Assignment 03
What Brown is saying in her essay “The Most We Can Hope For…” reminds me a bit of Pateman from last week. Pateman was asking feminists to look outside the current power structure, and language to figure out what they wanted on their own terms and in their own terms. Brown is directing us to be as objective when talking about human rights activism.
Acts of activism don’t exist in a void, there are consequence for every action, and we can’t always know all the consequences and repercussions of the actions we take. In this way activism is inherently political, are we helping the current regime? Hurting it? Or are we refusing to help one group because of its other human rights violations? These are all political acts. Brown doesn’t want us to subscribe to any one ideology because of these types of agendas. She uses the great word “generic” (60) to explain that no subjugation or abuse is generic, and neither than is the response. We choose to act in certain ways and we can’t always know what will happen long-term. One analogy that I believe is relevant is that many people choose to be vegetarian because of all the issues surrounding factory farming, issues that are moral, environmental, humanist, economic and on. However, an increase in vegetable farming leads to an increase in pesticides in certain cases which has decreased the bird population in farming communities. This was a negative consequence of a well-intentioned deed. I’m not saying we should stop being vegetarians, just that there is a large picture.
Human rights work and our viewpoints on it are subjective, and influenced by our upbringing, our beliefs and society. Brown points out that our acts are influenced by dynamic contexts (for example political and economic context), and by this I think she means where we as activists are coming from. Missionaries believed they were doing good as well. When we choose a project because of our interests, we don’t offer support to a separate project, this is another way in which our activism is political.
I think what Brown is writing makes complete sense, we must be critical and constantly evaluate ourselves and the human rights movement. Just as we note that actions that made sense to our parents, from the small to the large, from serving the husband first to how they considered race, things are evolving in our time. We have to constantly be checking ourselves to be sure we are doing the most good. The argument reminds me of myself as a feminist, and the ways in which I need to continually check my privilege, which is hard and easy to forget or push back against, but if I just believe that I’m right, and trying to do good I’ll never grow. If I still maintained the beliefs I had even a year ago without recognizing new information the stagnation would make me and my beliefs obsolete.
