Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
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 didnt want to double up and
put cards in multiple places, so if you wanna read something short against a
K aff, thats the place to look.
***Negative***
1NCs
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
I am discussing does not 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 changing15 nature of identity as the basis for an argument
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 questions about whether
that individuals need to take control of that identity themselves. Nonetheless,
This kind of politics then challenges the notions of safe space often prevalent in many activist circles in the United States. The concept of
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
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 nonoppressively, 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 covered include: disability, anti-Black
from thinking 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 subscription or support for good causes from Oxfam to
approach to 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
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 in-itself. 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 are an expression or voice, in Marxs words, of the
private and individualised, they are about us as individuals and our ethical choices; 3)
heart in a heartless world or the soul of a soulless condition. The practice of doing politics as a form 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 want to illustrate
religiosity is a highly conservative one. As Marx argued, religion was the opium of the people -
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 anti-globalisation protests, the huge march to Make Poverty History at the end of 2005,
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
involvement in the World Social Forums or the radical jihad of Al-Qaeda. I disagree;
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 is illustrated by the
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
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
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
acting as part of a collective association, for winning an argument or for success at the ballot-box.
may seem, the only people who are keener on global ethics than radical activists are 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 policymaking, 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 UKs 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
Britains 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 valuebased interventions from Bosnia to Iraq (see Blairs recent Foreign Affairs article, A Battle for Global
Values, 86:1 (2007), pp.7990). 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
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 Realisms 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 problemsolving while the task for critical theorists is to focus on emancipatory alternative forms of living or of
long way from Hedley Bulls (1995) perspective that, for academic research to be truly radical, we had to
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
put our values to the side to follow where the question or inquiry might lead.
students which theoretical 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 radical
or the act in itself: its connection 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 of our
the less we engage with our peers and colleagues at the level of political or intellectual debate and
organisation.
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 power to make and sustain the line of consequential
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 most
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 Individualappropriate 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 Returning to the example of the Rutgers University Scarlet
heterosexism). Significantly such athletes experience that pressure from coaches who are themselves
1NC Modules
If, taken together, the two passages from Foucault we have been considering 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 post-epistemological 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?
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
identitys desire (ibid: 55); thatis, the problem of wounded attachments whereby
a claim to identity becomes over-invested in its own historical suffering
and perpetuates its injury through its refusal to give up its identity claim.
Browns 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. In such cases, group activity operates to maintain
and reproduce the identity created by injury (exclusion) rather than and indeed, often in
opposition to resolving the injurious 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 the future. 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
and as a reproach to the present which embodies that history (ibid 1995: 73). Browns suggestion 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
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, Browns 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 Browns argument as outlined is problematic. First, following Kilby
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
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, Sethes 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
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 (2004: 33). We would add that the
thereby, disallow-ing the possibility of a future different from that past. As Sarah Ahmed argues in her response to Brown,
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 Ds acceptance of Sethes 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 ones 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 Browns
critique of identity poli-tics emerge from what we regard as her tendency to individualise social problems as problems that are the possession
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
Academes
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 read as an
eliciting pain stories from com- munities that are not White, not wealthy, and not straight.
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
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 from the
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,
Hookss
words resonate with our observation of how much of social science
research is concerned with providing recognition to the presumed
authority. I am still colonizer the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk. (p. 343)
recognition that is rooted in naming pain have been critiqued by recent decolonizing and feminist scholars (Hartman,
well-to-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
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
slaves person (p. 55). Furthermore, Hartman describes how slave-as-victim as human accordingly establishes
person only when seen as criminal or a violated body in need of limited forms of protection (p. 55).
slave-as-agent as criminal. Applying Hartmans 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
(see also Gould, 1981; Selden, 1999; Tuck & Guishard, forthcoming). Wolfe (1999) has explored how the contoured logic of
settler colonialism (p. 5) can be mapped onto the microactivities of anthropology; Guthrie (1976) traces the roots of
afforded the founding of the Unites States has been reduced to an unfortunate byproduct of the birthing of a new and
their operations from settler colonial logic, and it is this drive, a kind of unquestioning push forward, and not the origins of
statements regarding the objectives or purposes of a particular project, such protocols do not prompt reflection upon the
The rationale
for conducting social science research that collects pain narratives
seems to be self-evident for many scholars, but when looked at more
closely, the rationales may be unconsidered, and some- what flimsy .
underlying beliefs about knowledge and change that too often go unexplored or unacknowledged.
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?
significance of real and representational sovereignty in her analysis and theorizing of refusal. The
particularities of Kahnawake sovereignty throb at the center of each of the three dimensions of refusal
researcher is, who the researched are, and how the historical/ representational context for research
consider using strategies of social sci- ence research to further expose the complicity of social science
(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 affirmatives 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
for their character to be believable. 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 lack of
same time, the reader can rejoice in the inevitable return to the comfort of bourgeois norms, despite the onus that these
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 desire is premised on the
norms place on its beneficiaries as well as those excluded from the benefits of bourgeois identity. 14
denigration of disability, it will of course be invisible to the normate15 readers who prefer the kindly notion of cure to the
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
foundational model on which to argue the origin and theory of the novel. As a foundational origin, I can then say that all
other identitiesclass, race, gender, sexual preferenceshould 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 observations. First, I clearly have not
truly that the existence of another identity dilutes the 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
most active in identity politics.
Impacts
Anti-solidarity
Identity-based politics cannot produce change regresses into
anti-solidarity through purism and apathy refusing
complexity is reductionist
necessary to pursue deep political solidarity. Second, I've also mentioned in passing throughout the
Returning to "The Matrix," recall that Morpheus' 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
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_journal_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 to recognize it via
B. Identity's Burdens Still, because
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
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-problem-with-privilege2013.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
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
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 nonoppressively, 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 covered include: disability, anti-Black
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 selfimprovement. 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_journal_law_policy) //AD
Stated crudely, political
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 Constructed
recognition lends the authority of the state to those who police identity. According to Brown: While the
effort to replace liberalisms abstract formulation of equality with legal recognition of injurious social
stratifications is understandable, what such arguments do not query is whether legal protection
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, Harpers
Magazine, September 1993, http://harpers.org/archive/1993/09/the-left-lostin-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
rights attacks are disingenuous. For example, we hear much from the right about the
dangerous politicization of English and womens studies, but no
complaint when it comes to economics or business. But this shouldnt obscure
The continuing dispute over political correctness in the academy is, in significant part,
a troubling irony: the right, traditionally the custodian of the privileges of the few, now speaks in an
apparently general language of merit, reason, individual rights, and virtue that transcends politics,
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 1970smaking womens history and literature
legitimate, bolstering labor studies, rethinking slavery and the slaughter of the Indians, opening up the
most of todays
young academics had no political experience in mass movements for
general change and, for that matter, no contact with a successful
left-of-center Democratic Party. For them, fighting over appropriate language, symbolic
canon to hitherto silenced traditions. But unlike this generation of professors,
representation (whether in the syllabus, curriculum, or faculty), affirmative action, or even musical styles is
an end in itself, the principal way of claiming their politics. These p ost-Sixties
radicals found
universalism empty orworsea cover for white, straight, male
power. The intensification of identity politics is inseparable from a
fragmentation of what I will call commonality politicsa frame of
understanding that acknowledges difference but sees it against
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 196465. 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 pioneers of womens liberation rose
for a while by the 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 commonalityespecially 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.
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.
with respect to the sort of universalist rhetoric that can still stir the general public.
Today, here and there on the left, one hears a half-whispered 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, and
educational erosion. Ronald Reagans genius lay in his ability to demarcate common ground on the right.
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, cultural insecurity, and ethnic,
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 selfesteem. On a broader front, ambitious politicians demagogically dismantle the antidiscrimination mechanisms 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
with it. Contrary to the claims of neo- conservatives 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 whiteness, a politics based solely on
identity. Conversely,
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 second- and third-generation Asian American women united in their
commitment to help empower Asian immigrant women working in the electronics, hotel, and gar- ment
industries. AIWAs 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 gender 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 hotels 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 groups
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 centrality of
ethnic groups in 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
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
violence and white domination in ways quite different from the experiences of either white women or black
the obscenity prosecution of the music group 2 Live Crew and to the Senate's treatment of Anita Hill during
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
Chicana lesbians, and male bikers. They may also expose and perhaps solidify the self-affirmations of other
recognizing
intersectionality threatens to complicate identity politics with a
proliferation of new , and old, identity groupings .
intersectional groups, such as "white men" or "married women." 26 At a minimum,
Oppression Olympics
Oppression Olympics entrench injustice and discrimination
only intersectionality can break the trend
championship. That Scarlet Knights team included eight women of color and two white women.
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
Black Women and the National Council of Negro Women to demand termination of Imus' radio show.
million contract settlement and a 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
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
Categorical Multiplicity is a long-standing part of intersectionality research - but
to these prongs in the case study chapters to 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
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 AfricanAmerican women on the Rutgers team aren't Black on MondayWednesday-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
and Defiant Ignorance. From a 21st century political perspective, so too does
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 communityvii By acknowledging the role of Categorical Multiplicity,
post-colonial feminists who add the importance of North-South identity as a politically relevant category of
gradually put issues of intersectionality more centrally on their 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 Illusion of
Destiny (2006) recognizes the role of multiple identities in civil wars and contexts of ethnic violence.xii
Categorical Intersection: The Central Metaphor of Intersectionality I've mentioned twice that
recognizing this "tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and
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 all people.xxi Figure 1 displays the
original metaphor, herein called "Content
approach (others have said similar things about gender). 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
justice- oriented analytical tool. If we are committed to that part of our pledge of
allegiance to the flag that says, "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
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
"welfare queens" - a fabricated image. The successful push for the
Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 was countered by
- we must also attend to Movement Backlash, another aspect of the Oppression Olympics.
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 affs impacts
inevitable
from thinking 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 subscription or support for good causes from Oxfam to
approach to 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
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 in-itself. 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 are an expression or voice, in Marxs words, of the
private and individualised, they are about us as individuals and our ethical choices; 3)
heart in a heartless world or the soul of a soulless condition. The practice of doing politics as a form 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 want to illustrate
religiosity is a highly conservative one. As Marx argued, religion was the opium of the people -
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 anti-globalisation protests, the huge march to Make Poverty History at the end of 2005,
these new
forms of protest are highly individualised and personal ones - there
involvement in the World Social Forums or the radical jihad of Al-Qaeda. I disagree;
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
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
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
acting as part of a collective association, for winning an argument or for success at the ballot-box.
may seem, the only people who are keener on global ethics than radical activists are 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 policymaking, 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 UKs 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
Britains 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 valuebased interventions from Bosnia to Iraq (see Blairs recent Foreign Affairs article, A Battle for Global
Values, 86:1 (2007), pp.7990). 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
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 Realisms 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 problemsolving while the task for critical theorists is to focus on emancipatory alternative forms of living or of
long way from Hedley Bulls (1995) perspective that, for academic research to be truly radical, we had to
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
put our values to the side to follow where the question or inquiry might lead.
students which theoretical 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 radical
or the act in itself: its connection 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 of our
the less we engage with our peers and colleagues at the level of political or intellectual debate and
organisation.
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 who they were, instead of allowing Imus and his
This question has emerged over the past 20 years not simply in response to women of color charging
second-wave feminists with racism, but among conservative, independent, and moderate women who
We
can't always spin our wheels, Young concludes, searching for what we have
state that the feminist movement doesn't speak for them. So it's more than an idle question.xxxix
individuals with 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
(and return to daily life as an individual commuter) or they may choose to remain together as a nonpolitical entity (socially saying hello, playing card games on the bus during the ride) or as a formally
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 veer "off-road" in order to
organized political entity (forming a Straphangers Campaign or Bus Riders Union).xlvi Again
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.
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 doctrinethat
only members of a particular group possess the ability to undertake
research of their groupis "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
researchers, which, in turn, has generated discussion among scholars. Specifically,
shortcoming of this exclusiveness is that it leads to fragmentation, for groups necessarily contain
understand black women, and so through the various combinations of status subsets.7 The issue of insider
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 overrapport." 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 assumptions about social behavior and the blindness
to common, everyday activities; these are hazards of intimate familiarity."10 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
research validity has also garnered much discussion among scholars.
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
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
is prompted to raise questions for inquiry less apt to be raised at all by Insiders."12
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 trust and credibility necessary for gaining access
his or her participants.17 These researchers reached the same conclusion set out by Merton many years
ago: "We
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 challenged as falsely universalistic.
There is
exemplify: some 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 women
should take no position on clitoridectomy in Africa or the Middle East.
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
I am discussing does not 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 changing15 nature of identity as the basis for an argument
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 questions about whether
identity in this sense really exists. This highlights another aspect of
that individuals need to take control of that identity themselves. Nonetheless,
as the basis for human interaction, there is an attempt to alter radically the very vocabulary we use in describing and
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
violence, welfare dependency, bad housing, inadequate schools, and crumbling infrastructures,
selfishness, laziness, and lack of maturity or individual perseverance. By 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
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 and the successes
is so one-sided that it reinforces the myth that social safety nets simply weaken character, and
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
it reinforces rather
than ruptures those racially oppressive trends in American society
that disfigure the possibility of racial justice, democratic politics,
and responsible citizenship.
translating how the private and public mutually inform each other; consequently,
Alternative
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 most
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 Individualappropriate 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 Returning to the example of the Rutgers University Scarlet
heterosexism). Significantly such athletes experience that pressure from coaches who are themselves
Solidarity alt
Our alternative is solidarity internalization of affect is key to
break down the us/them dichotomy
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
unlike calls for workers-solidarity and proletarian internationalism where workers are asked to stand in
pluralism, the ever present potential for exclusion, the demands of accountability, and the importance of
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,
critique" through ties that are "communicative and open" (Ibid.: 21-30).
2004: 415, 422-426). Sandra Bartky pointedly asks whether there is some "special affective repertoire
necessary for the building of solidarities across lines of race and class that is not necessary when these
ahistorical universalism" (Mohanty, 2003: 117). This also shows how the notion of internationalism is not
just a Marxist deployment, but a feminist one as well, albeit in very different ways.
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.
international community "in the spirit of international 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" within the Occupied Territories of West Bank and
numerous Palestine-solidarity movements, primarily in the Global North, to implement campaigns that
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 sanction Israel until the oppression ends with the implementation of
continued support for Israel, resulting in the ongoing oppression of Palestinians.
their three demands. This includes a specific invitation to "conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the
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,
does not take into account the differences of class, gender, and so on among Palestinians. Both of
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
--Solves cap
Solidarity overcomes capitalism
attached romanticism to the idea of solidarity that is rarely realized in actual struggle. Many have explored
forms of struggle . 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
fundamental, albeit in very different ways, to both Marxist and feminist 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 examine)
has been an emphasis on identity and difference. However, despite the widespread implications and
specific discussions surrounding solidarity in conversation with each other, along with a few others that
provide some helpful additions. The selections of these texts have been made keeping in mind two things.
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
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).
pertinence for the specific case study on the Palestinian BDS call, since
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
greater attention to time-based contingencies in race and sexual orientation categories: "Put another way,
Generation, who tend to overestimate the importance of history,xxxiii holding on 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
Tranversalism alt
Their identity politics necessitates exclusionary essentialism
that forecloses the search for truth the alternative is a
transversal politics of intersectional dialogue
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 necessarily implied in either of the other two: Alison Assiters (1996,
2000) notion of epistemic
at: Permutation
The permutation is just adding on that doesnt access the
thesis behind intersectionality
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 weve 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 Collinss 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 less credible than those who
dominant group is essential. (1990, 236-37) And in her comment on Hekmans article on standpoint
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
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 Collinss 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
Flax (1990), who rejected any notion of objectivity and truth. Despite their differences, they
in which perception and knowledge production are socially organized have been seen as mediating and
what one believes is the worst conceivable social positioning, two problems remain. First, as Collins rightly
comments (in the second quote above),
peoples stories is important. But if it is to have any value, besides satisfying peoples desire to be heard,
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 doesnt get us very far in deciding how to judge that action and whether to allow it or
not.
are appealing to abstract considerations and invoking a general argument that is in principle available to
well be true that women are best placed to define and recognize sexism, and that non-white people are
that no intersectionalist 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
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 peoples
of racism are believed without evidence because it is a person of colour making the accusation.
stories, we cannot stop there, for on their own, peoples stories tell us nothing about what we ought to do,
as harmful at all. On this logic, we couldnt have a rule that punished breaking someones leg more
severely than pinching someones arm, because there may be some people who find arm-pinching as
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. Its not obvious to me why speaking for others is inherently oppressive.
Perhaps it would be better if all people could clearly and accurately express their views and experiences.
For some
especially weak and vulnerable people, it may be physically
impossible for them to speak for themselves . And crucially, its inevitable that
But some people are always going to be more skilled at doing that than others.
some people are going to be better than others at highlighting the relevant connections between different
stories, at drawing out the general features of peoples experiences that will enable us to construct our
principles and guide our action. While one person may well have the best understanding of her own
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 CoDirector 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 considering 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 post-epistemological 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?
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
identitys desire (ibid: 55); thatis, the problem of wounded attachments whereby
a claim to identity becomes over-invested in its own historical suffering
and perpetuates its injury through its refusal to give up its identity claim.
Browns 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. In such cases, group activity operates to maintain
and reproduce the identity created by injury (exclusion) rather than and indeed, often in
opposition to resolving the injurious 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 the future. 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
and as a reproach to the present which embodies that history (ibid 1995: 73). Browns suggestion 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
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, Browns 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 Browns argument as outlined is problematic. First, following Kilby
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
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, Sethes 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
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 (2004: 33). We would add that the
thereby, disallow-ing the possibility of a future different from that past. As Sarah Ahmed argues in her response to Brown,
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 Ds acceptance of Sethes 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 ones 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 Browns
critique of identity poli-tics emerge from what we regard as her tendency to individualise social problems as problems that are the possession
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
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
Academes
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 read as an
eliciting pain stories from com- munities that are not White, not wealthy, and not straight.
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
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 from the
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,
Hookss
words resonate with our observation of how much of social science
research is concerned with providing recognition to the presumed
authority. I am still colonizer the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk. (p. 343)
recognition that is rooted in naming pain have been critiqued by recent decolonizing and feminist scholars (Hartman,
well-to-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
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
slaves person (p. 55). Furthermore, Hartman describes how slave-as-victim as human accordingly establishes
person only when seen as criminal or a violated body in need of limited forms of protection (p. 55).
slave-as-agent as criminal. Applying Hartmans 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
(see also Gould, 1981; Selden, 1999; Tuck & Guishard, forthcoming). Wolfe (1999) has explored how the contoured logic of
settler colonialism (p. 5) can be mapped onto the microactivities of anthropology; Guthrie (1976) traces the roots of
afforded the founding of the Unites States has been reduced to an unfortunate byproduct of the birthing of a new and
their operations from settler colonial logic, and it is this drive, a kind of unquestioning push forward, and not the origins of
statements regarding the objectives or purposes of a particular project, such protocols do not prompt reflection upon the
The rationale
for conducting social science research that collects pain narratives
seems to be self-evident for many scholars, but when looked at more
closely, the rationales may be unconsidered, and some- what flimsy .
underlying beliefs about knowledge and change that too often go unexplored or unacknowledged.
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?
significance of real and representational sovereignty in her analysis and theorizing of refusal. The
particularities of Kahnawake sovereignty throb at the center of each of the three dimensions of refusal
researcher is, who the researched are, and how the historical/ representational context for research
consider using strategies of social sci- ence research to further expose the complicity of social science
(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.
pain. One might ask what is meant by 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 governmental funders, and all
when we say that there are some forms of knowledge that the academy does not deserve, it is because
freedom and primacy depend on the accessibility of millions of megabytes of data; no matter that the data
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
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
moments, turns of phrase, pauses, that would humiliate participants to share, or are too sensationalist to
publish. Novice researchers in doctoral and masters programs are often encouraged to do research on
of easy access to communities that have so far largely eluded researchers. Doctoral programs,
dissertations, and the masters thesis process tacitly encourage novice researchers to reach for lowhanging fruit. These are stories and data that require little effortand 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 publish, just produce; research in the
fingernails; and we carry the proof of our survivance (Vizenor, 2008) in our photo boxes, our calluses, our
These stories, too, are not always ours to give away, though
It needs to be said that we are not arguing
for silence. Stories are meant to be passed along appropriately,
wombs, our dreams.
especially among loved ones, but not all of them as social science research. 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,
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
2011). Lomawaima and McCarty (2006) describe the safety zone as ways in which
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
some narratives
die a little when contained within the metanarrative of social
science. Richardson (2011) theorizes Gerald Vizenors concept of trickster knowledge and the play of
the Indigenous curriculum to a supplement to a standard curriculum. Moreover,
shadows to articulate a shadow curriculum that exceeds the material objects of referencewhere 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 Richardsons analysis of
Vizenors work, beneath the intent gaze of the social scientific lens, shadow stories lose their silences, their
play of meaning.
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,
of social science theories (Vizenor, 1993, p. 8). Said another way,
[H]istory is what hurts. It is what 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 horizon of progress .
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 possibilitie s, 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. Jamesons observation also 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
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
the same time, analysing identity in terms of habitus allows us to give some relatively stable content to
it
allows for processes of construction and change, because the
habitus can be altered in response to different factors, including the
individuals 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 identity as a
the concept of identity, because the habitus tends to endure and to reproduce ideas and behaviour. Yet
basis for exploring and questioning the identity-related issues raised in the recent literature.
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 Bourdieus 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
sense20 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 the habitus are particularly difficult to discover, as
Is self-knowledge, and self-creation, of identity possible?
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 is not a simple
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 Bourdieus 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
central to much of the recent literature, of the autonomous individual, consciously gaining knowledge of
determination of an autonomous individual. At the same time, doxa shapes and constrains individuals
ideas about possible identities and the appropriateness or otherwise of creating new identities for
the idea, central to much of the recent literature, of the autonomous, knowing individual, who has
Self-knowledge and
self-creation of identity, if possible at all, have a much more limited
scope of operation than the recent scholarship assumes.
knowledge of his/her identity and the means to control its development.
self-knowledge. While this body of work suggests that self-knowledge is necessary both to remain faithful
I
have challenged this by interrogating the concept of identity;
questioning the possibilities for self-knowledge and self-creation 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
to ones identity and to engage in the acts of self-creation which constitute the exercise of autonomy,
mean that recent attempts to bridge the gap between autonomy and identity, or, 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
the concept of identity, and the 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
identity is of
central importance in the lives of individuals. And while true selfknowledge 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
to account for the difficulties associated with self-knowledge and self-creation. Yet
answer to this question above, in that I argue that identity can be usefully reconceived along the lines of
remains. The relevant scholarship seeks to bridge the gap between autonomy- and identity-based
accounts of human rights by arguing that self-knowledge opens up the possibilities for self-creation, a
proposition I have questioned above. But what if the link between self-knowledge and self-creation is more
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 self-creation 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 liberalcommunitarian 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
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 power to make and sustain the line of consequential
Cant refute it
We should not be forced to refute the content of their personal
experience because its impossible for us to do so people are
victimized, the core question is what do we do?
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
Commodification
The claim that oppression should be the basis for winning a
debate round commodifies the ballot the round devolves into
oppression olympics
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
of conflict where the stakes are much higher.
exposes the operation of guilt in the misunderstanding that often divides Western feminists from women in
The condition of victimhood does not absolve one of moral responsibility. I will return to this point
by racism and colonization. Nietzsche describes ressentiment as the overwhelming sentiment of slave
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 In its contemporary manifestation, Wendy
suffering by constituting sovereign subjects and events as responsible for the injury of social
useful for understanding why an ethics of absolute responsibility to the other appeals to the victimized.
Brown remarks that, for Nietzsche, the source of
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
Discursive militarism
Tying pedagogy to our identities reinforces discursive
militarism
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 responsibility.
point, critique has to turn into a positive program that those 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 the viewpoint of conservatives, liberals, and others with whom we work,
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 doesnt allow coalitions
what it is like to live as a 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 any of us have of our own conditions or
experience is
unique 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
argument against a private language (Wittgenstein, 1963, perhaps more straightforwardly presented in
the heterosexual world--that her studies conform to previous works and describe lesbian reality in terms of
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
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
standpoint, can quote this conclusion with apparent approval (Biddulph, 1996).
will depend among other things on the extent 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
The
argument which excludes the outsider from understanding a
community through the effort of their own research, a fortiori excludes the outsider from that
that same experience as mediated through the research of someone from that community?
understanding through the secondary source in the form of the effort of an insider researcher or indeed
(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 further proposition that they
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
ought not therefore attempt to research that community. I hope to have shown that
shown that in so doing they would cause some harm. This is indeed part of the argument emerging from
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 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 movement, and
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
selfdetermination are conspicuously absent' (Charlton, 1998 p. 27).
that is located in a positivist 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
qualification. 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 damaging and
worlds in the UK, USA or Australasia. Contemporary research literature abounds with critiques of positivism
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'a 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 about pupils in schools, for example, or children currently excluded from
educationwill 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 numberat 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 appealto 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 givingof being in thrall to the giver, of being in his or her debtbut on the whole anyone contributing
to an educational research project would be naoEve 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 dependencyand 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
dierences. 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. 1516) 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
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
usually unacknowledged stances of researchers who navigate and camouflage theory through the richness of ``native voices''' Fine, 1994, p.22).
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 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 might
reporting back to people and sharing in 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 one-off 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. 1516).
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
Instead of a one-way process where researchers extract data from `subjects', Educational
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 socalled 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
accused-now 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
the ways language is used to construct and reproduce asymmetries of power.
analyses of how history and social standing, privilege, and subordination are involved in personal behavior
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
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 s trong 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, African-American 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
ones identity when autobiographical narrative wins, it
subverts its own radical intentions
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 .
characterization of autobiography as a "contract" reminds us that
n200 Certainly, publication of a best seller may transform its author's life, with the resulting commercial success and
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
academic renown. n201 As one critic of autobiography puts it, "failures do not get published." n202
Alternatives
acknowledge the [End Page 151] 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
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
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
fty 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
Naipaul and Samuel Huntington, who reinforce such misrepresentation.
simplifications is, however, virtually impossible, since both those opposed to Islam and those invoking it
adhere to such labels. Moreover, as much of this literature shows ,
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.
reinforcing stereotypes, both advocate greater discussion between communities.
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,
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 AfroCaribbeans 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
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
or rural, with few resources, especially to combat the intense racism they faced in this country.
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 and large', the journalist Yasmin Alibhai Brown acknowledges, 'the lowest
achieving communities in this country are Muslim. 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 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
Islamophobia is used as an 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 such a frank, open debate
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. Toynbees defence of secularism and
womens rights, and criticism of Islam, was, it declared, unacceptable. Isn't it absurd, I asked the IHRC's
Massoud Shadjareh, to equate a liberal anti-racist 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 theres 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.
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
2NC cards
The conception of islamophobia is problematic it
essentializes and leads to unpractical results
other traditions and current rhetoric, but also those who challenge conservative readings from within, can
religious bodies, and of community organizations, who apply to them the conventions of inter-faith dialogue: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
denunciations of 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
icontent, or specic to the Muslim world. The Chinese denunciation of Western human rights
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,
interference, on the ground that it violates sover- eignty, is the same as the Iranian.
iemployment, racial prejudice, anti-immigrant violence are not spec ically 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.
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 Malcolms internationalist
energy and commitment. No specific examination of Farrakhans views is found in this account. Farrakhans
opportunism is forgotten, and he is praised for making peace among various hip hop artists and for being
Arabia and the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, although neither of the two leading
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
conference luminaries, Nehru and Zhou Enlai, were Muslims or represented Muslims.
Israeli apartheid policies to be conflated with those who secretly tipple fine scotch in Jeddah mansions? In
Tabari cite a view from Mujahid that the verse [Your 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 Quran that call upon Muslims to disdain non-Muslims ought to be interpreted as referring to
only non-Muslims opposed to the formers faith, as indicated in the verse O ye who believe! Take not my
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.
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 scholars
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 onto- logical category . This is
foray into the religion and society of an other without the requisite diligence. In either case,
a characteristic of the writings by Orientalists on the right (e.g., Bernard Lewis, Daniel 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 Lulls 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
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 scholarship is to see what the
Lulls work a polemic. Although Lull wants to explain globalized Islam,
terms of this representation are and who benefits from such representation.
Misc K stuff
have generally assumed that white prejudicea legacy, indeed, of slavery and Jim Crowis 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 those with lighter skin.
But skin color does not tell the whole story. If it did, the immigrant /
non-immigrant distinction within the black population would not
The African-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 hypodescent 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 African-American 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 root of
deploy federal power against racism in general, and to produce the concept of affirmative action in
President Clinton's Initiative on Race, One America in the 21st Century: Forging a New Future,
burying statistics
that disproved the all-minorities-are-alike myth, and by fashioning more than
systematically and willfully obscured those differences. That was done by
fifty recommendations to combat racism, not a single one of which spoke to the unique claims of black
immigrant/nonimmigrant distinction be put back in the bottle, or are we to generate new, group-specific
documented, but the instances most comparable to antiblack racism predate the migration of the bulk of
would lose 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 colorconscious 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-
a
historical approach to understanding the dynamics of inequality in
American life has much to recommend it. Obama himself pointed in this direction in
Islander applicants to classify themselves in 23 ethnic categories. These considerations suggest that
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 AfricanAmerican 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 oppression Olympics, and without
prior to Wright's 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
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 phenomenon in the context of my ideas about
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.
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 Annes 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
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 .
In the psychoanalytic account
trauma.
This is a logical limitation, not a question of a symbolic or social order being insufficiently developed.
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
concerns the real. It refers to events in 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;
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 nonlinearity is evident: time no longer moves unproblematically from past through present to future. In a
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
sense,
the social into being. We have to imagine that others will respond to us before we speak, but it is only our
recognise ourselves as subjects in that response. This 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
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 this is done, according to Zizek.'' The first is
time separate from that history. But central to this solution to doubt is forgetting, as we have seen.
Performance bad
Abstraction
Privileging performance detracts from substantive action
devolves into theoretical abstraction
Simpson 2 English @ UC Davis (David, Situatedness, Why We
the debate over the feminist "standpoint epistemology" that was derived
rapidly acknowledged the problem of there being no visibly
coherent groups, or too many of them, to belong to.20 Postmodern theory can
anyway. So
from Lukacs
sometimes declare itself comfortable enough with 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.
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
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
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
the subject." 23 It is now twenty years since Fredric Jameson wrote about
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
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
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
can only take the form of pure "communication" (Observations on Modernity, p. 78). In its
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
many insightful ways to account for the intersection of bodies, institutions, cultural practices, social
traditions, political movements, and economic initiatives. Michael Warners 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 heterosexuality and in doing so created the important spaces
examining and exposing how subjects come into being through discursive interactions. It offers a critical
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 queersdisturbs, disrupts,
and centerswhat 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
politics for thinking about how subjects are constituted through heteronormative discourses.
(1990), Fuss (1995), and Mufloz (1999) as they explore a 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
Queer theory
critically redefines the relationships amongst bodies, identities, and
longer determined by the Other but is discursively negotiated through others.
By
asking the question whats 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 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 presentwork 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). PostQueer Politics engages Eng, Halberstam, and Munozs call for a renewed queer studies by taking into
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 encompassing
consideration the various interconnections amongst the wide range of contributors of this edition.
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 politics of
between queer and heteronormativity. I make the argument here and throughout this book
queer and the queering of politics through a renewed sense of queer that is differentiated from queers
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 binaries that have resulted in the current desire for something post.
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 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-queer
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/
heteronormative dyad is a part of. In other words, the current politics of
is not. This, of course, would produce an unnecessary binary. Rather, as I will argue
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 planesbodies 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
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.
The BwO is a
fundamental aspect of post- queer politics because it speaks to the
production of intensities that emerge when the flows of desiringmachines 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). 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
machines but is an additional (anti-)production together with desiring-machines.
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 itselfBody 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 with a central tendency. 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
the connective synthesis, as the identity of producing and the product: the schizophrenic table is a body
without organs. The body without organs is not the proof of an original nothingness, nor is it what remains
desiring-machines and BwO are a part of two different systems. They are in fact two forms of the same
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
principle: desiring-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
capitalist machine 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
intensities involved in such a relationship are before the coding structures of subjectivity that stratify
and BwO offer a new language for thinking about life itself without reducing the experiences of such
of bodies that 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 youre just depraved. You will be signifier and signified, interpreter and interpretedotherwise
youre just a deviant. You will be a subject, nailed down as one, a subject of the enunciation recoiled into a
subject of the statementotherwise youre 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 imply that we just get rid of the subject or cut the body
from stratification. We recall from above that the
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 intensitiesnot by discovering a BwO
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
queers 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.
but by creating one in the process of deterritorializing the strata.
Munoz
Queerness is not something one can necessarily be rather, it
is an ideality that propels us into a positive future
Signifiers bad
1NC
The affirmatives 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.feministreprise.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
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 example, was one of the main identities of IP, as a
late 90's, I know this about
statement of biology. "Of color" was another main category, with groups dividing around the racial
categories recognized within the US. at the time,
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 Latina
by dividing into "white" and "of color" when the social meaning of "white" was rarely explored, and both
identities were treated as if they were actually about the color of skin? (5)
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 from their onset used this understanding,
because, I think, it was the most successful strategy anyone had seen in a long time. Such a position was a
questions about how power around us was constructed, we stood a chance of cracking open the
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 Identity Politics
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 answer to social wrongs would be to get
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 "oppressor" identities at all.(7)
In the
the category of the norm [homosexuals, drug addicts, delinquents, the insane, etc]; it is also suffered by
those for whom certain fragments of their identityfor identity is never a complete thingwould be
must not think, though, that this domination is entirely forced upon us. While this is no doubt true to a
certain extentthink of prisons, mental institutions, the army, hospitals, the workplace an
at all challenge or disrupt these categories, often only further embedding them in political discourse and
social reality.
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, explanations for what happens to us, suggestions for gaining our
organizing structures were not to be spoken of, calling them into question in any way was sure to invoke
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 effects of racism are always present,
function within IP groups. This is the scenario played out time and time again:
because theorists of color have worked so hard to make visible its working, and because we do honestly
charge is leveled, the point is to 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 as a "danger to Feminists." However - and this is a BIG However
color are granted equal authenticity, so some can stop a festival with a sentence, while others are simply
ignored. Regardless,
some
marginal person-someone who never quite "fit" in the group anywayor 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
and purging it. The former can happen, bringing real change. But usually the latter happens;
purged, as a way of "proving" that the accusation wasn't real. Sheer pollution behavior, this is. If all of this
we
have endless re-enactions of the scapegoat ritual, except that in this actual
ritual, the group 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
purging was ever actually about solving the problem of racism, it would be long since solved. Instead
precious time, over and over again, as we've used pollution rituals to make the group feel better without
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
actually addressing racism or race, or age, or ability, or economic privilege.
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, toward more action and less searching
in the name of forming bonds 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
subject, the subject that must be deconstructed, is here a site of illusion where we mistake ourselves
for sovereign agents possessed of an essence (as man or woman or African-American 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 standing-reserve available for further control
and mastery. Subject here must be deconstructed to put an end to this nihilistic and destructive will to
power premised on mastery. In the
is once again
a political rather than epistemological category, but is now conceived in positive terms.
Exemplified by the work of thinkers such as Zizek, Badiou, Johnston, perhaps Ranciere, and a number of
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
others,
problem of the site of subjugation arising as a result of something akin to ideological misrecognition. In
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
equivalence between subject and identity is the key move of contemporary political thought regarding the
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
subject.
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, theres 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 theres 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 the intrinsic failure of all
Binaries link
Returning to bodily marks to understand identity creates a
binaristic opposition between different forms of identity that
reproduces violence
depicted by Fanon is the omnipresent gaze of the Other, understandably conceived as white, from whose confirmation of
the horrible truth revealed in Lacans 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 subjects ultimately unrealizable desire
for racewhich 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
with little attention to where the road begins or ends. Theoretically, this limitation highlights the need to
add the Time Dynamics dimension for historical specificity.
Institutional Interactions occur on multiple political planes: the organizational, intersubjective, experiential
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 semi-permanent 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 roles of both Diversity Within and Time Dynamics in traversing the river in any
question and subject for politics, however, is which craft will best navigate that section of the rivers'
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
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 pre-designed for them.li We will continue this
other hand, conservatives focus on the role of personal responsibility among the fathers themselves.
Multiracialism link
Status quo conceptions of multiracialism get co-opted by the
black-white binary intersectionality is key
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
the Title IX coordinator provided a link to 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 related to me. I did learn that
Title
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 re-emerge 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
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
transparent than it is, let me introduce some transparency by sharing the charges against me.
caught in fact-checking were later corrected by the editors), and had violated the nonretaliation provision
She also charged that something I'd tweeted to someone else regarding the essay had actually referred to
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 allowing intellectual disagreement to
her. (It hadn't.)
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 investigators a summary,
adding that I'd answer only questions related to the charges I'd been informed about .
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
campus meeting -- they'd indeed flown to town to meet in person -- so pleasant that I relaxed and became
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
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
mystifying.
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 asked to keep the charges confidential, but this became moot when,
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 complaints in the first place. She was also surprisingly unconcerned
more about the process than I did. It wasn't me alone on the chopping block.
about how effectively her article demolished its own premises about the asymmetry of institutional power.
issue a report on their findings 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
My concern is that
debatable and ultimately conservative notions about sex, gender, and power
are becoming embedded in these procedures, without any public
here is meant to suggest that sexual assault on campuses isn't a problem. It is.
Adjuncts,
instructors, part-timers -- now half the profession, according to the American Association of
University Professors -- simply don't have the same freedoms, 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
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 of it myself, but I
verdict on my 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
freedom of expression means, and what's the good of having a freedom you're afraid to
use?
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 seemed symbolically incoherent.
(Yes, I was spending a lot more time online than I should have.) Being protested had its 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 agenda, or a desire for attention can easily leverage the system. I should pause to explain that
All is fair in love, war, and politics, and as illiterate as the comparisons to McCarthy may
be, I suppose I would almost be disappointed if someone, somewhere, did not choose to advance them.
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, Cruzs 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, wouldnt enter into his thinking. Over the
weekend, 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
this arrangement because to criticize it is . . . to risk losing his job. Welcome to Salem, 1692. Writing
anonymously on the White Hot Harlots blog, a passionate leftist friend of deBoers painted a
disquietingly similar picture. Saying anything that goes against liberal orthodoxy, he declared, is now
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 will note, perhaps, that it is not Ted Cruz who is causing
grounds for a firin. Indeed, even if you make a reasonable and respectful case,
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 takes is one slip
to involve the universitys authorities when she thought she might have to hear arguments that
meeting with administrators. Not long after, Browns president, Christina H. Paxson, announced that the
university would hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide research and facts about the role of
shown condensing this peculiar attitude into an almost impossibly perfect sound bite. At college, she
as
Kathryn Byron might have put it, what is important here is that we
do not permit reality to invalidate peoples experiences. At its root, The
words, the facts but the Greater Cosmic Truth that exists independent of objective truth. Or rather,
Crucible is such a terrifying and illuminating piece of work not because it involves witches and because
witches do not exist, but because it depicts the gradual victory of delirium over reason and of passion over
than one innocent person be condemned, warned Increase Mather, a critic of the trials. Not on your life,
replied the crowd; for we have some evils to spike.
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 Salems lips to Purdues ears directly and Ted Cruz has been nowhere to be seen.
Ovid tells his story, and a number of other equally appalling ones, in the Metamorphoses, a text continually
read and immensely loved since Ovids own day. Ovid is omnipresent in Dante, and Shakespeare, and
Mean old
Ovid, however, is too strong for the stomachs of certain sensitive souls
at Columbia University: During the week spent on Ovids Metamorphoses, the class was instructed
everywhere, really; or at least was, until the the fashion came in for illiterate writers.
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. My idea of a classroom is one in which nobody ever feels safe least of
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 shouldnt 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 shouldnt have to
***Affirmative***
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
In my experience,
committee, each of whom was 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 tradeselectricians, plumbers, and so forth, who are almost
entirely white meninitially saw no reason to fight for this provision in the contract or to make it a priority.
contract period. Fortunately, in this case the white workers united in supporting in-house advancement
because they came to recognize the relevance that racial difference made to union members' work lives.3
Redistribution demands will either reproduce or subvert the inequalities among workers, or, what is often
Agency
Identity politics is to key to agency and transformation
hand in the short term. Political agency, after all, can always sim- ply lead to the perpetuation of existing
different levels, that can prepare us for larger struggles. In todays stratified and divided context, I believe,
For
this reason we need to go beyond issues of inclusion/exclusion and an exaltation of difference as difference
to engage in an exploration of events, relations, and structures that have a con- stitutive role in identity
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.
reality. Nor should we define reality in terms of knowl- edgethe epistemic fallacy (Bhaskar, 1991, 33).
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 dont all par- ticipate in this process of
construction on an equal footing, an issue that, though crucial, is all but avoided by some knowledge
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, Whats
Wrong With Identity Politics (and Intersectionality Theory)? A Response to
Mark Fishers 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, or the forms of domination. The upshot in political
But
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 describe groups and
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,
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 is, while theoretically, we might all
have always determined them. They have been the products of capitalism from the outset.
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
appreciation of individual difference is surely not a liability in itself, by any stretch. Nor does understanding
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 . Whether or
and appreciation necessarily entail an individualistic ideological and political agenda. But
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 will defend those subject to various forms of
violence and white domination in ways quite different from the experiences of either white women or black
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
Chicana lesbians, and male bikers. They may also expose and perhaps solidify the self-affirmations of other
recognizing
intersectionality threatens to complicate identity politics with a
proliferation of new , and old, identity groupings .
intersectional groups, such as "white men" or "married 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
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
marginalized groups are primarily epistemological. To the extent that we, as cultural critics, are interested
postpositivist realist defense of the principle of epistemic privilege draws on the idea, common to much
feminist and marxist theory, that the major obstacle to the achievement of objective knowledge is
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
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
perspectivesperspectives that are formed through interpretation of personal experiencewe risk being
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 thus there
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 reference in which the "common
will be a conflict that can be addressed through compromise but never completely resolved.
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
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
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 identities involve meaning-making,
forms or that the political relevance of identity always is cashed out in similar fashion.
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
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 social narratives, paradigms, even
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
ideologies.'"(Dingwaney and Needham 1996, 21) In other words,
any and every person or group who wishes to inhabit it. The voluntarism that inheres in certain
elaborations of the constructedness of identity ignores, as Hall also notes... certain 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 every identity is placed, positioned,
in a culture, a language, a history.' It is for this reason that claims about lived experience' resonate with
such force in conflicts over what does or does not constitute an appropriate interpretation of culturally
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 reinterpretable past, not of its own
different phenomena.(Dingwaney and Needham 20-21; Quoted from Hall 1987, 44-45).
creation. The self carries with it always this horizon as a specific location, with substantive contentas, for
example, a specifiable relation to the holocaust, to slavery, to the encuentro, and so on---but whose
will be a difference in the way that these two groups are 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 other as knowing that
over the degree of significance the 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.
begin to develop an alternative account of identity, and will further develop this in the following two
chapters. This alternative account will be used to show the inadequacy of the assumptions behind the
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
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
culpability or that only those sharing an identity can unite together in common cause. But
in 1993-1994, the first survey of mass political opinion among African Americans conducted in the United
Researchers found that over 80% of respondents felt a strong sense of linked fate with African Americans
Social
identity operates then as a rough and fallible but useful indicator of
differences in perceptual access. This kind of hermeneutic descriptive account of social
visible from some locations is correlatively to claim that they are hard to see from others.
identities is more true to lived experience and more helpful in illuminating their real epistemic and political
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 background assumptions and
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
conflicting lines of argument over the last 200 years. On the one hand, the
needs the Other to recognize one's status as a self-directing subject in 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
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
postcolonial theories have emphasized the deformations of the self in hostile environments. Thus,
are broadly correct, it would seem that we are doomed to unfreedom, because freedom is defined as
precisely that which we cannot have. I will look at these traditions in some detail in the next chapter. A
mediations by which individual experience comes to have specific meanings, are produced through a foreknowledge or historical a priori that is cultural, historical, politically situated, and collective. In this sense, it
The wholesale
repudiation of identity attachments is often itself a form of tribalism
under cover, as in Schlesinger's argument against multiculturalist "cults of ethnicity" on the grounds
assumptions and values, identity is always operative in reasoning.
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
Lieberman attaches to his identity might well render him a problematic political candidate. But the
we will never be able to understand one another, and therefore we will never be able to resolve conflict
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 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
another example that illustrates the practical implications of my claim that
deconstructing the two-party bloc on U.S. electoral 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 organization based around a shared ethnic identity as
at: Solidarity
Solidarity still has binaries
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 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 socio-
and transformative political work by juxtaposing it against selected Marxist and Feminist threads on the
know about and also one that Marx would repeat 16 years later at the end of the inaugural address to the
and Engels when confronting forces within the IWMA that were aligned with the more anarchist politics of
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
singular type of solidarity, one can discern broadly two forms of solidarity in practice. The first is worker-toworker 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,
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
2006: 156-157; Dixon et al, 2004: 23-24; Hodson et al, 1993: 399-402). The second is
striking workers in another nation through sending aid and preventing foreign strikebreakers (Stekloff,
class- solidarity is real, when it is manufactured by actors at the organizational helms, and when it
sociological study on two union-drives with 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 classsolidarity, 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
--Census specific
Eliminating the census is the alt
Significantly such athletes experience that pressure from coaches who are themselves often Black women.
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
the whole, say, that position is essentialist and thats 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. 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
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
subsequently distanced herself from what she saw as misuses of the notion of strategic essentialism,
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
that part of the way human beings process complex information is to seek out a 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 preschool 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
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
of the kind share (p196) (an essence, in other words) is built into our conceptual system.
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
from other things deemed peripheral, so appears almost by definition to involve claims about accident and
essence. Sociologists from the days of Max Weber have been encouraged to hone their analytical tools
at: dng
Deleuzean resistance fails the BwO is opposed to binaries
and retrenches the logic they criticize
Becoming-fashion, becoming-commodity, becomingruin. 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, warmachines, 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 thought from this
from the order of fashion.
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
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 spatial terms) as a liquid,
colloidal suspension, often retrievable by one or another techno-metaphorical zoning (e.g., "cyberspace").
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 .
question, that it does not force the nature of things enough (ES, 107; cC WP, 82).
For readers who remain concerned with these constraints and their consequences, Deleuzes question is
not the best available question. Rather than try to refute Deleuze, this book has tried to show how his
resources for thinking the consequences of what happens within the actually existing world as such. Unlike
Deleuzes constructivism
does not allow him to account for cumulative transformation or
novelty in terms of actual materials and tendencies. No doubt few
Darwin or Marx, for instance, the adamantly virtual orientation of
contemporary philosophers have had as an acute a sense of the 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
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 Deleuzes 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 Deleuzes 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 world. Deleuzes philosophical war remains absolute and abstract, precisely, rather than
creating, a war machine consists and exists only in its own metamorphoses (T~ 360).
directed or waged [menee]. Once a social field is defined less by its conflicts and contradictions than by
room in Deleuzes philosophy for relations of conflict or solidarity, i.e. relations that are genuinely between
rather than external to individuals, classes, or principles.