Oppressive Discourses Research Articles

That Baby Will Cost You

This personal narrative highlights an intended ambivalent pregnancy, speaking to Sotirin’s call for radical specificity in mother-writing. The author began writing in a creative nonfiction workshop from memory fragments, diary entries, interviews, and scholarly research recognizing the story contained secrets, omissions, places she can’t remember, and places that are still in shadow that ethically need to stay closed. The use of creative nonfiction frames the story as a series of marginalized discourses from a relational dialectics perspective, in particular ambivalence (vs. certainty), bodily knowledge (vs. medicalization, vs. middle-class pregnancy), and flux (vs. cost–benefit ratios). The problem is that these marginalized discourses are not well represented in the totalizing picture of the pregnant lady. The story works as a performance text to transform totalizing oppressive discourse into a restructured aesthetic moment.

Deconstructing the Portrayals of Haitian Women in the Media

Haitian women constitute a group that is lauded within Haiti as the “pillar of society” and yet is also often silenced both within Haiti and abroad. Given the role of the media in shaping attitudes and behaviors toward Women of Color, evaluation of media portrayals is critical to challenge oppressive discourses about these groups. Therefore, in this study, the authors conducted a thematic analysis of 650 photographs of Haitian women in the Associated Press Photo Archive in the years 1994–2009. The analysis comprised a two-step process: First, the authors identified coding categories through an inductive analysis of the data; later, these categories were analyzed from a feminist poststructuralist framework to generate themes that could describe how Haitian women are positioned in relation to media consumers. The three themes generated—“Negotiating Power and Resistance,” “Enacting Haitian Culture,” and “Showcasing Affliction”—delineate the media’s tendency to emphasize the “otherness” in Haitian women, as well as to characterize this group as victims in need of rescuing by powerful others. The authors conclude by emphasizing the impact of these images on the identity of Haitian women and Women of Color, as well as on the attitudes and behaviors of media consumers toward these groups.

Negotiating Sissyphobia: A Critical/Interpretive Analysis of One “Femme” Gay Asian Body in the Heteronormative World

A selection of literature suggests that gay Asian men are considered unattractive and undesirable, because they are socially positioned as “feminine” in the gendered hierarchy of White centered hegemonic masculinity among gay men. However, the author questions why the discourse of oppression is the only way to interpret performative aspects of gay Asian cultural identity constructions in this multicultural and globalized era. In identifying with such labeling, he perceives multiple “realities” of performative aspects of its cultural identity constructions, since the perception of Asians in the West has been in constant change. Thus, this analysis utilizes performance autoethnography to explicate the author's personal text; the process of negotiating performative aspects of gay Asian cultural identity construction in the heteronormative world.

Media Misrepresentations of a Mascot Controversy: Contested Constructions of Race and Gender

This article examines media coverage of a high school Native American mascot controversy. Discourse analysis of media documents and artifacts was utilized to explore how the issue was socially constructed for public consumption. Critical race feminism was used as a framework to examine how media discourses can oversimplify the complex interaction of racism and sexism. We found that the rich historical and cultural legacies of Cherokee women were rendered invisible. This case provides insight for educators faced with media portrayals of racism and sexism in schools; it unearths some of the processes through which oppressive discourses can be perpetuated in news media coverage; and it suggests that understanding this is critical for school leaders who seek to be media literate and multiculturally competent.

Discourses of Friendship between Heterosexual Women and Gay Men: Mythical Norms and an Absence of Desire

Gay men and heterosexual women may share some common interests in critiquing hetero-patriarchy. However feminism and gay liberationist politics do not always coincide and the role of individual subjectivities in recognising oppressive discourses of normativity remains debated. Interviews were conducted with seven friendship dyads of heterosexual women and gay men. Transcripts were subjected to discourse analysis, which suggested extensive management of heterosexist norms in the friends’ accounts of friendship. The analysis highlighted ambiguity over the ‘male’ status of gay men, a concern with constructing the friendships as legitimately asexual, and the use of parody in the face of homophobia to disrupt normative assumptions. Although we primarily considered the role of heterosexist discourses, there is also evidence that other dimensions of non-normativity (for example, gender and ethnicity) are implicated in friendships constructed around shared otherness and mutual non-normativity.

Power and Social Work in the United Kingdom

• Summary: This article explores relations of power in social work using insights drawn from the critical ‘toolkit’ emanating from work of French philosopher, Michel Foucault. The article discusses the relationship between Foucault’s conceptual tools of ‘knowledge and power’, the emergence of ‘the modern subject’ and the concept of ‘governmentality’. Despite ongoing pressures, professional expertise persists as a core element of neo-liberal government in the management of the population. We use a Foucauldian perspective to explore two issues central to contemporary practice: surveillance and discretion that epitomise dualism of power relations. On the one hand, surveillance brings with it a potentially problematic process especially in context of top down managerial power; yet, on the other hand, discretion is much more focused on what Foucault (1977) calls ‘the microphysics of power’ with opportunities for ‘resistance’ from the bottom up.• Findings: Professional expertise creates a paradox where surveillance and discretion operate within similar social space as the expression of power relations that encompass the matrix of users, carers and social workers. On one hand, surveillance restricts practice however; on the other, complexity opens the space for resistance and new formulations of power relations.• Applications : Exposing social work activity to a critical stance enables the exploration of relations of power identifying how commitments such as empowerment and anti-oppressive practice become detached from their original radical and humanitarian moorings to feature now as components of oppressive discourses they might once have challenged.

Cotton's Queer Relations: Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the Southern Plantation, 1936-1968 (review)

Reviewed by: Cotton's Queer Relations: Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the Southern Plantation, 1936-1968 John Zheng Michael P. Bibler . Cotton's Queer Relations: Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the Southern Plantation, 1936-1968. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2009. 298 pp. $55.00 cloth/ $22.50 paper. Bibler's study is a groundbreaking book about same-sex intimacy and homo-ness as depicted in Southern literature. It covers a period of three decades with a focus on nine literary works by Ernest J. Gaines, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Katherine Anne Porter, Margaret Walker, William Styron, and Arna Bontemps. Bibler chooses these writers' texts for his literary and historical analysis of same-sex intimacy because they "demonstrate a similar conceptual engagement with the shapes and meanings of same-sex relationships in the South as part of a similar, rather liberal political engagement with the South's plantation past" (3). The importance of this book is that Bibler analyzes the same-sex relations represented in the literary works of Southern plantation from the social, racial, and historical perspectives; he also explains how such representations can serve a way for the eight writers to "respond to the massive social and political changes affecting the South during the middle decades of the twentieth century" (4). Specifically, the author focuses on the representations of queer relations between men or between women in Southern plantation settings. He tries to heighten the visibility of the queer plantation myth that remains hidden in the works of the eight Southern writers who effectively refashioned "the plantation into an intrinsically queer cultural space" (2). The book includes an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction to this literary criticism of same-sex intimacy offers central epitomes of the author's examination. It summarizes issues to be discussed in the seven chapters, such as hierarchy and homo-ness, social equality, the Southern context, the limits of homo-ness, three figurative models (the homosexual and homoerotic relations of white men of the planter class, the queer relations between women of the "Southern kitchen roman," and sameness relations between black men), and politics and visibility. One prominent part of the book is that it can also serve as a guide to the literary studies of homosexuality in African American literature as it includes three major African American writers from Mississippi and Louisiana, Ernest J. Gaines, Margaret Walker, and Arna Bontemps. In chapter one, Bibler uses the historical and literary-historical research to analyze hierarchy and homo-ness in Gaines's novel Of Love and Dust. He interprets the 1948 plantation setting as "a thoroughly sexualized space in which an oppressive discourse of heterosexual obligation and kinship defines . . . the plantation's exploitative social structures" (26) and asserts that John and Freddie, the two black field hands, are the "distinctive model of equality in the homosexual partnership" (26). More important, says Bibler, the homosexual relationship between the two "destabilizes the plantation's power structures and shields them from its dehumanizing effects" (26). Even though John and Freddie serve as a model of social equality and of the queerness to the hierarchy in Southern plantation literature, Bibler may overemphasize the power of homo-ness. He can be more persuasive if he provides a more detailed textual analysis of Gaines's novel to heighten the visibility of homo-ness between John and Freddie or of other texts. While Gaines's novel touches on the issue of homosexual relationships between black men, chapters four and five examine the texts of Lillian Hellman, Katherine Anne Porter, and Margaret Walker that depict the ambiguous queer intimacy between the plantation mistress and her black maid. Walker's Jubilee, different from Hellman's and Porter's depictions, underscores black women's autonomy through the central character of Vyry Brown, who rejects white women's fantasies of Southern kitchen romance. Vyry is a black woman willing to help white women through sisterhood. Although her maternal care may invoke homo-mess among white women, her same-sex [End Page 764] relationship with them never develops into a same-sex intimacy. According to Bibler, Walker's text serves as a counterbalance to those of Hellman and...

Victimization of Muslim Women in Submission

Shortly after Submission, a film critiquing the treatment of Muslim women, aired on Dutch television, a Muslim fundamentalist murdered the film's producer, Theo van Gogh. While the murder brought Islamic extremism worldwide attention, the film itself escaped critical scrutiny. Analyzing the depictions of Muslim women in Submission, this essay discusses the intricacies of Muslim women's struggle. Surrounded by the oppressive discourses of Islam and patriarchy on one hand, and of the “global sisterhood” and Orientalism on the other, Muslim women today labor to achieve equality both with Muslim men and Western women.

Science, science education and their discontents: a response to commentaries on the paper, Portrait of a Science Teacher as a Bricoleur: A case study from India

In this response to commentaries by Ali Sammel, Jhumki Basu and Alberto Rodriguez, I present my perspective on three important issues raised by the commentators. These issues relate to the role of a researcher in her field settings and society, the critique of science and science education as oppressive dominant discourses, and co-opting participants as researchers. I argue that researchers should work actively for progressive change in discursive fields such as educational research, in which they are firmly embedded rather than playing an interventionist role in field settings where their discursive positionality maybe temporary and not that rooted. Regarding the critique of science and science education, my response favors a perspective wherein an understanding of the marginalization and oppression of non-western communities caused by western science and science education is counterbalanced by an appreciation of the ways in which marginalized communities can use science and science education for affecting progressive change. Lastly, I recognize the value of co-opting participants in writing and communication of research. Open image in new window

Living between borderlands: discovering a sense of nomadic subjectivity throughout Rosa's life story

In this paper, we will intersect the disciplinary characters of gender studies and disability studies in order to tackle taken-for-granted discourses which objectify women with ‘learning difficulties’. We will draw attention to ongoing debates about the impairment/disability divide which we expose to insights from poststructuralist feminism(s), with the aim of bringing the body-and-mind-in-process back into the socio-political project of disability studies. We will investigate the life story of Rosa, a single mother with ‘learning difficulties’, and explore the notion of nomadic subjectivity, borrowed from the poststructuralist thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and from the poststructuralist feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti for its new political process ontology. In line with feminist nomadic inquiries, we will try to identify possible sites and strategies of resistance towards the politics of bio-power by addressing the ways that Rosa stands and moves in a web of oppressive discourses and practices. ‘Living between borderlands’ obviously allows her to open up new life worlds: she transforms and reconfigures her self situated in a multiplicity of shifting contexts wherein differentiated dimensions of time, space and relationality are all important.

Scientific responsibility for the dissemination and interpretation of genetic research: lessons from the “warrior gene” controversy

This paper discusses the announcement by a team of researchers that they identified a genetic influence for a range of “antisocial” behaviours in the New Zealand Māori population (dubbed the...

Christianity and Domestic Violence

Research has shown that spiritual and religious identification plays a role in defining women's experiences of violence and therefore that social workers need to acknowledge and create safe spaces to talk about this identification. This article describes a rural Australian study that focused on the impact of a local culture on domestic violence, in which Christianity strongly influenced women's experiences of violence. It is argued that looking at women's experiences of domestic violence through a feminist poststructuralist lens is valuable because it provides a framework for exploring and sensitively challenging oppressive discourses that inform women's identities.

The Kenosis of Unambiguous Sex in the Body of Christ: Intersex, Theology and Existing ‘for the Other’

Intersex conditions might be more usefully explored in light of theologies from impairment rather than those from sexuality. The areas of concurrence between intersex conditions and disability feed into theologies which fully respect and take into account such bodily states. Hegemonies of ‘goodness’ and ‘normality’ which lead to the marginalization of intersexed and impaired bodies are grounded in theological beliefs which fail adequately to ‘queer’ oppressive socio-cultural discourses. The disability theology of John M. Hull is used to argue that the ‘ideologies of dominance’ which assume the ‘sighted world’ to be the only ‘real world’ are also evident in assumptions that the binary-sexed world is the only real world; and that it is appropriate for theologians to query and subvert such assumptions. Kenotic behaviour in the realm of gender identity might involve the ceding of sexed signification by those who are not intersexed, rather than the assimilation or unchosen ‘correction’ of those who are.

Community and Nostalgia in Urban Revitalisation: a critique of urban village and creative class strategies as remedies for social ‘problems’

We examine how normative constructions of ‘the creative city’ have entered into Australian planning discourses. Although welcoming a place-based approach, critical consideration is given to how the misappropriation of ‘place making’ in creative city revitalisation plans may enhance rather than address processes of social marginalisation. A Foucauldian framework is employed, exploring the notion of the social production of power through discourse. We draw on a case study of Wentworth Street, a key urban space in Port Kembla, the industrialised district of Wollongong, New South Wales. The study focuses on various ideas of a common place-making theme of the ‘urban village’ evoked by planners, the media and a targeted local resident group (here elderly Macedonians) for a street positioned in ‘crisis’ because of declining infrastructure, services and its association with crime, drugs and prostitution. The case study demonstrates that marginalisation and exclusions are products of creative city strategies and wider, more oppressive urban discourses. But we also demonstrate that despite becoming normative in the texts of planning policies, discourses of place and identity always remain multiple, negotiated, and contradictory.

The discourse of oppression in contemporary gay Asian diasporal literature: Liberation or limitation?

In this article I examine contemporary Asian gay literature and argue that the experience of oppression is the central focus of this writing. Although this focus has helped gay Asians understand their experiences as a minority, the privileging of oppression as the primary site of gay identity also has other ramifications. In particular, it works to exclude experiences that are crucial to gay Asian identity but that are not centered around the experience of oppression. Because language not only describes but also determines and creates our reality, the centering of oppression in contemporary Asian gay literature helps to construct a reality for gay Asians in which oppression becomes the primary locus for identity politics. Consequently other kinds of experiences become, unwittingly, excluded as worthwhile areas of study in gay Asian criticism.

At the Crossroads: Disability and Trauma in The Farming of Bones

In October of 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered his troops to massacre as many as 15,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. (1) The attack came as a complete surprise to these Haitians as well as to many Dominicans; no prior event had warned them of what was about to take place. The killings were swift and particularly brutal. (2) Trujillo ordered his soldiers to use machetes and other crude weapons instead of guns, a brutality captured by the name of the massacre: in Spanish, El Corte, the cutting, and in Haitian Kreyol, kout kouto, the stabbing. (3) Those who survived lived with permanent injuries, scars, and impairments as well as the psychological trauma of having experienced a massacre. After visiting Haiti in order to research the testimonies of survivors, Haitian-born Edwidge Danticat wrote The Farming of Bones (1998), a historical novel that tells the story of one individual's experience of the attack and its devastating effects. Her novel is filled with wounded and disabled individuals whose marked, scarred bodies prevent them and those around them from forgetting what has happened. For disability studies scholars, the novel presents a complex perspective on the meanings of disability and the relationship of disability to trauma; yet to date, no literary scholars have explored the relevance of interpretive frameworks provided by disability studies. Instead, critics have discussed the novel's central issues--memory, testimony, nationalism, displacement, language, and corporeality--using a critical vocabulary drawn from other disciplines, including Caribbean and Latin American studies, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, Holocaust studies, and trauma theory. The result has been a rich and rewarding body of criticism on the novel, but one that lacks any mention of disability. In the spirit of rereading espoused by Michael Berube (576), I propose reconsidering Danticat's novel with a closer attention to disability. In order to do this, we need a critical vocabulary that incorporates concepts from disability studies into existing discussions about testimony, memory, and trauma in The Farming of Bones. Such a vocabulary, however, remains elusive. As James Berger argues, a separating disability studies from trauma studies has resulted in two separate and disconnected theoretical discussions about frequently overlapping phenomena (563). Within disability studies, this discursive abyss manifests itself in the absence of a sustained inquiry into trauma and loss. Berger suggests that the political origins of disability studies--namely, its links with the disability rights movement in the US, its critique of oppressive discourses that have constructed the absolute alterity of those who live with disabilities, and its concern with achieving equal access to full social, professional, and political lives for disabled individuals--has taken precedence over an exploration of the particularities of of any one individual (572). Indeed, these political goals have resulted in a reluctance to admit that disability is at times accompanied by feelings of loss, fear, or mourning (572). Berger finds this omission somewhat remarkable (571): Not all instances of disability are traumatic, certainly not in a direct way. But many are, such as those produced by war, accident, and sudden debilitating illness, both for the individuals affected and for their families.... Disability, particularly when experienced after infancy or childhood, involves loss, and loss entails mourning. A theory of disability might well try to include a theory of loss specific to disability--that is, the loss of physical, mental, and neurological capacities. The world itself, and one's own body, must be relearned, processes clearly analogous to some of the central concerns of trauma studies. One would think that a theory of disability would address such questions of trauma, loss, mourning, and regeneration that seem so closely associated with many people's experiences of disability. …

Jokes Apart

This paper revisits Orientalist discourses with a specific concern: to explore the unresolved relationship between Orientalism and colonial regimes. This exploration involves questions of representation, the status of reality and exteriority in a discourse like Orientalism, and the assertion of truth within a discursive field. I read a set of parodic texts by the noted Bengali satirist Rajshekhar Basu, which stage an inverted reality of colonialism, to suggest that ‘the Orient’ functions as a designation and a deterritorialized representation in the constitutive protocols of Orientalism. It is shifting and uneven in organization, and politically effective because of its capability of mutation and adaptation through the colonial business of governing ‘the Orient’. Parody's unusual engagement with Orientalist discourses makes us aware of the moment where Orientalist knowledge and colonial governmentality join each other. Without this circular relationship the discourse is quite ludicrous and ineffective. This laughter at the oppressive and sacrosanct discourse of global domination, however, is a postcolonial prerogative.

Radical Plural Feminisms and Emancipatory Practice in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Despite ten years of democracy, gross inequities continue to permeate South African society, implying the need for emancipatory theory and practice. Furthermore, despite a minority critical voice, South African psychology, as elsewhere, has been a generally conservative discipline. In this paper I explore how a radical plural feminism provides a resource for liberatory theory/practice. Drawing on Foucauldian discourse and postcolonial insights, this framework performs a ‘both/and’ (rather than an ‘either/or’) function in the theorizing and practice of diversity/unity and micro/macro-level politics. This theory is installed in practice through intellectual activism. Intellectual activism implies in this context: refusing abstractions that pre-define who one is, while at the same time strategically deploying plural identities around contingent issues; working in the bordersites of dominant understandings; identifying, communicating and acting upon transversal relations of commonality; identifying and inhabiting the contradictions and disparities contained in dominant and oppressive discourses; and being constantly vigilant and reflective in terms of self, other, context, process, assumptions and theory.

The Dialectics of Design

The popularity of deconstructivist architecture around the world has invited controversy over the sensationalist design of these buildings. New urbanists, in particular, have criticized decon architecture as alienating and disorienting. From a historical perspective, this opposition between deconstructivists and new urbanists is the latest in a long line of debates over what constitutes “good design.” Using a political-economy approach based on the work of Karl Polanyi, this article examines a centuries-long dialectic in design ideology between those who seek to embed design in social mores and those who attempt to “disembed” it from oppressive discourses. This analysis shows that the dialectic of design movements is intimately connected to the development of capitalist markets.

Supervision of Cross-Cultural Couples Therapy

This author discusses the importance of actively giving voice in clinical supervision and the therapy room to the code of silence around issues of ethnicity, gender, spirituality, and socioeconomic struggles that plague many cross-cultural couples. The author explores obstacles that collude with dominant oppressive discourses in supervision and therapy and provides suggestions for giving voice to issues of ethnicity, gender, spirituality, and socioeconomic status. The author offers strategies for entering a dialogue of cross-cultural exploration using narrative theory via a supervision case.