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Who Can Speak?: Authority and Critical Identity
For women, for lesbians and gays, for African Americans, for Asians, Native Americans, or any other self-identified and -identifying group, who can speak? Who has the authority to speak for these groups? Is there genuinely such a thing as "objectivity," or can only members of these groups speak, finally, for themselves? And who has the authority to decide who has the authority?
This collection examines how theory and criticism are complicated by
multiple perspectives in an increasingly multicultural society and
faces head on the difficult question of what qualifies a critic to speak from or about a particular position. In different formats and from different perspectives from various disciplines, the contributors to this volume analytically and innovatively work together to define the problems and capture the contradictions and tensions inherent in the issues of authority, epistemology, and discourse.
This collection examines how theory and criticism are complicated by
multiple perspectives in an increasingly multicultural society and
faces head on the difficult question of what qualifies a critic to speak from or about a particular position. In different formats and from different perspectives from various disciplines, the contributors to this volume analytically and innovatively work together to define the problems and capture the contradictions and tensions inherent in the issues of authority, epistemology, and discourse.
- GenresGender
264 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 7, 2016
Good book. Solid background/entry points for various debates around identity politics in academia.
Leslie Bow. p. 36: writers being judged on basis of authenticity. Who is authorized to evaluate said authenticity? "...perception that Asian American literary worth is evaluated by whites and measured in terms of marketability." "Asian Americanists seemed to be excluded from defining their own standards of scholarship."
p. 46: "I wonder about the politics inherent in leaving unmarked one's identification with the United States as a first world power, while at the same time benefitting from its resources."
return to Linda Martin Alcoff's essay, "The problem of speaking for others"
Sandra Harding, p. 124: "Standpoint theories direct us to identify whose questions a knowledge project is asking and whose problems it has been designed to resolve. Is it asking questions that are of interest primarily to the dominant groups or to those whom the dominant groups marginalize? The disciplinary preoccupations of philosophy, sociology, biology, and literary criticism have been constructed to assist dominant institutions and individuals in their projects, not to address the concerns of the marginalized."
Judith Roof, p. 184: “The narrative of oppression presumably caused by political correctness has to do with white males (more often than not) feeling suddenly aggressively prevented from saying what they want, which all at once has become an urgent need to insult women, African Americans, and other minorities in a public forum.”
Leslie Bow. p. 36: writers being judged on basis of authenticity. Who is authorized to evaluate said authenticity? "...perception that Asian American literary worth is evaluated by whites and measured in terms of marketability." "Asian Americanists seemed to be excluded from defining their own standards of scholarship."
p. 46: "I wonder about the politics inherent in leaving unmarked one's identification with the United States as a first world power, while at the same time benefitting from its resources."
return to Linda Martin Alcoff's essay, "The problem of speaking for others"
Sandra Harding, p. 124: "Standpoint theories direct us to identify whose questions a knowledge project is asking and whose problems it has been designed to resolve. Is it asking questions that are of interest primarily to the dominant groups or to those whom the dominant groups marginalize? The disciplinary preoccupations of philosophy, sociology, biology, and literary criticism have been constructed to assist dominant institutions and individuals in their projects, not to address the concerns of the marginalized."
Judith Roof, p. 184: “The narrative of oppression presumably caused by political correctness has to do with white males (more often than not) feeling suddenly aggressively prevented from saying what they want, which all at once has become an urgent need to insult women, African Americans, and other minorities in a public forum.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review