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8/14/2019 UNFINISHED--The Art of Ventriloquism: The Danger in Speaking for Others and The Relevance of Location
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Anika Reza
Carleton University
PHIL 2306
Christine Koggel
The Art of VentriloquismThe Danger in Speaking for Others and The Relevance of Location
Speaking for others is a common occurrence in daily life with
celebrities speaking for the poor in Sudan in order to raise awareness
to President Bush speaking for the citizens of Iraq on their wish for
democracy. While speaking for others remain the norm in many
sectors, it has increasingly been questioned among some groups of
academics and feminists. The idea of speaking for others as being
problematic has arisen from two points. The first is the growing
recognition that ones location, be it social or geographical, has an
impact on ones meaning and truth. That there is no universal truth
and ones reality and outlook on life is shaped by ones location. (Alcoff
6-7) And the second is the idea that speaking for others can be
dangerous because it is tied to the production of knowledge and
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power. Those that are speaking, or have the right to speak, are holding
the power and are in the process of creating knowledge. Thus a
privileged individual speaking for a less privileged one will often
reinforce the oppression rather than elevate it. Just by speaking on
behalf of an oppressed group one can unintentionally subvert their
right to speak and be acknowledged. This is because by speaking on
their behalf the privileged speaker takes away their voice and
perpetuates the idea that the oppressed group needs a stronger
individual or group to speak for them in order to be heard. Different
feminists have come to the conclusion that speaking for others is
dangerous by traveling on different paths. Adrienne Rich recognized
the danger in speaking for others through her writings on the
relevance of location. In her article titledNotes Towards a Politics of Location
Rich states You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for us (Rich 454).
Rich came to this understanding after realizing the large impact
location, within the world and within society, has on ones
understanding of events and thus a middle-class White female from
the United States cannot effectively speak for a poor Hispanic female
from Nicaragua.
When, where and under what conditions has the statement
been true? (Rich 449)
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To say the body lifts me away from what has given me a
primary perspective. To say my body reduces the temptation to
grandiose assertions. (Rich 449)
the white-educated mind is capable of formulating everything
that white middle-class feminism can know for all women; that only
when a white mind formulates is the formulation to be taken seriously
(Rich 457)
Being sensitive to one
In the end the danger is not so much in the action of speaking for
others but in not recognizing that location shapes our perspective and
knowledge and that the role of the speaker holds the power.
there is no liberation that only knows how to say I; there is no
collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through
(Rich 454)
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.
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The recognition that there is a problem with speaking for, or representing others, stems
from two connected points. First, that a speakers location is epistemologically significant
and second, that certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous
These examples demonstrate the range of current practices of speaking for others in our
society. While the prerogative of speaking for others remains unquestioned in the citadels
of colonial administration, among activists and in the academy it elicits a growing unease
and, in some communities of discourse, it is being rejected. There is a strong, albeit
contested, current within feminism which holds that speaking for others---even for other
women---is arrogant, vain, unethical, and politically illegitimate. Feminist scholarship
has a liberatory agenda which almost requires that women scholars speak on behalf of
other women, and yet the dangers of speaking across differences of race, culture,
sexuality, and power are becoming increasingly clear to all.
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 second
claim holds that not only is location epistemically salient, but certain privileged locations
are discursively dangerous.5In 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. 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. Adopting the
position that one should only speak for oneself raises similarly difficult questions. If I
http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html#footnote5http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html#footnote5http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html#footnote58/14/2019 UNFINISHED--The Art of Ventriloquism: The Danger in Speaking for Others and The Relevance of Location
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don't speak for those less privileged than myself, am I abandoning my political
responsibility to speak out against oppression, a responsibility incurred by the very fact of
my privilege?
In rejecting a general retreat from speaking for, I am not advocating a return to an unself-
conscious appropriation of the other, but rather that anyone who speaks for others should
only do so out of a concrete analysis of the particular power relations and discursive
effects involved.
Work Cited
Adrienne Rich, Notes Towards a Politics of Location, Feminist Theory
Reader: Localand Global Perspectives, eds, Carole R. McCann and
Seung-Kyung Kim, Routledge, 2003,pp, 447-459
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics
of Experience, Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives,
eds, Carole R. McCann andSeung-Kyung Kim, Routledge, 2003
The Problem of Speaking for Others
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Linda Alcoff
Cultural Critique, No. 20 (Winter, 1991-1992), pp. 5-32
Published by: University of Minnesota Press