PATRICIA HILL COLLINS SYMPOSIUM

Dialogical Epistemology—An Intersectional

Resistance to the “Oppression Olympics”
NIRA YUVAL-DAVIS
University of East London

I first met Patricia Hill Collins in Vienna during a conference in the 1990s,
which happened to be her first trip outside the United States. However, I
had already “met” her years earlier when I discovered her wonderful book
Black Feminist Thought (1990). Patricia Hill Collins the woman proved to
be even more wonderful than her book, and we’ve continued since to
interact in a sporadic way, especially whenever we are in the same corner
of the globe, with overlapping interests in racism, feminism, citizenship,
motherhood, belonging, and intersectionality. In this short piece, however,
I want to focus on the crucial importance that Collins’s writing has had
on my thinking concerning standpoint theory, situated knowledge and
imagination, and transversal politics of solidarity.1
I quote Collins from two of her writings. In Black Feminist Thought,
she says,

Each group speaks from its own standpoint and shares its own partial,
situated knowledge. But because each group perceives its own truth as
partial, its knowledge is unfinished [my emphasis]. . . . Partiality and
not universality is the condition of being heard; individuals and groups
forwarding knowledge claims without owning their position are deemed
less credible than those who do. . . . Dialogue is critical to the success of
this epistemological approach. Nevertheless—resisting power inequities
must be addressed . . . [and] “decentering” the dominant group is essential.
(1990, 236-37)

And in her comment on Hekman’s article on standpoint theory, she

comments,

Although it is tempting to claim that Black women are more oppressed than
everyone else (. . .), this simply may not be the case. (1997, 74)

GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 26 No. 1, February 2012 46-54

DOI: 10.1177/0891243211427701
© 2012 by The Author(s)
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 Yuval-Davis / AN INTERSECTIONAL RESISTANCE   47

In these two quotes, Collins establishes the ontological basis for a dia-
logical standpoint theory as well as an intersectional analytical framework
that resists what Ange-Marie Hancock (2011) calls the “oppression
olympics,” both of which are a necessary, although not sufficient, basis
for transversal dialogical politics of solidarity.

DIALOGICAL STANDPOINT THEORY

One of the cornerstones of feminist theory, in all its varieties, has been
its challenge to positivist notions of objectivity and truth. There is a large
variety of positions among feminists concerning these issues, starting from—
in Sandra Harding’s term—“feminist empiricists” (Harding 1993, 51), who
do not intend to challenge or reinvent the framework of “science” as such
but rather to do a better job in the existing one, up to post-modernist
theorists like Jane Flax (1990), who rejected any notion of objectivity and
“truth.” Despite their differences, they have all challenged “the god-trick
of seeing everything from nowhere” (Haraway 1991, 189) as a cover and
a legitimization of a hegemonic masculinist positioning.
Among those feminist theorists who did not reject completely any
notion of truth as such, standpoint theories were developed that claim, in
somewhat different ways, that it is vital to account for the social position-
ing of the social agent. This accounting of the situatedness of the knowing
subject has been used epistemologically in standpoint theories in at least
two different ways. One claims that a specific social situatedness (that in
itself has been constructed in several different ways) endows the subject
with a privileged access to truth. The other, developed among others in
Collins’s as well as my own work, rejects such a position and views the
process of approximating the truth as part of a dialogical relationship
among subjects who are differentially situated. In virtually all variations
of standpoint theory, however, the reduction of knowledge to a simple
reflection of its social basis has been rejected. Experiences, social prac-
tices, social values, and the ways in which perception and knowledge pro-
duction are socially organized have been seen as mediating and facilitating
the transition and transformation of situatedness into knowledge.
The standpoint that is expected to emerge from a specific positioning
has sometimes, especially in earlier versions of standpoint theory, been
expected to provide a privileged access to liberating insight, while the
more common position—more modest and closer to the general academic
debate on “sociology of knowledge”—seems to be that it produces merely
different insights. The “stronger” claim, as it has sometimes been made in

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48   GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2012

the context of “identity politics,” has been (polemically) summed up by

Collins as saying that “the more subordinated the group,” the “purer” its
“vision” (Collins 1990, 207). Some standpoint feminists, such as Zilla
Eisenstein (1993), recommended, for example, specifically taking the posi-
tioning of women of color and their multiple oppression as an epistemo-
logical starting point. This, however, was not intended to imply that only
those who share a certain marginal or oppressed positioning would be able
to really understand it (and therefore only women should study women,
only Blacks should study Blacks, etc.), or even enjoy thereby a privileged
access to understanding society as a whole. The “ethnocentrism” of such
a position has been rejected by Harding (1993, 59):

The claim by women that women’s lives provide a better starting point for
thought about gender systems is not the same as the claim that their own
lives are the best such starting point. (1993, 58; emphasis added)

Harding points out that Hegel was not a slave,2 Marx and Engels not
proletarians. She and other feminist theoreticians advocated that people
from the center use “marginalized lives” as “better places from which to
start asking causal and critical questions about the social order” (1993, 59).
However, as valuable as this exercise is in imagining oneself into what one
believes is the worst conceivable social positioning, two problems remain.
First, as Collins rightly comments (in the second quote above), the one
worst positioning simply does not exist. She rejects any mechanistic con-
struction of hierarchies of oppression and her resulting call for a dialogue
of people from different positionings as the only way to “approximate
truth.” Second, even prioritizing nonhierarchically the “view from the
margins” might lead to underestimating the relevance of the knowledge of
the dominant center. Although the view from the margins produces other
kinds of knowledge that are valuable (and often also more attractive to
study), it is crucial for any emancipatory movement to understand the
hegemonic center and the ways people situated there think and act. After
all, it is this most powerful position from which most political decisions
affecting the largest number of people in society come. Not surprisingly,
however, access to the study of hegemonic positions of power is the most
difficult to attain. Emphasis on the importance of the lives of the most
marginal elements in society can sometimes collude with the attempts of
hegemonic centers to remain opaque while at the same time maintaining
the surveillance of marginal elements in society.
Various intersectional axes of social, political, and economic power
have been identified by different theorists and social movements.3 Class,

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 Yuval-Davis / AN INTERSECTIONAL RESISTANCE   49

gender, ethnicity, and race have been the most common ones, although
sexuality, ability, and stage in the life cycle, for instance, have also often
been mentioned. The debate, both sociological and epistemological, about
whether or not, or to what degree, knowledge and meaning are bound to
particular social locations can be perceived both in relation to systems of
power and in relation to traditions and genealogies of meanings and cul-
ture: Sandra Harding (1997, 385) also mentions differences among women
that “were not initially centred in standpoint logics and epistemologies”
of “mere difference”—the cultural differences that would shape different
knowledge projects even where there were no oppressive social relations
between different cultures.
However, even more than many other central concepts in the social sci-
ences, the definition and meaning of the term “culture” has been contested.
Over the past decades, under the influence of both Gramsci and Foucault,
cultures have become conceptualized increasingly as dynamic social pro-
cesses operating in contested terrains in which different voices are more
or less hegemonic in different times, highlighting selectively different
elements from the rich resources that various cultural traditions and cus-
toms offer (Bhabha 1994; Bottomley 1992; Friedman 1994; Yuval-Davis
1997, chap. 3; 2011, chaps. 3 and 4).
To the two dimensions Harding relates to we need to add a third, which
is not necessarily implied in either of the other two: Alison Assiter’s
(1996, 2000) notion of “epistemic communities,” in which political values,
rather than location along intersecting/intermeshed axes of power or cul-
tural perspectives, become the unifying factors. Such “epistemic commu-
nities” shape their access to knowledge collectively rather than individually.
Such collective access to knowledge can be carried out in a variety of
ways. Assiter talks about relations of teachers and pupils, artisans and
apprentices. Other feminists (such as those who have developed the notion
of “transversal politics”; cf. Cockburn and Hunter 1999; Yuval-Davis 1994,
1997) put the emphasis more on the dialogical process that is required in
order for participants in the “epistemic community” who are positioned dif-
ferentially to establish common narratives.
Before discussing this further, however, it is important to point out that
there is an element that is missing in the various discussions on standpoint
theory: there is little discussion as to how the transitions from positionings
to practices, practices to standpoints, knowledge, meaning, values, and goals
actually take place. In my earlier work (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis 2002),
it is argued that one of the central ways in which these transitions and
transformations take place is by various processes of imagining. Feminist

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50   GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2012

epistemology has to extend the discussion of (situated) knowledge to include

also the notion of the (situated) imagination. At the same time, imagination
itself needs to be understood as situated as much as knowledge does.
Such a notion would be closely related, first, to Castoriadis’s (1994)
notion of the imagination as “creative” of both the category “society” itself
and of the processes through which we perceive and know of it. Crucially,
the imagination in this context is not straightforwardly a faculty of the
individual but it is (also, or even primarily) a social faculty. Second, the
situated imagination also encompasses Adorno’s (1978) concept of fantasy
that preserves the wish and the (bodily) impulses in thought and knowl-
edge. In Adorno’s concept, we see a reflection of a line of thought that
reaches back via Freud ([1911] 1958) to Spinoza ([1670] 1989). This tradi-
tion rejects the one-sided rationalist elimination of fantasy from mental
processes and sees its epistemological importance as a gateway to the body
on the one hand and society on the other.
The emphasis on the concept of imagination thus allows for an addi-
tional critical perspective on epistemology that should be particularly
relevant to feminist discussions on corporeality and criticisms of one-
sided, abstractly rational notions of understanding. It is in this double
sense that our (creative) imagination is situated. Such an epistemological
approach is assumed in transversal politics of solidarity.

TRANSVERSAL DIALOGICAL POLITICS

Similarly to Collins’s construction of Black feminist thought, transversal

politics has been developed as an alternative to the assimilationist
“universalistic” politics of the Left on the one hand and to relativist identity
politics on the other. The first has proved to be ethnocentric and exclusion-
ary (Balibar 1990), assuming a Westocentric commonality of interests
and viewpoint. Identity politics was a result of resisting such politics.
However, in their turn, they proved to be essentialist, reifying boundaries
between groups and, via homogenizing and collapsing individuals into
collective identities, undemocratic within groups. Transversalism, on
the other hand, as Guattari (1974) envisioned it, was about the politics
of the construction of a radical political group as a collective subject, in
which there is a constant flow of communication both horizontally and
vertically—hence the name “transversalism”—without such processes of
reification taking place. Bologna’s tradition of transversal politics expanded
it beyond the boundaries of the political group and developed it into a
more general politics of dialogue and cooperation.

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 Yuval-Davis / AN INTERSECTIONAL RESISTANCE   51

Transversal politics is based, first, on a dialogical standpoint epistemol-

ogy, the recognition that from each positioning the world is seen differ-
ently, and thus any knowledge based on just one positioning is “unfinished”
(to differentiate it from “invalid”) (Collins 1990, 236). Thus, the only way
to approach “the truth” is by a dialogue between people of differential
positionings, and the wider the better.
Second, transversal politics follows the principle of the encompassment
(Dumont 1972) of difference by equality (Yuval-Davis and Werbner
1999), the recognition, on one hand, that differences are important but, on
the other, that notions of difference should be encompassed by, rather than
replace, notions of equality. Such notions of difference are not hierarchical
and assume a priori respect to others’ positionings—which includes acknowl-
edgement of their differential social, economic, and political power.
Third, transversal politics differentiates—both conceptually and
politically—between positioning, identity, and values. People who iden-
tify themselves as belonging to the same collectivity or category can be
positioned very differently in relation to a whole range of social divisions
(class, gender, ability, sexuality, stage in the life cycle, etc.). At the same
time, people with similar positioning and/or identity can have very differ-
ent social and political values.
Several implications can be drawn from this. First, feminists and other
community activists cannot (and should not) see themselves as repre-
sentatives of their constituencies (unless they were democratically elected
and are accountable for their actions). Rather, they are advocates, working
to promote their cause. However, even as advocates, it is important that
the activists should be reflective and conscious of the multiplexity of their
specific positionings, both in relation to other members in their constitu-
encies and in relation to the other participants in the specific encounter.
One of the problems with both identity politics is that such activists and
“community leaders” too often become the “authentic voice” of their
communities. This is often harmful to women and other marginal elements
within these communities (Sahgal and Yuval-Davis [1992] 2001).
The second implication is that such advocates do not necessarily have
to be members of the constituency they advocate for. It is the message, not
the messenger, that counts. This avoids the necessity to construct fixed
and reified boundaries to social categories and groups. It does not mean,
of course, that it is immaterial who the “messenger” is, but it does avoid
becoming involved in exclusionary politics. Feminists in Bologna intro-
duced the concepts of “rooting” and “shifting” to aid in explaining how
this could be done (letter of invitation to the conference in Bologna of
Israeli and Palestinian feminists, December 1990). The idea is that each

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52   GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2012

such “messenger” and each participant in a political dialogue would bring

with them the reflective knowledge of their own positioning and identity.
This is the “rooting.” At the same time, they should also try to “shift”—to
put themselves in the situation of those with whom they are in dialogue
and who are different. This follows the same principle of Elsa Barkley
Brown (1989, 922), quoted by Collins (1990, 236), that “all people can
learn to center in another experience, validate it, and judge it by its own
standards without need of comparison or need to adopt that framework as
their own.” It is here where situated imagination is especially important
to be acknowledged as a necessary complement to situated knowledge in
dialogical politics.
Transversal politics, nevertheless, does not assume that the dialogue is
boundary-less, and that each conflict of interest is reconcilable—although,
as Jindi Pettman points out (1992, 157), “There are almost always possi-
bilities for congenial or at least tolerable personal, social and political
engagements.” Similar, compatible values can cut across differences in
positionings and identities. The struggle against oppression and discrimi-
nation might (and mostly does) have a specific categorical focus but it is
never confined to just that category.
Transversal politics, unlike “rainbow coalitions,” however, depends on
shared values rather than on specific political actions, as differential posi-
tioning might dictate prioritizing different political actions and strategies.
Transversal politics encompasses difference by equality and, while con-
tinuously crossing collectivity boundaries, the transversal solidarity is
bounded by sharing common values. While politics of solidarity can be
directed by care and compassion to defend any victim of racialization,
discrimination, inferiorization, and exclusion, transversal solidarity is an
alliance of mutual trust and respect, recognizing but transcending decen-
tered differential positionings of power.
Transversal dialogical political solidarity does not fall into the trap of
“oppression olympics” (Hancock 2011), in which contested unidimen-
sional constructions of oppression compete with each other, but rather
uses dialogical collective knowledge, imagination and judgment, aided by
intersectional analysis, in its ongoing political struggles. Collins’s work
has been a guiding light to such kind of politics.

NOTES

1.  I’ve elaborated some of what is in this paper in Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis
2002; Yuval-Davis 2006a, and the introductory chapter of Yuval-Davis 2011.

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 Yuval-Davis / AN INTERSECTIONAL RESISTANCE   53

2.  Harding, together with most of the earlier (more clearly Marxist influenced)
articulations of feminist standpoint theory, points to Hegel’s discussion of the
dialectic of master and slave in the “Phenomenology of Spirit,” as well as its
reception by Marx and Lukács, as its starting point (Harding 1993, 53-54).
3.  There is no space here to enter into a discussion on the nature of
intersectionality and the different theoretical and methodological approaches to
analyze it. For some partial reviews see, for example, Brah and Phoenix 2004;
McCall 2005; Yuval-Davis 2006b. Ange-Marie Hancock and I are also editing a series
of books on the politics of intersectionality for Palgrave MacMillan, New York.

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Nira Yuval-Davis is the Director of the Research Centre on Migration,

Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London. She has
been the President of the Research Committee 05 (on Racism, Nationalism
and Ethnic Relations) of the International Sociological Association, a
founder member of Women Against Fundamentalism and the international
research network of Women In Militarized Conflict Zones.

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