Sonics - Michigan 7 2024 CFMP

Aff – Sonics - CFMP
NOTES
This AFF is a Sonic Based Aff that is built upon Ludlow’s thesis of rap. Sonics that you would want to play with this aff would have to include a variety of 808’s and hi-hats---other sounds maybe lead to problems with the method. The 1AC makes a thesis level claim about historical blackness and the disposition of black labor within it. The main topic link is that the resolution is a form of stealing black artists work through intellectual property rights and is backed behind the logistical politics of the ontology claim. The aff goes to further that debate is a site for black-performance and its ability to destroys existential insecurities of white futurity.
1AC
Black Sonics---1AC
White futurism labels Blackness as “outcasts” reordering progression when tapes stop. Characterization of abandonment maintains a dislocation of white domination that furthers Blackness as the Other producing biocentric models of evolution. Only furthering Blackness to weaponize whiteness in academia destroys notions of existential insecurities.
Shanks ’23 [Logan K; June 13; Logan Shanks is a graduate researcher from Brandeis University who received her degree in AAAS/WGS/English. Logan defines herself as a “Black feminist curator” who demystifies traditional “academic” understandings of blackness by pairing Black theoretical knowledge with everyday, familiar encounters of Black culture and art to create spaces where Black ways of knowing are validated and elevated, “A Meditation on Afrosurrealism, Black Gender, and the Non-Human,” Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal: 1 (2), 17-26] /vishwa
Fleeing and escaping, second-class servitude in their own “home” countries, refuged white Europeans mimicked their intimate familial class violence to create the New World mercantilist-capitalist system by stratifying themselves into a higher class, enslaving African people and Indigenous people in the process. These white insecurities manifest in laws, literary genres, epistemological constructions, and every facet of American life. One of those is the American romance literary tradition that writer Toni Morrison explicitly names in her book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Morrison gives us the language to understand America as a white, nationalist, hegemonic world-building project that brands its aesthetic as generative and restorative through the shadow of slavery: “The black population was available for meditations on terror-the terror of European outcasts, their dread of failure, powerlessness, Nature without limits, natal loneliness, internal aggression, evil, sin, greed. In other words, this slave population was understood to have offered itself up for reflections on human freedom in terms other than the abstractions of human potential and the rights of man.” Ultimately capitalism derived from feudalism to free the peasants and serfs who were the least powerful in Western Europe and established a new white hierarchy that “freed” them from their poor, oppressive class conditions.
The white reordering of history acquaints us with a narrative of historical progression and controls when the tape stops, plays, and rewinds. I use Black feminist literary scholar Michelle M. Wright’s concept of “linear process narrative” to acknowledge how white linear historiographies play on a loop to place Blackness in constrictive, barricaded time-spaces in which whiteness uses Blackness as a historical causality to map out its regressions. As Black folks attempt to break 37 “free,” they must appeal to and reason with fallacies of white freedom and equality through the same forms of language, mediums, and textiles that are used to hold captive Black matter in its anti-Black world-building projects. Through the destabilization of historical time periods, the Black collective will be better equipped to destroy the machinery of white supremacy that naturalizes anti-Black normative assumptions of gender, sexuality, and reproduction.
As whiteness defines freedom in the form of white patriarchy (dependent on the suffering and oppression of stolen African people), Blackness runs the risk of inadvertently re-inscribing signifiers of white humanity in their new constructions of subjectivity and humanity. While the abandonment of freedom as a concept could seem degenerative and pessimistic to the survival of Black people, I beg the question of why Black existence is predicated on running and escaping the whip, ultimately an inescapable, slow necropolitical death? Perhaps, surrendering could possibly be more “freeing” than rendering Black matter legible to the category of the white Human. In our swapping of (white) Humanist conceptions of freedom for the non-Human, we are liberating ourselves from limiting, fixed categorization. In solidarity with Jayna Brown’s Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music Of Other Worlds, I recognize “those of us who are dislocated on the planet are perfectly positioned to break open the stubborn epistemological logics of human domination. These (im)possibilities open up where the human has abandoned us and onto a much bigger universe, when we jump into the unknowable.” Brown’s 38 statement has facilitated my choice to abandon the white Human category. The intimate interiorities are expressed in the Black feminist quilting of both Afrosurrealism and Afropessimism as artistic traditions and philosophical meditations that highlight how Blackness exists beyond the limiting concepts of white gender and the illegibility of white assumptions surrounding Black family, sexuality, and gender.
The category “Human” rests in the condition of gender; gender enters on the stage of European colonialism and sexual conquest. I call upon Caribbean philosopher Sylvia Wynter’s overrepresentation of the man to define Black freedom’s attempt to perform citizenship in the desire to be “Human,” in others words, a white Man:
Other, the abnormal Other, the timeless ethnographic Other, the most salient of all these was to be that of the mythology of the Black Other of sub- Saharan Africans (and their Diaspora descendants). It is this population group who would come to be made, several centuries on, into an indispensable function of the enacting of our present Darwinian “dysselected by Evolution until proven otherwise” descriptive statement of the human on the biocentric model of a natural organism. With this population group’s systemic stigmatization, social inferiorization, and dynamically produced material deprivation thereby serving both to “verify” the overrepresentation of Man as if it were the human, and to legitimate the subordination of the world and well-being of the latter to those of the former.
There is no “Human” and white regime without the control of Black reproduction and life. The American colonial law “Partus Sequitur Ventrem” was imagined as a curse that assigned subjects with a Black female genitalia to be slave-producing vessels: “Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother—Partus Sequitur Ventrem. And that if any Christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.” On the basis of white reproductive logic, this law fertilized the 40 grounds on which the colonial mappings of the “New World” were reinforced in every Black striving towards freedom. However, it is important to note that Blackness does not emerge from whiteness, but it is rather whiteness that exists because of the coercion of Black matter. To be white is to be human as to be human is to oppress and dominate. In our captivity, Blackness is expected to show up in specific ways that stabilize the existential insecurities of whiteness.
Intellectual Property commits to subordinate Black Property at the expense of exploitation. Through “Mileu” the system entrenches dissonance enclosing normativity sacrificing Black Bodies. Current logistics demands taciturnity to expand the “good”.
Greene ’98 [Kevin J; September 7th; Kevin J. Greene is a professor at Southwestern and a nationally recognized entertainment and intellectual property law scholar and an expert witness consultant for copyright, trademark, publicity rights, and entertainment contract disputes. He is a highly committed, outstanding teacher as well as a passionate leader and an IP law influencer. He teaches Contracts and Copyright Law. Professor Greene was most recently a tenured Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, “Copyright, Culture & (and) Black Music: A Legacy of Unequal Protection,”]/vishwa
The copyright regime converts cultural by-products such as art, dance, music, and literature into commodities, labeled generally as intellectual property. In simple societies- often and derogatorily described as primitive- music and other a result, they have tremendous social transformative power. But in modem capitalist culture, songs, books, music, and dance also become items in the supermarket of ideas. In addition to expressing cultural attributes, such as shared mores and popular sentiments, intellectual property provides tremendous economic power.
In the abstract, the notion of protecting intellectual and artistic property seems obvious. Concretely, protection is available only by way of a very specialized area of the law inaccessible to the unschooled. Intellectual property has been worthless where the creator failed to comply with legal requirements. Furthermore, the legal system, including copyright law, generally was created without deference to the interests of large segments of society. The copyright regime is owner-centered, not creator-centered," and 'reflects a possessory attitude best summed up as follows: "That is property to which the following label can be attached: To the world: Keep off unless you have my permission, which I may grant or withhold."
In practice, Blacks as a class received less protection for artistic musical works due to (1) inequalities of bargaining power" (2) the clash between the structural elements of copyright law and the oral predicate of Black culture, and (3) broad and pervasive social discrimination which both vulnerability to exploitation and appropriation of creative works. This phenomenon of cultural appropriation experienced by Black artists compares to the history of legal subordination experienced by African-Americans under property law principles.
Legal devices such as restrictive covenants at one time Blacks, historically, constituted the quintessential "out"group in American society. Social status and copyright law replicated inequality, and deprived the African-American community of untold millions in royalties and other revenues.
Music scholars have noted that Black artists, as a class of performers, routinely found their works appropriated and exploited by publishers and managers. The publishers typically (although hardly always) were white. As a result, Black artists as a class were denied the economic benefits of the copyright system. The prolific exploitation of Black artists casts doubt on the value and neutrality of legally sanctioned economic incentives. The copyright system did not protect Black artists as class from disproportionate economic and cultural exploitation and appropriation of the fruits of their works. Yet Black artists, even as slaves, continued to produce original works. This suggests that people from non- western cultures would create original works even without financial incentives. ' For example, Black American slaves created an impressive body of musical and artistic work, which like their physical labor, went uncompensated.
Part of the pattern of cultural appropriation included the predisposition of the dominant culture to stereotype and demean minority cultures. The copyright system does not exist in a vacuum, but in a concrete social milieu. The cultural or economic impact of the copyright regime on minority groups requires examination from a historical and social perspective. In a concrete social, cultural, and historical context, the degree of protection accorded to intellectual property in American society, as with tangible property, frequently depended on the racial (as well as gender and class) status of the individual. Disparate treatment occurred despite the 94 ostensible race neutrality of the copyright regime. Superficially, the copyright system sits outside of social Anglo-American culture. These values include individualism and formalism. In contrast to Anglo American culture, Black culture has traditionally been transmitted orally and communally, and has stressed group endeavors above individual achievement. These cultural facets have disadvantaged the Black minority in a dominant culture which stresses written communication and individualism.
The collision of disparate cultures creates cross-cultural dissonance. Cultures that operate from communal and informal bases (such as the African culture) clash with the individualistic, formalistic culture inherited from Europe. It has been noted, for example, that "folk culture ...is a social culture; it is produced in societies where social experience is more important than private experience and is typically produced and reproduced communally." For ill or good, liberal individualism is an essential component of Anglo-American culture. The Founding Fathers assumed that individual, rather than group, creation is normative. Accordingly, the intellectual property rights they endorsed represent the belief that economic rewards to individuals best serve the common good. These underlying assumptions of copyright law conflict with the concept of group or communal creation which characterize other cultures. In such cultures, aesthetic and spiritual rewards, rather than economic rewards, may be a primary motivator for creating art.
“Appropriation” starts from dynamics of “subaltern” politics between black and indigenous labor. The triangulation of the “other” is a forum of Eurocentric logistics that is part and parcel with the commodification of “culture” to satisfy the “tokenization” of white audiences.
Cherid ’21 [Maha I; July 14; Maha Ikram Cherid is a graduate student at McGill University. in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, ““Ain’t Got Enough Money to Pay Me Respect”: Blackfishing, Cultural Appropriation, and the Commodification of Blackness,” Sage Journals: 21 (5) https://doi.org/10.1177/15327086211029357] /vishwa
The Cambridge Dictionary (n.d.) defines cultural appropriation as “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.” There are three main elements that need to be highlighted here. First, this definition implies that the “appropriator” is not part of the group to which the cultural element itself belongs. Second, this concept implies the act of “taking or using” cultural elements, meaning that whoever is engaging in this process can engage with the culture on their own term, thus indicating that power dynamics are at play. Third, and perhaps most important, the cultural element is taken out of its context in a way that either does not credit its origins or is disrespectful to its meaning.
A good example to illustrate this definition is the wearing of “native headdresses” by nonindigenous folks at events like Coachella. In North America, indigenous people have been made subalterns through settler colonialism and white supremacy (Mann, 2000; Razack, 2002). As a result, there exists at both the macro- and micro-social level a power dynamic between indigenous people and non-indigenous people who live on these lands. In State of Race: Critical Race Feminism for the 21st Century, Razack et al. (2010) describe those power differentials in the Canadian context as follows:
The racial and gendered politics of the state were organized through a complex triangulation of relations, with Indigenous peoples marked for physical and cultural extinction, European settlers for integration, and people of colour for perpetual outsider status as “immigrants” and “newcomers.” (pp. 4–5)
Here, we see that indigenous peoples’ positioning is different to that of nonindigenous peoples, and is specifically subservient to that of Europeans, in a way that threatens their culture and continued existence. As a result, there is an inherent power differential that is enacted when someone who is not indigenous decides to take headdresses out of their context to wear them as fashion accessories. In addition, the significance of headdresses in indigenous communities, while varied, is generally associated with status and achievements. By wearing one without having the necessary qualifications, a nonindigenous person is removing it from its original context in a way that disrespects the traditions of the community.
Young and Brunk (2009) identify two main ways in which cultural appropriation can create harm. First, cultural appropriation could imply infringement of legal property rights. For example, both Khloe Kardashian and her sister Kylie Jenner were accused of stealing designs made by Black creator Destiny Bleu and Black-owned brand Plugged NYC (Lawrence, 2017). In these cases, the Kardashian–Jenner sisters took cultural items that were both inspired African American fashion from the 1990s and created by Black designers. In doing so, and without crediting the creators of the clothes nor paying them to use the designs, their appropriation of elements of Black culture simultaneously infringed on intellectual property rights owned by Destiny Bleu and Plugged NYC.
The other potential harm identified by Young and Brunk (2009) is “an attack on the viability or identity of cultures or their members” (p. 5) The authors go on to write:
Appropriation that undermines a culture in these ways would certainly cause devastating and clearly wrongful harm to members of the culture. If appropriation threatens a culture with assimilation, the same moral issues are raised. Other acts of appropriation potentially leave members of a culture exposed to discrimination, poverty, and lack of opportunity. (p. 5)
They in essence present the argument that the symbolic harm caused by appropriation as an enactment of power dynamics causes concrete consequences for the culture of origin and its people. Their legitimacy in society and the meanings they ascribe to their own symbol are negated in favor of those who are appropriating. In addition, cultural appropriation leads to benefits for those doing the taking, whether financial or social, and prevents the original peoples from accessing those same gains. When Kylie and Khloe launched products based on stolen designs, they not only financially benefited from the sales, but also prevented less known Black designers from earning profits on their creation. The mechanics of cultural appropriation thus maintain racial and ethnic hierarchies that effectively disempower communities that are already marginalized.
Commodification of Black Culture
This leads us to a discussion on how the appropriation and commodification of Black culture have served to enact white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy as interlocking systems of oppression. In the introduction of The Black Culture Industry, Ellis Cashmore (1997) writes the following:
Any residual menace still lurking in African American practices and pursuits has been domesticated, leaving a black culture capable of being adapted, refined, mass-produced, and marketed. Whites not only appreciate black culture: they buy it. A great many blacks have become rich on the back of it. An even greater number of whites have p

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