that does not take into account the
differences of class, gender, and so on among Palestinians. Both of these
points don't make the call any less viable for a transformative political praxis based on solidarity, but they offer
spaces for further examination. Both of the contradictions are strategic for it can certainly be argued
do not face the oppression that Palestinians face.
that voices from the Global North in solidarity with Palestinians could play a huge role in making interventions in
mainstream discourse in the Global North and, furthermore, that it might not make any political sense (at least for now) to
explicitly talk about differences among Palestinians in a solidarity-call that is issued in support of their collective
liberation. It is in the spaces of these contradictions that this call offers the richest points for further exploration of the
in-depth research into the BDS
collectives/groups that are emerging from this call is beyond the scope of
this paper, I discursively utilize the call itself to examine questions of solidarity and transformative political work by
juxtaposing it against selected Marxist and Feminist threads on the same. It is crucial to frame the
paper at this stage by acknowledging the existence of potentially
problematic binaries here in calls for solidarity. However, the crucial
point to derive from this is that solidarity automatically means someone in
solidarity with someone else (first binary), "over and against a third" (second binary) as
Jodi Dean theorizes (Dean, 1996: 3), and the Palestinian BDS call clearly categorizes. These binaries are
important to understand and acknowledge. They cannot be negated if
one is to understand and practice the idea of solidarity. Solidarity
can rarely be realized by hedging. One has to take a stand with the
oppressed, against the oppressor, often running counter to popular cultural
norms, accepted social practices, and hegemonic political structures. It's
not pure, it's never perfect, but it is the hard work of solidarity. Nowhere
socio-spatial politics of solidarity and the possibilities it offers. While
are the imperfections of real-life solidarity work more apparent than in
orthodox Marxist understandings of the same.
Specifically against capitalism, solidarity fails – it’s essentialist
and nationalist
Ananth 14 – writer, activist, and trauma-therapist currently living in Toronto
[Sriram, M.S. in Public Health and Geography from Johns Hopkins University,
completing PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota, “Conceptualizing
solidarity and realizing struggle: testing against the Palestinian call for the boycott of
Israel,” Interface, November 2014, JSTOR, Accessed 7/23/15]//schnall
Nowhere are the imperfections of real-life solidarity work more apparent
than in orthodox Marxist understandings of the same. Class-solidarity, labor, and
proletarian internationalism One of the earliest notions of class-solidarity from an
organizational standpoint came with the first International Workingmen's
Association (IWMA) in 1864, declaring in its General Rules that the need for
solidarity was one of the reasons for the founding of the International. G. M.
Stekloff (also known as Yuri Steklov) was an accomplished historian, journalist, and former high-ranking communist
within the party in the Soviet Union. Writing in 1928 (with likely little foresight that in about 10 years he was going to be
he saw solidarity as the driving force for the
International, stating that "in its intervention in strikes, the International
had two aims: first of all, to prevent the import of foreign strikebreakers,
and secondly, to give direct aid to all the strikers by inaugurating
collections and sending money." (Stekloff, 1928) Marx and Engels end the
Communist Manifesto they published in 1848 with the now famous slogan
"Workers of the World Unite" - a clarion call for class-solidarity many who haven't
killed during the Stalinist purges),
even seen the manifesto are likely to know about and also one that Marx would repeat 16 years later at the end of the
Inherent in this Marxist notion of solidarity is a
fundamental predication on class, and an assumption that workers across
the world share (or will ultimately share) common material conditions/interests
inaugural address to the First International.
(Pasture and Verberckmoes, 1998: 7). This was explicitly promoted by Marx and Engels when confronting forces within
Contrary to the sectarian
organization, with their vagaries and rivalries, the International is a genuine and
militant organization of the proletarian class of all countries, united in
their common struggle against the capitalists and the landowners, against their
the IWMA that were aligned with the more anarchist politics of Bakunin:
class power organized in the state. The International's Rules, therefore, speak of only simple "workers' societies" all aiming
for the same goal and accepting the same program, which presents a general outline of the proletarian movement, while
having its theoretical elaboration to be guided by the needs of the practical struggle and the exchange of ideas in the
sections, unrestrictedly admitting all shades of socialist convictions in their organs and Congresses. (Marx and Engels,
1872: Part IV) Indeed Marx and Bakunin stood on the same side when it came to the primacy of class as the basis for
revolutionary struggle, but differed in their understanding and organizational implementation .
Class-solidarity
as espoused by the IWMA (which was to be the foundation for Marxist political trends from then on)
was thus based on an assumption of commonality of material interests,
interdependence and a larger goal of fighting for better material conditions
for workers worldwide (Baldwin, 1990: 24-25, 33; Johns, 1998: 255). Identity outside of (and
hence difference within) class-struggles was seen as either reactionary or at best
treated from a pragmatic or tactical standpoint. Popular movements based on nationalist
sentiments are one such case-in-point, which were "supported when they assisted the socialist cause or were otherwise
beneficial to it" especially when they removed essential causes for discord between workers of different nationalities
national identity was seen as a form of
difference between workers that could lead to potentially pesky classdivisions, and (like other identities) had to be negotiated with purely on strategic
terms, with the ultimate aim of erasing it. Though class-solidarity is spoken of as a singular type
(Pasture and Verberckmoes, 1998: 3). Thus
of solidarity, one can discern broadly two forms of solidarity in practice. The first is worker-to-worker solidarity in the
same production site. Here the commonality of material conditions is immediately evident, with workers theoretically
sharing largely similar collective interests (despite identity-based differences) with regard to the betterment of their
working conditions and their relationship to the holders of capital in that site (Boswell et al, 2006: 4). This type of
solidarity might also incorporate other identities such as race or gender, but ultimately is based on collective interests as
workers at that site (Penney, 2006: 156-157; Dixon et al, 2004: 23-24; Hodson et al, 1993: 399-402). The second is
proletarian internationalism which assumes, ultimately, a commonality of
interests for workers worldwide and thus a common program for
emancipation resulting in solidarity that saw, for example, non-striking workers in one nation
supporting striking workers in another nation through sending aid and preventing foreign strikebreakers (Stekloff, 1928).
However, the collective material interests among those in solidarity with
each other are not as immediate but more abstract, because they are based
on a narrative of capital expansion, and as a counter to bourgeois
nationalism where "the working class and socialism, and indeed
internationalism, are effectively presented as being synonymous" (Pasture and
Verberckmoes, 1998: 7). This is all the more evident when, as often happens, the immediate
material interests of workers in the same site or region trump long-term
internationalist solidarity or when such solidarity degenerates to a paternalistic "labor philanthropy" of
northern activists which runs afoul of true internationalism (Gill, 2009: 677). A crucial issue to add when
class-solidarity as enacted out organizationally is the fact that "although
they intersect and often coincide, the actors who do battle...and [the] social
classes in a more general sense are, in fact, two different entities" (Baldwin, 1990:
11-12), with often little attention paid by Marxists to the "organizational and
ideological diversity of the labor movement" (Pasture and Verberckmoes, 1998: 7). It is
important to ask in this case when class- solidarity is real, when it is manufactured by actors at the organizational helms,
Shelby speaks of how Black Marxists
found it difficult "to get orthodox Marxists to take the black experience
seriously" and get them "to accept that there can be no interracial workingclass until there is racial justice" (Shelby, 2005: 6-8). A sociological study on two union-drives with
and when it possesses both in varying degrees. Tommie
very similar structural locations and institutional paths had vastly different results, with workers voting overwhelmingly
for the union in one location and overwhelmingly against in the other, primarily because "dynamic interplay between the
conditions of work, past cultural contexts, discourse, and collective action affected the way potential union supporters
understood the meaning of the movement, and whether or not the union made sense as a vehicle of change" (Penney,
2006: 139, 157). Meredith Tax writes historically about alliances between various women (a "united front") in the socialist
movement periodically occurring in the late 1800s and early 1900s who "knew there was a dialectical relationship between
the movement for women's liberation and the labor movement, and refused to give up on either," (Tax, 1980: 13-15) while
Diane Balser argues that "Feminists and working women's organizations need to work with the established labor
movement...at the same time that they need to maintain a parallel, independent women's base that will keep the Feminist
vision clear and will provide the external pressure necessary [emphasis mine] to motivate labor's organizing of
unorganized women" (Balser, 1987: 214-215). While it might seem like the above examples are recreating divisions
between the politics of labor and gender, or labor and race, which are certainly not fixed but rather time/space- specific,
what I wish to point out here is the well-understood issue of difference among workers that a classical Marxist notion of
class-solidarity either fails to account for or only does so with the ultimate idea of subsumption under class struggle. Apart
from socioeconomic difference among workers that labor sociologists have dealt with in great detail, there is another
crucial difference pertaining to class-solidarity, namely space, which has been taken up by labor geographers. Rebecca
Johns in examining class and space writes: Workers may have class interests that they share with workers across
international borders, and spatial interests that divide them. In reality, there is a conflict between these interests that
makes building a truly global movement problematic. The conflict between space and class arises because workers in
capitalism's areas of global development have come to expect a standard of living that accompanies their place in the
spatial structures of uneven development. (1998: 255) What all of the above tells us is
that an assumption of
class-solidarity brings up the question of socioeconomic and spatial difference within the working-class, usually
resulting in the effacement of the same, which has deleterious implications both for workers
solidarity on the shop floor as well as the internationalism of labor
movements. Whether it be upholding xenophobic, and racist attitudes
towards migrant workers or aligning with nationalist sentiment, the failure
to address real difference drastically reduces the possibility for real
solidarity/internationalism and ultimately defeats any movement towards
bettering material conditions for workers. It remains consistent with a
class- based political analysis, to not only understand that the effacement
of difference (which can be done even when difference is acknowledged, but without genuine political
engagement) only ultimately weakens the workers movement, but that,
crucially, "respecting diversity does not mean uniformity or sameness" (hooks,
2000: 58). It stands to reason that, while powerful and important, there are many
failings in such homogenizing projections of class-solidarity. But where
orthodox Marxism (and many other strains of left thought) faltered, transnational feminist thought
valiantly endeavored to advance.
--Census specific
Eliminating the census is the alt
Hancock 13 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at USC
[Ange-Marie, “Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression
Olympics (The Politics of Intersectionality),” Palgrave MacMillan, December 5, 2013,
http://sites.oxy.edu/ron/csp19/2010/BTOO%20Chapter%201.PDF, Accessed
7/22/15]//schnall
Black female athletes endure a
tremendous amount of surveillance and pressure lviii to conform to a
"Black Lady" public imagelix that is simultaneously liberating (from the "nappyheaded hos" stereotype) and constraining (preventing complete autonomy of
personal expression, including its heterosexism). Significantly such athletes experience that pressure from
coaches who are themselves often Black women. Time Dynamics improves Young's original
formulation by acknowledging the accrual of power over time by multiple
centers of power, and Diversity Within recognizes the multiple centers of
power as sites of struggle for the power of self-definition. Whether through
U.S. census categories, discriminatory policies like segregation, detention and
internment, or incentive-driven policies like affirmative action, government
and its agents play a significant role in the access we have to
freedom of identification and equality of opportunity in the United
States. One final example of the relationship among the five prongs of
intersectionality can illuminate the need for all five aspects in American
political discourse. Millennial-generation driven identity
movements like the Multiracial Movement have sought
complete freedom of self-identification in all aspects of their lives.
From the perspective of Categorical Multiplicity and Time Dynamics it is important
to recognize the politically charged practice of "passing" and its
legacy as part of the resistance to the idea of a multiracial identity and its
goals. First, attention to Categorical Multiplicity, Categorical Intersection and
Time Dynamics would draw our attention to the role of gender in this
movement. When the mothers of mixed race children in the United States
were primarily slaves, there was little if any activism to re-classify mixed
race children as "mixed" rather than as the legislatively-mandated "black."
In the 20th century, as greater numbers of White mothers have become involved in
the Multiracial Movement,lx the push for a "mixed," "biracial," or "multiracial"
identity choice has emerged from multiracial citizens and their parents.
This move has garnered resistance from communities of color who
Returning to the example of the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights,
envision the shift as a move to share in the spoils of whiteness, like those who long
ago passed into whiteness. Without a significant commitment to antiracism, it is
difficult if not impossible for the Multiracial Movement to contest this
belief, sparking a closing of ranks to protect allocations of resources tied to
the census, like the 2000 and 2010 "Check the Black box" U.S. census campaigns targeting African Americans,
Afro-Caribbeans, and African immigrants.lxi Far from influencing just the interpersonal identity domain, the
Multiracial Movement has successfully altered the administration of the
U.S. census for all Americans and shifted Census-driven debates over
allocation of resources toward a discourse that accepts their perceived
reality of who they are. My point here is not to challenge multiracial
people's agency to self-identify but to reveal the institutional impact of
their activism. In conjunction with the Time Dynamics element of intersectionality theory, IndividualInstitutional Interactions focuses on the idea that just as history (whether recent or centuries ago) plays a
dynamic role in explaining the status quo, so too do government and
cultural institutions play a shifting role as well in the political chances for
new politics.
Misc aff answers
Strategic essentialism good
Strategic essentialism is good
Phillips, 10 - Professor of Political and Gender Theory at the London School of
Economics (Anne, “What’s wrong with essentialism?”
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/30900/1/What's%20wrong%20with%20essentialism%20(LSER
O).pdf)/jml
Work on feminism and multiculturalism increasingly summons up for
criticism the spectre of cultural essentialism. This runs as a thread through the essays in a
recent collection on Sexual Justice/ Cultural Justice (Arneil et al, 2006). It figures in a ‘mapping of the terrain’ as the
object of an entire school of post-colonial feminism (Shachar, 2007). And though I do not much use (or like) the term, I
have been willing enough to hear my own work on Multiculturalism without Culture described as a critique of cultural
As its deployment in such works confirms, essentialism is thought
to be a bad thing. We do not, on the whole, say, ‘that position is essentialist and that’s why I like it’; or, ‘I have
some sympathy with your argument, but find it insufficiently essentialist’. As Ian Hacking (1999:17) puts it, ‘ most
people who use (essentialism) use it as a slur word, intending to put down
the opposition’. Yet it is also commonly argued that we cannot avoid at least some kind of
essentialism: that it is a politically necessary shorthand ; or even, in some
arguments, a psychologically inevitable feature of the way human beings think.
essentialism.
Diana Fuss (1989) has argued that the essentialism/ constructionism binary blocks innovative thinking, providing people
with too easy a basis for unreflective dismissal. Gayatri Spivak (1988) famously wrote of a strategic essentialism that could
invoke a collective category – like the subaltern or women – while simultaneously criticising the category as theoretically
unviable. Though she subsequently distanced herself from what she saw as misuses of the notion of strategic essentialism,
the idea that we may have to ‘take the risk of essence’ in order to have any
political purchase remains an important theme in feminist theory and politics. From a
different direction, it is sometimes said that while essentialist constructs are, in a sense, category mistakes – drawing the
boundaries between peoples or things in the wrong place -
there is not much point rubbishing
them as analytically wrong, because once in existence, they become part of our social reality.
Anthropologist Gerd Baumann simultaneously criticises and accommodates an ‘ethnic reductionism’ that divided the
population he was studying in Southall, London, into five religio-ethnic groups: Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, African
Caribbeans, and whites. The categorisation was, he argues, seriously misleading, privileging one kind of group identity
over others that were more important, and obscuring the dynamic ways in which group boundaries are drawn and
redrawn. For many of his older interviewees, it was a particular region of the Indian sub-continent (the Punjab, Gujarat,
Bengal), or particular island of the Caribbean, that provided the key terms of self and other identification; for some of the
younger ones, a new ‘Asian’ identity was being forged that cut across distinctions between Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. The
static five-way categorisation - widely employed by local politicians and policy makers, but also by the communities it was
describing - reduced or denied this complexity. It mis-represented culture as ‘an imprisoning cocoon or a determining
force’ (Baumann, 1996:1), encouraged potentially racist stereotypes, and significantly underplayed the multiple and
imaginative ways in which people negotiate their cultural identities. For all his criticism, however, Baumann does not
Once they have
entered into people’s self-definitions, they assume a life of their own.i Some
psychologists, meanwhile, have suggested that essentialist thinking might just be part of the
human condition, meaning that part of the way human beings process complex information is to seek out a
consider it appropriate simply to dismiss ‘folk reifications’ as falsely essentialised constructs.
deeper property – what we might then term an essence –linking the things that look alike. If we conceptualise racist
thinking, for example, as the presumption that visible differences of skin colour or physiognomy indicate something
significant about other characteristics like intelligence or temperament, then maybe part of what sustains racist thinking is
an innate tendency within the way we process information. Drawing on studies of pre-school children in Europe and the
US, Lawrence Hirschfeld (1996) notes that children as young as four understand racial types in terms of an underlying
essence, attributing differences in skin colour to something heritable and fixed at birth, while seeing differences in body
shape or occupation as more susceptible to change.ii Though stressing that the use of race markers as a basis for dividing
people up into different kinds may be specific to particular epochs and societies, he suggests that the tendency to create
‘human kinds’, and attribute to at least some of these a ‘nonobvious commonality that all members of the kind share’
He is not saying it is impossible
to eradicate notions of race from our mental repertoires, but he makes the
plausible point that telling children race is unimportant (as in the advice that ‘we are all
the same inside’) will not be the most effective strategy if it fails to accord with a
deeply rooted tendency to think in terms of essentially differentiated
groups. The particular features we employ to identify groups will be shaped by history; but the process of identifying a
group by some presumed essence may not be so. Even setting aside the still contested terrain of conceptual systems, it is
clear that theoretical analysis depends on at least some process of
abstraction. This typically involves separating out something deemed core from other things deemed peripheral, so
(p196) (an essence, in other words) is built into our conceptual system.
appears almost by definition to involve claims about accident and essence. Sociologists from the days of Max Weber have
Analytic philosophers
characteristically develop their arguments by stripping away misleading
‘contingencies’ in order to identify essential points. If we take essentialism
to mean the process of differentiating something deemed essential from
other things regarded as contingent, this can appear as a relatively
uncontroversial description of the very process of thought.
been encouraged to hone their analytical tools through the construction of ideal types.
at: dng
Deleuzean resistance fails – the BwO is opposed to binaries and
retrenches the logic they criticize
Mann, 95 - Professor of English at Pomona (Paul, “Stupid Undergrounds,”
PostModern Culture 5:3, Project MUSE)//jml
Intellectual economics guarantees that even the most powerful and challenging work cannot protect itself from the order
Becoming-fashion, becoming-commodity, becoming-ruin. Such instant,
indeed retroactive ruins, are the virtual landscape of the stupid underground. The exits and lines of flight
pursued by Deleuze and Guattari are being shut down and rerouted by the
very people who would take them most seriously. By now, any given work from
the stupid underground's critical apparatus is liable to be tricked out with
smooth spaces, war-machines, n - 1s, planes of consistency, plateaus and
deterritorializations, strewn about like tattoos on the stupid body without
organs. The nomad is already succumbing to the rousseauism and
orientalism that were always invested in his figure; whatever Deleuze and Guattari
intended for him, he is reduced to being a romantic outlaw, to a position opposite
the State, in the sort of dialectical operation Deleuze most
despised . And the rhizome is becoming just another stupid
subterranean figure . It is perhaps true that Deleuze and Guattari did not adequately protect their
of fashion.
thought from this dialectical reconfiguration (one is reminded of Breton's indictment against Rimbaud for not having
prevented, in advance, Claudel's recuperation of him as a proper Catholic), but no vigilance would have sufficed in any
The work of Deleuze and Guattari is evidence that, in real time, virtual
models and maps close off the very exits they indicate. The problem is in
part that rhizomes, lines of flight, smooth spaces, BwOs, etc., are at one
and the same time theoretical-political devices of the highest critical order
and merely fantasmatic, delirious, narcissistic models for writing, and thus
perhaps an instance of the all-too-proper blurring of the distinction
between criticism and fantasy. In Deleuze-speak, the stupid underground would be mapped not as a
case.
margin surrounding a fixed point, not as a fixed site determined strictly by its relation or opposition to some more or less
hegemonic formation, but as an intensive, n-dimensional intersection of rhizomatic plateaus.
Nomadology and
rhizomatics conceive such a "space" (if one only had the proverbial nickel for every time that word is
used as a critical metaphor, without the slightest reflection on what might be involved in rendering the conceptual in
as a liquid, colloidal suspension, often retrievable by one or another techno-metaphorical zoning
(e.g., "cyberspace"). What is at stake, however, is not only the topological
verisimilitude of the model but the fantastic possibility of nonlinear
passage, of multiple simultaneous accesses and exits, of infinite fractal
lines occupying finite social space. In the strictest sense, stupid philosophy. Nomad thought is
spatial terms)
prosthetic, the experience of virtual exhilaration in modalities already mapped and dominated by nomad, rhizomatic
capital (the political philosophy of the stupid underground: capital is more radical than any of its critiques, but one can
It is this very fantasy, this very narcissistic wish to see
oneself projected past the frontier into new spaces, that abandons one to
this economy, that seals these spaces within an order of critical fantasy that has long since been overdeveloped,
always pretend otherwise).
To pursue nomadology or rhizomatics as
such is already to have lost the game. Nothing is more crucial to
philosophy than escaping the dialectic and no project is more hopeless; the
stupid-critical underground is the curved space in which this opposition
turns back on itself.
entirely reterritorialized in advance.
Deleuze’s philosophy ignores suffering and makes us inactive—
only the aff can activate agency
Hallward, 6 – Professor in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy
at Middlesex University, London (Peter, “Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy
of Creation”, p. 161-162)
Now Deleuze understands perfectly well why ‘most of the objections raised against the great philosophers are empty’.
Indignant readers say to them: ‘things are not like that […]. But, in fact, it is not a matter of knowing whether things are
like that or not; it is a matter of knowing whether the question which presents things in such a light is good or not,
rigorous or not’ (ES, 106). Rather than test its accuracy according to the criteria of representation, ‘the genius of a
philosophy must first be measured by the new distribution which it imposes on beings and concepts’ (LS, 6). In reality
then, Deleuze concludes, ‘only one kind of objection is worthwhile: the objection which shows that the question raised by a
Deleuze
certainly forces the nature of things into conformity with his own question.
Just as certainly however, his question inhibits any consequential
engagement with the constraints of our actual world. For readers who remain concerned
philosopher is not a good question’, that it ‘does not force the nature of things enough’ (ES, 107; cC WP, 82).
with these constraints and their consequences, Deleuze’s question is not the best available question. Rather than try to
refute Deleuze, this book has tried to show how his system works and to draw attention to what should now he the obvious
limitations of this philosophy of unlimited affirmation. First
of all, since it acknowledges only a unilateral relation between virtual and
actual, there is no place in Deleuze’s philosophy for any notion of change,
time or history that is mediated by actuality In the end, Deleuze offers few resources for
(and perfectly explicit)
thinking the consequences of what happens within the actually existing world as such. Unlike Darwin or Marx, for
Deleuze’s ‘constructivism’ does not allow him
to account for cumulative transformation or novelty in terms of actual
materials and tendencies. No doubt few contemporary philosophers have had as an acute a sense of the
instance, the adamantly virtual orientation of
internal dynamic of capitalism — but equally, few have proposed so elusive a response as the virtual ‘war machine’ that
roams through the pages of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Like the nomads who invented it, this abstract machine
operates at an ‘absolute speed, by being “synonymous with speed”’, as the incarnation of ‘a pure and immeasurable
multiplicity; an irruption of the ephemeral and of the power of metamorphosis’ (TP, 336, 352). Like any creating, a war
By posing the question of
politics in the starkly dualistic terms of war machine or state — by posing
it, in the end, in the apocalyptic terms of a new people and a new earth or
else no people and no earth — the political aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy
amounts to little more than utopian distraction . Although no small number of
enthusiasts continue to devote much energy and ingenuity to the task, the truth is that Deleuze’s work is
essentially indifferent to the politics of this world. A philosophy based on
deterritorialisation, dissipation and flight can offer only the most
immaterial and evanescent grip on the mechanisms of exploitation and
domination that continue to condition so much of what happens in our
machine consists and ‘exists only in its own metamorphoses’ (T~ 360).
world. Deleuze’s philosophical war remains ‘absolute’ and ‘abstract’, precisely, rather than directed or ‘waged’
[menee]. Once ‘a social field is defined less by its conflicts and contradictions than by the lines of flight running through
any distinctive space for political action can only be subsumed within the
more general dynamics of creation or life. And since these dynamics are themselves antiit’,
dialectical if not anti-relational, there can be little room in Deleuze’s philosophy for relations of conflict or solidarity, i.e.
relations that are genuinely between rather than external to individuals, classes, or principles.