I am not usually one for sentimental blog posts; emotions can be tedious and robust motivators for the academic drives but messy to express amidst robust research and detailed critical thinking. Kate Hannah’s and Dr. Madhavi Manchi’s lectures impacted the idea that knowledge is never neutral. Emotions and positionality entrench powerful moral persuasions that can either extend or limit our ability to perceive ideas. Whether a vice or virtue, I have always found navigating value collisions to be exhilarating because it is intriguing to see how social identity is sowed and shaped by experience and exposure.
It strikes a personal chord because I have always considered my identity to be a basket of oxymoronic labels and leanings, sometimes unknowingly sharpening each other. A collection of various labels; national voter, classical liberal, genderqueer, homosexual, culturally catholic atheist. There are also many internal collisions between these components to the point where my academic life can be characterised by a sought of split personality disorder. What face to put on? What character to be? There are so many ways to cut an apple progressively; sometimes, my essays feel like puppet shows where words limits confine narratives to bare binary conclusions, probably why brain dumps have become so important. It is an equally euphoric and frustrating condition, depending on what neck of the words I have decided to visit.
While some poor souls found positionality to be confronting in Dr Manchi’s lecture, I mistakenly cited polygism to convey how easy it is to assume people’s values based on their social and cultural identity. Being gay and gender diverse suddenly makes me the voting property of labor, sometimes to the point where expressing my intellectual property becomes redundant. I am morally owned by a political party based unconscious bias of a progressive collective without even bothering to acknowledge my identity or value set that has been incubated in its own unique set of cultural conditions.
My oxymoron basket can be summarised by an intense devotion to devil’s advocacy, strongly resonating with the idea that knowledge is always prejudiced. I am a healthy sceptic of the orthodox, which describes mass-produced and mainstream politics that seem to stifle every corner of critical thinking. I would argue that understanding multiple perspectives in the liberal arts is an academic duty and the essence of liberalism because it encourages the idea that their ideas cannot solely characterise citizens. It dissuades polarity, perhaps why I felt comforted by Jacinda’s Ardern’s election victory speech. Although I did not vote for her, I know I am a New Zealander, one with a different perspective but a New Zealander nevertheless.
