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Comprehensive immigration reform will pass
Wolffe ’10 (Obama's Last-Ditch Strategy by Richard Wolffe October 25, 2010 | 11:26pm Richard Wolffe is Daily Beast columnist
and an award-winning journalist. He covered the entire length of Barack Obama's presidential campaign for Newsweek magazine.
His book, Renegade: The Making of a President, was published by Crown in June.
That may be wishful thinking. Whatever happens on Nov. 2, the White House political team is already busy mapping strategy for the next phase of
Obama's presidency. The White House plans to test Republicans' unity and political resolve on three controversial issues: repealing the Bush tax
cuts, implementing the deficit commission's findings, and pushing immigration reform. Obama's team says that these issues will make for good
policy—and good politics, forcing Republicans elected in swing districts to choose between placating Democrats and independents and risking a possible
Tea Party challenge in 2012. The White House believes immigration reform may be the toughest test for the GOP—even tougher than tackling the
deficit. "This will separate the reasonable Republicans from the pack running for president ," said one senior Obama aide.
Piecemeal reform crushes comprehensive reform
Altschuler ’10-27 (THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION REFORM This article is part of a two-part
series on the politics of immigration reform. by Daniel Altschuler October 27, 2010 : A two-part
article on the movement for reforming the immigration system and post-election prospects for its
success.
Some CIR advocates, though, fear the piecemeal route because of Democratic leaders’ limited
political capital. Many Democrats in Congress would prefer to vote once on immigration and be done
with it. They would resist piecemeal efforts that would force them to vote several times for proimmigrant stances, which could increase their vulnerability to attacks from the Right. After voting on
DREAM or AgJOBS, some could tell the leadership that they are not willing to risk another
immigration vote. President Obama alluded to this scenario: “I just don’t want anybody to think that
if we somehow just do the DREAM Act, that that solves the problem…We’ve got a bigger problem
that we have to solve. We still need comprehensive immigration reform.”
Comprehensive reform is key to food
ACIR ‘7 (December 4, 2007 THE AGRICULTURE COALITION FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM
Dear Member of Congress: The Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform (ACIR) is deeply concerned with pending immigration
enforcement legislation known as the ‘Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007' or ‘SAVE Act’ (H.R.4088
and S.2368). While these bills seek to address the worthy goal of stricter immigration law enforcement , they fail to take a
comprehensive approach to solving the immigration problem. History shows that a one dimensional approach to
the nation’s immigration problem is doomed to fail. Enforcement alone, without providing a viable means to
obtain a legal workforce to sustain economic growth is a formula for disaster. Agriculture best illustrates this
point. Agricultural industries that need considerable labor in order to function include the fruit and vegetable,
dairy and livestock, nursery, greenhouse, and Christmas tree sectors. Localized labor shortages have resulted in
actual crop loss in various parts of the country. More broadly, producers are making decisions to scale back
production, limit expansion, and leave many critical tasks unfulfilled. Continued labor shortages could force more
producers to shift production out of the U.S., thus stressing already taxed food and import safety systems. Farm
lenders are becoming increasingly concerned about the stability of affected industries. This problem is aggravated by the nearly
universal acknowledgement that the current H-2A agricultural guest worker program does not work. Based on government statistics
and other evidence, roughly 80 percent of the farm labor force in the United States is foreign born, and a significant majority of that
labor force is believed to be improperly authorized. The bills’ imposition of mandatory electronic employment eligibility verification
will screen out the farm labor force without providing access to legal workers. Careful study of farm labor force demographics and
trends indicates that there is not a replacement domestic workforce available to fill these jobs. This feature alone will result in chaos
unless combined with labor-stabilizing reforms. Continued failure by Congress to act to address this situation in a
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comprehensive fashion is placing in jeopardy U.S. food security and global competitiveness. Furthermore,
congressional inaction threatens the livelihoods of millions of Americans whose jobs exist because laborintensive agricultural
production is occurring in America. If production is forced to move, most of the upstream and downstream jobs will disappear as
well. The Coalition cannot defend of the broken status quo. We support well-managed borders and a rational legal system. We have
worked for years to develop popular bipartisan legislation that would stabilize the existing experienced farm workforce and provide
an orderly transition to wider reliance on a legal agricultural worker program that provides a fair balance of employer and employee
rights and protections. We respectfully urge you to oppose S.2368, H.R.4088, or any other bills that would impose employmentbased immigration enforcement in isolation from equally important reforms that would provide for a stable and legal farm labor
force.
Lack of food kills billions
Brown ‘5 (Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, February 7, 2005, People and the Planet,
“Falling water tables 'could hit food supply',” http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2424
Many Americans see terrorism as the principal threat to security, but for much of humanity, the effect of water
shortages and rising temperatures on food security are far more important issues. For the 3 billion people who live on
2 dollars a day or less and who spend up to 70 per cent of their income on food, even a modest rise in food prices can
quickly become life-threatening. For them, it is the next meal that is the overriding concern."
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Courts CP
The United States Supreme Court should rule to remove beneficiary eligibility restrictions included
under 201(2) (A) (i) of the INA in determination of “immediate relatives” for determining beneficiary
for topically designated visas on the basis of customary international law.
Recent CIL rulings have fallen short of incorporation
David Moore, associate professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, November, 2006, 75 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1, p.
lexis
As noted, the status of international law in the U.S. legal system has long been contested. The debate has been somewhat less feverish with regard to treaties than
with CIL. The question of whether treaties may be applied in U.S. courts as federal law has, at some level, been addressed by the
Constitution and the self-execution doctrine. 12 Scholars have criticized the concept of non-self-execution, however, arguing that it is inconsistent with treaties'
status as supreme federal [*5] law, and they have challenged the political branches' practice of attaching non-self-execution declarations to the ratification of
treaties. 13 A minority of scholars has sought to defend non-self-execution. 14 By contrast, the status of CIL in federal courts has remained uncertain
as a matter of doctrine. 15 Broad references by the Supreme Court to international law's domestic status have failed to supply clear
guidance, 16 and lower courts have treated CIL as federal common law [*6] for some purposes but not others. 17 Scholars have likewise split on the issue. Prior
to Sosa, the prevailing view was that CIL was applicable in federal courts as federal common law without a need for incorporation by the political branches. 18
Professor Koh, for example, argued that "once customary norms have sufficiently crystallized, courts should presumptively incorporate them into federal common
law, unless the norms have been ousted as law for the United States by contrary federal directives." 19 This view was challenged by a minority of scholars who
claimed that CIL should not qualify as federal common law post-Erie, 20 and thus could not provide a federal 21 rule of decision absent incorporation by the
political branches. 22 The crux of the minority position was that the political branches must take the lead in rendering CIL domestic law. While other views were
advanced, 23 [*7] these two framed the discussion. Each raised persuasive arguments; 24 neither was the clear winner. 25 Sosa provided additional fodder for the
debate between the two positions. In Sosa's wake, commentators have tended to conclude that the Supreme Court vindicated the majority position that federal courts
possess the authority to incorporate CIL as federal common law even in the absence of congressional authorization. 26 [*8] Sosa's significance, however,
has been both misperceived and underappreciated. Far from endorsing the majority view of CIL, the Court nodded support
for the minority position by demonstrating that the application of CIL in federal courts turns on congressional intent. 27 More
significantly for current purposes, the Court took this position in the course of making a broader statement about the status of
international law in federal courts; that is, the Court not only reaffirmed the self-execution doctrine with regard to treaties, but also indicated
that the substance of that doctrine governs the application of CIL in federal courts. 28 The Court thus set a trajectory toward a uniform approach to the application of
both sources of international law. To perceive this broader point in Sosa, one must understand in some detail the self-execution doctrine that courts use to determine
whether treaties are immediately applicable as federal rules of decision. Part II discusses the necessary contours of that doctrine.
U.S. Courts have failed to act, resulting in congress consistently defining “family” within immigration
law in a way that violates international law- congressional action is key to customary international law
King 2010
[Shani King, Assistant Professor, University of Florida Levin College of Law_ Co& Director, Center on
Children and Families. University of Florida Levin College of Law, University of Florida Legal Studies
Research Paper No. 2010-06, U.S. IMMIGRATION LAW AND THE TRADITIONAL NUCLEAR
CONCEPTION OF FAMILY: TOWARD A FUNCTIONAL DEFINITION OF FAMILY THAT PROTECTS
CHILDREN'S FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS, 2010]
Unlike regional international courts and courts in other countries, courts in the United States have not
embraced the CRC. The Fifth Circuit has explicitly refused to apply the CRC to U.S. immigration law and has
also refused to apply "customary international law" such as the UDHR where a "controlling legislative act"
occupies the field. n142 Similarly, the Second Circuit rejected the argument that the CRC is binding as
"customary international law" where Congress had already "enacted legislation defining the circumstances
under which hardship to a child may appropriately be considered as a ground for granting relief from
removal to a nonpermanent resident alien." n143 The Eighth Circuit also refused to consider the CRC where
"Congress has clearly expressed in the INA its intent to remove certain aliens, as in this instance, without a
separate consideration of the impact of that removal upon the alien's children ... ." n144 Despite the
widespread rejection of the CRC in the United States, at least one circuit has acknowledged its relevance to
U.S. immigration law. In Cabrera-Alvarez v. Gonzales, the Ninth Circuit noted that the CRC is not the law of
the land because the United States has not ratified it, but "assumed, without deciding that the [CRC] had
attained the status of "customary international law.'" n145 The court went on to consider whether the
Department of Justice's interpretation of the hardship standard in IRRIRA contravenes the [*549] CRC.
n146 The court held that the interpretation did not violate the CRC, so the discussion of the CRC is dictum;
however, the fact that the Ninth Circuit entertained the CRC as customary international law for purposes of
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argument suggests that the CRC may be emerging as a force in U.S. immigration law. n147 Despite the Ninth
Circuit's analysis, however, the reality is that several federal circuits have refused to grant the CRC the status
of customary international law. As we saw in Section I, the courts have simply deferred to Congress to define
"family" for the purpose of immigration law: Though this result - separating five U.S. citizen children from
their grandfather, who appears to be their only loving and stable source of care and support - may seem
unduly harsh and perhaps illogical, it is the result dictated by law. Congress is of course free to correct any
inequities resulting from our application of its plain statutory language, as it has done in the past. n148
Unfortunately, for matters relating to immigration, Congress has consistently relied on a definition of family
which conflicts with international law and is unduly harsh, illogical, and contrary to the best interests of
children.
Only ruling in the face of congressional inaction can the Supreme Court assert its jurisdiction over
customary international law
Michelle Kundmueller, University of Notre Dame, Candidate for J.D. and M.A. in Political Theory 2004,
2002, 28 J. Legis. 359, p. lexis
Because c ustomary i nternational l aw thus pervades the federal government, alternately limiting and expanding the powers of the respective branches, it
becomes a defining body of law in relationship to the federal government . Hence, Paust writes, "in the case of an unavoidable clash between
fundamental human rights supported by customary international law and a federal statute, the human rights (which have a constitutional status) [*367] must
prevail." 27 In normal conflicts between codified (treaty) international law and federal statute, the last-in-time rule applies; this rule dictates that
whichever law was most recently enacted controls. 28 Paust claims that this rule dictates that, in conflicts between customary international law and
federal statutes, customary international law always controls. 29 As Paust theorizes, " c ustomary i nternational l aw would necessarily be 'last in time,'
since custom is either constantly re-enacted through a process of recognition and behavior involving patterns of expectation and practice or it
loses its validity and force as law." 30 By this reasoning, custom is always a controlling authority in the face of a directly conflicting federal
statute. The extent to which Paust claims that c ustomary i nternational l aw influences and controls domestic law leads to the question of who ,
within the U.S. legal system, decides upon the content, interpretation, and manner of application of international law. While all three branches
of the federal government will have some indirect control in forming customary international law, it also limits the scope of each. Hence, whichever branch is
empowered to control the application and interpretation of this body of law within the domestic legal structure will be that much
stronger, relative to the coordinating branches. In Paust's view, the judicial branch is responsible to "identify, clarify, and apply" this body of law. 31 In
response to concerns that this role improperly changes the balance of powers, he asserts that "it is precisely because the federal judiciary has both the power and
responsibility to identify and apply customary international law in cases otherwise properly before the courts that there is no violation of the separation of powers
when federal courts apply international law while interpreting federal statutes." 32 In an article on human rights law and domestic courts, Richard B. Lillich explores
the role and the ramifications of customary international law in United States law. Like Paust, Lillich bases his understanding of the role of customary international
law on the finding that "customary international law, while not mentioned in the Constitution, is part of the law of the land to be determined and applied by the
courts whenever appropriate in making a decision." 33 Based on this, Lillich states that "the starting point in ascertaining what international human rights norms
have been received into customary international law--and therefore are rules of decisions for domestic [*368] courts--commonly is thought to be the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights . . . ." 34 The status of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a source of the customary international law rests solely on its
position as evidence of existing customary international law. Lillich admits that, while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights resolution was adopted without a
dissenting vote by the U.N. in 1948, it is not legally binding as a treaty, as it has never been ratified. 35 Thus, to the extent Lillich is correct that the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights reflects--at least in part--customary international law, and to the extent that both Paust and Lillich are correct that customary
international law is part of United States law which should be enforced and interpreted by the courts, it should also "be directly enforceable in domestic courts." 36
Most customary international law claims in U.S. courts have been based on a statute which provides for such a claim. The most common example of this is the Alien
Tort Statute, which dates back to the Judiciary Act of 1789 and provides for federal jurisdiction over "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in
violation of the law of nations of a treaty of the United States." 37 The point of Lillich's suggestion is that, while there is nothing wrong with providing statutorily
for the incorporation of customary international law, as has been done in the past, it is unnecessary or redundant. The implications of Lillich's claim that
c ustomary i nternational l aw may and ought to be directly incorporated into U nited S tates law even without statutory support are far
reaching. He advocates that judges ought to use human rights law--and implicitly all of c ustomary i nternational l aw --without statutory support. Not only
could claims be brought in federal and state courts without the benefit of enabling statutes, but, under the mirror principle, the United States has an
obligation, enforceable domestically, to live up to the provisions of c ustomary i nternational l aw. 38 Beyond this direct effect, which has
the potential to permit the voiding of a federal statute on the grounds that it conflicts with c ustomary i nternational l aw (as defined and
recognized by the judiciary), Lillich predicts that c ustomary i nternational l aw should have the "greatest impact on domestic law in the future
by influencing the courts' approach to constitutional and statutory standards." 39 This means that the Constitution, federal law, and state law
should be interpreted in light of customary international law. As Lillich states, "litigants and [*369] judges already have invoked the Universal Declaration [of
Human Rights] for precisely this purpose." 40 Lillich hails this new world of c ustomary i nternational l aw’s direct and indirect incorporation into United States
law as offering "significant as well as virtually limitless possibilities for achieving greater protection of the rights of individuals." 41
Judicial incorporation of CIL strengthens international law globally
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Douglas Sylvester, professor of law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, Spring, 1994, 42
Buffalo L. Rev. 555 , p. lexis
The preceding sections have shown that historical and theoretical objections to a modern application of customary international law are not dispositive. Since the
judiciary is not precluded from applying customary international law by the Constitution, history, or political theory, the only remaining
question to be answered is whether the judiciary should begin applying it. The answer is clearly yes, for a number of reasons. First,
there is the fact that much of international law since the Second World War has been created and fostered under the auspices, and to the benefit, of
the United States. Judicial applications of international law have the possibility of continuing to solidify and evolve that process.
Second, the decisions of domestic tribunals, as evidence of state practice, can have a significant impact on the further development of
international law. 301 Increased participation of the domestic judiciary in international law cases will aid in the development of
international law in accordance with the interests of the United States. [*620] Third, United States attempts to foster the rule of law in other
nations have been seriously hampered by this country's refusal to be bound by the very proscriptions it espouses. This country's
return to international legitimacy, even if through judicial imposition, would go far to strengthening the rule of law in international
relations -- a development that can only support American interests. Finally, the disproportionate effect that this country's actions have upon the development of
international law is another factor compelling the judiciary to enforce legitimacy. The incorporation of this law into United States constitutional discourse could
have important ramifications. Such an incorporation could simultaneously strengthen the body of customary international law and make it
easier for other nations to identify and enforce this law. Once these laws are made explicit it will become more difficult for violations
to occur. 302
International law must be strengthen to avoid nuclear war
R.A. Mullerson, Head, Department of International Law, Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences, THE
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, July 1989, p. 494. (DRGOC/B331)
In spite of different class approaches to social problems and different schools of thought ,
there is only one worldwide science of international law.
New global problems challenging humanity -- the threat of nuclear holocaust, environmental crises, economic difficulties of the
"Third World" -- can be solved only by all states acting together, by the common efforts of all nations. In the contemporary world, interests and values
common to all mankind must prevail over the interests of single nations, parties or social classes. Moreover, I think that nowadays values and interests common
to all mankind cannot be contrary to the interests of individual states. Avoidance of nuclear holocaust, disarmament, the resolution
of environmental problems and mutually beneficial cooperation between nations in all fields of human activity are in the interest of
all. Too often, when statesmen or politicians speak of the national interest and justify their actions by the notion of national interest, they are not talking about
genuine national interest but, rather, about the self-interest of certain influential groups.
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T- Eligibility
A --- Interpretation- topical beneficiary eligibility affs must allow a substantial number of
persons to qualify for a topical visa and provides visas to those persons
Nechman ‘7 (John Nechman is a partner in the Houston, Texas law office of Katine and Nechman L.L.P.,
where he focuses on immigration law. He is also an adjunct professor at South Texas College of Lawand the
University of Houston Law Center. He is a past chair/president of several national, state, and local legal
organizations, and he is a frequent speaker on immigration, business, human rights, criminal, and
GLBT/HIV-related legal issues. 22 Personal Lived and worked in 7 nations; traveled in 6 continents and
over 100 countries; fluent speaker of English and Spanish with strong conversational abilities in German,
Italian, French, Portuguese, and Norwegian. Long-time civil rights activist, recipient of numerous awards,
and frequent speaker on community issues, civil rights, criminal, and immigration-related topics. Houston,
TX National Conference on Equal Employment Opportunity Law March 25, 2007, 1:30-3:00 pm Track II:
Border Crossings: The Intersection of Employment and Immigration Law
www.abanet.org/labor/eeocomm/mw/Papers/2010/data/papers/019.pdf
The Act establishes a two check system as the main mechanism for deciding which immigrants are accorded
lawful permanent residence.14 These two checks correspond to two distinct types of limitation on the incoming
flow of immigrants. The first limitation is based on the concept of ELIGIBILITY TO FILE AN APPLICATION TO
IMMIGRATE. It corresponds to the limits in the Act on the number of immigrants that can be admitted in
different categories each year. The second limitation is based on the concept of the individual alien’s ADMISSIBILITY, i.e.,
certain individual characteristics or attributes that the prospective immigrant must have, or must NOT have, in order to be “lawfully
admitted for permanent residence.”15 A. ELIGIBILITY. Proving eligibility involves both a substantive and a procedural
component. To be eligible to apply for an immigrant visa, a prospective immigrant first has to prove that she fits
within a particular statutory category of eligibility AND that a visa number is available at the time she files her
application to immigrate. Substantively, the two most common criteria for establishing eligibility are based on
certain family relationships and prospective employment relationships. In family cases, substantive eligibility is
established by obtaining approval from CIS of a Petition filed on the immigrant’s behalf by a family member who
is a U.S. citizen ("USC") or LPR, where that USC or LPR Petitioner has a certain, statutorily defined relationship
to the immigrant Beneficiary. (Ex.: Husband-wife, parent-child, brother-sister)16. In a typical employment-based case, a
U.S. employer goes through a multi-step process to prove first to the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) and later
to USCIS that the employer should be allowed to hire a particular foreign worker and, as a necessary part of that
process, that the foreign worker should be allowed to apply for LPR status. Notably, some employment-based cases do
not require DOL involvement. For example, if the prospective employee has extraordinary qualifications in his field, or his being
employed in a particular position in the United States would be in the “national interest”, the U.S. employer may simply file a
petition with USCIS thoroughly documenting that fact. Substantive eligibility to immigrate may also be shown by the alien's
obtaining USCIS approval of a special immigrant petition. Here, the alien establishes that he fits into one of several statutorily
defined categories of individuals (certain juveniles, certain former members of the Armed Services, certain religious workers, etc.)17,
and by virtue of that fact is rendered eligible to file for LPR status. Another basis for eligibilityis winning the visa lottery. Each year
the Department of State sponsors a lottery on the internet in which up to 55, 000 immigrant visas are distributed to applicants from
eligible countries.18 Still yet another basis for eligibility is proof of an alien's conditional admission as a refugee or his having
obtained approval of asylee status while physically present in the U.S.19 together with proof that the refugee/asylee has thereafter
resided in the U.S. for at least one year. Procedural eligibility is based on proof that an immigrant visa number is
available to the alien beneficiary based on his “priority date”, i.e., the date on which the Petition on his behalf was
received at USCIS or at the Department of Labor. To further explain: The Act assigns an unlimitednumber of visas to certain
classes of alien beneficiaries, such as the parents, spouse, or minor unmarried children of a U.S. citizen (also known as "immediate
relatives")20. Persons in this category have the right to apply for immigrant status immediately after, or at the same time as, a
petition filed on their behalf is approved. With respect to other categories of alien beneficiaries, the INA sets numerical per
country limits on the number of persons that may be admitted in any one year in each category21. For example:
The law sets an annual maximum of non-immediate relative family- sponsored immigrants at 480,000; of
employment-based immigrants at 140,000; of diversity visa lottery immigrants at 55,00022. Moreover, these
aggregate numbers are further broken down within each category of eligibility. Thus, of the 480,000 slots
assigned to the family-based category, 23,400 are allocated to unmarried adult sons and daughters of U.S.
citizens; 23,400 are allocated to married adult sons and daughters of U.S. citizens; 65,000 are allocated to
siblings of U.S. citizens; and 114,200 plus an additional amount are allocated to spouses and single, minor
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children of permanent residents23. To determine the allocation of these numbers, when a family-preference based Petition or
an employment-preference based petition is filed for a particular alien, the date the Petition is received by USCIS or the U.S.
Department of Labor establishes the alien's priority datein the category of eligibility under which the alien intends to apply for LPR
status. The U.S. Department of State issues a monthly advisory indicating, for each category of numerically limited visas, the
priority date of the petitions being processed that particular month. By comparing the changes in priority dates for the current and
earlier months, one can estimate how long it will take for a particular petition to become "current", ie., ready for processing. An
alien beneficiary cannot proceed with his application to immigrate UNTIL HIS PRIORITY DATE IS CURRENT.
The Act envisions that alien beneficiaries within a numerically limited class, or preferencecategory, may have to
wait months or years before their petitions become current and they can actually apply for LPR status. In the
meantime, unless they have some other legal basis to be in this country, these intending immigrants are NOT
legally allowed to reside here, although many in fact do reside here. Moreover, a few narrow exceptions aside,
these intending immigrantscannotget work authorization. B. ADMISSIBILITY. Once eligibility is established, the
Alien Beneficiary of a petition has to establish that he is admissible as an immigrant. To that end, he has to apply for
permanent resident status and show that he is not subject to any grounds of inadmissibility. That can be done in one of two ways.
Either the alien can file an Application for Immigrant Visa, form DS 230 Pts. I&II, and supporting documents, with the U.S.
Consulate overseas that has jurisdiction over his foreign residence. When the Application has been approved and the visa has
issued, the alien must travel with it to the United States. On his admission to the U.S., he will be accorded LPR status. Alternatively,
if the alien is in the United States, subject to certain limitations he can filean Application to Adjust Status, form I-485, to the USCIS.
If and when that Application is approved, the USCIS will adjust his status to that of an LPR.
B- Violation- The aff fails to meet either substantive or procedural grounds of eligibility- they
don’t change specific visa requirements OR give visas – they just change the process of
actually OBTAINING one.
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Framework 1NC
A. Interpretation --- the ballot’s sole purpose is to answer the resolutional question: Is the outcome of the enactment of a
topical plan better than the status quo or a competitive policy option?
Definitional support --1. “Resolved” before a colon reflects a legislative forum
Army Officer School ‘04
(5-12, “# 12, Punctuation – The Colon and Semicolon”, http://usawocc.army.mil/IMI/wg12.htm)
The colon introduces the following: a.
A list, but only after "as follows," "the following," or a noun for which the list is an appositive: Each scout will carry the
following: (colon) meals for three days, a survival knife, and his sleeping bag. The company had four new officers: (colon) Bill Smith, Frank Tucker, Peter Fillmore, and
Oliver Lewis. b. A long quotation (one or more paragraphs): In The Killer Angels Michael Shaara wrote: (colon) You may find it a different story from the one you learned
in school. There have been many versions of that battle [Gettysburg] and that war [the Civil War]. (The quote continues for two more paragraphs.) c. A formal quotation or
question: The President declared: (colon) "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The question is: (colon) what can we do about it? d. A second independent clause
which explains the first: Potter's motive is clear: (colon) he wants the assignment. e. After the introduction of a business letter: Dear Sirs: (colon) Dear Madam: (colon) f.
The details following an announcement For sale: (colon) large lakeside cabin with dock g. A formal resolution, after the word "resolved:"
Resolved: (colon) That this council petition the mayor.
2. “United States Federal Government should” means the debate is solely about the outcome of a policy established by
governmental means
Ericson ‘03
(Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The
Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key elements, although they have slightly
different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---“The United States” in “The United
States should adopt a policy of free trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence.
2. The verb should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination.
For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A
specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the
topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing
interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred. The entire debate is about whether something
ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling
reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose.
B. Violation --- they claim advantages that are independent of the plan
D. Topicality is a voting issue for fairness and outweighs all other issues because without it, debate is impossible
Shively ‘2K
(Ruth Lessl, Assistant Prof Political Science – Texas A&M U., Partisan Politics and Political Theory, p.
181-2)
The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say "no" to-they must reject and limit-some ideas and
actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say "yes" to some things. In particular, they must say "yes" to the idea of
rational persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord that is
necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that agreement marks the
end of contest-that consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect-if there is nothing at all left to question or
contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on
specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest
and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one
of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the
reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other
words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we
have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is
being debated before we can debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks
euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if
those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other
words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Resisters,
demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their disagreements. The
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participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrator's audience must
know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how one might
go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
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Nancy
The affs inclusion of specific immigrants insures mass annihilation of dispensable immigrants.
The aff creates a myth of community that ensures more violence. Conditionality hospitality
turns case and makes violence possible
Ajana ‘6 (JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH VOLUME 10 NUMBER 3 (JULY 2006) ISSN 1479–
7585 print/1740–1666 online/06/030259–15 © 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14797580600848104
Immigration Interrupted Btihaj Ajana
This perpetual actualisation of borders or what we may refer to as ‘infinite bordering’ is enacted into our very
ousia, creating far-reaching implications on ‘bodies that do not matter’, bodies of those left to float in the
Strait of Gibraltar, bodies of those left to die on the US–Mexican border, bodies of those who are, at this very
moment, being raped, tortured and humiliated. Borders are becoming the epitome of Western hypocrisy: on
the one hand, they embody visions of Western progress, civilisation and technological advancements. On the
other hand, they are turning into mass graves, a monolithic disposal of dispensable bodies and unnecessary
existences. This is the dialectical reality of borders! Moving onto the third aspect of the figuration of
immanentism, we shall now discuss the ways in which the mythical collectivised identity is brought into play in order to
justify, articulate and sustain the function of immanentism. The idea of collective identity is bound to the idea of ‘common substance’ which, in the immanentist discourse,
is always represented as the essential bond between people and the foundational character of common identity. Common substance, as such, becomes the logic of
institutionalisation in immanentist politics which sees itself as the organiser and guarantor of common identity. Yet the realisation of this communal identity takes place
only at the level of ‘articulation’ (Nancy 1991) where the notion of ‘common substance’ is made ‘immanent’ to the idea of communality so much so that, in immanentist
political figurations, it is never questioned but always taken-for-granted and perceived as ‘common sense’. And to
question common sense/common
substance is to put at stake the very project of absolute separation and expose the inside to the irreducible
outside. Immanentist politics, as such, performs its task of absolute enclosure by means of
suppressing/reducing difference, regulating alterity and securing its ‘imaginative community’ (all being manifested in
immigration controls). And when the other is ‘needed’ (skilled migrants/ ‘Sector Based Scheme’ migrants) or
imposed (having to grant access to asylum seekers because of the signed international conventions), there is
a tendency to enforce modes of assimilation – what is called ‘integration’ – so that this Other is absorbed into
a homogenous totality in which its ‘imagined’ disturbance/threat is reduced if not eliminated: ‘… hard work,
determination and a willingness to integrate propelled them [immigrants] forward… Britain has an enviable record of racial integration’ (Howard 2005). Integration, in
this sense, becomes a work, an achievement to be extolled as the virtue of ‘good citizens’ and ‘good governments’, all, while invoking principles of common substance and
essential unity; ‘That’s what makes us so proud to be British’ (Howard 2005). ‘To
be British’ is, in fact, a testimony of how the myth of
communal essence speaks through the political enterprise of immanentism and renders identity as a project, as the gathering together of
absolute figures (citizens, states, institutions, communities, etc.) in order to naturalise the mythical character of collective identity; absolute ‘being-such’ (Agamben 1993,
p. 2) or absolute ‘suchness’: He recounts to them their story, or his own … he is his own hero, and they, by turns, are the heroes of the tale and the ones who have the right
to hear it and the duty to learn it. (Nancy 1991, pp. 43–4) I come from an immigrant family…For centuries Britain has welcomed people from around the world…Many of
them came to Britain with almost nothing and had to start again from scratch. (Howard 2005) In myth, … existences are not offered in their singularity: but the
characteristics of particularity contribute to the system of the “exemplary life”. (Nancy 1991, p. 78) The enunciation of absolute suchness is only possible insofar as it relies
on mythic, inaugural figurations that circumscribe commonality in such a way that 265 the ‘invention’, ‘recital’ and ‘transmission’ (Nancy 1991, p. 44) of myth become the
sole foundation of identity itself and the means by which absolute separation is achieved. As such, one might compare political conferences, assemblies, campaigns, etc. to
a scene of gathering in which the myth is being recycled and recited by telling stories about the genesis of absolute figures (citizens – including the assimilated migrants,
state, etc.), how they came to be together and how they must protect
their ‘origins’ and ‘communal essence’ from the intrusion of
the outsider (the ‘coming’ immigrant). In (political) speech, the articulation of myth takes place when series of stories, shared values and beliefs are
invoked in an attempt to ennoble that speech (ibid., 48), substantiate immanentism and present collective identity as an absolute figure whereby citizens and state are
situated within an enclosure. In such a process, myth transforms its mythic status into a natural one to the extent that it is no longer perceived as a myth but becomes the
condition par excellence for belonging, politics or any other form of ‘communitarian fulfilment’ (ibid., 69). Thus far, we have seen how the figurations of immanentist
politics are manifested through immigration controls by means of spatialising, technologising and articulating absolute figures within the political imaginary, giving rise
to modes of inclusion and exclusion. Such figurations are problematic insofar as they are deeply ensconced within the determinism of sovereignty in which identity,
citizenship, and belonging are reduced to and burdened by the illusive belief in a fixed common substance and a need to sustain a state of self-enclosure. To
follow
the thread of Nancy’s assertions, it can be argued that what makes these figurations rather problematic is, in
fact, their failure to address or at least recognise the question of what constitutes ‘being-in-common’ and
their continuous attempt to conceal the inevitability of ‘being-with’, notions that are salient in rethinking the
question of immigration. Instead of regarding being-in-common as the gathering together of individuals who
share some common property or essence –and in which the clinamen is removed from such gathering,
Nancy (1991, p. 26–7) offers an alternative understanding of this concept. He asserts that being-in-common
is first and foremost being exposed to alterity through a relationship of sharing, made possible by the
Heideggerian notion of being-with (Mitsein) which goes beyond commonality and identity politics. Such an
understanding, albeit abstract due to its breaking away from any spatial particularity, does indeed save
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individuals or rather singularities from the danger of communal fusion (witnessed for instance in the
movements of fascism and Nazism) and the restraints of self-enclosure (immigration controls for instance). For in Nancy’s conceptualisation, singular
beings are not regarded as absolute figures of immanentist politics (i.e. citizens) but as beings whose experience of being-in-common is constituted through their predicatefree existential/ ontological position of being-there (Dasein) and what they reveal to each other in their exteriority (which forms their interiority) and their multiplicity
(which forms their uniqueness). The being-such of a singular being is irreducibly a beingwith that draws its sense of ‘selfness’ from the existence of ‘otherness’ without,
however, having to live up to a differentiating identity or a shared individuality 266 AJANA that would place it within the confines of categorisation i.e. suchness: ‘suchandsuch being is reclaimed from its having this or that property … (the reds, the French, the Muslims)’ (Agamben 1993, p. 1). Thus, the realisation or rather actualisation of
being-in-common is only possible insofar as singular beings are ‘whatever’ (ibid.) beings (not having any particular identity) whose ‘membership’ could not be determined
by or reduced to having/sharing ‘common’ characteristics. But a membership that can only be experienced at the moment of exposure to singularity, at the moment of its
‘taking place’ ‘…(which is itself without a place, without a space reserved for or devoted to its presence)’ (Nancy 1991, p. 72). Exposure, sharing and being-with are thus
constitutive of being-in-common in such a way that belonging itself becomes a ‘bare’ belonging stripped from any predetermined condition of membership (Agamben 1993,
p. 84) or demarcated territoriality. It is a belonging where ‘whatever’ (singularity such as it is – and this ‘such’ is unidentifiable and fluid) belongs to ‘whateverness’
(unconditional being-in-common). Immigration, in this sense, can be regarded as an aspect of exposure, sharing and being-with, to which there could/should be no fixed
limit or neat bordering. But while it might be objected that this conceptualisation of ‘being-in-common’ is devoid of any concrete ‘sense’ of political engagement or agency,
it is, nevertheless, important to attend to the way in which such conceptualisation sets the stage for the tensions inherent in the thinking of hospitality, which renders
immigration not only a political question but also an ethical one. For
when the issue of immigration is contemplated from an ethical
standpoint, it becomes possible to reveal not only the failure but also the ‘violence’ embedded within Western
politics (Metselaar 2003, p. 1). This political violence is epitomised in the policies of detention, the treatment of
refugees, the proposal of asylum quotas, the forced integration, or even, the act of ‘naming’ (‘illegal
immigrant’, ‘asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’, ‘bogus’, ‘detainee’, ‘deportee’, etc.), all of which breach the ethics of
radical generosity toward otherness – in that ‘violence does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating
persons as in interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which they no longer recognize
themselves’ (Levinas 1969, p. 21). It is, hence, the call for ethics that puts the question of politics into doubt and
reconfigures the understanding of responsibility ‘for the Other’ (Levinas 1982, p. 95), for the ‘Stranger who disturbs the being at home
with oneself’ (Levinas 1969, p. 39)4. In Levinasian ethics, responsibility does not exhaust itself in the ‘deed’; in what one does for/to the Other5 (Levinas 1982, p. 96), but
responsibility is primarily the evocation of response entreated through the Other’s face, which allows one to enter into an ethical relationship with otherness. As such, one
is always and inevitably responsible for the Other by virtue of his/her proximity to the ‘face’ of alterity which presents itself not so much in the measuring of spacing
between singularities but rather insofar as it brings the subject into existence through the soliciting of speech and the embodiment of the relation of self to the Other. In
taking account of the face, the Other can no longer be abstracted into mere ‘graspable’ categories of ‘possession’ (an asylum seeker, a refugee, a detainee, etc.) but moves
into a dimension of expression in which ‘the face resists possession, resists my powers’ (Levinas 1969, p. 197) and, therefore, decentres subjectivity (Campbell 1999, p. 33)
and disturbs the will to ‘ignore’ this infinite responsibility. Facial practices such as eyelid and lip sewing are illustrations of ‘This bond between expression and
responsibility’ (Levinas 1969, p. 200) by which some of the ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘detainees’ assert their agency and make their ethical call heard.6 But perceived from the
vantage point of politics, the response to this call would be merely that of obligation; the obligation to put an end to what is perceived in the (Western) politics as a
‘barbarian blackmailing’ that stirs up the anger of taxpayers (in other words, the ‘belonging’, ‘good’ citizens – absolute figures). Whereas, from an ethical standpoint, the
very manifestation of this helpless plea would be in itself an attestation to the failure of politics – without which the self-inflicted bodily harm would not have occurred in
the first place – and a demand for a response that goes beyond duty, morals and obligation i.e. a response embedded within the ethics of absolute hospitality and pure
generosity. This disjuncture between the political totality and the ethical infinity marks the abyssal hiatus between conditional (not only in the Kantian sense) and
unconditional hospitality (Derrida 2000). For
conditional hospitality entails a measuring of actions, a calculation of
responsibility and a selection of those to whom one may/should be hospitable/responsible. This is indeed the
political hospitality manifested, for instance, in what Cohen (2003, p. 72) calls ‘economic elitism’ found in
the schemes of points system and work permits which function by means of filtering those who may
economically contribute ‘more to the public purse’ (Spencer, in Cohen 2003, p. 73) from those who have ‘little or nothing to contribute’ (Cohen
2003, p. 73). Added to that the current ‘Worker Registration Scheme’ in the United Kingdom relating to nationals
of the new European Union member states7 as well as the proposed quotas for asylum seekers. Ramifications
of this political hospitality are damaging and violent in that not only modes of discrimination, inequality and
exclusion are systematically implemented, but also, the absolute responsibility for the Other is negated and
overridden by an exigency for reciprocity or a demand for repayment: ‘we have offered a home to families who want to come here,
work hard and make a positive contribution to our society’ (Howard 2005). In contrast, unconditional hospitality is a response to the
ethical imperative which precedes the realm of politics, philosophy and sociality. It is offered to anyone and everyone
regardless of whether they are TB/HIV negative or not, whether they are skilled migrants or not, whether they would contribute to the economy or not, whether they would
conform to the customs and values of the host entity or not. This
notion of hospitality entails a responsibility that has no limits, no
particularity, and an absolute openness to the Other that goes beyond any expectation, determination and
knowledge. For ‘hospitality is…an experience which proceeds beyond knowledge toward the other as absolute stranger, as unknown, where I know that I know
nothing of him’ (Derrida 2000, p. 8) – so much so that the subject becomes not a host but a ‘hostage’ to the Other (Levinas in Derrida 2000, p. 9) with no choice but to be
responsible and hence hospitable. (However, this notion of being hostage to the Other is not to be regarded in negative terms for it is the alterity of the other and his/her
call that shape one’s subjectivity, incite one to think, to feel (Diprose 2002, p. 134) and to become). Thus, and to use Levinas’ (1981, p. 98) allegory, which is probably
derived from Nietzsche’s (1997, p. 91) ‘Ye love your virtue as a mother loveth her child; but when did one hear of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?’, the ethical
relation of self (in our case, this would be the State) to the Other becomes something akin to the relation of the mother to her foetus; an inevitable and, at times, excessive
responsibility for which nothing is necessarily expected in return. Nevertheless, ‘Everything that takes place “between us” concerns everyone’ (Levinas 1969, p. 212) and it
is never a matter of one foetus only, one Other solely, but a question of otherness in its entirety. As such, as soon as the ‘third’ party (another other) comes to the scene, this
absolute ethical relationship between self and Other is called into question, for the arrival of the Third complicates the status of the Other as being the only object of ethical
responsibility and transfers this self-Other relationship into the political/juridical realm, and hence conditionality so that responsibility could be calculated, portioned and
allocated ‘accordingly’ (such operations tend to be value and interest-driven). As mentioned earlier, it
is the way in which conditionality functions
by means of institutionalising, organising, standardising and universalising relationships that notions of
singularity and alterity are betrayed and negated in the process of legislation and (de)politicisation creating a
‘sociality that does not allow a generosity that would foster … the improvement of survival of anyone other
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than those bodies that already dominate’ (Diprose 2002, p. 171). Yet, this inevitable conditionality trigged by the arrival of the third is what indicates
that hospitality could never be regarded merely form the vantage point of ethics (since in reality, the ‘I’ does not engage solely with ‘one’ Other) but also in terms of politics
(by virtue of the arrival of the third who constitutes a multitude of others). Hospitality, in this sense, is concurrently straddling the ethical as well as the political sphere and
in so doing, it reveals that ‘the determinability of this limit [between the ethical and the political] was never pure and it never will be’ (Derrida in Diprose 2002, p. 186).
This statement suggests that despite the apparent hiatus between ethics and politics, there is no strict separation between the two after all, and that the realisation of an
ethico-political hospitality is possible only insofar as one is willing to resolve or at least navigate the malleable bifurcation between that which embodies calculable and
conceptual practice (politics) and that which embodies unconditionality and radical responsibility (ethics) without disposing of one in favour of the other. Such an act will
intrinsically necessitate the unworking (Nancy 1991) of immanentism in order to attend to an alternative politics which takes ethics as its premise rather than absolute
figurations of myth, technicism and enclosure. Although it is often argued that Levinas as well as Derrida’s unconditional hospitability cannot be unproblematically (or
even possibly) translated into a political action (Metselaar 2003, p. 9) insofar as it is merely articulated at the level of the dual self-Other relationship rather than sociality
as a whole (this being particularly true of Levinasian ethics), their vision is, nonetheless, salient in terms of provoking a radical transformation in social and political
imaginaries and invoking the exigency of a ‘politics of generosity that would foster rather than close off different ways of being’ (Diprose 2002, p. 172). Such politics will not
proceed from ‘a hermeneutics of depth’ (Rose 1999, p. 196) in which subjectivity is wrought around self-containment, self-sufficiency and self-determinacy, presented as a
project to be accomplished. Instead, it might find its point of departure in the potential encounter with the other and the total exposure to embodied alterity. For it is the
experience of encountering and being-exposed-to that infuses the crisis ‘into the hyphen at the heart of the nation-state’ (Coward 1999, p. 12) and undoes any immanentist
attempt to essentialise identity, commonality and belonging. Whilst
it is unclear as to how such an ethico-political vision may be
put into practice (perhaps this ‘not-knowing-how’ would save this alternative vision from being turned into
yet another figure of immanentism), it may be that the rejection, transgression and obliteration of
immigration controls are to be regarded as the touchstone of this radical ethico-politics and an epitome of
the necessary shift from politics of borders to politics of singularities where ‘No One Is Illegal’ (Cohen 2003).
Reject the aff. The aff endlessly recreates the violence they attempt to solve- only total
rejection can solve
Strysick ’97 (The End of Community and the Politics of Grammar Author(s): Michael Strysick Source:
Cultural Critique, No. 36 (Spring, 1997), pp. 195-215 Published by: University of Minnesota Press Stable
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354504
Change" has been one of the most consistent buzzwords of the current cultural, political, and social moment. With the recent shifts in
the executive and legislative branches of our federal government, the battle over who defines that term is once again being waged,
and only time will tell what connotative sense this word will assume. As this period unfolds, however, part of our attention must be
directed toward concentrating more intently on what structural forces change confronts. We face the real possibility that we
are once more headed in the direction of fulfilling the adage that the more things change, the more they stay the
same. The so-called postmodern era, the broader theoretical term assumed by some for the present moment, is concerned with
changing the predominance of metanarratives through attention to narrativity, and its critique informs some of the issues we face in
defeating this adage. As we have come to realize, the forms of our discourse demand critical attention equal to that given to the
contents of such discourse. Fundamental to these discussions is thinking about the very ordering of our relations with one another,
which I will call community, and the ways in which we talk about and communicate that being-together. Indeed, the very
grammatical or foundational character that underlies the structure of our narratives is in greatest need of our critical attention.
Nietzsche's attention to "grammar," a trope for the way in which we construct and negotiate structures-discursive, moral, narratival,
religious, societal, and others-is fundamental in thinking not only about the death of God and humanity, but also about the death or
end of community as we attempt to change and transform community. Jean-Francois Lyotard's assessment of narrative, what he calls
phrasing, and the discursive practices of narrative that he characterizes by the "differend" naturally extend Nietzsche's point. I would
assert that much of the recent attention to alterity and otherness-a direct result of our historical inattention to difference-can be
understood through Lyotard's differend; that is, by his insistence that discursive practice operates from the bias of a single
grammatical structure. This, in turn, informs how people respond, necessarily determining, even predetermining, the structure of
their responses, as well as the very forms of our community. However, community, with its implicit sense of the common,
is often conceived in terms of those things that are merely common among people; or more specifically, through
the presence of what is presumably mutual. In the process, a philosophy of community emerges which runs the
risk of operating on the basis of convenient oppositions between same and Other in which the bias of homogeneity
is predominant. If, however, the common within community is reconceived on the basis of an absence of what is
shared-our difference-then such convenient oppositions are seriously challenged; individuals must be conceived
in terms of their potentially unregulatable differences. Put simply, community is traditionally defined by what is
common among individuals; I am concerned with the negative way in which exclusion functions in community
despite a community's declared goals of inclusion. While it may seem paradoxical to begin by invoking an end, I
will do so by employing "end" in both its telic and final sense; that is, by thinking about how the traditional
structure and goals of community might be changed. Lyotard's battle cry in The Postmodern Condition, "Let us
wage a war on totality" (82), has its greatest application here, calling as it does for the end of a pretension to speak
for all that eradicates difference. He engages this battle through a task of incredulity, in which "the nostalgia of the
whole and the one" is challenged, exactly because "[t]he nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much
terror as we can take" (81). I address such a task by examining several recent texts that work to expose this
tendency, especially the manner in which totality and nostalgic wholeness fail to express the complexity and
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potential incommensurability within community. Does the auspicious declaration "the end of community" require
explanation? Our century alone continues to witness the terror Lyotard speaks of through countless events that
exhibit an inability to enact and ensure our being-together irrespective of our differences. These events bear
recognizable names: Auschwitz, Bosnia, Buchenwald, Chechnya, Hiroshima; apartheid, gay bashing, hate crimes,
rape.... In saying so, I cannot help remembering those painful words spoken by Max von Sydow in Woody Allen's
Hannah and Her Sisters. In one scene, von Sydow comments on a talk show in which participants discussed the
Holocaust, puzzled at the occurrence of such an atrocity. Why does it not happen more often, von Sydow asks. But
then again, doesn't it? One might argue that the end has been approaching for some time now, that recent events
have merely been the manifestation of structural forces-long in the making-pushed to their limits. Change confronts
structures whose very foundations, and the cornerstones of those foundations, have been firmly established centuries earlier. Over
time, these foundations have settled in, whole cities and communities have been built over them, and we are left to consider our plan
of alteration. Do we simply remodel the existing structures above the foundations? Do we raze the structures, rebuilding from the
foundations? Or do we tear up, literally exhume, these foundations by building new ones from new blueprints? Like the Max von
Sydow character, we ask: why is the impossible continuing to occur on both small and large scales? This is where the question of
community must begin, as well as a community of the question. Maurice Blanchot engages this question by insisting that the ethical
formulations underlying our social structures have been figured from the bias of homogeneity, what he calls in The Unavowable
Communit"yt he affirmation of the Same" (41). Since he views ethics as a constant relationship with the Other, he calls
for moving away from thinking of ethics as a prescriptive Law.2 "An ethics is possible," he says, "only when....
responsibility or obligation towards the Other.... does not come from the Law," primarily because the relationship
to the Other "cannot be enounced in any already formulated language. "This notion of an "already formulated language"
is essential; community traditionally speaks predominantly from a sense of the already formulated, presuming that all can be spoken
for. In its place, Blanchot offers a daunting ethical formulation: "an infinite attention to the Other" (43). It is this type of critical
attention that informs Giorgio Agamben's pronouncement on ethics in The Coming Community":T he fact that must constitute the
point of departure for any discourse on ethics is that there is no essence, no historical or spiritual vocation, no biological destiny that
humans must enact or realize." Essentially, nothing is already formulated. "This is the only reason why something like an ethics can
exist," he continues, "because it is clear that if humans were or had to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical
experience would be possible-there would be only tasks to be done" (42). Agamben's point about ethics, when expanded, bears on the
issue of community. For him, ethics exist in the very vacuum of prescribed actions, of already formulated actions. We might well ask:
are our relations with one another already formulated as well? If so, we are all automatons of some sort, Agamben would suggest,
merely performing prescribed and already formulated tasks. If they are not already formulated, then we are each charged with
responsibility to that void, required to act in the absence of prescription. The ethical responsibility demanded by this experience is
based on a completely different notion of community. In Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas criticizes Western thought as
marked by an optical imperative that believes it is able to see everything and achieve complete understanding. It is this imperative
that fuels totality and its emphasis upon homogeneity. Yet it achieves totalization and homogeneity through a neutralization of
difference-reducing all relations to that of same and Other, with the same preeminent in this hierarchy. Levinas calls for relations of
alterity-recognition and respect for difference-marked by what he calls an attention to the "visaged 'Autrui,"th e face of the Other. It
is crucial, however, to recognize that this attention involves a very real staring straight in the face of heterogeneity, and that this
heterogeneity is not regulatable by the same, the common, or the strictures of traditional community exactly because attention to the
Other radically alters the construction of being and existence. In other words, "[t]he ethical exigency to be responsible for the other
undermines the ontological primacy of the meaning of being," Levinas writes, because "it unsettles the natural and political positions
we have taken up in the world and predisposes us to a meaning that is other than being, that is otherwise than being (autremenqtu
'etre)"(2 3). Jean-Luc Nancy, in The Inoperativ Community, takes the ethical relation further by referring to the political element
involved in questions of community. In the preface of his text, he addresses the very time line in which we exist in such a community
of the question, inferring that community is wandering toward the meaning of its death. He states that "if we do not face up to
such questions, the political will soon desert us completely, if it has not already done so. It will abandon us to political
and technological communities, if it has not already done so. And this will be the end of our communities, if this has not yet come
about" (xli). The last sentence raises several important questions: (1) Has this end come about? (2) If it has, how would it be
recognized? and (3) Is this end necessarily good or bad? Ultimately, it seems clear in the texts mentioned here that the prevailing end
of community contains an inherent slow death, largely because of its manifest 199 inattention to issues of difference prominent
within its very grammar. The End of Politics In The Postmodern explained, Lyotard is careful to point out that the term
"postmodern" was first used in an architectural context, denoting a transition from one way of defining space to another (75-80).3
Such a remark invites us to extend the word "architecture" beyond its traditional association with buildings to a broader realm of
structures and the ways in which they inform human interaction. Our lives are characterized by the structures within which we
circulate, and these structures are maintained by ominous edifices, architectural in their own way, of power and control. The play of
these forces contributes to the political element of societal relations, political defined here not in the ordinary sense of politics (as
ideology, governments, etc.), but as "the political," a distinction that the French language allows through the definite articles of la and
le. In The Inoperative Community, Nancy makes this distinction by defining "the political" (le politique) as "[t]he place where
community as such is brought into play" (xxxvii).4 To pursue the architectural metaphor, politics (la politique) may be understood as
involving the very construction and maintenance of buildings and edifices, whereas the political (le politique) is concerned with
critical attention to the effects of structural forces themselves. The latter attends to "the politics of" these relations to the extent that
they bear on human interaction. For Lyotard, the political is seen as inextricably tied to our discursive practices, taking on a new
significance through the differend. "As distinguished from a litigation," he writes, "a differend [differendw] ould be a case of conflict,
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between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments"
(Differendx i). A new politics must operate outside of a presumed universal rule by recognizing painful silences: not everyone can
speak for himself or herself. What Lyotard then offers is a manner of thinking that markedly refuses the pretension of speaking for
others, or promoting any one authority or solution. In its most terrifying sense, Hitler's "final solution" earlier in this century
describes the limits to which such pretension can extend. This extreme marks the germ and grammar of all totalizing discourse. Once
the grammar is in place, all utterances are susceptible to its ordering principles, consciously or unconsciously, forcibly or at will. The
final solution-and all final solutions before it and those yet to come-did not and will not exhibit the success of a politics that speaks
for all but rather the failure of such a system. Unfortunately, that failure is repeatedly enacted in countless areas of community, each
further exhibiting its underlying grammar. For Lyotard, at the end are all political programs-Left, Right, or Center-that presume to
redeem us from previous prescriptions for community. In fact, the recent publication of Lyotard's Political Writings provides, says
Bill Readings in his foreword "The End of Politics,"" a useful empirical corrective to charges that poststructuralism is an evasion of
politics, or that Lyotard's account of the postmodern condition is the product of blissful ignorance of the postcolonial question" (xiii).
Furthermore, Readings adds, "Lyotard's writings.... promulgate.... not so much the heroic militancy of a refusal to submit as a refusal
to think that politics will come to an end. The time of 'big politics,' the idea of the political as the site where humanity struggles to
define its destiny and realize its meaning, may well have passed." In its place, Readings continues, politics becomes "the attempt to
handle conflicts that admit of no resolutions, to think justice in relation to conflict and difference" (xxiv). Such conflicts are, of
course, differends in Lyotard's vocabulary. What is necessitated is a new understanding of politics as "not just one sphere among
others," says Lyotard, "but the sphere in which all the spheres are represented and in which social activity is distributed among them"
(Political 61). This new notion of the political becomes so important precisely because these pretensions play themselves out in
community and involve our very being-together. In "Of Being-in-common" in Community at Loose Ends, Nancy addresses the
politics of community by distinguishing between types of communal orientation. For him, community should be thought
outside the bias of homogeneity and be based on what he calls "being-in-common," which forms the basis of a
question. "We are in common, with one another," Nancy writes, but "[w]hat does this 'in' and this 'with' mean? (Or, to put it
another way, what does 'we' mean, what is the meaning of this pronoun which, in one way or another, must be inscribed in any
discourse?)" (6). In other words, he continues, "Being, or existence, is what we share.... But being is not a thing we could possess in
common.... We shall say then that being is not common in the sense of a common property, but that it is in common. Being is in
common" (1). Commonality, in other words, should not be understood here as singularity but instead as radical plurality. If singular,
the tendency is toward totality and universality-what he calls immanentism. Nancy makes this clear in his preface to The Inoperative
Community here he provides a poignant example of how this in and with should not be conceived: "The community that becomes a
single thing (body, mind, fatherland, Leader.... ) necessarily loses the in of the beingincommon. Or, it loses the with or the together
that defines it. It yields its being-together to a being of togetherness. The truths of community, on the contrary, reside in the
retreat of such a being." Nancy then gives an example of an in which is lost by saying, "Nothing indicates more
clearly what the logic of this being of togetherness can imply than the role of Gemeinschaft, of community, in Nazi
ideology"( Inoperativxex xix). This is the logic of totality that Levinas fears is bred by homogeneity and that
Agamben warns results from prescribed formulations. Even more, this prescribed totality is the grammar that Nietzsche
diagnoses as imprisoning us. Community and the Postmodern Condition But how do we speak to metanarratival inscription? In
answering this question, it is necessary to remember that what is discredited in the postmodern condition is not just narrative itself
but rather narrative that assumes the idealistic continuity of beginning, middle, and end; idealistic not only because of this assumed
continuity, with implications of linear progression and progress in general, but also because of the assumed comprehensiveness of
the story as the story and its ability to completely exclude all other stories. In The Differend, Lyotard addresses how phrases, ways of
speaking and linking thoughts one to another, are in dispute. Recognizing the state of the differend would be, ultimately, to accept
several conditions: that the rules or regimens structuring a specific way of speaking (phrasing) are by necessity unique and exclusive;
that no one phrase or phrase regimen can assume hegemony over all others; and that the genres that generally distinguish phrases
from one another themselves cannot assume total hegemony. For Lyotard, a genre is always in quest of its own rules. Lyotard
suggests a move away from grand narratives, comprehensive and complete, to small narratives. These petits recits appear by the time
of The Differend to achieve the status of the phrase.5According to Lyotard, as things and events happen, we engage, no matter what
our response, in a process of enchainemenot,f linking, which requires an accountability of the storytellers in us, as mythmakers, as
linkers. The act of phrasing is necessary because things happen. However, the phrase, as a necessary, all-encompassing link, is no
longer credible, nor is the work, the story. The postmodern condition, thus, becomes summed up succinctly as incredulity through
the strongest link in Lyotard's book: "To link is necessary, but a particular linkage is not" (80); which is to say, we must say and/or do
something (we must answer a phrase with a phrase), but we cannot prescribe a form in which that link must necessarily occur. This
condition orients new ways of thinking both of community and what it means to be political. Fundamentally, Lyotard's critique of
metanarratives addresses its incredulity toward the pretense of completion and finality, which occurs only by reducing the
complexity of individuals and their competing interests to a single story. What must be undone, according to Lyotard, is the belief in
"a universal rule of judgment between heterogeneous genres" (Differendx i). At the root of such thinking is the failure to recognize
the incommensurability of relations and situations (genres, for Lyotard), followed by the assumption that a universal rule is
applicable. Our condition now involves a sifting through the debris of community after the failures of modernity's metanarratives and
community's attempt to satisfy all desires and affinities. Rather than resurrect past metanarratives or attempt to assemble any new
unifying voice or panopticon, another possibility arises: act on the assumption that narrative will still exist, but with the
understanding that narratives are irreducible to each other. Achieving the dissolution of a Manichean ordering of relations
is predicated upon our ability not only to re-think but un-think traditional community. A viable alternative is
suggested by the two adjectives used in French by Nancy and Blanchot in their important texts to modify the sense of la communaute
(community)-desoeuvree and inavouable, respectively. The term de'soeuvrede oes not simply mean to be idle or inoperative, as it is
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often translated,6 but rather actively "unworking" or undoing the traditional structure of the work, the oeuvre.7 The privative in- or
un- neutralizes avouable or avowable. Avow has feudal connotations deriving from avouer, to call to or to call on, especially to call on
as a defender or patron, derived from the Latin advocare. The noun avoue refers to this patron and defender as advocate; the verb to
avow is, thus, a call in which one is protected by this avoue. Individual sovereignty is lost as authority is transferred to the avoue, with
individual identity sacrificed to an immanent totality in a vassal-lord relationship. Blanchot's sense of the unavowable community as
"evasively consecrated to the always uncertain end inscribed within community itself" clearly distinguishes itself from avowable
communities (Unavowable 56). The unavowable would be more attentive to loss since all is valued, language I employ to suggest the
metanarrative character of the avowable structure. I see the avowable as a storywith an already formulated beginning, middle, and
end-that the avoue' demands others to defend and vow allegiance to. Yet, avowability is even more, for historically people have been
forced to confess to ends very specifically inscribed within their narrative. In an immanent, avowable structure, the ends are always
certain, with individuals merely ends themselves and understood as means of profit (as support) of this end. However, the distinction
between avowable and unavowable requires some further explanation, and this can be best achieved by reference to an earlier writer
who is key to the French debate. Bataille: Traditional and Elective Communities Blanchot's The Unavowable Community and Nancy's
The Inoperative Community are concerned primarily with the work of Georges Bataille. Blanchot and Bataille did not meet until
1941, but on viewing Bataille's work before that time, Blanchot asserts, "It is clear that (approximately) between 1930 and 1940, the
word 'community' imposed itself on his research more than during the following periods." (Unavowable 4). The group Acephale was
one of Bataille's last communitarian endeavors, moving away from an overt politics (la politique) to an interest in the political (le
politique). It was Acephale, which insisted its members be ferociously religious, that marked the beginning of the end for Bataille,
receding from an essentially exterior engagement in community toward one much more meditative and interior. The claim of
religious ferocity was followed in a companion Acephale text, "Sacred Conspiracy," by this equally provocative statement: "to the
extent that our existence is the condemnation of everything that is recognized today, an inner exigency demands that we be equally
imperious. What we are starting is a war" (Visions 178). This is undoubtedly the same war that Lyotard joins in some forty-five years
later with his declaration against totality in The PostmodernC ondition. Initiated in 1936, Acephale led to the founding of a College of
Sociology a year later, in many ways an extension of Acephale. In the initial College lecture, "Sacred Sociology," Bataille offers an
important distinction between what he calls traditional and elective communities, one that resonates with the difference between the
avowable and the unavowable. Stated simply, these two types of community differ on the basis of what unites them: facts or affinities.
What I would like to do is to excerpt these few comments and expand them, precisely because I find this distinction fundamental to
the current discussions on community. As noted, Bataille's distinction between types of communities is a small part of this larger
essay. What little he does have to say amounts to this: "[T]he development of new communities is such that the primary formation
itself, when all is said and done, takes on a value equivalent to that of the secondary formations." Both types of communal formations
are necessary, though radically different. He continues: "From then on it [the primary formation] can be regarded as one of the
communities forming society and take the name of traditional community, differing from the new communities, the most important
of which are the elective communities" ("Sacred" 81). At this moment, Bataille offers an important footnote that bears quoting in its
entirety: The College refuses to belong to de facto communities. The elective communities that it opposes to them, communities of
persons brought together by elective affinities, could be defined as communities of value. What value? Precisely that of community as
such: a community of those for whom the community is a value and not a fact. One's country is only a fact: it would be stupid to deny
it[;] it is morally inadmissible to limit oneself to it. (Hollier, College4 07n 13) This sense of delimiting oneself touches on an element
of individual insufficiency and incompletion that calls for the Other as well as community. These insufficiencies and incompletions
are, as Blanchot points out, defined by birth and death, our ultimate limits; traditional community is "imposed on us without our
having the liberty of choice in the matter: it is de facto sociality" (Unavowable 46). Bataille emphasizes that elective communities
choose to utilize energy "to break, partially or fatally, the bonds that unite us with society" ("Sacred" 81). Although elective
communities are secondary, they are of "a form of secondary organization that possesses constant characteristics and to which
recourse is always possible when the primary organization of society can no longer satisfy all the desires that arise" (Hollier, College
149). In short, Bataille is not convinced that traditional community fully appreciates the complexity and diversity of human
experience-precisely because it assumes being is common and not shared. Bataille extends this complexity: "The tendency to
dissociation does not simply oppose individuals to group; it opposes, even within the same whole, several parts that can be composed
of the same elements for that matter" ("Sacred" 81). In other words, there can be countless forms of elective communities, in addition
to elective communities embedded within elective communities. However, it is vital to realize that there can be no single form of
elective community; associations by affinity preclude any homogenizing as they epitomize heterogeneity. Admittedly, traditional
community seeks to reduce elective community to its grammar The End of Community and the Politics of Grammar 207 (that of an
economy of the same), but'the elective should not be seen as equally reductive. By differing grammars, I suggest that elective
communities exist as ends in themselves; they presume to speak only for those involved, by those involved. Traditional communities,
on the other hand, attempt to exist as an end for all. To use the language employed above in the discussion of ethics, elective
community has as its goal the alteration of traditional community, reformulating what was presumed already formulated. In the end,
while society is never exclusively one type of community or another, society's communifying movement is predominantly based on a
type of unity much more traditional than elective and always for limited benefit. We create problems by privileging the few
facts that unite us, and we have been duped into discounting the affinities that might better unite us. Furthermore, more often
than not it is characteristics of facts that are hierarchized and then imposed as supposedly traditional; that is, gender or race is a fact,
but community traditionally privileges or prefers one type of gender or race. I presume that these characteristics imposed as facts are
historically nothing less than the play of force and power, dubious of the fact that certain members of society on the basis of their
culture, economic class, ethnicity, gender, politics, race, religion, or sexual orientation-are necessarily more factual than others.
Elective communities necessarily expand the appreciation of these so-called facts. While we must recognize the intractability of
traditional community-Bataille admits it is the primary formation-we need not be reduced to it; we must simultaneously realize the
extent to which it can be altered and subverted by elective communities oriented by virtue of affinities and not facts. Bataille and the
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Elective Community of Friendship Eventually, Bataille began addressing questions of community through a new elective formulation.
"Friendship,"8h is first published text after the end of his various communities, helps define this turn. This essay reinforced that
insufficiency is at the root of unintelligibility and itself demands community. Bataille describes this as a discovery: "la seul
achevement possible de la connaissance a lieu si j'affirme de l'existence humaine qu'elle est un commencement qui ne sera jamais
acheve" [the only possible completion of knowledge takes place if I assert that human existence is a beginning that can never be
completed] ("L'Amitie"29 4). Let me pursue the issue of incompletion before getting to friendship, specifically because of how it bears
on the importance Bataille came to place on communication. In a section entitled "The Principle of Incompleteness," Blanchot asks:
"I repeat, for Bataille, the question: Why 'community'? The answer he gives is rather clear: 'There exists a principle of insufficiency at
the root of each being.... ' (the principle of incompleteness)"( Unavowabl5e ). For Bataille, insufficiency calls for the Other, and the
call is answered through communication; yet the connection this engenders is never intended to render the insufficiency obsolete.
Here, the term "unavowable"is abundantly meaningful. It describes an indefensible state-that is, a state that is not oriented by
prescribed or predefined statutes-because there is no central grand narrative, no traditional community that one vows to uphold. For
Bataille, sharing, ecstasy, and communication are the experience of incompletion, but not its overcoming. The idea that informed
much of Bataille's thinking was a striking passage by Nietzsche in The Gay Science: "I love the unknowability of the future." 9 Bataille
appreciates this quote because of the sense of deferral it implies. The future is omnipresent, and the passage of time never really
moves one closer to the future; however, one still moves in its direction. Likewise, the move toward completion for Bataille is just
that: movement alone, never an expectation that it will be reached. Nancy develops this idea in The Inoperative Community,
acknowledging, "Of course, to not reach an end was one of the exigencies of Bataille's endeavor, and this went hand in hand with the
refusal of project to which a thinking of community seems inexorably linked" (21). But how are we to understand all this in terms of
friendship, which exemplifies elective community for Bataille in the forties? I think this makes sense by reference to Montaigne's "Of
Friendship." Here, Michel de Montaigne is concerned with stating explicit differences between true friendship and common or
ordinary relationships-best understood through Bataille's distinction between elective and traditional communities or Blanchot's
distinction between the unavowable and avowable. Indeed, at the outset, Montaigne states very clearly that there are no friends in
"all associations that are forged and nourished by pleasure and profit, by public or private needs," in that they "are the less beautiful
and noble, and the less friendships, in so far as they mix into friendship another cause and object and reward than friendship itself"
(Complete Works 136). Refusing to structure relationships based on imperatives of pleasure and profit allows the possibility of
reaching friendship. Friendship is most opposed to what Nancy has called immanentist (totalitarian) community, and to what
Blanchot calls the avowable, specifically because it operates from a grammar that transcends totality: that is, an open, unlimited,
infinite orientation without irreducibility,w hat Blanchot calls the unavowable. Friendship is, in short, a self-referential relation
particular to its members alone, according to Montaigne: "friendship has no other model than itself, and can be compared only with
itself" (Complete Works 139). Present in this self-referential relation is loss, occurring in a seamless suturing. "In the friendship I
speak of," Montaigne writes, referring to the ideal relation unmarred by an imperative of pleasure or profit, "our souls mingle and
blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot find it again." Montaigne describes this
ideal in terms of his friendship with Etienne de La Boetie. "I know not what quintessence of all this mixture," he writes, "which
having seized my whole will, led it to plunge and lose itself in his." He continues by noting the reciprocity of this relation, as Boetie's
will would "lose itself in mine, with equal hunger, equal rivalry. I say lose, in truth, for neither of us reserved anything for himself, nor
was anything either his or mine" (139). The avowable is explicitly and exclusively oriented toward profit, the unavowable toward loss.
The unavowable character of friendship, in Montaigne's terms, would "hate and banish from between them these words of separation
and distinction: benefit, obligation, gratitude, request, thanks, and the like" (141). Obligation is replaced by necessity because of the
responsibility demanded by the friend-this Other-in terms of response. I think this is exactly what Lyotard means when he says, in
The Differend, "It is necessary to link, but the mode of linkage is never necessary" (29), or 210 MichaeSl trysick "To link is necessary,
but a particular linkage is not" (80). The necessity of linking-responding to a phrase-approximates one's infinite attention to the
Other who enunciates the phrase, with the phrase judged in large part by its attention to how the character of the differend may bear
on the phrase and its links. The response, as link, will be based on one of two structures, each infinite in variety: profit or loss,
avowable or unavowable, traditional or elective. The unavowable response in its responsibility is structured by an infinite attention in
which the friend, as Other, is not treated as commodity from whom profit is to be gained or exacted. A profit-oriented structure is not
defended or authorized when affinity is present, and the influence of the avoue or advocate is excised from the relation. Profit is at
work in the avowable relation, with the achievement of profit as its vow. The immanent is this work's logic and grammar; profit is its
theos and what is to be gained by the largesse of its totality is authority and power. The unavowable performs, in its intimacy and
elective affinities, the unworking of such an imperative. The unavowable community, friendship, is an unworking community: not a
utopia to be achieved, nor an ideal to be strived for, but merely an attention to the Other within the debris of the crisis of finite
inattention. Incredulity Toward the Grammar of Community Levinas sought to overcome metaphysics by speaking, as one of his
titles suggests, Autrement qu'etre (that is, otherwise than being); it is vital that we begin to speak otherwise in terms of community,
to hear, listen, see, and think otherwise as well. This is the conclusion at which Nancy arrives: "It should be possible to think
otherwise.... according to another articulation both of love and of community" ("Of Being-in-common" 38). Such a task is not simply
to be enacted as a single response but as a continuous responding. Community, with the sense of the common seemingly implicit, has
been thought for so long from a vertical standpoint, that is, top down. Perhaps the oldest term used to describe this verticalizing of
community is "empire," what I believe Nancy means when he uses The End of Community and the Politics of Grammar 211 the term
"immanentism." An emperor ruled from the pinnacle of the community, and the rest of the world was compartmentalized beneath
him. Imperial grammar manifested itself so thoroughly, resulting in the creation of many empires, each smaller (but no less
powerful) in nature and size. Community gains nothing from attempting to build and rebuild immanent, avowable empires.
Violence is at the root of the immanent mentality; its manifest destiny razes what it will, creating endless trails of
tears. Incredulity confronts the immanent with itself, mirroring it in order to undo power, not usurp it. But this
entails a change in foundation, in what Nietzsche refers to as grammar. Unless foundations change, what arises
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from them will not change demonstrably. Rather, we must engage a task to expose totalizing gestures within
community. This is the approach that community's altered politics (la politique), by virtue of a new orientation of the political (le
politique), must engage. And this approach marks not merely incredulity to metanarratives, but more importantly, incredulity toward
the lingering shadow of the grammar of metanarratives. How will this grammar be broken? The importance of undoing this mentality
arises not out of any search for truth, any metaphysical quest, or any religious pilgrimage; rather, it arises from the need for justice as
manifest equality. Unavowability itself defines a horizontal community. In the process, difference-on which avowability and
inequality has for so long been based-is not erased but rather becomes the greatest challenge. Thus, it requires a radical shift,
an overturning of a prevailing mentality that prefers the one to the many, or even the many as mediated through
the one. The challenge is to work to understand the many in terms of the many, mediated only by itself. But how
could such radical changes take place? Who would take charge of this? Again, even asking the question in this
manner belies the point to which empire is embedded in our very thinking, specifically if we seek to answer it
through the concept of leaders and followers. Community need not shrink the world to a handful but enlarge it to
the many. Rather than scheming about and theorizing on how to achieve such a horizontal structure, it is best to
simply undo those vertical elements when they appear. Rather than describing an end point to be reached, with a
specific program to that end, we can describe a point from which we wish to flee. Community has endured codes, laws,
and plans promising paradise, redemption, and salvation; now, we must conceive of practical ways to move further away from selfcreated states of emergency. Such a notion of community will not be achieved by some revisionist undoing of past documents but by
a real undoing of past practices incredulity in its strongest form. After all, we cannot change the past, but we need not be anchored in
its mistakes nor chained to its insensitivities. We need go no further in thinking about undoing the grammar of community than
Lyotard's first word in defining postmodernism: incredulity. Lyotard's term describes not merely a lack of belief, but even more, a
lack of faith: an inability to invest trust in those past creeds and faiths that have preferred the homogeneous and total at the expense
of difference and our shared elective affinities. Now, we must be motivated to create new myths in order to reinvest the notion of
credibility. The relationship to the past is characterized purely by the necessity of rethinking and restating what has been said. But
the post, while commenting on the past by naming a "post" -also relates to the future, saying not only that we have lost faith in the
past but also its modus operandi. At once, all three tenses are brought into play: at present, in large part because of the past, we do
not know what to do in the future, into which we are forever propelled. Of course, progress is called into question in the processWalter Benjamin states this so eloquently in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Despite the passage of time we are no
better equipped to avoid the so-called state of emergency in which we persist nor to repair it nor to quell the storm
blowing us further away from paradise. The continued proliferation of voices and visions in society, and
concomitant ways of hearing and seeing those imaginings, have engaged the slow death of community by
challenging its grammar. New ends-stressing the plural over and against the singular, the total-are emerging,
though perhaps very slowly. The degree to which they succeed will depend on the ability to undo totality and its
grammar such that our differences alone are held in common, affinities are as important as facts, and our discourse marks this
alterity. An altered grammar, thus, directs itself toward nothing less than an expression of the inability to speak for all, an
acknowledgment of the unspeakable manner in which we have tried to form and enforce such totalizing narratives, and an awareness
of the ultimate demand that we speak and think otherwise. Change can occur but only to the degree that community begins to mark
its end as not simply recognizing and allowing "other" voices to speak,10 and at the point when the grammar of the same and the bias
of homogeneity is broken. This will only occur at the moment when we begin to realize that all are "other" and none are the same.
Their affirmation of lines of flight and deterritorialization makes a communal ethic
impossible. Their stark distinction between state and war machine replicates the dualisms
they criticize and deters focus from the very real, material ways exploitation plays out across
the world.
Peter Hallward, Professor in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University,
London, 2006, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, p. 161-162
Now Deleuze understands perfectly well why ‘most of the objections raised against the great philosophers are empty’.
Indignant readers say to them: ‘things are not like that […]. But, in fact, it is not a matter of knowing whether things are
like that or not; it is a matter of knowing whether the question which presents things in such a light is good or not,
rigorous or not’ (ES, 106). Rather than test its accuracy according to the criteria of representation, ‘the genius of a
philosophy must first be measured by the new distribution which it imposes on beings and concepts’ (LS, 6). In reality
then, Deleuze concludes, ‘only one kind of objection is worthwhile: the objection which shows that
the question raised by a philosopher is not a good question’, that it ‘does not force the nature of
things enough’ (ES, 107; cC WP, 82). Deleuze certainly forces the nature of things into conformity with
his own question. Just as certainly however, his question inhibits any consequential engagement
with the constraints of our actual world. For readers who remain concerned with these constraints
and their consequences, Deleuze’s question is not the best available question. Rather than try to refute
Deleuze, this book has tried to show how his system works and to draw attention to what should now he the
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obvious (and perfectly explicit) limitations of this philosophy of unlimited affirmation. First of all,
since it acknowledges only a unilateral relation between virtual and actual, there is no place in
Deleuze’s philosophy for any notion of change, time or history that is mediated by actuality In the
end, Deleuze offers few resources for thinking the consequences of what happens within the actually
existing world as such. Unlike Darwin or Marx, for instance, the adamantly virtual orientation of Deleuze’s
‘constructivism’ does not allow him to account for cumulative transformation or novelty in terms of
actual materials and tendencies. No doubt few contemporary philosophers have had as an acute a sense of the
internal dynamic of capitalism — but equally, few have proposed so elusive a response as the virtual ‘war
machine’ that roams through the pages of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Like the nomads who invented it,
this abstract machine operates at an ‘absolute speed, by being “synonymous with speed”’, as the incarnation
of ‘a pure and immeasurable multiplicity; an irruption of the ephemeral and of the power of metamorphosis’ (TP, 336,
352). Like any creating, a war machine consists and ‘exists only in its own metamorphoses’ (T~ 360). By posing the
question of politics in the starkly dualistic terms of war machine or state — by posing it, in the end, in
the apocalyptic terms of a new people and a new earth or else no people and no earth — the political
aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy amounts to little more than utopian distraction. Although no small
number of enthusiasts continue to devote much energy and ingenuity to the task, the truth is that Deleuze’s work
is essentially indifferent to the politics of this world. A philosophy based on deterritorialisation,
dissipation and flight can offer only the most immaterial and evanescent grip on the mechanisms of
exploitation and domination that continue to condition so much of what happens in our world.
Deleuze’s philosophical war remains ‘absolute’ and ‘abstract’, precisely, rather than directed or ‘waged’
[menee]. Once ‘a social field is defined less by its conflicts and contradictions than by the lines of flight running through
it’, any distinctive space for political action can only be subsumed within the more general dynamics
of creation or life. And since these dynamics are themselves anti-dialectical if not anti-relational, there can be
little room in Deleuze’s philosophy for relations of conflict or solidarity, i.e. relations that are
genuinely between rather than external to individuals, classes, or principles.
Our first political priority should be to align ourselves with a more committed, principled,
and modest political engagement. Those who desire to make the world a better place must
look elsewhere than their rhizomatic war machine.
Peter Hallward, Professor in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University,
London, 2006, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, p. 162-164
Deleuze writes a philosophy of (virtual) difference without (actual) others. He intuits a purely internal or
self-differing difference, a difference that excludes any constitutive mediation between the differed. Such a
philosophy precludes a distinctively relational conception of politics as a matter of course. The politics of
the future are likely to depend less on virtual mobility than on more resilient forms of cohesion, on
more principled forms of commitment, on more integrated forms of coordination, on more resistant
forms of defence. Rather than align ourselves with the nomadic war machine, our first task should
be to develop appropriate ways of responding to the newly aggressive techniques of invasion,
penetration and occupation which serve to police the embattled margins of empire . In a perverse twist
of fate, it may be that today in places like Palestine, Haiti and Iraq, the agents of imperialism have more to
learn from Deleuzian rhizomatics than do their opponents. As we have repeatedly seen, the second corollary
of Deleuze’s disqualification of actuality concerns the paralysis of the subject or actor. Since what powers Deleuze’s
cosmology is the immediate differentiation of creation through the infinite proliferation of virtual creatings, the
creatures that actualise these creatings are confined to a derivative if not limiting role. A creature’s own interests,
actions or decisions are of minimal or preliminary significance at best: the renewal of creation always requires the
paralysis and dissolution of the creature per se. The notion of a constrained or situated freedom, the notion
that a subject’s own decisions might have genuine consequences -the whole notion, in short, of
strategy - is thoroughly foreign to Deleuze’s conception of thought. Deleuze obliges us, in other words, to
make an absolute distinction between what a subject does or decides and what is done or decided through the subject.
By rendering this distinction absolute he abandons the category of the subject altogether. He abandons the decisive
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Ian
subject in favour of our more immediate subjection to the imperatives of creative life or thought. Deprived of any
strategic apparatus, Deleuze’s philosophy thus combines the self-grounding sufficiency of pure force
or infinite perfection with our symmetrical limitation to pure contemplation or in-action. On the one
hand, Deleuze always maintains that ‘there are never any criteria other than the tenor of existence, the intensification of
life’. Absolute life or creation tolerates no norm external to itself. The creative movement that orients us out of the world
does not depend on a transcendent value beyond the world. After Spinoza, after Nietzsche, Deleuze rejects all
forms of moral evaluation or strategic judgement. Every instance of decision, every confrontation with
the question ‘what should we do?’, is to be resolved exclusively in terms of what we can do. An
individual’s power or capacity is also its ‘natural right’, and the answer to the question of what an individual
or body should do is again simplicity itself — it should go and will always go ‘as far as it can’ (WI~ 74;
EP, 258). But on the other band, we know that an individual can only do this because its power is not that of the
individual itself. By doing what it can, an individual only provides a vessel for the power that works through it, and
which alone acts — or rather, which alone is. What impels us to ‘persevere in our being’ has nothing to do with us as
such. So when, in the conclusion of their last joint project, Deleuze and Guattari observe that ‘vitalism has always bad
two possible interpretations’, it is not surprising that they should opt for the resolutely in-active interpretation.
Vitalism, they explain, can be conceived either in terms of ‘an Idea that acts but is not, and that acts therefore only from
the point of view of an external cerebral knowledge; or of a force that is but does not act, and which is therefore a pure
internal Feeling [sentir]’. Deleuze and Guattari embrace this second interpretation, they choose Leibnizian being over
Kantian act, precisely because it disables action in favour of contemplation. It suspends any relation between a living
and the lived, between a knowing and the known, between a creating and the created. They embrace it because what
feeling ‘presents is always in a state of detachment in relation to action and even to movement, and appears as a pure
contemplation without knowledge’.’8 As Deleuze understands it, living contemplation proceeds at an
immeasurable distance from what is merely lived, known or decided. Life lives and creation creates on a virtual
plane that leads forever out of our actual world. Few philosophers have been as inspiring as Deleuze. But
those of us who still seek to change our world and to empower its inhabitants will need to look for
our inspiration elsewhere.
Plan can’t escape capitalism
Slavoj Zizek, Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana University, 2004, interviewed by
Glyn Daly, Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University College, Northampton,
Conversations With Zizek, p. 151-52
Would this be a kind of twisted version of Deleuze and Guattari? It’s virtually the opposite of Deleuze and
Guattari, because they have this idea of capitalist schizophrenia, the bad paranoia, which then explodes
into a good revolutionary schizophrenia. But I think that Deleuze and Guattari are dangerously close
to some kind of pseudo anti-psychiatry celebration of madness. I think that madness is something
horrible — people suffer — and I’ve always found it false to try and identify some liberating
dimension in madness. In any case, the limit that the social psychologists are referring to is of a far more
straightforward kind. For example, according to some American estimates at least 70 per cent of today’s academics and
professors are on either Prozac or some other form of psychotropic drug. It is no longer the exception. It is literally that
in order to function we already need psycho-pharmacy. So that is the limit: we will simply start getting crazy. But I
don’t buy this notion of an external limit. I think that capitalism has this incredible capacity of
turning catastrophe into a new form of access. Capitalism can turn every external limit to its
development into a challenge for new capitalist investment. For example, let us assume that there will
be some big ecological catastrophe. I think that capitalism can simply turn ecology itself into a new
field of market competition, like, you know, who will produce the better product, which will be
ecologically better.
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