Reparations Aff
The University of Texas occupies land stolen from the Tonkawa, Comanche, and
Apache peoples. This school is hardly unique. Built by black slaves on land stolen
through genocidal wars of conquest, the primary goal of colleges is national capital
accumulation and maintaining racial stratification. Universities proliferate colonial
violence by inculcating nationalism and directly promoting the expansion of the global
economy at the expense of the dispossessed and the ecological balance of our planet.
These institutions owe a debt to the millions of dead bodies they have left in their
wake
Stein 22 - Sharon Stein, In the book Unsettling the University in 2022 “Unsettling the
University Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education”
[https://www.press.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/media/2022/10/Unsettling_the_University_Intro_and_C
h1.pdf] Accessed 11/17/23 SAO
American colleges were not innocent or passive beneficiaries of conquest and colonial slavery. The European invasion
of the Americas and the modern slave trade pulled peoples throughout the Atlantic world into each others’ lives, and colleges were among the colonial institutions that braided their histories and rendered their fates dependent
and antagonistic. —Craig Steven Wilder, 2013, p. 11 On September 18, 2019, New Mexico announced plans to offer free public higher education for all state residents, funded largely by increased revenue from oil production in the
state. Just a day earlier, the University of California announced that it would divest its endowment funds of fossil fuel stocks. In an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, the university’s chief investment officer–treasurer and
chairman of the board of regents’ investments committee noted, “The reason we sold some $150 million in fossil fuel assets from our endowment was the reason we sell other assets: They posed a long-term risk to generating
strong returns for UC’s diversified portfolios. . . . We have chosen to invest for a better planet, and reap the financial rewards for UC, rather than simply divest for a headline” (Baccher & Sherman, 2019). Viewed together, these two
announcements offer a glimpse into the possible futures for public higher education that are deemed imaginable and desirable in what is currently known as the United States. In one case, a state planned to boost public funding
through profits made from the extraction and sale of fossil fuels (a plan that ultimately fell through), while in the other, one of the country’s largest public university systems justified its divestment from fossil fuels out of concern
for future profits. Beyond illustrating some of the contradictions and convergences that circulate within current popular horizons of hope about the future of US higher education, when viewed from a decolonial perspective, these
two announcements expose the ethical and ecological limits of these horizons. Throughout this book, I use “decolonial” to refer to analyses and practices that (1) critique ways of knowing, being, and relating that are premised on
systemic and ongoing colonial violence, and that (2) gesture toward possible futures in which these colonial patterns of knowledge, existence, and relationship are interrupted and redressed. I describe my approach to decolonial
public higher education is predicated on the continuity of a
political economic system that requires endless growth, extraction, and consumption and that can
therefore hold little regard for its negative impacts on the human and other-than-human beings who
pay the price for this expansion. In this way, both of these proposed funding models reproduce the colonial architectures
of accumulation that form the foundations of US higher education. I use the phrase “colonial foundations of US higher education” to point to the
critique further in chapter 1. Despite their differences, in both announcements the future of
fact that while entrenched patterns of institutional violence do have specific starting points, they are not relegated to the past. Rather, they have continued to shape all subsequent higher education developments—never in a
different higher education futures will not be possible if we do not first
untangle and reckon with these historical and ongoing colonial foundations. I trace the origins of these foundations, consider how the
deterministic way but nonetheless in a way that suggests
harms of colonization and slavery continue to seep through these foundations into the present, and question the structural integrity of a future that rests on these foundations, especially if we fail to confront their disavowed costs
for people and the planet. Situating This Book’s Intervention Scholars have addressed the immense contemporary challenges of US higher education from numerous theoretical and methodological perspectives. Yet across these
dif­ferent perspectives one finds a common rhetorical strategy (echoed in the popular media) that compares the current state of higher education to an idealized higher education past and uses that past as a guide for imagining an
idealized higher education future. There is an alternative means of engaging with contemporary US higher education that problematizes the naively hopeful narratives of US higher education futurity that presume seamless
continuity and progress, as well as the selectively nostalgic narratives of US higher education history that invisibilize (make absent) colleges’ and universities’ structural complicity in racial, colonial, and ecological violence. In doing
so, this book intervenes in what are by now fairly prolific and increasingly mainstream conversations across the fields of critical university studies and higher education studies about the privatization and marketization of higher
education. The book engages this literature but also stretches it by bringing a decolonial lens to the fore using a historiographic method of analysis.
By examining the colonial foundations of US higher education
with a view to their implications for the present and future, I suggest that contemporary forms of academic capitalism in the neoliberal university should be seen not as entirely novel but as rooted in a long-standing architecture of
dispossession and accumulation that has formed the template for US higher education from the very beginning. Although this book does not address in great detail pressing contemporary challenges, such as surging
student debt, precarious academic labor, and contentious questions about increasingly diverse campuses and curriculum reform, it suggests that if we engage these issues with the
underlying colonial template of US higher education in mind, we are likely to arrive at very dif­ferent
conclusions about both the root causes of these problems and ethical modes of responding to them In this sense, Unsettling the
University resonates with the work of a small but growing number of scholars and activists who have drawn attention to how US colleges and universities have been consistently implicated in the reproduction and naturalization of
social and ecological harm, particularly by serving as “an arm of the settler state—a site where the logics of elimination, capital accumulation, and dispossession are reconstituted” (Grande, 2018, p. 47 [emphasis in original]; see
also Andreotti et al., 2015; Boggs et al., 2019; Boggs & Mitchell, 2018; Boidin, Cohen, & Grosfoguel, 2012; Chatterjee & Maira, 2014; Daigle, 2019; Hailu & Tachine, 2021; S. Hunt, 2014; La Paperson, 2017; Meyerhoff, 2019;
Minthorn & Nelson, 2018; Minthorn & Shotton, 2018; Patel, 2021; Rodríguez, 2012; StewartAmbo & Yang, 2021; Wilder, 2013). Many of these scholars are situated not in higher education studies or critical university studies but
rather in Black, Indigenous, or other critical ethnic studies, women and gender studies, and related interdisciplinary fields (Stein, 2021), some of them organized under the heading of abolitionist university studies (Boggs et al.,
2019). Despite their internal diversity, these critiques share a diagnosis that the fundamental harm inflicted by US higher education institutions is not only that they exclude historically and systemically marginalized communities
but also that they were founded and continue to operate at the expense of those communities. Drawing on this basic decolonial insight, this book offers an invitation to rethink inherited assumptions about the relationship
To pluralize possible higher
education futures requires first interrupting the hegemony of the currently dominant vision for the
future, which is rooted in three primary promises: (1) that higher education should exemplify and enable
continuous progress within its own walls and society at large; (2) that higher education is, in its truest
between the past and the present of US higher education so that we might pluralize the available imaginaries for the future (Barnett, 2012, 2014; Stein, 2019).
form, a benevolent public good; and (3) that a primary purpose of higher education is to enable
socioeconomic mobility. These promises, which I unpack in more detail in chapter 1 and illustrate throughout this volume, shape the terms of both scholarly and popular conversations about higher
education, including the questions that we ask about the predicament we currently face and, thus, the responses we are able to imagine and desire. These promises have such a hold on
the collective imagination about higher education that nearly all of the available theories, frames,
grammars, and vocabularies for thinking about or enacting justice and change in higher education fail or
falter when confronted with decolonial analyses that challenge their orienting assumptions and
investments. As a result, many people—including scholars, administrators, students, staff, and the public as a whole—lack a frame of reference for substantively engaging with decolonial critiques and considering
their implications for research, teaching, and practice in higher education. Further, even once people start to see the value of these critiques, they often decontextualize them, selectively extract from them, or graft them back into
mainstream frames and practices in ways, whether intentional or not, that align with and therefore do not interrupt existing individual advantages and institutional agendas (Ahenakew, 2016; Spivak, 1988; Tuck & Yang, 2012).
Thus, one reason that decolonial critiques are often misunderstood or misused in higher education contexts is that preexisting intellectual scaffolding is not in place that would support rigorous, reflexive decolonial inquiry. But
another reason is that
many of us lack the capacities to hold space for the affective difficulties and discomforts inevitably involved in facing the depth, complexity, and magnitude of problems that have no immediate, feel-
good solutions. Such difficulties and discomforts are further amplified when decolonial critiques ask us to question our investments in the benevolence and futurity of the institutions that helped to create these problems in the first
place and, further, to accept responsibility for our own role in reproducing those problems. To confront these difficulties and discomforts in generative ways would require us to go beyond mere critique in order to develop stamina
for the difficult, long-term work of confronting the violence that underwrites modern institutions of higher education, the study of higher education itself, and thus our livelihoods as scholars, practitioners, and students. It would
also require us to develop capacities for redressing and repairing these violences within the contemporary context of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. This, in turn, has significant political and economic
implications, as it would require those who currently benefit from systemic injustice to give up their accumulated power and wealth. Mobilizing these kinds of decolonial changes at both individual and institutional levels is beyond
what can be accomplished in this or any scholarly text, especially because it requires more than just intellectual work; however, I gesture toward some possible pathways forward. While there remains a serious question as to
whether higher education institutions can “right the wrongs that brought them into being” (Belcourt, 2018), this book is primarily intended for those who are most invested in the promises offered by US colleges and universities,
which tend to be those of us who work and study within them. However, the aim here is not to convince people to adopt or embrace decolonial critiques of higher education. Instead, I invite those concerned about the current
state and future of US higher education to “pause” (Patel, 2015) long enough to open themselves up to being surprised and unsettled by what decolonial critiques might teach us—including insight into the underlying costs of the
promises our institutions offer. This will require interrupting the temptation to selectively “consume” decolonial critiques in ways that circularly affirm existing colonial assumptions, investments, and desires, in particular desires for
virtue, purity, progress, and futurity ( Jimmy, Andreotti, & Stein in Ahenakew, 2019; Shotwell, 2016; Stein et al., 2020; Tuck & Yang, 2012). The book therefore offers no simplistic, universal, or feel-good solutions but rather
emphasizes the challenges, complexities, conflicts, failures, and contradictions involved in trying to interrupt colonial patterns. Although decolonial critiques offer no universal prescription for action, they can make it more difficult
to avoid what many of us would rather not see and would prefer to turn our backs to. Facing this reality is vital in a time when it is increasingly difficult to ignore calls to reckon with the ongoing colonial legacies of our campuses.
Thus, whether or not they ultimately agree with the
decolonial critiques that orient this book, those who accept the invitation to pause might find that it enables them to ask previously unthinkable
questions about the past, present, and future of US higher education, and about our subsequent responsibilities as scholars, practitioners, and students, without immediately demanding solutions or seeking absolution. Addressing
it seeks
to interrogate the socially sanctioned ignorance (Spivak, 1988) about higher education’s colonial foundations, so
that we might identify and interrupt the reproduction of colonial logics and practices in the present. To do
Unthought Questions This book seeks to make tangible what remains largely “unthought” (Hartman & Wilderson, 2003) in both scholarly and mainstream conversations about US higher education. In particular,
this, the book offers a thorough examination of what Kevin Bruyneel (2017) calls “settler memory” in narratives about US higher education. As Bruyneel notes, “When we fight about the meaning of the past, we are not fighting
Settler
memory refuses to attend to the implications of colonization in the present, even when evidence of
those implications is readily available. I suggest that collective investment in the continuity of the shiny promises offered by US higher education, as well as collective disavowal of the
over history, we are fighting over memory, specifically the collective memories that purport to bind and define a people’s sense of who they are from past to present and on into the future” (p. 36).
role of racial, colonial, and ecological violence in enabling those promises, shapes the settler memory that contributes to the reproduction of higher education’s romantic foundational myths and organizational sagas (Clark, 1972;
Meyerhoff, 2019). Approaching the foundations of US higher education from a decolonial angle challenges the common framing through which people resist (admittedly troubling) contemporary institutional economic formations
and imperatives by pining for a return to “better days.” As Abigail Boggs and Nick Mitchell (2018) note, this romanticism about the past “repeats the forgetting of the dispossession at the university’s origins while simultaneously
drumming up a sense of crisis regarding the potential consequences of its downfall” (p. 441; see also Boggs et al., 2019; Stein & Andreotti, 2017). In contrast to this wilful ignorance about the past and the ways it shapes the
How might the terms of current academic and political debates change if
the responsibilities of that very real lived condition of colonialism were prioritized as a condition of
possibility?” (p. xx [emphasis added]). I supplement this question with another, which is implied by Byrd’s but is nonetheless worth articulating, given the risk that critiques of colonialism will become anthropocentric
present, I invite readers to take up Jodi Byrd’s (2011) question “
and overlook the effects of colonization on other-than-human beings. That is: How might the terms of current academic and political debates change if we also prioritized our reciprocal responsibilities to the earth as a living entity,
rather than as a property or resource that can be commodified, owned, and even “made sustainable” for continued extractive purposes? In bringing these two questions together, I am drawing on the work of decolonial, especially
Indigenous, scholars and activists who have for a long time drawn connections between colonialism, capitalism, and climate change (Davis & Todd, 2017; Whyte, 2020). These connections point to the close relationship between (1)
the systemic, historical, and ongoing racialcolonial violence that enables the US socioeconomic system and the comforts and securities it promises its citizens (especially white citizens) and (2) the inherent ecological
unsustainability of a socioeconomic system that is premised on infinite extraction, growth, and accumulation, given that we inhabit a finite planet. This book seeks to integrate these two, often-siloed concerns, and consider their
combined implications for higher education.
Student loans are explicitly anti-black
Mustaffa & Dawson 21 - JALIL B. MUSTAFFA, Villanova University & CALEB DAWSON,
UC Berkeley, in the Journal Teachers College Record, June 1st, 2021 “Racial Capitalism and
the Black Student Loan Debt Crisis”
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/016146812112300601] Accessed 10/26/23 SAO {we
defend all debt forgiveness, not just student loans]
Student loans reflect a larger shift in U.S.
society in which people are forced to go into debt for basic needs. This paper uses racial capitalism to account for how Black educational desires are
co-opted, the government configures inclusion according to predatory terms, and the student loan industry forms a debt trap. Student loans as a policy rely on anti-Black
racial logics and systemic forces. Through financialization, student loans convert educationally aspirant people into
units of investment (as opposed to units of labor). The majority of Black people who enroll in higher education never secure the promise of college as always “worth-it,” yet the arrangement continues to be
worthwhile for student loan profiteers (C. H. F. Davis et al., 2020). This is why student loans are perfect for racial capitalism—they answer demands
Racial capitalism is offered as a theory to understand student loans within the long history of racialized debt and higher education.
for social access and inclusion (which are already reduced to mean credentialism)—and reproduce both the disposability and
dispossession of Blackness. Again, racial capitalism does not always make cents as in making a profit, but it
does always make sense as in ensuring a group is exploitable now or in the future. Lastly, while the purpose of this paper was to
trace how student loans operate as a tool in racial capitalism to uniquely exploit Black borrowers, this analysis still falls short. That is to say, this paper only contributes to one part of a racial justice praxis: providing a lens to
understand the problem. There is a need for scholarship and activism that explores how to eliminate student loan debt in a way that makes all racialized debt unthinkable. In other words, a racial justice praxis cannot just target
crises of racial capitalism—student debt—but must also abolish the racist logics, processes, and policies that make the crisis and Black precarity possible in the first place (Robinson, 2000). To begin, scholars must contextualize
racialized debt in higher education with other debt traps like housing, healthcare, or credit cards. Debt elimination should not happen solely for student loans; such an approach wrongly reifies education as the only social policy
There are activist movements and advocacy-driven scholarship
growing to argue for full debt cancelation coupled with free college as a gateway to a larger vision to imagine livelihoods beyond debt (Mir & Toor, 2021). As is often the case,
reckonings with anti-Blackness—where debt is one such tool—are made possible by grassroots
mobilizations (Dawson, 2021). There is the Debt Collective (2020), which launched student loan debt strikes where borrowers refused to participate in repayment in order to highlight the exploitation of student
(Kantor & Lowe, 2006) and the Black student debt crisis as an aberration of capitalism.
loans. The Collective successfully negotiated the cancellation of over $1 billion of student loan debt and forced the Department of Education to strengthen protection efforts for student borrowers (Appel, 2019). While also
proponents of full student debt cancellation, The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) (online) has prioritized criminal legal debt as a primary issue and has successfully launched bail mutual aid funds to help secure Black people’s
release from prison. In addition, M4BL has pushed cities closer to abolishing cash bail and reducing fees in places like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Ferguson, and Chicago. Next, Cooperation Jackson (online) is building a model whose
“basic theory of change is centered on the position that organizing and empowering the structurally under and unemployed sectors of the working class, particularly from Black and Latino communities, to build worker organized
and owned cooperatives will be a catalyst for the democratization of our economy and society overall.” All three coalitions are organizing for forms of debt cancellation and helped bring the solution to the national stage. Arguably,
their longterm organizing, while often outside the institutional system, opened up the space for debt cancellation to be a legitimate solution in higher education research and policy debates. In just the last three years, there have
been several research reports on student debt cancellation, public letters from hundreds of policy advocacy organizations supporting broad cancellation, and legislation like the College for All bill to cancel all student debt (Debt
Collective, 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, interest on federally held student loans was cancelled, and though described publicly as a payment pause, the interest during the pause will never be added onto the loan. Many
the executive branch, because of authority granted to the Secretary of Education in the
original Higher Education Act, has the power to cancel student debt in any amount and anytime (Student Borrower
Protection Center (SBPC), 2020). The COVID-19 pause and cancellation of student debt interest, implemented originally by executive order, is evidence of this authority. Cancellation can abolish
the racial student debt trap that targets Black people and harms many groups as collateral damage. While
advocates argue that
calls to dismantle student debt and racialized debt in general are growing (Mir & Toor, 2021; SBPC, 2020; Taylor, 2019), movement building continues to be necessary to generate political will. Disrupting racial capitalism demands
the cancellation of student loans. However, what that victory and others will mean for Black people and other marginalized groups will depend on a critique of racial capitalism that uproots racial logics and systems—from
meritocracy and credentialism to predation and financialization.
The draft was never abolished. The US government strategically dangles opportunities
for social mobility in front of minorities to fuel its imperial wars abroad.
Zhang 22 - Sharon Zhang, Truthout, September 20, 2022 “GOP: Student Loan Forgiveness
Hurts Anility to Lure Poor People Into Military” [https://truthout.org/articles/gop-student-loanforgiveness-hurts-ability-to-lure-poor-people-into-military/] ahs//jw accessed 10/26/2023
Republicans are
complaining that President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation program will
hurt the Pentagon’s ability to recruit poor people into the military.
facing criticism for
Last week, a group of 19 Republican representatives sent a letter saying that Biden’s recent plan to
cancel up to $10,000 for borrowers or $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients making under $75,000 a year is “removing any leverage the Department of Defense” to recruit people wishing to access higher education but who can’t afford it. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) tweeted a link to a news
report on the letter, saying that he is “very concerned that the deeply flawed and unfair policy of blanket student loan forgiveness will also weaken our most powerful recruiting tool at the precise moment we are experiencing a crisis in military recruiting.” Bacon faced ridicule for his
lawmakers are openly admitting that they
keeping higher
education expensive as a tool for military recruitment.
folks want poor people to be put in a
corner so they will go fight endless wars that benefit the rich just to receive an education
known as the
“poverty draft.” The military’s offers financial incentives like student loan repayment,
for young people experiencing debt or poverty.
the military often actively travels to schools in
poor and nonwhite neighborhoods in order to recruit
Black, Latinx, Indigenous and low-income
people are disproportionately placed in the most dangerous situations compared to other enlistees.
people shouldn’t have to put their
lives on the line just in order to afford higher education.
if canceling student debt actually does decrease military
recruitment, that would be a good thing.
canceling student debt
would hamper U.S. imperial/colonial efforts.”
tweet by progressives like former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, who are saying that GOP
have an interest in
“Read between the lines: these
,” Turner wrote. Republicans have faced
criticism for similar statements. Last month, Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana) similarly complained that student debt forgiveness “undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools.” Critics of the Pentagon have long condemned what is
of
free college, and other cash incentives are a draw
And, knowing this,
; then, once they join,
This
predatory practice is unethical for many reasons, critics of the practice argue. People in active military service are at high risk of mental health issues like suicide, and critics say that poor
and
bodies
With that in mind, critics said on social media that it is alarming that Republicans would not only acknowledge this fact but also
openly advocate for it, saying that Republicans were saying “the quiet part out loud.” Activist group the Debt Collective wrote that
, in fact,
wrote on Twitter. “It is not a stretch to say that
“One of the best parts about canceling student debt is thinking of all the people who no longer feel compelled to enlist in the military to pay off their loans,” the group
— and making college free —
You have a categorical imperative to reject doctrines that uphold cultural otherization
Dunford 17 - Robin Dunford, University of Brighton, Journal of Global Ethics,
September 21st 2017 “Toward a decolonial global ethics”
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449626.2017.1373140] Accessed 10/1/20 SAO
Decolonial ethics is not without its tensions, some of which I explore in this section. In principle, the above two aspects of pluriversality cut in different directions. The pluriversal as that which is formed through inter-cultural
dialogue points in the direction of a dialogue in which positions are not excluded in advance (even if this dialogue may take place, initially at least, only amongst the oppressed), and in which no particular standard or value is valid
in advance of dialogue.7 Taken alone, this form of pluriversality raises questions. Does inter-cultural dialogue have any limits or constraints? Are values justified solely by virtue of having emerged through inter-cultural dialogue, or
Are any and all views allowed to the table, or ought certain
views be rejected? What about those views that reproduce colonial narratives or values that have done
so much to silence, undermine and oppress those on the underside of the colonial matrix of power? Taken
is it possible for a value to be wrong, normatively speaking, despite emerging from this process?
alone, this aspect of pluriversality cannot provide an account of whether there are views, practices and modes of engagement that should not be allowed in discussion. Nor can it rule out, as illegitimate, views, values, practices or
. Pluriversality as a value suggests that practices, worldviews, values or
policies are legitimate only if they remain compatible with the existence of other worlds. In this sense, pluriversality sets a standard of legitimacy that would judge as
morally wrong any worldview, value or practice that does not accept the existence of, or that works to shut down,
other worlds. That is not necessarily to say, though, that those holding such views ought to be excluded from dialogue. There is a tension, then, between the two aspects of pluriversality. Giving ultimate priority to
policies that, despite emerging from discussion, may nonetheless go on to oppress others. It is here that pluriversality as a value enters
one aspect cannot solve this tension. Without any reflection on its emergence from pluriversal dialogue, the substantive value of pluriversality would become a new abstract, already-universal design and would undermine all
Without the substantive value, there is no way of identifying why a dialogue that takes seriously
multiple cosmovisions is a morally good thing. Nor would there be any way of casting any judgment on or identifying as morally wrong certain visions – racist visions, sexist
visions, visions that advocate a form of modernity that inevitably reproduces coloniality. Both aspects of pluriversality must
commitment to taking seriously as producers of knowledge those that are marginalised.
remain, and decolonial global ethics must find ways of navigating (if not resolving) any tension between them. It will be for pluriversal dialogue to find ways of navigating this potentially irresolvable tension. To offer some ideas to
the substantive value of pluriversality has emerged, in practice, through pluriversal exchanges in
indigenous, peasant (Martínez-Torres and Rosset 2014), feminist (Leinius 2014) and World Social Forum praxis (Conway and Singh 2011). Having
emerged as an abstract value through concrete, inter-cultural dialogue, it can, in turn, retrospectively
account for why it is that such dialogue is, normatively speaking, a good thing. One might also note that the abstract value of a world in
any such discussion, it is worth noting that
which other worlds are possible does not give rise immediately to concrete values, practices, policies and attitudes. Understanding what kind of practices, policies and modes of behaving and living enable other worlds to exist, and
fostering the kind of respect for other worlds that such practices and ways of living may require, requires pluriversal dialogue, for it is through such exchanges that it will become apparent that certain demands and ways of living
can and do result in the oppression of others. Both aspects of pluriversality can thus be mutually enriching in practice, despite the potential for tension between them. Whilst there is not room to introduce them in depth here,
any readers inclined to think that this tension makes decolonial ethics unworkable, hopelessly idealistic
and of no use in the ‘real world’ would be advised to explore the practices of the social movements that
navigate these tensions. Related to this difference between the two aspects of pluriversality are tensions between decoloniality as an option and decoloniality as an imperative. For Mignolo, there will
be no place for one option to pretend to be the option. The decolonial option is not aiming to be the one. It is just an option that, beyond asserting itself as such, makes clear that all the rest are also options. (2011, 21) Similarly,
what we put on the table is an option to be embraced by all those who find in the option(s) a response to his or her concern and who will actively engage, politically and epistemically, to advance projects of epistemic and
subjective decolonisation and in building communal futures. (2011, xxvii) This weaker version of decoloniality appears not to rule out, as incompatible with decolonial global ethics, other visions. ‘Western civilization’ would then,
Mignolo (2011, 176) suggests, ‘merely be one among many options, and not the one guide to rule the many.’ The decolonial option serves to add another option to the table. It does not necessarily reject Western modernity, liberal
cosmopolitanism or other positions, provided that they, too, present themselves only as an option. When understanding pluriversality in terms of its procedural aspect, this makes perfect sense. It would be wrong to set out, in
The worry with this weaker version, however, is that it risks ‘losing the ability for
critique’ (Alcoff 2012, 6) and becoming a relativism of anything goes. For Grosfoguel (2012, 101), by contrast, pluriversality is not
‘a relativism of anything goes’. Similarly, for Dussel (2012, 19), a decolonial perspective does ‘not presuppose the illusion of a non-existent symmetry between cultures’. Instead, it
acknowledges that some cultures, cosmovisions and livelihoods are systematically threatened by others
and cannot survive in the face of cosmovisions and lifestyles that are inextricably tied to the ceaseless
extraction of resources, the dispossession of people and poor working conditions. These perspectives follow when the substantive
value of pluriversality is invoked. If the practices, institutions and lifestyles that we associate with modernity continue to
depend upon and be constituted by coloniality, then these are not compatible with a world in which
other worlds fit. It is for this reason that Dussel suggests that decolonial liberation is ‘impossible for capitalism’ and must not accept the colonial matrix of power ‘as a whole’ (Dussel 2013, 138). Though Mignolo
advance, one option as an imperative, as one we ought to follow, albeit in different ways.
primarily presents decoloniality as an option, at other times he suggests that ‘pluriversal futures … are only possible if the reign of economic capitalism ends’, on the basis that economic capitalism provides space only for practices
that can be turned into, or do not obstruct, profits, and hence does not allow different worlds to exist on equal terms (Mignolo 2011, 292). This article is not the place to analyse the validity of Mignolo and Dussel’s accounts of
decoloniality should be considered an imperative, and not just an option to be placed on the table. So
understood, decolonial global ethics goes beyond a relativism of anything goes. Any option that inevitably depends upon
the systematic destruction of other words would violate the principle of a world in which many worlds
fit. Decoloniality, and its central value – pluriversality – invoke stringent demands that rule out a number of worlds, practices and lifestyles. It identifies as wrong a world of economic capitalism if and insofar as it inevitably
capitalism. The point is to suggest that
depends on, and cannot be reformed to prevent, the destruction of other worlds. It identifies as wrong practices of resource extraction, if and insofar as they destroy the livelihoods of peasant and indigenous peoples. It identifies
as wrong highly polluting lifestyles, if and insofar as they lead to the destruction of the lives and cosmovisions of those who are dispossessed and displaced as a result of environmental change.
It means, finally,
that Western civilization as we know it cannot be one legitimate option among many if and insofar as
it is constituted through, and cannot be separated from, coloniality. If decolonial global ethics is to unpick the colonial matrix of power and
liberate people (s) from domination, it must be an imperative. It must be understood, as it is by Mignolo (2011, 23) in one of his stronger statements, as a project ‘which all contending options would have to accept’. This
does not mean that decoloniality and pluriversality offer a singular and rigid global design. A pluriversal world is one
in which multiple options are possible – a world in which many worlds can co-exist. Whilst other options would be circumscribed insofar as they would have to accept the decolonial imperative of working towards a pluriversal
world, this still leaves room for many options, many possible lives, livelihoods and cosmovisions.
Only those worlds that involve, inextricably, the continued
domination of others are judged as wrong (though it may well be the case that such views should not be excluded from dialogue, given that dialogue itself may help enrich the kind
of mutual respect that would lead to the abandonment of such views). Far from invoking a relativism of anything goes, this principle is a
demanding one, with radical implications for global social structures and ways of living. The building of a pluriverse is and
must be an open-ended project, fed by dialogues amongst actors from across the world. Moreover, the demand of a pluriverse may be impossible to meet fully; in an
interconnected world, it may be impossible to ensure that it is not the case that the actions of some constrain the worlds of others. This does not mean, however, that some worlds,
practices, livelihoods, lifestyles and institutional designs are not more compatible with a pluriverse than others. Recognising interconnectedness – and the long history of
interconnectedness – only increases the importance of striving for a pluriversal world in an attempt to build a world free from the domination and destruction of the colonial matrix of power. Decolonial theory makes a distinctive
decolonial theory offers
a fundamentally global ethics that is distinct from individualistic and universalistic cosmopolitan theory. It begins with those
and valuable contribution to global ethics. It begins with an analysis of coloniality as the inextricable darker side of modernity. In reflecting on what it would mean to decolonise,
perspectives threatened by a colonial matrix of power, and proposes inter-cultural dialogue across diverse cosmovisions. In so doing, it refuses to specify, in advance, what is of fundamental moral significance. Finally, it embraces
A value is pluriversal if, rather than being set up as an abstract and
already-universal value, it is constructed through dialogue across multiple cosmovisions. Pluriversality also refers to a value
of a world in which many words fit. Pluriversality thus offers an account of both a global process through which global values can legitimately be formed, and a value that can be
used to judge particular practices, policies, processes or social structures. Pluriversality as a value is demanding and judges as morally wrong
practices and social structures that inevitably dispossess others. But it is not equivalent to those universal, global designs central to the colonial
matrix of power. It is not equivalent, in part, because it embraces radical difference and seeks to multiply options,
rather than close them down. It also differs in that it has emerged from, and can only be fleshed out through, a process of pluriversal exchange. Decolonial theory has been constructed alongside
pluriversality. Plurversality refers, on the one hand, to a way of constructing values.
and through social movement practice. The above presentation of the value of pluriversality, and of the distinctive features of decolonial theory more broadly, has only been possible in light of the work of peasant, indigenous,
feminist and World Social Forum activists contesting various aspects of the colonial matrix of power. Taking decolonial global ethics seriously opens avenues for further work judging whether, how, and why given practices, policies,
processes and structures are compatible with pluriversality in both senses of the term. If this article encourages global ethicists to explore further these questions, then it would have played its small part in contributing to the
construction of an ethical framework that can take seriously and challenge the legacy of colonial rule.
Reject negative arguments based on evaluating consequences of loan forgiveness, 6
warrants.
[1] Infinitely Cascading Consequences: It’s impossible to determine when the
consequences of an action have ended so we can never calculate ethicality
[2] Act-omission distinction: There are an infinite number of things you aren’t doing at
any given time which removes any reason to be moral because people cannot control
what they are being punished for
[3] Probability: We know that student loans are a racially targeted structure, that
means voting aff guarantees the removal of a racist structure. Any future harms are
speculative at best.
[4] Oppression Olympics: Evaluating consequences requires comparing the oppression
experienced by various groups. If we win that a structure is intrinsically racist we
shouldn’t be forced to devalue the oppression that other people experience by
comparing it to future oppression.
[5] Intrinsic Wrongness: Their interpretation would force debaters to defend that
slavery and genocide are morally obligatory if they prevented extinction. This
encourages students to practice dehumanization techniques that spill out of debate.
[6] Political consequences are empirically impossible to predict.
Menand 5 - Louis Menand, Professor at Harvard University, The New Yorker 2005
“Everybody’s An Expert” [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/12/05/everybodys-an-expert] SS
“Expert Political Judgment” is not a work of media criticism. Tetlock is a psychologist—he teaches at Berkeley—and his conclusions are based on a long-term study that he began twenty
years ago. He picked two hundred and eighty-four people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on
political and economic trends,” and he started asking them to assess the probability that various things would or would not come to pass, both in the areas of the world in which they specialized
and in areas about which they were not expert. Would there be a nonviolent end to apartheid in South Africa? Would Gorbachev be ousted in a coup? Would the United States go to war in the Persian Gulf? Would Canada
the experts had made 82,361
forecasts. Tetlock also asked questions designed to determine how they reached their judgments, how they reacted when their predictions proved to be wrong, how they evaluated new information that did not support
disintegrate? (Many experts believed that it would, on the ground that Quebec would succeed in seceding.) And so on. By the end of the study, in 2003,
their views, and how they assessed the probability that rival theories and predictions were accurate. Tetlock got a statistical handle on his task by putting most of the forecasting questions into a “three possible futures” form.
The respondents were asked to rate the probability of three alternative outcomes: the persistence of the status quo,
more of something (political freedom, [e.g.] economic growth), or less of something (repression, [e.g.] recession). And he measured his
experts on two dimensions: how good they were at guessing probabilities (did all the things they said had an x per cent chance of happening happen x per cent of the time?), and how accurate they were at predicting specific
the experts performed worse than they would have if they had simply assigned an equal
probability to all three outcomes—if they had given each possible future a thirty-three-per-cent chance of occurring. Human beings who spend their lives studying the state
of the world, in other words, are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys, who would have distributed their picks evenly over the three choices.
outcomes. The results were unimpressive. On the first scale,
Even if consequences matter, debt forgiveness works
Akhtar & Hoffower 20 - Allana Akhtar, senior health reporter for Insider, and Hillary
Hoffower, Economics Correspondent, Business Insider, June 10th 2020 “9 startling facts
that show just how hard the student-debt crisis is hurting Black Americans”
[https://www.businessinsider.com/how-americas-student-debt-crisis-impacts-black-students-2019-7]
Accessed 12/1/23 SAO *brackets in original
Education is one area where Black
Americans are hurting the most as the result of institutionalized racism — especiallywith student loans.
In the wake of George Floyd's death, the Black Lives Matter protests have shined a spotlight on America's long history of inequality and systemic racism.
Black students are not only more likely to need to take on debtfor school, graduates are also nearly five times as likely to default on their loans than their white peers. The racial gap between Black and white student borrowers
prompted senators who ran for a presidential bid in 2019 to address the issue during their campaigns: Elizabeth Warren's initiative would have wiped all student debt for 75% of US borrowers, and Bernie Sanders called to eliminate
all such debt. Here are nine mind-blowing statistics about the student-debt crisis' impact on black borrowers as compared to white students. (The majority of data sources compared Black- and white-borrower debt, which is why
other racial groups were not mentioned directly.) 1. 86.6% of black students borrow federal loans to attend four-year colleges, compared to 59.9% of white students.Of the black students who graduated in 2003, one in two
defaulted on their student loans sometime within the following 12 years, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics as analyzed by Student Loan Hero. In comparison, the rates of default for white student
was at 21.5%, and 36.1% for Latino students. 2. Even well-off black students carry more student-loan debt. Beth Akers, fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families, told Martha C. White of NBC News that
black students don't benefit as much from their parents' wealth as white students do. Well-off black families have a lower average net worth than white families, and they hold their wealth differently — mostly in homeownership
as opposed to financial assets like stocks that are easy to access, White reported. 3.An average black graduate has $7,400 more in student debt than his or her white peer. Black students with bachelor's degrees owe $7,400 more
student debt on average upon graduation than white grads, according to Brookings. The gap widens over time: after four years, black grads hold almost twice as much in student debt as their white counterparts at $53,000.
Brookings analyzed restricted-use data from the Department of Education's Baccalaureate and Beyond surveys, as well as Department of Education and Census Bureau data. 4. Black student-loan borrowers default on their loans at
five times the rate of white graduates. Though just six out of every 100 BA holders default on their loans, black borrowers are much more likely to default: 21% of them default on their loans compared to just 4% of white grads,
according to Brookings. Furthermore, black graduates with a bachelor's degree are even slightly more likely to default — or don't make a payment for 270 consecutive days — than white college dropouts. Brookings does not
attribute the racial disparity to just lower levels of parent education or family income. Instead, they point to higher for-profit graduate-school enrollment and lower earnings post-grad. 5. Graduates of historically black colleges and
universities (HBCUs) take on 32% more debt than their peers at other colleges. Howard University Students HBCU Students of Howard University march from campus to the Lincoln Memorial to participate in the Realize the Dream
Rally for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington August 24, 2013. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan A Wall Street Journal analysis of Education Department data found that not only do alumni at HBCUs take on 32% more
debt than graduates at other public or nonprofit four-year schools, the majority of graduates haven't paid any debt in the first few years out of school. While HBCUs make up just 5% of four-year American colleges, they make up
"50% of the 100 schools with the lowest three-year student-loan repayment rates," the Journal found. The discrepancy could be because black families already have less wealth compared to other racial groups. HBCUs are typically
more affordable than other institutions, according to Student Loan Hero. Spelman College, the most expensive HBCU as of January 2019, costs $28,181 in tuition, several thousand dollars less than the national average of $32,410
Eliminating student-loan debt would narrow the racial wealth gap for young families. The
Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank based in New York, found that white households headed by people between the ages of 25 and 40 have 12 times the amount of
wealth on average than [of] black households. By eliminating student debt — as presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have proposed to do in some
capacity — the ratio shrinks [it] to just five times the amount of wealth. Even after canceling debt, however, the racial wealth gap will remain high: the median
for private four-year colleges. 6.
wealth in young white households would total $52,700, compared to $10,010 for their black peers. 7. White borrowers pay down their education debt at a rate of 10% a year, compared with 4% for black borrowers. college
graduate worried surprised Chip Somodevilla/Getty That's according to a study by Jason Houle and Fenaba Addo in SAGE journals. They found that racial inequalities in student debt contribute to the black-white wealth gap in early
adulthood, which increases over time. After adjusting for family background and postsecondary characteristics, black youth reported 85.8% more debt than their white peers when starting their careers, according to the authors.
This disparity grows by 6.7% annually, they said.
Racists will find any excuses to stop policies that reduce the wealth gap
Larsen 22 - Peter Larsen, 12-11-2022, "The Racial Impact and Rhetoric of Student Loan
Forgiveness," No Publication, https://www.civilrights.pitt.edu/racial-impact-and-rhetoric-student-loanforgiveness-peter-larsen // MH
On August 24, 2022, President Biden announced a three-part strategy to address the U.S. student debt crisis. [1] First, cancellation of up to $10,000 for borrowers who earned less than $125,000 per year, with an additional $10,000
available for Pell grantees. Second, providing relief to borrowers by fixing the well-known problems with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program and cutting undergraduate loan monthly payments. Third, working to
control increasing costs of higher education going forward. Perhaps predictably, the major focus of attention in media and public opinion has centered around debt cancellation, and all but ignored the latter two parts of Biden’s
strategy. Outrage from conservatives was swift and broad. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed that the working class might “get off the bong” and vote for the Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections. [2] A group of Republican
Congresspersons voiced concern that Biden’s limited student loan cancellation would depress military recruitment, citing the military’s coverage of educational costs for some armed service members as a chief recruitment
incentive. [3] Even more conservative pundits and politicians argued against student debt cancellation on general principle, with arguments ranging from the offense debt forgiveness causes to those who had already paid off their
student loans, [4] to even more outlandish claims. [5] While some, like the ACLU exerted pressure on Biden prior to his announcement, arguing student debt cancellation is a racial justice issue, [6]
conservative
extremists called debt cancellation racism against white people. [7] Meanwhile, the Biden White House was mostly concerned with
pointing out the perceived hypocrisy with many of the student debt cancellation critics having recently significantly benefitted from the federal government’s financial relief during the pandemic. [8] So, what is the truth regarding
race and student debt cancellation? By the numbers, federally held student loans makeup roughly 92% of student loan debt, or $1.6 trillion, spread out over 43 million loan holders. [9] This is truly a major financial crisis for the U.S.
Who holds those loans? “In 2015–16, the percentage of full-time, full-year undergraduate students who received loans from any source also varied by racial/ethnic group. A higher percentage of Black students (71 percent)
received loans than students who were White (56 percent), of Two or more races (54 percent), Pacific Islander (53 percent), Hispanic (50 percent), American Indian/Alaska Native (38 percent), and Asian (31 percent)…. With respect
to Federal Pell Grants, Asian students received a higher average annual amount of aid ($5,030) than did Hispanic ($4,860) and White ($4,610) students. Students who were Black ($4,900), Hispanic, and of Two or more races
($4,830) also received higher average annual amounts of Pell Grant aid than did White students.” [10] What of the racialized rhetoric from the right? Research has shown conservatives perceive a greater racial correlation with
marijuana usage than liberals. [11] The actual data, however, shows that “in 2018 the lifetime prevalence of cannabis use was lower for Black (45.3%) than White (53.6%) adults aged 18 years or older, but Black individuals were
3.64 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession.” [12] In terms of military service, “In 2004, 36% of active duty military were black, Hispanic, Asian or some other racial or ethnic group. Black service members made up
about half of all racial and ethnic minorities at that time. By 2017, the share of active duty military who were non-Hispanic white had fallen, while racial and ethnic minorities made up 43% – and within that group, blacks dropped
from 51% in 2004 to 39% in 2017 just as the share of Hispanics rose from 25% to 36%.” [13] Interestingly, one of the greatest racial disparities around President Biden’s announced plan actually has to do with the PSLF program.
Black or African Americans are more likely to support PSLF [Loan Forgiveness] than
any other race,” and “White or Caucasian Americans report the least support for PSLF.” [14] In many ways, there is a great benefit to Black people in
While “[o]ne-third of Americans support PSLF, “
student loan forgiveness. At the same time, the benefit to the Black community is perhaps overstated. The larger issue at play is the conflation of race and socioeconomic status. The relationship between the two is complex, and
well documented, but poorly understood. Current census statistical research shows that “race and ethnicity in terms of stratification often determine a person's socioeconomic status.” [15] Many of the benefits of student debt
cancellation are more impactful along socioeconomic lines than racial lines. From the Brookings Institute, “we know that white families have about eight times the amount of wealth as Black families, and that really comes out of
the wash in terms of who repays student loans, what kind of time period, as well as default rates. And we know that Black borrowers take much longer time to cancel or to eliminate their loans, to pay down their loans, and also
conservative groups attempting to derail Biden’s student debt cancellation will remain myopic about the perceived racial benefits of
debt forgiveness. One of the legal challenges to the plan is from the Brown County Taxpayers Association, which claims that debt cancellation “violates federal law by
intentionally seeking to narrow the racial wealth gap and help Black borrowers.” [17] (The group’s emergency
their default rates are higher.” [16] Still, it seems that the focus of
application for writ of injunction pending appeal was recently rejected by the Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who serves as the Circuit Justice for the lawsuit, as well as the preceding federal judge and appellate judge panel.
[18]) It remains incumbent on academics to continue correcting the record and drawing necessary fine distinctions relating to racially based misinformation and disinformation around student debt cancellation as these lawsuits
continue to wend their way through the courts and remain a topic of discussion in the popular media.
Rebuttal
Capitalism is to ingrained to eliminate; we have to work within the system to promote
change
Dr. John K. Wilson, Institute for College Freedom, “How the Left can Win Arguments
and Influence People,” 2001, ["Project MUSE", https://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780814784587] JMS
Capitalism is far too ingrained in American life to eliminate. If you go into the most impoverished areas of America, you
will find that the people who live there are not seeking government control over factories or even more social welfare programs; they're
hoping, usually in vain, for a fair chance to share in the capitalist wealth. The
poor do not pray for socialism-they strive to
be a part of the capitalist system. They want jobs, they want to start businesses, and they want to
make money and be successful. What's wrong with America is not capitalism as a system but
capitalism as a religion. We worship the accumulation of wealth and treat the horrible inequality between rich and poor as if it were
an act of God. Worst of all, we allow the government to exacerbate the financial divide by favoring the wealthy: go anywhere in America, and
compare a rich suburb with a poor town-the city services, schools, parks, and practically everything else will be better financed in the place
populated by rich people. The
aim is not to overthrow capitalism but to overhaul it. Give it a social-justice
tune-up, make it more efficient, get the economic engine to hit on all cylinders for everybody, and stop putting out
so many environmentally hazardous substances. To some people, this goal means selling out leftist ideals for the sake of capitalism. But the
right thrives on having an ineffective opposition. The Revolutionary Communist Party helps stabilize the "free market" capitalist system by
making it seem as if the only alternative to free-market capitalism is a return to Stalinism. Prospective
activists for change are
instead channeled into pointless discussions about the revolutionary potential of the proletariat.
Instead of working to persuade people to accept progressive ideas, the far left talks to itself.
On the Alt: Turn- Social Movements must come through existing institutions or they
will never succeed--- the neg only reinforces the status quo
Alasdair Roberts, Suffolk University Law School, Public Administration Review,
2012 [“Why the Occupy Movement Failed” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.15406210.2012.02614.x/full , 7-2-2017 ] AWS
Th e Occupy movement briefly flourished and then failed. It burned itself out without moving the country substantially closer to remedies for
any of the problems associated with the neoliberal project. In a sense, it demonstrated some of the reasons for the resilience of that
project. Neoliberalism has reshaped politics as well as the economy. It destroyed mechanisms such as the union movement that
might have organized resistance against it and gave authorities more extensive capabilities for policing
mass protest. Granted, it provided its opponents with improved technical capabilities for mobilization; but at the same time, it encouraged
the illusion that these new technical capabilities would allow the possibility of organization without hierarchy. In this way, neoliberalism
unwittingly incapacitated its enemies. Taken to an extreme, the horizontalist ethic destroyed the capacity of Occupiers to build political
alliances and curb behavior that would corrode popular support and trigger robust policing. Th e anarchist philosophy promoted by many
activists within OWS contemplates only three possible paths to social change. One is violent resistance against established authority. As we
have seen, this is ineffectual when governments have increasingly robust policing capabilities. (And in any case, many anarchists would not
choose violence as a matter of principle.) A second path is the gradual subversion of the status quo through the creation and growth of
alternative modes of social organization—that is, “building the new society in the shell of the old” (Byrne 2012, 142). But this presumes the
ability to persuade a broader public that it should collaborate in expanding the anarchist experiment. To do this, the experiment would have to
be seen as something worth joining, and as the months passed, fewer and fewer Americans viewed OWS in this way. Many liked its goals; most
did not like its modus operandi. Th is leaves only the third path to social change: working
through existing political
institutions. This path is dismissed by anarchists because existing structures are thought to lack
legitimacy. But if the fi rst and second paths are obstructed, it is imprudent to dismiss the third out of
hand. The alternative is to give up on the possibility of social change entirely. To succeed on this third path,
however, opponents of neoliberalism must acknowledge three points. The first is that an opposition movement must have the capacity to
coordinate and control action, which OWS clearly lacked. Second, it must have a philosophy of action that concedes the possibility of tactical
alliances with other social actors. And third, it
must have an overarching view about the role of state and economy—
a new paradigm—that explains in a concise and appealing way its alternative to the status quo and
forestalls unending debate about what the demands of the movement should be. Th ere may be a good,
convenient example of a cause that did all of this: neoliberalism itself, as it became ascendant in the tumult of the 1970s.
2. Do Both: the net benefit Capitalism is not monolithic, but their K makes it so.
Instead, we should affirm everyday experiences of alterity and smaller actions like the
plan as a way to create ethical connections and cultivate subjectivities not alreadyinterpolated by capital.
Agnes N. Sui and Ngai Pun, Agnes S.Ku is Associate Professor of Sociology at Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology. Ngai Pun is Assistant Professor of
Anthropology at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Routledge Curzon
Studies in Asia’s Transformations, 2005 [“Remaking Citizenship in Hong
Kong” http://www.untagsmd.ac.id/files/Perpustakaan_Digital_1/CITIZENSHIP%20Remaking%20Citizenship%20in%20Hong%20Ko
ng%20Community,%20nation%20and%20the%20global%20city.pdf 10.04.15]-BHAJr
Gibson-Graham and colleagues have engaged in such a project by bringing in the experience of ordinary people in order to gain “a new positioning in the grammar of economy.” They have worked as a group since 1997 consisting
They do not see the economy and capitalism as a
monotonous entity; for them to call the economy capitalist is to engage in “categorical violence.” As a
result, it is desirable to develop new languages “to represent noncapitalist forms of economy
(including ones we might value and desire) as existing and emerging, and as possible to create” (ibid.: 95). Their
cultivation of alternative economic subjectivities is realized essentially through creating a new economic language and by rearticulating it with existing economic processes. For them, many of the diverse
everyday activities of ordinary people, such as community and ecological services, household
management, voluntary and religious works, can be seen as diverse “economic practices” but they are
disqualified as “non-economic” by mainstream economic language and are thus marginalized as
secondary or insignificant. In order to reclaim their centrality in the economy, Gibson-Graham develops a typology that regards
these practices as economic (but not capitalist) activities.3 In other words, what Gibson-Graham advocates is to broaden and to open up the meaning of the
of “members who hoped to become desiring economic subjects of a ‘socialist’ sort” (CEC 2001:94).
economy, instead of reducing everything into a narrowly defined economistic domain. To cultivate a “desiring economic subject” of a “socialist sort” requires integrating two apparently contradictory ethical principles. The first is
conventionally associated with the economic domain: being an autonomous self that is independent, free and assertive. The second is considered to fall into the communal domain: being a communal subject who is caring, willing
. To reconcile these seemingly contradictory principles, the meanings of
“economic” and “community” have to be reconsidered. On the one hand, the homogenizing and exclusive tendencies that limit or even suppress community
to share and is concerned with collective welfare
members’ freedom and autonomy have to be avoided, and the meaning of “community” could just as well be understood in terms of difference. On the other hand, to balance the selfish, indifferent, and atomizing tendencies of
individualism, the economic subject can be reconceptualized as mutually respecting and supportive subjects who are able to maintain feelings of common interest and sympathy but at the same time to keep a critical distance from
communal cohesion and domination. In Hong Kong, as elsewhere, unlike other keywords with contested meanings (perhaps the most notable one is “globalization”), the term “community” is rarely used unfavorably. Rebuilding
This is particularly true in
this current recession period in which the community is increasingly accepted as an alternative to the
malfunctioning market economy and the retreating state. Yet in light of the not-always-positive experiences of various kinds of community projects in the past,
community is an acceptable political agenda for almost all social forces differentially located along political spectrums, from conservatives to liberals to the radicals.
it is still worthwhile to swim against the current in order to rethink the meaning of community before endorsing its liberation potential. What is a “community”? The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines a community as: I.
A body of individuals: 1. The commons as opposed to peers etc.; the common people. 2. An organized political, municipal, or social body; a body of people living in the same locality; a body of people having religion, profession, etc.,
in common; a body of nations unified by common interests. 3. A monastic, socialistic, etc. body of people living together and holding goods in common. II. A quality or state: 4. The state of being shared or held in common; joint
ownership or liability. 5. A common character, an agreement, an identity. 6. Social inter-course; communion; fellowship, sense of common identity. 7. Commonness, ordinary occurrence. 8. Life in association with others; society;
the social state. In other words, in addition to its connotation of its detachment from the state and its difference from “peers” or those of rank, “community” often connotes “commonness,” “sameness” or even “oneness.” From
the nineteenth century onwards, “community” has become a term that implies “experiments in an alternative kind of group-living,” whose constituency is always disadvantaged populations. The term has increasingly detached
To many social activists, the ideal
“communal subject” is one who actively shapes his/her own future by engaging in various communal
relationships, promoting shared interests and constructing common identities. Yet in light of past negative experiences of various
from national politics and official social welfare provision, and come closer to denote “working directly with people” (Williams 1976:75–76).
kinds of community projects, such as the exclusive tendencies of the community and its restriction of individual autonomy and freedom, the term “community” has increasingly been rethought in recent
studies. When community is understood as a geographically bounded locality with the following
characteristics: intimacy, immediacy, reciprocity, transparency, assimilation, shared interests, shared
identities and local autonomy, it is often used as a (utopian) political model that could serve as an
alternative to both the atomizing individualism and a panoptical surveillant state. Yet in a cosmopolitan setting such as
sociocultural
contemporary Hong Kong, communities are inevitably border-crossing. Shared or common interests with a particular group/community are always partial. Even in a given geographical locality, it is not easy to put different groups
of persons together by assigning them a common identity, as the interests of different ethnic, gender, income and age-groups are very diverse. Elaborating Iris Young’s critical notion of community, Jeannie Martin (Martin and
O’Loughlin 2002) nicely argues that the model of a small neighborhood that celebrates face-to-face relations is inadequate to mediate among strangers and their unassimilated differences. Moreover, this model of community that
privileges commonness and sameness is blind to adverse political consequences such as exclusiveness and intolerance of difference. Hence, as Martin argues, broader networks such as administrative, political, economic, cultural
ones are crucial to communal projects in complex societies, for without these networks the democratic and inclusive encountering of strangers will be impossible. That is why Martin believes that community development should
be understood largely as cultural work or cultural mediation that aims at constructively handling “constellations of meanings, practices, identifications.” What Young and Martin proposed could be framed as
“community of difference.” As Cameron and Gibson (2001:17) suggest, “communities of difference”
are nothing but “fluid process[es] of moving between moments of sameness and difference, between
being fixed and ‘in place’ and becoming something new and ‘out of place.’” This opens up a
possibility, though not easy to realize, of reconciling the apparent contradiction between communal
relationships and independence/freedom of the individual.
the