1NC – 1
Interpretation and violation---the affirmative should defend the
desirability of topical government action
Most predictable—the agent and verb indicate a debate about
hypothetical government action
Jon M Ericson 3, Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et
al., The Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each
topic contains certain key elements,
agent doing the
acting ---“The United States” in “The United States should adopt a policy of free trade.” Like
the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb
should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination. For
example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action through
governmental means . 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action
desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of
although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An
increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet
occurred. The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur . What you agree to do, then,
when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you
propose.
“Resolved” is legislative
Jeff Parcher 1, former debate coach at Georgetown, Feb 2001
http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200102/0790.html
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. Firmness
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 statement of a
decision, as by a legislature. (3) The resolution is obviously a question. Any other conclusion is utterly inconceivable. 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 desirablility 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 committee somewhere to adopt their own group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the preliminary 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. Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by legislative bodies . A resolution is either adopted or
it is not. It's a question before a legislative body. Should this statement be adopted or not. (5) The very terms 'affirmative' and 'negative' support my view. One affirms
a resolution. Affirmative and negative are the equivalents of 'yes' or 'no' - which, of course, are answers to a question.
“Legalization” removes formal, legal prohibition
Rolles ‘9
Stephen Rolles, Company Director of Transform Drugs Campaign Limited, “A Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of
Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs”, April, http://www.tdpf.org.uk/sites/default/files/Cost-Effectiveness.pdf
‘Prohibition’ is used in this paper to refer to the set of policies that formally prohibit—through the application of
legal sanctions —all production, distribution and possession of specific psychoactive drugs for non-medical use, as defined under the UN
drug conventions and the Misuse of Drugs Act 197137. Reduction in use, specifically the aim of a ‘drug free’ society, is often given as the primary goal.
‘Decriminalisation’, which is often confused with legalisation/regulation, is the reduction or abolition (actual or de facto) of criminal penalties in
relation to certain acts. While decriminalised acts are no longer crimes, they may still be the subject of regulation; for example, a civil or administrative
penalty (commonly a fine) in place of a criminal charge for the possession of a decriminalised drug for personal use. ‘Legalisation’,
in
contrast to decriminalisation, is the process of removing a legal prohibition against something
which is currently illegal. ‘Legalisation’ describes a process or shift in legal status , rather than describing a
policy position or form of legal regulation.
It requires judicial or legislative action.
BD ‘14
Business Dictionary, “legalize”, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/legalize.html
legalize
To make enforceable, justifiable, or lawful by judicial or legislative sanction.
B. Vote neg:
Preparation and clash—changing the topic post facto manipulates
balance of prep, which structurally favors the aff because they speak
last and permute alternatives
Simulated legal debates that emphasize switch-side argumentation are crucial for
social transformation---teaching legal precision is net-better for eliminating
oppression. Infusing the law with egalitarian concepts can overcome larger social
biases, even if one-shot legal solutions don’t work the first time. Their pessimism
towards the law is a knee-jerk reaction that constrains transformative
possibilities so err on the side of optimism.
Klare 11 Karl Klare, George J. & Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University
Professor, Northeastern University School of Law, “Teaching Local 1330—Reflections on Critical
Legal Pedagogy,” (‘11). School of Law Faculty Publications. Paper 167.
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002528
Most
students have found themselves in the situation of wanting to express their moral
intuitions in the form of legal arguments but of feeling powerless to do so. A common attitude
of Northeastern students is that a lawyer cannot turn moral and political convictions into legal
arguments in the context of case-litigation. If you are interested in directly pursuing a moral and/or political
agenda, at a minimum you need to take up legislative and policy work, and more likely you need to
leave the law altogether and take up grass roots organizing instead. I insist that we keep the focus on litigation
By now it has begun to dawn that one of the subjects of this class session is how lawyers translate their moral intuitions and sense of justice into legal arguments.
beginning
for this class period. After the straw poll, I ask the students to simulate the role of Staughton Lynd‟ s legal assistants and to assume that the court has just definitively rejected
the claims based on contract, promissory estoppel, and the notion of a community property right. However, they should also assume, counter-factually, that Judge Lambros
stayed dismissal of the suit for ten days to give plaintiffs one last opportunity to come up with a theory. I charge the students with the task of making a convincing common law
argument, supported by respectable legal authority, that the plaintiffs were entitled to substantial relief. Put another way, I ask the students to prove that Judge Lambros was
mistaken—that he was legally wrong—when he concluded that there was no basis in existing law to vindicate the workers‟ and community‟ s rights. In some classroom
All students are asked to
simulate the role of plaintiffs‟ counsel and to make the best arguments they can—either because
they actually believe such arguments and/or because in their simulated role they are
fulfilling their ethical duty to provide zealous representation. A recurring, instant reflex is to say: “it‟ s simple—the workers‟
exercises, I permit students to select the side for which they wish to argue, but I do not allow that in this session.
human rights were violated in the Youngstown case.” I remind the class that the challenge I set was to come up with a common law theory. The great appeal of human rights
discourse for today‟ s students is that it seems to provide a technical basis upon which their fervent moral and political commitments appear to be legally required. “What
human rights?” I ask. The usual answers are (1) “they had a right to be treated like human beings” or (2) “surely there is some human right on which they can base their case.” To
the first argument I respond: “well, how they are entitled to be treated is exactly what the court is called upon in this case to decide. Counsel may not use a re-statement of the
conclusion you wish the court to reach as the legal basis supporting that conclusion.” To the second response I reply: “it would be nice if some recognized human right applied,
but we are in the Northern District of Ohio in 1980. Can you cite a pertinent human rights instrument?” (Answer: “no.”) The students then throw other ideas on the table.
Someone always proposes that U.S. Steel‟ s actions toward the community were “unconscionable.” I point out that unconscionability is a defense to contract enforcement
whereas the plaintiffs were seeking to enforce a contract (the alleged promise not to close the plant if it were rendered profitable). In any case, we have assumed that the judge
has already ruled that there was no contract. Another suggestion is that plaintiffs go for restitution. A restitution claim arises when plaintiff gives or entrusts something of value
to the defendant, and the defendant wrongfully refuses to pay for or return it. But here we are assuming that Judge Lambros has already ruled that the workers did not endow
U.S. Steel with any property or value other than their labor power for which they were already compensated under the applicable collective bargaining agreements. If the
community provided U.S. Steel with value in the nature of tax breaks or infrastructure development, the effect of Judge Lambros‟ ruling on the property claim is to say that
these were not investments by the community but no-strings-attached gifts given in the hope of attracting or retaining the company‟ s business. At this point I usually give a
hint by saying, “if we‟ ve ruled out contract claims, and we‟ ve ruled property claims, what does that leave?” Aha, torts! A student then usually suggests that U.S. Steel
committed the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED).15 I point out that, even if it were successful, this theory would provide plaintiffs relief only for their
emotional injuries, but not their economic or other losses, and most likely would not provide a basis for an injunction to keep the plant open. In any event, IIED is an intentional
tort. What, I ask, is the evidence that U.S. Steel intends the plant shutdown to cause distress? The response that “they should know that emotional distress will result” is usually
not good enough to make out an intentional tort. An astute student will point out that in some jurisdictions it is enough to prove that the defendant acted with reckless disregard
for the likelihood that severe emotional distress would result. I allow that maybe there‟ s something to that, but then shift ground by pointing out that a prima facie requirement
of IIED is that the distress suffered go beyond what an “ordinary person” may be expected to endure or beyond the bounds of “civilized behavior.”16 Everyone knows that plants
close all the time and that the distress accompanying job-loss is a normal feature of American life. A student halfheartedly throws out negligent infliction of emotional distress,
to which my reply is: “In what way is U.S. Steel‟ s proposed conduct negligent? The problem we are up against here is precisely that the corporation is acting as a rational profitmaximizer.” A student always proposes that plaintiffs should allege that what U.S. Steel did was “against public policy.” First of all, I say, “public policy” is not a cause of action;
it is a backdrop against which conduct or contract terms are assessed. Moreover, what public policy was violated in this case? The student will respond by saying “it is against
public policy for U.S. Steel to leave the community devastated.” I point out once again that that is the very conclusion for which we are contending—it is circular argument to
One ineffective theory after
another is put on the table. Only once or twice in the decades I have taught this exercise have the
assert a statement of our intended conclusion as the rationale for that conclusion. This dialogue continues for awhile.
students gotten close to a viable legal theory. But this is not wasted time —learning occurs in this
phase of the exercise. The point conveyed is that while law and morals/politics are inextricably
intertwined, they are not the same. For one thing, lawyers have a distinct way of talking about and
analyzing problems that is characteristic of the legal culture of a given time and place. So-called “legal reasoning” is actually a
repertoire of conventional, culturally approved rhetorical moves and counter-moves
deployed by lawyers to create an appearance of the legal necessity of the results for which they contend. In addition, good
lawyers actually possess useful, specialized knowledge not generally absorbed by political theorists
or movement activists. Legal training sensitizes us to the many complexities that arise
whenever general norms and principles are implemented in the form of rules of decision or case
applications. Lawyers know, for example, that large stakes may turn on precisely how a right is
defined , who has standing to vindicate it, what remedies it provides, how the right is
enforced and in what venue(s), and so on. We are not doing our jobs properly if we argue, simply, “what the
defendant did was unjust and the plaintiff deserves relief.” No one needs a lawyer to make the “what the
defendant did was unjust” argument. As Lynd‟ s account shows, the workers of Youngstown did make that argument in their own, eloquent words and through their collective
If “what the defendant did was unjust” is all we have to offer, lawyers bring
no added value to the table. Progressive students sometimes tell themselves that law is basically
gobbledygook, but that you can assist movements for social change if you learn how to spout the right gobbledygook. In this view of legal practice, “creativity”
resistance to the shut-downs.
consists in identifying an appropriate technicality that helps your client. But in the Youngstown situation, we are way past that naïve view. There is no “technicality” that can win
a social justice lawyer must use the bits and pieces lying around to generate new
legal knowledge and new legal theories. And these new theories must say something more
than “my client deserves to win” (although it is fine to commence one‟ s research on the basis of that moral intuition). The class is beginning to
the case. In this setting,
get frustrated, and around now someone says “well, what do you expect? This is capitalism. There‟ s no way the workers were going to win.” The “this-is-capitalism” (“TIC”)
statement sometimes comes from the right, sometimes from the left, and usually from both ends of the spectrum but in different ways. The TIC statement precipitates another
teachable moment. I begin by saying that we need to tease out exactly what the student means by TIC, as several interpretations are possible. For example, TIC might be a
prediction of what contemporary courts are most likely to do. That is, TIC might be equivalent to saying that “it doesn‟ t matter what theory you come up with; 999 US judges
out of 1,000 would rule for U. S. Steel.”17 I allow that this is probably true, but not very revealing. The workers knew what the odds were before they launched the case.
Even if doomed to fail , a legal case may still make a contribution to social justice if the
litigation creates a focal point of energy around which a community can mobilize,
articulate moral and political claims, educate the wider public, and conduct
political consciousness-raising. And if there is political value in pursuing a case, we might as well make good legal arguments. On an
alternative reading, the TIC observation is more ambitious than a mere prediction. It might be a claim that a capitalist society requires a legal structure of a certain kind, and that
therefore professionally acceptable legal reasoning within capitalist legal regimes cannot produce a theory that interrogates the status quo beyond a certain point. Put another
way, some outcomes are so foreign to the bedrock assumptions of private ownership that they cannot be reached by respectable legal reasoning. A good example of an outcome
This reading of the
TIC comment embodies the idea that legal discourse is encased within a deeper, extra-legal structure
given by requirements of the social order (capitalism), so that within professionally responsible legal
argument the best lawyers in the world could not state a winning theory in Local 1330. Ironically, the left
and the right in the class often share this belief. I take both conservative and progressive students on about this. I insist
that the claim that our law is constrained by a rigid meta-logic of capitalism—which curiously parallels the notion that
legal outcomes are tightly constrained by legal reasoning— is just plain wrong . Capitalist societies recognize all sorts of
limitations on the rights of property owners. Professor Singer‟ s classic article catalogues a multitude of them.18 The claim is
not only false, it is a dangerous falsehood. To believe TIC in this sense is to limit in
advance our aspirations for what social justice lawyering can accomplish.
that is incompatible with capitalism, so the argument goes, is a court order interfering with U.S. Steel‟ s decision to leave Youngstown.
The impact’s implementation education. Key to activist strategy –
turns Aff’s agenda and external causes.
Chandler – quoting Dean – ‘10
(David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Westminster – This card internally quotes Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and
William Smith Colleges, 'No Communicating Left' (review article), Radical Philosophy, No. 160 (March/April 2010),
pp.53-55. ISSN 0300 211X)
Dean pulls few punches in her devastating critique of the American left for its complacency, its limited capacity, and even its lack of awareness of the
need to offer a stand of political resistance to power. This is how she concludes her book: The eight years of the Bush administration were a diversion.
Intoxicated with a sense of purpose, we could oppose war, torture, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, a seemingly endless series of real
crimes… such opposition keeps us feeling like we matter… We have an ethical sense. But we lack a coherent politics. (p.175) Dean
highlights clearly the disintegration of the collective left and its simulacra in the individuated
life-style politics of today’s depoliticized radicalism, where it appears that particular
individual demands and identities are to be respected but there is no possibility of
universalising them into a collective challenge to the system : no possibility of a left which stands for
something beyond itself. She argues that, rather than confront this problem, the left take refuge in the fantasy that technology will overcome their
inability to engage and that the circulation of ideas and information on the internet will construct the collectivities and communities of interest, which
are lacking in reality. For Dean, this ‘technology fetishism’ marks the left’s failure: its ‘abandonment of workers and the poor; its retreat from the state
the
hole at the heart of the left, highlighting that radicalism appears to be based less on changing the
world than on the articulation of an alternative oppositionalist identity: a non-strategic, noninstrumental, articulation of a protest against power. In a nutshell, the left are too busy providing
and repudiation of collective action; and its acceptance of the neoliberal economy as the “only game in town”’ (p.33). In fact, she uncovers
gaping
alternative voices, spaces and forums to think about engaging with mass society in an organised, collective, attempt to achieve societal transformation.
For Dean, this
is fake or hollow political activity, pursued more for its own sake than for
future political ends . This is a politics of ethical distancing , of self-flattery and narcissism, which
excuses or even celebrates the self-marginalization of the left: as either the result of the overwhelming capacity of
neoliberal power to act, to control, and to regulate; or as the result of the apathy, stupidity, or laziness of the masses - or the ‘sheeple’ (p.171) - for their
failure to join the radical cause. Dean suggests that the
left needs to rethink its values and approaches and her book
narcissistic complacency. In doing this, she highlights a range of problems
connected around the thematic of the left’s defence of democracy in an age of communicative capitalism. She argues that the left’s focus
on extending or defending democracy by asserting their role in giving voice and creating spaces
merely reproduces the domination of communicative capitalism, where there is no shared space
of debate and disagreement but the proliferation of mediums and messages without the
responsibility to develop and defend positions or to engage and no external measure of accountability.
Communicative capitalism is held to thrive on this fragmented, atomizing, and individuated, framework of communication , which gives the
impression of a shared discourse, community, or movement but leaves reality just as it is, with neoliberal
frameworks of domination, inequality, and destruction continuing unopposed
is intended to be a wake-up call to abandon
(pp.162-75).
Decision-making skills – A general subject isn’t enough—debate
requires a specific point of difference in order to promote effective
exchange
Steinberg and Freeley 13, * David, Lecturer in Communication studies and rhetoric.
Advisor to Miami Urban Debate League. Director of Debate at U Miami, Former President of
CEDA. And ** Austin, attorney who focuses on criminal, personal injury and civil rights law, JD,
Suffolk University, Argumentation and Debate, Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision
Making, 121-4
Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a controversy, a difference of
opinion or a conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in agreement on a feet or
value or policy, there is no need or opportunity for debate; the matter can be settled by unanimous consent.
Thus, for example, it would be pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four,” because there is simply no controversy about
Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no
clash of ideas, proposals, interests, or expressed positions of issues, there is no debate.
Controversy invites decisive choice between competing positions. Debate cannot
produce effective decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to be
answered. For example, general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal
immigration. How many illegal immigrants live in the United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our
this statement.
economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they commit crimes? Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they
require social services? Is it a problem that some do not speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not
hiring undocumented workers? Should they have the opportunity to gain citizenship? Does illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country?
Do illegal immigrants do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human beings at risk due to their status?
Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? How are their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and
philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification card,
or enforce existing laws against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you
can think of many more
concerns to be addressed by a conversation about the topic area of illegal
immigration. Participation in this “debate” is likely to be emotional and intense.
However, it is not likely to be productive or useful without focus on a particular
question and identification of a line demarcating sides in the controversy. To be
discussed and resolved effectively, controversies are best understood when seated
clearly such that all parties to the debate share an understanding about the objective of the debate. This enables focus on substantive and objectively identifiable
issues facilitating comparison of competing argumentation leading to effective
decisions. Vague understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions , general feelings of tension without opportunity for resolution, frustration, and
emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of the U.S. Congress to make
substantial progress on the immigration debate. Of course, arguments may be
presented without disagreement. For example, claims are presented and supported within speeches, editorials, and
advertisements even without opposing or refutational response. Argumentation occurs in a range of settings
from informal to formal, and may not call upon an audience or judge to make a
forced choice among competing claims. Informal discourse occurs as conversation or panel
discussion without demanding a decision about a dichotomous or yes/no question.
However, by definition, debate requires "reasoned judgment on a proposition . The
proposition is a statement about which competing advocates will offer alternative
(pro or con) argumentation calling upon their audience or adjudicator to decide. The
proposition provides focus for the discourse and guides the decision process. Even
when a decision will be made through a process of compromise, it is important to identify the beginning
positions of competing advocates to begin negotiation and movement toward a
center, or consensus position. It is frustrating and usually unproductive to attempt to make a
decision when deciders are unclear as to what the decision is about. The proposition may be
implicit in some applied debates (“Vote for me!”); however, when a vote or consequential decision is called for (as in the courtroom or in applied
parliamentary debate) it
is essential that the proposition be explicitly expressed (“the defendant is
guilty!”). In academic debate, the proposition provides essential guidance for the preparation of
the debaters prior to the debate, the case building and discourse presented during
the debate, and the decision to be made by the debate judge after the debate. Someone
disturbed by the problem of a growing underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised youths might
observe, “Public schools are doing a terrible job! They' are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly
qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain order in their classrooms." That same
concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful
decision, such as "We ought to do something about this” or, worse, “It’s too
complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about the state of public education
could join together to express their frustrations , anger, disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools,
but without a focus for their discussions , they could easily agree about the sorry
state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions . A gripe
session would follow. But if a precise question is posed—such as “What can be
done to improve public education?”—then a more profitable area of discussion is
opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a concrete solution step. One or more
judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies, The
statements "Resolved: That the federal government should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities” and “Resolved; That the
state of Florida should adopt a school voucher program" more
clearly identify specific ways of dealing with
educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for debate. They provide specific
policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference .
This focus contributes to better and more informed decision making with the
potential for better results . In academic debate, it provides better depth of argumentation
and enhanced opportunity for reaping the educational benefits of participation. In the next section, we will consider the
challenge of framing the proposition for debate, and its role in the debate. To have a productive debate, which
facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing limits on the
decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined . If we
merely talk about a topic, such as ‘"homelessness,” or “abortion,” Or “crime,” or
“global warming,” we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to
establish a profitable basis for argument. For example, the statement “Resolved: That the pen is mightier
than the sword” is debatable , yet by itself fails to provide much basis for dear argumentation .
If we take this statement to mean Iliad the written word is more effective than physical force for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the
comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose, perhaps promoting positive social change. (Note that “loose” propositions,
such as the example above, may be defined by their advocates in such a way as to facilitate a clear contrast of competing sides; through definitions and
debate they “become” clearly understood statements even though they may not begin as such. There are formats for debate that often begin with this
sort of proposition. However, in
any debate, at some point, effective and meaningful discussion
relies on identification of a clearly stated or understood proposition.) Back to the example of
the written word versus physical force. Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It
is still too broad , too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels,
government documents, website development, advertising, cyber-warfare, disinformation, or what? What does it mean to be “mightier" in this context?
What kind of physical force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be, “Would
a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our support in a certain crisis?” The basis for argument could be
phrased in a debate proposition such as “Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense treaty with Laurania.” Negative advocates
might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This
is not to say that debates
should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by advocates, or that
good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in
fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that debate is best
facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of difference ,
which will be outlined in the following discussion.
Decisionmaking is the most portable and flexible skill—key to all facets of life and
advocacy
Steinberg and Freeley ‘13
David Director of Debate at U Miami, Former President of CEDA, officer, American Forensic
Association and National Communication Association. Lecturer in Communication studies and
rhetoric. Advisor to Miami Urban Debate League, Masters in Communication, and Austin, JD,
Suffolk University, attorney who focuses on criminal, personal injury and civil rights law,
Argumentation and Debate
Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, Thirteen Edition
In the spring of 2011, facing a legacy of problematic U.S, military involvement in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and criticism for
what some saw as slow support of the United States for the people of Egypt and Tunisia as citizens of those nations ousted their formerly
American-backed dictators, the administration of President Barack Obama
considered its options in providing support for
rebels seeking to overthrow the government of Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya. Public debate was robust as the
administration sought to determine its most appropriate action. The president
ultimately decided to engage in an international coalition, enforcing United Nations Security Council
Resolution 1973 through a number of measures including establishment of a no-fly zone through air and missile strikes to support rebels in
Libya, but stopping short of direct U.S. intervention with ground forces orany occupation of Libya. While the action seemed to achieve its
immediate objectives, most notably the defeat of Qaddafi and his regime, the American president received both criticism and praise for his
measured yet assertive decision. In fact, the
past decade has challenged American leaders to make
decisions in response to potentially catastrophic problems. Public debate has
raged in chaotic environment of political division and apparent animosity, The process of public
many difficult
decision making may have never been so consequential or difficult. Beginning in the fall of 2008, Presidents Bush and Obama faced a growing
economic crisis and responded in part with '’bailouts'' of certain Wall Street financial entities, additional bailouts of Detroit automakers, and a
major economic stimulus package. All these actions generated substantial public discourse regarding the necessity, wisdom, and consequences of
acting (or not acting). In the summer of 2011, the president and the Congress participated in heated debates (and attempted negotiations) to
raise the nation's debt ceiling such that the U.S. Federal Government could pay its debts and continue government operations. This discussion
was linked to a debate about the size of the exponentially growing national debt, government spending, and taxation. Further, in the spring of
2012, U.S. leaders sought to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapon capability while gas prices in the United States rose, The United
States considered its ongoing military involvement in Afghanistan in the face of nationwide protests and violence in that country1 sparked by the
alleged burning of Korans by American soldiers, and Americans observed the actions of President Bashir Al-Assad and Syrian forces as they
killed Syrian citizens in response to a rebel uprising in that nation and considered the role of the United States in that action. Meanwhile,
public discourse, in part generated and intensified by the campaigns of the GOP candidates for president and consequent media
coverage, addressed issues dividing Americans, including health care, women's rights
to reproductive health services, the freedom of churches and church-run organizations to remain true to their beliefs in providing (or electing
not to provide) health care services which they oppose, the growing
gap between the wealthiest 1 percent
of Americans and the rest of the American population, and continued high levels of
unemployment. More division among the American public would be hard to imagine. Yet through all the
tension, conflict was almost entirely verbal in nature, aimed at discovering or advocating solutions to growing
problems. Individuals also faced daunting decisions. A young couple, underwater with their mortgage
and struggling to make their monthly payments, considered walking away from their loan; elsewhere a
college sophomore reconsidered his major and a senior her choice of law school,
graduate school, or a job and a teenager decided between an iPhone and an iPad. Each of these situations called for
decisions to be made. Each decision maker worked hard to make well-reasoned decisions. Decision making is a thoughtful process of
choosing among a variety of options for acting or thinking. It requires that the decider make a choice. Life demands decision
making. We make countless individual decisions every day. To make some of those decisions, we work hard to employ care
and consideration: others scorn to just happen. Couples, families, groups of friends, and coworkers come together to make choices, and
decision-making bodies from committees to juries to the U.S. Congress and the United Nations make decisions that impact us all. Every
profession requires effective and ethical decision making, as do our school, community,
and social organizations. We all engage in discourse surrounding our necessary decisions every day. To refinance or sell one’s
home, to buy a high-performance SUV or an economical hybrid car, what major to select, what to have for dinner, what candidate to vote for,
paper or plastic, all present us with choices. Should
the president deal with an international crisis
through military invasion or diplomacy? How should the U.S. Congress act to
address illegal immigration? Is the defendant guilty as accused? Should we watch The Daily Show or the ball game? And
upon what information should I rely to make my decision? Certainly some of these decisions are more consequential than others. Which
amendment to vote for, what television program to watch, what course to take, which phone plan to purchase, and which diet to pursue—all
present unique challenges. At our best, we seek out research and data to inform our decisions. Yet even the choice of which
information to attend to requires decision making. In 2006, Time magazine named YOU its "Person of the Year.”
Congratulations! Its selection was based on the participation not of “great men” in the creation of history, but rather on the contributions of a
community of anonymous participants in the evolution of information. Through blogs, online networking, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,
Wikipedia, and many other “wikis," and social networking sites, knowledge and truth are created from the bottom up, bypassing the authoritarian
control of newspeople, academics, and publishers. Through
a quick keyword search, we have access to
infinite quantities of information, but how do we sort through it and select the best information for our
needs? Much of what suffices as information is not reliable, or even ethically motivated. The ability of every decision
maker to make good, reasoned, and ethical decisions' relies heavily upon their
ability to think critically. Critical thinking enables one to break argumentation down
to its component parts in order to evaluate its relative validity and strength, And, critical
thinking offers tools enabling the user to better understand the' nature and relative quality of the message under consideration. Critical
thinkers are better users of information as well as better advocates. Colleges and universities
expect their students to develop their critical thinking skills and may require students to take designated courses to that end. The importance and
value of such study is widely recognized. The executive order establishing California's requirement states; Instruction in critical thinking is
designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which would lead to the ability to analyze, criticize and
advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences
drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful conclusion of
instruction in critical thinking should be the ability to distinguish fact from judgment, belief from knowledge, and skills in elementary
inductive arid deductive processes, including an understanding of die formal and informal fallacies of language and thought.
Competency in critical thinking is a prerequisite to participating effectively in human
affairs, pursuing higher education, and succeeding in the highly competitive world of
business and the professions. Michael Scriven and Richard Paul for the National Council for Excellence in Critical
Thinking Instruction argued that the effective critical thinker: raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and
precisely; gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively; comes to well-reasoned
conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards; thinks open-mindedly within alternative systems of
thought, recognizing, and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and communicates
effectively with others in figuring our solutions to complex problems. They also observed that critical thinking entails
effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to
overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism,"1 Debate as a classroom exercise and as a
mode of thinking and behaving uniquely promotes development of each of these skill sets. Since
classical times, debate has been one of the best methods of learning and applying the principles of critical thinking.
Contemporary research confirms the value of debate. One study concluded: The impact of
public communication training on the critical thinking ability of the participants is
demonstrably positive. This summary of existing research reaffirms what many ex-debaters and others in forensics, public
speaking, mock trial, or argumentation would support: participation improves die thinking of those involved,2 In
particular,
debate education improves the ability to think critically. In a comprehensive review of the relevant
research, Kent Colbert concluded, "'The debate-critical thinking literature provides presumptive proof ■favoring a positive debate-critical
thinking relationship.11'1 Much of the most significant communication of our lives is conducted in the form of debates, formal or informal,
These take place in intrapersonal communications, with which we weigh the pros and cons of an important decision in our own minds, and in
interpersonal communications, in which we listen to arguments intended to influence our decision or participate in exchanges to influence the
Our success or failure in life is largely determined by our ability to
make wise decisions for ourselves and to influence the decisions of’ others in ways that
are beneficial to us. Much of our significant, purposeful activity is concerned with making
decisions. Whether to join a campus organization, go to graduate school, accept a job
offer, buy a car or house, move to another city, invest in a certain stock, or vote for Garcia—these are
just a few Of the thousands of decisions we may have to make. Often, intelligent self-interest or a
decisions of others.
sense of responsibility will require us to win the support of others. We may want a scholarship or a particular job for ourselves, a customer for
our product, or a vote for our favored political candidate. Some
people make decision by flipping a coin.
Others act on a whim or respond unconsciously to “hidden persuaders.” If the problem is
trivial—such as whether to go to a concert or a film—the particular method used is unimportant. For more crucial matters,
however, mature adults require a reasoned methods of decision making. Decisions should be justified
by good reasons based on accurate evidence and valid reasoning.
1NC – 2
The 1AC’s silence is a loaded presence – their forgetting of the nonhuman world and the individualistic formation of agency ensure the
replication of anthro power relations.
Bell and Russell 2K (Anne C. by graduate students in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York Universi- ty and
Constance L. a graduate student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Educa- tion, University of Toronto, Beyond Human, Beyond
Words: Anthropocentrism, Critical Pedagogy, and the Poststructuralist Turn, http://www.cssescee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE25-3/CJE25-3-bell.pdf)
For this reason, the various movements against oppression need to be aware of and supportive of each other. In critical pedagogy, however, the exploration of questions of race,
gender, class, and sexuality has proceeded so far with little acknowledgement of the systemic links between human oppressions and the domination of nature. The more-thanhuman world and human relationships to it have been ignored, as if the suffering and exploitation of other beings and the global ecological crisis were somehow
irrelevant.Despite the call for attention to voices historically absent from traditional canons and narratives (Sadovnik, 1995, p. 316), nonhuman beings are shrouded in
. This silence characterizes even the work of writers who call for a rethinking of all culturally positioned
essentialisms. Like other educators influenced by poststructuralism, we agree that there is a need to scrutinize the language we use, the meanings we deploy, and the
silence
epistemological frameworks of past eras (Luke & Luke, 1995, p. 378). To treat social categories as stable and unchanging is to reproduce the prevailing relations of power
(Britzman et al., 1991, p. 89). What would it mean, then, for critical pedagogy to extend this investigation and critique to include taken-for-granted understandings of "human,"
The anthropocentric bias in critical
pedagogy manifests itself in silence and in the asides of texts. Since it is not a topic of discussion, it can be difficult to situate a critique of it. Following feminist
analyses, we find that examples of anthropocentrism, like examples of gender symbolization, occur "in those places where speakers reveal the
assumptions they think they do not need to defend, beliefs they expect to share with their audiences" (Harding, 1986,
"animal," and "nature"? This question is difficult to raise precisely because these understandings are taken for granted.
p. 112). Take, for example, Freire's (1990) statements about the differences between "Man" and animals. To set up his discussion of praxis and the importance of "naming" the
world, he outlines what he assumes to be shared, commonsensical beliefs about humans and other animals. He defines the boundaries of human membership according to a
sharp, hierarchical dichotomy that establishes human superiority. Humans alone, he reminds us, are aware and self-conscious beings who can act to fulfill the objectives they set
for themselves. Humans alone are able to infuse the world with their creative presence, to overcome situations that limit them, and thus to demonstrate a "decisive attitude
towards the world" (p. 90). Freire (1990, pp. 87-91) represents other animals in terms of their lack of such traits. They are doomed to passively accept the given, their lives
. Thus whereas humans inhabit a "world" which they
create and transform and from which they can separate themselves, for animals there is only habitat, a mere physical
space to which they are "organically bound." To accept Freire's assumptions is to believe that humans are animals only in a nominal sense. We are
"totally determined" because their decisions belong not to themselves but to their species
different not in degree but in kind, and though we might recognize that other animals have distinct qualities, we as humans are somehow more unique. We have the edge over
Change in the service of human freedom is seen
to be our primary agenda. Humans are thus cast as active agents whose very essence is to transform the world--as if
somehow acceptance, appreciation, wonder, and reverence were beyond the pale . This discursive frame of reference is characteristic
other creatures because we are able to rise above monotonous, species-determined biological existence.
of critical pedagogy. The human/animal opposition upon which it rests is taken for granted, its cultural and historical specificity not acknowledged. And therein lies the
problem. Like other social constructions, this one derives its persuasiveness from its "seeming facticity and from the deep investments individuals and communities have in
This becomes the normal way of seeing the world, and like other
discourses of normalcy, it limits possibilities of taking up and confronting inequities (see Britzman, 1995). The primacy of the human
setting themselves off from others" (Britzman et al., 1991, p. 91).
enterprise is simply not questioned. Precisely how an anthropocentric pedagogy might exacerbate the environmental crisis has not received much consideration in the
literature of critical pedagogy, especially in North America. Although there may be passing reference to planetary destruction, there is seldom mention of the relationship
Concerns
about the nonhuman are relegated to environmental education. And since environmental education, in turn, remains peripheral to the core
curriculum (A. Gough, 1997; Russell, Bell, & Fawcett, 2000), anthropocentrism passes unchallenged. (FN1)
between education and the domination of nature, let alone any sustained exploration of the links between the domination of nature and other social injustices.
Using humanism to determine value risks the worst forms of violence.
Calarco 8 (Matthew, Asst. Prof of Phil at CSUF, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal From Heidegger to Derrida, June,
p. 92-94)
Agamben gives the name “anthropological machine” (a concept he borrows from the Italian scholar
of myth Furio Jesi) to the mechanism underlying our current means of determining the human-animal
distinction. This machine can best be understood as the symbolic and material mechanisms at work in various scientific and
philosophical discourses that classify and distinguish humans and animals through a dual process of inclusion
and exclusion. The first chapters of The Open provide the reader with a fascinating overview of some of the historical
variations on the anthropological machine at work in a number of authors and discourses, ranging from the philosophy of Georges
Bataille and Alexandre Kojeve to the taxonomic studies of Carl Linnaeus and post-Darwinian paleontology. For the purposes of the
argument I am developing here, it will suffice to recall the general structure of the machine and why Agamben argues that it is
necessary to stop its functioning. Agamben makes a distinction between two key variations on the anthropological machine: the
modern and premodern. The modern anthropological machine is post-Darwinian. It seeks to understand,
following the principles of natural science, the
emergence of the fully constituted human being from
out of the order of the human animal (the latter, of course, is in many ways indistinguishable from certain
nonhuman animals, especially so-called higher primates). In order to mark this transition, it is necessary to determine and isolate
the animal aspects of the human animal and exclude them from humanity proper. Agamben describes this process as involving an
“animalization” of certain modes of human life, an attempt to separate out—within human beings themselves—what precisely is
animal, on the one hand, and human, on the other. This variation on the anthropological machine gives rise to the search by
nineteenth-century paleontologists for the “missing link” that provides the biological transition from speechless ape to speaking
human. But it also opens the way for the totalitarian and democratic experiments on and
around human nature that function by excluding animal life from human life within
human beings. Agamben suggests that “it is enough to move our field of research ahead a few decades, and instead of this
innocuous paleontological find we will have the Jew, that is, the non-man produced within the man, or the neomort and the
overcomatose person, that is, the animal separated within the human body itself” (O, 37). The premodern form
of
the anthropological machine, which runs from Aristotle up through Linnaeus, functions in a similar
but inverted form. Rather than animalizing certain aspects of the human, animal life is itself humanized.
Human beings who take an essentially animal form are used to mark the
constitutive outside of humanity proper: the infant savage, the wolf-man, the werewolf, the slave, or
the barbarian. Here, the beings situated at the limits of humanity suffer similar consequences to those “animalized” beings
caught within the working of the modern anthropological machine. As Agamben suggests, the structure or machine that delimits the
contours of the human is perfectly ironic and empty. It does not function by uncovering a uniquely human trait that demarcates a
clean break between human and all other nonhuman animals—for, as Agamben himself acknowledges, no such trait or group of
traits is to be found. This much we know from current debates in evolutionary biology and animal ethics. And here it is not so
much a matter or subscribing to a watered-down, quasi-Darwinian continuism that
would blur any and all distinctions one might wish to make between and among human
and nonhuman animals but rather recognizing that deciding what constitutes “the
human” and “the animal” is never simply a neutral scientific or ontological matter.
Indeed, one of the chief merits of The Open is that it helps us to see that the locus and stakes of the human-animal
distinction are almost always deeply political and ethical. For not only does the distinction
create the opening for the exploitation of nonhuman animals and others considered not fully
human (this is the point that is forcefully made by animal ethicists), but it also creates the conditions for
contemporary biopolitics, in which more and more of the “biological” and “animal” aspects of human life are brought
under the purview of the State and the juridical order. As Agamben has argued in Homo Sacer and elsewhere, contemporary
biopolitics, whether it manifests itself in totalitarian or democratic form, contains within it the virtual possibility
of
concentration camps and other violent means of producing and controlling bare life.
It comes as no surprise, then, that he does not seek to articulate a more precise, more empirical, or less dogmatic
determination of the human-animal distinction. Such a distinction would only redraw the
lines of the “object” of biopolitics and further define the scope of its reach. Thus, instead of drawing a
new human-animal distinction, Agamben insist that the distinction must be abolished altogether, and along
with it the anthropological machine that produces the distinction. Recalling the political
consequences that have followed from the modern and premodern separation of “human” and “animal” within human existence,
Agamben characterizes the task for thought in the following terms: “it is not so much a matter of asking which of the two machines
[ie, the modern or premodern anthropological machine]…is better or more effective—or, rather, less lethal and bloody—as it is of
understanding how they work so that we might eventually, be able to stop them” (O, 38).
Vote negative to reject their human based pedagogy. We affirm an
animist research method – this is a process of bringing the voices of
the non-human into the interpretation of research and teaching.
Barrett 11—M.J., University of Saskatchewan, Canada, Doing Animist Research in Academia: A Methodological Framework,
Canadian Journal of Environmental Education Vol 16, 2011, http://cjee.lakeheadu.ca/index.php/cjee/article/viewFile/957/635,
Shree
Use Forms of Re-Presentation That Enable Both Researcher and Reader to Make Meaning Through Rather Than Just About an Animist Ontology
“form mediates understanding … [and] nontraditional form helps disrupt
the hegemony inherent in traditional texts and evoke emotional [and other] responses that bring
the reader/viewer closer to the work, permitting otherwise silenced voices to be heard” (p. 232, cited
in Nolan, in press). Engaging animism is not exclusive of, but necessitates moving beyond, intellectual
knowing. It entails disrupting the privileged place of linear thought and creating meditative
spaces where the “voices” of other-than-human “persons” (in their many forms) can be heard. While it is often
Butler-Kisber (2002) notes that
suggested that a participatory consciousness emerges from direct contact with the natural world (Bai, 2009), my experiences suggest this is not
communications from other-than-human “persons” can, and often do, transcend
time and space in ways that can influence both the designer and reader of the hypertext. The
necessarily always the case:
combination of intuitively placed links, music, “thought-bits” and image, together with the multi-linear hypertextual form (Morgan, 2000) reflects
many of the ways of coming to know that were used in the development of this research and a dialogic method(ology). Supported by the longer
theoretical sections, they encourage reading through porosity, a trans-rational form of knowing that supports understandings of multiple knowledge
the reader’s experience of travelling through the hypertext, and integrating
multiple knowledge forms during his or her wanderings through it, provide an experiential
medium designed to mirror, as best as possible, many of the methods used to complete the
research. In the process of selecting the links, the hand and eye are drawn to the places of resonance between the individual’s meaningmaking
process and the content.¶ This research is not exclusive of intellectual knowing, but stretches the reader to move beyond it. In
doing so, the representation creates multiple opportunities for other-than-human persons to
interrupt human thinking and knowing. It is up to the reader to be a reciprocating partner in
this engagement. The interruptive nature of the format unsettles reliance on extended
explanations, which can risk reinscribing “clichéd and explanatory language” (Davies, 2000b, p. 252) and
logic as privileged. In its place, I foreground opportunities to engage a re-animated perception (Bai, 2009) and support readers in an
systems. In other words,
experience of meaning-making through an animist ontology. The format for the dissertation was ultimately determined as I “unconsciously” walked
patterns in the snow, and ran the cul-de-sacs in my neighbourhood. My footprints mapped out the loops, dead-ends, and constant webbing a hypertext
would allow. As a technoneophyte, I have to admit that I was rather distraught when I realized that my body’s mapping seemed to be indicating that a
the hypertext, somewhat ironically,
offers a medium through which the dominant role humans have afforded themselves as the sole
agents in research and its many processes can be disrupted.¶ Artist Lipsett (2010) speaks of the importance
of letting go of fear and trusting one’s creative processes as a means of establishing “deep and
lasting even transformative Nature connections” (p. 7). Bai (2009) refers to the significance of
overcoming “humanity’s inability to perceive and feel the intrinsic worth of the other—in this
case, nonhuman beings” (p. 135). Abram (1996) talks about limitations of the alphabet and phonetic
language, and the ways in which it has disconnected us from an animate earth. Attending to dreams,
web-based format was most appropriate for the dissertation. Yet despite its reliance on technology,
visions, serendipity, embodied knowing, and spontaneous intuitions are also important ways to move beyond what Berry (1988) refers to as human
autism to the many voices of the natural world (Berry, 1988). These are all involved in a dialogic method(ology).¶ A dialogic method(ology) has many
parallels with intuitive (Anderson, 2004; in press) and organic inquiry (Clements, 2004), which, as of 2004, has “been used, in some form, in at least 86
dissertations in at least 17 graduate schools” (Braud, 2004, p. 18). Rather than focusing on any specific methods, organic inquiry is described instead as
“an approach” that is premised on a pre-existing “psychological and spiritual preparation and adequateness … of the researcher, and the importance of
the active use of transpersonally-relevant resources” (Braud, 2004, p. 18). It draws heavily on “transpersonal and spiritual resources” the researcher
brings to the process. Intuitive inquiry has been developed to the level of specific methods in its most recent iteration, and although Anderson
A dialogic
method(ology) is more explicit in its recognition and description of methods for engaging otherthan-human “persons” in the transfer of knowledge, as well as providing a method for clearing
obstructing discourses the researcher may encounter as he or she works to engage the methods
(see Zajonc, 2009 for a somewhat different approach that places earth at the centre of inquiry). A dialogic method(ology) is also
unique in some of its forms of representation, which deliberately create spaces for readers’
intuitive engagement with other-than-human “persons” as contributors to research, and thus, to
knowledge creation.
recognizes “nature” as having a potentially significant role in a researcher’s process, it is not foregrounded in her published work.
1NC – 3
The 1AC's research scholarship represents a continual regurgitation
and fixation on presenting communities as damaged. There is nothing
unique about this oversaturated scholarship, it reproduces
colonialism and disempowers communities.
Tuck & Yang 14 - *Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and
Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New York,
**Assistant Professor in Ethnic Studies, Ph.D., 2004, Social and Cultural Studies,
University of California, Berkeley (Tuck, E. & Yang, K.W. (2014). R-words: Refusing
research. In D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.) Humanizing research: Decolonizing
qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223-248). Thousand Oakes, CA:
Sage Publications, https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/evetuck/files/2013/12/Tuck-and-YangR-Words_Refusing-Research.pdf.)
Elsewhere, Eve (Tuck, 2009, 2010) has argued that educational research and much of social
science research
has been concerned with documenting damage , or empirically substantiating the
oppression and pain of Native communities, urban communities, and other
disenfranchised communities. Damage-centered researchers may operate, even
benevolently, within a theory of change in which harm must be recorded or proven in
order to convince an outside adjudicator that reparations are deserved. These
reparations presumably take the form of additional resources, settlements, affirmative actions, and other material, political, and
sovereign adjustments. Eve
has described this theory of change1 as both colonial and
flawed , because it relies upon Western notions of power as scarce and
concentrated , and because it requires disenfranchised communities to position
themselves as both singularly defective and powerless to make change (2010). Finally, Eve has observed that
“won” reparations rarely become reality, and that in many cases, communities are left
with a narrative that tells them that they are broken. Similarly, at the center of the analysis in this
chapter is a concern with the fixation social science research has exhibited in
eliciting pain stories from communities that are not White, not wealthy , and not straight.
Academe’s demonstrated fascination with telling and retelling narratives of pain is
troubling, both for its voyeurism and for its consumptive implacability. Imagining “itself to be a voice,
and in some disciplinary iterations, the voice of the colonised” (Simpson, 2007, p. 67, emphasis in the original) is
not just a rare historical occurrence in anthropology and related fields. We observe that much of the work of the
academy is to reproduce stories of oppression in its own voice . At first, this may read as an
intolerant condemnation of the academy, one that refuses to forgive past blunders and see how things have changed in recent
decades. However, it is our view that while many individual scholars have chosen to pursue other lines of inquiry than the pain
narratives typical of their disciplines, novice researchers emerge from doctoral programs eager to
launch pain-based inquiry projects because they believe that such approaches
embody what it means to do social science. The collection of pain narratives and the
theories of change that champion the value of such narratives are so prevalent in the social
sciences that one might surmise that they are indeed what the academy is about . In
her examination of the symbolic violence of the academy, bell hooks (1990) portrays the core message from the
academy to those on the margins as thus: No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you
better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your
pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become
mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still colonizer the
speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk. (p. 343) Hooks’s words resonate with
our observation of how much of social science research is concerned with providing recognition to the presumed voiceless, a
recognition that is enamored with knowing through pain. Further, this passage describes the ways in which the researcher’s voice is
constituted by, legitimated by, animated by the voices on the margins. The researcher-self is made anew by telling back the story of
the marginalized/subaltern subject. Hooks works to untangle the almost imperceptible differences between forces that silence and
forces that seemingly liberate by inviting those on the margins to speak, to tell their stories. Yet the forces that invite those on the
margins to speak also say, “Do not speak in a voice of resistance. Only speak from that space in the margin that is a sign of
deprivation, a wound, an unfulfilled longing. Only speak your pain” (hooks, 1990, p. 343).
You have engaged in role confusion - we aren't litigators putting the
world on trial, we are academics. All the 1ac leaves us with is damage,
and in doing so they serve as an advertisement for Colonial violence.
The time for damage narratives are over, prefer desire.
Tuck 9 - *Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and Coordinator of
Native American Studies at the State University of New York
(Eve, “Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities”, Harvard Educational Review Vol. 79 No.
3 Fall 2009, http://pages.ucsd.edu/~rfrank/class_web/ES-114A/Week%204/TuckHEdR793.pdf)
Some scholars have built their careers around producing damage narratives of
tribalized and detribalized peoples. Though it is no longer in fashion to frame research as “the problem with (insert tribe
or urban community here)” as it was in past generations, the legacy of this approach is alive and well. (See
also Harvey [1999] on “civilized oppression.”) Native communities, poor communities, communities of color, and
disenfranchised communities tolerate this kind of data gathering because there is an implicit and
sometimes explicit assurance that stories of damage pay off in material, sovereign, and
political wins. Many communities engage, allow, and participate in damage-centered research and in the construction of damage
narratives as a strategy for correcting oppression. However, I worry that the theory of change itself may be unreliable and ineffective.
It is a powerful idea to think of all of us as litigators, putting the world on trial, but
does it actually work ? Do the material and political wins come through? And, most importantly , are the
wins worth the longterm costs of thinking of ourselves as damaged ? To offer a counterstory,
my friend and Indigenous scholar Sandy Grande (personal communication, April 2008) shared with me that some of the narratives I
would categorize as damage centered, she would categorize as stories of colonization; the after-effects and the colonizing are
inextricably linked. Earlier, Grande (2004) wrote: The “Indian Problem” is not a problem of children and families but rather, first
and foremost, a problem that has been consciously and historically produced by and through the systems of colonization: a
multidimensional force underwritten by Western Christianity, defined by White supremacy, and fueled by global capitalism. (p. 19)
Contemporary damage-centered narratives (of abuse, addiction, poverty, illness) in the United States can be directly tied to 400-plus
years of occupation of Native lands, genocide, and colonization. Like Sandy, I can’t help but hear these stories within the context of
this history, but I suspect that for many people, Native and non-Native, this context has been made invisible and natural. As in
African American communities that have been coarsely expected to have “gotten over slavery by now,” Native American and First
Alaskan communities are expected to have gotten over the past, which is reduced to the unfortunate birth pangs of a new nation,
thus dismissing the very real and ongoing colonization of these communities to the corners of our imaginations (Tuck & Fine, 2007).
Although, as I have noted, damage-centered research involves social and historical contexts
at the outset, the significance of these contexts is regularly submerged. Without the
context of racism and colonization, all we’re left with is the damage, and this makes our stories vulnerable to pathologizing analyses
(Kelley, 1997). Our evidence of ongoing colonization by research—absent a context in which we acknowledge that colonization—is
relegated to our own bodies, our own families, our own social networks, our own leadership. After the research team
leaves, after the town meeting, after the news cameras have gone away, all we are left with is
the damage. I want to recognize that, particularly in Native communities, there was a need for
research that exposed the uninhabitable, inhumane conditions in which people lived and
continue to live. My ability to articulate this critique is due to the lessons and accomplishments
that have been made on the backs of prior generations of communities and
researchers. I have boundless respect for the elders who paved the way for
respectful, mutually beneficial research in Indigenous communities. I appreciate that, in
many ways, there was a time and place for damage-centered research. However, in talking with some of these elders, they agree that
a time for a shift has come , that damage-centered narratives are no longer
sufficient. We are in a new historical moment—so much so that even Margaret Mead probably would not do research like
Margaret Mead these days. 1 Researching for Desire In my own autobiographical performance projects, I identify this chiasmatic
shift in the possibility that all those performances I did about getting bashed only provided
knowledge of subjugation, serving almost as an advertisement for power: “Don’t
let this happen to you. Stay in the closet.” . . . I decided to write more about the
gratifications of same-sex relationships, to depict intimacy and desire, the kinds of
subjugated knowledges we don’t get to see on the afterschool specials and movies of the week that parade queer bruises and broken
One
alternative to damage-centered research is to craft our research to capture desire
instead of damage . I submit that a desire-based framework is an antidote to damage-centered research. An
antidote stops and counteracts the effects of a poison, and the poison I am
referring to here is not the supposed damage of Native communities, urban communities,
bones but shy away from the queer kiss. Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, “Auto-ethnography’s Family Values” (2005)
or other disenfranchised communities but the frameworks that position these communities as damaged. As I will explore, desirebased research frameworks are concerned with understanding complexity, contradiction, and the self-determination of lived lives.
Considering the excerpt from Craig Gingrich-Philbrook (2005), desirebased frameworks defy the lure to
serve as “advertisements for power” by documenting not only the painful elements of social realities but also
the wisdom and hope. Such an axiology is intent on depathologizing the experiences of dispossessed and disenfranchised
communities so that people are seen as more than broken and conquered. This is to say that even when communities
are broken and conquered, they are so much more than that—so much more that this
incomplete story is an act of aggression . Several solid examples of such depathologizing work come to mind.
2 In these examples, typical scripts of blame are flipped, and latent assumptions about responsibility are provoked. For instance, in
her study of the relationships between privatization of the public sphere and constructed public perceptions of women who are
responsible for the death of their children, Sarah Carney (2006) argues: Race, class and gender work in combination within a
current (U.S.) social and political moment that favors privatization and the withdrawal of public support to frame and construct
various images of “natural” women, of “good” and “bad” mothers, and of female responsibility; and these now-familiar images work
to support/bolster state policies regarding shrinking social assistance, and allow the state to place the burden for caring back on the
backs of women, particularly women who are poor and of color. (p. 11)
Our alternative is desired-centered research. It is not about denying
tragedy or 'seeing the bright side', but rather tends to the complexity
of lived experience to allow bodies to write their own history.
Tuck & Yang 14 - *Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and
Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New York,
**Assistant Professor in Ethnic Studies, Ph.D., 2004, Social and Cultural Studies,
University of California, Berkeley (Tuck, E. & Yang, K.W. (2014). R-words: Refusing
research. In D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.) Humanizing research: Decolonizing
qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223-248). Thousand Oakes, CA:
Sage Publications, https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/evetuck/files/2013/12/Tuck-and-YangR-Words_Refusing-Research.pdf.)
Alongside analyses of pain and damage-centered research, Eve (Tuck 2009, 2010) has
theorized desire-based
research as not the antonym but rather the antidote for damage-focused narratives. Pain
narratives are always incomplete. They bemoan the food deserts, but forget to see the food
innovations; they lament the concrete jungles and miss the roses and the tobacco from concrete. Desirecentered
research does not deny the experience of tragedy , trauma, and pain, but positions the
knowing derived from such experiences as wise. This is not about seeing the bright
side of hard times , or even believing that everything happens for a reason. Utilizing a desire-based
framework is about working inside a more complex and dynamic understanding of
what one, or a community, comes to know in (a) lived life. Logics of pain focus on events ,
sometimes hiding structure, always adhering to a teleological trajectory of pain, brokenness, repair, or irreparability—
from unbroken, to broken, and then to unbroken again. Logics of pain require time to be organized as linear
and rigid, in which the pained body (or community or people) is set back or delayed on some
kind of path of humanization, and now must catch up (but never can) to the
settler /unpained/abled body (or community or people or society or philosophy or knowledge system). In this way, the logics
of pain has superseded the now outmoded racism of an explicit racial hierarchy
with a much more politically tolerable racism of a developmental hierarchy.2 Under a
developmental hierarchy, in which some were undeterred by pain and oppression, and others were waylaid by their victimry and
subalternity, damagecentered research reifies a settler temporality and helps suppress
other understandings of time. Desire-based frameworks, by contrast, look to the past and the
future to situate analyses. Desire is about longing, about a present that is enriched by both the
past and the future; it is integral to our humanness. It is not only the painful elements of social and
psychic realities, but also the textured acumen and hope. (Tuck, 2010, p. 644) In this way, desire is time-warping. The
logics of desire is asynchronous just as it is distemporal, living in the gaps between the ticking machinery of disciplinary institutions.
To be clear, again, we are not making an argument against the existence of pain, or for the
erasure of memory, experience, and wisdom that comes with suffering. Rather, we see the
collecting of narratives of pain by social scientists to already be a double erasure,
whereby pain is documented in order to be erased , often by eradicating the communities that are
supposedly injured and supplanting them with hopeful stories of progress into a better, Whiter, world. Vizenor talks about such “the
consumer notion of a ‘hopeful book,’” and we would add hopeful or feel-good research, as “a denial of tragic wisdom” bent on
imagining “a social science paradise of tribal victims” (1993, p. 14). Desire interrupts this metanarrative of damaged communities
and White progress.
Do not be confused, this does not mean we cannot deal with the nittygritty of Settler colonialism, rather a focus on desire challenges at a
more fundamental level the way that history has victimized whole
populations.
Tuck & Yang 14 - *Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and
Coordinator of Native American Studies at the State University of New York,
**Assistant Professor in Ethnic Studies, Ph.D., 2004, Social and Cultural Studies,
University of California, Berkeley (Tuck, E. & Yang, K.W. (2014). R-words: Refusing
research. In D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.) Humanizing research: Decolonizing
qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223-248). Thousand Oakes, CA:
Sage Publications, https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/evetuck/files/2013/12/Tuck-and-YangR-Words_Refusing-Research.pdf.)
Said another way, the
academy as an apparatus of settler colonial knowledge already
domesticates, denies, and dominates other forms of knowledge. It too refuses. It sets limits, but disguises itself as
limitless. Frederic Jameson (1981) writes, “[H]istory is what hurts. It is what refuses desire and
sets inexorable limits to individual as well as collective praxis” (p. 102). For Jameson, history is a master narrative
of inevitability, the logic of teleos and totality: All events are interconnected and all lead toward the same
horizon of progress. The relentlessness of the master narrative is what hurts people who find themselves on the outside
or the underside of that narrative. History as master narrative appropriates the voices, stories, and
histories of all Others, thus limiting their representational possibilities, their expression as epistemological paradigms
in themselves. Academic knowledge is particular and privileged, yet disguises itself as universal and common; it is
settler colonial; it already refuses desire; it sets limits to potentially dangerous Other
knowledges; it does so through erasure, but importantly also through inclusion , and its own
imperceptibility. Jameson’s observation also positions desire as a counterlogic to the history
that hurts. Desire invites the ghosts that history wants exorcised, and compels us
to imagine the possible in what was written as impossible; desire is haunted. Read this
way, desire expands personal as well as collective praxis .
Case
The reactionary politics of the 1AC ultimately creates an attachment
to the status of oppression---the affirmative’s emphasis on exclusion
perversely recreate those as valorized ideals
Bhambra 10—U Warwick—AND—Victoria Margree—School of Humanities, U Brighton
(Identity Politics and the Need for a ‘Tomorrow’,
http://www.academia.edu/471824/Identity_Politics_and_the_Need_for_a_Tomorrow_)
2 The Reification of Identity We wish to turn now to a related problem within identity politicsthat can be best described as the problem of the reification of
politicised identities . Brown (1995) positions herself within thedebate about identity politics by seeking to elaborate on “the
wounded character of politicised identity’s desire” (ibid: 55); thatis, the problem of “wounded
attachments” whereby a claim to identity becomes over-invested in its own historical
suffering and perpetuates its injury through its refusal to give up its identity claim. Brown’s argument is
that where politicised identity is founded upon an experience of exclusion , for example, exclusion itself
becomes perversely valorised in the continuance of that identity . In such cases, group activity
operates to maintain and reproduce the identity created by injury (exclusion) rather than– and indeed, often in
opposition to – resolving the injurious social relations that generated claims
around that identity in the first place. If things have to have a history in order to have af uture, then the problem becomes that of how
To the extent that, for Brown, identity is associated primarily with (historical)
injury, the future for that identity is then already determined by the injury “as both bound to the
history that produced it and as a reproach to the present which embodies that history” (ibid 1995: 73). Brown’s sug-gestion that as it is not possible to undo the
past, the focus back- wards entraps the identity in reactionary practices, is, we believe,too stark and we will pursue this later in the article. Politicised identity,
Brown maintains, “emerges and obtains its unifying coherence through the politicisation of exclusion from
an ostensible universal , as a protest against exclusion” (ibid: 65). Its continuing existence requires both
a belief in the legitimacy of the universal ideal (for example, ideals of opportunity, and re- ward in proportion to effort) and enduring
exclusion from those ideals. Brown draws upon Nietzsche in arguing that such identi-ties, produced in reaction
history is con-structed in order to make the future.
to conditions of disempowerment andinequality, then become invested in their own
impotence through practices of , for example, reproach, complaint, and revenge . These are “reactions” in the
Nietzschean sense since they are substitutes for actions or can be seen as negative forms of action. Rather
than acting to remove the cause(s) of suffering, that suf-fering is instead
ameliorated (to some extent) through “the estab-lishment of suffering as the measure of
social virtue ” (ibid 1995:70), and is compensated for by the vengeful pleasures of
recrimnation . Such practices , she argues, stand in sharp distinction to –in fact, provide obstacles to –
practices that would seek to dispel the conditions of exclusion. Brown casts the dilemma discussed above in
terms of a choicebetween past and future, and adapting Nietzsche, exhorts theadoption of a (collective) will that would become the “redeemer of history” (ibid: 72) through its
focus on the possibilities of creat-ing different futures. As Brown reads Nietzsche, the one thingthat the will cannot exert its power over is the past, the “it was”.Confronted with
its impotence with respect to the events of thepast, the will is threatened with becoming simply an “angry spec-tator” mired in bitter recognition of its own helplessness. The
onehope for the will is that it may, instead, achieve a kind of mastery over that past such that, although “what has happened” cannotbe altered, the past can be denied the power
of continuing to de-termine the present and future. It is only this focus on the future, Brown continues, and the capacity to make a future in the face of human frailties and
injustices that spares us from a rancorous decline into despair. Identity politics structured by ressentiment – that is, by suffering caused by past events – can only break outof
the cycle of “slave morality” by remaking the present againstthe terms of the past, a remaking that requires a “forgetting” of that past. An act of liberation, of self-affirmation, this
“forgettingof the past” requires an “overcoming” of the past that offers iden-tity in relationship to suffering, in favour of a future in whichidentity is to be defined differently. In
arguing thus, Brown’s work becomes aligned with a posi-tion that sees the way forward for emancipatory politics as re-siding in a movement away from a “politics of memory”
(Kilby 2002: 203) that is committed to articulating past injustices andsuffering. While we agree that investment in identities prem-ised upon suffering can function as an
we share a concern
about any turn to the future that is figured as a complete abandonment of the past. This is because for those who
have suffered oppression and exclusion, the injunction to give up articulating a pain that is still felt may seem
cruel and impossible to meet. We would argue instead that the “ turn to the future ” that theorists such as Brown and Grosz callfor, to revitalise
obstacle to alleviating the causes of that suffering, we believe that Brown’s argument as outlined is problematic. First, following Kilby (2002),
need not be conceived of as a brute rejection of the past
feminism and other emancipatory politics,
. Indeed,
Brown herself recognises the problems involved here, stating that [since] erased histories and historical invisibility are themselves suchintegral elements of the pain inscribed in
most subjugated identities[then] the counsel of forgetting, at least in its unreconstructedNietzschean form, seems inappropriate if not cruel (1995: 74). She implies, in fact, that
the demand exerted by those in painmay be no more than the demand to exorcise that pain throughrecognition: “all that such pain may long for – more than revenge– is the
chance to be heard into a certain release, recognised intoself-overcoming, incited into possibilities for triumphing over, and hence, losing itself” (1995: 74-75). Brown wishes to
establish the political importance of remembering “painful” historical events but with a crucial caveat: that the purpose of remembering pain is to enable its release . The
challenge then, according to her,is to create a political culture in which this project does not mutate into one of remembering pain for its own sake. Indeed, if Brown feels that
this may be “a pass where we ought to part with Nietzsche” (1995: 74), then Freud may be a more suit-able companion. Since his early
work with Breuer, Freud’s writ-ings have suggested the (only apparent) paradox that remember-ing is often a condition of forgetting. The
hysterical patient, who is doomed to repeat in symptoms and compulsive actions a past she cannot
adequately recall, is helped to remember that trau-matic past in order then to move beyond it: she must
remember inorder to forget and to forget in order to be able to live in the present. 7 This model seems to us to be
particularly helpful for thedilemma articulated by both Brown (1995) and Kilby (2002),insisting as it does that “forgetting” (at least, loosening the holdof the past, in order to
enable the future) cannot be achieved without first remembering the traumatic past. Indeed, this wouldseem to be similar to the message of Beloved , whose central motif of
haunting (is the adult woman, “Beloved”, Sethe’s murderedchild returned in spectral form?) dramatises the tendency of theunanalysed traumatic past to keep on returning,
constraining, asit does so, the present to be like the past, and thereby, disallow-ing the possibility of a future different from that past. As Sarah Ahmed argues in her response to
in order to break the seal of the past , in order to move away from attach-ments that are hurtful, we must first
bring them into the realm of political action ” (2004: 33). We would add that the task of analys-ing the
Brown, “
traumatic past, and thus opening up the possibility of political action, is unlikely to be achievable by
individuals on their own, but that this, instead, requires a “community” of participants dedicated to the serious
epistemic work of rememberingand interpreting the objective social conditions that made up thatpast and continue in the present. The “pain” of historical
injury is not simply an individual psychological issue , but stems from objective social
conditions which perpetuate, for the most part, forms of injustice and inequality into the present. In sum,
Brown presents too stark a choice between past andfuture. In the example of Beloved with which we began thisarticle, Paul D’s acceptance of Sethe’s experiences of slavery
asdistinct from his own, enable them both to arrive at new under-standings of their experience. Such understanding is a way of partially “undoing” the (effects of) the past and
coming to terms with the locatedness of one’s being in the world (Mohanty 1995). As this example shows, opening up a future, and attending to theongoing effects of a traumatic
past, are only incorrectly under-stood as alternatives. A second set of problems with Brown’s critique of identity poli-tics emerge from what we regard as her tendency to
the problems associated
with identity politics can be overcome through a “shift in the character of political expression and politi-cal claims
common to much politicised identity” (1995: 75). She defines this shift as one in which identity would be expressed in terms of desire
individualise social problems as problems that are the possession and theresponsibility of the “wounded” group. Brown suggests that
rather than of ontology by supplanting the lan-guage of “I am” with the language
of “I want this for us” (1995:75). Such a reconfiguration, she argues, would create an opportu-nity to “rehabilitate the memory of desire within
identificatory processes…prior to [their] wounding” (1995: 75). It would fur-ther refocus attention on the future
possibilities present in theidentity as opposed to the identity being foreclosed
through its attention to past-based grievances .