1NC
1NC
“Resolved” before a colon reflects a legislative forum
Army Officer School ‘04
(5-12, “# 12, Punctuation – The Colon and Semicolon”, http://usawocc.army.mil/IMI/wg12.htm)
The colon introduces the following: a. A list, but only after "as follows," "the following," or a noun for which the
list is an appositive: Each scout will carry the following: (colon) meals for three days, a survival knife, and his
sleeping bag. The company had four new officers: (colon) Bill Smith, Frank Tucker, Peter Fillmore, and Oliver Lewis.
b. A long quotation (one or more paragraphs): In The Killer Angels Michael Shaara wrote: (colon) You may find it a
different story from the one you learned in school. There have been many versions of that battle [Gettysburg] and
that war [the Civil War]. (The quote continues for two more paragraphs.) c. A formal quotation or question: The
President declared: (colon) "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The question is: (colon) what can we do
about it? d. A second independent clause which explains the first: Potter's motive is clear: (colon) he wants the
assignment. e. After the introduction of a business letter: Dear Sirs: (colon) Dear Madam: (colon) f. The details
following an announcement For sale: (colon) large lakeside cabin with dock g. A formal resolution, after the
word "resolved:"
Resolved: (colon) That this council petition the mayor.
“The United States should” means the debate is solely about a policy established by
governmental means
Ericson ‘03
(Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The Debater’s
Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key
elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented
propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---“The United States” in “The United States should adopt a
policy of free trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of
the sentence. 2. The verb should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to
follow should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program
or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the
action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would,
for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or
discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred.
The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you
accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience
to perform the future action that you propose.
Legalize means to make lawful by judicial or legislative sanction
Business Dictionary No Date, "legalize", www.businessdictionary.com/definition/legalize.html
legalize¶ Definition¶ To make enforceable, justifiable, or lawful by judicial or legislative sanction.
They claim to win the debate for reasons other than the desirability of topical action.
That undermines preparation and clash. Changing the question now leaves one side
unprepared, resulting in shallow, uneducational debate. Requiring debate on a
communal topic forces argument development and develops persuasive skills critical
to any political outcome.
Debate over the material effects of legalization are vital to challenging the social
construction of gender
Showden, 12 - Assistant Professor Political Science University of North Carolina Greensboro (Carisa,
“Theorising maybe: A feminist/queer theory Convergence” Feminist Theory 2012 13: 3, DOI:
10.1177/1464700111429898)
Theory, politics, and prostitution One way to think about sex-positive queer feminist norms is that they
are multiple and therefore must be balanced. To balance them one must consider the various
constraints on subjects in practice. If what is required to realise particular norms (anti-subordination or
sexual autonomy or economic stability) is different practices in similar institutions, and if the norms
most needed for resistance are also variable, then one resulting argument is that some situations of
prostitution are more ethically defensible than others. A sex-positive queer feminism then leads us to
think about sex generally and prostitution specifically as multiple; rather than ‘prostitution’ we are led
to think about ‘prostitutions’. This is problematic, perhaps, from a legal perspective, which, as I noted
above, might be one reason why Halley and others argue that MacKinnon’s work ‘won’ the legal feminist
sex wars. But politics and policy can be (slightly) more nuanced and context-sensitive. Here sex-positive
queer feminism needs to be (warily) more governance-oriented. It needs to infuse prostitution policy
with a different ethics – to take the norms it brings to queer theory and make them work for women, to
fight the subordination produced by stigmatising ‘deviant’ sex as well as the subordination produced by
poverty and coercion into sex. The epistemological shift I am endorsing matters ethically for public
policy debates, even recognising the inconsistent relationship between a policy’s goals and its actual
material effects, as these debates create frameworks of understanding and subjectification. This
convergentist epistemology is neither precisely (dominance) feminist nor queer. While feminism and
queer theory ‘know’ sexuality differently – it either is or it is not heterosexual, subordinating, and the
source of women’s social ills – they also know sexuality the same: it is through either the rejection of sex
or the embracing of sexual acts in all their manifestations that we will be led to the new frontier of
gender relations. In Elisa Glick’s formulation, queer theory says we can ‘fuck our way to freedom’ (2000:
22) and, it seems, dominance feminism says we can not-fuck our way there. So there is an
epistemological break between them, but a break premised on an ontological agreement: sex, sexuality,
sex acts are the be-all and end-all of liberation or resistance. Or at least ‘good’ sex (however defined) is
the personal practice leading to political change. But what if it is not? What if sexuality and sexual
modalities can intervene in the consciousness of the people fucking, but this consciousness raising has
really quite mediated and distorted effects on the larger institutional contexts within which these sexual
actors live, work, and play? A more nuanced reading of sexuality, and one that accepts neither
epistemological framework of sex precisely as dominance and queer theorists have served it up so far,
might make more modest claims for its theory. Yes, rights to sexual pleasure and sexual knowledge are
essential to one’s health and well-being and (following Cornwall, Correˆa, and Jolly, 2008) are
fundamental to a human rights framework, but the specific sex acts that people engage in are not, in
and of themselves, essentially revelatory or politically engaged. Too much focus on specific acts puts all
the effort into self-styling and personal empowerment, and not enough into securing more general
collective rights to sexuality without stigma.29 Decentring sex as the central activity of identity
formation and political status does not make it unimportant; it simply means that sex does not occupy
the vanguard position in identity construction, political subordination, or political resistance. This
version of ‘sex-positive’ feminism is in some ways more ‘sex negative’ than dominance feminism: it is
less positive that sex is capable of producing subjectivity, at least in whole. If sex is not all that and then
some, there are still arguments to be had about how and why to regulate sex acts; but taking the onus
off the sex part of prostitution, for example, as either dooming women to oppression or freeing them to
reinvent themselves and the sexual order, might just open up spaces to see other aspects of
prostitution: the material effects of legalisation or criminalisation on the prostitutes themselves. If,
ironically, ‘sex-positive’ queer feminism can take some of the ‘special’ out of sex and make it one
significant form of human interaction among others, then perhaps policy makers can be guided by a
sense that is both more and less ‘free market’. More in that not all commodified sex is necessarily bad;
less in arguing that regulating conditions of commodification is the role of good government. This is
the point at which my interlocutors have asked for a more forceful normative defence: why should
feminists shift to a sex-positive queer approach such as the one I have outlined here, particularly in
thinking about prostitution? I would say first, as Kimberly D. Krawiec convincingly argues, both
commodification and coercion objections to prostitution – based on the ‘special status’ of sex – help
feed its continued marginal legal status, and it is this marginal status that benefits everyone except the
women supposedly protected by the ‘tolerated, but not embraced’ sex market (2010: 1743).30 Further,
surveys of sex workers across types of prostitution venues reveal that some prostitutes experience sex
work much as abolitionists have described it, but many do not.31 Given that many people, including
some sex workers, do not in fact experience sex acts as significantly tied to their identity, it seems
somehow wrong – anti-feminist, in fact – to insist on public policies premised on precisely this
assumption. Given also the normative power of the law, sex work’s illegality contributes to a view of
women as either ‘good girls’ or ‘bad girls’ based on promiscuity. Finally, a discursive shift that describes
sex as sometimes good and sometimes bad, but insists on attention to women’s knowledge of sex from
their own experiences of it, might eventually promote a legal regime that takes women’s knowledge
with similar seriousness, perhaps even eventually leading to changes in how rape claims are taken up by
judges and law enforcement officers. Listening to how the woman claiming rape frames the encounter
could become more central while beginning to marginalise currently hegemonic narratives about what
indicates that a woman ‘wanted it’. Discourse matters in the construction of subjectivity and
consciousness, of jurists no less than the rest of us. Even if the effects of theory on law and policy are
highly mediated, a more nuanced theory of sex is needed for its own sake in addition to policy
purposes. With its more modest ‘epistemology of sex’, sex-positive queer feminism provides a way of
contesting that it is the sex itself that is the problem with prostitution, arguing instead that it is when
sex is combined with economic coercion, or violent pimps, or desire only to feed a drug addiction, for
example, that prostitution is a problem. This shift in conceptions of power – where dominance is one,
but not the primary, modality, and the production of subjectivities and normative assessment and
material weight of any acts one engages in is multivalent – reflects a complex reality more accurately.
One can begin to articulate the domination that exists in, for example, human trafficking without
conflating human trafficking with prostitution (thereby ignoring forms of human trafficking that aren’t
for purposes of sex trafficking) or prostitution with trafficking (thereby ignoring forms of prostitution
that are more like sex work and less like forced labour or rape). Here, though, is the epistemological
break – within feminism – that simply cannot be bridged. Radical feminists say that sex ought not be
commodified, because their epistemology of sex is an epistemology of the self. The commission of sex
acts cannot be separated from self-hood; therefore, commodified sex is slavery. In this view, a ‘better’
marketplace of sexual transaction is, literally, inconceivable. But what sex-positive queer feminism
knows about sex it gets by looking at the world through lenses of both feminism’s definitional minima
and queer theory’s power plays: that sex can be a site of domination, but that it can also be a site of
productive, opaque, and diffuse power relations. Given this, then, a sexpositive queer feminism would
know that sex ought not be commodified under particular circumstances. On this view, sex does not say
anything essential about women, but practices of commodified sex under certain conditions are
indictments of unequal structural opportunities. The point of sex-positive queer feminist norms is to
help activists challenge the conditions producing political subordination, not to challenge women for
having sex. And the only way to get to that challenge is to stop putting so much identity-bearing weight
on sex acts. Further, a queer feminism, as opposed to ‘queer theory’, can also employ its Foucauldian
power frame to approach prostitution in the way that many radical feminists claim we ought to pay
more attention to and that is not directly addressed by queer theory. Prostitution is often framed as a
question of why women choose to go into this line of work. But the answers are not terribly complicated
in most cases, and only for a minority of prostitutes is it specifically for reasons that follow directly from
a queer theory position of destabilising the meaning of sex acts. The more interesting radical feminist
question is why so many men use the services of prostitutes.32 The Foucauldian power framework
offers a more satisfying toehold on an answer because it asks how men’s subjectivities are formed and
points to ways of resisting the reading of political power out of sex acts into gendered social relations. It
also points to a more nuanced answer to the motives and political understandings of the far-frommonolithic group of men who purchase sex from women.33 In the same way that moving away from a
domination model of power makes it possible to conceptualise women’s actions and motives in terms of
constrained agency rather than forcing women into being either agents or victims, productive,
subjectifying versions of power relations make men’s subjectivity both more complicated and more
open to potential reform. On the dominance view, there is no reason for men to change given the
benefits they currently receive. Further, a dominance frame where most sex is nearly indistinguishable
from rape makes dominance feminism all but useless in theorising a complex male sexuality. But such
work is an important aspect of a critical theory of sex given the number of women who seem to want to
continue to have sex with men, and the number of men and women who find various uses of power, but
not over-arching structures of dominance, erotic. Finally, much feminist theory and sex worker activism
that is focused on legalisation or decriminalisation maintains this focus in part because of the critique of
the stigma that surrounds sex and sex work. The argument is that the more stigmatised that social
norms make sex workers, the more sex workers become legitimate targets of abuse, and the harder it is
for them both to seek redress for harm and to leave sex work. This stigma is also problematic because of
its function in reminding all of us that ‘good girls don’t’ and that women’s sexuality needs to be
monitored so that it continues to serve as the moral compass for the national body. Even if most forms
of prostitution cannot be ethically defended as ‘good sex’ or even ‘good employment’, criminalisation of
prostitution is problematic as it serves as an effective strategy in the war for control over women’s
sexuality, sexual rights, and sexual pleasures. Structures of subordination are reinforced not only by
what is permitted, but by what is forbidden. Easing the legal restrictions on prostitution may be, in fact,
more in line with dominance feminism and its ultimate abolitionist project than many would like to
admit.34 Conclusion The deep incommensurability between radical feminism and queer theories of sex
cannot be overcome or merged into a happy (or even unhappy) middle ground. What the balance of
freedom and equality require in one theory is often antithetical to what is required in the other. But this
deep incommensurability is not between feminism and queer theory, it is between one version of
feminism and queer theory. There are ways to reconcile feminist critiques of subordination and feminist
desires to generate a more open habitus of sexuality for women with queer theory’s reliance on
subversion, play, and resistance. This matters theoretically, as the way we see the world shapes how we
understand what is possible and desirable in it. So a sex-positive queer feminist theory claims, on the
one hand, a more modest view of the future – one where ‘freedom’ isn’t attainable, but degrees of
openness and agency are – and, on the other hand, a more expansive one, where ‘freedom’ is defined in
myriad ways within a complex notion of equality in difference. Whether this equality is based on
multiple intersecting identities or not through identities at all, but through practices and positionalities
that shift and can be shifted is a question I have been able only to raise in this article but not discuss in
any detail. The question of identity politics and its necessity for a robust feminist theory is obviously
fraught, but is again being fought within feminism and not only between feminism and its ‘others’.35
This recognition of the incommensurability of feminist and queer epistemologies of sex also matters
politically, especially given the rise of ‘governance feminism’ over the last thirty years. It’s not enough
for voices of dissent within feminism to work culturally; sex-positive feminist theorists must also
engage in the specific political institutions that help to produce the discursive and material vectors
through which power flows. Such political engagement is more difficult for non-dominance feminists.
This is partly because dominance feminism (along with liberal feminism) is already more solidly fixed as
‘the’ voice of feminism in US jurisprudence especially, but also because governance violates both the
anti-regulatory queer influence on sex-positive feminism, and the poststructuralist feminist cautions
against working in the state because it requires calcifying power relations and identities, operates
through false universals, and forces women to claim to be victims in order to be heard.36 Clearly, then
strategising about how to influence policy will be an on-going debate, but one that feminism beyond
dominance needs to be party to. Otherwise, the brief carried for F may too often be a brief against her.
Debate over a controversial point of action creates argumentative stasis—that’s key
to avoid a devolution of debate into competing truth claims, which destroys the
decision-making benefits of the activity
Steinberg and Freeley ‘13
David Director of Debate at U Miami, Former President of CEDA, officer, American Forensic Association
and National Communication Association. Lecturer in Communication studies and rhetoric. Advisor to
Miami Urban Debate League, Masters in Communication, and Austin, JD, Suffolk University, attorney
who focuses on criminal, personal injury and civil rights law, Argumentation and Debate
Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, Thirteen Edition
Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a controversy, a difference of opinion or a
conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in agreement on a feet or value or
policy, there is no need or opportunity for debate; the matter can be settled by unanimous consent.
Thus, for example, it would be pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals
four,” because there is simply no controversy about this statement. Controversy is an essential
prerequisite of debate. Where there is no clash of ideas, proposals, interests, or expressed positions of
issues, there is no debate. Controversy invites decisive choice between competing positions. Debate
cannot produce effective decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to be
answered. For example, general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal immigration. How
many illegal immigrants live in the United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration and
immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they commit crimes? Do
they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a
problem that some do not speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal
immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should they have the opportunity to gain
citizenship? Does illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country? Do illegal immigrants do
work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human beings at risk
due to their status? Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? How are
their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state
to maintain its borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification
card, or enforce existing laws against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens?
Surely you can think of many more concerns to be addressed by a conversation about the topic area of
illegal immigration. Participation in this “debate” is likely to be emotional and intense. However, it is
not likely to be productive or useful without focus on a particular question and identification of a line
demarcating sides in the controversy. To be discussed and resolved effectively, controversies are best
understood when seated clearly such that all parties to the debate share an understanding about the
objective of the debate. This enables focus on substantive and objectively identifiable issues
facilitating comparison of competing argumentation leading to effective decisions. Vague
understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions, general feelings of tension
without opportunity for resolution, frustration, and emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of
the U.S. Congress to make substantial progress on the immigration debate. Of course, arguments may
be presented without disagreement. For example, claims are presented and supported within speeches,
editorials, and advertisements even without opposing or refutational response. Argumentation occurs in
a range of settings from informal to formal, and may not call upon an audience or judge to make a
forced choice among competing claims. Informal discourse occurs as conversation or panel discussion
without demanding a decision about a dichotomous or yes/no question. However, by definition, debate
requires "reasoned judgment on a proposition. The proposition is a statement about which competing
advocates will offer alternative (pro or con) argumentation calling upon their audience or adjudicator
to decide. The proposition provides focus for the discourse and guides the decision process. Even
when a decision will be made through a process of compromise, it is important to identify the
beginning positions of competing advocates to begin negotiation and movement toward a center, or
consensus position. It is frustrating and usually unproductive to attempt to make a decision when
deciders are unclear as to what the decision is about. The proposition may be implicit in some applied
debates (“Vote for me!”); however, when a vote or consequential decision is called for (as in the
courtroom or in applied parliamentary debate) it is essential that the proposition be explicitly expressed
(“the defendant is guilty!”). In academic debate, the proposition provides essential guidance for the
preparation of the debaters prior to the debate, the case building and discourse presented during the
debate, and the decision to be made by the debate judge after the debate. Someone disturbed by the
problem of a growing underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised youths might observe,
“Public schools are doing a terrible job! They' are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly qualified
in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain order in their
classrooms." That same concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an
unhelpful decision, such as "We ought to do something about this” or, worse, “It’s too complicated a
problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about the state of public education could
join together to express their frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools,
but without a focus for their discussions, they could easily agree about the sorry state of education
without finding points of clarity or potential solutions. A gripe session would follow. But if a precise
question is posed—such as “What can be done to improve public education?”—then a more profitable
area of discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a concrete solution step.
One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for parliamentary
debate, or bills for legislative assemblies, The statements "Resolved: That the federal government
should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities” and “Resolved; That the state
of Florida should adopt a school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with
educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for debate. They provide specific policies to be
investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference. This focus contributes to better and
more informed decision making with the potential for better results. In academic debate, it provides
better depth of argumentation and enhanced opportunity for reaping the educational benefits of
participation. In the next section, we will consider the challenge of framing the proposition for debate,
and its role in the debate. To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by
directing and placing limits on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly
defined. If we merely talk about a topic, such as ‘"homelessness,” or “abortion,” Or “crime,” or “global
warming,” we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to establish a profitable basis for
argument. For example, the statement “Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword” is debatable,
yet by itself fails to provide much basis for dear argumentation. If we take this statement to mean Iliad
the written word is more effective than physical force for some purposes, we can identify a problem
area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose, perhaps
promoting positive social change. (Note that “loose” propositions, such as the example above, may be
defined by their advocates in such a way as to facilitate a clear contrast of competing sides; through
definitions and debate they “become” clearly understood statements even though they may not begin
as such. There are formats for debate that often begin with this sort of proposition. However, in any
debate, at some point, effective and meaningful discussion relies on identification of a clearly stated
or understood proposition.) Back to the example of the written word versus physical force. Although
we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely
worded to promote weII-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with—poems,
novels, government documents, website development, advertising, cyber-warfare, disinformation, or
what? What does it mean to be “mightier" in this context? What kind of physical force is being
compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might
be, “Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our
support in a certain crisis?” The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as
“Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense treaty with Laurania.” Negative
advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution.
This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by
advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in
fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that debate is best facilitated by the
guidance provided by focus on a particular point of difference, which will be outlined in the following
discussion.
Ethics in an absurd world demands that we enter into mutual discussion of the
consequences of institutionalized values and accept that we may be wrong through
constructive argument on fair terms – this commitment to democratic dialogue,
embodied in debate over specific policy proposals and the consideration of their
results rather than clashing ideologies, is all that can save us from authoritarianism,
nihilism, and extinction
David Spritzen 1988 – Prof philosophy @ U Long Island; Camus: A Critical Introduction; note – we
reject the use of gendered language in this evidence; p 266-267
If there is an absolute for Camus, it is an absolute of evidence grounded in human possibilities. It is an
absolute given; its significance remains hypothetical and nonexclusive with respect to others, but it
defines the range of our commitment. If experience is to prove fruitful, thought must be relativized and
corrigible. “Persuasion demands leisure,” observes Camus, “and friendship a structure that will never be
completed.” (R, 247). We are recalled once again to the definition of dialogue: an open inquiry among
persons. The persons are the basic unit; the inquiry seeks to achieve and to maintain guidelines for
interaction; while the openness refers to the recognition and acceptance of the permanent possibility of
novelty entering into human experience. The political problem therefore becomes that of seeking to
institutionalize, first, the method of inquiry; and second, its always provisional and pragmatically
considered results. The freedom, dignity, and growth of the person, and the collectivity are the
reference points and limits of action. To pose the problems outside these limits is to remove the
discussion from the ethical dimension. The institutionalization of the method of dialogue just referred
to is what Camus means by democracy. He has written: “Justice implies rights. Rights imply the liberty to
defend them. In order to act, man has to speak. We know what we are defending…I am speaking for a
society which does not impose silence.” (A/I, 229) Such an act requires a commitment to values that
transcend the purely political. The commitment to democracy is at bottom just such a politically
transcending commitment to the human community. “The democrat, after all, is the one who admits
that the adversary may be right, who permits him to express himself, and who agrees to reflect upon his
arguments.” (A/I, 125) What is fundamental is not any specific political society or set of laws by which it
may be given constitutional embodiment. These structures are no more fundamental than the concepts
we use to regulate our lives. The actual basis of such arrangements is to be found in the experience of
community, which is essentially the experience of unity – that is, the felt communality of actions
grounded in common practices and common perceptions of meaning. Where we have the core notion of
community: shared meaningful activity through time. Its method of communication through reciprocal
approximation and mutual development of meanings in response to novel experiences is what is meant
by dialogue. “We must be fought today is fear and silence, and with them, the separation of minds and
souls which accompanies them. What must be defended is dialogue and universal communication
among men. Servitude, injustices, lies are the curses (les fléaux) which break this communication and
prevent dialogue. (A/I, 177) Speaking of the principles revealed by revolt, which provide the basis for
dialogue, Camus sums up much of the thesis in these words: “Nothing justifies the assertion that these
principles have existed eternally; it is of no use to declare that they will one day exist. But they do exist,
in the very period in which we exist. With us, and throughout history, they deny servitude, falsehood,
and terror.” There is, in fact, nothing in common between a master and a slave; it is impossible to
communicate with a person who has been reduced to servitude. Instead of the implicit and
untrammeled dialogue through which we come to recognize our similarity and consecrate our destiny,
servitude gives sway to the most terrible of silences. If injustice is bad for the rebel, it is not because it
contradicts an eternal idea of justice, but because it perpetuates the silent hostility that separates the
oppressor from the oppressed. It kills the small part of existence that can be realized on this earth
through the mutual understanding of men…the mutual understanding and communication discovered
by rebellion can survive only in free exchange of conversation. Every ambiguity, every misunderstanding,
leads to death; clear language and simple words are the only salvation from this death. The climax of
every tragedy lies in the deafness of its heroes. Plato is right and not Moses and Nietzsche. Dialogue on
the level of mankind is less costly than the gospel preached by totalitarian regimes in the form of a
monologue dictated from the top of a lonely mountain. On the stage as in reality, the monologue
precedes death. (R, 283-4). Dialogue grounded in truth and integrity is all that can protect us from the
despair of nihilism in a world that offers no meaning beyond what we can conjointly construct. “We
have a right to think,” Camus wrote a year or two before he died, “that truth with a capital letter is
relative. But facts are facts. And whoever says that the sky is blue when it is grey is prostituting words
and preparing the way for tyranny. This is not so much an implied theory of knowledge as a statement of
the moral role of intelligence. The question of Truth becomes derivative; the importance of truths for
experience, fundamental. Intelligence must bear witness to the facts of existence. It must disintoxicate
politics, as an essential condition for maintaining dialogue.
1NC
We affirm the entirety of the 1AC without their problematic use of the word
prostitution to describe sex work.
*Defined as all work to provide erotic services in the sex industry.
Legally coding prostitute has profound impacts – replicates inaccuracies that disrupt
workers jobs, undermines the wishes of actual workers, and perpetuates stigma
Taylor 14 (Victoria, New York Daily News, Campaign urges AP Stylebook to replace use of ‘prostitute’
with ‘sex worker’, http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/activists-ap-replace-prostitute-sex-workerarticle-1.1975176)
Sex workers’ rights advocates are saying the Associated Press can make a big difference by replacing one
word. An online campaign urges the editors of the AP Stylebook, the go-to guide for many journalists, to
use the term “sex worker” instead of “prostitute,” The Daily Dot reported. “Quick opportunity to do
some good: AP is updating their stylebook: suggest they use 'sex worker' not 'prostitute,’” a tweet from
international women’s fund Mama Cash reads. The Sex Worker’s Outreach Project NYC, or SWOP-NYC,
and Sex Workers Action New York, or SWANK, explain in the press section of their website that
"prostitute" is a legal term that is often unfavorable and inaccurate. “Sex workers whose jobs you may
feel fall under the heading ‘prostitute’ typically self-identify as something else entirely and this
difference may actually be quite crucial to their jobs and livelihood,” the site reads. “Please do not use
the word 'prostitute' to describe a sex worker unless they expressly consent to you using this term.”
Open Society Foundations communications officer Sebastian Krueger told the Daily Dot that what might
seem like a minor change can have a far-reaching impact. “Words have power,” he said. “Many people
who sell sexual services find the term ‘prostitute’ demeaning and stigmatizing, including the sex workerled groups that Open Society supports.” SWOP-NYC and SWANK say on their site that the term "sex
worker" can be used to describe the people who “provide erotic services in the sex industry,” including
brothel workers, call girls, escorts, strippers, porn stars and phone sex operators.
Usage of the term prostitute creates a distancing effect, normalizing the very violence
the aff attempts to solve – their legal prescription undermines activist work to solve
the impact in the squo
Smith 13 (Lizzie, Research Officer at The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society
(ARCSHS) at La Trobe University, Dehumanising sex workers: what’s ‘prostitute’ got to do with it?,
http://theconversation.com/dehumanising-sex-workers-whats-prostitute-got-to-do-with-it-16444)
Tracy Connelly, the woman behind the headline, had the love and support of her community and her
long-term partner. This has been eloquently explored and compared to the coverage of Jill Meagher by
Jane Gilmore in The King’s Tribune. Another question, however, needs to be asked: what are the effects
and reasons behind a woman being described as a “prostitute” when reporting on the horrific end to her
life? Sex, and by extension sex for money, is conflated with notions of self. Our sexual identity becomes
a signifier to other people about who we are, and in the case of Tracy Connelly, who we are in death.
Both major Victorian newspapers, The Age and the Herald Sun, identified Connelly as a prostitute in
their headlines. Both articles spoke about the inherent danger of her work, including her understanding
of this danger and also her preference not to work in sex work. Identifying victims of violent crime as
“prostitutes” has a distancing effect: it makes “normal” women feel safe. This good girl/bad girl binary
interacts with the normal man/client binary to create “extraordinary” circumstances within which this
violence can occur. Arguably, when “good” women are murdered by men, this creates a threat to all
women and a woman’s place/space of work or how outside of normalised sexual activities she steps is
no longer relevant. Referring to female sex workers as “prostitutes” in the media is not new, but it is a
sobering reminder of how pervasive negative understandings of sex work and sex workers are. These
understandings originate from various “expert” fields of knowledge including psychology, medicine,
sexology, religious doctrine and various feminist perspectives, through which sex workers are positioned
as dirty, diseased, sinful, deviant and victims. The term “prostitute” does not simply mean a person who
sells her or his sexual labour (although rarely used to describe men in sex work), but brings with it layers
of “knowledge” about her worth, drug status, childhood, integrity, personal hygiene and sexual health.
When the media refers to a woman as a prostitute, or when such a story remains on the news cycle for
only a day, it is not done in isolation, but in the context of this complex history. This stigma is farreaching and arguably does more damage to women who work in sex work than the actual work. This
stigma feeds into understandings of women that are violence-supporting and referring to victims of
violence as “prostitutes” continues to “other” these women and locates them as somehow deserving:
she knew the danger. More than that, it feeds into violence-supporting attitudes about all women.
While changing such embedded understandings about gender and sex work is slow going, there is
movement happening in this space. Many activists and lobby groups are working to resist sex workers
being positioned in such negative ways and assert their as human rights, as well as creating health
initiatives that seek to redress negative stereotypes about women and men in general that are violencesupporting. The ways that sex workers are portrayed in the media is also changing. However, the
reduction of Tracy Connelly’s humanity to that of simply “prostitute” reminds us that there is still a way
to go.
The term prostitute actively dehumanizes. Sex worker is way better
Lang 11 (NYT editor: Don’t say “sex worker”, http://breakingcopy.com/new-york-times-sexworkers/#sthash.mKq90V9S.dpuf)
Hold on. Is it really better to say prostitute than sex worker? In this case, we’re talking about someone
who admits she “accepted money in exchange for sexual services.” The case for writing prostitute goes
like this: Prostitute is a specific word for someone who performs sex acts for money, unlike sex worker,
which can encompass other activities. Even though the word prostitution has a negative stigma, English
doesn’t have a more neutral synonym. If a word describes something largely illegal and marginalized by
society, that’s not the word’s fault. The problem with this argument is that sex workers might not be as
marginalized if our language applied less judgment. The word prostitute, as a noun, carries the person’s
entire identity in one word and casts someone as an object for sale. The phrase sex worker describes a
human being performing a task for money. In most situations, the subjects would probably prefer to be
called sex workers. Human rights groups, for one example, favor the term sex worker. Wikipedia tells us
the term sex worker was coined around 1980 by Carol Leigh, an activist for prostitutes, though (without
having researched it thoroughly) it seems likely to me the phrase is older than that. At this point, the
term has become widely used and is not strongly linked to activism. You can use it without conveying
approval or disapproval of sex work. Sex worker isn’t a perfect term, but it’s preferable terminology
most of the time because it treats the person in question more like a person. If your interest is in
humanizing the subject of a story—and in journalism, that’s almost always the case—it’s a better
phrase.
1NC
The affs claims of ‘the symbolic order’ and ‘language’ being the cause of women’s
exclusion and oppression are inaccurate and masks capitalisms role in exploitation –
material conditions shape and maintain the patriarchal ideologies they criticize – this
misdiagnosis makes a shift in mass consciousness against capitalism and patriarchy
impossible
O’Shea 14
Louise, “Marxism and women's liberation”
[http://marxistleftreview.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=103:marxism-andwomens-liberation&catid=44:number-7-summer-2014&Itemid=83] Summer //
Difficulties of a period of working class retreat
The decades of defeat that the working class has suffered – and its retreat both politically and organisationally
over the last thirty to forty years throughout most of the advanced capitalist world – has shaped political ideas and
activism in a profoundly negative way. Amongst those concerned about women’s oppression, it has
led to a drift away from class politics, as the working class is less obviously a force to orient to for those seeking
fundamental social change, and towards a more middle class orientation led by the new layer of women columnists, academics and
politicians. Added to this, the
popularity of post-modern ideas over the last few decades, with their emphasis on
fragmented discourse, identity and introspection, has further undermined any idea that the class
struggle, and the left wing politics associated with it, has anything to offer those questioning oppression.¶ This has brought
about a shift in both popular understanding and public debate. The emphasis has moved away from fighting for
women’s rights championed by the Women’s Liberation Movement – rights at work, equal pay, childcare, control
over our fertility, social service provision – towards a focus on issues such as body image and eating disorders,
violence and sexual assault, individual sexist behaviour and language, as well as the degrading presentation of women in popular
culture and the media. It is after all the sexist and frequently abusive behaviour of individual men towards women which tends to be
the most readily observable form of sexism, and often the most debilitating from the point of view of individual women.¶ Of course
sexist behaviour and other direct expressions of sexism by individuals should be condemned, and where possible challenged, and efforts
made to deepen and extend understanding and awareness of how sexist behaviour affects women’s lives. But
it is also important
to recognise that, because both men and women internalise to a greater or lesser extent, and in turn express,
the values and attitudes that accord with their social reality – which is sexist – education without real
social change can only have a limited effect. Ultimately, male violence and abuse and the low selfconfidence of women with regard to their relationships and bodies will persist so long as women
are structurally unequal, and the corresponding sexist ideology that makes women perpetually
vulnerable to such exploitation and abuse continues.¶ It will only be possible to effectively
convince individuals on a mass scale not to behave in sexist (or racist or homophobic) ways when there is
a change in the social reality that legitimises such practices. That is why campaigns aimed at
improving the general economic and social position of women are actually a key step towards
stamping out offensive and abusive behaviour towards women. They put women in a better
economic position to escape abusive situations, build their confidence and self-respect, ensure
more services are available, and create more pressure on men to treat women respectfully. ¶ Because
the issues of violence and sexism in everyday life can be so personally devastating, because they emphasise the areas of women’s lives
in which they are the weakest and with the least power to confront them, a political emphasis on them tends to lead away from anticapitalist, working class politics. Furthermore they tend not to draw those concerned toward an orientation to mass, collective action
needed to seriously challenge women’s oppression. More commonly
they lead towards identifying men, and most often
working class men, as
the key perpetrators of sexism and therefore the main problem and natural target of any anti-sexist
activism or measures. So it matters how these issues are confronted. Obviously individual men need to be challenged;
and everyday sexism should be made a union issue, emphasising that sexism and abuse of women
divides our struggles to fight for a better world.[32] But as some American feminists have concluded after years of
experience in fighting around the issues of sexual violence, campaigns or political movements that target the sexist behaviour of
individual men and appeal to the state as protector of women against them tend to undermine such efforts, encourage identification
with authority and drag those involved to the right.[33]¶ The other problem with the increased focus on the personal effects of sexism is
that women are at their weakest and most atomised when they experience or try to confront the manifestations of sexism in their
personal lives. Focusing on these thus tends to reinforce and encourage identification as victims – which, while undeniably reflecting the
reality of sexism, does not help to challenge or change it. Only
by fighting back with the aim of changing social
conditions can the reality of oppression and the suffering of the oppressed be fought and ended.
This must involve women and other oppressed groups gaining the confidence and fighting spirit to defy the patterns of submission that
are the effect of that oppression. An
identity based on victimhood, or a political movement that takes this
suffering as its starting point, is not an effective basis for such a struggle.¶ Even amongst those
attempting to maintain some commitment to Marxism against the retreat from class politics over the last
couple of decades, including some socialist feminists, there exists a pronounced lack of confidence that
Marxism provides an effective theoretical and practical guide to liberating the oppressed
Capitalism causes extinction and destroys value to life
Robinson 14
(William I. Robinson, professor of sociology, global and international studies, and Latin American studies
at the University of California at Santa Barbara, “Global Capitalism Is In the Midst of Its Most Severe
Crisis” 02 Jul 2014, KB)
However, and this is the key point I wish to highlight here, US intervention around the world clearly
entered a qualitatively new period after September 11, 2001. This new period should be seen in the
context of emergent 21st century global capitalism. Global capitalism is in the midst of its most severe
crisis in close to a century, and in many ways the current crisis is much worse than that of the 1930s
because we are on the precipice of an ecological holocaust that threatens the very earth system and
the ability to sustain life, ours included, because the means of violence and social control have never
before been so concentrated within a single powerful state, and because the global means of
communication is also extraordinarily concentrated in the hands of transnational capital and a few
powerful states. On the other hand, global inequalities have never been as acute and grotesque as they
are today. So, in simplified terms, we need to see the escalation of US interventionism and the untold
suffering it brings about, including what you mention – the killing of unarmed civilians, the destruction
of the environment, forced migration and displacement, undermining democracy – as a response by the
US-led transnational state and the transnational capitalist class to contain the explosive contradictions
of a global capitalist system that is out of control and in deep crisis. You ask me who is going to
compensate for these losses. That will depend on how the world’s people respond. There is currently a
global revolt from below underway, but it is spread unevenly across countries and has not taken any
clear form or direction. Can the popular majority of humanity force the transnational capitalist class and
the US/transnational state to be accountable for its crimes? Mao Zedong once said that “power flows
through the barrel of a gun.” What he meant by this, in a more abstract than literal way, I believe, is that
in the end it is the correlation of real forces that will determine outcomes. Because the United States
has overwhelming and “full spectrum” military dominance, it can capture, execute, or bring to trial
people anywhere around the world… it has “free license”, so to speak, to act as an international outlaw.
We don’t even have to take the more recent examples. In December 1989 the United States undertook
an illegal and criminal invasion of Panama, kidnapped Manuel Noriega – whether or not he was a
dictator is not the point, as the United States puts in power and defends dictators that defend US and
transnational elite interests, and brought him back to US territory for trial. What country in the world
now has the naked power “flowing through the barrel of a gun” to invade the United States, capture
George Bush, Dick Chaney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other war criminals, and bring them somewhere to
stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity? Q: In your writings, you’ve warned against the
growing gap between the rich and the poor, the slant accumulation of the global wealth in the hands of
an affluent few and the impoverishment of the suppressed majority. What do you think are the reasons
for this stark inequality and the disturbing dispossession of millions of people in the capitalist societies?
You wrote that the participants of the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos were worried that the
current situation raises the specter of worldwide instability and civil wars. Is it really so? A: We have
never in the history of humanity seen such a sharp social polarization between the haves and the
have-nots, such grotesque levels of inequality, within and among countries. There have been countless
studies in recent years documenting the escalation of inequalities, among them, the current bestseller
by Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” The pattern we see is that the notorious “1
percent” monopolizes a huge portion of the wealth that humanity produces and transnational
corporations and banks are registering record profits, but as well that some 20 percent of the
population in each countries has integrated into the global economy as middle class and affluent
consumers while the remaining 80 percent has experienced rising levels of insecurity, impoverishment,
and precariousness, increasingly inhabiting what some have called a “planet of slums.” The apologists of
global capitalism point to the rise of a middle class in China to claim that the system is successful. But in
China, 300-400 million people have entered the ranks of the global middle and consuming class while
the other 800-900 million have faced downward mobility, immiseration, insecurity, unemployment and
extreme levels of exploitation. Such is this exploitation that a couple years ago, you may remember,
Foxcomm workers preferred to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of their factories than to remain
in their labor camps. This is the Foxcomm that makes your iPads and iPhones. The 80 percent is then
subject to all sorts of sophisticated systems of social control and repression. We are headed in this
regard towards a global police state, organized by global elites and led by the US state, to contain the
real or potential rebellion of a dispossessed majority. Such structures of inequality and exploitation
cannot be contained over time without both ideological and coercive apparatuses; conformity to a
system of structural violence must be compelled through direct violence, organized by states and
private security forces. Edward Snowden revealed the extent to which we are now living in a global
social control state, a global panoptical surveillance state. George Orwell wrote about such a state in his
famous novel “1984.” The Orwellian society has arrived. Yet it is worse than Orwell imagined, because
at least the members of Orwell’s society had their basic needs met in return for their obedience and
conformity. How do we explain such stark inequality? Capitalism is a system that by its very internal
dynamic generates wealth yet polarizes and concentrates that wealth. Historically a de-concentration of
wealth through redistribution has come about by state intervention to offset the natural tendency for
capital accumulation to result in such polarization. States have turned to an array of redistributive
mechanisms both because they have been pressured from below to do so – whether by trade unions,
social movements, socialist struggles, or so on – or because states must do so in order to retain
legitimacy and preserve at least enough social peace for the reproduction of the system. A great variety
of redistributive models emerged in the 20th century around the world, and went by a great many
names – socialism, communism, social democracy, New Deal, welfare states, developmental states,
populism, the social wage, and so on. All these models shared two things in common. One was state
intervention in the economy to regulate capital accumulation and thus to bring under some control the
most anarchic and most destructive elements of unrestrained capitalism. The other was redistribution
through numerous policies, ranging from minimum legal wages and unemployment insurance, to public
enterprises, the social wages of public health, education, transportation, and housing, welfare programs,
land reform in agrarian countries, low cost credit, and so on. But capital responded to the last major
crisis of the system, that of the 1970s, by “going global,” by breaking free of nation-state constraints to
accumulation and undermining models of state regulation and redistribution. Neo-liberalism is a set of
policies that facilitate the rise of transnational capital. As transnational capital has broken free of the
confine of the nation-state, the natural tendency for capitalism to concentrate wealth has been
unleashed without any countervailing restraints. The result has been this dizzying escalation of
worldwide inequalities as wealth concentrates within the transnational capitalist class and, to a much
lesser extent, the better off strata of middle classes and professionals. There are other related factors
that account for the intensification of worldwide inequalities. One is the defeat of the worldwide left in
the late 1980s and early 1990s, which led the ruling groups to declare that global neo-liberal capitalism
was “The End of History.” A second is the rise of a globally integrated financial system in which capital in
its liquid, that is money, form can move frictionless across the planet with no controls whatsoever.
Transnational finance capital has become the hegemonic fraction of capital on a global scale, and it
engages in unfathomable levels of speculation, turning the global economy into one giant casino.
Transnational finance capital has come to control the levers of the global economy, to get around and to
undermine any effort at regulation, and to concentrate wealth in its liquid form in a way that would
have been unimaginable just a few years ago. A third factor is the rise of a mass of surplus humanity.
Hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions, have been made “superfluous”, thrown off the land or
out of productive employment, replaced by machines and rising productivity, marginalized and
relegated to migration and to trying to scratch by an existence in the “planet of slums.” In turn, this
mass of humanity places those that are employed in a very vulnerable situation, drives down wage
levels everywhere, facilitates the “flexibilization” and precarious nature of wage labor, and thereby
further aggravating inequalities. Q: In one of your articles, you talked of an “ever-expanding militaryprison-industrial-security-financial complex” that generates enormous profits through waging wars,
selling weapons and then taking part in reconstruction activities in the war-torn countries. How does
this complex operate? Is it really reliant on waging wars? A: We cannot understand intensified
militarization and the rise of this complex outside of the crisis of global capitalism. This crisis is
structural, in the first instance. It is what we call a crisis of over-accumulation. The rise of the global
economy driven by new technologies, especially computer, information, and communications
technologies, but also by the revolution in transportation and containerization, by robotics, aerospace,
biotechnology, nanotechnology, and more recently, by 3D printing, among other aspects, has allowed
the transnational capitalist class to restructure and reorganize the whole world economy, and to bring
about a huge increase in productivity worldwide and an enormous expansion of the capacity of the
global economy to churn out goods and services. But extreme inequality and social polarization in the
global system means that the global market cannot absorb the expanding output of the global economy.
The result is a stagnation that is becoming chronic. The gap between what the global economy can
produce and what the global market can absorb is growing and this leads to a crisis of overproduction:
where and how to unload the surplus? How can transnational capital continue to accumulate and
generate profits if this output is not unloaded, that is, profitably marketed? Unloading the surplus
through financial speculation, which has skyrocketed in recent years, only aggravates the solution, as we
saw with the collapse of 2008. Now, if only 20 percent of humanity can consume in any significant
quantity it is not very profitable to go into the business of mass, inexpensive public transportation,
health and education, or the production of practical goods that the world’s population needs because
very simply even if people need these things they do not have the income to purchase them. A global
civilian economy geared to the basic needs of humanity is simply not profitable for the transnational
capitalist class. Look at it like this: the mass production and distribution of vaccines and other
medications for communicable and treatable diseases that affect masses of poor people around the
world are simply not profitable and as a result we even have new pandemics of diseases – tuberculosis,
measles, etc. – that previously were under control. Yet it is profitable for the global capitalist medical
industry, including the giant pharmaceutical, biotechnology and related branches to spend billions on
developing plastic surgery and every imaginable treatment for the vanity of a small portion of humanity,
or to develop incredibly expensive treatments for diseases that afflict the affluent. The lesson here is
that capital will seek to accumulate where it is profitable, according to the structure of the market and
of income, which in turn is shaped by the balance of class and social power and what we call the
relations of production and irrespective of rational use of resources and irrespective of human need. It is
in this context that it becomes quite profitable to turn to wars, conflicts, systems of repression and
social control to generate profit, to produce goods and systems that can repress that 80 percent of
humanity that is not your consumer, not your customer so to say, because they do not have the
purchasing power to sustain your drive to accumulate by producing goods and services for them that
they actually need. Global capitalism is a perverted and irrational system. Putting aside geo-political
considerations, the surplus that the global economy has been and is producing but that cannot be
absorbed by the world market, has been channeled into wars and conflicts that involve endless rounds
of destruction and reconstruction, and new systems of social control and repression, independent of
geo-political considerations, that is, simply as a way of sustaining capital accumulation and profit making
in the face of stagnation tendencies. The US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan –
although legitimated in the name of fighting “terrorism” – have generated hundreds of billions of dollars
in contracts and profits for transnational capital. The prison-industrial and immigrant-detention
complexes in the United States – and let us recall that the United States holds some 25-30 percent of
the world’s prisoners – is enormously profitable for private corporations that run almost all of the
immigrant detention centers, some of the general prisons, supply everything from guards to food, build
the installations, erect border walls, and so on. Let us recall that the US National Security Agency – and
we now know from Edward Snowden just how vast are its operations – subcontracts out its activities to
private corporations, as do the CIA, the Pentagon, and so on. Global security corporations are one of the
fastest growing sectors of the global economy and there are now more private security guards in the
world than police officers. All of this is to say that we are now living in a global war economy, in which
the threat of stagnation is offset in part by the militarization of global economy and society and the
introduction and spread of systems of mass social control. Of course this involves all kinds of cultural,
ideological, and political dimensions as well. A global war economy based on a multitude of endless
conflicts and the spread of social control systems, from full-scale wars to the repression of racial
minorities and immigrants in the United States and Europe, must be ideologically legitimated. This is
where bogus and farcical “wars on drugs and terrorism” come in, where enemies must be conjured up,
in which populations must be led to believe they are threatened, and so on. So the US public must
believe that Iran is a threat, that Putin is now the devil, and so on. One “threat” replaces another but
the system needs to keep a population in permanent compliance through the manipulation of emotion
and the senses. This transition into a permanent global war economy has involved some shifts in the
gravitational centers of capital accumulation, towards those global corporate conglomerates involved in
the production of war materials, of security, of engineering (for example, Bechtel and Halliburton), and
other activities that involve making profit out of conflict and control. Remember by way of example that
each drone that flies, each missile fired, each round of ammunition, each tank deployed, each soldier
equipped and fed, each prison that is constructed, each surveillance system put into place, each border
wall installed, and so on and so forth, is produced in factories and through production chains by global
corporations whose supply, in turn, of raw materials, machinery and service inputs in turn come from
other global corporations or local firms. So the whole global economy is kept running through violence
and conflict. But the global war economy also involves the global financial institutions that are at the
very heart of the global economy, together with the petroleum complex that is coming under much
pressure from the environmental movement yet is showing all-time record profits in the past few years.
This is a new transnational power bloc – this complex of corporate interests brought around a global
war economy and global systems of repression and social control, together with elites and state
managers brought into or representing the power bloc. Remember also that the polarization of the
world population into 20 percent affluent and 80 percent immiserated generates new spatial social
relations, so that the privileged occupy gated communities and those displaced by gentrification must
be violently suppressed and carefully controlled, while surveillance systems and security guards must
patrol and protect that 20 percent. All this and much more are part of the militarization and
“securitization” of global society by the powers that be. We face new doctrines, ideologies and political
discourse that legitimize the construction of a global police state – “fourth generation warfare,”
“humanitarian intervention,” the “war on drugs,” among others, and above all, the so-called “war on
terror.” I say so-called because, the US state is the biggest perpetrator of terror in the world. It is not
that Al-Qaida and other groups do not carry out condemnable violence against innocent civilians. They
indeed do. But if we define terrorism as the use of violence against civilians for political objectives, then
the US state is the world’s leading terrorist. The powers that be in global society and that control the
global political discourse attach the label “terrorist” to violence that they do not approve of, and they
attach the label of “freedom and democracy and security” to violence that they do approve of, or that
they commit themselves. Moreover, increasingly “terrorism” is used to simply describe political dissent,
so that legitimate social movements and political struggles against global capitalism become labeled as
“terrorism” in order to justify their suppression.
The alternative is a class-based critique of the system - pedagogical spaces are the
crucial staging ground for keeping socialism on the horizon – only by challenging the
continuous assumption to act can we avoid global violence
McLaren, Distinguished Fellow – Critical Studies @ Chapman U and UCLA urban schooling prof, and
Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, associate professor of Communication – U Windsor, ‘4
(Peter and Valerie, “Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of ‘difference’,” Educational
Philosophy and Theory Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 183-199)
For well over two decades we have witnessed the jubilant liberal and conservative pronouncements of
the demise of socialism. Concomitantly, history's presumed failure to defang existing capitalist relations
has been read by many self-identified ‘radicals’ as an advertisement for capitalism's inevitability. As a
result, the chorus refrain ‘There Is No Alternative’, sung by liberals and conservatives, has been
buttressed by the symphony of post-Marxist voices recommending that we give socialism a decent
burial and move on. Within this context, to speak of the promise of Marx and socialism may appear
anachronistic, even naïve, especially since the post-al intellectual vanguard has presumably
demonstrated the folly of doing so. Yet we stubbornly believe that the chants of T.I.N.A. must be
combated for they offer as a fait accompli, something which progressive Leftists should refuse to
accept—namely the triumph of capitalism and its political bedfellow neo-liberalism, which have worked
together to naturalize suffering, undermine collective struggle, and obliterate hope. We concur with
Amin (1998), who claims that such chants must be defied and revealed as absurd and criminal, and who
puts the challenge we face in no uncertain terms: humanity may let itself be led by capitalism's logic to a
fate of collective suicide or it may pave the way for an alternative humanist project of global socialism.
The grosteque conditions that inspired Marx to pen his original critique of capitalism are present and
flourishing. The inequalities of wealth and the gross imbalances of power that exist today are leading to
abuses that exceed those encountered in Marx's day (Greider, 1998, p. 39). Global capitalism has paved
the way for the obscene concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and created a world
increasingly divided between those who enjoy opulent affluence and those who languish in
dehumanizing conditions and economic misery. In every corner of the globe, we are witnessing social
disintegration as revealed by a rise in abject poverty and inequality. At the current historical juncture,
the combined assets of the 225 richest people is roughly equal to the annual income of the poorest 47
percent of the world's population, while the combined assets of the three richest people exceed the
combined GDP of the 48 poorest nations (CCPA, 2002, p. 3). Approximately 2.8 billion people—almost
half of the world's population—struggle in desperation to live on less than two dollars a day (McQuaig,
2001, p. 27). As many as 250 million children are wage slaves and there are over a billion workers who
are either un- or under-employed. These are the concrete realities of our time—realities that require a
vigorous class analysis, an unrelenting critique of capitalism and an oppositional politics capable of
confronting what Ahmad (1998, p. 2) refers to as ‘capitalist universality.’ They are realities that require
something more than that which is offered by the prophets of ‘difference’ and post-Marxists who would
have us relegate socialism to the scrapheap of history and mummify Marxism along with Lenin's corpse.
Never before has a Marxian analysis of capitalism and class rule been so desperately needed. That is not
to say that everything Marx said or anticipated has come true, for that is clearly not the case. Many
critiques of Marx focus on his strategy for moving toward socialism, and with ample justification;
nonetheless Marx did provide us with fundamental insights into class society that have held true to this
day. Marx's enduring relevance lies in his indictment of capitalism which continues to wreak havoc in
the lives of most. While capitalism's cheerleaders have attempted to hide its sordid underbelly, Marx's
description of capitalism as the sorcerer's dark power is even more apt in light of contemporary
historical and economic conditions. Rather than jettisoning Marx, decentering the role of capitalism, and
discrediting class analysis, radical educators must continue to engage Marx's oeuvre and extrapolate
from it that which is useful pedagogically, theoretically, and, most importantly, politically in light of the
challenges that confront us. The urgency which animates Amin's call for a collective socialist vision
necessitates, as we have argued, moving beyond the particularism and liberal pluralism that informs the
‘politics of difference.’ It also requires challenging the questionable assumptions that have come to
constitute the core of contemporary ‘radical’ theory, pedagogy and politics. In terms of effecting
change, what is needed is a cogent understanding of the systemic nature of exploitation and oppression
based on the precepts of a radical political economy approach (outlined above) and one that
incorporates Marx's notion of ‘unity in difference’ in which people share widely common material
interests. Such an understanding extends far beyond the realm of theory, for the manner in which we
choose to interpret and explore the social world, the concepts and frameworks we use to express our
sociopolitical understandings, are more than just abstract categories. They imply intentions,
organizational practices, and political agendas. Identifying class analysis as the basis for our
understandings and class struggle as the basis for political transformation implies something quite
different than constructing a sense of political agency around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, etc.
Contrary to ‘Shakespeare's assertion that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ it should be
clear that this is not the case in political matters. Rather, in politics ‘the essence of the flower lies in the
name by which it is called’ (Bannerji, 2000, p. 41). The task for progressives today is to seize the moment
and plant the seeds for a political agenda that is grounded in historical possibilities and informed by a
vision committed to overcoming exploitative conditions. These seeds, we would argue, must be derived
from the tree of radical political economy. For the vast majority of people today—people of all ‘racial
classifications or identities, all genders and sexual orientations’—the common frame of reference arcing
across ‘difference’, the ‘concerns and aspirations that are most widely shared are those that are rooted
in the common experience of everyday life shaped and constrained by political economy’ (Reed, 2000, p.
xxvii). While post-Marxist advocates of the politics of ‘difference’ suggest that such a stance is outdated,
we would argue that the categories which they have employed to analyze ‘the social’ are now losing
their usefulness, particularly in light of actual contemporary ‘social movements.’ All over the globe,
there are large anti-capitalist movements afoot. In February 2002, chants of ‘Another World Is Possible’
became the theme of protests in Porto Allegre. It seems that those people struggling in the streets
haven’t read about T.I.N.A., the end of grand narratives of emancipation, or the decentering of
capitalism. It seems as though the struggle for basic survival and some semblance of human dignity in
the mean streets of the dystopian metropoles doesn’t permit much time or opportunity to read the
heady proclamations emanating from seminar rooms. As E. P. Thompson (1978, p. 11) once remarked,
sometimes ‘experience walks in without knocking at the door, and announces deaths, crises of
subsistence, trench warfare, unemployment, inflation, genocide.’ This, of course, does not mean that
socialism will inevitably come about, yet a sense of its nascent promise animates current social
movements. Indeed, noted historian Howard Zinn (2000, p. 20) recently pointed out that after years of
single-issue organizing (i.e. the politics of difference), the WTO and other anti-corporate capitalist
protests signaled a turning point in the ‘history of movements of recent decades,’ for it was the issue of
‘class’ that more than anything ‘bound everyone together.’ History, to paraphrase Thompson (1978, p.
25) doesn’t seem to be following Theory's script. Our vision is informed by Marx's historical materialism
and his revolutionary socialist humanism, which must not be conflated with liberal humanism. For left
politics and pedagogy, a socialist humanist vision remains crucial, whose fundamental features include
the creative potential of people to challenge collectively the circumstances that they inherit. This variant
of humanism seeks to give expression to the pain, sorrow and degradation of the oppressed, those who
labor under the ominous and ghastly cloak of ‘globalized’ capital. It calls for the transformation of those
conditions that have prevented the bulk of humankind from fulfilling its potential. It vests its hope for
change in the development of critical consciousness and social agents who make history, although not
always in conditions of their choosing. The political goal of socialist humanism is, however, ‘not a resting
in difference’ but rather ‘the emancipation of difference at the level of human mutuality and
reciprocity.’ This would be a step forward for the ‘discovery or creation of our real differences which can
only in the end be explored in reciprocal ways’ (Eagleton, 1996, p. 120). Above all else, the enduring
relevance of a radical socialist pedagogy and politics is the centrality it accords to the interrogation of
capitalism. We can no longer afford to remain indifferent to the horror and savagery committed by
capitalist's barbaric machinations. We need to recognize that capitalist democracy is unrescuably
contradictory in its own self-constitution. Capitalism and democracy cannot be translated into one
another without profound efforts at manufacturing empty idealism. Committed Leftists must
unrelentingly cultivate a democratic socialist vision that refuses to forget the ‘wretched of the earth,’
the children of the damned and the victims of the culture of silence—a task which requires more than
abstruse convolutions and striking ironic poses in the agnostic arena of signifying practices. Leftists must
illuminate the little shops of horror that lurk beneath ‘globalization’s’ shiny façade; they must challenge
the true ‘evils’ that are manifest in the tentacles of global capitalism's reach. And, more than this,
Leftists must search for the cracks in the edifice of globalized capitalism and shine light on those fissures
that give birth to alternatives. Socialism today, undoubtedly, runs against the grain of received wisdom,
but its vision of a vastly improved and freer arrangement of social relations beckons on the horizon. Its
unwritten text is nascent in the present even as it exists among the fragments of history and the shards
of distant memories. Its potential remains untapped and its promise needs to be redeemed.
Case
Their alteration of rape victim to rape survivor is highly problematic, either
terminology is disrespectful to the person who has been raped. Survivor doesn’t
create positive effects, it just distracts from systemic victimization
Rayburn Yung 12 (Corey, St. John's Law Review Volume 78 Issue 4 Volume 78, Fall 2004, Number 4
Article 4 February 2012, Better Dead Than R(ap)ed?: The Patriarchal Rhetoric Driving Capital Rape
Statutes)
As this article is significantly focused on the rhetoric surrounding rape, it is important to consider the
"labels" used to identify those who have been raped. The central axis of conflict on the naming issue
surrounds the transition from calling someone a "rape victim" to using "rape survivor." See David Mills,
Semantics of Rape: Language vs. What's 'Politically Correct,' THE WASHINGTON POST, Nov. 22, 1991, at
B5. This linguistic transition has largely been driven by academics who believe that "victim" rhetoric is
disempowering for womyn. See EDWARD GONDOLF & ELLEN FISHER, BATTERED WOMEN AS
SURVIVORS: AN ALTERNATIVE To TREATING LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 17-18 (1988); Evelyn Mary Aswad,
Torture by Means of Rape, 84 GEO. L.J. 1913, 1916 n.11 (1996); Metin Basoglu, Prevention of Torture
and Care of Survivors: An Integrated Approach, 270 JAMA 606, 606 (1993); International Human Rights
Law Group, No Justice, No Peace: Accountability for Rape and Gender-Based Violence in the Former
Yugoslavia, 5 HASTINGS WOMEN'S L.J. 89, 110 (1994); Martha R. Mahoney, EXIT: Power and the Idea of
Leaving in Love, Work, and the Confirmation Hearings, 65 S. CAL. L. REV. 1283, 1310-11 & n.115 (1992);
Toni M. Massaro, Empathy, Legal Storytelling, and the Rule of Law: New Words, Old Wounds?, 87 MICH.
L. REV. 2099, 2112 (1989); Aviva Orenstein, "MY GOD!": A Feminist Critique of the Excited Utterance
Exception to the Hearsay Rule, 85 CAL. L. REV. 159, 164 n.5 (1997). Some writers have gone as far as
saying the "victim" label is abusive to womyn who have been raped. See Julie Hosking, When It Comes
to Rape Victim is a Dirty Word, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH MAGAZINE (Sydney), Mar. 24, 2002, at 20.
"Survivor" became a preferred term because it was used by womyn to move past their trauma. See
Rhona Dowdeswell, Why I Must Forgive to Get Over My Rape, WESTERN DAILY PRESS (Bristol), Jan. 25,
2002, at 8. Despite this "popular" movement among rape scholars to use "survivor" rhetoric, Andrea
Dworkin presented powerful arguments for using "victim" when she wrote: It's a true word. If you were
raped, you were victimized. You damned well were. You were a victim. It doesn't mean that you are a
victim in the metaphysical sense, in your state of being, as an intrinsic part of your essence and
existence. It means somebody hurt you. They injured you.
And if it happens to you systematically because you are born a woman, it means that you live in a
political system that uses pain and humiliation to control and to hurt you. Andrea Dworkin, WomanHating Right and Left, in THE SEXUAL LIBERALS AND THE ATTACK ON FEMINISM 38 (Dorchen Leidholdt &
Janice G. Raymond eds., 1990). There have also been numerous persons who have been raped that
prefer to be called "victims." See, e.g., Kate E. Bloch, A Rape Law Pedagogy, 7 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 307,
308 n.6 (1995). There is no easy answer to the dilemma of rape identity rhetoric as such language is
caught in an array of definitional and interpretive axes that both obfuscate and over-determine
meaning. See SABINE SIELKE, READING RAPE: THE RHETORIC OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN AMERICAN
LITERATURE AND CULTURE 1790-1990, at 12-14 (2002). Further, there is an oversimplified belief among
some who believe that a positive sounding word like "survivor" creates a positive effect. See id. at 13. 1
do not pretend to have any solution to the rhetorical impacts of "victim" and "survivor" and if I did, it
would be the subject of a separate paper unto itself. Instead, out of respect for those who would like to
be called "victims," but not "survivors," and those who would prefer "survivors" to "victims," I use
neither term. Rather, this article uses phrases like "womyn who have been raped" in recognition of the
diversity of opinions on this sensitive issue.
1ACs insistence that a voice is necessary to be political is ableist
Schalk 2013(Sami Schalk, Metaphorically Speaking: Ableist Metaphors in Feminist
Writing, http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3874/3410)
The conceptualization of feminism as healer also occurs in Modleski's Feminism Without
Women (1991). The third chapter of the book is entitled "Some Functions of Feminist Criticism;
Or the Scandal of the Mute Body," a title that plays on Shoshana Felman's The Scandal of the
Speaking Body (2003), with which Modleski disagrees and which she aims to critique (Modleski
1991, 48-49). As Modeleski explains it, the chapter centers on the question of what "feminists
hope to accomplish by examining popular texts—or, for that matter, any texts at all" (36). In the
chapter, Modleski critiques what she refers to as the "political paralysis" (an ableist metaphor) of
ethnographic cultural critics and their tendency not to heed their female interlocutors, erasing women from the
published work (36, 41). She uses the creative metaphor of the "mute body" (in contrast to Felman's
"speaking body") in order to explain the marginalized position that women often occupy in
cultural criticism. Although the word mute actually appears only three times in the chapter, the metaphor
itself is nonetheless ever-present, not only in the way that Modleski repeatedly invokes the terms silence and
silencing, but also in the "meta-text" of the chapter, since a portion of the title—"The Scandal of the
Mute Body"—appears as a header on every odd-numbered page throughout the chapter.
Indeed, the use of silence as a metaphor for marginalization and oppression is widespread in feminism and
other identity-based political movements, such as in ACT UP's "Silence = Death" slogan. Thus, we
ought to consider how silence is deployed as a metaphor, despite the fact that silence itself it not a disability. In
the case of Modleski's text, the particular way in which both silence and muteness are used helps reveal
the potentially ableist assumption undergirding of what is or is not considered politically possible without oral
speech. This extended disability metaphor relies on negative connotations of impairment in which a "mute
body" is associated with restriction, inability, and total, non-communicative silence. In the terms of this
metaphor, "muteness" or speech impairment is the source domain, while patriarchy's exclusion and erasure of
women's "voices" (a metonym for women's thoughts, opinions, writing, speech and so on) is the
target domain. In other words, muteness (the embodied experience of nonverbal people) is inherently and
oppressively undesirable and oral, hearing, and literate female feminists are called upon to resist it by speaking
and writing publicly in the name of all women. Since mute is only occasionally used in Modleski's text
and silence is so often used, it seems that, as in hooks, there is a slippage of meaning. That is,
Modleski presents muteness and silence as interchangeable, disregarding the denotative and
connotative differences between these terms. Like hooks's interchangeable uses
of wounded, mutilated, and crippled, Modleski's metaphorical use of mute and silence 10 is simplistic,
alluding to a monolithic experience of speech and hearing impairments that covers over the radical diversity
amongst Deaf, deafened, hard-of-hearing, and other disabled people.
Ableism is the root cause of war, environmental destruction, and other “isms”. Absent the
1AC those impacts become inevitable.
Wolbring 7, biochemist, bioethicist, disability/vari-ability/ability studies scholar, and health policy and
science and technology governance researcher at the University of Calgary, 7(Gregor, member of the
Center for Nanotechnology and Society at Arizona State University; Part Time Professor at Faculty of
Law, University of Ottawa, Canada, Innovation Watch, “NBICS, Other Convergences, Ableism and the
Culture of Peace,” April 15, 2007
Will the report and language of the culture of peace move people to intervene in the nanoscale science
and technology arms and military products race that is already developing? (4) So far, policies around
new and emerging technologies have failed to establish a culture of peace, poverty reduction, sustainable
development, and dialogue among civilizations. Why is that? I think ableism is at the root of or at least is a
major contributing factor to why we do not make much progress in these domains. Many ‘isms’ converge
in the concept of ableism, and one has to deal with ableism if one wants to achieve among other things a
culture of peace, poverty reduction, a better situation in low income countries, equity and equality for
women and other marginalized groups, sustainable development, and a dialogue among civilizations. The
Convergence Concept of Ableism Ableism is a set of beliefs, processes and practices that produce -- based
on our abilities -- a particular understanding of ourselves, our body, and our relationship with others of
our species, other species, and our environment. It includes being judged by others. Ableism exhibits a
favouritism for certain abilities that are projected as essential while labelling real or perceived deviations
from (or lack of) these ‘essential’ abilities as a diminished state. This leads or contributes to the
justification of a variety of other isms (5-7). Every ism has two components: something we cherish and
something we do not. The first, second or both parts may be emphasized. Ableism reflects the sentiment
of certain social groups and social structures to cherish and promote certain abilities such as productivity
and competitiveness over others such as empathy, compassion and kindness (favouritism of abilities) (57). Ableism and favouritism of certain abilities is rampant today and throughout history. Ableism shaped
and continues to shape areas such as human security (3) and social cohesion (8), social policies,
relationships among social groups and between individuals and countries, and relationships between
humans and non-humans, and humans and their environment.(6) Ableism is one of the most societally
entrenched and accepted isms and one of the biggest enablers for other isms (e.g. nationalism,
speciesism, sexism, racism, anti-environmentalism, consumerism, GDPism, superiority-ism….). Ableism
related to productivity and economic competitiveness is the basis upon which many societies are judged,
and it is often seen as a prerequisite for progress. The direction and governance of science and
technology and different forms of ableism have always been inter-related. Ableism will become more
prevalent and severe with the anticipated ability of new and emerging sciences and technologies: to
generate human bodily enhancements in many shapes and forms with an accompanying ability divide and
the appearance of the external and internal techno poor disabled; (5) to generate, modify and enhance
non-human life forms; to separate cognitive functioning from the human body; and to modify humans to
deal with the aftermath of anti-environmentalism. We can already observe a changing perception of
ourselves, our body, and our relationships with others of our species, other species and our environment.
New forms of ableism are now appearing which are often presented as a solution to the consequences of
other ableism based isms (transhumanization of ableism, for example) (5;6). The cognitive enhancement
of animals is now seen by some as a way to eliminate certain forms of speciesism. (2) Transhumanization
of the human body may be seen as a solution for coping with the climate change. This could become
popular if we reach a point where the severe consequences of climate change can no longer be
prevented. The Choice is Yours Judgment based on abilities is so ingrained in every culture that its use for
exclusionary or otherwise negative purposes is seldom questioned or even recognized. In fact, groups
who are marginalized due to some form of ableism often use that very sentiment to demand a change in
status (we are as able as you are; we can be as able as you are with accommodations). Dealing with
ableism is essential if we want to diminish, reverse, or prevent the conflict that may result from the
disruptive potential of many nanoscale science and technology products. Without dealing with the tenets
of ableism one can not achieve poverty reduction; peace; better living standards (especially for
traditionally excluded segments of the population); empowerment of people; dialogue among
civilizations; dialogue and integration of mainstream science with traditional, local and indigenous
sciences of diverse cultures; diversity; sustainability; and distributive justice. Without tackling ableism, no
real and durable sustainable equity and equality for any country, group, or individual will be achieved.
2NC
2NC OV
Only our interp solves stigma
MGBAKO 13 CHI ADANNA MGBAKO, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Fordham Law School;
Founding Director, Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic. J.D. Harvard Law School; B.A.
Columbia University, “THE CASE FOR DECRIMINALIZATION OF SEX WORK IN SOUTH AFRICA”,
Georgetown Journal of International Law 44 Geo. J. Int'l L. 1423 Lexis
Law plays an important role in influencing societal attitudes. Criminalization
stigmatizes sex workers as criminals, which
negatively affects the way society views them. n8 Because sex workers are criminalized, communities often
believe abuses against sex workers are justified. As a result, sex workers suffer stigma, discrimination, and
abuse from many facets of society including police, health workers, schools, banks, and other service
providers. n9 Criminalization also has an effect on family life. Despite being breadwinners for their families, stigma causes many sex
workers to feel shame and to try and hide their profession. Sex workers also report that their children face stigma. n10 As one sex
worker argued, "Sex work is our job--we work to put food on the table for our children and people are
judging us. The government has to do something about people judging us." n11
A2 Voices Key
The battle for self-representation inevitably occurs on corporate terrain, which means
their attempt to affirm the prostitute does nothing to rupture current norms
John Champagne Associate Professor of English Ph.D. English, Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Pittsburgh M.A. Cinema Studies,
New York University The Ethics of Marginality A New Approach to Gay Studies 1995
Finally, as I have argued throughour this study, Foucault's reformulation of power suggests that margin and center are unthinkable except in
relation to one another. To extrapolate this condition to the question of experience and the real: Foucault’s argument suggests that what we
call the real is itself possible only as a result of what Butler terms “the exclusionary means by which the circumscription of the real is effected.”
The concept of the real would fail to make sense were it not posited in relation to something which it is not. As Butler suggests, “We can
understand the ‘real’ as a variable construction which is always and only determined in relation to its constitutive outside: fantasy, the
unthinkable, the unreal.”20 As I suggested through my reading of Tongues Untied, one
of the problems with the category of
experience is that it necessarily relies on an often untheorized deployment of the real. Experience is
hauled into court in the service of one reality in order to discredit a competing one.21 In the case of the
struggle for marginalized groups to achieve the means of self-representation, one version of reality—the
“negative,” “stereotypical” portrayal of a marginalized group—is replaced with a “positive,” “realistic,” and self-constructed
image. But one of the limits of such an approach is, as Butler has suggested, that “to prove that events are real,
one must already have a notion of the real within which one operates, a set of exclusionary and
constitutive principles that confer on a given indication the force of an ontological designator; and if it is
rhar very notion of the real that one wants, for political reasons, to contest, then the simple act of pointing will
not suffice to delimit the force of the indexical.”22 Thus, simply substituting one version of reality for
another is not sufficient to challenge the grounds, or, in Foucault’s terminology, the regime of truth, on which
the initial, competing reality is posited. As Butler argues, “To change the real, that is, to change what qualifies as the real, would
be to contest the syntax within which pointing occurs and on which it tacitly relies” (107). As I have suggested at various moments throughout
this study, one
of the perils of a criticism affiliated with the culturally marginalized is that it too often seeks,
with recourse to, for example, identity politics, to re-create the marginalized in a specular image to the
dominant, as if, say, substituting gay bodies for straight ones, and giving such bodies “equal” representation, would significantly and decisively alter the current regime of truth. Such a move
circumvents the possibility of a more radical epistemological rupture impossibly suggested by the place
of the Other.
Focusing on structural conditions and gender paradigms sidestep the problem – direct
legal change is key
Barbara Havelkova, CSET Teaching Fellow in EU Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, ’11 “USING
GENDER EQUALITY ANALYSIS TO IMPROVE THE WELLBEING OF PROSTITUTES” Cardozo Journal of Law &
Gender, 18 Cardozo J.L. & Gender 55, 2011
It is difficult to locate a middle ground in the feminist debate, especially as far as legal solutions are concerned. Several
writers have extremely important insights and avoid the binary. For example, many socialist feminists argue that
prostitution should not be attacked directly but that women's poverty needs to be addressed. For
example, Stephanie Limoncelli states that "strategies for social and economic justice [are needed], which at the same time, will help to combat
the exploitation of women in prostitution." n94 Another
solution is offered by Laurie Shrage, who sees prostitution as
gendered and oppressive only under the current gender order n95 and argues for a change in the
cultural context. n96 Shrage stated, "By striving to overcome discriminatory structures in all aspects of
society - in the family, at work outside the home, and in our political institutions - feminists will
succeed in challenging some of the cultural presuppositions which sustain prostitution."
n97Consequently, "if prostitution were sufficiently transformed to make it completely non-oppressive
to women, though commercial transactions involving sex might still exist, prostitution as we now
know it would not." n98¶ Both of these positions sidestep, rather than go beyond, the binary with regard to
legal solutions. They neither help governments that might be pondering how to construct, amend, or
change their legal response to prostitution nor judges who are asked to review an existing policy or its
application in light of their constitutional, statutory or international requirements. This Article aims to offer a
[*70] gender equality test that transcends the two positions, is agnostic to the "best solution," and can be practically implemented.
A2 Can’t Access the Law
The law is produced and maintained by the production of cultural narratives and
assumptions---engagement with legal structures is vital to alter those cultural norms--this turns their offense because it’s directly in the interests of the powerful for law to
be seen as narrow and exclusionary---the more activists refuse to engage with the
legal system, the more the powerful consolidate their control. This proves there’s a
topical version of the aff, and only that version solves their offense.
Linda H. Edwards 13, the E.L. Cord Foundation Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law,
University of Nevada Las Vegas, Fall/Winter 2013, “Where Do the Prophets Stand? Hamdi, Myth, and
the Master's Tools,” Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal, 13 Conn. Pub. Int. L.J. 43, p. lexis
I. Introduction
Imagine an ancient walled city. Inside the walls, the city's inhabitants busily go about their work. They have routines. They have a
common language. They do not always agree with each other, but they meet in common places and use accepted methods and
procedures to decide the city's issues. Outside the wall stands a small group of prophets . The prophets
have messages for the city's people, and they are trying to be heard over the city's walls. Occasionally a few
city dwellers become aware that someone is shouting from outside the walls, but the words fall strangely on
city dwellers' ears . The distant voices, barely audible, are lost among the background sounds of ongoing city life. Occasionally, a city
leader looks over the walls, notices the prophets, and lobs a verbal assault in their direction, but city life is unaffected. Year after year, the
prophets speak, and year after year, the city ignores them.¶ Does this image of the ancient walled city and the
prophets excluded from it describe the relationship of oppositionists with law? Have people like Patricia Williams, Robin
West, Kimberle Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, and the late Derrick Bell been standing outside the gates for over thirty years,
critiquing the city of law and the work of its inhabitants? Many traditionalist n1 leaders seem to think so. Inside the city, they have been going
about their work unaffected, n2 using the same language and methods they learned from their mentors. Occasionally a traditionalist defender
reacts to the prophets, usually with name-calling derision. Consider this from Richard Posner:¶ [*44] ¶ What is most arresting about critical race
theory is that . . . it turns its back on the Western tradition of rational inquiry, forswearing analysis for narrative. Rather than marshal logical
arguments and empirical data, critical race theorists tell stories - fictional, science-fictional, autobiographical, anecdotal - designed to expose
the pervasive and debilitating racism of America today. By repudiating reasoned argumentation, the storytellers reinforce stereotypes about
the intellectual capacities of nonwhites. n3¶ Posner goes on, using terms like "lunatic core," "postmodernist virus," "loony Afrocentrism," and
"goofy ideas and irresponsible dicta." n4 He calls critical race theorists "whiners and wolf-criers," coming across as "labile and intellectually
limited." n5 He says, "Their grasp of social reality is weak; their diagnoses are inaccurate; their suggested cures . . . are tried and true failures.
Their lodgment in the law schools is a disgrace to legal education, which lacks the moral courage and the intellectual self-confidence to
pronounce a minority movement's scholarship bunk." n6 Having hurled his attack over the city walls, he goes back to his own work, unaffected
by oppositionist critique.¶ Posner and other traditionalists thus maintain
that oppositionists stand outside the gates of
law . If they are on law faculties, they should not be. n7 Whether this view is accurate depends, in large part, on what we mean by law. Some
of history's best scholars and judges have been tramping around in that field for a long time, so one might wonder how much ground remains
untrod. Still, we need to find some new territory, because we are far from a satisfactory answer. What's worse is that we
do not seem
able to have a productive conversation, as Posner demonstrates. The loudest traditionalist voices ridicule both
critical theory's narrative methods , n8 and critical theorists themselves . n9 To the traditionalist eye,
critical theorists repudiate traditional legal discourse as nothing more than domination and power
politics. n10 It is as if the two camps are speaking [*45] different languages. In fact, in some important ways,
they are.¶ The twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Peter Goodrich's Legal Discourse: Studies in Linguistics, Rhetoric and Legal
Analysis n11 offers an appropriate opportunity to revisit this topic. This article's modest goal is to suggest that narrative
theory and cognitive science n12 can help traditionalists better understand the language of critical theory n13 specifically, why critical theory insists on telling stories and why those narrative critiques are legitimately a part of law. n14 Since the
article's primary
goal is to speak to traditionalists , it begins by using what Posner wants-logical argument-to
"reason" its way to the conclusion that critical theory critiques law from the inside. A key part of that deductive
argument is the premise that cultural myths and other master stories operate at a largely hidden and unconscious
level beneath the language of traditional law talk. To explain and demonstrate that premise, the article offers a short course
in myth and then looks at the role of one myth-the myth of redemptive violence-in legal decision-making. The article explains the myth and
how it is pervasively reinforced through movies, video games, and other media and then shows how it affected the deliberations in Hamdi v.
Rumsfeld, the saga of an American citizen imprisoned without due process by his own government. n15¶ Deductive argument cannot be the
end of the matter, however, because naive reliance on "reason" is actually the antithesis of this article's primary point and certainly
inconsistent with critical theory itself. What
we mean by "law" is not a matter of some seemingly preordained
logical structure- [*46] this one or any other. Rather, it is a matter of human choice, and as with all matters of
human choice, it is driven by contested values, frames, power, and politics . This article, therefore, offers some nondeductive reasons for choosing to define "law" broadly enough to include critical theory's critiques. First, though, a deductive argument:¶ II.
Defining "Law" Deductively: A Four-step Dance¶ A. Step One: Law includes legal outcomes and the articulated reasons for those outcomes.¶ To
start simply, law includes constitutions, statutes, regulations, and judicial decisions. Traditional law talk interprets and applies these texts using
a cadre of traditional methods: semantic interpretation of authoritative text; reliance on canons of statutory construction; the use of careful or
creative analogies; and the support of relevant social policy, economic theory, or moral principle. n16 These methods have long been treated as
legitimately part of "law" because they claim to account for legal results, shaping how the law is applied and how it may change. When lawyers
and judges use these methods, no one would dispute that they are using the methods of the law. When Richard Posner finishes his tirade
against critical race theory and returns to his normal daily work, these are his tools. n17¶ B. Step Two: These tools are the stated reasons for
legal decisions, but they do not fully or fundamentally account for legal outcomes.¶ As both oppositionists and rhetoricians have pointed out,
legal results are not simply the result of adherence to authority or policy. n18 Rather, they are the product
of underlying values and assumptions about human nature [*47] and the world, what Peter Goodrich calls
"preconstructions, preferred meanings, rhetorical and ideological dimensions." n19 Among these preconstructions are the
cultural myths, n20 metaphors, and meta-narratives that frame the way those in power see the world. Far
more effectively than authorities or policies, these implicit but largely unrecognized n21 frames (values, assumptions, social and political
structures) account for where we are and how we got here. n22 Thus, myths and other frames operate silently but powerfully beneath
traditional law talk about objective reasons.¶ C. Step Three: If
cultural myths and other preconstructions guide and constrain
legal decisions (step two), then surely these preconstructions are also part of law .¶ It would be a curious position to
say that law includes the reasons that claim- perhaps inaccurately-to account for legal results but not the actual, though unstated, reasons for
those same legal results. n23 Powerful forces cultivate these preconstructions and are simultaneously captured by them, as will be discussed
below. Their
problematic operation is or should be a target of oppositionist critique of law . n24 Dominant
myths and other such frames have been instrumental in building and maintaining the master's house and are
among the master's most important tools. n25 Therefore, logically, they are part of "law," just as the unseen foundation is part
of a house.¶ D. Step Four: If myths and other stories are part of law when used implicitly by the masters in
making law (step three), they are surely part of law when used explicitly by those who critique law .¶ Quite
rightly, early oppositional critique used those same tools-especially stories-to challenge the way the world looks to those
inhabiting the halls of power. n26 The turn to narrative was part of the early brilliance of critical theory, made at a time when few others had
realized the significance of narrative in law. Are these myths, metaphors, and outsider stories part of law? If
narrative is part of law
when it is used by the dominant group to justify particular legal results (step three), it is surely also part of
law when used by critical theory to critique those same results. It would seem, then, that Goodrich is right. n27
Oppositional critique is within law, not external to it.¶ The key difference between traditional law-talk and oppositionist critique is that those
controlling myths, metaphors, and meta-narratives are kept implicit in traditional law-talk. We don't speak of those things. We confine the
discourse to rationalist, scientific, putatively objective language. As oppositionists and rhetoricians have pointed out, it is in the interests of
those in power to limit law to this "self-protective" view. But to oppositionists and at least some rhetoricians, such traditional law talk is [*49]
only an attempt to justify a result chosen for other and often unstated reasons. n28 In a way comparable to a psychoanalyst looking for what
lies beneath an explicit behavior, oppositionists try to look deeper to ask what is really going on. Is that permissible in the discourse
community? Can such things be said inside the wall? Law
is clearly, even in the most traditionalist view, the product of argument .
argument in rationalist objectivist language is half of an argument with
oppositionist critique constituting the other half. For law to progress, for it to live in dynamic tension, we
need both sides of the argument inside the wall . The rationalists are free to deny and refute oppositionist critique, but not to
I will contend here that justificatory
silence or exile it.¶ Like any deductive argument, this little four-step dance is subject to challenge at several key points. It might be vulnerable in
step two, for instance, in the face of skepticism about admitting a legal role for the myths and other frames that support the power of the
dominant group. It is certainly vulnerable in step three, for one could fairly say that once we include in "law" the largely unconscious cultural
frames that operate within us, then law includes everything and the question loses its meaning. Perhaps these more foundational but
unconscious myths and other frames are not part of law because their effects are ubiquitous, defining, and constraining our views of the world
in every part of life. One might argue, then, that oppositionist critique both originates from outside law and critiques something other than law.
n29 With these two legitimate challenges on the table, it is fair to require me to say more about the legal role of myths and other frames and
about what is at stake when we choose a definition for law.
Pragmatic reform of the law incorporates strong feminist jurisprudence and endorses
a multidue of perspectives
Samuels 14 [Harriet Samuels, A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the
University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Feminist engagement with law in the
new millennium, February 2014]
It appears to have a very clear message and poured a bucket of very cold water over second wave feminists’ enthusiasm for trying to use law
for women.70 This has led to a disjuncture between feminist theorising and practice, which is regretted by many feminists.71 It is my disquiet
about this call to turn away from law, and the belief that legal
feminists, both scholars and activists, have a
responsibility to engage with law that underpins the thesis. Critique of law is insufficient. There is a
need to use law’s tools in traditional and imaginative ways not only to expose its gendered character
but to find new ways of doing law. This aligns the thesis alongside feminists who seek to reconstruct liberal values
rather than reject them outright.72 Feminists have interrogated liberalism and found it wanting. They have critiqued the
individualistic and autonomous nature of the liberal subject, the dualism that liberalism presents in its divisions between the rational versus the
emotional, its formal view of equality, the vision of the neutral state and its separation of the public and the private realm. 73 Jaggar concludes
that feminism has often relied on liberal ideas and has many reasons to be grateful to liberalism, but that it is incapable of bringing about the
changes desired.74 Nussbaum, on the contrary, accepts much of the critique of liberalism, but she has famously mounted a spirited defence of
its principles of ‘personhood, autonomy, rights dignity [and] self respect’.75 She has pointed out the diversity of liberal thinking, and notes that
it has attempted to respond to feminist criticisms. She tries to persuade the reader that, ‘[t]he deepest and most central ideas of the liberal
tradition are ideas of radical force and great theoretical and practical value’.76 Nussbaum’s own project, based on human capabilities,
articulates a set of needs necessary for autonomy and human flourishing.77 My concern that Smart’s exhortations to
desist from
legal engagement, are overly dismissive of law’s possibilities, are shared by other legal feminists and critical theorists.
Sandland criticizes Smart for creating a dichotomy between politics/philosophy and between deconstruction/reform thus closing down all
political and legal options. 78 Being outside the system as a form of resistance is, according to Sandland,
a strategy of ‘no resistance’. He sees Smart as being overly pessimistic, by dismissing the significance of cases
such as R v R, where the judges removed the marital rape exemption, there is a danger of feminism
‘understating its own political and jurisprudential purchase as a subversive force interrupting the
“unmodified” liberal paradigm’.79 Feminism needs to use the tension between recognition and denial of law to evaluate the
merits of legal intervention on a case-by-case basis. Sandland sees there being value in finding the gaps in law that provide a
space to struggle over law’s meaning.80Lacey appears sympathetic to Smart’s theoretical project, and to Smart’s insight that law’s belief that it
is objective, true and impartial inflates its status so that it appear superior to other forms of knowledge. This makes it harmful to women.81 But
she also has reservations about Smart’s political strategy and argues that it
would be unfortunate to give up attempts at
legal reform. She notes that it is unclear that other institutions such as the family, religion or politics are more susceptible to
reconstruction than law.82 Writing just under ten years later Munro argues that feminism should not relinquish its attempts
to reconstruct law. She is not uncritical of liberal values, but given law’s resistance to competing discourses she thinks
there are pragmatic reasons for using law rather than remaining silenced by an oppositional stance.83
A2 Education
Policy role-play doesn’t indoctrinate current State or get stale – makes best Real
World education.
Joyner ’99
(Christopher C., Professor of International Law at Georgetown, "Teaching International Law", 5 Ilsa. J.
Int’l %26 Comp. L. 377, Lexis)
Use of the debate can be an effective pedagogical tool for education in the social sciences. Debates,
like other role-playing simulations, help students understand different perspectives on a policy issue
by adopting a perspective as their own. But, unlike other simulation games, debates do not require that a
student participate directly in order to realize the benefit of the game. Instead of developing policy alternatives
and experiencing the consequences of different choices in a traditional role-playing game, debates present the alternatives and
consequences in a formal, rhetorical fashion before a judgmental audience. Having the class audience serve as
jury helps each student develop a well-thought-out opinion on the issue by providing contrasting facts and views and enabling audience
members to pose challenges to each debating team. These debates ask undergraduate students to examine the international legal implications
of various United States foreign policy actions. Their chief tasks are to assess the aims of the policy in question, determine their relevance to
United States national interests, ascertain what legal principles are involved, and conclude how the United States policy in question squares
with relevant principles of international law. Debate questions are formulated as resolutions, along the lines of: "Resolved: The United States
should deny most-favored-nation status to China on human rights grounds;" or "Resolved: The United States should resort to military force to
ensure inspection of Iraq's possible nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities;" or "Resolved: The United States' invasion of Grenada in
1983 was a lawful use of force;" or "Resolved: The United States should kill Saddam Hussein." In
addressing both sides of these
legal propositions, the student debaters must consult the vast literature of international law, especially the
nearly 100 professional law-school-sponsored international law journals now being published in the United States. This literature furnishes an
incredibly rich body of legal analysis that often treats topics affecting United States foreign policy, as well as other more esoteric international
legal subjects. Although most of these journals are accessible in good law schools, they are largely unknown to the political science community
specializing in international relations, much less to the average undergraduate.
By assessing the role of international law in
United States foreign policy- making, students realize that United States actions do not always
measure up to international legal expectations; that at times, international legal strictures get
compromised for the sake of perceived national interests, and that concepts and principles of
international law, like domestic law, can be interpreted and twisted in order to justify United States policy
in various international circumstances. In this way, the debate format gives students the benefits
ascribed to simulations and other action learning techniques, in that it makes them become actively
engaged with their subjects, and not be mere passive consumers. Rather than spectators, students
become legal advocates, observing, reacting to, and structuring political and legal perceptions to fit
the merits of their case. The debate exercises carry several specific educational objectives. First, students on each team must work
together to refine a cogent argument that compellingly asserts their legal position on a foreign policy issue confronting the United States. In
this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal dilemmas faced by policy makers. Second, as
they work with other members of their team, they realize the complexities of applying and implementing international law, and the difficulty of
bridging the gaps between United States policy and international legal principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting
the latter. Finally, research for the debates forces students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign policy
The debate thus becomes an
excellent vehicle for pushing students beyond stale arguments over principles into the real world of
policy analysis, political critique, and legal defense. A debate exercise is particularly suited to an examination of United
agenda and the role that international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. 8
States foreign policy, which in political science courses is usually studied from a theoretical, often heavily realpolitik perspective. In such
courses, international legal considerations are usually given short shrift, if discussed at all. As a result, students may come to believe that
international law plays no role in United States foreign policy-making. In fact, serious consideration is usually paid by government officials to
international law in the formulation of United States policy, albeit sometimes ex post facto as a justification for policy, rather than as a bona
fide prior constraint on consideration of policy options. In addition, lawyers are prominent advisers at many levels of the foreign-policy-making
process. Students should appreciate the relevance of international law for past and current US actions, such as the invasion of Grenada or the
refusal of the United States to sign the law of the sea treaty and landmines convention, as well as for [*387] hypothetical (though subject to
public discussion) United States policy options such as hunting down and arresting war criminals in Bosnia, withdrawing from the United
Nations, or assassinating Saddam Hussein.
1NR
Impact
Gender binaries and homophobia are historical productions of the emergence of a
classed society founded on the logic of surplus accumulation. The Aff obfuscates that
relation and renders coalitions impossible.
Cloud (Prof. Comm at UT) 03 Dana, “Marxism and Oppression”, Talk for Regional Socialist Conference,
April 19, 2003, p. online
In order to challenge oppression, it is important to know where it comes from. Historians,
archaeologists, and anthropologists tell us that in pre-class societies such as hunter-gatherer societies,
racism and sexism were unheard of. Because homosexuality was not an identifiable category of such
societies, discrimination on that basis did not occur either. In fact, it is clear that racism, sexism, and
homophobia have arisen in particular kinds of societies, namely class societies. Women’s oppression
originated in the first class societies, while racism came into prominence in the early periods of
capitalism when colonialism and slavery drove the economic system. The prohibition against gays and
lesbians is a relatively modern phenomenon. But what all forms of oppression have in common is that
they did not always exist and are not endemic to human nature. They were created in the interest of
ruling classes in society and continue to benefit the people at the top of society, while dividing and
conquering the rest of us so as to weaken the common fight against the oppressors. The work of Marx’s
collaborator Friederich Engels on The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State in some
respects reflects the Victorian times in which in was written. Engels moralizes about women’s sexuality
and doesn’t even include gay and lesbian liberation in his discussion of the oppressive family. However,
anthropologists like the feminist Rayna Reiter have confirmed his most important and central argument
that it was in the first settled agricultural societies that women became an oppressed class. In societies
where for the first time people could accumulate a surplus of food and other resources, it was possible
for some people to hoard wealth and control its distribution. The first governments or state structures
formed to legitimate an emerging ruling class. As settled communities grew in size and became more
complex social organizations, and, most importantly, as the surplus grew, the distribution of wealth
became unequal—and a small number of men rose above the rest of the population in wealth and
power. In the previous hunter-gatherer societies, there had been a sexual division of labor, but one
without a hierarchy of value. There was no strict demarcation between the reproductive and productive
spheres. All of that changed with the development of private property in more settled communities. The
earlier division of labor in which men did the heavier work, hunting, and animal agriculture, became a
system of differential control over resource distribution. The new system required more field workers
and sought to maximize women’s reproductive potential. Production shifted away from the household
over time and women became associated with the reproductive role, losing control over the production
and distribution of the necessities of life. It was not a matter of male sexism, but of economic priorities
of a developing class system. This is why Engels identifies women’s oppression as the first form of
systematic class oppression in the world. Marxists since Engels have not dismissed the oppression of
women as secondary to other kinds of oppression and exploitation. To the contrary, women’s
oppression has a primary place in Marxist analysis and is a key issue that socialists organize around
today. From this history we know that sexism did not always exist, and that men do not have an
inherent interest in oppressing women as domestic servants or sexual slaves. Instead, women’s
oppression always has served a class hierarchy in society. In our society divided by sexism, ideas about
women’s nature as domestic caretakers or irrational sexual beings justify paying women lower wages
compared to men, so that employers can pit workers against one another in competition for the same
work. Most women have always had to work outside the home to support their families. Today, women
around the world are exploited in sweatshops where their status as women allows bosses to pay them
very little, driving down the wages of both men and women. At the same time, capitalist society relies
on ideas about women to justify not providing very much in the way of social services that would help
provide health care, family leave, unemployment insurance, access to primary and higher education,
and so forth—all because these things are supposed to happen in the private family, where women are
responsible. This lack of social support results in a lower quality of life for many men as well as women.
Finally, contemporary ideologies that pit men against women encourage us to fight each other rather
than organizing together.
Link
C/A the overview analysis- it’s an extension of the O’Shea evidence which is hyper
specific to their solvency claims
The aff’s political method depends on a prior epistemological commitment to
individual autonomy. We should reject this lens for understanding social harm.
Brooke ACKERLY Poli Sci @ Vanderbilt ‘8 in The Illusion of Consent p. 77-78
An epistemological contract is an agreement among some people about what constitutes knowing and
knowledge. An epistemological contract is a social contract among some people with certain power about which people
or categories of people are "persons" in the sense of being cognitive equals (Mills 1997, 59) and about the meaning of the basic terms used to
describe their experiences (125). By controlling the categories of persons and the characterization of their experiences, the
epistemological contract ossifies a "set of power relations" (127). When discussing race, we may see that "set of power relations"
as determined by color (127) and when discussing gender, we may see that "set of power relations" as determined by sex. But in fact, the
epistemological move is in the use of an existing political power to reify that power through our
knowledge systems. Recognizing this, we can see that the Pateman Mills critique applies not only to social contract
theories, but also to any theory that treats as apolitical existing knowledge systems.In this chapter, I argue that
certain human rights theories share an epistemological flaw with social contract theories. Those that do are predisposed to a narrow view of which human rights are
politically legitimate. The argument generalizes Pateman's epistemological insight in The Sexual Contract. Just as social contract theory mischaracterizes an
experience of being dominated as an exercise of freedom and autonomy, so too many
approaches to human rights provide
mechanisms for concealing the exercise of oppressive power. While a full account of an alternative basis for human rights theory
is beyond the scope of this chapter, the key features of such a theory are consistent with Pateman's proposal to found political community in the terrain of political
and social relationships that can sustain people's autonomy. Throughout her scholarship, Pateman theorizes as if politics
is experienced in the full
range of human contexts-political, economic, social, familial, interpersonal, cultural, and geographic.
Attempts to treat these interrelated contexts as separable, natural, or apolitical are themselves political
moves. As Pateman notes, we can be attentive to the exercise of power through contract by noticing when
people resist this characterization (1988, 15-16, and throughout the whole book). A theory of human rights must be
attentive to the ways in which certain "shared" epistemologies legitimate domination and deprive those
who would object of the epistemological ground from which to criticize its abuse.
Independently, their strategy of ‘feminist language jamming’ and their push for
‘debate to claim uncertainty’ prevents the transition away from capitalism – the focus
becomes ‘how do we individually remap our identities’ to reclaim individual agency
from the harms of the 1AC rather than interrogating the underlying structures that
shape social relations – also prioritizes individual survival over the collective good
*I rehighlighted this to be about Stanford’s aff
*replace ‘feminist language jamming’ with whatever language they use to describe their new discourse
strat
Torrant 14
Julie, “It Is Time To Give Up Liberal, Bourgeois Theories, Including New Materialist Feminism, And Take
Up Historical Materialist Feminism For The 21st Century”
[http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2014/historicalmaterialistfeminismforthe21stcentury.htm]
Winter/Spring //
Recently, there has been a turn away from textualist and culturalist theory in feminism and the emergence of "new"
materialist feminisms. Represented by the work of Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti, and others, this turn in theory has come in
response to the deepening inequalities and crises of capitalism that are having profound effects on
women worldwide — material problems outside the text and not resolvable by a change in cultural
values. While it is important to see that the new materialist feminisms are responses to real problems, it is
equally important to understand how these materialisms are limited by their conceptualization of
the material. The new materialist feminisms are actually disenabling for feminism in that they are
forms of spiritualism which displace critique with strategies of enchanted affective adaptation and survival
and thus dismantle materialist feminism's primary conceptual tool for social transformation. To
avoid merely reproducing sophisticated forms of the survivalism and "prepperism" that have emerged
as individualistic coping responses to economic crisis and austerity, I argue that feminism needs to return to
historical materialism in the tradition of Marx, Engels and Kollontai to understand social life in terms of its root
relations and aid in the struggles to bring about social transformation.¶ Exemplary of the new
materialist feminism is Rosi Braidotti's writing on "the politics of 'life itself'," a theory which she organizes around the trope of "sustainability."
Sustainability, a concept in ecology for living within natural limits, becomes in these writings a means of reconceiving the historical social relations of capitalism as if they were the unchangeable, underlying existential
limit-situation of "life itself." The politics of "life itself" and the new materialist focus on seeking a sustainable feminism within this new, more "realist" approach to material reality, is a form of feminist theory and
politics which is ultimately the already familiar theory and politics of reparative reading. Why is this significant? As Ellis Hanson suggests in a review of Sedgwick, "Faced with the depressing realization that people are
fragile and the world hostile, a reparative reading focuses not on the exposure of political outrages that we already know but rather on the process of reconstructing a sustainable life in their wake" (105). In other
reparative analysis begins not with critique of the so-called already known and presumably known
to be unchangeable, but by focusing on how to live within the already-known-to-be hostile world.
words,
Such a theory of the social begins and ends by reducing knowledge to a matter of how to cope, how to feel, how to exist, etc. within
what is taken to be unchangeable. The
effect of this focus on "sustainability" within hostility is that social
transformation — which requires the production of knowledge of what needs to be transformed —
is treated as impossible. Abandoning the project of transformation, I argue, is a sign of the way dominant "materialist" feminism — under the guise of "new materialism"— has increasingly
abandoned the project of women's emancipation from exploitation, and in the interests of capital instead translates austerity measures into a theoretical discourse of getting by on less.¶ At the core of Braidotti's
theory of "sustainable feminism" and "life politics" is a "new materialist" understanding of "life." For Braidotti, life is made up of two parts — zoē and bios. Zoē, "life as absolute vitality," is the spiritual and bios is the
"bio-organic" body which sets limits on the spiritual life force (210). Braidotti writes: ¶ Zoē, or life as absolute vitality, however, is not above negativity, and it can hurt. It is always too much for the specific slab of
enfleshed existence that single subjects actualize. It is a constant challenge for us to rise to the occasion, to catch the wave of life's intensities and ride it (210).¶ Thus for Braidotti, the source of social contradictions is
Braidotti's new materialism bypasses the
ensemble of social relations and historical conditions that produce social contradictions in
capitalism and presents contradictions as transhistorical and existential conditions of life as such. On
the conflict between zoē, that is, absolute vitality or spiritual life force, and our bio-organic bodies. As a result,
this logic, our absolute vitality comes into the world and reaches the limit of the body and this causes us "pain." But (in this narrative)
there is no real way to compensate for pain. This explanation of pain is an example of bypassing the social. As such it is an
accomodationist block to changing the conditions that produce suffering.¶ In fact, as
with all the popular articulations of
"materialism" today, Braidotti's theory is not actually an extension of materialism, but a break from it.
Materialism means determination by the mode of production because it is this materialism that
explains sense experience. Materialism is not the experience that exceeds conceptuality — a Kantian theory of the material that has come to dominate cultural theory, especially as it
conceives of "life." This notion of materialism merely reifies sense experience, it cannot explain it. Braidotti is Kantian about the material because she sees it as a sublime excess. Life, Braidotti writes,¶ is experienced as
inhuman because it is all too human, obscene because it lives on mindlessly. Are we not baffled by this scandal, this wonder, this zoē, that is to say, by an idea of life that exuberantly exceeds bios and supremely ignores
According to
Braidotti, what exceeds the individual body is zoē—the spiritual life force, which we should not understand
conceptually (by seeking to explain the conditions that shape it) but worship. This is a sentimental antilogos? Are we not in awe of this piece of flesh called our 'body,' of this aching meat called our 'self' expressing the abject and simultaneously divine potency of life? (208).¶
instrumental call for the re-enchantment of life that obscures the way the individual is determined not by what Braidotti calls "divine
potency" but by the social relations of production. And like all anti-instrumental arguments, Braidoitti's ends up affirming a species of
the sublime: a mode of affective non-knowing that resists rationality.¶ Thus,
having rejected the necessity of being
able to conceptualize (visible) effects to their (often invisible) causes, Braidotti proceeds to declare that the effects of
living in the ruins of capitalism—especially disasters like 9/11—defy all reason and are impossible to understand, and she
concludes that what is now necessary is not collective praxis to address the social relations which
condition the unequal situations of tragedy, but an individual ethics of affirmation. She writes: ¶ This is the road to an
ethics of affirmation, which respects the pain but suspends the quest for both claims and compensation. The displacement of the "zoē"-indexed reaction reveals the fundamental meaninglessness of the hurt, the
injustice, or injury one has suffered. "Why me?" is the refrain most commonly heard in situations of extreme distress. The answer is plain: actually, for no reason at all. Why did some go to work in the World Trade
Center on 9/11 while others missed the train? Reason has nothing to do with it. That's precisely the point. We need to delink pain from the quest for meaning. (213-14)¶ Following her predictable rejection of concepts
and reason, in the guise of a sermon on "selflessness," Braidotti here once again rejects the abstract in favor of the errant concrete and takes as a presupposition the individual. For it is of course from the starting point
of individuals and their loss that we cannot understand and explain such historical events as 9/11. From the perspective of the individual, such events are indeed random and inexplicable, but from a historical
To celebrate the individual perspective
and the inability to grasp historical necessity based on that individual perspective is not only to
celebrate ignorance, but to naturalize the limits of workers and how they are thrust into the
position of individuals who must compete on the market for work while leaving it the prerogative
of the owners to organize the totality to the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. ¶ Central
to Braidotti's enchanted materialism is her claim that affectivity "is what activates an embodied
subject, empowering him or her to interact with others" (210). However, she writes, "a subject can think/understand/do/become no more than what he or she can take or sustain
perspective they are determined. It was deep global inequities that provided the conditions of possibility for the 9/11 attacks.
within his or her embodied, spatiotemporal coordinates" (210). Thus, the ethical subject is the one who learns to endure his or her maximum zoē/bios intensity because such endurance leads to "sustainable
transformations" (211), the degree of change an individual can bear.¶ But the consequences of affirmative ethics are deeply problematic when considered in relation to the material conditions of working class families,
who have been subject to a thirty year stagnation in real wages, even as worker productivity has sharply increased. In the wake of the more recent 2007 crisis, worker productivity has sharply increased [1], while wages
fell. Alongside of these trends, rates of violence against women have increased dramatically [2] and suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the US [3]. That the spouses in working class families are increasingly
emotionally strained and often alienated from one another is not a transhistorical effect of their embodied state as it confronts a "divine" life force in zoē, but an effect of their deepening exploitation. To posit their
connection and dis-connection as a transhistorical effect of the confrontation with bios-zoē is to de-historicize their pain and alienation as individuals and as a couple. It is to cut off affect from its social conditions and
this making do under conditions of deepening
exploitation that all working class families—gay and straight, white and of color, native and
international—have been forced to do and which affects women profoundly. As Marx explains in his analysis of the global
then insist on its affirmation. ¶ Working more hours is a matter of "making do," not existential intensity, and it is
development of capitalism¶ The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour... the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women.
Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex. (Communist Manifesto 62).¶
This is a particularly important argument because it explains the way that capitalism increasingly turns women into wage-workers. Working class women and men form the "great camp" facing capital and it is thus
increasing important to the prospects for revolution that women conceive of themselves as working class. This is daily confirmed in the era of global capitalism, when women workers make up the increasing majority of
global workers, subject to extremely low wages and are particularly susceptible to the effects of austerity because they tend to work in and use the public sector more than men. ¶ As my discussion has, thus far,
New materialism" is aimed not only at
ideologically and pragmatically adjusting exploited workers to the exigencies of capitalism in crisis and
marginalizing struggles for social transformation by representing them as outside the realm of the "sustainable" (as
we see in Braidotti's theory of "new materialism"), but it also serves as a means to shore up the class privileges of
a small ruling class minority of men and women in capitalism by translating class contradictions
into a new metaphysics of freedom.¶
implied, "new materialism" is a ruling class movement in cultural theory in general and in feminist theory in particular. "
A2 Permutation
Sequencing DA to the perm - the judge has an intellectual obligation to evaluate the
social relations that underpin the plan prior to evaluating the outcome of the policy –
vote negative to reject neoliberalism
Molisa, Philosophy PhD, 14
(Pala Basil Mera, “ACCOUNTING FOR APOCALYPSE RE-THINKING SOCIAL ACCOUNTING THEORY AND
PRACTICE FOR OUR TIME OF SOCIAL CRISES AND ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE,”
http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10063/3686/thesis.pdf?sequence=2)
Ecologically too, the situation is dire. Of the many measures of ecological well-being – topsoil loss,
groundwater depletion, chemical contamination, increased toxicity levels in human beings, the number
and size of “dead zones” in the Earth’s oceans, and the accelerating rate of species extinction and loss of
biodiversity – the increasing evidence suggests that the developmental trajectory of the dominant
economic culture necessarily causes the mass extermination of non-human communities, the systemic
destruction and disruption of natural habitats, and could ultimately cause catastrophic destruction of
the biosphere. The latest Global Environmental Outlook Report published by the United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP), the GEO-5 report, makes for sobering reading. As in earlier reports, the
global trends portrayed are of continuing human population growth, expanding economic growth,6 and
as a consequence severe forms of ecological degradation (UNEP, 2012; see also, UNEP, 1997, 1999,
2002, 2007). The ecological reality described is of ecological drawdown (deforestation, over-fishing,
water extraction, etc.) (UNEP, 2012, pp. 72, 68, 84, 102-106, ); increasing toxicity of the environment
through chemical and waste pollution, with severe harm caused to human and non-human communities
alike (pp. 173- 179); systematic habitat destruction (pp. 8, 68-84) and climate change (33-60), which
have decimated the number of species on Earth, threatening many with outright extinction (pp. 139158). The most serious ecological threat on a global scale is climate disruption, caused by the emission
of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, other industrial activities, and land destruction (UNEP,
2012, p. 32). The GEO-5 report states that “[d]espite attempts to develop low-carbon economies in a
number of countries, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to increase to levels
likely to push global temperatures beyond the internationally agreed limit of 2° C above the preindustrial average temperature” (UNEP, 2012, p. 32). Concentrations of atmospheric methane have
more than doubled from preindustrial levels, reaching approximately 1826 ppb in 2012; the scientific
consensus is that this increase is very likely due predominantly to agriculture and fossil fuel use (IPCC,
2007). Scientists warn that the Earth’s ecosystems are nearing catastrophic “tipping points” that will be
marked by mass extinctions and unpredictable changes on a scale unseen since the glaciers retreated
twelve thousand years ago (Pappas, 2012). Twenty-two eminent scientists warned recently in the
journal, Nature, that humans are likely to have triggered a planetary-scale critical transition “with the
potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience”, which
means that “the biological resources we take for granted at present may be subject to rapid and
unpredictable transformations within a few human generations” (Barnofsky et al., 2012). This means
that human beings are in serious trouble, not only in the future, but right now. The pre-industrial level
of carbon dioxide concentration was about 280 parts per million (ppm). The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) estimates concentrations could reach between 541 and 970 ppm by the year
2100. However, many climate scientists consider that levels should be kept below 350 ppm in order to
avoid “irreversible catastrophic effects” (Hansen et al., 2008). “Catastrophic warming of the earth”
would mean a planet that is too hot for life – that is, any life, and all life (Mrasek, 2008). We need to
analyze the above information and ask the simple questions: what does it signify and where will it lead?
In terms of the social crises of inequalities, the pattern of human development suggests clearly that
although capitalism is capable of raising the economic productivity of many countries as well as
international trade, it also produces social injustices on a global scale. The trajectory of capitalist
economic development that people appear locked into is of perpetual growth that also produces
significant human and social suffering. In terms of the ecological situation, the mounting evidence from
reports, such as those published by UNEP, suggest that a full-scale ecocide will eventuate and that a
global holocaust is in progress which is socially pathological and biocidal in its scope (UNEP, 2012; see
also, UNEP, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2007). Assuming the trends do not change, the endpoint of this trajectory
of perpetual economic growth, ecological degradation, systemic pollution, mass species extinction and
runaway climate change, which human beings appear locked into, will be climate apocalypse and
complete biotic collapse. Given the serious and life-threatening implications of these social and
ecological crises outlined above, it would be reasonable to expect they should be central to academic
concerns, particularly given the responsibilities of academics as intellectuals. As the people whom
society subsidizes to carry out intellectual work,7 the primary task of academics is to carry out research
that might enable people to deepen their understanding of how the world operates, ideally towards the goal of shaping a world
that is more consistent with moral and political principles, and the collective self-interest (Jensen, 2013, p. 43). Given that most people’s stated
philosophical and theological systems are rooted in concepts of justice, equality and the inherent dignity of all people (Jensen, 2007, p. 30),
intellectuals have a particular responsibility to call attention to those social patterns of inequality which
appear to be violations of such principles, and to call attention to the destructive ecological patterns that threaten individual and collective
well-being. As a “critic and conscience of society,” 8 one task of intellectuals is to identify issues that people should all pay attention to, even when – indeed,
especially when – people would rather ignore the issues (Jensen, 2013, p. 5). In view of this, intellectuals today should be focusing
attention on the hard-to-face realities of an unjust and unsustainable world. Moreover, intellectuals in a democratic society, as its “critic and conscience”, should
serve as sources of independent and critical information, analyses and varied opinions, in an endeavour to provide a meaningful role in the formation of public
policy (Jensen, 2013c). In order to fulfil this obligation as “critic and conscience,” intellectuals
need to be willing to critique not only
particular people, organizations, and policies, but also the systems from which they emerge. In other words, intellectuals have to be willing to
engage in radical critique. Generally, the term “radical” tends to suggest images of extremes, danger, violence, and people eager to tear things down (Jensen, 2007,
p. 29). Radical, however, has a more classical meaning. It comes from the Latin –radix, meaning “root.” Radical critique in this light means critique or analysis that
gets to the root of the problem. Given that the patterns of social
inequality and ecocidal destruction outlined above are not the
product of a vacuum, but instead are the product of social systems, radical critique simply means forms of social
analysis, which are not only concerned about these social and ecological injustices but also trace them to the social systems from which
they emerged, which would subject these very systems to searching critiques. Such searching critique is challenging because,
generally, the dominant groups which tend to subsidize intellectuals (universities, think tanks, government, corporations) are the
key agents of the social systems that produce inequalities and destroy ecosystems (Jensen, 2013, p. 12). The
more intellectuals choose not only to identify patterns but also highlight the pathological systems from
which they emerge, the greater the tension with whoever “pay[s] the bills” (ibid.). However, this may arguably be
unavoidable today, given that the realities of social inequality and ecological catastrophe show clearly that our social systems are already in crisis, are pathological,
and in need of radical change.9 To adopt
a radical position, in this light, is not to suggest that we simply need to abolish capitalism, or to imply that if we did so
all our problems would be solved. For one thing, such an abstract argument has little operational purchase in terms of specifying how to go about struggling for
change. For another thing, as this thesis will discuss, capitalism is not the only social system that we ought to be interrogating as an important systemic driver of
social and ecological crises. Moreover, to adopt
a radical position does not mean that we have any viable “answers” or
terms of the alternative institutions, organizations and social systems that we could replace the existing ones with. There is
currently no alternative to capitalism that appears to be viable, particularly given the historical loss of credibility that Marxism and socialism
“solutions” in
has suffered. As history has shown, some of the self-proclaimed socialist and communist regimes have had their own fair share of human rights abuses and
environmental disasters, and the global left has thus far not been able to articulate alternatives that have managed to capture the allegiances of the mainstream
population. Furthermore, given
the depth, complexity, and scale of contemporary social and ecological crises, I
am not sure if there are any viable alternatives or, for that matter, any guarantees that we can actually prevent and change the disastrous
course of contemporary society. I certainly do not have any solutions. What I would argue, however, is that if we are to have any chance of
not only ameliorating but also substantively addressing these social and ecological problems, before
we can talk about alternatives or potential “solutions”, we first need to develop a clear understanding
of the problems. And, as argued above, this involves, amongst other things, exploring why and how the existing social
systems under which we live are producing the patterns of social inequality and ecological
unsustainability that make up our realities today.10 To adopt a radical stance, in this light, is simply to insist that we have an obligation to
honestly confront our social and ecological predicament and to ask difficult questions about the role that existing social systems
might be playing in producing and exacerbating them.
Ethics DA
Zizek and Daly 2k4 (Slavoj and Glyn, Conversations with Zizek page 14-16)
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize
that our ethico-political responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of today’s global capitalism
and its obscene naturalization / anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it throughout the
world. Against the standardized positions of postmodern culture – with all its pieties concerning
‘multiculturalist’ etiquette – Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be called ‘radically incorrect’ in the
sense that it break with these types of positions 7 and focuses instead on the very organizing principles
of today’s social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety.
For far too long, Marxism has been bedeviled by an almost fetishistic economism that has tended
towards political morbidity. With the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and more recently Laclau and
Mouffee, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the transcendence of all forms of
economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem that now presents itself is
almost that of the opposite fetish. That is to say, the prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of
economism can function as a way of not engaging with economic reality and as a way of implicitly
accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian twist, the fear of
economism can end up reinforcing a de facto economic necessity in respect of contemporary capitalism
(i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears). This is not to endorse any kind of
retrograde return to economism. Zizek’s point is rather that in rejecting economism we should not lose
sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies of humanity and our very sense
of the possible. In particular we should not overlook Marx’s central insight that in order to create a
universal global system the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the politico-discursive violence of its
construction through a kind of gentrification of that system. What is persistently denied by neo-liberals
such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is that the gentrification of global liberal capitalism is one
whose ‘universalism’ fundamentally reproduces and depends upon a disavowed violence that excludes
vast sectors of the world’s populations. In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to naturalize
capitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning and losing as if they were simply a matter of chance
and sound judgment in a neutral market place. Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain
diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in terms
of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and
degraded ‘life-chances’ cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in
consequence, social exclusion remains mystified and nameless (viz. the patronizing reference to the
‘developing world’). And Zizek’s point is that this mystification is magnified through capitalism’s
profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms
and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation. Instead of Bolshevism, the tendency
today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms of
consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek argues for a new universalism whose primary ethical
directive is to confront the fact that our forms of social existence are founded on exclusion on a global
scale.g While it is perfectly true that universalism can never become Universal (it will always require a
hegemonic-particular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is novel about Zizek’s
universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or reduce the status of the abject Other to
that of a ‘glitch’ in an otherwise sound matrix.
All of links are DA’s