Working Together Across Difference: Some Considerations on Emotions and Political Practice

Abstract

Uma Narayan attempts to clarify what the feminist notion of the ‘epistemic privilege of the oppressed’ does and does not imply. She argues that the fact that oppressed ‘insiders’ have epistemic privilege regarding their oppression creates problems in dialogue with and coalitionary politics involving ‘outsiders’ who do not share the oppression, since the latter fail to come to terms with the epistemic privilege of the insiders. She concretely analyzes different ways in which the emotions of insiders can be inadvertantly hurt by outsiders and suggests ways in which such problems can be minimized.

Classroom as Real World: Propositions for a pedagogy of difference

“…As a white, male, middle-class university teacher, my experience of Difference is usually as 'outsider', with little of an insider's experience of belonging to the minority position (Narayan, 1988). But differences of some kind, and the dilemmas involved in engaging with them, seem to characterise the programme.…”

Dividing the Difference: intelligibility as an element of moral education under oppression

“…We believe that Ellsworth is describing classroom practices that situate learners within the social relations-marginalisation and privilege-that organise the worlds inside and outside the class community as contexts of distrust (Narayan, 1988). Writing about the capacity of class participants to engage in democratic dialogue, Ellsworth notes:…”

“…This focus led us to recognise that differently situated people would be required to accomplish different tasks to generate intelligibility, but it did not indicate strongly the risks associated with those tasks. It was not until we assessed our experiences of disconnection in terms of what Uma Narayan (1988) called "contexts of distrust", and subsequently recognised that efforts to generate intelligibility involved considerable risks (particularly on the part of people operating from marginalised social positions), that we shifted the terms of our analysis from "co-operative work" to "coalition work".…”

Positionality at the Center

“…I believe that all these elements are important and can be explored based on the needs of the community, but that one of the most significant is the development of the capacity building and critical reflection of the participants. A condition of marginalization is often unequal access to certain forms of knowledge (Wylie, 2004); thus, while the local population may be experts in understanding local power relations, they are often unaware of how oppression they face originated and is maintained (Narayan, 1988). The capacity building and critical reflection of participants is therefore essential, so participants can effectively engage with the researcher and contribute to the analysis and so they can become critically aware and able to advocate at the local level if they choose to following the project's completion, ideally in collaboration with the researcher.…”