GWSS 3303W

Response Paper #1
February 6th, 2009

Speaking for Others: On Context and Responsibility

Linda Alcoff offers a complex interrogation surrounding the debates and practices of

speaking for others. She argues that neither speaking for, nor not speaking for are simple

positions to be taken, but rather that it depends on the context, discourse, location of the

speaker, the audience, and variety of other factors. The basic problem of speaking for

others, nevertheless, remains an important one. Speaking for others might have intended

or unintended effects on those who are being spoken for; it might distort the realities and

experiences; and give undeserved power and status for the speaker instead of those who

are the subjects of the speech.

She argues that speaking for is not completely different from speaking about others, latter

being perceived as a less problematic intellectual or political exercise (9). For Alcoff, any

speaking for or about others, or even about yourself is complicated by the problem of

representation itself. Any claim that it is possible to represent anyone objectively falls

into a trap of Western philosophical claims about the possibility of Truth, which is

objective and disembodied. Alcoff states:

“…The attempt to avoid the problematic speaking for by retreating into an

individualist realm is based on illusion, well-supported in the individualist

ideology of the West, that a self is not constituted by multiple intersecting

discourses but consists in a unified whole capable of autonomy from others” (21).
Alcoff calls to engage with “rituals of speaking” in order “to identify discursive

practices of speaking or writing that involve not only the text or utterance but their

position within a social space including persons involved in, acting upon, and/or affected

by the words” (12). The location of the speaker, among other factors contributing to the

context, does matter, but it should not be perceived as the ultimate authority – “To say

that location bears on meaning and truth is not the same as saying that location

determines meaning and truth” (16). More importantly, power inequalities matter greatly

and the position of the privileged intellectual or politician, for example, cannot be

interpreted the same way as that of the oppressed member from a particular marginalized

location. Alcoff, following Spivak, argues that simply to take a distanced intellectual

position and not to speak for others might contribute, rather than challenge, existing

power relations. Choosing not to speak is also a position of privilege and instead of

attempting to occupy the position of a perceived ethical/intellectual “purity,” it is more

important to attack “the very structure of discursive practice” that privileges some voices

and silences others (23). More importantly, speaking for others, or any speaking for that

matter, “should always carry with it an accountability and responsibility for what one

says” (25).

In terms of women of color speaking for others the critiques similarly might be applied.

There are inherent limits and dangers of one person trying to represent collective

experiences of others. Similarly to Alcoff however, I would argue that specific contexts

and discursive field in which particular authors make their interventions does matter. For

those who are marginalized and their subjectivities denied, “the very act of speaking

itself” is potentially transformative and liberatory (23). Therefore, rather than making
clear-cut divisions between those who can speak for others, and those who cannot, we

should be interrogating particular contexts – who, to whom, from what location, as well

as how and what, is speaking. Identities are more complex than a mere gender, race,

ethnicity, religion, class and so on- taken separately. Simply equating authors to their one

(or several) identity markers cannot provide full experience of the group the author

claims or is ascribed to represent. For example, a black woman writer might have

particular insights stemming from her experience as a black woman in the social order

but that experience cannot be interpreted as a universal, since a black women who lives in

different region, occupies different class, sexual, physical ability, age etc position might

have an entirely different experience personally and collectively. It is important to

recognize, when necessary, the identity of the author but the author’s identity cannot be

treated as a simple factor that establishes an unproblematic relationship to the text and

reveals to us the “truth.” No matter what the genre is, whether it is a fiction, theory,

history, or autobiography, certain elements of fiction and partiality are always present by

the simple fact that representations by their nature are just that – representations.

One of the central issues that is engaged with in Margaret Homans’ article is the

complicated terrain where postmodernist theory meets theories and practices of

marginalized identities. On the one hand, postmodernist theory attempts to deny all

essentialist claims to identity and argues that the social world can be explained by

analyzing social and discursive constructedness of identities and concepts that operate as

“truth” in the world. On the other hand, those who only recently (and partially) were able

to gain recognition of their identities and subjectivities engage with postmodernist ideas

with suspicion. For example Donna Harraway states that “There is the refrain that, just
now, when women are beginning to assume the place of subjects, postmodern positions

come along to announce that the subject is dead” (Quoted in Homans: 81). (I understand

that this is a very simplistic overview of existing debates and that also a lot has changed

in the past two decades, but since we are engaged with these particular texts I am

speaking in that context). Often postmodernist theorists are accused of ignoring social

realities and materialities of identities that live in the real world and that a certain degree

of essentialism is justified in order to make political claims. The danger remains, that

there could be a dead end-- in terms of theory as well as politics--between subjectification

and subjection.1 On the one hand, becoming a subject in the political and discursive field

is a necessary step in terms of emancipatory trajectory, on the other hand, recognition

might come at the price of essentializing and settling of identities, as well as creating

exclusionary definitions of who is allowed to be a member of the recognized

identity/group. The task for women of color, or any writers who are interested in shifting

the discursive field of representation in favor of democratization and plurality, is to try to

be deliberate in negotiating the two (non-essentialism and political relevance). There also

needs to be recognition that identities should not and cannot be static, nor do sides have

to be taken, that as Homans describing Williams’ position states, it should be possible “to

be whole and split, to be single and multiple, to have a self and to deconstruct the notion

of self, to be practical and theoretical” (89).

1 I am borrowing these terms from Denise Riley, “Am I That Name?”: Feminism and
the Category “Women” in History, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988)
pg.17