All Experiences Are Valid: Really?

This last summer, R ended a conversation with me by saying, "You know, you shouldn't dismiss other perspectives than your own. Other viewpoints are equally valid too!" We had been talking about the ways in which neo-liberalism re-defines the meaning of sexuality, especially female sexuality, and the ideological ramifications of that. I am not going to get into that in this post, but what was specifically interesting to me was the way he concluded the conversation. I wasn't surprised, because this is pretty much the way our conversations conclude themselves. That is when we're not tearing each other apart. And honestly speaking, R is not alone. I have learnt to recognize that most of us, especially the male alienationist, Marxist variety, invoke a kind of absolute relativism when they do not necessarily know how to continue to engage with the debate or the questions that they have been asked to confront. More specifically, that kind of relativism raises its head when gender, race, caste etc. has been brought up. Or when the individuals concerned have been asked to revisit, re-examine their own lives or privileges in terms of the ideologies they claim they uphold. Anyways, R and I have a pretty intense history of ripping each other apart over these things. And I can't speak for him, but I can definitely say that those conversations have helped me a lot to realize things about myself and this world, to hone my arguments and to locate the flaws in them.

A couple of days back, I attended a WOC meeting, where one of the catch-phrases was, "All experiences are valid." I was intrigued, because in this proclamation I saw a reverberation of R's argument. My instinctive response is to say, "Not really." But then I stop myself, take a back step and try to re-formulate, and this is what I would have to say in a nutshell:

Yes, of course. But for whom? To what purposes? And what are the yardsticks of validity here?

For me, that yardstick consists of the following things:

A. All experiences are experienced within specific social structures, ideologies, constructed ideas of self, society and nature. These, in turn, are implicated within certain structures of power. Therefore, all or most experiences, that involve the interaction of a human with another human or a non-human entity are guided by those power structures. Any attempt to understand "experiences" need to take into account such powered interactions and formations.

B. Depending upon the historical, cultural, social, geographical parameters, all power structures assume specific concrete forms. For example, class is one expression of that specificity. Gender is another. So is race. And caste. And religion. We can keep adding on to it. You get the idea..

C. Such specific dimensions rarely or never exist independently. They intersect each other, thus giving birth to complex social formations and modes of experiencing, which cannot always be reduced to one or the other. Therefore, in order to understand what underlies a specific experience, one needs to scratch the surface. And scratch it hard. This is what I would call de-bunking, or defamiliarization. For me, literature is a mode of de-bunking. So are other forms of art.

D. Because there are power structures, experiences are almost always an expression of one's marginality or one's ability to dominate. Often times, both marginality and dominance can co-exist within a specific experience.

E. Human beings resist. In multiple forms. Experiences reveal those modes of resistance.

F. Human beings resist, often in very fucked-up ways, thus reinforcing the category they had set out to resist in the very first place. Only in a different way.

G. Human beings resist, often in very screwed-up ways. Thus, in order to question one category of mode of dominance, they end up reinforcing another.

H. Experiences thus make sense only when seen and understood within specific ideological frameworks, whatever they might be.


So, this is how I understand experience. And thus, all experiences are not valid to me. And definitely not in the same way. Most of the times, in my attempts to understand experiences, I try to keep the power structures in mind, and yes, I do admit, I tend to side with those who I think occupy the relatively marginalized position. So, in the WOC meeting I attended, which claimed to be both WOC-centric and inclusive of all experiences, there was an essential fallacy, an essential contradiction. I guess, what it signified for me, is this weird way in which even the most radical, progressive political endeavors within USA ends up replicating the primary categories of the empire. This innate desire to avoid conflict, to push conflicts under the rug. And sometimes, in a very interesting, but nonetheless frustrating way, being selective about conflicts.