Such critical approaches would include feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial criticism, although ideological criticism need not fall into any of these categories.
Part of the role of the ideological critic is to use criticism to advance a social or political cause through questioning and investigating how language is used by power structures to conceal and maintain themselves. In other words, ideological critics tend to wear their policial hearts on their sleeve.
Sounds good to me.
One of the odd things about the discourse surrounding the Duke Lacrosse case that struck me early on was the extent to which conservative public voices came to the defense of the accused. Over a year ago, Rush Limbaugh referred to the alleged victim as (wait for it) a “ho,” adding:
I just, I'm looking at this case down there at Duke, [caller], and it's --
there's some things about it, some inconsistencies. You've got some timeline
differentiations and matriculations and, and so forth.
Several months ago, Glenn Beck referred to what was happening to the accused as a “lynching without the rope.”
With the announcement that all charges were dropped, many conservative voices in the blogosphere spoke almost jubilantly about this as if it were a political victory, and added to this personal attacks on the alleged victim.
Posting a photo of the accuser, the blog “Insignificant Thoughts” opined:
Make sure you make note of the woman in the picture. You’ll never see her again.
She’ll never be questioned. She’ll never be criticized. We’ll never hear from
her again. She wasted more than a year with her lies and almost destroyed three
innocent lives. I seriously doubt anyone will press charges, and we’ll now be
subjected to numerous lectures on how this lying piece of garbage being called
out for what she is will stop women who really are victims of sexual assaults
from coming forward, the assumption being that if these three guys were
convicted, innocent or not, we’d be better off.
The sentiment was similar over at
“SisterToldjah”:
I’m hoping that the three accused players will sue the state and/or Mike Nifong
for the hardships they’ve suffered since being falsely accused and made out to
be guilty by Nifong himself in the early days of the ‘investigation.’ Because
it’s my feeling that in this case, justice has not been served - for the real
victims here: the three lacrosse players, whose names were dragged through the
mud thanks to a lying stripper and a deceptive attorney who wanted to get
re-elected even if it meant ruining three young lives in the process.
And at “
Betsy’s Page,” the accused were lauded for their character:
We often mouth aphorisms about learning from adversity, but these three young
men have really demonstrated that they have indeed done so. Sadly, I expect that
we won't see any such demonstration of character from all those in the media and
among those in academia, particularly at Duke University itself, for their rush to judgment. A distressingly large number of professors at the university acted as if the players were guilty simply because an accusation had been made and the accuser
was a poor black woman and they were white well-to-do athletes.
This is just a smattering of what the celebratory mood seen in much of the conservative prattle-sphere.
In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with these sentiments. When the system works to correct a wrong—even (and perhaps especially) one it’s implicated in itself—that’s something we should celebrate, to say nothing of being thankful that our justice system puts the burden on the state to prove guilt. Yes, it’s a terrible thing when innocent people are unjustly accused, and it’s a wonderful thing when the system works and undoes that wrong.
So, what’s at issue? For me, it’s best summed up in another post from a popular conservative blog, “
Mr. Minority”. MM poses the rhetorical question:
As Fred Barnes said on Brit Humes show last night, how many other times has this
type of action against the innocent happened?
Well, MM, a great many times. Is it common for this to happen to affluent, white, educated men? Probably not. But unjust accusations against the innocent? All the time, my man.
Exhibit A: Guantanamo Bay.
And this is where the issue becomes interesting from a rhetorical point of view. The conservative concern with the rights of the accused, outrage at false accusations, and glee at the dropping of unjust charges is a jarringly juxtaposed with the rhetoric from many of these same mouths when it comes to the legal system for all.
How many times are liberal groups (e.g., the ACLU) lambasted for “coddling criminals” or putting “the rights of the crook ahead of the rights of victims” for raising the same issues that conservatives did in the Duke case? When people were getting tortured at Abu Ghraib, many of them completely innocent of any crime, how often did conservatives attack anyone who voiced the least concern about issues of justice as “anti-American” or “terrorist sympathizers?”
In short, conservative concern for the rights of the accused seems oddly sporadic, depending more on who the accused is than the principle itself.
Now, the reverse can be said of liberal/progressives. Many on the left were quick to support the accuser in this case and bemoaned the culture of privilege that they felt led a gang of simian preppies to sexually maul this poor woman.
If we just wanted to throw stones, we could just say “a plague on both your houses” and move on. But there are some important issues here.
First, why would those on the left tend to side with the accused when they (as those on the right observe) profess a deep concern with the rights of individuals who are accused by the state of wrongdoing?
The answer, I think, lies in the fact that what underlies liberal concern with the rights of the accused is a broader concern with the right of individuals in the face of power structures. Such powers are most obviously seen in the government (given its unique ability to punish individual citizens legally), but it doesn’t end there. Among other power structures are the “holy trinity” of social forces: race, class, and gender inequalities.
Seen in this light, the liberal tendency to side with the accuser seems less out of character. Yes, as the accuser, she is on the side of the state and is invoking its might to punish individuals. But she herself exists at the business end of the hegemonic stick, as a poor woman of color.
A radical feminist critique of the situation might suggest that, regardless of what did or didn’t happen at that lacrosse party, the woman in question *had been* violated. Wasn’t it her position in society that drove her to trade on her sexuality for monetary survival? In terms of power relations, how different is what happened at Durham different from the plantation master using his chattel to satisfy his libidinal longings?
I wouldn’t go that far because it dehumanizes everyone involved, making them into allegorical characters. From what I’ve heard, the guys on the lacrosse team tended to be assholes, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to be saddled with the guilt of all oppressors past and present.
On the other hand, one needn’t use hyperbole to understand that the woman in this case is someone who stood in an inferior power relation to those whom she accused in many ways. If a hallmark of liberalism is concern for protecting the individual from unfair consequences of arbitrary power, then one can understand the tendency of those on the left to find their sympathies inclined toward the accuser.
There’s actually a fair amount of overlap between liberals and conservatives (at least those of a certain stripe) on this issue. In their more libertarian incarnations, conservatives look on government’s ability to victimize and control the individual with suspicion. As a result, you find alliances among those on the left and right on issues such as the Patriot Act, which both groups see as a potentially dangerous abuse of hegemonic power structures against the individual.
Where conservatives and liberals part ways is on the question of what constitutes a “hegemonic power structure.” Liberals see these at work in the machinations of racism, sexism, class, and unchecked corporate power. All are examples of unwarranted power held by some citizens at the expense of others.
Conservatives, on the other hand, largely dismiss these, or at least rate them as of little concern compared with governmental power. For example, they tend to see class as a side effect of the free market—a result of choices made by the individual. In a free market, the individual can make choices that allow her or him recreate their class identity. To suggest that an individual is victimized by such a power structure is anathema. Worse, it is an open challenge to what they see as a valid and legitimate method of dispersing power and wealth.
And this is why we have conservatives so clearly taking the side of the accused in this case. If the apparent liberal flip-flop in this particular instance is based on the deeper philosophical concerns liberals have about power relationships and the individual, so is the conservative flip-flop.
What I mean is that conservatives are generally supportive of existing power structures and suspicious of those who challenge their legitimacy. Just as liberals sided with the accuser largely because of the fact that she is, in many ways, at the low end of the power hierarchies, conservatives side with the accused largely because of the fact that they are, in many ways, at the top of the power hierarchies—power hierarchies that in general benefit conservatives, or which are at least philosophically endorsed by them.
So the accuser and accused *do* end up becoming allegorical characters in a socio-political drama in the rhetoric of both sides, with the accuser standing in for those forces thought to challenge or subvert what conservatives consider the natural and rightful order of things, while the accused represent those who’ve justly reached the top of that order through their (or their ancestors’) abilities.
Liberals see it the other way, with the accuser representing those who have long been silenced, abused, violated, and kept down through the self-interested exercise of power by those who don’t necessarily deserve it (e.g., rich white-boy lacrosse players).
Both ways of framing the situation risk jettisoning the specific facts in favor of ideology, and confusing the outcome of a specific case with a win or loss for their particular set of values.
But to put my own ideological cards on the table (and that comes with the territory of doing ideological criticism), if one is faced with a choice of a political philosophy that seeks to constantly question how and why those with power exercise it over those who don’t, and one that seeks to defend those power structures to such an extent that it only recognizes the dangers of such structures when they turn on themselves, I think the choice is clear.
Questions:
Why did Limbaugh get away with calling the accuser a “ho” over a year ago, but Imus, in a less venomous use of the term, got his hat handed to him?
Should the accuser’s name/photo be used openly by the press (as it has on the web already)? Does this depend on whether it can be proved that her accusations were knowingly false and malicious? (The authorities in Durham claim that it’s possible that she in fact believed the various versions she told them, despite the fact that they weren’t consistent).
What other reasons are there for the politicization of this issue along liberal/conservative lines? What am I missing or wrong about? What else can be said?