On Foucault
Give an example of a disciplinary mechanism that is at work around you, preferably one that everyone seems to take for granted.
Analyze how it controls human activity (consider using concepts we have discussed, such as automation, fixity, etc.).
Assess whether it tends to be used ethically or not.
Could a leader (of some relevant kind) transform the use of that mechanism in either an ethical or more productive direction? Or, if the mechanism is unethical, is it irredeemable and ought to be entirely eliminated?
On Alexander
In your own cultural and educational experience, in what ways has the problem of mass incarceration been excluded or included in how you have learned about society? How much was this exclusion/inclusion intentional or unintentional on the part of leaders in education, media, business, government, etc.?
Note: If you are the citizen of a foreign country, feel free to speak about your cultural and educational experience of incarceration in your country.
On King
Are King’s four steps of nonviolent resistance still a good guide for leaders who want to resist existing power structures? Would the steps need to be updated in any way to fit with our particular times?
Original Post
Your original post will be a minimum of 500 words long and a maximum of 700 words long. By “original” we simply mean your own thoughts responding to the question(s) listed for each discussion forum. You will not have access to the posts of your classmates until you submit your original post. Only your first post will be counted as your original post for grading purposes. Please do not post more than one week before the deadline.
You are required to quote the text once in your original post. The quote should be about one or two sentences long. Only up to 50 words of the quote will count toward the minimum word count. The quote should provide evidence that your interpretation is correct (just as a prosecutor might provide a gun with the defendant’s fingerprints on it to convince the jury she is correct about him being the murderer). Provide a parenthetical citation for your quote.
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To be used as a Reference
So let’s now discuss King’s four steps to a nonviolent campaign, and remember for King, nonviolence is the signature move that he brought to the civil rights movement. So in designing this nonviolent approach, he’s really thinking about how to lead the resistance campaign against segregation, against discrimination, against Jim Crow laws, and all of the above, OK?
Now the first thing that he says that we have to do is to collect facts to determine an injustice. Think of this as simply doing your homework, doing your research so that when you get to step two, negotiation, you have the facts available. You have the material for your argumentation available so that in your negotiation, you can be as effective as possible.
Now in Birmingham, where King was, there were plenty of facts of injustice. So we had segregation throughout the community. We had police brutality. We had unsolved bombings, and the list goes on. So these were the facts of the injustices that were taking place. Injustices that, for example, in the bombings, were not being addressed by the proper mechanisms of justice, which is to say the justice system.
Therefore, when they went to the table to negotiate, they had these facts available and they could lay them out as just cause for the negotiation. So that’s what they did. They negotiated. They negotiated and were able to come to an agreement at first, in fact, in the city of Birmingham, which would allow the desegregation of local businesses. OK?
So they did try to negotiate with the economic leaders. However, these economic leaders ended up breaking the promises.
Now, what would have happened if they had not broken the promises? Let’s think this through for a moment. This says something about the steps of the campaign and the relative importance.
In Scenario One here, we collect our facts and then we negotiate, and if the negotiation is successful– put a little check mark here– then that’s it. We’ve been successful, right? We’ve negotiated, we figured out a solution to the problem, and then we can move forward. Right? The injustice has been addressed in a certain way.
However, here we see that the economic leaders broke their promises. They weren’t willing to desegregate. OK? So what happens? If, in fact, step two fails– our little x point here– that means that we have to go forward with the steps. OK?
So negotiation, in a certain sense, is absolutely key. In fact, it’s really the key step in the entire process because if it’s successful at first, we’re done. And in fact, if steps three and four, as we’ll see, are successful, we return to steps two. In fact, three and four are really only meant to return us to step two, negotiation. That is the peaceful, nonviolent way of solving a problem. Negotiating, compromising, figuring out a solution. OK? That is the intent. That’s why this is the most important step in the process.
Now, we know this failed in the case of Birmingham. So what’s our next step? The next step is self-purification, OK? And this required workshops. What did that mean? It meant going to the workshops and learning how to accept the possibility of violence when you were in these protests.
And as we saw in the actual protests in Birmingham, there was the possibility of police brutality, police violence. You could be hit, you could be bitten by police dogs. Now, whenever someone’s doing violence to you in general, what are your natural two reactions? Your natural reactions are to fight back, to use violence against violence, to stop the violence, right? Or to flee, right? This is our fight and flight response. This is basic psychology.
Neither of those scenarios are acceptable for the campaign, because think about it– if you fight back, then suddenly the police have a justification, a built-in justification for their own violence and they can spin it that they were simply suppressing the violence of the protesters. Right?
If you flee, well, then there is no march, there is no sit-in, right? So you’ve completely undermined the campaign itself.
So either if you’re violent, it becomes a violent campaign, or if you flee, there’s no campaign at all. Neither of those natural human responses are acceptable. So they needed to work on it. They needed to learn how to overcome their natural reactions to being attacked, to being harmed, right? To learn how to accept that. That is extremely difficult for human beings to do, for any human being to do.
And these people, who are already being oppressed, had to learn how to do it in the most extreme circumstance, right? That’s what King’s workshops were about– learning that process of overcoming your instincts and attaining a kind of higher form of action.
That would allow you to then engage in the direct action itself, and the direct action would be the march, the sit-in, the protest. OK?
This is what allowed the visible face of the movement to flourish. Now what does this actually do? What does the actual march, sit-in, et cetera actually do for us? And how does it help us get back to this essential step of negotiation? We’ll read a passage from King.
King says, “You may well ask, why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, et cetera? Isn’t negotiation a better path?”
Of course, we’ve already seen that he went through negotiation to direct action, but he’s speaking to his critics here.
“You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action.” This is this coming back to negotiation.
This is the key passage, perhaps key passage of the entire text. “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”
So now we have a kind of tension that King is trying to create. Why would we possibly want to create tension? Isn’t there enough tension already, right? Why would King want to create more tension? What is the point here? I’ll read further.
“This nonviolent direct action seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as part of the work of nonviolent resistance.” this may sound rather shocking. But I must confess, I am not afraid of the word tension.
I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension–” So here, he’s going to get to a nonviolent form of tension.
“But there is the type of constructive, nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis an objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that it will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
So now we can begin to understand what this creative tension is actually about. By dramatizing the issue, it forces the community to face the injustice. It can no longer hide from it. Right? That’s what’s essential about creating the tension. It can no longer hide from it. It can no longer put it aside. It’s right in its face.
Moreover, we need to be like Socratic gadflies. We need to transform society from believing in myth, as he says, and be able to move to the analysis of events, to be able to understand them rationally. Not reactively and not according to myths, like that of white supremacy. But rather, truly analyze and understand the situation, which essentially means, in King’s contexts, not just in the Socratic context, of being able to move from the myth of racism to, as he puts it, brotherhood, where everyone can come together in a kind of harmony.
Now this isn’t the entire story. We also need to think in terms of what’s already existing. It’s true that King is creating a tension, but there’s more to it. A passage a few pages later in the text, in the middle of a paragraph, King says, “Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive we bring it out into the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long it is covered up but must be open with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicine of light and air, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension it creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
So racism and its falsehoods are kind of like a boil, right? And they need to be opened up. They are already there. Society has already has these things in place. So there is a kind of hidden or underlying tension that already exists because of racism, and this is the most profound kind of tension.
But the protest itself, by creating a space in which the community is forced to see that underlying tension, this is the immediate tension created by the movement itself, by the sit-in, by the march.
So really, there are two things at work here. There’s the creating of a tension in the physical space in which these things are taking place so that the hidden tension, the problem in society, the problem that King is trying to resist so that that can be seen by everyone and dealt with. And that might force people to come back to the negotiation process and create new laws, and create new habits and norms in society. That’s what King, as a leader of the movement, is trying to achieve.
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