Information literacy and personal identity

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I don’t know how many librarians followed the recent drama swirling around feminist philosophy journal Hypatia, but I think it serves as a valuable object lesson in the complexity of contemporary research into identity. In brief, Hypatia published an article by Dr. Rebecca Tuvel (Philosophy, Rhodes College) entitled “In Defense of Transracialism” (paywalled) in which Tuvel argues that there are logical equivalences between arguments surrounding transgender identities and arguments surrounding transracial identities (e.g., Rachel Dolezal). Tuvel argues that many of the common arguments for accepting transgender identities can be applied mutatis mutandis to accepting transracial identities. What would otherwise be a fairly dry paper on the logic of identity claims set off a firestorm of outrage. An open letter accusing the article of causing harm received hundreds of signatories, the editorial board of Hypatia apologized, the board of directors for Hypatia disavowed that apology, the open letter was rebutted, social media erupted, the paper was called a “discursive transmisogynistic” act of “epistemic violence,”and there have been dozens of think-pieces on the state of feminist philosophy, on “call-out culture,” on the ethics of scholarly communication, on privilege, and so on, and so on. Read the Wikipedia article if you must. (No, really, it’s an academic scandal worth knowing about.)

I’m not going to weigh in with my thoughts on the affair–who’s right and who’s wrong. Instead, I want to look narrowly at one aspect of the scandal that seems to speak to information literacy: the role of identity in information evaluation practices.

Kant. The OG of moral imperatives.

The imperative to diversity in citations

The open letter that kicked off the whole affair makes four general points. Here’s the fourth claim:

[Tuvel’s article] fails to seek out and sufficiently engage with scholarly work by those who are most vulnerable to the intersection of racial and gender oppressions (women of color) in its discussion of “transracialism”. We endorse Hypatia’s stated commitment to “actively reflect and engage the diversity within feminism, the diverse experiences and situations of women, and the diverse forms that gender takes around the globe,” and we find that this submission was published without being held to that commitment.

In a later statement, Tuvel herself acknowledged that she had “discusse[d] the lives of vulnerable people without sufficiently citing their own first-person experiences and views.” Of all the criticisms of the paper, this is the one that seems the most widely shared: Tuvel did not “sufficiently engage” with the scholarship written by women of color. Unpacking that a little bit, we can reconstruct an imperative for scholars researching certain communities (keeping as close as possible to the original language):

[The Source Diversity Imperative] Any scholarship or discussion regarding a vulnerable community should sufficiently engage with the first-person experiences and views of members of that community.

Setting aside the vagueness of “sufficiently engage,” that seems reasonable, right? And yet, it’s an imperative that gets ignored with depressing frequency. Like the special journal issue on Black Lives Matter that didn’t include a single black author. Or the way the GOP isn’t including any women on the working group to draft a new healthcare bill that will drastically affect women’s health. There’s even an entire Tumblr devoted to exposing all-male (and usually all-white) panels at conferences. Clearly, people aren’t getting the message. Is there anything instruction librarians can do to help?

What kind of imperative?

Let’s start by assuming the Source Diversity Imperative (SDI). Now we just have to figure out what kind of an imperative it is.

First, SDI could be an epistemic imperative in the sense that it is a rule for proper reasoning. There are a few directions this can take you. Maybe it’s just about making sure you have all the evidence. Maybe it’s more about standpoint epistemology and truth being relative to experience. Maybe it’s that certain topics are off-limits to those who haven’t had certain experiences. Maybe it only applies to some topics? Maybe it applies to all topics? There are lots of possible epistemic justifications for SDI. Rather than argue for a position, I’ll just say that the epistemic approach to SDI is based on the idea that sufficient engagement with the documented experiences of a vulnerable community is a way of expanding knowledge.

Second, SDI could be seen as a moral imperative in the sense that it is morally wrong to discuss vulnerable communities without sufficiently engaging with their views and experiences. You can see this in the way some critics allege that Tuvel’s article caused harm to certain communities. How? I think the basic idea is that by failing to engage with the first-hand reports of a community, the researcher is dehumanizing the members of the community and silencing/subjugating their indigenous knowledge practices. Think of it like intellectual colonialism; ignoring the testimony of the people you are writing about is a form of erasure. It stands in the way of their right to self-determination. I’m not writing a scholarly article here, so I’ll just refer you to Spivak’s seminal paper “Can the Subaltern Speak?” where she takes Foucault’s concept of ‘epistemic violence’ and applies it to the subjugation of indigenous knowledge. Or, pick up Edward Said’s Orientalism for more on the same. Please leave suggestions in the comments too.

Finally, the SDI could be interpreted as a reparative imperative in the sense that it is aimed at correcting an inequality in the scholarly record (i.e., the under-representation of vulnerable communities). The idea would be that we need to engage with certain communities of scholarship as a means of restitution, of sorts, to make up for a history of exclusion. This also includes the idea of correcting the historic under-representation of vulnerable groups in academic positions. For example, librarianship is something like 87% white. By engaging with the testimony of under-represented communities, members of those communities may be more likely to enter or remain in the profession.

Or, maybe the SDI is all of these things. The important part is that the SDI seems to be a fairly widely-held view and, given that the imperative implies an evaluative criterion to apply when evaluating scholarship, the SDI seems to have some bearing on information literacy. Should we be teaching it then?

Identity and information literacy

Well, it all depends on how we interpret “sufficiently engage.” And I’d like to (try to) unpack that a little. But, first, I should acknowledge that there is a version of standpoint theory that says that no scholar from a privileged group should ever conduct research on issues pertaining to marginalized communities. The idea is that only members of those communities are situated in an appropriate epistemic or moral position. While I understand the argument and the sentiment, this view leads to some (arguably) unfortunate epistemological conclusions as well as the (inarguably) unfortunate conclusion of giving privileged classes a convenient excuse for simply ignoring vulnerable communities. This type of standpoint theory is not terribly common from what I can tell, but it deserves mention. As for myself, as a humanist and a pluralist, I think scholars should be allowed to do research that crosses lines of identity, so long as they do so respectfully and in accordance with maxims like the Source Diversity Imperative (and others, of course). And if a scholar begins researching a topic pertaining to a vulnerable community, then it seems that the scholar needs to be apprised of things like the SDI. Likewise, if someone is reading and evaluating articles pertaining to a vulnerable community, then they too need to be apprised of the SDI. Sounds like something for information literacy librarians, right? Let’s look a little closer…

Teaching source diversity

Students are routinely asked to write papers on subjects related to marginalized/vulnerable communities. Just this past semester, I helped students researching and writing about Black Lives Matter, the future of DACA, “bathroom bills”, and more. Basically, lots of students writing about topics that pertained to communities quite different from their own. When dealing with these sorts of papers, I taught the SDI as an epistemic imperative by encouraging students to consider the way privilege can distort perceptions and to actively seek out first-hand reports and perspectives. And, even though I reject the ACRL’s Framework thing, I do agree that we have a commitment to “acknowledge biases that privilege some sources of authority over others, especially in terms of others’ worldviews, gender, sexual orientation, and cultural orientations.” So, yeah, we need to teach/encourage students to seek out diversity in their citation practices, but it isn’t necessarily a simple task. Here are a few considerations:

• How do we define “vulnerable community?” That is, how do we teach students which topics trigger the SDI and which topics don’t? Some topics are obvious: if you write about Black Lives Matter without citing any black authors, there’s a clear problem. But, what about a student writing on something more plastic, like class. Is it okay for an economics student to write about income inequality while only citing (probable middle-class) scholars? Or what about something that is prima facie unrelated to identity, like physics or nursing? Personally, I think it’s contextual, but that just means it takes more time to teach/learn. I’d love to see librarians delve more deeply into how to approach both obvious and not-so-obvious topics from a social justice angle.
• What about “silent” vulnerable communities? That is, what should an author do when writing about a vulnerable community that hasn’t produced much to cite from? For example, if a student wants to write about homeless veterans, what does the student cite? Is there a body of scholarship written by homeless veterans? (And how could you tell?) A professional researcher will go out and interview people to gather actual first-hand reports. Is that what we should tell students to do? Or are second-hand narratives reported in news/magazines/books/etc acceptable. Or should a student just drop the topic all together? I think the default is to encourage students to gather secondary sources that contain first-hand reports. Interestingly, how you interpret the SDI is highly relevant here. If you take an epistemic approach, then second-hand sources are okay. But if the SDI is a moral imperative, then second-hand sources might be questionable. And on a reparative interpretation, SDI would seem to entail that we should not cite secondary sources at all. Again, something that may be worth the attention of librarians.
• What about undefined communities? That is, what if you are writing about a marginalized community whose very definition is contested. For example, being in East Tennessee, I occasionally help students write about the Melungeon people, a community described as the “lost people of Appalachia” whose history and membership are both highly contentious. There are even debates among scholars who write about Melungeons as to which scholars are and are not Melungeon. Basically, following the SDI becomes difficult when community boundaries are fuzzy. Similarly, there are some identity categories that are still struggling to gain traction. Like the journal Angelaki that recently published an entire issue devoted to trans-species identities. Is the community of people who identify as hippos well-defined enough to invoke the SDI? (And, given that this issue attempts to draw repeated, explicit parallels between transgender identity and trans-species identity, I can only assume it will soon experience the same outrage that followed the Tuvel article.)
• What about “non-biased” styles? That is, how do we accommodate the SDI within the context of a writing style that attempts to mask identity? For example, in APA Style citations, author given names are abbreviated (e.g., Wilkinson, L.) and no identity categories are included. Likewise, including identity descriptions in the text of an article is highly unusual. If we adopt the SDI, should we encourage students to (1) be more diligent and persistent in tracking down the identities of authors they cite and/or (2) include author identity in their writing (e.g., “Neil deGrasse Tyson, an African-American male, argues that we need more diversity in science (2011).”). You already see this in an more informal form anytime someone tweets or comments, “As an [identity claim], I think that…” Basically, if we agree that there is an imperative to sufficiently engage with the communities being discussed, then it seems there should be a corollary to the effect that authors have an obligation to acknowledge the identities of their sources. Is this something we need to teach?
• What about author privacy? That is, what if an author does not want their identity to be highlighted? Do we respect those wishes? Should authors clearly state their preferred/assigned identity categories on their publications? Lots of interesting questions here.
• What about intersectionality? That is, how do we meet the demands for source diversity when dealing with highly intersectional identity claims? We should all be familiar with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality. The interesting issue for information literacy comes when we consider how to weight intersectional identities in scholarship. Is intersectionality something we need to include in information literacy instruction? How do overlapping social identities play out in the realm of information evaluation?
• Should the SDI be expanded? That is, does the SDI apply beyond the bounds of research into vulnerable communities? On epistemic and moral grounds, the imperative is limited to vulnerable or marginalized communities. But, if the SDI is a reparative imperative, then it would seem that it applies to any and all subject areas, from critical studies to computer science. Should we instruct all of our students to always consider author identity as they gather sources? Or is it more important in some research areas than others? Again, some important questions here.
• Should we add an I to the CRAAP test? That is, do we need to start including personal identity as an evaluative criterion when we teach students how to evaluate information? Should personal identity be placed right along side Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose? Or alongside Rationale, Authority, Date, Accuracy, Relevance? Or whatever the hell RADCAB stands for? My personal new jam is VIA (verification, independence, accountability). Whatever the approach, do we need to be more specific and explicit about adding identity to the authority component of information evaluation?

I’m all about brainstorming, and the interesting considerations keep coming. But I don’t want to get too far afield. Let’s bring it back to the central issue: many people argue that personal identity claims are relevant to information evaluation. As librarians, who teach students how to evaluate information, what are our obligations concerning personal identity? There are obvious cases that show a lack of concern for inclusion, like the all-white panel discussing Black Lives Matter. Those are clearly epistemically and morally problematic. But, the interesting questions for me are (1) under which circumstances and to what extent are we required to acknowledge personal identity claims in scholarly research and (2) how should we introduce this imperative to students? I firmly believe that there are good epistemic, moral, and reparative grounds for paying more attention to the diversity of our sources. This is vitally important. I just want to point out that there are areas of inquiry that librarians have not yet sufficiently investigated (so far as I can tell). I mean, I could be way off base here, but I just feel like if we are going to incorporate social justice into information literacy then we need to admit that it’s far easier said than done. As information professionals, librarians need to understand how personal identity plays out in scholarly communication. If we’re going to be allies and advocates, we need to think about how to encourage source diversity. Finally, because I accept the SDI, note that I am intentionally not offering suggested solutions (how could I?) but I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.