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Post by samitch on Apr 4, 2016 16:58:13 GMT
I must admit, at first I found myself disagreeing with Chavez’s piece arguing for what I thought was a rather exclusionary view on citizenship. My perspective shifted though when she offers “inclusion also reinscribes the system in a way that makes posing alternatives to it or offering critiques of it much harder. But alternatives and critique are precisely what are necessary to counter the persistent reinscription of this narrative in Rhetoric” (p166). Her argument that including those voices of the margins only reinforces their subjugation made sense from a broader picture but this left me wondering “how do we rupture this system of oppression?” If a more inclusionary look at citizenship is not the prescription for enabling agency to those of the margins, then what is? How do we rupture systemic oppression if not from including those voices in our conception of citizenship?
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Post by swalker on Apr 6, 2016 3:52:10 GMT
Good question Scott. I am not sure even Chavez would be able to tell us what prescription we should use, if not inclusion. In my reading, the closest I came to really understanding one way we might get around it is through tactical subversion. Hearkening back to Nakayama and Krizek from last semester, if we consider the hegemonic influences of citizenship as a strategic rhetoric, and I believe Chavez does, then tactical rhetorics are one option of resisting that force. I think the inclusion question has to be looked at in a slightly different way, and rather than accepting blind inclusion into the system, marginalized groups would need to carefully consider their acts of citizenship, and find ways to declare them a citizenship outside of the hegemonic structure. It sounds a little.... "anarchistic", but using citational acts of citizenship, a la drag, BLM, Young Lords, even events like SlutWalk, you can "include" yourself in citizenship which simultaneously provides an opportunity to avoid cooption. I don't know though. Maybe it's a matter of simply ensuring we remain self-reflexive in our citizenship as we are included, and attempt to avoid exclusion for exclusion's sake, or inclusion merely as reactions to our culpability as actors seated within hegemonic institutions.
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