*rightly.

Whoops.

That said, I am generally suspicious of academics who counsel nonviolence when they will never have to raise a hand in self-defense.

People insulated from violence and oppression are the least likely to see the necessity in violent resistance.

And most likely to tell victims not to fight back.
/.

The extent to which a person's argument has merit lies within the argument itself, not the era in which it was written, nor the printing press from which it was issued.

10/

Which is really the overall point: it's all well and good to mention that "so-and-so says that nonviolence is best", but it doesn't really further anything. OTHER people say that nonviolence is insufficient. Some say it's actively harmful.

It's the start of the conversation, not the end.
9/

Such works and their arguments need to be assessed or dismissed on a case-by-case basis. The academic pedigree is nothing more than a helpful Oprah's book club sticker directing us towards (hopefully) more prominent and reasonable speakers. It is not the period in the argument. Just an asterisk.

8/

All of which is a long-handed way of saying "fuck academic pedigree." While It's a useful indicator of which opinions might be more considered views than wild rantings, there are plenty of works published inside academia that are tautological, and many outside that are perfectly reasoned.

7/

Instead we have an entire discipline made up of people sharing opinions and offering surmise. Informed opinions, certainly. Often with promising data to support conjecture. But in absolute terms a paper does not actually become more or less authoritative by dint of where it was published.

/7

2. The matter of peer review and academic pedigree. Peer review has obvious value. Largely when examining concrete data pools, experiments, statistics.

In the humanities, where objectivity takes a holiday and the subjective holds more sway, it has less value...
/5

...why the arguments therein have become outdated. While certain theories do become redundant, and new discoveries outdate old ones, class, race and social inequity are, unfortunately, evergreen issues.

It is not sufficient to say "this is old and irrelevant" unless one can specifically say how.
/4

These 2 approaches are very clearly flawed.

Not to say that any of the 5 texts that I mentioned are FLAWLESS or can be cited as authority. That, as I'll go on to say, is besides the point.

1. To say that a work is old does nothing to diminish its value, unless you then go on to explain...
/3

"I can dismiss any text on the basis of its inclusion or exclusion from an arbitrary set of criteria, adjudicated by a privileged body."

Now, setting aside for a moment the general value of peer-review and academia in general (which is worthy of discussion and does have some merit)
/2

Here's the thing: the majority of your responses coalesce around two basic counterarguments:

1. This text is old, therefore irrelevant.

2. These texts do not 'count' as real texts, because they fail to pass an academic litmus test for 'reputability'. Or to phrase it another way:
/1

"If the entire regime, even your nonviolent thoughts, is governed by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passiveness serves no other purpose but to put you on the side of the oppressors." - Fanon

Other published texts disagree:

F. Fanon "The Wretched of The Earth"

W. Benjamin "Toward the Critique of Violence"

P. Gelderloos "How Nonviolence Protects the State" & "The Failure of Nonviolence"

V. Osterweil "In Defense of Looting"