Topicality
Shells
The affirmative should defend a topical plan.
(INSERT APPROPRIATE T VIOLATION USING TOPICALITY
FILE)
Their interpretation is bad:
Plan’s are good: they are falsifiable and put a clear burden on
the negative to prove the plan is worse than the status quo or a
competitive counterplan – any other advocacy is not stable.
Limits: the negative should have to disprove desirability of a
policy action implemented within the bounds of the resolution –
otherwise, the floodgates are opened to an infinite number of
advocacies.
Limits are key to a worthwhile debate – otherwise the negative is
not prepared, clash is impossible, and the round becomes a onesided lecture – only a dialogic exchange can accrue educational
benefits.
Hanghøj, University of Bristol Author, 08 —
[Thorkild Hanghøj, author affiliated with Danish Research Centre on Education and
Advanced Media Materials, research the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and
Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the Institute of Education at the University of Bristol
and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of Education,
2008 (“PLAYFUL KNOWLEDGE: An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming,”
University of Southern Denmark, p. 50-51 Available Online at
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_udda
nnelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf)
Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include
descriptions of issues to be debated, educational goals, game goals, roles, rules, time
frames etc. In this way, debate games differ from textbooks and everyday classroom
instruction as debate scenarios allow teachers and students to actively
imagine, interact and communicate within a domain-specific game space.
However, instead of mystifying debate games as a “magic circle” (Huizinga, 1950), I will
try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between “gaming” and “teaching” that
tends to dominate discussions of educational games. In short, educational gaming is
a form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two different
semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions, modes of
representation and social forms of organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2).
In order to understand the interplay between these different domains and their
interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central assumption in Bakhtin’s
dialogical philosophy. According to Bakhtin, all forms of communication and
culture are subject to centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A
centripetal force is the drive to impose one version of the truth, while a
centrifugal force involves a range of possible truths and interpretations. This
means that any form of expression involves a duality of centripetal and centrifugal
forces: “Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as a point where
centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear” (Bakhtin, 1981: 272). If we
take teaching as an example, it is always affected by centripetal and centrifugal forces in
the on-going negotiation of “truths” between teachers and students. In the words of
Bakhtin: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person,
it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic
interaction” (Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly, the dialogical space of debate games
also embodies centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election scenario
of The Power Game involves centripetal elements that are mainly
determined by the rules and outcomes of the game, i.e. the election is based on a
limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure. Similarly, the open-ended goals,
roles and resources represent centrifugal elements and create virtually
endless possibilities for researching, preparing, presenting, debating and
evaluating a variety of key political issues. Consequently, the actual process of enacting a
game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal
forces that are inextricably linked with the teachers and students’ game activities. In this
way, the enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines different
pedagogical practices (i.e. group work, web quests, student presentations) and learning
resources (i.e. websites, handouts, spoken language) within the interpretive frame of the
election scenario. Obviously, tensions may arise if there is too much divergence between
educational goals and game goals. This means that game facilitation requires a
balance between focusing too narrowly on the rules or “facts” of a game
(centripetal orientation) and a focusing too broadly on the contingent
possibilities and interpretations of the game scenario (centrifugal
orientation). For Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal forces often
manifests itself as a dynamic between “monological” and “dialogical” forms
of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates this point with the monological discourse of the
Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the teacher never learns anything new
from the students, despite Socrates’ ideological claims to the contrary
(Bakhtin, 1984a). Thus, discourse becomes monologised when “someone who
knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and
in error”, where “a thought is either affirmed or repudiated” by the
authority of the teacher (Bakhtin, 1984a: 81). In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy
fosters inclusive learning environments that are able to expand upon students’ existing
knowledge and collaborative construction of “truths” (Dysthe, 1996). At this point, I
should clarify that Bakhtin’s term “dialogic” is both a descriptive term (all
utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other utterances as parts of a
chain of communication) and a normative term as dialogue is an ideal to be
worked for against the forces of “monologism” (Lillis, 2003: 197-8). In this
project, I am mainly interested in describing the dialogical space of debate games. At the
same time, I agree with Wegerif that “one of the goals of education, perhaps the
most important goal, should be dialogue as an end in itself” (Wegerif, 2006:
61).
A stasis point is key to debate – we offer the only one rooted in
the resolution.
Shively, Assistant Prof Political Science at Texas A&M, 2K — [Ruth Lessl, Assistant
Prof Political Science at Texas A&M, 2000 “Partisan Politics and Political Theory,” p.
182-3)
The point may seem trite, as surely the ambiguists would agree that basic terms must
be shared before they can be resisted and problematized. In fact, they are often
very candid about this seeming paradox in their approach: the paradoxical or "parasitic"
need of the subversive for an order to subvert. But admitting the paradox is not helpful
if, as usually happens here, its implications are ignored; or if the only implication drawn
is that order or harmony is an unhappy fixture of human life. For what the paradox
should tell us is that some kinds of harmonies or orders are, in fact, good for resistance;
and some ought to be fully supported. As such, it should counsel against the kind of
careless rhetoric that lumps all orders or harmonies together as arbitrary and inhumane.
Clearly some basic accord about the terms of contest is a necessary ground for all
further contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged
ambiguists, they cannot admit to these implications, for to open the door to some
agreements or reasons as good and some orders as helpful or necessary, is to open the
door to some sort of rationalism. Perhaps they might just continue to insist that this
initial condition is ironic, but that the irony should not stand in the way of the real
business of subversion. Yet difficulties remain. For and then proceed to debate without
attention to further agreements. For debate and contest are forms of dialogue: that is,
they are activities premised on the building of progressive agreements. Imagine, for
instance, that two people are having an argument about the issue of gun control. As
noted earlier, in any argument, certain initial agreements will be needed just to
begin the discussion. At the very least, the two discussants must agree on
basic terms: for example, they must have some shared sense of what gun control is
about; what is at issue in arguing about it; what facts are being contested, and so on.
They must also agree—and they do so simply by entering into debate—that they will not
use violence or threats in making their cases and that they are willing to listen to, and to
be persuaded by, good arguments. Such agreements are simply implicit in the act of
argumentation.
The impact is decision-making skills - focused deliberation is key
to informed opponents that are adequately prepared to debate.
Steinberg, University of Miami, and Freeley, John Caroll University, 8
[Austin L. and David L., 2/13/2008, “Argumentation and Debate: Critical
Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making”, 12th edition,
http://teddykw2.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/argumentation-anddebate.pdf, p. 43-44]
Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a difference of
opinion¶ or a conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in
agreement¶ on a fact or value or policy, there is no need 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 on issues, there is no debate.¶ In addition, 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 are 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 must be stated¶ clearly. Vague understanding
results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions,¶ frustration, and
emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of the United States¶
Congress to make progress on the immigration debate during the summer
of 2007.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.
Definitions
Resolved
“Resolved” expresses intent to implement a plan
American Heritage Dictionary 2000, www.dictionary.com/cgibin/dict.pl?term=resolved
To find a solution to; solve …
To bring to a usually successful conclusion
Resolved” requires a vote on a formal resolution
American Heritage Dictionary 11 (The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company., “resolved” 2011,
http://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=resolved&submit.x=826&submit.y=-210,)
re·solve (rĭ-zŏ
. re·solved, re·solv·ing, re·solves
v.tr.
1.a. To make a firm decision about: resolved that I would do better next time. See
Synonyms at decide.
b. To decide or express by formal vote: The legislature resolved that the official
should be impeached.
2. A formal resolution made by a deliberative body.
A resolution requires not only a formal vote, but a formal
proposition that was submitted to those voting upon it.
Black’s Law Dictionary ‘9
(The Law Dictionary Featuring Black's Law Dictionary Free Online Legal Dictionary
“What is RESOLUTION? definition of RESOLUTION “ October 23, 2009,
http://thelawdictionary.org/resolution/)
A motion or formal proposition offered for adoption by such a body. In
legislative practice. The term is usually employed to denote the adoption of a
motion, the subject-matter of which would not properly constitute a statute;
such as a mere expression of opinion; an alteration of the rules ; a vote of thanks or
of censure,
“Resolved” means to enact a resolution
Merriam-Webster 13 (“resolve”, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2013,
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolve)
re·solve verb \ri-ˈzälv, -ˈzȯlv also -ˈzäv or -ˈzȯv\
re·solvedre·solv·ing
Definition of RESOLVE
3
: to cause resolution of (a pathological state
Colon
The topic is defined by the phrase following the colon – the
USFG is the agent of the resolution, not the individual debaters
Webster’s Guide to Grammar and Writing – 2000,
http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/colon.htm
Use of a colon before a list or an explanation that is preceded by a clause that can stand
by itself. Think of the colon as a gate, inviting one to go on… If the introductory
phrase preceding the colon is very brief and the clause following the colon
represents the real business of the sentence, begin the clause after the colon with
a capital letter.
USfg
“Federal Government” means the central government in
Washington D.C.
Encarta ‘2K
(Online Encyclopedia, http://encarta.msn.com)
“The federal government of the United States is centered in Washington DC”
The USfg is the government established via the constitution.
USLegal, Acc 2010, http://definitions.uslegal.com/u/united-states-federalgovernment/
The United States Federal Government is established by the US
Constitution. The Federal Government shares sovereignty over the United Sates with
the individual governments of the States of US. The Federal government has three
branches: i) the legislature, which is the US Congress, ii) Executive, comprised of
the President and Vice president of the US and iii) Judiciary. The US Constitution
prescribes a system of separation of powers and ‘checks and balances’ for the smooth
functioning of all the three branches of the Federal Government. The US Constitution
limits the powers of the Federal Government to the powers assigned to it; all powers not
expressly assigned to the Federal Government are reserved to the States or to the people.
Should
“Should” requires we perform the actions of the following verb,
it’s a necessity
Cambridge Dictionary 13 (published by Cambridge University Press, “Should”
[American Version], 2013, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/americanenglish/should_1?q=should)
should
modal verb (DUTY) /ʃʊd, ʃəd/
Definition
used to express that it is necessary, desirable, or important to perform the
action of the following verb
“Should” is mandatory, in legal context it must be obeyed
Oxford English Dictionary 13 (“Shall- should”[American-Business Version],
Oxford University Press, Copyright © 2013,
Press.http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/177350?isAdvanced=true&result=10&rskey=XZ
3VE5&,)
II. Followed by an infinitive (without to).
Except for a few instances of shall will, shall may (mowe), shall conne in the 15th c., the
infinitive after shall is always either that of a principal verb or of have or be.
2. In general statements of what is right or becoming: = ‘ought’. Obs.
(Superseded by the pa. subjunctive should: see sense 18)
In Old English the subjunctive present sometimes occurs in this use (e.g. c888 in A. 4).
c. In conditional clause, accompanying the statement of a necessary
condition: = ‘is to’.
4. Indicating what is appointed or settled to take place = the modern ‘is to’,
‘am to’, etc. Obs.
5. In commands or instructions.
“Should” requires a mandate, implies that the action will be
followed through
Merriam-Webster Dictionary 13 (“Should”, Merriam-Webster Incorporated,
2013, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/should?show=0&t=1373233008,)
should verbal auxiliary \shəd, ˈshu̇d\
Definition of SHOULD
1
—used in auxiliary function to express condition <if he should leave his father, his father
would die — Genesis 44:22(Revised Standard Version)>
2
—used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency
<'tis commanded I should do so — Shakespeare> <this is as it should be — H. L. Savage>
<you should brush your teeth after each meal>
Should” denotes an expectation of enacting a plan
American Heritage Dictionary – 2000 [www.dictionary.com]
3 Used to express probability or expectation
2NC Blocks
Critique Fails
Critiques get bogged down in theoretical jargon that distract
from efforts for true political change – we must engage in the
rhetoric of policymaking.
McClean Rutgers Philosophy Professor 1
[David E., Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of American
Philosophy, “The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope”, http://www.americanphilosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/da
vid_mcclean.htm]
Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our
Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics continue to cite and
refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just
mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and
Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative
attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do suggest
them) aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed,
national belligerence and racism. I would like to suggest that it is time for
American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually
want to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease, and a disease
regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program
of recovery. The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical "remedies"
wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaborate theoretical
remedies are more "interesting," to be sure, than the pragmatically settled
questions about what shape democracy should take in various contexts, or
whether private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human
nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in such statements as "We don't like to
starve" and "We like to speak our minds without fear of death" and "We like to keep our
children safe from poverty"). As Rorty puts it, "When one of today's academic
leftists says that some topic has been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be
pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of
language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of
economic determinism. . . . These futile attempts to philosophize one's way
into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats
from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its
country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations"(italics
mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I
believe that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud long
since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a scholastic,
schematic formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own
needs and its own implicit principle of successful action."
Those who suffer or have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural
Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers
for good reason. Another attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy
themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of America and the West, rather
than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil, and
who view anything like national pride as equally evil even when that pride is tempered
with the knowledge and admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the
Cultural Left, in this country, too often dismiss American society as beyond
reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a disastrous
conclusion, i.e. disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for
our social hopes, as I will explain.
Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to
better use if they bury some of their cynicism about America's social and political
prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit of
determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the
country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard
Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the
words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe to
seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread
of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a
true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and faithbased initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business
interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part
of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We who fancy
ourselves philosophers would do well to create from within ourselves and
from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both a
hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move
past high theory to other important questions that are less bedazzling and
"interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis,
one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than
any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that undergirds the fantasy of a
missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a
community of nations under a "law of peoples?"
The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade
theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international
markets and trade agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics
of complexity as much as the politics of power (all of which can still be done from our
arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of our quotidian social
institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe
to dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take
difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples'
lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly understand how those
institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their
overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in
debates by true policy pros who actually know what they are talking about
but who lack awareness of the dogmatic assumptions from which they proceed,
and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargon-riddled lectures from
philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called
"managerial class."
Simulation
Simulating government discourses allows students to synthesize
theory and fact creating useful real-world knowledge.
Esberg and Sagan, special assistant to the director at New York University's and
Professor at Stanford, Center 12
(Jane Esberg is special assistant to the director at New York University's Center on.
International Cooperation. She was the winner of 2009 Firestone Medal, AND Scott
Sagan is a professor of political science and director of Stanford's Center for
International Security and Cooperation “NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION:
Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy,” The Nonproliferation Review,
19:1, 95-108 accessed 5-7-13, RRR
These government or quasi-government think tank simulations often provide
very similar lessons for high-level players as are learned by students in
educational simulations. Government participants learn about the
importance of understanding foreign perspectives, the need to practice internal
coordination, and the necessity to compromise and coordinate with other
governments in negotiations and crises. During the Cold War, political scientist
Robert Mandel noted how crisis exercises and war games forced government
officials to overcome “bureaucratic myopia,” moving beyond their normal
organizational roles and thinking more creatively about how others might
react in a crisis or conflict.6 The skills of imagination and the subsequent ability
to predict foreign interests and reactions remain critical for real-world foreign
policy makers. For example, simulations of the Iranian nuclear crisis—held in 2009
and 2010 at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center and at Harvard University's Belfer
Center, and involving former US senior officials and regional experts—highlighted the
dangers of misunderstanding foreign governments’ preferences and misinterpreting
their subsequent behavior. In both simulations, the primary criticism of the US
negotiating team lay in a failure to predict accurately how other states, both allies and
adversaries, would behave in response to US policy initiatives.7
By university age, students often have a pre-defined view of international
affairs, and the literature on simulations in education has long emphasized how
such exercises force students to challenge their assumptions about how other
governments behave and how their own government works.8 Since simulations became
more common as a teaching tool in the late 1950s, educational literature has expounded
on their benefits, from encouraging engagement by breaking from the typical lecture
format, to improving communication skills, to promoting teamwork.9 More broadly,
simulations can deepen understanding by asking students to link fact and
theory, providing a context for facts while bringing theory into the realm of
practice.10 These exercises are particularly valuable in teaching international
affairs for many of the same reasons they are useful for policy makers: they force
participants to “grapple with the issues arising from a world in flux.”11
Simulations have been used successfully to teach students about such
disparate topics as European politics, the Kashmir crisis, and US response
to the mass killings in Darfur.12 Role-playing exercises certainly encourage
students to learn political and technical facts—but they learn them in a more active style.
Rather than sitting in a classroom and merely receiving knowledge, students actively
research “their” government's positions and actively argue, brief, and negotiate with
others.13 Facts can change quickly; simulations teach students how to contextualize and
act on information.
Dialogue
Their interpretation results in a monologic dialogue where
debate becomes a one-sided lecture – only a dialogic exchange
can accrue educational benefits.
Hanghøj, University of Bristol Author, 08 —
[Thorkild Hanghøj, author affiliated with Danish Research Centre on Education and
Advanced Media Materials, research the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and
Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the Institute of Education at the University of Bristol
and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of Education,
2008 (“PLAYFUL KNOWLEDGE: An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming,”
University of Southern Denmark, p. 50-51 Available Online at
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_udda
nnelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf)
Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include
descriptions of issues to be debated, educational goals, game goals, roles, rules, time
frames etc. In this way, debate games differ from textbooks and everyday classroom
instruction as debate scenarios allow teachers and students to actively
imagine, interact and communicate within a domain-specific game space.
However, instead of mystifying debate games as a “magic circle” (Huizinga, 1950), I will
try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between “gaming” and “teaching” that
tends to dominate discussions of educational games. In short, educational gaming is
a form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two different
semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions, modes of
representation and social forms of organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2).
In order to understand the interplay between these different domains and their
interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central assumption in Bakhtin’s
dialogical philosophy. According to Bakhtin, all forms of communication and
culture are subject to centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A
centripetal force is the drive to impose one version of the truth, while a
centrifugal force involves a range of possible truths and interpretations. This
means that any form of expression involves a duality of centripetal and centrifugal
forces: “Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as a point where
centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear” (Bakhtin, 1981: 272). If we
take teaching as an example, it is always affected by centripetal and centrifugal forces in
the on-going negotiation of “truths” between teachers and students. In the words of
Bakhtin: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person,
it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic
interaction” (Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly, the dialogical space of debate games
also embodies centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election scenario
of The Power Game involves centripetal elements that are mainly
determined by the rules and outcomes of the game, i.e. the election is based on a
limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure. Similarly, the open-ended goals,
roles and resources represent centrifugal elements and create virtually
endless possibilities for researching, preparing, presenting, debating and
evaluating a variety of key political issues. Consequently, the actual process of enacting a
game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal
forces that are inextricably linked with the teachers and students’ game activities. In this
way, the enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines different
pedagogical practices (i.e. group work, web quests, student presentations) and learning
resources (i.e. websites, handouts, spoken language) within the interpretive frame of the
election scenario. Obviously, tensions may arise if there is too much divergence between
educational goals and game goals. This means that game facilitation requires a
balance between focusing too narrowly on the rules or “facts” of a game
(centripetal orientation) and a focusing too broadly on the contingent
possibilities and interpretations of the game scenario (centrifugal
orientation). For Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal forces often
manifests itself as a dynamic between “monological” and “dialogical” forms
of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates this point with the monological discourse of the
Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the teacher never learns anything new
from the students, despite Socrates’ ideological claims to the contrary
(Bakhtin, 1984a). Thus, discourse becomes monologised when “someone who
knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and
in error”, where “a thought is either affirmed or repudiated” by the
authority of the teacher (Bakhtin, 1984a: 81). In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy
fosters inclusive learning environments that are able to expand upon students’ existing
knowledge and collaborative construction of “truths” (Dysthe, 1996). At this point, I
should clarify that Bakhtin’s term “dialogic” is both a descriptive term (all
utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other utterances as parts of a
chain of communication) and a normative term as dialogue is an ideal to be
worked for against the forces of “monologism” (Lillis, 2003: 197-8). In this
project, I am mainly interested in describing the dialogical space of debate games. At the
same time, I agree with Wegerif that “one of the goals of education, perhaps the
most important goal, should be dialogue as an end in itself” (Wegerif, 2006:
61).
Decisionmaking
Critical frameworks destroy decision-making skills – we become
intellectually invested in utopian alternatives that lack political
traction.
Strait, George Mason University, and Wallace, George Washington University
Communications Professors, 7
[L. Paul and Brett, “The Scope of Negative Fiat and the Logic of Decision Making”,
http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/2007/The%20Scope%20of%20N
egative%20Fiat%20and%20the%20Logic%20of%20Decision%20Making.pdf, p. A-5)
Negative claims that excluding critical alternatives is detrimental to
education fail to be persuasive when decision-making logic is taken into
account. Critical intellectuals and policymakers both take into account the
probability that their actions will be successful. Fiating that individuals alter
their method of thinking circumvents these questions of probability and
thus not only destroys education about policymaking, but offers a flawed
approach to activism (or any other purview of action/ philosophy the
negative is advocating). Intellectuals and activists have many important
considerations relating to resources, press coverage, political clout and method. These
questions all are directly related to who is taking action. Alternative debates thus
often become frustrating because they do a poor job of explaining who the
subject is. Consider the popular Nietzschean alternative, ‘do nothing.” Who is it
that the negative wants to do nothing? Does the USFG de nothing? Is it the
debaters? Is it the judge who does nothing? Is it every individual, or just
individuals in Africa that have to do with the affirmative harm area? All of these
questions directly implicate the desirability of the alternative, and thus the education
that we can receive from this mode of debate. Alternatives like “vote negative to reject
capitalism,” “detach truth from power.” or ‘embrace an infinite responsibility to the
other" fall prey to similar concerns. This inability to pin the negative down to a course of
action allows them to be shifty in their second rebuttal, and sculpt their alternative in a
way that avoids the affirmative’s offense. Rather than increasing education,
critical frameworks are often a ruse that allows the negative to inflate their
importance and ignore crucial decision-making considerations. Several other
offensive arguments can be leveraged by the affirmative in order to insulate them from
negative claims that critical debate is a unique and important type of education that the
affirmative excludes. The first is discussed above, that the most important benefit to
participation in policy debate is not the content of our arguments, but the
skills we learn from debating. As was just explained, since the ability to make
decisions is a skill activists and intellectuals must use as well, decisionmaking is a prerequisite to effective education about any subject. The
strength of this argument is enhanced when we realize that debate is a
game. Since debaters are forced to switch sides they go into each debate
knowing that a non-personal mindset will be necessary at some point
because they will inevitably be forced to argue against their own convictions.
Members of the activity are all smart enough to realize that a vote for an argument in
a debate does not reflect an absolute truth, but merely that a team making
that argument did the better debating. When it comes to education about content,
the number of times someone will change their personal convictions because of
something that happens in a debate round is extremely low, because everyone knows it is
a game. On the other hand with cognitive skills like the decision-making
process which is taught through argument and debate, repetition is vital
.The best way to strengthen decision-making’s cognitive thinking skills is to
have students practice them in social settings like debate rounds. Moreover, a lot
of the decision-making process happens in strategy sessions and during research periods
— debaters hear about a particular affirmative plan and are tasked with developing the
best response. If they are conditioned to believe that alternate agent counterplans
or utopian philosophical alternatives are legitimate responses, a vital
teaching opportunity will have been lost.
Informed Citizenry
Critique disavows our responsibility to being an informed
citizenry – their framework arguments are intrinsically
apolitical.
Lundberg University of North Carolina Communications Professor, 10
[Christian 0., January 2010, “ The Allred Initiative and Debate Across the
Curriculum: Reinventing the Tradition of Debate at North Carolina”,
http://academia.edu/968401/LundbergOnDebate, p. 311, accessed 7/5/13,
ALT]
The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in
articulating debate and democracy is that it presumes that the primary
pedagogical outcome of debate is speech capacities. But the democratic
capacities built by debate are not limited to speech—as indicated earlier, debate
builds capacity for critical thinking, analysis of public claims, informed
decision making, and better public judgment. If the picture of modern
political life that underwrites this critique of debate is a pessimistic view of
increasingly labyrinthine and bureaucratic administrative politics, rapid
scientific and technological change, outpacing the capacities of the citizenry to
comprehend them, and ever-expanding insular special-interest and moneydriven politics, it is a puzzling solution, at best, to argue that these conditions
warrant giving up on debate. If democracy is open to rearticulation, it is open to
rearticulation precisely because as the challenges of modern political life proliferate, the
citizenry’s capacities can change, which is one of the primary reasons that theorists of
democracy such as Dewey in The Public and Its Problems place such a high premium on
deducation (Dewey 1988, 63, 154). Debate provides an indispensable form of
education in the modern articulation of democracy because it builds
precisely the skills that allow the citizenry to research and be informed
about policy decisions that impact them, to sort through and evaluate the
evidence for and relative merits of arguments for and against a policy in an
increasingly information-rich environment, and to prioritize their time and
political energies toward policies that matter the most to them.
Critical Thinking
Debate is key to critical thinking skills - arguing opposing points
of view enables a self-reflexive thought process that checks
dogmatism and ideological rigidity.
Keller, University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration Professor, et.
al, 01 – [Asst. professor School of Social Service Administration U. of Chicago (Thomas
E., James K., and Tracly K., Asst. professor School of Social Service Administration U. of
Chicago, professor of Social Work, and doctoral student School of Social Work, 2001
(“Student debates in policy courses: promoting policy practice skills and knowledge
through active learning,” Journal of Social Work Education, Spr/Summer 2001,
EBSCOhost)
The authors believe that structured student debates have great potential for
promoting competence in policy practice and in-depth knowledge of
substantive topics relevant to social policy. Like other interactive assignments
designed to more closely resemble "real-world" activities, issue-oriented debates
actively engage students in course content. Debates also allow students to
develop and exercise skills that may translate to political activities, such as
testifying before legislative committees. Finally, and perhaps most
importantly, debates may help to stimulate critical thinking by shaking
students free from established opinions and helping them to appreciate the
complexities involved in policy dilemmas. Relationships between Policy Practice
Skills, Critical Thinking, and Learning Policy practice encompasses social workers'
"efforts to influence the development, enactment, implementation, or assessment of
social policies" (Jansson, 1994, p. 8). Effective policy practice involves analytic activities,
such as defining issues, gathering data, conducting research, identifying and prioritizing
policy options, and creating policy proposals (Jansson, 1994). It also involves persuasive
activities intended to influence opinions and outcomes, such as discussing and debating
issues, organizing coalitions and task forces, and providing testimony. According to
Jansson (1984,pp. 57-58), social workers rely upon five fundamental skills when
pursuing policy practice activities: value-clarification skills for identifying and assessing
the underlying values inherent in policy positions; conceptual skills for identifying and
evaluating the relative merits of different policy options; interactional skills for
interpreting the values and positions of others and conveying one's own point of view in
a convincing manner; political skills for developing coalitions and developing effective
strategies; and position-taking skills for recommending, advocating, and defending a
particular policy. These policy practice skills reflect the hallmarks of critical thinking
(see Brookfield, 1987; Gambrill, 1997). The central activities of critical thinking are
identifying and challenging underlying assumptions, exploring alternative ways of
thinking and acting, and arriving at commitments after a period of questioning, analysis,
and reflection (Brookfield, 1987). Significant parallels exist with the policy-making
process--identifying the values underlying policy choices, recognizing and evaluating
multiple alternatives, and taking a position and advocating for its adoption. Developing
policy practice skills seems to share much in common with developing capacities for
critical thinking. R.W. Paul (as cited in Gambrill, 1997) states that critical thinkers
acknowledge the imperative to argue from opposing points of view and to
seek to identify weakness and limitations in one's own position. Critical
thinkers are aware that there are many legitimate points of view, each of
which (when thought through) may yield some level of insight. (p. 126) John
Dewey, the philosopher and educational reformer, suggested that the initial advance in
the development of reflective thought occurs in the transition from holding
fixed, static ideas to an attitude of doubt and questioning engendered by
exposure to alternative views in social discourse (Baker, 1955, pp. 36-40).
Doubt, confusion, and conflict resulting from discussion of diverse
perspectives "force comparison, selection, and reformulation of ideas and
meanings" (Baker, 1955, p. 45). Subsequent educational theorists have contended that
learning requires openness to divergent ideas in combination with the
ability to synthesize disparate views into a purposeful resolution (Kolb,
1984; Perry, 1970). On the one hand, clinging to the certainty of one's beliefs
risks dogmatism, rigidity, and the inability to learn from new experiences.
On the other hand, if one's opinion is altered by every new experience, the result is
insecurity, paralysis, and the inability to take effective action. The educator's role is to
help students develop the capacity to incorporate new and sometimes conflicting ideas
and experiences into a coherent cognitive framework. Kolb suggests that, "if the
education process begins by bringing out the learner's beliefs and theories, examining
and testing them, and then integrating the new, more refined ideas in the person's belief
systems, the learning process will be facilitated" (p. 28). The authors believe that
involving students in substantive debates challenges them to learn and grow in the
fashion described by Dewey and Kolb. Participation in a debate stimulates
clarification and critical evaluation of the evidence, logic, and values
underlying one's own policy position. In addition, to debate effectively
students must understand and accurately evaluate the opposing perspective.
The ensuing tension between two distinct but legitimate views is designed to
yield a reevaluation and reconstruction of knowledge and beliefs pertaining
to the issue
Empathy
Using a statis point to debate multiple sides of an issue
humanizes people with opposing views and creates empathy.
Zwarensteyn, Grand Valley State Masters’ student, 12 [Ellen C., 8-1-2012 “High
School Policy Debate as an Enduring Pathway to Political Education: Evaluating
Possibilities for Political Learning”
http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=theses)
Other scholars note benefits to debate outside traditional academic achievement or
behavioral measures. These studies theorize the importance in face-to-face
communication and adversarial dialectics. Galloway, Debate Director at Samford
University, studies the benefits to communication through dialogue and the switch-side
requirement of policy debate. Galloway (2007) encourages audiences to view debate as a
critical dialogue, where every argument is crafted to begin a meaningful, if not
strategic, dialogue. The values not only advance intellectual gain, but also to
look for argumentative consistency and personal validity.
[I]n a dialogical exchange, debaters come to realize the positions other than
their own have value, and that reasonable minds can disagree on
controversial issues. This respect encourages debaters to modify and adapt
their own positions on critical issues without the threat of being labeled a
hypocrite. The conceptualization of debate as a dialogue allows challenges to take
place from a wide variety of perspectives. By offering a stable referent the
affirmative must uphold, the negative can choose to engage the affirmative
on the widest possible array of “counterwords,” enhancing the pedagogical
process produced by debate (p. 12).
Viewing debate as a dialogue helps move understanding debate beyond
students set in one political ideology to those who must consider the best in
arguments from multiple sides of an argument. One of the most compelling
arguments as to how debate increases empathy, regards the practice of debating
multiple sides of the same issue. This practice is one of political understanding as it
helps create empathy by humanizing people who advance opposing
arguments. This practice bridges the world of argument with political and
personal understanding. “[T]he unique distinctions between debate and public
speaking allow debaters the opportunity to learn about a wide range of issues
from multiple perspectives. This allows debaters to formulate their own
opinions about controversial subjects through an in-depth process of
research and testing of ideas”(Galloway, 2007, p. 13).
Civic Engagement Impact
We have a responsibility to advocate for political, collective
action to resolve the world’s problems.
Small 6 (Jonathan, former Americorps VISTA for the Human Services Coalition, “Moving Forward,” The Journal
for Civic Commitment, Spring, http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/Journal/Issue7/Small.jsp)
What will be the challenges of the new millennium? And how should we equip young people to face these
challenges? While we cannot be sure of the exact nature of the challenges, we can say unequivocally that humankind
will face them together. If the end of the twentieth century marked the triumph of the capitalists, individualism, and
personal responsibility, the new century will present challenges that require collective
action, unity, and enlightened self-interest. Confronting global warming, depleted natural resources,
global super viruses, global crime syndicates, and multinational corporations with no conscience and no
accountability will require cooperation, openness, honesty, compromise, and most of all solidarity – ideals
not exactly cultivated in the twentieth century. We can no longer suffer to see life through the tiny lens of our own
existence. Never in the history of the world has our collective fate been so intricately interwoven. Our
very existence depends upon our ability to adapt to this new paradigm, to envision a more cohesive
society. With humankind’s next great challenge comes also great opportunity. Ironically, modern individualism
backed us into a corner. We have two choices, work together in solidarity or perish together in alienation. Unlike any
other crisis before, the noose is truly around the neck of the whole world at once. Global super viruses will ravage
rich and poor alike, developed and developing nations, white and black, woman, man, and child. Global warming
and damage to the environment will affect climate change and destroy ecosystems across the globe. Air pollution
will force gas masks on our faces, our depleted atmosphere will make a predator of the sun, and chemicals will
invade and corrupt our water supplies. Every single day we are presented the opportunity to change our current
course, to survive modernity in a manner befitting our better nature. Through zealous cooperation and radical
solidarity we can alter the course of human events. Regarding the practical matter of equipping young people to face
the challenges of a global, interconnected world, we need to teach cooperation, community, solidarity, balance and
tolerance in schools. We need to take a holistic approach to education. Standardized test scores alone will not begin
to prepare young people for the world they will inherit. The three staples of traditional education (reading, writing,
and arithmetic) need to be supplemented by three cornerstones of a modern education, exposure, exposure, and
more exposure. How can we teach solidarity? How can we teach community in the age of rugged individualism?
How can we counterbalance crass commercialism and materialism? How can we impart the true meaning of power?
These are the educational challenges we face in the new century. It will require a radical transformation of our
conception of education. We’ll need to trust a bit more, control a bit less, and put our faith in the potential of youth
to make sense of their world. In addition to a declaration of the gauntlet set before educators in the twenty-first
century, this paper is a proposal and a case study of sorts toward a new paradigm of social justice and civic
engagement education. Unfortunately, the current pedagogical climate of public K-12 education does not lend itself
well to an exploratory study and trial of holistic education. Consequently, this proposal and case study targets a
higher education model. Specifically, we will look at some possibilities for a large community college in an urban
setting with a diverse student body. Our guides through this process are specifically identified by the journal Equity
and Excellence in Education. The dynamic interplay between ideas of social justice, civic engagement, and
service learning in education will be the lantern in the dark cave of uncertainty. As
such, a simple and straightforward explanation of the three terms is helpful to direct this inquiry. Before we look at
a proposal and case study and the possible consequences contained therein, this paper will draw out a clear
understanding of how we should characterize these ubiquitous terms and how their relationship to each other
affects our study. Social Justice, Civic Engagement, Service Learning and Other Commie Crap Social justice is often
ascribed long, complicated, and convoluted definitions. In fact, one could fill a good-sized library with treatises on
this subject alone. Here we do not wish to belabor the issue or argue over fine points. For our purposes, it will suffice
to have a general characterization of the term, focusing instead on the dynamics of its interaction with civic
engagement and service learning. Social justice refers quite simply to a community vision and a community
conscience that values inclusion, fairness, tolerance, and equality. The idea of social justice in America has been
around since the Revolution and is intimately linked to the idea of a social contract. The Declaration of
Independence is the best example of the prominence of social contract theory in the US. It states quite emphatically
that the government has a contract with its citizens, from which we get the famous lines about life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Social contract theory and specifically the Declaration of Independence are concrete
expressions of the spirit of social justice. Similar clamor has been made over the appropriate definitions of civic
engagement and service learning, respectively. Once again, let’s not get bogged down on subtleties. Civic
engagement is a measure or degree of the interest and/or involvement an individual and a community demonstrate
around community issues. There is a longstanding dispute over how to properly quantify civic engagement. Some
will say that today’s youth are less involved politically and hence demonstrate a lower degree of civic engagement.
Others cite high volunteer rates among the youth and claim it demonstrates a high exhibition of civic engagement.
And there are about a hundred other theories put forward on the subject of civic engagement and today’s youth. But
one thing is for sure;
today’s youth no longer see government and politics as an effective or
valuable tool for affecting positive change in the world. Instead of criticizing this judgment,
perhaps we should come to sympathize and even admire it. Author Kurt Vonnegut said, “There is a tragic flaw in our
precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president.”
Maybe the youth’s rejection of American politics isn’t a shortcoming but rather a rational and appropriate response
to their experience. Consequently, the term civic engagement takes on new meaning for us today. In order to foster
fundamental change on the systemic level, which we have already said is necessary for our survival in the twentyfirst century, we need to fundamentally change our systems. Therefore, part of our challenge becomes
convincing the youth that these systems, and by systems we mean government and commerce, have
the potential for positive change. Civic engagement consequently takes on a more specific and political
meaning in this context. Service learning is a methodology and a tool for teaching social
justice, encouraging civic engagement, and deepening practical understanding of a
subject. Since it is a relatively new field, at least in the structured sense, service learning is only beginning to define
itself. Through service learning students learn by experiencing things firsthand and by exposing themselves to new
points of view. Instead of merely reading about government, for instance, a student might experience it by working
in a legislative office. Rather than just studying global warming out of a textbook, a student might volunteer time at
an environmental group. If service learning develops and evolves into a discipline with the honest goal of making
better citizens, teaching social justice, encouraging civic engagement, and most importantly, exposing students to
different and alternative experiences, it could be a major feature of a modern education. Service learning is the
natural counterbalance to our current overemphasis on standardized testing. Social justice, civic engagement, and
service learning are caught in a symbiotic cycle. The more we have of one of them; the more we have of all of them.
However, until we get momentum behind them, we are stalled. Service learning may be our best chance to jumpstart
our democracy. In the rest of this paper, we will look at the beginning stages of a project that seeks to do just that.
Debate=Policy
The resolution was created for two distinct sides to determine
the desirability of policy action.
PARCHER 2001 (Jeff, Fmr. Debate Coach at Georgetown University, February,
http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200102/0790.html)
(1) Pardon me if I turn to a source besides Bill. American Heritage Dictionary: Resolve: 1. To
make a firm decision about. 2. To decide or express by formal vote. 3. To separate something into
constiutent parts See Syns at *analyze* (emphasis in orginal) 4. Find a solution to. See Syns at
*Solve* (emphasis in original) 5. To dispel: resolve a doubt. - n 1. Frimness of purpose; resolution.
2. A determination or decision. (2) The very nature of the word "resolution" makes it a question.
American Heritage: A course of action determined or decided on. A formal statemnt of a deciion,
as by a legislature. (3) The resolution is obviously a question. Any other conclusion is
utterly inconcievable. Why? Context. The debate community empowers a topic
committee to write a topic for ALTERNATE side debating. The committee is
not a random group of people coming together to "reserve" themselves about some
issue. There is context - they are empowered by a community to do something. In their
deliberations, the topic community attempts to craft a resolution which can
be ANSWERED in either direction. They focus on issues like ground and fairness
because they know the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will
be resolved by determining the policy desireablility of that resolution. That's
not only what they do, but it's what we REQUIRE them to do. We don't just send the topic
committtee somewhere to adopt their own group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution
adopted by a body - it's the prelimanary wording of a resolution sent to others to be answered or
decided upon. (4) Further context: the word resolved is used to emphasis the fact that it's policy
debate.
AT Exclusionary
C/A Limits – their interpretation excludes the rest of the
tournament.
Effective subversion occurs within the limits of the game, not
from the outside.
Shively, Assistant Prof Political Science at Texas A&M, 2K — [Ruth Lessl, Assistant
Prof Political Science at Texas A&M, 2000 “Partisan Politics and Political Theory,” p.
180)
Thus far, I have argued that if the ambiguists mean to be subversive about
anything, they need to be conservative about some things. They need to be
steadfast supporters of the structures of openness and democracy: willing to say
"no" to certain forms of contest; willing to set up certain clear limitations about
acceptable behavior. To this, finally, I would add that if the ambiguists mean to
stretch the boundaries of behavior—if they want to be revolutionary and
disruptive in their skepticism and iconoclasm—they need first to be firm believers in
something. Which is to say, again, they need to set clear limits about what
they will and will not support, what they do and do not believe to be best. As G.
K. Chesterton observed, the true revolutionary has always willed something "definite
and limited." For example, "The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would
rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel
against..." He "desired the freedoms of democracy." He "wished to have votes and
not to have titles . . ." But "because the new rebel is a skeptic"—because he
and/or she cannot bring him and/or herself to will something definite
and limited— "he and/or she cannot be a revolutionary." For "the fact that
he wants to doubt everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce
anything" (Chesterton 1959,41). Thus, the most radical skepticism ends in the most
radical conservatism. In other words, a refusal to judge among ideas and
activities is, in the end, an endorsement of the status quo. To embrace
everything is to be unable to embrace a particular plan of action, for to embrace a
particular plan of action is to reject all others, at least for that moment. Moreover, as
observed in our discussion of openness, to embrace everything is to embrace selfcontradiction: to hold to both one's purposes and to that which defeats one's
purposes—to tolerance and intolerance, open-mindedness and close-mindedness,
democracy and tyranny. In the same manner, then, the ambiguists' refusals to
will something "definite and limited" undermines their revolutionary
impulses. In their refusal to say what they will not celebrate and what
they will not rebel against, they deny themselves (and everyone else in
their political world) a particular plan or ground to work from. By refusing to
deny incivility, they deny themselves a civil public space from which to speak. They
cannot say "no" to the terrorist who would silence dissent. They cannot turn their
backs on the bullying of the white supremacist. And, as such, in refusing to bar the
tactics of the anti-democrat, they refuse to support the tactics of the democrat. In
short, then, to be a true ambiguist, there must be some limit to what is
ambiguous. To fully support political contest, one must fully support some
uncontested rules and reasons. To generally reject the silencing or exclusion of
others, one must sometimes silence or exclude those who reject civility
and democracy.
Their revolution only reifies tyranny – only an effective dialogue
can prevent this.
Morson, Northwestern Prof, 4
(Greg, Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language, Literacy, and Learning, 317-23)
Sarah Freedman and Arnetha Ball describe learning
as a dialogic process. It is not merely a
transmission of knowledge, but an activity in which whole selves are formed and
acquire new capacities for development. We live in a world of enormous cultural diversity, and the
various languages and points of view – ideologies in Bakhtin’s sense – of students have become a fact that cannot be
ignored. Teachers need to enter into a dialogue with those points of view and to help students do the same. For difference
may best be understood not as an obstacle but as an opportunity. ¶ The range of “authoritative” and “innerly persuasive
discourses” in our classrooms appears to be growing along with our cultural diversity. Freedman and Ball observe: “This
rich and complex ‘contact zone’ inside the classroom yields plentiful opportunity for students to decide what will be
internally persuasive for them, and consequently for them to develop their ideologies. This diversity presents both
challenges and opportunities as teachers seek to guide their students on this developmental journey” (pp. 8– 9, this
volume). The journey they have in mind does not so much lead to a particular goal as establish an ever-enriching process
of learning. ¶ Freedman and Ball’s approach grows out of Bakhtin’s key concepts, especially one that has been largely
neglected in research on him: “ideological becoming” (see Chapter 1, this volume). The implications of the essays in this
volume therefore extend well beyond educational theory and practice to the humanities and social sciences generally. How
does a thinking person– and we are all thinking people – develop? What happens when ideas, embodied in specific people
with particular voices, come into dialogic contact? What factors guide the creation of a point of view on the world? The
specific problematic of pedagogy serves as a lens to make the broader implications of such questions clearer.¶ 318¶
Authority and testing ¶ How does a person develop a point of view on the world, a set of attitudes for interpreting and
evaluating it ? How systematic is that point of view? Is our fundamental take on the world a philosophy with implicit
doctrines or is it more like a set of inclinations and a way of probing? Perhaps it is not one, but a collection of ways of
probing, a panoply of skills and habits, which a person tries out one after another the way in which one may, in performing
a physical task, reach for one tool after another? What does our point of view have to do with our sense of ourselves,
whether as individuals or as members of groups? What role does formal education play in acquiring and shaping it? What
happens when contrary evidence confronts us or when the radical uncertainty of the world impinges on us? Whatever that
“point of view” is, how does it change over time ? ¶ In any given culture or subculture, there tends to be what Bakhtin
would call an “authoritative” perspective. However, the role of that perspective is not necessarily authoritarian. Despite
Bakhtin’s experience as a Soviet citizen, where the right perspective on just about all publicly identified perspectives was
held to be already known and certain, he was well aware that outside that circle of presumed certainty life was still
governed by opinion. It is not just that rival ideologies – Christian, liberal, and many others – were still present; beyond
that, each individual’s experiences led to half-formed but strongly held beliefs that enjoyed no formal expression.
Totalitarianism was surely an aspiration of the Soviet and other such regimes, but it could never realize its ideal of
uniformity–“the new Soviet man” who was all of a piece – for some of the same reasons it could not make a centrally
planned economy work. There is always too much contingent, unexpected, particular, local, and idiosyncratic, with a
historical or personal background that does not fit. ¶ Bakhtin may be viewed as the great philosopher of all that does not
fit. He saw the world as irreducibly messy, unsystematizable, and contingent, and he regarded it as all the better for that.
For life to have meaning, it must possess what he called “surprisingness.” If individual people are to act morally, they
cannot displace their responsibility onto some systematic ideology, whether Marxist, Christian, or any other. What I do
now is not reducible to any ethical, political, or metaphysical system; and I – each “I”– must take responsibility for his or
her acts at this moment. As Bakhtin liked to say, there is “no alibi.” ¶ Authoritative words in their fully expressed form
purport to offer an alibi. They say, like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor: we speak the truth and you need not question, only
obey, for your conscience to be at rest. Yet, every authoritative word is spoken or heard in a milieu of difference. It may try
to insulate itself from dialogue with reverential tones, a special script, and all the other signs of the authority fused to it,
but at the margins¶ 319¶ dialogue waits with a challenge: you may be right, but you have to convince me. Once the
authoritative word responds to that challenge, it ceases to be fully authoritative. To be sure, it may still command
considerable deference by virtue of its past, its moral aura, and its omnipresence. But it has ceased to be free from
dialogue and its authority has changed from unquestioned to dialogically tested. Every educator crosses this line when he
or she gives reasons for a truth. ¶ My daughter once had a math teacher who, when asked why a certain procedure was
used to solve an equation, would reply, “because some old, dead guy said so.” Of course, no answer could be further from
the spirit of mathematics, where logic counts for everything and authority for nothing. Nobody proves the Pythagorean
theorem by saying Pythagoras said so. Compare this reply with actually showing the logic of a procedure so the student
understands the “why.” In that case, one immediately admits that there must be a good reason for proceeding in a certain
way, and that it needs to be shown. The procedure does not end up as less sure because of this questioning; quite the
contrary. Rather, questioning is seen as intrinsic to mathematics itself, which enjoys its authority precisely because it has
survived such questioning. ¶ Even in fields that do not admit of mathematical proof, an authoritative word does not
necessarily lose all authority when questioning enters into it. We can give no mathematically sure reason why democracy
is preferable to dictatorship or market economies are generally more productive than command economies. But we can
give reasons, which admit the possibilities of challenges we had not foreseen and may have to think about. Education and
all inquiry are fundamentally different when the need for reasons is acknowledged and when questioning becomes part of
the process of learning. Truth becomes dialogically tested and forever testable. ¶ In short, authoritative words may or may
not be authoritarian. In the Soviet Union, authoritarian words were the norm and questioning was seen as suspect. One no
more questioned Marxism-Leninism than one questioned the law of gravity (a common comparison, suggesting that each
was equally sure). What the Party said was right because it was the outcome of sure historical laws guaranteeing the
correctness of its rulings. Education reflected this spirit. Bakhtin’s embrace of dialogue, then, challenged not so much the
economic or historical theories the regime propounded, but its very concept of truth and the language of truth it
embraced. Dialogue by its very nature invites questioning, thrives on it, demands it. ¶ It follows from Bakhtin’s argument
that nonauthoritarian authoritative words are not necessarily weaker than authoritarian ones. After all, one may believe
something all the more because one has questioned it, provided that defenders have been willing to answer and have been
more or less cogent in their defense. They need not answer all objections perfectly – we are often convinced with
qualifications, with a “just in case,” with “loopholes.”¶ 320¶ However, they must demonstrate that the authority is based on
generally sound reasons. Morever, for many, enormous persuasive power lies in the very fact that the authoritative belief
is so widely held. Everyone speaks it, even if with ironizing quotation marks. ¶ An authoritative word of this
nonauthoritarian kind functions not as a voice speaking the Truth, but as a voice speaking the one point of view that must
be attended to. It may be contested, rejected, or modified, the way in which church dogmas are modified over time by
believers, but it cannot be ignored. Think of Huck Finn (discussed by Mark Dressman, this volume). Even when he cannot
bring himself to turn in Jim as a runaway slave, he accepts the authority of the social voice telling him that such an action
would be right. He does not question that voice, just realizes he will not follow it and will do “wrong.” Much of the moral
complexity of this book lies in Huck’s self-questioning, as he does what we believe to be right but what he thinks of as
wrong; and if we read this book sensitively, we may ask ourselves how much of our own behavior is Huckish in this
respect. Perhaps our failure to live up to our ideals bespeaks our intuition without overt expression that there is something
wrong with those ideals. What Huck demonstrates is that there may be a wisdom, even a belief system, in behavior itself:
we always know more than we know, and our moral sensitivity may be different from, and wiser than, our professed
beliefs. ¶ our own authoritative words ¶ The basic power of an authoritative voice comes from its status as the one that
everyone hears. Everyone has heard that democracy is good and apartheid is bad, that the
environment needs preserving, that church must not be merged with state; and people who spend their
lives in an academic environment may add many more to the list. In our academic subculture, we
are, almost all of us, persuaded of the rightness of greater economic equality, of plans for
inclusion and affirmative action, of abortion rights, of peace, of greater efforts to reach out to all the
people in the world in all their amazing diversity. These are our authoritative voices, and , too, we
may accept either because they are simply not to be questioned or because
we have sought out intelligent opponents who have questioned them and
have thought about, if not ultimately accepted, their answers. Again, educators know
the moment when a student from a background different from ours questions one of our beliefs and we experience the
temptation to reply like that math teacher. Thinking of ourselves as oppositional, we often
forget that we, too, have our own authoritative discourse and must work to
remember that, in a world of difference, authority may not extend to those
unlike us. ¶ The testable authoritative voice: we hear it always, and though some may disagree
with it, they cannot ignore it. Its nonauthoritarian power is based¶ 321¶ above all on its ubiquity. In a society that
is relatively open to diverse values, that minimal, but still significant,
function of an authoritative voice is the most important one. It demands not
adherence but attention. And such a voice is likely to survive far longer than
an authoritarian voice whose rejection is necessarily its destruction. We have all
these accounts of Soviet dissidents – say, Solzhenitsyn – who tell their story as a “narrative of rethinking” (to use Christian
Knoeller’s phrase): they once believed in Communist ideology, but events caused them to raise some questions that by
their nature could not be publicly voiced, and that silence itself proved most telling. You can hear silence if it follows a
pistol shot. If silence does not succeed in ending private questioning, the word that silence defends is decisively weakened.
The story of Soviet dissidents is typically one in which, at some point, questioning moved from a private, furtive activity
accompanied by guilt to the opposite extreme, a clear rejection in which the authoritative voice lost all hold altogether.
Vulnerability accompanies too much power. ¶ But in more open societies, and in healthier kinds of individual
development, an authoritative voice of the whole society, or of a particular community (like our own academic
community), still sounds, still speaks to us in our minds. In fact, we commonly see that people who have questioned and
rejected an authoritative voice find that it survives within them as a possible alternative, like the minority opinion in a
court decision. When they are older, they discover that experience has vindicated some part of what they had summarily
rejected. Perhaps the authoritative voice had more to it than we thought when young? Now that we are teachers, perhaps
we see some of the reasons for practices we objected to? Can we, then, combine in a new practice both the practices of our
teachers and the new insights we have had? When we do, a flexible authoritative word emerges, one that has become to a
great extent an innerly persuasive one. By a lengthy process, the word has, with many changes, become our own, and our
own word has in the process acquired the intonations of authority. ¶ In much the same way, we react to the advice of our
parents. At some point it may seem dated, no more than what an earlier generation unfortunately thought, or we may
greet it with the sign of regret that our parents have forgotten what they experienced when our age. However, the dialogue
goes on. At a later point, we may say, you know, there was wisdom in what our parents said, only why did they express it
so badly? If only I had known! We may even come to the point where we express some modified form of parental wisdom
in a convincing voice. We translate it into our own idiolect, confident that we will not make the mistakes of our parents
when we talk to our children. Then our children listen, and find our own idiolect, to which we have devoted such painful
ideological and verbal work, hopelessly dated, and the process may start again. ¶ It is always a difficult moment when we
realize that our own voice is now the authority, especially because we have made it different, persuasive in its¶ 322¶ own
terms, not like our parents’ voice. When we reflect on how our children see us, we may even realize that our parents’
authoritative words may not have been the product of blind acceptance, but the result of a process much like our own.
They may have done the same thing we did – question, reject, adapt, arrive at a new version – and that rigid voice of
authority we heard from them was partly in our own ears. Can we somehow convey to our students our own words so they
do not sound so rigid? We all think we can. But so did our parents (and other authorities).¶ Dialogue, Laughter, And
Surprise ¶ Bakhtin viewed the whole process of “ideological” (in the sense of ideas and values, however unsystematic)
development as an endless dialogue. As teachers, we find it difficult to avoid a voice of authority, however much we
may think of ours as the rebel’s voice, because our rebelliousness against
society at large speaks in the authoritative voice of our subculture. We speak
the language and thoughts of academic educators, even when we imagine we
are speaking in no jargon at all, and that jargon, inaudible to us, sounds with all
the overtones of authority to our students. We are so prone to think of ourselves as
fighting oppression that it takes some work to realize that we ourselves may be
felt as oppressive and overbearing, and that our own voice may provoke the same
reactions that we feel when we hear an authoritative voice with which we
disagree. ¶ So it is often helpful to think back on the great authoritative oppressors and reconstruct their self-image:
helpful, but often painful. I remember, many years ago, when, as a recent student rebel and activist, I taught a course on
“The Theme of the Rebel” and discovered, to my considerable chagrin, that many of the great
rebels of history were the very same people as the great oppressors. There is a
famous exchange between Erasmus and Luther, who hoped to bring the great Dutch humanist over to the Reformation,
but Erasmus kept asking Luther how he could be so certain of so many doctrinal points. We must accept a few things to be
Christians at all, Erasmus wrote, but surely beyond that there must be room for us highly fallible beings to disagree.
Luther would have none of such tentativeness. He knew, he was sure. The Protestant rebels were, for a while, far more
intolerant than their orthodox opponents. Often enough, the oppressors are the ones who present themselves and really
think of themselves as liberators. Certainty that one knows the root cause of evil: isn’t that itself often the root cause? ¶ We
know from Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s letters denouncing Prince Kurbsky, a general who escaped to Poland, that
Ivan saw
himself as someone who had been oppressed by noblemen as a child and pictured
the great rebel against traditional authority when he killed masses of people or destroyed
whole towns. There is something in the nature of maximal rebellion against
authority that produces ever greater intolerance, unless one is very careful. ¶
himself as
323¶ For the skills of fighting or refuting an oppressive power are not those of openness, self-skepticism, or real dialogue.
In preparing for my course, I remember my dismay at reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf and discovering that his selfconsciousness was precisely that of the rebel speaking in the name of oppressed Germans, and that much of his amazing
appeal – otherwise so inexplicable – was to the German sense that they were rebelling victims. In our
time, the Serbian Communist and nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic
exploited much the same
appeal. Bakhtin surely knew that Communist totalitarianism, the Gulag, and the
unprecedented censorship were constructed by rebels who had come to
power. His favorite writer, Dostoevsky, used to emphasize that the worst oppression comes from those who, with the
rebellious psychology of “the insulted and humiliated,” have seized power – unless they have somehow cultivated the
value of dialogue, as Lenin surely had not, but which Eva, in the essay by Knoeller about teaching The Autobiography of
Malcolm X, surely had. ¶ Rebels often make the worst tyrants because their word, the voice
they hear in their consciousness, has borrowed
something crucial from the authoritative
word it opposed, and perhaps exaggerated it: the aura of righteous authority. If
one’s ideological becoming is understood as a struggle in which one has at last
achieved the truth, one is likely to want to impose that truth with maximal
authority; and rebels of the next generation may proceed in much the same
way, in an ongoing spiral of intolerance. By contrast, if one’s rebellion against
an authoritative word is truly dialogic, that is unlikely to happen, or to be
subject to more of a self-check if it does. Then one questions one’s own certainties and invites skepticism, lest
one become what one has opposed. One may even step back and laugh at oneself. ¶ Laughter at oneself invites the
perspective of the other. Laughter is implicitly pluralist. Instead of looking at one’s opponents as the unconditionally
wrong, one imagines how one sounds to them. Regarding earlier authorities, one thinks: that voice of authority, it is not
my voice, but perhaps it has something to say, however wrongly put. It comes from a specific experience, which I must
understand. I will correct it, but to do that I must measure it, test it, against my own experience. Dialogue
is a
process of real testing, and one of the characteristics of a genuine test is that
the result is not guaranteed. It may turn out that sometimes the voice of earlier authority turns out to be
right on some point. Well, we will incorporate that much into our own “innerly persuasive voice.” Once one has done this,
once one has allowed one’s own evolving convictions to be tested by experience and by other convictions
AT Creativity
Not at the expense of limits – the result is a pedagogically
bankrupt discussion.
We can incorporate their offense but they can’t incorporate
our’s.
Steinberg, University of Miami, and Freeley, John Caroll University, 8
[Austin L. and David L., 2/13/2008, “Argumentation and Debate: Critical
Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making”, 12th edition,
http://teddykw2.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/argumentation-anddebate.pdf, p. 45]
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
“homelessness” or “abortion”¶ or “crime” or “global warming” we are likely to have
an interesting discussion¶ but not to establish profitable basis for argument.
For example, the statement¶ “Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword” is
debatable, yet fails to¶ provide much basis for clear argumentation. If we take this
statement to mean¶ that 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.
Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem.¶
It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument.¶ What
sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels, government documents, website
development, advertising, or what? What does “effectiveness”¶ mean 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.Ӧ 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.
AT K of Fairness
Conflicts are inevitable – our attempt to establish procedural
fairness is necessary to the decision-making process EVEN IF
substantive fairness cannot be achieved.
Menkel-Meadow, 4 (Carrie, Georgetown University Law Center, 2004, “From
Legal Disputes to Conflict Resolution and Human Problem Solving: Legal Dispute
Resolution in a Multidisciplinary Context”)
If recent world events have taught us anything, it is that conflict and conflicting
notions of the good are inevitable for human beings. So, while many of us seek
ways to establish more universal notions of the good toward which to direct our human
efforts, it has, sadly, become, in the early years of the twenty-first century, more common
for us to assume there will be basic value differences among us. We should, then,
spend our time thinking about how we can at least develop fair and
considerate processes for communicating enough with each other so that we
may act with the most benefit and the least harm. Some offer hopes that "the rule
of law" can be universalized as a principled way to resolve conflicts, domestically and
internationally. Others of us see law as often conflictual, indeterminate, and politically
contested or manipulable, or so focused on the need for regulation of the aggregate that
it cannot always do 'Justice" in particular cases. Legal justice is not always actual justice.¶
The social philosopher Stuart Hampshire has recently concluded, in his book Justice Is
Conflict, that while we may never agree about what the content of universal justice is
"because there never will be such a harmony, either in the soul or in the city," we might
instead come closer to recognizing that "fairness in procedures for resolving
conflicts is the fundamental kind of fairness, and that it is acknowledged as a
value in most cultures, places, and times: fairness in procedure is an invariable value, a
constant in human nature."2 Hampshire goes on to say-in words eloquent enough to
make one feel proud of what has constituted at least half of a lifetime's work of theorizing
and practice 10 conflict resolution-that¶ [b]ecause there will always be conflicts
between conceptions of the good, moral conflicts, both in the soul and in the city, there
is everywhere a well-¶ recognized need for procedures of conflict resolution,
which can replace¶ brute force and domination and tyranny.3¶ The existence of such an
institution [for conflict resolution], and the particular form of its rules and conventions
of procedure are matters of historical contingency. There is no rational necessity about
the more specific rules and conventions determining the criteria for success in argument
in any particular institution, except the overriding necessity that each side in the
conflict should be heard putting its case ("audi alteram par/em '].4¶ [T]he skillful
management of conflicts [is] among the highest of human skills. 5¶ Hampshire identifies
several principles which are crucial to understanding the importance of procedural
justice.¶ 1. Conflict is human and ubiquitous. Conflict is actually necessary for
defining what is important about oneself and the polity to which individuals belong,
and for instigating important social change (e.g., the elimination of slavery, the
movements toward racial and gender equality, as well as increased democratic
participation in many nations). Agreement on all human values is unlikely given
human diversity, deep-seated cultural norms, and the variation of human needs and
desires.¶ 2. Even if we cannot all agree on substantive norms and goals, we can
probably agree on some processes for making decisions that will enable us to
go forward and act. We might have some virtually universal ideas about procedural
fairness, like the ability to "make a case" and "be heard" and to have
impartiality and fairness govern any decision-making process. Some might go
further and suggest that some participation in the process by which decisions are made
is essential to the legitimacy of a process (with or without commitments to
democratic political regimes).
Agonistic rhetoric is more than succeed-at-all-costs –
adversarial debate is key to testing ideas and tolerating
difference.
Crosswhite 2 (James Crosswhite, Professor, Department of English, University of
Oregon, Ph.D. Philosophy, UC San Diego, B.A. Philosophy, UC Santa Cruz, “Conflict in
Concert: Fighting Hannah Arendt's Good Fight,” JAC, 22(4), Fall 2002, pp.948-959,
http://www.jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol22.4/crosswhite-conflict.pdf)
Early in her essay, and again at the end, Roberts-Miller shakes hands with her opponent and acknowledges that there is a
legitimate grievance against agonistic rhetoric. The basic problem with valuing agonistic rhetoric is that one seems at the
same time to be promoting mere wrangling. The opponents ofagonistic rhetoric have opposed it on these grounds. One
needs a way to distinguish between agonistic rhetoric that is merely succeedat-all-costs-and-never-give-in combat and agonistic rhetoric that uses competition and
struggle to accomplish something greater than simple conquest. She is not sure that she has a
satisfying way of addressing this problem, but she cites a passage from John Locke in which the essence of wrangling is
that the wranglers are incapable of changing their minds, of being convinced by opposing arguments. Later in her essay, in
her gloss on a passage from Arendt, she develops this important feature of agonistic discourse: "It is not asymmetric
manipula- tion ofothers ... it must be a world into which one enters and by which¶ one can be changed" (593). This is a
familiar condition by which argumentation theorists attempt to delineate just what argumentation is. If the
interlocutors are not willing to change their minds, then they are not¶
engaged in argumentation. Near the end of her article, she regrets that Arendt did not do more to
distinguish polemical agonism from wrangling, and then she drops the discussion.¶ It would of course be very interesting
to hear more about this. The agonistic/collaborative distinction is made in large part, according to Roberts-Miller herself,
because one cannot distinguish the valuable kind of rhetoric from the destructive kind. If neither Arendt nor RobertsMiller can address this, then something is seriously amiss. At this point, it is just impossible not to regret that the last halfcentury's resurgence of argu- mentation theory is not more broadly acknowledged by those who make a profession of
rhetoric, writing, and literacy. Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca labor carefully in The New Rhetoric to
describe what makes possible the "contact of minds" that is a condition for the possibil- ity of genuine argumentation.
Franz van Eemeren and the late Rob Grootendorst worked for years on their "pragma-dialectical" rules for argumentative
discourse. And more recently, in The New Dialectic, Douglas Walton has systematized his thinking on the rules for
argumen- tative dialogues and distinguished the rules for eristic dialogues from the rules for inquiry dialogues,
deliberative dialogues, and other kinds of¶ argumentative discourse. It would be interesting to know whether Rob- ertsMiller would find in this work a way to elaborate the concept of polemical agonism and save it from its indistinguishability
from wran- gling.¶ However the threat of agonism's logical indistinguishability from wrangling is only part of the problem.
There is also a psychological dimension to the objection to agonistic argumentation. Some people are just psychologically
defeated by it. Their experience-in childhood, in a bad marriage, in the course of life in general, or even in court and with
lawyers, and perhaps in education-is to have been outdone by argumentation. It has not been a way for
them to gain a hearing, or a way to negotiate, or a way to resolve conflict, or
a way to learn, or a way to gain self-knowledge. They have succumbed to the
threat that Socrates feared for his own interlocutors-misology, the hatred of arguments-because of
the experience of being constantly defeated by them and by those who wield
them with virtuosity. This is not a problem that can be directly addressed by theorizing and argumentation,
although the theory of argumentation is quite an important part of it. It requires rather a practical kind of wisdom and
virtuous action. When Socrates breaks off the argument with young Theaetetus in Plato's dialogue of that name, it is
because he understands Theaetetus and his condition, the stage of his¶ formation, and the threat of misology, and because
he has the virtue to act on the younger man's behalf, to keep a space open for his individual development. One of the less
noted objections to agonistic rhetoric is that it damages those who are defeated by it, that it creates an association between
reason and failure, reason and psychological pain. It would be interesting to hear Roberts-Miller address this objection.
What would it take not only to theorize a logical distinction between agonistic rhetoric and wrangling but also to make use
ofthe distinction in our practice and teaching?¶ The central move in Roberts-Miller's deployment of Arendt's think- ing is
to accept the distinction between agonistic and collaborative rhetoric but to present arguments that reverse the value
hierarchy that the split sets up: to replace "much ofour dislike ofconflict with a dislike of consensus." Here she gives us
Arendt at her most Heideggerian. Human
beings are beset by a powerful drift toward
conformity that is an evasion of individual responsibility. This drift is not simply a
superficial, external conformity but a deep one in which our thinking becomes the thinking of no one in particular and in
which our individual identities meld in an anonymous social self. Ironically, this conformity is so deep that we can be most
social even while most isolated; in fact, conformity depends in part on a certain kind of isolation, an unwillingness to
express our disagreements and test them by arguments in some public way. Instead, one's social and
institutional identities pretty much determine how one¶ should think and act
on almost all occasions. This conformist sociality is the absolutization of
bureaucracy and the apotheosis of collaborationism. In Arendt's and Roberts-Miller's
hands, the idea of the collaborative takes on all the resonance the word had when it was used of those who capitulated to
the Nazis. One can almost see and hear scenes from The Sorrow and the Pity as one ponders these Arendtian ideas. And,
of course, Arendt's prime exhibit of "collaborative man" is the desk- murderer Adolph Eichmann, the perfect
administrator who, even after recognizing his complicity in the murder of millions, could under-¶ stand his guilt only as
the guilt ofobedience to his superiors, the guilt of doing his official duties. Eichmann is the thoroughly historicist, perfectly
formed social constructionist. To the challenge that he should have spoken out against what was going on, he replied:
"Under the circumstances then prevailing such an attitude was not possible. Nor did anyone behave in this fashion. From
my experience I know that the possibility, which was alleged only after the War, of opposing orders is a self-protective
fairy tale." Arendt's argument depends on Eichmann's¶ words never losing their power to chill us. And so Roberts-Miller
looks to Arendt for help in "replacing our mistrust of conflict with a mistrust of
consensus."¶ What Eichmann and collaborationism both lack is a capacity for being hospitable to a conflict of ideas.
True individuality (and not the passive isolation ofthe "personal"; even Eichmann was not "personally" in favor ofthe
persecution ofthe Jews) requires active political interac- tion that involves conflict and competition and the struggle and
testing of competing perspectives in argumentation. True individuality requires risk-the exposure
of our individual thoughts to the sometimes painful experience of their
public examination. This is the heroism of thinking. One always risks losing
and having to change. However, as Stanley Cavell would point out, this is also the joy and adventure of
individuality:¶ to change, to imagine one self as on some kind of path, to think of change as (sometimes painful)
transformation. This conflict, says Roberts- Miller, need not be forced. It is the form taken by
open
acknowledgment of difference. We find identities in the course of these conflicts; we set out on paths
toward ourselves. And this can all take place only when there is some kind of social
space for it and when there are individuals capable of it. And so, says Roberts-Miller,
we should trust collaborationism less and look to the agonism that allows
for individuality and openness to difference.
Excusing fairness as unimportant facilitates bad debates that
are dialogically useless and inherently exclusionary.
Galloway, Samford University communications professor, 07 — [Ryan Galloway,
professor of communications at Samford University (“Dinner And Conversation At The
Argumentative Table: Reconceptualizing Debate As An Argumentative Dialogue”,
Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 28 (2007)]
Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table, where all parties receive a
relatively fair opportunity to voice their position. Anything that fails to allow
participants to have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative table
a fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness
requirements. While affirmative teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in
fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of
each topic as its central point of departure.
Setting the affirmative reciprocally sets the negative. The negative crafts
approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative demands. The negative
crafts disadvantages, counter-plans, and critical arguments premised on the arguments
that the topic allows for the affirmative team. According to fairness norms, each side sits
at a relatively balanced argumentative table.
When one side takes more than its share, competitive equity suffers.
However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in the dialogue.
When one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood
of the other participant (Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as
dialogue takes this respect as a fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a
fundamental condition of a dialogue that takes the form of a demand for equality of
voice. Far from being a banal request for links to a disadvantage, fairness is a demand
for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a voice backed by literally
months upon months of preparation, research, and critical thinking not be
silenced.
Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to exclude
particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the
argumentative table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They
are unable to “understand what ‘went on…’” and are left to the whims of time and power
(Farrell, 1985, p. 114). Hugh Duncan furthers this line of reasoning:
Opponents not only tolerate but honor and respect each other because in
doing so they enhance their own chances of thinking better and reaching sound
decisions. Opposition is necessary because it sharpens thought in action. We
assume that argument, discussion, and talk, among free an informed people who
subordinate decisions of any kind, because it is only through such discussion that
we reach agreement which binds us to a common cause…If we are to be
equal…relationships among equals must find expression in many formal
and informal institutions (Duncan, 1993, p. 196-197).
Debate compensates for the exigencies of the world by offering a framework
that maintains equality for the sake of the conversation (Farrell, 1985, p. 114).
For example, an affirmative case on the 2007-2008 college topic might defend neither
state nor international action in the Middle East, and yet claim to be germane to the
topic in some way. The case essentially denies the arguments that state action is
oppressive or that actions in the international arena are philosophically or pragmatically
suspect. Instead of allowing for the dialogue to be modified by the
interchange of the affirmative case and the negative response, the
affirmative subverts any meaningful role to the negative team, preventing
them from offering effective “counter-word” and undermining the value of a
meaningful exchange of speech acts. Germaneness and other substitutes for
topical action do not accrue the dialogical benefits of topical advocacy.
AT Roleplaying
No link – defending policy does not necessitate pretending to be
the USfg – fiat is merely an intellectual heuristic for imagining
the enactment and consequences of a plan – does not kill
agency.
Michael Eber 5, former Director of Debate at Michigan State University, “Everyone
Uses Fiat”, April 8th,
http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/edebate@ndtceda.com/1077700.html
It is shocking to me how, after literally a DECADE of debates, no one seems to
understand what the hell fiat is. Policy teams foolishly defend "role playing" even
though they do not role play. And critique teams reject fiat even though
almost every single K alternative relies on a utopian imaginary that
necessitates a greater degree of fiat than the reformist Aff. Debate is
about opinion formation, not role-playing. Affirmative policy teams do not
pretend to BE the federal government. They merely IMAGINE the
consequences of the government enacting the plan as a means of
determining whether it SHOULD be done. All fiat represents is the step of
imagining hypothetical enactment of the plan as an intellectual tool for
deciding whether WE should endorse it."How should we determine whether or not
to ENDORSE lifting sanctions on Cuba?" "Well, what would happen if the government
did that?" "Let's IMAGINE a world where sanctions are lifted. What would that world
look like? Would it be better than the status quo?" "Is that world better than competitive
alternatives?"This conversation does NOT posit the discussants AS the federal
government. They do not switch identities and act like Condaleeza and
Rummy. They do not give up the agency to decide something for themselves the whole point is simply to use the imagination of fiat to determine OUR OPINION.
AT Agency
Policy debates are empowering.
Zwarensteyn, Grand Valley State Masters’ student, 12 [Ellen C., 8-1-2012 “High
School Policy Debate as an Enduring Pathway to Political Education: Evaluating
Possibilities for Political Learning”
http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=theses]
A debate education becomes a way for students to think of themselves as
activists and critics of society. This is a practice of empowerment. Warner and
Brushke (2001) continue to highlight how practicing public speaking itself may be
vitally empowering. Speaking in a highly engaged academic environment where the
goal is analytical victory would put many on edge. Taking academic risks in a
debate round, however, yields additional benefits. The process of debating
allows students to practice listening and conceiving and re-conceiving ideas
based on in-round cooperation. This cooperation, even between competing teams,
establishes respect for the process of deliberation. This practice may in turn
empower students to use speaking and listening skills outside the debate
round and in their local communities skills making students more
comfortable talking to people who are different from them (Warner and
Brushke, 2001, p. 4-7). Moreover, there is inherent value in turning the
traditional tables of learning around. Reversing the traditional classroom
demonstrates students taking control of their own learning through the
praxis of argumentation. Students learn to depend on themselves and their
colleagues for information and knowledge and must cooperate through the
debate process. Taken together, policy debate aids academic achievement,
student behavior, critical thinking, and empowers students to view
themselves as qualified agents for social change.
AT Privilege DA
Forcing confessions out of individuals fails to collectivize action
that can change broader structures of domination – Instead it
bestows cultural capital to those least privileged creating a
perverse game to be the most oppressed.
Andrea Smith, Ph.D., co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, UC
Riverside Associate Professor, 2013, Geographies of Privilege, Unsettling the Privilege of
Self-Reflexivity, Kindle
In my experience working with a multitude of anti-racist organizing projects over the years, I frequently found myself
participating in various workshops in which participants were asked to reflect on their gender/race/sexuality/class/etc.
privilege. These workshops had a bit of a self-help orientation to them: “I am so and so, and I have x privilege.” It was
never quite clear what the point of these confessions were. It was not as if other participants did not know the confessor in
question had her/his proclaimed privilege. It did not appear that these individual confessions
actually led
to any political projects to dismantle the structures of domination
that enabled their privilege. Rather, the confessions became the political
project themselves. The benefits of these confessions seemed to be ephemeral. For the
instant the confession took place, those who do not have that privilege in daily life would have a temporary position of
power as the hearer of the confession who could grant absolution and forgiveness. The sayer of the
confession could then be granted temporary forgiveness for her/his abuses of power and
relief from white/male/heterosexual/etc guilt. Because of the perceived benefits of this ritual, there was generally little
critique of the fact that in the end, it primarily served to reinstantiate the structures of
domination it was supposed to resist. One of the reasons there was little critique of this practice is
that it bestowed cultural capital to those who seemed to be the “most
oppressed.” Those who had little privilege did not have to confess and were in the position to be the judge of those
who did have privilege. Consequently, people aspired to be oppressed. Inevitably, those with more
privilege would develop new heretofore unknown forms of oppression from which they suffered. “I may be white, but my
best friend was a person of color, which caused me to be oppressed when we played together.” Consequently, the goal
became not to actually end oppression but to be as oppressed as possible.
These rituals often substituted confession for political movement-building.
And despite the cultural capital that was, at least temporarily, bestowed to those who seemed to be the most oppressed,
these rituals ultimately reinstantiated the white majority subject as the subject capable of self-reflexivity and the
colonized/racialized subject as the occasion for self-reflexivity. These rituals around self-reflexivity in the academy and in
activist circles are not without merit. They are informed by key insights into how the logics of domination that structure
the world also constitute who we are as subjects. Political projects of transformation necessarily involve a fundamental
reconstitution of ourselves as well. However, for this process to work, individual transformation must
occur concurrently with social and political transformation. That is, the
undoing of privilege occurs not by individuals confessing their privileges or
trying to think themselves into a new subject position, but through the creation of collective
structures that dismantle the systems that enable these privileges. The activist
genealogies that produced this response to racism and settler colonialism were not initially focused on racism as a
problem of individual prejudice. Rather, the purpose was for individuals to recognize how they were shaped by structural
forms of oppression. However, the response to structural racism became an individual one – individual confession at the
expense of collective action. Thus the question becomes, how would one collectivize individual transformation? Many
organizing projects attempt and have attempted to do precisely this, such Sisters in Action for Power, Sista II Sista, Incite!
Women of Color Against Violence, and Communities Against Rape and Abuse, among many others. Rather than focus
simply on one’s individual privilege, they address privilege on an organizational level. For instance, they might assess – is
everyone who is invited to speak a college graduate? Are certain peoples always in the limelight? Based on this assessment,
they develop structures to address how privilege is exercised collectively. For instance, anytime a person with a college
degree is invited to speak, they bring with them a co-speaker who does not have that education level. They might develop
mentoring and skills-sharing programs within the group. To quote one of my activist mentors, Judy Vaughn, “You don’t
think your way into a different way of acting; you act your way into a different way of thinking.” Essentially, the current
social structure conditions us to exercise what privileges we may have. If we want to undermine those
privileges, we must change the structures within which we live so that we
become different peoples in the process.
AT Discourse/Reps
Placing representations and discourse first trades off with
concrete political change
Taft-Kaufman, 95 (Jill, professor, Department of Speech Communication And
Dramatic Arts, at Central Michigan University, Southern Communication Journal,
Spring, proquest)
Clarke's assessment of the postmodern elevation of language to the "sine qua non" of
critical discussion is an even stronger indictment against the trend. Clarke examines
Lyotard's (1984) The Postmodern Condition in which Lyotard maintains that virtually all
social relations are linguistic, and, therefore, it is through the coercion that threatens
speech that we enter the "realm of terror" and society falls apart. To this assertion,
Clarke replies: I can think of few more striking indicators of the political and intellectual
impoverishment of a view of society that can only recognize the discursive. If the worst
terror we can envisage is the threat not to be allowed to speak, we are appallingly
ignorant of terror in its elaborate contemporary forms. It may be the intellectual's
conception of terror (what else do we do but speak?), but its projection onto the rest of
the world would be calamitous....(pp. 2-27) The realm of the discursive is derived from
the requisites for human life, which are in the physical world, rather than in a world of
ideas or symbols.(4) Nutrition, shelter, and protection are basic human needs that
require collective activity for their fulfillment. Postmodern emphasis on the discursive
without an accompanying analysis of how the discursive emerges from material
circumstances hides the complex task of envisioning and working towards concrete
social goals (Merod, 1987). Although the material conditions that create the situation of
marginality escape the purview of the postmodernist, the situation and its consequences
are not overlooked by scholars from marginalized groups. Robinson (1990) for example,
argues that "the justice that working people deserve is economic, not just textual" (p.
571). Lopez (1992) states that "the starting point for organizing the program content of
education or political action must be the present existential, concrete situation" (p. 299).
West (1988) asserts that borrowing French post-structuralist discourses about
"Otherness" blinds us to realities of American difference going on in front of us (p. 170).
Unlike postmodern "textual radicals" who Rabinow (1986) acknowledges are "fuzzy
about power and the realities of socioeconomic constraints" (p. 255), most writers from
marginalized groups are clear about how discourse interweaves with the concrete
circumstances that create lived experience. People whose lives form the material for
postmodern counter-hegemonic discourse do not share the optimism over the new
recognition of their discursive subjectivities, because such an acknowledgment does not
address sufficiently their collective historical and current struggles against racism,
sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice. They do not appreciate being told they are
living in a world in which there are no more real subjects. Ideas have consequences.
Emphasizing the discursive self when a person is hungry and homeless represents both a
cultural and humane failure. The need to look beyond texts to the perception and
attainment of concrete social goals keeps writers from marginalized groups ever-mindful
of the specifics of how power works through political agendas, institutions, agencies, and
the budgets that fuel them.
AT: Ontology/Epistemology
No prior questions
Owen 2 – David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton, Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p.
655-7
Commenting on the ‘philosophical turn’ in IR, Wæver remarks that ‘[a] frenzy for words like “epistemology” and “ontology” often
signals this philosophical turn’, although he goes on to comment that these terms are often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed
or not, it is clear that debates concerning ontology and epistemology play a central role in the contemporary IR theory wars. In one
respect, this is unsurprising since it is a characteristic feature of the social sciences that periods of disciplinary disorientation involve
recourse to reflection on the philosophical commitments of different theoretical approaches, and there is no doubt that such
reflection can play a valuable role in making explicit the commitments that characterise (and help individuate) diverse theoretical
positions. Yet, such a philosophical turn is not without its dangers and I will briefly mention three before turning to consider a
confusion that has, I will suggest, helped to promote the IR theory wars by motivating this philosophical turn. The first danger
with the philosophical
turn is that it has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of
ontology and epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the
latter two were merely a simple function of the former. But while the explanatory
and/or interpretive power of a theoretical account is not wholly independent of its ontological
and/or epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any
value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments.
Thus, for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful
accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective action
are foregrounded. It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good
account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant
actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory)
and, if this is the case, it is a philosophical weakness—but this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class
of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In
other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their
ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not
the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is
that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theory-construction from
philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problemdriven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there
is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the
challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action,
event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, ‘theory-driven
work is part of a reductionist program’ in that it ‘dictates always opting for the description that calls
for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory’.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests
on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to
characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to
misunderstand the enterprise of science since ‘whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a
question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry’.6 Moreover, this
strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of
empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a
particular image of disciplinary debate in IR—what might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) ‘the Highlander
view’—namely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical
alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view
because the turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one
theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and
epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially
vicious circle arises.
State Good
AT: State Bad Generic
Not always – policy can be affirmed within contingent, specific,
and contextualized formulations – abstract demonization of
power obfuscates the benefits of political engagement.
Zanotti, 13 (Laura, Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at
Virginia Tech, 12/30/13, Center for the Study of Developing Societies, “Governmentality,
Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World”)
By questioning substantialist representations of power and subjects, inquiries on the
possibilities of political agency are reframed in a way that focuses on power and subjects’
relational character and the contingent processes of their (trans)formation in the context
of agonic relations. Options for resistance to governmental scripts are not
limited to ‘‘rejection,’’ ‘‘revolution,’’ or ‘‘dispossession’’ to regain a pristine
‘‘freedom from all constraints’’ or an immanent ideal social order. It is found
instead in multifarious and contingent struggles that are constituted within the
scripts of governmental rationalities and at the same time exceed and transform
them. This approach questions oversimplifications of the complexities of liberal political
rationalities and of their interactions with non-liberal political players and nurtures a
radical skepticism about identifying universally good or bad actors or abstract solutions
to political problems. International power interacts in complex ways with diverse
political spaces and within these spaces it is appropriated, hybridized,
redescribed, hijacked, and tinkered with.¶ Governmentality as a heuristic
focuses on performing complex diagnostics of events. It invites historically
situated explorations and careful differentiations rather than overarching
demonizations of ‘‘power,’’ romanticizations of the ‘‘rebel’’ or the ‘‘the
local.’’ More broadly, theoretical formula- tions that conceive the subject in nonsubstantialist terms and focus on processes of subjectification, on the ambiguity of
power discourses, and on hybridization as the terrain for political transforma- tion,
open ways for reconsidering political agency beyond the dichotomy of
oppression/rebellion. These alternative formulations also foster an ethics of
political engagement, to be continuously taken up through plural and uncertain
practices, that demand continuous attention to ‘‘what happens’’ instead of
fixations on ‘‘what ought to be.’’83 Such ethics of engagement would not await the
revolution to come or hope for a pristine ‘‘freedom’’ to be regained. Instead, it would
constantly attempt to twist the working of power by playing with whatever
cards are available and would require intense processes of reflexivity on the
consequences of political choices. To conclude with a famous phrase by Michel
Foucault ‘‘my point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which
is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have
something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper- and pessimistic
activism.’’84
This is descriptive NOT absolute- we should use the state as a
heuristic to imagine possible political actions.
Zanotti, 13 (Laura, Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at
Virginia Tech, 12/30/13, Center for the Study of Developing Societies, “Governmentality,
Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World”)
While there are important variations in the way international relations scholars use governmen- tality theory, for the
purpose of my argument I identify two broad trajectories.2 One body of scholar- ship uses governmentality as a heuristic
tool to explore modalities of local and international government and to assess their effects in the contexts where they are
deployed; the other adopts this notion as a descriptive tool to theorize the globally oppressive features of international
liberalism. Scholars who use governmentality as a heuristic tool tend to conduct
inquiries based upon analyses of practices of government and resistance. These
scholars rely on ethnographic inquiries, empha- sizes the multifarious ways government
works in practice (to include its oppressive trajectories) and the ways uneven interactions of
governmental strategies and resistance are contingently enacted. As examples, Didier Bigo,
building upon Pierre Bourdieu, has encouraged a research methodology that privileges a relational approach and focuses
on practice;3 William Walters has advocated consider- ing governmentality as a research program rather than as a
‘‘depiction of discrete systems of power;’’4 and Michael Merlingen has criticized the downplaying of resistance and the use
of ‘‘governmentality’’ as interchangeable with liberalism.5 Many other scholars have engaged in con- textualized analyses
of governmental tactics and resistance. Oded Lowenheim has shown how ‘‘responsibilization’’ has become an instrument
for governing individual travelers through ‘‘travel warnings’’ as well as for ‘‘developing states’’ through performance
indicators;6 Wendy Larner and William Walters have questioned accounts of globalization as an ontological dimension of
the present and advocated less substantialized accounts that focus on studying the discourses, processes and practices
through which globalization is made as a space and a political economy;7 Ronnie D. Lipschutz and James K. Rowe have
looked at how localized practices of resistance may engage and transform power relations;8 and in my own work, I have
studied the deployment of disciplinary and¶ governmental tools for reforming governments in peacekeeping operations
and how these practices 9¶ were hijacked and resisted and by their targets.¶ Scholars who use
governmentality as a descriptive tool focus instead on one particular
trajectory¶ of global liberalism, that is on the convergence of knowledge and scrutiny of life processes (or
bio- politics) and violence and theorize global liberalism as an extremely effective formation, a coherent and powerful
Leviathan, where biopolitical tools and violence come together to serve dominant classes or states’ political agendas. As I
will show, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Sergei Prozorov tend to embrace this position.10 ¶
The distinction between governmentality as a heuristic and governmentality
as a descriptive tool is central for debating political agency. I argue that,
notwithstanding their critique of liberalism, scholars who use governmentality as a
descriptive tool rely on the same ontological assumptions as the liberal
order they criticize and do move away from Foucault’s focus on historical practices in order to privilege
abstract theorizations. By using governmentality as a description of ‘‘liberal- ism’’ or ‘‘capitalism’’ instead of as a
methodology of inquiry on power’s contingent modalities and technologies, these scholars tend to reify a substantialist
ontology that ultimately reinforces a liberal conceptualization of subjects and power as standing in a relation of externality
and stifles the pos- sibility of reimagining political agency on different
grounds. ‘‘Descriptive governmentality’’ con- structs a critique of the liberal international order based upon an
ontological framework that presupposes that power and subjects are entities possessing qualities that preexist relations.
Power is imagined as a ‘‘mighty totality,’’ and subjects as monads endowed with potentia. As a result, the problematique
of political agency is portrayed as a quest for the ‘‘liberation’’ of a subject ontologi- cally gifted with a freedom that power
inevitably oppresses. In this way, the conceptualization of political agency remains confined within the liberal struggle of
‘‘freedom’’ and ‘‘oppression.’’ Even researchers who adopt a Foucauldian vocabulary end up falling into what Bigo has
identified as ‘‘traps’’ of political science and international relations theorizing, specifically essentialization and
ahistoricism.11¶ I argue here that in order to reimagine political agency an ontological and epistemological turn is
necessary, one that relies upon a relational ontology. Relational ontological positions question adopting abstract stable
entities, such as ‘‘structures,’’ ‘‘power,’’ or ‘‘subjects,’’ as explanations for what happens. Instead, they explore how these
pillar concepts of the Western political thought came to being, what kind of practices they facilitate, consolidate and result
from, what ambiguities and aporias they contain, and how they are transformed.12 Relational ontologies nurture
‘‘modest’’ con- ceptualizations of political agency and also question the overwhelming stability of ‘‘mighty total- ities,’’
such as for instance the international liberal order or the state. In this framework, political action has more
to do with playing with the cards that are dealt to us to produce practical
effects in specific contexts than with building idealized ‘‘new totalities’’
where perfect conditions might exist. The political ethics that results from non-substantialist
ontological positions is one that privi- leges ‘‘modest’’ engagements and weights political choices with regard to the
consequences and dis- tributive effects they may produce in the context where they are made rather than based upon their
universal normative aspirations.13
Their interpretation of the state is reductionist, totalizing, and
destroys the very possibility of political agency.
Zanotti, 13 (Laura, Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at
Virginia Tech, 12/30/13, Center for the Study of Developing Societies, “Governmentality,
Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World”)
In summary, in non-substantialist frameworks, agency is conceptualized as modest and
multifar- ious agonic interactions, localized tactics, hybridized engagement and
redescriptions, a series of uncertain and situated responses to ambiguous discourses and
practices of power aimed at the con- struction of new openings, possibilities and
different distributive processes, the outcomes of which are always to an extent
unpredictable. Political agency here is not imagined as a quest for individual
authenticity in opposition to a unitary nefarious oppressive Leviathan aimed at
the creation of a ‘‘better totality’’ where subjects can float freed of ‘‘oppression,’’ or a
multitude made into a unified ‘‘subject’’ will reverse the might of Empire and bring
about a condition of immanent social justice. By not reifying power as a script and
subject as monads endowed with freedom non-substantialist positions open the way
for conceptualizing political agency as an engagement imbricated in praxis.
The ethical virtue that is called for is ‘‘pragmatist humility,’’ that is the patience of
playing with the cards that are dealt to us, enacting redescriptions and
devising tactics for tinkering82 with what exists in specific contexts.¶
Conclusion¶ In this article, I have argued that, notwithstanding their critical stance,
scholars who use governmen- tality as a descriptive tool remain rooted in
substantialist ontologies that see power and subjects as standing in a relation of
externality. They also downplay processes of coconstitution and the importance of indeterminacy and ambiguity as the very space where political
agency can thrive. In this¶ way, they drastically limit the possibility for
imagining political agency outside the liberal straight- jacket. They represent
international liberal biopolitical and governmental power as a homogenous and
totalizing formation whose scripts effectively oppress ‘‘subjects,’’ that are in
turn imagined as free ‘‘by nature.’’ Transformations of power modalities through
multifarious tactics of hybridiza- tion and redescriptions are not considered as
options. The complexity of politics is reduced to homo- genizing and/or
romanticizing narratives and political engagements are reduced to total
heroic rejections or to revolutionary moments.
AT: Nothing Leaves the Room
This cements the notion change is out of our reach - deliberative
dialogue over specific state policies can change this.
McCoy 2 (Martha L. – Executive director of the Study Circles Resource Center, the
primary project of The Paul J. Aicher Foundation, of which she is President – and
Patrick L. Scully — president of Clearview Consulting LLC, a firm that conducts public
policy research and analysis, designs and leads public participation and engagement
initiatives, develops and evaluates programs, and provides leadership and management
support; Before forming Clearview Consulting, Pat was Executive Vice President of The
Paul J. Aicher Foundation where he served as deputy director of its flagship program,
Everyday Democracy – "Deliberative Dialogue to Expand Civic Engagement: What Kind
of Talk Does Democracy Need?," NATIONALCIVIC REVIEW, vol. 91, no. 2, Summer
2002, http://ncdd.org/rc/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/McCoy-DD_Expand_CE.pdf)
8. Provide a way for people to see themselves as actors and to be actors. Our
everyday public discourse
reinforces the idea that real change happens “out there,” beyond most people’s reach or
influence. In part, this reflects the all- too-common disconnects between citizens and elected officials and between¶
126 McCoy, Scully¶
community members and the institutions and resources of the community. It also reflects the difficulty in seeing how
individuals’ efforts to create change connect to the larger issues or the larger community.¶ Effective deliberative
dialogue processes address this in two ways. First, whole-community organizing creates opportunities for
people from various neighborhoods, institutions, and agencies to work through problems, consider solutions, and share a
variety of resources to solve them.32 In essence, the process should bring “us” and “them” together in
the conversation, so that the conversation is about “all of us” making a difference in the community. This
takes the
focus away from “this is what we hope they will do.”¶ Second, the content of the
deliberative dialogue process is also critical. It helps create a sense of agency for
each person by leading participants in a nat- ural progression from analysis of the issue to
an exploration of specific action steps. When participants have the chance to consider a range of actions that
different actors (such as individuals, small groups, nonprofits, businesses, schools, and government) can take, they are
more likely to see that solutions to public problems can come in many and varied ways. They are also more likely to
see themselves as actors. When a public conversation ends with analy- sis of the issue and does not
progress to an intentional conversation about action steps, it reinforces the idea that the possibilities for addressing the
issue are entirely outside the room.¶ The final session of a study circle gives participants a chance to follow this natural
progression, consider a range of possible actions, and decide which action steps they see as most important. Then they
present those action prior- ities at a large-group meeting (often referred to as an action forum) that gives all the small
groups a chance to pool their ideas and move forward on a range of actions. It is also important to keep the results of the
deliberative dialogue process in the public eye. This helps people see the value of their participa- tion.33 Some
communities have developed benchmarks for change to help par- ticipants and the larger community measure the
progress they are making. This recognition of change encourages sustained efforts and also inspires broader
participation.¶ We have found that the marriage of community organizing to deliberative dialogue is essential for bringing
this principle to life. While it is possible for people in small-scale engagement processes to consider possible action steps, a
diverse, large-scale process opens up many more avenues for action that can address institutional, community-wide, and
policy dimensions of issues.34¶ 9. Connect to government, policymaking, and governance. A common prac- tice in public
talk processes is to ask participants to report the results of their deliberation to elected officials. Yet if the process does not
include a way to establish trust and mutuality between citizens and government, it will fall short of helping them work
together more effectively. Some engagement processes include ways to capture themes and convey them to public officials.
Identify- ing areas of common ground among members of the public can be especially¶ ¶
Deliberative Dialogue to
Expand Civic Engagement 127¶ useful to legislators who are looking for ways to reframe adversarial public pol- icy
debates. But the more effective input processes go one step further: they involve the policymakers as participants on an
equal basis in the dialogue.¶ Democratic conversation between citizens and government has always been
central to the ideal (if not practice) of democracy. A current-day example is Benjamin Barber’s call for
“horizontal conversations among citizens rather than the more usual vertical conversation typical of communication
between citizens and elites.”35 This type of process makes it more likely that the input will
be meaningful to officials, and thus acted on. It creates a context of reci- procity and relationship building
that makes for a nonthreatening way for pub- lic officials to reevaluate their own perspectives on policy issues, and
citizens to have their voices heard in a more meaningful way. In Oklahoma, the
for
League of Women Voters and several other organizations organized a statewide study circle program on criminal justice
and corrections. The study circles occurred in thirteen communities across the state and included state legislators. The
involvement of legislators in the deliberative dialogue helped break a long-standing deadlock on corrections policy and
helped create a rad- ical revision of the criminal justice system.36
Political Engagement Good
Anti-state politics lock in unaccountable policymaking – the
result is individualized ethics reliant on wishful thinking rather
than true political engagement.
Chandler ’7
(David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Politics and
International Relations, University of Westminster – ¶ "The Attraction of Post-Territorial
Politics: Ethics and Activism in the International Sphere" – Inaugural Lecture – May –
available at: http://www.davidchandler.org/pdf/short_articles/Inaugural20lecture.pdf)
The practice of ‘doing politics’ as a form of religiosity is a highly conservative one. As Marx argued, religion was the ‘opium
of the people’ - this is politics as a sedative or pacifier: it feeds an illusory view of
change at the expense of genuine social engagement and transformation. I
want to argue that global ethical politics reflects and institutionalises our sense of
disconnection and social atomisation and results in irrational and
unaccountable government policy making. I want to illustrate my points by briefly looking at the
practices of global ethics in three spheres, those of radical political activism, government policy making and academia. ¶
Radical activism¶ People often argue that there is nothing passive or conservative about radical political
activist protests, such as the 2003 anti-war march, anti-capitalism and anti- globalisation protests, the huge
march to Make Poverty History at the end of 2005, involvement in the World Social Forums or the radical jihad of AlQaeda. I disagree; these new forms of protest are highly individualised and personal ones - there is
no attempt to build a social or collective movement. It appears that theatrical suicide,
demonstrating, badge and bracelet wearing are ethical acts in themselves: personal statements of awareness, rather than
attempts to engage politically with society.¶ This is illustrated by the ‘celebration of differences’ at marches, protests and
social forums. It is as if people are more concerned with the creation of a sense of community
through differences than with any political debate, shared agreement or collective purpose. It seems to me
that if someone was really concerned with ending war or with ending poverty or with overthrowing capitalism, that
political views and political differences would be quite important. Is war caused by capitalism, by human nature, or by the
existence of guns and other weapons? It would seem important to debate reasons, causes
and solutions, it would also seem necessary to give those¶ 3¶ political differences an
organisational expression if there was a serious project of social change.¶
Rather than a political engagement with the world, it seems that radical
political activism today is a form of social disengagement – expressed in the anti-war
marchers’ slogan of ‘Not in My Name’, or the assumption that wearing a plastic bracelet or setting up an internet blog
diary is the same as engaging in political debate. In fact, it seems that political activism is a practice which isolates
individuals who think that demonstrating a personal commitment or awareness of problems is preferable to engaging with
other people who are often dismissed as uncaring or brain-washed by consumerism. The narcissistic aspects of the
practice of this type of global politics are expressed clearly by individuals who are obsessed with reducing their carbon
footprint, deriving their idealised sense of social connection from an ever increasing awareness of themselves and by
giving ‘political’ meaning to every personal action.¶ Global ethics appear to be in demand because they offer us a sense of
social connection and meaning while at the same time giving us the freedom to construct the meaning for ourselves, to
pick our causes of concern, and enabling us to be free of responsibilities for acting as part of a collective association, for
winning an argument or for success at the ballot-box. While the appeal of global ethical politics
is an individualistic one, the lack of success or impact of radical activism is also
reflected in its rejection of any form of social movement or organisation.¶
Governments¶ Strange as it may seem, the only people who are keener on global ethics
than radical activists are political elites. Since the end of the Cold War, global ethics have formed
the core of foreign policy and foreign policy has tended to dominate domestic politics. Global ethics are at the centre of
debates and discussion over humanitarian intervention, ‘healing the scar of Africa’, the war on terror and the ‘war against
climate insecurity’. Tony Blair argued in the Guardian last week that ‘foreign policy is no longer foreign policy’ (Timothy
Garten Ash, ‘Like it or Loath it, after 10 years Blair knows exactly what he stands for’, 26 April 2007), this is certainly
true.¶ 4¶ Traditional foreign policy, based on strategic geo-political interests with a clear framework for policy-making,
no longer seems so important. The government is down-sizing the old Foreign and Commonwealth Office
where people were regional experts, spoke the languages and were engaged for the long-term, and provides more
resources to the Department for International Development where its staff are experts in good causes. This shift was clear
in the UK’s attempt to develop an Ethical Foreign Policy in the 1990s – an approach which openly claimed to have rejected
strategic interests for values and the promotion of Britain’s caring and sharing ‘identity’. Clearly, the projection of foreign
policy on the basis of demonstrations of values and identity, rather than an understanding of the needs and interests of
people on the ground, leads to ill thought-through and short-termist policy-making, as was seen in the ‘value-based’
interventions from Bosnia to Iraq (see Blair’s recent Foreign Affairs article, ‘A Battle for Global Values’, 86:1 (2007),
pp.79–90).¶ Governments have been more than happy to put global ethics at the
top of the political agenda for - the same reasons that radical activists have been eager to shift to the
global sphere – the freedom from political responsibility that it affords them.
Every government and international institution has shifted from strategic and
instrumental policy-making based on a clear political programme to the ambitious
assertion of global causes – saving the planet, ending poverty, saving Africa, not just ending war but
solving the causes of conflict etc – of course, the more ambitious the aim the less anyone can be held to account for success
and failure. In fact, the more global the problem is, the more responsibility can be shifted to blame the US or the UN for
the failure to translate ethical claims into concrete results. Ethical global questions, where the alleged values of the UN,
the UK, the ‘civilised world’, NATO or the EU are on the line in ‘wars of choice’ from the war on terror to the war on global
warming lack traditional instrumentality because they are driven less by the traditional interests of Realpolitik than the
narcissistic search for meaning or identity.¶ Governments feel the consequences of their lack of social connection, even
more than we do as individuals; it undermines any attempt to represent shared interests or cohere political programmes.
As Baudrillard suggests, without a connection to the ‘represented’ masses, political leaders are as open to ridicule and
exposure as the¶ 5¶ ‘Emperor with no clothes’ (In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, New York: Semiotext(e), 1983, for
example). It is this lack of shared social goals which makes instrumental policy-
making increasingly problematic. As Donald Rumsfeld stated about the war on terror, ‘there are no
metrics’ to help assess whether the war is being won or lost. These wars and campaigns, often alleged to be based on the
altruistic claim of the needs and interests of others, are demonstrations and performances, based on ethical claims rather
than responsible practices and policies. Max Weber once counterposed this type of politics – the ‘ethics of conviction’ – to
the ‘ethics of responsibility’ in his lecture on ‘Politics as a Vocation’. The desire to act on the
international scene without a clear strategy or purpose has led to highly
destabilising interventions from the Balkans to Iraq and to the moralisation of a wide range of issues from
war crimes to EU membership requirements.¶ Academia¶ Today more and more people are ‘doing politics’ in their
academic work. This is the reason for the boom in International Relations study and the attraction of other social sciences
to the global sphere. I would argue that the attraction of IR for many people has not been IR theory but the desire to
practice global ethics. The boom in the IR discipline has coincided with a rejection of Realist theoretical frameworks of
power and interests and the sovereignty/anarchy problematic. However, I would argue that this rejection has not been a
product of theoretical engagement with Realism but an ethical act of rejection of Realism’s ontological focus. ¶ It seems
that our ideas and our theories say much more about us than the world we live in. Normative theorists and Constructivists
tend to support the global ethical turn arguing that we should not be as concerned with ‘what is’ as with the potential for
the emergence of global ethical community. Constructivists, in particular, focus upon the ethical language which political
elites espouse rather than the practices of power. But the most dangerous trends in the discipline today
are those frameworks which have taken up Critical theory and argue that
focusing on the world as it exists is conservative ‘problem-solving’ while the
task for critical theorists is to focus on emancipatory alternative forms of living
or of thinking about the world. Critical thought then becomes a process of wishful
thinking rather than one of engagement,¶ 6¶ with its advocates arguing that we need to focus on
clarifying our own ethical frameworks and biases and positionality before thinking about or teaching on world affairs; in
the process this becomes ‘me-search’ rather than research. We have moved a long way from
Hedley Bull’s perspective that, for academic research to be truly radical, we had to put our values to the side to follow
where the question or inquiry might lead.¶ The inward-looking and narcissistic trends in academia, where we are
more concerned with our ‘reflectivity’ – the awareness of our own ethics and values
- than with engaging with the world, was brought home to me when I asked my IR students which
theoretical frameworks they agreed with most and they replied mostly Critical theory and Constructivism despite the fact
that they thought that states operated on the basis of power and self-interest in a world of anarchy. Their theoretical
preferences were based more on what their choices said about them as ethical individuals than about how theory might be
used to understand and engage with the world.
AT: Exclusive
The state is not innately exclusionary – invoking nationhood can
vitalize and sustain civic engagement as well as relativize
internal differences.
Brubaker 4
Rogers Brubaker, Department of Sociology, UCLA, 2004, In the Name of the Nation:
Reflectionson Nationalism and Patriotism, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2,
www.sailorstraining.eu/admin/download/b28.pdf
In the United States and other relatively settled, longstanding nation-states, ‘nation’
can work in this exclusionary way, as in nativist movements in America or in the
rhetoric of the contemporary European far right (‘la France oux Franc¸ais’, ‘Deutschland
den Deutshchen’). Yet it can also work in a very different and fundamentally
inclusive way.3 It can work to mobilize mutual solidarity among members of
‘the nation’, inclusively defined to include all citizens—and perhaps all long-term
residents—of the state. To invoke nationhood, in this sense, is to attempt to
transcend or at least relativize internal differences and distinctions. It is an
attempt to get people to think of themselves— to formulate their identities and
their interests—as members of that nation, rather than as members of some other
collectivity. To appeal to the nation can be a powerful rhetorical resource, though it is
not automatically so. Academics in the social sciences and humanities in the United
States are generally skeptical of or even hostile to such invocations of
nationhood. They are often seen as de´passe´, parochial, naive, regressive, or even
dangerous. For many scholars in the social sciences and humanities, ‘nation’ is a suspect
category.
Few American scholars wave flags, and many of us are suspicious of those who do. And
often with good reason, since flag-waving has been associated with intolerance,
xenophobia, and militarism, with exaggerated national pride and aggressive foreign
policy. Unspeakable horrors—and a wide range of lesser evils—have been perpetrated in
the name of the nation, and not just in the name of ‘ethnic’ nations, but in the name of
putatively ‘civic’ nations as well (Mann, 2004). But this is not sufficient to account for
the prevailingly negative stance towards the nation. Unspeakable horrors, and an equally
wide range of lesser evils, have been committed in the name of many other sorts of
imagined communities as well—in the name of the state, the race, the ethnic group, the class, the party, the faith.
In addition to the sense that nationalism is dangerous, and closely connected to some of the great evils of our time—the sense that, as John Dunn (1979, p. 55) put
it, nationalism is ‘the starkest political shame of the 20th-century’— there is a much broader suspicion of invocations of nationhood. This derives from the
widespread diagnosis that we live in a post-national age. It comes from the sense that, however well fitted the category ‘nation’ was to economic, political, and
cultural realities in the nineteenth century, it is increasingly ill-fitted to those realities today. On this account, nation is fundamentally an anachronistic category,
and invocations of nationhood, even if not dangerous, are out of sync with the basic principles that structure social life today.4
The post-nationalist stance combines an empirical claim, a methodological critique, and a normative argument. I will say a few words about each in turn. The
empirical claim asserts the declining capacity and diminishing relevance of the nation-state. Buffeted by the unprecedented circulation of people, goods, messages,
images, ideas, and cultural products, the nation-state is said to have progressively lost its ability to ‘cage’ (Mann, 1993, p. 61), frame, and govern social, economic,
cultural, and political life. It is said to have lost its ability to control its borders, regulate its economy, shape its culture, address a variety of border-spanning
problems, and engage the hearts and minds of its citizens. I believe this thesis is greatly overstated, and not just because the September 11 attacks have prompted
an aggressively resurgent statism.5 Even the European Union, central to a good deal of writing on post-nationalism, does not represent a linear or unambiguous
move ‘beyond the nation-state’. As Milward (1992) has argued, the initially limited moves toward supranational authority in Europe worked—and were intended—
to restore and strengthen the authority of the nation-state. And the massive reconfiguration of political space along national lines in Central and Eastern Europe at
the end of the Cold War suggests that far from moving beyond the nation-state, large parts of Europe were moving back to the nation-state.6 The ‘short twentieth
century’ concluded much as it had begun, with Central and Eastern Europe entering not a post-national but a post-multinational era through the large-scale
nationalization of previously multinational political space. Certainly nationhood remains the universal formula for legitimating statehood.
Can one speak of an ‘unprecedented porosity’ of borders, as one recent book has put it (Sheffer, 2003, p. 22)? In some respects, perhaps; but in other respects—
especially with regard to the movement of people—social technologies of border control have continued to develop. One cannot speak of a generalized loss of
control by states over their borders; in fact, during the last century, the opposite trend has prevailed, as states have deployed increasingly sophisticated
technologies of identification, surveillance, and control, from passports and visas through integrated databases and biometric devices. The world’s poor who seek
to better their estate through international migration face a tighter mesh of state regulation than they did a century ago (Hirst and Thompson, 1999, pp. 30–1,
267). Is migration today unprecedented in volume and velocity, as is often asserted? Actually, it is not: on a per capita basis, the overseas flows of a century ago to
the United States were considerably larger than those of recent decades, while global migration flows are today ‘on balance slightly less intensive’ than those of the
later nineteenth and early twentieth century (Held et al., 1999, p. 326). Do migrants today sustain ties with their countries of origin? Of course they do; but they
managed to do so without e-mail and inexpensive telephone connections a century ago, and it is not clear—contrary to what theorists of post-nationalism suggest—
that the manner in which they do so today represents a basic transcendence of the nation-state.7 Has a globalizing capitalism reduced the capacity of the state to
regulate the economy? Undoubtedly. Yet in other domains—such as the regulation of what had previously been considered private behavior—the regulatory grip of
the state has become tighter rather than looser (Mann, 1997, pp. 491–2).
The methodological critique is that the social sciences have long suffered from ‘methodological nationalism’ (Centre for the Study of Global Governance, 2002;
Wimmer and Glick-Schiller, 2002)—the tendency to take the ‘nation-state’ as equivalent to ‘society’, and to focus on internal structures and processes at the
expense of global or otherwise border-transcending processes and structures. There is obviously a good deal of truth in this critique, even if it tends to be
overstated, and neglects the work that some historians and social scientists have long been doing on border-spanning flows and networks.
But what follows from this critique? If it serves to encourage the study of social processes organized on multiple levels in addition to the level of the nation-state, so
much the better. But if the methodological critique is coupled— as it often is—with the empirical claim about the diminishing relevance of the nation-state, and if it
serves therefore to channel attention away from state-level processes and structures, there is a risk that academic fashion will lead us to neglect what remains, for
better or worse, a fundamental level of organization and fundamental locus of power.
The normative critique of the nation-state comes from two directions. From above, the cosmopolitan argument is that humanity as a whole, not the nation- state,
should define the primary horizon of our moral imagination and political engagement (Nussbaum, 1996). From below, muticulturalism and identity politics
celebrate group identities and privilege them over wider, more encompassing affiliations.
One can distinguish stronger and weaker versions of the cosmopolitan argument. The strong cosmopolitan argument is that there is no good reason to privilege the
nation-state as a focus of solidarity, a domain of mutual responsibility, and a locus of citizenship.8 The nation-state is a morally arbitrary community, since
membership in it is determined, for the most part, by the lottery of birth, by morally arbitrary facts of birthplace or parentage. The weaker version of the
cosmopolitan argument is that the boundaries of the nation-state should not set limits to our moral responsibility and political commitments. It is hard to disagree
with this point. No matter how open and ‘joinable’ a nation is—a point to which I will return below—it is always imagined, as Benedict Anderson (1991) observed,
as a limited community. It is intrinsically parochial and irredeemably particular. Even the most adamant critics of universalism will surely agree that those beyond
the boundaries of the nation-state have some claim, as fellow human beings, on our moral imagination, our political energy, even perhaps our economic
resources.9
The second strand of the normative critique of the nation-state—the multiculturalist critique—itself takes various forms. Some criticize the nation-state for a
homogenizing logic that inexorably suppresses cultural differences. Others claim that most putative nation-states (including the United States) are not in fact
nation-states at all, but multinational states whose citizens may share a common loyalty to the state, but not a common national identity (Kymlicka, 1995, p. 11).
But the main challenge to the nation-state from multiculturalism and identity politics comes less from specific arguments than from a general disposition to
cultivate and celebrate group identities and loyalties at the expense of state-wide identities and loyalties.
In the face of this twofold cosmopolitan and multiculturalist critique, I would like to sketch a qualified defense of nationalism and patriotism in the contemporary
American context.10 Observers have long noted the Janus-faced character of nationalism and patriotism, and I am well aware of their dark side. As someone who
has studied nationalism in Eastern Europe, I am perhaps especially aware of that dark side, and I am aware that nationalism and patriotism have a dark side not
only there but here. Yet the prevailing anti-national, post-national, and trans-national stances in the social sciences and humanities risk obscuring the good
reasons—at least in the American context—for cultivating solidarity, mutual responsibility, and citizenship at the level of the nation-state. Some of those who
defend patriotism do so by distinguishing it from nationalism.11 I do not want to take this tack, for I think that attempts to distinguish good patriotism from bad
nationalism are not things with
fixed natures; they are highly flexible political languages, ways of framing
political arguments by appealing to the patria, the fatherland, the country, the nation.
These terms have somewhat different connotations and resonances, and the political
languages of patriotism and nationalism are therefore not fully overlapping. But they do
overlap a great deal, and an enormous variety of work can be done with both languages. I
therefore want to consider them together here.
I want to suggest that patriotism and nationalism can be valuable in four respects. They
can help develop more robust forms of citizenship, provide support for redistributive
social policies, foster the integration of immigrants, and even serve as a check on the
development of an aggressively unilateralist foreign policy.
First, nationalism and patriotism can motivate and sustain civic engagement. It
is sometimes argued that liberal democratic states need committed and active citizens,
and therefore need patriotism to generate and motivate such citizens. This argument
shares the general weakness of functionalist arguments about what states or societies
allegedly ‘need’; in fact, liberal democratic states seem to be able to muddle through with
largely passive and uncommitted citizenries. But the argument need not be cast in
functionalist form. A committed and engaged citizenry may not be necessary, but that
does not make it any less desirable. And patriotism can help nourish civic engagement. It
can help generate feelings of solidarity and mutual responsibility across the
boundaries of identity groups. As Benedict Anderson (1991, p. 7) put it, the nation is
conceived as a ‘deep horizontal comradeship’. Identification with fellow members of this
imagined community can nourish the sense that their problems are on some level my
problems, for which I have a special responsibility.12
Patriotic identification with one’s country—the feeling that this is my country, and
my government—can help ground a sense of responsibility for, rather than
disengagement from, actions taken by the national government. A feeling of
responsibility for such actions does not, of course, imply agreement with them;
it may even generate powerful emotions such as shame, outrage, and anger that underlie
and motivate opposition to government policies. Patriotic commitments are likely to
intensify rather than attenuate such emotions. As Richard Rorty (1994) observed, ‘you
can feel shame over your country’s behavior only to the extent to which you feel it is your
nationalism neglect the intrinsic ambivalence and polymorphism of both. Patriotism and
country’.13 Patriotic commitments can furnish the energies and passions that motivate
and sustain civic engagement
They Make State Worse
The “place of power” turns their offense – the state will merely
perpetuate itself in revolution.
Newman, 7 (Saul, Professor of Political Theory, PhD, University of Godsmiths
London, SubStance, Issue 113 (Volume 36, No. 2), 2007, “Anarchism, Poststructuralism,
and the Future of Radical Politics,” Project Muse)
The state remains one of the central and most persistent problems of¶
radical politics. Revolutions in the past have attempted to seize state ¶ power
with the view to its eventual “withering away;” however, the¶ result has often been a
strengthening and expansion of the state, and¶ with it a repression of the
very revolutionary forces that sought to control¶ it. This is the problem that I
have termed the “place of power”—the¶ structural imperative of the state to
perpetuate itself even in moments of revolutionary upheaval (see Newman
2001). Alain Badiou also sees this¶ problem as being of fundamental importance:¶ More
precisely, we must ask the question that, without a doubt,¶ constitutes the great enigma
of the century: why does the subsumption¶ of politics, either through the form of the
immediate bond (the¶ masses), or the mediate bond (the party) ultimately give rise to¶
bureaucratic submission and the cult of the State? (2005: 70)¶ In other words, perhaps
there is something in the political forms¶ that revolutions have taken in the past that led
to the perpetuation of the¶ state. We might recall that this was the same problem that
classical¶ anarchists during the nineteenth century confronted in their debates¶ with
Marx. Anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin warned of the dangers of a¶ workers’ revolution
that sought not to dismantle the state, but to seize¶ control of it and use it to complete the
revolution. He predicted that this¶ would end up in the emergence of a new
bureaucratic class of technocrats¶ who would exploit and oppress workers
and peasants, much in the same¶ way as the old class system did (Bakunin
1973: 266).¶ Moreover, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the political¶ and
ideological conflict between liberal-democracy and totalitarianism,¶ has allowed us to
confront, for the first time, the specific problem of state¶ power. In other words, liberaldemocracy and Communism merely¶ served as the ideological masks of the
state. These fictions have now¶ fallen away and the true face of sovereignty
has been laid bare. This dull¶ visage is merely one of naked power: a power that no
longer tries to¶ justify itself legally or normatively; a power that now operates
more or¶ less with total impunity in the name of guaranteeing our security—or,
to¶ be more, precise, creating a permanent state of insecurity in order to¶ legitimize its
existence. Indeed, we might say that the “war on¶ terrorism”—with its permanent state of
emergency and war—merely¶ operates as the state’s latest and flimsiest ideological
fiction, a desperate¶ attempt by the state to disguise its absence of legitimate foundation.
In its new “security” mode, the liberal-democratic state is becoming¶ increasingly
indistinguishable from the authoritarian police state. As¶ Giorgio Agamben argues, the
modern state now has the provision of¶ security—or some illusion of security—as its sole
purpose. The guarantee¶ of security has become, in other words, the ultimate
standard of the¶ state’s political legitimacy.
Topic Specific
Policy Debate K2 Effective Ocean Policy
Knowledge about the oceans is key to better informing
environmental policy.
Steel et al, 5 (Brent S. Steela, , Court Smithb, Laura Opsommerc, Sara Curiela, Ryan
Warner-Steeld¶ a Department of Political Science, Oregon State University¶ b Department
of Anthropology, Oregon State University, ¶ c Master of Public Policy Program, Oregon
State University, Corvallis¶ d Department of Biology, University of Oregon, 3/3/5, Ocean
and Coastal Management, “Public ocean literacy in the United States,”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964569105000190)
On April 20, 2004, the 16 member Oceans Commission, appointed by President
Bush, issued a report detailing the deteriorating condition of the nation's
coastal waters. The Commission's chairman, Adm. James Watkins, commented at the
release of the report: “Our oceans and coasts are in serious trouble” [1, p. A-15]. The
Commission's report, along with numerous other studies including the recently released
Pew Oceans Commission report America's Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea
Change, argue for new approaches and actions to mitigate and correct these
deteriorating conditions. Along these lines, the Pew Oceans Commission called for
“a new era of ocean literacy that links people to the marine environment” [2,
p. 91]. The Commission further argues that there is a “need to provide the public with
understandable information about the structure and functioning of coastal and marine
ecosystems, how ecosystems affect daily lives, and how we affect ecosystems” [2, p. 11].
Similarly, the Report of the US Commission on Ocean Policy states: “To successfully
address complex ocean- and coastal-related issues, balance the use and
conservation of marine resources, and realize future benefits of the ocean,
an interested, engaged public is essential” [3, p. 85]. Doug Daigle echoes this call
for greater public involvement in coastal conservation, “the only hope for further
progress on environmental protection and sustainable development lies
with a public that is not only informed but also engaged” [4, p. 230]. Knowledge
is vital in developing an individual's perception of the oceans and the resources they
provide. Additionally, knowledge is a key component in accomplishing effective
environmental policies [5], [6] and [7]. As Janicke comments, “without a doubt,
environmental knowledge and public awareness are important factors
influencing environmental policy and management” [8, p. 11]. Because citizens are
either directly or indirectly involved in activities and behaviors that may place our ocean
and coastal areas at risk, it is indeed important to assess the scope and depth of policyrelevant knowledge among the public and to learn where people tend to acquire their
information about ocean and coastal conditions.
Understanding ocean policy options through debate is the first
step to an effective ocean policy.
Steel et al, 5 (Brent S. Steela, , Court Smithb, Laura Opsommerc, Sara Curiela, Ryan
Warner-Steeld¶ a Department of Political Science, Oregon State University¶ b Department
of Anthropology, Oregon State University, ¶ c Master of Public Policy Program, Oregon
State University, Corvallis¶ d Department of Biology, University of Oregon, 3/3/5, Ocean
and Coastal Management, “Public ocean literacy in the United States,”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964569105000190)
Increasingly the scientific and technical complexity of many public policy
issues—such as environmental issues concerning coastal areas and the oceans—
poses serious challenges for the effective participation of citizens in the
democratic process [6], [9] and [10]. In order for citizens to effectively
monitor policy-makers in democratic societies, they need to be informed
consumers of relevant scientific research and the policy options suggested by
those findings [11] and [12]. As Beierle and Cayford have argued, “Increasing public
understanding of environmental problems builds capacity for solving those
problems” [5, p. 15]. However, the critical gap between the need for policyrelevant knowledge and the generally poor level of public understanding of
many public policy issues has led some commentators to proclaim the existence of
a “legitimacy crisis” [13]. As Mondak points out, “popular input into government
will be vacuous if citizens fail to…comprehend the intricacies of policy
debates ” [14, p. 513].¶ Many scholars suggest that knowledge is central to the
policy-making process and that improving the knowledge base of citizens
should be the first step in establishing a nation-wide effort to preserve the
oceans. Eagly and Kulesa have argued “communications directed to the general public
are important not only because they may influence public opinion, and therefore have an
impact on public policy, but also because they are potentially effective in inducing
individuals to engage in behavior that can lessen the destructive impact of humans on
the environment” [15, p. 123]. In fact, McKenzie-Mohr [16] has identified the lack of
knowledge as a major reason for public non-involvement in environmental activities.
Advancing ocean literacy is key to informed decisions about
policy.
Greely, 8 (Teresa, University of South Florida, 2008, “Ocean literacy and reasoning
about ocean issues:¶ The influence of content, experience and morality,”
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=etd)
Ocean issues with conceptual ties to science and a global society have captured ¶ the attention, imagination, and concern
of an international audience. Global climate ¶ change, natural disasters, over fishing, marine pollution, freshwater
shortages, ¶ groundwater contamination, economic trade and commerce, marine mammal stranding, ¶ and decreased
biodiversity are just a few of the ocean issues highlighted in our media and ¶ conversations. The ocean shapes our weather,
links us to other nations, and is crucial to ¶ our national security. From the life-giving rain that nourishes crops and our
bodies, to ¶ life-saving medicines; from the fish that come from the ocean, to the goods that are ¶ transported on the sea’s
surface--- the ocean plays a role in our lives in some way ¶ everyday (NOAA, 1998). The American public values the ocean
and considers protecting ¶ it to be a fundamental responsibility, but its understanding of why we need the ocean is ¶
superficial (Belden, Russonello & Stewart, 1999). However, a broad disconnect exists ¶ between what scientist know and
the public understands about the ocean. The ocean, ¶ more than any other single ecosystem, has social and personal
relevance to all persons. ¶ In the 21st century we will look increasingly to the ocean to meet our everyday needs and ¶
future sustainability. Thus, there is a critical need to advance ocean literacy within our
nation, especially among youth and young adults.¶ It has been estimated
that less than 2% of all American adults are environmentally ¶ literate (NEETF,
¶
2005). Results from a series of ocean and coastal literacy surveys 2¶ (AAAS, 2004; Belden, et al., 1999; Steel, Smith,
Opsommer, Curiel & Warner-Steel, ¶ 2005) of American adults reveal similar findings. Surveys demonstrated that in the ¶
1990’s the public valued the ocean and expressed emotional and recreational connections, ¶ however, awareness about
ocean health was low. A decade later Americans had an ¶ increased sense of urgency about ocean issues and were willing to
support actions to ¶ protect the oceans even when the tradeoffs of higher prices at the supermarket, fewer ¶ recreational
choices, and increased government spending were presented (AAAS, 2004). ¶ While most Americans surveyed agree that
humans are impacting the health of the ocean ¶ more than one-third felt that they cannot make a difference. In contrast, a
survey of youth reveals strong feelings about environmental issues and the confidence that they can make ¶ a difference
(AZA, 2003). Collectively, these studies reveal that the public is not well ¶ equipped with
knowledge about ocean issues. This implies that the public needs access to ¶ better ocean information
delivered in the most effective manner. The component lacking ¶ for both adults and youth is a baseline of ocean
knowledge--- literacy about the oceans to ¶ balance the emotive factors exhibited through care, concern and connection
with the ¶ ocean. ¶ The interdependence between humans and the ocean is at the
heart of ocean ¶ literacy. Cudaback (2006) believes that given the declining quality of the marine ¶
environment (Pew Ocean Commission, 2003), ocean educators have the responsibility to ¶ teach not only the science of
the ocean, but also the interdependence with humans. Ocean ¶ literacy is especially significant, as
we implement a first-ever national ocean policy to ¶ halt the steady decline of our nation’s ocean and coasts via
the Ocean Blueprint for the ¶ 21st Century (U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004). The need for ocean education and
literacy that goes beyond emotive factors is critical and relevant towards preparing ¶ our students, teachers, and citizens to
regularly contribute to ocean decisions and ¶ socioscientific issues that impact their health and well being on Earth. “The
biggest ¶ barriers to increasing commitment to ocean protection are Americans’ lack of awareness ¶ of the condition of the
oceans and of their own role in damaging the oceans,” (Belden, et ¶ al., 1999). The challenge for ocean educators is to
explicitly state the connections ¶ between the ocean and daily decisions and actions of people. ¶ People enjoy the beauty of
the ocean and the bounty of its waters, but may not ¶ understand that their everyday actions such as boating, construction,
improper waste ¶ disposal, or ignoring protected areas, can impact the ocean and its resources. More than ¶ one-half of the
US population lives within 200 miles of the ocean. Long-term planning ¶ for growth, development and use of coastal areas
is key to the continued productivity of ¶ the ocean (NOAA, 1998). Because the ocean is inextricably
interconnected to students’ ¶ lives it provides a significant context for
socioscientific issues that foster decision ¶ making, human interactions, and
environmental stewardship. ¶ Ocean literacy encompasses the tenets of scientific literacy which is defined
by ¶ national standards, as the ability to make informed decisions regarding scientific issues of particular social
importance (AAAS, 1993; NRC, 1996, 2000). As such, scientific literacy ¶ encompasses both cognitive (e.g. knowledge
skills) and affective (e.g., emotions, values, ¶ morals, culture) processes. Science standards were designed to guide our
nation toward a ¶ scientifically literate society and provide criteria to judge progress toward a national ¶ vision of science
literacy (NRC, 1996). Although standards for science teaching and ¶ literacy are established, the fundamental and critical
role of the ocean is not emphasized. 4¶ Recently the definition of scientific literacy has been more broadly conceptualized ¶
to include dealing sensibly with moral reasoning and ethical issues, and understanding ¶ connections inherent in
socioscientific issues (Zeidler, 2001; Zeidler & Keefer, 2003). ¶ Even more recently, the Centers for Ocean Sciences
Education Excellence (COSEE) ¶ established a definition of ocean literacy as understanding how the ocean affects you and
how you affect the ocean. An ocean-literate person understands the science of the
ocean, ¶ can communicate about the oceans, and can make informed
decisions about ocean policy. ¶ Table 1 identifies the seven content principles that guide the scope of
ocean literacy. ¶ Appendix A provides a description of the COSEE centers and their contribution to ocean ¶ literacy. Now
that a definition, characteristics and essential principles exist to describe ¶ ocean literacy, there is a critical need to
operationalize the concepts and assess the ¶ success and shortfalls of current ocean education programs using the tenets of
ocean ¶ literacy. The present study sought to test the concept of ocean literacy within the context ¶ of an ocean education
program, the Oceanography Camp for Girls. Appendix B provides ¶ a description of the Oceanography Camp for Girls
education program.
Ocean literacy – researching and understanding the ocean – is
key to avoiding an oceanic crisis.
West, 5 (Dick, President and CEO
Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE), Vol 38 No 4, Winter
2005, Marine Technology Society Journal, “Ocean Literacy is Key to Preserving Our
Oceans and Coasts”)
Of equal concern is the fact that with oceans covering 70% of our planet and play- ing such a critical role in sustaining life,
somehow we have allowed our oceans to degrade to the point where it has
become a crisis. One of the reasons may be that very few people are ‘oceanliterate’ and thus have no concern for the state of our oceans—not because they don’t care but
because they don’t know. In a recent national survey of the American public, results indicated a super- ficial level of
knowledge about the impor- tance of our oceans to human life and to our planet’s future.1¶ So what is the solution? The
solution is to improve awareness of our ocean, coasts and Great Lakes by developing
an ‘ocean-literate’ society—accomplished by simply educating all Americans about our¶ oceans, from
school-aged children to se- nior citizens. This way they
will under- stand its importance to our
existence on this planet and the urgency for action and become advocates for change. With over 200
recommendations put forth in the Ocean Commission (OC) report to Con- gress, a key item states, “strengthening the
nation’s awareness of the importance of the oceans requires a heightened focus on the marine environment through both
formal and informal education efforts. Curricula for kindergarten through 12th grade should expose students to ocean issues throughout their formal education with the next generation of ocean scien- tists, managers, educators and leaders being prepared through diverse higher edu- cation opportunities...” The report went on to say, “the public should
be armed not only with the knowledge and skills needed to make informed
choices, but also with a sense of excitement about the marine en- vironment. Individuals should understand the
importance of the ocean to their lives and should realize how individual actions affect the marine environment.Ӧ The
Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE), represent- ing 81 of the nation’s leading ocean research
and education universities, aquaria, non- profit institutes, laboratories, and industry partners, fully supports the
recommenda- tions in the OC report. The goals we sup- port in contributing to an ‘ocean-literate’ America include:¶ (1) to
invest in higher education (both under- graduate and graduate) in science and technology fields relevant to the oceans,¶
(2) to develop an ocean workforce and train individuals for productive ocean-related careers,¶ (3) to build a solid
framework for goals¶ 1 and 2 by integrating ocean studies into elementary and secondary school education programs, ¶ (4)
to establish a nationwide public outreach program and innovative education programs at museums, aquaria, science
centers and other informal education sites. But obtaining the goal of lifelong ocean ¶ education is not an undertaking that
can be accomplished by a single federal agency. It will require a coordinated federal effort ad- vocating for increased
federal funding for both formal and informal ocean education. Programs will need to be creative and en- gaging to spark
the interest of young people—and what better way to teach sci- ence, math, physics, biology, economics, then by using the
ocean as the medium.¶ Keeping ocean science in front of our talented youth is a challenge. However, we know that formal
education is one way to keep talented individuals who are well versed in science, mathematics and technology moving into
the nation’s workforce. Pro- grams such as the Centers for Ocean Sci- ence Education Excellence (COSEE), the National
Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB®) and the outreach and education programs supported by the National Sea Grant Col lege
Program are good investments in the educational continuum.¶ Graduate education in ocean-related
fields also needs to flourish in the United States if the nation is to have the
expert sci- entists, teachers, and policy makers, now and in the future. Closely
intertwined with this high quality graduate education is ocean re- search—also essential if we are
to make the right decisions on how to preserve and man- age our oceans and coasts. But again, gradu- ate education in the
ocean sciences cannot be the concern of a single agency because all agencies with an ocean-related mission must have a
well-educated workforce.¶ ‘Informal education,’ defined by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a life-long learning
process where people ac- quire knowledge and values from daily ex- periences (usually voluntarily and driven by personal
interest), is also necessary to educate our society. We must provide the opportunities that will draw interest from our
society to learn about the oceans, the prerequisite for an ‘ocean literate’ society. The OC report states it clearly by explaining “while most people do not recognize the number of benefits the ocean provides, or its potential for further discovery,
many do feel a positive connection with it, sens- ing perhaps that the vitality of the sea is directly related to human
survival. This connection can be a powerful tool for in- creasing awareness of, interest in, and re- sponsible action toward
the marine envi- ronment, and is critical to building an ocean stewardship ethic, strengthening the nation’s science
literacy and creating a new generation of ocean leaders.Ӧ There is a lot of work to do to get Ameri-
cans up to speed on their oceans. It’s a chal- lenge we must meet or face the
dangerous consequences of being ‘too late’ to preserve this vital resource. This nation must “promote the goal of lifelong ocean education,” both formal and informal. The OC report is a wake-up call!! It is also our
handbook on how to protect and preserve our seas. It will take an ‘ocean-literate’ society to
ensure the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy are
implemented by fed- eral, state, and regional governments.