Unrecognizable Standpoints - Zac

 

Unrecognizable Standpoints

              This is not the first time I’ve come across it, and entering the reading I knew I found Toole’s account of standpoint epistemology compelling. Something that I was unfamiliar with in my previous contacts with it was the balance Toole developed between Hegel’s ideological change and Marx’s material change absolutisms, which was intuitive (both material and ideological shifts being able to change social realities). I think there’s potential for major scholarly work there on both the Marx and Hegel side, and I think the middle ground might need more development to be tenable given how core it is to either of their accounts. However, despite my alignment with Professor Toole on a wide variety of topics, I have a far more pessimistic understanding of the ability for non-normative epistemologies to be unconcealed and recognized. (See Toole pg. 7 paragraph 2)

I agree “that the body of knowledge of the ruling class is not privileged.” (pg.10) Rather the reverse appears the case, the marginalized learning both their own standpoints and the dominant epistemology. However, marginalized standpoints are heavily suppressed, hence the successful dominance of the normative white man despite lacking the epistemic benefits of multiple lens. In other words, in many cases the negative harms of suppression from having a marginalized epistemology are greater than the benefits, allowing the dominant epistemology to retain control. Not only does the dominant epistemology suppress through harms, but it devalues the benefits of alternative perspectives. A clear example is the devaluing of gender studies as unproductive, a major for those incapable of the rigorous study of productive fields such as economics. This idea of running to the marginalized standpoint when you cannot succeed when competing in the dominant one. These empirical claims explain why despite the dominant epistemology’s weaker epistemic position, it perpetuates control. However, they are not the real reason for my pessimism, as empirical attitudes can shift. My pessimism comes from an agreement that material realities are perpetuated by the dominant ideology, under which the benefits of a marginalized standpoint are unable to be recognized.

This account develops from a pessimistic bent to Hegelian Gender Theory, an argument which attempts to merge the recognition and domination elements of Hegel’s account with contemporary gender theory. To give a quick illustration of part of Hegelian Gender Theory’s analysis on domination:

“Hegelian Gender Theory can explain how recognition dominates gender expression at the individual and societal levels using the lord-bondsman dualism. The individual’s relationship with society, can be understand in a dualistic division of the body into external and internal. The lord is the external codified gender appearance, or what society’s dominant social constructs gender the body. The bondsman lies in the internal, the self-consciousness’ own determination of gender/s or lack of gender. Initially, the transgender person is dominated by the external perception, typically expressed through the narrative that per was born in the wrong body. The locus of control over alienation is thus situated on the external characteristics of the body, and their inability to meet standards of recognition i.e. standards of womanhood. The expectation is for transgender persons to attempt to physically transition pers’ external appearances towards cisgender recognized aesthetics to receive recognition. However, the transgender person may come to realize the standards of recognition for gender i.e. womanhood do not exist to recognize, but to dominate through withholding recognition. Thus per realizes the standards of gender recognition diverge heavily from the gender per recognizes. This Hegelian inversion flips the locus of control to the internal bondsman who decides what gender the external form represents i.e. that the body represents womanhood. This shifts the locus of control over alienation, from the ability of unchangeable external factors to meet aesthetics developed by predominately cisgender gender structures to fluid internal consciousness determining per’s external aesthetic representation. Thus, Hegelian thought gives gender theory a tool through which the individual’s relationship with society can itself overturn societal structures. It explains how individual feelings of joy such as Gender Euphoria, produce and result from isothumotic effects: being recognized in likeness of others/aesthetics we recognize, outside of structures of domination. Hegelian analysis of group thumos and “battles for recognition” has the added benefit of extending resisting alienation to the collective “a feminist on behalf of all women, or a nationalist on behalf of his ethnic group. Indignation on one's own behalf then extends to the class as a whole and engenders feelings of solidarity.” (Fukuyama 171) Our thumos is not only challenged by denial of recognition to ourselves, but when recognition is denied to our class/es i.e. denial of deviant aesthetics the internal may identify with.” (Davis 2021)

              The reason for pessimism is thus the inability to achieve social recognition of non-dominant standpoints whatsoever. I refer to both Reid-Brinkley and Lavender for help in developing my recognition-based Hegelian Gender Theory account, in which I find the inability for deviant aesthetics of marginalized standpoints to be recognized within the social order as deviant standpoints.

“non-black deviant gender aesthetics are not faced with rejection but reversion. Social structures do not want to see transgender bodies gone, but transgender bodies devoid of per transness. Therefore, the transgender body’s internal and external are continuously policed for the goal of reversion to the ideal cis standard liberal subject (i.e. simplistically: the transgender person pre-transition, internally accepting cisgenderism). The transgender subject is continuously externally confronted with per reverted self as evidence that they can live happily as the reverted subject. This occurs through means ranging from conversion therapy to misgendering and clothing mandates. This form of domination seeks to deny the recognition of deviant aesthetics in a method consistent with Hegelian Gender Theory’s explanations, promising recognition as a reward for reversion to a previous state. Intuitively an optimistic Hegelian gender theorist would argue internal pressures for recognition seeking result in movement towards mutual recognition of various deviant aesthetics. However, the pessimism extends a step further by arguing such recognition is impossible to achieve. Even a trans-friendly cisgender subject cannot succeed in recognizing deviant gender aesthetics, absent references to the reversion. The transgender subject is recognized in terms of per transition/transitioning away from the reverted state tied to cisgender aesthetics, per “new” name, as opposed to per deadname/false name/old name, new pronouns, new aesthetic, etc. Rather then recognizing an independent deviant or genderfluid subject, these best attempts at recognition occur through separating the transgender individual into two subjects, the past external static cisgender aesthetic or reversion (i.e. cisgender man) which must be forgotten, and the new static subject (i.e. transgender women). In stripping gender deviance, the person is functionally understood by the cisgender observer as a new static cisgender women, “transgender” remains as the sole marker of the past reverted state (cisgender man), absent any understanding of genderfluid consciousness.

At this point an orthodox Hegelian theorist may be convinced achieving recognizing transgender aesthetics in non-cisgender gender understandings is difficult, but possible. It may require unlearning policing of deviant subjectivities via reference to their reversions, or a shift in what gender aesthetics are recognized, but from the human interest in increasing recognition those conditions will improve over time. However, looking to Lavender’s explanation of the “rebuttal system” helps contextualize why achieving recognition is so difficult. The dominant gender system “premises reality on the centrality of cisness in essence cisnormativity, in which cis people are the ‘natural.’”(Lavender) Beyond being forced into a non-natural positionality, deviant genders are required to “prove that they have some proximity to the perceived naturalness of cisness,”(Lavender) upon which recognition is conditioned. Therefore, there is simultaneously a burden for transgender people to prove the legitimacy of our genders, and a requirement that such a proof be done through the assimilation to a supposedly “neutral” gender system that already presumes cisgenderism. For example, deviant gender subjects are grouped under the term non-binary, based on our absent relation to the cisgender gender binary. The effect is such that any attempts at proof from a deviant starting point, or from the position of the bondsman, are understood as not applicable under the primary cisgender system nor worthy of recognition by the lord. Moreover, consider a situation in which successful assimilation to a “neutral” cisgender theory of gender succeeded, and a transgender person achieved a recognizable speaker’s authority. In achieving the “neutrality” of a recognizable speaker per has severed from the specific objective transgender experiences which make that authority meaningful. Moreover, in their abandonment per has further cast transgender understandings of gender into the realm of the “subjective” permanently devaluing them in the face of cisgender understandings of what is “objective” or “true” about gender. These conclusions bring us to an extremely pessimistic conclusion: there is no method of communication that meets society’s standards of “objective” cisgender authority on gender which simultaneously values the “subjective” starting point of transness, making societal recognition fundamentally separated by two different languages of gender. Moreover, any attempt to reach this stage by proving the “truth” of transgender existence merely justifies “the disproving of existence as having a right to dialog.” (Lavender)

Bibliography

Toole – Standpoint Epistemology as Ideology Critique handout provided by Prof. Hurley.

Davis – Old Paper from last semester.

Reid-Brinkley, Shanara R. “Voice Dipped in Black.” The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies, 2019, pp. 213–233., https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199982295.013.28.

Lavender, Lila. “Trans Argument, Trans Rage: Against the Rebuttal System and towards a Method of the Transfeminist...” Medium, Medium, 11 Dec. 2018, https://medium.com/@chriscoles_66854/trans-argument-trans-rage-against-the-rebuttal-system-and-towards-a-method-of-the-transfeminist-f9982084f92.