Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oppressors–oppressed distinction

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎. I see a consensus among editors to Delete this article. Liz Read! Talk! 08:54, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppressors–oppressed distinction[edit]

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Oppressors–oppressed distinction (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Stub politics article, the criteria for it being nominated are as follows: poorly sourced Content Fork WP:CF covered else where by Social Class, Political Class, Marxian class theory, and Class conflict... but also Wikipedia is not a dictionary WP:NOTDICT.

Examples of poor sourcing are as follows: "Israel/Palestine : the quest for dialogue" (1991) [1] by Gordon & Gordon, does not contain the terms on 145 as claimed, likewise "Specters of Marx" (1994) [2], by Jacques Derrida, and "French intellectual nobility : institutional and symbolic transformations in the post-Sartrian era" (1996) [3] by Niilo Kauppi both do not contain the terms "Oppressor" and "Oppressed" at all. This leaves four disparate sources (two from Marxists, one from a conservative, and one about Israel Palestine) which technically pass verifiability, but don't seem to be discussing a unified concept or theory at all. Besides which, as mentioned earlier, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. RecardedByzantian (talk) 06:38, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • SUPPORT DELETION: There does not appear to be a unified topic here to merit an article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PatrickJWelsh (talk • contribs) 17:19, January 22, 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment: I am unconvinced that the article's topic is notable. However, some of the statements made by the OP in support of deletion are not entirely accurate. For example, while Derrida doesn’t use oppressor/oppressed terminology, he does employ the dominant/dominated distinction (see page 68). Same goes for Kauppi (page 61) and Gordon & Gordon (page 71). XMcan (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 13:02, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Poorly reasoned nomination: None of Social Class, Political Class, Marxian class theory, and Class conflict mention oppressor-oppressed or dominant–dominated as opposing categories/concepts; valuable sources: "Israel/Palestine : the quest for dialogue" (1991) by Gordon & Gordon, states on page 145: But again and again I am inspired by Freire’s saying, "It is only the oppressed, who by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors" [4]; "Specters of Marx" “At least provisionally, we are placing our trust, in fact, in this form of critical analysis we have inherited from Marxism: In a given situation, provided that it is determinable and determined as being that of a socio-political antagonism, a hegemonic force always seems to be represented by a dominant rhetoric and ideology, whatever may be the conflicts between forces, the principal contradiction or the secondary contradictions, the overdeterminations and the relays that may later complicate this schema—and therefore lead us to be suspicious of the simple opposition of dominant and dominated, or even of the final determination of the forces in conflict, or even, more radically, of the idea that force is always stronger than weakness (Nietzsche and Benjamin have encouraged us to have doubts on this score, each in his own way, and especially the latter when he associated “historical materialism” with the inheritance, precisely, of some “weak messianic force”’). Critical inheritance: one may thus, for example, speak of a dominant discourse or of dominant representations and ideas, and refer in this way to a hierarchized and conflictual field without necessarily subscribing to the concept of social class by means of which Marx so often determined, particularly in The German Ideology, the forces that are fighting for control of the hegemony." [5]; "French intellectual nobility : institutional and symbolic transformations in the post-Sartrian era" (1996) by Niilo Kauppi "In its present meaning, the term “field” was partly created as a reaction to Marxist political-economic definitions of social phenomena and represents the systematization of Bourdieu’s structural approach. The field is composed of capital, an illusio, and consists of certain pertinent features. The concept contains some very Marxist elements: for example, the opposition dominant/ dominated. In accordance with yet another use of homologies, a field will be divided into dominant and dominated groups, and the dominant groups will themselves be divided into dominant-dominant and dominant-dominated (a:b; b1:b2; etc.). There is a definite tendency to construct a system—not surprising for a French intellectual who has been trained in philosophy.” [6]: sources do contain the dominant-dominated opposition, which is referred to as synonymous to oppressors-oppressed distinction in the lead of the article. No reason to delete. Phil from somewhere (talk) 22:53, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What you've done there is unsourced original research. Which is what the article is doing. The creator of the article User:SummerWithMorons has had many such articles deleted on those grounds. But you're correct, perhaps I should have nominated this one for those reasons (eg. WP:OR).
    Making the special case that this (the usage in those three disparate sources) is a unique meaning or usage of class politics (without a source), is a form of special pleading. That's not how Wikipedia works. We're not a catalogue of specific words and usages selected without any sources linking them. We're not an authority in of ourselves, capable of linking sources just because an editor says they're linked. That's more the work of a dictionary. The article should obviously be deleted as it is WP:OR regardless of how it's been nominated. RecardedByzantian (talk) 01:07, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to be clear, you call quoting the article's original sources original research?? Good joke to start the day Phil from somewhere (talk) 13:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I called the idea that all three of those sources/usages are related; Original Research. Not the sources themselves.
    Either all three are related (despite being from drastically different people, countries, areas of thought, and eras) because this is a general dictionary entry (and hence not appropriate encyclopedic content), or they're related because this is some unique and noteworthy usage (which would require a source OUTSIDE of Wikipedia saying so), or they're not related because this page is Original Research stringing unrelated sources together to construct an essay as if it's in Wikivoice.
    So we should Delete as per WP:NOTDICT, OR find the imagined source as per WP:RS and WP:NN, OR Delete as per WP:OR. This is what I'm saying... and it's my view that the page should be deleted. RecardedByzantian (talk) 22:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Deletion - although my nomination was perhaps not as thorough as it could have been, the article is still WP:OR. We can't just decide that two usages are linked, and then construct an article/essay around that opinion. RecardedByzantian (talk) 01:11, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ✗plicit 11:28, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Two ways this might be approached:
  1. The article is all about Marxist theory and responses to it, not the distinction itself, which is surely as old as the practice of forced labor. There might be a good WP:merge target to an existing article on Marxism. Otherwise, if it kept as its own article, "(Marxism)" should be appended to the title.
  2. One might ask – in addition to, or independently of, other articles on Marxism – whether there is anything in this article that is not already covered at oppression. If this article is to be about more than Marx's usage and its legacy, that is another possible merge target.
As it stands, however, while harmless, the article fails the WP:notability criterion. This distinction itself has not been shown in the existing article to be significant enough have generated its own literature. Hence it is not a enough of a topic to merit coverage in an encyclopedia.
Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:42, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A quick Google Scholar search shows that this is a very notable concept in Marxian political theory. Notability is based on the existence of sources, not whether those sources are cited in the article. And although I agree with others that this article is not in the best shape, deletion is not cleanup. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:19, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's in such poor shape that deleting it and letting some interested party re-write it from scratch would more than likely produce an article of better quality. But they'll have a tough time separating it from Marxian class theory in my opinion. 194.223.27.216 (talk) 03:46, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: It's covered by Marxian Class Theory. Part of the problem is that none of the authors are seeking to define or specifically talk about the "Oppressors–oppressed distinction" so it's disingenuous for Wikipedia to decide the terms are some how pivotal or important just because they get a mention here and there. Perhaps if there was a source focusing on these terms, or even a chapter, section, or subheading. But there's not. There's passing usages - the authors don't focus on the topic, so why are we?.... well it's because the American right are using claims about the "Oppressors–oppressed distinction" in the campaign to bolster and spread the conspiracy theory Cultural Marxism - here's right wing conspiracy nut Andrew Breitbart using the phrasing in his description of what cultural Marxism is: [7]. Here's the far right American think tank The Heritage Foundation using it for the same purposes: [8]. Here's American Conservative Think Tank Foundation for Economic Education using it in that same way: [9].
So one side of politics IS focusing on this phrasing - Conservative American Think Tanks. Here is Andrew Lynn, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture debunking the attempted twisting in 2018 [10]:
"Flash-forward to the present. According to conservative journalist and blogger Andrew Sullivan, today’s cultural Marxists are deeply invested in toppling power structures of patriarchy and white privilege. They do so, according to this version of history, by following the Frankfurt School thinkers in transposing the oppressed-oppressor conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie into the cultural realm, assigning oppressed status to various nonprivileged identity groups. Emergence of a victimhood culture follows, as groups laying claim to various identities articulate grievances against dominant groups and the structures that serve their interests. Rational adjudication of truth then becomes subsumed under demands for the subversion of power, patriarchy, and privilege across unjust social institutions, perpetuating continual identification of conflict within the established social order." [Emphasis added]
"There are many problems with this narrative, of course, and here’s one: Such a vision of an ever-in-conflict social order is only loosely “cultural” and could be constructed entirely independent of anything “Marxist.” You can find it in Machiavelli, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Ayn Rand, to name just a few. Indeed, today the most popular accounts of society as groups in perpetual conflict over resources—whether material, symbolic, or political—are found in best-selling books by evolutionary psychologists and biologists eager to apply their disciplinary insights to questions far outside their field. It is more the diffusion of Darwin—not Derrida—that underlies popular conflict-grounded accounts of morality and culture today."
This is a sound DELETE from me. Unless we can find leftist marxist theorists using it as at least a subheading - I'd even settle for just someone bolding it on the page. But in actual fact, they don't use it that often, the sources use it once or twice in passing IN WHOLE BOOKS, and it's the American right wing, and far right who are trying to bolster its usage as a paradigm of explanation for the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. Wikipedia shouldn't go joyously romping into a political minefield just because a particularly prolific editor who has had many of their essays deleted before carelessly wanders into one without asking "Is this really making something out of this particular terminology?". 194.223.27.216 (talk) 04:08, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While the concern is valid, I'm not seeing any of that in the article as written, which cites to Derrida, Hegel, and Lenin, who are hardly right-wing thinkers. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:51, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...and what do you make of my statement that they're not particularly focused on the topic of the "Oppressors–oppressed distinction" but are instead using the terms infrequently?194.223.27.216 (talk) 06:20, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- KEEP and turn into a disambiguation page. This is a unifying thread and key aspect of a lot of political philosophy, as well as various political ideologies. As such, I do not think that the reasoning provided here justifies a complete deletion. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, but this entry is of encyclopedic value, even as a disambiguation page. TucanHolmes (talk) 13:22, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Patrick J. Welsh pointed out that the concept and corresponding article on Oppression already includes the distinction, so any disambiguation or linking should happen there. I no longer think retaining this page would be useful, even as a disambiguation page. TucanHolmes (talk) 18:01, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Keep notable concept in various contexts. Phil from somewhere (talk) 16:39, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - there's a lot of people saying "keep" then saying "Oh this is a thing in politics" - but then not offering any substantive sources that discuss the topic, which is apparently (according to these voters) substantial and well known in political discourse. I would like to remind whoever closes this discussion, that on Wikipedia, voting is done by the winning arguments - not by tallying the numbers (see WP:POLL and WP:Consensus). Demanding that an article be kept because it matches someone's personal viewpoint or their own original research, is not the same as having enough sources to substantiate the claims of the CURRENT article in it's current condition. Currently, this article should be deleted, as the sources don't substantiate it as a notable topic WP:NN. No one has presented either a policy or source based argument against that fact. Just because a word appears in many texts, doesn't warrant Wikipedia creating a dictionary entry or stub article for it. Without sources, the keep claims are just adding to the original research that creeps into Wikipedia because we don't delete articles like this one. 194.223.63.134 (talk) 04:50, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete - We have several articles already about adjacent philosophical/academic/activist traditions that focus on (leftist) identity oppression. This isn't the name of something that needs an article on its own, I think; I wanted to say this is an unsourced neologism, I'm not sure that's right, maybe as OP says not a dictionary. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 05:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, CycloneYoris talk! 08:29, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: I have reviewed the above and continue to support deletion. The concept of oppression includes within itself the distinction between the person/group/system oppressing and those oppressed. (Hence the hits in Google Scholar are entirely unsurprising and not in-themselves relevant.) It is possible that somewhere there is a dissertation deconstructing the meaning of the dash in "oppressors–oppressed", but this has not been established – and is not at all likely to be established – as an encyclopedic topic.
If, as some comments above suggest, this is actually about covertly correcting current American political discourse, I would submit that this is not the appropriate use of an article with this title. If that is the point, it should be made explicit in a fresh article to be assessed from scratch for inclusion in Wikipedia. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:00, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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