Anika Reza

Carleton University
PHIL 2306
Christine Koggel

The Art of Ventriloquism

The Danger in Speaking for Others and The Relevance of Location

Speaking for others is a common occurrence in daily life with

celebrities speaking for the poor in Sudan in order to raise awareness

to President Bush speaking for the citizens of Iraq on their wish for

democracy. While speaking for others remain the norm in many

sectors, it has increasingly been questioned among some groups of

academics and feminists. The idea of speaking for others as being

problematic has arisen from two points. The first is the growing

recognition that one’s location, be it social or geographical, has an

impact on one’s meaning and truth. That there is no universal truth

and one’s reality and outlook on life is shaped by one’s location. (Alcoff

6-7) And the second is the idea that speaking for others can be

dangerous because it is tied to the production of knowledge and

 Reza |2

power. Those that are speaking, or have the right to speak, are holding

the power and are in the process of creating knowledge. Thus a

privileged individual speaking for a less privileged one will often

reinforce the oppression rather than elevate it. Just by speaking on

behalf of an oppressed group one can unintentionally subvert their

right to speak and be acknowledged. This is because by speaking on

their behalf the privileged speaker takes away their voice and

perpetuates the idea that the oppressed group needs a ‘stronger’

individual or group to speak for them in order to be heard. Different

feminists have come to the conclusion that speaking for others is

dangerous by traveling on different paths. Adrienne Rich recognized

the danger in speaking for others through her writings on the

relevance of location. In her article titled Notes Towards a Politics of Location

Rich states “You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for us” (Rich 454).

Rich came to this understanding after realizing the large impact

location, within the world and within society, has on one’s

understanding of events and thus a middle-class White female from

the United States cannot effectively speak for a poor Hispanic female

from Nicaragua.

“When, where and under what conditions has the statement

been true?” (Rich 449)

 Reza |3

“To say ‘the body’ lifts me away from what has given me a

primary perspective. To say ‘my body’ reduces the temptation to

grandiose assertions.” (Rich 449)

“the white-educated mind is capable of formulating everything

that white middle-class feminism can know for ‘all women’; that only

when a white mind formulates is the formulation to be taken seriously”

(Rich 457)

Being sensitive to one

In the end the danger is not so much in the action of speaking for

others but in not recognizing that location shapes our perspective and

knowledge and that the role of the speaker holds the power.

“there is no liberation that only knows how to say ‘I’; there is no

collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through”

(Rich 454)

acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location between speakers and those

spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said.
 Reza |4

The recognition that there is a problem with speaking for, or representing others, stems

from two connected points. First, that a speaker’s location is epistemologically significant

and second, that certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous

These examples demonstrate the range of current practices of speaking for others in our

society. While the prerogative of speaking for others remains unquestioned in the citadels

of colonial administration, among activists and in the academy it elicits a growing unease

and, in some communities of discourse, it is being rejected. There is a strong, albeit

contested, current within feminism which holds that speaking for others---even for other

women---is arrogant, vain, unethical, and politically illegitimate. Feminist scholarship

has a liberatory agenda which almost requires that women scholars speak on behalf of

other women, and yet the dangers of speaking across differences of race, culture,

sexuality, and power are becoming increasingly clear to all.

finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location between speakers and

those spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said. The second

claim holds that not only is location epistemically salient, but certain privileged locations

are discursively dangerous. In particular, the practice of privileged persons speaking for
5

or on behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing

or reenforcing the oppression of the group spoken for. Persons from dominant groups

who speak for others are often treated as authenticating presences that confer legitimacy

and credibility on the demands of subjugated speakers; such speaking for others does

nothing to disrupt the discursive hierarchies that operate in public spaces. Adopting the

position that one should only speak for oneself raises similarly difficult questions. If I
 Reza |5

don't speak for those less privileged than myself, am I abandoning my political

responsibility to speak out against oppression, a responsibility incurred by the very fact of

my privilege?

In rejecting a general retreat from speaking for, I am not advocating a return to an unself-

conscious appropriation of the other, but rather that anyone who speaks for others should

only do so out of a concrete analysis of the particular power relations and discursive

effects involved.

Work Cited

Adrienne Rich, “Notes Towards a Politics of Location,” Feminist Theory

Reader: Localand Global Perspectives, eds, Carole R. McCann and

Seung-Kyung Kim, Routledge, 2003,pp, 447-459

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics

of Experience,” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives,

eds, Carole R. McCann andSeung-Kyung Kim, Routledge, 2003

The Problem of Speaking for Others

 Reza |6

Linda Alcoff

Cultural Critique, No. 20 (Winter, 1991-1992), pp. 5-32

Published by: University of Minnesota Press