Can service users speak? Dissenting voices and subaltern speech in social work

Conditions of possibility and impossibility: ethical singularity

When Spivak says that subalterns cannot speak, she means they cannot be heard by the privileged (Spivak, 1996; Buzungu, 2021). If she makes herself heard, she is no longer a subaltern but an “organic intellectual.” This change cannot be brought about through representation. Spivak uses the words Darstellung and Vertretung from Marx to describe two different kinds of representations. By overlooking this distinction, portraying someone is misinterpreted as walking in their shoes. There is no representation without a portrayal, which in principle is a political representation of oneself, not of the subaltern. Representation is, therefore, always double and problematic, never complete. By confusing aesthetic representation (Darstellung) with political representation (Vertretung), the oppressed are further marginalized (Spivak, 2010 [1999]). Attempts at expressing the authentic subaltern voice become a masquerade, where the intellectual takes the role of an absent non-representing author, letting the oppressed people speak for themselves (Spivak, 1996 [1985]). Instead, Spivak argues that the only opportunity to access the subaltern voice is through establishing ethical singularity with the subaltern. This should not be confused with “raised consciousness fieldwork” (Spivak, 1996: 269) but includes making the subaltern into an organic intellectual, which implies not being a subaltern anymore (Spivak, 1996 [1994]). In her preface to her translation of the novel Imaginary Maps, she elaborates:

This encounter can only happen when the respondents inhabit something like normality. (…) In fact, it is impossible for all leaders (subaltern or otherwise) to engage every subaltern in this way, especially across the gender divide. This is why ethics is the experience of the impossible. (…) the future is always around the corner; there is no victory, but only victories that are also warnings (Spivak, 1996 [1994]: 270).

Spivak argues that the possibility of learning from below only can be earned by the slow effort of responding ethically and learning from the compromised, turning the roles from object to teacher (Spivak, 1996 [1994]). Often these organic intellectuals who become spokespersons for the subaltern groups are taken as token subalterns (Spivak, 1996). The effort is ignored by our desire to have our cake and eat it too: “that we can continue to be as we are, and yet be in touch with the speaking subaltern” (Spivak, 1996: 292). The task at hand would be to enter into a responsible structure with the subaltern:

“…without this quick-fix frenzy of doing good with an implicit assumption of cultural supremacy which is legitimized by unexamined romanticization, that’s the hard part, (…) working for the subaltern is precisely to bring them, not through cultural benevolence, but through extra-academic work, into the circuit of parliamentary democracy. (…) working for the subaltern means the subaltern‘s insertion into citizenship, whatever that might mean, and thus undoing of subaltern space” (Spivak, 1996: 293).

Making service users heard would thereby depend on deconstructing the very notion of service-userness, engaging in learning from service users, and restoring service users as citizens—this process necessities political subjectivation.

Consensus as the end of politics

Democracy is not an endgame for Rancière. Politics is always at risk of being swallowed by state power. Consensus is the end of politics, transforming politics into the police, annulling the dissensus, incorporating people into the social body, and asserting that there is a specific place for politics within the distribution of the sensible, that of the political community. Consensus is not simply an agreement, but an identity between the community’s political constitution and the population’s moral constitution, describing the community as an entity naturally unified by ethical values (Rancière, 2015: 108). No institution or organization can be political per se. Still, anything may become political if it gives rise to a meeting between the police logic and the political or egalitarian logic. “The time of a ‘democracy to come, is the time of a promise that has to be kept even though – and precisely because – it can never be fulfilled” (Rancière, 2015: 67). A political subject is a capacity for staging scenes of dissensus. This dissensus is not a conflict of interests, opinions, or values but a “division inserted in ‘common sense’: a dispute over what is given and about the frame within which we see something as given” (Rancière, 2015: 77). Dissensus is to act as a subject that does not have the rights they have and have the rights they have not. Consensus means absorbing dissensus:

the attempt to dismiss politics by expelling surplus subjects and replacing them with real partners, social and identity groups and so on. The result is that conflicts are turned into problems to be resolved by learned expertise and the negotiated adjustment of interests. Consensus means closing spaces of dissensus by plugging intervals and patching up any possible gaps between appearance and reality. (Rancière, 2015: 79)

This logic of consensus works in ways that reduce dissensus to a distribution where each part of the social body gets entitlement to its share, finely molded to fit the diversity of groups and the speed of social changes. This involves shrinking political space. Alternative approaches to social problems like recovery, empowerment, and service user involvement have arguably become co-opted by the state (Cruikshank, 1993). Starting as attempts of dissensus, they become redefined as problems for the expertise to solve and molded into the finely molded consensus of empty rights.

Rancière has been criticized for giving little thought to the influence of capitalism, racism, sexism, and heteronormativity on the distribution of the sensible (Sparks, 2016; Žižek, 2004), yet formed a theoretical basis for postcolonial analysis (Tolia-Kelly, 2019; Pirsoul, 2017), combining with the work of Spivak and Freire (Galloway, 2012; Lewis, 2009; Jooste, 2016). His work has been criticized for over-emphasizing speech and improvisation, overlooking abilities, skills, knowledge, and organization (Olivier, 2015; Feola, 2014; Garrett, 2015). Within certain historical junctures, the service user has opportunities for voice, as shown by, for example, homeless protesters (Middleton, 2014; Mendel, 2011). However, they never speak directly for themselves; they speak under a costume collectively designed for themselves, from a mask painted upon their face, on a stage built by their interventions (Citton, 2009). For Rancière, descriptions that lock people up in certain discourses are as damaging as the objectification of people. Spivak’s ethical engagement does not solve this, as it makes the philosopher the master of subaltern subjectivity. More than providing any blueprint for social work dissensus, the thoughts of Rancière posit essential questions about the part of social work within the police, its classification practices (Garrett, 2015), and the latter years, the relation between social work, normalcy, and political consensus related to COVID-19 (Garrett, 2021; Staller et al., 2021; Aaslund, 2021).

Challenges for service user involvement

Service user involvement is something that is given to you within specific places, times, and topics because you are a service user (Eriksson, 2018a; Carr, 2007). For the concept to make sense, it has to imply that the service user is a powerless creature (Cruikshank, 1993), a subaltern with no participation. As numerous scholars have pointed out, the discourse on service user involvement is apt to discipline service users into positions where they must present themselves as active, autonomous, and responsible entrepreneurs to be eligible for help (Woolford and Nelund, 2013; Cruikshank, 1993).

The service user, as the shoemaker, is a necessary part of the division of labor, legitimating the position of the social worker, the hero that brings the voices of the service users to discourse. In fact, research suggests that social work students’ future practice identities develop precisely in conjunction with their constructions of a service user identity (Skoura-Kirk, 2022), in the same way as the legitimacy of Plato’s philosopher-king relied on the shoemaker (Rancière, 2004). Therefore, empowering processes are in danger of inscribing people as powerless subjects before the process of lifting their voices starts—a push into deep water and a helping hand. Their utterances are interpreted through their psychobiography and the hegemonic discourse (Spivak, 1996 [1985]) that service users cannot speak. This powerless subject remains in the relationship as a hidden trump card to be played if real politics or insurgence occurs. Suppose the voices stage unpopular opinions not part of the current consensus. In that case, they can easily be defined by their psychobiographies and accused of being intoxicated or unable to see beyond their own immediate needs (Loehwing, 2010), an utterance outside the distribution of the sensible, or noise (Rancière, 2015).

Even when the voices are not subject to discipline, problems occur. Discussions about representativeness in service user involvement have a long history and have even been argued to disempower service users (Beresford and Campbell, 1994). In light of our theorists, representation is always double and problematic because it is a portrayal, essentially a political representation of the intellectual instead, even when it aims for people to have a say in political processes (cf. Vertretung (Spivak, 2010 [1999])). Representation involves expelling surplus subjects and replacing them with an identity group (Rancière, 2015). Re-presentations (Darstellung) of people are framed as giving people political representation, a process accelerated by the interest of myriads of different organizations to associate with the participatory buzzwords (Cornwall, 2008). Rather than exploring conflict or competing interests, this re-presentation tends to portray service users and social workers as having coincident interests (Natland and Hansen, 2017; Eriksson, 2018b). This consensus redefines conflicts as ethical issues to be resolved, “plugging intervals and patching up possible gaps between appearance and reality” (Rancière, 2015: 79).

When the service users leave it to the social workers to assert their rights, the political subjects disappear. However, history shows potential for acts of dissensus and undoing of subaltern space through insertion into citizenship, but not necessarily through the discourse of service user involvement. Examples of this could be poor people’s movements (Seim, 2016; Piven and Cloward, 1979) or homeless campaigns and protests (Rosenthal, 2000). Unfortunately, despite the values of social justice and liberation, social workers are not necessarily involved in processes where marginalized people act toward staging political disruptions or develop political subjectivities, or other contemporary social justice mobilizations for that matter (Zaidi and Aaslund, 2021; Holosko et al., 2018; Wendt and Moulding, 2016; Beddoe et al., 2020). Rather it seems to be multiple institutional, national, and personal barriers toward social workers supporting claims from marginalized people of insertion into citizenship. Even in an example when the dissensus happened to disrupt social workers’ own arrangement, it has been regarded as barbarian noise and violently suppressed. Only after criticism were the protesters given a space for speech within the consensus of social work from the benevolent social workers (Aaslund and Chear, 2020). As social work researchers, we risk misrepresenting acts of Darstellung as acts of Vertretung when reporting on apparently progressive projects with short-term positive outcomes.

Challenges for participatory knowledge production

The problems addressed above bleed into and are possibly even more complicated when researchers invite the service user to participate in knowledge production. There are solid arguments for service-user collaboration in research, and the congruence of values between social work and participatory research is strong (Flanagan, 2020). At the same time, power differences remain within the relationship between researcher and service user, even in projects characterized by partnership or service user control (Tew, 2008; McLaughlin, 2010), and there are processes not easily captured by the categories in ladders and cross tables of service user involvement or participation. The moral argument for participation could obscure the practical implications of the projects (Doyle and Timonen, 2010).

The double and seemingly contradictious message of the powerless service user to be emancipated makes service user participation in research appear interesting, radical, or innovative, attracting funders, researchers, and progressive social workers to projects aiming at authentic voices of the powerless. Re-writing the service user, the researcher writes himself anew (hooks, 1989). Or as Spivak puts it, “The ventriloquism of the speaking subaltern is the left intellectual’s stock-in-trade” (Spivak, 2010 [1999]: 27). Without the assumption that service users, people experiencing substance use problems, homelessness or other marginalized people, are unable to make their voices heard, protest, or participate, research into these processes would not at all be seen as that interesting or innovative. As researchers, we risk stereotyping and marginalizing the service users even more in the process of representing us as the radical emancipator. The participants are reduced to service users, objects for service providing, instead of persons (Nussbaum, 2009). These objects have no political voice themselves, but their utterances express their immediate private concerns (Rancière, 2015).

Payment, titles of co-researchers, methodological training, and other inclusive acts can remedy some of the power imbalances in the division of labor. Still, there will always remain a gap between the intentions and the actual legal regulations (Rancière, 2015). Like practitioners, most researchers assume a relationship of common interests, but as long as there is a prefix “co-,” there is also a potential conflict of interests between participants and academic researchers. When such conflicts are redefined as an ethical issue to be solved, for example, through checklists, any acts of real dissensus—disrupting the police order based on a presumption of equality—risk being absorbed by the consensual idea of service user involvement in research. Such a consensus presumes a naturally unified entity of ethical values, which transforms political conflict into an ethical consensus (Rancière, 2015). The service users become “token subalterns” as the academic community continues to be, as it were (Spivak, 1996).

These challenges are utterly amplified by troubles related to our use of master words of identity categories or social problem constructions in social work, leading to debates or conflict about who represents the authentic problem bearer or marginalized group (McLaughlin, 2009), an example being the common representation of ex-users in user involvement in substance use care (Selseng et al., 2021). Spivak claims that the power/desire/interest networks are so heterogenous that their reduction to a coherent narrative is counterproductive and essentializing. She says a persistent critique is needed (Spivak, 2010 [1999]). For example, Spivak’s point becomes evident concerning female participants and participants of color. In research about homelessness, these groups are largely made invisible in the discourse of homelessness and marginalized in the helping services (McCarthy, 2013; Baptista et al., 2017). Homeless persons without legal residence are often not counted at all. The idea that some persons could be involved in research to represent broader groups of these heterogenous networks is essentializing in a way that could jeopardize both the research outputs and the emancipatory aims of the project. Similar challenges of representation are also apparent when including service users in social work education (Aaslund and Woll, 2021). Spivak recognizes the need for strategic essentialism for political reasons in certain situations (Spivak, 1996 [1985]) but says the only access to the subaltern voice would be through efforts for the service user’s insertion into citizenship (Spivak, 1996).

So what to do then?—toward some preliminary solutions

I will conclude by suggesting some possible paths to keep the question open and nurture the possibilities for speech and dissent, inspired by participatory action research and situating the researcher. They all have pitfalls, as all victories come with a warning (Spivak, 1996 [1994]).

The tradition of participatory action research of the southern hemisphere (PAR/VPC) was closely connected to social movements, adult education, and democracy, as opposed to the more consensus-oriented PAR in the US (Whyte, 1991; Glassman and Erdem, 2014). Freire postulated that freedom is acquired by conquest rather than by gift and that all inquiries should start with human action and the persons’ lived experiences. He argued that the risk of participatory research was not that the co-investigators adulterated the results but that the researcher shifted the focus from investigating meaningful themes to investigating the people themselves, turning them into objects (Freire, 2014 [1970]). Fals-Borda also criticized contemporary action research for relying too much on historical materialism and not on people’s actual conditions and highlighted emphatic involvement from the researcher, lived through direct participation in everyday life—Vivienca. Arguing that academic traditions exploited fieldwork and data, he proposed that there was no distinction between subject and object of truth in authentic participation and stressed learning from social movements and utopias, social workers, and theologists (Rahman, 2008; Fals-Borda, 1987; Glassman and Erdem, 2014). Fals-Borda’s concepts of subject–subject relation and justice for the underprivileged are close to the concept of organic intellectual of Spivak (1996). By focusing on people’s inquiry into their living conditions and local practice, this approach circumvents many of the common challenges of representation (though not all). There are no master words or broader identity categories at play when inquiring into your own living experiences, but of course, representation issues and power constellations within the group remain. Later PAR, inspired by this direction, aimed for the broadest possible participation and primarily concentrated on discourse and dialogue as democratic theory (Helskog, 2014; Gustavsen and Pålshaugen, 2015). The action part of PAR needs to be revitalized to challenge consensus and open positions to speak as if the participants had a voice (Rancière, 2004).

Inspired by Jackson (2016), Neumann and Neumann (2017) suggest two ways of going about situatedness in research. The first, reflexive situatedness, relates to a structuralist epistemology and has been discussed extensively earlier in this journal (Moore, 2016; Probst and Berenson, 2014; Iacono et al., 2021). Perspectives from Spivak and Rancière can help us in our reflexivity by deconstructing, twisting, and untidying our assumptions about service users and their abilities for voice and speech (Neumann and Neumann, 2017). The other way of going about situatedness is called analytical situatedness and speaks to a poststructural analytical position. This approach includes drawing on autobiography and situatedness to form value commitments that inform data production and method (Neumann and Neumann, 2015). In this approach, the question becomes how the researcher affects the people that are included in the research, not the opposite:

something that had before been considered doxic or normal, becomes problematized, with a view to understanding the consequence for some group of which the researcher may, or may not, be a member. The value commitment that situates the researcher is towards understanding what the effects of categorizing and representing things like this rather than that does to a certain group of people (Neumann and Neumann, 2017: 94)

In Neumann and Neumann’s understanding of analytical situatedness, we will need research that produces situations that reveal how people do things. We need research that stage unusual, provocative, and rare speech acts from service users to see how people in power, researchers, and professionals respond to them—what they do. Rancière would call this dissensus.

In the end, however, there is no easy escape. Writing this, I am also inscribing service users into non-speakingness and myself as the giver of voice: “the enterprise of deconstruction always in a certain way falls prey to its own work” (Derrida, 1998: 24). Our best attempt is to keep the gap in consensus open by continuing asking the question: “Can service users speak?”.