AT Criterons and K’s
1
Consequentialism ........................................................................................................................ 2
Consequentialism-Good .......................................................................................................... 2
Survival Most Important.......................................................................................................... 3
Consequentialism-Bad General ............................................................................................... 4
Deo-Good ................................................................................................................................ 5
Deo-Bad ................................................................................................................................... 6
AT No Value to Life ...................................................................................................................... 7
General Perms ............................................................................................................................. 8
A2 Biopower-Foucault ................................................................................................................. 9
AT Language K’s ......................................................................................................................... 11
AT Representations ................................................................................................................... 13
AT Cap K..................................................................................................................................... 15
Cap Sustainable ..................................................................................................................... 15
Socialism Unsustainable ........................................................................................................ 16
Cap Good-General ................................................................................................................. 17
Cap Good-Space .................................................................................................................... 19
AT Feminism .............................................................................................................................. 20
A2 “Infinite Responsibility” ....................................................................................................... 23
AT Ethic of Care Essentialisms ................................................................................................... 25
AT Narratives: ............................................................................................................................ 26
AT Criterons and K’s
2
Consequentialism
Consequentialism-Good
Consequentialism key to examining real world social problems.
Robert Goodin a philosopher for ANDU, fellow in philosophy at Australian National Defense University, 1990 “The
Utilitarian Response”
Consequentialism is the idea that what matters most is the consequences of our actions. This de-emphasizes the
direct content of an action by replacing such emphasis with the actual outcome of an action.
There are many variations on this theme the most promising of which, I think, are the ones that take into count the actual
consequences of an agent throughout their entire life as opposed to just immediate consequences and deceptions. ac This view
looks at the overall success of protracted struggles above and beyond simply immediate victories that might eventually lead to the
success of the overall struggle. Also, emphasis
is placed on actual consequences instead of perceived
consequences in which an agent might be deceived. The consequences of an action are many times influenced by a great
number of outside forces or variables such as other agents in the world. Also, desired consequences
may involve
the conditions of others. In this way there is a social element implicit to
Consequentialism. “It is because Consequentialism attaches value ultimately to states
Upholding life is the ultimate moral standard.
Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, Professors of Philosophy at Bellarmine and St. John's, 1981, Reading
Nozick, p.244
Rand has spoken of the ultimate end as the standard by which all other ends are evaluated. When the ends
to be evaluated are chosen ones the ultimate end is the standard for moral evaluation . Life as the sort of thing a living entity is,
then, is the ultimate standard of value, and since only human beings are capable of choosing
their ends, it is the life as a human being-man's life qua man-that is the standard for moral
evaluation.
Douglas Den
Utilitarianism is real world and non-utopian
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 ( “Nuclear Ethics”, p. 24)
Whether one accepts the broad consequentialist approach or chooses some other, more
eclectic way to include and reconcile the three dimensions of complex moral issues, there will
often be a sense of uneasiness about the answers, not just because of the complexity of the
problems “but simply that there is no satisfactory solution to these issues – at least none that
appears to avoid in practice what most men would still regard as an intolerable sacrifice of
value.” When value is sacrificed, there is often the problem of “dirty hands.” Not all ethical
decisions are pure ones. The absolutist may avoid the problem of dirty hands, but often at the
cost of having no hands at all. Moral theory cannot be “rounded off and made complete and
tidy.” That is part of the modern human condition. But that does not exempt us from making
difficult moral choices.
AT Criterons and K’s
3
Survival Most Important
No natural good can come out of extinction of the human race. It is the ultimate
impact. You should prefer stopping it over all else.
Nick Bostrum 11 (Professor, Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School
EXISTENTIAL RISK PREVENTION AS THE MOST IMPORTANT TASK FOR HUMANITY “ 2011 ,
Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf
,DW)
But even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk. What makes
existential catastrophes especially bad is not that they would show up robustly on a plot like the one in figure 3,
causing a precipitous drop in world population or average quality of life. Instead, their significance lies primarily in the
fact that they would destroy the future. The philosopher Derek Parfit made a similar point with the following
thought experiment: ¶ I believe that if we destroy [humankind] mankind, as we now can, this outcome will
be much worse than most people think. Compare three outcomes: ¶ (1) Peace. ¶ (2) A nuclear
war that kills 99% of the world’s existing population. ¶ (3) A nuclear war that kills 100%. (2)
would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that
the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I
believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is very much
greater. … The Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years. Civilization began only a
few thousand years ago. If we do not destroy [humankind] mankind, these few thousand years may
be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history. The difference between (2) and (3) may thus
be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we compare this possible history to a day, what has
occurred so far is only a fraction of a second. (10: 453-454) ¶ To calculate the loss associated with an existential catastrophe, we
must consider how much value would come to exist in its absence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for Earth-originating
intelligent life is literally astronomical. ¶ One gets a large number even if one confines one’s consideration to the potential for
biological human beings living on Earth. If we
suppose with Parfit that our planet will remain habitable for
at least another billion years, and we assume that at least one billion people could live on it
sustainably, then the potential exist for at least 1018 human lives. These lives could also be considerably
better than the average contemporary human life, which is so often marred by disease, poverty, injustice, and various biological
limitations that could be partly overcome through continuing technological and moral progress.
Our strongest moral impulse ought to be prevention of human extinction.
Nick Bostrum ‘11 (Professor, Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School
EXISTENTIAL RISK PREVENTION AS THE MOST IMPORTANT TASK FOR HUMANITY “ 2011 ,
Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf
,DW)
We might also consider the issue from a less theoretical standpoint and try to form an
evaluation instead by considering analogous cases about which we have definite moral
intuitions. Thus, for example, if we feel confident that committing a small genocide is wrong, and
that committing a large genocide is no less wrong, we might conjecture that committing omnicide is
also wrong.25 And if we believe we have some moral reason to prevent natural catastrophes
that would kill a small number of people, and a stronger moral reason to prevent natural
catastrophes that would kill a larger number of people, we might conjecture that we have an even
stronger moral reason to prevent catastrophes that would kill the entire human population.
AT Criterons and K’s
4
Consequentialism-Bad General
Owning oneself is a moral imperative – utilitarianism imposes interpersonal
obligations to society, which destroys morality
Freeman 94 (Avalon Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D.
Harvard University, J.D. University of North Carolina (Samuel, “Utilitarianism, Deontology, and
the Priority of Right,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 4, Autumn, pp. 313-349,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265463)
Kymlicka distinguishes two interpretations of utilitarianism: teleological and egalitarian. According to Rawls's teleological
interpretation, the "fundamental goal" (LCC, p. 33) of utilitarianism is not persons, but the goodness of
states of affairs. Duty is defined by what best brings about these states of affairs. " [M] aximizing the good is primary, and we
count individuals equally only because that maximizes value. Our primary duty isn't to treat people as equals, but to
bring about valuable states of affairs" (LCC, p. 27). It is difficult to see, Kymlicka says, how this reading of
utilitarianism can be viewed as a moral theory. Morality, in our everyday view at least, is a matter of
interpersonal obligations-the obligations we owe to each other. But to whom do we owe the duty of
maximizing utility? Surely not to the impersonal ideal spectator . . . for he doesn't exist . Nor to the
maximally valuable state of affairs itself, for states of affairs don't have moral claims." (LCC, p. 28-29) Kymlicka says, "This form of
utilitarianism does not merit serious consideration as a political morality" (LCC, p. 29). Suppose we see utilitarianism differently, as a
theory whose "fundamental principle" is "to treat people as equals" (LCC, p. 29). On this egalitarian reading, utilitarianism is a
procedure for aggregating individual interests and desires, a procedure for making social choices, specifying which trade-offs are
acceptable. It's a moral theory which purports to treat people as equals, with equal concern and respect. It does so by counting
everyone for one, and no one for more than one. (LCC, p. 25)
Risks taken by the government to increase overall utility will severely
compromise the individual which will result in fatality
Schroeder 86 (Professor of Law at Duke (Christopher H., Prof of Law at Duke, “Rights Against
Risks,”, April, Columbia Law Review, pp. 495-562, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1122636)
Equity has provided a limited answer to the question of acceptable risk. The traditional doctrine of
injunctions against tortious behavior holds that courts may enjoin behavior that is virtually certain to harm
an identifiable individual in the near future.'2 This body of law, however, focuses more on avoidance of harm to
specific persons than on regulation of risk.'3 It is thus inapposite to the questions of modern technological risk, risk that is quite
unlikely to injure any identifiable individual in the short-term, but that carries severe
consequences that are certain to occur to someone in the medium to distant future. Consider the
paradigm of the Acme Chemical Company: Acme Chemical Company is discovered to be storing chemical wastes on its land in such a
way that seepage containing traces of those wastes are entering an underground water system that serves as the sole drinking
water supply for a town several miles away. One of the chemicals has been classified as a carcinogen in laboratory experiments on
mice. Although extrapolating from these results to predictions of human carcinogencity is somewhat controversial, federal agencies
routinely do so. Under one of a number of plausible sets of assumptions, a concentration of ten parts per billion (ppb) in drinking
water is estimated to increase a human's chance of contracting cancer by one in one hundred thousand if the human is assumed to
consume a normal intake over the course of twenty years. Analyses show that the current concentration in the underground aquifer
near Acme's plant is ten ppb. This case exhibits the typical features of risky actions associated with modern technology. The
probability of risk to any individual is relatively small while its severity is substantial, perhaps
fatal. Risk is being imposed on individuals who have not consented to it in any meaningful
sense. Finally, risk is unintentional in the sense that imposing risk on others is not an objective of Acme's plan.'4 We may assume
its executives in fact would be tremendously relieved if they could avoid the risk.
AT Criterons and K’s
5
Deontology
Deo-Good
Using people as a means goes against morality
Manuel Velasquez, Moral Philosopher, Mar. 6, 2007. Philosophy: A Text with Readings, pg.
460 “Ethics”.
Kant’s second version of the categorical imperative implies that we should not use people as objects, as things whose only function
is to satisfy our desires. Instead, he claims, morality
requires that we always give others the opportunity to
decide for themselves whether or not they will join us in our actions. This rules out all forms
of deception, force, coercion, and manipulation. It also rules out all the ways we have of
exploiting other people to satisfy our own desires without their free consent. Moreover, the second
version implies that we should promote people’s capacity to choose for themselves. It also implies that we should strive to develop
this capacity in ourselves and in those around us (for example, through education). Again, some examples may clarify what Kant has
in mind in this second version. For Kant, to respect a person as an end is to respect her capacity to freely and knowingly choose for
herself what she will do. To
treat a person as a means is to use the person to achieve my personal
interests. In effect, this second version says that we should treat people only as they freely and knowingly
consent to be treated, not merely as a means to my own goal. Kant would say that it is wrong to force or to
manipulate a person into doing something because in manipulating or forcing a person I am failing to treat the person as she has
freely and knowingly consented to be treated.
Morality precedes all decision making
Zygmunt Bauman, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, 1993. Postmodern Ethics pgs. 246-250.
http://docs.exdat.com/docs/index-149754.html?page=82 accessed 7/19/12
But the moral crisis of the postmodern habitat requires first and foremost that politics - whether the
politics of the politicians or the policentric, scattered politics which matters all the more for being so elusive and beyond control _
be an extension and institutionalization of moral responsibility. Genuine moral issues of the high-tech
world are by and large beyond the reach of individuals (who, at best, may singly or severally purchase the right not to worry about
them, or buy a temporary reprieve from suffering the effects of neglect). The effects of technology are long-distance, and so must be
the preventive and remedial action. Hans Jonas's 'long-range ethics' makes sense, if at all, only as a political programme - though given the nature of
the postmodern habitat, there is little hope that any political party competing for state power would be willing, suicidally, to endorse this truth and act
upon it. Commenting on Edgar Allan Poe's story of three fishermen caught in the maelstrom, of whom two died paralysed with fear and doing
nothing, but the third survived, having noticed that round objects are sucked into the abyss less quickly, and promptly jumping into a
barrel - Norbert Elias sketched the way in which the exit from a nonexit situation may be plotted. The survivor, Elias suggests, “began to
think more coolly; and by standing back, by controlling his own fear, by seeing himself as it were from a distance, like a chessman forming a pattern
with others -on a board, he managed to turn his thoughts away from himself to the situation in which he found himself... Symbolically representing in
his mind the structure and direction of the flow of events, he discovered a way of escape. In that situation, the level of self-control and the level of
process-control were ... interdependent and complemen tary.'s” Let us note that Poe's cool and clever fisherman escaped alone. We do not know how
many barrels there were left in the boat. And barrels, after all, have been known since Diogenes to be the ultimate individual retreats.
The question is - and to this question private cunning offers no answer -- to what extent the techniques of individual survival
(techniques by the way, amply provided for all present and future, genuine and putative maelstroms, by eager-tooblige-and-profit
merchants of goods and counsels) can be stretched to-embrace the-collective survival.--The-maelstrom-of the kind we are in - all of
us together, and most of us individually - is so frightening because of its tendency to break down the issue of common survival into a
sackful of individual survival issues, and then to take the issue so pulverized off the political agenda. Can the process be retraced?
Can that which has been broken be made whole again? And where to find an adhesive strong enough to keep it whole? If the
successive chapters of this book suggest anything, it is that moral issues cannot be 'resolved', nor the moral life of humanity
guaranteed, by the calculating and legislative efforts of reason. Morality
is not safe in the hands of reason, though
cannot help the moral self without depriving the
self of what makes the self moral: that unfounded, non-rational, un-arguable, no-excusesgiven and noncalculable urge to stretch towards the other, to caress, to be for, to live for, happen what
may. Reason is about making correct decisions, while moral responsibility precedes all thinking about
decisions as it does not, and cannot care about any logic which would allow the approval of an action as correct. Thus,
morality can be `rationalized' only at the cost of self-denial and self attrition.
this is exactly what spokesmen of reason promise. Reason
AT Criterons and K’s
6
Deo-Bad
Deontology is severely flawed in the context of public policy
Woller 1997 (Gary, professor of economics @ BYU. Policy Currents, June 1997. Accessed at
http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf, p. 11)
At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis
for public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical
dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at
worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately
address the problem or actually making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment
by no means implies the best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy
that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly
consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is
evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be
implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of
environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to
environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse
outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and
Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points
are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The
number of values typically involved in public policy
decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and
complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively
that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only
one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a
democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy
alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a
policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end
language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral
piety are an insufficient, though perhaps at times a necessary basis for public policy in a
democracy.
DEONTOLOGY LOCKS US INTO A DEADLOCK WHEN VALUES CONFLICT, ONLY
WAY TO RESOLVE THAT IS BY USING CONSEQUENTIALISM
Person, 1997 (lngmar. Lund University. Three Methods of Ethics: a debate. Eds. Baron,
Marcia, Philip Petit, and Michael Stole. Pg 13-14. uw//wej)
Now the natural rights theorist maintains, of course, that. the presence of a right is such a relevant factor, or reason, that may
justify departing from the goal of fulfilment maximization. In Ronald Dwor. kin's phrase, rights could in this way `trump' the pursuit
of maximal fulfilment. A right to M provides a reason for holding that one morally should have M even if this is at odds with the goal
mentioned. I do not say that it ensures that one should have M because the rights theorist may like to impose a limit on the weight
of rights, on how great the loss of fulfilment overall may be if a right is not to be outweighed. Suppose that my hair has a unique
healing quality: thousands of terminally ill patients could be saved if a couple of strands are removed and made into a medicine.
What should the rights theorist say if I none the less refuse to have these strands removed? Surely, something like this: the suffering
there is
a limit on the weight of my right, on its capacity to restrain maximiza- tion; a right provides a moral reason
that can be outweighed. As an aside, note that, like the limit on the extension of rights, this limit would seem to
have to be based on consequentialist considera- tions, on weighing the frustration and confusion occasioned
by infring- ing our deep-seated intuitions about rights against the frustration and suffering caused by respecting them. Thus, when
It comes to the precise weight of rights, no less than their extension, we see that it cannot be
fixed unless we transcend the natural rights framework in favour of a consequentialist one.
caused by respecting my right to my strands of hair is so great that we are morally justified in violating the right. But then
AT Criterons and K’s
7
AT No Value to Life
THERE’S ALWAYS VALUE TO LIFE
Victor Frankl, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna, Man’s Search
for Meaning, 1946, p. 104
But I did not only talk of the future and the veil which was drawn over it. I also mentioned the past; all its joys, and how its light
shone even in the present darkness. Again I quoted a poet—to avoid sounding like a preacher myself—who had written, “Was Dii
erlebst, k,ann keme Macht der Welt Dir rauben.” (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our
experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it
is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. Then I spoke of the many
opportunities of giving life a meaning. I
told my comrades (who lay motionless, although occasionally a sigh could be heard)
that human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this
infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death. I asked the poor creatures
who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose
hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did
not detract from its dignity and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours—a
friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God—and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering
proudly—not miserably—knowing how to die.
THERE’S ALWAYS VALUE TO LIFE, EVEN WITH TREMENDOUS SUFFERING
Victor Frankl, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna, Man’s Search
for Meaning, 1946, p. 99-100
When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task ;
his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one
His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears
his burden. For us, as prisoners, these thoughts were not speculations far removed from reality. They
were the only thoughts that could be of help to us. They kept us from despair, even when there seemed to
be no chance of coming out of it alive. Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the
meaning of life, a naive query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the
active creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and
death, of suffering and of dying. Once the meaning of suffering had been revealed to us, we refused to minimize or
alleviate the camp’s tortures by ignoring them or harboring false illusions and entertaining artificial optimism. Suffering
had become a task on which we did not want to turn our backs. We had realized its hidden
opportunities for achievement, the opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, “Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!” (How
can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place.
much suffering there is to get through!) Rilke spoke of “getting through suffering” as others would talk of “getting through work.”
There was plenty of suffering for us to get through. Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to
keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was
no need to be ashamed of tears, for
tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer . Only very few
realized that. Shamefacedly some confessed occasionally that they had wept, like the comrade who answered my question of how
he had gotten over his edema, by confessing, ‘I have wept it out of my system.”
AT Criterons and K’s
8
General Perms
Perm Do both, my advocacy is the first temporary expression of the critique
alternative. Reform is necessary to engage the public sphere
Foucault, French Sociologist, 1988 (Michel, “On Criticism” in Michel Foucault: Politics
Philosophy Culture Interviews and other writings 1977- 1984)
D.E. You mean it will be possible to work with this government?¶ FOUCAULT: We must escape from the dilemma of
being either for or against. After all, it is possible to face up to a government and remain
standing. To work with a government implies neither subjection nor total acceptance. One
may work with it and yet be restive. I even believe that the two things go together.¶ D.E. After Michel Foucault the
critic, are we now going to see Michel Foucault the reformist? After all, the reproach was often made that the criticism made by
intellectuals leads to nothing.¶ FOUCAULT First I’ll answer the point about “that leads to nothing.” There are hundreds and
thousands of people who have worked for the emergence of a number of problems that are now on the agenda. To say that this
work produced nothing is quite wrong. Do you think that twenty years ago people were considering the problems of the relationship
between mental illness and psychological normality, the problem of prison, the problem of medical power, the problem of the
relationship between the sexes, and so on, as they are doing today?¶ Furthermore, there are no reforms as such. Reforms are not
produced in the air, independently of those who carry them out. One cannot not take account of those who will have the job of
carrying out this transformation.¶ And, then, above all, I believe that an opposition can be made between critique and
transformation, “ideal” critique and “real” transformation.¶ A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It
is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the
practices that we accept rest.¶ We must free ourselves from the sacrilization of the social as the only reality and stop regarding as
superfluous something so essential in human life and in human relations as thought. Thought exists independently of systems and
structures of discourse. It is something that is often hidden, but which always animates everyday behavior. There is always a little
thought even in the most stupid institutions; there is always thought even in silent habits.¶
Criticism is a matter of
flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as
one believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a
matter of making facile gestures difficult.¶ In these circumstances, criticism (and radical criticism) is absolutely
indispensable for any transformation. A transformation that remains within the same mode of thought, a transformation that is only
a way of adjusting the same thought more closely to the reality of things can merely be a superficial transformation.¶ On the other
hand, as
soon as one can no longer think things as one formerly thought them, transformation
becomes both very urgent, very difficult, and quite possible.¶ It is not therefore a question of there being a time for criticism and
a time for transformation, nor people who do the criticism and others who do the transforming, those who are enclosed in an
inaccessible radicalism and those who are forced to make the necessary concessions to reality. In fact I think the
work of
deep transformation can only be carried out in a free atmosphere, one constantly agitated by
a permanent criticism.¶ D.E. But do you think the intellectual must have a programmatic role in this transformation?¶
FOUCAULT A reform is never only the result of a process in which there is conflict, confrontation,
struggle, resistance¶ To say to oneself at the outset: what reform will I be able to carry out? That is not, I believe, an aim for the
intellectual to pursue. His role, since he works specifically in the realm of thought, is to see how far the liberation of thought can
make those transformations urgent enough for people to want to carry them out and difficult enough to carry out for them to be
profoundly rooted in reality.¶ It
is a question of making conflicts more visible, of making them more
essential than mere confrontations of interests or mere institutional immobility. Out of these conflicts,
these confrontations, a new power relation must emerge, whose first, temporary expression
will be a reform. If at the base there has not been the work of thought upon itself and if, in fact, modes of thought, that is to
say modes of action, have not been altered, whatever the project for reform, we know that it will be swamped, digested by modes
of behavior and institutions that will always be the same.
AT Criterons and K’s
9
A2 Biopower-Foucault
Lifting biopolitical constraints necessarily creates new ones. The illusion that we
can be free from biopower makes the impact worse.
Shapiro, Critical Theorist and UCLA graduate, 2007 (Steve, April 22, Foucault and Constraints
on Individualism, http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474976965588) PMK
A prime example of this is during the 1970s when the Soviet Union and the United States were still in an arms race. In 1979, guerrilla
opposition forces started to threaten the government of Afghanistan. The Soviets interfered trying to end the conflict, but instead,
the conflict led to the Afghan War which lasted ten years, taking an enormous human and economic toll. Only after the Soviet
withdrawal could the Afghan people take control of their government. The Soviets let the Afghan people take care of it themselves.
It so happened to be that when the Soviets lifted their biopower, the Taliban seized control of the government and exerted far
greater biopower than before. The truth is, however, that lifting a biopolitical constraint is an endless process.
Foucault himself states the fact that it is impossible to be in a world without biopower, because as soon
as a constraint has been lifted, another one sets into place. Foucault uses the historical example of the
French revolution and how the French overthrew their government, a constraint that led to their
suffering at the time, but then had to face a new governmental power. The power structures circulate if
individualism is preserved, and that, Foucault explains, is the sole priority of a society: to ensure that it
does circulate. As soon we try to infringe on a constraint and use power to limit it, we are stopping this
cycle, only increasing biopower within the constraint itself .
Foucault is irrelevant to public policy
David E. McClean, New School University, “The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope,”
Presented at the 2001 Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of American
Philosophy.
Or we might take Foucault who, at best, has provided us with what may reasonably be
described as a very long and eccentric footnote to Nietzsche (I have once been accused, by a Foucaltian true
believer, of "gelding" Foucault with other similar remarks). Foucault, who has provided the Left of the late 1960s through the
present with such notions as "governmentality," "Limit," "archeology," "discourse" "power" and "ethics," creating or redefining their
meanings, has
made it overabundantly clear that all of our moralities and practices are the
successors of previous ones which derive from certain configurations of savoir and
connaisance arising from or created by, respectively, the discourses of the various scientific
schools. But I have not yet found in anything Foucault wrote or said how such observations
may be translated into a political movement or hammered into a political document or theory
(let alone public policies) that can be justified or founded on more than an arbitrary aesthetic
experimentalism. In fact, Foucault would have shuddered if any one ever did, since he thought
that anything as grand as a movement went far beyond what he thought appropriate. This
leads me to mildly rehabilitate Habermas, for at least he has been useful in exposing
Foucault's shortcomings in this regard, just as he has been useful in exposing the shortcomings of others enamored
with the abstractions of various Marxian-Freudian social critiques.
Geneaologies don’t create political change—they just lead to endless questions
Michel Foucault, SOCIETY MUST BE DEFENDED: LECTURES AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE 19751976, 2003, p. 3-4.
So what was I going to say to you this year? That I’ve just about had enough; in other words, I’d
like to bring to a close, to
put an end to, up to a point, the series of research projects—well, yes, “research”—we all talk about it, but what does it
actually mean?—that we’ve been working on for four or five years, or practically ever since I’ve been here, and I realize that there
were more and more drawbacks, for both you and me. Lines of research that
were very closely interrelated but
that never added up to a coherent body of work, that had no continuity. Fragments of research, none of which was
completed, and none of which was followed through; bits and pieces of research, and at the same time it was getting very repetitive,
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always falling into the same rut, the same themes, the same concepts. A
few remarks on the history of penal
procedure; a few chapters on the evolution, the institutionalization of psychiatry in the nineteenth century;
considerations on sophistry or Greek coins; an outline history of sexuality, or at least a history of knowledge about sexuality
based upon seventeenth-century confessional practices, or controls on infantile sexuality in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries; pinpointing the genesis of a theory and knowledge of anomalies, and of all the related techniques. We
are making
no progress, and it’s all leading nowhere. It’s all repetitive, and it doesn’t add up. Basically, we keep
saying the same thing, and there again, perhaps we’re not saying anything at all. It’s all getting into something of an
inextricable tangle, and it’s getting us nowhere, as they say. I could tell you that these things were trails to be
followed, that it didn’t matter where they led, or even that the one thing that did matter was that they didn’t lead
anywhere, or at least not in some predetermined direction. I could say they were like an outline for something. It’s up to you to go
on with them or to go off on a tangent; and it’s up to me to pursue them or give them a different configuration. And then, we—you
or I—could see what could be done with these fragments. I felt
a bit like a sperm whale that breaks the surface
of the water, makes a little splash, and lets you believe, makes you believe, or want to believe, that down
there where it can’t be seen, down there where it is neither seen nor monitored by anyone, it is following a deep,
coherent, and premeditated trajectory.
Perm Do Both: ACKNOWLEDGING THE TENSION OF MODERNITY WHILE
ENGAGING IN DEMOCRATIC STRUGGLE ALLOWS POLITICS BEYOND THE POLICE
STATE IN OPPOSITION TO SOVEREIGNTY AND EXCEPTION
Deranty 2004
[Jean-Philippe, Macquarie University, “Agamben’s challenge to normative theories of modern rights,” borderlands e-journal, Vol. 3,
No. 1, www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/deranty_agambnschall.htm, acc 1-7-05//uwyo-ajl]
47. If, with Rancière, we
define politics not through the institution of sovereignty, but as a continual
struggle for the recognition of basic equality, and thereby strongly distinguish politics from
the police order viewed as the functional management of communities (Rancière 1999), then it is
possible to acknowledge the normative break introduced by the democratic revolutions of the
modern age without falling into a one-sided view of modernity as a neat process of
rationalisation. What should be stressed about modernity is not primarily the list of substantive inalienable and
imprescriptible human rights, but the equal entitlement of all to claim any rights at all. This definition of politics
must be accompanied by the parallel acknowledgment that the times that saw the recognition of the fundamental equality of all
also produced the total negation of this principle. But this parallel claim does not necessarily render the first invalid. Rather it
points to a tension inherent in modern communities, between the political demands of equality and the
systemic tendencies that structurally produce stigmatisation and exclusion.
48. One
can acknowledge the descriptive appeal of the biopower hypothesis without
renouncing the antagonistic definition of politics. As Rancière remarks, Foucault’s late hypothesis is more about
power than it is about politics (Rancière 2002). This is quite clear in the 1976 lectures (Society must be defended) where the term
that is mostly used is that of "biopower". As Rancière suggests, when the "biopower" hypothesis is transformed into a "biopolitical"
thesis, the very possibility of politics becomes problematic. There is a way of articulating modern disciplinary power and the
imperative of politics that is not disjunctive. The
power that subjects and excludes socially can also
empower politically simply because the exclusion is already a form of address which
unwittingly provides implicit recognition. Power includes by excluding, but in a way that might
be different from a ban. This insight is precisely the one that Foucault was developing in his last writings, in his definition of
freedom as "agonism" (Foucault 1983: 208-228): "Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free" (221).
The hierarchical, exclusionary
essence of social structures demands as a condition of its possibility an
equivalent implicit recognition of all, even in the mode of exclusion. It is on the basis of this recognition
that politics can sometimes arise as the vindication of equality and the challenge to exclusion.
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AT Language K’s
FOCUSING ON HOW WE TALKED ABOUT THE ISSUE, RATHER THAN HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT, TRADES OF WITH ACTIVISM AND DESTROYS THE ABILITY TO
FORM COALITIONS
Ward Churchill, Keetoowah Cherokee, 25+ year member of the American Indian Movement
and Professor, Indigenous Studies, University of Colorado Boulder. FROM A NATIVE SON, 1996
p. 460.
There can be little doubt that matters of linguistic appropriateness and precision are of serious
and legitimate concern. By the same token, however, it must be conceded that such
preoccupations arrive at a point of diminishing return. After that, they degenerate rapidly into
liabilities rather than benefits to comprehension. By now, it should be evident that much of
what is mentioned in this article falls under the latter category; it is, by and large, inept,
esoteric, and semantically silly, bearing no more relevance in the real world than the question of
how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Ultimately, it is a means to stultify and divide
people rather than stimulate and unite them. Nonetheless, such “issues” of word choice have
come to dominate dialogue in a significant and apparently growing segment of the Left.
Speakers, writers, and organizers or persuasions are drawn, with increasing vociferousness and
persistence, into heated confrontations, not about what they’ve said, but about how they’ve
said it. Decisions on whether to enter into alliances, or even to work with other parties, seem
more and more contingent not upon the prospect of a common agenda, but upon mutual
adherence to certain elements of a prescribed vernacular. Mounting quantities of a progressive
time, energy, and attention are squandered in perversions of Mao’s principle of criticism/selfcriticism – now variously called “process,” “line sharpening,” or even ‘struggle” – in which there
occurs a virtually endless stream of talk about how to talk about “the issues.” All of this happens
at the direct expense of actually understanding the issues themselves, much less doing
something about them. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the dynamic at hand adds
up to a pronounced avoidance syndrome, a masturbatory ritual through which an opposition
nearly paralyzed by its own deeply felt sense of impotence pretends to be engaged in something
“meaningful.” In the end, it reduces to a tragic delusion at best, cynical game playing or
intentional disruption at worst. With this said, it is only fair to observe that it’s high time to get
off this nonsense, and on with the real work of effecting positive social change.
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Punishing language trades off with more effective social change
Matthew Roskoski and Joe Peabody, “A Linguistic and Philosophical Critique of Language
‘Arguments,’” 1991, http://debate.uvm.edu/Library/DebateTheoryLibrary/Roskoski&PeabodyLangCritiques, accessed 10/17/02
Previously, we have argued that the language advocates have erroneously reversed the causal relationship between language and
reality. We have defended the thesis that reality
shapes language, rather than the obverse. Now we will also contend that
to attempt to solve a problem by editing the language which is symptomatic of that problem
will generally trade off with solving the reality which is the source of the problem. There are several
reasons why this is true. The first, and most obvious, is that we may often be fooled into thinking that language
"arguments" have generated real change. As Graddol and Swan observe, "when compared with larger social and
ideological struggles, linguistic reform may seem quite a trivial concern, " further noting "there is also the danger
that effective change at this level is mistaken for real social change" (Graddol & Swan 195). The second
reason is that the language we find objectionable can serve as a signal or an indicator of the
corresponding objectionable reality. The third reason is that restricting language only limits the overt
expressions of any objectionable reality, while leaving subtle and hence more dangerous
expressions unregulated. Once we drive the objectionable idea underground it will be more
difficult to identify, more difficult to root out, more difficult to counteract, and more likely to have its
undesirable effect. The fourth reason is that objectionable speech can create a "backlash" effect that raises the
consciousness of people exposed to the speech. Strossen observes that "ugly and abominable as these expressions are, they
undoubtably have had the beneficial result of raising social consciousness about the underlying societal problem..." (560).
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AT Representations
Representational violence does not preclude the need for concrete action
Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities, University of Virginia, Truth, Politics, and
Postmodernism, Spinoza Lectures, 1997, p. 51-2
This distinction between the theoretical and the practical point of view is often drawn by Derrida, another writer who enjoys
demonstrating that something very important – meaning, for example, or justice, or friendship – is both necessary and impossible.
the paradox doesn't matter
when it comes to practice. More generally, a lot of the writers who are labeled `post-modernist; and who talk a lot
about impossibility, turn out to be good experimentalist social democrats when it comes to actual
political activity. I suspect, for example, that Gray, Zizek, Derrida and I, if we found ourselves citizens of the same country,
When asked about the implications of these paradoxical fact, Derrida usually replies that
would all be voting for the same candidates, and supporting the same reforms. Post-modernist philosophers have gotten a bad
name because of their paradox-mongering habits, and their constant use of terms like `impossible; `self-contradictory' and
`unrepresentable'. They have helped create a cult of inscrutability, one which defines itself by opposition to the Enlightenment
search for transparency - and more generally, to the `metaphysics of presence; the idea that intellectual progress aims at getting
I am all for getting rid of the metaphysics of
presence, but I think that the rhetoric of impossibility and unrepresentability is counterproductive
overdramatization. It is one thing to say that we need to get rid of the metaphor of things being accurately represented,
things clearly illuminated, sharply delimited, wholly visible.
once and for all, as a result of being bathed in the light of reason. This metaphor has created a lot of headaches for philosophers,
and we would be better off without it. But that does not show that we are suddenly surrounded by unrepresentables; it just shows
that `more accurate representation' was never a fruitful way to describe intellectual progress. Even
if we agree that we
shall never have what Derrida calls "a full presence beyond the reach of play"; our sense of the
possibilities open to humanity will not have changed. We have learned nothing about the limits of human hope
from metaphysics, or from the philosophy of history, or from psychoanalysis. All that we have learned from `post-modern'
philosophy is that we may need a different gloss on the notion of `progress' than the rationalistic gloss which the Enlightenment
offered. We
have been given no reason to abandon the belief that a lot of progress has been
made by carrying out the Enlightenment's political program. Since Darwin we have come to suspect that
whether such progress is made will be largely a matter of luck. But we have been given no reason to stop hoping to get lucky.
Focus on representational violence worsens real violence
Elana Gomel, Tel-Aviv University, “Written in Blood: Serial Killing and Narratives of Identity,”
Post Identity, Volume 2, Number 1, Winter 1999, p. 24-25,
http://ids.udmercy.edu/pi/2.1/PI21_24-70.pdf, accessed 1/28/02
ONE CAN START WITH FOUCAULT’S famous and endlessly circulated statement in The Order of Things: It is comforting, however, and
a source of profound relief to think that man is only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our
knowledge, and that he will disappear as soon as this knowledge has discovered a new form. (xxiii) Man the Universal Subject, a
cookie-cutter mold of (post)technological identity, stamping out simulacra of individuality. But why should we be “comforted” and
experience “relief’ at the thought of his imminent dissolution? Perhaps because, at least from Adorno on, the subject of reason has
the Enlightenment has been
reconceptualized as the universal killer, armed with the most potent of weapons—
representation. In their Introduction to the collection typically entitled Violence of Representation Armstrong and
also been identified as the subject of violence. The universal Man of
Tennenhouse offer the basic formula of this approach: “The violence of representation is the suppression of difference” (8). In this
particular reading of Foucault the discursive constructedness of identity is directly responsible for corporeal violence inflicted by
some (post)modern subjects upon others. In his recent book Serial Killerr and in the series of articles that preceded it Mark Seltzer
applies this insight to the fascinating and grisly phenomenon of serial killing, variously identified also as “stranger killing” and
sometimes “lust murder”. For Seltzer the enigma of the serial killer’s personality consists in “an experience of typicality at the level
of the subject” The
serial killer, I will be arguing, is in part defined by such a radicalized experience of
typicality within. Simply put, ‘murder by numbers’ (as serial murder has been called) is the form of
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violence proper to statistical persons. (30-1) Violence of representation, representation of
violence and violence per se smoothly link into an unbroken chain, leading from statistics to mayhem and
from typology of subjects to fingertyping of putrefying bodies. My goal in this essay is to put a hitch into this chain, to
question the easy fit between discursive moulds of identity and the individual self-experience of serial killers, and to suggest that
represenration may be not so much the cause of violence as a post factum defence against it. I
do not imply, however, that violence in general or serial murder in particular are totally free from the constraints of discourse or that
the identity of the serial killer is not constructed using the building blocks of cultural narratives (though the narratives in question
are more variegated than Seltzer suggests). Rather, I would claim that the
serial “form of violence” is conditioned
not so much by the monolithic coherence of representation as by its breakdown. The violent
behavior of a serial killer is not a direct outcome of any social construction but a random, causeless choice which is retrospectively
incorporated into a generic narrative of identity. The repeated ritualistic violence, then, becomes a means of reinforcing this identity
but achieves precisely the opposite, its complete disintegration. Rather than being generated by representation, corporeal violence
offers a resistance to it.
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AT Cap K
Cap Sustainable
Assumptions about the instability of capitalism are wrong – the kritik will fail
Kimball, Managing Editor of New Critierion, 2K1 (Roger, “The new anti-Americanism”, The
New Critierion, Vol. 20, No. 2, October,
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/oct01/empire.htm)
I suspect that part of the reason Empire is such a hit in the academy is its superior insulation. Hardt and Negri have sealed every
point of ingress: no hint of reality is allowed to seep in. The
single greatest embarrassment to Marxist theory
has always been the longevity of capitalism. It was supposed to implode from “internal
contradictions” long ago. But here it is 2001 and capitalism is still going strong and making the world richer
and richer. Attempting to explain this is the greatest test of a Marxist’s ingenuity. Here is how Hardt and Negri handle the problem:
As we write this book and the twentieth century draws to a close, capitalism is miraculously healthy, its accumulation more robust
than ever. How can we reconcile this fact with the careful analyses of numerous Marxist authors at the beginning of the century who
point to the imperialist conflicts as symptoms of an impending ecological disaster running up against the limits of nature? They
offer three hypotheses for this imponderable situation. One, that capitalism has reformed
itself and so is no longer in danger of collapse (an option they dismiss out of hand). Two, that
the Marxist theory is right except for the timetable: “Sooner or later the once abundant resources of nature will
run out.” Three—well, it is a little difficult to say what the third hypothesis is. It has to do, they say, with the idea that
capitalism’s expansion is “internal” rather than “external,” that it “subsumes not the
noncapitalist environment but its own capitalist terrain— that is, that the subsumption is no longer formal but
real.” I won’t attempt to explain this for the simple reason that I haven’t a clue about what it means. Is there any
important option they have neglected? Could it, just possibly, be that the “careful analyses of
numerous Marxist authors” was just plain wrong? This is a possibility apparently too awful to contemplate, for
Hardt and Negri never raise it.
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Socialism Unsustainable
Socialism is unsustainable, it relies on funds from other people which
can only last so long
Jay Peroni, Bachelor of Arts in economics and marketing from Assumption College and a Master of Science in personal
financial planning from Bentley College. Certified Financial Planner professional (CFP). “Socialism is great until you run out of
other people’s money” June 21,
2011 in: Battle of Good Vs. Evil, Investing.
It’s kind of like sticking
your head in the sand “hoping” for “change”. Change happens when you take the
proper actions. Want to see how the great “socialism experiment” worked? Go ask
Greece! Their failed socialist wealth-state policies have done them in. The Debt/GDP
ratio of over 150%, forecast to be 170% by 2013, and an uncompetitive economy with
only two primary economic drivers: Tourism and shipping. Greek government revenue declined sharply in May 2011
while government spending rose sharply, leading to a large step backward and a
further widening of the deficit. A government which is in turmoil and a population that feels betrayed by politicians and the Greek elite. Widespread public
outrage against proposed EU/IMF austerity measures and state asset sales; 76% of Greek citizens believe government measures
cannot fix the economy, 74% of Greek citizens want a renegotiation of the 2010 bailout terms. A bloated & inefficient public sector which has run up a significant
It amazes me how many people think our financial mess will just disappear without actually fixing the problems that created the mess.
percentage of the debt that currently plagues Greece. The last and probably most controversial - A failure of the private sector in Greece to move the country forward and to become competitive with
You can’t promise the moon forever. Eventually as the quote says: “you
run out of other people’s money”. Capitalism, on the other hand, isn’t perfect. But it creates
prosperity for individuals and for the economy. It gets businesses and individuals investing for the future. Capitalism works best
other EU economies. (SOURCE: The Stock Sage 6-19-11)
because it is the only social and economic system that aligns itself with the combined human spirits of achievement, ambition, self-improvement, individualism, self-esteem, and initiative.
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Cap Good-General
Capitalism is better than any other alternative; 6 reasons.
Charles Handy, former Professor London Business School, in 1998 (The Hungry Spirit, p. 50-2)
Michael Novak, the American theologian and philosopher, writes eloquently and persuasively about business and morality and sees
no incompatibility between the two. In his book Business as a Calling, he sets out some very pragmatic reasons for preferring
capitalism to any other alternative systems yet invented. They include the following:
1. Capitalism helps the poor to
escape from poverty. Not all do, of course, the evidence is that even at the bottom levels of American
society there is a lot of churning. People don’t stay at the level forever or even for a year. The
unemployment figures are a snapshot at a point in time. Even if the percentage is the same
one year later it will not be made of the same people. The American dream—that everyone can be rich—is still
working, unlike the more stagnant societies of North Korea, for example, or Cuba. The Soviet Union had more scientists and
technical experts than most of the rest of the world put together, but all that brainpower did not make their people rich .
2.
Capitalism is a spur to democracy. Not all capitalist countries are democratic but the empirical
evidence is that a growing middle class, and an increasingly prosperous one, will demand
more say in the government of their country and more personal liberty. The middle class, says Novak,
has always been the seedbed of the republican spirit. It was the growing prosperity of Spain’s middle class that ended Franco’s
dictatorship. China is probably on an irreversible path to a fuller democracy even though it may take a generation or more before
the bulk of the non-urban population are enriched by the market system. Already, in the cities, one can sense the pressures for more
freedoms to earn more and buy more but
will one day turn into demands for more political liberty. 3. Capitalism requires the rule of
law, a respect for property rights of the individual, and necessitates a limited role for government.
Capitalism is, therefore, a guarantee of stability and natural liberty, even if there are those who exploit the
personal liberties, pressures that are currently taken care of by the new
which
liberty and disturb the stability. An open economy with many individual parts has a much better chance of coping with the
unforeseen than a centrally-planned authority, no matter how benign. No man is all-wise. Better therefore to let a thousand flowers
bloom than to pick the favorites and water only them. 4. Capitalism reduces envy. Novak quotes Montesquieu:
“Commerce is the cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule, that wherever we find agreeable manners,
there commerce flourishes.” To me there is a paradox in that capitalism thrives on envy as we aim to emulate or even do better than
our neighbors, but at the same time gives us the opportunity to do something about it.
We can choose to compete or
we can choose to be different. Novak argues, therefore, that capitalism prevents the tyranny of the
majority, because no one can impose their values on us. I am less idealistic than he. When money becomes
the only scale of values which counts it’s less easy for us to choose our definition of success. But that, of course, is up to us. 5.
Capitalism encourages morality. Without an underlying moral consensus capitalism doesn’t work. In parts of
Russia today we see a wild economy. Piracy, murder, dishonesty and a blatant disregard for contracts are
widespread. These are held by some to be the inherent features of capitalism, which, they say, can only work when its excesses are
held in check by a strong and well-enforced legal system. Laws
are necessary, but they will only work if people
want them to work. Gradually Russia will realize that without a basic understanding of right and
wrong in everyday dealings there will be no end to poverty. Capitalism, ironically perhaps, drags morality in
its train, rather than the other way around. 6. Capitalism builds community. Businesses don’t work, as I shall
argue later on, unless they are communities. For many, the workplace, or nowadays, more
accurately, the work system, has been their prime community. Indeed, if we lose that sense of
community the business becomes a mere box of individual contracts. The good business encourages
reliability and fidelity in personal relationships and turns us into competent human beings, prepared to work for a common cause.
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Capitalism is a key element in promoting economic equality.
Johan Norberg, Fellow at Timbro (Swedish think tank), in 2003, In Defense of Global Capitalism, p. 154
Arguments that capitalism is somehow to blame for world poverty are oddly
contradictory. Some argue that capital and corporations make their way only into the
affluent countries leaving the poor ones up the proverbial creek. Others maintain that
capital and corporations flock to poor countries with low production costs, to the
detriment of workers in the developed world. The truth seems to be that they make
their way into both. Trade and investment flows in the past two decades have come to be more and more evenly
distributed among the economies that are relatively open to the rest of the world. It is the really closed economies
that, for obvious reasons, are not getting investments and trade. Moreover, the
difference between these groups of countries are increasing. Clearly, instead of
globalization marginalizing certain regions, it is the regions that stand back from
globalization that becomes marginalized.
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Cap Good-Space
Capitalist privatization is key to space exploration and colonization
Garmong, 5 – PhD in philosophy (Richard, Cap Mag, “Privatize Space Exploration,”
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4327)
As NASA scrambles to make the July 31 window for the troubled launch of space shuttle Discovery, we should recall the first
privately funded manned spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, which over a year ago shattered more than the boundary of
outer space: it destroyed forever the myth that space exploration can only be done by the
government. Two years ago, a Bush Administration panel on space exploration recommended that NASA increase the role of
private contractors in the push to permanently settle the moon and eventually explore Mars. Unfortunately, it appears unlikely that
NASA will consider the true free-market solution for America's expensive space program: complete privatization. There
is a
contradiction at the heart of the space program: space exploration, as the grandest of
man's technological advancements, requires the kind of bold innovation possible only to
minds left free to pursue the best of their creative thinking and judgment. Yet, by funding
the space program through taxation, we necessarily place it at the mercy of bureaucratic
whim. The results are written all over the past twenty years of NASA's history: the space program is a political animal, marked by
shifting, inconsistent, and ill-defined goals. The space shuttle was built and maintained to please
clashing special interest groups, not to do a clearly defined job for which there was an
economic and technical need. The shuttle was to launch satellites for the Department of Defense and private
contractors--which could be done more cheaply by lightweight, disposable rockets. It was to carry scientific experiments--which
could be done more efficiently by unmanned vehicles. But one "need" came before all technical issues: NASA's political need for
showy manned vehicles. The result, as great a technical achievement as it is, was an over-sized, over-complicated, over-budget,
the space shuttle program was
supposed to be phased out years ago, but the search for its replacement has been halted,
largely because space contractors enjoy collecting on the overpriced shuttle without the
expense and bother of researching cheaper alternatives. A private industry could have
fired them--but not so in a government project, with home-district congressmen to lobby
on their behalf.
overly dangerous vehicle that does everything poorly and nothing well. Indeed,
Space colonization means we survive global nuclear war, bioweapon use, and
environmental destruction
Koschara, 1 – Major in Planetary Studies
(Fred, L5 Development Group, http://www.l5development.com/fkespace/financialreturn.html)
Potentially one of the greatest benefits that may be achieved by the space colonies is
nuclear survival, and the ability to live past any other types of mass genocide that become
available. We have constructed ourselves a house of dynamite, and now live in fear that
someone might light a match. If a global nuclear war were to break out, or if a deadly
genetic experiment got released into the atmosphere, the entire human race could be
destroyed in a very short period of time. In addition, many corporate attitudes seem
concerned with only maximizing today's bottom line, with no concern for the future. This
outlook leads to dumping amazingly toxic wastes into the atmosphere and oceans, a move
which can only bring harm in the long run. Humanity has to diversify its hold in the
universe if it is to survive. Only through space colonization is that option available, and
we had all best hope we're not to late.
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AT Feminism
Feminist attempts at reconfiguring identity politics fail due to lack of account
for queer identity
Honkanen, 07 (Katriina Honkanen, contributor to Rhizomes, “Deconstructive Intersections,
http://www.rhizomes.net/issue14/honkanen.html, Summer 2007, EB)
[By
focusing on political intersections we can refer to the exclusions that an identity-based
equality politics produces, for instance a "queer" identity not being addressed by the politics of
equality. Structural intersectionality occurs when inequalities and their intersections are directly
relevant to the experiences of people in society (Verloo, 2006: 213). I suggest the concept of subaltern as an
analytical tool that reminds us of the coexistence of these two levels of intersectionality. I suggest deconstruction as a political
strategy that feminists must insist upon in order to overcome the problems of humanism, liberalism and individualism.
The alternative does not come to terms with gender fluidity – they create a new
hegemonic definition of masculinity, turning the Kritik
Charlotte Hooper, teacher of Gender and IR @ University of Bristol, 2001,
Such a plethora of crises and changes identified in the literature lends weight to the argument that masculinities are fluid
constructions and that dominant masculinities are constantly being challenged, reconstituted
and reinvented in different sections of society, in adaptation to changing economic, political and social
circumstances. Indeed, one might be led to expect crisis or subcrisis of hegemonic masculinity in
particular locations or sections of society to be an almost permanent social feature. But such
crisis should not necessarily be seen as a sign of the imminent demise of male-power for they
are part and parcel of the adjustment process, so that, as Brittan argues, “while styles of masculinity
may alter in relative short time spans, the substance of male power does not” (Brittan 1989,2). The
pessimistic view (from the prospect of feminism) is that unraveling masculinities is “a utopian
aspiration because new hegemonic masculinities are always being refigured and
reconstituted, perhaps more quickly that the older ones unravel” (Stacey 1993, 711).
The Alternative allows the colonialization and appropriation of Third World in
order to prove the universality of masculinity
Judith Butler, 1990
The political assumption that there must be a universal basis for feminism, one which must be found in an
identity assumed to exist cross-culturally, often accompanies the notion that the oppression of women has
some singular form discernible in the universal or hegemonic structure of patriarchy or masculine
domination. The notion of a universal patriarchy has been widely criticized in recent years for its failure to account for the
workings of gender oppression in concrete cultural contexts in which it exists. Where those various contexts have been consulted
within such theories it has been to find examples or illustrations of a universal principle that is assumed from the start. That
form of feminist theorizing has come under criticism for its efforts to colonize and appropriate
non-western cultures to support highly western notion of oppression but because the tend as
well to construct a third world or even an orient in which gender oppression is subtly
explained as symptomatic of an essential non-western barbarism. The urgency of feminism to
establish a universal status for patriarchy in order to strengthen the appearance of feminism’s own claims to be
representative has occasionally motivated the shortcut to a categorical or fictive universality of the
structure of domination, held to produce women’s common subjugated experience.
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Kritiks focus on patriarchy ignores the role race and social status plays in
creation of oppression
Noh, 3. assistant professor of Asian American studies at California State University, Fullerton, 2003
[Eliza, Problematics of Transnational Feminism for Asian American Women, The New Centennial Review 3.3, Project Muse, Stevens]
Pluralizing "women's oppression" cannot get around the fact that there
exist "various forms and degrees of
patriarchal oppression, some of which we share [with white women], and some of which we do
not" (Lorde 1983b, 97). The experiences of Asian American women show that sexual domination cannot be
separated from other oppressions, unless one takes a narrow view of gendered experience
within our "traditional" cultures. In his important work, "The Sexual Demon of White Power . . . in 'America' and
Beyond" (1999), Greg Thomas thoroughly elaborates processes of sexualization via racialization and coloniality that challenge the
notion of universal sex. Within this framework, the
inadequacy of feminism to account for multiple,
simultaneous oppressions, in particular the centrality of experiences of racialization and
coloniality to sexualization, is precisely why different gender identities, such as "womanist," become
necessary. This is also why the Combahee River Collective (1983) uses the term "racial-sexual
oppression"—"which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon
of political repression" (213). In the classes where I have worked with Asian American women and other women of color, I often
hear it stated that they cannot imagine identifying first with [End Page 141] white women on the basis of gender or sex over their
cultural communities on the basis of ethnicity or race. I think that this does not necessarily reflect a naïve ranking of race over
gender, but the predominant experiential reality of racialized sex for nonwhite women. The implications of transnational feminism
for Asian/American 15 women create artificial solidarities with white women where there may not be a common ground, whether
subjectively or sociopolitically. Even if
a contingent similarity exists between women—where Asianbased, patriarchal sex- gender systems claim Asian American women just as European-based
patriarchies claim white, Anglo women—it is important to look at the specificities of these
relationships within their own contexts. The different racial and gender experiences of Asian women may separate,
on the basis of race and sex, Asian feminine subjects as far apart from white femininity as they may be from Asian masculine
subjects.
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A2 “Infinite Responsibility”
BASED ON ORIGINARY NEGATIVITY, BLOCKING AFFIRMATION OF ETHICS IN
SPECIFIC CONTEXTS
Hallward 2001 [Peter, Nip/Tuck junky, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, Trans.
Peter Hallward, New York: Verso, 2001, xxii-xxiii//uwyo-ajl]
For Badiou, true ethical questions can arise only in a specific situation and under circumstances which,
however divisive, are essentially indifferent to differences, concerning subjects 'disinterested' in the other as such,
the other qua other (i.e. in the circumstances created by a truthprocedure). The 'ethical ideology', by contrast,
precisely presumes to transcend all situated restrictions and to prevail in a consensual realm
beyond division, all the while orientated around the imperious demands of difference and
otherness qua otherness, the difference of the altogether other as much as the irreducibly incommensurable demands of
every particular other. As Badiou is the first to recognize, nowhere is the essential logic more clearly
articulated than in Levinas's philosophy, where 'the Other comes to us not only out of context
but also without mediation... .'28 According to Levinas, there can be no ethical situation as such,
since ethics bears witness to a properly meta- or preontological responsibility (roughly, the
responsibility of a creature to its transcendent creator, a creator altogether beyond the ontological field of creation). For Levinas, as
for Derrida after him, the other is other only if he immediately evokes or expresses the absolutely (divinely) other.
Since the alterity of the other is simultaneously 'the alterity of the human other [Autruzl and of the Most High [Tres Haut]' ,29 so
then our responsibility to this other is a matter of 'unconditional obedience', 'trauma', 'obsession',
'persecution', and so on.30 Of course, the limited creatures that we are can apprehend the Altogether-Other only if this otherness
appears in some sense 'on our own level', that is, in the appearing of our 'neighbour' (of our neighbour's face): there is only
'responsibility and a Self because the trace of the [divinely] Infinite . . . is inscribed in proximity'.31 But this inscribing in nearness in
no sense dilutes the essential fact that in
my 'non-relation' with the Other, 'the Other remains absolute
and absolves itself from the relation which it enters into'.32 The relation with the other is first and foremost a
'relation' with the transcendent.beyond as such. Levinasian ethics, in short, is a form of what Badiou criticizes as anti-philosophy,
that is, the reservation of pure or absolute value to a realm beyond all conceptual distinction.
LEVINAS’ ARGUMENT DEPENDS ON THE THEOLOGICAL INFINITY OF GOD.
SECULAR APPROPRIATION LAPSES INTO FINITUDE, BLOCKING RESPONSIBILITY
Badiou 2001 [Alain, Number muncher, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, Trans.
Peter Hallward, New York: Verso, 2001, 21-3//uwyo-ajl]
The difficulty, which also defines the point of application for these axioms, can be explained as follows: the
ethical primacy
of the Other over the Same requires that the experience of alterity be ontologically
'guaranteed' as the experience of a distance, or of an essential non-identity, the traversal of which is the ethical
experience itself. But nothing in the simple phenomenon of the other contains such a guarantee. And
this simply because the finitude of the other's appearing certainly can be conceived as resemblance, or as imitation, and thus lead
back to the logic of the Same. The other always resembles me too much for the hypothesis of an originary exposure to his alterity to
be necessarily true.¶ The phenomenon of the other (his face) must then attest to a radical alterity which he nevertheless does not
contain by himself. The Other, as he appears to me in the order of the finite, must be the epiphany of a properly infinite distance to
the other, the traversal of which is the originary ethical experience.¶ This means that in
order to be intelligible, ethics
requires that the Other be in some sense carried by a principle of alterity which transcends
mere finite experience. Levinas calls this principle the 'Altogether-Other', and it is quite
obviously the ethical name for God. There can be no Other if he is not the immediate phenomenon of the
AltogetherOther. There can be no finite devotion to the non-identical if it is not sustained by the infinite devotion of the principle to
that which subsists outside it. There
can be no ethics without God the ineffable.¶ In Levinas's enterprise, the
believe
ethical dominance of the Other over the theoretical ontology of the same is entirely bound up with a religious axiom; to
AT Criterons and K’s
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that we can separate what Levinas's thought unites is to betray the intimate movement of this
thought, its subjective rigour. In truth, Levinas has no philosophy - not even philosophy as the 'servant' of theology.
Rather, this is philosophy (in the Greek sense of the word) annulled by theology, itself no longer a theology (the terminology is still
too Greek, and presumes proximity to the divine via the identity and predicates of God) but, precisely, an ethics. ¶ To make of ethics
the ultimate name of the religious as such (i.e. of that which relates [re-lie] to the Other under the ineffable authority of the
Altogether-Other) is to distance it still more completely from all that can be gathered under the name of 'philosophy'. ¶ To put it
crudely: Levinas's enterprise serves to remind us, with extraordinary insistence, that every
effort to turn ethics into the
principle of thought and action is essentially religious. We might say that Levinas is the coherent and inventive
thinker of an assumption that no academic exercise of veiling or abstraction can obscure: distanced from its Greek usage (according
to which it is clearly subordinated to the theoretical), and taken in general, ethics is a category of pious discourse.
Vote to save lives—The existence of endangered 3rd parties makes responsibility
impossible to determine
David Campbell, professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, Moral
Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, ed. by Campbell and Shapiro, 1999, p. 35-36
Levinas's thought is appealing for rethinking the question of responsibility, especially with respect to situations like the Balkan crisis,
because it maintains that there
is no circumstance under which we could declare that it was not our
concern. As Levinas notes, people can (and obviously do) conduct their relationship to the Other in terms of exploitation,
oppression, and violence. But no matter how allergic to the other is the self, "the relation to the other,
as a relation of responsibility, cannot be totally suppressed, even when it takes the form of politics or
warfare." In consequence, no self can ever opt out of a relationship with the other: "[I]t is impossible to free myself
by saying, 'It's not my concern.' There is no choice, for it is always and inescapably my concern. This is a unique 'no
choice,' one that is not slavery." This unique lack of choice comes about because in Levinas's thought ethics has been transformed
from something independent of subjectivity—that is, from a set of rules and regulations adopted by pregiven, autonomous agents—
to something insinuated within and integral to that subjectivity. Accordingly, ethics can be understood as something not ancillary to
the existence of a subject; instead, ethics can be appreciated for its indispensability to the very being of the subject. This argument
leads us to the recognition that "we" are always already ethically situated, so making judgments about conduct depends less on
what sort of rules are invoked as regulations and more on how the interdependencies of our relations with others are appreciated.
To repeat one of Levinas's key points: "Ethics redefines subjectivity as this heteronomous responsibility, in contrast to autonomous
freedom." Suggestive though it is for the domain of international relations where the bulk of the work on ethics can be located
within a conventional perspective on responsibility — Levinas's
formulation of responsibility, subjectivity, and ethics
some problems when it comes to the implications of this thought for politics. What
requires particular attention is the means by which the elemental and omnipresent status of responsibility, which is
founded in the one-to-one or face-to-face relationship, can function in circumstances marked by a
multiplicity of others. Although the reading of Levinas here agrees that "the ethical exigency to be responsible to the other
nonetheless possesses
undermines the ontological primacy of the meaning of being," and embraces the idea that this demand "unsettles the natural and
political positions we have taken up in the world and predisposes us to a meaning that is other than being, that is otherwise than
being:" how those disturbances are negotiated so as to foster the maximum responsibility in a world populated by others in struggle
remains to be argued. To examine what is a problem of considerable import given the context of this essay, I
want to
consider Levinas's discussion of "the third person," the distinction he makes between the ethical and the moral,
and—of particular importance in a consideration of the politics of international action—the role of the state in
Levinas's thought.
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AT Ethic of Care Essentialisms
Their essentialism argument misreads our criticism – gender is a social construction
which is enforced contingently
Sjoberg Ass’t Prof of Poli Sci at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 2009 Laura
Security Studies 18.2 informaworld d/a 7/13/10
In order to understand feminist work in ir, it is important to note that gender is not the
equivalent of membership in biological sex classes. Instead, gender is a system of symbolic
meaning that creates social hierarchies based on perceived associations with masculine and
feminine characteristics. As Lauren Wilcox explains, “gender symbolism describes the way in
which masculine/feminine are assigned to various dichotomies that organize Western
thought” where “both men and women tend to place a higher value on the term which is
associated with masculinity.”23 Gendered social hierarchy, then, is at once a social
construction and a “structural feature of social and political life” that “profoundly shapes our
place in, and view of, the world.”24
This is not to say that all people, or even all women, experience gender in the same ways.
While genders are lived by people throughout the world, “it would be unrepresentative to
characterize a 'gendered experience' as if there were something measurable that all men or all
women shared in life experience.”25 Each person lives gender in a different culture, body,
language, and identity. Therefore, there is not one gendered experience of global politics, but
many. By extension, there is not one gender-based perspective on ir or international security,
but many. Still, as a structural feature of social and political life, gender is “a set of discourses
that represent, construct, change, and enforce social meaning.”26 Feminism, then, “is neither
just about women, nor the addition of women to male-stream constructions; it is about
transforming ways of being and knowing” as gendered discourses are understood and
transformed.27
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AT Narratives:
Narrative fails to subvert the dominant paradigm – They recreate absolutisms
Clawson 98 (Mark, J.D. – Stanford, 22 Legal Stud. Forum 353)
These subjective identities give certain individuals solid ground upon which they can build a progressive
framework of thought. But the narrowly defined identities of contemporary progressivism limit the possibility that
those outside the narrow group of interest will share the agenda. One might hope that progressives could be
somewhat open-minded. But as Stanley Fish has observed, "to say that one's mind should be open sounds fine until
you realize that it is equivalent to saying that one's mind should be empty of commitments , should be a
purely formal device." n165 Assuming that a broad base of progressive factions can mold diverse individualswith distinct notions of identity-into a cohesive whole is simply asking the framework of progressive thought to do
something that, in the end, it cannot. Contemporary narratives of identity seek to resolve the questions of
authority that plague progressivism, but they lack the power that religion once held. In an earlier era, progressives could
unite behind an over-arching paradigm that commanded them to "do as they would be done by." n166 Since widely shared
cultural assumptions fueled the progressive agenda of early decades, slavery was vanquished and
monopolies were crushed. But increasingly subjective narratives of identity command obeisance only within
narrow spheres, not translating easily into the realities of other social worlds. The interpretation of the world
facilitated by these narrow identities-including a well-defined course of future action-is accessible only to those
who share their cultural assumptions. This interpretation may, in fact, challenge the social worlds established by other
progressives. In the end, it seems that progressive narratives, like Frye's romances, end where they began, but with a
difference. n167 Questions of authority and feelings of dissonance remain in the larger progressivism, but those who
gain new identities now live in temporary worlds of absolutes.
The affirmative fetishizes the narrative
Wendy Brown * Wendy Brown is Professor of Women's Studies and Legal Studies, and is Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Studies at
the University of California, Santa Cruz. The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable 19 96
But if
the silences in discourses of domination are a site for insurrectionary noise, if they are the corridors
counter-tales, it is also possible to make a fetish of breaking silence. Even
more than a fetish, it is possible that this ostensible tool of emancipation carries its own
techniques of subjugation--that it converges with non-emancipatory tendencies in contem- porary
culture (for example, the ubiquity of confessional discourse and rampant personalization of political life), that it establishes regulatory
norms, coincides with the disciplinary power of confession, in short, feeds the powers we meant to
starve. While attempting to avoid a simple reversal of feminist valorizations of breaking silence, it is this dimension of silence and its putative
we must fill with explosive
opposite with which this Article is concerned. In the course of this work, I want to make the case for silence not simply as an aesthetic but a political
value, a means of preserving certain practices and dimensions of existence from regulatory power, from normative violence, as well as from the
scorching rays of public exposure. I also want to suggest a link between, on the one hand, a certain contemporary tendency concerning the lives of
public figures--the confession or extraction of every detail of private and personal life (sexual, familial, therapeutic, financial) and, on the other, a
certain practice in feminist culture: the compulsive putting into public discourse of heretofore hidden or private experiences--from catalogues of sexual
pleasures to litanies of sexual abuses, from chronicles of eating disorders to diaries of homebirths, lesbian mothering, and Gloria Steinam's inner
revolution. In linking these two phenomena--the privatization of public life via the mechanism of public exposure of private life on the one hand, and
the compulsive/compulsory cataloguing of the details of women's lives on the other--I want to highlight a modality of regulation and depoliticization
specific to our age that is not simply confessional but empties private life into the public domain, and
thereby also usurps public
space with the relatively trivial, rendering the political personal in a fashion that leaves injurious
social, political and economic powers unremarked and untouched. In short, while intended as a practice of
freedom (premised on the modernist conceit that the truth shall make us free), these productions of truth not only bear the
capacity to chain us to our injurious histories as well as the stations of our small lives but also
to instigate the further regulation of those lives, all the while depoliti- cizing their conditions.
This turns the case- it writes oppression into the law
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Brown * Wendy Brown is Professor of Women's Studies and Legal Studies, and is Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Studies at
the University of California, Santa Cruz. The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable 19 96
Wendy
codifying a fragment of an insurrec- tionary discourse as a timeless
truth, interpellating women as unified in their victimization, and casting the "free speech" of men as that which
"silences" and thus subordinates women, MacKinnon not only opposes bourgeois liberty to
substantive equality, but potentially intensifies the regulation of gender and sexuality in the law,
abetting rather than contesting the production of gender identity as sexual. In short, as a regulatory fiction of a particular
identity is deployed to displace the hegemonic fiction of universal personhood, the discourse of
rights converges insidiously with the discourse of disciplinarity to produce a spectacularly potent
mode of juridical-regulatory domination. Again, let me emphasize that the problem I am seeking to
delineate is not specific to MacKinnon or even feminist legal reform. Rather, MacKinnon's and
kindred efforts at bringing subjugated discourses into the law merely constitute examples of
what Foucault identified as the risk of re-codification and re- colonisation of "disinterred knowledges" by those
"unitary discourses, which first disqualified and then ignored them when they made their
appearance." n23 They exemplify how the work of breaking silence can metamorphose into
new techniques of domination, how our truths can become our rulers rather than our
emancipators, how our confessions become the norms by which we are regulated.
These questions suggest that in legally