Saturday, November 9, 2013

Victims, truth, and power

Here's the thing: I don't think this resolution is necessarily about truth. In fact, I think it's more about power. We have the differential between victims rights and the rights of the accused. It's also about the power of the state versus the individual. The key thing for neg is this: valuing truth seeking through juridical means isn't inherently going to provide truth or liberate. The usage of legitimate channels only further reifies the juridical subject. On neg, the strongest argument may be that there are better ways to liberate ourselves. Fortunately, Zizek has got that covered:
We must challenge the structure of power itself, not look for it to legitimize us
Zizek, Slavoj (2011). “Good Manners in the Age of Wikileaks.” The London Review of Books 33.22 (20 January 2011). http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/slavoj-zizek/good-manners-in-the-age-of-wikileaks What WikiLeaks threatens is the formal functioning of power. The true targets here weren’t the dirty details and the individuals responsible for them; not those in power, in other words, so much as power itself, its structure. We shouldn’t forget that power comprises not only institutions and their rules, but also legitimate (‘normal’) ways of challenging it (an independent press, NGOs etc) – as the Indian academic Saroj Giri put it, WikiLeaks ‘challenged power by challenging the normal channels of challenging power and revealing the truth’.​ The aim of the WikiLeaks revelations was not just to embarrass those in power but to lead us to mobilise ourselves to bring about a different functioning of power that might reach beyond the limits of representative democracy. However, it is a mistake to assume that revealing the entirety of what has been secret will liberate us. The premise is wrong. Truth liberates, yes, but not this truth. Of course one cannot trust the façade, the official documents, but neither do we find truth in the gossip shared behind that façade. Appearance, the public face, is never a simple hypocrisy. E.L. Doctorow once remarked that appearances are all we have, so we should treat them with great care. We are often told that privacy is disappearing, that the most intimate secrets are open to public probing. But the reality is the opposite: what is effectively disappearing is public space, with its attendant dignity. Cases abound in our daily lives in which not telling all is the proper thing to do. In Baisers volés, Delphine Seyrig explains to her young lover the difference between politeness and tact: ‘Imagine you inadvertently enter a bathroom where a woman is standing naked under the shower. Politeness requires that you quickly close the door and say, “Pardon, Madame!”, whereas tact would be to quickly close the door and say: “Pardon, Monsieur!”’ It is only in the second case, by pretending not to have seen enough even to make out the sex of the person under the shower, that one displays true tact.
What's more important then the usage of legitimate avenues is the use of illegitimate avenues, as that directly questions the state's power. The power of the state here is huge as in the US we've seen historical shifts from the right's of victims to the prosecution of the state: 

The constitution represents a historic shift of power from victims to the executive branch for prosecution

Cassell, Paul G. and Steven Joffee. (2011) “THE CRIME VICTIM'S EXPANDING ROLE IN A SYSTEM OF PUBLIC PROSECUTION: A RESPONSE TO THE CRITICS OF THE CRIME VICTIMS' RIGHTS ACT.” The Northwestern University Colloquy (January 2011).

Historically speaking, crime victims have long played an important role in the criminal process. Levine's argument to the contrary begins by dismissing this country's practice of private prosecutions--that is, prosecutions brought by crime victims. 89 Levine relies heavily on Blackstone's influential Commentaries on English Law as support for the proposition that the colonists understood crimes to be solely public wrongs. 90 However, the victim-orientation of private prosecutions cannot be so quickly dismissed. Indeed, as Levine recognizes, Blackstone himself explained that "[i]n all cases . . . crime includes an injury" because "every public offense is also a private wrong, and [thus] . . . it affects the individual, and . . . likewise . . . the community." 91 Given this understanding, it is not surprising that early American criminal prosecutions were, as in England, 92 often brought by the victim--a private prosecutor--rather than by a government agency. 93

 [*178]  Levine acknowledges these facts, but still believes that the Constitution essentially transferred prosecuting discretion to the executive branch. 94 To our mind, this view pays insufficient attention to the fact that histories of the eighteenth century criminal justice system in the United States--including the period before, during, and after the framing of the Constitution--reveal that victims often directly prosecuted criminal cases. 95 Professor William McDonald has summarized the period: "Even after identification and arrest, the victim carried the burden of prosecution . . . [by] retain[ing] an attorney and pa[ying] to have the indictment written and the offender prosecuted." 96 Indeed, early Americans preferred a system of private prosecution because it avoided the tyranny of government prosecutors and the expense of public-funded prosecutions. 97 Thus, legal scholars report that private prosecutions were the dominant form of prosecution during the colonial period. 98
Overall, perhaps the best solution is the one that is non-juridical and desubjectivizes us.
If you have questions or want specific evidence post in the comments.

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