Round What is it that entitles somebody to speak? Some speak, some don’t, and some speak but nobody listens. the structure of debate is calling on me to speak. I’m supposed to respond to this year’s resolved colon, but: what entitles me to speak for the interests of all those affected by US democracy assistance?
According to Linda Alcoff, a professor of philosophy who has described her lifeworld as being invisible to the world of public discourse, the entitlement to speak is not natural. It is the product of certain “rituals of speaking” present in a given situation. the positionality of the speaker and nature of the discursive context predetermine the truth-value of what’s said.
Alcoff 92 [Linda, Prof of Philosophy, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Cultural Critique 20, p.12-3]
A plethora of sources have argued in this …. in the eyes of the same milieu.
Teams have long been telling us that systems of privilege infect the ways we make arguments in debate. Economic, racial, sexual, and other forms of cultural privilege help to produce subterranean biases in debate practice. At its most basic, debaters presuppose the right to speak on behalf of the federal government without ever asking why we get to do that.
teams justify their policy simulations by using rawls argument that “citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes … they would think most reasonable to enact.”: it is the citizen who acts as if; I get to speak because I am a citizen and my speech forms the “social basis of liberal democracy.” It is my nation that validates my speech.
Not everybody possesses this privilege. Nation-state citizenship is no longer a monogamous entity –in the era of “global citizenship,” the voices of the subaltern are excluded from the political community – unable to make calls on international actors… national citizenship can no longer be the viable vehicle for democracy
Armstrong 06 (Chris, Senior Lecturer @ University of Southampton, Global Civil Society and the Question of Global Citizenship, International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University) WC
Politicians, journalists, and academics …. making their voices heard.
Discussions of the Middle East is one arena where effects of power imbalances are shown - Scholarship on the Middle East has been divorced of engagement with colonial modernity…. Contributing to ethnocentric knowledge production – justifying a “feminist civilizing mission” by the West
Moallem 01 [Minoo: “Middle Eastern Studies, Feminism, and Globalization” Signs, Vol. 26, No. 4, Globalization and Gender (Summer, 2001), pp. 1265-1268 JSTOR].
Middle Eastern studies does not …. that create legitimacy for a "feminist civilizing mission."
US neocolonialist visions of “freedom” rely on the concrete experiences of the subaltern… viewing women and men in the region as oppressed, backwards, and in need of saving.
Spivak 99 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, p.254-5]
It is not surprising, therefore, that …. thus occluding the native once again.
There are also other places where we experience the entitlement to speak.
At Concordia, for example, we live in an environment in which our “right” to speak is protected… both by college policy and by policies in the United States. Concordia’s mission statement tells us we must be “responsibly engaged in the world,” and fosters an environment in which our ability to be heard is guaranteed… we are allowed to talk ABOUT Yemen and make calls on Saleh without fear of torture, bullets, or incarceration. We enjoy the privilege of safety.
Attacks have been made on Yemeni Human Rights activists as well as journalists who have tried to speak out against their government’s abuses –Yemen’s National Security Agency is believed to be behind all attacks… The Cairo Institute for Human Rights reports on an attack that occurred in 2009…
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies “Yemen: Human rights organisation attacked” November 26, 2009 accessed: 9/4/11
Attack on the headquarters of …. repression and military solutions to ensure its survival.
In response to attacks made by authorities, Ms. Amal Al-Basha, the leader of the Arab Sisters Forum for Human Rights, conducted an interview in which she demands speech from the international community
“Interview with Amal Basha, Chairperson of the Sisters' Arab Forum for Human Rights (SAF), Yemen: "The international community must not be silent on what it happening in Yemen"” March 9, 2011 accessed:
Are there demands specifically relating to women and their rights?
The biggest slogan everywhere is “…. their right to demonstrate peacefully.
Unfortunately, the US does not listen to those voices excluded from political discourses. In response to President Saleh’s accusations that protests were manufactured by the US, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney commented that Yemenise leaders should focus on political reforms
CNN 11 “Yemeni leader lashes out at U.S. as protests continue” March 1, 2011, accessed: 9/3/11 http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-01/world/yemen.protests_1_president-saleh-zindani-ali-abdullah-saleh?_s=PM:WORLD
Upon rebroadcast, Saleh's …. telling them to stick to their demands.
Additionally, US policy in the region has been marked on a military campaign, to oust terrorists, a campaign to protect US interests… no where is there a focus on democratization
Boucek 2010
[Dr. Christopher, Associate, Middle East Program Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Written Testimony U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs February 3, 2010 YEMEN ON THE BRINK: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/0203_transcript_boucek_testimony.pdf]
It is essential that Washington take a ….. indirectly to improving domestic security.
So if we cannot claim to “know” the other through our acts of representation, then what are we supposed to do?
We’re in a double bind. On the one hand, failure to heed the perspectives of the other will ensure the continuation of structures of oppression, but on the other hand, there is no guarantee that our representations won’t themselves also be in line with imperialist discourse. There is no easy answer. Speaking for others and speaking about them are deeply intertwined. Spivak suggests a strategy of “unlearning our privilege as loss.” We need to learn to occupy the subject position of the other, which can only be accomplished through a historical critique of our own positions as investigating persons.
Spivak 90 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, The Post-Colonial Critic, p.56, 62-3, 121-2]
When I criticized Foucault in …. to irresponsibility, self-congratulation, and fun for some people.
In an attempt to unlearn our privilege and learn to occupy the subject position of the other, we are resolved that the United States federal government should stand in solidarity with The Arab Sisters Forum for Human Rights and its leader, Amal al-Basha
Solidarity is a way of knowing that begins with a critique of current ways of knowing and a recognition of the other as a subject capable of producing knowledge
Santos, Professor of Sociology, 1999 [Boaventura de Sousa, “On Oppositional Postmodernism,” Critical Development Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm, ed. Ronaldo Munck & Denis O’Hearn, p.36-7]
On the contrary, in a …. modern principle of solidarity.
Standard practice would ask us to defend this “as if” it were implemented by that body in Washington DC. Debaters remove the content of what is SAID AWAY from the subject who speaks and the contex it’s spoken in. This reestablishes the privilege of the speaking subject by rendering their positionality transparent and foreclosing an analysis of the speaking situation.
It is not enough to evaluate the content of each team’s claims to decide whose arguments are better reasoned or researched. Nor can we decide based on whose idea would be best in some hypothetical world of fiat. Instead, the criteria for evaluation must be whether the effects of their speech help to reconfigure the rituals of speaking in debate in such a way as to ally it with resistance to oppression
Alcoff 92 [Linda, Prof of Philosophy, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Cultural Critique 20, p.14-5]
Let me return now to the …. assessing the politics of the situation.
Our plan is a counter-hegemonic statement that challenges our own position of privilege as members of the political community of the US. IF debate remains wedded to the false idol of implementation, it will be allied with structures of oppression. To realign debate with possibilities for resistance means changing the meaning of affirmation. Our plan is an acceptance of the truth-value of those perspectives excluded from current democracy assistance discussions.
To be clear: we are not claiming to “get rid of” privilege. That is not possible, especially since we are the ones who have chosen the very terms by which we have called our privilege into question. “Unlearning” is not the same thing as “eliminating.” Unlearning is a critical interrogation that enables us to work through our privilege and being to understand how to challenge it.
