1nc
Latin American interventions are based on Orientalist
representations of the ‘other’ that seek to dominate and control
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at
Loughborough University (David, “Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South
Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing, http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
One of the recurrent themes of this study has been the
intersection between intervention and
representation. Geopolitical interventions as examined in the nineteenth, twentieth and now
twenty-first centuries entail different forms of representation. Nevertheless, it can be argued that they
all presuppose a combination of desire, will, capacity and justification.
The desire to intervene, to possess, to take hold of another society, even if only
temporarily, flows from that deeply rooted sense of superiority and mission. The nineteenth-century
notions of ‘Manifest Destiny’ or ‘benevolent assimilation’ were predicated on a belief in the
ostensible superiority of the Western and more specifically American way of life. It was
not just that the United States had a ruling vision of itself that was associated with a destiny that
needed to be fulfilled; it was a vision that was also embedded in a hierarchical
perspective on peoples, races and cultures, whereby the white/black binary division was seen as a
crucial marker of value and significance. As was suggested in chapter 2, in the history of US expansion, race went together with
notions of destiny and mission, as exemplified in the US–Mexico War, the colonization of the Philippines and the
creation of semi-protectorates such as Cuba at the beginning of the twentieth century. In that era, the
desire to
intervene was also linked to protecting the Americas from the insecurity of
political disorder, and the tenets of civilization were closely associated
with the stipulated need to preserve socio-economic order and stability
throughout the American hemisphere. The desire to intervene can also be traced through
the histories of modernization theory and neo-liberalism. In the aftermath of the Second World War, modernization ideas
were formulated with a view to diffuse Western capital, technology, and social and political values to societies that were judged to be
traditional and in need of modern transformation. However, as I suggested in chapter 3 ,
the desire to project
modernization was also tied to a fear of the perceived vulnerability of
Third World societies to the ‘contagion of communism’. Therefore, intervention had a
double motive, and while the perceived threat from communism came to a close in 1989 , the desire to modernize
and re-order the other has continued into the post-Cold War period.
The attempt to fix countries is premised off of paternal Orientalism—
their epistemology legitimizes endless violence—this turns the case
Anand 07—Reader, IR, U Westminster. PhD, politics, Bristol (Dibyesh, Western
Colonial Representations of the Other,
http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ecsda/DAnandNPSArticleMar07.pdf)//IK
Within the context of European imperialism, the issue of the representation of natives was often considered as belonging
to the realm of scientific objective ethnography, journalistic commentaries, or fiction.2 A clear boundary was said to exist
between fiction and non-fiction writing. It was presumed that, unlike fiction, non-fiction writing such as literary and
popular journalism, exploration and travel writings, memoirs of colonial officials, and so on is unmediated by the
consciously aesthetic requirements of imaginative literature.3 Emphasis was on the recording of observed facts. However,
as argued by scholars from fields as diverse as postcolonial studies,4 anthropology,5 and international relations,6 such
views are no longer tenable. Starting with Said,7 the enterprise of postcolonial theory has
unpacked the notion of neutral academic expertise and highlighted how Western
knowledge and representations of the non-Western world are neither innocent nor
based on some pre-existing “reality,” but implicated in the West's will to power, and
its imperial adventures. The image of a scientific, apolitical, disinterested, knowledge-seeking “gentleman”
braving all odds to study non-Western cultures has been revealed as hollow. For instance, Colin Mackenzie, the first
surveyor general of Madras in India, was clear about his necessary complicity in the brute realities of colonial power. He
conflated the role of the soldier and the scientist and wrote:¶ That science may derive assistance, and knowledge be
diffused, in the leisure moments of [military] camps and voyages, is no new discovery; but … I am also desirous of proving
that, in the vacant moments of an Indian sojourn and campaign in particular … such collected observations may be found
useful, at least in directing the observation of those more highly gifted to matters of utility, if not to record facts of
importance to philosophy and science.8¶ The mask of objectivity in the colonial discourse hid relations of inequality and
domination. Fiction as well as non-fiction writings were permeated with various strategies of representation. These were
not epiphenomenal but central to the ways in which the Other was sought to be known. What Rana Kabbani points out
about travel writing holds true for non-fictional writings in general: during imperialism, it ultimately produced “a
communal image of the East,” which “sustained a political structure and was sustained by it.”9¶ Various forms of
representing the non-West—visual (films, television, photographs, paintings, advertisements, and so on) as
well as textual (such as fiction, travelogue, journalism, ethnography, and anthropology)—were closely linked to
the production of imperial encounters. Asymmetry of productive power is a common trait shared by
these encounters. The contemporary neocolonial world too “bears witness to the unequal and uneven forces of cultural
representation involved in the contest for political and social within the modern world order.”10 It is not only the
represented (here the colonized, the third world, the South) who are subjects of and subjected to the process; even the
representer (the colonizer, the first world, the West) is constructed by representational practices. This in no way implies
similar experiences for the colonizer and the colonized (the representer and the represented). It only indicates that though
everyone is subjected to representational practices, the impact differs according to the existing power relations. To
illustrate this point, while both the West and Tibetans are subjects of Exotica Tibet, and the latter are not mere victims but
exercise their agency through creative negotiations, the West does not have to construct its identity according to the
perception of Tibetans. Westerners exoticize Tibet, and in turn, Tibetans exoticize the West. But while Western
exoticization has a defining productive impact on Tibetan identity discourse,11 the same cannot be said of Tibetan
exoticization of the West. This reflects the asymmetry in their power relations.¶ A concentration on Western
representations does not deny the fact that representational practices were
prevalent in non-Western societies too. In fact, historically, all cultures and civilizations have had their
own particular representational practices for perceiving those they considered as Other. But—and this is a crucial
qualification—it was only with modern European imperialism that the capacity to convert
these representations into truth on a systematic and mass scale emerged. What makes
such representational practices distinctly modern is their productive capacity. Production of knowledge
about the Other through representations goes hand in hand with the construction,
articulation, and affirmation of differences between the Self and Other, which in turn
feeds into the identity politics amongst the representer as well as the represented.¶
Essentializing and Stereotyping the Other¶ Jump to section¶ Representing the Natives¶ Essentializing and Stereotyping
the Other¶ Strategies of Representation¶ Conclusion¶ The practices of essentializing and stereotyping the Other underlie
different strategies of Western representations. Essentialism is the notion that some core meaning or identity is
determinate and not subject to interpretation. Ronald Inden writes that essentialist ways of seeing tend to ignore the
“intricacies of agency” pertinent to the flux and development of any social system.12 In colonial context, we find
essentialism in the reduction of the indigenous people to an “essential” idea of what it means to be “native”—say, Africans
as singing–dancing–fighting, Chinese as duplicitous, Arabs as cruel and oppressors of women, Tibetans as religious, and
so on. Imperialism drew its strength from representations of natives as quintessentially lazy, ignorant, deceitful, passive,
incapable of self-governing, and the native rulers as corrupt and despotic. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the
British officials involved during the 1903–1904 invasion of Tibet saw it as something welcomed by “ordinary” Tibetans
seeking deliverance from their Chinese and monastic overlords. Captain Cecil Rawling in a military report in 1905 wrote:
“It seems to be the general wish of the inhabitants of that country (Tibet) that they should come under British
administration.”13 Curiously, Alistair Lamb's own assessment that “when dealing with the primitive peoples of Central
Asia, the problem often was not how to expand one's power but how to prevent its indefinite expansion”14 too puts the
onus of responsibility for imperial expansion on the victims themselves. This is made possible by their
essentialist representations as requiring paternal imperialism—a mix of iron fist
and velvet glove.¶ A stereotype is a one-sided description of a group/culture resulting from the collapsing of
complex differences into a simple “cardboard cut-out,” seeing people as pre-set image and “more of a formula than a
human being.”15 It reduces people to a few simple characteristics, which are then represented as fixed by nature.
“Stereotyping reduces, essentialises, naturalises and fixes ‘difference.’”16 Stereotypes function as a marker
between norm and deviancy, between “us” and “them.” As Said argues, stereotypical images of
the Orient's separateness—“its eccentricity, its backwardness, its silent indifference, its
feminine penetrability, its supine malleability”—have been part of Western
discursive practices for a long time.17 Stereotyping flourished to justify imperialism
as a civilizing mission—the restless, honest, active, exploratory, masculine,
enlightened, modern spirit of the “white man” stood in contrast to the laziness,
deceit, passivity, fatalism, femininity, backwardness, and traditional spiritlessness
of the natives. For example, Captain John Noel's films Climbing Mount Everest (1922) and The Epic of Everest
(1924) developed the “contrast between the extroverted, aggressive, and manly British climbers with the introverted,
passive, and squalid but mystical Tibetans.”18¶ Stereotyping is a simplification not because it is a false representation of a
given reality but because it is an arrested, fixated form of representation that denies the play of difference. Let me
illustrate this with an example from the story of the first two men to reach Mount Everest—Tenzing Norgay and Edmund
Hillary. Reaching the summit, Tenzing Norgay says he felt the warm presence of the mountain, buried an offering to the
gods, and said in prayer: “I am grateful, Chomolungma”; Hillary took photographs to survey the area, urinated on the
summit, and later told one of the other climbers, George Lowe: “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.”19 This
difference in attitude may be due to cultural factors. But to interpret humility as passivity and fix the identity of Tenzing
Norgay (read as representative of sherpas and other natives) as essentially passive in contrast to adventurous, scientific
Hillary (read as white man) leads to a reified and fixated form of representation (excluding those who do not “fit” in the
image). Stereotyping is not about expressing cultural difference, but fixing it in a pre-given socio-cultural milieu with
extreme power differentials.¶ Stereotyping served imperialism at both representational and psychic levels—
supporting the idea of paternal domination and acting as a kind of perceptual blinder protecting the
colonizers from discomforting consciousness of either poverty or guilt.20 It allowed the participants in the
massacre of Tibetans at Guru (March 31, 1904) that took place during the British invasion of Tibet to blame it on the
“crass stupidity and childishness of the Tibetan general,”21 malevolent monks, superstitious Tibetan soldiers—everyone
except themselves. We must liberate the ordinary natives from their brutal leaders—this sentiment can be seen in Colonel
Francis Younghusband's account of the 1903–1904 “expedition” to Tibet where after criticizing Tibetans for being crafty,
immoral, over-religious, dirty, and lazy, he says “there are in them latent potentialities for good, which only await the right
touch to bring them into being.”22 We may recall Napoleon's proclamation in 1798 upon entering Egypt: “Peoples of
Egypt, you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion; do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your
rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect more than the Mamluks God, His Prophet, and the Quran.”23¶ Though
in everyday conversation we tend to use stereotype only for negative images, stereotyping has within it dualism and
ambivalence.24 As Michael Hunt in his study of hierarchy of race and American foreign policy points out, the Americans
created for “Orientals” two distinctly different images: “a positive one, appropriate for happy times when paternalism and
benevolence were in season, and a negative one, suited to those tense periods when abuse or aggrandizement became the
order of the day.”25 While sometimes a positive stereotype may be politically and socially helpful for a group, in the long
run it reifies and imprisons the represented subjects in their own arrested image. This problem can be seen most clearly in
the case of Tibetans who seem to be prisoners of their stereotyped images. Alluding to the real effects of the language of
stereotype about Tibet, Donald Lopez points out that it “not only creates knowledge about Tibet, in many ways it creates
Tibet, a Tibet that Tibetans in exile have come to appropriate and deploy in an effort to gain both standing in exile and
independence for their country.”26 However, these stereotypes legitimize only certain goals and actions geared toward
achieving them—the prevalent stereotypes paint Tibetans mainly as passive victims requiring outside help. And this
outside support comes at a price. As Jamyang Norbu says, “however hopeless their cause or marginal their survival,
Tibetans are better off living their own reality than being typecast in ethereal roles in the fantasies of the West.”27¶
Strategies of Representation¶ Jump to section¶ Representing the Natives¶ Essentializing and Stereotyping the Other¶
Strategies of Representation¶ Conclusion¶ In spite of commonalities and consistencies, it is complexity, oppositionality,
and ambivalence that lie at the heart of Western colonial representations. Imaginative practices through which the
imperial West came to represent the Other can be interrogated through the various strategies of representation involved.
Though there was always a will to reify the represented, this was undermined by the nature of representation—it was not a
singular act, but one necessitating repetition. There always was a paradox in the Western representations of other
cultures—an unresolvable tension between transparency and inscrutability, desire and disavowal, difference and
familiarity. Therefore Exotica Tibet is not a distinct phenomenon devoid of contrariety; rather, it is defined by a “true
complexio oppositorum, a rich complexity of contradictions and oppositions.”28 So near, yet so far! As Slavoj Zizek puts
it:¶ The very inconsistency of this image of Tibet, with its direct coincidence of opposites seems to bear witness to its
fantasmatic status. Tibetans are portrayed as people leading a simple life of spiritual satisfaction, fully accepting their fate,
liberated from the excessive craving of the Western subject who is always searching for more, AND as a bunch of filthy,
cheating, cruel, sexually promiscuous primitives … The social order is presented as a model of organic harmony, AND as
the tyranny of the cruel corrupted theocracy keeping ordinary people ignorant …29¶ The following section of this article
identifies the most common discursive strategies marshalled in the representation of the non-Western Other in the
context of Western imperialism and uses Exotica Tibet as the main empirical site of investigation.¶ Archive¶ Archive is
commonly understood as a place or collection containing records, documents, photographs, film, or other materials of
historical interest. But archive can be taken to refer to a repository of stored memories, information, myths, rumours, and
legends.30 Encounter with the Other did not take place in a vacuum—it was understood
within pre-given images. What was knowable then was shaped by imperial prerogatives as well as pre-existing
“knowledge.” This included those found in classical writings, religious and biblical sources, mythology, traveller's tales
(which in any case hardly differentiated between description and legend), and fictional writings. These provided
the cultural framework through which others were seen, described and
represented. Orientalism itself performed an archival function—generalizations abounded as the attitude was “pick
an East, any East”31 and the story will be the same. As Said puts it: “In a sense Orientalism was a library or archive of
information commonly and, in some of its aspects, unanimously held.”32 In situations where the culture was relatively
unknown—like the Tibetan—hearsay, legends, and fantasies performed an ever more important archival function.33
Representers of Tibet especially before the 19th century often drew upon these archives, supplementing the rare
missionary and travellers' accounts. Hugh Richardson's argument that the early allusions of Westerners reveal little more
than that the Tibetans had a reputation in neighbouring countries for “strange ways and rare magical powers”34 holds
true even for the 20th century. Evaluation of Tibet and its people was based on an archive that made very little distinction
between myths, legends, hearsay, and facts. Western writers constructed “facts” not by referring to the place of Tibet but
through repetition and cross-reference.¶ Gaze¶ Surveillance is a technique through which, under
an overpowering gaze, the non-Western subject is rendered “a knowable, visible
object of disciplinary power.”35 The gaze is not mere innocent curiosity: “to gaze implies more
than to look at—it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer
is superior to the object of the gaze.”36 Through observation, examination and interpretation objects are
differentiated, categorized, and identified, and made ready to be acted upon. Objectification
(fixing its
essence) of the gazed goes hand in hand with its subjectification—gaze and
surveillance are productive of identity of the gazed.¶ Surveillance as a strategy for representing the
Other and rendering it disciplined is characterized by the all-knowing gaze of a white “man,” the colonial master, the West.
It enables both the visual possession of the body of the gazed and an interposition of technique which safely conceals the
body of the gazer.37 Observations then are presented as dispassionate, objective facts. The gaze is
disembodied—statements are made as if there is no seer behind the observations.¶
This is not to say that non-Westerners are visually impaired, powerless to gaze back
at the West. But the authority of imperialism for a large part of the modern period
ensured that mastery and control remained a possession of Western “man.” The
“monarch of all I survey” rhetorical gesture remained peculiar to the West.38 Establishment of mastery
through surveillance, gaze, and observation were accompanied by consolidation of
shades of political dominance over the object of the gaze. Appropriation was done in the name of
scientific curiosity, ethnographic material gathering, protection of simple masses from their own despotic rulers, or the
spread of progress.¶ British colonial and military officials who went inside Tibet often wrote their accounts as scientific
exploration, or as exciting adventure,39 or simply as “everyday” observation.40 Behind the innocent sounding
descriptions of travel like the “narrative of a plant hunter's adventures and discoveries”41 lay the violence of imperialism.
Though their gaze might be considered as one of adventurer or romantic in Europe,
the effect on the natives was the same as some steely-eyed militarist—the
establishment and institutionalization of control through political rule and
knowledge formation. To know is a prelude to possess, especially if there is a huge
asymmetry of power. Such asymmetry led to situations where it was perfectly acceptable for a participant in the
Tibet mission of 1903–1904 to say: “In fact the visible riches and treasures of Lhasa fairly made our mouths water. The
Tibetans however would not sell, and to our honour be it said; although Lhasa was a fair object to loot, and lay in our
power, not a farthings worth was forcibly [author adds this word in pen in a typed text] taken from it.”42 Securing
priceless artefacts through coercion and displaying them in the private and public collections in the West was an essential
feature of Western imperialism.¶ Paradoxically, the project of rendering the Other knowable and the image of it as
primitive and simple went had in hand with recognition that there are elements of inscrutability and mystery that eluded
complete understanding of the Other. While discussing his own failure to fathom the unease of Phuntsog, a Tibetan who is
seen no longer as “authentic” native as he has learnt the language of the imperialist, Edmund Candler, an early example of
embedded reporter (a Daily Mail reporter accompanying the British invasion of Tibet in 1903–1904), calls him a “strange
hybrid product of restless western energies, stirring and muddying the shallows of the Eastern mind. Or are they depths?
Who knows? I know nothing, only that these men are inscrutable, and one cannot see into their hearts.”43¶ Frustrated
with the inaccessibility, invisibility and inscrutability of “the Orientals,” Western desire subjects them to a relentless
investigation. Veil becomes a metaphor for all that invites, titillates, and yet resists Western knowing. It is “one of those
tropes through which Western fantasies of penetration into the mysteries of the Orient and access to the interiority of the
other are fantasmatically achieved.”44 Surveillance and gaze facilitate other representational strategies that fix the Orient,
the Other, particularly those that seek to classify, differentiate and provide identity to the Other (and in turn to the Self).¶
Differentiation–Classification¶ Differentiation and classification, two crucial factors in the formation of the modern
subject,45 are also evident in Western representations of the Other. The ideational differentiation between the West and
the Rest underpins these representations. The need to articulate one's personal and collective self in terms of identity
comes from an internalization of this principle of differentiation. Classification occupies a central place in any account of
non-Western people. It polices discourses, assigns positions, regulates groups, and enforces boundaries.46 What Lobsang
Rampa47 says about his own treatment in the West reflects the dominant Western attitude toward the exhibition of
Oriental curiosities: “Unfortunately, western people looked upon me as a curio, as a specimen who should be put in a cage
and shown off as a freak from the unknown. It made me wonder what would happen to my old friends, the Yetis, if the
westerners got hold of them—as they are trying to do.”48 Given the taxonomizing predilection and conceit of Western
imperialism, we can hardly disagree with Rampa's conjecture about the fate of the yetis: “(If) Western Man had his way,
our poor old yetis would be captured, dissected, and preserved in spirit.”49¶ While some classifications may be essential
for understanding, often the classification of non-Western peoples went hand in hand
with the hierarchization and racialization of cultures. Classifying the Other as
barbarian or savage validated its dehumanization and was seen as justification for
use of violence to impose European norms.50 At the top were the white Europeans and at the bottom were
“primitive” Africans and aboriginal populations in the “new world.” Chinese, Arabs, Indians, and others occupied different
positions in the hierarchical table. The 19th and 20th century obsession with racializing culture can be seen in the case of
Tibetans too where different commentators sought to identify characteristics of the Tibetan “race.” A typical example was
Graham Sandberg who was unflattering in his comments about the “Tibetan race as ‘a weak and cowardly people, their
pusillanimity rendering them readily submissive.’”51 The fact that racism has less to do with colour and more to do with
power relations becomes evident in the British treatment of Irish as “coloured,” as “white negroes,”52 during the 19th
century. Captain William Frederick O'Connor's observation at the start of the 20th century about Tibet is illustrative:
“Common people are cheerful, happy-go-lucky creatures, absurdly like the Irish in their ways, and sometimes even in their
features.”53 On the other hand, French traveller Alexandra David-Neel finds that dobdobs, the Lhasa monk “police,” looks
like a “real negro.”54 Differentiation, classification and identification, when combined with racialization, evolutionism and
hierarchization, lead to the debasement and negation of most non-Western natives and idealization of some.
(Optional – It’s a very good reps key card)
The aff’s rhetoric reproduces Orientalist violence – power structures
can only be changed discursively
Koefoed et al. 06, Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental, Social and
Spatial Change, Roskilde University, (Michael Haldrup, Lasse Koefoed, and Kirsten Simonsen,
“Practical Orientalism: Bodies, Everyday Life and the Construction of Otherness”, Wiley ( global
provider of content and content-enabled workflow solutions in areas of scientific, technical, medical, and
scholarly research; professional development; and education) on behalf of the Swedish Society for
Anthropology and Geography, 2006, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3878386)
Much analysis following Said (1995, 1997) and Gregory (1994) has tended to focus
on orientalism mostly as a 'regime of knowledge', thereby placing
the analytical scope on the workings of institutions, discourse and
texts. It has repeatedly (and justly) been fleshed out that acts of representation are not
innocent. The degree to which Orientalism is (re)produced and negotiated in banal, bodily and
sensuous practices, on the contrary, has been less prominent in the discussion. As Gregory
argues, the way people see, perceive, picture, imagine and speak of
others is what in the last instance legitimizes the violent fight
against the external Other (2004, p. 20). Incidents like the ones quoted at the
beginning of this section are not only products of discourse, but reflect a practical
orientalism, articulated through processes of 'othering' developed
and enacted in concrete bodily meetings in everyday life. By using this term to
describe the transformation of rhetoric and everyday practices towards nonEuropean immigrant groups, we want to highlight the interrelationship between the
rearticulation of nationhood and the transformation of security dynamics of 'The New Europe',
and in particular how this transformation rests on small, often
unnoticed and 'banal' acts and articulations in everyday life. We do
this first by discussing Said's concept of orientalism in relation to Billig's inspiring notion of
'banal nationalism'. Then we take it one step further, arguing that everyday articulations of
difference are embodied and embedded in sensuous encounters with concrete Others. Finally,
inspired by Rodaway (1994), we demonstrate how practical orientalism works through the
construction of particular sensuous geographies. Orientalism, everyday life and banality The
obvious starting point for this enterprise is Edward Said's analysis of the discourse of orientalism
in colonial Europe. Taking the late eighteenth cen- tury as a starting point, Said suggests that
oriental- ism can be analysed and discussed as cooperate institutions dealing with the Orient - it
works, he argues, as a regime of knowledge, a systematic, dis- ciplined system of power - that not
only describes, teaches and rules but also produces the Orient (1995, p. 3). Orientalism is
a created body of texts and theories that works as a discursive
system of dominance and authority in the uneven relation between
the Orient and the Occident. In a recently published article Said also
emphasizes 'that neither the Orient nor the concept of the West has
any ontological stability; each is made up by human effort - partly
through the identification of the Other and partly through
affirmation'. It is a supreme fabricated fiction, 'lending itself to collective passion that has
never been more evident than in our time with mobilisation of fear, hatred, disgust and a
resurgent in self-pride and arrogance' (Said, 2004, p. 870). In order to to take seriously that
history and geography are man-made, we, in continuation of that, will argue that
the relatively 'unstable' discursive system of orientalism and its
powerful stereotypical representations (Said, 1997) is dependent on a
daily reproduction. With this point of departure orientalism is not
only established by 'institutions' and regimes of knowledge, it is
also centrally performed, practised and (re)negotiated in daily life.
The everyday consuming and (re)negotiation of orientalism in
complex ways (re)produce the discursive system of power and
dominance that establish it as a natural, self-evident, 'taken-for- granted' global moral order.
This is not to say that orientalism is only passively reflected
in everyday life - it is rather distributed, manipulated,
reproduced and opposed. It is linking the little banal social
poetic with the grand dramas where contrasting images
between the Orient and the West are fought in real visible
wars, exclusions and repressions (see also Gregory, 2004). As the imaginative
geography has spread across the globe and in very powerful ways has been put to work in
international relations so has it shaped the contemporary common
sense. What we suggest is that the concept of orientalism should be
taken further beyond its institutional starting point. This is
to stretch the term 'Orientalism' so that it covers the banal
and intimate means by which orientalism is (re)produced in
everyday life.
Our alternative is a rejection of the 1ac as a rejection of the
imperiality of western representations of Latin American, this causes
a break with power relations that opens up possibilities of solvency
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at
Loughborough University (David, “Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South
Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing, http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
In my exploration of geopolitics, power and knowledge, I have argued that in the
broad context of North–South relations, and in particular with respect to US–
Latin American encounters, a series of representations have been
deployed as a legitimizing mechanism for a continuing power over
societies judged to be less civilized, less ordered, less modern and less
democratic. Such power is rooted in an imperial subjectivity which
entails a subordinating mode of knowledge. It is also a power that seeks
to transfer responsibility to the other, to delegate ownership of the
process of change, but within a frame that is already established:
according to guidelines that are set down as part of a hegemonic project, but
which may well be resisted and modified or displaced. In contrast, an ethic of
responsibility to the other, to the self and to their interrelationship,
requires going beyond an imperial consciousness. Such a journey might
include developing a perspective which:
a) questions those conceptualizations of, inter alia, civilization, order,
modernity, development and sovereignty that occlude the geopolitics of power
over non-Western societies and represent the West as a self-contained
entity, comprehensible outside a context of colonial and imperial relations; b)
profiles the dynamic and relational nature of power through which colonizer
and colonized, globalizer and globalized are continually, although differentially,
affected in a two-way process; c) emphasizes the importance of learning
critically from those other post-colonial writers and theorists who have represented
and continue to propel forward intellectual life beyond and within the West; d)
signals, as suggested in chapter 1, the underlying centrality of the Third
World periphery in the formation of the modern world; e) rethinks the
place of an ethico-political sensibility which contests the imperiality of
power and knowledge, while taking sustenance from feminist ethics in
discussions of (post-)development and knowledge (see e.g. Lazreg 2002 and
Saunders 2002).6 Such a perspective needs to be genuinely global in the
sense that it would not be limited by a Euro-Americanist frame, and it would take
care to regard other cultures with respect and recognition, seeking out
whatever webs of reciprocity may be located and sustained. There will always be the
need for a negotiation of respect and recognition with a critical spirit that helps us
avoid essentializations of either a positive or negative hue. A meaningful ethics of
intersubjectivity would include the right to be critical and different on
both sides of any ‘cultural border’. And the future can be post-imperial;
another world is possible.
***Links***
Link - Multiple
Representations of Western Ideals are use to justify infiltration and
domination by the U.S.
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at
Loughborough University (David, “Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South
Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing, http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
The interweavings of geopolitical power, knowledge and subordinating
representations of the other have a long history. For example, the identity and authority
of Western modernity took shape on the terrain of colonial and imperial power, and the production of knowledge
that characterized the development of Western scientific disciplines went together with the establishment of modern
imperialism. In a similar vein, the history of comparative literature, cultural
analysis, and anthropology can be seen as affiliated with imperial power,
and as contributing to its methods for ensuring Western ascendancy over
non-Western peoples. Together with this intertwining of power and
knowledge one can locate varying forms of subordinating representation
which are equally geopolitical and cultural. The assumption of Western supremacy goes together with a silencing of
the non-Western other. There is incorporation, inclusion, coercion but only infrequently an acknowledgement that
the ideas of colonized people should be known. This silencing of the non-Western other is
customarily combined with representations that legitimize the power to
penetrate and to re-order. The posited superiorities of Western
‘progress’, ‘modernization’, ‘democracy’, ‘development’ and ‘civilization’
are deployed to justify a project of enduring invasiveness. The nonWestern society is shorn of the legitimate symbols of independent identity and authority, and its
representation tends to be frozen around the negative attributes of lack, backwardness, inertia and violence. It
becomes a space ready to be penetrated, worked over, restructured and
transformed. This is a process that is seen as being beneficial to the re-ordered society, so that resistance,
especially in its militant form, is envisaged as being deviant and irrational. So while power and knowledge are
combined together, they cannot be adequately grasped if abstracted from the gravity of imperial encounters and the
geopolitical history of West/non-West relations.
Link - Generic
Constructing non-western spaces as inferior excludes them from the
geographical sphere
Kolluoglu-Kirli 03(Biray
Kolluoglu-Kirli, Bogazici University, The New Centennial Review,
2003, From Orientalism to Area Studies, Project Muse, PS)
United States President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech, following the attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 the previous year,
represents the solidification of a discourse marked by naked aggression
against the "un-civilized" world. In that speech, months-long hatred and
frustration culminated in the delineation of the "axis of evil." Both the American
president's and other government representatives' public discourse incessantly evoked images of "civilization" being under
attack and being threatened and, hence, in need of saving. In the reigning understanding, civilization, without any
adjective in front of it, refers to the "Western civilization" and is defined in opposition to
the "non-Western," and if we carry the antithetical reasoning to its logical
consequence, to the "un-civilized" world. The relationship of hierarchy and further-refined
definitions of these categories were nakedly spelled out by the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who, in late
September 2001, unabashedly proclaimed the superiority of the Western civilization over the Islamic world. I am
beginning this article by reiterating these well-known contemporary observations to underline one point: Berlusconi,
Bush, and [End Page 93] others can invoke these categories of good/evil, civilized/uncivilized, Western/Eastern without
any hesitation precisely because they represent the tip of an iceberg whose enormous body itself goes deep in the ocean of
Western epistemology and the imaginary.¶ In this article I will scrutinize layers of this iceberg in the form of a discussion
of the structural elements and institutional framework of Orientalism and area studies, with special emphasis on the
latter. In order to explain the institutional framework and the development of area studies, three issues must be taken into
account. Firstly, area studies needs to be understood in its relation to Orientalism in terms of it being the heir to this
academic discipline, which was the nineteenth-century European way of dealing with the non-West. Although, as we will
see in the following pages, Orientalism and area studies have discursive similarities,
and they form a continuum in the organization of the knowledge on the nonWest, this is not a relationship of direct heritage. Borrowing Harootunian's formulation
inspired by Benjamin, we can say that area studies constituted "not a copy but another original, an afterlife and an
afterimage" (153). Thus, the second issue that must be taken into consideration is the novel forms that this heritage takes
under the geopolitics of the post-World War II era. The third issue will be the distinctive and disruptive places that these
two disciplines hold within the organization of the social sciences.¶ Thus, in the following pages we will have a closer look
at the structural elements and institutional settings of the nineteenth-century Orientalism of Europe, and twentiethcentury area studies instituted in the United States. We will try to figure out the transformations that took place as the
study of the non-Western world was crossing the Atlantic to build an entirely new home for itself under new institutional
settings and novel learning methods and techniques on the same discursive grounds—with ultimately parallel objectives.¶
I¶ We start by discussing the last issue listed above. Orientalism and area studies hold peculiar
places in the historical structuration of academic fragmentation [End Page 94]
and disciplinization of the social sciences in terms of the definition of their
subject matter. That is, no other social science discipline sets out to identify its content (or draws its boundaries)
via geography or by exclusion. The social science disciplines, as we know them today,
started to take shape in the second half of the nineteenth century . The division of
labor among the social sciences is such that the three nomothetic social science disciplines—namely, sociology, economics,
and political science—correspond to the divisions of life spheres in capitalist society and its dominant ideology, liberalism.
The fourth discipline, idiographic history, began to be understood as the study of "what actually happened." 1
Political science, sociology, and economics focused on extracting universally
valid laws in their respective spheres through empirical observations. Their
purpose was to explain human behavior and to account for the change that
was shaking the societies on whose territories these social science
disciplines were flourishing. History was to be the account of a past, with the aim of finding the sources
of the inherent dynamics of the potential for change that European societies possessed (Wallerstein et al. 1996). Thus, at
first sight, it may seem that the subject matter of these disciplines was also geographically determined—namely, Europe
and North America. Yet it is not space, but time that is the key to the epistemology of social sciences. Progress was
the source of fascination as, simultaneously, a haunting spatial specificity of
the West got totally lost. Hence, the implicit understanding persists that travel to Asia or Africa is felt like
travel in time (Fabian 1983). In other words, social sciences could make universal claims
valid over space and time: space being the universalized West, time being
modern-capitalist temporality. The non-West was expelled from both.
Link - Asia
The affirmative construction of Asian threats is wrong and
categorizes the region as the Orient
Rosen 2k(Steven
L. Rosen, Faculty of Intercultural Communication Hiroshima Women's
University, Intercultural Communication, November Issue 4, Japan as Other:
Orientalism and Cultural Conflict, http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr4/rosen.htm,PS)
Orientalism is a total mis-seeing of the other through a veil of
interpretations of reality which are relatively impenetrable and resistant to
change. It is a form of ethnocentrism which has evolved into cultural myth, invariant in its imaginings, and
imperialistic in its aims. This paper argues that so-called Orientalism is a way of life, and not just
an out-dated way of knowing from the colonial past; it is an integral part of
modern consciousness. Ethnocentrism is the imposition of one's own culturally mediated system of
understandings onto others. It is the interpretation and evaluation of others through
this epistemological screen, with the implicit assumption that one's own
mode of understanding is superior because it is invariantly true. (Erchak 1992:90)
In psychological terms we can say that ethnocentrism is a kind of cognitive orientation which understands the world in
terms of rigid schemata; Orientalism is a particular historical manifestation of this
ethnocentric orientation. It is based on a Western consciousness which
"includes a battery of desires, repressions, investments and projections." ( Said
1993:90)¶ Orientalism as cultural myth had been articulated through metaphors which characterize the East in ways
which emphasize its strangeness and otherness. The Orient (whatever that term may signify) is seen as
separate, passive, eccentric, backwards, "with a tendency to despotism." (Said
1993:36) What Edward Said says of stereotypes of Middle-Eastern peoples applies to East Asian stereotypes as well: the
Oriental person is a single image, a sweeping generalization; an essentialized image which carries with it the taint of
inferiority. (51) The cultural myth of Orientalism is, as Said convincingly
demonstrates, fueled or reiterated by academic Orientalism. Although in the United
States it is now more politically correct to refer to "East Asian studies" when speaking about research related to China,
Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the University of London still boasts The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)perhaps a throwback to colonial days. This is an appellation which lumps just about all the peoples from Turkey to Tokyo
under one rubric, which all its connotations of exoticism and foreignness. Below we will be looking at some
examples of how academic Orientalism has helped perpetuate certain
stereotypes of Japan as Other.
China is constructed as a threat only to fit US interests
China Hush 09(China
Hush, December 20 2009, “U.S. threat theory” and how we talk
about threats, http://www.chinahush.com/2009/12/20/u-s-threat-theory-and-how-wetalk-about-threats/,PS)
For the past decade or so, there has been debate about the validity of the
“China threat theory.” The above picture shows the presence of US military bases in relation to China in the
region. My first reaction to this picture was: Is there talk of a “US threat theory” in China that I am not aware of? When I
first saw this picture, I was very intrigued. In my studies of international relations, I have never heard the term “US threat
theory,” or nor do I know of scholars talking about the US using these terms.¶ So I turned to Google. If you Google
“China threat theory,” (in quotes) you get over 266,000 results, but if you Google
“US threat theory,” there are 7 results. One of which is this People’s Daily article quoting Lu
Xiaobo, the Director of the East Asia Institute of Columbia University, as saying both “China threat theory” and “US threat
theory” exist. Is this really the case? Then I looked in Baidu for “美国威胁论”(U.S. threat theory) and found that the
creation of the U.S. as a security threat in public dialogue was hardly the
case. Rather than making the case for U.S. threat theory, the articles that I
did find are mostly reflections and reactions on “China threat theory.”¶ Now, I
take threat construction very seriously and the point of this post is not to say that the US is a threat, but to talk about the
idea of threat construction. I hope to provide some information and viewpoints that might provide some reflection on how
a “threat” manifests through language, especially in the context of US-China relations. Ole Weaver, in the book On
Security, talks about security “not as an objective or material condition, but as a ‘speech act,’ enunciated by elites in order
to securitize issues or ‘fields,’ thereby helping to reproduce the hierarchical conditions that characterize security
practices.”¶ In 2007, the Global Times (环球日报)published an article entitled “Why you never hear about ‘US threat
theory.’” The article looks at how the United States creates an image of “security” rather than one that causes other nations
to perceive it as a “threat.” The premise of the article is:¶ Even though the United States freely
roams the world as they please, often waging war or being a major party in
the cause of conflict, there are virtually no experts, media, or any politicians
that stand up and propose “U.S. threat theory.” This is an incredible phenomenon! On the
other hand, China engages in military build-up only to ensure that its own
territory is not divided, and yet elicits “concern” from Western countries and
some countries in the Asia-Pacific, causing the so-called “China threat theory” to
flourish.¶ The article then talks about two ways that the U.S. uses to prevent
other countries from constructing it as a threat. First is using “justice,
freedom, and democracy” as cover-up:¶ In light of this, the tactic of “cover-up” employed by
successive U.S. administrations is indeed worthy of consideration. The U.S. is ahead of other countries in the public
advertising and the media industry, and in military and foreign policy and internal and external propaganda, it is
definitely not inferior. In dealing with CIA and operations of special forces that do not naturally gain international and
public support, in dealing with situations where explanation is needed, the U.S. will often first accumulate evidence, find a
reputable spokesperson, and then gain support. In times where public support is impossible to gain, the U.S. president has
a last resort of using the statement “not excluding any possibility” that works as a last resort. Hence, no matter the
real nature of his military actions, the U.S. president can always find
arguments on the basis of “fighting for democracy.”¶ The next tactic the
article says that U.S. uses is giving carrots after using sticks, and thus
reducing the shock that the country being attacked or invaded suffers:¶
“Carrots and sticks” are complimentary, they not only help the U.S. military
influence weak governments when a political vacuum occurs, they can also
stablizie a political situation, and provide a catalyst for economic
development when the conditions are ripe.¶ The article continues:¶ Open any article about
military affairs in the U.S. press, and many reports are about how the U.S. military provides humanitarian assistance to
the “weak,” how the U.S. brings security and stability to all the corners of the world, etc. This type of publicity that pays
great attention to detail will leave a deep impression with many people.¶ Now back to the “China threat theory” side. Ole
Weaver talks about threats and security as a “speech act,” and we can clearly see this in action in public statements made
by U.S. officials. In this article (great article, would recommend reading the entirety), The Nation talks about Rumsfeld’s
speech at a strategy conference in Singapore:¶ After reviewing current security issues in Asia, especially the threat posed
by a nuclear North Korea, Rumsfeld turned his attention to China. The Chinese can play a constructive role in addressing
these issues, he observed. "A candid discussion of China…cannot neglect to mention areas of concern to the region." In
particular, he suggested that China "appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many
areas of the world," and is otherwise "improving its ability to project power" in the region. Then, with consummate
disingenuousness, he stated, "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why
these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments?"¶ The article follows
with:¶ To Beijing, these comments must have been astonishing. No one threatens China? What about the US planes and
warships that constantly hover off the Chinese coast, and the nuclear-armed US missiles aimed at China? What about the
delivery over the past ten years of ever more potent US weapons to Taiwan? But disingenuousness aside, Rumsfeld’s
comments exhibited a greater degree of belligerence toward China than had been expressed in any official US statements
since 9/11, and were widely portrayed as such in the American and Asian press.¶ So, the threat that is being constructed
has nothing to do with the actual material weapons that the U.S. has or that China has. When Rumsfeld talks
about China “improving its ability to project power,” he seems to be
automatically implying that if the U.S. does the same thing, it’s just not a big
deal (check out “Obama’s Empire” from New Statesman). I’ll leave you with a quote from this article in International
Organizations – Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedman write:¶ The threat posed to the United States by five hundred
British nuclear weapons is less than that posed by five North Korea ones, because the British are friends and the North
Koreas are not, and amity and enmity are social, not material, relations. In that sense it is “ideas all the way down.
Link – Border Security
Border Security is a ruse to ensure economic engagement largely
favors the north at the expense of the south
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
In the US and Europe, the
desire to defend borders and erect ‘fortresses’ sits uneasily with
support for the free movement of commodities, open economies, the abolition of
economic protectionism, and deregulation. Hence, while on the one hand the opening up of space to the
free flow of capital is championed, the free flow of labour is checked at the border. Within the
transnational space of NAFTA, for example, the US places increasing restrictions on the
inflow of Mexican labour while reasserting the centrality of open economies; in fact, for
some Mexicans there is a ‘new Berlin Wall’ exemplified in the refortification of the
fence along the US–Mexican frontier (see Nevins 2002 and Smith 1998). Underlying these
kinds of tensions and counterpoints, one can discern a deeply-rooted unevenness which
is symptomatic of the process of globalization. Such an unevenness is tellingly depicted by the Cuban
artist and writer Mosquera (1994), who argues that while the word ‘globalization’ may
evoke the idea of a planet in which all points happen to be interconnected in
a web-like network, in actual fact, connections occur inside a radial and
hegemonic pattern around the centres of power, while the peripheral
countries tend to remain disconnected from one another, or are only
connected indirectly via and under the control of the centres. For Mosquera, there
is a twin structure of ‘axial globalization’ and ‘zones of silence’ which forms the basis of
the economic, political and cultural network that moulds the whole planet. In the highly
centralized system of museums, galleries, collectors and market networks, Mosquera argues that the countries which host
the art of other cultures are at the same time curating the shows, so that the world is being practically divided between
‘curating cultures and curated cultures’. Mosquera’s couplet of ‘axial globalization’ and ‘zones of silence’
highlights a key dimension of the geopolitical unevenness of globality, while also
foregrounding the place of the periphery in contemporary treatments of culture. A primary
theme here concerns the issue of how genuinely global is the contemporary theorization of global politics. In some
instances, it is clear that a North–South divide emerges when the question of global
change is posed. Nakarada (1994), for example, reporting on a workshop held in Zimbabwe, where the theme was
the future of ‘world order’, noted the existence of a crucial North–South difference in the
orientation of the discussion. The participants from the North tended to stress the
phenomena of speed and the dissolution of spatial borders, with some emphasizing the
positive potential of globalization. By contrast, participants from the South were far more
negative in their diagnosis of globalization, referring to the South as a new object of
recolonization and global apartheid. This kind of split raises the question of the existence
of a North–South divide in terms of the effects of globalization and also of the presence
of North–South differential in the manner that this divide is diagnosed. A contemporary
example of the former differential can be seen in the current political debate on
US–Latin American relations.
Link - Cuba
US actions that influence Cuban sovereignty are only used to express
larger hegemonic control
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at Loughborough University
(David, “Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
Thus, while a specific conception of the Cuban people,
with an emphasis on their right to freedom, democracy and prosperity
through ‘self-determination’ (US GPO 1996, 110 Stat, 789 and 805) is
set against a notion of a tyrannical regime that needs to
be replaced, that same tyrannical regime is constructed
as a threat not only to its own people but also to the US.
Its removal therefore is interpreted as being beneficial
to both the Cuban people and the people of the US and
its government. Symptomatically, while ‘regime change’ is the
clear long-term goal, at the same time, the Act underlines the fact that
US policy is to (a) ‘recognize that the self-determination of the Cuban
people is a sovereign and national right of the citizens of Cuba which
must be exercised free of interference by the government of any other
country’ and to (b) ‘encourage the Cuban people to empower
themselves with a government which reflects the self-determination of
the Cuban people’ (US GPO 1996, 110 Stat, 805). Reminiscent of the
third article of the Platt Amendment, whereby the Cuban government
had agreed to the right of the US to intervene in order to preserve
Cuban independence, the US government in 1996 defined
Cuban sovereignty as a Cuban right which must be
exercised free of interference by the government of any
other country. At the same moment, the US was itself
setting the terms for the nature of that sovereignty and
stipulating its own right and responsibility (as well as that
of the international community) to act against the present
Cuban government. And this government was represented as
being separate from its people, as implicitly being an extraneous and
unhealthy growth on the body politic of the Cuban people.5 From the
Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 it can be seen
that the US has assumed the right to ‘represent’ or act as
‘guardian’ for the Cuban people – to write a narrative for the
defence of Cuban sovereignty which is also a defence of US interests
against an ostensibly threatening and tyrannical regime. The internal
and external are closely intertwined, and the moral, cultural and
political leadership role assumed by the US can only be
fully understood as part of the geopolitical history of
US–Cuban relations (see, for example, Benjamin 1990 and
Weldes & Saco 1996). Equally, however, as writers such as Cottam
(1994) and Kenworthy (1995) have demonstrated, US hegemony
has been constructed in similar ways with regards to
other Latin American societies, where the combined US
role of being ‘teacher’, ‘doctor’ and ‘policeman’ has
received a continuing significance (Schoultz 1999).
Cuba is falsely belittled by American media inorder to force US
interests on the island – The debate is shaped by these
representations
Anderson 10’- Orientalism Expert from Belgium at the University of Ghent (Tim, “Orientalism' and Cuba: How
Western media get it wrong”, Links International Journal of Social Reform, 9/14/10, http://links.org.au /node/1891)//AK
Naturally,
people are influenced by the corporate media, which wages a ferocious and
relentless propaganda campaign against the little independent island. As Salvador Allende told the Chilean Senate in 1960 “day
by day and minute by minute ... they [the corporate media monopolies] misrepresent what is
happening in Cuba”. However, we can also see elements of what Edward Said called "orientalism" – a series of false
assumptions about the country, conditioned by cultural prejudice. For example, the constant moral pressures of
the revolution are often misinterpreted as state "coercion"; while a well-coordinated and
caring health system has been derided as "paternalistic" and denying "choice" in health
care. These are the results of trying to understand Cuba through a set of individualistic, liberal assumptions. Let's look at some recent
misinterpretations. The corporate media has seized on Fidel Castro’s comment to US journalist
Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine that “the 'Cuban model' now doesn't work even
for us” as an admission that Cuban socialism had failed and that Cuba would now have to
take on US-style capitalism. Julia Sweig, Goldberg’s adviser on Cuba, said she took the comment “to be an acknowledgment
that ... the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country”. Goldberg
excitedly interpreted the comment to mean “Cuba is beginning to adopt the sort of
economic ideas that America has long demanded it adopt”. Goldberg’s article launched thousands of other
stories. Ahem. Neither writer had much sense of Cuban phraseology. On September 13 Fidel clarified and Cuban television pointed out (by
reference to an episode of The Simpsons, in which Fidel is shown as admitting the defeat of "communism") that the Cuban leader meant
Cuba was constantly adapting, and that there had never been a rigid "Cuban model". What they have held onto are principles, not models.
Furthermore, and in response to Goldberg's specific question about "exporting" a Cuban
"model", Fidel was repeating an old theme that "we don't export any model". Among
English-language articles on the Atlantic interview only a few, such as Steven
Wilkinson’s in the September 10 British Guardian ("Cuba: from communist to cooperative?"), noted this point. The misinterpretation of this simple phrase is a good
example of the "orientalism" regarding Cuba, where a revolutionary country, constantly
adapting, is portrayed by its enemies as representing a rigid model of the past. Any
change or admission is seen as the fracture of a monolith; but what monolith? A second
example of this same process can be seen in stories on the restructuring of state
enterprises in Cuba. The BBC reports on September 14 ("Cuba to cut one million public sector jobs") that Cuba’s peak trade
union body the CTC says “more than a million workers would lose their jobs ... [they] will be encouraged to become selfemployed or join new private enterprises” and half a million will be laid off in the next
six months. On the back of this a multitude of right and left commentators predict Cuba’s
reversion to capitalism. The thinking here is that a major efficiency drive in Cuban state
enterprises must mean a surrender to the logic of private corporations. Never mind that
hundreds of thousands were laid off from Cuba’s sugar industry, almost two decades ago
when the sugar-for-oil agreement with the Soviet bloc collapsed. In its much worse
economic crisis of the 1990s, Cuba maintained its system of social guarantees, allowing
foreign investment through joint ventures and a small private business sector. On the
current restructuring, if the BBC and others had read further in the September 13 CTC
statement, they would have seen that the “alternative employment” for the laid-off
workers comprises “land renting and usufruct leases, cooperatives and small business”.
Big corporations don’t get a mention; where they exist in Cuba they are joint ventures in which the state owns land and buildings and hires
all the labour. Nevertheless, work bonuses are being revised in a wider range of sectors. The CTC says state employment is to be maintained
in some sectors of agriculture, in construction, teaching and industrial work. Furthermore,
there is an ongoing
diversification of state industry into petroleum (Cuba is developing its own reserves and
is set to become an oil exporter), construction (including for expanded tourism),
biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, tourism and other areas. Change is a constant in Cuba,
as one might logically expect of a self-described "revolutionary" society. However others
portray this society as a monolithic state. Does any of this matter to Western audiences,
with their short attention spans and modernist tendencies to see the world through their
own self-image? Outside commentators have been characterising Cuban socialism
according to their cultural prejudices for half a century now, and no doubt will continue
to do so. Those who look closer might understand a bit more.
The Aff’s engagement to Cuba positions itself as Savior, and serves to
acts as a new form of imperialism
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
Thus, while a specific conception of the Cuban people, with an emphasis on their
right to freedom, democracy and prosperity through self-determination’ (US GPO 1996,
110 Stat, 789 and 805) is set against a notion of a tyrannical regime that needs to be
replaced, that same tyrannical regime is constructed as a threat not only to its own
people but also to the US. Its removal therefore is interpreted as being beneficial to both
the Cuban people and the people of the US and its government. Symptomatically, while
‘regime change’ is the clear long-term goal, at the same time, the Act underlines the fact
that US policy is to (a) ‘recognize that the self-determination of the Cuban people is a
sovereign and national right of the citizens of Cuba which must be exercised free of
interference by the government of any other country’ and to (b) ‘encourage the Cuban
people to empower themselves with a government which reflects the self-determination
of the Cuban people’ (US GPO 1996, 110 Stat, 805). Reminiscent of the third article of
the Platt Amendment, whereby the Cuban government had agreed to the right of the US
to intervene in order to preserve Cuban independence, the US government in 1996
defined Cuban sovereignty as a Cuban right which must be exercised free of interference
by the government of any other country. At the same moment, the US was itself setting
the terms for the nature of that sovereignty and stipulating its own right and
responsibility (as well as that of the international community) to act against the present
Cuban government. And this government was represented as being separate from its
people, as implicitly being an extraneous and unhealthy growth on the body politic of the
Cuban people. From the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 it can be
seen that the US has assumed the right to ‘represent’ or act as ‘guardian’ for
the Cuban people – to write a narrative for the defence of Cuban sovereignty which is
also a defence of US interests against an ostensibly threatening and tyrannical regime.
The internal and external are closely intertwined, and the moral, cultural and political
leadership role assumed by the US can only be fully understood as part of the
geopolitical history of US–Cuban relations (see, for example, Benjamin 1990 and Weldes
& Saco 1996). Equally, however, as writers such as Cottam (1994) and Kenworthy (1995)
have demonstrated, US hegemony has been constructed in similar ways with
regards to other Latin American societies, where the combined US role of
being ‘teacher’, ‘doctor’ and ‘policeman’ has received a continuing
significance. But also, the invocation of a commonality of interest must not be
forgotten. This is illustrated, for example, in the emphasis in the Helms–Burton Act on
the posited shared US–Cuban interest in representative democracy, market economy
and freedom and prosperity. Moreover, there is the shared importance given to selfdetermination, which is born out of a sense of the American nations being the product,
as President Kennedy expressed it in 1961, of a ‘common struggle, the revolt from
colonial rule’ (see Holden & Zolov 2000: 227). From the perspective of Washington,
what has been specific about contemporary Cuba, or more accurately the Castro
government, is its alliance during the Cold War period with the Soviet Union and its
continuing adherence post-1989 to a communist political system. This specificity has
been used by the US as a justification for not only classifying Cuba as a
threat to the US and the Western Hemisphere, and now more recently as a
‘rogue state’, but also as a justification for its embargo on or blockade of
Cuba – an embargo which has been condemned by the UN, the European
Union and the Inter-American Juridical Committee, which has ruled that
such a measure against Cuba violates international law (Chomsky 2000: 2). The
embargo and related acts of interference also contravene Article 15 of the 1948 Charter of
the Organization of American States, which stipulates that no state or group of states has
the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, in the internal or external affairs of any other
state (see Holden & Zolov 2000: 192). The Cuban case might be considered to be too
specific to act as a basis for broader interpretations, and certainly in the context of US–
Latin American relations it has a unique geopolitical significance. However, it can also be
argued that US–Cuban relations express in a rather concentrated form a persistent
theme in the history of US–Latin American relations. For example, there are other cases
of the US assigning to itself a role of framing relations with Latin American societies in
which their sovereignty is transgressed. One thematic exemplification of this problem
concerns the US policy of ‘certification’ in relation to the ‘war on drugs’.
Link – Democracy and Stability
Democracy and stability are links to the kritik- it makes racism,
insecurity, and serial policy failure inevitable
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
This silencing of the non-Western other is customarily combined with representations
that legitimize the power to penetrate and to re-order. The posited superiorities of
Western ‘progress’, ‘modernization’, ‘democracy’, ‘development’ and
‘civilization’ are deployed to justify a project of enduring invasiveness. The
non-Western society is shorn of the legitimate symbols of independent identity and
authority, and its representation tends to be frozen around the negative attributes of
lack, backwardness, inertia and violence. It becomes a space ready to be penetrated,
worked over, restructured and transformed. This is a process that is seen as being
beneficial to the re-ordered society, so that resistance, especially in its militant form, is
envisaged as being deviant and irrational. So while power and knowledge are combined
together, theycannot be adequately grasped if abstracted from the gravity of imperial
encounters and the geopolitical history of West/non-West relations. One of the recurrent
themes of this study has been the intersection between intervention and representation.
Geopolitical interventions as examined in the nineteenth, twentieth and now twenty-first
centuries entail different forms of representation. Nevertheless, it can be argued that
they all presuppose a combination of desire, will, capacity and justification. The desire to
intervene, to possess, to take hold of another society, even if only temporarily, flows from
that deeply rooted sense of superiority and mission. The nineteenth-century notions of
‘Manifest Destiny’ or ‘benevolent assimilation’ were predicated on a belief in the
ostensible superiority of the Western and more specifically American way of life. It was
not just that the United States had a ruling vision of itself that was associated with a
destiny that needed to be fulfilled; it was a vision that was also embedded in a
hierarchical perspective on peoples, races and cultures, whereby the white/black binary
division was seen as a crucial marker of value and significance. As was suggested in
chapter 2, in the history of US expansion, race went together with notions of
destiny and mission, as exemplified in the US–Mexico War, the colonization of the
Philippines and the creation of semi-protectorates such as Cuba at the beginning of the
twentieth century. In that era, the desire to intervene was also linked to
protecting the Americas from the insecurity of political disorder, and the
tenets of civilization were closely associated with the stipulated need to preserve socioeconomic order and stability throughout the American hemisphere. The desire to
intervene can also be traced through the histories of modernization theory and neoliberalism. In the aftermath of the Second World War, modernization ideas were
formulated with a view to diffuse Western capital, technology, and social and political
values to societies that were judged to be traditional and in need of modern
transformation. However, as I suggested in chapter 3, the desire to project
modernization was also tied to a fear of the perceived vulnerability of Third World
societies to the ‘contagion of communism’. Therefore, intervention had a double motive,
and while the perceived threat from communism came to a close in 1989, the desire to
modernize and re-order the other has continued into the post-Cold War period.
Link – Development/Failed States/Quasi States
The aff’s attempt to regard countries as “in need for development and
change” necessitates domination and war
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
Although the states of the South have given key importance to their own sovereignty,
there has been a tendency in the North to regard the sovereignty of states of the South as
being characterized by a lack of effectiveness and modern authority, so that terms such
as ‘quasi-states’ are sometimes employed to situate the state sovereignty of Third World
countries. This tendency has become more overt, for instance ‘quasistates’ becoming
‘failed states’ (Gros 1996 and Huntington 1998), as the following phenomena have
become more visible and often more acute: the disintegration of centralized state
authority as in countries such as Somalia and Sierra Leone; the reduction of the
territorial extension of state power through the existence of effective and durable
guerrilla organizations, as is the case in Colombia and also in Sri Lanka; and the
territorial fracturing of the sovereign power of the state, as can be seen in the cases of
Angola and Afghanistan, due to long periods of civil war and inter-regional strife.
Moreover, with the increase in wars, ethnic conflicts and humanitarian crises in the postCold War period, sovereignty has come to be seen in a dual sense.
Link – Drug Trafficking
Combating drug trafficking is only an example of imperial
intervention
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at Loughborough University
(David, “Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
The Cuban case might be considered to be too specific to act as a basis
for broader interpretations, and certainly in the context of US–Latin
American relations it has a unique geopolitical significance. However,
it can also be argued that US–Cuban relations express in a
rather concentrated form a persistent theme in the
history of US–Latin American relations. For example,
there are other cases of the US assigning to itself a role
of framing relations with Latin American societies in
which their sovereignty is transgressed. One thematic
exemplification of this problem concerns the US policy
of ‘certification’ in relation to the ‘war on drugs’. The US
certification process was initiated by President Reagan in 1986 as part
of Washington’s ‘war on drugs’ strategy, and has become the essential
point of US influence over other countries’ drug control policies, with
an international link being made to the 1988 UN Vienna Convention
Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic and Psychotropic Drugs. Every
February, the White House announces the results of the certification
process, and countries regarded as major drug producing or transit
countries are examined on their judged efficiency in drug control
during the previous year. If their efforts are deemed to have been
unsatisfactory, the offending countries are ‘decertified’. Decertification
of a country can lead to the imposition of mandatory sanctions,
including the suspension of at least 50 per cent of US assistance for the
current year (excepting humanitarian aid and drug cooperation aid), a
complete suspension of aid for the following years and a required US
vote against loans for the decertified country. Further discretionary
sanctions can include the denial of preferential tariff treatment under
existing acts, the curtailment of air transportation and traffic between
the US and the country in question, and the withholding of tourist
visas to the US. This certification process is undertaken for a whole
range of countries of the South, not just for Latin America, and this is
a clear case of the US assigning to itself the authority to
determine not only whether other countries are
complying with US stipulations but also to evaluate
unilaterally their compliance with the UN Vienna Convention. In 1997,
Mexico was threatened with decertification, and the discussions that
took place in both the US and Mexican Congresses were particularly
revealing.
Link – Economic Engagement
Representation of philanthropic aid are used to mask US imperialism
and neoliberal domination
Chapman 05’- Department of International Studies (Dennis, Blackwell Publishing, “US
Hegemony in Latin America and beyond”, International Studies Review, JStor)//AK
Is globalization merely
US imperialism masked as the philanthropic diffusion of
neoliberalism into the Third World? In Geopolitics and the Post-Colonial: Rethinking North-South
Relations, David Slater-drawing primarily from the deconstruction methodology of James Derrida (1992), the critical
theory of Michel Foucault The structural theory of World Systems Theory (although Wallerstein is not cited), and the
postcolonial perspectives of a myriad of Latin American schol- ars-argues that it is. More
specifically, Slater asserts that the United States (with the aid of such neoliberal organizations as the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization) has sought to liberate the Third World
from its indigence for the purpose of establishing a Southern hemisphere of "quasisovereignties" (see Jackson 1996:60) that can be easily manipulated politically. Slater
argues that the neoliberal order creates an asymmetry of structure that
facilitates the dominance of the North over the South in "a conscious
and often violent intervention on the part of [the US] government which
impose[s] market organization on society for non-economic ends" In short, the United
States seeks to use the neoliberal economic order to achieve its political goal of
geopolitical imperialism.
Representations of Neoliberalism manufacture consent of the
exploited in Latin America
Chapman 05’- Department of International Studies (Dennis, Blackwell Publishing, “US
Hegemony in Latin America and beyond”, International Studies Review, JStor)//AK
Drawing on dependency theory, Slater explains that the neoliberal project in Latin
America helps sustain the wealth of the United States by importing raw materials
from the South and exporting processed goods from the North- a relationship that
clearly favors the North. This argument is not a new one (see Wallerstein 1974).
Nonetheless, as Slater argues, it is one that has been largely abandoned with the
discursive hegemony of neoliberal theory. Neoliberals take for granted the inherent
goodness of the free market, which, by virtue of being regulated only by market forces,
is seen as fair for everyone. Yet, aside from the economies of Southeast Asia, which
Slater treats as an anomaly, the neoliberal promise of wealth for all has
largely failed. But does this mean that Latin America is a total failure? According to
Slater, the answer is "no." On the other hand, the "shadow" neoliberal project of
eliminating political opposition to Occidentalism-whether in the form of
governmental regimes (for example, Fidel Castro) or the campaign of postmodern
guerilla warfare (for example, the Zapatistas in Mexico)-has succeeded in maintaining
US dominance over Latin America. So, why cloak imperialist ambitions in neoliberal
reformation? The reason is that the United States wishes to maintain a legitimate
empire. Although imperialism a la Caesar and Napoleon is rejected by the United
Nations, imperialism la Ronald Reagan (that is, "neoimperialism") is tolerated because
any activity that supports the free market is assumed to be legitimate. Therefore,
the discursive power of Western institutions diffused into the South (what
Slater calls "conceptual framings") produces consensual exploitation. As Slater
writes, "[t]he discursive power [of the United States] entails putting into
place a regime of truth that subaltern nations are encouraged,
persuaded and induced to adopt and put into practice" (p. 148). The tragedy
for the South, according to Slater, is that, even though its acceptance of neoliberal
economics is presumably removed from any political agenda, in the final analysis it is
the political agenda of US hegemony that motivates the neoliberalization of the South.
Link - Engagement
The ‘Orientalist’ representation of engagement directs it towards an
imperialistic interaction of domination of Latin America
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
As we have seen in the previous chapter, the
emergence of the United States as a global power went
together with a projection of notions of civilization, progress, democracy and order that
posited a subordinate place for the societies of the non-West. The powers of
expansion and intervention, both internally in the territorial constitution of
the United States itself, and in a broader transnational mission of Empire,
were intimately rooted in a vision of the United States as a driving force of
Western civilization, diffusing its values to the presumed benefit of other
non-Western societies (Cumings 1999). However, while US-modelled notions of civilization,
progress, democracy and order continued to be transmitted in the period after the Second World War, and remained part
of the Americanizing mission, other concepts came to receive greater emphasis. From the 1950s onward notions of
‘modernization’ and ‘development’ came to be more closely associated with the portrayal
of West/non-West encounters, whereas representations of civilization and order,
although still present, as noted above in the Dulles quotation, became less prominent – they were no longer the
master signifiers they had been before 1940. At the same time, democracy and order were resituated in a
discursive context organized around the new signifiers of modernization and
development. This does not mean, of course, that these terms had never been deployed
before the Second World War, but rather that their visibility and discursive weight came
to assume greater predominance in the post-War period. The post-War origins of the
‘discourse of development’ have been dealt with in considerable detail by Escobar (1995), while Patterson
has traced the links between notions of Western civilization and modernization.
Also, recent contributions (for example, Baber 2001 and Blaney & Inayatullah 2002) have revisited modernization theory
in relation to Cold War politics and the conceptualization of international relations. What therefore still needs to be
examined; or more precisely, what constitutes my own perspective? First, in analysing the continuing
intersections between geopolitical power and the cultural representations of
other, non-Western societies, and particularly Latin America in the example
of this study, it is important to keep in mind that the notion of
modernization – or more specifically modernization theory – came to be
closely associated with the nature and direction of US interventions in the
Third World. There was a specificity about this intersection which contrasts with earlier and later periods and
needs to be understood in its geopolitical and historical context. It not only provides another important example of the
interwoven nature of power, politics and representation but also illustrates the changing
dynamic of US power as it impacted on the Third World. Second, from a
post-colonial perspective, and in the specific setting of this chapter, there
are two analytical elements that can be usefully signaled: a) The power to
intervene was certainly not unaffected by the societies in which that invasive
power was projected, since, as was noted in the previous chapter,
resistances and oppositions to US hegemony altered the subsequent
modalities of intervention, and this was particularly the case with respect to
both the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the Vietnam War, set as they were in
a broader context of accelerating geopolitical turbulence. b) The geopolitics of
intervention situated as it was in a Cold War context had an inside and an outside, since
the Cold War had its chilling effect on domestic politics in the United States itself, and
the phenomenon of ‘containment culture’ was a reflection of the
interweaving of international and national concerns.
Link – Failed States
The imperial North establish Orientalist views through language such
as “failed states” – they don’t regard the South as sovereign states
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at Loughborough University (David,
“Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing, http://translateenglish-indonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
This overall
differential is rooted in a contextualization of
sovereignty and self-determination that has been historically
affected by the dependence of international law on Western norms and the intimate
association between the rules, practices and processes of international law and politics and the
development of the West’s imperial power (Grovogui 1996). In
particular, from 1492 onward, the erasure of the fact of conquest from the discourses of law and
international politics enabled Western powers to claim rights and privileges that would otherwise
have been considered illegitimate. As Strang (1996: 43) has put it, ‘the
imperial
moment took place within and was carried forward by a
collective delegitimation of the sovereignty of nonWestern peoples’. Subsequently, with the twentieth-century emergence of newly
independent states in Africa and Asia, that followed on from the earlier nineteenth-century lead
of independent Latin American states, the significance of state sovereignty was strongly asserted.
This was reflected in the Charter of the Organization of African Unity adopted in 1963, and also in
the Charter of the Economic Rights and Duties (CERDS) adopted by the UN General Assembly in
1974, which included a call for the global economy to be regulated by states (see Clapham 1999).
Although the states of the South have given key
importance to their own sovereignty, there has been a
tendency in the North to regard the sovereignty of
states of the South as being characterized by a lack of
effectiveness and modern authority, so that terms such
as ‘quasi-states’ are sometimes employed to situate the state
sovereignty of Third World countries.4 This tendency has become more
overt, for instance ‘quasi states’ becoming ‘failed
states’
(Gros 1996 and Huntington 1998), as the following phenomena have become more
visible and often more acute: the disintegration of centralized state authority as in countries such
as Somalia and Sierra Leone; the reduction of the territorial extension of state power through the
existence of effective and durable guerrilla organizations, as is the case in Colombia and also in
Sri Lanka; and the territorial fracturing of the sovereign power of the state, as can be seen in the
cases of Angola and Afghanistan, due to long periods of civil war and inter-regional strife.
Moreover, with the increase in wars, ethnic conflicts and humanitarian crises in the post-Cold
War period, sovereignty has come to be seen in a dual sense.
Link - Globalization
Globalization policies in the name of US profit construct the “other”
to be dominated
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at Loughborough University (David,
“Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing, http://translateenglish-indonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
Mosquera’s couplet of ‘axial globalization’ and ‘zones of silence’ highlights a key dimension of the
geopolitical unevenness of globality, while also foregrounding the place of the periphery in
contemporary treatments of culture. A primary theme here concerns the issue
of how genuinely global is the contemporary theorization of global
politics. In some instances, it is clear that a North–South divide emerges
when the question of global change is posed. Nakarada (1994), for example,
reporting on a workshop held in Zimbabwe, where the theme was the future of ‘world order’,
noted the existence of a crucial North–South difference in the orientation of the discussion. The
participants from the North tended to stress the phenomena of speed and the
dissolution of spatial borders, with some emphasizing the positive potential of
globalization. By contrast, participants from the South were far more
negative in their diagnosis of globalization, referring to the South
as a new object of recolonization and global apartheid. This kind of split
raises the question of the existence of a North–South divide in terms of the effects of globalization
and also of the presence of a North–South differential in the manner that this divide is
diagnosed. A contemporary example of the former differential can be seen in the
current political debate on US–Latin American relations. If, for
instance, we look at the impacts of NAFTA for Mexico, it can be noted that
while Mexican trade with the US has skyrocketed, going from US$36
billion in 1993 to $450 billion in 2002, most of the high-volume South–North
exchanges have been between a handful of transnational
subsidiaries in Mexico and their US-based corporate headquarters
(Latin America Press no. 1, 15 Jan. 2003: 6). During these years, a substantial number
of Mexico’s banks have now become controlled by US, Canadian
and Spanish investors, while US-based Wal-Mart has become Mexico’s leading retailer.
Mexican agriculture has been badly affected by imports – 6 million tons
of cheap US and Canadian corn, much of it genetically modified, enters Mexico each year,
displacing small farmers from the internal market. Moreover, farmers have now to sell to
transnationals such as Cargill which have taken over the nation’s privatized grain distribution
infrastructure. Basic food imports have increased by 77 per cent over the past decade to an
estimated $78 billion, equivalent to the government’s public debt, and critics fear Mexico is losing
its food sovereignty. There is inequality also in food subsidies, so while per capita subsidies of
$21,000 per annum enable US farmers to sell produce in Mexico at prices 20 per cent below
production costs, Mexican farm subsidies have continually fallen so that they are now at an
average of $760 per farmer (Latin America Pressibid.). With increased poverty in the rural areas
of Mexico, many farmers have joined the immigration flow to the US. Further, in accordance with
a 10-year-old NAFTA schedule, the programmed suspension at the beginning of January 2003 of
all tariffs on basic agricultural imports from the US has provoked Mexican peasant farmers into
organizing militant protests. During a recent demonstration (December 2002) of rural workers
outside the Mexican Congress, where using sledgehammers and tractors as battering rams, the
campesinos broke down the gates of the building, one 80-year-old peasant farmer from
Guanajuato said, ‘I’m an old man and I’ve never had to work in El Norte [the US] because my land
gave me what I needed to live –but now this government is forcing me to go there’ (Latin America
Pressibid.).
Link - Immigration
The discourse of immigration causes otherization that breeds
discrimination and violence
Jurado 8 (Kathy, Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) at the University of Michigan, 2008, “Alienated Citizens:
‘Hispanophobia’ and the Mexican Immigrant Body,”
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/58455/kjurado_1.pdf?sequence=1, p. 3-4)
In certain geographical spaces, such as the Southwest, the bodies of¶ Mexican
im/migrants remain discursively constructed as beasts of burden; a¶
workforce that is at times either invisible or anonymous while at others¶
conspicuously criminal, but always “foreign” and “alien.” This statement,¶
unfortunately, still resonates with the way we think of Mexican immigrant
labor¶ contemporaneously, as disembodied hands, without faces or bodies. Manos
sin¶ cuerpos de carne y hueso. Devoid of the conceptualization of any concrete¶
physicality and corporeality within dominant discourses, it is easier to
erase,¶ exploit and criminalize these bodies. In short, it becomes easier to
strip these¶ subjects of any basic sense of humanity. The recurrence of Mexicans
as the¶ object of such alienating discourse is the driving force behind this project. Ethnic ¶
4¶ Mexicans (and by unfortunate extension, all Latina/os) in the U.S. are
“alientated”¶ in the sense that they are considered “foreign” and thus forced
outside any¶ conceptualizations of the nation. Further, I also want to play with the
word to¶ refer to the discursive construction of ethnic Mexicans as a monstrous “alien”¶
Other.
Understanding differential racialization is a prerequisite to creating
policies
Jurado 8 (Kathy, Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) at the University of Michigan, 2008, “Alienated Citizens:
‘Hispanophobia’ and the Mexican Immigrant Body,”
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/58455/kjurado_1.pdf?sequence=1, p. 4-5)
While, as I noted earlier, there have been historical accounts of the¶ historical events
involving massive deportation and repatriation campaigns, I am¶ most interested in
critically engaging the literary and visual responses to¶ “Hispanophobia” that are
articulated in popular culture. This “Hispanophobia,” I¶ argue, is the product of a
process of “differential racialization” that has impacted¶ Mexican American
subjects since at least the turn of the century. Legal scholar¶ Richard Delgado has
coined the term “differential racialization” to define the often¶ varying yet specific
racializations of any disfavored group at different historical¶ moments in time. 9 He
offers as an example the changing images of African¶ Americans in the
national imaginary. During slavery, images of African¶ Americans were
overwhelmingly that of happy, dependent, and child-like¶ subjects. After
emancipation, this image was radically different, even¶ 9 See generally Richard
Delgado & Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New¶ York: New York
University Press, 2001).¶ 10¶ oppositional. The subservient and docile slave is
replaced by the image of a¶ menacing, criminal and bestial (often masculine)
black subject during¶ Reconstruction.¶ Delgado’s formulation of “differential
racialization” is key when engaging in¶ re-readings of the Mexican
im/migrant body in literature, film and general media.¶ Interfaced with legislative
practices that range from immigration laws to public¶ policies, one is able to
see the implications such individual and regional¶ occurrences have on a
much more global perspective. Only through such multifaceted¶ analysis
can one see the ways in which dominant discourses operate in¶ concert to
create both criminalized hyper-visibility and destructive invisibility.¶ Cultural
productions emerging within the Mexican im/migrant community,¶ however, often
counter these pathologizing discourses.
Immigration policies still are orientalist in nature, governing brown
bodies
Jurado 8 (Kathy, Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) at the University of Michigan, 2008, “Alienated Citizens:
‘Hispanophobia’ and the Mexican Immigrant Body,”
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/58455/kjurado_1.pdf?sequence=1, p. 4-5)
Thinking about it now, the genesis of my project began well over a decade¶ ago, years
before ever considering a Ph.D. program. In 1994 I was an¶ undergraduate at U. C. Santa
Cruz witnessing in dumbfounded disbelief, along¶ with thousands of other Californians,
the passing of Proposition 187. Aimed at¶ denying “illegal aliens” of medical care
and education, the proposition was¶ deceptively marketed as an issue of
“fiscal common sense” and not racism. In¶ California, the adjoining border left no
question as to which ethnic group was¶ being targeted as the problem. Despite intense
organizing by anti-Prop 187¶ proponents involving door to door
campaigning, countless editorials and protest¶ marches the majority of
California voters passed legislation that was inherently¶ “Hispanophobic.” At
the time, the socio-political climate was venomously¶ charged and instinctively I new that
this legislation would have repercussions that¶ would extend far and beyond that of only
targeting undocumented immigrants.¶ Furthermore, the question remained in all our
minds: exactly how were citizens to¶ be differentiated from non-citizens? It was
inevitable to assume that all brown¶ bodies would be rendered suspect, noncitizens and citizens alike.¶ As a child, I grew up hearing about my father’s childhood
in segregated¶ South Texas. My father, a second generation Mexican American, was once¶
5¶ detained while walking home from fieldwork with several braceros. The men¶
fortunate enough to have carried with them their contract cards were immediately¶
released, but those without contracts or without them in hand were detained¶ along with
my father. Being a citizen of the United States, my father did not carry¶ a
contract card though he worked alongside Mexican immigrant workers.¶
Needless to say, my father’s word that he had been born in the state of Texas¶ was
not enough. He was held until my grandmother was able to provide my¶ father’s birth
certificate as proof of citizenship. By the simple fact and¶ coincidence of his
ethnicity, his body had been consequently scripted as¶ “suspect” and foreign.
In 1994 I had the uncanny, horrifying sense that the¶ discrimination my father had
described from his adolescence had re-surfaced.¶ The danger of Proposition 187 went
beyond the issue of immigrant scapegoating.¶ The danger resided in the way
the rhetoric of the legislation conflated all Latina/o¶ immigrants and citizens
in such a way that promoted the falsity of reading¶ citizenship on the body as
one might (equally falsely, I might add) be able to read¶ race or gender.
Immigrants are labeled inferior and forced into lowest class of society
Márquez 03 Professor
of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has
published extensively on Latinos and American politics; his research has focused on
Mexican American social movement organizations. He is the former Director of the
Chicano Studies program.
The formation of a political identity is a critical issue in
multicultural societies. Collective identities emphasize similarities among
citizens, what is held in common, criteria for group membership, and difference from
others. Identities can offer the individual psychological health, personal authenticity,
and attachment to community. However, ascribed identities that brand
racial minorities as inferior and relegate them to lower social and
economic status can undermine the target group’s attachment to
the larger society and lead to the formation of disparate,
antagonistic racial identities (Taylor 1992; Hochschild 1995). What kinds
of identities have Mexican Americans created in response to
discrimination and economic deprivation? Do they form
antagonistic political identities? Or, alternatively, do they share
identities with others in society?
U.S. imperialism has caused Latinos to move to the U.S. where they
are viewed negatively and used to serve the United States’ interests
Feagin 11 (The Latino/a Condition: Chapter 11, pages 65-67. Joe Feagin is the president of the American Sociological
Association. He is is a U.S. sociologist and social theorist who has conducted extensive research on racial and gender
issues, especially in regard to the United States. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard and is the author of 50 plus
books on social issues)
Viewing Americans of color as alien goes back to the white view of early enslaved
Africans as uncivilized, strange, and foreign. Groups entering later have also been viewed
as uncivilized, foreign, and threatening to the dominant Anglo-American culture. This
was true of groups like the Russian Jews who entered as “alien” and “not white” around
the turn of the twentieth century, but who later would become accepted as “white”. It has
been especially true for immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Thus, Latino
immigrants and their descendants have usually been positioned somewhere between
whites and blacks – with a negative evaluation on both axes of alienated social relations,
that of a superior/inferior and that of insider/foreigner. The white view of Latinos
sometimes stresses their similarity to black Americans in terms of racial status and
inferiority, but at other times accents their “alien” and “foreign” character. It is
therefore not surprising that Latino immigrants and their descendants, unlike earlier
white European immigrants, have not been allowed to assimilate structurally and fully
to white society. All entering groups do not share the same fate, but in all cases it is the
dominant white group that generally determines the rate and character of the societal
incorporation, as well as the prevailing interpretation of that incorporation. Today, large
numbers of Latinos make their homes in the United States mainly because of United
States government intervention and imperialism in places like Mexico, Cuba, Puerto
Rico, and Central America. In this way, Latin American and Caribbean immigrants are
not similar to European immigrants, such as those large groups that come from southern
and eastern Europe in the decades just before and after 1900. These early European
immigrants, like other European immigrants today, are not usually linked to the United
States by direct United States imperialism in their home countries, as are most Latin
American immigrants. Juan Gonzalez calls this Latin American immigration the
“Harvest of Empire”: [T]he Latino migrant flows were directly connected to the growth
of a U.S. empire, and they responded closely to that empire’s needs, whether it was a
political need to stabilize a neighboring country or to accept its refugees as a means of
accomplishing a broader foreign policy objective (Cubans, Dominicans, Salvadorans,
Nicaraguans), or whether it was an economic need, such as satisfying the labor demands
of particular U.S. industries (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Panamanians). Indeed, the
central role of the United States employers in aggressively recruiting both legal and
undocumented Mexican and other Latin American labor is not well known. Such
ignorance allows much anti-immigrant stereotyping to take place unchallenged. From
the early twentieth century, as David Gutierrez notes, United States “employers and
their allies in government have worked in close partnership to recruit foreign workers
and to ensure that the flow of immigrant workers is regulated for the maximum benefit
of American businesses and consumers.” The largest group of Latin Americans ever to
be drawn directly into wealth creation within the United States consists of Mexicans and
Mexican Americans. Indeed, counting both legal and undocumented immigrants,
Mexicans constitute the largest group of immigrants ever to come to the United States
from any area of the world. Like African Americans before them, millions of Mexican
immigrants and their descendants have been central to wealth creation for United States
employers and to cheap services for United States consumers. Because Americans of
Mexican origin are by far the largest immigrant group ever drawn from the United States
empire, I will examine their history and contemporary situation in some detail. As noted,
the first Mexican residents of the United States did not immigrate, but were brought into
the new nation by violent conquest during the Texas rebellion and the MexicanAmerican War of the 1830s and 1840s. With the end of the Mexican-American War came
the incorporation of a hundred thousand Mexicans. Mexicans were forcibly absorbed
into the expanding United States empire, which now encompasses a large portion of
what was northern Mexico. With great aggression, leading white politicians and
economic entrepreneurs sought to dominate the entire continent. In this they were
highly successful. World history was shaped by their colonial aspirations and
imperialistic actions. For more than a century and a half, United States imperialism has
included both direct colonialism, particularly in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Hawaii, and
neo-colonialism (recurring economic or political intervention) to protect United States
economic and political interests in many Latin American countries, such as Mexico. To
accomplish United States economic and political domination, military forces have
intervened directly or covertly dozens of times in Latin American countries. In order to
expand or protect United States interests, this intervention has included protecting
dictators sympathetic to United States investors using military aid or tactical
intervention, as well as putting down local rebellions seeking to overthrow the United
States-supported dictatorships. United States intervention has included the creation of a
new country, Panama, to facilitate the building of a canal and thus United States
commerce across two oceans.
Focusing on discourse of the Mexican body is key to human rights
Jurado 8 (Kathy, Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) at the University of
Michigan, 2008, “Alienated Citizens: ‘Hispanophobia’ and the Mexican Immigrant
Body,”
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/58455/kjurado_1.pdf?seque
nce=1)
I want to pay special attention to this Mexican im/migrant body not simply
to understand the contradictory space it inhabits in American history but
also and perhaps most importantly, to pay homage to the basic human
rights and complete physicality of this body, regardless of legal status. This body has
for too long been persistently fragmented, dehumanized and erased both
discursively and rhetorically. Hegemonic discourses have oscillated between
reducing the Mexican im/migrant body to a mere pair of hands or creating of
it a monstrous, alien Other. In either case, the immigrant’s basic sense of
humanity is obscured, his/her complete physicality compromised in one form or another. As the artists that I
will be analyzing prove within their work, the Mexican-Latina/o im/migrant body is much more than mere pair of brazos.
It is also constituted by cuerpo entero y alma in spite of what any man made laws may dictate.
Link – Immigration Privatization
Attempts to privatize immigration control denies immigrants basic
rights and threatens the integrity of immigrant processing
Koulish 11 (The Latino/a Condition: Chapter 17, page 102, Robert Koulish is a Research
Fellow at CAPC as well as Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Politics. He has
a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has published a book as well as many academic
journals on immigration control.)
The decision to include immigration within Homeland Security was no accident. One
author suggests that the first major step linking immigration to the war on terror occurred with the creation of DHS which
would include the Border Patrol, port of entry inspectors from Customs, INS, and the Agriculture Department’s Animal
and health Inspection Service within the purview of the new Bureau of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Also within DHS
are Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Under a 2002
Executive Order a host of sub-governments formed and private actors gaine dirct access to the immigration control policy
process. For example, the Customs and Border Protection’s Expedited Removal Program has contracted with KBR [Inc.]
to oversee the expansion of the federal government’s capacity to detain immigrants. This $385 million contract would set
up temporary processing, detention and deportation facilities. Indeed, the KBR deal is part of an
extraordinary rush to build new private detention sites. Private prison companies are competing for
an immigrant “super jail” facility (2,800 beds) in Laredo, Texas, and in December 2005, Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA) announced a contract with ICE to hold up to 600 immigrant detainees in Tyler, Texas. Privatizing
immigrant detention is nothing new. During the early 1980s, the federal government began
experimenting with incarcerating people for profit. What is new is the expansiveness of
privatiziation after 9/11 and its use in establishing a social control apparatus ostensibly
for non-citizens but applicable to citizens, as well. According to one authority, “In the aftermath of 9/11, the
private prison industry has once again experienced a boom as national security has been
pressed to sweep up and jail an unprecedented number of immigrants. Immigrants are
currently the fastest growing segment of the prison population in the U.S. today.” As an outcome, the private prison
industry is increasingly in a position to direct immigration detention policy. Private
detention facilities are one-stop shops for immigrant processing. The DHS contracts are to train and supply security
guards and screeners and to build, manage and maintain detention facilities. Security guards and screeners
make deicisions related to political asylum and other forms of relief from deportation,
arrest, recommendations on relief from detention, and hold a great deal of everyday
power of the conditions of confinement within the detention facility. Guards have
control over access to phones, lawyers, visitors, food, restrooms and medical care.
Given the logic of private prisons – to keep beds full- privatization threatens the legal
integrity of immigrant processing. Private guards wear badges, uniforms, carry guns and drive cards with
sirens; they make arrests and as far as the individual is concerned, represent the coercive force of the state. They wield as
much power as any state actor but are not held as accountable to the rule of law. Screeners and guards make
decisions with virtually no oversight. Interviews and hearings are closed to the public
and family. Non-citizens are secretly shuffled from one detention facility to another
around the country, without notice to family or counsel.
Link - IR
The affirmative’s fetish with the sovereignty of the state ignores all
oppression and reduces humans to being of utility
Chowdry 07(Geeta
Chowdry, Professor of Political Science at Northern Arizona University,
Millennium Journal of International Studies, Edward Said and Contrapuntal Reading:
Implications for Critical Interventions in International Relations, Sage Journals, PS)
To describe the period from 1815 to 1914 as “peaceful” in any¶ sense of that term seemed astounding to anyone familiar
with the¶ history of empire’.¶ 19¶ He suggests that IR’s fetish with abstractions, such¶ as
sovereignty, allowed the ‘wars, insurrections, mutinies, conquests and¶
territorial expansions’ to be ‘excised from the genealogy of international¶
relations’; by defining international relations as the encounter between¶
sovereign states, much of the history of empire is made invisible and¶ erased
from the legitimate study of international relations. Krishna’s¶ contrapuntal reading of
sovereignty, of ‘the Hundred Years’ Peace’, and¶ of the history of empire makes visible the hidden history of violence, land¶
theft, slavery, racism, empire building, etc. during this period.¶ The disciplining moves within the
pedagogy of IR - the taboo against¶ overly historical and descriptive
narratives; the fetish for quantitative¶ analysis that compress centuries of contested historical narratives into¶
eviscerated numbers; the reduction of socially sentient human beings¶ into utilitymaximizers; the preference for problem-solving theory (in¶ the guise of policy relevance)
rather than for critical or genealogical¶ theory; the putative anarchy of the
system of nation-states, that¶ discredits possibilities of imagining non-national ways of being; the¶
hypermasculine tetchiness and insecurity on questions of gender,¶ androgyny, and queer identity; and most significantly
the elision¶ of themes such as the theft of land, racism, slavery and colonialism¶ can be
collectively understood as a series of extraordinarily effective¶ moves that
preserve the ideology of IR discourse.¶ 20
IR ignores colonialism and the violence against the victims in favor of
sovereignty of the state
Jones 06(Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Lecturer in International Political Economy, Introduction: International
Relations,
Eurocentrism, and Imperialism, http://chapters.rowmanlittlefield.com/07/425/0742540235ch1.pdf,PS)
IR is largely silent on the imperial foundations and constitution of modern ¶ international relations, however.
According to IR common sense, the “expan-¶ sion of international society”
has entailed the spread of European forms of state,¶ sovereignty, democracy,
law, and rights to non-European areas and peoples.¶ But Europe’s legacy to
most of the rest of the world has been one of authoritari-¶ anism, theft,
racism, and, in significant cases, massacre and genocide. For most¶ of the world, it is
arguably the history of the colonial state and political econ-¶ omy rather
than European sovereignty and liberal democracy that is central¶ to
understanding modern international relations. To diminish the
significance¶ of colonialism to the study of international relations—for understanding in-¶ ternational
relations both past and present—is nothing less than to diminish¶ the significance and
worth of all peoples who have suffered colonialism. This,¶ truly, is the
massive “collateral damage” of modern IR.¶
Link – Latin America
The United States colonized Latin America through economic
engagement
Rotter 2k- Professor of History at Colgate University (The American Historical View,
“Review Essays Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic History”,5/3/00,
Jstor, 1205-1217) //AK
the United States was congenitally imperialistic, starting
with the determination of white settlers to move across the North American continent, displacing and
dominating the Indians as they went. The decision for imperialism after 1898 was an outward projection
of expansionist values peculiar to Americans, and the empire formed thereafter, in Latin
America and Asia, was an "informal" one, in which remote nations were bound to the United States not
so much by political institutions as by economic (and later cultural) attachments. Diplomatic
The more commonly accepted argument is that
historians who hold this view, including most of those cited by Said in Culture and Imperialism, are no less critical of
empire than is he. But having studied the record, they have concluded that the American empire was in important
respects different from its European counterparts.
The borderless rhetoric of NAFTA exacerbates dehumanization of Mexican
citizens
Jurado 8 (Kathy, Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) at the University of
Michigan, 2008, “Alienated Citizens: ‘Hispanophobia’ and the Mexican Immigrant
Body,”
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/58455/kjurado_1.pdf?seque
nce=1)
Latina/o cultural productions, as this dissertation has continually asserted,¶ provide a site
that not only registers but rearticulates dehumanizing language¶ and rhetoric from
the public domain. In the 1990s this language and rhetoric¶ (particularly in California
and the Southwest) was indicative of a surge in nativism¶ which marked the most
contemporary “Hispanophobic” moment that I will be¶ addressing. This decade ushered
in a new “borderless” logic that was primarily¶ espoused by the rhetoric that promoted
the North American Free Trade¶ Agreement. The alleged “invisibility” of the
U.S.-Mexico border as circumscribed¶ by NAFTA, as I will illustrate, simultaneously
criminalized and heightened the¶ visibility of Mexican im/migrant bodies.
NAFTA essentially approved of the¶ exchange of business and capital between
Canada, the U.S. and Mexico but rejected the reciprocal exchange of bodies.
When Proposition 187 was enacted¶ in California in 1994, during the height of the
conceptualizations of a new,¶ “borderless” hemisphere, ironically, though not
surprisingly, it also criminalized¶ the bodies of Latina/o immigrants migrating across the
much celebrated¶ “invisible” border.¶ Like most juridical language, the rhetoric of NAFTA and
Proposition 187¶ likewise suggested a sense of “race neutrality” that elided a
different reality in¶ practice. In the case of NAFTA it gestured toward a
democratically progressive,¶ borderless hemisphere. However, this surface
appearance belied the disruptive¶ measures it would eventually place upon
Mexico. What was hailed as (among¶ other things) the solution to “illegal immigration” in fact only further
aggravated¶ the influx of undocumented immigrants by producing a whole new segment of¶ economically displaced
immigrants. In the case of Proposition 187, it claimed to¶ isolate only “illegal” immigrants (whether Chinese, Latin
American, European¶ etc.) but the lived, everyday reality was the explicit racialization and persecution of Mexican
immigrants. The Latina/o cultural workers that I critically engage in¶ this chapter reveal not only the complexity of the ongoing debate on immigration¶ from south of the border, but also expose the falsity of “race neutral” juridical¶ language.
Their work demonstrates that such legal rhetoric and discourse was¶ complicit in the
racialization and dehumanization of Mexican im/migrant, and by¶
extension, all Latina/o bodies.
Link – Mexico
Mexico is painted in worst case scenario to justify manipulation
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
In Congressional hearings on Mexico’s certification, Mexico
was consistently described as being
rampantly corrupt and the source of most of the drugs coming into the US.
The US was said to have a duty and a right to correct Mexican behaviour. For
example, Senator Trent Lott, speaking before the Senate on 20 March 1997, stated that ‘we have a right’ to have Mexican
nationals extradited to face charges in the US and to have DEA (US Drug Enforcement Agency) agents carry weapons in
Mexico. The Clinton administration was given 90 days to provide evidence that Mexico had made substantial progress in
cooperating with US drug control efforts, including demands that Mexico allow more US law enforcement agents into
Mexico, permit agents to carry weapons, extradite Mexicans to the US and permit the US Coast Guard to chase traffickers
and stop them in Mexican waters. If Mexico did not agree to these measures decertification would follow (Cottam &
Marenin 1999: 225). Mexican responses to the US perspective were fast and furious. The Mexican Congress voted
unanimously to condemn certification in principle as an insult to national sovereignty. The US was also condemned for its
hypocrisy on drug production, it being noted that most of the marijuana consumed in the US is grown in the US. Overall,
as Cottam and Marenin (1999: 223) explain, the Mexican government has not only regarded the certification process as a
violation of international law but also as an illustration of US arrogance and imperialism
assertiveness of US officials has also been expressed with regard to other
Latin American countries. In one instance, as Der Derian (1992:108–9) informs us, the perceived ‘narcoterrorist’ threat from Colombia provoked Mayor Koch of New York to advocate an air attack on Medellı´n, while Daryl
Gates – the chief of the Los Angeles Police –went further and called for an outright invasion of Colombia.
The dominant discourse of the 1AC perpetuates colonialist impulses that
coerce Latin America into an assimilation
Ramirez 7 – (Luz Elena, “British Orientalism in Latin America”, British Representations of Latin
America, H-Net Reviews, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=14415)
This is welcome study investigates British literary representations of Latin
American subjects between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Luz Elena Ramirez, currently an associate
professor of English at California State University at San Bernardino, provides single case analyses of five representative
works within several historical contexts: Robert Schomburgk’s 1848 edition of Walter Ralegh’s Discovery of Guiana (the
“Elizabethan” and “Victorian” periods); Joseph Conrad’s 1904 work Nostromo and Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 the Lost
World (the era of “Development and Science” during the late nineteenth century); Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 Under the
Volcano (the era of British imperialist decline); and Graham Greene’s “Americanist” oeuvre (the advent of a “Modern
Consciousness” during the twentieth century). Yet, this exceptional book is much more than a series of “case studies,” as
she calls them. In an outgrowth of her dissertation from the University of Texas, Austin, Ramírez has advanced an
illuminating thesis about why British writers were interested in Latin America. These “Americanist
writers,” as she describes them, shared a number of fundamental characteristics:
they consistently “question or condemn brutality on the part of the British
Empire’s rivals, particularly the Spanish and Portuguese,” “justify major
interventions and multiple exploitations of native peoples,” and venerate
“the cartographic impulse of the British Empire to claim and map land” (pp.
23-24). This work succeeds, too, because it advances our interpretative framework beyond
postcolonial studies, which, as she points out, “both resist and complicate the
category of imperial discourse and derail a postcolonial (usually Marxist)
interpretation” (p. 3). In Ramirez’s estimation, the first “Americanist” literary piece was Walter Ralegh’s 1596
travelogue Discoverie of Guiana, written within the context of conquest, discovery, and exploration. By the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, particularly after the publication of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), for example,
British authors responded more frequently to Spanish conquest and
colonialism. By the early nineteenth century, Great Britain had supplanted Spain as the preeminent commercial
power in Latin America. British economic interests remained unmatched for most of the century, especially in the region’s
major port cities. This
was largely the result of efforts by newly independent Latin
American countries that often depended on British merchants for raising
badly needed revenue. By the early twentieth century, however, Great Britain’s influence in
Latin America diminished and other actors, such as the United States, filled
the void. Within this context, other writers, such as Charles Darwin, Bram Stoker, and Joseph Conrad, influenced
Arthur Conan Doyle’s perceptions of Latin America. As a side note not mentioned by the author, it is interesting
that in their representations of Latin American countries, many British
authors, like Conan Doyle, adopted a binary view of Latin Americans (in terms of
“evolution” versus “backwardness”) much the same way that Latin
American intellectuals like Domingo Sarmiento did (in terms of “civilization”
versus “barbarism”). In the twentieth century, British writers, such as Malcolm Lowry in his work Under the
Volcano, also looked to Latin America to “inspire their works” (p. 127). Within this context, questions
about how to “develop” Latin America and the nationalization of key
industries weighed heavily on the minds of British investors. In her final chapter,
Ramirez describes Graham Greene’s works as typically “Americanist” whereby
“protagonists do not mix easily or successfully with Creoles” and portrays
Greene as the quintessential twentieth-century liberal, uneasy with
socialism and neoliberalism (i.e., corporate interests) (p. 47). In fact, as Ramirez notes,
Greene “refuses to glorify informal imperialism,” but at the same time, “he
also rejects the romantic notion of successful twentieth-century subsistence
farming” (pp. 165-166). By the twentieth century, two “contradictory impulses” grew out of
these types of novels: one that sought to recreate the desire to travel, coupled with the view of
Latin America as a “failed experiment” (p. 50). As a minor quibble, one of Ramirez’s principle
arguments, namely that British writers tried to “justify major interventions and multiple
exploitations of native peoples,” does not, in my view, go far enough (p. 23). Ramirez notes on that by
the early nineteenth century, British merchants “depended less on military coercion
and more on financial clout and persuasion” (p. 6) and “considered
themselves facilitators of business, not conquistadors” (p. 12), and suggests that
“British imperialism in Latin America has been informal and relatively noninterventionist in nature” and that the British had more “entrepreneurial
interests rather than military ones” (p. 30). All of this leaves the reader with the
mistaken impression that British interests in Latin America were peaceful;
moreover, this view largely ignores a litany of examples that point to British
military aggression against Latin American countries, especially after the
turn of the nineteenth century. Beginning in 1806, a year after Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the
Spanish Armada at Trafalgar, Sir Home Popham led an unauthorized attack on Buenos Aires while it was still a Spanish
colonial port city. This defeat did not deter British forces, which then invaded Montevideo in 1807. In fact, only two years
before the Buenos Aires and Montevideo expeditions, Popham himself conceded: “The idea of conquering
South America is totally out of the question, but the possibility of gaining all
its prominent points, alienating it from its present European Connections,
fixing on some Military position, and enjoying all its Commercial advantages
can be reduced to a fair calculation, if not a certain operation.”[1] They us, while
Popham recognized the folly of replacing Spain as a mother country, he articulated the belief in a strong British military
presence in the region. Quite interestingly, his defeat in Buenos Aires led to nascent feelings of nationalism among
inhabitants of the port city, but it certainly did not stop British aggression. Indeed, the British were very
hostile in their business practices with Latin American countries during the
nineteenth century. Newly formed Latin American republics sustained their
currency in large part through loans from foreign lenders, especially British
merchants.[2] Argentina, for example, borrowed heavily from Great Britain
to finance projects and pay off war debts. Baring Brothers of London loaned
570,000 pounds sterling to the new country in exchange for a debt of 1
million pounds. As a condition of these loans, Argentine merchants were
forced to buy English manufactured goods. Then, in 1825, while the Anglo-Argentine Treaty of
Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation officially recognized Argentine national sovereignty, this agreement forced
Argentina to open its economy to British commercial interests. When Latin American countries reneged on their
agreements, did not respond to British efforts to force open their economies, or could not pay back their loans, the British
often resorted to military interventions. The British (along with the other major European powers) punished
Latin American countries by blockading their major port cities, such as
Buenos Aires during the 1840s, and Veracruz, Mexico in the 1860s. British forces left
Veracruz only when Mexico agreed to resume payments. The reason for Ramirez’s
emphasis on British commercial rather than military aggression may be that she relies heavily on a seminal work by P. J.
Cain and A. G. Hopkins titled British Imperialism: 1688-2000 (2001) as background. Cain and Hopkins
emphasize British financial and commercial interests rather than industrial
sectors as the main impetus for British imperialism. These authors also
argue that the British intended to bring South American nations under their
influence and replace Spain once and for all. Like Ramirez, however, they
ignore the effects of British military aggression in Latin America. Incorporating
works by H. S. Ferns, Nicolas Shumway, and Jeremy Adelman would have shed a different light on British policies, which,
interestingly, contributed to the growth and development of nationalism.[3] In all, however, these criticisms are not
intended to take anything away from Ramirez’s overall impressive findings. Detractors of Ramirez’s “case studies”
approach may argue whether or not she has chosen the right “cases,” or enough of them to support her thesis. The idea, for
example, that Graham Greene, being born in 1904–the same year that both Nostromo and Green Mansions were
published–“inherited a long tradition of British writing about Latin America,” may seem contrived (p. 145). Indeed, more
“case studies” will be needed to see if the author’s conclusions are ultimately correct. However, I find her arguments
overall to be very convincing and recommend this monograph for scholars in literature and history as well as advanced
undergraduate and graduate students. Ramirez blazes new trails with this book, which will not be the last word on this
subject.
Link – Mexicans residing in the US
Differentiating Mexican’s in the United States based on legal status is
a form of dehumanization
Jurado 08’- Master in American Culture and US-Mexican Relations (Kathy,
“ALIENATED CITIZENS: “HISPANOPHOBIA” AND THE MEXICAN IM/MIGRANT
BODY”, University of Michigan, 2/14/08,
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/58455/kjurado_1.pdf?seque
nce=1)//AK
The topic of Latino immigrant day laborers has resurfaced recently as a tense, if volatile,
subject. In part, this is a result of the racial and social tensions that tend to accompany
the emergence of such “day labor corners,” but also in part because the city corners in
question are no longer a strictly Southern California fixture. Rather, the recent media
buzz is largely informed by the locations of these corners, such as those now found in
states like Louisiana and Georgia and various other “non-Southwest” geographic regions.
The manifestations of the racial tensions embedded within this issue run the Countless
reports have focused on the “unexpected” locations for newly arriving immigrant labor.
Some examples: the particularly informative report by Maria Hinojosa “Immigrant
Nation: These headline stories become markers of the volatile and often hateful tensions
associated with immigrant laborers—particularly those of Mexican (or other Latina/o)
ancestry. Latina/os in general pose an interesting challenge to the U.S. national
imaginary in that they comprise a large population that is a mixture of varying legal
statuses that include but are not limited to: citizens, legal residents, and the
undocumented. As noted in the first quote from the epigraph, when the Dillingham
Commission reported on Mexican immigrants, it noted the community’s difficulty in
“assimilating,” but telling of the era in which the report was written, it deemed that
factor irrelevant if the laborers returned from whence they came. Nearly one
hundred years later, I would argue that the same sentiment remains. My
dissertation shows how the dehumanizing discourses deployed to discursively
construct Mexican immigrant laborers at the beginning of the last century
continue to burden the Latina/o community in the present day. In part, that
long trajectory the United States has with Mexican immigration and its accompanying
xenophobia is the focus of this dissertation. This hate crime was also the impetus for the
documentary titled Farmingville by Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini.Emilie Bahr
"Many taco trucks targeted by Jefferson Parish food-vendor restrictions have left the
parish." Day to Day, NPR, August 8, 2007. Pedro Guzman, a 29 year old developmentally
disabled Mexican American citizen was mistakenly deported to Tijuana and was only
recently found in August 2007 after 3 months of wandering the streets of Tijuana, a city
he had never been to. However, this dissertation is also about the counter articulations
that arise from within the Latina/o community that denounce and challenge such
dehumanizing rhetoric during peak “Hispanophobic” moments. Thus, at its most basic
level, my project is an effort to valorize critical analysis and deconstruction of such
racializing conceptualizations in the Latina/o community. My dissertation focuses
primarily on the Mexican im/migrant body in large part due to the fact that they
comprise the majority of Latina/os living in the United States as well as the adjacency of
the two countries by a particularly militarized and violent border. However, I strongly
believe that such regionally and nationally specific analysis also sheds light on the
Latina/o population in the United States, particularly because Latino/os tend to be
conflated or collapsed into the most visible ethnic group. In certain geographical spaces,
such as the Southwest, the bodies of Mexican im/migrants remain discursively
constructed as beasts of burden; a workforce that is at times either invisible or
anonymous while at others conspicuously criminal, but always “foreign” and “alien.”
This statement, unfortunately, still resonates with the way we think of Mexican
immigrant labor contemporaneously, as disembodied hands, without faces or bodies.
Manos sin cuerpos de carne y hueso. Devoid of the conceptualization of any
concrete physicality and corporeality within dominant discourses, it is
easier to erase, exploit and criminalize these bodies. In short, it becomes
easier to strip these subjects of any basic sense of humanity. The recurrence of
Mexicans as the object of such alienating discourse is the driving force behind this
project. Ethnic 4 Mexicans (and by unfortunate extension, all Latina/os) in the U.S. are
“alientated” in the sense that they are considered “foreign” and thus forced outside any
conceptualizations of the nation. Further, I also want to play with the word to refer to
the discursive construction of ethnic Mexicans as a monstrous “alien”
Other.
The xenophobia surround ‘terrorism’ is the same racism used to
subjugate Mexicans in the United States
Jurado 08’- Master in American Culture and US-Mexican Relations (Kathy,
“ALIENATED CITIZENS: “HISPANOPHOBIA” AND THE MEXICAN IM/MIGRANT
BODY”, University of Michigan, 2/14/08,
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/58455/kjurado_1.pdf?seque
nce=1)//AK
Following September 11, xenophobic discourses about “foreign Others” reached new
levels provoking a renewed, if not fanatic, wave of intolerance for ethnic groups
perceived to be culturally different within the United States. Certainly, this is nothing
new to the self proclaimed “nation of immigrants” that has always struggled with its
master narrative that simultaneously romanticizes its immigrant roots while maintaining
xenophobic assumptions about “foreigners.” While xenophobic ideologies about Other cultures
know no boundaries or limitations (that is to say, no one is “safe”), for the purposes of this project, I would
like to isolate those that relate to ethnic Mexicans. Given the fact that during the last decade or so, public intellectuals like
Patrick Buchanan and 26 Samuel P Huntington have produced xenophobic texts that bear striking similarities to the
eugenic texts of the previous century, I would like to situate my project historically by interfacing eugenics texts that
crystallized public thought at the turn of the century with contemporary articulations of xenophobic discourse. The
placement of these texts into dialogue with each other reveals the recurrence of fears about Mexican-Latina/o
im/migrants. Despite their differences in terms of audience and genre (eugenics texts were couched in what was then a
“science” and the more recent texts have been marketed as expressions of “political pundits”), the similarities in their
rhetorical strategies to influence public opinion and public policy, is uncanny. If one looks at years past, it is
clear to see that the “Hispanophobia” evident in California in the mid 1990s was simply
the latest iteration of a cyclical narrative in which Latina/o subjects and especially
immigrants, played a recurring role as dangerous “aliens.” Eugenics ideology and scholarship
constituted a strong ideological force in the early 20th century and its effects were far reaching, adding a scientific
legitimacy to racist and imperial projects like Jim Crow segregation and colonial ventures in Latin America. Eugenicists
concern with the “unacceptable” and the “inferior” was mirrored in political discourse as nativist sought to bar entry to
subjects they deemed “unacceptable” and “inferior.” Espoused by leading figures such as Madison Grant and his disciple
Lothrop Stoddard, eugenics was focused on the basic question of hereditary characteristics. Out West, in California, C.M.
Goethe was Grant and Stoddard’s counterpart in both influence and prestige. Thus, as leading eugenicists
would vehemently argue, environment and education could do little in regards to “race
betterment.” “Better breeding” was the only solution and the bedrock of eugenics logic.
In this pseudo-scientific logic, even climate influenced genetic disposition: making
people from warmer, tropical climates “intellectually and physically fat” or conveniently,
more “able” to withstand harsh climates such as those demanded by agricultural work.
Link – Middle East
Middle Eastern plans by the US ignore history in planning for the
future
Said 3 (Edward Said, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University, “Preface to Orientalism” Al-Ahram Weekly, August 25 2003
http://www.fsor.it/varia/Edward%20Said%20-%20Preface%20to%20Orientalism.htm)
I wish I could say that general understanding of the Middle East, the Arabs and Islam in the United States has improved
somewhat, but alas, it really hasn't. For all kinds of reasons the situation in Europe seems to be considerably better. In
the US the hardening of attitudes, the tightening of the grip of demeaning
generalisation and triumphalist cliché, the dominance of crude power allied
with simplistic contempt for dissenters and "others" has found a fitting
correlative in the looting and destruction of Iraq's libraries and museums. What our leaders and
their intellectual lackeys seem incapable of understanding is that history cannot be
swept clean like a blackboard, clean so that "we" might inscribe our own future there
and impose our own forms of life for these lesser people to follow. It is quite
common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map
of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken
up like so many peanuts in a jar. But this has often happened with the
"Orient", that semi-mythical construct which since Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in the late 18th century has been
made and re-made countless times. In the process the uncountable sediments of history, that
include innumerable histories and a dizzying variety of peoples, languages,
experiences, and cultures, all these are swept aside or ignored, relegated to the sand
heap along with the treasures ground into meaningless fragments that were taken out of Baghdad.¶ My argument is that
history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, so that "our" East, "our" Orient becomes "ours" to possess and
direct. And I have a very high regard for the powers and gifts of the peoples of that region to struggle on for their
vision of what they are and want to be. There's been so massive and calculatedly aggressive
an attack on the contemporary societies of the Arab and Muslim for their
backwardness, lack of democracy, and abrogation of women's rights that we
simply forget that such notions as modernity, enlightenment, and
democracy are by no means simple and agreed-upon concepts that one
either does or does not find, like Easter eggs in the living-room. The breathtaking insouciance of jejune
publicists who speak in the name of foreign policy and who have no knowledge at all of the language real people speak has
fabricated an arid landscape ready for American power to construct there an ersatz model of free market "democracy".
You don't need Arabic or Persian or even French to pontificate about how the democracy domino effect is just what the
Arab world needs.
Link – ‘Modernization’
Representations of modernization of Latin American countries are
used to gain imperialist contol
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
Overall, there tended to be an association of modernization with societal transformation,
so that for one American sociologist modernization was conceived as a total
transformation of traditional or premodern societies into the types of technology and
associated social organization that characterized the politically stable nations of the
Western world (Moore 1966). Moreover, a distinction was sometimes drawn between
notions of ‘change’ and ‘development’ that were envisaged as being incremental, and
modernization which was posited as being tantamount to a systemic transformation
(Halpern 1965). For one influential political scientist, modernization was a special kind
of hope, and ‘embodied within it are all the past revolutions of history and all the
supreme human desires . . . the modernization revolution is epic in its scale and moral in
its significance’ (Apter 1987: 54). There was also a belief, certainly expressed by Talcott
Parsons, looking back at the 1950s and 1960s, that the trend toward modernization had
become worldwide, and that in particular the elites of most non-modern societies
accepted the crucial aspects of the values of modernity, especially economic
development, education, political independence and some form of ‘democracy’ (Parsons
1971: 137). In general, and notwithstanding the varying strands within it, modernization
theory as it was developed and deployed in the 1950s and 1960s can be characterized by
the following features: a) a linear view of history, in which Western countries were
situated as being further along the path of modern development than Third World
countries; b) the positing of a crucial historical distinction between modern and
traditional social systems, whereby the modern was defined inrelation to a series of
ostensibly primary attributes of Western societies – the scientific, secular, rational,
innovative, democratic, open, plural, urban-industrial, achievement-oriented, and
universally relevant – to be distinguished from the traditional, which was defined in
relation to characteristics such as the particular, the religious, backwardness, the
predominance of the rural, undeveloped divisions of labour, pre-democratic institutions,
over-population, and the lack of capital, technology, entrepreneurship and modern
values; c) progress and development for the ‘traditional society’ would come about
through the diffusion of modernization from the West to the non-West; and d) successful
transformations were not inevitable, and the passage from the traditional to the modern
required a series of appropriate interventions – economic, financial, social, cultural,
political and psychological.
‘Modernization’ is used as a justification to dichotomize and
subjugate Latin America
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
In general, and notwithstanding the varying strands within it, modernization theory
as it was developed and deployed in the 1950s and 1960s can be characterized by the
following features: a) a linear view of history, in which Western countries were
situated as being further along the path of modern development than Third
World countries; b) the positing of a crucial historical distinction between modern and
traditional social systems, whereby the modern was defined in relation to a series of
ostensibly primary attributes of Western societies – the scientific, secular, rational,
innovative, democratic, open, plural, urban-industrial, achievement-oriented, and
universally relevant – to be distinguished from the traditional, which was defined in
relation to characteristics such as the particular, the religious, backwardness, the
predominance of the rural, undeveloped divisions of labor, pre-democratic
institutions, over-population, and the lack of capital, technology,
entrepreneurship and modern values; c) progress and development for the
‘traditional society’ would come about through the diffusion of
modernization from the West to the non-West; and d) successful transformations
were not inevitable, and the passage from the traditional to the modern
required a series of appropriate interventions – economic, financial, social,
cultural, political and psychological. Modernization theory provided post-war society
in the West, and especially the US, with a temporal and spatial identity, an
identity that could only be effectively constructed in a relation of difference with
another time and another space. In this sense the will to be modern designated two
forms of separation. First, there was a separation or break in time – the contrast between
a modern now and a traditional, backward past, so that the societies of the Third World
were located in another, previous time and their co-presence in modern time was
effectively erased (Fabian 1983). Second, there was a separation in space – a
geopolitical distinction made between the modern societies of the West and
the ‘traditional societies’ of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Link – ‘Modernization’
The aff is wed to Modernization as a tool to dominate the other which
makes violence inevitable
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
Much attention was allocated to the role of modernizing elites and their
capacity to engineer Western-led development and change. Eisenstadt (1966),
for instance, stressed the centrality of their role in the crucial problem of
developing an institutional structure capable of absorbing continually
changing social problems and demands. Here the attitude of elites was examined
in terms of their relation to modernity, and institutional patterns were distinguished on a
basis of democratic versus oligarchic, so that with respect to the former, one had a
contrast between the political democracies of the West and the tutelary or guided
democracies of the non-West, and as regards oligarchies, it was possible to differentiate
three types: the modernizing, as in those peripheral societies that were moving away
from being traditional and backward; the totalitarian, as in the countries of the
communist world; and the traditional, as in those countries that had still not embraced
the diffusion of Western modernity. In these kinds of formulations, modernization
always had its shadow – the danger that through the process of social mobilization, and
as an inevitable component of the ‘revolution of rising expectations’, new strata or
groupings would emerge that would be hostile to the Western-led process of modern
transformation. Infused with the extraneous ideology of communism, these radicalized
layers of the modernizing society could well come to pose a serious and sustained threat
to an orderly transition to modernity. It was in this context, for example, that Pool
argued that ‘order depends on somehow compelling newly mobilized strata to return to a
measure of passivity and defeatism from which they have been aroused by the process of
modernisation’
Link - Relations
Attempts at relations is used to define the engaged country –
perpetuates asymmetrical power
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at Loughborough University
(David, “Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
As a symptomatic illustration of these kinds of interconnections, it can
be suggested that international, and more specifically North/South,
relations are characterized by an asymmetrical power
to define and be defined – who, for example, has the will
and capacity to define sovereignty for both the self and
the other? Looking at the example of the US in relation
to societies of the Latin South, this asymmetrical power,
notwithstanding its varied mutations, has been continuously
present, as has been discussed in previous chapters. Such an
asymmetrical power has gone together with a sharp dissonance
between the imperialist impact of the US and its enunciated belief from
Jefferson on in the self-determination of peoples. This contradiction
has been the subject of varied attempts at resolution. In some
instances, as with the Reagan administration’s intervention in Grenada
in 1983, a clear separation was drawn between a people that
purportedly needed rescuing – the US invasion of Grenada
was portrayed as a ‘rescue mission’ – and a tyrannical
regime that not only did not represent the interests of its people but
also constituted a threat to the neighborhood of the Americas
(Weber 1999: 79). At the same time, this separation has been
reinforced by the association of the ‘tyrannical regime’
with a foreign ideology that is seen as subverting the
values of Western freedom and democracy, as in the
Cuban case both during the Cold War and also post-1989. In these
contexts, the US has assigned to itself the right and also
the responsibility to define the sovereignty of another
people. For example, in the case of the US invasion of Panama in
December 1989, which was undertaken despite the refusal to accord it
legitimacy at either the continental, i.e. OAS (Organization of
American States), or the UN level, the US Permanent Representative to
the United Nations declared that ‘the sovereign will of the Panamanian
people is what we are here defending’ (qtd in Weber 1995: 100).
Link - Stability
The U.S. will aid authoritarian control to force neoliberalism on a
stabilized population
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
The essential problem of politics was the failure of political institutionalization to keep up with the pace of social and
economic change. The crucial problem for developing societies was one of order,
authority and institutional control, features that in the US had been assured
since its founding. For Huntington it was not the absence of modernity but the effort to achieve it that
produced political disorder, and it was actually the diffusion of modernization
throughout the world which increased the prevalence of violence (Huntington
1968: 41). While he associated violence with Third World society itself, rather than with the nature of Western power, he
did point to the stabilizing effect of revolutionary governments which did secure order while introducing totalitarian rule.
Organization, for Huntington, was of cardinal importance, and in this he credited Leninism with
bringing to modern politics not the destruction of established institutions
but the organization and creation of new political institutions. In general, it was
concluded that political organization was crucial for stability and liberty – ‘in the modernizing world he controls the future
who organizes its politics’ (1968: 461). The trajectory of modernization theory was greatly affected by the intensified
geopolitical turbulence in the societies of the periphery. The concern with order and institutional control, made so much
more palpable by the Cuban Revolution and the Vietnam War, came to receive more attention in the 1960s, and the
Huntington text was emblematic of this shift in focus. Such a shift in analytical attention was not only due to greater
turmoil in the international arena, but was also influenced by the development of social conflict within the US itself.
Opposition to the Vietnam War which developed through the 1960s and into the early 1970s – especially visible on US
campuses with the activities of Students for a Democratic Society, in the upsurge in the civil rights movement, and in the
destabilizing effect of assassinations of key leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and the Kennedys – tended to create an
ethos in which a concern with order became more prominent. Overall, the earlier, more optimistic
visions of the gradual but effective diffusion of modernization and
democracy came to be overshadowed by a focus on political conflict and the
need for authority and order to help buttress Western power in a
destabilizing world. This change in focus evidently reflected the dynamic of Cold War
politics and the intensification of superpower rivalry from the late 1950s through to the
mid-1970s and the end of the Vietnam War.
Link - Terrorism
Designating people as “terrorists” sustains the orientalist binary of us
and them
Graham 06(Stephen
Graham, Professor at the University of Durham, International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 30 Issue 2 Pages 255- 276, Cities and
the ‘War on Terror’, July 4 2006, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.14682427.2006.00665.x/full,PS)
Whilst dramatic, the imaginative geographies underpinning the ‘war on terror’ are
far from original (see Driver, 2001). In fact, they revivify long-established colonial and
Orientalist tropes to represent Middle Eastern culture as intrinsically
barbaric, infantile, backward or threatening from the point of view of
Western colonial powers (Gregory, 2004a). Arab cities, moreover, have long been
represented by Western powers as dark, exotic, labyrinthine and
structureless places that need to be ‘unveiled’ for the production of ‘order’ through the ostensibly superior
scientific, planning and military technologies of the occupying West. By burying ‘disturbing
similarities between “us” and “them” in a discourse that systematically
produces the Third World as Other’, such Orientalism deploys considerable
‘symbolic violence’ (Gusterson, 1999: 116). This is done, crucially, in order to produce both‘ “the Third World”
and “the West” ’ (ibid.: 116).¶ The Bush administration’s language of moral absolutism is, in particular, deeply Orientalist.
It works by separating ‘the civilized world’— the ‘homeland’ cities which must be ‘defended’— from the ‘dark forces’, the
‘axis of evil’ and the ‘terrorists nests’ alleged to dwell in, and define, Arab cities, which allegedly sustain
the ‘evildoers’ who threaten the health, prosperity and democracy of the
whole of the ‘free’ world (Tuastad, 2003). The result of such imaginative
geographies is an ahistorical and essentialized projection of Arab urban
civilization. This, as Edward Said (2003: vi) remarked, just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is very easily
worked so as to ‘recycle the same unverifiable fictions and vast
generalizations to stir up “America” against the foreign devil’. The Orientalist notions
of racial worth that helped to shape the real and imagined geographies of Western colonialism are particularly important
foundations for the ‘war on terror’ (Gregory, 2004a). As Paul Gilroy suggests, these:¶ old, modern notions of racial
difference appear once again to be active within the calculus [of the ‘war on terror’] that tacitly assigns differential value to
lives lost according to their locations and supposed racial origins or considers that some human bodies are more easily
and appropriately humiliated, imprisoned, shackled, starved and destroyed than others (2003: 263).¶ Discourses
of ‘terrorism’ are crucially important in sustaining such differential values
and binaried notions of human worth (Collins and Glover, 2002). Central here is the principle of
the absolute externality of the ‘terrorist’— the inviolable inhumanity and shadowy, monster-like status of those deemed to
be actual or dormant ‘terrorists’ or those sympathetic to them (Puar and Rai, 2002). The unbound diffusion
of terrorist labelling within the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’ , moreover, works
to allow virtually any political opposition to the sovereign power of the US
and its allies to be condemned as ‘terrorist’. ‘Without defined shape, or determinate roots’,
Derek Gregory writes, the mantle of ‘terrorism’ can now be ‘be cast over any form of resistance to sovereign power’ (2003:
219, original emphasis). Those experiencing frequent ‘terrorist’ labelling by national governments or sympathetic media
since 9/11 include anti-war dissenters, critical researchers, anti-globalization protestors, anti-arms-trade campaigners,
ecological and freedom of speech lobbyists, and pro-independence campaigners within nations like Indonesia allied to the
US. Protagonists of such a wide spectrum of opposition to transnational US dominance are thus all too easily
dehumanized or demonized. Above all, they become radically delegitimized. Who, after all, will speak out
in favour of ‘terrorists’ and their sympathizers?¶ Once achieved, this loose
proliferation of ‘terrorist’ labelling works to legitimize ever-widening
emergency and ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation. It sustains increasingly militarized civil and law and
order policing. And it supports the construction of complex legal and geographical archipelagos operating through
networked connections across many geographical scales. Within these, legal ‘states of exception’ are invoked to suspend
‘normal’ legal proceedings, but these themselves increasingly sediment out to become normalized and apparently
obdurate (Agamben, 2005).
Phrases such as Islamic fundamentalist only reinforces orientalism
Ameli et al 07(Saied
R. Ameli, Syed Mohammad Marandi, Sameera Ahmed, Sedfeddin
Kara, Arzu Merali, British Muslims’ Expectations of the Government: The British Media
and Muslim Representation: The Ideology of Demonisation, Published by Islamic
Human Rights Commission, www.ihrc.org.uk/file/1903718317.pdf, PS)
All newspapers used phrases containing the word Islamic or Muslim in the reports on the following day, 12th September
2001. Each newspaper tended to have a particular way of describing who it
thought were the culprits, for example, Islamic extremist, Islamic fanatics
or Islamic fundamentalists or fundamentalism, and tended to use this phrase more than
others, although other similar terms were used within the same article. The use of any of these phrases
may not have been frequent within any one article but it normally had the
desired effect of turning the reader’s attention toward a particular idea or
phenomenon. In The Sun for example, although the occurrence of phrases was relatively low, they would occur in
the opening paragraphs such that a framework was established within which to read the rest of the article. If it had
originally stated that ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ were responsible for the
attacks, later words like fundamentalist, extremist, Afghani fundamentalist
or fundamentalist Afghani regime may have been used interchangeably to
denote the same people. The ‘lexical choice’ of words and phrases within a particular context enables
readers to gain from it implicit understandings and meanings, especially in relation to minorities and more often than not
these meanings are negative (van Dijk, 2000). It is however important to differentiate between articles which were more
restrained in not only their use of the chosen phrases but which gave a bal- anced argument of the incident. For example,
two articles may both have contained the same phrase but the context may have been very different. One may
have looked at the reasons why America was a target of this type of terrorist activity whereas the other may have talked about the nature of the
Taliban and Osama bin Laden. However, it would not be an overstatement to say that in many people’s
minds the use of words such as ‘Islamic extrem- ist’ would simply have reinforced negative stereotypes regardless of the
con- text of articles. The greatest impact of this kind of press reporting has proba-
bly been to inflate the potential danger which ‘Islamic extremists’ pose to
the Western world. Frequent use of the above phrases no doubt reinforced
previ- ously held prejudices and fears about the Islamic world and Muslims
living in the West. These attitudes and representations are evident in many
western countries with Muslim populations. Elmasry (2002) demonstrates how in the
Canadian media, especially after 9/11, “the frequent demonic portrayal and misrepresentation of Islam and Muslims has
been one of the most persistent, virulent and socially significant sources of anti-Islam” (p 58). His identifica- tion of the
coupling of words such as ‘extremist’, ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘ter- rorist’ with Islam or Muslim, shows a disturbing
development in reporting in both print and broadcast media. Research in Europe has also reached similar conclusions
recognising the media in 15 EU states as being one of the most obvious sources of Islamophobic attitudes and idea.
Constructions of Arabic persons as “terrorists” is only a western way
of re-entrenching orientalist thought
Tuastad 03(Dag
Tuastad, Third World Quarterly, August 2003, Vol 24, No 4, pg 591-599,
Neo-OrIentalism and the new barbanism thesis: aspects of symbolic violence
in the Middle East conflict(s), JSTOR, PS)
Symbolic power is power to construct a hegemonic version of reality.' The
means of production in this sense is also the means to produce distorted
images of dominated people. Hence, resistance also involves resistance to the imaginanes produced by
the hegemonic power. Palestinians are victims of symbolic violence in two ways. The first is the 'terrorist'
stigma, with which the occupying power has labelled Palestinian resistance
organisations, if not the whole Palestinian population. The second way is that described by
Edward Said in Orientalism, the imaginary of the 'Arab mind' by the Israeli writer Raphael Patai, or by
Sainia Hamady's imaginary of the temperament and character of Arabs that Said quotes: The Arabs ... have demonstrated
an incapacity for disciplined and abiding unity.... They show lack of coordination and harmony in organization and
function, nor have they revealed an ability for cooperation. Any collective action for common benefit or mutual profit is
alien to them ... The Arab has little chance to develop his potentialities and define
his position in society, holds little belief in progress and change, and finds
salvation only in the hereafter.2 The production of such imaginaries dominated the writings of the early
Israeli social science establishment, as has been documented by Elia Zureik.3 The focus was on the Palestinian as an
individual actor, on his/her psychology, culture, value system, temperament and so forth. Attachments to
extended kinship systems, labelled 'familism', were interpreted as if Arabs
were resistant to Western-style industrialisation and development, and by
implication, to democra- tisation. Raphael Patai in The Arab Mind is a telling example of this
approach.4 Patai leans on psychological cultural explanations when he describes the stagnation and backwardness of
Arabs, claiming that 'the problem' is rooted in mental configurations, as the title of his book suggests.5 Arabs have a 'sense
of marginality which never allows an Arab to detach himself from his traditional culture', Patai writes-the Arab has a
'proclivity to blaming others for his own shortcomings and failure. Since the West is the most readily available scapegoat,
it must take most of the blame, with that goes inevitably most of the hate.'6 Alroy, building on Patai, claims that
Palestinian resistance against Israel is based on 'basic personality traits peculiar to Arab peoples', which refers to the
notion that 'the Arabs are a fiercely vengeful people'.' This imaginary of Arabs has significant political implications. For
example, Waschitz asserts that 'various social and communal groups' (the terms used when referring to Palestinians) lack
the 'psychological readiness', the cultural qualities that are needed to be members of a democratic society.8 This is
the underlying message of these interpretations of Arab social organisation:
Arabs or Palestinians do not have the 'civic' ethos necessary for political
communities. The political implication is what Said has called the project of
'Orientalism': 'They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented'. This is the quotation from Marx that
is stated on the opening page of Orientalism.9 A measure of the powerfulness of states is their ability to thwart attempts to
unmask that power.10 'Terrorism' and 'familism' or 'Arab mind' labels equally serve as powerful inventions that legitimise
continuous colonial economic or political projects. The imaginaries of 'terrorism' and 'Arab
mind' backwardness are closely connected. The latter explains the former as irrational-violence
thus becomes the product of a backward culture. I will argue that this way of explaining the violence of peripheralised
people in conflict is a form of symbolic violence, a form that has been characterised as the 'new barbarism thesis'.
Link - Threat Construction
Rhetoric of security allows the US to exercise its hegemony under the
mask of preventing war
Noorani 05(Yaseen
Noorani, Assistant Professor in Near Eastern Studies at the University
of Arizona. He was previously Lecturer in Arabic Literature at the University of
Edinburgh , The New Centennial Review, 2005, The Rhetoric of Security, Project Muse,
PS)
The rhetoric of security, then, provides the moral framework for U.S.
political hegemony through its grounding in the idea of national agency and
in the absolute opposition between the state of civility and the state of [End
Page 37] war. Designating the United States as the embodiment of the world order's
underlying principle and the guarantor of the world order's existence, this rhetoric places
both the United States and terrorism outside the normative relations that should inhere
within the world order as a whole. The United States is the supreme agent of the
world's war against war; other nations must simply choose sides. As long as
war threatens to dissolve the peaceful order of nations, these nations must
submit to the politics of "the one, instead of the many." They must accept the
United States as "something godlike," in that in questions of its own security—
which are questions of the world's security—they can have no authority to influence or
oppose its actions. These questions can be decided by the United States alone. Other
nations must, for the foreseeable future, suspend their agency when it
comes to their existence. Therefore, the rhetoric of security allows the
United States to totalize world politics within itself in a manner that extends
from the relations among states down to the inner moral struggle
experienced by every human being.
The affirmative’s construction of threats justifies prememptive
warfare that makes war inevitable
Jabri 06(Vivienne
Jabri, Professor of International Politics and the Director of the Centre
for International Relations at the King’s College London, International Peace Research
Institute, April 20 2006, War, Security and the Liberal State, Sage Journals, PS)
The practices of warfare taking place in the immediate aftermath of 11
September 2001 combine with societal processes, reflected in media representations and in the wider public sphere,
where increasingly the source of threat, indeed the source of terror, is
perceived as the cultural other, and specifically the other associated variously with Islam, the Middle
East and South Asia. There is, then, a particularity to what Agamben (1995, 2004) calls the
‘state of exception’, a state not so much generalized and generalizable, but
one that is experienced differently by different sectors of the global
population. It is precisely this differential experience of the exception that draws attention to practices as diverse as
the formulation of interrogation techniques by military intelligence in the Pentagon, to the recent provisions of counterterrorism measures in the UK,8 to the legitimizing discourses surrounding the invasion of Iraq. All are practices that draw
upon a dis-course of legitimization based on prevention and pre-emption. Enemies constructed in the
discourses of war are hence always potential, always abstract even when
identified, and, in being so, always drawn widely and, in consequence,
communally. There is, hence, a ‘profile’ to the state of exception and its experience. Practices that profile particular
communities, including the citizens of European states, create particular challenges to the self-understanding of the liberal
democratic state and its capacity, in the 21st century, to deal with difference. While a number of
measures undertaken in the name of security, such as proposals for the introduction of
identity cards in the UK or increasing surveillance of financial transactions in the
USA, might encompass the population as a whole, the politics of exception is
marked by racial and cultural signification. Those targeted by exceptional measures are
members of particular racial and cultural communities. The assumed threat that underpins the measures highlighted
above is one that is now openly associated variously with Islam as an ideology, Islam as a mode of religious identification,
Islam as a distinct mode of lifestyle and practice, and Islam as a particular brand associated with particular organizations
that espouse some form of a return to an Islamic Caliphate. When practices are informed by a discourse of antagonism, no
distinctions are made between these various forms of individual and communal identification. When communal profiling
takes place, the distinction between, for example, the choice of a particular lifestyle and the choice of a particular
organization disappears, and diversity within the profiled community is sacrificed in the name of some ‘precautionary’
practice that targets all in the name of security.9 The practices and language of antagonism, when racially and culturally
inscribed, place the onus of guilt onto the entire community so identified, so that its individual members can no longer
simply be citizens of a secular, multicultural state, but are constituted in discourse as particular citizens, subjected to
particular and hence exceptional practices. When the Minister of State for the UK Home Office states that members of the
Muslim community should expect to be stopped by the police, she is simply expressing the condition of the present, which
is that the Muslim community is particularly vulnerable to state scrutiny and invasive measures that do not apply to the
rest of the citizenry.10 We know, too, that a distinctly racial profiling is taking place, so that those who are physically
profiled are subjected to exceptional measures. Even as the so-called war against terrorism recognizes no boundaries as
limits to its practices – indeed, many of its practices occur at transnational, often indefinable, spaces – what is crucial to
understand, however, is that this does not mean that boundaries are no longer constructed or that they do not impinge on
the sphere of the political. The paradox of the current context is that while the war against terrorism in all its
manifestations assumes a boundless arena, borders and boundaries are at the heart of its operations. The point to stress is
that these boundaries and the exclusionist practices that sustain them are not coterminous with those of the state; rather,
they could be said to be located and perpetually constructed upon the corporeality of those constructed as enemies, as
threats to security. It is indeed the corporeal removal of such subjects that lies at the heart of what are constructed as
counter-terrorist measures, typified in practices of direct war, in the use of torture, in extra-judicial incarceration and in
judicially sanctioned detention. We might, then, ask if such measures constitute violence or relations of power, where,
following Foucault, we assume that the former acts upon bodies with a view to injury, while the latter acts upon the
actions of subjects and assumes, as Deleuze (1986: 70–93) suggests, a relation of forces and hence a subject who can act.
What I want to argue here is that violence is imbricated in relations of power, is a mode
of control, a technology of governmentality. When the population of Iraq is targeted through
aerial bombardment, the consequence goes beyond injury and seeks the pacification of the Middle East as a political
region. When legislative and bureaucratic measures are put in place in the name of security, those targeted are categories
of population. At the same time, the war against terrorism and the security discourses utilized in its legitimization are
conducted and constructed in terms that imply the defence or protection of populations. One option is to limit policing,
military and intelligence efforts through the targeting of particular organizations. However, it is the limitless
construction of the war against terrorism, its targeting of particular racial
and cultural communities, that is the source of the challenge presented to
the liberal democratic state. In conditions constructed in terms of
emergency, war permeates discourses on politics, so that these come to be
subject to the restraints and imperatives of war and practices constituted in
terms of the demands of security against an existential threat. The
implications for liberal democratic politics and our conceptions of the
modern state and its institutions are far-reaching,11 for the liberal democratic polity that
considers itself in a state of perpetual war is also a state that is in a permanent state of mobilization, where every
aspect of public life is geared towards combat against potential enemies,
internal and external.
Security threats allow the US to exercise militaristic dominance
anywhere as a preemptive measure against war
Noorani 05(Yaseen
Noorani, Assistant Professor in Near Eastern Studies at the University
of Arizona. He was previously Lecturer in Arabic Literature at the University of
Edinburgh , The New Centennial Review, 2005, The Rhetoric of Security, Project Muse,
PS)
I will argue that the symmetrical externality of the United States and terrorism to
the world order lies at the foundation of the rhetoric of security by which
the U.S. government justifies its hegemonic actions and policies. This
rhetoric depicts a world in which helpless, vulnerable citizens can achieve
agency only through the U.S. government, while terrorist individuals and
organizations command magnitudes of destructive power previously held
only by states. The moral-psychological discourse of agency and fear, freedom and enslavement invoked by this
rhetoric is rooted in both classical liberalism and postwar U.S. foreign policy. The war of "freedom"
against "fear" is a psychic struggle with no specific military enemies or
objectives. It arises from the portrayal of the United States as an autarkic,
ideally impermeable collective agent that reshapes the external world in its
own image. The war of freedom against fear thereby justifies measures said
to increase the defenses and internal security of the United States as well as
measures said to spread freedom and democracy over the world. Now that the
destructive capacity of warlike individuals can threaten the world order, the power of the United States must be deployed
in equal measure to neutralize this threat throughout the world. The world as a [End Page 14] whole now comes within the
purview of U.S. disciplinary action. Any manifestation of the state of war, terrorist
activity, anywhere in the world, is now a threat to the existence of the United
States and to world peace. There is no "clash of civilizations," but the Middle East, as the current site of the
state of war, is the primary danger to the world and must be contained, controlled, and reshaped. The symmetrical
externality of the United States and terrorism to the world order, then, allows its rhetoric to envision a historic
opportunity for mankind—the final elimination of the state of war from human existence, and fear from the political
psyche. This will be achieved, however, only by incorporating the world order
into the United States for the foreseeable future.
Link – NAFTA/Trace
US economic engagement in Mexico empirically fails- NAFTA, banks,
agriculture, and subsidies prove, the impact is poverty, famine, and
violence
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
If, for instance, we look at the impacts of NAFTA for Mexico, it can be noted that while
Mexican trade with the US has skyrocketed, going from US$36 billion in 1993 to $450 billion in 2002,
most of the high-volume South–North exchanges have been between a handful of
transnational subsidiaries in Mexico and their US-based corporate headquarters (Latin
America Press no. 1, 15 Jan. 2003: 6). During these years, a substantial number of Mexico’s banks have
now become controlled by US, Canadian and Spanish investors, while US-based Wal-Mart has
become Mexico’s leading retailer. Mexican agriculture has been badly affected by
imports – 6 million tons of cheap US and Canadian corn, much of it genetically modified,
enters Mexico each year, displacing small farmers from the internal market.
Moreover, farmers have now to sell to transnationals such as Cargill which have taken over the nation’s privatized grain
distribution infrastructure. Basic food imports have increased by 77 percent over the past decade
to an estimated $78 billion, equivalent to the government’s public debt, and critics fear
Mexico is losing its food sovereignty. There is inequality also in food subsidies, so while
per capita subsidies of $21,000 per annum enable US farmers to sell produce in Mexico
at prices 20 per cent below production costs, Mexican farm subsidies have continually
fallen so that they are now at an average of $760 per farmer (Latin America Press ibid.).
With increased poverty in the rural areas of Mexico, many farmers have joined the
immigration flow to the US. Further, in accordance with a 10-year-old NAFTA schedule,
the programmed suspension at the beginning of January 2003 of all tariffs on basic
agricultural imports from the US has provoked Mexican peasant farmers into organizing
militant protests. During a recent demonstration (December 2002) of rural
workers outside the Mexican Congress, where using sledgehammers and
tractors as battering rams, the campesinos broke down the gates of the
building, one 80-year-old peasant farmer from Guanajuato said, ‘I’m an old
man and I’ve never had to work in El Norte [the US] because my land gave
me what I needed to live –but now this government is forcing me to go there’
(Latin America Press ibid.) The radical opposition expressed by Mexican peasant farmers to the
subordinating effects of ‘free trade doctrine’ has been shared more generally. In late October 2002, in Quito, Ecuador, for
example, at a meeting of trade ministers for the FTAA (Free Trade Area for the Americas), Demonstrators who
were organizing protests against the new trade deal for 2005 proclaimed ‘We don’t want
to be an American colony!’, linking their protests to the Brazilian President Luis Ina´cio
Lula da Silva’s description of the FTAA as a policy of ‘annexation, not integration’
***Alternative***
Alt - Humanism
The alternative is to reject the aff to better situate the solvency claims
of the status quo from a humanist perspective
Said 3 (Edward Said, Profess tor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University, “Preface to Orientalism” Al-Ahram Weekly, August 25 2003
http://www.fsor.it/varia/Edward%20Said%20-%20Preface%20to%20Orientalism.htm)
My idea in Orientalism is to use humanistic critique to open up the fields of
struggle, to introduce a longer sequence of thought and analysis to replace
the short bursts of polemical, thought-stopping fury that so imprison us. I
have called what I try to do "humanism", a word I continue to use stubbornly despite the scornful dismissal of the term by
sophisticated post-modern critics. By humanism I mean first of all attempting to dissolve
Blake's "mind-forg'd manacles" so as to be able to use one's mind
historically and rationally for the purposes of reflective understanding.
Moreover, humanism is sustained by a sense of community with other interpreters and other
societies and periods: strictly speaking, therefore, there is no such thing as an isolated humanist.¶ This is to say that every
domain is linked to every other one, and that nothing that goes on in our world has ever been isolated and pure of any
outside influence. We need to speak about issues of injustice and suffering within a
context that is amply situated in history, culture, and socio- economic
reality. Our role is to widen the field of discussion. I have spent a great deal of my life
during the past 35 years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self- determination, but I have always
tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by way of persecution
and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be
directed towards a humane goal, that is, co-existence, and not further
suppression and denial. Not accidentally, I indicate that Orientalism and modern anti-Semitism have
common roots. Therefore it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent
intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the simplifying and
confining ones based on mutual hostility that have prevailed in the Middle East and
elsewhere for so long.
Alternative - Reject
Alternative is to reject the affirmative as a interpretation of the other
in favor of an openness to cultural multiplicity
Dallmayr 96, a political theorist specializing in modern and contemporary European thought, and Professor in the
departments of philosophy and political science at the University of Notre Dame; a recipient of NEH and Fulbright
fellowships, and has been a visiting professor at the New School in New York and at Hamburg University (Germany) and a
Senior Fellow at Nuffield College in Oxford (Fred R., Beyond Orientalism, Introduction p. xxii-xxxiii)//SC
The confluence of Western and Eastern theoretical initiatives opens the path to a
conceptualization of democracy and democratic sovereignty as a regime form hovering
precariously between affirmation and negativity, that is, as a mode of political will formation that
can never be stabilized into a solid identity (without on this account becoming a mere playground
of strategic interests). The issue of identity and diversity is further pursued in the concluding
chapter 9, which is devoted to "Democracy and Multiculturalism."• Returning to Todorov's
suggestion of distinct cultural paradigms, the chapter first highlights recent developments in
Western democratic theory and political ethics, with special attention being given to the role
assigned to a "politics of (cultural) difference." These theoretical reflections then set the stage for
a more detailed examination of multiculturalism in a number of political contexts, primarily in
Canada and in some non-Western, developing societies. Experiences in these contexts are finally
presented as incentives both for political-institutional experimentation and for theoretical
innovation pointing beyond the conundrums of universalism and particularism or of globalism
and local parochialism. What all the successive chapters point to, and plead
for, is a move beyond Orientalism, but one which does not end up in a bland
assimilationism or a melting-pot cosmopolitanism. As it seems to me, global development
can avoid turning into a global nightmare only if it is accompanied by a
cultivation of deeper human potentials and aspirations, aspirations
foreshadowed in different ways in the plurality of cultural traditions.
Such potentials also hold the key to a genuine cross-cultural hermeneutics whose direction has
been charted by Gadamer, l. L. Mehta, and others. To listen again to Gadamer, in the Cited
interview with Thomas Pantham: "I firmly believe that the global status quo [its built-in
hegemony] must
be changed and that a new world order of human
solidarity must be brought about"•; to this end, philosophical hermeneutics can
contribute by fostering a "politics of dialogue and phronesis (practical
wisdom)/' These sentiments are echoed and further developed by Mehta in an essay on "The Will
to Interpret and India's Dreaming Spirit": We live in a world in which the hitherto relatively
closed horizons of the different traditions of mankind are opening out to each other and our
divided histories are being joined together, or are being rejoined, in strange, unheard-of ways....
But so far we have no hermeneutic of a global "we," appropriate to a
world factually in process of unification under the common destiny of the Gestell
[technological enframing], and aspiring to learn to speak a common language and share in a
heritage which is no longer sharply partitioned. . . [What is needed is] a renunciation
of the voluntaristic metaphysics of the will to interpret the other, a
willingness to let the other be, only inviting him to engage in the
exciting and creative task of reappropriation that lies ahead, for him
and in respect of his own tradition, endlessly open to the future and its
promise. The non-Western intellectual is brought to see that by joining
in this enterprise he may let his tradition deliver him into a
truth, new and fresh, and freed from the contingencies of its
historical context, by delivering to him its treasures of the
unsaid and unthought, the treasure of the zukun-tiige that lies hidden, conserved,
held in reserve, in all living past."
Rejecting Orientalism requires a break from the epistemology of the
affirmative
Dallmayr 96, a political theorist specializing in modern and contemporary European thought, and Professor in the
departments of philosophy and political science at the University of Notre Dame; a recipient of NEH and Fulbright
fellowships, and has been a visiting professor at the New School in New York and at Hamburg University (Germany) and a
Senior Fellow at Nuffield College in Oxford (Fred R., Beyond Orientalism, p. 134)
As it seems to me, exiting from Orientalism in our time requires more
than an exchange of blind charges and counter-charges; above all, it
requires a serious rethinking of such basic philosophical categories as
equality (or sameness) and difference. Perhaps, in reacting against
Buddhism, traditional Indian (or rather Hindu) thought has tended to
privilege difference too much over sameness (and being over nonbeing),
forgetting the more complex legacy of the “ontology of openness” deriving
from the Vedas. But the problems are reciprocal or cross-cultural. As Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have persuasively pointed out, the two principals
of equivalence and difference presuppose each other and need to be
articulated jointly, but in a way that resists synthesis, yielding only
reciprocal destabilization. What this points up is an enormous task
looming ahead of us in the wake of Orientalism: the task of genuine
dialogical learning on the level of basic frameworks, beyond the limits
of assimilation and exclusion. By being willing to shoulder this task,
Wilhelm Halbfass’s work makes an important contribution to
cross-cultural understanding which can serve as a guidepost
illuminating future endeavors.
Movements against neoliberal globalization are prerequisite to the
success of all other struggles
Santos 03(Sousa
Santos, social theorist, the director of the Center for Social Studies at the
University of Coimbra, April 2003, Bad subjects issue 63, Collective Suicide?,
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2003/63/santos.html,PS)
Is it possible to fight this death drive? We must bear in mind that, historically, sacrificial
destruction has always been linked to the economic pillage of natural resources and the labor force, to the imperial design
of radically changing the terms of economic, social, political and cultural exchanges in the face of falling efficiency rates
postulated by the maximalist logic of the totalitarian illusion in operation. It is as though hegemonic
powers, both when they are on the rise and when they are in decline,
repeatedly go through times of primitive accumulation, legitimizing the
most shameful violence in the name of futures where, by definition, there is
no room for what must be destroyed. In today's version, the period of primitive accumulation
consists of combining neoliberal economic globalization with the globalization of war. The machine of
democracy and liberty turns into a machine of horror and destruction.¶ In
opposition to this, there is the ongoing movement of globalization from below, the
global struggle for social justice, led by social movements and NGOs, of which the
World Social Forum (WSF) has been an eloquent manifestation. The WSF has been a remarkable affirmation of life, in its
widest and most inclusive sense, embracing human beings and nature. What challenges does it face before the increasingly
intimate interpenetration of the globalization of the economy and that of war?¶ I am convinced that this new
situation forces the globalization from below to re-think itself, and to
reshape its priorities. It is well-known that the WSF, at its second meeting, in 2002, identified the
relationship between economic neoliberalism and imperial warmongering, which is why it organized the World Peace
Forum, the second edition of which took place in 2003. But this is not enough. A strategic shift is
required. Social movements, no matter what their spheres of struggle, must
give priority to the fight for peace, as a necessary condition for the success
of all the other struggles. This means that they must be in the frontline of
the fight for peace, and not simply leave this space to be occupied solely by
peace movements. All the movements against neoliberal globalization are,
from now on, peace movements. We are now in the midst of the fourth world war (the third being the Cold
War) and the spiral of war will go on and on. The principle of non-violence that is contained
in the WSF Charter of Principles must no longer be a demand made on the
movements; now it must be a global demand made by the movements. This
emphasis is necessary so that, in current circumstances, the celebration of life can be set against this vertiginous collective
suicide. The peace to be fought for is not a mere absence of war or of terrorism.
It is rather a peace based upon the elimination of the conditions that foster
war and terrorism: global injustice, social exclusion, cultural and political
discrimination and oppression and imperialist greed.¶ A new, cosmopolitan humanism
can be built above and beyond Western illuminist abstractions, a humanism of real people based on the concrete
resistance to the actual human suffering imposed by the real axis of evil: neoliberalism plus war.
Discourse can break down the orientalist mindset of the aff
Crow 7(Lori
Crow, Candidate in Political Science at York University, “The “Fuzzy Dream”:
Discourse, Historical myths, and Militarized (in)Security - Interrogating dangerous
myths of Afghanistan and the ‘West,’” http://turin.sgir.eu/uploads/Croweloricrowe.pdf,PS)
“People think and see through language,” explains Eisenstein “but language¶ is also a¶
barrier.”¶ 27¶ Discourse acts as a variable in deliberatly constructed stories/m¶
yths which require¶ particular terminology to ensure a proscribed reading. For
example, the¶ words “terrorism” and¶ “terrorist” are ambigous terms which in
and of themselves are essentia¶ lly devoid of meaning, but¶ when used by
those with a particular agenda, become politically and det¶ ermindly loaded.
For¶ example, over
one hundred definitions of the word “terrorism” have been
found to exist and¶ which have been used. The pejorative use of the term
exemplified by the fami¶ liar phrase "One¶ man's terrorist is another man's
freedom fighter", is cogently expresse¶ d in Bruce Hoffman’s book¶ Inside Terrorism:¶ `What is called
terrorism', Brian Jenkins has written, `thus seem¶ s to¶ depend on one's point of view. Use of the term implies a moral
judgment;¶ and if one party can successfully attach the label terrorist to it ¶ s
opponent,¶ then it has indirectly persuaded others to adopt its moral
viewpoint¶ .'¶ Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization
`terrorist¶ '¶ becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether¶ one
sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If¶ one identifies with the victim of
the violence, for example, then the act¶ is¶ terrorism. If, however, one identifies
with the perpetrator, the violent¶ act¶ is regarded in a more sympathetic, if
not positive (or, at the worst, an¶ ambivalent) light; and it is not terrorism.¶ [¶ 28¶ This indicates
not only the subjectivity of the term, but perhaps also suggests the need to¶ question the usefulness of the term itself . Its
ambiguity means that explanatory control rests on¶ whomever possesses the power to define it and that power is enacted
through strategies that utilize not only manipulations of language, but also of symbols, imagery and the me¶ diums of¶
information dissemination. ‘Terrorism’ explains Eisenstein, has become¶ a catch-all term for any¶ enemy who challenges
US imperialism.”¶ 29¶ Other such words as “development”, “security”,¶ “peace”, and
“fundamentalism” have similarly been utilized to facilit¶ ate certain
historical myths¶ in the current situation in Afghanistan which become normalized as a common discours¶ e
that¶ naturalizes particular types of practical engagements. Thus, language¶ or discourse plays a
critical¶ role in the strategic construction of particular narratives that
inform our un¶ derstandings of a¶ particular event, region, or people. According
to Eisenstein, “rhetoric”¶ is a large part of the¶ problem contributing to dangerous myths: “The US appropriates ‘democra¶
cy’ for it’s own global¶ agenda, and displaces ‘terrorism’ to others elsewhere.”¶ 30¶ The danger thus lies in the portrayal of¶
whole or partial truths and in their imperial logic which often denies the ex¶ istence or silences¶ alternate ‘myths’ and
competing voices.
Reject the aff to unseat neoliberalisms (development discourse)
unquestioned place in American Economic Engagement
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
Although the influence of laissez-faire ideas has been most notable in the US, their
overall impact has been of a global nature. Their retention and redeployment in the late
twentieth century are an important part of the genealogy of the neo-liberal. Neoliberalism in development discourse must not however be seen as static – its content and
deployment in the contemporary era have been affected by a series of social changes and
mutations of perspective, which will be discussed in the next section of the chapter.
Overall, the above arguments lead me to underline the following three points. First of
all, the contemporary neo-liberal orthodoxy, with its ensemble of market,
private property, streamlined state and acquisitive individual, expresses an
historical continuity that is not infrequently overlooked. Retracing the roots
and de-sedimenting the origins of such an orthodoxy can help counter those
recurrent attempts to present neo-liberal ideas as somehow new, previously
untried, and eminently sound, thus veiling their history of failure and
ideological partiality. This is also important in relation to the fact that in
mainstream development discourse the role of the market, the place of free
trade and investment, the functioning of private enterprise and the logic of capital
accumulation are pervasively screened from any probing political critique, so that while
the state and the public sphere have been continually monitored, assessed and subjected
to far-reaching critique, there has been less space allocated for a critical rethinking of the
role of the private sector in society. Second, when one considers the critiques of
‘structural adjustment’, of monetarist policy and of neo-liberal strategy in general, it is
worthwhile remembering that the framing of the economic also insinuates a
conception of the individual and the relation of the individual to society. The
anchoring of the individual to the bedrock of possession, ownership and acquisitiveness
gives meaning to the notion of possessive individualism, and has to be distinguished
from the richer and potentially more open term of individuality, which connects to the
complex issues of identity and difference, taken up in chapter 6. Last, neo-liberalism is
embedded in a political philosophy, which is not always made explicit, but which aspires
to be universal and continuous, and the belief in the universalization of Western liberal
democracy as the final form of human government represents one example of such an
overarching doctrine (Fukuyama 1992). I shall return to this aspect of the politics of the
universal below.
Alt - Reject
The alternative is a rejection of the affirmative, which acts as a
rupture to colonialist logic, spurs movements
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
With the Western territorial state, there is an assumption of a pre-given territorial
integrity and impermeability. But in the situation of peripheral polities, the historical
realities of external power and its effects within those polities are much more difficult to
ignore. What this contrast points to is the lack of equality in the full recognition of the
territorial integrity of nation-states. For the societies of Latin America, Africa and
Asia, the principles governing the constitution of their mode of political being
were deeply structured by external penetration, by the invasiveness of foreign
powers. The framing of time and the ordering of space followed an externally imposed
logic, the effects of which still resonate in the postcolonial period. The struggles to
recover an autochthonous narrative of time, to counter a colonialist rule of memory, and
to rediscover an indigenous amalgam of meanings for the territory of the nation have
formed a primary part of post-Independence politics. In what were referred to as ‘wars of
national liberation’, the struggle to breathe new life into the time–space nexus
of independence lay at the core of the anti-imperialist movement. This then is
one modality of the geopolitical, of a transformative rupture, where anti-colonial
movements were the disrupting and destabilizing currents able to challenge and
eventually bring to an end the colonial appropriation of national space.
The alternative is to reject the affirmative- this is key to rethinking the
way we view Latin America
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
This element can be seen in relation to both the themes and concepts of analysis and the agents of knowledge. For
example, as part of an appraisal of Western theories of modernization and neo-liberalism, identifying the relative absence
of a critical consideration of the history of Western societies and specifically the role therein of colonialism and Empire
can form part of the development of critical knowledge. By specifying and analysing the
significance of the absence or silence, an alternative vision can be
developed. Crucial to this absence is the failure to appreciate the pivotal
significance of Western invasiveness, penetration and intervention. The
coloniality and imperiality of power are rooted in the will and capacity to
invade and penetrate – the imperial, as contrasted to the colonial, not
necessarily requiring the possession of territory. Also, the coloniality and
imperiality of power can be used to raise the issue of the imbrication of inside and
outside in the sense of tracing the domestic and foreign implications of the colonial and
imperial moments. Clearly, Empire, for example, is not a phenomenon that only resides in the international
domain; it also affects the domestic terrain, as will be seen in subsequent chapters. In a similar vein, but in
relation to the subjects or agents of knowledge, pointing to the absence of other voices of
analysis based in the South constitutes a part of the same critical project of opening up a
different kind of interpretive agenda. The exclusion or subordinating inclusion of
the intellectual other can be seen as part of the overall politics of occidental
privilege. Signaling such an absence and indicating its significance does not
have to lead into implicitly underwriting an uncritical reading of the
intellectual South. Rather, it is both to question those texts that make the intellectual
South invisible and to open up and amplify the analytical terrain – making the absence
critically present. Absence, in the way I define it here, therefore, has a duality; it is thematic and conceptual, and
also present in relation to the differential exclusion and inclusion of the agents of knowledge.
Alt - Reject
Only our criticism displaces representations of neutrality and opens
up possibilities for social understandings
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
it is not advisable to separate power from knowledge, nor power from the
politics of discursive representation, including the varied salience of cultural
imaginations. Specifically, in the setting of this study, I want to underscore the relevance of connecting the power of a
As was noted above,
shifting geopolitical landscape, most obviously seen in relation to watershed events such as the collapse of the Berlin Wall
in 1989 or the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, with the dynamic of conceptual and thematic
interpretation. Being critical means not only to be prepared to pursue these connections but also and
to challenge the official discourse of world politics, both in relation to the
in terms of the underlying markers of
interpretation and the geopolitics of strategic action. Furthermore, even though this might
be thought to be already understood, social processes in general need to be subjected to critique
through the identification of winners and losers, of costs and benefits, so processes such as
globalization or modernization are not implicitly envisaged as being beneficial to all
concerned. In addition, and with reference to the difference that agents of knowledge
make, the counter-representations of these processes which have been developed in the
global South need to be critically included as part of the broadening of our global
understanding.
essentially
meaning of specific events such as September 11 but also
The alternative is to reject the aff and question the assumptions made
by the 1AC- this is key to challenging global power and deconstructing
threats
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
Finally, returning to the comment made by Fernando Henrique Cardoso concerning the
proposal that Latin American societies publish reports evaluating the policies and
actions of the US – the call for a process of ‘writing, and theorizing back’, discussed in
chapter 5 in relation to dependencia – it is worthwhile underlining that aspect of
postcolonial thinking that enables us to take the critique back to the heartlands of global
power. In the context of the spread of US influence, especially in relation to the notion of
exporting democracy, a good place to start would be in the state of Florida during the
2000 presidential election, where defective voting machines, gerry-mandering and
chicanery came together to form a salient democratic deficit which was not salvaged by
the decision of the US Supreme Court. In other words, the actual prerogative of diffusing
one model of democracy to the societies of the South, needs to be challenged by going
back to the limitations of the ‘model society’ and posing questions to that uncritically
enframed model, as did members of the Russian Duma, who voted a resolution
demanding that American presidential elections, like Haiti’s and Rwanda’s, should be
held under the auspices of the United Nations. Resisting the exported model, challenging
the existing state of global affairs, arguing for another kind of world, lead us into a new
set of questions.
Alt - Reject
The alternative is to reject the aff to deconstruct the memories of
Western Domination- this is key to create standards for politics- only
the alternative prevents facism, racism, and human rights violations
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
Moreover, if we are concerned to extend the reach and effectiveness of critical thinking,
then clearly it is not advisable to refer only to the contemporary era. But then how do we
set about the task of connecting memory to conceptual preference – how, for example,
do we select what is remembered in terms of ideas and perspectives as well as events ?
One of the aims of chapter 5 which dealt with dependency ideas was to argue that a
critical memory on North–South relations would entail examining the potential
contemporary relevance of these ideas, as well as their original contextualization in the
geopolitical world of their time. Being critical of dependency thinking does not have to
lead to its entombment. The selection of dependency perspectives for analysis was
connected to the objective of sourcing different critical currents, so that through a
process of comparison and synthesis a more linked-up interpretation of North–South
relations could be formulated, albeit focused on one type of such relations, namely, US–
Latin American encounters. Consequently, dependency provided one kind of
analytical terrain for the subsequent treatment of the post-modern, differential elements
of Marxist thought and post-coloniality. Here, a suggestion of their nature as an
archipelago of critical thinking provided a basis for looking for the possible forms of
articulation and connection among them. And again in chapters 3 and 4, the histories of
modernization and neo-liberal thinking were not only contextualized geopolitically, but
also they were situated as part of a critical memory of ideas – ideas that still
have their effects on the direction of North–South relations. Thus the
geopolitics of memory is not only relevant to events and historical circumstances but to
the ideas and theories that have been drawn around them. Colonization of the
imagination or the reproduction of ruling memories need to be contested
through the deployment of a critical memory that re-invigorates previous
oppositional imaginations as well as re-examining past events that official
narratives sometimes erase or belittle. Representations of history, as the Haitian
anthropologist Trouillot (1995) observes, need to be associated with some conscious
relation to the knowledge they transmit, but critically it is the renewal of the practices of
power and domination that should concern us most, since although these practices are
rooted in the past, it is only in the present that the struggle against them can be
genuinely authentic. Making the link between past and present so as to profile the need
for contemporary struggles against injustice and inequality is a key aspect of the
repertoire of a critical or counter memory. It acts as a counterpoint to that other memory
that seeks to re-assert older colonial visions of Western supremacy. A struggle over the
meaning and significance of past ideas and events is expressive of a clash not of
civilizations but of geopolitical world-views. Struggles against present-day injustices and
oppression raise another theme involving power and knowledge – namely, the issue of
an ethics of responsibility. From a starting point that states that an ethic of
responsibility, allied with a search for a more emancipatory and democratic politics,
must include a responsibility to the other, then it follows that there will be a call to resist
domination, exploitation, oppression and all other similar conditions that seek to
subordinate the other. This would provide a substantive criterion according to
which one must mobilize opposition to, for example, ethnic and nationalist
chauvinism, fascism, racism, xenophobia, dictatorship and the imperiality
of power. However, while such mobilizations might helps us go beyond the ossifying
influence of political indifference, nevertheless, in prioritizing struggles against existing
conditions, the question of struggles
is left unattended. It is here that a
notion of radical democracy can be introduced; not as a goal that is restricted to the
national level, but as political horizon that can connect overlapping global, supranational, national, regional and local spheres in the sense that justice and equality and
representative and direct democracy can be fought for and extended through a series of
struggles, as has been occurring in Latin American societies such as Bolivia, Brazil,
Mexico and Venezuela. In these examples and elsewhere, democratic struggles for
greater equality, justice, and socio-economic and political rights crucially
unfold at the national level, which remains pivotal to political change, even
though this level is radically affected by those other levels or domains ‘above
it’ and ‘below it.
for some wider objective
Alt – K Sovles
Only being critical solves our offense- neoliberalism is rooted in a
stubborn regime that refuses change
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
This is an element that is not always easy to pin down, but it relates to being willing to
consider different visions while not abandoning a given set of analytical principles which
give any perspective its potential explanatory coherence, and protect it from a vapid
eclecticism. It means being open to learn from opposed interpretations and accepting
both the reality of the continuing diversity of knowledge, and the dynamic and
contradictions that affect the individual trajectories of specific authors. In the case of
Marx, for example, it is clear that there are important shifts of thinking in relation to the
way he interpreted non-Western societies, so that in later years his writing on
colonialism in India had a closer association with twentieth-century writing on
dependency than did his earlier writing, a point that was sometimes passed over. Also,
asanother rather different example, in the domain of post-modern thinking,
Baudrillard’s framing of the Third World oscillates from negative essentialization to
critical engagement, and taking one text would not do justice to his representation of the
Third World (see chapter 6). We always need to leave space open for ambiguity,
contradiction, change, complexity and that ever-present precariousness of thought.
Alt – Floating Pic/Alt solves the aff
Alternatively, we should engage the aff in non-hegemonic politics
through social forums, only this can avoid the true root of corrupt
politics
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
The idea of a counter-hegemonic globalization, a globalization from below that not only
challenges the neo-liberal doctrine of capitalist expansion and a resurgent imperialism,
but at the same time offers an alternative vision of how the world could be organized,
also can be viewed as offering the possibility of a counter-geopolitics. A transnational project for
global justice and participatory democracy which does not prioritize any one spatial level, and does not downgrade the
relevance of the national level (Glassman 2001), offers a real alternative to the current hegemony of
neo-liberalism. The actual practice of opposition has also been innovative, as the previous director of the World
Development Movement, Barry Coates, has pointed out. Face-to-face lobbying, alliance-building, the arrival in politicians’
mailboxes of thousands of letters, cards and emails from the public, stories placed with sympathetic journalists, working
through trade union and political party structures, and the production of alternative proposals on world trade and
investment done through international coordination via the internet, all came together in a successful campaign to block
the MAI initiative (see Green & Griffith 2002). A similar campaign is now underway against the attempt to revive the MAI
initiative, which is linked to another ongoing campaign against the GATS proposal on the privatization of services (see
WDM 2003). But also street protests and demonstrations are a key part of the
resistance movement, as was vitally clear on 15 February 2003, when over 8 million people
marched on the streets of the world’s five continents, protesting against the imminent
invasion of Iraq. The counter-geopolitics that I have invoked above is rooted in an optimism of the
will that goes beyond national boundaries, that encompasses activists across borders,
and provides a new kind of globalization. It is taken forward by grassroots activists,
progressive NGOs, civil society organizations, pressure groups and critical writers and intellectuals like Eduardo Galeano,
Walden Bello, Vindana Shiva and Martin Khor. An archipelago of resistances that engenders new
spatialities of solidarity and hope for a more emancipatory politics of the future.
Alternative – Standpoint (Voices of Dead)
Criticism based on the experience of the oppressed is the only hope of
the oppressed
Coronil 96’- Venezuelan anthropologist (Fernando, University of Michigan,
“Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories”,
Jstor, 51-87) //AK
The dead speak in many ways. In February 1989 an- other massacre took place in
Venezuela in which several hundred people were killed following rioting against an IMF
austerity program. The effort to exhume the secret mass graves of the army's victims
became the focus of popular strug- gle around the massacre, as the government sought to
prevent the bodies of the victims from speaking of how they had met death. When the
stakes of history are high, the safety of the living rests on the voices of the
dead who speak through the actions of the living. Establishing this link across
time, the Maya rebels of the contemporary Zapatista movement in Mexico define their
opposition through a collective history, proclaiming, "Zapata lives, the struggle
continues !" while their spokesperson Subcommander Marcos underlines that the people
who now speak "are the dead people of always, those who have to die in order to live.
Alt – Rejection sovles discourse
Only a rejection through discourse solves- otherwise the system gets
tangled
Springer 12’- University of Victoria, Department of Geography and History (Simon,
“Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy andMarxian
poststructuralism”, 5/12, http://academia.edu/592370/Neoliberalism _as_
discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_poststructuralism)
//AK
Suggesting that there is no entry point is not meant to imply an absence of historical trajectory to the idea of
neoliberalism, it is simply meant as a reconfigured understanding of historical materialism through a Foucauldian
archeology. So while Peck’s (2008) account of the ‘prehis-tories’ of ‘protoneoliberalism’ argues that there is a historical
lineage to the development of neo-liberalism, the lack of entry point here refers to the
slow processes of discursive circulation that allowed a fringe utopian idea to congeal as a
hegemonic imperative (see Plehwe et al., 2006).There is clearly a history, but in line with Peck’s (2008, p. 4)
rejection of an ‘immaculate idea-tional flashpoint’, the circuitous paths of neoliberalism have no precise discernable
beginning because it is impossible to disentangle them from previous ideologies and discourses. In this sense
‘neoliberalism in general’ is simply a semiotic sign of neoliberalization, as it is necessarily ‘something that stands for
something else, to someone in some capacity’ (Danesi & Perron,1999, p. 366). For its part, ‘the social’ is always a figment
of ‘the self’, which is not a coherent entity but a constitution of conflicting tensions and knowledge claims (Derrida, 2002;
Lacan,1977/2006). In short, ‘the social’ and ‘the self’ are mutually constituted through
discourse. Accordingly, what we are left with are rearticulations and representations of
neoliberal discourse in the form of particular discourses of neoliberalization, where
individual actors take a proactive role in reshaping the formal practices of politics,
policy, and administration that comprise the dynamics and rhythms of socio-cultural
change. There is no presentation or constitution, only Representation and reconstitution, because as we produce social
texts we create meanings. Such ‘discursive performativity’, Butler (1993,p. 107) argues, ‘appears
to produce that which it names, to enact its own referent, to name and to do, to name
and to make. ... [g]enerally speaking, a performative functions to produce that which it
declares’. Hence, the issue is not about a purported reality of scientific truths, where
neoliberalism is seen as an end, but the interpretation of cultural constructs (Duncan
&Ley, 1993), wherein neoliberalism becomes a means. The implications for the current neoliberal
moment is that it is just that, a transitory moment on its way to becoming something else. And while there will be no
perceptible line in the sands of history where neoliberalism categorically ends, the patterns of contextually specific
discourses of neoliberalization will eventually and inevitably mutate into something that no longer has any resemblance to
‘neoliberalism in general’. The question then, provoked by Barnett (2005) and Castree (2006), is does neoliberalism in
general ever exist? The answer I would venture is ‘yes’, but like anything we can name, and even things we can touch like
water (to revisit Castree’s peculiar analogy), they are always and only understood as representations through the
performative repercussions of discourse. Some readers might contend that this caveat amounts toa ‘no’, and they would be
correct if ‘neo-liberalism in general’ is understood as a ‘real word’ referent, something I have been arguing against. Again,
the rejection of an assumed ‘real world’ does not refuse a certain materiality to neoliberalism or other phenomena, but
instead recognizes materialism in the Foucauldiansense of an ‘archeology of knowledge’ whereby discourse and practice,
or theory and event,become inseparable. Thus, recognizing neoliberalism as a general form
becomes possible once we consider it through its discursive formation,
whereby the four understandings of neoliberalism are read as an ongoing
reconstitution of a particular political rationality (Brown, 2003).Far from negating the need
for resistance to neoliberalism, recognizing neoliberalism as rep-resentation still requires social struggle. Moreover,
and notwithstanding Gibson-Graham’s(1996) criticism, the building of transnational
solidarity through a ‘larger conversation’ isalso needed, because such activity hastens the
pace at which neoliberalism may recede into his-torical obscurity to be replaced with a
new discourse, a novel representation that we can hopeproduces a more egalitarian
social condition. Contestation actively works toward and openspathways to achieving
this goal (Purcell, 2008; Springer, 2010a, 2011b), and while discoursemay for a time
reinscribe the power of particular logics, Foucault (1990) insists that no discourse is
guaranteed. So while particular discourses prevail in some spaces, the potential for
meanings to shift or for subaltern discourses to unsettle the orthodoxy remains.
Alt – Solves Neolib
Rejection is necessary to tear down the system- only this can
overcome neoliberalism as a discourse
Springer 12’- University of Victoria, Department of Geography and History (Simon,
“Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy andMarxian
poststructuralism”, 5/12, http://academia.edu/592370/Neoliberalism _as_
discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_poststructuralism)
//AK
In arguing for an understanding of neoliberalism as discourse, I do not presume that compre-hending neoliberalism
separately as a hegemonic ideology, a policy and program, a state form, or as a form of governmentality is wrong or not
useful. Rather I have simply attempted to provoke some consideration for the potential reconcilability of the different
approaches. My argument should accordingly be read as an effort to destabilize the ostensible in compatibility that some
scholars undertaking their separate usage seem keen to assume. Without at least attempting to reconcile
the four approaches we risk being deprived of a coherent concept with which to work,
and thus concede some measure of credibility to Barnett’s (2005) claim that ‘there is no
such thing as neoliberalism’. Such a position renders the entire body of scholar-ship on
neoliberalism questionable, as scholars cannot be sure that they are even discussing the
same thing. More perilously, to accept such a claim throws the project of constructing
solidari-ties across space into an uneasy quandary, where the resonant violent
geographies of our current moment may go unnoticed, a condition that plays perfectly
into the ideological denial main-tained by the current capitalist order (Zizek, 2011). In
ignoring such relational possibilities for resistance to the contemporary zeitgeist, Barnett
(2005) seems keen to engage in disarticulation Yet deconstruction is meant to be
interruptive not debilitating. As Spivak (1996, p. 27) contends, ‘Deconstruction does not
say there is no subject, there is no truth, there is no history. It is constantly and
persistently looking into how truths are formed’. It is about noticing what we inevitably leave out of
even the most searching and inclusive accounts of phenomena like neoliberalism, which opens up and allows for
discursive understandings. Rather than making nice symmetrical accounts of the ‘real’ at the meeting point of
representational performance and structural forces, neoliberalism understood as a discourse is attuned to processual
interpretation and ongoing debate. While there are inevitable tensions between the four views of neoliberalism that are
not entirely commensurable, their content is not diametrically opposed, and indeed a considered understanding of how
power similarly operates in both a Gramscian sense of hegemony and a Foucauldian sense of governmentality points
toward a dialectical relationship. Understanding neoliberalism as discourse allows for a much
more integral approach to social relations than speech performances alone. This is a
discourse that encompasses material forms in state for-mation through policy and
program, and via the subjectivation of individuals on the ground, even if this articulation
still takes place through discursive performatives. By formulating dis-course in this fashion, we need
not revert to a presupposed ‘real-world’ referent to recognize a materiality that is both constituted by and constitutive of
discourse. Instead, materiality and discourse become integral, where one cannot exist without the other. It is precisely this
under-standing of discourse that points to a similitude between poststructuralism and Marxian political economy
approaches and their shared concern for power relations. I do not want to conclude that I have worked out all these
tensions, my ambition has been much more humble. I have simply sought to open an avenue for dialogue between
scholars on either side of the political economy/ poststructuralist divide. The importance of bridging this gap
is commensurate with ‘the role of the intellectual [in] shaking up habits, ways of acting
and thinking, of dispelling common-place beliefs, of taking a new measure of rules and
institutions and participating in the for-mation of a political will’ (Foucault, quoted in
Goldstein, 1991, pp. 11–12). Such reflexivitynecessarily involves opening ourselves to the
possibility of finding common ground between the epistemic and ontological
understandings of political economy and poststructuralism.
Alt – Reorientation (Third World Specific)
Re-examine the 1AC’s methodology and scrutinize the material
studied with direct sensitivity to eliminate orientalist categories
Macfie 02 (Alexander has written widely and published several books on the modern
history of the near and Middle East, Orientalism, page 197-198)
If the problem of orientalism, as defined by Said, is as deep-seated as its numerous
critics suppose, then it may be doubted whether it can be easily eliminated. Nevertheless
several academics have offered possible solutions to the problem, none wholly
convincing. Said, himself, in Orientalism, opted for critical self-scrutiny, involving a
direct sensitivity to the material studied, combined with a continual re-examination of
methodology and practice, and a constant attempt to respond, not to doctrinal
preconception, but to the subject matter concerened. Orientalists who have adopted this
approach might include Jaques Berque, Maxime Rodinson, Anouar Abdel-Malek and
Roger Owen. Progressiive scholarship, openly polemical and right-minded, might still
degenerate into dogmatic prejudice, but with sufficient effort, a study might be made to
fit experience, at the same time as being shaped by it. At all costs the danger of
Orientalizing the Orient, over and over again, is to be avoided. A generation of scholars,
critics and intellectuals might then grow up for whom racial, ethnic and national
distinctions are less important than the common enterprise of promoting humanity.
Gyan Prakash, in an article entitled ‘Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third
World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography’, Comparative Studies in Society and
History (1990), more consistently, perhaps, suggests that Third World historians
studying oriental history, who in their work risk reinforcing the existing East-West,
Orient-Occident divide, might solve the problem of orientalism by viewing all previous
studies of their subject as discursive attempts to constitute objects of knowledge,
involving a variety of shifting positions. Modes of thinking which configure the Third
World in such irreducible essences as religiosity, underdevelopment, poverty,
nationhood, and non-Westerness are at all costs to be avoided. The ‘calm presences’ of
orientalist categories, such as East-West, First World-Third World, which inhabit
thought, might then be disrupted.
***Impacts***
Impact – Root Cause of War
The root cause of genocide and racism is orientalist thought
Batur, 07 (Pinar, Associate Professor of Sociology, and Director of Urban Studies,
Vassar College, “Heart of Violence: Global Racism, War, and Genocide”, Handbook of
the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations, edited by Hernán Vera and Joe R. Feagin,
2007, p. 441-443)
War and genocide are horrid, and taking them for granted is inhuman. In the 21st
century, our problem is not only seeing them as natural and inevitable, but even worse: not
seeing, not noticing, but ignoring them. Such act and thought, fueled by global racism, reveal
that racial inequality has advanced from the establishment of racial hierarchy and
institutionalization of segregation, to the confinement and exclusion, and elimination, of
those considered inferior through genocide. In this trajectory, global racism manifests genocide. But this
is not inevitable. This article, by examining global racism, explores the new terms of exclusion and the path to
permanent war and genocide, to examine the integrality of genocide to the framework of global antiracist confrontation.
GLOBAL RACISM IN THE AGE OF “CULTURE WARS” Racist legitimization of inequality has
changed from presupposed biological inferiority to assumed cultural
inadequacy. This defines the new terms of impossibility of coexistence,
much less equality. The Jim Crow racism of biological inferiority is now bein g replaced with a new and
modern racism (Baker 1981; Ansell 1997) with “culture war” as the key to justify difference, hierarchy, and oppression. The
ideology of “culture war” is becoming embedded in institutions, defining the workings of organizations, and is now
defended by individuals who argue that they are not racist, but are not blind to the inherent differences between AfricanAmericans/Arabs/Chinese, or whomever, and “us.” “Us” as a concept defines the power of a
group to distinguish itself and to assign a superior value to its institutions,
revealing certainty that affinity with “them” will be harmful to its existence
(Hunter 1991; Buchanan 2002). How can we conceptualize this shift to examine what has changed over the past century
and what has remained the same in a racist society? Joe Feagin examines this question with a theory of systemic racism to
explore societal complexity of interconnected elements for longevity and adaptability of racism. He sees that systemic
racism persists due to a “white racial frame,” defining and maintaining an “organized set of racialized ideas, stereotypes,
emotions, and inclinations to discriminate” (Feagin 2006: 25). The white racial frame arranges the routine operation of
racist institutions, which enables social and economic reproduction and amendment of racial privilege. It is this frame that
defines the political and economic bases of cultural and historical legitimization. While the white racial frame is one of the
components of systemic racism, it is attached to other terms of racial oppression to forge systemic coherency. It has
altered over time from slavery to segregation to racial oppression and now
frames “culture war,” or “clash of civilizations,” to legitimate the racist
oppression of domination, exclusion, war, and genocide. The concept of
“culture war” emerged to define opposing ideas in America regarding privacy, censorship, citizenship rights, and
secularism, but it has been globalized through conflicts over immigration, nuclear power, and
the “war on terrorism.” Its discourse and action articulate to flood the racial space of
systemic racism. Racism is a process of defining and building communities and societies based on racialized
hierarchy of power. The expansion of capitalism cast new formulas of divisions and oppositions, fostering inequality even
while integrating all previous forms of oppressive hierarchical arrangements as long as they bolstered the need to
maintain the structure and form of capitalist arrangements (Batur-VanderLippe 1996). In this context, the white racial
frame, defining the terms of racist systems of oppression, enabled the globalization of racial space through the articulation
of capitalism (Du Bois 1942; Winant 1994). The key to understanding this expansion is comprehension of the synergistic
relationship between racist systems of oppression and the capitalist system of exploitation. Taken separately, these two
systems would be unable to create such oppression independently. However, the synergy between them is devastating. In
the age of industrial capitalism, this synergy manifested itself imperialism and colonialism. In the age of advanced
capitalism, it is war and genocide. The capitalist system, by enabling and maintaining the connection between everyday
life and the global, buttresses the processes of racial oppression, and synergy between racial oppression and capitalist
exploitation begets violence. Etienne Balibar points out that the connection between everyday life and the global is
established through thought, making global racism a way of thinking, enabling connections of “words with objects and
words with images in order to create concepts” (Balibar 1994: 200). Yet, global racism is not only an
articulation of thought, but also a way of knowing and acting, framed by both everyday
and global experiences. Synergy between capitalism and racism as systems of oppression
enables this perpetuation and destruction on the global level. As capitalism expanded and
adapted to the particularities of spatial and temporal variables,
global racism became part of its
legitimization and accommodation, first in terms of colonialist arrangements. In colonized and colonizing
lands, global racism has been perpetuated through racial ideologies and discriminatory practices under capitalism by the
creation and recreation of connections among memory, knowledge, institutions, and construction of the future in thought
and action. What makes racism global are the bridges connecting the particularities of everyday racist experiences to the
universality of racist concepts and actions, maintained globally by myriad forms of prejudice, discrimination, and violence
(Balibar and Wallerstein 1991; Batur 1999, 2006). Under colonialism, colonizing and colonized societies were antagonistic
opposites. Since colonizing society portrayed the colonized “other,” as the adversary and
challenger of the “the ideal self,” not only identification but also segregation and
containment were essential to racist policies. The terms of exclusion were set by the
institutions that fostered and maintained segregation, but the intensity of exclusion, and
redundancy, became more apparent in the age of advanced capitalism, as an extension of
post-colonial discipline. The exclusionary measures when tested led to war, and genocide.
Although, more often than not, genocide was perpetuated and fostered by the post-colonial institutions, rather than
colonizing forces, the colonial identification of the “inferior other” led to segregation, then
exclusion, then war and genocide. Violence glued them together into seamless
continuity. Violence is integral to understanding global racism. Fanon (1963), in exploring colonial
oppression, discusses how divisions created or reinforced by colonialism guarantee the perpetuation, and escalation, of
violence for both the colonizer and colonized. Racial differentiations, cemented through the colonial relationship, are
integral to the aggregation of violence during and after colonialism: “Manichaeism [division of the universe into opposites
of good and evil] goes to its logical conclusion and dehumanizes” (Fanon 1963:42). Within this dehumanizing framework,
Fanon argues that the violence resulting from the destruction of everyday life, sense of self and imagination under
colonialism continues to infest the post-colonial existence by integrating colonized land into the violent destruction of a
new “geography of hunger” and exploitation (Fanon 1963: 96). The “geography of hunger” marks
the context and space in which oppression and exploitation continue. The
historical maps drawn by colonialism now demarcate the boundaries of post-colonial arrangements. The white
racial frame restructures this space to fit the imagery of symbolic racism,
modifying it to fit the television screen, or making the evidence of the necessity of the politics of
exclusion, and the violence of war and genocide, palatable enough for the front page of newspapers, spread out next to the
morning breakfast cereal. Two examples of this “geography of hunger and exploitation” are Iraq and New Orleans.
Impact – War/Violence
Orientalism justifies wars and dominance
Said 3 (Edward Said, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University, “Preface to Orientalism” Al-Ahram Weekly, August 25 2003
http://www.fsor.it/varia/Edward%20Said%20-%20Preface%20to%20Orientalism.htm)
But there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding,
compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and knowledge that is part of an overall campaign of selfaffirmation. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to
understand for purposes of co-existence and enlargement of horizons, and
the will to dominate for the purposes of control. It is surely one of the intellectual
catastrophes of history that an imperialist war confected by a small group of unelected
US officials was waged against a devastated Third World dictatorship on
thoroughly ideological grounds having to do with world dominance,
security control, and scarce resources, but disguised for its true intent ,
hastened, and reasoned for by Orientalists who betrayed their calling as scholars.¶ The major influences on
George W Bush's Pentagon and National Security Council were men such as Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, experts
on the Arab and Islamic world who helped the American hawks to think about
such preposterous phenomena as the Arab mind and centuries-old Islamic
decline which only American power could reverse. Today bookstores in the
US are filled with shabby screeds bearing screaming headlines about Islam and
terror, Islam exposed, the Arab threat and the Muslim menace, all of them written by
political polemicists pretending to knowledge imparted to them and others by experts who have
supposedly penetrated to the heart of these strange Oriental peoples .
Accompanying such war-mongering expertise have been CNN and Fox, plus myriad evangelical and
right-wing radio hosts, innumerable tabloids and even middle-brow journals, all of them
re-cycling the same unverifiable fictions and vast generalisations so as to stir up "America" against the
foreign devil.¶ Without a well-organised sense that these people over there
were not like "us" and didn't appreciate "our" values -- the very core of traditional
Orientalist dogma -- there would have been no war. So from the very same
directorate of paid professional scholars enlisted by the Dutch conquerors of
Malaysia and Indonesia, the British armies of India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, West Africa, the French
armies of Indochina and North Africa, came the American advisers to the Pentagon and
the White House, using the same clichés, the same demeaning stereotypes, the same
justifications for power and violence (after all, runs the chorus, power is the only language they
understand) in this case as in the earlier ones. These people have now been joined in Iraq by a whole army of private
contractors and eager entrepreneurs to whom shall be confided every thing, from the writing of textbooks and the
constitution to the refashioning of Iraqi political life and its oil industry. ¶ Every single empire, in its
official discourse, has said that it is not like all the others, that its
circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilise , bring order
and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals
to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires.
Their ethnocentric understanding of the world breeds endless conflict
and warfare
Barger 08—Anthropology, Indiana University (Ken, Ethnocentrism, July 1 2008,
http://www.iupui.edu/~anthkb/ethnocen.htm)//IK
"Ethnocentrism" is a commonly used word in circles where ethnicity, inter-ethnic relations, and similar social issues are of concern.
The usual definition of the term is "thinking one's own group's ways are superior to
others" or "judging other groups as inferior to one's own". "Ethnic" refers to cultural heritage, and
"centrism" refers to the central starting point... so "ethnocentrism" basically refers to judging other
groups from our own cultural point of view. But even this does not address the underlying issue of why
people do this. Most people, thinking of the shallow definition, believe that they are not ethnocentric, but are rather "open minded" and
"tolerant." However, as explained below, everyone is ethnocentric, and there is no way not to be ethnocentric... it cannot be avoided,
nor can it be willed away by a positive or well-meaning attitude.¶ To address the deeper issues involved in ethnocentrism calls for a
more explicit definition. In this sense, ethnocentrism can be defined as: making false assumptions about others' ways based on our own
limited experience. The key word is assumptions, because we are not even aware that we are being ethnocentric... we don't
understand that we don't understand.¶ One example of ethnocentrism is seen in the above comments on the
Inuit snowshoe race. I assumed that I had "lost" the race, but it turns out the Inuit saw the same situation very differently than I did.
Westerners have a binary conflict view of life (right or wrong, liberal versus conservative, etc.), and I had imposed my "win or lose"
perspective of life on the situation. As a result, I did not understand how they experience life, that trying is a basic element of life. This
did not necessarily involve thinking that my ways were superior, but rather that I assumed my experience was operational in another
group's circumstances.¶ Another example illustrates how basic ethnocentrism is. If we go to a store and ask for a green coat and the
sales clerk gives us a blue one, we would think the person was color blind at the best or stupid at the worst. However, "colors" are not
so simple. The Inuit lump shades of what AngloAmericans call "blue" and "green" into one color category, tungortuk, which can only be
translated as "bluegreen." Does this mean that they cannot see the difference? Just as we can distinguish between different shades
(such as "sky blue" and "navy blue," and "kelly green" and "forest green"), so can the Inuit. If they want to refer to what we would call
"green," they would say tungUYortuk, which can be translated something like "that bluegreen that looks like the color of a [conifer]
tree." The point is that something so "simple" as colors has very different meanings to us and to the Inuit. How could an Inuk "feel
blue"? Colors, after all, are only different wavelengths of light, and the rainbow can be divided in many different ways.¶ There are
many, many examples of such differences in meanings that make life experience so unique for all the human groups around the world.
For example, English has tenses built into our verb forms, so we automatically think in terms of time (being "punctual," "time is
money," "make the time," etc.). But Algonquian Indian languages do not have tenses (not that they cannot express time if they wish),
but rather have "animate" and "inanimate" verb forms, so they automatically think in terms of whether things around them have a life
essence or not. So when Chippewa Indians do not show up for a medical appointment, Anglo health care workers may explain this as
being "present oriented," since we normally cannot think except in terms of time frames. But this is the essence of ethnocentrism, since
we may be imposing a time frame where none exists.¶ The assumptions we make about others'
experience can involve false negative judgements, reflected in the common definition of ethnocentrism.
For example, Anglos may observe Cree Indians sitting around a camp not doing obvious work that is needed and see Crees as "lazy".
Westerners generally value "being busy" (industriousness), and so may not appreciate the Cree capacity to relax and not be compelled
to pursue some activities of a temporary nature... nor realize how much effort is put into other activities like hunting.¶ Assumptions
can also reflect false positive attitudes about others' ways. For example, we in urban industrial society frequently think of Cree Indians
as being "free of the stresses of modern society," but this view fails to recognize that there are many stresses in their way of life,
including the threat of starvation if injured while checking a trap line a hundred miles from base camp or when game cycles hit low
ebbs. False positive assumptions are just as misleading as false negative assumptions.¶ Examples abound in our local communities, as
well as around the world. When you think about your own experience with people from other ethnic groups and with attitudes
expressed about relations with other countries, what examples come to your mind where you may have imposed your own views and
feelings about life on their experience?¶ Everybody is ethnocentric, as all of us around the world assume things about other people's
ways. The question is why are we ethnocentric?¶ The definition given above emphasizes that we make false assumptions based on our
own limited experience. This is all we know... what we have already experienced is the basis for our "reality", what we expect. It is
normal to assume it is the "natural" basis of reality... because our own ways work for us. Our perceptions of colors, our time frames, our
values on industriousness, our social roles, our beliefs about Life and the Universe, and all our other ways help us organize life
experience and provide important meanings and functions as we move through daily and life span activities. Therefore, our limited
experiences we have already had are the basis for interpreting new experiences, in this case, others’ behavior.¶ Since we have not
experienced everything they have experienced, how can we not be ethnocentric?¶ So what is the problem with ethnocentrism?¶
Ethnocentrism leads to misunderstanding others. We falsely distort what is
meaningful and functional to other peoples through our own tinted glasses . We see
their ways in terms of our life experience, not their context. We do not understand
that their ways have their own meanings and functions in life, just as our ways have
for us.¶ At the heart of this is that we do not understand that we do not understand! So we aren't aware that we can develop more
valid understandings about how they experience life.¶ At the best, we simply continue in our unawareness. Yet this can have
consequences within our own society and in international relations. We may be well meaning in interethnic
relations, for example, but can unintentionally offend others, generate ill feelings, and even set
up situations that harm others. For example, it is easy not to see the life concerns of others (particularly minorities
and the disadvantaged) or conversely to pity them for their inabilities to deal with life situations (like poverty or high crime rates). How
do we feel when someone doesn't recognize our concerns, or feels sorry for us because we can't "just let go" of a stressful situation?¶ A
lack of understanding can also inhibit constructive resolutions when we face conflicts
between social groups. It is easy to assume that others "should" have certain perspectives or values. How often are we prone to address
conflicts when others tell us how we should think and feel?¶ Ethnocentrism is also evident in international relations,
creating conflicts and inhibiting resolution of conflicts. For example, how might our Western binary
conflict view of life (A versus B) influence our interpretation of another group's intents when they express a different position on an
issue? Is it just another" viewpoint, or is it "against" our viewpoint? If we don't "win" the conflict, will we "lose"? We may have positive
intentions (from our viewpoint) in "helping" other groups deal with certain "problems," but how do they see the problem and what
kind of solution do they want? Some peoples around the world see Americans as very competitive and violent people, as evidenced by
our business practices, Hollywood movies, and events like the Columbine High School massacre. How much does this describe your
personal experience? How do you think this perception might influence their assumptions about our intents in relations with their
societies? An ultimate case of such misunderstandings is warfare, where many people
are killed, maimed for life, have their families, subsistence, health, and way of life
disrupted, sometimes forever.¶ There are extreme forms of ethnocentrism that pose serious
social problems, of course, such as racism, colonialism, and ethnic cleansing. These
views are generally condemned by the world community, but we regularly see such cases in the news.¶ One issue that we need to
consider is that ethnocentrism is often exploited to foster conflict... and to promote the
power of a particular group. History shows us that promoting an "us versus them" perspective, political, religious, and
other groups foster discrimination and conflict to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Social conflict and wars
usually have ethnocentrism at their core, which over time usually proves to be selfdestructive for all concerned.
Current western culture justifies the devaluation of human life,
imperial intervention and militarized violence
Crow 7(Lori
Crow, Candidate in Political Science at York University, “The “Fuzzy Dream”:
Discourse, Historical myths, and Militarized (in)Security - Interrogating dangerous
myths of Afghanistan and the ‘West,’” http://turin.sgir.eu/uploads/Croweloricrowe.pdf,PS)
Disagreement around the production of knowledge has been at the heart of some of the¶ most divisive debates within
academia – that is, our relationship with knowledge and ‘¶ knowing’¶ in general is highly mediated be myths: “Anything
that has the status of know¶ ledge” explains¶ French philosopher Michele LeDoeff “can turn out to be riddled with me¶ re
beliefs, myths, or¶ shocking representations”.¶ 14¶ Similarly, Peter Taylor employs the label “historical myth” or¶ “Ossian”¶
15¶ to indicate that what is commonly called history or knowledge are often¶ institutionalized frameworks, cognitive
blockages, ingrained discourse or s¶ ocial beliefs that have¶ become ingrained in the collective epistemic imaginary.¶ 16¶
Interestingly, ‘mythology’ was¶ adopted by early folklorists to characterize the living systems of tal¶ es and beliefs of
‘primitive¶ people’ such as Native American Indians. The earliest uses of the word ar¶ e recorded in the form¶ of the Greek
word¶ mythos¶ ; interestingly, in the¶ llliad¶ , reveals Trubshaw, the word is used 167¶ times usually to refer to a powerful
male making boasts or giving orders.¶ 17¶ In the twentieth¶ century, ‘myth’ began to refer to stories that were ‘sacred’ to a
society¶ – “metaphorical means of¶ conveying ‘truths’ (or perceived truths within that society)” – which provide¶ d a sort
of structure¶ to that society: “They explained such matters as the origin and organizatio¶ n of the cosmos, social¶
organization such as gender and kinship, and told of deities and heroes.”¶ 18¶ Myths are ‘alive and¶ well’ in modern day
‘Western’ cultures, argues Trubshaw, and are intermeshed w¶ ith political¶
ideologies to provide a ‘deep structure’ to how we think about the world;
they are¶ essentially¶ “narrative forms of ideology”. In the modern world, these myths
manifest as “fr¶ agmentary¶ references, indirect allusions, watchwords, slogans, visual symbols, echoes in l¶ iterature,
film,¶ songs, public ceremonies, and other forms of everyday situations, often highly conde¶ nsed and¶ emotionally
charged.”¶ 19¶ The danger of myth is precisely its ability to attain the status of
knowled¶ ge, gaining¶ authenticity as comprehensive and total. This is problematic
because¶ “Nothing”, as Eisenstein¶ argues “escapes invention, interpretation, or subversion.”¶ 20¶ Let’s return
momentarily to our¶ example of 1492 and the ‘discovery’ of the Americas. A
key “collective ficti¶ on” or myth that¶ contributed to the ‘discovery’ and
entitlement narratives regarding the New¶ World land was the¶ notion of¶
terra nullius¶ – the idea that prior to European occupation, the land was
uninhabited and¶ belonged to no one. In her article exploring the philosophical imaginations around
A¶ ustralia’s¶ colonial past, Lloyd explains how such a dominant and determining fiction of a cul¶ ture like¶ terra¶ nullius¶
manufactured a myth of Australia’s sovereignty as built upon notions of discovery¶ and¶ peaceful settlement rather than
violent invasion and conquest. The result, as in the A¶ mericas, is a¶ history built on emotions of
pride and a legitimization of the idea that the human¶ presence that¶ had
inhabited the land was not ‘fully human’ or was ‘lesser human’ and had no
ownership over¶ the land.¶ 2¶ Academia commonly uses the terms discourse or narrative in analyses that
i¶ nterrogate the¶ power of language by deconstructing its utilization and its underpinnings. I¶ want to delineate¶ between
these terms and my deployment of the word myth. Discourse or discours¶ e analysis is a¶ social concept that is often linked
to Michele Foucault and Jurgen Habermas (althoug¶ h each¶ philosopher deploys the concept differently) and generally
refers t¶ o an institutionalized way of¶ thinking, writing, and speaking, or, in the words of Judith Butler “the limits of
accep¶ table¶ speech”.¶ 22¶ Discourse affects our view of all things and can simultaneously constitute¶ a social¶ subject and
can be performed by a subject. Discourse thus is infused with¶ power relations and is¶ intrinsically connected to the
production of knowledge.¶ 23¶ Narrative, in turn, is a story or part of a¶ story recounted in any medium. Most commonly
used in literary theory, a narrative¶ is¶ understood, by the creator and the reader, to have multiple points of view repre¶
senting different¶ participants and/or observers. For example: “In stories told verbally, t¶ here is a person telling the¶
story, a narrator whom the audience can see and hear, and who adds layers of meanin ¶ g to the text¶ nonverbally. The
narrator also has the opportunity to monitor the audience's response t¶ o the story¶ and to modify the manner of the
telling to clarify content or enhance listener i¶ nterest.”¶ 24¶ Interestingly, Walter Fisher claimed in his theory the
Narrative Par¶ adigm, that all communication¶ is in and of itself a form of storytelling.¶ 25¶ I use the word myth then to
denote a particular type of narrative that is imbued w¶ ith¶ discursive power (that is, intentionally deployed power-filled
words, ima¶ ges, rhetoric, etc.) in¶ order to communicate a specific worldview and with the intent of eliciting a cer¶ tain
response¶ from the audience. I use it pejoratively as well; in popular use, the wor¶ d¶ myth¶ arose as a label for¶ religious
beliefs and stories from cultures outside the West as being fa¶ lse.¶ 26¶ Myth then signifies a¶ story, produced through
narratives and propagated by discourse, which is be¶ lieved to be true but¶ which is created with an underlying agenda.¶
There is a dangerous relationship between the construction and dissemination of myths¶ through the deployment of
discourse and the development of international policy. The¶ political¶ implications of failing to
deconstruct myths that perpetuate and justify imperial intervention and¶
militarized violence are severe. It is imperative that we learn to recognize and acknowledge¶ collective
imaginings/myths such as¶ terra nullius¶ because they are constitutive of our present social
and political world, influencing how we perceive the past, constructing
beliefs and¶ attitudes in the present, and impacting the decisions and actions
we make in the future.
Orientalist essentialist views lead to a race specific world
Malek 04(Anwar
Abdel Malek, “A Major Inspiration for Said's Conception of Orientalism”,
Political Discourse- Theories of Colonialism and Postcolonialism, March 12 2004,
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/said/orient9.html)
a) On the level of the position of the problem, and the problematic . . . the Orient and Orientals [are considered by
Orientalism] as an "object" of study, stamped with an otherness -- as all that is different, whether it be "subject" or
"object" -- but of a constitutive otherness, of an essentialist character.... This "object" of study will be, as is customary,
passive, non-participating, endowed with a "historical" subjectivity, above all, non-active, non-autonomous, nonsovereign with regard to itself: the only Orient or Oriental or "subject" which could be admitted, at the extreme limit, is the
alienated being, philosophically, that is, other than itself in relationship to itself, posed, understood, defined -- and acted -by others.¶ b) On the level of the thematic, [the Orientalists] adopt an essentialist
conception of the countries, nations and peoples of the Orient under study,
a conception which expresses itself through a characterized ethnist typology . . . and will soon
proceed with it towards racism.¶ According to the traditional orientalists, an essence should
exist -- sometimes even clearly described in metaphysical terms -- which
constitutes the inalienable and common basis of all the beings considered;
this essence is both "historical," since it goes back to the dawn of history, and fundamentally a-historical, since it
transfixes the being, "the object" of study, within its inalienable and nonevolutive specificity, instead of defining it as all
other beings, states, nations, peoples, and cultures-as a product, a resultant of the vection of the forces operating in the
field of historical evolution.¶ Thus one ends with a typology-based on a real specificity,
but detached from history, and, consequently, conceived as being
intangible, essential-which makes of the studied "object" another being with
regard to whom the studying subject is transcendent; we will have a homo
Sinicus, a homo Arabicus (and why not a homo Aegypticus, etc.), a homo Africanus, the man-the
"normal man," it is understood-being the European man of the historical period, that is, since Greek antiquity. One sees
how much, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the hegemonism of possessing
minorities, unveiled by Marx and Engels, and the anthropocentrism dismantled by Freud are
accompanied by europocentrism in the area of human and social sciences,
and more particularly in those in direct relationship with non-European
peoples. [Anwar Abdel Malek, "Orientalism in C risis," Diogenes 44 (1963): 107-8]
The West’s obsession with power means that politics always fails
Santos 03(Sousa
Santos, social theorist, the director of the Center for Social Studies at the
University of Coimbra, April 2003, Bad subjects issue 63, Collective Suicide?,
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2003/63/santos.html,PS)
According to Franz Hinkelammert, the
West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it
should try to save humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and
sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need to radically
materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political
reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism, with
the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the period of imperialist struggles, which
caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many other colonial wars. This is how it was under Stalinism, with the
Gulag, and under Nazism, with the Holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism,
with the collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of
the world system. With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal
and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the
radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the Western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it.¶
Sacrificial genocide arises from a totalitarian illusion manifested in the belief that there are no alternatives to the presentday reality, and that the problems and difficulties confronting it arise from failing to take its logic of development to
ultimate consequences. If there is unemployment, hunger and death in the Third World, this is not the result of market
failures; instead, it is the outcome of market laws not having been fully applied. If there is terrorism, this
is not due to the violence of the conditions that generate it; it is due, rather,
to the fact that total violence has not been employed to physically eradicate
all terrorists and potential terrorists.¶ This political logic is based on the supposition of total power
and knowledge, and on the radical rejection of alternatives; it is ultra-conservative in that it aims to reproduce infinitely
the status quo. Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history. During the last hundred years, the
West has experienced three versions of this logic, and, therefore, seen three
versions of the end of history: Stalinism, with its logic of insuperable
efficiency of the plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority; and
neoliberalism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the market. The first two
periods involved the destruction of democracy. The last one trivializes democracy, disarming it in the
face of social actors sufficiently powerful to be able to privatize the state and international institutions in their favor. I have
described this situation as a combination of political democracy and social fascism. One current
manifestation of this combination resides in the fact that intensely strong
public opinion, worldwide, against the war is found to be incapable of
halting the war machine set in motion by supposedly democratic rulers.¶ At all
these moments, a death drive, a catastrophic heroism, predominates, the idea of a looming collective suicide, only
preventable by the massive destruction of the other. Paradoxically, the broader the definition of the other and the efficacy
of its destruction, the more likely collective suicide becomes. In its sacrificial genocide version,
neoliberalism is a mixture of market radicalization, neoconservatism and
Christian fundamentalism. Its death drive takes a number of forms, from
the idea of "discardable populations", referring to citizens of the Third World not capable of being
exploited as workers and consumers, to the concept of "collateral damage", to refer to the deaths, as a result of war, of
thousands of innocent civilians. The last, catastrophic heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable
calculations by the Non-Governmental Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260
thousand civilians will die during the war and in the three months after (this
is without there being civil war or a nuclear attack); the war will cost 100
billion dollars, enough to pay the health costs of the world's poorest
countries for four years.
WMD warfare results from orientalism
Derian 98(James
Der Derian, IR research professor at brown, On Security, The Value of
Security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard,
http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lipschutz/lipschutz12.html,PS)
No other concept in international relations packs the metaphysical punch, nor commands the disciplinary power of
"security." In its name, peoples have alienated their fears, rights and powers to gods,
emperors, and most recently, sovereign states, all to protect themselves
from the vicissitudes of nature--as well as from other gods, emperors, and sovereign states. In its name,
weapons of mass destruction have been developed which have transfigured
national interest into a security dilemma based on a suicide pact. And, less often
noted in international relations, in
its name billions have been made and millions killed
while scientific knowledge has been furthered and intellectual dissent
muted.
The affirmative’s depiction of migrants reduce them to bare life
Jabri 06(Vivienne
Jabri, Professor of International Politics and the Director of the Centre
for International Relations at the King’s College London, International Peace Research
Institute, April 20 2006, War, Security and the Liberal State, Sage Journals, PS)
The ‘elasticity of the enemy’ as subject position is nevertheless in today’s global arena, in today’s Europe, bound up with
the politics of difference, and specifically cultural difference. The precise nature of the relationship varies between
contexts and is a matter for empirical investigation. What is clear is that while counter-terrorist measures, such as the
UK’s Terrorism Act 2000, proscribe particular organizations and hence possess a degree of specificity, that such measures
encompass the element of ‘prevention’ suggests a wider frame of reference, a frame that, in police operations, in
institutional discourse and in public arenas, comes to constitute the culturally marked other as the source of danger.
Furthermore, when migrants are constituted as enemies, indeed are treated as
such, they are by and large those racially and culturally identified as other.
Racism as state practice has reached the remit of the functionary, just as those discretionary decisions beyond the law are,
now openly and blatantly, informed by a racist discourse that targets the corporeal being of the other, whether through a
21st century form of colonization, as in Iraq, or in the detention camps that contain Europe’s refugees. As Michel Foucault
(2003: 61) writes in relation to the gradual shift from the 17th century to his present (and by implication ours), the
‘discourse of race struggle’ is not a battle between races, ‘but by a race that is
portrayed as the one true race, the race that holds power and is entitled to
define the norm, and against those who deviate from that norm’. These are
prescient words and remind us of the dangers that the liberal democratic polity faces when it instantiates and
institutionalizes practices that target the cultural and racial other. The implication is the reduction of the citizen to what
Giorgio Agamben (1995) refers to as ‘bare life’, a life devoid of rights, of history, of the capacity to speak. When the
discourses and practices of war dominate the social sphere, when the
construct of enemy is directed at particular individuals for their
identification with and/or membership of particular communities, when the
very corporeal presence of the other is perceived as threat, the very idea of
equal citizenship before the law is banished; identification becomes, once
again in the history of Europe and the United States, colour-bound.
Outside the collective self of the nation persons are disposable and
have no value
Noorani 05(Yaseen
Noorani, Assistant Professor in Near Eastern Studies at the University
of Arizona. He was previously Lecturer in Arabic Literature at the University of
Edinburgh , The New Centennial Review, 2005, The Rhetoric of Security, Project Muse,
PS)
How is the nation represented in this way? This may be understood by seeing both principles, liberty and
democracy, as arising from and linked by the concept of agency. Liberal autonomy is an ideal of
individual agency, and democracy is a conception of collective agency as
self-rule. The relationship between the two is grounded in the
correspondence between individual and collective selfhood. The collective
self has a will and a moral [End Page 16] structure. It contains a principle of order that generates the
values embodied in collective life and necessary for individual agency and fulfillment. Outside the collective
self in its ordered condition, individual lives are characterized by servitude
and misery and are not worth living. For this reason, the nation, the
collective self, is worthy of individual self-sacrifice. To live in the absence of
the values that lead to one's fulfillment without fighting for these values is
moral self-betrayal. The national self, therefore, mirrors the self of each of its members and grants them selfcompletion by making their internal values into social reality. This strong conception of the nation underlies notions of
national independence, self-determination, and sovereignty. It is the basis of the moral demands
that nations make on their citizens, culminating in the readiness to kill and
be killed.¶ Liberal political theory, like other conceptions of nationhood, affirms the moral necessity and authority of
national agency. John Rawls, for example, endows "peoples" with "common sympathies," a principle of affective unity, and
a "moral character," by which "liberal peoples are both reasonable and rational," just like individual citizens in a liberal
democracy (Rawls 1999, 25–27).2 Moreover, a people enacts its agency through private possession and maintenance of
the national homeland in the same manner that individuals in a liberal democracy possess and maintain not only their
private property, which is readily alienable, but more to the point, their bodies (8, 38–39).3 It is due to this
correspondence between national and individual agency that nations enable
the realization of liberty and justice on the domestic level, are able to
represent their citizens on the global level in "the society of peoples," and may
demand of citizens, when necessary, self-sacrifice in war. Nations interact with each other in the "society of peoples" just
as individuals do in civil society, except that they submit to no higher authority in their voluntary adherence to the law of
peoples.4 In other words, unlike individuals, they remain fully sovereign beings in a Lockean state of nature.5 That
the nation is the highest form of agency in Rawls, and the only collective that
can legally sacrifice the lives of its members, and others, for its selfpreservation, shows the unique status of the "people" or nation as the only
social form in which human beings can fulfill [End Page 17] their moral nature.
Liberal theory, therefore, is distinctive not in entertaining a weak notion of nationality but in positing individual liberty as
the principle of order by which national agency is brought
Impact – Colonialism
The aff perpetuates the Orient through their assertions of western
superiority and otherizing Latin America to promote European
imperialism and gain power
Macfie 02 (Alexander has written widely and published several books on the modern
history of the near and Middle East, Orientalism, page 8)
Of the four principal assaults launched on orientalism, as traditionally practiced, that
launched by Edward Said, in Orientalism, proved to be by far the most effective.
According to Said, the orientalist, the heir to a ‘narcissistic’ tradition of European
writing, founded by, among others, Homer and Aeschylus, through his writing ‘creates’
the Orient. In the process, he assists in the creaton of a series of stereotypical images,
according to which Europe (The West, the ‘self’) is seen as being essentially rational,
developed, humane, superior, authentic, active, creative, and masculine, while the
Orient (the East, the ‘other’) (a sort of surrogate, underground version of the West or
the ‘self’) is seen as being irrational, aberrant, backward, crude, despotic, inferior,
inauthentic, passive, feminine and sexually corrupt. Other ‘orientalist’ fantasies
invented, in Said’s opinion, by the orientalists include the concept of an ‘Arab mind’, an
‘oriental psyche’, and an ‘Islamic Society’. Together they contribute to the construction
of a ‘saturating hegemonic system’, designed, consciously or unconsciously to dominate,
restructure and have authority over the Orient – designed, that is to say, to promote
European imperialism and colonoialism
Impact – Dichotomies cause conflict
The aff’s dichotomies breed conflict – only focusing on the overlap of
cultures can we hope for solvency
Said 3 (Edward Said, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University, “Preface to Orientalism” Al-Ahram Weekly, August 25 2003
http://www.fsor.it/varia/Edward%20Said%20-%20Preface%20to%20Orientalism.htm)
The terrible conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like
"America", "The West" or "Islam" and invent collective identities for large
numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse, cannot remain as
potent as they are, and must be opposed. We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive
skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or
the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular rational discourse. The secular world is the world of history as
made by human beings. Critical thought does not submit to commands to join in the
ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the
manufactured clash of civilisations, we need to concentrate on the slow
working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together
in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. But
for that kind of wider perception we need time, patient and sceptical enquiry,
supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world
demanding instant action and reaction.
Impact – Immigration Discourse Dehum
Dehumanization is worse than racism – specifically in Mexico citizens
are depicted as “aliens”
Jurado 8 (Kathy, Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) at the University of
Michigan, 2008, “Alienated Citizens: ‘Hispanophobia’ and the Mexican Immigrant
Body,”
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/58455/kjurado_1.pdf?seque
nce=1)
Because of the social, legal and discursive impact that this rhetoric has on¶ the Latina/o community, I am partial to the
term “dehumanization,” as used by¶ Patrisia González and Roberto Rodriguez. Co-authors of the
on-line Column of¶ the Americas, they use
the word “dehumanization” instead of “racism”
to talk¶ about racial inequalities. They explain the reasons behind this conscious word¶ choice:¶ For
those who often ask why we use the word ‘dehumanization’ rather¶ than
‘racism’…..to dehumanize (including, but not limited to reasons of¶ race) is to degrade,
stereotype, caricaturize, trivialize, devalue, humiliate,¶ invisibilize, alienize,
scapegoat, criminalize and demonize. In effect, it’s to¶ make one less than
human, not simply in society and the media, but also¶ inside of the courtroom.”10 The
“Hispanophobia” that has marginalized Mexican/American subjects for well ¶
over a century represents a form of “dehumanization.” Much of the legal
rhetoric¶ and public discourse during these key moments stripped ethnic
Mexicans of their¶ humanity, rendering them foreign, abject and monstrous.
In the Southwest in particular, the conflation of the term “illegal alien” and¶ Mexican is
undeniable. Mae Ngai documents the historical trajectory of this¶ conflation in her book Impossible Subjects.
The discursive power and material¶ residues of such a conflation I argue, has
indelibly marked and manifest in¶ cultural productions. Ngai cogently dissects the master
narratives of immigration¶ and citizenship analyzing the ways in which “illegal alien” subjects are¶ constructed and
subsequently racialized creating what she terms “alien citizens.”¶ In Ngai’s words, “alien citizens” are
“persons who are American by virtue of birth¶ in the United States but who
are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of¶ American culture and, at
times, by the state.”11 In my project I map how the¶ rhetorical and discursive
construction that creates “alien citizens” affect the¶ cultural productions by
and about ethnic Mexican subjects.
Impact – Magnifier
Orientalist domination permeates every aspect of the oppressed’s
lives
Wilson 81’- member of the political science department at the University of Michigan
(Ernest, Journal of Palestine Studies, “Orientalism: A black perspective”, 9/10/81,
JStore, 59-69) //AK
Domination, like liberation, tends to be a total phenomenon. It cannot easily be
restricted to the political, cultural or economic. When social groups seek to dominate
others they have historically done so through every institution and social process at their
disposal. Some efforts are conscious and carefully crafted strategies of
domination. Others, especially after the initial forceful establishment of
control, come to be automatic and unconscious. Similarly, when people struggle
against domination and for liberation, one of the conclusions quickly forced upon them
is that their movement must encompass the breadth and width of a people's life. If it is
to be far-reaching in its scope and lasting in its effect then a liberation movement must
insinuate itself into all human relationships, not merely between oppressor and
oppressed, but between man and woman, parent and child, religious teacher and
follower. Each of these fundamental relationships must be touched and transformed by
the movement, since the character of the social domination is there and must
be altered.
Impact - Racism
Current forms of racism focus on culture instead of biological
inferiority creating an us-them concept
Batur 7 (Pinar Batur, Professor of Sociology and Director of Environmental Studies at
Vassar College, research focused on global racism and anti-racist movements, “The
Heart of Violence: Global Racism, War, and Genocide,” in Handbook of The Sociology of
Racial and Ethnic Relations edited by Hernan Vera and Joe. R. Feagin, 2007, p.442)
Racist legitimization of inequality has changed from presupposed biological
inferiority to¶ assumed cultural inadequacy. This defines the new terms of
impossibility of coexistence,¶ much less equality. The Jim Crow racism of
biological inferiority is now being replaced¶ with a new and modern racism (Baker
1981; Ansell I997) with "culture war" as the key to¶ justify difference, hierarchy,
and oppression. The ideology of "culture war" is becoming¶ embedded in
institutions, defining the workings of organizations, and is now defended by¶
individuals who argue that they are not racist, but are not blind to the
inherent differences¶ between African-Americans/Arabs/Chinese, or whomever,
and “us.” "Us" as a concept¶ defines the power of a group to distinguish
itself and to assign a superior value to its institutions, revealing certainty
that affinity with "them" will be harmful to its existence (Hunter¶ l99l:
Buchanan 2002).
Case Turn – increases Instability
Turn – Economic liberalization from the US causes instability
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
Clearly, the concern for order and stability was not entirely new in the sense that in
earlier periods of the twentieth century similar preoccupations had been voiced, as we
discussed in the previous chapter. It provided another example of the drive to ‘pacify the
political’ in the sense employed by Rancie`re (1995), and discussed previously: i.e. the
desire to impose a settled order on a series of disrupting and destabilizing currents and
forces present within a society at a specific moment of time. In the particular case of the
perception of world order in the 1960s, the difference with the earlier era stemmed from
the fact that the prioritization of order, institutional stability and security was
formulated in a radically altered geopolitical world by a combination of US social
scientists and government advisers specializing in and concerned with the problems of
rapid change in non-Western areas. Paradoxically the more the drive towards
Western-style modernization was encouraged, the more likely it became
that threats to institutionalized orders would emerge and endanger the
stability of societies undergoing processes of social, economic and political
transformation.
***Framework***
Representations First
Representations shape our politics towards Latin America
Slater 04, British geographer and Professor of Social and Political Geography at Loughborough University (David,
“Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, 2004, Blackwell Publishing, http://translateenglish-indonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscolonial.pdf)
It is sometimes the case that a discussion of definitions can help clarify the analytical route. Here,
the context is formed by terms such as colonialism, imperialism and Empire. In relation to
colonialism and imperialism, Said (1993: 8) defined imperialism as ‘the practice, the theory and
the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory’. In contrast,
colonialism, which, for Said, was seen as being almost always a consequence of imperialism, was
defined as ‘the implanting of settlements on distant territory’. This implantation of
settlements was of course only the most visible expression of an invasive and
multi-dimensional power that Aime´ Ce´saire (2000: 43) described in terms of
‘cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, land
confiscated, and extraordinary possibilities wiped out’ (emphasis in the
original). While by the 1990s colonialism had been effectively brought to a close, having been
declared illegitimate by the United Nations in 1960, and condemned as ‘alien subjugation,
domination and exploitation’ and ‘a denial of fundamental human rights’,3 imperialism would
seem to be more enduring. Imperial politics can be linked to an invocation
of a posited Western moral superiority and duty. In the West there
has always been and remains the narcissistic assumption that the
non-West could only be improved by becoming more like the West
itself. In this context, therefore, the geopolitics of representation of the
other has been and remains a crucial mechanism of imperial
power, a point to which I shall return below.
Their epistemology is flawed- all actions taken are development
oriented
Kolluoglu-Kirli 03(Biray
Kolluoglu-Kirli, Bogazici University, The New Centennial Review,
2003, From Orientalism to Area Studies, Project Muse, PS)
In this structuration, the sixth discipline of the social sciences, Orientalism, holds a rather peculiar
place. Its subject matter is geographically determined: the non-Western
world. Its findings, contrary to other disciplines, is exclusive rather than inclusive. Orientalists' findings
and accounts are not generalizable—i.e., they do not have the potential to be
valid anywhere else, other than in the non-Western world. An Orientalist is the
political scientist, sociologist, and economist of "Oriental societies," or he is none; he is usually the student of frozen
structures that have been hanging out there for centuries.¶ This division of labor survived and was further consolidated
after the Second World War with the exception of Orientalism. Orientalism disappeared from the scene, leaving its place
as the study of the non-Western world to area studies, which emerged, quickly institutionalized and tremendously
expanded, in the second half of the twentieth century—though in a radically new form, with new content, methods, and
techniques. To the demise of Orientalism we will return later.¶ The subject matter of area studies is
also defined by geography. The map of the globe is in front of the area expert
who divides, classifies, and categorizes the non-Western world according to
the economic and political interests and priorities of the United States, under
the guidance and support of [End Page 96] governmental agencies. Thereupon, historians, sociologists, economists,
political scientists, geographers, and anthropologists unite their efforts to further the knowledge
about all parts of the non-Western world toward the maintenance of the
American hegemony in the new world arena marked by "decolonization"
and the Cold War.¶ Area studies played a disruptive role in the organization
of social knowledge production in two distinct but interrelated ways:
structural and epistemological. The first is that by challenging the literary
and textual orientation of Orientalism as an academic discipline, area studies
initiated the flood of interdisciplinarity that came to dominate scholarly tradition of the social sciences in the last quarter
of the twentieth century. Area studies brought home the problems and deficiencies that derive from academic
compartmentalization and opened up the way for the emergence of women's studies and ethnic studies, which also rose up
with claims that their subject matters should be handled with an interdisciplinary approach (Wallerstein 1995, 42).¶ The
second disruption is the radical epistemological critique that emerged in
reaction to knowledge produced under area studies departments. As is well
known, area studies operated with the conceptual framework and theoretical
premises of the modernization approach, and were development-oriented.
Such work generated a rigorous critique, mostly from within the "areas" themselves, resulting in the emergence of new
approaches to "Third World development" such as "dependency school" and the world-systems perspective. The discursive
heritage that area studies took over from Orientalism again led to reactions in the form of postcolonial critique, and hence
postcolonial studies. While the former resulted in the attempt to unthink the spatial premises of a world divided into
regions, further divided by nation-states, the latter reproduced the cartographic imaginary of area studies.
Postcoloniality's "unconscious" is scarred by the way in which area studies organized knowledge (see Harootunian 2002).¶
II¶ Let us now turn to Orientalism with the aim of understanding the discursive premises at work in the study of the nonWestern world. When we readily [End Page 97] use the concept Orientalism, actually we are referring to several
interdependent meanings of the concept. Following Said (1978), Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as a discourse,
"as the corporate institution dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of
it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating,
restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (2-3). Orientalism as a discourse depends on a certain mode of
thinking derived from the ontological and epistemological distinction made between the East and the West; and finally,
both are made possible by (and make possible) Orientalism as an academic discipline, a tradition of disciplined learning
whose studies revolve around Oriental cultures, histories, and languages (Said, 2-3).
Excluding the other leads to flawed studies and knowledge
Ramakrishnan 99(A.K.
Ramakrishnan, International Studies, 1999, The Gaze of
Orientalism: Reflections on Linking Postcolonialism and International Relations, Sage
Journals, PS)
Another important matter to be considered in this context is the fact that, as Long and Borneman put it, “… our own
discursive practices are indubitable no less rooted in particular institutional
situations and concerns that are those we describe”.21 In other words, it is a
flawed view that emerges from any study, research or perception of a
particular social or political system, of which the one who studies deals only
with his/her object’s several aspects of institutional contexts and not with
the context of the subject’s own position. The Self/Other dichotomy has to be
approached as a relationship of contextualities rather than distant and
neutral entities, in order that any worthwhile is produced.
Reps First – Persuasion = Neoliberal Oppression
Representational ‘persuasion’ is the new forum of neoliberal
domination
Slater 04’- expert in US Hegemony and Socialism (David, “Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North–South Relations”, International relations, 6/3/04,
http://translate-englishindonesia.com/download/International%20Relations/Geopolitics%20and%20Poscoloni
al.pdf)//AK
The translation of political questions into what appear to be technical issues, or themes of public-sector
management, accountability, a legal framework for development and information and transparency, can be
interpreted as a politics of depoliticization, or, as suggested in previous chapters, as an example of the
‘pacification of the political’ – that is, placing a set of contestable orientations under the control
of a settled system of understandings and priorities. This analytical suggestion can be illustrated in
relation to the World Bank’s proposed actions on governance for which six options, depending upon country
circumstances, were itemized: a) to assist with governmental reform (e.g. with reference
to a legal and procurement framework or decentralization programmes); b) to
persuade governments
through dialogue of the need for reforms (e.g. in relation to public sector management
assessments and financial accountability and legal sector reviews); c) to craft country lending strategies and levels to take
account of the effect of governance on development performance; d) to help countries deal with the
especially complex issues of poverty and the environment; e) to project a long-term vision of an
‘enabling environment’ for the private sector; f) to improve implementation performance through greater efforts to assist
borrowers in ‘building ownership of adjustment programs’, to foster an ‘implementation culture’ within the Bank and to
promote greater understanding of the social and political structure of the countries where policies are being implemented
(see World Bank 1992c: 52–3). From these specifications there is clear evidence of a new kind of
interventionist strategy which, taken together with structural adjustment policies, represented both an
extension and an intensification of a powerful apparatus of rule. Within an evolving rationality of
persuasion and penetration, the economy and the state were being
integrated into a broader discursive frame. Particularly significant in terms of the
project of discursive persuasion, was the intention to assist borrowers. in ‘building
ownership of adjustment programs’. In other words, as in any effective project of
hegemony, the subjects being ‘hailed’ or persuaded and incorporated into the project need to be convinced that it is
their project too, that they ‘own’ the ideas and the practices as much as he originator of the project. The persuasion, if it is
to be successful, needs to have a certain kind of plasticity whereby the receivers can also feel that they have the possibility
to mould the project themselves in ways which seem pertinent to their own perceived objectives. This is also to be noted in
the way the World Bank, already in 1992, gave significance to popular participation in new projects of governance,
commenting, for example, that governance is a ‘plant that needs constant tending’, whereby participating citizens ‘need to
demand good governance’(World Bank 1992c: 11).
Representations K’s Key
Representational criticism is needed to challenge power structures
within ascribed objectivity
Springer 12’- University of Victoria, Department of Geography and History (Simon,
“Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy andMarxian
poststructuralism”, 5/12, http://academia.edu/592370/Neoliberalism _as_
discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_poststructuralism)
//AK
Implicit in these notions of a culturally informed political economy is an appreciation of
poststructural critique, which renowned political economist Cox (2002) makes explicit
by adopt-ing poststructuralism’s classic critique that all power/knowledge is for
someone, serving some purpose, and any notion of disinterested objectivity is
illusory. Wright (2006, p. 83) neatly sum-marizes poststructuralism’s position on
objectivity, suggesting ‘not only is the idea that we can grasp meaning through language
a fiction, albeit a necessary one, but so also is the idea that we can know (conceptualize)
or represent original meaning through scientific inquiry’. In other words, as Foucault
(1978, 1980) demonstrated through his dismantling of the subject as a self knowing and
autonomous actor, human reality is a protean landscape, produced through innumerable
signifying activities, whose origins can never be located through historical, philosophical, or ‘scientific’ inquiry. Poststructuralism thus advances a constructivist position,
which deconstructs the truth claims of an objective science by ‘showing the radical
historical specficity, and so contestability, of every layer of the onion of scientific and
technological constructions (Haraway, 1988, p. 578), which in turn dismantles the
possibility of any apparatus that might be used to effectively talk about the ‘real world’.
The current influence of neoliberal reason (Peck, 2010) offers no exception to the notion
that power operates as a field of knowledge serving some purpose, and through such
understanding we begin to open a window to how post-structuralism might be able to
accommodate the political economy appraisal that neoliberalism is an elite project
concerned with the (re)constitution of class power
Representations First – Neoliberalism comes about
thru represenations
Neoliberalism is permeated through representations
Springer 12’- University of Victoria, Department of Geography and History (Simon,
“Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy andMarxian
poststructuralism”, 5/12, http://academia.edu/592370/Neoliberalism _as_
discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_poststructuralism)
//AK
As such, the notion of hegemony is not dia-metrically opposed to a more nuanced
understanding of neoliberalization, nor is there an insur-mountable disjuncture between
the four forms of neoliberalism. These theoretical strands are reconcilable insofar as the hegemonic
project has particular policy goals that re-shape state formations, making them
‘differently powerful’ (Peck, 2001). Simultaneously, principles from different systems of
thought are combined into one coherent ideology (Laclau & Mouffe,2001), which becomes
‘commonsense’ allowing governance at a distance to operate. In turn ,the circle is closed
– and thrown back on itself – by individual subjects who reconstitute hegemony through
the coalescence of circumstances of their everyday lives. Thus, the productive power of neoliberal
ideology constitutes and constrains, but does not determine. Instead, as a process of becoming through which one
simultaneously obtains the constitution of a subject(iv-ity) (Foucault, 1988b) and undergoes subjection (Butler, 1997),
neoliberal subjectivation works on individuals who are rendered as subjects and subjected to relations of power through
dis-course (Foucault, 1982). Accordingly, as Figure 1 indicates, neoliberalism can productively be
understood as a circulating discourse.
Neoliberalism is an idealistic hegemonic discourse- it necessitates
hierarchy and domination
Springer 12’- University of Victoria, Department of Geography and History (Simon,
“Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy andMarxian
poststructuralism”, 5/12, http://academia.edu/592370/Neoliberalism _as_
discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_poststructuralism)
//AK
Precisely because discourse can be defined as a group of statements belonging to a single
system of formulation (Foucault, 1972/2002), neoliberalism understood as discourse is able to
articulate a synthesis of complementarities between theoretical positions that are
seemingly mismatched. Yet there can be little doubt that some readers will retain their
hardened epistemological positions and want to continue to see these interwoven strands
as disparate. For example, from a poststructuralist perspective this model of neoliberalism as discourse
can be criticized for assuming a Marxian political economy inspired structure insofar as
it still recognizes the hierarchy behind and involved in the construction of
neoliberalism as an ideological hegemonic project. But when is poststructural critique ever
actually ‘beyond structure’ in that regard? As Rancie`re(2006, p. 2) argues, ‘critique acknowledges
something’s existence, but in order to confine it within limits’, and
accordingly poststructuralism necessarily acknowledges structuralism and
so presupposes structure. Moreover, there is no single definition of poststructuralism, no agreed upon
methodological or theoretical imperatives. Instead, it refers to conceptual sign postscollected from a diverse set of ideas
based on the writings of authors like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida. Indeed, it is inconsistent with
poststructural concepts to codify itself in any concretized manner (Harrison, 2006). The term ‘poststructuralism’ itself was
first applied to Derrida’s practice of deconstruction in the 1970s. Yet he showed some degree of dis-comfort with this label,
suggesting it was ‘a word unknown in France until its “return” from the United States’ (Derrida, 1983/1988, p. 3). Instead,
Derrida actually spoke of himself as both a communist and a Marxist (Ryan, 1982), where Specters of Marx clearly
exemplified his position on the ongoing relevance of Marx and his belief that we must continue to sift through Marx’s
possible legacies (Derrida 1994). Deleuze (1995, p. 171) also suggested he ‘remained Marxist’, having been intrigued by
Marx’s analysis of capitalism as an imminent system that is constantly overcoming its own limitations, he contended that
‘any political philosophy must turn on the analysis of capitalism and the ways it has
developed’. For his part, Foucault(1991b, p. 157) refused to define his position or ‘play the part of one who prescribes
solutions’, regarding each of his books as an experiment that necessarily changed his opinions. Thus, one should not
expect poststructuralist views to contribute to any sort of canon, for such a canon does not exist.
Reps First – Shape Institutions
Representations come first – Institutions are shaped based on
representations and criticism of those representations upsets power
balances
Springer 12’- University of Victoria, Department of Geography and History (Simon,
“Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy andMarxian
poststructuralism”, 5/12, http://academia.edu/592370/Neoliberalism _as_
discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_poststructuralism)
//AK
Nonetheless, the
materialist interpretation of history is one key feature of Marxism that
many believe cannot be easily reconciled with poststructuralism. Poststructuralism is often
said to establish an orientation toward history that denies material historical truth, yet far from being a denial of
temporality, it is instead to emphasize the forces that go beyond any telos of history that can
be
fully known, appreciated, and articulated by human actors (Peters, 2001).So while
Foucault, for example, rejects Marxism as a particular theory of the mode of
production and as a critique of political economy, he nonetheless forwards a
critical view of domination which, like historical materialism, recognizes all social
practices as transitory, and all intellectual formations as integral with power and social
relations (Poster, 1984). Thus, although often critical of Marx, by Foucault’s (1988a) own admission, his approach also
bears striking parallels to Marxism. In Foucault’s rendering, the historical relativity of all systems and structures(society,
thought, theory, and concepts) is recognized alongside a materialism of physical necessities (Olssen, 2004). A
discursive approach to Foucault thus represents a questioning of the very relation
between structure and agency, which evokes a complementary between Marxian and
poststructuralist thought. As such, Poster (1984, p. 12) contends that Foucault’s
approach understands discourse and practice as a couplet, which enables Foucault ‘to
search for the close connection between manifestations of reason and patterns of
domination. Foucault can study the way in which discourse is not innocent, but shaped by practice,
without privileging any form of practice such as class struggle. He can also study how
discourse in turn shapes practice without privileging any form of discourse’. In this
sense, Foucault rejects Marx’s under-standing of historical materialism as a mechanism
through which material (non-discursive) practice is separated from discourse and by
which the latter is subsequently subordinated to the former (Olssen, 2004). In contrast to Marx, the
objective of Foucault’s (1972/2002,p. 180, original emphasis) version of materialism as
an Archeology of knowledge is to reveal relations between discursive formations and
non-discursive domains (institutions, political events ,economic practices and processes)
[wherein] these rapprochements are not intended to uncover great cultural continuities,
nor to isolate mechanisms of causality nor does it seek to rediscover what is expressed in
them it tries to determine how the rules of formation that govern it maybe linked to nondiscursive systems: it seeks to define specific forms of articulation. For Foucault, unlike Marxian
understandings, human destiny is not directed by a single set of factors and instead ‘the
forms of articulation and determination may differ in relation to the relative importance
of different non-discursive (material) factors in terms of both place and time’
Reps First – Neoliberalist History proves
Discourse shapes reality- history proves
Springer 12’- University of Victoria, Department of Geography and History (Simon,
“Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy andMarxian
poststructuralism”, 5/12, http://academia.edu/592370/Neoliberalism _as_
discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_poststructuralism)
//AK
Foucault’s approach to discourse as a coupling with practice is of paramount importance
to understanding neoliberalism as discourse for the central reasons of geography and
history. Given the increasing appreciation for how the geographic and temporal placement of
performances of neoliberalism make a difference – hence the concept of
neoliberalization replacing neoliberal-ism – it must be recognized that discourse does
not have the same effects in any given location. The critical importance here is in
wanting to avoid reducing all the heterogeneities of neoliber-alism involved to just
discursive ones (in the sense of language), thereby overlooking neoliber-alism’s specific
variations in conjunctural articulations with different sorts of material practiceson the
ground. Hence, understanding neoliberalism as discourse is an approach that goes
beyond simply the profusion and dissemination of language that occurs either though
hegemonic ideol-ogy or governmentality, and necessarily recognizes the material
practices of state formation andpolicy and program implementation that characterize the
specificities of ‘actually existing neo-liberalism’ (Brenner & Theodore, 2002), or neoliberalization in
practice. In different geographi-cal and institutional contexts neoliberal discourse will circulate and function
in variegated waysthat intersect with the local culture and political economic
circumstances to continually (re)con-stitute ‘the social’. This is notto ‘treat “the social” as
aresidual effect of hegemonic projects and/ or governmental rationalities’ (Barnett,
2005, p. 7), as neither ‘the social’ nor hegemonic pro- jects ever amount to a fully
actualized material reality. If neoliberalism is to be understood asa discourse, ‘the real world’ both Castree and
Barnett suppose neoliberalism is premised uponis an impossible contradiction of the symbolic and imaginary
connotations of language(Lacan, 1977/2006). Again, this is not to deny materiality, but to recognize
that the material and the discursive are always refracted through each other, and further
that social practice is transitory so that we can never quite put our finger on a definitive
historical materialism that can be pinned down as a ‘real world’. Of course Barnett and
Castree take this notion of a ‘real world’ from the literature on neoliberalism, but they
never pause to problematize its application. Instead, they seem to replicate its possibility and focus their
critiques on how their ver-sions of a ‘real word’ differ from those of other scholars concerned with neoliberalism/
neoliberalization. Put differently, the structure of hegemony that neoliberalism as discourse
see-mingly invokes is only possible through the discourse of neoliberalism itself. There is
no ‘before’ discourse, and accordingly Figure 1 shows no point of entry.
Orientalism Shaped by Reps
Representations perpetuate orientalism but accurate representations
are possible
Macfie 02 (Alexander has written widely and published several books on the modern
history of the near and Middle East, Orientalism, page 96-97)
The similarities between the four critiques are striking. All four agree that orientalism,
acting for the most
part in the service of imperialism, created stereotypical images of Islam/the
Orient/the East; and all four agree that the origins of this bias lay in the remote past, in the case
of Abdel-Malek and Said in the world of ancient Greece, and in the case of Tibawi and Turner in the Mediaeval Christian confrontation with
Islam. Similarities between the work of Abdel-Malek and Turner may be accounted for by the fact that both are Marxists; and similarities
between the work of Abdel-Malek and Said by the fact that Said to some extent built on the foundations ladi by Abdel-Malek, employing in
particular his concept of a European, ‘sovereign’ subject and an oriental object. xThe essential differences between the four – the most
important of which is Said’s radical redefinition of orientalism as a sort of Foucauldian discourse and an instrument of imperialism – arise
out of their different approaches to the question of knowledge. For Abdel-Malek and Turner, both good Marxists, scientific knowledge of the
world, defined as matter, is possible. In the form of an ideology, knowledge may be used by the ruling class to exploit and suppress the
working class. For Tibawi, a good Muslim, knowledge may be divided into two parts: eternal knowledge, known by God, and knowledge of
the world, known by man, God’s creature. Knowledge of the world may be acquired by means of intuition, the senses and reason; but in the
Koran, revealed to Muhammad, man has direct access to the word of God. For Said, following Foucault, knowledge,
in the
context of the debate about orientalism, at least, consists of a series of
representtions, shaped by the knowing subject’s point of view or
perspective. Such representations are essentially unstable, but after long
usage they become accepted as fixed and unchanging. Yet, paradoxically, Said, in Orientalism,
continues to assert that there is a material Orient, about which true knowledge may be obtained.
Standpoint Epistemology
Vote Neg on Presumption – The aff’s epistemology is entirely based
on text instead of learned experience making it flawed knowledge
Said 78’ – father of orientalism and post-colonialism (Edward, “Orientalism: Western
Conceptions of the World”, 3/5/78, http://www.rlwclarke.net/courses/LITS3304/20102011/13Said,Orientalism.pdf)//AK
It may appear strange to speak about something or someone as holding a textual
attitude, but a student of literature will understand the phrase more easily if he will recall
the kind of view attacked by Voltaire in Candide, or even the attitude to reality satirized
by Cervantes in Don Quixote. What seems unexceptionable good sense to these writers is
that it is a fallacy to assume that the swarming, unpredictable, and problematic mess
in which human beings live can be understood on the basis of what books texts
say; to apply what one learns out of a book literally to reality is to risk folly
or ruin. One would no more think of using Amadis of Gaul to understand sixteenth
century (or present¬ day) Spain than one would use the Bible to understand, say, the
House of Commons. But clearly people have tried and do try to use texts in so simpleminded a way, for otherwise Candide and Don Quixote would not still have the appeal
for readers that they do today. It seems a common human failing to prefer the schematic
authority of a text to the disorientations of direct encounters with the human. But is this
failing constantly present, or are there circumstances that, more than others, make the
textual attitude likely to prevail?
Orientalist K Key to Education
Criticism of Orientalism is the only way to achieve education about
politics
Said 3 (Edward Said, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University, “Preface to Orientalism” Al-Ahram Weekly, August 25 2003
http://www.fsor.it/varia/Edward%20Said%20-%20Preface%20to%20Orientalism.htm)
All this was obviously undermined and destroyed in Germany by National Socialism. After the war, Auerbach notes
mournfully, the standardisation of ideas, and greater and greater specialisation of knowledge gradually narrowed the
opportunities for the kind of investigative and everlastingly enquiring kind of philological work that he had represented,
and, alas, it's an even more depressing fact that since Auerbach's death in 1957 both the idea and practice of
humanistic research have shrunk in scope as well as in centrality. Instead of
reading in the real sense of the word, our students today are often
distracted by the fragmented knowledge available on the Internet and in the
mass media. Worse yet, education is threatened by nationalist and religious
orthodoxies, often disseminated by the mass media as they focus
ahistorically and sensationally on the distant electronic wars that give viewers the
sense of surgical precision, but in fact obscure the terrible suffering and destruction
produced by modern warfare. In the demonisation of an unknown enemy
for whom the label "terrorist" serves the general purpose of keeping people
stirred up and angry, media images command too much attention and can
be exploited at times of crisis and insecurity of the kind that the post-9/11
period has produced.
Utopianism Good
Utopianism is good
Parr ’13 (Adrian, Assoc. Prof. of Philosophy and Environmental Studies @ U. of
Cincinnati, THE WRATH OF CAPITAL: Neoliberalism and Climate Change
Politics, p. 7)
Environmental change exposes problems inherent to the modem political order and presents that order with a crisis.
Although this book is very¶ much about the failure of politics to produce equitable political options in ¶ response to
environmental change, it is also an attempt to break through¶ the dominant political edifice to get to the structures and
conditions that¶ constrain a viable alternative from appearing. Habitual thinking and praxis have to
be replaced by a more utopian imagination-one that injects disobedience
into the institutionalized political order. The philosophical concerns that
drive my analysis are the failure of imagination, the poverty of politics, the
nature of change, and the meaning of life in the absence of a future. I suggest that
this political crisis concems the distant relationship between utopian
imagination (ideal futures) and social unrest (real presents and pasts) as well as, more significant,
the new collective arrangements that the utopian imagination and social
unrest create when brought into proximity with each other.¶ All in all, mv point is that
it matters who claims ownership of the discourse and politics surrounding
environmental and climatic change and¶ how they do so. One significant political lesson we can take away from the¶
failure of Kyoto and of the various international climate change talks over¶ the past few decades is that if the
economically powerful are allowed to¶ continue monopolizing the meaning
of environmental change, then the¶ disagreement and disobedience that collective conditions
and aspirations¶ present lose their relevance.
AT: Policy Focus Good
They don’t make us policymakers, they make us consultants: we
become intellectual guns for hire, irresponsibly crafting marketing
strategies, incapable of advocating social change while entrenching an
oligarchy
Mason 13 (Arthur, Assistant Professor, Justice and Social Inquiry, School of Social
Transformation, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences @ Arizona State U., “Cartel
Consciousness and Horizontal Integration in Energy Industry” Cultures of Energy:
Power, Practices, Technologies, 2013, pp. 126-129)
The culture of power surrounding large-scale energy systems over the past¶ century
can best be described as forms of collusion whose decision-making¶
authority relies on structural positions of bureaucratic- and capitalist-led
industry organization. In this chapter, I depart from this model by drawing¶ attention to the
increasing role played in energy policy decision-making by one group of
experts, intermediaries (consultants) whose authority is based¶ not on their structural position
but instead on their theoretical knowledge and independent stance within the
energy sector. In the past, energy systems were highly regulated by a national
political community in which expertise was embedded as part of the originary political
organizational form. Wrestling civilian control of nuclear power from the¶ military, for example, resulted in the
establishment of a core set of experts¶ embedded within U.S. congressional politics. Atomic scientists and expecta-¶ tions
of nuclear power as too cheap to meter were present in the popular¶ imagination. However, the transparency
of expertise was not autonomous from government nor did experts view
themselves as independent of any sector of the industry. This is the case even after the
1Q70S, when expansion¶ in the scope of conflict and interested publics led to bureaucratic fragmentation and
reorganization of nuclear power.¶ In fact, one need only draw attention to popular
catchphrases of collusion and government capture throughout the twentieth
century to realize that prior to restructuring of energy markets in the 19805, the
culture of power and political decision-making was based upon structural
position in industrial organization. The notion of iron triangles or subgovernments, for¶ example,
draws attention to the closed-circle partnerships of industry leaders, congressional members, and technocratic elites
involved in promoting¶ nuclear power from the postwar years to the 19705 (Temples 1980). Managerial consensus reflects
the backroom arrangements of public utility officials¶ and industry leaders that results in expansion of electricity
transmission¶ from the Depression era to the restructuring of the 19805 (Hirsh 2001).¶ Natural monopoly and negotiated
settlements refer to growth of the natural gas¶ industry to, in the case of the former, a government selection process, and
in¶ the latter, pre-agreements that forestall litigation among pipeline builders,¶ natural gas producers, and distributors
(Doucet and Littlechild 2oo6; Tussing¶ and Tippee 1995). The government-sponsored project, as in the Manhattan¶
Project that exemplifies an alliance of military and managerial expertise, was¶ not limited to the advent of the nuclear era
but inclusive of other federally¶ sanctioned megaprojects (Rochlin 1994). interest group may be included here,¶ especially
the forms of claims-making across civil and governmental spheres¶ to remediate environmental insult (Tugwell 1980;
Wapner 1995). All such¶ phrases call attention to a crucial feature of twentieth-century styles of col-¶ lusion: the forces
that influence and indeed authorize political and economic¶ arrangements are based on decision-making authority in
which possessors¶ of theoretical knowledge are the dominated faction of the dominating group.¶ Curiously, the most
pervasive arrangement of collusion in which the¶ dissembedding of
expertise becomes transparent is the cartel. A cartel refers¶ to a group of sellers whose intent is
to fix prices and production outputs in¶ concert to maximize wealth, usually by strategy of trial and error. The cartel¶
arrangement is associated with oligopolistic industries in which the presence¶ of few
sellers facilitates coordination. Oligopoly means few sellers in the¶ marketplace, often with strategic interaction among
rival firms. While each¶ firm may independently decide its strategy, its actions anticipate the reac-¶ tion of rival firms.¶
Among students of cartel theory, anticipation and reaction represents a¶ "consciousness of interdependence"• (Dibadj
2o1o:595). That is, even without¶ intent to agree on specific conditions, oligopolies
are marked by coordinated¶ conduct across industries where prices are
suspiciously similar or change in¶ rapidly parallel ways (gasoline, airline tickets, cell phone rates, credit-card¶
fees, movie tickets). This coordinated conduct has given rise to the phrase¶ conscious
parallelism, to describe a tacitly collusive conduct in which firms¶ engage in parallel
behavior in order to gain collusive profits but where a car-¶ tel is not set up explicitly. The absence of explicit agreement is
consequential¶ in antitrust law, where the cartel fulfills a "contract," "combination," or "conspiracy" requirement (section 1
of the Sherman Act). In the legal profession,¶ conscious parallelism is restricted to 'probable reactions of competitors' in¶
setting their prices (Turner 1962). "Although it is hard to find a precise defini-¶ tion,"conscious parallelism
refers to "tacit collusion in which each firm in an¶ oligopoly realizes that it is
within the interests of the entire group of firms to¶ maintain a high price or
to avoid vigorous price competition, and the firms¶ act in accordance with this realization' (Hylton
2oo3:73, emphases added).¶ In this chapter, I highlight the role of independent experts in energy pol¶ icy decision-making by focusing on the forms they employ for realizing inter-¶
dependence among energy companies. I draw attention to representational¶ strategies used by
consultants (workshops, commodified forms of knowledge,¶ expert advice) for translating information into knowledge that
becomes the¶ collective property of energy industry elites. I argue that the advisory services¶ of firms such
as Wood Mackenzie, Cambridge Energy, and others structure¶ the location and content of
high-level conversations within the newly privatized and globalized energy markets. Through mastery of skill gained
through¶ experience, competency in education and employment, the discrimination¶ they perform
as
it pertains to judgment between knowledge claims based on¶ one's
involvement in certain social networks, consultants reduce the complexity
of facts into the kinds of simplicity that can form the basis of decisionmaking. In so doing, experts disentangle themselves from political and¶
economic rights in techno-economic decision-making by addressing, at least¶ on
the surface of things, reasons for adopting their advice in virtue of the¶ things that
they do and know rather than as members of institutions.¶ To characterize their role, I
begin by outlining the ascendency of energy¶ consultants and then Identify media representations, such as brochures and¶
advertisements produced by consultant firms, through which clients become¶ witness to a detailed interplay of images
about global modernity. 'These¶ images establish a relation between consultants' intended audience (energy¶ executives),
those defined as outside this audience (energy consumers), and¶ the future. Because of its resonance with risk, the future
is open to contestation. Contestation is the norm in the energy decision making arena where a¶ cartel alliance and cartellike consciousness are reconstructed continuously.¶ The temporary stabilization of an alliance relies upon a sustained
perception¶ of the credibility of a given future. To be sustained, it is incumbent to replicate an image of the future that is
both believable and authoritative.
They’ll say we’re ivory tower, but they’ve got it backwards – they
convert debate into an elite consultants’ summit which turns the aff
by increasing economic insecurity and enforcing a cartel
consciousness between companies creating oligopoly
MASON ’13 (Arthur, Assistant Professor, Justice and Social Inquiry, School of Social
Transformation, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences @ Arizona State U., “Cartel
Consciousness and Horizontal Integration in Energy Industry” Cultures of Energy:
Power, Practices, Technologies, 2013, pp. 136)
Consulting firms, buoyed by venture capital, operate like transnational¶ entities in
which their power relies on the strength of their networks. Con-¶ sequently,
emphasis in energy development increasingly is placed on global¶ financial markets,
instead of structural positions within national political¶ systems. For the
elative isolation and elitism of these deciders who think¶ big thoughts, squirreled away in jawdroppingly expensive conferences,¶ located in elite resorts, the performativity of knowledge
creation suggests¶ knowledge artifacts seem to materialize out of thin air. The
use of images of¶ strategy and transparency to ensure control over information is complete,¶ suggesting knowledge is
occluded and manipulable by the companies them-¶ selves. Thus, cartel consciousness is the
reproduction of oligopoly through¶ horizontal integration, a type of "clubbiness' that is
strategically beneficial¶ to participants and impenetrable to nonparticipants,
who remain vulnerable¶ and at risk in the new world of energy insecurity.
***Misc***
AT: The ‘Other’ doesn’t speak
Implementing the Plan is Orientalist—it implies the target country is
silent by nature
Levinson, 13-- Professor and Chair, Comparative Literature, Undergraduate Advisor and Co-Director PLC
(Philosophy, Literature and the Theory of Criticism) (Brett, “Orientalism and Identity in Latin America”, The University of
Arizona Press, 2013, The Death of the Critique of Eurocentrism pg 21)//IK
But it is important to add that this Other silence is a de-orientalist metaphor, not
a fact. The Other is not literally silent except in death. The Other is a speaking
being. Marginal or subaltern communities have a voice. The problem is that these
voices have not been sufficiently heeded by a particular public sphere:
scholarship, historiography, the media, literature, and so forth. In fact, not
even the most brutal colonizers' descriptions claim to impose silence upon the living
Other. These portrayals have suggested that the Other’s tongue is babble,
irrational, forked, barbaric, underdeveloped, uncultured, animal-like,
nonsensical, childlike, innocent, immature, naive, meek, even poetic, charming,
godlike, and Christ-like. But of all the adjectives that the orientalist has used to depict
the Other's voice, silent does not figure among them. Orientalists often imply that
the Other is silent by nature and that therefore its speech is counter to
nature, unnatural, dangerous. But the Orientalist can never actually impose
this silence upon a living being, neither through political action nor through
discursive argument. Indeed, for the colonizer, the living Other is always making too
many noises: speaking, breathing, weeping, singing.
AT: Orientalism not about Latin America
Orientalist criticism is especially pertinent to Latin American
Economic Engagement
Wilson 81’- member of the political science department at the University of Michigan
(Ernest, Journal of Palestine Studies, “Orientalism: A black perspective”, 9/10/81,
JStore, 59-69) //AK
For example he
shows the reader from Latin America or Africa or Afro-America the outline of his or
domination. His analytical categories, and especially his linking of political and economic
domination - in a word, imperialism - on the one hand, and the intellectual life of the
dominant culture on the other, are applicable beyond the Middle East. Some of its worldwide
applicability comes from what is one of the most novel and interesting features of the work - its nearly exclusive
focus on the mores and internal meanings of Euro-American culture, and not on the
impact of that cultural domination on the subject peoples. This was the terrain that Said chose to
her own
map, and it is indeed a relatively uncharted one. Still, it is a peculiarly undialectical exploration, which often leaves the
reader with little feel for the reality behind the stereotype, and which also tends to reproduce the Orientalist's own
exclusive focus upon the dominant culture with little examination of the reactions to and attacks upon Orientalism by the
dominated.
All out-groups are homogenized as one
Levinson, 13-- Professor and Chair, Comparative Literature, Undergraduate Advisor and Co-Director PLC
(Philosophy, Literature and the Theory of Criticism) (Brett, “Orientalism and Identity in Latin America”, The University of
Arizona Press, 2013, The Death of the Critique of Eurocentrism pg 21)
The common denominator among these various non-Western cultures is the
perspective from which they were evaluated, which could be no other than that of
hegemonic culture: Eurocentrism, the self-proclaimed universality of
Western man, the standard against which "others"• would be measured.
And to the extent they were not the same, racially or religiously in particular, they
would be considered inferior. Thus Eurocentric identity was constructed not
only through differentiation and exclusion but also by the biased
attribution, projection, and transference of negative traits onto its
"others"•-an exercise Edward Said collectively termed “orientalization.”
Furthermore, the different out-groups of the West were bundled together as
one, indiscriminately orientalized. The "primitive"• Atricans, the "degenerated" Asians,
and the Amerindians, those "primitive Orientals,” were imbricated stereotypes conceived
by colonialist discourses as an exotic continuum of otherness.
AT: Orientalism Good
Oriental descriptions are made to legitimize dominance over the
Orient
Buchowski 06(Michal
Buchowski, University of Poznań, Poland¶ European University
Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder, Anthropological Quarterly 2006, The Specter of Orientalism
in Europe:¶ From Exotic Other to Stigmatized Brother,
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/anthropological_quarterly/v079/79.
3buchowski.html,PS)
Orientalism" as a critical category was instituted by Edward Said in 1978. For him orientalism is, first of
all, a set of discursive practices through which the West structured the
imagined East politically, socially, military, ideologically, scientifically and
artistically. Orientalism is also "a style of thought based upon an ontological and
epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and…'the Occident'"
(Said 1978: 2) The Orient as such exists and real people live in the region concerned, but the European
representation of these people is a typical cultural creation that enables
those powerful to legitimize their domination over those subjugated and
conquered. The oriental Other constitutes the alter ego of the West and a
perpetuation of this dichotomy proves that a powerful cultural hegemony is
still at work. Discursive hardening permits politically stronger groups to
define weaker groups.
Orientalism only serves to govern the Orient
Kolluoglu-Kirli 03(Biray
Kolluoglu-Kirli, Bogazici University, The New Centennial Review,
2003, From Orientalism to Area Studies, Project Muse, PS)
Orientalism did not only make the Orient knowable and learnable but, more
crucially, governable. European interests in the Orient were both created and made realizable by
Orientalism. This aspect becomes most explicit with Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, a "turning point for orientalism"
(Fück 1962), which is the point when Orientalism reaches its maturity as a body of
knowledge that could be directly put into use for both conquest and colonial
administration. Napoleon's project pioneered those European "encounters in which the orientalist's special
expertise was put directly to functional colonial use (Said 1978, 80). And, as more material through more intensive contact
found its way to Europe, "Oriental studies since the French Revolution had been breaking free of the bonds of theology"
(Fück 1962, 304).
We learn about the “outside world” in order to exercise hegemonic
dominance over them
Kolluoglu-Kirli 03(Biray
Kolluoglu-Kirli, Bogazici University, The New Centennial Review,
2003, From Orientalism to Area Studies, Project Muse, PS)
With this aim, the SSRC appointed Robert B. Hall, the chairman of the committee, to make a survey of the existing
situation of area studies in the United States. 4 His findings, comments, and recommendations are central to
understanding the future development of area studies. Hall's survey showed that in this period, the best-established area
was Latin American studies, followed by Far Eastern and Russian studies, which were newly emerging. There was very
little organized or group interest in the Near East, Africa, the Indian world, or Southeast Asia (Hall 1947, 9). Hall
enthusiastically proposed that this gap be filled immediately. He was self-conscious about the role of the
United States on the world scene as a hegemonic power and drew a parallel
[End Page 103] with Britain of the nineteenth century, emphasizing that when
they were rigorously involved with their colonies over the "seven seas," they
had to overcome their provincialism by expanding their knowledge of other
cultures. He asked, "[I]s there not a similarity in our own position today? Do we need 'those
differently colored glasses' to live wisely in our 'one world?'" (14). According to him,
the development of area studies was not only an academic but also a
national need, and thus, universities were in a way obliged to undertake this
national responsibility. He underscored the lack of personnel and material. What they wanted was to
establish libraries and train experts as quickly as possible. He recommended that priority be given to certain areas in the
early stages, but that the ultimate aim should be "to take care of all areas"; "we should move rapidly toward filling out the
map" (83).¶ The world map was open to scrutiny before the United States. Despite a lack of resources
and infrastructure, there was enough consciousness and willingness to
promote knowledge about different parts of the world that were (or were to
become) scenes of the realization of U.S. political and economic interests. Now
the world was to be known—not to be directly administered, as was the case
for European imperialism, but to be ruled indirectly, more subtly, as
necessitated by American hegemony.
Orientalism is centered around dominance of the Orient
Landow 02(George
P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University,
March 18 2002, Edward W. Said's Orientalism,
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/said/orient14.html,PS)
Let us now turn to Orientalism with the aim of understanding the discursive premises at
work in the study of the non-Western world. When we readily [End Page 97] use the
concept Orientalism, actually we are referring to several interdependent
meanings of the concept. Following Said (1978), Orientalism can be discussed and
analyzed as a discourse, "as the corporate institution dealing with the Orient—dealing
with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching
it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for
dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (2-3).
Orientalism as a discourse depends on a certain mode of thinking derived
from the ontological and epistemological distinction made between the East
and the West; and finally, both are made possible by (and make possible)
Orientalism as an academic discipline, a tradition of disciplined learning
whose studies revolve around Oriental cultures, histories, and languages
(Said, 2-3).
AT: Our Reps are Fact
There is no objective truth in describing another culture or political
system
Macfie 02 (Alexander has written widely and published several books on the modern
history of the near and Middle East, Orientalism, page 187)
According to Said, many of the critics of Orientalism had taken his work to be a defence
of Islam and the Arabs. This was not the case. Neither Islam nor the Arabs actually
existed. Both were merely ‘communities of interpretation’. Like the Orient itself, each
designation represented merely interests, claims, projects, ambitions, and rhetorics that
were not only frequently in violent disagreement with each other, but also often at war.
So Saturated with meaning, so over-determined by history, religion, and politics were
such labels that no one today can use them without paying some attention to the
‘formidable polemical mediations’ that screen the actual objects – if they exist at all –
that the labels designate. Scholars may argue that science and learning are designed to
transcend such vagaries of interpretation, but as the history of orientalism shows, such
assertions are all too often themselves politically motivated (Barker et al,. 1986, p. 214).
***Aff***
***Orientalism Bad***
Alternative DA – Replicates Harms
De-orientalism silences the ‘Other’
Levinson, 13-- Professor and Chair, Comparative Literature, Undergraduate Advisor and Co-Director PLC
(Philosophy, Literature and the Theory of Criticism) (Brett, “Orientalism and Identity in Latin America”, The University of
Arizona Press, 2013, The Death of the Critique of Eurocentrism pg 21)//IK
And de-orientalism knows this: that the Others have always broken through
silence, even if their voices, sighs, and screams (of joy and pain) have rarely been heard.
De--orientalism is well aware that the metaphor of the "formerly silent
native"• (Culture and Imperialism 212) is just a metaphor and not literally true.
Why, then, must the de-orientalist deploy this metaphor of silence? What is deorientalism trying to sneak onto the postcolonial scene when it posits the
Other's unrecognized speech and noise as nonspeech and nonnoise? Simple
logic dictates that the de-orientalist metaphor of silence reflects a desire for
precisely the Other’s silence. In fact only this silence can guarantee of
speech is that it will disrupt silence. (First, of course, the silence has to be
supposed.) Therefore when de-orientalism speaks out against this silence,
which it itself imposes through metaphor, it a priori emancipates both itself and the
Other from suppression and oppression, from the enforced silence. De-orientalism
most definitely opens the way for the Other’s insurgent speech, but it is just as true that
the Other’s silence open the way for de-orientalism’s claims. This is why deorientalism desires the Other’s silence before it desires the Other’s speech,
why it grounds that speech on imaginary or metaphorical silence, on a
fantasy or blantant misreading. It wants the Other to speak. But first it wants the
Other to be silent so that de-orientalism itself can speak more securely, so
that its critique is assured to be radical, known to be Other, guaranteed to
upset the imposition of silence. In short, the colonizer and the decolonizer are
unaware of their common desire for the Other’s silence (or death). Matters are of course
complicated. The colonizer wants the Other’s death and silence but also his labor, his life.
No doubt the Orientalist’s imposition of babble upon the Other’s speech is geared to
communicate this double desire: for an irrational, thus animal-like, and exploitable life.
But insofar as the colonizer truly desires the Other’s silence by simulating violence
through rhetoric, through a poetics. It silences the Other through a turn of phrase. It
kills the Other’s voice in order to bring back that voice, to redeem it through
“poetry”, through trope.
Neg attempts at de-orientalizing only result in renewed orientalism—
ontologizes the Other and cultural differences
Levinson, 13-- Professor and Chair, Comparative Literature, Undergraduate Advisor and Co-Director PLC
(Philosophy, Literature and the Theory of Criticism) (Brett, “Orientalism and Identity in Latin America”, The University of
Arizona Press, 2013, The Death of the Critique of Eurocentrism pg 21)
Orientalism is a term that Edward Said excavates and retools in books Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. He labels
Orientalist Western discourse that, by constructing and imagining the non-Western; world in prejudicial or violent modes,
generates and affirms Western hegemony. Orientalism deals with the way a particular First
World, Western subject, in its representations of peoples and sites of the
Third World, establishes itself as the universal subject. The critique of
Orientalism, which I shall call de-orientalism (not to be confused with Occidentalism or the
reversal of Orientalism), tries
to dismantle this Orientalist discourse. It veils the
misconceptions and biases that Orientalisim itself both and conceals. Deorientalism also attempts to restore the wronged or violated discourses. For
it Orientalism abjects other worlds, it only makes sense that the critique of
Orientalisrn would attempt to recover that excluded domain, to recuperate
a subjectivity of difference. One cannot be at all sure, however, that this
critical response to Orientalism actually avoids participating in the very
discourse that it contests, especially when one considers the project in
terms of its overall teleology. Before pursuing this last point, a word on this study’s use of the term Other
is necessary. Said’s critique of Orientalism does not intend to define the Third World Other. Rather Said demonstrates
how vertain cultures and races have been Othered. Orientalism is not about the devaluation of
the Other, as many seem to believe; it is about Othering as devaluation. Indeed
non-Western sites are abjected the moment they are Othered. Said’s Third World Other is not an ontological but an
existential category. It emerges when, in a particular historical, cultural, or political situation, a Western discourse
objectifies the foreign or the unfamiliar. In this structure, any person, group, class, or site can potentially occupy the place
of the Other or that of the Same. Therefore much Latin American scholarship that seems faithful to Said’s project actually
betrays it (although it must be noted that Said too at times betrays his own undertaking). This scholarship
assumes Latin America to be A priori Other, reveals how this Otherness has
been violated, and then tries to recover that alterity. It presupposes an authentic Other who
preexists an inauthentic Othering, whereas Said’s critique succeeds insofar as it does not make such presuppositions. This
(perhaps inevitable) slippage in Latin American and postcolonial studies between the ontological and the cultural, the
essential and the existential-between a reading that posits Third World inhabitants as Other (an ontological statement)
and one that studies the way that, at a specific historical moment, particular discourses and peoples have fabricated this
Otherness (a cultural statement)-is of course of enormous interest. However, critics striving to expose the radical aspects
of Said’s work should not forget that the Saidian Other is not a given but a construct: a product of the West, racism,
metaphysics, and global Capi-tal. Thus when I implement the word Other in this study, l am referring to those figures who
have been named and posited as Other by Western discourses, not to peoples or sites supposed to be really (ontologically)
Other. At the same time, my analysis is attentive to de-orientalism's (and
Said's) tendency to slide from the cultural to the ontological, for this is
precisely my point: Latin American de-orientalism repeats Orientalism
rather than critiquing it, because it ontologizes alterity and cultural
difference.
De-orientalism recreates the same representational truths it
criticizes, flips the k
Levinson, 13-- Professor and Chair, Comparative Literature, Undergraduate Advisor and Co-Director PLC
(Philosophy, Literature and the Theory of Criticism) (Brett, “Orientalism and Identity in Latin America”, The University of
Arizona Press, 2013, The Death of the Critique of Eurocentrism pg 21)
This all explains how the
de-orientalist, when faced with the erased documents, the repression or silence of the
Other, can nonetheless put forth theses about the Other's perspective as truth. The de-orientalist comprehends
the Other's visions by catching them in the rearview mirror of the
Eurocentric Same that he or she critiques. He or she then draws a metaphysical line between the
false mirror itself (the Same, discourse, Orientalism) and the intuited (rather than manifest) lost Other that the mirror
reflects: truth, or silence as truth. In brief, the de-orientalist Other, supposedly a construct, is Other precisely because it
transcends construction. It is not the Other at all, then, but the eidos. The structure of de-orientalism is that of truth
because, as in Platonism, it separates an off-stage "Other-than representation” domain from a visible, on stage, field of
representation. The fact that de-orientalism stands today as one of the most truthful and accurate means by which to
analyze imperialism is therefore not surprising. But nor is it surprising that the critique, when it
tackles the unavoidable second project, the analysis of the Other of imperialism,
necessarily falls back into the paradigms it seeks to undo. Indeed due to his or
her investment in truth, the de-orientalist does not dismantle but restages
Orientalism by turning the question of Otherness into a reflection of or
upon the Sante. De-orientalism is too true to be good because it ignores the
collusion of Western metaphysics and Western politics. It refuses to
acknowledge that the political discourse that critiques the West (de-orienialism) is
identical to the epistemological discourse (of truth) that grounds the West,
since both discourses are founded on the same critique of representation.
Said’s method is flawed
Ning 97(Wang
Ning, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Peking
University, Orientalism versus Occidentalism?, Project Muse)
As quite a few Eastern and Western scholars have already noticed, however, the "Orient" and
"Orientalism" constructed by Said have their inevitable limitations, which
lie chiefly in their geographical, cultural, and literary aspects. It is these
limitations that provide us Third World scholars and critics with a
theoretical basis on which to question and reconsider his Orientalism.¶
First, we should point out its geographical limitation, which is restricted by his family
background, as well as his scope of knowledge and learning. As is well known, the
"Orient," geographically speaking, covers at least the wide areas of Asia, Africa, and Australia, but in Said's book, the
boundary line stops at the Near East and Middle East. Such regions as Southeast Asia and such
important Oriental countries as China, India, and Japan are seldom touched
upon; they pose a serious limitation to his theory although he has added certain corrective
analyses in his new book Culture and Imperialism.¶ Second, his "Orient" or "Orientalism" also
has its ideological and cultural limitations. As far as its ideological and cultural significance is
concerned, the "Western" idea or culture that we usually deal with in effect
refers to the ideology or cultural concepts based on the bourgeois value
standard prevailing in Western Europe and North America, while those
contrary to them are normally regarded as the "Oriental" concepts. It is on the
basis of this striking difference in ideology and culture that the East and the West were in a state of opposition during the
cold-war period after World War II; with the end of the cold war, East-West relations have entered a post-cold war period,
during which, according to Samuel Huntington, "The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of
conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of
global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations
will dominate global politics." 6 Among Oriental cultures, the "most prominent form of this cooperation
is the Confucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and power" (45).
Huntington has here correctly grasped the two origins of Oriental cultures,
the Arab countries and China, which
have, especially the latter, been overlooked by Said.¶
to the limitations of other geographical and ideological factors,
Said's Orientalism, in the sense of Oriental studies, naturally leads to his limitation in
comparative literature studies: the texts he discusses are mostly from the
English or english -speaking world rather than from the non-English-speaking or other Third-World
Moreover, due
countries, while comparative literature is not only cross-national and interdisciplinary but also cross-cultural and crosslinguistic. In this way, the limitations of his research as well as that of all the
postcolonial academic [End Page 61] studies are obviously discernible. It is true that to
conduct comparative literature studies from the postcolonial perspective could break through the boundary line of
geography and disciplines, but cannot break through the boundary line of languages, which is the very problem that we
Oriental scholars of comparative literature and cultural studies must solve in our research.
Said’s concept of orientalism leads to orientalism
Landow 02(George
P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University,
March 18 2002, Edward W. Said's Orientalism,
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/said/orient14.html,PS)
Drawing upon the methods of feminist criticism of the 1970s, Said's Orientalism did much to create the field of
postcolonial studies by teaching us to "read for the gap," placing texts in broad political contexts. Despite its obviously
valid points about weaknesses of Euro-American thought, its appeal for Western intellectuals, and its liberating effect on
intellectuals from former countries that were colonized, this seminal book has some major flaws:¶ Though enormously
effective as a polemic, Orientalism is very shoddy as scholarship, and yet it presents
itself as a corrective to flawed scholarship.¶ The book completely neglects
China, Japan, and South East Asia, and it has very little to say about India.
Although purporting to be a study of how the West treats all of the East, the
book focuses almost entirely upon the Middle East. Its generalizations about
"the Orient" therefore repeat the very Orientalism it attacks in other texts!¶ It
is bizarrely forgiving of French Orientalist writers like Nerval and Flaubert.¶ Orientalism is an orientalist
text several times over, and in two ways commits the major errors involved with the idea of the Other: First,
it assumes that such projection and its harmful political consequences are
something that only the West does to the East rather than something all
societies do to one another. (I am surely not the only teacher who has had heard Asian-American
students returning from their parent's country of origin exclaim, "Everything Said says the West does to the East, the East
does to the West!")¶ Because Orientalism is apparently based on very little
knowledge of the history of European and Non-European imperialism, it
treats Western colonialism as unique. This point, like the previous one, makes perfect sense if one
takes Said's pioneering book largely as a political polemic, for in that case such omissions might be forgivable. One
expects more from criticism and scholarship, particularly politically
motivated criticism and scholarship.¶ Although greatly influenced by
feminist criticism and theory, Orientalism almost completely neglects
gender matters. Although emphasizing the way the West sexualizes the East, it also tends to repeat the pattern,
and, moreover, its generally favorable treatment of French orientalization suggests a great insensitivity to such issues, ¶ For
many scholars, one of Orientalism's most offensive claims was its dramatic
assertion that no European or American scholar could "know" the Orient
and that, moreover, all scholarly attempts to do so (except Said's own)
always constituted acts of oppression. In a single dramatic move, which had great appeal for many,
Said committed the greatest single scholarly sin: he silenced others by
preventing them from taking part in the debate. According to Said, if
someone knew Persian or Tamil grammar, the history of Islam or Hinduism, or the societies of
Saudi Arabia, Eygpt, or Bangladesh, he or she already belonged to the devil's party. They
were corrupted by what Said defined as Orientalism. For Said, who studied literature at
Princeton and Harvard, this proved a very convenient tactic, since he knew very little about these alien fields. Indeed, one
of the bitterest charges directed at him was that in his own Orientalist ignorance of the actual
Middle East, Said himself in effect suppressed important work by Egyptian
and Arabic scholars!¶ Whatever liberatory or other benefits Orientalism might have offered upon its
appearance, it has harmed literary studies and literary students. By focusing exclusively on the political valences of literary
texts, it has very little to offer those also interested their literary or aesthetic dimensions. Even those with little interest in
such non-political themes have been harmed by the school of thought Orientalism has fostered: its
political argument, which first enriched familiar texts, impoverishes when it
leads to a neglect of literary and rhetorical technique. (Note: Said does not himself argue
against acquiring such skills, but those who follow him often do.)¶ Even if all these charges were true (and I believe they
are), Said's Orientalism remains a major work. Why do you think this is the case? How is the book larger than the local
conditions in which it was produced? Why do the book's strengths, rather than its weaknesses, appear far more important
to a scholar working in, say, Morocco, Singapore, or India?
K Causes Terrorism
Orientalist criticism fuels terrorism – he distorts the truth
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 18-19)
lt takes courage for an Arab to write self-criticism of this kind; indeed. without the¶
personal pronoun "we," how many would have guessed that an Arab. let alone¶ Edward
Said. had written it? And yet, ironically. what makes self-examination for¶ Arabs and
Muslims. and especially criticism of Islam in the West. very difficult is¶ the totally
pernicious influence of Edward Said’s Orientalism. The latter work¶ taught an
entire generation of Arabs the art of self-pity-"were it not for the¶ wicked
imperialists, racists and Zionists, we would be great once more"-encouraged the
Islamic fundamentalist generation of the l980s, bludgeoned into silence¶
any criticism of lslam, and even stopped dead the research of eminent
lslamologists who felt their findings might offend Muslim sensibilities and who dared
not¶ risk being labeled "0rientalist." The aggressive tone of Orientalism is what l
have¶ called "intellectual terrorism," since it seeks to convince not by
arguments or historical analysis, but by spraying charges of racism,
imperialism, and Eurocentrism¶ from a moral high ground; anyone who
disagrees with Said has insult heaped¶ upon him. The moral high ground is an
essential element in Said's tactics. Since¶ he believes his position is morally
unimpeachable. Said obviously thinks he is justified in using any means
possible to defend it, including the distortion of the¶ views of eminent
scholars, interpreting intellectual and political history in a¶ highly
tendentious way-in short, twisting the truth. But in any case. he does not¶ believe
in the "truth." ¶ Said attacks not only the entire discipline of Orientalism which is
devoted¶ to the academic study of the Orient and which Said accuses of perpetuating
negative racial stereotypes, anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudice, and the myth of¶ an
unchanging, essential "Orient," but he also accuses Orientalists as being a¶ group
complicit with imperial power and holds them responsible for creating¶ the distinction
between Westem superiority and Oriental inferiority, which they¶ achieve by suppressing
the voice of the "Oriental" and by their antihuman tendency to make huge. but vague,
generalizations about entire populations that in¶ reality consist of millions of individuals.
In other words, much of what was¶ written about the Orient in general. and
Islam and Islamic civilization in partic-¶ ular, was false. The Orientalists also
stand accused of creating "the Other"-the¶ non-European, always
characterized in a negative way, as, for example, passive,¶ weak, and in need of
civilizing by the advanced West (contrasting Western¶ strength with Eastern weakness).¶
Orientalism causes anti-american sentiment and breeds terrorism
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 49-50)
R. Stephen Humphreys found Said's book important in some ways because¶ it showed
how some Orientalists were indeed "trapped within a vision that portrayed
Islam and the Middle East as in some way essentially different from "the¶
West.’" Nonetheless, "Edward Said's analysis of Orientalism is overdrawn and¶
misleading in many ways, and purely as [a] piece of intellectual history,
Orientalism is a seriously flawed book." Even more damning, Said's book
actually discouraged, argues Humphreys, the very idea of modernization of
Middle Eastern¶ societies. "In an ironic way, it also emboldened the Islamic
activists and militants¶ who were then just beginning to enter the political
arena. These could use Said¶ to attack their opponents in the Middle East as
slavish "’Westernists’ who were¶ out of touch with the authentic culture and
values of their own countries. Said’s ¶ book has had less impact on the study of
medieval Islamic history – partly¶ because medievalists know how distorted his account
of classical Western Orientalism really is?"
Impact Turn – Small Wars Good
Small wars promote political and social change in Western societies
Barkawi 8 (Tarak Barkawi, 3/26/2008, Ph.D., Political Science, University of
Minnesota, M.Sc., International Relations, London School of Economics B.A.,
International Affairs and Philosophy, George Washington University, “Orientalism at
War in Korea,”
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/5/2/6/2/p2526
22_index.html)
This paper is a preliminary ‘thought piece’ for a new book project concerned with¶ the fate of assumptions of Western
superiority in the face of military reverse at the hands¶ of non-European others. As a matter of historical observation,
‘small wars’ gone wrong¶ increasingly have come to play prominent roles in
metropolitan politics and society.¶ Political and cultural contestation over
limited wars generated by imperial commitments¶ comes to a head when
things do not go as expected. The political fortunes of Benjamin¶ Disraeli, William Gladstone, Jules Ferry,
Francesco Crispi and William McKinley,¶ among others, revolved in some measure around ‘small wars’. With the turn of
the¶ twentieth century, especially its last half, the severity and consequences of defeat began¶ to mount. Anti-
colonial, nationalist wars in the Third World led to regime change in¶ France
and Portugal, while the Vietnam War remains the single most significant
moment¶ in American politics and society since 1945. What this history suggests is the
enormous¶ power of war against non-European others to generate political,
social and cultural¶ reaction and change in Western societies. ¶ The generative
character, the cultural and social productivity, of such wars is a¶ consequence of
the constitutive role of ‘the Orient’, broadly understood, in Western¶
identities. Such identities are committed, in diverse ways, to notions of
Western vitality,¶ strength and dominance over the Orient. At the same time, these
identities evince a fear¶ of, and a fascination with, the Orient. As such,
evidence of Oriental power and potency,¶ such as for example the rise of
Japan or China, have the capacity to disrupt Western narratives, leading not
only to moments of self-doubt and critique but also fuelling¶ energies for
change or redoubled efforts at continued dominance in new circumstances.¶
There is no more obvious sign of Western weakness and Oriental strength than defeat in ¶ battle or failure to obtain victory.
Unsurprisingly then, such setbacks become sites of¶ cultural disruption and
production at all levels of Western society.
Orientalism is Inevitable
Orientalism is inevitable
Hübinette- 03’ orientalist expert- has written many scholarly articles relating
orientalism and Western Dominance (Tobias, “Orientalism Past and Present”, 9/7/03,
http://www.tobias hubinette.se/orientalism.pd)//AK
Since the end of the 1970s, most academic institutions in the West have more or less accepted the
critique on classical orientalism and tried to distance themselves from their
predecessors. Instead, it is in the form of popular orientalism that the discourse has managed to survive in the West as a romantic
and colonial nostalgia reproduced in arts, movies and literature. This kind of popular orientalism is for example extremely well-represented
in commercials here in Sweden. So finally there is a time to ask ourselves- is
there a way out of orientalism , and can
we imagine a world beyond orientalism? can we imagine a world beyond orientalism? Well, my personal guess is
that orientalism will always exist in one or another form as long as the West
has hegemonic power. Orientalism is strongly intertwined with the Western
self-image to such an extant that if orientalism goes, then Western world
power or even the West itself must also go. And isn´t that what we are seeing today, a slow but
unstoppable power shift from the West towards East Asia with China and Japan in the forefront, maybe also South Asia with India as a
leading nation, while the academic world itself is undergoing of a rapid Asianization, giving way to a more or less higher competence of
higher diaspora Asians in the subjects involved.
***Aff FW***
Adv I/L’s ow Reps
Approximate cause o/w’s representational questions – we can know
cause and effect
Rotter 2k- Professor of History at Colgate University (The American Historical View,
“Review Essays Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic History”,5/3/00,
Jstor, 1205-1217) //AK
A third and yet more troubling problem for historians reading Orientalism is
Said's dubious epistemological relationship to matters of cause and effect.
Discourse theory and postmodernism generally have shaken old certainties about
history as a kind of science, a divining rod, which, properly wielded, will indicate the
truth. In the postmodern universe, there is no truth, just self-serving "realities"
promoted by regimes of power. "Reality is the creature of language," and "Western Man
a modern-day Gulliver, tied down with ideological ropes and incapable of
transcendence because he can never get beyond the veil of language to the reality 'out
there,'" as three historians have summarized it. Following Nietzsche and Heidegger,
postmodernists like Michel Foucault deny the linearity of the historical process; thus
"causation should be pitched out." For better or worse, most historians still believe
that they are engaged in a search for reasons why things happened as they did. An
event occurs, like the American Revolution. It is not, they say, a construct or a
representation but a revolution, properly named. There are reasons why the revolution
occurred, and even though historians might assign different weights to these reasons
or argue over whether some of them mattered at all, they still believe that the
causes of the revolution are knowable, that they preceded the act of
revolution itself, and that they are important to understand.
Cause and effect o/w- discoursive theory is wrong
Rotter 2k- Professor of History at Colgate University (The American Historical View,
“Review Essays Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic History”,5/3/00,
Jstor, 1205-1217) //AK
For diplomatic historians, the link between cause and effect is crucial, and
this constitutes another area of disagreement with Said. In a perceptive 1995
Diplomatic History essay, Melvyn P. Leffler complained that "the post-modernist
emphasis on culture, language, and rhetoric often diverts attention from
questions of causation and agency." The problem with discourse theory specifically
"is that although we might learn that seemingly unconnected phenomena are related in
some diffuse ways, we do not necessarily get much insight into how relatively important
these relationships are to one another." And Leffler quotes Patrick O'Brien: "'Foucault's
study of culture is a history with beginnings but no causes."' Leffler does not
mention Said, but insofar as Said employs Foucauldian analysis in his work, the
criticism could apply to him as well.
Causation ow’s Reps Theory
Our internal links outweigh your representation based arguments –
causation is more responsible for harms
Rotter 2k- Professor of History at Colgate University (The American Historical View,
“Review Essays Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic History”,5/3/00,
Jstor, 1205-1217) //AK
If most historians continue to believe that establishing the cause of things is a
meaningful part of their enterprise, even more insistently do diplomatic historians hold
to this principle. That is because so much is at stake: most scholars of U.S.
foreign policy are interested in expansionism, imperialism, and
ultimately war. Given the field of analysis, the dismissal of cause seems
irresponsible, for people should try to understand what causes imperialism and war, and
where power has such solemn consequences it seems trivial to equate it with knowledge.
Power, say diplomatic historians, is economic and military superiority, not
narrative authority. Imperialism is not just an attitude. War is not
preeminently a discourse.
No meaning– Neoliberalism doesn’t mean anything
The K is incoherent – Neoliberalism means nothing and is a process,
not an end point
Springer 12’- University of Victoria, Department of Geography and History (Simon,
“Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy andMarxian
poststructuralism”, 5/12, http://academia.edu/592370/Neoliberalism _as_
discourse_between_Foucauldian_political_economy_and_Marxian_poststructuralism)
//AK
On the other hand, some have called for a moment of pause, suggesting that we
should be wary of overly
concrete or introspective analyses of the local, as such accounts
inadequately attend to the principal attributes and meaningful bonds of
neoliberalism as a global project(Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Peck & Tickell, 2002). The ‘larger
conversation’ that neoliberalism provokes is regarded as imperative in connecting similar patterns of experiences across
space, which may serve as a potential basis for building solidarities (see Brand & Wissen, 2005;Escobar, 2001;
Featherstone, 2005; Kohl, 2006; Routledge, 2003; Springer, 2008, 2011b;Willis, Smith, & Stenning, 2008). Thus
neoliberalism as a concept allows poverty and inequality experienced across multiple sites to find a point of similitude,
whereas disarticulation under-mines efforts to build and sustain shared aims of resistance beyond the micro-politics of the
local. Accordingly, conceptualizing neoliberalism requires an appreciation of the elaborate and fluctuating interchange
between the local and extra local forces at work within the global political economy (Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Ferguson
& Gupta, 2002; Peck, 2001). Ong (2007,p. 3) corroborates this notion by conceptualizing ‘big N Neoliberalism’ as ‘a fixed
set of attributes with predetermined outcomes’, while ‘small n neoliberalism’ operates in practice ‘as a logic of governing
that mitigates and is selectively taken up in diverse political contexts’. In this light, Peck and Tickell (2002, p. 383)
propose ‘a processual conception of neoliberalization as both an “out there” and “in here” phenomenon whose effects are
necessarily variegated and uneven, but the incidence and diffusion of which may present clues to a pervasive
“metalogic”.Like globalization, neoliberalization should be understood as a process, not an end-
state’. Thus, neoliberalism-cum-neoliberalization can be viewed as a plural set of ideas
emanating from both everywhere and nowhere within diffused loci of power (Plehwe &
Walpen, 2006). The inability to straightforwardly align neoliberalism to particular individuals, organizations, or states,
and the further recognition that there is no ‘pure’ or ‘paradigmatic’ version of neoliberalism, but rather a series of
geopolitically distinct and institutionally effected hybrids (Peck, 2004),plays a significant role in the
difficulty of realizing consensus on a conceptual definition of ‘neo-liberalism in general’.
Neoliberalism, it would seem is simply too nebulous to isolate or deter-mine
Orientalism Ignores Causality
Orientalist representations don’t cause violence – don’t assume a
casual relationship
Rotter 2k – Professor of History at Colgate University (Andrew J., “Saidism Without Said: Orientialism and U.S.
Diplomatic History”, The American Historical Review, 105(4), p. 1208-1210)
A third and yet more troubling problem for historians reading Orientalism is Said’s dubious
epistemological relationship to matters of cause and effect. Discourse theory and
postmodernism generally have shaken old certainties about history as a kind of science, a divining rod, which, properly
wielded, will indicate the truth. In the postmodern universe, there is no truth, just self-serving “realities” promoted by
regimes of power. “Reality is the creature of language,” and “Western Man a modern-day Gulliver, tied down with
ideological ropes and incapable of transcendence because he can never get beyond the veil of language to the reality ‘out
there,’” as three historians have summarized it. Following Nietzsche and Heidegger, postmodernists like Michel Foucault
deny the linearity of the historical process; thus “causation should be pitched out.” For better or worse, most historians
still believe that they are engaged in a search for reasons why things happened as they did. An event occurs,
like the American Revolution. It is not, they say, a construct or a representation but a
revolution, properly named. There are reasons why the revolution occurred. and even though historians might
assign different weights to these reasons or argue over whether some of them mattered at all, they still believe that the
causes of the revolution are knowable, that they preceded the act of revolution itself, and that they are important to
understand. One of the contributions of discourse theory has been to complicate—a virtue, in its own terms—comfortable
assumptions about historical causation. But do the difficulties of ascribing cause make the effort itself a fool’s errand? Said
seems unsure. At times, James Clifford has pointed out, Said “suggests that authenticity,’ ‘experience,’ ‘reality,’ ‘presence,’
are mere rhetorical contrivances.” Elsewhere in Orientalism, he posits “an old-fashioned existential realism.”
Sometimes, Orientalism “distorts, dominates, or ignores some real or authentic feature of the
Orient”: sometimes, Said “denies the existence of any ‘real’ Orient.” There is, he asserts, a relationship between the
discourse of Orientalism and the exercise of power by the West over the Mideast. The discourse, Said wrote, “is by no
means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in uneven
exchange with various kinds of power,” including political, intellectual, cultural, and moral. Making allowances for lifting
this quotation out of a longer passage, it is nevertheless reasonable to wonder about the agency of that word “produced.”
Does Said mean to say, as his grammar suggests, that the discourse is “produced . . . with various kinds of power” rather
than by power, or that the discourse has an independent source? Is discourse a dependent variable where power is
concerned, providing a reservoir of culturally shaped images from which the powerful can draw to justify decisions made
for reasons of perceived strategic or economic interest?7 Said’s efforts to illuminate these connections arc not always
successful. Responding to Bernard Lewis’s attack on Orientalism, Said insisted that “there is a remarkable
(but nonetheless intelligible)
coincidence between the rise of modern Orientalist
scholarship and the acquisition of vast Eastern empires by Britain and France.”
“Coincidence” is far from cause and effect. In Culture and Imperialism, where the
relationship between discourse and power is the heart of the matter, Said
admitted: “It is difficult to connect these different realms, to show the involvements of
culture with expanding empires, to make observations about art that preserve its unique endowments and at the same
time map its affiliations.” Saids subsequent use of language indicates the difficulty. His definition of
imperialism includes not just the “practice” and “theory” of domination but also
the “attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory”—a statement that calls
to mind Mark Lilla’s comment that “postmodernism is long on attitude and
short on argument. ” Said struggles to decide whether culture and politics are separate spheres in some ways
connected or finally the same thing. Novels never “‘caused’” imperialism, but reading Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness “was part of the European effort to hold on to, think about, plan for Africa”; and, while no one would
construe Moby Dick as “a mere literary decoration of events in the real world. . the fact is that during the nineteenth
century the United States did expand territorially, most often at the expense of native peoples, and in
time came to gain hegemony over the North American continent and the territories and seas adjacent to it.” That
fact; what it has to do with Moby Dick is less clear.8 I am picking here at the most
is a
provocative and vulnerable part of Said’s argument. Said’s notion of power is more refined than the foregoing
decontextualized summary admits. He defines Orientalism as “a style of thought,” a way of thinking about the East in such
a way as to dominate it. Orientalism gave the West “the power to say what was significant about (the Other], classify him
among others of his breed, put him in his place,” as Michael Dalby has summarized it. For Said, as for Foucault,
knowledge is power. This equation, however arresting. may not say enough to
historians of the state. It certainly does not say enough to historians of U.S. foreign relations, on
which more shortly.
K not based in history
Be skeptical of any evidence from Said – he gets many historical events
wrong
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 23-24)
For a work that purports to be a serious work of intellectual history, Orientalism is
full of historical howlers. According to Said, at the end of the seventeenth
century, Britain and France dominated the eastern Mediterranean, when in
fact the Levant was still controlled for the next hundred years by the
Ottomans. British and French merchants needed the permission of the sultan to land.
Egypt is repeatedly described as a British colony when, in fact, Egypt was
never more than a protectorate; it was never annexed as Said claims (p.35). Real
colonies, like Australia or Algeria, were settled by large numbers of Europeans, and this
manifestly was not the case with Egypt. The most egregious error surely is Said’s
claim that Muslim armies conquered Turkey before they overran North
Africa (p. 57). In reality, the Arabs invaded North Africa in the seventh
century, and what is now Turkey remained part of the Eastern Roman Empire – and
Christian – until it was conquered by the Seljuk Turks in the late eleventh century. Said
writes, “macdonald and Masignon were widely sought after as experts on Islamic matters
by colonial adminstrators from North Africa to Pakistan” (p. 210). But Pakistan was
never a colony; it was created in 1947 when the British left India. Said talks oddly
about the “unchallenged Western dominance” of the Portuguese in the East
Indies, China, and Japan until the nineteenth century (p. 73). But Portugal only
dominated the trade, especially in the sixteenth century, and was never, as
historian J.M. Roberts points out, “interested in the subjugation or settlement of
large areas.” In China, Portugal only had the tiny foothold of Macao. The first decades
of the seventeenth century witnessed the collapse of much of the Portuguese empire in
the East, to be replaced by the Dutch. In the early eighteenth century there was a Dutch
supremacy in the Indian Ocean and Indonesia. However, like the Portuguese, the Dutch
did not subjugate “the Orient,” but worked through diplomacy with native rulers and
through a network of trading stations.
Author Indict – Said cheats
Even if historical errors don’t discredit Said, he takes statements by
scholars out of context to support his arguments (lol like debate)
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p.24-25)
Such errors can be put down to ignorance – Said is no historian – but so
many gross errors put into doubt Said’s competence to write such a book. On
the other hand, we can only qualify as intellectual dishonesty the way he
deliberately misinterprets a distinguished scholar’s work and conclusions.
Said quotes with approval and admiration some of the conclusions of R.W. Southern’s
Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages: Most conspicuous to us is the inability of
any of these systems of thought [European Christianity] to provide a fully satisfying
explanation of the phenomenon they had set out to explain [Islam] – still less to
influence the course of practical events in a decisive way. At a practical level, events
never turned out either so well or so ill as the most intelligent observers predicated; and
it is perhaps worth noticing that they never turned out better than when the best judges
confidently expected a happy ending. Was there any progress [in Christian knowledge of
Islam]? I must express my conviction that there was. Even if the solution of the problem
remained obstinately hidden from sight, the statement of the problem became more
complex, more rational, and more related to experience….The scholars who labored at
the problem of Islam in the Middle Ages failed to find the solution they sought and
desired; but they developed habits of mind and powers of comprehension which, in other
men and in other fields, may yet deserve success. Now here is Said’s extraordinary
misinterpretation of the quote from Southern: “The best part of Southern’s
analysis…is his demonstration that it is finally Western ignorance which becomes more
refined and complex, not some body of positive Western knowledge which increases in
size and accuracy” (p. 62). According to Said, Sourthern says that positive
Western knowledge of the Orient did not increase. This is not what Southern
is saying. Southern asks a question and replies: “Was there any progress [in Christian
knowledge of Islam]? I must express my conviction that there was.” Yes, I am firmly
convinced that Western knowledge did progress; that is what Southern states.
Southern adds that the medieval scholars’ methodology became more and
more sophisticated; they were more mature intellectually, since they developed
habits of mind and powers of comprehension that would pay dividends later. How Said
can speak, with his usual pretentious vocabulary, of “Western ignorance which
become more refined: is a mystery, but it is in keeping with his method and his goal of
painting the West as negatively as possible. Incidentally, the same passage
from Southern contradicts one of Said’s principal theses, about Oriental
studies being a cause of imperialism. All this thinking about he Orient failed,
Southern says, “to influence the course of practical events in a decisive way.”
***Defense of West***
Expansionism justified/Inevitable
Expansion was based on intellectual inquisitiveness, not greed or
economics
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p.38-39)
The golden thread running through Western civilization is rationalism. As
Aristotle said, “Man by nature strives to know.” This striving for knowledge results in
science, which is but the application of reason. Intellectual inquisitiveness is
one of the hallmarks of Western civilization. As J.M. Roberts put it, The massive
indifference of some civilisations and their lack of curiosity about other worlds is a vast
subject. Why, until very recently, did Islamic scholars show no wish to
translate Latin or western European texts into Arabic? Why, when the English
poet Dryden could confidently write a play focused on the succession in Delhi after the
death of the Mogul emperor Aurungzebe, is it a safe guess that no Indian writer
ever though of a play about the equally dramatic politics of the English
seventeenth-century court? It is clear that an explanation of European
inquisitiveness and adventurousness must lie deeper than economics,
important though they may have been. It was not just greed which made
Europeans feel they could go out and take the world. The love of gain is
confined to no particular people or culture. It was shared in the fifteenth
century by many an Arab, Gujarati or Chinese merchant. Some Europeans wanted
more. They wanted to explore. Marxists, Freudians, and anti-imperialists, who crudely
reduce all human activities to money, sex, and power, respectively, have difficulties in
understanding the very notion of disinterested intellectual inquiry. European man, by
nature, strives to know. Science undoubtedly owned some of tis impetus to finding
ways of changing base metal into gold and to attempts to solve practical problems, but
surely science owes as much to the desire to know, to get at the truth. This is
the reason philosophers like Karl Popper have called it a spiritual
achievement. Hence, the desperate attempts by Said to smear every single
Orientalist with the lowest of motives are not only reprehensible but also
fail to give due weight to this golden thread running through Western
civilization. One should also have reminded Said that it was this desire for
knowledge on the part of Europeans that led the people of the Near East to
recover and discover their own past and their own identity. In the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia,
ancient Syria, ancient Palestine, and Iran were carried out entirely by
Europeans and, later, Americans. The disciplines of Egyptology, Assyriology, and
Iranology, all of which restored to mankind a large part of its heritage, were the exclusive
creations of inquisitive Europeans and Americans – whereas, for doctrinal reasons,
Islam deliberately refused to look at its pre-Islamic past, which was considered a period
of ignorance.
Orientalism double turns itself
Orientalist Criticism oversimplifies the West in the same way of your
criticism – you can’t reduce it to imperliasm and dominance
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 28-30)
In order to achieve his goal of painting the West in general, and the
discipline of¶ Orientalism in particular, in as negative a way as possible, Said has
recourse to¶ several tactics. One of his preferred moves is to depict the Orient as a perpetual¶ victim
of Western imperialism, dominance, and aggression. The Orient is never¶
seen as an actor, an agent with free will or designs or ideas of its own. It is to
this¶ propensity that we owe that immature and unattractive quality of so
much con temporary Middle Eastern culture, self-pity, and the belief that all
its ills are the¶ result of imaginary Western-Zionist Conspiracies." Here is an
example of Said's¶ own belief in such conspiracies taken from The Question of Palestine: "It was perfectly apparent to
Western supporters of Zionism like Balfour that the colonization of Palestine was made a goal for the Western powers
from the very beginning¶ of Zionist planning: Herzl used the idea, Weizmann used it, every leading Israeli ¶ since has used
it. Israel was a device for holding Islam-later the Soviet Union,¶ or communism-at bay."' So Israel was created to hold
Islam at bay!¶ As for the politics of victimhood, Said has "milked it himself to an indecent¶ degree?" Said wrote:
My own experiences of these matters are in part what made me write this
book.¶ The life of an Arab Palestinian in the West, particularly in America, is
disheartening. There exists here an almost unanimous consensus that politically he does¶ not exist, and when it is
allowed that he does, it is either as a nuisance or as an¶ Oriental. The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political
imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim is very strong indeed, and¶ it is this web which
every Palestinian has come to feel as his uniquely punishing¶ destiny. (p. 27) Such wallowing in self-pity
from a tenured and much-feted professor at¶ Columbia University, where he enjoyed privileges
that we lesser mortals only¶ dream of (and a decent salary), all the while spewing
forth hatred of the country¶ that took him in and heaped honors on him, is
nauseating, As lan Buruma concluded in his review of Said's memoir, Out of Place, "The more he dwells
on his¶ suffering and his exile status, the more his admirers admire him. On
me, however, it has the opposite effect. Of all the attitudes that shape a memoir, self-pity¶ is the least attractive." The
putative conquest of Egypt by Napoleon plays an important symbolic¶ role in
Said’s scheme of showing all that is evil in Orientalism. For Said,¶ Napoleon
conquered, dominated, engulfed, possessed, and oppressed Egypt (see¶ especially
pp. 83-88 in Orientalism). Egypt is described as the passive victim of¶ Western
rapacity. In reality, the French were defeated and had to retreat hastily ¶ after
fewer than four years: Napoleon arrived in July 1798 and left for good just¶ over a year later, and the French forces stayed
until September l80l. But during¶ this brief interlude, the French fleet was destroyed at the Battle of the Nile, and¶ the
French failed to capture Murad Bey. Riots broke out when a house tax was¶ introduced in Cairo, and the French general
Dominique-Martin Dupuy, lieu tenant governor of Cairo, was killed. Further riots broke out among the Muslims ¶ in Cairo
when the French left to confront the Turks at Mataria, but the chief victims were Christians, many of whom were
slaughtered by the Muslims. The¶ French general Jean-Baptiste Klêber was assassinated. Far from seeing the
Egyptians as "the Other" and far from denigrating Islam, from 1798 the French
were¶ highly sensitive to Muslim opinion, with Napoleon showing an
intimate knowledge of the Koran. Perhaps the ultimate irony was that after the assassination of¶
Klêber, the command of the French army passed to Gen. J. F. Baron de Menon,¶ who had converted to Islam and had set
about enacting measures to conciliate the¶ Muslims. Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel Prize-winning
Egyptian novelist, once said it is thanks to Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt
that his country has emerged out of centuries of obscurantism. Egypt owes
all its modernity to Napoleon!" Another result of the encounter with the West
was the discovery of its ancient, pre-Islamic past, thanks to the work and genius of scholars
such as Mariette and Chrunpollion. So much for the evils of the "conquest of Egypt." Had
he bothered to pursue the subsequent history of Egypt, Said would have ¶ put
Westem imperialism in perspective, since he would have come across the
history of Muhammad Ali, often considered the founder of modern Egypt. It was¶ never in the
interest or even the intention of the Western powers to see the dismemberment
of the Ottoman Empire, which time and time again sought and received European support for the
preservation of its imperial possessions. After¶ the humiliating retreat of the French, the Ottoman's greatest challenger
was a¶ Muslim, the able but ambitious governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, "who aspired¶ to nothing less than the
substitution of his own empire for that of the Ottomans.Ӧ Inspired by Napoleon, Muhammad Ali modernized many of
Egypt's archaic institutions. In his imperial dreams, Ali was thwarted by the Ottomans, who had the¶ help, once again, of
the great powers-Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia-that¶ did not wish to use the sultan's plight to expand their imperial
possessions. A little later, Muhammad Ali’s grandson Ismail also dreamed of transforming Egypt into¶ a modern imperial
power. By the mid-1870s, "a vast Egyptian empire had come¶ into being, extending from the Mediterranean in the north to
Lake Victoria, and¶ from the Indian Ocean in the east to the Libyan desert."
Orientalist Critique stereotypes every European as inherently racist –
he recreates the divide between the Orient and Europe
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 31-33)
Here is Said’s characterization of all Europeans: "It is therefore correct that¶ every
European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist,¶
an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric" (p. 204). 'In other words, not
only¶ are all Europeans racist, but they must necessarily be so. Said claims he is
explicitly antiessentialist, particularly about "the West." But here is Said again: "Consider first the demarcation between
Orient and West. It already seems bold by the¶ time of the Iliad. Two of the most profoundly influential qualities
associated with¶ the East appear in Aeschylus's The Persians, the earliest Athenian play extant, and¶ in The Bacchae of
Euripides, the very last one extant .... The two aspects of the¶ Orient that set it off from the West in this pair of plays will
remain essential motifs¶ of European imaginative geography. A line is drawn between two
continents.¶ Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant"
(pp. 56~57).¶ As Keith Windschuttle comments on that passage: These same motifs persist in
Western culture, [Said] claims, right clown to the¶ modern period. This is a
tradition that accommodates perspectives as divergent¶ as those of Aeschylus,
Dante, Victor Hugo, and Karl Marx. However, in¶ describing "the essential motifs" of the
European geographic imagination that¶ have persisted since ancient Greece, he is ascribing
to the West at coherent self-¶ identity that has produced a specific set of
value judgments-"Europe is powerful and articulate: Asia is defeated and distant"-that have
remained constant¶ for the past 2,500 years. This is, of course, nothing less
than the use of the very¶ notion of "essentialism” that he elsewhere
condemns so vigorously. In short, it¶ is his own work that is essentialist and
ahistorical. He himself commits the very¶ faults he says are so objectionable
in the work of Orientalists."And here is another example to prove Said’s anti-Western essentialism "The¶
Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be ‘Oriental’ in all those ways considered commonplace by
an average nineteenth-century European,¶ but also because it could be-that is, submitted to being-made Oriental" (p. 6).¶
Here we have Said's reductionistic absurdity: the "average nineteenth-century¶ European." A part of Said's
tactic is to leave out Western writers and scholars who do¶ not conform to
his theoretical framework. Since, for Said, all Europeans are a¶ priori racist,
he obviously cannot allow himself to quote writers who are not.¶ Indeed, one could
write a parallel Work to Orientalism made up of extracts from¶ Western writers, scholars, and travelers who were attracted
by various aspects of¶ non-European cultures, which they praised and contrasted favorably with their¶ own decadence,
bigotry, intolerance, and bellicosity.
Orientalism Lies
The Criticism is ignorant of the works of real Orientalists and
fabricates lies to refute those who disagree with him
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 50-51)
Even scholars praised by Said in Orientalism do not particularly like his¶
analysis, arguments, or conclusions. Maxime Rodinson judged that "as usual,¶
[Said’s] militant stand leads him repeatedly to make excessive statements,"
due,¶ no doubt, to the fact that Said was "inadequately versed in the
practical work of¶ the Orientalists." Rodinson also calls Said's polemic and style
"Stalinist," while P. J. Vatikiotis wrote, "Said introduced McCarthyism into Middle
Eastern¶ Studies." Jacques Berque, also praised by Said, wrote that the latter had "done¶
quite a disservice to his countrymen in allowing them to believe in a Westem¶ intelligence
coalition against them." ¶ For the English historian of India Clive Dewey, Said's book
"was, technically, so bad; in every respect, in its use of sources, in its
deductions, it lacked¶ rigour and balance. The outcome was a caricature of
Western knowledge of the Orient, driven by an overtly political agenda. Yet it
clearly touched a deep vein ¶ of vulgar prejudice running through American academe."
The most famous modern scholar who not only replied to but who also mopped the floor
with Said was, of course, Bernard Lewis. Lewis points to many ¶ serious errors of
history, interpretation, analysis, and omission. He has never¶ been answered,
let alone refuted. ¶ Lewis points out that even among British and French scholars on
whom.¶ Said concentrates, he does not mention at all Claude Cahen, Evariste Levi-¶
Provengal, Henri Corbin, Marius Canard. Charles Pellat, William and George¶ Marcais, or
William Wright; only mentioned in passing, usually in a long list of,¶ names, are scholars
like R. A. Nicholson, Guy Le Strange. Sir Thomas Arnold, ¶ and E. G. Browne: "Even for
those whom he does cite, Said makes a,¶ remarkably arbitrary choice of
words. His common practice indeed is to omit¶ their major contributions to
scholarship and instead fasten on minor or occasional writings." Said even
fabricates lies about eminent scholars: "Thus in speaking of the late-eighteenth
early-nineteenth-century French Orientalist Silvestre de Sacy, Mr. Said remarks that "he
ransacked the Oriental archives .... What texts he isolated, he then brought back;
he doctored them .... [p. 127] lf ¶ these words bear any meaning at all it is that Sacy was
somehow at fault in his¶ access to these documents and then committed the crime of
tampering with¶ them. This outrageous libel on a great scholar is without a shred of truth.
¶ Another false accusation that Said- flings out is that Orientalists never
properly discussed the Orient's economic activities until Rodinson's Islam and
Capitalism (1966). This shows Said's total ignorance of the works of Adam Mez,
J.H. Kramers, W. Bjorkman, V. Barthold, and Thomas Arnold, all of whom dealt¶
with' the economic activities of Muslims. As Rodinson himself points out else-¶
where, one of the three scholars who was a pioneer in this very field was Bernard¶
Lewis."¶ Said writes of Islamic Orientalism being cut off from developments
in other¶ flields in the humanities, particularly the economic and the social
(p. 26l). But¶ this again only reveals Said's ignorance of the works of real
Orientalists rather¶ than those of his imagination. As Rodinson writes, the
sociology of Islam'is an¶ ancient subject, citing the work of R. Lêvy. Rodinson then points
out that Emile¶ Durkheim's celebrated journal L'Annêe sociologique listed for every year,¶
starting from the first decades of the twentieth century, a certain number of works¶ on
Islam!"
Orientalism is Bad – Hurts the West
Orientalism disregards the West without warrant
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 51-52)
Page 51-52
It must have been particularly galling for Said to see the hostile reviews of his¶ -Orientalism written by Arab, Iranian, and
Asian intellectuals, some of whom he¶ admired and singled out for praise in many of his works. For example, Nikki ¶
Keddie, praised in Covering Islam, talked of the disastrous influence of Orientalism, even though she admired parts of it: I
think that there has been a tendency in the Middle East field to adopt the word
"orientalism" as a generalized swear-word essentially referring to people
who¶ take the "wrong" position on the Arab-Israeli dispute or to people who
are¶ judged too "conservative.” It has nothing to do with whether they are
good or¶ not good in their disciplines. S0 "orientalism" for many people is a
word that substitutes for thought and enables people to dismiss certain
scholars and their¶ works. I think that is too bad. It may not have been what Edward Said meant at¶ all, but
the term has become a kind of slogan."¶ Keddie noted that the book "could also be used in a
dangerous way because it¶ can encourage people to say, "You Westerners,
you can't do our history right, you¶ can't study it right, you really shouldn't
be studying it, we are the only ones who¶ can study our own history
properly'” Albert Hourani, much admired by Said, made a similar point: "l think all this¶ talk after Edward's book
also has a certain danger. There is a certain counter-¶ attack of Muslims, who say
nobody understands Islam except themselves." Hourani went further in his criticism of Said's
Orientalism: "Orientalism has¶ now become a dirty word. Nevertheless it should be used for a
perfectly¶ respected discipline .... I think [Said] carries it too far when he says that the ¶
orientalists delivered the Orient bound to the imperial powers ....` Edward
totally¶ ignores the German tradition and philosophy of history which was
the central tradition of the Orientalists…I think Edward’s other books are admirable.” Similarly,¶
Aijaz Ahmed thought Orientalism was a "deeply flawed book," and would¶ be forgotten when the dust settled, whereas he
thought Said's books on Palestine¶ would be remembered." Kanan Makiya, the eminent Iraqi scholar, chronicled Said's
disastrous influence, particularly in the Arab world: Orientalism as an intellectual project influenced at whole generation
of young¶ Arab scholars, and it shaped the discipline of modern Middle East studies in the¶ 1980s. The original
book was never intended as a critique of contemporary Arab¶ politics, yet it fed into a deeply rooted
populist politics of resentment against the¶ West. The distortions it analyzed
came from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but these were
marshalled by young Arab and "pro-Arab" scholars into an¶ intellectualpolitical agenda that was out of kilter with the real needs of Arabs¶ who were
living in a world characterized by rapidly escalating cruelty, not ever-¶
increasing imperial domination. The trajectory from Said's Orientalism to his¶ Covering Islam . . . is
premised on the morally wrong idea. that the West is to be¶ blamed in the here-and-now for its long nefarious history of
association with the¶ East at the same time as it contributed more bitterness to the armory ol' young¶ impressionable
Arabs when there was already far too much of that around.""
Impact Turn – West solves stability/democracy
Western civilization is mischaracterized – it actually guarantees
peace and democracy
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 57-58)
A visit to the Ontario Science Center in Toronto on New Year's Day 2006
was for me a sobering experience. Tucked away in the section titled "Truth" were
many untruthful though undoubtedly politically correct statements denigrating
Westem civilization. In an effort to be fair, one exhibit gave way to unbridled
relativism: "Modern Western science puts the Sun at the centre of the solar system.
But other points of view are not necessarily wrong or primitive." And yet the same
section, without a hint of irony, was proclaiming how "Eurocentric" or
"intolerant" the West was! This science museum, which was implicitly a veritable
hymn¶ to the achievements of Western thought and ideas, went out of its way to
selectively criticize some Western thinkers for "racism," or, as F. R. Leavis and D. H.¶
Lawrence might both have said, "to do dirt on Western life." But the museum
exemplified the defining values of the Occident, or what are¶ the tutelary guiding
lights of, or the three golden threads running through. Western¶ civilizationnamely, rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism. One could¶ fperhaps argue
that universalism and self-criticism were the logical outcomes of¶ rationalism, but 1 think
it more useful to view them as separate but interconnected¶ sets of beliefs and principles.
Second, Western civilization can, and has been,¶ characterized in several other ways' I
think many of the suggested distinguishing¶ characteristics of the West, such as the
separation of spiritual and temporal¶ authority, can be said to derive from
one or more of the three golden threads.¶ Thus, in the latter case of the separation
of church and state, as Nlarsilius of Padua¶ argued, "It is the state and not the church
that guarantees the civil peace, and¶ reason, not revelation, to which appeal
must be made in all matters of temporal¶ jurisdiction." Politics involves
willing and free participation, discussion: in short, rationalism, dissent, the
right to change one's mind. and the right to oppose and¶ disagree-that is,
self-criticism-without recourse or appeal to divine commands¶ or holy
scriptures. Similarly, another defining feature, the rule of law, the thought¶ that
law is central to civilized existence and its continuation was derived largely¶
from the Romans. Not only is lawmaking a supremely human and rational¶
activity, but Roman law was also conceived as possessing a universal
jurisdiction.
K is reductionist
Not all orientalists wanted to colonize the Orient – many opposed
Western interference
Warraq 7 (Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic
Society, senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qurahic criticism,
Defending the West: A Critique of Edeward Said’s Orientalism, p. 407-408)
It should be evident that one cannot reduce the colorful and gifted
individuals known as Orientalists and their works to as yet another
expression of colonialism and imperialism. Many of these artists worked in
Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, which were not parts of any Western
colonial empire. Others¶ worked in Egypt and Morocco, neither of which
were strictly speaking colonies¶ mid-nineteenth century; the latter of which
only became a French protectorate in 1912, and the former came under dual French and
British control in¶ Algeria did come under French rule in l830, but Orientalists such as¶
Eugene Fromentin sympathized with the Algerian people, and others like
Charles¶ Cordier actually settled there, Many Orientalists were opposed to
Western interference in the Orient, both for political reasons-they were
democratic in their¶ sympathies-and for aesthetic ones-they did not want to see too
rapid a change¶ in the lands they had come to love. They had come to the Orient to
escape industrialization. The Orientalists had their own individual reasons
for exploring artistically foreign climes, customs, people, and costumes.
Many passed through either Asia Minor, Greece and Albania, or Spain. In all cases our
Orientalist painters were enthralled by the descriptive, genre possibilities of the peoples
and¶ their colorful traditions. They did not see the Spanish in any different
manner¶ from how they saw the Algerians or Moroccans; there was no
racism on their part. On the contrary, they painted Arabs, Spanish gypsies,
Algerians, Albanians, Berbers, Greeks, and Armenians in the same fashion,
according all their subjects¶ dignity, humanity, and individuality. In this, they
were influenced by, and followed the tradition of, the great Dutch masters, whom they
explicitly acknowledged as their teachers. The nineteenth-century Orientalists, just as
such artistic ancestors as Gentile¶ Bellini, Carpaccio, and Pisanello, were struck byoverwhelmed by-this new¶ world of bright skies and vivid colors. Delacroix's painting was
modified immediately with "his Contact with the Orient, and the intensification of color
so¶ afforded is passed on to the whole line of successors." Indeed, the Orientalists
must be seen not only against the background of¶ Venetian colorists and the Dutch
masters but also against the entire background¶ of Western civilization, with
its intellectual and artistic curiosity and the very¶ often essentially
sympathetic attitudes to the Other that l have described throughout this
book, from the ancient Greeks. by way of liberal-minded European and American
travelers, all the way to the Orientalist scholars writing about¶ India, Persia, and
the Near East in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.