“The USFG” is the government in Washington D.C.Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000 [http://encarta.msn.com]

“The federal government of the U nited S tates is centered in Washington DC .”

Grounding your movement within the law is key to effectuate change and ensure reform. Goldstein 2013 (Lee D. Goldstein, Unbound, Vol. 8: 133, 2012-2013, Legal Left, http://www.legalleft.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Goldstein.pdf)Left lawyers and legal workers should operate in the interstices of all areas of social ¶ life where law affects people. Because of our own special relation to the state, left ¶ lawyers and legal workers most frequently operate on behalf of those who have direct ¶ contact with legal institutions such as courts, government agencies and police. However the “practice of law” in the broadest sense can be located in a context ¶ beyond such direct contact. As discussed within Thesis III supra, most people have ¶ little contact with law. Legitimation is effected through indirect images. Direct ¶ contact with legal apparatuses provides people with their most vivid and important ¶ experiences with law. The more immediate the contact, the less belief in the equality ¶ and rationality of the law. The eroding of the image of law’s “evenhandedness” ¶ brings into play its coercive aspect, which realization may lead to active opposition ¶ and resistance among those dominated by its form. Thus, unmasking the law can ¶ occur before one has direct contact with state legal institutions. ¶ The practice of unmasking in whatever context realizes the contradiction within ¶ law between the illusion of fairness and its reality. This illusion is not only maintained ¶ by images disseminated from without, but by the law itself. To maintain the illusion ¶ of fairness, within the given mode of production people must believe that individual ¶ outcomes of cases result in “just” results. Thus a perceived correspondence emerges ¶ between outcomes and notions of fairness. While recognizing that formal equality is a ¶ mask for class domination and though there exists an enormous disparity between the ¶ norm of equality in the abstract and its particular application, some results must ¶ accord with the law’s unarticulated norm. Therein lies the fundamental contradiction ¶ of the legal system. ¶ The utilization of this fundamental contradiction is highly dependent on the ¶ particular nature of class struggle at a specific moment. As Lenin noted: ¶

Revolutionaries who are unable to combine illegal forms of struggle with every form of ¶ legal struggle are poor revolutionaries indeed. It is not difficult to be a revolutionary ¶ when revolution has already broken out and is at its height. . . It is far more difficult—¶ and of far greater value—to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open , ¶ really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist to be able to champion the ¶ interests of the revolution . . . in non-revolutionary bodies and often enough in ¶ downright reactionary bodies . . . .69

Revolutionary transformation is not an event, not the storming of the Winter ¶ Palace. Rather it is a process. In parliamentary periods of bourgeois liberal ¶ democracy where ideological hegemony prevails over state force as a mechanism for ¶ social control, the contradiction between the illusion and reality of fairness provides a ¶ guide to the concrete

tasks of the left lawyer and legal worker. On the one hand, ¶ outside legal institutions we should strive to de-

legitimate law by pointing out both its ¶ failure to fulfill its ideals as well as the paucity of

those ideals. De-legitimation ¶ encompasses a revelation (both to ourselves and others) of the class, racial and sexual ¶

domination masked by the law. Along with such de-legitimation we should ¶ simultaneously proffer a vision of the less alienated forms of social life. On the other ¶ hand, within legal institutions we must defend and “legitimate” the ideal of liberal ¶ democracy

against more repressive forms of state coercion in order to protect left ¶ political activity.70 While attempting to legitimate those ideals, we must also expand ¶ them within law, push them as far as they can go. Within legal forums, we must seek ¶ to establish those legal ideas whose effect is to guarantee the maximum amount of ¶ freedom to organize, expand and operate for progressive groups and their

members ¶ (see Thesis V infra). ¶ Thus in a defensive posture, law provides a “buffer” or breathing space for ¶ individuals and groups, functions to check future repression, furnishes time to ¶ organize, keeps people out of jail, and neutralizes the class enemy. In the rare case of ¶ a well-publicized “political

trial”71 it can guarantee a forum for the dissemination of left political ideas. In its affirmative face, law as part of an overall political strategy ¶ can give strength to individuals and organizations by providing a measure of ¶ transformation in people’s lives . Even within the legal forum, affirmative litigation ¶ can force one’s opponent to respond to issues as articulated and defined by left and ¶ progressive forces. While changes within “legal doctrine”72 may be related to and ¶ have impact outside legal institutions, legal ideas themselves have little direct influence. ¶ Only in their representation as images of law do they affect the prevailing ¶ mechanisms of ideological hegemony. Further, the outcome of a decision, ¶

independent of the stated reasoning, is also an important influence on the social ¶ world. Legal arguments advanced in distinctly legal forums are primarily made to ¶ obtain a desired result, not to themselves articulate an alternate vision (not as an ¶ ideological device to, in Gramsci’s vocabulary, establish “counter-hegemony.”)73 ¶ It is often suggested that a lawyer or legal worker speaks two different languages; ¶ one inside the courtroom, one outside. I believe it is more accurate to characterize ¶ the lawyer and legal worker’s predicament as speaking both languages at the same ¶ time. I’m sure any legal person has had the experience described by Philadelphia ¶ lawyer Holly McGuigan in her talk about the role of the radical lawyer at a meeting ¶ of the Boston National Lawyers Guild chapter in October, 1980. We get in an ¶ argument with a friend, spouse or lover and at some time are accused of “being an ¶ asshole because you’re trying to cross-examine me and you sound just like a lawyer.” ¶ We immediately realize a distinction between talking and acting like a person ¶ (realspeak) and as a lawyer (lawspeak.) 74 Within legal institutions, with an ¶ understanding of the law’s contradictions and with a view to obtaining favorable ¶ results and “legitimating” the law’s unstated goals, we should also try to efface the ¶ distinction between lawspeak and realspeak. However, we should also be aware that ¶ unless we are engaged in a political trial or are addressing non-legal persons such as ¶ members of a jury, such effacement is directed primarily to legal elites, those with a ¶ special relation to the state.75

And, a limited point of stasis is necessary to provide equitable ground to both sides – this does not exclude their content but does require them to be topicalO’Donnell 2004, Timothy M. O’Donnell, Professor of Communication and UMW Associate Provost for Academic Engagement and Student Success, University of Mary Washington, 2004, “And the Twain Shall Meet: Affirmative Framework Choice and the Future of Debate”, DOC, http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/DRGArtiarticlesIndex.htm

Given that advocates on all sides have dug in their heels, it does not take much to imagine that if the current situation continues to persist, the debate “community” will eventually splinter

along ideological lines with break out groups forming their own organizations designed to

safeguard their own sacrosanct approaches to debate . It has happened before . Yet, while debate has witnessed such crises in the past, the present era of discontent seemingly threatens the very existence of the activity as both a coherent, competitive enterprise and a

rewarding, educational co-curricular activity . The origins of the present crisis have many

contributing causes, including the advent of mutual preference judging, the postmodern, performative, and

activist turns in scholarly circles, the dawn of the information revolution and its attendant technologies, as well as a growing

resource disparity between large and small debate programs. There appears to be no mutually agreeable solution. Simply put, there is little consensus about what ought to be the focus of debate , or even what constitutes good debate. Moreover, there appears to be no agreement about what question the judge ought to be answering at the end of the debate. In the present milieu, these questions and many more are literally up for grabs. The product of this disagreement has been a veritable boon for the negative. We need to look no further than the caselist from the 2004 National Debate Tournament (NDT) to witness the wide variety of strategic tools that the negative now has in its arsenal. In one or more debates at this tournament, the negative team attempted to alter the ground for evaluating the debate by criticizing: the use of problem-solution thinking (or the lack thereof), the will to control present in the affirmative’s opening speech act, the reliance on

and use of the state, the illusory belief in fiat, the affirmative’s relationship to the “other,” the embracing or eschewing of policymaking, the ethics of the affirmative, the rhetoric of the affirmative, the representations of the affirmative, the debate community as a whole, the debate community’s practices, the affirmative’s style of debate, the type of evidence the affirmative used (including an over or under reliance on experts),

the affirmative’s failure to focus on the body, the revolutionary or anti-revolutionary nature of the affirmative, the piecemeal (or lack there of) nature of change advocated by the affirmative, the desires emanating from the

affirmative debaters and/or their opening speech act, the identify formation instantiated by the affirmative, the metaphors inspired by the affirmative, and the very act of voting affirmative. And this is

only a partial list. To make the point another way, it is quite likely that an affirmative team on the 2003-2004

college topic who advocated that the United States should cede political control over reconstruction in Iraq to the United Nations –

certainly one of the most pressing issues of the day – could have made it through whole tournaments, indeed large portions of the whole season, without ever discussing the merits of U.S. policy in Iraq after

the opening affirmative speech. Such a situation seems problematic at best. That the negative’s strategic arsenal

has grown so large that negative teams are tempted to eschew consideration of the important issues of the day

(in the case of Iraq, an issue with geopolitical repercussions that will echo for the rest of our lives) for competitive reasons seems

more than problematic. In fact, it is downright tragic. What is so tragic about all of this is that a debater could go through an entire debate career with very little effort to go beyond meta-argument or arguments about argument (i.e. debate theory). The sad fact is that, more often than not, the outcome of any given debate today hinges less on the substantive issues introduced by the affirmative’s first speech, than it does on the resolution of

these meta-arguments. These so-called “ framework” debates about what the question of the debate ought to be, while somewhat interesting, have little practical application to the circumstances of our times and in my judgment, at least, are less intellectually rewarding than their counterparts. In fact, in a situation where the merits of the public policy issues staked out by the year’s resolution along with the critical issues that those policies raise are no longer the

focus of the debate – because the negative can shift the question – why have a resolution at all? The disastrous implications of this trend in academic debate are appearing at the very moment that the academy is being urged to take seriously the goal of educating citizens. In a world where proponents for any one of the varied questions are equally strident in staking out their views about what the debate ought to be about, agreement

seems to be impossible. To be sure, there is value in each of these views. Public policy is important. The political consequences of policies are important. The language used in constructing policies is important. The presentational aspects of policy are important. The epistemological, ontological, and ethical underpinnings of policies are important. And so on. What are we to do then in situations where advocates on all sides make more or less equally compelling

claims? As an educator, I am interested in having the students that I work with ask and answer all of these questions at one time or another. As a coach, I am interested in having them have

a predictable set of arguments to prepare for. Thus, the question for me is, how can we have a game in which they have such an opportunity? The argument of this essay seeks to chart a partial answer to this

question. It involves staking out a compromise position that recognizes that there is value in a wide variety of perspectives and that all deserve an equal opportunity to be represented in competitive debates. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a framework consists of “a set of standards, beliefs, or assumptions” that govern behavior. When we speak of frameworks in competitive academic debate we are talking about the set of standards, beliefs, or

assumptions that generate the question that the judge ought to answer at the end of the debate. Given that there is no agreement among participants about which standards, beliefs, or assumptions ought to be universally accepted, it seems that we will never be able to arrive at an agreeable normative assumption about what the question ought to be. So the issue before us is how we preserve community while agreeing to disagree about the question in a way that recognizes that there is richness in answering many different questions that would not otherwise exist if we all adhered to a “rule” which stated that there is one and only one question to be answered. More importantly, how do we stop talking past each other so that we can have a genuine conversation about the substantive merits of any one question? The answer , I believe, resides deep in

the rhetorical tradition in the often overlooked notion of stasis. Although the concept can be traced to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, it was

later expanded by Hermagoras whose thinking has come down to us through the Roman rhetoricians Cicero and Quintillian. Stasis is a Greek word meaning to “stand still.” It has generally been considered by argumentation scholars to be the point of clash where two opposing sides meet in argument . Stasis recognizes the fact that interlocutors engaged in a conversation, discussion, or debate need to have some level of expectation regarding what the focus of their encounter ought to be . To

reach stasis, participants need to arrive at a decision about what the issue is prior to the start

of their conversation . Put another way, they need to mutually acknowledge the point about which they disagree. What happens when participants fail to reach agreement about what it is that they are arguing about? They talk past each other with little or no awareness of what the

other is saying . The oft used cliché of two ships passing in the night, where both are in the dark

about what the other is doing and neither stands still long enough to call out to the other, is the

image most commonly used to describe what happens when participants in an argument fail to achieve stasis. In such situations, genuine engagement is not possible because participants have not reached agreement about what is in dispute. For example, when one advocate says that the United States should increase international involvement in the reconstruction of Iraq and their opponent replies that the United States should abandon its policy

of preemptive military engagement, they are talking past each other. When such a situation prevails, it is hard to see how a productive conversation can ensue. I do not mean to suggest that dialogic engagement always unfolds along an ideal plain where participants always can or even ought to agree on a mutual starting point. The reality is that many do not. In fact, refusing to acknowledge an adversary’s starting point is itself a powerful strategic move. However, it must be acknowledged that when such situations arise, and participants cannot agree on the issue about which they disagree, the chances that their exchange will result in a productive outcome are diminished significantly. In an enterprise like academic debate, where the goals of the encounter are cast along both educational and competitive lines, the need to reach accommodation on the starting point is urgent. This is especially the case when time is limited and there is no possibility of extending the clock. The sooner such agreement

is achieved, the better. Stasis helps us understand that we stand to lose a great deal when we refuse a genuine starting point. How can stasis inform the issue before us regarding contemporary debate practice ? Whether we recognize

it or not, it already has. The idea that the affirmative begins the debate by using the resolution as a starting point for their opening speech act is nearly universally accepted by all members of the debate community. This is born out by the fact that affirmative teams that have ignored the resolution altogether have not gotten very far. Even teams that use the resolution as a metaphorical condensation or that “affirm the resolution as such” use the

resolution as their starting point. The significance of this insight warrants repeating. Despite the numerous differences about what types of arguments ought to have a place in competitive debate we all seemingly agree on at least one point – the vital necessity of a starting point . This common starting point, or topic, is what separates debate from other forms of communication and gives the exchange a directed focus .

Our past transgressions have shifted presumption against saving the activity. The communities’ actions have put us on the brink of obsolescence. Previous buffers that used to protect debate are rapidly eroding. Politics, academia, and the public are giving up on debate as a revolutionary activity for activists, radicals, and pragmatically minded thinkers.Hester, 2013 [Michael, PhD, University of West Georgia, “Letter from a Maryland Comfort Inn”, CEDA Policy Debate Forums (username: Hester), November 22, http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php/topic,5407.msg11974.html#msg11974, BJM]To whom it may concern, CEDA-NDT Debate is a hot mess right now . There are so many things wrong, it can sometimes seem like they're all related. Maybe they are (reference Homer Simpson's "one big ball of lies" explanation to Marge), but a delineation may still provide some guidance as to what we can change, what we may have to accept, and where (if anywhere) we may go from here... The foundation We no longer have one, and haven't for more than two decades. Fewer and fewer debate coaches are communication scholars, which is fine because Communication Departments don't consider us anything more than the bastard cousins who show up at the family reunion piss-drunk and demanding more potato salad. Our activity long ago (40 years?) lost any resemblance to a public speaking event attracting outside audiences. The problem is we vacated that academic space without being able to find a home anywhere

else . Despite the pious assumptions of some with "policy" in mind , we are not a legitimate

"research" community of scholars . The "portable skills " we currently engrain in our students via practice are: all sources are equivalent, no need for qualifications; "quoting" a source simply means underlining ANY words found ANYWHERE in the document, context and intent

are irrelevant; and we are the only group outside of Faux News that believes one's argument is improved by taking every point of logic to its most absurd extreme. Simply put, 99.9% of the speech docs produced in debates would receive no better than a C (more likely F) in any upper division undergraduate research-based class . Comically, we are the public speaking research activity that is atrocious at oral persuasion and woefully in violation of any standard research practices. But this letter is not intended to bury Debate, even though it's hard to praise it in its current state. Before any peace treaty ending the Paradigm Wars can be signed and ratified, an honest appraisal of where Debate fits in the Academy is necessary . Battle lines drawn in sinking sands This letter will not include a call for unity. It's not clear that such a "coming together" is either possible or even beneficial. But it is necessary to take a moment to publicly correct those who believe there defecation products are odorless. First, we all should feel ashamed for running Gary Larson off. Yes, all of us. If you think you're not responsible, and it's those other people who are to blame, you are wrong. Honestly, we don't deserve a person of Gary's talents and integrity right now. If we manage to improve our activity to the point where one day, we do deserve such a person, hopefully that person will be around to be the kind of positive force Gary has been. Every single one of us owes him a debt of gratitude. Second, contrary to what your friends may have told you in your secret meeting or special Facebook page, there is no faction which has avoided doing and saying stupid things in this craptastrophe. Devolving our disagreements into a "but they did it first" shows just how low we have sunk in terms of bad arguments. Hateful and ignorant statements have been made by nearly everyone who has felt the need to express themselves, especially in the heat of competition (which includes not just the rounds themselves, but more likely the times before and after rounds). This is not to say that feelings should always be spared. When issues of discrimination and structural inequality are in play, discomfort isn't just inevitable, it is frequently required in order to make the needed changes. Sadly, because we are imperfect, we have used our rightful indignation to rationalize behavior that is counterproductive if we are interested in resolving conflicts and hypocritical if we are claiming to advocate for social justice. Ultimately, everyone has to ask themselves this: are you interested in being a part of a functioning community of scholarship with people who are different than you (however defined)? If the answer is 'no', then it makes no sense to stick around throwing stink bombs - you don't have to go home, but you oughta leave the place you call hell. If the answer is 'yes' , then it makes no sense to stick around throwing stink bombs - advocate solutions that can attract enough support to become

actionable reforms . A growing To-Do List We have a lot that needs fixing. Here's an

incomplete list, in no particular order: - Our debates are incoherent . There were at least four instances of card-clipping at Wake. And an honest assessment of our practices would likely reveal more. If we could actually understand what debaters were saying. Reading regularly unqualified sources at incomprehensible speeds is hardly the foundation upon which to build any academic co-curricular activity, let alone one that couches its own credentials in public policy deliberation. If we want to be taken seriously as contributing to public discourse over public policy, we have to come to grips with how bad we have become at oral presentation of argument and scholarly presentation of quality research. - our debates are too shallow and stale given the time commitment we make. Debating Heg every round every topic doesn't further our understanding of the resolution any more, nor is it any less intellectually lazy, than turning fights about the latest Facebook conspiracy theories into a 1AC. Debaters have

wrongly conflated winning ballots with confirmation that their arguments make any sense . MPJ has allowed us to "preach to the choir" so often, we have wrongly concluded that we're

cute when we're preachy. - Our community has a current imbalance between the diversity of its student body and the makeup of its coaching/judging pool. Current efforts to increase minority representation in judge placement are seriously limited by the lack of numbers in underrepresented demographic categories. Until we have more people of color in the grad assistant and director ranks, these efforts will have very low ceilings of accomplishment. But in order to increase those numbers, those who have refused to acknowledge the connection between HOW we debate WHAT we debate and WHO wants to debate (and judge/coach) will have to put down their "but some of my best friends who like plan-focus debates are black" rationalization and be prepared to compromise more than they've been willing to so far. - We lack the trust required for voluntary goodwill and a foundation of "best practices " required to have a "code of conduct" that makes any sense. When an allegation of card-clipping can be refuted by saying "that wasn't clipping, it was just incomprehensible spreading" it's time to acknowledge our standards have sunk too low. When incompetence is the alibi to deny cheating, you have forfeited any moral high ground upon which to tell others they are playing the game wrong. Likewise, if you believe students and coaches of a particular program have committed "racist" or "sexist" acts, then contact the appropriate authorities and file a lawsuit. Otherwise, stop alleging things that should trigger such responses. If our debaters don't know the rhetorical difference between claiming "our opponent has made a sexist argument that warrants a voting issue" and "our opponents are irredeemably sexist", then we have failed as communication scholars to educate them and need to do a better job. This is not a denial of some messed up shit having occurred in our interactions, but the folks who are employed at universities need to wake up and smell the liability - we should either be bringing people before the appropriate authorities or toning down our venom. Otherwise, the notion that allegations are being thrown around just to win debates begins to gain credence, and any real chance to improve the activity is reduced as real problems are trivialized as competitive tactics. And it's this last point that precludes any demand to "come together." Debate is extra-curricular and we all work for and/or attend different institutions. We have no obligation to "get along ." If some of us truly believe others of us are evil or incapable of being peers, then we should leave , go our own ways and find a group of people /institutions with which we can commune in mutual respect. Because the nerves are so raw right now, it may seem that mutual respect is impossible. It will certainly require a willingness on all sides to stop acting like victims of wrongdoing (even where such feelings are warranted). Because that seems impossible at this time, it is not the focus of this letter. Rather, what has been laid out is an outline of some of the main questions we must confront. What defines our activity as a worthwhile endeavor deserving of university support? What parameters of how we best practice "debate" help reinforce those definitional criteria? What responsibilities do each of us have as members of our activity to maintain and nurture the activity itself? What obligations do we have to the other members of this activity, and to those who - if given the chance - would like to be a member? The paradigmatic disruptions occurring have given us a crisi-trinity to address these questions with deep self-reflection and comprehensive conversation. It would behoove all of us to remember that none of us - either individually or as a group - is so important as to be "too big to fail." Debate does not need us , not any of us . What we have to determine is whether we need debate, and if so, how do we keep it going in the ways that fulfill those needs.

Their politics worsen the situation by directing attention away from structural and material conditions for action – that divorces a discussion of means/ends for accomplishing institutional change which results in backlash and further entrenches the status quo Pineda 14 Erin, doctoral candidate in political theory @ Yale, “Enacting democracy: Deliberation, agonism, and the empty place of political action,” http://wpsa.research.pdx.edu/papers/docs/Pineda_Enacting%20democracy_Mar2014.pdfFor one thing, as many critics have noted, the focus on the clash of identities seems to run the risk of reifying

and entrenching group divisions, rather than productively challenging them and rendering

the bounds of the demos more fluid. It also obscures the process through which diverse

individuals and groups who make up various social movements come to see their needs and

desires in collective and shared terms , and the process whereby they appeal and agitate for

the broader publics to do something about it. 68 Just as the invocation of King by Rawls or Gutmann and

Thompson runs the risk of making him, and in particular his written texts, the stand-in for a complex, varied, diverse, and often divided “movement of movements,” so does the agonist ontology leave to a strange, unexplored alchemy the union and alliance of diverse groups and individuals that is actually made possible by considerable organizing efforts and “broad-based” organizations

which bridge more narrowly-construed interests.69 If the deliberative democrat’s insistence on communication obscures strategy, the agonist’s recourse to identity has much the same effect. It directs attention away from the structural and material conditions of contentious

political action – the concrete threat to particular interests, the concerted attempt to provoke

targeted structural (not just identity) crises, the operation both within and against particular

institutional arrangements , the forging and breaking of alliances and coalitions , and the mobilization of resources (money, manpower, creativity, leadership, and so on) that both open and close particular horizons of possibility.

The discursive move to see the relevant dimension of social and political conflict in terms of “identity\ difference ” (shared by many agonists) may have been timely with respect to “new social movements,” but one wonders if it doesn’t take the “identity” in “identity politics” too much

at face value, leaving little room for the diverse amalgam of means and ends pursued by

social movements – which include not just Connolly’s “politics of enactment” in which new

ways of being and new modes of identity are lived , defined, and defended, but also the framing of unmet

needs , the articulation of policy and legislative demands, the reconsideration and

reinterpretation of constitutional , legal, or community principle , the critique of existing structures and

the envisioning of new institutions . The gay rights movement, in Connolly’s work, operates to destabilize the

majority’s sense of itself, to remind us of the contingency of our own constructed selves, and thus to provoke collective redefinition.

But without a more detailed description, this destabilization seems as likely as not to provoke

a politics of backlash , fear , entrenchment , and separatism than a reflective , critical

renegotiation of identity and difference . In fact, Connolly seems aware of just this possibility when he worries that

identities born of exclusion, inequality, and discrimination are least likely to instigate the kind of positive politics he envisions – but it is these movements, these ‘identities,’ that are most democratically urgent. The politics of difference thus threatens to collapses into a politics of identity, without discussion of what – beyond an “ethos” – might make this more or less likely.70

As a result the new right fills inOrly Lobel, University of San Diego Assistant Professor of Law, 2007, The Paradox of Extralegal Activism: Critical Legal Consciousness and Transformative Politics,” 120 HARV. L. REV. 937, http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/lobel.pdfBoth 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 projects,”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 advocacy 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 Unrelated efforts become related and part of a whole through mere reframing. At the same time, 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. ¶ 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-statenational 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 .

Instead we offer an alternative – Debate as legislative theater. This process best promotes our strategic cognitive ability, preserves community, and creates a safe space for debaters to have a relationship to a legal system that we had once given up hope onMajaury, 2013 [Heather, MA Theater Studies, University of Guelph, “Plays That Make Policy A Debwewin Journey Through Legislative Theatre”, Thesis, https://dspace.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/7515/Majaury_Heather_201308_Ma.pdf?sequence=1, BJM]In 1992, Augusto Boal created a complex theatre devising system in Rio de Janeiro that built upon his well-known

and well-used Theatre of the Oppressed method for creating interactive plays. This system developed new theatrical tools using the Forum theatre anti-model in conjunction with “specifically parliamentary applications” (Legislative Theatre 5). This new system was named Legislative Theatre because it generated discourse through theatrical means, which proposed and created municipal law. Early in Boal’s theoretical discussions of the Theatre of the Oppressed we can see the germination of his ideas about theatrical practice intervening directly in the legislative process. He discusses the legislator’s virtue as being the ability to make perfect laws. He proclaims that “the highest good is the political one, and the political good is justice!”(Theatre of the Oppressed 21). This thesis answers Boal's call for further explorations of Legislative Theatre. It asks how Canadian Legislative projects have contributed to our understanding of the use of “theatre as politics” over and above the original Rio mandate from 1992 to 1996. I also explore questions around practice through my own experiments as a Joker as part of my research methodology. A Joker is an artist that provides a specific hybrid function, when creating a forum anti-model. This function includes dramaturgy, direction, and forum facilitation between stage and audience. My reflections communicate a specifically Anishinaabe way of knowing described as the Debwewin Journey which I will explain further when I describe the methodology used to shape and inform my investigations. In these experiments I have attempted to understand how creating the Forum itself facilitates empowered knowledge sharing and more truthful dialogue. I discuss the theatre as embodying a holistic approach to data gathering that innovates the law-making

process. I then ask what can be done from here. For a brief time, the Rio experiment using “theatre as politics” flourished, in

a large Brazilian metropolitan centre as a creative response to the need for more effective and democratic governance. It 2

promoted the concept of “transitive or practiced/performed” democracy by devising Forum “antimodels” within several different neighbourhoods. The Forum anti-model is a specific play structure that represents a social problem where the protagonist of the play falters and fails to reach his/her goal. Audience members, who feel compelled, take the stage to replace the role of the protagonist. They then improvise other strategies for potential success . The Forums, in conjunction

with law-crafting sessions called “Chamber in the Square”, facilitate d citizens to draft laws . The Chamber in the Square is a specific form of consultation tied to the Legislative Forum where new laws are drafted and can be as Boal describes, a way to resolve local problems (Legislative Theatre 92). Boal states that these sessions can happen “anywhere at anytime” and it is that process that creates a synthesis for recommendation (92–94). These sessions were advertised and supported by an information dissemination system called the Interactive Mailing List. This list enabled more inclusive democratic participation of the general citizenry. These lists are easily facilitated today through various applications of email and

social media. Boal exclaims, THEATRE cannot be imprisoned inside theatrical buildings, just as religion cannot be imprisoned inside churches; the language of theatre and its forms of expression cannot be the private property of actors, just as religious practice cannot be appropriated by priests and theirs alone! (Legislative Theatre 19). To further extend Boal’s hyperbole,

this thesis affirms that the LEGISLATURE should not be imprisoned inside municipal or government buildings either . Its procedures should not be hidden behind closed doors. Access or understanding, by the general public, should not be obfuscated by the practices or jargon of experts. Think tanks that inform legislatures are not balanced in their advice if they only consider and disseminate the musings and speculations of exclusive round tables with no platform created for dialogue or contact with the wisdom of lived experience , especially experience 3 shared by those living and working at the point of impact of any law or policy . All forms of communication have their limitations. The written form does not always express emotions. I can tell you something has impacted me in a negative way but if I show you how it has done so there is a higher opportunity for mutual understanding. If you are given an opportunity to actually physically embody what I have shown you, your sensitivity to the impact of my circumstances is increased significantly

because you are now sharing a sensory experience of a specific location in social and physical space. There is a popular Native American proverb that speaks to the ethics of experiential knowing. It warns “Walk a mile in another man’s moccasins before you criticize him” (Krznaric). This kind of understanding is crucial to building a more empathetic and humble society capable of greater inclusion when conducting its law-making rituals. Forum theatre allows the body to speak, as much as the word or the written report. It does not replace these other ways of communicating: it simply augments them. Thus challenging their superiority as the only valid source information illuminating decision-making. The presence of the physical body, carrying emotional weight and energetic drive, can sometimes provide crystal clarity about cause, impact, and location that is simply lost in either oral or written forms of the same information. When considering how we all learn and retain knowledge, whether we are street cleaners or board CEO’s, consider the wisdom of Confucius: “I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand” (Brainy Quote). The Forum takes knowledge gathering into the realm of doing. therefore increasing our mutual capacity for better understanding across difference. The body holds knowledge not easily articulated by the word alone, which is just as revealing and just as important.

Coming into play, as a function of a democratized social structure, is the concept of the “rule of 4 law.”1 Legislative Theatre seeks to intervene directly into the designing of our agreements that structure our relationships. The assumption underlying this impetus is that obeying the rule of law is more likely if those ruled by it have

created it. The Theatre of the Oppressed, therefore, transforms itself from functioning as only a “rehearsal for revolution”2 to becoming an actual technology of transformation. The Legislative Theatre is concerned with engaging citizenry in law-making, and /or legal reform , through using aesthetic space and theatrical language to transmit perceptions of injustice, messages of impact, and assertions of

desire. The Legislative Theatre is not just informing lawmakers of a community’s desires: it elevates citizens to “experiential experts” crucial to the process of researching and making laws . Attending or creating a Legislative Theatre session is explicitly about learning the laws and systems that oppress us. A Legislative Theatre project takes this process further by suggesting that we each

hold the power to reform or create the law itself . What we must discover is how to do that successfully and in

tandem with others. Legal change is rarely the outcome of one individual’s efforts. The goal for such a process can be one of achieving justice where justice does not yet exist. Or it can simply be to achieve standards of social regulation

that are deemed fair, constructive, and are therefore not punitive but restorative in their goals. This stems from a moral belief that law should be made and grounded in the realities of those most effected. The law should not be a dehumanizing force in governance but a means by which our humanity is protected and realized. Legislative Theatre is a humanizing force in the pursuit of that ideal. Understanding the impact of a crime, unjust law, or a negligent system on its victim and discovering what a law could have done to prevent dehumanization 5 is important fiscally as well as morally. The economic liabilities that are the result of dehumanizing

vulnerable people often exceed the costs of humane treatment. The rule of law and the systems that enforce it are insufficient when they fail to protect the most vulnerable members of the society being regulated from abuse or exploitation. Quite often laws are created by those who have been empowered to make them and not necessarily in adequate or respectful consultation with those who must live with their outcomes. Such outcomes

include social exclusion with harsh penalties for non-compliance. Therefore, the “rule of law” itself can become a system of oppression for some groups while for others it provides a means to achieve further privilege s . Moreover, the legal system runs a real risk of perpetuating an unjust social order that violates fundamental human rights. Any groups, including municipal corporations, can create unjust circumstances when they create by-laws, policies, and procedures that lack adequate and thorough consultation. This is often the case where social

orders have been formed through colonial contexts. Therefore, Legislative Theatre may be employed as a means to assist in the on-going process of decolonization, cultural restoration, and the realization of self-determination. Facilitated embodied learning and expression should be an operating principal of democratized social design and decisionmaking. After Boal's four-year experiment in Rio de Janeiro, other Legislative Theatre projects, with the caveat distinction “without the legislature”, emerged in other Brazilian communities, as well as in Europe and Canada. I have focused my research and analysis on specifically Canadian contexts. These Canadian projects do not replicate the original Rio experiment. The original experiment is distinguished because it employed “Jokers” and deployed them as cultural animators throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro. This to my knowledge has never occurred within a Canadian municipality. Although Canada does not experience the same widespread violence and abject poverty to the same scale as Brazil, generally there can still be found situations of inequity that reveal an unjust society. Lib 6 Spry supports this by articulating her view of Canadian power structures. All the power structures that allow the third-world reality to be maintained so that the first world may enjoy its standard of living can be found in our society. The “isms” abound in Canada; sexism, racism, chauvinism, heterosexism, ageism, classism; they all exist in our daily relationships. While most of us can and do exercise some choice in our lives, we are all part of power relationships that allow dominating and exploitative structures to maintain the status quo (173). Therefore, Theatre of the Oppressed is as valid a liberation research technology within Canadian borders as it is within Latin America or other countries that

are deemed Third World. A Legislative Theatre project embedded within a Canadian Municipality could prove very fruitful in transform ing the way we expect and desire laws to be created in our own communities. As is demonstrated by science’s Chaos theory, a small change in initial conditions can result in vast differences in final outcomes. There is no way to predict the outcome of any Legislative Theatre project but that does not mean it is not worth doing. The possibility for participation to inspire active citizen engagement that confronts chronic apathy is justification enough. The Canadian projects I am including in this thesis approach goals and outcomes related in some way to Boal’s original objectives. However, they do not achieve the same structures that were woven directly into wider municipal management. My personal ability to conduct comprehensive community outreach was very limited. However, by simply inviting participants to workshops via email, various doors began to open and my expectations were exceeded. The project did however predictably not maintain enough stamina to create an adapted version of the Chamber in the Square compatible with the deadlines for this thesis. The assembled group overcame several obstacles and are still committed to completion of the project beyond the scope of this research. This will to continue indicates the power of the work to constitute and develop community. 7 The original Rio mandate deployed Jokers as government sanctioned cultural workers. All of the projects I include in this thesis are the result of Jokers acting independently with associated theatre companies often drawing their financial support from cultural funding schemes and their own entrepreneurial tenacity. One project I have included actually pre-dates the Brazilian experiment so it is technically not a Legislative Theatre project proper. The name had not been coined yet so it was not adequately theorized into existence. This early show in Canada demonstrates that independent Jokers were making the necessary and logical links between the power of the Forum and its relationship to law making. Two of the theatre production companies cultivated relationships of cooperation with large metropolitan government. Both of these cities are comparable to Rio de Janeiro as large urban centres but they did not achieve multiple nuclei. Nor was support for either project embraced as their city council’s mandates. Thus they remained characterized as primarily alternative theatre anomalies rather than instituted social planning innovations. The final case study included in this thesis discusses a mentoring project with First Nations that utilized drama to train and encourage youth leadership. These performances fostered a direct communication between citizenry and elected officials but these interventions were not consciously or structurally Forums: however, the process did set up dialogue for change with some tangible results because it asked participants to communicate to reserve leadership what change they wanted to see in their communities. The participants were empowered through performance training to express their heartfelt desires to both their band councils and service agencies in their communities. They were themselves constructed, through the act of performance, as live proposals. As part of my research I created my own micro-inquiries by conducting laboratories in the community where I live. I also accepted invitations to work with other groups on two different occasions. Not all of these experiments were Legislative in focus but they elucidated questions of process and politics within the devising process of Forum theatre and how it relates to the more 8 complex Legislative form. From these experiments I was able to ask what would need to occur for any of these projects to become Legislative. The projects ranged from organizational and educational to a strictly grass roots workshop exploration. The first project used Theatre of the Oppressed

techniques to build scenes for a fundraising event that brought the staff and residents of an independent living complex together to raise money for a mobility van. This project contained certain scenes that could have been transformed into, and performed and facilitated, as Forum anti-models. Through discussions linked to these scenes casual observations about policy constraints and contradictions did happen. These casual conversations suggested that the scenes were one step away from being effective Forums. I then worked on a commissioned educational project that used Forums to explore teen sexting/bullying. While the project achieved a Forum anti-model that was very successful in its ability to incite intervention it did not make law. I did see the potential for a full legislative project if teachers, principals, and enough practical resources could support taking this project one step further into a legislative context. I could vision a cross-curriculum design linking dramatic arts, social studies, and law classes together where a Forum could be presented in a school-wide Chamber in the Square session prepped in advance by creating and maintaining an

interactive mailing list that could easily be set up with blogging software to prepare students for the session. The purpose of the Theatre of the Oppressed is to take what we learn through role-play into our real lives . During my work on this thesis I was confronted with a legal hearing concerning my family’s enrolment in a land claim where we were required to defend our place on the voters list. Through my continuing understanding of the power of live performance we defended our family’s oral tradition as a legitimate way of knowing. Inside this legal proceeding I was able to put my Jokering and

performance skills to use in the service of my family. This I found to be very satisfying. Through performance and other

devising techniques we successfully defended our claim and call ed into question prevailing legal 9 biases that have historically obfuscated our legal Indigenous identity in Canada. Kelly Britt Howe, when referring to the

Legislative Forum, suggests “each production differently constructs performance as a ‘think tank’ epistemology – an embodied way of building and transferring knowledge about legislation” (x). This occurred during this hearing subtly and implicitly. Our family prepared our materials and our testimonials in the same way you would prepare for a Forum. I took on the role of presenter and called family members to speak and share relevant oral history. The presentation was dynamic enough that it encouraged others to also speak on our behalf. There was a spirit of intervention in the room that resulted in a successful outcome for us. But much larger questions remain regarding comprehensive land claims and how that process needs to be democratized in a manner that is truly respectful to all Algonquin people. Finally, I culminated this study with a once a week laboratory called The Housing Project where I assembled community volunteers to create a Forum play that would make a policy using the specific elements that constitute Legislative theatre. These included the creation of a Forum that was intended to evolve into a community-based equivalent of a Chamber in the Square session. The goal was to invite an audience through our collective networks and support their participation using an interactive mailing list. This was not achieved but the group agreed to continue beyond the first six sessions, which was their official obligation, to see how far we could get. We were able to construct a Forum anti-model from those sessions that set up several possible focuses on various laws at three levels of government. Where the project ended is also its possible beginning. I did build relationships with discipline experts that are curious to experience a Chamber in the Square session. I remain hopeful that we will get there. My experiments attempted to answer the following questions. Can individual curiosity, or a feeling of urgency, be enough to activate theatrical inquiry? Can such inquiry lead to a legislative project that will make a difference and be taken seriously beyond the single nucleus that is formed and the specific nature of one Forum presentation? 10 How does a Joker ensure that a project makes a difference? Is that even a Joker’s responsibility? How do we define

success? What does making a difference mean? Augusto Boal, quoted by scholar Britt Howe warns, “the subjunctive will only take political organizing so far. Believing that changes in law can happen is important, yet so is figuring out how to turn potential into reality…” (195). Must there always be an invitation that brings the Joker in or can the Joker be a project initiator inviting others? How do you keep the work generating possibilities beyond the confines of Canada’s professionalized theatre community while asserting that Theatre of the Oppressed is a legitimate theatre practice as well as a ground-breaking innovation in think tank methodology? Is Legislative Theatre for the Oppressed or of the Oppressed? It is possible that the practice itself holds both locations simultaneously like a subatomic particle inhabiting two locations inside its quantum universe. Boal himself clarified that his theatre has been inaccurately named and if he had the opportunity he would have renamed it the “Theatre of Liberation” (qtd. in Playing Boal Spry 174). This active principal of liberation is a much preferred framing. This framing releases it from the confines of superficial identity politics, which is important to consider if the practice is to be taken seriously outside of its own disciplinary confines. Otherwise, the practice itself is stigmatized before you even start. As Boal aptly

states when explaining the history of Theatre of the Oppressed in his book Legislative Theatre, “sometimes the

oppression is actually rooted within the law. In the latter case, to bring about the desired change would require a transformation or redrafting of the law : legislation” (10). Ergo, the Legislative Theatre takes the impetus toward changing practical reality and through the collective drafting of laws redrafts the boundary of the performance beyond the performance. Devising Forum theatre can help any group identify oppression that is manifesting systemically through the legal regimes of practice that uphold hegemonic ideological state apparatuses as first described by

Louis Althusser, and find the gaps in policy that might make a difference. Althusser describes the need for

such social orders or systems to reproduce submission to the rules of the 11 established order (88). Forum Theatre identifies specific people operating as antagonists or oppressors in our social relationships and helps us to identify those who may become potential allies to our cause. These people themselves do not function outside of the structures of ideological state apparatuses but are themselves agents of these operating systems of

social control. These apparatuses function inside a larger organic system of human relationships that enact the living organism metaphor associated with systems theory and well described in David Diamond’s Theatre for Living, where he talks about the

“patterns of relationships that creates the structures” (46). Boal also challenges the authority of the law-maker by stating that “the legislator should not be the person who makes the law, but the person through whom the law is made (by the citizens, of course!)” (Legslative Theatre10). Augusto encouraged the Forum theatre spectactor to exercise his/her “theatrical citizenship” (10). Therefore my inquiries ask how does Legislative Theatre function without the legislature and how do we perform “theatrical citizenship?” Should it function without the legislature? What do we mean by the legislature? What is a theatrical citizen? According to the Theatre and Citizenship scholar David Wiles, “citizenship addresses the fundamental problem of cohabitation” (2). What is considered democratic? Wiles states “in a world of media manipulation and personality politics there is no space for any serious public engagement with moral issues” (2). It is therefore left

to each citizen or citizen group to create that space and assert such dialogue. Legislative Theatre is one way to take

back public space as a space for engagement of deliberate self-governance . And to what extent could

practicing Legislative Theatre transform ideological state apparatuses? How does Legislative Theatre tap into political power and use it?

And, debate as legislative theater sustains a new form of deliberative engagement that will re-energize students and programs to form a better sense of community that can challenge structures of power internally and externally making for a better tomorrow than we have todayCarcasson, 7/1/13 [Martin, PhD., Colorado State University, “Rethinking Civic Engagement on Campus: The Overarching Potential of Deliberative Practice”, Kettering Foundation Project #35.13.00, http://thedemocracycommitment.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/3-carcasson-civic-eng-paper.pdf, BJM]Both adversarial and expert forms of engagement have strengths and weaknesses . Unfortunately, their weaknesses are particularly exposed and consequential when dealing with wicked problems . The zero-sum, winner-take-all nature of adversarial tactics tends to incentivize problematic communication patterns that cause polarization, misunderstanding, and cynicism, making already wicked problems much more wicked. Rather than help communities uncover and work through the competing values that underlie wicked problems, issues are often framed strategically to narrow the issue to one dominant value, supporting the assumption that those that disagree must reject strongly held values, rather than recognizing they likely support alternative values that are in tension. With adversarial engagement, most messages are designed to either mobilize the like-minded (the “choir” or the “base”) or entice the undecided, meaning productive communication between perspectives is oddly rare. Adversaries seek to make one side sound 10 flawless and the other depraved, while opposing advocates make the same argument, leading to dominant communication patterns of opposing sides completely talking past each other in what political scientists have termed “noncontradictory argumentation”( Baumgartner and Jones, 1993). Communications that recognize the value of and provide respect for opposing perspectives are actually seen as weak and ineffective, rather than prudent.

Admitting to tradeoffs is simply poor strategy. Said differently, adversarial engagement results in patterns of communication where people that disagree—an inherent aspect of a diverse democracy and wicked problems—

have little incentive to interact or understand each other genuinely. When combined with the natural egoistic tendency of humans to function as selective listeners that prefer to surround themselves with people that agree and avoid those that disagree, adversarial engagement creates situations were groups see issues through very different lenses, making the collaboration, coordination, and innovation so important to addressing wicked problems particularly difficult. As a result, the level of conflict becomes severely exaggerated, and those groups never genuinely discuss (or work through) their true differences because they are blinded by the false polarization caused by poor communication. In sum, the natural

marketplace of ideas breaks down . The “best” arguments are often punished, and the

demand for low quality products is high . Expert dominated engagement struggles with

wicked problems primarily due to the privileging of particular forms of knowledge . As scholars

such as Yankelovich and Boyte have argued, experts support a technocratic view of decision-making that overly focuses on empirical

data and being “value free,” meaning they are adept at examining what is or what could be but not what should be. Experts are trained to focus on specific aspects of problems, which works well with tame problems but is far too narrow for wicked problems. Wicked problems require 11 significant engagement with both facts and values, and experts tend to only deliver on half of that equation. Both adversarial and experts forms are also limiting because they typically support very narrow roles for citizens , which clearly impedes the need for adaptive changes that are so important to tackling wicked problems. Adversarial engagement often leads to citizens serving primarily as spectators or voters (in many ways, primarily as objects of manipulation), whereas experts tend to shut the public out altogether, or attempt to dictate appropriate behavior from one high, which rarely works. Whereas advocates focus primarily on interaction and persuasion to the detriment of genuine inquiry, experts focus primarily on inquiry and fall short on the genuine inclusion and interaction. The nature of wicked problems requires both genuine inquiry and significant public engagement, including broad inquiry and engagement in defining the problem, developing approaches to address the problem, considering the various consequences to those approaches,

and finally managing the changes necessary to implementing any actions. Addressing wicked problems calls for cooperation , shared understanding and ownership, and, ultimately, action from a broad range of stakeholders; therefore citizens must take up the role of (and have the skills to be) engaged and

collaborative problem solvers , a role neither adversarial or expert forms of engagement encourages or equips citizens to play. An alternative to adversarial and expert engagement that is slowly gaining

more and more traction is deliberative engagement. A broad review will not be repeated here (see Gastil & Levine, 2005;

Mathews, 1999; McIvor, Barker, and McAfee, 2012 for examples), but briefly deliberative engagement relies on citizens, not just experts or politicians, to be deeply involved in public decision making . Ideally, citizens come

together and consider relevant facts and values from multiple points of view, listen to one another in order to think critically about the various 12 options before them, and discover and work through the underlying tensions and tough choices inherent to wicked

problems. In this process, participants are open to refining their opinions as they consider their personal interests

and the interests of fellow community members and the broader community, identify the common ground that may exist, and ultimately come to some conclusion for various forms of action in the form of a reasoned public judgment. Most importantly for tackling wicked problems, deliberative engagement focuses on the tough choices and paradoxes inherent to public problems and the need for publics to interact with each other and “work through” issues across perspectives (Yankelovich & Friedman, 2010). In doing

so, it tends to foster mutual understanding across perspectives , which then fuels greater potential for collaboration and innovation. Freed from the simplistic one-sided views and wishful

thinking of advocacy and the narrow perspectives of the expert model, ideally participants confronted with the true “wickedness” of the issue work together to imagine a broad range of potential actions to negotiating the tensions. Here is yet another major advantage of deliberative engagement: its potential to open up the conversation to innovation regarding multiple mechanisms of action, which connects to developing notions of democratic or collaborative governance (Boyte, 2005). Addressing wicked problems at the local level must in particular go beyond a focus on governmental policy or individual behavior, and also consider potential actions from groups, non-profits, educational institutions, and private industry. With adversarial and expert engagement, possible actions are typically much more narrowly construed, and in the case of adversarial, when a particular campaign is successful, it may only work to mobilize the opposition even more strongly to oppose it, as we have seen with “Obamacare.” Deliberative engagement therefore not only supports broader and more innovative ways of thinking about 13 change, but the processes themselves tend to build long term support and legitimacy for those actions. Deliberative engagement, however, takes significant time and effort. It is, again, an ideal to strive for which will never fully be reached. The primary problem with deliberative engagement, therefore, is how to build capacity and support for it, and ultimately make it a habit in our communities (Carcasson, 2009). In order to support all the various process points deliberative engagement requires—i.e. broad and inclusive research, identifying and negotiating both tensions and common ground, issue framing, nurturing genuine engagement across perspectives, and supporting the move to collaborative action—deliberative practice generally requires the assistance of individuals or organizations that take an “impartial” perspective on issues and focus primarily on improving the quality of communication in order to hopefully improve the quality of the decisions made. Such resources increase community capacity by fulfilling a broad range of critical roles, such as conveners, process designers, facilitators, reporters, and impartial researchers that name and frame issues to support deliberation. Elsewhere I have termed those that take on these roles as key resources of “passionate impartiality” (Carcasson, 2010; Carcasson & Sprain, 2010). They represent people who are passionate about their community, about democracy, and about solving problems but nonetheless realize that serving as impartial resources focused on building capacity for deliberative democracy will fill a unique, critical void in their community. Here again is why expanding the deliberative nature of campus civic engagement programs can have a critical dual effect, both increasing the ability of future generations to address wicked problems, but also to serve their communities as critical

capacity for deliberative work at that time. Deliberative practice requires dedicated, smart, and passionate people to serve critical impartial roles to support the process, 14 and clearly such individuals are rare, and becoming more and more rare by the minute in our polarized political culture. College students, with instruction and support from professors and staff, however, have enormous potential to fill this role in their local communities, as they have with the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation model (Carcasson, 2011). The key is getting to the college students early, so they serve as antidotes to the polarization rather than either join the fray or avoid politics altogether.

The Japanese American Redress and Reparations movement proves topical action is possible.Kang 1993, Kang, Robert S. is a Professor of Law and an Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, He also serves on the advisory board of Berkeley’s Asian American Law Journal. “Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship: Critical Race Theory, Post-Structuralism, and Narrative Space”, 81 Cal. L. Rev. 13141316

The Commission released its findings in 1982, 33¶ 1 concluding that¶ " Executive Order

9066 and the internment that it sanctioned resulted¶ from 'race prejudice, war

hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.' ¶ "332 The Commission further presented five recommended remedies.¶ 3 3 These included a recommendation that an official apology be¶ issued and that each surviving internee be given $20,000.11' The¶

Commission's report and recommendations as well as the work of¶ Japanese

American congressmen 335 paved the way for the redress bill,¶ which was

passed by the House in September 1987 and by the Senate in¶ April 1988.336 The government began making payments on October 9,¶ 1990. 337¶ Professor Chan comments that "[t] he r edress movement has been a¶ prime example of how Asian

American elected officials have worked ¶ hand in hand with community activists

toward a common end ., 33' Bu t¶ this "end" did not come about until the "model

minority" broke its¶ silence, demonstrating the power of narrative through

testimony about¶ the injustice of the internment camps.

Localization DA – Fetishization of the local and the fugitive does not make it possible to theorize the relations between local issues as relations between parts to a whole. We need a new paradigm, not simply a scattered guerrilla war.Alcoff 12, Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, (Linda M., “Enrique Dussel’s Transmodernism”, TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/58k9k17t)

For this sort of reason, I suspect some of Dussel’s critics cannot follow him to a new metanarrative¶ but would prefer the piecemeal, local interventions that aim for a smaller scale.¶ This difficulty gets at the key problem for the revisionary shift at the meta-level that Dussel¶ wants to make: how do we move to a decentralized, pluriversal (rather than universal) approach that¶ avoids relativism? How do we avoid losing the ability for critique, and especially for macro-level¶ critiques that will be adequate to the macro-level epistemic structures of the coloniality of power?¶ How do we construct a pluriversal epistemology in a politically meaningful way? Any overarching¶ normative criterion for inclusion in the pluriversal is contradictory to the idea of pluriversality.¶ Jurgen Habermas’s attempts to produce overarching norms come under the understandable¶ criticism that these work again to be exclusionary of those who cannot or don’t want to be¶ discursively engaged, who cannot or refuse to accept the terms of engagement, and this would¶ include some indigenous groups, for example, who want disengagement and autonomy more than¶ anything else.¶ Yet without an overarching criterion of inclusion or evaluation, Dussel is right that¶ pluriversality has no clear relation to liberation. Dussel’s worries with Foucault are based precisely¶ in this

concern: he suggests that if we stay only at the level of the local, we cannot develop a macroaccount¶ of hegemonic power. He asks: how can Foucault’s local critiques work without challenging¶ the meta-narratives, and macro-practices, that subordinate local knowledges?

“One must recognize¶ … that power is mutually and relationally constituted between social subjects, but that, in any case,¶ the power of the state or the power of the hegemonic nation (such as the U nited S tates) continues¶ to exist ” (Dussel, “Philosophy” 339). Local praxis does not make it possible to theorize the

relations between local issues as relations between parts to a

whole , and to understand local¶ problems and challenges as often connected to larger, non-local processes . Dussel rightfully argues¶ that we need a new paradigm, not simply a scattered

guerrilla war .¶ The concept of the transmodern is meant, in part, to allow for a broad, even global¶ relationality among elements, so none are irreducibly local. When we make cultures or knowledge¶ systems irreducibly local, we truly risk ahistorical reifications. We risk losing sight of how our¶ representations of local practices or knowledges may be constituted through imperial sign systems,¶ or, in other words, mistaking the local as a solipsistic spontaneous emergence, rather than¶ implicated---at least in its representations and how it is understood--- within a larger colonial¶ semiosis. Thus we must

avoid fetishizing the local . ¶ The potential relativism of pluriversality is avoided,

then, not by imposing a uniform,¶ universal standard or method or set of norms, but by developing provisional meta-narratives of¶ global history that can illuminate local conditions and relations. What provides the normative¶ criterion within pluriversality is just this meta-narrative of an interconnected history. This is not a¶ transcendental criterion of rationality, a la Habermas, but a more dynamic and decentered notion of¶ the developments of reason in relationality. Dussel’s macro-frame of the metanarrative, and in¶ particular his metanarrative of the transmodern, operates to keep the colonial context ever-present¶ in the analytical process, while decentralizing the idea of the modern and removing its vanguard¶ global status. There is a coherent historical narrative that Dussel gives here to be sure—modernity¶ phase one and modernity phase two—but there is no uniquely privileged site where the emergence¶ of rationality occurs, or the development of a reflexive critical consciousness that begins to assess¶ one’s conventions of belief and practice. Reflective consciousness is an equal opportunity¶ phenomenon, as is blind dogmatism and willful ignorance.¶ Meta-narratives of history have

explanatory value; they are offered as explanations for¶ progression, development, or relations. The concept of the transmodern is a concept with much¶ greater explanatory value than the myth of Eurocentric modernity, and, because of its pluri- and¶ trans-versal character, it avoids the exclusionary , hierarchical effects of totalizing systems . Although¶ it provides a check on the potential relativism that can occur when we reject centralized models, the¶ concept of the transmodern is meant to provide an overarching criterion of evaluation for the¶ philosophy of liberation, despite the fact that it is Dussel’s main alternative meta-narrative to the¶ meta-narratives of Eurocentrism. It is motivated by its descriptive project, to produce a better¶ ideational representation of history and social formations in the colonial era.¶ In more

recent work, Dussel has suggested that it is out of this historical re-description that¶ we can map the productive sites for the most critical, irruptive work. The transmodern metanarrative¶ suggests a recipe for moving forward not through universalist procedures justified via a¶ transcendental arguments outside of cultural or historical specificity, but via an analysis of how and¶ where cultural dialogues can occur most productively given the way in which the current global¶ discursive regimes have been affected by colonialism. Radical critiques respond, he argues, from¶ another place or location, positioned as the exterior to those designated universal cultures of¶ European Modernity. These other places have been characterized as dead, or epistemically barren,¶ yet they are alive with a distinct difference barely

legible to the center. It is from here that new paths¶ for future development and dialogue will emerge toward “pluriversality as a universal project.”¶ (Mignolo 243).¶ Dussel clarifies this proposal as a positive alternative to the rational reconstructive projects¶ of European modernity, but without sacrificing or conceding the terrain of the rational. Critical¶ thought is sparked by intercultural dialogue through an immanent process that ignites local¶ participants to rethink the terms of local cultures, not through recourse to mandated universals but¶ as a response to the

stimulation of a dialogue that is what Dussel calls transversal, meaning that it¶ does not presuppose a formal symmetry between cultures, nor does it operate only between elites.¶ It thus occurs outside of the domain of legitimated epistemic interaction by the standards of¶ European rationalist modernity, and it does this in several ways. First, the location of participants is¶ key in assessing the legitimacy and efficacy of their critique, rather than ideas separated from¶ context. Second, we must begin to recognize, and incorporate within utopian revisions, the simple¶ fact that non-elites contribute to the production, development, and dissemination of critical¶ thought, and that, in many cases, the best radical ideas of authoritative discourses are expressions of¶ the intellectual ferment sowed from “below,” in the subjugated spaces of the culture. And third,¶ that the ongoing effect of colonial legacies on cultural interactions must cause us to recognize that¶ the necessity of defending cultural autonomy must still be recognized as a powerful force even¶ when we acknowledge the unstoppable flows of ideas and influence. In

Dussel’s account, critical¶ rationality occurs within localized spaces but is instigated at times by larger intercultural dialogues.¶ This is truly a new map, a map of a transmodern world. If we recall the three meta-theoretical¶ hurdles for Dussel’s work that I enumerated at the beginning of this essay, we can see how his¶ notion of the transmodern addresses each one: through the re-articulation of certain identities as¶ privileged epistemic locations, and through a re-grounding of knowledge via the transmodern¶ cosmology.¶ The postmodernist critics of Dussel as well as of Walter Mignolo are making the mistake of¶ incorporating their ideas “under the domain of the Same,” as if their revisions of meta-language¶ replicate the formal characteristics of Eurocentric, decontextualized, de-culturated universalisms (see¶ e.g. Michaelson and Cutler Shershow). But here are the differences: Dussel places his foundation in¶ a politically conscious perspectivalism, rejecting neutrality or objectivity; he and Mignolo¶ geographically and historically locate their ideas, thus forestalling claims of absoluteness or¶ infallibility and inviting future transformation; gnoseology

and transmodernity are both approaches¶ that exemplify pluriversality—that is, a decentered epistemology that emphasizes dialogue as the¶ route to adjudicate difference rather than an individual procedure of judgment . To be sure, both¶ offer meta-languages and in some senses, intellectual and political maps with aspirations to cover a¶ wide territory, geographically and historically. But postmodernists do the same— Jean-François¶ Lyotard’s paralogies, proposed in place of paradigms, and Gilles Deleuze’s thousand plateaus are¶ similarly broad in scope and ambitious in coverage, even setting out normative criterion for¶ determining what kind of moves can be supported (inventiveness, productiveness, difference). (So¶ one could argue that Dussel and Mignolo are postmodern in this sense if Lyotard and

Deleuze are,¶ and yet there is a difference. Lyotard and Deleuze are not as upfront about the normative aims of¶ their meta-ambitions.) But the main point here is that Dussel is right to charge his critics with¶ formalism: as if all meta-narrative forms are the same. They are not.

Their Affirmative Fails- Attempting to “tear down the system” and build something completely new is little more than abstract and apolitical moralism and idealism. The best way to change the world is via transformation of existing democratic institutions. Dussel, Argentine-Mexican writer and post-occidental/Decoloniality philosopher, 2008 (Enrique, Twenty Theses on Politics)The question of whether or not it is possible to “change the world ¶ without taking power” has from the outset been posed incorrectly . Power is not “taken'' as though it were a thing, an object at hand, or a well-bound package.¶ Power is a faculty belonging to the political community (» 2 ], to the people¶ [» 12]. The power that appears to be “taken" is merely the mediations or institutions of the delegated exercise (» 3] of this fundamental power. If the¶ delegated exercise of power takes the form of obedience [» 4 ], this power qua¶ service is just, adequate, and necessary. If one were to “take" control of already¶ corrupted institutions, or structures of fetishized power [ » 5], this exercise¶ would not operate to the benefit of the community, the people. As a result, one¶ cannot “change the world" through such a corrupted exercise, as should be¶ obvious by now. The subject, then, has been posed in a confusing manner. To¶ simplify, we could say that it is the position of Bakunin, of anarchism, that all¶ institutions are repressive [ » 7].¶ [20•1. 2 ] When an honest representative of the political community, the¶ people, is delegated for the exercise of institutional power, they must in the first¶ place not merely fulfill the

already institutionally defined and structured func-¶ tions of power (potestas) [» 3]. It remains always necessary to consider whether¶ or not these given institutions truly serve to satisfy the demands of the community , the people, and social movements. If they do not serve these demands, they ¶ need to be transformed. Chavez changed the Constitution at the outset of his¶ delegated exercise of power, as did Evo Morales. That is, the package of State¶ institutions (potestas) need s to be untied and changed as a whole by conserving¶ what is sustainable and eliminating what is unjust-thereby creating the new.¶ Power ( as potestas ) is not "taken" en bloc · It is reconstituted and exercised ¶ critically in view of the material satisfaction of needs, in fulfillment of the¶ normative demands of democratic legitimacy, and within empirical political¶ possibility . But, to be clear, without the obediential exercise of delegated institutional power the world

cannot feasibly be changed . To attempt to do so is little more¶ than abstract and apolitical 'moralism and idealism, which clearly results from¶ practical and theoretical confusions . However, these quasi-anarchists do in-¶ deed remind us that institutions become fetishized and always need to be¶ transformed, as Marx points out.¶ [20.1.3] On the level of strategic feasibility, in order to change the world one¶ needs to rely on an extraordinarily

healthy political postulate: that of the¶ 'dissolution of the State." This postulate can be put approximately as follows:¶ We must operate in such a way as to tend toward the (empirically impossible)¶ identity of representation with the represented, in such a way that State¶ institutions become always increasingly transparent, effective, simplified, etc .¶ Such a condition would not, however, be a "minimal State"-in either the¶ Right-wing version of Nozick or the left-wing version of Bakunin-but rather a¶ "subjectified State," in which the institutions become diminished due to the¶ increasingly shared

responsibility by all citizens ("We are all the State!").132 This¶ would need to proceed alongside the application of the electronic revolution in¶ order to reduce almost to zero the time and space required for citizen par,¶ ticipation, 133 in terms of collecting the opinion of the citizenry to constitute a¶ consensus or carry out bureaucratic procedures. This would be a virtual State¶ with decentralized offices, managed by Web sites, and the State of the future¶ would be so different from that of the present that many of its most bureau,¶ cratic, opaque, and bloated institutions would have disappeared . . . It would¶ appear that the State no longer exists, but it will be more present than ever as¶ the normative responsibility of each citizen toward the others. This is the¶ criterion of orientation that follows from the postulate of the 'dissolution of¶ the State."¶