Professional Documents
Culture Documents
the gift provides an insightful metaphor with which to analyze the current state of sociopolitical affairs
subjugated populations. The advances made by the state regarding minority citizen
groups, particularly within the context of employment (economic) and education (social), are gifts.13 Legislative enactments
designed to foster the growth of equality and thereby democratic justice (i.e., standards of what is "right and fair") produce hegemonic
effects constitutive only of narcissistic power.14 These effects are eclipsed by counterfeit, although impactful, offerings. The omnipotence of
majority sensibilities in Western cultures, particularly in the United States, has produced an exploitative and nongiving existence for under- and nonrepresented citizen groups . Despite the
many rights-based movements during the past several decades that have ostensibly conferred to minorities such
abstract gifts as liberty, equality, and freedom, there remains an enduring wall dividing the
masses from those on whom such awards are bestowed. This fortified separation is most prominent in the (silent) reverberations of state and federal legislative reforms.15 Relying on Derrida's
(1991,1992,1997) critique, we can regard such statutory reform initiatives as gifts; that is, they are
something given to non-majority citizens by those in power; they are tokens and emblems of
empowerment in the process of equality and in the name of democratic justice. The majority is
presenting something to marginalized groups, something that the giver holds in its entirety:
power.16 The giver or presenter of such power will never, out of capitalistic conceit and greed,
completely surrender that which it owns. It is preposterous to believe that the narcissistic
majority would give up so much as to threaten what they own; that is, to surrender their hospice and community while
authentically welcoming in the other as stranger. This form of open-ended generosity has yet to occur in Western
democratic societies and, perhaps, it never will. Thus, it is logical to assume that, although unconscious in some respects, the efforts
of the majority are parsimonious and intended to secure (or accessorize) their own power.17 The following two
means by which a gift enables self-empowerment were already alluded to by Derrida (1997): (a) the giver (i.e., the sender or majority) either
bestows to show off his or her power or (b) gives to mobilize a cycle of reciprocation in which
the receiver (i.e., the minority) will be indebted. s
Derrida's explication of
regarding traditionally
US democracy assistance produces an unequal relationship between the donor and the US.
Democracy assistance will build countries in the US image.
Newberg & Carothers, senior associates at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace,
1996 (Paula R. & Thomas, World Policy Journal, "Aiding - And Defining Democracy", p. 98-99)
There are many ways that democracy assistance differs from the more customary forms of U.S.
foreign assistance to the Third World. Perhaps the element that distinguishes democracy assistance most clearly
from traditional U.S. foreign aid is the relationships it establishes between a donor government and
the citizens of the recipient countries. In the past, bilateral assistance created relationships between governments, although the fact and nature of aid had profound
consequences on recipient societies.
Democracy assistance, as conceived by the U.S. government, not only affects state institutions but is
designed to help transform the relationships between the citizens of recipient states and their own
governments. Democracy assistance not only establishes an unequal relationship between donor and
recipient but assumes a kind of political intervention by donors that has rarely been undertaken so
explicitly by a donor government. Democracy assistance therefore assumes a risk that infrastructure support does not: dams do not talk back; people do.
Each of these concepts about aid assumes different ideas about the content and processes of
democracy. Equally, if not more important, they represent worldviews articulated by donors rather
than aid recipients, for whom the textures of political, social, and economic life are denser and
sometimes less amenable to distinct policy choices. For example, while Americans keenly support the idea of a multiparty system in the Czech Republic,
Czech voters (and nongovernmental organization and party organizers) have been far more concerned about the ways that successful parties consolidate power and the new forms of power -- particular financial -that they now embody. The differences between parties as institutions for mobilizing voters and representing interests, and parties as institutions through which power is distributed, is far clearer to Czech political
actors than to American donors.
B. Impact
the gift and justice. Justice cannot appear as such; it cannot be calculated as in the law or other
tangible commodities (Derrida, 1997). Although Derrida acknowledges that we must attempt to calculate, there is a point beyond which calculation must fail and we must
recognize that no amount of estimation can adequately assign justice (Derrida, 1997). For equality (like the "gift beyond
This is the relationship between
seems to be irreducible in its affirmative character, in its demand of gift without exchange, without circulation, without recognition of gratitude, without economic circularity, without calculation and
illusion is displaced) is open-ended and absent of any obligatory reciprocation. As Caputo (1997) notes, "justice is the welcome given to the other in which I do not. . . have anything up my sleeve" (p.
149). With this formula of equality and justice in mind, one may still speculate on the law's relationship to the gift. But again, the law as a commodity, as a thing to be transacted, eliminates its prospects
as something to be given
Oppression is a cycle draining power from the oppressed and giving it right back
to the powerful
Khan, professor of law @ Washburn, 1994 (Ali, Howard Law Journal, Lessons
From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary, 38 How. L.J. 79, lexis)
C. Alt:
Vote for continuing without the assistance of the oppressor. The oppressed should be
affirmed in challenging their oppression by any means necessary
Khan, professor of law @ Washburn, 1994 (Ali, Howard Law Journal, Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary, 38 How. L.J. 79, lexis)
The concept of by any means necessary unravels the normative pretense of the oppressive system
and rejects the moral claims of those who argue that law and order must remain a supreme value
even in the most unjust system. When a system refuses to recognize the fundamental rights of a
group of citizens, the moral imperative to challenge the oppressor gains momentum and
arguments for the maintenance of law and order lose merit. If obedience to the system does not
change the condition of subjugation, a new attitude among the subjugated begins to develop. The
yearning to break away from oppression illicits a militant and defiant attitude against those who
deny even such fundamental rights.
The teacher/facilitator must not be understood (by herself/himself or by the students) as "in charge" of the
knowledge. While she/he may be the custodian of certain knowledges, this by no means translates into
understanding of decolonization as
[is] a process wherein we depart from our customary paradigms, and
reject the ways in which our reality and experience have been
shaped by hegemonic cultural discourse[.], we can arrive at a critical
learning moment The most dangerous of all delusions is to think that your social reality is the
only reality worth talking about. To do so is to [which] engage[s] in a colonizing
mental exercise, characterized by profound intellectual arrogance.
This is the problem with the Eurocentric epistemology that
characterizes so much [in] dominant curricula. The subversion thereof is thus an
ownership thereof. Working with bell hooks' (1994)
act of mental liberation. To truly embrace and work with a multicentric framework requires axiological,
ontological and epistemological de-centering. We must return here to the notion and necessity of humility
in the teaching and learning processes.
Contention level:
DPT
Civil Society
Framework Wrap Up