POL480H/2038H, Fall 2022, Reading Questions
Week 5: Methods and Comparison (Part II)
What are the two recognitions that Linda Alcoff cites that alert us to the dangers of speaking for others?
What are the implications of these premises that she develops later in the article?
Why does Alcoff intentionally conflate speaking for and speaking about others?
What are some of the potential responses to the problem of speaking for others that Alcoff considers
and either rejects or modifies?
What are some of the reasons Alcoff considers for the privileging of speech by the oppressed?
What are the four interrogatory practices that Alcoff concludes with and what types of reflections or
actions might they prompt?
What are the various meanings or linguistic uses of hta that emerge in Violet Cho’s hta or in her analysis
of her own relationship to hta?
What ambivalence does Cho express about language, both written and spoken? What are the
relationships between writing, orality and power, in her experience?
What is Toby Rollo’s concern with the privileging of textual analysis—and, similarly, speech as text—in
much of CPT?
How does Rollo distinguish the “enactive” from the textual or oral registers of political understanding?
How does enactive practice potentially relate to political understanding?
How does Rollo connect privileging text to practices of (cognitive and political) imperialism?
Why, according to Rollo, is a focus on orality, in addition to textuality, not a sufficient shift?
How does Rollo demonstrate his argument about the distinctiveness of enactive practices through
reference to some Place-based Indigenous ways of being and knowing?