Oppositional thinking interrogates the assumptions behind authoritative questions

Evidence

The extreme form of this approach might be the discussion technique of Street Epistemology, which was developed by the American philosophy professor Peter Boghossian specifically for the purpose of converting people to atheism . A substantive argumentation is completely avoided and the believer is instead repeatedly asked which method he used to reach his conviction and why he considers this method suitable. The answers are summarized by the questioner and used as a basis to ask for the next justification. Critics of the method complain that it challenges the rhetorical ability to clearly formulate and justify one’s own position rather than the belief’s content that should actually be criticized . Especially in the case of a clear intellectual gap, there is also the danger that the believer feels rhetorically outsmarted and even less taken seriously. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 242 (#complicates, via linked claim)

If this position can raise a “why do you fly from me?” toward the subaltern separated from the feminist, then the feminist might, just might, ventriloquize the “fly from me” toward the Narcissus-face, both the self-knowing Ovidian and the deluded Freudian. In fact, the subaltern herself is also sometimes caught in the desire for Narcissus and the “fly from me” gesture, on another level. Once there is an effort to engage in the politics of subalternity-on-the-move, who questions and who answers “fly from me” is not at all clear. The only thing we know is that “be like me, be my image” can never be on the agenda, from either side. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1507 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Effective opposition requires first understanding the adversary’s actual project — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 901; Critical questioning can replace test-driven memorization in cultural circles — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 617; Defining a field’s core questions requires prolonged diffuse dissatisfaction (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Question-based debate techniques can backfire by humiliating the rhetorical rather than testing the belief #complicates (0.78) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 242
• Collective subaltern politics makes the questioner-respondent relation indeterminate #complicates (0.72) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1507