Tactics, Strategies, Stories, Bodies

In rereading de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, I am thinking about structuring my chapters in the following way:

• a story of the events or people in the event
• rhetorical practice
• theory of procedure

In each case study, there is the operations of systems, the strategic, which construct discursive places. In each example, tactics are used to circumscribe the discursive expectations.

But, I’m going to bracket that for now.

At this moment, I want to take a crack at answering some question prompts from my director:

• Is agitation particularly relevant for movements?
  • Yes, but usually when
  • conditions have disclosed another type of response
  • the issue is contentious enough to warrant an aggressive response
    • but this requires that we ask what counts as a social movement?
      • def:
      • def:
• What strategies do sites have in common?
• Are there other features of the rhetorical situation that determine when persuasion actively becomes confrontation?
  • depends on what we define confrontation as, but if we understand confrontation as an intervention into another’s behavior, then we could say that all persuasion is a form of confrontation in that it relies on engaging with others to change their behavior
  • take Gezi Park for example: Tayyip Erdogan had plans to demolish the park for a commercial mall. One could argue that this could increase the economy of Istanbul. However, city residence saw Gezi as an important park, both socially and ecologically. The confrontation with Erdogan, however, is influenced by many parts of the situation, such as
    • Erdogan’s ethos: many had been already disgruntled with the AKP’s policy against alcohol and city-wide reform of behavior. Some treated the protest as a way to question and critique his policies and the larger AKP party
    • audience: Erdogan was elected without a majority vote because of a schism between representational members and minority vote weight. As it was explained to me, the collective of the “minority” vote was well over 50% against Erdogan. However, the weight of votes meant that the real numeric minority was able to elect Erdogan without popular vote. Thus, the country- and city-wide audience may not be the rhetorical audience that would agree with Erdogan’s policies, as the demonstration shows.
    • pathos: Erdogan acted like an authoritarian leader in his initial responses to the protests over the park. His brash response was not well thought-out, lacking in logos or rationale other than economic, which pissed people off. As Erdogan’s rhetoric and measures intensified, so too did the protester’s.
    • rhetoric: part of what makes this a fascinating case study is that the rhetoric that circulated was dynamic and complex.
      • Erdogan used definitive, authoritative messages to close down discussion
      • early protesters used environmental rhetoric to salvage the park amid the city’s urban landscape
      • as other protester’s joined in, the rhetoric changed depending on value and rhetor
      • the raucous football fans were able to engage the politicians in compromise, or at least begin talks toward moving in that direction
      • after violent exchanges between police and protesters, the protest went global
      • media censorship became a key point in demonstrating the governments authoritative power and also the tactical (?) bypass that protester’s made
      • Erdogan’s rhetoric cooled off after global attention and solidarity put pressure on Erdogan to stop ignoring and close-fist rhetoric engagement with protesters
    • circulation: circulation played a big role in this event. Circulation is what grew the movement beyond the environmentalists. It was also what allowed news of the events to spread beyond the censored media, making it a more transnational movement.
  • CeCe McDonald is another case in which agitation led to confrontation in many directions.
    • CeCe verbally confronted racism and homophobia, and the situation escalated until  the accidental death of her aggressor resulted in prison
    • early responses to the case involved institutional strategies, such as letters, petitions, legal fund campaigns, ACLU support, and Laverne Cox documentary
    • later reactions were more aggressive, including Feinberg’s graffiti on a courthouse, various global graffiti support, a molotov cocktail at an Oregon bank
    • pathos: CeCe came to represent the realities of living as a trans person of color, and her incarceration prompted a slew of statistical reports justifying the violence perpetrated and the stand that she took against her confronters
    • logos: statistics were important in terms of trans lives/deaths, incarceration, wrongful sentencing, race inmate stats, etc. Logic was also examined in terms of the sentencing, time served, trans inmates, prison industrial complex, etc.
    • audience: several layers of audience are factors. For instance, some raised concerns with the audience in terms of the jury in CeCe and other’s trials. Another audience is through the media, who is rightfully accused of sensationalizing black on white violence, downplaying trans violence, especially for people of color, and circulation of details about the altercation and people involved. CeCe’s incarceration then became an event for an activist audience, who followed updates online and perhaps participated through letters and protests. These folks overlap with ACLU, etc.
    • message: it ranges from trans awareness to institutional critique depending on the vested interest in the case
    • circulation: circulation played a large role in details of the events gaining public attention, as well as publicizing the social conditions that framed the event as well as the material conditions that CeCe faced while in the prison system. Circulation of information is what added her release as well as a documentary by Laverne Cox, famous transgender actress
  • FoP poses an interesting foil in many ways, as well as problematizes the agitational leaning that the other two take
    • message: the graffiti was anonymous and could have been an internal critique, making its quasi-homophobic sentiments audienceless and ubiquitous
    • pathos: the graffiti was interpreted and taken up as mainly an appeal to emotions, particularly shame and its counter pride. These were the fundamental discursive debate of the event
    • circulation: social media played a huge role in the circulation of the graffiti event, as well as the call for responses. Technology made distribution possible especially in the short amount of time that the planners needed to respond to the event in a timely manner
    • the avenues that protesters took were both institutional (SU) and grassroots simultaneously.
    • this event looks the most like a social movement, yet it lacks the numbers and precedent as a singular event to be a movement. However, drawing on rich traditions of LGBT protest, it has connections

How would I challenge that queer activism should be seen as a type of social movement? Why is this important?

• The scholarship that discusses social movements tends to work from people outward. The movement is somewhat established, the people have formed because of a similarity of position or commonalities. In other words, the rhetorical tactics that people use are created after the movement has formed. 
• What if it is the rhetorical action that defines collectives and not the other way around? This would mean that people form around the rhetoric, rather than commonalities. 
  • Gezi is a great example of this: the park’s destruction was first addressed by environmentalists. It was adaptation of their rhetoric by people not necessarily environmentally minded that formed the “protesters” 
  • FoP is like that as well in some key ways: the initial rhetorical framing came from Taneja. Participants then utilized or modified his rhetoric in order to engage in the rhetorical action of protest.
  • In the case of CeCe, letters to her, signs, and other forms of protest/solidarity were modified by those who took to protest. Feinberg used some methods, others used others. All of these were tactics used by others, but they were correlatives to the same event. 

How have readings reinforced/complicated idea that seriality is key to queer activism? Why is this important?

Is queer activism always agitational?

Where are they different, and what makes them different?

• Gezi was a larger collective in that it eventually encompassed the entire city, country, and abroad. This also looked the most like what we automatically associate with a protest (clashes with the police, clashes with the government, aggressive tactics, etc). This event was about popular votes and governmental policies. Growing discomfort with AKP motivated citizens to criticize the government publicly. 
• CeCe was also more of a protest in that Feinberg took a stand against the government officials publicly and was arrested for defacing property. People raised money and petitioned authorities for fair treatment of her in prison. However, the protest was dispersed and not centralized on the whole so that much of the work was individual. Groups did come together, mainly around the trans aspect of CeCe’s case. However, her case was about racism, transphobia, and homophobia.
• One main difference is the division between American and Turkish protest. The Turkish citizens were more aggressive than American protesters, which others have talked about in terms of American complacency and individualism. Even the most aggressive tactics in the US were tame next to the clashing between protesters and the police in Taksim Square. 
• FoP was a more institutionally driven protest in that it was sponsored by a university and hosted by a social activist-minded museum. Gezi and CeCe protesters were working against institutions, not necessarily with them.
• The American protest worked much closer on the movement model in that it seems that the intended audience were assumed to be like the people affected by the incident. The Gezi protest, however, didn’t appear to assume who would care about the park’s destruction apart from the people who lived in the city
• It would also seem that Gezi is the most diverse of the protests, gathering several different types of people together from various religious, economic, social, and geographical backgrounds. Not that FoP and CeCe didn’t have a range of people, but it was less diverse in terms of public makeup