Part Four: "I Designate Caliban" Ultimately, the question must be where will morally progressive people who = care about quizbowl turn? Paradoxically it is the format most often held up= as the voice of conservatism that allows us to reshape quizbowl with the maste= r's own discourse. Precisely because of the Enlightenment ideals of self- fashioning it espouses, its past history as the format of Seth Kendall and = Strom Thurmond can be overturned. The recent calls to scrutinize the so- called "knowledge arms race," a very worthy cause if the true motivation behind the ire were not to simply reify quiz bowl's exclusionary and simpli= stic past, actually hides the ways in which ACF's growing question subject expansion may hold the most promise for the quizbowl utopia we have always dreamed about. In other words, the format's elitism and search for n= ew frontiers of knowledge actually helps to diversify the game, and promulgate= s a more inclusive vision of the world. Ask yourself why you hate the format—is= it really the difficulty or is it all the non-western, non-male questions that= seem unanswerable? In their never-ending quest to one up one another many ACF players actually extol (often not deliberately) global contributions to the= tapestry of human culture. Inadvertently or not, ACF has become an alternative space for minority voices. Curiously, their own core members includes the most diverse ethnic cross-section of any format (though they must address their gendered politics to truly show a commitment to growth) = and not surprisingly they are often the subject of slander. Note how the consistent sniping about the over-representation of hip-hop would be interpreted in another context—can you say Trent Lott? What we can take, therefore, from ACF, is not the elitist aloof stance towards the rest of th= e community, but their implicit willingness to explore and expose players to = the myriad ways of knowing that are otherwise silenced. Conclusions: In conclusion, this letter was not written out of hate, but out of love, lo= ve for the game, love for the people who play it, love for knowledge. We must be aware= of the power structures that effect our daily lives. It is only through a g= rowing consciousness of our sordid past that we can have a future as one people, united, buzzing, together.
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