critique of alice essays

There are a few problems with the arguments made in David Daniel’s essay on Alice. One section that I found particularly problematic was the analysis on Alice’s encounter with the Mouse. David asserts that the Mouse “understands both French and English” (444). However, after Alice uttered a question in French, “the Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water” (Carroll). Despite this leap, the claim is never explicitly made that the mouse understood what Alice was saying. Rather, the Mouse could have merely been startled by any noise that it heard. Moreover, David Daniel connects this conversation to a broader claim that Alice is inconsiderate about the feelings of other individuals: “Alice demonstrates very quickly that she is unable to imagine what it is like to live in the world of the mouse, or indeed, any world but her own” (444). I feel like this claim is relatively unwarranted. The context of the conversation given by Lewis Carroll presents Alice as a more innocent character, with his description of her “soothing tone” of voice while she talks to the mouse (Carroll). Moreover, the Mouse later claims that he will tell Alice his “history, and you'll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs” (Carroll). If Carroll was presenting an argument about whether or not Alice could empathize with the animal, it seems likely that the Mouse would attribute its hatred for cats and dogs to a natural relationship shared amongst all mice. Instead, the Mouse attributes this fear to a personal history, implying that it is reasonable for Alice to be unaware of the context of the Mouse’s dislike for cats and dogs. Because of this, it seems unfair to expect Alice to be aware of the Mouse’s dislike for cats or dogs.

There are also problems in Bump’s essay about Alice. When referring to the croquet scene, Bump likens the flamingo’s pain to the face of the Other as described by Levinas. This presents the ethical dilemma central to Carroll’s book, that the “face of the other says, “Don’t kill me.” (453). However, I believe that the invocation of Levinas’s understanding of ethics undercuts the broader critique of speciesism presented in the beginning of the essay, which alludes to the animal kingdom as being a component in a broader family that we are all members of. This all-inclusive form of ethics in the opening of the essay seems incompatible with being fixated on the face of the flamingo, considering Zizek argues that “every preempting of the Other in the guise of his face relegates the Third to the faceless background” (Zizek). After all, “justice as blind thus means that, precisely, it cannot be grounded in the relationship to the Other's face” (Zizek). It seems reasonable to assert that focusing ethics upon the face of the Other will always relegate the suffering of other entities into the background. While the animal’s suffering is viewed as an a priori issue, instances of environmental degradation and human poverty seem impossible to grasp with. In order to attain the type of familial ethical stance towards animals, it seems that ethics can not be situated around the shock and awe of an individual animal’s suffering. Instead, justice must truly be blind to alleviate the suffering of everyone.

Slavoj Zizek. “Smashing the neighbor’s face”. http://www.lacan.com/zizsmash.htm.

accounts of dogs: similarities and dissimilarities

Rick Bass utilizes a fascinating approach when discussing his dog, Homer, in “The Odyssey.” Rather than attempting to inject humanizing traits into the behavior of the animal like many authors, Bass seems to have a greater focus upon the unique traits of the dog that make it distinct from humans. Homer’s abstract musings about life achieve this function. While Homer’s “owner” (note that Homer never refers to him as an owner) is showing Homer nostalgic places from his past, Homer describes it as a time “before he knew or dreamed us, and the way we would change his life—the way everything, each day, adds up to change your life, to steer it, turn it” (418). It is unclear whether the human views Homer’s influence upon his life in a similar way. Nonetheless, Homer’s unique perspective provides her with a unique characterization. She continues, “The best thing you can do about this is to take long naps and let it, the decay of life, go on past you, as if uninterested in you—though it is always interested” (418). I can’t help but recall our discussions about how each animal has unique characteristics that we can learn from. Homer’s napping is depicted as being a component of a broader life view that many dogs have. In this way, Rick Bass refrains from the temptation of reading human traits into dogs, and instead presents the unique traits that dogs possess and humans are lacking.

I also found many differences between “The Odyssey” and Jonae Chavez’s “A Ruff Life.” Where “The Odyssey” exemplifies the unique characteristics of dogs, it seems like “A Ruff Life” imagines dogs as being remarkably similar to humans with their emotions and thought process. The protagonist laments, “I run up to my fellow dog’s, but they just ignore me because their mom says, “Don’t talk to her, she can have rabies or bite you.” Why would someone think that of me?” (Chavez). The interactions between the two dogs is depicted as being remarkably similar to the types of interactions that exist between humans. As the account draws to a close, the narrator claims that “her mom puts a collar on me, and this time I won’t take it off” (Chavez). This action was justified by many human emotions that the dog performs. Moreover, the dog is depicted as desiring an owner to take care of it. This speculation from the author is vastly different from Rick Bass’s account, which places the dog and the owner on an equal playing field.

animals

The assigned readings provide a great amount of context for our viewing of Earthlings. Earthlings calls for a radical change about how we view the treatment of animals and our own complicity with the violence enacted upon them regularly. One argument frequently used to justify this treatment of animals is that the consumption of animals is natural. Humans are naturally suited to consume other animals. However, this argument is invalid considering many of our presuppositions about animals are formulated by outside sources. If our beliefs about animals are influenced by outside subjectivities, then outside institutions cause us to formulate our beliefs from birth. “When a system is entrenched, it is supported by every major institution in society, from medicine to education; chances are, your doctors and teachers didn’t encourage you to question whether meat is normal, natural, and necessary” (374). The presumption of eating meat is advanced in every realm of society. The example is given that the American Veterinary Medical Association, regarded as the “voice of the veterinary community,” endorsed “gestation crates, two-foot-wide stalls in which sows are confined during pregnancy” (374). This is another revealing example that shows how many of our institutions, even the normalized medical discourses that we see throughout our society, advance certain understandings about meat that may or may not be natural. Instead, they are contingent upon the perspectives of institutions and the sway they hold over us as we engage in political socialization.

The readings also provide other insight to how we should respond to Earthlings. Earthlings functioned to problematize the privileged role that humans have in society. It can be argued that “if we no longer feel entitled to kill and consume animals, our identity as human beings comes into question. Witnessing compels us to view ourselves as strands in the web of life, rather than as standing at the apex of the so-called food chain” (391). However, it is easy to feel uncomfortable with such a realization. If we no longer have the privileged anthropocentric position on the food chain that we previously did, our very existence comes into question. Denial is also another common response to Earthlings. Much of this denial can be explained in psychoanalytic terms as an attempt to justify the status quo that we associate ourselves with. “Freud explains that we attempt to detach ourselves from reality by the use of denial,” and this claim is especially applicable to the issue of eating meat (400). If one were to refuse to eat meat after watching Earthlings, they are responsible for the murder of many animals over the past several years in their new ethical viewpoint. The fear of feeling such despair causes us to develop many psychological coping mechanisms. The only proper way to prevent such a knee-jerk response is by being willing to feel complicit in the violence of animals. It is only by feeling more comfortable with this feeling of pain can we genuinely question our ethical engagement with the animal kingdom.

ram dass ii: this time it's serious

Our adventures in world literature have taught me a significant amount about listening. Between our meditation activities and also the many discussions we’ve had during class, it has always been emphasized that we should listen to those around us more carefully. To limit ourselves to only our own solutions to problems forecloses the opportunity to benefit from the wisdom of one’s peers. There have been many times in the past two months that I’ve benefited greatly from the thoughts shared to me by my friends in Austin. Ram Dass puts it best when he says that, “as we listen with a quiet mind, there is so much we hear” (111). Ram Dass also believes that we should be attentive to the thoughts and emotions of others around us. The best way to confront suffering is to reveal an honest portrayal of the phenomenon.

i learned how to listen to others

I have been exposed to a greater sense of community since I have arrived in Austin, as well. Living in the dorm, I have found myself more dependent on others for my daily necessities than I have ever previously encountered. Countless times I have failed to purchase flash drives, gotten horrendously sick on Thursday nights, and squandered hours at the bowling alley. Nevertheless, the bonds of friendship that I have formed have helped me persevere. Truly “intimacy is what we're looking for, and it's often there to be found in a helping relationship” (126). Encountering these new relationships has presented realizations about my relationship with my own suffering. Rather than deny that I am in need of assistance, I should refrain from hiding behind “false facades of courage or self-sufficiency” and instead take a more humble posture (136). After all, I have willingly bailed my friends out of their awful decisions many times myself.

sometimes i was sick on friday mornings

There has been a lot of great discussion regarding the explicit messages conveyed by Ram Dass. However, one thing that I found interesting in How Can I Help? was the implicit arguments made by Ram Dass. On an abstract level, it is telling that Ram Dass chose to respond to suffering on an individual level instead of in a broad sense. Many political and philosophical books have been written about the response to suffering on a macro level, proposing solutions to the suffering resulting from the alienation of labor, political disenfranchisement, and material deprivation. While this literature is extensive, Dass makes the decision to focus on different solutions to suffering other than structural change.

Marx searched for structural changes to alleviate suffering

Dass acknowledges the expectation for the “government to relieve suffering” (10). At the same time, Dass also finds that such an expectation is too narrow of a scope to find solutions to the problem of suffering. Dass notes that while governments implement policies that cause suffering, any individual politician would “probably do everything he could, faced with one starving child” (10). Dass is effectually deconstructing the State as an institution comprised of individuals with their own agency to relieve minute instances of suffering. Dass’s reconfiguration of the question of agency to relieve suffering enables each person to alter suffering in their own way.

Charity and service can result from deeper connections with suffering

Some of the Dass passages also relate to the concept of compassion fatigue that many of us discussed in a previous Facebook discussion. We mentioned previously that compassion fatigue causes individuals to respond less and less to the proliferation of images of people suffering. Dass notes that being confronted with suffering sometimes triggers off “an almost morbid fascination. We continually feed ourselves, through newspapers, soap operas, tragedies, and gossip with images of suffering” (55). However, Dass actually offers a solution to the problem of compassion fatigue. He believes that instead we can confront our own relationship to suffering which ultimately frames the way that we approach the suffering of others. By having a different perception of suffering, we can “look anew at how each situation can teach us, how it can help us evolve in our ability to confront and help alleviate suffering” (72). This was one thing that I really appreciated about the Dass book. It genuinely attempted to find solutions to problems that it’s difficult to even conceive of solutions to respond with.

emotional intelligence

I found the passage about emotional intelligence to be particularly compelling. Society places a significant amount of emphasis on measurable forms of intelligence in its educational institutions and on a personal level. We seem to be inundated with the importance of SATs, ACTs, LSATs, and MCATs while other important forms of education are placed on the backburner. Indeed, all of the decisions that we make in life are "determined by both," "it is not just IQ, but emotional intelligence that matters" (334). It seems that all of our actions are determined by our understandings of emotions. It is worth noting the "power of emotions to disrupt thinking itself" (333) which means that we should have a type of focus on emotional intelligence so thinking is disrupted in ways that are good instead of bad. I also felt like the author's attempts to eliminate the dichotomy between reason and emotion was also useful. Creating a paradigm that "harmonize[s] head and heart" has the benefit of taking all perspectives about a matter into account (335). I think that it would be useful for individuals in society as a whole to move past previous understandings of giving preference to reason over emotion and instead to take both aspects in account equally.

standardized testing

Compassion fatigue is a phenomenon where indifference is developed "towards the suffering of others" as a result of being surrounded by too many depictions to such suffering (347). Many cultural theorists have found compassion fatigue to be particularly problematic as humanitarian groups attempt to raise funds to donate towards impoverished people who are suffering. However, I think that this approach to humanitarianism is somewhat nihilistic. If we are constantly afraid of pushing humans' compassion to the fringe, then it seems that the battle has already been lost. The valid concern of compassion fatigue hindering the ability for people to donate moneys to humanitarian foundations is somewhat resolved by later passages about sympathy. Literature distinguishes sympathy from compassion as the attempt to develop an "imaginative understanding of the nature of others" and the "power of putting ourselves in their place" (350). The problem of compassion fatigue should not be read as a call to reject humanitarianism, but instead should push us to understand deeper forms of emotional intelligence and create a personal ethics that is founded upon this new belief. Compassion fatigue seems pretty impossible in a world where one engages in the type of sympathetic approach that the liteature suggests.

images such as these create compassion fatigue

p2

    Although the University of Texas emphasizes the ability for their incoming freshman to achieve a rebirth, Texas has already granted me a rebirth in my past. In the summer of 2008 I attended the University of Texas National Institute of Forensics as an incoming junior. While there is a diverse array of debate camps to choose from across the country, the UTNIF is renowned for pushing the limits in argumentative style. Rather than solely trying to improve the debaters’ win/loss record, the institute emphasized drawing deeper connections with the arguments presented in debate rounds. Generally opposed to the sophistry prevalent in high school speech and debate, the instructors at the UTNIF encouraged debaters to research major philosophical thinkers and deploy their beliefs within a debate round. The personal emancipation that the instructors enlightened me to has sparked my own desire to continue to teach similar lessons to younger debaters.
    Early on in my own participation in speech and debate, I had many instructors who were excellent and teaching me how to win. A common expectation advanced throughout the debate community is that arguments should be approached strategically. While certain teams might advance arguments condemning patriarchal relations that oppress women, a valid response to such arguments could include morally repugnant justifications of patriarchy. Debate rounds are won frequently on arguments with Malthusian, imperialistic, and even implicitly racist assumptions. Despite the extensive amounts of research and persuasive technique exhibited by such hypothetical victors, I have always felt that there is something missing in such an approach to debate. While it is obviously not necessary to intimately believe in every warrant advanced in a speech delivered in a debate round, an approach to debate that creates unique disincentives to defending personal advocacies in favor of more strategic yet less genuine arguments is untenable. Approaches to debate should be fostered that leave room for connecting advocacies to personal agency. Similar to how methods of experiential learning “make the value of education more obvious because you begin connecting information to the “real world””.1 Due to these personal observations, I quickly became disenchanted with the ideologues who emphasized a separation between personal beliefs and positions defended.
    The aforementioned severance was conducive to giving the progressive instructors at the UTNIF a highly influential role in my own development. A significant amount of my time at UTNIF was spent studying the thoughts of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s 1953 essay “The Question Concerning Technology” reorients philosophy from being primarily concerned with how to one thinks about action and instead with how one thinks about thinking. In the face of the suicidal drive of modern technological thought, Heidegger advocates incorporating meditative modes of thought into one’s ontology. While there are certainly problems in this world that require immediate action, Heidegger suggests that many more problems are caused by a rush to action without proper reflective inquiry. Such an approach can be aggravating, especially “if we still believe that thinking’s only real purpose is to function as a prelude to action,” which will leave us “feeling nothing but frustration, unable to conceive of ourselves as anything but paralyzed.”2 Although this might be a difficult obstacle to overcome, the end result is certainly worthwhile. This approach to philosophy introduced by Heidegger directly applied to the revelations that the UTNIF gave me in my approach to speech and debate. Because my own personal ontological inquiries became a high priority, debate quickly became a brilliant outlet for my own development. It was through the implementation of Heidegger’s philosophy in debate that the UTNIF instructors affected my personal views of debate.
    These lessons taught to me in Austin remained with me throughout my junior and senior year of high school. Senior year was a time of great existential questioning as I filled out college applications and wrote many essays. As college approached, I was forced to consciously consider what my future career was going to be. My previous experience in speech and debate had made me painfully aware of countless struggles constantly occurring across the globe. My declared major in college would inevitably be conducive to personally influencing a social issue of concern. Although I was resolved to make my choice in career a means to a higher end, determining the proper methodology to use to combat social injustice was particularly problematic. The structural conditions that lock individuals into social hierarchies are largely irreversible by a single individual. This depressing realization forced me to consider prioritizing certain struggles that I would align myself with. When determining how best to use my labor to benefit other individuals, I had no other criterion with which to base priorities upon besides my own personal experience. Remembering the emancipation found through intellectual inquiry taught to me at the UTNIF the previous year, I realized my own personal contentment derived from personal growth instead of a mere shift in material conditions. Such a freedom is inherently derived from the immaterial. Because my own path to emancipation was paved with intellectual enlightenment alone, I was left with no other choice but to lay similar stones for others to follow. While it might be difficult to quantify the impact that an inherently immaterial methodology would have on others, I was inevitably more intimately connected with such a struggle than any other political outlet predicated upon a material struggle that I have not personally experienced.
    My passion for debate provides the perfect means for me to cause other individuals to question their presuppositions in a similar manner. Because of the objective and creative nature of debate, competitors are encouraged to research and create their own unique arguments and utilize the laboratory of the debate round to discover how different arguments interact. More importantly, debaters have the opportunity to defend positions that they personally believe in and teach other competitors about distinct material struggles. This increase about awareness of certain issues translates into interest and activism towards solutions to the particular problem. However, using my influence to strictly increase participation in debate is insufficient. The instructors at UTNIF that sparked my own passion for debate taught me that debate only reaches its full potential when it is pushed to the limits of intellectual inquiry. When debaters can advance positions that they fundamentally believe in instead of falling prey to the sophistry that characterizes debate, the competitors can thereby situated their arguments in a broader context of social struggle. This creation of intrinsic meaning for individual advocacies allows the debate round to become a space for the advancement of personal ethical beliefs.

unique opportunities of debate

    This endeavor is not an end in itself. Preserving public spaces for the democratic contestation of ideas is integral to maintaining freedom within American society. Professor of Cultural Studies at McMaster University Henry Giroux notes in his 2006 essay “Reading Hurricane Katrina” that any resistance to social injustice is impossible when a public sphere does not exist to allow citizens to genuinely consider different political ideas. Giroux writes that we should foster the “creation of a vast network of democratic public spheres such as schools and the alternative media in order to develop new models of individual and social agency that can expand and deepen the reality of democratic public life.”3 By ensuring the emancipatory potential of speech and debate programs in high schools across the United States, such a democratic network of the exchange of ideas is thereby created. This conclusion allows me to connect my own passion for my involvement in high school speech and debate to broader material struggles. Without ensuring that the free exchange of ideas is maintained throughout the nation’s youth (that is not manipulated by corporate or governmental influence on ideas), the hearts and minds behind any future social struggle will never be passionate enough themselves. It would seem safe to conclude that maintaining speech and debate as a public sphere free of outside control is a perquisite to the vitality of American democratic culture.
    My passion for speech and debate as an outlet for expressing certain political beliefs directly translates into influencing the way that others approach speech and debate. In some ways, the indebtedness that I feel towards the instructors at UTNIF for opening my mind years ago only feels resolved when I am able to pass a similar gift onto others. Fortunately, I have several ways to influence high school speech and debate as a college student. Many local Austin high schools host speech and debate tournaments on the weekends that require judges. As a judge, I am able offer encouragement and advice to competitors. Moreover, I am currently involved in coaching several debaters at a local high school. By helping the students learn how to research arguments and also injecting my own personal views on debate, I am able to ensure that the activity is approached in a manner that is conducive to a genuine exchange of ideas. It is also encouraging to note that my passion for sparking intellectual inquiry within others is not relegated to the speech and debate world. I have considered pursuing a future career in teaching as a result of my recent reflection on what constitutes my passion. Even maintaining any involvement with the academy would allow me to pursue encouraging others to take the pedagogical stances that can provide a sense of freedom.

1 Bump, Jerome. Course Anthology. Page 45.

2 Ladelle McWhorter. Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State University. “Guilt as Management Technology: A Call to Heideggerian Reflection.” Heidegger and the Earth: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. 1992. pp. 3-9

3 Henry Giroux. Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. “Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability.” College Literature. 33.3: Summer 2006.