had to read some stuff for class the other day on whether or not black judges and female judges could be impartial.
yup. that’s what I said.
and, of course, I harkened back to my summer of researching and writing my thesis. all kinds of stuff came spilling out about how the dominant class always thinks they have the market cornered on what is objective. but how of course, nobody is exempt from having a social identity, and how it’s pretty much impossible to ever escape the perspective that you have as a result of that identity. And so, those who claim they can are pretty much fooling themselves by assuming a false (because it’s not possible) and disingenuous (because they claim they can) god’s-eye view of the world. Because the very act of claiming that false position is protecting the interests and values of the dominant class.
I think what we need to do is re-think the entire notion of objectivity. Because it’s ridiculous to claim that one group (who happens to be the dominant class, funny how that works) has a perspective that is unbiased and impartial, and all the rest can’t possibly achieve objectivity because they’re too tainted by their vaginas or their dark skin or slanty eyes or their homo/bi/trans-sexuality.
seems to me that the best way to get to a model of the world that reflects reality most closely is to include everyone in the process. you know, like EVERYONE. poor folks, white folks, women folks, gay folks, jewish folks, black folks, lesbian folks, men folks, rich folks, transfolks, hispanic folks, middleclass folks, bi folks, native folks, mixed race folks, intersexed folks, smart folks, asian folks, disabled folks… all folks. we all need representation, ya know? the more people who are excluded from a process like, oh, justice or academia or science or whatever, the more slanted that “truth” is gonna be (holla Kevin!).
class dismissed.
You’ve probably already read it, since some of your language here reflects it, but I just read an awesome and convincing article by Donna Haraway called “Situated Knowledges.” I put a quote from it on my Powerful Quotes from Empowered Women this week… basically, she argues that the idea of objectivity is a false idol that seduces people into thinking that their eyes are not balls of goo and their bodies are not firmly situated in the material reality of their lives. Objectivity abstracts the embodied experience of observation, and apes omniscience in a way that protects the interests of the dominant class but actually hurts everybody.
She is for partial knowledges – admitting that one’s apprehension is limited, and conversing with other partial knowledges to approach objectivity. I can see where an idea like that would be difficult to put into practice legally… but the ideas are still beneficial. Looks like some white male justices need to be reminded that they, too, have a standpoint – and it ain’t God’s.
tanglethis
yep, Donna Haraway is my hero. That article was so inspiring for me.
for starters, perhaps appointing judges from varied backgrounds would be a good idea. It’s funny how everyone else involved in a case can have specific and narrow experiences, and that’s considered “expertise”, but judges are supposed to be completely neutral.
foolishness.
fuck, I was totally gonna mention Donna Haraway, as I just had to do a presentation on some of her work last week, but I guess I am just to slow for the game…dang!
Ah well, cheers to Haraway and her Situated Knowledges! When I read her, and was trying to figure out what I thought I knew about being objective, I realized that it really is impossible to to think I can place myself in a nowhere land to see the entire world. There is simply no way to get there. I wonder though, why this idea of situated, partial knowledges, this recognition that neutrality is not a given in objectivity is not apparent in many academic fields outside of women’s studies? At least, not in many academic fields I’ve had particular experience in, I should say.
all the rest can’t possibly achieve objectivity because they’re too tainted by their vaginas or their dark skin or slanty eyes or their homo/bi/trans-sexuality.
What I’ve found remarkable about this white-hetero-male default-setting version of ‘objectivity’ is that when it suits, not having experience of something somehow becomes the position that makes one able to better understand it. On non-oppression related topics, experience gives expertise, but women who’ve been raped, or POC/queer people who’ve experienced bias-motivated violence actually lose ground, because suddenly, the discourse is framed in terms of lack of ‘objectivity’. Given the Catch-22 in that dynamic, it’s not coincidence that these are the academic fields that give rise to the Donna Haraways and others who try to situate knowledge.
My dog, woman, I think I love you. Okay, it’s a major girl-crush instead. Seriously big kudos, either way, for the battle cry that was this entry, and the kiss-my-ass that was the previous one.
I learn, and it makes me happy.
@tanglethis: Okay, I have to look into Haraway now. Must have grown up in a fuckin’ vacuum.
Thinking Girl
You have tripped one of my major points of contention.
I my mind you are first very right and then wrong.
We have a serious problem with objectivity, we are creature pulled in many directions by so many different needs wants and forces. we get hungry or tired or cold or irritated, or bored and all have an affect and all cause problems.
The answer is to try to escape the human condition altogether by discipline. some eastern quasi religions attempt to divorce the mind from the mere brain, and to a realm of pure thought. This is a very good start. Disciplining oneself from the sensations and emotions that overwash the thingking process. Without this experience becomes a negative rather than a positive. The ability to empathize without strong mental discipline is a negative rather than a positive.
This is often expressed a s being to close to a problem. Pain will focus the mind but has the danger of overfocusing the mind on only the pain. Empathy can cause one to overfocus on only the source of the empathetic feelings and bends the mind to the resolution of those empathetic feelings.
I will not be upset to take flak for this opinion, I know I am in the minority and it runs counter to your instincts. but then again I am used to swimming upstream and holding unpopular or unfashionable ideas.
Steve
Nightgigjo, don’t feel bad. I really had only my feminist instincts to go on before this year, when I actually took a class in womens’ studies and started reading all this Second Wave stuff. It blows my mind on a weekly basis… and I’d never heard of most of the writing before! Check out my powerful quotes thing if you want leads for recommended reading. : D
Steve, the whole point of standpoint theory and Donna Haraway’s article and TG’s rant is that you can’t unbody yourself, discipline or not. Your knowledge is only ever going to be partial. And while “over-focusing” on the particular experience of your physical person in space and time might be a problem (in what way? could you explain?), it’s very true that imagining your perspective is somehow divorced from your experience of being a young white male (or a middleclass older woman or whatever) is dangerous. Then you start making decisions for other people, thinking you know better. That’s why it’s so mind-boggling that there is the article out there in the world questioning whether women and blacks can be impartial enough to be judges… what’s missing is the question of whether white male judges can be impartial enough to make federal bans on abortion or criminalize baggy pants in Louisiana, etc.
Anyway, no feminist I’ve ever met is anti-discipline. Just pro-critiquing discipline and considering how exactly it is supposed to be useful.
Electric Furr – I know, it may seem that way, that this stuff only really gets talked about in women’s studies circles, but that’s not the case. Dorothy Smith, one of the pioneers of standpoint theory, is a sociologist. As is Patricia Hill Collins, who includes race in her analysis. There’s Nancy Tuana, and Sandra Harding, and who all write in philosophy of science. Uma Narayan does it in the context of postcolonial studies. There’s Peter Haan, and Jacques Lacan, and Elizabeth Anderson and Helen Longino all write about epistemic communities in various disciplines from science to law. I think discussion of these issues of identity perhaps just gain easier acceptance within circles that are used to talking about identity as unfixed and fluid, and of course, socially constructed.
puretek – yes yes yes! exactly! I ask, who better to judge, make decisions, talk about, their situations than those who actually experience them? seriously, this is what drives me nuts about so many discussions! like, how can I, as a white person, make any kind of judgment about what is or isn’t racist? I don’t experience racism! ya know? COME ON!
jo – awwww! *blushes*
Haraway is amazing. be sure to read her Cyborg Manifesto. it’s mindblowingly great.
Steve – I think I hear some of what you’re saying. please let me know if I’m hearing you properly, because I don’t want to misinterpret or put words in your mouth.
you seem to have a concern with people getting too wrapped up in themselves and their own situations? and allowing those to cloud their judgment about other situations?
I can agree with this. But acknowledging our social situations doesn’t automatically give rise to this problem. I merely propose doing this as a basis, beginning from this point, and then moving forward. I think that not doing so leads to the problem of trying to see everything through your own set of glasses, but acknowledging where we are in the social stratification system we live in allows us the opportunity to join together with others. I think of it as singing in a choir instead of singing solo all the time, or joining your little scrap of material into a beautiful and multicoloured crazy quilt. reconizing that your perspective is partial (in both senses of that word: partial as in being incomplete, and partial as in being biased towards oneself) really means that you also acknowledge others have perspectives too.
it’s only a start, but it’s an important one to make.
and what tanglethis said.
Thanks for that!
Bah. Objectivity is overrated anyway. The only things that are even close to being 100% objective are probably mathematical (and I swear, my disdain for objectivity has nothing to do with my disdain of calculus).
Thinking Girl:
Yes I agree mostly with what you are saying. What bothers me about the example post you used was the assumption that ONLY certain individuals have this problem. We all have this problem. The only solution I see is too isolate one by one factors that affect oneself and then you can mental counterbalance for those. It is like using counter weights on a scale to bring it to zero.
For example If I fear I am in danger of falling into the funnel that leads to hate, so I will attempt to solve fear before hate.
If I hurt I am also in danger of sliding into hate so if I cannot stop the hurt I must learn the value the lessons of hurt positively to prevent it sliding to hate.
If I love I can also be jealous, Jealousy is a path to hate, therefore no jealousy can be accepted as good or wholesome.
The revulsion factor of your example is the claim that only certain groups may have a problem when it is a universal human struggle.
Thinking Girl and all
Please check out the link provided as a good example of the effect I am refering to. It applies to self esteem primarily but it still applies. The last two paragraphs parallel nicely
http://www.physorg.com/news111337064.html
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