Deference to the oppressed gets us nowhere
Should deference to oppressed people be the basis for solidarity? Among progressives, the answer is increasingly yes.
At the University of Melbourne’s sizeable Gaza solidarity encampment last year for example, events were in effect dictated by a group of about six individuals—the only people involved with “lived experience” of colonial occupation—and who therefore unilaterally decided who could participate in the action and what strategy and tactics participants were allowed to use.
It is likewise now routine for organisers of events like Invasion Day rallies to draw up authoritarian rules that attendees are expected to adhere to, many of which violate democratic rights in a way that would be vigorously objected to if imposed by the police or government.
But because they are the dictates of the oppressed to be adhered to by the “privileged”, they are not only accepted by most attendees; they are actively enforced by large numbers for whom deference to such demands has become both second nature and a badge of honour. At Invasion Day, this means in practice white people aggressively policing the rallies.
This fawning approach to oppressed people is so unquestioningly accepted as a moral virtue that it generally escapes interrogation. But in an effort to give it a more solid ideological footing, two UK academics, Kerri Woods and Joshua Hobbs, last year published a journal article titled “The Normative Demand for Deference in Political Solidarity” with the explicit aim of better thinking through this “prevalent” but chronically “under-theorised” practice. The article didn’t make much of a splash, and it’s not likely to enter the canon of journal articles, if there is such a thing. But it is of interest because, in attempting to draw out the theory behind this ubiquitous practice, the authors inadvertently make a compelling case against it.
The problem, according to Woods and Hobbs, is this: “Allies of those experiencing injustice or oppression face a dilemma: to be neutral in the face of calls to solidarity risks siding with oppressors, yet to speak or act on behalf of others risks compounding the injustice.”
The solution to this dilemma is “a normative demand for deference” to those with “lived experience”, which means “accepting the authority of a given speaker’s testimony or guidance and accepting normative demands arising from that as prima facie action-guiding”. In other words, whatever the oppressed say or say to do about their oppression should be accepted unquestioningly as a matter of principle.
This, they argue, is “an important corrective to the tendency of the privileged to erase and to fail to understand the experience of oppression, and, alongside this, to deny and diminish the agency of those in disempowered positions”.
This tendency of the non-oppressed doesn’t just mean that they might sometimes be insensitive or imperfect opponents of inequality, and therefore should exercise caution and be respectful when showing solidarity. Such an approach is denoted by different academic jargon: “epistemic humility”.
The Normative Demand for Deference, by contrast, involves understanding the “distinct limitations” to the “knowledge or authority to speak and act” on the part of those who do not have “lived experience” of oppression, and therefore the likelihood that any attempt by them to challenge oppression will “compound the injustice”. Only through the complete relinquishing of agency in thought and action on the part of would-be “allies” can there be “authentic” solidarity and the perpetuation of oppression avoided.
There is no doubt that there is a need for humility, sensitivity and respect in political spaces where people’s experiences of life and society are likely to differ. But the assumption underpinning this argument—that perfect knowledge of the experience of a particular form of oppression is a precondition for effective solidarity and necessary to avoid generating further injustice—does not stand up to scrutiny. Nor does the converse: that first-hand experience of a specific oppression provides the sufferer with some sort of portal into truth and strategic infallibility not available to others.
Oppressed people simply do not uniformly demonstrate a greater understanding of or tendency to challenge their oppression. The very experience of oppression, which by definition degrades and disempowers people, can mean that those experiencing it more readily internalise the ideology of inequality that shapes their reality. Just think of the phenomenon of refugees or new migrants who oppose refugee boat arrivals on the basis that the actions of those refugees attract hostility to already arrived refugee and migrants.
Or women who spend endless money and time on products and procedures to make themselves look younger or more “attractive”, and who influence or shame other women into doing likewise.
Oppression can of course also lead to resistance and rebellion, and struggles against oppression almost always are led by members of that group. But even then, the ideologies and strategies those leaders gravitate towards are not necessarily the most effective, “lived experience” notwithstanding. Take some of the early gay rights activists, who argued that invisibility (remaining in the closet) was the best way to be accepted by society. Or the many national liberation struggles that have adopted counterproductive terrorist tactics that have more often than not advantaged the imperialist power that was oppressing them in the first place.
Then there are countless examples of non-oppressed people demonstrating meaningful solidarity even when their experience and understanding, or likely understanding, of those they’re standing up for is quite limited. The international solidarity movement against apartheid in South Africa, which provided important encouragement to the struggle within South Africa, is one example. The solidarity meetings and actions in support of the 1966 strike by Aboriginal stockmen and domestic workers at the Wave Hill station in the Northern Territory, which eventually won important gains, including the first iteration of land rights, is another.
In fact, gains can be won for the oppressed even when there is no understanding at all nor any conscious intention to win gains for the particular oppressed group on the part of the people whose actions win them. When the Family Code was abolished in Russia shortly after the successful workers’ revolution in October 1917, it opened the door to greater acceptance of lifestyles outside the nuclear family. But this was not primarily because people with “lived experience” of homophobia in Russia demanded workers take this action. It was because the workers came to view as intolerable all forms of ruling class social and economic control. This made them natural allies of all the oppressed, whatever they thought they were doing.
If “lived experience” is uniquely able to bestow insight and political wisdom on its subject, and this knowledge is unavailable to those without it, how can we understand how and why all this happens and has happened?
If meaningful solidarity can be measured in its contribution to winning greater rights for the oppressed, the latter examples would have to count as very meaningful, despite the notable absence of deference. If instead solidarity is only “authentic” when those taking part in it are deemed to have prostrated themselves sufficiently to guarantee moral purity regardless of what it means practically for the struggle to end oppression, then solidarity is no longer particularly relevant to the pursuit of social justice.
Strengthening the fight for liberation and to end oppression notably does not feature in the case Woods and Hobbs make for deference. Instead, they point to deference’s potential to facilitate emotional repair of the psychological damage caused by oppression. As they put it, “There is also an element of moral repair in adopting the appropriate (deferring) attitude or response to persons affected by injustice. To not accept as authoritative the testimony of those with lived experience is to disrespect the person as a knower”. By elevating the “testimony” of the oppressed, their dignity is accordingly restored and trauma to some degree ameliorated.
The problem with this that the non-oppressed become the potential saviours of the oppressed, despite their ostensible commitment to being dominated by them. The hierarchy might be artificially inverted in the world of deference, but the “privileged” still hold the key to liberation, or, more accurately, the psychological recovery of the oppressed from their oppression. This denies the agency of the oppressed. Oppressed people simultaneously shouldn’t be engaged with as equals, argued with or debated because it takes away their agency, but only the action of allies properly elevating their voices and listening to their “moral knowledge” can alleviate their suffering.
Another glaring problem with what Woods and Hobbs advocate, and which they acknowledge to be a problem but don’t address, is that it is not even possible to do what they suggest. The reality is that oppressed groups are not homogeneous, and rarely agree on even basic questions. Just think of the referendum about establishing an Indigenous Voice to parliament—an utterly bland gesture that was nevertheless a chance for the population to express some minimal sympathy with the plight of Aboriginal people. The referendum was strongly supported but also vehemently opposed by different Indigenous people, for a range of reasons.
If the task of an ally is to do as an oppressed group says, this situation presents a problem. To decide who to defer to, the non-oppressed must exercise their agency, but the limits of their “lived experience” mean that, in doing so, they are only likely to add to the injustice according to the “deference” schema. When there is no consensus among the oppressed then, there is no possibility of deference and nor therefore of meaningful solidarity.
The argument for deference also can’t accommodate the overlapping oppressions under capitalism, all with their own peculiar dynamics and manifestations. Working out which combination of oppressions commands the greatest authority within this matrix at any one time, assuming the would-be ally can legitimately make such a determination, is no straightforward task.
A problem with deference that Woods and Hobbs do attempt to solve is the unfairly onerous burden it places on the oppressed to educate and direct the non-oppressed. This has generated its own peculiar backlash in the form of resentment at the “work” the oppressed are expected to do to facilitate solidarity, the nasty flavour of which is encapsulated in the title of this popular 2017 Medium article “White people, stop asking us to educate you about racism. Signed, every POC [person of colour] you’ve burdened with this question”.
In keeping with their deferential approach, Woods and Hobbs get around this problem by advocating what they call “second order engagement”, an alternative to active solidarity which relieves the oppressed of this burden. They define this type of engagement as “reading ethnographies, narrative work of any kind (fact or fiction), watching films or listening to podcasts, that offer testimonies or reflections on lived experience—which, to some extent, may be taken as a practice of solidarity that expresses deference to those with lived experience of oppression. This may evolve into not just reading or watching material, but promoting and distributing material: organising exhibitions, screenings, readings (though it may not).”
But even this becomes a minefield, because to work out what material to best engage with should legitimately be done by the oppressed, not those without lived experience. But then that places yet another undue impost on them. So, consistent application of the deference approach leads logically towards disengagement as the ultimate expression of real solidarity. If the first rule is “do no harm” to the oppressed by exercising agency or requiring the oppressed to do the work to fill the void said agency has left, disengagement is the safest bet to ensure authentic solidarity. Happy news for the supporters of the status quo.
For those of us not keen on the idea that activism is best done by withdrawing or spending inordinate time in front of a television set, there is an alternative: one that involves moving away from the idea that the subjective experience of individuals is the holy grail of truth and that listening to and “elevating” the right ones the pinnacle of political virtue.
Sensitivity to the reality of oppression, and success in challenging it, is much more effectively forged through the practical and collective experience of fighting society’s various injustices and finding common ground between groups that face the same enemy. The process of developing and testing strategies aimed at achieving a clear and common goal has the potential to build bonds of solidarity between people and groups that otherwise might not have had reason to interact. This is precisely why the bosses and governments so frequently deploy divide and rule strategies to undermine the strength of campaigns or industrial campaigns.
Working together in this way, whether to maintain a picket line, maximise numbers at a rally or prevent an eviction or deportation, brings people together as equals, in a way the practice of deference cannot. Deference engenders more of a disciple-prophet type relationship than one of comrades as equals in a common struggle.
This matters, because the type of society we are fighting for is connected with the means adopted to achieve it. If a revolution is brought about primarily through military struggle, for example, it usually does not develop the level of working-class organisation necessary to ensure the resulting society is genuinely democratic and that production is under collective control.
The way workers’ struggle, and ultimately revolution, rests on the collective power of the oppressed majority is what makes socialism—a society of mass, democratic control over production by the working class—possible. The collective fight against a common enemy necessary to achieve this itself changes people and shapes their political ideas—no-one, not the oppressed or anyone else, starts out with all the answers. The rigid hierarchical nature of the deference model leaves little room for this dynamic to develop.
Of course, people’s experience of oppression should be respected. If it is not, and activist spaces or struggles just seem to reproduce the same demeaning conditions that the rest of society foist on people, this weakens the struggle. But the deference Woods and Hobbs talk about doesn’t help get us there. It condemns us to a never-ending vigilance over who is where in the pecking order of suffering in order to decide whose perspective should dominate our political thought and practice.
The accumulation of experiences of fighting alongside others, the conclusions drawn from victories and defeats, and the obvious strength that unity confers shape the consciousness and understanding of all involved, and provide a material reason to be concerned with and sensitive to the suffering of others. The passivity and atomisation inherent to “second order engagement” cannot do this. Nor can deference. Woods and Hobbs have done us a service in highlighting why this widespread practice leads us nowhere.
