The Epistemology of Identity Politics
The sanctity of "in my experience as an "xyz" and how it threatens the quest for knowledge and the inner world of the self.
Firstly, I would like to say that I have been quite delayed in getting out my most recent set of posts. The reason? Though it is quite early and I know miscarriages can be common, I am pregnant! Moreover, I have been hit early and hard by symptoms, rendering me quite nauseaus and fatigued. I am trying to push through this though as I have much I have been researching and am excited to share. In the meanwhile, here is a small post on some topics that have long been on my mind. I have other upcoming posts though that go into much more history and details. This is merely a thinkpiece, some smatterings of topics that I have been rehashing in my head for quite some time.
“Lived Experience” versus Reason
Something that has long annoyed me about the epistemics of identitarian wokeism is the insistence on argument via “lived experience,” i.e. testimony and confession. Logic, rationality, data, and the general precepts of Enlightenment-based liberalism and the scientific method have been summarily discarded by people who claim that an appeal to experience not only supersedes the above-mentioned means of knowledge, but that also the Enlightenment-derived methods of seeking knowledge are immoral, a relic of some of the original sins of modernity.
Appeal to identity and experience is sacred and taboo. If one claims an identity and makes a statement about it, anyone who tries to nuance the dialogue or disagree will be met not with reasoned argument back, but a righteous and rage-filled dismissal that one could dare “disagree with lived experience.” Claims of identity and of lived experience makes an argument untouchable - one must stand at a distance, in reverence.
Exposing the Self and the End of Privacy
The contemporary progressive epistemic paradigm forces any other participant in the quest for knowledge to reveal aspects of the self that they may wish to keep private. In fact, privacy is anathema to this regime. If one is not willing to divulge their gender, their history of sexuality, their history of mental illness, their history of physical disability, their ancestry or other matters pertaining to race or ethnicity, or whatever else validates an argument under this paradigm, then one can be not only ignored, but essentially spat upon. The only method to have your voice listened to by adherents to the identitarian religion that privileges “lived experience” is to also engage in a process of public self-revelation.
One must politicize “the self” in order to have legitimacy in the realm of argument by “lived experience.” I find this pressure to publicize and politicize the self nearly blasphemous, a sort of cheapening of one’s life in order to perform it on the internet, on campus, in op-eds, on podast interviews, or otherwise in activist spaces. It distances oneself from one’s own inner world, requiring that one unearths some aspect of one’s life and expose it for all to scrutinize, applaud, meme, and otherwise use as a tool for advancing some politic. “The self” becomes a two-dimensional performance, placed on an altar and rendered static. Worse, becomes a form of self-evasion, distancing oneself from introspection and self-growth, and also forces the self to conform to social perceptions of identity, allowing no room for nuance, for a private inner-world of self-analysis and development. “Argument from experience” is partly a product of our social media age, where we are expected to self-reveal for an audience, for “likes,” and for status in our in-group digital communities. But I believe that revelation of the self is a dehumanizing political ploy.
Self-Reporting is Known to be Unreliable, but is now the Gold Standard for Educational, Media, and Activist Spaces
Worse, we seem to have forgotten that self-reporting is unreliable, not only due to shaky memory and cognitive biases, but also because our recall is primed by environment and institutional frameworks. In scientific studies, we recognize the limitations of studies based on self-reporting, but in activist spaces, we valorize this faulty means of argument. Most of the people who make this sort of “argument from experience” belong to similar classes of social capital.
I see this quite prominently with my best friend, who is trans, as he is absent from these social classes. He never went to college nor has taken any of the numerous “theory” related courses that might prime him to view his own experience through a certain lens, and as a result, he has an incredibly different take on gender and being trans than the dominant narratives. In fact, he detests the dominant narratives on trans ideology. I also think back to my own introduction to “gender sociology” and “gender theory” classes in college - how much did those prime my understanding of my own experiences as a woman? Quite significantly, I would say. It introduced terms and concepts that became a bedrock of how I viewed my own life and the world around me. My self-reporting on my own experiences based on gender thereafter should be taken with a grain of salt, as it took me years to create some distance between my sense of self and the lenses we are taught by which to observe our sense of self.
The American Christian Ritual of Providing “Testimony,” Now Secularized and Universalized, Imposed on the Masses.
This “appeal to lived experience” that is so bandied about is also quite Christian, or at the very least, part of the ritual of American Christianity, albeit it with the “God” aspect stripped away. We have removed the contents of American Christianity but kept the structure. More so, the people who are most fervent about identitarian epistemology are those very same people would be the first to claim that they are “not Christians” since they are atheist, oblivious to the degree to which they are Christian in all manners of epistemology, faith, ritual, worldview, and so forth, simply without the divinity. To me (dare I say, “as a Jewish woman?” despite detesting such identity-appeals?) workeism unleashes systems that were once confined specifically to matters of faith and instead universalizes them as the means by which we should interact with our self, our relationships, our agora. While I am not Christian and have never been to Christian services, I have heard that “testimony” is a central component of a number of Christian denominations (correct me if I am wrong), particularly in American Prostestant sects such as Baptism. One must reveal their own experiences, their own “testimony” of Christ, as a form of “proof” in a sense that this belief system is true, and are thus rewarded by the congregation. Testimony, or lived experience, seems to be an epistemic cornerstone for denominations of American Christianity. I have no issue with this in a religious context, I think most religions have the capacity to provide beauty, order, community, character development, and so forth. But I do take issue with religious ritual or worldview being universalized by the very same people who would decry the Christian faith, and then bully people who do not share that faith-derived worldview and epistemology. It is, ironically, always the people whose war cry includes “decolonization” who are most wont to dehumanize anyone who does not abide by their own religious-derived frameworks.
Identitarian Epistemology: Chills Debate, Encourages Heavy Selection Bias, and Debases the Self.
Identitarian epistemology is but a small component of the failures of identitarian politics and academia, but I think it is an overlooked aspect. I think that the appeal to “lived experience” or appeal to “identity” threatens our ability to live a private life, forcing us to publicize and stifle our inner selves in order to advance political ends. Not only is “lived experience” simply another means of using shaky “self-reporting” to make arguments, giving us poor claims to truth that become publicily taboo and untouchable due to their origins, but it forces us to relinquish our ability to refine and nurture our very own selves, always filtering the Self through a lens of accepted institutional and social frameworks.
Ultimately though, I worry about the chilling effect of “lived experience” epistemology on academic and journalistic research, speech, and debate. We should all be able to engage in spirited dialogue with one another on the political topics de jour, but claiming that “lived experience” is the only means by which one can have a legitimate voice on a topic all but ensures that we no longer believe in attempting objectivity and universal democratic participation. Moreover, it also ensures that we only hear the voices of those most comfortable with performing “the self” publicly and vocally, those with least care to privacy, skewing even the selection of “experiences” we hear. I think back to university and graduate courses that I took such as “Feminist Epistemology” (yes, this was a real course) and how it included none such criticisms of “lived experience” as a means of knowledge. I hope that one day, professors of such courses can provide counterpoints like those I listed above to the dominant narratives that they teach.
This piece articulated so much of what I've been grappling with. Thank you! I love the phrase "cheapening one's life"; that's exactly how it feels. When we reduce ourselves to what can fit on a Walgreens poster board — and when our sense of self comes from how that projected self is reflected back to us — the rest of us doesn't just disappear; it suffers from acute neglect, which is tragic.
Thank you for this! I hope the coming baby is treating you well. Standpoint epistemology is one of the big sources of disordered thinking I've recognized as I reassess all my progressive baggage. Having previously spent time in Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, you're absolutely right about valuing experience (often superstitious hype, TBQH) over reason being a religious tendency that has been absorbed by the left.