Masters both rely on the dominated and deny that dependency through backgrounding.
Evidence
Backgrounding is a complex feature which results from the irresoluble conflicts the relationship of domination creates for the master, for he attempts both to make use of the other, organising, relying on and benefiting from the other’s services, and to deny the dependency which this creates. Denial can take many forms. Common ways to deny dependency are through making the other inessential, denying the importance of the other’s contribution or even his or her reality, and through mechanisms of focus and attention. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 197
Categorization
- XREF: Backgrounding provides the philosophical mechanism for environmental racism’s invisibility — the worm farm/landfill siting logic of Eco-Justice pedagogy. — connects to: Old oppressions stored as dualisms pave the way for new ones. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 181; Dualism arises from denied dependency on a subordinated other. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 173; Nature is backgrounded through systematic moral exclusion, denial, and not-seeing. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 269 (+3 more)
- SHARE: The specific ‘denied dependency’ framing of backgrounding is a sharp tool to hand a colleague arguing about why women’s and nature’s labor goes uncredited.
Broader Connections
- Dependence on the subordinated coexisted with total denial of their humanity.
#corroborates(0.90) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1556 - Dominant groups deny their dependency on those they exclude
#corroborates(0.85) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 597 - The master’s belief in the slave’s inessentiality is an illusion masking real dependency
#expands(0.85) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 199