I felt Alcoff contradicted herself a little bit. First off she is a social theorist arguing that we shouldn’t speak for or about someone or something because we might influence other’s thoughts in the wrong way. But isn’t she doing that by writing this article? Can we ever completely speak or write without influencing someone else? Even right now as I write these thoughts and you read them, they are somehow influencing your thought- whether by changing your perception, asking new questions, or even just by reading, you are subconsciously absorbing my opinions. You might believe or agree with them, but you are still reading, absorbing, and forming your own thoughts on them. Another place I believe she contradicts herself is at the end when she says, “Thus, the effect of a U.S. president’s speaking for Latin America in this way is to re-consolidate U.S. imperialism by obscuring its true role in the region in torturing and murdering hundreds and thousands of people who have tried to bring democratic and progressive governments into existence. And this effect will continue until the U.S. government admits its history of international mass murder and radically alters it foreign policy.” This clearly states HER opinion, and I believe she doesn’t consider the various factors she asks us to consider when speaking for or about someone or a situation.

 

All that aside there are some good points and some rather confusing points. In my opinion (there I go, not taking “responsibility for the effects of words” as Alcoff would say) you cannot speak without having influencing someone else, even in the slightest way.

“First, there has been a growing awareness that where one speaks from affects both the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend her location. In other words, a speaker’s location (which I take here to refer to her social location or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker’s claims, and can serve either to authorize or dis-authorize one’s speech. “

“Who is speaking to whom turns out to be as important for meaning and truth as what is said; in fact what is said turns out to change according to who is speaking and who is listening.” 

I agree with these statements. We have to take into consideration what stand point we are talking from, from where we are talking from, and what context we have about the situation/person we are talking about. At the boys and girls club, a volunteer has to make him/herself a part of the children’s lives and act as an equal, not a superior figure. As a person you cannot not deny these children with the respect they deserve. I believe by understanding the way to approach and treat these children is a key element in being a successful volunteer. This all incorporates the use of context, where you are located, how your social background may differ and how you decide to overcome these obstacles to be successful. In speaking for these children, are we treating them with respect? Are we treating their background and social place with dignity? Are we speaking for them, about them, or with them?

“ In particular, is it ever valid to speak for others who are unlike me or who are less privileged than me?”

Yes, why not? As long as you talk with these people, understand the context of their situation, the background they come from, and have sufficient evidence then why can you not? You influence people through your words, and if you can help someone with them, then why not? It is a different story if you do not have the context or know the people you are helping, but if you are speaking with these people and are helping get their word across, then I see no reason why it wouldn’t be valid to speak for others unlike you.

“On the one hand, a theory which explains this experience as involving autonomous choices free of material structures would be false and ideological, but on the other hand, if we do not acknowledge the activity of choice and the experience of individual doubt, we are denying a reality of our experiential lives.9 So I see the argument of this paper as addressing that small space of discursive agency we all experience, however multi-layered, fictional, and constrained it in fact is.”

“The dominant modernist view has been that truth represents a relationship of correspondence between a proposition and an extra-discursive reality. On this view, truth is about a realm completely independent of human action and expresses things “as they are in themselves,” that is, free of human interpretation.”

“Such a view has no necessary relationship to idealism, but it allows us to understand how the social location of the speaker can be said to bear on truth. The speaker’s location is one of the elements which converge to produce meaning and thus to determine epistemic validity.12″

“One important implication of this first premise is that we can no longer determine the validity of a given instance of speaking for others simply by asking whether or not the speaker has done sufficient research to justify her claims. Adequate research will be a necessary but insufficient criterion of evaluation.”   

I don’t completely understand the first statement. If you want analyze something, then why are we analyzing something that is fictional and can never be? If do so, aren’t we just creating more problems? And I don’t completely understand what exactly she is analyzing.

I believe these statements are all connected with one fact- that of the unattainable. In the first we are analyzing a somewhat “multi-layered fictional discursive agency.” In the second statement we are discussing a ideal situation- where a statement can be stated free of human interpretation. Sure this is possible, but only in the mind of the person saying it. Anything and everything we say and write is processed by another’s mind where they analyze it. No matter what they do, it is human nature to observe, hear, and analyze everything we see and hear. Sometimes we’ll miss subtleties and focus on the big picture and vice-versa. But an important point she makes is that a “speaker’s location is one of the elements which converge to produce meaning.” If this so, perhaps because of the person’s background and credits what they say has come truth to it. Can we ever speak objectively? Maybe and maybe not. As we view various situations, we form opinions which then transfer into our own opinions and OUR OWN TRUTHS. No two people take the same information and interpretation from a certain situation, and through each of their analysis they establish their own truth. Therefore, can anything a person claims as true, be true to anyone? I feel like I am going in circles, and am making no sense just like some of the article but there are so many questions that arise from a few different points. In high school, when we did a presentation or debate we were asked to provide evidence. If we could provide evidence for our claim, it was valid. In the last statement Alcoff argues this notion. There is so much more than evidence that drives whether an argument is valid.

“To say that location bears on meaning and truth is not the same as saying that location determines meaning and truth.”

 

“There are numerous examples of the practice of speaking for others which have been politically efficacious in advancing the needs of those spoken for, from Rigoberta Menchu to Edward Said and Steven Biko. Menchu’s efforts to speak for the 33 Indian communities facing genocide in Guatemala have helped to raise money for the revolution and bring pressure against the Guatemalan and U.S. governments who have committed the massacres in collusion. The point is not that for some speakers the danger of speaking for others does not arise, but that in some cases certain political effects can be garnered in no other way.”

 

I like the fact that she doesn’t completely undermine the important role speaking for others can play. She warns us of the dangers, but still tells us about the benefits.

 

“As my practices are made possible by events spatially far away from my body so too my own practices make possible or impossible practices of others. The declaration that I “speak only for myself” has the sole effect of allowing me to avoid responsibility and accountability for my effects on others; it cannot literally erase those effects.”

 

I like this quote because we are responsible for our words and actions. As Newton said for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Everything we do and say somehow has an effect on something else, whether it be on ourselves or someone else. I believe by speaking for and about the boys and girls club we definitely have to consider the effects of what we say and how what we say could be taken in a good and bad connotation. We will have to come up with arguments for the counterarguments we may encounter.

 

“Even if the speaker offers a dozen caveats about her views as restricted to her location, she will still affect the other woman’s ability to conceptualize and interpret her experience and her response to it. And this is simply because we cannot neatly separate off our mediating praxis which interprets and constructs our experiences from the praxis of others. We are collectively caught in an intricate, delicate web in which each action I take, discursive or otherwise, pulls on, breaks off, or maintains the tension in many strands of the web in which others find themselves moving also. When I speak for myself, I am constructing a possible self, a way to be in the world, and am offering that, whether I intend to or not, to others, as one possible way to be.”

 

I really like this quote because it sums up the effects our individual words and actions can have on the world.

 

“…but the point is that the impetus to always be the speaker and to speak in all situations must be seen for what it is: a desire for mastery and domination. Some of us have been taught that by right of having the dominant gender, class, race, letters after our name, or some other criterion, we are more likely to have the truth. Others have been taught the opposite and will speak haltingly, with apologies, if they speak at all… speaking should always carry with it an accountability and responsibility for what one says. To whom one is accountable is a political/epistemological choice contestable, contingent and, as Donna Haraway says, constructed through the process of discursive action… we need to analyze the probable or actual effects of the words on the discursive and material context. One cannot simply look at the location of the speaker or her credentials to speak; nor can one look merely at the propositional content of the speech; one must also look at where the speech goes and what it does there.”

 

All of this is in part III and parts I believe are important. I don’t believe that speaking for others or about them is a desire for mastery. When you are helping someone sincerely, you don’t care who notices what you are doing or what you are sacrificing for the cause. You should only care about the outcome and how it will help those you are oppressing. Alcoff says that the oppressed should speak for themselves, but when it is hard enough for them to have a voice that others listen to, what do they do? They turn to someone through whom their voice will be heard. Perhaps these people can help these people form a voice in which they can eventually speak for themselves. There are many factors one needs to consider before speaking for someone but if in any way one does speak for or about someone then they should be ready to accept responsibility for their the effects of their words and actions. The same principle will apply to our volunteer service at the boys and girls club. If we say anything for or about the boys and girls club, whether received in a good or bad way, we are solely responsible for the effects and outcomes. In the end, we hope to help the boys and girls club, but what if our concerns are interpreted wrongly? Then we put the boys and girls club at risk- a risk they are willing to take by having as volunteers and perhaps spokespeople to further their cause. This is the danger Alcoff is talking about when warning us about speaking for and about others. But Alcoff counters this claim by saying, “It is not always the case that when others unlike me speak for me I have ended up worse off, or that when we speak for others they end up worse off. Sometimes, as Loyce Stewart has argued, we do need a “messenger” to advocate for our needs.”

 

“The source of a claim or discursive practice in suspect motives or maneuvers or in privileged social locations, I have argued, though it is always relevant, cannot be sufficient to repudiate it. We must ask further questions about its effects, questions which amount to the following: will it enable the empowerment of oppressed peoples?” 


 

Though Alcoff makes many good points, I believe one of the most important ones is this last question. Ultimately, when we specifically speak for or about others (ignoring our everyday talk and its implications), we wish to help someone or their cause. But there are many factors to take into consideration before actually being able to help someone. Cruz and Illich said in their articles that perhaps we can better service the country by not doing service in these third world countries. Illich said, “The damage which volunteers do willy-nilly is too high a price for the belated insight that they shouldn’t have volunteered in the first place…I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce excercising the power which being an American gives you,” and Cruz says, ““I want us to talk about why, in the context of conflicting interests and the historical dominance of one racial or gender group over another, it is possible that ’service,’ in and of itself, can have racist or sexist outcomes despite good intentions. For example, I resist the notion of service learning for U.S. students in the Philippines, my country of origin, because I think it perpetuates a ‘colonial mentality’ among Filipinos and a kind of ‘manifest destiny’ amoung U.S. students. To my way of thinking, the results of the history of U.S. dominance in the Philippines is so overwhelming that it is almost impossible for a U.S. student doing what is regarded on both sides as ’service’ not to deliver a message of superiority.” Through both these quotes we are shown what can happen if the context of the situation is not taken into account and how “service” in its broadest sense can be bad. There are many factors that need to be taken into account when talking about service, just as when you are speaking for or about others. In either case what you consider a “service” may not actually be a service and rather than help, make the situation worse.