Tournament: The MiLo Cup at Millard North | Round: 6 | Opponent: Lincoln North Star CB | Judge: Matt Casas
AC - Alien Sublime
The single standard is evaluating the resolution through a decolonial paradigm. Held 19’
(Mirjam B. E. Held, Jan 23, 2019, “Decolonizing Research Paradigms in the context of settler colonialism unsettling, mutual and collaborative effort” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1609406918821574)
This pragmatic move allowed them to combine methods and thus methodologies that were previously (and still, by some scholars) believed to be irreconcilable. From a paradigm incompatibility perspective, merging Western and Indigenous methodologies is equally impossible. Can the pragmatic paradigm thus provide a framework under which transformative and Indigenous methodologies can be used in combination? Not directly. The pragmatic paradigm was constructed to provide the flexibility to make quantitative/qualitative mixed-methods research legitimate from a philosophical/theoretical point of view. Early pragmatism (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) was a philosophical movement that emphasized research as a social endeavor (Maxcy, 2003). Today, issues of power are still important to researchers who practice mixed-methods research in the context of feminist approaches (e.g., Hesse-Biber, 2010; Hesse-Biber and Griffin, 2015) or to generally challenge dominant views of reality (e.g., Hesse-Biber, 2010; Mertens, Bledsoe, Sullivan, and Wilson, 2010). Yet often, current practices of mixed-methods research under the pragmatic paradigm lack a true axiological stance, either overlooking or ignoring questions of ethics or value (Biddle and Schafft, 2015, p. 323; Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009; p. 90). Research, however, is always already political (Denzin and Lincoln, 2008b, p. xi) and thus any paradigm that guides transformative/Indigenous research—which is inherently emancipatory/liberatory—needs to include values and let them play a formative role. Still, the creation of the pragmatic paradigm can provide a model for rejecting the “either-or” of two seemingly incommensurable paradigms. The transformative paradigm is based on a Western worldview, while Indigenous paradigms are rooted in a holistic, localized worldview. Nevertheless, they share many of their philosophical underpinnings. Another common tenet are decolonizing aspirations. These, however, are more than just another social justice issue. Decolonization is, by default, an unsettling enterprise and therefore “cannot easily be grafted onto pre-existing discourses/frameworks” as stated by Tuck and Yang (2012, p. 3). In the Canadian context of settler colonialism, decolonization is about land, resources, sovereignty, and self-determination (Tuck and Yang, 2012); as such, it involves the creation of a new social order. Thus, it is a mutual undertaking involving the colonizer and the colonized (Beeman-Cadwallader, Quigley, and Yazzie-Mintz, 2011). I suggest applying this radical interpretation of decolonization to the decolonization of research in order to advance the discussion on multiparadigmatic research spaces. Radically decolonizing research means than any decolonizing research paradigm must be developed conjointly between Western and Indigenous researchers, creating a new research framework altogether. It also means that decolonizing paradigms is not a means to an end (e.g., to provide alternative pathways to research or to make the research endeavor more inclusive and diverse), but just a small piece in the puzzle that is the decolonization project, which is ultimately a radical social reform. Decolonizing research under these premises will be an unsettling collaboration with fraught solidarity (Tuck and Yang, 2012) and an unknown outcome.
definition of appropriation from Cambridge
“the act of taking something for your own use”
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/appropriation
Contention 1: Private space appropriation is an extension of colonialism
Currently, the chicanx is under attack. The colonialist powers that have taunted us for so long are able to terrorize us undetected by creating a space-time border within which the chicanx can’t become self aware.
Valencia 20’ (Daniel Valencia - doctor of philosophy in english, University of California Riverside) “Chicano Science Fiction and the Shattering of Colonized Reality: The Resurgence of the Alien Sublime” march, 2020
The Chicano Mind is in the midst of a great invasion. Subatomic alien entities indiscriminately fire laser hot magma beams into Chicano Neurons within the Chicano Cerebral Cortex, pumping toxic microbe alchemy into the cellular structure of the incredible Chicano Brain. These colonizing forces deceive the Chicano Mind into perceiving itself through an impaired ontological frequency only capable of imagining liberation through a bounded, predetermined reality dictated by the invading organisms. In the language of Earthly physics, the illusory event unfolds in space-time as a .003 gravimetrical fissure of the cognitive realm in alien subspace misprocessed as a minus quantum variance in the way cosmic matter is perceived. The colonizing presence survives in the Chicano Subconscious Mind as an undetected foreign entity, generating an invisible force field, a space-time border that prevents the Chicano Mind from actuating self-awareness as pure space consciousness. And yet, sensing danger from inside the depths of the Incredible Chicano Mind, in the midst of chaotic space, the Chicano Brain is triggered by a primordial, self-activating Indigenous technology. The Alien Sublime ReEmerges as Space Consciousness…the empty space in which physical objects in the universe are created.
Enlightenment epistemology has split reality into two things, firstly it created a subject-object duality within which the colonized populations are forced to exist in binary realities and secondly it limits our potential as humans in the first place. This fracture is the root of all violence - only the AC solves
Valencia 2 (Daniel Valencia - doctor of philosophy in english, University of California Riverside) “Chicano Science Fiction and the Shattering of Colonized Reality: The Resurgence of the Alien Sublime” march, 2020
Anzaldúa introduces an alien consciousness as a method to transcend this damaged condition. She regenerates the mestiza by re-establishing a connection with her pre-colonial roots. Anzaldúa reconfigures elements of Indigenismo to generate a force capable of challenging colonial systems that have worked to diminish the Chicana/Mexicana/India through patriarchy, homophobia, European imperialism and the white supremacist legacy (37). Anzaldúa specifically targets Enlightenment epistemology and rationality, which she argues has constructed a consciousness of duality that splits reality in two; the subject-object duality of consciousness which manufactures and governs "official reality," forcing colonized populations to exist in binary realities. She claims that this fracturing of reality is the root of all violence (36-37). Anzaldúa additionally explains that this dualistic structure of reality severely limits our potential as 28 human beings. She writes, "It claims that human nature is limiting and cannot evolve into something better"
To enact the Alien Sublime requires a shifting of our consciousness away from colonial time and space for a deeper reality and higher thought via universal awareness.
Valencia 3 (Daniel Valencia - doctor of philosophy in english, University of California Riverside) “Chicano Science Fiction and the Shattering of Colonized Reality: The Resurgence of the Alien Sublime” march, 2020
This shift in consciousness hinges on formulating a new approach towards experiencing liberation for Chicanas/os. Attempting to articulate on such an abstract concept, however, is not without difficulty since the core of my argument rests on attempting to describe a force that is indescribable from the perspective of the colonial mind; a description that begins by drastically shifting from a psychosomatic, time-based political imagination into a timeless, formless, boundless, vibrant life-energy, which I refer throughout this project as, the alien sublime. The alien sublime is untamed. It is the empty space and force of creation from which the universe as a physical manifestation emerges—think, if you will, of that which existed before the Big Bang and the beginning of space and time as form, which may be described as non-corporal existence, nothingness, or nihilism. It is the absence of thought as form; a deeper reality expressed as the consciousness responsible for the expression of thought via higher universal awareness. The alien sublime is therefore primordial genuine space as intelligence…an Indigenous consciousness that transcends matter as it emerges and is experienced in the colonized mind within space and time.
Two major impacts:
First, The colonial epistemologies are key in creating oppressive structures. They create hierarchies of knowledge within which presuppositions are created against the ethnic knowledge system to favor the western one.
Grosfoguel in 2k5 (Ramon, associate professor in the department of ethnic studies at the university of California at Berkeley, Critical Globalization Studies, edited by Richard Appelbaum and William Robinson)
The first point to be examined is the contribution of ethnic studies to epistemological questions. The hegemonic Eurocentric paradigm that has informed Western philosophy and sciences in the modern—colonial capitalist, patriarchal world-system for the last 500 years assumes a universalistic, neutral, objective point of view. Chicana and black feminist scholars (Moraga and Anzaldua, 1983) as well as Third World scholars inside and outside the United States (Mignolo, 2000) reminded us that we always speak from a particular location in the power structures. Nobody escapes the class, sexual, gender, spiritual, geographical, and racial hierarchies of the modern—colonial capitalist world-system. As feminist scholar Donna Haraways (1988) states, our knowledges are always situated. Black feminist scholars called this perspective standpoint epistemology (Collins, 1990), whereas Latin American philosopher of liberation Enrique Dussel called it the "geopolitics of knowledge" (Dussel, 1977). This is not only a question about social values in knowledge production or the fact that our knowledge is always partial. The main point here is the locus of enunciation, that is, the geopolitical location of the subject that speaks. In Western philosophy and sciences, the subject that speaks is always hidden, concealed, erased from the analysis. Ethnic location and epistemic location are always decoupled. By delinking ethnic location from epistemic location, Western philosophy and sciences are able to produce a myth about universalist knowledge that covers up, that is, conceals who is speaking, as well as the geopolitical location in the structures of power from which the subject speaks. This is what the Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gomez called the "point zero" perspective of Eurocentric philosophies (Castro-Gomez, 2003). The "point zero" is the point of view that hides and conceals itself as being beyond a particular point of view, that is, the point of view that represents itself as being without a point of view. It is this god's-eye view that always hides its local and particular perspective under a universal perspective. Historically, this has allowed Western man (the gendered term is intentionally used here) to represent his knowledge as the only knowledge capable of achieving a universal consciousness, and to dismiss non-Western knowledge as particularistic and, thus, unable to achieve universality. This strategy has been crucial for Western global designs. By hiding the location of the subject of enunciation, European/Euro-American colonial expansion and domination was able to construct a hierarchy of superior and inferior knowledge and, thus, of superior and inferior people around the world. We went from the sixteenth-century characterization of "people without writing" to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century characterization of "people without history," then to the twentieth-century characterization of "people without development." We went from the sixteenth-century "rights of people" to the eighteenth-century "rights of man," and to the late-twentieth-century "human rights." All of these are part of global designs articulated to the simultaneous production and reproduction of an international division of labor of core—periphery that overlaps with the global racial—ethnic hierarchy of European and non-European. What is the implication of this epistemological critique to our knowledge production and to our concept of capitalism? 283-284
Second, the future and time has already ended for us. The only way forward is imagining a space outside of the framework of colonial space-time.
We entered the conversation of climate change with signs that read “help us”,
Signs that read “dead body inside,”
Signs that read “save our souls”
But the souls of black folk were encapsulated in the reams of a book,
20,000 leagues under toxic flood waters
For people of color, the world as we knew it ended centuries ago.
for people of color the world over, starvation is already a common problem
But we find ways to feed our babies, and stretch meals into next week, or until the next paycheck comes
for people of color the world over, starvation is already a common problem, when, for example, a nation's crops are grown for export rather than to feed its own people. And the housing of people of color throughout the world's urban areas is already blighted and inhumane
And when the lights shut off, and water ceases to spill from the taps, we find ways to ensure we see through the darkness and never go to bed thirsty
Acts of war, nuclear holocausts, and genocide have already been declared on our jobs, our housing, our schools, our families, and our lands
there is no outside to the forms of violence, terror, and subjugation produced by white supremacy, anti-blackness, and heteropatriarchy
(Omolade 1984, Barbara, Calvin College’ first dean of multicultural affairs, “Women of Color and the Nuclear Holocaust”, Women’s Studies Quarterly vol. 12, No. 2)
and Space nor time will bring relief because there is no contingent relationship between blackness and violence
the violence of the past will endlessly repeat
death is the future’s promise: it is all that the future holds
People have changed the climate of the world.
Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back “
We can’t make the climate change back,
You and I can’t.
We can’t do anything
Dillon 13 Stephen, Prof. Queer Studies @ Hampshire College, “‘It’s here, it’s that time:’ Race, queer futurity, and the temporality of violence in Born in Flames,” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory vol. 23 no. 1,pp. 47-)
Thus, I affirm the resolution, “Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.” for one sole reason; it is the propagation of colonial powers. We must reject private space appropriation and uphold the great cosmos, My rejection hinges on one key analytic tool, that we reject appropriating space, to uphold the Alien Sublime.
Contention 2: Solvency
The alien sublime is the only true method we can use to liberate the chicanx mind. It shatters the colonized psychological state that oppressive presuppositions of the resolution and NC stem from.
Valencia 4 (Daniel Valencia - doctor of philosophy in english, University of California Riverside) “Chicano Science Fiction and the Shattering of Colonized Reality: The Resurgence of the Alien Sublime” march, 2020
Although Csicsery-Ronay's theorization of the sublime presents a beneficial analysis to better understanding how science fiction operates, in my view, it does not extend far enough, particularly with respect to colonized populations, into cultivating liberation as a sublime experience. As discussed during the initial stages of this Introduction, I describe the alien sublime as a primordial consciousness responsible for the manifestation of the physical universe and space-time; the nothingness that exists prior to matter. I introduce the alien sublime as a way to transcend the confinement imposed by the colonial imagination's misperception of reality. I contend that, as a means to shatter the colonized psychological state, the alien sublime must be experienced, not as a consequence that happens outside of the self/within the confines of material reality, but as an existential phenomena that inverts the colonized mind by making science fiction real. My theorization of the alien sublime, hence, relies on making a sharp distinction between a limited material imagination from which colonial reality emanates, and a higher formless alien sublime consciousness as the ultimate freedom. Csicsery-Ronay's science fiction sublime, however, relies on the sensory field of material reality, which equally results in a material consciousness that activates from inside the ancillary colonial imagination. Herein, Kant's and Burke's classical sublime, as well as Nye's technological sublime, are not solely consequences of material reality, but are merged by CsicseryRonay to show how the psychosomatic process of dislocation, described as the act of shocking the quotidian mind into a higher consciousness, is an integral feature within science fiction. The method by which Csicsery-Ronay envisions the science fiction sublime consequently relies on featuring a transcendent experience that actuates from within the confines of artificial reality. And, as a result, science fiction may only be understood as an extension of a preconceived sublime that determines how the science fiction nomenclature may be experienced, rendering the science fiction sublime impotent as an emancipating process for colonized populations. The colonized imagination is tasked with accessing a higher awareness able to transcend the quotidian form through sensing the physical universe as unimaginable phenomena, but which from a colonized perspective whose goal is liberation from coloniality, is inconsequential since the existential alien sublime consciousness precedes the manifestation of the imagined object as form
The role of debate is to allow students to build advocacy skills to contest oppressive structures. However, academic spaces are an extension of colonization and can subvert student activism to support state rule, and further colonization of indigenous peoples. It follows that the only way for the debate space to be a true space of advocacy-skill building is if it’s anti-colonial. Therefore, the role of the ballot is whoever best deconstructs colonial space-time. This is a pre-fiat argument. Morgensen 12’
(Scott Lauri Morgensen, Dec 2012, “Destabilizing the Settler Academy: THe Decolonial Effects of Indigenous Methodologies, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41809527.pdf?refreqid=excelsior3A481021b795737e6acb97c1288eb68fe2)
The academy forms within settler societies as an apparatus of colonization. Indigenous researchers critically engage its colonial power by practicing Indigenous methodologies: an act that also implicates non-Indigenous people in challenging the settler academy. Indigenous meth- odologies do not merely model Indigenous research. By exposing normative knowledge production as being not only non-Indigenous but colonial, they denaturalize power within settler societies and ground knowledge production in decolonization. An activist impetus thus informs Indigenous methodologies, yet "activism" typically fails to invoke their full implications. Whereas "activ- ism" in a settler society may invest social justice in state rule, decolonization anticipates that rule's end. Decolonization is activist, but activism need not be decolonizing. Indigenous methodologies arise within the larger pursuit of Indigenous decolonization, a project that Indigenous critics theorize variously as ontological, psychic, governmental, and relational.1 Indigenous methodolo- gies present what Dylan Rodriguez (referencing João Costas Vargas) calls an "urgency imperative," which answers "the academy's long historical complicities in racial/colonial genocide" by endeavoring "to denaturalize and ultimately dismantle the conditions in which these systems of massive violence are repro- duced." Such theories seek to fundamentally transform the institutional and epistemic conditions of life and thought for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people on lands where all live relationally, in ways that settler societies and their governance cannot contain.
1)K comes before theory.
theory norm changes can wait, cross apply that we’re already excluded from society so their claims only benefit the settlers, in order for you to set norms in society i have to be in that society first. This means even if you buy their theory you vote aff first because it’s a prereq
B)Theory is just a way for settlers to sidestep real violence
C) any education claims are taken out because in order for it to matter we need to re-orient the debate space to avoid the settler mindset it promotes
D). In order to achieve fairness we need to start on an even playing field thus we need
to solve the impacts of the K first because oppression in these spaces fundamentally
create uneven starting points.