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Agamben Answers
K Answers Toolbox
K Answers Toolbox ............................................................... 1
***Western Feminism Answers***............... 3
Western Feminism – No Link: Imperialism/Trade-Off .......... 4
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Politics Key .................. 5
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally ...................... 6
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally ...................... 7
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally ...................... 8
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally ...................... 9
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally .................... 10
Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Aff is a Prereq to the Alt ... 11
Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Essentialism Turn ............. 12
Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Exclusion Turn ................. 13
Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Generally .......................... 14
Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Generally .......................... 15
***Security Answers*** ............................... 16
Security K – No Link – A2: State Bad ................................. 17
Security K – Link Turn: Sovereignty ................................... 18
Security K – AT: Security Discourse Bad ............................ 19
Security K – AT: Security Discourse Bad ............................ 20
Security K – Threats = Real – Generally and Historically ... 21
Security K – A2: Epistemology K ........................................ 22
Security K – AT: Root Cause ............................................... 23
Security K – Fear Good ........................................................ 24
Security K – Apocalyptic Imagery Good – Social Change .. 25
Security K – Apocalyptic Imagery Good – Social Change .. 26
Security K – Apocalyptic Imagery – Alt Fails ..................... 27
Security K – Predictions Good ............................................. 28
Security K – Predictions Good ............................................. 29
Security K – Perm Solves – Strategic Reversibility ............. 30
Security K – Perm Solves – Generally ................................. 31
Security K – Perm Solves – A2: Security is Totalizing ........ 32
Security K – Alt Fails – Discourse ....................................... 33
Security K – Alt Fails – Generally ....................................... 34
Security K – Alt Turn – Exclusion ....................................... 35
Security K – Alt Fails – Reject Bad ..................................... 36
Security K – Alt Fails – Violence Inevitable ........................ 37
Security K – Alt Fails – Violence Inevitable ........................ 38
***Agamben Answers*** ............................ 39
Agamben – Perm .................................................................. 40
Agamben – Perm: Neg Totalizes .......................................... 41
Agamben – Perm: Neg Totalizes .......................................... 42
Agamben – AT: Aid Links (1/2) .......................................... 43
Agamben – AT Aid: Links (2/2) .......................................... 44
Agamben – No Link: Liberalism Good ................................ 45
Agamben – No Link: Liberalism Good ................................ 46
Agamben – No Impact – Turn: Trivialization ...................... 47
Agamben – No Impact – Turn: Value to Life/Bare Life ...... 48
Agamben – No Impact – A2: Root Cause ............................ 49
Agamben – No Impact – AT: Bare Life ............................... 50
Agamben – No Impact – AT: Bare Life ............................... 51
Agamben – AT: Soveriegn Power ........................................ 52
Agamben – AT: Biopower  Holocaust ............................. 53
Agamben – Alt Bad – Overdetermined ................................ 54
Agamben – No Alt – Turn: Sovereign Control .................... 55
Agamben – No Alt – Turn: Violence ................................... 56
Agamben – Alt Fails (1/4) .................................................... 57
Agamben – Alt Fails (2/4) .................................................... 58
Agamben – Alt Fails (3/4).................................................... 59
Agamben – Alt Fails (4/4).................................................... 61
Agamben – No Alt – A2: Witnessing .................................. 62
Agamben – No Alt – A2: Whatever Being........................... 63
***Empire Answers*** .................................64
Empire – No Link: DA is Not Imperial ................................ 65
Empire – Imperialism Good ................................................. 66
Empire – Imperialism Good ................................................. 67
Empire – Hegemony Good................................................... 68
Empire – A2: US is Imperialist ............................................ 69
Empire – A2: US is Imperalist ............................................. 70
Empire – A2: US is Imperalist ............................................. 71
Empire – Anti-Imperialism – Alt Fails................................. 72
Empire – Anti-Imperialism – Alt Fails................................. 73
Empire – General Philosophy Bad ....................................... 75
Empire – Perm ..................................................................... 76
Empire – Impact Debate 1/3................................................. 77
Empire – Impact Debate 2/3................................................. 78
Empire – Impact Debate 3/3................................................. 79
Empire – Alt Debate ............................................................ 80
Empire – Alt Debate ............................................................ 81
Empire – Alt Debate ............................................................ 82
Empire – Alt Debate ............................................................ 83
Empire – Alt Debate ............................................................ 84
Empire – Alt Debate ............................................................ 85
***Whiteness Answers*** ............................86
Whiteness – Democracy Good ............................................. 87
Whiteness – Democracy Good ............................................. 88
Whiteness – Democracy Good ............................................. 89
Whiteness – Democracy Good ............................................. 91
Whiteness – Colorblindness Good ....................................... 92
Whiteness – Perm Solves ..................................................... 93
Whiteness – Perm Solves ..................................................... 94
Whiteness – Perm Solves ..................................................... 95
Whiteness – Perm Solves ..................................................... 96
Whiteness – Perm Solves – A2: Monolithic Power.............. 97
Whiteness – A2: Time Wise................................................. 98
Whiteness – ‘White Supremacy’ = Dirty Word ................... 99
Whiteness – Alt Fails – Focus on White Supremacy Bad .. 100
Whiteness – Alt Fails – Focus on White Supremacy Bad .. 101
Whiteness – Alt Fails – AT: Olson Alt .............................. 103
Whiteness – LatCrit ........................................................... 104
Whiteness – LatCrit ........................................................... 106
Whiteness – LatCrit ........................................................... 107
Whiteness – LatCrit – A2: Spillsover ................................. 108
Whiteness – LatCrit – A2: Spillsover ................................. 109
Whiteness – LatCrit – A2: Marginalizes Black History ..... 110
Whiteness – LatCrit – A2: Black Perspective Key ............. 111
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***Nietzsche Answers*** ........................... 112
Nietzsche – Perm (1/3) ....................................................... 113
Nietzsche – Perm (2/3) ....................................................... 114
Nietzsche – Perm (2/3) ....................................................... 115
Nietzsche – Perm – Solvency ............................................. 116
Nietzsche – Perm – Solvency ............................................. 117
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Liberal Institutions ...................... 118
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Liberal Institutions ...................... 119
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Democracy.................................. 120
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Democracy.................................. 121
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Democracy.................................. 122
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Democracy.................................. 123
Nietzsche – Impact Turn – Genocide ................................. 124
Nietzsche – Impact Turn – Genocide ................................. 125
Nietzsche – Impact Turn – Violence .................................. 126
Nietzsche – Impact Turn – Rape ........................................ 127
Nietzsche – A2: Suffering Link.......................................... 128
Nietzsche – AT: Suffering Inevitable ................................. 129
Nietzsche – AT: Suffering Inevitable ................................. 130
Nietzsche – A2: Ressentiment ............................................ 131
Nietzsche – AT: Slave Morality (1/2) ................................ 132
Nietzsche – AT: Slave Morality (2/2) ................................ 133
Nietzsche – A2: Root Cause of Vio ................................... 134
Nietzsche – A2: Root Cause of Vio ................................... 135
Nietzsche – A2: Root Cause of Vio ............ 136
Nietzsche – A2: Root Cause of Vio ................................... 137
Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency.............................. 138
Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency.............................. 139
Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency.............................. 140
Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency.............................. 141
Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency.............................. 142
Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency – ER..................... 143
Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency – ER..................... 144
Nietzsche – Alternative – Turn – Otherness ....................... 145
Nietzsche – Alternative – Extinction Outweighs................ 146
Nietzsche – Alternative – Extinction Outweighs ................ 147
Nietzsche – A2: VTL ......................................................... 148
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***Orientalism Answers*** .......................149
Orientalism – Perm Solvency ............................................. 150
Orientalism – Perm Solvency ............................................. 151
Orientalism – Said Defense- Ontology............................... 152
Orientalism – Said Defense- Ontology............................... 153
Orientalism – Said Defense- Useless Theory ..................... 154
Orientalism – Said Defense- Useless Theory ..................... 155
Orientalism – Said Defense- Useless Theory ..................... 156
Orientalism – Said Defense- Flawed Theory ..................... 157
Orientalism – Said Defense- Out of Context ...................... 158
Orientalism – Said Defense- Out of Context ...................... 159
Orientalism – Said Defense- Out of Context ...................... 160
Orientalism – Said Offense- Conclusions bad.................... 161
Orientalism – Said Offense- Conclusions bad.................... 162
Orientalism – Said Offense- Conclusions bad.................... 163
Orientalism – Said Offense- Orientalist ............................. 164
Orientalism – Said Offense- Orientalist ............................. 165
Orientalism – Said Offense- Advocates Violence .............. 166
Orientalism – Said Offense- Flawed Theory ...................... 167
Orientalism – Said Offense- Flawed Theory ...................... 168
***Neoliberalism Answers*** ....................169
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good ....................................... 170
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – General ....................... 171
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – Environment............... 172
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – Food Production ......... 173
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – Space .......................... 174
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – Freedom ..................... 175
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – War ............................ 176
Neoliberalism – AT: Inequality.......................................... 177
Neoliberalism – AT: Value to Life..................................... 178
Neoliberalism – Alt = Transition Wars .............................. 179
Neoliberalism – Alt = Transition Wars .............................. 180
Neoliberalism – Perm Solves ............................................. 181
Neoliberalism – Perm Solves ............................................. 183
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Capitalism Inevitable ............. 184
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Capitalism Inevitable ............. 185
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Generic (And Cap Links) ....... 186
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Totalizing Bad ........................ 187
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Totalizing Bad ........................ 188
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Agamben Answers
***Western Feminism Answers***
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Agamben Answers
Western Feminism – No Link: Imperialism/Trade-Off
Western feminism is not imperialist-it actually facilitates dialogue about feminism, and
thus the best of both worlds can be reached by the perm.
B Mbire-Barungi, 1999 [Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol.22,No.4,pp.435-439,1999: Elsevier
Science Ltd. USA; “ugandan feminism: political rhetoric or reality?;” Economics Department, Makerere University;
http://www.wougnet.org/Documents/UgandanFeminism.rtf]
Lessons can be learnt from western feminist movements as to how women have been able to uplift their
status beyond tokenism (as is the case in many African countries) in the more developed countries. The
more crucial role of international feminism is to influence public policy at the global level. Western
feminism in particular cannot simply be brushed aside as imperialist. It must be commended for its
significant role in propping up the stage for a global sisterhood dialogue. Women can no longer be
dismissed as inferior, and governments today are accountable at global levels (Taylor, 1995). The
challenge that remains is how to bridge the gap between women of the south and women of the equity and
empowerment.
Western and indigenous feminism are not mutually exclusive.
Christine Sylvester, 1995 [“African and Western Feminisms: World-Traveling the Tendencies and Possibilities;”
Signs, Vol. 20, No. 4, Postcolonial, Emergent, and Indigenous Feminisms. (Summer, 1995), pp. 941-969; Professor
of Women's Studies and Professorial Affiliate of Politics & International Relations at the Lancaster University;
Her answer, carefully constructed to give just desserts to a variety of solid feminisms and tart reminders to
move on, analyzes the various notions of personhood and thematizations of subjectivity that anchor the
(Western) marchers in the feminist parade. She finds considerable variegation in the personhoods
feminisms set forth and sees no sound reason why we cannot be mobile in them, world traveling those
positions, in effect, as a way of sustaining contradictions and ensuring that "nothing is thrust out" as a
"foreign importation which has no relevance to the African [or some other] situation" (Meena 1992, 4).
Ferguson's equivalent of world traveling is the concept of "mobile subjectivities." It takes subjects (in this
case, women) as "particular positionalizations" (1993, 159) that are produced by dominant discursive and
institutional practices and that produce both the dominant patterns and practices of resistance to them.
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Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Politics Key
Political activism is critical to furthering indigenous feminism and warding off Eurocentric
patriarchialism.
Violet Eudine Barriteau 6 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; First published by the
African Gender Institute; University of Cape Town; “The relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean
perspective; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf
Collins contends that black women’s subjectivities defy negative self perceptions, and that this has the
potential to change power inequalities. She maintains that black feminism constitutes political activism
that resists the oppression of black women by negative, Eurocentric, bourgeois and patriarchal
ideologies. Collins maintains that black feminist standpoints share four main criteria.
Being politically active is the main furtherance of women’s mobilization.
Aili Mari Tripp 6 ["Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in
women's participation in decision-making structures". Catholic New Times. April 9, 2006. FindArticles.com..
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_6_30/ai_n16128126; associate dean of international studies and a
professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin]
Women have also been very active, especially since the 1990s, in peace building initiatives throughout
Africa: from Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mali,
Senegal, Somalia and Uganda to Sudan and other countries that have been wracked by civil war or
conflict. Female political representation in the peace efforts and post-conflict governance
arrangements has been a central theme of women's mobilization.
Not only does political activism empower women, but it casts off Western feminism.
Aili Mari Tripp 6 ["Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in
women's participation in decision-making structures". Catholic New Times. April 9, 2006. FindArticles.com..
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_6_30/ai_n16128126; associate dean of international studies and a
professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin]
Women activists often encounter fierce resistance to their efforts to advance women politically,
economically and socially. With regional influences are putting pressure on governments to advance
women's rights, greater openness to change on the part of governments has been evident.
The veil of transnational feminism has been lifted to reveal the local scene, eliminating the dubious, yet
all too frequent charge that the advancement of women's rights must be equated with "alien" Western
influences. The regional pressures for women's rights described here are emanating from Africa, and
are eliciting new and important African responses.
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Agamben Answers
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally
Perm solves – doing both engages in a process of mutual construction. Our speech is not
unilateral, but open to transformation.
Dr. Cheryl McEwan 1, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department
of geography at Durham U, [“Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas,” Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco]
For example, Robinson (1994) attempts to displace the privileged fixed position of the researcher, to
deconstruct the dualism between ‘self-researcher’ and ‘other-researched’, and instead to find a ‘third space’
where mediations of meanings and interactions of interpretations become the object of investigation. Crucial
to this is a recognition that the subjectivities of both researcher and researched are mutually constructed
through the research process, and that meanings and interactions are also mediated, as is knowledge
itself. Transforming the research process in this way involves recognizing that the researcher does not
have unilateral control over the research process and the need to ‘speak with’ rather than to or for the
people with whom one is engaged in research. As Spivak (1990) argues, ‘speaking with’ people from
other places and cultures involves openness to their influence and the possibility of them ‘speaking back’.
It also links to broader notions of breaking with Eurocentric concepts of development and finding other ways
of knowing and being.
Cooperation between Western and African feminists is essential due to economic and social
ties
Susan Arndt 2k, former Research Fellow at St. Antony's College in Oxford, Humboldt-University at Berlin and
the Center for Literary Research (Berlin), she taught at the University of Frankfurt/Main. “African Gender Trouble
and African Womanism: An Interview with Chikwenye Ogunyemi and Wanjira Muthoni” Signs, Vol. 25, No. 3.
(Spring), pp. 709-726
SA: I wonder what the relationship between your projects and Western feminism is or could be like? Is it necessary to cooperate? Is it
possible to cooperate? Are there some ways in which Western feminism and African womanism could go together, or should this kind of
cooperation rather be postponed?
CO: Isn't this conversation a cooperation of sorts? To shift a little, yesterday I was listening to a lecture delivered by a white Western
feminist.~ Concludng from this, I would argue that the difference, technologically, between the Western world and the African world is
so vast that your concerns are not necessarily our concerns. For example, the scholar was talking about cyborgs; she was talking about
technology. In the discussion, she raised questions in the medical sphere about transplants and about who has the power to declare a
body dead and so on. We have not yet got to that stage at all. When you become involved in that type of conversation,
then the African world, which has not yet battled malaria effectively, gets left out totally. We have to
remind you that we are still down there and still have our practical problems that have not been
solved. And so, yes, there are many things you can do. We need cooperation, because the two worlds are still tied
to each other. Economically, we are tied to each other. There is still a lot of migration and
immigration, and if things are terrible in Africa, more and more people migrate to the Western world.
So it is also in your interest -particularly if you are overwhelmed by the immigration -to help in some way, because, as I said,
economically we are tied to the Western world. We provide raw material and so forth. We need Western help to make
not a
fair distribution of wealth but a fair economic arrangement for us to have enough to live on, so that we
do not need to migrate to the West. I think this is very crucial, and feminists, I think, can play a very
important part in that project.
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Agamben Answers
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally
The West and Third World must combine to participate in evaluating internal practices of
each others’ cultures and eliminate biases
Alison M. Jaggar 98, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder
“Globalizing Feminist Ethics” Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Despite the difficulties and dangers of cross-cultural moral discourse, it is not impossible for outsiders to
participate in evaluating the internal practices of another culture. Advocates of women's strategic
gender interests in both the West and the Third World therefore should not regard questions and
criticisms of our own cultural practices by our foreign counterparts as inevitably presumptuous or
unwarranted but should view them rather as moral resources. For feminism to become global does not
mean that Western feminists should think of themselves as missionaries carrying civilization to primitive and
barbarous lands, but neither does it mean that people concerned about the subordination of women in their
own culture may dismiss the plight of women in others. At least on the level of morality, global feminism
means that feminists in each culture must re-examine our own commitments in light of the
perspectives produced by feminists in others, so that we may recognize some of the limits and biases of
our own beliefs and assumptions. Of course, the moral evaluations of any cultural practice must always be
''immersed'' rather than ''detached,'' taking account of ''the practices, the perceptions, even the emotions, of
the culture'' (Nussbaum and Sen 1989, 308). Elsewhere, I suggest that a feminist conception of discourse,
with its emphasis on listening, personal friendship, and responsiveness to emotion, and its concern to address
power inequalities, is especially well suited to facilitate such an immersed evaluation.
Recognition of disagreement is not a reason to avoid collaboration – dissent is key
Alison M. Jaggar 98, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder
“Globalizing Feminist Ethics” Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Recognizing the possibility, indeed the inevitability, of disagreement within as well as among moral
communities complicates our hitherto simple model of insiders and outsiders. For instance, if we were to
determine that issues that appeared to concern only a single group might be assessed solely by members of
that group, so that only prostitutes could evaluate prostitution and only African women could discuss
clitoridectomy and infibulation, we would immediately encounter new problems of identity, authorization,
and legitimation. Who is entitled to speak for a group as a whole and whence derives her authority?8 Can exprostitutes speak for prostitutes who are currently working? Can an African woman who has received a
Western education fairly represent other African women? There is no reason to suppose that African
women, or prostitutes, or lesbians, or African American women all think alike, and dissenters in these
groups may be silenced by women who claim to speak for the whole. It is interesting to notice how the
urban Aboriginal women who participated in the Bell controversy delegitimated the voice of Topsy
Naparrula Nelson by labeling her ''traditional,'' even though it could well be argued that Nelson was better
qualified than her Western-educated challengers to speak for other Aboriginal women precisely by virtue of
her traditional identity. Some Aboriginal women who had no opportunity to participate in the published
debate might have agreed with Nelson in welcoming the intervention of an outsider whose professional
credentials enabled her to be heard while their own voices were ignored.
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Agamben Answers
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally
Nonwestern and western groups share the common goal for womyn’s “gender interests” –
differences between these groups are not so significant that they cannot collaborate in
order to solve for gender equality
Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder
“Globalizing Feminist Ethics” Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Whether or not they call themselves feminist, innumerable groups outside the West are currently
working to promote what Maxine Molyneux calls women's ''gender interests.'' Molyneux defines gender
interests as ''those that women (or men for that matter) may develop by virtue of their social positioning
through gender attributes'' (Molyneux 1985, 232). She distinguishes practical from strategic gender
interests. Women's practical gender interests emerge directly from their concrete life situations and
include such immediately perceived necessities as food, shelter, water, income, medical care, and
transportation. Molyneux notes that demands for these ''do not generally... challenge the prevailing forms of
subordination even though they arise directly out of them'' (1985, 232-3). Indeed, addressing women's
practical gender interests may even reinforce the sexual division of labor by reinforcing the assumption that it
is women's responsibility to provide for their families. By contrast, women's strategic gender interests are
defined as necessary to overcoming women's subordination. According to Molyneux, they may include
all or some of the following, depending on the social context: the abolition of the sexual division of labor;
the alleviation of the burden of domestic labor and childcare; the removal of institutionalized forms of
discrimination such as rights to own land or property, or access to credit; the establishment of political
equality; freedom of choice over childbearing; and the adoption of adequate measures against male violence
and control over women. (Molyneux 1985, 233) It is groups working to promote women's strategic gender
interests that are most likely to share the basic commitments held by many Western feminists. 6 Because of
their potentially challenging nature, local grassroots groups dedicated to addressing women's strategic gender
needs in the Third World are largely unsupported either by national governments or bilateral aid agencies
(Moser 1991, 109-10). They may be seen as communities of resistance comparable in many ways to Western
feminist communities. Like some Western feminist groups, which may open women's health centers or
run automobile or home maintenance workshops, many Nonwestern groups find that they can develop
the skills and motivation necessary for addressing women's strategic gender interests by working
immediately on women's practical gender interests. One example is the Forum Against Oppression of
Women which, in 1979, began campaigning in Bombay to draw attention to issues such as rape and bride
burning but soon shifted its focus to housing, which was an especially acute problem for women deserted or
abused by their husbands in a culture where women by tradition had no access to housing in their own right.
Organizing around homelessness raised awareness of the male bias in inheritance legislation, as well as in the
interpretation of housing rights, and ultimately ensured that women's strategic gender needs related to
housing rights were placed on the mainstream political agenda (Moser 1991, 109). Even if we grant a
significant base of similar commitments between Western feminists and Nonwestern women
committed to advancing women's strategic gender interests, many obstacles exist to dialogue that is
genuinely egalitarian, open, and inclusive.7 Still, these are not insuperable obstacles to the possibility
of global feminist discourse.
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Agamben Answers
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally
The perm solves-we need to mix the notion of western and eastern feminism in order to
actually achieve equality.
B Mbire-Barungi, 1999 [Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol.22,No.4,pp.435-439,1999: Elsevier
Science Ltd. USA; “UGANDAN FEMINISM: POLITICAL RHETORIC OR REALITY?;” Economics Department,
Makerere University; http://www.wougnet.org/Documents/UgandanFeminism.rtf]
The urgent need for the advancement of gender equality is indeed a global truism, but one beset by global
contradictions that arise from the huge diversity of women. The polarisation between women from the
North is increasingly evident on the international stage. The bond that is necessary for a coalition to
evolve within international feminism cannot be created from a romanticised sisterhood that assumes
the common oppression of all women. Rather, it can only occur after women’s diverse historical,
cultural, economic, social, and national priorities and interests have been recognised, and the various
barriers to this goal have been identified in the global arena (see, e.g., Bahl, 1997, p.11; hooks,1998, pp.
43-65; Mani, 1992).
The perm solves-by using the indigenous beliefs about feminism, we are able to correct the
notions of western feminism, which does not need to be rejected.
Signe Arnfred 2 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural Sociology
from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark.
http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; “Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?"
Issues of African feminist thought”
I have introduced Oyèrónké Oyewùmí and Ifi Amadiume as brave and determined feminist scholars who
have had the courage to go against established power structures and current fashions in feminist thought.
Nevertheless I find them too timid, in one particular aspect: They tend to limit the scope of their analysis to
Africa, which in one way is fine—concrete, rooted studies with concepts which are sensitive to empirical
particularities are always a good thing. In another way, however, this approach tends to consolidate a
difference between Africa and the West—a dichotomization which I find unproductive and also
unjustified. Both Amadiume and Oyewùmí make explicit distinctions between African and Western
realities, talking about motherhood in the African context being such and such, and thus needing
different concepts, as compared to analysis of Western realities, where motherhood and femininity are
different. I agree that the realities are different (or especially that they were different – both researchers
draw their conceptual inspiration from things as they were before the impacts of colonialism, Christianity,
and continued contact with the West). To me the point about empirical differences between Africa and
Europe is not, however, that concepts developed for Africa are useful in Africa only, but rather that the
“African difference” is a source of inspiration for developing concepts which make it possible to think
differently about gender in Western contexts as well.
We need to erase the racial lines in within our feminism movements for them to actually
succeed, and in order to do that, we need to embrace all types of feminism, including
Western and indigenous feminism.
Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark.
http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; “Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?"
Issues of African feminist thought”
Regarding this model of female emancipation, socialism and liberalism by and large agree, as do large
parts of the women’s movement that the notion that the female body is a handicap as persistent and
pervasive as the idea of woman as the other. This idea is based of course on the assumption that the
model body is male. But what if it isn’t? I assert, as do others with me, that it is time for feminist thought
to overcome the phallocentric as well as the ethnocentric biases in this line of thinking.
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Agamben Answers
Western Feminism – Perm Solves – Generally
The mix of indigenous and western feminism is the best option because it allows women to
expand their horizons, giving them more grounds to fight oppression.
Patricia Mohammed 6 [“A triangular trade in gender and visuality: the making of a cross-cultural image-base;”
holds the post of Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the Centre for Gender and Development Studies,
University of the West Indies; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf; Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora
Voices; Issue 7: December 2006]
One of the immediate goals of the database project as conceived between the two researchers was to
introduce Emory graduate students to the Caribbean as a possible site for dissertation research at a fairly
early stage, allowing them early access to archival and unpublished material as they prepared proposals for
dissertation research. It was also felt that there would be a similar broadening of scope of the vision of
students at the University of the West Indies as they shaped their graduate projects. At the same time, faculty
at both institutions could develop their networks of collegial contacts for teaching and training students.
More importantly, gender studies from non-Western regions, like the Caribbean and Africa, help to
diffuse the hegemony of traditionally Eurocentric gender teachings. To teach the construction of
femininity in, say, Ghana (as opposed to Europe) to students in the Caribbean expands the possibilities
for seeing cultures in new ways.
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Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Aff is a Prereq to the Alt
Political failure impedes on the autonomy of women – Inaction links too – And these crises
are qualitatively worse than the impact of cultural assumptions made by the plan
Mieke Maerten 4 [“African feminism;” http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34; Documentation
Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies]
Over the past decades the population of Central Africa has been confronted with a succession of crises:
the failure of male multiparty politics or state nationalism after the independence, coups and military
dictatorships, economic instability, the pushing of western-steered development programs and
pressure to install democracy, rethinking geographical borders as they were put up during colonial
reign, pressure from the technologically advanced West and the development of new states in a global
world (economy). Women especially have been paying the price for this. The consequences are clearly
visible in the living conditions of African women today. Generally, they have a lower level of education
and are primarily active in agricultural or other rural activities. A large number of women suffer from
malnutrition, mortality rate of infants and children is very high. Because of these pitiful living conditions
for women, the West has lately exerted more pressure to increase women’s participation in more areas
- this is often done by stating it as a condition for investments or development aid. The effect is twofaced. On the one hand it creates an opportunity for women to be on the decision making side when new
states and institutions are being organised and structured
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Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Essentialism Turn
They link to their criticism by generalizing African-gendered experience
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf 3, is an independent scholar. Her research interests focus on gender and youth expressive
cultures in the African world, cultural studies and feminist theory and politics. “Beyond Determinism: The
Phenomenology of African Female Existence” Feminist Africa: Issue 2, http://www.feministafrica.org/fa%202/022003/bibi.html
The importance that existential phenomenologists attach to the context of the body requires that we must also
acknowledge the nebulousness of the idea of "Africa". Whether to treat the continent as a geographical entity
or a homogenous cultural reality continues to be a source of debate among African scholars (see, for
example, Hountondji, 1976). Africa is a diverse continent, with thousands of cultural traditions and
linguistic groupings that dwarf all the different European cultural traditions and languages combined.
This plurality makes any generalisations about the configuration(s) of gendered existence on the
continent problematic.
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Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Exclusion Turn
Criticisms of Western feminism secludes women into communities that build identity
through exclusion
Alison M. Jaggar 98, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder
“Globalizing Feminist Ethics” Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
The threat of expulsion is the ultimate sanction enforcing conformity in most communities. How far the
threat is successful in suppressing dissent depends on how much community members fear exclusion and this
fear varies according to the type of community in question, its relationship to the larger society, the needs it
satisfies for its members, and the dependence members feel on that community. If the members of a religious
community believe that excommunication will result in an eternity of hellfire, they have an extremely
powerful incentive to conform; so do members of a professional organization for whom expulsion will result
in the loss of their occupational licenses. By contrast, the prospect of expulsion from a neighborhood
swimming club is likely to be unpleasant but not especially frightening, because club membership does not
represent the only way members can fulfil their needs for exercise and social affiliation. When belonging to
a particular community is central to a member's sense of her own identity, the threat of expulsion is
likely to loom extraordinarily large. Leaving the community may represent losing connection with the
religious, moral, political, or cultural values that have given meaning to her life. It may represent losing her
emotional home, her sense of belonging, her colleagues, comrades, friends and lovers. Such fears are
especially intense for members of racial/ethnic and oppositional communities, because no comparable
alternatives are likely to be available. This is one reason why community loyalty and discipline are often
especially strong among ethnic and cultural minorities and on both the right and the left of the political
spectrum. Some communities may seek to forestall challenges to their beliefs or values by limiting diversity
among those they admit, excluding people thought likely to hold disruptive opinions or values or even people
with an unacceptable image. Ethnic or cultural minorities may refuse to admit ''half-bloods'' or people
who have been ''Westernized''; lesbian communities may refuse to admit bisexuals; gay groups may
exclude drag or leather queens. Conscious policies of exclusion reinforce the tendencies towards cultural
homogeneity that exist in all small communities whose members rely on each other for emotional as
well as intellectual support (Young 1990, 235). Policing the boundaries of the community serves to
maintain the ''purity'' of its beliefs and values by insulating its members from the challenge of
alternative thinking (Phelan 1989).
Coalitions key
Alison M. Jaggar 98, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder
“Globalizing Feminist Ethics” Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Narayan's words suggest that the subaltern woman's muteness is rooted not in slavish contentment but in
her inability to conceptualize the injustice to which she is subjected. Like all diagnoses, this analysis implies the
appropriate remedy: what the subaltern woman needs is a conceptual framework, a language capable of articulating her injuries, needs, and aspirations. The
existing discourses or texts of exploitation do not provide such a language: even when they promise explicitly to liberate the subaltern, they obscure the
distinctive nature of her oppression; indeed, by purporting to speak for her, they position her as mute. In order to articulate her specific exploitation, the
Language is a public construct and its absence is a public, not a
private, deficit. Creating a new language is by definition a collective project, not something that can be
accomplished by a single individual; if the subaltern woman seeks to enter practical discourse alone,
therefore, her experience is likely to remain distorted and repressed. She can overcome her silence only
by collaborating with other subaltern women in developing a public language for their shared
experiences. She must become part of a group that explicitly recognizes itself as sharing a common
condition of oppression--in Marxist terms, a group that constitutes itself as a class for itself as well as in itself. She must claim a collective
subaltern woman must create her own language.
identity distinct from her identification as the particular daughter, wife, and mother of particular others. Only by creating a collective identity with other
women in similar situations, perhaps with other daughters, wives, and mothers, can the subaltern even come to see herself as subaltern and only in this way
can she break through the barriers to her speech.
Articulating women's distinctive interests requires a language and
this, in turn, requires a community. Without either of these, the emergence of counterhegemonic moral
perspectives remains impossible.
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Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Generally
Plan key to solve – postcolonialism is the academic elite and ignores material conditions of
oppression.
Dr. Cheryl McEwan 1, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department
of geography at Durham U, [“Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas,” Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco]
One of the major dilemmas for postcolonialism is the charge that it has become institutionalized,
representing the interests of a western-based intellectual élite who speak the language of the
contemporary western academy, perpetuating the exclusion of the colonized and oppressed (Ahmad,
1992; McClintock, 1992; Watts, 1995; Loomba, 1998). Moreover, critics suggest that greater theoretical
sophistication has created greater obfuscation; postcolonialism is too theoretical and not sufficiently
rooted in material concerns (Ahmad, 1992; Dirlik, 1994). Emphasis on discourse detracts from an
assessment of material ways in which colonial power relations persist. As Dirlik (1994: 353) argues, ‘[It]
is remarkable ... that a consideration of the relationship between postcolonialism and global capitalism should
be absent from the writings of postcolonial intellectuals’. Debates about postcolonialism and globalization
have largely proceeded in relative isolation from one another, and to their mutual cost (Hall, 1996: 257).
Economic relations and their effects elude representation in much of postcolonial studies (Eagleton, 1994).
Plan key to solve - they don’t address power imbalances
Dr. Cheryl McEwan 1, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department
of geography at Durham U, [“Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas,” Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco]
Some critics berate postcolonial theory for ignoring urgent life-or-death questions (San Juan, 1998). To have
greater immediacy in critical development studies, postcolonial approaches might consider questions of
inequality of power over and control of resources, human rights, global exploitation of labour, child
prostitution and genocide. With some exceptions (for example, the writings on postdevelopment by such
authors as Esteva (1987) and Escobar (1992, 1995b)), postcolonialism cannot easily be translated into action
on the ground and its oppositional stance has not had much impact on the power imbalances between
North and South. It also tends to be preoccupied with the past and has failed to say much about
postcolonial futures. (Spivak’s (1999) attempt to describe a responsible role for the postcolonial critic in her
critique of transnational globalization is one exception.) Meanwhile, ethnocentric representations continue to
disadvantage the South, and are evident in sources ranging from popular media to World Bank reports.
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Western Feminism – Alt Fails – Generally
Indigenous feminism cannot solve for double gender roles.
Mieke Maerten, Jul 4 [“African feminism;” http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies]
Many (though not all) African cultures have a certain tradition of double gender organisation: women
were able to participate as members of a ritual or professional organisation, a peer group or a genderspecific organisation. Men dominated most spheres of society, but the double gender and community
organisation created a façade of equality by letting women participate politically. Women were
political actors speaking on behalf of a group and not in their own name. This made them usually
unwilling to go against interests of family or group, when faced with political decisions.
Analysis of colonial discourse doesn’t solve – Their postcolonial representations are
resisted by developing nations’ women
Parpart 95, Departments of History, International Development Studies and Women's Studies, Dalhousie
University[“IS AFRICA A POSTMODERN INVENTION?” Jane L., A Journal of Opinion, Vol. 23, No. 1, African
Studies. (Winter - Spring), pp. 16-18., jstor]
Does this approach to the world have anything to offer those who study Africa? In a very interesting critique,
Megan Vaughan argues that colonial/neocolonial discourse analysis, with the exception of a few literary
scholars such as Valentine Mudimbe or Anthony Appiah, has aroused little interest among Africanists in
or outside the continent.13 Although young scholars in South Africa are increasingly drawn to this
perspective,14 the explicit use of colonial/neocolonial discourse analysis is indeed limited in Africa. This
is no doubt partly due to the desperate plight of many universities on the continent and their continued
dependence on Western institutions. It is, after all, not politic to bite the hand that feeds you. More to the
point, however, Northern hegemony over scholarly as well as development discourse and practice is
well understood and heartily disliked by many Africans.
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***Security Answers***
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Security K – No Link – A2: State Bad
They can’t eliminate the state and non-statist solutions are unproductive deployments of
power – They matter
Buzan 4 (Barry , December, Montague Burton Prof. of International Relations @ the London School of
Economics and honorary prof. @ the University of Copenhagen, "Realism vs. Cosmopolitanism"
http://www.polity.co.uk/global/realism-vs-cosmopolitanism.asp
A.Mc.: But would not a realist response be that the very issues David seeks to highlight are largely marginal to the central dilemmas of
world politics: the critical issues of war and peace, life and death.
B.B.: Again, that is a difficult question for realism because in traditional realism there was a rather clear
distinction between 'high' and 'low' politics, high politics being about diplomacy and war, and low politics
being about economics and society and many issues like the weather and disease. And because of the
change in the importance of the different sectors that I mentioned earlier, this becomes problematic
for realism. But the realists have been fairly agile. The realist line of defence would be that in most areas
of world politics - again the emphasis on politics - states are still the principle authorities. And there is nothing
that stops them from co-operating with each other. Thus, realists, or at least a good proportion of realists, can live quite comfortably with the idea of
international regimes in which states, as the basic holders of political authority in the system, get together sometimes with other actors, sometimes just with
other states, to discuss issues of joint concern, and sometimes they can hammer out of a set of policies, a set of rules of the game, which enable them to coordinate their behaviour. Now, this
certainly does not feel like traditional power politics realism. You can think of
it to some extent in terms of power politics by looking at issue power; who are the big players in
relation to any big issue? Who are the people who have any kind of control? Who loses out?, etc.. There
is, therefore, an element of power politics in this whole notion of regimes, and it does retain a strong element
of state centrism. I think the realist would say: if you discount the state, where is politics? Where is it
located? You cannot eliminate politics, as some liberals sometimes seem to do. To wish the state away,
to wish politics away, is not going to generate results. The good dyed-in-the-wool realist would argue that power politics
is a permanent condition of human existence. It will come in one form or another , in one domain or another, in
relation to one issue or another, but it will always be there. It will be politics and it will be about relative power. And at the moment the
state is still an important player in the game.
States are the key actors who solve violence – plan accesses this best.
Weingast 9 (Barry, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and \Professor in the Department of Political Science
at Stanford U, “Why are developing countries so resistant to the rule of law,” February 2009, accessed 7/10/09,
http://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/bitstream/1814/11173/1/MWP_LS_2009_02.pdf ) KSM
All states must control the fundamental problem of violence. In natural states, a dominant coalition of
the powerful emerges to solve this problem. The coalition grants members privileges, creates rents through
limited access to valuable resources and organizations, and then uses the rents to sustain order. Because
fighting reduces their rents, coalition members have incentives not to fight so as to maintain their rents.
Natural states necessarily limit access to organizations and restrict competition in all systems. Failing to do
so dissipate rents and therefore reduces the incentives not to fight. We call this order the natural state
because for nearly all of the last 10,000 years of human history – indeed, until just the last two centuries –
the natural state was the only solution to the problem of violence that produced a hierarchical society
with significant wealth. In comparison with the previous foraging order, natural states produced impressive
economic growth, and even today we can see the impressive wealth amassed by many of the early
civilizations. In contrast to open access orders, however, natural states have significant, negative
consequences for economic growth.
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Security K – Link Turn: Sovereignty
DA challenges state sovereignty
Lugar 6 (Sen. Richard, “The Backlash against Democracy Assistance”, http://www.ned.org/docs/backlash06.pdf)
No model of governance with broad normative appeal or legitimacy currently rivals democracy, and the
validity of democracy assistance is now widely accepted. The doctrine of state sovereignty has ceased to be
an absolute principle of international relations, while the active promotion of democracy has acquired the
status of a new norm of international behavior.12 Democracy is now widely accepted as the only political
system that guarantees personal liberties and human rights, protects individuals against arbitrary and
intrusive government, facilitates human and economic development, and is strongly associated with peaceful
relations between and within states.
Sovereignty is essential to the dangers of security
McDonald 2 (Matt, U of Queensland, http://arts.anu.edu.au/sss/apsa/Papers/mcdonald.pdf)
Despite the centrality of both sovereignty and security to international politics, there have been few attempts
to explicitly link these concepts. However, most attempts to engage with security, at both the theoretical and
practical level, involve an engagement with sovereignty. As RBJ Walker has argued, it is difficult to escape
sovereignty when discussing issues such as security: it permeates the way we talk about and think about
international politics. Crucially, even discourses of security critical of the statism of traditional approaches to
international politics continue to set out and evoke a range of understandings concerning the state and the
norm of sovereignty, even while critical of the dominance of the state in traditional security discourses.
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Security K – AT: Security Discourse Bad
Treating security as a speech act means there are an infinite number of security threats,
making it impossible to solve. The word “security” is not itself harmful, only when used by
actors in positions to make security choices, it doesn’t apply to us.
Williams 3 (Michael C., university of Whales, “Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and
International Politics”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4) CC
This stance allows the Copenhagen School to argue simultaneously for both an expansion and a limitation of
the security agenda and its analysis. On the one hand, treating security as a speech-act provides, in
principle, for an almost indefinite expansion of the security agenda. Not only is the realm of possible
threats enlarged, but the actors or objects that are threatened (what are termed the "referent objects" of
security) can be extended to include actors and objects well beyond the military security of the
territorial state. Accordingly, the Copenhagen School has argued that security can usefully be viewed as comprising five "sectors,"
each with their particular referent object and threat agenda (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde, 1998).6 In the "military" sector, for example,
the referent object is the territorial integrity of the state, and the threats are overwhelmingly defined in external, military terms. In the
"political" sector, by contrast, what is at stake is the legitimacy of a governmental authority, and the relevant threats can be ideological
and sub-state, leading to security situations in which state authorities are threatened by elements of their own societies, and where states
can become the primary threat to their own societies. Even further from an exclusively military-territorial focus is the concept of
"societal" security, in which the identity of a group is presented as threatened by dynamics as diverse as cultural flows, economic
integration, or population movements. Conversely, while treating security as a speech-act allows a remarkable broadening of analysis,
securitization theory seeks also to limit the security agenda. Security, the Copenhagen School argues, is not
synonymous with "harm" or with the avoidance of whatever else might be deemed malign or
damaging (Buzan et al., 1998:2-5, 203-12). As a speech-act, securitization has a specific structure which
in practice limits the theoretically unlimited nature of "security." These constraints operate along three
lines. First, while the securitization process is in principle completely open (any "securitizing actor" can
attempt to securitize any issue and referent object), in practice it is structured by the differential capacity
of actors to make socially effective claims about threats, by the forms in which these claims can be made in
order to be recognized and accepted as convincing by the relevant audience, and by the empirical factors or
situations to which these actors can make reference. Not all claims are socially effective, and not all actors
are in equally powerful positions to make them. This means, as Buzan and Waever put it, that the
"Conditions for a successful speech-act fall into two categories: (1) the internal, linguistic-grammaticalto follow the rules of the act (or, as Austin argues, accepted conventional procedures must exist, and the act
has to be executed according to these procedures); and (2) the external, contextual and social-to hold a
position from which the act can be made ('The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for
the invocation of the particular procedure invoked')" (Buzan et al., 1998:32). The claims that are likely to be effective, the forms in
which they can be made, the objects to which they refer, and the social positions from which they can effectively be spoken are usually
deeply "sedimented" (rhetorically and discursively, culturally, and institutionally) and structured in ways that make securitizations
somewhat predictable and thus subject to probabilistic analysis (Waever, 2000)-and not wholly open and expandable. Finally, while
empirical contexts and claims cannot in this view ultimately determine what are taken as security issues or threats, they provide crucial
resources and referents upon which actors can draw in attempting to securitize a given issue.
Security discourse isn’t inherently bad—presenting it in debate allows the negative
attributes to be avoided.
Williams 3 (Michael, Professor of International Politics at the University of Wales, “Words, Images, Enemies:
Securitization and International Politics,” International Studies Quarterly, 47(4), AD: 7-10-9) BL
I have argued thus far that recognizing the roots of securitization theory within the legacy of a Schmittianinfluenced view of politics explains a number of its key and most controversial features. Charges of an
ethically and practically irresponsible form of objectivism in relation to either the act of securitization
or the concept of societal security are largely misplaced. Locating the speech-act within a broader
commitment to processes of discursive legitimation and practical ethics of dialogue allows the most
radical and disturbing elements of securitization theory emerging from its Schmittian legacy to be offset.
Seen in this light, the Copenhagen School is insulated from many of the most common criticisms leveled
against it.
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Security K – AT: Security Discourse Bad
Treating Security as a speech act ruins the meaning of what security threats actually are
and trivializes security, making it impossible to actually evaluate threats.
Williams 3 (Michael C., university of Whales, “Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and
International Politics”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4) CC
A second major criticism of the Copenhagen School concerns the ethics of securitization. Simply put, if
security is nothing more than a specific form of social practice-a speech-act tied to existential threat and
a politics of emergency-then does this mean that anything can be treated as a "security" issue and that,
as a consequence, any form of violent, exclusionary, or irrationalist politics must be viewed simply as
another form of "speech-act" and treated "objectively"? Questions such as these have led many to ask
whether despite its avowedly "constructivist" view of security practices, securitization theory is implicitly
committed to a methodological objectivism that is politically irresponsible and lacking in any basis
from which to critically evaluate claims of threat, enmity, and emergency.29 A first response to this issue is to
note that the Copenhagen School has not shied away from confronting it. In numerous places the question of the ethics of securitization
are discussed as raising difficult issues.
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Security K – Threats = Real – Generally and Historically
Dogmatic realism leads us to universal truth- security threats exist.
Kwan and Tsang 1 (Kai-Man, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University,
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, Eric W. School of Business Administration, Wayne State University, Detroit,
Michigan, U.S.A, December, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 22, No. 12 (Dec., 2001), pp. 1163-1168,
“Realism and Constructivism in Strategy Research: A Critical Realist Response to Mir and Watson”,) CH
The problem with Mir and Watson here is again their failure to distinguish different kinds of real- ism. It is
important to distinguish a dogmatic realist from a critical realist. Both believe that theories can be true
or false, and rigorous scientific research can move us progressively towards a true account of
phenomena. Dogmatic realists further believe that current theories correspond (almost) exactly to
reality, and hence there is not much room for error or critical scrutiny. This attitude is inspired by (but
does not strictly follow from) a primitive version of positivism which believes in indubitable observations
as raw data and that an infallible scientific method can safely lead us from these data to universal laws.
In contrast, critical realists, though believing in the possibility of progress towards a true account of phenomena, would not take such
progress for granted. Exactly because they believe that reality exists independently of our minds, our theories, observations and methods
are all fallible. Critical realists also insist that verification and falsification are never conclusive, especially in social sciences. So critical
testing of theories and alleged universal laws need to be carried out continuously. A more detailed description of critical realism, which
is now a growing movement transforming the intellectual scene.
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Security K – A2: Epistemology K
Their relativist approach is self-contradictory.
Kwan and Tsang 1 (Kai-Man, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University; Eric
W., School of Business Administration, Wayne State University; Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 22, No. 12,
Dec., 2001, pp. 1163-1168)
However, the blame for the confusion partly lies on the side of constructivists, who rarely make clear the above distinction. Mir and
Wat- son have this problem too. Although they mention briefly the different types of constructivism, they do not state explicitly which
type they subscribe to. Sometimes they speak as moderate constructivists. For example, they state that the ‘identification of
some of the inadequacies of the realist paradigm must not be seen as a critique of realism itself’ (Mir and
Watson, 2000: 947). They believe that ‘(c)onstructivist theories decenter the concept of a “natural” organizational science, but do not
blindly embrace a philosophy of relativism’ (2000: 950). On the other hand, these disclaimers sometimes seem to be
contradicted by their other sayings. For instance, they say, ‘According to constructivists, the philosophical
positions held by researchers determine their findings’ (2000: 943). They further mention that such a constructivist
approach suggests that ‘organizational “reality” (Astley, 1985) or the truth that academic disciplines avow (Can- nella and Paetzold,
1994) is socially constructed’ (2000: 943). If philosophical positions determine research findings, then reality
has no input to and control over scientific research. Each and every one of various incommensurable
philosophical positions will determine its own findings. No research findings can be neutrally assessed, criticized or
falsified. Besides being rather implausible, this view quickly leads to epistemological relativism, as confirmed by their
Fig. 11 (which includes epistemological relativism within the zone of constructivism). Furthermore, they quote Foucault approvingly:
‘We must conceive analysis as a violence we do to things, or in any case as a practice which we impose upon them’ (2000: 942,
emphasis added), and later make a Foucaultian point themselves: ‘Researchers are never “objective” or value-neutral.
Constructivists subscribe to the view that theory is discursive and power-laden’ (2000: 943). If it is the
case, again it is hard to see how scientific research can be objective . So despite their disclaimers, Mir and Watson
at times do lean towards an unacceptable form of antirealism and relativism. (Owing to space limitations, we are not going to discuss the
reasons why relativism is unacceptable. Mir and Watson themselves also seem to have reservations about relativism.) In the end,
because Mir and Watson fail to distinguish different types of constructivism, and to clarify where they stand exactly, their
characterization of constructivism is shot through with internal contradictions.
Alt fails - Discursive focus generates epistemological blind spots and won’t alter security
structures
Hyde-Price 1 (Adrian, Professor of International Politics at Bath, Europes new security challenges, page 39)
KSM
Securitization thus focuses almost exclusively on the discursive domain and eschews any attempt to
determine empirically what constitutes security concerns. It does not aspire to comment on the reality
behind a securitization discourse or on the appropriate instruments for tackling security problems .
Instead, it suggests that security studies – or what Waever calls securitization studies –should focus on the discursive moves whereby issues are securitized.
The Copenhagen school thus emphasizes the need to understand the “speech acts” that accomplish a process of securitization. Their focus is on the
linguistic and conceptual dynamics involved, even though they recognize the importance of the institutional setting within which securitization takes place.
The concept of securitization
offers some important insights for security studies. However, it is too
epistemologically restricted to contribute to a significant retooling of security studies. On the positive side, it
draws attention to the way in which security agendas are constructed by politicians and other political actors. It also indicates the utility of discourse
analysis as an additional tool of analysis for security studies. However, at best, securitization studies can contribute one aspect of security studies.
It
cannot provide the foundations for a paradigm shift in the subdiscipline. Its greatest weakness is its
epistemological hypochondria. That is, its tendency to reify epistemological problems and push sound
observations about knowledge claims to their logical absurdity. Although it is important to understand the discursive
moves involved in perception of security in, say, the Middle East, it is also necessary to make some assessment of nondiscursive factors like the military
balance or access to freshwater supplies. For the Copenhagen school, however, these nondiscursive factors are relegated to second place. They are
considered only to the extent that they facilitate or impede the speech act. In this way, the Copenhagen school is in danger of cutting security studies off
from serious empirical research and setting it adrift on a sea of floating signifiers.
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Agamben Answers
Security K – AT: Root Cause
Focus on the root cause of war is ineffective and increases conflict
Woodward 7 (Susan, senior research fellow at the Centre for Defense Studies, King's College, London, and
from 1990 to 1999, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution “Do the Root Causes of Civil War Matter? On
Using Knowledge to Improve Peacebuilding Interventions”, Journal of Intervention and State Building, volume
1, No. 2, AD: 7-11-09)MT
In sum, the policy interest in stopping the violence of civil wars has led to substantial advances in what we
know about their causes, but current policies tend to be based on research that has been superseded and that,
in any case, proposed competing arguments. If effective peacebuilding depends on addressing ‘root
causes’ and the knowledge on which those policies are based is wrong, then our interventions may do
more harm than we would by ignoring causes altogether.
Furthermore, if the root causes of any civil war lie in international factors, even partially _ for example, the
changing global economic context, the instability of a neighbourhood, the strategic policies of major powers,
the economic policies supported by donors and banks, the conditions for aid or trade _ then the focus of
peacebuilding must include those international conditions or actions, not just domestic transformation. While
the regional security context of a country in conflict has been incorporated into some peacebuilding
strategies, such as the regional stabilization annex (1B) of the Dayton peace accord for Bosnia-Herzegovina
and its implementation by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and further regional arms
control negotiations in Vienna, or the agreement on cooperation between Afghanistan and its neighbours
facilitated by Lakhdar Brahimi in 2002, for the most part the international conditions and policies that
figure most prominently in analyses of root causes are beyond the reach of a peace operation or worse,
the external actors who would have to make changes will not and insist that local actors bear full
responsibility for the violence. Most important, the parties themselves will not agree about the ‘root
causes’ of their war. That is the nature of civil war. Not only is civil war a highly complex phenomenon,
such that there is no single cause in the sense promoted by the three influential schools of explanation, but
the fuel that provokes and prolongs a war includes fundamental disagreements over its cause (and thus
respective responsibilities for its start and resolution). Crucial to the way a conflict ends are the parties’
campaigns to win external support (including intervention) for their side by shaping outsiders’
perceptions of the cause of the war. Academic experts often lend their support to these campaigns without
full disclosure that they have taken on an advocacy role. One reason that military victories tend to be
more stable than negotiated or assisted endings (Licklider 1993) may be that victors impose their explanation
and can, thus, terminate the competition over cause and responsibility. Otherwise, the politics of the
immediate post-war period is suffused with (if not actually driven by) a continuing contest over
interpretations, relative responsibilities and guilt, and search for external support for one origin and
cause over others. While policy makers tend (impatiently, one must acknowledge) to dismiss academic
research on grounds that ‘experts do not agree’, these disagreements pale in intensity and consequence in the
face of the inevitable disagreements among the parties.
/
/
There is no root cause of war- too many factors to consider
Smith 89 (Robert, Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa, pg. 141, AD: 7-11-09) MT
As Quincy Wright concludes, Wars arise because of the changing relations of numerous variablestechnological, physic, social, and intellectual. There is no single cause of war. This multiplicity of variables
which characterizes most human situation, suggests that the search for generalizations about the causes of
war, in pre-colonial West Africa or elsewhere, or at any time, has only a limited value and interest.
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Security K – Fear Good
Fear of nuclear war is key to preventing it.
Futterman 94 (J. A. H., Physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “Meditations on the Bomb,”
http://www.dogchurch.org/scriptorium/nuke.html, AD: 7/11/09) jl
But the inhibitory effect of reliable nuclear weapons goes deeper than Shirer's deterrence of adventurerconquerors. It changes the way we think individually and culturally, preparing us for a future we cannot now
imagine. Jungian psychiatrist Anthony J. Stevens states, [15]
"History would indicate that people cannot rise above their narrow sectarian concerns without some
overwhelming paroxysm. It took the War of Independence and the Civil War to forge the United States,
World War I to create the League of Nations, World War II to create the United Nations Organization and
the European Economic Community. Only catastrophe, it seems, forces people to take the wider view.
Or what about fear? Can the horror which we all experience when we contemplate the possibility of
nuclear extinction mobilize in us sufficient libidinal energy to resist the archetypes of war? Certainly, the
moment we become blasé about the possibility of holocaust we are lost. As long as horror of nuclear
exchange remains uppermost we can recognize that nothing is worth it. War becomes the impossible
option. Perhaps horror, the experience of horror, the consciousness of horror, is our only hope.
Perhaps horror alone will enable us to overcome the otherwise invincible attraction of war."
Thus I also continue engaging in nuclear weapons work to help fire that world-historical warning shot I
mentioned above, namely, that as our beneficial technologies become more powerful, so will our weapons
technologies, unless genuine peace precludes it. We must build a future more peaceful than our past, if we
are to have a future at all, with or without nuclear weapons — a fact we had better learn before worse things
than nuclear weapons are invented. If you're a philosopher, this means that I regard the nature of humankind
as mutable rather than fixed, but that I think most people welcome change in their personalities and cultures
with all the enthusiasm that they welcome death — thus, the fear of nuclear annihilation of ourselves and
all our values may be what we require in order to become peaceful enough to survive our future
technological breakthroughs.
In other words, when the peace movement tells the world that we need to treat each other more kindly, I
and my colleagues stand behind it (like Malcolm X stood behind Martin Luther King, Jr.) saying, "Or else."
We provide the peace movement with a needed sense of urgency that it might otherwise lack.
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Security K – Apocalyptic Imagery Good – Social Change
Apocalypse is the purest test of dialogue – we should be open to the transformative
potential of vulnerability to apocalyptic imagery
Franke 9 (Associate Prof of Comparative lit at Vanderbilt William Poetry and Apocalypse Page 92-93)JFS
Apocalypse prima facie refuses and makes an end of dialogue: it thunders down invincibly from above. But for this very
reason the greatest test of our dialogical capacity is whether we can dialogue with the corresponding
attitude or must resort to exclusionary maneuvers and force. What is called for here is a capacity on the part of dialogue not
to defend itself but to let itself happen in interaction with an attitude that is apparently intolerant of dialogue. Letting this possibility
be, coming into contact with it, with the threat of dialogue itself, may seem to be courting disaster for dialogue. It
is indeed a letting down of defenses. Can dialogue survive such a surrendering of itself in utter vulnerability to the enemy of
dialogue? Or perhaps we should ask, can it rise up again, after this self-surrender, in new power for bringing together a scattered, defeated
humanity to share in an open but commonly sought and unanimously beckoned Logos of mutual comprehension and communication? May
this, after all, be the true and authentic “end” of dialogue provoked by apocalypse? For what it is worth, my apocalyptic
counsel is that we must attempt an openness to dialogue even in this absolute vulnerability and risk. The world
is certainly not a safe place, and it will surely continue not to be such, short of something … apocalyptic. Needed, ever
again, is something on the order of an apocalypse, not just a new attitude or a new anything that we can ourselves simply produce.
Philosophy itself, thought through to its own end, can hardly resist concluding that “only a god can save us” (Nur
noch ein Gott kann uns retten). But can not our attitude make a difference- perhaps make possible the advent of apocalypse beyond all our
powers, even those of our own imaginations? I will wager an answer to this question only in the operative mood. May we
bring a voice speaking up for mutual understanding onto the horizon of discourse in our time, a time
marked by the terrifying sign of apocalyptic discourse. May we do this not by judging apocalyptic
discourse, but by accepting that our condition as humans is as much to be judged as to judge and that all our relatively justified judgments
are such to the extend that they offer themselves to be judged rather than standing on their own ground as absolute. In other words, may
our discussions remain open to apocalypse, open to what we cannot represent or prescribe but can nevertheless
undergo in a process of transformation that can be shared with others – and that may be genuinely dialogue.
Our encounter with the apocalypse is an aesthetic approach – this opens up space for
imagining a new world
Franke 9 (Associate Prof of Comparative lit at Vanderbilt William Poetry and Apocalypse Page 40)JFS
Envisioning an end to the game of the present in all spheres of social and political life, with its embittered alignments and its
entrenched impasses, as insidiously difficult as that may be for us to “do” (as Beckett’s Endgame so wittily insinuates), enables us to
envisage, and so also to beginning to enact, new possibilities. And yet, apocalypse, as the advent of the end, is nothing
that we can do, though we can be aware of and perhaps cooperate with its happening to us. Indeed, from a certain
point of view, this is already what our tradition itself is all about. Apocalyptic, as the ultimate expression of transcendent,
metaphysical vision in poetry, rather than being taken as an aberration, symptomatic of a pathology of Western
civilization that could be cured, should be accepted as part of the whole and as standing for the possibility
of renewal inherent within this tradition. From this type of imagination, new and different proposals unceasingly
draw their inspiration. All representations and imaginings have their limits. Apocalypse thematizes this inherent destiny for
every order of imagination to have its end and give place to a new, thitherto unimaginable order. Every imagination of the end in
apocalyptic style is the occasion for new orientation toward the open space we call the future. This future,
however, is not for us to name, in the end, since it is beholden to the Other. And this may mean – and has meant, in the terms forged by a
certain tradition embracing Dante, Celan, and Stevens – being beholden to an apocalypse, to the revelation of the “eternity” that
surpasses us utterly and unutterably.
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Security K – Apocalyptic Imagery Good – Social Change
Apocalypse is the vision of change –the imagination of something entirely different
Franke 9 (Associate Prof of Comparative lit at Vanderbilt William Poetry and Apocalypse Page 91)JFS
“Apocalyptic” in the proper sense is a biblical or apocryphal literary genre that develops especially in the inter-testamental period,
but it must also be understood as a mode of vision that views life as destined to convert into something
utterly strange and different: it envisions our life as radically relational and as dependent ultimately on
an absolute Other. This is the vision of the Bible and of the plethora of disparate cultural outlooks and religious ways of life it has
spawned.102 Apocalyptic in this sense raises the issue of the ultimate groundlessness of all our own
judgments through opening up beneath them the abyss of a judgment by which they are all to be
judged: their partial perspective is then set to be measured against a whole vision and absolute standard and last judgment in order to
avoid assuming the role of God and the prerogatives of revelation ourselves, thereby setting dialogue into a frame not itself open to
dialogue and negotiation.
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Security K – Apocalyptic Imagery – Alt Fails
Their alternative only recreates the violence they attempt to stop –the anti-apocalyptic
position fails to transgress their link arguments
Franke 9 (Associate Prof of Comparative lit at Vanderbilt William Poetry and Apocalypse Page 4-5)JFS
There is a temptation, especially appealing to articulate, dialectically skillful academicians, perhaps particularly in the
postmodern climate where “deconstruction” has become as much a common denominator as a radical challenge, to say that every
party to the discussion must simply avoid assertions presuming to any final disclosure of truth, or, in other words, that we must all
learn to avoid “apocalyptic” discourse.1 But the viability of precisely this solution seems to me to have been belied
by discussions even in purely academic contexts, such as an interdisciplinary seminar among humanities scholars.2 for this solution
draws the boundaries of acceptable discourse in a tendentious and exclusionary way: it in effect makes a
rational, pragmatic, relativistic approach normative for all. And to that extend, so far from overcoming the arbitrary and
dogmatic method of absolutistic religious belief, it risks becoming just one further manifestation and application of it,
the imposition of one’s own apocalypse, however liberal, enlightened, and philosophical it may be, on others. Indeed,
any drawing of boundaries by us – that is, by certain of us, however the claim to being representative may itself be drawn –
cannot but be tendentious and exclusionary. That is why we have no right to shut out the final judgment from
above of beyond us – though, of course, also not to appropriate this judgment in order to use it, in the name of God or truth of facts or
the future, in our own biased way against others. The problem here is that the “anti-apocalyptic” position belongs to a
system of oppositions with apocalypticist positions, and so can do no more than turn their violence in
the opposite direction. The bracketing or banning of apocalyptic discourse, even when only by ostracizing it, does
not solve the problem posed by this form of communication so difficult to accommodate alongside other in an open, neutral
forum of debate. It shifts the imposition of an absolute from the level of the expressed, the propositions affirmed,
to the unending, free, unjudged and unjudgeable status of conversation itself: anything may be said, but nothing
must be said that would call into question this activity of unrestricted discourse and mark its limits against something
that could perhaps reduce it to vanity and, in effect, end it. That would be a threat to the dialogue’s own unimpeachable power of selfvalidation. Higher powers, such as those revealed, at least purportedly, by apocalypse, must be leveled in the interest of this power of
our own human Logos that we feel ourselves to be in command of, or that is, at any rate, relatively within our control. Of course, the
“we” here depends on who is the most dialectically powerful, and its established not without struggle and conflict.
Rejection of the apocalyptic vision entrenches an apocalyptic theology which dictates
absolute truth – censorship of aesthetics destroys dialogue
Franke 9 (Associate Prof of Comparative lit at Vanderbilt William Poetry and Apocalypse Page 83-84)JFS
Yet this
rejection of apocalyptic vision itself involves a claim, and it is not without pretenses of its own.
It wishes to draw the bounds of legitimate representations and to circumscribe what ought and ought
not be brought to the table as lying within the compass of discussion. And to set the limits and establish
the law for representation is in and of itself to assume a position beyond all representation . 97 There is
perhaps an apocalyptic theology (or its negation and inversion) buried even here, a belief about what ultimately is true or,
at any rate, about what makes a difference or really matters in the end. Rather than attempting to exorcise this residual
haunting presence of truth, or at least of a pretended disclosure of what is decisive in the end, I submit that we should accept it as
belonging to the very dialogical nature of our common pursuit. For to the extend that we gather to talk and
exchange views with one another and argue over them, we are seeking some generally valid and communicable
understanding. And yet the dialogue can have no pre-established framework that would not be biased – the work of some and the
imposition on others. Any delimitation of a framework for dialogue, unless they have previously accepted the conditions that are not of
their own making, does presuppose what in crucial respects is indistinguishable from an absolute “theological” type of authority, a sort
of positively given “revelation”.
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Security K – Predictions Good
Predictions are imperfect but inevitable and critical to preventing major war
Kagan & Kagan 2k (Donald & Frederick, American Enterprise, While America Sleeps, p. 5)
Predicting the future is a difficult and uncertain business, but for those who make international and military
policy there is no escape from it. Any future course of action rests on assumptions about how events are likely to
develop and how political and military leaders will try to shape and react to them. Simply to project the behavior of the
past in a straight line into the future is a mistake, for history does not repeat itself with precision. A far worse mistake,
however, is to project a future that is entirely different from the past, to assume that all previous human behavior has been made
irrelevant by some developments or discoveries. It is tempting to construct a vision of the future that, however
pleasing, is entirely unprecedented and most unlikely. Men have been making such optimistic projections since the
eighteenth century, at least, predicting the end of war because of new conditions and always turning out to be
devastatingly wrong. For all its shortcomings, past behavior remains the most reliable predictor of future
behavior. History can enlighten critical elements of the debate over our national security policy by examining what once was as a
way of conceiving what might be. The center of any argument against the need to maintain large armed forces
and an active foreign policy as a way of preventing war is the refusal to admit that we could face a
serious threat in a very short time. A corollary to that refusal is the assumption that warning signs will be seen well before
the threat materializes.
We have an ethical obligation to act – if the future is uncertain, we must do everything we
can to intervene.
Kurasawa 4 (Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology @ York University of Toronto, “Cautionary Tales: The Global
Culture of Prevention and the Work of Foresight,”
http://www.yorku.ca/kurasawa/Kurasawa%20Articles/Constellations%20Article.pdf, AD: 7/11/09) jl
In addition, farsightedness has become a priority in world affairs due to the appearance of new global threats
and the resurgence of ‘older’ ones. Virulent forms of ethno-racial nationalism and religious fundamentalism that had mostly
been kept in check or bottled up during the Cold War have reasserted themselves in ways that are now all-too-familiar – civil warfare,
genocide, ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and global terrorism. And if nuclear mutually assured destruction has come to pass, other
dangers are filling the vacuum: climate change, AIDS and other diseases (BSE, SARS, etc.), as well as previously
unheralded genomic perils (genetically modified organisms, human cloning). Collective remembrance of past atrocities
and disasters has galvanized some sectors of public opinion and made the international community’s
unwillingness to adequately intervene before and during the genocides in the ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda, or to
take remedial steps in the case of the spiraling African and Asian AIDS pandemics, appear particularly glaring. Returning to the
point I made at the beginning of this paper, the significance of foresight is a direct outcome of the transition toward a dystopian
imaginary (or what Sontag has called “the imagination of disaster”).11 Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four,
two groundbreaking dystopian novels of the first half of the twentieth century, remain as influential as ever in framing public discourse
and understanding current techno-scientific dangers, while recent paradigmatic cultural artifacts – films like The Matrix and novels like
Atwood’s Oryx and Crake – reflect and give shape to this catastrophic sensibility.12 And yet dystopianism need not imply despondency,
paralysis, or fear. Quite the opposite, in fact, since the pervasiveness of a dystopian imaginary can help notions of historical contingency
and fallibilism gain traction against their determinist and absolutist counterparts.13 Once we recognize that the future is
uncertain and that any course of action produces both unintended and unexpected consequences, the
responsibility to face up to potential disasters and intervene before they strike becomes compelling .
From another angle, dystopianism lies at the core of politics in a global civil society where groups mobilize their own nightmare
scenarios (‘Frankenfoods’ and a lifeless planet for environmentalists, totalitarian patriarchy of the sort depicted in Atwood’s Handmaid’s
Tale for Western feminism, McWorld and a global neoliberal oligarchy for the alternative globalization movement, etc.). Such scenarios
can act as catalysts for public debate and socio-political action, spurring citizens’ involvement in the work of preventive foresight.
Several bodies of literature have touched upon this sea-change toward a culture of prevention in world affairs, most notably just-war
theory,14 international public policy research,15 and writings from the risk society paradigm.16 Regardless of how insightful these three
approaches may be, they tend to skirt over much of what is revealing about the interplay of the ethical, political, and sociological
dynamics that drive global civil society initiatives aimed at averting disaster. Consequently, the theory of practice proposed here
reconstructs the dialogical, public, and transnational work of farsightedness, in order to articulate the sociopolitical processes
underpinning it to the normative ideals that should steer and assist in substantively thickening it. As such, the establishment of a capacity
for early warning is the first aspect of the question that we need to tackle.
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Security K – Predictions Good
Predictions are necessary in a realist world
Mearsheimer 1 [John J. Prof. of Poli Sci at U Chicago. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Pg
7-8] JL
Despite these hazards, social scientists should nevertheless use their theories to make predictions about the future. Making
predictions helps inform policy discourse, because it helps make sense of events unfolding in the world
around us. And by clarifying points of disagreement, making explicit forecasts helps those with
contradictory views to frame their own ideas more clearly . Furthermore, trying to anticipate new events is
a good way to test social science theories, because theorists do not have the benefit of hindsight and
therefore cannot adjust their claims to fit the evidence (because it is not yet available). In short, the world can be
used as a laboratory to decide which theories best explain international politics. In that spirit, I employ
offensive realism to peer into the future, mindful of both the benefits and the hazards of trying to
predict events.
Predictions are useful to develop a superior framing of ideas
Mearsheimer 1 (John, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001
p. 8,
googleprint)
As a result, all
political forecasting is bound to include some error. Those who venture to predict, as I do here, should therefore
these
hazards, social scientists should nevertheless use their theories to make predictions about the future . Making
proceed with humility, take care not to exhibit unwarranted confidence, and admit that hindsight is likely to reveal surprises and mistakes. Despite
predictions helps inform policy discourse, because it helps make sense of events unfolding in the world around us. And by clarifying points of disagreement,
making explicit forecasts helps those with contradictory views to frame their own ideas more clearly.
Furthermore, trying to anticipate new events is a good way to test social science theories, because theorists do
not have the benefit of hindsight and therefore cannot adjust their claims to fit the evidence (because it is not yet
available). In short, the world can be used as a laboratory to decide which theories best explain international
politics. In that spirit I employ offensive realism to peer into the future, mindful of both the benefits and the hazards of trying to predict events.
Identifying causal forces of past events helps predict the future and better enable
policymakers to respond to future crises
Walt 5 – (Prof, Kennedy School of Government @ Harvard (Stephen M., Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2005. 8:23–48, pg. 31, “The Relationship Between Theory and
Policy in International Relations,” http://www.iheid.ch/webdav/site/political_science/shared/political_science/3452/walt.pdf)
PREDICTION IR theories can also help policy makers anticipate events. By identifying the central causal
forces at work in a particular era, theories offer a picture of the world and thus can provide policy makers
with a better understanding of the broad context in which they are operating. Such knowledge may enable
policy makers to prepare more intelligently and in some cases allow them to prevent unwanted
developments. To note an obvious example, different theories of international politics offered contrasting predictions about the end of the Cold War.
Liberal theories generally offered optimistic forecasts, suggesting that the collapse of communism and the spread of Western-style institutions and political forms
realist theories of IR
predicted that the collapse of the Soviet threat would weaken existing alliances (Mearsheimer 1989, Waltz 1994–1995,
Walt 1997c), stimulate the formation of anti-U.S. coalitions (Layne 1993,Kupchan 2000), and generally lead to heightened international competition. Other
realists foresaw a Pax Americana based on U.S. primacy (Wohlforth 1999, Brooks & Wohlforth 2000–2001), whereas
scholars from different traditions anticipated either a looming “clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1997) or a
“coming anarchy” arising from failed states in the developing world (Kaplan 2001). Some of these works were more explicitly
theoretical than others, but each highlighted particular trends and causal relationships in order to sketch
a picture of an emerging world.
heralded an unusually peaceful era (Fukuyama 1992, Hoffman et al. 1993, Russett 1995, Weart 2000). By contrast,
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Security K – Perm Solves – Strategic Reversibility
Power is strategically reversible – The resistance to state power counteracts the
disciplinary power at the heart of their impacts
Campbell 98 (David- PHD, Prof of cultural & poli geog @ U of Durham, Writing Security, p.257-258,ET)
The possibility of rearticulating danger leads us to a final question: what modes of being and forms of life
could we or should we adopt? To be sure, a comprehensive attempt to answer such a question is beyond the
ambit of this book. But it is important to note that asking the question in this way mistakenly implies that
such possibilities exist only in the future. Indeed, the extensive and intensive nature of the relations of
power associated with the society of security means that there has been and remains a not
inconsiderable freedom to explore alternative possibilities. While traditional analyses of power are
often economistic and negative, Foucault's understanding of power emphasises its productive and
enabling nature.36 Even more importantly, his understanding of power emphasizes the ontology of
freedom presupposed by the existence of disciplinary and normalizing practices. Put simply, there
cannot be relations of power unless subjects are in the first instance free: the need to institute negative
and constraining power practices comes about only because without them freedom would abound.
Were there no possibility of freedom, subjects would not act in ways that required containment so as to
effect order.37 Freedom, though, is not the absence of power. On the contrary, because it is only through
power that subjects exercise their agency, freedom and power cannot be separated. As Foucault
maintains: At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the
recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. Rather than speaking of an essential freedom, it
would be better to speak of an `agonism' — of a relationship which is at the same time reciprocal incitation
and struggle; less of a face-to-face confrontation which paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation.38
The political possibilities enabled by this permanent provocation of power and freedom can be specified in
more detail by thinking in terms of the predominance of the `bio-power' discussed above. In this sense,
because the governmental practices of biopolitics in Western nations have been increasingly directed
towards modes of being and forms of life — such that sexual conduct has become an object of concern,
individual health has been figured as a domain of discipline, and the family has been transformed into
an instrument of government — the on-going agonism between those practices and the freedom they seek
to contain, means that individuals have articulated a series of counter-demands drawn from those new fields
of concern. For example, as the state continues to prosecute people according to sexual orientation,
human rights activists have proclaimed the right of gays to enter into formal marriages, adopt
children, and receive the same health and insurance benefits granted to their straight counterparts.
These claims are a consequence of the permanent provocation of power and freedom in biopolitics, and
stand as testament to the 'strategic reversibility' of power relations: if the terms of governmental
practices can be made into focal points for resistances, then the 'history of government as the "conduct
of conduct" is interwoven with the history of dissenting "counter- conducts" '.39 Indeed, the emergence
of the state as the major articulation of 'the political' has involved an unceasing agonism between those in
office and those they ruled. State intervention in everyday life has long incited popular collective action,
the result of which has been both resistance to the state and new claims upon the state. In particular,
'The core of what we now call "citizenship" . . . consists of multiple bargains hammered out by rulers and
ruled in the course of their struggles over the means of state action, especially the making of war.'40 In more
recent times, constituencies associated with women's, youth, ecological, and peace movements (among
others) have also issued claims upon society.
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Security K – Perm Solves – Generally
Realism bridges the gap between the critique and the need for pragmatic action.
Murray 97 (Alastair J.H., Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism p.
202-3)
If the cosmopolitan-communitarian debate seems at times to be avoiding practical questions by going around in circles ,
the critical
literature seems at times to be utterly unsure whether there are such things as practical questions . Yet,
unless international relations theory is to become a purely intellectual exercise devoid of practical relation, such concerns must be juxtaposed to a
consideration of the problems posed by the current framing of international politics .
Ultimately, the only result of the post-positivist
movement's self-styled 'alternative' status is the generation of an unproductive opposition between a
seemingly mutually exclusive rationalism and reflectivism. Realism would seem to hold out the
possibility of a more constructive path for international relations theory. The fact that it is engaged in a
normative enquiry is not to say that it abandons a concern for the practical realities of international politics,
only that it is concerned to bridge the gap between cosmopolitan moral and power political logics. Its
approach ultimately provides an overarching framework which can draw on many different strands of thought, the 'spokes' which can be said to be attached
to its central hub, to enable it to relate empirical concerns to a normative agenda. It
can incorporate the lessons that geopolitics
yields, the insights that neorealism might achieve, and all the other information that the approaches which
effectively serve to articulate the specifics of its orientation generate, and, once incorporated within its
theoretical framework, relate them both to one another and to the requirements of the ideal, in order to
support an analysis of the conditions which characterise contemporary international politics and help
it to achieve a viable political ethic. Against critical theories which are incomprehensible to any but their
authors and their acolytes and which prove incapable of relating their categories to the issues which
provide the substance of international affairs, and against rationalist, and especially neorealist,
perspectives which prove unconcerned for matters of values and which simply ignore the relevance of
ethical questions to political action, realism is capable of formulating a position which brings ethics
and politics into a viable relationship. It would ultimately seem to offer us a course which navigates
between the Scylla of defending our values so badly that we end up threatening their very existence,
and the Charybdis of defending them so efficiently that we become everything that they militate against.
Under its auspices, we can perhaps succeed in reconciling our ideals with our pragmatism.
The perm solves through critical realism
Fairclough 5 (Norman, emeritus Prof. of Linguistics @ Lancaster University, "Discourse Analysis in
Organization Studies: The Case for Critical Realism" European Group for Organizational Studies Organization
Studies, Vol. 26, No. 6 page 3)
I shall take a critical stance towards one prominent tendency within the work which has been carried out in
the study of organizational discourse, on the grounds that it equates a shift in focus towards discourse in
organization studies with the adoption of postmodernist and extreme social constructivist positions. My
position is that commitment to such positions does not in any way follow from a commitment to giving
discourse analysis its proper place within organization studies. I shall argue instead for a critical realist
position which is moderately socially constructivist but rejects the tendency for the study of
organization to be reduced to the study of discourse, locating the analysis of discourse instead within
an analytically dualist epistemology which gives primacy to researching relations between agency
(process, and events — see note 1) and structure on the basis of a realist social ontology . I shall argue
that this form of critical discourse analysis has more to offer organization studies than broadly
postmodernist work on organizational discourse. In the final section of the paper, I shall justify this
argument through a discussion of organizational change. So, in sum, this paper is simultaneously an
argument that the analysis of discourse is an essential and unavoidable part of organization studies, and
an argument against certain prominent forms of discourse analysis which are currently carried out
within organization studies.
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Security K – Perm Solves – A2: Security is Totalizing
Absolute claims about security must be questioned.
Burke 7 (Anthony, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of New South
Wales, Sydney, June 2007, What security makes possible: Some thoughts on critical security
studies)
The Copenhagen School’s analyses open a door, however briefly, to an important insight. Security is
contingent and not universal. However they fail to push beyond that into an analysis that could put the
deeper ontological claims and construction of security into question, that could reveal its wider
sociological function and power, and most importantly, that could be put into the service of a
normatively progressive politics (whether that takes the name of security or not).49 Put briefly, this is the
critical project which has motivated my own research over the last decade. This project requires walking a
tricky path between what Matthew McDonald has called the ‘reconstructive’ and ‘deconstructive’ agendas in
security studies.50 Many writers argue that they simply cannot be reconciled. From the reconstructive end,
Booth has been sharply critical of some poststructuralist work on security which he thinks fails to
acknowledge, or create space for, an agenda which resignifies security in terms of social justice or
emancipation. He comments that: the poststructuralist approach seems to assume that security cannot be
common or positive-sum but must always be zero-sum, with somebody’s security always being at the
cost of the insecurity of others. [Hence] security itself is questioned as desirable goal … They also tend
to celebrate insecurity, which I regard as a middle-class affront to the truly insecure.51 In some ways
this critique—which cites writings by Michael Dillon and James Der Derian as examples—is appropriate. He
might also have included in this list an article published in 2000 by Costas Constantinou. 52 While in some
ways he misunderstands what they are searching for (a route out of generalised politics of alienation and fear,
which make them as critical of realism as he is) it is important to remind ourselves of the legitimate and
almost universal concern of individuals and communities for secure and stable lives. It is for this reason that
in my own work I have often endorsed the normative arguments of the Welsh School, Tickner, the Secure
Australia Project or the UNDP’s 1994 Human development report. It might be possible to read Booth’s
comments as a critique of my argument in the introduction to In fear of security, which challenges realist
policy discourses for generating Orwellian practices of security that sacrifice the security of others. I,
however, am implicitly working with a contrasting human security ideal. This, manifestly, is not a
celebration of insecurity. The power of statist ontologies of security nevertheless led me to wonder if it might
be better to speak of the human needs and priorities named by security in their specificity: conflict prevention
and resolution, human rights, land and women’s rights, the right to control one’s own economic destiny, etc.
My concern was, and remains, that security’s ‘perversion’ into a ‘metaphysical canopy for the worst
manifestations of liberalmodernity’ has been too final and damaging. 53 We live in a world where security
will continue to remain one of the most powerful signifiers in politics, and we cannot opt out of the
game of its naming and use. It must be defined and practiced in normatively better ways, and kept
under continual scrutiny.
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Security K – Alt Fails – Discourse
Their alt can’t solve the aff discourse or the overall regime of truth described by realist
thought
Williams 3 (Michael, Prof. of International Politics at the Univ. of Wales, International Studies Quarterly, Vol.
47, No. 4, pp. 511-531)
This stance allows the Copenhagen School to argue simultaneously for both an expansion and a limitation of the security agenda and its
analysis. On the one hand, treating security as a speech-act provides, in principle, for an almost
indefinite expansion of the security agenda. Not only is the realm of possible threats enlarged, but the
actors or objects that are threatened (what are termed the ‘‘referent objects’’ of security) can be
extended to include actors and objects well beyond the military security of the territorial state.
Accordingly, the Copenhagen School has argued that security can usefully be viewed as comprising five ‘‘sectors,’’ each with their
particular referent object and threat agenda (Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, 1998).6 In the ‘‘military’’ sector, for example, the referent
object is the territorial integrity of the state, and the threats are overwhelmingly defined in external, military terms. In the ‘‘political’’
sector, by contrast, what is at stake is the legitimacy of a governmental authority, and the relevant threats can be ideological and substate, leading to security situations in which state authorities are threatened by elements of their own societies, and where states can
become the primary threat to their own societies. Even further from an exclusively military-territorial focus is the concept of ‘‘societal’’
security, in which the identity of a group is presented as threatened by dynamics as diverse as cultural flows, economic integration, or
population movements. Conversely, while treating security as a speech-act allows a remarkable broadening of analysis,
securitization theory seeks also to limit the security agenda. Security, the Copenhagen School argues, is
not synonymous with ‘‘harm’’ or with the avoidance of whatever else might be deemed malign or damaging (Buzan et al.,
1998:2–5, 203–12). As a speech-act, securitization has a specific structure which in practice limits the
theoretically unlimited nature of ‘‘security .’’ These constraints operate along three lines. First, while the securitization
process is in principle completely open (any ‘‘securitizing actor’’ can attempt to securitize any issue and referent object), in practice it is
structured by the differential capacity of actors to make socially effective claims about threats, by the forms in which these claims can be
made in order to be recognized and accepted as convincing by the relevant audience, and by the empirical factors or situations to which
these actors can make reference. Not all claims are socially effective, and not all actors are in equally powerful
positions to make them. This means, as Buzan and Wæver put it, that the ‘‘Conditions for a successful speech-act
fall into two categories: (1) the internal, linguistic-grammatical-to follow the rules of the act (or, as Austin
argues, accepted conventional procedures must exist, and the act has to be executed according to these procedures); and (2) the
external, contextual and social-to hold a position from which the act can be made (‘The particular
persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular
procedure invoked’)’’ (Buzan et al., 1998:32). The claims that are likely to be effective, the forms in which they can be made, the
objects to which they refer, and the social positions from which they can effectively be spoken are usually deeply ‘‘sedimented’’
(rhetorically and discursively, culturally, and institutionally) and structured in ways that make securitizations somewhat predictable and
thus subject to probabilistic analysis (Wæver, 2000)Fand not wholly open and expandable. Finally, while empirical contexts and claims
cannot in this view ultimately determine what are taken as security issues or threats, they provide crucial resources and referents upon
which actors can draw in attempting to securitize a given issue.
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Security K – Alt Fails – Generally
Security discourse is inevitable.
Williams 3 (Michael, Prof. of International Politics at the Univ. of Wales, International Studies Quarterly, Vol.
47, No. 4, pp. 511-531)
The first, and simplest point is that in some ways the Copenhagen School treats securitization not as a normative question, but as
an objective process and possibility. Very much like Schmitt, they view securitization as a social possibility intrinsic to
political life. In regard to his concept of the political, for example, Schmitt once argued,
It is irrelevant here whether one rejects, accepts, or perhaps finds it an atavistic remnant of barbaric times that nations continue to group
themselves according to friend and enemy, or whether it is perhaps strong pedagogic reasoning to imagine that enemies no longer exist
at all. The concern here is neither with abstractions nor normative ideals, but with inherent reality and the real possibility of making such
a distinction. One may or may not share these hopes and pedagogic ideals. But, rationally speaking, it cannot be denied that
nations continue to group themselves according to the friend–enemy antithesis, that the distinction still remains
actual today, and that this is an ever present possibility for every people existing in the political sphere (1996 [1932]: 28).30 In certain
settings, the Copenhagen School seems very close to this position. Securitization must be understood as
both an existing reality and a continual possibility. Yet equally clearly there is a basic ambivalence in this position, for
it raises the dilemma that securitization theory must remain at best agnostic in the face of any securitization, even, for example, a fascist
speech-act (such as that Schmitt has often been associated with) that securitizes a specific ethnic or racial minority. To say that we must
study the conditions under which such processes and constructions emerge and become viable is important but incomplete, for without
some basis for avoiding this process and transforming it the Copenhagen School appears to risk replicating some of the worst excesses
made possible by a Schmittian understanding of politics.
Critical theory is not able to predict the outcome of desecuritization – the alternative is
nothing more than wishful thinking.
Mearsheimer 95 (John, Prof. of Poli Sci at the Univ. of Chicago, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3, Winter
1994-1995, pp. 5-49)
There is another problem with the application of critical theory to international relations. Although critical
theorists hope to
replace realism with a discourse that emphasizes harmony and peace, critical theory per se emphasizes
that it is impossible to know the future. Critical theory, according to its own logic, can be used to undermine realism and
produce change, but it cannot serve as the basis for predicting which discourse will replace realism, because the
theory says little about the direction change takes. In fact, Cox argues that although "utopian expectations may be an element in
stimulating people to act ... such expectations are almost never realized in practice."160 Thus, in a sense, the communitarian
discourse championed by critical theorists is wishful thinking, not an outcome linked to the theory
itself. Indeed, critical theory cannot guarantee that the new discourse will not be more malignant than the discourse it replaces.
Nothing in the theory guarantees, for example, that a fascist discourse far more violent than realism
will not emerge as the new hegemonic discourse.
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Security K – Alt Turn – Exclusion
Their critical approach to security necessarily turns in on itself – it recreates the exclusions
that it attempts to cross over by targeting specific audiences.
Mutimer 9 (David, Assoc. Prof. of Poli Sci at York Univ., Studies in Social Justice, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 9-22)
Most critical scholarship in International Relations begins, in some sense, from Robert Cox’s observation
that all theory is for someone and for some purpose. (Cox, 1986, p. 207) It is rarely noted that this means,
necessarily, that theory is also against someone and against their purposes. While rarely noted, it would
generally not be seen as overly problematic by critical theorists if it were, because the assumption is
that critical theory is for the oppressed, for the excluded, and is therefore against the oppressor,
against those on the inside keeping the deserving out. But who are the deserving? Our reflex is that they are any that are
kept out, but here is the point at which the discussion I have just followed gains its significance. The various forms of critical
theorizing about security identify those deserving by identifying whom it is their theory is for . By
effecting exclusions from the critical project, the different forms of theorizing produce some as doubly excluded:
they are outside, but not deserving. Emancipatory critical theory is revealed to be against not only the
oppressors, those inside guarding the gates, but against some of those on the outside as well . As Christine
Sylvester puts it:When critical people of all persuasions and locations forget to recognize that critical comes in many forms, when they
designate some critical analysts as ‘other participants’, fall into the habit encouraged by camp IR to focus narrowly and rally around a
few thinkers, when they forget that feminists are dissidents too and that women are in security peril the world round . . . they are in
trouble . . . ” (Sylvester, 2007, p. 556) The conclusion is unavoidable, then, that each of the positions I have surveyed is “in trouble,” as
each effects just such exclusions of other forms of critique and the insecure outsiders for whom those others speak . Booth’s post-
Marxism privileges those excluded on the basis of class, but the disparagement of post-structuralism
effects an excision of not only the writers but the varied forms of identity for whom they write . These
multiple and overlapping forms of identity include, but are not limited to, those constituted by race, sexual orientation and, of course,
gender. The CASE Collective, even in its aim to be inclusive, excludes feminists and the insecure women
for whom they write, as well as the non-Europeans who may also write for subjects other than those that are the focus of
European authors. The question that remains, of course, is whether we can escape the production of exclusions in our attempts at critical
(security) scholarship. My answer is that no, we cannot. By speaking for some we necessarily speak against others ,
and the range of those who face oppression, those for whom critical scholarship is written, is too great for them all to be written for at
once. My corollary to this observation is that there will be different outsiders who most need critical theory at different times and in
different places. In taking this step, I make clear my own choice amongst the inclusions and exclusions I have surveyed, for from this
corollary follows a post- structural critical ethos. While we cannot avoid effecting exclusions in our work, we can resist the temptation to
effect them a priori. Rather, we need to turn our critical gazes constantly on ourselves to ask if, at each time and in each place, we are
theorizing for those most in need. Doing so acknowledges that other outsiders will be excluded by our choices, but has at least the
benefit of doing so in a limited and contingent fashion.
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Security K – Alt Fails – Reject Bad
Resistance Fails.
D’Cruz 1 (Carolyn LaTrobe University, Australia, “What Matter Who's Speaking?" Authenticity and Identity in
Discourses of Aboriginality in Australia,” Jouvert, Volume 5, Issue 3,
http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v5i3/cdcr.htm AD: 7/11/09) NS
When Hollinsworth tackles the problem of essentialism, he argues that identifying an Aboriginal essence in
terms of 'biological descent,' for instance, can unintentionally lend itself to right-wing populism, which
creates a hierarchy of authenticity based on racist assumptions about categorisations such as full blood,
half caste, and so on. This effectively derides some Aboriginal people with 'mixed ancestry.' He argues that
there are similar problems of creating a hierarchy of authenticity with definitions of identity that situate an
Aboriginal essence in terms of 'cultural continuity' (cultural commonalities in terms of heritage, and ways of
doing things). While Hollinsworth does show an awareness that the means of defining Aboriginality is
seeped in Australia's racist history, he curiously acts as if it were possible to simply choose the most
appropriate way for authenticating identity, by rejecting the above classifications for what he calls
'Aboriginality as resistance.' This latter category professedly describes an 'oppositional culture' to common
experiences of dispossession and racism. Though he warns against the tendency to essentialise this
'discourse' of resistance, Hollinsworth contends that 'Aboriginality as resistance' is "the most
inclusive, dynamic and least readily domesticated by state co-option" ("Discourses" 151). Yet his choice
to settle on a preferred category begs the question as to how such a selection can disentangle itself from
its complicity with state co-option, as it is such domestication of identity that has produced such resistance
and opposition in the first place.
Rejection is counterproductive. Realism synthesizes critical theories in order to provide for
the possibility of transition.
Murray 97 (Alastair J.H. Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, p. 178-9)
NS
In Wendt’s constructivism, the argument appears in its most basic version, presenting an analysis of realist
assumptions which associate it with a conservative account of human nature. In Linklater's critical theory it
moves a stage further, presenting an analysis of realist theory which locates it within a conservative discourse
of state-centrism. In Ashley's post-structuralism it reaches its highest form, presenting an analysis of realist
strategy which locates it not merely within a conservative statist order, but, moreover, within an active
conspiracy of silence to reproduce it. Finally, in Tickner's feminism, realism becomes all three
simultaneously and more besides, a vital player in a greater, overarehing, masculine conspiracy against
femininity. Realism thus appears, first, as a doctrine providing the grounds for a relentless pessimism,
second, as a theory which provides an active justification for such pessimism, and, third, as a strategy which
proactively seeks to enforce this pessimism, before it becomes the vital foundation underlying all such
pessimism in international theory. Yet, an examination of the arguments put forward from each of these
perspectives suggests not only that the effort to locate realism within a conservative, rationalist camp is
untenable, but, beyond this, that realism is able to provide reformist strategies which are superior to those
that they can generate themselves. The progressive purpose which motivates the critique of realism in
these perspectives ultimately generates a bias which undermines their own ability to generate effective
strategies of transition. In constructivism, this bias appears in its most limited version, producing
strategies so divorced from the obstacles presented by the current structure of international politics
that they threaten to become counter-productive. In critical theory it moves a stage further, producing
strategies so abstract that one is at a loss to determine what they actually imply in terms of the current
structure of international politics. And, in post-modernism, it reaches its highest form, producing an
absence of such strategies altogether, until we reach the point at which we are left with nothing but
critique. Against this failure, realism contains the potential to act as the basis of a more constructive
approach to international relations, incorporating many of the strengths of reflectivism and yet
avoiding its weaknesses. It appears, in the final analysis, as an opening within which some synthesis of
rationalism and reflectivism, of conservatism and progressivism, might be built.
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Security K – Alt Fails – Violence Inevitable
Us vs. Them mentality is genetically encoded and inevitable.
Fisbein and Dess 3 (Harold D., Nancy, Ph. D. University of Cincinnati psychology, Ph.D. Occidental
College psychology Evolutionary psychology and violence: a primer for policymakers and public policy
advocates Ed. - Richard W. Bloom, Nancy Kimberly Dess pg.157-158)
This chapter deals with an evolutionary analysis of intercultural conflict. The core assumption is that genes
determine some aspects of human social behavior Our genes make all of our social behavior possible, but
because of our evolutionary design—as social primates and, later, as tribally organized hunters and
gatherers—we have inherited a genetic structure that makes certain kinds of attitudes and social
behavior inevitable. Further, the occurrence of some of these attitudes and behaviors makes the
development of prejudice and discrimination toward members of other cultures highly likely. These
attitudes and behaviors constitute an "us versus them" psychology that is genetically determined. On
the basis of the current state of knowledge, it is highly likely that particular processes are genetically
coded that normally ensure that the evolved social behaviors (phenotypic characteristics) will develop.
For example, neither English nor Spanish is coded in the genes, but language-inducing processes are. If a
child is reared in an English-speaking community, she'll learn English. If she's reared in an American Sign
Language (ASL) community, she'll learn ASL. Either outcome can occur because language-inducing
processes that have evolved in the species have developed in the individual. Although debate continues over
whether these processes are modular or generic and about exactly how human communication is unique, that
children's great facility for learning human language is an evolutionary legacy is clear
Violence Inevitable – History.
Shaw and Wong 89 (R. Paul, Yuwa, Ph.D. Senior population and development economist UNPF, Ph.D.
Simon Fraser University Genetic Seeds of Warfare: Evolution, Nationalism, and Patriotism pg. 3)
What kinds of evidence convey war proneness? Some social scientists view the frequency of warfare
among "primitive” tribes and "modern" nations as the most persuasive data. Montagu (1976) cites
evidence of some 14,500 wars during the last 5,600 years of recorded history, or 2.6 wars per year.
From his tally, only 10 of 185 generations have known uninterrupted peace. Burke (1975) makes a
similar point; there have been only 268 years of peace during the last 3,400 years of history. Peace thus
comprises only 8% of the entire history of recorded civilization. More recently, the Correlates of War
Project at the University of Michigan shows there is virtually no evidence of a secular trend up or down
in the incidence of warfare between 1816 and 1977 (Singer and Small 1972; Singer 1981). This suggests
that war proneness is a "constant" in modern history. Since World War II, Valzelli (1981) notes there
have been more than 150 wars, scrimmages, coups d'etat, and revolutions. During this period of
"deceitful peace," he reports an average of 12 acts of war occurring simultaneously per year, with only
26 days of actual peace. Some 25 million humans were killed during the last 35 years, more than the
total number of soldiers killed during the two world wars.
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Security K – Alt Fails – Violence Inevitable
Conflict serves multiple evolutionary functions.
Shaw and Wong 89 (R. Paul, Yuwa, Ph.D. Senior population and development economist UNPF, Ph.D.
Simon Fraser University Genetic Seeds of Warfare: Evolution, Nationalism, and Patriotism pg. 10-11)
Do ritualized aggression and lethal conflict serve similar functions among humans? Alcock (1978), an
evolutionary biologist, concludes that most threatening or violent disputes are employed to resolve
contested ownership over scarce or potentially limiting resources. Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1979), an ethologist,
interprets intergroup aggression as a means of sorting out territorial disputes or status in a ranking order,
van den Berghe (1978), a sociologist, sees primitive and early societal warfare as a rational means of gaining
livestock, women and slaves, gaining or keeping territory, or gaining, controlling, and exploiting new
territory. Among nations, Knorr {1966, 1977), a political scientist, argues that the use of force is an
allocative mechanism by which competition among states is resolved. Choucri and North (1975)
demonstrate that much international conflict is the result of the interactive effects of population and
technology demanding resources beyond national borders. And two military historians, Wright (1935)
and Gray (1974), conclude that warfare and arms races seek to preserve solidarity under the status quo
by augmenting nations* influence, prestige, and power over social and economic resources in the world
community. Perhaps the most outstanding testimony that modern warfare serves accepted functions is
its institutionalization — to the extent that it now operates within a cadre of laws defining states of war
and peace and prescribes rules of conduct for each. Several military historians define war as a legal
condition which permits two or more hostile groups to carry on conflict by armed force. Emphasis on the
term legal connotes societal acceptance and approval (Wright 1935; Kennedy 1972; J.T.Johnson 1981).
Margaret Mead (1968) observes that modern warfare requires an organization for killing, the willingness
of individuals to die on behalf of other members, the approval of individuals within the societies
concerned, and an agreement that it is a legitimate way of solving problems. If we strip away the
vagaries of different analytical approaches and academic jargon, we find that most anthropologists,
sociologists, historians, economists, and political scientists agree that modern-day arms races, military
threats, and use of violence by groups at various levels of organization serve to enforce, protect, or
extend power (for example, Andreski 1968; von Clauscwitz 1976; Garnett 1970; Blaincy 1973; Hammond
1975; Midlarsky 1975; Falger 1987). And, in this context, any distinction between economic and political
power is unreal. Every conflict involves power, and power depends on control over scarce or potentially
limiting physical and nonphysical resources.
Violence is inevitable – Evolution.
Shaw and Wong 89 (R. Paul, Yuwa, Ph.D. Senior population and development economist UNPF, Ph.D.
Simon Fraser University Genetic Seeds of Warfare: Evolution, Nationalism, and Patriotism pg. 12,14)
An evolutionary approach is essential to understanding humanity’s propensity for warfare for one
reason. Behavioral strategies to enhance biological goals of survival, reproduction, and genetic fitness
have not evolved independently of humanity's environment — they have coevolved. To decipher the "deep
structure" of warfare propensities it is thus crucial to bear in mind that evolution always involves adaptation to past, not present,
environments. Moreover, most genetic evolution of human behavior has occurred over a span of hundreds of thousands of years prior to
civilization (see Figure 1.3). This means that a legacy of aggression and lethal conflict has adapted to serve
humans for 99% of their existence. During the same period, structures of the brain and processes of cognition that are attuned
to aggress ion/war fare have evolved. Viewing the coevolution of genes, mind, and culture with this legacy in mind suggests that the
cultural explosion of modern times may not, as yet, have fully taken on a life of its own. Why? Because modern culture and
many of its uses may be constrained or guided by humanity's evolutionary legacy including
adaptations which have evolved to serve previous environments. Some of these formerly adaptive
predispositions may well be maladaptive today. As we shall see, merely recognizing this possibility is
not likely to be sufficient for their abandonment .
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***Agamben Answers***
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Agamben – Perm
Perms solves the residual links - the state is no longer the primary locus of biopolitical
control
Lemke 9 (Thomas, PhD in political science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main., “”A
Zone of Indistinction’ – A Critique of Giorgio Agamben’s Concept of Biopolitics”
http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/engl.%20texte/A%20Zone3.pdf) MV
Agamben sees the novelty of the modern biopolitics in the fact that “the biological given is as such
immediately political, and the political is as such immediately the biological given” (1998: 148; emphasis in
orig.). In the political program of the Nazis, the preoccupation with life is at the same time a struggle against
the enemy. While there are probably convincing reasons to state that in the present we are one step further on
the way towards a politicisation of nature, there are at least two major problems that this conception of
biopolitics fails to address. Firstly, Agamben does not take into account that the site of sovereignty has
been displaced. While in the eugenic programs in the first half of the 20 th century biopolitical interventions
were mainly executed by the state that controlled the health of the population or the hygiene of the race,
biopolitics today is becoming more and more a responsibility of sovereign subjects. As autonomous
patients, active consumers or responsible parents they demand medical or biotechnological options.
Today, it is less the state that regulates by direct interventions and restrictions, since the capacity and
competence of decision-making is increasingly ascribed to the individual subject to make “informed
choices” beyond political authoritarianism and medical paternalism. Decisions on life and death are less
the explicit result of legal provisions and political regulations but the outcome of an “invisible hand” that
represents the options and practices of sovereign individuals (Lemke 2002b; Koch 2002). Agamben’s
analysis is too state-centred, or rather, it relies on a limited conception of the state which does not take into
account important political transformations since the Nazi era. He does not take into account that in
contemporary liberal societies political power is exercised through a multiplicity of agencies and techniques
that are often only loosely associated with the formal organs of the state. The self-regulating capacities of
subjects as autonomous actors have become key resources for present forms of government that rely in
crucial respects on forms of scientific expertise and knowledge (Rose/Miller 1992).
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Agamben – Perm: Neg Totalizes
Totalizing sovereign power makes resistance infeasible
Hussain 2k (Department of History at Berkeley Nasser, 34 Law & Soc'y Rev. 495, lexis).
Here once again we are forced to question Agamben's teleological mode of thought. Is this sovereign power
represented in the concentration camps really a constitutive feature of sovereignty tout court? Even limiting
ouselves to the remarks above, we can imagine a liberal critique of this position that asks from where come the limitations that Agamben concedes previous
Surely, one does not have to accept in its entirety a normative liberal
conception of sovereign power in order to appreciate that the demand for a factual accounting for the
decision on the exception, and institutional checks upon the totalization of the space of exception, can
nonetheless - at least in certain instances - be effective. Indeed, one could go further and suggest that a
liberal theory of sovereign power understands full well the paradoxical relation between law and fact,
norm and exception; and, precisely in light of such an understanding constructs an institutional system
that cannot resolve the paradox but nonetheless attempts to prevent it from reaching an intensified
and catastrophic conclusion. Given that Agamben is a nuanced and fair-minded thinker, one must wonder about why he largely
Weimar governments had observed.
ignores such a system. We think that one possible answer is that, just as for Agamben the source of the problem is not the institutional
operation of sovereign power, but its object - bare life - so too the solution is not a proliferation of institutional safeguards but a
rethinking of that mode of being. In this regard, we find his concluding musings on Heidigger to be suggestive.
Their absolute link claims are unverifiable
Lewis 99 (Stephen, Modernism/Modernity 6.3, p. 165, Project MUSE, Humanities Professor at Chicago,)
There are a number of objections one could raise to specific aspects of the book, particularly its premise that concepts such as "sovereign power" and "bare
life" describe realities that remain more or less constant over twenty-four centuries of history. I will focus here, however, on what I think is the
most
fundamentally objectionable aspect of the book: its methodology, or the set of assumptions about what
constitutes a good argument that governs its "historico-philosophical" approach to its subject matter.
The best way to demonstrate these assumptions is by considering Agamben's adoption of the term
"biopolitics." He takes up the term from Michel Foucault with the intent of moving beyond Foucault's thinking of the "double bind" exerted upon the
political subject by, on the one hand, "subjective technologies" and, on the other, "political technologies" (5-6). Agamben's claim is that his approach to
biopolitics clarifies the precise nature of this "point at which the voluntary servitude of individuals comes into contact with objective power" because he
grounds it in an analysis of the juridico-institutional structure of sovereign power, a realm of political reality that Foucault refused to take seriously (119).
Agamben's rhetoric when explaining why Foucault did not see the structural nature of modern power in the more complete and illuminating way that
Agamben does is interesting. For Agamben, any failings in Foucault's thinking arise not from a problem with Foucault's methods of research or from
deficits in his command of evidence, but, rather, from the assumption that Foucault could not have thought otherwise than as he did because he was thinking
at the very limits then of Western thought. The "blind spot" in the "double bind" Foucault locates constitutes, says Agamben, "something like a vanishing
point that the different perspectival lines of Foucault's inquiry (and, more generally, of the entire Western reflection on power) converge toward without
reaching" (6). Unfortunately, yet perhaps unsurprisingly, Agamben intimates that he, too, is thinking at the very limits of current thought (presumably he
finds himself able to think beyond Foucault's horizon because he is alive and thinking now, after Foucault). Agamben's use of what Thomas Pavel has
called the "rhetoric of the end" calls attention to the problems that occur when a book is structured by apocalyptic claims about the end (and thus the
inaccessibility) of certain modes of being or of thought rather than by empirically or historiographically grounded argument. 2 There is nothing inherently
objectionable about claiming that the end of a certain era has occurred; the point is simply that, to my mind, the reader ought to be able to decide from
evidence-based argumentation whether the claim is reasonable. 3 Agamben says that his intent in describing the hidden connection between totalitarianism
and democracy on an "historico-philosophical" plane rather than through detailed historiographical inquiry is not to "[level] the enormous differences that
characterize [the] history and [. . .] rivalry" of democracy and totalitarianism (10). Instead, his
intent is to make the structure of this
hidden connection known so that it can one day be surpassed through a new form of politics. The
problem, however, is that the rhetoric of the end he employs in lieu of historiographical argument
prevents him from saying precisely what this new form of politics could be and thus makes its
attainment seem mysteriously difficult. Indeed Agamben tends to fall back on impossible-to-prove
categorical assertions rather than reasonable explanations when he tells why, for instance, the
categories of classical politics, or, alternatively, religion-based ethical systems, cannot be "returned to"
in any sense. Functioning hand-in-hand with such categorical assertions about the inaccessibility of the
past are equally unsupported gestures towards a future politics articulated in what reads at times like a language of
secularized apophatism, which in the present book Agamben tends to employ in conjunction with discussions of Benjamin's messianism.
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Agamben – Perm: Neg Totalizes
Their alternative totalizes – Reform solves best
Daly 4 (Frances, Australian National University, borderlands, Research Fellow in Philosophy,
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/daly_noncitizen.htm)
It is always possible to suppose that a self-fashioned potentiality is simply available to us, and in some senses it is, but not because a
type of theory merely posits the social and the historical as completely open to our manipulation or 'perforation'. Likewise, we cannot
merely assume that changing 'forms of life' necessarily amount to types of refusal. Such a claim would
only make sense if it were put forward on the basis of an appreciation of an impulse to freedom from
particular types of constraint and oppression. It would also require a sense of how this impulse takes place within a variety of
conditions, some of which might be easily altered and some of which might not. In the absence of an engaged sense of what this impulse
means, and of the context in which elements of freedom and unfreedom do battle, it is impossible to speculate on the nature
of the subjectivity or potentiality which might be emerging or which might be in stages of decomposition. Agamben merely
presumes that a strategy by which we all identify as refugees will renew a politics and thereby end the current plight of the refugee, as if no other reality
is also assumed on the basis that the State – in Agamben's theorizing, the
abstraction of an all-encompassing, leviathan State – is equally, readily and easily liable to perforation.
This contradiction is indicative of a wider problem where what we encounter is a form of critique that
is oddly inappropriate to the type of issue it addresses. 29. Much can be said in criticism of the doctrine of right, of the limited
impinges on this identification. This
nature of the understanding of freedom and rights in documents on rights, of the assumption of the place of citizen rights as the locus of the fundamental
rights of the human, and most significantly, the absence of any sense of the undetermined nature of what being might mean. But what must be stated, I feel,
is that it would be a serious impoverishment of the ethical problem that we currently face to deny any potential value of rights in carrying forth traces of an
impetus towards human dignity, of the ideals of freedom and equality, and to thus reduce rights to what might be termed an absolute politics. Rights cannot
be reduced to citizenship rights as if the ideas of rights and citizenship are coterminus. What most critically needs to be understood is, firstly, why values of
freedom and equality have such a limited and fragile place within conditions of such inordinate legalism, and, secondly, what the absence of freedom, which
we are left with a
gestural politics that contains a posture of radicalism but one which fails to connect the aspirations of
those who are struggling to achieve elementary rights with a vision of a world that could accord them a
degree of dignity. To acknowledge this is not to be seduced by concepts of right or law, but is rather to
refuse the denial of a radical questioning of the possibilities with which a discourse presents us. Benjamin's
the cause of human rights inevitably suggests, means for the installation of any such rights. Without such an understanding
understanding of a genuinely messianic idea is something that is "not the final end of historical progress, but rather its often failed and finally accomplished
interruption" (Benjamin, 1974: 1231). We find this in values that resist exploitation and assaults upon human dignity. And it is this realm that currently
requires urgent, emphatic and significant renewal.
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Agamben – AT: Aid Links (1/2)
Social programs arise from a relationship between state agencies and demands made by the
people, not from an official desire to control populations
Dickinson 4 (UC Berkeley – History, Edward Ross, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our
Discourse About “Modernity,” Central European History, vol. 37, no. 1, 1–48) MV
Concretely, moreover, I am not convinced that power operated in only one direction — from the top
down — in social work. Might we not ask whether people actually demanded welfare services, and
whether and how social work- ers and the state struggled to respond to those demands? David Crew and Greg
Eghigian, for example, have given us detailed studies of the micropolitics of welfare in the Weimar period in
which it becomes clear that conflicts between welfare administrators and their “clients” were sparked
not only by heavy- handed intervention, but also by refusal to help.94 What is more, the speci� c nature
of social programs matters a great deal, and we must distinguish between the different dynamics (and
histories) of different programs. The removal of children from their families for placement in foster
families or reformatories was bitterly hated and stubbornly resisted by working-class families; but mothers
brought their children to infant health clinics voluntarily and in numbers, and after 1945 they brought
their older children to counseling clinics, as well. In this instance, historians of the German welfare state
might pro� t from the “demand side” models of welfare development that are sometimes more explicitly
explored in some of the international literature.95 In fact, even where social workers really were attempting to
limit or subvert the autonomy and power of parents, I am not sure that their actions can be characterized
only and exclusively as part of a microphysics of oppression. Progressive child welfare advocates in
Germany, particularly in the National Center for Child Welfare, waged a campaign in the 1920s to persuade
German parents and educators to stop beating children with such ferocity, regularity, and nonchalance. They
did so because they feared the unintended physical and psychological effects of beatings, and implicitly
because they believed physical violence could compromise the development of the kind of autonomous,selfreliant subjectivity on which a modern state had to rely in its citizenry. 96 Or, to give another common example
from the period, children removed from their families after being subjected by parents or other relatives to
repeated episodes of violence or rape were being manipulated by biopolitical technocrats, and were often
abused in new ways in institutions or foster families; but they were also being liberated. Sometimes some
forms of the exercise of power in society are in some ways emancipatory; and that is historically signi� cant.
Further, of course we must ask whether it is really true that social workers’ and social agencies’ attempts
to manipulate people worked. My own impression is that social policy makers grew increasingly aware,
between the 1870s and the 1960s, that their own ends could not be achieved unless they won the
cooperation of the targets of policy. And to do that, they had to offer people things that they wanted
and needed. Policies that incited resistance were — sometimes with glacial slowness, after stubborn and
embittered struggles — de-emphasized or even abandoned. Should we really see the history of social
welfare policy as a more or less static (because the same thing is always happening) history of the imposition
of manipulative policies on populations? I believe a more complex model of the evolution of social policy
as a system of social interaction, involving conflicting and converging demands, constant negotiation,
struggle, and — above all — mutual learning would be more appropriate. This is a point Abram de Swaan
and others have made at some length; but it does not appear to have been built into our theory of modernity
very systematically, least of all in German history.97
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Agamben – AT Aid: Links (2/2)
Empirically, governments that have intervened in the social relations of their citizens have
been more protective of rights and not authoritarian
Dickinson 4 (UC Berkeley – History, Edward Ross, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our
Discourse About “Modernity,” Central European History, vol. 37, no. 1, 1–48) MV
All of these questions, however, still address primarily the activities of technocrats and social managers. We
are still asking how bad social engineering is. In fact, this entire discourse seems to be shaped by the
fundamental suspicion that trying actively to create a better society is always and necessarily a bad
thing — an undemocratic, manipulative, oppressive thing.98 This assumption is rooted in a particular
understanding of the micropolitics of expertise and pro- fessionalism. It is frequently argued that modern
forms of technical knowledge and licensing create relations of dominance and subordination between experts
and their “clients.” Thus Paul Weindling, for example, asserted that, “Profes- sionalism, reinforced by of�
cial powers, meant that welfare de� ned new spheres for the exercising of coercion . . . The new technocracy
of professions and wel- fare administrators might be seen as erecting antidemocratic and coercive social
structures by extending the welfare state.” Michael Schwartz, similarly, observed in 1992 that “even in the
democratic variant of science there was a tendency to technocratic elitism” and the “scientistic objecti�
cation of humanity.”99 And Detlev Peukert reminded us that “rationalization as a strategy of experts inherently contained [barg systematisch] the danger of the technocratic arrogance of experts, the overwhelming of
those affected by the catalog of norms for ratio- nal living derived from the expert knowledge of the
professions, but not from the experience of those affected.” 100 Even more sinister, again, is the tendency of
these same experts to exclude, stigmatize, and pathologize those they are not able to “normalize.” Zygmunt
Bauman has presented the same case with a par- ticular clarity, concluding that since modernity is “about”
order, and order always implies its opposite, chaos, “intolerance is . . . the natural inclination of modern
practice. Construction of order sets the limits to incorporation and admission. It calls for the denial of rights,
and of the grounds, of everything that cannot be assimilated — for the de-legitimation of the other.”101 At its
simplest, this view of the politics of expertise and professionalization is certainly plausible. Historically
speaking, however, the further conjecture that this “micropolitical” dynamic creates authoritarian,
totalitarian, or homicidal potentials at the level of the state does not seem very tenable. Historically, it
appears that the greatest advocates of political democracy — in Germany left- liberals and Social
Democrats — have been also the greatest advocates of every kind of biopolitical social engineering,
from public health and welfare programs through social insurance to city planning and, yes, even eugenics. 102
The state they built has intervened in social relations to an (until recently) ever-growing degree;
professionalization has run ever more rampant in Western societies; the production of scientistic and
technocratic expert knowledge has proceeded at an ever more frenetic pace. And yet, from the perspective of
the first years of the millennium, the second half of the twentieth century appears to be the great age of
democracy in precisely those societies where these processes have been most in evidence. What is more,
the interventionist state has steadily expanded both the rights and the resources of virtually every
citizen — including those who were stigmatized and persecuted as biologically defective under National
Socialism. Perhaps these processes have created an ever more restrictive “iron cage” of rationality in
European societies. But if so, it seems clear that there is no necessary correlation between
rationalization and authoritarian politics; the opposite seems in fact to be at least equally true.
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Agamben – No Link: Liberalism Good
Democracies restrict the freedom of the sovereign to act with impunity
Heins 5 (Volker, polisci Concordia University, 6 German Law Journal No. 5, May,
http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=598) MV
According to this basic Principle of Distinction, modern humanitarian action is directed towards those who
are caught up in violent conflicts without possessing any strategic value for the respective warring parties.
Does this imply that classic humanitarianism and its legal expressions reduce the lives of noncombatants to
the "bare life" of nameless individuals beyond the protection of any legal order? I would rather argue that
humanitarianism is itself an order-making activity. Its goal is not the preservation of life reduced to a
bare natural fact, but conversely the protection of civilians and thereby the protection of elementary
standards of civilization which prevent the exclusion of individuals from any legal and moral order. The
same holds true for human rights, of course. Agamben fails to appreciate the fact that human rights laws
are not about some cadaveric "bare life", but about the protection of moral agency.[33] His sweeping
critique also lacks any sense for essential distinctions. It may be legitimate to see "bare life" as a juridical
fiction nurtured by the modern state, which claims the right to derogate from otherwise binding norms in
times of war and emergency, and to kill individuals, if necessary, outside the law in a mode of "effective
factuality."[34] Agamben asserts that sovereignty understood in this manner continues to function in the
same way since the seventeenth century and regardless of the democratic or dictatorial structure of the state
in question. This claim remains unilluminated by the wealth of evidence that shows how the humanitarian
motive not only shapes the mandate of a host state and nonstate agencies, but also serves to restrict the
operational freedom of military commanders in democracies, who cannot act with impunity and who
do not wage war in a lawless state of nature. Furthermore, Agamben ignores the crisis of humanitarianism
that emerged as a result of the totalitarian degeneration of modern states in the twentieth century. States
cannot always be assumed to follow a rational self-interest which informs them that there is no point in
killing others indiscriminately. The Nazi episode in European history has shown that sometimes leaders do
not spare the weak and the sick, but take extra care not to let them escape, even if they are handicapped, very
old or very young. Classic humanitarianism depends on the existence of an international society whose
members feel bound by a basic set of rules regarding the use of violence—rules which the ICRC itself helped
to institutionalize. Conversely, classic humanitarianism becomes dysfunctional when states place no value at
all on their international reputation and see harming the lives of defenseless individuals not as useless and
cruel, but as part of their very mission.[36] The founders of the ICRC defined war as an anthropological
constant that produced a continuous stream of new victims with the predictable regularity and unavoidability
of floods or volcanic eruptions. Newer organizations, by contrast, have framed conditions of massive social
suffering as a consequence of largely avoidable political mistakes. The humanitarian movement becomes
political, to paraphrase Carl Schmitt,[37] in so far as it orients itself to humanitarian states of emergency, the
causes of which are located no longer in nature, but in society and politics. Consequently, the founding
generation of the new humanitarian organizations have freed themselves from the ideals of apolitical
philanthropy and chosen as their new models historical figures like the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg,
who saved thousands of Jews during the Second World War. In a different fashion than Agamben imagines,
the primary concern in the field of humanitarian intervention and human rights politics today is not
the protection of bare life, but rather the rehabilitation of the lived life of citizens who suffer, for
instance, from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. At the same time, there is a field of
activity emerging beneath the threshold of the bare life. In the United States, in particular, pathologists
working in conjunction with human rights organizations have discovered the importance of corpses and
corporal remains now that it is possible to identify reliable evidence for war crimes from exhumed
bodies.[39]
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – No Link: Liberalism Good
Liberal democratic mindset prevents the use of structures for control – Even if the aff
authorizes control, institutional power for autonomy massively overwhelms the link
Dickinson 4 (UC Berkeley – History, Edward Ross, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse About
“Modernity,” Central European History, vol. 37, no. 1, 1–48)
In short, the continuities between early twentieth-century biopolitical discourse and the practices of the welfare state in our own time are unmistakable. Both
are instances of the “disciplinary society” and of biopolitical, regulatory, social-engineering modernity, and they share that genealogy with more
authoritarian states, including the National Socialist state, but also fascist Italy, for example. And it is certainly fruitful to view them from this very broad
perspective. But that
analysis can easily become superficial and misleading , because it obfuscates the
profoundly different strategic and local dynamics of power in the two kinds of regimes. Clearly the democratic
welfare state is not only formally but also substantively quite different from totalitarianism . Above all, again,
it has nowhere developed the fateful, radicalizing dynamic that characterized National Socialism (or for
that matter Stalinism), the psychotic logic that leads from economistic population management to mass
murder. Again, there is always the potential for such a discursive regime to generate coercive policies. In those cases in which the regime of rights does
not successfully produce “health,” such a system can —and historically does— create compulsory programs to enforce it. But again, there are political and
policy potentials and constraints in such a structuring of biopolitics that are very different from those of National Socialist Germany. Democratic
biopolitical regimes require, enable, and incite a degree of self-direction and participation that is
functionally incompatible with authoritarian or totalitarian structures. And this pursuit of biopolitical ends
through a regime of democratic citizenship does appear, historically, to have imposed increasingly narrow limits on
coercive policies, and to have generated a “logic” or imperative of increasing liberalization. Despite limitations imposed
by political context and the slow pace of discursive change, I think this is the unmistakable message of the really very impressive waves of legislative and
welfare reforms in the 1920s or the 1970s in Germany.90 Of course it is not yet clear whether this is an irreversible dynamic of such systems. Nevertheless,
such regimes are characterized by sufficient degrees of autonomy (and of the potential for its expansion) for sufficient numbers of people that I think it
becomes useful to conceive of them as productive of a strategic configuration of power relations that might fruitfully be analyzed as a condition of “liberty,”
just as much as they are productive of constraint, oppression, or manipulation. At the very least, totalitarianism cannot be the sole orientation point for our
understanding of biopolitics, the only end point of the logic of social engineering.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – No Impact – Turn: Trivialization
Their impact claims trivialize Nazism
Rabinow & Rose 3 (Paul, Anthropology at Berkeley, Nikolas, Sociology @ London School of Economics, December 10,
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/sociology/ pdf/RabinowandRose-BiopowerToday03.pdf, accessed July 07, pg. 8-9)
Agamben takes seriously Adorno’s challenge “how is it possible to think after Auschwitz?” But for
that very reason, it is to trivialize Auschwitz to apply Schmitt’s concept of the state of exception and
Foucault’s analysis of biopower to every instance where living beings enter the scope of regulation, control
and government. The power to command under threat of death is exercised by States and their surrogates
in multiple instances, in micro forms and in geopolitical relations. But this is not to say that this form of
power commands backed up by the ultimate threat of death is the guarantee or underpinning principle
of all forms of biopower in contemporary liberal societies. Unlike Agamben, we do not think that : the
jurist the doctor, the scientist, the expert, the priest depend for their power over life upon an alliance with
the State (1998: 122). Nor is it useful to use this single diagram to analyze every contemporary instance of
thanato-politics from Rwanda to the epidemic of AIDS deaths across Africa. Surely the essence of critical
thought must be its capacity to make distinctions that can facilitate judgment and action.
Their impact claims overexpand the concept of total control making resistance impossible
Levi & Rothberg 3 (Neil, English @ Drew University, Michael, English @ the University of Sydney, “Auschwitz and the Remnants of
Theory: Towards an Ethics of the Borderlands,” (11: 1/2), pg.30-31)
At the same time, Agamben's formulations strike us as problematic and inadequate in several respects.
First, by restructuring the "zone of the human" to conform to the condition of the Muselmann,
Agamben removes the figure of the Muselmann from the context-the camps-in which he or she is
"produced." The Muselmann becomes an isolated figure floating, like a Giacometti sculpture, in an otherwise apparently empty
abstract space that Agamben calls "humanity." The Muselmann is meant to bear a certain truth about the nature of ethics "after
Auschwitz," but is it not important when trying to articulate such an ethics to reflect on what Auschwitz was?4 Surely such an account
should attend to the historical, legal, and political conditions that led to the development of the camp system, including the kinds of
features that Zygmunt Bauman focuses on in Modernity and the Holocaust - such as a massive, morally indifferent bureaucratic
apparatus that dehumanized its "objects" and distanced its agents from a sense of responsibility for their actions, as well as the obsessive
hatred of the Jews that Saul Friedländer has recently dubbed "redemptive antisemitism."5 If the Muselmann would not have
existed without these factors, shouldn't an ethics focused upon this figure also take account of them?
Interestingly enough, in Homo Sacer Agamben himself argues that "the camp" is the "nomos" (definitive political element) of the
modern. In remarking that "[w]hat happened in the camps so exceeds the juridical concept of crime that the specific juridico-political
structure in which those events took place is often simply omitted from consideration" (1998, 166), Agamben could be preparing a
critique of what is omitted from Remnants of Auschwitz. Homo Sacer argues that the camp is the space where the state of exception
becomes normal and where "whether or not atrocities are committed depends not on law but on the civility and ethical sense of the
police who temporarily act as sovereign" (1998, 174). This line of argument produces an antinomy in the Agamben oeuvre: for the
Agamben of Homo Sacer a camp is a camp if anything is possible within it, no matter whether or not it
actually produces Muselmänner and corpses, while for the Agamben of Remnants of Auschwitz the important fact about the
Muselmann is simply that such a figure happened, not where and how he became possible. What links the positions of his
two works is a level of abstraction that deliberately brackets features of each paradigm ordinarily
understood as essential: for the camp, figures such as the Muselmann; for the Muselmann, the
conditions of the camp. Both moves permit Agamben to dismantle the boundary between the Nazi camps and the modern world.
We have already seen this in relation to the Muselmann, in the wake of whose existence all previously existing moral concepts must be
revised. It can be seen also in the examples of modern camps Agamben offers, including, "[t]he soccer stadium in Bari into which the
Italian police in 1991 provisionally herded all illegal Albanian immigrants," the zones d'attentes in French international airports where
foreigners requesting refugee status are held, and even, he suggests in an earlier version of the essay, gated communities in the USA
(1998, 174).6 At such moments Agamben seems to be suggesting that Auschwitz is potentially everywhere,
a suggestion that ends up eliding the specific challenges posed both by the Muselmann and the camp
system.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – No Impact – Turn: Value to Life/Bare Life
They totalize bare life – The exclusion of power makes life not worth living
Cesarino & Negri 4 (Cesare, cultural studies, Antonio, professor emeritus @ the Collège International de Philosophie, Cultural Critique, Vol. 57, Spring ,
pg. 172-173)
I believe Giorgio is writing a sequel to Homo Sacer, and I feel that this new work will be resolutive for his thought—in the sense that he will be forced in it
to resolve and find a way out of the ambiguity that has qualified his understanding of naked life so far. He already attempted something of the sort in his
recent book on Saint Paul, but I think this attempt largely failed: as usual, this book is extremely learned and elegant; it remains, however, somewhat
trapped within Pauline exegesis, rather than constituting a full-fledged attempt to reconstruct naked life as a potentiality for exodus, to rethink naked life
fundamentally in terms of exodus. I believe that the
concept of naked life is not an impossible, unfeasible one. I believe it is
possible to push the image of power to the point at which a defenseless human being [un povero Cristo] is crushed, to conceive of that
extreme point at which power tries to eliminate that ultimate resistance that is the sheer attempt to keep oneself alive. From a logical
standpoint, it is possible to think all this: the naked bodies of the people in the camps, for example, can lead one precisely in this
direction. But this is also the point at which this concept turns into ideology: to conceive of the relation between power
and life in such a way actually ends up bolstering and reinforcing ideology. Agamben, in effect, is saying that
such is the nature of power: in the final instance, power reduces each and every human being to such a state of
powerlessness. But this is absolutely not true! On the contrary: the historical process takes place and is
produced thanks to a continuous constitution and construction, which undoubtedly confronts the limit
over and over again—but this is an extraordinarily rich limit, in which desires expand, and in which
life becomes increasingly fuller. Of course it is possible to conceive of the limit as absolute pow-erlessness,
especially when it has been actually enacted and enforced in such a way so many times. And yet, isn't such a
conception of the limit precisely what the limit looks like from the standpoint of constituted power as
well as from the standpoint of those who have already been totally annihilated by such a power—
which is, of course, one and the same standpoint? Isn't this the story about power that power itself
would like us to believe in and reiterate? Isn't it far more politically useful to conceive of this limit
from the standpoint of those who are not yet or not completely crushed by power, from the standpoint
of those still struggling to overcome such a limit, from the standpoint of the process of constitution,
from the standpoint of power [potenza]?
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – No Impact – A2: Root Cause
Alt doesn’t solve- Agamben doesn’t assume biopolitical structures outside “the state of
exception”-They don’t solve the root causes they isolate
Lemke 9 ( Thomas Studied Political Sciences, Sociology and Law @ Frankfurt/ PhD
Frankfurt/Main.(http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/engl.%20texte/A%20Zone3.pdf)MA
By concentrating on questions of law and the figure of the sovereign ban, Agamben ignores central aspects
of contemporary biopolitics. He takes for granted that the state of exception is not only the point of
departure for politics, but its essence and destination. In this light, politics is reduced to the production of
homines sacri – a production that in a sense has to be called non-productive since bare life is only produced to be
suppressed and killed. But biopolitical interventions cannot be limited to registering the opposition of bare
life and political existence. Bare life is no longer simply subject to death; it falls prey to a bioeconomical
imperative that aims at the increase of life’s value and the optimalisation of its quality. Contemporary
biopolitics is essentially political economy of life that is neither reducible to state agencies nor to the form
of law. Agamben’s concept of biopolitics remains inside the ban of sovereignty, it is blind to all the
mechanisms operating beneath or beyond the law (see also Bröckling 2003).7
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Agamben – No Impact – AT: Bare Life
Biopower cannot reduce someone to bare life
Ojakangas 5 (Mika, U of Helsinki, May, Foucault Studies, No. 2,
http://www.foucault-studies.com/no2/ojakangas1.pdf)
The original problem of Agamben’s analysis is that he sees biopower as power based upon bare life,
defined in turn solely by its capacity to be killed. Foucault’s biopower has nothing to do with that kind
of bare life. In fact, to the same extent that biopower is the antithesis of sovereign power, its concept of life
is the antithesis of bare life. This is so because life that is at issue in biopower is univocal and immanent to
itself – like Spinoza’s Being analyzed by Agamben himself in his article on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of
life.35 It is without such differences in kind as that between bare life (zoe) and a form of life (bios). In the
era of bio-power, life is one ("life in general13”), and all differences, even virtual ones, are merely
differences of degree, differences of intensity. (Beings are no longer distinguished by a qualitative essence
but by a quantifiable degree of power.) However, this life is not even Spinoza’s Being because in his
distinction between substance and the modes "substance appears", at least according to Deleuze,
"independent of the modes” .3’ Such independence always implies the retum of transcendence. In the era of
bio-politics, there is no transcendence: substance (life in general) is not independent of the different modes
(forms of life), but the unlimited – “anarchical” – totality of the modes themselves, different merely
according to their degree of intensity and power. Admittedly, Agamben also holds that in the modern era of
bio‐politics a form of life and bare life enter into a zone of irreducible indistinction. Nevertheless, he
maintains that even in this zone it is possible and, from the perspective of bio‐power, even necessary to
isolate “something like a bare life.”38 For, without this isolation, without a distinction between a form of
life and bare life – even if this distinction is paradoxical one as in the case of a generalized ban – there would be no power that
could have “any hold” over men’s existence. This is something that Foucault would refuse to admit. Bio‐
power has hold over men’s existence precisely because it operates with a completely different notion of life. The concept of life corresponding to
bio‐ politics is no longer the Aristotelian notion, differentiating the various levels of life (vegetative life, animal life, human life, divine life...), nor
is it the classical taxonomic notion, differentiating species according to their visible properties. It is a synthetic notion, unifying both the levels
and the species in the “invisible focal unity” of life, from which the “multiple seems to derive, as though by ceaseless dispersion”, as Foucault
puts it in The Order of Things.39 To be sure, it is possible to think that now this invisible focal unity, the “root of all existence”, 40 represents
bare life isolated from the multiple forms of life that are merely its external expressions. This is not the case, however. The modern
synthetic notion of life, although it implies a difference between the “mysterious depth” and the “visible surface”, does not allow
any isolation, because the mysterious depth does not reside outside the surface as an essence of existence, but is the “fundamental force”
within the surface. It animates the surface, functioning within it as an “untamed ontology”.41 Bio‐ political life is not bare life
(Being) isolated from the forms of life (beings) but becoming – becoming of beings: “Now it is over life, throughout its
unfolding, that power establishes its dominion.”42
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – No Impact – AT: Bare Life
Theory fails – Doesn’t consider context of bare life
Levi & Rothberg 3 (Neil, English @ Drew University, Michael, English @ the University of Sydney,
“Auschwitz and the Remnants of Theory: Towards an Ethics of the Borderlands,” (11: 1/2), pg.30-31)
CLS
At the same time, Agamben's formulations strike us as problematic and inadequate in several respects.
First, by restructuring the "zone of the human" to conform to the condition of the Muselmann,
Agamben removes the figure of the Muselmann from the context-the camps-in which he or she is
"produced." The Muselmann becomes an isolated figure floating, like a Giacometti sculpture, in an
otherwise apparently empty abstract space that Agamben calls "humanity." The Muselmann is meant to
bear a certain truth about the nature of ethics "after Auschwitz," but is it not important when trying to
articulate such an ethics to reflect on what Auschwitz was?4 Surely such an account should attend to the
historical, legal, and political conditions that led to the development of the camp system, including the
kinds of features that Zygmunt Bauman focuses on in Modernity and the Holocaust - such as a massive,
morally indifferent bureaucratic apparatus that dehumanized its "objects" and distanced its agents
from a sense of responsibility for their actions, as well as the obsessive hatred of the Jews that Saul
Friedländer has recently dubbed "redemptive antisemitism."5 If the Muselmann would not have existed
without these factors, shouldn't an ethics focused upon this figure also take account of them? Interestingly
enough, in Homo Sacer Agamben himself argues that "the camp" is the "nomos" (definitive political
element) of the modern. In remarking that "[w]hat happened in the camps so exceeds the juridical concept of
crime that the specific juridico-political structure in which those events took place is often simply omitted
from consideration" (1998, 166), Agamben could be preparing a critique of what is omitted from Remnants
of Auschwitz. Homo Sacer argues that the camp is the space where the state of exception becomes normal
and where "whether or not atrocities are committed depends not on law but on the civility and ethical sense
of the police who temporarily act as sovereign" (1998, 174).
Philosophy flawed – Lack of context reduces rights to a division of form
Daly 4 (Frances, Australian National University,
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/daly_noncitizen.htm) CLS
If we are to understand the real function of rights in the modern State, as Agamben wishes to do, as
rights of the citizen serving the interests of the nation-State, then we need to understand why a separation
between human and citizen rights emerged, and what relation the distinction between these rights has to
the propositions of an ethical or just life. This, I want to argue, involves understanding an inheritance that
brings with it illusions and aporias, and, at the same time, a theoretical heritage that has engaged with
certain ideals and intentions that reveal an anticipation of what is right and just. An ahistorical disdain
for legal action is merely the obverse of the process of fetishizing legality. Much theory that merely
substitutes the idea of the static essence of the person to explain the consequence of good and evil in the
world with an equally static, invariant view of authority and the State is, I would argue, ultimately
eternalizing such concepts. Undoubtedly, some sort of move beyond categories underscoring divisions
within the ways people are entitled to live their lives is necessary. But much of the power of any such
critique must depend upon the manner in which the context of this life – the possible experience of
acting in the world, or 'form-of-life' - is itself understood. In the absence of any such context, what
tends to emerge is a return to the problem of rights reduced to a division of form and content, rather
than the overturning of this very problematic. Only in this case, because the content is seen to fall short of
the abstraction of, for example, a "whatever singularity", the form is wholly discarded. More importantly, by
revisiting this problem via a dismissal of the context of rights, and more specifically of the possibility of
traces of the intention towards human dignity, a rich heritage of critique is sidelined.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – AT: Soveriegn Power
Sovereignty is not an inherent condition of the state, it is just a mode of power the state can
exercise
Rabinow and Rose 3 (Paul, Anthropology at Berkeley, Nikolas, Sociology @
London School of Economics, December 10, http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/sociology/pdf/RabinowandRose-BiopowerToday03.pdf) MV
The interpretation of contemporary biopolitics as the politics of a state modeled on the figure of the
sovereign suits the twentieth century absolutisms of the Nazis and Stalin . But we need a more nuanced
account of sovereign power to analyze contemporary rationalities or technologies of politics. Since these
authors take their concept and point of reference from Foucault, it is worth contrasting their postulate of a
origin and beneficiary of biopower to Foucault’s remarks on sovereignty as a form of power whose
diagram, but not principle, is the figure of the sovereign ruler. Itsí characteristic is indeed ultimately a mode
of power which relies on the right to take life. However , with the exception of certain paroxysmal
moments, this is a mode of power whose activation can only be sporadic and non-continuous. The
totalization of sovereign power as a mode of ordering daily life would be too costly , and indeed the very
excesses of the exercise of this power seek to compensate for its sporadic nature. Sovereignty , in this
sense, is precisely a diagram of a form of power not a description of its implementation. Certainly some
forms of colonial power sought to operationalize it, but in the face of its economic and governmental costs,
colonial statecraft was largely to take a different form. The two megalomaniac State forms of the twentieth
century also sought to actualize it, as have some others in their wake: Albania under Hoxha, North KoreaÖ
But no historian of pre-modern forms of control could fail to notice the dependence of sovereign rule in its
non-paroxysmal form on a fine web of customary conventions, reciprocal obligations, and the like, in a word,
a moral economy whose complexity and scope far exceeds the extravagance displays of the sovereign.
Sovereign power is at one and the same time an element in this moral economy and an attempt to master it. A
cursory glance at the work of Jacques Le Goff ñ whose work Foucault knew well, or Ferdinand Braudel and
the whole Annales project, or, for English readers, the writings of EP Thompson should be sufficient to
dispel such recent mis- readings.9
Checks on sovereign power prevent the neg’s impacts
Hussain 2k (Department of History at Berkeley Nasser, 34 Law & Soc'y Rev. 495, lexis) MV
Here once again we are forced to question Agamben's teleological mode of thought. Is this sovereign power
represented in the concentration camps really a constitutive feature of sovereignty tout court? Even
limiting ouselves to the remarks above, we can imagine a liberal critique of this position that asks from where
come the limitations that Agamben concedes previous Weimar governments had observed. Surely, one does
not have to accept in its entirety a normative liberal conception of sovereign power in order to appreciate that
the demand for a factual accounting for the decision on the exception, and institutional checks upon
the totalization of the space of exception, can nonetheless - at least in certain instances - be effective.
Indeed, one could go further and suggest that a liberal theory of sovereign power understands full well the
paradoxical relation between law and fact, norm and exception; and, precisely in light of such an
understanding constructs an institutional system that cannot resolve the paradox but nonetheless
attempts to prevent it from reaching an intensified and catastrophic conclusion. Given that Agamben is a
nuanced and fair-minded thinker, one must wonder about why he largely ignores such a system. We think
that one possible answer is that, just as for Agamben the source of the problem is not the institutional
operation of sovereign power, but its object - bare life - so too the solution is not a proliferation of
institutional safeguards but a rethinking of that mode of being. In this regard, we find his concluding musings
on Heidigger to be suggestive.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – AT: Biopower  Holocaust
Holocaust is not the normal culmination of biopolitics but an exception dependant on a
rare set of circumstances and variables
Rabinow and Rose 3 (Paul, Anthropology at Berkeley, Nikolas, Sociology @
London School of Economics, December 10, http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/sociology/pdf/RabinowandRoseBiopowerToday03.pdf) MV
Agamben takes seriously Adornoís challenge ñ how is it possible to think after Auschwitz? 7 But for that very
reason, it is to trivialize 8 Auschwitz to apply Schmitt’s concept of the state of exception and Foucault’s
analysis of biopower to every instance where living beings enter the scope of regulation, control and
government. The power to command under threat of death is exercised by States and their surrogates in
multiple instances, in micro forms and in geopolitical relations. But this is not to say that this form of power
- commands backed up by the ultimate threat of death - is the guarantee or underpinning principle of
all forms of biopower in contemporary liberal societies. Unlike Agamben, we do not think that : ìthe juristÖ
the doctor, the scientist, the expert, the priestî depend for their power over life upon an alliance with the State
(1998: 122). Nor is it useful to use this single diagram to analyze every contemporary instance of thanatopolitics ñ from Rwanda to the epidemic of AIDS deaths across Africa. Surely the essence of critical thought
must be its capacity to make distinctions that can facilitate judgment and action. 8 Holocaust is
undoubtedly one configuration that modern biopower can take. Racisms allows power to sub-divide a
population into subspecies known as races, to fragment it, and to allow a relationship in which the death of
the other, of the inferior race, can be seen as something that will make life in general healthier and purer: as
Foucault put it in 1976 ìracism justifies the death-function in the economy of biopower by appealing to the
principle that the death of others makes one biologically stronger insofar as ones is a member of a race or a
population (2003: 258). It is true that in this lecture he suggests that it is ìthe emergence of biopower that
inscribes [racism] in the mechanisms of the State Ö as the basic mechanism of power, as it is exercised in
modern States. (2003: 254). But the Nazi regime was, in his view, exceptional – “a paroxysmal
development”: ìWe have, then, in Nazi society something that is really quite extraordinary: this is a society
which has generalized biopower in an absolute sense, but which has also generalized the sovereign right to
killÖ to kill anyone, meaning not only other people but also its own peopleÖ a coincidence between a
generalized biopower and a dictatorship that was at once absolute and retransmitted throughout the entire
social bodyî (2003: 260). ). Biopower in the form it took under National Socialism was a complex mix of
the politics of life and the politics of death ñ as Robert Proctor points out, Nazi doctors and health activists
waged war on tobacco, sought to curb exposure to asbestos, worried about the over use of medication and Xrays, stressed the importance of a diet for of petrochemical dies and preservatives, campaigned for wholegrain bread and foods high in vitamins and fiber, and many were vegetarians (Proctor, 1999). But within this
complex, the path to the death camps was dependent upon a host of other historical, moral, political
and technical conditions. Holocaust is neither exemplary of thanato-politics, nor the hidden dark truth
of biopower.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – Alt Bad – Overdetermined
Agamben overdetermines biopower – Produces an analytic lens that papers over dangerous
power dynamics making them more difficult to address
Virno 2 (Paolo, PhD and Italian philosopher, “General intellect, exodus, multitude,” Archipelago No. 54,
June, http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpvirno2.htm) CLS
Agamben is a problem. Agamben is a thinker of great value but also, in my opinion, a thinker with no
political vocation. Then, when Agamben speaks of the biopolitical he has the tendency to transform it
into an ontological category with value already since the archaic Roman right. And, in this, in my
opinion, he is very wrong-headed. The problem is, I believe, that the biopolitical is only an effect derived
from the concept of labor-power. When there is a commodity that is called labor-power it is already
implicitly government over life. Agamben says, on the other hand, that labor-power is only one of the
aspects of the biopolitical; I say the contrary: over all because labor power is a paradoxical commodity,
because it is not a real commodity like a book or a bottle of water, but rather is simply the potential to
produce. As soon as this potential is transformed into a commodity, then, it is necessary to govern the living
body that maintains this potential, that contains this potential. Toni (Negri) and Michael (Hardt), on the other
hand, use biopolitics in a historically determined sense, basing it on Foucault, but Foucault spoke in few
pages of the biopolitical - in relation to the birth of liberalism - that Foucault is not a sufficient base for
founding a discourse over the biopolitical and my apprehension, my fear, is that the biopolitical can be
transformed into a word that hides, covers problems instead of being an instrument for confronting
them. A fetish word, an "open doors" word, a word with an exclamation point, a word that carries the
risk of blocking critical thought instead of helping it. Then, my fear is of fetish words in politics because it
seems like the cries of a child that is afraid of the dark..., the child that says "mama, mama!", "biopolitics,
biopolitics!". I don't negate that there can be a serious content in the term, however I see that the use of the
term biopolitics sometimes is a consolatory use, like the cry of a child, when what serves us are, in all
cases, instruments of work and not propaganda words.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – No Alt – Turn: Sovereign Control
Alt turns itself-Agamben’s act of resistance can only take place via the systems he
criticizes-they shirk ethical and political responsibility for a false hope of change
Ross 7 [Daniel, Australian philosopher , obtained doctorate from Monash University “Giorgio Agamben,
Profanations,” http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/23/profanations.html ]ADS
Agamben remains both intensely pessimistic yet somehow still too optimistic. His pessimism is manifest in his
insistence that anything short of the most extreme measure is a betrayal. Yet he continues to optimistically operate
with that ancient philosophical machinery the gears of which are set to move from consideration of our general crisis
to elaboration of the task which would be its final resolution. Our situation may indeed be dire, but by relating crisis
and task in the grand sense in which Agamben never fails to do, he continues to profess the belief that a
singular antagonistic act might yet overthrow those self-destructive tendencies befalling
humankind, or finally eliminate the gap between law and justice. It may well be that our collective future
depends on a thoroughgoing transformation of the conditions of psychic, collective and technical individuation, that
these conditions as they are presently unfolding are nearing collapse, and that the required transformation amounts
to a revolution or a renovation of those conditions. Nevertheless, the way toward this could only be via those
systems and processes which exist—there is no form of political or ethical responsibility which
could today consist in wishing for or encouraging those tendencies which are currently leading to the
disindividuation of the psychic, the collective and the technical, and as such destructive of existence as such. The
philosophical machinery moving from crisis to task has from the beginning worked by identifying with the
truth of language at the expense of the technics of power, but this has always constituted philosophy’s limit,
that is, its perpetual mistake, one which has today become eminently visible. The means of this mistake, which has
always also been the engine of philosophy’s individuation, was to fail to see any connection betweentechnology as a means, as availability for
use, and technique as that which opens worlds, opens the world. If what we lack are persuasive descriptions of our state of heart and mind, if what
we require is a new form of persuasion, then inventing a future for politics is also a matter of (sophistic) technique, that is, a technicalquestion. In
an epoch in which the cinematic, televisual, and digital image is the most potent instrument by which desire is accessed and influenced on a
planetary scale, overcoming this mistake and this limit amount, at the very least, to the question of philosophy’s survival.
Alt reinforces state sovereignty-deconstruction interprets being to a state to which it can’t
relate- this makes sovereignty over being possible
Chare 6 [Nicholas, Associate Lecturer in Art History at the University of Reading, “The Gap in Context Giorgio
Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz,” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cultural_critique/v064/64.1chare.html]ADS
It is at this point, the moment when Agamben identifies the witness as a remnant, that an attempt to break
with the tenets of deconstruction takes place.8 In his essay 'Never Before, Always Already,' Alexander García
Düttmann provides a useful summation of Agamben's reasoning behind positing deconstruction as complicit with
sovereignty (4).9 Sovereignty rests upon the state of exception, the inclusive exclusion that authorizes it.
Deconstruction reinforces sovereignty in "that it interprets being as a relation of undecidability to
which a being must and yet cannot relate" (Düttmann, 4). The undecidable is in this sense comparable to
the state of exception as it occurs within sovereignty; as the unrelated relation it is like the inclusive exclusion. To
move beyond the category of relation—to abandon our abandonment to the law, to sovereignty—requires
"nothing less than an attempt to think the political-social factum no longer in the form of a relation"
(Agamben, Homo, 60). The path to the relationless (the unrelated is relational in its very unrelatedness to the
relation) lies in the remnant.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – No Alt – Turn: Violence
Agamben’s refusal of the “witness” to prove violation of rights makes state control
possible- By denying the existence of atrocities we make further atrocities inevitable
Chare 6 [Nicholas, Associate Lecturer in Art History at the University of Reading, “The Gap in Context Giorgio
Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz,” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cultural_critique/v064/64.1chare.html]ADS
The Holocaust deniers of this world are unlikely to be troubled in their opinions by the six pages of testimony
from Muselmänner that form the conclusion toRemnants of Auschwitz, testimony that "absolutely and irrefutably"
proves Auschwitz (164). Denial is anyway a kind of acceptance. The refusal to acknowledge testimony requires
an acknowledgment prior to that act of refusal. The testimony is there to be denied. The denier must disavow the
troubling matter that is the testimony that enabled the action of denial. Denial requires something to deny. In a
sense, the Holocaust denier relies upon the Holocaust more than any other person; if there was no Holocaust,
then the denier would and could not be. Agamben's thinking is unsettling in that, by removing Auschwitz
and the gas chambers—"if the survivor bears witness not to the gas chambers or to Auschwitz but
to the Muselmann"—he is removing the deniable (Remnants, 164). This may indeed cause the end of denial,
but at what expense? The figure of the Muselmann (the trope that is the argument) may be undeniable, but perhaps
this is because the figure of the Muselmann is not anything. It is not testimony, but rather an exercise in thought. It
does not try to bear witness to the matter of Auschwitz but rather to the limits of a particular way of thinking. That
way of thinking may have contributed to the production of Auschwitz but cannot be equated with it. To
privilege the Muselmann—construed as the remnant—as the proof of Auschwitz might well end denial but could
also cause that which is denied to be understood as irrelevant. The concern could be raised that
theMuselmann as it is conceived by Agamben—as the ultimate and irrefutable witness—actually
relies upon the Holocaust denier. In a gesture designed to deny denial, Agamben reaffirms it.
Auschwitz would not need to be "absolutely and irrefutably proven" without the presence of the denier. Therefore
the Holocaust denier is integral to Agamben's argument. The Holocaust denier is not, however, integral to the
memory of the Holocaust, only the witness is. The denier is admittedly a form of witness, but certainly not
the only form and obviously the least desirable and most loathsome. The filmmaker, the historian,
the philosopher, and the survivor, are all forms of witness who ensure the memory of the
Holocaust. These forms, however, are not central to Agamben's argument. Agamben's position is one that, in a
sense, presupposes and therefore perpetuates Holocaust denial, despite an obviously deep desire to refute it.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – Alt Fails (1/4)
Shifting away from the state grants biopolitical control to private industry, which
perpetuates much greater abuses of power
Lemke 9 (Thomas, PhD in political science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main., “”A Zone of Indistinction’ – A
Critique of Giorgio Agamben’s Concept of Biopolitics” http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/engl.%20texte/A%20Zone3.pdf) MV
Our reading of Agamben leads to a surprising result. Following a binary code and a logic of subsumtion
that does not allow for differentiations, his argumentation remains committed to exactly the juridical
perspective that he so vividly criticizes. He reduces the “ambiguous terrain” (1998: 143) of biopolitics
by operating with a notion of politics that is at once too broad in its explanatory scope and too narrow
in empirical complexity. On the one hand Agamben conceptualises the political as a sovereign instance that
does not allow for an outside that would be more than an “inner outside” and an “exception”. On the other
hand his presentation of sovereignty is completely limited to the decision on the state of exeption and the
killing of bare life. As a consequence, Agamben presents a distorted picture. The main danger today
may not be that the body or its organs are targets of a distinctive state politics (1998: 164-5), but – quite
on the contrary – we are witnessing an important transformation of the state under the sign of
deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation. It is more and more the scientific consultants, economic
interest groups, and civil societal mediators that define the beginning, the end, and the value of life, in
consensus conferences, expert commissions, and ethical counsels. This “withdrawal of the state” could itself be analysed as a political strategy,
though one that does not necessarily refuse individuals legal rights. In a more moderate account of exceptionality the suspension of legal rights
might remain important in determining who is allowed to become part of a community, who is eligible to legal rights at all . The political
strategy, however, that shifts legal and regulatory competencies from the public and legal domain to
the private sphere will probably pose a much greater threat in the future. This tendency is already
visible; for example, it is possible for private companies to own and exploit human body substances (see
Andrews/Nelkin 2001). Moreover, this tendency can already be traced in examples that Agamben mentions, namely the admissibility of
euthanasia and transplantation medicine. Here we can expect that a patient’s legal will and contract relations will take the place of explicit state
prohibitions and regulation. We note that in some countries there is already a public discussion to provide financial compensations for individuals
who donate organs, and there is a growing consensus in the legal community to accept the will of the patient not to prolong life under certain
conditions. By the analytical focus on a formal and repressive conception of the state and the theoretical fixation on the sovereign border between
life and death, Agamben fails to see the limits of his own argumentation. Not every single form of exclusion needs to be grounded in legal
regulations, or necessitate a suspension of law. Sovereignty does not only reside in political instances and state agencies, it also dwells in “life
politics” (Giddens 1991: 209-31) of sovereign subjects who are expected to act in a autonomous ways as individuals. We are not only subjected to
political mechanisms that regulate and restrict our physical life; we are also inscribed in what Foucault called “arts of government” that direct us
how to reflect ourselves as moral persons and parts of collective subjectivities (see Foucault 2004a). In fact, Foucault regarded biopolitics as an
essential part of the liberal art of government (see Foucault 2004b, pp. 3-28).
Agamben’s alternative is vague and utopian
Cmiel 96 (Kenneth, Professor of Cultural History at Iowa, “The Fate of the Nation and the Withering of the State”, American Literary
History, Spring, p. 196, JSTOR) MV
If community cannot be a closed thing, if it is forever open to the potentially new, then the dream of a national community is simply impossible.
In Agamben's community, the idea of some- thing being "un-American'' makes no sense, for there is no defining essence in a "whatever
singularity.'' Yet Agamben is also aware that capitalism and the state will continue. Indeed, he recognizes that after the fall of Communism they
are sweeping the globe. Politics, in the future, Agamben argues, will not be community building but the
perpetual project of communities against the state "a struggle between the State and the non-state
(humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the State organization'' (84). I
doubt Agamben's new community is actually coming. It remains far from clear that communities without
identities are emerging anywhere except in the febrile imaginations of a few philosophers. It is not that I
dislike the dream. It is for me the most attractive dream there is. It is that I am skeptical that such "whatever
singularities'' are possible on more than the level of personal behavior. Politics is too clunky for such
subtlety. Even the new social movements seem far more down-to-earth and prone to defining
themselves than Agamben's theorizing. Politics, alas, demands more leaden language. Still, the image of
the state fighting communities is one worth pondering. Its distance from earlier welfare state thinking could
not be more dramatic. Instead of the state embodying the will of the nation we have a picture of numerous
communities at war with the state. It is, and I say this with no relish, a far more plausible picture of our emerging politics than
Walzer's happy pluralism. Just think of insurance companies, Perotistas, and gay and lesbian activists-all communities distrustful of the states all
committed to struggling with the state. Agamben does not ask what this perpetual warfare will do to government.
Like Walzer, he assumes that the state will trudge on as before. Yet if this warfare between humanity and
the state is constant, is it not plausible to surmise that hostility to the state will become permanent?
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – Alt Fails (2/4)
Alt fails – there is no method for resolving the problems Agamben isolates
Fort 7 (Jeff, translator for “Profanations”, New York: Zone Books,
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/23/profanations.html) MV
Agamben’s understanding of the spectacle as a species of linguistic milieu, rather than as another milieu
possessing its own dynamic, determines his interpretation: the spectacle is understood only as an
intensification of linguistic experience, as an extreme linguistic event. And thus if the spectacle contains a
positive possibility for Agamben, this can only consist in taking this process of intensification to the limit. As
a consequence he implicitly repeats the metaphysical gesture that tries to save logos from tekhne, and that
can only see genuine ethics and politics in terms of a transcendental leap in which “everything” is put at stake
without reserve, a violent gesture to be grasped in terms of, for example, Nastasya Filippovna or Antigone.
Thus when Agamben argues that the political task of the coming generation is to wrest from all
apparatuses the possibility of use which they have captured, the profanation of the unprofanable (p. 89),
he risks turning this admirable gesture in favour of singularity into an intensification of destruction to
an absolute limit, into an injunction that cannot be met until the apparatuses are in fact overturned, or
capitalism destroyed. Agamben remains both intensely pessimistic yet somehow still too optimistic. His
pessimism is manifest in his insistence that anything short of the most extreme measure is a betrayal. Yet he
continues to optimistically operate with that ancient philosophical machinery the gears of which are set to
move from consideration of our general crisis to elaboration of the task which would be its final resolution.
Our situation may indeed be dire, but by relating crisis and task in the grand sense in which Agamben
never fails to do, he continues to profess the belief that a singular antagonistic act might yet overthrow
those self-destructive tendencies befalling humankind, or finally eliminate the gap between law and
justice. It may well be that our collective future depends on a thoroughgoing transformation of the conditions
of psychic, collective and technical individuation, that these conditions as they are presently unfolding are
nearing collapse, and that the required transformation amounts to a revolution or a renovation of those
conditions. Nevertheless, the way toward this could only be via those systems and processes which
exist—there is no form of political or ethical responsibility which could today consist in wishing for or
encouraging those tendencies which are currently leading to the disindividuation of the psychic, the
collective and the technical, and as such destructive of existence as such. The philosophical machinery
moving from crisis to task has from the beginning worked by identifying with the truth of language at the
expense of the technics of power, but this has always constituted philosophy’s limit, that is, its perpetual
mistake, one which has today become eminently visible. The means of this mistake, which has always also
been the engine of philosophy’s individuation, was to fail to see any connection between technology as a
means, as availability for use, and technique as that which opens worlds, opens the world. If what we lack are
persuasive descriptions of our state of heart and mind, if what we require is a new form of persuasion, then
inventing a future for politics is also a matter of (sophistic) technique, that is, a technical question. In an
epoch in which the cinematic, televisual, and digital image is the most potent instrument by which desire is
accessed and influenced on a planetary scale, overcoming this mistake and this limit amount, at the very
least, to the question of philosophy’s survival.
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Agamben – Alt Fails (3/4)
Alt fails – Doesn’t address rights on the meta-juridical level
Daly 4 (Frances, Australian National University,
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/daly_noncitizen.htm) CLS
A significant part of Agamben's rejection of rights is based on the belief that rights necessarily involve
processes by which values are made eternal. The argument as to whether there is a problem with the idea
of eternal metajuridical values able to be inscribed within rights is interesting for a number of reasons.
Firstly, there is the problem of what particular values we find inscribed, and by what process these
values have been arrived at; secondly, there are certainly difficulties at issue with an understanding of
what is eternal within such values. But such arguments often proceed on the basis of misplaced
assumptions. Instead of indicating the actual nature of the problem with particular metajuridical
values, or indeed indicating what, for example, a construction of an eternalized, homogeneous substrate
would mean for the idea of a social contract or rights, it is presumed that, despite whatever it is that
constitutes their content, it is such values themselves that are at fault. Agamben elides all difference by
assuming that right has only judgment, calculation and control as its outcome, and that the basis of
right is its place within the structure of the State. And yet right is not necessarily or merely a part of the
State; rather it is better understood as practices on the part of human beings interacting within social forms
(of which the State may or may not be a part).
Alt fails – Misinterprets human rights
Daly 4 (Frances, Australian National University,
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/daly_noncitizen.htm) CLS
The problem would appear to be that not only are we no clearer as to the actual problems involved in
such values, but we are also left without a basis for the critique of the intention of right. And, not
surprisingly, we are also without any basis for considering the productive content of these values. Legal
positivism assumes or sets out the basis for rights within a normative framework of the State that
merely takes for granted judicial postulates of the inalienability of rights, the basis of rights in
property and assumptions that people are in fundamental accord on matters of right. It is unable to
imagine a realm of freedom against the State. But within rights, I would argue, we can detect unsatisfied
demands that have nothing to do with essentialist assumptions about 'man' or 'citizen'. These demands
are concerned with an understanding of human freedom in relation to values of solidarity, justice and the
overcoming of alienation; they are historical and contingent, shifting and alive, and are not about a fixed,
static, generic essence of the person, or some ahistorical or superhistorical immutable totality. What it is to
be human is open and changeable, although not without determinations, commonalities and shared
properties that can emerge at various times. Simply because we would want to challenge a distorted,
limited or perhaps unappealing view of what it is to be human, does not mean that we are unable to say
anything about what it is to be a creative, suffering, desiring being. Somewhat strangely, Agamben's
argument is ultimately more concerned with the problem of contradictions within the theory and
practice of rights and with attendant illusions that arise from these contradictions than with a critique
of content or with an examination of a new potentiality that might emerge out of what he takes to be
our present vacuousness. Such contradictions and illusions certainly do exist in relation to right, although as
far as attitudes to the law are concerned I believe that a Slöterdijkean 'cynical reason' probably more
accurately describes the matter. 17. The assumption that any understanding of human values is a
reductionist, eternalizing essentialism has become one of the banalities of much contemporary
theorizing, but even in more considered forms it often fails to come to terms with what it is attempting
to criticize. For example, if there is a problem with making right the depository of eternal values, this is
hardly because we have arrived at some content that would forevermore allow us to express a sense of justice
in common. Rather, it is because what becomes 'eternalized' (or, more correctly, what merely congeals under
certain circumstances and is able to be reformulated for these changing circumstances) is a view of what it
means to be human in terms of an ability to possess. Thus, what is frequently taken to be the eternal
nature of right is, unfortunately, anything but the idea of communal principles that would provide
some natural standard, however derived, for justice. Instead, what becomes solidified, and, more
importantly, reified, is a positivity of existing conditions (such as the right to possess, exclude and
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alienate) through which doctrines of the rights of the individual are determined. This, I want to argue, is
at the basis of the juridical objectification separating ethics or justice from law. It is this reification of law
rather than the eternalization of values that is of significance to a critique of rights.
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Agamben Answers
Agamben – Alt Fails (4/4)
Alt can’t solve – Historico-philosophical methodology flawed
Lewis 99 (Stephen, Modernism/Modernity 6.3, p. 165, Project MUSE, Humanities Professor at Chicago)
CLS
There are a number of objections one could raise to specific aspects of the book, particularly its premise
that concepts such as "sovereign power" and "bare life" describe realities that remain more or less
constant over twenty-four centuries of history. I will focus here, however, on what I think is the most
fundamentally objectionable aspect of the book: its methodology, or the set of assumptions about what
constitutes a good argument that governs its "historico-philosophical" approach to its subject matter.
The best way to demonstrate these assumptions is by considering Agamben's adoption of the term
"biopolitics." He takes up the term from Michel Foucault with the intent of moving beyond Foucault's
thinking of the "double bind" exerted upon the political subject by, on the one hand, "subjective
technologies" and, on the other, "political technologies" (5-6). Agamben's claim is that his approach to
biopolitics clarifies the precise nature of this "point at which the voluntary servitude of individuals comes
into contact with objective power" because he grounds it in an analysis of the juridico-institutional structure
of sovereign power, a realm of political reality that Foucault refused to take seriously (119). Agamben's
rhetoric when explaining why Foucault did not see the structural nature of modern power in the more
complete and illuminating way that Agamben does is interesting. For Agamben, any failings in Foucault's
thinking arise not from a problem with Foucault's methods of research or from deficits in his command of
evidence, but, rather, from the assumption that Foucault could not have thought otherwise than as he did
because he was thinking at the very limits then of Western thought. The "blind spot" in the "double bind"
Foucault locates constitutes, says Agamben, "something like a vanishing point that the different perspectival
lines of Foucault's inquiry (and, more generally, of the entire Western reflection on power) converge toward
without reaching" (6). Unfortunately, yet perhaps unsurprisingly, Agamben intimates that he, too, is
thinking at the very limits of current thought (presumably he finds himself able to think beyond Foucault's
horizon because he is alive and thinking now, after Foucault). Agamben's use of what Thomas Pavel has
called the "rhetoric of the end" calls attention to the problems that occur when a book is structured by
apocalyptic claims about the end (and thus the inaccessibility) of certain modes of being or of thought
rather than by empirically or historiographically grounded argument. 2 There is nothing inherently
objectionable about claiming that the end of a certain era has occurred; the point is simply that, to my mind,
the reader ought to be able to decide from evidence-based argumentation whether the claim is
reasonable. 3 Agamben says that his intent in describing the hidden connection between totalitarianism and
democracy on an "historico-philosophical" plane rather than through detailed historiographical inquiry is not
to "[level] the enormous differences that characterize [the] history and [. . .] rivalry" of democracy and
totalitarianism (10). Instead, his intent is to make the structure of this hidden connection known so that it can
one day be surpassed through a new form of politics. The problem, however, is that the rhetoric of the end
he employs in lieu of historiographical argument prevents him from saying precisely what this new
form of politics could be and thus makes its attainment seem mysteriously difficult. Indeed Agamben
tends to fall back on impossible-to-prove categorical assertions rather than reasonable explanations
when he tells why, for instance, the categories of classical politics, or, alternatively, religion-based
ethical systems, cannot be "returned to" in any sense. Functioning hand-in-hand with such categorical
assertions about the inaccessibility of the past are equally unsupported gestures towards a future politics
articulated in what reads at times like a language of secularized apophatism, which in the present book
Agamben tends to employ in conjunction with discussions of Benjamin's messianism. [End Page 165] The
story of homo sacer is certainly worth reading because of its suggestiveness and provocations; my concern is
more about what one does with it afterwards. In an academic environment where the monograph is on its
last legs, and books such as Agamben's are marketed to and read by an interdisciplinary public, it
seems to me that the very last thing we ought to be giving up is rigorous, evidence-based argument.
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Agamben – No Alt – A2: Witnessing
Their alt oversimplifies the Holocaust preventing an accurate understanding of the
roots of control
Levi & Rothberg 3 (Neil, English @ Drew University, Michael, English @ the University of Sydney, “Auschwitz and the
Remnants of Theory: Towards an Ethics of the Borderlands,” (11: 1/2), pg.31-32)
We would also identify a second problem with Agamben's approach: the grounds for
Agamben's selection of the Muselmann as the "complete witness" are not clear. Ethics after
Auschwitz must take account of the Muselmann, but that does not justify transforming him
into a fetish, the sole site of the truth of the camps. If Levi's own testimony is on his own account
unrepresentative, that surely does not mean that it has no truth content. The fact that Levi himself
distrusts the testimony of, say, former members of the Sonderkommando (the camp inmates who
were forced, under threat of death, to operate the crematoria) is no reason to disqualify such
testimony out of hand. The power of Claude Lanzmann's astonishing film Shoah derives in no small
part from the testimony of a former "crematorium raven" (P. Levi 60). Despite his attempt to
develop a complex theory of testimony premised on the relationship between the Muselmann and
the surviving witness, Agamben ultimately homogenizes the site of witness by polarizing those
positions. While there is warrant for such a reading in Levi's texts (e.g., Levi's notion of "the
drowned and the saved"), those texts also include the hypothesis of "the gray zone," a zone of
ethical uncertainty in which figures such as the Sonderkommando are paradigmatic. In fact,
testimony from the gray zone may prove as illuminating about the ethical challenges of the Nazi
genocide as that derived from an understanding of Levi's paradox. Despite the serious reservations
expressed by Levi about the testimonies of figures who were forced into the most terrible complicity
with the Nazis, such testimonies have been shown to be of great value in understanding the Nazi
genocide, and, indeed, in making clear the need for theoretical innovation in order to do so.7 In
what remains one of the most profound attempts to "think" the Nazi genocide, historian and
social theorist Dan Diner proposes that Nazi action can be most effectively illuminated from
the perspective of the gray zone, and particularly that of the Judenräte - the Jewish councils
who ran the ghettos and were charged to make decisions about who would be allowed to work
and who would be sent to the camps (130-137). The councils negotiated on the assumption that
the Nazis were rational - specifically, that they would not want to exterminate a productive labor
source while at war. The Nazis utilized this assumption to facilitate the killing process, with which
the councils found themselves unsuspectingly cooperating. It is the Jewish councils' experience of
participating in their own destruction while acting according to the logic of self-preservation
that Diner terms the counterrational. And it is in reflecting on the Jewish experience of Nazi
counterrationality that Diner says we encounter the limits of historical understanding. Only at
this limit point, according to Diner, can we begin to "think the Nazis" via what he calls negative
historical cognition. While we wouldn't want to generalize the standpoint of the Judenräte as the
essence of the Holocaust any more than we would that of the Muselmann, when read alongside
each other the arguments of Agamben and Diner strongly suggest the importance of multiplying
the epistemological standpoints from which we approach the Nazi genocide.
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Agamben – No Alt – A2: Whatever Being
Whatever being has no political value
Cmiel 96 (Kenneth, American Literary History, Spring, p. 196, JSTOR, Professor of Cultural History at Iowa)
If community cannot be a closed thing, if it is forever open to the potentially new, then the dream of a national community is
simply impossible. In Agamben's community, the idea of some- thing being "un-American'' makes no sense, for there is no
defining essence in a "whatever singularity.'' Yet Agamben is also aware that capitalism and the state will
continue. Indeed, he recognizes that after the fall of Communism they are sweeping the globe. Politics, in the future,
Agamben argues, will not be community building but the perpetual project of communities against the state "a struggle
between the State and the non-state (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the State
organization'' (84). I doubt Agamben's new community is actually coming. It remains far from
clear that communities without identities are emerging anywhere except in the febrile
imaginations of a few philosophers. It is not that I dislike the dream. It is for me the most attractive dream there is. It is that I
am skeptical that such "whatever singularities'' are possible on more than the level of
personal behavior. Politics is too clunky for such subtlety. Even the new social movements seem far
more down-to-earth and prone to defining themselves than Agamben's theorizing. Politics , alas,
demands more leaden language. Still, the image of the state fighting communities is one worth pondering. Its
distance from earlier welfare state thinking could not be more dramatic. Instead of the state embodying the will of the nation
we have a picture of numerous communities at war with the state. It is, and I say this with no relish, a far more plausible
picture of our emerging politics than Walzer's happy pluralism. Just think of insurance companies, Perotistas, and gay and
lesbian activists-all communities distrustful of the states all committed to struggling with the state. Agamben does not
ask what this perpetual warfare will do to government . Like Walzer, he assumes that the state will
trudge on as before. Yet if this warfare between humanity and the state is constant, is it not
plausible to surmise that hostility to the state will become permanent?
Whatever Being is too amorphous to provide political guidance
Daly 4 (http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/daly_noncitizen.htm, Frances Australian National University)
What it is that we might want a human potentiality to mean is, of course, a complex, difficult and open-ended issue. But it
is
important for us to ask whether a human potentiality must start from emptiness . Agamben
repeatedly refers to the need to begin from a place of 'amorphousness' and 'inactuality', assuming that there is something that will necessarily
follow from the simple fact of human existence – but why should we assume this? What might constitute or form this potentiality is surely
concerned with what is latent but as yet unrealized. For Agamben, there is nothing latent that is not already tainted by a sense of a task that
must be done (Agamben, 1993: 43). There is no ability to achieve any displacement with what is present within values of community and
If the 'whatever' being that
he contends is indeed emerging, and it possesses, as he argues, "an original relation to desire", it is worthwhile
asking what this desire is for (Agamben, 1993: 10). If it is simply life itself, then it is not clear why this
should be devoid of any content. Any process of emptying out , of erasing and abolishing, such as that which
Agamben attempts, is done for a reason - it involves critique and rejection, on the basis, necessarily, that something
else is preferable. But Agamben provides us with very little of what is needed to understand how we
might engage with this option.
justice, there is only an immobilizing nothingness that assumes a false essence, vocation or destiny.
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***Empire Answers***
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Empire – No Link: DA is Not Imperial
DA is not a tool of US policy – Broadening international coalitions prove
Lugar 6 (Sen. Richard, “The Backlash against Democracy Assistance”, http://www.ned.org/docs/backlash06.pdf)
Recent years have seen the emergence of new actors in the democracy promotion field, both
governmental/intergovernmental (the EU and the UN Democracy Fund), within civil society
(including NED-like initiatives in Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Western Europe, and the new
democracies of Central and Eastern Europe) and government-civil society partnerships like the
Democracy Assistance Dialogue that emerged from the G8 summit at Sea Island, Georgia. This
growing diversity contradicts and undermines those critics and detractors who argue that democracy
promotion is an instrument of U.S. foreign policy—a weapon of foreign policy realpolitik wrapped
in the clothing of Wilsonian idealism. These claims are heard from those for whom democracy
assistance is designed to promote U.S. interests and undermine its adversaries overseas, from those
for whom it is a form of wasteful idealism, and from foreign governments, particularly authoritarian
regimes, that pick up on these arguments to portray democracy assistance as an unacceptable and
illegitimate form of interference in their internal affairs and a violation of national sovereignty.
However, here, too, the context has shifted dramatically, undermining these claims. First, not only
has democracy become widely accepted as a universal norm, but the international community is
now more readily inclined to accept the legitimacy of intervention in the event of gross violations of
human rights even when this transgresses state sovereignty.15 Second, the field of democracy
promotion now extends well beyond the U.S. For example, the European Union has emerged as a
key player, spurred by the need to consolidate democracy in its post-communist eastern periphery,
especially as these states became candidates for EU accession. And, on July 4, 2005, UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan initiated the UN Democracy Fund that draws on the General Assembly’s
commitment to promote and consolidate new and restored democracies. India has emerged as a
leader of the 26 countries so far committed to support the fund. Finally, the German party
foundations, which predate NED, have been joined by a growing number of democracy promotion
groups, openly drawing inspiration from the NED model, such as the UK’s Westminster Foundation
for Democracy, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, and civil society groups from postcommunist societies, particularly Poland and the Czech and Slovak republics. The latter have
campaigned aggressively within the EU for a strong commitment to democracy promotion.
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Empire – Imperialism Good
An imperialist hegemon in society is a necessity, without it our world would see
civilization reduce itself to anarchic and barbaric ways of life
Ferguson 4 (Niall, Prof of History at NYU Stern, Foreign Policy, “A World Without Power”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/07/01/a_world_without_power) MAT
Critics of U.S. global dominance should pause and consider the alternative. If the United States retreats from its
hegemonic role, who would supplant it? Not Europe, not China, not the Muslim world—and certainly not the
United Nations. Unfortunately, the alternative to a single superpower is not a multilateral utopia,
but the anarchic nightmare of a new Dark Age. We tend to assume that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
In the history of world politics, it seems, someone is always the hegemon, or bidding to become it.
Today, it is the United States; a century ago, it was the United Kingdom. Before that, it was
France, Spain, and so on. The famed 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, doyen of the
study of statecraft, portrayed modern European history as an incessant struggle for mastery, in
which a balance of power was possible only through recurrent conflict. The influence of economics on
the study of diplomacy only seems to confirm the notion that history is a competition between rival powers. In
his bestselling 1987 work, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to
2000, Yale University historian Paul Kennedy concluded that, like all past empires, the U.S. and Russian superpowers would
inevitably succumb to overstretch. But their place would soon be usurped, Kennedy argued, by the rising powers of China
and Japan, both still unencumbered by the dead weight of imperial military commitments. In his 2001 book, The Tragedy of
Great Power Politics, University of Chicago political scientist John J. Mearsheimer updates Kennedy's account. Having failed
to succumb to overstretch, and after surviving the German and Japanese challenges, he argues, the United States must now
brace for the ascent of new rivals. “[A] rising China is the most dangerous potential threat to the United States in the early
twenty-first century,” contends Mearsheimer. “[T]he United States has a profound interest in seeing Chinese economic
growth slow considerably in the years ahead.” China is not the only threat Mearsheimer foresees. The European Union (EU)
too has the potential to become “a formidable rival.” Power, in other words, is not a natural monopoly; the struggle for
mastery is both perennial and universal. The “unipolarity” identified by some commentators following the
Soviet collapse cannot last much longer, for the simple reason that history hates a hyperpower. Sooner
or later, challengers will emerge, and back we must go to a multipolar, multipower world. But
what if these esteemed theorists are all wrong? What if the world is actually heading for a period when there is no hegemon?
What if, instead of a balance of power, there is an absence of power? Such a situation is not unknown in history. Although
the chroniclers of the past have long been preoccupied with the achievements of great powers—whether civilizations,
empires, or nation-states—they have not wholly overlooked eras when power receded. Unfortunately, the world's experience
with power vacuums (eras of “apolarity,” if you will) is hardly encouraging. Anyone who dislikes U.S. hegemony
should bear in mind that, rather than a multipolar world of competing great powers, a world with no
hegemon at all may be the real alternative to U.S. primacy. Apolarity could turn out to mean
an anarchic new Dark Age: an era of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic
plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions; of economic stagnation and
civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves.
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Empire – Imperialism Good
History proves that any future without a dominant expansionist nation acting within
global society spurs on a world in which chaos and discontinuity pervades all parts
of the globe
Ferguson 4 (Niall, Prof of History at NYU Stern, Foreign Policy, “A World Without Power”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/07/01/a_world_without_power) MAT
Suppose, in a worst-case scenario, that U.S. neoconservative hubris is humbled in Iraq and that the Bush administration's
project to democratize the Middle East at gunpoint ends in ignominious withdrawal, going from empire to decolonization in
less than two years. Suppose also that no aspiring rival power shows interest in filling the resulting vacuums—not only in
coping with Iraq but conceivably also Afghanistan, the Balkans, and Haiti. What would an apolar future look
like? The answer is not easy, as there have been very few periods in world history with no contenders for the role of global,
or at least regional, hegemon. The nearest approximation in modern times could be the 1920s, when the United States walked
away from President Woodrow Wilson's project of global democracy and collective security centered on the League of
Nations. There was certainly a power vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Romanov, Habsburg,
Hohenzollern, and Ottoman empires, but it did not last long. The old West European empires were quick to snap up the
choice leftovers of Ottoman rule in the Middle East. The Bolsheviks had reassembled the czarist empire by 1922. And by
1936, German revanche was already far advanced. One must go back much further in history to find a period of true
and enduring apolarity; as far back, in fact, as the ninth and 10th centuries. In this era, the remains of the Roman
Empire—Rome and Byzantium—receded from the height of their power. The leadership of the West was
divided between the pope, who led Christendom, and the heirs of Charlemagne, who divided up his shortlived empire under the Treaty of Verdun in 843. No credible claimant to the title of emperor emerged until
Otto was crowned in 962, and even he was merely a German prince with pretensions (never realized) to rule Italy.
Byzantium, meanwhile, was dealing with the Bulgar rebellion to the north. By 900, the Abbasid
caliphate initially established by Abu al-Abbas in 750 had passed its peak; it was in steep decline by the middle of
the 10th century. In China, too, imperial power was in a dip between the T'ang and Sung dynasties. Both these
empires had splendid capitals—Baghdad and Ch'ang-an—but neither had serious aspirations of territorial expansion. The
weakness of the old empires allowed new and smaller entities to flourish. When the Khazar tribe
converted to Judaism in 740, their khanate occupied a Eurasian power vacuum between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
In Kiev, far from the reach of Byzantium, the regent Olga laid the foundation for the future Russian Empire in 957 when she
converted to the Orthodox Church. The Seljuks—forebears of the Ottoman Turks—carved the Sultanate of Rum as the
Abbasid caliphate lost its grip over Asia Minor. Africa had its mini-empire in Ghana; Central America had its Mayan
civilization. Connections between these entities were minimal or nonexistent. This condition was the antithesis of
globalization. It was a world broken up into disconnected, introverted civilizations . One feature of
the age was that, in the absence of strong secular polities, religious questions often produced serious convulsions. Indeed,
religious institutions often set the political agenda. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Byzantium was racked by controversy
over the proper role of icons in worship. By the 11th century, the pope felt confident enough to humble Holy Roman
Emperor Henry IV during the battle over which of them should have the right to appoint bishops. The new monastic orders
amassed considerable power in Christendom, particularly the Cluniacs, the first order to centralize monastic authority. In the
Muslim world, it was the ulema (clerics) who truly ruled. This atmosphere helps explain why the period ended with the
extraordinary holy wars known as the Crusades, the first of which was launched by European Christians in 1095. Yet, this
apparent clash of civilizations was in many ways just another example of the apolar world's
susceptibility to long-distance military raids directed at urban centers by more backward
peoples. The Vikings repeatedly attacked West European towns in the ninth century—Nantes in 842, Seville in 844, to
name just two. One Frankish chronicler lamented “the endless flood of Vikings” sweeping southward. Byzantium, too, was
sacked in 860 by raiders from Rus, the kernel of the future Russia. This “fierce and savage tribe” showed “no mercy,”
lamented the Byzantine patriarch. It was like “the roaring sea … destroying everything, sparing nothing.” Such were the
conditions of an anarchic age. Small wonder that the future seemed to lie in creating small, defensible, political
units: the Venetian republic—the quintessential city-state, which was conducting its own foreign policy by 840—or Alfred
the Great's England, arguably the first thing resembling a nation-state in European history, created in 886.
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Empire – Hegemony Good
The lack of a unipolar system with a stable, hegemonic power at its core would lead
to apolarity, a state of being described by conflict, plagues, piracy, and nuclear war
Ferguson 4 (Niall, Prof of History at NYU Stern, Foreign Policy, “A World Without Power”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/07/01/a_world_without_power) MAT
Could an apolar world today produce an era reminiscent of the age of Alfred? It could, though
with some important and troubling differences. Certainly, one can imagine the world's established powers—
the United States, Europe, and China—retreating into their own regional spheres of influence. But what of the growing
pretensions to autonomy of the supranational bodies created under U.S. leadership after the Second World War? The United
Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (formerly the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) each considers itself in some way representative of the “international community.” Surely
their aspirations to global governance are fundamentally different from the spirit of the Dark Ages? Yet universal claims
were also an integral part of the rhetoric of that era. All the empires claimed to rule the world; some, unaware of the existence
of other civilizations, maybe even believed that they did. The reality, however, was not a global Christendom, nor an allembracing Empire of Heaven. The reality was political fragmentation. And that is also true today.
The defining characteristic of our age is not a shift of power upward to supranational
institutions, but downward. With the end of states' monopoly on the means of violence and the collapse of their
control over channels of communication, humanity has entered an era characterized as much by
disintegration as integration. If free flows of information and of means of production empower multinational
corporations and nongovernmental organizations (as well as evangelistic religious cults of all denominations), the free
flow of destructive technology empowers both criminal organizations and terrorist cells. These
groups can operate, it seems, wherever they choose, from Hamburg to Gaza. By contrast, the writ of the
international community is not global at all. It is, in fact, increasingly confined to a few strategic cities such as Kabul and
Pristina. In short, it is the nonstate actors who truly wield global power—including both the monks and the Vikings of our
time. So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into
fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might
quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more
dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous—roughly 20
times more—so friction between the world's disparate “tribes” is bound to be more frequent.
Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on
supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now
possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it. For more than two decades, globalization—the integration
of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital—has raised living standards throughout the world, except where
countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalization—
which a new Dark Age would produce—would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even
depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago,
it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business.
Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would become
irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown
in China would plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that
undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home
are preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning
great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy —from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai—
would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the
freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically
concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous
regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin
America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa,
the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent
airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded
safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should frighten us today a great deal more than
it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from global hegemony—its fragile selfimage dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier—its critics at home and abroad must not pretend
that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony , or even a return to the good old balance of
power. Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be
apolarity—a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great powers would benefit from
such a not-so-new world disorder.
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Empire – A2: US is Imperialist
Generalizing the US as an empire is untrue; doing so would allow many others to be
characterized similarly.
Motyl 6 (Alexander J., Prof of Poli-Sci at Rutgers Univ, Foreign Affairs, “Empire Falls”,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61764/alexander-j-motyl/empire-falls, p. 1) MAT
Matthew Connelly begins his contribution to the SSRC's Lessons of Empire with a puzzle: "Scholars of empire have
to ask themselves why, after several decades of research and teaching, almost all of it critical
of imperialism and its legacies, we seem not to have had the slightest impact. " One good answer can
be found in the conclusion to George Steinmetz's essay in the same volume: "A preferable way of avoiding having one's work
functionalized for empire, to avoid the 'ear of the prince,' is to try to create accounts that are ontologically and
epistemologically adequate to the processual, conjunctural, contingent nature of social life, and hence irreducible to simple
policy statements." Ontological and epistemological adequacy may not do the trick, but stylistic opacity and intentional
irrelevance will surely kill a putative prince's interest in academic writing. Sheldon Pollock's piece wanders even further into
academic obscurantism, arguing that "contemporary discussions of the lessons past empires may have
for present ones make several assumptions that must come as a surprise to anyone who has
followed the debates on historical knowledge over the past few decades. One is that we really
can acquire true knowledge of history; another is that this knowledge is useful to us, that we
will benefit by acting upon its truth." Oddly enough, the book's editors share some of this skepticism about the
relevance of history to the present, writing that "the lessons of studying past empires reinforce a cautious
attitude toward claims made about the present." That may be so, but if historians really believe that they have
little to say to policymakers, why write such books in the first place? One can draw lessons from the past only if one believes
that history is real, that knowledge of history is possible, and that such knowledge can be packaged appropriately. Assuming
one accepts these propositions, one then has to identify conceptual similarities between the objects to be compared and the
contexts within which they exist and then develop meaningful theories of causality. Lessons of empire can be
drawn, in other words, only if the United States is or has an empire and only if the foreign policy
environment in which it pursues its supposedly imperial aims is comparable to that of past
empires. It is that simple. If the United States is not an empire, or does not have one, there is
nothing more to say about this particular subject. In Among Empires, Maier tries to sidestep this
problem by claiming that "the United States reveals many, but not all -- at least not yet -- of
the traits that have distinguished empires." But if the United States does not share all the
defining characteristics of empires, then it is not an empire, and there is little reason to believe
that valid lessons of imperial history will apply to it. After all, the United States shares "many,
but not all" traits (such as bigness, multiethnicity, and arrogance) with non-empires such as Brazil,
Canada, France, and Indonesia, so why not draw lessons from their experiences with equal
justification?
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Empire – A2: US is Imperalist
The US isn’t characterized as an empire now, and it would be conceptually
impossible to attempt to become one
Motyl 6 (Alexander J., Prof of Poli-Sci at Rutgers Univ, Foreign Affairs, “Empire Falls”,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61764/alexander-j-motyl/empire-falls, p. 3) MAT
Not only is the United States not an empire, but it probably could not become one today.
Several decades ago, the political scholar Rein Taagepera -- who, distressingly, is not mentioned by
any of the authors in the books under review -- plotted the life spans of empires, graphically
demonstrating what is now the conventional wisdom: empires have been among the most
durable, stable, and successful political entities of all time. Empire actually works -- or, rather,
worked -- quite well. Despite empire's long and venerable track record, however, there are
strong reasons to think that empire building is no longer a viable political project. Imperial
states have acquired territory in three ways: by marriage, by purchase, and by conquest.
Marriage no longer works, as no contemporary ruler (not even a dictator) claims to own the
territory he rules. Purchase is a dead end, as all the world's land is divided among jealous states
and oftentimes empowered populations. Conquest is still possible in principle, and the twentieth
century is full of instances in which it was attempted in practice. But the limits of conquest are
clear, in the aftermath of Iraq if not before. International and most national norms, for example, now
hold that the conquest of foreign nations and states almost certainly involves violations of
human rights and the principles of self-determination and cultural autonomy, and is therefore
illegitimate. Moreover, nation-states are unusually effective vehicles of mass mobilization and
resistance, making sustained conquest harder now than in the past. And a growing aversion to
violence militates against the ruthlessness that overcoming resistance requires. The
international community may look the other way if mass murder is confined to a localized area of
the developing world, such as Darfur, but it is hard to imagine that repeated genocidal policies in the
service of imperialist expansion would not provoke severe condemnation and some
countermeasures. In sum, while history suggests that being or having an empire is a guarantee
of longevity, it also shows that acquiring an empire is probably no longer possible. What has
caused the empire vogue recently has been not the sudden appearance of imperially structured
U.S. power, but the seemingly arbitrary use of that power. The invasion of Afghanistan did
not provoke talk of a U.S. empire, because most people in most countries believed that it was a
reasonable response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and because it was the Taliban,
not the United States, that was arbitrarily violating widely held norms about human rights, cultural
autonomy, democracy, and national self-determination. It was the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the
Bush administration's tub-thumping unilateralist rhetoric that made the difference. Empire talk
made sense not because the United States suddenly had an empire, but because the exercise of
the United States' vast power seemed imperial to some in its potential beneficence and wisdom
and imperious to others in its arrogance and arbitrariness. Seen in this light, it comes as no
surprise that the authors who are cited the most in Lessons of Empire are Niall Ferguson and the
writing team of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Ferguson is an enthusiastic proponent of empire,
whereas Hardt and Negri are self-declared foes of it. All three have written books that have been as
popular as they are weakly argued and incoherent. The empire talk such authors promote may be
of interest to students of "discourses" or intellectual fads, but policy analysts and officials
would do well to abandon the term "empire" instead of fetishizing it. Fortunately, that should
not be difficult. Before there was empire talk, it was perfectly possible to discuss U.S. foreign
policy in nonimperial terms. Michael Mandelbaum has recently shown in his book The Case for
Goliath that it still is. Once President George W. Bush leaves office and the United States withdraws
from Iraq, empire talk may well go the way of empires themselves. The issues it purported to clarify
will remain.
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Agamben Answers
Empire – A2: US is Imperalist
The US doesn’t fall under the definition of an empire, and it can’t be characterized
as possessing an empire either
Motyl 6 (Alexander J., Prof of Poli-Sci at Rutgers Univ, Foreign Affairs, “Empire Falls”,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61764/alexander-j-motyl/empire-falls, p. 2) MAT
So does the United States qualify? It would be absurd to say that the 50 states are an empire. Does the
United States have an empire? It is too soon to say whether occupied Iraq will become a U.S. colony, although from the way
the war has been going, the chances are that it will not. Afghanistan is hardly a U.S. periphery. Puerto Rico's relationship
with the mainland might be "colonial," as might Samoa's and Guam's, but a few minor islands make for a pretty
dull empire. The United States and its institutions, political and cultural, certainly have an
overbearing influence on the world today, but why should that influence be termed
"imperial," as opposed to "hegemonic" or just "exceptionally powerful"? McDonald's may
offend people, but it is unclear how a fast-food chain sustains U.S. control of peripheral
territories. U.S. military bases dot the world and may facilitate Washington's bullying, but
they would be indicative of empire only if they were imposed and maintained without the
consent of local governments. Hollywood may promote Americanization -- or antiAmericanism -- but its cultural influence is surely no more imperial than the vaunted "soft
power" of the European Union. Ronald Grigor Suny thus sensibly concludes his essay in the
SSRC volume by noting that if "empire" is defined rigorously, the United States cannot be
said to have one. Appropriate lessons might therefore be drawn from comparisons with other polities that have had vast
power in the international system, some of which might have been empires, some of which might not. This point is not just
academic. If the United States is not an empire, then the lessons of empire are the wrong ones for
U.S. policymakers to heed. Maier implicitly acknowledges that "empire" is a dispensable term
when he says he wants to investigate U.S. ascendancy without "claiming that the United States
is or is not an empire." And indeed, his history of U.S. power could easily have been written
without reference to empire. Imagine, then, that policy analysts and scholars stopped applying the label to the
United States. Would it make any difference? I think not. The challenges facing the country -- war in Iraq, nuclear weapons
in Iran and North Korea, rising authoritarianism in Russia, growing military power in China, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
terrorism, avian flu, climate change, and so forth -- would be exactly the same, as would U.S. policy options. Allies would
still be allies; foreign critics would still express outrage at what they perceive to be American stupidity, arrogance,
unilateralism, and the like. Life would go on, and no one -- except for scholars of empire -- would notice the difference.
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Empire – Anti-Imperialism – Alt Fails
The ideology of imperialism is so deeply entrenched in society that the State has
been entirely corrupted and prevents any real alternative
Van Elteren 3 (Mel, Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Tilburg University, “US Cultural
Imperialism Today” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais_review/v023/23.2elteren.html) JL
To the extent that advertising constitutes a pervasive public "art form," however, it has become the dominant
mode in which thoughts and experiences are expressed. This trend is most evident in U.S.
society. While alternative values and ideologies do exist in this culture, it is harder to find
representations for them. Advertising distorts and flattens people's ability to interpret
complex experiences, and it reflects the culture only partially, and in ways that are biased toward a
capitalist idealization of American culture. 47 At this level, goods are framed and displayed to entice the
customer, and shopping has become an event in which individuals purchase and consume the meanings attached to goods.
The ongoing interpenetration and crossover between consumption and the aesthetic sphere
(traditionally separated off as an artistic counter-world to the everyday aspect of the former) has led to a [End Page 182]
greater "aestheticization of reality": appearance and image have become of prime
importance. Not only have commodities become more stylized but style itself has turned into a valuable commodity. The
refashioning and reworking of commodities—which are themselves carefully selected according to one's individual tastes—
achieve a stylistic effect that expresses the individuality of their owner. 48 This provides the framework for a
more nuanced and sometimes contradictory second order of meaning. The dynamics of
cultural change therefore entail both processes of "traveling culture," in which the received culture (in this case
globalizing capitalist culture) is appropriated and assigned new meaning locally, and at the same time a "first order"
meaning that dominates and delimits the space for second order meanings—thus retaining
something of the traditional meaning of cultural imperialism. The latter is, ultimately, a negative
phenomenon from the perspective of self-determination by local people under the influence of
the imperial culture. Traditional critiques of cultural globalization have missed the point. The core of the problem lies
not in the homogenization of cultures as such, or in the creation of a "false consciousness" among consumers and the
adoption of a version of the dominant ideology thesis. Rather, the problem lies in the global spread of the
institutions of capitalist modernity tied in with the culturally impoverished social imagery
discussed above, which crowd out the cultural space for alternatives (as suggested by critical analysts like
Benjamin Barber and Leslie Sklair). The negative effects of cultural imperialism—the disempowerment
of people subjected to the dominant forms of globalization—must be located on this plane. It is
necessary, of course, to explore in more detail how the very broad institutional forces of capitalist modernity actually operate
in specific settings of cultural contact. The practices of transnational corporations are crucial to any understanding of the
concrete activities and local effects of globalization. A state-centered approach blurs the main issue here,
which is not whether nationals or foreigners own the carriers of globalization, but whether their interests are
driven by capitalist globalization.
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Empire – Anti-Imperialism – Alt Fails
Imperialism doesn’t allow for the space of alternatives to exist
Ali 6 (Tariq, novelist, historian, and commentator on the
current situation in the Middle East, “The new imperialists – Ideologies of Empire”, Ch 3 Pg 51)JL
Then came the total collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of a peculiar form of gangster capitalism in the world.
Did the triumph of capitalism and the defeat of an enemy ideology mean we were in a world
without conflict or enemies? Both Fukuyama and Huntington produced important books as a response to the new
situation. Fukuyama, obsessed with Hegel, saw liberal democracy/capitalism as the only embodiment of the “world-spirit”
that now marked the “end of history,” a phrase that became the title of his book.3 The long war was over and the restless
world-spirit could now relax and buy a condo in Miami. Fukuyama insisted that there were no longer any available
alternatives to the American way of life. The philosophy, politics, and economics of the Other – each and
every variety of socialism/Marxism – had disappeared under the ocean, a submerged continent of ideas
that could never rise again. The victory of capital was irreversible. It was a universal triumph.
Huntington was unconvinced, and warned against complacency. From his Harvard base, he challenged
Fukuyama with a set of theses first published in Foreign Affairs (“The Clash of Civilizations?” – a phrase originally coined
by Bernard Lewis, another favourite of the current administration). Subsequently these papers became a book, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. The question mark had now disappeared. Huntington agreed that
no ideological alternatives to capitalism existed, but this did not mean the “end of history.”
Other antagonisms remained. “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of
conflict will be cultural. . . . The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.” 4 In particular,
Huntington emphasized the continued importance of religion in the modern world, and it was this that propelled the book
onto the bestseller lists after 9/11. What did he mean by the word civilization? Early in the last century,
Oswald Spengler, the German grandson of a miner, had abandoned his vocation as a teacher, turned to philosophy and to
history, and produced a master-text. In The Decline of the West, Spengler counterposed culture (a word philologically tied to
nature, the countryside, and peasant life) with civilization, which is urban and would become the site of industrial anarchy,
dooming both capitalist and worker to a life of slavery to the machine-master. For Spengler, civilization reeked of
death and destruction and imperialism. Democracy was the dictatorship of money and
“money is overthrown and abolished only by blood.” 5 The advent of “Caesarism” would drown it in
“blood” and become the final episode in the history of theWest.Had the Third Reich not been defeated in Europe, principally
by the Red Army (the spinal cord of the Wehrmacht was broken in Stalingrad and Kursk, and the majority of the unfortunate
German soldiers who perished are buried on the Russian steppes, not on the beaches of Normandy or in the Ardennes),
Spengler’s prediction might have come close to realization. He was among the first and fiercest critics of Eurocentrism, and
his vivid worldview, postmodern in its intensity though not its language, can be sighted in this lyrical passage: I see, in place
of that empty figment of one linear history, the drama of a number of mighty cultures, each springing with primitive strength
from the soil of a mother-region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle; each stamping its material,
its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will and feeling, its own death. Here
indeed are colours, lights, movements, that no intellectual eye has yet discovered. Here the Cultures, peoples, languages,
truths, gods, landscapes bloom and age as the oaks and stonepines, the blossoms, twigs and leaves. Each Culture has its own
new possibilities of self-expression, which arise, ripen, decay and never return.6 In contrast to this, he argued, lay the
destructive cycle of civilization:Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a
species of developed humanity is capable. They are a conclusion, death following life, rigidity following
expansion, intellectual age and the stone-built petrifying world city following motherearth . . . they are an end, irrevocable,
yet by inward necessity reached again and again. . . . Imperialism is civilization unadulterated. In this
phenomenal form the destiny of the West is now irrevocably set. . . . Expansionism is a doom,
something daemonic and intense, which grips forces into service and uses up the late humanity
of the world-city stage.7
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Empire – General Philosophy Bad
Empire is exaggerated and links to our cap good turns
Anderson 2 (Brian , Senior Editor, City Journal, FIRST THINGS, “The Ineducable Left,”
February 2002, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0202/articles/anderson.html) CLS
What's all the excitement about? In part, it is the book's grandiose ambition that has generated the buzz. Hardt
and
Negri seek to update Marx's Capital for the era of economic globalization. In doing so, they
plunder every imaginable recent source of academic foolishness, from postcolonialism to Queer Theory
to French post-structuralism, and wed it to Marx, Lenin, and even Mao, making the book a kind of up-to-the-minute manual
on how to get tenure in today's university. Empire's pages brim with the science-fiction-like neologisms
that typify much contemporary academic writing: “agentic,” “biopower,”
“deterritorialization”-words that give those who wield them the sense of gaining Shaman-like
access to hidden realms. Unlike most leftist writing since the fall of communism, which has
been dourly pessimistic, Empire is also brashly optimistic, heralding the revolutionary dawn
of a utopian postcapitalist age.
Their analysis is weak – Fails to address the complexities of modern anti-capitalism
Bull 1 (Malcom , head of art & history, Oxford, LONDON REVIEW OF
BOOKS, 2001, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/bull01_.html) CLS
Most of Empire
is an exercise in nominalism, in the attempt to name, rather than to describe, to
analyze, or even to condemn, the new order that its authors see emerging . Although it is presumably
devoted to outlining the contours of a new mode of production, the book contains no data, offers no effort to
demonstrate who owns what or holds power over whom, and provides no indicators of any of
the deplorable conditions that it discusses. As if once again to distinguish itself from Marx, Empire, like the
left Hegelians whom Marx once attacked, moves entirely at the level of ideas. Unlike the left Hegelians,
however, Hardt and Negri handle ideas incompetently
Empire’s view of capitalism is unrealistic
Post 2 (Charlie, sociologist, City University of New York, EMPIRE & REVOLUTION, 2002,
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article435) CLS
Put simply, the analysis Hardt and Negri present in Empire of the contemporary capitalist
world economy is unrealistic - it does not correspond to the realities of capitalist production
and accumulation today. At the centre of Hardt and Negri’s notion of ’empire’ is that they call
the ’postmodernisation, or the informationalisation of production .’ In this schema, the transition from
’modernity’ and ’postmodernity’ involves an historic shift from an ’economic paradigm’ where "industry and the
manufacture of durable goods occupied the privileged position" to one where "providing services and manipulating
information are at the heart of economic production". [4] (p. 280) Freed from the spatial constraints associated with industrial
production, the production of services and information allows for rapid and easy geographic mobility of capital and the
creation of a ’smooth’ - relatively evenly developed - global economic space. The reality of the capitalist world
economy is quite different. It is true that the percentage of workers employed in industry - the production of material
goods and services - has declined continuously for over a century. As Harry Braverman argued in his classic Labor and
Monopoly Capital, [5] this is the inevitable result of capitalism’s continuous mechanization of production, and the resultant
reduction in the percentage of workers needed to produce goods. However, the number of industrial workers, in
most industrialized societies, has remained stable or grown slightly . Even more important, the
proportion of total output industrial workers produce has increased over the past fifty years. [6] The growth of service and
’information’ production is unrelated to industry. Most investment and employment in the ’service sector’ is not in the
provision of personal services (restaurants, hair and nail salons, etc), but in ’business services’ - legal and financial operations
that facilitate industrial production. Similarly, most of the growth of the ’information sector’ over the past 20 years has taken
the form of the application of computer technology to industrial production (regulating inventories, controlling complex
machinery, etc). While information flows easily around the world, the hardware that is the
backbone of the new telecommunications network is among the world’s most immobile
investments. Capitalist competition has led to vast over-capacity in fibre-optic networks and electronic switching
equipment in the past few years, none of which can be easily relocated or even abandoned by its owners. Given the
continued dominance of industrial investment, even the largest trans-national corporations
are not ’foot-loose and fancy free’ - moving from place to place in search of the lowest labour
costs. The global capitalist economy is not a ’smooth’ - evenly developed - space. The vast majority of global production
and consumption still takes place within the boundaries of the advanced capitalist nation states. Consider the following
statistics: [7]
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Empire – Perm
Perm solves – Their absolutist rejection of territorialized identity is too dualistic –
Links to itself, devalues linkages and synergy, and avoids the shiftiness necessary to
combat and wily post-capitalism
Angus 4 (Ian, Professor of humanities atSimon Fraser University, “Empire, Borders, Place: A Critique of Hardt and Negri’s
Concept of Empire.” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v007/7.3angus.html) CLS
The two critical points that I have made converge on a central issue: how
can one find a limit to the expansive
tendency of empire? The inscription of a border and a politics of place both pertain to the
construction of a limit to expansion and thus to “hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and
plural exchanges” (xii). While deterritorialization cannot be exactly reversed, it is not true that
this implies that emancipation must lie in further deterritorialization and that all
reterritorializations are perverse, or fundamentalist. They are artificial—a matter of human artifice—
to be sure. However, it can be argued that the most profound and effective anti-neoliberal globalization
politics in recent years has been inspired precisely by inventive reterritorializations,
localizations that retrieve that which has been pushed aside by empire and preserved by
borders. It is a politics of limit to empire so that a plurality of differences can occur—
differences from empire, not the putative consumer differences that are equalized by
exchanges. Leonard Cohen has pointed to the problem of empire in this fashion. Things are going to slide in all directions.
Won’t be nothing. Nothing you can measure anymore.24 How exactly to define limits, draw borders, to open a space where
measure can be taken, will take a great deal of political debate and action in deciding. There is a lot more to be said and done
about this, but I doubt whether the perspective put forward in Empire will be of much use in this important matter. Their
concept of abstraction is too dualistic, their concept of border too one-sided, their concept of
history too uni-linear, their concept of place too shallow, to have much long-term resonance in
the anti-neoliberal globalization alliance. I would put my bets on the construction of borders that allow Others to
flourish, a politics of place and a defence of communities against exchange value. This is a very different politics whose
difference is perhaps now obscured by the common opposition to empire. But it is different enough that one may expect it to
become generally visible before too long.
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Empire – Impact Debate 1/3
American Empire is better than arbitrary, exclusive alternatives to our power
Ikenberry 4 (G. John, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, “Illusions of Empire: Defining the
New American Order,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59727/g-john-ikenberry/illusions-of-empire-defining-the-newamerican-order) CLS
If the United States is an empire, however, it is like no other before it. To be sure, it has a long tradition of
pursuing crude imperial policies, most notably in Latin America and the Middle East. But for most countries , the U.S.-led
order is a negotiated system wherein the United States has sought participation by other states
on terms that are mutually agreeable. This is true in three respects. First, the United States has
provided public goods -- particularly the extension of security and the support for an open
trade regime -- in exchange for the cooperation of other states. Second, power in the U.S. system
is exercised through rules and institutions; power politics still exist, but arbitrary and
indiscriminate power is reigned in. Finally, weaker states in the U.S.-led order are given "voice
opportunities" -- informal access to the policymaking processes of the United States and the
intergovernmental institutions that make up the international system. It is these features of the post1945 international order that have led historians such as Charles Maier to talk about a "consensual empire" and Geir
Lundestad to talk about an "empire of invitation." The American order is hierarchical and ultimately
sustained by economic and military power, but it is put at the service of an expanding system
of democracy and capitalism.
Globalization is solving the contradictions of capitalism
Anderson 2 (Brian , Senior Editor, City Journal, FIRST THINGS, “The Ineducable Left,”
February 2002, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0202/articles/anderson.html) CLS
The truth about globalization is exactly the reverse of what Hardt and Negri assert.
Globalization is dramatically increasing world prosperity and freedom. As the Economist's John
Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge point out, in the half century since the foundation of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the world economy has expanded six-fold, in part because trade has
increased 1,600 percent; nations open to trade grow nearly twice as fast as those that aren't;
and World Bank data show that during the past decade of accelerated economic globalization,
approximately 800 million people escaped poverty.
No impact to Empire – no evidence
Anderson 2 (Brian , Senior Editor, City Journal, FIRST THINGS, “The Ineducable Left,”
February 2002, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0202/articles/anderson.html) CLS
The success of Empire is astonishing when you cut through the jargon and see exactly what it says. Hardt
and Negri
fall prey to every destructive error that has characterized radical antibourgeois thought, of
the left and right, from Lenin to Heidegger to Foucault to Islamism. Though the book seems on first inspection to be
something new, it is really very old news. Like their radical predecessors, Hardt and Negri fail to think
politically—fail to explore the real possibilities and dangers of political reality and take
measure of the lessons of history. Though the authors say they want to mine the “dense complex of experience”—a
praiseworthy aim for any political thought—a reader of Empire will wander through hundreds of pages of arid theory
before he encounters a flesh-and-blood political actor or a real decision or historical event or institution. The book, like much
contemporary political theory, is inhumanly abstract. The same abstraction was abundantly evident when Hardt
appeared on The Charlie Rose Show. To the host's commonsense questions, Hardt could only respond in hallucinatory
theory-speak. To anyone unfamiliar with the latest academic buzzwords, he sounded like a space alien. Rose seemed—
justifiably—completely befuddled. Inseparable from the failure to think politically, Hardt and Negri, like the rioters
endlessly disrupting World Trade Organization meetings, offer no evidence to support their basic charge
that economic globalization is causing wide-scale planetary misery. Predictably, this past summer, as
the G-8 meeting got underway in Genoa, Italy, the New York Times chose these two “joyful” Communists to write a lengthy
op-ed extolling the virtues of anti-globalization rioters.
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Empire – Impact Debate 2/3
Turn – Only American Empire has the power to reduce the politico-cultural borders
that Hardt & Negri ignore in their geographic determinism – The plan reduces
international autocracy
Angus 4 (Ian, Professor of humanities atSimon Fraser University, “Empire, Borders, Place: A
Critique of Hardt and Negri’s Concept of Empire.”
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v007/7.3angus.html) CLS
It is not that Hardt and Negri never recognize politico-cultural barriers to U.S. constitutionalism. “Black
slavery, a practice inherited from the colonial powers, was an insurmountable barrier to the formation of a free people” (170)
and women, they claim, “occupied a very similar position” (171) because “they could be neither completely included nor
entirely excluded” (171). This contradiction, unlike the position of the Native Americans, “posed a crisis … because it
blocked the free circulation, mixing, and equality that animate its foundation” (171). “The enormous barriers between black
and white, free and slave, blocked the imperial integration machine and deflated the ideological pretense to open spaces. …
What was in play was a redefinition of the space of the nation” (172). This space that they now describe is clearly politicocultural. It is a space of inequality, restriction of movement, and thus crisis. It is on the same page, in the next paragraph, at
the beginning of the next section, after the utilization of a politico-cultural conception of space with
respect to this restriction of movement that they say, of the closure of the frontier of freedom,
that the open spaces simply ran out! It seems that, when it is a matter of the restriction of
movement within the U.S. constitutional space, a politico-cultural concept of space is called
for, but when it is a matter of the halting of the expansive tendency at the Rio Grande and the
49th parallel, a merely quantitative geographical determinism will do. It is this difference of
theoretical deployment of concepts that renders the difference between the ‘internal’
restrictions of movement of African Americans and women and the ‘external’ ones of Mexico,
Canada and also Native Americans. It is not, or at least not proven to be, the difference between the cases
themselves. They avoid precisely this question of the difference between the cases by deploying a
geographical conception of closure to make the one set of cases seem unproblematic. In this respect it is revealing
that, despite their supposed anti Hegelianism, Hardt and Negri share Hegel’s analysis of the U.S.A. in its fundamentals, that it
is “constantly and widely open” and that “the North American Federation has no neighboring state.”13 Whereas a concept
of a border requires that one theorize the constitution of an inside-outside relation within
politico-cultural space, Hardt and Negri define externality through a geographical
determinism and internality through politico cultural space. This unaccountable divergence of registers
means that they can never investigate the constitution of an inside-outside relation but resort
to a continual rhetoric of ‘no outside’ that pervades the narrative but which cannot formulate
the necessity of the outside to the constitution of the inside.
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Agamben Answers
Empire – Impact Debate 3/3
No impact to Empire – Globalization is enhancing state effectiveness – Their arg
can’t pass empirical muster
Post 2 (Charlie, sociologist, City University of New York, EMPIRE & REVOLUTION, 2002,
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article435) CLS
Hardt and Negri’s claims that the nation-state and inter-imperialist rivalry have declined in
importance with the rise of ’empire’ and various institutions of ’global governance’ (World Bank,
IMF, WTO, G7, EU, NATO, etc) lack theoretical and even empirical plausibility. The ’declining
effectiveness’ of the nation-state can be traced clearly through the evolution of a whole series
of global juridico-economic bodies, such as GATT, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the IMF.
The globalisation of production and circulation, supported by this supranational juridical scaffolding, supersedes the
effectiveness of national juridical structures (p 337). Clearly, this ’supranational juridical scaffolding’ has been crucial in
changing the political environment for capitalist accumulation over the past two decades. Clearly, ’neo-liberalism’ - the
dismantling of the rules that restrict corporations at home and abroad - would be impossible without these ’global juridicoeconomic bodies.’ However, the growing importance of these trans-national organizations does not
mean that, in the words of Hardt and Negri ’state functions and constitutional elements have
effectively been displaced to other levels and domains’ (p. 307). On the contrary, the ability of these global
political bodies to operate effectively requires, in many ways, the strengthening of the national-capitalist state. Kim Moody
presents a compelling alternative analysis. The trans-national corporations (TNCs) have neither the desire
nor ability to create a world state. They have opted instead for a system of multilateral
agreements and institutions that they hope will provide coherence and order the world
market. Through their ’home’ governments, the TNCs have attempted to negotiate forms of regulation through the GATT,
the new WTO, and the various regional and multilateral trade agreements. They have also transformed some of the old
Bretton Woods institutions, notably the World Bank and IMF. [9] To ensure the unhindered operations of the trans-nationals
and protect private business property, these global political institutions require national capitalist states capable of
denationalising industries, abolishing social welfare programs and labour regulations, generally deregulating their capital,
labour and commodities markets, and containing challenges from below. Put simply, rather than representing a
simple shift of political powers ’upward’ from the nation-state to the ’global juridicoeconomic bodies’, the development of the WTO, EU, and the like actually enhance the role of
the nation-state.
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Agamben Answers
Empire – Alt Debate
Multitude endorses terrorism – If all oppositional voices are equally valid, violent
and oppressive voices will fill that abstraction
Wolf 1 (lan , Director of the Boisi Center for Religh and American Public Life at Boston College,
NEW REPUBLIC, October 4, 2001, http://www.powells.com/review/2001_10_04) CLS
The authors of Empire see no reason to exclude explicit reactionaries, including religious
fundamentalists, from the catalogue of post-Fordist movements that they admire. Fundamentalists, they write, are
often portrayed as anti-modernist, but this is Western propaganda. "It is more accurate and more useful...to understand the
various fundamentalism [sic] not as the re-creation of a pre-modern world, but rather as a powerful refusal of the
contemporary historical passage in course." Neglecting to mention the Taliban's treatment of women,
Hardt and Negri go out of their way to reassure readers of the genuinely subversive nature of
the Islamic version of fundamentalism. These movements are motivated not by nostalgic
attempts to reconstruct the past, but by "original thought." They are anti-Western, which means that they
are anti-capitalist. Properly understood, they are postmodern rather than premodern, since they engage in a refusal of Western
hegemony, with the proviso that fundamentalism speaks to the losers in the globalization project and postmodernism to the
winners. Hardt and Negri even leave the impression that, if they had to choose between the
postmodernists in Western universities and the fundamentalists in Iran, they would prefer the
latter: "The losers in the process of globalization might indeed be the ones who give us the strongest indication of the
transformation in process." We cannot know, of course, whether Hardt and Negri, in the light of the recent atrocities at the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, will want to change their minds about the progressive potential of Islamic
fundamentalism. But their book gives no grounds on which such attacks can be condemned. For if
being against the West is the sine qua non of good and effective protest, well, no one could
accuse the murderers in New York and Washington of not being against Western hegemony .
And if it is true, as Hardt and Negri blithely claim, that efforts to find legitimate reasons for intervening in world affairs are
only a smokescreen for the exercise of hegemonic power, then the way is cleared for each and every illegitimate act of global
intervention, since in the postmodern world of this book no justifiable distinctions between good
and evil acts can ever be made.
Multitude perpetuates Nazi extermination – Multitude is synonymous with ultrademocracy, like the Weimar Republic
Wolf 1 (lan , Director of the Boisi Center for Religh and American Public Life at Boston College,
NEW REPUBLIC, October 4, 2001, http://www.powells.com/review/2001_10_04) CLS
From this warped perspective, all states are equally bad and all movements of opposition are
equally good. Only the working of such a myopia can help the reader to understand why the authors of Empire
are incapable of mustering any rigorous historical or moral consciousness of Nazism and its
policy of Jewish extermination. In their view Nazism is capitalism, and that is the end of the story. Nazi
Germany, Hardt and Negri write, far from a unique excursion into human evil, "is the ideal type of the
transformation of modern sovereignty into national sovereignty and of its articulation into
capitalist form...." Since Nazism is merely normal capitalism — this point of view was once associated with the
Frankfurt School, and it survives almost nowhere outside the pages of this book — there is no reason to single out the Nazis
or their sympathizers for crimes against humanity. Astonishingly, Hardt and Negri are worse than neutral in
their discussion of the Nazi period: they actually heap praise on the ordinary Germans who
supported the regime. The obedience of these citizens is called "exemplary" in this book. The
authors also celebrate "their military and civil valor in the service of the nation," before moving on
to identify the victims whom they valorously helped to send to Buchenwald as "communists, homosexuals, Gypsies, and
others," the latter, presumably, being the Jews (whom Hardt and Negri reserve for Auschwitz).
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Agamben Answers
Empire – Alt Debate
Alt fails – Autonomy leads to extinction
Bull 1 (Malcom , head of art & history, Oxford, LONDON REVIEW OF
BOOKS, 2001, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/bull01_.html) CLS
It would, I think, be difficult for Hardt and Negri to turn their argument around in this way.
Although they recognise the function of society in the production of individual subjectivities they barely
acknowledge its role in the production of power. Using Foucault’s model of biopower, they argue that power
constitutes society, not the other way round: ‘Power, as it produces, organises; as it organises, it speaks and expresses itself as
authority.’ In reply to Machiavelli’s observation that the project of constructing a new society needs arms and money, they
cite Spinoza and ask: ‘Don’t we already possess them? Don’t the necessary weapons reside precisely within the creative and
prophetic power of the multitude?’ No one is powerless; even the old, the sick and the unemployed are engaged in the
‘immaterial labour’ that produces ‘total social capital’. Sounding a bit like Ali G, they conclude: ‘The poor itself is power.
There is World Poverty, but there is above all World Possibility, and only the poor is capable of this.’ It is difficult to
see how this analysis comprehends the reality of powerlessness. You may be able to threaten
the world with a Stanley knife, but you cannot build a new society with one. Insofar as the
problems of the powerless have been addressed in recent years it is often through a dynamic
that works in the opposite direction to the one Hardt and Negri suggest . Their response to
globalisation is to maintain that since we have not contracted into global society, we still have all the power we need to
change it. The alternative is to argue that a geographically boundless society must also be a totally inclusive society. The
latter is an extension of what used to be called the politics of recognition. Globalisation may have replaced multiculturalism
as the focus of contemporary political debate, but there is an underlying continuity: the concern of anti-
globalisation protesters with remote regions of the world, with the lives of people unlike
themselves, and with species of animals and plants that most have seen only on TV is
predicated on an unparalleled imaginative identification with the Other. This totalisation of the
politics of recognition from the local to the global is what has given momentum to campaigns such as the one for African
Aids victims; here, it is a question of sympathy rather than sovereignty, of justice rather than power. In many cases,
unless the powerful recognised some kinship with them, the powerless would just die.
Capitalism has no need for the ‘immaterial labour’ of millions now living. For powerless
human beings, as for other species, autonomy leads to extinction.
Alt fails – Multitude requires us to shed our human individuality, making us all
devoid cyborgs
Anderson 2 (Brian , Senior Editor, City Journal, FIRST THINGS, “The Ineducable Left,”
February 2002, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0202/articles/anderson.html) CLS
What will this “alternative political organization” look like? Hardt and Negri, like their
intellectual godfather Marx before them, remain mostly silent about the postcapitalist world, but
they do offer a few provocative hints. Global citizenship will be one key feature. “The cities of the earth will
become at once great deposits of cooperating humanity and locomotives for circulation, temporary residences and networks
of the mass distribution of living humanity—an end to borders and nations,” Hardt and Negri prophesize. A second aspect
will be “absolute democracy,” in which the multitude directly manages and organizes economic, political, and social life. No
more will private property—“a putrid and tyrannical obsolescence”—pit man against man. Free access to and control over
“knowledge, information, communication, and affects” will be a matter of course. A final characteristic: equal compensation
for all. Hardt and Negri call it a “citizenship income.” The counter-Empire is possible only after
modernity—including the universal solvent of global capitalism—has dissolved the certainties
of all earlier ages. Hardt and Negri's multitude is a Promethean power, born with the modern age's
emancipation of the human will from the moral constraints of religion and human nature. “Today there is not even the
illusion of a transcendent God,” the authors proclaim. “The mythology of the languages of the multitude interprets
the
telos of the earthly city, torn away by the power of its own destiny from any belonging or
subjection to a city of God, which has lost all honor and legitimacy.” Human nature is a
mirage too. We must embrace our “post-human” identities as monkeys and cyborgs, Hardt
and Negri aver. “Humanism after the death of Man,” the authors call their stark vision of
man as demiurge. The multitude represents an “uncontainable force,” an “excess of value with respect to every form of
right and law.” Beyond good and evil, it will “create and recreate” the human world in a “secular Pentecost.” Hardt and
Negri, dreaming of Communist Supermen, view the American Declaration of Independence and the Marx-inspired
revolutions of the twentieth century as anticipatory signs of the coming liberation
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Agamben Answers
Empire – Alt Debate
Alt fails – Multitude is unrealistic and discourages real social change
Post 2 (Charlie, sociologist, City University of New York, EMPIRE & REVOLUTION, 2002,
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article435) CLS
The notion of the ’multitude’ confronting the ’Empire’, at all points and through all ’acts of
refusal’, rests on the questionable claims that production has been ’informationalised’ and
social production has become ’decentred’ and ’smoothly’ diffused across the globe . As we have
seen, the reality is quite different: industrial production remains dominant within capitalism,
and the centres of industrial production remain geographically concentrated in the advanced
capitalist ’north’ and select parts of the ’south.’ Not surprisingly, the potential and actual power of industrial working class
activity has diminished in the past thirty years. Clearly twenty years of political defeats and economic restructuring at the
hands of capital, undermine the confidence and ability of workers to take action at the point of production and in the streets.
However, in the past decade we have begun to see a turn-around in the class struggle, that again
demonstrates the power of organized workers in strategic sectors of the economy . Beginning with
the public sector strikes in France - spearheaded by the transport, postal and telecommunications workers - we have seen a
new rise of industrial action across western Europe, and to a lesser extent in the US (the UPS strike in 1997 being the most
important example). This new wave of struggle against the effects of lean production and neo-
liberalism has spilled over into political struggles - mass political strikes against privatisation,
and new alliances between sectors of the European labour movement and anti-capitalist youth
in the global justice movement. This alliance of ’teamsters and turtles’ is much more fragile in the US, where the
pro-war and pro-Democratic party union officialdom has constantly distanced themselves from the global justice movement.
However, the power and impact of the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 flowed from the unity, in the streets, of
young global justice activists and militant teamsters (mostly UPS workers), longshore and steelworkers. Hardt and
Negri’s notion of the ’multitude’ is not only an unrealistic representation of the relationship
between labour and capital today: it has a long and problematic political history . Negri first argued
that a new ’revolutionary subject’ had displaced the ’collective worker’ in the large factories of northern Italy in the late
1970s, as growing unemployment and employer victimization of worker militants crushed the wave of industrial militancy
that began in 1968-69. Negri and the ’autonomist’ current in the Italian revolutionary left argued that the ’social worker’ - all
those oppressed by capitalism, whether employed or unemployed - had become the new force for social revolution. In fact,
Negri and his cothinkers privileged the unemployed - those who ’refused work’. These ideas
provided solace to a political current whose support among employed workers in the large
factories had disappeared by the late 1970s, reducing them to a base among students and
unemployed youth. However, these notions also justified acts of political desperation : most
notably, ’autonomist’ youth mounting ideological and physical attacks on organized and employed workers for their
unwillingness to ’refuse work’. [11] Today, none of the currents influenced by Negri and autonomism, like the Tute Bianche
in Italy, engage in physical attacks on organized workers. While the Tute Bianche have engaged in solely non-violent forms
of direct action, they often take action against the police without regard to the real relationship of forces in society. In
practice, they often substitute their own courageous, non-violent action for mass action by working people. Negri and
Hardt’s theories do not simply justify such practices, but actively discourage the hard
strategic thinking, about building alliances between anti-capitalist youth and rank and file
workers, that is crucial to the long-term success of the new struggle for global justice.
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Agamben Answers
Empire – Alt Debate
Alt fails – Empire’s ubiquitous and reducing it to globalization makes no sense as an
analytic lens
Petras 1 (James , professor of sociology, Binghampton University, EMPIRE WITH
IMPERIALISM, October 29, 2001, http://www.rebelion.org/petras/english/negri010102.htm)
CLS
Modern empires and therefore imperialism which constructs them are ubiquitous: Whether
through large-scale multinational corporations or through technologically advanced massive
military power, the peoples and nations of the worlds confront the problem of great concentration
of corporate and state power on an unprecedented scale. This stark reality and the evidence of
US prolonged wars of conquest and occupation has forced a general recognition of the
relevance of the concept of imperialism to understanding global power relations . Only a decade
ago writers, intellectuals and academics discarded imperialism and empire in favor of ‘globalization’ – to describe the world
configuration of power. But globalization with its limited focus on the movement of multinational
corporations could not explain the centrality of the state in establishing and imposing
favorable conditions for the ‘movement’ or expansion of multinationals. Corporate globalization
could not explain wars of conquest, like the first Gulf War, or wars of occupation or colonization, such as the US invasions of
Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor could globalization explain the large-scale, long-term expansion of Chinese public corporations
throughout Africa and the vast extraction of raw materials and sale of finished goods. By the new millennium, the language
of empire even entered the vocabulary of the Right, the practitioners and ideologues of imperialist power. Contemporary
imperial conflicts had their effects: Imperialism and empire once again became common language on the Left, but in many
cases poorly understood, at least in all of its complexities and structures.
Alt fails – Ignores risks and perpetuates totalitarianism
Bull 1 (Malcom , head of art & history, Oxford, LONDON REVIEW OF
BOOKS, 2001, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/bull01_.html) CLS
For Arendt, it
was the other sort of revolution, motivated by compassion rather than the desire for freedom, that
led inexorably to terror and totalitarianism. She may not have been altogether wrong. All those dogooders are more dangerous than they look. Even the much-touted idea of a tax on currency speculation
(designed to reduce market volatility and provide resources for sustainable development) would require worldwide
ideological consensus for its enactment. Chasing foreign exchange trading from one tax haven to another, and from currency
deals to bonds to commodities to derivatives needs bigger government than anything that currently exists. Effective
environmental regulation would restrict the movement, fertility and consumption patterns of individuals all over the planet.
The ideological alternative to Neoliberalism is, as Neoliberals never tire of saying, some form of
totalitarianism. But that can only be a reason for people to start thinking about what new forms of totalitarianism might
be possible, and, indeed, desirable. In the United States, the discussion has been kick-started by the recent hijackings.
Globalisation appears to have created a world of unlimited risk, without a corresponding
totalisation of the means of social control. Some commentators, following Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of
civilisations’ model, argue that global social control is impossible and the only way to contain risk is to
maintain the boundaries between civilisations. For Neoliberals, however, commitment to globalisation
necessitates the search for some form of global authority – the shifting nexus of institutions and alliances that Hardt and
Negri call Empire. But this is never going to yield the type of intensive social regulation needed to limit all the risks of a
global society. Unlimited risks need total controls and, as Hardt and Negri point out, ‘totalitarianism consists not
simply in totalising the effects of social life and subordinating them to a global disciplinary
norm’ but also in ‘the organic foundation and unified source of society and the state’.
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Agamben Answers
Empire – Alt Debate
Alt fails – Totalitarian and utopian
Anderson 2 (Brian , Senior Editor, City Journal, FIRST THINGS, “The Ineducable Left,”
February 2002, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0202/articles/anderson.html) CLS
If Hardt and Negri's depiction of global capitalism is mendacious, their hazy alternative to it—absolute democracy,
open borders, equal compensation—is apolitical utopian nonsense. How would such schemes actually
work? Hardt and Negri never say. Do they truly think that “annulling” private property and
eliminating nations, if it were somehow possible, would be liberating? Wouldn't it lead to a
totalitarian increase in political power, as in the old Soviet Union? But then Hardt and Negri
seem to look back fondly on Lenin and Stalin's dark regime . “Cold war ideology called that society
totalitarian,” they complain, “but in fact it was a society criss-crossed by extremely strong instances of creativity and
freedom, just as strong as the rhythms of economic development and cultural modernization.” To which one can only
respond: Have they never read a page of Solzhenitsyn? Moreover, as filled with admiration as Hardt and Negri are toward the
Soviet Union, they are contemptuous toward the decencies and the humble—often not so humble—freedoms of democratic
capitalist societies. Along with this utter failure to look at political reality, Hardt and Negri share
another ugly characteristic with Lenin, Franz Fanon, and many other antibourgeois thinkers: a totalitarian style of
thought that substitutes rhetorical violence for reasoned argument. For Lenin, disagreement with the
revolutionary line (as he defined it) was heretical. Differences of political vision or even pragmatic disputes were not open to
moderation through debate, as in the liberal democratic tradition, but deserved only insult—and in practice, ruthless
elimination. Hardt and Negri's violent verbal attacks on Western capitalists—“putrid,” “rotting,” “parasitic”—could come
right from the pages of Materialism and Empirocriticism (or, for that matter, from one of Osama bin Laden's terrifying
manifestos). After September 11, the authors' illiberal, terrorist language seems obscene
Alt fails – Vague and still neo-liberal
Bull 1 (Malcom , head of art & history, Oxford, LONDON REVIEW OF
BOOKS, 2001, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/bull01_.html) CLS
Nevertheless, the
structure of counter-Empire remains obscure. Hardt and Negri distance
themselves from those who merely want to ‘defend the local and construct barriers to capital’ .
But although their reinterpretation of autonomy involves more than freedom from the constraints of the market, it is
still recognisably part of the late 20th-century reworking of liberalism. Negri’s rediscovery of
republican thought in the early 1980s paralleled that of Quentin Skinner in Britain, and the retrieval of Anti-Federalism by
libertarians in the United States. In no case did this involve repudiation of the idea of negative liberty,
just a renewed emphasis on the point that people can be free only if they also have an ongoing
capacity for self-government. For Skinner this meant a call to active citizenship, while for Negri it involved a
reaffirmation of the Anti-Federalist view that the constituent power of the citizen is not irretrievably transferred to the
sovereign through some contract or constitution. The constituent power of the multitude is inalienable; it remains, as Negri
writes in Insurgencies, ‘an irresistible provocation to imbalance, restlessness and historical ruptures’. Counter-empire is
permanent revolution. This is not the Marxist revolution to which Negri was once committed.
Although hailed by Slavoj Žižek as ‘The Communist Manifesto for our time’, Empire is more Jeffersonian than Marxist. Like
those who invoke The Declaration of Independence against the Federal Government, Hardt and Negri focus on the
contradictions generated by liberalism’s global sovereignty: the nuclear bomb (a standing affront to militias as well as to
pacifists), the continuing existence of immigration controls, the reliance of global business and media interests on
government support and regulation. Cheerfully appropriating the slogans of national Neoliberalism for use against global
Neoliberalism, Hardt and Negri proclaim: ‘Now that the most radical conservative opponents of big
government have collapsed under the weight of the paradox of their position, we want to pick up their
banners . . . It is our turn now to cry: “Big government is over!”’With its repeated affirmation that we don’t have to accept
the world as we find it, and that we can remake it to suit ourselves, Empire is certainly inspirational reading.
But what, if anything, it might inspire someone to do is hard to say . Because Hardt and Negri’s
version of republican liberty is a theory of power rather than of rights it doesn’t easily translate into talk of duties. (Unlike
Skinner, they can’t call for laws forcing us to exercise our rights.) Furthermore, their analysis of power is not one
that lends itself to judgments about the way it should be exercised . Both these difficulties are inherited
from Spinoza, whose theological metaphysics dictated that, since all power is God’s power, power must be co-extensive with
natural right. In a state of nature everyone has as much right as they have the power to exercise, limited only by the
antagonistic power of others. The formation of the commonwealth involves no transfer of natural right to the sovereign (as in
social contract theory), merely an aggregation of power, and thus of right, that increases the power of the commonwealth
over nature and over the individuals within it. Civil right is natural right and natural right is power. As Negri puts it in
Insurgencies, ‘the law precedes the constitution, the people’s autonomy lives before its formalisation. It is the Tartar who
founds freedom, in the experience of his own right.’
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Agamben Answers
Empire – Alt Debate
Alt fails – Creates another Empire
Bull 1 (Malcom , head of art & history, Oxford, LONDON REVIEW OF
BOOKS, 2001, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/bull01_.html) CLS
The belief that civil right is unalienated power is fundamental to Negri’s rethinking of the autonomist programme. But as
many commentators have pointed out, Spinoza’s theory licenses tyranny as much as democracy,
counter-revolution as well as revolution. Whoever exercises sovereignty has the right to do so
for as long as they have the power to maintain it. By replacing Marx with Spinoza, Negri preserves the
revolutionary creed at the expense of its justification. For Spinoza, there is no point at which
either the individual or the multitude is alienated from something that is naturally or
rightfully theirs, so no one has any claim to power that they do not happen to possess. If
someone develops larger muscles, buys a bigger gun, or stages a successful revolution, power
and right are redistributed accordingly. That is all there is to it. Spinoza, it’s no surprise to discover, is Henry
Kissinger’s preferred political philosopher. Whether he is Mrs Thatcher’s favourite as well, I don’t know, but on Negri’s
reading he ought to be. For Spinoza, too, ‘the bourgeois ideology of civil society is only an illusion’ and
there is no such thing as ‘an intermediate moment in the process that leads from the state of
nature to the political state’. The concept of ‘multitude’ that Negri derives from Spinoza is
therefore as much a repudiation of civil society as it is a substitute for the old idea of the
‘masses’. According to Negri, nature constructs individuals, and then, through co-operation, ‘an infinite number of
singularities are composed as productive essence.’ The political is ‘a multitude of co-operating singularities’ coextensive with
the social but not mediated through it. If civil society withers away, so much the better; the true structure of sovereignty is
then laid bare.
Alt fails – Creates a new Empire
Bull 1 (Malcom , head of art & history, Oxford, LONDON REVIEW OF
BOOKS, 2001, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/bull01_.html) CLS
In Empire, this argument is applied to globalisation. The new world order represents a new form of
imperial sovereignty ‘composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of
rule’. The account of the way these organisms – the United States, the G8, the UN, the NGOs, the multinationals
and the media conglomerates – exercise their authority is left rather vague, but in a sense it doesn’t matter.
Empire, like other forms of sovereignty (imperium in Spinoza), is only the power of the people writ large. In globalisation,
alternatives to capitalism are not defeated so much as given new opportunity to work on a
global scale: ‘The creative forces of the multitude that sustain Empire are also capable of
autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organisation of global flows and
exchange.’
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***Whiteness Answers***
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Whiteness – Democracy Good
Democratic neutrality is better than the alternative – The option is not white or nonwhite democracy, but democracy or liberal autocracy, which is not open,
competitive, or free to public participation – Democracy has its problems, but
ademocratic systems are far worse
Diamond 2 (Larry, Politics-Harvard, Advancing Democratic Governance, http://www.stanford.edu/~ldiamond/papers/
advancing_democ_%20governance.pdf)
Competitive, free and fair elections are the sine qua non of democracy. But other institutional
components of good governance are also much more likely to be vibrant and effective in a
democracy than a non-democracy. These include an independent judiciary with a clear and
predictable rule of law; an elected parliament that is autonomous and capable of checking and
scrutinizing the executive branch of government; and a civil society with the freedom and resources
to monitor, evaluate, question, and participate in the making and implementation of policy. When
governance is open to the scrutiny and involvement of a wide range of societal actors (NGOs,
interest groups, think tanks, and the mass media), it is more likely to be transparent, public-spirited,
and thus legitimate. There is no guarantee that electoral democracy will bring such transparency and
inclusion, but it is an illusion to imagine that “liberal autocracy” is a developmental option in the
contemporary world. Precious few are the examples of a well-governed autocracy, and the few that
exist (Singapore, for example) have sustained good governance for highly idiosyncratic reasons that
are not broadly transferable. The typical recipient of US foreign assistance is a country that needs
the openness, competition, and broad and free public participation of democracy in order to develop
truly good governance.
The aff is not an attempt to provide a single-size solution to democracy – we
shouldn’t be wedded w the entire project of western democracy as they establish –
we defend this plan, in this instance, for specific advantages – The label ‘democracy
assistance’ is not a link and does not even appear in our plan
Diamond 2 (Larry, Politics-Harvard, Advancing Democratic Governance, http://www.stanford.edu/~ldiamond/papers/
advancing_democ_%20governance.pdf)
It is impossible to offer a general strategy or sequence of political reforms to fit such widely varying
cases. That is why careful assessment must be done of the current state of democracy and
governance in each country. There is no one sector that provides the key to fostering democracy and
good governance. There is no one “answer.” And there are no shortcuts. In most countries that lack
stable and effective governance today, we must be prepared to work on a number of fronts over a
prolonged period of time. Nevertheless, a few characteristic priorities do emerge with striking
regularity. These priorities involve making democracy work better to advance development and
respond to the needs of society. They would generate the capacity for and commitment to using the
public resources of a country to advance the public good. Most of these themes and approaches are
not new. The foreign assistance community has worked in and with most of them, particularly over
the past decade. What is needed now is not wholesale invention but innovation, adaptation,
refinement, elaboration, a deepening of commitment, and an expansion of activity in some areas.
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Whiteness – Democracy Good
Neutrality prevents theocracy and state encroachment on rights
Griffiths 8 (Graham, writer for the Orator, a publication analyzing politics, “Liberal Values and Question of Tolerance,” The
KJS
The model of liberal toleration also implies a neutrality principle. The recognition that
certain reasons (those based on specific comprehensive beliefs) can never be reasonable
grounds for the exercise of coercive state power leads to the prohibition of state
interference in the private lives of its citizens, in which they pursue those goals compatible
with their comprehensive beliefs. The elimination of these reasons as justifiable grounds for
the use of state power implies the state must remain neutral regarding the various sets of
comprehensive beliefs adopted by its citizens. Thus, for example, the U.S. Constitution
prohibits the government from establishing a state religion. The state achieves neutrality by
being “blind” to the private religious differences of its citizens in its extension of rights and
privileges and in its application of the law.
Orator, Volume 3, http://students.washington.edu/nupsa/Docs/Volume3/Graham_Griffiths_Liberal_Values_and_Tolerance.pdf)
Neutrality protects minority interests and rights
Gutierrez 9 (Alejandro, professor of public law at the University of Navarre, “Neutrality of Public
Authorities and Religion,” November 3, 2009, http://www.ceir.co.rs/neutrality.pdf) KJS
The European Court of Human Rights*2 has frequently emphasised the State’s role as the neutral and impartial organiser
of the exercise of various religions, faiths and beliefs, and stated that this role is conducive to public order, religious
harmony and tolerance in a democratic society. It also considers that the State’s duty of neutrality and
impartiality is incompatible with any power on the State’s part to assess the legitimacy of religious beliefs or the ways in which these
beliefs are expressed,*3 and that it requires the State to ensure mutual tolerance between opposing groups.*4
Accordingly, the role of the authorities in such circumstances is not to remove the cause of tension by eliminating pluralism, but to ensure
that the competing groups tolerate each other.*5 Pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness are hallmarks of a “democratic society”.
democracy does not simply mean
that the views of a majority must always prevail: a balance must be achieved which ensures
the fair and proper treatment of people from minorities and avoids any abuse of a dominant
position.*6 Pluralism and democracy must also be based on dialogue and a spirit of
compromise necessarily entailing various concessions on the part of individuals or groups of
individuals which are justified in order to maintain and promote the ideals and values of a
democratic society.*7 Where these “rights and freedoms” are themselves among those guaranteed by the European Convention of
Although individual interests must on occasions be subordinated to those of a group,
Human Rights or its Protocols, it must be accepted that the need to protect them may lead States to restrict other rights or freedoms likewise
set forth in the Convention. It is precisely this constant search for a balance between the fundamental rights of each individual which
constitutes the foundation of a “democratic society”.*
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Whiteness – Democracy Good
The kritiks logic is flawed: Western liberalism is not racist – Neutrality allows
identity difference, organization, solidarity, and mutuality – Their position is
empirically indefensible – Rolling back civil rights laws would be worse for every
minority in America and around the world
Levin 99 (Michael, professor at the City College of New York, “ Review of “On Race and Philosophy,
“http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/10.1086/233911.pdf?acceptTC=true) KJS
In a perverse way, it is flattering to a group to believe that figures of the stature of Kant and Hegel
lost sleep devising ways to oppress them; being ignored is considerably less flattering. Not that
Outlaw has nothing to say about the classical liberalism of Locke, Kant, and Mill; he
repeatedly excoriates it as an equally flawed extension of Aristotelian elitism. Aristotle thought
some groups naturally subordinate, and classical liberal egalitarianism, to reconcile the slavery in its
midst, invented the theory that some groups are inferior (or ‘‘inferior’’). This ‘‘outright
contradiction’’ (p. 150) is ‘‘paradigmatic of the self-contradictory tensions inscribed in the
core of Enlightenment thought and practice’’ (p. 163). The contradiction is hard to see.
Liberalism promises autonomy to all mature rational beings; the application of this tenet, the
scope of the ‘all’, rests on empirical assumptions about who is mature and rational. Ten-yearolds in democracies are denied the franchise because they are considered too labile and intellectually
underdeveloped. America permitted slavery (for a time) because of similar beliefs about blacks.
These beliefs may have been wrong, even unconscionable, but one must squint hard to find them
logically inconsistent with liberal norms. And the suggestion that liberalism was invented in
order to exclude blacks is less poor philosophy than paranoia. Outlaw notwithstanding,
universalistic liberalism easily accommodates ethnicity. Letting each man pursue his good
provided he lets others do likewise allows members of ethnic minorities to stick together for
morale building, for cultivating their distinctiveness, for reinforcing a sense of superiority, for
bragging to others of their superiority (as Outlaw does, about the talents of his cohort of black
youths in rural Mississippi: ‘‘We weren’t conceited, just convinced. And if you watched [us], you
would be convinced too’’ [p. xiii]). It would be interesting to see whether racial strife abated
under such a regime, establishing which would require repeal of most civil rights legislation.
While group differences do not undo liberalism, some issues Outlaw mentions may suggest some modifications to it. He
dismisses talk of intelligence as ‘‘a return to ‘reason’ in disguise as the critical measure of humanity’’ (p. 170), but—
whatever the fell aim of reporting this fact—the mean IQ of American blacks falls one standard deviation (and that of African
blacks nearly two standard deviations) below that of whites, with genes significantly implicated (Michael Levin, Why Race
Matters [Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997], pp. 31–141). Outlaw himself does not dissent from the view that ‘‘Negro-African
reasoning is intuitive by participation, [involving] discovery through emotion’’ (p. 67). He reports (pp. vii, xvi) that school
segregation ‘‘made no sense’’ to his younger self, but this disparity in IQ and cognitive style explains why whites might vote
for public education that separates their children from blacks actuarially certain to be less able and more eruptive. More
generally, a society permitting extensive individual freedom may require minimal mean levels of
self-restraint on the part of its members, so the apparent race differences in time-preference rates
(see Levin, pp. 73 –78, 99 –101, 213 –15) raise questions about multiracial democracies. These are
areas, ignored by Outlaw, where race and philosophy really do interact.
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Kyla’s whiteness cards part 1 table of contents
Whiteness K marginalizes other races 1/3 ................................................................................ 91
Whiteness K marginalizes other groups 2/3 ..................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
Whiteness K marginalizes other groups 3/3 ..................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
Black/white paradigm doesn’t solve ...............................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
A2: you marginalize black history........................................................................................... 110
A2: we solve for others ....................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
We solve best ....................................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
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Whiteness – Democracy Good
Liberalism can accommodate all ethnicities – despite previous exceptions
Levin 99 – Michael Professor of philosophy at the City University of New York (Outlaw, Lucius T., Jr.
On Race and Philosophy.) Ethics, Vol. 109, No. 2 (January 1999), pp. 454-456, MCL)
The contradiction is hard to see. Liberalism promises autonomy to all mature rational beings; the
application of this tenet, the scope of the ‘all’, rests on empirical assumptions about who ismature
and rational. Ten-year-olds in democracies are denied the franchise because they are
considered too labile and intellectually underdeveloped. America permitted slavery (for a time)
because of similar beliefs about blacks. These beliefs may have been wrong, even unconscionable,
but one must squint hard to find them logically inconsistent with liberal norms. And the
suggestion that liberalism was invented in order to exclude blacks is less poor philosophy than
paranoia. Outlaw notwithstanding, universalistic liberalism easily accommodates ethnicity.
Letting each man pursue his good provided he lets others do likewise allows members of
ethnic minorities to stick together for morale building, for cultivating their distinctiveness, for
reinforcing a sense of superiority, for bragging to others of their superiority (as Outlaw does,
about the talents of his cohort of black youths in rural Mississippi: ‘‘We weren’t conceited, just
convinced. And if you watched [us], you would be convinced too’’ [p. xiii]). It would be interesting
to see whether racial strife abated under such a regime, establishing which would require repeal of
most civil rights legislation.
Democratic transitions allow for non-racialism, where it is left to the private sphere
and disentangled from the state – South Africa proves
MacDonald 4 – Michael, teaches in the Political Science Department at Williams College. He has
published on political conflict in Northern Ireland and South Africa, and is the author of Children of Wrath:
Political Violence in Northern Ireland and is finishing a manuscript entitled The Political Economy of
Identity Politics: Citizenship, Race and Class in South Africa. (The Political Economy of Identity Politics,
The South Atlantic Quarterly 103.4 (2004) 629-656, Project Muse, MCL)
The transition to democracy disentangled citizenship from race, opening citizenship to all South
Africans irrespective of race, but it did not disentangle class from race. Business still is owned
overwhelmingly by whites and still is mostly unreformed. Lest the racial resentments of Africans
fuel the economic grievances of the poor, infusing demands for economic redistribution with the
passion of racial nationalism, the ANC is endeavoring to break down the associations of prosperity
with whiteness and poverty with blackness. In principle, the ANC could divorce class from race by
driving down the class status of whites, so that whites would become poor too. But that would be
counterproductive economically, and would not help Africans anyway. The ANC prefers to raise
African elites, with the effect of detaching class from race but without threatening the essential
interests of business and without preventing the ANC from using racial appeals for its own
purposes. The ideology of nonracialism comes in handy here. The ANC's conception of
nonracialism follows the example of liberal treatments of religion; essentially, it privatizes
race. Western liberals distinguish between what they call the private sphere, where religion is
allowed to flourish, and the public sphere, where religion is to be stripped of official standing.
Separating church and state serves several important purposes. It protects religion from the
state and the state from religion; it also keeps each in its place. Along the same lines,
nonracialism locates race in the private, the unofficial, sphere. Officially, the nonracial state is
universal. [End Page 631] It sees blacks and whites as South Africans only, relegating race to
the private sphere (save for the important exception of affirmative action). But making race a
private matter not only preserves race; it also keeps race available for purposes of political
mobilization. The nonracial state is a liberal democratic state and liberal democratic states
represent "private" interests in "public" institutions.
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Whiteness – Colorblindness Good
The root of racism is racist policies not colorblindness. Colorblindness is key to fix
the institutions that pass racist policies
Hooks et al. 85 (http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv9n4/v9n4-3.pdf, William B. Allen, Drew S. Days III,
Benjamin L. Hooks, and William Bradford Reynolds, )
HOOKS: With regard to Mr. Reynolds's eloquent argument, let me make an analogy: no lie will stand
long unless it has a little truth mixed up in it. That is the concrete that keeps it together.. He can
cite what we said about a colorblind society, and he can make of it what he will, but I thought
Justice Blackmun dealt most appropriately with the whole question of colorblindness in the Bakke
case when he pointed out that in order to reach a colorblind society we may have to take into
consideration color and sex to eliminate inequities just as we took into consideration color and
sex to build these inequities. This problem did not come about through colorblindness; it came
about through discrimination, through prejudice, through segregation, in a society with signs
that said "Whites Only," with absolute white-only police departments all over this country,
north and south, where blacks could not advance beyond the position of sergeant.
Colorblindness is the only way to fix racist policies
Hooks et al. 85 (http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv9n4/v9n4-3.pdf, William B. Allen, Drew S. Days III,
Benjamin L. Hooks, and William Bradford Reynolds, )
I just want to emphasize that while it is true that the objective in terms of contemporary policy
is a colorblind society, there is a more important objective, and that is a free society. That is to
say, one has to get to a colorblind future in a way that preserves the freedom with which this
country began. To argue that the Constitution established and perpetuated slavery is a
fundamental mistake. When one chips away at it, one chips away at the structures through the
years that gave the nation its only opportunity to abolish slavery. If we are going to talk about
the contemporary implications, I would like us to broaden the discussion to recognize that we are
not talking merely about past victims who we may or may not be able to pinpoint. You cannot talk
about victims without establishing who is guilty of the crime. And the problem with affirmative
action is that there are a great many grandsons and great-grandsons whom you simply cannot call
guilty of any crime, but who are nonetheless suffering at the hands of an unjust law.
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Whiteness – Perm Solves
Their conception of whiteness is overdetermined – Identifies whiteness as a root
cause that it is not – And, it’s connectedness w other identity formations means
rearticulating rather than repudiating whiteness solves best – Perm solves
Winant 97 – Howard, American sociologist and race theorist and teaches in the Department of
Sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara (Behind Blue Eyes: Contemporary White Racial
Politics, NEW LEFT REVIEW 225 (Sept.-Oct. 1997),
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/whitness.html, MCL)
Thus the point is not that all whites recognize the lie of their privilege, but that enough whites do so, and act out their
rejection of that lie, to disrupt the "white club's" ability to enforce its supremacy. It is easy to sympathize with this analysis, at
least up to a point. The postwar black movement, which in the US context at least served as the point of origin for all the
"new social movements" and the much-reviled "politics of identity," taught the valuable lesson that politics went "all the way
down." That is, meaningful efforts to achieve greater social justice could not tolerate a public/private, or a
collective/individual distinction. Trying to change society meant trying to change one's own life. The formula "the personal is
political," commonly associated with feminism, had its early origins among the militants of the civil rights movement (Evans
1980). The problems come when deeper theoretical and practical problems are raised. Despite their explicit adherence to a
"social construction" model of race (one which bears a significant resemblance to my own work), theorists of the
abolitionist project do not take that insight as seriously as they should. They employ it chiefly
to argue against biologistic conceptions of race, which is fine; but they fail to consider the
complexities and rootedness of social construction, or as we would term it, racial formation. Is
the social construction of whiteness so flimsy that it can be repudiated by a mere act of political
will, or even by widespread and repeated acts aimed at rejecting white privilege? I think not;
whiteness may not be a legitimate cultural identity in the sense of having a discrete, "positive"
content, but it is certainly an overdetermined political and cultural category, having to do with
socioeconomic status, religious affiliation, ideologies of individualism, opportunity, and
citizenship, nationalism, etc. Like any other complex of beliefs and practices, "whiteness" is
imbedded in a highly articulated social structure and system of significations; rather than
trying to repudiate it, we shall have to rearticulate it. That sounds like a daunting task, and of
course it is, but it is not nearly as impossible as erasing whiteness altogether, as the abolitionist
project seeks to do. Furthermore, because whiteness is a relational concept, unintelligible without
reference to nonwhiteness -- note how this is true even of Roediger's formulation about "build[ing]
an identity based on what one isn't" -- that rearticulation (or reinterpretation, or deconstruction) of
whiteness can begin relatively easily, in the messy present, with the recognition that whiteness
already contains substantial nonwhite elements. Of course, that recognition is only the beginning
of a large and arduous process of political labor, which I shall address in the concluding section of
this paper. Notwithstanding these criticisms of the abolitionist project, we consider many of its
insights to be vital components in the process of reformulating, or synthesizing, a progressive
approach to whiteness. Its attention is directed toward prescisely the place where the neo-liberal
racial project is weak: the point at which white identity constitutes a crucial support to white
supremacy, and a central obstacle to the achievement of substantive social equality and racial
justice.
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Whiteness – Perm Solves
Their totalizing arguments falsely dichotomize whiteness as outside of racial
identity, retaining its special place amongst races and preventing a reasonable
discussion and pragmatic rearticulation which solves white privilege bets
Winant 97 – Howard, American sociologist and race theorist and teaches in the Department of
Sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara (Behind Blue Eyes: Contemporary White Racial
Politics, NEW LEFT REVIEW 225 (Sept.-Oct. 1997),
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/whitness.html, MCL)
CONCLUDING NOTES: WHITENESS AND CONTEMPORARY POLITICS In a situation of
racial dualism, as Du Bois observed more than 90 years ago, race operates both to assign us and
to deny us our identity. It both makes the social world intelligible, and simultaneously renders it
opaque and mysterious. Not only does it allocate resources, power, and privilege; it also
provides means for challenging that allocation. The contradictory character of race provides the context in which racial
dualism -or the "color-line," as Du Bois designated it, has developed as "the problem of the 20th century." So what's new? Only that, as a result
of incalculable human effort, suffering, and sacrifice, we now realize that these truths apply across the board. Whites and whiteness can no
longer be exempted from the comprehensive racialization process that is the hallmark of US history and social structure. This is the present-day
context for racial conflict and thus for US politics in general, since race continues to play its designated role of crystallizing all the fundamental
issues in US society. As always, we articulate our anxieties in racial terms: wealth and poverty, crime and punishment, gender and sexuality,
nationality and citizenship, culture and power, are all articulated in the US primarily through race. So what's new? It's the problematic of
whiteness that has emerged as the principal source of anxiety and conflict in the postwar US. Although this situation was anticipated or
prefigured at earlier moments in the nation's past -- for example, in the "hour of eugenics" (Stepan 1991, Kevles 1985, Gould 1981) -- it is far
more complicated now than ever before, largely due to the present unavailability of biologistic forms of racism as a convenient rationale for
white supremacy.[7] Whiteness -- visible whiteness, resurgent whiteness, whiteness as a color, whiteness as difference -- this is what's new, and
newly problematic, in contemporary US politics. The reasons for this have already emerged in my discussion of the spectrum of racial projects
and the particular representations these projects assign to whiteness. Most centrally, the problem of the meaning of whiteness appears as a
direct consequence of the movement challenge posed in the 1960s to white supremacy. The battles of that period have not been resolved; they
have not been won or lost; however battered and bruised, the demand for substantive racial equality and general social justice still lives. And
while it lives, the strength of white supremacy is in doubt. The racial projects of the right are clear efforts to resist the challenge to white
supremacy posed by the movements of the 1960s and their contemporary inheritors. Each of these projects has a particular relationship to the
white supremacist legacy, ranging from the far right's efforts to justify and solidify white entitlements, through the new right's attempts to
utilize the white supremacist tradition for more immediate and expedient political ends, to the neoconservative project's quixotic quest to
surgically separate the liberal democratic tradition from the racism that traditionally underwrote it. The biologistic racism of the far right, the
expedient and subtextual racism of the new right, and the bad-faith anti-racism of the neoconservatives have many differences from each other,
but they have at least one thing in common. They all seek to maintain the long-standing association between whiteness and US political
traditions, between whiteness and US nationalism, between whiteness and universalism. They all seek in different ways to preserve white
identity from the particularity, the difference, which the 1960s movement challenge assigned to it. The racial projects of the left are the
movements' successors (as is neoconservatism, in a somewhat perverse sense). Both the neoliberal racial project and the abolitionist project
seek to fulfill the movement's thwarted dreams of a genuinely (i.e., substantively) egalitarian society, one in which significant redistribution of
wealth and power has taken place, and race no longer serves as the most significant marker between winners and losers, haves and have nots,
powerful and powerless. Although they diverge significantly -- since the neoliberals seek to accomplish their ends through a conscious
diminution of the significance of race, and the abolitionists hope to achieve similar ends through a conscious reemphasizing of the importance
of race -- they also have one very important thing in common. They both seek to rupture the barrier between whites and racially-defined
minorities, the obstacle which prevents joint political action. They both seek to associate whites and nonwhites, to reinterpret the meaning of
whiteness in such a way that it no longer has the power to impede class alliances. Although the differences and indeed the hostility -- between
the neoliberal and abolitionist projects, between the reform-oriented and radical conceptions of whiteness -- are quite severe, we consider it
vital that adherents of each project recognize that they hold part of the key to challenging white supremacy in the contemporary US, and that
their counterpart project holds the other part of the key. Neoliberals rightfully argue that a pragmatic approach to transracial politics is vital if
the momentum of racial reaction is to be halted or reversed. Abolitionists properly emphasize challenging the ongoing commitment to white
supremacy on the part of many whites. Both of these positions need to draw on each other, not only in strategic terms, but in theoretical ones as
well. The recognition that racial identities -- all racial identities, including whiteness -- have become implacably dualistic, could be far more
liberating on the left than it has thus far been. For neoliberals, it could permit and indeed justify an acceptance of race-consciousness and even
nationalism among racially-defined minorities as a necessary but partial response to disenfranchisement, disempowerment, and
superexploitation. There is no inherent reason why such a political position could not coexist with a strategic awareness of the need for strong,
class-conscious, transracial coalitions. We have seen many such examples in the past: in the anti-slavery movement, the communist movement
of the 1930s (Kelley 1994), and in the 1988 presidential bid of Jesse Jackson, to name but a few. This is not to say that all would be peace and
harmony if such alliances could come more permanently into being. But there is no excuse for not attempting to find the pragmatic "common
ground" necessary to create them. Abolitionists
could also benefit from a recognition that on a pragmatic
basis, whites can ally with racially-defined minorities without renouncing their whiteness. If
they truly agree that race is a socially constructed concept, as they claim, abolitionists should also
be able to recognize that racial identities are not either-or matters, not closed concepts that
must be upheld in a reactionary fashion or disavowed in a comprehensive act of renunciation.
To use a postmodern language I dislike: racial identities are deeply "hybridized"; they are not
"sutured," but remain open to rearticulation. "To be white in America is to be very black. If you
don't know how black you are, you don't know how American you are" (Thompson 1995, 429).’
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Whiteness – Perm Solves
Whiteness is an engrained cultural habit best addressed by pragmatic legal recourse
and step-by-step rejection – It’s cultural practices, not a conspiratorial social system
MacMullan 5 – Terrance, Professor of social philosophy at Eastern Washington University (Is There a White Gift?: A
Pragmatist Response to the Problem of Whiteness, Charles S. Peirce Society, vol 41, iss 4, online, MCL)
Du Bois critiqued whiteness not as a collection of inherently evil people, but as a flawed set of
habits that have ossified inside most people of European descent that place them in
disequilibria with their world, their history, and people of other cultures. Du Bois' most passionate critique of
whiteness is "The Souls of White Folks," the title of which is a sardonic reference to his earlier and acclaimed The Souls of
Black Folk. The later work replaces the mellifluous compassion of the first with bitter indignation. Its opening passage
warrants being quoted at some length. Of [White Folk] I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them. I view them
from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of
their language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor
yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. Rather I see these souls
undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know.
This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious! They deny my right to live and call me misbirth! My word is to
them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they
clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever
stripped,- ugly, human.18 Here Du Bois proclaims that in spite of their conquests, white folk are still fools. When Du Bois
refers to white folks "crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness" he is referring to the false
idea of a superior white race that is propped up by slanted science and history. He sees the white march to civilize the world
as merely an attempt to conquer it. Further, Du Bois knows that whites are not above any member of the
human family, but just another branch of its common trunk. Du Bois's critique of whiteness
raises the question of whether any element of cultural whiteness is worth conserving. Du Bois
recognizes that despite certain similarities whiteness is qualitatively different from all other
racial groups. Races are all inherited founts of human meaning that span generations through
habits, attitudes, and cultures. They all use morphology as a badge that marks an individual as
the inheritor of a particular history. They are all organized around habits: frameworks of
meaning that are passed from old to young that organize inchoate and new experiences.
However, they are different because the history that white Americans inherit is a skewed one
that causes them to adopt habits of action that are violent and anti-democratic. Whiteness is a
uniquely problematic racial identity both because it directs future actions according to distorted
perceptions of past experiences, and because it encourages a violent and exclusionary disposition
towards nonwhites. So while white culture doubtlessly exists (there really are laws, practices,
institutions and activities that are based on the idea of a distinct, superior white race), it leads a false
existence according to Du Bois (in that the supposed difference is fabricated, and kept in place by
legal sanction, social custom, and force of habit) that in turn generates more falsehoods (the ones
necessary to maintain the façade of white superiority and civility). Whiteness is therefore not so
much a race that carries a cultural gift, in the Du Boisian sense, but a race based on an anticulture. However, while Du Bois mordantly critiques whiteness as an anti-culture, he does not
claim that white people are inherently evil or false. He maintains this distinction because he
recognized the crucial habitual dimension of race and racism. At the end of Dusk of Dawn Du Bois
says, I ... began to realize that in the fight against race prejudice, we were not facing simply the
rational, conscious determination of white folk to oppress us; we were facing age-long complexes
sunk now largely to unconscious habit and irrational urge, which demanded on our part not only the
patience to wait, but the power to entrench ourselves for a long siege against the strongholds of
color caste.19 He further suggests that an apt response to the problem of white supremacist
racism must take into account the fact that racism is largely an unconscious affair. This
process must deal not only with conscious rational action, but with irrational and unconscious
habit, long buried in folkways and custom. Intelligent propaganda, legal enactment and reasoned
action must attack the conditioned reflexes of race hate and change them.20
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness – Perm Solves
Consciousness alone fails – Pragmatic deconstructing of privileged habits is also key
– Only the combination uses recognition along with practical action to reinforce
change
MacMullan 5 – Terrance, Professor of social philosophy at Eastern Washington University (Is There a White Gift?: A
Pragmatist Response to the Problem of Whiteness, Charles S. Peirce Society, vol 41, iss 4, online, MCL)
While Du Bois argues that white folk need to acknowledge and reconstruct the habits behind
white racism, he does not offer specifics on how to do this. However, by combining Du Bois's
critique of whiteness with Dewey's theory of habits, we can develop a pragmatist reconstruction
of the habits of whiteness that would address the problematic nature of whiteness as well as the
disagreement between Outlaw and Sullivan. A Deweyan Reconstruction of Whiteness This section initiates an inquiry into
the problem of whiteness that uses the medicines that we find in Dewey to treat the illness diagnosed by Du Bois and
contemporary race theorists. Du Bois explained that whiteness is dangerous because it is based on a false history and
encourages violence and cultural amnesia. Dewey's work suggests that we use inquiry to reform
entrenched, problematic habits of whiteness into ones more appropriate for the needs of a
democratic polity. A Deweyan focus on the habitual dimension of race and racism is especially
important now in the post Civil Rights era, when many are tempted to think that racism is dead and
buried. Dewey's analysis of habit tells us that this sanguine story is untenable because a set of
habits, like those attached to whiteness, that have played such a fundamental role in a society
for generations will not simply disappear with a change in the law. He shows that habits like
these persist until consciously reconstructed. The use here of Dewey's theory of habit to address the problem of white
racism is already anticipated by Sullivan, who integrates it into her transactional philosophy. She describes well our need to attend to habit
Habit also explains why it is likely that significant
change will be effected by means of the gradual transformation of self and environment through
transaction, rather than by sudden, one-time revolution. The notion of habit does not entail
social conservatism, nor does it deny the importance of social struggle. Rather, it recognizes the
force of lag in life produced by sedimented dispositions. By itself, sudden revolution tends to be
an ineffective shortcut that cannot make deep changes. It works against, rather than with, the
constitutive role that habit plays in life.21 This essay not only agrees with Sullivan's general claim that understanding habit
when engaging in meliorist social projects when she writes,
is crucial to any liberatory philosophy, but also with her specific claim in "From the Foreign to the Familiar: Confronting Dewey Confronting
Racial Prejudice," that Dewey's "concept of habit can be used to understand the unconscious operations of white privilege."22 A
critique
of whiteness as an infelicitous habit enables us to answer the questions at the heart of the
disagreement between Sullivan and Outlaw: "Do white folk have a cultural gift, and if so where might they
find it?" Du Bois makes it clear that it cannot be in whiteness per se, or in white identity. Whiteness is a dangerous anticulture because at its root it fosters a negative pride: it says, "I am proud to not be one of them." We can use Dewey's analysis
of impulses (the inchoate but propulsive feelings that demand habit formation) and habits (which are learned ways of
organizing and making impulses meaningful) to separate, for example, the value-neutral human impulse of pride away from
its current habitual form framed around the concept of whiteness towards more life-affirming and democratic forms. An
impulse like pride is so basic that it cannot be eliminated and must instead be fostered through habits that are non-racist and
non-hierarchical. Such a reformation is fundamental for a successful critique of whiteness from a Du Boisian perspective
because pride is necessary for a group to both have something to share and to be able to appreciate the value of the others
gift. Habits, in Dewey s use of the term, are organic functions of an organism that facilitate its survival within an
environment. A habit is "an acquired predisposition to ways or modes of response."23 They are the means through which we
make our experiences meaningful because "the meaning of native activities is not native, but acquired."24 Habits work by
organizing basic or "native" feelings that Dewey calls impulse. The native activities occur before habits and emerge within
each individual organism, but ultimately depend on acquired habit for any meaning.25 Dewey says in Human Nature and
Conduct: Impulse brings with itself the possibility but not the assurance of a steady reorganization of habits to meet new
elements in new situations. The moral problem in child and adult alike as regards impulse and instinct is to utilize them for
formation of new habits, or what is the same thing, the modification of an old habit so that it may be adequately serviceable
under novel conditions.26 While we live in a society that has mostly rejected the whiteness as a superlative racial category,
the habits of whiteness persist. Sullivan identifies the habitual problem of whiteness in her essay "Remembering the Gift:
W.E.B. Du Bois on the Unconscious and Economic Operations of Racism" when she writes, Du Bois's insights into the racist
unconscious are not just appropriate for the mid-20th century; they remain extremely valuable today. While rational,
conscious argumentation certainly can have a role to play in the fight against racism, antiracist struggle ultimately will not be successful if the unconscious operations of white racism
are ignored. White unconscious resistance to understanding racism as a problem must be
tackled if inroads against specific problems of racism are to be made. . . . Contemporary
critical race theory, including pragmatists who wish to contribute to it, thus cannot proceed
effectively by assuming either that their logical arguments against racism will convince racists
to change their beliefs or that racism can be ended by conscious fiat.
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness – Perm Solves – A2: Monolithic Power
Whiteness is a shifting identity – Their “it’s monolithic” arguments are a
totalization that is no longer applicable
Winant 97 – Howard, American sociologist and race theorist and teaches in the Department of
Sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara (Behind Blue Eyes: Contemporary White Racial
Politics, NEW LEFT REVIEW 225 (Sept.-Oct. 1997),
http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/whitness.html, MCL)
My discussion of this theme, in the next section of this essay, is an extension to whites of the
Duboisian idea that in a racist society the "color line" fractures the self, that it imposes a sort of
schizophrenia on the bearers of racialized identities, which forces them to see themselves
simultaneously from within and without. Du Bois of course intended this analysis to explain
problems of black politics and culture at the turn of the 20th century; it was a time when few
publically questioned the normalization of whiteness. I extrapolate his idea to whites at the end of
the 20th century; today, I suggest, whiteness has been deeply fissured by the racial conflicts of
the post-civil rights period. Since the 1960s contemporary racial discourse has been unable to
function as a logic of racial superiority and justified exclusion. Therefore it has been forced
into rearticulations, representations, reinterpretations of the meaning of race and, perforce, of
whiteness. In the following section of this paper I analyze the new politicization of whiteness which
has taken shape particularly in the post-civil rights era -- the period since the ambiguous victory of
the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s. Here we discuss the reasons why, contrary to the
racially egalitarian thrust of the civil rights "revolution," the significance of white identity was
reinterpreted and repoliticized -- largely in a reactionary direction -- in the wake of the 1960s.
I identify several factors contributing to this shift: the erosion of traditional ethnicities, the
decline of class-based politics, and the elaboration of right-wing racial ideologies able to
rearticulate some of the 1960s movement demands in a discourse of conservatism and "colorblindness."
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness – A2: Time Wise
Tim Wise is inaccurate –narrative of black identity ignores other factors
Martin 10 – Renee, pacifist, anti-racist, blogger on Womanist Musings (The Limitations of Tim Wise, Womanist Musings,
http://www.womanist-musings.com/2010/11/limitations-of-tim-wise.html, November 29, 2010, MCL)
I have been very critical of Tim Wise for quite sometime now. To be honest, I must admit that
much of my judgment of his work was based solely on interviews that I had seen, as well as reading
various posts on his website. I recently decided that perhaps my judgment of him was a bit strong,
and so I set about to challenge this understanding by reading, White Like Me: Reflections On
Race From A Privileged Son. As a Black woman, I am very aware that I am not Wise's target
audience, in fact, he seeks to exploit my experience for his own financial gain, rather than to deeply
educate those that read his books. My number one criticism of Wise, is his continual essentialism
regarding a Black identity. Even though I understand his book was meant to be a 101 primer to
those not aware of how Whiteness and indeed race operates in the U.S., his inability, or perhaps
outright failure would be more accurate, to include an intersectional approach reduces what it
means to be of color in a North American context. Black people belong in various categories:
we are disabled, TLBG, poor, wealthy, educated, TAB, religious, non religious, male and
female, gender queer etc,. To make a definitive description of how Black people experience
race, without explaining that such marginalization quite often multiplies oppression is not only
irresponsible, it erases members of the Black community to present a single mendacious
narrative. One really glaring example is the complete erasure of trans women of colour that die
each year. Race absolutely effects who lives and who dies, and yet Wise, to my knowledge has
yet to raise this issue.
Tim Wise is inaccurate – profit motive, and desire to make people feel safe, prevents
interrogation from people of color
Martin 10 – Renee, pacifist, anti-racist, blogger on Womanist Musings (The Limitations of Tim Wise, Womanist Musings,
http://www.womanist-musings.com/2010/11/limitations-of-tim-wise.html, November 29, 2010, MCL)
Wise also has a tendency to reduce race relations to a Black/White binary. To be of colour in
the U.S. is to be not White of non European descent. With the exception of a small passage on the
fallacies in Disney's Pocahontas, Wise mainly framed racism as something Whites do to Blacks,
rather than Whiteness as an institution that is harmful to every single person of colour. This is
erasure and it ignores the hierarchies of power that support Whiteness, as well as ensures that people
of colour are constantly fixated on each other, rather than united to bring an end to White supremacy. Social justice is hard
work and it demands a full-time commitment and therefore, I completely understand when someone attempts to earn a living,
even as they raise awareness to the multiple issues that plague our planet. It is highly problematic that a White
man is earning a substantial living talking about the way that race effects people of colour.
Wise of course covers this by discussing Whiteness, but the truth of the matter is, that you
cannot talk about Whiteness without examining people of colour. He is essentially profiting
from hundred of years of our history and taking on an expert status that is denied people of
colour when we discuss our lived experiences. His very existence as White, educated male of
class, TAB, cisgender, heterosexual privilege, means that he is affirming much of the very
narrative that he seeks deconstruct. Wise makes White people feel safe. He gives them the
appropriate liberal spin that never expects them to seek truth via the people most impacted by
race. Each chapter of his book began with a James Baldwin quote, proving that people of colour exist for the purposes of
appropriation, but never really to interact with, unless one is in a leadership role. One of the main problems with
Wise's work is that it does not encourage those researching anti-racism to seek out the
opinions of people of colour, thus once again turning Whiteness into the arbitrator. This
normalizes oppression and further supports White supremacy. Wise does encourage readers
to take on a subordinate role, but how believable is that when he continually fails to do so
himself. Wise claims that it is his right to be forthright about race because he is fighting to end White supremacy,which he sees as harmful,
not only to himself but to all people, but using the operating status of Whiteness to fight the battle cannot possibly disarm, much less eradicate
this sickness. In the end, I think that Wise is very well aware that what he has to say has already been said and in fact argued infinitely better by
Depending on Tim
Wise to teach you about race means that you are not ready to move out of your comfort zone
and really see racism for the pure evil that it is.
people of colour. To really challenge privilege, one must first learn from the people that it impacts the most.
ADI 2010
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness – ‘White Supremacy’ = Dirty Word
Using the term ‘white supremacy’ is problematic – homogenizes minority groups
and fails to break down racism
Cole 7 – Mike, \research professor in education and equality at Bishop Grosseteste University College
Lincoln ('Racism' is about more than colour, Times Higher Education,
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=311222&sectioncode=26, MCL)
The problem with standard critical race theory is the narrowness of its remit, says Mike Cole.
One of the main tenets of critical race theory is that "white supremacy" is the norm in societies
rather than merely the province of the racist right (the other major tenet is primacy of "race" over
class). There are a number of significant problems with this use of the term "white
supremacy". The first is that it homogenises all white people together in positions of power
and privilege. Writing about the US, critical race theorist Charles Mills acknowledges that not "all
whites are better off than all non-whites, but ... as a statistical generalisation, the objective life
chances of whites are significantly better". While this is, of course, true, we should not lose sight of
the life chances of millions of working-class white people. To take poverty as one example, in the
US, while it is the case that the number of black people living below the poverty line is some
three times that of whites, this still leaves more than 16 million "white but not Hispanic"
people living in poverty there. In the UK, there are similar indicators of a society underpinned
by rampant colour-coded racism, with black people twice as poor as whites, and those of
Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin more than three times as poor as whites. Once again,
however, this still leaves some 12 million poor white people in the UK. That such statistics are
indicative of racism, however, is beyond doubt, and to interpret them it is useful to employ the
concept of "racialisation". Given that there is widespread agreement among geneticists and social
scientists that "race" is a meaningless concept, racialisation describes the process by which people
are falsely categorised into distinct "races". Statistics such as these are indicative of racialised
capitalism rather than white supremacy. A second problem with "white supremacy" is that it is
inherently unable to explain non-colour-coded racism. In the UK, for example, this form of
racism has been and is directed at the Irish and at gypsy/traveller communities. There is also a
well-documented history of anti-Semitism, too. It is also important to underline the fact that
Islamophobia is not necessarily triggered by skin colour. It is often sparked by one or more
(perceived) symbols of the Muslim faith. Finally, a new form of non- colour-coded racism has
manifested itself recently in the UK. This has all the hallmarks of traditional racism, but it is
directed towards newly arrived groups of people. It has been described by A. Sivanandan,
director of the Institute of Race Relations, as "xeno-racism". It appears that there are some similarities in the
xeno-racialisation of Eastern European migrant workers and the racialisation of Asian and black workers in the immediate postwar period, a
point I address in my latest book. "White supremacy" is counterproductive as a political unifier and rallying point against racism. John Preston
concluded an article in The Times Higher advocating critical race theory ("All shades of a wide white world", October 19) by citing the US
Preston has argued "the abolition
of whiteness is ... not just an optional extra in terms of defeating capitalism (nor something
which will be necessarily abolished post-capitalism) but fundamental to the Marxist educational
project as praxis". Indeed, for Preston, "the abolition of capitalism and whiteness seem to be
fundamentally connected in the current historical circumstances of Western capitalist development".
From my Marxist perspective, coupling the "abolition of whiteness" to the "abolition of
capitalism" is a worrying development that, if it gained ground in Marxist theory, would most
certainly further undermine the Marxist project. I am not questioning the sincerity of the protagonists of "the
journal Race Traitor , which seeks the "abolition of the racial category 'white'". Elsewhere,
abolition of whiteness", nor suggesting in any way that they are anti-white people but merely questioning its extreme vulnerability to
misunderstanding. Anti-racists have made some progress in the UK at least in making anti- racism a mainstream rallying point, and this is
reflected, in part, in legislation. Even if it were a good idea, the chances of making "the abolition of whiteness" a successful political unifier and
rallying point against racism are virtually non-existent.
The usage of "white supremacy" should be restricted to
its everyday meaning. To describe and analyse contemporary racism we need a wide- ranging
and fluid conception of racism. Only then can we fully understand its multiple manifestations
and work towards its eradication.
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness – Alt Fails – Focus on White Supremacy Bad
Focus on white supremacy alone reproduces the most dangerous forms of racism
and is doomed to fail
Hartigan 5- John, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas (Culture against Race:
Reworking the Basis for Racial Analaysis, South Atlantic Quarterly 104.3, Online)
One might be tempted to assume that Gilroy’s stance is largely polemical, but his critique is
thoroughgoing, as is his call to reject ‘‘this desire to cling on to ‘race’ and go on stubbornly
and unimaginatively seeing the world on the distinctive scales that it has specified.’’ In spite of
powerful, novel efforts to fundamentally transform racial analysis—such as the emergence of
‘‘whiteness studies’’ or analyses of the ‘‘new racism’’—Gilroy is emphatic in ‘‘demand[ing]
liberation not from white supremacy alone, however urgently that is required, but from all
racializing and raciological thought, fromracialized seeing, racialized thinking, and racialized
thinking about thinking’’ (40). In contrast to Visweswaran—and, interestingly, voicing concerns
over ‘‘cultural politics’’ that resonate with Dominguez’s critique—Gilroy sees a host of problems
in ‘‘black political cultures’’ that rely on ‘‘essentialist approaches to building solidarity’’
(38).14 Nor does he share Harrison’s confidence in making racism the centerpiece of critical
cultural analysis. Gilroy plainly asserts that ‘‘the starting point of this book is that the era of New
Racism is emphatically over’’ (34). A singular focus on racism precludes an attention to ‘‘the
appearance of sharp intraracial conflicts’’ and does not effectively address the ‘‘several new
forms of determinism abroad’’ (38, 34). We still must be prepared ‘‘to give effective answers
to the pathological problems represented by genomic racism, the glamour of sameness, and the
eugenic projects currently nurtured by their confluence’’ (41). But the diffuse threats posed by
invocations of racially essentialized identities (shimmering in ‘‘the glamour of sameness’’) as the
basis for articulating ‘‘black political cultures’’ entails an analytical approach that
countervails against positing racism as the singular focus of inquiry and critique.15 From
Gilroy’s stance, to articulate a ‘‘postracial humanism’’ we must disable any form of racial vision
and ensure that it can never again be reinvested with explanatory power. But what will take its
place as a basis for talking about the dynamics of belonging and differentiation that profoundly
shape social collectives today? Gilroy tries to make clear that it will not be ‘‘culture,’’ yet this
concept infuses his efforts to articulate an alternative conceptual approach. Gilroy conveys many of
the same reservations about culture articulated by the anthropologists listed above. Specifically,
Gilroy cautions that ‘‘the culturalist approach still runs the risk of naturalizing and normalizing
hatred and brutality by presenting them as inevitable consequences of illegitimate attempts to mix
and amalgamate primordially incompatible groups’’ (27). In contrast, Gilroy expressly prefers the
concept of diaspora as a means to ground a new form of attention to collective identities. ‘‘As an
alternative to the metaphysics of ‘race,’ nation, and bounded culture coded into the body,’’ Gilroy
finds that ‘‘diaspora is a concept that problematizes the cultural and historical mechanics of
belonging’’ (123). Furthermore, ‘‘by focusing attention equally on the sameness within
differentiation and the differentiation within sameness, diaspora disturbs the suggestion that
political and cultural identity might be understood via the analogy of indistinguishable peas
lodged in the protective pods of closed kinship and subspecies’’ (125). And yet, in a manner
similar to Harrison’s prioritizing of racism as a central concern for social inquiry, when it comes to
specifying what diaspora entails and how it works, vestiges of culture reemerge as a basis for the
coherence of this new conceptual focus. When Gilroy delineates the elements and dimensions of
diaspora, culture provides the basic conceptual background and terminology. In characterizing
‘‘the Atlantic diaspora and its successor-cultures,’’ Gilroy sequentially invokes ‘‘black cultural
styles’’ and ‘‘postslave cultures’’ that have ‘‘supplied a platform for youth cultures, popular
cultures, and styles of dissent far from their place of origin’’ (178). Gilroy explains how the
‘‘cultural expressions’’ of hip-hop and rap, along with other expressive forms of ‘‘black
popular culture,’’ are marketed by the ‘‘cultural industries’’ to white consumers who
‘‘currently support this black culture’’ (181). Granted, in these uses of ‘‘culture’’ Gilroy
remains critical of ‘‘absolutist definitions of culture’’ and the process of commodification that
culture in turn supports. But his move away from race importantly hinges upon some notion
of culture. We may be able to do away with race, but seemingly not with culture.
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness – Alt Fails – Focus on White Supremacy Bad
Whiteness studies are inaccurate – seen as worthless, inaccurate and is an outlet for
people to project their personal opinions
Carey, Boucher and Ellinghaus, 2009 – Jane, Postcolonialism Researcher at Monah University,
Leigh, School of Modern History and PLS at Marquarie University and Katherine, School of History
Studies at Monach University (Reorienting Whiteness, October 2009, Book, MCL)
Despite its much longer tradition in black American writing," whiteness studies has its origins in
the spate of foundational works of the early 1990s, which continue to mark and define the
field. 15 Where previously race had only been deployed to refer to "non-whites," this scholarship
firmly established whiteness too as a racial category and one in urgent need of interrogation.
The key features of whiteness that emerged—and that do not need repetition here—were its
inherent association with power and privilege, and its structural, invisible location as "the
norm." The exponential growth of whiteness studies since this time has been accompanied by
almost equally numerous overviews of the field, some highly negative. 16 Assessing the utility
of whiteness specifically for U.S. historians in 2001, Eric Arnesen contended that it had "proven to
be an inadequate tool of historical analysis." 17 Methodological weaknesses and definitional
looseness, he argued, rendered it practically worthless. Indeed, he accused some whiteness scholars
of providing little empirical evidence for their claims, suggesting instead they "put words into
their subjects' mouths ... disregarded scholarly standards [and] employed sloppy methodology."
"Arbitrary and inconsistent definitions," he concluded, meant "whiteness has become a blank screen
onto which those who claim to analyze it can project their own meanings." 18
Prioritizing whiteness reentrenches US exceptionalism – zero solvency
Carey, Boucher and Ellinghaus, 2009 – Jane, Postcolonialism Researcher at Monah University,
Leigh, School of Modern History and PLS at Marquarie University and Katherine, School of History
Studies at Monach University (Reorienting Whiteness, October 2009, Book, MCL)
Arneson was not alone, as the flurry of similarly dissatisfied reviews indicated." Although not as
scathing, Peter Kolchin, for example, also expressed uneasiness at the "elusive, undefined
nature of whiteness," the lack of "historical grounding" of many contemporary studies, and the
"over-reliance on whiteness in explaining the American past." 2° In assigning such
overarching explanatory power to whiteness, he suggested, the field is prone to overstatement
and overgeneralization, coming close to "portraying race as a ubiquitous and unchanging
transhistorical force rather than a shifting and contingent 'construction.'" 21 Kolchin also briefly
observed that one of the "most striking features" of whiteness studies is the "assumption—
sometimes asserted and sometimes unspoken—that the racism they describe is uniquely
American and that American whiteness can be understood in isolation." 22 The most
influential U.S. scholarship, particularly that by labor historians, locates the creation of white
identity entirely within historical circumstances quite specific to the United States, namely
black chattel slavery and, later, mass immigration. 23 While this narrow national focus has not
emerged as a prominent concern within existing critiques of the field, we argue that it is in fact of
central importance. Much historical work on whiteness is even more narrowly positioned. As
John Munro has outlined, it largely represents another in the series of U.S. labor history projects that
have sought to answer the question Werner Sombart posed in 1906, "Why is there no socialism in
the United States?," and is primarily concerned with finding "a usable past upon which an
anti-capitalist and antiracist future can be envisioned." 24 This in part explains why it has
largely ignored wider scholarship that does not share these, very particular, interests, and why
many objections to whiteness studies have simply joined the long history of attempts to assert
the primacy of class over race. 25 Despite pretensions to an almost universal applicability, distinct
U.S. academic debates, as well as specific political projects and disavowals (particularly of the
settler-colonial underpinnings of the United States), silently orient the field. In many ways, debates
about whiteness have primarily reflected a turf war over leadership in the field of labor
history in the United States. The issues at stake are far too important to allow them to be subsumed
within such parochial concerns.
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness studies’ US-centric focus prevents solvency – can’t apply to other
contexts
Carey, Boucher and Ellinghaus, 2009 – Jane, Postcolonialism Researcher at Monah University,
Leigh, School of Modern History and PLS at Marquarie University and Katherine, School of History
Studies at Monach University (Reorienting Whiteness, October 2009, Book, MCL)
This is not to say that this collection is united by an unfaltering commitment to whiteness studies. It
is equally shaped by a uneasiness with the field tendencies toward ahistoricity, reification, and
universalization; its ill-defined analytic vocabulary; and especially its potential simply to reinscribe
white people at the center of historical narratives. And we are acutely aware that, since its
emergence, the field has proven "a lightning rod for critics.' I licked, alongside its rapid
growth, the apparently deserved death of the field has been simultaneously announced as the
latest headstone in a graveyard of academic fads. 7 A key development that argues these
dismissive predictions, however, is the degree to which the terms "white" and "whiteness" have
already been adopted by historians, particularly those writing about European colonialism. These
categories have recently been inserted alongside class, gender, and various "others."' This book
functions in some ways simply to highlight the significance of this quite startling analytic uptake.
But it also registers a profound discomfort with the ways that whiteness has snuck through the
backdoor into the historian's toolkit, often with little definition or explanation. Its meanings are
often taken for granted, as if they were self-evident. The nuanced, historically grounded, and
theoretically broad-ranging approaches in this collection suggest a number of ways forward for
scholars. As Matt Wray has recently observed, "whiteness studies has left childhood and is now
enduring adolescence. It's having its identity crisis right on time." 9 The time is ripe for a
major reassessment of the field. In approaching this task, we wish to foreground the
limitations that have resulted from the U.S.-centered nature of most whiteness scholarship.
This is clearly problematic for a field that makes broad, even universal, claims to explaining
the operations of "race." Whiteness, obviously, has had far wider geographic purchase. We
seek to decenter the United States in the area of whiteness studies, and in some ways to recognize
that it was never central to begin with. So too, the isolationist tendencies of U.S. whiteness
scholarship have produced its lack of engagement with work on race in other contexts,
particularly the analytic frames that have emerged through attempts to theorize European
colonialism. We contend that this nationally and theoretically limited approach represents in fact the
major weakness of the field." In other words, whiteness needs to be reconciled with the major
intellectual currents that have shaped research on race outside the United States.
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness – Alt Fails – AT: Olson Alt
Olson’s alternative neglects factors outside of race in democratic politics – can’t
effectively create change in democratic policies.
Holland 6 – (Review: Democracy beside Itself, Political Theory, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Aug., 2006), pp. 488498, Sage Productions, JSTOR, MCL)
The Abolition of White Democracy powerfully demonstrates how democracy can generate
deeply antidemocratic effects, but it also, perhaps unavoid ably, generates its own set of
limitations. For Olson, racism is the prime force of American democracy, and abolition the
democratic movement from which all others derive. His call for a contemporary abolition
movement aims to free the world "of oppression and domination in general," just as nine teenthcentury abolition "inspired the first wave of feminism" (p. 142). He is right, of course, to point to the
power of racialized citizenship in the United States. Yet by treating race as uniquely foundational
to citizenship, he both over- and understates his case, missing many of the political nuances,
the his torical twists and turns, of democratic citizenship in the United States. The dyad of white
citizen and black anticitizen is not wrong so much as incomplete, failing to acknowledge, much
less account for, the changing political lots of free blacks and women (to name only two groups)
over time. Indeed, this failure to engage fully the shifting complexities of citizenship through out
American history is linked to a tendency to gloss over some of the less auspicious conflicts
entailed in any politics of "abolition." The nineteenth century abolition movement, for example,
did not simply spawn first-wave feminism by inspiring women to pursue full equality. First-wave
feminism (much like its counterpart forged in the politics of the New Left) was equally a response to
the gendered politics of abolition itself and to the move ment's tendency to characterize issues of
gender equality and women's freedom as derivative, patronize women's intelligence, and limit their
public participation. This would suggest that democratic movements are by no means simply or
wholly progressive and liberatory, but may also, simultaneously, incorpo rate reactionary
ideals and promote new constraints on citizenship. Indeed, this is Olson's point-to a point. Yet
his failure to appreciate this as fully as he might shapes a vision of democratic politics that is
too singular, and a political imagination that may be too fragile, to engage creatively the
counterdemocratic effects of democratic politics.
Olson’s alternative is vague – does not define prescriptive action
Hartelius 6 – E. Johanna, Assistant Professor Rhetorical Studies at Northern Illinois University, (Review
of The Abolition of White Democracy. By Joel Olson, Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9.4 (2006) 715-718,
Project Muse, MCL)
The book's principal disjunct, however, lies likewise with this agenda. Methodologically, Olson
is an historian and political theorist. Ideologically, he is a Marxist and materialist. His ultimate
intention, remarkably, is not to advocate change within the modes of production that undergird
race relations. Instead, he calls for a revision of America's political thinking, the abolition of
whiteness as a category. How can Olson be "particularly interested in the way in which white
citizenship relates to class relations and the accumulation of capital" while at the same time
emphasizing the reconfiguration of popular democratic imagination (xxvii)? How ought the reader
to reconcile his descriptions of whiteness as access to material resources and as "a particular
conception of democracy" within which alternative conceptions are unimaginable (63)? The
disjunct, in short, is the unestablished link between a fundamentally materialist conviction and an
idealist or constructivist agenda. Since Olson's definition of "political imagination" is left to the
reader's interpretation, a rhetorician might infer that abolition-democracy is a matter of
language. If so, it is no [End Page 717] stretch to concede that changing the way Americans
conceive of democracy opens new possibilities for race relations and participation.
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Whiteness – LatCrit
Narrow paradigms—such as the kritik’s—marginalize sectors of research, making
them invisible to a community
Perea 97– Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,4 describes the properties of paradigms
and their power in structuring scientific re- search and knowledge. While Kuhn develops his
understanding of paradigms in evaluating the development of scientific knowledge, many of
his insights are useful in understanding paradigms and their effects more generally. A paradigm
is a shared set of understandings or prem- ises which permits the definition, elaboration, and
solution of a set of problems defined within the paradigm." A paradigm is an accepted model or
pattern that, "like an accepted judicial decision in the com- mon law.., .is an object for further
articulation and specification under new or more stringent conditions."6 Paradigms exist,
therefore, not just in the sciences but also in law and other disciplines.' Thus, a paradigm is the
set of shared understandings that permits us to distinguish those facts that matter in the
solution of a problem from those facts that do not. As Kuhn writes, [i]n the absence of a
paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possibly pertain to the
development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant. As a result, early factgathering is a far more nearly random activity than the one that subsequent scientific
development makes familiar.8 Paradigms thus define relevancy. In so doing, paradigms control
fact- gathering and investigation. Data-gathering efforts and research are focused on
understanding the facts and circumstances that the relevant paradigm teaches us are important.9
Paradigms are crucial in the development of science and knowl- edge because, by setting
boundaries within which problems can be understood, they permit detailed inquiry into
these problems. In Kuhn's words, a "paradigm forces scientists to investigate some part of
nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable."'0 Indeed, it is this
depth of research that eventually yields anomalies and discontinuities and, ultimately, the
necessity to develop new paradigms. However, as a paradigm becomes the widely accepted
way of thinking and of producing knowledge on a subject, it tends to exclude or ignore
alternative facts or theories that do not fit the expectations produced by the paradigm."
Kuhn uses the concept of "normal science" to describe the elabo- ration of the paradigm and the
solution of problems that the paradigm allows us to perceive.'2 Scientists and researchers spend
almost all of their time engaged in normal science, conducting their research under the rules
prescribed by the paradigm and attempting to solve problems cognizable and derivable from the
paradigm. However, normal science "often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are
necessarily subversive of its basic commitments."" As Kuhn describes, normal sci- ence "seems
an attempt to force nature into the performed and rela- tively inflexible box that the paradigm
supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed
those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all."'4 As normal research progresses in
depth and detail within a paradigm, researchers make un- expected discoveries, yielding
anomalies that the current paradigm does not adequately explain. In time, and in the face
of problems not ade- quately explained by the paradigm, scientists are forced to abandon
the old paradigm and replace it with some new understanding that better explains the
observed anomalies."5 Literature and textbooks play an important role in producing and
reproducing paradigms. Kuhn identifies textbooks and popular litera- ture, which convey
scientific knowledge in a language more accessible to the general public, as authoritative sources
of established paradigms.'6 Textbooks and derivative literature intend to communicate the
particular paradigm or set of paradigms that constitute the current tradition of a science.17
Interestingly, Kuhn observes that textbooks must distort history significantly in order to convey
the current state of a discipline in a lin- ear, coherent way." Textbooks truncate "the scientist's
sense of his discipline's history and then proceed to supply a substitute for what they have
eliminated."'9 In order to do this, textbooks present only a small part of history-the portion of
history that authors can easily pre- sent as contributing to the development and solution of
today's para- digm problems.20 "The result," in Kuhn's words, "is a persistent tendency to make
the history of science look linear or cumulative."21 In other words, textbooks distort history to
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make it appear that the cur- rent paradigm, or current knowledge, is the result of a linear, related
se- ries of discoveries or events in which each subsequent event is causally linked to the prior
events.22 This distortion requires leaving out all of the historical complexity and the
revolutionary questions and ideas on which new scientific discoveries and new paradigms
depend. Kuhn terms this distortion of history "depreciation of historical fact."23
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Whiteness – LatCrit
The kritik’s is entrenched in the black/white paradigm—this marginalizes other
racial groups
Perea 97 – Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
Paradigms of race shape our understanding of race and our defini- tion of racial problems.
The most pervasive and powerful paradigm of race in the United States is the Black/White
binary paradigm. I define this paradigm as the conception that race in America consists,
either ex- clusively or primarily, of only two constituent racial groups, the Black and the
White. Many scholars of race reproduce this paradigm when they write and act as though
only the Black and the White races matter for purposes of discussing race and social policy
with regard to race. The mere recognition that "other people of color" exist, without careful attention to their voices, their histories, and their real presence, is merely a reassertion
of the Black/White paradigm. If one conceives of race and racism as primarily of concern
only to Blacks and Whites, and understands "other people of color" only through some
unclear anal- ogy to the "real" races, this just restates the binary paradigm with a slight
concession to demographics. My assertion is that our shared understanding of race and
racism is essentially limited to this Black/White binary paradigm.27 This paradigm defines,
but also limits, the set of problems that may be recognized in racial discourse. Kuhn's notion of
"normal science," which further articulates the paradigm and seeks to solve the problems
perceivable because of the paradigm, also applies to "normal research" on race. Given the
Black/White paradigm, we would expect to find that much research on race is concerned with
understanding the dynamics of the Black and White races and attempting to solve the problems
between Blacks and Whites. Within the paradigm, the relevant material facts are facts about
Blacks and Whites. In addition, the paradigm dictates that all other racial identities and groups in
the United States are best understood through the Black/White binary paradigm. Only a few
writers even recognize that they use a Black/White paradigm as the frame of reference
through which to un- derstand racial relations.28 Most writers simply assume the
importance and correctness of the paradigm, and leave the reader grasping for whatever
significance descriptions of the Black/White relationship have for other people of color. As I
shall discuss, because the Black/White binary paradigm is so widely accepted, other
racialized groups like Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are often
marginal- ized or ignored altogether. As Kuhn writes, "those that will not fit the box are
often not seen at all."29 Scholarly literature, textbooks, and popular literature on race are
crucial in reifying and transmitting the binary paradigm." In the realm of scholarly
literature, I begin by analyzing Andrew Hacker's famous Two Nations: Black and White,
Separate, Hostile, Unequal. I then study Cornel West's Race Matters. These books, by leading
scholars on race, both illustrate the existence and use of the Black/White binary paradigm. They
show how the paradigm results in an exclusive focus on Blacks and Whites, both from the point
of view of a White writer and a Black writer. The paradigm also leads to the marginalization of
other non-White people, again borne out by both writers. Both Hacker and West exhibit
astonishing indifference with regard to the history of ra- cism against non-Black people of color.
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Whiteness – LatCrit
Claiming blacks and whites are the two prominent groups in racial conflict
characterizes other groups as passive and renders them invisible
Perea 1997 – Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of
Race: The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review
California Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
Hacker's justification for this focus is that "[i]n many respects, other groups find
themselves sitting as spectators, while the two promi- nent players try to work out how or
whether they can coexist with one another."" This justification perpetuates the
marginalization of the al- ready marginalized. Hacker and so many other writers on race
decline to understand that, by focusing only on Blacks and Whites, they both produce and
replicate the belief that there are only "two prominent players," Black and White, in
debates about race. These writers thus render other non-White groups invisible and
implicitly characterize them as passive, voluntary spectators. Such characterization is contrary
to the history of these groups.36
The black/white paradigm implies other non-white Americans don’t experience
violence—silencing their claims to justice
Perea 97 – Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
One can thus discern how the binary paradigm interferes with lib- eration and equality. If
Latinos/as and Asian Americans are presumed to be White (or quasi-White) by both White
writers and Black writers (a presumption not borne out in the lived experience of most
Latinos/as and Asians), then our claims to justice will not be heard nor acknowl- edged.
Whites can ignore our claims to justice, since we are not Black and therefore are not
subject to real racism. And Blacks can ignore our claims, since we are presumed to be
aspiring to and acquiring Whiteness, and therefore we are not subject to real racism.
Latinos/as do not fit the boxes supplied by the paradigm.
The black/white paradigm excludes other minorities from academic studies
Perea 97– Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
One of Kuhn's insights about paradigms is their power to define relevance and so to define
the scope of fact-gathering.'20 One of the most striking results of the Black/White binary
paradigm is that it limits the scope of relevant facts that are deemed important in
research and teaching about this country's racial history. Within the paradigm, the only
facts and histories that matter are those regarding Whites and Blacks. Therefore, virtually
the only stories we ever learn about civil rights are stories about Blacks and Whites struggling
over civil rights for Blacks.
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Whiteness – LatCrit – A2: Spillsover
The black/white paradigm fails to solve other forms of racism, instead it makes it
worse
Perea 97 – Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
As with the previous books on White racism, however, Feagin and Vera make only sporadic
references to unnamed "other people of color." The reader is left to wonder, again, about the
relationship be- tween White racism against African Americans and White racism against
ambiguous "other people of color.""' The entire book is organized around the Black/White
paradigm, thereby reasserting the importance of understanding all race through an examination
of only this relationship. To their credit, and unlike the earlier White Racism books, the
authors are explicit in the use of the Black/White relationship as a para- digm for
understanding other racisms: "[W]e focus centrally on white racism as it targets and
exploits African Americans because that racism is an archetype for other subsequent
patterns of white treatment of people of color.""' Furthermore, the authors argue that
African Americans are appropriately a "central point of reference,"112 because other
racisms cannot be understood without a focus on the Black-White relationship: White-onblack racism is thus a-if not the-crucial paradig- matic case of racism historically and in the
present. Other types of white-on-minority racism are very important, and there is a great need to
eradicate them all. Yet we believe that they cannot be adequately understood until we understand
deeply the char- acter and history of white racism as it has targeted African Americans."3 The
very conscious recognition and use of White-against-Black racism as a paradigm, while a
significant step towards clarity in the in- tellectual tools we use to understand racism, also
has its limitations. Feagin and Vera assert that deeper inquiry into the paradigmatic relationship is a necessary condition for understanding the racism experi- enced by any other
racialized American minority group. They assert, in essence, that normal, paradigmatic research is
the key to solving perva- sive, multiple racisms. The Black/White paradigm, thus asserted, may
become an even more unyielding and impenetrable form of study and discourse than it was
before. All other racial studies must be dependent upon the results of "normal" science. In my
view, Feagin and Vera are wrong in asserting that a deeper understanding of the BlackWhite relationship will necessarily promote understanding of the particularities of other
racisms. I agree with Feagin and Vera that an understanding of White-against-Black racism
may be helpful in understanding the deployment of racism against other non-Whites, for
example in understanding the persistent use and tolerance of segregation against non-White
peoples. However, an exclusive focus on the Black-White relationship, and the concomitant
margin-alization of "other people of color," can operate to prevent understanding of other
racisms and to obscure their particular operation. For example, the attribution of
foreignness to Latinos/as and Asian Americans, or discrimination on the basis of language
or accent, are powerful dynamics as played out against these groups that do not appear to
be as significant in the dynamics of White-against-Black rac- ism.
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Agamben Answers
Whiteness – LatCrit – A2: Spillsover
Solving black/white paradigm isn’t enough to solve other racism
Perea 97– Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
One could defend the Black/White paradigm on the grounds that it represents the efforts
of scholars to study the most virulent form of rac- ism in the United States, White racism
against Blacks, and that study of the most virulent form will naturally encompass less virulent
forms such as those experienced by Latinos/as. The extent of White racism against Blacks,
cruelly manifested in slavery, was unprecedented. Pervasive and continuing racism against
Blacks justifies every effort dedicated to its eradication. There are at least three reasons,
however, why an exclusive focus on Blacks and Whites is not justified. First, it is important to
work to eradi- cate all racism, not just the racism experienced by Blacks. Second, it is
wrong to assume that racism against Latinos/as is simply a less virulent form of the same
racism experienced by Blacks. As Blauner described, racism against Latinos/as has a
different genesis. It may also be differ- ent in kind in ways that are very important. For
example, Blacks may or may not ever experience the language and accent discrimination
faced by many Latinos/as. Finally, our national demographics are changing significantly.
One cannot simply ignore the concerns of an increasingly large and subordinated group of
Latinos/as forever. A society is just only if everyone can participate in it on equal terms.
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Whiteness – LatCrit – A2: Marginalizes Black History
Argument isn’t to ignore black history, rather to broaden it
Perea 97– Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
One might object that I am distorting history by suggesting that slavery and the experience
of Black Americans has not been of central importance in the formation of American
society. I believe this objec- tion misunderstands my argument. There can be no question, I
think, that slavery and the mistreatment of Blacks in the United States were crucial building
blocks of American society.2" The fact that the text of the Constitution protects slavery in so
many places demonstrates the importance of slavery in the foundation of the country.205 The
constitu- tional, statutory and judicial attempts to create more equality for Blacks, imperfect as
these all have been, correspond to the history of mistreat- ment of Blacks. My argument is not
that this history should not be an important focus of racial studies. Rather, my argument
is that the exclusive focus on the development of equality doctrines based solely on the
experience of Blacks, and the exclusive focus of most scholarship on the Black- White
relationship, constitutes a paradigm which obscures and prevents the understanding of
other forms of inequality, those experienced by non-White, non-Black Americans. The
Black/White binary paradigm, by defining only Blacks and Whites as relevant participants in
civil rights discourse and struggle, tends to produce and promote the exclu- sion of other
racialized peoples, including Latinos/as, Asian Americans and Native Americans, from this
crucial discourse which affects us all. This exclusion is both the power and the stricture of the
Black/White binary paradigm. Its power derives from the fact that a limited subject of inquiry
makes possible the study of the Black-White relationship in extraordinary detail and with great
insight. Its stricture, however, is that it has limited severely our understanding of how
White racism operates with particularity against other racialized peoples. Furthermore, the
binary paradigm renders the particular histories of other racialized peoples irrelevant to
an understanding of the only rac- ism-White racism against Blacks-that the paradigm
defines to be im- portant. This perceived irrelevance is why the history of Latinos/as,
Asian Americans, and Native Americans is so frequently missing from the texts that
structure our thinking about race.
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Whiteness – LatCrit – A2: Black Perspective Key
Inclusion solves best—combating racism isn’t a zero sum game – Only our strategy
supplements; theirs supplants
Perea 97– Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
One could object to my conclusions on the grounds that White rac- ism against Blacks has
operated for a much longer time than racism against Latinos/as or Asians, and therefore the
former problem needs to be studied and remedied first. English enslavement of Blacks can be
traced to the early 1600s, well before the nationhood of the United States.20" Encounters between
Anglo and Mexican people did not begin on a large scale until the 1830s, as Whites moved west
into Texas and other parts of the Southwest that, at the time, were parts of Mexico.208 To a
large extent, the Black/White binary paradigm of race has devel- oped precisely because of the
historical priority in time of White racism against Blacks and because of the nature of the
exploitation that slavery caused. The question is whether the earlier deployment of White
racism against Blacks in the United States justifies the binary approach in race
scholarship and thinking today. I cannot see scholarly efforts to understand and remedy
White rac- ism in all its forms as a "zero-sum game," in which efforts to under- stand
other forms of White racism somehow take away from efforts to understand and remedy
White racism against Blacks. My goal is not to take away anything from the study of White
racism against Blacks. Rather, it is to identify some limitations of this study and to add to
these studies the study of White racism against other racialized American groups. Stated
simply, we must study and understand White racism in all its forms. Indeed, here lie some
of the possibilities for coalition and for solving some of the problems that resist solution
under our current scholarship.29
Moving away from the black/white binary doesn’t marginalize other groups
Perea 97– Juan, Professor of Law at the University of Florida (The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race:
The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought," Oct. 5, 1997, 1997 California Law Review California
Law Review, JSTOR, MCL) KJS
Another objection that critics might raise to this work is that I am merely substituting
another, nearly equally oppressive paradigm for the Black/White binary paradigm. In
other words, the critique would be that I am advocating a Black/White/Latino/a paradigm which
would give Latinos/as more visibility but would render even more invisible Asian Americans,
Native Americans, Gypsies, and other racialized groups. This is not the case. I have
demonstrated that the Black/White binary paradigm renders invisible and irrelevant the
history of every group other than Whites and Blacks. The rest of us become part of the
undifferentiated mass of "minorities" or "people of color." While I haveused MexicanAmerican legal history to demonstrate the inadequacy of the Black/White paradigm, and I
have written from my point of view as a Latino scholar, I have used this history to illustrate
how much is lost in the service of normal science and research on race, and how the introduction of omitted history can present a radically different picture of what we are taught
to believe about the story of struggles for equality. I know that just as much is lost
regarding Asian-American and Native- American legal history. In like manner, scholars
must also present this omitted history prominently as part of the development of constitutional
law and other legal subjects.21 My argument is really an argument against the use of paradigms
of race, against orthodox attempts to un- derstand the experiences of every racialized group by
analogy to Blacks, and for the development of particularized understanding of the histories of
each and every racialized group.
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***Nietzsche Answers***
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Nietzsche – Perm (1/3)
Taking action is necessary to celebrate life – we have to appreciate the possibilities
for interacting with and thinking about the world in order to love it
May 5 (Todd, Prof. at Clemenson U. “To change the world, to celebrate life,” Philosophy & Social
Criticism 2005 Vol 31 No. 5–6 p. 517–531) MV
There are many ways to conceive the bond between world-changing and life-celebrating. Let
me isolate two: one that runs from Merleau-Ponty to Foucault, from the body’s chiasmic relation with the world to the politics of its practices;
and the other one running back in the opposite direction. The ontology Merleau-Ponty offers in his late work is one of wonder. Abandoning the
sterile philosophical debates about the relation of mind and body, subject and object, about the relation of reason to that which is not reason, or
No
longer are we to be thought the self-enclosed creatures of the philosophical tradition. We are
now in touch with the world, because we are of it. Art, for example, does not appeal solely to our minds; its beauty is
the problem of other minds, his ontology forges a unity of body and world that puts us in immediate contact with all of its aspects.
not merely a matter of the convergence of our fac- ulties. We are moved by art, often literally moved, because our bodies and the work of art
share the same world. As Merleau-Ponty says, ‘I would be at great pains to say where is the painting I am looking at. For I do not look at it as I
do a thing; I do not fix it in its place. My gaze wanders in it as in the halos of Being. It is more accurate to say that I see according to it, or with
it, than that I see it.’7 It is only because my body is a fold of this world that art can affect me so. But this affection is also a vulnerability. As my
look can happen according to a work of art, so it can happen according to a social practice. And even more so in proportion as that social
practice and its effects are suffused through the world in which I carry on my life, the world my body navigates throughout the day, every day.
I do not have a chance to look according to a painting by Cezanne very often; but I do encounter the effects of normalization as it has filtered
through the practices of my employment, of my students’ upbringing, and of my family’s expectations of themselves and one another. The
vulnerability of the body, then, is at once its exposure to beauty and its opening to what is intolerable. We might also see things from the other
end, starting from politics and ending at the body. I take it that this is what Foucault suggests when he talks about bodies and pleasures at the
If we are a product of our practices and the conception of
ourselves and the world that those practices have fostered, so to change our practices is to
experiment in new possibilities both for living and, inseparably, for conceiving the world. To
end of the first volume of the History of Sexuality.
experiment in sexu- ality is not to see where the desire that lies at the core of our being may lead us; that is simply the continuation of our
oppression by other means. Rather, it is to construct practices where what is at issue is no longer desire but something else, something that
might go by the name of bodies and pleasures. In doing so, we not only act differently, we think differently, both about ourselves and about the
world those selves are inseparable from. And because these experiments are practices of our bodies, and because our bodies are encrusted in the
world, these experiments become not merely acts of political resistance but new folds in the body/ world nexus. To
construct new
practices is to appeal to aspects or possibilities of the world that have been previously closed to
us. It is to offer novel, and perhaps more tolerable, engagements in the chiasm of body and world. Thus we might say of politics what
Merleau-Ponty has said of painting, that we see according to it. Here, I take it, is where the idea of freedom in Foucault lies. For Foucault,
freedom is not a metaphysical condition. It does not lie in the nature of being human, nor is it a
warping, an atomic swerve, in the web of causal relations in which we find ourselves. To seek our
freedom in a space apart from our encrustation in the world is not so much to liberate
ourselves from its influence as to build our own private prison. Foucault once said: There’s an optimism that
consists in saying that things couldn’t be better. My optimism would consist rather in saying that so many things can be
changed, fragile as they are, bound up more with circumstances than with necessities, more arbitrary than self-evident, more a matter of
complex, but temporary, historical circumstances than with inevitable anthropological constraints . . .8 That is where to discover
our freedom. And what happens from there? From the meetings, from the rallies, from the petitions and the teach-ins? What happens
next? There is, after all, always a next. If you win this time – end aid to the contras, divest from apartheid South Africa, force debt-forgiveness
by techno- logically advanced countries – there is always more to do. There is the de-unionization of workers, there are gay rights, there is
Burma, there are the Palestinians, the Tibetans. There will always be Tibetans, even if they aren’t in Tibet, even if they aren’t Asian. But is that
the only question: Next? Or is that just the question we focus on? What’s the next move in this campaign, what’s the next campaign? Isn’t there
engaging in political organizing is a practice, or a group of practices. It
contributes to making you who you are. It’s where the power is, and where your life is, and where
more going on than that? After all,
the intersection of your life and those of others (many of whom you will never meet, even if it’s for their sake that you’re involved) and the
This moment when you are seeking to change the world, whether by
making a suggestion in a meeting or singing at a rally or marching in silence or asking for a
signature on a petition, is not a moment in which you don’t exist. It’s not a moment of yours
that you sacrifice for others so that it no longer belongs to you. It remains a moment of your life, sedimenting in you to make
buildings and streets of your town is.
you what you will become, emerging out of a past that is yours as well. What will you make of it, this moment? How will you be with others,
those others around you who also do not cease to exist when they begin to organize or to protest or to resist? The illusion is to think that this
You’ve made a decision to participate in world-changing. Will that be all there is
to it? Will it seem to you a simple sacrifice, for this small period of time, of who you are for the sake of others? Are you, for
this moment, a political ascetic? Asceticism like that is dangerous.
has nothing to do with you.
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Nietzsche – Perm (2/3)
Their conception of freedom is life-annihilating – It distances us from the world and
retreats into complete autonomy – world changing accepts our contingencies in our
relatedness to others – We are innately political
May 5 (Todd, Prof. at Clemenson U. “To change the world, to celebrate life,” Philosophy & Social
Criticism 2005 Vol 31 No. 5–6 p. 517–531) MV
Freedom lies not in our distance from the world but in the historically fragile and contingent ways we are
folded into it, just as we ourselves are folds of it. If we take Merleau-Ponty’s Being not as a rigid foun- dation or a truth
behind appearances but as the historical folding and refolding of a univocity, then our freedom lies in the possibility of other
foldings. Merleau-Ponty is not insensitive to this point. His elusive concept of the invisible seems to gesture in this direction.
Of painting, he writes: the proper essence of the visible is to have a layer of invisibility in the strict sense, which it makes
present as a certain absence . . . There is that which reaches the eye directly, the frontal properties of the visible; but there is
also that which reaches it from below . . . and that which reaches it from above . . . where it no longer participates in the
heaviness of origins but in free accomplishments.9 Elsewhere, in The Visible and the Invisible, he says: if . . . the surface of
the visible, is doubled up over its whole extension with an invisible reserve; and if, finally, in our flesh as the flesh of things,
the actual, empirical, ontic visible, by a sort of folding back, invagination, or padding, exhibits a visibility, a possibility that is
not the shadow of the actual but its principle . . . an interior horizon and an exterior horizon between which the actual visible
is a partitioning and which, nonetheless, open indefinitely only upon other visibles . . .10 What are we to make of these
references? We can, to be sure, see the hand of Heidegger in them. But we may also, and for present purposes more
relevantly, see an intersection with Foucault’s work on freedom. There is an ontology of freedom at work here,
one that situates freedom not in the private reserve of an individual but in the unfinished
character of any historical situation. There is more to our historical juncture, as there is to a
painting, than appears to us on the surface of its visibility. The trick is to recognize this, and to take
advantage of it, not only with our thoughts but with our lives. And that is why, in the end, there
can be no such thing as a sad revolutionary. To seek to change the world is to offer a new form of
life-celebration. It is to articulate a fresh way of being, which is at once a way of seeing, thinking, acting, and being
acted upon. It is to fold Being once again upon itself, this time at a new point, to see what that might yield. There is, as Foucault often reminds
us, no guarantee that this fold will not itself turn out to contain the intolerable. In a complex world with which we are inescapably entwined, a
world we cannot view from above or outside, there is no certainty about the results of our experiments. Our politics are constructed from the
same vulnerability that is the stuff of our art and our daily practices. But to
refuse to experiment is to resign oneself to
the intolerable; it is to abandon both the struggle to change the world and the opportunity to
celebrate living within it. And to seek one aspect without the other – life-celebration without
world-changing, world-changing without life-celebration – is to refuse to acknowledge the
chiasm of body and world that is the well- spring of both. If we are to celebrate our lives, if we are to change our
world, then perhaps the best place to begin to think is our bodies, which are the openings to celebration and to change, and perhaps the point at
which the war within us that I spoke of earlier can be both waged and resolved. That is the fragile beauty that, in their different ways, both
Merleau- Ponty and Foucault have placed before us. The question before us is whether, in our lives and in our politics, we can be worthy of it.
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Perm (2/3)
We can embrace the world the way it is at the same time as we attempt to change it
– attempting to improve life is a form of celebrating other facets of our own Being
May 5 (Todd, Prof. at Clemenson U. “To change the world, to celebrate life,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 2005 Vol 31 No. 5–6
p. 517–531) MV
I can offer only a suggestion of an answer here today. It is a suggestion that brings together some thoughts from the late
writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with those of Foucault, in order to sketch not even a framework for thought, but the mere
outlines of a framework. It is not a framework that would seek to find the unconscious of each in the writings of the other.
Neither thinker finishes or accomplishes the other. (Often, for example regarding methodology, they do not even agree.)
Rather, it is a framework that requires both of them, from their very different angles, in order to be able to think it. My goal
in constructing the outlines of this framework is largely philosophical. That is to say, the suggestion I would like to
make here is not one for resolving for each of us the struggle of life-celebration and worldchanging, but of offering a way to conceive ourselves that allows us to embrace both sides of this
battle at the same time. Given the thinkers I have chosen as reference points, it will be no surprise when I say that that conception runs
through the body. Let me start with Merleau-Ponty. In his last writings, particularly in The Visible and the Invisible, he offers
a conception of the body that is neither at odds nor even entangled with the world, but is of the very world itself. His concept
of the flesh introduces a point of contact that is also a point of undifferentiation. The flesh, Merleau-Ponty writes, ‘is the
coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangi ble upon the touching body, which is attested in particular when
the body sees itself, touches itself seeing and touching the things, such that, as tangible it descends among them’.2 We must
recall this economy of the flesh before we turn to Foucault. There is, for Merleau-Ponty, a single Being. Our
world is of that Being, and we are of our world. We are not something that confronts the
world from outside, but are born into it and do not leave it. This does not mean that we cannot remove
ourselves from the immediacy of its grasp. What it means is that to remove ourselves from that immedi- acy is neither the
breaking of a bond nor the discovery of an original dichotomy or dualism. What is remarkable about human
beings is pre- cisely our capacity to confront the world, to reflect upon it, understand it, and
change it, while still being of a piece with it. To grasp this remarkable character, it is perhaps worth recalling
Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the fold.
The world is not composed of different parts; there is no transcendent, whether of God or of subjec- tivity. The world is one.
As Deleuze sometimes says, being is univocal. This oneness is not, however, inert or inanimate. Among other things , it
can fold over on itself, creating spaces that are at once insides and outsides, at once different
from and continuous with one another. The flesh is a fold of Being in this sense. It is of the world,
and yet encounters it as if from a perceptual or cognitive distance. It is a visi- bility that sees, a tangible that touches, an audible that
hears. Merleau- Ponty writes: There is vision, touch when a certain visible, a certain tangible, turns back upon the whole of the
visible, the whole of the tangible, of which it is a part, or when suddenly it finds itself surrounded by them, or when between it and
them, and through their commerce, is formed a Visibility, a Tangible in itself, which belong properly neither to the body qua fact nor
to the world qua fact . . . and which therefore form a couple, a couple more real than either of them.
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Perm – Solvency
Liberal institutions are absolutely necessary to crafting the new values of the higher
types – democracy allows for the highest types to take power and their political
influence can only be negative (positive?).
Egyed 8 (Béla, Professor of Philosophy at Carleton University, Ottawa. Eruo-Zine, “Nietzsche's antidemocratic liberalism” April 8 2008. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-04-08-egyed-en.html AD
7/7/09) JM
Nietzsche's problem is that by rejecting traditional morality he has "wiped away" those horizons that
have hitherto served to stabilize and give meaning to social existence. Since absolute and
permanent values are no longer available to him, he needs to give an account of how valuation
– something he deems to be essential for human existence – is still possible. It is at this point that
Nietzsche's doctrine of Will to Power, his ontology of agency, becomes significant. According to him human
subject are not absolutely stable unities. They are more or less stable organizations of heterogeneous
multiplicities: structures of dominance. These fragile unities are complexes of competing drives (passions,
emotions, affects). Under the regency of one of these drives: We gain the correct idea of the nature of
subject-unity, namely as regents at the head of a community (not as "souls" or "life forces"), also of the dependence
of these regents upon the ruled and of an order of rank and division of labour as the
conditions that make possible the whole and its parts. In the same way, how living unities continually arise
and die and how the "subject" is not eternal; in the same way, that the struggle expresses itself in obeying and commanding,
and that the fluctuating assessments of the limits of power is part of life. (WP 492) On the basis this conception of
subjectivity, Nietzsche envisions three different human types: first, those in whom the struggle among the drives is so intense
that even a fragile unity cannot result from them; second, those whose dominant drive is so strong that they remain in a
constant defensive struggle against a hostile Other in order to preserve it; finally, those who are capable of organizing the
greatest number of different drives under the greatest possible unity. "The highest man, Nietzsche says, would
have the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured"
(WP 966). Or again: "I believe that it is precisely through the presence of opposites and feelings they
occasion that the great man, the bow with the greatest tension, develops" (WP 967). It is worth
repeating: Nietzsche is an elitist. He holds, in my opinion, the following paradoxical complex of views: Liberal
democratic institutions are here to stay. The great danger is that the democratization of Europe leads to the debasing of the
human spirit. The material survival of humanity requires some measure of stability that can only be provided by a permanent
working force. For its spiritual survival, humanity needs values: spiritual horizons. Since God is
dead, there are no absolute values, therefore, new spiritual horizons, new creators, are needed,
and these will be legislators/diagnosticians of human drives. These higher types need to understand, but
keep their distance from, the herd and its values. Societies, in spite of their democratic structure, will
always require, and will always have, extra-political aristocratic features. The higher types
will lead by example only; their political role can only be negative. Their task will be to subvert outworn
human values, propose new ones, all along insisting that human existence is essentially tragic. By so doing, they will also,
indirectly, enhance the power of all individuals to overcome themselves. I feel fairly confident about all but the last sentence
of the previous paragraph, and I am also fairly confident that Detwiler too would agree with most of it. But what evidence is
there that Nietzsche would have accepted both my non-interventionist account of his politics, as well as my suggestion that in
spite of their pathos of distance higher types could still be educators of the "herd"? The picture that one can easily get from
his "The Greek State" and, indeed, some of his later statements, is that he was only interested in educating higher types –
cultivating genius. At times he does suggest that, "a good and healthy aristocracy ... [should accept] with a good conscience
the sacrifice of untold human beings who for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to
instruments" (BGE 258, p.202) (also WP 954). Comments like these are disturbing, and they definitely go against any
attempt to construe Nietzsche as "moderate aristocrat" and a liberal. One has only a few options here. One could dismiss
comments like this as the ranting of a desperate, hardly sane, person. Or, one could try, as Kaufmann does, to take the sting
out of such passages by reading them strictly metaphorically. More to the point, however, one could ask: how can comments
like these be reconciled with Nietzsche's view that "the destiny of humanity depends upon the attainment of its highest type"
(WP 987)? Surely, if the higher types are to have any relevance for the destiny of humanity they
cannot be completely irrelevant to it. Even if we admit that they need to keep their distance,
and admit, also, that they cannot enter into communication with the herd on its terms; if the
herd learns nothing from them, even indirectly, what is their social use? What is art, what is
culture, worth, if it does not contribute to the perfection of human nature? To deny them that role
would go against even what Nietzsche says in BT.
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Perm – Solvency
Political action isn’t nihilism – their link arguments are contrived and don’t assume
a creative path of politics
Bourke 8 (James, Graduate Student Department of Political Science Duke University,
"Nietzsche\Connolly: Problems of a Nietzschean Democracy,"
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/5/7/7/pages265777/p265777-1.php,
AD: 7/8/09) jl
There are at least two ways of going about a critique of Connolly’s appropriation of Nietzsche. One
would be largely hermeneutic, and might involve an attempt to show that Nietzsche’s politics are
aristocratic and inegalitarian in such a way that expropriating whatever we might like from
this picture destroys the coherence of calling it a “Nietzschean” view in the first place. To do
this successfully one would not merely have to point out some of the many places where Nietzsche
either attacks democracy or supports a radical aristocratic political vision. 3 One would have to go
further by showing the ways in which Nietzsche’s political views “hang together” in an overall
coherent picture, extraction from which for non-Nietzschean purposes makes a mess of the whole.
One might add to this the claim that Nietzsche’s politics are embedded in an overall
metaphysic (though we might want to qualify the term “metaphysic” with a view to Nietzsche’s
perspectivism and epistemological skepticism) of hierarchy and power. I will not attempt such a
project here. First, even if, as I think is correct, Nietzsche presents a more or less coherent, though
certainly not systematic, view by the time of his late works, it is not clear to me that one could
successfully explain away all of the ambiguities and resistances that such a rich and protean thinker
as Nietzsche consistently offers up. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, it is not clear what
would be gained from such an effort by way of critical leverage over Connolly. Though this
interpretation might advance the aim of getting Nietzsche “right,” if such a thing is possible,
it is not clear that Connolly’s project is thereby undermined. For couldn’t Connolly insist that
his ideas make sense on their own apart from the accuracy of his interpretations? As Connolly
has said in response to this kind of critic, these are questions for the “academic police” 4 to
resolve, while those using Nietzsche creatively and in ways relevant to the present can consider
their enterprise separate from the work of scholarly precision and accuracy. Getting
Nietzsche right is less important to Connolly than is uncovering ways in which Nietzsche and
others disclose political and ethical potentialities that can support the vibrancy of democracy.
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Liberal Institutions
Liberal institutions allow the higher type to establish a base of authority among the
lower type.
Egyed 8 (Béla, Professor of Philosophy at Carleton University, Ottawa. Eruo-Zine, “Nietzsche's antidemocratic liberalism” April 8 2008. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-04-08-egyed-en.html AD
7/7/09) JM
By way of an answer, I offer the following hypothesis: While Nietzsche has no doubt that there will always be a significant
distinction between higher and lower types – between those who create new visions of existence freely, and those who
produce the requirements of material existence under some forms of moral and material constraints, given his ontology of
agency, the distinction must remain relatively open. Individualism is a virtue of those who exist under some
form of constraint; their will to power – reminding us of the lion's in Zarathustra's "Prologue" – is sufficient
only to get free from an overpowering domination by society. Their struggle is not that of the
higher types, although the living examples and the visions created by the higher types might
serve them in their struggle. And, individuals struggling for their liberation might, at the end of those struggles, with
themselves, as well as with their external "constraints", become persons. "Persons", as I understand them, will not be only
higher types. Nevertheless, they will be like the third type I described earlier. They will be open to experimentation with
ways of being, tolerating diversity, and imposing on the tensions within themselves, and those surrounding them, the
maximum order compatible with that diversity. The question is: If what I say represents Nietzsche's position, why did he not
make it more explicit? Part of the answer, surely, must be Nietzsche's extreme suspicion of the masses as carriers of the
pathogen of Christian morality. In any commerce with them, the higher types would be in danger of infection. For that reason
they must keep their distance. They could not, as Connolly proposes, be engaged in "democratic politics". Democratic
politics might indeed be liberating for individuals, or groups of individuals, negotiating about divergent "hegemonic"
interests, but such negotiations are fraught with great danger for the higher types. For that reason they must avoid them. Still,
if my analysis here is correct, it does not follow from it that the higher types are politically irrelevant.
They could, as I will show in a moment, help individuals in their becoming-persons – in
achieving, as Connolly would say, "contingent identities". Also, they could help in the drawing
and re-drawing of socio-political horizons providing a limited, fragile place within which a
true political militancy could evolve. Still, someone who takes Detwiler's position might object to this particular
line of argument. They might say that most of the evidence I have marshalled in support of my claim that Nietzsche's elitism
is not essentialist, comes from the middle period and, therefore, it does not have much weight. My reply to that possible
objection would be that the onus is on those who deny the relevance of the middle period wrings in assessing Nietzsche's
political views, to explain how it is that there is such a remarkable congruence between passages coming from it and from the
late period. But, as I said earlier the onus is also on me to offer an explanation for those passages that have nourished the
opinion that Nietzsche advocates the political oppression and exploitation of the "masses", by the higher types. Perhaps the
most embarrassing passages for my interpretation are the following: Put in the crudest form: how could one sacrifice the
development of mankind to help a higher species than man to come into existence? (WP 859) A declaration of war on the
masses by higher men is needed! (WP 861) The dwarfing of man must for a long time count as the only
goal; because a broad foundation has first to be created so that a stronger species of man can
stand upon it. (WP 890) These passages, however, need to be read in the context of others where
Nietzsche speaks of: a) the higher type's need for a "base" upon which it can perform its task
(WP 901); and b) where he speaks of the need to protect the strong against the weak (WP 684-5, 8634). These passages imply that for Nietzsche the "lower types" will be essential not only in the production/reproduction of the
means of material survival, but are also essential as the bearers of a relatively stable moral base serving as a context in which
the creation of new visions of human existence will become possible. Nietzsche's call for the pathos of distance has a very
specific purpose. It is to prevent that: "The values of the weak prevail because the strong have taken them over as devices of
leadership" (WP 863). The danger for the higher types is that they may be seduced by herd morality. But that does not mean
that they can ignore it. In fact, their main role is, having recognized its practical necessity, to prevent it from becoming
ossified, and to revitalize it. So, I would maintain that, in spite of some of the troubling statements he makes, it would be
rash to exclude the possibility that Nietzsche allowed for the open ended-ness of, not only of
higher type subjectivity, but also of a lower type one. And, indeed this is as it should be.
Otherwise he would be guilty of precisely that type of essentialism that he wishes to avoid.
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Liberal Institutions
Liberal institutions, once attained, immediately give up their liberalism when
aristrocracy takes charge.
Egyed 8 (Béla, Professor of Philosophy at Carleton University, Ottawa. Eruo-Zine, “Nietzsche's antidemocratic liberalism” April 8 2008. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-04-08-egyed-en.html AD
7/7/09) JM
Lest I be accused of being too abstract, I offer the following clarification of my last point:
Nietzsche's doctrine of Will to Power has the most immediate application on the personal or
the micro-political level. It is there that encounters involve the clash, or convergence, of feeling
passions, and where drives are alternately dominating or dominated. It has broader political
implication in cases of specific struggles against intolerable conditions, or in cases where
specific passions or drives are mobilized to achieve some desired goal. It invites suspicion
about totalizing party politics, and it is positively hostile to forms of identity politics that confine
persons within narrow limits. A Nietzsche inspired politics would focus on local, punctual, issues.
It would encourage not so much a critique of the most obvious and loudest political events or issues,
but a diagnosis of the imperceptible forces and tendencies driving them. It might, in this way,
prepare the conditions for a truly radical militancy, and it might unleash a truly effective
subversion of entrenched values, be they that of "the people" or, indeed, that of the "higher
types" themselves. This would, in my view, capture the true spirit of liberalism, one that
advocates a true autonomy, one that welcomes contest, and one that is more interested in the
process of liberation than in its achievements. Let me give the last word to Nietzsche: Liberal
institutions immediately cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: subsequently there is
nothing more harmful to freedom than liberal institutions [...] As long as they are still being
fought for, these same institutions produce quite different effects; they then in fact promote
freedom mightily. (Twilight of the Idols 38, p.92)
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Democracy
Nietzsche acknowledged that democracy is a prerequisite to the alt
Vivian 7 (Bradford Communication and Rhetorical Studies Syracuse U. “Freedom, Naming, Nobility: The Convergence of
Rhetorical and Political Theory in Nietzsche's Philosophy” Philosophy and Rhetoric, Volume 40, Number 4, Muse)
In The Wanderer and His Shadow, Nietzsche adopts a more sympathetic stance toward
democracy compared to his early and late writings on the subject. At this time, he perceives in
the democratic pretensions of his age a serviceable political means to the desired
moral goal of self-overcoming. Nietzsche posits that democracy, despite its apparently
decadent entailments, represents a critical stage rather than a goal unto itself in humanity’s
eventual achievement of truly noble moral and political development: It is
possible that posterity will one day laugh at this anxiety of ours and regard the
democratic work of a succession of generations somewhat as we regard the
building of stone
dams and protective walls—as an activity that necessarily gets
a lot of dust on clothes and faces
and no doubt also unavoidably makes the work-ers a little purblind and stupid; but who would
wish such a work undone on that account! The democratization of Europe is, it seems, a
link in the chain of those
tremendous prophylactic measures which are the conception of modern
times and
through which we separate ourselves from the Middle Ages. Only now is it the age
of cyclopean building! We finally secure the foundations, so that the whole future can
safely build upon them! We make it henceforth impossible for the fruitful fields of
culture again to be destroyed overnight by wild and senseless torrents! We erect
stone dams and protective walls against barbarians, against pestilences, against physical and
spiritual enslavement! (WS 275) Nietzsche’s instinctive aversion to democracy remains here,
albeit in muted form. Democracy consists in disruptive, crude, and polluting activity, akin to the
construction of “stone dams and protective walls.” Yet humanity will reap great rewards in
the future from protections afforded by such edifices; they rep- resent a stable and
enduring instrument of progress, a “prophylactic” measure, that separates modernity
from Christianity’s unparalleled weakening of the will during the “Middle Ages.”
Present-day democracy will prove expedient as a means of securing nobler, nondemocratic ideals vital to moral improvement or self-overcoming, thereby
rendering impossible the quick destruction of the “fruitful fields of culture” as such.
Democracy is thus commendable as a means to far nobler ends, not as a political telos
in and of itself. Such means emerge principally through the fortunate accident that select
individuals in democratic culture endeavor to tran- scend the life of the herd,
question the rhetoric of accepted truths, and thereby train themselves to attain a
superior form of freedom. Nietzsche concedes that, although “Europe’s democratization”
renders individuals “prepared for slavery in the most subtle sense,” nevertheless “the strong person
will need, in particular and exceptional cases, to get stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever
been” (BGE 242). Rare individuals, in combating the false consciousness and
decadence they imbibe as members of liberal democratic culture, achieve a mastery
over their base desires for petty illusions, dominating them to such an extent that
they illuminate the path to a new and morally ennobling political order. Such is
Nietzsche’s meaning when he asks, “And would it not be a kind of goal, redemption, and
justification for the democratic movement itself if someone arrived who could make use of it . . .
who would stand upon it, maintain themselves by it, and elevate themselves through it?” (WP 954).
This serendipi- tous coincidence demonstrates that democracy can equip one to achieve a
vital measure of political independence, a mastery over oneself, as opposed to mere
social individualism (Ansell-Pearson 1994, 87).
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Democracy
Policy making can be utilized with the alternative – It’s key to generating
confrontation and struggle
Bourke 8 (James, Graduate Student Department of Political Science Duke University, "Nietzsche\Connolly: Problems of a
Nietzschean Democracy," http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/5/7/7/pages265777/p265777-1.php,
AD: 7/8/09) jl
We have seen the ways in which the logic of identity\difference stands at the core of Connolly’s
thought as well as the ways in which Connolly defines this logic using Nietzsche’s ideas. The
second layer of Nietzschean indebtedness I identified above concerns Connolly’s preferred strategy
for mitigating the pressures of identity that lead to the cruelties labeled as the second problem of
evil. This strategy is one of agonistic contestation among identity groups. Connolly clearly
defines agonism as a strategy of mitigating the second problem of evil. “Is there, then, a practice
of democracy … that responds to the problematic relationship between identity and
difference? I suspect there is … Let me call this political imaginary ‘agonistic democracy,’ a
practice that affirms the indispensability of identity to life, disturbs the dogmatization of
identity, and folds care for the protean diversity of human life into the strife of
identity\difference.” 8 Agonism consists in the active struggle between identity groups over the
conditions of identity\difference. The terms of agonistic confrontation are set by the claims
identity groups make to otherize the groups against which they struggle and the counterarguments
deployed in the effort to resist these moves. Connolly focuses his theoretical energy on the kinds of
arguments and contestations likely to upset or disturb the hegemonic positions of dominant identity
groups. Agonism is primarily developed in his thought as a strategy for the marginalized to be used
in defusing the power of already entrenched groups. Several Nietzschean debts and strategies are
evident in Connolly’s privileging of agonistic contests. On the most basic level, democratic
agonism reflects Nietzsche’s valorization of struggle as the means to achieving greatness.
Without accepting a crude, brutalist interpretation of will to power, we can identity in
Nietzsche a strong theme of the celebration of confrontation, struggle, and war. There are
several dimensions to this theme. First of all, Nietzsche sees in struggle a fundamental drive of
life itself. Life is will to power for Nietzsche, and though this power may be spiritual and nonviolent, it must be admitted that domination and hierarchy form a part of the Nietzschean
thematic here. Connolly does not accept an interpretation of Nietzsche as the philosopher of world
mastery, as he makes clear in the following passage: Let me say something, though, about … the
reading of Nietzsche as the consummate philosopher of world mastery. While such a reading
is possible, it is not the single or necessary reading to be drawn from a thinker as protean as
Nietzsche. It tends to be given by those who endorse strong transcendental or teleological
perspectives. They presume that any ethic of care and self-limitation must flow form a
teleotranscendental perspective, and that since Nietzsche noisily repudiates such a perspective, the
coiner of the phrase “will to power” must endorse a ruthless philosophy in which a few exercise
mastery over other humans and nature. 9 However, Connolly smuggles in certain Nietzschean
attitudes toward the value of struggle. This is evident in his selection of a passage from “Homer’s
Contest” for the epigraph of Identity\Difference. “And not only Aristotle but the whole of Greek
antiquity thinks differently from us about hatred and envy, and judges with Hesiod; who in one
place calls one discord evil—namely the one that leads men into hostile fights of annihilation
against one another—while praising another discord as good—the one that, as jealousy, hatred and
envy, spurs men to activity; not to the activity of fights of annihilation but to the activity of fights
which are contests.” 10 Confrontation and struggle are not merely, for Connolly, features of life
and politics; rather, they are generative sources of potentiality.
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Democracy
Democracy is compatible with Nietzschean ethics – it promotes competition
Schrift 99 (The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1999) Vol. XXXVZZ, Supplement, Nietzsche For
Democracy: Response To Charles Scott Alan D.Schrift, rofessor Department of Philosophy GrinnelI
College)
In one of his earliest pieces, the unpublished “Homers Wettkampf,” Nietzsche suggests that the
Greeks knew that competition is vital to the continued well-being of the state.8 In fact, the
Greek educational system was designed to cultivate respect for the agon,and, in contrast to
modernity’s desire for an exclusive position of absolute dominance, Nietzsche sees in the Greeks
the recognition that an ongoing contest of powers is necessary for cultural advancement. An
absolute victory within the agon would thus mark the death of the agon,and Nietzsche
acknowledges that in order to preserve freedom from dominance, one must be committed to
maintaining the institution of the agon as a shared public space for open competition. Without that
healthy and respectful competition, it was his opinion that Greek culture could only deteriorate, as evidenced by the declines of Athens and
Sparta following their respective rises to unrivaled cultural hegemony. What Nietzsche’s reading of the Greek agon shows us, and what I think
Nietzsche’s critiques of nationalism and the metaphysical assumptions underlying rigid identity politics should show us as well, is that not only
is a politics of difference just; it is also good. The merits of such an agonal politics have been explored recently by several political theorists.
for example, has made the “permanence of conflict and antagonism” a central
feature in her articulation of a “radical and plural democracy.”Rather than erasing differences
through the postulation of some imagined consensus yet to be achieved, Mouffe argues that
pluralism is necessary for democracy, and dissensus-conflict and contestation, diversity and
disagree- ment is a necessary condition of pluralism. Working from a more explicitly
Nietzschean framework, William E. Connolly also focuses on Nietzsche’s appeal to the
contestatory nature of the agon while arguing for a reinvigorated democracy, understood not in
terms of the drive for consensus but as a dynamic social space in which agonistic respect is folded
into “the ambiguities, conflicts and interdependencies that constitute social relations.”1° Connolly
makes agonism central to democratic practice as he takes the impossibility of arriving at a final
and fixed identity-whethe social or individual-as the basis for cultivating the “agonistic respect”
necessary for democracy. For Connolly, Nietzsche’s agonal dynamism operates both
interpersonally and intrapersonally as Nietzsche’s account of the multiple self--of the self as a
struggle between competing drives and impulses-can likewise serve as a model for a dynamic
and pluralistic polity. To those for whom the model executors of Nietzsche’s “grand politics” were
Hitler or Mussolini, Connolly’s or Mouffe’s democratic agonism will sound very un-Nietzschean.
But is it really so un-Nietzschean? For it is the same sensibility that admired the Greek agon
which despairs over the Christian dogmatic tendency to seek the elimination of difference
because it has always and only understood difference as opposition. Following the famous
opening section of milight’s “Morality as Anti-Nature,” in which Nietzsche notes that the only way
that the Church, and morality more generally, knows how to combat the passions is through their
extermination, there comes this less famous statement of Nietzsche’s alter- native: The Church has
at all times desired the destruction of its enemies: we, we immoralists and anti-Christians, see that it is to our
Chantal Mouffe,
advantage that the Church exists.... In politics, too, enmity has become much more spiritual-much more prudent, much more thoughtful, much
more forbearing.... We adopt the same attitude toward the “enemy within”;there too we have spiritualized enmity, there too we have grasped its
value. One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions;one remains young only on condition the soul does not relax, does not long
Nietzsche continued to appeal to the
idea that competition and contestation the agon isnecessary for the continued well- being of
the individual and the community. While Nietzsche did not choose to link the agon with
democracy, his oversight should not keep us from acknowledging that it is precisely
totalitarianism that requires the elimination of competition and contestation in the
political sphere. In fact, Nietzsche acknowledges this very point in The Wanderer and his Shadow (289), where he noted that
for peace. (TI “Morality”3) Thus, at the end of his productive life, as at the beginning,
democratic institutions serve to combat that “ancient pestilence, lust for tyranny.” And, contrary to the Right’s tendency to desire an identity or
unanimity that presumes the elimination of their antagonists, Nietzsche never tires of invoking the desirability of a “worthy enemy” whose
enduring presence is required for the agon to continue and for each of the agonal partners to proceed along the path of self-overcoming.“ To
conclude, then, it may not be the case that philosophers and artists only make mischief when they turn specifically to social and political
questions. And turning to the political may not mean that we should always turn away from Nietzsche for there are grounds to look to
Nietzsche as we explore the possibilities for democratic politics within a differential and agonistic public space. Turn not to the Nietzsche who
Charles Scott cautions us against, the Nietzsche drawn to hero construction or the Nietzsche who measures the worth of a culture in terms of its
highest exemplars, but instead, to the Nietzsche who criticizes identity and nationalism, who rejects dogmatism and affirms pluralism, to the
Nietzsche who, in spite of himself, affirms difference, for this Nietzsche can be made to speak for a vigorous, ongoing, contestatory agon that,
in the words of William Connolly, can promote the “agonistic respect amidst a world of dissonant interdependencies [that] is crucial to the
fabric of democratic politics.”12
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Agamben Answers
Nietzsche – Link Turn – Democracy
Efforts to promote a democracy consisting of active and engaged citizens is
consistent with Nietzschean ethics
Owen 2 (David, “Equality, Democracy, And Self-respect:
Reflections On Nietzsche's Agonal Perfectionism”, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 24 (2002) 127-128,
Project Muse) MV
The implication of this argument is that modern democracy can avoid the pitfalls that Nietzsche
identifies in "the democratic movement of our times" to the extent that it cultivates an agonal
political culture in which citizens strive to develop their capacities for self-rule in competition
with one another, a culture that honors exemplary democratic citizens as setting standards
that we should seek to match and surpass. The point of this Nietzschean argument is that if democracy is to meet its own best
aspirations, it requires citizens who cultivate those political virtues (e.g., independence of mind) which are necessary to this task. This is a
central purpose of the democratic agon: to cultivate citizens who stand to themselves politically as sovereign individuals.
There has been much recent consideration of Nietzsche's agonistic views and their relationship to democratic theory (Connolly; Hatab; Mouffe;
Owen, 1995; Schrift). These interpretations have, in particular, focused on the notion of agonistic respect, that is, Nietzsche's emphasis on the
virtues of becoming what one is (i.e., standing to oneself as a sovereign individual) because, in a context of pluralism, such a notion of respect
seems to offer significant resources for a democratic politics of difference. Rather than review this point once more, I will focus here on the
crucial question of the character of the democratic agon in order to show how it links recognition (self-)respect and appraisive (self-)respect.
By showing this connection, we will also be able to see why servility must be counted as a fundamental democratic vice. "Agonistic
deliberation" here refers to deliberative contestation within and over the terms of democratic citizenship. The importance of Tully's remarks for
the concerns of this essay begins to become clear once we note that "the terms of democratic citizenship" are the terms of political recognitionrespect. In other words, the terms of democratic citizenship are the terms of recognition-respect accorded to members as beings
capable
of standing to themselves politically as sovereign individuals. In Nietzschean terms, struggles over
the terms of democratic citizenship are struggles over what recognition-respect is due to
citizens as persons who can stand to themselves as sovereign individuals. How, though, does this
point concerning recognition-respect connect up to the central concern of Nietzsche's focus on the
agon as a way of cultivating nobility, i.e., those features worthy of appraisive respect? The crucial
connection is this: Subjects become citizens not only in virtue of a set of constitutionally
guaranteed rights and duties enabling them to participate in the institutions of their association.
They also take on their identity or form of self-awareness and self-formation as citizens in virtue
of participating in democratic-constitutional institutions and, more importantly, participating in the
array of practices of deliberation over the existing institutions. (Tully 7) In other words, it is in and
through agonistic engagements within and over the terms of democratic citizenship that citizens exercise and develop the capacities and
dispositions that compose democratic nobility, i.e., standing to oneself politically as a sovereign individual. Consider
that what is
required for democratic nobility, on the Nietzschean account, is that citizens acquire and
develop a will to political self-responsibility, which consists in cultivating one's capacity and
disposition for political self-rule. But what it is to cultivate this capacity and disposition is just to
participate in struggles within and over the terms of democratic citizenship, to engage in the
practices of exchanging reasons oriented to the two critical and abstract norms of constitutionalism
and democracy. More particularly, it is do so with the full acknowledgment that we are subject
to political fortuna, i.e., that our struggles may fail, that we may (and probably will) find ourselves
committed qua democratic citizen to accepting laws and policies to which we are committed qua
private conception of the good to opposing. This is what Wollheim called "the paradox of
democracy" (Waldron, 1999b: 126-29). In this regard, it is part and parcel of standing to oneself
politically as a sovereign individual that one acknowledges both the openness of the terms of
our political association to contestation and the demand that we submit ourselves to the rule of
law even as we seek to contest democratically particular laws. In other words, what we may call political amor
fati consists in accepting (and affirming) that our political fate is to be subject to, what Waldron has called, "the circumstances of politics”.
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Nietzsche Answers
Nietzsche – Impact Turn – Genocide
The alternative empirically leads to genocide – when you place the privileged above
everyone else and the rules you end up in a big game of King of the Hill where the
poor and disadvantaged are exterminated.
Simpson 95 (Chris, scholar in Human Rights and the merits of Democracy. Common Courage Press,
“The Splendid Blond Beast” 1995.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Genocide/SplendidBlondeBeast.html AD 7/8/09) JM
Friedrich Nietzsche called the aristocratic predators who write society's laws "the splendid
blond beast" precisely because they so often behave as though they are beyond the reach of
elementary morality. As he saw things, these elites have cut a path toward a certain sort of
excellence consisting mainly of the exercise of power at the expense of others. When dealing with
ordinary people, he said, they "revert to the innocence of wild animals.... We can imagine them
returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape and torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as
though they had committed a fraternity prank-convinced, moreover, that the poets for a long time to
come will have something to sing about and to praise.'' Their brutality was true courage,
Nietzsche thought, and the foundation of social order. Today genocide-the deliberate destruction
of a racial, cultural, or political group-is the paramount example of the institutionalized and
sanctioned violence of which Nietzsche spoke. Genocide has been a basic mechanism of empire
and the national state since their inception and remains widely practiced in "advanced" and
"civilized" areas. Most genocides in this century have been perpetrated by nation-states upon
ethnic minorities living within the state's own borders; most of the victims have been children.
The people responsible for mass murder have by and large gotten away with what they have done.
Most have succeeded in keeping wealth that they looted from their victims; most have never faced
trial. Genocide is still difficult to eradicate because it is usually tolerated, at least by those who
benefit from it. The Splendid Blond Beast examines how the social mechanisms of genocide often
encourage tacit international cooperation in the escape from justice of those who perpetrated the
crime... According to psychologist Ervin Staub, who has studied dozens of mass crimes, genocidal
societies usually go through an evolution during which the different strata of society literally learn
how to carry out group murder. In his book The Roots of Evil, Staub contends that genocidal
atrocities most often take place in countries under great political, economic, and often military
stress. They are usually led by authoritarian parties that wield great power yet are insecure in their
rule, such as the Nazis in Germany or the Ittihad (Committee of Union and Progress) in Turkey. The
ideologies of such parties can vary in important respects, but they are nonetheless often similar in
that they create unity among "in-group" members through dehumanization of outsiders. Genocidal
societies also show a marked tendency toward what psychologists call "justworld" thinking: Victims
are believed to have brought their suffering upon themselves and, thus, to deserve what they get. But
the ideology of these authoritarian parties and even their seizure of state power are not necessarily
enough to trigger a genocide. The leading perpetrators need mass mobilizations to actually
implement their agenda. For example, the real spearheads of genocide in Germany-the Nazi party,
SS, and similar groups- by themselves lacked the resources to disenfranchise and eventually murder
millions of Jews. They succeeded in unleashing the Holocaust, however, by harnessing many of the
otherwise ordinary elements of German life-of commerce, the courts, university scholarship,
religious observance, routine government administration, and so on-to the specialized tasks
necessary for mass murder. Not surprisingly, many of the leaders of these "ordinary" institutions
were the existing notables in German society. The Nazi genocide probably would not have
been possible without the active or tacit cooperation of many collaborators who did not
consider themselves Nazis and, in some cases, even opposed aspects of Hitler's policies, yet
nonetheless cooperated in mass murder. Put bluntly, the Nazis succeeded in genocide in part
through offering bystanders money, property, status, and other rewards for their active or
tacit complicity in the crime.
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Nietzsche Answers
Nietzsche – Impact Turn – Genocide
Nietzsche’s philosophy glorifies racism and queer bashing – the neg says that
genocide is freakin awesome.
Ross 8 (Kelly L., PhD, Department of Philosophy, Los Angeles Valley College. Friesian.com, “Friedrich
Nietzsche”, last updated in 2008. http://www.friesian.com/NIETZSCH.HTM AD 7/9/09) JM
First of all, Nietzsche's racism is unmistakable. The best way to approach this is to let Nietzsche speak for
himself. In the quotes that follow, I will simply offer examples from The Genealogy of Morals alone, as translated by Francis
Golffing (in the footnotes I have been adding some passages from Beyond Good and Evil for comparison). The Latin
malus ["bad"] (beside which I place melas [Greek for "black"]) might designate the common man as dark, especially blackhaired ("hic niger est"), as the pre-Aryan settler of the Italian soil, notably distiguished from the new blond conqueror race by
his color. At any rate, the Gaelic presented me with an exactly analogous case: fin, as in the name Fingal, the characteristic
term for nobility, eventually the good, noble, pure, originally the fair-haired as opposed to the dark, black-haired native
population. The Celts, by the way, were definitely a fair-haired race; and it is a mistake to try to relate the area of dark-haired
people found on ethnographic maps of Germany to Celtic bloodlines, as Virchow does. These are the last vestiges of the preAryan population of Germany. (The subject races are seen to prevail once more, throughout almost all of Europe; in color,
shortness of skull, perhaps also in intellectual and social instincts. Who knows whether modern democracy, the even more
fashionable anarchism, and especially that preference for the commune, the most primitive of all social forms, which is now
shared by all European socialists -- whether all these do not represent a throwback, and whether, even physiologically, the
Aryan [master] race of conquerors is not doomed?) [The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, Doubleday Anchor
Books, 1956, p.164, boldface added; note the term "master" deleted in the Golffing translation; note] Here we have an
unmistakable racism: the good, noble, and blond Aryans, contrasted with the dark and primitive
indigenes of Europe. While Nietzsche's thought is often defended as unrelated to the racism of
the Nazis, there does not seem to be much difference from the evidence of this passage. One
difference might be Nietzsche's characterization of the "commune" as "the most primitive of all social forms." Nazi ideology
was totalitarian and "social," denigrating individualism. Nietzsche would not have gone for this -- and the small, dark Hitler
is certainly no Aryan -- but then many defenders of Nietzsche these days also tend to prefer a communitarian democracy,
which means they might have more in common with the Nazis, despite their usual anti-racism, than Nietzsche himself. This
is characteristic of the confusion of contemporary politics, let alone Nietzsche apologetics. The passage above, at least,
provides as much aid and comfort for the Nazis as for any other interpretation or appropriation of Nietzsche. Nietzsche's
racism might be excused as typical of its age, and criticism of it anachronistic. However, the
racism of Thomas Jefferson, a century earlier, involved an explicit denial that physical or
intellectual differences between the races (about which Jefferson expressed no certainty) compromised the
rights of the inferior races. To Nietzsche, however, the "subject races" have no "rights"; and domination, not to
mention all the forms of "oppression" excoriated by the trendy Left, are positive and desirable goods.
This anxiety or
distemper may be due to a variety of causes. It may result from a crossing of races too
dissimilar (or of classes too dissimilar. Class distinctions are always indicative of genetic and
racial differences: the European Weltschmerz and the pessimism of the nineteenth century were both essentially the
results of an abrupt and senseless mixing of classes)... [p.267, boldface added, note] In the litany of political sins identified
by the Left, "racism, classism, and homophobia" are the holy trinity -- with "classism," of course, as a codeword for the hated
capitalism. Here we see that for Nietzsche racism and "classism" are identical: the "subject races"
form the subject classes. This is good and noble. We also get another aspect of the matter, the "mixing" of
races and classes is "senseless" and productive of the pessimism and social problems of modern society. In these terms,
Nietzsche can only have approved of the Nazis laws against marriage or even sex between Aryans and Untermenschen. The
lack of rights for the dark underclasses brings us to the principal theme of The Genealogy of Morals: The morality of
"good and evil" has been invented out of hatred and resentment by the defeated and
subjugated races, especially the Jews. People who love Nietzsche for his celebration of
creativity and his dismissal of the moralism of traditional religion, mainly meaning Christianity, usually
seem to think of going "beyond good and evil" as merely legitimizing homosexuality, drugs,
abortion, prostitution, pornography, and the other desiderata of progressive thinking. They don't seem to understand that
Nietzsche wasn't particularly interested in things like that, but, more to the point, legitimizing rape, murder, torture, pillage,
domination, and political oppression by the strong. The only honest Nietzschean graduate student I ever
met frankly stated, "To be creative, you must be evil." We get something similar in the recent Sandra
Bullock movie, Murder by Numbers [2002], where the young Nietzschean student simply says, "Freedom is crime." The
story of the movie is more or less that of Leopold and Loeb, the Chicago teenagers who in 1924 murdered a
young boy (Bobby Franks) to prove that they were "beyond good and evil." Leopold and Loeb
understood their Nietzsche far better than most of his academic apologists.
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Nietzsche Answers
Nietzsche – Impact Turn – Violence
Pushing for a politics that allows political stability, avoids agonism and policy
making can avoid the poitical instability and violence that is inherent within a
Nietzschean alternative
Bourke 8 (James, Graduate Student Department of Political Science Duke University,
"Nietzsche\Connolly: Problems of a Nietzschean Democracy,"
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/5/7/7/pages265777/p265777-1.php,
AD: 7/8/09) jl
A second way of critiquing Connolly’s Nietzschean project does not simply frame the problem as a
set of hermeneutic abuses, but rather targets Connolly’s borrowings from Nietzsche as the sources
of unresolved tensions and practical obstacles. Of course, Connolly might retort that he likes
unresolved tensions, and that he sees them as generative of the political possibilities of
democratic life. However, I am not focusing on the torsional relationships between being and
becoming and other dualities that Connolly endorses. My claim is instead that Connolly’s use of
Nietzsche introduces threats not only to the practicability of his ethico-political program but
to the stability of liberal democracy itself. To make this claim, I must answer the question “what
problems is Nietzsche brought in to solve, and what are the contours of these solutions?” As we
will see, Connolly’s debts to Nietzsche are layered. At the first layer lies what I will characterize as
the fundamental political problem for Connolly: the problem of identity\difference and the
otherizations and marginalizations that accompany it. At this first and fundamental level,
Nietzsche is one of Connolly’s many sources for understanding the dynamics of identity\difference.
A second layer consists in Connolly’s solution, or rather his strategy of mitigation, to the
problem of identity\difference, a politics of democratic agonism. This strategy is inspired by
Nietzsche and closely resembles his valorization of struggle. However, the solution of agonism
poses a problem of violence and instability that Connolly needs to contain if his politics can be
pursued without endangering liberal democracy, which it presupposes as a background condition.
So Connolly’s agonistic strategy for mitigating the pressures of identity\difference introduces
a second problem, one of violence, that needs to be addressed. Connolly attempts to address this
problem with another Nietzschean borrowing, and it is at this third level that Connolly’s debts to
Nietzsche are perhaps at their deepest. Here Connolly has a threefold strategy of dampening
tendencies to violence and instability inherent in a politics of contestation. First, he directs
Nietzschean themes such as an ethics of adversarial respect towards what he calls “agonistic
respect.” Second, he develops a Nietzschean nontheistic reverence or gratitude for the abundance of
being which is meant to bolster ethical relationships to others. Finally, and most recently, he
reinvents the Nietzschean ideal of nobility into an ethic of cultivation such that we develop more
generous dispositions toward others.
I will argue below that these various Nietzschean moves put Connolly in something of a bind. I
take issue primarily with his last, and deepest, Nietzschean debt, his attempts to resolve the
problem of agonistic instability through Nietzschean ethical attitudes. These attitudes, it
seems to me, are inadequate to the task of securing a stable liberal democratic polity. I do not
oppose to them a “teleotranscendental” ethics, some source of respect that goes deeper than what
Connolly admits is a thoroughly contestable doctrine. I am not arguing that the insufficiencies of
Connolly’s Nietzschean ethics throw us back upon a necessary, universal, and/or transcendent
ground for political morality. Indeed, I am sympathetic to parts of Connolly’s critiques of such
perspectives. However, I think that his reliance on Nietzsche does not serve as a convincing
solution to the problems his Nietzschean agonism introduces. It seems to me there are two ways out
for someone committed to broadening the scope and deepening the contours of democracy. Either
one can abandon the Nietzschean ethical solutions while keeping the agonism and look for other,
more robust ways around the problems of violence and instability this agonism threatens. Or one
can dampen the emphasis on agonism itself as a political strategy, pushing instead for a politics
that, while not devoid of struggle and contestation, does not valorize it in a Nietzschean
manner but views it instead as a feature of politics that can lead to good outcomes only when
first constrained within the limits of a viable public morality. The two solutions can be woven
together, and in conclusion I will briefly suggest a combination of them as a more viable vision for
liberal democracy.
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Nietzsche Answers
Nietzsche – Impact Turn – Rape
The alternative makes rape not only OK but also desirable
Ross 8 (Kelly L., PhD, Department of Philosophy, Los Angeles Valley College. Friesian.com, “Friedrich
Nietzsche”, last updated in 2008. http://www.friesian.com/NIETZSCH.HTM AD 7/9/09) JM
But, one might think, violence and oppression are unjust! How could any progressive person not see that
expoitation and abuse are wrong! We have Nietzsche's answer:
No act of violence, rape, exploitation,
destruction, is intrinsically "unjust," since life itself is violent , rapacious, exploitative, and destructive and
cannot be conceived otherwise. Even more disturbingly, we have to admit that from the biological [i.e. Darwinian] point of
view legal conditions are necessarily exceptional conditions, since they limit the radical life-will bent on power and must
finally subserve, as means, life's collective purpose, which is to create greater power constellations. To accept any legal
system as sovereign and universal -- to accept it, not merely as an instrument in the struggle of power complexes, but as a
weapon against struggle (in the sense of Dühring's communist cliché that every will must regard every other will as its equal)
-- is an anti-vital principle which can only bring about man's utter demoralization and, indirectly, a reign of nothingness.
[p.208, boldface added] Nietzsche is certainly life affirming, but then violence, rape, exploitation,
and destruction are intrinsic to his view of life. Attempts to protect the weak, see that justice is done, and
mitigate suffering are "anti-vital" projects that, being adverse to life itself, actually tend towards "a reign of nothingness."
Thus, if we actually care about others and are not just interested in asserting power over them
and using them for our own pleasure, then we can look forward to extinction. The delicacy -even more, the tartufferie -- of domestic animals like ourselves shrinks from imagining clearly to what extent cruelty
constituted the collective delight of older mankind, how much it was an ingredient of all their joys, or how naïvely they
manifested their cruelty, how they considered disinterested malevolence (Spinoza's sympathia malevolens) a normal trait,
something to which one's conscience could assent heartily.... To behold suffering gives pleasure, but to cause another to
suffer affords an even greater pleasure. [pp.197-198, boldface added] A great part of the pleasure that we get,
according to Nietzsche, from injustice to others is simply the pleasure of inflicting suffering. In
this it is worth recollecting the feminist shibboleth that rape is not about sex, it is about power.
Nietzsche would heartily concur. So much the better! And what is more, the value of rape is not just power, it is
the chance to cruelly inflict suffering. The rapist who beats and mutilates, perhaps even kills,
his victim, has done no evil, he is instead one of the heroes of true historic nobility. And people
think that the droit de seigneur represents some "abuse" of power! No! It is the truly noble man as heroic rapist !
Nietzsche would turn around Susan Brownmiller, who said that all men are rapists. No, it is just the problem that they are not.
Nietzsche would regard most men as virtual castrati (domestic oxen, geldings) for not being rapists.
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Nietzsche Answers
Nietzsche – A2: Suffering Link
We feel a limited amount of sympathy for suffering – our lives will not be consumed
by it
Conway 99 (David, PhD in Philosophy, senior research fellow at CIVITAS, 6/5,
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/MPsy/MPsyConw.htm) MV
Conclusion Where then does this leave us with respect to the issue from which we started. Was Nietzsche correct to repudiate his 'teacher'
Schopenhauer in the way he does? My answer must be complicated. Nietzsche was certainly correct in supposing that Schopenhauer grossly
exaggerated the case for denial of the will as the most reasonable and attitude to adopt in the face of suffering. Nietzsche is correct in supposing
that, contrary to Schopenhauer, suffering is not inextricably bound up with all human existence on the scale on which Schopenhauer alleged it
must be. Nonetheless, Nietzsche was mistaken in supposing that it was contrary to the interests of an individual who is otherwise free from
suffering to feel sympathy and pity for those who do suffer (through no fault of their own). Pity is not the baneful emotion which Nietzsche
claims it to be. This verdict leaves unresolved the ultimate issue. In a world which does as a matter of fact contain the enormous amount of
suffering that ours contains, is not an individual who is open through sympathetic identification to this suffering bound like Schopenhauer says
to be revolted by the world to the point of revulsion with it? Nietzsche, of course, thought the strong can and should disengage their sympathies
how can
one continue to affirm the will when one feels with all the suffering there is? Nietzsche is
correct that existence could only be tolerable if we were able to live without being constantly
affected by the suffering of others. However, it was wrong to think that in order to achieve this
enviable state, pity should be condemned and avoided. No, on this matter I think we are entitled to
place more trust in life itself than did Nietzsche. The fact is that there are strict psychological
limits on our susceptibility to feel pity. Pity is in part a function of our attention. To what we
attend is a function of our will. Our sentiments very largely determine to what we attend.
Consequently, it is only where people have disengaged themselves from pursuit of personal
projects, like appreciating and producing art or caring for loved ones, and so on , that there can be
scope for a degree of pity of the sort that alone can give rise to denial of will. Where denial of
will becomes psychologically possible, therefore, it can hardly be thought of as unwarranted.
Nietzsche himself spoke approvingly of taking leave of life at the time before one became a burden
and life lost its point. Surely, he would not have wished to frown on Sannyasis who give up all
attachments at that stage in life after they have made their way through it.
from the suffering of the weak. I think this is a mistake. One's world is impoverished by such disengagement of sympathies. Yet
Suffering has meaning
Wrisley No Date (Geore,
http://www.georgewrisley.com/Nietzsche%20and%20the%20Value%20of%20Suffering.pdf) MV
Relating this back to suffering, if one cannot embrace all that one lives through, which includes
profound suffering, then one cannot embrace the idea of the eternal recurrence. In embracing
the eternal recurrence one embraces every aspect of one’s life. I want to say that part of this
embrace involves the recognition of the necessity and life enhancing aspects of suffering—the
recognition that suffering thereby has a meaning. To my knowledge, Nietzsche does not say
directly that suffering can or cannot be given a meaning through the acknowledgment and embracement of
its necessary and life enhancing aspects. But it is clear that insofar as Nietzsche’s alternative ideal involves the eternal
recurrence it also involves embracing one’s suffering: My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants
nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal
it—all idealism is mendacious in the face of what is necessary—but love it.113 To live is to suffer; to be able to
embrace one’s life means being able to embrace, to love, one’s suffering—one’s fate as a creature
who is born to suffer. Seeing our suffering as meaningful for its necessary and life enhancing
aspects should mean a rejection of suicidal nihilism. For suffering would then no longer be 112
The Gay Science, 341. 113 On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, p258. 28 without a
meaning, which is the central motivating factor of suicidal nihilism; further, if we couple this
alternative ideal with the eternal recurrence, we affirm life and thus do not want to end it.
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Nietzsche Answers
Nietzsche – AT: Suffering Inevitable
Suffering is not inevitable
Oden 4 (Thomas – Cal Berk, The Humor of Kierkegard: An Anthology, p. 31)
To those who live aesthetically, suffering is merely an occasional misfortune to be avoided. But for
religious consciousness, suffering accompanies every step of human freedom. It is not merely
accidental. Suffering is the essential trigger of religious perception. But if viewed merely in
aesthetic (pleasure/pain) terms, suffering is not intrinsic to human existence but rather the least
essential of all things.
More ev…
Mangalwadi 2 (Vishna, L’Abri Fellowship,
http://www.vishalmangalwadi.com/vkmWebSite/files/When_the_New_Age_Gets_Old.pdf)
The Bible, which has moulded Western history, sees creation, both'living' and'non-living', as very
good. Man was made to live in Eden, that is, bliss. Evil and suffering entered history later. They
are therefore finite and temporary aberrations, introduced by the 'fall' or the free choice of human
beings. Because suffering is not intrinsic to the human condition, it can be overcome and
removed. This viewpoint gives a basis of hope for our future. In the West Thomas More
immortalised this hope in his book Utopia (1516).
However, in Western history the hope is often secularised, as in the French Revolution inspired
by Rousseau, in the theory of social evolution, and in the dialectical materialism of Engels and
Marx.
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Nietzsche – AT: Suffering Inevitable
Suffering is not inevitable – advance directives prove
Texas Medical Association 10 (“Advance Directives” http://www.texmed.org/Template.aspx?id=5327) MV
Research proves the presence of an advance directive such as a living will is associated with
decreased family stress and increased patient comfort . In the absence of advance directives, however, families find
making treatment decisions near the end of life for terminally ill loved ones extremely stressful, and the family is more likely to insist upon
ineffective and expensive treatments that increase patient suffering. Medicine's 2011 Agenda Pass legislation that promotes advance care
planning and the completion of advance directives. Financially support pilot programs in urban and rural counties to implement systematic
advance care planning in a variety of chronic care sites. Create a single page physician order sheet that ensures a patient's wishes will actually
follow the patient. Medicine's Message TADA
was a good law when passed; it remains a good law today. One
of its most important goals is to relieve suffering at the end of life. Suffering is not inevitable.
We can see it coming, plan to deal with it appropriately, and follow those plans. Although advance
directives have proven benefits for patients and families, few patients have them. Advance care planning includes an ongoing
dialogue among patient, family, and physician, and must begin when the patient is not under the stress of a health crisis.
Suffering is not inevitable
Abu Dhabi Gallup Center 11 (March, “Egypt: The Arithemetic of Revolution,”
http://www.abudhabigallupcenter.com/147470/egypt-arithmetic-revolution.aspx) MV
Unemployment and poverty alone did not lead to the overthrow of Egypt's government. It was the
perceived difference between what should be and what was that created the driving force for the
country's historic uprising. Experience of hardship alone does not move people to resist. To shift
from misery to a mass movement, people must first discover "moral anger and a sense of
social injustice." This is according to Barrington Moore's seminal work Injustice: The Social
Bases of Obedience and Revolt, a study of revolutions throughout history. In other words, he
writes, the idea that the societal distribution of pain is unfair and the suffering is not inevitable
as the prerequisite to action. Many credit the successful ouster of Ben Ali in Tunisia for providing
Egypt the necessary counter example to rid it of its culture of political fatalism. The citizens of
Egypt harnessed their collective discontent and changed the social and political future of their
country in the days spanning January 25 to February 11, 2011. Hundreds of thousands of citizens
took to the streets in a peaceful stance of solidarity that resulted in one key outcome - an end to
Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule. If Tunisia's revolt provided the trigger for Egypt's uprising,
the gap between what Egyptians expected and what they experienced provided the fuel.
There are various degrees and types of suffering
Krishnamurti 11 (J, “The Book of Life”, http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-dailyquote/20110713.php) MV
There are so many varieties and complications and degrees of suffering. We all know that. You
know it very well, and we carry this burden right through life, practically from the moment we are
born until the moment we collapse into the grave.
If we say that it is inevitable, then there is no
answer; if you accept it, then you have stopped inquiring into it. You have closed the door to further
inquiry; if you escape from it, you have also closed the door. You may escape into man or woman,
into drink, amusement, into various forms of power, position, prestige, and the internal chatter of
nothingness. Then your escapes become all-important; the objects to which you fly assume colossal
importance. So you have shut the door on sorrow also, and that is what most of us do. Now, can we
stop escape of every kind and come back to suffering? That means not seeking a solution for
suffering. There is physical suffering-a toothache, stomachache, an operation, accidents,
various forms of physical sufferings which have their own answer. There is also the fear of
future pain, which would cause suffering. Suffering is closely related to fear and, and without
comprehension of these two major factors in life, we shall never comprehend what it is to be
compassionate, to love. So a mind that is concerned with the comprehension of what is
compassion, love, and all the rest of it must surely understand what is fear and what is sorrow.
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Nietzsche – A2: Ressentiment
1. Link turn – They fear ressentiment. This either proves that they’re tautological or
is a worse link turn because they express a metaphysical certainty in this concept.
2. Ressentiment isn’t literal; it’s a metaphor
Gadon 7 (David, URI, Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Eternal Return,
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=srhonorsprog)
This is a profound affirmation of our responsibility, and merely scoffing that time is a circle refuses
to acknowledge that profundity. However, with such a guaranteed recurrence set forth for us, we are
forced to acknowledge that every step towards progress that we seem to make is ultimately an act of
indifference. If even the venomous spiders of what Nietzsche elsewhere deems ressentiment must
recur, then how can any step towards betterment be seen as anything but an act of futility? The small
man may allow his apathy to carry him through the gateway Moment, but as a part of the closed
universe Gadon 10 he too indeed must recur. This idea too weighs heavily on Zarathustra’s mind. In
fact, it is the very realization that even the unworthy small men of slave morality must return
eternally that nauseates him.17 That such a person could have power over eternity is difficult to
bear, but one must face the importance of Moment to begin to understand recurrence.
1AR Ressentiment is only an analogy
Gadon 7 (David, URI, Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Eternal Return,
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=srhonorsprog)
As for the underlying question of whether the same literally recurs or not, the point here is still
worth analysis. Here we begin to see again how the notion of identity becomes central to
Nietzsche’s doctrine. The analogy of the myth of Sisyphus returns to us once more. Few would
doubt that there is an actual, metaphysical distinction between the thousandth and the thousand and
first times that Sisyphus pushes the boulder up the mountain. However, if nothing ever changes
between each repetition of the act, it is all but meaningless to even count them. There will never be
an end to Sisyphus’s toil, just as Nietzsche asserts that we too will eternally repeat our labors. But
identity cannot be so easily explained. Again we come to the problem that if it is not literally me
that must repeat the act for all eternity, then it is meaningless to concern myself with the existential
weight of each decision. For Nietzsche’s thought to hold its power, it must be the same me, the same
everything that recurs time and again. This is of course paradoxical. There can be no logical
enumeration of the selves that have occurred if there is nothing to differentiate them. It is here that
we find once again how troublesome the thought of eternal return can be to our ordinary
conceptions of time and identity.
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Nietzsche – AT: Slave Morality (1/2)
Nietzsche’s master morality justifies Ayn Rand’s view of extreme capitalism
JMP 11 (March 9, phd in philosophy, “Slave Morality Kicks the Ass of Master Morality: stupid
Nietzsche again” http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/03/slave-morality-kicks-ass-of-master.html)
MV
And yet Nietzsche's division between master and slave morality, the comparison he makes of
different perspectives, is oddly in accordance with certain historical materialist approaches to
morality… except that he reverses the value equation. In Anti-Duhring, for example, Engels speaks
of two moralities, one for the bourgeoisie and one for the proletariat, and argues that peoples'
individual moralities are connected to class perspective. Unlike Nietzsche, however, Engels holds
that the master morality is inferior and in the way of human progress. Similarly, in the Chinese
Revolution, contra the Nietzschean position, the revolutionaries often spoke of how historical
progress was made by the slaves and never by the masters; the masters were ultimately parasites,
their existence as masters (along with the morality they developed) dependent on those deemed
slaves. We could also cite the Spanish Revolution and the anarchist maxim "No Gods, No Masters"–
–a statement that only the first half would be agreeable to Nietzsche. This Nietzschean philosophy is
evident in libertarian elegies to individual merit. In Ayn Rand's odious Atlas Shrugged (that is now,
unfortunately, about to be released as a film), society is made mundane, and historical progress
halted, due to the intervention of the state on behalf of the herd. Heroic individuals, who are
uncompromising in their selfish master morality, are being brought low by the common and slavish
masses. Thus the visionary protagonist, John Galt, devises a capitalist/intellectual bizarro-strike
where the special and unique individuals, the great men, disappear from society and thus prove that
it is the masters who make history. The herd, possessed by slavish morality of collectivism and
unionism, can do nothing but produce a stagnant society, Rand argues, and progress can only be
assured by those individuals who make themselves great––who do not have to suffer under the
morality of the slaves. Clearly Rand's proposition is ludicrous for anyone who considers hirself a
proper progressive: this is capitalist pseudo-radicalism that imagines workers need capitalists
when the opposite, as every strike and mass movement proves, is the historical truth. (Rand
also assumes that without state intervention on behalf of the collectivist herd, capitalism will
flourish––a position that remains blind to every state intervention on behalf of capitalism, every
redistribution of profit for the wealthy, every military adventure to preserve the world market, and
every global institution that exists to ensure that capitalism will continue to function.) But Rand's
story of John Galt is simply a rearticulation of Nietzsche's beloved master morality and it is a
terrible mistake to ignore the parallels. Yes, I agree that it is not fair to accept Rand's reading of
Nietzsche as authoritative… but after a while, when every libertarian ever continues to cite
Nietzsche as the reason s/he's a libertarian, we should begin to wonder whether the correlation
is telling us something. When Nietzsche claims that the problem with society, the malaise that
holds back the strong, is slave morality, we cannot simply dismiss what this implies by arguing (as
some have) that he is being "ironic" and "satirical." Why not assume that Ayn Rand and Milton
Friedman are being ironic as well? In order to take Nietzsche seriously as a philosopher, and not
someone who spent his entire life being a vague satirist, we have to accept his position on master
versus slave morality. For if he was just a stairist, then his philosophy would not have inspired so
much veneration; nor would he be a very good satirist considering that satire requires a certain level
of focus to make the satire dissimilar from what is being satirized. If there is any satire in Nietzsche
it is the same satire that can be found in right-wing pundits: unintentional self-satire. Nietzsche's
philosophy is that of an extreme capitalist, and sometimes of an extreme aristocrat, who
believes that history is made by great men (and perhaps great women if we grant that, as some
desperately argue, he was not a misogynist) and not by the masses. He argues for the coming of the
ubermensch, the truly excellent individual, and refuses to see that those who would call
themselves ubermensch, who claim to exist beyond the "good and evil" of slave morality, are
nothing more than parasites, the fetters of progress.
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Nietzsche – AT: Slave Morality (2/2)
Nietzsche didn’t advocate the master morality over the slave morality
Menasse 10 (Sophia, philosophy student at Higher Institute of Philosophy, “Is Nietzsche’s “Beyond
Good and Evil” Advocating a “Back to Good and Bad”?” http://kuleuvenbe.academia.edu/SophieMenasse/Papers/221880/Beyond_Good_and_Evil_Back_to_Good_and_Bad) MV
If Nietzsche had indeed aspired to a return to master-morality, one would expect that he evaluated
master-morality consistently positively, and slave-morality negatively. At first sight this may in fact
seem to be the case. However, this impression arises solely due to the connotation of the words
Nietzsche uses. The word “slave“ has, as such, a very negative connotation, nobody would like to
recognise himself in it, nobody would like to call himself a slave. The term “master“ on the
contrary, has a quite positive connotation. Therefore it is very easy to start thinking, that Nietzsche
indeed did think that way: ascribing positive meanings to master- and negative ones to slavemorality. However, this surely is no adequate way of reading Nietzsche. Concerning the words
“master“ and “slave“ one should not be confused by their connotation, but simply take them as
names, referring to the social status of the class in which the respective morality first arose.
“Master” and “slave” are key concepts in Nietzsche’s philosophy; therefore it is important to treat
them as philosophical terms, which might have a slightly different meaning than the every-day
connotation ascribes to them. Nietzsche, not being a systematic philosopher, did not explicitly
define his understanding of those terms. Therefore it is important to try to free oneself from the
established connotations in order to be able to read Nietzsche prejudice-free and accept and adopt
his connotation of his key-concepts. His understanding of those terms becomes clear once one sees
how he uses them. This unprejudiced reading is, however, only possible if one disengages from the
established connotations. If one adheres to the common associations it is easy to get a fallacious
impression of Nietzsche’s philosophy. If, however, one approaches Nietzsche’s writings
prejudice-free and adopts the values he himself ascribed to those terms, it becomes clear that
Nietzsche did not at all praise master- over slave-morality. Rather does he name positive and
negative aspects in both. Slave-morality is for Nietzsche a morality of mediocrity , representing
the „regression of mankind“. But at the same time it is generating the creative and clever
individual, which has a very high significance in Nietzsche. „[T]here thereby results and has
always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art,
music, dancing, reason, spirituality[.] (...) [S]lavery, both in the coarser and the finer sense, is
apparently an indispensable means of spiritual education and discipline“. The same thought can be
found formulated even clearer in the Genealogy: „A race of such men of ressentiment is bound to
become eventually cleverer than any noble race“. And again: „Human history would be altogether
too stupid a thing without the spirit that the impotent have introduced into it“. Master-morality, on
the other hand, is ¬– at least at the time of its origin – equated with barbarianism. Nevertheless
does the „master“ exhibit many attributes, which Nietzsche emphasises positively: a distinctive,
strong will to power, a sense of egoism, self-love, strength. It should be clear now, however, that
Nietzsche is not advocating a return to master-morality. But what then? The only distinct
positive notion he expresses is the one of the Übermensch. One major point of Nietzsche’s
critique on morality is that it is suppressing the emergence of the Übermensch. It might thus be
worthwhile to have a closer look at what exactly Nietzsche means by this notion. [G]rant me the
sight, but one glance of something perfect, wholly achieved, happy, mighty, triumphant, something
still capable of arousing fear! Of a man who justifies man, of a complementary and redeeming lucky
hit on the part of man for the sake of which one may still believe in man! The Übermensch
displays attributes typically belonging to “masters“ as well as such only found in “slaves“. The
Übermensch for Nietzsche is, as displayed in the above quote, fearsome and powerful – also having
power over himself. Furthermore he is life-affirming: he “has not only learnt to compromise and
arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again and again as it was and is, for all
eternity“. He practices self-reverence and he believes in differences between human beings and
thus accepts “with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who for [his] sake,
must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments“. All these virtues the
Übermensch shares in common with “masters“. Furthermore Nietzsche emphasises the importance
of suffering for the elevation of man as it strengthens the individual and enhances his or her
resilience. This again is something only possible in master-morality, as suffering is proscribed in
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slave-morality. However, the Übermensch also has some typical “slave”-virtues: He is creative
and intelligent, he is constituted by art, religion or philosophy.
Nietzsche – A2: Root Cause of Vio
Aggression is not the primordial feature of human existence – Nietzsche’s theory does not
even consider linguistic dimensions that lie beyond the constraints of aggression
Butler in 2005 Giving an Account of Oneself, page 13-15,
Nietzsche restricts his understanding of accountability to this juridically mediated and
belated attribution. Apparently he fails to understand the other interlocutory conditions in which
one is asked to given an account of oneself, focusing instead on an original aggression that he
holds to be part of every human being and, indeed, coextensive with life itself. Its prosecution under a
Importantly,
system of punishment would, in his view, eradicate this truth about life. The institution of law compels an originally aggressive
human to turn aggression “inward,” to craft an inner world composed of a guilty conscience and to vent that aggression against
oneself in the name of morality: “in this psychical cruelty there resides a madness of the will which is absolutely unexampled; the
will of man to find himself guilty and reprehensible to a degree that can never be atoned for” (GM, 93). This aggression, which
Nietzsche regards as native to every human animal and to life itself, is turned against the will and then assumes a second life,
imploding to construct a conscience that generates reflexivity on the model of self-beratement. That reflexivity is the precipitate
of the subject, understood as a reflexive being, one who can and does take him or herself as an object of reflection.
Nietzsche does not consider other linguistic dimensions of this situation. If I
am held accountable through a framework of morality, that framework is first addressed to me,
first starts to act upon me, through the address and query of another. Indeed, I come to know that
framework through no other way. If I give an account of myself in response to such a query, I am implicated in a
relation to the other before whom and to whom I speak, Thus, I come into being as a reflexive subject in the
context of establishing a narrative account of myself when I am spoken to by someone and
prompted to address myself to the one who addresses me.
As I mentioned above,
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Nietzsche – A2: Root Cause of Vio
Nietzsche’s postulation of the self as the “cause” is an incredibly reductionist view of ethics
which severs itself from the social life – their theory’s failure to understand that our
primary relation to others serves as a productive precondition for ethics – although it may
be risky we are obliged to ask the questions of the 1AC because these questions constitute
our humanity
Butler 5 (Giving an Account of Oneself, page 135-136 Judith)
What perhaps emerges most emphatically from the conjunction of these very disparate positions (Adorno, Foucault, Laplanche, Levinas, Nietzsche, Hegel) is that the response to the demand to
give an account of oneself is a matter of fathoming at once the formation of the subject (self, ego, moi, first-person perspective) and its relation to responsibility. A subject who can never fully
give an account of itself may well be a result of being related at non-narratable levels of existence to others in ways that have a supervenient ethical significance. If the “I” cannot effectively be
The
Nietzschean postulation of the self as a “cause” has a genealogy that must be understood as part
of the reduction of ethical philosophy to the inward mutilations of conscience. Such a move not
only severs the task of ethics from the matter of social life and the historically revisable grids of
intelligibility within which any of us emerge, if we do, but it fails to understand the resource of
primary and irreducible relations to others as a precondition of ethical responsiveness. One might rightly
quarrel with the postulation of a preontological persecution by the Other in Levinas or offer an account that challenges the primacy of seduction in Laplanche. But either way, one must
ask how the formation of the subject implies a framework for understanding ethical response and
a theory of responsibility. If certain versions of self-preoccupied moral inquiry return us to a
narcissism that is supported through socially enforced modes of individualism, and if that
narcissism also leads to an ethical violence that knows no grace of self-acceptance of
forgiveness, then it would seem obligatory, if not urgent, to return to the question of responsibility
to the question “How are we informed within social life, and at what cost?”
disjoined from the impress of social life, then ethics will surely not only presuppose rhetoric (and the analysis of the mode of address) but social critique as well.
we must recognize that ethics requires us to risk ourselves precisely at
moments of unknowingness, when what forms us diverges from what lies before us, when our
willingness to become undone in relation to others constitutes our change of becoming human.
To be undone by another is a primary necessity, an anguish, to be sure, but also a chance – to be
addressed, claimed, bound to what is not me, but also to be moved, to be prompted to act, to address myself
elsewhere, and so to vacate the self-sufficient “I” as a kind of possession. If we speak and try to
give an account from this place, we will not be irresponsible, or, if we are, we will surely be forgiven.
Perhaps most importantly,
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Nietzsche – A2: Root Cause of Vio
Nietzsche’s misogyny, elitism and chauvinism influence every aspect of the world after
their alternative – attempts to separate his form of criticism from these central ideologies is
dangerous – you shouldn’t risk backsliding into male supremacy – especially when our
affirmative offers a more determinate negation of the system of domination
Alcoff 4, Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University, Linda Martin, Hypatia, summer, page
proquest
Schutte's argument in more precise form is this: she claims that Nietzsche's reactionary views "break the taboos of the mind and
the ever-present dogmatisms of the prevailing culture" which has the effect of allowing us to "think creatively and to risk new
interpretations of democracy, feminist theory, etc." (Schutte 1999, 69-70). This is an example of what I earlier referred to as a
kind of argument that puts form over content, that argues in defense of a form of critique even when its particular content in a
given person's writing is indefensible. Now first, I would want to challenge the idea that Nietzsche's views
were taboo-breaking. Wasn't his misogyny, elitism, and European chauvinism just all too typical,
of his Jay and ours? He represents very dominant views, which still carry the day in our societies as
Schutte herself argues so well in a number of papers (for example, Schutte 1984, 1999). There may be a thin rhetorical veneer of
egalitarianism in the West, but it is quickly dropped when pressed toward significant redistributions of either material resources
or epistemic authority.
Beyond this essentially factual disagreement, however, 1 wonder about her philosophical view that we can
separate form from content in this way, that we should support the risk of challenge, no matter its
direction, over the staidness of the status quo. Hegel warned against valorizing an abstract as
opposed to a determinate negation, and argued that abstract negations do not in fact move the
dialectic forward precisely because they are not motivated by content; they are not "genuine doubts" in
Peirce's sense, but contrived, artificial, in form only, of the "how do you know everything wasn't created just as it is five minutes
ago?" variety. These don't move us forward because they are launched equally well against any positive claim and thus provide
no direction for improvement. They are surely symptomatic of the nihilism Nietzsche wanted to overcome, an ethical pessimism
or epistemic defeatism. But to champion the form of critique without specifying content invites such
nihilism, because it suggests that critique is an a priori ally, that the form of critique can have
positive effects no matter its content. Some do argue this in regard to skepticism, such as Barry Stroud, who makes
the case that even Pyrrhonic skepticism, which would deride every type of claim equally and thus directs us nowhere, yet has
positive effects in stimulating the epistemological enterprise. Nietzsche himself is torn in this regard, on my reading; on the one
hand he suggests the specific kinds of questions that Schutte lists above, about the interests that benent from the support of
certain values. But on the other hand he believes that to defeat the Platonic mirage of rational absolutes, everything must be kept
contingent, challengeable, in dispute. Nietzsche's own solution to the uncertainty this creates is psychological, not philosophical.
It is to suggest that we ground our values in what we need, in organic rather than logical argument, in genuine affect. But this
solution would warn against championing a form of negation as an intrinsic good.
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Nietzsche – A2: Root Cause of Vio
The criticism is the worst form of oppression for those who are subject to violence – this
relationship with domination is not life affirming and recurrence of this suffering is
something that must be resisted not embraced
Alcoff 4, Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University, Linda Martin, Hypatia, summer, page
proquest
the political implications of Nietzsche's metaphysical critique
are incoherent: on the one hand the critique of transcendentalism works against authoritarianism
of all kinds, but on the other hand his naturalist account of hierarchies among human beings, his
"endorsement of an order of rank," works to replicate the metaphysical orientation and ethical
values that he rejects:
Ultimately, Schutte argues persuasively that
He has not yet overcome the dualism of good and evil; his analysis of decadence as an impurity that ought to be eliminated from
society is much too reminiscent of the Manichcan struggle between good and evil. Furthermore, his identification of Christians,
democrats, socialists, feminists, and others with decadent forces is a drastic oversimplification. Nietzsche's
counterproposals to democracy do not take him any farther along the road to a nonalienated,
nonfragmented conception of human reality than the dualistic and reductionist structures of value
that he himself opposed. (1984, 172)
Schutte also shows how Nietzsche's inability to imagine a democratization of the creation of values adversely affects the attempt
to develop a wider application of his work. She argues that the
central ethical concept of eternal recurrence, for
is not in fact universalizable; persons who have experienced severe forms of suffering
cannot be both life affirming and will an eternal recurrence of their suffering. Contra Nietzsche, all
forms of suffering are not ennobling. On the whole, Schutte defends Nietzsche's metaphysics and epistemology
example,
while generally critiquing his normative projects.
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Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency
Nietzsche implicitly says that even the most superior are still weak and true autonomy
can’t exist – the alternative can’t ever be fully realized.
Golomb 6 (Jacob, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 32, “Can One Really
Become a "Free Spirit Par Excellence"or an Übermensch?” 2006. Project Muse, AD 7/8/09) JM
In HAH Nietzsche suggests that the highly developed spiritual and intellectual component of power
may weaken even the most superior personality. Because they are genuinely free and independent,
they are unlikely to adhere to any rigid and inflexible set of norms: the values they possess are open to
examination and susceptible to being "overcome." They will, then, be more vulnerable to the surreptitious
indoctrination and devious manipulations that the weak use against them. Their freedom from any given
tradition induces a kind of vulnerability, though it allows them to oscillate perpetually among whatever
possibilities they may encounter. Hence, in historical praxis, this dynamic may produce an
impressionable personality, susceptible to manipulation and exploitation: "Compared with him who has
tradition on his side and requires no reasons for his actions, the free spirit is always weak, especially in
actions; for he is aware of too many motives and points of view and therefore possesses an uncertain and
unpracticed hand. What means are there of nonetheless rendering him relatively strong? How does the strong
spirit come into being?" (HAH I:230). [End Page 24] The problem may be recast as that of turning purely
spiritual power into a concrete historical force: Is it possible to preserve the spirit of Hamlet in the body of
Faust? Nietzsche's solution focuses on the social fabric woven with religious and moral dogmas that produces
a psychological pattern of guilt, vengeance, and bad conscience. These are the weakest threads of culture,
responsible for the corruption of spiritual power and cultural achievements. In emphasizing these elements,
Nietzsche implicitly admits that there can be no absolute autonomy; even the most powerful are not
impervious to the influence of the environment with which they interact. The revaluation of prevalent
cultural norms is essential to the evolution of the psychology of the Übermensch, because even the arena of
the "authentic legislator" is penetrated by environmental values and forces. Hence it becomes clear that the
Übermensch type is essentially different from the free spirit par excellence. The latter, namely, the
absolutely autonomous will to power, is, therefore, no more than a regulative idea—one that provides
the model for approximation but which can in principle never be fully realized.
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Nietzsche – Alternative – No Solvency
The Alt is paradoxical – once the individual reaches the ubermensch there is no where to
go. You are either re-integrated into society or you fade.
Golomb 6 (Jacob, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 32, “Can One Really
Become a "Free Spirit Par Excellence"or an Übermensch?” 2006. Project Muse, AD 7/8/09) JM
According to Nietzsche, the cry for personal authenticity appeared at the "twilight of the idols" and is
an explicit expression of revolt against the spirit of objectivity. Thus it is inconceivable to have a fully
authentic individual living in society, which by nature is founded on a set of objective norms and common
ethos. To clarify this point I will draw an analogy from the domain of psychoanalysis. If neurosis is, as Freud
claims, a natural outcome of the repressive society, which is founded on such repression, can we imagine a
society where there are no neurotic people? This question remains valid even for a society in which all
neurotic individuals have successfully undergone psychoanalytic treatment. But once they try to live in
that society under, more or less, the same conditions that caused their neuroses in the first place, won't
they to some degree regress? The same consideration is relevant to the individual whose quest for
authenticity or for optimal positive power, that is, in the form of the Übermensch, is supposedly finally
fulfilled. Because such a person continues to be a member of society, the processes of social conditioning and
the assault from within on one's "pure power" will continue to exert their antiauthenticating and weakening
effects. Moreover, imagine a society where authenticity became a general norm: such a society either
would be destroyed or would destroy that authenticity, which would be manifested precisely in those
individuals who attempt to overcome its ethic and exhibit the spirit of revolt. Hence the struggles to
attain personal authenticity and Übermensch status face what seems to be a paradoxical situation:
these lofty ideals cannot be materialized without society, but neither can they be lived within its
framework. Nietzsche's genealogy cannot provide us with the sought-after empirical evidence that
authenticity or, invariably, the Übermensch were common among human beings in any given society. Hence
he was well aware of the difficulty of trying to allow for the "ought" of the übermenschlich authenticity
within the social "is." The fact is that he leaves this issue intentionally vague in the closing sentence of his
book, where Zarathustra, who personifies the ideal of personal authenticity, leaves his "cave" in order to
do—what? To return to society? It is far from being completely clear: "[T]hus spoke Zarathustra, and he
left his cave, glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains" [End Page 37] (Z 439).
The metaphor of a "sun" implies that Zarathustra, not able to become part of the human social nexus, is like
the sun, which, not being part of the earth, only warms it from above. Zarathustra can only inspire us to
try and become authentic, to be freer than we are, to be mentally and intellectually more powerful
than at the present. All those Nietzschean lofty ideals are solely regulative ideals rather than manifestly
viable norms. As a consoling afterthought one may perhaps state that though the Übermensch is not
viable in a human community, striving to approximate this ideal will help us in overcoming the
mentality of the "herd," or the "slaves," but, of course, will not liberate us from society as such.
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Schotten 5 (C Heike, Assistant Prof of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, "Between Past and
Future: The Politics of Nietzschean Affirmation,"
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/8/5/6/9/pages85696/p85696-1.php. AD: 7/8/09)
jl
Nietzsche’s texts, like his life, are of an inherently dual nature. He emphasizes this in Ecce Homo,
acknowledging his “dual descent” as “at the same time a decadent and a beginning,” 1 both a decadent and
“the opposite of a decadent,” 2 with access to a “dual series of experiences,” positioned with “one foot
beyond life.” 3 As even Nietzsche recognized, then, his being both a member of modernity and yet able
to see beyond it, positioned with one foot in this world and another foot beyond it, renders him able to
experience decadence and yet unable to recover from it. This is the case in his own dual description of
himself: his health—his “one foot beyond” life—is also his sickness, for the “beyond,” as Nietzsche so often
reminds us, is synonymous with death. Nietzsche’s health (his untimeliness, his “beyond” modernity) is thus
co-implicated with sickness, and his sickness—his living membership in modernity—is simultaneously his
health. In this paper, I focus in particular on the unhealthy or decadent aspect of Nietzsche’s dual
philosophy, arguing that because Nietzsche found modern decadence too horrifying to own and affirm,
he was unable to be healthy himself. He could not value or affirm the very age which gave him life—he
could not, as I will later term it, delight in decay. In particular, I will show that Nietzsche’s inability to
delight in decay renders him incapable of coping with modernity except through an illegitimate
longing for redemption, which he himself argues against. 4 Finally, I will argue that Nietzsche’s
infrequent recommendations of laughter and love offer a more productive avenue for achieving the kind of
reconciliation with modernity and (self-)affirmation Nietzsche valorizes, albeit not via the means he seems
explicitly to endorse.
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The will to power inevitably runs back into slave morality - both are attempts to make up
for a lack in the self, the only truly ethical action is to view oneself as distinct from the
world and view the self as interconnected to all other beings
Loy 96 (David, professor of Philosophy. Asian Phillosophy, Vol 6, No 1, “Beyond good and evil? A Buddhist
critique of Nietzsche” March 1996. http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/loy.htm AD 7/8/09) JM
All power is in essence power to deny mortality. Either that or it is not real power at all , not ultimate power,
not the power that mankind is really obsessed with. Power means power to increase oneself, to change one's natural
situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, importance. (Becker)
[15] We feel we are masters over life and death when we hold the fate of others in our hands, adds Becker; and we feel we are real when
the reality of others is in our hands, adds Buddhism. From that perspective, however, desire for power is little different from
the slave morality Nietzsche criticises. Both become symptoms of our lack, equally frustrating inasmuch as
we are motivated by something that cannot be satisfied in the way we try to satisfy it. No wonder Nietzsche's
will-to-power can never rest, that it needs to expand its horizons, and that for most of us morality has been a matter of collecting
religious brownie points. In both cases we think that we have found the way to get a grip on our eligibility for immortality -- or being.
The whole basis of the urge to goodness is to be something that has value, that endures... Man uses morality to try to get a
place of special belongingness and perpetuation in the universe... Do we wonder why one of man's chief
characteristics is his tortured dissatisfaction with himself, his constant self-criticism? It is the only way he has to overcome the sense of
hopeless limitation inherent in his real situation. (Becker) [16] When I realise that I am not going to attain cloture on
that diabolical part of myself, it is time to project it. "The Devil is the one who prevents the heroic victory of
immortality in each culture -- even the atheistic, scientific ones." [17] As long as lack keeps gnawing, we need to keep struggling with
the Devil, and as we all know the best devil is one outside our own group. Evil is whatever we decide is keeping us from
becoming real, and since no victory over any external devil can yield the sense of being we seek, we have
become trapped in a paradox of our own making: evil is created by our urge to eliminate evil. Stalin's
collectivisation programme was an attempt to build a more perfect socialist society. The Final Solution of the Nazis was an attempt to
purify the Earth of its vermin. The Buddhist critique of such ressentiment includes understanding the self-deception involved in such
dualistic thinking, when I identify with one pole and vainly try to eliminate its interdependent other. [18] Buddhism gets beyond good
and evil not by rebaptising our evil qualities as our best, but with an entirely different perspective. As long as we experience ourselves as
alienated from the world, and society as a set of separate selves, the world is devalued into a field-of-play wherein we compete to fulfill
ourselves. That is the origin of the ethical problem we struggle with today: without some transcendental ground such as
God, what will bind our atomised selves together? When my sense-of-self lets-go and disappears, however, I
realise my interdependence with all other phenomena. It is more than being dependent on them: when I discover that I
am you, the trace of your traces, the ethical problem of how to relate to you is transformed. [19] Of course, this provides no
simple yardstick to resolve knotty ethical dilemmas. Yet more important, I think, is that this absolves
the sense of separation between us which
usually makes those dilemmas so difficult to resolve,
including the conceit that I am the one who has privileged access to transcendental principles, or who
embodies more fully the will-to-power. Loss of self-preoccupation entails the ability to respond to others without an ulterior
motive which needs to gain something from that encounter. Buddhist ethical principles approximate the way of relating to others that
nondual experience reveals. As in Christianity, I should love my neighbour as myself -- in this case because my neighbour is myself. In
contrast to the 'Thou shalt not -- or else!' implied in Mosaic law, the Buddhist precepts are vows one makes not to some other being but
to one's to-be-realised-as-empty self: "I vow to undertake the course of training to perfect myself in non-killing," and so forth. If we
have not developed to the degree that we spontaneously experience ourselves as one with others, by
following the precepts we endeavour to act as if we did feel that way. Yet even these precepts are
eventually realised not to rest on any transcendental, objectively-binding moral principle. There are,
finally, no moral limitations on our freedom -- except the dualistic delusions which incline us to abuse
that freedom in the first place.
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A desire to attain power creates a disatisfaction with life in the same way as the slave
morality Nietzsche criticizes
Loy 96 (David, PhD in philosophy “Beyond good and evil? A Buddhist critique of Nietzsche”, Asian Philosophy,
Vol. 6, No. 1, March, p. 43-44, http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/loy.htm) MV
Nietzsche sees the sublimity of Greek culture as the sublimation of its original ferocity, yet here perhaps the genealogist of morals does
not trace his genealogy back far enough. What makes man so ferocious? Can even the will to power, irreducible for Nietzsche, be
deconstructed? What, after all, does power mean to us? All power is in essence power to deny mortality. Either that or
it is not real power at all, not ultimate power, not the power that mankind is really obsessed with. Power
means power to increase oneself, to change one's natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness,
finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, importance. (Becker) [15] We feel we are masters over life
and death when we hold the fate of others in our hands, adds Becker; and we feel we are real when the
reality of others is in our hands, adds Buddhism. From that perspective, however, desire for power is little
different from the slave morality Nietzsche criticises. Both become symptoms of our lack, equally
frustrating inasmuch as we are motivated by something that cannot be satisfied in the way we try to
satisfy it. No wonder Nietzsche's will-to-power can never rest, that it needs to expand its horizons, and that
for most of us morality has been a matter of collecting religious brownie points. In both cases we think that
we have found the way to get a grip on our eligibility for immortality -- or being. The whole basis of the urge to
goodness is to be something that has value, that endures... Man uses morality to try to get a place of special belongingness and perpetuation in the universe...
Do we wonder why one of man's chief characteristics is his tortured dissatisfaction with himself, his constant self-criticism? It is the only way he has to
overcome the sense of hopeless limitation inherent in his real situation. (Becker) [16] When I realise that I am not going to attain cloture on that diabolical
part of myself, it is time to project it. "The Devil is the one who prevents the heroic victory of immortality in each culture -- even the atheistic, scientific
As long as lack keeps gnawing, we need to keep struggling with the Devil, and as we all know the
best devil is one outside our own group. Evil is whatever we decide is keeping us from becoming real, and
since no victory over any external devil can yield the sense of being we seek, we have become trapped
in a paradox of our own making: evil is created by our urge to eliminate evil. Stalin's collectivisation programme was an
ones." [17]
attempt to build a more perfect socialist society. The Final Solution of the Nazis was an attempt to purify the Earth of its vermin.
Pure celebration of life alone fails
May 5 (Todd, Prof. at Clemenson U. “To change the world, to celebrate life,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 2005
Vol 31 No. 5–6 p. 517–531) MV
To change the world and to celebrate life. This, as the theologian Harvey Cox saw, is the struggle within
us.1 It is a struggle in which one cannot choose sides; or better, a struggle in which one must choose both
sides. The abandonment of one for the sake of the other can lead only to disaster or callousness. Forsaking
the celebration of life for the sake of changing the world is the path of the sad revolutionary. In his
preface to Anti-Oedipus, Foucault writes that one does not have to be sad in order to be revolu- tionary. The
matter is more urgent than that, however. One cannot be both sad and revolutionary. Lacking a sense of the
wondrous that is already here, among us, one who is bent upon changing the world can only become solemn
or bitter. He or she is focused only on the future; the present is what is to be overcome. The vision of what is
not but must come to be overwhelms all else, and the point of change itself becomes lost. The history of the
left in the 20th century offers numerous examples of this, and the disaster that attends to it should be evident
to all of us by now. The alternative is surely not to shift one’s allegiance to the pure celebration of life,
although there are many who have chosen this path. It is at best blindness not to see the misery that
envelops so many of our fellow humans, to say nothing of what happens to sentient non- human creatures.
The attempt to jettison world-changing for an un- critical assent to the world as it is requires a self-deception
that I assume would be anathema for those of us who have studied Foucault. Indeed, it is anathema for all
of us who awaken each day to an America whose expansive boldness is matched only by an equally
expansive disregard for those we place in harm’s way. This is the struggle, then. The one between the
desire for life- celebration and the desire for world-changing. The struggle between reveling in the contingent
and fragile joys that constitute our world and wresting it from its intolerability. I am sure it is a struggle that
is not foreign to anyone who is reading this. I am sure as well that the stakes for choosing one side over
another that I have recalled here are obvious to everyone. The question then becomes one of how to choose
both sides at once.
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Embracing eternal recurrence is inherently cyclical – the alternative can only result in
re-territorialization and fail at producing change.
Conway 98 (Daniel W., Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He is author of “Nietzsche and
the Political” and “Nietzsche's Dangerous Game”. Symploke 6.1, “Tumbling Dice”, 1998. Project Muse AD 7/8/09)
JM
In his familiar deterritorializing aspect, Nietzsche is an astute physician of culture, an experimenter who exposes
and de-mystifies the constraints required, and imposed, by civilization. As a "master of suspicion," he potentially
liberates desire from the self-prescribed repression called for by advanced industrial capitalism in late modernity. This is the Nietzsche
whom Deleuze originally fetishized, the rhizomaniacal inventor of the "Heraclitean fire machine." In his less familiar reterritorializing
aspect, however, Nietzsche is a resentful, lying priest, who contributes to the besetting schizophrenia of late
modernity. He presents the decadence of late modernity as a novel field of agency, albeit one which he himself has already delimited
and policed. Aspiring disciples of Dionysus complete their rites of initiation under Nietzsche's conduct, only to find themselves
enmeshed in the familiar "mysteries" of yet another Oedipal cult. Having whetted his readers' desire with the deterritorializing promise
of unrepressed cathexis upon its natural and proper object, the priestly Nietzsche decrees decadence to be an originary
lack or loss, for which desiring machines can never fully compensate. His children are "free" to
explore the undiscovered country of decadence, but their desire can express itself only in Oedipal
operations of self-repression and self-denial. They may gain an epiphanic insight into the shipwreck of their age, but this
cognitive triumph does not translate into the volitional recuperation he originally promised. He thus permits his children to preview the
end of history, but this end promises only further repression and, finally, auto-destruction. While it is perhaps true that humankind would
sooner desire nothingness than not desire, Nietzsche provides no hope that anything other than self-annihilation is
available as an object of desire. [End Page 14] While it may be true that Nietzsche's nomadic adventures confounded all
despotic attempts to codify the law, it is simply not the case that he, or anyone else, could sustain indefinitely
the rhizomatic activities for which he is celebrated. While his "nomadic war machine" succeeded in deterritorializing
the despotic codifications of philosophy, thereby creating the conditions for the possibility of investigating difference, it also contributed
eventually to the inevitable reterritorialization of philosophy, through the despotic codification of new oppositional categories.
Nietzsche's labyrinth, so inviting initially as an extra-dialectical retreat from the orthodoxy of binary
opposition, eventually reveals itself as a gilded cage, wherein self-styled nomads satisfy their twisted
desire to wave the despot's scepter. In order to put Nietzsche to work, one must not only embrace his
familiar deterritorializing movement, which corresponds to the affirmation of chance; one must also embrace his
inevitable reterritorialization, which corresponds to the affirmation of necessity. 1 For all of his rhizomatic
calisthenics, his dice too must return to earth, and the fatal combination they eventually deliver will necessarily betray the promise of his
nomadic war machine. In order to affirm Nietzsche, one must forcibly inscribe his practice of critique into
the context of his critique of modernity, thereby divesting him of any extra-machinic (either romantically human
or fatuously divine) privilege. He must be reduced—as he reduces all others—to a collection of signs, which
may be decoded unsentimentally and incorporated within the framework of one's own evolving
difference engine.
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Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence strategy fails – his nomadic war machine fails to engage the
production of difference.
Conway 98 (Daniel W., Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He is author of “Nietzsche and
the Political” and “Nietzsche's Dangerous Game”. Symploke 6.1, “Tumbling Dice”, 1998. Project Muse AD 7/8/09)
JM
How is it possible, however, that Nietzsche's celebrated nomadism might be or become productive? Why is the nomad not merely an
aimless outsider, wandering and wasteful? How could the mobilization of nomadic forces possibly contribute to the production of
difference? Notwithstanding Deleuze's enthusiasm, Nietzsche's nomadic war machine does not deliver him to
victory over the dialectic. On the contrary, Nietzsche's nomadism ultimately betrays its original promise,
culminating in a colonization and settlement of its own unique design. His "Heraclitean fire machine" is ultimately
productive not of difference, but of yet another iteration of binary opposition. The problem here is that Nietzsche's faux nomads continue
to roam Nature, as wandering heroes tragically displaced from their ownmost homes. Indeed, his nomadic war machine is
haunted by the ghost of romanticism: these nomads may revel in their rhizomatic distribution across a
particular region, but their ultimate aim is to return home, to the originary womb of Nature. Owing to
this residual naturalism, Nietzsche fails to mount a differential critique of the dialectic, one that might foster
revolution or change; he aspires only to a nomadism in thought (or perhaps in script), but not in deed. Nietzsche's experiments
with nomadism are compromised in the end by his (involuntary) foundational commitment to negativity—lack, loss, sin or deficiency—
as the originary metaphysical condition of human experience. Although Nietzsche understands this preoccupation
with negativity as a prejudice fundamental to the crisis of European nihilism, shrewdly exposing it in its
various neo-Hegelian incarnations, his experiments with originary sufficiency all eventually founder. In
promulgating his dubious teaching of the Übermensch, for example, he cannot help but present this
figure of originary sufficiency within the irrefrangible frame of negativity, as a "cure" his readers both
lack and need in order to become whole (Nietzsche 1982, 124-137). Even Dionysus [End Page 12] himself, the enduring
symbol for the unquenchable sufficiency of Life, the diceplayer par excellence, eventually becomes conscripted as an agent of
negativity. Nietzsche's failure to escape the snares of originary deficiency is illuminated most clearly in his repeated miscarriage of the
teaching of eternal recurrence. Although Deleuze recommends eternal recurrence as a promising engine of
repetition, Nietzsche's best renditions of this teaching clearly fail to engage the production of
difference. As Heidegger has argued in his own parlance, Nietzsche remains mired in the metaphysical tradition,
attempting with his teaching of eternal recurrence to "eternalize the moment" within a single, heroic
act of will. Heidegger thus detects in Nietzsche's teaching of eternal recurrence a residual subjectivism, which tinctures his
subsequent experiments with difference and repetition (Heidegger 1977, 95-105). Despite his efforts to illuminate the difference
that metaphysical thinking necessary occludes, he ultimately conflates the eternal recurrence of the same with the
eternal recurrence of identity. While his teaching of eternal recurrence does in fact clear a conceptual
space for the investigation of difference, he promptly fills this space with identity, confounding the
traditional codes of philosophy only to replace them with binary oppositions of his own design.
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Turn – The Ks reliance on identity creation creates a moral framework founded on
otherness that makes resentment of the other inevitable
Bourke 8 (James, Graduate Student Department of Political Science Duke University, "Nietzsche\Connolly:
Problems of a Nietzschean Democracy,"
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/5/7/7/pages265777/p265777-1.php, AD:
7/8/09) jl
Before examining the strategies of democratic agonism that Connolly recommends in order to mitigate and
dampen the cruelties of identity, we should consider what Nietzschean elements come into the basic problem
of identity\difference. Part of the Nietzschean debt here concerns Nietzsche’s insights into the logic of
resentment. In the first essay of the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche describes the ways in which master
and slave morality are both constituted with respect to an other or opposite. The master affirms himself and
in order to do so identifies in those opposite qualities of the slave an other labeled “bad.” But, and more
importantly for Connolly’s reading of identity, the slave goes a step further. Here, the identification is first a
demonization of the other, the conversion of that which the master calls “good” into the category of “evil.”
Resentment of the other here makes the first move in forming the identity of the self, which only after
pinpointing the qualities of evil goes on to affirm their opposites. Though Connolly would probably insist
that this slave-like logic is more the rule than the exception, his debt to Nietzsche on this matter is clear.
Another use of Nietzsche appears in Connolly’s generalization of the dynamics of resentment to the very
conditions that promote identity\difference dynamics in the first place. Here it is not a question of how
identity and otherness are played out, but rather a question of why we seek refuge in identity
formations in the first place. To answer this question, Connolly introduces the theme of “existential
resentment,” a Nietzschean idea that tracks more closely the development of the idea of revenge and
resentment in Thus Spoke Zarathustra as opposed to the Genealogy. Connolly borrows here from
Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the deepest sources of resentment in the desire for revenge against the dead
hand of the past and its “it was.” What Nietzsche sees as a general resentment at our inability to turn
back the wheel of time, Connolly expands into the idea that every resistance of the world to our attempts to
master it generates resentment. Connolly locates existential resentment primarily in the drive to find some
locus of responsibility for the sufferings we endure. Existential resentment is resentment toward the
recalcitrance of the world to our attempts to explain and master it. As Connolly elaborates, People tend to
demand … a world in which suffering is ultimately grounded in proportional responsibility. We resent a
world in which it appears that this is not so. But resentment must locate an appropriate object if it is to be
discharged as resentment. It thereby seeks a responsible agent that it can convince itself is otherwise worthy
of receiving the load of incipient resentment it carries. … So, part of the drive to insistent attributions of
responsibility flows from existential resentment. 6 As one might imagine, the drive to pin responsibility
on an agent is itself a part of the logic of identity\difference. But more fundamentally, existential
resentment illustrates the features of the human condition that give rise to identity formations in the first
place. For the resistance of the world to our attempts to master it is part of Connolly’s Nietzschean
understanding of action and will to power. According to Connolly’s Nietzsche, “to do is to forgo,” and the
will to power is fundamentally “the will to give form to something.” 7 In combination, these two ideas
suggest a weak ontology in which giving form and actualizing possibilities always leaves a remainder
that resists the original effort. In such a world, identity formation suggests itself as a potential way to
discharge the resentment that such recalcitrance engenders.
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Nietzsche admits that society is necessary for the ubermensch to appear – preventing our
impacts is a precursor to the alternative’s solvency.
Golomb 6 (Jacob, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 32, “Can One Really
Become a "Free Spirit Par Excellence"or an Übermensch?” 2006. Project Muse, AD 7/8/09) JM
Nietzsche's affirmation of society as the necessary condition for the materialization of positive power
attenuates the radical stance of his extreme individualism. And because Nietzsche affirms "a community" (e.g., GM
II:9) and does not seek to destroy it, he had to explain how the übermenschlich patterns of behavior or the morality of positive power are
possible within the social context. He analyzes the nature of the interaction among members of society and maintains that genuine
justice is possible only within a social fabric composed of equally powerful members: "Justice . . . is the good will among parties of
approximately equal power to come to terms with one another, to reach an 'understanding' by means of a settlement—and to compel
parties of lesser power to reach a settlement among themselves" (GM II:8). Nietzsche argues that the powerful individual
is characterized by egoism. Avoidance of any altruistic activity and ideology would seemingly contradict any possible moral
system. This emphasis on the egoism of genuine power, however, does not prevent Nietzsche from continuing
to describe the moral and social network of powerful individuals who would willingly and freely enter
the restrictive social fabric: The noble soul accepts this fact of its egoism without any question mark. . . . [U]nder certain
circumstances there are some who have rights equal to its own. . . . [I]t moves among these equals with their equal privileges, showing
the same sureness of modesty and delicate reverence that characterize its relation with itself. . . . [E]very star is such an egoist. . . . [I]t
honors itself in them and in the rights it cedes to them; it does not doubt that the exchange of honors and rights is of the
nature of all social relations and thus also belongs to the natural condition of things. (BGE 265) Nietzsche
declares here that recognition of the value and freedom of others originates in egoism. Only an individual possessing an abundance of
positive [End Page 27]power and a firm selfhood is able to grant similar rights and freedoms to all those who are recognized as equals.
This individual is not afraid that this might diminish or destroy her or his own power. It is a self-affirmation and a confidence in one's
power and virtues that enable the affirmation of "others" and their uniqueness. For Nietzsche, human egoism and the emphasis on
selfhood do not contradict the social and moral order; they actually create the ideal conditions for its proper functioning. Yet Nietzsche
is not occupied solely with characterizing the ideal features of the übermenschlich society. He also seeks to show that the morality
of positive power has already existed in one form or another in history , so that it is empirically feasible and does
not stand in any a priori contradiction to society. Thus he speaks about "the essential characteristic of a good and healthy aristocracy,"
urging us to "look for once at an aristocratic commonwealth . . . an ancient Greek polis, or Venice," which in his view are typical social
and political examples "of the morality of the powerful" (BGE 258, 262, 260). In this context he also refers several times to the historical
patterns of Rome and the Renaissance. At this point a question arises: Why do the powerful need a society at all? Isn't it
the case that the need of others indicates feebleness and insufficiency? In answer, one may point out that the powerful person is
not identical with an omnipotent and absolutely perfect God, capable of functioning fully and freely
apart from his creation. There is no upper limit to power, and there is no optimum for absolute autarchy and self-sufficiency.
Moreover, cultural enterprises require the association and collaboration of various creative powers, each
contributing its distinct capacities to the common enterprise. The close cooperation and interaction of
the different distinct powers are required. To make the social manifestation of power possible, any creation, even the most
individual, needs the social fabric and the mutual exchange of ideas and concepts. There is no power without creation and giving form,
and there is no creation without society. Hence there is no power without society, and its essential
manifestations are impossible if there is a complete severance from the social context. Furthermore, because
absolute power never actually "exists," and because there is no creation ex nihilo, persons possessing positive powers, namely, "we free
spirits" (and this includes, by extrapolation, the Übermenschen), need each other and need society and culture as the vital working
framework within which they create. Society itself obviously also requires moral patterns that organize and
consolidate it. Nietzsche, then, is not a negating "nihilist" who wishes to overthrow society and go
beyond its limits. The "Antichrist" within him does not turn him into an anarchist; nor does it make him immoral—quite the
reverse. This is especially related to his anthropological concept of Macht.
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Nietzsche – Alternative – Extinction Outweighs
Success of the alternative can only happen in a world where we’re still alive – extinction
claims precede the alternative.
Connolly 91 (William E., professor and chair of the Department of political science at The Johns Hopkins
University. “Identity/Difference” 1991. AD 7/9/09) JM
Zarathustra says: "The most concerned ask today, 'How is man to be preserved?' But Zarathustra is the first and only one to ask: `How is
man to be overcome?"16 The idea is to stop worrying about the preservation of man, to strive to create a few
overmen. Leave to their own devices those who insist upon being consumed by resentment, so that a
few can cultivate another type of humanity. The new type to be cultivated consists of a few free spirits who fend off the
resentment against the human condition that wells up in everyone, a few who rise above the insistence that there be symmetry between
evil and responsibility, who live above the demand that some guilty agent worthy of punishment be located every time they themselves
suffer, who recognize that existential suffering is a precondition of wisdom. But this typological differentiation between man and
overman no longer makes much sense, if it ever did. For the overman— constituted as an independent, detached type—refers
simultaneously to a spiritual disposition and to the residence of free spirits in a social space relatively insulated from reactive politics.
The problem is that the disappearance of the relevant social preconditions confounds any division of
humanity into two spiritual types. If there is anything in the type to be admired, the ideal must be
dismantled as a distinct caste of solitary individuals and folded into the political fabric of late- modern
society. The "overman" now falls apart as a set of distinctive dispositions concentrated in a particular caste or type, and its spiritual
qualities migrate to a set of dispositions that may compete for presence in any self. The type now becomes (as it already was to a
significant degree) a voice in the self contending with other voices, including those of ressentiment. This model is implicitly suggested
by Foucault when he eschews the term "overman" (as well as "will to power") and shifts the center of gravity of Nietzschean discourse
from heroes and classical tragic figures to everyday misfits such as AlexiAlexina and Pierre Riviere. These textual moves are, I think,
part of a strategy to fold Nietzschean agonism into the fabric of ordinary life by attending to' the extraordinary character of the latter. I
seek to pursue this same trail. The Nietzschean conception of a few who overcome resentment above politics
while the rest remain stuck in the muck of resentment in politics is not today viable on its own terms. Today
circumstances require that many give the sign of the overman a presence in themselves and in the
ethicopolitical orientations they project onto the life of the whole. But this break with the spirit of Nietzsche
requires further elucidation. The shift results partly from the late-modern possibility of self-extinction. In this
new world the failure to "preserve man" could also extinguish the human basis for the struggle
Nietzsche named "overman." Preservation and overcoming are now drawn closer together so that
each becomes a term in the other: the latter cannot succeed unless it touches the former. But the entanglement of each with
the other in sociopolitical relations means, when the logic of this entanglement is worked out, that the "overman"' as a type cannot
eliminate from its life some of the modalities definitive of the "human." If the overman was ever projected as a distinct type—and this is
not certain—it now becomes refigured into a struggle within the self between the inclination to existential resentment and an affirmation
of life that rises above this tendency.
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Nietzsche Answers
Nietzsche – A2: VTL
Elevating any ideology above preventing extinction is allows extinction to happen
Schell 82 (Jonathan, writer for the New Yorker and nuclear weapons expert, “The Fate of the Earth” p.129)
For the generations that now have to decide whether or not to risk the future of the species, the implication of
our species’ unique place in the order of things is that while things in the life of mankind have worth, we
must never raise that worth above the life of mankind and above our respect for that life’s existence. To
do this would be to make of our highest ideals so many swords with which to destroy ourselves. To
sum up the worth of our species by reference to some particular standard, goal, or ideology, no matter
how elevated or noble it might be, would be to prepare the way for extinction by closing down in thought
and feeling the open-ended possibilities for human development which extinction would close down in
fact. There is only one circumstance in which it might be possible to sum up the life and achievement of the
species, and that circumstance would be that it had already died, but then, of course, there would be no one
left to do the summing up. Only a generation that believed itself to be in possession of final, absolute
truth could ever conclude that it had reason to put an end to human life, and only generations that
recognized the limits to their own wisdom and virtue would be likely to subordinate their interests and
dreams to the as yet unformed interests and undreamed dreams of the future generations, and let human
life go on.
Value to life is subjective
Schwartz 2 (Lisa, Medical Ethics, http://www.fleshandbones.com/readingroom/pdf/399.pdf) MV
The second assertion made by supporters of the quality of life as a criterion for decision- making is closely
related to the first, but with an added dimension. This assertion suggests that the determination of the
value of the quality of a given life is a subjective determination to be made by the person experiencing
that life. The important addition here is that the decision is a personal one that, ideally, ought not to be
made externally by another person but internally by the individual involved. Katherine Lewis made
this decision for herself based on a comparison between two stages of her life. So did James Brady.
Without this element, decisions based on quality of life criteria lack salient information and the patients
concerned cannot give informed consent. Patients must be given the opportunity to decide for themselves
whether they think their lives are worth living or not. To ignore or overlook patients’ judgement in this
matter is to violate their autonomy and their freedom to decide for themselves on the basis of relevant
informa- tion about their future, and comparative con- sideration of their past. As the deontological
position puts it so well, to do so is to violate the imperative that we must treat persons as rational and
as ends in themselves.
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Nietzsche Answers
***Orientalism Answers***
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Nietzsche Answers
Orientalism – Perm Solvency
Only the perm solves- it’s impossible to exclude the state
Foucault 88 (Michel, French Sociologist, “On Criticism” in Michel Foucault: Politics Philosophy Culture
Interviews and other writings 1977- 1984)
D.E. You mean it will be possible to work with this government? FOUCAULT : We must escape from the
dilemma of being either for or against. After all, it is possible to face up to a government and remain
standing. To work with a govern ment implies neither subjection nor total acceptance. One may work
with it and yet be restive. I even believe that the two things go together.D.E. After Michel Foucault the critic,
are we now going to see Michel Foucault the reformist? After all, the reproach was often made that the
criticism made by intellectuals leads to nothing. FOUCAULT First I’ll answer the point about “that leads to
nothing.” There are hundreds and thousands of people who have worked for the emergence of a
number of problems that are now on the agenda. To say that this work produced nothing is quite
wrong. Do you think that twenty years ago people were considering the problems of the relationship between mental illness and
psychological normality, the problem of prison, the problem of medical power, the problem of the relationship between the sexes, and so
on, as they are doing today? Furthermore, there are no reforms as such. Reforms are not produced in the air,
independently of those who carry them out. One cannot not take account of those who will have the job
of carrying out this transformation. And, then, above all, I believe that an opposition can be made between
critique and transformation, “ideal” critique and “real” transformation. A critique is not a matter of
saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions,
what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, uncon sidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest. We must free
ourselves from the sacrilization of the social as the only reality and stop regarding as superfluous something so essential in human life
and in human relations as thought. Thought exists independently of systems and structures of discourse. It is something that is often
hidden, but which always animates everyday behavior. There is always a little thought even in the most stupid institutions; there is
always thought even in silent habits. Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it:
to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident
will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult. In these circumstances,
criticism (and radical criticism) is absolutely indispensable for any transformation. A transformation that
remains within the same mode of thought, a transformation that is only a way of adjusting the same thought more closely
to the reality of things can merely be a superficial transformation. On the other hand, as soon as one can no
longer think things as one formerly thought them, transformation becomes both very urgent, very
difficult, and quite possible. It is not therefore a question of there being a time for criticism and a time for
transformation, nor people who do the criticism and others who do the transforming, those who are enclosed in an inaccessible
radicalism and those who are forced to make the necessary concessions to reality. In fact I think the work of deep
transformation can only be carried out in a free atmosphere, one constantly agitated by a permanent
criticism. D.E. But do you think the intellectual must have a programmatic role in this transformation? FOUCAULT A reform is
never only the result of a process in which there is conflict, confrontation, struggle, resistance. To say to
oneself at the outset: what reform will I be able to carry out? That is not, I believe, an aim for the intellectual to pursue. His role, since he
works specifically in the realm of thought, is to see how far the liberation of thought can make those transformations urgent enough for
people to want to carry them out and difficult enough to carry out for them to be profoundly rooted in reality. It is a question of
making conflicts more visible, of making them more essential than mere confrontations of interests or
mere institutional immobility. Out of these conflicts, these confrontations, a new power relation must
emerge, whose first, temporary expression will be a reform. If at the base there has not been the work of thought
upon itself and if, in fact, modes of thought, that is to say modes of action, have not been altered, whatever the project for reform, we
know that it will be swamped, digested by modes of behavior and institutions that will always be the same.
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Nietzsche Answers
Orientalism – Perm Solvency
Blanket rejection can’t solve
SAID 3 (Edward, Prof. of English/Comparative Lit., Columbia U., “Preface.” Orientalism. p. xxviii)
This is not to say that the cultural world has simply regressed on one side to a belligerent
neoOrientalism and on the other to blanket rejectionism. The recent United Nations World Summit in Johannesburg,
for all its limitations, did in fact reveal a vast area of common global concert whose detailed workings on matters having to do with the
environment, famine, the gap between advanced and developing countries, health, and human rights, suggest the welcome emergence of
a new collective constituency that give the often facile notion of "one world" a new urgency. In all this, however, we must admit
that no one can possibly know the' extraordinarily complex unity of our globalized world, despite the
reality that, as I said at the outset, the world does have a real interdependence of parts that leaves no genuine
opportunity for isolation.
Compromise key to solve
Spencer 6 (Robert, NYT Bestselling author on Islam,
http://media.web.britannica.com/ebsco/pdf/23/23648989.pdf, date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
We postcolonial critics should have the courage to heed Said's proposition that the problem with
American imperialism is not that it is too universalist, but on the contrary, that it is not universalist
enough. Our opponent is not universalism, in other word, but a provincial, two-faced caricature of it.
The apparent universalism of the Bush administration is in fact nothing of the sort. Insofar as its talk of freedom, democracy
and human rights is not merely a smokescreen sent up to conceal more unseemly motivations,
America's missionaiy universalism represents a circumscribed view of the world that propagates
systems, priorities and courses of action that further only the special interests of American elites.' "
Hymning the virtues of unregulated business activity, privatised public sen'ices and cursory forms of democracy betrays a worldview far
too parochial to be described accurately as universalist. So narcissistic is this particular vision ofthe world that, far
from being characterised by the global sympathies and self-conscious mindset of humanism, it actually has more in common
with the cast iron certainties of religious belief. Of great relevance, therefore, to the humanist as he or she
operates in the public sphere is not just the idea of humanistic or democratic criticism but also Said's earlier
notion of secular criticism, which was set out in Beginnings and, most persuasively, in The World, the Text, and the Critic, and
which reverberates in these late essays. Said's secularism is a powerful antidote to the selfrighteous, double-dealing piety of orthodox
humanism. He proclaims the need to resist abstract doctrines that claim all the incontestability of God-
given truth and he attests the veiy urgent requirement to apply oneself instead to a perspicacious and
watchfully self-conscious engagement with the world. In the present context secularism involves rejecting the sort of
fanatical selfcertainty hrought into relief by Gregoiy Thielmann, director ofthe US State Department's bureau of intelligence until his
'retirement' in 2002, when he remarked that '[the Bush] administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude ,,, "We know the
answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers'"," The disciples of that 'faith-based' worldview credit it with the impregnable,
fact-proof authority of divine scripture. Gathered about the maundering president and his blowhard lieutenants, therefore, are the most
garrulous but unselfconscious votaries. Theirs is a clueless executive, 'advised' (or al; least sweet-talked) by corrupted intellectuals like
Fawaz Gerges, Richard Perle and Norman Podhoretz as well as the usual minstrels like Francis Fukuyama, Fouad Ajami and Bernard
Lewis, an unctuous crowd assembled at court to admire the emperor's new humanitarian clothes and deliver their wrong-headed waffle
about a clash of civilisations. Seemingly devoid of conscience and evidently without accountability, these thinkers (if thinking is what
they are doing) issue jeremiads against the evildoers and declaim from their pulpits the merits of America's divinely sanctioned power.
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Nietzsche Answers
Orientalism – Said Defense- Ontology
Said’s theory of Orientalism isn’t fully developed- unanswered questions of current
ontological conditions
Spanos 96 (William, Professor of comparative literature at Binghampton,
Culture and Colonization: The Imperial Imperatives of the Centered Circle, p. 172, date accessed: 7/7/2010) AJK
Given the political sterility of the studied localism of much of our criticism, especially as represented by New Historicists, such as
Stephen Greenblatt, and by the odd parochialism of even some of our best critics, such as Raymond Williams, Edward Said's
globalization of cultural criticism is uniquely powerful and enabling. Insofar as the ontology informing the in-dissoluble relay between
culture and imperialism has been left unthought, there is still work to be done. Even the power of Said's visionary
critical humanism leaves unthought the ontological conditions of global power re-lations precipitated
by the end of the cold war. The failure of postcolonial critics to think the ontological site not only thins
out its critique of the iden-tity (nationalist) politics of the various colonial and postcolonial discourses but,
equally important, renders even Said's recommendation for "an emer-gent non-coercive culture" (Cl,
334) a kind of despairing lyrical yearning of a "damaged life," a yearning that, however suggestive, lacks
the fully persuasive force of an ontologically grounded theory.
Said’s theory of Orientalism isn’t fully developed- ontological representations aren’t
addressed
Spanos 96 (William, Professor of comparative literature at Binghampton,
Culture and Colonization: The Imperial Imperatives of the Centered Circle, date accessed: 7/7/2010) AJK
Nevertheless, I believe that Said's valuable meditation on the cul-ture/imperialism nexus betrays a
fundamental limitation, one that may be the inadvertent consequence of his quite justified effort to extricate criticism (especially
American) from the rarefied web of academic professionalism in order to put it to work in the world. I mean his resistance to
"travelling theory"-an institutionalized discursive practice separated from the origi-nal occasion of
crisis and thus devoid of historical specificity and practical effectivity--especially to his reluctance to
theorize his commitment to the decentered subject.5 As a result, Said fails to adequately articulate the
absolute continuity--however uneven in any particular historical occasion, including the present-between ontological representation (metaphysics: the perception and ordering of the being of Being, the differences that temporality always already disseminates, from above or after the process), cultural production (the re-presentation of individual and
social experience as narrative), and imperialism (the "conquest" and incorporation of extra-territorial constituencies--the provincial
"others"--within the self-identical framework of the "conquering" metropolis). To put this knowledge/power relay between metaphysics,
culture, and imperialism in the metaphorics en-demic to the hegemonic discourse and practice of Western imperialism, Said is
blinded by his enabling insight into the "worldliness"o f the cultural text to the indissoluble relation
between the circle, culture, and coloniza-tion in etymological and historical usage and practice.6 This
blindness is not a disabling limitation of Said's momentous critical genealogical project. But insofar as it leaves vague that
which would allow an oppositional dis-course to intervene precisely where the "end-of-history"d
iscourse is both strongest and most vulnerable, Said's project needs to be supplemented by putting
ontological representation back into play in the process of thinking the imperial depth and scope of the New World Order.
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Nietzsche Answers
Orientalism – Said Defense- Ontology
Said’s analysis on Orientalism is useless without an interrogation of ontology
Spanos 96 (William, Professor of comparative literature at Binghampton,
Culture and Colonization: The Imperial Imperatives of the Centered Circle, date accessed: 7/7/2010) AJK
Edward Said's rethinking of colonization in texts from Orientalism to Culture and Imperialism sets out with a deep recognition of the
ambivalence of humanist culture's Eurocentrism—even if not of its ontological "ground.'9In his work throughout this part of his career,
in which he shows that the alleged universality of humanist cultural p roductionis historically specific and its globalr each paradoxically
provincial, Said achieves an es- 9. See EdwardW .Said, "Secular Criticism,"in The World, the Text,a nd the Critic, 21-22. This text
offers an excellent example of Said's well-knownli ne of argumentv is-6-vis the Eurocentrismo f humanists tudies. 142 boundary2 /
Spring1 996 trangement effect of persuasive force. In overdetermining Western human-ist scholarship and
cultural production, he overlooks and renders practically invisible, however, the inextricably
connected and more fundamental ques-tion of the specifically colonized "Others" all along the continuum of
being-a continuum we have seen Dussel to acknowledge as well. Said too often minimizes, if he does not entirely
efface, the role that ontology-the anthro-pologos and its centering, accommodational force-plays in the
ideologi-cal relay he thematizes. I want to recall that the anthropological phase of the ontotheological
tradition, significantly called "the Enlightenment,"is the phase that witnesses the (re)emergence of a
Eurocentric imperialism that represents itself (as in the case of Hegel) as being founded on the "truth" of being or (as in the case
of the United States's intervention in Vietnam) as a project of "winning the hearts and minds" of extraterritorial others to the essential
principles informing its "way of life." Said claims that humanist culture is complicitous with imperialism; if this
claim is to have any validity, it behooves the genealogist of imperialism to look deeper into the
historical and ideological origins of humanist culture than Said has done thus far.10 Agenealogy of imperialism
must con-front not simply humanist culture but humanism as such. It must view with suspicion the assumption of
virtually all modern theoreticians and practitioners of humanism that this discourse derives a
putatively disinterested and free inquiry from classical Greece.1 Reading the history of humanism against the grain
will show how crucial ontological representation-and its figuration-is in the relay of dominations that Said and others who follow him
delimit to Western cultural production and the imperial project.
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Nietzsche Answers
Orientalism – Said Defense- Useless Theory
Said’s analysis is hypocritical and illogical
Warraq 6 (Ibn, founded the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society, http://www.islamwatch.org/IbnWarraq/EdwardSaid.htm, date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
There are, as I shall show, several contradictory theses buried in Said’s impenetrable prose, decked with post-modern
jargon ("a universe of representative discourse", "Orientalist discourse") (and some kind editor really ought to explain to Said the meaning of "literally"
and the difference between scatological and eschatological), and pretentious language which often conceals some banal
observation, as when Said talks of "textual attitude", when all he means is "bookish" or "bookishness". Tautologies abound, as in "the freedom of
licentious sex ". Or take the comments here: "Thus out of the Napoleonic expedition there issued a whole series of textual children, from Chateaubriand’s
Itinéraire to Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient to Flaubert’s Salammbô, and in the same tradition, Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians and
Richard Burton’s Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah. What binds them together is not only their common background in Oriental
legend and experience but also their learned reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb out of which they were brought forth. If paradoxically these creations
turned out to be highly stylized simulacra, elaborately wrought imitations of what a live Orient might be thought to look like, that by no means detracts from
the strength of their imaginative conception or from the strength of European mastery of the Orient, whose prototypes respectively were Cagliostro, the
great European impersonator of the Orient, and Napoleon, its first modern conqueror." What does Said mean by "out of the Napoleonic
expedition there issued a whole series of textual children" except that these five very varied works were written
after 1798? The pretentious language of textual children issuing from the Napeolonic expedition covers up this crushingly obvious fact. Perhaps
there is a profound thesis hidden in the jargon, that these works were somehow influenced by the Napoleonic
expedition, inspired by it, and could not have been written without it. But no such thesis is offered. This arbitrary group
consists of three Frenchmen, two Englishmen, one work of romantic historical fiction, three travel books, one detailed study of modern Egyptians.
Chateaubriand’s Itinéraire (1811) describes superbly his visit to the Near East; Voyage en Orient (1835) is Lamartine’s impressions of Palestine, Syria, and
Greece; Salammbô (1862) is Flaubert’s novel of ancient Carthage; Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836) is a fascinating first-hand
account of life in Egypt, particularly Cairo and Luxor, written after several years of residence there, Burton’s account of his audacious visit to Mecca was
first published in three volumes between 1855-6. Lane and Burton both had perfect command of Arabic, Classical and Colloquial, while the others did not,
and Lane and Burton can be said to have made contributions to Islamic Studies, particularly Lane, but not the three Frenchmen. What on earth do they have
in common? Said tells us that what binds them together is "their common background in Oriental legend and experience
but also their learned reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb out of which they were brought forth ". What is the background of Oriental
legend that inspired Burton or Lane? Was Flaubert’s vivid imagination stimulated by "Oriental legend", and was this the same legendary material that
inspired Burton, Lane and Lamartine? "Learned reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb..." is yet another example of Said’s pretentious way of saying the
obvious, namely that they were writing about the Orient about which they had some experience and intellectual knowledge.. Orientalism is
peppered with meaningless sentences. Take, for example, "Truth, in short, becomes a function of learned judgment, not of the material itself,
which in time seems to owe its existence to the Orientalist". Said seems to be saying :‘Truth’ is created by the experts or Orientalists, and does not
correspond to reality, to what is actually out there. So far so good. But then "what is out there" is also said to owe its existence to the Orientalist. If that is
the case, then the first part of Said’s sentence makes no sense, and if the first part is true then the second part makes no sense. Is Said relying on that weasel
word "seems" to get him out of the mess? That ruse will not work either; for what would it mean to say that an external reality independent of the
Orientalist’s judgment also seems to be a creation of the Orientalist? That would be a simple contradiction. Here is another example: "The
Orientalist can imitate the Orient without the opposite being true." Throughout his book, Said is at pains to point
out that there is no such thing as "the Orient", which, for him, is merely a meaningless abstraction concocted by
Orientalists in the service of imperialists and racists. In which case, what on earth could "The Orient cannot imitate the
Orientalist" possibly mean? If we replace "the Orient" by the individual countries, say between Egypt and India, do we get anything more
coherent? No, obviously not : "India, Egypt, and Iran cannot imitate the Orientalists like Renan, Bernard Lewis, Burton, et al.". We get nonsense whichever
way we try to gloss Said’s sentence. Contradictions At times, Said seems to allow that the Orientalists did achieve genuine positive knowledge of the
Orient, its history, culture, languages, as when he calls Lane’s work Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians "a classic of historical and
anthropological observation because of its style, its enormously intelligent and brilliant details"; or when he talks of "a growing systematic knowledge in
Europe about the Orient", since Said does not have sarcastic quotation marks around the word knowledge, I presume he means there was a growth in
genuine knowledge. Further on, Said talks of Orientalism producing "a fair amount of exact positive knowledge about the Orient". Again I take it Said is not
being ironical when he talks of "philological discoveries in comparative grammar made by Jones,...". To give one final example, Said mentions
Orientalism’s "objective discoveries". Yet, these acknowledgements of the real discoveries made by Orientalists are
contradicted by Said’s insistence that there is no such thing as "truth "; or when he characterizes Orientalism as "a form of
paranoia, knowledge of another kind, say, from ordinary historical knowledge". Or again, "it is finally Western ignorance which becomes more refined and
complex, not some body of positive Western knowledge which increases in size and accuracy". At one point Said seems to deny that the Orientalist had
acquired any objective knowledge at all, and a little later he also writes, "the advances made by a ‘science’ like Orientalism in its academic form are less
objectively true than we often like to think". It is true that the last phrase does leave open the possibility that some of the science may be true though less
than we had hitherto thought. Said also of course wholeheartedly endorses Abdel Malek’s strictures against Orientalism, and its putatively false
"knowledge" of the Orient. In his 1994 Afterword, Said insists that he has "no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what
the true Orient and Islam really are". And yet he contradicts this outburst of humility and modesty, when he
claims that, "[The Orientalist’s] Orient is not the Orient as it is, but the Orient as it has been Orientalized", for such
a formulation assumes Said knows what the real Orient is. Such an assumption is also apparent in his statement that "the present crisis dramatizes the
disparity between texts and reality". In order to be able to tell the difference between the two, Said must know what the reality is. This is equally true when
Said complains that "To look into Orientalism for a lively sense of an Oriental’s human or even social reality...is to look in vain".
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Nietzsche Answers
Orientalism – Said Defense- Useless Theory
Said’s analysis of Orientalism is severely lacking- four reasons
McLeod (John, University of Leeds, “Beginning postcolonialism”, p. 47-50, date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
1.Orientalism is ahistorical. The major criticism of Orientalism from which several of the others stem,
concerns its capacity to make totalizing assumptions about a vast, varied expanse of representations
over a very long period of history. As Dennis Porter describes it in his essay of 1983, ‘Orientalism and its Problems’ (in
Colonial Discourse and Post- Colonial Theory, ed. Williams and Chrisman, pp. 150-61), Said posits the ‘unified character of Western
discourse on the Orient over some two millennia, a unity derived from a common and continuing experience of fascination with and
threat from the East, of its irreducible otherness’ (p. 152). Said’s examples of Orientalist writing range from the
Italian poet Dante writing in the early fourteenth century up to twentieth-century writers. Can it be
true that they all hold essentially the same latent assumptions? Can such a massive archive of materials be so
readily homogenized? Has nothing changed? Said’s view takes in a broad, generalizing sweep of history but
attends little to individual historical moments, their anomalies and specifics. As John MacKenzie points out in
his book Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester University Press, 1995), Said’s history of Orientalism is perhaps ‘in
itself essentially ahistorical because it glosses over the variable factors that make historical moments unique, such as the ‘contrasting
economic and social circumstances of different territories’ (p. 11). In these terms, we could say that Said privileges latent
Orientalism over manifest Orientalism by neglecting to think whether the representations of the
Orient made by those in the West at particular moments might modify or challenge the enduring
assumptions of the Orient. MacKenzie argues that Western artists have approached the Orient at various moments with
perfectly honourable intentions and ‘genuine respect’ (p. 60) for other peoples, in order to learn from and value their cultures. Not
everybody looked down upon the Orient so crudely. This was no doubt true in some cases. However, in fairness to Said, MacKenzie is
too trusting of the examples of ‘benign’ Orientalist art he reproduces and fails to grasp the point that even the most gracious and
respectful artist may unwittingly reproduce Orientalist assumptions. If Said’s work privileges the latent aspect of Orientalism,
MacKenzie pays it too scant attention and forgets that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. It does not necessarily follow
that a sympathetic representation of the Orient or the Oriental will automatically be free from the latent assumptions of Orientalism. 2 .
Said ignores resistance by the colonized. This is another major criticism of Orientalism. If Said is to be
believed, Orientalism moves in one direction from the active West to the passive East. But he rarely
stops to examine how Oriental peoples received these representations, nor how these representations circulated in
the colonies themselves. In what ways did the colonized peoples respond to Orientalist representations? Did they readily submit to the
colonisers’ view of themselves? How might they have contested Orientalism and brought it to crisis? As Patrick
Williams and Laura Chrisman have argued in their introduction to Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, there is
little notion of the colonized subject as a constitutive agent (p. 16) with the capacity for political resistance. And in the
words of Aijaz Ahmad, one of Said’s fiercest critics, Said never thinks about how Western representations
‘might have been received, accepted, modified, challenged, overthrown or reproduced by the
intelligentsias of the colonized countries’ (In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, Verso, 1992, p. 172). In these terms,
Said stands accused of writing out the agency and the voice of colonized peoples from history as he never stops to consider the
challenges made to dominant discourses. In so doing, his work is in danger of being just as ‘Orientalist’ as the field he is describing by
not considering alternative representations made by those subject to colonialism. 3 . Said ignores resistance within the West.
According to Said, ‘every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist,
an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric’ (Orientalism, p. 204). This is certainly a sweeping
statement. What about those within the West who opposed colonialism and were horrified by the
treatment of colonized peoples? As Dennis Porter argues, Orientalism leaves no room to accommodate what he
calls, adapting a term from Antonio Gramsci, ‘counter hegemonic thought’ (‘Orientalism and its Problems’, p. 152); that is,
opinions contrary to the dominant views within the West which contest the authority of Orientalist
representations. 4. Said ignores gender differences. As we noted previously, Said argues that Orientalist
representations were made in the main by men. This explains why the Orient is a specifically male
fantasy and is often represented in feminine terms . Said maintains that in Orientalist writing ‘women are usually the
creatures of a male power-fantasy. They express unlimited sensuality, they are more or less stupid, and above all they are willing’
(Orientalism, p. 207). But did Western women write about the Orient? And if they did, did they also resort
to the same stereotypes? As Sara Mills has argued importantly in
<Continues…>
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Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism (Routledge, 1992), many
women travelled to the colonies and made their own observations in a variety of writings, but Said rarely
looks at women’s writing in Orientalism. However, it is not just a case of ‘adding in’ women’s writings to
Said’s theory in order to fill the gaps in his more male-centered study. Mills points out that the position
of women in relation to Orientalism is often different to that of men because of the tensions between
the discourses of colonialism and the discourses of gender. Looking at late Victorian and early twentieth
century travel writing by Western women, Mills maintains that these women were, at one level,
empowerered by colonialism due to the superior position they perceived themselves to hold in relation to
colonized peoples. Yet, not unlike colonized peoples, women were disempowered due to the inferior position
they were placed in in relation to Western men. This might make available, if only fleetingly, a partial and
problematic accord between the Western woman traveler and the colonized peoples she encountered. Her
position in relation to the colonized is not the same as the Western male. Hence, the intersection of colonial
and patriarchal discourses often places Western women in a contradictory position. They occupy a dominant
position due to colonialism, but a subordinate place in patriarchy. Women ‘cannot be said to speak from
outside colonial discourse, but their relation to it is problematic because of its conflict with the discourses of
“femininity”, which were operating on them in an equal, and sometimes stronger, measure. Because of these
discursive pressures, their work exhibits contradictory elements which may act as a critique of some of the
components of other colonial writings’ (Discourses of Difference, p. 63). Women’s writing about the
colonies may not be so readily explained with recourse to Said’s theory of Orientalism due to its particular
contradictions borne out of the contrary positions frequently held by women. (We will consider these issues
again in Chapter 6.) As Sara Mills’s argument above suggests, the various criticisms of Said’s work
collectively give the impression that colonial discourses are multiple, precarious and more ambivalent
than Said presumes in Orientalism. They do not function with the smoothness or the complete success that
he awards the totalizing concept of Orientalism. Colonial discourses, then, are by no means homogenous
or unitary. Said is certainly right to identify a series of representations about the Orient which
functioned to justify and perpetuate the propriety of colonial rule, but these representations were not
monolithic, static and uncontested.
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Orientalism – Said Defense- Flawed Theory
Said’s analysis of “Orientalism” is flawed and inconsistent
Roosa 95 (John, “Literary Approach to a Complex Relationship”, Social Scientist Vol. 23 No 1/3, date
accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
The questions concerning the relationship between culture and imperialism that Said has posed in his most recent book are important and
complex. They are ones that many of us have faced in thinking about imperialism. Said's own attempt to answer these
questions is , I think, deeply flawed, but it is rich with ideas. As a beginning, his writing may help us think through the
problems in an alternative way. In this very brief review, I'll indicate what I see to be a few of the fundamental problems with his
analysis. Said's basic approach into the vast topic of culture and imperialism is to review British and
French novels of the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Said considers novels to be 'immensely
important in the formation of imperial attitudes, references and experiences' (p. xii). Novels may indeed be 'particularly
interesting to study' (p. xii) but the reader is not given any evidence that novels were important at a
mass level in Britain and France. How many people actually read lengthy novels in the largely illiterate
European countries of the nineteenth century? Novels should certainly be studied but their significance as
determinants or representations of empire should not be inflated. In following Said through his literary approach to imperialism,
the reader may well forget what is missing: a study of popular culture and everyday practice, whether
in Europe or in the colonies. Said has made an advance over his book Orientalism (1978) by intertwining a reading of European
writers with writers of the colonies. He is now willing to admit that he made a serious error in omitting the voices of the colonised in his
previous book. In C&I, Said places the European texts side by side with those from colonies. For example, Camus's novels, in which
France's possessions in North Africa play a significant part, are discussed in conjunction with Fanon's writings on the Algerian struggle
for independence. This methodology produces much of what is valuable in the book and is a clear departure from the often vindictive
and vague readings of European writers presented in Orientalism. It is strange, however, that most of Said's non-
European texts are by activists or historians, and not novelists. In discussing European imperialism, he
adopts an almost exclusively literary approach but when discussing the resistance to imperialism, he
moves into a more political and historical account. In so doing, he omits even mentioning the truly
great anti-imperialist novelists from the British and French colonies, e.g. Prem Chand in India and Osmane
Sembene in Senegal. Most of the non-European novelists he does mention are modern day 'cosmopolitan' novelists whose writing is
more for consumption in Europe than in the countries of their origin. e.g. Salman Rushdie, a particular favorite of Said. It is encouraging
to read Said's discussions of C.L.R. James and Fanon, two great anti-imperialist activists who are routinely ignored or vilified in
European and American writings. But when the book's focus is on level, almost 200 pages to Dickens, Conrad, Austen, Kipling, and
Camus, it is disheartening to see virtually no discussion of non-European novelists. The study of British and
French novels is actually the core of the book and the section concerning the non-European 'resistance' to empire-a confused rambling
and repetitive section covering only ninety pagesappears to be tacked on as an afterthought. Thus, after reducing the study of
culture to the novel, Said is not even consistent enough to study the non-European novel and compare
it with the European.
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Orientalism – Said Defense- Out of Context
Said builds portions of his theory on a faulty and out of context Marx quote
Richardson 90 (Michael, “Reflections on Orientalism”, Anthropology Today Vol. 6 No. 4, date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
At this point, a consideration of the relation of reci-procity to representation is called for. We
have already noted the use made by
Said of Marx's phrase 'they can-not represent themselves; they must be represented'. This phrase is also used
as an epigraph to the book and is clearly one of its central themes. Yet if we refer to the context in which Marx himself
made this comment, we find that the implications for Marx are radically different from those that Said seeks
to establish. Given the importance this phrase has for Said it is perhaps useful here to give the context of Marx's own argu-ment. Marx
was considering not the Orient but the peasantry.H e was concerned with understandinga con-crete historical context:
the failure of the revolution of 1848 and in this specific quotation he was looking at the relation of the peasantry to the Bonapartist
party. He wrote: 'Insofar as these small peasant proprietors are merely connected on a local basis, and the identity of their interests fails to
produce a feeling of commu-nity, national links, or a political organization, they do not form a class. They are therefore incapable of assert-ing
their class interests in their own name, whether through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot represent themselves; they must be
represented. Their representative must appear simultaneously as their master, as an authority over them, an unrestricted government power that
protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from , 12above'. If there are implications in this for the
Orien-talist debate, they are certainly not the ones that Said himself takes up. What will be immediately apparent here is
that for Marx this relation is dynamic: the peasantry are not acted upon but rather actively seek such representation and use it for their own
purposes. The relation between the Bonapartist party and the con-servative peasantry is thus reciprocal: they need each other. It goes without
saying that the idealist conclusion that Said draws here 'if the Orient could represent it-self, it would; since it cannot, the representation does the
job...' would be wholly foreign to Marx. Indeed it reveals a curious naivety on the part of Said as to how people actually
perceive images. Does he really believe that anyone actually thinks that images of the Orient are
commensurate with what the Orient is actually like? Indeed it is arguable that it is only academic literary critics (whose work is
by definition concerned pri-marily with representation)w ho would mistake a repre-sentation for the thing it represented. Said would, however,
wish to extend such a critique further to dissolve the subject/object relation altogether, something that is not unique to him but is rather a postmodernist stance. It certainly cuts to the heart of the anthropological project, since a relation of self to other is fundamental in anthropology and it
is difficult to see how anthropology can possibly take form unless it en-gages with the complex dialectical relation between dis-tanciation and
familiarity that the subject/object relation implies. If at its root this relation is unable to entertain the possibility of reciprocity, then anthropology
must resign itself to producing images that bear no relation to the object of study. Worse, such images could only function ideologically and
involve falsification in a power context. However, in this context Said fails to justify, or even argue, the presupposition
that enables him to establish the monolithic nature of the object of his study: the European subject that has
created Orientalism. What is the nature of this subject: Where did it originate? And how and why? Such 'willed, human work' as he calls it
can hardly be born from empty space. Given the nature of his critique, it would seem incumbent upon him to at least address these issues. The
fact that he does not do so emphasizes even more the 'Orientalist' nature of his own project: Orientalism is a
given to be analysed; as such it becomes Said's own 'Other'. Thus, within his own work, the self/other relation remains intact.
Even if we allow for the possibility of the dissolving of the self/other relation, it must still be asked whether this can be done except by means of
a tautological sleight of hand. He has certainly not taken on board the philosophical underpinning of this relation,
which is contained in Hegel's anthropology and most notably in his treatment of the relation of master and
slave13, for in Hegel's terms what is fundamental is reciprocity. In fact, it is more than reciprocal, it is symbiotic: the real-ity of the slave is the
master; the reality of the master is the slave. Nleither are free agents: each needs the other to complete his relation to the world. But this separation is also necessary for any sort of lucidity; without it undifferentiation and entropy take over. But in Hegel's terms, the differentiation between
master and slave is, at root, illusory: it is the interplay of the relation, not its fixity, that is of importance. In Hegel's terms, then,
Orientalism could be changed only by the Orient itself acting upon the relation. The Orient would have to
rec-ognize itself, something that Said refuses to accept. However, if the relation remains static then Orientalism will not, indeed
cannot, change its ideological charac-ter. In this respect a critique such as Said's, acting solely on the form by which the subject master asserts its
ascendancy, can change only the form and not the substance of such domination. Indeed it must become subsumed within the dominant subject; it
must of ne-cessity become part of the dominating ideology. In this respect Simon Leys was not merely being malicious when he wrote acidly:
'Orientalism could obviously have been written by no one but a Palestinian scholar with a huge chip on his shoulder and a very dim under- ,1 4
standingo f the Europeana cademic tradition.
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Said’s theory manipulates quotes and theories out of context to arrive at a flawed
conclusion
Richardson 90 (Michael, “Reflections on Orientalism”, Anthropology Today Vol. 6 No. 4, date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
Both Said and Fabian are, of course, part of the groundswell of contemporary criticism that takes refuge in the so-called 'post-modem
condition', founded in a dubious Nietzschean subjectivism. Said dutifully quotes Nietzsche in defining truth as a
'mobile army of meta-phors', but refuses to recognize the problematic that Nietzsche himself
recognized in such a definition. How rarely do we hear Nietzsche's own corollary to this statement: 'The falseness of a
judgement is to us not an objection to a judgement; it is here perhaps that our language sounds strangest. The question is to what ex-tent
it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserv-ing, perhaps even species-breeding.. 17. Furthermore, Nietzsche recognized
that truth and falsehood existed in dialogic relation to each other . If one accepts that truth is nothing but a 'mobile
army of metaphors' then one must, as Nietzsche recognized, establish a centring position that enables the relative value of a particular
'lie' to be qualitativized. Both Said and Fabian, in com-mon with post-modernism in general, fall into the trap
of all subjectivism and conflate general and specific cri-tiques in a way thaf de-legitimizes both. The
direction of the 'deconstructive' impulse in contemporary criti-cism is not negation but rather its subversion, to the extent that genuine
negation becomes impossible. In his La Conquete de 1'Am&rique, Tzvetan Todorov has attempted a critique that has some similarities
with Said's, but in the opposite direction. He has considered the conquest of Mexico not in the terms we know so well, in which the
double violence (Aztec and Spani-ard) still has power to shock, but in terms of human sympathy: "'To ignore history", as the adage goes,
is to risk repeating it, but it is not through knowing history that we know what to do. We are both like and not like the Conquistadores;t
heir example is instructive,b ut we can never be sure that we would not behave like them, or that we are not in the process of imitating
them as we adapt to new circumstances. But their history can be exemplary for us because it allows us to reflect on our-selves, to
discover resemblances: once more the knowl-edge of self passes through that of the other'18. It is surely in this affirmation that
anthropology ought to base itself. In considering one of the Conquistadores, Cabeza de Vaca, Todorov notes that he had 'reached equally
a neutral point, not because he was indifferent to the two cultures, but because he was able to ex-perience both internally; for him there
was no longer a "they" around him. Without becoming an Indian, he had ceased to be completely Spanish' . This flow of an individual
between cultures constitutes the am-bivalence of the anthropological experience, a relation that is never simple and never easy. But
within this re-lation a dialogue is possible between cultures in which, as Todorov suggests, 'no-one has the last word, where none of the
voices reduces the other to a simple object and in which neither takes advantage of his exteriority 2 0in relation to the other'. But it is
also the reality of the Western conquest that has established the possi-bility for such dialogue and communication. It is in the recognition
of this fact that anthropological knowledge needs to be founded. For anthropology, the critiques of Said and Fabian bring
attention to our need to remain alert to our own social context. In addition to the usually assigned moral
requirements towards the society one is studying, one also needs to be aware both of the institutional frame-work in which one is
working and also of one's subser-vience to one's own culture. This is so no matter how strong the affinity anthropologists may feel with
the people studied: if it weren't they would not return to write up their ethnographies. While we need to be aware also of the danger of
turning the 'Other' into an ill-defined universal, we need at the same time to be conscious of the contrary danger of relativizing the
'Other' to the extent that the context of the ethno-graphic encounter in time and space is lost, and both observer and observed are reduced
to a common de-nominator in which it becomes increasingly difficult to extricate one from the other. In this context the very real
problems of repre-sentation that undoubtedly need to be addressed are in danger of being subsumed
by following the spurious direction in which Said has led the debate. Perception is not determined by Orientalism,
or by anything else. It is of course true that our perceptions of the part of the world we have named as the Orient are conditioned by the
representations that scholars and artists have estab-lished of that part of the world. We need to understand how such representations have
functioned in practice and in this respect Said has provided some valuable raw material for a genuine
consideration of what he convinces is a specific ideological construction that can be called
'Orientalism'. Such an ideology has deter-mined nothing, however, and it is surely a dangerous illusion
to believe that it ever has done.
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Lack of context results in a confused and confusing theory of Orientalism
Roosa 95 (John, “Literary Approach to a Complex Relationship”, Social Scientist Vol. 23 No 1/3, date
accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
Said repeatedly insists on the need to place British and French novels in an earthly, global context'
and, more specifically, in the context of empire. As a criticism of old-school literary studies which wished to see art as a
purely aesthetic object, in a world apart, Said's argument is valid. But it is also platitudinous. The difficult question is the
method in which the connection is made between literature and the 'real world.' So let us consider 'imperialism', the phenomenon to
which Said says European literature should be affiliated. Said defines the term 'imperialism' as the practice of
'dominating a distant territory'. If Said was studying imperialism from ancient Egypt to the present
then perhaps this would have been a sufficient definition. But he is studying nineteenth century
imperialism of that century's two leading capitalist powers. That imperialism was not just about
'dominating distant territories'; it was about exploiting them within a capitalist economy . European imperialism
of the nineteenth century obviously had something to do with capitalism. Said does mention a list of writers on the political economy of
imperialism, Lenin, A.G. Frank, Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Harry Magdoff, among others, writers whose works precisely turned upon
the question of the relationship between capitalism and imperialism. Said avoids taking any position in their debate
upon the excuse of studying culture, not political economy. But Said, by ignoring the debate entirely, is
left seeing imperialism as divorced from capitalism. His terms of discussion are 'nations' and 'national cultures', without
a word on class. In fact, Said thinks imperialism may have emerged out of, was caused by, the will to dominate behind the 'national
cultures' of Europe (cf. pp. 8, 15, 61). Said is so confused on the causes and functioning of imperialism that he
fears his argument that imperialism was 'integrative' may represent a 'vast system building or
totalistic theory' (p. 4). He need not worry, the argument is merely a platitude; it is not even a theory. Said
is unable to see the relationship between exploitation within Europe, (which in the nineteenth century
was more brutal than many people recognise now,) and imperial exploitation. If literature should be
connected to its political context then this would apply to Said's own text. What are his own worldly
affiliations? Said would like to position himself in the middle, reading both European and non-European writers with
a mixture of admiration and criticism. In the 'loud antagonisms of the polarized debate of pro- and anti-imperialists, 'he would like to be
the sober-headed individual calling for tolerance, peaceful interchange and calm dialogue (p. 29). Said's general principle is to denounce
cultural and national chauvinisms, whether they arise in Europe or in the mid- East, and to demand that we be self-critical and vigilant
against our own self-pride turning into chauvinism. While Said's generous attitude is admirable, it is also ethereal. Said wants to
speak in the name of all humanity and avoid taking any sides. In a particularly bizarre passage he argues
that 'the organization of political passions . . . lead[s] inevitably to mass slaughter, and if not to literal mass slaughter then certainly to
rhetorical slaughter.' (p. 28). Said says political organization leads inevitably to mass murder, then contradicts
himself that the process may not be inevitable and then invents a perfectly meaningless concept
'rhetorical slaughter'. Such confusing passages litter the entire book. Said, as a literary critic, is preoccupied with books and
intellectuals and has great difficulty presenting a clear political position. By the end of the book he is posing 'homeless wanderers,
nomads, vagrants' (p. 403), those living on the margins of the world's nation-state system, as the basis of a new politics of liberation.
And he is posing a new breed of intellectuals, deconstructivists, post-modernists, as those 'distilling then articulating the predicaments . .
. [of] mass deportation, imprisonment, population transfer, collective dispossession, and forced immigrations.' (p. 403) Said sees all of
these problems as stemming from nationalism and imperialism. I would certainly agree with Said that we need to find a new
internationalist politics but the liberation of which Said speaks is simply the liberation from nationalism, not
from capitalism. Capitalists themselves, through all the free trade agreements now underway, are in the business
now of dissolving many aspects of the national and forcing a worldwide trend of economic
expropriations. And they would be quite happy to read Said's injunctions to study and understand other cultures
(p. 21,408). But their internationalism is completely different from the internationalism of the working class and the poor. Said is
incapable of distinguishing between the two. As for nationalism, Said fails to see that, as protection from the
exploitation of capital, the nation-state may still play a positive role. In the book's typical trivial style, Said speaks
of the world as 'one global environment' incapable of bearing any longer' 'selfish and narrow interests-patriotism, chauvinism, ethnic,
religious, and racial hatreds.' (p. 21) Perhaps one will soon find Said's writing being quoted by multinational corporations.
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Said’s research and analytic methods are flawed- means his conclusions are faulty
Ning 97 (Wang, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Peking University,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/v028/28.1wang_n.html, date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
As quite a few Eastern and Western scholars have already noticed, however, the "Orient" and "Orientalism" constructed
by Said have their inevitable limitations, which lie chiefly in their geographical, cultural, and literary
aspects. It is these limitations that provide us Third World scholars and critics with a theoretical basis on which to question and
reconsider his Orientalism. First, we should point out its geographical limitation, which is restricted by his family
background, as well as his scope of knowledge and learning. As is well known , the "Orient," geographically speaking,
covers at least the wide areas of Asia, Africa, and Australia, but in Said's book, the boundary line stops
at the Near East and Middle East. Such regions as Southeast Asia and such important Oriental countries as
China, India, and Japan are seldom touched upon; they pose a serious limitation to his theory although he has added
certain corrective analyses in his new book Culture and Imperialism. Second, his "Orient" or "Orientalism" also has its
ideological and cultural limitations. As far as its ideological and cultural significance is concerned, the "Western" idea
or culture that we usually deal with in effect refers to the ideology or cultural concepts based on the bourgeois value
standard prevailing in Western Europe and North America, while those contrary to them are normally
regarded as the "Oriental" concepts. It is on the basis of this striking difference in ideology and culture that the East and the
West were in a state of opposition during the cold-war period after World War II; with the end of the cold war, East-West relations have
entered a post-cold war period, during which, according to Samuel Huntington, "The great divisions among humankind
and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful
actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different
civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics." 6 Among Oriental cultures, the "most prominent
form of this cooperation is the Confucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western
interests, values and power" (45). Huntington has here correctly grasped the two origins of Oriental
cultures, the Arab countries and China, which have, especially the latter, been overlooked by Said.
Moreover, due to the limitations of other geographical and ideological factors, Said's Orientalism, in the sense of Oriental studies,
naturally leads to his limitation in comparative literature studies: the texts he discusses are mostly from the
English or english -speaking world rather than from the non-English-speaking or other Third-World
countries, while comparative literature is not only cross-national and interdisciplinary but also crosscultural and cross-linguistic. In this way, the limitations of his research as well as that of all the
postcolonial academic [End Page 61] studies are obviously discernible. It is true that to conduct comparative
literature studies from the postcolonial perspective could break through the boundary line of geography and disciplines, but cannot break
through the boundary line of languages, which is the very problem that we Oriental scholars of comparative literature and cultural
studies must solve in our research.
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Orientalism – Said Offense- Conclusions bad
Said’s conclusions perpetuate misconceptions
Habib 5 (Irfan, a former Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research,
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=141&issue=108 ,
date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
I would not take more space to press the point that Said’s concept of ‘Orientalism’ is both far too general
and far too restricted, and the limits of his definition are so set and the actual selection so executed that his conclusions
are thereby simply predetermined. I would also not go into the other fundamental questions that Aijaz Ahmad has raised
about Said’s method in his essay, ‘Orientalism and After’ (In Theory, Delhi, 1994, pp159-220). But one further problem with
Said that needs certainly to be taken up is his notable lack of rigour in terms of documentation and
logic; and I illustrate this by the treatment he metes out to Karl Marx. On a preliminary page of his Orientalism, Said puts two
short quotations, the first of which is from Marx: ‘They cannot represent themselves; they must be
represented.’ An innocent reader will surely assume that Marx is here implying that Oriental peoples
are incapable of representing themselves, and so Europeans (better still, European Orientalists) must speak for them. And,
indeed, on p21, quoting Marx’s words in original German, Said explicitly furnishes this precise context for his words. There is a double
sense in which this use of the quotation is unethical and irresponsible. The quoted words are taken from a passage in Marx’s Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where he speaks not of the position of Eastern peoples, but of the poverty-
stricken smallholding peasants of France at a particular juncture in the mid-19th century. Since these
peasants could not unite, they were ‘incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own name,
whether through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.
Their representative must at the same time appear as their master…’ (K Marx and F Engels, Selected Works, Moscow, 1950, vol I,
p303). Not only does Said thus coolly substitute eastern peoples for French peasants; by a sleight of
hand he also converts Marx’s word ‘representation’, meaning political representation, into ‘depiction’
(The Oriental people cannot depict themselves, and so the Orientalists’ ‘representation does the job’—p21). The exploitation of
Marx’s quotation does not even end with this double misuse. On p293, Said makes the still more audacious statement
that Marx had used the quoted phrase ‘for Louis Napoleon’, as if Louis Napoleon had made any claims to represent or depict Orientals.
Further on, quite forgetting what context he had given to Marx’s quotation on p21, Said alleges in the ‘Afterword’ to the 1995 edition
(p335), that by putting the quotation as one of the book’s epigraphs, he, on his part, meant to refer to ‘the subjective truth insinuated by
Marx…which is that if you feel you have been denied the chance to speak your truth, you will try extremely hard to get that chance!’
One fears to voice the suspicion that Said had never cared to read the original passage of the
Eighteenth Brumaire, and had just picked up the quotation from some secondary source. Even so, the
range of manifestly wrong meanings so confidently ascribed to the same words, on different spurs of
the moment, is incredible. So much for the short ‘epigraph’. Marx as a subject of Said’s study (pp153-156) also offers further
examples of the cavalier way in which Said can stuff anyone he dislikes or wishes to belittle into his nasty basket
of ‘Orientalists’. Much has already been said on this matter by Aijaz Ahmad in his essay, ‘Marx on India: a Clarification’ (In
Theory, as above, pp221-242). He shows that Said builds his interpretation on just two passages taken from Marx’s two articles
published in the New York Tribune in 1853, and seems to be unacquainted with what Marx wrote elsewhere on India. Here it must be
added that while Marx necessarily relied on (the quite extensive) European reports on India, the picture that he drew out of it, of the
social and economic devastation that British rule caused in India, was largely his own—and this was hardly an ‘Orientalist’
enterprise under Said’s definition. Moreover even in Marx’s second essay, apparently consulted by Said, there is a passage looking
forward to the Indians overthrowing ‘the English yoke’ (K Marx and F Engels, Collected Works, vol 12, Moscow, 1979, p221). Marx
also writes in the very same article of ‘the profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilisation [which] lies unveiled
before our eyes, turning from its home where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies where it goes naked.’ And yet, again and
again in his book, Said sneers at Marx as being, at the end of the day, a pro-colonial ‘Orientalist’. So we are told,
‘This Orientalism can accommodate Aeschylus, say, and Victor Hugo, Dante and Karl Marx’ (p3). The view that ‘Indians were
civilisationally, if not racially, inferior’ is indirectly ascribed to Marx on page 14. On page 102 Said goes so far as to put Marx among
those writers who could use all the following ‘generalities unquestioningly’: ‘An Oriental lives in the Orient, he lives a life of Oriental
ease, in a state of Oriental despotism, and sensuality, imbued with a feeling of Oriental fatalism.’ The italicised words constitute a
fantastic misrepresentation of Karl Marx’s writings on Asia. But Said does not still stop here. On p231 he puts Marx among those who
held that ‘an Oriental man was first an Oriental and only second a man’—a meaningless formula seemingly coined simply to belittle
Marx. III Such reckless rhetoric cannot but create grave suspicions about Said’s general credibility. Here it must be made clear that it
cannot be any serious critic’s case that colonialism and imperialism have not promoted a particular kind of
<Continues…>
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Orientalism – Said Offense- Conclusions bad
<Continued…>
writing about the East; the
real point of criticism is that not only does Said unreasonably use the term
‘Orientalism’ to represent only this particular class of writing, but he also goes on to tar with the same
brush the entire corpus of learned writing on the Orient, which in common parlance constitutes the
product of Orientalism. This is a clever device, and verve and verbosity tend to conceal the resort to a verbal confusion pure and
simple. Said himself tells us (‘Afterword’, pp341-342) that the late Professor Albert Hourani, while agreeing with much of his criticism
of a part of the writing on the Orient, protested that the criticism was not applicable to a large part of Orientalist writing, and yet now
after Said’s Orientalism, the very word Orientalism has ‘become a term of abuse’. How much Said has been successful here was borne
upon me while reading a recent article by a western ‘Orientalist’, Carl W Ernst. This author claims credit, without any sense of
embarrassment, for ‘foreign scholars who alone had the resources and the motivation’ to analyse an Islamicised Yogic text. The claim
has all the marks of a self-satisfied sense of western superiority that Said treats as the trademark of ‘Orientalism’. Yet Ernst himself dubs
early theories of a possible Indian origin of Sufism as ‘early Orientalist theories’ (‘The Islamicisation of Yoga in the Amrtakunda
Translations’, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, vol 13, part 2, London, 2003, p226, italics mine). ‘Orientalist’ here just does
duty for what one thinks is wrong: otherwise, how can there be any indication of western superiority in an ‘Orientalist’ theory that places
the source of Islamic sufism in early Indian beliefs rather than, say, Christian mysticism? ‘Orientalism’ as a word has thus been so
degraded that anyone can use it for anything one disapproves of, even when the disapprover may himself be a dyed in the wool
‘Orientalist’! Despite Said’s denials that it was not his intention to protect chauvinistic or conservative
beliefs in Asia, especially in relation to Islam, one can see that any critical or historical view of any aspect
of Islam by any western scholar is yet taken by him as reflective of a sense of western superiority and so
a kind of ‘Orientalist’, colonial discourse. The hypersensitivity goes to such an extent that the word
‘Mohammedan’, used in place of ‘Islamic’, as in ‘Mohammedan Law’, is held to be an ‘insulting’
designation (p66): Said obviously forgets that innumerable Muslim scholars down the centuries have also spoken (in Persian) of
Din-i Muhammadi (Muhammedan faith), or Shari‘at-i Muhammadi (Muhammedan law), without at all being conscious of any insult
implied in such use of the Prophet’s name. But with the aggressive stance of modern Islamic ‘orthodoxy’, the word ‘Mohammedan’ is
quickly disappearing from books, and even from titles of works by authors long dead: thus Goldziher’s Mohammedanische Studien and
H A R Gibb’s Mohammedanism now reappear in print respectively as Muslim Studies (English translation) and Islam in editions by
established academic publishers. An innocent designation becomes disreputable the moment it is found to be tainted through association
with that pernicious weed, ‘Orientalism’.
Said’s writing is unsubstantiated and erroneous
Lippman 81 (Thomas, Middle East Journal, date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
The cogency of Said's argument, however, is undermined by the narrowness of his focus, his arroganta nd hectoringt one,
unsubstantiateda s-sertions and numerous inaccuracies. Most of his conclusions are based on the per-formance of the
American media during the Iranian revolution and the captivity of the hos-tages.Certainly that performance was flawed,but Said fails
to demonstrate that it was, as he claims, characteristic of Western coverage of crises in the Islamic world. It would
have been instructive to make a brief comparison with how the French media covered the war in Algeria, say, or what the British reported about Egypt
during the Suez affair, neither of which he mentions. Said thinks that the errors he finds in press and diplomatic analysis of
events in Iran reflect a collective American antipathy to Islam. There may be such antipathy, but Said ought to acknowledge that the same criticisms were rightly made of coverage of events in Vietnam, Chile and Africa, where "fear
of 'Mohammedanism'"(p . 5) was not involved. Finding the American press to be a handmaiden of American government policy and asserting that "never
before has an international trouble spot like Iran been covered so instantaneously and so regularly as it has by the media" (p. 25), Said seems to have
slept through the Vietnam war. Said's choice of facts and incidents to support his argument is selective and
duplicitous. It is not true, as he asserts, that President Sadat offered to "give the United States bases on his
territory" and that therefore "most of what is reported out of Egypt by the media effectively makes his point of
view on matters Egyptian, Arab and regional seem like the correct one" (p. 112). (In fact, it is hard to think of any political
opposition so tooth-less as that of Egypt that is so successful in having its views disseminated by the Western press.)I t is not true that "only recently have
there been overt references to Israeli religious fanaticism, and all of these have been to the zealots of Gush Emunim" (p. 31). It is not true that the
press ascribed Saudi Arabia's refusal to endorse the Camp David accords to some "peculiarly Islamic logic " (p. 30).
There is no credible evidence for Said's statement that the Christian factions in Lebanon have been "armed and supported" by the United States (p. 138).
And it is preposterous to assert that "assiduous research has shown that there is hardly a primetime television show with-out several episodes of patently
racist and insult-ing caricatures of Muslims" (p. 69). Said appears to have written this denunciation of American correspondents
without interview-ing any, and he knows little about the decision-making processes of the media. He complains that
"anything falling outside the consensus defi-nition of what is important is considered irrele-vant to United States interests and to the media's definition of a
good story" (p. 142). If the charge against them is that their coverage emphasizes American interests and "good stories," most edi-tors and writers would
happily plead guilty.
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Orientalism – Said Offense- Orientalist
Said’s analysis is largely irrelevant, save when it actually furthers Orientalism
Richardson 90 (Michael, “Reflections on Orientalism”, Anthropology Today Vol. 6 No. 4, date accessed: 7/8/2010) AJK
That Said feels under no compunction to justify his change of opinion here is indicative of his
methodological approach. As he felt no necessity to explain what it was specifically that made the work of
Geertz ad-mirable in the first place so, it appears, he is not called upon to explain a radical change of
opinion. In 1978 he had been seeking to place himself within 'Western' dis-course, almost in the role of a radical reformer. By 1983,
he is clearly seeking to orient his critique differ-ently, seeking to find a place within a 'space' of anti-imperialist studies, in which the
work of Geertz does not fit. This much is apparent in his article 'Orientalism Revisited?' in which he plays down the originality of his
own study, to place it in a line of anti-colonialist writers who seem to have nothing but this, and the fact that Said approves them, in
common10. What he is keen to establish is a catch-all critique providing the means to dispose of what he
finds objectionable and to praise whatever he approves. This is exactly the power rela-tion that he
accuses the Orientalists of constructing in relation to the Orient. Unlike the Orient itself, however, contemporary
Orientalists have the power to answer back, and not surprisingly they have not hesitated to do so. Said's pathetic response to
some of these counter-blasts indicates the weakness of his position, which he is incapable of defending,
except by constantly shifting his ground. The more substantial question raised (or, one could equally argue, hidden) by
Said's critique is the nature of reciprocity between subject and objec t. In this re-spect the extent that Said has
adequately represented what the Orientalists themselves have said is largely ir-relevant. His argument
rather stands or falls on his denial of such a reciprocal relationship. Orientalism was imposed upon the
Orient: it was a European pro-ject, more or less consciously elaborated, in which Orientalists were nothing but
passive pawns. Whether or not Orientalist representations were accurate or not thereby becomes
somewhat irrelevant. The problem here is that if reciprocity between sub-ject and object is impossible then, by the same token,
the object cannot challenge the subject by developing alternative models. In fact, since the object has no real existence, being only a
conceptualization of the sub-ject's mind, it can never be a question of the former acting upon the latter. However, this just will not do, as
Said has to recognize in the conclusion to his book, since to leave the matter there would be to freeze the relation in empty space. There
could be no way of ever changing it. The only way out of the impasse is for the subject to develop
representations of the object that would represent the object more faithfully. Given the extent of Said's
critique, however, it is difficult to see how this can ever possibly occur. The best that can be achieved is that the
representation should concur with Said's own understanding. But then by what right can Said stand as a
representative of the Orient? He is con-sequently forced into a position that relies on precisely the
same discourse that he is criticizing. Whether or not the 'Orientalists' are guilty of the central charge that Said makes against
them, of believing that the Orient 'cannot represent itself, it must be represented' (and it cannot be said that he proves his case on this
point) it would certainly appear that Said himself believes it; indeed such a belief is inscribed at the heart of his pro-ject. Furthermore,
his own critique relies on just as much mis-representation of Orientalists as he accuses them of making in their representations of the
Orient. In Said's terms, in fact, his own conceptualization of 'Orientalists' is as pure an example of 'Orientalism' as one could wish for!
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Orientalism – Said Offense- Orientalist
Said’s concept of Orientalism recreates Orientalism
Landow 02(“Edward W. Said's Orientalism” George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University 18 March, 2002,
Political Discourse- Theories of Colonialism and Post-Colonialism http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/said/orient14.html)
Drawing upon the methods of feminist criticism of the 1970s, Said's Orientalism did much to create the field
of postcolonial studies by teaching us to "read for the gap," placing texts in broad political contexts. Despite
its obviously valid points about weaknesses of Euro-American thought, its appeal for Western intellectuals,
and its liberating effect on intellectuals from former countries that were colonized, this seminal book has some
major flaws: Though enormously effective as a polemic, Orientalism is very shoddy as scholarship, and yet
it presents itself as a corrective to flawed scholarship. The book completely neglects China, Japan, and
South East Asia, and it has very little to say about India. Although purporting to be a study of how the West
treats all of the East, the book focuses almost entirely upon the Middle East. Its generalizations about
"the Orient" therefore repeat the very Orientalism it attacks in other texts! It is bizarrely forgiving of
French Orientalist writers like Nerval and Flaubert. Orientalism is an orientalist text several times over, and
in two ways commits the major errors involved with the idea of the Other: First, it assumes that such
projection and its harmful political consequences are something that only the West does to the East
rather than something all societies do to one another. (I am surely not the only teacher who has had heard
Asian-American students returning from their parent's country of origin exclaim, "Everything Said says the
West does to the East, the East does to the West!") Because Orientalism is apparently based on very little
knowledge of the history of European and Non-European imperialism, it treats Western colonialism as
unique. This point, like the previous one, makes perfect sense if one takes Said's pioneering book largely
as a political polemic, for in that case such omissions might be forgivable. One expects more from
criticism and scholarship, particularly politically motivated criticism and scholarship.
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Orientalism – Said Offense- Advocates Violence
Said encouraged violence in a text littered with misrepresentations and contradictions
Pryce-Jones 8 (David, staff writer for The New Criterion, http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/enough-said-3743,
date accessed: 7/9/2010) AJK
Edward Said was an outstanding example of an intellectual who condemned the West root and branch while taking every advantage of
the privileges and rewards it has to offer. In its dishonesty and exercise of double standards, his was truly a
cautionary tale of our times. Born in Jerusalem in 1935, he laid claims to be a Palestinian, dispossessed by Zionist Jews, and
therefore an archetypal Third World victim. In sober fact, he was the son of an American father, a member of a prosperous Christian
family with extensive business interests in Egypt. Undoubtedly an intelligent and civilized man with one side of his personality, he
became a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. Yet with his other side, he wrote speeches for Yasser Arafat in the
1970s, and was far and away the most vociferous advocate for the Palestine Liberation Organization . Although he knew the
history of persecution that lay behind Zionism, he could not accept Israel as anything but an injustice
that had to be put right in bloodshed. On the pretext of victimhood, but from the safety of New York, he urged
others to kill and be killed. When Arafat professed (falsely as it turned out) to be willing to make peace with
Israel, Said broke with him, insisting on armed struggle. At the end of his life, this professor of a subject
within the humanities was photographed throwing a stone from Lebanese soil against the boundary
with Israel. The contradictory aspects of the man came together in Orientalism, a book Said published in
1978. The thesis was that every Westerner who had ever studied or written about the Middle East had
done so in bad faith. From ancient Greece through the medieval era to the present, the work of historians, grammarians, linguists,
and even epigraphists had been “a rationalization of colonial rule.” There was no colonial rule in the lifetimes of the majority of these
scholars, so they must have been “projecting” what was to come. For Said, these highly eclectic individuals were all
engaged in a long-drawn conspiracy, international but invisible, to establish the supremacy of the West
by depicting an East not only inferior but static and incapable of change . At bottom, here was the vulgar Marxist
concept that knowledge serves only the interest of the ruling class. Said had also latched on to Michel Foucault, with his proposition—
modishly avant-garde at the time—that there is no such thing as truth, but only “narratives” whose inventor is putting across his point of
view. This reduces facts to whatever anyone wishes to make of them. Omitting whatever did not fit, misrepresenting
evidence, and making unwarranted generalizations, Said committed the very sin for which he was
accusing Westerners—of concocting a “narrative” to serve his purposes. As he summed up: “Every European, in
what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist.” The “narrative” shaped a conclusion particularly crucial
to Said. Europeans included Jews and later Israelis, and they were therefore integral to the conspiracy to
do down Orientals and ensure that Palestinians were prime victims of racism and imperialism.
Palestinian violence and terror was therefore natural and legitimate.
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Orientalism – Said Offense- Flawed Theory
Said’s theory of Orientalism is based on lies and misrepresentations
Pryce-Jones 8 (David, staff writer for The New Criterion, http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/enough-said-3743,
date accessed: 7/9/2010) AJK
Discussion of inconvenient facts soon began to expose piecemeal Said’s “narrative.” An Israeli scholar,
Justus Reid Weiner, uncovered the extent to which Said had been romancing his own victimhood. Leaving
Jerusalem as a young boy before Israel became independent, he had grown up in Cairo and been educated at its most
prestigious British-run college. His credentials as a Palestinian refugee and a spokesman demanded
more than a stretch of the imagination. It was not the Zionists who had dispossessed the Said family, it turned out, but
Nasser when he expropriated the property of all foreigners including theirs. The victim of Arab nationalism, Said was
nevertheless its most ardent defender, and this psychological inversion is the most mystifying thing
about him. Perversity of the sort may perhaps illuminate the psychological process whereby so many kindred intellectuals misplace
hatred and guilt, admiring those who injure them and condemning those who might protect them. Said did not live long enough to read
Robert Irwin’s book For Lust of Knowing, published early in 2006. This thorough rebuttal of Said is a monument of genuine
scholarship, examining who the Orientalists were, how historically they advanced their disciplines all over Europe, and what their
achievements have been. At the outset, Irwin calls Said’s book “a work of malignant charlatanry,” and he demonstrates the point calmly;
in contrast to Said, he is free from either spite or arrogance. (Stephen Schwartz, another informed critic, also deploys the words
“malignant charlatan” to describe Said.) Irwin’s account of the founding of chairs in European universities for the sake of studying and
translating Eastern languages and literary texts is particularly strong. Dedicated scholars handed down to their successors a tradition of
learning and research. Even Christian churchmen and apologists among them were prepared to pursue knowledge objectively. Some of
Said’s critics have had Arab or Muslim origins, for instance Sadiq al-Azm, Fouad Ajami, and Kanan Makiya, and Said treated them all
as though they were traitors. He would surely have issued another personal fatwa in his usual style of bluster and insult against Ibn
Warraq, whoseDefending the West further demolishes in close detail the Saidian “narrative.” Originally from the Indian subcontinent,
Ibn Warraq is the author of a previous book, Why I Am Not A Muslim. This is a scrupulously documented examination of the life and
teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, of the Qur’an and its sources, and the resulting culture. As he sees it, intolerance and ignorance, and
all manner of taboos, have been deliberately preserved and cultivated down the centuries, doing the faithful no service, and creating what
he openly calls the totalitarian nature of Islam. Like the earlier book, Defending the West rests on very wide reading in several
languages; there are almost a hundred pages of footnotes. The impact is all the more solid because the tone expresses neither ridicule nor
anger but only determination to get at the truth. The book mounts its demolition of Said from several angles. To begin with, Said’s
pseudo-Foucault style often descends into meaningless verbiage and contradiction. Said’s selectivity
and failure to take historical context into consideration also lead him astray wildly. Out of laziness or
carelessness, he makes egregious historical blunders. For instance, at the time when Said is accusing the
British of imperialism in the Middle East, the actual overlords were the Ottoman Turks. And if British and
French Orientalists were imperial agents by definition, how come Germany had no Middle East empire when its Orientalists were the
most distinguished and original of all? And what about Ignaz Goldziher, the founding father of modern Orientalism and ready to
consider converting to Islam, but Hungarian, therefore from a country with no imperialist aims in the Middle East?
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Orientalism – Said Offense- Flawed Theory
Orientalism is full of faulty assumptions, manipulations, and misrepresentations
Berkowitz 8 (Peter, Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at Stanford, “Answering Edward Said”, Policy Review, date accessed: 7/9/2010)
AJK
Like the book it introduces, the preface exhibits a master propagandist at work, as he weaves together moderate and
reasonable pronouncements with obscurantist rhetoric and sophisticated invective. But Said puts even his moderate and
reasonable pronouncements in the service of immoderate and unreasonable conclusions. For instance, he couples an elegant defense of
humane studies with a vehement condemnation of the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon's government. It is one thing to condemn Bush and
Sharon. But he insists that the condemnation is intimately connected to the defense of serious scholarship in the
humanities. Indeed, in the guise of presenting to a new generation his critique of the decisive contribution that the West's scholarly study of the East allegedly
made to the West's subjugation of the East, Said insinuates that literary cultivation itself issues in an implacable opposition to American and Israeli Middle East
foreign policy. I say "insinuates" because such arguments for the link as Said puts forward in the preface crumble upon inspection.
Said begins by contending that since its first publication, Orientalism has been subject to "increasing misrepresentation
and misinterpretation." But he never bothers to identify the misrepresentations and misinterpretations--or, for that matter, to
acknowledge a single flaw that might have been brought to his attention in the 25 years since his book's publication, wide dissemination and discussion in the West,
and translation into 36 languages including Hebrew and Vietnamese. Said leaves it to the reader to conjecture where his critics might have gone astray. Perhaps he
had in mind those who charge that Orientalism exploits the ignorance, panders to the passions, and plays to the
prejudices of credulous American intellectuals only too ready to believe the worst about their intellectual forbears and
their nation. Such critics contend that the book seduced a generation of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and
political theorists into believing falsely that for two centuries Western scholarship devoted to understanding the
languages, history, art, and ideas of the Arab and Muslim Middle East distorted and degraded the peoples under
examination and provided inspiration and justification for their intellectual and political conquest. If Said had such
critics in mind, his preface does nothing to allay their charges and, in the space of 16 pages, much to prove their point. On the
one hand, Said stresses the importance of "continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment that, in my
opinion, frames and gives direction to the intellectual vocation." He emphasizes that while he has "never taught anything about the Middle East" (his emphasis), his
"training and practice" as "a teacher of the mainly European humanities" fits him for "the kind of deliberately meditated and analyzed study that this book contains,
which for all its urgent worldly references is still a book about culture, ideas, history, and power, rather than Middle East politics tout court." He deplores that
"Reflection, debate, rational argument, moral principle based on a secular notion that human beings must create their own history have been replaced by abstract ideas
that celebrate American or Western exceptionalism, denigrate the relevance of context, and regard other cultures with derisive contempt." On the other hand, Said
descends into incoherent theorizing and rank vilification to deride the history of U.S. and Israeli conduct in the Middle East. To illustrate the trendy notion that
"neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability," he declares, without a shred of supporting evidence or the slightest effort to make
explicit the connection, that following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000, "Israeli F-16s and Apache helicopters [were] used routinely on
defenseless civilians as part of their collective punishment." Along the same lines, to demonstrate that the Orient and the West are "supreme fictions," Said
cavalierly effaces the vital distinction between terrorist attacks on civilians and wars by liberal democracies against
terrorist organizations and ruthless dictators: "The suicide bombing phenomenon has appeared with all its hideous damage, none more lurid and
apocalyptic of course than the events of September 11 and their aftermath in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq." Furthermore, notwithstanding his call for
intellectual civility, he accuses the Bush administration of coming under the influence of "intellectual lackeys," chief among them Princeton University professor
emeritus Bernard Lewis and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies scholar Fouad Ajami. Despite their diverse and worldly
backgrounds--Lewis is a British-born Jew and Ajami is of Lebanese Shiite origins--both these eminent scholars are, in
Said's judgment, hopelessly naive and incurably racist. What they "seem incapable of understanding," he declares, "is that history cannot be swept
clean like a blackboard, clean so that 'we' might inscribe our own future there and impose our own forms of life for these lesser people to follow." Of course, contrary
to Said, the premise that informs Lewis's and Ajami's writings on American foreign policy and undergirds Bush administration democracy promotion efforts is that
Arabs and Muslims are not lesser peoples but full members of the human family, equal in rights and as deserving as any other people of living in freedom and dignity.
In the preface's closing lines, Said contrives an obscene moral equivalence by declaring that "the human, and humanistic, desire or enlightenment and emancipation"
are menaced by "the incredible strength of the opposition to it that comes from the Rumsfelds, Bin Ladens, Sharons, and Bushes of this world." Said's brand of
propaganda is particularly insidious. Although he presents himself as a heroic defender of liberal learning and systematic
scholarship, he conjures egregious misrepresentations and promulgates toxic misunderstandings, thereby undermining the separation
between scholarly vocation and partisan pleading in defense of which he purports to write. Nor is such an outcome incidental to Orientalism's larger project. Said aims
to persuade that for hundreds of years Western scholars of the East, like U.S. and Israeli political leaders today, have been blinded to the realities of Arab life and the
wider Muslim world by the very principles that lie at the heart of the West. Furthermore, he wants readers to believe that these principles compel the West to vanquish
and oppress Arabs and Muslims. To succeed, Said must anesthetize his readers' critical faculties and incite their resentment of Western power and preeminence.
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***Neoliberalism Answers***
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Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good
Capitalism can’t replace neoliberalism as a political idelogy
Levidow 2 (Les, U of Sussex, “Terrorising Dissent: the Neoliberal 'Anti-terrorist' Strategy”, http://www.commoner.org.uk/026groundzero.htm#uno)
How does political protest become terrorism? Answer: whenever governments say that it is. They
increasingly do so because capitalism has no alternative to neoliberal globalization and new enclosures. This
agenda can be imposed only by terrorizing dissent -- in the name of protecting the public from terrorism, of
course. In this way, 'counter-terrorism' is redefining or even replacing politics. As this article argues,
effective resistance becomes inseparable from a struggle against new enclosures and for new commons.
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Nietzsche Answers
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – General
Free market capitalism is vital to preventing extinction and ensuring equality and value to
life – also solves disease and poverty
Rockwell ‘02
(Llewellyn H., President of the Mises Institute, The Free Market, “Why They Attack Capitalism”, Volume 20,
Number 10, October, http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=418&sortorder-articledate)
If you think about it, this hysteria is astonishing, even terrifying. The market economy has created
unfathomable prosperity and, decade by decade, for centuries and centuries, miraculous feats of innovation,
production, distribution, and social coordination. To the free market, we owe all material prosperity, all
our leisure time, our health and longevity, our huge and growing population, nearly everything we call
life itself. Capitalism and capitalism alone has rescued the human race from degrading poverty, rampant
sickness, and early death.
In the absence of the capitalist economy, and all its underlying institutions, the world’s population would,
over time, shrink to a fraction of its current size, in a holocaust of unimaginable scale, and whatever
remained of the human race would be systematically reduced to subsistence, eating only what can be hunted
or gathered.
And this is only to mention its economic benefits. Capitalism is also an expression of freedom. It is not so
much a social system but the de facto result in a society where individual rights are respected, where
businesses, families, and every form of association are permitted to flourish in the absence of coercion,
theft, war, and aggression.
Capitalism protects the weak against the strong, granting choice and opportunity to the masses who
once had no choice but to live in a state of dependency on the politically connected and their enforcers. The
high value placed on women, children, the disabled, and the aged— unknown in the ancient world—owes so
much to capitalism’s productivity and distribution of power. Must we compare the record of capitalism
with that of the state, which, looking at the sweep of this past century alone, has killed hundreds of
millions of people in wars, famines, camps, and deliberate starvation campaigns? And the record of
central planning of the type now being urged on American enterprise is perfectly abysmal.
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Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – Environment
Capitalism empirically improves the environment
Caruba 8 (Alan, writer@The National Anxiety Center, August 4,
http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/article/23614/Capitalism_and_Clean_Air.html,
accessed: 1 July 2011, JT)
“The record clearly shows environmental conditions are improving in every capitalist country in the world
and deteriorating only in non-capitalist countries,” wrote the book’s authors. Only affluent nations can afford
to protect their environmental conditions. By way of example, total air pollution emissions in the United
States fell 34 percent between 1970 and 1990. Particulate matter emissions fell by 60 percent, sulfur oxides by 25 percent,
carbon monoxide by 40 percent, and lead by 96 percent, The book’s authors noted that “Total emissions of air pollutants tracked by the
EPA are forecast to fall by 22 percent between 1975 and 2015.” Water pollution has decreased dramatically
throughout the U.S. Sport fishing has returned, for example, to all five of the Great Lakes. There is a critical
reason why capitalism favors a cleaner environmental. “The security of personal possessions made possible by the
capitalist institution of private-property rights is a key reason why capitalism protects the
environment,” said the book’s authors. When you own property investing in improvements increases its longterm value. “Markets, the second capitalist institution, tend to increase efficiency and reduce waste by putting resources under the
control of those who value them most highly.”
Capitalism is the only system that can effectively preserve the environment
Bast et al 94 (Joseph, pres Heartland Institute, Peter Hill, econ@Wheaton College, Richard Rue, EnergyWise
CEO, Eco-Sanity, http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/publicpdf/23673b.pdf, accessed: 1 July 2011, JT)
The superior economic and environmental performance of capitalism is probably not what many
environmentally conscious readers expected. The images that have stayed with us from grade school or college classes
are of the industrial revolution’s smoky factories, sweatshops, violent strikes, child labor, and colonialism. A system that would allow
such atrocities, we feel almost instinctively, cannot be trusted to protect the rights of workers or a fragile environment. Even a
professional writer on economics, the aforementioned Frances Cairncross, writes: For it is only government that can decide how much
society should value the environment, and how that value should be inserted into economic transactions. The market, that mechanism
that so marvelously directs human activity to supply human needs, often has no way of putting a proper price on environmental
resources, It is time to update our attitudes toward capitalism, and particularly our understanding of how it puts “a
proper price on environmental resources.” Capitalism is based on a system of markets and private property
rights. When rights are correctly defined and enforced, capital- ism will protect the environment for
four reasons: ti It creates incentives to do the right things; ti It generates and distributes needed
information; ti It enables people to trade things or rights in order to solve problems that otherwise
can’t be solved; and r/ It enables property rights to evolve over time. The free-enterprise system
creates wealth, rewards efficiency, and _ protects the environment better than any other system yet
devised by man. The tireless campaign against this system by some quarters of the environmental movement is wrong-headed and
counterproductive.
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Nietzsche Answers
Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – Food Production
Only capitalism can respond fast enough to prevent famines
Lockitch 9 (Keith, fellow@ Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, Energy & Environment, 20(5),
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/25905.pdf, accessed: 1 July 2011, JT)
Despite drought conditions severe enough to rate comparison with the 1930s Dust Bowl, Americans
saw only minor economic losses and fluctuations in food prices . It is telling that the most that Weart could find to
say was that the Midwest droughts showed up on “the front pages of newspapers and on television news programs.” Observe that
they specifically did not “show up” at all on people’s waistlines and barely registered on their pocketbooks.
Such resilience is testament to the adaptive flexibility of an industrialized economy and a (relatively) free
market—to industrial capitalism’s ability to respond quickly when normal conditions are disrupted. While the other
regions mentioned suffered a total failure of their food production and distribution systems, the United States
donated surplus food supplies to Africa, sold food grains to India, and arranged a massive sale of wheat to the Soviet Union in
late 1972. Contrast this to the helplessness before nature of India’s peasant farmers or the Sahel’s nomadic
tribes. Why were they unable to benefit from the agricultural practices that empowered the American
farmers—the irrigation of fields, the use of fertilizers and pesticides, and the application of sophisticated methods of agricultural
management? What role did their primitive cultural traditions and their countries’ oppressive political systems play in suppressing the
industrial development and free market mechanisms that made such advances possible? And in the case of the Soviet Union, should
there really be any surprise that its state-owned collective farms were unable to cope with unfavorable
weather conditions? Even under good conditions— and with the advantage of some of the most fertile agricultural land in the
world—the central planners of the Soviet agricultural ministry were rarely able to coerce adequate food
production.
Food shortages lead to World War III
Calvin 98. (William, theoretical neurophysiologist @ U Washington, “The Great Climate Flip-Flop”,
Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 281, No. 1, January, p. 47-64)
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields would cause some
powerful countries to try to take over their neighbors or distant lands -- if only because their armies,
unpaid and lacking food, would go marauding, both at home and across the borders. The betterorganized countries would attempt to use their armies, before they fell apart entirely, to take over
countries with significant remaining resources, driving out or starving their inhabitants if not using
modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating competitors for the remaining food. This would
be a worldwide problem -- and could lead to a Third World War -- but Europe's vulnerability is
particularly easy to analyze. The last abrupt cooling, the Younger Dryas, drastically altered Europe's climate
as far east as Ukraine. Present-day Europe has more than 650 million people. It has excellent soils, and
largely grows its own food. It could no longer do so if it lost the extra warming from the North Atlantic.
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Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – Space
Profit motive is the primary driver of space exploration
Parker 9 (Martin, Prof of Organization and Culture @ U of Leicester, The Sociological Review, May, Vol. 57, Iss. Supp. s1, p. 83-97)
This, it seems to me, is the paradox of having capitalists in space. As if the distance between the Earth and 47 Ursae Majoris is a
problem for marketing, and the sublime evaporates in the exhaust fumes of managerialism. But, at the same time, it is naïve to imagine
that Apollo and the rest have been free from such earthly entanglements. In the context, it doesn’t matter that much whether
we articulate these entanglements as nation building; party political interest; hidden subsidy of the
military industrial complex, or research institutes; career and identity projects; needing to pay the
mortgage; or compensating for small penis size. All these, and many more, have undoubtedly driven human
beings to work on space exploration projects. But now, in an era of globalising capitalism, it seems that
matters of profit and loss are becoming more relevant than ever in driving human beings to such work.
Commercial space tourist flights will be the first clear example of what has, so far, been a tendency partly concealed by state and state
agency operations. But now, it seems, NASA is being pushed out of the way, in order that enterprise can be
launched. Astronauts seem to spend much of their free time looking back at Earth, photographing it, talking about it, recognising it.
In this chapter, in order to see capitalism more clearly, I will try to see what it looks like from space, and perhaps what it could look
like from the future.
Space prevents extinction
CNN 8 (Oct 9, “Hawking: If we survive the next 200 years, we should be OK”) CH
CAMBRIDGE, England (CNN) -- Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world's great scientists, is
looking to the stars to save the human race -- but pessimism is overriding his natural optimism. Stephen
Hawking, here delivering a lecture in May, spoke recently to CNN about his vision of the future. Hawking,
in an exclusive CNN interview, said that if humans can survive the next 200 years and learn to live in
space, then our future will be bright. "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in
space," said Hawking, who is almost completely paralyzed by the illness ALS. "It will be difficult enough
to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next 100 years, let alone next thousand, or million. The human
race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the
basket until we have spread the load." Hawking is one of the few scientists known to a wide audience
outside academia thanks to his best-selling books, a guest spot on "The Simpsons" and an ability to clearly
explain the complexities of theoretical physics. He has 12 honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982
and since 1979 has been at Cambridge University's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical
Physics, where he is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics -- a post once held by Isaac Newton. Speaking at
Cambridge's Centre for Mathematical Studies, he said: "I see great dangers for the human race. There
have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go. The
Cuban missile crisis in 1963 was one of these. “The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in
the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully. "But I'm an
optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe, as we spread into
space." Twenty years ago, Hawking wrote "A Brief History of Time." Now he is looking forward to a
space flight of his own next year. He said: "I don't think the human race has a moral obligation to learn about
space, but it would be foolish and short sighted not to do so. It may hold the key to our survival."
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Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – Freedom
Capitalism is key to freedom
Rockwell 2 (Llewellyn, jr pres Ludwig Von Mises Institute, July 18, http://mises.org/daily/1005, accessed: 29
June 2011, JT)
And this is only to mention the economic benefits of capitalism. It is also an expression of freedom. It is not so much a
social system but the natural result of a society wherein individual rights are respected , where businesses,
families, and every form of association are permitted to flourish in the absence of coercion, theft, war, and
aggression. Capitalism protects the weak from the strong , granting choice and opportunity to masses who
once had no choice but to live in a state of dependency on the politically connected and their enforcers. Must we compare the
record of capitalism with that of the state, which, looking at the sweep of this past century alone, killed hundreds
of millions of people in its wars, famines, camps, and deliberate starvation campaigns? And the record of
central planning of the type now being urged on American enterprise is perfectly abysmal. Let the state attempt to eradicate
anything--unemployment, poverty, drugs, business cycles, illiteracy, crime, terrorism--and it ends up creating more of it
than would have been the case if it had done nothing at all. The state has created nothing. The market has created
everything. But let the stock market fall 20 percent in 18 months, and what happens? The leading intellectuals discover anew why the
Bolshevik Revolution was a pretty good idea, even if the results weren't what idealists might have hoped. We are told that we must
rethink the very foundations of civilization itself.
Freedom outweighs – it is the foundation of existence and is the only value that makes life
worth living
Clifford 1 (Michael, philosophy@Mississippi State, Political Geology After Foucault, p. 143-144,
http://58.192.114.227/humanities/sociology/htmledit/uploadfile/system/20100724/20100724113140306.pdf,
accessed: 6 July 2011, JT)
Interestingly, almost the same sort of objections were raised against Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism. In Being and Nothingness,
Sartre could largely dodge charges of moral nihilism by claiming that he was doing an “ontology,” not an ethics; but later, in his
famous public address, “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” he tried to address such criticisms by insisting that “existentialism is
optimistic, it is a doctrine of action.”57 However, this characterization of existentialism was more asserted than it was argued. It was
really Simone de Beauvoir who addressed the issue of the possibility of an ethics from an existential point of view directly in her book,
The Ethics of Ambiguity. In this work, Beauvoir offers an ethics of radical freedom in which freedom founds itself
as a value and as a principle of ethical choice: By turning toward this freedom we are going to discover
a principle of action whose range will be universal. . . . Freedom is the source from which all significations and
all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence. The man who seeks to
justify his life must want freedom itself absolutely and above everything else. At the same time that it requires
the realization of concrete ends, of particular projects, it requires itself universally. It is not a ready-made value which offers
itself from the outside to my abstract adherence, but it appears (not on the plane of facticity, but on the moral plane) as a cause of itself.
It is necessarily summoned up by the values which it sets up and through which it sets itself up. It can not
establish a denial of itself, for in denying itself, it would deny the possibility of any foundation. To will oneself moral and to
will oneself free are one and the same decision.58
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Neoliberalism – Turn: Cap Good – War
Capitalism incentivizes peace—outweighs all other factors
Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Nov 10, 2005
[Doug, Spreading Capitalism is Good for Peace, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5193]
But World War I demonstrated that increased trade was not enough. The prospect of economic ruin did not
prevent rampant nationalism, ethnic hatred, and security fears from trumping the power of markets. An even
greater conflict followed a generation later. Thankfully, World War II left war essentially unthinkable among
leading industrialized - and democratic - states. Support grew for the argument, going back to Immanual
Kant, that republics are less warlike than other systems. Today's corollary is that creating democracies out of
dictatorships will reduce conflict. This contention animated some support outside as well as inside the United
States for the invasion of Iraq. But Gartzke argues that "the 'democratic peace' is a mirage created by the
overlap between economic and political freedom." That is, democracies typically have freer economies
than do authoritarian states. Thus, while "democracy is desirable for many reasons," he notes in a chapter
in the latest volume of Economic Freedom in the World, created by the Fraser Institute, "representative
governments are unlikely to contribute directly to international peace." Capitalism is by far the more
important factor. The shift from statist mercantilism to high-tech capitalism has transformed the
economics behind war. Markets generate economic opportunities that make war less desirable.
Territorial aggrandizement no longer provides the best path to riches. Free-flowing capital markets
and other aspects of globalization simultaneously draw nations together and raise the economic price of
military conflict. Moreover, sanctions, which interfere with economic prosperity, provides a coercive step
short of war to achieve foreign policy ends. Positive economic trends are not enough to prevent war, but then,
neither is democracy. It long has been obvious that democracies are willing to fight, just usually not each
other. Contends Gartzke, "liberal political systems, in and of themselves, have no impact on whether states
fight." In particular, poorer democracies perform like non-democracies. He explains: "Democracy does not
have a measurable impact, while nations with very low levels of economic freedom are 14 times more
prone to conflict than those with very high levels." Gartzke considers other variables, including alliance
memberships, nuclear deterrence, and regional differences. Although the causes of conflict vary, the
relationship between economic liberty and peace remains.
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Neoliberalism – AT: Inequality
Capitalism is the ultimate equalizer
Bast 1 (Joseph, pres Heartland Institute, March 1,
http://www.heartland.org/publications/heartlander/article/190/March_2001_Socialist_Myths_Capitalist_Truths.html,
accessed: 1 July 2011, JT)
Capitalism is profoundly egalitarian. Its existence relies on institutions that protect the equal rights of
consumers and producers, eschews privilege and authority, and distributes wealth based on each
participants' contribution to satisfying the needs of others. So we should immediately be suspicious of
claims that capitalism causes inequality. Historical data on income inequality in the U.S. show that both the rich and
the poor are getting richer. The proportion of the U.S. population that was poor, measured by household consumption, fell from
31 percent in 1949 to just 2 percent in the late 1990s. Census data released in September 2000 found the nation's poverty rate had
reached a 33-year low, and poverty among African-Americans and Hispanics was at the lowest levels since record-keeping began in the
1950s. "Snap-shot" views of income distribution in a capitalist society overlook the movement of households from low- to middle- and
high-income status, and sometimes back again. According to W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm in their 1999 book, Myths of Rich &
Poor, only 5 percent of households in the bottom fifth of income earners in 1975 were still there in 1991.
Almost 3 out of 10 had risen to the top fifth, and more than three-quarters had reached the two highest
tiers of income earners for at least one year by 1991. These numbers should be reassuring to those who like to "keep score" on the
relative wealth of various categories of people, but it is possible to focus too much on such statistics. Incomes , after all,
are outcomes of voluntary decisions and moral behavior . Income inequality generally means different
choices are being made, often involving complex trade-offs between leisure, status, and work that outside observers
cannot hope to judge as right or wrong.
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Neoliberalism – AT: Value to Life
Their view that capitalism destroys the value to life is an attempt to pass blame for failure
onto a system. Human failure is inevitable and not caused by capitalism. Only the
individual controls their value and actions.
Dieteman 1 (David, attorney in Pennsylvania, September 3,
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman88.html, accessed: 2 July 2011, JT)
Second, what is the nature of capitalism? Capitalism means the free market, in other words, men freely exchanging
things. As a shortcut, we refer to the free exchange of goods and services as "a market." A market is of course also the physical space
where such exchanges take place. Third, if men freely exchange things — if they buy and sell in a market — how does such
voluntary activity "eat away at our lives and relationships"? For starters, it would seem that it sustains lives
and relationships: food that you buy keeps you alive, and movies and dinners sustain relationships .
Dating gets a lot more difficult when you cannot rely on the division of labor to supply you with entertainers, chefs, and waiters
(waiters; yes, waiters; not "servers;" if service must be in the name, are they not "servants"? One's computer may be dependent upon a
server, but one's dinner may not, unless your kitchen is really automated). For that matter, contemporary life would be nearly
impossible without the division of labor provided by markets. Try growing a variety of nutritious foods on your own
property, plus making your own furniture and clothing, and building your own home, generating your own electricity to run the
appliances that you built yourself...and I hope you get the idea. Human beings have one large problem, and one large
problem only, from which all the little problems flow. The problem is not capitalis. The problem is that human beings are
imperfect beings, subject to temptation and sin. Not religious? Fine. Consider that human beings have a strong
tendency to screw things up, and to simply be weak, i.e., to do something — anything! — but what they are supposed to be
doing. The voluntary actions of buying and selling do not "eat away at our lives and relationships." Instead, we eat away at our
lives by living like a walking version of the disposal under a kitchen sink. Similarly, we destroy our own
relationships with our insistence upon control, or an unthinking, lazy sort of self-centered approach to
life. If you can think of nothing better to do with your time than mindlessly walk shopping malls and
spend money, that says more about you than about capitalism. Read a book, go swimming, or shoot skeet.
Whatever you do, you are responsible for how you spend your time . Blaming capitalism for an unhappy
life or a failed love makes about as much sense as blaming a gun maker for an act of murder, or blaming a dairy
farmer for your clogged arteries. Or, you might say that it makes as much sense as blaming your parents for everything bad that happens
to you. Recall that this was a trendy and acceptable thing to do, until the Menendez brothers took things a bit too far, and commentators
had a field day with the "I'm not responsible for anything I do" crowd.
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Neoliberalism – Alt = Transition Wars
The desire for freedom and growth is innate – moving away risks totalitarianism, violence,
poverty and war
Aligica ’03 (Paul Aligica, Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and Adjunct Fellow at the
Hudson Institute, “The Great Transition and the Social Limits to Growth: Herman Kahn on Social Change and
Global Economic Development”, April 21,
http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=2827)
Stopping things would mean if not to engage in an experiment to change the human nature, at least in an equally difficult experiment in
altering powerful cultural forces: "We firmly believe that despite the arguments put forward by people who would like to 'stop the earth
and get off,' it is simply impractical to do so. Propensity to change may not be inherent in human nature, but it is firmly
embedded in most contemporary cultures. People have almost everywhere become curious, future oriented, and
dissatisfied with their conditions. They want more material goods and covet higher status and greater control of nature. Despite much
propaganda to the contrary, they believe in progress and future" (Kahn, 1976, 164). As regarding the critics of growth that stressed the
issue of the gap between rich and poor countries and the issue of redistribution, Kahn noted that what most people everywhere
want was visible, rapid improvement in their economic status and living standards, and not a closing of the gap
(Kahn, 1976, 165). The people from poor countries have as a basic goal the transition from poor to middle
class. The other implications of social change are secondary for them. Thus a crucial factor to be taken into account is that while the
zero-growth advocates and their followers may be satisfied to stop at the present point, most others are not. Any serious attempt
to frustrate these expectations or desires of that majority is likely to fail and /or create disastrous
counter reactions. Kahn was convinced that "any concerted attempt to stop or even slow 'progress' appreciably (that is,
to be satisfied with the moment) is catastrophe-prone". At the minimum, "it would probably require the creation of
extraordinarily repressive governments or movements-and probably a repressive international system" (Kahn, 1976, 165;
1979, 140-153). The pressures of overpopulation, national security challenges and poverty as well as the revolution of
rising expectations could be solved only in a continuing growth environment . Kahn rejected the idea that continuous
growth would generate political repression and absolute poverty. On the contrary, it is the limits-to-growth position "which
creates low morale, destroys assurance, undermines the legitimacy of governments everywhere, erodes personal and group commitment
to constructive activities and encourages obstructiveness to reasonable policies and hopes". Hence this position "increases
enormously the costs of creating the resources needed for expansion, makes more likely misleading
debate and misformulation of the issues, and make less likely constructive and creative lives ". Ultimately
"it is precisely this position the one that increases the potential for the kinds of disasters which most at its advocates are trying to avoid"
(Kahn, 1976, 210; 1984).
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Neoliberalism – Alt = Transition Wars
Transition wars will kill the planet but not capitalism
Flood ’04 (Andrew, Anarchist organizer and writer, “Civilization, Primitivism, Anarchism,”
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1451)
However it is worth doing a little mental exercise on this idea of the oil running out. If indeed there was no alternative what might
happen? Would a primitivist utopia emerge even at the bitter price of 5,900 million people dying? No. The
primitivists seem to forget that we live in a class society. The population of the earth is divided into a few people with vast resources and
power and the rest of us. It is not a case of equal access to resources, rather of quite incredible unequal access. Those who fell
victim to the mass die off would not include Rubert Murdoch, Bill Gates or George Bush because these
people have the money and power to monopolise remaining supplies for themselves. Instead the first to
die in huge number would be the population of the poorer mega cities on the planet. Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt have a
population of around 20 million between them. Egypt is dependent both on food imports and on the very intensive agriculture of the Nile
valley and the oasis. Except for the tiny wealthy elite those 20 million urban dwellers would have nowhere to go and there is no more
land to be worked. Current high yields are in part dependent on high inputs of cheap energy. The mass deaths of millions of
people is not something that destroys capitalism. Indeed at periods of history it has been seen as quite natural and
even desirable for the modernization of capital. The potato famine of the 1840's that reduced the population of Ireland by 30%
was seen as desirable by many advocates of free trade.(16) So was the 1943/4 famine in British ruled Bengal in which
four million died(17). For the capitalist class such mass deaths, particularly in colonies afford opportunities to
restructure the economy in ways that would otherwise be resisted. The real result of an 'end of energy'
crisis would see our rulers stock piling what energy sources remained and using them to power the helicopter
gunships that would be used to control those of us fortunate enough to be selected to toil for them in
the biofuel fields. The unlucky majority would just be kept where they are and allowed to die off. More of the 'Matrix'
then utopia in other words. The other point to be made here is that destruction can serve to regenerate capitalism. Like it or
not large scale destruction allows some capitalist to make a lot of money. Think of the Iraq wa r. The
destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure may be a disaster for the people of Iraq buts it's a profit making bonanza for Halliburton and
co[18]. Not coincidentally the Iraq war, is helping the US A, where the largest corporations are based, gain control of the parts of the
planet where much future and current oil production takes place
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Neoliberalism – Perm Solves
Macro AND micro politics are necessary - creates alliances and avoids reductionism
Marsh 95
(James L., Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, Critique, Action, and Liberation p.346-347 GAL)
What seems to be called for and to be more likely with the greater possibility and actuality' of economic and rationality' crisis is
a union of workers and citizens groups, economic and cultural movements, purposive rational-action
and symbolic interaction, macro- and micropolitics. Links with workers can remind citizen groups of
the relationship of their own goals and movements to economic class domination and help supply a unity' to these
various groups. On the other hand, movements centered around quality' of life remind workers that mere
economic reforms and revolution are not enough either, transformation of quality' of life is essential. Moreover,
movements centered on the problems of racism, sexism, and the devastation of the environment
remind us of a legitimate specificity, plurality', and irreducibility within social movements. Even though racism,
sexism, heterosexism. and environmental pollution are ultimately related to capitalism, they are not
reducible to capitalist class domination. A legitimate differance exists among social movements that must be respected. In
contrast to postmodernists. I would insist on a legitimate unity' or identity' that should be articulated, an identity-in-difference.
Such a politics disavows either a one-sided unity' present in some traditional Marxism or a one-sided
pluralism present in liberal or postmodern theories. Such a politics would be aesthetic as well as
political, cultural as well as economic, micro as well as macro, but in contrast to many postmodern theories the
aesthetic and cultural are linked to the critical and reflective. Rationality' is not simply or primarily instrumental or
scientific as some traditional Marxism would have it or simply libidinal and aesthetic as some postmodem theory would have it. but a unity' of political, aesthetic, and scientific. Thus the aesthetic politics of
Act-Up. an organization of AIDS activists, breaking into Dan Rather's newscast on CBS during the Gulf War has its legitimate place as
do marches protesting the war or worker resistance on the shop floor.
The symbolic protest of a Dan Berrigan at the King of Prussia nuclear facility in Pennsylvania has its place as well as political
organizing in the Bronx around the issues of health care, housing, and food. Many legitimate struggles, kinds of struggle,
and sites of struggle exist, none of which is reducible to the other, but which are or can be linked to one
another in different alliances against a common enemy, a racist, sexist, heterosexist capitalism. Linking
and alliance are not the same as subsumption and reduction, a common mistake. Such struggles have a
common enemy, are subject to common norms of right, morality', and justice, and have a common goal of liberation taking the form of
full economic, cultural, and political democracy.
In contrast to a politics of assimilation that denies differences or a politics of rigid identity' that becomes separatist, my
recommended politics is one of inclusion and alliance. Such a politics flows from the argument of the whole book. On a
phenomenological level, cognitional-transcendental structure and the validity' claims of the ideal speech situation are shared by everyone
equally, white or African-American, capitalist or laborer, woman or man. heterosexual or homosexual. No person or group of persons is
privileged in the ideal speech situation, and each has an equal right to express her needs and desires and claims.
Ethically the principles of right, morality, and justice forbid classism. racism, sexism, and
heterosexism. Hermeneutically. these forms of domination are distinct but related and are not
reducible to one another. Critically, the task of social theory is to criticize these forms of domination with the aim of overcoming
them. Finally, on the level of praxis itself, each kind of group subject to its own distinct kind of exploitation can give rise to its own
legitimate kind of social movement.
It is true that on a hermeneutic-explanatory level class domination is more fundamental and definitive of our social situation than other
kinds, but even here one form is not reducible to the other. Also, it is mistaken to infer from such privileging to a privileging on other
levels. Ethically, for example, it is not clear that exploitation of labor by capital is worse than that exerted
by white over Latino or Indian, heterosexual over homosexual, or man <CONTINUED>
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<CONTINUED>
over woman. Here, we note again the advantage of methodologically distinguishing different stages, aspects, and levels in critical
theory.
Even if I privilege class domination over other forms on a hermeneutic-explanatory level, it may be
that social movements arising from racism, sexism, and heterosexism have to be privileged at times in
the late capitalist context. Which of these social movements takes the lead depends very much on different local, regional, and national
situations. In addition to other kinds of indeterminacy and ambiguity, social theory has to own up to a certain indeterminacy on the level
of praxis.
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Neoliberalism – Perm Solves
We shouldn’t shy away from embracing particular struggles which are linked to more
universal struggle- we need a dialectic between micro and macro struggles
Marsh 95
(James L., Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, Critique, Action, and Liberation p. 256-257 GAL)
Clearly, then, full liberation in the university should become liberation of the university from the thrall of capital and capitalist values.
Such liberation implies a theoretical and practical praxis on the part of students and faculty to become really what they are essentially,
the center of the university. Such a movement involves a movement from powerlessness to power, hierarchy to equality, patriarchy to
feminism, passivity to activity, ressentiment to critique. Being a radical academic means, first of all. to do what I can.
according to my own talents, needs, and available time, to aid such a struggle . We become in Foucault's
words "specific intellectuals." engaging the socioeconomic system where it impinges on our own
professional lives. Such specificity, however, should be linked as much as possible to a systematic,
universal comprehension of the socioeconomic system in which we live. Otherwise, we run a danger of
misunderstanding the meaning of the struggle and the causes of the evil against which we struggle, racist, sexist capitalist domination,
tyranny, and colonization in this university. We note here a necessary dialectic between micro and macro
struggles. Perhaps more adequate as a model than "universal" or "specific" intellectual is Gramsci's
notion of organic intellectual: the intellectual as related to. emerging from, and connected to particular
groups and struggles but able and willing to relate these specific struggles to the universal in different
senses, phenomenological. ethical, hermeneutical-explanatory. critical, programmatic.
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Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Capitalism Inevitable
Greed and capitalism are inevitable – the concepts of property rights and free trade are
engrained in our psyche
Wilkinson 5 (Will, policy analyst@CATO, CATO Policy Report, XXVII(1), January/February,
http://www.cato.org/research/articles/wilkinson-050201.html, accessed: 29 June 2011, JT)
Perhaps the most depressing lesson of evolutionary psychology for politics is found in its account of the deepseated human capacity for envy and, related, of our difficulty in understanding the idea of gains from trade and increases in
productivity—the idea of an ever-expanding "pie" of wealth. There is evidence that greater skill and initiative could lead to higher status
and bigger shares of resources for an individual in the EEA. But because of the social nature of hunting and gathering, the fact that food
spoiled quickly, and the utter absence of privacy, the benefits of individual success in hunting or foraging could not be easily
internalized by the individual, and were expected to be shared. The EEA was for the most part a zero-sum world, where increases in total
wealth through invention, investment, and extended economic exchange were totally unknown. More for you was less for me.
Therefore, if anyone managed to acquire a great deal more than anyone else, that was pretty good evidence that theirs was a stash of illgotten gains, acquired by cheating, stealing, raw force, or, at best, sheer luck. Envy of the disproportionately wealthy may have helped to
reinforce generally adaptive norms of sharing and to help those of lower status on the dominance hierarchy guard against further
predation by those able to amass power. Our zero-sum mentality makes it hard for us to understand how trade and investment can
increase the amount of total wealth. We are thus ill-equipped to easily understand our own economic system. These features of human
nature—that we are coalitional, hierarchical, and envious zero-sum thinkers—would seem to make liberal capitalism extremely unlikely.
And it is. However, the benefits of a liberal market order can be seen in a few further features of the human
mind and social organization in the EEA. Property Rights are Natural The problem of distributing scarce resources
can be handled in part by implicitly coercive allocative hierarchies. An alternative solution to the problem of distribution is the
recognition and enforcement of property rights. Property rights are prefigured in nature by the way animals mark
out territories for their exclusive use in foraging, hunting, and mating. Recognition of such rudimentary claims to control and
exclude minimizes costly conflict, which by itself provides a strong evolutionary reason to look for innate tendencies to recognize and
respect norms of property. New scientific research provides even stronger evidence for the existence of such property "instincts." For
example, recent experimental work by Oliver Goodenough, a legal theorist, and Christine Prehn, a neuroscientist, suggests that the
human mind evolved specialized modules for making judgments about moral transgressions, and
transgressions against property in particular. Evolutionary psychology can help us to understand that property
rights are not created simply by strokes of the legislator's pen. Mutually Beneficial Exchange is
Natural Trade and mutually beneficial exchange are human universals, as is the division of labor. In their groundbreaking paper,
"Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange," Cosmides and Tooby point out that, contrary to widespread belief, hunter-gatherer
life is not "a kind of retro-utopia" of "indiscriminate, egalitarian cooperation and sharing." The archeological
and ethnographic evidence shows that hunter-gatherers were involved in numerous forms of trade and
exchange. Some forms of hunter-gatherer trading can involve quite complex specialization and the interaction of supply and demand.
Most impressive, Cosmides and Tooby have shown through a series of experiments that human beings are able easily to
solve complex logical puzzles involving reciprocity, the accounting of costs and benefits , and the detection of
people who have cheated on agreements. However, we are unable to solve formally identical puzzles that do not
deal with questions of social exchange. That, they argue, points to the existence of "functionally specialized, contentdependent cognitive adaptations for social exchange."
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Nietzsche Answers
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Capitalism Inevitable
Even a drastic decline in living conditions won’t spur revolution – empirically proven
Flood 5 (Andrew, Anarchist Organizer and Writer, “Is Primitivism Realistic?”
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1890
There is also nothing automatic about poverty or a decline in living standards being met with mass
revolt. Capitalism, and the market in particular, is also an inbuilt mechanism though which the
population are encouraged to accept the hoarding of scarce resources as natural. In the west today this
means the rich have access to fast cars, luxury homes and private yachts - not that much of a hardship for the
rest of us. But elsewhere in the world the rich have access to these things while the poor literally starve in the
streets. If there was to be a real crisis in world food production then this is what would visit the working
class in the USA and beyond. To a minor extent this is what happened in depression era America and in
post war Europe. In neither case did it lead to significant revolts never mind the collapse of civilisation.
History proves elites begin revolution, not slum dwellers
Bast 8 (Andrew, May 17,, With Zizek, We're All Just Left Joking Around,
http://www.nyinquirer.com/nyinquirer/2008/05/with-zizek-were.html]
What is frightening, simply put, is Žižek’s utter disregard for reality. In the final pages, he grapples with
Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 declaration of the “End of History,” undoubtedly a text to be reckoned with—
moved past, if you will—in any serious discussion of where humanity is heading. Frankly, I breathed a sigh
of relief, eager for his response. What came to mind was a final passage from Fukuyama’s essay: “The end of
history will be a very sad time,” the long-time neoconservative and professor of international political
economy at the School of Advanced International Study at Johns Hopkins wrote in the midst of the Cold
War’s end almost two decades ago. “The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a
purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination,
and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems,
environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.” And in conclusion,
what does Žižek offer? A slipshod analysis of the growing slum cities around the world, and why their
dispossessed residents ought be tapped to find strategies for the rest of us to organize resistance against
… against … It is still unclear. Global capitalism? Repressive state apparatuses? Overblown institutions?
Feeble social welfare organizations? Privatized medical establishments? And on top of all this, if anyone
should know, Žižek the intellectual should, that revolution rarely, if ever, comes from the peasants.
History teaches us, in France, in Russia, in Iran, in Ethiopia, in China, the list goes on and on, that
revolution comes from out-of-power elites. And their allegiance sworn to the intellectuals.
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Nietzsche Answers
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Generic (And Cap Links)
Their criticism of neoliberalism suffers from the same problems as K’s of capitalism
Springer 8 (Simon, U of Otago, “The nonillusory effects of neoliberalisation: Linking geographies of poverty, inequality,
and violence”, Geoforum, 39)
‘‘[S]imply trying to wish away the structural power of capital is a curious theoretical and political strategy
for those on the Left – and one that is doomed from the outset as the basis for a radical and emancipatory
politics. And as long as it remains the case that we are grappling with the economic (and other) geographies
of capitalism, we. . . have a deep and enduring need for Marxian political economy.” (Hudson, 2006: 389) It
is these ‘other’ geographies of capitalism, namely those of impoverishment, socioeconomic disparity, and in
particular violence, that form the basis of concern in this critical review. In identifying how poverty and
inequality can be understood in relation to violence, I am convinced a Marxian political economy is a
necessary precursor insofar as it positions us in such a way that allows us to recognise the inherent violences
of capital. Indeed, Marxism proceeds from a position that sees capitalism as the central social institution of
the modern world (Palan, 2000: 10), and as Dume´nil and Le´vy (2004: 269) contend, the ‘‘basic function of
economic ‘violence’ remains a core feature of capitalism.” Notwithstanding the recent criticisms of Amin
and Thrift (2005), who ask ‘‘what’s Left?” about a Marxian political economy, and the parallel position of
Gibson- Graham’s (1996) project to move beyond Marxism for what they view as its discursive fetishisation
of capital, following Hudson (2006) I believe our world remains to a considerable extent produced – in a
Lefebvreian sense (Lefebvre, 1991) – and driven by the logic of capital and capital accumulation. In light of
the successful expansion of the neoliberal project that currently envelops the globe, it would seem that Marx
has been proven correct in his view that the logic of capital maintains a self-expanding value that reproduces
itself across time and space, penetrating and creating new and distant markets (Harvey, 2003, 2005; Palan,
2000). It is in this sense rather disheartening that some have seemingly and perhaps inadvertently done such
paralysing damage to a Marxian approach, and its concern for structure, right at a time when it has the
potential to be most critical and elucidating. I am thinking in particular of Castree’s (2006) recent lament
(compare Castree, 1999), following Barnett (2005), about the (f)utility of the term ‘neoliberalism’ in a
political economy approach to understanding our current situation.
Either the alt attacks capitalism or it fails
Springer 8 (Simon, U of Otago, “The nonillusory effects of neoliberalisation: Linking geographies of poverty, inequality,
and violence”, Geoforum, 39)
Finally, by relegating Marxian political economy perspectives to the intellectual dustbin as Hudson (2006)
contends Amin and Thrift (2005) have done, and in suggesting that neoliberalism is a ‘necessary illusion’ or
that ‘there is no such thing’ as Castree (2006) and Barnett (2005) respectively do, albeit from two very
different theoretical perspectives, is to run the perilous risk of obviating ourselves from the contemporary
reality of structural violence (Bourgois, 2001; Farmer, 2004; Uvin, 2003). Without theorising capital as a
class project and neoliberalism as an ‘actually existing’ circumstance (Brenner and Theodore, 2002),
structural violence, and the associated, if not often resultant direct violence (Galtung, 1990), becomes
something ‘out there’ and far away in either spatial proximity or class distance, so that it is unusual,
unfamiliar, and unknown to the point of obscurity and extraordinarity. Arming ourselves with a Marxian
political economy approach, and a theoretical toolkit that includes neoliberalism, allows us to bring global
capitalism’s geographies of violence into sharp focus, alerting us to the realities of poverty and inequality as
largely outcomes of an uneven capitalist geography, and furthermore to recognise the ways in which the ‘out
there’ of violence has occurred and continues to proliferate and be (re)produced in a plentitude of spaces,
including ‘in here’. It is only through recognition of such symbolic violence that human emancipation may be
offered, and without such acknowledgement, what’s left? Just a future of ensuing violence.
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Nietzsche Answers
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Totalizing Bad
Neoliberalism is not a singular frame – their authors conflate and confuse neoliberalism for
a number of discourses – Makes analyzing and solving oppression harder and more
obscure
Springer 11 (Simon, U of Otago, “Neoliberalism as Discourse: Between Foucauldian Political Economy and Marxian Poststructuralism”,
http://otago.academia.edu/SpringerSimon/Papers/595924/Neoliberalism_as_discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_p
oststructuralism)
In arguing for an understanding of neoliberalism as discourse, I do not presume that comprehending
neoliberalism separately as a hegemonic ideology, a policy and program, a state form, or as a form of
governmentality is wrong or not useful. Rather I have simply attempted to provoke some consideration for
the potential reconcilability of the different approaches. My argument should accordingly be read as an effort
to destabilize the ostensible incompatibility that some scholars undertaking their separate usage seem keen to
assume. Without at least attempting to reconcile the four approaches we risk being deprived of a coherent
concept with which to work, and thus concede some measure of credibility to Barnett’s (2005) claim that
‘there is no such thing as neoliberalism’. Such a position renders the entire body of scholarship on
neoliberalism questionable, as scholars cannot be sure that they are even discussing the same thing. More
perilously, to accept such a claim throws the project of constructing relational solidarities across space into
an uneasy quandary, where the resonant violent geographies of our current moment may go unnoticed.
Totalizing conceptions of neoliberalism fail
Springer 11 (Simon, U of Otago, “Neoliberalism as Discourse: Between Foucauldian Political Economy and Marxian Poststructuralism”,
http://otago.academia.edu/SpringerSimon/Papers/595924/Neoliberalism_as_discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_p
oststructuralism)
From initial explorations concerned with the implications for state reform, the expansion of neoliberalism
into a field of academic inquiry has been meteoric. Scholars are now examining the relationships between
neoliberalism and everything from cities to citizenship, sexuality to subjectivity, and development to
discourse to name but a few. Concomitant to such theoretical expansion, consensus on what is actually meant
by ‘neoliberalism’ has diminished. Consequently, some commentators have demonstrated considerable
anxiety over the potential explanatory power of the concept, labeling neoliberalism a ‘necessary illusion’
(Castree 2006) or suggesting that ‘there is no such thing’ (Barnett 2005). Drawing on Gibson-Graham’s
(1996) misgivings over the discursive fetishization of capital, these reservations are anxious about how
pervasive neoliberalism has become in academic writing and are equally concerned about the monolithic
appearance of neoliberalism owing to its characterization as expansive, dynamic, and self-reproducing.
Clearly there critiques offer an important call for further reflection, as it is vital to challenge the
‘neoliberalism as monolithism’ argument for failing to recognize the protean and processual character of
space and time (Massey 2005). Similarly, by constituting an external and supposedly omnipresent
neoliberalism, we neglect internal constitution, local variability, and the role that ‘the social’ and individual
agency play in (re)producing, facilitating, and circulating neoliberalism. These criticisms have triggered an
increasing propensity in the literature to replace discussions of neoliberalism with a new language of
‘neoliberalization’, which acknowledges multiplicity, complexity, variegation, and contextual specificity (see
Heynen and Robbins 2005; England and Ward 2007; Brenner et al. 2010; Purcell 2009). As a protean
process, neoliberalization is considered to ‘materialize’ very differently as a series of hybridized and mutated
forms of neoliberalism, contingent upon existing historical contexts, geographical landscapes, institutional
legacies, and embodied subjectivities (see Peck 2001; Peck and Tickell 2002).
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Nietzsche Answers
Neoliberalism – Alt Fails – Totalizing Bad
Their conception of neolib is totalizing which turns the K alt
Springer 8 (Simon, U of Otago, “The nonillusory effects of neoliberalisation: Linking geographies of poverty, inequality,
and violence”, Geoforum, 39)
I do appreciate Barnett (2005) and Castree’s (2006) shared concern that neoliberalism has become such a
pervasive academic buzzword as to lend it the appearance of monolithic (the very critique that GibsonGraham (1996) articulate with respect to capitalism), and accordingly I welcome the recognition of
multiplicity, complexity, and variegation found in recent accounts such as Brenner and Theodore (2002) and
Peck (2001). I am equally concerned by the emerging claims (see Farrands, 2002) that the Left must seek to
replicate the Right in articulating an alternative to neoliberalism that mirrors its breadth and scope of think
tank networks and institutional connections (Plehwe and Walpen, 2006; Carroll and Carson, 2006; Weller
and Singleton, 2006). Indeed, such a totalising vision is a detrimental recapitulation that brings us no closer
to the notion of human ‘emancipation’ than we are today. Following Mitchell (2002), we should rightly
question why ‘experts’ should remake the world rather than the collective world remaking itself on its own
terms. Nonetheless, Barnett’s (2005) post-structuralist critique that ‘there is no such thing as neoliberalism’, a
claim Castree (2006) approaches from a critical realist perspective in deeming neoliberalism a ‘necessary
illusion’, are both potentially wanton in the face of the contemporary prevalence of poverty and inequality,
and the resultant violence that such divisions of wealth, status, and power so often entail. Castree no doubt
remains committed to a Marxism of ensembles, where ‘neoliberalism’ is replaced by a set of connected and
differential neoliberalisations. He also recognises full well that there are very real effects to come to terms
with, but I fear that he leaves the question of ‘where do we go from here’ dangerously wide open. Barnett is
less apologetic, contending ‘neoliberalism’s’ ascription as a singular ‘hegemonic’ project reduces our
understandings of social relations to that of residual effects by disregarding the proactive role sociocultural
processes play in changing policy, regulations, and governance modes. The contrasting reality, Barnett avers,
is that market liberalisation, deregulation, and privatisation have actually been impelled from the bottom-up,
primarily via the populist ethos of left-leaning citizens movements seeking greater autonomy, equality, and
participation. This critique may have some resonance in many first world settings, but in making this
argument, other than to question academics’ alliances with various actors ‘out there’, Barnett completely
ignores third world contexts where such reforms have largely been foisted from the topdown through the
coercive auspices of aid conditionality, International Financial Institution lending practices, and occasionally
even overt militarism as is currently seen in Iraq. Likewise, he fails to consider the resultant violent outcomes
these impositions so frequently have (see Uvin, 1999, 2003).