Race K Toolbox
***Pessimism Answers***
AT: Pessimism – General
Negativity as a starting point is necessary but insufficient – constructive building is
necessary to create tangible changes.
Brand-Jacobsen, TRANSCEND Co-Director and Coalition for Global Solidarity
and Social Development Director, 2005
[Kai Frithjof, “Peace by Peaceful Means”
https://web.archive.org/web/20050404102302/http://www.globalsolidarity.org/articles/peace_means_kai.
html]
Peace by Peaceful Means Dear Friends, The discussions which have taken place over e-mail over the past few days have been extremely
interesting. I have just returned from Oslo where the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize was being celebrated. The obvious contrast
between the rather elite 'suit' dominated celebrations in Oslo and the realities of what is occurring in the world today was stark. Questions
of
strategy, tactics and visions for how we work to bring about change, to transform all forms of violent
conflict -- direct, structural, and cultural -- and to empower, mobilise, and involve people in a mass,
broad-based movement for peace and to build the alternatives we are looking for, are vital . In Norway alone, to take
one example, perhaps 80% of people think what is happening now in and over Afghanistan is wrong, either completely or at least in part, and yet
all they hear from the media, academics and politicians is constant support and acclaim for the 'justness' of this war (or indeed, any war in which
it is 'we' against 'them'). Small groups of people and 'NGOs', in Norway as in every single country, are trying to bring forward alternatives, to
raise their voices, and to protest/oppose what they think is wrong. While these organisations are in every case much smaller than our governments
and militaries going to war, they often represent the social majority. A
major challenge they face, however, is how to reach out to people,
to develop alternatives which make sense to people tired of war and violence (whether of
the kind we are seeing in Afghanistan, or of a global economic system killing 100,000 a day). Negative slogans and opposition to what is
wrong is not enough however. It is not enough, but it is necessary. 'Basta!', 'Enough!' was perhaps the most
how to involve people, and how
'revolutionary' cry of the last decade, and still is in many parts of the world. The simple, courageous act, of standing up when we see that
something is wrong, and stating
that it is wrong, not cooperating with it, can be a powerful and evocative
symbol. When we are having our conferences, discussions and meetings in whichever city, town or village of the world we may be found, we
should always remember that the vast majority of people in our own city, town or village, as well as the entire rest of the world, have no idea that
we are there, meeting. The vision, hope and ideas which bring people to these conferences are, in the vast majority of cases, kept marginalised, on
the periphery. Yet that is also part of our own responsibility, technique and methods. Basta! became a cry to inspire millions, because those who
said it lived it, refusing to cooperate any longer with what they know to be wrong. While Basta! may be the most revolutionary cry or word today,
transforming all forms of direct, structural, and cultural violence is the greatest challenge. The
two are inclusive and
complementary, not exclusive. We need to state clearly our opposition to violence, war, injustice and exploitation (the
'peace movement' has often been willing to do the first two, not always as willing on the last two), and we need also to build a
constructive, positive programme. It is not only a question of what we are against, but what we are for.
When we criticize what we think is wrong, people will also want to know what we think could be done
instead. In these cases, our answers must seem real and viable to people. The 'anti-globalisation' movement is therefore also
a social justice movement; 'non-governmental organisations' should also be people's organisations or people's movements; and one of our
challenges today will be to build upon the growing 'anti-war' movement, transforming it also into a peace movement. A step further, as many
social and peace activists have recognised, will be to link the peace and social justice movements. Slogans and messages are important, as are
It will not be possible today to unite broad numbers of people around issues which
they feel are too abstract and divorced from them . The 'abolish the debt' campaign/movement was successful because
practice and vision.
people were able to see the clear linkages between debt and the effective colonisation and enslavement of countries and people across the south,
as well as the incredible suffering and destruction it brought. The Jubilee 2000 'campaign' however, unlike the Jubilee South movement which
continues today, did not reach its objective of having the debt cancelled. Instead, while many people around the world believe the problem has
been solved, the debt-system and the burden it places upon countries has become even more extreme. Going
from 'campaigns' to
movements will also be important, though even here it is not a question of 'either/or' but 'both/and'
with individual campaigns extremely useful and effective at times for involving people, raising awareness
and mobilising around specific issues, strengthening further the broader movements of which they may be
a part. Today, a movement for demos kratos is necessary, and vital for any movement or work towards peace. To
speak about the United States or any government in the world today as a 'democracy' is a ridiculous farce. They are highly elite dominated
systems built upon massive structures and cultures of violence, and willing to use overwhelming (Powel Doctrine) violence when necessary to
enforce their needs and/or interests. At best they may be demagogia's, where elites maintain power by promising the people what they will do for
them (we call this 'elections'), but they are not system's or societies built upon people's power, demos kratos. Decisions to go to war are made by
tiny numbers of people. Our economic and political policies are constructed for us, often to the detriment of the social majorities who are told to
'leave well enough alone' and trust in the experts. This is sometimes as true of politicians as it is of non-governmental organisations who
themselves frequently prefer the conference halls and well-funded projects to actually working democratically with people as part of the people
themselves. An alternative today, what Johan Galtung has called for, with 10,000 dialogues, meetings, discussions at every level, focussing not
only on what is wrong, but also on what we want therapy, ideas, alternatives. In one form or another many of these dialogues are taking place. In
a way they are therapy for the massive amounts of violence we are all being exposed to today, in our cultures, in our world, on our television sets
or in the speeches of our 'democratically elected' rulers (the question, for those who do not support their policies, should not be 'who put them in
power' -- though this is also important -- but why haven't we removed them from power yet?). They are also empowering, if we take the step
beyond saying what is wrong to what could be done?, what should be done?, and then go further to discussing what I/we can do about it.
Mobilising people for peace today is not simply about a slogan (though coming up with clearly expressed messages in a few
words will of course help us to link people together and raise awareness). What is necessary, beyond any single issue or toplevel strategy for how to change the world, is the process. The way is the goal. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the
social justice/anti-globalisation movement is that it has mobilised, involved, and empowered millions of people around the world in discussing,
thinking about, and acting upon the realities around them. On the streets of Seattle, Praha, Okinawa, Melbourne, Gotheburg, Washington,
Quebec, Genoa, Ottawa, people, many of whom refuse to vote, have been discussing foreign policy, domestic politics, people to people
movements, and all the issues which politicians and well-established NGOs are not able and often not willing to discuss with people. We
have
our 'manifestos', our policies and plans which we wish to put forward in the name of people, often addressing them to 'politicians' and
'elites' believing, in a fundamentally undemocratic way, that they will be the ones to bring about and implement change for us. This is not to
say that that is not an important level which we also need to work at. The broader vision here is both/and,
not either or, in terms of strategy as well often of vision. We also need, however, to be willing to take part
in the much slower, more timely, and more empowering process, of tens of thousands of dialogues together with people,
communities, and organisations at every level. Solidarity today is being built upon and carried further into alliances not just supporting
people in their struggles for social justice, peace and freedom, but carrying forward those struggles ourselves in our own communities, our own
towns, cities and villages.
If we wish to change the injustices taking place in the world today we must of course
work on a global level, but we must also work, just as importantly, within our communities. Again,
both/and rather than either or. We should also be wary when we say 'we must begin here', or 'this must be
done first!', even when the message is very positive and constructive. 'We must begin with the individual!'. 'We must
begin by changing society!'. 'We must begin with a culture of peace!'. 'We must begin by ending the debt!'. All of these, and the many
others put forward, are extremely important issues. They are also all linked together. Again, both/and. Exclusive and elitist visions
will only serve to further fragment our efforts, creating division and separation where what is needed
is dialogue, solidarity, cooperation and alliances between movements/organisations which often take
diverse strategies and approaches to addressing deeply interlinking injustices and structures and cultures
of violence. Conscientisation (raising awareness, often political awareness -- but also social, cultural, economic), organisation (we
can do more together than we can apart, and it is necessary to organise -- though in many different ways -- to be able to bring about changes, both
against what we think is wrong and for what we think is right), mobilisation (bringing in more and more people, involving people in
dialogues, discussion, action, and work for change/transformation), and empowerment (I/we can, rather than 'I/we can't'; also important
recognising the power we have to bring about change, rather than simply accepting existing, often extremely violent, power structures and
believing that change can/should/must be implemented by those 'in power', whether slave owners, men, politicians, or fuhrers)
are all
necessary. A guide for this, and for ourselves as movements, organisations and individuals might be to be Critical -- not simply accepting
what is happening but questioning it, recognising what we think is wrong, and also open to criticism of ourselves and what we are doing from
others, not simply accepting things as 'given', 'natural', unchangeable ('TINA' -- there is no alternative, is one of the most deeply undemocratic
and disempowering messages, frequently given by our 'democratically' elected elites/rulers); Radical -- according to the original etymology 'to go
to the roots'. Often NGOs (as well as much western medicine and political strategies) are satisfied with dealing with 'effects', 'symptoms' and fail
to go to the roots of the problems or structures we are dealing with. We cannot afford this today, or we will simply serve to reproduce sickness,
disease, and injustice on ever broader scales. It is necessary, therefore, to go to the roots, to see what lies beneath, behind, if we are to be able to
bring about true transformation, healing; Creative -- also very important today. Not simply accepting old methods, techniques, slogans, ways of
organising (though these are also all very important and should be learned from), but willing to be creative, to search for new approaches, new
ideas, and also new therapies to transform direct, structural and cultural violence; Constructive -- as many have suggested, we need to go beyond
what we are against, and also create what we are for. Part of being constructive is recognising our own power. It is itself an empowering act.
Recognising, realising, building our ability to think, dream, create ourselves the type(s) of communities/world we want. Mobilising people for
what we can do together, not simply for what we are opposed to being done by others. And; Honest -- with ourselves, with each other, to our
goals, aims, vision. Unity of means and ends. People can feel when their is honesty in a movement/organisation. If it is not there, they will be
sceptical and will not become involved. If we wish to be truly democratic, and truly empowering, we must also be honest, in our goals, our
methods, our vision, and with ourselves and each other. Speaking all day at a conference about poverty and then eating a US$100 meal is not
necessarily honest. Opposing the horrible poverty 3000 km away while ignoring the horrible poverty many live in in our own
towns/cities/villages is not necessarily honest. Talking about 'democracy' but expecting people to simply join our movements and accept our
slogans without dialogue, discussion, and mutual respect/empowerment, is not necessarily honest. The challenges are great, and they are ones we
we cannot simply wait until the end of the road for our alternatives, just
as we cannot wait until wars or violence have ended before we begin peacebuilding and conflict transformation. True empowerment will
come from building our alternatives, our alternative visions, social orders (or lack of order/structure),
communities, and way in our lives, in our communities, in our struggles and movements, here and now.
must live up to. Also, for I will not say finally,
This is being done in every corner of the world. It is part of the regeneration, revitalisation, and empowerment of people -- demos kratos and
peace by peaceful means.
AT: Pessimism – Race
Critique alone fails – it never puts something in its place.
Pyle, Boston College Law School JD, 1999
[Jefferey, 40 B.C.L. Rev. 787, “Race, Equality and the Rule of Law: Critical Race Theory's Attack on the
Promises of Liberalism”
http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2124&context=bclr, p.808-9]
At bottom, CRT fails because of its single-mindedly "critical" character. Race-crits bewail minority
disadvantage, blame liberal values for "constructing" this disadvantage and dismiss any defense of them
as a legitimation of white supremacy.262 But here endeth their analysis. As CLS scholar Mark Tushnet
admitted: "Critique is all there is." 263
"Critique," however, never built anything, and liberalism, for all its shortcomings, is at least constructive.
It provides broadly-accepted, reasonably well-defined principles to which political advocates may appeal
in ways that transcend sheer power, with at least some hope of incremental success:26' Critical race
theory would "deconstruct" this imperfect tradition, but offers nothing in its place.
AT: Pessimism – Afro-Pess
The absolutism of afro-pessimism fails – dogmatism reifies social death and slips
into cynicism.
Marriott, University of California Santa Cruz History of Consciousness professor,
2012
[David, Years Work Crit Cult Theory (2012) 20 (1): 37-66, “Black Cultural Studies” EBSCO]
However, this is also not the entire story of Red, White, and Black, as I hope to show. For example, in Chapter One (‘The Structure of
Antagonisms’), written as a theoretical introduction, and which opens explicitly on the Fanonian question of why ontology cannot understand the
being of the Black, Wilderson
is prepared to say that black suffering is not only beyond analogy, it also
refigures the whole of being: ‘the essence of being for the White and non-Black position’ is non-niggerness, consequently, ‘[b]eing can
thus be thought of, in the first ontological instance, as non-niggerness, and slavery then as niggerness’ (p. 37). It is not hard when
reading such sentences to suspect a kind of absolutism at work here, and one that manages to be
peculiarly and dispiritingly dogmatic : throughout Red, White, and Black, despite variations in tone and emphasis, there is
always the desire to have black lived experience named as the worst , and the politics of such a desire
inevitably collapses into a kind of sentimental moralism: for the claim that ‘Blackness is incapacity in its
most pure and unadulterated form’ means merely that the black has to embody this abjection without reserve (p.
38). This logic—and the denial of any kind of ‘ontological integrity’ to the Black/Slave due to its endless
traversal by force does seem to reduce ontology to logic , namely, a logic of non-recuperability —moves through
the following points: (1) Black non-being is not capable of symbolic resistance and, as such, falls outside of any language of authenticity or
reparation; (2) for such a subject, which Wilderson persists in calling ‘death’, the symbolic remains foreclosed (p. 43); (3) as such, Blackness is
the record of an occlusion which remains ever present: ‘White (Human) capacity, in advance of the event of discrimination or oppression, is
parasitic on Black incapacity’ (p. 45); (4) and, as an example of the institutions or discourses involving ‘violence’, ‘antagonisms’ and
‘parasitism’, Wilderson
describes White (or non-Black) film theory and cultural studies as incapable of
understanding the ‘suffering of the Black—the Slave’ (they cannot do so because they are erroneously wedded to humanism
and to the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, which Wilderson takes as two examples of what the Afro-pessimist should avoid) (p. 56); as a
corrective, Wilderson calls for a new language of abstraction, and one centrally concerned with exposing
‘the structure of antagonisms between Blacks and Humans’ (p. 68). Reading seems to stop here, at a critique of Lacanian
full speech: Wilderson wants to say that Lacan’s notion of the originary (imaginary) alienation of the subject is still wedded to relationality as
implied by the contrast between ‘empty’ and ‘full’ speech, and so apparently cannot grasp the trauma of ‘absolute Otherness’ that is the Black’s
relation to Whites, because psychoanalysis cannot fathom the ‘structural, or absolute, violence’ of Black life (pp. 74; 75). ‘Whereas Lacan was
aware of how language ‘‘precedes and exceeds us’’, he did not have Fanon’s awareness of how violence also precedes and exceeds Blacks’ (p.
76). The violence of such abjection—or incapacity—is therefore that it cannot be communicated or avowed, and is always already delimited by
desubjectification and dereliction (p. 77). Whence the suspicion of an ontology reduced to a logic (of abjection). Leaving aside the fact that it is
quite mistaken to limit Lacan’s notion of full speech to the search for communication (the unconscious cannot be confined to parole), it is clear
that, according
to Wilderson’s own ‘logic’, his description of the Black is working, via analogy, to Lacan’s
notion of the real but, in his insistence on the Black as an absolute outside Wilderson can only duly reify
this void at the heart of universality. The Black is ‘beyond the limit of contingency’—but it is worth saying
immediately that this ‘beyond’ is indeed a foreclosure that defines a violence whose traces can only be thought
violently (that is, analogically), and whose nonbeing returns as the theme for Wilderson’s political thinking of a
non-recuperable abjection. The Black is nonbeing and, as such, is more real and primary than being per se:
given how much is at stake, this insistence on a racial metaphysics of injury implies a fundamental
irreconcilability between Blacks and Humans (there is really no debate to be had here: irreconcilability is the condition and
possibility of what it means to be Black).
AT: Pessimism – AT: Ethics DA
Impossible demands fail – strategic and specific demands are more subversive than
“withdraw from the system” – the alt links comparatively more to the “ethics DA.”
Zizek, University of Ljubljana Institute for Sociology and Philosophy senior
researcher, 2007
[Slavoj, 11-15-07, “ Resistance Is Surrender” http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/print/zize01_.html]
The response of some critics on the postmodern Left to this predicament is to call
for a new politics of resistance. Those who
still insist on fighting state power, let alone seizing it, are accused of remaining stuck within the ‘old
paradigm’: the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating
new spaces outside its control. This is, of course, the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism. The politics of
resistance is nothing but the moralising supplement to a Third Way Left. Simon Critchley’s recent book, Infinitely
Demanding, is an almost perfect embodiment of this position.＊ For Critchley, the liberal-democratic state is here to stay.
Attempts to abolish the state failed miserably; consequently, the new politics has to be located at a distance from it: anti-war
movements, ecological organisations, groups protesting against racist or sexist abuses, and other forms of local self-organisation. It must be
a politics of resistance to the state, of bombarding the state with impossible demands, of denouncing the
limitations of state mechanisms. The main argument for conducting the politics of resistance at a distance
from the state hinges on the ethical dimension of the ‘infinitely demanding’ call for justice: no state can
heed this call, since its ultimate goal is the ‘real-political’ one of ensuring its own reproduction (its economic growth, public safety, etc). ‘Of
course,’ Critchley writes, history is habitually written by the people with the guns and sticks and one cannot expect to defeat them with mocking
satire and feather dusters. Yet, as the history of ultra-leftist active nihilism eloquently shows, one is lost the moment one picks up the guns and
sticks. Anarchic political resistance should not seek to mimic and mirror the archic violent sovereignty it opposes. So what should, say, the US
Democrats do? Stop competing for state power and withdraw to the interstices of the state, leaving state power to the Republicans and start a
campaign of anarchic resistance to it? And what would Critchley do if he were facing an adversary like Hitler? Surely in such a case one should
‘mimic and mirror the archic violent sovereignty’ one opposes? Shouldn’t the Left draw a distinction between the circumstances in which one
would resort to violence in confronting the state, and those in which all one can and should do is use ‘mocking satire and feather dusters’? The
ambiguity of Critchley’s position
resides in a strange non sequitur: if the state is here to stay, if it is impossible
to abolish it (or capitalism), why retreat from it? Why not act with(in) the state? Why not accept the basic premise of the
Third Way? Why limit oneself to a politics which, as Critchley puts it, ‘calls the state into question and calls the established order to
account, not in order to do away with the state, desirable though that might well be in some utopian sense, but in order to better it or attenuate its
malicious effect’? These words simply demonstrate that today’s liberal-democratic state and the
dream of an ‘infinitely demanding’
exist in a relationship of mutual parasitism: anarchic agents do the ethical thinking, and the
state does the work of running and regulating society. Critchley’s anarchic ethico-political agent acts like a superego,
comfortably bombarding the state with demands; and the more the state tries to satisfy these demands, the more guilty it
is seen to be. In compliance with this logic, the anarchic agents focus their protest not on open dictatorships, but on the hypocrisy of liberal
anarchic politics
democracies, who are accused of betraying their own professed principles. The big demonstrations in London and Washington against the US
attack on Iraq a few years ago offer an exemplary case of this strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance. Their
paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters saved their beautiful souls: they
made it clear that they don’t agree with the government’s policy on Iraq. Those in power calmly accepted it,
even profited from it: not only did the protests in no way prevent the already-made decision to attack Iraq; they
also served to legitimise it. Thus George Bush’s reaction to mass demonstrations protesting his visit to London, in effect: ‘You see, this
is what we are fighting for, so that what people are doing here – protesting against their government policy – will be possible also in Iraq!’ It is
striking that the
course on which Hugo Chávez has embarked since 2006 is the exact opposite of the one chosen by the
postmodern Left: far from resisting state power, he grabbed it (first by an attempted coup, then
democratically), ruthlessly using the Venezuelan state apparatuses to promote his goals. Furthermore, he is
militarising the barrios, and organising the training of armed units there. And, the ultimate scare: now that he is feeling the economic effects of
capital’s ‘resistance’ to his rule (temporary shortages of some goods in the state-subsidised supermarkets), he has announced plans to consolidate
the 24 parties that support him into a single party. Even some of his allies are sceptical about this move: will it come at the expense of the popular
movements that have given the Venezuelan revolution its élan? However, this choice, though risky, should be fully endorsed: the task is to make
the new party function not as a typical state socialist (or Peronist) party, but as a vehicle for the mobilisation of new forms of politics (like the
grass roots slum committees). What
should we say to someone like Chávez? ‘No, do not grab state power, just
withdraw, leave the state and the current situation in place’? Chávez is often dismissed as a clown – but
wouldn’t such a withdrawal just reduce him to a version of Subcomandante Marcos, whom many
Mexican leftists now refer to as ‘Subcomediante Marcos’? Today, it is the great capitalists – Bill Gates,
corporate polluters, fox hunters – who ‘resist’ the state. The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not
to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it,
such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your
critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make
do with what is possible.’ The
thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically wellselected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.
AT: Pessimism – AT: Cooption DA
Fear of cooption and concerns with authenticity is ivory tower oppositionalism – it
never gets off the ground.
Pyle, Boston College Law School JD, 1999
[Jefferey, 40 B.C.L. Rev. 787, “Race, Equality and the Rule of Law: Critical Race Theory's Attack on the
Promises of Liberalism”
http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2124&context=bclr, p.808-9]
For all their talk of "realism,"'" race-crits
are strangely unrealistic in their proposals for reform. 1 m7 Most probably
measures like racial or ethnic reparations are not likely to be granted, especially by a court. But even
unrealistic proposals are rare, because race-crits generally prefer not to suggest solutions, but to "resist" the
dominant legal thought, doctrine and policy, whatever that happens to be.'" As Derrick Bell has put it, " most critical race theorists are
committed to a program of scholarly resistance, and most hope scholarly resistance will lay the
groundwork for wide-scale resistance."'" How this ivory tower oppositionalism would foment
grassroots revolt is unclear, because CRT professors rarely suggest anything practical . Rather, their exhortations
realize that radical
are meant, as Bell says, to "harass white folks" and • thereby "make life bearable in a society where blacks are a permanent, subordinate class."'"
One of the race-crits’ few practical programs of "resistance" is Paul Butler's proposal that inner-city juries practice racially-based jury
nullification.' 91 jurors of color, Butler argues, have the "moral responsibility" not to apply the criminal law to blacks and whites equally, but to
"etnancipate some guilty black outlaws" because "the black community" would be "better off" if there were fewer black men in prison.'" If
enough juries were hung or not-guilty verdicts rendered, he imagines, the white-dominated government would change its excessive reliance on
incarceration.'" Butler rejects the ordinary democratic process of legal reform.' Democracy, he says, ensures a "permanent,
homogenous majority" of whites that "dominat[es]" African Ainericans.w 5 Butler is probably correct that occasional acts of jury nullification
might well express the resentment that many African Americans justifiably feel towards discriminatory law enforcement.'"`' As Randall Kennedy
has pointed out, however, black Americans are disproportionately the victims of crimes,' 97 and therefore tend to favor more, not less, criminal
prosecution and punishment. 1 "8
The race-crits' preference for "resistance"' 99 over democratic participation seems to flow from
a fear of losing their status as
"oppositional scholars] "200 to the game of mainstream law and politics, which they regard as "an
inevitably co-optive process?"' Better to be radically opposed to the "doniinant political discourse""2 and remain an out
than to work within the current system and lose one's "authenticity?" In rejecting the realistic for the
"authentic," however, race-crits begin to look like academic poseurs—ideological purists striking the correct
radical stance, but doing little within the confines of the real world, so sure are they that nothing much
can be done."
EXTN – AT: Pessimism
It is better to have faith in incrementalism – cynicism breeds ineffectiveness.
Tannenbaum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign social psychology PhD
candidate, 10-10-13
[Melanie, MA in social psychology, “Lady Gaga, You Shouldn’t Be Doing It For The Applause.”
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psysociety/2013/10/10/lady-gaga-applause/]
Moving to a slightly different (yet related) domain, research
on goal theory also reveals that there are two broad types of
goal orientations. You might have a mastery (or learning) goal, in which your primary focus is on
mastering difficult material, learning and understanding complex topics, and truly improving at a task. Or,
you might have a performance (or ego) goal, in which your primary focus is on demonstrating
competence, avoiding negative evaluations, and publicly showing that you are “good” at something. In
the former, your focus is internal — you are presumably trying to master some kind of skill or material for your own benefit, so you
can genuinely learn and grow, regardless of what others happen to think of your ability or performance. In the latter, your focus is
external — you are presumably focused on the evaluations of others, and worrying more about what they think or say than about your actual
progress. In other words, you might be doing it all for something like applause. ¶ Perhaps unsurprisingly, those two different outlooks on
personality & skills mentioned two paragraphs above predict how people come to form mastery or performance goal orientations. People
with entity views typically prioritize “looking good” over actually developing competence, leading them
to focus on performance (rather than mastery) goals. After all, if you believe that you are born with a set ability
level and it can’t really be altered, it makes more sense to focus on how you appear (trying to maximize your
positive evaluations from others) rather than wasting your time in a futile attempt to change your innate ability level.
Incremental theorists, on the other hand, are more likely to set goals that revolve around learning and increasing competence. Generally, this
becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy: People who believe that they can improve their abilities with
hard work usually end up working harder, and they gain mastery and become better in that domain as a result.¶ In
fact, studies consistently link mastery (or learning) goals to more adaptive outcomes than performance goals.
For example, MBA students who set learning goals (like mastering complex course material) outperform MBA students who set performance
goals (like getting a high GPA). Teenagers
who hold entity beliefs about athletic ability tend to be less motivated
to pursue athletic goals, whereas teens with incremental beliefs are more likely to enjoy sports and
genuinely want to increase their athletic abilities. Holding incremental beliefs is significantly more adaptive for both learning
and performance — believing that you can improve is better for both motivation and enjoyment than
believing that you must be “born” into greatness. This is because people with mastery goals also exhibit higher levels of
intrinsic motivation, self-regulation, persistence in the face of challenge or possible failure, and metacognition (an overarching term for the ways
in which we plan, monitor, and evaluate our progress on important goals to help us ensure that we’re always engaging in the best possible
strategies).¶ As
Carol Dweck (one of the leading researchers on this topic) explains in the video above, all of
this put together makes a lot sense. Even though you might not see the differential effects of these goals in
the face of success, they certainly emerge in the face of failure. People with incremental theories believe
that they are always capable of learning, growing, and improving. As a result, failing on a difficult task is
not necessarily a personal threat. Rather, it might just be a cue that this is a task on which he/she needs to work harder — it is an
opportunity to learn and grow. People with entity theories, however, do not believe that they can truly
change their abilities. Thus, there is no point in responding to criticism or negative feedback by working harder
or persisting on a difficult task — after all, if you can’t improve, what’s the point? As a result, any negative
feedback is seen a threat. Therefore, they are more likely to seek out situations in which they are likely to
excel and “appear” smart or talented. This can be fine for a while, but it severely limits entity theorists’ capacities
to grow and reach their full potential. After all, if you are terrified of negative feedback, you are more likely to give
up on a task when faced with failure and less likely to persist in the face of a challenge.
Optimism is a prerequisite to solvency.
Levine, practicing psychologist and prominent author, 2011
[Bruce, 9-28-11, “How Anti-Authoritarians Can Transcend their Sense of Hopelessness and Fight Back”
http://www.alternet.org/print/story/152565/how_antiauthoritarians_can_transcend_their_sense_of_hopelessness_and_fight_back]
Critical thinking anti-authoritarians see the enormity of the military-industrial complex, the energyindustrial complex and the financial-industrial complex. They see the overwhelming power of the U.S.
ruling class. They see many Americans unaware of the true sources of their oppression or with little knowledge
of the strategies and tactics necessary to overcome it. They see American society lacking the
psychological and cultural building blocks necessary for democratic movements—the self-respect required to reject
the role as a mere subject of power, the collective self-confidence that success is possible, courage, determination, anti-authoritarianism, and
solidarity. They see how the corporatocracy pays back those few Americans who do question, challenge, and resist illegitimate authority with
economic and political marginalization.¶ Critical Thinking, Depression, and Political Passivity¶ Research
shows that a more
accurate notion of one’s powerlessness can result in a greater feeling of helplessness and is associated
with depression. Several classic studies show that moderately depressed people are more critically
thinking than those who are not depressed. Researchers Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson, studying
nondepressed and depressed subjects who played a rigged game in which they had no actual control,
found that nondepressed subjects overestimated their contribution to winning, while depressed subjects
more accurately evaluated their lack of control.¶ If you are critical thinking enough to see the reality of just
how much influence the corporatocracy has and how little power you have, then you are going to experience more pain than
those who do not see these truths. To dull this pain, in addition to drugs and other diversions, human beings use
depression and apathy. But these “shutdown strategies” weaken us and create passivity, immobilization
and what Bob Marley called “mental slavery,” which in itself can be humiliatingly painful. And in this
vicious cycle, human beings use even more diversions and shutdown strategies to dull this ever-increasing
pain.¶ When one is in such a debilitating vicious cycle, painful truths about the cause of one’s malaise—
the truths of how we are getting screwed—are not positively energizing. Instead, one may take such truths
as confirmation that pessimism and hopelessness are warranted. The vicious cycle continues.¶ When one
is already in pain and immobilized, there is a reflexive negative reaction to any proposed solution. Solutions
demand effort, and a demand for effort is painful for those with little energy. So, it’s much easier to reflexively dismiss any
solution. Of course, many solutions do deserve to be dismissed, as they may well be naïve.¶ The feeling of hopelessness is a
legitimate one. And hopeless people are turned off by attempts to invalidate their feelings. Is it possible to
validate that feeling of hopelessness while at the same time challenging the wisdom of inactions based on
hopelessness? And is it possible to challenge it in a way that doesn’t insult the intelligence of critical thinkers?¶ Critical Thinking about
Critical Thinking¶ The battle against the corporatocracy demands critical thinking, which results in seeing many ugly
truths about reality. This critical thinking is absolutely necessary. Without it, one is more likely to engage in tactics that
can make matters worse. Critical thinking also means the ability to think critically about one’s pessimism—realizing that pessimism can cripple
the will. Critical thinkers who reflect on their own critical thinking recognize how negativism can cause inaction, which results in maintaining the
status quo.¶ Critical
thinking anti-authoritarians who move into hopelessness can forget that while they may
in fact be better at seeing ugly truths than are many other people, they cannot see everything. Simply put,
critical thinkers sometimes lose their humility.¶ Abraham Lincoln, considered by many historians to be our most critical thinking
president, was also a major depressive. When he was a young man, he became so depressed that twice his friends had to form suicide watches for
him. In the 1850s in the United States, the major battle was less over abolishing slavery than merely stopping the spread of it. Lincoln, who
fought politically to stop the spread of slavery, wrote in 1856 a pessimistic analysis of the North’s chances of winning this fight:¶ This immense,
palpable pecuniary interest, on the question of extending slavery, unites the Southern people, as one man. But it can not be demonstrated that the
North will gain a dollar by restricting it. Moral principle is all, or nearly all, that unites us of the North. Pity ’tis, it is so, but this is a looser bond,
than pecuniary interest. Right here is the plain cause of their perfect union and our want of it. ¶ That slavery would be abolished in the United
States less than a decade after Lincoln’s pessimistic analysis of the difficulty of merely stopping its spread was one of those seeming
impossibilities that became possible because of unforeseen historical events. In the North, there was certainly not enough concern for African
Americans to result in the end of slavery. But less than a decade after Lincoln’s pessimistic analysis about merely stopping the spread of slavery,
one unforeseen event after another resulted in the abolition of slavery. ¶ There
are many examples from history of seeming
impossibilities actually happening, examples that compel critical thinkers to rethink whether they are
actually seeing all the possibilities. One recent example is, of course, the Arab spring. Many critical thinkers from that part of the
world remain amazed at the huge revolts in Egypt that toppled the Mubarak tyranny. ¶ The collapse of the Soviet empire seemed impossible to
most Americans up until shortly before it occurred. Most Americans saw only mass resignation within the Soviet Union and its sphere of control.
But the shipyard workers in Gdansk, Poland, did not see their Soviet and Communist Party rulers as the all-powerful forces that Americans did.
And so Polish workers’ Solidarity, by simply refusing to go away, provided a strong dose of morale across Eastern Europe at the same time other
historical events—such as the Soviet Union’s Afghanistan war—weakened their empire.¶ Why Not Just Wait for the Collapse?¶ History tells us
that not just the Soviet empire but all empires ultimately collapse, and so why not just wait for their fall? It is pretty safe to say that the U.S.
military-industrial complex and other oppressive U.S. industrial complexes will ultimately fall. These may be transformed by our own efforts or,
more likely—given Americans’ current state of political passivity—they will fall owing mostly under the weight of their own stupidity. So, if it is
more likely that these will fall under the weight of their own stupidity, why bother with activism? ¶ One reason for democratic movements is that
history tells us that not all empires and oppressive institutions fall under the weight of their own stupidity, as some are transformed by a
combination of democratic movements and empire stupidity.¶ There is another reason to work each day on the democracy battlefields at our
workplace, schools, the media, the marketplace, etc. Whether an empire and its oppressive institutions fall under the weight of their own stupidity
or with help from a democratic movement, there must be people around in the aftermath who have what it takes to create and maintain a
democratic society. There must be people who have retained their individual self-respect, collective self-confidence, courage, determination, antiauthoritarianism, and solidarity.¶ The
lesson from history is that tyrannical and dehumanizing institutions are often
more fragile than they appear. We never really know until it happens whether or not we are living in that
time when historical variables are creating opportunities for seemingly impossible change. Maybe in our
lifetime, or our kids’ lifetime, or their kids’ lifetime, the current corporatocracy will fall. It may fall because of the efforts of democratic
movements or because of its own stupidity or some combination.¶ But when
it does fall, the likelihood that it will be replaced
by an enduring democratic society rests on whether there are enough of us with practice in democracy,
enough of us who took seriously the psychological and cultural building blocks of self-respect, collective
self-confidence, courage, determination, anti-authoritarianism, and solidarity. And democratic movements
are the best place to practice creating those psychological and cultural building blocks required for an
enduring democracy.¶ That's why "Occupy Wall Street" makes sense, and that's why I will be at "October 2011" at Freedom Plaza,
Washington D.C. beginning next Thursday, October 6.
Even illusory agency is productive. Imagining possible changes is necessary to
motivate action.
Shove, Lancaster University sociology professor, and Walker, Lancaster University
geography professor, 2007
[Elizabeth and Gordon, “CAUTION! Transitions ahead: politics, practice, and sustainable transition
management” http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/761/2/A_cautionary_note_on_transition_managementv5.pdf,
p.8]
For academic readers, our commentary argues for loosening the intellectual grip of ‘innovation studies’, for backing off from the nested,
hierarchical multi-level model as the only model in town, and for exploring other social scientific, but also systemic theories of change. The
more we think about the politics and practicalities of reflexive transition management, the more complex
the process appears: for a policy audience, our words of caution could be read as an invitation to abandon
the whole endeavour. If agency, predictability and legitimacy are as limited as we’ve suggested, this might be the only sensible
conclusion.¶ However, we are with Rip (2006) in recognising the value, productivity and everyday necessity of an
‘illusion of agency’, and of the working expectation that a difference can be made even in the face of so
much evidence to the contrary. The outcomes of actions are unknowable, the system unsteerable and the
effects of deliberate intervention inherently unpredictable and, ironically, it is this that sustains concepts of agency and
management. As Rip argues ‘illusions are productive because they motivate action and repair work, and thus
something (whatever) is achieved’ (Rip 2006: 94). Situated inside the systems they seek to influence, governance actors – and
actors of other kinds as well - are part of the dynamics of change: even
if they cannot steer from the outside they are
necessary to processes within.¶ This is, of course, also true of academic life. Here we are, busy critiquing
and analysing transition management in the expectation that somebody somewhere is listening and maybe
even taking notice. If we removed that illusion would we bother writing anything at all? Maybe we need such fictions to keep us
going, and maybe – fiction or no - somewhere along the line something really does happen, but not in
ways that we can anticipate or know.
***Race K Answers***
2ac – No Root Cause – Whiteness
Whiteness not the root cause of the aff – it’s too sweeping.
Shelby, Harvard University African and African American Studies professor, 2005
[Tommie, also a philosophy professor at Harvard, “We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of
Black Solidarity”
http://books.google.com/books?id=8W7W6F3fCPkC&q=others+might+challenge#v=snippet&q=others%
20might%20challenge&f=false, p.147-8]
Others might challenge the distinction between ideological and structural causes of black disadvantage, on the grounds that we
are rarely, if
ever, able to so neatly separate these factors, an epistemic situation that is only made worse by the fact
that these causes interact in complex ways with behavioral factors. These distinctions, while perhaps straightforward in the abstract,
are difficult to employ in practice. For example, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the members of a poor
black community to determine with any accuracy whether their impoverished condition is due primarily
to institutional racism, the impact of past racial injustice, the increasing technological basis of the economy, shrinking state
budgets, the vicissitudes of world trade, the ascendancy of conservative ideology, poorly funded schools,
lack of personal initiative, a violent drug trade that deters business investment, some combination of these
factors, or some other explanation altogether. Moreover, it is notoriously difficult to determine when the formulation of
putatively race-neutral policies has been motivated by racism or when such policies are unfairly applied
by racially biased public officials.
There are very real empirical difficulties in determining the specific causal significance of the factors that
create and perpetuate black disadvantage; nonetheless, it is clear that these factors exist and that justice will demand different
practical remedies according to each factor's relative impact on blacks' life chances. We must acknowledge that our social world
is complicated and not immediately transparent to common sense, and thus that systematic empirical
inquiry, historical studies, and rigorous social analysis are required to reveal its systemic structure and
sociocultural dynamics. There is, moreover, no mechanical or infallible procedure for determining which
analyses are the soundest ones. In addition, given the inevitable bias that attends social inquiry, legislators and those they represent
cannot simply defer to social-scientific experts.
We must instead rely on open public debate—among politicians, scholars, policy makers, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens—
with the aim of garnering rationally motivated and informed consensus. And even if our practical decision procedures
rest on critical deliberative discourse and thus live up to our highest democratic ideals, some trial and error through actual practice is unavoidable.
These difficulties and complications notwithstanding, a general recognition of the distinctions among the ideological and structural causes of
black disadvantage could help blacks refocus their political energies and self-help strategies. Attention
to these distinctions might
help expose the superficiality of theories that seek to reduce all the social obstacles that blacks face to
contemporary forms of racism or white supremacy. A more penetrating, subtle, and empirically grounded
analysis is needed to comprehend the causes of racial inequality and black disadvantage. Indeed, these
distinctions highlight the necessity to probe deeper to find the causes of contemporary forms of racism, as
some racial conflict may be a symptom of broader problems or recent social developments (such as
immigration policy or reduced federal funding for higher education).
AT: Race – Debates/Implementation Key
Debates about the implementation and consequences of policies are critical to
fighting racism.
Bracey, Washington University law professor and African and African American
studies professor, 2006
[Christopher, 79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1231, “THE CUL DE SAC OF RACE PREFERENCE DISCOURSE”
http://lawreview.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/slideshow/Bracey_Christopher_79_6.pdf, p.1318]
Second, reducing
conversation on race matters to an ideological contest allows opponents to elide inquiry
into whether the results of a particular preference policy are desirable. Policy positions masquerading as
principled ideological stances create the impression that a racial policy is not simply a choice among
available alternatives, but the embodiment of some higher moral principle. Thus, the “principle” becomes
an end in itself, without reference to outcomes. Consider the prevailing view of colorblindness in constitutional discourse.
Colorblindness has come to be understood as the embodiment of what is morally just, independent of its actual effect upon the lives of racial
minorities. This explains Justice Thomas’s belief in the “moral and constitutional equivalence” between Jim Crow laws and race
preferences, and his tragic assertion that “Government cannot make us equal [but] can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the
law.”281 For Thomas, there
is no meaningful difference between laws designed to entrench racial subordination
and those designed to alleviate conditions of oppression. Critics may point out that colorblindness in practice has the effect
of entrenching existing racial disparities in health, wealth, and society. But in framing the debate in purely ideological terms,
opponents are able to avoid the contentious issue of outcomes and make viability determinations based
exclusively on whether racially progressive measures exude fidelity to the ideological principle of
colorblindness. Meaningful policy debate is replaced by ideological exchange, which further exacerbates
hostilities and deepens the cycle of resentment.282
Policy debates over how to fight racism are critical.
Bouie, The American Prospect, 2013
[Jamelle, “Making (and Dismantling) Racism” http://prospect.org/article/making-and-dismantling-racism]
Over at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates has been exploring the intersection of race and public policy, with
a focus on white supremacy as a driving force in political decisions at all levels of government. This has
led him to two conclusions: First, that anti-black racism as we understand it is a creation of explicit policy
choices—the decision to exclude, marginalize, and stigmatize Africans and their descendants has as much
to do with racial prejudice as does any intrinsic tribalism. And second, that it's possible to dismantle this
prejudice using public policy. Here is Coates in his own words: Last night I 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 Morgan’s work and actually see racism being
inscribed in the law and the country changing as a result. If we accept that racism is a creation, then we
must then accept that it can be destroyed. And if we accept that it can be destroyed, we must then accept
that it can be destroyed by us and that it likely must be destroyed by methods kin to creation. Racism was
created by policy. It will likely only be ultimately destroyed by policy.
2ac – Race Traitors Perm
Whiteness is hegemonic but not monolithic – pragmatic redeployment of some
forms of whiteness can be strategic.
Winant, University of California Santa Clara sociology professor, 1997
[Howard, New Left Review, “Behind Blue Eyes: Contemporary White Racial Politics”
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/whitness.html]
On the practical level, the argument goes, whites
can become¶ "race traitors" by rejecting their privilege, by refusing
to¶ collude with white supremacy. When you hear that racist joke,¶ confront its teller. When you see the police harassing a¶ nonwhite
youth, try to intervene or at least bear witness. In¶ short, recognize that white supremacy depends on the thousands of¶
minute acts that reproduce it from moment to moment; it must¶ "deliver" to whites a sense of their own
security and¶ superiority; it must make them feel that "I am different from¶ those "others." Single gestures of this
sort, Race Traitor's¶ editors say,¶ ...would [not] in all likelihood be of much consequence. But if enough of those who looked white broke the
rules of the club to make the cops doubt their ability to recognize a white person merely by looking at him or her, how would it affect the cops'
behavior (Editorial 1993, 4-5)?¶ Thus
the point is not that all whites recognize the lie of their¶ privilege, but that
enough whites do so, and act out their¶ rejection of that lie, to disrupt the "white club's" ability to¶ enforce
its supremacy.
It is easy to sympathize with this analysis, at least up to a¶ point. The postwar black movement, which in the US context at ¶ least served as the
point of origin for all the "new social¶ movements" and the much-reviled "politics of identity," taught¶ the valuable lesson that politics went "all
the way down." That¶ is, meaningful efforts to achieve greater social justice could ¶ not tolerate a public/private, or a collective/individual¶
distinction. Trying to change society meant trying to change¶ one's own life. The formula "the personal is political,"¶ commonly associated with
feminism, had its early origins among¶ the militants of the civil rights movement (Evans 1980).
The problems come when deeper theoretical and practical problems¶ are raised. Despite their explicit
adherence to a "social¶ construction" model of race (one which bears a significant¶ resemblance to my own work), theorists
of the abolitionist¶ project do not take that insight as seriously as they should. ¶ They employ it chiefly to argue
against biologistic conceptions¶ of race, which is fine; but they fail to consider the¶ complexities and rootedness of social construction, or as we¶
would term it, racial formation. Is
the social construction of¶ whiteness so flimsy that it can be repudiated by a
mere act of¶ political will, or even by widespread and repeated acts aimed at¶ rejecting white privilege? I
think not; whiteness may not be a¶ legitimate cultural identity in the sense of having a discrete,¶ "positive"
content, but it is certainly an overdetermined¶ political and cultural category, having to do with socioeconomic¶
status, religious affiliation, ideologies of individualism,¶ opportunity, and citizenship, nationalism, etc. Like any other¶ complex of beliefs and
practices, "whiteness"
is imbedded in a¶ highly articulated social structure and system of significations;¶
rather than trying to repudiate it, we shall have to rearticulate¶ it.
That sounds like a daunting task, and of course it is, but it is¶ not nearly as impossible as erasing
whiteness altogether, as the¶ abolitionist project seeks to do. Furthermore, because whiteness¶ is a
relational concept, unintelligible without reference to¶ nonwhiteness -- note how this is true even of
Roediger's¶ formulation about "build[ing] an identity based on what one¶ isn't" -- that rearticulation (or
reinterpretation, or¶ deconstruction) of whiteness can begin relatively easily, in the¶ messy present, with the
recognition that whiteness already¶ contains substantial nonwhite elements. Of course, that¶ recognition is only the
beginning of a large and arduous process¶ of political labor, which I shall address in the concluding¶ section of this paper.
Notwithstanding these criticisms of the abolitionist project, we¶ consider many of its insights to be vital components in the¶ process of
reformulating, or synthesizing, a progressive approach¶ to whiteness. Its attention is directed toward prescisely the¶ place where the neo-liberal
racial project is weak: the point at¶ which white identity constitutes a crucial support to white¶ supremacy, and a central obstacle to the
achievement of¶ substantive social equality and racial justice.
CONCLUDING NOTES: WHITENESS AND CONTEMPORARY POLITICS
In a situation of racial dualism, as Du Bois observed more than¶ 90 years ago, race operates both to assign us and to
deny us our¶ identity. It both makes the social world intelligible, and¶ simultaneously renders it opaque and mysterious. Not only does¶ it
allocate resources, power, and privilege; it also provides¶ means for challenging that allocation. The contradictory¶ character of race provides the
context in which racial dualism --¶ or the "color-line," as Du Bois designated it, has developed as¶ "the problem of the 20th century."
So what's new? Only that, as a result of incalculable human ¶ effort, suffering, and sacrifice, we now realize that these¶ truths apply across the
board. Whites
and whiteness can no¶ longer be exempted from the comprehensive racialization process¶ that
is the hallmark of US history and social structure.
This is the present-day context for racial conflict and thus for¶ US politics in general, since race continues to play its¶ designated role of
crystallizing all the fundamental issues in US¶ society. As always, we articulate our anxieties in racial terms:¶ wealth and poverty, crime and
punishment, gender and sexuality,¶ nationality and citizenship, culture and power, are all¶ articulated in the US primarily through race.
So what's new? It's the problematic of whiteness that has¶ emerged as the principal source of anxiety and conflict in the¶ postwar US. Although
this situation was anticipated or¶ prefigured at earlier moments in the nation's past -- for¶ example, in the "hour of eugenics" (Stepan 1991, Kevles
1985,¶ Gould 1981) -- it is far more complicated now than ever before,¶ largely due to the present unavailability of biologistic forms of¶ racism as
a convenient rationale for white supremacy.[7]
Whiteness -- visible whiteness, resurgent whiteness, whiteness as¶ a color, whiteness as difference -- this is what's new, and newly¶
problematic, in contemporary US politics. The reasons for this¶ have already emerged in my discussion of the spectrum of racial¶ projects and the
particular representations these projects assign¶ to whiteness. Most centrally, the
problem of the meaning of¶ whiteness appears
as a direct consequence of the movement¶ challenge posed in the 1960s to white supremacy. The battles of¶ that
period have not been resolved; they have not been won or¶ lost; however battered and bruised, the demand for substantive¶ racial equality and
general social justice still lives. And¶ while it lives, the strength of white supremacy is in doubt.
The racial projects of the right are clear efforts to resist the¶ challenge to white supremacy posed by the movements of the 1960s¶ and their
contemporary inheritors. Each of these projects has a¶ particular relationship to the white supremacist legacy, ranging¶ from the far right's efforts
to justify and solidify white¶ entitlements, through the new right's attempts to utilize the¶ white supremacist tradition for more immediate and
expedient¶ political ends, to the neoconservative project's quixotic quest¶ to surgically separate the liberal democratic tradition from the¶ racism
that traditionally underwrote it. The biologistic racism¶ of the far right, the expedient and subtextual racism of the new¶ right, and the bad-faith
anti-racism of the neoconservatives have¶ many differences from each other, but they have at least one¶ thing in common. They all seek to
maintain the long-standing¶ association between whiteness and US political traditions,¶ between whiteness and US nationalism, between
whiteness and¶ universalism. They all seek in different ways to preserve white¶ identity from the particularity, the difference, which the 1960s ¶
movement challenge assigned to it.
The racial projects of the left are the movements' successors (as¶ is neoconservatism, in a somewhat perverse sense). Both the¶ neoliberal racial
project and the abolitionist project seek to¶ fulfill the movement's thwarted dreams of a genuinely (i.e.,¶ substantively) egalitarian society, one in
which significant¶ redistribution of wealth and power has taken place, and race no¶ longer serves as the most significant marker between winners
and¶ losers, haves and have nots, powerful and powerless. Although¶ they diverge significantly -- since the neoliberals seek to¶ accomplish their
ends through a conscious diminution of the¶ significance of race, and the abolitionists hope to achieve¶ similar ends through a conscious
reemphasizing of the importance¶ of race -- they also have one very important thing in common. ¶ They both seek to rupture the barrier between
whites and¶ racially-defined minorities, the obstacle which prevents joint ¶ political action. They both seek to associate whites and¶ nonwhites, to
reinterpret the meaning of whiteness in such a way¶ that it no longer has the power to impede class alliances.
Although the differences and indeed the hostility -- between the¶ neoliberal and abolitionist projects,
between the reform-oriented¶ and radical conceptions of whiteness -- are quite severe, we¶ consider it vital
that adherents of each project recognize that¶ they hold part of the key to challenging white supremacy in
the¶ contemporary US, and that their counterpart project holds the¶ other part of the key. Neoliberals rightfully argue that a ¶ pragmatic approach
to transracial politics is vital if the¶ momentum of racial reaction is to be halted or reversed. ¶ Abolitionists properly emphasize challenging the
ongoing¶ commitment to white supremacy on the part of many whites.
Both of these positions need to draw on each other, not only in¶ strategic terms, but in theoretical ones as
well. The¶ recognition that racial identities -- all racial identities,¶ including whiteness -- have become
implacably dualistic, could be¶ far more liberating on the left than it has thus far been. For¶ neoliberals, it
could permit and indeed justify an acceptance of¶ race-consciousness and even nationalism among
racially-defined¶ minorities as a necessary but partial response to¶ disenfranchisement, disempowerment,
and superexploitation. There¶ is no inherent reason why such a political position could not¶ coexist with a
strategic awareness of the need for strong,¶ class-conscious, transracial coalitions. We have seen many such¶
examples in the past: in the anti-slavery movement, the communist¶ movement of the 1930s (Kelley 1994), and in the 1988 presidential¶ bid of
Jesse Jackson, to name but a few. This
is not to say that¶ all would be peace and harmony if such alliances could
come more¶ permanently into being. But there is no excuse for not¶ attempting to find the pragmatic
"common ground" necessary to¶ create them.
Abolitionists could also benefit from a recognition that on a¶ pragmatic basis, whites can ally with
racially-defined minorities¶ without renouncing their whiteness. If they truly agree that¶ race is a socially
constructed concept, as they claim,¶ abolitionists should also be able to recognize that racial¶ identities
are not either-or matters, not closed concepts that¶ must be upheld in a reactionary fashion or
disavowed in a¶ comprehensive act of renunciation. To use a postmodern language¶ I dislike: racial identities are
deeply "hybridized"; they are¶ not "sutured," but remain open to rearticulation. "To be white¶ in
America is to be very black. If you don't know how black you¶ are, you don't know how American you
are" (Thompson 1995, 429).
EXTN – Implementation Details Key
Vague alts fail – utopianism doesn’t hit the ground.
Farber, City University of New York Brooklyn College political science professor, 9-1312
[Samuel, “Occupy Wall Street and the Art of Demanding” http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11507occupy-wall-street-and-the-art-of-demanding]
The OWS reluctance to formulate demands might have been beneficial initially in that it might have
created a more welcoming atmosphere to newly radicalized people. But as movements develop and
mature, they need to state more clearly what they stands for and not only what they stand against.
Movements need to develop some kind of theory to guide their actions, not as an obscure, technical
body of thought only accessible to the select few, but as the clearest possible ideas about the nature of
the enemy and of the movement. Movements must address the problems they are likely to confront as
they go from point A – where they are – to point B – where they want to be.
Concrete alts are key – either the perm solves OR the alt does nothing.
Bryant, Collin College philosophy professor, 2012
[Levi, “Critique of the Academic Left” http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpantsgnomes-a-critique-of-the-academic-left/]
The problem as I see it is that this is the worst sort of abstraction (in the Marxist sense) and wishful
thinking. Within a Marxo-Hegelian context, a thought is abstract when it ignores all of the mediations in
which a thing is embedded. For example, I understand a robust tree abstractly when I attribute its
robustness, say, to its genetics alone, ignoring the complex relations to its soil, the air, sunshine, rainfall,
etc., that also allowed it to grow robustly in this way. This is the sort of critique we’re always leveling
against the neoliberals. They are abstract thinkers. In their doxa that individuals are entirely responsible
for themselves and that they completely make themselves by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps,
neoliberals ignore all the mediations belonging to the social and material context in which human beings
develop that play a role in determining the vectors of their life. They ignore, for example, that George W.
Bush grew up in a family that was highly connected to the world of business and government and that this
gave him opportunities that someone living in a remote region of Alaska in a very different material
infrastructure and set of family relations does not have. To think concretely is to engage in a cartography
of these mediations, a mapping of these networks, from circumstance to circumstance (what I call an
“onto-cartography”). It is to map assemblages, networks, or ecologies in the constitution of entities.¶
Unfortunately, the academic left falls prey to its own form of abstraction. It’s good at carrying out
critiques that denounce various social formations, yet very poor at proposing any sort of realistic
constructions of alternatives. This because it thinks abstractly in its own way, ignoring how networks,
assemblages, structures, or regimes of attraction would have to be remade to create a workable
alternative. Here I’m reminded by the “underpants gnomes” depicted in South Park:¶ The underpants
gnomes have a plan for achieving profit that goes like this:¶ Phase 1: Collect Underpants¶ Phase 2: ?¶ Phase
3: Profit!¶ They even have a catchy song to go with their work:¶ Well this is sadly how it often is with the
academic left. Our plan seems to be as follows:¶ Phase 1: Ultra-Radical Critique¶ Phase 2: ?¶ Phase 3:
Revolution and complete social transformation!¶ Our problem is that we seem perpetually stuck at phase 1
without ever explaining what is to be done at phase 2. Often the critiques articulated at phase 1 are right,
but there are nonetheless all sorts of problems with those critiques nonetheless. In order to reach phase 3,
we have to produce new collectives. In order for new collectives to be produced, people need to be able to
hear and understand the critiques developed at phase 1. Yet this is where everything begins to fall apart.
Even though these critiques are often right, we express them in ways that only an academic with a PhD in
critical theory and post-structural theory can understand. How exactly is Adorno to produce an effect in
the world if only PhD’s in the humanities can understand him? Who are these things for? We seem to
always ignore these things and then look down our noses with disdain at the Naomi Kleins and David
Graebers of the world. To make matters worse, we publish our work in expensive academic journals that
only universities can afford, with presses that don’t have a wide distribution, and give our talks at
expensive hotels at academic conferences attended only by other academics. Again, who are these things
for? Is it an accident that so many activists look away from these things with contempt, thinking their
more about an academic industry and tenure, than producing change in the world? If a tree falls in a
forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound! Seriously dudes and dudettes, what are
you doing?¶ But finally, and worst of all, us Marxists and anarchists all too often act like assholes. We
denounce others, we condemn them, we berate them for not engaging with the questions we want to
engage with, and we vilify them when they don’t embrace every bit of the doxa that we endorse. We are
every bit as off-putting and unpleasant as the fundamentalist minister or the priest of the inquisition (have
people yet understood that Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus was a critique of the French communist
party system and the Stalinist party system, and the horrific passions that arise out of parties and
identifications in general?). This type of “revolutionary” is the greatest friend of the reactionary and
capitalist because they do more to drive people into the embrace of reigning ideology than to undermine
reigning ideology. These are the people that keep Rush Limbaugh in business. Well done!¶ But this isn’t
where our most serious shortcomings lie. Our most serious shortcomings are to be found at phase 2. We
almost never make concrete proposals for how things ought to be restructured, for what new material
infrastructures and semiotic fields need to be produced, and when we do, our critique-intoxicated cynics
and skeptics immediately jump in with an analysis of all the ways in which these things contain dirty
secrets, ugly motives, and are doomed to fail. How, I wonder, are we to do anything at all when we have
no concrete proposals? We live on a planet of 6 billion people. These 6 billion people are dependent on a
certain network of production and distribution to meet the needs of their consumption. That network of
production and distribution does involve the extraction of resources, the production of food, the
maintenance of paths of transit and communication, the disposal of waste, the building of shelters, the
distribution of medicines, etc., etc., etc.¶ What are your proposals? How will you meet these problems?
How will you navigate the existing mediations or semiotic and material features of infrastructure? Marx
and Lenin had proposals. Do you? Have you even explored the cartography of the problem? Today we are
so intellectually bankrupt on these points that we even have theorists speaking of events and acts and
talking about a return to the old socialist party systems, ignoring the horror they generated, their failures,
and not even proposing ways of avoiding the repetition of these horrors in a new system of organization.
Who among our critical theorists is thinking seriously about how to build a distribution and production
system that is responsive to the needs of global consumption, avoiding the problems of planned economy,
ie., who is doing this in a way that gets notice in our circles? Who is addressing the problems of microfascism that arise with party systems (there’s a reason that it was the Negri & Hardt contingent, not the
Badiou contingent that has been the heart of the occupy movement). At least the ecologists are thinking
about these things in these terms because, well, they think ecologically. Sadly we need something more, a
melding of the ecologists, the Marxists, and the anarchists. We’re not getting it yet though, as far as I can
tell. Indeed, folks seem attracted to yet another critical paradigm, Laruelle.¶ I would love, just for a
moment, to hear a radical environmentalist talk about his ideal high school that would be academically
sound. How would he provide for the energy needs of that school? How would he meet building codes in
an environmentally sound way? How would she provide food for the students? What would be her plan
for waste disposal? And most importantly, how would she navigate the school board, the state legislature,
the federal government, and all the families of these students? What is your plan? What is your
alternative? I think there are alternatives. I saw one that approached an alternative in Rotterdam. If you
want to make a truly revolutionary contribution, this is where you should start. Why should anyone even
bother listening to you if you aren’t proposing real plans? But we haven’t even gotten to that point.
Instead we’re like underpants gnomes, saying “revolution is the answer!” without addressing any of the
infrastructural questions of just how revolution is to be produced, what alternatives it would offer, and
how we would concretely go about building those alternatives. Masturbation.¶ “Underpants gnome”
deserves to be a category in critical theory; a sort of synonym for self-congratulatory masturbation. We
need less critique not because critique isn’t important or necessary– it is –but because we know the
critiques, we know the problems. We’re intoxicated with critique because it’s easy and safe. We best
every opponent with critique. We occupy a position of moral superiority with critique. But do we really
do anything with critique? What we need today, more than ever, is composition or carpentry. Everyone
knows something is wrong. Everyone knows this system is destructive and stacked against them. Even
the Tea Party knows something is wrong with the economic system, despite having the wrong economic
theory. None of us, however, are proposing alternatives. Instead we prefer to shout and denounce. Good
luck with that.
Structures Not Individuals
The law is problematic but it is a lived reality – there is nothing outside of it - the
only effective method is redeploying institutional logic against contradictions.
Crenshaw, University of California Los Angeles law professor, 1988
[Kimberle, Harvard law review, “RACE, REFORM, AND RETRENCHMENT: TRANSFORMATION
AND LEGITIMATION IN ANTIDISCRIMINATION LAW”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1341398.pdf?acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true, JSTOR, p.1366-8]
The Critics' product is of limited utility to Blacks in its present form. The implications for Blacks of trashing liberal
legal ideology are troubling, even though it may be proper to assail belief structures that obscure liberating possibilities. Trashing legal ideology
seems to tell us repeatedly what has already been established -- that legal discourse is unstable and relatively indeterminate. Furthermore,
trashing offers no idea of how to avoid the negative consequences of engaging in reformist discourse or
how to work around such consequences. Even if we imagine the wrong world when we think in terms of legal discourse, we
must nevertheless exist in a present world where legal protection has at times been a blessing -- albeit a
mixed one . The fundamental problem is that, although Critics criticize law because it functions to legitimate
existing institutional arrangements, it is precisely this legitimating function that has made law receptive to
certain demands in this area.
The Critical emphasis on deconstruction as the vehicle for liberation leads to the conclusion that engaging in legal discourse should be avoided
because it reinforces not only the discourse itself but also the society and the world that it embodies. Yet Critics offer little beyond this
observation. Their focus on delegitimating
rights rhetoric seems to suggest that, once rights rhetoric has been
discarded, there exists a more productive strategy for change, one which does not reinforce existing
patterns of domination.
Unfortunately, no such strategy has yet been articulated, and it is difficult to imagine that racial minorities
will ever be able to discover one. As Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward point out in their [*1367] excellent account of the civil
rights movement, popular struggles are a reflection of institutionally determined logic and a challenge to that logic. 137 People can only
demand change in ways that reflect the logic of the institutions that they are challenging. 138
Demands for change that do not reflect the institutional logic -- that is, demands that do not engage
and subsequently reinforce the dominant ideology -- will probably be ineffective . 139
The possibility for ideological change is created through the very process of legitimation, which is triggered by crisis. Powerless
people
can sometimes trigger such a crisis by challenging an institution internally, that is, by using its own logic
against it. 140 Such crisis occurs when powerless people force open and politicize a contradiction
between the dominant ideology and their reality. The political consequences [*1368] of maintaining the
contradictions may sometimes force an adjustment -- an attempt to close the gap or to make things
appear fair. 141 Yet, because the adjustment is triggered by the political consequences of the
contradiction, circumstances will be adjusted only to the extent necessary to close the apparent
contradiction.
This approach to understanding legitimation and change is applicable to the civil rights movement. Because Blacks were challenging their
exclusion from political society, the only claims that were likely to achieve recognition were those that reflected American society's institutional
logic: legal rights ideology. Articulating their formal demands through legal rights ideology, civil rights protestors exposed a series of
contradictions -- the most important being the promised privileges of American citizenship and the practice of absolute racial subordination.
Rather than using the contradictions to suggest that American citizenship was itself illegitimate or false,
civil rights protestors proceeded as if American citizenship were real, and demanded to exercise the
“rights” that citizenship entailed. By seeking to restructure reality to reflect American mythology, Blacks
relied upon and ultimately benefited from politically inspired efforts to resolve the contradictions by
granting formal rights. Although it is the need to maintain legitimacy that presents powerless groups with the opportunity to wrest
concessions from the dominant order, it is the very accomplishment of legitimacy that forecloses greater possibilities . In sum, the
potential for change is both created and limited by legitimation .
Institutional macropolitical policy engagement is vital to solve – any alternative
results in failure to actualize change, cooption, and moot activism
Lobel, University of San Diego assistant law professor, 2007
[Orly, Harvard law review, “THE PARADOX OF EXTRALEGAL ACTIVISM: CRITICAL LEGAL
CONSCIOUSNESS AND TRANSFORMATIVE POLITICS” http://cdn.harvardlawreview.org/wpcontent/uploads/pdfs/lobel.pdf, p.983-7]
Both the practical failures and the fallacy of rigid boundaries generated by extralegal activism rhetoric
permit us to broaden our inquiry to the underlying assumptions of current proposals regarding
transformative politics — that is, attempts to produce meaningful changes in the political and socioeconomic landscapes. The suggested
alternatives produce a new image of social and political action. This vision rejects a shared theory of social reform, rejects
formal programmatic agendas, and embraces a multiplicity of forms and practices. Thus, it is described in
such terms as a plan of no plan,211 “a project of pro-jects,”212 “anti-theory theory,”213 politics rather than goals,214
presence rather than power,215 “practice over theory,”216 and chaos and openness over order and formality. As a result, the
contemporary message rarely includes a comprehensive vision of common social claims, but rather
engages in the description of fragmented efforts. As Professor Joel Handler argues, the commonality of struggle
and social vision that existed during the civil rights movement has disappeared.217 There is no unifying
discourse or set of values, but rather an aversion to any metanarrative and a resignation from theory.
Professor Handler warns that this move away from grand narratives is self-defeating precisely because only
certain parts of the political spectrum have accepted this new stance: “[T]he opposition is not playing that
game . . . . [E]veryone else is operating as if there were Grand Narratives . . . .”218 Intertwined with the resignation
from law and policy, the new bromide of “neither left nor right” has become axiomatic only for some.219 The contemporary critical
legal consciousness informs the scholarship of those who are interested in progressive social activism, but
less so that of those who are interested, for example, in a more competitive securities market. Indeed, an interesting
recent development has been the rise of “conservative public interest lawyer[ing].”220 Although “public interest law” was originally associated
exclusively with liberal projects, in the past three decades conservative advocacy groups have rapidly grown both in number and in their vigorous
use of traditional legal strategies to promote their causes.221 This growth in conservative ad-vocacy is particularly salient in juxtaposition to the
decline of traditional progressive advocacy. Most recently, some thinkers have even suggested that there may be “something inherent in the left’s
conception of social change — focused as it is on participation and empowerment — that produces a unique distrust of legal expertise.”222
Once again, this conclusion reveals flaws parallel to the original disenchantment with legal reform. Although
the new extralegal
frames present themselves as apt alternatives to legal reform models and as capable of producing
significant changes to the social map, in practice they generate very limited improvement in existing
social arrangements. Most strikingly, the cooptation effect here can be explained in terms of the most profound risk of the typology —
that of legitimation. The common pattern of extralegal scholarship is to describe an inherent instability in
dominant structures by pointing, for example, to grassroots strategies,223 and then to assume that specific
instances of counterhegemonic activities translate into a more complete transformation. This celebration
of multiple micro-resistances seems to rely on an aggregate approach — an idea that the multiplication of
practices will evolve into something substantial. In fact , the myth of engagement obscures the actual
lack of change being produced, while the broader pattern of equating extralegal activism with social
reform produces a false belief in the potential of change . There are few instances of meaningful
reordering of social and economic arrangements and macro-redistribution . Scholars write about decoding
what is really happening, as though the scholarly narrative has the power to unpack more than the actual conventional experience will admit.224
the elephant in the room — the
rising level of economic inequality — is left unaddressed and comes to be understood as natural and inevitable.225 This is
precisely the problematic process that critical theorists decry as losers’ self-mystification, through which
marginalized groups come to see systemic losses as the product of their own actions and thereby begin to
focus on minor achievements as representing the boundaries of their willed reality.
Unrelated efforts become related and part of a whole through mere reframing. At the same time,
The explorations of micro-instances
of activism are often fundamentally performative, obscuring the distance
between the descriptive and the prescriptive. The manifestations of extralegal activism — the law and organizing model;
the proliferation of informal, soft norms and norm-generating actors; and the celebrated, separate nongovernmental sphere of action — all
produce a fantasy that change can be brought about through small-scale, decentralized transformation.
The emphasis is local, but the locality is described as a microcosm of the whole and the audience is
national and global. In the context of the humanities, Professor Carol Greenhouse poses a comparable challenge to ethnographic studies
from the 1990s, which utilized the genres of narrative and community studies, the latter including works on American cities and neighborhoods in
trouble.226 The aspiration of these genres was that each individual story could translate into a “time of the nation” body of knowledge and
motivation.227 In contemporary legal thought, a corresponding gap opens between the local scale and the larger, translocal one. In reality,
although there has been a recent proliferation of associations and grassroots groups, few new local-state-national federations have emerged in the
United States since the 1960s and 1970s, and many of the existing voluntary federations that flourished in the mid-twentieth century are in
decline.228 There
is, therefore, an absence of links between the local and the national, an absent intermediate
public sphere, which has been termed “the missing middle” by Professor Theda Skocpol.229 New social movements have
for the most part failed in sustaining coalitions or producing significant institutional change through grassroots activism. Professor Handler
concludes that this
failure is due in part to the ideas of contingency, pluralism, and localism that are so
embedded in current activism.230 Is the focus on small-scale dynamics simply an evasion of the need to
engage in broader substantive debate?
It is important for next-generation progressive legal scholars, while maintaining a critical legal consciousness, to
recognize that not all extralegal associational life is transformative. We must differentiate, for example,
between inward-looking groups, which tend to be self-regarding and depoliticized, and social movements
that participate in political activities, engage the public debate, and aim to challenge and reform existing
realities.231 We must differentiate between professional associations and more inclusive forms of institutions that act as trustees for larger
segments of the community.232 As described above, extralegal activism tends to operate on a more divided and hence a
smaller scale than earlier social movements, which had national reform agendas. Consequently, within critical
discourse there is a need to recognize the limited capacity of small-scale action. We should question the
narrative that imagines consciousness-raising as directly translating into action and action as directly
translating into change. Certainly not every cultural description is political. Indeed, it is questionable
whether forms of activism that are opposed to programmatic reconstruction of a social agenda should
even be understood as social movements. In fact, when groups are situated in opposition to any form of
institutionalized power, they may be simply mirroring what they are fighting against and merely
producing moot activism that settles for what seems possible within the narrow space that is left in a
rising convergence of ideologies. The original vision is consequently coopted, and contemporary
discontent is legitimated through a process of self-mystification.
Local resistance to power is not enough – a focus on structures that produce
privilege is more important.
Darcy, Huron University College philosophy professor, 2014
[Steve, “The Rise of the Post-New Left Political Vocabulary” publicautonomy.org/2014/01/27/the-riseof-the-post-new-left-political-vocabulary/]
Second, however, it is also true that the
series of shifts from the old vocabulary to the new one has entailed certain
losses. In particular, the relative de-emphasizing of system-level causation, in favour of a new emphasis on the importance of
individual action or inaction, tends to weaken the integration of everyday Left discourse with the
theoretical analysis of systems like capitalism and colonialism. It is true that, in exchange, we have a vocabulary
that better enables us to focus on class privilege and settler privilege. But if we are to defeat colonialism
and capitalism, we cannot do so one person at a time, or one interaction or relationship at a time. The
systems themselves have to be named, understood, attacked and overthrown. This issue is, obviously, closely
connected to the loss of a focus on liberation. A liberation focus and a systems focus share a common understanding:
that the purpose of the Left is to defeat systems of exploitation and oppression. Challenging immediate
impacts is important, but not enough. It is necessary, but by no means sufficient. Moreover, the way we
challenge everyday impacts should be informed by our understanding that they are not produced simply
by individual actions, but by the operation of large-scale systems. The Left needs a vocabulary, and a self-understanding,
that highlights and foregrounds the importance of constructing and expanding anti-systemic movements that aim to defeat systems of oppressive
and exploitative power. It is hard not to think that the older vocabulary better expresses this insight, even as it obstructs our access to other critical
insights that are also indispensable. One could certainly say more about the gains and losses associated with adopting either of these two
vocabularies. But perhaps it is enough, in the context of a blog post, to have sketched an approach to thinking about the question. Both
vocabularies have been formed to address indispensably important concerns, so we should be reluctant to give up on either one. The most
important thing, I would suggest, is to refuse to allow either of these two ways speaking, writing and thinking about Left activism to evade the
challenge raised by its counterpart. Personally, I would be reluctant to give up an expression like, ‘the people,’ and to take up ‘folks’ in its place.
But I hope that the way I talk about the people is disciplined by a certain amount of sensitivity to the motivation that has led some activists to
drop it from their vocabulary. On the other hand, I
hope that people who have embraced the newer way of articulating
Left politics will (begin to, or continue to) see the importance of highlighting issues of system dynamics,
large-scale alliance-building, and ultimate liberation, rather than letting these urgently important matters
disappear from view entirely.
Structures are more important than individuals in terms of locuses of oppression.
Smith, University of California Riverside cultural studies professor, 12-13-13
[Andrea, “The Problem with Privilege” http://andrea366.wordpress.com/author/andrea366/]
The politics of privilege have made the important contribution of signaling how the structures of
oppression constitute who we are as persons. However, as the rituals of confessing privilege have
evolved, they have shifted our focus from building social movements for global transformation to
individual self-improvement. Furthermore, they rest on a white supremacist/colonialist notion of a
subject that can constitute itself over and against others through self-reflexivity. While trying to keep the
key insight made in activist/academic circles that personal and social transformation are interconnected,
alternative projects have developed that focus less on privilege and more the structures that create
privilege. These new models do not hold the “answer,” because the genealogy of the politics of privilege
also demonstrates that our activist/intellectual projects of liberation must be constantly changing. Our
imaginations are limited by white supremacy, settler colonialism, etc., so all ideas we have will not be
“perfect.” The ideas we develop today also do not have to be based on the complete disavowal of what
we did yesterday because what we did yesterday teaches what we might do tomorrow. Thus, as we think
not only beyond privilege, but beyond the sense of self that claims privilege, we open ourselves to new
possibilities that we cannot imagine now for the future.
Structures key.
Tonn, University of Maryland communication professor, 2005
[Mari Boor, Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8.3, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public” Project
Muse]
Approaching public controversies through a conversational model informed by therapy also enables
political inaction in two respects. First, an open-ended process lacking mechanisms for closure thwarts
progress toward resolution. As Freeman writes of consciousness raising, an unstructured, informal discussion [End
Page 418] "leaves people with no place to go and the lack of structure leaves them with no way of getting there."70
Second, the therapeutic impulse to emphasize the self as both problem and solution ignores structural
impediments constraining individual agency. "Therapy," Cloud argues, "offers consolation rather than
compensation, individual adaptation rather than social change, and an experience of politics that is
impoverished in its isolation from structural critique and collective action. " Public discourse
emphasizing healing and coping, she claims, "locates blame and responsibility for solutions in the private
sphere. "71¶ Clinton's Conversation on Race not only exemplified the frequent wedding of public dialogue and
therapeutic themes but also illustrated the failure of a conversation-as-counseling model to achieve
meaningful social reform. In his speech inaugurating the initiative, Clinton said, "Basing our self-esteem on the ability to look down
on others is not the American way . . . Honest dialogue will not be easy at first . . . Emotions may be rubbed raw, but we must begin." Tempering
his stated goal of "concrete solutions" was the caveat that "power cannot compel" racial "community," which "can come only from the human
spirit."72¶ Following
the president's cue to self-disclose emotions, citizens chiefly aired personal experiences
and perspectives during the various community dialogues. In keeping with their talk-show formats, the forums
showcased what Orlando Patterson described as "performative 'race' talk," "public speech acts" of denial, proclamation, defense,
exhortation, and even apology, in short, performances of "self" that left little room for productive public
argument. 73 Such personal evidence overshadowed the "facts" and "realities" Clinton also had promised to
explore, including, for example, statistics on discrimination patterns in employment, lending, and
criminal justice or expert testimony on cycles of dependency, poverty, illegitimacy, and violence. ¶
Whereas Clinton had encouraged "honest dialogue" in the name of "responsibility" and "community," Burke argues that
"The Cathartic Principle" often produces the reverse. "[C]onfessional," he writes, "contains in itself a kind of
'personal irresponsibility,' as we may even relieve ourselves of private burdens by befouling the
public medium." More to the point, "a thoroughly 'confessional' art may enact a kind of 'individual
salvation at the expense of the group,'" performing a "sinister function, from the standpoint of
overall-social necessities."74 Frustrated observers of the racial dialogue—many of them African
Americans—echoed Burke's concerns. Patterson, for example, noted, "when a young Euro-American woman spent nearly five
minutes of our 'conversation' in Martha's Vineyard . . . publicly confessing her racial insensitivities, she was directly unburdening herself of all
There was nothing to argue about. "75 Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson invoked the
game metaphor communication theorists often link to [End Page 419] skills in conversation,76 voicing suspicion of a talking cure for
racial ailments that included neither exhaustive racial data nor concrete goals. "The game," wrote Jackson, "is
to get 'rid' of responsibility for racism while doing nothing to solve it." 77
sorts of racial guilt feeling.
Individuals fail.
Tonn, University of Maryland communication professor, 2005
[Mari Boor, Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8.3, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public” Project
Muse]
Fourth, a
communicative model that views public issues through a relational, personal, or therapeutic lens
nourishes hegemony by inviting political inaction. Whereas the objective of conventional public
argument is achieving an instrumental goal such as a verdict or legislation, the aim of social conversation
generally stops with self-expression. As Schudson puts it, "Conversation has no end outside itself." 39
Similarly, modeling therapeutic paradigms that trumpet "talking cures" can discourage a search for political
solutions to public problems by casting cathartic talk as sufficient remedy. As Campbell's analysis of consciousnessraising groups in the women's liberation movement points out, "[S]olutions must be structural, not merely personal , and
analysis must move beyond personal experience and feeling . . . Unless such transcendence occurs,
there is no persuasive campaign . . . [but] only the very limited realm of therapeutic, small group
interaction."40¶ Finally, and related, a therapeutic framing of social problems threatens to locate the source and
solution to such ills solely within the individual , the "self-help" on which much therapy rests. A postmodern therapeutic
framing of conflicts as relational misunderstandings occasioned by a lack of dialogue not only assumes that familiarity inevitably breeds
caring (rather than, say, irritation or contempt) but, more importantly, provides cover for ignoring the structural
dimensions of social problems such as disproportionate black [End Page 412] poverty. If objective reality is unavoidably a fiction,
as Sheila McNamee claims, all suffering can be dismissed as psychological rather than based in real, material
circumstance, enabling defenders of the status quo to admonish citizens to "heal" themselves.
AT: Color-blindness
Even if they win a link, that doesn’t warrant rejection.
Winant, University of California Santa Clara sociology professor, 1997
[Howard, New Left Review, “Behind Blue Eyes: Contemporary White Racial Politics”
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/whitness.html]
THE NEOLIBERAL RACIAL PROJECT: Neoliberal
discourse seeks to¶ limit white advantages through denial of
racial difference. The¶ overlap with neoconservatism is, of course, hardly accidental. ¶ Yet there are
significant differences in political orientation¶ between the two projects.
Neoliberalism recognizes the cross-cutting and competitive¶ dynamics of race- and class-based forms of
subordination in the¶ post-industrial, post-civil rights era. It seeks systematically¶ to narrow the differences which divide
working and middle-class¶ people as a strategy for improving the "life-chances" of¶ minorities, who are disproportionately poor. It thus
attempts to¶ appeal to whites with arguments about the medium- and long-term¶ consequences upon their
living standards of downward mobility and¶ greater impoverishment of nonwhites. The neoliberal racial¶
project can thus be described as social democratic, focused on¶ social structure (as opposed to cultural representation
a la the¶ various right-wing racial projects), and somewhat class¶ reductionist in its approach to race.
The most effective, as well as controversial, spokesperson for¶ the neoliberal racial project has undoubtedly been William Julius¶ Wilson.
In a series of prominent scholarly works and political¶ interventions, Wilson has argued for the use of class-based¶ criteria (and consequently,
against the use of racial logics) in¶ formulating social policy aimed at achieving greater substantive¶ equality in US society. He has contended that
this reorientation¶ of social policy priorities is both better suited to the¶ contemporary dynamics of capitalist development, and that it is¶
politically strategic in ways that explicit racially oriented ¶ policies are not.
While Wilson does not dismiss the effects of historical racial¶ discrimination, he argues that since the late 1960s
capital has¶ been "color-blind," and that consequently the large-scale¶ demographic, economic, and political changes which have¶ negatively
affected the ghettos and barrios do not have their¶ origins in racial discrimination. Therefore, "group-specific"¶ policies such as affirmative action
in all its incarnations,¶ cannot improve the situation experienced by the African-American¶ "underclass." Wilson thus calls
for
"universal programs," rather¶ than group-targeted ones, to halt the deterioration of inner-city¶ communities, arguing that such
measures will disproportionately¶ help the minority poor:
The hidden agenda is to improve the life chances of groups such as the ghetto underclass by emphasizing
programs to which the more advantaged groups of all races can positively relate (Wilson 1987, 120).
This "hidden agenda," of course, justifies a pragmatic attempt to¶ woo white, middle-class voters. Their needs
-- for more and¶ better jobs, access to education and health care, and reductions¶ in drug trafficking and crime -- can be linked to those of the¶
minority poor if the "wedge issue" of race can be blunted. To¶ this end Wilson has urged political actors (notably President ¶ Clinton, whom he
has served as an advisor) to create "biracial¶ coalitions" by promoting programs which unite, as opposed to¶ divide, racial minorities (particularly
blacks) and whites.¶ [I]f the message emphasizes issues and programs that concern the families of all racial and ethnic groups, whites will see
their mutual interests and join in a coalition with minorities to elect a progressive candidate (Wilson, 1992; A15).
A similar argument has been proposed by Michael Lind, who argues¶ that¶ ...the American elites that subsidize and staff both the
Republican and the Democratic parties have steadfastly waged a generation-long class war against the middle and working classes (Lind 1995a,
35),¶ using race, as well as other divisions, to achieve unprecedented¶ levels of power and concentrated wealth. Affirmative action, and ¶ other
race-based initiatives aimed at achieving greater¶ substantive social equality, only contribute, according to Lind,¶ to the effectiveness of the
"overclass's" divide-and-conquer¶ strategy:
...the overclass shores up its defense against genuinely representative democracy (i.e., a popular coalition uniting middle-class and working-class
Americans of all races and regions) by adopting a strategy of divide and rule expressed in the language of multiculturalism.... Unified along
the lines of economic interest, the wealthy American minority hold the fragmented majority at bay by pitting blacks against whites in zero-sum
struggles for government patronage and by bribing potential black and Hispanic leaders, who might otherwise propose something other than
rhetorical rebellion, with the gifts of affirmative action (Lind 1995a, 44).
Both Wilson and Lind call for a nationalism of the left, a¶ populist alliance of the have-nots, regardless of race, against¶ the haves. Lind's
version is perhaps more radical and certainly¶ more explicitly nationalist: he proposes specific measures to tax¶ corporate flight, restrict
immigration, and establish a "common¶ high-wage trading bloc." Like Wilson, he proposes to eliminate¶ affirmative action, which he would
replace with a¶ ...transracial America..., [where] a color-blind, gender neutral regime of individual rights would be combined with government
activism promoting a high degree of substantive social and economic equality (Lind 1995b, PAGE?).
Wilson's proposals, though more circumspect, conform in all their¶ essentials to this perspective. He too identifies¶ deindustrialization and the
continuing influx of new migrants to¶ the depressed cities as key sources of ghetto and barrio poverty;¶ he too calls for government activism in
support of a high-wage¶ economy and tight labor market, as the recipe for achieving¶ substantive, transracial social justice.
The neoliberal project actively promotes a pragmatic vision of¶ greater substantive equality, linking
class and race, and arguing¶ for the necessity of transracial coalition politics. These¶ themes seem to us
worthy of support , and receive more discussion¶ below in this essay's concluding section.
For the present I wish simply to register some uneasiness¶ with the neoliberal project in respect to its treatment of race. ¶ Most specifically, I
question the argument that race-specific¶ policies should receive less attention in a progressive political¶ agenda (Wilson 1987, 10-12). Despite
protestations that the¶ neoliberal approach is more hardheaded, more willing to face up ¶ to the difficult questions of "the rise of social pathologies
in¶ the ghetto," it is also noteworthy that the neoliberal project ¶ tends to deny, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, the¶ ongoing
relevance of white supremacy to ghetto and barrio¶ poverty. It tends to deemphasize the "dirty little secret" of ¶ continued racial hostility,
segregation, and discrimination of¶ all sorts.
Powerful as some of Wilson's, Lind's, and others' arguments are, ¶ they
do not succeed in demonstrating the demise of
racism or¶ white privilege. They largely fail to recognize the ongoing¶ racial dualism that prevails in the contemporary period,¶
perceiving post-civil rights era conflicts between whites and¶ racially-defined minorities merely as strategic problems, and ¶ paying less attention
to the deep-seated structural racial¶ conflicts endemic to US society.
This weakness is more noticeable in some areas than others, for¶ example in respect to residential segregation or criminal justice¶ issues, which
simply cannot be understood as outcomes of¶ "color-blind" capitalist development imperatives or¶ deindustrialization, and are certainly not the
product of¶ affirmative action. Rather, the imperviousness of these problems¶ to political reform testifies to the continuing viability of¶ oldfashioned white supremacy, and to the competitive advantages¶ whiteness still has to offer.
What drops out of the neoliberal project, then, is precisely the¶ cultural and moral dimensions of white
supremacy. The neoliberal¶ project does not challenge whites on their willingness to receive¶ a
"psychological wage," which amounts to a tangible benefit¶ acquired at the expense of nonwhites (Du Bois 1977 [1935],¶ Roediger 1991,
Harris 1993). Indeed, the neoliberal project does¶ not challenge whites to abjure the real wage subsidies, the¶ artificially low unemployment rates,
or the host of other¶ material benefits they receive in virtue of their whiteness¶ (Lipsitz 1995).
Nevertheless, the neoliberal project does undertake a crucial¶ task: the construction of a transracial
political agenda, and the¶ articulation of white and minority interests in a viable¶ strategic perspective.
This is something which has been missing¶ from the US political scene since the enactment of civil rights¶
legislation thirty years ago.
AT: Reformism Fails
Sweeping reformism K is wrong. Increases oppression through isolation.
Hahnel, American University economics professor, 2005
[Robin, “Fighting For Reforms Without Becoming Reformist” http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/fighting-forreforms-without-becoming-reformist-by-robin-hahnel/]
What To Avoid¶ ¶ We
need look no further than to the history of twentieth century social democracy to see
how fighting for reforms can make a movement reformist. Social democrats began the twentieth century
determined to replace capitalism with socialism — which they understood to be a system of equitable cooperation based on
democratic planning by workers, consumers, and citizens. Long before the century was over social democratic parties and
movements throughout the world had renounced the necessity of replacing private enterprise and markets
with fundamentally different economic institutions, and pledged themselves only to pursue reforms
geared toward making a system based on competition and greed which they accepted as inevitable more
humane. As a result social democrats were doomed to grappled with two dilemmas: (1) What to do when leaving the system intact makes it
impossible to further promote economic justice and democracy, much less environmental sustainability. (2) What to do when further reforms
destabilize a system one has agreed to accept while the system constantly threatens to undermine hard won gains. Social democrats struggled
unsuccessfully with these dilemmas, all too often abandoning important components of economic justice and democracy and denouncing political
tendencies to their left whose programs they considered politically or economically destabilizing. ¶ ¶ We
need look no further than to
the history of twentieth century libertarian socialism to see how failing to embrace reform struggles can
isolate a movement and make it irrelevant. The principle failure of libertarian socialists during the
twentieth century was their inability to understand the necessity and importance of reform organizing.
When it turned out that anti-capitalist uprisings were few and far between, and libertarian socialists
proved incapable of sustaining the few that did occur early in the twentieth century, their reticence to throw
themselves into reform campaigns, and ineptness when they did, doomed libertarian socialists to more than a half century of decline after their
devastating defeat during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. What too many libertarian socialists failed to realize was that any transition to a
democratic and equitable economy has no choice but to pass through reform campaigns, organizations, and institutions however tainted and
corrupting they may be. The new left tried to exorcise the dilemma that reform work is necessary but corrupting with the concept of non-reformist
reforms. According to this theory the solution to the dilemma was for activists to work on non-reformist reforms, i.e. reforms that improve
people’s lives while undermining the material, social, or ideological underpinnings of the capitalist system. There is nothing wrong with the
notion of winning reforms while undermining capitalism. As a matter of fact, that is a concise description of pecisely what we must be about!
What was misleading was the notion that there are particular reforms that are like silver bullets and accomplish this because of something special
about the nature of those reforms themselves.¶ ¶ The Myth of the Non-Reformist Reform¶ ¶ There
is no such thing as a nonreformist reform. Social democrats and libertarian socialists did not err because they somehow failed to
find and campaign for this miraculous kind of reform. Nor would new leftists prove successful where
others had failed before them because new leftists found a special kind of reform different from those
social democrats championed and libertarian socialists shied away from. Some reforms improve peoples
lives more, and some less. Some reforms are easier to win, and some are harder to win. Some reforms are easier to
defend, and some are less so. And of course, different reforms benefit different groups of people. Those are ways reforms,
themselves, differ. On the other hand, there are also crucial differences in how reforms are fought for. Reforms can be fought for by
reformers preaching the virtues of capitalism. Or reforms can be fought for by anti-capitalists pointing out that only by replacing capitalism will it
be possible to fully achieve what reformers want. Reforms can be fought for while leaving institutions of repression intact. Or a reform struggle
can at least weaken repressive institutions, if not destroy them. Reforms can be fought for by hierarchical organizations that reinforce
authoritarian, racist, and sexist dynamics and thereby weaken the overall movement for progressive change. Or reforms can be fought for by
democratic organizations that uproot counter productive patterns of behavior and empower people to become masters and mistresses of their
fates. Reforms can be fought for in ways that leave no new organizations or institutions in their aftermath. Or reforms can be fought for in ways
that create new organizations and institutions that fortify progressive forces in the next battle. Reforms can be fought for through alliances that
obstruct possibilities for further gains. Or the alliances forged to win a reform can establish the basis for winning more reforms. Reforms can be
fought for in ways that provide tempting possibilities for participants, and particularly leaders, to take unfair personal advantage of group success.
Or they can be fought for in ways that minimize the likelihood of corrupting influences. Finally, reform organizing can be the entire program of
organizations and movements. Or, recognizing that reform organizing within capitalism is prone to weaken the personal and political resolve of
participants to pursue a full system of equitable cooperation, reform work can be combined with other kinds of activities, programs, and
institutions that rejuvenate the battle weary and prevent burn out and sell out. ¶ ¶ In
sum, any reform can be fought for in ways
that diminish the chances of further gains and limit progressive change in other areas, or fought for in
ways that make further progress more likely and facilitate other progressive changes as well. But if
reforms are successful they will make capitalism less harmful to some extent. There is no way around
this, and even if there were such a thing as a non-reformist reform, it would not change this fact. However,
the fact that every reform success makes capitalism less harmful does not mean successful reforms
necessarily prolong the life of capitalism — although it might, and this is something anti-capitalists must
simply learn to accept. But if winning a reform further empowers the reformers, and whets their appetite
for more democracy, more economic justice, and more environmental protection than capitalism can
provide, it can hasten the fall of capitalism.¶ ¶ In any case, it turns out we are a more cautious and social species than twentieth
century libertarian socialists realized. And it turns out that capitalism is far more resilient than libertarian socialists
expected it to be. More than a half century of libertarian socialist failures belie the myth that it is possible for social revolutionaries
committed to democracy to eschew reform work without becoming socially isolated. Avoidance of participation in reform work
is simply not a viable option and only guarantees defeat for any who opt out. Moreover, no miraculous
non-reformist reform is going to come riding to our rescue. Though many twentieth century libertarian socialists failed to
realize it, their only hope was to throw themselves wholeheartedly into reform struggles while searching for ways to minimize the corrupting
pressures that inevitably are brought to bear on them as a result.
AT: Can’t Use the Master’s Tools
Working from within the system can produce change. Proves solvency and
addresses K of civil society.
James, University of North Carolina Charlotte philosophy professor, 2009
[Robin, Hypatia Volume 24, Issue 2, “Autonomy, Universality, and Playing the Guitar: On the Politics
and Aesthetics of Contemporary Feminist Deployments of the “Master's Tools”” Wiley]
Norma Coates expresses here an ethical and aesthetic quandary we might term a “feminist guilty
pleasure”: liking something one knows one just shouldn't like, since one considers its politics
problematic, if not disgusting. Why would an avowed feminist like this clearly misogynistic work? How
can one have an aesthetic taste for something that is politically disgusting? This is not a new question by
any means, but it is still a contested one. Indeed, Audre Lorde has famously argued that the “the master's
tools will never dismantle the master's house,” just as Laura Mulvey has equally famously called for the
necessity for feminists to abandon mainstream cinematic pleasure as coercive (Mulvey 1975; Lorde
1983). I contend, however, that we should not be too quick to dismiss either the “master's tools” or some
of the “pleasures” we might experience from them. Indeed, when appropriately hacked, the master's tools
in certain situations and under certain criteria might even be very effective tools for feminist, anti-racist
work.¶ Examining two cases—one political, one aesthetic—from the perspective of non-ideal theory, I
will demonstrate concrete instances in which multiply-underprivileged individuals have utilized, for
liberatory ends, the concepts, rhetoric, and methodologies characteristic of what bell hooks terms “the
white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”1 Judith Butler's recent appeals for “autonomy” and
“universality,” and indie-electro artist Peaches's use of conventionally racist and sexist art forms are all
instances in which “the master's tools” have been productively reappropriated for progressive ends. I
argue that non-ideal theory also helps clarify two conditions that help to distinguish a successful
resignification from a hegemonic rearticulation: first, reappropriation is successful when, as Butler
argues, the very process of an “outsider's” appropriation of “insider” privilege collapses the
insider/outsider or master/marginalized distinction, so the procedure is itself transformative; second,
success is achieved in instances where nothing else does quite what the master's tools “do,” when nothing
is as accessible, effective, affective—or, as in the case of Coates and the Stones, as “sexy”—as
mainstream/conventional discourse.
There is no alternative to the master’s tools – they are always already working in
and through us – reappropriation reverses the dynamic of power.
James, University of North Carolina Charlotte philosophy professor, 2009
[Robin, Hypatia Volume 24, Issue 2, “Autonomy, Universality, and Playing the Guitar: On the Politics
and Aesthetics of Contemporary Feminist Deployments of the “Master's Tools”” Wiley]
In its adoption and modification of Foucaultian–Nietzschean genealogy as the preferred philosophical
methodology, Judith Butler's work can be seen as itself a form of non-ideal theory. Butler's work relies
heavily on Foucault's theory of power, which is itself a non-ideal critique of classical liberal notions of
power. Via an examination of historical documents on education, the military, the penal system, and ‘the
clinic,’ Foucault argues that power is not juridical (as liberalism tells us power is/should be), but also
normative and disciplinary. That is to say, Foucault examined how power actually worked in real-world
institutions, and from this analysis concluded that the liberal story of power qua “repression” was a
hegemonic misrepresentation. Butler picks up on this reconceptualization of power as “disciplinary” and
“productive,” but, more importantly, on Foucault's commitment to genealogical analysis. Asking of a
concept “how it plays, what investments it bears, what aims it achieves, what alterations it undergoes”
(Butler 2004, 180) does not inquire into the truth of the concept so much as ask about its consequences—
that is, how it is mobilized in the real world. Rather than asking what the concept “is,” Butler wants to
know what it does, and what meaning(s) it has in a particular situation. Insofar as it inquires into how an
idea “works,” this is yet another way in which Butler's notion of theory is never far from concrete
engagement with praxis—and, accordingly, from a version of non-ideal theorizing. In my reading, Butler
utilizes this form of non-ideal theory to argue that since nothing can “do”—that is, function as powerfully
or effectively—quite what terms such as “universality” or “autonomy” can do, they can, have been, and
must be appropriated by progressive theory and activism.7 When this appropriation is performed by those
conventionally excluded by or from that idea (l), Butler claims that the term itself is transformed in its
“repetition”; when utilized by the oppressed in this fashion, the “master's tools” are never quite the
“master's tools.”¶ It is this commitment to real-world conditions and consequences, and, indeed, an often
pragmatic framework, that leads Butler to embrace the very “ideals” of classical liberalism that her earlier
work can be seen as deconstructing and critiquing.8 In Undoing Gender (2004), Butler brings this
genealogical methodology to bear on the concept universality—one of those liberal ideals that have,
historically, functioned to mask the marginalization of underprivileged groups. Since our present moment
of both (post–Post) Modernity and feminism is marked most significantly by issues concerning the global
and the multicultural, the notion of “universality” is placed under particular scrutiny. Is “universality”
necessarily and inevitably monocultural (the supposedly “universal” norm can be a norm in reference to
only one privileged culture); put differently, is “absolute” a necessary co-predicate of “universality,” or
can there be such a thing as a plural or internally polyphonous universal? Following Paul Gilroy's analysis
of the limitations of postmodernism,9 Butler finds the binary opposition of the postmodern privileging of
plurality and the modern privileging of unity to be inadequate. Butler's frustration here with both
“modernism” and “postmodernism” is that “passions for foundations [in the case of the former] and
methods [in the case of the latter] sometimes get in the way of an analysis of contemporary political
culture” (Butler 2004, 181). Her commitment is clearly to the concrete world of lived experience, in the
sense that foundations and methods are subordinated to, in a sense, utility: “What can this do for me?”
seems to be her underlying practical concern. Thus, “[a]lthough many feminists have come to the
conclusion that the universal is always a cover for a certain epistemological imperialism, insensitive to
cultural texture and difference,” Butler argues that “the rhetorical power of claiming universality for
rights of sexual autonomy and related rights of sexual orientation within the international human rights
domain appears indisputable” (182). In real political contexts such as the United Nations' declarations on
the rights of women, the language of “universality” might do what no other language can—thus, it would
be advantageous to keep some form of it in play. Accordingly, even though standard liberal norms about
universality and autonomy might be empirically inadequate, Butler argues that “we had better be able to
use that language to secure legal protections and entitlements” (20; emphasis mine), since, practically,
this is the only language institutions of power presently speak.10 Notions such as individual or civil rights
do have a strategic value; problems arise, however, “if we take the definitions of who we are, legally, to
be adequate descriptions of what we are about” (20). Political myths such as “universality” or
“autonomy” are, as myths, useful, because it makes one intelligible to present structures of power; it must
not be forgotten that these are useful fictions, and that problems arise when they are taken as non-fiction.
Thus, while “autonomy” as commonly figured in mainstream liberalism is, for Butler, clearly a myth, its
political salience therein is cause for resignifying (rather than chucking) the term.¶ This is possible, for
Butler, only because “universality” has no necessary or inherent function—the meaning of a term derives
not from some signifier-signified referential logic, but from consensus … and people can always change
their minds and rewrite agreements. Thus, Butler explains that terms such as universality“are never finally
and fully tethered to a single use. The task of reappropriation is to illustrate the vulnerability of these
often compromised terms to an unexpected progressive possibility” (Butler 2004, 179). Universality can
do lots of different things for us, and we can give it lots of different meanings. When we include in the
conversation about universality those who historically have been excluded from it, this
theoretical/practical exercise itself reconfigures the scope, function, and denotation of the term. “[T]he
struggle against those exclusions very often ends up reappropriating those very terms from modernity”
(179) via performative resignification.¶ For Butler, political and theoretical progress occurs when the
master's discourse is not merely expanded to include more people, but is “rearticulated” when “the
excluded speak to and from such a category” (Butler 2004, 13). This resignification is performative: in
Butler's example, the fact that Fanon writes, that is, assumes a “human” task, “he is in and through the
utterance opening up the category to a different future” (13). By “doing” an activity reserved for
“humans,” a category from which Fanon was excluded, Fanon “undoes” the hegemonic sense of the
“human.” As Butler puts it, “[t]hose deemed illegible, unrecognizable, or impossible nevertheless speak
in the terms of the ‘human,’ opening up the term to a history not fully constrained by the existing
differentials of power” (13–14). When those whose exclusion from the full scope of the “universal” or the
“human” speak with reference to and in the name of these very ideals, these terms become something
other than what they were originally. Thus, for Butler, one never uses precisely the same “tool” as the
master does, for this performative resignification by those whose exclusion from the term renders it
consistent doesn't “stretch” the boundaries of the term to make it more inclusive so much as it makes the
term do what, in its conventional formulation, is logically impossible. While Mills argues that “it cannot
be claimed that from the possibility of the extension of ideal theory to previously excluded populations
that this shows the ideal theory is really not exclusionary” (Mills 2004, 177), we can see that this is not
Butler's claim at all. For Butler, this reappropriation is transformative and not merely assimilative because
“when the unreal lays claim to reality … the norms themselves can become rattled, display their
instability, and become open to resignification” (Butler 2004, 27–28). When those excluded from the
system suddenly put themselves in it, this challenges the foundations of the system, and produces an
imperfect reproduction of its imperative.11¶ Butler's notion of autonomy, with its emphasis on
interdependence and the necessary commerce across a very unclear boundary between individual and
society, has highly significant implications for her call to use the “master's tools.” If, as she argues, all
agency arises from one's insertion in networks of power relations, then one must be “recognizable” to the
“master's” system(s) in order to participate in the working(s) of power in the first place. That is to say, in
order to “do” anything, I must necessarily work with the master's tools and let them work on me. “We
come into the world on the condition that the social world is already there, laying the groundwork for us.
This implies,” Butler argues, “that I cannot persist without norms of recognition that support my
persistence” (Butler 2004, 32). I have no choice to use or not use the master's tools—they have been
working on and through me since before I was even born; they constitute the field in and through which I
act. This does not, however, mean that I must use them as they were intended. Indeed, Butler argues that
when one makes appeals to “rights” for a marginalized group, one is not—or should not be—seeking the
extension of the same old concept to a new group (that is, the colonization of the outside, a
domestication), but instead is/should be challenging the very assumptions behind that term, transforming
it in the process of demanding or claiming it.¶ Butler qualifies her call to use the master's tools with what
she calls a “double path”: “we must use this language to assert an entitlement to conditions of life in ways
that affirm the constitutive role of sexuality and gender in political life, and we must also subject our very
categories to critical scrutiny” (Butler 2004, 37–38). This double path sounds a lot like the more
conventional notion of “critique”—a self-reflexive meta-narrative concerned with the limits of the
discourse under question—but it goes beyond this traditional sense of “critique” insofar as the “limits” it
scrutinizes are not only discursive, but also political. If it is the case that norms “are invoked and cited by
bodily practices that also have the capacity to alter norms in the course of their citation” (52), then it is
clear that Butler finds revolutionary capacity in reactionary norms. If this is the case, then, we must ask
“what departures from the norm constitute something other than an excuse or rationale for the continuing
authority of the norm?” (53), for not every instantiation of the norm, obviously, will be revolutionary. By
what criteria do we determine reactionary from revolutionary reworkings of gender norms? Moreover,
“what departures from the norm disrupt the regulatory process itself?” (53)—that is, what sorts of
subversive repetitions don't just reinstall the terms of the norm, but call the norm itself and its modus
operandi into question?12 In response to these questions, I turn to the case of Peaches's reappropriation of
patriarchal gender norms. Her work, read alongside Butler's, fleshes out the two criteria we can use to
distinguish a successful reworking of the “master's tools” from a hegemonic rearticulation of them.
Because her work deals with many of the same themes (sex, sexuality, sexually empowered women) as
Madonna's superficially (but not really) “feminist” work from the 1980s–90s, Peaches's oeuvre is
particularly helpful in distinguishing a genuinely transformative use of the master's tools from one that,
although superficially radical, in fact maintains the status quo. More importantly, if, as Deleuze and
Guattari say, domination “is not an ideological problem” but “a problem of desire” (Deleuze and Guattari
1983, 104), then power functions, at least in part, by making us want and be satisfied by structures that
are counter to our interests; as Coates demonstrates in the epigraph, structures of feeling (such as musical
conventions) are often resistant to intellectual critique, even in politicized intellectuals. As a musician,
Peaches is engaging the “master's tools”—the guitar, cock rock, binary gender—precisely at the level of
desire and structures of feeling. Accordingly, her work helps me move my analysis beyond the more
ideologically oriented work of Mills and Butler toward consideration of problems of desire and affect.
Indeed, it is precisely because power functions at these levels that the second criterion (accessibility,
affectivity) is so important in distinguishing a successful from an unsuccessful reappropriation.
AT: Coalitions Bad
Reforms are key – critical to mobilization – by focusing on suffering as the basis for
identity, they preclude mobilization.
Bhambra, University of Warwick sociology professor, and Margree, University of
Brighton cultural studies professor, 2010
[Gurminder and Victoria, “Identity Politics and the Need for a ‘Tomorrow’”
http://www.academia.edu/471824/Identity_Politics_and_the_Need_for_a_Tomorrow_, p.64-5]
Political mobilisation around suffering engenders solidarities between those who are suffering and those
who afford recognition of (and then action around) that suffering. Those who suffer generally claim their common humanity with
others in asking for people to look beyond the specific circumstances of their suffer-ing, and in doing so, the request is to address those specific
circumstances on the basis of a humanity not bound to the circumstances. The
mistake of some forms of identity politics,
then, is to associate identity with suffering. While a recognition of historical (and contemporary) suffering
is an important aspect of the political process of seeking redress for the conditions of suffering, it does not
constitute identity singularly. ¶ “Wounded attachments”, we would argue, do not represent the general condition of politicised
identities, but rather, are prob-lematic constructions of identities which fail to recognise (or accept) the processes of change associated with
movements. The accumulation of different sorts of challenges around similar issues generally leads to the gradual amelioration of the condi-tions
which generated the identity (and the associated move-ment) in the first instance. If
the emphasis in the movement is on identity
then successful reform (even partial reform) reduces the injury and thus diminishes the power of the
identity claim based upon that injury. This is because reform is necessarily uneven in terms of the impact
it has. This then poses a problem for those within the movement who would wish the reforms to go
further and who see in the reforms a weakening of the identity that they believe is a necessary prerequisite
for political action. As they can no longer mobilise the injured identity – and the associated suffering – as
common to all (and thus requiring address because of its generalised effect), there is often, then, a perceived need to
privilege that suffering as particular and to institute a politics of guilt with regard to addressing it – truly
the politics of ressentiment. ¶ The problems arise by insisting on the necessity of political action being constituted through pre-existing
identities and soli-darities (for example, those of being a woman). If, instead, it was recognised that equality for women is
not separable from (or achievable separated from) wider issues of justice and equality within society then reforms
could be seen as steps towards equality. A movement concerned with issues of social justice (of which gender
justice is an integral aspect) would allow for provisional reforms to prevailing conditions of injustice without
calling into question the basis for the movement – for there would always be more to be achieved . 8 Each
achievement would itself necessitate further revision of what equality would look like. And it would also necessitate revision of
the particular aims that constitute the “identity” afforded by participating in that movement. In this way, identity becomes more
appropriately understood as being, in part at least, about participating in a series of dialogues about what is desired for the future in terms of
understandings of social justice. ¶ Focusing on the future, on how we would like things to be tomorrow, based on an understanding of where we
are today, would allow for partial reforms to be seen as gains and not threats. It
is only if one believes that political action can
only occur in the context of identification of past injustices as opposed to future justice that one has a
problem with (partial) reforms in the present. Political identity which exists only through an enunciation of
its injury and does not seek to dissolve itself as an identity can lead to the ossification of injured relations.
The “wounded attachment” occurs when the politicised identity can see no future without the injury also
constituting an aspect of that future. Developing on the work of Brown, we would argue that not only does a “reformed”
identity politics need to be based upon desire for the future, but that that desire should actually be a desire
for the dissolution (in the future) of the identity claim. The complete success of the femi-nist movement, for instance, would mean
that feminists no longer existed, as the conditions that caused people to become feminist had been addressed. Similarly, with the dalit movement,
its success would be measured by the dissolution of the identity of “dalit” as a salient political category. There would be no loss here, only a
gain.¶ As we have argued, following Mohanty ([1993] 2000) and Nelson (1993), it is participation in the processing of one’s own and other’s
experiences into knowledge about the world, in the context of communities that negotiate epistemological premises, which confers a notion of
politicised identity. Since
it is an under-standing of “tomorrow” (what that would be, and how it is to be achieved) that
establishes one as, for example, a feminist, such an identity claim does not exclude others from participation,
and it does not solicit the reification of identity around the fact of historical or contemporary suffering. By
removing these obstacles to progress, the “tomorrow” that is the goal, is more readily achievable. Identity politics, then, “needs a
tomorrow” in this sense: that the raison d’être of any politicised identity is the bringing about of a
tomorrow in which the social injustices of the present have been overcome. But identity politics also needs that
tomorrow – today – in the sense that politicised identities need to inscribe that tomorrow into their self-definition in
the present, in order to avoid consolidating activity around the maintenance of the identity rather than the
overcoming of the conditions that generated it. That the tomorrow to be inscribed – today – in the self-definition of one’s
political identity, is one in which that identity will no longer be required, is not a situation to be regretted, since it is rather the promise of success
for any movement for justice.
Coalitions are necessary to solve and possible – this evidence assumes their indicts –
rallying around particular goals like the plan overcomes the problems with
coalitions.
Wing, University of Iowa law professor, 2003
[Adrien Katherine, 63 La. L. Rev. 717, “Civil Rights in the Post 911 World: Critical Race Praxis,
Coalition Building, and the War on Terrorism” Lexis]
Because of the various problems with coalition building, several scholars do not endorse it. For example,
Delgado advocates laboring within your own group for the social justice goals you support. "For some projects, justice turns out to be a solitary
though heroic quest, and the road to justice is one that must be traveled alone, or with our deepest, most trusted companions." n204 Haunani-Kay
Trask states that real organizing of native Hawaiians takes place outside of coalitions. n205 She supports Malcolm X's claims that whites
need to tackle racism within their own communities, rather than in coalition. n206 "Work in conjunction with us-each working
among our own kind." n207¶ Despite the frictions and problems between various traditional and nontraditional
groups, coalition building can be a useful tool of critical race praxis in the current period. African
Americans have been used to being the dominant minority in the United States, able to keep their
concerns at the center of the civil rights movement. Latinos are now surpassing Blacks numerically, n208
and are the majority in California already. n209 They will be 25% of the U.S. population by 2050. n210 [*746] Blacks will have to learn
to work in coalition with Latinos to ensure that Black concerns are not lost in a new dispensation of
"favored minority." While the Latinos are becoming the majority minority, they are not as politically
organized as the Blacks yet, with many being recent immigrants or noncitizens, who may not speak English. n211 Thus in some
instances, Latinos will need to learn from African Americans, and with them, to achieve various goals. ¶
Coalition is good for Asians because although they score higher on standardized tests and have a higher
income level than the other minority groups, history has already shown that they remain regarded as
perpetual foreigners, n212 once subject to internment. n213 Native Americans constitute only two million
people, n214 and can benefit from linking with the larger groups, some of whom may resent those tribes, who now profit
from gambling casino wealth. n215 Arabs and Muslims need to join in coalition with the other groups because they
are too small and too recent as immigrants in comparison to the other groups to go it alone. As the current
personification of evil of the moment, they need to draw upon the resources of other groups for support.¶
Coalition building does not happen in a vacuum. It must coalesce around particular projects where there is
commonality of interest. For instance, Frank Valdes has noted that Latinos and Asians share a common interest in legal issues that involve
"immigration, family, citizenship, nationhood, language, expression, culture, and global economic restructuring." n216 ¶ [*747] ¶ Racial
profiling is a potential issue for cooperation as it affects all the major minority groups. I will use it for illustrative
purposes in the remainder of this section, even though it is only one of various issues that could be the basis for coalition building. Asian scholars
have noted how both the recent mistreatment of Chinese American scientist Dr. Wen Ho Lee n217 and the interning of 120,000 Japanese and
Japanese Americans in World War II could both be regarded as cases of racial profiling. n218 Kevin Johnson has called for Asians and Latinos to
form political coalitions to challenge arbitrary INS conduct. n219 He also wants Blacks and Latinos to form coalitions to work on issues of racial
profiling, as well. n220¶ In
the war against terrorism, racial profiling is particularly affecting Blacks, Latinos and
South Asians who look Arab, creating an ideal intersectional issue for coalition building. n221 Coalescing
around profiling in these times will not be easy. In his timely book, Justice at War: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights in a Time of Crisis,
Richard Delgado, a founder of CRT, queries, "Will the establishment insist on Americanism and toeing the line in the war on terrorism, and
demand that minorities demonstrate loyalty, in return for a symbolic concession or two?...Will it choose one minority group for favored [*748]
treatment, in hope of keeping the others in line." n222 There are several foreseeable scenarios in this regard. For example, the Bush
administration could reconfigure rather than terminate various federal affirmative action programs after an expected hostile Supreme Court
decision in the upcoming Michigan cases, n223 to attempt to ensure Black support for the war efforts. The administration's rejection of the proaffirmative action position of the University of Michigan may have attracted some Asian support. n224 The perpetuation of the forty year old
blockade against Cuba despite U.S. business opposition ensures Cuban American loyalty, n225 and the rumored appointment of a Hispanic for
the next U.S. Supreme Court vacancy may attract other Latinos. n226 Delgado wonders whether people of color will "be able to work together
toward mutual goals- or [will] the current factionalism and distrust continue into the future, with various minority groups competing for crumbs
while majoritarian rule continue[s] unabated?" n227¶ In order to ensure that issues like racial profiling do become an effective rallying point for
multiethnic coalition building in the war against terrorism era, it is necessary to develop a more complete theorization of the process. Critical
race scholars have provided some insights that could be useful. According to Mari Matsuda, "when we
work in coalition . . . . we compare our struggles and challenge one another's assumptions. We learn of
the gaps and absence in our knowledge. We learn a few tentative, starting truths, the building blocks of a
theory of subordination." n228 If traditional minority civil rights groups joined together with Arabs and
Muslims, they would learn how little they truly understood about the other. I am one of the few African Americans
that I know who deals with Arab and Muslim organizations as well as African American ones. I am astounded at how little accurate information
each has about the other, even though some Blacks are Muslim, and there may be some degree of overlap between groups. In dealing with
Latino-based entities, for example, I find they have very little basis for understanding Arabs and Muslims. I have tried to translate Catholic or
Christian principles [*749] into Muslim ones and vice versa, but my own knowledge of Christian theology is inadequate to the task. Since I teach
Attempting to fill in the gaps in
knowledge between Muslim and Arab groups and various organizations of color might reveal the
similarities and differences in racial profiling and perhaps other issues as well. These issues might
become the focus for joint action.¶ Chuck Lawrence has a more elaborate position on coalition building, which requires:¶ (1)
Islamic law, I actually know more about that faith than the Christianity in which I was socialized.
understanding the complex interrelatedness of our racial subjugation; ¶ (2) confronting our own internalized racist beliefs and the ways in which
we participate in the maintenance of white supremacy;¶ (3) resisting constructions of race that divide and demean us;¶ (4) learning to talk and
listen to one another, to share experience, to empathize with and understand one another; and ¶ (5) finding ways to sustain ourselves as we do the
difficult, and often thankless work of coalition building. n229¶ It
is very difficult to imagine various groups agreeing on the
interrelatedness of racial subjugation. Some minorities still socially construct themselves as white, and would not want to
characterize their position as "Black." They might view their problems through the prism of religion or culture or ideology, rather than be forced
to fit into America's racial categorizations.¶ With respect to Lawrence's second point, I
have found many groups of color are
unable to recognize that they too could be participants in maintaining white supremacy, not merely
victims. Demonizing another group of color may be a vain attempt to be better or more "American" than others, failing to recognize that all
will be seen as perpetual permanent outsiders in a hierarchy where white is still at the top. Addressing the third issue, seeking white status may be
more important than alliances with groups of color.¶ I have participated in coalitions where it would have been better for groups not to talk too
much with each other, because more points of dissimilarity may come out. For example, a Black civil rights group may be able to march against
racial profiling with an Asian group. Engaging in dialogue may reveal the Asian group is anti- affirmative action. Thus Lawrence's fourth point
about talking together and developing empathy may not occur. As a matter of fact, [*750] coalition building can create strange bedfellows,
according to Delgado. Skinheads, survivalists, and anti-gun control elements all concerned with government surveillance may not be otherwise
compatible with Asian and Latino groups concerned with the government treatment of immigrants after September 11. n230 ¶ Sustaining
ourselves as we build coalitions, Lawrence's fifth point, is critical. I have seen too many legal activists burn out in frustration or depression from
the lack of positive results from both ends of coalition building. Some will merely drop out of the coalition aspect, while others will drop out of
organizational work altogether, preferring to focus on individual personal, professional or family pursuits. ¶ Lawrence also emphasizes
trust. "Coalition work requires time and space to build trust. It requires creating methods and models for conversation, collaboration, and
sharing. Engaging in collective action and careful reflection means starting small and building on the trust that we create in the process of doing
this difficult work together." n231 My
attitude toward trust is the opposite of Lawrence's. Using a personal
hypothetical example, I would trust my husband, until I catch him cheating, and then might forgive him
and stay with him, but would not trust him again. If I would not always trust a husband to whom I have
made a life commitment in such circumstances, I see no reason why trust is necessary in coalition. We
may work together within my group, and I may not trust other group members to do all the work as
promised. I am usually prepared with a back up plan that requires that I may have to fill in to do the work of a colleague who is inefficient,
incompetent, lazy, overworked or who has a personal or medical issue or a family matter. If I do not readily trust those in my own group,
especially based on long term experiences with them, I would not extend trust to others operating perhaps on even fewer points of commonality.
This lack of trust does not mean being hostile to the other group, it just means being aware of the pitfalls,
and that their other priorities may not make them worthy of trust on any but the most superficial level.¶ In
The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy, n232 Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres see those raced as Blacks
as having the potential to lead or be at the center of coalitions of outgroups, who exemplify the notion of "political race," n233 which might
include various nonblack groups. [*751] According to the authors, all U.S. society would benefit if it would notice when Blacks are hurting; they
serve in the role of the miner's canary signaling problems that will ultimately affect everyone in the mine. n234 Their framework involves
reconceptualizing meta-narratives, working from the bottom up, and tackling hierarchy. n235 Unfortunately, I do not think it is likely that various
outgroups would accept the leadership or centrality of Black groups in the current atmosphere. An issue like racial profiling, for example, does
not affect poor whites or many white-looking women to the same degree it affects Blacks, Arabs and Muslims, and those who look like them.
Derrick Bell's theory of white self-interest indicates that poor whites have not historically rallied together with people of color. n236 Outgroups
who are used to being dominant due to white privilege n237 or relative privilege vis-a-vis Blacks, are unlikely to take a back seat to Blacks in the
war against terrorism, an issue on which they would feel Blacks have no special expertise in any event. Delgado postulates that various outgroups
of color would abandon their coalition with each other if they can get concessions from white power elites. n238¶ Critical Latina/o Theory
(LATCRIT), a more recent CRT offshoot, has generated an analysis of coalition across minority ethnic groups. n239 LATCRIT founder Frank
Valdes calls for "'critical coalitions' . . . 'alliances based on a thoughtful and reciprocal interest in the
goal(s) or purpose(s)' of a collaborative and collective project." n240 This definition would not require
embracing of trust, but would be pragmatic, i.e., we will cooperate in publicizing these egregious cases in
our respective communities.¶ [*752] ¶ Mary Romero posits that "the ways in which race based movements and racialized communities
construct their identities has enormous implications for setting social justice agendas and for coalition building." n241 Returning to an example
we have mentioned before, n242 some groups may construct themselves as white and think perhaps that they are above being in coalition with a
group of color. They may unconsciously feel entitled to dominate the coalition. ¶ Lisa Iglesias has stated, "we need to learn how to articulate our
intergroup comparisons in ways that energize new solidarities and promote more fluid and inclusive political identities by revealing new
interconnections and commonalities among the oppressed, despite and perhaps because of our differences." n243 Her plea is an optimistic one,
and perhaps could help with the problem of finding out too much information about a coalition partner, leading to less desire to work together.
For example, the previously mentioned Black pro-affirmative action and Asian anti-affirmative action group might be able to become closer
while mutually addressing the racial profiling issue. Blacks and Asians who look like "Arabs" will both be subject to profiling as terrorists. A
good working relationship on this issue might enable some members of each group to hear each other from time to time on the divisive and
potentially explosive affirmative action question.¶ At the annual LATCRIT conferences, one issue is chosen that is designed to appeal to
nonLatino attendees, as a means of rotating centers of emphasis. n244 In this regard, Athena Mutua has called for what she terms "shifting
bottoms and rotating centers" to acknowledge the fact that Blacks and Latinos can both be at the bottom of the white power hierarchy in different
ways, and there is the need for a shifting emphasis on the various groups. Whereas Blacks are at the bottom of a color hierarchy, many Latinos
can be at the bottom of the language hierarchy. n245 Unfortunately, it may be difficult to rally around this theme, as the number of nonLatinos at
the conferences does not constitute a big enough cohesive faction to offset the dominance of the Latinos. The dynamic manifests as one center of
the universe, i.e. Latino issues, with a shooting star flashing past, i.e. other minority issues. The environment can be particularly uncomfortable
for some African Americans who are used to their concerns taking center stage. While some Latinos may be at the [*753] bottom in terms of
language hierarchy in the U.S., Blacks remain there as well for their failure to master standard English despite having no other first language.
n246 At the LATCRIT conferences, nonspanish speakers may feel isolated as there is frequent lapsing in and out of Spanish, with accompanying
joking or shaking of heads, that others who do not speak Spanish can not follow. ¶ Cho
and Westley provide an insight that is
critically important. They call for a "structure of political organizing that unites contingent, transitory, and
relationally defined individuals on the basis of interests rather than putative fixed group identities." n247
In other words, we can not essentialize the interests of various minority groups, and assume that all the
Asians will have the same position, for example. n248 There are Asian groups which are against
affirmative action, and groups that are for it. n249 Conservative Cuban groups may not have much in common with the Puerto
Rican Legal Defense Fund. The NAACP rarely agrees with the positions taken by Justice Clarence Thomas or African American University of
California regent, Ward Connerly, who led the call to dismantle affirmative action in the UC system. n250 ¶ Some
groups of color may
resent racial profiling of their own ethnic group members, but welcome its use against Arabs and Muslims
as potential terrorists. n251 Catching young Black juveniles who rob convenience stores or poor Mexicans crossing the Texas border
looking for work may be regarded as qualitatively different by Blacks and Latinos than catching Muslim supporters of Al Qaeda, who destroyed
the World Trade Centers, damaged the Pentagon, and killed thousands in one day. They are people who have declared war on America, literally
and figuratively.¶ [*754] ¶ Yamamoto posits four understandings about situated group power when we move beyond the black-white binary:
simultaneity, positionality, differentiation, and dominance transformation. n252 Interpreting the points, a
group could simultaneously
be both oppressed and an oppressor, depending on its position to other groups, which relates to how that
group has been treated differently historically. If the group is dominating others, it requires the desire to
transform that dynamic in a positive manner so the groups can work together in healthy coalition. n253
Applying Yamamoto's concepts to Black legal groups, it is necessary for some of these organizations to realize that they
have been filling up a disproportionate amount of space in many coalitions of color, "acting white," so to
speak. Working together effectively in the war on terror era will require an acknowledgment of this
reality. Given how longstanding the dominance of Black groups has been, it will not be easy for them to transform, particularly as their
numerical dominance fades as well.
AT: Subversive Strategies Good
Being subversive has no intrinsic value absent pre-conceived norms – that flips
subversion on its head.
Nussbaum, University of Chicago law professor, 1999
[Martha, “The Professor of Parody” http://www.akad.se/Nussbaum.pdf]
Butler departs in this regard from earlier social-constructionist feminists, all of whom used ideas such as
non-hierarchy, equality, dignity, autonomy, and treating as an end rather than a means, to indicate a
direction for actual politics. Still less is she willing to elaborate any positive normative notion. Indeed, it
is clear that Butler, like Foucault, is adamantly opposed to normative notions such as human dignity, or
treating humanity as an end, on the grounds that they are inherently dictatorial. In her view, we ought to
wait to see what the political struggle itself throws up, rather than prescribe in advance to its participants.
Universal normative notions, she says, "colonize under the sign of the same."¶ This idea of waiting to see
what we get--in a word, this moral passivity--seems plausible in Butler because she tacitly assumes an
audience of like-minded readers who agree (sort of) about what the bad things are--discrimination against
gays and lesbians, the unequal and hierarchical treatment of women--and who even agree (sort of) about
why they are bad (they subordinate some people to others, they deny people freedoms that they ought to
have). But take that assumption away, and the absence of a normative dimension becomes a severe
problem.¶ Try teaching Foucault at a contemporary law school, as I have, and you will quickly find that
subversion takes many forms, not all of them congenial to Butler and her allies. As a perceptive
libertarian student said to me, Why can't I use these ideas to resist the tax structure, or the
antidiscrimination laws, or perhaps even to join the militias? Others, less fond of liberty, might engage in
the subversive performances of making fun of feminist remarks in class, or ripping down the posters of
the lesbian and gay law students' association. These things happen. They are parodic and subversive.
Why, then, aren't they daring and good?¶ Well, there are good answers to those questions, but you won't
find them in Foucault, or in Butler. Answering them requires discussing which liberties and opportunities
human beings ought to have, and what it is for social institutions to treat human beings as ends rather than
as means--in short, a normative theory of social justice and human dignity. It is one thing to say that we
should be humble about our universal norms, and willing to learn from the experience of oppressed
people. It is quite another thing to say that we don't need any norms at all. Foucault, unlike Butler, at least
showed signs in his late work of grappling with this problem; and all his writing is animated by a fierce
sense of the texture of social oppression and the harm that it does.¶ Come to think of it, justice, understood
as a personal virtue, has exactly the structure of gender in the Butlerian analysis: it is not innate or
"natural," it is produced by repeated performances (or as Aristotle said, we learn it by doing it), it shapes
our inclinations and forces the repression of some of them. These ritual performances, and their
associated repressions, are enforced by arrangements of social power, as children who won't share on the
playground quickly discover. Moreover, the parodic subversion of justice is ubiquitous in politics, as in
personal life. But there is an important difference. Generally we dislike these subversive performances,
and we think that young people should be strongly discouraged from seeing norms of justice in such a
cynical light. Butler cannot explain in any purely structural or procedural way why the subversion of
gender norms is a social good while the subversion of justice norms is a social bad. Foucault, we should
remember, cheered for the Ayatollah, and why not? That, too, was resistance, and there was indeed
nothing in the text to tell us that that struggle was less worthy than a struggle for civil rights and civil
liberties.¶ There is a void, then, at the heart of Butler's notion of politics. This void can look liberating,
because the reader fills it implicitly with a normative theory of human equality or dignity. But let there be
no mistake: for Butler, as for Foucault, subversion is subversion, and it can in principle go in any
direction. Indeed, Butler's naively empty politics is especially dangerous for the very causes she holds
dear. For every friend of Butler, eager to engage in subversive performances that proclaim the
repressiveness of heterosexual gender norms, there are dozens who would like to engage in subversive
performances that flout the norms of tax compliance, of non-discrimination, of decent treatment of one's
fellow students. To such people we should say, you cannot simply resist as you please, for there are
norms of fairness, decency, and dignity that entail that this is bad behavior. But then we have to articulate
those norms--and this Butler refuses to do.
Performative politics is a private act that doesn’t challenge systemic oppression –
two implications. A- all your offense on framework is solved by reading a book and
B- you don’t solve your impacts, your speech act is an act of nihilism.
Nussbaum, University of Chicago law professor, 1999
[Martha, “The Professor of Parody” http://www.akad.se/Nussbaum.pdf]
The idea of gender as performance is Butler's most famous idea, and so it is worth pausing to scrutinize it
more closely. She introduced the notion intuitively, in Gender Trouble, without invoking theoretical
precedent. Later she denied that she was referring to quasi-theatrical performance, and associated her
notion instead with Austin's account of speech acts in How to Do Things with Words. Austin's linguistic
category of "performatives" is a category of linguistic utterances that function, in and of themselves, as
actions rather than as assertions. When (in appropriate social circumstances) I say "I bet ten dollars," or
"I'm sorry," or "I do" (in a marriage ceremony), or "I name this ship...," I am not reporting on a bet or an
apology or a marriage or a naming ceremony, I am conducting one.¶ Butler's analogous claim about
gender is not obvious, since the "performances" in question involve gesture, dress, movement, and action,
as well as language. Austin's thesis, which is restricted to a rather technical analysis of a certain class of
sentences, is in fact not especially helpful to Butler in developing her ideas. Indeed, though she
vehemently repudiates readings of her work that associate her view with theater, thinking about the
Living Theater's Austin.¶ Nor is Butler's treatment of Austin very plausible. She makes the bizarre claim
that the fact that the marriage ceremony is one of dozens of examples of performatives in Austin's text
suggests "that the heterosexualization of the social bond is the paradigmatic form for those speech acts
which bring about what they name." Hardly. Marriage is no more paradigmatic for Austin than betting or
ship-naming or promising or apologizing. He is interested in a formal feature of certain utterances, and we
are given no reason to suppose that their content has any significance for his argument. It is usually a
mistake to read earth-shaking significance into a philosopher's pedestrian choice of examples. Should we
say that Aristotle's use of a low-fat diet to illustrate the practical syllogism suggests that chicken is at the
heart of Aristotelian virtue? Or that Rawls's use of travel plans to illustrate practical reasoning shows that
A Theory of Justice aims at giving us all a vacation?¶ Leaving these oddities to one side, Butler's point is
presumably this: when we act and speak in a gendered way, we are not simply reporting on something
that is already fixed in the world, we are actively constituting it, replicating it, and reinforcing it. By
behaving as if there were male and female "natures," we co-create the social fiction that these natures
exist. They are never there apart from our deeds; we are always making them be there. At the same time,
by carrying out these performances in a slightly different manner, a parodic manner, we can perhaps
unmake them just a little.¶ Thus the one place for agency in a world constrained by hierarchy is in the
small opportunities we have to oppose gender roles every time they take shape. When I find myself doing
femaleness, I can turn it around, poke fun at it, do it a little bit differently. Such reactive and parodic
performances, in Butler's view, never destabilize the larger system. She doesn't envisage mass movements
of resistance or campaigns for political reform; only personal acts carried out by a small number of
knowing actors. Just as actors with a bad script can subvert it by delivering the bad lines oddly, so too
with gender: the script remains bad, but the actors have a tiny bit of freedom. Thus we have the basis for
what, in Excitable Speech, Butler calls "an ironic hopefulness."
Their reading of power ignores material conditions – slavery never would have been
challenged if this was the abolitionist strategy.
Nussbaum, University of Chicago law professor, 1999
[Martha, “The Professor of Parody” http://www.akad.se/Nussbaum.pdf]
What precisely does Butler offer when she counsels subversion? She tells us to engage in parodic
performances, but she warns us that the dream of escaping altogether from the oppressive structures is
just a dream: it is within the oppressive structures that we must find little spaces for resistance, and this
resistance cannot hope to change the overall situation. And here lies a dangerous quietism.¶ If Butler
means only to warn us against the dangers of fantasizing an idyllic world in which sex raises no serious
problems, she is wise to do so. Yet frequently she goes much further. She suggests that the institutional
structures that ensure the marginalization of lesbians and gay men in our society, and the continued
inequality of women, will never be changed in a deep way; and so our best hope is to thumb our noses at
them, and to find pockets of personal freedom within them. "Called by an injurious name, I come into
social being, and because I have a certain inevitable attachment to my existence, because a certain
narcissism takes hold of any term that confers existence, I am led to embrace the terms that injure me
because they constitute me socially." In other words: I cannot escape the humiliating structures without
ceasing to be, so the best I can do is mock, and use the language of subordination stingingly. In Butler,
resistance is always imagined as personal, more or less private, involving no unironic, organized public
action for legal or institutional change.¶ Isn't this like saying to a slave that the institution of slavery will
never change, but you can find ways of mocking it and subverting it, finding your personal freedom
within those acts of carefully limited defiance? Yet it is a fact that the institution of slavery can be
changed, and was changed--but not by people who took a Butler-like view of the possibilities. It was
changed because people did not rest content with parodic performance: they demanded, and to some
extent they got, social upheaval. It is also a fact that the institutional structures that shape women's lives
have changed. The law of rape, still defective, has at least improved; the law of sexual harassment exists,
where it did not exist before; marriage is no longer regarded as giving men monarchical control over
women's bodies. These things were changed by feminists who would not take parodic performance as
their answer, who thought that power, where bad, should, and would, yield before justice.¶ Butler not only
eschews such a hope, she takes pleasure in its impossibility. She finds it exciting to contemplate the
alleged immovability of power, and to envisage the ritual subversions of the slave who is convinced that
she must remain such. She tells us--this is the central thesis of The Psychic Life of Power--that we all
eroticize the power structures that oppress us, and can thus find sexual pleasure only within their confines.
It seems to be for that reason that she prefers the sexy acts of parodic subversion to any lasting material or
institutional change. Real change would so uproot our psyches that it would make sexual¶ satisfaction
impossible. Our libidos are the creation of the bad enslaving forces, and thus necessarily sadomasochistic
in structure.¶ Well, parodic performance is not so bad when you are a powerful tenured academic in a
liberal university. But here is where Butler's focus on the symbolic, her proud neglect of the material side
of life, becomes a fatal blindness. For women who are hungry, illiterate, disenfranchised, beaten, raped, it
is not sexy or liberating to reenact, however parodically, the conditions of hunger, illiteracy,
disenfranchisement, beating, and rape. Such women prefer food, schools, votes, and the integrity of their
bodies. I see no reason to believe that they long sadomasochistically for a return to the bad state. If some
individuals cannot live without the sexiness of domination, that seems sad, but it is not really our
business. But when a major theorist tells women in desperate conditions that life offers them only
bondage, she purveys a cruel lie, and a lie that flatters evil by giving it much more power than it actually
has.
AT: Black Scholarship
The aff is a form of selling out – they produce black knowledge in a space they have
already criticized as being white – that de-radicalizes black thought – the alternative
is negation of whiteness, not an affirmation of debate.
Curry, Texas A&M African studies and philosophy professor, 2013
[Tommy, “Reflections on College Debate as a Black Man in the 1990s”
http://drtjc.tumblr.com/post/63012232390/reflections-on-college-debate-as-a-black-man-in-the]
See I was a problem. Back then, no
one talked about race seriously in debate rounds. Even in a year when the topic was
title seven, racism was secondary to the cases that won constantly that year on sex. I lost rounds to white people
for running impacts on race, was called a token by white women, I even lost a round to a two woman white team on the neg after they dropped a
counterplan and disadvantage because I ran extension evidence in the 2NC. There was a moratorium on Blackness, especially Black maleness in
CEDA/NDT. When I proposed an all-Black debate tournament on the list-serv I was called hateful, despite the celebration of white women doing
one. I say this to say that debate has a peculiar-pre-determined morality.¶ The UDL were just beginning in the mid to late 90’s when I started
college. I was involved in them around my junior year when Emory and UMKC started recruiting me, and I certainly think they have been a
success, however, with
the allure of progress (more Blacks, more Black judges, more conceptual debates about
Blackness) comes a de-radicalization of what Black theory and what Black people are supposed to do
and represent. Despite our pretense, debate is still a privileged world; a pretend world where Black people can
have their queerness, their femaleness, their faux radicality recognized, for actual oppressed peoples,
who are not recognized, these qualities mean death. So in debate rounds we get to act as if we are the
conduit of this Black suffering. In demographic increase in the population of Black debaters, has brought
about a new morality committed to fighting for inclusion, intellectual space or expanded ideas of home,
but in this we miss the extent of our dependency on white recognition—that white judge—in the back of
the room comprehending and assimilating our goals with their own liberal/progressive existence. In other
words, it is through our appeal to white men and women, our need for their recognition, for their ballot, that
frames the ultimate message of our pessimism, or gender critiques, or colonial analysis. We are fundamentally
dependent on how the white mind situates itself conceptually to the project of diversification. We appeal
to the sympathies, or worse yet intersectional empathy of whites, as the gauge of the transformative
potency.¶ In these spaces, real radicality comes not from the appeal to white recognition, but the rejection
of it. Of the declaration that Black knowledge, Black theory, and Black accounts of existence (in all is economic and sexual plurality) can be
found in Black people thinking Black thought. It need not depend on our alliances/allegiances with white liberals
rationalizing their existence as justifiable through alliances. Black debate should ultimately move to the
rejection of white adjudication. If Black theory is about the liberation of Black people and a move to definitions
of knowledge/selves/concepts that don’t currently exist, how can we expect the dilapidated ideas of white sentimentality
projected from archaic racialized whiteness to understand or comprehend the interrelatedness of
propositions that are beyond their present being. The true radicality of Black people debating points to the
negation of white comprehension of Black ideas of liberation, not their assimilation or recognition of
them.
AT: White Feminists who Talk about Race
White feminists should not use Audre Lorde.
Smith, University of California Riverside cultural studies professor, 12-26-13
[Andrea, “Sympathy, Outrage and White Humanity: Reflections on BDS, Anti-Black Racism and Justine
Sacco” http://andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/sympathy-outrage-and-white-humanity-reflectionson-bds-anti-black-racism-and-justine-sacco/]
The disappearance of Black suffering in these defenses indicates the extent to which Black
peoples become marked as property
within even progressive circles. The legacy of anti-Black racism is that Black struggle gets deemed the
property of all other social justice struggles. The symbols and tactics of Black struggle are deemed the
common property of all. Black people are required to show solidarity with other oppressed communities,
without other struggles owing solidarity to Black communities. Black oppression is always analogized to other forms of
oppression in a manner that disappears Black oppression itself. It is presumed we already know
everything about Black oppression, so we can just use it as an empty signifier to explain other
oppressions. Thus, once again, while the defenses of Sacco do not defend her remarks per se, Black suffering becomes an empty signifier to
talk about the ethics of twitter outrage. We supposedly know all about anti-Black racism, so we do not need to
concern ourselves further with that. We just need to concern ourselves with the plight of those who make
anti-Black statements. That is why many white feminists have no trouble using quotes from Audre Lorde
against women of color because they see Black feminist critique as their property. As Saidiya Hartman describes in Scenes of
Subjection, Black peoples are seen either as property or as criminals when they resist their designation as
property. Thus, it is not surprise that white feminists attempt to designate some forms of Black feminist
critique (Audre Lorde) as their property in order to attack and criminalize other forms of Black feminist critique they deem threatening
(as can be seen by recent white feminist attacks on Mikki Kendall and #solidarityisforwhitewomen) ¶ As Hartman further demonstrates, the
logics of slavery that render Black peoples as the property of white supremacy required the disappearance
of Black outrage. Slaveowners required Black peoples to sing and dance in order to affirm the naturalness of their slave condition. Outrage
by contrast, would have asserted the humanity of Black peoples by underscoring the violence needed to maintain plantation slavery, thus
challenging the presumption that white supremacy should be the natural order of things. ¶ Today, dissent
against white supremacy
and settler colonialism remains constantly policed. Black peoples are not supposed to complain, get outraged or “riot” when
they are subjected to premature death. Indigenous peoples are supposed to be happy when the nation-states that continue to colonize them then
issue official “apologies” for residential/boarding school abuse. As Glen Coulthard notes, Indigenous peoples become pathologized when they
refuse these official apologies and choose to remain angry about settler colonialism. Palestinian peoples are supposed to forego their struggles for
self-determination and even just to survive in order to support academic freedom for Israelis. We are supposed to obsess about whether
Palestinians are excessively “violent” while ignoring the violence of Israeli state. Peoples subjected to colonization and white supremacy cannot
be outraged because outrage would indicate they are no longer willing to accept these conditions. ¶ These calls to monitor twitter outrage mirror
the admonitions made after the George Zimmerman verdict to Black peoples to be “peaceful” to ensure they wouldn’t riot.
Racialized and
colonized peoples are supposed to be the victims of outrage. Twitter outrage is a problem only when racialized and
colonized peoples express outrage against conditions of colonialism and white supremacy. Sure, it is acceptable to feel sympathy
when racialized and colonized peoples are victimized – but only as long as they remain victims to be
rescued by others under the terms and conditions set by those in the dominant position. However, insofar as
outrage indicates a desire to fundamentally change conditions, it becomes strictly policed, even by those who claim to support racial justice. ¶ It is
also telling that the reaction against Sacco gets described as a form of “lynching” or mob violence. This
depiction is a legacy of the
gendered racial histories of Black lynching in which the imperiled white woman becomes the justification
for anti-Black violence. White women, both then and in this case, become imagined as imperiled by black
violence. This transforms them into people requiring protection and obscures their role as active
perpetrators of oppression and violence from which Black peoples need protection.¶ The question is not whether
Sacco has been dehumanized – rather the question is how has white humanity itself been fundamentally constructed
through the transformation of Black peoples into non-persons. The question is, how has the continuing colonization of the
peoples in Africa as well as trans-Atlantic slavery – and the millions of Black deaths that continue as a result - disappear as things that deserve
our outrage. As the work of Denise Da Silva, Katherine McKittrick, Sylvia Wynter, Rinaldo Walcott, Alexander G. Weheliye and many others
have shown us, white
humanity does not need to be recovered. Rather the racial logics of who gets deemed to
be human need to be dismantled. And as Jared Sexton notes, white humanity is premised on the
“obscurity of Black suffering.”
AT: Domestic Racism Trade-off
To claim that domestic racism should proceed the “international” violence the US
commits against foreign bodies is unethical—their overly broad focus on white
supremacy cannot explain particulars of interethnic conflicts and undermines
effective racial politics
Sunstrom, University of San Francisco philosophy professor, 2008
[Ronald, “The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice”
http://books.google.com/books?id=WSzh1o4CB8C&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=sundstrom,+It+would+be+odd+and+troubling+for+the+nation+t
o+merrily+work+toward+justice+at+%E2%80%9Chome,%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=Okube3k_gR&
sig=PGTWRaNb86KhCXpxx0g1RwdNg4M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gbAsUONLsaS0AHDz4BA&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=sundstrom%2C%20It%20would%20be%2
0odd%20and%20troubling%20for%20the%20nation%20to%20merrily%20work%20toward%20justice%
20at%20%E2%80%9Chome%2C%E2%80%9D&f=false, pp. 3-4]
It would be odd and troubling for the nation to merrily work toward justice at “home,” all the while
neglecting the demands of those whom the nation regarded as perpetual foreigners (and not really being at
“home” in the nation) and the demands of global justice. Such a vision of justice is self-serving and
morally hollow. Long-existing civil rights claims should not delimit the nation’s moral boundaries
and its conception of civil rights , thus ipso facto severing them from internationally determined human
rights. The reactions of some citizens to the browning of America, unfortunately, open up this possibility, which is yet another evasion of social
justice.7 ¶ When I broach these issues, or any of the particular issues discussed in this book, the response I frequently
receive is that these issues are red herrings that divert our attention away from the real enemy, that of
white supremacy.8 I am dubious about this complaint; after all, focusing on “white supremacy” does not
directly address the particulars of the interethnic confl icts that arise from the browning of America.
Perhaps, though, these critics mean that we should focus on how “white supremacy,” in the form of
institutionalized racism or white power, divides minority groups, so as to conquer them and leave them to fi ght over a
limited set of resources. Alternatively, these critiques would have us focus on how Latinos, Asian Americans,
Americans who identify as multiracial, and immigrants adopt anti-black racism and the privileges of
whiteness as they assimilate into American society. I think the latter argument is bogus, and chapter 3 is devoted
in part to explaining why. As for the former, I think “white supremacy” is too broad and vague a category to be helpful,
and that focusing on such a fl awed category of power can be positively harmful. Such moves simply
sidestep the particular issues that are raised in interethnic confl icts and may even contribute to the
evasions I outlined earlier. The people of the United States, as they experience and participate in the browning of America,
should resist both types of evasions. The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice argues, in contrast, that the people
of the United States should see in its demographic change the transformation of social justice. They should welcome that transformation and view
it as an opportunity to satisfy old debts and expand in a cosmopolitan direction the very idea of social justice.
Doesn’t export violence.
Chandler, University of Westminster international relations professor, 2010
[David, “The uncritical critique of ‘liberal peace’”
http://www.davidchandler.org/pdf/journal_articles/RIS%20Critiques%20of%20Liberal%20Peace.pdf,
p.144-9]
In the critiques of the liberal peace, this growing consensus on the problematic¶ nature of liberalism
appears to cross the political and policy spectrum. The¶ fundamental and shared claim of the critics is that
the lack of success of external¶ interventions, designed not only to halt conflict but to help reconstruct the
peace,¶ is down to the liberalism of the interveners. If only they were not, in various ways,¶ so liberal, then
it is alleged external intervention or assistance may potentially be¶ much less problematic. It can appear
that the main academic and political matter¶ of dispute is whether the liberal peace discourse is amenable
to policy change.¶ Here the divide seems to roughly approximate to the division highlighted above, in¶
terms of the heuristic categories of ‘power-’ and ‘ideas-based’ liberal peace critics. The more radical,
‘power-based’, critics, with a more economically deterministic¶ approach to the structural dynamics or the
needs of ‘neo-liberalism’ are less¶ likely to be optimistic of reform. On the ‘ideas-based’ side, those critics
of liberal¶ peace frameworks who tend to be more engaged in policy related work are¶ more optimistic
with regard to a shift away from the policy emphasis of liberal¶ peace.
In a recent article, Endre Begby and Peter Burgess argue that the majority of¶ the critics of the liberal
peace seem to share two key assumptions about external¶ intervention: firstly, that external Western
intervention (of some kind) is necessary,¶ and secondly, that the goal of this intervention should be the
liberal one of human¶ freedom and flourishing.33 They state that, in which case, the problem is not so¶
much with the aspirations or goals of ‘liberal peace’ but with the practices of¶ intervention itself. They
have a valid point regarding the limited nature of much¶ of this ‘critical’ discourse, but do not reflect
adequately on the diminished content¶ of the ‘liberalism’ of the policy interventions themselves nor the
‘liberal’ aspirations¶ of those who advocate for the reform of practices of external intervention. It seems¶
that the common ground in the broad and disparate critiques of the liberal peace,¶ is not the critique of the
external practices of intervention as much as the classical¶ assumptions of liberalism itself.
The critique of liberalism as a set of assumptions and practices seems to be¶ driving the approach to the
study of post-Cold War interventions in ways which¶ have tended to produce a fairly one-sided framework
of analysis in which the¶ concept of liberalism is ill-equipped to bear the analytical weight placed upon
it¶ and appears increasingly emptied of theoretical or empirical content. Liberalism¶ appears to be used
promiscuously to explain a broad range of often contradictory¶ policy perspectives and practices across
very diff ering circumstances and with very¶ diff ering outcomes. In this sense, it appears that liberalism
operates as a ‘field of¶ adversity’34 through which a coherent narrative of post-Cold War intervention has¶
been articulated both by critical and policy orientated theorists. The promiscuous¶ use of liberalism to
explain very diff erent policy approaches is, of course, facilitated¶ by the ambiguous nature of the concept
itself.
It is this ambiguity which enables liberalism to be critiqued from opposing¶ directions, sometimes by the
same author at the same time. Good examples of this¶ are Roland Paris and Timothy Sisk who criticise
‘liberal’ peacebuilding for being¶ both too laissez-faire and too interventionist in its approach to the
regulation and¶ management of conflict. In the peacebuilding literature today, the experience of the¶ early
and mid-1990s and the ‘quick exit’ policies of the ‘first generation’¶ peacebuilding operations in Nambia,
Nicaragua, Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador,¶ Mozambique, Liberia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia and
Guatemala has been repackaged¶ as evidence that Western interveners had too much faith in the liberal¶
subject.35 Similarly, the ad hoc responses to the problems of the early 1990s in the¶ development of
‘second generation’ peacebuilding with protectorate powers in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, has been
criticised as liberal hubris, on the¶ assumption that international overlords could bring democracy,
development and¶ security to others. It seems that, rather than adding clarity, the critique of the¶
‘liberalism’ of intervention tells us very little.
The mechanism through which these liberal framings have been facilitated and¶ critiqued is that of the
discursive centring of the non-liberal Other; on whose behalf¶ the policy critics assert the need for
different policy practices. In this way, the¶ policy critics of past policy approaches evade a direct critique
of liberal¶ assumptions about equality, autonomy, and transformative capacity, instead,¶ arguing that the
non-liberal Other (in various ways) invalidates, challenges or¶ resists (passively as well as actively)
policy practices which may otherwise have¶ been less problematic.
Rather than a critique of liberalism for its inability to overcome social,¶ economic and cultural
inequalities, both the policy, ‘ideas-based’, critique of the¶ liberal peace and the more radical, ‘powerbased’, critiques argue that social,¶ economic and cultural inequalities and differences have to be central
to policy¶ practices and invalidate universalising liberal attempts to reconstruct and rebuild¶ post-conflict
societies. In this context – in which the dichotomy between a liberal¶ policymaking sphere and a nonliberal sphere of policy intervention comes to¶ the fore – there is an inevitable tendency towards a
consensual framing of the¶ problematic of statebuilding or peacebuilding intervention as a problem of the¶
relationship between the liberal West and the non-liberal Other.
The rock on which the liberal peace expectations are held to crash is that of the¶ non-liberal Other. The
non-liberal Other increasingly becomes portrayed as the¶ barrier to Western liberal aspirations of social
peace and progress; either as it lacks¶ the institutional, social, economic and cultural capacities that are
alleged to be¶ necessary to overcome the problems of liberal peace or as a subaltern or resisting¶ subject,
for whom liberal peacebuilding frameworks threaten their economic or¶ social existence or fundamental
values or identities. The ‘critique’ becomes apology¶ in that this discursive focus upon the non-Western
or non-liberal Other is often¶ held to explain the lack of policy success and, through this, suggest that
democracy¶ or development are somehow not ‘appropriate’ aspirations or that expectations¶ need to be
substantially lowered or changed to account for difference.
International statebuilding and the critique of liberalism¶ It would appear that the assumptions held to be
driving liberal peace approaches¶ are very much in the eye of their critical beholders. The most obvious
empirical¶ difficulty is that international policy regarding intervention and statebuilding seems¶ to have
little transformative aspiration: far from assumptions of liberal universalism,¶ it would appear that, with
the failure of post-colonial development, especially¶ from the 1970s onwards, international policymakers
have developed historically¶ low expectations about what can be achieved through external intervention
and¶ assistance. The lack of transformative belief is highlighted by one of the key¶ concerns of the policy
critics of the liberal peace – the focus on capacity-building¶ state institutions and intervening to construct
‘civil’ societies. The focus on institutional solutions (at both the formal and informal levels) to the
problems of¶ conflict and transition is indicative of the narrowing down of aspirations from¶ transforming
society to merely regulating or managing it – often understood¶ critically as the ‘securitising’ of
policymaking. This is a long way from the promise¶ of liberal transformation and the discourse of
‘liberating’ societies economically¶ and politically.
In fact, it is the consensus of opinion on the dangers of democracy, which has¶ informed the focus on
human rights and good governance. For the policy and¶ radical critics of liberal peace, liberal rights
frameworks are often considered¶ problematic in terms of the dangers of exclusion and extremism.
Today’s ‘illiberal’¶ peace approaches do not argue for the export of democracy – the freeing up of the¶
political sphere on the basis of support for popular autonomy. The language of¶ illiberal institutionalist
approaches is that of democratisation: the problematisation¶ of the liberal subject, held to be incapable of
moral, rational choices at the ballot¶ box, unless tutored by international experts concerned to promote
civil society and¶ pluralist values. In these frameworks, the holding of elections serves as an¶ examination
of the population and the behaviour of electoral candidates, rather¶ than as a process for the judgement or
construction of policy (which it is assumed¶ needs external or international frameworks for its production).
The focus on institutionalism does not stem from a critique of liberal peace¶ programmes; institutionalist
approaches developed from the 1970s onwards and¶ were rapidly mainstreamed with the end of the Cold
War.36 From 1989 onwards,¶ Western governments and donors have stressed that policy interventions
cannot¶ just rely on promoting the freedoms of the market and democracy, but need to put¶ institutional
reform and ‘good governance’ at the core.37 Even in relation to¶ Central and Eastern Europe it was
regularly stressed that the people and elected¶ representatives were not ready for freedom and that it would
take a number of¶ generations before it could be said that democracy was ‘consolidated’.38 The¶
transitology literature was based on the critique of liberal assumptions – this was¶ why a transitional
period was necessary. Transition implied that markets and¶ democracy could not work without external
institutional intervention to prevent¶ instability. While markets needed to be carefully managed through
government policymaking it was held that civil society was necessary to ensure that the¶ population learnt
civic values to make democracy viable.39
It was through the engagement with ‘transition’ and the problematic negotiation¶ of EU enlargement that
the discursive framework of liberal institutionalism –¶ where human rights, the ‘rule of law’, civil society,
and anti-corruption are¶ privileged over democracy – was programmatically cohered. It was also through¶
the discussion of ‘transition’ that the concept of sovereign autonomy was¶ increasingly problematised,
initially in relation to the protections for minority¶ rights and then increasingly expanded to cover other
areas of domestic policymaking.¶ 40 It would appear that the key concepts and values of the ‘liberal
peace’¶ held to have been promoted with vigour with the ‘victory of liberalism’ at the end¶ of the Cold
War were never as dominant a framing as their radical and policy¶ critics have claimed.41
Rather than attempting to transform non-Western societies into the liberal¶ self-image of the West, it
would appear that external interveners have had much¶ more status quo aspirations, concerned with
regulatory stability and regional and¶ domestic security, rather than transformation. Rather than
imposing or ‘exporting’¶ alleged liberal Western models, international policy making has revolved
around¶ the promotion of regulatory and administrative measures which suggest the¶ problems are not the
lack of markets or democracy but rather the culture of society¶ or the mechanisms of governance. Rather
than promoting democracy and liberal¶ freedoms, the discussion has been how to keep the lid on or to
manage the¶ ‘complexity’ of non-Western societies, usually perceived in terms of fixed ethnic¶ and
regional divisions. The solution to the complexity of the non-liberal state and¶ society has been the
internationalisation of the mechanisms of governance,¶ removing substantive autonomy rather than
promoting it.
While it is true that the reconstruction or rebuilding of states is at the centre¶ of external projects of
intervention, it would be wrong to see the project of¶ statebuilding as one which aimed at the construction
of a liberal international¶ order.42 This is not just because external statebuilding would be understood as
a contradiction in liberal terms but, more importantly, because the states being¶ constructed in these
projects of post-conflict and failed state intervention are not¶ liberal states in the sense of having selfdetermination and political autonomy. The¶ state at the centre of statebuilding is not the ‘Westphalian
state’ of classical¶ International Relations (IR) theorising. Under the internationalised regulatory¶
mechanisms of intervention and statebuilding the state is increasingly reduced to an¶ administrative level,
in which sovereignty no longer marks a clear boundary line¶ between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’.43
Whether we consider European Union¶ (EU) statebuilding, explicitly based on a sharing of sovereignty, or
consider other¶ statebuilding interventions, such as those by the international financial institutions¶ in sub-
Saharan Africa, it is clear that the state is central as a mechanism for¶ external coordination and
regulation rather than as a self-standing actor in¶ so-called ‘Westphalian’ terms.44
No tradeoff – perm solves.
Hardt, Duke University literature professor, and Negri, Collège International de
Philosophie professor, 2000
[Michael, phd in comparative literature from the Univ Washington, and Antonio, Univ Vincennes,
“Empire” p.44-5]
We are well aware that in affirming this thesis we are swimming against the current of our friends and
comrades on the Left. In the long decades of the current crisis of the communist, socialist, and liberal
Left that has followed the 1960s, a large portion of critical thought, both in the dominant countries
of capitalist development and in the subordinated ones, has sought to recompose sites of resistance
that founded on the identities of social subjects or national and regional groups, often grounding
political analysis on the localization of struggles. Such arguments are sometimes constructed in
terms of “place-based” movements or politics, in which the boundaries of place (conceived either as
identity or as territory) are posed against the undifferentiated and homogeneous space of global
networks.2 At other times such political arguments draw on the long tradition of Leftist nationalism in
which (in the best cases) the nation is conceived as the primary mechanism of defense against the
domination of foreign and/or global capital.3 Today the operative syllogism at the heart of the
various forms of “local” Leftist strategy seems to be entirely reactive: If capitalist domination is
becoming ever more global, then our resistances to it must defend the local and construct barriers
to capital’s accelerating flows. From this perspective, the real globalization of capital and the
constitution of Empire must be considered signs of dispossession and defeat. We maintain, however,
that today this localist position, although we admire and respect the spirit of some of its proponents,
is both false and damaging. It is false first of all because the problem is poorly posed. In many
characterizations the problem rests on a false dichotomy between the global and the local,
assuming that the global entails homogenization and undifferentiated identity whereas the local
preserves heterogeneity and difference. Often implicit in such arguments is the assumption that the
differences of the local are in some sense natural, or at least that their origin remains beyond the
question. Local differences preexist the present scene and must be defended or protected against the
intrusion of globalization. It should come as no surprise, given such assumptions, that many defenses
of the local adopt the terminology of traditional ecology or even identify this “local” political project
with the defense of nature or biodiversity. This view can easily devolve into a kind of primordialism
that fixes and romanticizes social relations and identities. What needs to be addressed, instead, is
precisely the production of locality, that is, the social machines that create and recreate the
identities and differences that are understood as the local.4 The differences of locality are neither
preexisting nor natural but rather effects of a regime of production. Globality similarly should not be
understood in terms of cultural, political, or economic homogenization. Globalization, like
localization, should be understood instead as a regime of the production of identity and difference,
or really of homogenization and heterogenization. The better framework, then, to designate the
distinction between the global and local might refer to different networks of flows and obstacles
in which the local moment or perspective gives priority to the reterritorializing barriers or
boundaries and the global moment privileges the mobility of deterritorializing flows. It is false,
in any case, to claim that we can (re)establish local identities that are in some sense outside and
protected against the global flows of capital and Empire.
The perm is black internationalism – that solves.
Bush, St. John’s University sociology associate professor, No Date
[Roderick, At least written by 2004 if not later, “Reflections on Black Internationalism As Strategy”
http://sdonline.org/38/reflections-on-black-internationalism-as-strategy/]
But the rising tide of decolonization in the post-World War II period was to reinforce the radical
elements within the African American population who linked civil rights with liberation movements
and with radical states such as China, Cuba, Algeria, and Ghana. The modern civil rights movement
had been a product of the post-World War II world which gave us both the American Century
and decolonization. During this period, movements for national liberation were prominent in
every part of the formerly colonized world. The collapse of colonial empires dominated by the
British, French, and Dutch gave rise to new nations composed of people of color. While the Japanese
defeat of the Russians in 1905, and the Ethiopian defeat of Italy in 1896 were signals of the increasing
vulnerability of white power, the postwar decline of world white supremacy seemed to presage the
long dreamed “rise of the dark world.” though often combined with forms of Black nationalism, is
central to this effort, and compromise on this position is a dead-end for progressive social change,
pure and simple. At the same time, however, to dismiss the nationalist aspirations of those
inside our borders as do some elements even among the Black Left is equally unacceptable, not
only because dogma is counterproductive but because it undermines the agency of those groups.
At the same time the U.S. had become the new hegemonic power ironically clothing itself in the
language of its anti-colonial heritage. To win the allegiance of these new nations of color required
that the U.S. eliminate its official sanction of segregation and adopt a posture of support for civil
rights. But the collapse of the European empires vindicated the notion of the inevitable rise of the dark
world, which was a part of the folklore of the Black working class communities from which Malcolm
Little had come, and thus contributed to the mobilization of these communities. So during the
flowering of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X was saying that we had arrived at the end of white
world supremacy. While the civil rights movement drew inspiration from the challenge to the white
world, they did not develop a position so frankly oppositional. They hoped that their movement might
redeem the soul of America. But the movements operated in a common social space,
interpenetrated one another, and generated an increasingly powerful internationalist discourse
that resonated with other emancipatory voices within the United States and from many parts of
the earth. Many viewed the rebellion of the inner cities and the resistance to the increasing violence
of U.S. intervention in Vietnam as the onset of a sea change in power relations not only within the
United States but on a world scale. This was a remarkable evolution, with a substantial section of
the movements arguing for global solidarity with those whom Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called
“the barefoot people of the earth.” The agenda was to complete the Great American Revolution,
and to transform the American Century into something more akin to a “People’s Century.” The
triumph of the right in the 1980s was part of a global reversal of these trends, but this was not a sign of
strength requiring another retreat of the Left. It should be no mystery that this movement aimed its
fire at women, people of color, the underclass, and gays and lesbians. These are precisely sites of
greatest resistance and of those dreaming of a new society. Since this was also the period of the rising
of the women, it should not be surprising that Black feminists have argued most forcefully for a
strategy based on race, class, gender, and sexuality as interlocking forms of oppression. This
contribution by Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis, Rose Brewer and others deepens the contribution
of Black internationalism, which is an uncompromising break with the U.S.-centric perspective
that the ruling class labored so hard to install across the political spectrum from the Right to the social
democratic Left during the postwar period. It was Malcolm X’s insight which most effectively
demolished the power of that consensus when he argued that the Negro problem was not simply an
American problem or a Black problem, but that it was an issue of the haves against the havenots on a global scale an issue not of civil rights but of human rights.
AT: Structural Violence – Omolade
There is no tradeoff in focus which means the perm solves – also understanding
nuclear disarmament as a means of fighting racism is not mutually exclusive with
the aff.
Omolade, City College Center for worker education worker, 1984
[Barbara, historian of black women and organizer for women’s and civil rights/black power movements,
Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2, Teaching about Peace, War, and Women inthe Military,
“Women of Color and the Nuclear Holocaust” JSTOR]
As women of color, who are warriors in continual struggle to reclaim our lands and liberate our peoples,
resistance to war has been¶ our heritage. Women of color are the survivors of the holocausts¶ visited
upon our people through the centuries.
Five hundred years ago a group of light-skinned men left their¶ European homelands as they had for
centuries before. This time,¶ however, they left to conquer the land, the resources, and the other¶ people of
the world. They described the people of the world as "colored,"¶ and defined themselves as "white." They
defined "whiteness"¶ as pure, superior, right. They defined the "blackness" of those they¶ conquered as
evil, dirty, and inferior. Their journeys changed the¶ world from a diverse, autonomous group of tribes,
villages, nation-states,¶ feudal empires- with varying world views and practices.¶ Even if we agree that all
of these societies were patriarchal, we must¶ also admit that the forms of patriarchy varied widely, from
the almost¶ non-existent variety among the Arawaks to the highly structured¶ Japanese culture. Overall, the
world was not at war with¶ itself, though territorial disputes and religious crusades continued¶ to take
place. People in areas outside of those involved in disputes¶ could live largely unaffected by and in
ignorance of these events.
My Indian and African ancestors were generally at peace 500¶ years ago. The white men who came to
conquer them were not.¶ These white men were able to conquer not because they were superior¶ or more
intelligent or more civilized, but because they were¶ armed and prepared for war. Indeed, the movement of
these white¶ men changed world history because the primary lines that divided¶ the world henceforth
became racism and the biological distinctions¶ of skin color. Military terrorism became the method of
world domination;¶ capitalism, the method of social organization; and racism¶ became the ideology and
world view that held together a cohesive¶ system of exploitation and oppression for the world's people
and¶ their lands.
A direct historical line of military terrorism can be drawn from the¶ guns used during the slave trade
against Africans and American Indians¶ to the building of nuclear arsenals by the world's current
superpowers.¶ During the nineteenth century, the repeating Winchester¶ rifle precipitated a holocaust
against the Sioux and the Comanches,¶ which massacred their people, destroyed the buffalo which had
sustained¶ them, and destroyed the land as they knew, protected, and¶ cared for it. It was, in that sense,
neither an accident of history, nor¶ a surprise, when similar white men dropped atomic bombs on the¶
Japanese citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Military terror has also been used to destroy resistance to racism,¶ capitalism, and militarism, for the fear
of violent reprisals has taught¶ people to feel powerless to attempt to change the world. Too often¶ the
statistics and other information on nuclear arsenals have¶ merely reinforced the military's power to
terrorize people into submission¶ or into "doomsday" protests against death. The question¶ of nuclear
disarmament is not a psychological question or a technological¶ question, but rather a political question.
Nuclear arsenals and nuclear power are part of a rational and holistic system in which those in power hold
power over all aspects¶ of world society. It is irrelevant whether they are called "mad" or¶ "sane" by
protestors and critics of the system. The fact remains that¶ they are men, initiating and carrying out the
dictates of a rational¶ system of military terror. Calling them "mad," or considering them¶ military "male
chauvinists," assures only that the rational system¶ they are part of will remain obscure, and that the
responsibility of¶ each man in the Pentagon will never be understood clearly enough¶ to wage an effective
political struggle against it. Nuclear disarmament¶ and peace are political questions requiring political
solutions of accountability and struggle around who has the power to determine¶ the destiny of the earth.
The demand for unconditional U.S.¶ disarmament holds that the U.S. government is responsible for its¶
actions and should be held accountable for them.
To raise these issues effectively, the movement for nuclear disarmament must overcome its reluctance to
speak in terms of power,¶ of institutional racism, and imperialist military terror. The issues of¶ nuclear
disarmament and peace have been mystified because they¶ have been placed within a doomsday frame
which separates these¶ issues from other ones, saying, "How can we talk about struggles¶ against
racism, poverty, and exploitation when there will be no¶ world after they drop the bombs?" The struggle
for peace cannot¶ be separated from, nor considered more sacrosanct than, other¶ struggles concerned
with human life and change.
In April, 1979, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency released a report on the effects of
nuclear war that concludes that,¶ in a general nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet¶ Union,
25 to 100 million people would be killed. This is approximately¶ the same number of African people who
died between 1492¶ and 1890 as a result of the African slave trade to the New World.¶ The same federal
report also comments on the destruction of urban¶ housing that would cause massive shortages after a
nuclear war,¶ as well as on the crops that would be lost, causing massive food¶ shortages. Of course, for
people of color the world over, starvation¶ is already a common problem, when, for example, a nation's
crops¶ are grown for export rather than to feed its own people. And the¶ housing of people of color
throughout the world's urban areas is¶ already blighted and inhumane: families live in shacks, shanty¶
towns, or on the streets; even in the urban areas of North America,¶ the poor may live without heat or
running water.
For people of color, the world as we knew it ended centuries ago. Our world, with its own languages,
customs and ways, ended. And¶ we are only now beginning to see with increasing clarity that our¶ task is
to reclaim that world, struggle for it, and rebuld it in our, own¶ image. The "death culture" we live in has
convinced many to be¶ more concerned with death than with life, more willing to demonstrate¶ for
"survival at any cost" than to struggle for liberty and peace¶ with dignity. Nuclear disarmament becomes a
safe issue when it is¶ not linked to the daily and historic issues of racism, to the ways in¶ which people of
color continue to be murdered. Acts of war, nuclear¶ holocausts, and genocide have already been declared
on our¶ jobs, our housing, our schools, our families, and our lands.
As women of color, we are warriors, not pacifists. We must fight as a people on all fronts, or we will
continue to die as a people.¶ We have fought in people's wars in China, in Cuba, in Guinea-¶ Bissau, and in
such struggles as the civil rights movement, the¶ women's movement, and in countless daily encounters
with landlords,¶ welfare departments, and schools. These struggles are not¶ abstractions, but the only
means by which we have gained the ability¶ to eat and to provide for the future of our people.
We wonder who will lead the battle for nuclear disarmament with the vigor and clarity that women of
color have learned from participating¶ in other struggles. Who will make the political links among¶ racism,
sexism, imperialism, cultural integrity, and nuclear arsenals¶ and housing? Who will stand up?
***Afro-Pessimism Answers***
AT: Afro-Pess – Top Level
Optimism and solidarity are our only hope---their strategy of negativity accepts the
foundational premises of racism as its starting point for politics.
Hooks, City Univeristy New York English professor, 1996
[bell, “Killing Rage: Ending Racism”
http://books.google.com/books?id=3JlNFYKLheUC&q=unitary+representations#v=snippet&q=unitary%
20representations&f=false, p.249-50]
269More than ever before in our history, black Americans are succumbing to and internalizing the racist
assumption that there can be no meaningful bonds of intimacy between blacks and whites. It is fascinating
to explore why it is that black people trapped in the worst situation of racial oppres sion—enslavement—
had the foresight to see that it would be disempowering for them to lose sight of the capacity of white
people to transform themselves and divest of white supremacy, even as many black folks today who in no
way suffer such extreme racist oppression and exploitation are convinced that white people will not
repudiate racism. Con temporary black folks, like their white counterparts, have passively accepted the
internalization of white supremacist assumptions. Organized white supremacists have always taught that
there can never be trust and intimacy between the superior white race and the inferior black race. When
black people internalize these sentiments, no resistance to white supremacy is taking place; rather
we become complicit in spreading racist notions . It does not matter that so many black people feel
white people will never repudiate racism because of being daily assaulted by white denial and refusal of
accountability. We must not allow the actions of white folks who blindly endorse racism to determine the
direction of our resistance. Like our white allies in struggle we must consistently keep the faith, by always
sharing the truth that 270white people can be anti-racist, that racism is not some immutable character
flaw. ¶ Of course many white people are comfortable with a rhetoric of race that suggests racism cannot
be changed, that all white people are “inherently racist” simply because they are born and raised in this
society. Such misguided thinking socializes white people both to remain ignorant of the way in which
white supremacist attitudes are learned and to assume a posture of learned helplessness as though they
have no agency—no capacity to resist this thinking. Luckily we have many autobiographies by white
folks committed to anti-racist struggle that provide documentary testimony that many of these individuals
repudiated racism when they were children. Far from passively accepting It as inherent, they instinctively
felt it was wrong. Many of them witnessed bizarre acts of white racist aggression towards black folks in
everyday life and responded to the injustice of the situation. Sadly, in our times so many white folks are
easily convinced by racist whites and bLack folks who have internalized racism that they can never be
really free of racism.¶ These feelings aíso then obsc]re the reality of white privi lege. As long as white
folks are taught to accept racism as ‘natura]” then they do not have to see themselves as con sciously
creating a racist society by their actions, by their political choices. This means as well that they do not
have to face the way in which acting in a racist manner ensures the maintenance of white privilege.
Indeed, denying their agency allows them to believe white privilege does not exist even as they daily
exercise it. If the young white woman who had been raped had chosen to hold all black males account
able for what happened, she would have been exercising white privilege and reinforcing the structure of
racist thought which teaches that all black people are alike. Unfortunately,¶ 271so many white people are
eager to believe racism cannot be changed because internalizing that assumption downplays the issue of
accountability. No responsibility need be taken for not changing something ¡fit is perceived as immutable.
To accept racism as a system of domination that can be changed would demand that everyone who sees
him- or herself as embracing a vision of radai social equality would be required to assert anti-racist habits
of being. We know from histories both present and past that white people (and everyone else) who
commit themselves to living in anti-racist ways need to make sacrifices, to courageously endure the
uncomfortable to challenge and change.¶ Whites, people of color, and black folks are reluctant to commit
themselves fully and deeply to an anti-racist struggle that is ongoing because there is such a pervasive
feeling of hopelessness—a conviction that nothing will ever change . How any of us can continue to
hold those feelings when we study the history of racism in this society and see how much has
changed makes no logical sense. Clearly we have not gone far enough. In the late sixties, Martin Luther
King posed the question “Where do we go from here.” To live in anti-racist society we must collectively
renew our commitment to a democratic vision of racial justice and equality. Pursuing that vision we create
a culture where beloved community flourishes and is sustained. Those of us who know the joy of being
with folks from all walks of life, all races, who are fundamentalls’ anti-racist in their habits of being. need
to give public testimony. Ve need to share not only what we have experienced but the conditions of
change that make such an experience possible. The interracial circle of love that I know can happen
because each individual present in it has made his or her own commitment to living an anti- racist life and
to furthering the struggle to end white supremacy 272 will become a reality for everyone only if those of
us who have created these communities share how they emerge in our lives and the strategies we use to
sustain them. Our devout commitment to building diverse communities is cen tral. These commitments to
anti-racist living are just one expression of who we are and what we share with one an other but they form
the foundation of that sharing. Like all beloved communities we affirm our differences. It is this generous
spirit of affirmation that gives us the courage to challenge one another, to work through
misunderstandings, especially those that have to do with race and racism. In a beloved community
solidarity and trust are grounded in profound commitment to a shared vision. Those of us who are always
anti-racist long for a world in which evezyone can form a beloved community where borders can be
crossed and cultural hybridity celebrated. Anyone can begin to make such a community by truly seeking
to live in an anti-racist world. If that longing guides our vision and our actions, the new culture will be
born and anti-racist communities of resis tance will emerge everywhere. That is where we must go from
here.
AT: Modern-Day Slavery/Michelle Alexander
Claiming racial progress is impossible obfuscates class as the underlying ideology
perpetuating racism.
-
Specific answer to Michele Alexander.
Reed, University of Pennsylvania political science professor, 2013
[Adolph, “The Help: How “Cultural Politics” Is Worse Than No Politics at All, and Why”
http://nonsite.org/feature/django-unchained-or-the-help-how-cultural-politics-is-worse-than-no-politicsat-all-and-why]
That sort of Malcolm X/blaxploitation narrative, including the insistence that Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind continue to shape
Americans’ understandings of slavery, also is of a piece with a line of anti-racist argument and mobilization that asserts powerful continuities
between current racial inequalities and either slavery or the Jim Crow regime. This line of argument has been most popularly condensed recently
in Michelle
Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which analogizes contemporary mass incarceration to the
segregationist regime. But even she, after much huffing and puffing and asserting the relation gesturally
throughout the book, ultimately acknowledges that the analogy fails.37 And it would have to fail because
the segregationist regime was the artifact of a particular historical and political moment in a particular
social order. Moreover, the rhetorical force of the analogy with Jim Crow or slavery derives from the fact
that those regimes are associated symbolically with strong negative sanctions in the general culture
because they have been vanquished. In that sense all versions of the lament that “it’s as if nothing has
changed” give themselves the lie. They are effective only to the extent that things have changed
significantly . The tendency to craft political critique by demanding that we fix our gaze in the rearview
mirror appeals to an intellectual laziness. Marking superficial similarities with familiar images of
oppression is less mentally taxing than attempting to parse the multifarious, often contradictory dynamics
and relations that shape racial inequality in particular and politics in general in the current moment.
Assertions that phenomena like the Jena, Louisiana, incident, the killings of James Craig Anderson and Trayvon Martin, and racial
disparities in incarceration demonstrate persistence of old-school, white supremacist racism and charges that
the sensibilities of Thomas Dixon and Margaret Mitchell continue to shape most Americans’ understandings of slavery
do important, obfuscatory ideological work. They lay claim to a moral urgency that, as Mahmood Mamdani
argues concerning the rhetorical use of charges of genocide, enables disparaging efforts either to differentiate discrete
inequalities or to generate historically specific causal accounts of them as irresponsible dodges that abet
injustice by temporizing in its face.38 But more is at work here as well.
Narratives of “modern forms of slavery” are misleading and undermine the efficacy
of actions against racism.
Reed, University of Pennsylvania political science professor, 2013
[Adolph, “The Help: How “Cultural Politics” Is Worse Than No Politics at All, and Why”
http://nonsite.org/feature/django-unchained-or-the-help-how-cultural-politics-is-worse-than-no-politicsat-all-and-why]
Once established, stereotypes and the folk taxonomies that legitimize them may die hard, but their
significance as props for a regime of class hierarchy can change along with the political-economic
foundations of the class order. Persistence of familiar narratives of hierarchy can evoke the earlier
associations, but that evocation can be misleading and counterproductive for making sense of social
relations in both past and present. In particular the “just like slavery” or “just like Jim Crow”
proclamations that are intended as powerful criticism of current injustices are more likely to undermine
understanding of injustice in the past as well as the present than to enable new insight. Another version of
the trope of the damaged ex-Confederate is illustrative.
AT: Libidinal Economy/Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis puts the cart before the horse and distracts from widescale change
necessary to solve.
Rosen-Carole, Bard College philosophy professor, 2010
[Adam, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. LXXIX, No. 1, “Menu Cards in Time of Famine: On
Psychoanalysis and Politics” Wiley, p.205-7]
On the other hand, though in these ways and many others,¶ psychoanalysis seems to promote the sorts of subjective dispositions¶ and habits
requisite for a thriving democracy, and though¶ in a variety of ways psychoanalysis contributes to personal emancipation—¶ say, by releasing
individuals from self-defeating, damaging,¶ or petrified forms action and reaction, object attachment,¶ and the like—in light of the very
uniqueness of what it has to¶ offer, one cannot but wonder: to what extent, if at all, can the¶ habits and dispositions—broadly, the forms of life—
cultivated by¶ psychoanalytic practice survive, let alone flourish, under modern ¶ social and political conditions? If
the emancipatory
inclinations¶ and democratic virtues that psychoanalytic practice promotes¶ are systematically crushed or
at least regularly unsupported by¶ the world in which they would be realized, then isn’t psychoanalysis¶
implicitly making promises it cannot redeem? Might not¶ massive social and political transformations be
the condition for¶ the efficacious practice of psychoanalysis? And so, under current¶ conditions, can we avoid experiencing
the forms of life nascently¶ cultivated by psychoanalytic practice as something of a ¶ tease, or even a source of deep frustration?
(2) Concerning psychoanalysis as a politically inclined theoretical¶ enterprise, the worry is whether
political diagnoses and proposals¶ that proceed on the basis of psychoanalytic insights and¶ forms of
attention partake of a fantasy of interpretive efficacy¶ (all the world’s a couch, you might say), wherein
our profound¶ alienation from the conditions for robust political agency are¶ registered and repudiated?¶
Consider, for example, Freud and Bullitt’s (1967) assessment¶ of the psychosexual determinants of Woodrow Wilson’s political¶ aspirations
and impediments, or Reich’s (1972) suggestion that¶ Marxism should appeal to psychoanalysis in order to illuminate¶ and redress neurotic
phenomena that generate disturbances in working capacity, especially as this concerns religion and bourgeois¶ sexual ideology. Also relevant are
Freud’s, Žižek’s (1993,¶ 2004), Derrida’s (2002) and others’ insistence that we draw the¶ juridical and political consequences of the hypothesis of
an irreducible¶ death drive, as well as Marcuse’s (1970) proposal that¶ we attend to the weakening of Eros and the growth of aggression ¶ that
results from the coercive enforcement of the reality¶ principle upon the sociopolitically weakened ego, and especially¶ to the channeling of this
aggression into hatred of enemies.¶ Reich (1972) and Fromm (1932) suggest that psychoanalysis be¶ employed to explore the motivations to
political irrationality, especially¶ that singular irrationality of joining the national-socialist¶ movement, while Irigaray (1985) diagnoses the desire
for the¶ Same, the One, the Phallus as a desire for a sociosymbolic order¶ that assures masculine dominance.
Žižek (2004) contends that only a psychoanalytic exposition of the¶ disavowed beliefs and suppositions of the United States political elite can¶
get at the fundamental determinants of the Iraq War. Rose (1993) argues¶ that it was the paranoiac paradox of sensing both that there is every¶
reason to be frightened and that everything is under control that allowed ¶ Thatcher “to make this paradox the basis of political identity so that
subjects¶ could take pleasure in violence as force and legitimacy while always ¶ locating ‘real’ violence somewhere else—illegitimate violence
and illicitness¶ increasingly made subject to the law” (p. 64). Stavrakakis (1999)¶ advocates that we recognize and traverse the residues of utopian
fantasy¶ in our contemporary political imagination.1¶ Might
not the psychoanalytic interpretation of powerful figures¶
(Bush, Bin Laden, or whomever), collective subjects (nations, ethnic¶ groups, and so forth), or urgent “political” situations
register an anxiety¶ regarding political impotence or “castration” that is pacified and modified¶ by the
fantasmatic frame wherein the psychoanalytically inclined¶ political theorist situates him- or herself as
diagnosing or interpretively intervening in the lives of political figures, collective political subjects, or
complex political situations with the idealized efficacy of a successful¶ clinical intervention? If so, then
the question is: are the contributions¶ of psychoanalytically inclined political theory anything more than
tantalizing¶ menu cards for meals it cannot deliver?
As I said, the worry is twofold. These are two folds of a related ¶ problem, which is this: might the
very seductiveness of
psychoanalytic¶ theory and practice—specifically, the seductiveness of its political¶ promise—register the lasting eclipse
of the political and the objectivity¶ of the social, respectively? In other words, might not everything that¶ makes
psychoanalytic theory and practice so politically attractive indicate¶ precisely the necessity of wideranging social/institutional transformations¶ that far exceed the powers of psychoanalysis?
And so, might not the politically salient transformations of subjectivity to which psychoanalysis can
contribute overburden subjectivity as¶ the site of political transformation, blinding us to the necessity of
largescale¶ institutional reforms? Indeed, might not massive institutional transformations¶ be necessary
conditions for the efficacy of psychoanalytic¶ practice, both personally and politically? Further, might not the so-called¶
interventions and proposals of psychoanalytically inclined political¶ theory similarly sidestep the question of the
institutional transformations¶ necessary for their realization, and so conspire with our blindness to the¶ enormous
institutional impediments to a progressive political future?
No solvency and not falsifiable.
Bunge, McGill University philosophy professor, 2010
[Mario, “Should Psychoanalysis Be in the Science Museum?” http://stirling-westruptt.blogspot.com/2010/11/tt-ns-2780-robert-bud-and-mario-bunge.html]
WE SHOULD congratulate the Science Museum for setting up an¶ exhibition on psychoanalysis.
Exposure to pseudoscience greatly¶ helps understand genuine science, just as learning about tyranny¶ helps
in understanding democracy.¶ Over the past 30 years, psychoanalysis has quietly been displaced in¶
academia by scientific psychology. But it persists in popular¶ culture as well as being a lucrative
profession. It is the¶ psychology of those who have not bothered to learn psychology, and¶ the
psychotherapy of choice for those who believe in the power of¶ immaterial mind over body.¶
Psychoanalysis is a bogus science because its practitioners do not¶ do scientific research. When the field
turned 100, a group of¶ psychoanalysts admitted this gap and endeavoured to fill it. They¶ claimed to have
performed the first experiment showing that patients¶ benefited from their treatment. Regrettably, they did
not include a¶ control group and did not entertain the possibility of placebo¶ effects. Hence, their claim
remains untested (The International¶ Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol 81, p 513).¶ More recently, a metaanalysis published in American Psychologist¶ (vol 65, p 98) purported to support the claim that a form of¶
psychoanalysis called psychodynamic therapy is effective. However,¶ once again, the original studies did
not involve control groups.¶ In 110 years, psychoanalysts have not set up a single lab. They do¶ not
participate in scientific congresses, do not submit their papers¶ to scientific journals and are foreign to the
scientific community -¶ a marginality typical of pseudoscience.¶ This does not mean their hypotheses have
never been put to the test.¶ True, they are so vague that they are hard to test and some of them¶ are, by
Freud's own admission, irrefutable. Still, most of the¶ testable ones have been soundly refuted.¶ For
example, most dreams have no sexual content. The Oedipus complex¶ is a myth; boys do not hate their
fathers because they would like to¶ have sex with their mothers. The list goes on.¶ As for therapeutic
efficacy, little is known because psychoanalysts¶ do not perform double-blind clinical trials or follow-up
studies.¶ Psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience. Its concepts are woolly and¶ untestable yet are regarded as
unassailable axioms. As a result of¶ such dogmatism, psychoanalysis has remained basically stagnant for¶
more than a century, in contrast with scientific psychology, which is thriving.
Psychoanalysis overdetermines – it’s too simplistic to explain the world.
Lear, University of Chicago philosophy professor, 2000
[Jonathon, “Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life” http://www.amazon.com/HappinessRemainder-Tanner-Lectures-Values/dp/0674006747, p.131-2]
By 1920 Freud is ready to break up what he has come to see as a fantasied unity of mental functioning.
The mind can no longer be understood in terms of the pleasure principle, but instead of living with the
gap, he posits a “beyond.” It is in this way that Freud takes himself to be explaining aggression.
Aggression is now interpreted as the death drive diverted outward.20 It is precisely this move which locks
us into an inescapably negative teleology. Let us just assume (for the sake of argument, though I think it
true) that humans are aggressive animals, and that dealing with human aggression is a serious
psychological and social problem. The question remains: how might one deal with it? But if, as Freud
does, one interprets aggression as the most obvious manifestation of one of the two primordial forces in
the universe, the answer would seem to be: there is no successful way. My first inclination is to say that
this leads to a pessimistic view of the human condition; but this isn’t really the issue. My second
inclination is to say that this leads to a limited view of the human condition; but even this doesn’t get to
the heart of the problem. The point here is not to endorse an ontic optimism – that if we didn’t adopt that
view, we could shape life in nonaggressive ways – but to confront an ontological insight: that Freud’s
interpretation is an instance of bad faith. The metaphysical basicness of the death drive implies a kind of
metaphysical intractability to the phenomenon of human aggression. As a matter of empirical fact,
humans may be aggressive animals – and the fact of human aggression may be difficult to deal with. It
may even be experienced as intractable. But to raise this purported intractability to a metaphysical
principle is to obliterate the question of responsibility. And it is to cover over – by precluding – what
might turn out to be significant empirical possibilities.
Violence isn’t monocausal.
Muro-Ruiz, London School of Economics, 2002
[Diego, Politics Volume 22, Issue 2, pages 109–117, May 2002, “The Logic of Violence” Wiley]
Violence is, most of the time, a wilful choice, especially if it is made by an organi-sation. Individuals
present the scholar with a more difficult case to argue for. Scholars of violence have now a wide variety
of perspectives they can use – from sociology and political science, to psychology, psychiatry and even
biology – and should escape easy judgements. However, the fundamental difficulty for all of us is the
absence of a synthetic, general theory able of integrating less complete theories of violent behaviour. In
the absence of such a general theory, researchers should bear in mind that violence is a complex and
multifaceted phenomenon that resists mono-causal explanations. Future research on violence will have to
take in account the variety of approaches, since they each offer some understanding of the logic of
violence.
AT: Social/Ontological Death – Theory
No ontological antagonism---conflict is inevitable in politics, but does not have to be
demarcated around whiteness and oppression---the alt’s ontological fatalism
recreates colonial violence.
Hudson, University of the Witwatersrand political studies professor, 2013
[Peter, Social Dynamics, “The state and the colonial unconscious” Taylor and Francis]
There always has to exist an outside, which is also inside, to the
extent it is designated as the impossibility from which the possibility of the existence of the subject
derives its rule (Badiou 2009, 220). But although the excluded place which isn’t excluded insofar as it is necessary
for the very possibility of inclusion and identity may be universal (may be considered “ontological”), its content (what
fills it) – as well as the mode of this filling and its reproduction – are contingent. In other words, the meaning of the
signifier of exclusion is not determined once and for all: the place of the place of exclusion, of death is itself
over-determined, i.e. the very framework for deciding the other and the same, exclusion and inclusion, is
nowhere engraved in ontological stone but is political and never terminally settled. Put differently, the
“curvature of intersubjective space” (Critchley 2007, 61) and thus, the specific modes of the “othering” of “otherness” are nowhere
decided in advance (as a certain ontological fatalism might have it) (see Wilderson 2008). The social does
not have to be divided into white and black , and the meaning of these signifiers is never necessary –
because they are signifiers. To be sure, colonialism institutes an ontological division, in that whites exist in a way barred to blacks –
who are not. But this ontological relation is really on the side of the ontic – that is, of all contingently constructed
identities, rather than the ontology of the social which refers to the ultimate unfixity, the indeterminacy or
lack of the social. In this sense, then, the white man doesn’t exist, the black man doesn’t exist (Fanon 1968, 165); and neither does the colonial symbolic itself, including its most
intimate structuring relations – division is constitutive of the social, not the colonial division. “Whiteness” may well be
very deeply sediment in modernity itself, but respect for the “ontological difference” (see Heidegger 1962, 26; Watts 2011, 279) shows up its ontological status as
ontic. It may be so deeply sedimented that it becomes difficult even to identify the very possibility of the
separation of whiteness from the very possibility of order, but from this it does not follow that the “void” of “black
being” functions as the ultimate substance, the transcendental signified on which all possible forms of
sociality are said to rest. What gets lost here, then, is the specificity of colonialism, of its constitutive axis, its “ontological”
differential. A crucial feature of the colonial symbolic is that the real is not screened off by the imaginary in the way it is under capitalism. At the place of the colonised, the
symbolic and the imaginary give way because non-identity (the real of the social) is immediately inscribed in the
“lived experience” (vécu) of the colonised subject. The colonised is “traversing the fantasy” (Zizek 2006a, 40–60) all the time; the void of the verb “to be” is
the very content of his interpellation. The colonised is, in other words, the subject of anxiety for whom the symbolic and the
imaginary never work, who is left stranded by his very interpellation.4 “Fixed” into “non-fixity,” he is eternally suspended
between “element” and “moment”5 – he is where the colonial symbolic falters in the production of meaning
and is thus the point of entry of the real into the texture itself of colonialism. Be this as it may, whiteness and
blackness are (sustained by) determinate and contingent practices of signification; the “structuring
relation” of colonialism thus itself comprises a knot of significations which, no matter how tight, can always be
undone. Anti-colonial – i.e., anti-“white” – modes of struggle are not (just) “psychic” 6 but involve the “reactivation” (or
“de-sedimentation”)7 of colonial objectivity itself. No matter how sedimented (or global), colonial objectivity is not ontologically immune to antagonism. Differentiality,
Thus the self-same/other distinction is necessary for the possibility of identity itself.
as Zizek insists (see Zizek 2012, chapter 11, 771 n48), immanently entails antagonism in that differentiality both makes possible the existence of any identity whatsoever and at the same time –
because it is the presence of one object in another – undermines any identity ever being (fully) itself. Each element in a differential relation is the condition of possibility and the condition of
impossibility of each other. It is this dimension of antagonism that the Master Signifier covers over transforming its outside (Other) into an element of itself, reducing it to a condition of its
symbolisation produces an ineradicable excess over itself, something it can’t totalise or make
sense of, where its production of meaning falters. This is its internal limit point, its real:9 an errant “object” that has no place of its own, isn’t
recognised in the categories of the system but is produced by it – its “part of no part” or “object small a.”10
possibility.8 All
That is the subject of
antagonism in confrontation with the real of the social, as distinct from “subject” position based on a
determinate identity.
Correlative to this object “a” is the subject “stricto sensu” – i.e., as the empty subject of the signifier without an identity that pins it down.11
Reflexivity on history dooms present-day action.
Farber, University of Minnesota law professor, 1998
[Daniel, 15 T.M. Cooley L. Rev. 361, “KRINOCK LECTURE SERIES: IS AMERICAN LAW
INHERENTLY RACIST?” Lexis]
And finally, what I fear the most is the response that seemed to be implied by one of the audience
questions earlier. If it is true that American society is inherently racist, doesn't that mean that it is
essentially hopeless? Now this conclusion does not logically follow from that premise, any more than it
logically follows that if certain character traits have a genetic basis then it is hopeless to do anything
about them. But nevertheless, we all recognize that when we are talking about individuals and biology,
these genetic theories tend to discourage the idea of reform, and tend to reinforce, as a matter of social
reality, the view that any bad behavior that we see is just inherent. I think we can expect to see the same
kind of thing when we are dealing with the sociological equivalent involving the claim that there is this
inherent genetic flaw in American society. You can see this most clearly in Derrick Bell's writings, which
are redolent of despair and which, in that respect, curiously resemble Robert Bork's writings, who is
similarly convinced that the genetic flaws of American society will prevent it from ever achieving his
vision of justice.¶ It is true that we cannot afford to forget our history. It is true that much of that history is
unfortunate, if not worse. But it is also true that if we remain totally obsessed with the flaws of the past,
fixated on their inevitability, we are unlikely to be able to move past them and move forward. And in
particular, it seems to me that if we approach today's problems primarily as an issue in finger-pointing, in
blaming somebody or another, or in finding the culprit, then we are not likely to be able to unite our
society in a quest toward attacking those serious problems.
They’re wrong about ontological freedom – it is reductionist.
Macedo, University of Massachusetts Boston Applied Linguistics Master of Arts
program graduate program director, 2000
[Donaldo, writes the new introduction to the anniversary edition to Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Pedagogy
of the Oppressed, p.32-3]
Freire is able to do this because he operates on one basic assumption: that man’s ontological vocation
(as he calls it) is to be a Subject who acts upon and transforms his world, and in so doing moves
toward ever new possibilities of fuller and richer life individually and collectively. This world to
which he relates is not a static and closed order, a given reality which man must accept and to which he
must adjust; rather, it is a problem to be worked on and solved. It is the material used by man to
create history, a task which he performs as he overcomes that which is dehumanizing at any
particular time and place and dares to create the qualitatively new. For Freire, the resources for that
task at the present time are provided by the advanced technology of our Western world, but the social
vision which impels us to negate the present order and demonstrate that history has not ended comes
primarily from the suffering and struggle of the people of the Third World. Coupled with this is Freire’s
conviction (now supported by a wide background of experience) that every human being, no matter
how “ignorant” or submerged in the “culture of silence” he or she may be, is capable of looking
critically at the world in a dialogical encounter with others. Provided with the proper tools for such
encounter, the individual can gradually perceive personal and social reality as well as the
contradictions in it, become conscious of his or her own perception of that reality, and deal
critically with it, in this process, the old, paternalistic teacher-student relationship is overcome. A peasant
can facilitate this process for a neighbor more effectively than a “teacher” brought in from outside.
“People educate each other through the mediation of the world.” As this happens, the word take on new
power. It is no longer an abstraction or magic but a means by which people discover themselves and their
potential as they give names to things around them. As Freire puts it, each individual wins back the
right to say his or her own word, to name the world.
[We don’t endorse any gender language within this card]
Social death doesn’t make sense as a theory – nothing is always something, not the
absence of anything.
Moten, Duke University professor, 2013
[Fred, The South Atlantic Quarterly 112:4, Fall 2013, “Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the
Flesh)” EBSCO, p.774]
Nevertheless, my first impulse in reading Wilderson’s long, Trane-like¶ recitation in Incognegro of his
exchange with his friend and colleague Naima¶ was to ask, in a kind of Quinean rebuttal, why are we
something rather than¶ nothing? But the real task, and I follow in the footsteps of Sexton in taking it¶ up,
is to think about the relation between something and nothing or, if you’d¶ rather, life and death. Is life
surrounded by death, or does each move in and¶ as the constant permeation of the other? But this is not
even precise enough.¶ The question is, Where would one go or how would one go about studying¶
nothing’s real presence, the thingly presence, the facticity, of the nothing¶ that is? What stance, what
attitude, what comportment? If pessimism allows¶ us to discern that we are nothing, then optimism is the
condition of possibility¶ of the study of nothing as well as what derives from that study. We are the¶ ones
who engage in and derive from that study: blackness as black study as¶ black radicalism. In the end,
precisely as the end of an analysis, the payment¶ of a set of social costs will have coalesced into the
inability properly to assess¶ the nothingness that one claims. Blackness is more than exacted cost.
Nothing¶ is not absence. Blackness is more and less than one in nothing. This,¶ informal, informing,
insolvent insovereignty is the real presence of the nothing¶ we come from, and bear, and make.
Wilderson misreads Fanon into a Husserlian mysticism – social life is all blackness
is.
Moten, Duke University professor, 2013
[Fred, The South Atlantic Quarterly 112:4, Fall 2013, “Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the
Flesh)” EBSCO, p.775-9]
Insofar as I am concerned, by way of a certain example to which Sexton¶ appeals in order to explain
(away) the difference that lies between us, with¶ what surrounds, with what the nature is of surrounding
and enclosure, I am¶ also, of necessity, concerned with the relation between the inside and the¶ outside, the
intramural and the world. The difference that is not one is, for¶ Sexton, a matter of “ontological reach.”
Perhaps he thinks of that difference¶ as set-theoretic, a matter of calculating over infinities with the
understanding¶ that the infinity of social death is larger, as it were, than that of social life;
that the world is bigger than the other world, the underworld, the outer world¶ of the inside song, the
radical extension and exteriority that animates the¶ enclosed, imprisoned inner world of the ones, shall we
say, who are not poor¶ in world but who are, to be more precise, poor-in-the-world. Black people are¶ poor
in the world. We are deprived in, and somehow both more and less than¶ deprived of, the world. The
question is how to attend to that poverty, that¶ damnation, that wretchedness. I invoke Martin Heidegger’s
formulation¶ regarding the animal, that it is poor in world, up against the buried contour¶ of his question
concerning the way that technology tends toward the displacement¶ of world with a world-picture, in order
to make the distinction¶ between the animal’s status and our own, which some might call even more¶
distressing. What is it to be poor in the world? What is this worldly poverty,¶ and what is its relation to the
otherworldliness that we desire and enact, precisely¶ insofar as it is present to us and present in us? Sexton
characterizes¶ this worldly poverty as attenuated ontological reach, but to say this is tricky¶ and requires
care. Poverty in this world is manifest in a kind of poetic access¶ to what it is of the other world that
remains unheard, unnoted, unrecognized¶ in this one. Whether you call those resources tremendous life or
social life in¶ social death or fatal life or raw life, it remains to consider precisely what it is¶ that the ones
who have nothing have. What is this nothing that they have or¶ to which they have access? What comes
from it? And how does having it¶ operate in relation to poverty?¶ At the same time, for Sexton, recognition
of this attenuation (which¶ marks that fact that the tone world is, as it were, surrounded by the deaf¶ world)
is already understood to indicate possession, as it were, of ontological¶ reach. Maybe there’s another
implicit distinction between ontic extension¶ and ontological grasp. But who but the transcendental subject
can have that¶ grasp or attain the position and perspective that corresponds to it? Husserl,¶ at the end of his
career, when his own attainment of it is radically called into¶ question, speaks of this exalted hand-eye
coordination as the phenomenological¶ attitude; a few years earlier, when his career was much nearer to
its¶ fullest height and he could claim to be master of all he surveyed—modestly,¶ on the outer edges of his
work, under the breath of his work in a way that¶ demands a more general attunement to the
phenomenological whisper—¶ Husserl spoke of it in these terms: “I can see spread out before me the
endlessly¶ open plains of true philosophy, the ‘promised land,’ though its thorough¶ cultivation will come
after me” (Husserl 1982: 429). Marianne Sawicki¶ is especially helpful, here, because she so precisely
teases out the implications¶ of his imagery. “By means of this spatial, geographical metaphor of
crossing over into the ‘new land,’ Husserl conveys something of the adventure¶ and pioneer courage that
should accompany phenomenological work.¶ This science is related to ‘a new field of experience,
exclusively its own, the¶ field of “transcendental subjectivity,”’ and it offers ‘a method of access to the¶
transcendental-phenomenological sphere.’ Husserl is the ‘first explorer’ of¶ this marvelous place”
(Sawicki n.d.).¶ We should be no less forthright in recognizing that such positionality is¶ the desire that
Fanon admits, if only, perhaps, to disavow, when he conducts¶ his philosophical investigations of the lived
experience of the black. Two questions¶ arise: Does he disavow it? Or is it, in its necessity, the very
essence of¶ what Wilderson calls “our black capacity to desire”? Certain things about the¶ first few
paragraphs of Fanon’s phenomenological analysis seem clearer to¶ me now than when I was composing
“The Case of Blackness” (Moten 2008).¶ The desire to attain transcendental subjectivity’s self-regard is
emphatic even¶ if it is there primarily to mark an interdiction, an antagonism, a declivity, a¶ fall into the
deadly experiment that will have been productive of “a genuine¶ new departure” (Fanon 2008: xii), the
end of the world and the start of the¶ general dispossession that will have been understood as cost and
benefit. But¶ that desire returns, as something like the residual self-image of the phenomenologist¶ that he
wants to but cannot be, to enunciate the (political) ontology¶ he says is outlawed, in what he would
characterize as the neurotic language of¶ the demand, called, as he is, to be a witness in a court in which
he has no¶ standing, thereby requiring us to reconsider, by way of and beyond a certain¶ Boalian turn, what
it is to be a specta(c)tor. Elsewhere, I misleadingly assert,¶ Fanon is saying that there is no and can be no
black social life. I now believe¶ he says that is all there can be (Moten 2008: 177). The
antephenomenology of¶ spirit that constitutes Black Skin, White Masks prepares our approach to
sociological¶ or, more precisely, sociopoetic grounding, as Du Bois, say, or later Walter¶ Rodney would
have it, by way of the description of the impossibility of¶ political life, which is, nevertheless, at this
moment and for much of his¶ career, Fanon’s chief concern. The social life of the black, or of the
colonized,¶ is, to be sure, given to us in or through Fanon, often in his case studies, sometimes¶ in verse, or
in his narrative of the career of the revolutionary cadre. It is¶ as if Fanon is there to remind us that the
lunatic, the (revolutionary) lover, and¶ the poet are of imagination all compact. They occupy and are
preoccupied¶ with a zone of the alternative, the zone of nonbeing (antic disposition’s tendency¶ to cut and
displace organic position) that asks and requires us to consider¶ whether it is possible to differentiate a
place in the sun, a promised land,¶ a home—or merely a place and time—in this world, from the position
of the
settler. Is it possible to desire the something other than transcendental subjectivity¶ that is called nothing?
What if blackness is the name that has been¶ given to the social field and social life of an illicit alternative
capacity to desire?¶ Basically, that is precisely what I think blackness is. I want it to be my constant ¶ study.
I listen for it everywhere. Or, at least, I try to. If I read Sexton correctly,¶ after trying to get underneath the
generous severity of his lesson, he¶ objects, rightly and legitimately, to the fact that in the texts he cites I
have not¶ sufficiently looked for it in the Afro-pessimistic texts toward which I have¶ sometimes gestured.
In the gestures I have made here I hope I have shown¶ what it is that I have been so happy to find, that
projection or relay or amplification¶ carried out by the paraontological imagination that animates and
agitates¶ Afro-pessimism’s antiregulatory force.¶ Black optimism and Afro-pessimism are asymptotic.
Which one is the¶ curve and which one is the line? Which is the kernel and which is the shell?¶ Which one
is rational, which one is mystical? It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say¶ that their nonmeeting is part of an
ongoing manic depressive episode called¶ black radicalism / black social life. Is it just a minor internal
conflict, this¶ intimate nonmeeting, this impossibility of touching in mutual radiation and¶ permeation?
Can pessimists and optimists be friends? I hope so. Maybe¶ that’s what friendship is, this bipolarity, which
is to say, more precisely, the¶ commitment to it. To say that we are friends is to say that we want to be¶
friends. I want to try to talk about the nature and importance of the friendship¶ I want, that I would like us
to have, that we are about to have, that in the¶ deepest sense we already more than have, which is
grounded in and enabled¶ by that commitment even as it is continually rethought and replayed by way¶ of
our differences from one another, which is held within and holds together¶ our commonness. The
difference has to do with the proper calibration of¶ this bipolarity. Sexton is right to suggest that the far
too simple opposition¶ between pessimism and optimism is off, and that I was off in forwarding it,¶ or off
in forwarding an imprecision that made it seem as if I were, having¶ been seduced by a certain heuristic
and its sound, thereby perhaps inadvertently¶ seducing others into mistaking an alternating current for a
direct one.¶ The bipolarity in question is, at every instance, way too complicated for that,¶ and I really want
you to hear what we’ve been working on, this under-riff¶ we’ve been trying to play, to study, to improvise,
to compose in the hyperreal¶ time of our thinking and that thinking’s desire. There is an ethics of the cut,¶
of contestation, that I have tried to honor and illuminate because it instantiates¶ and articulates another
way of living in the world, a black way of living¶ together in the other world we are constantly making in
and out of this¶ world, in the alternative planetarity that the intramural, internally differenti
ated presence—the (sur)real presence—of blackness serially brings online¶ as persistent aeration, the
incessant turning over of the ground beneath our¶ feet that is the indispensable preparation for the radical
overturning of the¶ ground that we are under.
AT: Social/Ontological Death – Empirics
Slavery doesn’t prove social death – generations of data disprove their argument.
Brown, Harvard University African American studies professor, 2009
[Vincent, American Historical Review, “Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery”
http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/documents/brown-socialdeath.pdf, p.1235-41]
1235-1241¶ Specters of the Atlantic is a compellingly sophisticated study of the relation between ¶ the
epistemologies underwriting
both modern slavery and modern capitalism,¶ but the book’s discussion of the politics of anti-slavery is fundamentally
incomplete.¶ While Baucom brilliantly traces the development of “melancholy realism” as an oppositional¶ discourse that ran counter to the
logic of slavery and finance capital, he¶ has very little to say about the enslaved themselves. Social death, so well suited to¶ the tragic
perspective, stands in for the experience of enslavement. While this heightens ¶ the reader’s sense of the way Atlantic slavery haunts the present,
Baucom largely¶ fails to acknowledge that the enslaved performed melancholy acts of accounting not¶
unlike those that he shows to be a fundamental component of abolitionist and human¶ rights discourses, or
that those acts could be a basic element of slaves’ oppositional¶ activities. In many ways, the effectiveness of
his text depends upon the silence of¶ slaves—it is easier to describe the continuity of structures of
power when one downplays¶ countervailing forces such as the political activity of the weak . So
Baucom’s¶ deep insights into the structural features of Atlantic slave trading and its afterlife¶ come with a cost. Without engagement with the
politics of the enslaved, slavery’s¶ history serves as an effective charge leveled against modernity and capitalism, but not as an uneven and
evolving process of human interaction, and certainly not as a¶ locus of conflict in which the enslaved sometimes won small but important
victories.11¶ Specters of the Atlantic is self-consciously a work of theory (despite Baucom’s¶ prodigious archival research), and social
death
may be largely unproblematic as a¶ matter of theory, or even law. In these arenas, as David Brion Davis has argued, “the¶ slave
has no legitimate, independent being, no place in the cosmos except as an ¶ instrument of her or his master’s will.”12 But the concept
often becomes a general¶ description of actual social life in slavery. Vincent Carretta, for example, in his authoritative¶
biography of the abolitionist writer and former slave Olaudah Equiano, ¶ agrees with Patterson that because enslaved Africans and their
descendants were¶ “stripped of their personal identities and history, [they] were forced to suffer what ¶ has been aptly called ‘social death.’ ” The
self-fashioning enabled by writing and print¶ “allowed Equiano to resurrect himself publicly” from the condition that had been ¶ imposed by his
enslavement.13 The living conditions of slavery in eighteenth-century¶ Jamaica, one slave society with which Equiano had experience, are
described in rich¶ detail in Trevor Burnard’s unflinching examination of the career of Thomas Thistlewood, ¶ an English migrant who became an
overseer and landholder in Jamaica, and¶ who kept a diary there from 1750 to 1786. Through Thistlewood’s descriptions of his ¶ life among
slaves, Burnard glimpses a “world of uncertainty,” where the enslaved ¶ were always vulnerable to repeated depredations that actually led to
“significant¶ slave dehumanization as masters sought, with considerable success, to obliterate¶ slaves’ personal histories.” Burnard consequently
concurs with Patterson: “slavery¶ completely stripped slaves of their cultural heritage, brutalized them, and rendered ¶ ordinary life and normal
relationships extremely difficult.”14 This was slavery, after¶ all, and much more than a transfer of migrants from Africa to America.15 Yet one¶
wonders, after reading Burnard’s indispensable account, how slaves in Jamaica organized¶ some of British America’s
greatest political events during Thistlewood’s¶ time and after, including the Coromantee Wars of the
1760s, the 1776 Hanover¶ conspiracy, and the Baptist War of 1831–1832. Surely they must have found
some¶ way to turn the “disorganization, instability, and chaos” of slavery into collective¶ forms of
belonging and striving, making connections when confronted with alienation¶ and finding dignity in the
face of dishonor. Rather than pathologizing slaves¶ by allowing the condition of social death to stand for
the experience of life in slavery,¶ then, it might be more helpful to focus on what the enslaved actually
made of their¶ situation . Among the most insightful texts to explore the experiential meaning of Afro-¶ Atlantic slavery (for both the
slaves and their descendants) are two recent books by¶ Saidiya Hartman and Stephanie Smallwood. Rather than eschewing the concept of¶ social
death, as might be expected from writing that begins by considering the perspective¶ of the enslaved, these two authors use the idea in penetrating
ways. Hartman’s¶ Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route and Smallwood’s¶ Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from
Africa to American Diaspora extend social¶ death beyond a general description of slavery as a condition and imagine it as an ¶ experience of self.
Here both the promise and the problem with the concept are most¶ fully apparent.16¶ Both authors seek a deeper understanding of the experience
of enslavement and¶ its consequences for the past, present, and future of black life than we generally find ¶ in histories of slavery. In Hartman’s
account especially, slavery is not only an object¶ of study, but also the focus of a personal memoir. She travels along a slave route in ¶ Ghana,
from its coastal forts to the backcountry hinterlands, symbolically reversing¶ the first stage of the trek now commonly called the Middle Passage.
In searching¶ prose, she meditates on the history of slavery in Africa to explore the precarious ¶ nature of belonging to the social category “African
American.” Rendering her remarkable¶ facility with social theory in elegant and affective terms, Hartman asks the¶ question that nags all
identities, but especially those forged by the descendants of¶ slaves: What identifications, imagined affinities, mythical narratives, and acts of
remembering¶ and forgetting hold the category together? Confronting her own alienation ¶ from any story that would yield a knowable genealogy
or a comfortable identity,¶ Hartman wrestles with what it means to be a stranger in one’s putative motherland, ¶ to be denied country, kin, and
identity, and to forget one’s past—to be an orphan.17¶ Ultimately, as the title suggests, Lose Your Mother is an injunction to accept
dispossession¶ as the basis of black self-definition.¶ Such a judgment is warranted, in Hartman’s account, by the implications of social¶ death both
for the experience of enslavement and for slavery’s afterlife in the¶ present. As Patterson delineated in sociological terms the death of social
personhood¶ and the reincorporation of individuals into slavery, Hartman sets out on a personal¶ quest to “retrace the process by which lives were
destroyed and slaves born.”18 When¶ she contends with what it meant to be a slave, she frequently invokes Patterson’s ¶ idiom: “Seized from
home, sold in the market, and severed from kin, the slave was¶ for all intents and purposes dead, no less so than had he been killed in combat. No¶
less so than had she never belonged to the world.” By making men, women, and ¶ children into commodities, enslavement destroyed lineages,
tethering people to owners¶ rather than families, and in this way it “annulled lives, transforming men and ¶ women into dead matter, and then
resuscitated them for servitude.” Admittedly, the¶ enslaved “lived and breathed, but they were dead in the social world of men.”19 As¶ it turns
out, this kind of alienation is also part of what it presently means to be African American. “The transience of the slave’s existence,” for example,
still leaves its traces¶ in how black people imagine and speak of home:¶ We never tire of dreaming of a place that we can call home, a place better
than here, wherever¶ here might be . . . We stay there, but we don’t live there . . . Staying is living in a country¶ without exercising any claims on
its resources. It is the perilous condition of existing in a world¶ in which you have no investments. It is having never resided in a place that you
can say is¶ yours. It is being “of the house” but not having a stake in it. Staying implies transient quarters, ¶ a makeshift domicile, a temporary
shelter, but no attachment or affiliation. This sense of not¶ belonging and of being an extraneous element is at the heart of slavery.20 ¶ “We may
have forgotten our country,” Hartman writes, “but we haven’t forgotten ¶ our dispossession.”21¶ Like
Baucom, Hartman sees the
history of slavery as a constituent part of a tragic¶ present. Atlantic slavery continues to be manifested in
black people’s skewed life¶ chances, poor education and health, and high rates of incarceration, poverty,
and¶ premature death. Disregarding the commonplace temporalities of professional historians,¶ whose
literary conventions are generally predicated on a formal distinction¶ between past, present, and future,
Hartman addresses slavery as a problem that¶ spans all three. The afterlife of slavery inhabits the nature of belonging, which in turn ¶ guides the
“freedom dreams” that shape prospects for change. “If slavery persists¶ as an issue in the political life of black America,” she writes, “it is not
because of¶ an antiquated obsession with bygone days or the burden of a too-long memory, but¶ because black lives are still imperiled and
devalued by a racial calculus and a political¶ arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago.”22¶ A professor of English and comparative
literature, Hartman is in many respects¶ in a better position than most historians to understand events such as the funeral¶ aboard the Hudibras.
This is because for all of her evident erudition, her scholarship ¶ is harnessed not so much to a performance of mastery over the facts of what
happened,¶ which might substitute precision for understanding, as to an act of mourning, ¶ even yearning. She writes with a depth of introspection
and personal anguish that¶ is transgressive of professional boundaries but absolutely appropriate to the task.¶ Reading
Hartman, one
wonders how a historian could ever write dispassionately¶ about slavery without feeling complicit and
ashamed. For dispassionate accounting—¶ exemplified by the ledgers of slave traders—has been a great weapon of the¶ powerful, an episteme
that made the grossest violations of personhood acceptable,¶ even necessary. This is the kind of bookkeeping that bore fruit upon the Zong. “It ¶
made it easier for a trader to countenance yet another dead black body or for a¶ captain to dump a shipload of captives into the sea in order to
collect the insurance,¶ since it wasn’t possible to kill cargo or to murder a thing already denied life. Death ¶ was simply part of the workings of the
trade.” The archive of slavery, then, is “a¶ mortuary.” Not content to total up the body count, Hartman offers elegy, echoing¶ in her own way the
lamentations of the women aboard the Hudibras. Like them, she¶ is concerned with the dead and what they mean to the living. “I was desperate to
reclaim the dead,” she writes, “to reckon with the lives undone and obliterated in ¶ the making of human commodities.”23¶ It is this mournful
quality of Lose Your Mother that elevates it above so many¶ histories of slavery, but the same sense of lament seems to require that Hartman¶
overlook small but significant political victories like the one described by Butterworth. ¶ Even as Hartman seems to agree with Paul Gilroy on the
“value of seeing the¶ consciousness of the slave as involving an extended act of mourning,” she remains¶ so focused on her own commemorations
that her text makes little space for a consideration¶ of how the enslaved struggled with alienation and the fragility of belonging, ¶ or of the
mourning rites they used to confront their condition.24 All
of the questions¶ she raises about the meaning of slavery in
the present—both highly personal¶ and insistently political—might as well be asked about the meaning of
slavery to¶ slaves themselves, that is, if one begins by closely examining their social and political¶ lives
rather than assuming their lack of social being. Here Hartman is undone by her¶ reliance on Orlando Patterson’s totalizing
definition of slavery. She asserts that “no¶ solace can be found in the death of the slave, no higher ground can be located, no¶ perspective can be
If she is correct, the events on the
Hudibras were of¶ negligible importance. And indeed, Hartman’s understandable emphasis on the
personal¶ damage wrought by slavery encourages her to disavow two generations of social¶ history
that have demonstrated slaves’ remarkable capacity to forge fragile communities,¶ preserve
cultural inheritance, and resist the predations of slaveholders.¶ This in turn precludes her from
describing the ways that violence, dislocation, and¶ death actually generate culture, politics, and
consequential action by the enslaved .26
found from which death serves a greater good or becomes anything¶ other than what it is.”25
Social death isn’t useful for changing material conditions for black people.
Brown, Harvard University African American studies professor, 2009
[Vincent, American Historical Review, “Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery”
http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/documents/brown-socialdeath.pdf, p.1241-3]
THE PREMISE OF ORLANDO PATTERSON’S MAJOR WORK, that enslaved Africans were¶ natally alienated and culturally isolated, was
challenged even before he published¶ his influential thesis, primarily by scholars concerned with “survivals” or “retentions” ¶ of African culture
and by historians of slave resistance. In the early to mid-twentieth¶ century, when Robert Park’s view of “the Negro” predominated among
scholars, it¶ was generally assumed that the slave trade and slavery had denuded black people¶ of any ancestral heritage from Africa. The
historians Carter G. Woodson and¶ W. E. B. Du Bois and the anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits argued the opposite.¶ Their
research supported the conclusion that while enslaved Africans could not have¶ brought intact social,
political, and religious institutions with them to the Americas,¶ they did maintain significant aspects of
their cultural backgrounds.32 Herskovits examined “Africanisms”—any practices that seemed to be identifiably African—as useful
symbols of cultural survival that would help him to analyze change and continuity¶ in African American culture.33 He engaged in one of his most
heated scholarly¶ disputes with the sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, a student of Park’s, who emphasized ¶ the damage wrought by slavery on black
families and folkways.34 More
recently,¶ a number of scholars have built on Herskovits’s line of thought, enhancing our
understanding¶ of African history during the era of the slave trade. Their studies have¶ evolved
productively from assertions about general cultural heritage into more precise¶ demonstrations of the
continuity of worldviews, categories of belonging, and¶ social practices from Africa to America. For these
scholars, the preservation of distinctive¶ cultural forms has served as an index both of a resilient social
personhood,¶ or identity, and of resistance to slavery itself.35¶ Scholars of slave resistance have never
had much use for the concept of social¶ death . The early efforts of writers such as Herbert Aptheker aimed to derail the¶
popular notion that American slavery had been a civilizing institution threatened by¶ “slave crime.”36 Soon after, studies of slave revolts
and conspiracies advocated the¶ idea that resistance demonstrated the basic humanity and intractable will
of the¶ enslaved—indeed, they often equated acts of will with humanity itself. As these writers¶ turned toward more
detailed analyses of the causes, strategies, and tactics of slave¶ revolts in the context of the social relations of slavery, they had trouble squaring¶
abstract characterizations of “the slave” with what they were learning about the enslaved.¶ 37 Michael Craton, who authored Testing the Chains:
Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies, was an early critic of Slavery and Social Death, protesting that ¶ what was known about chattel
bondage in the Americas did not confirm Patterson’s¶ definition of slavery. “If
slaves were in fact ‘generally dishonored,’ ”
Craton asked,¶ “how does he explain the degrees of rank found among all groups of slaves—that¶ is, the scale
of ‘reputation’ and authority accorded, or at least acknowledged, by slave¶ and master alike?” How could
they have formed the fragile families documented by¶ social historians if they had been “natally alienated”
by definition? Finally, and perhaps¶ most tellingly, if slaves had been uniformly subjected to “permanent violent¶
domination,” they could not have revolted as often as they did or shown the “varied¶ manifestations of
their resistance” that so frustrated masters and compromised their¶ power, sometimes “fatally.”38 The
dynamics of social control and slave resistance¶ falsified Patterson’s description of slavery even as the tenacity of African culture¶ showed that
enslaved men, women, and children had arrived in the Americas bearing¶ much more than their “tropical
temperament.”¶ The cultural continuity and resistance schools of thought come together powerfully¶ in an important book by Walter C.
Rucker, The River Flows On: Black Resistance,¶ Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America. In Rucker’s analysis of¶ slave revolts,
conspiracies, and daily recalcitrance, African concepts, values, and cultural¶ metaphors play the central role. Unlike Smallwood and Hartman, for
whom¶ “the rupture was the story” of slavery, Rucker aims to reveal the “perseverance of¶ African culture even among second, third, and
again at some familiar events in North America—New York City’s 1712
Coromantee¶ revolt and 1741 conspiracy, the 1739 Stono rebellion in South Carolina, as well as¶ the plots,
schemes, and insurgencies of Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat¶ Turner—deftly teasing out the
African origins of many of the attitudes and actions¶ of the black rebels. Rucker outlines how the
transformation of a “shared cultural¶ heritage” that shaped collective action against slavery corresponded
to the “various¶ steps Africans made in the process of becoming ‘African American’ in culture,
orientation,¶ and identity.”40
fourth generation creoles.”39 He looks¶
The alt fails – too totalizing – it makes resistance impossible and misreads history.
Walker, Graduate of Psychosocial studies, 12
(Tracey, Graduate of Psychosocial Studies at Birbeck University of London, Graduate Journal of Social
Science July 2012, Vol. 9, Issue 2, " The Future of Slavery: From Cultural Trauma to Ethical
Remembrance" pg. 165-167, http://gjss.org/images/stories/volumes/9/2/Walker%20Article.pdf)
To argue that there is more to the popular conception of slaves as victims who experienced social death
within the abusive regime of transatlantic slavery is not to say that these subjectivities did not exist. When considering the
institution of slavery we can quite confidently rely on the assumption that it did indeed destroy the self-hood and the lives of millions of Africans.
Scholar Vincent Brown (2009) however, has criticised Orlando Patterson’s (1982) seminal book Slavery and Social Death for
positioning the slave as a subject without agency and maintains that those who managed to dislocate from
the nightmare of plantation life ‘were not in fact the living dead’, but ‘the mothers of gasping new
societies’ (Brown 2009, 1241).¶ The Jamaican Maroons were one such disparate group of Africans who
managed to band together and flee the Jamaican plantations in order to create a new mode of living under
their own rule. These ‘runaways’ were in fact ‘ferocious fighters and master strategists’, building towns
and military bases which enabled them to fight and successfully win the war against the British army after 200
years of battle (Gotlieb 2000,16). In addition, the story of the Windward Jamaican Maroons disrupts the phallocentricism
inherent within the story of the slave ‘hero’ by the very revelation that their leader, ‘Queen Nanny’ was a
woman (Gotlieb 2000). As a leader, she was often ignored by early white historians who dismissed her as an ‘old hagg’ or ‘obeah’ woman
(possessor of evil magic powers) (Gotlieb 2000, xvi). Yet, despite these negative descriptors, Nanny presents an interesting image of an African
woman in the time of slavery who cultivated an exceptional army and used psychological as well as military force against the English despite not
owning sophisticated weapons (Gotlieb 2000). As an oral tale, her
story speaks to post-slavery generations through its
representation of a figure whose gender defying acts challenged the patriarchal fantasies of the
Eurocentric imaginary and as such ‘the study of her experiences might change the lives of people living
under paternalistic, racist, classist and gender based oppression’ (Gotlieb 2000, 84).¶ The label of ‘social death’
is rejected here on the grounds that it is a narrative which is positioned from the vantage point of a
European hegemonic ideology. Against the social symbolic and its gaze, black slaves were indeed regarded as non-humans since their
lives were stunted, diminished and deemed less valuable in comparison to the Europeans. However, Fanon’s (1967) assertion that ‘not
only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man’ (Fanon 1967, 110) helps us to
understand that this classification can only have meaning relative to the symbolic which represents the
aliveness of whiteness against the backdrop of the dead black slave (Dyer 1997). Butler (2005) makes it clear
that the ‘death’ one suffers relative to the social symbolic is imbued with the fantasy that having
constructed the Other and interpellated her into ‘life’, one now holds the sovereignty of determining the
subject’s right to live or die:¶ this death, if it is a death, is only the death of a certain kind of subject, one
that was never possible to begin with, the death of the fantasy of impossible mastery, and so a loss of what
one never had, in other words it is a necessary grief (Butler 2005, 65).¶ The point to make here is that although the
concept of social death has proved useful for theorists to describe the metaphysical experience of those
who live antagonistically in relation to the social symbolic, it is nevertheless a colonial narrative within
which the slaves are confined to a one dimensional story of terror. In keeping with Gilroy’s (1993b) argument that the
memory of slavery must be constructed from the slaves’ point of view, we might instead concentrate, not on the way in
which the slaves are figured within the European social imaginary, but on how they negotiated their own
ideas about self and identity. We might therefore find some value in studying a group like the Maroons
who not only managed to create an autonomous world outside of the hegemonic discourse which negated
them, but also, due to their unique circumstances, were forced to create new modes of communication which would
include a myriad of African cultures, languages and creeds (Gottlieb 2000). This creative and resistive energy
of slave subjectivity not only disrupts the colonial paradigm of socially dead slaves, but also implies the
ethical tropes of creation, renewal and mutual recognition.¶ In contrast, the passive slave proved to feature
heavily in the 2007 bicentenary commemorations causing journalist Toyin Agbetu to interrupt the official
speeches and exclaim that it had turned into a discourse of freedom engineered mostly by whites with stories
of black agency excluded8. Young’s argument that ‘one of the damaging side effects of the focus on white
people’s role in abolition is that Africans are represented as being passive in the face of oppression’,
appears to echo the behaviour in the UK today given that a recent research poll reveals that the black vote turnout is
significantly lower than for the white majority electorate and that forty percent of second generation ‘immigrants’ believe that voting ‘doesn’t
matter’.9 Yet, Gilroy (1993a) argues
that this political passivity may not simply be a self fulfilling prophecy, but might allude
to the ‘lived contradiction’ of being black and English which affects one’s confidence about whether
opinions will be validated in a society that, at its core, still holds on to the fantasy of European superiority
(Gilroy 1993a). Without considering the slaves’ capacity for survival and their fundamental role in
overthrowing the European regime of slavery, we limit the use–value of the memory and risk becoming overly
attached to singular slave subjectivities seeped in death and passivity. The Maroons story however, enables slave
consciousness to rise above the mire of slavery’s abject victims and establishes an ethical relation with our ancestors who lived and survived in
the time of slavery.
Social death is empirically wrong – explicit policies created racism and explicit
policies can fight it.
Bouie, The American Prospect, 2013
[Jamelle, “Making (and Dismantling) Racism” http://prospect.org/article/making-and-dismantling-racism]
But Coates is making a more precise claim: That there's nothing natural about the black/white divide that has defined American history. White
Europeans had contact with black Africans well before the trans-Atlantic slave trade without the
emergence of an anti-black racism. It took particular choices made by particular people—in this case,
plantation owners in colonial Virginia—to make black skin a stigma, to make the "one drop rule" a defining feature of American
life for more than a hundred years. By enslaving African indentured servants and allowing their white counterparts a chance for upward mobility,
colonial landowners began the process that would make white supremacy the ideology of America. The
position of slavery generated a stigma that then justified continued enslavement—blacks are lowly, therefore we must keep them as slaves.
Slavery (and later, Jim Crow) wasn't built to reflect 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 behavior—owning a home, getting married—and 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 men--not because they're gay but because they
are men in an all-male subculture--are 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 participate in this institution." If the prohibition against gay marriage helped create an anti-gay
stigma, then lifting it—as we've seen over the last decade—has helped destroy it. There's
way.
no reason racism can't work the same
Claiming racial progress is impossible is intellectual laziness.
Reed, University of Pennsylvania political science professor, 2013
[Adolph, “The Help: How “Cultural Politics” Is Worse Than No Politics at All, and Why”
http://nonsite.org/feature/django-unchained-or-the-help-how-cultural-politics-is-worse-than-no-politicsat-all-and-why]
That sort of Malcolm X/blaxploitation narrative, including the insistence that Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind continue to shape
Americans’ understandings of slavery, also is of a piece with a line of anti-racist argument and mobilization that asserts powerful continuities
between current racial inequalities and either slavery or the Jim Crow regime. This line of argument has been most popularly condensed recently
in Michelle
Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which analogizes contemporary mass incarceration to the
segregationist regime. But even she, after much huffing and puffing and asserting the relation gesturally
throughout the book, ultimately acknowledges that the analogy fails.37 And it would have to fail because
the segregationist regime was the artifact of a particular historical and political moment in a particular
social order. Moreover, the rhetorical force of the analogy with Jim Crow or slavery derives from the fact
that those regimes are associated symbolically with strong negative sanctions in the general culture
because they have been vanquished. In that sense all versions of the lament that “it’s as if nothing has
changed” give themselves the lie. They are effective only to the extent that things have changed
significantly . The tendency to craft political critique by demanding that we fix our gaze in the rearview
mirror appeals to an intellectual laziness. Marking superficial similarities with familiar images of
oppression is less mentally taxing than attempting to parse the multifarious, often contradictory dynamics
and relations that shape racial inequality in particular and politics in general in the current moment.
Assertions that phenomena like the Jena, Louisiana, incident, the killings of James Craig Anderson and Trayvon Martin, and racial
disparities in incarceration demonstrate persistence of old-school, white supremacist racism and charges that
the sensibilities of Thomas Dixon and Margaret Mitchell continue to shape most Americans’ understandings of slavery
do important, obfuscatory ideological work. They lay claim to a moral urgency that, as Mahmood Mamdani
argues concerning the rhetorical use of charges of genocide, enables disparaging efforts either to differentiate discrete
inequalities or to generate historically specific causal accounts of them as irresponsible dodges that abet
injustice by temporizing in its face.38 But more is at work here as well.
AT: Social Death – Wilderson Indict
Black social death is based on cherry-picked data that doesn’t accurately explain the
world.
Bâ, Race and Postcolonial theorist, 11
(Saer Maty, “The US decentered: From Black Social Death to Cultural Transformation,” Cultural Studies
Review 17(2), September p. 385-387)
And yet Wilderson's highlighting is problematic because it overlooks the 'Diaspora' or
'African Diaspora', a key component in Yearwood's thesis that, crucially, neither navel-gazes (that is,
at the US or black America) nor pretends to properly engage with black film. Furthermore, Wilderson
separates the different waves of black film theory and approaches them, only, in terms of how a most
recent one might challenge its precedent. Again, his approach is problematic because it does not
mention or emphasise the inter-connectivity of/in black film theory. As a case in point,
Wilderson does not link Tommy Lott's mobilisation of Third Cinema for black film theory to Yearwood's
idea of African Diaspora. (64) Additionally, of course, Wilderson seems unaware that Third
Cinema itself has been fundamentally questioned since Lott's 1990s' theory of black film
was formulated. Yet another consequence of ignoring the African Diaspora is that it
exposes Wilderson's corpus of films as unable to carry the weight of the transnational
argument he attempts to advance. Here, beyond the US-centricity or 'social and political specificity
of [his] filmography', (95) I am talking about Wilderson's choice of films. For example, Antwone Fisher
(dir. Denzel Washington, 2002) is attacked unfairly for failing to acknowledge 'a grid of captivity across
spatial dimensions of the Black "body", the Black "home", and the Black "community"' (111) while films
like Alan and Albert Hughes's Menace II Society (1993), overlooked, do acknowledge the same grid and,
additionally, problematise Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP) policing. The above
examples expose the fact of Wilderson's dubious and questionable conclusions on black film. Red,
White and Black is particularly undermined by Wilderson's propensity for exaggeration
and blinkeredness. In chapter nine, '"Savage" Negrophobia', he writes: The philosophical anxiety of
Skins is all too aware that through the Middle Passage, African culture became Black 'style' ... Blackness
can be placed and displaced with limitless frequency and across untold territories, by whoever so chooses.
Most important, there is nothing real Black people can do to either check or direct this process ... Anyone
can say 'nigger' [the n word] because anyone can be a 'nigger' [n word]. (235)7 Similarly, in chapter ten,
'A Crisis in the Commons', Wilderson addresses the issue of 'Black time'. Black is irredeemable, he
argues, because, at no time in history had it been deemed, or deemed through the right
historical moment and place. In other words, the black moment and place are not right
because they are 'the ship hold of the Middle Passage': 'the most coherent temporality ever
deemed as Black time' but also 'the "moment" of no time at all on the map of no place at
all'. (279) Not only does Pinho's more mature analysis expose this point as preposterous (see below), I
also wonder what Wilderson makes of the countless historians' and sociologists' works on
slave ships, shipboard insurrections and/during the Middle Passage,8 or of groundbreaking
jazz-studies books on cross-cultural dialogue like The Other Side of Nowhere (2004). Nowhere
has another side, but once Wilderson theorises blacks as socially and ontologically dead while
dismissing jazz as 'belonging nowhere and to no one, simply there for the taking', (225)
there seems to be no way back. It is therefore hardly surprising that Wilderson ducks the
need to provide a solution or alternative to both his sustained bashing of blacks and antiBlackness.9 Last but not least, Red, White and Black ends like a badly plugged announcement of a bad
Hollywood film's badly planned sequel: 'How does one deconstruct life? Who would benefit from such an
undertaking? The coffle approaches with its answers in tow.' (340)
AT: Social Death – Sexton Indict
Sexton’s entire K is de-contextual and based on poor evidence.
Spickard, University of California Santa Barbara history and Asian American
studies professor, 2009
[Paul, American Studies Volume 50, Number 1/2, Spring/Summer 2009, “Amalgamation Schemes:
Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism. Jared Sexton. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press. 2008.” Project Muse]
Sexton does point out, as do many writers, the flawed tendencies in multiracial advocacy mentioned in the
second paragraph above. But he imputes them to the whole movement and to the subject of study, and
that is not a fair assessment.¶ The main problem is that Sexton argues from conclusion to evidence, rather
than the other way around. That is, he begins with the conclusion that the multiracial idea is bad,
retrograde, and must be resisted. And then he cherry-picks his evidence to fit his conclusion. He spends
much of his time on weaker writers such as Gregory Stephens and Stephen Talty who have been
tangential to the multiracial literature. When he addresses stronger figures like Daniel, Root, Nash, and
Kennedy, he carefully selects his quotes to fit his argument, and misrepresents their positions by doing
so.¶ Sexton also makes some pretty outrageous claims. He takes the fact that people who study multiracial
identities are often studying aspects of family life (such as the shaping of a child's identity), and twists
that to charge them with homophobia and nuclear family-ism. That is simply not accurate for any of the
main writers in the field. The same is true for his argument by innuendo that scholars of multiraciality
somehow advocate mail-order bride services. And sometimes Sexton simply resorts to ad hominem
attacks on the motives and personal lives of the writers themselves. It is a pretty tawdry exercise.
2ac – Essentialism Turn
Ontological blackness relies on whiteness – that makes liberation illusory – it is also
too totalizing a view of black existence to be useful.
Pinn, Macalester College Professor of Religious Studies, 4
(Anthony, Dialog: A Journal of Theology, Volume 43, Number 1, Spring 2004, '‘‘Black Is, Black Ain’t’’:
Victor Anderson, African American Theological Thought, and Identity', pg.57-58, Wiley online Library)
This connection between ontological blackness and¶ religion is natural because: ‘‘ontological blackness
signifies¶ the totality of black existence, a binding together¶ of black life and experience. In its root,
religio, religion¶ denotes tying together, fastening behind, and binding¶ together. Ontological blackness
renders black life and¶ experience a totality.’’13 According to Anderson, Black¶ theological discussions
are entangled in ontological¶ blackness. And accordingly, discussions of black life¶ revolve around a
theological understanding of Black¶ experience limited to suffering and survival in a racist¶ system. The
goal of this theology is to find the ‘‘meaning¶ of black faith’’ in the merger of black cultural¶
consciousness, icons of genius, and post-World War¶ II Black defiance. An admirable goal to be sure,
but¶ here is the rub: Black theologians speak, according to¶ Anderson, in opposition to ontological
whiteness¶ when they are actually dependent upon whiteness for¶ the legitimacy of their agenda.
Furthermore, ontological¶ blackness’s strong ties to suffering and survival¶ result in blackness being
dependent on suffering,¶ and as a result social transformation brings into¶ question what it means to be
black and religious.¶ Liberative outcomes ultimately force an identity¶ crisis, a crisis of legitimation and
utility. In¶ Anderson’s words:¶ Talk about liberation becomes hard to justify¶ where freedom appears as
nothing more than¶ defiant self-assertion of a revolutionary racial¶ consciousness that requires for its
legitimacy¶ the opposition of white racism. Where there¶ exists no possibility of transcending the
blackness¶ that whiteness created, African American¶ theologies of liberation must be seen not only¶ as
crisis theologies; they remain theologies in¶ a crisis of legitimation.14¶ This conversation becomes more
‘‘refined’’ as new¶ cultural resources are unpacked and various religious¶ alternatives acknowledged. Yet
the bottom line¶ remains racialization of issues and agendas, life and¶ love. Falsehood is perpetuated
through the ‘‘hermeneutic¶ of return,’’ by which ontological blackness is¶ the paradigm of Black
existence and thereby sets the¶ agenda of Black liberation within the ‘‘postrevolutionary¶ context’’ of
present day USA. One ever finds¶ the traces of the Black aesthetic which pushes for a¶ dwarfed
understanding of Black life and a sacrifice of¶ individuality for the sake of a unified Black ‘faith’.¶ Yet
differing experiences of racial oppression (the¶ stuff of ontological blackness) combined with varying¶
experiences of class, gender and sexual oppression¶ call into question the value of their racialized
formulations. Implicit in all of this is a crisis of faith,¶ an unwillingness to address both the glory and
guts¶ of Black existence—nihilistic tendencies that, unless¶ held in tension with claims of transcendence,
have¶ the potential to overwhelm and to suffocate.¶ At the heart of this dilemma is friction between¶
ontological blackness and ‘‘contemporary postmodern¶ black life’’—issues, for example related to¶
‘‘selecting marriage partners, exercising freedom of¶ movement, acting on gay and lesbian preferences,
or¶ choosing political parties.’’15 How does one foster¶ balance while embracing difference as positive?¶
Anderson looks to Nietzsche.
Essentializing black identity takes out solvency.
Hooks, City Univeristy New York English professor, 1996
[bell, “Killing Rage: Ending Racism”
http://books.google.com/books?id=3JlNFYKLheUC&q=unitary+representations#v=snippet&q=unitary%
20representations&f=false, p.249-50]
Unitary representations of black identity do not reflect the real lives of African Americans who struggle to
create self and identity. Psychoanalytically, it is clear that the unitary self is sustained only by acts of
coercive control and repression. Collectively African Americans fear the loss of a unitary representation
of blackness because they feel we will lose a basis for organized resistance. ¶ In retheorizing black
subjectivity we have to also revise our understanding of the conditions that are needed for black folks to
join together in a politics of solidarity that can effectively oppose white supremacy. Breaking with
essentialist thinking that insists all black folks inherently realize that we have something positive to gain
by resisting white supremacy allows us to collectively acknowledge that radical politiciza-tion is a
process—that revolutionary black thinkers and activists are made, not born. Progressive education for
critical consciousness then is automatically understood to be necessary to any construction of radical
black subjectivity. Whether the issue is construction of self and identity or radical politici-zation, AfricanAmerican subjectivity is always in process. Fluidity means that our black identities are constantly
changing as we respond to circumstances in our families and communities of origin, and as we interact
with a larger world. Only by privileging the reality of that changing black identity will we be able to
engage a prophetic discourse about subjectivity that will be liberatory and transformative.
2ac – Black/White Binary Turn
Anti-blackness is not the master-key—the focus on it as such skews discussions of
racial justice and promotes nationalistic and xenophobic forms of racism
Sunstrom, University of San Francisco philosophy professor, 2008
[Ronald, “The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice” http://www.usfca.edu/facstaff/rrsundstrom/selected-articles/black-white-binary.pdf, pp. 65-6]
The future of race in the United States, or elsewhere, will not be determined solely through the American instinct to
return to black white politics—as if the question of the conservation or elimination of race and racial
justice is in the hands of whites and blacks who need to hash out their issues for the sake of all of us. That
somehow American racial problems are primarily black and white problems is the conceit of too many Americans.
¶ This
conceit is rooted in an image of an America defi ned by Protestantism, the English language, and its ties to Europe and populated by fading
yet romantic “Indians,” a few Mexicans, and “Orientals” but dominated by whites and blacks. In this fantasy, the
racial problems that
we have are determined by the painful yet interesting history between whites and blacks. From here, liberals and
conservatives part company, but the central vision holds—both sides affirm that black-white division is the United States’ core racial
problem, and that solving black-white confl ict is the master key to all of its racial problems . ¶ The result of this
assumption has been that the concerns, problems, and questions, specific to blacks and whites and the relationship between them, have
historically dominated discourse over race in the United States. The
domination of this focus, often called the blackwhite
binary, has colored the U.S. reaction toward, and policies about, Native Americans, Asians, Latinos, and
its colonial subjects, such as Puerto Ricans and Filipinos.1 The color line, which W. E. B. Du Bois famously claimed
marked the twentieth century and spanned the globe, was imagined in the cast of the black-white binary. ¶ In the following
sections I clarify various conceptions of the black-white binary and consider their relative merits and failings. I then turn to the host of objections
against this binary. I support the primary complaint against the
binary, that it does not engender accurate descriptions of
the United States’ racial past or present , and it skews discussions of the future of race and racial
justice toward the perspectives and interests of blacks and whites. Some readers may think that the
problems with the black-white binary are so obvious and great that the subject is not worth a chapterlength study. I urge such readers to momentarily suspend their incredulity about the blackwhite binary so that they can consider the demands
for justice that motivate its proponents. I argue that the black-white binary should not simply be dismissed, for incautious dismissals of it end up
casting off the demands of justice that frequently motivate statements that seemingly support the binary. Nonetheless, there
are troubling
aspects of the black-white binary that go beyond the usual objections, leading, fi nally, to its total rejection.
The black-white binary is rooted in a peculiar conception of black-white American nationalism and
xenophobia that is ultimately hostile to American multiculturalism. Such a view is fundamentally illiberal, and
the people of the United States should not capitulate to its desire that the false image of America as
black and white not be upset.
2ac – Black/White Binary Turn – Model Minority
The deployment of the 1nc reifies the black white binary – even if the Sapphire is a
heuristic for understanding oppression, the presentation of the 1nc is divisive. If it is a
heuristic, the perm is best.
Hutchinson 4 (Darren Lenard, JD from Yale, BA in Political Science and Economics from the University
of Pennsylvania, “Critical Race Histories: In and Out”,
http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1102&context=aulr&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar_url%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dhttp%3A%2
F%2Fdigitalcommons.wcl.american.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1102%2526conte
xt%253Daulr%26sa%3DX%26scisig%3DAAGBfm2VQ7OWExXQKB8eDDBDqMjVpxseg%26oi%3Dscholarr#search=%22http%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.wcl.american.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewc
ontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1102%26context%3Daulr%22)
A third area of critical race innovation involves multiracial politics. Internal critics have argued that racial discourse in the United States fixates
upon black/white racial issues, thereby marginalizing Latino, Native American, and Asian American experiences.95 Empirically, this observation
is indisputable. Race theorists lack a full understanding of the breadth of racial injustice. The inclusion of the
experiences of Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans in racial discourse can improve CRT in several ways. First, a multiracial discourse
permits a full accounting of the problem of racial inequality and allows for the construction of adequate remedies for racial subordination.96
Although all people of color suffer racism, often in similar ways, racial
hierarchies impact communities of color in diverse
ways. A narrow focus on black/white subjugation severely limits the reach of antiracist remedies. The
black/white paradigm also prevents persons of color from engaging in coalition politics.97 By treating
racism as a problem that affects blacks primarily (or exclusively), racial discourse in the United States
divides persons of color who could align to create formidable political forces in the battle for racial
justice. Binary racial discourse also causes persons of color to compete for the attention of whites, as
marginalized racial groups treat racial justice as a zero-sum game.98 Instead of recognizing the
pervasiveness and complexity of racial injuries, binary racial discourse leads to the tyranny of oppression
ranking and to competing demands for centrality in a marginalized space of racial victimization. Recently,
Critical Race Theorists, responding to the multiracial critics, have attempted to contextualize binary racial discourse. Devon Carbado, for
example, recognizes the existence of the so-called black/white paradigm but pushes its critics to consider that this paradigm privileges whites
and subordinates blacks.99 Because blacks and whites are situated differently with respect to the black/white paradigm, their investment in
binary racial discourse likely serves diverging interests.100 If whites created the paradigm, then directing multiracial critiques toward black
scholars might be misguided. Furthermore, several scholars, including those who reject binary racial politics, have documented the unique
experiences of blacks in the construction of racism in the United States.101 “Black exceptionalism”102 might provide a historical and
sociological explanation for the predominance of black/white racial discourse. Also, resistance to multiracial discourse among blacks might exist
because non-black persons of color often benefit from white supremacy. That is, non-black persons of color sometimes align themselves
ideologically and culturally with whites to elevate their status in a racially hierarchical society.103 The embrace of racial hierarchy among
people of color and white-supremacist privileging (even if shifting and extremely limited) of non-black communities of color impede the
willingness of blacks to engage in multiracial discourse. Furthermore, black experiences are relevant to the experiences of other persons of
color for two reasons. First, anti-black racism provides an institutional and historical framework for the subordination of non-black persons of
color.104 Much of the racial hierarchy in the United States was concretized during slavery—though not exclusively.105 The formation of a rigid
racial caste structure in the black/white context legitimizes racist practices against all persons of color.106 Second, persons of color do not exist
in mutually exclusive groups. Latino communities, for example, have large populations of persons of African descent; thus, it is difficult to
bifurcate Latino and black experiences.107 Abolishing the black/white paradigm, therefore, might preclude analysis of the unique experiences
facing black Latinos. Ultimately, however, the
exclusive deployment of a binary black/white paradigm artificially
narrows racial discourse and harms racial justice efforts. In order to construct adequate antiracist
theories and to develop effective remedies for racial injustice, Critical Race Theorists must excavate the
multidimensional harms that racial injustice causes, including harms that are racial but not endured by
blacks. Furthermore, progressive racial politics can only survive with broad political support. The most
likely support for progressive racial change comes from persons of color. Yet, the deep divisions that
result from binary racial politics hinders the formation of helpful antiracist alliances. Finally, a multiracial
discourse may help blacks demonstrate the pervasiveness of racial inequality. Whites tend to view racism as a relic
of prior generations, and they often respond to blacks’ claims of ongoing racial injustice with suspicion.108 Moreover, in a whitesupremacist culture, binary racial discourse obscures the experiences of discrimination experienced by
Latinos and Asian Americans.109 As a result, whites argue that blacks should emulate “model
minorities,” usually Asian Americans, who either do not suffer from racism or do not believe that racism
injures them enough to oppose it on a political level.110 Binary racial discourse therefore allows whites
to discredit blacks’ claims of racism by offering Asian Americans as proof that the United States has
eradicated racial injustice, or that blacks can easily overcome what “little” racism still exists. Multiracial
discourse, however, offers a powerful rebuttal to this negative and deceitful discourse. By portraying the
complexity of racial inequality, Critical Race Theorists can counter a white-supremacist narrative that
disparages blacks’ assertions of racial injustice by deploying model minority constructs.111
2ac – Black/White Binary Turn – Islamophobia
The K doesn’t solve – focus on the black-white binary papers over how Arabs and
Muslims are not only looked at as black BUT also foreign – the world of the alt in no
way guarantees a world without Islamophobia.
Wing, University of Iowa law professor, 2003
[Adrien Katherine, 63 La. L. Rev. 717, “Civil Rights in the Post 911 World: Critical Race Praxis,
Coalition Building, and the War on Terrorism” Lexis]
As we await the decisions in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, n1 this symposium
raises a timely and important query: is civil rights law dead? This article answers that query by asserting
that there is a need for a thorough reconceptualization in the 21st century. Historically, civil rights in the
United States has been synonymous with the struggle of African Americans to attain racial equality with
white Americans. n2 The battles of other ethnic minorities, such as Latinos, Asians and Native
Americans, not to mention the struggles of other victims of discrimination such as women, gays, the
disabled or the aged, have often received secondary attention. n3 Some scholars and activists would assert
that, given the unique history of Blacks as slaves [*718] in this country, the continuation of the so-called
black-white binary or emphasis is still justified. n4¶ In my view, we must expand our civil rights efforts
beyond all the above mentioned groups to include those that do not easily fit into historic racial
categories: specifically Arabs and Muslims, who have faced especially increased discrimination since
September 11, 2001. n5 That day clearly changed the United States, if not the world, in very profound
ways. n6 Since then, the War on Terrorism has taken precedence in both U.S. foreign and domestic
policy. In late 2001, the foreign policy aspect manifested itself as a literal war in Afghanistan that
overthrew the globally despised Taliban regime. n7 Shortly after the symposium for which this paper was
composed took place, the U.S. launched a war against Iraq to overthrow its long term leader Saddam
Hussein and destroy any weapons of mass destruction. n8 On the domestic front, these wars have had
profound effects on the civil liberties of both noncitizens and citizens, particularly Arabs, Muslims, and
those who resemble them. n9¶ Part II of this article details how the civil rights of Arabs and Muslims have
been restricted both before and after September 11, 2001. n10 Using a Critical Race Theory (CRT) n11
analysis, we shall see how these groups have been socially constructed as "Black," with the negative legal
connotations historically attributed to that designation. For example, racial profiling, which originated as
a term synonymous with Blacks and police traffic stops, n12 now equally applies to both Arabs and
Muslims in many contexts.¶ [*719] ¶ Part III draws upon CRT for answers for how to solidify a new, more
inclusive civil rights movement. n13 Critical Race Praxis, combining theory and practice, will be detailed
as a means to create solutions to the civil rights dilemmas facing all groups, including Arabs and
Muslims. Part IV suggests a specific form of praxis, coalition building, as a problematic but appropriate
means for the new and old components of the civil rights movement to intersect and perhaps join forces
from time to time. n14 Part V concludes with specific proposals for coalitions that may help alleviate the
bleak situation currently facing Arabs and Muslims. n15
This epistemological exclusion does more than just excluding cultural forms of
racism from our discussion, it actively replicates them—the view of American
racism as a black/white issue helped solidify xenophobic violence against Arab
bodies in the war on terror as foreign issues outside the American schema
Sunstrom, University of San Francisco philosophy professor, 2008
[Ronald, “The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice” http://www.usfca.edu/facstaff/rrsundstrom/selected-articles/black-white-binary.pdf, pp. 77-9]
To underline this fi nal point, the
critiques of the binary offered by legal scholars, such as Juan Perea and Richard Delgado,
underscore the dangers that Alcoff’s critique exposes.34 Delgado in particular distinguishes three ways that the binary
negatively affects Latinos and Asian Americans. First, it has framed the legal conception of equal
protection in terms of the struggle for equal black citizenship. That frame aids in discrimination
against nonwhite immigrants and undermines the equal protection of Latino/a and Asian American
citizens. Second, the binary plays into contractarian justifications for the national self-determination of
citizenship and thus cements past race-based (and racist) definitions of citizenship . Third, the binary
places Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans “ out of sight” and thus out of the discourse of
racial justice . The consequence of the normative force of the binary is that African Americans, according to Delgado, are trained to pursue,
and are recognized as the primary legitimate recipients of, benefi ts and protections that fl ow from antidiscrimination laws. ¶ The blackwhite binary, as a “template” or master key, demarcates who is a proper subject of our thoughts about
race, racism, and civil rights. Consequently, some individuals and groups, and their respective interests, are
left out of public deliberations of race and social justice, and are typifi ed as, quite literally, foreign
issues. Legal scholar Juan Perea put it this way: ¶ If Latinos/as and Asian Americans are presumed to be White by
both White and Black writers . . . then our claims to justice will not be heard or acknowledged. Our
claims can be ignored by Whites, since we are not Black and therefore are not subject to real racism. And
our claims can be ignored by Blacks, since we are presumed to be, not Black, but becoming White, and therefore not subject to real racism.
Latinos/as do not fi t the boxes supplied by the paradigm.35 ¶ In
the wake of the reaction of the United States to the
terrorist strikes against the World Trade Center towers, the black-white binary’s role as principle of
exclusion in the service of American nationalism took on an ugly clarity .36 It assuaged American
worries about racism as it targeted Arabs, Middle Easterners, and Muslims in the war against Al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan, the war against Iraq, and the everlasting war on terror.37 Whatever the role of racism in the rounding up,
questioning, detention, and expulsion of Arabs, Muslims, and people from the Middle East, the United
States was comforted by the “United We Stand” rhetoric, and a rainbow coalition of Americans
helped author and justify the United States’ reactions to terrorism . Thus practices such as the racial
profi ling of Arabs, Muslims, and those who look like them, to our eyes, met with 60 percent approval
ratings, while before the war 80 percent of Americans disapproved of racial profi ling, a sentiment that George
Bush and even John Ashcroft supported before the war. ¶ It is of great consequence that this exclusion is a result of a
particular black-white normative vision of the American nation as being properly and primarily
black and white . The implication is that the black-white binary is a nativist idea that aids the continued
exclusion of Latinos, Asian Americans, and other nonwhite immigrant groups, such as Arabs and
Muslims, from full citizenship and equal protection .38
EXTN – Black/White Binary Turn
The 1NC and Block’s argument will almost entire rely on a historical narrative of
slavery—“the founding of America is tied to antiblackness and means it comes
first”—even it’s factually accurate, it is not a defense of their politics—their historic
analysis doesn’t respond to the complexities of Modern America which undermines
effective racial politics and specifically marginalizes indigenous oppression
Sunstrom, University of San Francisco philosophy professor, 2008
[Ronald, “The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice” http://www.usfca.edu/facstaff/rrsundstrom/selected-articles/black-white-binary.pdf, pp. 81-2]
The sixth form of the binary is justifi ed for some because of the historical precedence of the African
American experience, as well as the relative severity of the confl ict between African Americans and
whites. For others, such as Mary Frances Berry, Andrew Hacker, and Toni Morrison, the sixth form has additional justifi cation
because, as Toni Morrison put it, assimilation and integration into the United States happen upon the “backs of
blacks.” My objection to the fourth form of the binary (that it names prescriptive patterns of racial organization) undermines the latter claim,
and without it the fi rst claim is not as signifi cant. Mainstream African American demands for justice deserve
satisfaction, and those claims do not need the black-white binary as justifi cation . Worse, the blackwhite binary in the contemporary multiethnic United States, with the complexities of its history in which
the confl ations of the black-white binary are invalid, undermines the realization of social justice for all
because it, as Alcoff argued, “ seriously undermines the possibility of achieving coalitions .”42 Therefore, public
deliberations that commence by professions of the black-white binary are anti-political and either imperil or end
public communication on race and social justice. ¶ Additionally, the basic historical claim of the sixth form
of the binary is suspicious when Native American claims are considered. Native Americans possess
their own history as a group defi ned as a national other and enemy of the United States. The history of Native
Americans, since 1492, has been interwoven with that of the descendents of Africans brought to the Americas by
European powers, but their history is distinct in terms of geography, language, culture, international political treaties, and the formation
of sovereign nations within North and South America and the Caribbean. The claims of the black-white binary are so
totalizing that it would erase the importance of this history by assimilating Native Americans in the
black-white system. This is the reason Native Americans scholars, such as Vine Deloria and David Wilkins, need to
remind Americans that Native Americans are members of “sovereign nations” and are not minorities; or, in
the words of Will Kymlicka, indigenous Americans are “national minorities” rather than a “polyethnic” group.43 The black-white binary
does violence to that distinction by erasing Native Americans’ claims of precedence and envisioning a
state of national racial harmony that is at odds with Native American sovereignty.
You make other minorities invisible which makes anti-blackness inevitable.
Espinoza, Boston College law professor, Harris, University of California Berkeley
law professor, 1997
[Leslie and Angela, 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1585, “AFTERWORD: Embracing the Tar-Baby - LatCrit Theory
and the Sticky Mess of Race” Lexis]
The argument for black exceptionalism is usually not articulated in mixed company in the interests of
interracial solidarity. I have set out the argument, not because I believe it to be right, but because I believe
that Perea's direct challenge to the black-white paradigm and the power and promise of LatCrit theory
more generally forces it into the open. The claim of black exceptionalism presents both an intellectual and
a political challenge to LatCrit theory. As an intellectual claim, black exceptionalism answers Perea's
criticism of the black-white paradigm by responding that the paradigm, though wrongly making "other
nonwhites" invisible, rightly places black people at the center of any analysis of American culture or
American white supremacy. In its strongest form, black exceptionalism argues that what "white" people
have done to "black" people is at the heart of the story of America; indeed, the story of "race" itself is the
story of the construction of blackness and whiteness. In this story, Indians, Asian Americans, and
Latino/as do exist. But their roles are subsidiary to, rather than undermining, the fundamental binary
national drama. As a political claim, black exceptionalism exposes the deep mistrust and tension among
American ethnic groups racialized as "nonwhite."
Even after having issued my disclaimers, I feel queasy writing these words. Not only does black
exceptionalism present a serious threat of [*1604] political division; the fact that I write about it in a
symposium on LatCrit theory is politically suspect. Trina Grillo and Stephanie Wildman have written
perceptively about the ways in which people who are members of a dominant group expect always to be
given center stage, and will attempt to take back the center if they are momentarily denied it. n60 In these
circumstances, I am a member of the dominant group. Until very recently, African Americans have
numerically dominated critical race theory. To turn the subject back to African Americans at the end of a
symposium devoted to Latino/as is a perfect example of taking back the center.
Nevertheless, I think I can justify this politically suspicious move, at least to myself. First, the claim of
black exceptionalism represents something larger than the narrow interests of African Americans: it is an
example of the conflicts that emerge from what Eric Yamamoto calls "differential racialization" and
"differential disempowerment." n61 LatCrit theory is emerging at a time when the United States is rapidly
becoming more multiracial than ever before. As the preceding examples of conflict among "people of
color" suggest, contemporary race theory must come to terms with tensions among "nonwhite" groups as
well as the ever-present tension with "whites." Indeed, LatCrit theory's attack on the black/white
paradigm itself engages the problem of developing a multidimensional race theory. On its own terms,
then, LatCrit theory demands an understanding of white supremacy that goes beyond the binary of
oppressed/oppressor. [*1605]
Black/white binary papers over different ways of experiencing oppression – it is not
useful for countering whiteness.
Espinoza, Boston College law professor, Harris, University of California Berkeley
law professor, 1997
[Leslie and Angela, 85 Calif. L. Rev. 1585, “AFTERWORD: Embracing the Tar-Baby - LatCrit Theory
and the Sticky Mess of Race” Lexis]
What, then, of the claim to black exceptionalism? Is the LatCrit attack on the black/white paradigm, as
Leslie suggests, a veiled attack on African Americans? Certainly one scenario of the decades to come is a
struggle for intellectual as well as political and economic power between African Americans and Latinos,
the struggle that Jack Miles names "blacks against browns." n174¶ The message of black exceptionalism is
that this struggle can have only one outcome. Consider a model of American race relations in which
"whiteness" is at the top and "blackness" at the bottom. Ethnic groups lacking a stable identification with
either category have a choice: [*1637] they may struggle to be accepted as white; they may proclaim
themselves "black"; or they may struggle to be accepted as neither. n175 Of course, both color categories
are metaphysical rather than biological: achieving whiteness may be accomplished through cultural
assimilation rather than plastic surgery, and people visually identified as "black" may nevertheless strive
to distance themselves from niggers [the n word]. The prize here is not physical conformity but social
status.¶ The claim of black exceptionalism reveals the fear that nonwhite, nonblack people will choose not
to challenge the hierarchy that places white over black but to accomodate it. Haney Lopez describes the
lure of "ethnicity" for Latino/as, who, in rejecting a racial designation for themselves, are implicitly
rejecting blackness, just as in earlier generations Latino/as protected their status as "white." Similarly,
many African Americans suspect that Asian Americans will find the "model minority" myth a convenient
way to achieve social, economic, and political power: a way to distance themselves from, indeed contrast
themselves to, black people. Even if this is not the conscious intent of nonwhite, nonblack people, the
power of the opposition between white and black may be such that any attempt to distinguish oneself
from black people simply reinforces the degraded status of blackness. n176 Thus, whether Latino/as and
Asian Americans seek to profit from the black-white paradigm by struggling to be accepted as white or
simply by struggling to be accepted as not black, the result for African Americans is the same: once again,
as with the Irish and other formerly "not yet white" ethnic groups, African Americans serve as the
stepstool that other groups stand on as they advance in achieving social power and status.¶ What this
model leaves out, however, is the complexity that LatCrit theory can bring to the analysis of blackness
itself. Take, for example, LatCrit's shift in focus from viewing "race" as an immutable trait to viewing it
as a conflation of biology, culture, and nation. At first glance, this shift may appear to have little
relevance for African Americans. After all, white supremacy against African Americans has been based
for the most part on color discrimination, supplemented by notions of "blood," rather than on cultural or
national origin discrimination. Moreover, since the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, African
[*1638] Americans have been citizens, not subject to the sovereign exclusionary power of the United
States. n177 But just as it would be a mistake for Latino/as to accept the current bifurcation of
discrimination into that based on "immutable" traits versus that based on "mutable" ones - and the
attendant bifurcation of racialism into "race" and "ethnicity" - it would be a mistake for African
Americans as well. The move beyond color begins to acknowledge the cultural bases of AfricanAmerican identity in other, more subtle ways. Not all African Americans look "black" or experience color
discrimination. n178 Not all black people in the United States are African Americans; there are important,
if often unacknowledged, divisions between African and Caribbean immigrants and native-born African
Americans. Many African Americans feel the pressure to assimilate to white culture, a pressure that
leaves them struggling to "pass" socially if not physically. n179 The project of black liberation is left
incomplete if employers are prevented from refusing to hire or promote African Americans but are free to
force them to look and act as "white" as possible. n180¶ Finally, the Supreme Court's increasingly
vehement denial that race is anything other than skin color threatens the political strength of AfricanAmerican communities. n181 As Alex Johnson has noted, for African Americans, blackness is not simply
an accident of birth but the [*1639] focus of an ethnicity - a distinct way of being in the world. n182 To
the extent that white supremacy maintains itself by attacking the cultural practices that sustain blackness
as an ethnicity, African Americans and Latino/as have a shared interest in questioning the bright line
between mutable and immutable traits, biology and culture.¶ African Americans also have an interest in
recognizing a larger geopolitical context for white supremacy. For instance, to the extent that African
Americans are concerned about Africa and its relations with the West, it is necessary to understand that
white supremacy is not solely a domestic phenomenon, but is inextricable from the colonial practices that
gave it birth. n183 Finally, the concept of nativist racism shines a different sort of light on the claim of
black exceptionalism. Focusing on the unique oppression of blacks obscures both the global and the local
complexities of white supremacy. From a global perspective, the perpetuation of nativist racism puts
American whites and blacks into collusion against foreign, nonwhite Others. From a local perspective, the
exclusive focus on black oppression obscures the fact that African Americans are not always the niggers
[n word]. In some areas in the Southwest where few black people live, it is Mexicans, or Indians, who are
treated as niggers[the n word].Black exceptionalism takes the part for the whole, and in so doing not only
damages the material interests of African Americans but also enlists them in the project of preserving
white supremacy.¶ Consider, then, a different model of United States race relations: a box with the
mystical Other (perhaps a nigger [n word]; perhaps a threatening foreigner) at the bottom and perfectly
transparent, cultureless whiteness at the top. African Americans still have a unique liability in their
historic association with the nigger [n word], but each ethnic group has ways and means, some more
powerful than others, of strengthening its position within the box. People who speak unaccented Standard
English, people with pale skins, round eyes, and straight hair, and people who are citizens all have the
opportunity to profit by distancing themselves from the Other. Some groups have the opportunity to
access white privilege through language, others through color, still others through familiarity with the
[*1640] dominant culture. This model is slightly more complex than the previous one, in that it does not
suggest that blacks and no others are locked into the bottom position. Which group wins the competition
for power and status depends in part on local conditions.
***Privilege K Answers***
AT: Privilege – Reductive
Privilege theory is reductive and elitist – it collapses into idealism and recreates
liberalism.
Choonara and Prasad, International Socialism Journal, 2014
[Esme and Yuri, “What’s wrong with privilege theory?” http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=971]
Most privilege theorists would also agree that the “privileged” should not be called on to give up their
advantages—though primarily because they believe that privilege is something that cannot be got rid of,
not because of a need for wider solidarity. As Michael Kimmel puts it, “One can no more renounce
privilege than one can stop breathing”.40 This is a very pessimistic theory—just as someone cannot
renounce their privilege, they cannot avoid being complicit in oppressing others. They can only aspire to
greater awareness of their “privilege” and attempt to curb or legislate against the worst expressions of it.
Ironically the idea that we can’t escape our “privileges” seems to echo the Marxist notion that “being
determines consciousness”—someone’s ideas and behaviours flow directly from their position of
“privilege” or “penalty”. But this highly reductive and deterministic view of how oppressive ideas are
formed is, as we have seen, a long way from Marxism. First, someone’s “being” in this sense cannot just
be reduced to a sum of what oppressions they do or don’t suffer. Second, there is a range of ideas across
society, including among the oppressed—and there is no direct correlation between ideas and the level of
oppression an individual faces. People’s ideas are not fixed—otherwise why bother with argument,
political organisation and so on? Finally people are not just passive objects—we constantly act on and
interact with the world around us. In particular the antagonism at the heart of capitalism compels people
to fight back, creating a situation in which human agency changes not just the world around them, but
also the people themselves. Privilege theory also expresses a form of elitism—we are all seen to be
inescapably bound to innate bias and oppressive ideas except the theorists themselves who have been able
to reach a degree of enlightened self-awareness. Those who see us all as prisoners of our unearned
advantages can only ever expect to persuade a minority to acknowledge their privileges. In this way,
despite superficially appearing to be rooted in material reality, privilege theory actually collapses into
idealism—seeing ideas as the crucial factor. That is why for privilege theory the key focus is education
and awareness. This approach has a lot in common with liberalism—a focus on educating individuals and
a moral imperative to strive for justice, without believing that inequality can be completely overcome
(presumably without wiping out men or white people or heterosexuals at least).
AT: Privilege – Structures Key
Pointing out privilege isn’t useful – it distracts from structures that perpetuate
privilege.
Smith, University of California Riverside cultural studies professor, 12-13-13
[Andrea, “The Problem with Privilege” http://andrea366.wordpress.com/author/andrea366/]
In my experience working with a multitude of anti-racist organizing projects over the years, I frequently
found myself participating in various workshops in which participants were asked to reflect on their
gender/race/sexuality/class/etc. privilege. These workshops had a bit of a self-help orientation to them: “I
am so and so, and I have x privilege.” It was never quite clear what the point of these confessions were. It
was not as if other participants did not know the confessor in question had her/his proclaimed privilege. It
did not appear that these individual confessions actually led to any political projects to dismantle the
structures of domination that enabled their privilege. Rather, the confessions became the political project
themselves. The benefits of these confessions seemed to be ephemeral. For the instant the confession took
place, those who do not have that privilege in daily life would have a temporary position of power as the
hearer of the confession who could grant absolution and forgiveness. The sayer of the confession could
then be granted temporary forgiveness for her/his abuses of power and relief from
white/male/heterosexual/etc guilt. Because of the perceived benefits of this ritual, there was generally
little critique of the fact that in the end, it primarily served to reinstantiate the structures of domination it
was supposed to resist. One of the reasons there was little critique of this practice is that it bestowed
cultural capital to those who seemed to be the “most oppressed.” Those who had little privilege did not
have to confess and were in the position to be the judge of those who did have privilege. Consequently,
people aspired to be oppressed. Inevitably, those with more privilege would develop new heretofore
unknown forms of oppression from which they suffered. “I may be white, but my best friend was a person
of color, which caused me to be oppressed when we played together.” Consequently, the goal became not
to actually end oppression but to be as oppressed as possible. These rituals often substituted confession
for political movement-building. And despite the cultural capital that was, at least temporarily, bestowed
to those who seemed to be the most oppressed, these rituals ultimately reinstantiated the white majority
subject as the subject capable of self-reflexivity and the colonized/racialized subject as the occasion for
self-reflexivity.¶ These rituals around self-reflexivity in the academy and in activist circles are not without
merit. They are informed by key insights into how the logics of domination that structure the world also
constitute who we are as subjects. Political projects of transformation necessarily involve a fundamental
reconstitution of ourselves as well. However, for this process to work, individual transformation must
occur concurrently with social and political transformation. That is, the undoing of privilege occurs not by
individuals confessing their privileges or trying to think themselves into a new subject position, but
through the creation of collective structures that dismantle the systems that enable these privileges. The
activist genealogies that produced this response to racism and settler colonialism were not initially
focused on racism as a problem of individual prejudice. Rather, the purpose was for individuals to
recognize how they were shaped by structural forms of oppression. However, the response to structural
racism became an individual one – individual confession at the expense of collective action. Thus the
question becomes, how would one collectivize individual transformation? Many organizing projects
attempt and have attempted to do precisely this, such Sisters in Action for Power, Sista II Sista, Incite!
Women of Color Against Violence, and Communities Against Rape and Abuse, among many others.
Rather than focus simply on one’s individual privilege, they address privilege on an organizational level.
For instance, they might assess – is everyone who is invited to speak a college graduate? Are certain
peoples always in the limelight? Based on this assessment, they develop structures to address how
privilege is exercised collectively. For instance, anytime a person with a college degree is invited to
speak, they bring with them a co-speaker who does not have that education level. They might develop
mentoring and skills-sharing programs within the group. To quote one of my activist mentors, Judy
Vaughn, “You don’t think your way into a different way of acting; you act your way into a different way
of thinking.” Essentially, the current social structure conditions us to exercise what privileges we may
have. If we want to undermine those privileges, we must change the structures within which we live so
that we become different peoples in the process.¶ This essay will explore the structuring logics of the
politics of privilege. In particular, the logics of privilege rest on an individualized self that relies on the
raw material of other beings to constitute itself. Although the confessing of privilege is understood to be
an anti-racist practice, it is ultimately a project premised on white supremacy. Thus, organizing and
intellectual projects that are questioning these politics of privilege are shifting the question from what
privileges does a particular subject have to what is the nature of the subject that claims to have privilege
in the first place.
Pointing out privilege becomes an end in itself – it never challenges the structures
that produce that privilege.
Choonara and Prasad, International Socialism Journal, 2014
[Esme and Yuri, “What’s wrong with privilege theory?” http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=971]
In many ways privilege theory reflects much older narratives about who benefits from oppression—
arguments for example that men benefit from women’s oppression and that all white people gain from
racism. Those who allegedly hold privilege are seen to benefit automatically from, and to be complicit in,
the oppression of others. Privilege theorist and diversity consultant Frances Kendall argues, for example:
“Any of us who has race privilege, which all white people do, and therefore the power to put our
prejudices into law, is racist by definition, because we benefit from a racist system”.5 This is a very
pessimistic and disarming theory—seeing individuals as unable to escape their prejudices or their role in
the oppression of others. The best that can be hoped for in such circumstances is for increased selfawareness and mitigation of the worst forms of individually oppressive behaviour in order to become
suitable allies of those facing oppression, though to what end is generally not clear. Once you accept a
framework of understanding inequalities in society as forms of privilege, the concept itself can become
very imprecise. So, while many privilege theorists focus on clear questions of oppression such as racism,
gender, sexuality or disability, some expand the concept to practically all social phenomena. The
Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois, for example, lists many forms of privilege that activists
should check including education privilege, body size privilege, “life on the outside” privilege (the
“privilege” of not being in prison) and “passing privilege…the privilege to be able to ‘pass’ as a more
privileged group, such as a light skinned person of colour passing as white”.6 This approach confuses
symptoms with problems. Inequalities and prejudices around body size are not factors that exist
independently; they are a direct consequence of sexism and concepts of gender. Similarly the vast
inequalities in the likelihood of being in prison or of being able to access education are the consequence
of racism and social inequality. Reeling off a list of “privileges” in this way simply states the existence of
an unequal society—it does not help us to understand it or to challenge it. In fact the recognition of
inequalities becomes an end in itself.
Privilege theory looks at challenging individuals – this trades off with institutional
focus which takes out solvency.
Choonara and Prasad, International Socialism Journal, 2014
[Esme and Yuri, “What’s wrong with privilege theory?” http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=971]
Many of the core ideas of privilege theory reflect—directly or indirectly—the ideas of the post-Marxists that gave such a boost
to identity politics. Post-Marxists rejected classical Marxism’s concerns with class and class struggle as the central driving force of history
and the working class as the agent of socialist change. Influential writers such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe explicitly argued for the left
to reject Marxist notions of class as reductionist, conjuring a highly distorted version of Marxism in order to bolster their argument.11 They saw
the rise of social movements based on identity as the foundation for a new radical politics that rejected attempts to explain “totality” in favour of
“partial discourses” and a focus on subjectivity. Thus for Laclau and Mouffe society is divided by “various subject positions” and “diverse
antagonisms and points of rupture” that “cannot be led back to a point from which they could all be embraced and explained by a single
discourse”.12 In other words, they were arguing that it is wrong and futile to attempt to understand how the variety of oppressions fit together
into a wider picture of how society works. If Laclau and Mouffe were the theoretical backbone of the identity politics of the 1980s, it is another
post-Marxist, the French theorist Michel Foucault, whose ideas have arguably
had the most lasting influence on debates
around power and oppression. Foucault is in many ways a more complex and contradictory theorist than Laclau or Mouffe. His
writings on the social construction of sexuality, for example, are thought provoking and inform much of current theory around LGBT
oppression.13 However, he shares with Laclau and Mouffe a rejection of attempts to see society as a totality. Foucault’s
distinctive concept of power is hugely influential on theorists and activists dealing with questions of oppression. His central argument is that
“power
is everywhere”—it is omnipresent. Alex Callinicos summarises Foucault’s theory thus: Rather than being unitary power is
a multiplicity of relations infiltrating the whole of the social body. Consequently no causal priority can be assigned as it is by
Marxism, to the economic base. Moreover, power is productive: it does not operate by repressing individuals…but rather by constituting them…
Finally, power necessarily evokes resistance, albeit as fragmentary and decentralised as the power-relations it contests.14 So what does this
mean? It means that power is not something that some people have and some people don’t have. According to
Foucault, it is not concentrated in the hands of the capitalist class or the state as the classical Marxist tradition would have it, but is something that
is distributed throughout society and exists therefore in all social and interpersonal relationships. Clearly, this has implications for how to
understand and to challenge injustice and inequality. Foucault explicitly argues that power does not reside in the ruling class or the state: “Neither
the caste which governs, nor the groups which control the state apparatus, nor those who make the most important economic decisions direct the
entire network of power that functions in a society.” He argues that there must be a “multiplicity of points of resistance” and therefore “there is no
single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances,
each of them a special case…by definition, they can only exist in the strategic field of power relations”.15 This
outlook informs the
notion running throughout privilege theory that every individual is inescapably part of a multiplicity of
oppressive relationships—what Patricia Hill Collins calls a “matrix of domination”. Collins is best known for her
writings on intersectionality and black feminism, concepts that we will return to later. While she is at times critical of postmodernist concepts of
oppression, her theory of power also embraces notions of individual privilege and interpersonal domination arguing that “each one of us derives
varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression that frame our lives”.16 Anyone
encountering or
reading material on privilege theory will be struck by the overwhelming focus on the individual—the
many confessionals of the “privileged” describing how they came to terms with their privileges17 or the
exhorting of others to check theirs. Yet despite the focus on individual change, most privilege theorists
acknowledge that there are wider and structural inequalities behind the privileges that individuals are
alleged to have bestowed upon them. Michael Kimmel, for example, argues that individual solutions are not
enough: “Inequality is structural and systematic as well as individual and attitudinal. Eliminating
inequalities involves more than changing everyone’s attitudes”.18
Challenging privilege fails micro and macro politically.
Choonara and Prasad, International Socialism Journal, 2014
[Esme and Yuri, “What’s wrong with privilege theory?” http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=971]
Much of the privilege theory literature focuses not just on challenging others, but on challenging oneself.
Even an author with such a broad historical scope as Collins argues that “change starts with self, and
relationships that we have with those around us must always be the primary site for social change”.41
There is, of course, nothing wrong with individuals being self-critical about their attitudes and
interactions with others. And it is right to challenge all manifestations of oppressive behaviour, language
and attitudes. But the struggle against huge systemic divisions such as racism, sexism and homophobia
cannot rely on the individual self-reflection of a number of progressive individuals. These arguments are
not new. Writing more than 20 years ago, Ambalavaner Sivanandan pointed to the dangers of an approach
that focused primarily on the personal and interpersonal: “By personalising power, ‘the personal is
political’ personalises the enemy: the enemy of the black is white as the enemy of the woman is the man.
And all whites are racist like all men are sexist”.42 Privilege theory tends to reduce political argument to
moral appeal and personal feelings, in which who is saying something often becomes more important than
what they are saying. This is one reason that the notion of privilege is potentially corrosive to debate and
actually risks letting oppressive behaviour off the hook. If someone speaks or behaves in a racist or sexist
way, it is surely better, and more educative for all concerned, to challenge them by explaining that what
they do or say is racist or sexist, rather than attributing it to an automatic expression of their “privileged”
gender, race, sexuality and so on.
Bringing privilege into conflict against structural change is the best way to challenge
both interpersonal and structural oppression.
Choonara and Prasad, International Socialism Journal, 2014
[Esme and Yuri, “What’s wrong with privilege theory?” http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=971]
Even when supporters of privilege theory move away from the relentless focus on individuals and involve
themselves in wider campaigns they insist that the “privileged” can play at most a supporting role to the
oppressed. Frances Kendall, for example, argues that the point of checking our privileges is to become
“an ally”, able to build “authentic relationships” with those who do not share our privileges.43 The focus
on trying to change ideas in ourselves and others before a meaningful challenge to wider structural
inequalities is possible is getting things the wrong way round. Most people who enter into struggle,
whether for better rights at work, to stop a war, against racism, sexism or some other campaign, bring
with them a mixture of contradictory ideas. They may accept some reactionary ideas, and reject others.
It is precisely in the struggle for change that most people learn new insights into how capitalism
functions, and old assumptions and prejudices can be broken down. This is because in battling for change,
people’s direct experiences come into the sharpest conflict with the view of the world propagated by the
institutions of capitalism.