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A question of power

These last few days a case involving academia, a well-known and generally well-respected (but we’ll get onto that below) social sciences professor, and sexual assault on students is making a splash in Portugal, with echoes coming in from Latin America.

The gist of it is fairly simple to summarise: an international book titled Sexual Misconduct in Academia - Informing an Ethics of Care in the University (edited by Erin Pritchard and Delyth Edwards) includes a chapter written by three students (one post-doctorate, two doctorates) that were at a certain time in their academical careers at CES (Centro de Estudos Sociais - Centre for Social Studies) at Coimbra University, in Portugal. The three of them realised they were not alone in being affected by sexual assault from said professor (and apparently from an assistant of his as well) when they saw graffiti on the walls of the institution, calling for the professor’s expulsion and the sentence “we all know”. In Portuguese, “we” can be either masculine or feminine, and it was the latter, meaning “we (females) all know”.

What happened after the scandal broke followed a well-known pattern:

a) the accused rejected the accusations, said he was being canceled, and that this was an ad hominem attack, whilst trying to turn it around on at least one of the accusers, labelling her insolent and recalling an insubordination incident at CES.

b) other cases emerged; once someone speaks up it empowers other victims/survivors to talk about their own cases.

To give you some context: this professor is, as Wikipedia tells us:

a sociologist, Professor emeritus at the School of Economics at the University of Coimbra, Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick and Director Emeritus of the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra. A Marxist, outspoken sympathizer and avowed supporter of the Bloco de Esquerda party, he is regarded as one of the most prominent Portuguese living left-wing intellectuals.

Further below, the article adds:

Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ extensive published works qualify him for being regarded as epitome of left-wing intellectual and a self-proclaimed staunch defender of human, female and indigenous rights of the peoples of the Southern Hemisphere.

This means… he’s supposed to be one of us, that is, someone on the left, someone who is theoretically a humanist, a feminist, an anti-imperialist. If these cases of sexual assault happened, as well as the new cases being reported (and the vast, vast majority of cases are real, so you can stop the “what if it’s just a vendetta?” internal dialog), then this situation is a great illustration of what I like to call the perversion of power.

The problem

You see, power is a real problem. Once someone gets some amount of power, power starts getting them. It corrodes them and it makes them conveniently forget and make excuses for behaving in a way that they theoretically oppose. It is no surprise, therefore, that feminist men, when in a position of power, sexually assault, groom or exert uncalled-for domination over women or other non-males. It shouldn’t surprise us, as well, if an anti-imperialist scholar steals sociological concepts from indigenous authors, as was the case with Boaventura de Sousa Santos. (more details at the bottom of this article).

In response to this scandal, I’ve seen some women on social media stating that “we should be wary of any man that labels themselves as feminist” and they’re not wrong. A label is not proof of anything. I label myself a feminist because that’s something that I strongly believe in, but I am certain that, if I was in a position of immense power, as this scholar has in academia, or managers at workplaces, or leaders of all types of organised religions, I would potentially abuse power too, I would potentially become a male chauvinist, patriarchal predator.

Power is the problem. Those who have power sooner or later, despite their best theoretical intentions, will abuse it. People become predators. I say people because, in our universe and timeline, the majority of sexual abuse cases are caused by men, but there’s nothing innate in women or other non-males that prevents them to abuse too. Women in power also abuse it. Margaret Thatcher and Mother Theresa, to name just two, were horrible people who committed horrible deeds. It was not because they were women, it was because they had power, almost unlimited power, over other humans.

The solution

Since power corrupts and erodes, only vigilance can stop its effects. There needs to be constant vigilance and monitoring of humanity by humanity. This cannot be done via any sort of dictatorship because - surprise! - that too is uncontrolled power (of the worst kind). In my view, the only way to tackle all of the issues that face humankind (and that humankind is responsible for), be it climate change, food scarcity (or more specifically food distribution), energy needs, wars and other conflicts, global pandemics, political-, social- and religious-motivated abuse, etc., is anarchism, for anarchism knows that eternal self-vigilance is the price humans need to pay to have all that we need - no one excluded. Not women, not indigenous people, not non-human animals, not nature itself. No one.

Without it, allies with power become predators, and labels mean nothing.

UPDATE: A tv piece from RTP (Portuguese national TV) adds more data from members of CES that wish to remain anonymous out of fear. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the thesis of “neoliberal conspiracy and vendetta against professors and their institution” is a smear campaign, so common in cases of sexual abuse.

Notes

  • The book mentioned in this article can be found on libgen. The relevant chapter, The walls spoke when no one else would - Autoethnographic notes on sexual-power gatekeeping within avant-garde academia, starts on page 208.

  • The article that covers this situation in dept can be found at Diário de Notícias’ website. It’s behind a paywall, so send me a message if you want a pdf of the full text.

  • More articles have followed, mentioning other cases of sexual abuse by the scholar in question. Here are three of them, all from Portuguese newspaper Público:

  • Today (April 14th, 2023) a manifesto signed by 150+ academics and culture agents was released. It lends support to those who denounce abuse. Its full text can be found here.

  • I mentioned above the fact that the vast majority of reported cases of abuse are true. The scientific literature backs me up. Here’s one example, and here’s another.

  • I also mentioned a case of intellectual expropriation. In June 9, 2020, the website ethic. es published an interview with Boaventura de Sousa Santos. In it, he said:

    El capitalismo financiero va a seguir endeudando a los países y estos van a tener que pagar sus deudas. Ya pasó en Ecuador, que para pagar al Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) no ha tenido cómo enterrar a los muertos de Guayaquil. En ese sentido, Ecuador ha sido un laboratorio de lo que va a suceder en otros países. Es el peor escenario posible, lo que llamo el capitalismo gore, sangriento, muy violento, que va a matar a mucha gente.

    Here’s my translation: Financial capitalism will continue to put in debt countries and these will have to pay their debts. It happened already in Ecuador, where, in order to pay the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the country was unable to bury those dead at Guayaquil. In that sense, Ecuador has been a laboratory of what’s going to happen in other countries. It is the worst-case scenario, what I call gore capitalism, bloody, very violent, that will kill a lot of people.

    The term “gore capitalism” was not invented by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Quite the contrary, it was coined by a transfeminist Mexican philosopher, Sayak Valencia, who showed her disappointment with this case of appropriation. Some days after, ethic.es quietly changed the sentence, without mentioning what had happened. The interview, in its final form, can be read here, but thanks to The Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine, we can see its original version in a snapshot taken on June 13, 2022. We can also see that Boaventura de Sousa Santos gives credit to other authors, when speaking of other concepts, throughout the article. As far as I can see, he never apologised or acknowledged this mistake.

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