Liberation Ideologies

1
Liberation Ideologies

• Characteristics
• Main features/tenets
• Conception of freedom

2
Liberation ideologies

• Black liberation
• Womens liberation
• Gay liberation
• Liberation theology
• Native peoples liberation
• Animal liberation

3
Common features

• Directed to particular audience who share common
  identity as members of oppressed group
• Sometimes also directed to bystanders and
  oppressors
• Seek to emancipate from external constraints
  imposed by oppressors and internalized
  constraints
• Raise consciousness and alter outlook of
  oppressed people, empower to take fate into own
  hands
• Liberate oppressors from illusion of superiority,
  help recognize former victims as fellow human
  beings or beings

4
Black liberation

• Directed to blacks seeks to overcome obstacles
  to freedom for blacks
• Blacks long discriminated against by white people
• Seeks to address external forms of oppression
• Seeks also to expose and overcome often subtle
  ways blacks have internalized white norms and
  values
• Articulates and defends alternative black
  standards of beauty, appropriate behavior, as way
  of instilling self-respect and black pride
• Main variants
• Civil rights (integrationist, assimilationist)
  emphasizes external barriers seeks to remove
  obstacles to equal opportunity
• Black power (separatist, nationalist) stresses
  spiritual and cultural barriers seeks to promote
  identity, pride, self-sufficiency

5
Womens liberation

• Directed at women long oppressed by men, who have
  participated in their oppression
• Objectifying themselves as sex objects,
  child-bearers, to detriment of full and free
  development as whole human beings
• Main variants
• Liberal feminist places more emphasis on external
  barriers (discriminatory laws, hiring practices)
• Radical feminist gives greater weight to
  internalized beliefs, attitudes, stereotypes that
  make women less willing and able to empower
  themselves

6
Gay liberation

• Directed at gay men and lesbians
• Attempts to help homosexuals come to terms with,
  feel comfortable about, homosexuality
• Instill sense of shared identity, gay pride to
  overcome homophobia, stereotypes, and attitudes
  held by many heterosexuals and homosexuals (i.e.,
  internalized oppression)
• Seeks to empower homosexuals by helping them
  overcome fears and crippling attitudes
• Seeks to repeal discriminatory laws, gain access
  to opportunities denied

7
Native peoples liberation

• Concerned with well-being of Native or indigenous
  peoples
• Native Americans (U.S., Central and South
  America), Aborigines (Australia), First Nations
  (Canada), Maori (New Zealand), Hawaiians (Hawaii)
• Lands conquered and cultures demeaned by white
  European settlers
• European domination undermined pride and identity
• Aim to recover identity and restore pride and
  dignity
• Seek political power, restoration of lands,
  enforcement of fishing, other rights guaranteed
  by treaties

8
Liberation theology

• Religious or theological orientation
• Offers emancipatory interpretation of gospels
• Jesus helped people liberate themselves from sin,
  evils of exploitative money economy
• Criticized Pharisees, others who think themselves
  morally and socially superior
• Showed how to exercise the option for the poor
  by choosing to live among them, taking ordinary
  workers as his disciples
• Scriptures convey emancipatory message dignity
  of labor, human equality, and empowerment of poor
  and powerless

9
Liberation theology, 2

• Addresses several audiences (most influential in
  Latin America)
• Main audience is poor, powerless peasant or
  worker
• Also addresses wealthy and affluent, appealing to
  follow Jesus and exercise the option for the
  poor, take their side in struggle for social
  justice
• Poor are oppressed externally (by landlords,
  powerful corporations) and internally, by
  defeatist (self-fulfilling) beliefs, attitudes
  about inferiority, powerlessness
• Attempts to expose, break through self-imposed
  shackles, give poor dignity, power, purpose, and
  potential

10
Animal liberation

• Addressed to humans who hold unexamined
  assumptions about innate superiority of species
• Attitudes toward animals we can, for profit or
  pleasure (without worrying about pain), eat
  flesh, use fur or skin for clothing, and perform
  painful experiments
• Speciesism is harmful to animals, human beings
• Gives us false picture of species real and
  proper relation to other species and environment
  that makes mutual existence possible
• Only when we overcome deep-seated prejudice will
  our full humanity be realized
• Hopes to liberate animals from human oppression
  by appealing to human beings to examine
  previously unexamined beliefs about and attitudes
  toward animals

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Discussion questions

1. All of the liberation ideologies try to promote
   freedom for a particular group of people -- or,
   in one case, of non-human animals. Choose three
   of these liberation ideologies, and use the
   triadic model of freedom to explain how it
   proposes to free its particular group.
2. Describe how liberation ideologies can be seen to
   be promoting, or at least to be consistent with,
   democracy. Use examples from at least three of
   the liberation ideologies to illustrate your
   answer.
3. Why are liberation ideologies sometimes
   associated with the politics of identity or
   the politics of difference? Is the emergence of
   this kind of politics something to be welcomed or
   feared? Explain your answer in detail by
   referencing three liberation ideologies.
4. In what ways is the politics of
   identity/difference consistent with and/or
   contradictory to liberal democracy? Can the two
   coincide or are they mutually exclusive?
5. Describe the ideological functions of liberation
   ideologies (explanation, evaluation, orientation,
   and program).