Broken voices
Politics of domination are reproduced in the educational setting. The education most of us have had or been given is not neutral, despite claims of objectivity. Who shares such facts — or who receives them, is a subject in history.
For some of us, our personal histories are a part of established ways of knowing. We enter an academic institution, and we may feel immediately comfortable. We have a key that grants us the right to open all doors. We may read ourselves in the books or find ourselves in the examples. But for others of us, our personal histories pose a threat. They do not fit under established ways of knowing because storytelling, weaving, or silence are not considered legitimate forms of producing knowledge. Our pain, rage, hopes, and desires are not regarded as valid drivers of academic research. Our histories remain untold, misconstrued, or erased from the books. Some of us are denied subjectivity, while others are allowed to maintain it.
Such recognition of processes of subordination of subjectivities, histories and trajectories is an invitation to be aware and situated. A call to embrace positionality (meet ourselves) and create the space for authentic relating (meet the imagined Other), recognising and understanding ourselves in and with the other. Yet, empathy alone may not resolve the discomfort. But it is also true that disputes between us do not always have to be harmful. Conflicts sometimes provide clarity and lead to a cathartic experience, resulting in newfound knowledge and depth, more authentic forms of relating.
Still, we struggle to relate across our differences, so they are misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion. Society often creates a mythical norm that excludes those who are different, resulting in feelings of isolation and false connections. This rejection of difference is necessary for a profit economy that relies on disposable lives.
While it is true that we have varying lived experiences, it is not these differences that cause division. Instead, it is our unwillingness to acknowledge and accept them. Instead of listening to each other, we tend to project our own experiences and beliefs onto others, resulting in a distorted understanding of their perspectives. When we fear what is different, we push it away, and it becomes foreign and unreachable, much like the dark corners of ourselves that we are afraid to see.
That said, it is uncomfortable to reach out and overcome the fear of encountering differences or seeing ourselves changing in the process, losing control of who we are in other’s eyes and being deemed different. This is one of the readings of the recent protests in Latin America and how they have challenged the legitimacy of the current economic system and (the lack of) state policies. In the region with the highest levels of inequality, it is no surprise that people went from hope to frustration. Yet, why did their voices take so long to be heard? If the economic model was producing such levels of precarity, what held people from mobilising at such a scale before? A plausible explanation could be found in the market ethos that gave an illusion of choice in a marketised society, turning collectivities into individual self-regulating actors, obsessing over our differences and responding to them with fear. The various responses to the mobilisations exposed that many have been programmed to respond to human differences with fear and loathing. Yet, there was also room for shared experiences, collective struggles and solidarity. Mobilisations reminded me that collective voices could help to reinscribe elements of social justice in policymaking, demanding accountability, protection and the guarantee of rights and entitlements. Still, how do you listen to those voices? How do we deal with the anger, the frustration and the discontent? And after decades of silencing and othering, how did those voices emerge? Were they articulate or fractured? Images of shared prosperity, similar and innocuous, were recast as dividing, segregating, and unsuitable.
Social struggles help us explore our sources of connection and proximity. How can we do so without belittling one another? Audre Lorde reminds us of our tendency to diffuse our energies to fight for control over each other when ‘[w]e could still focus our attention against the real economic, political, and social forces at the heart of this society’ (p.46 Sister Outsider). During times of great frustration and collective fear, it is common for collectivites to engage in horizontal hostility as they compete to prove who is the most oppressed. Can we shift the narrative for once? Your suffering is also my suffering. In recognizing your vulnerability, I stand by your side. Can we come together to address our shared experiences of vulnerability and suffering?
