Speak Some Shit AC

Narrative
You are a teenager and have cancer .
Your
physician says that chemotherapy and radiation therapy could be tried, but
(BMT) is your only chance of a cure. He tells you and your parents that you
could die as a result of complications
but without it you would only
live
one year.
You ask what
if the BMT fails, but your
physician and your family tell you that
you must
not think negative
thoughts. You do not ask more questions. The doctor gives your parents the
consent form
only your parents may sign it. The preparation
before the transplant is worse than you imagined
you experience painful
side effects You become fearful because some patients
went to the
PICU
and never came back you do not ask your
family if these patients died neither your family nor your doctor asks
what you would want done if you
need intensive care. One week after
BMT,
you
have trouble breathing.
it gets harder to
breathe and becomes difficult to speak more than two words at a time. You
feel so hungry for air.
A doctor tells you that you
will need help from a ventilator and
they must transfer you to the PICU. You ask
them please, do not send you to the PICU, because you do not want to die there .
You are transferred to the
PICU and are put into
sleep
You undergo a year of chemotherapy and after a brief return to normal life, you have a relapse.

a bone marrow

transplant

real

from the transplant,

be expected to

You and your family discuss the alternatives and decide to have the transplant.

will happen

right now

both

fight to get better and

any

to read over. You look at it as well, but

necessary

had

grapevine,

also

it would be and

BMT

pediatric intensive care unit (

, whom you've heard about through the hospital's patient/family

) this month

. Still,

and

ever

you if you have thought about

were sick enough to

before the new marrow has even taken hold in your body,

the

start to

Over the next day

are frightened because

you

As your family watches you struggle to breathe, they become frightened as well.
soon

for this

You and

your parents look to your doctor, who is obviously worried. Your parents ask the doctor to save you; he says that the ventilator is your only chance.
a deep

, as the doctor promised, but eventually you wake up enough to realize that your fingers cannot move and your eyelids will not open. You cannot

speak, and even a grimace is impossible. You are groggy most of the time. The voices of family members, of certain nurses that you come to recognize, occasional music, a light stroking on your arm-these become the highlights of

After weeks
you are
awake
you cannot
move.
They promised you would be asleep. The air
goes into your lungs with so much force that you feel like your lungs are going to
burst, you are choking on the tube in your windpipe. The ulcerations in your mouth
and throat hurt continuously.
worse
is the
realization you are dying.
You want
more medicine to keep your pain and fear under
control. You want
to say goodbye to your family and go home to die, but you cannot move or speak
You die in the PICU
your existence. Time passes slowly and you lose track of the days.

some

Nobody told you that you might be awake but unable to move a muscle.

you notice that

had

more

than before, yet

still

that

and

Even

than the pain

to ask for

dawning

that

better

at all.

You hear the members of your family whisper to each other and they tell you how much they love you, but you cannot respond to them.

Framework
Normative debate in the form of absolutist ethics allow for
privileged debaters to never have to deal with the practical
implications of their arguments and performances. Vincent
Vincent, Christopher J. "Re-Conceptualizing Our Performances: Accountability in Lincoln-Douglas
Debate." VBriefly. N.p., 26 Oct. 2013. Web. <http://vbriefly.com/2013/10/26/201310re-conceptualizingour-performances-accountability-in-lincoln-douglas-debate/>.
We generate universal theories and assume they can be applied to anyone. These abstractions assume a conception of universality that never intended to account for the African American experience. This drowns out the

Normativity becomes a privilege that

students of
color do not get to access because of the way we discuss things.
it is easy for a white student to
question whether oppression is bad, since
They never have to
deal with the practical implications of their discourse. These become manifestations
of privilege in the debate space because many students of color, who have to go
back to their communities still have to deal with the daily acts of racism and
violence inflicted upon their homes, communities, and cultures.
perspectives of students of color that are historically excluded from the conversation.

historically

These same philosophical texts have served as a

cornerstone in Lincoln Douglas and in turn have been used to justify exclusion. That is why

make claims that we do not know whether racism is

bad, or even

after all it is just another argument on the flow.

for

, they

To question or even make a starting point question for

the debate to be about justifying why racism is bad ignores the reality of the bodies present in the room. Our justification of western philosophy has allowed us to remain disconnected from reality. Philosophy, as Mills argues, justifies
particular way of knowing under free and rational thought, through a universal way of knowing, believing, and discussing. We have embedded white ways of knowing as normative without ever challenging how it replicates

the gaming
of debate allows us to
speech can be disconnected from the
act.
The critical distinction is the
performance of that discourse. Its not what you say, but what you justify.
Debate is
itself a performance. To claim that it is not
is to be divorced from reality
We must evaluate what a debaters
performance does and justifies.
those with privilege in
debate, are never forced to have their performance attached to them but instead
their arguments are viewed as words on paper. They are taught to separate
themselves from ideologies and beliefs, and feel that there is no consequence to
what they say. It becomes the way in which they justify what is deemed as
rational and logical thought.
oppressive structures. The question then becomes how does our discourse justify what we believe? For many debaters it is

assume

aspect

that our

speech

that

The speech can be defined as the arguments that are placed on the flow,

and is evaluated in the context of what is the most logical and rational argument to win the round.

speech act, which is the

Understanding the speech

act requires critically assessing the ramifications of the debaters discourse.

the

in and of

of what we do.

For white debaters it is easy to view the discourse as detached from the body. For

they

any

The argument sounds like it will be competitive so it is read but it is deemed as just an argument. Judges evaluate this as just a speech. This

becomes what I deem as a performance by the body, rather than a performance of the body.

The Role of the Judge is to disrupt the practice of judging on

flow exclusively, and instead evaluate the impacts of the
speech act itself, in an effort to disrupt normative approaches
to LD. This means we evaluate the pre-fiat in round impacts to
our speech acts. Vincent 2
Vincent, Christopher J. "Re-Conceptualizing Our Performances: Accountability in Lincoln-Douglas
Debate." VBriefly. N.p., 26 Oct. 2013. Web. <http://vbriefly.com/2013/10/26/201310re-conceptualizingour-performances-accountability-in-lincoln-douglas-debate/>.
As a community we must re-conceptualize this distinction the performance by the body and of the body by re-evaluating the role of the speech and the speech act.

for judges to vote off of the flow anymore

It is no longer enough

. Students of color are being held to a higher threshold to better articulate why racism is bad, which is the problem in

we
must begin to evaluate the speech act itself. Debaters must be held accountable for
more than winning the debate. They must be held accountable for the implications
of that speech. As educators and adjudicators in debate
we have an ethical
obligation to foster an atmosphere of education.
a space that we deem to be educational. It is here where I shift my focus to a solution. Debaters must be held accountable for the words they say in the round. We should no longer evaluate the speech. Instead

the

space

also

It is not enough for judges to offer predispositions suggesting that they do not endorse racist,

sexist, homophobic discourse, or justify why they do not hold that belief, and still offer a rational reason why they voted for it. Judges have become complacent in voting on the discourse, if the other debater does not provide a clear
enough role of the ballot framing, or does not articulate well enough why the racist discourse should be rejected. Judges must be willing to foster a learning atmosphere by holding debaters accountable for what they say in the

They must be willing to disrupt the process of the

flow for the purpose of embracing that teachable moment. The speech must be
connected to the speech act. We must view the entire debate as a performance of
the body, instead of the argument solely on the flow .
round. They must be willing to vote against a debater if they endorse racist discourse.

Likewise, judges must be held accountable for what they vote for in the debate space.

If a judge is comfortable enough to vote for discourse that is racist, sexist, or homophobic, they must also be prepared to defend their actions. We as a community do not live in a vacuum and do not live isolated from the larger
society. That means that judges must defend their actions to the debaters, their coaches, and to the other judges in the room if it is a panel. Students of color should not have the burden of articulating why racist discourse must be
rejected, but should have the assurance that the educator with the ballot will protect them in those moments.

Medical ethics cannot be determined from moral absolutes,

and must be determined practically on a case by case basis,
determined by the needs of a patient. Montgomery
Montgomery, Kathryn. "How Doctors Think: Clinical Judgment and the Practice of Medicine." Oxford
University Press (2006): n. pag. Web. <http://www.ivory-ivory.info/wpcontent/uploads/2013/05/how_doctors_think.pdf>.

as objects of
knowledge, health and morals differ from physical phenomena
For
moral questions, as for questions about the care of patients, absolute or invariant
answers are unobtainable.
scientific reasoning or episteme is inappropriate in
fields like medicine, ethics
disciplines that are interpretive because they are
radically uncertain
Medicine and morals
call for phronesis or practical reasoning, the ability to determine the
best action to take in particular circumstances that cannot be distilled into
universally applicable solutions.
,
It is not that medicine and moral inquiry have no use for certainty or fixed and invariable answers: nothing would make physicians or moral reasoners happier. But

, about which certainty is available.

For this reason,

, law, or meteorology,

. Episteme belongs, instead, to stable physical phenomena that can be known through necessary and invariant laws.

(like

navigation, law, and meteorology)

While scientific reasoning has precision and replicability as its goals

practical reasoning seeks the best answers possible under the

circumstances. It enables the reasoner to distinguish, in a given situation, the better choice from the worse. The former is law-like and generalizable to every similar instance, while the latter is inescapably particular and
interpretable, applicable to only a small set of more richly detailed circumstances.

My reading of the narrative gives us an opportunity to stand

with the patient in order to determine the best action. Thus my
reading is an a-priori necessity for the act of ethics. Jones
Jones, Anne Hudson. Narrative in Medical Ethics. BMJ: British Medical Journal 318.7178 (1999): 253
256. Print. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114730/

Unlike analytic
philosophers who
work deductively
doctors are trained
beginning with the particular case and then seeking general medical
principles that might apply.
ethical
examination begins with the features of a particular case, then seeks to recall
similar paradigm cases that may shed enlightenment about the best resolution for
the case at hand
a narrative ethics in which the doctor must
work as coauthor with the patient
involves more than
simply recognising the patients autonomy
such a narrative practice is relational and requires the
doctor to be empathic
of the patients suffering
narrative ethics
recognises the primacy of the patients story but encourages multiple voices to be
heard and multiple stories to be brought forth by those whose lives will be involved
Hunters work on the narrative structure of medical knowledge has helped clarify some of the mental processes involved in medical education and practice.20
are trained to

from general principles to the particular case,

to work in the

opposite direction,

Hunter argues that this practice is not inductive but abductive, as doctors tack back and forth between a particular case and the generalised realm of

scientific knowledge.20,23,24 This process is similar to the ethical practice of casuistry, which was revived and rehabilitated in an influential book by Jonsen and Toulmin. 25 In casuistry,

. Casuistry is, arguably, one form of narrative ethics. But narrative ethics has underlying assumptions that casuistry does not share. Foremost among them is a focus on the patient as

narrator of his or her own story, including the ethical choices that belong to that story. Brody has described

to construct a joint narrative of illness and medical care.26 This coauthoring

as author. Brody calls it a relational ethic.26 Kleinman27 and Frank28have written about it from differing

perspectives, the doctors and the patients respectively, but both agree that
an

witness

. In an ideal form,

29

in

the resolution of a case.30,31 Patient, doctor, family, nurse, friend, and social worker, for example, may all share their stories in a dialogical chorus32 that can offer the best chance of respecting all the persons involved in a case.33

Narratives are not just important in academic discussion. They

influence our public opinion on important medical ethics
issues. This proves that the aff spills over. Jones 2
Jones, Anne Hudson. Narrative in Medical Ethics. BMJ: British Medical Journal 318.7178 (1999): 253
256. Print. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114730/

By writing narratives from their personal

experiences, doctors
have a powerful effect on the public discussion
of an ethical issue
it was doctors narratives of assisting patients
suicides that broke through decades of professional silence and opened debate
about this issue
after Selzer published his
story Mercy, about a
doctors
attempt to help a terminally ill patient die
he
Patients and their family members and friends are not the only ones who write important narratives of witness.
and other healthcare professionals also can

. In the United States, for example,

in American medical journals. In 1982,

fictional

unsuccessful

by giving him an overdose of morphine,

received hate mai

when the journal of the American Medical
Association published Its over, Debbie,
l. A few years later,

(JAMA)

16 an anonymous, presumably factual account by a doctor who had deliberately given a patient who was

a
states attorney took the journals editor to court to
try to force him to reveal the authors identity.
after Quill
published an eloquently written account of prescribing drugs for a patient who, he
knew, intended to use them to commit suicide he was brought before a grand jury
but was not indicted.
terminally ill with cancer an overdose of analgesics to speed her death,

Cook County

The effort was unsuccessful. And a few years later,

,17

Despite the general legal prohibition against physician assisted suicide in the United States, exemplified by the legal action taken against JAMA and Quill, doctors narratives

have helped compel re-examination of this controversial ethical issue.

Contention One
Marginalizing and silencing bodies in academic spaces like
debate reinstitutionalizes violent hierarchies of oppression.
Brown and Strega
Brown, L., & Strega, S. (2005). Introduction: Transgressive Possibilities. In Research as Resistance:
Critical, Indigenous and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars'
Press/Women's Press.

Traditional

social science

research

, whatever its intentions, has

silenced

and distorted the experiences of

those on the margins

, taking a deficit-

in
the academy, where,
, only certain conceptualizations of information are counted
as valid
subjugated knowledges
have been excluded or trivialized The search for research methodologies that are
capable of grasping the complexities of
the lives of those on the
margins, involves reclaiming these knowledges while
moving away from the
binary conceptualizations fostered under existing research paradigms
informed approach to explaining their lives and experiences. The histories, experiences, cultures, and languages (the ways of knowing) of those on the margins have historically been devalued, misinterpreted, and omitted
as noted

(objective and therefore authoritative) knowledge. In this process, many ways of knowing, which Foucault referred to as

messy

(1980),

peoples lives, especially

simultaneously

. The theoretical pieces and exemplars

in this book focus on racialized, gendered, differently abled, and classed experiences from a strengths-based focus and as sources of strength. Thus, it offers support for marginalized researchers attempting to cleave to the truth of
their own experience. It also offers research ideas for those who are not from the margins, or who occupy both marginal and privileged spaces, but who want to engage in research practices from a position of solidarity with the

there is
a move to
evidence based practice that reinscribes traditional
notions of how knowledge
should be created and assessed, in which what constitutes evidence is understood
securely within a positivist/Enlightenment (White, heterosexual, patriarchal)
framework
marginalized. Practitioners are being encouraged to embrace research as a core feature of practice. As previously noted, in social work at least

strong support in many quarters for

positivist

. We suggest that it is no accident that it is particularly the practice professions that are being pushed in this direction. As professions historically and currently dominated by women, they have long

struggled with and for issues of legitimacy. As female-dominated professions and as professions that work with those on the margins, we have been tempted (and have at times in the past) taken the position of proving ourselves
by subjecting ourselves as well as our research methodologies and processes to standards of legitimacy that are ultimately not in our own interests. Now we have a chance to step into the research space that has been opened up by
those on the margins. In acknowledging that previous efforts to develop a critical social science have largely failed to contribute to anti-oppressive practice or policy making, we must ask different questions about how to construct
and conduct our inquiries. This book is therefore for research practitioners in search of transgressive possibility

This is used to justify genocide. Absolon and Willet

Absolon, K., & Willett, C. (2005). Putting Ourselves Forward: Location in Aboriginal Research. In
Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Toronto, Ontario:
Canadian Scholars' Press/Women's Press.
To look twice is to practise respect. Respect calls upon us to consider how we are represented by others, the expectations that others have of us, and how we represent ourselves. As Aboriginal scholars, we have both been highly
dismayed by the realization that our experience as Aboriginal peoples is poorly represented in the academy. There are few places that accurately reflect Aboriginal reality, where we can see and say, This represents who I am. Thus
far, Aboriginal peoples have been represented in curricula, research, and scholarship (if at all) as a savage, noble, stoic, and, most disturbingly, a dying race. Images and representations of Aboriginal peoples that predominate in
media, popular culture, and research studies portray us not as we are, but as non-Aboriginals think we are. To various degrees, we all struggle to free ourselves from the colonial beliefs and values that have been ingrained in us.

neutral and objective research has been used to justify the oppression
and genocide of the Other for the good of humankind
[t]he fact that
much research does not confront ideologies of oppression prevents the application
to research of critical knowledge regarding traditional culture, colonial history and
racist structure. This results in research which does not use appropriate concepts as
variables and defines ones culture using the cultural beliefs of another.
Throughout the world such

. Gilchrist (1997) explains that:

(Gilchrist, 1997, p. 76) This lack

of accurate representations of Aboriginal peoples in almost every facet of popular culture leads us (Aboriginal peoples) to seek validation in one another. This is a two-edged sword; while Aboriginal peoples are extremely proud of
Aboriginal individuals who become famous in sports, politics, or the media, generalized representations of Aboriginal role models can negate the reality of oppression. A minority of Aboriginal peoples who have successfully
negotiated Western culture are too often held up as proof that the problems of oppression, racism, and inequity can be easily overcome or, worse, that the roots of these problems lie not within institutions or systems of governance
but within Aboriginal peoples themselves.

The performance of finding ethics in narratives is a method to

challenge Western ideals of knowledge, meaning the act of the
AC solves. Morris
Morris, David B. "Narrative, Ethics, and Pain: Thinking With Stories." NARRATIVE 9.1 (n.d.): 55-77.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30940862/narrative_ethics_and_pain.pdf?
AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1439854537&Signature=vnCk2jJEHCzV04dekiOP
KGh7MeU%3D&response-content-disposition=inline

Is it possible that ethical action might depend less on analytical reasoning than on
responding to a dilemma as we might respond to a story?
By thinking
I mean, a process very different from the exclusive
operation of reason. Thought
involves reasoning, in addition to various forms of
"Thinking with stories" is a concept I borrow from sociologist Arthur W.

Frank in The Wounded Storyteller (23-25).

, Frank means, and

clearly

cognitive activity
but I want to emphasize that thinking involves a
crucial collaboration with feeling.
the
Western binary habit requires us to put
reason and emotion into separate words and unconnected categories is
a
neurological mistake, with
implications for ethics.
from memory to meditation,

also

In fact,

ancient

that

, I contend,

crucial

We need a greatly revised understanding of reason and emotion? a revision consistent

with recent discoveries in cognitive science?in order to escape the history of erroneous assumptions about thinking and about ethics, a history that I wish to challenge. The concept of thinking with stories is meant to oppose and mod

Thinking
step back,

ify (not replace) the institutionalized Western practice of thinking about stories. Thinking about stories conceives of narrative as an object. Thinker and object of thought are at least theoretically distinct.

with stories is a process in which we

, of allowing narrative to work on us.

as thinkers do not so much work on narrative as

childhood experience

take the

radical

almost a return to

Contention Two
Relying exclusively on universalized ethics to determine
correct action results in an ethical system that we does not
consider the perspectives of excluded Bodies. This justifies
exclusion and violence against non-normative bodies. Yancy
Yancy 5 George, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University, Whiteness and the
Return of the Black Body, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 19(4), p. 215-216

I write out of a personal existential context. This context is a profound source of

knowledge connected to my "raced" body. Hence, I write from a place of lived embodied
experience, a site of exposure. In philosophy, the only thing that we are taught
to "expose" is a weak argument, a fallacy, or someone's "inferior" reasoning power.
The embodied self is bracketed and deemed irrelevant to theory, superfluous and cumbersome in one's search for truth. It is
best, or so we are told, to reason from nowhere. Hence, the white philosopher/author

presumes to speak for all of "us" without the slightest mention of [THEIR]
his or her "raced" identity. Self-consciously writing as a white male philosopher, Crispin Sartwell observes: Left to my own devices, I disappear as an author.
That is the "whiteness" of my authorship. This whiteness of authorship is, for us, a form of authority; to speak
(apparently) from nowhere, for everyone, is empowering, though one wields
power here only by becoming lost to oneself. But such an authorship and authority is also pleasurable: it yields the
pleasure of self-forgetting or [End Page 215] apparent transcendence of the mundane and the particular, and the pleasure of power expressed in the "comprehension" of a range of
materials.

Narrative ethics allow us to solve these problems by engaging

with moral Others by recognizing that we cannot speak for
them, and instead standing in solidarity with them. This means
the method of my Affirmation solves. Mccarthy
Mccarthy, J. "Principlism or Narrative Ethics: Must We Choose between Them?" Medical Humanities
29.2 (2003): 65-71. Web. <http://mh.bmj.com/content/29/2/65.full#ref-27>.
The third tenet of narrative ethics is the claim that the task of moral justification is not, primarily, a unifying one. Rather, its focus is on acknowledging and embracing the multiplicity of, often contested, meanings that are available in

What is key
is the idea that many different
readings of moral
situations and individual lives are possible .
narrativists focus less on trying to
reduce competing perspectives
and more on involving as many people as
possible in the dialogue.
any given situation.

for this narrativist account

voices and

And, generally,

to a commonly shared view

Anne Hudson Jones summarises this view thus: In ideal form, narrative ethics recognises the primacy of the patients story but encourages multiple voices to be

heard and multiple stories to be brought forth by all those whose lives will be involved in the resolution of a case. Patient, physician, family, health professional, friend, and social workerfor example, may all share their stories in a

, for narrativists,
empathetic listening and support are privileged .
these virtues are
reworked to
accommodate the
view that,
difference is irreducible
dialogical chorus that can offer the best chance of respecting all the persons involved in a case (Hudson Jones A,20 p 222). In turn

relational virtues such as

In the course of such privileging,

acknowledge and

narrative

in some senses,

Howard Brody, for example, radically reconceives the moral demands of empathy in the following passage: In a culture that prizes autonomy and independence, we may fondly imagine that most people are whole and intact, unlike
those who suffer from disease. Charity tends to assume that I start off whole and remain whole while I offer aid to the suffering. Empathy and testimony require a full awareness of my own vulnerability and radical incompleteness;
to be with the suffering as a co-human presence will require that I change. Today I listen to the testimony of someones suffering; tomorrow that person (or someone else) will be listening to my testimony of my own. Today I help
to heal the sufferer by listening to and validating her story; tomorrow that sufferer will have helped to heal me, as her testimony becomes a model I can use to better make sense of and deal with my own suffering (Brody H,27 pp 21

the demand of empathy does not

presuppose that it is ever possible fully to understand anothers pain The other
person is always other to us, her difference persists, resisting assimilation
Instead, empathy demands that we bear witness to our own vulnerability
and lack so that we stand
as a co-human presence.
2). On Brodys view,

require us to step into anothers shoes in order to understand their pain. It does not
.

under the umbrella of

mutual understanding.

, not as whole to part, or healthy to ill, but

On this view, health professionals cannot

offer patients the reassurance that they know and understand them, only the acknowledgement that they have listened and heard. On this view too, no health professional is untouched by a patients pain and vulnerability, there is
professional engagement, not detachment. What is refreshing about the account of narrative ethics outlined above is that it introduces the idea that the aim of ethics is not, necessarily, to reduce discord, disunity, and disagreement.
Where principlism is lauded because of its justificatory forcefor example, its supposed objective rules distinguishing between good and bad actions, and its theoretical consistency, by contrast narrative ethics, as we have seen,
slides toward relativism and diversity with seemingly wild abandon (MacIntyre excepted). Some might see this slide as good reason to abandon narrative ethics for the more stable and theoretically satisfying principlist position. What
if, however, one were to view the relativism of narrative ethics not as a failure of comprehensiveness or probity or insight, but rather, as pointing the way toward a reframing of what we understand the task of ethics to be?