[This is an invited guest post by Audrey Yap.--ES.]
Yesterday I took up Heath's column on “Me” Studies and took issue with both his framing of the issue and several conclusions. I ended the piece acknowledging that one of the issues he raised was very important, and had to do with the participation of non-oppressed folks in dialogues about oppression. That being said, I did disagree with one of his assumptions, that neither the oppressed nor the non-oppressed are better placed to study oppression, since it seems clear to me that the former are in a much better epistemic position. (Anyone who disagrees with me on this point is very likely to disagree with what follows.)
But this quote raises an important problem:
The problem is that, when you’re studying your own oppression, and you’re obviously a member of the oppressed group in question, people who are basically sympathetic to your situation, but who disagree with your specific claims, are going to be extremely hesitant to challenge you, because they don’t want to appear unsympathetic.--Heath.
What he is describing is a barrier to the participation of non-oppressed folks in important conversations about oppression. Because if all the non-oppressed are allowed to do in these conversations is agree with the claims of the oppressed, their participation seems basically nominal and hardly worthwhile. We should not adopt a stance under which everyone who is oppressed is automatically right whenever they disagree with someone who is privileged. But we do have good reason to think that the oppressed generally know more about their oppression than the privileged do.
My suggestion is to treat issues of oppression like we treat many other cases of specialized knowledge in philosophy, like philosophy of science or mathematics. My training is in philosophy of mathematics, and not every issue raised in that field requires specialized mathematical knowledge. But there are many debates about mathematical practice that require, if not a math background, at least some familiarity with the practice itself. This means that not every philosopher is well-positioned to have an important contribution to, for instance, the question period at a philosophy of math talk. And this does exclude many people from participation in these discussions, even people who would likely be able to make valuable contributions. But because they do not have the background knowledge, they will frequently refrain from participating so as not to appear uninformed or unintelligent.
The situation in many fields that study oppression can be seen as parallel. At least some issues that are raised in discussions of gender make explicit reference to types of experiences that many women have. Other women pointing out that they do not have those experiences can be very helpful, such as bell hooks' criticism of The Feminine Mystique, pointing out that black and lower-class women have always had to work outside the home, and that Friedan's writing about gender was limited to her own white middle-class perspective. But it seems rather unhelpful for a cis man, no matter how sympathetic, to point out that he is personally unfamiliar with those experiences and doubts that they are really so widespread. If this is the sole contribution of the non-oppressed person to the debate, it also seems hardly worth considering, since it seems principally to stem from a lack of knowledge about the subject matter. It is not that his gender prohibits him from making a valuable contribution, but that he has not bothered to gain background knowledge that his gendered experiences have not thus far accorded him. (And even those whose experiences do give them an epistemic advantage in understanding various kinds of oppression still need to reflect on those experiences and read what others say about it!)
It is important for those who study oppression to consider dissenting views. But those who study oppression know that there are already dissenting views in their field. There are substantive disagreements in philosophy of gender, philosophy of race, philosophy of disability (etc) just as there are in any philosophical field. So to say that the only form of disagreement entertained is either the entirely unsympathetic kind, or the kind that would like the views to be even more extreme, seems to neglect what actually goes on in those parts of philosophy. Of course, views that question the very possibility of the field don't generally get included as part of its canon, but faulting that would be like blaming metaphysicians for not embracing the logical empiricists.
Then let's return to the types of scenario that Heath has in mind, in which someone is at a talk that discusses a way in which they are not personally oppressed, but others are. And while they are generally sympathetic to the fact of the oppression, they happen to disagree with a particular point that the speaker makes. And since we are discussing barriers to the entry of studying oppression, this is a field in which they do not happen to work. Now, perhaps not wanting to seem like a bigot is an additional reason to self-censor dissent that doesn't show up in other fields. But this is because inadvertently saying bigoted things is easier to do when discussing oppression than, say, eliminative materialism (though really, plenty of bigoted things are said in all kinds of areas of philosophy). So perhaps the better solution would not be to ask oppressed people to be less sensitive, but rather to ask non-oppressed people to expend more effort to avoid saying bigoted things. I mean, if they're really sympathetic to the fact of oppression, perhaps they would do a bit more to try and avoid perpetuating it. (And this still leaves open lots of modes of engagement, such as asking speakers about the structure of their arguments, or simply asking them for more information.)
We can use Heath's own article as a case study – specifically, his dismissal of a reviewer who finds his use of the term “crazy” to be ableist (but as far as I can tell does not say this is a reason to discount the work as a whole). Rather than consider why someone might find the term problematic, it gets dismissed as an example of the over-the-top language policing that we are supposedly beyond now in academia. If this is the sort of supposedly valuable criticism that philosophy of disability is lacking because people are afraid of seeming ableist, the discipline does not really seem any worse off. Now the criticism I am making here is not that Heath used the term in the first place without knowing that it was potentially problematic. It is in his dismissive reaction to someone's bringing it to his attention that it is a problematic term. There might be some interesting debate to be had over the extent to which “crazy” is problematic in the first place, but there is no evidence of it here. So what this really is, is an illustration of how not to participate in conversations about oppressions that you do not suffer (i.e. By dismissing others' contributions to them)
Of course it is difficult to learn about the nature of oppression and to avoid using prejudiced language. It is also difficult to learn about quantum mechanics and the intricacies of the law. Yet still, we think that in order to be taken as a serious participant in debates about philosophy of quantum mechanics or philosophy of law, one should know something about them. And even these disciplines require some retraining in terms of our common sense ideas about how the world works. The difference is that some, because of their life circumstances, are in a better position to know about oppression than others due to their firsthand experience of it. But that's just a generalization of the claim (that Heath might agree with), that “me” studies are often easier for us than “not-me” studies. But then if he's right about the aims of a humanities education, that just means more privileged people need to do a bit more homework so they can engage in the “not-me” studies of oppression. And if they're upset at at the suggestion that what they say might sometimes perpetuate rather than alleviate oppression, then perhaps they're the ones who lack the temperament and critical thinking skills for philosophy.
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