In recent
weeks, I have given much thought to the construction of otherness in
contemporary theory, and my own use of the figure of the ‘other’ (and to some
extent the abject and the subaltern) as a means of grappling with the
marginalization and effective de-subjectification of racialized minorities in
the U.S. This reconsideration of my thinking on this topic was precipitated by
a reading of the “Introduction” to Kelly Oliver’s book Witnessing: Beyond Recognition.[1]
In contrast to theorist such as Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Axel Honneth
and Jurgen Habermas, to name but a few, Oliver is insistent on distancing
herself from an analysis of the ‘other’ that is based on the impulse to posit a
state of otherness whose requisite impoverishment, silence and invisibility
functions solely to enable and/or support its dichotomous opposite, the realm
of vocal subjectivity. Calling for a contemplation of the subject position of
those othered by discourses of subjectivity, Oliver asks if it is possible to
“…develop a theory of subjectivity by starting from the position of those
othered by dominant culture?”[2]
Indeed, how can we begin to think about the ways in which an individual’s sense
of subjectivity or agency is altered when s/he “…is objectified through
discrimination, domination, oppression, enslavement or torture?”[3]
For her part,
Oliver proposes the concept of witnessing, and the concomitant notions of
“address-ablility” and “response-ability,” as a means of constructing a vision
of subjectivity that recognizes the interdependent and dialogic nature of
subject relations, and which attempts to circumvent a condition of being that
is reliant on the tropes of oppression and subordination for its constitution. Moreover,
she maintains that “…the need to demand recognition [ergo subjectivity] from
the dominant culture or group is a symptom of the pathology of oppression,”[4]
wherein this recognition “…merely repeats the dynamic of hierarchies, privilege
and domination”[5]
that already inform and construct human relationships. She goes on to argue
against a positing of “…the social struggles manifested in critical race
theory, queer theory, feminist theory and various social movements”[6]
as struggles for recognition, but as movements and individuals that “…bear
witness to a pathos beyond recognition…”[7]
that can only be interrogated outside the dichotomy subject/object (other) and
through inter-relationality.
I mention
Oliver’s work because I believe that it brings to bear a number of issues that arise
when we confront the notion of subalternity, and the extent to which the
mechanisms of voice and agent witnessing/testimony are addressed in Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak’s seminal piece, Can
the Subaltern Speak?[8]. Critical of the “ventriloquism of the
speaking subaltern” that she maintains is the stock-in trade of leftist
theorists, Spivak wrestles with the construction of an ‘other’ who while
remaining mute, is accorded a sense of agency vis-à-vis theories of liberation
that continue to privilege the subjectivity of dominant groups; who, in turn, use
socio-political ‘others’ as vehicles for their emancipation. If the subaltern
is to be defined as “…a person without lines of social mobility,”[9]
then the effort to (re-)constitute the subaltern’s subjective standing
necessitates the (re-)introduction into an economy of being that is dependent
on subject/other dichotomy that, as Oliver points out, continues to buttress
long standing power imbalances and dynamics. Spivak, in asking with “[w]hat
voice-consciousness can the subaltern speak?,”[10]
further contests efforts to construct a subject regime that is reliant on
precisely those “totalizing concepts of power and desire,” that fail to address
the breadth and nuance of being and representation.
The failure
of voice, the silence of otherness, in this instance is a failure to posit
subalternity as the terra firma of
subject construction, and the failure to take into account the ways in which
the subaltern testify to their material conditions. Indeed, it is the hidden
testimonies of women in the records of the East India Company in which Spivak
identifies a locus of counter narratives of women’s consciousness and where an
alternative economy of subjectivity can be considered. But I wonder to what
extent this move continues to rely on dominance as the counterpoint and point
of origin for the ‘other’, and to what extent the subaltern woman as located in
the organizational narrative of the East India Company can fully wrest herself
from her subjective dependence on a more agent, powerful figure. Is Spivak a
party to the “pathology of oppression”? Or can we make case for this being a
recognition of Oliver’s interrelational nature of subjectivity? Of a
co-dependence that holds the promise of the unearthing of parallel histories
that articulate more complicated narratives.
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