Off-Case
1
The affirmative’s failure to read a topical plan undermines debate’s transformative potential
Legalize means to confirm by law
McGRAW-HILL LEGAL 07 [Burton's Legal Thesaurus, William C. Burton. Used with permission of The
McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/legalize]
legalize verb approve, authorize, bring into conformity with law, confirm, confirm by law, decree by law, enact by
law, ferre, legislate, legitimate, legitimatize, make lawful, make legal, order by law, permit by law, pronounce legal, sanction,
sanction by law, validate
And independently important for limits and ground--- negative strategy is based on the “should”
question of the resolution---there are an infinite number of reasons that the scholarship of their
advocacy could be a reason to vote affirmative--- these all obviate the only predictable strategies
based on topical action---they overstretch our research burden and undermine preparedness for all
debates they also make the Aff conditional – without the defense of the resolution as a stable source
of the offense the aff can shift their advocacy to get out of offense which discourages research and
clash
The first impact is Deliberation
Debate over a clear and specific controversial point of government action creates argumentative
stasis – that’s a prerequisite to the negative’s ability to engage in the conversation — that’s critical to
deliberation
Steinberg 8, lecturer of communication studies – University of Miami, and Freeley, Boston based attorney who focuses on criminal,
personal injury and civil rights law, ‘8
(David L. and Austin J., Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making p. 45)
Debate is a means of settling differences , so there must be a
interest
before there can be a debate.
If everyone is in agreement
difference of opinion or a
conflict of
on a tact or value or policy, there
is no need
for debate : the matter can be settled by unanimous consent . Thus, for example, it would be
pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four," because there is simply no controversy
about this statement. (Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no clash of ideas, proposals,
interests, or expressed positions on issues,
there is no debate . In addition, debate cannot produce effective
decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to be answered . For example,
general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal immigration . How many illegal
immigrants are in
the United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact
on our communities? Do they commit crimes? Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social
services? Is it a problem that some do not speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal
immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should they have the opportunity- to gain citizenship? Docs illegal immigration pose a
security threat to our country? Do illegal immigrants do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their
rights as workers and as human beings at risk due to their status? Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? I
low are their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders?
Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification can!, or enforce existing laws against
employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to be
addressed by a conversation about the topic area of illegal immigration. Participation in this "debate" is
likely to be emotional and intense. However, it is not likely to be productive or useful without
focus on a particular question and identification of a line demarcating sides in the controversy .
To be discussed and resolved effectively,
controversies must be stated clearly . Vague understanding
results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions , frustration, and emotional distress, as evidenced by
the failure of the United States Congress to make progress on the immigration debate
during the summer of 2007 . Someone disturbed by the problem of the growing underclass of poorly
educated, socially disenfranchised youths might observe, "Public schools are doing a terrible job! They are
overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain
order in their classrooms." That same concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision, such as "We
ought to do something about this" or. worse. "It's too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups
of concerned citizens worried
about the state of public education could join together to express their frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and
emotions regarding the schools,
but without a focus for their discussions , they could easily agree about the
sorry state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions. A gripe session
would follow . But if a precise question is posed—such as "What can be done to improve public education?"—then a
more profitable area of discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a
concrete solution step. One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions,
motions for parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies. The statements "Resolved: That the federal
government should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities" and "Resolved: That the state of Florida should adopt a
school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for debate.
They provide specific policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference.
To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing
limits on the decision
to be made,
the basis for argument should be clearly defined . If we merely
talk about "homelessness" or "abortion" or "crime'* or "global warming" we are likely to have an
interesting discussion but not to establish profitable basis for argument. For example, the statement
"Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword" is debatable, yet fails to provide much
basis for clear argumentation . If we take this statement to mean that the written word is more effective than physical force
for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose.
Although we now have a general subject , we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad , too loosely
worded to promote well-organized argument. What
sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels, government
documents, website development, advertising, or what? What does "effectiveness" mean in this context? What kind of physical
force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be. "Would a mutual
defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Liurania of our support in a certain crisis?" The
could be phrased in a debate proposition
basis for argument
such as "Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense
treatv with Laurania." Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution.
is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation
advocates, or
This
of the controversy by
that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the
controversy ; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging . The point is that debate is
best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of difference , which will be
outlined in the following discussion.
Debate is a question of skills not content – saying the world is dominated by anti-trans
politics and mass incarceration is an inherency claim that voting aff can’t resolve –
endorsing our political method teaches the tools that have a much better chance of
dismantling those power structures
Paroske 11 – Marcus, Assistant professor of communication, Department of Communication and Visual Arts, University of Michigan-Flint (
Argumentation and Federal Rulemaking. Controversia; Fall 2011, Vol. 7 Issue 2, p34-53, 20p ebsco)
The process
of democratic governance is more than a means to an end. Often, how we deliberate
a policy
is as important or even more important to the outcome of the debate than the underlying
issue itself . Recent history is rife with examples of laws that rose and fell on the mechanics of voting in
the legislative body or the parliamentary vehicles in which the legislation was offered. There is a normative
element to deliberation in a democracy, and failure to vet an issue sufficiently is often seen as grounds for rejecting
the legislation itself (Paroske, 2009). For example, it is routine for legislators of a minority party in Congress to
denounce a pending bill because there were not enough hearings on the issue, or that a sufficient
number or kind of amendments was not allowed, or even that the time devoted to debate on the floor
was insufficient. These questions of process in legislation dominate headlines . Less studied, but perhaps
even more interesting, are questions of process in a regulatory framework. Given its complexity,
rulemaking is especially
prone to process- oriented questions . Far more than legislation, rules must navigate a number of
prescribed argumentative hurdles on their way to adoption. This raises the stakes for following proper
procedure both logically and practically, as violating protocols makes it likely the rule will be rejected. In
addition, the authority of agencies in the federal government is nebulous. Agency power to make rules is
delegated by Congress, but there is little consensus on the degree of latitude that those designees hold.
Since rulemakers lack constitu- tional warrants for coercing citizen behavior, they are highly susceptible
to criticism of their authority and jurisdiction. Asked to act both independently and under the watch of
the constitutional branches, rulemakers must pay careful attention to process.
Second government knowledge – debate’s key to in-depth political discussions that are fostered by
the creativity necessity inherent in defending the resolution
Zwarensteyn 12, Ellen, Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements For the Degree of Masters of Science, “High School Policy Debate as an Enduring Pathway to Political Education: Evaluating
Possibilities for Political Learning,” August, http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=theses
The first trend to emerge concerns how debate
fosters in-depth political knowledge. Immediately, every resolution
calls for analysis of United States federal government action. Given that each debater may debate in over a hundred different
unique rounds, there is a competitive incentive thoroughly research as many credible, viable, and in-depth
strategies as possible. Moreover, the requirement to debate both affirmative and negative sides of the topic injects
a creative necessity to defend viable arguments from a multitude of perspectives. As a result, the depth
of knowledge spans questions not only of what, if anything, should be done in response to a policy question, but also questions
of who, when, where, and why. This opens the door to evaluating intricacies of government branch,
committee, agency, and even specific persons who may yield different cost-benefit outcomes to conducting policy action.
Consider the following responses: I think debate helped me understand how Congress works and policies actually happen which is different
than what government classes teach you. Process counterplans are huge - reading and understanding how delegation works means you
understand that it is not just congress passes a bill and the president signs. You
understand that policies can happen in
different methods. Executive orders, congress, and courts counterplans have all helped me understand
that policies don’t just happen the way we learn in government. There are huge chunks of processes
that you don't learn about in government that you do learn about in debate. Similarly, Debate has certainly aided
[my political knowledge]. The nature of policy-making requires you to be knowledgeable of the political process
because process does effect the outcome. Solvency questions, agent counterplans, and politics are tied to process
questions. When addressing the overall higher level of awareness of agency interaction and ability to identify pros and cons of various
committee, agency, or branch activity, most respondents traced this knowledge to the politics research spanning from their affirmative cases,
solvency debates, counterplan ideas, and political disadvantages. One of the recurring topics concerns congressional vs. executive vs. court
action and how all of that works. To be good at debate you really do need to have a good grasp of that. There is really something to be said for
high school debate - because without debate I wouldn’t have gone to the library to read a book about how the Supreme Court works, read it,
and be interested in it. Maybe I would’ve been a lawyer anyway and I would’ve learned some of that but I can’t imagine at 16 or 17 I would’ve
had that desire and have gone to the law library at a local campus to track down a law review that might be important for a case. That aspect of
debate in unparalleled - the competitive drive pushes you to find new materials. Similarly, I think [my political
knowledge] comes
from the politics research that we have to do. You read a lot of names name-dropped in articles. You know who
has influence in different parts of congress. You know how different leaders would feel about different policies
and how much clout they have. This comes from links and internal links. Overall, competitive debaters must have a
depth of political knowledge on hand to respond to and formulate numerous arguments. It appears
debaters then internalize both the information itself and the motivation to learn more . This aids the PEP
value of
intellectual pluralism as debaters seek not only an oversimplified ‘both’ sides of an issue, but multiple angles
of many arguments. Debaters uniquely approach arguments from a multitude of perspectives – often challenging traditional
conventions of argument. With knowledge of multiple perspectives, debaters often acknowledge their relative
dismay with television news and traditional outlets of news media as superficial outlets for information.
Failure to engage the state means the aff fails, coalitions break down, and hawks seize the political –
only engagement solves
Mouffe 2009
(Chantal Mouffe is Professor of Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, “The
Importance of Engaging the State”, What is Radical Politics Today?, Edited by Jonathan Pugh, pp. 233-7)
In both Hardt and Negri, and Virno, there is therefore emphasis upon ‘critique as withdrawal’. They all call for the
development of a non-state public sphere. They call for self-organisation, experimentation, non-representative and extra-parliamentary
politics. They
see forms of traditional representative politics as inherently oppressive. So they do not seek
to engage with them, in order to challenge them. They seek to get rid of them altogether. This disengagement
is, for such influential personalities in radical politics today, the key to every political position in the world. The Multitude must recognise
imperial sovereignty itself as the enemy and discover adequate means of subverting its power. Whereas in the disciplinary era I spoke
about earlier, sabotage was the fundamental form of political resistance, these authors claim that, today, it should be desertion. It is
indeed through desertion, through the evacuation of the places of power, that they think that battles against Empire might be won.
Desertion and exodus are, for these important thinkers, a powerful form of class struggle against imperial postmodernity. According to
Hardt and Negri, and Virno, radical politics in the past was dominated by the notion of ‘the people’. This was, according to them, a unity,
acting with one will. And this unity is linked to the existence of the state. The Multitude, on the contrary, shuns political unity. It is not
representable because it is an active self-organising agent that can never achieve the status of a juridical personage. It can never converge
in a general will, because the present globalisation of capital and workers’ struggles will not permit this. It is anti-state and anti-popular.
Hardt and Negri claim that the Multitude cannot be conceived any more in terms of a sovereign authority that is representative of the
people. They therefore argue that new forms of politics, which are non-representative, are needed. They
advocate a withdrawal
from existing institutions. This is something which characterises much of radical politics today. The
emphasis is not upon challenging the state. Radical politics today is
sense and a
often characterised
by a mood, a
feeling, that the state itself is inherently the problem . Critique as engagement I will now turn
to presenting the way I envisage the form of social criticism best suited to radical politics today. I agree with Hardt
and Negri that it is important to understand the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. But I consider that the dynamics of this transition
is better apprehended within the framework of the approach outlined in the book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical
Democratic Politics (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). What I want to stress is that many factors have contributed to this transition from Fordism
to post-Fordism, and that it is necessary to recognise its complex nature. My problem with Hardt and Negri’s view is that, by putting so
much emphasis on the workers’ struggles, they tend to see this transition as if it was driven by one single logic: the workers’ resistance to
the forces of capitalism in the post-Fordist era. They put too much emphasis upon immaterial labour. In their view, capitalism can only be
reactive and they refuse to accept the creative role played both by capital and by labour. To put it another way, they
deny the
positive role of political struggle. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics we use the
word ‘hegemony’ to describe the way in which meaning is given to institutions or practices: for
example, the way in which a given institution or practice is defined as ‘oppressive to women’, ‘racist’
or ‘environmentally destructive’. We also point out that every hegemonic order is therefore susceptible to
being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices – feminist, anti-racist, environmentalist, for example.
This is illustrated by the plethora of new social movements which presently exist in radical politics today
(Christian, anti-war, counter-globalisation, Muslim, and so on). Clearly not all of these are workers’ struggles. In their various
ways they have nevertheless attempted to influence and have influenced a new hegemonic order. This
means that when we talk about ‘the political’, we do not lose sight of the ever present possibility of
heterogeneity and antagonism within society. There are many different ways of being antagonistic to a dominant order in
a heterogeneous society – it need not only refer to the workers’ struggles. I submit that it is necessary to introduce this
hegemonic dimension when one envisages the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. This means
abandoning the view that a single logic (workers’ struggles) is at work in the evolution of the work process; as well as acknowledging the
pro-active role played by capital. In order to do this we can find interesting insights in the work of Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello who, in
their book The New Spirit of Capitalism (2005), bring to light the way in which capitalists
manage to use the demands for
autonomy of the new movements that developed in the 1960s, harnessing them in the development
of the post-Fordist networked economy and transforming them into new forms of control. They use
the term ‘artistic critique’ to refer to how the strategies of the counter-culture (the search for
authenticity, the ideal of selfmanagement and the anti-hierarchical exigency) were used to promote
the conditions required by the new mode of capitalist regulation, replacing the disciplinary framework
characteristic of the Fordist period. From my point of view, what is interesting in this approach is that it shows how an important
dimension of the transition from Fordism to post- Fordism involves rearticulating existing discourses and practices in new ways. It allows us
to visualise the transition from Fordism to post- Fordism in terms of a hegemonic intervention. To be sure, Boltanski and Chiapello never
use this vocabulary, but their analysis is a clear example of what Gramsci called ‘hegemony through neutralisation’ or ‘passive revolution’.
This refers to a situation where demands
which challenge the hegemonic order are recuperated by the
existing system, which is achieved by satisfying them in a way that neutralises their subversive
potential. When we apprehend the transition from Fordism to post- Fordism within such a
framework, we can understand it as a hegemonic move by capital to re-establish its leading role and
restore its challenged legitimacy . We did not witness a revolution , in Marx’s sense of the term. Rather, there
have been many different interventions, challenging dominant hegemonic practices. It
is clear that, once we envisage
social reality in terms of ‘hegemonic’ and ‘counter-hegemonic’ practices, radical politics is not
about withdrawing
completely from
existing institutions. Rather, we have no other choice but to
engage with hegemonic practices, in order to challenge them . This is crucial; otherwise we will be faced with a
chaotic situation. Moreover, if
we do not engage with and challenge the existing order, if we instead choose
to simply escape the state completely, we leave the door open for others to take control of systems of
authority and regulation. Indeed there are many historical (and not so historical) examples of this. When the Left shows
little interest, Right-wing and authoritarian groups are only too happy to take over the state . The
strategy of exodus could be seen as the reformulation of the idea of communism, as it was found in Marx. There are many points in
common between the two perspectives. To be sure, for Hardt and Negri it is no longer the proletariat, but the Multitude which is the
privileged political subject. But in both cases the
state is seen as a monolithic apparatus of domination that
cannot be transformed. It has to ‘wither away’ in order to leave room for a reconciled society beyond law, power and
sovereignty. In reality, as I’ve already noted, others are often perfectly willing to take control. If my approach –
supporting new social movements and counterhegemonic practices – has been called ‘post-Marxist’ by many, it is precisely because I have
challenged the very possibility of such a reconciled society. To acknowledge the ever present possibility of antagonism to the existing order
implies recognising that heterogeneity cannot be eliminated. As
far as politics is concerned, this means the need to
envisage it in terms of a hegemonic struggle between conflicting hegemonic projects attempting to incarnate the universal
and to define the symbolic parameters of social life. A successful hegemony fixes the meaning of
institutions and social practices and defines the ‘common sense’ through which a given conception of
reality is established. However, such a result is always contingent, precarious and susceptible to being
challenged by counter-hegemonic interventions. Politics always takes place in a field criss-crossed by
antagonisms . A properly political intervention is always one that engages with a certain aspect of
the existing hegemony. It can never be merely oppositiona l or conceived as desertion, because it
aims to challenge the existing order, so that it may reidentify and feel more comfortable with that order. Another
important aspect of a hegemonic politics lies in establishing linkages between various demands (such as
environmentalists, feminists, anti-racist groups), so as to transform them into claims that will challenge
the existing structure of power relations. This is a further reason why critique involves engagement,
rather than disengagement. It is clear that the different demands that exist in our societies are often in
conflict with each other. This is why they need to be articulated politically, which obviously involves the
creation of a collective will, a ‘we’. This, in turn, requires the determination of a ‘them’. This obvious and simple point is
missed by the various advocates of the Multitude. For they seem to believe that the Multitude possesses a natural unity which does not
need political articulation. Hardt and Negri see ‘the People’ as homogeneous and expressed in a unitary general will, rather than divided by
different political conflicts. Counter-hegemonic
practices, by contrast, do not eliminate differences. Rather, they
are what could be called an ‘ensemble of differences’, all coming together, only at a given moment, against a
common adversary. Such as when different groups from many backgrounds come together to protest against a war perpetuated by
a state, or when environmentalists, feminists, anti-racists and others come together to challenge dominant models of development and
progress. In
these cases, the adversary cannot be defined in broad general terms like ‘Empire’, or for that
matter ‘Capitalism’.
It is instead contingent upon the
particular circumstances in question – the
specific
states, international institutions or governmental practices that are to be challenged. Put another way, the
construction of political demands is dependent upon the specific relations of power that need to be
targeted and transformed, in order to create the conditions for a new hegemony. This is clearly not an exodus from
politics. It is not ‘critique as withdrawal’, but ‘critique as engagement’. It is a ‘war of position’ that
needs to be launched, often across a range of sites, involving the coming together of a range of interests. This
can only be done by establishing links between social movements, political parties and trade unions,
for example. The aim is to create a common bond and collective will, engaging with a wide range of
sites, and often institutions, with the aim of transforming them. This, in my view, is how we should conceive
the nature of radical politics.
This impact is unique to our method- any alternative fractures politics and guarantees the aff fails
Chandler 9 (David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster,
“Questioning Global Political Activism”, What is Radical Politics Today?, Edited by Jonathan Pugh, pp.
81-2)
politics is no less important to many of us today. Politics still gives us a sense of social connection and social rootedness and gives meaning to many of our lives.
It is just that the nature and practices of this politics are different. We are less likely to engage in the formal politics of representation - of elections and governments - but in post-territorial politics, a politics where
However,
there is much less division between the private sphere and the public one and much less division between national, territorial, concerns and global ones. This type of politics is on the one hand ‘global’ but, on the other, highly
individualised: it is very much the politics of our everyday lives – the sense of meaning we get from thinking about global warming when we turn off the taps when we brush our teeth, take our rubbish out for recycling or cut back
on our car use - we might also do global politics in deriving meaning from the ethical or social value of our work, or in our subscription or support for good causes from Oxfam to Greenpeace and Christian Aid. I want to suggest that
when we do ‘politics’ nowadays it is less the ‘old’ politics, of self-interest, political parties, and concern for governmental
power, than the ‘new’ politics of global ethical concerns. I further want to suggest that the forms and content of this new global approach to the political are more
akin to religious beliefs and practices than to the forms of our social political engagement in the past. Global politics is similar to religious approaches in three vital respects: 1) global post-territorial politics are no longer concerned
with power, its’ concerns are free-floating and in many ways, existential, about how we live our lives; 2) global politics revolve around practices with are private and individualised, they are about us as individuals and our ethical
choices; 3)
the practice of global politics tends to be non-instrumental , we do not subordinate ourselves to collective associations or parties and are
more likely to give value to our aspirations, acts, or the fact of our awareness of an issue, as an end in-itself. It is as if we are upholding our goodness or ethicality in the face of an increasingly confusing, problematic and alienating
world – our politics in this sense are an expression or voice, in Marx’s words, of ‘the heart in a heartless world’ or ‘the soul of a soulless condition’. The practice of ‘doing politics’ as a form of religiosity is a highly conservative one.
As Marx argued, religion was the ‘opium of the people’ - this is politics as a sedative or pacifier: it feeds an illusory view of change at the expense of genuine social engagement and transformation. I want to argue that
global
ethical politics reflects and institutionalises our sense of disconnection and social atomisation and
results in irrational and unaccountable government policy making . I want to illustrate my points by briefly looking at the practices of
People often argue that there is nothing passive
or conservative about radical political activist protests, such as the 2003 anti-war march, anti-capitalism
and anti-globalisation protests, the huge march to Make Poverty History at the end of 2005, involvement in the World Social Forums or the radical jihad of Al-Qaeda. I disagree;
these new forms of protest are highly individualised and personal ones - there is no attempt to build a social or
collective movement. It appears that theatrical suicide, demonstrating, badge and bracelet wearing are
ethical acts in themselves: personal statements of awareness, rather than attempts to engage politically
with society. This is illustrated by the ‘celebration of differences’ at marches, protests and social forums.
It is as if people are more concerned with the creation of a sense of community through differences than
global ethics in three spheres, those of radical political activism, government policy making and academia. Radical activism
with any political debate, shared agreement or collective purpose . It seems to me that if someone was really concerned with
ending war or with ending poverty or with overthrowing capitalism, that political views and political
differences would be quite important. Is war caused by capitalism, by human nature, or by the existence of guns and other weapons? It would seem important to debate reasons, causes
and solutions, it would also seem necessary to give those political differences an organisational expression if there was a serious project of social change. Rather than a political engagement with the world, it seems that radical
political activism today is a form of social disengagement – expressed in the anti-war marchers’ slogan of ‘Not in My Name’, or the assumption that wearing a plastic bracelet or setting up an internet blog diary is the same as
engaging in political debate. In fact, it seems that
political activism is a practice which isolates individuals who think that demonstrating
a personal commitment or awareness of problems is preferable to engaging with other people
who are often dismissed as uncaring or brain-washed by consumerism. The narcissistic aspects of the practice of this
type of global politics are expressed clearly by individuals who are obsessed with reducing their carbon footprint, deriving their idealised sense of social connection from an ever increasing awareness of
themselves and by giving ‘political’ meaning to every personal action. Global ethics appear to be in demand because they offer us a sense of social connection and
meaning while at the same time giving us the freedom to construct the meaning for ourselves, to pick our causes of concern, and enabling us to be free of responsibilities for acting as part of a collective association, for winning an
argument or for success at the ballot-box. While the appeal of global ethical politics is an individualistic one,
the lack of success or impact of radical activism is also reflected in its
rejection of any form of social movement or organisation.
ethics
than radical activists
Strange as it may seem,
the only people
who are
keener on global
are political elites . Since the end of the Cold War, global ethics have formed the core of foreign policy and foreign policy has tended to dominate domestic politics.
Global ethics are at the centre of debates and discussion over humanitarian intervention, ‘healing the scar of Africa’, the war on terror and the ‘war against climate insecurity’. Tony Blair argued in the Guardian last week that
‘foreign policy is no longer foreign policy’ (Timothy Garten Ash, ‘Like it or Loath it, after 10 years Blair knows exactly what he stands for’, 26 April 2007), this is certainly true. Traditional foreign policy, based on strategic geopolitical interests with a clear framework for policy-making, no longer seems so important. The government is down-sizing the old Foreign and Commonwealth Office where people were regional experts, spoke the languages and
were engaged for the long-term, and provides more resources to the Department for International Development where its staff are experts in good causes. This shift was clear in the UK’s attempt to develop an Ethical Foreign
the projection of foreign
policy on the basis of demonstrations of values and identity, rather than an understanding of the needs
and interests of people on the ground, leads to ill thought-through and short-termist policy-making, as
was seen in the ‘value-based’ interventions from Bosnia to Iraq (see Blair’s recent Foreign Affairs article, ‘A Battle for Global Values’, 86:1 (2007), pp.79–
90). Governments have been more than happy to put global ethics at the top of the political agenda for - the
Policy in the 1990s – an approach which openly claimed to have rejected strategic interests for values and the promotion of Britain’s caring and sharing ‘identity’. Clearly,
same reasons that radical activists have been eager to shift to the global sphere – the freedom from
political responsibility that it affords them. Every government and international institution has
shifted from strategic and instrumental policy-making based on a clear political programme to the
ambitious assertion of global causes – saving the planet, ending poverty, saving Africa, not just ending
war but solving the causes of conflict etc – of course, the more ambitious the aim the less anyone can be
held to account for success and failure. In fact, the more global the problem is, the more responsibility can be shifted to blame the US or the UN for the failure to translate ethical
claims into concrete results. Ethical global questions, where the alleged values of the UN, the UK, the ‘civilised world’, NATO or the EU are on the line in ‘wars of choice’ from the war on terror to the war on global warming lack
traditional instrumentality because they are driven less by the traditional interests of Realpolitik than the narcissistic search for meaning or identity. Governments feel the consequences of their lack of social connection, even more
than we do as individuals; it undermines any attempt to represent shared interests or cohere political programmes. As Baudrillard suggests, without a connection to the ‘represented’ masses, political leaders are as open to ridicule
and exposure as the ‘Emperor with no clothes’ (In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, New York: Semiotext(e), 1983, for example).
It is this lack of shared social goals which
makes instrumental policy-making increasingly problematic. As Donald Rumsfeld stated about the war on terror, ‘there are no metrics’ to help assess whether
the war is being won or lost. These
wars
and campaigns, often
alleged to be based on the altruistic claim of the needs and interests of others, are
demonstrations and performances, based on ethical claims rather than responsible practices and
policies. Max Weber once counterposed this type of politics – the ‘ethics of conviction’ – to the ‘ethics of responsibility’ in his lecture on ‘Politics as a Vocation’. The desire to act on the international scene without a clear
strategy or purpose has led to highly destabilising interventions from the Balkans to Iraq and to the moralisation of a wide range of issues from war crimes to EU membership requirements. Today more and more people are ‘doing
politics’ in their academic work. This is the reason for the boom in International Relations (IR) study and the attraction of other social sciences to the global sphere. I would argue that the attraction of IR for many people has not
been IR theory but the desire to practise global ethics. The boom in the IR discipline has coincided with a rejection of Realist theoretical frameworks of power and interests and the sovereignty/anarchy problematic. However, I
would argue that this rejection has not been a product of theoretical engagement with Realism but an ethical act of rejection of Realism’s ontological focus. It seems that our ideas and our theories say much more about us than
the world we live in. Normative theorists and Constructivists tend to support the global ethical turn arguing that we should not be as concerned with ‘what is’ as with the potential for the emergence of a global ethical community.
Constructivists, in particular, focus upon the ethical language which political elites espouse rather than the practices of power. But the most dangerous trends in the discipline today are those frameworks which have taken up
while the task for critical theorists is to focus on emancipatory
alternative forms of living or of thinking about the world. Critical thought then becomes a process of wishful thinking
rather than one of engagement, with its advocates arguing that we need to focus on clarifying our own ethical frameworks and biases and positionality, before thinking about or teaching on world
Critical Theory and argue that focusing on the world as it exists is conservative problem-solving
affairs.
This becomes ‘ me-search’ rather than research . We have moved a long way from Hedley Bull’s (1995) perspective that, for academic research to be truly
radical, we had to put our values to the side to follow where the question or inquiry might lead.
The inward-looking and narcissistic trends in academia,
where we are more concerned with our reflectivity
– the awareness of our own ethics and values –
than with engaging with the
world, was brought home to me when I asked my IR students which theoretical frameworks they agreed with most. They mostly replied Critical Theory and Constructivism. This is despite the fact that the students thought
that states operated on the basis of power and self-interest in a world of anarchy. Their theoretical preferences were based more on what their choices said about them as ethical individuals, than about how theory might be used
to understand and engage with the world. Conclusion I have attempted to argue that there is a lot at stake in the radical understanding of engagement in global politics.
Politics has become a
religious activity, an activity which is no longer socially mediated; it is less and less an activity based on social engagement and the testing
ideas in public debate
of
or in the academy. Doing politics today, whether in radical activism, government policy-making or in academia, seems to bring people into a one-to-one relationship with global
when we look for meaning we find it inside
ourselves rather than in the external consequences of our ‘political’ acts. What matters is the conviction or the act in itself: its connection to
issues in the same way religious people have a one-to-one relationship with their God. Politics is increasingly like religion because
the global sphere is one that we increasingly tend to provide idealistically. Another way of expressing this limited sense of our subjectivity is in the popularity of globalisation theory – the idea that instrumentality is no longer
possible today because the world is such a complex and interconnected place and therefore there is no way of knowing the consequences of our actions. The more we engage in the new politics where there is an unmediated
relationship between us as individuals and global issues, the less we engage instrumentally with the outside world, and
the less we engage with our peers and colleagues at the
level of political or intellectual debate and organisation.
This is specifically true of prostitution discussions- engaging the law is key to change the way debates
are structured in the academy and are necessary to create social change
Fechner 94 (Holly, B.A., Oberlin College, J.D., University of Michigan, 1994, “Three Stories of
Prostitution in the West: Prostitutes’ Groups, Law, and Feminist ‘Truth”, Hein Online///TS)
First,
law is an important locus of meaning in society that provides feminists with an
opportunity to create and promote alternative, counter hegemonic meanings . The legal
system in the United States is based, in large measure, on Enlightenment ideas about truth and justice.’53
Within the existing political and legal structure , grand theories make claims to truth
less false knowledge)
(or at least
that can justify and increase the political power of persons or groups using
them .’ As many feminists know, the power to narrate (tell your own version of a story) is the power to construct reality.’55
Prostitution illustrates why postmodern feminism is disempowering politically . Law can be a
powerful forum for improving the lives of women in prostitution . Women in prostitution
and feminist supporters need to tell a coherent feminist story to make both statutory legal
changes and to alter how legal decisionmakers apply law. ’56 Our postmodern understandings
about truth are difficult, if not impossible, to apply through the modern institution of law.’57 Law demands
answers to many questions. What is the status of women in prostitution? How do laws contribute to
that status? How will changes in doctrine affect women in prostitution? Postmodern feminists deny
the relevancy of answers to these questions because they think a more just society cannot
be created through better knowledge. Because feminism is a modern practice as well as a
theory
(unlike postmodernism, it would seem),
it cannot ignore the political implications of using the
legal system for social change . In her review of Catharine MacKinnon’s Feminism Unmodified, legal theorist Frances Olsen
emphasized this pragmatic approach by arguing for the political utility of “grand theory” arguments.’59
Olsen attempted to refute criticism of MacKinnon’s version of radical feminism . She argued
that MacKinnon’s work contains gaps and fissures like any other grand theory, but that a
more complex or subtle analysis could lose strategic political force by being misunderstood
or not taken as seriously .’60 If one follows Olsen’s logic, feminists should not hesitate to advocate for and
defend an unambiguous position with regard to prostitution. Grand theories are useful to feminists for another related
reason. Although claims to less false knowledge may not be “true” or useful throughout time and place, they are convincing in the West in this
historical time period.’6’ Because Enlightenment thought defined truth as simultaneously universal and benign, societies can use it to resolve
conflict without domination.162 Grand theories are transitional, and advocates should use those theories that are convincing in their own time
and place.’63 Harding supports what she calls feminist standpoint theory). She thinks that women (and members of other oppressed groups)
have access to less distorted views of the world and are privileged to less partial knowledge.’ Harding
argues that postmodernists
“appear to assume that if one gives up the goal of telling one true story about reality, one must also give
up trying to tell less false stories.”’ She thinks that women need to tell less false stories about reality to
increase their political power and improve their material conditions. Law provides a powerful
forum for telling stories and constructing new meanings of prostitution . Because
postmodern feminism over-emphasizes feminism as a discourse and underemphasizes it as a
practice, it is not particularly useful in the face of a long-ignored feminist issue like prostitution .
The postmodern feminist response to gender subordination in prostitution---proliferating multiple
meanings to decenter it—-does not provide an effective counterbalance to embedded acceptance of
women’s subordination as evidenced by prostitution. Law as a site of creation and dissemination
of meanings in societies can help improve the lives of women in prostitution . It should
unambiguously promote a feminist perspective.
Our method is empirically successful and spills over
Horowitz 10, Michael, assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, “Debating Debate Club,” Entry 5, August
20th,
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_book_club/features/2010/debating_debate_club/can_debate_save_the_world_or_does_it_just_help_
you_get_into_a_better_college.html
As for your point about policy debate being hermetically sealed, consider this: The debaters who actually go into their communities and
encourage more public dialogue are the policy
debaters. They founded the National Association of Urban Debate
Leagues, which serves more than 500 schools around the country. Peer-reviewed research shows that
participating has helped more than 40,000 inner-city students improve their grades, graduate from high
school, and attend college. Policy debaters go to Washington, D.C., and conduct accessible public debates for lay
audiences about many topics, including nuclear weapons and environmental policy. They work with prison
populations in Georgia and New York as a means of enfranchising those voices. They teach public
speaking to kids of all ages in Jamaica, Malaysia, and South Korea. The middle-school policy debate program in
the Atlanta Housing Authority has
been recognized by the Bureau of Justice Administration as a potential national model
for reducing gang participation among inner-city youth. The policy debate community makes these things happen
because it believes that more students equipped with speaking and research skills is a good thing, that more
knowledge about
current events and
political decisions is a powerful weapon , and that these benefits
shouldn't be restricted to those who are already in positions of privilege.
Using the starting point in debate specifically is bad ----- it simultaneously fails to
inculcate more diversity in debate and inherently privileges the non-traditional style
of debate that devolves into a series of shell-games, trading off with efforts for socialchange while providing more ammo for conservative power-grabs
ZOMPETTI 2004 - Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Illinois State University (is he still
there?) (Joseph P. Zompetti, “PERSONALIZING DEBATING: DIVERSITY AND TOLERANCE IN THE DEBATE
COMMUNITY” September 2004 Contemporary Argumentation and Debate volume 25)
Frequently posts to eDebate (e.g., April 2004),1 the electronic listserv for intercollegiate policy debate,
have described a controversial phenomenon in debate, namely the use of personalized discourse to
articulate a specific position of progressive social change in the debate community. More specifically,
the discussion centered in April 2004 on the arguments advanced by University of Louisville debaters
who have essentially claimed that rap, instead of "traditional" forms of evidence,2 ( In another eDebate
post, Ede Warner (2005), the coach of the University of Louisville, described how their project does not
forbid "traditional" forms of evidence. Their project, nevertheless, privileges "non-traditional" types of
evidence and criticizes "traditional" debate practices. In another post, Warner (2004b) goes so far as to
indict traditional evidence as "crappy.") along with personal narratives should be used to support the
position that the debate community is exclusionary against people of color. Their position continues to
claim that they have made real advances to change the community, including their "project" of rejecting
"traditional" forms of debate (privilege, evidence, flowing, styles of argument, etc.), recruiting
marginalized student populations, providing scholarships to targeted high school groups, advancing a
campaign of inclusion of different voices, etc. Such advances are difficult to counter since they are in
large part unverifiable and do not justify by themselves the insertion of personalized arguments within
the debate round. When opponents try to question their own privilege and advance ideas of changing
the community, Louisville has responded with a series of arguments, including tokenism, insincerity,
divide-and-conquer, and so on. The question then becomes, at what point should the personal intercede
into the debate round? Are the concerns and voices of individuals who feel slighted in the debate
community appropriate for actual debate rounds? Should issues of racism, marginalization, sexism, and
the like which occur in the debate community be subject to actual debates within the debate
community, or should they be discussed in venues and forums that are more appropriate to discussing
structural issues of the community? These questions, among others, have become highlighted in the
discussions on eDebate. The purpose of this essay is to outline what I strongly believe is a fundamental
problem with recent debate techniques the personalizing of debating. The intent is not to isolate or
overly criticize the arguments advanced by the University of Louisville specifically, but rather to locate
their arguments as a case study for how debate rounds have become highly personalized. Even before
Louisville’s project (and certainly Louisville is not the only team that currently engages in this type of
debating), individuals and groups alike were personalizing debate arguments, making it difficult for
opponents and judges to decipher, understand, analyze and come to grips with such arguments in a
forum meant for hypothetical policy-making. In essence, the personalizing of debating has emerged
wrought with frustrations, anxiety, resistance and backlash. To be sure, many have embraced the idea
to gain a strategic edge in competitive debate rounds as well as to be self-reflexive of their own
participation in an activity that probably does need restructuring. However, the central problem of this
new phenomenon the personalizing of debating is twofold: it victimizes debate , and it ignores
deeper, perhaps more important structural problems within the debate community. There is no
question that intercollegiate policy debate is at a crossroads. It suffers from a severe lack of diversity, in
terms of female debaters as well as debaters of color. Stating the obvious, McRee and Cote declare that
"twenty years of data have begun to cement an agreement among forensics educators that there exists
a serious lack of diversity in debate" (2002, p. 29). This problem is especially acute when one looks at the
teams clearing into elimination rounds and which debaters receive speaker awards at both regional and
national tournaments. Very few would argue, I suspect, that diversity is not a problem In fact, the
opposite is true (Bartenan, 1995, 1998; Bile, 1999; Bruschke & Johnson, 1994; Crenshaw, 1993a, 1993b;
Hunt & Simerly, 1999; Loge, 1991; McRee & Cote, 2002; Rogers et al., 2003; Rowland, 1993; Sowards,
1999a, 1999b; Tuman, 1993; Wilkins & Hobbs, 1997; Williams, McGee & McGee, 1999; Zompetti, 1999).
However, the real debate occurs as to the core causes of this problem and how to address them. In the
past five years or so, some debaters and debate teams have introduced the diversity problem into actual
debate rounds, arguing that "traditional" debate is exclusionary and problematic. Their arguments focus
on several core issues: traditional debate excludes certain types of evidence (i.e., narratives, music, etc.),
traditional debate privileges affluent individuals (i.e., the cost of summer institutes, travel budgets, etc.),
traditional debate ignores the reality of many individuals who are already at a disadvantage in the
activity (i.e., debaters of color and women). These teams then use these types of arguments, coupled
with a patchwork of hip- hop music clips and personal testimony, along with soliloquies on how the
current resolution precludes their perspectives. The result is a highly effective and advanced
amalgamation of ad hominem attacks, fallacies of composition (the part represents the whole), guilt
appeals and, to use Kenneth Burke’s (1962) term, victimage. In essence, many debates on college
campuses have become venues for complaints about how the current order of things (aka "status quo,"
or as Rogers et al. (2003) call it, the "ISM") in intercollegiate debate is occurring. Before addressing
specifically the issue of personalizing debate, I want to pause to address another, separate argument
lodged by teams like Louisville. Such teams often critique "traditional" pedagogy for its reliance on
banking, top-down forms of education. Stemming from the perspective of critical pedagogy (Freire,
1993), this critique argues that traditional pedagogy includes instruments of alienation which require
personal attention to overcome the marginalization and oppressive conditions associated with
traditional pedagogy. While I generally agree with the tenets of Freirian critical pedagogy, I am
unconvinced that the personalized nature of debate falls within its purview. As a matter of fact, the
dialogic nature of debate can actually foster the organic learning process of critical pedagogy, absent
personalizing it (Wade, 1998; Warner, 2001). Furthermore, as I will argue below, even if traditional
debate practices have problems, personalizing debate within the specific debate round is not the most
effective means for creating change. Finally, one can also dispute that personalizing debate is actually a
bone fide element to critical pedagogy. Given the therapeutic nature of personalized debate, such
argumentative transactions almost become like disputes on a playground where one debater essentially
says "my daddy can beat up your daddy," or translated it becomes "my oppression is worse than your
oppression." And, because these arguments occur in a debate round, they are articulated precisely in this
way. As I will argue below, a much more effective strategy is to engage, in the spirit of critical pedagogy,
in a community-based discussion of structural issues regarding privilege, as opposed to competitive,
albeit strategic, arguments in specific debates. Many, if not most, of the complaints heard in debate
rounds have merit. As a community, we must address the issues of exclusivity, tolerance, respect and
diversity. However, when debaters make arguments about these issues in debate rounds, the arguments
become personalized, often seen as attacks against specific individuals, namely the "other" team (in
arguments such as "you don’t address your privilege," or "you don’t do anything or aren’t doing enough
for diversity"). The so-called "Other" that debaters refer to as being marginalized becomes transferred
onto "other" individuals and teams as the competitive structure of a debate necessitates. The point,
then, is not that these complaints and concerns should not be discussed, but that they should not be
discussed in actual debate rounds. I should also add that since diversity is still an on-going concern, we
must question the efficacy of personalized debating at generally improving diversity in our community.
Even if other solutions fall short as well, they at least avoid the pitfalls of personalized
debating that I now begin to explore. Interjecting the personalized into debate rounds has become
highly problematic. As discussions on eDebate demonstrate and my own discussions with folks who
have judged teams like Louisville suggest, these arguments have increased anxiety, frustration, anger
and resentment. To be fair, these arguments have also facilitated much soul-searching and selfreflexivity in the community. However, except for the Urban Debate League (UDL) movement2 little, if
anything, is being done to correct for inadequacies and inequities in the community, contrary to the
appeal of the personalized arguments. In fact, any benefits from the personalization of debate can be
accrued from enhancing other strategies: larger community discussions (as evidenced by some
messages on eDebate),3 discussion fora at national tournaments,4 special high school debate
institutes,5 clear directives and discussion during the CEDA and NDT business and roundtable
meetings,6 more sensitive topic selection,7 etc. The drawbacks to personalizing debate, however, are, in
my opinion, enormous. I will elaborate on two significant problems of engaging the personal in actual
debate rounds: victimhood and therapy rhetoric. The first major problem with this new form of debating
is its appeal to victimage. Through victimage and scapegoating, a rhetor uses a purification ritual as a
means of identifying and blaming the guilt onto an appropriate other. This commonality helps form
identification among people when such blaming is in common (Burke, 1962, p. 22). In other words,
victimage necessarily implies the understanding that one is in a position of marginalization. In debate,
marginalized groups gain credit for being victims by arguing their plight among the community. There is
no shame in that. However, many so-called "victims" deploy these arguments in actual debate rounds. I
have no problem with discussions of exclusivity and underrepresentation in our community, but let me
be clear: Such arguments should not be the focus of debate competition. On one level, we clearly have a
problem in our community, namely the marginalization of diverse groups. On the other level, we have
arguments about problem "x" occurring in debate rounds where debate teams may not have access to
knowledge concerning the problem of the community-at-large or they may not be prepared to debate
such issues (after all, one is reminded of the importance of clash in individual debates). Clearly, we have
a mismatch concerning a topic and its venue. The concomitant positions advanced by a team in favor of
changing the community are essentially "debate-proof." We may initially want to congratulate such
debaters for their strategic prowess: For how can one debate against the claim that one "feels" or
"perceives" marginalization? Such claims are unverifiable and dependent on the person who is
advancing the argument, not on the one answering it. In essence, then, victimage arguments "stack-thedeck" in favor of those advocating such positions. One may also insert the role of the judge into this
equation. Judging debates is hard enough, particularly when debaters already personalize judge’s
comments. After all, when debaters make arguments, they put forward part of themselves and are
vulnerable to criticism. But for many years debaters have claimed that judges are too subjective in their
assessments, particularly when forms of racism and sexism emerge, subtly or not so subtly, in some
judge’s comments. When debaters engage in a more explicit form of personalized debating, the role of
the judge is even more difficult. In addition, any critical comment from a judge runs the risk of being
misperceived. The result is a more frustrating and anxiety- prone activity precisely because the
arguments become personalized, as opposed to placing them within the larger community context.1 My
position, then, is not that such arguments are untrue (yes, marginalization exists), but rather that such
claims are not debatable. Hence, no clash can occur when such arguments are made. This destroys
the nature of debate because it not only nullifies any ground the other team may have, but it also sets a
very dangerous precedent where some team personally argues "x" where no alternate team may
respond with "y." This is dangerous, of course, because debate as we know it ceases to exist the
fundamental element of clash (i.e., the different affirmative and negative burdens) becomes moot and
irrelevant. Victimhood, as is true with society as a whole, becomes the ultimate trump card where
someone’s personal feelings, beliefs, or journeys supercede any attempts at verifying or locating expert
testimonial evidence to the contrary. What’s more, an even more dangerous impulse occurs that
people in positions of power may appropriate the arguments and rhetoric of the marginalized for
their own ends (Dubber, 2002). The second major problem with this turn in contemporary policy debate
is its deflection, if not downright rejection, of more fundamental or core problems which are the cause
of marginalization. Dana Cloud (1998) poignantly argues that when focusing on the personalizing of
"debating," society stifles dissent, which is probably more important and powerful at ushering-in social
change than particularized attention to therapeutic, albeit victimized, perspectives. The will to engage in
discourse about transgression is one of individualized therapy, as if the individual’s psychological
condition is at stake (e.g., arguments about "discursive violence" are often deployed to this end). Her
argument is primarily one about key progressive change should we focus on individual notions of
psychological distress or the larger group’s problem of resource-based scarcity and exploitation? If one
is compelled by the argument that we should look self-reflexively 2 and comprehensively at the nature
of excluding debaters of color and other marginalized groups, then we might be tempted to agree with
the outcome of piecemeal solutions and incoherent policies. On the other hand, we may want to
analyze how such relationships occurred and grew when other relationships and situations were not as
obvious. In fact, we may want to even broaden our interpretation of such relationships exactly how are
students of color marginalized? Why do folks believe they have nothing to contribute? Why do students
of color feel excluded? It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get at these questions during a collegiate
debate round. Not only is the limited time in a round an impediment at answering these complex
questions, but both debaters of a single team may advance different personalized arguments, creating a
moving target of advocacy that the opposing team and judges have difficulty in specifically pinning down
for thorough and productive examination. Or, as Cloud suggests, such therapeutic arguments " deflect
[sic] the energy and radicalism of activists," essentially creating a shell-game during private
discussions of much larger societal problems (1998, p. 34). In addition, these questions are often skirted
in debate rounds because there is a drive for competition. While some critical self-reflection has
undoubtedly occurred as a result of personalizing debate, the overwhelming majority of debaters and
coaches spend less time thinking about the core problems of marginalization (and their solutions) than
they do locating debate strategies to beat personalization arguments at the next tournament. During
squad meetings and coaching sessions, one does not hear an opposing team sincerely talk about their
privilege or the exclusion of women or people of color in the debate community. Instead, one hears
about what topicality argument, framework argument, or counter-narrative will be deployed to win the
judge’s ballot. The problem of therapeutic rhetoric underscores how personalized debating prevents
examination of more important factors such as resource disparity. Thus, the underlying therapeutic
nature of personalized debate, coupled with the competitive component of trying to win debate rounds
nullifies any chance at a fruitful and productive discussion about the problems of
marginalization and their potential solutions. A focus on the personal my experience, my narrative, my
feelings, how I learn, how I can engage the community is quite seductive; we all want to know how we
fit into the larger structure of the community. And, given the intense nature of our activity, it is easy to
get lost in how our feelings of hard work, emotional attachment, anxiety, despair, excitement, success,
and so on become interfaced with larger community trends. Ultimately, however, a focus on the
personal is a dead-end. The community’s composition of multiple persons, who become focused on
themselves, ignores the community at large. This can be seen with the move toward personalizing
debating. Instead of examining problems of resource disparity (high costs of travel, scholarships, lack of
novice tournaments, disparate coaching staffs, etc.) which plague debaters and debate programs
throughout the country, 1 the personalization arguments focus on different styles of debating (slow vs.
fast, hip-hop vs. traditional evidence), individual identity (black vs. white, privileged vs. marginalized),
and praxis (I’m doing something about the problem vs. you’re not). Indeed, as Cloud argues, the
"privatizing, normalizing, and marginalizing discourses of the therapeutic are incompatible with a public, policy-, and change-oriented definition of politics" (1998, p. 7). There is no question that individualized
and personalized questions of debate style are important to examine some debaters learn better
through different styles and some styles are more exciting than others. And, if those are the questions
the community wants to ask and deal with, then so be it. However, if we are serious about creating a
climate of tolerance, respect and diversity, then much deeper, structural (i.e., not personalized) issues
must be addressed first. We would do well to note Rogers et al., who argue: The forensic community has
made significant progress over the past few years towards understanding the complexities of the
differing presentational styles, argument forms and analysis of subdominant cultural groups hoping to
bridge the gap between understanding, tolerance and both significant representation and participation
in debate. None would argue against the goal of significant inclusiveness and its overall contribution to
the pedagogy of a complete forensic experience resulting in education. In spite of our efforts, the
participation and success rates for women and minorities within intercollegiate, competitive debate
remain disparagingly low (2003, p. 2). As such, the problems of diversity and privilege in the debate
community cannot be addressed in individual debate rounds, particularly through arguments about
"non- traditional" evidence, argumentative style and cultural forms of learning. The highly personalized
nature of such arguments creates feelings of victimhood. The competitive aspect of a debate round
makes the therapeutic rhetoric of argumentative style displace the larger, structural impediments to a
diverse and tolerant community. Again, if we refer to Cloud, we can translate her use of "private" for a
"debate round," particularly if we juxtapose the private debate round to the community writ large: . . .
the therapeutic is a rhetoric that encourages a reformist rather than revolutionary political stance . . . . It
is dangerous . . . to allow the therapeutic to set the bounds of our political imagination to the extent
that it becomes difficult even to conceive of revolutionary change . . . the therapeutic asks activists to
retreat from the public struggle for even modest reforms in favor of private wound-licking (1998, pp.
159-160). And this is what personalizing debating does. While projects such as Louisville’s declare
ambitions of "community change" and radical social transformation, what they are really doing is
keeping such arguments in the closet by performing their therapeutic rhetoric of victimhood in private
debate rounds. If revolutionary change is the intent, then revolutionary action should occur to change
the structural and institutional barriers to more diverse involvement and success in debate (Cloud, 1998,
p. 166). Personalizing debating, as competitive arguments, in a private debate round does nothing
except breed frustration, victimage, and displacement of more lofty efforts. Debate should remain a
simulated activity where students gather together to clash about issues of social controversy related to
a resolution. During the simulation, debaters learn to engage each other with civility, obtain vital skills,1
and engage about a common societal problem, rather than personalized problems that may or may not
be a reflection of larger community issues. If there are problems about who gets to participate, what
topic gets debated, or what styles of debate get introduced, then those are issues the community as a
whole needs to address, not the individual debaters.
Case
Method Defense
The affirmative’s use of the term “Prison Industrial Complex” obscures the racist
underpinnings of the Prison System – this term’s exclusive reliance on capital as
explanation
Maoist International Ministry of Prisons 9
(http://www.prisoncensorship.info/news/all/US/1415/, “The Myth of the "Prison Industrial Complex")
Many people are caught up in the line that millions are enslaved in this country, and that the main motivating factor behind the prison boom of
recent decades is to put prisoners to work to make money for corporations or the government. MIM(Prisons) has clearly shown that U.S.
prisons are not primarily (or even significantly) used to exploit labor, and that they are a great cost financially to the imperialists, not a source of
profit.(1) "Indeed, at peak use around 2002, fewer than 5,000 inmates were employed by private firms, amounting to one-quarter of one per
cent of the carceral population. As for the roughly 8% of convicts who toil for state and federal industries under lock, they are 'employed' at a
loss to correctional authorities in spite of massive subsidies, guaranteed sales to a captive market of public administrations, and exceedingly
low wages (averaging well under a dollar an hour)."(2) Instead, we argue that there
is a system of population control (including all
the elements of the international definition of genocide) that utilizes methods of torture on mostly New Afrikan and
Latino men, with a hugely disproportionate representation of First Nation men as well, across this
country on a daily basis. As the new prison movement grows and gains attention in the mainstream, it is of utmost importance that we
maintain the focus on this truth and not let the white nationalists define what is ultimately a struggle of the oppressed nations. To analyze
why the term "prison industrial complex" ("PIC") is inaccurate and misleading, let's look at some common
slogans of the social democrats, who dominate the white nationalist left. First let's address the slogan "Welfare not
Warfare." This slogan is a false dichotomy, where the sloganeer lacks an understanding of imperialism and militarism. It is no coincidence that
the biggest "welfare states" in the world today are imperialist countries. Imperialism brings home more profits by going to war to steal
resources, discipline labor, and force economic policies and business contracts on other nations. And militarism is the cultural and political
product of that fact. The
"military industrial complex" was created when private industry teamed up with the
U.$. government to meet their mutual interests as imperialists. Industry got the contracts from the government, with
guaranteed profits built in, and the government got the weapons they needed to keep money flowing into the United $tates by oppressing
other nations. This concentration of wealth produces the high wages and advanced infrastructure that the Amerikan people benefit from, not
to mention the tax money that is made available for welfare programs. So it is ignorant for activists to claim that they are being impoverished
by the imperialists' wars as is implied by the false dichotomy of welfare vs. warfare. Another slogan of the social democrats which speaks to
why they are so eager to condemn the "PIC" is "Schools not Jails." This slogan highlights that there is only so much tax money in a state
available to fund either schools, jails, or something else. There is a limited amount of money because extracting more taxes would increase
class conflict between the state and the labor aristocracy. This battle is real, and it is a battle between different public service unions of the
labor aristocracy. The "Schools not Jails" slogan is the rallying cry of one side of that battle among the labor aristocrats. Unlike militarism, there
is not an imperialist profit interest behind favoring jails over schools. This is precisely why the
concept of a "PIC" is a fantasy. While
the U.$. economy would likely collapse without the spending that goes into weapons-related industries, Loïc Wacquant points out that the
soft drink industry in the United $tates is almost twice as big as prison industries, and prison industries are a
mere 0.5% of the gross domestic product.(2) Compared to the military industrial complex, which is 10% of U.$. GDP, the
prison system is obviously not a "complex" combining state and private interests that cannot be
dismantled without dire consequences to imperialism.(3) And of course, even those pushing the "PIC" line must admit that
over 95% of prisons in this country are publicly owned and run.(4) Federal agencies using the prison system to control
social elements that they see as a threat to imperialism is the motivating factor for the injustice system,
not an imperialist drive for profits. Yet the system is largely decentralized and built on theinterests of the majority of Amerikans at
the local level, and not just the labor unions and small businesses that benefit directly from spending on prisons. We would likely not have the
imprisonment rates that we have today without pressure from the so-called "middle class." Some in the white nationalist left at times appears
to dissent from other Amerikans on the need for more prisons and more cops. At the root of both sides' line is the belief that the majority of
Amerikans are exploited by the system, while the greedy corporations benefit. With this line, it is easy to accept that prisons are about profit,
just like everything else, and the prison boom can be blamed on the corporations' greed. In reality the prison boom is directly related to the
demands of the Amerikan people for "tough on crime" politicians. Amerikans have forced the criminal injustice system to become the tool of
white hysteria. The
imperialists have made great strides in integrating the internal semi-colonies financially,
yet the white nation demands that these populations be controlled and excluded from their national
heritage. There are many examples of the government trying to shut down prisons and other cost-saving measures that would have shrunk
the prison system, where labor unions fought them tooth and nail.(1) It is this continued legacy of national oppression,
exposed in great detail in the book The New Jim Crow, that is covered up by the term "Prison Industrial Complex." The
cover-up continues no matter how much these pseudo-Marxists lament the great injustices suffered by
Black and Brown people at the hands of the "PIC."
The 1ac’s call for prison abolition accomplishes little – even allies of their struggle
admit
Larsen 11 (“Considering Abolition” http://joanr73.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/considering-abolition/)
What is to be abolished?¶ There is a recurring discussion in the abolitionist literature regarding the
prefix that should accompany ‘abolition’. A recent addition to this ongoing dialogue, published in
Contemporary Justice Review, is Piché and Larsen’s (2010) article ‘The Moving Targets of Abolitionism:
ICOPA, Past, Present and Future’. To briefly summarize, I would say that ‘abolition’ on its own is a bit too
vague – there are many systems and institutions that have been the targets of abolitionist movements,
and while there are definitely links between these institutions (slavery, colonialism, torture, and the
prison, for example), it seems important to specify an objective. The question that Justin and I ask is
“What is to be abolished?”.
Transgender methodolgy fails because it is self-contained and lacks self-reflexivity.
Activist only recreate new systems of exclusion based on bullying, intimidation and
violence.
Jeffreys 12
Sheila Jeffreys. Let us be free to debate transgenderism without being accused of hate speech. The
Guardian. May 29 2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/29/transgenderismhate-speech
Criticism of the practice of transgenderism is being censored as a result of a campaign of vilification by
transgender activists of anyone who does not accept the new orthodoxy on this issue. A recent Comment is free
piece by the transgender activist Roz Kaveney, headlined "Radical feminists are acting like a cult", criticises a forthcoming radical feminist
conference, at which I was to be a speaker, on the grounds that I and "my supporters" may be guilty of "hate speech" for our political criticism of
this practice. Though Kaveney's comments about me are comparatively mild in tone, the campaign by transgender activists in general is anything
but. This particular campaign persuaded Conway Hall, the conference venue, to ban me from speaking on the grounds that I "foster hatred" and
"actively discriminate". On being asked to account for this, Conway Hall appeared to compare me to "David Irving the holocaust denier". The
proffered evidence consists of quotes from me arguing that transgender surgery should be considered a human rights violation – hardly evidence
of hate speech. For several years there
has been a concerted campaign via the internet and on the ground, to ensure that I, and
any other persons who have criticised transgenderism, from any academic discipline, are not given opportunities to
speak in public. I have not yet spoken in public about transgenderism, but do speak about religion and women's human rights, about
pornography, and about beauty practices. Whatever the topic of my presentation, and whether in Australia, the UK or the US, transgender
activists bombard the organising group and the venue with emails accusing me of transhate, transphobia, hate speech, and seek to have me
banned. On blogs, Facebook and Twitter they accuse me of wanting to "eliminate" transgendered persons, and they wish me dead. One activist
has created an image of a pesticide can bearing a photo of me and the slogan "kills rad fems instantly". These activists threaten demonstrations
and placards against me at any venue where I speak. What is clear is that transgender
activists do not want any criticism of the
practice to be made. They do not just target me, but the few other feminists who have ever been critical. Germaine Greer was
glitterbombed, a practice that can be seen as assault and can endanger eyesight, in Sydney this year, though it is many years since she said
anything critical of transgenderism. Psychiatrists and sexologists who are critical of the practice are targeted too. Transgender activism was
successful in gaining the cancellation of a London conference entitled Transgender: Time for Change, organised by the Royal College of
Psychiatrists' lesbian and gay special interest group for May 2011. When, in 2003, US sexologist Michael Bailey published a book, The Man
Who Would Be Queen, which argued that transgenderism was a practice based on sexual fetishism, he became subject to a campaign of
vilification, which included placing photographs of his children on a website with insulting captions. The effect is to scare off any researchers
from touching the topic. There
are many aspects of the practice which bear investigation, including the history
and social construction of the idea of transgenderism, the recent increased identification of children as
transgender, the phenomenon of transgender regrets, that is those persons who consider they have made a
mistake. Given that the drug and surgical treatments have now been normalised and are increasingly embarked upon by young lesbians and
sought out by parents for young children, it is most important that the rights of researchers and theorists to comment
and investigate should be protected. Instead, they are subjected to determined campaigns of bullying,
intimidation and attempts to shut them down. The degree of vituperation and the energy expended by the
activists may suggest that they fear the practice of transgenderism could justifiably be subjected to
criticism, and might not stand up to rigorous research and debate, if critics were allowed to speak
out.
Positing trans politics within the realm of the law IS productive – it can produce
change in legal scholarship AND make the lives of trans individuals a little bit better
Martin Quiñones 12
BOOK REVIEW -QUINONES-MACRO (DO NOT DELETE) 6/22/2012 3:53PM “NORMAL LIFE:
ADMINISTRATIVE VIOLENCE, CRITICAL TRANS POLITICS, AND THE LIMITS OF THE LAW by Dean Spade.
New York: South End Press, 2011.
A possible weakness of Spade’s argument is that at times he seems to conflate the strategies of law reform and its substantive goals. He writes
that the mainstream gay and lesbian law reform movement “is an example of [the] shift from a more transformative social movement agenda
to an inclusion- and incorporation-focused professionalized non-profit legal reform project.” (p. 59) Looking at examples of “formal legal
equality demands [like legalizing same sex marriage], and the limited potential of those demands to transform the conditions facing highly
vulnerable queer and trans people,” Spade
concludes that law reform as a tactic is not worthwhile (p. 62). He doesn’t
more nuanced law reform agenda, focused on changing policies that cause
day-to-day hardship, could use the non-profit tools and structures already in place to more effective
ends without starting from scratch. Part of Spade’s argument is that law reform tactics, by virtue of how they are deployed,
dictate substantive goals (pp. 62-65). The lesbian and gay movement “has come to reflect the needs and
experiences of [its] leaders more than the experiences of queer and trans people not present,” and done so
in spaces dominated by lawyers and other professionals (p. 65). Nevertheless, his suggestion that law reform must be
abandoned as a strategy does not follow inevitably from the experience of the lesbian and gay
movement or others. If Spade is right and transformation of tactics is what is required, it’s not clear why that effort can’t profitably
be spent making existing law reform tools more effective and more responsive to the neediest
populations. Indeed, it is intuitively likely that many legal readers who enjoy class, race, gender, and
educational privilege, and who are persuaded by Spade’s critiques, will choose the more familiar path
leave room for the possibility that a
and look for better versions of strategies they already know. Spade’s deep distrust of that method notwithstanding, there
is no clear reason why the only viable avenues for change must be invented from whole cloth.
All of the criticisms of the legal arena EQUALLY apply to the affirmative’s radical approach –OCCUPY
PROVES – working within legal structures can create a more effective, less exclusionary politics
Martin Quiñones in his review of Spade’s book on radical trans-politics 12
BOOK REVIEW -QUINONES-MACRO (DO NOT DELETE) 6/22/2012 3:53PM “NORMAL LIFE:
ADMINISTRATIVE VIOLENCE, CRITICAL TRANS POLITICS, AND THE LIMITS OF THE LAW by Dean Spade.
New York: South End Press, 2011.
But Occupy also illustrates many of the concomitant risks
associated with a de-centralized, dynamic movement,
and the difficulties of implementing the strategies Spade suggests. On the one hand, gathering under the mantle of “The
99%” and working through democratically organized direct action brings together marginalized groups, avoiding the trap of dividing
constituencies that Spade cautions against. Some commentators have noted, however, that political
messages from many
individual occupiers and Occupy groups have suffered from the same kinds of racialized imagery that Spade
critiques in mainstream liberal movements, including comparisons between bank debt and slavery, and prominent imagery
about hard-working and deserving middle-class whites47 (pp. 92–93, 108–109). Some Occupy groups are also hesitant to address incidents of
sexual violence within their encampments, in fear of diluting their economic message. 48 Spade acknowledges that a central challenge of
resistance movements is generating the “consistent self-reflection and critique” necessary to avoid replicating received racist or classist
stereotypes (pp. 210–212, 216–217). If that kind of focused
self-critical effort is necessary even in collective,
democratic, radical structures, the question arises whether the same effort can be profitably spent in a more traditional law reform
setting. If constantly assessing whether an organization is still focused on the needs of its most vulnerable
constituents can be a determining factor in its effectiveness, it may be that organizations with an
established law reform skill set can utilize the same modifications in thought process and agenda
without abandoning the tools they have at hand. Whether democratic de-centralized processes will necessarily better protect
the interests of marginalized minorities than a refocused mainstream movement is by no means clear.
Whiteness
Their argument elevates white supremacy to an all-pervasive force that explains
nearly all global oppression---this conceptual expansion hides the actual practice of
racism and makes breaking it down more difficult
Andersen 3 – Margaret L. Andersen, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies and Vice Provost for
Academic Affairs at the University of Delaware, 2003, “Whitewashing Race: A Critical Perspective on
Whiteness,” in White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, edDoane& Bonilla-Silva, p. 28
Conceptually, one of the major problems in the whiteness literature is the reification of whiteness as a concept,
as an experience, and as an identity. This practice not onlyleads to conceptual obfuscation but also impedes the
possibility for empirical analysis. In this literature, "whiteness" comes to mean just about everything associated
with racial domination. As such, whiteness becomes a slippery and elusive concept. Whiteness is presented as
any or all of the following: identity, self-understanding, social practices, group beliefs, ideology, and a system of
domination. As one critic writes, "If historical actors are said to have behaved the way they did mainly because
they were white, then there's little room left for more nuanced analysis of their motives and meanings" (Stowe
1996:77). And Alastair Bonnett points out that whiteness "emerges from this critique as an omnipresent and allpowerful historical force.Whiteness is seen to be responsible for the failure of socialism to develop in America,
for racism, for the impoverishment of humanity. With the 'blame' comes a new kind of centering: Whiteness, and
White people, are turned into the key agents of historical change, the shapers of contemporary America"
(1996b:153). Despite noting that there is differentiation among whites and warning against using whiteness as a
monolithic category, most of the literature still proceeds to do so, revealing a reductionist tendency. Even
claiming to show its multiple forms, mostwriters essentialize and reify whiteness as something that directs most
of Western history (Gallagher 2000). Hence while trying to "deconstruct” whiteness and see the ubiquitousness
of whiteness, the literature at the same time reasserts and reinstates it (Stowe 1996:77). For example, Michael
Eric Dyson suggests that whiteness is identity, ideology, and institution (Dyson, quoted in Chennault 1998:300).
Butif it is all these things, it becomes an analytically useless concept. Christine Clark and James O'Donnell
write: "to reference it reifies it, to refrain from referencing it obscures the persistent, pervasive, and seemingly
permanent reality of racism" (1999:2). Empirical investigation requires being able to identify and measure a
concept— or at the very least to have a clear definition—butsince whiteness has come to mean just about
everything, it ends up meaning hardly anything.
The 1ac’s embracement of COUNTER-HEGEMONIC practices is EXACTLY what turns us
into SIDESHOWS and ARM_CHAIR activists – the vague call to rebel against
HEGEMONY – means we NEVER WEILD THE NECESSARY power for change – we need
to EMBRACE HEGEMONY OF LOVE in order to cause any revolutionary change –This
evidence also explains why the 1ac’s explanation of Performance and Methodology as
separate creates even greater confusion for the audience since they cannot even
figure out what the affirmative is resisting against
Smucker 13 (“Counter-Hegemony” and the Left Ambivalence Toward Power,
http://devoketheapocalypse.com/2013/03/22/counter-hegemony-and-left-ambivalence-towardpower/)
I’m reading Cihan Tuğal’s Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. I’m still working my way through it, but so far I’ve
found it very insightful. There are so many things in the book that I’m looking forward to digging into, so I feel a little bad that I’m about to start
with the one thing that I’m ambivalent about: Tuğal’s use of the term counter-hegemony. I’m not usually one to nitpick about terms—especially
esoteric terms like counter-hegemony—but here I go…¶ Dr. Tuğal did not invent the term, of course. Moreover, I suspect that because I agree
so much with his descriptions and assessments (of patterns of political engagement, in the case of Islamist movements in Turkey), it stands out
all the more when I do take issue with something. His book has got me thinking more specifically about what I don’t like about the term
generally. To be clear, I introduce his work here as a jumping off point for this blog post, rather than as the object of my critique.¶ Here’s my
problem with the term counter-hegemony: it is unclear whether (1) it implies an opposition to the idea of hegemony itself, or
(2) it notes an opposition to a particular hegemony — opposition by a challenger force (i.e. an alternative,
aspiring hegemony). I want to be careful to not put words in his mouth, but I suspect that Dr. Tuğal intends something closer to the
latter interpretation of counter-hegemony. I had the pleasure of meeting him this past weekend at the UC Berkeley sociology open house. At
the end of one of our conversations, we briefly discussed my ambivalence about the term. This ambivalence was reinforced later that same day
by a discussion with another person who subscribed to the first interpretation, i.e., that to be counter-hegemonic is—and should be—to be
against all hegemony.¶ This is how I define hegemony only some of the time.¶ To me, particular actors and political alignments maintain
particular hegemonies. Their political
challengers are not counter-hegemonic—insofar as the term may imply being against
the idea of hegemony itself—but are themselves aspiring hegemonies. They want their ideas to win.¶ My concern is about
power and the US Left’s ambivalence toward it. Rather than framing a conversation about how a Left might build and
wield power, the term counter-hegemony may suggest inherent opposition to—or at least confusion
about—power itself. The “counter” part reinforces our eternal outsider status and casts doubt on
whether we even want power. It’s similar to how the term counter-culture suggests the creation of
sideshow alternative subcultures, rather than a seizure of the main stage — i.e., a contestation of the meanings,
symbols, narratives, and institutions of the popular culture.¶ Let’s back up. What do I mean by hegemony? The term implies dominance, but by
winning some degree of popular consent. Now, this is tricky terrain. Aren’t we against dominance? Well, what about dominant values or ideas?
Are there not ideas that we wish to be predominant? What about the idea of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” winning
out against “Greed is good”? Or how about “From each according to her ability to each according to her need”? Do we want these ideas to win
the future — to actually shape reality? Or are we content with the wishing itself — the wishing for an ever-elusive someday utopia? Is it good
enough to have history record our names as the righteous few who stood up for the inevitably doomed underdog?¶ If
we see hegemony
as invariably bad—something to always counter—but we are unclear about when we are referring to a
particular content and when we are referring to a form (i.e., a socio-political pattern or structure), then, I believe, we
are dooming the Left to eternal impotency . We cede the terrain that we need to learn to navigate
if we are to ever replace their content with ours. We cast ourselves as permanent armchair critic.¶
Are we prepared to actually struggle? Struggle implies power. To struggle against a power is to build and
wield a power of one’s own. A bottom-up power must win some degree of popular consent while
delegitimizing and ultimately isolating its opposition. Here’s how victory ultimately plays out: our oncehegemonic opposition’s ambitions for domination (with a different agenda) must be constrained. If a
bottom-up movement—a power—succeeds in defining its values as popular/commonsense and then
succeeds in translating this broad values shift into concrete revolutionary transformations of power and
wealth relationships in society, then that challenger has now become hegemonic. That’s the
roadmap . That terrifying thing, with all its challenges, messiness, and moral quandaries, is what our victory looks like. But how will
we ever reach our destination if we are too ambivalent about power to even look at the map?¶ To be clear,
there are many very good reasons to be wary of power. The past century alone is full of tragic examples of once-well-intentioned revolutionary
leaders becoming tyrants themselves in the messy process of executing power. But is that a legitimate excuse for allowing the power-hungry to
have all the power, uncontested, while we content ourselves with sideline critique? Sideline critique can take many forms. Even taking the
streets can become little more than an edgy expression of an ultimately resigned sideline. Our
historic task, if we are serious, has
to extend well beyond critique. Our job is to arm our critiques with power. Yes, we must wrestle with how to wield
power responsibly, of course. How to do so can and should include ethical considerations and critiques of the corrupting influence power can
have on individuals and groups. These are important warnings about power, but they cannot be prohibitions. ¶ “Now, we’ve got to get this thing
right…”¶ Power
properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength
required to bring about social, political and economic change… And one of the great problems of history is
that the concepts of love and power have usually been
contrasted as opposites — polar opposites — so that love is identified with
a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love… Now, we’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization
that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic… It is
precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of
our times.
Their discussion of dehuamization and prison ignores those individuals deemed as
unhuman and nonhuman aninmals turns their offense
Guenther 12 (Lisa, associate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt, “Beyond Dehumanization: A PostHumanist Critique of Solitary Confinement”, Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Volume 10, Issue 2,
2012)
What does it mean to be treated like a nonhuman animal? In this paper, I analyze the discourse of “dehumanization” in
Madrid v Gomez, a 1995 Eighth Amendment case concerning the treatment of prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay Supermax Penitentiary. I
argue that the
language of dehumanization fails to describe the harm of solitary confinement because it
remains complicit with a hierarchical opposition between human and nonhuman animal that rebounds
against prisoners, especially those who have been racialized and/or sexualized as less than human. Humanist
discourse neglects the sense in which both human and nonhuman animals are affective, corporeal beings who
rely upon the support of others for their own capacity to orient themselves within a mutually-perceived world. Drawing on the
testimony of inmates in solitary confinement, and situating this testimony in relation to the political and scientific history of US
incarceration practices, I develop a post-humanist critique of solitary confinement. Keywords: Solitary confinement,
sensory deprivation, intercorporeal Malebranche would not have beaten a stone as he beat his dog, saying that the dog didn’t suffer. Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 166 Certain
carceral practices are often condemned – both by prisoners and by their legal or political
advocates – on the grounds that they violate human dignity by treating people like nonhuman animals. For
example, in the 1995 Eighth Amendment case, Madrid v Gomez, the treatment of prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay Supermax Penitentiary is
consistently compared to the treatment of nonhuman animals.i Some
inmates were “hog-tied” with their hands and feet
bound together, then left chained to a toilet or bunk for up to 24 hours (47). Other inmates were confined to
outdoor cages the size of a telephone booth, and left naked or partially dressed, exposed to inclement
weather and to the view of other inmates (58). One inmate who was caged recalled feeling like "just an
animal or something" (59). The presiding judge in this case, Chief Judge Thelton Henderson, concluded that “[l]eaving inmates in outdoor
cages for any significant period – as if animals in a zoo – offends even the most elementary notions of common decency and dignity” (62). And
yet, Henderson stopped short of condemning prolonged solitary confinement in a tiny indoor cell as cruel and unusual Journal for Critical
Animal Studies, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2012 (ISSN1948-352X) 47 punishment, in all but the most extreme cases. What is this “common decency
and dignity” so often invoked to protect prisoners from abuse, and why does it tend to produce such negligible effects? In what follows, I
analyze the tension between the concept of “human dignity” and the ongoing abuse of both human and
nonhuman animals. In the first part of the paper, I present a critical reading of Judge Henderson’s decision in Madrid v Gomez. In the
second part, I situate this decision within the history of the US penitentiary and Cold War research on the sensory deprivation of human and
nonhuman animals in order to demonstrate the complicity of animal abuse and prisoner abuse, especially in the case of racialized prisoners. In
conclusion, I suggest a different way of describing the harm of solitary confinement without opposing the needs of human prisoners to the
needs of the billions of nonhuman animals confined to zoos, laboratories and factory farms across the world today. De-humanization In
Madrid v Gomez, Judge Henderson states very clearly that prisoners have a right to “human dignity” (328), even
though they have forfeited many other rights by violating the law. All citizens, incarcerated or otherwise, deserve “not
to be treated as less than human beings” (329).ii What
is the content of this doubly-negative right? Presumably, it means
that prisoners deserve not to be treated like nonhuman animals. But what does it mean to be treated like
an animal – and why would being caged or forcibly restrained seem appropriate for nonhuman animals,
but inappropriate for human beings? The content of the right to “human dignity” in the context of Madrid v
Gomez is based on the satisfaction of “basic human needs,” which are listed as “food, clothing, shelter, medical
care, and reasonable safety (330).iii Note the degree to which these basic human needs overlap with the
needs of any nonhuman animal; there is nothing on this list, except for clothing and perhaps medical care, that a horse or a bear
would not also need in order to thrive. But precisely because “humans are composed of more than flesh and blood” –
presumably, because they are not merely animals, but human animals, that is, social and rational animals – Judge Henderson
argues that “mental health is a need as essential to a meaningful human existence as other basic physical demands our bodies may make for
shelter, warmth or sanitation” (388). Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2012 (ISSN1948-352X) 48 How does Judge
Henderson seek to protect this fundamental, apparently human need for mental health? And what is “mental health” anyhow? Henderson
condemns the use of excessive force and the deliberate humiliation of prisoners, acknowledging that some of the techniques used at Pelican
Bay violated “evolving standards of decency that mark the process of a maturing society” (329, citing Patchette v. Nix, 952 F.2d 158, 163 (8th
Cir. 1991)). He acknowledges the evidence of expert witnesses such as Stuart Grassian, who found that in forty of the fifty inmates he
interviewed over the course of two years, prolonged solitary confinement in the SHU, or “Security Housing Unit,” at Pelican Bay had either
“massively exacerbated a previous psychiatric illness or precipitated psychiatric symptoms associated with RES [Reduced Environmental
Stimulation] conditions” (281). He notes the typical effects of RES, or what Grassian later calls SHU Syndrome, as “perceptual distortions,
hallucinations, hyperresponsivity to external stimuli, aggressive fantasies, overt paranoia, inability to concentrate, and problems with impulse
control” (276). In passing, Henderson even acknowledges the Court’s observation during its tour of the SHU that “some inmates spend the time
simply pacing around the edges of the pen; the image created is hauntingly similar to that of caged felines pacing at a zoo” (270). But
Henderson stops short of condemning SHU conditions as a violation of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights, concluding that: Conditions in the
SHU may well hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable for those with normal resilience, particularly when endured for extended periods
of time. They do not, however, violate exacting Eighth Amendment standards, except for the specific population subgroups identified in this
opinion.iv (460) The “specific population subgroups” for whom prolonged solitary confinement would count as “cruel and unusual
punishment,” are: 1) prisoners who are already mentally ill, and 2) prisoners who are at “unreasonably high risk” of becoming mentally ill if held
in SHU conditions (411). Note the frankly biopolitical resonance of the term, “population,” which refers to prisoners as a statistical entity with
no specifically human qualities, even in a ruling that celebrates and seeks to protect this population’s (apparently) human need for mental
“health.”v How are concepts such as “humanity” and “mental illness” (understood as an Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Volume 10, Issue 2,
2012 (ISSN1948-352X) 49 affliction faced by human beings who are “more than flesh and blood”) working together here to expose prisoners to
intolerable violence, even while claiming to protect them from it? Colin Dayan has argued persuasively that the “exacting standards” of Eighth
Amendment cases have done less to protect prisoners from cruel and unusual punishment, and more to expand the scope and intensity of the
violence to which prisoners are exposed within legal limits (Dayan 2005). Henderson’s decision in Madrid v Gomez is no exception to this rule.
On one hand, he acknowledges that “contemporary notions of humanity and decency… will not tolerate conditions that are likely to make
inmates seriously mentally ill” (388). But on the other hand, by limiting Eighth Amendment protection to just those “population subgroups”
who are already suffering from mental illness or are recognizably on the verge of it, he creates a loophole into which virtually every prisoner
could fall. If you are already mentally ill or “unreasonably” close to mental illness (whatever that means, and however it is measured), you are
protected from conditions that would exacerbate your condition. You are recognized as a human being, with an intrinsic dignity that no civilized
nation would dare to violate. But if you are not (yet) mentally ill – if you display “normal resilience” to barely tolerable conditions – you may be
confined in a situation that, according to Grassian’s research, produces mental illness in about 90% of the population. To put this more
succinctly: Unless you can obtain a diagnosis of mental illness, you may be subject to conditions that typically produce mental illness. In the
legal discourse of Madrid v Gomez, and of Eighth Amendment cases more generally, mental illness becomes both the benchmark for
distinguishing torture from legitimate punishment, and also the condition that one would need to satisfy in order to be exempt from torture; it
becomes both a sign of human dignity and an alibi for dehumanizing treatment. Given the
complicity of discourses on
humanity and dehumanization with both the abuse of prisoners and the abuse of animals such as hogs
and caged felines, to whose condition prisoners are typically “reduced,” we need a different
language to describe the harm of prolonged solitary confinement. Is there another way of describing
the violence of conditions in the SHU without appealing to human dignity or to the defense of human rights at
the expense of nonhuman animals, and ultimately at the expense of human prisoners as well?
Place
Focusing on a location undermines the emancipatory potential of the 1ac
Morton 2007 – Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University (Timothy, Ecology
Without Nature, p. 10-11)
From an environmentalist point of view, this is not a good time. So why
undertake a project that criticizes ecocriticism at
all? Why not just let sleeping ecological issues lie? It sounds like a perverse joke. The sky is falling, the globe is
warming, the ozone hole persists; people are dying of radiation poisoning and other toxic agents;
species are being wiped out, thousands per year; the coral reefs have nearly all gone. Huge globalized corporations are
making bids for the necessities of life from water to health care. Environmental legislation is being threatened around the
world. What a perfect opportunity to sit back and reflect on ideas of space, subjectivity, environment,
and poetics. Ecology without Nature claims that there could be no better time. What is the point of reflecting like
this? Some think that ecocriticism needs what it calls “theory” like it needs a hole in the head. Others contend that this aeration is exactly what
ecocriticism needs. In the name of ecocriticism itself, scholarship must reflect—theorize, in the broadest sense. Since
ecology and
ecological politics are beginning to frame other kinds of science, politics, and culture, we must take a
step back and examine some of ecology's ideological determinants. This is precisely the opposite of
what John Daniel says about the need for a re-enchantment of the world: The sky probably is falling. Global
warming is happening. But somehow it's not going to work to call people to arms about that and pretend to know what will world. People don't
want to feel invalidated in their lives and they don't want to feel that they bear the responsibility of the world on their shoulders. This is why
you shouldn't teach kids about the dire straits of the rain forest. You should take kids out to the stream out back and show them water
striders.” To speak thus is to use the aesthetic as an anesthetic. To
theorize ecological views is also to bring thinking up to
date. Varieties of Romanticism and primitivism have often construed ecological struggle as that of “place” against the encroachments of
modern and postmodern “space.” In social structure and in thought, goes the argument, place has been ruthlessly corroded by space: all that is
solid melts into air. But unless
we think about it some more, the cry of “place!” will resound in empty space, to
no effect. It is a question of whether you think that the “re-enchantrnent of the world” will make nice
pictures, or whether it is a political practice. Revolutionary movements such as those in Chiapas, Mexico, have had partial
success in reclaiming place from the corrosion of global economics. “Third World” environmentalisms are often passionate defenses of the local
against globalization."
Simply lauding location in the abstract or in the aesthetic, however-praising a
localist poetics, for example, just because it is localist, or proclaiming a “small is beautiful” aestheticized
ethics—- is in greater measure part of the problem than part of the solution. Our notions of
place are retroactive fantasy constructs determined precisely by the corrosive effects of
modernity. Place was not lost, though we posit it as something we have lost.
Even if place as an
actually existing, rich set of relationships between sentient beings does not (yet) exist, place is part of our worldview right now what if it is
actually propping up that view? We
would be unable to cope with modernity unless we had a few pockets of
place in which to store our hope.
Their narrative ethics disavows pragmatic solutions in favor of individual preference –
the impact is fascism on a global scale
Morton 2007 – Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University (Timothy, Ecology
Without Nature, p. 170-171)
Place is caught up in a certain question. It takes the form of a questioning, or questioning attitude. Phenomenology has come
closest to understanding place as a provisional yet real “thing.” Heidegger has most powerfully described place as open and beyond concept.
But Heidegger,
infamously, solidifies this very openness, turning history into destiny and leaving the way for
an extreme right-wing politics, which can easily assimilate ecological thinking to its ideological ends,
precisely because ecological thinking is highly aestheticized. The
Nazis passed original laws to protect animals and (German)
forests as ends in themselves. Giorgio Agamben observes, succinctly, that this thinking of being as destiny and
project is only undermined when we think of humans and animals as connected in a profound inactivity,
or desoeuvrement (unworking). Here is the utopian side of ambience’s imagining for rest and relaxation. Instead of running away
from Heidegger, left scholarship should encounter him all the more rigorously in seeking to demystify
place, in the name of a politics and poetics of place. We must put the idea of place into question; hence an
ecological criticism that resists the idea that there is a solid metaphysical bedrock (Nature or Life, for instance)
beneath which thinking cannot or should not delve. In the rush to embrace an expanded view, the plangent, intense rhetoric of
localism, the form of ecological thinking that seems most opposed to globalization and most resistant to
modern and postmodern decenterings and deconstructions, must not be allowed to fall into the hands
of reactionaries. Instead, the central fixations upon which localism bases its claims must be
examined. A left ecology must “get” even further “into” place than bioregionalism and other Romantic localisms.
Only then can progressive ecocriticism establish a firm basis for exploring environmental justice issues
such as environmental racism, colonialism, and imperialism. This basis is a strong theoretical approach. If we restrict
our examination to the citation of ecological “content”—listing what is included and excluded in the thematics of the
(literary) text—we hand over aesthetic form, the aesthetic dimension and even theory itself, to the reactionary wing of
ecological criticism. The aesthetic, and in a wider sense perception, must form part of the foundation of a
thoroughly transnational ecological criticism. If we do not undertake their task, virulent codings of place
will keep rearing their ugly heads.
1NR
Place
However if the affirmative chooses to solely extend a rupture of the debate space
method they don’t solve
Morton 2007 – Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University (Timothy, Ecology
Without Nature, p. 10-11)
From an environmentalist point of view, this is not a good time. So why
undertake a project that criticizes ecocriticism at
all? Why not just let sleeping ecological issues lie? It sounds like a perverse joke. The sky is falling, the globe is
warming, the ozone hole persists; people are dying of radiation poisoning and other toxic agents;
species are being wiped out, thousands per year; the coral reefs have nearly all gone. Huge globalized corporations are
making bids for the necessities of life from water to health care. Environmental legislation is being threatened around the
world. What a perfect opportunity to sit back and reflect on ideas of space, subjectivity, environment,
and poetics. Ecology without Nature claims that there could be no better time. What is the point of reflecting like
this? Some think that ecocriticism needs what it calls “theory” like it needs a hole in the head. Others contend that this aeration is exactly what
ecocriticism needs. In the name of ecocriticism itself, scholarship must reflect—theorize, in the broadest sense. Since
ecology and
ecological politics are beginning to frame other kinds of science, politics, and culture, we must take a
step back and examine some of ecology's ideological determinants. This is precisely the opposite of
what John Daniel says about the need for a re-enchantment of the world: The sky probably is falling. Global
warming is happening. But somehow it's not going to work to call people to arms about that and pretend to know what will world. People don't
want to feel invalidated in their lives and they don't want to feel that they bear the responsibility of the world on their shoulders. This is why
you shouldn't teach kids about the dire straits of the rain forest. You should take kids out to the stream out back and show them water
striders.” To speak thus is to use the aesthetic as an anesthetic. To
theorize ecological views is also to bring thinking up to
date. Varieties of Romanticism and primitivism have often construed ecological struggle as that of “place” against the encroachments of
modern and postmodern “space.” In social structure and in thought, goes the argument, place has been ruthlessly corroded by space: all that is
solid melts into air. But unless
we think about it some more, the cry of “place!” will resound in empty space, to
no effect. It is a question of whether you think that the “re-enchantrnent of the world” will make nice
pictures, or whether it is a political practice. Revolutionary movements such as those in Chiapas, Mexico, have had partial
success in reclaiming place from the corrosion of global economics. “Third World” environmentalisms are often passionate defenses of the local
against globalization."
Simply lauding location in the abstract or in the aesthetic, however-praising a
localist poetics, for example, just because it is localist, or proclaiming a “small is beautiful” aestheticized
ethics—- is in greater measure part of the problem than part of the solution. Our notions of
place are retroactive fantasy constructs determined precisely by the corrosive effects of
modernity. Place was not lost, though we posit it as something we have lost.
Even if place as an
actually existing, rich set of relationships between sentient beings does not (yet) exist, place is part of our worldview right now what if it is
actually propping up that view? We
would be unable to cope with modernity unless we had a few pockets of
place in which to store our hope.
Legalism
All of the criticisms of the legal arena EQUALLY apply to the affirmative’s radical approach –OCCUPY
PROVES – working within legal structures can create a more effective, less exclusionary politics
Martin Quiñones in his review of Spade’s book on radical trans-politics 12
BOOK REVIEW -QUINONES-MACRO (DO NOT DELETE) 6/22/2012 3:53PM “NORMAL LIFE:
ADMINISTRATIVE VIOLENCE, CRITICAL TRANS POLITICS, AND THE LIMITS OF THE LAW by Dean Spade.
New York: South End Press, 2011.
But Occupy also illustrates many of the concomitant risks
associated with a de-centralized, dynamic movement,
and the difficulties of implementing the strategies Spade suggests. On the one hand, gathering under the mantle of “The
99%” and working through democratically organized direct action brings together marginalized groups, avoiding the trap of dividing
constituencies that Spade cautions against. Some commentators have noted, however, that political
messages from many
individual occupiers and Occupy groups have suffered from the same kinds of racialized imagery that Spade
critiques in mainstream liberal movements, including comparisons between bank debt and slavery, and prominent imagery
about hard-working and deserving middle-class whites47 (pp. 92–93, 108–109). Some Occupy groups are also hesitant to address incidents of
sexual violence within their encampments, in fear of diluting their economic message. 48 Spade acknowledges that a central challenge of
resistance movements is generating the “consistent self-reflection and critique” necessary to avoid replicating received racist or classist
stereotypes (pp. 210–212, 216–217). If that kind of focused
self-critical effort is necessary even in collective,
democratic, radical structures, the question arises whether the same effort can be profitably spent in a more traditional law reform
setting. If constantly assessing whether an organization is still focused on the needs of its most vulnerable
constituents can be a determining factor in its effectiveness, it may be that organizations with an
established law reform skill set can utilize the same modifications in thought process and agenda
without abandoning the tools they have at hand. Whether democratic de-centralized processes will necessarily better protect
the interests of marginalized minorities than a refocused mainstream movement is by no means clear.