I would just like to point out that citing sources means little on its own if the sources cited are other academics who are circling jerking about a topic they were raised to only ever analyze through an incredibly biased lens.
Similar to how, just because wikipedia has sources, doesn’t mean it’s inherently a reliable place to get information, much less an unbiased one (really, there’s no such thing as an unbiased place to get information). Academics sometimes like to act as if there is such a thing, that they can extricate themselves from bias, but they can’t. That doesn’t mean there isn’t true and untrue, but it does mean that how you array the facts into narrative, which facts you choose to include and not include, can drastically change how it comes across. A source that was attempting to be fully unbiased would have to include as many different takes as possible from different angles, different cultures, different languages, including materials destroyed by invaders (making it impossible to start with), and do no editing or editorializing on the presentation of those angles. Which is an unrealistic ask and one that nobody but the most centrist fool would attempt because it’s not going to accomplish anything meaningful in the first place, since at that point, you’re basically teaching people the biases they already came with in lieu of giving them new ones to consider.
Bias, to be clear, is not a dirty word; it is an inevitability we deal with constantly. But trying to be actively dishonest, to promote views that harm the masses, the colonized, that is dirty. Between the colonizer and the colonized, between the capitalist and the proletariat, I will be biased and side with the colonized and the proletariat, whether they show up as separate or as the same. And I will be biased and side with the colonized over the colonizer who is part of the proletariat because the liberation of the colonized is more important.
If an “academic” approaches with opposite biases, or if they approach with biases sympathetic to communism but of the view that it has “never been tried”, if they work within liberal institutions that elevate those who justify imperialism and speak poorly of communism, they are going to create elaborate works of colonizer design that get cited in other elaborate works of colonizer design. Their bibliography cannot protect them from such things. I say this not to dismiss any and all academic works coming out of western imperialist academia, but to make the point that if you don’t take biases into account, if you start with the belief that some of it is free of bias, you have already let them have unfair footing in which they can claim their systems of evidence and approval as intrinsic proof of some kind of superior ability of perspective they don’t have.
Hope this makes sense to people. If you’ve been raised in the idea of being above it all with impartiality, you might find some of this sounds odd; even to me, there is a part that goes “but, but, I can extricate myself somehow and be above it, right?” But none of us are a god who exists outside, are we?
I would just like to point out that citing sources means little on its own if the sources cited are other academics who are circling jerking about a topic they were raised to only ever analyze through an incredibly biased lens.
Similar to how, just because wikipedia has sources, doesn’t mean it’s inherently a reliable place to get information, much less an unbiased one (really, there’s no such thing as an unbiased place to get information). Academics sometimes like to act as if there is such a thing, that they can extricate themselves from bias, but they can’t. That doesn’t mean there isn’t true and untrue, but it does mean that how you array the facts into narrative, which facts you choose to include and not include, can drastically change how it comes across. A source that was attempting to be fully unbiased would have to include as many different takes as possible from different angles, different cultures, different languages, including materials destroyed by invaders (making it impossible to start with), and do no editing or editorializing on the presentation of those angles. Which is an unrealistic ask and one that nobody but the most centrist fool would attempt because it’s not going to accomplish anything meaningful in the first place, since at that point, you’re basically teaching people the biases they already came with in lieu of giving them new ones to consider.
Bias, to be clear, is not a dirty word; it is an inevitability we deal with constantly. But trying to be actively dishonest, to promote views that harm the masses, the colonized, that is dirty. Between the colonizer and the colonized, between the capitalist and the proletariat, I will be biased and side with the colonized and the proletariat, whether they show up as separate or as the same. And I will be biased and side with the colonized over the colonizer who is part of the proletariat because the liberation of the colonized is more important.
If an “academic” approaches with opposite biases, or if they approach with biases sympathetic to communism but of the view that it has “never been tried”, if they work within liberal institutions that elevate those who justify imperialism and speak poorly of communism, they are going to create elaborate works of colonizer design that get cited in other elaborate works of colonizer design. Their bibliography cannot protect them from such things. I say this not to dismiss any and all academic works coming out of western imperialist academia, but to make the point that if you don’t take biases into account, if you start with the belief that some of it is free of bias, you have already let them have unfair footing in which they can claim their systems of evidence and approval as intrinsic proof of some kind of superior ability of perspective they don’t have.
Hope this makes sense to people. If you’ve been raised in the idea of being above it all with impartiality, you might find some of this sounds odd; even to me, there is a part that goes “but, but, I can extricate myself somehow and be above it, right?” But none of us are a god who exists outside, are we?
Edit: for typo