To me, intersectionality feels like one of those “motte and bailey” things. Yes, seeing things from other people’s perspective can be very useful, and yes, it is often better to invite an X to participate in the project than trying to guess how things might seem from X’s perspective. This is definitely worth paying attention to!
But it also comes with the political baggage, the official list of “groups that matter” which suggests that it is useful to consider people’s gender or sexual orientation, but not that useful to consider e.g. people’s social class or degree of autism. Unless you discuss the latter from the perspective of the former. (You don’t discuss poverty, unless you discuss e.g. poverty of women, or poverty of LGBT; and the correct solution is always a support of given group, not a support of poor people in general. The other causes exist only to serve the important causes.)
It also considers people within the groups replaceable. If Alice and Betty have the same gender, same race, same sexual orientation, then Alice is assumed to also speak in Betty’s name, especially if Alice is politically on “the right side of history”. (On the other hand, if Betty is conservative, she is not even allowed to speak for herself. Alice knows better what is best for her. You should listen to Alice and ignore Betty, otherwise you are “against women”.) There is a somewhat related concept of “token” person, which kinda admits that having one representative of a group is not enough, but the main concern is about choosing Betty as that representative.
Plus the usual “critical” bias, where one person being unhappy about something is more important than ten people being happy and opposing the change. (Because the true reason for the fight is promoting social change towards “the right side of history”, not solving specific problems of specific people. Individuals only exist to serve the cause.)
So I am in favor of listening to different perspectives, but if you do it with an open mind, chance is that you may ask ten X’s and receive ten different answers. The answers will probably have something in common, so hopefully you can work with that, but can be frustratingly different at the parts where you hoped to get one unified “X perspective” as an answer. (You can’t make everyone happy, and you can’t even make all X happy.) Therefore, you can get better data by asking people different from you for a perspective, but at the end of the day, you have to apply your own judgment to the somewhat contradictory answers you have received.
Good points. Perhaps ‘intersectionality’ isn’t the right term. I also considered ‘positionality,’ trying to refer to ′ ideology that emphasizes identity over reasoning.′ Or maybe I’m thinking of the ‘motte’ form, so that [whatever the Scott quote represents] is a weaker form of motte!intersectionality is a weaker form of bailey!intersectionality.
Though I think the Scott quote represents something stronger than ‘paying attention to identity X’s perspective’. It looks more like ‘identity X may provide information and insights in unpredictable ways.’
This is not compatible with reflexively applying a narrative to an identity group, as so often happens. If identity X’s insights line up perfectly with your preexisting beliefs, there’s something else going on.
Perhaps more specifically, I newly endorse the proposal, “Identity has distinct and unpredictable effects on research,” but not the more extreme proposals:
“Identity group members are replaceable.”
“Identity groups have a ‘correct’ position.”
“Problems must be examined first in relation to identity groups.”
I’m personally coming into this with a heavy bias against intersectionality and critical theory, so I’m trying to steelman where possible.
Considering that anyone can provide an unpredictable insight, and you can’t invite everyone to the debate, so you need to use some heuristic to get maximum insight per number of people invited… the social justice heuristic (focusing on gender, race, sexual orientation) is actually quite good.
It can be further improved by also considering social class and religion/politics.
I hadn’t considered that angle. Still, that heuristic assumes
a) that the field is one where those differences are salient (I maintain mathematics at least is exempt) and
b) that the people you’re inviting have sufficient background to make meaningful contributions, contra the orthodox intersectional considerations you mentioned before.
I’m tempted say that this heuristic (diversity of identity) is strictly less effective than diversity of thought/ideology, but that seems to be what Scott runs against. It would indicate that there are insights not available just through ideology but through (to use an abused phrase) lived experience.
As to how these cross over and whether they’re intersectional, that’s another can of worms I’m not going to open.
To me, intersectionality feels like one of those “motte and bailey” things. Yes, seeing things from other people’s perspective can be very useful, and yes, it is often better to invite an X to participate in the project than trying to guess how things might seem from X’s perspective. This is definitely worth paying attention to!
But it also comes with the political baggage, the official list of “groups that matter” which suggests that it is useful to consider people’s gender or sexual orientation, but not that useful to consider e.g. people’s social class or degree of autism. Unless you discuss the latter from the perspective of the former. (You don’t discuss poverty, unless you discuss e.g. poverty of women, or poverty of LGBT; and the correct solution is always a support of given group, not a support of poor people in general. The other causes exist only to serve the important causes.)
It also considers people within the groups replaceable. If Alice and Betty have the same gender, same race, same sexual orientation, then Alice is assumed to also speak in Betty’s name, especially if Alice is politically on “the right side of history”. (On the other hand, if Betty is conservative, she is not even allowed to speak for herself. Alice knows better what is best for her. You should listen to Alice and ignore Betty, otherwise you are “against women”.) There is a somewhat related concept of “token” person, which kinda admits that having one representative of a group is not enough, but the main concern is about choosing Betty as that representative.
Plus the usual “critical” bias, where one person being unhappy about something is more important than ten people being happy and opposing the change. (Because the true reason for the fight is promoting social change towards “the right side of history”, not solving specific problems of specific people. Individuals only exist to serve the cause.)
So I am in favor of listening to different perspectives, but if you do it with an open mind, chance is that you may ask ten X’s and receive ten different answers. The answers will probably have something in common, so hopefully you can work with that, but can be frustratingly different at the parts where you hoped to get one unified “X perspective” as an answer. (You can’t make everyone happy, and you can’t even make all X happy.) Therefore, you can get better data by asking people different from you for a perspective, but at the end of the day, you have to apply your own judgment to the somewhat contradictory answers you have received.
Good points. Perhaps ‘intersectionality’ isn’t the right term. I also considered ‘positionality,’ trying to refer to ′ ideology that emphasizes identity over reasoning.′ Or maybe I’m thinking of the ‘motte’ form, so that [whatever the Scott quote represents] is a weaker form of motte!intersectionality is a weaker form of bailey!intersectionality.
Though I think the Scott quote represents something stronger than ‘paying attention to identity X’s perspective’. It looks more like ‘identity X may provide information and insights in unpredictable ways.’
This is not compatible with reflexively applying a narrative to an identity group, as so often happens. If identity X’s insights line up perfectly with your preexisting beliefs, there’s something else going on.
Perhaps more specifically, I newly endorse the proposal, “Identity has distinct and unpredictable effects on research,” but not the more extreme proposals:
“Identity group members are replaceable.”
“Identity groups have a ‘correct’ position.”
“Problems must be examined first in relation to identity groups.”
I’m personally coming into this with a heavy bias against intersectionality and critical theory, so I’m trying to steelman where possible.
Considering that anyone can provide an unpredictable insight, and you can’t invite everyone to the debate, so you need to use some heuristic to get maximum insight per number of people invited… the social justice heuristic (focusing on gender, race, sexual orientation) is actually quite good.
It can be further improved by also considering social class and religion/politics.
I hadn’t considered that angle. Still, that heuristic assumes
a) that the field is one where those differences are salient (I maintain mathematics at least is exempt) and
b) that the people you’re inviting have sufficient background to make meaningful contributions, contra the orthodox intersectional considerations you mentioned before.
I’m tempted say that this heuristic (diversity of identity) is strictly less effective than diversity of thought/ideology, but that seems to be what Scott runs against. It would indicate that there are insights not available just through ideology but through (to use an abused phrase) lived experience.
As to how these cross over and whether they’re intersectional, that’s another can of worms I’m not going to open.