Genealogie der Verbündeten – Zum Privilegiendiskurs in feministischen und antirassistischen sozialen Bewegungen
In recent years, social movements have increasingly made use of what I suggest to call „discourse of privilege.” The terms „privilege” and „privileged” play a key role and are linked to manuals for action that promise to turn a privileged person into an „ally“. The debates surrounding this discourse of privilege – within the movements, but also in the mass media – are highly polarized. This study takes a step back and traces the emergence of this discursive situation. Methodologically, the study is guided by discourse analysis in the Sociology of knowledge tradition. The corpus consists primarily of movement material from anti-racist and feminist social movements from the mid-1980s to the present. The analysis takes German-language texts as a starting point and traces influences leading to North America. Building on the Foucauldian concept of genealogy, which takes current bodies of knowledge as historically-politically-socially situated, the study analyzes the subjectivation of the „allies“. Beginning with spotlights on several movement materials, the study traces how the knowledge of anti-racist and feminist movements was taken up in pedagogical arenas, where it consolidated into a discourse of privilege that was pedagogically contoured. The pedagogical arenas „classroom“, „training” and „workshop” are each examined considering their characteristics and influences. The consolidated discourse of privilege is then examined in terms of the mode of subjectivation it entails. The promised goal of the instructions for action is personal growth, a moral improvement, which can be achieved through the self-technologies of the discourse of privilege. Liberal notions of the subject are formative here, particularly notions of individual cognition, agency and of the self-interest of the privileged. Regarding social movements, the discourse of privilege thereby promises resonance, while having significant limits at the same time: As a consequence, movement-specific aspects are at risk of getting lost. It is important for social movements to find a conscious approach to this tension. To this end, a movement-oriented outlook outlines some typical movement tasks often involving intersectional conflicts, and points to some respective resources from the movenents’ body of knowledge.
