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“Free software as a community, has been and still sometimes is critiqued as being an exclusionary space of white male sociality (Nafus 2012; Massanari 2016; Ford and Wajcman 2017; Reagle 2013). I think this critique is true, but it is less a problem of identity than it is a pathology of a certain form of liberalism: a form that demands that merit consists only in the content of the things we say (whether in a political argument, a scientific paper, or a piece of code), and not in the ways we say them, or who is encouraged to say them and who is encouraged to remain silent (Dunbar-Hester 2014).

One might, as a result, choose to throw out liberalism altogether as a broken philosophy of governance and liberation. But it might also be an opportunity to focus much more specifically on a particular problem of liberalism, one that the discourse of OA also relies on to a large extent. Perhaps it is not the case that merit derives solely from the content of utterances freely and openly circulated, but also from the ways in which they are uttered, and the dignity of the people who utter them. An OA (or a free software) that embraced that principle would demand that we pay attention to different problems: how are our platforms, infrastructures, tools organized and built to support not just the circulation of putatively true statements, but the ability to say them in situated and particular ways, with respect for the dignity of who is saying them, and with the freedom to explore the limits of that kind of liberalism, should we be so lucky to achieve it.”

Chelty, Christopher, “Recursive Publics and Open Access” en Guerrilla Radical Open Access, Coventry: Post Office Press, Rope Press and Memory of the World, 2018, págs. 16-24. Descargable aquí (última consulta: 14/08/2019).