Petro Cap Case Neg
Petro Cap Case Neg
1
A2 Petrocapitalism 3
Oil Sustainable
4
SQ Solves
6
No Peak Oil
8
Biopower 9
Ecology/Heidegger 11
Controversy Turn 12
A2: Ontology First 14
A2: K of Positivism 18
Empirics Good
20
A2: Security is Constructed 24
Predictions Good 26
Extinction Outweighs Everything
29
Extinction Outweighs Ontology
31
Solvency 32
Always Value to Life
33
Auto Industry DA 36
1NC
37
Key to Econ
39
2NC UQ 40
Oil DA Helpers
42
Links
44
Ecological Pragmatism K/Framework Helpers
47
1NC Shell
48
2NC Link Extension
52
A/T: Permutation 53
***FRAMEWORK***
54
FRAMEWORK 1NC SHELL 55
FRAMEWORK 2NC 1/5
57
FRAMEWORK 2NC 2/5
58
FRAMEWORK 2NC 3/5
60
FRAMEWORK 2NC 4/5
62
FRAMEWORK 2NC 5/5
62
FRAMEWORK - GROUND 65
FRAMEWORK - EDUCATION
67
FRAMEWORK – ANTIPOLITICS DISAD 1/3
68
FRAMEWORK – ANTIPOLITICS DISAD 2/3
68
FRAMEWORK – ANTIPOLITICS DISAD 3/3
70
FRAMEWORK – EXTRA / CEDE THE POLITICAL
FRAMEWORK – OTHER
72
***DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM KRITIK***
74
DM SHELL 1/8
75
DM SHELL 2/8
76
DM SHELL 3/8
77
DM SHELL 4/8
78
DM SHELL 5/8
79
DM SHELL 6/8
80
DM SHELL 7/8
81
DM SHELL 8/8
81
2NC OVERVIEW CARDS 83
AT: PERM
84
AT: DISCOURSE KEY
85
71
AT: DISCOURSE KEY
86
AT: GIBSON-GRAHAM
87
AT: GIBSON-GRAHAM
88
AT: GIBSON-GRAHAM
89
AT: GIBSON-GRAHAM
90
AT: MARXISM BAD
91
AT: MARXISM BAD
92
BIOPOWER LINKS 93
BIOPOWER LINKS 94
SELF-REFLECTION LINKS 95
ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUAL LINKS 96
POSTCOLONIALISM LINKS 97
FEMINISM/GENDER LINK 97
A2 Petrocapitalism
Oil Sustainable
Oil is sustainable
Krauss ‘10(“There Will Be Fuel,”November 16, 2010 New York Times, CLIFFORD KRAUSS, correspondent for The New
York Times, http://216.9.68.119/VFDA_News_files/Plenty%20of%20Oil%20-%20NYTimes.pdf)
THREE summers ago, the world’s supertankers were racing across the oceans as fast as they could to deliver oil to markets growing increasingly thirsty for
energy. Americans were grumbling about paying as much as $4 a gallon for gasoline, as the price of crude oil leapt to $147 a barrel. Natural gas prices
were vaulting too, sending home electricity bills soaring. A book making the rounds at the time, “Twilight in the Desert,” by Matthew R. Simmons, seemed to
sum up the conventional wisdom: the age of cheap, plentiful oil and gas was over. “Sooner or later, the worldwide use of oil must peak,” the book concluded,
“because oil, like the other two fossil fuels, coal and natural gas, is nonrenewable.” But no sooner did the demand-and-supply equation shift out of kilter than
it swung back into something more palatable and familiar. Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the
coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition,
the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation. Meanwhile, another wave of natural gas drilling has taken
off in shale rock fields across the United States, and more shale gas drilling is just beginning in Europe and Asia. Add to that an increase in
liquefied natural gas export terminals around the world that connected gas, which once had to be flared off, to the world market, and gas prices have
plummeted. Energy experts now predict decades of residential and commercial power at reasonable prices. Simply put, the world of energy has once again
been turned upside down. “Oil and gas will continue to be pillars for global energy supply for decades to come ,” said James
Burkhard, a managing director of IHS CERA, an energy consulting firm. “The competitiveness of oil and gas and the scale at which they are produced mean
that there are no readily available substitutes in either one year or 20 years.” Some unpleasant though predictable consequences are likely, of course, as
the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this spring demonstrated. Some environmentalists say that gas from shale depends on drilling techniques and chemicals
that may jeopardize groundwater supplies, and that a growing dependence on Canadian oil sands is more dangerous for the climate than most conventional
oils because mining and processing of the sands require so much energy and a loss of forests. And while moderately priced oil and gas bring economic
relief, they also make renewable sources of energy like wind and solar relatively expensive and less attractive to investors unless governments impose a
price on carbon emissions. “When wind guys talk to each other,” said Michael Skelly, president of Clean Line Energy Partners, a developer of transmission
lines for renewable energy, “they say, ‘Damn, what are we going to do about the price of natural gas?’ ” Oil and gas executives say they provide a
necessary energy bridge; that because both oil and gas have a fraction of the carbon-burning intensity of coal, it makes sense to use them until wind, solar,
geothermal and the rest become commercially viable. “We should celebrate the fact that we have enough oil and gas to carry us forward until a new energy
technology can take their place,” said Robert N. Ryan Jr., Chevron’s vice president for global exploration. Mr. Skelly and other renewable energy
entrepreneurs counter that without a government policy fixing a price on carbon emissions through a tax or cap and trade, the hydrocarbon bridge could go
on and on without end. So what happened to shift the energy world so drastically the last few years? Is the shift reversible once the economy picks up? The
recession throttled the world’s demand for energy, particularly in the United States and Europe, but that tells only part of the story. Periodic jolts, like the
Arab oil embargoes in the 1960s and 1970s, are likely to recur in a world with unpredictable actors like Iran. Access to oil and gas may always be limited by
geopolitics, especially in places like the Middle East. Just in the last few days, the decline in the dollar spurred a new spike in oil prices, along with those of
other commodities. Yet, the outlook, based on long-term trends barely visible five years ago, now appears to promise large supplies of oil and gas from
multiple new sources for decades into the future. The same high prices that inspired dire fear in the first place helped to resolve them. High oil and gas
prices produced a wave of investment and drilling, and technological innovation has unlocked oceans of new resources. Oil and gas from ocean bottoms,
the Arctic and shale rock fields are quickly replacing tired fields in places like Mexico, Alaska and the North Sea. Much depends, of course, on government
policies in the coming decades. The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based organization that advises industrialized countries, projected this month
that global energy demand would increase by an astounding 36 percent between 2008 and 2035, assuming the broad policy commitments already
announced by governments were exercised. Oil demand is projected to grow to 99 million barrels a day in 2035, from 84 million barrels a day in 2009. Even
in an alternative world where there is a concerted, coordinated effort to reduce future carbon emissions sharply, the International Energy Agency projected
oil demand would peak at 88 million barrels a day around 2020, then decline to 81 million barrels a day in 2035 — just fractionally less than today’s
consumption. Natural gas use, meanwhile, would increase by 15 percent from current levels by 2035. In contrast, global coal use would dip a bit, while
nuclear power and renewable forms of energy would grow considerably. No matter what finally plays out, energy experts expect there will be
plenty, perhaps even an abundance, of oil and gas. IHS CERA, which monitors oil and gas fields around the world, projects that productive
capacity for liquid fuels could rise to 112 million barrels a day in 2030 (including 2.75 million barrels in biofuels), from 92.6 million barrels a day this year.
“The estimates for how much oil there is in the world continue to increase,” said William M. Colton, Exxon Mobil’s vice president for corporate strategic
planning. “There’s enough oil to supply the world’s needs as far as anyone can see.” More promising still is that the growing oil production comes
from a variety of sources — making the world less vulnerable to a price war with the Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries or an outbreak of violence in a major producing country like Nigeria. As IHS CERA and other oil
analysts see it, new oil is going to come from both conventional and unconventional sources — from anticipated expansions of
fields in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and from a continued expansion of deepwater drilling off Africa and Brazil, in the Gulf of Mexico and across the Arctic, where
hopes are high in the oil world, although little exploration has yet been done. The vast oil sands fields in western Canada, deemed uneconomical by many
oil companies as few as 15 years ago, are now as important to global supply growth as the continuing expansions of fields in Saudi Arabia, the current No. 1
producer. “We’ve got a wealth of opportunities to address around the world,” said Mr. Ryan, Chevron’s vice president. “We have quite a few deepwater
settings all over the world, some of them very new, like the Black Sea. There are Arctic settings. We have efforts under way re-exploring Nigeria, Angola,
Australia. The easy stuff has been found, that’s true, but in the end, we still have many basins in the world to explore or to re-explore.” The biggest wild card,
and a potential game-changer, is Iraq, which now produces a modest 2.5 million barrels a day. With Saddam Hussein out of the picture, international oil
companies have rushed there. If all the projects they have agreed to develop pan out, and if Iraq can contain its political turbulence enough to pump,
production could mushroom to 12 million barrels a day by the end of the decade — well above what Saudi Arabia produces today. But even if Iraq’s
production does not rise to this level, IHS CERA predicts “it will eventually join Saudi Arabia and Russia as one of the largest global producers, with
increasing influence on OPEC and world oil markets.” New supplies are only part of the equation. Technological innovation has made the use of oil and gas
more efficient, too, helping to keep rising demand for energy at least partly in check. Cars, buildings and appliances are becoming less wasteful, and
biofuels are increasingly supplementing oil products and extending their reach. Even in China, India and the rest of the developing world, where the
demands of a growing middle class probably represent the world’s biggest energy challenge, there are positive signs. China, for instance, is making a big
push to reduce energy subsidies for exports like steel and aluminum. Countries around the developing world are severely cutting gasoline subsidies, forcing
consumers of new cars to contain their exuberance. Cars that run on compressed natural gas are replacing more carbon-intensive gasoline-driven vehicles
across Latin America and Asia. Natural gas sales should soar in Europe and the United States if the electric car takes off in the next couple of decades, as
utilities are expected to phase out coal-burning plants in favor of gas. Not surprisingly, the back-to-the-future world of oil and gas begins in the United
States, still the biggest economy and the driver of energy markets since World War II. For the last two decades, the United States has produced less oil
each year and been increasingly dependent on imports than the year before. As recently as a decade ago, most experts predicted that the country had only
25 years of gas reserves, and that it would need to import at least half of its needs in the future. Today the country has reversed both trends, chiefly
because of new drilling techniques that have opened world-class oil and gas resources. In 2009, domestic production began to reverse its annual decline for
the first time since 1991. The Energy Department expects domestic supplies to grow through 2035, absent a significant decline in oil prices. Largely shut out
of the Middle East, international companies including BP and Shell began seriously looking at the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico in the 1990s.
Exploration and drilling below 10,000 feet of water and through miles of hard rock, thick salt and tightly packed sands required the development of
supercomputers and three-dimensional imaging and equipment that could withstand the heat and pressures common at such depths, as well as submarine
robots to make repairs. After only a decade of serious deepwater drilling, the gulf is undergoing a drilling renaissance. Despite a decline in shallow-water
production, gulf oil production has increased by more than 12 percent since 2000, to 1.7 million barrels a day, comparable to Libya’s output. Those
increases are bound to slow over the next year or two as the federal government recalibrates regulations after the BP accident, but oil executives say they
are committed to continue the production boom. “We’ll see the industry ramp back up, go back to work and maybe in a year or year and a half, we’ll be back
in a normal pace,” Marvin E. Odum, president of Shell Oil, a major Gulf producer, predicted. Similar advances have made drilling gas and oil from shale
possible on a large scale for the first time. Advances in so-called horizontal drilling allow well drillers to steer and carve through hard shale to expose more
and hard-to-reach rock, and it also makes possible drilling under city neighborhoods, as in Fort Worth, which happens to sit atop a large gas field. Horizontal
drilling and advanced fracturing techniques across wide swaths of Pennsylvania, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas over the last few years have
produced so much natural gas that experts now say the United States has reserves for more than 100 years. That means the country is not only going to
have plenty of gas, but also is likely to become an exporter over the next decade. The American gas glut has set off a glut around the world, because the
building spree in recent years of Middle Eastern and Asian liquefied natural gas terminals was originally intended to send much of their gas to the United
States. “The technology producing these resources has absolutely made the difference,” Mr. Odum said. “It’s the same with the Arctic, with the shale oil, all
over the world. Technology is the key.” Shale drilling is also beginning to produce significant amounts of oil in the United States. The Bakken shale field
centered in North Dakota has become the fastest-growing major oil field in the United States, with production rocketing to about 350,000 barrels a day, from
100,000 barrels a day a decade ago. In a recent report, the consultancy firm PFC Energy projected production would climb to 450,000 barrels a day by
2013. Add up the shale, the deepwater drilling and Canadian oil sands, says Edward L. Morse, the head at commodity research at Credit Suisse, and what
you get is less dependency on OPEC and hostile countries like Venezuela. Synthetic oil made from Canadian oil sands has become the largest single
source of imported oil this year, far more than from any OPEC country. Mr. Morse said the demand side of the equation also helped. He noted that
American demand for gasoline appeared to have peaked in 2007 and could decline by 15 to 20 percent by 2020 because of
increasingly efficient cars and a federal mandate requiring that renewable fuels, like ethanol, blended into transportation fuels must increase to 36 billion
gallons in 2022, from nine billion gallons in 2008. “When you add it up,” Mr. Morse noted, “you get something that very closely approximates energy
independence.”
SQ Solves
Independence from the automobile is happening naturally in the U.S.
Burwell, 12 June 2012 [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/12/america-motor-car-transport] David Burwell is director
of the Energy and Climate Program at the Carnegie Endowment. His work at Carnegie focuses on the intersection between energy,
transportation and climate issues, and policies and practice reforms to reduce global dependence on fossil fuels.
America's love of driving is iconic. The open road is a central manifestation of America the free. During the 20th
century, the total movement of cars and trucks on our national roads and highways grew as fast as our economy, or
faster. Movement – measured by total vehicle miles travelled (VMT) – was considered an unqualified blessing. In the
1960s each American drove about 5,000 miles a year in a car, van, or truck. By 2000 that number was 10,000 miles. Which
means we are twice as well off – right? Wrong. In the early years of the 21st century, something very interesting happened.
Individual vehicle travel in America lost its glamour – and its connection to economic growth. In 2003 when VMT was
2.9 trillion miles, US gross domestic product was just under $11tr. In 2011 GDP passed $15tr while total vehicle travel
was still about 2.9 trillion miles. In 2011 alone GDP went up 1.5% while VMT went down 1.5%. VMT per capita is receding
as well, with each American now travelling less than 9,500 miles annually. America is not alone. The UK has
experienced similar trends, with a 13% drop in annual trips by cars and vans since 1996, and a 4% reduction in annual
distance travelled over the same time period. The ratio of vehicle miles travelled to GDP in the core EU 15 states has
dropped by more than 10% since 2000. There are a number of explanations for why VMT is no longer growing at the same
rate as GDP. Demand for shopping and business trips has slowed as these activities are increasingly conducted
electronically. Internet-based social networks are fast replacing hanging out at the mall as a teenage pastime. Then there is the
cost: fewer young people can afford car ownership – the cost of insurance, fuel, and maintenance on even a used car is
simply too high. Transportation policy has been slow to respond to this change in the way we prefer to travel and, at
times, actively resists the shift in customer demand for cheaper, cleaner, on-demand travel choices. Forecasters
continue to predict 1.6% annual increases in vehicular travel demand as far as the eye can see – and are designing road
and highway expansions to match. The Congressional Budget Office still links travel demand (and thus fuel tax revenues)
directly to GDP growth. Earlier this year House leaders in Congress tried to strip funding for transit, bicycling, and pedestrian
travel from the Highway Trust Fund, causing a backlash within their own ranks that forced them to drop a floor debate on the
measure. In the absence of policy leadership, Americans are taking matters into their own hands. Baby boomers are giving
up the suburbs for communities with more travel choices. Younger adults are delaying getting a driver's licence and, when they
do, they are not buying cars or using them as much. Instead, they are embracing new forms of "collaborative consumption"
– sharing vehicles through car-share and bike-share programmes. New "smart apps" allow users to identify travel options to
places they want to go on a real-time basis, then guide them to the nearest available vehicle – whether bus, car, bicycle or train –
to get them there. All age groups appear to be moving toward mixed communities where schools, businesses,
residences, and shops are in close proximity – even walking distance. Failure to recognise this sea-change in travel
behaviour leads to massive misallocation of scarce infrastructure capital. If vehicular travel is, as it seems, decoupling
from GDP growth, then transportation investments should respond by supporting a much broader array of travel behaviour than
driving, including bus, bus rapid transit, shared ride services, cycling and safe pedestrian travel. America still stands for freedom
– but it is no longer just the freedom of the open road. Freedom to multitask while we travel. Freedom to access social networks,
buy goods and services, and conduct business without sitting in traffic. Freedom to live in clean, healthy environments. In such a
world, planning to accommodate more and more driving when the customer is signalling a desire for new transportation services
makes no sense. The stagnation in VMT growth is an important indicator of how lifestyles are changing in America. It's about
time our legislators designed transportation policies that suit our needs in the 21st century.
The rising generation is rejecting a dependence on cars and oil
Eisenstein, Nov 1st 2011 [http://www.autoblog.com/2011/11/01/is-americas-automotive-love-affair-over-w-poll/] Paul A.
Eisenstein is publisher of The Detroit Bureau. He has more than 30 years of experience covering the auto industry for a broad range of print,
broadcast, and electronic media.
At first glance, Kerry Jenkins might seem to be a perfectly normal California girl, with her wispy blond hair and tanned complexion. But
in a part of the country where getting an automobile has long been a rite of passage, the 19-year-old Los Angelino is quite content to
live without a set of wheels, even though her parents offered to buy her a car when she graduated high school. "I just don't see why,"
she says, ending her sentence with the Valley Girl's upturned lilt. "I can always hitch a ride when I need it from my folks and friends. I
have my bike. And I just wish more people would stop driving everywhere." While it's easy to dismiss Jenkins as an oddball, the fact is
she's anything but unique these days. A number of her friends at college have also put off buying cars and industry research says that's
becoming increasingly commonplace. "It's something we're watching," acknowledges Mike Accavitti, the head of marketing
for Honda of America. "There is a trend with kids under 30 that they put more value in their cellphones than in the cars
they drive" – or the cars they decide not to drive. Paul A. Eisenstein is Publisher of TheDetroitBureau.com and a 30-year
veteran of the automotive beat. His editorials bring his unique perspective and deep understanding of the auto world to Autoblog
readers on a regular basis. The trend transcends national boundaries. A 10-year study by the Nikkei Research Institute of
Industry & Regional Economy, titled Hoshigaranai Wakamonotachi, or "Young People Who Don't Want," found that a
generation rejecting their parents' traditional values is especially turned off by the cars that clog the island nation's
roads. In Europe, researchers are noticing a similar phenomenon, especially in cities like Amsterdam where bicycles are becoming as
commonplace a way to commute as driving. This year motorists have trimmed the number of miles they drove by 1.3 percent – the
lowest number since 2003. In major European and Asian urban centers, the move away from the automobile might not seem that
surprising. Traffic in many cities has hit gridlock. In Beijing, capital of what has become the world's largest national automotive market,
authorities have instituted a registration lottery system to slow down the growth of the city's automotive fleet. Halfway around the world,
London has enacted a stiff road usage charge for those entering the city center and other communities are considering either banning
automobiles entirely or restricting access to just zero-emission vehicles or plug-in hybrids operating on battery power. Here in the
States, a study by the Department of Transportation shows that so far this year, motorists have trimmed the number of
miles they drove by 1.3 percent, which translates into the lowest number since 2003. Now, there are plenty of possible
explanations, including this year's near-record fuel prices and a lackluster economy that's left millions of unemployed
sitting at home rather than commuting to work. But it might also suggest that Americans,
especially our youngest generation of drivers, might simply be falling out of love with the automobile. Even among
those who embrace the automobile, more and more young buyers are opting for cleaner, more efficient products. There
is, of course, a growing sense of environmental responsibility among the Millennials who are rapidly becoming the next big
American consumer wave, exceeding in size even the vaunted post-War Baby Boomers. So, even among those who embrace
the automobile, more and more young buyers are opting for cleaner, more efficient (read: downsized, lower-powered and
cheaper) products. And they're more likely to turn to their bikes – or even, *gasp,* walk – rather than drive to visit friends, go
out for the evening or even commute to work. There are, as Honda's Accavitti notes, more things vying for their attention and their
dollars, like smartphones and video game systems. To some, it's more fun comparing the number of apps they've downloaded on their
iPhones than bragging about the horsepower of their cars. And, even if they do have wheels, technologies like Ford's SYNC and
Toyota's Entune are becoming bigger draws than performance. And perhaps for good reason. "My daughter has no interest in owning a
car," says a media colleague. "She sees it as nothing but a hassle and I can understand why." When he grew up, says this aging
Boomer, there were plenty of open roads by his home in Orange County. Today, the orange groves have been replaced by endless
tract housing and shopping malls. You can barely hit 40 mph before you reach the next stoplight and if you can find a place to open up
you're just as likely to get a ticket as not. What happens if they accept the car as a basic appliance and not as a symbol of personal
identity? There's also the issue of America's economic realities. "This is likely to be the first generation to have a lower
standard of living than their parents," short of those who grew up in the Great Depression, points out John Mendel,
Honda's chief U.S. executive. The automobile has been a symbol of aspiration for those who lived the classic American dream.
The Millennials, on the other hand, have to rein in their desires. Bumming rides from family and friends is something young
people can put up with. As they grow older, get more responsible jobs, start families, will they still feel the same way?
Researchers suggest that they'll be more likely to accept the idea that one needs an automobile in American life. But what
happens if they accept the car as a basic appliance and not as a symbol of personal identity? Perhaps that's already happening
as we see the steady growth of the U.S. small car market. Especially among the next generation of consumers, owning a car
may become little more than a necessity they can take or leave. Meanwhile, after a century of migration from farm and field, as
well as city center, to the suburbs that long defined the nation, there is beginning to be a measurable return to urban living. That's
reshaping not only traditionally vibrant cities like New York and Chicago, where there are viable mass transit systems, but even longstruggling metropolises such as Detroit. The Motor City is even getting ready to put in its first street car line in more than half a century.
While it's unlikely the U.S. will have a widespread mass transit network capable of giving its populace an alternative to the highway
anytime soon, the slow expansion of regional rail and bus lines could play at least a small factor. And for those who don't find the need
to park a car in the driveway there's the fast-growing alternative provided by carsharing services like ZipCar. To say America has lost its
love for the automobile would almost certainly be an overstatement. But we may be entering that stage of marriage where we lose the
lustful infatuation. True, there will always be those who dream of 0 to 60 times and worship the latest trend in sheetmetal. And even for
those who don't see cars as more than appliances, it's hard to give up on personal mobility. But especially among the next generation of
consumers, owning a car may become little more than a necessity they can take or leave
No Peak Oil
Biopower
Biopower is key to check unregulated state power
Lacombe in 96 (Danny, Criminology Simon Fraser U, “Reforming Foucault: A Critique of the Social
Control Thesis” The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 47, No. 2 Jstor)
The nature of the relation between the individual and the political order concerned Foucault in his studies
of 'bio-power' and 'bio-politics'. In this work, he implicitly negates his earlier claims that rights in the West were unequivocally linked to
the sovereign (1980b, 1988, 199 1). Foucault introduced the notion of 'bio-power' in his work on sexuality to designate the proliferation of a
technology of power-knowledge primarily concerned with life. Bio-power was a mechanism that took charge of life by
'investing the body, health, modes of subsistence and habitation, living conditions, the whole space of existence' (Foucault 1980b:
14344, emphasis added). The notion of bio-power is useful for our understanding of the phenomenon of resistance because while it
represents a totalizing or universal mechanism -one that interpellates the subject as a member of a population - it also
contains the seed for a counter-power or a counter-politics because that mechanism individualizes the subject
of a population. It is this aspect of bio-power, its simultaneous totalizing and individual-izing tendencies, that is of importance in
understanding the strategies by which individual subjects can claim the right to self-determination. Foucault explains that against this [bio]power that was still new in the nineteenth century, the forces that resisted relied for support on the very thing it
invested, that is, on life and man as a living being . Since the last century, the great struggles that have challenged the general
system of power were not guided by the belief in a return to former rights, or by the age-old dream of a cycle of time or a Golden Age. (. . .)
[Wlhat was demanded and what served as an objective was life, understood as the basic needs, man's concrete essence, the realization of his
potential, a plentitude of the possible. Whether or not it was Utopia that was wanted is of little importance; what we have seen has been a
very real process of struggle; life as a political object was in a sense taken at face value and turned back against the system that was bent on
controlling it. It was life more than the law that became the issue of political struggles, even if the latter were formulated through
affirmations concerningrights. The 'right' tolife, to one's body, to health, to happiness, to the satisfaction of needs, and beyond all the
oppressions or 'alienations,' the 'right' to rediscover what one is and all that one can be, this 'right' (. . .) was the political response to all these
new procedures of power which did not derive, either, from the traditional right of sovereignty. (Foucault 1980b: 144-5) If life,
understood here as 'man's concrete essence', is affirmed through rights claims, then, like Foucault we can no longer
conceive law as necessarily linked to the sovereign. It must be linked to a different political rationality, one
I believe, in which human rights are at the centre. While Foucault never specifically addressed the question of human rights, his lectures on
'bio-politics' (at the College de France between 1978 and 1979) suggest that struggles for life and for self-determination are
to be understood in the context of liberalism. In his lectures, he explores the relation between bio-power -the
mechanisms taking charge of life -and the emergence of bio-politics, by which he means the way in which a rationalization was
attempted, dating from the eighteenth century, for the problems posed to governmental practice by the phenomena specific to an ensemble of
living beings: health, hygiene, birthrate, longevity, races . . .(198 1 :353) Foucault's statement is significant because it
suggests that we cannot dissociate the problems posed by the question of population (bio-power) from the
political rationality within which they emerged, liberalism. Far from conceiving it as a political theory or a representation
of society, Foucault understands liberalism as an 'art of government', that is, as a particular practice, activity
and rationality used to administer, shape, and direct the conduct of people (1981 :358). As a rationality of
government - a 'governmentality' -liberalism, towards the beginning of the eighteenth century, breaks from reason of state (la raison
d'e'tat) which since the sixteenth century had sought to 'justify the growing exercise of government' (Foucault 198 1 :354). What
distinguishes liberalism from reason of state as an art of government is that for liberalism 'there is always
too much government' (Foucault 1981: 354-5). In fact, far from being organized around the principle of a strong
state, liberalism upholds the principle of maximal economy with minimal government (Foucault 1981: 354).
The question of liberalism, that of 'too much governing,' regulates itself, according to Foucault, 'by means of a continuing
reflection' (1 98 1: 354). The idea of reflexivity here is significant because it refers to a mechanism of selfcritique, and self-limitation, inherent in liberalism. Foucault claims that Liberalism (. . .) constitutes - and this is the reason
both for its polymorphous character and for its recurrences - an instrument for the criticism of reality. Liberalism criticizes an
earlier functioning government from which one tries to escape; it examines an actual practice of government that one
attempts to reform and to rationalize by a fundamental analysis; it criticizes a practice of government to which one is opposed and whose
abuses one wishes to curb. As a result of this, one can discover liberalism under different but simultaneous forms, both as a schema for the
regulation of governmental practice and as a theme for sometimes radical opposition to such practice. (Foucault 198 1 : 356) What
allows liberalism to oppose state power, then, is not the principle of sovereignty or the idea of a natural
right external to the state; rather it is a rationality, a governmentality of life that takes on 'the character of
a challenge' (Foucault 1981 :353). People resist the conditions under which they live, they make claims for or
against the state, because they have been submitted to government. In other words, the political technologies
that seek to render us governable as a population (bio-power and bio-politics) simultaneously make possible the
critique of these same technologies.'
Democracy checks a slippery slope
Dickinson 4 (UC Berkeley – History, Edward Ross, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some
Reflections on Our Discourse About “Modernity,” Central European History, vol. 37, no. 1, 1–48)
In the Weimar model, then, the rights of the individual, guaranteed formally by the constitution and substantively by the welfare system, were the central element
of the dominant program for the management of social problems. Almost no one in this period advocated expanding social provision out of the goodness of their
hearts. This was a strategy of social management, of social engineering. The
mainstream of social reform in Germany believed
that guaranteeing basic social rights— the substantive or positive freedom of all citizens — was the best way to turn people
into power, prosperity, and profit. In that sense, the democratic welfare state was— and is — democratic not
despite of its pursuit of biopower, but because of it. The contrast with the Nazi state is clear. National Socialism
aimed to construct a system of social and population policy founded on the concept of individual duties, on the ubiquitous and total power of the state, and on the
systematic absorption of every citizen by organizations that could implant that power at every level of their lives — in political and associational life, in the family, in the workplace, and in
leisure activities. In the welfarist vision of Weimar progressives, the task of the state was to create an institutional framework that would give individuals the wherewithal to integrate
themselves successfully into the national society, economy, and polity. The Nazis aimed, instead, to give the state the wherewithal to do with every citizen what it willed. And where
Weimar welfare advocates understood themselves to be constructing a system of knowledge and institutions that would manage social problems, the Nazis fundamentally sought to abolish
just that system by eradicating — by finding a “final solution” to — social problems. Again, as Peukert pointed out, many advocates of a rights-based welfare structure were open to the
; the right to health could easily be redefined as primarily a duty to be healthy, for
difference between a strategy of social management built on the rights of the citizen and a
system of racial policy built on the total power of the state is not merely a semantic one; such differences
had very profound political implications, and established quite different constraints. The rights-based
strategy was actually not very compatible with exclusionary and coercive policies; it relied too heavily on
the cooperation of its targets and of armies of volunteers, it was too embedded in a democratic institutional structure and
civil society, it lacked powerful legal and institutional instruments of coercion, and its rhetorical structure
was too heavily slanted toward inclusion and tolerance.
idea that “stubborn” cases might be legitimate targets for sterilization
example. But the
Ecology/Heidegger
Controversy Turn
The aff’s claims about sustainability backfire- by questioning the dominant rhetoric of
global warming give credence to climate deniers.
Ceccarelli 2011, (Leah, PhD, associate professor and associate chair- rhtetorical critic and theorist at northwestern,
“Manufactures Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate,”
On the basis of this proposition about the deceptive nature of the tactic, the orientation toward mainstream science that I adopt in
this essay will be as a critic of its opponents, and by implication, a defender of the current scientific orthodoxy. This is an
approach to the rhetoric of science that rarely appears in our journals. It is more common for scholars in the rhetoric of
science to orient themselves as critics of the world-defining hegemony of scientific discourse, interpreting the
complicated social and technical entanglements that coproduce scientific “discoveries,” and thus bringing the scientific
establishment down a notch or two. This standard approach derives from the sophistic impulse that initiated the subfield and still
motivates much of its scholarly energy. Our critical spirit calls rhetoricians of science to practice the “koractic” art of pollution, “an
impious management of linguistic and social ambiguities” that works “in resistance to the forces of rationalistic domination and
discipline.”14 When Celeste Condit attempts to create a scientific controversy by critiquing the assumptions of brain sex
researchers, or Carolyn R. Miller characterizes research on the biological effects of nonionizing radiation as part of an
ongoing scientific controversy rather than a closed debate, the rhetorical critic plays the role of Protagoras, making the
(currently) weaker case stronger in a critique that challenges the scientific orthodoxy.15 I am not opposed to this standard
approach; in fact, I strongly support it in most cases (including the studies by Condit and Miller), and I often adopt this stance in
my own research.16
Furthermore, the aff’s claims to discursive openness helps the oil lobbies maintain
controversy.
Ceccarelli 2011, (Leah, PhD, associate professor and associate chair- rhtetorical critic and theorist at northwestern,
“Manufactures Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate,”
By undertaking a multiple-case rhetorical study of argument and counterargument in the manufacture of scientific controversy,
this article [End Page 197] will reveal how opposition scientists are recruited by political agents and their voices are
amplified through the exploitation of balancing norms in American journalistic, legal, political, and educational
institutions. Appeals to open-mindedness , freedom of inquiry, and fairness create discursive traps to constrain the
response of mainstream scientists and their allies. The topoi employed by those who manufacture scientific controversy in the
public sphere insinuate that defenders of the scientific mainstream cannot refuse to debate without seeming dogmatically
unscientific and opposed to democratic values. However, agreement to debate is taken by audiences to indicate that there
are two equally strong sides on the matter within the scientific community. To further constrain the response of those who
speak for mainstream science, those who manufacture scientific controversy describe academic practices like peer
review and tenure as mechanisms for an orthodoxy to suppress those who have a dissenting view, thus weakening the
very practices of science that could be used to contest the quality of the most dubious claims in such debates. The
narrative of controversy thus produced identifies skeptics as heroes in an unfolding scientific revolution, oppressed by
mainstream scientists who are ideologically deaf to their appeals and who try to silence them so that others are not exposed to
their heresy.
And there’s a whole industry prepared to take advantage of that opening- the
pretrochemical industry hires scientists to continually re-open the debate.
Ceccarelli 2011, (Leah, PhD, associate professor and associate chair- rhtetorical critic and theorist at northwestern,
“Manufactures Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate,”
In separate case studies that richly detail the specific civic epistemologies involved in each, rhetoricians have demonstrated how
AIDS dissent, global warming skepticism, and intelligent design have been used to manufacture scientific controversy
in the public sphere.7 But no one study has yet detailed the common arguments and counterarguments deployed in all three
cases. Reading these case studies separately, one might conclude that the purpose of the manufactured scientific controversy is
to preclude the resolution of an issue in government action, or contrarily, that its purpose is actually to necessitate and legitimize
government action.8 The comparative study of arguments produced in all three cases will demonstrate how both ends can be
served by the tactic; those who manufacture a scientific controversy in [End Page 196] the public sphere use the same
rhetorical strategies to initiate an “epistemological filibuster” that delays policy change (like the regulation of carbon
emissions), or to insert a “fairplay wedge” that enacts policy change (like a state government’s introduction of new “teach the
controversy” directives for science education).9
Scholars outside the field of rhetorical inquiry who have studied this tactic have told us a great deal about the use and misuse of
scientific uncertainty in the public sphere. For example, epidemiologist David Michaels details a number of cases where
industries have deployed a strategy he calls “manufacturing uncertainty” in which “mercenary scientists” are hired to
skillfully turn “what should be a debate over policy into a debate over science.”10 Historian of science Robert Proctor
invented the term “agnogenesis” to refer to the use of ignorance “as a deliberately engineered and strategic ploy” in
cases like the tobacco industry’s response to cancer studies or the petrochemical industry’s promotion of global warming
skepticism—cases where doubt or uncertainty becomes “something that is made, maintained, and manipulated by means of
certain arts and sciences.”11 Sociologists William R. Freudenburg, Robert Gramling, and Debra J. Davidson coined the term
“scientific certainty argumentation methods,” or SCAMs, to refer to “a clever and surprisingly effective political-economic tactic”
that exploits the fact that “most scientific findings are inherently probabilistic and ambiguous”; they point out that “SCAMs can be
remarkably effective even in cases where most scientists see findings as strong or robust—indeed, even in cases where the
findings are backed by clear and emphatic statements of scientific consensus from the most prestigious scientific organizations
in the world.”12
Scientific controversy keeps the public from taking action- internal-link-turns their
advantage.
Ceccarelli 2011, (Leah, PhD, associate professor and associate chair- rhtetorical critic and theorist at northwestern,
“Manufactures Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate,”
However, I have come to believe that there are also times when the rhetorical critic should be prepared to develop
scholarly insights that can be turned to the defense of a scientific orthodoxy.17 Others in the interdisciplinary field of
science studies have made a similar point. A recent article in the official journal of the History of Science Society argues that “in
the current political climate, historians may be surprised to find themselves defending sciences, when the usual stance of
historians is to be critical.”18 Bruno Latour, who famously argued in 1979 for the social construction of scientific
knowledge, [End Page 199] now wonders, in the wake of “artificially maintained controversies” over subjects like global
warming, if he was “foolishly mistaken” to show “‘the lack of scientific certainty’ inherent in the construction of facts.”
He now regrets that “entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard
way that facts are made up . . . while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to
destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. ” Latour fears that our “critical spirit has sent us down the wrong path,
encouraging us to fight the wrong enemies and, worst of all,” he says “to be considered as friends by the wrong sort of allies.”19
A2: Ontology First
Normative political calculation MUST precede ontological questioning
Jarvis 2k (Darryl, Senior Lecturer in International Relations – University of Sydney,
International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism, p. 128-9)
More is the pity that such irrational and obviously abstruse debate should so occupy us at a time of great
global turmoil. That it does and continues to do so reflect our lack of judicious criteria for evaluating theory
and, more importantly, the lack of attachment theorists have to the real world. Certainly it is right and proper
that we ponder the depths of our theoretical imaginations, engage in epistemological and ontological debate,
and analyze the sociology of our knowledge. But to support that this is the only task of international theory,
let alone the most important one, smacks of intellectual elitism and displays a certain contempt for those
who search for guidance in their daily struggle as actors in international politics. What does Ashley’s project,
his deconstructive efforts, or valiant fight against positivism say to the truly marginalized, oppressed, and
destitute? How does it help solve the plight of the poor, the displaced refugees, the casualties of war, or the
émigrés of death squads? Does it in any way speak to those whose actions and thoughts comprise the policy
and practice of international relations? On all these questions one must answer no. This is not to say, of
course, that all theory should be judged by its technical rationality and problem-solving capacity as Ashley
forcefully argues. But to support that problem-solving technical theory is not necessary—or in some way
bad—is a contemptuous position that abrogates any hope of solving some of the nightmarish realities that
millions confront daily. As Holsti argues, we need ask of these theorists and their theories the ultimate
question, “So what?” To what purpose do they deconstruct, problematize, destabilize, undermine, ridicule,
and belittle modernist and rationalist approaches? Does this get us any further, make the world any better, or
enhance the human condition? In what sense can this “debate toward [a] bottomless pit of epistemology and
metaphysics” be judged pertinent, relevant, helpful, or cogent to anyone other than those foolish enough to be
scholastically excited by abstract and recondite debate. Contrary to Ashley’s assertions, then, a poststructural
approach fails to empower the marginalized and, in fact, abandons them. Rather than analyze the political
economy of power, wealth, oppression, production, or international relations and render and intelligible
understanding of these processes, Ashley succeeds in ostracizing those he portends to represent by delivering
an obscure and highly convoluted discourse. If Ashley wishes to chastise structural realism for its
abstractness and detachment, he must be prepared also to face similar criticism, especially when he so
adamantly intends his work to address the real life plight of those who struggle at marginal places.
Even a flawed epistemology has predictive potential
Norris, 92 (Christopher, professor of philosophy at the University of Wales-Cardiff, Uncritical
Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals, and the Gulf War, the university of massachusetts press,
43-44)
This is not to suggest that Solomon takes the whole Aristotelian doctrine on board, along with its deep-laid
teleological assumptions and other commitments that would clearly run counter to his own critical-realist
position. What he does wish to rescue — and defend as wholly valid from a present-day perspective — is
Aristotle’s argument that the unpredictability of future events need not be taken as any cause for
scepticism with regard to our knowledge of present realities and their possible or likely outcome. Thus
he cites the well-known passage from Dc Interpretutione where Aristotle makes this point by way of
distinguishing matters of logical necessity from matters of real-world predictive consequence. • “A sea-fight”
(or, we might add, a nuclear war] must either take place tomorrow or not”, Aristotle explains, but “it is
not necessary that it should take place tomorrow, neither is it necessary that it should not take place.”
it is wrong to conclude from this that reason is powerless in face of such uncertainties, or that we are
simply in no position to extrapolate from present evidence to future events on the basis of observed
regularities, rational conjectures, the weighing of probable outcomes etc. For the absence of any strictly
logical (i.e. deductive) order of necessity does nothing to disqualify these other forms of valid inferential
reasoning. Two further passages from Solomon’s book may help to clarify the point. On the one hand, ‘the
future, Aristotle believes, must establish the propositional truth of our predictions, but those predictions
themselves, our words, cannot determine the truth from within, cannot cross over from the word to the act,
cannot reduce to indifference the difference between the conformations of our knowledge and the reality that
we seek to know’. In which case it might seem that the sceptical arc right and that we have no grounds — no
possible warrant — for predicting future eventualities on the basis of present observations. More than that:
one could press Aristotle’s reasoning yet further and argue, in postmodern-textualist fashion, that this
scepticism must apply not only to future occurrences but also to existing states of real-world affairs, since
here likewise there is no guarantee that the ‘conformations of our knowledge’ (or the ‘facts’ as 43
represented in some given language-game) necessarily correspond at any point to ‘the reality we seek to
know’. But this is simply wrong, as Solomon points out, since the absence of strictly logical grounds for
predicting future events (or foe claiming knowledge of the truth behind present appearances) gives
absolutely no reason for doubting our capacity to interpret events and arrive at a better understanding
on the basis of evidence and inferential reasoning of a probabilistic kind. ‘This is the real challenge
that the nuclear referent offers to criticism, a challenge to analyze the ways in which the word relates
to the world, how our knowledge actuates the potentiality of a world that is real, that subsists outside our
discourse, and that referentially grounds it.’2’
Ontology Bad
Subjectivity is rooted in material fact—the affirmatives superfluous questioning destroys
political potential and results in unrestrained domination
Graham 99 (Philip , School of Communication Queensland University of Technology,
Heidegger’s Hippies Sep 15 1999
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html)
Societies should get worried when Wagner’s music becomes popular because it usually means that distorted
interpretations of Nietzsche’s philosophy are not far away. Existentialists create problems about what is,
especially identity (Heidegger 1947). Existentialism inevitably leads to an authoritarian worldview: this, my
Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of twofold
voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without a goal, unless the joy of the circle itself is a goal;
without will, unless a ring feels good will towards itself – do you want a name for this world? A solution to
all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men? –
This world is the will to power – and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power – and
nothing besides! (Nietzsche 1967/1997).
Armed with a volume of Nietzsche, some considerable oratory skills, several Wagner records, and an
existentialist University Rector in the form of Martin Heidegger, Hitler managed some truly astounding feats
of strategic identity engineering (cf. Bullock, 1991). Upon being appointed to the Freiberg University, Heidegger pronounced the end of
thought, history, ideology, and civilisation: ‘No dogmas and ideas will any longer be the laws of your being. The Fuhrer himself, and he alone, is the present
and future reality for Germany’ (in Bullock 1991: 345). Heidegger signed up to an ideology-free politics: Hitler’s ‘Third Way’ (Eatwell 1997).
The idealised identity, the new symbol of mythological worship, Nietzsche’s European Superman, was to rule from that day hence. Hitler took control of the
means of propaganda: the media; the means of mental production: the education system; the means of violence: the police, army, and prison system; and
pandered to the means of material production: industry and agriculture; and proclaimed a New beginning and a New world order. He ordered Germany to
look forward into the next thousand years and forget the past.
Heidegger and existentialism remain influential to this day, and
history remains bunk (e.g. Giddens , 1991, Chapt. 2).Giddens’s claims that ‘humans live in circumstances of
… existential contradiction’, and that ‘subjective death’ and ‘biological death’ are somehow unrelated, is a an
ultimately repressive abstraction: from that perspective, life is merely a series of subjective deaths, as if death
were the ultimate motor of life itself (cf. Adorno 1964/1973). History is, in fact, the simple and
straightforward answer to the “problem of the subject”. “The problem” is also a handy device for confusing,
entertaining, and selling trash to the masses. By emphasising the problem of the ‘ontological self’ (Giddens
1991: 49), informationalism and ‘consumerism’ confines the navel-gazing, ‘narcissistic’ masses to a
permanent present which they self-consciously sacrifice for a Utopian future (cf. Adorno 1973: 303; Hitchens
1999; Lasch 1984: 25-59). Meanwhile transnational businesses go about their work, raping the environment;
swindling each other and whole nations; and inflicting populations with declining wages, declining working
conditions, and declining social security. Slavery is once again on the increase (Castells, 1998; Graham,
1999; ILO, 1998).
There is no “problem of the subject”, just as there is no “global society”; there is only the mass amnesia of
utopian propaganda, the strains of which have historically accompanied revolutions in communication
technologies. Each person’s identity is, quite simply, their subjective account of a unique and objective
history of interactions within the objective social and material environments they inhabit, create, and inherit.
The identity of each person is their most intimate historical information, and they are its material expression:
each person is a record of their own history at any given time. Thus, each person is a recognisably material,
identifiable entity: an identity. This is their condition. People are not theoretical entities; they are people. As
such, they have an intrinsic identity with an intrinsic value. No amount of theory or propaganda will make it
go away.
The widespread multilateral attempts to prop up consumer society and hypercapitalism as a valid and useful
means of sustainable growth, indeed, as the path to an inevitable, international democratic Utopia, are already
showing their disatrous cracks. The “problem” of subjective death threatens to give way, once again, to
unprecedented mass slaughter. The numbed condition of a narcissistic society, rooted in a permanent “now”,
a blissful state of Heideggerian Dasein, threatens to wake up to a world in which “subjective death” and
ontology are the least of all worries.
A2: K of Positivism
The criticism of positivism destroys a productive engagement with institutions and creates
a vacuous methodology
Houghton, 8 (David Patrick, Associate Professor of I.R. Theory at the University of Central
Florida, “Positivism ‘vs’ Postmodernism: Does Epistemology Make a Difference?”, International
Politics (2008), 45)
As long ago as 1981, Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach effectively laid the influence of the dogmatic behaviouralism of the 1960s to rest in their book
The Elusive Quest, signaling the profound disillusionment of mainstream IR with the idea that a cumulative science of IR would ever be possible (Ferguson
The popularity of the ‘naı¨ve’ form of positivism, wed to a view of inexorable scientific
progress and supposedly practiced by wide-eyed scholars during the 1960s, has long been a thing of the past.
Postmodernists hence do the discipline a disservice when they continue to attack the overly optimistic
and dogmatic form of positivism as if it still represented a dominant orthodoxy, which must somehow
be overthrown. Equally, supporters of the contemporary or ‘neo-’ version of positivism perform a similar
disservice when they fail to articulate their epistemological assumptions clearly or at all. Indeed, the first
error is greatly encouraged by the second, since by failing to state what they stand for, neo-positivists have
allowed postmodernists to fashion a series of straw men who burn rapidly at the slightest touch. Articulating a full
and Mansbach, 1988).
list of these assumptions lies beyond the scope of this article, but contemporary neo-positivists are, I would suggest, committed to the following five
That explaining the social and political world ought to be
our central objective, (2) That — subjective though our perceptions of the world may be — many features of
the political world are at least potentially explainable. What remains is a conviction that there are at least
some empirical propositions, which can be demonstrably shown to be ‘true’ or ‘false’, some underlying
regularities that clearly give shape to IR (such as the proposition that democracies do not fight one another),
(3) That careful use of appropriate methodological techniques can establish what patterns exist in the political
world, (4) That positive and normative questions, though related, are ultimately separable, although both
constitute valid and interesting forms of enquiry. There is also a general conviction (5) that careful use of
research design may help researchers avoid logical pitfalls in their work. Doubtless, there are some who would not wish to
assumptions, none of which are especially radical or hard to defend: (1)
use the term ‘positivism’ as an umbrella term for these five assumptions, in which case we probably require a new term to cover them. But to the extent that
there exists an ‘orthodoxy’ in the field of IR today, this is surely it. Writing in 1989, Thomas Biersteker noted that ‘the vast majority of scholarship in
international relations (and the social sciences for that matter) proceeds without conscious reflection on its philosophical bases or premises. In professional
meetings, lectures, seminars and the design of curricula, we do not often engage in serious reflection on the philosophical bases or implications of our
activity. Too often, consideration of these core issues is reserved for (and largely forgotten after) the introductory weeks of required concepts and methods
courses, as we socialize students into the profession’ (Biersteker, 1989). This observation — while accurate at the time — would surely be deemed incorrect
were it to be made today.
Even some scholars who profess regret at the philosophically self-regarding nature of
contemporary of IR theory, nevertheless feel compelled to devote huge chunks of their work to
epistemological issues before getting to more substantive matters (see for instance Wendt, 1999). The recent
emphasis on epistemology has helped to push IR as a discipline further and further away from the concerns
of those who actually practice IR. The consequent decline in the policy relevance of what we do, and our
retreat into philosophical self-doubt, is ironic given the roots of the field in very practical political concerns
(most notably, how to avoid war). What I am suggesting is not that IR scholars should ignore philosophical
questions, or that such ‘navel gazing’ is always unproductive, for questions of epistemology surely undergird
every vision of IR that ever existed. Rather, I would suggest that the existing debate is sterile and
unproductive in the sense that the various schools of thought have much more in common than they suppose;
stated more specifically, postpositivists have much more in common than they would like to think with the
positivists they seek to condemn. Consequently, to the extent that there is a meaningful dialogue going on
with regard to epistemological questions, it has no real impact on what we do as scholars when we look at the
world ‘out there’. Rather than focusing on epistemology, it is inevitably going to be more fruitful to subject
the substantive claims made by positivists (of all metatheoretical stripes) and postpositivists to the cold light
of day. My own view, as the reader may have gathered already, is that the empirical claims of scholars like
Der Derian and Campbell will not often stand up to such harsh scrutiny given the inattention to careful
evidence gathering betrayed by both, but this is a side issue here; the point is that substantive theoretical and
empirical claims, rather than metatheoretical or epistemological ones, ought to be what divides the
international relations scene today.
Empirics Good
Ontological question produces reductionism—we must use empirical validity to create
proscriptive political formulations
Owen 2 (David, Reader of Political Theory – University of Southampton, “Re-orienting
International Relations: On Pragmatism, Pluralism and Practical Reasoning”, Millennium:
Journal of International Studies, 31(3), p. 655-657)
Commenting on the ‘philosophical turn’ in IR, Wæver remarks that ‘[a] frenzy for words like “epistemology”
and “ontology” often signals this philosophical turn’, although he goes on to comment that these terms are
often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or not, it is clear that debates concerning ontology and
epistemology play a central role in the contemporary IR theory wars. In one respect, this is unsurprising since it is a
characteristic feature of the social sciences that periods of disciplinary disorientation involve recourse to reflection on the philosophical commitments of
different theoretical approaches, and there is no doubt that such reflection can play a valuable role in making explicit the commitments that characterise (and
help individuate) diverse theoretical positions. Yet,
such a philosophical turn is not without its dangers and I will briefly mention
The first
danger with the philosophical turn is that it has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of ontology and
epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the latter two were merely a simple function of
the former. But while the explanatory and/or interpretive power of a theoretical account is not wholly independent of its ontological and/or
three before turning to consider a confusion that has, I will suggest, helped to promote the IR theory wars by motivating this philosophical turn.
epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast,
wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus, for example,
one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to
recognise that it can provide powerful accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which
dilemmas of collective action are foregrounded. It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of
why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these
circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if this is the case, it is a philosophical weakness—but this does not
a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account
available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their
ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even
necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because
prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theory-construction from philosophical first principles,
it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problem-driven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be
undermine the point that, for
put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to
decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet,
‘theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program’ in that it ‘dictates always opting for the
description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory’.5 The justification offered for
from this standpoint,
this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of
phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since ‘whether there are general
explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry’.6 Moreover,
this
strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third
danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary
debate in IR—what might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) ‘the Highlander view’—namely, an
image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated
to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the
turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one
theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and
epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a
potentially vicious circle arises.
Empiricism is necessary to convince policy makers—recourse to the ontological is
merely preaching to the choir
Wagner, 2k (Joseph, Poly Sci Prof @ Colgate, “The Revolt Against Reason,” in Critical
Thinking, ed. Oxman-Michelli and Weinstein,
http://hascall.colgate.edu/jwagner/DownloadFiles/Revolt.doc)
In this paper I have tried to show that the relativist fails to appreciate the obligatory epistemic status of objectivity and logical consistency. Relativists fail to understand that while
objectivity is implicit in any framework or language , and while frameworks and languages are human conventions, objectivity is not. In other
words, whether we call blue, 'blue' or 'grue' is a matter of volition; but that the condition for meaningful reference to blue is that we can pick out the same color and use the same color
terms in a consistent fashion, and this is not simply a matter of volition. This is the precondition for metaphorical, ironic, sarcastic claims as well, if we are to get their meaning,
irony, etc. And this point holds for every language. Language (the most open of frameworks) makes meaning possible; and particular languages make certain meanings more
available, more easily expressible than others, but no language creates new things in the world to which other language users cannot, in principle, have access, and no language makes
Although different standards and frameworks determine what
we say about the world, they do not determine the world. To illustrate this analogically we need only recognize that while having a
purely private experiences a matter for only parochial communication.
microscope is the precondition for discovering very small objects, very small objects are the precondition of perceiving them in the microscope. In other words,
frameworks are chronologically prior to our descriptions of the world, but the world is the epistemic
condition for the possibility of frameworks. Or put somewhat differently, while learning language is chronologically prior to expressing meaning, the
possibility of meaning is epistemically prior to language. Relativism confuses chronological and epistemological order of knowledge, or what Aristotle would have called the formal
By failing to appreciate the distinction between chronology and epistemology,
relativism commits a genetic fallacy. By confusing the formal and material conditions of knowledge relativism is guilty of the confusion of discernibles.
Thus relativism fails. If follows that the possibility of frameworks and languages presupposes universal meta-principles.
These meta-principles are not determined by the framework, but are the preconditions for meaning and the
constraints upon what can be validly said. Because common meta-principles condition any framework,
not only are meanings universally accessible, but the constraints of reason universally apply. For instance,
and material conditions of knowledge.
assume a language, Loco, in which all Locoians believe the earth is a two dimensional plane. This belief, X, is, in fact, false, any outside observers who know Loco can correctly
assert, in Loco, 'X is false' even though no native Locoian believes it (assuming no mistake in translation). Why should unanimity among Locoians cause us any doubt? The
epistemic problem of asserting this across frameworks is no greater than the problem of asserting scientific truths within a culture in which some persons persist in pre-scientific
beliefs. The underlying conditions of logical consistency and objectivity, our knowledge of Locoian physics and modern Western physics, our evidence from satellites allow us to
judge truth in this matter. Of course, deciding whether the Locoians are wrong is distinguished from deciding whether one should respect Locoian beliefs and customs, and whether
Relativism goes awry because of its tendency to confuse distinct categories and
issues. In this case it confuses an epistemic issue with a normative one. Normatively, post-positivist relativism tells us
that the universalism and objectivity of science and ethics seem insensitive to non-Western cultures or
even subordinate subcultures, groups, and classes within Western societies. It reminds us that 'knowledge is power,' and that power is
one should tell them they are wrong.
frightful. It commends relativism to those excluded groups and recommends that each group recapture the 'fleeting images' and 'subjective memories' that constitute its group
meanings and form the basis for social and political solidarity. Each community is encouraged to articulate values implicit in such archeology (Giroux 1991). Perhaps these are
by themselves
these are inadequate prescriptions for liberation or emancipation from domination. If the subordinate
groups have one set of values and the dominant groups have another; if the subordinate groups have their fleeting images and
the dominant groups have another; if the subordinate group has its collective memories and the dominant group theirs, then the question of politics and
morals is, which values and images should rule? If subordinate groups find objectivity hostile, then
they deny a common ground that is prior to or takes precedence over the parochial differences in beliefs
and values. If they can only appeal to that which is unique in their group, if they can appeal to values
that move only them, then they fail. They fail to appeal to the values of the dominant group; they fail to
make any claim upon the dominant group; and thereby concede to a struggle that is simply a matter of
power. Unfortunately, the dominant group, by definition has power. Thus the normative
prescriptions of relativism are practically as well as logically self-defeating. Alternatively, objective principles
commendable prescriptions, especially if we believe there is value in solidarity and in capturing meanings that make life in a community worthwhile. But
of justice and mutual respect make moral and political claims which ought to be honored by all persons, nations, and cultures. These are
universal claims, the only sorts of claims which assert obligation on those who are dominant as well as
those who are subordinate. Only universal claims of justice are the kind that cannot be discharged by
the rejoinder, 'those are simply your tastes and preferences, not mine,' because only universal claims are
grounded on the fundamental commonality of human beings and human societies, not upon the
ineradicable differences between them. Such universality resides in the common reason and common truths
(empirical and moral), which make differences possible as well as shared understanding and appreciation. Finally, identifying, understanding and appreciating differences between
groups and individuals depends the universal capacity for logical consistency and objectivity that every language user possesses. By this means I recognize that 'happiness,' 'pain,'
'frustration,' 'friendship,' 'commitments' and 'beliefs about justice' matter not only to me but to others. I recognize that 'happiness' is desirable not because it occurs in me, but because
happiness is a desirable experience in whomever it occurs. I recognize that if these matters are reasons to advance my interests or the interests of my society, they are also reasons to
universality that forms the basis for understanding and
solidarity. Abandoning the common and the universal, as post-positivists, post-structuralists, and postmoderns do, not only rests upon a series of epistemic mistakes, but leads to a moral and political
program that is as foolish as it is imprudent and unwise.
advance the interests of others and other societies. It is our commonality and
Predictions are possible even without recourse to positivism
Wagner, 2k (Joseph, Poly Sci Prof @ Colgate, “The Revolt Against Reason,” in Critical
Thinking, ed. Oxman-Michelli and Weinstein,
http://hascall.colgate.edu/jwagner/DownloadFiles/Revolt.doc)
There is an affinity between critical thinking and relativism, which, on its face, is not surprising.
Contemporary relativism, like its predecessors, appeals to those who view the Enlightenment as
incarcerating society and morality in the rigid and compassionless formalism of reason (e.g., Sandel 1982,
Barnes and Bloor 1985, Connolly 1985, Poole 1991, White 1991). In contemporary ethics relativism has
developed from groundings as disparate as feminist psychology and analytic philosophy (Gilligan 1982,
Brown and Gilligan 1992, Murdoch 1985, Kittay and Meyers 1987, Nicholson 1990, Benhabib 1992 as
examples of the former and Mackie 1976, Walzer 1983, Hampshire 1983, MacIntyre 1984, 1992, Taylor
1984, 1989 as examples of the latter). This resurgence of relativism can be found in a variety of fields,
perhaps inspired by the demise of positivism (Winch 1958, Kuhn 1960, Lakatos and Musgrave 1970) and the
emergence of avant garde trends in continental philosophy (Derrida 1978, Foucault 1970, Rorty 1979, 1989,
and Lyotard 1988). In advancing their position, contemporary relativists often speak in the spirit of
multiculturalism. They find the Western emphasis on reason and methodological empiricism
inhospitable to the interests, voices, and concerns of those whose visions and values are unarticulated
within the dominant canon of the Western philosophical tradition. Not surprisingly they also argue that a
commitment to universal truth and transcultural standards bespeaks an arrogance and insensitivity to group,
class, and cultural differences. After all Geertz (1973), Taylor (1985), and Foucault (1980) remind us that
power is knowledge and warn us of the violence done when we attempt to understand the beliefs and acts of
others by imposing categories, concepts and norms external to the individuals or groups we seek to
understand. The critics of reason go on to argue that observation and comprehension of human behavior
requires 'attunement' to other ways of knowing, feeling, valuing and experiencing. Contemporary relativists
counsel us to recognize that all knowledge claims are acts of interpretation, because there is no
Archimedean point from which one may survey the world. In effect, there is no world, pure and simple.
Worlds are created by observers; truth and knowledge are framework-dependent; and understanding is an
interpretive act. Given such an epistemology, art is a more appropriate paradigm for knowing than science,
and knowledge is a matter of "reading the world" (Barthes 1973). Our readings derive from
incommensurable contexts shaped by ineliminable language games (Lyotard 1988). A fortiori, no group,
class, or culture occupies a position that authorizes their judgments and evaluations as superior to the beliefs,
principles, or values of another. Therefore, confronted with the question, whose community, whose
knowledge, and whose interpretation of the world is to prevail, the relativist responds by insisting that the
values and meanings of others deserve as much attention and appreciation as our own. These articulations
are often associated with the doctrines of post-modernism, post-positivism and multiculturalism. I hope to
show these claims are indefensible on epistemic, moral, and political grounds. I intend to challenge
progressive thinkers to consider how relativism ill serves and dishonors their ends and to see how
transcultural and ahistorical claims of reason can be advanced as universally and objectively true while
also denying that human beings can occupy a "god's eye point of view." Finally, I wish to show that
despite firm assurances about the death of universalism and objectivity, these standards are necessary for
any coherent epistemic position and essential for anyone who prescribes an obligation to honor
prescriptions for equality, justice, and the mutuality of respect.
A2: Security is Constructed
Even if security is a discursive construction, the affirmative cannot create international
change in the actors that BELIEVE in it
Wendt, 92 (Alexander, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Chicago, “Anarchy is what
States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics, International Organization, VOl.
46, no. 2.)
Let us assume that processes of identity- and interest-formation have created a world in which states do not
recognize rights to territory or existence—a war of all against all. In this world, anarchy has a “realist”
meaning for state action: be insecure and concerned with relative power. Anarchy has this meaning only in
virtue of collective, insecurity-producing practices, but if those practices are relatively stable, they do
constitute a system that may resist change. The fact that worlds of power politics are socially
constructed, in other words, does not guarantee they are malleable, for at least two reasons. The first
reason is that once constituted, any social system confronts each of its members as an objective social
fact that reinforces certain behaviors and discourages others. Self-help systems, for example, tend to
reward competition and punish altruism. The possibility of change depends on whether the exigencies of
such competition leave room for actions that deviate from the prescribed script. If they do not, the
system will be reproduced and deviant actors will not.” The second reason is that systemic change may
also be inhibited by actors’ interests in maintaining., relatively stable role identities. Such interests are
rooted not only in the desire to minimize uncertainty and anxiety, manifested in efforts to confirm
existing-beliefs about the social world, but also in the desire to avoid the expected costs of breaking
commitments made to others—notably domestic constituencies and foreign allies in the case of states—
as part of past practices. The level of resistance that these commitments induce will depend on the “salience”
of particular role identities to the actor. The United States, for example, is more likely to resist threats to its
identity as “leader of anticommunist crusades” than to its identity as “promoter of human rights.” But for
almost any role identity, practices and information that challenge it are likely to create cognitive
dissonance and even perceptions of threat, and these may cause resistance to transformations of the
self and thus to social change.” For both systemic and “psychological” reasons, then, intersubjective
understandings and expectations may have a self-perpetuating quality, constituting path-dependencies that
new ideas about self and other must transcend. This does not change the fact that through practice agents are
continuously producing and reproducing identities and interests, continuously “choosing now the preferences
[they] will have later.” But it does mean that choices may not be experienced with meaningful degrees of
freedom. This could be a constructivist justification for the realist position that only simple learning is
possible in self-help systems. The realist might concede that such systems are socially constructed and
still argue that after the corresponding identities and in have become institutionalized, they are almost
impossible to transform.
Predictions Good
The affirmative abandons predictions in the name of metaphysical purity—this destroys
responsibility for preventative actions and results in atrocity
Kurasawa, 04 (Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology, York University of Toronto, Constellations
Volume 11, No 4, 2004).
A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps
even harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of
historical analysis. If, contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to
be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be
predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The
future appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose
speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and turns
of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument
has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary
recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about the latter’s total opacity and
indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does
not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare
for crises already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the
work of prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for responses
that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this
paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency and of the selflimiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of
present generations. The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the
cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human
action shaped by decisions in the present – including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible
and avoidable sources of harm to our successors. Combining a sense of analytical contingency toward the
future and ethical responsibility for it, the idea of early warning is making its way into preventive action on
the global stage.
Preventative foresite and prediction making is ethical and necessary to confront the
immense problems of modernity
Kurasawa, 04 (Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology, York University of Toronto, Constellations
Volume 11, No 4, 2004).
In the twenty-first century, the lines of political cleavage are being drawn along those of competing dystopian
visions. Indeed, one of the notable features of recent public discourse and socio-political struggle is their
negationist hue, for they are devoted as much to the prevention of disaster as to the realization of the good,
less to what ought to be than what could but must not be. The debates that preceded the war in Iraq provide a vivid
illustration of this tendency, as both camps rhetorically invoked incommensurable catastrophic scenarios to make their respective cases. And as many
analysts have noted, the multinational antiwar protests culminating on February 15, 2003 marked the first time that a mass movement was able to mobilize
substantial numbers of people dedicated to averting war before it had actually broken out. More generally,
given past experiences and
awareness of what might occur in the future, given the cries of ‘never again’ (the Second World War, the
Holocaust, Bhopal, Rwanda, etc.) and ‘not ever’ (e.g., nuclear or ecological apocalypse, human cloning) that
are emanating from different parts of the world, the avoidance of crises is seemingly on everyone’s lips – and
everyone’s conscience. From the United Nations and regional multilateral organizations to states, from non-governmental organizations to transnational
social movements, the determination to prevent the actualization of potential cataclysms has become a new imperative in world affairs.
Allowing past
disasters to reoccur and unprecedented calamities to unfold is now widely seen as unbearable when, in the
process, the suffering of future generations is callously tolerated and our survival is being irresponsibly
jeopardized. Hence, we need to pay attention to what a widely circulated report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
identifies as a burgeoning “culture of prevention,”3 a dynamic that carries major, albeit still poorly understood, normative and political implications.
Rather than bemoaning the contemporary preeminence of a dystopian imaginary, I am claiming that it can
enable a novel form of transnational socio-political action, a manifestation of globalization from below that
can be termed preventive foresight. We should not reduce the latter to a formal principle regulating
international relations or an ensemble of policy prescriptions for official players on the world stage, since it
is, just as significantly, a mode of ethico-political practice enacted by participants in the emerging realm of
global civil society. In other words, what I want to underscore is the work of farsightedness, the social
processes through which civic associations are simultaneously constituting and putting into practice a sense
of responsibility for the future by attempting to prevent global catastrophes. Although the labor of preventive
foresight takes place in varying political and socio-cultural settings – and with different degrees of
institutional support and access to symbolic and material resources – it is underpinned by three distinctive features: dialogism,
publicity, and transnationalism. In the first instance, preventive foresight is an intersubjective or dialogical process of address, recognition, and response
between two parties in global civil society: the ‘warners,’ who anticipate and send out word of possible perils, and the audiences being warned, those who
heed their interlocutors’ messages by demanding that governments and/or international organizations take measures to steer away from disaster. Secondly,
the work of farsightedness derives its effectiveness and legitimacy from public debate and deliberation. This is
not to say that a fully fledged global public sphere is already in existence, since transnational “strong publics” with decisional power in the formalinstitutional realm are currently embryonic at best. Rather, in this context, publicity signifies that “weak publics” with distinct yet occasionally overlapping
constituencies are coalescing around struggles to avoid specific global catastrophes.4 Hence, despite having little direct decision-making capacity, the
environmental and peace movements, humanitarian NGOs, and other similar globally-oriented civic associations are becoming significant actors involved in
public opinion formation. Groups like these are active in disseminating information and alerting citizens about looming catastrophes, lobbying states and
multilateral organizations from the ‘inside’ and pressuring them from the ‘outside,’ as well as fostering public participation in debates about the future. This
brings us to the transnational character of preventive foresight, which is most explicit in the now commonplace observation that we live in an interdependent
world because of the globalization of the perils that humankind faces (nuclear annihilation, global warming, terrorism, genocide, AIDS and SARS
individuals and groups from far-flung parts of the planet are being brought together into
“risk communities” that transcend geographical borders.5 Moreover, due to dense media and information
flows, knowledge of impeding catastrophes can instantaneously reach the four corners of the earth –
sometimes well before individuals in one place experience the actual consequences of a crisis originating in
another. My contention is that civic associations are engaging in dialogical, public, and transnational forms of ethico-political action that contribute to
the creation of a fledgling global civil society existing ‘below’ the official and institutionalized architecture of international relations. The work of
preventive foresight consists of forging ties between citizens; participating in the circulation of flows of
claims, images, and information across borders; promoting an ethos of farsighted cosmopolitanism; and
forming and mobilizing weak publics that debate and struggle against possible catastrophes. Over the past few
epidemics, and so on);
decades, states and international organizations have frequently been content to follow the lead of globally- minded civil society actors, who have been
instrumental in placing on the public agenda a host of pivotal issues (such as nuclear war, ecological pollution, species extinction, genetic engineering, and
mass human rights violations).
Preventative foresight is critical to prevent runaway impact scenarios
Kurasawa, 04 (Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology, York University of Toronto, Constellations
Volume 11, No 4, 2004).
Independently of this contractualist justification, global civil society actors are putting forth a number of
arguments countering temporal myopia on rational grounds. They make the case that no generation, and no
part of the world, is immune from catastrophe. Complacency and parochialism are deeply flawed in that even
if we earn a temporary reprieve, our children and grandchildren will likely not be so fortunate unless steps
are taken today. Similarly, though it might be possible to minimize or contain the risks and harms of actions
to faraway places over the short-term, parrying the eventual blowback or spillover effect is improbable. In
fact, as I argued in the previous section, all but the smallest and most isolated of crises are rapidly becoming
globalized due to the existence of transnational circuits of ideas, images, people, and commodities.
Regardless of where they live, our descendants will increasingly be subjected to the impact of environmental
degradation, the spread of epidemics, gross North-South socioeconomic inequalities, refugee flows, civil
wars, and genocides. What may have previously appeared to be temporally and spatially remote risks are
‘coming home to roost’ in ever faster cycles. In a word, then, procrastination makes little sense for three
principal reasons: it exponentially raises the costs of eventual future action; it reduces preventive options; and
it erodes their effectiveness. With the foreclosing of long-range alternatives, later generations may be left
with a single course of action, namely, that of merely reacting to large-scale emergencies as they arise. We
need only think of how it gradually becomes more difficult to control climate change, let alone reverse it, or
to halt mass atrocities once they are underway. Preventive foresight is grounded in the opposite logic,
whereby the decision to work through perils today greatly enhances both the subsequent room for maneuver
and the chances of success. Humanitarian, environmental, and techno-scientific activists have convincingly
shown that we cannot afford not to engage in preventive labor. Moreover, I would contend that farsighted
cosmopolitanism is not as remote or idealistic a prospect as it appears to some, for as Falk writes, “[g]lobal
justice between temporal communities, however, actually seems to be increasing, as evidenced by various
expressions of greater sensitivity to past injustices and future dangers.”36 Global civil society may well be
helping a new generational self-conception take root, according to which we view ourselves as the
provisional caretakers of our planetary commons. Out of our sense of responsibility for the well-being of
those who will follow us, we come to be more concerned about the here and now.
Extinction Outweighs Everything
Extinction comes first
Cummiskey ‘96
(David, Associate Philosophy Professor, Bates College, Kantian Consequentialism, p. 129-131)
It does, however, support the consequentialist interpretation. Since the moral demand to respect other persons is based on the equal
moral status of all persons, Kant’s argument presupposes the equal value, or dignity, of all persons. Such beings are comparable, and
the comparison demonstrates the equal objective value of all. The equal value
of all rational being provides a
clear basis for a requirement to maximally promote the flourishing of rational agency
(chapter 5). Nonetheless, while the extreme interpretation must be rejected, the dignity- price distinction still accurately signifies the
priority of rationality. If we refuse to sacrifice a person for the sake of the maximization of happiness or any other market value, then
we have shown a “reverence” for such
beings. But as we shall see more fully in chapter 9, this reverence is
compatible with the sacrifice of some for the sake of other persons with dignity. It is mere
dogmatic intuitionism or groundless deontology to insist that all such sacrifices are
inconsistent with the equal dignity of all. At times the dignity principle seems to function like an inkblot where
each sees whatever conclusions he or she is predisposed to accept. If one believes that a particular way of treating people is morally
unacceptable, then such treatment is inconsistent with respect for the dignity of persons. Too often, when a deontologist uses the
dignity principle as a normative principle, the cart is put before the horse: This reasoning presupposes that we have a standard of
unacceptable conduct that is prior to the dignity principle. The dignity principle cannot then provide the reason why the conduct is
unacceptable. The goal of the Kantian deontologist is to (directly) vindicate ordinary commonsense morality; but it is not at all clear
how the dignity principle can even support the intuitive view that the negative duty not to kill is more stringent than the positive
duty to save lives. How is the common view that we have only slight, if any, duties to aid those in desperate need consistent with the
lexical priority of the dignity of persons over the price of the inclinations? Of course, on the one hand, it is commonly maintained that
killing some persons to save many others fails to give due regard to the incomparable and absolute dignity of persons. On the other
hand, it is maintained that respect for the dignity of persons does not require that one spend one’s discretionary income on saving
lives rather than on one’s own personal projects. As long as one has done some minimum and indeterminate amount to help others,
then one need not do any more. So the Kantian deontologist wants to use the dignity-price distinction to resolve conflicting grounds
of obligation in an intuitively acceptable way, but it is far from obvious why allowing a loss of dignity for the sake of something with
price is consistent with the dignity principle. In short, ordinary morality permits one to place the satisfaction of one’s inclinations
above a concern for the dignity of all. Consequentialists have produced indirect justifications for many of these common intuitive
judgments; it would seem that those appealing to the dignity principle must rely on similar arguments. Finally, even
if one
grants that saving two persons with dignity cannot outweigh and compensate for killing one—
because dignity cannot be added and summed in this way—this point still does not justify deontological
constraints. On the extreme interpretation, why would not killing one person be a stronger obligation than saving two persons?
If I am concerned with the priceless dignity of each, it would seem that I may still save two; it is just that my reason cannot be that
the two compensate for the loss of the one. Consider Hill’s example of a priceless object: If I can save two of three priceless statutes
only by destroying one, then I cannot claim that saving two makes up for the loss of the one. But similarly, the loss of the two is not
outweighed by the one that was not destroyed. Indeed, even if dignity cannot be simply summed up, how is the extreme
interpretation inconsistent with the idea that I should save as many priceless objects as possible? Even
if two do not
simply outweigh and thus compensate for the loss of the one, each is priceless; thus, I have good
reason to save as many as I can. In short, it is not clear how the.extreme interpretation justifies the ordinary
killing/letting-die distinction or even how it conflicts with the conclusion that the more persons with dignity who
are saved, the better.
Extinction outweighs – no coping mechanisms, no experience, no trial-and-error,
future generations
Bostrom 2
(Nick Professor of Philosophy and Global Studies at Yale.. www.transhumanist.com/volume9/risks.html.)JFS
Risks in this sixth category are a recent phenomenon. This is part of the reason why it is useful to
distinguish them from other risks. We have not evolved mechanisms, either biologically or culturally, for
managing such risks. Our intuitions and coping strategies have been shaped by our long
experience with risks such as dangerous animals, hostile individuals or tribes, poisonous foods, automobile accidents,
Chernobyl, Bhopal, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, draughts, World War I, World War II, epidemics of influenza, smallpox, black
plague, and AIDS. These types of disasters have occurred many times and our cultural attitudes towards risk have been shaped by
trial-and-error in managing such hazards. But tragic as such events are to the people immediately affected, in the big picture
of things – from the
perspective of humankind as a whole – even the worst of these
catastrophes are mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life. They haven’t significantly affected the total
amount of human suffering or happiness or determined the long-term fate of our species. With the exception of
a species-destroying comet or asteroid impact (an extremely rare occurrence), there were probably no significant existential risks in
human history until the mid-twentieth century, and certainly none that it was within our power to do something about. The
first
manmade existential risk was the inaugural detonation of an atomic bomb. At the time, there was some concern
that the explosion might start a runaway chain-reaction by “igniting” the atmosphere. Although we now know that such an outcome
was physically impossible, it qualifies as an existential risk that was present at the time. For there to be a risk, given the knowledge
and understanding available, it suffices that there is some subjective probability of an adverse outcome, even if it later turns out that
objectively there was no chance of something bad happening. If we
don’t know whether something is objectively
risky or not, then it is risky in the subjective sense. The subjective sense is of course what we must base our decisions
on.[2]At any given time we must use our best current subjective estimate of what the objective risk factors are.[3]A
much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An all-out nuclear war was a
possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that mighthave been persistent enough to qualify as global and
terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon
would occur and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and the US retain large
nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states
may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance,
is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankind’s potential permanently. Such a war might however be a
local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be targeted. Unfortunately, we shall see that nuclear Armageddon and comet
or asteroid strikes are
mere preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter in the
21st century. The special nature of the challenges posed by existential risks is illustrated by the following points: Our
approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to
learn from errors. The reactive approach – see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience – is
unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new
types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such
actions. We cannot necessarily rely on the institutions, moral norms, social attitudes or national security policies that developed
from our experience with managing other sorts of risks. Existential risks are a different kind of beast. We
might find it hard
to take them as seriously as we should simply because we have never yet witnessed such
disasters.[5] Our collective fear-response is likely ill calibrated to the magnitude of threat. Reductions in existential
risks are global public goods [13] and may therefore be undersupplied by the market [14]. Existential risks are a
menace for everybody and may require acting on the international plane. Respect for national sovereignty is not a legitimate excuse
for failing to take countermeasures against a major existential risk. If we
take into account the welfare of future
generations, the harm done by existential risks is multiplied by another factor, the size of which
depends on whether and how much we discount future benefits [15,16]. In view of its undeniable importance, it is surprising how
little systematic work has been done in this area. Part of the explanation may be that many of the
gravest risks stem (as we
shall see) from anticipated future technologies that we have only recently begun to understand. Another part
of the explanation may be the unavoidably interdisciplinary and speculative nature of the subject. And in part the neglect may also be
attributable to an aversion against thinking seriously about a depressing topic. The
point, however, is not to wallow in
gloom and doom but simply to take a sober look at what could go wrong so we can create
responsible strategies for improving our chances of survival. In order to do that, we need to know
where to focus our efforts.
Extinction Outweighs Ontology
Extinction precedes ontology – existence is a prerequisite for the self
Wapner 3
[Paul Wapner is associate professor and director of the Global Environmental Policy Program at American University, DISSENT /
Winter 2003]JFS
All attempts to listen to nature are, indeed, social constructions, except one. Even
the most radical postmodernist
acknowledges the distinction between physical existence and nonexistence. As mentioned,
postmodernists assume that there is a physical substratum to the phenomenal world, even if they argue
about its different meanings. This substratum is essential for allowing entities to speak or express
themselves. That which doesn't exist, doesn't speak. That which doesn't exist, manifests
no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should rightly worry about interpreting nature's expressions. And
everyone should be wary about those who claim to speak on nature's behalf (including when environmentalists and students of
global environmental politics do so). But we should not doubt the simple-minded notion that a prerequisite
of
expression is existence. That which doesn't exist can never express itself. And this in turn suggests
that preserving the nonhuman world-in all its diverse embodiments-must be seen by eco-critics as a
fundamental good. Eco-critics must be supporters, in some fashion, of environmental preservation.
Solvency
People wont use the infrastructure
Tight and Giovoni ‘10 (Miles, Moshe, “The Role of Walking and Cycling in Advancing Healthy and Sustainable Urban
Areas” BUILT ENVIRONMENT VOL 36 NO 4)
Walking and cycling are well known as potential contributors to more sustainable urban environments, but the key difficulty is how to bring about real change to
create genuine improvements for these modes and a stimulus for people to switch modes, particularly from car to walk or cycle. The barriers to the
further development of walking and cycling – such as safety, lack of or poor infrastructure, complex lives which are
increasingly intertwined with car use and, for many, perceptions of personal safety and security – are substantial and
difficult to overcome. However, the benefits of such changes could be considerable: cleaner, quieter and safer urban
environments; places where the street has a function not just for movement but also in encouraging sociability and
more interaction with others and with the built environment; and a healthier population through increased use of active
modes of transport.
Noone will use the infrastructure
Parkin, Ryley, & Jones ‘7 (John, Reader in Transport Engineering and Planning , Tim Senior Lecturer in Transport Studies
@ Loughsborough U, Tim, Research Fellow in Sustainable Urban Mobility, “Barriers to Cycling: An Exploration of Quantitative
Analysis” “Cycling the City: Non-Place and the Sensory Construction of Meaning in a Mobile Practice” eds Horton, Dave Rosen,
Paul Cox, Peter)
Hilliness has been shown to have a very significant effect on the proportion of people cycling the journey to work. While
it is not feasible to eradicate hills, careful consideration should be given to the alignment of cycle routes in hilly areas, in order to
reduce the negative consequences of topography. Similarly, it has been shown that both surface roughness and the number of
stops and starts have a strong impact on the amount of effort required to cycle. Correspondingly, infrastructure should
comprise direct routes, with few stops and starts, and have well maintained riding surfaces. The perception of the risk
of cycling on a road with motorised traffic is unaffected by the provision of cycle lanes along routes, and approaching
and through junctions. The relative importance of the perception of risk and other environment features remains fully to
be explored, but it is possible to say that important features of network design involve not just safety, but also effort
and positive features such as attractiveness and comfort. It is also important to understand that perceptions of the risk
and effort involved in cycling practices are unlikely to relate directly to actual levels of risk and effort. For example, a
reduction in perceived risk without a commensurate reduction in actual risk might lead to exposure of a larger number
of people to hazard. Networks for cycle traffic should extend from significant trip attractors, such as town centres, at least to 2
km and as far as 5 km, as over these distances the flexibility and freedoms of the bicycle are evident without undue exertion. It
cannot be assumed that use of the bicycle for leisure purposes will follow through into use for utilitarian purposes, but
promotion of the bicycle for utilitarian trips should recognise that the market comprises principally car-owning
households.
Always Value to Life
Yes value to life. Our status as beings inheres an affirmation of life in the face of
extinction and nonbeing.
Bernstein ‘2
(Richard J., Vera List Prof. Phil. – New School for Social Research, “Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation”, p. 188-192)
This is precisely what Jonas does in The Phenomenon of Life, his rethinking of the meaning of organic life. He tealizes that his philosophical project goes
against many of the deeply embedded prejudices and dogmas of contemporary philosophy. He challenges two well-entrenched dogmas: that
there is no metaphysical truth, and that there is no path from the "is" to the "ought". To escape from ethical nihilism,
we must show that there is a metaphysical ground of ethics, an objective basis for value and purpose in being itself. These are
strong claims; and, needless to say, they are extremely controversial. In defense of Jonas, it should be said that he approaches this task with both boldness and
intellectual modesty. He frequently acknowledges that he cannot "prove" his claims, but he certainly believes that his "premises" do "more justice to the total
phenomenon of man and Being in general" than the prevailing dualist or reductionist alternatives. "But in the last analysis my argument can do no more than give
a rational grounding to an option it presents as a choice for a thoughtful person — an option that of course has its own inner power of persuasion. Unfortunately I
have nothing better to offer. Perhaps a future metaphysics will be able to do more." 8 To appreciate how Jonas's philosophical project unfolds, we need to
examine his philosophical interpretation of life. This is the starting point of his grounding of a new imperative of responsibility. It also provides the context for his
speculations concerning evil. In the foreword to The Phenomenon of Life, Jonas gives a succinct statement of his aim. Put at its briefest, this volume offers an
"existential" interpretation of biological facts. Contemporary existentialism, obsessed with man alone, is in the habit of claiming as his unique privilege and
predicament much of what is rooted in organic existence as such: in so doing, it withholds from the organic world the insights to be learned from the awareness
of self. On its part, scientific biology, by its rules confined to the physical, outward facts, must ignore the dimension of inwardness that belongs to life: in so doing,
it submerges the distinction of "animate" and "inanimate." A new reading of the biological record may recover the inner dimension — that which we know best -for the understanding of things organic and so reclaim for psycho-physical unity of life that place in the theoretical scheme which it had lost through the divorce of
the material and the mental since Descartes. p. ix) Jonas, in his existential interpretation of bios, pursues "this underlying theme of all of life in
its development through the ascending order of organic powers and functions: metabolism, moving and desiring, sensing and
perceiving, imagination, art, and mind — a progressive scale of freedom and peril, culminating in man, who may understand his uniqueness anew
when he no longer sees himself in metaphysical isolation" (PL, p. ix). The way in which Jonas phrases this theme recalls the Aristotelian approach to bios, and it
is clear that Aristotle is a major influence on Jonas. There is an even closer affinity with the philosophy of nature that Schelling sought to elaborate in the
nineteenth century. Schelling (like many post- Kantian German thinkers) was troubled by the same fundamental dichotomy that underlies the problem for Jonas.
The dichotomy that Kant introduced between the realm of "disenchanted" nature and the realm of freedom leads to untenable antinomies. Jonas differs from both
Aristotle and Schelling in taking into account Darwin and contemporary scientific biology. A proper philosophical understanding of biology must always be
compatible with the scientific facts. But at the same time, it must also root out misguided materialistic and reductionist interpretations of those biological facts. In
this respect, Jonas's naturalism bears a strong affinity with the evolutionary naturalism of Peirce and Dewey. At the same time, Jonas is deeply skeptical of any
theory of evolutionary biology that introduces mysterious "vital forces" or neglects the contingencies and perils of evolutionary development.' Jonas seeks to
show "that it is in the dark stirrings of primeval organic substance that a principle of freedom shines forth for the first time within the vast necessity of the physical
universe" (PL 3). Freedom, in this broad sense, is not identified exclusively with human freedom; it reaches down to the first glimmerings of organic life, and up to
the type of freedom manifested by human beings. " 'Freedom' must denote an objectively discernible mode of being , i.e., a manner of
executing existence, distinctive of the organic per se and thus shared by all members but by no nonmembers of the class: an ontologically descriptive term which
can apply to mere physical evidence at first" (PL 3). This coming into being of freedom is not just a success story. "The privilege of freedom carries the burden of
need and means precarious being" (PL 4). It is with biological metabolism that this principle of freedom first arises. Jonas goes "so far as to maintain
that metabolism, the basic stratum of all organic existence, already displays freedom — indeed that it is the first form freedom takes." 1 ° With
"metabolism — its power and its need — not-being made its appearance in the world as an alternative embodied in being itself; and thereby being itself first
assumes an emphatic sense: intrinsically qualified by the threat of its negative it must affirm itself, and existence affirmed is existence as a concern" (PL 4). This
broad, ontological understanding of freedom as a characteristic of all organic life serves Jonas as "an Ariadne's thread through the interpretation of Life" (PL 3).
The way in which Jonas enlarges our understanding of freedom is indicative of his primary argumentative strategy. He expands and reinterprets categories that
are normally applied exclusively to human beings so that we can see that they identify objectively discernible modes of being characteristic of everything
animate. Even inwardness, and incipient forms of self; reach down to the simplest forms of organic life. 11 Now it may seem as if Jonas is guilty of
anthropomorphism, of projecting what is distinctively human onto the entire domain of living beings. He is acutely aware of this sort of objection, but he argues
that even the idea of anthropomorphism must be rethought. 12 We distort Jonas's philosophy of life if we think that he is projecting human characteristics onto
the nonhuman animate world. Earlier I quoted the passage in which Jonas speaks of a "third way" — "one by which the dualistic rift can be avoided and yet
enough of the dualistic insight saved to uphold the humanity of man" (GEN 234). We avoid the "dualistic rift" by showing that there is genuine continuity of
organic life, and that such categories as freedom, inwardness, and selfhood apply to everything that is animate. These categories designate objective modes of
being. But we preserve "enough dualistic insight" when we recognize that freedom, inwardness, and selfhood manifest themselves in
human beings in a distinctive manner. I do not want to suggest that Jonas is successful in carrying out this ambitious program. He is aware of the
tentativeness and fallibility of his claims, but he presents us with an understanding of animate beings such that we can discern both continuity and difference.' 3 It
should now be clear that Jonas is not limiting himself to a regional philosophy of the organism or a new "existential" interpretation of biological facts. His goal is
nothing less than to provide a new metaphysical understanding of being, a new ontology. And he is quite explicit about this. Our reflections [are] intended to show
in what sense the problem of life, and with it that of the body, ought to stand in the center of ontology and, to some extent, also of epistemology. . . The central
position of the problem of life means not only that it must be accorded a decisive voice in judging any given ontology but also that any treatment of itself must
summon the whole of ontology. (PL 25) The philosophical divide between Levinas and Jonas appears to be enormous. For Levinas, as long as we restrict
ourselves to the horizon of Being and to ontology (no matter how broadly these are conceived), there is no place for ethics, and no answer to ethical nihilism. For
Jonas, by contrast, unless we can enlarge our understanding of ontology in such a manner as would provide an objective grounding for value and purpose within
nature, there is no way to answer the challenge of ethical nihilism. But despite this initial appearance of extreme opposition, there is a way of interpreting Jonas
and Levinas that lessens the gap between them. In Levinasian terminology, we can say that Jonas shows that there is a way of understanding ontology and the
living body that does justice to the nonreducible alterity of the other (l'autrui). 14 Still, we might ask how Jonas's "existential" interpretation of biological facts and
the new ontology he is proposing can provide a metaphysical grounding for a new ethics. Jonas criticizes the philosophical prejudice that there is no place in
nature for values, purposes, and ends. Just as he maintains that freedom, inwardness, and selfhood are objective modes of being, so he
argues that values and ends are objective modes of being. There is a basic value inherent in organic being, a basic
affirmation, "The Yes' of Life" (IR 81). 15 "The self-affirmation of being becomes emphatic in the opposition of life to
death. Life is the explicit confrontation of being with not-being. . . . The 'yes' of all striving is here sharpened by the
active `no' to not-being" (IR 81-2). Furthermore — and this is the crucial point for Jonas — this affirmation of life that is in all organic
being has a binding obligatory force upon human beings. This blindly self-enacting "yes" gains obligating force in the
seeing freedom of man, who as the supreme outcome of nature's purposive labor is no longer its automatic executor but, with the power obtained from
knowledge, can become its destroyer as well. He must adopt the "yes" into his will and impose the "no" to not-being on his power.
But precisely this transition from willing to obligation is the critical point of moral theory at which attempts at laying a foundation for it come so easily to grief. Why
does now, in man, that become a duty which hitherto "being" itself took care of through all individual willings? (IR 82). We discover here the transition from is to
"ought" — from the self-affirmation of life to the binding obligation of human beings to preserve life not only for the present but also for the future. But why do we
need a new ethics? The subtitle of The Imperative of Responsibility — In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age — indicates why we need a new ethics.
Modern technology has transformed the nature and consequences of human ac-tion so radically that the underlying
premises of traditional ethics are no longer valid. For the first time in history human beings possess the knowledge and the power to destroy life
on this planet, including human life. Not only is there the new possibility of total nuclear disaster; there are the even more invidious and
threatening possibilities that result from the unconstrained use of technologies that can destroy the environment required for life . The
major transformation brought about by modern technology is that the consequences of our actions frequently exceed by far anything we can envision. Jonas was
one of the first philosophers to warn us about the unprecedented ethical and political problems that arise with the rapid development of biotechnology. He
claimed that this was happening at a time when there was an "ethical vacuum," when there did not seem to be any effective ethical principles to limit ot guide our
ethical decisions. In the name of scientific and technological "progress," there is a relentless pressure to adopt a stance where virtually anything is permissible,
includ-ing transforming the genetic structure of human beings, as long as it is "freely chosen." We need, Jonas argued, a new categorical imperative
that might be formulated as follows: "Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of
genuine human life"; or expressed negatively: "Act so that the effects of your action are not destructive of the future
possibility of such a life"; or simply: "Do not compromise the conditions for an indefinite continuation of humanity on
earth"; or again turned positive: "In your present choices, include the future wholeness of Man among the objects of your will." (IR 11)
Always an inherent value to life
Coontz 1
Phyllis Coontz, 01, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
2001 (Journey of Community Health Nursing, 18(4). “Transcending the Suffering of AIDS.” JSTOR) In the 1950s, psychiatrist and theorist Viktor
Frankl ( 1963) described an existential theory of purpose and meaning in life. Frankl, a long-time prisoner i n a concentration camp, related
several instances of transcendent states that he experienced in the midst of that terrible suffering using his own
experiences and observations. He believed that these experiences allowed him and others to maintain their sense of
dignity and self-worth. Frankl (1969) claimed that transcendence occurs by giving to others, being open to others and the
environment, and coming to accept the reality that some situations are unchangeable. He hypothesized that life always has
meaning for the individual; a person can always decide how to face adversity. Therefore, self-transcendence provides
meaning and enables the discovery of meaning for a person (Frankl, 1963). Expanding Frankl's work, Reed (1991b) linked selftranscendence with mental health. Through a developmental process individuals gain an increasing understanding of who they
are and are able to move out beyond themselves despite the fact that they are experiencing physical and mental pain.
This expansion beyond the self occurs through introspection, concern about others and their well-being, and integration of the past and future to strengthen one's
present life (Reed, 1991 b).
Value to life is intrinsic
Schwarz 2
Schwartz, Lecturer in Philosophy of Medicine at the Department of General Practice at the University of Glasgow ‘2 (Lisa,
“Medical Ethic: A case-based approach, Chapter 6: A Value to Life: Who Decides and How?”)
The second assertion made by supporters of the quality of life as a criterion for
decisionmaking is closely related to the first, but with an added dimension. This assertion suggests that the
determination of the value of the quality of a given life is a subjective determination to be
made by the person experiencing that life. The important addition here is that the decision is a
personal one that, ideally, ought not to be made externally by another person but internally by the
individual involved. Katherine Lewis made this decision for herself based on a comparison between two stages of her life. So did
James Brady. Without this element, decisions based on
quality of life criteria lack salient
information and the patients concerned cannot give informed consent. Patients must be given the opportunity to decide for
themselves whether they think their lives are worth living or not. To ignore
or overlook patients’ judgement in
this matter is to violate their autonomy and their freedom to decide for themselves on the
basis of relevant information about their future, and comparative consideration of their past. As the
deontological position puts it so well, to do so is to violate the imperative that we must treat persons
as rational and as ends in themselves.
Auto Industry DA
1NC
Auto industry is doing well
NYT 1/3 (Nick Bunkley, New York Times automotive reporter, “Auto industry off to strong start in 2012,” New York Times News
Service, January 3, 2012, http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20120203/NEWS0107/202030353/, SSR)
DETROIT — New-vehicle sales in the United States were unexpectedly strong in January, an early sign that the auto
industry could have its best year since 2007, carmakers and analysts said Wednesday. Sales increased 11.4 percent
from January 2011, according to the research firm Autodata. The industry’s annual selling rate, an important measure of its
health, climbed to 14.18 million, the highest in more than two years. The Chrysler Group beat forecasts with a 44 percent
increase in monthly sales, and Honda posted its first year-over-year gain since it began struggling with inventory shortages after
last year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Honda’s sales were up 8.8 percent. Toyota, the Ford Motor Co. and Nissan each
reported modest increases, while Hyundai and Kia set January records. Volkswagen reported a 39.5 percent gain, its best
January since 1974. In contrast, General Motors, whose sales were down 6.1 percent from January 2011, when sales were
inflated by big discounts offered after the company’s public stock sale. Small cars were among the biggest factors driving the
increase. Car sales rose 19.9 percent, while truck sales increased 3.7 percent. “This is healthy, this is good. It’s sustainable,”
said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends and insight at the automotive research website TrueCar.com. “It’s going to
be another year of recovery where we have a very good chance of getting to that magic 14 million number.” Annual sales have
been below 14 million for each of the last four years, falling to as low as 10.4 million in 2009. Hitting 14 million this year would
represent at least a 9 percent increase from the 12.8 million sold in 2011. January was the first month in which the seasonally
adjusted, annualized selling rate surpassed 14 million since August 2009, when the government’s cash-for-clunkers program
briefly bolstered demand. Excluding that spike, January’s rate was the highest since May 2008. Honda and Toyota saw big
rebounds for some of their models in January, after having difficulty meeting demand for much of 2011. Sales of the Toyota
Camry, a midsize sedan that was redesigned several months ago, rose 56 percent. The industry’s top-selling compact car was
the revamped Honda Civic, which posted a 50 percent increase.
The auto industry relies on a car-focused transportation industry
Cohen 12
Larry, Founder and Executive Director of Prevention Institute, a non-profit national center dedicated to improving community health and equity, Prevention
Institute, “Creeps and Weirdos: the auto industry agenda for keeping you on four wheels,” 2 February 2012, http://www.nationofchange.org/creeps-and-weirdosauto-industry-agenda-keeping-you-four-wheels-1328193397, accessed 7/8/12,
On Thursday, February 2nd, the House Transportation Committee is slated to vote on the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, a bill that would
effectively eliminate funding for Transportation Enhancements and Safe Routes to School – the two largest federal programs that fund biking and walking
infrastructure. These programs are essential to communities across the country that are building safer streets, sidewalks and bike paths to ensure health and
safety for everyone on the road. But, the auto industry’s profits depend on making sure that cars remain the standard mode of
transportation—and that car companies grow their customer base, not lose them to bicycles. Auto companies are
fueled by profits, and the auto industry spent over $45 million last year alone on lobbying Congress and other federal agencies in order to maintain a
monopoly on our roadways. The auto industry makes money by ensuring that the public values driving and that roads are built
for cars alone—even if this means greater demand for fossil fuel, increased environmental degradation, fewer opportunities for physical activity, and more
road-related injuries.
Auto industry key to econ growth
Box 12
Terry, dallasnews.com, “Auto industry provided half of U.S. economic growth in first quarter,” May 15, 2012,
http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2012/05/auto-industry-provided-half-of.html/, accessed 7/8/12,
Was it only three or four years ago that our noble politicians in Washington were grilling auto-industry executives, insinuating that their dinosaur industry might
have outlived its usefulness? Get this: The auto industry’s remarkable comeback since 2009 contributed fully half of the 2.2
percent national economic growth in the first quarter of this year, according to Bloomberg . You have to wonder where the D.C.
suits are now. No one denies that the auto industry is highly cyclical and has weathered some major challenges in the last few years, including the bailouts and
devastating bankruptcies of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Group LLC. But with auto sales up 15.2 percent in the first quarter, the
industry’s economic impact was felt throughout the economy. Production rose at all three domestic automakers, which
kept hundreds of suppliers and other industry-related businesses humming along. Moreover, Bloomberg noted, the
National Association of Manufacturers estimates that every dollar spent on a new vehicle spurs an additional $2.02 in
economic activity. Sales in the four-county Dallas-Fort Worth area were even more robust, increasing 18 percent in the first quarter, according to The
Freeman Metroplex Recap. Despite the auto activity, automaker stock prices remain flat. Although a key automotive index was up 1.5 percent in the first quarter,
it remains down 31 percent over the last year. However, industry officials expect U.S. auto sales to hit 14 million this year and possibly 16 million in the next
couple of years – a level equal to sales in some years before the recession.
Key to Econ
Auto industry key to jobs – fewer auto layoffs
World News Services 7/13 (From World news services, “Auto industry’s upturn key to unemployment claim drop,”
http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2012/jul/13/auto-industrys-upturn-key-to-unemployment-claim/, July 13, 2012, SSR)
WASHINGTON — The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits plunged last week. But a big reason is that
automakers have skipped some of their usual summer shutdowns to keep up with demand, causing fewer temporary
auto layoffs. Economists expect the number of Americans seeking unemployment aid to go back up in coming weeks. ¶ The
auto industry’s recovery so far this year has helped support the struggling U.S. economy. U.S. auto sales in the first half
of the year jumped 15 percent over the same period a year ago. Sales of new vehicles surged in June.
Auto growth leads to econ growth in multiple sectors
Business Week, ’12 (5/17/12, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-17/whats-good-for-gm-is-good-for-theeconomy,)
Americans are slamming doors and kicking tires again. This year they’ve been buying cars and trucks at an annualized rate of more than 14 million vehicles, the
strongest performance since early 2008. General Motors (GM) has boosted its 2012 industry sales forecast, Ford Motor (F) will add factory shifts, and Chrysler
Group is stepping up hiring as demand rises. Automakers have rebounded since demand plunged during the 18-month recession that began in December 2007,
which caused production cuts and mass layoffs and forced both GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy. Now for the ripple effect. Government data show that
motor-vehicle production contributed half of the first quarter’s annual pace of 2.2 percent economic growth. When an
industry is expanding that fast, it lifts the fortunes of thousands of other companies. The auto resurgence—from assembly
lines and dealerships to steelmakers, freight lines, and loan providers—signals the U.S. is headed for solid growth, says Joseph Carson,
director of global economic research at AllianceBernstein (AB) in New York. “We’re starting to see the spark in the auto sector that was
missing initially” during the recovery from the recession, says Carson, a former GM economist. “It tells you there’s a certain momentum. A whole
host of areas could see the multiplier effect. We’re at the beginning of a very long and durable cycle.” Contributing to
the auto sales revival are rising employment, an improvement in consumer confidence, and a thaw in lending . Chad
Moutray, chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington, D.C., estimates each dollar spent in the industry triggers an additional
$2.02 for the economy. Apex Tool & Manufacturing is benefiting from the trickledown as the maker of tooling, fixtures, and gauges used to manufacture glass and
other products has seen an increase in auto-related sales since the last quarter of 2011. Glass for vehicles “is the one part of our business that’s on the rise,”
says Apex President Terry Babb. “Everything else is sort of diminishing.” Conglomerate 3M (MMM), which makes fuel-system tuneup kits, beat analysts’ firstquarter profit estimates as U.S. auto and industrial demand cushioned slowing growth abroad. Rising car sales are helping generate the most
business for railroads in four years: Data from companies including Union Pacific (UNP) and Norfolk Southern (NSC) show motor-vehicle shipments
for the final week of March hit their highest level since June 2008. Foreign companies also are responding to rising U.S. demand . Faurecia
(EO), Europe’s largest maker of car interiors, said on May 3 that it will acquire an interior-components business in Saline, Mich. VW Credit, the U.S. finance arm
of Germany’s Volkswagen (VOW), said in April it’s expanding its Libertyville, Ill., office and adding about 150 jobs through 2018. Toyota Motor (TM), the biggest
seller of hybrid vehicles, said in early May that it wants to produce more Prius models as demand outpaces its U.S. target of more than 220,000 cars this year.
Toyota has also announced it will spend about $30 million to lift production of four-cylinder engines at its Georgetown, Ky., plant by August 2013, adding about
80 jobs. All this boosts U.S. manufacturing, which grew in April at the fastest pace in almost a year, according to the
Institute for Supply Management. One reason factories may remain a source of strength for the economy is low stockpiles, particularly of automobiles,
says Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist and founding partner at RDQ Economics in New York. The inventory-to-sales ratio for motor vehicles—at 1.9 in
March—is holding around last year’s average of 1.87 and is down from 2.39 in 2008, the peak since recordkeeping began in 1967, he says. “Given the
combination of a low-inventory environment and the current selling rates, you could see continued solid growth in production,” DeQuadros says. There are
caveats. The gains in auto sales depend on continued improvement in overall employment. The jobless rate has been above 8 percent for more than three years,
and payrolls rose by 115,000 in April, the poorest showing in six months, after a 154,000 gain in March, adding to concerns the labor market may be faltering.
And even if the industry’s rebound continues, sales haven’t returned to the pre-recession level of 16.1 million in 2007. The industry’s current share of gross
domestic product, at 2.8 percent, is well below the record 4.8 percent in 1968. While the pickup in sales and its potential to filter through the economy is clear to
investors, auto stocks underperform the market as a whole. Investors are leery of making risky bets on an industry that was on the brink not long ago. Still, a
revival “obviously benefits everybody,” says NAM’s Moutray. “You’re not only helping outside the auto industry—the glass and steel and seat manufacturers—but
you’re also helping the restaurant that’s on the corner next to all those facilities. It is going to continue to be a bright spot for manufacturing throughout this year
and next.” The bottom line: With production accounting for a big share of GDP growth, the auto industry is spreading its
wealth to suppliers and their employees.
2NC UQ
Auto industry is improving
Bloomberg 7/3 (Bloomberg News “Auto Sales in June Provided Bright Spot for U.S. Economy,” By Craig Trudell on July 03,
2012, SSR)
General Motors Co. (GM) (GM), Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC reported better than predicted gains from the yearearlier period in which they dominated the U.S. market because of vehicle shortages at Toyota (7203) Motor Corp. and Honda
Motor Co. caused by Japan’s tsunami. The 22 percent June increase for the industry gives reason for optimism after
analysts under- estimated demand following lower than projected sales in May. Light-vehicle sales accelerated to 14.1
million seasonally adjusted annualized rate, according to researcher Autodata Corp., beating the 13.8 million light-vehicle
average of 15 analyst estimates surveyed by Bloomberg. The world’s second- largest auto market remains on pace for the
best annual sales total since 2007. “The auto market continues to be the one bright spot in an otherwise complicated and
generally negative marketplace,” Jesse Toprak, an analyst at researcher TrueCar.com, said in a telephone interview. “The
industry was able to carry a more than 14 million selling rate despite the roller-coaster ride we experienced in the economy
and financial markets last month.”
Auto sales rising by the end of the second fiscal quarter
Fortune 7/3 (Doron Levin, Fortune, “U.S. auto industry dodges a weak month,”
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/03/u-s-auto-industry-dodges-a-weak-month/, 7/3/12, SSR)
FORTUNE -- U.S. auto sales, a fundamental measure of consumer confidence, rose 22% in June -- led by a rebounding Toyota
Motor Corp. Toyota posted a 60% gain over last June when it was beset with post-earthquake and tsunami dislocation.
June results came in stronger than expected by analysts, who just two weeks ago were predicting a second straight
month of less-than-stellar sales. Some Wall Street analysts cut back their 2012 forecasts based on the apparent slowdown
from the year's pace through April. "Despite the relative slowdown in the last two months, the auto industry continues to
experience improved profitability with strong year-over-year sales, historically high transaction prices and precise
incentives spending," said Jesse Toprak, Vice President of Market Intelligence for TrueCar.com.¶ Jessica Caldwell, an analyst
for automotive website Edmunds.com, speculated that an end-of month sales push by manufacturers increased raised the
seasonally adjust annual rate to just over 14 million units. After a sub 14-million rate in May, automakers were eager to
maintain the industry's sales momentum -- especially because the end of June also marked the end of the second fiscal
quarter, she said. A year ago June's sales rate was 11.8 million.
Auto sales will keep improving despite the decline from previous months
Wall Street Journal 6/1 (Jeff Bennett and Neal E. Boudette, “U.S. Auto Sales Keep Rising,” 6/1/12,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303552104577440072804683342.html, SSR)
Auto makers on Friday reported a 26% rise in May U.S. sales of new cars and light trucks, shrugging off worries about
the American economy despite further signs the recovery is slowing. Americans bought 1.33 million new vehicles last
month, said researcher Autodata Corp. May's annualized sales pace was 13.8 million vehicles, up from an 11.7 million pace a
year ago, but down from April's 14.2 million. It was the first month this year that annualized sales have fallen below 14 million
cars and light trucks.¶ But auto dealers and Autodata said the decline from previous months was largely a result of a change
in how the Bureau of Economic Statistics adjusts for seasonal variations. Autodata and other researchers still forecast fullyear, new-vehicle sales of about 14.4 million cars and trucks. May's sales gain came alongside a gloomy jobs report. On Friday
the Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls grew by a lackluster 69,000 last month, the smallest gain in a year. April's jobs
growth was also revised down to 77,000 from 115,000. A survey of U.S. households found the unemployment rate rose slightly in
May to 8.2%.¶ Auto makers, however, expressed confidence the industry will remain on an upward trajectory. "I don't
believe that the employment data in and of itself will have an impact," Ken Czubay, Ford's U.S. marketing and sales chief said in
a conference call. "The dealers are telling me that they had excellent traffic over the weekend. There is significant pent-up
demand in the marketplace."
Auto industry recovering now
Waldron 12
Travis, reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Think Progress, “Auto Industry Adds Thousands Of Jobs To
Meet Growing Demand, Proving Auto Rescue’s Success Yet Again,” May 23, 2012, http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/23/489024/auto-industry-addjobs/?mobile=nc, accessed 7/8/12,
The automobile industry has been a consistent bright spot in the American economy over the last several months , as
automakers have added jobs to meet growing demand. And news from the industry is only getting better, as new estimates expect
automakers to sell 14.3 million cars in the United States in 2012 — 1.5 million more than they sold last year. Factories for both foreign and
domestic automakers are now working “at maximum capacity” and the industry is adding shifts and jobs to keep up with that rising demand, the USA Today
reports: Some plants are adding third work shifts. Others are piling on worker overtime and six-day weeks. And Ford Motor and Chrysler Group are cutting out or
reducing the annual two-week July shutdown at several plants this summer to add thousands of vehicles to their output. “We have many plants
working at maximum capacity now,” says Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans. “We’re building as many (cars) as we
can.” Chrysler and General Motors, the major beneficiaries of the auto rescue, have both reported their best profits in
more than a decade, and both were already planning to add jobs this yea r. With factories now struggling to meet demand, both foreign
and domestic auto companies are planning to add even more jobs — and, as the Center for American Progress’ Adam Hersh and Jane Farrell noted in April, the
industry has added more than 139,000 jobs in the last three years. The strength of the auto industry is yet another sign that letting it fail
would have been a major mistake. Not only would it have cost more than a million jobs at a time when the economy was
struggling, it would have prevented the current growth that is helping both the industry and the American economy
recover.
Oil DA Helpers
Oil prices are at the goldilocks level now.
Stanton, Dec 26, 2009 [http://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/steady-stable-oil-prices-make-everyone-happy] Chris Stanton is a journalist for the
National, a government-owned English-language daily newspaper published in Abu Dhabi.
Oil prices remain on a stable glide path into next year, analysts say, after emerging this autumn from a chaotic 12-month
period that saw both record highs and a brutal crash. Supported by a stable demand and supply outlook, crude oil has
remained within a range of $65 to $80 a barrel since August 1. The range has been approved by OPEC, which decided on
Tuesday, for the fourth time this year, to keep output levels unchanged. Oil supply is stable, and demand is supported by
Asia but held back by continued low consumption in the West, said Dalton Garis, an associate professor of economics
and market behaviour at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi. Volatility in oil prices returned to "normal" after extreme
swings last year and in the first half of this year, he said. "China is putting a floor on the price, but the fact that there isn't much
demand from North America - and Europe is also slow - that sort of puts a lid on the demand as well," Dr Garis said.
"The fundamentals really don't suggest there should be big swings in prices." He expects the stability to continue at least
until April. West Texas Intermediate crude was little changed on Thursday, the last day of trading before Christmas, falling 0.4
per cent to $76.35 a barrel. Markets were closed yesterday for Christmas, and trading volumes are normally very low in the week
before New Year's Day. OPEC ministers said this week they were happy with current prices, and some agreed that $75 a
barrel was good for both consumers and producers because it allowed OPEC to earn large revenues without hurting the
world economy or pushing consumers to switch to other fuels. "At between $70 and $80, everyone is happy," Ali al
Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, told reporters in Angola. "The current price is good for consumers, producers and
investors." Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos, the Angolan oil minister and president of OPEC, predicted that prices could hold
through to the beginning of next year. "I think that for 2010 price levels will be identical to what we have today," he told Reuters.
John Hall, the chairman of EnergyQuote, a consultancy based in Britain, said: "With such support for the price band, OPEC will
probably take action to support current levels. "The group's members want to avoid higher prices that would encourage faster
development of renewables and new oilfields that would flood the market with more supply, Mr Hall said. "As prices exceed the
$80 level, alternative energy sources start to become attractive again and so, too, do exploration projects both inside and
outside the OPEC membership while, conversely, economic activity and recovery are restricted," he said. "Our view for now is
that the oil price is unlikely to average out above $70 during 2010."
The U.S transportation infrastructure drives global demandNRDC 04 [http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/gasprices.asp] (Natural Resources Defense Council, 1.3 million members and online activists
with the courtroom clout and expertise of more than 350 lawyers, scientists and other professionals, praised by the New York Times and
National Journal on Public Policy, Reducing America’s Energy Dependence: Breaking our addiction to oil is the real solution to high gas prices)
The root cause of high gasoline prices is soaring demand, caused in large part by increasingly fuel-inefficient cars and
trucks. Of the 20 million barrels of oil consumed each day, 40 percent is used by passenger vehicles, 24 percent by
industry, 12 percent by commercial and freight trucks, 7 percent by aircraft, and 6 percent in residential and commercial
buildings.1 The U.S. passenger vehicle fleet alone accounts for one-tenth of world petroleum consumption.2 To make
matters worse, fuel economy of the combined car and light truck fleet peaked in 1987 and has essentially been declining since
then due to outdated standards and increased sales of fuel-wasting SUVs and other light trucks. While in real terms oil prices are
not as high as in 1981, the current price tag of $40 per barrel of oil is the highest since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. High demand,
driven largely by the transportation sector,3 has sparked this increase in three ways: First, there is very little excess global oil
production capacity.4 Even OPEC officials estimate that world crude oil production is running at 97 percent capacity, with a thin
cushion of only 2 million barrels per day.5 Moreover, the only significant spare capacity is in Saudi Arabia, making this politically
unstable country the critical "swing producer." Second, high demand has reduced the ability of suppliers to respond quickly
if a sudden supply disruption occurs, and thus traders and speculators have bid up oil prices on the spot market based on
the fear that the global oil supply chain may be disrupted by terror attacks.6 As a result, the oil industry has profited
generously over the last few months and passed the higher costs to consumers at the pump. Finally, U.S. gasoline demand
has outstripped our domestic refinery capacity, leading to a tight market for gasoline and other refined products. World surplus
capacity in 2004 fell to its second lowest level in three decades.7 Lower supply and high demand makes the United States
dangerously dependent on Middle East oil, which holds two-thirds of world oil reserves. The United States, with just 2
percent of world oil reserves, relies on the Middle East for one-fifth of our oil imports.
U.S. Economy depends on oil
IPAA 7/13 (Jeff Eshelman and Julia Bell, Independent Petroleum Association of America, “American Oil and Natural Gas
Production Carrying U.S. Economy,” http://www.ipaa.org/friday-fact-checks/american-oil-and-natural-gas-production-carrying-us-economy/, 7/13/12, SSR)
WASHINGTON– From creating jobs to supporting retirement and pension funds, America’s oil and natural gas industry
has long stood as a pillar in our nation’s robust economy. As many of our nation’s leaders push for increased access to our
extensive offshore reserves, onshore production is setting records from the Bakken formation of North Dakota to Pennsylvania’s
Marcellus shale, creating countless benefits along the way. But as a recent study from Bank of America Merrill Lynch indicates,
our nation’s domestic energy production is not just creating jobs and supporting local communities. Development of
our oil and natural gas reserves may just be the key factor saving the United States from another recession. As the firm’s
chief of commodities research Francisco Blanch noted for USA Today, “Energy is beginning to carry America.” More from the
USA Today report: “The economic benefits of far-reaching new finds of domestic oil and natural gas are fast approaching $1
billion a day and may be keeping the U.S. out of another recession, according to a new study by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
From safeguarding our nation’s economy to providing jobs and benefits from the well pad to the dinner table, America’s
independent oil and natural gas producers are again providing the energy our nation relies upon while providing the
foundation for a stable and robust American economy.
Links
Use of the car drives oil consumption.
Hathaway, Mar 30, 2009 [http://suite101.com/article/oils-importance-to-the-world-economy-a107937] Terry Hathaway is a PhD student at
the University of Leeds, UK, and an author for International Affairs at Suite 101.
Since the horse and carriage gave way to the car as the main method of transportation oil has been vitally important to
the world economy. Its importance has risen to the extent that in a world suddenly without oil, all the minor and major
distribution systems that allow economic transactions on a more than local basis would fail and the world economy would
collapse. The Current Level of World Oil Consumption According to the EIA, the world currently consumes 85.64 million barrels
of crude oil daily – roughly equivalent to every single person on the planet using 2 litres of oil a day. With the current market
prices of a barrel of oil being $51, global consumption of oil costs $4.3 billion every single day, or 62 cents for every person. Of
course, the global distribution of oil consumption is not evenly spread out as developed and oil-rich states consume far more oil
than less developed states. Also, all of this oil is not simply consumed with no end product. Oil is involved in the manufacture of a
large number of everyday items, such as plastics, asphalt, or fertilizers. However, the majority of this oil is refined into
gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel, to be used for transportation. According to Ran Goel in his 2004 New Political Economy
article “A Bargain Born of Paradox”, oil’s role in fuelling transport oil is currently non-substitutable – there is nothing in
the world that, within the bounds of its infrastructure, could replace oil.
Transportation is a large portion of oil consumption – It supports high prices
Puentes, September 9, 2008 [www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/testimony/2008/9/09%2520transportation%
2520puentes/0909_transportation_puentes.pdf]
Robert Puentes, is a Fellow and Director, Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative Brookings Institution, a Fellow and Director,
Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative Brookings Institution, 9-9-08, [“Strengthening the Ability of Public Transportation to
Reduce Our Dependence on Foreign Oil,” Congressional Testimony,
The U.S. transportation system today consumes 70 percent of the nation's oil and is almost entirely
dependent upon petroleum-based fuels.2 This demand is contributing, in part, to the global rise in the
price of oil and the major hit on Americans' pocketbooks. Yet we do not come close to
producing the oil we consume and that figure is declining over time, decreasing 17.0
percent since 2000.3 Only one-quarter of the crude oil consumed in the U.S. is domestically
produced. Twice as much is imported and the majority of that from countries considered
to be in danger of "state failure" based on a range of social, economic, and political
factors.4 In addition, the transportation sector is responsible for one-third of the
nation's carbon emissions and the U.S. continues to rank first among major world
economies in per-capita carbon dioxide emissions, roughly double the rate of the
United Kingdom and Germany.5 A recent Brookings study found that the density of
land use patterns in metropolitan areas and transit availability play an important role
in determining energy consumption, travel behavior and carbon emissions in our
major economic centers.6 With the right policies in place, denser, walkable, and
transit-friendly communities can help reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and
therefore help create more affordable and energy-efficient travel options for
Americans.
Development of alternative energy causes prices to drop
DeCiantis March 7, 2008 - [http://www.freedom24.org/rationalpost/2008/03/25/speculations-on-a-25-oil-tariff/]
Devin DeCiantis is a Masters candidate in Public Policy at Harvard’s JFK School of Government, specializing in development economics and
international trade
In the mid-term, as industries and generators begin to shift away from higher-cost imported oil, domestic oil producers
might begin building out untapped capacity and utilities might begin diversifying their energy portfolios into lower-cost
fossil fuels and alternative energy technologies. Together, these processes should cause a more substantial decline in
import volumes. In the long-run, a more fundamental shift away from a high-carbon, high-cost, oil-dependent economy is likely
to unfold, at which point oil imports would begin to decline more precipitously as demand for energy is almost completely
replaced with lower-cost substitutes. This progression is an example of a typical “adjustment lag”. b. The world price of oil?
Again, in the very short-term we might expect a modest decline, partially offsetting the cost of the tariff. Given that America is one
of the world’s largest energy importers (importing roughly 2/3rds of its annual consumption), it would still need to source oil
externally or risk seizing up its industrial capacity. Thus, aggregate import demand would remain relatively stable and prices
would likely settle somewhere between $75 and $100. Over the mid-to-long-term, major OPEC suppliers would have room
to lower prices given their lower relative cost of production, while growing demand from China and India would partially
offset declining American demand. Finally, as the U.S. begins to substitute away from oil as a key energy input in the
long-run, global aggregate demand for oil will inevitably decrease, assuming that emerging market demand doesn’t
continue to grow at its current pace in perpetuity. This will put considerable downward pressure on prices over time as oil
exporters adjust to a situation of extended excess supply-at least while total global oil reserves remain relatively
plentiful.
The US economy is driven by oil production- employment numbers and percentage of
GDP
American Petroleum Institute 2009, the only national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural
gas industry, “THE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF THE OIL AND NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY ON THE U.S. ECONOMY:
EMPLOYMENT, LABOR INCOME AND VALUE ADDED,” September 8, 2009
http://www.api.org/newsroom/upload/industry_economic_contributions_report.pdf
Employment¶ The total number of jobs directly or indirectly attributable to the oil and natural gas ¶ industry's operations
as a percent of each state’s total employment in 2007 ranged from ¶ 1.5 percent (the District of Columbia) to nearly one in
every five jobs (Wyoming). The oil ¶ and natural gas industry directly and indirectly supported more than 5 percent of
the total ¶ employment in 12 states in 2007: Wyoming (18.8 percent) Oklahoma (16.3 percent), ¶ Louisiana (13.4 percent),
Texas (13.1 percent), Alaska (9.8 percent), New Mexico (8.1 ¶ percent), West Virginia (6.7 percent), Kansas (6.5 percent),
Colorado (6.0 percent), ¶ North Dakota (5.7 percent), Mississippi (5.5 percent) and Montana (5.3 percent). In ¶ these top 12
states, the oil and natural gas industry on average was directly or indirectly ¶ responsible for one in every nine jobs. ¶ Labor
Income¶ As a percent of each state’s total labor income (including wages and salaries and ¶ benefits as well as proprietors'
income), the labor income from the total jobs directly and ¶ indirectly supported by the oil and natural gas industry's operations
ranged from 1.4 ¶ percent (the District of Columbia) to one in every four dollars of labor income ¶ (Oklahoma) in 2007. The oil
and natural gas industry’s total labor income contribution ¶ exceeded 5 percent of the state total in 14 states: Oklahoma (24.7
percent), Wyoming ¶ (24.3 percent), Texas (19.5 percent), Louisiana (16.6 percent), Alaska (13.5 percent), ¶ New Mexico (9.5
percent), Kansas (8.8 percent), Colorado (7.7 percent), North Dakota ¶ (7.6 percent), West Virginia (7.4 percent), Montana (7.0
percent), Mississippi (6.5 ¶ percent), Utah (5.9 percent), and Nebraska (5.6 percent). ¶ Value Added¶ As a percent of each
state’s economy, the oil and natural gas industry’s total valueadded contribution from its operations ranged from 1.7 percent (the
District of Columbia) ¶ to just under one in every three dollars of value added (Oklahoma) in 2007. The oil and ¶ natural gas
industry’s total value-added contribution accounted for at least 5 percent of ¶ the state total in 17 states: Oklahoma (31.3
percent), Wyoming (29.4 percent), Texas ¶ (24.2 percent), Louisiana (20.6 percent), Alaska (16.6 percent), New Mexico (12.2 ¶
percent), Kansas (11.4 percent), North Dakota (9.6 percent), West Virginia (9.4 percent), ¶ Colorado (9.3 percent), Montana (8.9
percent), Mississippi (8.4 percent), Utah (7.6 ¶ percent), Nebraska (6.7 percent), Arkansas (6.0 percent), California (5.5 percent),
and ¶ Illinois (5.0 percent). IV. Economic Impact Breakdown: Direct, Indirect, and Induced Impacts ¶ As noted earlier, the total
economic impact presented in the previous section includes ¶ the direct impact (the jobs, labor income, and value added within
the oil and natural gas ¶ industry), the indirect impact (the jobs and value added occurring within other industries ¶ that provide
goods and services to the oil and natural gas industry), and the induced ¶ impact (the jobs and value added resulting from
household spending of income earned ¶ either directly or indirectly from the oil and natural gas industry’s spending). In this ¶
section, the three different economic impacts will be separately identified. ¶ Direct Impact ¶ Table 4 shows the direct impact of
the oil and natural gas industry by NAICS subsectors ¶ for the country as a whole in terms of employment, labor income
(including wages and ¶ salaries and benefits as well as proprietors' income), and value added. ¶ In 2007, the oil and natural
gas industry directly provided 2.1 million jobs for American ¶ workers with approximately $200 billion in wages and
salaries and fringe benefits and ¶ proprietors' income. The industry directly contributed over $450 billion to the national
¶ GDP. Table 5a shows the direct employment, labor income (including wages and salaries and ¶ benefits as well as proprietors'
income) and value added impacts of the oil and natural 16 ¶ gas industry as a whole by state, where the states are shown
alphabetically. Table 5b is ¶ the same as Table 5a, except that the states are ranked by the oil and natural gas ¶ industry's direct
employment. In 2007, the ten states with the largest combined direct ¶ employment effect generated by the oil and natural gas
industry were, in order: Texas, ¶ California, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, New York, Illinois, and ¶
Colorado. These top ten states accounted for 54.7 percent of the oil and natural gas ¶ industry’s national direct employment,
74.0 percent of the oil and natural gas industry’s ¶ national direct labor income, and 75.3 percent of the oil and natural gas
industry’s ¶ national direct value added in 2007.Indirect and induced Impacts¶ The oil and natural gas industry purchases
intermediate inputs from a variety of other ¶ U.S. industries, supporting jobs in these industries and spurring additional rounds of
¶ purchases. Meanwhile, employees and business owners make personal purchases out ¶ of the additional income that is
generated by this process. The jobs, labor income ¶ (including wages and salaries and benefits as well as proprietors' income),
and value ¶ added supported by this cycle of spending, or multiplier process, are referred to as the ¶ indirect and induced
economic impacts. ¶ In addition, the oil and natural gas industry purchases capital goods from a variety of ¶ U.S. suppliers,
which has a similar multiplier effect on the rest of the U.S. economy. ¶ Based on data from the Census Bureau and U.S.
Department of Commerce, ¶ PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that the oil and natural gas industry invested over ¶ $150 billion
in new equipment and structures in 2007. ¶ PricewaterhouseCoopers quantified these indirect and induced impacts of both the
oil ¶ and natural gas industry's operational and capital spending using the customized impact ¶ models PricewaterhouseCoopers
has built based on the IMPLAN modeling system. Table 6 shows the oil and natural gas industry’s indirect and induced impacts
by sector, ¶ separately identifying its operational and capital investment impacts. ¶ PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that in
addition to the 2.1 million direct jobs in the oil ¶ and natural gas industry, the industry’s purchase of intermediate inputs from
other U.S. ¶ suppliers supported 5.7 million indirect and induced jobs in other industries across the ¶ country in 2007, while its
capital investment supported an additional 1.4 million indirect ¶ and induced jobs across many sectors of the U.S. economy.
Combined, the oil and ¶ natural gas industry directly or indirectly contributed more than 9.2 million jobs to the ¶ U.S.
economy. The service sector received the largest number of indirect and induced ¶ jobs from the oil and natural gas industry's
spending (3.4 million) in 2007, followed by ¶ wholesale and retail trade (1.2 million), finance, insurance, real estate, rental and
leasing ¶ (0.8 million), and manufacturing (0.7 million). ¶ The estimated nationwide indirect and induced labor income
(including wages and ¶ salaries and benefits as well as proprietors' income) was $359 billion and the indirect ¶ and
induced value added was $580 billion in 2007.
Reducing demand for oil causes prices to collapse – hurting Russia’s economy.
Carey 2/24/2003 (John, Business Week, "Taming the Oil Beast,"
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_08/b3821001.htm)
reducing oil use has to be done judiciously A drastic or abrupt drop in demand could even be counterproductive . Why? Because even a
very small change in capacity or demand "can bring big swings in price," explains Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center
Yet
.
at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business. For instance, the slowdown in Asia in the mid-1990s reduced demand only by about 1.5 million bbl. a day, but it caused oil
if the U.S. succeeded in abruptly curbing demand for oil, prices would plummet. Highercost producers such as Russia and the U.S. would either have to sell oil at a big loss or stand on the sidelines. The effect would
prices to plunge to near $10 a barrel. So today,
be to concentrate power--you guessed it--in the hands of Middle Eastern nations, the lowest-cost producers and holders of two-thirds of the known oil reserves. That's why flawed energy policies,
such as trying to override market forces by rushing to expand supplies or mandating big fuel efficiency gains, could do harm.
Active Transportation leads to decrease of oil consumption
Higgins et al 5
Paul A.T. Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Millicent Higgins Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Michigan.
Energy Policy, “A healthy reduction in oil consumption and carbon emissions,”
http://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeeenepol/v_3A33_3Ay_3A2005_3Ai_3A1_3Ap_3A1-4.htm Accessed 7/8/12, CD
In contrast, the reduced gasoline demand possible (equivalent to the amount that comes from as much as 116.1% of domestic oil
production) through wide spread adoption of healthier lifestyles could substantially reduce foreign oil dependence and the
need to extract oil from environmentally sensitive habitat. Over a 10-year period the reduced oil consumption possible would
exceed even upper estimates of recoverable oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—the 95% confidence interval lies between 5.7
and 16 billion barrels (EIA, 2000b). Unlike the oil contained in ANWR, however, this reduction in oil consumption is inexhaustible.
Furthermore, the carbon dioxide emissions reduction (up to 10.9% of 1990 emissions) constitutes a substantial step toward satisfying the Kyoto
protocol. That agreement requires the US to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 7% below 1990 emissions.
Ecological Pragmatism K/Framework Helpers
1NC Shell
The affirmative adopts a monistic attitude towards environmental ethics – analyzing
petro-capitalism solely based on its relation to American political culture – only a
universal ethic can equip us with the tools to effectively combat climate change.
Simpson 2010 (Francis Simpson, College of Engineering, Spring 2010, Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal:
Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No.1, “Environmental Pragmatism and its Application to Climate Change The Moral
Obligations of Developed and Developing Nations to Avert Climate Change as viewed through Technological Pragmatism,” azp)
Many authors have previously tackled the ethics of climate change. All of them have come to the same conclusion of action
being morally imperative; although, their proposed suggestions for action have contained different yet strikingly similar solutions.
It is commonly accepted that due to the temporal and spatial resolution of climate change, it is difficult to place specific
blame on those who have broken the atmosphere (Garvey, 59-61. Singer, 27). There is consensus in the environmental
ethics literature that failing to act when moral reasons are present is worse than being unconscious of them (Garvey, 41).
Authors such as Garvey, Haller, and Singer all advocate action and claim that since we have been aware of climate change
since the 1950s, no country can currently claim ignorance as an excuse for their inaction. As of 1990, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that no country can claim ignorance. What is holding countries like
the United States, Australia, India, and China back from acting then? To answer this question, it becomes necessary to
analyze developed countries methodologies for running their government and what constitutes their overall general
outlook. The prevailing outlook in most countries is utilitarian, which may be one of the sources contributing to inaction.
According to utilitarianism, moral rightness or wrongness only depends on the outcome of said actions; something is morally right
if it increases the amount of utility in someone’s life (Garvey, 46). With this viewpoint, nature is disposable and exists for the
benefit of humanity… or is it? If the non-human world is within our realm of moral consideration, then utilitarianism demands
maximizing good/pleasure not only for humans but also for the rest of nature (Garvey,46). If moral consideration is extended to
nature, then humanity has a basic obligation to preserve nature not only for its own use, but to ensure the stability of the rest of
the biosphere for future generations. This philosophy though can either be strictly anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric and is
inadequate for establishing climate change policy. The main reason it is inadequate is that there is no moral mandate to
ensure that all countries act to avert climate change. Without multilateral global action, one nation’s offset will be
another’s ability to emit greenhouse gases. Since it is a form of moral monism, it will not necessarily resonate with all
involved parties around the world. The criticism of any monistic doctrine is that there will always be multiple conflicting
views about how to solve climate change and who is responsible for fixing it. Any monistic view will only hinder
potential progress, table negotiations, and endanger the planet’s biosphere as a whole. It, therefore, becomes necessary
to explore or propose other environmental ethics which are inherently pluralistic.
Refusing to consider global, pragmatic action on climate change makes warming
inevitable regardless of what philosophical stance we take – because the risk is
existential pragmatic action is a prerequisite to the case.
Simpson 2010 (Francis Simpson, College of Engineering, Spring 2010, Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal:
Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No.1, “Environmental Pragmatism and its Application to Climate Change The Moral
Obligations of Developed and Developing Nations to Avert Climate Change as viewed through Technological Pragmatism,” azp)
With a great deal of uncertainty contained in climate science models, philosophers and policy makers still advocate action but
seem to delay in actually doing something to combat climate change. What would be the potential consequences of doing
nothing, and would this be morally reprehensible? A potential consequence would be that Greenland melts, sea levels
go up by as much as 7 meters, and many people are displaced from their homes (IPCC). This scenario is very real and
very possible. Despite the uncertainty that most people cite in these calculations, uncertainty is not a justification for
inaction. In fact, the uncertainty seems to command action, not inaction (Garvey, 95). If we wait for the uncertainty to
clear, then it will be too late (Garvey, 95). Continuing with business as usual places many innocent people in harm’s way. The
precautionary principle is a moral and political theory which was first formulated at the Earth Summit in 1992. It states that if an
action might cause permanent or severe harm to the public or environment, and if there is scientific uncertainty associated
with the action, then the action should not be taken and alternatives should be found (Garvey, 96-97). If the precautionary
principle is applied, as Garvey suggests, then we should seek to be conservative in the face of large uncertainty
(Houghton, 274-276). Since the consequences of climate change are extremely great, and while there is uncertainty in the
climate models used to predict future climate patterns, this uncertainty demands that we act to avert it since the consequences
are so large. The precautionary principle here is extremely helpful since it forces us to act to be conservative so that we will not
procrastinate to act until it is too late. Another argument for inaction is that climate change is cost prohibitive for something which
may never occur, and is a waste of fund allocations for combating poverty in third world countries (Lomborg). Many economists
and people find this argument extremely convincing since they are concerned especially in times of economic hardship about
improving the economy, and they see climate change abatement as an unnecessary cost which may turn out to greatly stifle the
economy. Cost is the usual excuse given by many governments for keeping with business as usual. While developed nations are
extremely guilty, developing nations have likewise embraced this concept: Our easy high energy lives as compared to the
suffering which greenhouse-gas emissions cause and will continue to cause – you can come to the conclusion that avoiding
action on climate change just because it might be expensive amounts to harming people for money (Garvey, 98). The
consequences of allowing climate change to occur just because it is expensive to avert, will far outweigh the initial investment in
new technologies from a traditional cost-benefit analysis. If this is applied utilizing a pragmatist viewpoint, then it is
important that we act to avert climate change before it is too late and refuse to remain inactive just because it could
adversely affect the economy. Since pragmatism demands pluralism, the economy can be tailored to be green and
environmentally friendly without sacrificing economic productivity; thus climate change and economic success will not be
mutually exclusive. As such, if we are following the precautionary principle, the costs of doing nothing greatly outweigh the
costs of acting now to curtail our greenhouse gas emissions.
Inaction makes omnicide inevitable – warming is a universal moral side constraint.
Simpson 2010 (Francis Simpson, College of Engineering, Spring 2010, Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal:
Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No.1, “Environmental Pragmatism and its Application to Climate Change The Moral
Obligations of Developed and Developing Nations to Avert Climate Change as viewed through Technological Pragmatism,” azp)
Climate change will impact humans through rising sea levels, decreased predictability of rain fall, drought, and water shortages
leading to an increase in the number of environmental refugees and casualties. One impact in particular that is of great
concern to people in coast regions and scientists is sea level rise. Modeling predictions have indicated that the 21st century
could witness an increase in sea level by 1 meter (Houghton, 180). While this does not seem like a large impact, half of
humanity inhabits coastal regions where fertile soil is crucial to survival (Houghton, 181). A prime example would be people in
Bangladesh where nearly 150 million people are located in the deltas of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers
(Houghton, 181). In this region 10% of the habitable land would be lost with a 0.5m sea level rise and 20% would be lost in a 1m
rise displacing 6 million and 15 million people respectively (Houghton, 182). Since 83% of the population relies on agriculture for
making a living, the loss of agricultural land will remove their main method of subsistence (Houghton, 183). Additionally,
climate change and increased sea levels will mean increased vulnerability to storms and the potential for large scale natural
disasters, resulting in millions of refugees and deaths (Houghton, 181-187). Additionally, increases in sea level causes an
increase in salinity problems in the soil, making once arable land, agriculturally unproductive (Houghton, 184-185). The
combination of increases in flooding and salinity will make once habitable regions of the world uninhabitable causing pain and
suffering to the inhabitants of these low lying regions. Closely related to changes in sea level rise, will be the decrease in water
availability for many regions due to a change in rain patterns and intensity of precipitation events (Houghton, 191). As 1/3 of the
human population is dependent upon glacially fed streams for their drinking water supplies, they will become vulnerable to water
shortages. This will lead to conflicts over a limited but necessary resource. As an example, the Himalayan glaciers which supply
1/6th of global population with water, are expected to decrease in area by 80% by 2030, meaning a future of water scarcity is in
store for Asia (Houghton, 192). As populations continue to grow, water usage proportionally increases. Due to the decrease in
rainfall predictability, there will be more world citizens who live in water scarce countries who are going to suffer from the
consequences of climate change (Houghton, 193-194). Not only will countries have diminished access to constant supplies of
fresh water, but agricultural productivity will be redistributed. In developed countries, agricultural productivity is expected to
supply a larger surplus of food; whereas developing countries are likely to face intense deprivations, which will only aggravate
the strain on feeding growing populations (Houghton, 202). These aforementioned consequences of climate change will cause
pain and suffering to countless human beings, who will be unable to adapt to the changing climate. Consequently, it is a
primary moral concern for every global citizen to act to prevent these climate modeling predictions from becoming a
reality. Until now, human health consequences have largely been excluded from the impacts of climate change since the
changes in temperature has not been enough to change disease vectors. Their effects cannot be disregarded now! With
increased temperature and moisture content in the atmosphere comes an increase in disease vectors (insects usually) for
carrying lethal infections like malaria to regions which were once immune (Houghton, 213-217). Not only will disease vectors
increase, but a degraded environment will mean a poorer quality of life for many of the world’s poorest inhabitants as drinking
water will become increasingly polluted and nutrient-deficient soil will result in less productive agriculture and barren lands
(Houghton, 213). From an anthropocentric ethical standpoint, how can we allow millions to be displaced and/or perish when the
problem of climate change can be combated with technology now? With the above anthropocentric reasons for preventing
climate change in mind, it is important to recognize that there will still be a large impact on the ecology of the biosphere, which
should compel us to act. There is a moral imperative to act to preserve biodiversity and natural resources for future generations.
Imagine a world without species like the polar bear. Will we only be able to show our children pictures or take them to natural
history museums to describe long extinct species which have taken millions of years to evolve, all because of anthropogenic
climate change and a lack of human will to act? This question can be answered in a variety of ways, but one of the more
interesting answers relates to medicine. If species are going extinct, we are missing not only an opportunity to study them in the
wild, but we are potentially killing species that might possess medicinal remedies for various forms of cancer such as sea
creatures. If for no other reason than our own self interest, we should be working to prevent species loss. From a nonanthropocentric viewpoint, species must be preserved since they have their own intrinsic value and as such they have a
right to carry on their own existence. Species are becoming extinct at a rate which is 1000 times the background rate of
extinction, leading to the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is responsible for accelerating this rate (Gore, 163). The
root cause of this increase in extinction rates stems from the increases in global surface temperature, which ecosystems are
highly sensitive to and have evolved to be productive in (Houghton, 203-206). With just an increase of 2 degrees Centigrade,
which is predicted to occur during the next 150-300 years (IPCC), dire consequences are in store for the environment. These
effects include: decreased resilience due to resource exploitation and pollution, and conversion of the biosphere from a net
carbon sink to a net carbon source (Houghton, 212-213). In terms of the environmental impact due to climate change, effects
include: an increase of 20-30% of all plant and animal species to be at high risk of extinction, extensive forest and wetland
decline, and substantial changes in marine ecosystems due to climate change and increased ocean acidity (Houghton, 212-213).
Changing these ecosystems will cause pain and suffering in the human population for anyone that is dependent upon agriculture
or fishing for a food supply, thereby affecting everyone in some way (Houghton, 203-211). Regardless if we are just recognizing
intrinsic value of nature or we value it instrumentally, it is in the best interests of humanity to ensure long-term ecological health
both for humanities benefit and are the ecological services the environment provides.
The alternative is to embrace environmental pragmatism – abstract theorizing is
useless and dangerous in the face of ecological destruction. The alternative
necessitates an acceptance of universal responsibility – rather than the aff’s myopic,
nationally located understanding of oil politics.
Simpson 2010 (Francis Simpson, College of Engineering, Spring 2010, Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal:
Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No.1, “Environmental Pragmatism and its Application to Climate Change The Moral
Obligations of Developed and Developing Nations to Avert Climate Change as viewed through Technological Pragmatism,” azp)
Environmental pragmatism is a relatively new field of environmental ethics that seeks to move beyond the strictly theoretical
exercises normal in philosophy and allows the environmental movement to formulate substantial new policies (Light, 1).
Environmental Pragmatism was initially posited by Bryan Norton and evolved to not take a stance over the dispute between nonanthropocentric and anthropocentric ethics. Distancing himself from this dispute, he preferred to distinguish between strong and
weak anthropocentricism (Light, 290-291, 298). The main philosophers involved in advancing the debate in environmental
pragmatism include Eric Katz, Andrew Light, and Bryan Norton. This particular discipline advocates moral pluralism, implying
that the environmental problems being faced have multiple correct solutions. Light argues that the urgency of ecological
crises requires that action is necessary through negotiation and compromise. While theorists serve to further the field of
environmental ethics and to debate the metaethical basis of various environmental philosophies, some answers to questions are
best left to private discussion rather than taking time to argue about them publically (introduction of pragmatism). Pragmatism
believes that if two theories are equally able to provide solutions to a given problem, then debate on which is more is argued that:
“the commitment to solving environmental problems is the only precondition for any workable and democratic political
theory” (Light, 11). While the science behind a footprint is well understood, what can the synthesis of environmental pragmatism
and footprinting tell us about the moral obligation to avert climate change? How does grounding the practice of sustainability
footprinting in environmental pragmatism generate moral prescriptions for averting climate change? Environmental
Pragmatism necessitates the need for tools in engineering to be developed and applied to avert the climate change
problem, since pragmatism inherently calls for bridging the gap between theory and policy/ practices. With the theory of
pragmatism in mind, further research and development of tools such as life-cycle analysis and footrprinting are potential policy
tools that are necessary under a pragmatist viewpoint so that informed decisions can be made by policy makers. Since the role
of life-cycle analysis and footprinting attempt to improve the efficiency and decrease the overall environmental impact of a given
process, good, or service, environmental pragmatism would call for the further development and usage of these tools so that we
can continue to develop sustainably and fulfill our moral obligation to future generations. By utilizing footprinting and life-cycle
analysis, it becomes possible to make environmentally conscious decisions not only based upon a gut instinct but additionally
based on sound science. Finally, in regards to averting climate change, footprinting and life-cycle analysis offer another
dimension to traditional cost-benefit analysis and can allow for our moral obligation to future generations to weigh into final
decisions which will eventually result in policies and/ or a production of a good or service. Since traditional costbenefit analysis
does not account for the environment explicitly, pragmatism would call for the application of these tools to ensure that the
environment is adequately protected for future generations. Climate change modeling inherently contains many
unknowns in terms of future outcomes and applied simplifications, but these factors should not be enough to hold us
back from an environmental pragmatism stand point. Rather than hiding behind a veil of uncertainty with the science, the
uncertainty of the possible catastrophic outcomes demands action on the part of every human individual.
Environmental pragmatism could also adopt a view point like the precautionary principle where a given action has great
uncertainty, but also great consequence (Haller). Since we are attempting to protect human lives and prevent unnecessary
suffering, environmental pragmatism would dictate that we should take action now and stop debating the theoretical
aspects of this problem. A moral obligation exists to protect human life, and it becomes our obligation to avert climate change.
Despite the relatively high economic costs of averting climate change, it is worth noting that the creation of green jobs and new
sectors will help to stimulate the economy rather than completely hindering it. People inherently fear change, and it is my opinion
that averting climate change requires a drastic change in our consumption patterns, an important reason why people
are resisting averting climate change. From an environmental pragmatism viewpoint, it is humanities responsibility to avert
climate change before it is too late since we have a moral obligation to protect the future of humanity and the biosphere.
2NC Link Extension
Climate change is a geopolitical extension of the prisoner’s dilemma – states exploit
carbon reserves even though its in their best interest to cooperate towards
sustainability – only an ethical model that encompasses all states can solve.
Simpson 2010 (Francis Simpson, College of Engineering, Spring 2010, Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal:
Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No.1, “Environmental Pragmatism and its Application to Climate Change The Moral
Obligations of Developed and Developing Nations to Avert Climate Change as viewed through Technological Pragmatism,” azp)
This quote is crucial since it is hard to point the blame about climate change to any one person; deciphering who is
morally reprehensible is a challenging task. This quote points out that while each and every one of us make choices about
our power consumption, the car we drive, the food we eat, etc, we are each making our own contribution to furthering the climate
change problem. Since each person is responsible for contributing to climate change, there is no responsible party; it
will become the responsibility of each individual to contribute to solving the climate change problem. Since there is no
clear wrong done for breaking the climate by just one person, it is all of our responsibility to make choices that are sustainable.
Climate change can be thought of as a Tragedy of the Commons. The Tragedy of the Commons is a situation where
multiple individuals act rationally and individually for their own self-interests, ultimately depleting a shared resource (in
this case natural resources) even when it is evident that these actions are not in the best interests for anyone when viewed from
a long term perspective (property). In this case, global warming is exemplified by the fact that the common resource of the planet
(the carbon sink) is being depleted by a few industrialized countries to the detriment of other countries (Garvey, 72). On the other
hand, the Prisoner’s Dilemma can also aptly describe the issue of climate change. The prisoner’s dilemma is defined in
game theory as two people who will not cooperate with one another despite it being in both their best interests to do so
in order to decrease the overall penalty (Prisoner’s Dilemma). A non-environmental example would be two theifs who are
caught for stealing. If each one talks, then they will both be imprisoned for three years. If neither of them talk, they both walk
away. If one of them talks, then the other will go to prison for 8 years. The whole point of this is that while it is in their best
interest to either say nothing or cooperate jointly, they will almost always do what is in the individuals best interest rather than the
joint interest. When you apply the Prisoner’s Dilemma to global warming, it is in the best interest of all countries to work
together to avert climate change as the consequences will affect every human on the planet; their concentration on
economics, though, blinds them from participation. Both The Tragedy of the Commons and the Prisoner’s Dilemma,
exemplify the problems related to responsibility related to climate change as stated above. Individuals will exploit a common
resource until it is exhausted, even at the expense of everyone else. The story according to authors like Garvey and Haller
for climate change is as follows: developed nations exploit the carbon absorption of the planet (common resource), continue to
burn fossil fuels since that is what the other countries are doing, and only the polluter enjoys the added benefits of being an
economic powerhouse (Garvey). The problem with this particular outlook is that future generations stand to lose the most
from climate change. These values are absolutely not what is needed to solve something as big as climate change (Garvey).
This raises the question of what is the ethically commendable thing to do and who is going to be doing it?
A/T: Permutation
Their focus on historical reflection complicates pragmatic logic to the point of
impossibility – their historical perspective has two negative implications:
First, it focuses on the nation-state – they conceptualize of petro-capitalism as a
problem of the US – not a global one, this makes it impossible to extend their
particular methodology to the commons.
Second, the process of reflection accords blame only to developed nations, letting
developing countries off the hook and consequently eliminating the incentive for
developed nations to participate in global cooperation.
Simpson 2010 (Francis Simpson, College of Engineering, Spring 2010, Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal:
Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No.1, “Environmental Pragmatism and its Application to Climate Change The Moral
Obligations of Developed and Developing Nations to Avert Climate Change as viewed through Technological Pragmatism,” azp)
If we look at pollution from the pragmatist viewpoint, pollution cannot be viewed as just a national problem, but rather a global
problem since without common cooperation from every nation, climate change is a problem we cannot solve. It will take
cooperation from every nation, both developed and developing, to devise a plan to avert climate change to preserve the
biosphere. As a pragmatist, it becomes necessary for all countries to act to avert climate change, but they will obviously have
different roles in helping the abatement process. Developed countries have a duty to redress the balance and at the least start
reducing their emissions (Garvey, 73). Whether fundamental change is in the form of deploying renewable energy, leading the
way in research to make these renewable sources more efficient, or in simple conservation, it is the developed world’s
responsibility to enforce change everywhere before it is too late for the rest of humanity. Many authors, including Garvey and
Singer, look to historical emissions (emission occurring prior to the period in question, usually during industrialization) when
they are trying to determine what a fair emissions distribution per capita would look like. Historical reflection leads to the
conclusion that developed nations have a moral responsibility to combat climate change. While developed nations do
have an obligation to avert climate change, the historical argument appears to let developing nations off the hook (Garvey,
73). So, what incentive would there be for developed nations to cooperate? If there were no alternatives for power generation
prior to 1970 and developing nations now have greater access to cleaner technology with which to develop, why should
developing nations be excluded from any treaties or climate change abatement policies as they were in the Kyoto Protocol?
Such a historical concentration would unjustly punish developed countries (Garvey, 73-76). What would happen to the
moral obligations of developed and developing nations? To refute the usage of historical emissions to determine who pays to
combat climate change, the developed world up until the 1970s had no clear alternatives for base load power (power plants
which are expected to meet continuous power requirements of customers at all times throughout the year) due to a lack of
technological innovation. As a result, it is unjust for any developed country to solely bear the brunt of combating climate change,
not only due to a lack of technological choice, but also due to the economic forward momentum of development . Now that there
are renewable sources of energy like wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, and nuclear power, it is the responsibility of
developed countries to utilize these power generation technologies along with their developing counterparts. Taking these
scientific considerations into account and employing the pragmatist viewpoint, I believe emissions between the industrial
revolution and 1970s should be excluded from all numbers concerning per capita emissions, as it is an unfair argument to use
historical justification where no plausible alternative was available other than halting any further technological development.
While the developed world has used more than its fair share of the carbon sinks, there have been benefits conveyed to the
developing and impoverished rest of the world. Developing countries should not be exempted from climate change
combating measures simply due to economic reasons. Sensitivity should be made to their growth needs, but the growth
must still be achieved sustainably. Unlike Garvey’s theory of burdens, I believe that all countries need to work together to avert
climate change, while realizing each may have different responsibilities. The development card is not an adequate excuse to
be environmentally irresponsible. When a country like China is the world’s largest polluter, they cannot be excluded from
climate change agreements on the basis of being a developing nation especially since they are a major contributor to the
problem of climate change. As of October 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) still classified China as a developing
country despite their contributions to the world economy in terms of trade goods for exports to other countries and pollution
output from the millions of tons of coal burned to provide unclean electricity; thereby proving that just because a country is
developing, it can still have a large effect on the world as a whole (World Economic Outlook).
***FRAMEWORK***
FRAMEWORK 1NC SHELL
A. Interpretation: the aff should win if the topical plan is the best policy option in the
debate. The neg should win if the plan is proven worse than the status quo or a policy
option competitive with the plan.
B. Violation:
C. Standards
1) Plan focus – our framework ensures a stable locus for links and the comparison of
alternatives. Alternative frameworks which do not ensure that the plan is the starting-point
of the debate make confusion and judge intervention inevitable.
2) Ground – there is an infinite number of unpredictable K frameworks, K links, and K
impacts. Forcing the aff to debate in whatever framework the neg picks moots eight
minutes of our speech time. the K could be about anything, their framework destroys aff
ground because we can never predict what we’ll have to compare our plan to. Even if
there’s some ground for us to respond to their arg, it’s not good or predictable and losing
the 1AC puts us at an inherent disadvantage.
3) Topic-specific education – only debates about the plan translate into education about the
topic. There would be no reason to switch topics every year if not for plan-focus debate. K
frameworks encourage ultra-generics like the ‘state bad’ K that are stale and
uneducational.
4) Framework must be decided before the substance be debated—we have to know what
we’re arguing about to argue.
Shively 2000 (Ruth Lessl is assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M, “Political Theory and the Postmodern
Politics of Ambiguity,” Political Theory and Partisan Politics, Chapter 8, p181-183, Google Books)
This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord
that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in
thinking that agreement marks the end of contest—that consen-sus kills debate. But this is true only if
the agreement is perfect—if there is nothing at all left to question or contest. In most cases, however, our
agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on
specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the
starting condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths;
therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by
positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true.
There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960,
10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not com-municating: if we cannot agree
on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence
or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can
debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks
euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one's target audience simply
thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate
resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a
lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and debaters
must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their disagree-ments. The
participants and the target of a sit-in must share an under-standing of the complaint at hand. And a
demonstrator's audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes
some agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other
words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony. The point may seem trite, as surely the
ambiguists would agree that basic terms must be shared before they can be resisted and
problematized. In fact, they are often very candid about this seeming paradox in their approach: the
paradoxical or "parasitic" need of the subversive for an order to subvert. But admitting the paradox is not
helpful if, as usually happens here, its implications are ignored; or if the only implication drawn is that order
or harmony is an unhappy fixture of human life. For what the paradox should tell us is that some kinds of
harmonies or orders are, in fact, good for resistance; and some ought to be fully supported. As such, it
should counsel against the kind of careless rhetoric that lumps all orders or harmonies together as
arbitrary and inhumane. Clearly some basic accord about the terms of contest is a necessary ground
for all further contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged ambiguists, they cannot
admit to these implica-tions, for to open the door to some agreements or reasons as good and some orders as
helpful or necessary, is to open the door to some sort of rationalism. Perhaps they might just continue to
insist that this initial condition is ironic, but that the irony should not stand in the way of the real business of
subversion. Yet difficulties remain. For agreement is not simply the initial condition, but the continuing
ground, for contest. If we are to success-fully communicate our disagreements, we cannot simply agree
on basic terms and then proceed to debate without attention to further agree-ments. For debate and
contest are forms of dialogue: that is, they are activities premised on the building of progressive
agreements. Imagine, for instance, that two people are having an argument about the issue of gun
control. As noted earlier, in any argument, certain initial agreements will be needed just to begin the
discussion. At the very least, the two discussants must agree on basic terms: for example, they must
have some shared sense of what gun control is about; what is at issue in arguing about it; what facts
are being con-tested, and so on. They must also agree—and they do so simply by entering into
debate—that they will not use violence or threats in making their cases and that they are willing to
listen to, and to be persuaded by, good arguments. Such agreements are simply implicit in the act of
argumentation.5
D. Voter for fairness and education
FRAMEWORK 2NC 1/5
The critique ignores the practical side of life. We must be able to use logic and
rationality in order to solve the basic problems of our society. The criticism would
leave us in endless questioning over meaning.
Jarvis, senior lecturer @ University of Australia, 2000 D.S.L. International Relations and the Challenge of
Postmodernism
To what end these approaches will prove beneficial, however, to what end their concerns and depictions of
current realities prove accurate remains problematic. What does seem obvious, though, is the continuing
desire for understanding, the need to examine, comprehend, and make sense of events and, consequently, the
need for theoretical endeavor. Despite “nihilistic despair” or charges of epochal change, most of us will wake
up tomorrow confronted by a world much the same as today, one that experiences the recurring problems of
inequality, injustice, war, famine, violence, and conflict. Various problems will emerge and solutions to them
will be sought. These, surely, cannot be deconstructed as the subversive postmodernists insist, but only
reinscribed as new questions. And while we might problematize current knowledge and interpretations,
question our faith in science, reason, and logic, or reinscribe questions in new contexts, to suppose these
endeavors contrary to the activity of theory and the search for meaning and understanding seems plainly
absurd. If we abandon the principles of logic and reason, dump the yardsticks of objectivity and assessment,
and succumb to a blind relativism that privileges no one narrative or understanding over another, how do we
tackle such problems or assess the merits of one solution vis-à-vis another? How do we go about the activity
of living, making decisions, engaging in trade, deciding on social rules or making laws, if objective criteria
are not to be employed and reason and logic abandoned? How would we construct research programs, delimit
areas of inquiry or define problems to be studied if we abandon rationalist tools of inquiry
Materialism cannot exist without realism- Ontology and epistomology are inseprable
Bunge 06 (PhD in physico-mathematical sciences from National University of La Plata, Professor of theoretical
physics at University of Buenos Aires, Frothingham Professor of Logics and Mathematics at Mcgill University,
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada) Mario Bunge
University of Toronto Press 2006 “Chasing Reality: Strife Over Realism”
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6GraKxazuOQC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=
WlIpthT8k7&sig=QqIbzXQOnMBsn5mE2Jqq5oZtk0I#v=onepage&q=Concluding%20Remarks&f=false
We have attempted to elucidate the notions of thing and fact because they are far from clear in the
philosophical literature. And, contrary to a certain tradition, we have neither confused realism with
materialism nor kept them apart. After distinguihing them we have joined them in a doctrin that may be
dubbed hylorealism. One reason for wedding realism to materialism is that the idea of irrealist materialism is
an oxymoron, since the statement that the universe is material amounts ot the claim that the non-conceptual is
known to be material rather than, say, ghostly. Another reason is that materialism without realism is both
pointless and toothless. Indeed, what would be the point of exploring a purely imaginary or totally
unknowable material universe? And how firm would realism be without the assumption that al unreal things,
however ephemeral or artificial, abide by laws that are either physical or rooted, however remotely, in
physical laws? In general, epistomology and ontology, though distinguishable, are inseperable. For instance,
radical (or dogmatic) rationalism calls for an idealist ontology, because only abstract ideas can be known
(invented or learned) without the aid of experience. And radical (or dogmatic) empiricism requires a
phenomenalist ontology, because experience deals in qualia, not in primary properties, which are the ones
characterizing things in themselves. Whoever admits the existence of things in themselves rejects both
dogmatic rationalism and dogmatic empiricism, and adopts instead ratio-empiricim (or empirirationalism), a
synthesis according to which human gofnition makes use of both reason and experience. This is so for two
reasons. One is that the overwhelming majority of facts are imperceptible, hence accessible only through
conception. The other reason is that the normal human brain is active and inventive as well as reflexive; in
particular, it looks for ideas or deeds behind words, reasons reasons behind assertions, and mechanisms
behind appearances. However, the concept of an appearance or phenomenon is so slippery, and yet so central
to many influential philosophies, this it requires an entire chapter- the next one.
FRAMEWORK 2NC 2/5
Turn- “Role Playing” the thoughts and ideas of the government is essential for
breaking down assumptions, developing critical thinking, and understanding the state
in order to deconstruct it. Without allowing for situations like ours there is no way to
change the state in real life, and you destroy debate in the process.
Joyner, Professor International Law @ Georgetwon, 99 (Christopher “TEACHING INTERNATIONAL LAW:
VIEWS FROM AN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS POLITICAL SCIENTIST” ILSA Journal of International &
Comparative Law, Spring, 5 ILSA J Int'l & Comp L 377)
Use of the debate can be an effective pedagogical tool for education in the social
sciences. Debates, like other role-playing simulations, help students understand
different perspectives on a policy issue by adopting a perspective as their own.
But, unlike other simulation games, debates do not require that a student
participate directly in order to realize the benefit of the game. Instead of
developing policy alternatives and experiencing the consequences of different
choices in a traditional role-playing game, debates present the alternatives and
consequences in a formal, rhetorical fashion before a judgmental audience. Having the
class audience serve as jury helps each student develop a well-thought-out opinion on the issue by providing contrasting
facts and views and enabling audience members to pose challenges to each debating team. These debates ask undergraduate
students to examine the international legal implications of various United States foreign policy actions. Their chief tasks are
to assess the aims of the policy in question, determine their relevance to United States national interests, ascertain what
legal principles are involved, and conclude how the United States policy in question squares with relevant principles of
international law. Debate questions are formulated as resolutions, along the lines of: "Resolved: The United States should
deny most-favored-nation status to China on human rights grounds;" or "Resolved: The United States should resort to
military force to ensure inspection of Iraq's possible nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities;" or "Resolved: The
United States' invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a lawful use of force;" or "Resolved: The United States should kill Saddam
Hussein." In
addressing both sides of these legal propositions, the student debaters
must consult the vast literature of international law, especially the nearly 100 professional lawschool-sponsored international law journals now being published in the United States. This literature furnishes an
incredibly rich body of legal analysis that often treats topics affecting United States foreign policy, as well as other more
esoteric international legal subjects. Although most of these journals are accessible in good law schools, they are largely
unknown to the political science community specializing in international relations, much less to the average
By assessing the role of international law in United States foreign
policy- making, students realize that United States actions do not always measure
up to international legal expectations; that at times, international legal strictures
get compromised for the sake of perceived national interests, and that concepts
and principles of international law, like domestic law, can be interpreted and
twisted in order to justify United States policy in various international
circumstances. In this way, the debate format gives students the benefits ascribed
to simulations and other action learning techniques, in that it makes them become
actively engaged with their subjects, and not be mere passive consumers. Rather than
undergraduate.
spectators, students become legal advocates, observing, reacting to, and structuring political and legal perceptions to fit the
merits of their case. The debate exercises carry several specific educational objectives. First, students on each team must
work together to refine a cogent argument that compellingly asserts their legal position on a foreign policy issue confronting
the United States.
In this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal
dilemmas faced by policy makers. Second, as they work with other members of their team, they realize the
complexities of applying and implementing international law, and the difficulty of bridging the gaps between United States
policy and international legal principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting the latter. Finally,
research for the debates forces students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign
policy agenda and the role that international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. 8
The debate
thus becomes an excellent vehicle for pushing students beyond stale arguments
over principles into the real world of policy analysis, political critique, and legal
defense.
FRAMEWORK 2NC 3/5
This failure to engage the political process turns the affirmative into spectators who are powerless to produce real
change.
Rorty 98 – professor emeritus of comparative literature and philosophy, by courtesy, at Stanford University (Richard,
“ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America”, 1998, Pg. 7-9)
Such people find pride in American citizenship impossible, and vigorous participation in electoral politics pointless. They associate American patriotism with an endorsement of atrocities: the importation of African
slaves, the slaughter of Native Americans, the rape of ancient forests, and the Vietnam War. Many of them think of national pride as appropriate only for chauvinists: for the sort of American who rejoices that America
When young intellectuals watch John Wayne war
movies after reading Heidegger, Foucault, Stephenson, or Silko, they often become convinced that they live in a violent,
inhuman, corrupt country. They begin to think of themselves as a saving remnant-as the happy few who have the insight to see
through nationalist rhetoric to the ghastly reality of contemporary America. But this insight does not move them to formulate a
legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in a national hope. The contrast between national hope and national self-mockery and self-disgust
can still orchestrate something like the Gulf War, can still bring deadly force to bear whenever and wherever it chooses.
becomes vivid when one compares novels like Snow Crash and Almanac of the Dead with socialist novels of the first half of the century-books like The Jungle, An American Tragedy, and The Grapes of Wrath. The
latter were written in the belief that the tone of the Gettysburg Address was absolutely right, but that our country would have to transform itself in order to fulfill Lincoln's hopes. Transformation would be needed
because the rise of industrial capitalism had made the individualist rhetoric of America's first century obsolete. The authors of these novels thought that this rhetoric should be replaced by one in which America is
destined to become the first cooperative commonwealth, the first classless society. This America would be one in which income and wealth are equitably distributed, and in which the government ensures equality of
opportunity as well as individual liberty. This new, quasi-communitarian rhetoric was at the heart of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal. It set the tone for the American Left during the first six decades of the
The difference between early twentieth-century leftist intellectuals and the majority of their contemporary counterparts is the difference between agents and spectators. In the early
decades of this century, when an intellectual stepped back from his or her country's history and looked at it through skeptical
eyes, the chances were that he or she was about to propose a new political initiative. Henry Adams was, of course, the great
exception-the great abstainer from ·politics. But William James thought that Adams' diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a
symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse. James's pragmatist theory of truth was in part a reaction
against the sort of detached spectators hip which Adams affected. For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and selfdeception was pointless unless accompanied by an effort to give America reason to be proud of itself in the future. The kind of
proto- Heideggerian cultural pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed, to James, decadent and cowardly. "Democracy,"
James wrote, "is a kind of religion, and we are bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and utopias are the noblest exercise of
human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. "2
twentieth century. Walt Whitman and John Dewey, as we shall see, did a great deal to shape this rhetoric.
The affirmative’s strategy is not political - it is a strategy against politics which undermines the possibility of liberation.
Grossberg, 92 (Lawrence, Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
“We Gotta Get Out of this Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture”, page 278-279)
Finally, the frontier itself is transformed. It is still partly defined by an attitude in which we are all implicated. In this sense, the
frontier is in everyone—and with it, the possibility of evil. But now its popular/resonance is rearticulated to "activities" that have to
be affectively and morally judged and policed. The enemy is not within people but in specific activities that construct the frontier
over in the image of the new conservatism. The frontier becomes a seductive machine, seducing people not only into the need to
invest, but ultimately into a series of temporary and mobile investments which locate them within a popular conservatism. The
frontier's articulation by the logic of scandal marks a real break with older conservatisms built on some notion of tradition. Here
politics is not a solution to problems, but a machine which organizes the population and its practices. What is on the "right" (in
both senses) side of the frontier, on the other side of politics, is a purely affective morality (ie., one which leaves no space within
which specific actions can be judged as anything other than scandalous). The new conservatism embodies, not a political
rebellion but a rebellion against politics. It makes politics into an other, located on the other side of the frontier. Anyone who
actually talks about serious problems and their solutions is a dreamer; anyone who celebrates the mood in which the problem is
at once terrifying and boring is a realist. It is no longer believing too strongly that is dangerous, but actually thinking that one is
supposed to make one's dreams come true. The failure of Earth Day cannot be explained by merely pointing to its status as a
feel-good media event, nor by pointing out the increasingly hypocritical appropriation of "green politics" by corporate polluters. It
is rather that ecology, like any "politics," has become a question of attitude and investment, as if investing in the "correct"
ideological beliefs, even demonstrating it, was an adequate construction of the political. Within the new conservative articulation
of the frontier, political positions only exist as entirely affective investments, separated from any ability to act.
Questioning of meaning and objectivity forces us to accept a double standard- destroys all
meaning and can only serve to dichotimize the population
Boghossian 97 (Professor of Philosophy NYU, Director of the New York Institute of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy at
Princeton, PhD in philosophy from Princeton, Fellow at the New York Institute for Humanitites, Fullbright Senior Specialist) Paul
Boghossian, Times Literary Supplement November 24, 2007 “What the Sokal Hoax Ought to Teach Us”
Even on purely political grounds, however, it is difficult to understand how this could have come to seem a
good way to conceive of multiculturalism. For if the powerful can't criticize the oppressed, because the
central epistemological categories are inexorably tied to particular perspectives, it also follows that the
oppressed can't criticize the powerful. The only remedy, so far as I can see, for what threatens to be a
strongly conservative upshot, is to accept an overt double standard: allow a questionable idea to be criticized
if it is held by those in a position of power -- Christian creationism -- for example, but not if it is held by
those whom the powerful oppress -- Zuni creationism, for example. Familiar as this stratagem has recently
become, how can it possibly appeal to anyone with the slightest degree of intellectual integrity; and how can
it fail to seem anything other than deeply offensive to the progressive sensibilities whose cause it is supposed
to further? As for the second question, regarding widespread acceptance, the short answer is that questions
about truth, meaning and objectivity are among the most difficult and thorny questions that philosophy
confronts and so are very easily mishandled. A longer answer would involve explaining why analytic
philosophy, the dominant tradition of philosophy in the English-speaking world, wasn't able to exert a more
effective corrective influence. After all, analytic philosophy is primarily known for its detailed and subtle
discussion of concepts in the philosophy of language and the theory of knowledge, the very concepts that
postmodernism so badly misunderstands. Isn't it reasonable to expect it to have had a greater impact on the
philosophical explorations of its intellectual neighbors? And if it hasn't, can that be because its reputation for
insularity is at least partly deserved? Because philosophy concerns the most general categories of knowledge,
categories that apply to any compartment of inquiry, it is inevitable that other disciplines will reflect on
philosophical problems and develop philosophical positions. Analytic philosophy has a special responsibility
to ensure that its insights on matters of broad intellectual interest are available widely, to more than a narrow
class of insiders. Whatever the correct explanation for the current malaise, Alan Sokal's hoax has served as a
flashpoint for what has been a gathering storm of protest against the collapse in standards of scholarship and
intellectual responsibility that vast sectors of the humanities and social sciences are currently afflicted with.
Significantly, some of the most biting commentary has come from distinguished voices on the left, showing
that when it comes to transgressions as basic as these, political alliances afford no protection. Anyone still
inclined to doubt the seriousness of the problem has only to read Sokal's parody.
FRAMEWORK 2NC 4/5
Cynicism towards politics paralyzes change and destroys authentic resistance because people refuse the recognition
of actual change.
Grossberg, 92 (Lawrence, Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
“We Gotta Get Out of this Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture”, pages 274-277)
The popularization of the new conservatism depends on this recognition and on its ability to articulate this cynicism into a
particular political relationship. Its various agencies use a variety of strategies, not to negate or challenge this cynicism, but to
articulate its effects. Popular conservative intellectuals constantly remind 'people of how bad things are and blame it all on the
relativism of postmodern cynicism. At the same time, they speak the language of that cynicism.21 Popular media (from the spate
of recent Vietnam movies to the various political exposes) reinscribe the irrationality, not only of our political system, but of the
world in which it must operate. The only response to such a condition is to reduce one's claims to understand and intervene
intelligently, and retreat into one's commitments. As politics becomes freed from the constraints of meaning and reconstructed
within the terms of contemporary cynicism, as people increasingly accept their ignorance and the affective nature of political
choices, their commitments carry little or no responsibility with them. But the cynicism never stands alone within the new
conservative discourse: it is always inflected by an ironic glance: Reagan's "most effective public gesture is the humorous shrug
of incomprehension, a mannerism that appears strangely genuine. To see him do it is to laugh with him, to share his amused
befuddlement at the mess the world's in." This ironic cynicism not only divides the population into two groups on either side of the
frontier. It also divides that population articulated to the frontier into two groups, each with a different relation to the frontier: those
who actively oppose its logic even as they perhaps unknowingly live in it, and those who surrender to that logic. The first group
actively participates in conservative political struggles (embodied in Operation Rescue, for example), believing not only in their own affective commitment to
specific gut issues, but in the ideological correctness of their positions. Their passion is directed against their own place within the frontier as much as it is against
the mythic enemies which the new conservatism has created. The second group is unable or unwilling to struggle against their place in the frontier. They may
find themselves caught in the discursive trap of the new conservative articulation of the frontier. This involves a reversal by which social concern is translated into
selfishness and special interests. For example, the press release for a recent ad campaign with the slogan "Do Life" describes itself as reflecting "the
transformation in outlook from the 'me' generation to the 'we' generation ... 'Do Life' means don't waste your life. It's about self actualization" (emphasis added).
23 This reversal enables one fan of Beauty and the Beast, a theologian who defends the show as a catalyst of change, to justify her own inactivity: "I might be
able to help 15 people ... But if the show survives, there will be millions who are inspired to go out and help others. ,,24 What is lacking here is any sense of
political action aimed at changing the world. This logic of reversal foregrounds the futility of struggle as a tactic for one of the most explicit social and political
struggles in recent history. The proliferation of statements suggesting, not only that the various movements of the 1960s and 1970s
are dead but that their struggles were largely ineffective, is part of a larger rhetoric of helplessness which entails that control has
always to be surrendered to someone else, whether corporate technology or the new conservatives. At the same time, it ignores
and even hides the fact that these agents are actively struggling to gain control (e. g., the often noted irony in the active struggles of
antifeminists who defend the claim that a woman's place is in the home while they are organizing and campaigning). Here activity is used in the name of
passivity, and passivity is constructed as a new form of activism. Surely it is not coincidental that a powerfully visible rhetoric of the end of feminism has appeared
alongside the explosion of struggles over abortion. Perhaps the most pernicious example of this ironic reversal is the rhetoric which locates
people's freedom in their ability to choose to reject change. No where has this logic been more actively deployed than in various attempts to
rearticulate the trajectory of the women's movements. Good Housekeeping describes "the leading edge of America's newest life-style" as belonging to the
woman who "is part of the powerful social movement that researchers call 'neotraditionalism.' ,,25 The campaign suggests that it is a woman's right to choose to
ignore the arguments and gains of the feminist movement. Marketer Daniel Yankelovich says, "It's a combination of the best parts of the '40s and '50s-security,
safety and family values with the '60s and '70s emphasis on personal freedom of choice. It's the first major change in the basic way we want to organize our
society since the '60s. ,,26 Its best images are perhaps Vanna White and Tammy Faye Bakker. Leslie Savan comments: "Simply insisting that nothing has really
changed-divorce, abuse, drugs, etc. notwithstanding-does two things: It makes the traditional virtuous it must deserve its longevity. And it presents a solutioneternity is the ultimate security."n Despite their real political differences, the so-called new postfeminists in rock culture (from Sinead O'Connor to Madonna) can
be articulated into a similar logic of reversal. Not only do they offer a vision of authenticity as a marketable image, but their image of "becoming feminist" is often
defined by images or simple reversals of a countercultural traditionalism. Ultimately, the impact of this ironic reversal is that politics becomes an
act of investment in a position where one does not have to do anything, whatever one's own relation is to what is happening,
however one might feel about events. This goes beyond image politics, for the logic of images is itself reversed in the new conservatism. The current
power of images in politics is not an end in itself. Mood politics is not image politics, for the latter privatizes politics, while the former takes politics out of the realm
of public debate. One can debate about images, but how can you debate moods? Scandal replaces debates, and emotional confessions become the dominant
form of political self-definition. Why, after all, do scandals arise in certain places and not others? And why, when they have appeared, is it so unpredictable
whether they will have any consequences? In the end, this is less important than the fact that public life itself is increasingly constituted as the space of scandal,
and scandal is the ambiguous machinery by which stars are made, remade and only rarely undone.
FRAMEWORK 2NC 5/5
The aff is a pointless cultural criticism – they only affect the people in this room – vote neg
to prevent debate from becoming an underground irrelevancy
Mann 95 (Paul, Pomona College, Dept. of English, Post-Modern Culture 5(3), http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.595/mann.595)JFS
Apocalyptic cults and youth gangs, garage bands and wolfpacks, *colleges* and phalansteries, espionage
network trading in vaporous facts and networks of home shoppers for illicit goods; monastic, penological,
mutant-biomorphic, and anarcho-terrorist cells; renegade churches, dwarf communities, no-risk survivalist
enclaves, unfunded quasi-scientific research units, paranoid think tanks, unregistered political parties, subemployed workers councils, endo-exile colonies, glossolaliac fanclubs, acned anorexic primal hordes;
zombie revenants, neo-fakirs, defrocked priests and detoxing prophets, psychedelic snake-oil shills,
masseurs of undiagnosed symptoms, bitter excommunicants, faceless narcissists, ideological drag
queens,
mystical technophiles, sub-entrepreneurial dealers, derivative *derivistes*, tireless archivists of phantom
conspiracies, alien abductees, dupe attendants, tardy primitives, vermin of abandoned factories, hermits,
cranks, opportunists, users, connections, outriders, outpatients, wannabes, hackers, thieves, squatters,
parasites, saboteurs; wings, wards, warehouses, arcades, hells, hives, dens, burrows, lofts, flocks, swarms,
viruses, tribes, movements, groupuscules, cenacles, isms, and the endlessly multiplied hybridization of
variant combinations of all these, and more... Why this stupid fascination with stupid undergrounds?
What is it about these throwaway fanzines and unreadable rants, these neo-tattoos and
recycled
apocalypses, this mountainous accumulation of declassified factoids, these bloody smears, this incredible
noise? Why wade through these piles of nano-shit? Why submit oneself to these hysterical purveyors, these
hypertheories and walls of sound? Why insist on picking this particular species of nit? Why abject
criticism, whose putative task was once to preserve the best that has been known and thought, by guilty
association with so fatuous, banal, idiotic, untenable a class of cultural objects? Why not decline, not so
politely, to participate in the tiny spectacle of aging intellectuals dressing in black to prowl festering
galleries and clubs where, sometime before dawn, they will encounter the contemptuous gaze of their own
children, and almost manage to elide that event when they finally produce their bilious reports, their chunks
of cultural criticism? No excuse, no justification: all one can put forward is an unendurable habit of
attention, a meager fascination, no more or less commanding than that hypnosis one enters in the face of
television; a rut that has always led downward and in the end always found itself stuck on the surface; a kind
of drivenness, if not a drive; a *critique*, if you can forgive such a word, that has never located any
cultural object whose poverty failed to reflect its own; a rage to find some point at which criticism would
come to an end, and that only intensified as that end-point receded and shrunk to the size of an ideal. [2]
Then if one must persist in investigating these epi-epiphenomena, perhaps compelled by some critical
fashion (no doubt already out of vogue), perhaps merely out of an interminable immaturity, why not refer
the stupid underground back to all the old undergrounds, back to the most familiar histories? Why not
cast it as nothing more than another and another and another stillborn incarnation of an avant-garde that
wallows in but doesn't quite believe its own obituaries, and that one has already wasted years
considering?
Why not just settle for mapping it according to the old topography of center and margin, or some other
arthritic dichotomy that, for all their alleged postness, the discourses we are about to breach always manage
to drag along behind them? Why not simply accede to the mock-heroic rhetoric of cultural opposition
(subversion, resistance, etc.) that, after a generation of deconstructions, we still don't have the strength
to shake; or to the nouveau rhetoric of multiplicity (plurality, diversity, etc.), as if all one needed was to add
a few more disparate topic headings to break the hold of a One that, in truth, one still manages to project in
the very act of superceding it? Nothing will prevent us—indeed, nothing can save us--from ransoming
ourselves again and again to the exhausted mastery of these arrangements; nothing will keep us from
orienting ourselves toward every difference by means of the most tattered maps. But at the same time we
must entertain--doubtless the right word--the sheer possibility that what we encounter here is not just
one more margin or one more avant-garde, however impossible it will be to avoid all the orders and terms
attendant upon those venerable and ruined cultural edifices. We must remain open to the possibility that this
stupid underground poses all the old questions but a few more as well, that it might suggest another set of
cultural arrangements, other topographies and other mappings, however unlikely that might be. In any case,
whatever vicarious attractions the stupid underground offers the bored intellectual groping for a way to
heat up his rhetoric, if not his thought, whatever else we might encounter here, it is important to insist
that you will not find these maps laid out for your inspection, as if on an intellectual sale table, and rated
for accuracy and charm. No claim is being staked here; no one is being championed, no one offered up on
the critical auction block as the other of the month. There is nothing here to
Apolitical theorizing exists only in the ivory tower and fails to persuade anyone or
change anything
Lepgold and Nincic 1
(Joesph, associate professor of Government at Georgetown and Miroslav professor of Poly Sci at UCDavis, Beyond the Ivory Tower: International Relations Theory and the Issue of Policy Relevance pg. 2-4)JFS
For many reasons, connections between scholarly ideas and policymakers’ thinking in international
relations are less common today, and the gap may grow unless we rethink carefully our approach to policy
relevance. Deep, often ritualized rivalry among theoretical schools makes it unlikely that fu- ture officials will leave their university
training in this subject with a clear, well-formed worldview. Such intellectual competition, of course, could be stimulating
and useful, especially if it led officials to question their basic causal assumptions or consider rival explanations of the cases they face.
More commonly, officials seem to remember the repetitive, often strident theo- retical debates as
unproductive and tiresome. Not only is much international relations scholarship tedious, in their view; it is often technically
quite dif- ficult. Partly for this reason, much of it is so substantively arid that even many scholarly specialists avoid trying to penetrate it.
From a practitioner’s perspective, it often seems as if university scholars are increasingly “with- drawing . . . behind a
curtain of theory and models” that only insiders can penetrate. In addition, for many observers, the end of the cold war
has made it harder to find models providing a compelling link between the international environment and manipulable policy
instruments. One exception to this growing split between scholars of international relations and policymakers is the work on the
inter-democratic peace, which we discuss in chapter 5. This work, as we will show, has deeply influenced many
contemporary policymakers. But, for the most part, it remains the exception; the profes- sional gap between academics and
practitioners has widened in recent years. Many scholars no longer try to reach beyond the Ivory Tower, and
officials seem increasingly content to ignore it. According to much conventional wisdom, this situation is unsurprising.
International relations scholars and practitioners have different professional priorities and reflect different cultures. Not only is it
often assumed that good theory must sacrifice policy relevance; but also those seeking guidance in diagnosing
policy situations and making policy choices, it is often thought, must look for help in places other than contemporary
social science research. This book challenges much of the conventional wisdom on these issues. It argues that IR theorists and
foreign policy practitioners have important needs in common as well as needs that are different. Social science theory seeks to
identify and explain the significant regularities in human affairs. Because people’s ability to process information is limited,
they must perceive the world selectively in order to operate effectively in it; constructing and using theories in a self-conscious way
helps to inject some rigor into these processes.6 For these reasons, both theorists and practitioners seek a clear and powerful
understanding of cause and effect about policy issues, in order to help them diagnose situations, define the range of
possibilities they con- front, and evaluate the likely consequences of given courses of action. At the same time, a deep and continuing
concern for the substance and stakes involved in real-world issues can help prevent theorists’ research agendas
from becoming arid or trivial. This book therefore has two objectives: to elaborate and justify the reasoning that leads to these
conclusions, and to illustrate how scholarship on international relations and foreign policy can be useful beyond the Ivory Tower.
Theory can impact policymakers, but only if it focuses on practical policy issues
Lepgold and Nincic 1
(Joesph, associate professor of Government at Georgetown and Miroslav professor of Poly Sci at UCDavis, Beyond the Ivory Tower: International Relations Theory and the Issue of Policy Relevance pg. 11-12)JFS
In some areas, foreign-policymakers have been deeply influenced by the theoretical literature in International
Relations. Aside from the work the work on the interdemocratic peace discussed in chapter 5, and, to a lesser extent, some of the
literature on international institutions examined in chap- ter 6, strategic studies has been most important in this
respect. Such concepts as “escalation dominance” as well as the more general notion of the pris- oners’ dilemma were
conceived by academics but have become part of the daily vocabulary of many practitioners. Work on
deterrence, nuclear prolif- eration, arms control, and the use of coercive force has influenced a host of U.S.
weapons-acquisition and force-management issues.24 At one time, such an impact on official thinking
was not unusual. Concerns about effective public policy have traditionally been part of the academic
study of politics; the American Political Science Association (APSA), for example, was founded in part to “bring political science
to a position of authority as regards practical politics.”25 By moving professional scholars away from externallydriven issues, the professionalization of political science has molded the kind of work by which they earn
professional prestige, making them less able or willing to communicate with policymakers. From the
perspective of many officials, SIR scholars are comfortable on their side of the gap, free of any obligation to address
practical issues.26 As a result, the public intellectuals who address current foreign policy issues now tend to have few or weak
connections to universities, while the prominent scholars in this field tend to write almost exclusively for their own colleagues.
FRAMEWORK - GROUND
Ground – A performance aff will always win that the principles of their advocacy are
good in the abstract – we can only debate the merits of their framework if they
defend the specific consequences of political implementation
Michael Ignatieff, Carr professor of human rights at Harvard, 2004 Lesser Evils p. 20-1
As for moral perfectionism, this would be the doctrine that a liberal state should never have
truck with dubious moral means and should spare its officials the hazard of having to decide
between lesser and greater evils. A moral perfectionist position also holds that states can spare
their officials this hazard simply by adhering to the universal moral standards set out in human
rights conventions and the laws of war. There are two problems with a perfectionist stance, leaving
aside the question of whether it is realistic. The first is that articulating nonrevocable,
nonderogable moral standards is relatively easy. The problem is deciding how to apply them
in specific cases. What is the line between interrogation and torture, between targeted killing and
unlawful assassination, between preemption and aggression? Even when legal and moral
distinctions between these are clear in the abstract, abstractions are less than helpful when
political leaders have to choose between them in practice. Furthermore, the problem with
perfectionist standards is that they contradict each other. The same person who shudders,
rightly, at the prospect of torturing a suspect might be prepared to kill the same suspect in a
preemptive attack on a terrorist base. Equally, the perfectionist commitment to the right to life
might preclude such attacks altogether and restrict our response to judicial pursuit of offenders
through process of law. Judicial responses to the problem of terror have their place, but they are no
substitute for military operations when terrorists possess bases, training camps, and heavy
weapons. To stick to a perfectionist commitment to the right to life when under terrorist attack
might achieve moral consistency at the price of leaving us defenseless in the face of
evildoers. Security, moreover, is a human right, and thus respect for one right might lead us to
betray another.
Without predictable ground debate becomes meaningless and produces political
strategy that is wedded to violence and fails to achieve productive change.
Ruth Lessl Shively, Assoc Prof Polisci at Texas A&M, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 182-3
The point may seem trite, as surely the ambiguists would agree that basic terms must be shared
before they can be resisted and problematized. In fact, they are often very candid about this
seeming paradox in their approach: the paradoxical or "parasitic" need of the subversive for an
order to subvert. But admitting the paradox is not helpful if, as usually happens here, its
implications are ignored; or if the only implication drawn is that order or harmony is an unhappy
fixture of human life. For what the paradox should tell us is that some kinds of harmonies or
orders are, in fact, good for resistance; and some ought to be fully supported. As such, it should
counsel against the kind of careless rhetoric that lumps all orders or harmonies together as
arbitrary and inhumane. Clearly some basic accord about the terms of contest is a necessary
ground for all further contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged
ambiguists, they cannot admit to these implications, for to open the door to some agreements or
reasons as good and some orders as helpful or necessary, is to open the door to some sort of
rationalism. Perhaps they might just continue to insist that this initial condition is ironic, but that
the irony should not stand in the way of the real business of subversion.Yet difficulties remain. For
agreement is not simply the initial condition, but the continuing ground, for contest. If we
are to successfully communicate our disagreements, we cannot simply agree on basic terms
and then proceed to debate without attention to further agreements. For debate and contest are
forms of dialogue: that is, they are activities premised on the building of progressive
agreements. Imagine, for instance, that two people are having an argument about the issue of gun
control. As noted earlier, in any argument, certain initial agreements will be needed just to begin
the discussion. At the very least, the two discussants must agree on basic terms: for example, they
must have some shared sense of what gun control is about; what is at issue in arguing about it;
what facts are being contested, and so on. They must also agree—and they do so simply by
entering into debate—that they will not use violence or threats in making their cases and that
they are willing to listen to, and to be persuaded by, good arguments. Such agreements are
simply implicit in the act of argumentation.
FRAMEWORK - EDUCATION
Topical Education – By manipulating the topic to access their political project they
skirt debate about the implementation of policies by the government. Their education
is distrusting of institutional study and pragmatic reform. Even if their intentions are
noble, their message results in fascist totalitarianism
Martin Lewis, Assistant Professor at George Washington, 1992 Green Delusions p. 258
A majority of those born between 1960 and 1980 seem to tend toward cynicism, and we can
thus hardly expect them to be converted en masse to radical doctrines of social and environmental
salvation by a few committed thinkers. It is actually possible that a radical education may make
them even more cynical than they already are. While their professors may find the extreme
relativism of subversive postmodernism bracingly liberating, many of today's students may
embrace only the new creed's rejection of the past. Stripped of leftist social concerns, radical
postmodernism's contempt for established social and political philosophy—indeed, its
contempt for liberalism—may well lead to right-wing totalitarianism. When cynical, rightleaning students are taught that democracy is a sham and that all meaning derives from
power, they are being schooled in fascism, regardless of their instructors' intentions.
According to sociologist Jeffrey Goldfarb (1991), cynicism is the hallmark—and main defect—of the
current age. He persuasively argues that cynicism's roots lie in failed left- and right-wing
ideologies—systems of thought that deductively connect "a simple rationalized absolute truth ... to
a totalized set of political actions and policies" (1991:82). Although most eco-radicals are anything
but cynical when they imagine a "green future," they do take a cynical turn when contemplating the
present political order. The dual cynical-ideological mode represents nothing less than the
death of liberalism and of reform. Its dangers are eloquently spelled out by Goldfarb (1991:9):
"When one thinks ideologically and acts ideologically, opponents become enemies to be
vanquished, political compromise becomes a kind of immorality, and constitutional
refinements become inconvenient niceties.
This argument is an independent reason to vote negative
Ruth Lessl Shively, Assoc Prof Polisci at Texas A&M, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 186
To sum up the argument thus far, the ambiguists cannot support political contest unless they
are willing to say "no" to—or to bring closure to—some activities, and unless they are willing
to say "yes" to the rational rules of persuasion. Like all other democratic theorists, they must
make some foundational assumptions about the goodness of self-determination, the
preferability of reasons over force, and the evils of tyranny, among other things. All democratic
visions presuppose that politics is about rational persuasion. Thus, talk of resisting or subverting
all orders or all rational foundations is incoherent. At the very least, the foundations of rational
persuasion must be rigidly upheld. It will not do, then, to say we simply need more contest or
more "politics" and less rationality or foundationalism. It will not do to invoke contest as a kind
of talisman against the need to make difficult judgments about good and bad, healthy and
unhealthy, political actions. For inasmuch as the conditions necessary to political contest
require constant support and protection and inasmuch as we require constant education
and improvement in upholding and effectively applying them, the conditions necessary to
political contest require these judgments.
FRAMEWORK – ANTIPOLITICS DISAD 1/3
They embrace anti-politics – this dooms their project, creates atrocity, and cedes politics to
the Right.
Carl Boggs, Professor of Social Sciences at National University in Los Angeles, 1997 (“The great retreat: Decline of the
public sphere in late twentieth-century America,” Theory and Society, Volume 26, Number 6, December, Available Online to
Subscribing Institutions via SpringerLink, p. 773-774)
The decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America poses a series of great dilemmas and
challenges. Many ideological currents scrutinized here—localism, metaphysics, spontaneism, postmodernism, Deep Ecology—intersect with and reinforce each other. While these currents have deep origins
in popular movements of the 1960s and 1970s, they remain very much alive in the 1990s. Despite their
different outlooks and trajectories, they all share one thing in common: a depoliticized expression of
struggles to combat and overcome alienation. [end page 773] The false sense of empowerment that comes
with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of public engagement, an erosion of citizenship
and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for social change. As this ideological quagmire
worsens, urgent problems that are destroying the fabric of American society will go unsolved—perhaps
even unrecognized—only to fester more ominously into the future. And such problems (ecological crisis,
poverty, urban decay, spread of infectious diseases, technological displacement of workers) cannot be
understood outside the larger social and global context of internationalized markets, finance, and
communications. Paradoxically, the widespread retreat from politics, often inspired by localist sentiment,
comes at a time when agendas that ignore or sidestep these global realities will, more than ever, be
reduced to impotence. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today, Wolin refers to the increasing
sublimation and dilution of politics, as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward
private ones. By diluting the life of common involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source
of public ideals and visions.74 In the meantime, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The
unyielding truth is that, even as the ethos of anti-politics becomes more compelling and even
fashionable in the United States, it is the vagaries of political power that will continue to decide the fate
of human societies. This last point demands further elaboration. The shrinkage of politics hardly means
that corporate colonization will be less of a reality, that social hierarchies will somehow disappear, or
that gigantic state and military structures will lose their hold over people's lives. Far from it: the space
abdicated by a broad citizenry, well-informed and ready to participate at many levels, can in fact be
filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites—an already familiar dynamic in many lesser-developed
countries. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world, not very far removed from the rampant
individualism, social Darwinism, and civic violence that have been so much a part of the American
landscape, could be the prelude to a powerful Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and
atomized retreat. In this way the eclipse of politics might set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more
virulent guise—or it might help further rationalize the existing power structure. In either case, the
state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal, collective
interests that had vanished from civil society.75
FRAMEWORK – ANTIPOLITICS DISAD 2/3
We control external impacts – abandoning politics causes war, slavery, and
authoritarianism
Boggs 2k (CAROL BOGGS, PF POLITICAL SCIENCE – SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 00, THE END OF POLITICS, 250-1)
But it is a very deceptive and misleading minimalism.
While Oakeshott debunks political mechanisms and rational planning, as
either useless or dangerous, the actually existing power structure-replete with its own centralized state apparatus,
institutional hierarchies, conscious designs, and indeed, rational plans-remains fully intact, insulated from the minimalist
critique. In other words, ideologies and plans are perfectly acceptable for elites who preside over established governing systems, but not for ordinary
citizens or groups anxious to challenge the status quo. Such one-sided minimalism gives carte blanche to elites who naturally desire
as much space to maneuver as possible. The flight from “abstract principles” rules out ethical attacks on injustices that may
pervade the status quo (slavery or imperialist wars, for example) insofar as those injustices might be seen as too
deeply embedded in the social and institutional matrix of the time to be the target of oppositional political action. If
politics is reduced to nothing other than a process of everyday muddling-through, then people are condemned to
accept the harsh realities of an exploitative and authoritarian system, with no choice but to yield to the dictates of
“conventional wisdom”. Systematic attempts to ameliorate oppressive conditions would, in Oakeshott’s view, turn into
a political nightmare. A belief that totalitarianism might results from extreme attempts to put society in order is one thing; to argue that all politicized
efforts to change the world are necessary doomed either to impotence or totalitarianism requires a completely different (and indefensible) set of premises.
Oakeshott’s minimalism poses yet another, but still related, range of problems: the shrinkage of politics hardly suggests that corporate
colonization, social hierarchies, or centralized state and military institutions will magically disappear from people’s
lives. Far from it: the public space vacated by ordinary citizens, well informed and ready to fight for their interests,
simply gives elites more room to consolidate their own power and privilege. Beyond that, the fragmentation and
chaos of a Hobbesian civil society, not too far removed from the excessive individualism, social Darwinism and urban
violence of the American landscape could open the door to a modern Leviathan intent on restoring order and unity in the
face of social disintegration. Viewed in this light, the contemporary drift towards antipolitics might set the stage for a
reassertion of politics in more authoritarian and reactionary guise-or it could simply end up reinforcing the dominant state-corporate
system. In either case, the state would probably become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal, collective interests that had
vanished from civil society.16 And either outcome would run counter to the facile antirationalism of Oakeshott’s Burkean muddling-through theories.
FRAMEWORK – ANTIPOLITICS DISAD 3/3
Moving away from anti-politics is vital to check extinction
Small ‘6
(Jonathan, former Americorps VISTA for the Human Services Coalition, “Moving Forward,” The Journal for Civic Commitment, Spring,
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/Journal/Issue7/Small.jsp)
What will be the challenges of the new millennium? And how should we equip young people to face these challenges? While we cannot be sure of the exact nature of the challenges,
we can say unequivocally that humankind will face them together. If the end of the twentieth century marked the triumph of the capitalists, individualism, and personal responsibility ,
the new century will present challenges that require collective action , unity, and enlightened self-interest. Confronting global
warming, depleted natural resources, global super viruses, global crime syndicates, and multinational corporations with no
conscience and no accountability will require cooperation, openness, honesty, compromise, and most of all solidarity – ideals not exactly cultivated in the
twentieth century. We can no longer suffer to see life through the tiny lens of our own existence. Never in the history of the world has our collective fate been so
intricately interwoven. Our very existence depends upon our ability to adapt to this new paradigm, to envision a more
cohesive society. With humankind’s next great challenge comes also great opportunity. Ironically, modern individualism backed us into a corner. We
have two choices, work together in solidarity or perish together in alienation. Unlike any other crisis before, the noose is truly around
the neck of the whole world at once. Global super viruses will ravage rich and poor alike, developed and developing nations, white and black, woman, man, and
child. Global warming and damage to the environment will affect climate change and destroy ecosystems across the globe. Air pollution will force gas masks on
our faces, our depleted atmosphere will make a predator of the sun, and chemicals will invade and corrupt our water supplies. Every single day we are presented
the opportunity to change our current course, to survive modernity in a manner befitting our better nature. Through zealous cooperation and radical
solidarity we can alter the course of human events. Regarding the practical matter of equipping young people to face the challenges of a global,
interconnected world, we need to teach cooperation, community, solidarity, balance and tolerance in schools. We need to take a holistic approach to education.
Standardized test scores alone will not begin to prepare young people for the world they will inherit. The three staples of traditional education (reading, writing, and arithmetic) need to
be supplemented by three cornerstones of a modern education, exposure, exposure, and more exposure. How can we teach solidarity? How can we teach community in the age of
rugged individualism? How can we counterbalance crass commercialism and materialism? How can we impart the true meaning of power? These are the educational challenges
we face in the new century. It will require a radical transformation of our conception of education . We’ll need to trust a bit more, control a bit less, and
put our faith in the potential of youth to make sense of their world. In addition to a declaration of the gauntlet set before educators in the twenty-first century, this paper is a proposal and
a case study of sorts toward a new paradigm of social justice and civic engagement education. Unfortunately, the current pedagogical climate of public K-12 education does not lend
itself well to an exploratory study and trial of holistic education. Consequently, this proposal and case study targets a higher education model. Specifically, we will look at some
possibilities for a large community college in an urban setting with a diverse student body. Our guides through this process are specifically identified by the journal Equity and
Excellence in Education. The dynamic interplay between ideas of social justice, civic
engagement, and service learning in education will be the lantern in the
dark cave of uncertainty. As such, a simple and straightforward explanation of the three terms is helpful to direct this inquiry. Before we look at a proposal and case study
and the possible consequences contained therein, this paper will draw out a clear understanding of how we should characterize these ubiquitous terms and how their relationship to
each other affects our study. Social Justice, Civic Engagement, Service Learning and Other Commie Crap Social justice is often ascribed long, complicated, and convoluted definitions.
In fact, one could fill a good-sized library with treatises on this subject alone. Here we do not wish to belabor the issue or argue over fine points. For our purposes, it will suffice to have a
general characterization of the term, focusing instead on the dynamics of its interaction with civic engagement and service learning. Social justice refers quite simply to a community
vision and a community conscience that values inclusion, fairness, tolerance, and equality. The idea of social justice in America has been around since the Revolution and is intimately
linked to the idea of a social contract. The Declaration of Independence is the best example of the prominence of social contract theory in the US. It states quite emphatically that the
government has a contract with its citizens, from which we get the famous lines about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Social contract theory and specifically the Declaration of
Independence are concrete expressions of the spirit of social justice. Similar clamor has been made over the appropriate definitions of civic engagement and service learning,
respectively. Once again, let’s not get bogged down on subtleties. Civic engagement is a measure or degree of the interest and/or involvement an individual and a community
demonstrate around community issues. There is a longstanding dispute over how to properly quantify civic engagement. Some will say that today’s youth are less involved politically
and hence demonstrate a lower degree of civic engagement. Others cite high volunteer rates among the youth and claim it demonstrates a high exhibition of civic engagement. And
there are about a hundred other theories put forward on the subject of civic engagement and today’s youth. But one thing is for sure; today’s
youth no longer see
government and politics as an effective or valuable tool for affecting positive change in the world. Instead of criticizing this
judgment, perhaps we should come to sympathize and even admire it. Author Kurt Vonnegut said, “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be
done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president.” Maybe the youth’s rejection of American politics isn’t a shortcoming but rather a rational and appropriate response to their
experience. Consequently, the term civic engagement takes on new meaning for us today. In order to foster fundamental change on the systemic level, which we have already said is
necessary for our survival in the twenty-first century, we need to fundamentally change our systems. Therefore, part
of our challenge becomes convincing the
youth that these systems, and by systems we mean government and commerce, have the potential for positive change. Civic
engagement consequently takes on a more specific and political meaning in this context. Service learning is a methodology and a tool for teaching social justice, encouraging civic
engagement, and deepening practical understanding of a subject. Since it is a relatively new field, at least in the structured sense, service learning is only beginning to define itself.
Through service learning students learn by experiencing things firsthand and by exposing themselves to new points of view. Instead of merely reading about government, for instance, a
student might experience it by working in a legislative office. Rather than just studying global warming out of a textbook, a student might volunteer time at an environmental group. If
service learning develops and evolves into a discipline with the honest goal of making better citizens, teaching social justice, encouraging civic engagement, and most importantly,
exposing students to different and alternative experiences, it could be a major feature of a modern education. Service learning is the natural counterbalance to our current overemphasis
on standardized testing. Social justice, civic engagement, and service learning are caught in a symbiotic cycle. The more we have of one of them; the more we have of all of them.
However, until we get momentum behind them, we are stalled. Service learning may be our best chance to jumpstart our democracy. In the rest of this paper, we will look at the
beginning stages of a project that seeks to do just that.
FRAMEWORK – EXTRA / CEDE THE POLITICAL
Exposing the flaws of the system does nothing – real change must start with the state
Johnston 5 (Adrian, Dept of Philosophy, New Mexico University, International Journal of Zizek Studies,
Vol. 1)JFS
However, the absence of this type of Lacan-underwritten argument in Žižek’s socio- political thought indicates something important.
Following Lacan, Žižek describes instances of the tactic of “lying in the guise of truth” and points to latecapitalist cynicism as a key example of this (here, cynically knowing the truth that “the System” is a vacuous sham
produces no real change in behavior, no decision to stop acting “as if” this big Other is something with
genuine substantiality).149 Žižek proclaims that, “the starting point of the critique of ideology has to be full
acknowledgement of the fact that it is easily possible to lie in the guise of truth.”150 Although the Lacanian
blurring of the boundary between theoretical thinking and practical action might very well be completely true,
accepting it as true inevitably risks strengthening a convenient alibi—the creation of this alibi has long been a fait
accompli for which Lacan alone could hardly be held responsible—for the worst sort of intellectualized avoidance of praxis.
Academics can convincingly reassure themselves that their inaccessible, abstract musings, the publications of
which are perused only by their tiny self-enclosed circle of “ivory tower” colleagues, aren’t irrelevant obscurities made
possible by tacit complicity with a certain socio-economic status quo, but, rather, radical political interventions that
promise sweeping changes of the predominating situation. If working on signifiers is the same as working in
the streets, then why dirty one’s hands bothering with the latter?
Debate empowers democratic decision-makers and preserves the process of democratic
deliberation.
Hill 8 (Sara, Afterschool Matters: Creative Programs That Connect Youth Development and Student Achievement, MEd from the Harvard Graduate School of
Education, and her EdD from Peabody College, Vanderbilt University)JFS
Civic education, or what we are calling democracy skill-building experiences, can help to empower youth to become
engaged learners, critical thinkers, and active citizens, as well as to be more academically prepared. At a time when
the civic participation of young people is becoming less frequent, out-of-school time and youth development programs,
such as an urban debate club, offers a possible model for using the out-of-school time hours to foster civic
participation, democracy skill building, and learning. This chapter describes an urban youth debate league and how
this type of program can be a part of the vision of a more informed and active youth citizenry. This chapter discusses
these questions: What might “democracy in action” look like in out-of-school time and youth development programs, and how
does it relate to learning? How does urban debate serves as an example of democracy skill building during the out-ofschool time hours? What are the program and policy supports needed to support a civic engagement and democracy skillbuilding role for out-of-school time hours? The chapter concludes with information important for youth program providers,
policy makers, and other individuals and organizations seeking to foster youth democracy development and participation
during out-of-school time hours. There is consensus that to preserve a democracy requires the development of
democratic citizens. How we think about the formation of democratic citizens depends on the specific conception of
democracy we hold, whether it is a set of skills, level of participation, civic discourse, community mobilization, or exercise of
certain rights and responsibilities (Galston, 2001). Educators and government leaders agree on the importance of
democratic education because of society’s reliance on the people to make deliberate choices about the direction of
their collective lives (Battistoni, 1985). Yet there is a range of terms used in the language to describe democratic
development or civic engagement.
FRAMEWORK – OTHER
Our interpretation solves – education through participation in policy debates is
essential to check manipulation of the government by powerful private interests
Donald S. Lutz, Professor of Polisci at Houston, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 36-7
The position argued here is that to the extent such a discussion between political theorists and
politicians does not take place we damage the prospects for marrying justice with power.
Since the hope of uniting justice with power was the reason for creating political philosophy in the
first place, political theorists need to pursue the dialogue as part of what justifies their
intellectual project. Politics is the realm of power. More specifically it is the realm where
force and violence are replaced by debates and discussion about how to implement power.
Without the meaningful injection of considerations of justice, politics tends to become
discourse by the most powerful about how to implement their preferred regime. Although
constitutionalism tends to be disparaged by contemporary political science, a constitution is the
very place where justice and power are married. Aristotle first taught us that a constitution must be
matched to the realities of the political system—the character, hopes, fears, needs and environment
of the people—which requires that constitutionalism be addressed by men and women practiced in
the art of the possible.2 Aristotle also taught us that a constitution (the politeia, or plan for a way of
life) should address the improvement of people toward the best life possible, which requires that
constitutionalism be addressed by political theorists who can hold out a vision of justice and
the means for advancing toward it. The conversation between politician and political
theorist stands at the center of their respective callings, and a constitution, even though it
reflects only a part of the reality of a political system, has a special status in this central
conversation. Although the focus of this chapter is on a direct conversation between theorist and
politician, there is an important, indirect aspect of the conversation that should not be
overlooked—classroom teaching. Too often the conversation between politician and
political theorist is described in terms of a direct one between philosophers and those
holding power. Overlooked is the central need to educate as many young people as possible.
Since it is difficult to predict who will, in fact, hold power, and because the various peoples who
take seriously the marriage of justice with power are overwhelmingly committed to a non-elitist,
broad involvement of the population, we should not overlook or minimize our importance as
teachers of the many. Political leaders drawn from a people who do not understand what is
at stake are neither inclined nor equipped to join the conversation. As we teach, we converse
with future leaders. Perhaps not everyone who teaches political theory has had the same
experience, but of the more than eight thousand students I have taught, I know of at least forty-nine
who later held a major elective office, and at least eighty more who have become important political
activists. This comes down to about five students per teaching year, and I could not have predicted
which five it would be. The indeterminate future of any given student is one argument against
directing our efforts at civic education toward the few, best students. A constitutional perspective
suggests not only that those in power rely upon support and direction from a broad segment of the
public, but also that reliance upon the successful civic education of the elite is not very effective, by
itself for marrying justice with power in the long run.
This argument provides a-prior reasons to vote negative. You must use your ballot to
ratify constraints on discourse to preserve a politically-enabling discussion
Ruth Lessl Shively, Assoc Prof Polisci at Texas A&M, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 179
To put this point another way, it turns out that to be open to all things is, in effect, to be open to
nothing. While the ambiguists have commendable reasons for wanting to avoid closure—to avoid
specifying what is not allowed or celebrated in their political vision—they need to say "no"
to some things in order to be open to things in general. They need to say "no" to certain
forms of contest, if only to protect contest in general. For if one is to be open to the principles of
democracy, for example, one must be dogmatically closed to the principles of fascism. If one would
embrace tolerance, one must rigidly reject intolerance. If one would support openness in political
speech and action, one must ban the acts of political intimidation, violence or recrimination that
squelch that openness. If one would expand deliberation and disruption, one must set up strict legal
protections around such activities. And if one would ensure that citizens have reason to engage
in political contest—that it has practical meaning and import for them—one must establish and
maintain the rules and regulations and laws that protect democracy. In short, openness
requires certain clear limits, rules, closure. And to make matters more complex, these
structures of openness cannot simply be put into place and forgotten. They need to be taught
to new generations of citizens, to be retaught and reenforced among the old, and as the political
world changes, to be shored up, rethought, adapted, and applied to new problems and new
situations. It will not do, then, to simply assume that these structures are permanently viable
and secure without significant work or justification on our part; nor will it do to talk about
resisting or subverting them. Indeed, they are such valuable and yet vulnerable goods that they
require the most unflagging and firm support that we can give them.
***DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM KRITIK***
DM SHELL 1/8
The failure of the Left
More than a decade and a half ago, the intellectual climate in Germany collapsed into
philosophy. German philosophers emphasized the transformative potential of ideas, and
sought to emancipate themselves and politics through transformations in consciousness.
It was in this intellectual climate that Karl Marx emerged. His central thesis was that this
philosophy of ideas not only distracted attention from the very real material conditions that
structure our existence, but also made progressive social change impossible.
The insights of Karl Marx are perhaps even more pertinent today, when the liberal
academy and intellectuals have begun to assert that discourse and performance are
avenues for confronting oppressive power structures. This trend of the Left today is
embodied in the affirmative’s politics, in their naïve and unproblematic endorsement of
discourse as they desperately struggle to believe that what they have done in this debate is
itself transformative and empowering.
Against this paralyzing politics, it is more important that ever to return to Marx, and to
emphasize his insight that transformations in consciousness can never lead to social
transformations—only struggling to transform the real material conditions that structure
social relations can bring about social change
Marx, 1845
(Karl, The German Ideology, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm)
This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, starting out from the material
production of life itself, and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this mode of production
(i.e. civil society in its various stages), as the basis of all history; and to show it in its action as State, to explain all the different
theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. etc. and trace their origins and growth from
that basis; by which means, of course, the whole thing can be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal action of
these various sides on one another). It has not, like the idealistic view of history, in every period to look for a category, but
remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of
ideas from material practice; and accordingly it comes to the conclusion that all forms and products of consciousness
cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into “self-consciousness” or transformation into “apparitions,”
“spectres,” “fancies,” etc. but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic
humbug; that not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory.
It shows that history does not end by being resolved into “self-consciousness as spirit of the spirit,” but that in it at each stage
there is found a material result: a sum of productive forces, an historically created relation of individuals to nature and to one
another, which is handed down to each generation from its predecessor; a mass of productive forces, capital funds and
conditions, which, on the one hand, is indeed modified by the new generation, but also on the other prescribes for it its conditions
of life and gives it a definite development, a special character. It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make
circumstances.
DM SHELL 2/8
Unfortunately, Marx’s insight has been all but discarded by the new left, with its emphasis
on being postmodern, postcolonial, poststructural, postMarxist, or post-anything. This
post-al politics of the contemporary left focuses on discourse and language at the expense of
analyzing real material conditions. This post-al logic is complicit with capitalism,
especially insofar as it obscures the operation of political economy and the material reality
of capitalism
Zavarzadeh, Dept English @ Syracuse, 1994
(Mas’ud, “The Stupidity that Consumption is Just as Productive as Production”, The Alternative
Orange, V 4, Fall/Winter, http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
The task of this text[1] is to lay bare the structure of assumptions and its relation to the workings of the regime of capital and wage-labor (what I have articulated
as “post-al logic"),[2] that unites all these seemingly different texts as they recirculate some of the most reactionary practices that are now masquerading as
“progressive” in the postmodern academy. Analyzing the post-al logic of the left is important because it not only reveals how the ludic
left is complicit with capitalism but, for the more immediate purposes of this text-of-response, it allows us to relate the local discussions in these texts
to global problems and to deal, in OR‐ 2's words, with the “encompassing philosophical issues”[3] that are so violently suppressed by the diversionist uses of
“detailism”[4] in these nine texts. Whether they regard themselves to be “new new left," “feminist," “neo-Marxist," or “anarchist," these
texts—in slightly different local idioms—do the ideological work of US capitalism by producing theories, pedagogies, arguments,
ironies, anecdotes, turns of phrases and jokes that obscure the laws of motion of capital. Post-al logic is marked above all by
its erasure of “production” as the determining force in organizing human societies and their institutions, and its insistence on
“consumption” and “distribution” as the driving force of the social. The argument of the post-al left (briefly) is that “labor," in
advanced industrial “democracies," is superseded by “information," and consequently “knowledge” (not class struggle over the
rate of surplus labor) has become the driving force of history. The task of the post-al left is to deconstruct the “metaphysics of labor” and
consequently to announce the end of socialism and with it the “outdatedness” of the praxis of abolishing private property (that is, congealed alienated labor) in
the post-al moment. Instead of abolishing private property, an enlightened radical democracy—which is to supplant socialism (as Laclau, Mouffe, Aronowitz,
Butler and others have advised)—should make property holders of each citizen. The post-al left rejects the global objective conditions of production for the local
subjective circumstances of consumption, and its master trope is what R-4 so clearly foregrounds: the (shopping) “mall"—the ultimate site of consumption “with
all the latest high-tech textwares” deployed to pleasure the “body." In fact, the post-al left has “invented” a whole new interdiscipline called “cultural studies" that
provides the new alibi for the regime of profit by shifting social analytics from “production” to “consumption." (On the political economy of "invention" in ludic
theory, see Transformation 2 on "The Invention of the Queer.") To prove its “progressiveness," the post-al left devotes most of its energies
(see the writings of John Fiske, Constance Penley, Michael Berube, [Henry /Robert] Louis Gates, Jr., Andrew Ross, Susan
Willis, Stuart Hall, Fredric Jameson), to demonstrate how “consumption” is in fact an act of production and resistance to
capitalism and a practice in which a utopian vision for a society of equality is performed! The shift from “production” to
“consumption” manifests itself in post-al left theories through the focus on “superstructural” cultural analysis and the
preoccupation not with the “political economy” ("base") but with “representation"—for instance, of race, sexuality,
environment, ethnicity, nationality and identity. This is, for example, one reason for R-2's ridiculing the “base” and “superstructure” analytical model of classical Marxism (Marx, A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) with an anecdote (the privileged mode of “argument” for the post-al left) that the base is really not all that “basic." To adhere to the base/superstructure model for
him/her is to be thrown into an “epistemological gulag”. For the post-al left a good society is, therefore, one in which, as R-4 puts it, class antagonism is bracketed and the “surplus value” is distributed more evenly
among men and women, whites and persons of color, the lesbian and the straight. It is not a society in which “surplus value"—the exploitative appropriation of the other's labor—is itself eliminated by revolutionary
praxis. The post-al left's good society is not one in which private ownership is obsolete and the social division of labor (class) is abolished, rather it is a society in which the fruit of exploitation of the proletariat (surplus
labor) is more evenly distributed and a near-equality of consumption is established. This distributionist/consumptionist theory that underwrites the economic interests of the (upper)middle classes is the foundation for
all the texts in this exchange and their pedagogies. A good pedagogy, in these texts, therefore is one in which power is distributed evenly in the classroom: a pedagogy that constructs a classroom of consensus not
antagonism (thus opposition to “politicizing the classroom” in OR‐ 1) and in which knowledge (concept) is turned into—through the process that OR‐ 3 calls “translation"—into “consumable” EXPERIENCES. The
more “intense” the experience, as the anecdotes of OR‐ 3 show, the more successful the pedagogy. In short, it is a pedagogy that removes the student from his/her position in the social relations of production and
places her/him in the personal relation of consumption: specifically, EXPERIENCE of/as the consumption of pleasure. The post-al logic obscures the laws of motion of capital by very specific assumptions and
moves—many of which are rehearsed in the texts here. I will discuss some of these, mention others in passing, and hint at several more. (I have provided a full account of all these moves in my “Post-ality” in
Transformation 1.) I begin by outlining the post-al assumptions that “democracy” is a never-ending, open "dialogue” and “conversation” among multicultural citizens; that the source of social inequities is “power”; that
a post-class hegemonic “coalition," as OR‐ 5 calls it—and not class struggle—is the dynamics of social change; that truth (as R-2 writes) is an “epistemological gulag"—a construct of power—and thus any form of
“ideology critique” that raises questions of “falsehood” and “truth” ("false consciousness") does so through a violent exclusion of the “other” truths by, in OR‐ 5 words, “staking sole legitimate claim” to the truth in
Given the injunction of the post-al logic against binaries (truth/falsehood), the project of “epistemology” is displaced in the
ludic academy by “rhetoric." The question, consequently, becomes not so much what is the “truth” of a practice but whether it
“works." (Rhetoric has always served as an alibi for pragmatism.) Therefore, R-4 is not interested in whether my practices are truthful but in what
question.
effects they might have: if College Literature publishes my texts would such an act (regardless of the “truth” of my texts) end up “cutting our funding?" he/she
asks. A post-al leftist like R-4, in short, “resists” the state only in so far as the state does not cut his/her “funding." Similarly, it is enough for a cynical pragmatist
like OR‐5 to conclude that my argument “has little prospect of effectual force” in order to disregard its truthfulness. The post-al dismantling of
“epistemology” and the erasure of the question of “truth," it must be pointed out, is undertaken to protect the economic interests
of the ruling class. If the “truth question” is made to seem outdated and an example of an orthodox binarism (R-2), any conclusions about the truth of ruling
class practices are excluded from the scene of social contestation as a violent logocentric (positivistic) totalization that disregards the “difference” of the ruling
class. This is why a defender of the ruling class such as R-2 sees an ideology critique aimed at unveiling false consciousness and the production of class
consciousness as a form of “epistemological spanking." It is this structure of assumptions that enables R-4 to answer my question, “What is wrong with being
dogmatic?" not in terms of its truth but by reference to its pragmatics (rhetoric): what is “wrong” with dogmatism, she/he says is that it is violent rhetoric ("textual
Chernobyl") and thus Stalinist. If I ask what is wrong with Stalinism, again (in terms of the logic of his/her text) I will not get a political or philosophical argument
but a tropological description.[5]
DM SHELL 3/8
And, Criticism itself can never generate revolutionary action—they get stuck in utopian
appeals or ethical gestures which mollifies us into avoiding practical, material action
Alea, Cuban Film Theorist, 1985 (Tomas Gutierrez, “The Viewer's Dialectic”, Jump Cut, No 30, March,
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC30folder/ViewersDialectic2.html)
There's a paralyzing effect in criticizing reality but exhausting all action in the making of the critique. Such a mental process
tends to consolidate the petit bourgeois mindset, in the sense that this thinking never generates practical action and does not
impel people to revolutionary action but rather to decadent conformity. In the best cases, it leads to a kind of blue stocking
reformism. In the final instance, it always bears within it an implicit accepting of social evil as something essentially immobile.
And thus such criticism promotes utopian solutions or individual consolation. Pondering evil and its eternal character leads to
resignation.[10]
"… all forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into selfconsciousness" or transformation into 'apparitions,' 'specters,' 'fancies,' etc. but only by the practical overthrow of the actual
social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug … not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of
religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory."[11]
And, their appeal to discourse negates the necessity of changing material conditions and is
merely a self-righteous attempt of intellectuals to center themselves as a kind of hero, as the
new subject of social change, over and opposed to those actually oppressed and
disenfranchised
Poitevin, PhD Cand Sociol @ UC-Davis, 2001(Rene Francisco, “The end of anti-capitalism as we knew it: Reflections on
postmodern Marxism”, TheSocialist Review, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3952/is_200101/ai_n8932891) The
Postmodern Intellectual as Revolutionary Subject, Or Capitalocentrism Strikes Back
Let us bracket for a moment the limitations of postmodern/post-Marxist epistemologies, together with their "provisional ontology,"
and focus instead on the merits of their "performative" politics. What is it exactly that has been/can be accomplished politically in
this new paradigm? I will point out two results from the postmodern/post-Marxist approach. First, in the postmodern/post-Marxist
world, it is the (white, middleclass) postmodern intellectual who gets constituted as the new "revolutionary subject."40 In a
political universe controlled by postmodern Marxist physics, where there are no longer objective mechanisms of oppression, but
what matters is "rather how... we wish to think of the complex interaction between these [sic] complexities,"" the postmodern
intellectual becomes the de facto new vanguard. In a political practice that denies the possibility of objective criteria in deciding
what constitutes social phenomena, postmodern intellectuals are the agency in charge of allocating legitimacy to political claims.
It is no longer the material conditions or the historical conjuncture of a particular situation that determine what is to be done, but
as JK. Gibson-Graham claim, it is "rather how we wish to think" about social problems that constitutes the defining criteria for
validity and politics - in a context where the "we" is constituted by a postmodern intelligentsia. Simply put, it is no longer up to the
working class, or queer people of color, or women, or the party intellectual, or any other subjectivity to decide which project is
legitimate enough to merit recognition - and commitment. In the postmodern Marxist world, the hypereducated postmodern
scholar is the one in charge of leading and defining which struggles count and how they will be fought. Simply put, the
postmodern intellectual is the new revolutionary subject. One of the most immediate and important tasks in the postmodern/postMarxist "revolution" is theory production. To paraphrase Lenin, there can be no revolutionary practice without postmodern theory.
The reason that postmodern theory is so important is because, as they themselves put it, postmodern Marxism constructs
political agency by offering a "range of subject positions that individuals may inhabit, constituting themselves as class subjects
with particular political energies and possibilities."42 This, of course, is no small task given that "the production of new
knowledges is a world-changing activity, one that repositions other knowledges and empowers new subjects, practices and
institutions."43 This privileging of postmodern-theory production, coupled with the unique role conferred on the postmodern
intellectual in a political process that privileges discourse at the expense of institutional analysis constitutes (in an ironic twist of
fate for people who are so explicitly anti-Leninist) nothing short of a new vanguardism on post-structuralist steroids.
DM SHELL 4/8
This appeal to performance renders the judge into a spectator position that creates
reactionary tendencies and makes social transformation impossible
Alea, Cuban Film Theorist, 1985(Tomas Gutierrez, “The Viewer's Dialectic”, Jump Cut, No 30, March,
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC30folder/ViewersDialectic2.html)
Some assume, with the greatest of good will, that if we substitute a revolutionary hero for Tarzan, we could get more people to adhere to the revolutionary cause. But they do not
understand that the very mechanism of identification or empathy with the hero, if he's made into an absolute, fixes the spectator at a point where
the only thing that person can distinguish is the "bad" and the "good." Of course, viewers naturally identify with the "good," without considering
what the character represents. So it's intrinsically reactionary because it doesn't work at the level of the viewers' consciousness. Far from it, it
keeps consciousness asleep. (Communication occurs on every possible level, and expressive resources are valid to the degree that they are
effective, no matter what channel they resort to. But what happens when identification is resorted to unconditionally is that it blocks the step to
rational communication. In this sense, its operation is reactionary, no matter if directed towards revolutionary goals.) And we should note that all
theater, both before and after Brecht, based itself to a certain degree on that resource. Bertolt Brecht, whom we could justifiably nickname "the scourge of the entrancers," most
systematically called our attention to identification, which has been used in Western theater since ancient Greece and which has limited extraordinarily spectacle's social function
(political and ideological). Brecht understood these issues as only a German Marxist might who experienced in his youth the entire process of the ever more acute class struggle
between the two world wars, with the subsequent rise of fascism. He set in opposition what he called a non-Aristotelian dramaturgy to traditional concepts, which he said were based on
identification. "We can define as Aristotelian dramaturgy (a definition from which we will derive a definition of non-Aristotelian dramaturgy) all drama which fits the definition of tragedy
contained in Aristotle's Poetics … From the social point of view, most interesting is the goal Aristotle attributes to tragedy: catharsis, emptying the spectator of all fear and pity, through
actions which provoke fear and pity, This emptying out is achieved by a very specific psychological act: viewers' emotional identification with dramatic characters, recreated by actors.
We'll call drama Aristotelian when it produces this identification, whether or not it uses the rules furnished by Aristotle to achieve that effect." Further on, he writes, "We must assume
that [catharsis] is based on some form of identification. Because a free and critical position among spectators, oriented toward purely earthly solutions for problems, could not rest on
the base of catharsis." (Brecht, Writing on Theatre) Perhaps it would be useful to define more precisely certain shadings among these concepts. Catharsis is equivalent to an
emptying, a discharge, so much so that identification leads to the idea of swept away, of involvement; that is, emotional discharge through
affective involvement. Brecht claimed — following Aristotle — that it's a matter of emptying the spectator of all fear and pity through actions that provoke fear and pity. On the
other hand, we can prove historically that this operation (like the counter fires ignited along the boundaries of a forest fire to halt it) has had and continues to have a primary function in
theater and in spectacle in general — regulating the limits within which certain passions can be presented and sometimes impending the "fire" in spectators from extending beyond the
spectacle itself. Thus we must be more cautious about openly proclaiming a kind of dry law that would assume to throw out of the theater a resource that has had such a sustained
acceptance.
DM SHELL 5/8
B) The impacts
Unrestrained capitalism leads to extinction
Harman, Editor of the Socialst Worker 1997(Chris, Economics of the madhouse, Pg 90-1) The system may have entered a new
phase. But the way it operates is not new. It is, in its essentials exactly the way described by Marx
The only sense in which Marx is “outdated” is not that the system is more rational than he thought but
rather his picture understates the destructiveness of the system. Capitalists do not merely battle against
each other on the markets. They also use the state to force rival capitalists to accept their dictates,
supplementing economic competition with displays of military prowess. American capitalism seeks to
persuade European and Japanese capitalism to accept its dictates by proving that it alone has the power to
wage war in the vital oil rich regions of the middle east; Iranian and Turkish capitalists rely on the help of
their states as they compete with each other for influence and contracts in the southern belt of the former
USSR; Turkish and Greek capitalists encourage a mini-arms race as each seeks to establish a dominate role
in the Balkan countries once controlled by Russia; Germany backs Croatia, the US backs Bosnian Muslims,
and Greece backs the Serbs to the horrific wars in the former Yugoslavia; the Russian military wage vicious
wars to hang onto vital oil pipelines through Chechnya and in the Tadjik republic bordering Afghanistan;
China the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam clash over control of the oil reserves thought to lie close to the
uninhabited islands in the China Sea; Israel tries to carve Egypt out from economic influence in the Arabian
peninsula. The result is that at any point in time there are half a dozen wars or civil wars using the most
horrendous forms for “conventional” weaponry in one part of the world or another. Alongside the slaughter
and devastation afflicting ever wider sections of humanity is another threat to us all which is hardly visible in
Marx’s time- the threat of destruction of the environment we depend on to survive. Marx and Engels were
fully aware that the mad drive to capital accumulation led to pollution, the poisoning of the ground and air,
the adulteration of foodstuffs and the spread of horrific epidemics. Engels wrote vividly of these things in his
book Anti-duhring. But they lived in a time when capitalist industry was confined to relatively small areas of
the globe and the devastation was local devastation, affecting chiefly the workers employed in a particular
factory, mill or mining village. Today capitalist industry operates on a global scale and its impact is on the
global environment- as is shown by the way in which radioactive clouds over Chernobyl spread across the
whole of Europe, by the way in which the seas are being fished clean of fish, by the damage to the ozone
layer by the gases used in aerosols and refrigerators. Above all there is the threat of the ‘greenhouse’ gases
destabilizing the whole world’s climate, flooding low lying countries turning fertile regions into desert
And, capitalism destroys the environment and is the root cause of oppression
Latin America Solidarity Coalition, 2003 (“Getting to the Roots: Ecology and Environmental Justice”,
http://www.lasolidarity.org/papers/enviro.htm)
The globalization of capital and the interweaving of financial and governmental institutions have opened the
flood gates for even greater destruction of ecosystems (ecocide) and the annihilation of traditional peoples,
cultures and values (genocide) while waging a war on the poor, woman and workers. In this position paper
we believe that those who read this are disillusioned with the current condition of life on earth: global forest
destruction, increased mono-culture timber plantations, ozone layer depletion, militarism, consumerism,
extinction of species, utter collapse of life support systems, racism, air, water and food pollution, chemical
warfare, genetic engineering, sweatshops, sexism, fascism and nationalism, abhorrent corporate
multinationalism, industrialism and breakdown of community. All of these are exacerbated by the newest
ideology of capitalism: neoliberalism. The neoliberalist ideology legitimates corporate control, proposing a
"free" global market, whose sole concern is profit and whose primary hindrances are social desires and
environmental conservation. Evident in the socio-ecological consequences are agreements like the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the
World Bank (WB), the current proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and bodies such as the
World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB). Neoliberalism further fuels an elite to control the earth and all of its inhabitants,
leading to desperation, degradation and suffering.
DM SHELL 6/8
And, our kritik short circuits their impacts—Discourse and performance can never
transform structures of oppression—the effectiveness of this political strategy is disproven
by the failure of the left in the status quo
Poitevin, PhD Cand Sociol @ UC-Davis, 2001
(Rene Francisco, “The end of anti-capitalism as we knew it: Reflections on postmodern Marxism”, The Socialist Review,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3952/is_200101/ai_n8932891) From Radical Democracy to Revolutionary
Democracy Let me finish by addressing the "vision thing" in Marxist theory, and by putting forward some minimal suggestions for
how to proceed. The problem with the Left in this country is not Marx's theorizing of capital, it is the Left's profound poverty of
vision. Simply put, we cannot think "Revolution" anymore because we cannot think "Capitalism" anymore. What passes for
"radical democracy" nowadays is so timid and so willing to declare and settle for quick victories that one has to wonder
sometimes where exactly it is that the radicalism in radical democracy lies. And to make matters worse, we are living in a period
in which the Left itself is the one in charge of convincing us that the "Revolution" is not only politically unfeasible, but also
epistemologically impossible. To paraphrase Marx's famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, postmodern Marxists have
interpreted the world for too long - the point is to change it. Do we need reform? Of course we do, but to construct reform as
a "sufficient" condition for social change is to engage not in the politics of empowerment but in the practice of a politics of
surrender with delusions of grandeur. Furthermore, in a post-structuralist epistemological framework in which structural and
systemic explanations are forbidden, all we are left with is a blurred capacity to prioritize what is to be done. In short, in the
postmodern Marxist world, it is impossible to structurally explain how the top 1 percent of the world population has more wealth
than the bottom 92 percent. To do that would require the admission that there is something called capitalism with a logic to it.
Recall that in the postmodern Marxist world, the political importance of "any relationship... [is determined by] how we wish to
think of the complex interaction"; it is not based on institutional or systemic mechanisms of how inequality gets generated and
reproduced.51 And given the postmodern Marxists' insistence on defining capitalism from the get-go as having "no essential or
coherent identity,"52 it is no surprise that such academics are totally irrelevant to real people's struggles against globalization,
the IMF, the WTO, and NAFTA. It's the case of the chicken coming home to roost. It is time to stop the politics of surrender and
denial. It is time to stop pretending that if we repeat things over and over again for long enough (this is called
"performative" in postmodern parlance), things will eventually change. The fact is that the Left has been getting crushed
for quite some time now. The fact is that it is going to take more than a cadre of postmodern intellectuals and a new definition
of capitalism to establish a just economic and political system. And attempts to co-opt and hijack Marxism for some reformist
agenda is not going to do it either.
DM SHELL 7/8
And, no turns—Language cannot change the OBJECTIVE reality of oppression—this
means that their framework can never access our capitalism impacts
Zavarzadeh, Dept English @ Syracuse, 1994
(Mas’ud, “The Stupidity that Consumption is Just as Productive as Production”, The Alternative
Orange, V 4, Fall/Winter, http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
The unsurpassable objectivity which is not open to rhetorical interpretation and constitutes the decided foundation of critique is
the “outside” that Marx calls the “Working Day” (Capital 1, 340-416). (R-4 willfully misrecognizes my notion of objectivity by confusing my discussion of identity
politics and objectivity.) The working day is not what it seems: its reality, like the reality of all capitalist practices, is an alienated reality—there is a contradiction
between its appearance and its essence. It “appears” as if the worker, during the working day, receives wages which are equal compensation for his labor. This
mystification originates in the fact that the capitalist pays not for “labor” but for “labor power”: when labor power is put to use it produces more than it is paid for.
The “working day” is the site of the unfolding of this fundamental contradiction: it is a divided day; divided into "necessary labor"—the part in which the worker
produces value equivalent to his wages—and the “other," the part of “surplus labor"—a part in which the worker works for free and produces “surplus value." The
second part of the working day is the source of profit and accumulation of capital. “Surplus labor” is the OBJECTIVE F A C T of capitalist relations
of production: without “surplus labor” there will be no profit, and without profit there will be no accumulation of capital, and without
accumulation of capital there will be no capitalism. The goal of bourgeois economics is to conceal this part of the working day,
and it should therefore be no surprise that, as a protector of ruling class interests in the academy, R-2, with a studied casualness, places
“surplus value” in the adjacency of “radical bible-studies” and quietly turns it into a rather boring matter of interest perhaps only to the dogmatic. To be more
concise: “surplus labor” is that objective, unsurpassable “outside” that cannot be made part of the economies of the “inside” without capitalism itself being
transformed into socialism.
Revolutionary critique is grounded in this truth—objectivity—since all social institutions and practices of capitalism are founded
upon the objectivity of surplus labor. The role of a revolutionary pedagogy of critique is to produce class consciousness so as to
assist in organizing people into a new vanguard party that aims at abolishing this FACT of the capitalist system and transforming
capitalism into a communist society. As I have argued in my “Post-ality” [Transformation 1], (post)structuralist theory, through the
concept of “representation," makes all such facts an effect of interpretation and turns them into “undecidable” processes. The
boom in ludic theory and Rhetoric Studies in the bourgeois academy is caused by the service it renders the ruling class: it makes
the OBJECTIVE reality of the extraction of surplus labor a subjective one—not a decided fact but a matter of “interpretation”. In
doing so, it “deconstructs” (see the writings of such bourgeois readers as Gayatri Spivak, Cornell West, and Donna Haraway) the labor theory of value, displaces
production with consumption, and resituates the citizen from the revolutionary cell to the ludic shopping mall of R-4. Now that I have indicated the objective
grounds of “critique," I want to go back to the erasure of critique by dialogue in the post-al left and examine the reasons why these nine texts locate my critique-al
writings and pedagogy in the space of violence, Stalinism and demagoguery. Violence, in the post-al left, is a refusal to “talk”. “To whom is Zavarzadeh
speaking?" asks OR‐5, who regards my practices to be demagogical, and R-3, finds as a mark of violence in my texts that “The interlocutor really is absent”
from them. What is obscured in this representation of the non-dialogical is, of course, the violence of the dialogical. I leave aside here the violence with which
these advocates of non-violent conversations attack me in their texts and cartoon. My concern is with the practices by which the post-al left,
through dialogue, naturalizes (and eroticizes) the violence that keeps capitalist democracy in power. What is violent? Subjecting
people to the daily terrorism of layoffs in order to maintain high rates of profit for the owners of the means of production or
redirecting this violence (which gives annual bonuses, in addition to multi-million dollar salaries, benefits and stock options, to the
CEO's of the very corporations that are laying off thousands of workers) against the ruling class in order to end class societies?
What is violent? Keeping millions of people in poverty, hunger, starvation, homelessness, and deprived of basic health care, at a
time when the forces of production have reached a level that can, in fact, provide for the needs of all people, or trying to over
throw this system? What is violent? Placing in office, under the alibi of “free elections," post-fascists (Italy) and allies of the ruling
class (Major, Clinton, Kohl, Yeltsin) or struggling to end this farce? What is violent? Reinforcing these practices by “talking” about
them in a “reasonable” fashion (i.e. within the rules of the game established by the ruling class for limited reform from “within") or
marking the violence of conversation and its complicity with the status quo, thereby breaking the frame that represents “dialogue”
as participation—when in fact it is merely a formal strategy for legitimating the established order? Any society in which the labor
of many is the source of wealth for the few—all class societies are societies of violence, and no amount of “talking” is going
to change that objective fact. “Dialogue” and “conversation” are aimed at arriving at a consensus by which this violence is
made more tolerable, justifiable and naturalized.
DM SHELL 8/8
C) The alternative
Reject their assertion that discourse and performance can change material social realities.
We must return to Marx, recognizing that the only hope for human survival is a politics
which engages in struggles to change material social relations rather than discursive
attempts to change assumptions—any attempt to work within the system of capitalism is
doomed to failure—our alternative is the only hope for human survival
Harman, Editor of the Socialst Worker 1997
(Chris, Economics of the madhouse, Pg 99-100)
‘A reprise in the early 21st century of the conditions in the early part of this century. Such is the danger that
confronts the world if we cannot deal with the present crisis concludes Will Hutton in his book The State
We’re In. Those conditions included two world wars, the rise of Nazism, the collapse o democracy across
most of Europe, the victory of Stalinism, the death camps and the gulag. If they were to be repeated in a few
years time there is no doubt it would be on a much more horrific scale that even Hitler could not imagine. We
would indeed be facing a future of barbarism, if not the destruction of the whole of humanity.
Warnings of
such a future are not to be treated lightly. Already the crisis of the 1990’s has begun to unleash the same
barbaric forces we saw in the 1930’s. In one country after another political adventurers who support the
existing system are making careers for themselves by trying to scapegoat ethnic or religious minorities. In the
Russia, the Hitler admirer, racist, and proponent of nuclear war, Zhirinovsky got 24 percent of the vote in the
November 1993 poll. In Bombay, another Hitler admirer, Bal Thackercey, runs the state government,
threatening to wage war against the Muslim minority. In turkey the government and the military wage a war
against the Kurdish fifth of the population, while the fascists try to incite Sunni Muslims to murder Alawi
Muslims. In Rwanda the former dictator unleashed a horrific slaughter of Tutsis by Hutus, while in
neighboring Burundi there is the threat of slaughter of Hutus by Tutsis. All this horror has its origins in the
failure of market capitalism to provide even minimally satisfactory lives for the mass of people. Instead is
leaves a fifth of the worlds’ population under nourished and most of the rest doubting whether they will be
able to enjoy tomorrow the small comforts that allowed to them today Both the out and out defenders of
ruling class power and today’s timid cowed reformists tell us there is no alternative to this system. But if that
is true then there is no hope for humanity. Politics becomes merely about having the deckchairs on the titanic
while making sure no one disturbs the rich and privileged as they dine at the captains table.
But there is an
alternative. The whole crazy system of alienated labor is a product of what we do. Human beings have the
power to seize control of the ways of creating wealth and to subordinate them to our decisions, to our values.
We do not have to leave them to the blind caprice of the market to the mad rush of the rival owners of wealth
in their race to keep ahead of each other. The new technologies that are available today, far from making out
lives worse have the potential to make this control easier. Automated work processes could provide us with
more leisure, with more time for creativity and more change to deliberate where the world is going.
Computerism could provide us with the unparalleled information about the recourses available to satisfy our
needs and how to deploy them effectivly But this alternative cannot come from working within the system,
from accepting the insane logic of the market, of competitive accumulation, of working harder in order to
force someone else to worker harder or lose their job. The alternative can only come from fighting against the
system and the disastrous effect its logic has on the lives of the mass of people.
2NC OVERVIEW CARDS
Capitalism is the root cause of oppression
Scott, Prof PostColonial Lit & Theory @ U Vermont, 2006
(Helen, “Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism, Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Literature”,
Postcolonial Text, 2.1, http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174)
For Gedalof’s study, the material coordinates of oppression are secondary to the “conceptual space where the
social and the self meet … within particular discourses of gender, race, national and class identities” (2). Her
focus is on “narratives” and “discourses” and she subscribes to a Foucauldian understanding of power as “not
just a privilege possessed by a dominant group; it is rather exercised by and through us all, situated as we are
in multiple networks of ‘nonegalitarian and mobile relations’” (19). This formulation effectively jettisons the
primacy of social structures and class antagonism and instead generalizes power as something omnipresent,
equating the expression of a system of ideas with the exercise of social domination.[6] It thus has much in
common with the post-Althusserian “rejection of economism and … reprioritization of ideology” and
disposal of “Althusser’s rather nebulous but necessary affirmation of the primacy of the material ‘in the last
instance’ in favor of a conception of ideology as absolutely autonomous” (Brenner 12-13). The problem with
discourse theory is that “once ideology is severed from material reality it no longer has any analytical
usefulness, for it becomes impossible to posit a theory of determination — of historical change based on
contradiction” (Brenner, paraphrasing Michèle Barrett, 13). Marxists understand class in contrast not as an
“identity” but rather as a material relationship to the governing mode of production.[7] In extension, all
forms of oppression — racial, national, gender and sexual — have specific material causes and effects
and are shaped by the compulsions of capitalism.[8] As Deborah Levenson-Estrada maintains in a study
of women union activists in 1970s Guatemala: “There is no ‘more important’ or ‘prior’ issue — class or
gender — these are inside one another, and the struggle against gender conventions and sexist ideologies is
integral to any project of liberation. A critical consciousness about class needs a critical consciousness about
gender, and vice versa” (227).
AT: PERM
New link: any focus on the transformative effects their discourse abstracts language from
experience—this is the same logic that abstracts surplus value and enables capitalism
Scott, Prof PostColonial Lit & Theory @ U Vermont, 2006
(Helen, “Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism, Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Literature”,
Postcolonial Text, 2.1, http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174)
[P]ostmodernist theory, whether it calls itself post-structuralism, deconstruction or post-Marxism, is
constituted by a radical attempt to banish the real human body — the sensate, biocultural, laboring body —
from the sphere of language and social life. As a result, I argue, these outlooks reproduce a central feature of
commodified society: the abstraction of social products and practices from the laboring bodies that generate
them. (1) This elision can be seen in readings of Caribbean literature that constantly move away from
material relationships and experiences towards allegorical interpretations emphasizing language and
representation.
Language focus distracts from material focus
Scott, Prof PostColonial Lit & Theory @ U Vermont, 2006
(Helen, “Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism, Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Literature”,
Postcolonial Text, 2.1, http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174)
And yet postmodern paradigms can, ironically, given their habitual celebration of multiplicity and specificity, lead to formulaic —
one dimensional, mono-focused, reductive — readings of texts as linguistic, discursive allegories, and exclude multiple
possibilities for more specific, grounded readings. And despite postmodernism’s vaunted radicalism, as many of its critics have
argued, the “linguistic turn” and “descent into discourse” in postcolonial studies have obscured the material coordinates of
imperialism, arguably depoliticizing a field of study that is from its inception engaged with inherently political questions of empire,
race, colonialism and their relationship to cultural production.[14] In her study of Caribbean women writers, Isabel Hoving
equates “high theory” with “political criticism” and attributes the crisis in postcolonial studies to “weariness with the issues of
gender, class and race” which is being met with a “return to the literary” (7). Yet it could be argued that it is “high theory” that
insistently pulls us away from concrete histories, lived experiences of oppression and resistance, and specific artistic movements
and works, and leads us towards monotonous questions of discourse, representation, language, and identity.
AT: DISCOURSE KEY
Despite their emancipatory intentions, their discourse can be reappropriated by oppressive
forces—they can never control the effects of their discourse
Butler, Prof Rhetoric & Comp Lit @ UC-Berkeley, 2000
(Judith, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, ed Butler, Laclau, Zizek, p 157-8)
This extended discussion does not yet make clear the place of psychoanalysis for a broader conception of politics. Zizek has contributed immeasurably to this
project by showing us how disidentification operates in ideological interpellation, how the failure of interpellation to capture its object with its defining mark is the
very condition for a contest about its meanings, inaugurating a dynamic essential to hegemony itself. It seems clear that any effort to order the subject through a
performative capture whereby the subject becomes synonymous with the name it is called is bound to fail. Why it is bound to fail remains an open question. We
could say that every subject has a complexity that no single name can capture, and so refute a certain form of nominalism. Or we could say that there is in every
subject something that cannot be named, no matter how complicated and variegated the naming process becomes (I believe that this is Ziiek's point). Or we
could think a bit more closely about the name, in the service of what kind of regulatory apparatus it works, whether it works alone, whether in order to `work' at all
it requires an iteration that introduces the possibility of failure at every interval. It is important to remember, however, that interpellation does not always operate
through the name: this silence might be meant for you. And the discursive means by which subjects are ordered fails not only because of an extra-discursive
something that resists assimilation into discourse, but because discourse has many more aims and effects than those that are actually
intended by its users. As an instrument of non-intentional effects, discourse can produce the possibility of identities
that it means to foreclose. Indeed, the articulation of foreclosure is the first moment of its potential undoing, for the articulation can become rearticulated
and countered once it is launched into a discursive trajectory, unmoored from the intentions by which it is animated. In the case of foreclosure, where certain
possibilities are ruled out so that cultural intelligibility can be instituted, giving discursive form to the foreclosure can be an inaugurating moment of its
destabilization. The unspeakable speaks, or the speakable speaks the unspeakable into silence, but these speech acts are recorded in speech, and speech
becomes something else by virtue of having been broken open by the unspeakable. Psychoanalysis enters here to the extent that it insists upon the efficacy of
unintended meaning in discourse. And although Foucault failed to see his affinity with psychoanalysis, he clearly understood that the
`inadvertent consequences' produced by discursive practices not fully controlled by intention have disruptive and
transformative effects. In this sense, psychoanalysis helps us to understand the contingency and risk intrinsic to political
practice – that certain kinds of aims which are deliberately intended can become subverted by other operations of power
to effect consequences that we do not endorse (e.g. the feminist anti-pornography movement in the USA saw its cause
taken up by rightwing Republicans, to the dismay of – we hope – some of them). Conversely, attacks by one 's enemies
can paradoxically boost one ' s position (one hopes), especially when the broader public has no desire to identify with the
manifest aggression represented by their tactics. This does not mean that we ought not to delineate goals and devise strategies,
and just wait for our foes to shoot themselves in their various feet. Of course, we should devise and justify political plans on a
collective basis. But this will not mean that we would be naive in relation to power to think that the institution of goals
(the triumphs of the civil rights movement) will not be appropriated by its opponents (California's civil rights initiative) to
dismantle those accomplishments (the decimation of affirmative action).
Your assumption that changes in discourse lead to social transformation is saturated in the
logic of idealism which we kritik
Gouldner, Prof Sociol @ Washington U-St Louis, 1980
(Alvin W., The Two Marxisms, Chapter 3 - Appendix - "Conflating the Contrary and Negation"
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Marx/ch3app.htm)
At the center of Marxism's conception of itself is the view that it is a "materialism." This materialism emerged in the course of Marx's determined opposition to two
different types of "theories." On the one hand, he opposed and sought to differentiate his views from other forms of materialism, e.g., from "vulgar," mechanical,
or bourgeois materialisms. This, however, was only a secondary opposition. The overshadowing context in which Marx's materialism arose was his opposition to
everyday idealism, expressed in a critique of traditional religion, that was extended into an opposition to the dominant German philosophical idealism, and
especially Hegelianism. This critique of idealism is essentially a critique of the idea that mind or consciousness determines or is
independent of the other spheres of life; it is also a critique of the Enlightenment premise that social changes proceed from prior
changes in understanding or consciousness. The Marxist critique of ideology, which is also part of its rejection of idealism, entailed the transformation
of Destutt de Tracy's positive appreciation of "ideology" into a negative symbol. This inversion derived from the fact that de Tracy's concept of ideology2 rested
on the idealistic assumption that changes in ideology were the key to social transformations; it premised that if one changed the
present belief system, eliminating its errors, and educating the populace into the newly purified ideologies, a better society and
state would result. Marx, who recurrently mentioned de Tracy's work polemically, had picked up de Tracy's word, "ideology," fully explicated its idealistic
assumptions, but then evaluated these negatively rather than positively. Marx thus inverted de Tracy's notion of ideology and then used it as a way to generalize
the Left Hegelians' critique of religion. The focus now moved from the critique of religion to a more general ideology critique. This allowed a critique of secular
belief systems, including rational philosophies and metaphysics, even of those defining themselves as "sciences." It is via Marx's devalution of ideology that he
moves from an explicit critique of religion to a critique of rational secular philosophy and of the social science of political economy. These, he
holds, are also ideological because they believe themselves autonomous when, in fact, they are dependent on other social
conditions.
AT: DISCOURSE KEY
The discourse focus trades off with concern for the material realities that structure our
existence
Poitevin, PhD Cand Sociol @ UC-Davis, 2001
(Rene Francisco, “The end of anti-capitalism as we knew it: Reflections on postmodern Marxism”, The
Socialist Review, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3952/is_200101/ai_n8932891)
I ended the 1990s, however, profoundly dissatisfied with both the theory and the practice of what constitutes "the Left" in this country. When I
look around and see what passes for radical politics today, I see a Left so acquiescent and timid in its demands that one has to
wonder what is left of the Left. And the theory and action that claims recognition as critical, or oppositional, is not only more
dogmatically anti-Marxist than ever, it is also masquerading itself as socialist discourse. What I see is a U.S. Left political practice - vehement in
rhetoric and tone -- more invested in pursuing a reformist intra-middle class liberal agenda, all in the name of "going beyond Marx," than with the well-being of the majority of people in
this country. This is a Left that insists on downplaying institutional and structural inequality, the asymmetric distribution of social and
economic power, in favor of issues concerning language, cultural representation, procedural democracy, access to elite employment, and
environmental degradation as a quality-of-life issue. So my critique of actually existing U.S. Lefts comes out of my own need for intellectual and political selfclarification, but more importantly, it is a way to look forward to what must be done.
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This approach, however, requires by way of introduction a preliminary inventory and assessment of what I mean by "actually existing U.S. Lefts." While I
acknowledge that "the Left" is by no means monolithic, it is possible to provide a critique of radical politics by looking at the academic Left in the university.
This paper is first a critique of what constitutes the Left in academia - the poverty of politics and theory in the ivory tower relates directly
to the crisis of the broader Left. Within this academic context, "radical democracy"' has been the Left's dominant theoretical orientation for the last two decades. And
within the radical democracy tradition itself, the "Amherst School" of postmodern Marxism, which I will explain in more detail shortly, has been the most vocal trend in academic circles
since the mid 1990s (as anybody who went to their Marxism 2000 Conference or who has looked at their journal Rethinking Marxism can testify.) As the title of this paper suggests, a
close reading of the Amherst School of postmodern Marxism as standard bearer for an academic Left will allow me to engage with the broader current political crisis in Left politics -and radical democracy.
I begin with the postmodern (mis)appropriation of Althusser's notion of "overdetermination," namely the intuition that reality is so complex that it is better understood as a multicausal
process rather than as a "structural" or systemic mechanism, as in the traditional Marxist explanation of capitalism. Then, through a close reading of J.K. Gibson-Graham's (which is the
professional name of scholars Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson), The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It),2 I show that despite its intuitive analytical appeal and theoretical
sophistication, their book espouses an unconvincing and ultimately reactionary postmodern/post-Marxist politics - one that is ultimately predicated around how to make capitalism more
user friendly. I will show that to
practice or "perform" postmodern Marxist politics in our present situation is not to engage in what
the Amherst School of postmodern Marxism describes as a "politics of opportunity and attainment,"3 but to practice the
politics of surrender instead. I will make clear that what ultimately gives internal consistency to many of the critiques of postmodern and post-Marxist theorists is a
profound distortion and co-optation of the most critical, unique, and politically mobilizing features of Marxist theory, on one hand, combined with a renaturalization of a capitalism
predicated on liberal notions of social and economic reform, on the other.4
The Amherst School of postmodern Marxism, which is predicated on a rethinking of Marxist theory from a post-structuralist standpoint,5 came together as a recognizable cluster during
the late 1980s, first through the writings of scholars like Richard Wolff, Stephen Resnick, and David Ruccio, and later through the publication of the journal Rethinking Marxism and
conferences sponsored by the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA), and a newer generation of scholars that can be traced to the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst (they either teach, worked, or graduated from there.)6 Operating within the broader tradition of radical democracy triggered by Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy,7 the Amherst School spent the 1990s ferociously debating and advocating their vision of politics predicated on the "overdetermination" of the social world, namely, the claim
that causal explanations of social phenomena, and macroanalyses of economic systems, are really nothing more than myths and fictions that cannot stand the cross-examination of
discursive analysis and the analytical power of post-structuralist tools.
Because of the close overlap between the critiques of Marxism espoused by radical democracy, a la Laclau and Mouffe, and postmodern Marxism, a la J.K. Gibson-Graham, I use the
term "postmodern/post-Marxism" to refer to the epistemological and political goals they share in common. By "postmodern/post-Marxism" I refer to the shared set of positions through
which radical democracy and the Amherst School reduce Marxism to a "teleological, totalizing, and essentializing" tradition. Moreover, within the radical democracy/ post-- modern
Marxism school, classical Marxism is also understood to be an inherently economistic and class-reductionist paradigm. Both traditions share a commitment to postmodern politics that
refuses to privilege class oppressions over other forms of domination. And they refuse to theorize capitalism as a macro-level social structure that is inherently exploitative. Thus it
makes sense to combine them both for analytical purposes under the rubric of "postmodern/post-Marxists." The main difference between radical democrats and postmodern Marxists is
that the former absolutely refuse to use the label "Marxist" to describe themselves, while the latter accept the label. Radical democracy is definitely a "post-Marxist" tradition, with Laclau
and Mouffe its best-known members. (Most) postmodern Marxists, on the other hand, still claim the label "Marxists" to construct themselves, even if, at times, they might be conflicted
about it. In so doing, it is not at all clear what in the Marxist tradition the post-Marxists are actively drawing on. The need that J.K. Gibson-Graham exhibit in one of their essays to clarify
their self-identification as Marxists - however thinly - is a perfect example of the uses of "Marxism" to describe the Amherst School: "The chapter reads as a Marxist speaking to an
audience of Marxists" because the paper was first presented at a Marxist conference.8
Overdetermination and Its Discontents
In an intellectual custody battle resembling a lot of the drama of the Elian Gonzalez case, structuralists and postmoderns continue to fight over the legacy of Louis Althusser.9 From the
same guy who brought us the most rigid construction of subjectivity in all of Western Marxism, now comes the notion of "overdetermination," the claim that no social reality can be
explained in terms of causal hierarchies and/or specific mechanisms. This legacy of Althusser is divided into two distinct, mutually exclusive camps. On the one hand, the structuralist
Althusser brings us the (oversimplified) notion of capitalism constructed as a fixed "box" with allocated and predetermined "slots" in which people lack any agency and are simply
reduced to enacting already programmed scripts. On the other hand, the overdeterminist Althusser tells us that not only is the "capitalist structure" gone, but no social phenomenon (be
it a person, identity, social movement, or institution) can ever be explained in terms of causal hierarchies or specific mechanisms. Whereas the earlier, structuralist Althusser used to
bring us the "truth" about the capitalist system in dear and unambiguous terms, now the overdeterminist Althusser, as presented by the Amherst School, denies the very possibility of
theorizing macro social and economic processes in terms of causal mechanisms. Instead
of "structure" we are left with what postmodern Marxists call
"discursive fixings," namely the claim that any and all interpretation of reality is inherently unstable because "reality" is
constituted by "discourse" and discourse changes through time and place ." So in the overdetermined Althusserian reality, the best we
can do is to try to "hold" or temporarily "fix" particular social realities, with the explicit understanding that whatever categories or situations we can come up with,
are bound to change and are inherently unstable, due to the ever-changing nature of meaning in discourse and language. So tells the story.
AT: GIBSON-GRAHAM
**Gibson –Graham is caught in the same logic that we kritik—they reduce politics to
discourse—AND, their kritik of Marxism relies on a flawed and distorted conception of
Marx’s work—this card will win us this debate
Poitevin, PhD Cand Sociol @ UC-Davis, 2001
(Rene Francisco, “The end of anti-capitalism as we knew it: Reflections on postmodern Marxism”, The
Socialist Review, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3952/is_200101/ai_n8932891)
The End of Capitalism (As We Know It)
The first thing that jumps out after reading The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy is
the way in which there are at least two ways of smashing the capitalist state: we can have the Leninist revolution or we can
change the definition of capitalism and make it disappear. J.K. Gibson-Graham succeeds in doing the latter: in a kind of
theoretical abracadabra, capitalism is definitely gone by the end of their book. But despite the theoretical sophistication of their
work - a no-holds barred embracing of post-structuralist theory - once the epistemological fireworks dissipate, the argument of
the book is actually rather simple. If what is wrong with Left politics "is the way capitalism has been 'thought' that has made it so
difficult for people to imagine its supersession,"16 then it logically follows that what is to be done is to change its definition so that
it can be "thought" differently - and therefore be made easier to get rid of. And if the problem of why U.S. radical politics has been so ineffective
for the last two decades is the stubborn Marxist insistence upon "the image of two classes locked in struggle," a situation that "has in our view become an
obstacle to, rather than a positive force for, anticapitalist endeavors,"17 then how about getting rid of this whole class struggle thing and "reimagine" labor and
capital as allies rather than enemies?18 Would not that make the whole task of social transformation much easier? Perhaps, but as we will see shortly, getting rid
of capitalism is easier said than done.
The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) begs another question: Who are they going after? Is it capitalism or is it Marx? Their book spends so much time on what
is supposedly wrong with Marxism that at times it reads more like The End of Marxism As We Knew It. This approach is typical of a pattern that, to quote Wendy
Brown, "responds less to the antidemocratic forces of our time than to a ghostly philosophical standoff between historically abstracted formulations of Marxism
and liberalism. In other words, this effort seeks to resolve a problem in a (certain) history of ideas rather than a problem in history."19 Simply put, postmodern
Marxist politics has more to do with the micropolitics of the ivory tower than with the plight of the workers who clean their campuses. However, once it becomes
clear that a necessary condition for the primacy of postmodern theory and politics is that Marxism has to go (otherwise you do not have to become a postmodern
to address their concerns), J.K. Gibson-Graham's anti-Marxist hostility, while actively embracing the Marxist label in order to render it useless, makes a lot of
sense. And once again, all this is done with impeccable logic: Given that Marxism is still the only doctrine that calls for the systematic overthrow of capitalism,
getting rid of Marx(ism) is also to get rid of the need for revolution with a big "R."20
One of the problems with trying to make the case for postmodern Marxism is that in order to get rid of Marxism and declare its
tradition obsolete, you have to distort its legacy by constructing a straw man. This straw man-reading of Marx is predicated upon
the double maneuver of collapsing Marxist history into Stalinism, on the one hand, and reducing Marxist theory to "essentialism,"
"totality," and "teleology," on the other. As J.K. Gibson-Graham themselves acknowledge, without any regrets, "Indeed, as many
of our critics sometimes charge, we have constructed a 'straw man.'"21 What is left out of their quasi-humorous dismissal of Marxism is the
complicity of such a straw man in the long history of red-baiting and anti-Marxist repression in this country and around the world.
Also left out is the rich Marxist scholarship that was addressing their concerns long before there was a postmodern Marxist school. The fact is that postmodern
Marxist's "contributions" are not as original nor as profound as they might have us believe. For example, what about the bulk of the Western Marxist tradition
since the Frankfurt School? Has it not been predicated on a rejection of the economic reductionism embedded in the passage from the Preface to the
Introduction to A Critique of Political Economy in which the (in)famous base/superstructure metaphor of society gets set in stone as the "official" definition of
historical materialism? Or what about Horkheimer and Adorno's relentless critique of instrumental rationality? Marxism, in spite of what the postmodern Marxists
want us to believe, has long been making the case for the centrality of culture and its irreducibility to economic laws, as anybody who has read Walter Benjamin
or Antonio Gramsci can certify. Furthermore, postcolonial Marxism and critical theory have also been theorizing at more concrete levels of analyses the
irreducibility of subjectivity to class.22 And despite the postmodern Marxist excitement when talking about class as a relational process, in fact it is impossible to
tell that they are not the first ones to talk about class as a relational process, lots of Marxists before the Amherst School have been theorizing and clarifying the
relational mechanisms embedded in class politics.23
Postmodern Marxism also ignores Lefebvre's urban Marxist contribution: his emphasis on the importance of experience and the everyday in accounting for social
processes.24 And Marxist feminist contributions on the intersection of agency and gender with race, class, and sexuality are conveniently erased from J.K.
Gibson-Graham's reduction of Marxism to a straw man.25 The fact is that when one looks at Marxism not as a distorted "straw man" but on its
own terms, taking into account its richness and complexity, Marxist theory starts to appear all of a sudden less "totalizing,"
"essentializing," and "reductionist" and instead as more rich in possibilities and more enabling.
CONTINUED
AT: GIBSON-GRAHAM
CONTINUED
Excursion Filosofica
A third feature of J.K. Gibson-Graham's work, in particular, and of the whole radical democracy tradition, in general, is its post-structuralist extremism.26 For
postmodern Marxists it is not enough to point out that, as both Foucault and Habermas argue, we inhabit an intellectual regime characterized by a paradigm shift
from the "philosophy of consciousness" to the "philosophy of language."27 Nor is it good enough for postmodern/post-Marxists to recognize the pitfalls
embedded in Hegelian epistemology and argue instead, as Spivak does, for strategic-- uses-of-essentialism as a corrective to the excesses of teleological
thinking and fixed notions of class.28 No way. As far as postmodern Marxism is concerned, the only way to compensate for constructions
of capitalism that are too totalizing is through the unconditional surrender of the Marxist project. As J.K. Gibson-Graham
themselves make clear, "to even conceive of 'capitalism' as 'capitalisms' is still taking 'capitalism' for granted."29 And to try to
redistribute the heavy theoretical and political burden placed upon the proletariat by reconfiguring political agency through "raceclass-gender," as opposed to just class, is still a futile endeavor: essentialism is still essentialism whether one essentializes
around one or three categories.
This strand of post-structuralism, one that once again, can be directly traced back to Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy,30 is predicated on the faulty epistemological premise that what really matters is "discourse." As Laclau and
Mouffe clarify, "our analysis rejects the distinction between discursive and nondiscursive practices. It offirms that every object is
constituted as an object of discourse."31 The problem with this approach is that once we enter this world of epistemological
foundationalism predicated on the claim that there is "nothing but discourse," we enter a world of relativism in which all we can
do is "create discursive fixings," as J.K. Gibson-Graham themselves prescribe, that will guarantee that "any particular analysis
will never find the ultimate cause of events."32
It is this ideological postmodern insistence on reducing all of social reality to discourse that ultimately overloads its theoretical
apparatus and causes it to buckle beneath them. The Amherst School's "provisional ontology" is incapable of escaping the
performative trap of trying to get rid of essentialism by essentializing all of reality as "discursive." The postmodern Marxist
approach to ontology boils down to substituting in political practice every occurrence of "continuity" with "discontinuity" as a way
to get rid of essentialism and macro-narratives. Even Foucault, the great master of discontinuity, distances himself from such mirror-reversal
solutions when theorizing the limits of discourse and accounting for the "divergence, the distances, the oppositions, the differences" that constitute the episteme
of a period.33
In a (rarely cited) interview titled "Power and the Study of Discourse," Foucault goes to great length to emphasize the importance of the nondiscursive (which he
defines as "a whole play of economic, political and social changes"34) as a necessary condition for the successful application of "discourse" to Left politics."
When explicitly asked whether "a mode of thought which introduces discontinuity and the constraints of system" does "not remove all basis for a progressive
political intervention"36 (in other words, is post-structuralist politics friend or foe of Left politics), Foucault does three things before he can answer in the
affirmative. First, he defends the need for "discourse" and "discontinuity" in unmasking the hidden teleologies embedded in metanarratives of universal history
and so forth, in other words, in unmasking the myth of "the sovereignty of the pure subject."
Next, and this is crucial in understanding the role of discourse in post-structuralist analysis, Foucault proceeds to triangulate "discourse" as an interplay between
three separate levels of analysis: intradiscursive, interdiscursive, and extradiscursive transformations. Taken together, these three levels of analysis constitute
the basic "schemes of dependence" that define the conditions that regulate discursive historical transformations and social change. An example of the
intradiscursive, for Foucault, is the relationship between the objects, operations, and concepts that constitute a single discipline, let's say math. How "math"
constitutes itself with all its many subfields, rules, and definitions is an example of intradiscursive. Interdiscursive, on the other hand, deals with the relationship
between one discipline (Foucault uses the example of medical discourse) and other disciplines, in this example other disciplines outside of medicine, such as
economics or natural history. And the extradiscursive level of analysis, the one relevant for us in our assessment of postmodern Marxism, deals between the
discursive and those "transformations outside of discourse."37 Foucault talks about the connections between "medical discourse and a whole play of economic,
political, and social changes" as an example of extradiscursive processes. Notice how careful and unequivocal Foucault's analysis is in emphasizing and making
sure that we do not reduce all of reality to some simple notion of "discourse." The irreducibility of the nondiscursive cannot be summarily dismissed as irrelevant,
as postmodern/post-Marxists do.
The key point in assessing the postmodern/post-Marxist epistemological and ontological viability is this: None of Foucault's subtleties in theorizing the
"nondiscursive" are present in the postmodern/post-- Marxist model. Not only is Foucault's notion of "discourse" more complex and nuanced than the one
presented in postmodern/post-Marxism, the "nondiscursive" is defined as constituted by "institutions, social relations, economic and political conjuncture" - and
as explicitly nonreducible to discourse.38 This is why the postmodern/post-Marxist's incapability and/or refusal to account for the
irreducibility of the nondiscursive aspects of institutions and the economy ultimately disqualifies them from articulating a viable
Left project. To retort by saying that it is OK to not deal with the centrality of the nondiscursive (e.g., the institutional) because
"every object is constituted as an object of discourse"39 misses the point that the moment of the nondiscursive and
extradiscursive is both irreducible and essential. How many more Ptolemaic circles of "discursive fixings" is it going to take
before it becomes clear that postmodern Marxism's bankrupt epistemology/ontology cannot articulate a viable project for radical
politics?
AT: GIBSON-GRAHAM
The notion of capitalism as a global system is the pre-requisite for mobilizing populations
for fundamental social change
Reinsborough, Activist, Writer, Grassroots Organizer, 2004(Patrick, “Decolonizing The
Revolutionary Imagination: Values Crisis, the Politics of Reality, and Why There's Going to Be a Common-Sense
Revolution in This Generation”, ww.rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=508)
Naming the System (Global Pathology) In this era of escalating global crisis one of the most important roles radicals can play is
to help build a common analysis of the system's flawed design. Not by imposing some kind of dogmatic vanguardism of a single
analysis, but rather by creating the political space for a critical mass of people to define the problems they face in their own lives
in a systematic way that allows the imagining of fundamental change. We don't have to convince people that something is wrong
-- as corporate control becomes more blatant and the ecological crisis worsens, the system is doing much of the work to discredit
itself. We must, however, help people to imagine alternatives that go beyond tinkering with the symptoms to actually dismantling
and redesigning the global system. Radicals have always struggled to build oppositional power by naming the system. If only it
were as easy as putting "Capitalism" or "Corporate Rule" or "Algae Bloom Civilization/Insane World" on a banner, we'd have won
the battle by now. But naming the system isn't merely a semantic or intellectual exercise. Rather, it is the revolutionary process
through which a critical mass of people recognize the deadly design flaws of the current social order. The process of "naming" is
our way of revealing the hypocrisy, brutality, and idiocy of the corporate-controlled world in order to build the popular
consciousness necessary to inspire transformative action. One of the beauties of the recent global uprisings has been their
ability to look beyond tactical, cultural, and ideological differences to see a unifying commitment to structural change. The better
we articulate the fundamental flaws of the current world order the more we will see links between the many types of resistance
that are springing up to confront the doomsday economy.
AT: GIBSON-GRAHAM
Gibson-Graham’s argument is nothing more than an appeal to liberal reforms within
capitalism—this short circuits the necessity of revolutions and is mere apologist for
capitalism
Poitevin, PhD Cand Sociol @ UC-Davis, 2001
(Rene Francisco, “The end of anti-capitalism as we knew it: Reflections on postmodern Marxism”, The
Socialist Review, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3952/is_200101/ai_n8932891)
But by far the most anticlimactic and disappointing outcome of the postmodern Marxist approach is that in its desire to get rid of
"capitalocentrism,"44 they end up actually reconfiguring the very beast they seek to eliminate by disguising liberal reform as
"noncapitalism." Nowhere is this more obvious than in J.K. Gibson-Graham's celebratory reading of The Full Monty, a film about a group of British
steelworkers who lose their jobs due to deindustrialization, and end up refashioning themselves as strippers as a way to reclaim their economic agency.45 The
movie shows how the tragic loss of the town's steel mill creates a cascade effect that ends up reconfiguring the social fabric of that community. By the end of the
movie, the ex-steelworkers are forced to rethink and renegotiate many types of relationships and identities, from constructions of masculinity and gender roles to
economic identities even their wives have to get service jobs to make ends meet. Of particular interest for J.K. Gibson-Graham are the ways in which the movie
overlaps with some of the themes of The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It), especially with the ways in which The Full Monty "hinted at different narratives of
class transformation, new awareness of class politics and an expanded range of class emotions."46 They also welcomed the way in which the unemployed men
"are unable to draw sustenance from old models of resistance-style politics" (i.e., they cannot use the "old" labor/capital class struggle thing) and the way in
which the characters in the film pursue what J.K. Gibson-Graham call "non-- capitalist economic relations." Never mind that old predictable "feeling of regret that
the climactic one-night-stand striptease is so economically inconsequential" to the well-being of the ex-steelworker strippers, their families, and the community.
Even though the ex-steelworkers are still poor at the end of the movie, what matters, according to J.K. Gibson-Graham, is that there was a process of "becoming"
that allowed the community to come together, not as ex-workers and ex-managers, or as husbands and wives, but as a "communal economic identity based
upon self-value and identification across difference."47 This is important because it is the "communal economic identity" of the successful striptease venture that
constitutes the precondition for imagining and engaging in "noncapitalist commodity production," such as worker collectives or self-employed workers. A key part
of the ex-steelworkers' success, and an important strategy in postmodern Marxist politics, is that the ex-steelworkers do not pursue the "orthodox" line of worker's
challenging capitalist control of industrial property, nor do they seem to care about circuits of capital or structural needs of accumulation. The problem with J.K.
Gibson-Graham's celebratory reading of The Full Monty is that regardless of how sound the process of "becoming" might be for that community, and regardless
of how well they might manage to get along afterwards, calling their striptease enterprise a "noncapitalist commodity production" that is "full of potential and
possibilities" is wishful thinking at best and totally ludicrous at worst. Am I the only one who realizes that what JK. Gibson-Graham refer to as "noncapitalist
commodity production" is actually sex work? Would JK. Gibson-Graham still embrace as "noncapitalist economic relations" ex-maquila workers along the U.S.Mexican border deciding to do sex work a la The Full Monty as long as it brings the community together? Is prostitution OK as long as the prostitute's surplus is
not being appropriated by someone else? My main point here is that throughout The Full Monty - and in J.K. Gibson-Graham's review of
the film as well - property relations are never questioned or challenged. In the postmodern/post-Marxist "noncapitalist" world,
corporations get to keep ownership of the means of production and their profits, while working class communities continue to lap
dance their way through "identification across difference" rather than doing union organizing. That this kind of argument can be
presented not only as "noncapitalist" but also as Marxist thinking should be enough to demonstrate the political bankruptcy of this
paradigm. It is also interesting that JK Gibson-Graham maintain that challenging their analysis of The Full Monty, or not
endorsing the politics of the film, "is inherently conservative and capitalocentric."48 I disagree strongly. The politics advocated by
J.K. Gibson-Graham through their reading of The Full Monty is nothing but liberal politics with post-structuralist delusions of
grandeur. It is one thing to say that we are at a political conjuncture in which the thing to do is to work hard for reform, not
"revolution." But it is another thing to argue that revolutionary practice cannot happen on epistemological grounds, and that all we
can do is make capitalism as user friendly as possible while obscuring and co-opting the Marxist tradition. J.K. Gibson-Graham's
reading of The Full Monty is both liberal and reactionary. What the postmodern Marxist's reading of The Full Monty demonstrates
is that in their desire to get rid of "capitalocentrism" - the alleged obsession of Marxists with seeing "capitalism" everywhere - they
end up reconfiguring and consolidating capitalism back in. In their unreflective romanticizing of reform, and in their haughty
contempt for revolutionary thinking and politics, J.K-.Gibson-Graham's style of postmodern/post-Marxism delivers what boils
down to good old-fashioned liberalism: a mild, state-administered "economic justice" platform centered around individual private
liberties, neatly packaged in postmodern gift wrapping. The bottom line is this: When one looks closely at what postmodern/postMarxist theory actually offers, and after it is done "representing capitalism through the lens of overdetermination,"49 all one can
strategize about is how to make capitalism more "user friendly." Gone is the project of getting rid of it. Strangely enough,
postmodern/ post-Marxists do not regard these positions as a surrender of the Marxist project at all, but rather, as the exact
fulfillment of that commitment.50
AT: MARXISM BAD
Marxism does not privilege class or make reductionist claims about the economy—their
criticism of Marxism relies on a distorted straw argument that ignores the nuances of
Marxist analysis of the intersections of oppression
Scott, Prof PostColonial Lit & Theory @ U Vermont, 2006 (Helen, “Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism,
Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Literature”, Postcolonial Text,
2.1http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174)
This figuration of discursive and cultural forms as “tools” to be wielded for imperialist or anti-imperialist ends is very helpful for
discussions of Caribbean literature, which even more obviously than other regional literatures is multifaceted and plural, drawing
on and synthesizing multiple influences — from Amerindian, African, Asian, European traditions — to produce something unique.
Concepts such as transnationalism, hybridity, nomadism, syncretism, and creolization continue to be central to critical
exploration of Caribbean culture. But, as Quayson argues, we cannot afford to overlook “the efficacy of Marxism in providing
progressive ways by which non-Western nations have grasped the processes of globalization” (12). While a straw-man version is
assumed to be unable to negotiate multiplicity or to challenge oppression around nation, race, gender and sexuality, marxism on
the contrary provides a framework from which to probe the inter-dependence of class exploitation and other forms of oppression,
and to apprehend imperialism as an integral, though flexible, feature of capitalism. The materialist dialectic, moreover, provides
an apt starting point for analysis of postcolonial literature, capable as it is of engaging with the material coordinates of
imperialism without reducing “the literary” to a mimetic relationship with an unproblematic empirical reality.
Dismissing Marxism as a “Western” discourse ignores the emancipatory gains achieved
through Marxism—the dismissal of Westernism is disempowering and only reinforces
orientalist notions of the East/West binary
Scott, Prof PostColonial Lit & Theory @ U Vermont, 2006 (Helen, “Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism,
Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Literature”, Postcolonial Text,
2.1,http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174)
In his account of the critical challenges posed by “the new and complex varieties of historical experiences now available to us all
in the post-Eurocentric world” (470), Edward Said finds “the various post-modern theories put forward by J.F. Lyotard and his
disciples, with this disdain for the grand historical narratives, their interest in mimicry and weightless pastiche, their unrelenting
Eurocentrism” unequal to the task (“History” 471). Not the least of its inadequacy is postmodernism’s hostility to theories of
liberation, which, even when explicitly anti-imperialist, are held to be implicated in Eurocentrism. Marxism is routinely rejected as
a “western discourse,” crudely “economist,” and unable to respond to cultural forms and complex issues of ideology and
representation, especially those emerging from non-western societies.[15] The “eurocentrism” identified by Said as endemic to
postmodernism is apparent in its reliance on terms that artificially homogenize competing ideologies and cultures, and its tacit
acceptance that the world can be broken down into “West” and “East,” although the so-called “western tradition” is itself a
historically recent construct, one that is only sustainable by ruthlessly masking the non-western roots of classical thought and
obscuring the cultural cross-pollination that is central to human history. The anti-colonialists of the national liberation period
opposed eurocentrism, but in the words of Said “they did not at all mean that all whites and Europeans, or all white and
European culture, were to be thrown out and rejected” (Reflections xvii). The anti-imperialist giants of this era saw that within
“western societies” dominant ideologies have always been in tension and conflict with oppositional currents in correspondence
with capitalism’s antagonistic class forces and relationships. In his book-length study of postcolonial theory, African scholar Ato
Quayson reiterates this position: [U]nlike most postcolonial commentators I do not think it is possible or desirable completely to
debunk Western-inspired theories … It is undeniably the case, of course, that discourses manufactured in the West have
regularly been used as tools for marginalizing others. And yet at the same time these same tools, in the hands of both
Westerners and others have also been used in serious struggles for liberation, not just from the West but from constrictive
patterns of thought. There is no question, for instance, of the efficacy of Marxism in providing progressive ways by which nonWestern nations have grasped the processes of globalization and helping them to position themselves strategically with regard to
these processes. In fact, there is no question that without Marxism, some of the best ideas that postcolonialism has produced,
from Fanon through to C.L.R. James and Gayatri Spivak, would have been much less interesting than they have turned out to
be. (12-13)
AT: MARXISM BAD
Marxism does not close off difference, but instead emphasizes the objective existence of
oppressive social forces—Marxism therefore discloses oppression that their vague appeal to
respect otherness covers over
Zavarzadeh, Dept English @ Syracuse, 1994 (Mas’ud, “The Stupidity that Consumption is Just as Productive as Production”,
The Alternative Orange, V 4, Fall/Winter, http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
The “New New Left” (as practiced, for example, in what OR‐5 calls the “magisterial” texts of Aronowitz) post-alizes bourgeois
democracy (the political ideology of capitalism) by intensifying its pluralism (e.g. multiculturalism) and renaming it “radical
democracy”. Radical democracy is the space of dialogue and conversation: no particular view is valorized and no specific
conclusions are drawn from these conversations. Conversation is conducted for its own political good: it keeps citizens alert and
vigilant. Any intervention in this conversation, from its “outside” (for example Leninist democratic centralism) is seen as shutting
out the “other” and thus as an instance of anti-democratic violence. Any conclusion is regarded as imposing one's own view on
the “other." In a pedagogy founded upon such assumptions, all theories are of equal validity. The student who puts forth a
reactionary religious interpretation is thus placed in the same analytical terrain as the one who offers a scientific explanation
because it is “obvious” in this post-al classroom of “difference” that “religion” and “science” are simply two autonomous and
incommensurable interpretations whose differences, in the absence of a norm (truth) cannot be adjudicated: they are cases of
“differends." It is in this classroom of difference-as-dialogue that Gerald Graff and Gregory Jay say that “if a student ends up
deciding” that for him/her “authentic liberation means joining a corporation and making a lot of money," he/she should be
respected for his/her views since there is no norm against which one can critique them ("Some Questions about Critical
Pedagogy” in Democratic Culture, Fall 1993). But there is a norm—collectivity—and in reference to such a norm, what Graff and
Jay regard to be a “personal choice," should be explained and critiqued as the work of dominant ideology and its counterrevolutionary understandings and practices made clear to the students. In contrast to the post-al left classroom in which
capitalism, religion, communism are all treated simply as “different” and incommensurable discourses, the pedagogy of critique
argues for the priority of science (conceptual knowing) and demonstrates that religion is a mode of mystification through which
the ruling class naturalizes its oppression of the proletariat and that what is often regarded to be a “personal choice” is, in fact, a
choice made for the subject by the laws of motion of capital. Pedagogy of critique, in other words, argues for the “truth” that
mystification (religion) has no place in education and that education is a project of enlightenment and critique of ideology. Such a
critique of religion is seen by a post-al leftist as an instance of dogmatism (Stalinism) and such a term as “ruling class” will never
be used in his/her classroom since it is rhetorically not effective (Chernobyl!). In valorizing “dialogue” as the spirit of democracy,
the post-al left effectively excludes the “critique” (of ideology) from the scene of democratic participation since post-al discourses
regard the conclusions critique makes as forcing “closure" on open democratic conversations. Such a move is aimed at
discrediting intervention from the “outside” (revolution) as an instance of violence; it legitimates social change as the incremental,
consensual reform from inside the system.
BIOPOWER LINKS
The notion that interrogating power can empower individuals and inspire agency is
misleading—this traps students and academics in the ruse that combating power relations
will lead to social change—this saturates the intellectual climate with theorists who distract
from material struggles—this ensures complicity with capitalism
Zavarzadeh, Dept English @ Syracuse, 1994
(Mas’ud, “The Stupidity that Consumption is Just as Productive as Production”, The Alternative
Orange, V 4, Fall/Winter, http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
Reading and writing as stories of power-and-resistance are now part of the curriculum of reading and interpretation in the ludic
academy. Students are taught how to detect trajectories of power in TV texts, advertisements, novels, films, face-to-face
conversations.... To occupy students with power analysis is one of the devices that the pedagogy of pleasure uses to produce
false consciousness in them: they think that through power analysis they have got hold of the logic of the society in which they
live, and if they can put an end to power relations, a good society will emerge. All the have to do to make such a society possible
is to notice the code of power in conversations between a man and a woman; an ad for an automobile; a body gesture of a white
male to an African American... when in reality the logic of the social is formed in the site of production. The ludic protocol of
reading produces false consciousness in students by teaching them that power is the key to agency: that people can in fact
empower themselves by becoming aware of the workings of power and by learning, through such awareness, to “speak for
themselves." One can speak for oneself all one wants, but without economic access such speaking for oneself is simply one of
many devices for reform and the suppression of revolutionary praxis in the radical democracy advocated by the post-al left.
Empowerment is a material practice: it is achieved only by seizing ownership of the means of production from private owners.
But the pedagogy of pleasure substitutes descriptive code-reading for rigorous conceptual analysis, thereby producing halfliterate subjects of labor whose main skill is to “read” cultural practices—"reading” the news, playing with the rhetorical moves of
a political speech, detecting “power” signs all over the place.... These a-conceptual, dialogic, anecdotal readers of codes of
power form the reserve army of labor for capitalism. To teach students conceptual understanding of the world (scientific analysis
of the everyday to develop class consciousness) is, in the pedagogy of pleasure, a violent act (banking pedagogy, or as R-2 puts
it to “bury you with books").
The complicity of the post-al left with capitalism through its pedagogy of pleasure is, of course, caused by the fact that any
revolutionary change aimed at ending exploitation (not simply domination) will also end the class privileges of the post-al left. R4's text is quite telling on this point: in a moment of reflection, which in bourgeois rhetoric carries the signs of “honesty," R-4 announces, “I write these words as a
an academic (neo)marxist whose health insurance, state retirement, and tax-deferred annuity are impeccably Republican." R-4's “honest” moment is a
“complicated” warning to revolutionaries by reminding them that they are beneficiaries of the “system," and if any really radical action (which goes beyond the
reformism that she/he calls “neo-marxism") is taken, their very privileges will be in danger. The un-said of this “honest” confession is, of course, that someone like
me, who is working towards a revolutionary transformation (and OR‐3's cartoon affirms R-4 on this point) is dis-honest and hypocritical: how could I be in the
system and criticize it? How could I speak for the “other"? I addressed some of these issues in my “Reading My Readers," which has made R-4 to call it a site of
violence ("a kind of textual Chernobyl"). The other un-said of R-4's confession is, of course, that a decent job that feeds a human being, a health care plan that
attends to his/her human needs, a retirement plan that makes sure that in his/her old age she/he is not thrown into the streets should be provided only to those
who accept the premises of the system. Jobs for reformists only! Health care for the supporters of the system only! Jobs, health care, retirement plans... are in R4's confession, a bribe for cooperation, for going along, for being collegial, for being dialogical... to this neo-marxist, jobs (economic access) are not part of basic
human rights—they are graft for the reformist. This is the post-al left in its most lucid moment.
BIOPOWER LINKS
Their infatuation with power relations obscures the reality of the material social relations
that lead to oppression
Zavarzadeh, Dept English @ Syracuse, 1994
(Mas’ud, “The Stupidity that Consumption is Just as Productive as Production”, The Alternative
Orange, V 4, Fall/Winter, http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
The representation of revolutionary practices as “violent” is part of the larger project of the post-al left in which all practices are
“read” as power practices and society itself is understood to be an ensemble of political struggle over contingent hegemony. In
positing the social as “political," the post-al left engages in an idealist move that erases the material base of the political—the
forces of production that in fact shape social organizations. In such a ludic social theory, “domination” and not “exploitation” is the
primary term. Post-al pedagogy has, thus, become a long lesson in mapping strategies of power; detecting trajectories of power
in daily life with the final goal of self-empowerment, and enabling the subject to speak for her/him self and to become an active
“agent." “Language," according to R-2, “constitutes radical agency..." because access to language is access to power. The
underlying theory of “power” in this ludic pedagogy is, as Foucauldian clichés have it, a diffuse (not localized and not the
possession of one class but of “collective ownership"), post-juridical, multidirectional practice. This power is always a “power from
below” and an effect of discourse, and not (as in classical Marxism) the hierarchical organization of the social that is the outcome
not of discourse but of the social relations of production. The idea of power as a diffuse discourse to which everyone has access
means there are is no clear line of demarcation between the powerful and the powerless (Foucault, History of Sexuality 1, 92102). This is the central notion of the ludic view of power and the basis for the ludic erasure of the labor theory of value along
with the materialist explanation of the social according to the dynamics of production. The complicity of the Foucauldian view of
power (rehearsed by R-2) with the ruling class is made clear in Foucault's insistence that everyone has access to power and
more importantly that power is not repressive but in fact enabling ("Where there is power there is resistance," Foucault, 95). The
ludic dogma that all people (regardless of their position in the social relations of production) have access to power is subtly
deployed to argue that contrary to Marxist theories that power is in the hands of the powerful (owners of the means of
production), power is in fact most effectively used by the powerless. It is, according to this complicit theory of power, the “weak”,
as R-2 puts it, rather than the “tenured” that have power since the “weak” can always resist the “tenured” by not “reading." Such
a view of the “weak” as powerful is, of course, the post-alization of a reactionary religious quietism that the meek will inherit the
earth and a ludic recirculation of the old, free-market, capitalist, moral maxim of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.
Furthermore, the power of the “weak” (resistance to reading) is a mere illusion of power, since what R-2 regards to be the sign
of a successful resistance ("the victory of the student's reluctance to read") is eventually a victory for the ruling class since
encouraging non-reading—as a mark of the free choice of a sovereign subject—is part of the very anti-conceptuality that the
ruling class needs in order to produce false consciousness. Non-reading is represented in the commonsense of R-2's text as a
liberation of the imagination from the oppressive schoolmaster who wants to bury you under books and prevent you from the real
“experience” of the world through the body. The perniciousness of the theory of power as resistance (not production) and its
complicity with capitalism in pacifying the masses becomes more clear in such reactionary tracts as Lyotard's “On the Strength of
the Weak” (Semiotexte, 3, 2, 1978, 204-212) which serves as one of the main theoretical texts upon which the retrograde
writings of Ross Chambers are founded—texts which in turn serve as the master theory of reading in R-2. Chambers, in such
books as Story and Situation: Narrative Seduction and the Power of Fiction and, more recently, Room to Maneuver: Reading
(the) Opposition (in)Narrative, applies the lessons of Lyotard and Foucault to “reading” texts as sites of power and
empowerment. (I put aside here the pacifying lessons that Chambers delivers in which, for example, prisoners are seen as
empowering themselves through their graffiti when in fact such a reading of prison graffiti is designed to produce a false
consciousness in which the prisoners misrecognize their situation and mistake “freedom” in writing on the walls within prison for
emancipation through economic access in the world.) The lessons that Chambers gives are based on prefabricated formulas
through which relations of exploitation are obscured by lines of “domination”.
SELF-REFLECTION LINKS
Self reflection is a stalling tactic that undermines the revolution
Zavarzadeh, Dept English @ Syracuse, 1994
(Mas’ud, “The Stupidity that Consumption is Just as Productive as Production”, The Alternative
Orange, V 4, Fall/Winter, http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
The ideological work of the “honest” moment validates “experience” as the limit text of the real. The “honest” moment is also a
"reflective” moment: a moment in which the subject examines his/her practices, casts doubts on his/her own “certainties” and, in
doing so, proposes an “undecidable” and “subtle” subjectivity. Self-reflexivity is a highly valorized commodity in the ludic
academy because it constructs the subtle, skeptical subject of undecidablity thereby producing a hesitation: a hesitation that
deprives the subject from any commitment to the decidable—the revolution. This is one reason why OR‐ 5 finds my decided
critique to be “blindly unreflective." The “reflective” is the guarantee of a skepticism that is the most effective protector of ruling
class intelligibilities and practices. The “honest” moment is now required in the new post-al vogue of self-writing (confessions,
memoirs, autobiographies, interviews, testimonies...). Construction of the “honest” moment is constitutive of the mode of post-al
logic underling the ludic populism that is sweeping the US knowledge industry. The main features of this post-al populism, in
addition to its “honest"y, is its violent attacks on theory (now institutionalized as “Post Theory"); its opposition to any rigorous
conceptual knowledge and scientific understanding, and its relentless anti-intellectualism (which in R-2's text is articulated by the
New Age-y anxiety that “I will bury you with books"). R-2's liberationist, anti-book, freeing of the self is affirmed by, among many
others, Jane Tompkins, who recently took a “two-year leave of absence” from Duke University to perform anti-book life—but “she
has yet to say 'To hell with Duke' (Lingua Franca, March/April 1994, 55). She now works in the Wellspring grocery store in
Durham, which is an “organic” place that “recycles everything” and will “only sell eggs from happy hens” (55). Pedagogy,
according to Tompkins has lost its way because “it puts students in touch, neither with the world out there nor with themselves in
here” (56, emphasis added). Her own pedagogy counters this sterile, “bury you with books” pedagogy with one in which the aim
is no longer “explaining” texts but using texts as an “excuse” to calm the me-in-crisis: “get people to come out of themselves and
find out what they want, who they are." At the center of this anti-explanatory, anti-critique-al pedagogy is “dialogue," thus she
herself is “looking for someone to talk to." The goal of this ludic populism is, in Tompkins' words, individual “emotional and
spiritual fulfillment” (56, emphasis added).
ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUAL LINKS
Their belief that the intellectual is key to forming ideas creates a dependence of the
working class on the intellectual, negating radical social transformation of material
conditions of existence
Zavarzadeh, Dept English @ Syracuse, 1994
(Mas’ud, “The Stupidity that Consumption is Just as Productive as Production”, The Alternative
Orange, V 4, Fall/Winter, http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
The various tendencies of ludic populism can perhaps best be outlined by examining the emerging figure of the post-al “public
intellectual." The “public intellectual” is an invention of the bourgeois academy to solve the material contradictions of capitalism in
the cultural imaginary. The “public intellectual” is represented in ludic discourses as a person who democratizes knowledge:
he/she ostensibly removes the philosophical opacity, technical obscurity and conceptual density (all assumed to be marks of
elitism) from the writings of intellectuals and offers the “results” of knowledge to the “public” in order to “empower” them and turn
them into active “agents." In actuality, however, the bourgeois “public intellectual"—in the name of democratizing knowledge—
perpetuates the ignorance of the people and deepens their dependence on the knowledge industry. In the name of making
knowledge available to all citizens, the “public intellectual” “popularizes” knowledge under the cover of “accessibility” (bite sizing),
but in so doing he/she conceals the conditions and practices of production of knowledge and instead offers knowledge as an
ahistorical commodity to be consumed with “pleasure"—the success of bite-sizing is in direct relation to the amount of “pleasure”
it gives to the reader. In this process the “public intellectual” renders an ideologically necessary service to the ruling class: under
the alibi of democratization and anti-elitism, he/she reifies the language of “common sense," which is the congealed false
consciousness of the regime of capital and wage-labor. Capitalism needs “common sense” in order to protect its class interests
from ideology critique, which aims at producing class consciousness. Thus the “public intellectual” of the ludic knowledge
industry is always a dialogical person who is opposed to “critique” (which, as OR‐ 5 puts it, is the practice of prophets and
demagogues; and is considered anti-democratic, or, as R-4 puts it, “elitist"). In bite-sizing knowledge, the “public intellectual”
denounces the critique-al relation of the intellectual and culture and instead becomes an “affirmationist”: she/he naturalizes the
contradictions of daily life by accepting the laws of “commonsense” and its anti-critique-al, consenting ideology. In fact
“affirmation” is the main task of the bourgeois “public intellectual." Moreover, the credibility of the bourgeois “public intellectual” is
established through her/his “activism," which is, itself, an “affirmation” of the system by accepting (affirming) its rules and playing
inside the system according to the rules of reform. The affirmative activism proposed by R-4, in terms of the work that he/she
does “locally” in his/her “community," and the confirmatory “coalition” of OR‐ 5 are instances of this post-al practice. The
complicity of this ludic, localist activism with the counter-revolutionary, experientialist reformism that is protective of capitalism is
made clear in R-2's affirmative, New Age-y celebration of “experience” (a celebration shared by OR‐ 3) for its dismissal of “high
theoretical schemes"—which are supposed to “seize and radicalize” the disenfranchised—as a fraud, as calls “from above." R2's assumption is identical with the dominant ideology: the “disenfranchised” know by the authenticity of their “experience," and
they do not need the elitist conceptuality of a vanguard party. The popularity of this ludic activism is owing to its no nonsense,
pragmatic (no reciting here of the “right passage," as R-2 puts it) and “honest” stance against a revolutionary praxis guided by a
vanguard party—produces a theoretical and historical understanding of social totality and rejects “experience” (the subject) as
the “natural” (authentic) ground of social change. The “public intellectual” is a figure invented to combine this deep antiintellectualism and counter-revolutionary affirmation of the commonsense with reformist localism. The critique of “experience,"
introduction of the conceptual into the everyday, and development of class consciousness through praxical theory is, of course,
the very heart of the revolutionary Marxist project. In What Is To Be Done, Lenin argues that knowledges should not be
popularized ("translated"—to use OR‐ 3's privileged pedagogical technique—into “experience") for the workers: such a practice
turns the worker into a passive consumer of knowledge. Workers should, themselves, become producers of knowledge. They
intervene in the social “not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians” who are “able to develop” knowledges.
POSTCOLONIALISM LINKS
Postcolonialism has gotten caught up in discourse, ignoring the materiality of oppression
Scott, Prof PostColonial Lit & Theory @ U Vermont, 2006
(Helen, “Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism, Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Literature”,
Postcolonial Text, 2.1, http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174)
Emboldened by rampant U.S. American imperialist military incursions, ideologues of empire are confidently espousing a new
colonialism.[2] One such figure, Niall Ferguson, celebrating the British Empire and advocating for American colonialism, explicitly
condemns “a generation of ‘postcolonial’ historians anachronistically affronted by [the British Empire’s] racism” (1) and calls for
universities to prepare a new imperial elite to once more take up the “white man’s burden.” Another neo-imperialist, Michael
Ignatieff, argues that “imperialism doesn’t stop being necessary just because it becomes politically incorrect” (26). Against a
backdrop of brutal wars of domination and unapologetic racist mythmaking, critical exposés of the material history and
continuation of imperialism are crucial. Unfortunately in its current orthodox form, postcolonial studies is often not up to the
task. Dominated by the impenetrable language of postmodern theories that prohibit the attempt to understand history or
explain social forces, postcolonialism has focused on the cultural detritus of previous moments of empire — the discursive
and ideological remnants of European colonialism — while neglecting the economic, political and military forms of imperialism
that survived formal colonialism’s demise. Postcolonial studies as a field has also been marred by disdain for social movements
and “totalizing” theories of liberation. There is much to learn from the global justice movement, which has scrutinized economic
institutions of global capitalism — the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization and Free Trade Area
of the Americas — and from the global mass movement against the war on Iraq, which has drawn attention to the material
motivations for “wars of liberation.” Marxist analyses of imperialism’s centrality to capitalism remain invaluable for cutting through
the ideological mystifications of capitalism’s current forms. Postcolonial literature overwhelmingly refutes the champions of
empire. In the introduction to his Reflections on Exile, Edward Said, one of the most important interpreters of the relationships
between art and empire, contemplates literary criticism’s regrettable abstraction of texts from their historical and social
surroundings: “The sway of semiology, deconstruction, and even the archaeological descriptions of Foucault, as they have
commonly been received, reduced and in many instances eliminated the messier precincts of ‘life’ and historical experience”
(xviii).[3] These same tendencies have influenced postcolonial criticism, “reducing and eliminating” the “messier precincts” of
imperialism’s current forms. If postcolonial critics are to meet the challenge of the new imperialist ideologues, we should heed
Said’s call to reunite texts with their “worldly situation” — one of imperialist conquest and global inequalities. Taking
contemporary Caribbean women’s literature, my field of expertise, as a reference point (although in this space I can only sketch
a general approach), I suggest the usefulness of established marxist categories (imperialism, class, ideology) and critical
practice (as informed by Georg Lukács and Raymond Williams) for this project. In so doing I follow the many scholars in the field
who hold that historical materialism provides an important corrective to the idealism of postmodernist postcolonialism.[4]
FEMINISM/GENDER LINK
Gender oppression stems from the material realities of capitalism
Scott, Prof PostColonial Lit & Theory @ U Vermont, 2006
(Helen, “Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism, Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Literature”,
Postcolonial Text, 2.1, http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174)
Considered as material coordinates rather than systems of thought, gender and class are inseparable and interdependent:
“‘Gender is created not simply outside production but within it … It is not a set of ideas developed separately from the economic
structure but a part of it, built into the organization and social relations of work’” (French, quoting Ava Baron, 7). Women’s
oppression is not a trans-historical constant but is produced through class structure and serves the needs of capitalism.[9]
Women both disproportionately provide the unpaid labor of privatized reproduction — the childcare and other domestic
responsibilities that are necessary to service future generations of workers — and form a low paid work force: globally women
earn two thirds of the average male wage, and in some countries the gap is far larger.[10] These dynamics are particularly
pertinent for discussion of postcolonial countries in the neoliberal period: