Re: status abdication

Jay Lemke (JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Mon, 16 Sep 96 22:17:46 EDT

I hope to reply to Katherine Goff's other queries about the larger
issue of whether researchers' work can really benefit those who
don't share our 'standing' in relation to social communities (the
insider/outsider issues, but complicated by class, gender differences,
etc.) -- but to the more specific point about 'atypical males', I
was not taking that from Gilligan's work, but from an earlier posting
that asked whether compensatory power or privilege abdication was
a reasonable general moral response to structural inequities. I'm not
sure I do know any such dominant caste types, though I know some
who have anguished over _whether_ this was the best thing to do. Not
surprisingly people with power and privilege usually manage to convince
themselves that it's better to use their power for the good of the
oppressed rather than abdicate it. And that leads to a number of other
troubling questions, of course. JAY.

JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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