SS+Speaking+for+Other+K

Politicizing Narratives is wrong—the affirmative acts under the guise of political empowerment, they utilize narratives to accomplish their own goals—this is an act of commodification and colonial domination Linda Martín **__Alcoff__** (Department of Philosophy at Syracuse University. “The Problem of Speaking For Others” Cultural Critique Winter 1991-**__92__**, pp. 5-32.) [Gunnarsdottir]

Feminist discourse is not the only site in which the problem of speaking for others has been acknowledged and addressed. In anthropology there is similar discussion about whether it is possible __to speak for others__ either adequately or justifiably. Trinh T. Minh-ha explains the grounds for skepticism when she says that anthropology __is "mainly a conversation of `us' with `us' about `them__,' of the white man with the white man about the primitive-nature man...__in which `them' is silenced__. `Them' always stands on the other side of the hill, naked and speechless...`__them' is only admitted among `us',__ the discussing subjects, __when accompanied or introduced by an `us'__..."[|4] Given this analysis, even ethnographies written by progressive anthropologists are a priori regressive because of the structural features of anthropological discursive practice. The recognition that there is a problem in speaking for others has followed from the widespread acceptance of two claims. First, there has been a growing awareness that __where one speaks__ from __affects__ both __the meaning and truth of what one says__, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend her location. In other words, __a speaker's location__ (which I take here to refer to her social location or social identity) __has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker's claims, and can serve either to authorize or dis-authorize one's speech__. The creation of Women's Studies and African American Studies departments were founded on this very belief: that both the study of and the advocacy for the oppressed must come to be done principally by the oppressed themselves, and that we must finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location between speakers and those spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said. The unspoken premise here is simply that a speaker's location is epistemically salient. I shall explore this issue further in the next section. The second claim holds that not only is location epistemically salient, but certain __privileged locations are discursively dangerous__.[|5] In particular, __the practice of privileged persons speaking for__ or on behalf of __less privileged persons has__ actually __resulted__ (in many cases) __in increasing or reenforcing the oppression of the group spoken for__. This was part of the argument made against Anne Cameron's speaking for Native women: Cameron's intentions were never in question, but the effects of her writing were argued to be harmful to the needs of Native authors because it is Cameron rather than they who will be listened to and whose books will be bought by readers interested in Native women. Persons from dominant groups who speak for others are often treated as authenticating presences that confer legitimacy and credibility on the demands of subjugated speakers; such __speaking for others does nothing to disrupt the discursive hierarchies that operate in public spaces.__ For this reason, the work of privileged authors who speak on behalf of the oppressed is becoming increasingly criticized by members of those oppressed groups themselves.[|6] As social theorists, we are authorized by virtue of our academic positions to develop theories that express and encompass the ideas, needs, and goals of others. However, __we must begin to ask ourselves whether this is ever a legitimate authority,__ and if so, what are the criteria for legitimacy? In particular, __is it ever valid to speak for others who are unlike me or who are less privileged than me?__ We might try to delimit this problem as only arising when a more privileged person speaks for a less privileged one. In this case, __we might say that I should only speak for groups of which I am a member. But this does not tell us how groups themselves should be delimited.__ For example, can a white woman speak for all women simply by virtue of being a woman? If not, how narrowly should we draw the categories? The complexity and multiplicity of group identifications could result in "communities" composed of single individuals. Moreover, the concept of groups assumes specious notions about clear-cut boundaries and "pure" identities. I am a Panamanian-American and a person of mixed ethnicity and race: half white/Angla and half Panamanian mestiza. The criterion of group identity leaves many unanswered questions for a person such as myself, since I have membership in many conflicting groups but my membership in all of them is problematic. Group identities and boundaries are ambiguous and permeable, and decisions about demarcating identity are always partly arbitrary. Another problem concerns how specific an identity needs to be to confer epistemic authority. Reflection on such problems quickly reveals that no easy solution to the problem of speaking for others can be found by simply restricting the practice to speaking for groups of which one is a member. 

Stop the sale of the African experience. Your ballot takes a stance against the commodification of African life. We do not exclude anyone’s voice—our act of critique is recognition of the importance of the African experience and the rejection of the first world impulses to engage in exclusionary discussions about the third world. Linda Martín **__Alcoff__** (Department of Philosophy at Syracuse University. “The Problem of Speaking For Others” Cultural Critique Winter 1991-**__92__**, pp. 5-32.) [Gunnarsdottir]

(1) __The impetus to speak must be carefully analyzed and__, in many cases (certainly for academics!), __fought against__. This may seem an odd way to begin discussing how to speak for, but the point is that __the impetus to__ always __be the speaker__ and to speak in all situations __must be seen for what it is: a desire for mastery and domination__. If one's immediate impulse is to teach rather than listen to a less-privileged speaker, __one should resist that impulse__ __long enough__ __to interrogate it__ carefully. Some of us have been taught that by right of having the dominant gender, class, race, letters after our name, or some other criterion, we are more likely to have the truth. Others have been taught the opposite and will speak haltingly, with apologies, if they speak at all.[|16] At the same time, we have to acknowledge that __the__ very __decision to "move over"__ or retreat __can occur only from a position of privilege__. __Those who are not in a position of speaking at all cannot retreat from__ an __action__ they do not employ. Moreover, making the decision for oneself whether or not to retreat is an extension or application of privilege, not an abdication of it. Still, it is sometimes called for. (2) __We must__ also __interrogate__ __the__ bearing of our location and __context on what__ it is __we are saying__, and this should be an explicit part of every serious discursive practice we engage in. Constructing hypotheses about the possible connections between our location and our words is one way to begin. This procedure would be most successful if engaged in collectively with others, by which aspects of our location less obvious to us might be revealed.[|17]__One deformed way__ in which this is __too often carried__ out __is when speakers offer up__ in the spirit of __"honesty" autobiographical information about themselves__, usually __at the beginning of their discourse__ as a kind of disclaimer. __This is meant to acknowledge their own understanding__ that they are speaking from a specified, embodied location without pretense to a transcendental truth. But as Maria Lugones and others have forcefully argued, such an act serves no good end when it is used as a disclaimer against one's ignorance or errors and is made without critical interrogation of the bearing of such an autobiography on what is about to be said. It leaves for the listeners all the real work that needs to be done. For example, if a middle class white man were to begin a speech by sharing with us this autobiographical information and then using it as a kind of apologetics for any limitations of his speech, this would leave to those of us in the audience who do not share his social location all the work of translating his terms into our own, apprising the applicability of his analysis to our diverse situation, and determining the substantive relevance of his location on his claims. This is simply what less-privileged persons have always had to do for ourselves when reading the history of philosophy, literature, etc., which makes the task of appropriating these discourses more difficult and time-consuming (and alienation more likely to result). Simple unanalyzed __disclaimers__ do not improve on this familiar situation and may even __make it worse__ to the extent that __by offering__ __such__ __information__ __the speaker may feel__ even __more authorized to speak__ and be accorded more authority by his peers. (3) Speaking should always carry with it an accountability and responsibility for what one says. To whom one is accountable is a political/epistemological choice contestable, contingent and, as Donna Haraway says, constructed through the process of discursive action. What this entails in practice is a serious commitment to remain open to criticism and to attempt actively, attentively, and sensitively to "hear" the criticism (understand it). A quick impulse to reject criticism must make one wary. (4) Here is my central point. __In order to evaluate attempts to speak for others__ in particular instances, __we need to analyze the probable or actual effects of the words on the discursive and material context.__ One cannot simply look at the location of the speaker or her credentials to speak; nor can one look merely at the propositional content of the speech; one must also look at where the speech goes and what it does there. Looking merely at the content of a set of claims without looking at their effects cannot produce an adequate or even meaningful evaluation of it, and this is partly because the notion of a content separate from effects does not hold up. The content of the claim, or its meaning, emerges in interaction between words and hearers within a very specific historical situation. Given this, we have to pay careful attention to the discursive arrangement in order to understand the full meaning of any given discursive event. For example, __in a situation where a well-meaning First world person is speaking for a person or group in the Third world, the very discursive arrangement may reinscribe the "hierarchy of civilizations"__ view where the U. S. lands squarely at the top. __This effect occurs because the speaker is positioned as authoritative and empowered, as the knowledgeable subject, while the group in the Third World is reduced, merely because of the structure of the speaking practice, to an object and victim that must be championed from afar__. __Though the__ __speaker may be trying to materially improve the situation of some lesser-privileged group, one of the effects of her discourse is to reenforce racist, imperialist conceptions and perhaps also to further silence the lesser-privileged group's own ability to speak and be heard.__[|18] __This shows us why it is so important to reconceptualize discourse____,__ as Foucault recommends, as an event, which includes speaker, words, hearers, location, language, and so on. All such evaluations produced in this way will be of necessity indexed. That is, they will obtain for a very specific location and cannot be taken as universal. This simply follows from the fact that the evaluations will be based on the specific elements of historical discursive context, location of speakers and hearers, and so forth. When any of these elements is changed, a new evaluation is called for.