Triple oppression

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Triple oppression or triple suppression is a term for multiple and simultaneous suppression or discrimination due to sex , ethnic and class-specific membership ( sexism , racism , classism ). Another name is race-class gender suppression .

history

An important step in the development of the multiple suppression hypothesis was a merger in the USA of lesbian black radical feminists to form the Combahee River Collective . In its 1977 manifesto, the androcentrism of the black civil rights movement was criticized as well as the restriction of feminism to the needs of white middle-class women. They wanted to focus on the specific experiences of oppression of black women. In South Africa in the 1980s, similar approaches were widely discussed within the radical wing of the anti-apartheid movement , such as the National Forum to the left of the ANC .

In the German-speaking countries, multiple oppression was initially discussed in the feminist movement. The publication Scheidelinien is particularly noteworthy here . About sexism, racism and classism by the Dutch feminist Anja Meulenbelt .

Within the left radical autonomous scene , the triple oppression theory was discussed intensively in the mid-1990s based on the book Three to One. Class contradiction, racism and sexism . The theory of three mutually influencing mechanisms largely replaced the previously widespread thesis of the “main contradiction of capitalism ”, to which other social domination relationships (in particular racism and patriarchy ; also referred to as “secondary contradictions”) would be subordinated, and is often also used in the context of the Subsistence theory cited.

An extension of the multiple suppression thesis can be found in intersectionality research (from intersection  = overlap). Intersectionality research is based on numerous different forms of oppression or "bipolar hierarchical boundaries".

Triple Oppression after Klaus Viehmann

Klaus Viehmann recommends thinking of rule over women, blacks and workers in the metaphor of the net:

“The thought model of a network of rule is not bad at all as an aid to imagination.

The meshes of the network are wider ( metropolis ) or narrower ( tricontal ). The threads older (patriarchy) or newer (capitalism). More stable (in Germany, for example) or weaker (in Central America, for example). The threads form different knots (racism is differently connected to capitalism than patriarchy, etc.) and the network is repaired and re-tied by some (capital, state, whites, men) in order to bind others (women, blacks, workers), and [these] tear it up as best they can.

The idea of ​​a network-like rule, in which the top and bottom are retained with every thread and knot, but no longer a sole cause, no main contradiction is assumed, also touches on the question of the revolutionary subject .

If it can no longer be derived from a duality, from a single ultimate cause, then no group of the oppressed can be assigned a privileged avant-garde position. "

criticism

One of the criticisms of the triple oppression approach is that forms of oppression such as heterosexism , hostility to the disabled or speciesism do not occur. Also, anti-Semitism cannot simply be viewed as racism. From the critical Marxist side, the triple oppression approach is criticized for the fact that it analyzes capitalism as a mere oppressive relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and not as a social formation or mode of production in which patriarchy, racism, etc. are inextricably integrated or constitutive components, and that the approach tends to obscure the links between specific forms of oppression and exploitation.

See also

swell

  1. ↑ Klaus Viehmann u. a .: Three to one: class contradiction, racism and sexism . In: nadir.org .

literature

  • Anja Meulenbelt : dividing lines. About sexism, racism and classism . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1988, ISBN 3498043161 .
  • Ingrid Strobl , Klaus Viehmann and comrades, autonomous lupus group: three to one. Metropolises (thoughts) and revolution? . Verlag ID-Archiv, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3894080299 .
  • Helma Lutz , Norbert Wenning: Different different. Difference in educational science . Leske + Budrich Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3810028541 .
  • Neville Alexander : Who sows the wind, will reap the storm. Culture and politics of the oppressed majority in South Africa ISP-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3883321133 .
  • Brochure group u. a .: triple oppression and armed struggle. A documentation of anti-imperialist, feminist, communist contributions to the debate about the redefinition of revolutionary politics. Self-published, Berlin 1995.
  • Combahee River Collective. 1977: A Black Feminist Statement . In: Zillah Eisenstein (Ed.): Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case For Social Feminism.