Therese, Tom: something I came across just today that maybe ties in with this
notion of defended subject - I've been looking at autonomy in terms of
research ethics, and particularly from a social constructionist perspective.
Chris MacDonald, [writing in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2002)
11, 282-289] refers to the work of Susan Sherwin a feminist accademic, who
writes that: "when the messages of reduced self-worth are internalized,
agents... tend to lose the ability even to know their own objective
interests".  Apparently Sherwin and Anne Donchin are two theorists who explore
the importance of power structures and social relationships as the contexts in
which choice is exercised.

S.Sherwin: A relational approach to autonomy in health care.  In: Sherwin, S,
ed. The Politics of Women's Health: Exploring Agency and Autonomy.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

A. Donchin. Reworking autonomy: toward a feminist perspective.  Cambridge
Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 1995; 4: 44-55.

Regards
bernadette.

>===== Original Message From Researching and evaluating the use of narrative
in health and              related fields
<[log in to unmask]> =====
>People who aren't Therese might also be interested in the problems
>that this email is about. If you aren't, apologies for sending it to
>you. tom.
>
>Dear Therese,
>
>It was good to hear from you, and your thinking on these difficult matters.
>
>As a 'post-marxist' (or something similar), I like very much the
>notion of 'standpoint theory' that you evoke for generating and
>analysing the positions and perspectives of homeless women.  I have
>only one thought about it which may or may not be relevant. I agree
>that "the marginalised have more vision" than the powerful, since
>they need to understand their powerful enemies whereas the powerful
>don't need to understand their enemies, they can just corral them
>out, in or about, in real or symbolic barbed wire and unload
>thousands of moral or physical or emotional cluster-bombs. Going
>further though,  that "the marginalised have the kind of double
>vision that can see the full picture", I think I agree with, but in a
>cautious way.
>
>They have the "kind of double vision that can see the full picture",
>yes, but it doesn't mean that any or all of them do see that picture.
>At any given moment, some may see very little except a desperate
>struggle to survive -- eg Palestinians under US-Israeli occupation
>and onslaught. "Seeing the full picture" is a potential that they
>have much more readily than the powerful, but getting to see that
>picture is a social-historical collective accomplishment, not an
>individually automatic heritage. "They can see the full picture" but
>they have to work at developing that 'capacity to see'. So trying to
>understand the conditions which constrain and which enhance that
>"potential to see the full picture" seems to be the requirement if
>one wants to help the marginalised and oneself as marginal.
>
>Within that interest in the socio-historical conditions for
>accomplishing something closer to full vision of the full picture, it
>may be worth revisiting the work of the Austro-English post-marxist
>Karl Mannheim (England in the 1940s-50s).
>
>He started from a marxist version of standpoint theory, but he argued
>for a special role for "free-floating intellectuals" whose historical
>function was to clarify all the 'standpoints/perspectives' of the
>collective players, and then to work out a 'meta-perspective' that
>could clarify how the truths seen from all these different
>standpoints could be 'integrated' and the erroneous ideas that tend
>to follow any particular standpoint be set aside. He was attacked by
>Marxists because he denied that any one standpoint could see
>everything and attacked by conservatives because he asserted that
>their standpoint stopped them seeing lots of things.
>
>The extreme version of his account is that of the free-standing
>philosopher king who has all the insights and none of the oversights
>of other people's perspectives. I think this just doesn't work,
>because it denies the 'historical locatedness' of all intellectuals.
>Most intellectuals as  Antonio Gramsci pointed out are very strongly
>located on the side of the most powerful. So this strong version of
>his position is dangerous self-delusion.
>
>  A weaker version of his account might be that all standpoints of all
>'collectively situated groups' have differing proportions of
>potential for full and restricted vision, perhaps very different
>proportions/probabilities, but that even the standpoint of the
>collective most potentially favoured by their location does not see
>everything and, to see more, has to see some of the things that only
>their allies and their enemies can see. 'Full picture vision' always
>would therefore come only from a dialogue with groups who have, on
>average, necessarily more restricted vision but who, despite that,may
>the only ones who see (and necessarily mis-recognise and
>over-estimate) things that no other group can see.
>
>Such a weak model of a Mannheimian position  -- and I haven't come
>across it anywhere in this form, but it might well already exist and
>be worked out in detail -- might relate to the notion of the
>"defended subject" which is based on a more psychoanalytic
>understanding of individual subjectivity. In my book on interviewing,
>I take the concept inherent in the term "the defended subject"
>(Hollway, W. and Jefferson, T.  2000) and use it as a basis for
>necessarily going beyond the recycling of the 'perspectives of the
>interviewee' or their own personal self-theory (standpoint). If all
>individuals, groups, and societies have to defend themselves against
>'anxiety', then there can be no 'spontaneous standpoint' that can see
>all the truths of the full picture. The interviewee cannot see the
>full picture of what their interview shows; the picture the
>researcher paints is also governed by the researchers' standpoints
>and anxieties. In dialogue, we can successively attempt to help each
>other enhance the strength of what we see relatively easily but also
>to help each other accept the much less welcome truths about
>ourselves that only others (with our help) can spontaneously see.
>This does not deny that the marginalised and the oppressed can
>spontaneously have more double or multiple perspectives than the
>powerful, but it does assert that they and we have to achieve a
>collective accomplishment through dialogue and the assimilation of
>unwelcome truths.
>
>Both as individuals and as members of diverse collectives, our task
>has to be the 'assimilation of the most unwelcome, the least
>tolerable truth' (perceived more easily or only from positions other
>than our own) if we wish to achieve and to contribute towards
>achieving something closer to full, enriched vision. What is it that
>any particular "defended individual subjects' and 'historically
>located and evolving standpoints' finds it most difficult to tolerate
>and assimilate? That is precisely what they do have to tolerate and
>assimilate if they want to overcome the 'oversight' inherent in the
>standpoint that gives so much insight. As Nietzsche says,
>"intelligence grows from a wound".
>
>The doing of the interviewing and the dialogue about what it shows
>and what it shows up can contribute to the assimilating of 'wounding
>truths'. Hence the importance of reflexivity and 'feedback' (and in
>dialogue feed-sideways!) that you propose.
>
>As this has got written, I can see it has a more general implication,
>Therese, so I'm copying it to the list to see if others want to enter
>this dialogue of ours.
>
>Best wishes
>
>Tom
>
>P.S. As to particular relevant places in my book,you could find a
>couple of pages on 'the anxious defended subject' on pp.158-9. In
>general, Part ! identifies the concepts and thinking that govern the
>more practical rest of the book.
>--
>For details of my (doing quite well) textbook
>        Qualitative Research Interviewing: biographic narrative
>        and semi-structured methods (Sage: 2001)
>look at
>        <http://www.sagepub.co.uk/shopping/Detail.asp?id=4813>
>
>The Sixth and Final London
>        Short Course in Biographic Narrative Interpretive Interviewing
>will take place in three-day blocks
>                covering interviewing, analysis, comparing/theorising
>from cases
>in November and December 2002 and January 2003. Nine days in all.
>        Contact me for details, or click on
>                http://www.uel.ac.uk/bisp/bisp.pdf

Bernadette Bartlam
Research Fellow
Centre for Social Gerontology
School of Social Relations
Keele University
Keele
Staffordshire UK ST5 5BG
Tel +44(0)1782 621111