Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Response Paper #1
February 6th, 2009
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
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
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
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
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
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
and subjection.1 On the one hand, becoming a subject in the political and discursive field
might come at the price of essentializing and settling of identities, as well as creating
identity/group. The task for women of color, or any writers who are interested in shifting
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
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