Read on Twitter
reacting to a few different things (some of which are on Twitter), but not a subtweet: I see two well-intentioned norms floating around these days.
1) You *must* address justice issues (e.g. "white silence is violence")
2) Only address justice issues when you've "done the work"
1) You *must* address justice issues (e.g. "white silence is violence")
2) Only address justice issues when you've "done the work"
There are problems. 1st: these aren't *conceptually* at odds with each other, but tension between them seems obvious to me. Doing the work (2) takes time/effort/resources - the more you devote to issue A, the more vulnerable you are to the criticism in 1 concerning issue B
Secondly, I think these are at odds with each other in a more important way. A lot hinges on what you mean by 1 and 2, but a typical pattern: to artificially wish the tension between 1 and 2 away by arbitrarily deciding which *specific* issues of justice should concern others...
cynically put: 1's "You must address justice issues" becomes "you must address the justice issues that are a concern for *me*/people *I* care about". then, 2 becomes: "you must join my cause, regardless of what you care about"
worth looking for a better recruitment strategy.
worth looking for a better recruitment strategy.
while we're being cynical, we can also point to another problem. #2, "doing the work", is often operationalized in academia as having read or cited specific people or literatures. but what if those people's work is a subset of what's relevant? if we're ignoring better work?
what if we could do better starting over? more to the point: who benefits from this manner of gatekeeping, and how does that influence how this norm *actually* functions, regardless of the initial intentions?
I think we've got an elite capture problem here
I think we've got an elite capture problem here
this way of doing things drives citations, prestige, and institutional leverage towards a handful of scholars talking about marginalized people's issues.
at this point, you could point out that there's other ways of interpreting 2, and you'd be right, but...
at this point, you could point out that there's other ways of interpreting 2, and you'd be right, but...
once the dollars/power start flowing in that direction, so does the ability to push that interpretation of 2 above alternatives. unclear that anyone outside of academia benefits from this arrangement, since the opportunity cost could be better knowledge production about justice
again, abstractly put but not a theoretical or hypothetical concern. this is more or less my take on the state of things academically - which I see as in general a poorly functioning set of epistemic institutions, focused on the wrong things
The big explanations for this are, of course, structural - who is funding and how much. But to add these norms, which the Koch brothers can't prevent us from challenging, on top of that toxic starting point is a weird unforced error
more to the point: the world described by 1 and 2 is not one I want to live in, and not just because it's a response to oppression (and thus non-ideal). we need to know how to build bridges, find vaccines, etc...not everything worth answering is answered by analyzing injustice.
cliffnotes: inaction and unseriousness about justice are problems, but these norms don't seem to me like a good response.
