Guys, it’s my birthday on Saturday!!! To celebrate, let’s put on our Claire’s tortoiseshell glasses and talk about STANDPOINT THEORY.
Mmmmkay. A lot of us are in it, “getting proximate” with the people in our communities who are suffering most. In my experience, when privileged people get involved in that kind of work, we can end up having some or all of the following thoughts/feelings. (There’s so much joy in this work, but for today I’m focusing on the harder responses, because—spoiler—I think standpoint theory can help us think about them.)
Any of these seem familiar?
- Overwhelm: “OMG there’s so much pain in the world, so many people being hurt. I want to help but don’t know how.”
- Culture shock: “Whoa, people are very different from me. Also, whyyyyy are they doing it that way, when my way is (fill in the blank: more efficient, more effective, better)?”
- Shame: “ACK, am I being a white savior?! I don’t want to be; I do want to find and follow the leadership of historically marginalized people.”
- Jadedness: [flicks cigarette ash] “I’ve been doing this work for twenty years; These People will never change.” (If you’ve been in a teachers’ lounge, holy smokes have you heard this.)
- Irritation with your own or others’ flaccid reminder to be humble!!!: “I’m, um, in charge of teaching refugees how to navigate American banks and schools. Not sure what ‘be humble’ means in this context, when what they need is confident direction.”
- Distaste for platitudes from other privileged people in your position: “Whew, Susan, your Facebook post, which contains an ill-advised photo of the adults we’re tutoring and the caption “I just learn sooo much from Them heart heart heart” is…kinda icky, kinda infantilizing, like when we say that we have sooo much to learn from toddlers whose simple little souls are full of love. Or puppies.”
- Confusion, though: "But I do have so much to learn from people closer to suffering and further from power than me. That’s real. How do I pair a learning posture with a helping posture, without being a jerk?”
Soooo, to review, I’m looking for
- solutions to really entrenched, awful problems having to do with the abuse of power;
- a sense of hope that I don’t personally have to have all of the answers, because I don’t;
- a robust way to interact with the historically marginalized people I’m “getting proximate with” that neither ignores my skills/knowledge, nor treats them as somehow lesser beings in need of my saving;
- as ever, a thicker and more beautiful understanding of the world.
That’s it! Just those little things!
But here’s what’s wild: I have found a lot of this in picking up and using the toilet-paper roll of standpoint theory. I am really, really excited to introduce y’all to it if you don’t already know each other. (It’s been propounded by a wide range of mostly feminist scholars since the mid-twentieth century. My favorites are Patricia Hill Collins and Sandra Harding, both of whom I will quote in the future.)
Here is the most simplistic, quick-and-dirty version, as I understand it, formatted in the style of a diagrammed sentence, BECAUSE IT’S HELPFUL AND WE ARE ADORABLE NERDS:
By virtue of their social location
and their collective struggle,
marginalized groups
have
some knowledge and understanding
about the world,
about social relations, and
about oppression
that is simply not accessible
to more powerful groups.
OK. The thinking beneath it goes like this:
- Knowledge isn’t neutral or obtained in a vacuum. It’s “socially situated,” meaning that how and what we know are partly shaped by our social positions/groups.
Example: my husband, a tall man, doesn’t know what it’s like to feel hyper-vigilant in a parking garage at night. Until I explained it, he didn’t even know about the keys-between-the-fingers trick! - This one’s a three-parter:
- A society’s most powerful groups define its dominant culture and basic power structures.
- In order to survive, less-powerful groups always have to be at least conversant, if not fluent, in the (literal and figurative) languages of power.
- This is not true in the opposite direction: members of more-powerful groups can easily survive without having to learn the ways of less-powerful groups.
Example: colonized people are usually (at least) bilingual, knowing their own indigenous languages plus the language of their colonizers. Colonizers, on the other hand, can but don’t have to learn the indigenous language to get by.
- Less-powerful people have to collaborate creatively amongst themselves in order to thrive in power-imbalanced or unjust systems.
Example: In male-dominated corporate workplaces, women often help each other strategize about how to advance their careers…and (unfortunately but also thank God) tip each other off about the creepy dudes.
Because of all of this, again, standpoint theory posits that, by virtue of their social location and their collective struggle, marginalized groups have some knowledge and understanding about the world, about social relations, and about oppression that is simply not accessible to more powerful groups.
A really important note:
Standpoint theory does not locate this knowledge-advantage in individuals. It does not posit, for example, that every individual woman “knows more about the world” than every individual man. That would be silly! (It might also be true, but THAT IS MY PERSONAL OPINION, NOT STANDPOINT THEORY’S.)
To get wonky: theorists explicitly distinguish between a perspective (how you see the world from your personal point of view, wherever you happen to be) and a standpoint, which theorists define as an achievement gained in collective struggle.
Example: I wasn’t born knowing how it feels to get catcalled or pay a “luxury tax” on tampons. I accrued these experiences because they are common to women in my culture. I have gained insight about them through discussion with other women.
Are you still with me???
I’m going to stop here for today, even though I’ve written, like, four thousand more words about this. I think we need to marinate in it for a week.
How does it hit you? What questions / concerns / suspicions / possible applications come to mind? Please note any of those in the comments, even OR ESPECIALLY if they are disorganized verbal vomit. I think this toilet-paper roll is a particularly powerful one, but it’s also tricky, and there’s a lot more to say about it! Just not right at this moment! Happy birthday to us. xoxoxo
Member discussion: