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Final Assignment: Critical Theory and Latino GLBT Adults

Silence…is less the absolute limit of discourse than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them…we must try to determine the different ways of saying…how those who can and cannot speak…are distributed, which type of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required…There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourse(Foucault, 1972, p. 27)

It is impossible to discuss the experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities (referred to hereafter as ‘GLBT’) when so much of that lived experience has been silenced. This is especially true of Latino GLBT, among other people of color. For one thing sexuality is rarely completely static – people may come to realize their sexuality late in life as a result of homophobia, while others may discover that they are actually bisexual from a starting point of being lesbian or gay. Recognition of one’s ‘real’ gender can be a tortuous process, fighting against the pressures of society’s norms and the fear of the extensive consequences of accepting the reality.

In this last posting of an educational module on critical theory and social work. The purpose has been to offer an introduction to critical theory by covering psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, queer, postcolonial and other criticism. These summaries have been based on Tyson’s book Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, which is highly recommended for more in-depth converge of each area of theoretical criticism covered in this weblog. This final submission is intended to synthesize many of the ideas and concepts that have been explored in previous summaries by applying them to my research interest in Latino GLBT life.

As we look back over our lives, we construct them as stories. While New Criticism has replaced biographical historical criticism, I would like to offer some biographical information to help you as the reader better understand what experiences influences my writing. While this is my experience, it can not be generalized to that of all Latino GLBT because the one thing that you as a reader should take away, this is all very complicated and can not be captured in one persons experience.

I self-identify as a Chicano, a term used to indicate my identity of Mexican descent living in the United States. As a fourth generation Mexican American who was born in Denver, Colorado in 1963, I have a family connection to Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales who was considered one of three influential activist during the Chicano movement known as the Crusade for Justice. Supposedly, he helped my paternal grandmother out of legal situation when she was charged with the brutal stabbing of her abusive boyfriend, a muscular marine named Leo Santoya. Despite the connection, as a family we were not politically aware or involved in the Chicano movement, our focus was on surviving poverty and intergenerational trauma.

As the first born son to a machismo father, the fact that I was a gender nonconforming child was always a point of deep enmity between us. While I now have a loving relationship with my dad, in my formative years I experienced sever physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual trauma because I did not meet his expectations. After my father was nearly beaten to death by a couple of Denver Police officers in 1975, for having a Mexican flag decal on the back window of his 1966 Ford Galaxy, we converted from Catholicism to Pentecostalism. This was the same time that I began to accept that I am homosexual. In this new conversion I struggled to suppress my sexual orientation believing that I was possessed with demons and that my soul was predestined to experience eternity in a lake of fire and brimstone. I grew up trying to earn the approval of both my father and God, both of who considered me an abomination.

At 21, I volunteered for service in the U.S. Marine Corp from 1984 to 1988. This was during the Regan military buildup. I was fortunate that I never had to experience combat. While serving in Okinawa, Japan, I met my partner, another Marine who was a Tejano from the Corpus Christi area. I experienced three different Naval Investigations, some of which lead to dishonorable discharges of friends and the suicide of another. I think it says a great deal about my character that despite this harassment, I completed my tour with an honorable discharge and earned a good conduct medal.

It was also a time when many of my friends were infected with HIV, many of whom died from the disease. This led to my involvement with ACT UP as a member of Hogar Latino in Orange County California. Eventually, I made my way back to Colorado where I worked with La Gente Unida in raising public awareness of Amendment 2. Over the years, I have been the direct target of homophobic attacks and death threats. I know first hand the experience of oppression and discrimination for being both gay and a person of color.

In my educational career I have always been interested in the nexus of gender, class, race and sexuality, believing the more I understood, the better chance I would have to survive. It was synchronicity that my first research project involved the study of resilience among Latino GLBT individuals. Resilience is defined as the quality that enables some individuals to develop normally and to achieve satisfactory outcomes despite a disadvantage background, to recover from traumatic experiences, and to continue to function competently under stress. While many Latino gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender people surrender to the oppression of racism, poverty, heterosexism and sexism, which reveals itself in high rates of suicide ideation, substance abuse, high risk sex and other forms of social alienation, many find there place in the world and not only survive but thrive.

We as Social Workers are in a unique professional position to offer transformational service that facilities positive change in the lives of Latino GLBT. Yet, Social Workers are exposed throughout their lives to the same myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes of GLBT individuals as are their clients. Many well-intentioned social workers are unaware of their own heterosexism. While it is comforting to assume that absence of overt homophobia automatically ensures a proactive and affirming attitude, such an assumption may bring harm to the very clients social workers hope to serve well. Failing to recognize a happy event, such as successfully coming out at work or assuming opposite gender when referring to romantic relationships are examples of subtle ways of negating the lived experience of LGB persons. Examples of more overt ways include comparing LGB persons with adulterers, alcoholics, and pedophiles, inadvertent heterosexist bias, at best, and blatant "homonegative" attitudes, at worst.

Sexual customs have varied greatly over time and from one region to another. There has been some form of same sex love expressed through out every culture of the world. For example, in Africa, women in Lesotho have engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships" named motsoalle and male Azande warriors (in the northern Congo) routinely married male youths who functioned as temporary wives (although the practice has died out in the 20^th century). In North America, many but not all tribes celebrated two-spirit, which involved nontraditional gender roles and held status over that of other shamans. As well, there is record of other expressions in China, Japan, India, Europe and other parts of the world. Ignorance and puritan sensibility is what has exalts heterosexual sex as the absolute human norm.

It also appears that homosexuality is not exclusive to homo sapiens, some same-sex birds do it. So do beetles, sheep, fruit bats, dolphins, and orangutans. Zoologists are discovering that homosexual and bisexual activity is not unknown within the animal kingdom. Its not just males that engage in the behavior, some female Japanese macaques, often prefer to be with females, even when males are present in their group. It appears there is no “natural” human sexuality.

So much of what we feel has been repressed, which always manages to become expressed in unforeseen ways. Much of this energy was released when Freud opened the bedroom door, consequently, we have seen a number of significant shifts in social attitudes, behaviors and institutional regulations surrounding sexuality. In 1905 Sigmund Freud invented the idea of sexuality in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, which he described as a process independent of an individual's biological sex. Thinkers before Freud believed that most men are born "normal" (i.e. heterosexual) but that male inverts inherit some female mental characteristic that makes them sexually attracted to members of their own sex. Freud rejected the idea and argued that the direction the sexual drive takes has no necessary relationship to inherited sexual characteristics.

Where sex refers to the biological division into man and woman, gender is the parallel and socially constructed division into femininity and masculinity. Men are expected to be physically virile, athletic, strong, stoic, brave and sexually aggressive. Women are expected to be nurturing, dependent and submissive who succumb to the sexual prowess of men. Transgender is the state of one's gender identity not matching one's assigned physical sex. In Mexican cultures, the between space of power-laden gender identities of the virile male and dutiful woman, are the effeminate males who only play the passive role in anal intercourse, demarcated as a particular category of being – jotos or putos. Unlike their sexual partners, jotos are stigmatized for the “unmanly effeminate behavior” and are the target of social ridicule expressed through jokes and verbal play. Neither wholly male nor wholly female, jotos are interstitial begins who transgress and confound the power-laden categories of gender. Jotos are anomalous in numerous ways. On the one hand, they are begins with male bodies who are penetrated like women. On the other hand, they are symbolic women who have the sexual license of men and for whom sex is a source of pleasure and not reproductive activity. Indeed, this is why jotos are also called putos, putas being women whose sexuality has escaped the bounds of the patriarchal family and is "misused" for pleasure and profit rather than for "legitimate" reproductive function. Though putas are women, their deviation from the norms of "respectable" female sexuality paradoxically masculinizes them. Thus, the stigma borne by the joto (like his/her identity) is multiple and contradictory: he/she is stigmatized as a man for being feminine and as a woman for being masculine.

Despite intense hostility that white gay men faced during the early part of the century, they were in the best position to risk the social processes of coming out. They were relatively better situated than other homosexuals to endure the hazards unleashed by their transgression of gender conventions and traditional heterosexual norm. The diminished importance of ethnic identity among these individuals, due principally by the homogenizing and integrating impact of the dominant racial categories which define them foremost as white, undoubtedly also facilitated the emergence of gay identity among them. As members of the privileged racial group, these middle-class men no longer depend solely on their respective cultural groups and families as defense against the dominant group.

Chicanos, on the other hand have never occupied the social space where their gay or lesbian identity could becomes a primary basis of self-identity. This is due, in part, to the structural position as a subordinate, both the class and racial hierarchies, as their ethnicity remains a primary base for group identity and survival. Moreover, Chicano family life requires allegiance to patriarchal gender relations and to a system of sexual meaning that directly militates against the emergence of their alternative basis-identity. Furthermore, factors such as gender, geographical settlement, age, Nativity, language usage, and degree of cultural assimilation further prevent, or at least complicated, the acceptance of the gay or lesbian identity by Chicanos, which accounts respectively. They are not as free as individual situated elsewhere in the social structure to redefine the sexual identity in ways that are congruent with minority family life and additional gender expectations.

As has been discussed in the previous critical summaries, critical theory offers an understanding from dialectical materialism, class analysis and structuralism. This approach is traced to Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, and was elaborated on by Theordor Adorno, Eric Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse among outers. Critical theory often associated with conflict theory, feminist analysis and the radical psychotherapy. In the attempt to approach social reality “out there” to be discovered, this methodology takes a realist position and assumes that social reality always changes and the change is rooted in the tensions, conflicts or contradictions of social relations or institutions. It focuses on changes and conflict, especially paradoxes or conflicts that are inherent in the vary way social relations are organized. Such as paradoxes or inner conflicts, reveal much about the true nature of social reality.

Social constructionist is a theory built on the foundation that people do not discover reality but rather use language to construct a conception of reality through social interaction. An integral part of any culture is its language. Language not only develops in conjunction with a society’s historical, economic and political evolution; it also reflects that society’s attitudes and thinking. Language not only expresses ideas and concepts but actual shapes though”.

Foucault offers us a way of seeing belief systems defined by the connection between knowledge, language, and action, which he calls the discourse of power. There has always been a tension between religious and scientific belief systems. Each attempting to legitimizes knowledge and thus shapes our world-view. I recognize society as an intricate matrix, which influences individual development. At the same time, the individual is not a passive recipient of nurture; rather people actively respond in varied ways to their milieu. I am also aware we are moving from knowledge as abstract, objective and universal to ecologically valid, socially useful and local. More practical forms of knowing are advocated in elevating the embodied knowledge of everyday life over theoretical knowledge. A person’s conception of reality consists of the meanings we give to our interpretation of the world. Through conversations with numerous people over a lifetime, one’s reality continually evolves. One major aspect of this socially constructed reality is our sense of self – self-concept. Integral to the social construction of the self are experiences in the family of origin. I believe family is paramount to the transmission of reality of the self in one’s ethnic and cultural heritage. Different ethnic groups have different values, beliefs, rituals, and tradition that form the context of the family of origin. Just as the family is the context for one’s construction of self, one’s ethic and cultural heritage provides the larger context for the family’s construction of its reality continually shaped by shared memories. Having a sense of and construct with one’s ethic and cultural heritage is important to positive self-esteem and mental health.

Experience shows, however, the unique attributes of groups in the minority tend to be devalued by those it the majority as a way of coping with perceived threats from the minority. Consequently, a person from an ethnic group in the minority may construct a sense of self that is influenced by this devaluation, lack of power, and discrimination in the social context. At this level, constructionist theory offers an orientation toward knowledge making in the psychological science, a standpoint at considerable variance with the empiricist tradition. At the same time, social construcionsim contains the ingredients of a theory of human functioning, which offers an alternative to traditional views of individual and psychological process and opens new departures in such fields as therapy, organizational management, and education.

In sociology the term acculturation is synonymous with assimilation, used to describe the process by which an outsider, immigrant, or subordinate group becomes indistinguishably integrated into the dominant host society. Assimilation implies that the subordinate group actually comes to accept and internalizes the values and culture of the dominant group. So the process whereby immigrants change their behavior and attitudes toward those of the host society, is a fundamental part of migration-induced adaptations to new sociocultural environments.

Writing this paper has been an attempt to understand my own experience and why as I look around the profession I do not see myself reflected back. There are very few Latinos, even fewer Mexicans, and an even fewer number that self-identify as Chicano. Those who do, very few are openly gay and willing to share their experience. It would have been easier to focus on a different population, but this writer dose not have the luxury to look at racism and oppression as an objective academic exercise. On the contrary, I am one of the few of my gente (people) to achieve this level of success (at least success defined by dominant Anglo culture) and I am attempting to raise awareness of how we have and continue to be impacted by Americanization. As a fourth generation Chicano, nothing is more important than family, which suggest that direct service interventions that make use of family strengths and build on those strengths are most likely to be effective. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of Chicano clients must include both cultural considerations and the residual impact of such minorities’ status.

Many Chicanos are gradually acculturating to middle class mainstream society, but the vast majority is still struggling to meet their basic survival needs. Poor Chicanos experience discrimination, have poor physical and mental health and live in substandard housing; in addition, their proficiency in English is limited, and their level of education is low. Thus, they need more than feeling good about themselves and their loved ones; they need the back necessities to survive. Hence, in working with Chicano families, social workers must extend their role beyond that of the psychologically oriented healers to include other essential and functional roles – cultural broker, mediator, educator, and advocate.

Social workers who practice with Chicanos should develop generic skills to enable them to intervene with social systems at all levels. In addition to being therapist-advocates, they must be adept at helping families to cope with cultural change and adaptation. In addition, they need group wok skills to organize peer-support groups or small groups to help parents become more effective in their parental roles. Finally, they must acquire community organization skills to help impoverished community residents organize to effect the desired changes that will result in a higher quality of life of their communities.

The profession must shift to a systemic and holistic epistemology that blends scientific with other belief systems. In the role of activist and social critic I hope to influence the shift from exclusively intraspychic to social ecological models of problems; and an exploration of new models of service deliver with an emphasis on prevention, collaboration, use of indigenous resources, cultural diversity and empowerment. As a social interventionist my goal will be to limit deviance; to resolve social conflict; to facilitate knowledge and enhance skills; to ameliorate psychological problems; to prevent and treat illness; and to promote cultural, spiritual and intellectual life.

References

Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon

Critical Theory and Latino Gay Men: Silenced Voices in Literature

The first gay novel I recall reading was The Lord Wont Mind by Gordon Merrick(1970). I quickly followed up with the other two novels of the trilogy, One for the Gods (Merrick, 1971) and Forth into the Light (Merrick, 1974). For the most part, reading the story of love between Peter and Charlie was a positive experience because unlike many other writers of gay themes, the story did not end in suicide or deep despair. Merrick was one of the first writers to insist that a gay relationship could in fact be a happy one. The title of the first book comes from a conversation between Peter and a black maid, who makes the statement, “I say if it’s love, the lord wont mind.” The story is set in high society, among Ivy league educated and world travelers. Reading about the lives of these beautiful rich men was made more exotic by the encounter of two men loving each other. It was far removed from my experience as a 15 year old Chicano growing up in a Pentecostal church in Denver Colorado during the 1970s. It left a lasting impression that only powerful white gay men could experience this kind of freedom.

Over the years, I have made my way into many bookstore that specialize in selling gay themed books, but to my recollection, none of the books on the shelf were by Chicano gay men. Despite the proliferation of a Chicano and Latino literary renaissance in the wake of the Chicano movement of the 1960s, few Chicano and Latino gay men have been published to date. It was not until the mid 1980s that I even became aware of the influential tradition of Chicana and Latina lesbian writings(Moraga & Anzaldua, 1984). Chicana lesbians were able to form coalitions based on feminist principals with other lesbians of color, white lesbians and non-lesbian feminist in order to facilitate the process of establishing their own publishing venues and opportunities. Latino gay men have neither experienced an overt politicization around a Latino gay identity nor had access to support from Latino and white gay male publishing institutions. Consequently, Chicano and Latino gay male writers have yet to approach such a degree of visibility. Such invisibility inevitably raises the question why are there so few published works by Latino gay men?

If we apply critical theory to this question, we can identify a number of plausible reasons why the voices of Latino gay men have been silenced. In the process, their very experience has been erased from public consciousness. One way to approach this question is to recognize the omnipresence of machismo in Latino cultures. Machismo, defined as a strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, domination of women, and aggressiveness that contributes to the refusal of many Latino men who engage in same-sex activity to identify themselves as "gay." According to psychoanalyst Goldwert (1985), this patriarchal culture equation has special resonance for Mexicans and remains deeply embedded in the Mexican psyche. He explains that it has symbolic roots in cultural myths surrounding the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the sixteenth century. This colonial drama unfolds with the Spanish conquistador's playing the role of active, masculine intruders who raped the passive, feminine Indian civilization. Goldwert suggests that

…there now exists in every Mexican male a culturally stereotyped polarity in which “masculinity” is synonymous with the active/dominant personality and “femininity” is passive/submissive. In mestizo society, the macho …strove to overcome his sense of Indian femininity by asserting a true Spanish dominance over his women (162)

Moreover, the monumental influence of Catholicism on Latinos also increases the difficulty of proclaiming themselves "gay." Certainly the cultural forces of machismo and Catholicism among Latinos have combined to undervalue - if not foreclose - a Latino gay identity.

Another factor contributing to the paucity of writings by Latinos is located on the other side of the border where U.S. culture exercises various forms of racism. Chicano literary theorist José Saldívar (1991) has noted, for instance, that the writings of various Latinos - including Chicano gay novelist Arturo Islas (1996) who died of AIDS complications in 1991 - were rejected by various publishers and agents because the work was assumed to be either too limited or not "ethnic" enough. Self-identifying Latino gay male writers must therefore combat the dual forces of homophobia and racism. Finally, the AIDS pandemic has decimated the Latino gay male population in the United States. Homophobia, racism, and AIDS are, then, the major factors that begin to account for the lack of a Latino gay male literary heritage.

Yet there have been a few Latino gay writers who have managed to publish novels, poetry, drama, and essays that deal directly with gay themes and issues. It remains to be seen what influence these authors will have in the construction of a gay literary tradition - let alone a Latino gay tradition. From these writing, certain characteristic themes and recurring motifs can be identified as central to Latino gay men. The role of the Latino gay man within the traditional Latino family, the experience of a border identity and its ramifications within two distinct cultures, the attempts to assimilate into U.S. gay culture, and the efforts to cultivate a Latino gay culture in the United States are the most prevalent topics in Latino gay literature. Although Latino gay men employ various literary methods and traditions to tell their stories, social realism remains the primary mode of expression.

Román(2002)has written about Latino literature and while he sites the contribution of many different Latino authors, there a three that stand out as important examples of Chicano/Latino author. The first is John Rechy, the most renowned Latino gay male writer, has written about gay issues since the publication of his highly successful novel City of Night (1963). Rechy is best understood as a writer who emerged from a specific historical moment in gay history, a time before gay men of color were politically organized. His writings chart the history of a gay culture that continues to ask many gay men of color to choose between their ethnic or racial identities and their sexual identities. For Rechy, these categories have remained discrete in his work but, yet to understand seemingly inherent contradictions, it is necessary to recognize the social forces of racism and homophobia that have historically positioned Latino gay men and lesbians to choose between these categories in the first place.

Other Latino gay men have faced this dual oppression and have made their simultaneous experience of racism and homophobia the focus of their writing. The poetic novels of Chicano writer Arturo Islas, The Rain God (1984) and Migrant Souls (1991), describe the life and times of Miguel Chico, a closeted Chicano gay man. The two novels - the first and second parts of an unfinished trilogy - focus on Chico's struggles to form an identity that will resolve the tensions of his conservative Southwest Latino heritage and his new life in the gay urban culture of San Francisco. Yet rather than focusing exclusively on the perspective of Miguel Chico, Islas provides snapshots of the various members of his extended family. These stories of other family members are told in third-person narratives that move backward and forward in time and provide multiple perspectives on various intratextual events. Such narratives demonstrate the sociohistorical forces that combine to produce Miguel Chico's crisis of identity. Islas is most interested in exploring the concept of a border identity: How does one reconcile sexuality with ethnicity? What are the effects of this dilemma in the traditional and conservative Latino kinship structure? What possible spiritual growth can stem from this crisis? Islas poses these questions effectively in the domain of tragedy where individuals struggle in defeat against the social forces that undo them.

If Islas describes Latino gay identity as fundamentally tragic, Colombian born writer Jaime Manrique, in his successful cross-over novel Latin Moon in Manhattan (1992), offers the comic antidote to Islas's tragic novels. Manrique's novel describes the adventures of Santiago Martínez, a Colombian gay male immigrant living in New York City. Manrique also provides his readers with a wide-ranging portrait of his protagonist's extended family and friends, including a boyhood friend who dies of AIDS complications and a Latina lesbian motorcyclist whom his family plans for him to marry. In place of Islas's tragic approach, however, Manrique traces Santiago's madcap journey from Bogota to Times Square with full comic flair. Unlike the protagonists in the novels of Rechy and Islas, Manrique's central character is able to reconcile the various configurations of his identity. Rather than focusing on the formation of his character's pysche, Manrique chooses to concentrate on his character's multifaceted experiences as a Latino gay immigrant. By the end of the novel, when all the various plots and subplots are resolved, Manrique's protagonist is shown in the midst of his newly fashioned community, which includes family members, other nongay Latino neighbors, and non-Latino gays. The novel concludes with the central character, surrounded by his loved ones, aware finally that his life in New York, though always quirky and complicated, is joyful.

In closing, Chicano and Latino gay men have been surprisingly silent in articulating the political and personal meaning of their cultural and sexual identities, with notable exception. Given the diversity of the Chicano and Latino experience, it is difficult to accept that our experience is limited to street hustlers, tragic Chicanos or humorous immigrants. There continues to be a silence around the increasing impact of HIV in the Latino community, not just among gay Latinos but of bisexual Latinos who are able to express their sexuality with less restrictions, infecting our women at greater numbers. There is a need for Chicano writers to provide narrative of the intersection between Chicano cultural socialization and Anglo dominant culture’s categorization of “deviant” sexualities. To give voice to the strength and beauty that would otherwise be erased.

References

Goldwert, M. (1985). Mexican Machismo: The Flight from Feminity. Psychoanalytic Review, 72(1), 161-169.

Islas, A. (1984). Rain God. Del Mar, CA: HarperCollins.

Islas, A. (1991). Migrant Souls. DelMar: HarperCollins.

Islas, A. (1996). La Mollie and the king of tears Albuquerque NM University of New Mexico Press.

Manrique, J. (1992). Latin Moon in Manhattan New York: St. Martin's Press.

Merrick, G. (1970). The Lord Won't Mind. Los Angeles: Alyson Publications.

Merrick, G. (1971). One for the Gods. Los Angeles: Alyson Publications.

Merrick, G. (1974). Forth into Light. Los Angeles: Alyson Publications.

Moraga, C., & Anzaldua, G. (1984). This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (2 ed.): Kitchen Table--Women of Color Press.

Rechy, J. (1963). City of Night New York: Grove Press.

Román, D. (2002, May 15, 2006). Latino Literature. glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture Retrieved May 15, 2006, from www.glbtq.com/literature/latino_lit.html

Saldivar, J. D. (1991). Criticism in the borderlands : studies on Chicano literature, culture, and ideology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Chapter 11: From Radical to Critical Perspectives

In Malcolm Payne’s (2005) third edition of Modern Social Work Theory he has done an extensive review on social work theory and the relationship to practice. The structures for explaining social work theory are extensive and helpfully explained, as is the detail of the range of theories. Chapters 11, on ‘Radical to Critical’ perspectives are thought-provoking and practical, in equal measure. The chapter covers a number of important concepts beginning with radical social work and moving to a critical approach, covered in Fook’s exemplary work on critical reflection which gets considerable attention in this chapter. Payne adopts a balanced view of political and philosophical arguments about knowledge and its power to persuade. The main points of the chapter include:

· Radical and critical theories are transformational, proposing that social work should seek to change the way societies create social problems. In particular it rejects capitalist, economic liberal or economic rational approaches to managing economies either because of ideological objections or because they are inconsistent with a reasonable level of welfare provision.

· They are also emancipatory being concerned with freeing people from restrictions imposed by the existing social order.

· Radical social work of the 1970s has developed toward critical practice in the late 199s, incorporating feminist and anti-discrimination perspectives and elements of empowerment theory along side contemporary critical theory.

· Radical and critical social work reject elements of traditional elements of traditional social work practice that accepts social policy based on economic liberalist or rationalism

· The main elements of radical and critical theory include a focus on structural rather than personal explanations of social problems and a concern for inequality and oppression.

· Radical and critical practice seeks to promote consciousness-raising about social inequalities, political action and social change because this helps to combat cultural hegemony, through which powerful people maintain a social order that benefits them by integrating social believe into people’s culture life through influence in the media and education.

According to Payne, radical social work has confronted the use of psychodynamic approach and other theories relying on psychological explanations of social problems. The concern is that traditional social work reduce complex social problems to individual psychological ones. They “blame the victim”, making clients responsible for problems which have social origins. (p. 233). What more, it strengthens and follows the oppressive social order of capitalism. The goal of the state will be to minimize the stress on the system by controlling the way human beings behave. Combined with a powerful legal system, the field of social work has been granted power over the disenfranchised, including women, the disabled, gay and lesbians, people of color, children and the poor for the end purpose of controlling body, mind, and soul. There are those who argue that mental illness is a myth (Szasz, 1994) that diagnoses are social constructs that vary from time to time and from culture to culture and today they are designed to aid the state in controlling behavior. Social Work, as a discipline, is following the example of psychology in that we have adopted the western medical model that objectifies clients, and utilizes pharmacological treatment as a further tool of control.

Payne then discusses Mullalys structural approach to social work. “Structural social work is so called because social problems are inherent in our present social order and therefore the focus of change should be mainly on social structures and not individuals. Structural social work is inclusive because it is concerned with all forms of oppression; one is not more important than another” (p. 237). There is a focus on economic and political institutions that influence social life. Together, along with other social institutions, are the site of social relations which are supported by a dominant ideology. Structural social work focuses on oppression though consciousness raising and challenging the distribution of resources and power.

The remainder of the chapter focuses on Fook’s critical theory of social work practice. She argues that “a radical tradition in social work connects with a concern with the social rather than the personal, extended by the radical critique. The main points of critical social theory that are incorporated into critical social work as follows:

· Domination is created structurally but experienced personally.

· False consciousness, mean that people are not aware that social order are created historically, and might therefore be changed. They assume that inequalities are natural in society.

· Positivism as an ideology about how knowledge is created leads to passivity and fatalism, because people believe that social facts cannot be changed. Critical social theory emphasizes people’s agency – the capacity to achieve social change.

· Progress is possible

Critical theory explains why discussion, reflection, analysis and insight are important in leading to a capacity to take action about problems in our lives. This explains why critical social work rejects evidence-based and other positivist views of social work knowledge. As well, critical theory questions the categorization of human experience. We can change, be contradictory and multiple: many tings at once. We should see ourselves as whole people, who can develop more complexity and diversity.

Critical social work continues to develop as a viable theory and practice. There are a number of important criticism of the approach that still need to be reconciled. There is a neglect of the immediate personal needs of clients given the focus on collective action. This has created a perception that the approach is unethical, uncaring or impractical because it is counter to how the welfare system operates. Embedded in this perception is the criticism that critical theory is weak in dealing with emotional problems. There is also a continuing debate about both radical theory and critical social work lacking any practical guidelines. However, critical social work has incorporated social construction that allows clients voices to be heard and responded to, especially those of marginalized and excluded communities. There is also an adversarial relationship set up with power, assuming that it equates with control. This forces social workers to side with the oppressed neglecting the complexity of social power relationships and prevents us greater access to advocate with allies in the system. There also appears to be an over emphasis on risk as it relates to oppression, there is little acknowledgment about the resilience of marginalized voices.

Payne, M. (2005). Modern Social Work Theory: A Critical Introduction (3rd ed.). Chicago: Palgrave Macmillan.

Szasz, T. (1994). Mental Illness is Still a Myth. Society, 24(3), 34-39.

Chapter 9: Modern Critical Social Work: From Radical to Anti-Oppressive Practice

Karen Healy (2005) has written a book that that offers a broad discussion about various approaches to social work and the significance of postmodern theory to practice. The book revolves around theories of social construction and dominant discourses in Health and Welfare which include biomedicine, economics and the law. This is future shaped by service discourses from psychology and sociology. While these define the filed there is an interplay with alternative service discourse that include consumer rights and spirituality. Her focus in the book are key discourses and contemporary theories that inform current practice, considering approaches such as problem-solving, system theories, the strengths perspective, and postmodern practice. The fifth approach is discussed in chapter 9, Modern Critical Social Work: from Radical to Anti-Oppressive Practice. This chapter attempts to put anti-oppressive practice in context by offering a historical view of the movement form radical social work tot critical practice models. She concludes the chapter with a number of practice principles intended to guide social workers in the application of this approach.

In the broadest sense, “critical social work is concerned with the analysis and transformation of power relations at ever level of social work practice” (p.172). In this chapter she take a modernist approach to social work, in chapter 10 where she considers postmodern forms. “These perspectives draw on critical social science theories and focus on understanding and addressing the impact of broad social structures of the problems facing service users and the social work process itself. For Healey, this approach is grounded in sociological discourses, especially critical social sciences ideas and concepts from consumer rights movements that supposedly addresses clients need and appropriate social work response to them.

The chapter continues with a general discussion of modern critical social work which includes Marxist social work; radical social work; structural social work; feminist social work; anti-racist social work; and anti-oppressive and anti-discriminatory social work. The key features relevant include the claim that macro-social structures shape social relations at ever level of social life. From a Marxist perspective there are the “haves’ and have not’s, making the interest of these groups irreconcilable in their maintenance of power, privilege and property . Another feature of this approach is that view that the oppressed re complicit in their own oppression which is secured by dominant ideologies that present the current social order as just. Critical social workers are expected to assist in raising consciousness of the service user, helping them to see that the causes of the problems they face are not in themselves but are the result of unjust social structures.

Social Work has its historical roots in the work of Jane Addams, who worked in the settlement House Movement in Chicago in the late 19^th century. Even at this time there were elements of critical social work which focused on socioeconomic conditions that linked social movements with labor conditions and union movements. Radical social work did not emerge as a distinctive practice until the late 1960s and 1970s, shaped by the growing influence of critical sociology. At this time, many oppressed groups began to voice their opposition to the oppressive power structures and unfair treatment of the social welfare system, these groups includes women, people of color, gays and lesbians and the disabled. Social workers followed the movement and began focusing on uses of racial, economic injustice with focused on community development. In the 1980s and 1990s social workers began to move away from this approach in favor of more positivist science and neoliberal policy which focused on individual responsibility. Ideally, social workers would recognize their privileged status, at least I contrast to service users, and emphasize the social work roles as intensely political that attempts to work with the oppressed in gaining access to power and institutionalize democratic change to the system. The principles that Healey believes will guide practice include:

· Critical reflection on self in practice

· Critical assessment of service users experiences of oppression

· Empowering service users

· working in partnership, and

· minimal intervention

Healey concludes with some critical reflections that include a strengths and weakness analysis. Some of the strengths include the importance of social justice and collaborative work with community. Some of the limitations include ‘high-risk’ decision making that involves significant risk of death or serious injury to participants. Another limitation is the oppositional stance in which battle lines are drawn and involves a opposition to power. She concludes by bridging this approach to postmodern practice by stating “yet, as we shall see in the next chapter, postmodern approaches to critical social work urge social workers to adopt a skeptical attitude towards many of the claims on which modern forms of social work, including anti-oppressive practice, are formed.

Healy, K. (2005). Social Work Theories in Context: Creating Frameworks for Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 11: Postcolonial and African American Criticism

What Tyson has revealed thus far is that in literature, whether it be a novel, a play, a short story a poem, or academic writing, emanates from the perspective and the biases of its author. The author's biases are the product of his/her cultural and social environments. The written word often serves as a mirror of the cultural and social mindset of the author's "civilization". “Postcolonial criticism seeks to understand the operations – politically, socially, culturally, and psychologically - of colonist and anti-colonist ideologies (p. 365). The term post-colonialism is something of a misnomer because it implies that colonialism is over when in reality, many countries that have been invaded or controlled by outsiders in the past are still controlled today. That is, those countries that have bee colonized as part of the British or Spanish empire have systematically supplanted indigenous cultures and replaced local languages with English or Spanish, temples have been destroyed to be replaced with Catholic churches but more insidious is the spreading of religious doctrine in order to control the heart and minds of the conquered people. In time, indigenous reality is erased and pushed into the margins by economic conditions and indoctrination of the values and beliefs of the dominant master culture.

To this end, postcolonialism begins its critical process by defying the idea that Western Civilization's literature is universal, transcending time and place. Postcolonial criticism argues that Western Civilization's standard of "universality" is a grievous wrong to non-western cultures. In fact, the universality is limited to the borders of Western Civilization, and its "norms" are, therefore, not applicable to indigenous cultures. When the literature of indigenous cultures is judged by Eurocentric standards, it is relegated to a position of inferiority, thereby dismissed and subordinated to western experiences and outlooks. While colonialism is no longer practiced as it once was between the fifteen and mid-twentieth centure, the current form is now called neo-colonialism. This form of colonialism seeks to exploit cheep labor in developing countries at the expense of their own struggling business and cultural traditions. As Tyson explains “neo-colonialist corporate enterprise is supported, when the need arises, by puppet regimes (local rules paid by a corporation to support its interest) and by covert military intervention (sometimes I the form of financing troops loyal to corporate political interests, sometimes in the form of enlisting military aid from the Western power most closely aligned with the corporations concerns). In other words, just as in case of old-style European colonialism, there is big money to be made in this game, and the major players are too powerful to be bound by any rules of fair play” (p. 372).

Consequently, we are engaged in what some believe to be a fourth World War, the cold war being the third, where cultural imperialism seeks to establish a global economy. In the process of takeover of another culture the food, clothing, customers, recreation, and values of the economically dominant culture increasingly replace those of the economical vulnerable culture until the latter appears to be a kind of imitation of the former. American culture imperialism has been on of the most pervasive forms of this phenomenon, as we see American fashions, movies, music, supports, fast food, and consumerism squeeze out indigenous cultures all of the world (p. 372-373). These economic forces demand integration, uniformity, mesmerizing the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce.

In African American Criticism today, the focus appears on a number of themes that include surviving the horrors of slavery and segregation struggling for freedom and equality. As these themes suggest, the political content of African American literature includes correcting stereotypes and misrepresentation of African Americans by celebrating African American culture, experience and achievement and exploring racial issues which include institutionalized and internalized racism. The problem with this, as I see it, we are using the master tools to create a reality that can never be defined outside the box that has already been created by western colonialism. We can describe what has happened, we can use the master’s language to mimic the master, but as we see, the ability to live and think differently have already been wiped away.

Chapter 10: Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Criticism

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the second definition of the word “margin,” which is fitting for literature critique is the blank space bordering the written or printed area on a page. This is the space where many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender authors have existed in relationship to their printed text. As Tyson explains, “we are given very little, if any, biographical information about a writer’s lesbian or gay sexual orientation, let alone information concerning how that orientation affected her or his life and literary production” (p. 318). Marginalization then is practice of excluding a social group from the mainstream of the society, placing that group-legally or socially-on the "margins" of the society. In this case, the group is made up of men and women who are excluded because of emotional and sexual attraction, which is directed toward members of the same sex, otherwise known as homosexual. In American culture, heterosexuality, emotional and sexual attraction directed toward members of the opposite sex is the only sexual orientation receiving full social legitimacy.

Tyson remind us that “gay men and lesbians in America still face discrimination in the military; in obtaining jobs and housing; in using public facilities, such as hotels and taverns; in areas of family law such as the right to marry, retain custody of their children, adopt children, or provide foster care, as victims of police harassment and violent hate crimes; and in AIDS-related discrimination” (p. 320). This discrimination is compounded when we the gay person is also a person of color or if he dose not conform to traditional gender roles. While many lesbian women of color have found their voice and have managed to write about their experience, gay men of color continue to be silenced by a complex system of discrimination. It is not just discrimination experienced as a sexual minority, but gay men and lesbian people of color have also suffered oppression within the white dominated gay culture. The brown body is fetishedized and eroticized while simultaneously pushing him and her further out into the borderlands of identity. Consequently, the discussion of this experience continues to be defined in lesbian criticism, gay criticism and queer criticism, each of which are briefly address below.

Lesbian criticism has much in common with feminist criticism given that both are responses to patriarchal oppression. Where feminism address issues related to sexism and shaping personal identity and political action beyond the influence of sexist ideologies, lesbian critics address heterosexism, which is privileged status based on sexual orientation. Lesbians who have raised awareness of heterosexual privilege have created tension within the feminist movement. Heterosexual feminists have distanced themselves from lesbianism given the threat that they too might be perceived as homosexual. This was made even more complicated by feminist women of color who wrote about their experience as lesbians, which revealed yet another layer of within group oppression where white lesbian’s racist attitudes exposed their white privilege. Together they “analyze how the sexual/emotional orientation of lesbian writers have affected their literary expression; how the intersecting of race and sexual/emotional orientation has affected their literary expression of lesbians of color; and how the intersection of class, race, and sexual/emotional orientation has affected the literary expression of lesbians of working class origins. Lesbian critics also analyze the sexual politics of specific texts by examining, for example, how lesbian characters or “masculine” women are portrayed in literature by and about lesbians. They study canonized heterosexual texts, too, in order to learn what attitudes toward lesbian they embody explicitly or implicitly. ” (p. 329).

What I found significant about this section writing was the discussion about the contemporary sexual system of the U.S. white middle class compared to that of Mexican and South American cultures. In the U.S., emphasis is given to object choice as a crucial factor in defining sexuality, homosexual desire itself, stigmatizes one as a homosexual. The Mexican/Latin-American sexual system is based on the configuration of gender/sex/power. This is articulated along the active/passive axis and organized through the scripted sexual role one plays. It highlights sexual aim – the act one wants to perform with another person toward whom sexual activity is directed – and gives only secondary importance to the person’s gender or biological sex. “As a macho, a man can have sex with both men and women and not be considered what Americans call homosexual. Because the U.S. system places much emphasis on sexual desire, there is, a great deal of focus is placed on the maintenance of masculinity. This is what makes the expression of flamboyant drag queens and camp salient to gay criticism. These roles are “subversive in that it mocks authority and traditional standards of behavior by imitating them in outrageous ways, often thought the use of exaggerated gestures, postures, and voice” (p. 332). The other significant area of importance to gay criticism is related to the impact of HIV on the gay community. AIDS was first identified in 1981, and by the end of the decade, a generation of gay men had died from it. Given the slow response of the government and public health system to address this disease, the gay community created a national response that formed political organization and generated a great deal of writing that has had a significant impact on American culture.

Originally, the word “queer” referred to something suspicious or 'not quite right', or to a person with mild insanity or who exhibits socially inappropriate behavior. As we see in this branch of criticism, the meaning of words are taken and redefined in a way that minimizes the stigmatizing effects and turns it on its head by making it a badge of pride. For example, the meaning of the word “queer” remained fundamentally the same, the connotations of the word changed substantially in the late 20th century. It was used in the late 1960s by radical writer Paul Goodman in his book The Politics of Being Queer (1969), which had a significant effect on the early gay liberation movement in the USA, especially as it became more widely and openly radical in the 1980s and 1990s. At this time, a movement developed within this larger movement, which sought to reclaim queer and wear it as a label of self-respect, as had already begun happening in some communities with epithets such as faggot and dyke (p. 337). This has resulted in a politics of sexuality that defines individual sexuality as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible sexuality. Thus, sexuality is see has different at different times over the course of our lives or even at different times over the course of a week because sexuality is a dynamic range of desire. For queer theory, then, our sexuality is socially constructed (rather than inborn) because it is based on the way in which sexuality is defined by the culture in which we live (p. 338).

Finally, the boundaries among lesbian, gay and queer criticism remains somewhat fluid. Given the attention to the social construction of categories of normative and deviant sexual behavior, it turns identity inside out. It reflects the emphasis on identity politics, which is common among contemporary progressive movements. The flipside of identity politics is the politics of shared ideas where communities and activism is based on shared beliefs, commitments, values, and goals rather than on shared immutable characteristics or oppressions. A sexual and gender liberation movement based on ideas could encompass everyone who shares the goal of free choice in the areas of sexuality and gender expression, regardless of their personal sexual or gender identity.

Chapter 9: New Historical and Cultural Criticism

Tyson begins this chapter by reminding us that critical theories overlap with one another in a number of ways and she summarizes the main theme of each of the distinct critical theories we have covered thus far:

• Marxism attempts to revel the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experience

• Feminism attempts to reveal the ways in which patriarchal gender roles are the ultimate source of our experience

• Psychoanalysis attempts to reveal the ways in which repressed psychological conflicts are the ultimate source of our experience

• Structuralism attempts to reveal the simple structural system that make possible our understanding of an otherwise chaotic world, and

• Reader-response theory attempts to reveal the operations whereby readers create the text they read.

As we see with the two-theoretical approaches that will be covered in this posting, there is so much overlap between new historicism and cultural criticism, it is important to differentiate the two by discussing each filed separately.

I did not realize it until I began reading the chapter New Historical Criticism is largely based on the work of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) who in recent decades has been the most talked about of French intellectuals. Foucault was a historian who was concerned with real human being in the midst of the material conditions of their lives. His vivid description of the lepers in the Middle Ages, or the prison cells and factory building of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exemplifies the kind of baseline from which Foucault worked, and which keep him immune form the idealist tendencies of the strurcturalist and poststructuralist intellectuals. Foucault always had his eye on power, control, struggle, and historical change. The same time, he was concerned with the history of ideas. However, this did not mean a history of intellectuals; it meant the history of ideas and practice, practice of the doctors, the prisoner reformers, the psychiatrist, and the factory managers whom Foucault studied. According to Foucault discourse is a system of language that excludes or constrains what can be know by what can be said and expressed with language. Foucault suggests that there are three great forms of exclusion: the division between madness and reason; prohibited words; and will to truth.

Tyson (1999) provides clear distinction between the two approaches of understanding history from a traditional historical perspective and new historicists, which is made clear in questions asked by each. Traditional historian says, “What happened?” and “What did the event tell us about history?” in contrast, new historic’s ask, “How has the event and interpretive?” and “What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?” On page 287, she provides six points to review of the concepts:

1. A writing a history is a matter of interpretation, not found. Thus, all historical accounts are narratives and can be analyzed using many of the tools used by literary critics analyze narrative.
2. History is needed in your (it does not proceed neatly from cause A to effect B and from cause B to effect C) nor progressive (the human species is not steadily improving over the course of time).
3. Power is never wholly confined to a single person or a single level of society. Rather, power circulates in our culture the exchange is a material goods, exchanges of human beings, and most important for literary critics, as well be below, exchanges of ideas through the various discourse is a culture produces.
4. A dismal monolithic (single, unify universal) spirit of an age, and there is no adequate totalizing we use this (an explanation that provides a single key to all aspects of a given culture). There’s only a dynamic, unstable interplay among discourses, the meanings of which the historian can try to analyze, through the analysis will always be incomplete, accounting for all the a part of the historical picture.
5. Personal identity – like historical events, text, and artifacts – is shaped by and shapes the culture in which it emerges. Thus, cultural categories such as normal and abnormal, sane and insane, are matters of definition. Put another way, our individual identity consists of the narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves, and we draw the material for our narratives from the circulation of discourses that constitutes our culture.
6. All historical analysis is unavoidably subjective. Historians must therefore review of the ways in which they know they have been positioned, by their own cultural experiences, to interpret history.

Cultural criticism shares with new historicism the view that human history and culture constitutes a complex arena of dynamic forces in which we can construct only a partial, subjective picture. For cultural critics, culture is a process, not a product; it is a good experience, not a fixed definition. More precisely, a culture is a collection of interactive cultures, each of which is growing and changing, each of which is constituted at any given moment in time by the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, occupation, and similar factors that contribute to the experience of its members. The

To summarize the theoretical premise of cultural criticism, Tyson offers three instances on page 294.

1. “Cultural criticism tends to be more overtly political unit support of oppressed groups.
2. Because of its political orientation, cultural criticism often draws upon Marxist, feminists, and other political theories and performing its analysis.
3. Cultural criticism, in the narrow sense of the term, is especially interested in popular culture".

In conclusion, it is important to remember when cultural criticism the operations of oppression, it does not view oppressed peoples, as political theories sometimes do, as helpless victims. Rather, like new historicism, cultural criticism views oppressed people as both victimized by the dominant power structure and capable of resisting or transforming the power structure.