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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.