Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Kritik - Paperless
Toya & Jaime
Katherine Alexander, Lauren Andrews, Christina Bui, Mosie Burke,
Elaine Chen, Jack Delehanty, Tyler Durbin, Amy Ho, Grace
Kiersznowski, Matthew Lugibihl, Nathan Metz-lerman, Patrick Molina,
Jia (Anita) Pan, Maryanne Pasiewicz, Nikpreet Singh, Alex Sodders,
Emi Solorzano, Wai Ho Zhang,
***1NC Shells***
1NC XO 12333
The affs analysis of surveillance systematically ignores
how embodiment is implicated in the processes of
technological surveillance.
Conrad in 09
(Kathryn, Associate Professor of Kansas at the University of Kansas. Surveillance, Gender, and the Virtual
Body in the Information Age. Published in Surveillance and Society, 2009).
concept of 'woman' dependent upon a perceived biological essence, and have celebrated the female body
as essential giver of life; but many strands of theoretical feminism have questioned those seemingly
'essential' links between body, 'sex', and 'gender'. Poststructuralist feminism in particular, inspired by
writers such as Monique Wittig and perhaps best exemplified in the works of Judith Butler, has been
concerned with the ways in which discourse6 not only affects women's rolesi.e., 'gender'but actually
shapes the physical body and 'sex' itself.7 In Butler's theory, indebted to a range of philosophical traditions
including Foucault's conception of gender as constituted by the circulation of power and knowledge
'gender performativity', the notion that gender is a 'stylized repetition of acts' (Butler 1990: 140). The
popular understanding of her work has been that one can change one's gender performance and thereby
challenge the entire gender system at will, a misconception she has had to correct in subsequent texts.8
Butler, like Foucault, does not suggest that subjects can control the discourse that forms them quite so
directly; we operate as gendered subjects within the gendered system, and so deliberate attempts at
parody (as in, for instance, a staged drag queen performance) tend simply to reinforce our understanding
of 'proper' gender. But Gender Trouble does provide a possibility for change, though not a change effected
diagnosis of the Israeli-Palestinian syndrome but differed completely on the prognosis and the prescription. We agreed
that there was much blame to go around for the fact that peace has not yet been achieved. We both noted the historically
corrupt and frequently incompetent Palestinian leadership, the extremist mentality of Hamas and, above all, the ongoing
Israeli settlement project as key factors in the absence of peace. But that was more or less where agreement ended. In the
second part of his diagnosis, Aslan categorically asserted that Palestinian statehood was absolutely impossible because
of demographic and infrastructural changes enforced by the occupation. His prognosis was that a prolonged period of
bloodshed, "apartheid and ethnic cleansing" is totally unavoidable. Eventually, he said, international mediation would
enforce his prescription: a loose confederation" akin to the Bosnian arrangement. All
of this, he insisted,
extraordinary amount of violence that would be required to produce it. Perhaps unfairly, I thought I detected in him an
"secular" perspective on history and politics, in the way its most important contemporary champion, Edward Said, defined
it. It's
an acceleration in the expansion of surveillance infrastructures has not been the tearing away of
[Personal narrative/performance]
We embrace radical healing, in which members of the
community come together to voice their struggles with
dominant power-this dialogic method is a step toward
rebuilding the wellness of our community through
fostering hope for the future, empowering individuals,
and establishing a love of the self that is a prerequisite to
collective resistance.
Ginwright in 10
(Shawn, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University. Peace out to revolution!
Activism among African American youth: An argument for radical healing. Published in Young Nordic
Journal of Youth Research by SAGE Publications in 2010. Accessed on SAGE Journals.)
I shift from social disorganization of youth behaviour and borrow from the
works of Janelle Dance (2002), Joyce West Stevens (2002) and Janie Ward (1995; 2000) who not only
10
organizations can play an important role in healing and respond- ing to neighbourhood and community
problems (Ginwright, 2009). Often, these organizations provide opportunities for urban youth to connect
with peers, adults and experiences that address pressing social and community problems. Robert Sampson
(2001: 95) argues that social capital for poor communities must be more understood as closely linked to
collective efficacy and calls for the linkage of mutual trust and the shared willingness to intervene for the
common good. Sampson et al. (1999: 635) argue that collective efficacy for children is produced by the
shared beliefs and a collectivity in its conjoint cap- ability for action. The notion of collective efficacy
emphasizes residents sense of active engagement. This perspective allows for defining the purpose of
social relationships through actions promoting justice within neighbourhoods, churches and youth
programmes in low-income urban communities, all of which serve as vital sources for the understanding of
civic organizations
are pathways for youth to engage in healing or what Paulo Freire (1993) calls
praxis critical reflection and action. Often, community-based
civic life for African American youth and their communities. In many ways,
11
Critical consciousness and action promote selfdetermination and compel individuals and collectives to claim power
and control over sometimes-daunting social conditions. Power and
control over life situations are key for social justice and wellness
(Prilleltensky, 2008; Prilleltensky et al., 2001). Wellness encompasses more than striving for the
absence of risks and the elimination of community problems. Rather it points to those
individual needs required to effectively engage in collective action.
Wellness and social justice illustrate how young peoples aspirations
to create better schools, safe neighbourhoods and vibrant
community life require both individual and collective development .
The relationship between social justice and wellness is an important
aspect of radical healing. The capacity to act to improve the quality
of life for oneself and others highlights the convergence of both the
personal and political dimensions of civic life. Individuals seek power
and control both at the personal level, through their own decision
making, and at the political level, by organizing their neighbourhood to influence public
policy. This is precisely the process of liberation which overcomes
internal and external sources of oppression . Liberation is both
freedom from internal and external forms of oppression and
freedom to pursue dreams, wellness, peace and a better quality of
life (Prilleltensky, 2008). This pursuit of justice and freedom, in this sense, yields
both internal capacity to resist domination, as well as builds social
capital and a greater external capacity to act to create better
community conditions. Wellness is a result of power and control over
internal and external forms of oppression (Prilleltensky et al., 2001; Watts and
Guessous, 2006). It is my contention that radical healing can facilitate wellness
on three levels. First, the individual level wellness focuses on
strengthening political and social consciousness, hope, optimism
and voice among young people. Particularly important is building
critical consciousness necessary to resist domination and create a
better way of life. Often social justice researchers, educators and practitioners focus
almost entirely on youth resistance without conceptualizing the
critical importance of creating. For young people, individual wellness
provides an internal capacity and resilience to engage in civic and
social justice efforts. Second, community-level wellness focuses on
collective power and con- trol over local public policy. As young
people heal, they can also form commu- nities where a collective
consciousness drives people to act to achieve social justice.
critical consciousness.
12
Community wellness involves community organizing , planning a neighbourhood block party or attending a public hearing about a school closure. These examples of
community wellness signal trust, relationships, networks and
optimism about the capacity for social change. Third, social wellness
is where young people engage in social movements and other forms
of collective action. Robust and healthy democratic life requires
debate, contestation and participation, all of which signal social
well-being.
13
1NC Drones
Drone encode biometric measures in order to detect
queerness. By a refusal to confront these issues, the aff
proliferates divisions, stereotypes, and oppressions.
Monaham 2015 [Torin, a Professor of Communication Studies at The
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on
institutional transformations with new technologies, with a particular
emphasis on surveillance and security programs, The Right to Hide? AntiSurveillance Camouflage and the Aestheticization of Resistance
http://publicsurveillance.com/papers/Right-to-hide.pdf]
A different masking project called the Facial Weaponization Suite presents a much
more complex artistic intervention.48 Created by Zach Blas, this project captures the images of many
different faces and aggregates them into one, grotesque, cellular, plastic mask that confounds face-
forges
collective masks of this sort to critique regimes of visibility that
reduce people to static identity categories and discriminate against
them. Thus, one of his masks, The Fag Face Mask, responds to scientific
studies claiming that queerness can be read reliably on ones facial
features, which could lead to automated algorithms for detecting sexual orientation in the absence of
any other information.49 The so-called Fag Face Mask, then, is a monstrous merging of
the faces of many self-identified queer men, perhaps showing the
grotesqueness of bigoted categorization while also serving as a
symbolic weapon against the unnamed enemies who would control
through stigmatizing visualizations. Rather than simply substitute one bizarre collective
representation for an alienating singular one, the Facial Weaponization Suite aspires
to erase identity markers altogether. It denies the legitimacy of a market of discrete
recognition systems and defies legibility by people or machines (see figure 3). Blas
identities and the systems that would reduce people to them. Blas and colleagues explain: We want a
technology that allows us to escape regimes of identification standardization and control, like facial
recognition technologies and biometrics. In response to this, we ask, What are the tactics and techniques
for making our faces nonexistent? How do we flee this visibility into the fog of a queerness that refuses to
be recognized? We propose to start making faces our weapons. We can learn many faces and wear them
frees one from social constraint and expectation, affording identity experimentation and potentially
revolt. Oddly, this play with masks and faces references a universal we and advocates for the erasure
of difference, or at least its markers, in the service of individual autonomy .
It performs a kind
of post-identity politics right to social and political equality without any signifiers of
difference, which are themselves seen as oppressive impositions on the part of others. The fog is a utopic
non-space where the artist can speak on behalf of others, not because everyone is him, as in the case with
Selvaggios URME project, but because no one is anyonepeople, as defined by difference, do not exist.
Figure 3. Zach Blas. Facial Weaponization Suite: Fag Face MaskOctober 20, 2012, Los Angeles, CA. Photo
by Christopher OLeary. 168 T. Monahan At the same time, the Facial Weaponization Suite communicates
additional messages that deserve interpretation. What does it mean to take seriously dubious scientific
14
biological difference. This can be seen, for instance, in assertions dating back to
Aristotle about the inferiority of women due to them having less
heat, or in nineteenth century claims that criminality could be read from ones physiognomy, or in
mid-twentieth century research professing to have found bodily
markers of homosexuality on womens genitalia.51 In each case, science
reproduces the values of its practitioners and its wider culture. In accepting scientific claims about
queerness and the body, Blas might be unwittingly affirming the validity of constructed truths about
measurable biological difference. In essence, the Facial Weaponization Suite says that the identity markers
ascribed to us by institutions, including the institution of mainstream science, are accurate, so only by
erasing and evading (not debunking) them can we obtain freedom. Additionally, it is worth questioning the
semantic appeal to militarized action. If faces are already being enlisted in militarized security responses
to constructed terrorist threats, for instance through biometric face-recognition capture at borders or on
city streets, then military logics already prevail and infuse dominant discourses and practices.52 The
hegemony of militaristic framings bounds what is viewed as possible and practical, positioning resistance
problematically as threatening to the nation state and deserving of criminalization. Perhaps, taking a cue
from Jacques Derrida,53 a better goal might be to defuse, instead of combat, the violence of binary logics.
Such a discursive move could inspire a greater tolerance for ambiguous identities and the messiness of
social worlds.
15
of state power likewise permits only limited pluralism. Under the logic of authority, any actor not subdued,
tamed, and domesticated presents a threat. While Dale asserts that [n]o one ideal will prevail over the
diversity of our peers, the state demands submission to a singular ideal. This
project has yet to conclude the states monopoly on violence remains incomplete but the goal is
definitional. Anyone who materially defies the dominance of the U.S. government faces a prompt
[Personal narrative/performance]
We embrace radical healing, in which members of the
community come together to voice their struggles with
dominant power-this dialogic method is a step toward
rebuilding the wellness of our community through
fostering hope for the future, empowering individuals,
and establishing a love of the self that is a prerequisite to
collective resistance.
Ginwright in 10
(Shawn, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University. Peace out to revolution!
Activism among African American youth: An argument for radical healing. Published in Young Nordic
Journal of Youth Research by SAGE Publications in 2010. Accessed on SAGE Journals.)
I shift from social disorganization of youth behaviour and borrow from the
works of Janelle Dance (2002), Joyce West Stevens (2002) and Janie Ward (1995; 2000) who not only
16
17
organizations can play an important role in healing and respond- ing to neighbourhood and community
problems (Ginwright, 2009). Often, these organizations provide opportunities for urban youth to connect
with peers, adults and experiences that address pressing social and community problems. Robert Sampson
(2001: 95) argues that social capital for poor communities must be more understood as closely linked to
18
collective efficacy and calls for the linkage of mutual trust and the shared willingness to intervene for the
common good. Sampson et al. (1999: 635) argue that collective efficacy for children is produced by the
shared beliefs and a collectivity in its conjoint cap- ability for action. The notion of collective efficacy
emphasizes residents sense of active engagement. This perspective allows for defining the purpose of
social relationships through actions promoting justice within neighbourhoods, churches and youth
programmes in low-income urban communities, all of which serve as vital sources for the understanding of
civic life for African American youth and their communities. In many ways,
civic organizations
are pathways for youth to engage in healing or what Paulo Freire (1993) calls
praxis critical reflection and action. Often, community-based
organizations facilitate the healing process because they foster
important relationships and develop critical consciousness
necessary for activism. Similar to Freires conceptualization of critical consciousness, I use
the term to convey how an awareness of the systematic forms of oppression
builds the capacity for self-determination to take action to address
social and community problems. Critical consciousness allows youth
to see and act dif- ferently in the world as agents rather than
victims. This notion marks a sig- nificant departure from the standard social capital literature that
more often fails to recognize both individual and collective agency or how social networks ultimately foster
Critical consciousness and action promote selfdetermination and compel individuals and collectives to claim power
and control over sometimes-daunting social conditions. Power and
control over life situations are key for social justice and wellness
(Prilleltensky, 2008; Prilleltensky et al., 2001). Wellness encompasses more than striving for the
absence of risks and the elimination of community problems. Rather it points to those
individual needs required to effectively engage in collective action.
Wellness and social justice illustrate how young peoples aspirations
to create better schools, safe neighbourhoods and vibrant
community life require both individual and collective development .
The relationship between social justice and wellness is an important
aspect of radical healing. The capacity to act to improve the quality
of life for oneself and others highlights the convergence of both the
personal and political dimensions of civic life. Individuals seek power
and control both at the personal level, through their own decision
making, and at the political level, by organizing their neighbourhood to influence public
policy. This is precisely the process of liberation which overcomes
internal and external sources of oppression . Liberation is both
freedom from internal and external forms of oppression and
freedom to pursue dreams, wellness, peace and a better quality of
life (Prilleltensky, 2008). This pursuit of justice and freedom, in this sense, yields
both internal capacity to resist domination, as well as builds social
capital and a greater external capacity to act to create better
community conditions. Wellness is a result of power and control over
internal and external forms of oppression (Prilleltensky et al., 2001; Watts and
Guessous, 2006). It is my contention that radical healing can facilitate wellness
on three levels. First, the individual level wellness focuses on
strengthening political and social consciousness, hope, optimism
and voice among young people. Particularly important is building
critical consciousness necessary to resist domination and create a
better way of life. Often social justice researchers, educators and practitioners focus
critical consciousness.
19
20
1NC Foucault
By endorsing the implementation of their plan outside of
themselves, the aff papers over the implications of
digitized surveillance on the identity of communities and
condemns them to ontological violence.
Conrad in 09
(Kathryn, Associate Professor of Kansas at the University of Kansas. Surveillance, Gender, and the Virtual
Body in the Information Age. Published in Surveillance and Society, 2009).
The rise of the virtual body has its roots in the interconnection
between new information technologies and new directions in
surveillance. Several scholars have noted that the rise of the contemporary
surveillance society corresponds with 'a new form of penology based
on "actuarial justice", which is legal abandonment of individualised
suspicion' (Norris & Armstrong 1999: 26). The result, as William Staples puts it, is that 'we
may be witnessing a historical shift from the specific punishment of
the individual deviant to the generalized surveillance of us all ' (Staples
1997: 6). This shift is part of a larger attempt to manage riska 'shift
away from strategies of social control which are reactive (only
activated when rules are violated) towards proactive strategies
which try to predict dangers one wishes to prevent' (McCahill 1998: 54). More
technologically advanced versions of this 'proactive' approach rely on 'dataveillance', or the surveillance of
data, which is much cheaper as well as more comprehensive than physical surveillance techniques (Clarke
1994). The proactive approach also relies on predictive models and simulations. As David Lyon argues,
behind this proactive approach is the assumption that gathering more and more information can lead to
complete knowledge and thus more effective prediction (Lyon 2001)a claim to which I will return later in
this article.
21
instead of merely that of representation' (van der Ploeg 2003: 58-9). In other words,
the body itself is changing as a result of new information
technologies and the ways in which we interact with them. She
continues, 'with technological and discursive practices converging
toward an ontology of "information," it is unlikely that their
mediating link, embodiment even while acknowledging its
constraining and limiting powerwill remain unaffected. And
because embodiment concerns our most basic experience of the
body and of being in the world, these developments carry profound
normative and moral implications we ought to attempt to uncover'
(59). In short, the information gleaned from body surveillance is not merely a
'data image', an irrelevant or circumstantial collection of information, but indeed is constitutive of
the body. There is no distinct line between the biological body and
the 'virtual body', to use another of van der Ploeg's terms; and when the virtual body is
circulated, probed, even stolen (as in the case of 'identity theft'), those actions can impact the lived
22
Girouxs
and yet so repetitive. I do not dispute his premise that, at risk of oversimplifying his arguments,
the public needs to critically debate and participate in emancipatory politics without interference from
Stremmel 2007). Most of us chose this career because of our commitment to a profession that is relevant
to peoples lives, write Few, Piercy, and Stremmel (2007), we did not leave our interest in social action at
tenure and hiring committees. It is interesting how Giroux evokes riskiness by speaking of fugitive
cultures (1996), living dangerously (1996), and abandoned generations (2003). These phrases seem
to imply that
Giroux has placed himself in jeopardy by writing about disenfranchised groups; yet, in
doing so, he gains from what Foucault (1990) calls the speakers benefit (6). Foucault
explains the speakers benefit by examining the way scholars have written about sexual oppression: 00
23
24
thus power . The anarchist critique identifies bureaucratic coercion and the mentality of obedience
as a key source of oppression. Progressive statist discourse risks furthering the
most nightmarish aspects of modernity dehumanization,
dependency, alienation, self-discipline in its calls for reform.
Saying we absolutely need the same institution that torments me
and my comrades on a daily basis as well as murders folks like AbdulRahmanal-Awlaki leaves us with no way out . By funneling our fierce passions into
the void of electoral democracy and pathologizing autonomy, statist logic justifies these
atrocities and all but assures their indefinite reiteration . Dales statism
contradicts eir profession of both nonviolence and pluralism. As any political theorist will tell you, the
state relies on a monopoly on violence for its very existence. This feature
of state power likewise permits only limited pluralism. Under the logic of authority, any actor not subdued,
tamed, and domesticated presents a threat. While Dale asserts that [n]o one ideal will prevail over the
diversity of our peers, the state demands submission to a singular ideal. This
project has yet to conclude the states monopoly on violence remains incomplete but the goal is
definitional. Anyone who materially defies the dominance of the U.S. government faces a prompt
[Personal narrative/performance]
We embrace radical healing, in which members of the
community come together to voice their struggles with
dominant power-this dialogic method is a step toward
rebuilding the wellness of our community through
fostering hope for the future, empowering individuals,
and establishing a love of the self that is a prerequisite to
collective resistance.
Ginwright in 10
(Shawn, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University. Peace out to revolution!
Activism among African American youth: An argument for radical healing. Published in Young Nordic
Journal of Youth Research by SAGE Publications in 2010. Accessed on SAGE Journals.)
I shift from social disorganization of youth behaviour and borrow from the
works of Janelle Dance (2002), Joyce West Stevens (2002) and Janie Ward (1995; 2000) who not only
25
26
plethora of research that has documented the ways in which poor black communities collectively
experience gentrification, violence, job loss, family dislocation and substance abuse, few have explored the
collective healing process.
organizations can play an important role in healing and respond- ing to neighbourhood and community
problems (Ginwright, 2009). Often, these organizations provide opportunities for urban youth to connect
with peers, adults and experiences that address pressing social and community problems. Robert Sampson
(2001: 95) argues that social capital for poor communities must be more understood as closely linked to
collective efficacy and calls for the linkage of mutual trust and the shared willingness to intervene for the
common good. Sampson et al. (1999: 635) argue that collective efficacy for children is produced by the
shared beliefs and a collectivity in its conjoint cap- ability for action. The notion of collective efficacy
emphasizes residents sense of active engagement. This perspective allows for defining the purpose of
27
social relationships through actions promoting justice within neighbourhoods, churches and youth
programmes in low-income urban communities, all of which serve as vital sources for the understanding of
civic life for African American youth and their communities. In many ways,
civic organizations
are pathways for youth to engage in healing or what Paulo Freire (1993) calls
praxis critical reflection and action. Often, community-based
organizations facilitate the healing process because they foster
important relationships and develop critical consciousness
necessary for activism. Similar to Freires conceptualization of critical consciousness, I use
the term to convey how an awareness of the systematic forms of oppression
builds the capacity for self-determination to take action to address
social and community problems. Critical consciousness allows youth
to see and act dif- ferently in the world as agents rather than
victims. This notion marks a sig- nificant departure from the standard social capital literature that
more often fails to recognize both individual and collective agency or how social networks ultimately foster
Critical consciousness and action promote selfdetermination and compel individuals and collectives to claim power
and control over sometimes-daunting social conditions. Power and
control over life situations are key for social justice and wellness
(Prilleltensky, 2008; Prilleltensky et al., 2001). Wellness encompasses more than striving for the
absence of risks and the elimination of community problems. Rather it points to those
individual needs required to effectively engage in collective action.
Wellness and social justice illustrate how young peoples aspirations
to create better schools, safe neighbourhoods and vibrant
community life require both individual and collective development .
The relationship between social justice and wellness is an important
aspect of radical healing. The capacity to act to improve the quality
of life for oneself and others highlights the convergence of both the
personal and political dimensions of civic life. Individuals seek power
and control both at the personal level, through their own decision
making, and at the political level, by organizing their neighbourhood to influence public
policy. This is precisely the process of liberation which overcomes
internal and external sources of oppression . Liberation is both
freedom from internal and external forms of oppression and
freedom to pursue dreams, wellness, peace and a better quality of
life (Prilleltensky, 2008). This pursuit of justice and freedom, in this sense, yields
both internal capacity to resist domination, as well as builds social
capital and a greater external capacity to act to create better
community conditions. Wellness is a result of power and control over
internal and external forms of oppression (Prilleltensky et al., 2001; Watts and
Guessous, 2006). It is my contention that radical healing can facilitate wellness
on three levels. First, the individual level wellness focuses on
strengthening political and social consciousness, hope, optimism
and voice among young people. Particularly important is building
critical consciousness necessary to resist domination and create a
better way of life. Often social justice researchers, educators and practitioners focus
almost entirely on youth resistance without conceptualizing the
critical importance of creating. For young people, individual wellness
provides an internal capacity and resilience to engage in civic and
critical consciousness.
28
29
trans
populations would be targeted as suspicious and subjected to new
levels of scrutiny . Criticizing what they read as instances of
transphobia or anti-trans discrimination, many of these
organizations offer both transgender individuals and government
agencies strategies for reducing or eliminating that discrimination. While
attending to the very real dangers and damages experienced by many
trans people in relation to government policies, in many cases the
organizations approaches leave intact the broader regulation of
gender , particularly as it is mediated and enforced by the state . Moreover , they
tend to address concerns about anti-trans discrimination in ways
that are disconnected from questions of citizenship, racialization or
nationalism . Nevertheless, by illuminating the ways that new security measures interact with and
transgender activist and advocacy organizations in the U.S. quickly pointed to the ways
affect transgender-identified people and gender-nonconforming bodies, transgender activist practices and
the field of transgender studies are poised to make a significant contribution to the ways state surveillance
30
purportedly neutral administrative systems as key vectors of that violence, critical scholars and activists
are making demands that include ending immigration enforcement and abolishing policing and prisons.
These demands suggest that the technologies of gendered racialization that form the nation cannot be
reformed into fair and neutral systems. These systems are technologies of racialized-gendered population
control that cannot operate otherwisethey are built to extinguish perceived threats and drains in order to
protect and enhance the livelihood of the national population. These kinds of demands and the analysis
they represent produce a different relation to law reform strategies than the national narrative about law
reform suggests, and different than what is often assumed by legal scholars interested in the field of
31
providing affordable and low-income housing; making Oaklands Planning Commission accountable
regarding environmental impacts of development; ending gentrification; and increasing the accountability
of Oaklands city government while augmenting decision-making power for Oakland residents (Stop the
Instead, people caught up in criminal and immigration systems are portrayed as those in need of resources
and support, and the national fervor for law and order that has gripped the country for decades, emptying
public coffers and expanding imprisonment, is criticized.
[Personal narrative/performance]
We embrace radical healing, in which members of the
community come together to voice their struggles with
dominant power-this dialogic method is a step toward
rebuilding the wellness of our community through
fostering hope for the future, empowering individuals,
and establishing a love of the self that is a prerequisite to
collective resistance.
Ginwright in 10
(Shawn, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University. Peace out to revolution!
Activism among African American youth: An argument for radical healing. Published in Young Nordic
Journal of Youth Research by SAGE Publications in 2010. Accessed on SAGE Journals.)
I shift from social disorganization of youth behaviour and borrow from the
works of Janelle Dance (2002), Joyce West Stevens (2002) and Janie Ward (1995; 2000) who not only
32
call this process radical healing which builds the capacity of young
people to act upon their environment in ways that contribute to
well-being for the common good. This process contributes to
individual well-being, community health and broader social justice
where young people can act on behalf of others with hope, joy and a
sense of possibility. Radical healing occurs in everyday life when
black youth confront racial profiling in their neighbourhoods, fight
for free bus passes to get to school, demand access to bathrooms
that work in their schools and hold impromptu theatre on street
corners to inspire youth vote. These acts require a consciousness of
possibilities and are fostered through strong caring relationships
and spaces that encourage black youth to see be- yond present-day
community conditions. When black youth are conscious of the root
causes of the problems they face, they act in profound ways to resist
and transform issue they view as unjust. This requires that we
conceptualize oppression as a form of social and collective trauma.
This view of oppression allows us to identify and name the cultural,
social and spiritual consequences of trauma for oppressed communities. Trauma conveys the idea that oppression and injustice
inflict harm. Effectively responding to oppression, therefore, requires a
process that restores individuals and communities to a state of wellbeing. Radical healing points to the process of building hope,
optimism and vision to create justice in the midst of oppression .
Healing from the trauma of oppression such as poverty, racism,
sexism homophobia and class exploitation is an important political
act. Without a critical understanding of how the various structures of
domination operate in our daily lives, we cannot begin to develop
meaningful forms of personal and collective resistance. Daily
trauma, hopelessness and nihilism prevent us from participating in
organized collective struggle aimed at ending domination and
transforming society (Hooks, 1993: 15). Healing occurs when we reconcile
painful experiences resulting from oppression through testimony
and naming what may seem to be personal misfortune as systemic
oppression . Understanding the personal and political dimensions of
daily life, however, requires a critical consciousness, a way of
understanding the social world through political resistance and
freedom. This notion of resistance occurs in communities where the
capacity to confront racism and other forms of dom- ination teach
youth what they need to know about the world and how to change
things in it (Ward, 2000). Janie Victoria Ward suggests that these communities are
intimate spaces where young people cultivate resistance against
beliefs, attitudes, and practices that can erode a black childs selfconfidence and impair her positive identity development ( Ward, 2000:
51). The power to speak about painful experiences related to racism,
sexism and poverty facilitates healing be- cause the act of testifying
exposes the raw truth about suffering and releases the hidden pain
33
organizations can play an important role in healing and respond- ing to neighbourhood and community
problems (Ginwright, 2009). Often, these organizations provide opportunities for urban youth to connect
with peers, adults and experiences that address pressing social and community problems. Robert Sampson
(2001: 95) argues that social capital for poor communities must be more understood as closely linked to
collective efficacy and calls for the linkage of mutual trust and the shared willingness to intervene for the
common good. Sampson et al. (1999: 635) argue that collective efficacy for children is produced by the
shared beliefs and a collectivity in its conjoint cap- ability for action. The notion of collective efficacy
emphasizes residents sense of active engagement. This perspective allows for defining the purpose of
social relationships through actions promoting justice within neighbourhoods, churches and youth
programmes in low-income urban communities, all of which serve as vital sources for the understanding of
civic life for African American youth and their communities. In many ways,
civic organizations
34
are pathways for youth to engage in healing or what Paulo Freire (1993) calls
praxis critical reflection and action. Often, community-based
organizations facilitate the healing process because they foster
important relationships and develop critical consciousness
necessary for activism. Similar to Freires conceptualization of critical consciousness, I use
the term to convey how an awareness of the systematic forms of oppression
builds the capacity for self-determination to take action to address
social and community problems. Critical consciousness allows youth
to see and act dif- ferently in the world as agents rather than
victims. This notion marks a sig- nificant departure from the standard social capital literature that
more often fails to recognize both individual and collective agency or how social networks ultimately foster
Critical consciousness and action promote selfdetermination and compel individuals and collectives to claim power
and control over sometimes-daunting social conditions. Power and
control over life situations are key for social justice and wellness
(Prilleltensky, 2008; Prilleltensky et al., 2001). Wellness encompasses more than striving for the
absence of risks and the elimination of community problems. Rather it points to those
individual needs required to effectively engage in collective action.
Wellness and social justice illustrate how young peoples aspirations
to create better schools, safe neighbourhoods and vibrant
community life require both individual and collective development .
The relationship between social justice and wellness is an important
aspect of radical healing. The capacity to act to improve the quality
of life for oneself and others highlights the convergence of both the
personal and political dimensions of civic life. Individuals seek power
and control both at the personal level, through their own decision
making, and at the political level, by organizing their neighbourhood to influence public
policy. This is precisely the process of liberation which overcomes
internal and external sources of oppression . Liberation is both
freedom from internal and external forms of oppression and
freedom to pursue dreams, wellness, peace and a better quality of
life (Prilleltensky, 2008). This pursuit of justice and freedom, in this sense, yields
both internal capacity to resist domination, as well as builds social
capital and a greater external capacity to act to create better
community conditions. Wellness is a result of power and control over
internal and external forms of oppression (Prilleltensky et al., 2001; Watts and
Guessous, 2006). It is my contention that radical healing can facilitate wellness
on three levels. First, the individual level wellness focuses on
strengthening political and social consciousness, hope, optimism
and voice among young people. Particularly important is building
critical consciousness necessary to resist domination and create a
better way of life. Often social justice researchers, educators and practitioners focus
almost entirely on youth resistance without conceptualizing the
critical importance of creating. For young people, individual wellness
provides an internal capacity and resilience to engage in civic and
social justice efforts. Second, community-level wellness focuses on
collective power and con- trol over local public policy. As young
critical consciousness.
35
people heal, they can also form commu- nities where a collective
consciousness drives people to act to achieve social justice.
Community wellness involves community organizing , planning a neighbourhood block party or attending a public hearing about a school closure. These examples of
community wellness signal trust, relationships, networks and
optimism about the capacity for social change. Third, social wellness
is where young people engage in social movements and other forms
of collective action. Robust and healthy democratic life requires
debate, contestation and participation, all of which signal social
well-being.
36
traditional family as a private haven from a public world, family is seen as being held together through primary emotional
traditional family ideal is thought to be, African-American families are not. Two elements of the traditional family ideal are
37
become less feminine, because they work outside the home, work
for pay and thus compete with men, and their work takes them away
from their children. Framed through this prism of an imagined traditional family ideal, U.S. Black
womens experiences and those of other women of color are
typically deemed deficient (Higginbotham 1983; Glenn 1985; Mullings 1997). Rather than trying to
explain why Black womens work and family patterns deviate from the seeming normality of the traditional family ideal, a
more fruitful approach lies in challenging the very constructs of
work and family themselves (Collins 1998b). Understandings of work, like understandings of family,
vary greatly depending on who controls the definitions. In the following discussion of the distinction between work and
measures of self, May Madison, a participant in John Gwaltneys study of inner-city African-Americans, alludes to the
difference between work as an instrumental activity and work as something for self: One very important difference
between white people and black people is that white people think you are your work. . . . Now, a black person has more
sense than that because he knows that what I am doing doesnt have anything to do with what I want to do or what I do
when I am doing for myself. Now, black people think that my work is just what I have to do to get what I want. (Gwaltney
1980, 174) Ms. Madisons perspective criticizes definitions of work that grant White men more status and human worth
work is a contested
construct and that evaluating individual worth by the type of work
performed is a questionable practice in systems based on race and
gender inequality. Work might be better conceptualized by
examining the range of work that African-American women actually
perform.Work as alienated labor can be economically exploitative,
physically demanding, and intellectually deadening the type of work long
associated with Black womens status as mule. Alienated labor can be paidthe case of Black
because they are employed in better-paid occupations. She recognizes that
women in domestic service, those Black women working as dishwashers, dry-cleaning assistants, cooks, and health-care
or it can be
unpaid, as with the seemingly never-ending chores of many Black grandmothers and Black single mothers. But work
assistants, as well as some professional Black women engaged in corporate mammy work;
can also be empowering and creative, even if it is physically challenging and appears to be demeaning.
Exploitative wages that Black women were allowed to keep and use
for their own benefit or labor done out of love for the members of
ones family can represent such work. Again, this type of work can be either paid or unpaid.
What is the connection between U.S. Black womens work both in the labor market and in African-American family
networks? Addressing this question for four key historical periods in Black political economy uses this broader
understanding of Black womens work to further Black feminist analyses of U.S. Black womens oppression.
politics of belonging (Antonsich, 2010; Yuval-Davis, 2006, 2011) of people and groups with
similar senses of belonging. It is necessary first to describe the established
social sci-ence definitions of belonging and move on to the poli-tics
thereafter . Ethnicity and citizenship, both concepts operational-ized by the abovementioned
Research Network and used as sub-categories of belonging (cf., Albiez, Castro, Jssen, Youkhana, 2011),
are well known in various dis-ciplines and have long been discussed in social sciences and history (for
ethnicity cf., Anderson, 1983; Barth, 1969; Elwert, 1989; Gabbert, 2006; Pedone, 2003; and for citizenship,
Conrad & Kocka, 2001; Isin & Turner, 2002; Cachn Rodrguez, 2009), but belonging is still a rather new
theoretical term.
39
humanity, slavery provided no social context for issues of privatized motherhood as a stay-at-home occupation. Instead,
communal child-care arrangements substituted for individualized maternal carea few women were responsible for caring
for all children too young to work, and women as a group felt accountable for one anothers children (D. White 1985).
Motherhood
and racism were symbolically intertwined, with controlling the
sexuality and fertility of both African-American and White women
essential in reproducing racialized notions of American womanhood
White mothers. Any children born of such liaisons must be seen as being the product of rape.
(King 1973). Second, motherhood as an institution occupies a special place in transmitting values to children about their
their children to trust their own self-definitions and value themselves, they offered a powerful tool for resisting oppression.
40
segments of the U.S. population by economically exploiting others. As Black feminist intellectual Frances Ellen Watkins
Harper argued, How can we pamper our appetites upon luxuries drawn from reluctant fingers. Oh, could slavery exist
long if it did not sit on a commercial throne? (Sterling 1984, 160). Under such a system in which the control of property is
Slaveowners
controlled Black womens labor and commodified Black womens
bodies as units of capital. Moreover, as mothers, Black womens
fertility produced the children who increased their owners property
and labor force (Davis 1981; Burnham 1987).
fundamental, enslaved African women were valuable commodities (Williams 1991).
cleaning, nursing, and child care have been routinized and decentralized in an array of fastfood restaurants, cleaning
services, day-care centers, and service establishments. Black women perform similar work, but in different settings.
The location may have changed, but the work has not. Moreover, the
treatment of Black women resembles the interpersonal relations of
domination reminiscent of domestic work. Mabel Lincoln, an inner-city resident, describes
how the world looks to her as a working woman: If you are a woman slinging somebody
elses hash and busting somebody elses suds or doing whatsoever
you might do to keep yourself from being a tramp or a willing slave,
you will be called out of your name and asked out of your clothes. In
this world most people will take whatever they think you can give. It
dont matter whether they want it or not, whether they need it or
not, or how wrong it is for them to ask for it. (Gwaltney 1980, 68) Many Black
women turn to the informal labor market and to government
transfer payments to avoid being called out of their names and
asked out of their clothes. Many Black women over age 16 are not
41
the
alarming trend is the persistent poverty of African- American women
and children living in such households (Dickerson 1995a). The increase in
unmarried Black adolescent parents is only one indication of the
effects that changes in the broader political economy are having on
work and family patterns not just of poor Black women but of many
other segments of the U.S. population. Rates of adolescent pregnancy are actually
numerous African-Americans raised by their mothers suggest, such families are not inherently a problem. Rather,
decreasing among young Black women. The real change has been a parallel decrease in marital rates of Black
adolescents, a decision linked directly to how Black teens perceive opportunities to support and sustain independent
households. A sizable proportion of families maintained by Black single women are created by unmarried adolescent
mothers. This decline in marital rates, a postWorld War II trend that accelerated after 1960, is part of changes in AfricanAmerican community structures overall (Wilson 1987). The communal child-care networks of the slave era, the extended
family arrangements of the rural South, and the cooperative family networks of prior eras of Black urban migration have
eroded. These shifts portend major problems for African-American women and point to a continuation of Black womens
oppression, but structured through new institutional arrangements. The effects of these changes are convincingly
demonstrated in Ladner and Gourdines (1984) replication study of Tomorrows Tomorrow, Joyce Ladners (1972) study of
Black female adolescents. The earlier investigation examined poor Black teenage girls values toward motherhood and
Black womanhood. The girls in the original study encountered the common experiences of urban poverty they became
mothers quite young, lived in substandard housing, attended inferior schools, and generally had to grow up quickly in
order to survive. But despite the harshness of their environments, the girls in the earlier sample still had high hopes and
dreams that their futures would be positive and productive (Ladner and Gourdine 1984, 24). The findings from the
replication study are quite different. Ladner and Gourdine maintain that the
assessments the
teenagers and their mothers made of the socioeconomic conditions
and their futures are harsher and bleaker than a similar population a
generation ago (p. 24). In talking with young grandmothers, all of whom looked older than they were even
though the majority were in their 30s and the youngest was age 29, Ladner and Gourdine found that all became single
parents through divorce or had never married. The strong Black grandmothers of prior generations were not in evidence.
Instead, Ladner and Gourdine found that these young grandmothers complained about their own unmet emotional and
social needs. They appeared to feel powerless in coping with the demands made by their children. They comment
frequently that their children show them no respect, do not listen to their advice, and place little value on their role as
parents (p. 23). Sociologist Elaine Bell Kaplans important (1997) study of 32 teen mothers and adult women who were
once teen mothers reports similar findings. By the 1980s, reports Kaplan, so many young Black girls were pushing
strollers around inner-city neighborhoods that they became an integral part of both the reality and the myth concerning
42
[Personal narrative/performance]
43
I shift from social disorganization of youth behaviour and borrow from the
works of Janelle Dance (2002), Joyce West Stevens (2002) and Janie Ward (1995; 2000) who not only
44
45
organizations can play an important role in healing and respond- ing to neighbourhood and community
problems (Ginwright, 2009). Often, these organizations provide opportunities for urban youth to connect
with peers, adults and experiences that address pressing social and community problems. Robert Sampson
(2001: 95) argues that social capital for poor communities must be more understood as closely linked to
collective efficacy and calls for the linkage of mutual trust and the shared willingness to intervene for the
common good. Sampson et al. (1999: 635) argue that collective efficacy for children is produced by the
shared beliefs and a collectivity in its conjoint cap- ability for action. The notion of collective efficacy
emphasizes residents sense of active engagement. This perspective allows for defining the purpose of
social relationships through actions promoting justice within neighbourhoods, churches and youth
programmes in low-income urban communities, all of which serve as vital sources for the understanding of
civic life for African American youth and their communities. In many ways,
civic organizations
are pathways for youth to engage in healing or what Paulo Freire (1993) calls
praxis critical reflection and action. Often, community-based
organizations facilitate the healing process because they foster
important relationships and develop critical consciousness
necessary for activism. Similar to Freires conceptualization of critical consciousness, I use
the term to convey how an awareness of the systematic forms of oppression
builds the capacity for self-determination to take action to address
social and community problems. Critical consciousness allows youth
to see and act dif- ferently in the world as agents rather than
victims. This notion marks a sig- nificant departure from the standard social capital literature that
more often fails to recognize both individual and collective agency or how social networks ultimately foster
Critical consciousness and action promote selfdetermination and compel individuals and collectives to claim power
and control over sometimes-daunting social conditions. Power and
control over life situations are key for social justice and wellness
(Prilleltensky, 2008; Prilleltensky et al., 2001). Wellness encompasses more than striving for the
absence of risks and the elimination of community problems. Rather it points to those
individual needs required to effectively engage in collective action.
Wellness and social justice illustrate how young peoples aspirations
critical consciousness.
46
47
individuals I interviewed
spoke of concealing their homosexuality in specific situations or with
particular individuals. This episodic pattern of concealment should not be confused, as many
of my interviewees did, with the closet. There is a huge difference between concealing from an uncle
and social activities to avoid exposure or suspicion. Almost all of the
or a client and marrying or avoiding certain occupations in order to pretend to be straight. The former
may be a source of anxiety and discomfort, but the latter potentially shapes a
whole way of life. If the concept of the closet is to be useful in understanding gay life, it should describe a
life-shaping social pattern.
48
gays have increased almost fourfold between 1991 and 1998; since the Dont ask, dont tell
policy was installed in 1994, the number of lesbians and gay men discharged from the military has risen by
almost 70 percent; while the number of pro-gay bills introduced into state legislatures increased steadily in
the mid-1990s (for example, 41 in 1995, 128 in 1997), so too has the number of anti-gay measures (64 in
have seen, Heideggers approach to the question of being begins with his own existentiell interpretation of
ordinary, concrete life. Heideggers departure from a conception of understanding based on detached
theorizing in favor of everyday social understanding would appear to make him attractive to the concerns
virtue of our being-in-the-world, and these structures are asexual (geschlechtslos) of neutral (neutral)
because they are more original than the particular biological characteristics of man or woman. But
what Heidegger does not appear to recognize is that our concrete acts
49
Your affirmation of anxiety is really messed updiscriminatory violence done on disabled bodies
culminates in anxiety-your affirmation only reifies the
exclusion of the disabled body.
Stevens in 11
(Bethany, JD, MA, Center for leadership in Disability, College of Health and Human Sciences, Georgia State
University. Politicizing Sexual Pleasure, Oppression and Disability: Recognizing and Undoing the Impacts of
Ableism on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Published by the Center for Women Policy Studies, 2011.
http://centerwomenpolicy.org/programs/waxmanfiduccia/documents/BFWF_PoliticizingSexualPleasureOppre
ssionDisability_BethanyStevens_FINAL.pdf).
reformed so that disabled people are not kept in poverty nor denied access to marriage. Our right to parent must be
Institutions and nursing homes that steal our lives away from us must
be shut down, not just because the Supreme Court decided it was a violation of the law to incarcerate us but
because we are people and deserve to be treated as such. All of these issues of discrimination
create physical, emotional and psychological harm that is
manifested in depression, hypertension, anxiety , and heart disease (Krieger, 2000). These very
real forms of violence enacted through structural and even
internalized oppressions must be understood in order to unravel
them. All of the issues addressed here speak to the need for policy and
advocacy that is driven by the voices and needs of all disabled
people and law and policy must work together with communitybased movement building in order to truly shift minds to embrace
disability in our culture. It may be useful to also think about
revolutionary ways of embracing disabled people , particularly
concerning sexuality and reproduction. Certainly all disabled people must have access to
embraced.
sexuality education, yet it is not available to those in special education. Knowledge about anatomy, learning when, why
and how to say yes and say no to sexual advances, and understanding desire and pleasure are all human rights that
everyone should have. Some of the more controversial approaches might include the use of sex surrogacy and
Much of the writing and policy internationally (e.g., Denmark, Australia and
focus on satiating male sexual needs by
sex surrogates or sex workers; I encourage thinking beyond
phallocentric understandings of sexuality. Disabled women and LGBT
and queer disabled people need to be included in these policies. The
benefits of sexual expression have been quantified and should
inform policies that recognize the need for sexual pleasure. Some of the
involvement of sex workers.
many health benefits of sexual activity, include analgesic effects, hypertension reduction, increased relaxation (Whipple,
50
[Personal narrative/performance]
We embrace radical healing, in which members of the
community come together to voice their struggles with
dominant power-this dialogic method is a step toward
rebuilding the wellness of our community through
fostering hope for the future, empowering individuals,
and establishing a love of the self that is a prerequisite to
collective resistance.
Ginwright in 10
(Shawn, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University. Peace out to revolution!
Activism among African American youth: An argument for radical healing. Published in Young Nordic
Journal of Youth Research by SAGE Publications in 2010. Accessed on SAGE Journals.)
I shift from social disorganization of youth behaviour and borrow from the
works of Janelle Dance (2002), Joyce West Stevens (2002) and Janie Ward (1995; 2000) who not only
51
and spaces that encourage black youth to see be- yond present-day
community conditions. When black youth are conscious of the root
causes of the problems they face, they act in profound ways to resist
and transform issue they view as unjust. This requires that we
conceptualize oppression as a form of social and collective trauma.
This view of oppression allows us to identify and name the cultural,
social and spiritual consequences of trauma for oppressed communities. Trauma conveys the idea that oppression and injustice
inflict harm. Effectively responding to oppression, therefore, requires a
process that restores individuals and communities to a state of wellbeing. Radical healing points to the process of building hope,
optimism and vision to create justice in the midst of oppression .
Healing from the trauma of oppression such as poverty, racism,
sexism homophobia and class exploitation is an important political
act. Without a critical understanding of how the various structures of
domination operate in our daily lives, we cannot begin to develop
meaningful forms of personal and collective resistance. Daily
trauma, hopelessness and nihilism prevent us from participating in
organized collective struggle aimed at ending domination and
transforming society (Hooks, 1993: 15). Healing occurs when we reconcile
painful experiences resulting from oppression through testimony
and naming what may seem to be personal misfortune as systemic
oppression . Understanding the personal and political dimensions of
daily life, however, requires a critical consciousness, a way of
understanding the social world through political resistance and
freedom. This notion of resistance occurs in communities where the
capacity to confront racism and other forms of dom- ination teach
youth what they need to know about the world and how to change
things in it (Ward, 2000). Janie Victoria Ward suggests that these communities are
intimate spaces where young people cultivate resistance against
beliefs, attitudes, and practices that can erode a black childs selfconfidence and impair her positive identity development ( Ward, 2000:
51). The power to speak about painful experiences related to racism,
sexism and poverty facilitates healing be- cause the act of testifying
exposes the raw truth about suffering and releases the hidden pain
that is the profound barrier to resistance. Hope and radical
imaginations are important prerequisites for activism and social
change. Together hope and imagination inspire youth to understand
that community conditions are not permanent, and that the first
step to change is by imagining new possibilities. Robin Kelly (2002) reminds us
that hope and imagination may be the most revolutionary ideas
available to us, and yet as intellectuals we have failed miserably to
grapple with these political and ana- lytical importance (pp. 1112).
Healing involves reconciling the past to change the present while
imagining a new future. The concept focuses on how hope,
imagination and care trans- form the capacity of communities to
52
organizations can play an important role in healing and respond- ing to neighbourhood and community
problems (Ginwright, 2009). Often, these organizations provide opportunities for urban youth to connect
with peers, adults and experiences that address pressing social and community problems. Robert Sampson
(2001: 95) argues that social capital for poor communities must be more understood as closely linked to
collective efficacy and calls for the linkage of mutual trust and the shared willingness to intervene for the
common good. Sampson et al. (1999: 635) argue that collective efficacy for children is produced by the
shared beliefs and a collectivity in its conjoint cap- ability for action. The notion of collective efficacy
emphasizes residents sense of active engagement. This perspective allows for defining the purpose of
social relationships through actions promoting justice within neighbourhoods, churches and youth
programmes in low-income urban communities, all of which serve as vital sources for the understanding of
civic organizations
are pathways for youth to engage in healing or what Paulo Freire (1993) calls
praxis critical reflection and action. Often, community-based
organizations facilitate the healing process because they foster
important relationships and develop critical consciousness
necessary for activism. Similar to Freires conceptualization of critical consciousness, I use
the term to convey how an awareness of the systematic forms of oppression
builds the capacity for self-determination to take action to address
social and community problems. Critical consciousness allows youth
to see and act dif- ferently in the world as agents rather than
victims. This notion marks a sig- nificant departure from the standard social capital literature that
civic life for African American youth and their communities. In many ways,
more often fails to recognize both individual and collective agency or how social networks ultimately foster
53
Critical consciousness and action promote selfdetermination and compel individuals and collectives to claim power
and control over sometimes-daunting social conditions. Power and
control over life situations are key for social justice and wellness
(Prilleltensky, 2008; Prilleltensky et al., 2001). Wellness encompasses more than striving for the
absence of risks and the elimination of community problems. Rather it points to those
individual needs required to effectively engage in collective action.
Wellness and social justice illustrate how young peoples aspirations
to create better schools, safe neighbourhoods and vibrant
community life require both individual and collective development .
The relationship between social justice and wellness is an important
aspect of radical healing. The capacity to act to improve the quality
of life for oneself and others highlights the convergence of both the
personal and political dimensions of civic life. Individuals seek power
and control both at the personal level, through their own decision
making, and at the political level, by organizing their neighbourhood to influence public
policy. This is precisely the process of liberation which overcomes
internal and external sources of oppression . Liberation is both
freedom from internal and external forms of oppression and
freedom to pursue dreams, wellness, peace and a better quality of
life (Prilleltensky, 2008). This pursuit of justice and freedom, in this sense, yields
both internal capacity to resist domination, as well as builds social
capital and a greater external capacity to act to create better
community conditions. Wellness is a result of power and control over
internal and external forms of oppression (Prilleltensky et al., 2001; Watts and
Guessous, 2006). It is my contention that radical healing can facilitate wellness
on three levels. First, the individual level wellness focuses on
strengthening political and social consciousness, hope, optimism
and voice among young people. Particularly important is building
critical consciousness necessary to resist domination and create a
better way of life. Often social justice researchers, educators and practitioners focus
almost entirely on youth resistance without conceptualizing the
critical importance of creating. For young people, individual wellness
provides an internal capacity and resilience to engage in civic and
social justice efforts. Second, community-level wellness focuses on
collective power and con- trol over local public policy. As young
people heal, they can also form commu- nities where a collective
consciousness drives people to act to achieve social justice.
Community wellness involves community organizing , planning a neighbourhood block party or attending a public hearing about a school closure. These examples of
community wellness signal trust, relationships, networks and
optimism about the capacity for social change. Third, social wellness
is where young people engage in social movements and other forms
of collective action. Robust and healthy democratic life requires
debate, contestation and participation, all of which signal social
well-being.
critical consciousness.
54
55
56
Anxiety
Anxiety felt by queer people as a result of homophobia leads to
internalization of oppressive norms and self-policing.
Harbeck in 14 (Karen, faculty member in the Graduate Education programs at Northeastern
University College of Professional Studies. Coming Out of the Classroom Closet: Gay and Lesbian Students,
Teachers, and Curricula, pg. 38)
Popularized by sociologist Weingerg (1972), homophobia originally meant an irrational fear of
Becker, and Jackson-Brewer, 1987). Despite the methodological, conceptual, and political problems
associated with homophobia, the term is a useful benchmark for beginning understanding of the
attitudes and feeling sof persons about homosexuality and the sources for these beliefs (Herek, 1984;
Lehne, 1976; Sears, 1990). One of the more extensive areas of research in lesbian and gay studies is on
adult attitudes toward homosexuality or toward homosexuals. These studes often report the relationships
between attitudes and personality traits or demographic variables. Though such studies are not without
conflicting data, Herek (1984) has summarized some consistent patterns. People with negative
attitudes report less personal contact with gays and lesbians, less (if any) homosexual behavior, a more
conservative religious ideology, and more traditional attitudes about sex roles than do those with less
attitudes.
57
Embodiment
We have to discuss our social locations and understand
intersections before we can approach politicsthe alt is a
prerequisite to the aff
Youkhana 14
(Eva Youkhana, Interdisciplinary Latin America Centre, University of Bonn, A Conceptual Shift in Studies of
Belonging and the Politics of Belonging , Social Inclusion, 2015, Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 10-24,
https://www.academia.edu/13804986/A_Conceptual_Shift_in_Studies_of_Belonging_and_the_Politics_of_Belo
nging)
The rise of the virtual body has its roots in the interconnection
between new information technologies and new directions in
surveillance. Several scholars have noted that the rise of the contemporary
surveillance society corresponds with 'a new form of penology based
on "actuarial justice", which is legal abandonment of individualised
suspicion' (Norris & Armstrong 1999: 26). The result, as William Staples puts it, is that 'we
may be witnessing a historical shift from the specific punishment of
the individual deviant to the generalized surveillance of us all ' (Staples
1997: 6). This shift is part of a larger attempt to manage riska 'shift
away from strategies of social control which are reactive (only
activated when rules are violated) towards proactive strategies
which try to predict dangers one wishes to prevent' (McCahill 1998: 54). More
technologically advanced versions of this 'proactive' approach rely on 'dataveillance', or the surveillance of
data, which is much cheaper as well as more comprehensive than physical surveillance techniques (Clarke
1994). The proactive approach also relies on predictive models and simulations. As David Lyon argues,
behind this proactive approach is the assumption that gathering more and more information can lead to
complete knowledge and thus more effective prediction (Lyon 2001)a claim to which I will return later in
this article.
59
the data gleaned from the body has increasingly been privileged over the
material body itself. Indeed, as N. Katherine Hayles as put it, since World War II, information has
'lost its body' (Hayles 1999). In her examination of cognitive science, philosophy, literature, information
circulated, probed, even stolen (as in the case of 'identity theft'), those actions can impact the lived
60
the rise of the virtual body may be in part because both the
'posthuman' and feminist and queer theory emerge, as Hayles reminds us, out of a critique
of the liberal humanist subject (Hayles 1999: 4). The myth of the universal
subject, dependent on the far-from-universal Western white male
experience, have tended to erase the voices, experiences, and
contributions of those who fall outside of this model. But Hayles also notes
that 'embodiment has been systematically downplayed or erased in
the cybernetic construction of the posthuman in ways that have not
occurred in other critiques of the liberal humanist subject , especially in
feminist and postcolonial theories' (4).5 At the same time as these new ways of thinking
about the human provide a critique of the liberal humanist subject, 'to the extent that the
posthuman constructs embodiment as the instantiation of thought/information, it continues the
liberal tradition rather than disrupts it' (5). This liberal tradition has, as
she suggests, a long history of 'an emphasis on cognition' over
embodiment (5). Contemporary feminist theory's apparent blindness
to the risks of informatisation are not only due to the critique of the liberal humanist
it appears, at least on the surface, to share with the 'posthuman', but also due to feminist
theory's complex and sometimes fraught relationship with
embodiment more generally. Some feminists, particularly in the late 1960s and 70s, embraced a
concept of 'woman' dependent upon a perceived biological essence, and have celebrated the female body
as essential giver of life; but many strands of theoretical feminism have questioned those seemingly
'essential' links between body, 'sex', and 'gender'. Poststructuralist feminism in particular, inspired by
writers such as Monique Wittig and perhaps best exemplified in the works of Judith Butler, has been
concerned with the ways in which discourse6 not only affects women's rolesi.e., 'gender'but actually
shapes the physical body and 'sex' itself.7 In Butler's theory, indebted to a range of philosophical traditions
including Foucault's conception of gender as constituted by the circulation of power and knowledge
'gender performativity', the notion that gender is a 'stylized repetition of acts' (Butler 1990: 140). The
popular understanding of her work has been that one can change one's gender performance and thereby
challenge the entire gender system at will, a misconception she has had to correct in subsequent texts.8
Butler, like Foucault, does not suggest that subjects can control the discourse that forms them quite so
directly; we operate as gendered subjects within the gendered system, and so deliberate attempts at
parody (as in, for instance, a staged drag queen performance) tend simply to reinforce our understanding
of 'proper' gender. But Gender Trouble does provide a possibility for change, though not a change effected
61
Foucault
Foucaltian understandings of surveillance dont account
for changes in surveillance practices
Heir 03
Sean P. Heir, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria British
Columbia Canada Probing the Surveillant Assemblage: on the dialectics of
surveillance practices as processes of social control. Published 2003
Accessed 7/6/15 - JDD
contemporary literature concerned with surveillance has
demonstrated a tendency to gravitate towards the metaphoric imagery expatiated in
George Orwells prescient vision of Oceania and, more commonly, Michel Foucaults abstraction of
the panoptic. For Orwell, the future promised state totalitarianism, exemplified by the telescreen, the thought
The
police and categorically selective social monitoring practices. So went the argument, the constant visibility of Big Brother
served as a mechanism of repression oriented towards inducing and maintaining compliance and social order.
from, or data doubles on, organic hybrids, such that a protracted reliance develops on machines not only to register but
62
record otherwise discrete observations. Maintaining that we are only beginning to appreciate how surveillance is driven by
the desire to integrate component parts into wider systems, they insist that data simulations are not simply
representational by nature, but involve a more advanced form of pragmatics having to do with their instrumental efficacy
in making discriminations among divergent populations.
rhizomatic character of
contemporary surveillance has worked to transform previously
existing hierarchies of surveillance. In contrast to panoptical
conceptions of surveillance, where the few are able to visualize the
many, they maintain that the rhizomatic expansion of surveillance throughout
all sectors of society ....cumulatively highlight a fractured rhizomatic
criss-crossing of the gaze such that no major population groups
stand irrefutably above or outside the surveillant
assemblage(op.cit.:618). They attribute this partial democratization of surveillance hierarchies to the fact that
that Haggerty and Ericson deduce from their conceptualization that the
surveillance has become rhizomatic (op. cit.:617), recognizing that although surveillance monitoring remains differential in
63
Gendered Language
They use the term you guys this universalization of a
masculine subject position reinforces a system in which
men are seen as superior to women
Kleinmen 2 (Sherryl, Teacher at the Department of Sociology at the
University of North Carolina, Why Sexist Language Matters,
http://uncadvocatesformdphdwomeninscience.web.unc.edu/files/2014/03/Klei
nman_QualitativeSociology_2002.pdf, 3/20/2002//MP)
For years I've been teaching a sociology course at the University of North Carolina on gender inequality. I
cover such topics as the wage gap, the "second shift" (of housework and childcare) that heterosexual
women often do in the home, the "third shift" (women's responsibility for intimate relationships with men),
compulsory heterosexuality, the equation of women's worth with physical attractiveness, the sexualizing of
women in the media, lack of reproductive rights for women (especially poor women), sexual harassment
For example,
if women are expected to take care of housework and children, then
they cannot compete as equals with men in the workplace; if men
see women largely as sex objects and servers, then it is hard for
men to see women as serious workers outside the home; if women
are taught that it is their job to take care of relationships with men,
they may be blamed for breakups; if women are economically
dependent on men, they may stay with abusive male partners; if
women prefer intimacy with women, men may harass or violate
them. What I've left off the list is the issue that both women and
men in my classes have the most trouble understanding -- or, as I
see it, share a strong unwillingness to understand -- sexist
language. I'm not referring to such words as "bitch," "whore" and
"slut." What I focus on instead are words that students consider just
fine: male (so-called) generics. Some of these words refer to persons
occupying a position: postman, chairman, freshman, congressman,
fireman. Other words refer to the entire universe of human beings: "mankind" or "he." Then we've got
and men's violence against women. My course makes links among items on that list.
manpower, manmade lakes and "Oh, man, where did I leave my keys?" There's "manning" the tables in a
country where children learn that "all men are created equal ."
But that's because I've so often heard (and not only from
students) ... What's the big deal? Why does all this "man-ning" and
"guys-ing" deserve a place in my list of items of gender inequality
and justify taking up inches of space in the newsletter of a rape
crisis center? Because male-based generics are another indicator -and more importantly, a reinforcer -- of a system in which "man" in
the abstract and men in the flesh are privileged over women. Some say
defensive. I know.
that language merely reflects reality and so we should ignore our words and work on changing the unequal
gender arrangements that are reflected in our language. Well, yes, in part .
64
women? And why do so many women cling to "freshman," "chairman" and "you guys?" I think I know why,
and current studies, that far too many men are doing "what they want" with women. Most of us can see a
We need
to recognize that making women linguistically a subset of man/men
through terms like "mankind" and "guys" also makes women into
objects. If we, as women, aren't worthy of such true generics as "first-year," "chair" or "you all," then
link between calling women "sluts" and "whores" and men's sexual violence against women.
how can we expect to be paid a "man's wage," be respected as people rather than objects (sexual or
otherwise) on the job and at home, be treated as equals rather than servers or caretakers of others, be
considered responsible enough to make our own decisions about reproduction, define who and what we
-- like men's violence against women -- rather than on "trivial" issues like language. Well, I work on lots of
issues. But that's not the point. What I want to say (and do say, if I think they'll give me the time to
explain) is that working against sexist language is working against men's violence against women. It's one
step. If we cringe at "freshwhite" and "you whiteys" and would protest such terms with loud voices, then
why don't we work as hard at changing "freshman" and "you guys?" Don't women deserve it ?
If
women primarily exist in language as "girls" (children), "sluts" and
"guys," it does not surprise me that we still have a long list of
gendered inequalities to fix. We've got to work on every item on the list. Language is one
we can work on right now, if we're willing. It's easier to start saying "you all"
instead of "you guys" than to change the wage gap tomorrow.
Nonsexist English is a resource we have at the tip of our tongues.
Let's start tasting this freedom now.
65
(Serano 2007).
trans and gender-nonconforming people are active manifestations of conventional ways of thinking about
gender. Due to the dearth of accurate information on transgender phenomena in public circulation,
microaggressors misunderstand or misinterpret trans and gendernonconforming peoples gender identities, inva- lidating their
experiences of reality and at times conflating sexual nonnormativity
with gender nonnormativity. Microaggressors address trans people with incorrect gender
pronouns, call them by former names, inquire about their real identity, ask them to explain their gender
identity, and deny or fail to acknowledge their pronouns, name, or identity (Nadal, Skolnik, and Wong
cultural conflation of sexed anatomy and gender identity result in a rhetoric of deception, where
microaggressors cast trans people as deceivers or pretenders who hide what microaggressors
imagine are trans peoples true selves (Bettcher 2007).
of pronouns (Nadal, Rivera, and Corpus 2010). They may stare, do double takes, avoid eye contact or proximity, look away, laugh, or become silent (Nordmarken 2012, 2014; Nordmarken and Kelly, forthcoming).
They may make excuses for or apologize excessively for misgendering, drawing more attention to and
67
Giroux
Giroux is unable to theorize effective modes of
resistance. Ivory tower conceptions of political
engagement fail to manifest themselves in a
way that creates actual material change
Richardson 12 (Chris, Doctorate in communication studies, Between Scarlem and the
Ivory Tower: An Autoethnographic examination of marginality in Canadian Communication and Media
Studies, pp. 17-18, JP)
Though Girouxs writings about intellectuals performing acts of liberating pedagogy and emancipatory
politics initially appealed to me, I became frustrated and dissatisfied as I read through his books. His titles
are powerful and provocative: Education Under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Debate over
Schooling (1985), Stealing Innocence: Corporate Cultures War on Children (2001), The University in
writes in The Abandoned Generation: Democracy Beyond the Culture of Fear (2003), if emancipatory
politics is to be equal to neoliberal capitalism, educators need to theorize politics not as a science or a set
of objective conditions, but as a point of departure in specific and concrete situations (Giroux 2003, 65). I
was struck by how the more recent quotation sounds quite similar to the passage from 1981. While it is not
my intention to downplay
Girouxs
and yet so repetitive. I do not dispute his premise that, at risk of oversimplifying his arguments,
the public needs to critically debate and participate in emancipatory politics without interference from
68
tenure and hiring committees. It is interesting how Giroux evokes riskiness by speaking of fugitive
cultures (1996), living dangerously (1996), and abandoned generations (2003). These phrases seem
Giroux has placed himself in jeopardy by writing about disenfranchised groups; yet, in
doing so, he gains from what Foucault (1990) calls the speakers benefit (6). Foucault
to imply that
explains the speakers benefit by examining the way scholars have written about sexual oppression: 00
repressed or that repression itself is a ruse; he instead asks why do we say, with so much passion and so
much resentment against our most recent past, against our present, and against ourselves, that we are
69
High Theory
High theorys discourses of liberation marginalize
members of underrepresented communities by prioritizing
the voices of scholars over any representation of
individual strugglesscholars should assist, not
dominate.
Richardson 12 (Chris Richardson has a doctorate in communication
studies. BETWEEN SCARLEM AND THE IVORY TOWER:AN
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC EXAMINATION OF MARGINALITY IN CANADIAN
COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES published 2012, pp. 17-18. /\Burke/\)
When I first found critical theory and cultural studies and attempted
to bring these ideas back to Scarborough, I could not understand why
family and friends were not interested in hearing about them . I see
now that I was not necessarily liberating anyone by talking about
theories of emancipatory politics and false consciousness. If
anything, I was perpetuating the clich of the academic telling
marginalized groups how and why they are marginalized through
convoluted languageone of the reasons such groups tend not to
like academics. I realized that my neighbourhood was not condemned to
silence; it was condemned to speak about itself, to justify its
existence, to stay on the outside of the panopticon so to speak .
Baudrillard (1994) argues that such subject-resistance is today unilaterally valorized and viewed as
positivejust
70
Islamophobia
The state justifies Islamophobic violence based on the premise that
surveillance and discrimination of Muslim people is for the greater
public good-the perceived injustices of Islam are used to justify
exclusions of Muslims from the public realm
Bhattacharyya in 08 (Gargi, Professor of Law and Social Sciences at the University of East
London. Dangerous Brown Men and the War on Terror. Published by the Centre for Ethinicity and Racism
Studies, 2008).
The various disavowals of racism that occur in the name of the War on Terror
and the related activity of reclaiming state racism as a legitimate response to
dangerous differences of belief and culture could be seen as embodying a
wider backlash against the analytic status of race and racism as structuring
forces in society. Instead, the rhetoric of us and them portrays this new battle of
ideas as rooted in differences of values, beliefs and ways of life. If the other is
hiding their adherence to a demonic, violent and destructive culture and set
of beliefs, it is not racist to use the surveillance and categorisation techniques
of a modern state to limit the threat that this poses. We are back to
deciphering bodies, but now in order to discern adherence to these
dangerous beliefs. Religious identity occupies a different status to ideas of
race, and there have been claims from different quarters that religion is the
new race and that ideas of social justice should be reconsidered in the light of
this shift (Modood, 1992; Gottschalk, 2007). For those wishing to defend and represent religious
minorities, this claim is framed to extend demands for social equality to include extended rights to
the same
claim is presented to argue that racism has been eliminated precisely
because it was recognised to be an unnecessary and irrational social evil but
that antagonism towards the practices and values of religious minorities is
not and cannot be racism because religion is an issue of belief and free-will.
Seeking to accommodate the beliefs and practices of minorities in the name
of equality is a bad thing for society, because some beliefs and practices
make bad things happen and are bad for society. The continual return to the
alleged status of women in Islam and/or in the conception of those professing
various strands of political Islam could be seen to represent one process of
counter-narrative. In implicit, and sometimes explicit, response to the
allegation that Muslim minorities are marginalised and face social exclusion in
western societies, a counter-claim is made that alleges that these groups
cannot expect equality when their own cultural practices deny equality to
women. This claim suggests that the social ills faced by Muslim communities
are not discrimination on the grounds of religion or race, but are an outcome
of other groups proper disapproval of Muslim accounts of the status of
women. As such beliefs are a cultural choice, unlike the naturalised and absolute difference
religious freedom and recognition and a linking of social and cultural rights. For others,
of physicalised conceptions of race, Muslims should change their unpleasant ways in order to gain social
71
allegiance between Muslims that over-rides the claim of any national law or
allegiance and therefore Muslims must be scrutinised and persecuted if
national security is to be defended. At the heart of each narrative is the
assertion that unequal treatment is not only justifiable, it is
necessary for the greater good. In the process, racism is resurrected as a
respectable and also necessary practice, but now on the grounds of the
dangers of insurmountable cultural difference. The demonisation of Muslims
serves as a model through which to rework racial difference as a matter of
threatening cultural difference and the need to preserve social goods such as
womens rights, sexual freedom and personal liberty . Thus, while oldfashioned physicalised racism is derided, yet another new cultural racism emerges to
explain the misfortunes of minority communities in the labour market,
criminal justice and education systems and at the hands of
their neighbours as an outcome of their own illiberal, repressive and
discriminatory culture which makes it impossible for them to integrate with
the more progressive majority culture and leads to their self-segregation .
Muslims are the most identified focus of such narratives, but similar allegations transfer easily to other
72
Legal Reform
The valorization of legal personhood sans surveillance
operates along a pendulum of inclusion and exclusion
the legal order only offers temporary escape from
surveillance, all the while maintaining a permanent war
against non-normative bodies and behaviors
Puar 7 (Jasbir Puar, Associate Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University, Terrorist
Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times Duke University Press, November 2007)
Reflecting upon contemporary debates about the United States as empire, Amy Kaplan notes, The
73
way of life and those privileged to live it. Giorgio Agamben, noting that biopolitics
continually seeks to redefine the boundaries between life and death, writes, The state of
exception is neither external nor internal to the juridical order, and
the problem of defining it concerns precisely a threshold, or a zone of
indifference, where inside and outside do not exclude each other but
rather blur with each other. 22 The temporality of exception is one
that seeks to conceal itself ; the frenzied mode of emergency is an
alibi for the quiet certitude of a slowly normativized working
paradigm of liberal democratic government, an alibi necessary to
disavow its linkages to totalitarian governments. The state of
exception thus works to hide or even deny itself in order to further its
expanse, its presence and efficacy, surfacing only momentarily and
with enough gumption to further legitimize the occupation of more
terrain. Agamben likens the externally internal space of the state of
exception to a Mbius strip: at the moment it is cast outside it
becomes the inside. In the state of exception, the exception insidiously
becomes the rule, and the exceptional is normalized as a regulatory
ideal or frame; the exceptional is the excellence that exceeds the
parameters of proper subjecthood and, by doing so, redefines these
parameters to then normativize and render invisible (yet transparent)
its own excellence or singularity.
Sexual exceptionalism also works by glossing over its own policing of
the boundaries of acceptable gender, racial, and class formations. That
is, homosexual sexual exceptionalism does not necessarily contradict
or un dermine heterosexual sexual exceptionalism; in actuality it may
support forms of heteronormativity and the class, racial, and
citizenship privileges they require. The historical and contemporaneous
production of an gent normativity, hornonormativity, ties the recognition of
homosexual subjects, both legally and representationally, to the
national and trans national political agendas of U.S. imperialism.
Homonormativity can be read as a formation complicit with and
invited into the biopolitical valorization of life in its inhabitation and
reproduction of heteronormative norms. One prime mechanism of
sexual exceptionalism is mobilized by discourses of sexual
repression a contemporary version of Foucaults re pressive hypothesisthat are
generative of a bio- and geopolitical global mapping of sexual
cultural norms. Unraveling discourses of U.S. sexual exceptionalism
is vital to critiques of U.S. practices of empire (most of which only intermittently
take up questions of gender and rarely sexuality) and to the expansion of queerness
beyond narrowly conceptualized frames that foreground sexual
identity and sexual acts.
Given that our contemporary political climate of U.S. nationalism relies so heavily on homophobic
demonization of sexual others, the argument that homosexuality is included within and contributes
positively to the optimi zation of life is perhaps a seemingly counterintuitive stance. Nonetheless, it is
74
imperative that we continue to read the racial, gender, class, and national dimensions of these vilifying
notes ironically that to some extent the United States lags behind most European countries, as well as
Canada, Brazil, Colombia, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africaa backwardness that the United
States often ascribes to others in comparison to itself.24 We can also say that the United States has
investments in being exceptionally beteronormative even as it claims to be exceptionally tolerant of
(homosexual) difference. But Adamss reliance on lag reinscribes a troubling teleology of modernity that,
despite situating exceptionalism as a narrative that masks or fuzzes over regional differences, impels like-
efforts to
exceptional, efforts that have
dominated various debates in history, Ameri can studies, and political science, among other fields, have
focused on comparative empirical studies that do little to challenge
or even question this telos. 25 With the range of discussion on American exceptionalism n
mind, my intent is not to determine whether the United States is
indeed exceptionalexceptionally good or ahead, or exceptionally
behind or different but to illustrate the modes through which such
claims to exceptionalism are loaded with unexamined discourses
about race, sexuality, gender, and class. Furthermore, exceptionalisms
rely on the erasure of these very modalities in order to function;
these elisions are , in effect, the ammunition with which the exception,
necessary to guard the properties of life, becomes the norm , and the
minded countries in a unilateral itinerary rather than multidirec tional flows. Some
indeed
75
76
Omission
Failure to use an intersectional lens is what allows the
state to exploit the nature of surveillance to construct
identities
Smith et al 13 (Smith, G.J.D., M. San Roque, H. Westcott and P. Marks. 2013. Editorial:
Surveillance Texts and Textualism: Truthtelling and Trustmaking in an Uncertain World. Surveillance &
Society 11(3): 215-221. http://www.surveillance-and-society.org | ISSN: 1477-7487 The author(s), 2013 |
Licensed to the Surveillance Studies Network under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No
Derivatives license)
77
The State
Reformist logic enhances state power which justifies
its atrocities as well as legitimizes the creation of a
singular identity. The impact is dehumanization and
marginalization of those who dont fit into the states
framework
Queering the Singularity, 12
(A grassroots organizer who identifies as genderqueer and transgender, Queering the Singularity, Here is to Dancing and
Derailing, https://queersingularity.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/heres-to-dancing-and-derailing///NMM)
The anarchist critique identifies bureaucratic coercion and the mentality of obedience as a key
78
singular ideal. This project has yet to conclude the states monopoly on violence
remains incomplete but the goal is definitional. Anyone who materially defies the dominance of
the U.S. government faces a prompt
79
Surveillance Studies
Contemporary surveillance studies ignore issues of gender-the aff
continues this by not analyzing gender-this allows surveillance
practices to make people fit into a binary conception of gender and
reinforce heteronormativity.
Koskela in 12 (Hille, Professor at the University of Turku. You Shouldnt be Wearing that Body:
The problematic of surveillance and gender. Published in the Routledge Hankbook of Surveillance Studies,
edited by Kristie Ball, Kevin Haggerty, and David Lyon, pgs. 49-50. Published by Routledge, 2012)
Gender has not been the most popular research topic among
surveillance scholars. Considering how well established the field of gender studies is, and how
strongly surveillance studies has been embracing the study of concrete everyday issues, it is
surprising that these fields have not been better integrated . The
histories of (controlling) gender/sexualities and of surveillance are
very much connected, and there is much to understand and discover about this topic.
Gender is embedded in a complex range of relations where power
and repression are associated with the exercise of surveillance. Long
before the development of contemporary surveillance technologies,
gender and sexuality were intensely controlled by social and moral
norms, which entailed their own forms of interpersonal monitoring ,
and in many places of the world this is still the case. Historically, women and sexual
minorities have pioneers in challenging and refusing to submit to
such control. Today, surveillance helps to reinforce sexual norms by
creating pressures for self-regulation. The operation of surveillance
is also full of male assumptions and assorted gendered dynamics.
Focusing on gender relations negotiated under surveillance also
helps us come to terms with other forms of power and exclusion. Early
feminist scholars tended to label all sorts of things as masculine-technology, academic understanding,
and reason-which were counterpoised to the more feminine domains of emotion and culture. In such
accounts, gender was-as we now realize-confused with sex, the biological
essence of each individual being either a woman or a man. Women were claimed to be different just by
sex as a basis for social difference was questioned and replaced by a spectrum of multiple differently
80
gender. Biological sex, gender, and the body are connected , but not in a
simple way. Rather, there is a complex range of female, male, lesbian, gay,
queer, transgendered, transsexual and androgyny identities. Additionally,
gender and sexuality are constantly negotiated. Gender is not a
stable quality, but is always also performed (McGrath, 2004). This performativity, however, does
not mean that gender can be escaped. Whether female, male, transgender, queer or other, the body
is what is visible to others and that makes a difference in how
people perceive and approach one another. This makes for a complex
gendered politics of looking and being looked at. At the same time,
formal surveillance systems still require people to fit into a twogendered world. Regardless of our identities, we are treated as
female or male . Thus far, only artists circulate forms asking people to tick male/female/other. This
accentuates the issue of information, as material bodies are increasingly accompanied by what has been
this volume). These digital shadows are connected in various ways to actual persons, but sometimes take
example as welfare or health care clients, paying customers or travelers (Monahan 2009). Occasionally,
such data doubles can take over ones material body, as in the case where a person ends up on a black
list of international travel restrictions without knowing the reason why. Data enables, but also restricts, and
81
Satiable Demands
Government reform is never anything more than a
symbolic victory that is a guise for violence
Spade 13
Dean Spade, Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law,
transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people activist
Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform - http://www.deanspade.net/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/signs-proofs.pdf - Published 2/23/23 - Accessed
7/9/15 - JDD
Social movements using critical intersectional tools are making demands that are often difficult for legal
scholars to comprehend because of the ways that they throw US law and the nation-state form into crisis.
purportedly neutral administrative systems as key vectors of that violence, critical scholars and activists
are making demands that include ending immigration enforcement and abolishing policing and prisons.
These demands suggest that the technologies of gendered racialization that form the nation cannot be
reformed into fair and neutral systems. These systems are technologies of racialized-gendered population
control that cannot operate otherwisethey are built to extinguish perceived threats and drains in order to
protect and enhance the livelihood of the national population. These kinds of demands and the analysis
they represent produce a different relation to law reform strategies than the national narrative about law
reform suggests, and different than what is often assumed by legal scholars interested in the field of
82
an acceleration in the expansion of surveillance infrastructures has not been the tearing away of
83
Settler Colonialism
We are speaking on stolen land-queer theorys fails to conceptualize
heteropatriarchy in relation to settler colonialism and foonotes Native demandsthat ensures the erasure of the Natives genocide and its assimilation under the
settler colonial nation state.
Driskill 10 (Qwo-Li, professor at college of liberal arts,Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques:
Building Alliances between Native and Queer Studies, Duke University Press, accessed:
7/9/15)
However, the fact that Native people have largely been left out of these critiques points to major ruptures
in queer theories. Not only are Native people and Native resistance movements rarely a subject of
analysis, the specific political and historical realities of Native people seem outside queer studies
purview. This means that at best analyses of race, nation, diaspora, history, sexuality, and gender
are deeply lacking and that at worst these critiques risk colluding with master narratives both
inside and outside the academy that, as Powell describes, un-see Native people: Material Indian bodies
are simply not seen so that the mutilations, rapes, and murders that characterized . . . first-wave
genocide also simply are not seen.24 When Native people are mentioned in the new queer studies, it is
usually only in passing, and often within lists of other people of color.25 Even while Gopinath locates her notion
of the impossible in Jos Rabasas interpretations of Zapatista resistance, the connections between Zapatista decolonial
movements and similar movements in the United States and Canada remain un-said and un-seen.26
While it may be true that through the lens of queer diaspora, various writers and visual artist s such as Nice
Rodriguez, Ginu Kamani, Audre Lorde, R. Zamora Linmark, Richard Fung, and Achy Obejas . . . can now be deciphered and read
simultaneously into multiple queer and national genealogies, a
many of us are indeed diasporic, notions of diaspora must be deeply questioned and
revised in order to be inclusive of our experiences. Queer of color critique and queer diasporic critique
have rightly looked at the misogyny and queerphobia too often present in nationalist struggles and
have offered queerness as a tool that deconstructs and reformulates concepts of nation. Gopinath argues: A
consideration of queerness . . . becomes a way to challenge nationalist ideologies by restoring the impure, inauthentic,
nonreproductive potential of the notion of diaspora. Indeed, the
84
struggles is not an assimilationist move but instead a move against the colonial powers that have
attempted to dissolve or restrain Native sovereignties. As I discuss below, Two-Spirit critiques can
simultaneously push queer studies to a more complex analysis of nation while also incorporating the
critiques of heteropatriarchal nationalisms that queer studies offers in order to fight against
heterosexism, homophobia, and rigid gender binaries in decolonial theories and activism.
85
Welfare
Welfare surveillance is a result, not a cause of
discrimination
Heir 03
Sean P. Heir, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria British
Columbia Canada Probing the Surveillant Assemblage: on the dialectics of
surveillance practices as processes of social control. Published 2003
Accessed 7/9/15 - JDD
A high-tech surveillance system capable of monitoring all legitimate forms of welfare recipients income
for risks of infraction or abuse, CRIS-E brings together state-wide databases to manage and evaluate,
surveil and administer welfare allowances. What is so alarming about the system is not the states
stronghold over poor single mothers, but the disciplinary effects of CRIS-E. As Gilliom relates through
interview data, although single mothers accessing welfare fully realize that the state does not provide
enough in allowances to meet basic necessities, many refrain from taking side jobs for fear of termination
from welfare or, equally as feared, the inspection. What the latter involves is state agents interrogating
recipients to ascertain their deservingness or worthiness under conditions of secrecy as to the purpose
of the inspection. Indeed, Gilliom is correct to observe that it is hard to image a more compelling example
of the politics of vision and how surveillance operates as a form of domination over the body, contributing
to the exasperation rather than leveling of hierarchies of surveillance. The implementation of CRIS-E draws
attention to important panoptic developments in the regulation of poor single mothers, but
Gillioms
the
government has been afforded popular legitimacy to significantly
reduce allowances for poor single mothers whilst at the same time
enhancing a variety of surveillance mechanisms which govern their
lives. When the conservative government under the leadership of former Premier Mike Harris ascended
significant risk to the welfare system, the state and ultimately the moral underpinnings of society,
to power in Ontario in 1995, it was on a New Right policy platform combining a neo-liberal emphasis on
reducing the size and role of government with a neo-conservative focus oriented towards getting tough
with moral deviants. One of the central discursive objects of contention in the Harris Tories campaign
strategy was the welfare recipient. Riding on a populist platform reflected in the nations mainstream
press, the conservatives agenda included a strong codified discourse focusing on welfare dependency,
responsibilization and levels of benefits that we cant afford (Knight 1998:109). At the start of their
campaign, the conservatives were significantly behind the liberals in the polls, as the liberals enjoyed over
50% support with the conservatives at 25%. Voicing a consistent and clear commitment to cutting
government spending, introducing mandatory workfare and cutting welfare costs, as well as taking a hard
line with juvenile offenders and rescinding useless employment equity/race relations policies, the
conservatives media strategies memorably involved Mike Harris standing in front of a mock road sign
reading Welfare, Ontario, to the point that by the fourth week of the campaign the liberals lead was
vanishing (ibid). Particularly noteworthy about the conservatives election platform was not simply that
they assigned a conflated sense of blame for high levels of government spending to moral deviants,
welfare recipients and criminals, but an additional level of failure was attributed to the structure of
government itself. This strategy effectively served to set up two discursive antagonisms: first it situated
honest citizens against those on the social and moral margins, individualizing blame and social
responsibility; and second, it problematized the role of the state in social welfare, identifying responsible
government as a problem in and of itself. As Mathiesen maintains, the visual domain of synopticon vis-a-vis
the press represents a totalizing message system tailored to the requirements of modernity, functioning
to constrain popular consciousness in the interests of power and control. Inside synopticon, he laments,
....the material is purged of everything but the criminal what was originally a small segment of a human
being becomes the whole human being whereupon the material is hurled back into the open society as
stereotypes and panic-like, terrifying stories about individual cases (op. cit:231). By articulating a
generalized sense of crisis along the dual axes of the political and the transgressive, the Harris campaign
86
served to tap into populist anxieties pertaining to middle-class discontentment with state spending, public
safety and welfare abuse. Understood in the context of the wider political landscape of the early 1990s,
the conservatives ascendancy to power was set against the backdrop of rising provincial debt, severe
recession, growing unemployment and an NDP government perceived as a failure in the eyes of business
the administration of welfare, old paper documents were increasingly transferred to computer files. Over
the duration of these processes, it was discovered that several pieces of verifying documentation were
missing from welfare recipients files. Subsequently, everything from assets, documented employment
histories and relationships with ex-spouses/lovers to the sale of personal belongings some of which
transpired over a decade prior to the request for documentation were demanded. The stresses placed on
women who were faced with fewer financial resources to track down such information (to offset childcare,
travel fees and service charges), combined with barriers such as those faced by aboriginal women who
were forced to deal with The Department of Indian and Northern Development, women who had to contact
abusive ex-spouses or immigrant women forced to seek documentation in other countries.
87
traditional family ideal is thought to be, African-American families are not. Two elements of the traditional family ideal are
vary greatly depending on who controls the definitions. In the following discussion of the distinction between work and
measures of self, May Madison, a participant in John Gwaltneys study of inner-city African-Americans, alludes to the
difference between work as an instrumental activity and work as something for self: One very important difference
between white people and black people is that white people think you are your work. . . . Now, a black person has more
sense than that because he knows that what I am doing doesnt have anything to do with what I want to do or what I do
when I am doing for myself. Now, black people think that my work is just what I have to do to get what I want. (Gwaltney
1980, 174) Ms. Madisons perspective criticizes definitions of work that grant White men more status and human worth
work is a contested
construct and that evaluating individual worth by the type of work
performed is a questionable practice in systems based on race and
gender inequality. Work might be better conceptualized by
examining the range of work that African-American women actually
perform.Work as alienated labor can be economically exploitative,
physically demanding, and intellectually deadening the type of work long
associated with Black womens status as mule. Alienated labor can be paidthe case of Black
because they are employed in better-paid occupations. She recognizes that
women in domestic service, those Black women working as dishwashers, dry-cleaning assistants, cooks, and health-care
or it can be
unpaid, as with the seemingly never-ending chores of many Black grandmothers and Black single mothers. But work
assistants, as well as some professional Black women engaged in corporate mammy work;
can also be empowering and creative, even if it is physically challenging and appears to be demeaning.
Exploitative wages that Black women were allowed to keep and use
88
for their own benefit or labor done out of love for the members of
ones family can represent such work. Again, this type of work can be either paid or unpaid.
What is the connection between U.S. Black womens work both in the labor market and in African-American family
networks? Addressing this question for four key historical periods in Black political economy uses this broader
understanding of Black womens work to further Black feminist analyses of U.S. Black womens oppression.
humanity, slavery provided no social context for issues of privatized motherhood as a stay-at-home occupation. Instead,
communal child-care arrangements substituted for individualized maternal carea few women were responsible for caring
for all children too young to work, and women as a group felt accountable for one anothers children (D. White 1985).
Motherhood
and racism were symbolically intertwined, with controlling the
sexuality and fertility of both African-American and White women
essential in reproducing racialized notions of American womanhood
White mothers. Any children born of such liaisons must be seen as being the product of rape.
(King 1973). Second, motherhood as an institution occupies a special place in transmitting values to children about their
89
segments of the U.S. population by economically exploiting others. As Black feminist intellectual Frances Ellen Watkins
Harper argued, How can we pamper our appetites upon luxuries drawn from reluctant fingers. Oh, could slavery exist
long if it did not sit on a commercial throne? (Sterling 1984, 160). Under such a system in which the control of property is
Slaveowners
controlled Black womens labor and commodified Black womens
bodies as units of capital. Moreover, as mothers, Black womens
fertility produced the children who increased their owners property
and labor force (Davis 1981; Burnham 1987).
fundamental, enslaved African women were valuable commodities (Williams 1991).
cleaning, nursing, and child care have been routinized and decentralized in an array of fastfood restaurants, cleaning
services, day-care centers, and service establishments. Black women perform similar work, but in different settings.
The location may have changed, but the work has not. Moreover, the
treatment of Black women resembles the interpersonal relations of
domination reminiscent of domestic work. Mabel Lincoln, an inner-city resident, describes
how the world looks to her as a working woman: If you are a woman slinging somebody
elses hash and busting somebody elses suds or doing whatsoever
you might do to keep yourself from being a tramp or a willing slave,
you will be called out of your name and asked out of your clothes. In
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this world most people will take whatever they think you can give. It
dont matter whether they want it or not, whether they need it or
not, or how wrong it is for them to ask for it. (Gwaltney 1980, 68) Many Black
women turn to the informal labor market and to government
transfer payments to avoid being called out of their names and
asked out of their clothes. Many Black women over age 16 are not
employed, in many cases because they cannot find jobs, because
they are in school, have children to care for, are retired, or are in
poor health. A considerable proportion support themselves through
varying combinations of low-wage jobs and government transfer
payments. The employment vulnerability of working-class African-Americans in the postWorld War II political
economy, the relative employment equality of poor Black women and men, and the gender-specific patterns of
dependence on the informal economy all have substantial implications for U.S. Black women who find themselves among
the working poor. One effect has been the growth of families maintained by Black single mothers. As the testimonies of
the
alarming trend is the persistent poverty of African- American women
and children living in such households (Dickerson 1995a). The increase in
unmarried Black adolescent parents is only one indication of the
effects that changes in the broader political economy are having on
work and family patterns not just of poor Black women but of many
other segments of the U.S. population. Rates of adolescent pregnancy are actually
numerous African-Americans raised by their mothers suggest, such families are not inherently a problem. Rather,
decreasing among young Black women. The real change has been a parallel decrease in marital rates of Black
adolescents, a decision linked directly to how Black teens perceive opportunities to support and sustain independent
households. A sizable proportion of families maintained by Black single women are created by unmarried adolescent
mothers. This decline in marital rates, a postWorld War II trend that accelerated after 1960, is part of changes in AfricanAmerican community structures overall (Wilson 1987). The communal child-care networks of the slave era, the extended
family arrangements of the rural South, and the cooperative family networks of prior eras of Black urban migration have
eroded. These shifts portend major problems for African-American women and point to a continuation of Black womens
oppression, but structured through new institutional arrangements. The effects of these changes are convincingly
demonstrated in Ladner and Gourdines (1984) replication study of Tomorrows Tomorrow, Joyce Ladners (1972) study of
Black female adolescents. The earlier investigation examined poor Black teenage girls values toward motherhood and
Black womanhood. The girls in the original study encountered the common experiences of urban poverty they became
mothers quite young, lived in substandard housing, attended inferior schools, and generally had to grow up quickly in
order to survive. But despite the harshness of their environments, the girls in the earlier sample still had high hopes and
dreams that their futures would be positive and productive (Ladner and Gourdine 1984, 24). The findings from the
replication study are quite different. Ladner and Gourdine maintain that the
assessments the
teenagers and their mothers made of the socioeconomic conditions
and their futures are harsher and bleaker than a similar population a
generation ago (p. 24). In talking with young grandmothers, all of whom looked older than they were even
though the majority were in their 30s and the youngest was age 29, Ladner and Gourdine found that all became single
parents through divorce or had never married. The strong Black grandmothers of prior generations were not in evidence.
Instead, Ladner and Gourdine found that these young grandmothers complained about their own unmet emotional and
social needs. They appeared to feel powerless in coping with the demands made by their children. They comment
frequently that their children show them no respect, do not listen to their advice, and place little value on their role as
parents (p. 23). Sociologist Elaine Bell Kaplans important (1997) study of 32 teen mothers and adult women who were
once teen mothers reports similar findings. By the 1980s, reports Kaplan, so many young Black girls were pushing
strollers around inner-city neighborhoods that they became an integral part of both the reality and the myth concerning
91
92
War/Violence Inev
Subscribing to the myth of the inevitability of violence is a
discourse that robs individuals of their agency and
become complicit with the violence described
Ibish, 12
(Hussein, is a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.
journalist, Nothing is inevitable 22/05/2012,
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentary/nothing_is_inevitable2//NMM)
diagnosis of the Israeli-Palestinian syndrome but differed completely on the prognosis and the prescription. We agreed
that there was much blame to go around for the fact that peace has not yet been achieved. We both noted the historically
corrupt and frequently incompetent Palestinian leadership, the extremist mentality of Hamas and, above all, the ongoing
Israeli settlement project as key factors in the absence of peace. But that was more or less where agreement ended. In the
second part of his diagnosis, Aslan categorically asserted that Palestinian statehood was absolutely impossible because
of demographic and infrastructural changes enforced by the occupation. His prognosis was that a prolonged period of
bloodshed, "apartheid and ethnic cleansing" is totally unavoidable. Eventually, he said, international mediation would
enforce his prescription: a loose confederation" akin to the Bosnian arrangement. All
of this, he insisted,
was inevitable, with an absolute certainty worthy of Nostradamus himself. Aslan
readily agreed this was not a desirable outcome and frankly conceded the
extraordinary amount of violence that would be required to produce it. Perhaps unfairly, I thought I detected in him an
93
"secular" perspective on history and politics, in the way its most important contemporary champion, Edward Said, defined
it. It's
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95
War
Patriarchy culminates in war, genocide, environmental
degradation and extinction it is the root cause of all
other oppression we must resist every instance of it.
Kelly 1997 (Petra, Grassroots Activist and Green Party Member of the
German Parliament and Author of Several Books, in Ecofeminism: women,
culture, nature Edited by Karen J. Warren, p. 112-114)
Men's domination of women is deep and systemic, and it is accepted around the world by most men and many women as "natural," as something that somehow cannot be
changed. But norms of human behavior do change. Because the oppression of women is so deeply embedded in our societies and our psyches, it continues to be invisible,
even to those who are working to overcome other forms of injustice. Feminism is considered by many people to be one aspect of social justice, but to me it is a principle in
To rid the world of nuclear weapons and poverty, we must end racism
and sexism. As long as white males hold all of the social and economic power, women and people of color will continue to be discriminated against, and
and of itself.
system in which men have more value and more social and economic power than women is found throughout the worldEast and West, North and South.
Women suffer both from structural oppression and from individual men. Too many
movements for social justice accept the assumptions of male dominance and ignore the
oppression of women, but patriarchy pervades both our political and
our personal lives. Feminism rejects all forms of male dominance and affirms the value of women's lives and experiences. It recognizes that no
pattern of domination is necessary and seeks to liberate women and men from the structures of dominance that characterize patriarchy. Many women are beginning to
reject the existing systems and styles of male politics. Whether at Greenham Common, Comiso, Australia, Belau, protecting the Himalayan forests, or working for peace in
Eastern Europe, women have been stirred to action. Motivated to act on our own, not only as mothers and nurturers but also as leaders in a changing world, we must stand
up as women and become elected to political and economic offices throughout the world, so we can change the policies and structures from those of death to those of life.
to develop caring human qualities and become responsible for child care, housework, and all other essential support work. We will never be able to reclaim the earth if
men do not give up their privileges and share these basic tasks with women. Children are not just the responsibility of their mothers. The scientific revolution of the
seventeenth century contained in it the seeds of today's oppressive technologies. If we trace the myths and metaphors associated with the conquest of nature, we will
realize how much we are under the sway of masculine institutions and ideologies. Masculine technology and patriarchal values have prevailed in Auschwitz, Dresden,
Feminism is about alleviating women's powerlessness. Women must share half the earth and half the sky, on our own terms and with our own self-determined values.
Feminism seeks to redefine our very modes of existence and to transform nonviolently the structures of male dominance. I am not saying that women are inherently better
oppressive to women and restrictive to men, and to restore balance and harmony between women and men and between masculine and feminine values in society and
within each of us. Feminists working in the peace and ecology movements are sometimes viewed as kind, nurturing earth mothers, but that is too comfortable a
stereotype. We are not meek and we are not weak. We are angryon our own behalf, for our sisters and children who suffer, and for the entire planetand we are
determined to protect life on Earth. Green women work together with men on issues like ecology and disarmament. But we must also assert women's oppression as a
our Green brothers, but we will not be subservient to them. They must demonstrate their willingness to give up the privileges of membership in the male caste. There is
a saying: where power is, women are not. Women must be willing to be powerful. Because we bear scars from the ways men have used their power over us, women often
emulating Margaret Thatcher and others who loyally adapt themselves to male values of hierarchy, we must find our own definitions of power that reflect women's values
and women's experience. Jean Baker Miller points out how women, though closed out of male dominions of power, experience great power in the daily work of nurturing
others. 2 This is not power over others, but power with others, the kind of shared power that has to replace patriarchal power.
96
Structural Violence
Queer bodies that fall outside the heteronormative
relationships face structural violence through
institutionalized homophobia.
Price 12
97
Zeb Tortorici examined a 1604 case of sodomy accusations in Valladolid, Michoacn, Mexico, that
illuminates this shift. After the capture of two indigenous Purpecha men committing the pecado nefando
the nefarious sin of sodomy, a regional investigation resulted in sodomy charges against thirteen
indigenous and mestizo men, some of whom were relatives or in long-term relationships.22 For two
98
months, legal and religious authorities exacted confessions and implications that tried to determine the
degree of interest or culpability in the alleged acts for each accused while threatening torture or public
execution as punishments. Yet the investigation deferred its threatened outcomes to serve as a fact-finding
exercise, which newly mapped social networks along which the church and government began to chart
new routes for their authority in indigenous communities. Given that only six of the thirteen accused men
were tried for sodomy, with four of them executed, and others who evaded capture never pursued,
colonial Mexican society, so that while in 1604 four of the Purpecha men accused of sodomy were
executed for their crimes, in the eighteenth century men found guilty of sodomy were never executed for
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Gender Violence
Surveillance and questions of gender are inextricably
bound together-by not forefronting issues of violence
done on bodies seen as sexual and gendered others, the
affirmative excludes those bodies form the system and
does violence on them.
Conrad in 09
(Kathryn, Associate Professor of Kansas at the University of Kansas. Surveillance, Gender, and the Virtual
Body in the Information Age. Published in Surveillance and Society, 2009).
those who are 'out' about their genderqueer status must often 'pass'
as one of two genders in order to survivequite literallyin a twogendered world. According to the group Gender Education and Advocacy, the between 1970 and
2004, 321 murders of trans people have been tallied; and 'more than
one new anti-transgender murder has been reported in the media
every month since 1989' (GEA 2004a, c2004b). Although gathering reliable statistics for the
number of people killed because they were genderqueer is impossible, these statistics along with more
being
readably genderqueer, at least in the West, still comes with significant
risk. Information technologies, as I have suggested above, have given some gender and queer theorists
publicised cases, such as that of the murder of Brandon Teena in 1993, suggest that
people hope for liberation from the sometimes oppressive gendered discourses that accompany biological
100
are particularly politically conservative; indeed, many political conservatives are just as invested in the
(and selective) reading of Butler, would be that this contradictory data would have the effect of
destabilising the gender system. But rather than abandoning the gender system that the transsexual /
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Patriarchy
Patriarchy has damaged society since childhood:
bell hooks writes
(bell hooks is an American author, Black feminist, and social
activist,Understanding Patriarchy Lousiville Anarchist Federation Fedeartion,
Lousivilles Radical Lending Library No Borders, 2013
imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf)
Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting
the male body and spirit in our nation. Yet most men do not use the word
patriarchy in everyday life. Most men never think about patriarchywhat it means, how it is created
and sustained. Many men in our nation would not be able to spell the word or pronounce it correctly. The
word patriarchy just is not a part of their normal everyday thought or speech. Men who have heard
and know the word usually associate it with womens liberation, with feminism, and therefore dismiss it
as irrelevant to their own experiences. I have been standing at podiums talking about patriarchy for
more than thirty years. It is a word I use daily, and men who hear me use it often ask me what I mean
Nothing discounts the old antifeminist projection of men as allpowerful more than their basic ignorance of a major facet of the
political system that shapes and informs male identity and sense of
self from birth until death. I often use the phrase imperialist white-supremacist capitalist
by it.
patriarchy to describe the interlocking political systems that are the foundation of our nations politics.
Of these systems the one that we all learn the most about growing up is the system of patriarchy, even
age, patriarchy determined how we would each be regarded by our parents. Both our parents believed
and that it was the work of women to help men perform these tasks, to obey, and to always assume a
These
teachings were reinforced in every institution they encountered-schools, courthouses, clubs, sports arenas, as well as churches.
Embracing patriarchal thinking, like everyone else around them,
they taught it to their children because it seemed like a natural
way to organize life.
subordinate role in relation to a powerful man. They were taught that God was male.
She continues:
The dictionary defines patriarchy as a social
organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or
family in both domestic and religious functions . Patriarchy is characterized
by male domination and power. He states further that patriarchal rules still
govern most of the worlds religious, school systems, and family
systems. Describing the most damaging of these rules, Bradshaw lists blind obediencethe foundation upon which
Love is a useful one:
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all-pervasive would not exist. This violence was not created by feminism. If patriarchy were rewarding,
the overwhelming dissatisfaction most men feel in their work livesa dissatisfaction extensively
documented in the work of Studs Terkel and echoed in Faludis treatisewould not exist.
103
ending sexism, therapist Terrence Real makes clear that the patriarchy damaging us all is embedded in our
women participate in this tortured value system. Psychological patriarchy is a dance of contempt, a
perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex, covert layers of dominance and
submission, collusion and manipulation. It is the unacknowledged paradigm of relationships that has
suffused Western civilization generation after generation, deforming both sexes, and destroying the
passionate bond between them.
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as
shown by the thousands of cases of social and communal violence that occurs daily in the nation.
Every year, some 20,000 people are killed by others, and additional
20,000 folks kill themselves. Add to this the non lethal violence that
Americans daily inflict on each other, and we begin to see the tracings of a nation
immersed in a fever of violence. But, as remarkable, and harrowing as this level and degree of violence is,
We live,
equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones
and ignores wide-ranging "structural" violence, of a kind that
destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts
prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes;"By `structural violence' I
mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those
who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who are above
it is, by far, not the most violent feature of living in the midst of the American empire.
them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the class
structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to
distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting `structural' with
`behavioral violence' by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific
behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide,
soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on." -- (Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National
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***Alternativos***
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Countervisuality
The alternative is to engage in a feminist countervisuality, where aestheticization challenges the Watchers
Monahan, 2015
Professor of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. His research focuses on institutional transformations with new
technologies, with a particular emphasis on surveillance and security
programs. He has published over forty articles or book chapters and five
books, director of the international Surveillance Studies Network and an
associate editor of the leading academic journal on surveillance, Surveillance
& Society. (Torin, The Right to Hide? Anti-surveillance Camouflage and the
Aestheticization of Resistance. PDF, 159-61.
http://publicsurveillance.com/papers/Right-to-hide.pdf 7.8.15)//ctb
Alongside increasing public
awareness of drone warfare, government spying programs, and big
data analytics, there has been a recent surge in anti-surveillance
tactics . While these tactics range from software for anonymous Internet browsing to detoxification supplements for
fooling drug tests, what is particularly fascinating is the panoply of artistic
projectsand productsto conceal oneself from ambient
surveillance in public places. These center on the masking of identity
to undermine technological efforts to fix someone as a unique entity
apart from the crowd. A veritable artistic industry mushrooms from the perceived death of the social
brought about by ubiquitous public surveillance: tribal or fractal face paint and hairstyles
to confound face-recognition software, hoodies and scarves made
with materials to block thermal emissions and evade tracking by
drones, and hats that emit infrared light to blind camera lenses and
prevent photographs or video tracking. Anti-surveillance camouflage
of this sort flaunts the system, ostensibly allowing wearers to hide
in plain sightneither acquiescing to surveillance mandates nor
becoming reclusive under their withering gaze. This is an
aestheticization of resistance, a performance that generates media
attention and scholarly interest without necessarily challenging the
violent and discriminatory logics of surveillance societies . These artistic
practices should be situated in the context of the state visuality projects that galvanize them. Visuality is
about the normalization of state control through techniques of
classification, separation, and aestheticization, which enforce a kind
of reductive, exclusionary legibility.1 As Nicholas Mirzoeff writes, Visuality
sutures authority to power and renders this association natural 2 ; it
manifests in a set of extractive and dehumanizing complexes (plantation,
imperialist, and military industrial) that are institutionalized through bureaucratic
and scientific apparatuses that render classifications true and
populations governable. Frequently, these complexes have explicitly
racist, neocolonial, and necropolitical aims, affording the prejudicial
allocation and distribution of death for populations deemed
A curious trend is emerging in this era of pervasive surveillance.
107
dangerous to the state, which could include terrorists, asylum seekers, or the
poor in todays capitalist economy. Thus, biopolitics and necropolitics
fuse in destructive ways, in the service of neoliberal capitalism, to create conditions
of bare life, or at least of abjection and human insecurity .3 Visuality,
therefore, denies from the Other the right to legitimate autonomy and
agency; it denies the right to look back and challenge the
identities ascribed by institutions.4 As Stephen Graham5 reminds us, following Michel
Foucault,6 there is also a boomerang effect to the deployment of biopolitical and necropolitical technologies in distant
territories, leading frequently to their application in the homeland on so-called civilian populations, as can be seen, for
Countervisuality
projects may be necessary to disarm the natural logics of state
visuality and confront their supposed order from nowhere .9 Rather
than merely opposing visuality or seeking to substitute it with
different totalizing regimes, countervisuality would instead
challenge forms of violence and oppression, acknowledging
differential exposures and effects. After all, despite popular claims about
universal subjection to surveillance, it must be recognized that a
host of surveillance functions are reserved for those who threaten
the status quo, principally those classified as poor or marked as
Other.10 Racialized identities of dangerousness are encoded back
upon the targets through surveillance encounters that are always
tied to the threat of state force (e.g., the stop-and-frisk search, the video-tracking of racial
minorities through commercial stores, the scrutiny of purchases made by welfare recipients). These are
mechanisms of marginalizing surveillance that produce conditions
and identities of marginality through their very application .11 This paper
example, with the domestication of drones7 and biometric identification systems.8
builds upon theoretical insights from the field of surveillance studies, particularly with regard to the differential treatment
of populations and ways that marginality inflects experiences of surveillance. The field has had a longstanding concern
with discriminatory surveillance practices predicated on categorical suspicion of marginalized groups12 and social
sorting of populations through increasingly abstract, invisible, and automated systems of control.13 Perhaps
Feminist and
intersectional approaches to surveillance studies connect the
embodied, grounded nature of individual experience with larger
systems of structural inequality and violence. Such approaches
investigate the technological and organizational mediation of
situated practice, advancing a critique of contemporary surveillance
systems and power relations. The analysis presented here builds upon this orientation by
social safety net if fleeing from an abuser or risk assault or arrest if they do call the police.
108
I shift from social disorganization of youth behaviour and borrow from the
works of Janelle Dance (2002), Joyce West Stevens (2002) and Janie Ward (1995; 2000) who not only
109
110
organizations can play an important role in healing and respond- ing to neighbourhood and community
problems (Ginwright, 2009). Often, these organizations provide opportunities for urban youth to connect
with peers, adults and experiences that address pressing social and community problems. Robert Sampson
(2001: 95) argues that social capital for poor communities must be more understood as closely linked to
collective efficacy and calls for the linkage of mutual trust and the shared willingness to intervene for the
common good. Sampson et al. (1999: 635) argue that collective efficacy for children is produced by the
shared beliefs and a collectivity in its conjoint cap- ability for action. The notion of collective efficacy
emphasizes residents sense of active engagement. This perspective allows for defining the purpose of
social relationships through actions promoting justice within neighbourhoods, churches and youth
programmes in low-income urban communities, all of which serve as vital sources for the understanding of
civic organizations
are pathways for youth to engage in healing or what Paulo Freire (1993) calls
praxis critical reflection and action. Often, community-based
organizations facilitate the healing process because they foster
important relationships and develop critical consciousness
necessary for activism. Similar to Freires conceptualization of critical consciousness, I use
the term to convey how an awareness of the systematic forms of oppression
builds the capacity for self-determination to take action to address
social and community problems. Critical consciousness allows youth
to see and act dif- ferently in the world as agents rather than
victims. This notion marks a sig- nificant departure from the standard social capital literature that
civic life for African American youth and their communities. In many ways,
more often fails to recognize both individual and collective agency or how social networks ultimately foster
Critical consciousness and action promote selfdetermination and compel individuals and collectives to claim power
and control over sometimes-daunting social conditions. Power and
control over life situations are key for social justice and wellness
(Prilleltensky, 2008; Prilleltensky et al., 2001). Wellness encompasses more than striving for the
critical consciousness.
111
points to those
individual needs required to effectively engage in collective action.
Wellness and social justice illustrate how young peoples aspirations
to create better schools, safe neighbourhoods and vibrant
community life require both individual and collective development .
The relationship between social justice and wellness is an important
aspect of radical healing. The capacity to act to improve the quality
of life for oneself and others highlights the convergence of both the
personal and political dimensions of civic life. Individuals seek power
and control both at the personal level, through their own decision
making, and at the political level, by organizing their neighbourhood to influence public
policy. This is precisely the process of liberation which overcomes
internal and external sources of oppression . Liberation is both
freedom from internal and external forms of oppression and
freedom to pursue dreams, wellness, peace and a better quality of
life (Prilleltensky, 2008). This pursuit of justice and freedom, in this sense, yields
both internal capacity to resist domination, as well as builds social
capital and a greater external capacity to act to create better
community conditions. Wellness is a result of power and control over
internal and external forms of oppression (Prilleltensky et al., 2001; Watts and
Guessous, 2006). It is my contention that radical healing can facilitate wellness
on three levels. First, the individual level wellness focuses on
strengthening political and social consciousness, hope, optimism
and voice among young people. Particularly important is building
critical consciousness necessary to resist domination and create a
better way of life. Often social justice researchers, educators and practitioners focus
almost entirely on youth resistance without conceptualizing the
critical importance of creating. For young people, individual wellness
provides an internal capacity and resilience to engage in civic and
social justice efforts. Second, community-level wellness focuses on
collective power and con- trol over local public policy. As young
people heal, they can also form commu- nities where a collective
consciousness drives people to act to achieve social justice.
Community wellness involves community organizing , planning a neighbourhood block party or attending a public hearing about a school closure. These examples of
community wellness signal trust, relationships, networks and
optimism about the capacity for social change. Third, social wellness
is where young people engage in social movements and other forms
of collective action. Robust and healthy democratic life requires
debate, contestation and participation, all of which signal social
well-being.
absence of risks and the elimination of community problems. Rather it
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113
Alt Interdependence
The alternative is to embrace interdependency as a
method for poltical and personal engagement within the
debate space
Arneil 9
(Barbara, professor of political science at the university of british columbia,
Disability, Self Image, and Modern Political Theory , April 2009, Sage Publications, accessed:
7/6/15)
114
115
116
in
it
is like every other academic discipline with the only difference being
117
the focus on gender.41 A similar critique is offered by Aurora Levins Morales: My intellectual
life and that of other organic intellectuals, many of them women of
color, is fully sophisticated enough for use. But in order to have
value in the marketplace, the entrepreneurs and multinational
developers must find a way to process it, to refine the rich
multiplicity of our lives and all we have come to understand about
them into high theory by the simple act of removing it, abstracting it
beyond recognition, taking out the fiber, boiling it down until the
vitality is oxidized away and then marketing it as their own and
selling it back to us for more than we can afford.42 Not only do Two-Spirit critiques
remain accountable to both academic and nonacademic audiences, they are informed by Two-Spirit artist and activist movements.
118
critiques call into question, then, how radical queer politics replicate
colonial taxonomies and realities even as they attempt to disrupt
them. Does this mean Two-Spirit critiques dont call into account
Native nationalisms that replicate colonialism? Of course not the legal challenge to the
definitions of marriage in the C.N.O. mentioned above did just that. But it does mean that the
challenges against homophobic and heterosexist Native nationalisms
are not seen as antinationalist but as part of larger nationalist and
decolonial struggles.
119
120
121
122
123
Counter Surveillance
Alt solves Counter surveillance exists as a resistant
activism, criticizing and destabilizing the surveillance
state
Clavell, 2014 The University of Barcelona. Center for the Study of
Culture, Politics and Society. (Gemma, Surveillance by any other name?
Understanding counter surveillance as critical discourse and practice. pages
343-45. PDF. 7.6.15)//ctb
If we take Lyon's definition of surveillance as a starting point (any collection and processing of personal data, whether
identifiable or not, for the purpose of influencing or managing those whose data have been garnered - Lyon 2001, p. 9),
both Cybersyn and Situation Room, as well as social movement-developed medialabs, are instances of surveillance. The
while State-controlled
surveillance is usually accountable to some sort of democratic body
(the Judiciary, administrative procedures, etc.), one could argue that
most people have very little say or control over the use of personal
data when done by non-State bodies social movements among
them. What is, then, counter surveillance, and how does it relate to
co-option, recreation and exposure? For some authors, any action
aimed at exposing surveillance practices, even if through cooption
or recreation, constitutes counter surveillance: counter surveillance
can include disabling or destroying surveillance cameras, mapping
paths of least surveillance and disseminating that information over
the nternet, employing video cameras to monitor sanctioned
surveillance systems and their personnel, or staging public plays to
draw attention to the prevalence of surveillance in society (Monahan 2006,
p. 515). Others, however, establish differences between certain practices,
distinguishing between opposing surveillance and organizing
counter surveillance: avoiding images versus creating images. Opposing
surveillance includes hiding from it in one way or another,
demanding tighter regulation, as well as organizing 'surveillance
free zones' (...) Counter surveillance is another type of activism that
takes place to criticise surveillance (Koskela, 2004, p. 205). It is about
turning those same tools against the oppressors (Mann in Koskela, 2004, p. 157).
For others, still, counter surveillance is the act of turning the tables and
surveilling those who are doing the surveillance, a practice made
possible by the democratization of surveillance, but different from
refusal, masking, distorting and avoidance, among others
emphasis might be more on the managing than the influencing, but
(Marx, 2003). The boundaries between surveillance and practices of resistance, thus, are not clear. And the blurring gets
even more intense if we add to the mix Mann's concept of sousveillance (2002), which he defined as inversed
surveillance or watchful vigilance from underneath involving a peer to peer approach that decentralizes observation to
produce transparency in all directions and reverse the otherwise one-sided Panoptic gaze (Mann, Fung & Lo, 2006, p.
177).4 The same author differentiates between inband sousveillance/subveillance (arising from within the
organization) and out-of-band sousveillance (often unwelcome by the organization and/or necessary when inband
sousveillance fails). He is also responsible for coining the terms equiveillance, which aims to find equilibrium between
surveillance and sousveillance and introduce issues of power and respect in the discussion (Mann 2004, p. 627), and
coveillance, defined by some as participatory or multicultural surveillance (Kernerman, 2005).
124
125
126
Assemblages
Assemblages are necessary to rejecting binaries and
interrogating power
Monahan et al, 2010 Professor of Communication Studies at The
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on
institutional transformations with new technologies, with a particular
emphasis on surveillance and security programs. He has published over forty
articles or book chapters and five books, director of the international
Surveillance Studies Network and an associate editor of the leading academic
journal on surveillance, Surveillance & Society. Phillips is from Faculty of
Information, University of Toronto. Wood is from Surveillance Studies Centre,
Queens University. (Torin, David, and David. Surveillance and
Empowerment. pages 107-8. PDF. 7.7.15)//ctb
Surveillance is always about power. But following Michel Foucault
(1980), power is never simply possessed by one individual or group
and wielded over another. Power is better understood as a set of
forces that have productive capacities, that are in constant flux, and
that manifest in larger assemblages of material, social, and
symbolic relationships (Foucault 1978). Rather than simply being a map of connections of disparate
elements, such assemblages also include the literary, political, and
economic glue that holds those connections in place long enough to
yield social truths or scientific facts (Fortun and Bernstein 1998). Therefore, scholars
should follow the many disparate links that constitute surveillance
practices and posit explanations for how these connections hold the
assemblage together. This means attending to the relationships that are produced, which the field has
done quite well, and to the ways in which these relationships resist alteration, which is something that scholars are forced
to confront when investigating potentials for empowerment. In the Surveillance Studies literature, there have been
significant contributions on social sorting, digital discrimination, privacy invasion, racial profiling, and other mechanisms of
unequal treatment (e.g., Gandy 1993; Lyon 2003; Monahan 2008; Regan 1995). In contrast, questions concerning the
potential of surveillance for contributing to individual autonomy and dignity, fairness and due process, community
cooperation, social equality, and political and cultural visibility have been rare in the field. Does a set of practices count as
surveillance only if government agencies or agents are violating the rights of denizens? Only if corporations are
collecting data on consumers? Only if bosses are spying on workers? Only if conservative political ends are being met? In
other words, why should a set of practices count as surveillance if used by one group but not by another? There may be
an understandable predilection in Surveillance Studies of concentrating on institutional actors impinging on the rights and
traditionally marginalized groups use surveillance to challenge their positions of marginality? Or, even broader, how can
surveillance be designed, employed, and regulated to contribute to democratic practices and/or the social good? Such
undermined. This does not mean that surveillance ceases to be about power relationships. Instead,
empowering surveillance can be those surveillant practices that
favorably alter ones position in larger sociotechnical systems.
128
***2NC Answers***
129
(Kirstie Ball, EXPOSURE, Exploring the subject of surveillance, Information, Communication &
Society Volume 12, Issue 5, 2009, August 13, 2009,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/13691180802270386#.VZvt0xNViko)
argued that surveillance systems reduces the body ontology to one of information (Van Der Ploeg 2002),
the reality of that lived body in relation to surveillance is a far more complex issue.
130
131
132
state, the military, the church, etc.) one can say, "It is not I that acts: a higher
authority is acting through me, so I am not personally responsible."
Yet, despite the seemingly overwhelming dominance of techno- bureaucratic
tribalism and mass killing in the twentieth century, a modest but important
counter-trend also emerged a cross-cultural and interreligious ethic of
audacity on behalf of the stranger, linked to such names as Tolstoy, Gandhi,
and King. The purpose of this chapter is to grasp the ethical challenge of
modernity as symbolized by Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The purpose of the
remainder of this book is to examine the potential of the ethical response to
that challenge offered by the tradition of non-violent civil disobedience,
symbolized by Gandhi and King, for a cross-cultural and interreligious
post/modern ethic of human dignity, human rights, and human liberation.
traveling with the brightest students on my campus. I am a person who looks forward to the opportunities
for active engagement of ideas with debaters and coaches from around the country .
I am also,
however , a college professor, a "feminist," and a peace activist who is increasingly frustrated and
disturbed by some of the practices I see being perpetuated
and rewarded in academic debate. I find that I can no longer separate my involvement in
debate from the rest of who I am as an individual. Northwestern I remember listening to a lecture a few
years ago given by Tom Goodnight at the University summer debate camp. Goodnight lamented what he
133
shocked and surprised when I hear myself saying things like, "we killed them," or "take no prisoners," or
"let's blow them out of the water." I am tired of the "ideal" debater being defined as one who has mastered
the art of verbal assault to the point where accusing opponents of lying, cheating, or being deliberately
women are more emotional then men. I am tired of hearing comments like, "those 'girls' from school X
aren't really interested in debate; they just want to meet men." We can all point to examples (although
only a few) of women who have succeeded at the top levels of debate. But I find myself wondering how
many more women gave up because they were tired of negotiating the mine field of discrimination, sexual
As members of this
community, however, we have great freedom to define it in
whatever ways we see fit. After all, what is debate except a collection of shared
understandings and explicit or implicit rules for interaction? What I am calling for is a
critical examination of how we, as individual members of this
community, characterize our activity, ourselves, and our
interactions with others through language. We must become aware of
the ways in which our mostly hidden and unspoken
assumptions about what "good" debate is function to exclude
not only women, but ethnic minorities from the amazing intellectual
opportunities that training in debate provides. Our nation and indeed, our planet, faces incredibly
harassment, and isolation they found in the debate community.
difficult challenges in the years ahead. I believe that it is not acceptable anymore for us to go along as we
always have, assuming that things will straighten themselves out. If the rioting in Los Angeles taught us
134
practices today are not only supported but encouraged by those who serve as the primary targets of data gathering
doing so, they invoke Delueze and Guattari s concept of assemblages to denote the increasing convergence of once
Guattari (1987: 406), veritable inventions. For Haggerty and Ericson, what is notable about the emergent surveillant
135
***AFF Answers***
136
Assemblage Permutation
The perm is to do the aff and construct an assemblage
more attuned to our surroundings a rejection of
intersectionalitys demands of stable identity, a
recognition of becoming
Puar, 2005 queer theorist, department of Womens and Gender Studies
at Rutgers University. Author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in
Queer Times. (Jasbir, Queer Times, Queer Assemblages. Book. 7.5.15)//ctb
As there is no entity, no identity to queer, rather queerness coming
forth at us from all directions, screaming its defiance, suggests to
me a move from intersectionality to assemblage. The Deleuzian assemblage, as a
series of dispersed but mutually implicated networks, draws together enunciation and dissolution, causality and effect.
137
each
form of life presents a distinctive kind of continuity and creativity .
occasions. Other forms of life (e.g. trees, frogs and cats) are also coordinated systems too, of course, but
(Wetherell, 2012, p. 126) A related criticism applies to one of the central conclusions that Haggerty and Ericson (2000)
derive at through the concept of
138
139
AT: Intersectionality
Intersectionality always posits some group as deviant
from the normal, and views gender as the starting point
from which all other intersectional identities are derived.
Gender always coming first ends up positioning the white
woman as the normal, and women of color as deviants
who must then act in certain ways in the face of
oppression. This is generalizing to the point where it is
self-defeating.
Puar 10 (Jasbir K Puar, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess: intersectionality, assemblage,
and affective politics published Fall 2010, pp. 373-5 /\Burke/\)
identities are lived and experienced as intersectional in such a way that identity categories themselves are cut through
the
method of intersectionality is most predominantly used to qualify is
the specific difference of women of color, a category that has
now become, I would argue, simultaneously emptied of specific meaning on
the one hand and overdetermined in its deployment on the other. In
this usage, intersectionality always produces an Other, and that
Other is always a Woman Of Color (WOC), who must invariably be shown
to be resistant, subversive, or articulating a grievance. And more pointedly, it is
and unstable and that all subjects are intersectional whether or not they recognize themselves as such. But what
the difference of black women that dominates this genealogy of the term women of color (and indeed, Crenshaw is clear
that she centralizes black womens experience and posits black women as the starting point[4] of her analysis). Thus
locational differences in the interest in intersectionality. As someone who works with graduate students at Rutgers, I
encounter a variety of uneven and vexed responses to the importance of intersectionality, determined in part by
140
variations among womens and gender studies programs and geographical regions from students who have are wellschooled in the lexicon of intersectionality and presume a taken-for-grantedness of its effects, to those who have yet to
encounter it as a central concept.
intersectionality that might address multicultural and post-racial discourses of inclusion that destabilizes
the WOC as a prosthetic capacity to white women?Such questions also bring to the fore the geopolitical
problems of intersectional analyses. If, as Avtar Brah and Ann Pheonix have argued, old debates about the
141
142
Alt Offense
Counter surveillance fails to be intersectional lack of
accessibility means empowerment of one body
disempowers another
Monahan et al, 2010 Professor of Communication Studies at The
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on
institutional transformations with new technologies, with a particular
emphasis on surveillance and security programs. He has published over forty
articles or book chapters and five books, director of the international
Surveillance Studies Network and an associate editor of the leading academic
journal on surveillance, Surveillance & Society. Phillips is from Faculty of
Information, University of Toronto. Wood is from Surveillance Studies Centre,
Queens University. (Torin, David, and David. Surveillance and
Empowerment. pages 107-8. PDF. 7.7.15)//ctb
Surveillance Studies has been grappling with these
issues for a while, in part by focusing on counter-surveillance in
which actors with fewer institutional or symbolic resources seek to
vitiate the surveillance to which they and others are subjected (Monahan
2010b). Studies of countersurveillance have followed two paths. The
first addresses attempts to thwart, disrupt, or avoid surveillance . John
In an oblique way the field of
Gillioms Overseers of the Poor, for instance, shows how women welfare recipients evade bureaucratic surveillance by,
among other things, refusing to disclose secondary forms of income they receive in order to make ends meet (Gilliom
2001). The Institute for Applied Autonomys iSee project provides maps of paths of least surveillance routes through
At its best, this type of countersurveillance can be empowering, but usually in a reactive way, by
contesting and trying to reduce the forms of surveillance to which
people are exposed. This also describes the important legal work
done by civil-society organizations (Bennett 2008). Another strand of
counter-surveillance action seeks to embrace and use surveillance
practices to counter dominant power. Examples of this include
CopWatch programs (Huey, Walby, and Doyle 2006) or the Institute for Applied
Autonomys (2006) defensive surveillance tactics of monitoring police
at mass public protests in order to better avoid confrontation (see also
Fernandez 2008). As is clear from the articles in this issue, this embrace is problematic. At their worst, countersurveillance tactics can be willfully ignorant of and insensitive to
intersectional forms of oppression, as can be witnessed, for
instance, in videos of Steve Manns shooting back project1, where
he (a relatively affluent white man) confronts African American
women and others working low-income, service sector jobs and
questions them about store video surveillance systems, to which the
workers are more likely to be the targets than the customers (Monahan
2010b)2. At best, they require a subtle and nimble engagement with volatile
forms of power. For example, in this issue, Wilson and Serisier examine the ways that new techniques for
urban regions that avoid CCTV cameras (Monahan 2010b).
producing and disseminating video images alter the possibilities for successful activism in complex ways, providing safety
and visibility for street protesters, but also provoking greater police violence, and sometimes providing evidence for legal
143
article in this volume, Shilton suggests that the design criteria for ethical tools for participatory sensing pay attention to
values of local control, participation, transparency, and social justice. Of course, each of these foci provide plenty of
opportunity for debate. Where is local? Who is to participate? What is to be transparent to whom? What is justice?
Nevertheless, they helpfully structure the debate to attend to normative principles of equality and autonomy.
Design
144
Ombudsman's Office endorse whatever the police do' (Mills interview). The possibility of seeking official
redress is limited in a number of ways. 'Masking moves' (Marx 2003) may foreclose the usefulness of
footage for official exposure of police misconduct. Complaints to the New South Wales Ombudsman, for
example, have been returned on the basis that without a name or number it is impossible to ascertain the
and in the domain of official inquiry and legal proceedings police are positioned to supply the 'official
definition of the situation' (Doyle 2006, 211). The structural space of those undertaking surveillance is
therefore of considerable consequence, as it is not inevitably coupled with the power of interpretation. This
perhaps explains the pervasive cynicism based on experience expressed by all participants regarding the
capacity of counter-surveillance to render police officially accountable. If the capacity of video footage to
bring about official accountability is constrained, images nevertheless constitute an important tactical
device in defending against accusations by police and in 'backstage' negotiations. Several participants
noted the value of video for defence, particularly if footage captured police misconduct. John Jacobs for
of video evidence
which exposed Jacobs himself had been 'put in a headlock and bashed in the
face' the case was dismissed, although no further action was taken against
police (Jacobs interview). Moreover, the mere existence of images can be deployed to
negotiate with police. One community lawyer with extensive involvement in logging protests noted
instance, was charged with 'assault police' at a protest. However on the basis
the utility of footage in negotiations and 'situations where we have kind of ruffled some feathers through
telling the sergeant of the relevant police station of the existence of our footage, that having the impact of
having that person at least informally reprimanded' (Bleyer interview).
One of the key ironies is that in monitoring and documenting protest actions
video activists may inadvertently assemble a database that incriminates
those it is intended to protect. Andrew Lowenthal, a video activist at numerous protest
events, suggests 'the downside is that, yeah, you do the surveillance work of the police, and you can help
them do dossiers, or background or convict people' (Lowenthal interview). Another videographer noted,
'sometimes...your footage might be counter-productive, so you might actually catch somebody committing
There is
consequently the danger of footage being subpoenaed, or even police raids ,
an offence so that material could be used against your aims' (Puckett interview).
145
as occurred in 2001 at one community television station, Channel 31, which was raided by police searching
the protests at the Beverley Uranium mine, footage was subpoenaed in court of 'a greenie meeting where
the greenies are saying...` we're outnumbering the cops. Let's go anyway". The cops one of their
arguments is "we didn't use excessive force, we were outnumbered and we had to do this" so that video
comes to support their argument' (Davi interview). Some community groups have offered specific training
in video activism that includes advice to avoid filming protestors performing illegal activities
people like that at protests, I've seen it. People with megaphones, people with cameras they get taken
down pretty quickly' (Jacobs interview), while another recollected that 'quite a few people have ended up
with a black eye and a bruised head' (Morris interview).
Yes we saw this during APEC in particular, it wasn't again just not Copwatchers but members of the
commercial media, there was that infamous video Paula Bronstein for example who was thrown to the
ground during APEC, but again other members of the commercial media who either had police officers
block their filming, or told to turn around and not to film, several of us were threatened with arrest, there
was one undercover police officer who tried to snatch a camera from my hand, and so it definitely brings
attention to yourself yeah (Mills interview).
Spatial strategies of isolation and containment are an additional counter-neutralization move engaged by
police. Fernandez, drawing upon Foucault's notion of disciplinary diagrams, argues that police deploy two
disciplinary diagrams: the leprosy model and the plague model (2009, 170). In the plague model, space is
identifies a definite strategy of 'make sure you've identified who the camera people in the protest group
are, sideline them, don't give them any good footage and don't give them anything that will turn up in
court' (Moths interview). While another video activist suggested 'some police will act against you for being
the teller of the truth so you can get targeted, camera can get trashed and your tapes ripped out or
personally removed from a protest because you are documenting it' (Jacobs interview).
146
For police in
protest situations this involves simply mobilizing the significant asymmetry
power to neutralize monitoring either through physical force, the confiscation
of equipment or both. Several participants discussed having their cameras
and film confiscated and then damaged or reported difficulty
in reobtaining the equipment. Isabelle Brown, a frequent videographer of protests, described
above, is to engage a 'breaking move' that renders counter-surveillance inoperable.
negatively to videoing and filming at protests as 'they don't want individual accountability, I think that's
why they don't wear their badges' (Mills interview).
The constant interplay of move and counter-move between police and video activists activates ascending
spirals of surveillance and counter-surveillance, what Marx has termed a 'surveillance arms race' (2007b,
299). Thus while the safety of protestors and the witnessing and documenting of misconduct remain
powerful drivers of video activism, an increasingly frequent rationale of video activism is to counter the
escalating visual surveillance of protest events undertaken by police. One video activist remarked: I think it
is [video] important as well to counter the incredible levels of surveillance that police put on protests. They
have really sophisticated surveillance on protests, like camera positioned in key strategic areas and
telephoto lenses with small digital cameras right on hot spots. So we need to have our cameras there as
well because you see in cases which have happened in the past evidence the police collect, somehow all of
the footage of events which incriminate the police go missing while all the evidence that might incriminate
protestors of certain things comes to light (McEwan interview).
This transformation also appears to accompany a diminishing of the power of the image in relation to
protests. As one video activist with fifteen years experience videoing protests remarked 'at one point it was
very powerful to have even just a portable camera there, that was the new thing...eventually
they realised it was better to just have their own cameras there, so I gradually saw the collaboration of
more and more police cameras' (Jacobs interview). Situations where police are armed with cameras facing
protestors armed with cameras can reach heights of absurdity, as the same videographer suggested 'so
you video them videoing you and it just gets sillier and sillier. We know you're looking at us and it's that
Such
counter moves on the part of police potentially lead to a Kafkaesque situation
where 'counter counter-surveillance' promotes a spiral of surveillance
enmeshed within layers of neutralization. The surveillance spiral ends in a
cancelling out, a form of surveillance gridlock, where the act of monitoring
has eclipsed both action and control.
sort of projection of power through the process of surveillance and sort of static' (Jacobs interview).
147
disciplinary potential of modern bureaucratic regimes, one could read this as a disciplinary or panoptic relationship
de Certeaus book The Practice of Everyday Life provides a point of departure for thinking about the agency of individuals
148
Regardless
of the fact that the story did finally emerge, the police officers
obviously exercised extreme caution in regulating the places of
abuse (i.e. in a police vehicle and in a police restroom), and
one can speculate that this level of control was a response to
their fear of being under surveillance, and thus held
accountable, for their actions. Another example of the dance of surveillance and counter-surveillance can be
witnessed in the confrontations occurring at globalization protests throughout the world. Activists have
been quite savvy in videotaping and photographing police and
security forces as a technique not only for deterring abuse, but
also for documenting and disseminating any instances of
excessive force. According to accounts by World Trade Organization protesters, the police, in
turn, now zero-in on individuals with video recorders and
arrest them (or confiscate their equipment) as a first line of
defense in what has become a war over the control of media
representations (Fernandez 2005). Similarly, vibrant Independent Media Centers
are now routinely set up at protest locations, allowing activists
to produce and edit video, audio, photographic, and textual
news stories and then disseminate them over the Internet,
serving as an outlet for alternative interpretations of the
issues under protest (Breyman 2003). As was witnessed in the beating of independent media
sodomized with the stick from a toilet plunger in the police restrooms (Mazelis 1997; Jeffries 2002).
personnel and destruction of an Indymedia center by police during the 2001 G8 protests in Genoa, Italy (Independent
institutions was the subsequent 2002 G8 meeting held in Kananaskis, which is a remote and difficult to access mountain
resort in Alberta, Canada. Rather than contend with widespread public protests and a potential repeat of the police
violence in Genoa (marked by the close-range shooting and death of a protester), the mountain meeting exerted the most
extreme control over the limited avenues available for public participation: both reporters and members of the public were
the removal of the 2002 G8 meetings to a publicly inaccessible location was a response to previous experiences with
protestors and their publicity machines, this choice of location served a symbolic function of revealing the exclusionary
elitism of these organizations, thereby calling their legitimacy into question. So, whereas mainstream news outlets seldom
lend any sympathetic ink or air time to anti-globalization protests, many of them did comment on the overt mechanisms
of public exclusion displayed by the 2002 G8 meeting (CNN.com 2002; Rowland 2002; Sanger
149
readily critique Hardt and Negri for their attribution of agency to capitalism or to the amorphous force of
150
Narratives bad
Their Narrative of Suffering Leads to a Permanent
Identification of Suffering Turns The case
Brown 96 (Wendy is Professor of Women's Studies and Legal Studies, and
is Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California,
Santa Cruz. The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable)
If, taken together, the two passages from Foucault we have been consider- ing call feminists to account in our compulsion to put everything about women into discourse,
they do not yet exhaust the phenomenon of being ensnared 'in the folds of our own discourses.' For if the problem I have been discussing is easy enough to see--indeed,
largely familiar to those who track techniques of co-optation--at the level of legal and bureaucratic discourse, it is altogether more disquieting when it takes the
Confessed truths are assembled and deployed as "knowledge" about the group. This phenomenon would seem to undergird a range of recurring troubles in
feminism, from the "real woman" rejoinder to post-structuralist deconstructions of her, to totalizing descriptions of women's experience that are the inadvertent effects of
various kinds of survivor stories. Thus, for example, the porn star who feels miserably exploited, violated and humiliated in her work invariably monopolizes the truth about
sex work; as the girl with math anxieties constitutes the truth about women and math; as eating disor- ders have become the truth about women and food; as sexual
abuse and viola- tion occupy the knowledge terrain of women and sexuality. In other words, even as feminism aims to affirm diversity among women and women's experiences, confession as the site of production of truth and its convergence with feminist suspicion and deauthorization of truth from other sources tends to reinstate a
unified discourse in which the story of greatest suffering becomes the true story of woman. (I think this constitutes part of the rhetorical power of MacKinnon's work;
analytically, the epistemological superiority of confes- sion substitutes for the older, largely discredited charge of false consciousness). Thus, the adult who does not suffer
from her or his childhood sexual experi- ence, the lesbian who does not feel shame, the woman of color who does not primarily or "correctly" identify with her marking as
such--these figures are excluded as bonafide members of the categories which also claim them. Their status within these discourses is that of being "in denial," "passing"
or being a "race traitor." This is the norm-making process in feminist traditions of "breaking silence" which, ironically, silence and exclude the very women
these traditions mean to empower. (Is it surprising, when we think in this vein, that there is so little feminist writing on heterosexual pleasure?) But if these practices
tacitly silence those whose experiences do not parallel those whose suffering is most marked (or whom the discourse produces as suffering markedly),
than it? What if this incessant speech not only overwhelms the experiences of others, but alternative (unutterable? traumatized? fragmentary? inassimilable?)
zones of one's own experience? Conversely, what if a certain modality of silence about one's suffering--and I am suggesting that we must consider modalities of silence
as varied as modalities of speech and discourse--is to articulate a variety of possibilities not otherwise available to the sufferer?
151
potentially intensifies the regulation of gender and sexuality in the law, abetting rather than contesting
"disinterred knowledges" by those "unitary discourses, which first disqualified and then ignored them
when they made their appearance." n23 They exemplify how the work of breaking silence can
metamorphose into new techniques of domination, how our truths can become our rulers rather than
our emancipators, how our confessions become the norms by which we are regulated.
152
ignoring] a basic dialectical prin-ciple: that men and women make history, but not under the conditions of
their own choosing" (Viotti da Costa 2001, 20). We agree that "cultural resources and funds of knowledge
such as myths, folk tales, dichos, consejos, kitchen talk, [and] autobiographical stories" (Delgado Bernal
2002, 120) employed by critical race theory can illuminate particular concrete manifestations of racism.
additional but related concerns wit the storytelling narrative method are also at issue here. One is the
Gilroy (2000) warns against "short-cut solidarity" attitudes that assume that a person's political allegiance
can be determined by his or her "race" or that a "shared history" will guarantee an emancipatory
worldview. For this reason, we argue that such declarations, though they may sound reasonable,
commonsensical, or even promising as literary contributions, have link utility in explaining "how and why
power is constituted, reproduced and transformed" (Viotti da Costa 2001, 22).
153
The aesthetic, then, is from the beginning a contradictory, double-edged concept, On the one hand, it
figures as a genuinely emancipatory force as a community of subjects now finked by sensuous impulse
and fellow-feeling rather than by heteronomous law, each safeguarded in its unique particularity while
bound at the same time into social harmony. The aesthetic offers the middle class a superbly versatile
model of their political aspirations, exemplifying new forms of autonomy and self-determination,
transforming the relations between law and desire, morality and knowledge, recasting the links between
individual and totality, and revising social relations on the basis of custom, affection and sympathy. On the
`internalised
spontaneous impulse may consort well enough with political domination; but these phenomena border
embarrassingly on passion, imagination, sensuality, which are not always so easily incorporable. As Burke
put it in his Appeal from the NM to the Old Wags: 'There is a boundary to men's passions when they act
from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination.'" ` Deep'
subjectivity is
what the ruling social order desires, and exactly what it has most cause to fear. If
the aesthetic is a dangerous, ambiguous affair, it is because, as we shall see in this study, there is
something in the body which can revolt against the power which
inscribes it; and that impulse could only be eradicated by extirpating
along with it the capacity to authenticate power itself .
just
Hip hop and rap were not created as a means to make money (Fernando
1994), but as a way of announcing ones existence to the world (George
1999). Gramsci calls such people who use art-forms in this manner, organic intellectuals; people who have
close ties with their communities and express class identities and aspirations (Stapleton 1998). I believe
rap and hip hop are powerful art-forms. Organic intellectuals are powerful because they expose political
frustrations that many people can empathise with. If people unite and begin to tackle political issues,
curtailed by elites.
Today however,
154
the margins of the music industry (Stoller 1998; Maher 2005). Commercially successful
rap music and other musical genres created primarily by Black artists, are a
huge source of profit for Americas recording industry (Yousman
2003:367) (Walker 1998; McLeod 1999; Farley 1999; Day 2000). Just like slaving institutions
in the Americas, these industries are predominantly white owned
(Beckford 1979). Urban music has had a worldwide impact in the 20th century (McClary 1994), receiving
very possible that an artist who generates millions through record sales, tours, heavy promotion and even
endorsements has no personal capital of their own. Hip hops integrity is being prostituted in the pursuit of
financial gain (Salsa 1997:5), a sentiment I agree with. Welch (1994) believes that
become colonised . Kelley (1999) makes a strong case for this idea. The relationship is certainly
exploitative (McClary 1994; Kitwana 2005; Day 2000). The oligopololies collectively known today as the
Big Five (Warner, Universal, SonyBMG, EMI, Polygram) have global reach (Lovering 1998) and supply
retailers with 90% of the music.
vastly different than the structure of more traditional affirmative cases, disadvantages, and counterplans.
This difference creates a problem of how a narrative should be evaluated versus a disadvantage resulting
in worldwide destruction. The narrative structure does not refute this, nor does the disadvantage outweigh
the narrative. The intersection of the disadvantage and the narrative only happens at the impact level
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appeal of the story over the logical structure of links, brinks, and impacts, 2)
provides a snapshot of time in which a person can identify with true
suffering as opposed to the longitudinal aspects of death tallies , and
3) opens a rhetoric of possibility in which competitors and judges
alike can affirm or negate a resolution based off of the ability to
foresee a future effected by the narrative. The debate community has privileged
traditional logical appeals over nontraditional forms of argument. These logical appeals create easy
comparisons for critics since the arguments can be broken down into simple equations. To weigh a
disadvantage of ecological collapse versus a plan that saves fifty lives is basic mathsurvival of the planet
emotional appeal of the narrative could be weighed against the emotional appeal of a disadvantage.
This new type of impact analysis provides clear ground , because the
traditional disadvantage can have emotional appeal (deaths of children, environmental destructionthese
all include basic pathos appeals) and the narrative can be weighed against this. The other advantage to
this form of impact analysis is that it becomes a forum in the debate community, judges and competitors
alike could begin to create rubrics and hierarchies that would help explain the more powerful versus less
powerful pathos appeals. The realm of the pathos appeal has been understudied for years, and with its
acceptance as a criterion in debate, the community could lend a helping hand to facilitate a mapping out
the persuasiveness of pathos appeals. The second advantage that the narrative provides in academic
debate is that the narrative is centered on a snapshot in time: the narrative is a glimpse into someone
elses life for just a moment. In debate rounds, competitors often prophesize the most severe impacts
species endures. Compared to traditional policy arguments that concentrate on future action to remedy
current problems, the narrative forces competitors to empathize with a particular problem that a human is
experiencing now. This empathy is lost in contemporary debate , with debaters
claiming future destruction for the planet in almost every debate round. With more narrative debaters, we
may see a resurgence of probabilistic arguments against disadvantages, since the unlikely scenario of
nuclear war might be outweighed by the definite impact to the protagonist of the narrative (as well as the
they are advocating in the status quo. The final reason why narratives would help the debate community is
that they do open up a rhetoric of possibility. The Gulf war may or may not have started (without the
narrative), but after the young Kuwaiti girl spoke, there was a call for war, and war seemed inevitable, a
conclusion that traditional forms of argument would never have established. This discourse is a prime
example of the power of the narrative, which opened a possibility that before was not an option. The
persuasive force of the narrative affects receiver and the individual immediately begins to ponder what
sort of situation would bring about such a travesty. This thought process create new possibilities that
reflections of a different rhetorical style, new faculties that should be available to the young debater. The
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rhetoric of possibility that is created by having competitors and judges alike engage the narrative calls for
The
rhetoric of possibility is different from the rhetoric of actualitythe
traditional debater creates claims from a realist framework the political
new creative actions that would have normally been dismissed in the contemporary debate society.
disadvantage based around the workings of government, the financial disadvantage from the workings of
the stock market, or the counterplan that tries to implement a plan through the same traditional policy
means. The narrative debater, working from a rhetoric of possibility works from a different ideology or
school of thought, though the narrative debater would recognize these same realist conceptions, the
narrative debater also tries to guide the audience to see additional perspectives and to create more
solutions than the realist platformthe narrative debater as asks the audience to try to work outside and
around the realist framework as well. By helping people examine possibilities, which they previously did
not imagine or think they could achieve, rhetors can free them to pursue more satisfying responses to both
personal and public needs. Hence a rhetoric of possibility can illuminate diverse kinds of communication
(Kirkwood, 1992, p.44). As of the writing of this paper, the signing of a debate ballot has gained
perlocutionary forcethe action of voting has some concrete impact in the community (debate and
weighed in a debate round on the probability and pathos appeal of the narration, or it can be endorsed by
mere fact that more individuals should hear it. The intellectual landscape would support any effort or trust
157
Performance Bad
The neg commodifies the suffering of marginalized people
in exchange for your ballot in the debate economy--playing a game where we move scenarios of suffering
around like chess pieces for our own personal enjoyment
is the most unethical form of intellectual imperialism
Baudrillard 94 [Jean, The Illusion of the End p. 66-71]
We
must today denounce the moral and sentimental exploitation of that
poverty - charity cannibalism being worse than oppressive
violence . The extraction and humanitarian reprocessing of a
destitution which has become the equivalent of oil deposits and gold
mines . The extortion of the spectacle of poverty and, at the same time, of our charitable condescension : a worldwide appreciated surplus of
We have long denounced the capitalistic, economic exploitation of the poverty of the 'other half of the world' [['autre monde].
fine sentiments and bad conscience. We should, in fact, see this not as the extraction of raw materials, but as a waste-reprocessing enterprise. Their destitution
and our bad conscience are, in effect, all part of the waste-products of history- the main thing is to recycle them to produce a new energy source. We have here an
escalation in the psychological balance of terror. World capitalist oppression is now merely the vehicle and alibi for this other, much more ferocious , form of
beleaguered, this time as a catastrophe-bearing stratum. The West is whitewashed in the reprocessing of the rest of the world as waste and residue. And
the white world repents and seeks absolution - it, too, the waste-product of its own history. The South is a natural producer of raw materials, the latest of which is
catastrophe. The North, for its part, specializes in the reprocessing of raw materials and hence also in the reprocessing of catastrophe . Bloodsucking
protection, humanitarian interference, Medecins sans frontieres, international solidarity, etc. The last phase of colonialism : the New Sentimental Order
delightful spectacle of poverty and catastrophe, and of the moving spectacle of our own
efforts to alleviate it
reproduction of the catastrophe market ); there, at least, in the order of moral profits, the Marxist
poverty is reproduced as a
symbolic deposit, as a fuel essential to the moral and sentimental
equilibrium of the West. In our defence, it might be said that this extreme poverty was largely of our own making and it is therefore normal that
analysis is wholly applicable: we see to it that extreme
we should profit by it. There can be no finer proof that the distress of the rest of the world is at the root of Western power and that the spectacle of that distress is its
crowning glory than the inauguration, on the roof of the Arche de la Defense, with a sumptuous buffet laid on by the Fondation des Droits de l'homme, of an
exhibition of the finest photos of world poverty. Should we be surprised that spaces are set aside in the Arche d' Alliance. for universal suffering hallowed by caviar
and champagne? Just as the economic crisis of the West will not be complete so long as it can still exploit the resources of the rest of the world, so the symbolic
crisis will be complete only when it is no longer able to feed on the other half's human and natural catastrophes (Eastern Europe, the Gulf, the Kurds,
Bangladesh, etc.). We need this drug, which serves us as an aphrodisiac and hallucinogen. And the poor countries are the best suppliers - as, indeed,
they are of other drugs. We provide them, through our media, with the means to exploit this paradoxical resource, just as we give them the means to exhaust their
natural
resources
with
our
cannibalism,
technologies .
relayed in cynical mode by the news media, and carried forward in moral mode by our humanitarian aid, which is a way of
encouraging it and ensuring its continuity, just as economic aid is a strategy for perpetuating under-development. Up to now, the financial sacrifice has been
compensated a hundredfold by the moral gain. But when the catastrophe market itself reaches crisis point, in accordance with the implacable logic of the market,
when distress becomes scarce or the marginal returns on it fall from overexploitation, when we run out of disasters from elsewhere or when they can no longer be
traded like coffee or other commodities, the West will be forced to produce its own catastrophe for itself , in order to meet its need for spectacle and that voracious
appetite for symbols which characterizes it even more than its voracious appetite for food. It will reach the point where it devours itself. When we have finished
sucking out the destiny of others, we shall have to invent one for ourselves. The Great Crash, the symbolic crash, will come in the end from us Westerners, but only
when we are no longer able to feed on the hallucinogenic misery which comes to us from the other half of the world. Yet they do not seem keen to give up their
monopoly. The Middle East, Bangladesh, black Africa and Latin America are really going flat out in the distress and catastrophe stakes, and thus in providing symbolic
nourishment for the rich world. They might be said to be overdoing it: heaping earthquakes, floods, famines and ecological disasters one upon another, and finding
The 'disaster show' goes on without any letup and our sacrificial debt to them far exceeds their economic
the means to massacre each other most of the time .
158
debt. The misery with which they generously overwhelm us is something we shall never be able to repay. The
sacrifices we offer in return are laughable (a tornado or two, a few tiny
holocausts on the roads , the odd financial sacrifice) and, moreover, by some infernal logic, these work out as much greater gains
for us, whereas our kindnesses have merely added to the natural catastrophes another one immeasurably worse: the demographic
catastrophe, a veritable epidemic which we deplore each day in pictures.
cherry-picking among [ . . . ]
extremes of horror , but one that engages issues of the international travel, perception and valuation of traumatic memory.2
This seemingly arbitrary determination engrosses the emigre protagonist of Dubravka Ugresics 2004 novel, The Ministry of Pain, who from her new home in
Amsterdam contemplates an uneven response to the influx of claims by refugees fleeing the Yugoslav wars: The Dutch authorities were particularly generous
about granting asylum to those who claimed they had been discriminated against in their home countries for sexual differences , more generous
than to the wars rape victims . As soon as word got round, people climbed on the bandwagon in droves . The war [ . . . ] was something like the national
Traumatic
experiences are described here in terms analogous to social and economic
capital . What the protagonist finds troubling is that some genuine refugee claimants must
invent an alternative trauma to qualify for help: the problem was that
nobodys story was personal enough or shattering enough.
Because death itself had lost its power to shatter . There had been
too many deaths.4 In other words, the mass arrival of Yugoslav refugees into the European Union means that war
trauma risks becoming a surfeit commodity and so decreases in value. I bring up Ugresics
wry observations about traumas marketability because they enable us to
conceive of a trauma economy , a circuit of movement and exchange where traumatic memories travel and
lottery: while many tried their luck out of genuine misfortune, others did it simply because the opportunity presented itself.3
are valued and revalued along the way. Rather than focusing on the end-result, the winners and losers of a trauma lottery, this article argues that there is, in
a trauma economy, no end at all, no fixed value to any given traumatic experience. In what follows I will attempt to outline the system of a trauma economy,
including
its intersection with other capitalist power structures , in a way that shows how
representations of trauma continually circulate and, in that circulation enable or disable awareness of particular traumatic experience
across space and time. To do this, I draw extensively on the comic nonfiction of Maltese-American writer Joe Sacco and, especially, his
retrospective account of newsgathering during the 19921995 Bosnian war in his 2003 comic book, The Fixer: A Story From Sarajevo.5
Sacco is the author of a series of comics that represent social life in a number of the worlds conflict zones, including the Palestinian
territories and the former Yugoslavia. A comic artist, Sacco is also a journalist by profession who has first-hand experience of the way that
war and trauma are reported in the international media. As a result, his comics blend actual reportage with his ruminations on the media
industry. The Fixer explores the siege of Sarajevo (19921995) as part of a larger transnational network of disaster journalism, which also
critically, if briefly, references the September eleventh, 2001 attacks in New York City. Saccos emphasis on the transcultural coverage of
these traumas, with his comic avatar as the international journalist relaying information on the Bosnian war, emphasizes how
visible, we still dont fully comprehend the travel of memory in a global age of media, information networks and communicative capitalism .6 As
postcolonial geographers frequently note, to travel today is to travel in a world striated by late capitalism. The same must hold for memory; its circulation in this
global media intensive age will always be reconfigured, transvalued and even commodified by the logic of late capital. While we have yet to understand
the relation between the travels of memory (traumatic or otherwise) and capitalism, there are nevertheless models for the circulation of other putatively immaterial
things that may prove instructive. One of the best, I think, is the critical insight of Edward W. Said on what he called travelling theory.7 In 1984 and again in 1994,
Said wrote essays that described the reception and reformulation of ideas as they are uprooted from an original historical and geographical context
and propelled across place and time. While Saids contribution focuses on theory rather than memory, his reflections on the travel and transformation of ideas
provide a comparison which helpfully illuminates the similar movements of what we might call travelling trauma. Ever attendant to the historical specificities that
159
prompt transcultural transformations, the Travelling Theory essays offers a Vichian humanist reading of cultural production; in them, Said argues that theory is not
given but made. In the first instance, it emanates out of and registers the sometimes urgent historical circumstances of its theorist. Subsequently, he maintains,
when other scholars take up the theory, they necessarily interpret it, additionally integrating their own social and historical experiences into it, so
changing the theory and, often, authorizing it in the process. I want to suggest that Saids birds eye view of the intellectual circuit through which theory travels, is
received and modified can help us appreciate the movement of cultural memory. As with theory, cultural memories of trauma are lifted and separated from
their individual source as they travel; they are mediated, transmitted and institutionalized in particular ways, depending on the structure of
communication and communities in which they travel. Said invites his readers to contemplate how the movement of theory transforms its meanings to such
an extent that its significance to sociohistorical critique can be drastically curtailed . Using Luka css writings on reification as an example, Said shows how
a theory can lose the power of its original formulation as later scholars take it up and adapt it to their own historical circumstances . In Saids estimation,
Luka css insurrectionary vision became subdued, even domesticated , the wider it circulated. Said is especially concerned to describe what happens when
such theories come into contact with academic institutions , which impose through their own mode of producing cultural capital , a new value upon
then. Said suggests that this authoritative status, which imbues the theory with prestige and the authority of age, further dulls the theorys originally
insurgent message .8 When Said returned to and revised his essay some ten years later, he changed the emphasis by highlighting the possibilities, rather than the
limits, of travelling theory. Travelling Theory Reconsidered, while brief and speculative, offers a look at the way Luka css theory, transplanted into yet a different
context, can flame [ . . . ] out in a radical way.9 In particular, Said is interested in exploring what happens when intellectuals like Theodor Adorno and Franz Fanon
take up Luka cs: they reignite the fiery core of his theory in their critiques of capitalist alienation and French colonialism. Said is interested here in the idea that
theory matters and that as it travels, it creates an intellectual [ . . . ] community of a remarkable [ . . . ] affiliative kind.10 In contrast to his first essay and its
emphasis on the degradation of theoretical ideas, Said emphasizes the way a travelling theory produces new understandings as well as new political tools to deal
with violent conditions and disenfranchized subjects. Travelling theory becomes an intransigent practice that goes beyond borrowing and adaption.11 As Said sees
it, both Adorno and Fanon refuse the emoluments offered by the Hegelian dialectic as stabilized into resolution by Luka cs.12 Instead they transform Luka cs into
their respective locales as the theorist of permanent dissonance as understood by Adorno, [and] the critic of reactive nationalism as partially adopted by Fanon in
colonial Algeria.13 Saids set of reflections on travelling theory, especially his later recuperative work, are important to any account of travelling trauma, since it is
not only the problems of institutional subjugation that matter; additionally, we need to affirm the occurrence of transgressive possibilities, whether in the form of
fleeting transcultural affinities or in the effort to locate the inherent tensions within a system where such travel occurs. What Said implicitly critiques in his 1984
essay is the negative effects of exchange, institutionalization and the increasing use-value of critical theory as it travels within the academic
knowledge economy; in its travels, the theory becomes practically autonomous, uncoupled from the theorist who created it and the historical
context from which it was produced. This seems to perfectly illustrate the international circuit of exchange and valuation that occurs in the trauma economy. In
with the dissemination and reproduction of information and its consequent effects in relation to what Said described as the broader political world.14 Saids
anxiety relates to the academic normativization of theory (a tame academic substitution for the real thing15), a transformation which, he claimed, would
hamper its uses for society. A direct line can be drawn from Saids discussion of the circulation of discourse and its (non)political effects, and the international
representation of the 19921995 Bosnian war. The Bosnian war existed as a guerre du jour, the successor to the first Gulf War, receiving saturation
coverage and represented daily in the Western media. The sustained presence of the media had much to do with the proximity of the war to European cities
and also with the spectacular visibility of the conflict, particularly as it intensified. The bloodiest conflict to have taken place in Europe since the Second
World War, it displaced two million people and was responsible for over 150,000 civilian casualties.16 Yet despite global media coverage, no decisive
international military or political action took place to suspend fighting or prevent ethnic cleansing in East Bosnia, until after the massacre of Muslim
men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995. According to Gregory Kent, western perceptions about the war until then directed the lack of political will within the
international community, since the event was interpreted, codified and dismissed as an ethnic, civil war and humanitarian crisis, rather than
newspaper Liberation in 1993, Baudrillard writes of his anger at the international apathy towards the Bosnian crisis, denouncing it as a
spectral war.18 He describes it as a hyperreal hell not because the violence was in a not-so-distant space, but because of the way the
it is
important to evaluate the role of representative discourses in
relation to violence and its after effects. To begin with, we are still unsure of the consequences
Bosnians were harassed by the [international] media and humanitarian agencies.19 Given this extensive media coverage,
of this saturation coverage, though scholars have since elaborated on the racism framing much of the media discourses on the Yugoslav
wars.20 More especially, it is the celebrity of the Bosnian war that makes a critical evaluation of its current status in todays media cycle
all the more imperative. Bosnias current invisibility is fundamentally related to a point Baudrillard makes towards the end of his essay:
The demand
created by a market of a sympathetic, yet selfindulgent
spectators propels the global travel of trauma (or rather, the memory of that trauma)
precisely because Bosnian suffering has a resale value on the futures
markets .22 To treat traumatic memory as currency not only
acknowledges the fact that travelling memory is overdetermined by
capitalism ; more pertinently, it recognizes the global system through which traumatic memory travels and becomes subject to
distress, misery and suffering have become the raw goods circulating in a global age of commiseration.21
exchange and flux. To draw upon Marx: we can comprehend trauma in terms of its fungible properties, part of a social relation [that is] constantly
changing with time and place.23 This is what I call the trauma economy. By trauma economy, I am thinking of economic, cultural, discursive and political
structures that guide, enable and ultimately institutionalize the representation, travel and attention to certain traumas. The Trauma Economy in Joe
Saccos The Fixer Having introduced the idea of a trauma economy and how it might operate, I want to turn to Sacco because he is acutely conscious of the way
representations of trauma circulate in an international system. His work exposes the infrastructure and logic of a trauma economy in war-torn Bosnia and so echoes
some of the points made by Said about the movement of theory. As I examine Saccos critical assessment of the Bosnian war, I want to bear in mind Saids discussion
about the effects of travel on theory and, in particular, his two contrasting observations: first, that theory can become commodified and second, that theory enables
unexpected if transient solidarities across cultures. The Fixer takes up the notion of trauma as transcultural capital and commodity, something Sacco has confronted
in his earlier work on Bosnia.24 The Fixer focuses on the story of Neven, a Sarajevan local and the fixer of the comics title, who sells his services to international
journalists, including Saccos avatar. The comic is set in 2001, in postwar Sarajevo and an ethnically partitioned and economically devastated Bosnia, but its
narrative frequently flashes back to the conflict in the mid- 1990s, and to what has been described as the siege within the siege.25 This refers not just to Sarajevos
three and a half year siege by Serb forces but also to its backstage: the concurrent criminalization of Sarajevo through the rise of a wartime black market economy
from which Bosniak paramilitary groups profited and through which they consolidated their power over Sarajevan civilians. In these flashbacks, The Fixer addresses
Nevens experience of the war, first, as a sniper for one of the Bosniak paramilitary units and, subsequently, as a professional fixer for foreign visitors, setting them
up with anything they need, from war stories and tours of local battle sites to tape recorders and prostitutes. The contemporary, postwar scenes detail the
160
ambivalent friendship between Neven and Saccos comic avatar. In doing so, The Fixer spares little detail about the economic value of trauma:
career
Nevens
vital indeed for Saccos avatar often the only access to the stories and traumas of the war, we can never be sure whether he is a
reliable witness or merely
an opportunistic salesman. His anecdotes have the whiff of bravura about them. He
expresses pride in his military exploits, especially his role in a sortie that destroyed several Serb tanks (the actual number varies increasingly each time the tale is
told). He tells Sacco that with more acquaintances like himself, he could have broken the siege of Sarajevo.28 Nevens heroic selfpresentation is consistently
undercut by other characters, including Saccos avatar, who ironically renames him a Master in the School of Front-line Truth and even calls upon the reader to
assess the situation. One Sarajevan local remembers Neven as having a big imagination29; others castigate him as unstable30; and those who have also fought in
the war reject his claims outright, telling Sacco, it didnt happen.31 For Saccos avatar though, Neven is a godsend.32 Unable to procure information from the
other denizens of Sarajevo, he is delighted to accept Nevens version of events: Finally someone is telling me how it was or how it almost was, or how it could have
been but finally someone in this town is telling me something.33 This discloses the true value of the Bosnian war to the Western media: getting the story right
factually is less important than getting it right affectively. The purpose is to extract a narrative that evokes an emotional (whether voyeuristic or
empathetic) response from its audience. Here we see a good example of the way a traumatic memory circulates in the trauma economy, as it travels from its site
of origin and into a fantasy of a reality. Nevens mythmaking whether motivated by economic opportunism, or as a symptom of his own traumatized psyche
reflects back to the international community a counter-version of mediated events and spectacular traumas that appear daily in the Western media.
It is worth adding that his mythmaking only has value so long as it occurs within preauthorized media circuits. When Neven attempts to bypass the international
journalists and sell his story instead directly to a British magazine, the account of his wartime action against the 43 tanks is rejected on the basis that they dont
follow-up story, he finds widespread, deliberate resistance to his efforts to gather first-hand testimonies. Wishing to uncover the citys
terrible secrets, Sacco finds his research has stalled, as locals either refuse to meet with him or cancel their appointments.36 The
suspiciousness and hostility Sacco encounters in Sarajevo is a response precisely to the international demand for trauma of the 1990s.
The mass media presence during the war did little to help the citys besieged residents; furthermore, international
journalists
and civilians who will die in this war .37 The media fascination with Sarajevos humanitarian crisis was as intense as it was fleeting and has since been
described as central to the ensuing compassion fatigue of Western viewers.38 In contrast to this coverage, which focused on the casualties and victims of the war,
The Fixer reveals a very different story: the rise of Bosniak paramilitary groups, their contribution (both heroic and criminal) to the war and their ethnic cleansing of
non- Muslim civilians from the city. Herein lies the appeal of Neven, a Bosnian-Serb, who has fought under Bosnian- Muslim warlords defending Sarajevo and who
considers himself a Bosnian citizen first before any other ethnic loyalty. For not only is Sacco ignorant about the muddled ethnic realities of the war, its moral
ambiguities and its key players but he also wants to hear Nevens shamelessly daring and dirty account of the war, however unreliable. As Sacco explains, hes a
little enthralled, a little infatuated, maybe a little in love and what is love but a transaction.39 Neven a hardened war veteran provides the goods, the first-hand
experience of war and, for Saccos avatar, that is worth every Deutschemark, coffee and cigarette. He explains in a parenthetical remark to his implied reader: I
would be remiss if I let you think that my relationship with Neven is simply a matter of his shaking me down. Because Neven was the first friend I made in Sarajevo . .
. [hes] travelled one of the wars dark roads and Im not going to drop him till he tells me all about it.40 Saccos assertion here suggests something more than a
mutual exploitation. The word friend describing Saccos relationship to Neven is quickly replaced by the word drop. Having sold his raw goods, Neven finds that
the trauma economy in the postwar period has already devalued his experience by disengaging with Bosnias local traumas. As Sacco suggests, the war moved on
and left him behind [ . . . ] The truth is, the war quit Neven.41 The Neven of 2001 is not the brash Neven of old, but a pasty-looking unemployed forty-year old and
recovering alcoholic, who takes pills to prevent his anxiety attacks.42 His wartime actions lay heavily on his conscience, despite his efforts to stash [ . . . ] deep his
bad memories.43 The Fixer leaves us with an ironic fact: Neven, who has capitalized on trauma during the war, is now left traumatized and without capital in the
postwar situation.
Juxtaposing Traumas in a Global Age Saccos depiction of the trauma economy certainly
highlights the question of power and exploitation, since so many of the interactions between locals and international visitors are shaped by the commodity
market of traumatic memories. And while The Fixer provides a new perspective of the Bosnian war, excoriating the profit-seeking objectives of both the media
and the Bosnian middle-men amid life-altering events, its general point about the capitalistic vicissitudes of the trauma economy is not significantly different from
that sustained in the narratives of Aleksandar Hemon, Rajiv Chandrasekaran or Art Spiegelman.44What distinguishes Saccos work is the way it also picks up the
possibility described in Edward Saids optimistic re-reading of travel: the potential for affiliation. As I see it, Saccos criticism isnt leveled merely at the moral grey
zone created during the Bosnian war: he is more interested in the framework of representations themselves that mediate, authorize, commemorate and circulate
trauma in different ways. been described as central to the ensuing compassion fatigue of Western viewers.38 In contrast to this coverage, which focused on the
casualties and victims of the war, The Fixer reveals a very different story: the rise of Bosniak paramilitary groups, their contribution (both heroic and criminal) to the
war and their ethnic cleansing of non- Muslim civilians from the city. Herein lies the appeal of Neven, a Bosnian-Serb, who has fought under Bosnian- Muslim warlords
defending Sarajevo and who considers himself a Bosnian citizen first before any other ethnic loyalty. For not only is Sacco ignorant about the muddled ethnic realities
of the war, its moral ambiguities and its key players but he also wants to hear Nevens shamelessly daring and dirty account of the war, however unreliable. As Sacco
explains, hes a little enthralled, a little infatuated, maybe a little in love and what is love but a transaction.39 Neven a hardened war veteran provides the
goods, the first-hand experience of war and, for Saccos avatar, that is worth every Deutschemark, coffee and cigarette. He explains in a parenthetical remark to his
implied reader: I would be remiss if I let you think that my relationship with Neven is simply a matter of his shaking me down. Because Neven was the first friend I
made in Sarajevo . . . [hes] travelled one of the wars dark roads and Im not going to drop him till he tells me all about it.40 Saccos assertion here suggests
something more than a mutual exploitation. The word friend describing Saccos relationship to Neven is quickly replaced by the word drop. Having sold his raw
goods, Neven finds that the trauma economy in the postwar period has already devalued his experience by disengaging with Bosnias local traumas. As Sacco
suggests, the war moved on and left him behind [ . . . ] The truth is, the war quit Neven.41 The Neven of 2001 is not the brash Neven of old, but a pasty-looking
unemployed forty-year old and recovering alcoholic, who takes pills to prevent his anxiety attacks.42 His wartime actions lay heavily on his conscience, despite his
efforts to stash [ . . . ] deep his bad memories.43 The Fixer leaves us with an ironic fact: Neven, who has capitalized on trauma during the war, is now left
traumatized and without capital in the postwar situation. Juxtaposing Traumas in a Global Age Saccos depiction of the trauma economy certainly highlights the
question of power and exploitation, since so many of the interactions between locals and international visitors are shaped by the commodity market of traumatic
memories. And while The Fixer provides a new perspective of the Bosnian war, excoriating the profit-seeking objectives of both the media and the Bosnian middlemen amid life-altering events, its general point about the capitalistic vicissitudes of the trauma economy is not significantly different from that sustained in the
narratives of Aleksandar Hemon, Rajiv Chandrasekaran or Art Spiegelman.44What distinguishes Saccos work is the way it also picks up the possibility described in
Edward Saids optimistic re-reading of travel: the potential for affiliation. As I see it, Saccos criticism isnt leveled merely at the moral grey zone created during the
panel places Saccos (Anglophone) audience within the familiar, emotional context of the September 11, 2001 attacks, with their attendant anxieties, shock and grief
and so contributes to a blurring of the hierarchical lines set up between different horrors across different spaces. Consequently, I do not see Saccos juxtaposition of
traumas as an instance of what Michael Rothberg calls, competitive memory, the victim wars that pit winners against losers.49 Sacco gestures towards a far more
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complex idea that takes into account the highly mediated presentations of both traumas, which nonetheless evokes Rothbergs notion of multidirectional memory by
affirming the solidarities of trauma alongside their differences. In drawing together these two disparate events, Saccos drawings echo the critical consciousness in
Saids Travelling Theory essay. Rather than suggesting one trauma is, or should be, more morally legitimate than the other, Sacco is sharply attentive to the way
trauma is disseminated and recognized in the political world. The attacks on theWorld Trade Centre, like the siege of Sarajevo, transformed into discursive form
epitomize what might be called victim narratives. In this way, the United States utilized international sympathy (much of which was galvanized by the stunning
footage of the airliners crashing into the towers) to launch a retaliatory campaign against Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. In contrast, Bosnia in 1992 faced a precarious
future, having just proclaimed its independence. As we discover in The Fixer, prior to Yugoslavias break-up, Bosnia had been ordered to return its armaments to the
Yugoslav National Army (JNA), which were then placed into the hands of the rebel Serbs, leaving the Bosnian government to build an army almost from scratch.50
The analogy between 9/11 and 1992 Sarajevo is stark: Sarajevos empty landscape in the panel emphasizes its defencelessness and isolation. The Fixer constantly
reminds the reader about the difficulties of living under a prolonged siege in a city that is cut off and being starved into submission.51 In contrast, September 11,
2001 has attained immense cultural capital because of its status as a significant U.S. trauma. This fact is confirmed by its profound visuality, which
crystallized the spectacle and site of trauma. Complicit in this process, the international press consolidated and legitimated the events symbolic power, by
representing, mediating and dramatizing the trauma so that, as SlavojZ izek writes, the U.S. was elevated into the sublime victim of Absolute Evil.52 September
11 was constructed as an exceptional event, in terms of its irregular circumstances and the symbolic enormity both in the destruction of iconic buildings and in the
attack on U.S. soil. Such a construction seeks to overshadow perhaps all recent international traumas and certainly all other U.S. traumas and sites of shock.
Saccos portrayal, which locates September eleven in Sarajevo 1992, calls into question precisely this claim towards the singularity of any trauma. The implicit
doubling and prefiguring of the 9/11 undercuts the exceptionalist rhetoric associated with the event. Saccos strategy encourages us to think outside of
hegemonic epistemologies , where one trauma dominates and becomes more meaningful than others . Crucially, Sacco reminds his audience of the
cultural imperialism that frames the spectacle of news and the designation of traumatic narratives in particular . Postwar Bosnia and Beyond 2001
remains, then, both an accidental and a significant date in The Fixer. While the (Anglophone) world is preoccupied with a new narrative of trauma and a sense of
historical rupture in a post 9/11 world, Bosnia continues to linger in a postwar limbo. Six years have passed since the war ended, but much of Bosnias day-to-day
Bosnia is now a
thriving economy for international scholars of trauma and political
theory, purveyors of thanotourism,53 UN peacekeepers and post-conflict nation builders (the ensemble of NGOs,
economy remains coded by international perceptions of the war. No longer a haven for aspiring journalists,
charity and aid workers, entrepreneurs, contractors, development experts, and EU government advisors to the Office of the High Representative, the foreign overseer
of the protectorate state that is Bosnia). On the other hand, many of Bosnias locals face a grim future, with a massive and everincreasing unemployment
rate (ranging between 35 and 40%), brain-drain outmigration, and ethnic cantonments. I contrast these realities of 2001 because these circumstances a
flourishing economy at the expense of the traumatized population ought to be seen as part of a trauma economy. The trauma economy, in other
words, extends far beyond the purview of the Western media networks. In discussing the way traumatic memories travel along the circuits of the global media, I have
described only a few of the many processes that transform traumatic events into fungible traumatic memories; each stage of that process represents an exchange
unscrupulous fixer can supply western reporters with the story they want to hear is only a concentrated example of a more general
practices, of the renunciation of the subject position and of meaning-precisely the practices of the masses-that we bury under the derisory terms of alienation and
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whose argument is oppression and repression, the strategic resistance is the liberating claim of subjecthood. But this strategy is more reflective of the earlier phase of the
which is a form of refusal and of non- reception. It is the strategy of the masses: it is equivalent to re-turning to the system its own logic by doubling it, to reflecting
meaning, like a mirror, without absorbing it. This strategy (if one can still speak of strategy) prevails today, because it was ushered in by that phase of the system which
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Discourse
Discourse doesnt shape reality- the alternatives antihegemonic discourse can never resolve material forms of
violence and oppressive power structures
Rodwell 05 (Jonathan, PhD student at Manchester Met. researching U.S. Foreign Policy, 49th
parallel, Spring, Trendy but empty: A Response to Richard Jackson,
www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue15/rodwell1.htm)//CA
real problems. It is proposed that the real world killers are not
terrorism, but disease or illegal drugs or environmental issues. The
problem is how do we know this? It seems we know this because there is
evidence that illustrates as much Jackson himself quoting to Dr David King who argued
global warming is a greater that than terrorism. The only problem of course is that
discourse analysis has established (as argued by Jackson) that
Kings argument would just be self-contained discourse designed to
naturalise another arguments for his own reasons. Ultimately it would be
no more valid than the argument that excessive consumption of
Sugar Puffs is the real global threat. It is worth repeating that I dont personally
believe global terrorism is the worlds primary threat, nor do I believe that Sugar Puffs are a global killer.
without the ability to identify real facts about the world we can
simply say anything, or we can say nothing. This is clearly ridiculous and many
But
It is a seemingly fairly obvious reintroduction of traditional methodology and causal links. It implies things
that can be seen to be right regardless of perspective or discourse. It again goes without saying that
logically in this case if such an assessment is possible then undeniable material factors about the word are
real and are knowable outside of any cultural definition.
the onslaught of an oppressive and dangerous breakfast cereal? Because empirically persuasive evidence
tells us this is the case. The question must then be asked, is our understanding of the world born of
evidential assessment, or born of discourse analysis? Or perhaps its actually born of utilisation of many
different possible explanations.
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A2 RoB
Assigning political value to the ballot makes debate a site
for exclusion
Harris
Scott
, Director of Debate, Kansas University, 20
http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?topic=4762.0
This ballot has concerns about the messages this debate sends about what it means to be welcomed into the home of
debate. Northwestern made an argument that spoke to this concern that could have been more developed in the debate
This debate seemed to suggest that the sign that debate can be
your home is entirely wrapped up in winning debates . The message
seems to be that the winner is accepted and the loser is rejected . I
itself.
believe that the arguments Northwestern advanced in the debate that being voted against is not a sign of personal
rejection and that voting against an argument should not be perceived as an act of psychic violence are important
end up in violent fights in society is the inability to separate people from their arguments. People outside of debate (or the
law) are often confused by how debaters (or lawyers) can argue passionately with one another and then be friends after
the argument. It is because we generally separate our disagreements over arguments from our opinions about each other
as people. There are two concerns this ballot has about the implications of where this debate has positioned us as a
point where the only perceived route to victory for some minority debaters is to rail against exclusion in debate.
The reality is
that many debaters do not win the majority of their debates. The majority
of debaters will never win the NDT. The majority of debaters will never attend the
NDT. Every debate has a loser. Losing should not be a sign of
expulsion from the home. Years ago on van trips we used to play a game which we called the green weenie award.
The second concern is the emphasis on winning as the sign evidence of debate being a home.
We would take the results packet and have everyone in the van guess who was the team that was the bottom seed of the
tournament. The game may have had a certain amount of arrogant cruelty in it. I would sometimes wonder what it was
As a
community we get so caught up sometimes in defining our wins as
successes and our losses as failures that we have lost sight of what
it is that makes debate a special home in the first place . Debate
cannot only be a home for the winner or it would by definition have
become not a home for the majority of its participants. This ballot hopes that
we can learn to recognize that the experience of losing debates is part of being welcomed in debate as well. Getting
the opportunity to debate itself has tremendous value . The value is
that made the teams who didnt win debates, who didnt ever clear, come back the next week.
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lesson that I need to constantly work on myself. Learning to value the losses as much as the wins is the hardest part for
me but I believe it is vital if debate is really going to be a home for all of its participants.
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Framework
The negative should weigh the agency of the affirmative
vs a governmental actor of their own. We should win if
our actor offers the best political/ethical option. They
should win if they can prove either the squo solves or a
competitive option is better.
Resolved denotes a proposal to be enacted by law
Words and Phrases 1964 Permanent Edition
Definition of the word resolve, given by Webster is to express an opinion
key elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented
propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---The United States in The
United States should adopt a policy of free trade. Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of
value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb should the first
part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination.
For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action
though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired.
The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate
consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of
policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred.
something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a
debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose.
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Bouie 13
Jamelle, Staff Writer at The American Prospect, 2013 (Making (and Dismantling) Racism, The American Prospect, March
th
had the luxury of sitting and talking with the brilliant historian Barbara Fields. One point she makes that very few
Americans understand is that racism is a creation. You read Edmund Morgans work and actually see racism being
law created racism any more than it can create lust or greed or envy or hatred. It can encourage or mitigate these
profound aspects of human psychology it can create racist structures as in the Jim Crow South or Greater Israel. But it
can no more end these things that it can create them. A complementary strategy is finding ways for the targets of such
hatred to become inured to them, to let the slurs sting less until they sting not at all. Not easy. But a more manageable
goal than TNCs utopianism. I can appreciate the point Sullivan is making, but I'm not sure it's relevant to Coates'
argument. It is absolutely true that "Group loyalty is deep in our DNA," as Sullivan writes. And if you define racism as an
overly aggressive form of group loyaltybasically just prejudicethen Sullivan is right to throw water on the idea that the
law can "create racism any more than it can create lust or greed or envy or hatred." But Coates is making a more precise
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racism as much as it was built in tandem with it. And later policy, in
the late 19th and 20th centuries, further entrenched white
supremacist attitudes. Block black people from owning homes, and they're forced to reside in crowded
slums. Onlookers then use the reality of slums to deny homeownership to blacks, under the view that they're unfit for
suburbs. In other words, create a prohibition preventing a marginalized group from engaging in socially sanctioned
behaviorowning a home, getting marriedand then blame them for the adverse consequences. Indeed, in arguing for
gay marriage and responding to conservative critics, Sullivan has taken note of this exact dynamic. Here he is twelve
years ago, in a column for The New Republic that builds on earlier ideas: Gay mennot because they're gay but because
they are men in an all-male subcultureare almost certainly more sexually active with more partners than most straight
men. (Straight men would be far more promiscuous, I think, if they could get away with it the way gay guys can.) Many
gay men value this sexual freedom more than the stresses and strains of monogamous marriage (and I don't blame
them). But this is not true of all gay men. Many actually yearn for social stability, for anchors for their relationships, for the
family support and financial security that come with marriage. To deny this is surely to engage in the "soft bigotry of low
expectations." They may be a minority at the moment. But with legal marriage, their numbers would surely grow. And
they would function as emblems in gay culture of a sexual life linked to stability and love. [Emphasis added] What else is
this but a variation on Coates' core argument, that society can create stigmas by using law to force particular kinds of
behavior? Insofar as gay men were viewed as unusually promiscuous, it almost certainly had something to do with the
fact that society refused to recognize their humanity and sanction their relationships. The absence of any institution to
mediate love and desire encouraged behavior that led this same culture to say "these people are too degenerate to
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are their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its
borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification card, or enforce existing laws against
employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to be addressed
to make substantial progress on the immigration debate. Of course, arguments may be presented without disagreement. For
example, claims are presented and supported within speeches, editorials, and advertisements even without opposing or
refutational response. Argumentation occurs in a range of settings from informal to formal, and may not call upon an audience
or judge to make a forced choice among competing claims. Informal discourse occurs as conversation or panel discussion
by definition, debate
requires "reasoned judgment on a proposition. The proposition is a
statement about which competing advocates will offer alternative (pro
or con) argumentation calling upon their audience or adjudicator to
decide. The proposition provides focus for the discourse and guides
the decision process. Even when a decision will be made through a
process of compromise, it is important to identify the beginning positions
of competing advocates to begin negotiation and movement toward
a center, or consensus position. It is frustrating and usually unproductive to attempt
to make a decision when deciders are unclear as to what the decision is
about. The proposition may be implicit in some applied debates (Vote for me!); however, when a vote or
without demanding a decision about a dichotomous or yes/no question. However,
consequential decision is called for (as in the courtroom or in applied parliamentary debate) it is essential that the
problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about the state of public education could join together to express
their frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools, but without a focus for their discussions,
they could easily agree about the sorry state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions.
A gripe
that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very
engaging.
following discussion.
In the spring of 2011, facing a legacy of problematic U.S, military involvement in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and
criticism for what some saw as slow support of the United States for the people of Egypt and Tunisia as citizens of those nations ousted their
formerly American-backed dictators, the administration of President Barack Obama
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past
decade has challenged American leaders to make many difficult
decisions in response to potentially catastrophic problems. Public debate has
raged in chaotic environment of political division and apparent animosity,
The process of public decision making may have never been so consequential or difficult. Beginning in the fall of 2008, Presidents Bush and Obama
faced a growing economic crisis and responded in part with 'bailouts'' of certain Wall Street financial entities, additional bailouts of Detroit automakers,
and a major economic stimulus package. All these actions generated substantial public discourse regarding the necessity, wisdom, and consequences of
acting (or not acting). In the summer of 2011, the president and the Congress participated in heated debates (and attempted negotiations) to raise
the nation's debt ceiling such that the U.S. Federal Government could pay its debts and continue government operations. This discussion was linked to
a debate about the size of the exponentially growing national debt, government spending, and taxation. Further, in the spring of 2012, U.S. leaders
sought to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapon capability while gas prices in the United States rose, The United States considered its
ongoing military involvement in Afghanistan in the face of nationwide protests and violence in that country1 sparked by the alleged burning of
Korans by American soldiers, and Americans observed the actions of President Bashir Al-Assad and Syrian forces as they killed Syrian citizens in
response to a rebel uprising in that nation and considered the role of the United States in that action. Meanwhile, public
discourse, in part generated and intensified by the campaigns of the GOP candidates for president and consequent media coverage,
addressed issues dividing Americans, including health care, women's
rights to reproductive health services, the freedom of churches and church-run organizations to remain true to their beliefs in providing (or
electing not to provide) health care services which they oppose, the growing gap between the
wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and the rest of the American
population, and continued high levels of unemployment. More division among the American public would be
hard to imagine. Yet through all the tension, conflict was almost entirely ver bal in nature, aimed at discovering or advocating solutions to growing problems. Individuals also faced
daunting decisions. A young couple, underwater with their mortgage and struggling to make their monthly
payments, considered walking away from their loan; elsewhere a college
sophomore reconsidered his major and a senior her choice of law school,
graduate school, or a job and a teenager decided between an iPhone and an iPad. Each of these situations
called for decisions to be made. Each decision maker worked hard to make well-reasoned decisions. Decision
making is a thoughtful process of choosing among a variety of options for acting or thinking. It requires that the decider make a choice. Life
demands decision making. We make countless individual decisions
every day. To make some of those decisions, we work hard to employ care and consideration: others scorn to just happen. Couples, families,
groups of friends, and coworkers come together to make choices, and decision-making bodies from committees to juries to the U.S. Congress and the
the
choice of which information to attend to requires decision making. In
2006, Time magazine named YOU its "Person of the Year. Congratulations! Its selection was based on the participation not of great men in the
creation of history, but rather on the contributions of a community of anonymous participants in the evolution of information. Through blogs,
online networking, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and many other wikis," and social networking sites, knowledge and truth are created
from the bottom up, bypassing the authoritarian control of newspeople, academics, and publishers. Through
a quick
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in critical thinking is a
prerequisite to participating effectively in human affairs, pursuing higher
education, and succeeding in the highly competitive world of business
and the professions. Michael Scriven and Richard Paul for the National Council for Excellence in Critical
Thinking Instruction argued that the effective critical thinker: raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly
and precisely; gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively; comes to wellreasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards; thinks open-mindedly within
alternative systems of thought, recognizing, and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and communicates effectively with others in figuring our solutions to complex problems. They also observed
times, debate has been one of the best methods of learning and applying the principles of critical thinking.
Colbert concluded, "'The debate-critical thinking literature provides presumptive proof favoring a positive debate-critical thinking relationship.11'1
Much of the most significant communication of our lives is conducted in the form of debates, formal or informal, These take place in intrapersonal
communications, with which we weigh the pros and cons of an important decision in our own minds, and in interpersonal communications, in which
Our
success or failure in life is largely determined by our ability to make
wise decisions for ourselves and to influence the decisions of others
in ways that are beneficial to us. Much of our significant, purposeful activity is
concerned with making decisions. Whether to join a campus
organization, go to graduate school, accept a job offer, buy a car or
house, move to another city, invest in a certain stock, or vote for Garciathese are just a few
Of the thousands of decisions we may have to make. Often, intelligent self-interest or a
we listen to arguments intended to influence our decision or participate in exchanges to influence the decisions of others.
sense of responsibility will require us to win the support of others. We may want a scholarship or a particular job for ourselves, a customer for our
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Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include descriptions
games
differ from textbooks and everyday classroom instruction as debate scenarios allow
teachers and students to actively imagine, interact and
communicate within a domain-specific game space. However, instead of mystifying
of issues to be debated, educational goals, game goals, roles, rules, time frames etc. In this way, debate
debate games as a magic circle (Huizinga, 1950), I will try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between
educational
gaming is a form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two different semiotic
gaming and teaching that tends to dominate discussions of educational games. In short,
domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions, modes of representation and social forms of
organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2). In order to understand the interplay between these different domains
and their interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central assumption in Bakhtins dialogical philosophy.
issues. Consequently, the actual process of enacting a game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these
centrifugal/centripetal forces that are inextricably linked with the teachers and students game activities. In this way, the
enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines different pedagogical practices (i.e. group work, web
quests, student presentations) and learning resources (i.e. websites, handouts, spoken language) within the interpretive
frame of the election scenario. Obviously, tensions may arise if there is too much divergence between educational goals
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is both a descriptive term (all utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other
am mainly interested in describing the dialogical space of debate games. At the same time, I agree with Wegerif that
one of the goals of education, perhaps the most important goal, should be
dialogue as an end in itself (Wegerif, 2006: 61).
Bakhtin viewed the whole process of ideological (in the sense of ideas and values, however unsystematic)
when we hear an authoritative voice with which we disagree. So it is often helpful to think back on the great
authoritative oppressors and reconstruct their self-image: helpful, but often painful. I remember, many years ago, when,
as a recent student rebel and activist, I taught a course on The Theme of the Rebel and discovered, to my considerable
who
hoped to bring the great Dutch humanist over to the Reformation, but Erasmus kept asking Luther how he could be so
certain of so many doctrinal points. We must accept a few things to be Christians at all, Erasmus wrote, but surely
beyond that there must be room for us highly fallible beings to disagree. Luther would have none of such tentativeness.
He knew, he was sure. The Protestant rebels were, for a while, far more intolerant than their orthodox opponents. Often
enough, the oppressors are the ones who present themselves and really think of themselves as liberators. Certainty that
one knows the root cause of evil: isnt that itself often the root cause? We know from Tsar Ivan the Terribles letters
denouncing Prince Kurbsky, a general who escaped to Poland, that Ivan saw himself as someone who had been
oppressed by noblemen as a child and pictured himself as the great rebel against traditional authority when he killed
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name of oppressed
Germans, and that much of his amazing appeal otherwise so inexplicable was to the German sense that they were
Milosevic exploited
the same appeal. Bakhtin surely knew that Communist
totalitarianism, the Gulag, and the unprecedented censorship were constructed by
rebels who had come to power. His favorite writer, Dostoevsky, used to emphasize that the worst
oppression comes from those who, with the rebellious psychology of
the insulted and humiliated, have seized power unless they have somehow
rebelling victims. In our time, the Serbian Communist and nationalist leader Slobodan
much
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