Theorising and Challenging Oppression in Contemporary Practice - Essay Example

? Theorising and Challenging Oppression in Contemporary Practice With reference to appropriate theoretical frameworks, critically outline your understanding of human oppression. Almost every major discipline under the Humanities is strongly engaged in understanding the causes of human oppression and offering solutions for its alleviation. Major fields of scholarly inquiry, including psychology, sociology, politics, philosophy, literature and linguistics, have a strong focus on the issue of human oppression. Imperialism is often condemned for its inherently oppressive effects on the subjects of the colonies. In the field of postcolonial theory, scholars such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Edward Said have expressed the far-reaching negative consequences of imperialism on human welfare. In her seminal essay titled ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Spivak questions the idea of the colonial ‘subject’. She criticizes European intellectuals for their presumption in ‘knowing’ the ‘other’, and in the manner in which they construct narratives of the oppressed. Through this “act of epistemic knowing/violence, the essentialization of the other is always the reinforcement of the menace of empire.” (Maggio, 2007, p.419) This can prove to be a dangerous exercise, for this sort of transcendental cultural logic amounts to an apology for imperialism. Spivak’s objection also extends to the manner in which literature is often co-opted by the intellectual elite into a form of political propaganda. While appearing to keep a distance from politics, literature is complicit with imperial oppression through its omissions. Spivak is at pains to explain how silence in the face of injustice leads to acute human oppression. To quote, “Western thought masquerades as disinterested history, even when the critic presumes to touch its unconscious. The academy is both part of the problem and part of the solution. I think it is important to acknowledge our complicity in the muting, in order precisely to be more effective in the long run. Hence, the intellectual Western scholar is almost in a Derridean paradox, setting the limits of discourse as well as expelling the nondiscourse.” (Maggio, 2007, p.419) Just as multiculturalism has its share of issues, liberalism, the school of political thought in vogue today, creates equally bizarre outcomes for social groups. For instance, although liberalism seeks neutrality, it actually destroys all difference. The narrative of the oppressed “will be part of the history of [liberalism's capacity to absorb all difference] and will reinforce the capacity itself. In fact, even the radically postmodern "subject" is still colonial. “(Maggio, 2007, p.420) Another realm where oppression is often manifests is with regards to gender. Women are sometimes referred to as the world’s largest minority group. Despite the equality in the gender ratio, the tagging of women as a minority group speaks volumes of the oppression that they have suffered throughout human history. Pioneering feminists considered oppression in subjective and experiential terms. In this framework, the measure of any ideology, theory or generalization was based on how exactly it matched women's experiences. This way of looking at oppression has its drawbacks, for “experience is impossible to discern authentically, and that experience leaves some women out. The concern here is that "experience" is linked to the universalistic category "Woman," assuming that all women share common experiences.” (Grant, 1995, p. 56) Nevertheless, despite these flaws, one cannot evade from grounding feminist politics, theory and action upon anything other than women's experiences. It is important to note that women’s experience is modulated and regulated by ‘personal politics’, whereby it is acknowledged that “the things women experienced as profoundly personal in fact came directly from political relations between men and women in a system of male domination -- patriarchy. And since the oppression of Woman was transcultural and transhistorical, patriarchy had also to exist across cultures and across time.” (Grant, 1995, p. 56) Politics is at the centre of feminist discourse. When we analyze feminism under the democratic framework, “theories of equal rights or class are employed to demand/explain inclusion/exclusion; possibly at unnoticed costs related to a subscription to masculinist methodologies and explanations which are modified to apply to women. By contrast, an autonomist critique questions traditional and leftist knowledges as phallocentric or representative of male perspectives, and seeks to challenge models of knowledge as often inappropriate to women and female thinking...These critiques suggest that a re-evaluation of the feminine by female definition is a necessary step towards female autonomy; feminists must define their thinking, exposing lacks in existent theory in order to create new theory. (Sky, 1994, p.88) Race is a basic feature of individual identity. But as much as it has created a sense of communal identification it has also produced grave oppression across ages. Critical race theory holds that race and racism were products of European modernity. This modernity was articulated through “a homogenization of the social, legal, political and medical systems of non-Europeans”. (Sanbonmatsu, 2007, p.218) The European modernist discourse, which can be said to have commenced with the Italian Renaissance ushered an understanding that “racism interlocks with sexism and classism to form an overarching system of oppression that thrice threatens modern movements for multicultural (and/or radical) democracy”. (Rabaka, 2006, p.22) W.E.B. Du Bois's philosophy of race is of salience here as it foreshadows contemporary critical race theory and, hence offers new paradigms and theoretic points of departure. Richard Delgado has also made important contributions to critical race theory. In his 1995 work of the same name, he states that critical race theory's “intellectual origins embrace Critical Legal Studies, feminism, and Continental social and political philosophy. It [also] derives its inspiration from the American civil rights tradition, including Martin Luther King, W.E.B. Du Bois, Rosa Parks, and Cesar Chavez, and from nationalist movements, including Malcolm X and the Panthers". (Rabaka, 2006, p.23) As critical race theorists constantly remind readers, racism’s roots run profound in many societies. Though it is outwardly invisible, it does permeate the life-experience of every member of a particular society. At this post-modern moment in history, even if utter abandonment of race concepts and race-consciousness were possible, “the material and morphological, religious and rancorous, public and private consequences of the last five hundred years of extremely racialized human existence - that is, rote racialization and racial injustice and the socio-cultural memories associated with these phenomenon - would remain.” (Rabaka, 2006, p.22) Often racism is intertwined with imperialism to take shape as a powerful oppressive force. In the neo-colonial context, the Manichean duel of the colonist and colonized worlds is problematized. It is internalized at the heart of the neocolonial and racist structures of oppression. In many ways, “such inner Manichean dualisms that led to the realities of overt violence and war in the first place. The outer dualisms that explode into cruder physical violences in particular spaces and times, in other words, are only volcanic eruptions of world-historically enduring dualistic structures fragmenting the inner realities, the geographies of selves, of humankind.” (Tamdgidi, 2007, p.115) Another subtle yet powerful form of oppression ubiquitous in society comes in the form of formal education. Social critics have often pointed out how what passes for education today is nothing more than systematic indoctrination of the young. They contend that obedience and obtainment of grades supersede the ability to think critically. As a result we have the forging of young minds on an industrial scale so as to make them well-adjusted adults in a consumerist society. But this need not have been the case. Educationists such as John Dewey have held that education is an end in itself without any bearing on their value in the labour market. In this view, education would equip children to explore their innate talents and contribute to the progress of humanity in the realms of art, architecture, culture and technology. (Nicholson, 2006, p.340) The education system in place today is a far cry from this ideal. In many ways, oppression through education is more drastic than other physical, social or economic forms of oppression for the usurpation of critical thinking ability pre-empts any possibility for emancipation. Oppression in the field of education can be reduced if educators take moral responsibility for moulding the next generation of leaders. Educators such as Richard Cavell have already attempted some innovative methods of engaging with students. For example, Cavel “pushed students to engage in a dual practice of reading whereby they respond to both the historical context of the work and to the moment of localized, materialized reading, such that through our readings we locate ourselves in a series of discontinuous histories”. (Sullivan, Eyre, & Roman, 1998, p. 233) At first the students in his history class resisted his endeavour to give neo-colonialism a new perspective. They soon got round to his point of view and began to deal with “categories of difference as mutually exclusive, and they relied on a linear notion of historical progress. These strategies of reading thus allowed the students to understand themselves as unimplicated in the global machinations of systems of oppression. Cavell regards this experience as reflecting the contradictions of performing postcolonially within the academy.” (Sullivan, Eyre, & Roman, 1998, p. 233) 2. In what ways can/do your understandings of human oppression shape or may shape your personal and professional relationships and practices. (1000 words) From what I’ve understood of women’s oppression across ages, I would support a new feminist humanism in which would be based on ‘democratic reconstruction’. This way, we can avert ethnocentric mistakes about what it means to be human. In order to mitigate women’s oppression, one has to recognize how it is tied to other forms of oppression. For all women gender is at all times interlocked with other systems of oppression “depending on their race, class, sexuality, physical and mental abilities, religion, nationality, age, relation to children and so on.” (Grant, 1995, p. 56) It is futile to solve women’s subordination at the exclusion of various other forms of oppression. Hence a sound motto for social change would be ‘liberation of the self’ – a liberation that applies across various axis of oppression. In my professional practice I would take a sceptical approach to dominant ideologies of culture in order to prevent oppression. Take say the ideology of multiculturalism in the postcolonial Canadian context. Today Canadian politicians use catchwords such as ‘inclusive politics’. But a closer scrutiny reveals how such posturing deflects attention from “the colonization of peoples within Canada and other forms of racial oppression.” (Sullivan, Eyre, & Roman, 1998, p. 233) In this respect one has reason to be suspicious of how far the ideology of multiculturalism can be regarded liberatory. In Canada of today, we see how immigrants’ participation and integration into society is hampered by policies of multiculturalism, leading to unequal treatment meted out to different ethno-demographic groups. This understanding of the oppressive outcomes of multiculturalism will inform the decisions I would take in my professional practice. Since the ideology of multiculturalism is equally applicable to institutions as they are to nation-states, they hold relevance to my professional practice. Professionals would benefit greatly through their cognisance of Du Bois’ discourse on race and racism, as it brings to focus the often-neglected fact that “it is possible to reject biology-based concepts of race and any and all forms of racism without denying the socio-historic and politico-economic reality of race and racism. The so-called "anti-race" theorists who argue that race and race-consciousness are the cause of racism and racial oppression are quite simply thinking wrong about race and have not done their homework on the origins and evolution(s), and the historic socio-political uses and abuses of race.” (Robinson & Diaz, 1999, p. 33) These days all the professions are increasingly getting corporatized. This is a dangerous tendency for it undermines independence and critical engagement with pressing issues facing the profession. It constrains fair-minded professional by making them vulnerable to “the sweeping moves toward corporate restructuring, privatization, down-sizing and amalgamation”. (Sullivan, Eyre, & Roman, 1998, p. 233) The cumulative effects of these effects are slowly converting professional practice into “systems of award restructuring, productivity agreements, standardization, and a re-emphasis on professionalism -- all of which thwart the development of a praxis oriented, site-specific, politically engaged practice”. (Sullivan, Eyre, & Roman, 1998, p. 233) In the case of professionals in the field of education, we are already witnessing how “the general commodification of academic labour is biased against women academics, all of which really extend to all those working toward radical social change. These include the privileging of research over teaching, quantity of publications over quality of publications, short-term outcomes over long-term outcomes, and funding over substance. Basing higher education on a competitive market model inevitably reproduces the struggles for hegemony seen outside the academy in full force”. (Sullivan, Eyre, & Roman, 1998, p. 233) In this context of the state of academia today, it is important that educators are given opportunities in their training to extend a critical understanding of their own attitudes and beliefs about diversity and difference and how inequities are often politically and socially constructed through established power relations operating on all levels of social life. This is crucial, “as research indicates that pre-service teachers have a tendency to focus on the `individuals' as the fulcrum of change, at the expense of acknowledging the role those systemic and structural forms of oppression plays in the lives of minority groups.” (Levine, 2004, p.12) Edward Said has offered key insights on oppression in the imperialist context. In his important work Orientalism, Said has articulated in the unique historical regional context of the Middle East, how “the cruder colonialism of U.S./Israeli occupations in Palestine are asynchronically juxtaposed with an already emergent, on a global scale, reality of neo-colonialism.” (Medina, 2013, p.15) Said’s conception makes for an interesting juxtaposition with the views of sociologist Anzaldua, who sees a more subtle form of oppression at work in the United States. Today, the problems facing native Americans need remedy: “The cruder physical colonial borderlands must give way to the complexities of much subtler "geography of selves" bearing class, racial, gender, sexual, and psychic "Borderlands" of dualistic thinking, feeling, and sensing that help perpetuate global colonial and racial oppression from within.” (Tamdgidi, 2007, p.114) The understanding of how to rebuild from oppression can serve as a useful guideline for my own professional practice. This might entail a “different conception of the architecture of self and social oppression which in turn calls for a different, a simultaneity, of self and broader social liberation.” (Tamdgidi, 2007, p.113) References Barnes, H. E. (2004). Sociology and Political Theory: A Consideration of the Sociological Basis of Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf. Beckett, C. (2011). Sociology for Social Workers and Probation Officers. British Journal of Community Justice, 9(1/2), 149+. Grant, J. S. (1995). Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts of Feminist Theory // Review. Resources for Feminist Research, 24(1/2), 56. Levine, R. F. (Ed.). (2004). Enriching the Sociological Imagination: How Radical Sociology Changed the Discipline. Boston: Brill. Maggio, J. (2007). "Can the Subaltern Be Heard?": Political Theory, Translation, Representation, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 32(4), 419+. Medina, J. (2013). The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. New York: Oxford University Press. Nicholson, H. N. (2006). Media and Ethnic Minorities. British Journal of Canadian Studies,19(2), 340+. Rabaka, R. (2006). W.E.B. Dubois's "The Comet" and Contributions to Critical Race Theory: An Essay on Black Radical Politics and Anti-Racist Social Ethics. Ethnic Studies Review, 29(1), 22+. Robinson, K., & Diaz, C. J. (1999). Doing Theory with Early Childhood Educators: Understanding Difference and Diversity in Personal and Professional Contexts.Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 24(4), 33. Sanbonmatsu, J. (2007). 10 the Subject of Freedom at the End of History: Socialism beyond Humanism. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 66(1), 217+. Sky, P. (1994). The Power of Perspectives: A Case for Feminist Leisure Theory. Journal of Leisure Research, 26(1), 88+. Sullivan, A., Eyre, L., & Roman, L. G. (1998). [Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference & Equality in Education]. Resources for Feminist Research, 26(3/4), 233. Tamdgidi, M. H. (2007). Intersecting Autobiography, History, and Theory: The Subtler Global Violences of Colonialism and Racism in Fanon, Said, and Anzaldua. Human Architecture, 5, 113+. Read More