Gonzaga Debate Institute Framework Backfile
Gonzaga Debate Institute Framework Backfile
Gonzaga Debate Institute Framework Backfile
**Shells
*Aff
2AC Shell
A. Our interpretation is that the affirmative should be able to weigh the advantages of
the plan against the kritik alternative, which must be enacted by the United States
federal government.
B. Violation they dont let us weigh the aff and their aff is not enacted by the USfg
C. Vote Aff
1. Plan focus we allow for a stable locus for links and comparison of alternatives.
Their framework makes confusion and judge intervention inevitable.
2. Ground they access a massive amount of K frameworks, links, and impacts. They
can leverage framework to moot the 1AC. We can never predict what we will have to
compare the plan to. Even if we get ground, its bad and unpredictable.
3. Topic education their framework encourages generic Ks that get rehashed every
year. We change the topic to learn about new things.
Apolitical alternatives fail
Rorty 98 (prof of philosophy at Stanford, Richard, 1998, achieving our country, Pg. 7-9)JFS
Such people find pride in
themselves as a saving remnant-as the happy few who have the insight to see through nationalist rhetoric to the
ghastly reality of contemporary America. But this insight does not move them to formulate a legislative program, to
join a political movement, or to share in a national hope. The contrast between national hope and national self-mockery and self-disgust
becomes vivid when one compares novels like Snow Crash and Almanac of the Dead with socialist novels of the first half of the century-books
like The Jungle, An American Tragedy, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter were written in the belief that the tone of the Gettysburg Address
was absolutely right, but that our country would have to transform itself in order to fulfill Lincoln's hopes. Transformation would be
needed because the rise of industrial capitalism had made the individualist rhetoric of America's first century obsolete. The authors of these
novels thought that this rhetoric should be replaced by one in which America is destined to become the first cooperative commonwealth, the
first classless society. This America would be one in which income and wealth are equitably distributed, and in which the government ensures
equality of opportunity as well as individual liberty. This new, quasi-communitarian rhetoric was at the heart of the Progressive Movement and
the New Deal. It set the tone for the American Left during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Walt Whitman and John Dewey, as we
shall see, did a great deal to shape this rhetoric. The difference between early twentieth-century leftist intellectuals and the
majority of their contemporary counterparts is the difference between agents and spectators. In the early decades
of this century, when an intellectual stepped back from his or her country's history and looked at it through
skeptical eyes, the chances were that he or she was about to propose a new political initiative. Henry Adams was, of
course, the great exception-the great abstainer from politics. But William James thought that Adams' diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a
symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse. James's pragmatist theory of truth was in part a reaction against the
sort of detached spectators hip which Adams affected. For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and self-deception was pointless unless
accompanied by an effort to give America reason to be proud of itself in the future. The kind of proto- Heideggerian cultural
pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed, to James, decadent and cowardly. "Democracy," James wrote, "is a kind of religion,
and we are bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and utopias are the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in
him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. "2
*Neg
C. Vote neg
1. Topicality they dont defend the resolution, which is a voting issue to
preserve competitive equity and jurisdictional integrity
2. Fairness their framework allows infinite non-falsifiable, unpredictable,
totalizing, and personal claims impossible to be neg
3. Switch-side debate spending every round theorizing about your K is
unproductive you cannot know your argument is true unless you consider both sides
of it
4. No offense you can read this arg when youre negative to win this round,
they have to prove why reading this aff and not being topical is good
5. Topicality before advocacy vote negative to say that you think they are not
topical, not that you dont believe in their project
marks the end of contest-that consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect-if there is nothing at all
left to question or contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect . We agree on some matters but
not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited
agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths;
therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that
argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the
premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are
not communicating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different
ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is
being debated before we can debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks
euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those
doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a
policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is
being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the
terms of their disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a
demonstrator's audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that
idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
Limits are key infinite political theories exist, artificial limits are key
Lutz 2k (Donald S. Professor of Polisci at Houston, Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 39-40)JFS
Aristotle notes in the Politics that political theory simultaneously proceeds at three levelsdiscourse about the ideal, about
the best possible in the real world, and about existing political systems.4 Put another way, comprehensive political theory must
ask several different kinds of questions that are linked, yet distinguishable. In order to understand the interlocking set of questions that
political theory can ask, imagine a continuum stretching from left to right. At the end, to the right, is an ideal form of
government, a perfectly wrought construct produced by the imagination. At the other end is the perfect dystopia, the most
perfectly wretched system that the human imagination can produce. Stretching between these two extremes is an infinite set of
possibilities, merging into one another, that describe the logical possibilities created by the characteristics defining the end points. For
example, a political system defined primarily by equality would have a perfectly inegalitarian system described at the other
end, and the possible states of being between them would vary primarily in the extent to which they embodied equality. An ideal defined
primarily by liberty would create a different set of possibilities between the extremes. Of course, visions of the ideal often are
inevitably more complex than these single-value examples indicate, but it is also true that in order to imagine an ideal state of
affairs a kind of simplification is almost always required since normal states of affairs invariably present themselves to human
consciousness as complicated, opaque, and to a significant extent indeterminate. A non-ironic reading of Plato's Republic leads one to
conclude that the creation of these visions of the ideal characterizes political philosophy. This is not the case. Any person can
generate a vision of the ideal. One job of political philosophy is to ask the question "Is this ideal worth
pursuing?" Before the question can be pursued, however, the ideal state of affairs must be clarified, especially
with respect to conceptual precision and the logical relationship between the propositions that describe the ideal.
This pre-theoretical analysis raises the vision of the ideal from the mundane to a level where true philosophical analysis,
and the careful comparison with existing systems can proceed fruitfully. The process of pre-theoretical analysis, probably
because it works on clarifying ideas that most capture the human imagination, too often looks to some like the entire enterprise of political
philosophy.5 However, the value of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's concept of the General Will, for example, lies not in its formal logical
implications, nor in its compelling hold on the imagination, but on the power and clarity it lends to an analysis and comparison of actual
political systems.
either useless or dangerous, the actually existing power structure-replete with its own centralized state apparatus, institutional
hierarchies, conscious designs, and indeed, rational plans-remains fully intact, insulated from the minimalist critique. In other
words, ideologies and plans are perfectly acceptable for elites who preside over established governing systems, but not for ordinary citizens or
groups anxious to challenge the status quo. Such one-sided minimalism gives carte blanche to elites who naturally desire as
much space to maneuver as possible. The flight from abstract principles rules out ethical attacks on injustices that may pervade the status
quo (slavery or imperialist wars, for example) insofar as those injustices might be seen as too deeply embedded in the
social and institutional matrix of the time to be the target of oppositional political action. If politics is reduced to
nothing other than a process of everyday muddling-through, then people are condemned to accept the harsh
realities of an exploitative and authoritarian system, with no choice but to yield to the dictates of conventional wisdom.
Systematic attempts to ameliorate oppressive conditions would, in Oakeshotts view, turn into a political nightmare.
A belief that totalitarianism might results from extreme attempts to put society in order is one thing; to argue that all politicized efforts to
change the world are necessary doomed either to impotence or totalitarianism requires a completely different (and indefensible) set of
premises. Oakeshotts minimalism poses yet another, but still related, range of problems: the shrinkage of politics hardly suggests
that corporate colonization, social hierarchies, or centralized state and military institutions will magically
disappear from peoples lives. Far from it: the public space vacated by ordinary citizens, well informed and ready to fight for
their interests, simply gives elites more room to consolidate their own power and privilege. Beyond that, the
fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian civil society, not too far removed from the excessive individualism, social Darwinism and
urban violence of the American landscape could open the door to a modern Leviathan intent on restoring order and unity in the
face of social disintegration. Viewed in this light, the contemporary drift towards antipolitics might set the stage for a
reassertion of politics in more authoritarian and reactionary guise -or it could simply end up reinforcing the dominant statecorporate system. In either case, the state would probably become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal, collective
interests that had vanished from civil society.16 And either outcome would run counter to the facile antirationalism of Oakeshotts Burkean
muddling-through theories.
**Overviews
*Aff
1AR Overview
Extend the interpretation they must allow us to weigh the impact of our aff and
must defend USFG action they do neither, and thats a reason to reject the team
They kill plan focus, and its the only way to have predictable limits all debates
need a starting locus for educational clash
K Ground is too large they give us unpredictable and generic ground that is only
tangentially related to the plan
Were key to topic-specific education they can run state bad every year, but we
wont learn anything new education is the central mission of debate its the only
thing we take away from debate after we leave the activity
Extend the Rorty evidence their K is impotent and it allows the structures it
criticizes to stay in place
It actually strengthens those structures by giving the elites a power vaccum to seize
this is an external impact
Boggs 2k (CARL, PF POLITICAL SCIENCE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 00, THE END OF POLITICS,
250-1)JFS
While Oakeshott debunks political mechanisms and rational planning, as
either useless or dangerous, the actually existing power structure-replete with its own centralized state apparatus, institutional
hierarchies, conscious designs, and indeed, rational plans-remains fully intact, insulated from the minimalist critique. In other
But it is a very deceptive and misleading minimalism.
words, ideologies and plans are perfectly acceptable for elites who preside over established governing systems, but not for ordinary citizens or
groups anxious to challenge the status quo. Such one-sided minimalism gives carte blanche to elites who naturally desire as
much space to maneuver as possible. The flight from abstract principles rules out ethical attacks on injustices that may pervade the status
quo (slavery or imperialist wars, for example) insofar as those injustices might be seen as too deeply embedded in the
social and institutional matrix of the time to be the target of oppositional political action. If politics is reduced to
nothing other than a process of everyday muddling-through, then people are condemned to accept the harsh
realities of an exploitative and authoritarian system, with no choice but to yield to the dictates of conventional wisdom.
Systematic attempts to ameliorate oppressive conditions would , in Oakeshotts view, turn into a political nightmare.
A belief that totalitarianism might results from extreme attempts to put society in order is one thing; to argue that all politicized efforts to
change the world are necessary doomed either to impotence or totalitarianism requires a completely different (and indefensible) set of
premises. Oakeshotts minimalism poses yet another, but still related, range of problems: the shrinkage of politics hardly suggests
that corporate colonization, social hierarchies, or centralized state and military institutions will magically
disappear from peoples lives. Far from it: the public space vacated by ordinary citizens, well informed and ready to fight for
their interests, simply gives elites more room to consolidate their own power and privilege. Beyond that, the
fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian civil society, not too far removed from the excessive individualism, social Darwinism and
urban violence of the American landscape could open the door to a modern Leviathan intent on restoring order and unity in the
face of social disintegration. Viewed in this light, the contemporary drift towards antipolitics might set the stage for a
reassertion of politics in more authoritarian and reactionary guise -or it could simply end up reinforcing the dominant statecorporate system. In either case, the state would probably become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal, collective
interests that had vanished from civil society.16 And either outcome would run counter to the facile antirationalism of Oakeshotts Burkean
muddling-through theories.
*Neg
2NC Overview
3 key arguments in this debate
1. Switch-Side debate solves all of the affirmatives offense all of your reasons why
your kritik is good can be ran while you are negative without a blatant violation of
the resolution
2. Shively this precedes all other questions we cannot even debate until we know
the conditions, subjects, and limits of this debate you cant evaluate the content of
their claims until rules have been set up
3. Boggs we are the only ones with an external impact if we fail to engage
politics, then elites fill the vacuum who push forth imperialist, oppressive agendas
**Interpretation Debate
**Fairness Debate
**Switch-Side Debate
flexibility, empathy, and familiarity with significant issues provided by switch-side debate. The values of tolerance and
fairness, implicit in the metaphor of debate as game, are idealistic in nature. They have a much greater chance of success, however,
in an activity that requires students to examine and understand both sides of an issue. In his description of debating
societies, Robert Louis Stevenson questions the prevalence of unreasoned opinion , and summarizes the judgment furthered in
this work: Now, as the rule stands, you are saddled with the side you disapprove, and so you are forced , by regard for
your own fame, to argue out, to feel with, to elaborate completely, the case as it stands against yourself; and what a fund of
wisdom do you not turn up in this idle digging of the vineyard! How many new difficulties take form before your eyes! how many
superannuated arguments cripple finally into limbo, under the glance of your enforced eclecticism! . . . It is as a means of melting down this
museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul that we insist on their utility.
the same dilemma: No one value is seen as correct and unassailable, yet certain values get placed above
others as a matter of procedure. Both features need to be explicitly addressed since both reflect directly on debate as a tool of
moral pedagogy. The first response to the charge of relativism is that switch-side debate respects the existence of divergent
beliefs, but focuses attention on assessing the validity of opposing belief systems . Scriven argues that the
"confusion of pluralism, of the proper tolerance for diversity of ideas, with relativismthe doctrine that there are no right and
wrong answers in ethics or religionis perhaps the most serious ideological barrier to the implementation of moral
education today. "^ The process of ethical inquiry is central to such moral education, but the allowance of just
any position is not. Here is where cognitive-development diverges from the formal aims of values clarification. Where clarification
ostensibly allows any value position, cognitive-development progresses from individualism to social conformity to social contract theory to
universal ethical principles. A pluralistic pedagogy does not imply that all views are acceptable: It is morally and
pedagogically correct to teach about ethics, and the skills of moral analysis rather than doctrine, and to set out the arguments for and
against tolerance and pluralism. All of this is undone if you also imply that all the various incompatible views about
abortion or pornography or war are equally right, or likely to be right, or deserving of respect. Pluralism
requires respecting
the right to hold divergent beliefs; it implies neither tolerance of actions based on those beliefs nor respecting the content of the
beliefs. The role of switch-side debate is especially important in the oral defense of arguments that foster
tolerance without accruing the moral complications of acting on such beliefs. The forum is therefore unique in
providing debaters with attitudes of tolerance without committing them to active moral irresponsibility. As Freeley notes, debaters are
indeed exposed to a multivalued world, both within and between the sides of a given topic. Yet this exposure hardly
commits them to such "mistaken" values. In this view, the divorce of the game from the "real world" can be seen
as a means of gaining perspective without obligating students to validate their hypothetical value structure
through immoral actions.
**Shively Debate
the paradox should tell us is that some kinds of harmonies or orders are, in fact, good for resistance; and
some ought to be fully supported. As such, it should counsel against the kind of careless rhetoric that lumps all orders
or harmonies together as arbitrary and inhumane. Clearly some basic accord about the terms of contest is a
necessary ground for all further contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged ambiguists, they cannot admit to these implications, for
to open the door to some agreements or reasons as good and some orders as helpful or necessary, is to open the door to some sort of rationalism. Perhaps they might just continue to
insist that this initial condition is ironic, but that the irony should not stand in the way of the real business of subversion.Yet difficulties remain. For and then proceed to debate without
debate and contest are forms of dialogue : that is, they are activities premised on the building
of progressive agreements. Imagine, for instance, that two people are having an argument about the issue of gun control. As noted earlier, in any argument, certain
attention to further agreements. For
initial agreements will be needed just to begin the discussion. At the very least, the two discussants must agree on basic terms: for example, they must have some shared sense of what
gun control is about; what is at issue in arguing about it; what facts are being contested, and so on. They must also agreeand they do so simply by entering into debatethat they will
not use violence or threats in making their cases and that they are willing to listen to, and to be persuaded by, good arguments. Such agreements are simply implicit in the act of
argumentation.
Grounding their movement in the context of the resolution is even more subversive
Shively 2k (Ruth Lessl Assoc Prof Polisci at Texas A&M, Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 180)
'Thus far, I have argued that if the ambiguists mean to be subversive about anything, they need to be conservative about
some things. They need to be steadfast supporters of the structures of openness and democracy: willing to say "no" to certain forms of
contest; willing to set up certain clear limitations about acceptable behavior. To this, finally, I would add that if the ambiguists mean
to stretch the boundaries of behaviorif they want to be revolutionary and disruptive in their skepticism and iconoclasmthey
need first to be firm believers in something. Which is to say, again, they need to set clear limits about what they will and
will not support, what they do and do not believe to be best. As G. K. Chesterton observed, the true revolutionary has always willed
something "definite and limited." For example, "The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more
important) the system he would not rebel against..." He "desired the freedoms of democracy." He "wished to have votes and not to have
titles . . ." But "because the new rebel is a skeptic"because he cannot bring himself to will something definite
and limited "he cannot be a revolutionary." For "the fact that he wants to doubt everything really gets in his way when he
wants to denounce anything" (Chesterton 1959,41). Thus, the most radical skepticism ends in the most radical conservatism. In other
words, a refusal to judge among ideas and activities is, in the end, an endorsement of the status quo . To embrace everything is to
be unable to embrace a particular plan of action, for to embrace a particular plan of action is to reject all others, at least for that moment. Moreover, as observed in our discussion of
openness, to embrace everything is to embrace self-contradiction: to hold to both one's purposes and to that which defeats one's purposesto tolerance and intolerance, open-
their backs on the bullying of the white supremacist. And, as such, in refusing to bar the tactics of the anti-democrat, they refuse to support the tactics of the democrat. In short, then, to
there must be some limit to what is ambiguous. To fully support political contest, one must fully
support some uncontested rules and reasons. To generally reject the silencing or exclusion of others, one must
sometimes silence or exclude those who reject civility and democracy.
be a true ambiguist,
**Lutz Debate
**Boggs Debate
cynicism as a key example of this (here, cynically knowing the truth that the System is a vacuous sham produces no
real change in behavior, no decision to stop acting as if this big Other is something with genuine
substantiality).149 iek proclaims that, the starting point of the critique of ideology has to be full
acknowledgement of the fact that it is easily possible to lie in the guise of truth .150 Although the Lacanian
blurring of the boundary between theoretical thinking and practical action might very well be completely true,
accepting it as true inevitably risks strengthening a convenient alibithe creation of this alibi has long been a fait accompli
for which Lacan alone could hardly be held responsiblefor the worst sort of intellectualized avoidance of praxis. Academics can
convincingly reassure themselves that their inaccessible, abstract musings, the publications of which are perused only by
their tiny self-enclosed circle of ivory tower colleagues, arent irrelevant obscurities made possible by tacit complicity with a
certain socio-economic status quo, but, rather, radical political interventions that promise sweeping changes of the
predominating situation. If working on signifiers is the same as working in the streets, then why dirty ones hands
bothering with the latter?
democracy requires the development of democratic citizens. How we think about the formation of democratic citizens
depends on the specific conception of democracy we hold, whether it is a set of skills, level of participation, civic discourse, community
mobilization, or exercise of certain rights and responsibilities (Galston, 2001). Educators and government leaders agree on the
importance of democratic education because of societys reliance on the people to make deliberate choices
about the direction of their collective lives (Battistoni, 1985). Yet there is a range of terms used in the language to describe
democratic development or civic engagement.
abject criticism, whose putative task was once to preserve the best that has been known and thought, by guilty association
with so fatuous, banal, idiotic, untenable a class of cultural objects? Why not decline, not so politely, to participate in the tiny
spectacle of aging intellectuals dressing in black to prowl festering galleries and clubs where, sometime before dawn, they will
encounter the contemptuous gaze of their own children, and almost manage to elide that event when they finally produce their bilious
reports, their chunks of cultural criticism? No excuse, no justification: all one can put forward is an unendurable habit of
attention, a meager fascination, no more or less commanding than that hypnosis one enters in the face of television; a rut that has always
led downward and in the end always found itself stuck on the surface; a kind of drivenness, if not a drive; a *critique*, if you can forgive
such a word, that has never located any cultural object whose poverty failed to reflect its own; a rage to find some
point at which criticism would come to an end, and that only intensified as that end-point receded and shrunk to the size of an ideal. [2]
Then if one must persist in investigating these epi-epiphenomena, perhaps compelled by some critical fashion (no doubt already out of
vogue), perhaps merely out of an interminable immaturity, why not refer the stupid underground back to all the old
undergrounds, back to the most familiar histories? Why not cast it as nothing more than another and another and another stillborn
incarnation of an avant-garde that wallows in but doesn't quite believe its own obituaries, and that one has already wasted years
considering? Why not just settle for mapping it according to the old topography of center and margin, or some other arthritic dichotomy
that, for all their alleged postness, the discourses we are about to breach always manage to drag along behind them? Why not simply
accede to the mock-heroic rhetoric of cultural opposition (subversion, resistance, etc.) that, after a generation of
deconstructions, we still don't have the strength to shake; or to the nouveau rhetoric of multiplicity (plurality, diversity,
etc.), as if all one needed was to add a few more disparate topic headings to break the hold of a One that, in truth, one still manages to
project in the very act of superceding it? Nothing will prevent usindeed, nothing can save us--from ransoming ourselves again and again
to the exhausted mastery of these arrangements; nothing will keep us from orienting ourselves toward every difference by means of the
most tattered maps. But at the same time we must entertain--doubtless the right word--the sheer possibility that what we
encounter here is not just one more margin or one more avant-garde, however impossible it will be to avoid all the orders and
terms attendant upon those venerable and ruined cultural edifices. We must remain open to the possibility that this stupid underground
poses all the old questions but a few more as well, that it might suggest another set of cultural arrangements, other topographies and
other mappings, however unlikely that might be. In any case, whatever vicarious attractions the stupid underground offers
the bored intellectual groping for a way to heat up his rhetoric, if not his thought, whatever else we might encounter here,
it is important to insist that you will not find these maps laid out for your inspection , as if on an intellectual sale
table, and rated for accuracy and charm. No claim is being staked here; no one is being championed, no one offered up on
the critical auction block as the other of the month. There is nothing here to choose; all the choices have already been made.
One can only hope, in what will surely prove an idle gesture, to complicate cultural space for a moment or two,
Lepgold and Nincic 1 (Joesph, associate professor of Government at Georgetown and Miroslav professor
of Poly Sci at UC-Davis, Beyond the Ivory Tower: International Relations Theory and the Issue of Policy
Relevance pg. 2-4)JFS
For many reasons, connections between scholarly ideas and policymakers thinking
officials seem to remember the repetitive, often strident theo- retical debates as unproductive and tiresome. Not
only is much international relations scholarship tedious, in their view; it is often technically quite dif- ficult. Partly for this reason, much of it
is so substantively arid that even many scholarly specialists avoid trying to penetrate it. From a practitioners perspective, it often seems as
if university scholars are increasingly with- drawing . . . behind a curtain of theory and models that only insiders
can penetrate. In addition, for many observers, the end of the cold war has made it harder to find models providing a compelling link
between the international environment and manipulable policy instruments. One exception to this growing split between scholars of
international relations and policymakers is the work on the inter-democratic peace, which we discuss in chapter 5. This work, as
we will show, has deeply influenced many contemporary policymakers. But, for the most part, it remains the exception; the
profes- sional gap between academics and practitioners has widened in recent years. Many scholars no longer try to reach
beyond the Ivory Tower, and officials seem increasingly content to ignore it. According to much conventional wisdom, this
situation is unsurprising. International relations scholars and practitioners have different professional priorities and reflect different
cultures. Not only is it often assumed that good theory must sacrifice policy relevance; but also those seeking
guidance in diagnosing policy situations and making policy choices, it is often thought, must look for help in places other
than contemporary social science research. This book challenges much of the conventional wisdom on these issues. It argues that IR
theorists and foreign policy practitioners have important needs in common as well as needs that are different. Social science theory
seeks to identify and explain the significant regularities in human affairs. Because peoples ability to process information is
limited, they must perceive the world selectively in order to operate effectively in it; constructing and using theories in a self-conscious way
helps to inject some rigor into these processes.6 For these reasons, both theorists and practitioners seek a clear and powerful
understanding of cause and effect about policy issues, in order to help them diagnose situations, define the range of possibilities
they con- front, and evaluate the likely consequences of given courses of action. At the same time, a deep and continuing concern for
the substance and stakes involved in real-world issues can help prevent theorists research agendas from becoming arid
or trivial. This book therefore has two objectives: to elaborate and justify the reasoning that leads to these conclusions, and to illustrate
how scholarship on international relations and foreign policy can be useful beyond the Ivory Tower.
that it contributes to improved policy. It is part of what August Comte believed would constitute a new, positive science of
society, one that would supersede the older tradition of metaphysical speculation about humanity and the social world. Progress
toward this end has been incomplete as well as uneven across the social sciences. But, in virtually all of these fields, it has been
9
driven by more than just curiosity as an end in itself. Tightening our grip on key social processes via improved understanding has always
been a major incentive for new knowledge in the social sciences, especially in the study of international relations. This broad purpose
covers a lot of specific ground. Policymakers want to know what range of effective choice they have, the likely
international and domestic consequences of various policy decisions, and perhaps whether, in terms of more general interests
and values, contemplated policy objectives are really desirable, should they be achievable . But the practical implications
of international issues hardly end there. How wars start and end, the causes and implications of economic interdependence,
and what leverage individ- ual states might have on trans-state problems greatly affects ordinary citizens physical safety,
prosperity, and collective identity. Today, it is hard to think of any major public-policy issue that is not affected by a states or
societys relationships with other international actors. Because the United States looms so large within the international
system, its citizens are sometimes unaware of the range and impact of international events and processes on their
condition. It may take an experience such as the long gas lines in the 1970s or the foreign-inspired terrorist bombings in the 1990s to
remind them how powerfully the outside world now impinges upon them. As Karl Deutsch observed, even the smallest states can
no longer effectively isolate themselves, and even the largest ones face limits on their ability to change others behavior or values.
11
In a broad sense, globalization means that events in many places will affect peoples investment opportu- nities, the value of their money,
whether they feel that their values are safe or under attack, and perhaps whether they will be safe from attack by weap- ons of mass
destruction or terrorism. These points can be illustrated by observing university undergraduates, who constitute one of the broadest
categories of people who are potentially curious about IR. Unlike doctoral students, they care much less about po- litical
science than about the substance of politics. What they seem to un- derstand is that the subject matter of SIR, regardless of
the level of theoretical abstraction at which it is discussed, inherently has practical implications. One might argue that whatever our
purpose in analyzing IR might be, we can have little confidence in our knowledge absent tightly developed theory and rigorous
research. One might then infer that a concern with the practical implications of our knowledge is premature until the field of
SIR is better developed on its own terms. But if one assumes that SIR inherently has significant real-world implications, one could also
conclude that the balance in contemporary scholarship has veered too far from substance and too close to scholasticism.
As in other fields driven by a concern with real-world developments, SIR research has been motivated by both internally- and externallydriven con- cerns. The former are conceptual, epistemological, and methodological mat- ters that scholars
believe they need to confront to do their intellectual work: Which research programs are most apt to resolve the fields core
puzzles? What is the meaning of contested concepts? Which empirical evidence or methods are especially useful, convincing, or
weak in this field? The latter consist of issues relevant to policy practitioners and citizens: How can people prepare to deal
with an uncertain future? More specifically, how can they anticipate future international developments to which
they might need to adapt, assess the likely consequences of measures to deal with that future, or at least think about such matters
intelligently? While the best scholarly work tends to have important ramifications for both types of concerns, the academic
emphasis has shifted too far toward work with little relevance out- side academia. This balance must be redressed if
12
Relations. Aside from the work the work on the interdemocratic peace discussed in chapter 5, and, to a lesser extent, some of the
literature on international institutions examined in chap- ter 6, strategic studies has been most important in this respect .
Such concepts as escalation dominance as well as the more general notion of the pris- oners dilemma were conceived by
academics but have become part of the daily vocabulary of many practitioners. Work on deterrence, nuclear
prolif- eration, arms control, and the use of coercive force has influenced a host of U.S. weapons-acquisition
and force-management issues. At one time, such an impact on official thinking was not unusual. Concerns
about effective public policy have traditionally been part of the academic study of politics; the American Political
24
Science Association (APSA), for example, was founded in part to bring political science to a position of authority as regards practical
politics.25 By moving professional scholars away from externally- driven issues, the professionalization of
political science has molded the kind of work by which they earn professional prestige, making them less able or
willing to communicate with policymakers. From the perspective of many officials, SIR scholars are comfortable on their
side of the gap, free of any obligation to address practical issues . As a result, the public intellectuals who address current
26
foreign policy issues now tend to have few or weak connections to universities, while the prominent scholars in this field tend to write
almost exclusively for their own colleagues.
Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism. As such, it may also be read as an archaeology of postmodern theory. During the
1970s and 1980s a panoply of texts by Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and Lyotard were translated into English, provoking a
far-reaching shift in American intellectual life. Many of these texts were inspired by Nietzsches anticivilizational animus: the
conviction that our highest ideals of beauty, morality, and truth were intrinsically nihilistic. Such views found favor among a generation of
academics disillusioned by the political failures of the 1960s. Understandably, in despondent times Nietzsches iconoclastic
recommendation that one should philosophize with a hammer that if something is falling, one should give it a final
pushfound a ready echo. Yet, too often, those who rushed to mount the Nietzschean bandwagon downplayed or ignored the
illiberal implications of his positions. Moreover, in retrospect, it seems clear that this same generation, many of whose
representatives were comfortably ensconced in university careers, had merely exchanged radical politics for textual politics:
unmasking binary oppositions replaced an ethos of active political engagement. In the last analysis it seems that the
seductions of theory helped redirect formerly robust political energies along the lines of acceptable academic
career tracks. As commentators have often pointed out, during the 1980s, while Republicans were commandeering the
nations political apparatus, partisans of theory were storming the ramparts of the Modern Language Association and
the local English Department. Ironically, during the same period, the French paradigms that American academics were so busy
assimilating were undergoing an eclipse across the Atlantic. In France they were perceived as expressions of an obsolete political
temperament: gauchisme (leftism) or French philosophy of the 1960s.21 By the mid-1980s French intellectuals had passed through the
acid bath of antitotalitarianism. Under the influence of Solzhenitsyns pathbreaking study of the Gulag as well as the timely, if slick,
anticommunist polemics of the New Philosophers such as Andr Glucksmann and Bernard Henri-Lvy, who were appalled by the killing
fields of Pol Pots Cambodia (the Khmer Rouge leader had been educated in Paris during the 1950s) and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, French intellectuals began returning to the indigenous tradition of democratic republicanismthereby
leaving the 1960s leftists holding the bag of an outmoded philosophical anarchism. The tyrannical excesses of Third
WorldismChinas Cultural Revolution, Castros Cuba, Idi Amins Uganda, Mobutus Zaire, Duvaliers Haitifinally put paid
to the delusion that the wretched of the earth were the bearers of a future socialist utopia . Suddenly, the
nostrums of Western humanism, which the poststructuralists had emphatically denounced, seemed to merit a second look.
discourse of a free society, the project must be to restore it through the revival of true communicative action, that is, to
persuade people to talk to one another with respect, to listen fairly, to argue cleanly, and to move towards consensus on norms for
action. That way lies a democratic future. Any other way leads to one or another form of totalitarianism, including
the totalitarianism of mass consumption culture whose victims are so easily persuaded to pursue its spurious
salvation and ersatz heaven. However, the character of our modern world requires that steps taken to transform the
public sphere respect and reflect the complexity of modern society. We are not just so many individuals sorted into different social
classes. We are rather members of a number of sub-groups, perhaps defined by race, class, gender or religion, as
well as members of the larger body politic. What will be needed is a confluence of these autonomous publics or distinct
interest groups coming together in common concern for the preservation of democratic life. The public sphere will have to
include many more voices than it did in the time of Samuel Johnson, and the consensus on social goods may seem even more
elusive; but the dynamics of the process, so argues Habermas, will help ensure the preservation of a human society.
sacrificed two potential advocates for change within the community. Creating change through wins generates
backlash through losses. Some proponents are comfortable with generating backlash and argue that the reaction is evidence that
the issue is being discussed. From our perspective, the discussion that results from these hostile situations is not a
productive one where participants seek to work together for a common goal. Instead of giving up on hope for change and
agitating for wins regardless of who is left behind, it seems more reasonable that the debate community should try the method of public
argument that we teach in an effort to generate a discussion of necessary community changes. Simply put, debate competitions do
not represent the best environment for community change because it is a competition for a win and only one team
can win any given debate, whereas addressing systemic century-long community problems requires a tremendous
effort by a great number of people.
individual debate rounds sacrifices the "community" portion of the change. Many teams that promote activist
strategies in debates profess that they are more interested in creating change than winning debates. What is clear, however, is that the
vast majority of teams that are not promoting community change are very interested in winning debates. The tension
that is generated from the clash of these opposing forces is tremendous. Unfortunately, this is rarely a productive
tension. Forcing teams to consider their purpose in debating, their style in debates, and their approach to evidence are all critical aspects of
being participants in the community. However, the dismissal of the proposed resolution that the debaters have spent countless
hours preparing for, in the name of a community problem that the debaters often have little control over, does
little to engender coalitions of the willing. Should a debate team lose because its director or coach has been
ineffective at recruiting minority participants? Should a debate team lose because its coach or director holds political positions
that are in opposition to the activist program? Competition has been a critical component of the interest in intercollegiate debate from
the beginning, and it does not help further the goals of the debate community to dismiss competition in the name of
community change.
2NC No Spillover
Individual debates cant create changeno audience and forgetfulness
Atchison and Panetta 9 (Jarrod Atchison, PhD. In Speech Communication. Edward Panetta, Ph.D. in
Communication. Intercollegiate Debate Speech Communication: Historical Developments and Issues for the
Future; The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Pg. 27)JFS
The first problem that we isolate is the difficulty of any individual debate to generate community change. Although any
debate has the potential to create problems for the community (videotapes of objectionable behavior, etc.), rarely does any one
debate have the power to create communitywide change. We attribute this ineffectiveness to the structural problems
inherent in individual debates and the collective forgetfulness of the debate community. The structural problems stem from the current
tournament format that has remained relatively consistent for the past 30 years. Debaters engage in preliminary debates in
rooms that are rarely populated by anyone other than the judge . Judges are instructed to vote for the team that does the
best debating, but the ballot is rarely seen by anyone outside the tabulation room. Given the limited number of debates
in which a judge actually writes meaningful comments, there is little documentation of what actually transpired during the debate round.
During the period when judges interact with the debaters, there are often external pressures (filing evidence,
preparing for the next debate, etc.) that restrict the ability of anyone outside the debate to pay attention to the
judges' justification for their decision. Elimination debates do not provide for a much better audience because debates still occur simultaneously, and travel schedules dictate that most of the participants have left by the later elimination rounds. It is difficult for anyone
to substantiate the claim that asking a judge to vote to solve a community problem in an individual debate
with so few participants is the best strategy for addressing important problems. In addition to the structural problems, the
collective forgetfulness of the debate community reduces the impact that individual debates have on the
community. The debate community is largely made up of participants who debate and then move on to successful careers. The
coaches and directors that make up the backbone of the community are the people with the longest cultural memory, but they are also a
small minority of the community when considering the number of debaters involved in the activity. This is not meant to suggest that the
activity is reinvented every yearcertainly there are conventions that are passed down from coaches to debaters and from debaters to
debaters. However, the basic fact remains that there are virtually no transcriptions available for the community to read, and, therefore, it
is difficult to substantiate the claim that the debate community can remember any one individual debate
over the course of several generations of debaters. Additionally, given the focus on competition and individual skill, the
community is more likely to remember the accomplishments and talents of debaters rather than a specific winning
argument. The debate community does not have the necessary components in place for a strong collective memory of individual
debates. The combination of the structures of debate and the collective forgetfulness means that any strategy for creating
community change that is premised on winning individual debates is less effective than seeking a larger community
dialogue that is recorded and/or transcribed.
**Answers To
AT: Mitchell
He changed his mind debate as a political safe space is key to true political
experimentation
Mitchell 2 (Gordon, debate coach at Pittsburgh, Nov 09,
http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200211/0136.html)JFS
Politically I have moved quite a bit since 1998, when I wrote that debate institutions should pay more attention to
argumentative agency, i.e. cultivation of skills that facilitate translation of critical thinking, public speaking, and research acumen into
concrete exemplars of democratic empowerment. Back then I was highly skeptical of the "laboratory model" of
"preparatory pedagogy," where students were kept, by fiat, in the proverbial pedagogical bullpen . Now I respect
much more the value of a protected space
positions, driving the heuristic process by arguing against their convictions. In fact, the integrity of this space could be
compromised by "activist turn" initiatives designed to bridge contest round advocacy with political activism. These days I have
much more confidence in the importance and necessity of switch-side debating, and the heuristic value for debaters of
arguing against their convictions. I think fashioning competitive debate contest rounds as isolated and politically
protected safe spaces for communicative experimentation makes sense . However, I worry that a narrow diet of
competitive contest round debating could starve students of opportunities to experience the rich political valence of their debating
activities.
AT: Spanos
Spanos misconceptualizes the dialogic student-teacher relationship
Devyne 96 (John, NYU Ed School, Maximum Security: The Culture of Violence in Inner City Schools, p.
191)JFS
I argue that Spanos epistemology should be challenged on two essential points. First, in reconceptializes ideal education along
the lines of Paulo Freire, Spanos conflates the dialogic aspect of teaching with the totality of the student-teacher
relationship. Teacher and student, we are told, should enter into a reciprocal deconstructive learning process,
one in which the oppositional teacher becomes a student and the interested student a teacher (1993, 202), the teacher now
experiencing what it feels like to be subjected to the disciplinary gaze . Such an educational philosophy has
delusions of omnipotence: it wishes to extend its valid insights to encompass all aspects of teaching and learning, to become
a totalizing vision. To accept the concept that not all knowledge is immediately generated through the dialogic
relationship does not, however, equal an oppressor ideology or the absolutizing of ignorance. It simply represents a
recognition that the student needs to be aware of what things or concepts mean for other people outside the
context of the immediate dialogic relationship. In other words, while knowledge constructed through dialogue is to be valued as
essential to the pedagogic process, it is also true that not all knowledge is or should be so conceptualized. Constructivism is splendid, but it
has limits.
AT: Kulynych
Kulynych concludes aff the aff is performative politics
Kulynych 97 (Jessica, Asst Professor of Political Science at Winthrop University, Polity, Winter, n2
p315(32)JFS
When we look at the success of citizen initiatives from a performative perspective, we look precisely at those
moments of defiance and disruption that bring the invisible and unimaginable into view. Although citizens were
minimally successful in influencing or controlling the outcome of the policy debate and experienced a considerable lack of
autonomy in their coercion into the technical debate, the goal-oriented debate within the energy commissions could be seen as a
defiant moment of performative politics. The existence of a goal-oriented debate within a technically dominated
arena defied the normalizing separation between expert policymakers and consuming citizens. Citizens
momentarily recreated themselves as policymakers in a system that defined citizens out of the policy process, thereby
refusing their construction as passive clients.
bad argument. Second, an anecdote is not an argument. Karl Rove was a debater therefore debaters are evil is
just an asinine statement. Third, there are plenty of counter anecdotes of pretty sweet people who debated and are now
awesome: Neal Katyal - Defended Gore in Bush v. Gore, and defended the Detainees from Gitmo in Hamdan v.
Rumsfeld - Debated for Dartmouth Laurence Tribe - one of the foremost constitutional scholars of our time, has
argued before the supreme court over 30 times - Debated for Harvard
problems: First, as J.P. Lacy once pointed out, it seems a tremendous causal (or even rhetorical) stretch to go from
debating both sides of an issue creates civic responsibility essential to liberal democracy to this civic
responsibility upholds the worst forms of American exceptionalism. Second, Hicks and Greene do not make
any comparison of the potentially bad power of debate to any alternative. Their implied alternative, however, is a
form of forensic speech that privileges personal conviction. The idea that students should be able to preserve their personal convictions at
all costs seems far more immediately tyrannical, far more immediately damaging to either liberal or participatory democracy, than the
ritualized requirements that students occasionally take the opposite side of what they believe. Third, as I have suggested and will
continue to suggest, while a debate project requiring participants to understand and often speak for opposing points of view may
carry a great deal of liberal baggage, it is at its core a project more ethically deliberative than institutionally
liberal. Where Hicks and Greene see debate producing the liberal citizen-subject, I see debate at least having the potential to
produce the deliberative human being. The fact that some academic debaters are recruited by the CSIS and the CIA does not
undermine this thesis. Absent healthy debate programs, these think-tanks and government agencies would still recruit what they saw as
the best and brightest students. And absent a debate community that rewards anti-institutional political rhetoric as much as liberal
rhetoric, those students would have little-to-no chance of being exposed to truly oppositional ideas.
and Hicks make a specific and context-dependent claim about the Cold War that cannot be easily applied to
contemporary discussion of the merits of SSD. 1954 was a time of McCarthyism and anti-Communist witch-hunts. It was quite
possible then that one justification for debating both sides was a re-affirmation of liberalism against the communists. Now, in the
midst of the war on terrorism, widespread restrictions on civil liberties, and President Bushs mantra of with us or against us,
it seems like the opposite is truer. Fidelity to the American cause is performed through the willing silence of
its citizens. Dissent is quelled and the public is encouraged to view the world through the singular lens of freedom against the
forces of terrorism. Debating both sidesand lacking immediate convictionis a sign of weakness and waffling in
the face of imminent threats to national security. Thus, in the contemporary context, to reject SSD and promote
argument only through conviction is far more conducive to supporting American exceptionalism than
debating multiple sides is as a liberal democratic justification.
switch-side debating originates from a civic attitude that serves as a bulwark against fundamentalism of all
stripes. Several prominent voices reshaping the national dialogue on homeland security have come from the academic
debate community and draw on its animating spirit of critical inquiry. For example, Georgetown University law professor Neal
Katyal served as lead plaintiffs counsel in Hamdan, which challenged post-9/11 enemy combat definitions.12 The foundation
for Katyals winning argument in Hamdan was laid some four years before, when he collaborated with former intercollegiate debate
champion Laurence Tribe on an influential Yale Law Journal addressing a similar topic.13 Tribe won the National Debate Tournament in
1961 while competing as an undergraduate debater for Harvard University. Thirty years later, Katyal represented Dartmouth College at the
same tournament and finished third. The imprint of this debate training is evident in Tribe and Katyals contemporary public
interventions, which are characterized by meticulous research, sound argumentation, and a staunch commitment to democratic
principles. Katyals reflection on his early days of debating at Loyola High School in Chicagos North Shore provides a vivid illustration. I
came in as a shy freshman with dreams of going to medical school. Then Loyolas debate team opened my eyes to a different world: one of
argumentation and policy. As Katyal recounts, the most important preparation for my career came from my
experiences as a member of Loyolas debate team .14 The success of former debaters like Katyal, Tribe, and others in
challenging the dominant dialogue on homeland security points to the efficacy of academic debate as a training ground for future
advocates of progressive change. Moreover, a robust understanding of the switch-side technique and the classical liberalism
which underpins it would help prevent misappropriation of the technique to bolster suspect homeland security
policies. For buried within an inner-city debaters files is a secret threat to absolutism: the refusal to be
classified as with us or against us, the embracing of intellectual experimentation in an age of orthodoxy, and reflexivity in the
face of fundamentalism. But by now, the irony of our story should be [end page 224] apparentthe more effectively academic debating
practice can be focused toward these ends, the greater the proclivity of McCarthys ideological heirs to brand the activity as a weapon of
mass destruction.
avoid the disasters that are likely when national policy is monopolized by a few self-interested parties.
Jentleson 2 (Bruce, Director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy and
Political Science at Duke University, International Security 26.4 (2002) 169-183, projectmuse)JFS
To be sure, political science and international relations
relevance back in to the discipline, to seek greater praxis between theory and practice. This is not to say that scholars
should take up the agendas of think tanks, journalists, activists, or fast fax operations. The academy's agenda is and should be
principally a more scholarly one. But theory can be valued without policy relevance being so undervalued.
Dichotomization along the lines of "we" do theory and "they" do policy consigns international relations scholars
almost exclusively to an intradisciplinary dialogue and purpose, with conversations and knowledge building that while highly
intellectual are excessively insular and disconnected from the empirical realities that are the discipline's raison d'tre.
This stunts the contributions that universities, one of society's most essential institutions, can make in dealing with the profound problems
and challenges society faces. It also is counterproductive to the academy's own interests. Research and scholarship are bettered by pushing
analysis and logic beyond just offering up a few paragraphs on implications for policy at the end of a forty-page article, as if a "ritualistic
addendum." 3 Teaching is enhanced when students' interest in "real world" issues is engaged in ways that
reinforce the argument that theory really is relevant, and CNN is not enough. There also are gains to be made for the
scholarly community's standing as perceived by those outside the academic world, constituencies and colleagues
whose opinions too often are self-servingly denigrated and defensively disregarded. It thus is both for the health of the
discipline and to fulfill its broader societal responsibilities that greater praxis is to be pursued .
avoid the disasters that are likely when national policy is monopolized by a few self-interested parties.
Cant always be true people choose their arguments debate does not force people
to be bad policymakers
Academics role in policy is key to check war
Walt 91 (Stephen, Professor U Chicago, International Studies Quarterly, 35)JFS
A recurring theme of this essay has been the twin dangers of separating the study of security affairs from the academic world or of shifting
the focus of academic scholarship too far from real-world issues. The danger of war will be with us for some time to come,
and states will continue to acquire military forces for a variety of purposes. Unless one believes that ignorance is preferable
to expertise, the value of independent national security scholars should be apparent . Indeed, history suggests that
countries that suppress debate on national security matters are more likely to blunder into disaster , because
misguided policies cannot be evaluated and stopped in time. As in other areas of public policy, academic experts in security studies can
help in several ways. In the short term, academics are well place to evaluate current programs, because they face less
pressure to support official policy. The long-term effects of academic involvement may be even more significant: academic
research can help states learn from past mistakes and can provide the theoretical innovations that produce better
policy choices in the future. Furthermore, their role in training the new generation of experts gives academics an additional avenue of
influence. Assuming they perform these tasks responsibly, academics will have a positive-albeit gradual-impact on how
states deal with the problem of war in the future.
playing simulations, help students understand different perspectives on a policy issue by adopting a perspective as
their own. But, unlike other simulation games, debates do not require that a student participate directly in order to realize the benefit of
the game. Instead of developing policy alternatives and experiencing the consequences of different choices in a traditional role-playing
game, debates present the alternatives and consequences in a formal, rhetorical fashion before a judgmental audience.
Having the class audience serve as jury helps each student develop a well-thought-out opinion on the issue by providing
contrasting facts and views and enabling audience members to pose challenges to each debating team. These debates ask
undergraduate students to examine the international legal implications of various United States foreign policy actions. Their chief tasks are
to assess the aims of the policy in question, determine their relevance to United States national interests, ascertain what legal principles
are involved, and conclude how the United States policy in question squares with relevant principles of international law. Debate questions
are formulated as resolutions, along the lines of: "Resolved: The United States should deny most-favored-nation status to China on human
rights grounds;" or "Resolved: The United States should resort to military force to ensure inspection of Iraq's possible nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons facilities;" or "Resolved: The United States' invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a lawful use of force;" or "Resolved: The
United States should kill Saddam Hussein." In addressing both sides of these legal propositions, the student debaters
must consult the vast literature of international law, especially the nearly 100 professional law-school-sponsored
international law journals now being published in the United States. This literature furnishes an incredibly rich body of
legal analysis that often treats topics affecting United States foreign policy, as well as other more esoteric international legal subjects.
Although most of these journals are accessible in good law schools, they are largely unknown to the political science
community specializing in international relations, much less to the average undergraduate. By assessing the role of international law in
United States foreign policy- making, students realize that United States actions do not always measure up to international legal
expectations; that at times, international legal strictures get compromised for the sake of perceived national interests, and that concepts
and principles of international law, like domestic law, can be interpreted and twisted in order to justify United States policy in various
international circumstances. In this way, the debate format gives students the benefits ascribed to simulations and
other action learning techniques, in that it makes them become actively engaged with their subjects, and not be mere
passive consumers. Rather than spectators, students become legal advocates, observing, reacting to, and
structuring political and legal perceptions to fit the merits of their case. The debate exercises carry several specific
educational objectives. First, students on each team must work together to refine a cogent argument that compellingly asserts their
legal position on a foreign policy issue confronting the United States. In this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal
dilemmas faced by policy makers. Second, as they work with other members of their team, they realize the complexities
of applying and implementing international law, and the difficulty of bridging the gaps between United States policy and international
legal principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting the latter. Finally, research for the debates forces
students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign policy agenda and the role that
international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. The debate thus becomes an excellent vehicle for pushing
students beyond stale arguments over principles into the real world of policy analysis, political critique, and legal defense. A
debate exercise is particularly suited to an examination of United States foreign policy, which in political science courses is usually studied
from a theoretical, often heavily realpolitik perspective. In such courses, international legal considerations are usually given short shrift, if
discussed at all. As a result, students may come to believe that international law plays no role in United States foreign policy-making. In
fact, serious consideration is usually paid by government officials to international law in the formulation of United States policy, albeit
sometimes ex post facto as a justification for policy, rather than as a bona fide prior constraint on consideration of policy options. In
addition, lawyers are prominent advisers at many levels of the foreign-policy-making process. Students should appreciate the relevance of
international law for past and current US actions, such as the invasion of Grenada or the refusal of the United States to sign the law of the
sea treaty and landmines convention, as well as for [*387] hypothetical (though subject to public discussion) United States policy options
such as hunting down and arresting war criminals in Bosnia, withdrawing from the United Nations, or assassinating Saddam Hussein.
p. 20-1)
As for moral perfectionism, this would be the doctrine that a liberal state should never have truck with dubious moral means and should
spare its officials the hazard of having to decide between lesser and greater evils. A moral perfectionist position also holds that
states can spare their officials this hazard simply by adhering to the universal moral standards set out in human rights
conventions and the laws of war. There are two problems with a perfectionist stance , leaving aside the question of whether
it is realistic. The first is that articulating nonrevocable, nonderogable moral standards is relatively easy. The problem is
deciding how to apply them in specific cases. What is the line between interrogation and torture, between targeted
killing and unlawful assassination, between preemption and aggression? Even when legal and moral distinctions between these are clear in
the abstract, abstractions are less than helpful when political leaders have to choose between them in practice.
Furthermore, the problem with perfectionist standards is that they contradict each other. The same person who shudders,
rightly, at the prospect of torturing a suspect might be prepared to kill the same suspect in a preemptive attack on a terrorist base. Equally,
the perfectionist commitment to the right to life might preclude such attacks altogether and restrict our
response to judicial pursuit of offenders through process of law. Judicial responses to the problem of terror have their
place, but they are no substitute for military operations when terrorists possess bases, training camps, and heavy weapons. To stick to a
perfectionist commitment to the right to life when under terrorist attack might achieve moral consistency at the price of leaving us
defenseless in the face of evildoers. Security, moreover, is a human right, and thus respect for one right might lead us to betray another.
ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation" (56). I will return to this point as it
relates to politics later. For now, it is important to underscore that Habermas relies upon the communicative-strategic distinction to do at
least two things: first, to show that on the level of linguistics, communicative action enjoys an "originary" priority over strategic and all
other modes of linguistic usage, which are themselves "parasitic" (Rasmussen 1990, 38) or "derivative" (McCarthy 1991, 133) upon the
former.12 Second, on the level of political theory, Habermas introduces the distinction in order to limit the exercise of
threats and coercion (or strategic action) by enumerating a formal-pragmatic system of discursive accountability (or
communicative action) that is geared toward human agreement and mutuality. Despite its thoroughly modern
accouterments, communicative action aims at something like the twentieth-century discourse-equivalent of the chivalric codes of
the late Middle Ages; as a normative system it articulates the conventions of fair and honorable engagement between
interlocutors. To be sure, Habermas's concept of communicative action is neither as refined nor as situationally embedded as were the
protocols that governed honorable combat across European cultural and territorial boundaries and between Christian knights; but it is
nonetheless a (cross-cultural) protocol for all that. The entire framework that Habermas establishes is an attempt to
limit human violence by elaborating a code of communicative conduct that is designed to hold power in
check by channeling it into persuasion, or the "unforced" force of the better argument (Habermas 1993b, 160).^
resolution which can be ANSWERED in either direction . They focus on issues like ground and fairness because
they know the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will be resolved by determining the policy desireablility of
that resolution. That's not only what they do, but it's what we REQUIRE them to do. We don't just send the topic committee somewhere to
adopt their own group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the prelimanary wording of a resolution
sent to others to be answered or decided upon. (4) Further context: the word resolved is used to emphasis the fact that it's
policy debate. Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by legislative bodies. A resolution is either
adopted or it is not. It's a question before a legislative body. Should this statement be adopted or not. (5) The
very terms 'affirmative' and 'negative' support my view. One affirms a resolution. Affirmative and negative are the equivalents of 'yes' or
'no' - which, of course, are answers to a question.
represents the real business of the sentence, begin the clause after the colon with a capital letter.
And, our interpretation is goodwe have no evidence about the stance of individuals
which hurts predictability if we win that policy education is good, our interp is
preferable
And, our ground and education arguments outweigh thiseven if their grammar
claims are correct, they still destroy debate
Ferguson and Mansbausch 2 (Yale, Prof of IR at Rutgers, Richard, Prof of IR at Iowa State, International
Relations and the Third Debate, ed. Jarvis)JFS
Although there may be no such thing as absolute truth (Hollis, 1994:240-247; Fernandez-Armesto, 1997:chap.6), there
is often a sufficient amount of intersubjective consensus to make for a useful conversation. That conversation
may not lead to proofs that satisfy the philosophical nit-pickers, but it can be educational and illuminating. We gain a degree of
apparently useful understanding about the things we need (or prefer) to know.
Their arg leads to the linguistic masking of atrocities like the Holocaust
Hexham 99 (Irving, in Mission and the State, ed. Ulrich van der Hayden, 2000,
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~hexham/courses/Courses-2006/Rels-339/IRVING/Ulrich-revised.htm)JFS
Deborah Lipstadt warns historians about the dangers of adopting fashionable theories like deconstruction without solidly grounding their
work in an accurate representation of source materials [1994]. She makes a passionate plea for historical accuracy while demonstrating the real dangers that
occur when people distort the facts. The techniques used by Holocaust deniers, who use history to propagate their views, are not isolated to
rogue historians. The basic arguments used by the deniers are not as absurd as most decent people,
likely to become converts to holocaust denial, although in places like France this is a clear possibility, rather it is the effect such
techniques have on students. As Lipstadt observes: "The scholars who supported this deconstructionist approach were neither deniers themselves nor
sympathetic to the deniers' attitudes; most had no trouble identifying Holocaust denial as disingenuous." But, " when students had to confront the
issue. Far too many of them found it impossible to recognize Holocaust denial as a movement with no scholarly , intellectual,
or rational validity" [Lipstadt 1984:18]. At the end of her work she warns again that some "historians are not crypto-deniers, but the results of their work are
the same: the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction and between persecuted and persecutor [Lipstadt 1994:215].
Further Lipstadt correctly observes that "If Holocaust denial has demonstrated anything, it is the fragility of memory, truth, reason, and
history." She is right. As scholars it is our duty to defend history based upon the accurate and the objectivity of scholarship. No doubt some people will
bristle at the suggestion that we ought to strive for objectivity. Such critics regard the discovery of bias as something
totally new without realizing that the hermeneutics of suspicion existed long before Foucault or Deridda [Spencer 1874] History and the deconstruction of
Afrikaner Ideology With Lipstad's warning in mind let us turn to the study of South Africa history. During the 1980's various writers used history to deconstruct
the claims of Afrikaner Nationalism [Hexham 1981; du Toit and Giliomee 1983; du Toit 1983; Elphick and Giliomee 1988]. These works made an impact among
Afrikaners because they exposed the inconsistencies of the historical claims used to legitimate the ideology of apartheid. This delegitimation was
possible because these studies were based on the same historical sources as those used by Afrikaner Nationalists used to justify apartheid. By
demonstrating that the sources themselves did not support Nationalist claims these authors struck a body blow at the intellectual edifice that maintained the
self-confidence of Afrikaner Nationalist intellectuals. At the same time other authors, such as Charles Villa-Vicencio and James Cochran, joined the fray. But,
these latter writers were not trained historians. Rather they were theologians who used history as a tool in the "as a basis for ecclesial renewal" and to
"understand the character of the church in South Africa and identify its social function" [Villa-Vicenciio 1988:1]. Worthy as these goals were these theologians
appropriated historical evidence rather like fundamentalist Christians use proof texts from the Bible to support their arguments. Thus the historical record was
forced into preconceived neo-Marxist ideological frameworks for the purpose of undermining support for apartheid. The problem with this approach was that
it often distorted and misrepresented the source documents [Cf. Hexham 1989; 1993]. At this point, it is necessary to add that whenever one talks
about the "distortion" or misrepresentation of sources it is important to recognize that everyone makes the occasional
mistake. It is also true that in many cases legitimate questions of interpretation may arise when various scholars see the significance of the same piece of
evidence differently. Therefore, what I am objecting to is not the occasional mistake, questionable usage, or issues of genuine interpretation. Rather, it
is the systematic use or misuse of source texts to support a grand theory without regard to the context and clear intent of the
original sources. Such practices ignore historical methods for the purpose of promoting an ideology [Himmelfarb 1987; Elton 1967 and 1991] The problem, of
course, is that once these techniques are generally accepted the choice of ideology can change. Today they are used to promote democracy and tolerance.
Tomorrow they may be used to promote totalitarianism and racism.
**Policymaking/Roleplaying
and out of yeshivas where they study the torah and the talmud . many of their theological discussions occur (in
hebrew) at a rapid pace, employing highly technical and difficult forms of argumentation , relying on arcane
examples and evidence, some of which reaches back into previous millenia. one could even say that when they are praying, they bob
back and forth in a way that many of us would instantly recognize from many of our debate rounds. I would say that
even among the more conservative wings of my family, few of us can really understand what they do. I never learned
Hebrew, and can't their discussions. Yet I'm certain that if their first priority were always accessibility and
transparency, the whole of Jewish religion and culture would have no soul.
enter the oasis. A thirsty public, drunk on the product of anyone who claims a decision, needs to drink from
the pool of decision-making skills. Teaching these skills is our virtue.
in information management and decision-making. Because our activity is non-political, students receive the
space they need to test ideas, opinions, and beliefs. This testing process is put at risk by an outward activist
turn. Yet, even more dangerous is the potential for new forms of domination within our academic oasis. We must be careful not to
replace domination by media/government elites with domination with our community elite. Mitchell's call for
activism, as well as his examples of thriving participation should raise our awareness of both our responsibilities and opportunities.
Individuals who have learned to make and defend their own political decisions will continue to move easily into
political life. Let us do nothing to lessen that impact. Let us encourage greater involvement in debate. Such
involvement holds greater potential for reinvigoration of political discourse than direct mass activism. Let us not
stoop to the level of modem political discourse, but elevate that discourse to our own level of deliberation.
control of the media/government elite with a mass control of our own elite. The greatest virtue of academic
debate is its ability to teach people that they can and must make their own decisions. An outward turn,
organized along the lines of mass action, threatens to homogenize the individual members of the debate community. Such
an outcome will, at best, politicize and fracture our community. At worst, it will coerce people to participate
before making their own decisions. Debate trains people to make decisions by investigating the subtle nuances of public policies.
We are at our best when we teach students to tear apart the broad themes around which traditional political activity is organized. As a
result, we experience a wide array of political views within academic debate. Even people who support the same proposals or candidates
do so for different and inconsistent reasons. Only in academic debate will two supporters of political views argue
vehemently against each other. As a group, this reality means that mass political action is doomed to fail. Debaters
do not focus on the broad themes that enable mass unity. The only theme that unites debaters is the realization that we are all free
to make our own decisions. Debaters learn to agree or disagree with opponents with respect. Yet unity around this
theme is not easily translated into unity on a partisan political issue. Still worse, Mitchell's proposal undermines the one unifying principle.
Mitchell must be looking for more. He is looking for a community wide value set that discourages inaction. This means that an activist
turn necessarily will compel political action from many who are not yet prepared. The greatest danger in this
proposal is the likelihood that the control of the media/government elite will be replaced by control of our own debate elite.
Emphasizing mass action tends to discourage individual political action. Some will decide that they do not need to get
involved, but this is by far the lesser of two evils. Most will decide that they must be involved whether or not they feel
strongly committed to the issue. Mitchell places the cart before the horse. Rather than letting ideas and opinions drive action as
they do now, he encourages an environment where action drives ideas for many people. Young debaters are particularly
vulnerable. They are likely to join in political action out of a desire to "fit in." This cannot be what Mitchell desires. Political discourse is a
dessert now because there are more people trying to "fit in" that there are people trying to break out.
real world. Policy is more than law. It is any written agreement (formal or informal) that specifies how an institution, governing body, or
community will address shared problems or attain shared goals. It spells out the terms and the consequences of these agreements and is
the codification of the body's values-as represented by those present in the policymaking process. Given who's usually present, most
policies reflect the political agenda of powerful elites. Yet, policy can be a force for change -especially when we
bring our base and community organizing into the process. In essence, policies are the codification of power
relationships and resource allocation. Policies are the rules of the world we live in. Changing the world means changing
the rules. So, if organizing is about changing the rules and building power, how can organizing be separated from policies? Can we
really speak truth to power, fight the right, stop corporate abuses, or win racial justice without contesting the rules
and the rulers, the policies and the policymakers? The answer is no-and double no for people of color. Today, racism subtly
dominates nearly every aspect of policymaking. From ballot propositions to city funding priorities, policy is increasingly about the control,
de-funding, and disfranchisement of communities of color. What Do We Stand For? Take the public conversation about welfare reform, for
example. Most of us know it isn't really about putting people to work. The right's message was framed around racial stereotypes of lazy,
cheating "welfare queens" whose poverty was "cultural." But the new welfare policy was about moving billions of dollars in individual cash
payments and direct services from welfare recipients to other, more powerful, social actors. Many of us were too busy to tune
into the welfare policy drama in Washington, only to find it washed up right on our doorsteps. Our members are suffering
from workfare policies, new regulations, and cutoffs. Families who were barely getting by under the old rules are being pushed over
the edge by the new policies. Policy doesn't get more relevant than this. And so we got involved in policy-as defense. Yet we
have to do more than block their punches. We have to start the fight with initiatives of our own. Those who do are
finding offense a bit more fun than defense alone. Living wage ordinances, youth development initiatives, even gun control and alcohol and
tobacco policies are finding their way onto the public agenda, thanks to focused community organizing that leverages power for
community-driven initiatives. - Over 600 local policies have been passed to regulate the tobacco industry. Local
coalitions have taken the lead by writing ordinances that address local problems and organizing broad support for them. - Nearly 100
gun control and violence prevention policies have been enacted since 1991. - Milwaukee, Boston, and Oakland are
among the cities that have passed living wage ordinances: local laws that guarantee higher than minimum wages for workers,
usually set as the minimum needed to keep a family of four above poverty. These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how
organizing for local policy advocacy has made inroads in areas where positive national policy had been stalled by
conservatives. Increasingly, the local policy arena is where the action is and where activists are finding success. Of course,
corporate interests-which are usually the target of these policies-are gearing up in defense. Tactics include front groups, economic
pressure, and the tried and true: cold, hard cash. Despite these barriers, grassroots organizing can be very effective at the smaller scale of
local politics. At the local level, we have greater access to elected officials and officials have a greater reliance on their
constituents for reelection. For example, getting 400 people to show up at city hall in just about any city in the U.S. is quite impressive. On
the other hand, 400 people at the state house or the Congress would have a less significant impact. Add to that the fact that all 400 people
at city hall are usually constituents, and the impact is even greater. Recent trends in government underscore the importance of local policy.
Congress has enacted a series of measures devolving significant power to state and local government. Welfare, health care, and the
regulation of food and drinking water safety are among the areas where states and localities now have greater rule. Devolution has some
negative consequences to be sure. History has taught us that, for social services and civil rights in particular, the lack of clear federal
standards and mechanisms for accountability lead to uneven enforcement and even discriminatory implementation of policies. Still, there
are real opportunities for advancing progressive initiatives in this more localized environment. Greater local
control can mean greater community power to shape and implement important social policies that were heretofore out of
reach. To do so will require careful attention to the mechanics of local policymaking and a clear blueprint of what we
stand for. Getting It in Writing Much of the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of demands. By getting into the
policy arena in a proactive manner, we can take our demands to the next level. Our demands can become law, with real consequences if
the agreement is broken. After all the organizing, press work, and effort, a group should leave a decisionmaker with more than a
handshake and his or her word. Of course, this work requires a certain amount of interaction with "the suits," as well as
struggles with the bureaucracy, the technical language, and the all-too-common resistance by decisionmakers. Still, if it's worth
demanding, it's worth having in writing-whether as law, regulation, or internal policy. From ballot initiatives on rent control to
laws requiring worker protections, organizers are leveraging their power into written policies that are making a real difference
in their communities. Of course, policy work is just one tool in our organizing arsenal, but it is a tool we simply can't afford
to ignore. Making policy work an integral part of organizing will require a certain amount of retrofitting. We will need to develop the
capacity to translate our information, data, and experience into stories that are designed to affect the public conversation. Perhaps most
important, we will need to move beyond fighting problems and on to framing solutions that bring us closer to our vision of how things
should be. And then we must be committed to making it so.
important in the present circumstances. The focus on security and the dilemma of security versus freedom that is set out in debates
immediately after September 11th presents an apparent choice as the focus for dissent, while concealing the extent to which
thinking is thereby confined to a specific agenda. Our argument will be that this approach relies on a particular picture of the political world
that has been reflected within the discipline of international relations, a picture of a world of sovereign states. We have a
responsibility as scholars; we are not insulated from the policy world. What we discuss may not , and indeed
does not, have a direct impact on what happens in the policy world, this is clear, but our writings and our teaching do
have an input in terms of the creation and reproduction of pictures of the world that inform policy and set the
contours of policy debates.21 Moreover, the discipline within which we are situated is one which depends itself on a particular view of the
world a view that sees the international as a realm of politics distinct from the domestic the same view of the world as the one that
underpins thinking on security and defence in the US administration.22 In this article then we develop an analysis of the ways in which
thinking in terms of international relations and a system of states forecloses certain possibilities from the start, and how it might look to
think about politics and the international differently.
produce several new genocides and proliferating nuclear weapons will generate one or more regional nuclear
wars. Paralyzed by fear and restrained by impotence, various governments will try, desperately, to deflect our attention, but it will be a
vain effort. Caught up in a vast chaos from which no real escape is possible, we will learn too late that there is no durable
safety in arms, no ultimate rescue by authority, no genuine remedy in science or technology. What shall we do? For a start, we must all
begin to look carefully behind the news. Rejecting superficial analyses of day-to-day events in favor of penetrating
assessments of world affairs, we must learn quickly to distinguish what is truly important from what is merely
entertainment. With such learning, we Americans could prepare for growing worldwide anarchy not as immobilized
objects of false contentment, but as authentic citizens of an endangered planet. Nowhere is it written that we people of Earth
are forever, that humankind must thwart the long-prevailing trend among all planetary life-forms (more than 99 percent) of ending in
extinction. Aware of this, we may yet survive, at least for a while, but only if our collective suppression of purposeful fear is
augmented by a complementary wisdom; that is, that our personal mortality is undeniable and that the harms done by one tribal state or
terror group against "others" will never confer immortality. This is, admittedly, a difficult concept to understand, but the longer we humans
are shielded from such difficult concepts the shorter will be our time remaining. We must also look closely at higher education in the
United States, not from the shortsighted stance of improving test scores, but from the urgent perspective of confronting extraordinary
threats to human survival. For the moment, some college students are exposed to an occasional course in what is fashionably
described as "global awareness," but such exposure usually sidesteps the overriding issues: We now face a deteriorating
world system that cannot be mended through sensitivity alone; our leaders are dangerously unprepared to deal with
catastrophic deterioration; our schools are altogether incapable of transmitting the indispensable visions of planetary restructuring. To
institute productive student confrontations with survival imperatives, colleges and universities must soon take great risks, detaching
themselves from a time-dishonored preoccupation with "facts" in favor of grappling with true life-or-death questions. In raising these
questions, it will not be enough to send some students to study in Paris or Madrid or Amsterdam ("study abroad" is not what is meant by
serious global awareness). Rather, all students must be made aware - as a primary objective of the curriculum - of where we
are heading, as a species, and where our limited survival alternatives may yet be discovered. There are, of course, many particular
ways in which colleges and universities could operationalize real global awareness, but one way, long-neglected, would be best. I refer to
the study of international law. For a country that celebrates the rule of law at all levels, and which explicitly makes international law part of
the law of the United States - the "supreme law of the land" according to the Constitution and certain Supreme Court decisions - this
should be easy enough to understand. Anarchy, after all, is the absence of law, and knowledge of international law is necessarily prior to
adequate measures of world order reform. Before international law can be taken seriously, and before "the blood-dimmed tide" can be
halted, America's future leaders must at least have some informed acquaintance with pertinent rules and procedures. Otherwise we shall
surely witness the birth of a fully ungovernable world order, an unheralded and sinister arrival in which only a shadowy legion of
gravediggers would wield the forceps.
possibilities. Drama and suspension of reality allows competing, even bitterly opposed interests to collaborate, and engages individual
players emotionally over many months. Scenario building and storytelling can make collective sense of complexity, of predicting
possibilities in an uncertain world, and can allow the playful imagination, which people normally suppress, to
go to work. In the course of engaging in various roles, participants develop identities for themselves and others and become more
effective participants, representing their stakeholders' interests more clearly. In many of their most productive moments, participants
in consensus building engage not only in playing out scenarios, but also in a kind of collective, speculative tinkering, or
bricolage, similar in principle to what game participants do. That is, they play with heterogeneous concepts, strategies, and actions with
which various individuals in the group have experience, and try combining them until they create a new scenario that they collectively
believe will work. This bricolage, discussed further below, is a type of reasoning and collective creativity fundamentally
different from the more familiar types, argumentation and tradeoffs.[sup11] The latter modes of problem solving or
dispute resolution typically allow zero sum allocation of resources among participants or finding the actions acceptable to
everyone. Bricolage, however, produces, rather than a solution to a known problem, a new way of framing the situation and of developing
unanticipated combinations of actions that are qualitatively different from the options on the table at the outset. The result of this
collective tinkering with new scenarios is, most importantly, learning and change among the players, and growth in their sophistication
about each other, about the issues, and about the futures they could seek. Both consensus building and roleplaying games center on
learning, innovation, and change, in a process that is entertaining and-when conducted effectively-in some fundamental sense
empowers individuals.
As Malcolm X sought new outlets for his heightened political consciousness, he turned to the weekly formal
debates sponsored by the inmate team. "My reading had my mind like steam under pressure," he recounted; "Some way, I had
to start telling the white man about himself to his face. I decided to do this by putting my name down to debate"
(1965b, p. 184). Malcolm X's prison debate experience allowed him to bring his newly acquired historical knowledge
and critical ideology to bear on a wide variety of social issues. "Whichever side of the selected subject was assigned
to me, I'd track down and study everything I could find on it," wrote Malcolm X. "I'd put myself in my
opponent's place and decide how I'd try to win if I had the other side; and then I'd figure out a way to
knock down those points" (1965b, p. 184). Preparation for each debate included four or five practice sessions.
Rawls 99 (John, Professor Emeritus Harvard University, The Law of Peoples, p. 54-7)0
Developing the Law of Peoples within a liberal conception of justice, we work out the ideals and principles of the foreign policy of a
reasonably just liberal people. I distinguish between the public reason of liberal peoples and the public reason of the Society of Peoples.
The first is the public reason of equal citizens of domestic society debating the constitutional essentials and matters of
basic justice concerning their own government; the second is the public reason of free and equal liberal peoples
debating their mutual relations as peoples. The Law of Peoples with its political concepts and principles, ideals and criteria, is
the content of this latter public reason. Although these two public reasons do not have the same content, the role of public reason among
free and equal peoples is analogous to its role in a constitutional democratic regime among free and equal citizens. Political liberalism
proposes that, in a constitutional democratic regime, comprehensive doctrines of truth or of right are to be replaced in
public reason by an idea of the politically reasonable addressed to citizens as citizens. Here note the parallel: public reason is
invoked by members of the Society of Peoples, and its principles are addressed to peoples as peoples. They are not expressed in terms of
comprehensive doctrines of truth or of right, which may hold sway in this or that society, but in terms that can be shared by different
peoples. 6.2. Ideal of Public Reason. Distinct from the idea of public reason is the ideal of public reason. In domestic
society this ideal is realized, or satisfied, whenever judges, legislators, chief executives, and other government officials, as
well as candidates for public office, act from and follow the idea of public reason and explain to other citizens their reasons for
supporting fundamental political questions in terms of the political conception of justice that they regard as the most reasonable. In this
way they fulfill what I shall call their duty of civility to one another and to other citizens. Hence whether judges, legislators, and chief
executives act from and follow public reason is continually shown in their speech and conduct. How is the ideal of public reason realized by
citizens who are not government officials? In a representative government, citizens vote for representatives -chief
executives, legislators, and the like-not for particular laws (except at a state or local level where they may vote directly on referenda
questions, which are not usually fundamental questions). To answer this question, we say that, ideally, citizens are to think of
themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes , supported by what reasons satisfying the
criterion of reciprocity, they would think it most reasonable to enact.7l When firm and widespread, the disposition of citizens
to view themselves as ideal legislators, and to repudiate government officials and candidates for public office who violate public
reason, forms part of the political and social basis of liberal democracy and is vital for its enduring strength and vigor. Thus in
domestic society citizens fulfill their duty of civility and support the idea of public reason, while doing what they can to hold government
officials to it. This duty, like other political rights and duties, is an intrinsically moral duty. I emphasize that it is not a legal duty, for in that
case it would be incompatible with freedom of speech.
Mitchell 2k (Gordon, Director of Debate and Professor of Communication U. Pittsburgh, Argumentation &
Advocacy, Vol. 36, No. 3, Winter)JFS
When we assume the posture of the other in dramatic performance, we tap into who we are as persons, since our
interpretation of others is deeply colored by our own senses of selfhood. By encouraging experimentation in identity
construction, role-play "helps students discover divergent viewpoints and overcome stereotypes as they
examine subjects from multiple perspectives..." (Moore, p. 190). Kincheloe points to the importance of this sort of reflexive critical
awareness as an essential feature of educational practice in postmodern times. "Applying the notion of the postmodern
analysis of the self, we come to see that hyperreality invites a heteroglossia of being," Kincheloe explains; "Drawing upon a
multiplicity of voices, individuals live out a variety of possibilities, refusing to suppress particular voices . As
men and women appropriate the various forms of expression, they are empowered to uncover new dimensions of
existence that were previously hidden" (1993, p. 96). This process is particularly crucial in the public argument context, since a
key guarantor of inequality and exploitation in contemporary society is the widespread and uncritical acceptance by
citizens of politically inert self-identities. The problems of political alienation, apathy and withdrawal have
received lavish treatment as perennial topics of scholarly analysis (see e.g. Fishkin 1997; Grossberg 1992; Hart 1998; Loeb
1994). Unfortunately, comparatively less energy has been devoted to the development of pedagogical strategies for
countering this alarming political trend. However, some scholars have taken up the task of theorizing emancipatory
and critical pedagogies, and argumentation scholars interested in expanding the learning potential of debate would do well to
note their work (see e.g. Apple 1995, 1988, 1979; Britzman 1991; Giroux 1997, 1988, 1987; Greene 1978; McLaren 1993, 1989; Simon
1992; Weis and Fine 1993). In this area of educational scholarship, the curriculum theory of currere, a method of teaching pioneered by
Pinar and Grumet (1976), speaks directly to many of the issues already discussed in this essay. As the Latin root of the word "curriculum,"
currere translates roughly as the investigation of public life (see Kincheloe 1993, p. 146). According to Pinar, "the method of currere is one
way to work to liberate one from the web of political, cultural, and economic influences that are perhaps buried from conscious view but
nonetheless comprise the living web that is a person's biographic situation" (Pinar 1994, p. 108). The objectives of role-play pedagogy
resonate with the currere method. By opening discursive spaces for students to explore their identities as public
actors, simulated public arguments provide occasions for students to survey and appraise submerged aspects of
their political identities. Since many aspects of cultural and political life work currently to reinforce political
passivity, critical argumentation pedagogies that highlight this component of students' self-identities carry significant
emancipatory potential.
action. It is here that a performative conception of political action implicitly informs Hagers discussion. From a
performative perspective, the goal of action is not only to secure a realm for deliberative politics, but to disrupt and
resist the norms and identities that structure such a realm and its participants. While Habermas theorizes that political
solutions will emerge from dialogue, a performative understanding of participation highlights the limits of dialogue
and the creative and often uncontrollable effect of unpremeditated action on the very foundations of communication. When we look at
the success of citizen initiatives from a performative perspective , we look precisely at those moments of defiance
and disruption that bring the invisible and unimaginable into view. Although citizens were minimally successful in influencing or
controlling the outcome of the policy debate and experienced a considerable lack of autonomy in their coercion into the technical debate,
the goal-oriented debate within the energy commissions could be seen as a defiant moment of performative politics. The existence of a
goal-oriented debate within a technically dominated arena defied the normalizing separation between expert
themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think it most reasonable
to enact. When firm and widespread, the disposition of citizens to view themselves as ideal legislators , and to repudiate
government officials and candidates for public office who violate public reason, forms part of the political and social basis of
liberal democracy and is vital for its enduring strength and vigor . Thus in domestic society citizens fulfill their duty
of civility and support the idea of public reason, while doing what they can to hold government officials to it. This duty, like
other political rights and duties, is an intrinsically moral duty. I emphasize that it is not a legal duty, for in that case it would be
incompatible with freedom of speech. Similarly, the ideal of the public reason of free and equal peoples is realized, or satisfied, whenever
chief executives and legislators, and other government officials, as well as candidates for public office, act from and follow the principles of
the Law of Peoples and explain to other peoples their reasons for pursuing or revising a peoples foreign policy and affairs of state that
involve other societies. As for private citizens, we say, as before, that ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were
executives and legislators and ask themselves what foreign policy supported by what considerations they would think it most
reasonable to advance. Once again, when firm and widespread, the disposition of citizens to view themselves as ideal
executives and legislators, and to repudiate government officials and candidates for public office who violate the public reason of free
and equal peoples, is part of the political and social basis of peace and understanding among peoples.
Streeten 99
First, Utopian thinking can be useful as a framework for analysis. Just as physicists assume an atmospheric vacuum for some
purposes, so policy analysts can assume a political vacuum from which they can start afresh. The physicists
assumption plainly would not be useful for the design of parachutes, but can serve other purposes well. Similarly, when thinking of
tomorrows problems, Utopianism is not helpful. But for long-term strategic purposes it is essential. Second, the Utopian
vision gives a sense of direction, which can get lost in approaches that are preoccupied with the feasible. In a world that is
regarded as the second-best of all feasible worlds, everything becomes a necessary constraint. All vision is lost. Third,
excessive concern with the feasible tends to reinforce the status quo. In negotiations, it strengthens the hand of
those opposed to any reform. Unless the case for change can be represented in the same detail as the case for no change, it tends to
be lost. Fourth, it is sometimes the case that the conjuncture of circumstances changes quite suddenly and that the constellation of forces,
unexpectedly, turns out to be favourable to even radical innovation. Unless we are prepared with a carefully worked out, detailed plan,
that yesterday could have appeared utterly Utopian, the reformers will lose out by default. Only a few years ago nobody would have
expected the end of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the unification of Germany, the
break-up of Yugoslavia, the marketization of China, the end of apartheid in South Africa. And the handshake on the White House lawn
between Mr Peres and Mr Arafat. Fifth, the Utopian reformers themselves can constitute a pressure group,
countervailing the self interested pressures of the obstructionist groups. Ideas thought to be Utopian have
become realistic at moments in history when large numbers of people support them , and those in power have to
yield to their demands. The demand for ending slavery is a historical example. It is for these five reasons that Utopians should
not be discouraged from formulating their proposals and from thinking the unthinkable, unencumbered by the
inhibitions and obstacles of political constraints. They should elaborate them in the same detail that the defenders of the status quo
devote to its elaboration and celebration. Utopianism and idealism will then turn out to be the most realistic vision. It is well
known that there are three types of economists: those who can count and those who cant. But being able to count up to two, I want to
distinguish between two types of people. Let us call them, for want of a better name, the Pedants and the Utopians. The names are due to
Peter Berger, who uses them in a different context. The Pedants or technicians are those who know all the details about the way things are
and work, and they have acquired an emotional vested interest in keeping them this way. I have come across them in the British civil
service, in the bureaucracy ofthe World Bank, and elsewhere. They are admirable people but they are conservative, and no good
companions for reform. On the other hand, there are the Utopians, the idealists, the visionaries who dare think the unthinkable.
They are also admirable, many of them young people. But they lack the attention to detail that the Pedants have. When the day of the
revolution comes, they will have entered it on the wrong date in their diaries and fail to turn up, or, if they do turn up, they will be on the
wrong side of the barricades. What we need is a marriage between the Pedants and the Utopians, between the technicians who pay
attention to the details and the idealists who have the vision of a better future. There will be tensions in combining the two, but they will
be creative tensions. We need Pedantic Utopian Pedants who will work out in considerable detail the ideal world
and ways of getting to it, and promote the good cause with informed fantasy . Otherwise, when the opportunity
arises, we shall miss it for lack of preparedness and lose out to the opponents of reform, to those who want to preserve the status quo.
Policy Making
Discussion about transportation enhances policy making decisions- thats key to
countering power imbalances and corruption
Wilson et al 3 (Richard, interim Dean at the College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic
University, Marianne Payne, directs strategic planning at the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, and Ellen Smith,
manages BARTs planning in Contra Costa County, Does Discussion Enhance Rationality? APA Journal, 69(4),
Autumn 2003, pg. 365-366) PCS
The case study presented here suggests that discussion
Transportation Education at the high school level is key to better policy action and
citizen making
Center for Urban Transportation Research 03
(Center for Urban Transportation Research at University of South Florida, 3/19/03, High school transportation
curriculum being developed, http://cutr.usf.edu/pubs/news_let/articles/winterC98/news933.htm) Azimi
In addition, by
introducing high school students to transportation issues, a secondary benefit may be increased
interest in future career opportunities. CUTR recently completed a review of transportation curriculum
programs around the country and has proposed that development of similar curricula be advanced at the
senior high school level in Florida. The project considered how best to introduce high school students to public
policy questions related to transportation, expand their knowledge as citizens, and enable them to make
educated transportation decisions in the future. Of primary consideration was examining the feasibility of developing a
transportation course module that could be offered to senior level high school students.
local issues having to do with infrastructure, your expertise is even more important. When local
infrastructure matters arise, reporters are always looking for local subject matter experts. They will quote
city, county and town officials because they are the ones who own the infrastructure. But they will seize your
information because they see you as a third party expert . This is an excellent opportunity for the profession
and working with the media isnt difficult. If an issue comes up that you feel strongly about and would like to make a comment, contact
ASCEs communication/media relations staff and talk about it. It might be an opportunity for a letter to the editor from you, or you can help
ASCE staff reach out to the reporter/media outlet and offer an interview. If you are hesitant or this idea piques your interest and you would like to
talk about it, staff members can walk you through the process and guide you step-by-step. All you need to do is make a phone call or
send an email; we will be more than happy to work with you to help get your expertise into the conversation . Put your Civil
Engineering education and experience to work for your neighbors and make a difference in your community.
student gains significant benefit simply by sitting in the same classroom as students from
other transportation-related disciplines. Students appear to gain insight into the perspectives of other
disciplines through discussion with these peers and hearing the questions asked by these peers. In a transportation
planning course at the University of Tennessee, a civil engineering student asked the question, Why do we even need to involve the
public in the transportation decision-making process? This was a valid question and probably not one most engineers in the
class had given too much thought to before. The professor turned to the planning students in the room and asked for them to provide an answer to
the question, which they did, since public involvement is an essential part of the planning process that every planning
student, even in his or her first semester of graduate school, is keenly aware of. A similar situation occurred during a discussion in a course at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. The instructor posed the scenario of funding a bypass around an urban center. The planning and
public policy students were quick to attack the idea for its many potential environmental and socially
disruptive side effects. An engineering student pointed out advantages, such as safety and mobility, that this
kind of facility might provide. All valid points. Still, these points may not have been heard in a classroom with
students of the same discipline. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering offers a Master of Science in Transportation (MST). The interdisciplinary degree, which typically takes students two years to
complete, consists of two core courses one focused on an introduction to transportation systems using a softer approach, while the other is a
more technical analysis of the modal systems and tools used to operate and analyze these systems. Other course requirements include
building a depth of understanding in a select area of interest, such as one of the transportation modes like air
transport or ocean systems; that depth could also be attained through coursework in planning, policy,
logistics, or management. Or, rather than focusing on depth, the student may choose to take coursework in
numerous areas and build a broader understanding of transportation. Since research is at the heart of the
program, a research-based thesis is also required. Though this program is located within the School of Engineering, it brings in students with
backgrounds in the physical and social sciences, urban planning, management, as well as engineering. All that is specifically required for
admission are two courses in calculus and one each in economics and probability. The requirement for two courses in calculus appears to be
unique to MIT and likely reflects MITs reputation as a leader in technical education. Dual degrees are also an option with pairings available in
MST/Master of Science in the Technology and Policy Program, MST/Master of Science in Operations Research, and MST/Master of City
Planning. Based on a preliminary review of the MIT program, it appears that the second option, where a student is able to build a
broader understanding of transportation and the disciplines involved, is more likely to develop the skills and
perspective that are desirable of a well-rounded transportation professional. This is the type of professional
an interdisciplinary transportation education program seeks to develop.
there can be any hope from the knowledge producing side, the developed, can ever offer any work for the
underdog, nor the developing can produce something for themselves as there could not be the potential to do
that.
which Americans name the most serious challenges facing the country, and transportation infrastructure
doesn't register. At all. For transportation stakeholders, that's a big problem. Now, a growing number of them are
shifting their strategies to try to capture an audience that's often left out of the conversation: everyday
Americans . Historically, organizations pushing for increased transportation investment generally don't get
grassroots support in the form of rallies and letter-writing campaigns endorsing their cause in the way that
organizations involved with high-profile issues like reproductive rights, immigration and the environment do. Instead, members of the
transportation community tend to operate within the Washington echo chamber, with minimal focus on
appealing to the everyman. When transportation stakeholders do make their case, their argument has sometimes been a
simple one: our roads are crumbling, and we need more money to fix them. The problem is, as many are starting to realize, that message
doesn't resonate. "They cant get constituents to write letters saying we need to get DOTs more money, and more work for the road
builders,' says Joshua Schank of the Eno Center for Transportation. Former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta puts it in even more stark
terms, calling infrastructure a ho-hum subject to most people. Everyone falls asleep about it," Mineta said at a recent transportation event in
Washington. In the coming weeks, University of Virginia's Miller Center, a policy think tank, will release a report explaining how the
transportation community can retool its message. Already, the organization has opted to stop harping on crumbling infrastructure. Nobody
believes it, says Jeffrey Shane, a former USDOT undersecretary whos a visiting fellow at the Miller Center. Others are trying to change the
conversation too. Building America's Future Education Fund, a bipartisan group calling for infrastructure investment, ran television ads in early
Republican primary states New Hampshire and South Carolina. The group learned during focus groups that Republican primary voters would
support infrastructure spending so long as it came with reforms. So instead of emphasizing crumbling infrastructure in their ads, BAF Ed Fund
focused on the importance of having a long-term plan and avoiding cost overruns. The American Society of Civil Engineers has tried to bring the
issue home as well, putting it in terms that even people who aren't transportation wonks can understand. Among the costs affiliated with a
deteriorating transportation system are increased maintenance and repair costs to the family car. ASCE also cites the damage the economy atlarge would suffer without an effective transportation network. Still, ASCE President Andrew Hermann acknowledges, it seems that the
message may not be resonating -- at least not yet -- given the relative inattention the general public has paid to the
issue. "Obviously, we're not getting loud enough, Hermann says. "If we don't educate the public that we have a need, they won't
contact legislators, and we won't get anything," But what may be at the root of the problem is the fact that anyone who isn't
well-versed in transportation policy would have a hard time noticing the infrastructure funding crisis, based
on the actions and rhetoric of Congress. The Highway Trust Fund -- the primary account used to fund federal spending on roads and
transit -- is in fiscal straits. Some time during 2013, its highway account will no longer be able to meet its obligations. The same will happen to
the transit account in 2014. Thats largely because the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline isn't tied to inflation and hasn't been
increased since 1993. As a result, its purchasing power has declined dramatically. Yet members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, as well as
President Obama, have opposed any proposals to increase the gas tax to help shore up the fund. That dichotomy is illustrated perfectly by a recent
op-ed penned by Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee in the Washington Post. His piece noted "two options for restoring sound financing"
to the highway bill: cut spending on transportation, or cut spending elsewhere. Corker didnt mention the other option increasing revenue that
almost every association, industry, and academic involved with transportation policy believes is necessary. Yet Corkers approach isnt unique
among federal lawmakers, and the idea of a gas-tax hike is so politically unpalatable that it's not just opposed by legislators; it's simply not
discussed. Instead, lawmakers have assembled piecemeal solutions (like finding revenue in something called the Leaking Underground Storage
Tank Fund) to help bridge the funding gap. As one lobbyist noted, most supporters of the bill couldn't understand or explain (or even seem to
care much about) the funding gimmicks in the Senates highway bill. Meanwhile, in the midst of a presidential election, neither of the GOP front
runners has spent much time addressing transportation. Rick Santorum appears to have no mention of transportation policy on his campaign
website, and Mitt Romney's mentions of the subject are minimal. Meanwhile, President Obama hasn't played a major role in the debate about
transportation policy. Last year, his budget called for doubling transportation spending, but Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told reporters
that it was Congress's job to figure out how to pay for it. "[A]t the most basic level, no one in Washington has mustered the will to tell Americans
the truth: 'Transportation isnt free'," writes Streetsblog's Ben Goldman. What is clear is that by not acknowledging the revenue question,
lawmakers of both parties arent doing much to help educate citizens about fiscal challenges facing the
transportation system. "One of these days, there needs to be a conversation : what do the people in America
want to pay for?" says Bill Kennedy, a commissioner from Yellowstone County, Mont. who served on a federal panel charged with figuring out
how to pay for infrastructure. "The reality is, people don't understand what it costs to maintain a roadway or build a new roadway."
Education
Civil engineering becoming more importantimportant to education in every area
of society
Jamal no date (Haseeb, educator of civil engineers, Importance and applications of civil engineering,
AboutCivil.com, http://www.aboutcivil.com/importance-and-applications-of-civil-engineering.html) GSK
Civil engineers are becoming more and more important with time . Now, they are also responsible for looking after the fire
control systems and installing quick fire exit points in the buildings they design. This will help in minimizing the loss of life during fire
accidents. Civil engineering is one of the oldest of the engineering professions. Ancient feats such as the
building of the Egyptian pyramids and Roman road systems are based on civil engineering principles .
Another very important aspect of civil engineering is environmental engineering. In this case, the civil engineers
are concerned with applications of various methods to purify the contaminated air, water and soil. The
polluted system should be cleaned, the waste extracted and the purified constituent must be sent back to the
natural system. Civil engineers are also responsible for building good quality transportation systems like
highways, airports, rail lines, sea ports, etc. A civil engineer is concerned with determining the right design for these
structures and looking after the construction process so that the longevity of these structures is guaranteed
after completion. These structures should also be satisfactory for the public in terms of comfort.
progress and individual freedom , the larger project of communicative rationality is to enhance the quality of
community and political dialogue in support of democracy, creating a transportation planning process that
fully addresses both means and ends and links transportation issues to broader social concerns. The effects of
this approach are greater attention to ends (goals), better integration of means and ends, new forms of
participation and learning, and enhanced democratic capacity. 16 Example: The transportation planner
explicitly identifies the roles he or she will play in leading the parking policy process. The planner seeks the
consent of decision-makers on those roles, e.g., technical expert, process facilitator, educator, coordinator,
negotiator, shuttle diplomat, or mediator. These roles will change as the planning process progresses some transitions are
predictable and others depend on the unique circumstance of the planning exercise. For example, there may be a need for a
technical/education role in helping decision makers and the public understand the dynamics of parking demand
across the system, while later in the process the planners main focus might be mediating conflict between suburban and urban elected
representatives. When there are multiple planners on the team a strategy can be crafted around the strengths of team members in these various
of the educational function of planning, planning documents and presentations do more than
document technical analysis they engage the public in thinking about fundamental questions, explore
images, ideals and values, and open up the process to creative participation. Public participation is seen as a
part of an ongoing learning process, not an episodic event prior to the adoption of a new plan.
areas. Because
Improving Pavements With LongTerm Pavement Performance: Products for Today and Tomorrow Study of Long-Term Pavement Performance
(LTPP): Pavement Deflections PAPER 5: ASSIGNMENTS WITH PURPOSE: USING LTPP FOR EDUCATING
TOMORROWS
ENGINEERhttp://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/infrastructure/pavements/ltpp/06109/paper5.cfm)
The overall scope of this paper involves a university perspective on how the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program can be used to
educate and train skilled engineers in the pavement sector. Building on a presentation at the 2003 Transportation Research Board Annual
Meeting, this paper first presents a context for using the LTPP data. In formulating and addressing the use of the data, the following main points
are discussed: education and training using LTPP, development of assignments with purpose, discussion of using LTPP to develop pavement
research themes, and conclusions. The paper is directed primarily at academics. However, it does have relevance to the public and private sectors,
as it directs assignments that will result in highly qualified people and potential leaders in the field of pavement
engineering. It also recognizes the competing demands that face academics, so the assignments are intended to be straightforward and are
designed for academics with limited preparation time. Overall there is a need to produce intelligent engineers with good
problem-solving skills. Thus, the primary focus is to encourage independence and creativity through inquirybased learning. In summary, the basic premise of this paper is that good design, construction, and maintenance of long-life pavements can be
realized most effectively in education and training through inquiry-based learning with LTPP. INTRODUCTION The broad issue of
transportation education and training and the associated issues of supply and demand have existed for decades. A key motivating
factor for training and educating future engineers in the transportation sector is concern about whether the
transportation sector is and will be adequately served in terms of education and training, supply of skilled
people, availability of resources, and future demands and commitment by both public and private agencies.
Overall, the transportation sector has many dimensions. It can be viewed by modal type, public versus private versus academic, professionals
versus technologists/technicians versus operators, function ranging from engineering to financial or accounting to planning to administrative or
management, supply sources, skill sets needed, breakdown of demand, remuneration levelsand the list goes on. This paper recognizes the many
dimensions of the needs of the transportation sector, while the focus remains on the academic perspective and the use of the Long-Term
Pavement Performance (LTPP) program to promote transportation and more specifically to attract highly qualified people to the pavement sector.
identifies previously unexamined policy and institutional correlates of PA related to land use and
transportation planning. While we cannot conclude that planning causes behavior change, our findings demonstrate that counties with
higher ACE scores have higher prevalences of both leisure and transportation PA. Because a higher score indicates a more comprehensive
implementation tool set complementing NMTI and mixed land use classification, this suggests that counties with land-use policies and
implementation tools that support nonmotorized modes may foster diverse environments conducive to various types of PA (e.g., greenways,
parks, open space, and walkable downtown areas). Improving the quality of local land-use plans may provide a means for
communities to integrate transportation projects with appropriate land uses and improve access to healthpromoting infrastructure. Partnerships between public health and urban planning professionals could translate into innovative
interventions tailored to meet the needs of diverse communities. Future healthpromotion efforts should consider the implications of transportation
and land-use policies, especially with respect to the distribution of resources that support transportation PA as well as leisure PA.
Transdisciplinary collaboration may contribute to more comprehensive methodologic frameworks and inform policy recommendations to
promote active community environments.
This study appears to indicate that land use and transportation planning may
play a role in supporting active community environments . After controlling for sociodemographic factors,
higher ACE scores were associated with leisuretime PA, transportation-related PA, and meeting public health
recommendations for PA in North Carolina. If this assertion holds true, land-use and transportation plans
may provide a means through which community support for active living can be incorporated into the public
policy process. Additionally, these findings could be used to tailor transdisciplinary interventions to promote
active living in diverse populations.
Misc
Plan focused knowledge is key to public participation which can affect controversial
issues
Wilson et al 3 (Richard, interim Dean at the College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic
University, Marianne Payne, directs strategic planning at the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, and Ellen Smith,
manages BARTs planning in Contra Costa County, Does Discussion Enhance Rationality? APA Journal, 69(4),
Autumn 2003, pg. 355) PCS
In the last decade, transportation agencies have addressed new and controversial issues such as travel behavior
modification, pricing, and environmental justice. Moreover, their plans recognize interdependencies among
transportation, land use, community development, and environmental systems and reflect a diverse set of stakeholder
interests and interagency relationships. Langmyhr (2000) describes this transition as one in which transportation problems become increasingly
wicked and increasingly politicized (p. 678). Although the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and the 1998
Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) spurred improvements to transportation planning processes,
including public participation, the epistemological root of many plans lies in technical knowledge. Most research
grants and consulting studies focus on analytic tasks. Community members now participate more fully than in the
highway-building period of the 1960s, but that participation is often limited to providing input on goals and
commenting on alternatives that reflect predetermined issue frames. Our argument is that the process of transportation planning
must change substantially to respond to its changing context and to address contested policy choices.
With the number of young drivers on the rise, and the overall increase in teenagers
in need of transportation methods, discussion on transportation policy is needed.
Clifton 2003
(Kelly J, November 18th 2003, Graduate Program in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Iowa,
INDEPENDENT MOBILITY AMONG TEENAGERS: AN EXPLORATION OF TRAVEL TO AFTERSCHOOL ACTIVITIES pg 3-4 http://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/TRB_82/TRB2003-001412.pdf accessed 7/10/12) ZLH
Teenagers are poised at the cusp of adulthood. On one hand, their activity participation and mobility are constrained by parental
consent and age restrictions on driving. On the other, their burgeoning maturity grants them increasing license to make
independent decisions and spend time without the supervision of adults. This unique juncture in a persons life proves an
interesting time to study his or her travel behavior. The automobile plays an important role in shaping teenagers lives and
transportation policies. Travel by the private automobile is the mode of choice for most Americans and teenagers are no exception. The
automobile is the predominant mode of travel for children aged 10 to 15 years (1). This places an additional travel burden on parents as they
chauffeur their younger teens to activities. Obtaining a drivers license is a significant rite of passage for most teenagers,
symbolizing independence and freedom from parental control. Many parents frequently support the
increased autonomy that accompanies their childrens ability to drive as it relieves their chauffeuring responsibilities and
allows teenagers to contribute more to household errands (2). But with addition of a driver, these households must bear an increase
in transportation expenditures, including the cost of additional vehicle purchases and insurance. The safety
issues surrounding young drivers cannot be overlooked. Young drivers are involved in a disproportionately
higher number of motor-vehicle crashes than their older counterparts (3), due in part, to their inexperience, immaturity,
and lack of judgment (4). The number of young drivers aged 15 to 19 is expected to rise as much as 25% over the
next 15 years (5) and this has important implications for traffic safety and future directions of transportation
policy. For these reasons, teenage travel patterns warrant closer inspection. Understanding more about how American
teenagers travel may provide insight into how policy can respond to their current mobility needs and their
preferences and behaviors. Efforts to divert Americans out of their cars, improve access , and increase the retail and other
non-work opportunities available in and near residential neighborhoods may find teenagers to be responsive targets. At the
same time, these policies may address concerns about safety, additional household driving burden, and the associated costs with automobile use.
But a better understanding of current teenage travel and its contribution to household travel demand is necessary before policy can respond to this
need.
Now, here's some bad news, we have to learn how to partially renounce to such a pleasure or to such
pleasures. Frightening as it may sound, we have to embrace mass transportation. Oh yes! There will be bus... and metro
stations. Well it turns out, most of us are reluctant of getting into public transportation, not only because we would be renouncing to the
commodity of our own cars, but also because of the fact that when rush hour comes, it infects absolutely everything. New York, for example, in
the case of my friend he would wake up everyday and get on his Lambo and he'll try to drive to Wall Street, and to his surprise... it's rush hour!
Therefore, he'll spend hours inside the poor Lamborghini which will be desperately stuck in traffic. But, people don't actually see an escape in
public transportation since getting on a bus would be exactly the same, only sharing it with a couple of strangers, and the metro or subway
stations would be just as crowded, not to mention the people walking on the streets. There's traffic jam everywhere, in the roads
and in the streets. Nevertheless, in order to solve this situation we do have to turn to public and mass
transportation. However, in many countries, even in major cities, public transportation is very underdeveloped,
ergo, there seems to be virtually no ease on traffic, but if we do develop the public transportation, if we
investigate and develop new ways to transport people everyday from their homes to their jobs without the
need of a personal car, we'll see a great difference on the road. This doesn't necessarily mean that we should
not own our own cars. Cars would be used then when one has a cargo or some luggage that would, otherwise, be very hard to carry in
public transportation, and of course, we would use our cars for the recreational purpose every weekend or every now and then. We will not
renounce to our very favoured toys, all the contrary, as a matter of fact we will make them more enjoyable since we wouldn't have to spend
countless hours in bitter traffic.
Transportation planners balance specialized and interdisciplinary knowledge and participate in crossfunctional teams. For example, modelers engage in participatory activities with the community so they understand individuals motivations
for travel behavior and the consequences of their analytic work. The role of the planner, then, is centrally as a communicative
and process design expert with technical expertise a person who can design and guide processes for making
sense about controversial issues with decision-makers and the public. This greater range of discourse
facilitation, education, mediation and negotiation roles distinguishes the communicative rationality model
from its instrumental rationality counterpart . As mentioned, an example transportation planning issue parking policy at fixed rail
transit stations follows in the text boxes for each of the six discussion areas. The scenario is a transit agency considering parking charges for
facilities in a regional rail transit system. Assume that the system 15experiences high parking demand levels and is receiving pressure for policy
change from the agencys funding partners and stakeholders. A wide range of problem definitions, goals, and preferred
means exist among staff, board members, stakeholders and the public.
Debate over the best policy method for transportation infrastructure development is
key to effective solutions other methods result only in competing interests
Waidley and Bittner 7, (Greg, Wisconsin Transportation Center University of Wisconsin, Madison, and
Jason, Wisconsin Transportation Center University of Wisconsin, Madison, An Interdisciplinary Approach to
Transportation Education, Mid-Continent Transportation Research Symposium,
http://www.ctre.iastate.edu/pubs/midcon2007/WaidleyEducation.pdf) DMD
Our nations transportation system is a complex one. It consists of many modes, owned by many parties,
travels through many jurisdictions, and impacts many people, communities, businesses, and even ecosystems.
Because our transportation system is such a complex one, the planning, design, construction, and operation of
such a system requires a vast number of skilled professionals working together towards a common goal of an
efficient transportation system that moves people and goods safely and effectively. These professionals come from
a number of different backgrounds. Planners determine need through collection of data, detailed analysis, and
communication with the public and politicians to begin the project development process. Engineers design and
oversee the construction and operation of the infrastructure. Environmentalists provide input during the NEPA
process. Real estate specialists get involved during property appraisal and acquisition. Financial analysts prepare
budgets and track expenditures throughout the process. Public affairs professionals coordinate political efforts and
administer the funds. This is only a partial description and barely scratches the surface of the disciplines involved
but makes the point that the players often come from very different professional and educational backgrounds.
Table 1 provides a description of how various disciplines contribute to each phase of the transportation project
development process (Faucett 2003). This description of disciplines and their responsibilities is an extensive one,
though not entirely exhaustive (especially if you consider modes other than highway). Some of the other disciplines
not mentioned but that are still integral to the overall successful operation of a multimodal transportation system
include researchers, law enforcement officers, vehicle and system operators, and managers of port authorities,
among others. While it is absolutely critical for these parties to be involved to provide a transportation system
of high quality, getting these parties to work together can be a very real challenge. This is a challenge not
because they do not get along, but because they often do not truly understand one another. This difficulty in
communication is rooted in the fact that each discipline has their own vocabulary and approaches to problem
solving that are part of their disciplines culture, or as Hugh Petrie calls it, a disciplines cognitive map, i.e.,
the cognitive and perceptual approach connected to a discipline. The longer a practitioner operates within a
discipline, the more engrained this cognitive map becomes. It can get to the point where, quite literally,
two opposing disciplinarians can look at the same thing and not see the same thing. (Petrie 1976; Hall and
Weaver 2001) For example, when looking at the problem of a congested segment of urban highway, an
engineer may suggest expanding the highway to include another lane. The urban planner may attempt to
employ demand management strategies such as car pooling, parking restrictions, and telecommuting to
alleviate the peak hour volumes. The transit operator will likely suggest encouraging commuters to switch
their trips to bus or commuter rail. The traffic control engineer may recommend the use of ramp metering
and incident management control measures. Meanwhile the environmentalist is in favor of whatever strategy is
least likely to adversely impact air and water quality and nearby sensitive ecosystems. Having different view points
should not be considered a bad thing. It is true that it can be a struggle to find a solution when you have so many
competing interests, but it is these competing interests that help to ensure all angles are examined, or at least
considered, when attempting to find a solution to such a problem. Often time there is no one right answer. It
might be that the solution is a combination of the suggestions above. But if we did not have these groups working
together at various points in the project development process, solutions considered best for all involved may have
been missed. In order to find these solutions, the multitude of disciplines involved in the process must be able to
communicate. In order to communicate effectively, we must have foundational understanding of where each
other is coming from and why we each think and talk like we do. So the question being begged here is, How do
we begin to understand one another? How do we learn to communicate more effectively? Perhaps we need
to begin this learning process before we become so immersed in our own subcultures. A natural place to start seems
to be in college. It is during this time that transportation professionals begin to take on the vocabulary and
approaches to problem solving that makes an engineer and engineer, a planner a planner, an
environmentalist and environmentalist, and so on.
Civil engineering key to quality of lifeneed to think like them to solve the world`s
problems
Davis no date (James, Executive Director and CEO of American Society of Civil Engineers, Civil
Engineering Building the Future, Transworld Education, http://www.transworldeducation.com/articles/engciv.htm)
GSK
Civil engineers have one of the world's most important jobs: they build our quality of life. With creativity and
technical skill, civil engineers plan, design, construct and operate the facilities essential to modern life , ranging
from bridges and highway systems to water treatment plants and energyefficient buildings. Civil engineers are problem
solvers, meeting the challenges of pollution, traffic congestion, drinking water and energy needs, urban
redevelopment and community planning. As the technological revolution expands, as the world's population
increases, and as environmental concerns mount, civil engineering skills will be needed throughout the world.
Whatever area you choose, be it design, construction, research, planning, teaching or management, civil engineering offers you
a wide range of career choices. And there's no limit to the personal satisfaction you will feel from helping to
make our world a better place to live.
**Consequentialism
philosophers maintain the academic virtues there they will not only find themselves often ineffective but will
as well often fail in their responsibilities and act wrongly. Why is this so? The central point of conflict is that the first
concern of those responsible for public policy is, and ought to be, the consequences of their actions for public policy
and the persons that those policies affect. This is not to say that they should not be concerned with the moral
evaluation of those consequences-they should; nor that they must be moral consequentialists in the evaluation of the policy, and
in turn human, consequences of their actions-whether some form of consequentialism is an adequate moral theory is another matter. But
it is to say that persons who directly participate in the formation of public policy would be irresponsible if they
did not focus their concern on how their actions will affect policy and how that policy will in turn affect people. The virtues
of academic research and scholarship that consist in an unconstrained search for truth, whatever the consequences, reflect
not only the different goals of scholarly work but also the fact that the effects of the scholarly endeavor on the public are less
direct, and are mediated more by other institutions and events, than are those of the public policy process. It is in part the very impotence
in terms of major, direct effects on people's lives of most academic scholarship that makes it morally acceptable not to
worry much about the social consequences of that scholarship. When philosophers move into the policy domain,
they must shift their primary commitment from knowledge and truth to the policy consequences of what they do. And if they
are not prepared to do this, why did they enter the policy domain? What are they doing there?
state action is morally justified. This Comment adds another. This Comment began by adopting deontology as a foundational theoretic
assumption and briefly describing how deontology was to be understood herein. I then examined the characteristics of two leading theories of
rights--Dworkin's theory of legal rights and Thomson's theory of moral rights. Although neither Dworkin nor Thomson is an
absolutist with respect to rights, neither account explains why the state, but not individuals, may act in ways seemingly
justifiable only on consequentialist grounds: that is, why the state may override the trumping effect of rights. In attempting to
provide an answer to this question, I first noted that deontology does not exhaust moral discourse. The deontologist is forced to recognize that
rights cannot capture everything of moral importance. I then provided several examples of distinctions recognized in the
philosophical literature that delimit areas in which deontology does not apply, focusing in particular on the Trolley Problem and the distributive
exemption from deontological norms that the Trolley Problem illustrates. The deontological exemption was examined fairly closely in order to
enumerate the criteria that trigger the exemption and understand the principles that guide its application. By applying the distributive
exemption to the state, I accomplished two things. First, I was able to provide a new justification for the existence of the
coercive state, both when premised on the traditional assumptions of social contractarians, and when premised on a more realistic
understanding of the modern state. Second, I was able to sketch the relationship between the constraints of rights and the demands of policy,
justifying a state that provides for the general welfare without violating rights in a way objectionable to liberals. Libertarians
have argued that such a state violates deontologicalnorms, that governmental intervention going beyond what is minimally
necessary to preserve social order is not justified. Deontology does not require such a timid state and, moreover, finds
desirable a state which promotes the general welfare to the fullest extent possible, even if in so doing it acts in ways deontologically
objectionable for anyone other than one filling the government's unique role in society. More specifically, I argued that the government
must consequentially justify its policy choices. The elegance of this particular rationale for the contours of permissible
governmental action is that it remains a deontological justification at base. One of the worries of full-blown
consequentialism is that it requires too much, that any putative right may be set aside if doing so would produce greater
good. The justification offered here does not suffer that flaw. The distributive exemption does not permit that
any one be sacrificed for the betterment of others; rather, it only permits a redistribution of inevitable harms, a diversion
of an existing threatened harm to many such that it results in harm to fewer individuals.
left to assimilate the death and destruction of September 11 to more ordinary (and still deplorable) injustices of
the world system--the starvation of children in Africa, or the repression of peasants in Mexico, or the continued occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza by Israel. But this assimilation is only possible by ignoring the specific modalities of September
11. It is true that in Mexico, Palestine, and elsewhere, too many innocent people suffer, and that is wrong. It
may even be true that the experience of suffering is equally terrible in each case. But neither the Mexican nor the Israeli
government has ever hijacked civilian airliners and deliberately flown them into crowded office buildings in
the middle of cities where innocent civilians work and live, with the intention of killing thousands of people.
Al-Qaeda did precisely this. That does not make the other injustices unimportant. It simply makes them
different. It makes the September 11 hijackings distinctive, in their defining and malevolent purpose--to kill people and to create terror
and havoc. This was not an ordinary injustice. It was an extraordinary injustice. The premise of terrorism is the
sheer superfluousness of human life. This premise is inconsistent with civilized living anywhere. It threatens people of every race
and class, every ethnicity and religion. Because it threatens everyone, and threatens values central to any decent
conception of a good society, it must be fought. And it must be fought in a way commensurate with its malevolence.
Ordinary injustice can be remedied. Terrorism can only be stopped. Second, it would mean frankly acknowledging
something well understood, often too eagerly embraced, by the twentieth century Marxist left--that it is often politically necessary
to employ morally troubling means in the name of morally valid ends . A just or even a better society can only be
realized in and through political practice; in our complex and bloody world, it will sometimes be necessary to respond to barbarous tyrants
or criminals, with whom moral suasion won't work. In such situations our choice is not between the wrong that
confronts us and our ideal vision of a world beyond wrong. It is between the wrong that confronts us and the
means--perhaps the dangerous means--we have to employ in order to oppose it. In such situations there is a
danger that "realism" can become a rationale for the Machiavellian worship of power . But equally great is the
danger of a righteousness that translates, in effect, into a refusal to act in the face of wrong. What is one to do?
Proceed with caution. Avoid casting oneself as the incarnation of pure goodness locked in a Manichean struggle with evil. Be wary of
violence. Look for alternative means when they are available, and support the development of such means when they are not. And never
sacrifice democratic freedoms and open debate. Above all, ask the hard questions about the situation at hand, the means available, and
the likely effectiveness of different strategies.
lead to the best outcome. Whilst it is typically afforded only a small note in any text on consequentialism, this reply has deep
implications for the practical application of consequentialism, perhaps entailing that a consequentialist should
eschew calculation altogether.
Frank 2 (Robert, Cornell University, The Status of Moral Emotions in Consequentialist Moral Reasoning,
http://tinyurl.com/22truv3)JFS
The philosopher Bernard Williams describes an example in which a botanist wanders into a village in the jungle
where ten innocent people are about to be shot. He is told that nine of them will be spared if he himself will shoot
the tenth. What should the botanist do? Although most people would prefer to see only one innocent person die rather than
ten, Williams argues that it would be wrong as a matter of principle for the botanist to shoot the innocent villager.2 And most people
seem to agree. The force of the example is its appeal to a widely shared moral intuition. Yet some philosophers counter that it is the
presumed validity of moral intuitions that such examples call into question (Singer, 2002). These consequentialists insist that
whether an action is morally right depends only on its consequences. The right choice, they argue, is always the one
that leads to the best overall consequences. I will argue that consequentialists make a persuasive case that moral
intuitions are best ignored in at least some specific cases. But many consequentialists appear to take the stronger position that moral
intuitions should play no role in moral choice. I will argue against that position on the grounds that should appeal to their way of thinking.
As I will attempt to explain, ignoring moral intuitions would lead to undesirable consequences. My broader aim is to expand the
intervention is an act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a
response. The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist
violence abetted by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a
question that most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a
Saddam Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls
for diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global
order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how diplomacy or international law
can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers no such account. To do so would require it to contemplate
tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of
power. Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to
effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To
accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means
is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible
to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding
concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable,
reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's
intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends . Abjuring violence or refusing to make common
cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence,
then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see
that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of
complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially
immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3)
it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects
of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender impotence, it is
often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's goals
be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in
pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true
**Utilitarianism
private conduct. Nonetheless, in adducing many of its most important implication for public policy it is important to see at leas in
broad outline how it would set about shaping private conduct. Utilitarians, and consequentialists more generally, are outcomeoriented. In sharp contrast to Ten Commandment-style deontological approaches, which specify certain actions to be
done as a matter of duty, utilitarian theories assign people responsibility for producing certain results, leaving the
individuals concerned broad discretion about how to achieve those results. The same basic difference in the two theories' approaches to
assigning moral jobs reappears across all levels of moral agency, from private agency, from private individuals to collective (especially
state) actors. The distinctively utilitarian approach, thus conceived, to international protection of the ozone layer is to
assign states responsibility for producing certain effects, leaving them broad discretion in how they
accomplish it (Chapter 18). The distinctively utilitarian approach, thus conceived, to the ethical defense of nationalism is couched in
terms of delimiting state boundaries in such a way as to assign particular organization (Chapter 16). And, at a more domestic level of
analysis, the distinctively utilitarian approach to the allocation of legal liabilities is to assign them to whomsoever can best discharge them
(Chapters 5 through 7). The great advantage of utilitarianism as a guide to public conduct is that it avoids
gratuitous sacrifices, it ensures we are able to ensure in the uncertain world of public policy-making that
politics are sensitive to people's interests or desires or preferences. The great failing of more deontological theories,
applied to those realism, is that they fixate upon duties done for the sake of duty rather than for the sake of any
good that is done by doing one's duty. Perhaps it is permissible (perhaps it is even proper) for private individuals in the course of their
personal affairs to fetishize duties done for their own sake. It would be a mistake for public officials to do likewise, not least because it is
impossible. The fixation of motives makes absolutely no sense in the public realm, and might make precious little sense in
the private one even, as Chapter 3 shows. The reason public action is required at all arises form the inability of
uncoordinated individual action to achieve certain orally desirable ends. Individuals are rightly excused from pursuing those
ends. The inability is real; the excuses, perfectly valid. But libertarians are right in their diagnosis, wrong in their prescription. That is the
message of Chapter 2. The same thing that makes those excuses valid at the individual level the same thing that relives individuals of
responsibility - makes it morally incumber upon individuals to organize themselves into collective units that are capable of acting where
they as isolated individuals are not. When they organize themselves into these collective units, those collective
deliberations inevitably take place under very different forms. Individuals are morally required to operate in that
collective manner, in certain crucial respects. But they are practically circumscribed in how they can operate, in their collective mode.
and those special constraints characterizing the public sphere of decision-making give rise to the special
circumstances that make utilitarianism peculiarly apt for public policy-making, in ways set out more fully in Chapter 4.
Government house utilitarianism thus understood is, I would argue, a uniquely defensible public philosophy.
Green 2 (Asst Prof Department of Psychology Harvard University Joshua, November 2002, 314) JFS
Some people who talk of balancing rights may think there is an algorithm for deciding which rights take priority over which. If thats what
we mean by 302 balancing rights, then we are wise to shun this sort of talk. Attempting to solve moral problems using a
complex deontological algorithm is dogmatism at its most esoteric, but dogmatism all the same. However,
its likely that when some people talk about balancing competing rights and obligations they are already
thinking like consequentialists in spite of their use of deontological language. Once again, what deontological
language does best is express the thoughts of people struck by strong, emotional moral intuitions: It doesnt matter that you can save five
people by pushing him to his death. To do this would be a violation of his rights!19 That is why angry protesters say things
like, Animals Have Rights, Too! rather than, Animal Testing: The Harms Outweigh the Benefits! Once
again, rights talk captures the apparent clarity of the issue and absoluteness of the answer. But sometimes rights
talk persists long after the sense of clarity and absoluteness has faded. One thinks, for example, of the thousands of children whose lives
are saved by drugs that were tested on animals and the rights of those children. One finds oneself balancing the rights on
both sides by asking how many rabbit lives one is willing to sacrifice in order to save one human life, and so
on, and at the end of the day ones underlying thought is as thoroughly consequentialist as can be, despite
the deontological gloss. And whats wrong with that? Nothing, except for the fact that the deontological gloss adds nothing
and furthers the myth that there really are rights, etc. Best to drop it. When deontological talk gets
sophisticated, the thought it represents is either dogmatic in an esoteric sort of way or covertly
consequentialist.
shoot two peasants lined up against a wall. When you ask the reason, you are told someone in this village shot at the captain's men
last night. When you object to the killing of possibly innocent people, you are told that civil wars do not permit moral niceties. Just to prove the
point that we all have dirty hands in such situations, the captain hands you a rifle and tells you that if you will shoot one peasant,
he will free the other. Otherwise both die. He warns you not to try any tricks because his men have their guns trained on you. Will you
shoot one person with the consequences of saving one, or will you allow both to die but preserve your moral
integrity by refusing to play his dirty game? The point of the story is to show the value and limits of both traditions.
Integrity is clearly an important value, and many of us would refuse to shoot. But at what point does the
principle of not taking an innocent life collapse before the consequentialist burden? Would it matter if there were
twenty or 1,000 peasants to be saved? What if killing or torturing one innocent person could save a city of 10 million
persons from a terrorists' nuclear device? At some point does not integrity become the ultimate egoism of fastidious selfrighteousness in which the purity of the self is more important than the lives of countless others? Is it not better to follow a
consequentialist approach, admit remorse or regret over the immoral means, but justify the action by the
consequences? Do absolutist approaches to integrity become self-contradictory in a world of nuclear weapons? "Do what is right though
the world should perish" was a difficult principle even when Kant expounded it in the eighteenth century, and there is some evidence that he
did not mean it to be taken literally even then. Now that it may be literally possible in the nuclear age, it seems more than
ever to be self-contradictory.35 Absolutist ethics bear a heavier burden of proof in the nuclear age than ever
before.
defensive investments into needlessly narrow or implausibly detailed risk scenarios . More generally, people
tend to overestimate conjunctive probabilities and underestimate disjunctive probabilities. (Tversky and
Kahneman 1974.) That is, people tend to overestimate the probability that, e.g., seven events of 90% probability will all occur. Conversely,
people tend to underestimate the probability that at least one of seven events of 10% probability will occur. Someone judging whether to,
e.g., incorporate a new startup, must evaluate the probability that many individual events will all go right (there will be sufficient funding,
competent employees, customers will want the product) while also considering the likelihood that at least one critical failure will occur (the
bank refuses a loan, the biggest project fails, the lead scientist dies). This may help explain why only 44% of entrepreneurial
ventures3 survive after 4 years. (Knaup 2005.) Dawes (1988) observes: 'In their summations lawyers avoid arguing from
disjunctions ("either this or that or the other could have occurred, all of which would lead to the same conclusion") in favor of
conjunctions. Rationally, of course, disjunctions are much more probable than are conjunctions.' The scenario of humanity going
extinct in the next century is a disjunctive event. It could happen as a result of any of the existential risks
discussed in this book - or some other cause which none of us fore saw. Yet for a futurist, disjunctions make
for an awkward and unpoetic-sounding prophecy.
We can give survival of the species a very high priority without giving it the paralyzing status of an absolute
value. Some degree of risk is unavoidable if individuals or societies are to avoid paralysis and enhance the
quality of life beyond mere survival. The degree of that risk is a justifiable topic of both prudential and moral
reasoning.
**Extinction
was the inaugural detonation of an atomic bomb. At the time, there was some concern that the explosion might start a runaway
chain-reaction by igniting the atmosphere. Although we now know that such an outcome was physically impossible, it qualifies as an
existential risk that was present at the time. For there to be a risk, given the knowledge and understanding available, it suffices that there is
some subjective probability of an adverse outcome, even if it later turns out that objectively there was no chance of something bad
happening. If we dont know whether something is objectively risky or not, then it is risky in the subjective sense. The
subjective sense is of course what we must base our decisions on.[2]At any given time we must use our best current subjective
estimate of what the objective risk factors are.[3]A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the
US and the USSR. An all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that mighthave been
persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available at
the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4]
Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also
a risk that other states may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and
Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankinds potential permanently. Such a war might
however be a local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be targeted. Unfortunately, we shall see that nuclear Armageddon and
comet or asteroid strikes are mere preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter in the 21st
century. The
special nature of the challenges posed by existential risks is illustrated by the following points: Our approach to existential risks
cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach see what
happens, limit damages, and learn from experience is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This
requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs
(moral and economic) of such actions. We cannot necessarily rely on the institutions, moral norms, social attitudes or national security
policies that developed from our experience with managing other sorts of risks. Existential risks are a different kind of beast. We might
find it hard to take them as seriously as we should simply because we have never yet witnessed such
disasters.[5] Our collective fear-response is likely ill calibrated to the magnitude of threat. Reductions in existential risks are
global public goods [13] and may therefore be undersupplied by the market [14]. Existential risks are a menace for everybody and
may require acting on the international plane. Respect for national sovereignty is not a legitimate excuse for failing to take
countermeasures against a major existential risk. If we take into account the welfare of future generations, the harm
done by existential risks is multiplied by another factor, the size of which depends on whether and how much we discount future
benefits [15,16]. In view of its undeniable importance, it is surprising how little systematic work has been done in this area. Part of the
explanation may be that many of the gravest risks stem (as we shall see) from anticipated future technologies that we have
only recently begun to understand. Another part of the explanation may be the unavoidably interdisciplinary and speculative nature
of the subject. And in part the neglect may also be attributable to an aversion against thinking seriously about a depressing topic. The
point, however, is not to wallow in gloom and doom but simply to take a sober look at what could go wrong so we
can create responsible strategies for improving our chances of survival. In order to do that, we need to know where to
focus our efforts.
could be appointed with authority to commission advance peer-review of potentially hazardous experiments. This is currently done
on an ad hoc basis and often in a way that relies on the integrity of researchers who have a personal stake in the experiments going forth.
The existential risks of naturally occurring or genetically engineered pandemics would be reduced by the same measures that would help
prevent and contain more limited epidemics. Thus, efforts in counter-terrorism, civil defense, epidemiological monitoring and
reporting, developing and stockpiling antidotes, rehearsing emergency quarantine procedures, etc. could be intensified. Even
abstracting from existential risks, it would probably be cost-effective to increase the
these existential risks suggests that it is advisable to gradually shift the focus of security policy from seeking
national security through unilateral strength to creating an integrated international security system that can prevent
arms races and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Which particular policies have the best chance of
attaining this long-term goal is a question beyond the scope of this paper.
needs to be redefined to make humanitys survival primary and absolute. Even if we lose our cherished freedom,
our sovereignty, our government or our Constitution, where there is life, there is hope . What good is anything else if
humanity is extinguished? This concept should be promoted to the center of national debate. For example, for
sake of argument, suppose the ancient Israelites developed defensive bioweapons of mass destruction when they were enslaved by Egypt.
Then suppose these weapons were released by design or accident and wiped everybody out? As bad as slavery is, extinction is worse. Our
generation, our century, our epoch needs to take the long view. We truly hold in our hands the precious gift of all
future life. Empires may come and go, but who are the honored custodians of life on earth? Temporal politicians? Corporate
competitors? Strategic brinksmen? Military gamers? Inflated egos dripping with testosterone? How can any sane person believe
that national sovereignty is more important than survival of the species? Now that extinction is possible, our
slogan should be "Where there is life, there is hope." No government, no economic system, no national pride, no religion,
no political system can be placed above human survival. The egos of leaders must not blind us. The adrenaline and
vengeance of a fight must not blind us. The game is over. If patriotism would extinguish humanity, then patriotism is the
highest of all crimes. There are many people who believe it is their God-given right to do whatever is deemed necessary to secure
their homeland, their religion and their birthright. Moslems, Jews, Hindus, ultra-patriots (and fundamentalist Christians who believe that
Armageddon is Gods prophesy) all have access to the doomsday vials at Fort Detrick and other labs. Fort Detrick and Dugway employees
are US citizens but may also have other loyalties. One or more of them might have sent the anthrax letters to the media and Congress last
year. Are we willing to trust our security, NO -- trust human survival to people like this? Human frailty, duplicity, greed, zealotry, insanity,
intolerance and ignorance, not to speak of ultra-patriotism, will always be with us. The mere existence of these doomsday weapons is a risk
too great for rational people to tolerate. Unless guards do body crevice searches of lab employees every day, smuggling out a few grams
will be a piece of cake. Basically, THERE CAN BE NO SECURITY. Humanity is at great risk as we speak. All biological
weapons must be destroyed immediately. All genetic engineering of new diseases must be halted. All bioweapons labs must be dismantled.
Fort Detrick and Dugway labs must be decommissioned and torn down. Those who continue this research are potential war criminals of the
highest order. Secret bioweapons research must be outlawed.
extinction as catastrophicwhich implies that it may somehow never occur, provided that we are all well behavedis
not only specious, but self-defeating. Man is both blessed and cursed by the highest level of self-awareness of any life-form on Earth.
This suggests that the process of human extinction is likely to be accompanied by more suffering than that associated
with any previous species extinction event. Such suffering may only be eased by the getting of wis- dom: the same kind of wisdom
that could, if applied sufficiently early, postpone extinction. But the tragedy of our species is that evolution does not select for such
foresight. Mans dreams of being an immortal species in an eternal paradise are unachievable not because of original
sinthe doomsday scenario for which we choose to blame our free will, thereby perpetuating our creationist illusion of
being at the center of the universebut rather, in reductionist terms, because paradise is incompatible with evolution. More
scientific effort in propounding this central truth of our species mortality , rather than seeking spiritual comfort in
escapist fantasies, could pay dividends in minimizing the eventual cumulative burden of human suffering.
the distinction between physical existence and nonexistence. As mentioned, postmodernists assume that there is a
physical substratum to the phenomenal world, even if they argue about its different meanings. This substratum is
essential for allowing entities to speak or express themselves. That which doesn't exist, doesn't speak. That
which doesn't exist, manifests no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should rightly worry about interpreting
nature's expressions. And everyone should be wary about those who claim to speak on nature's behalf (including when environmentalists
and students of global environmental politics do so). But we should not doubt the simple-minded notion that a prerequisite of
expression is existence. That which doesn't exist can never express itself. And this in turn suggests that preserving
the nonhuman world-in all its diverse embodiments-must be seen by eco-critics as a fundamental good. Eco-critics must be
supporters, in some fashion, of environmental preservation.
**Pragmatism
when the torturers violate the innocent, there is nothing to be said to them of the form There is something
within you which you are betraying. Though you embody the practices of a totalitarian society which will endure forever, there is
something beyond those practices which condemns you. This thought is hard to live with, as is Sartres remark: Tomorrow, after my death,
certain people may decide to establish fascism, and the others may be cowardly or miserable enough to let them get away
with it. At that moment, fascism will be the truth of man , and so much the worse for us. In reality, things will be as
much as man has decided they are. This hard saying brings out what ties Dewey and Foucault, James and Nietzsche, together- the
sense that there is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no criterion that we have not
created in the course of creating a practice, no standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a criterion, no rigorous argumentation
that is not obedience to our own conventions. A post-philosophical culture, then, would be one in which men and
women felt themselves alone, merely finite, with no links to something Beyond. On the pragmatists account,
position was only a halfway stage in the development of such a culture-the progress toward, as Sartre puts it, doing without
God. For positivism preserved a god in its notion of Science (and in its notion of scientific philosophy), the notion of a portion of culture
where we touched something not ourselves, where we found Truth naked, relative to no description. The culture of positivism thus
produced endless swings of the pendulum between the view that values are merely relative (or emotive, or subjective)
and the view that bringing the scientific method to bear on questions of political and moral choice was the solution to all
our problems. Pragmatism, by contrast, does not erect Science as an idol to fill the place once held by God. It views
science as one genre of literature-or, put the other way around, literature and the arts as inquiries, on the same footing as scientific
inquiries. Thus it sees ethics as neither more relative or subjective than scientific theory, nor as needing to be made
scientific. Physics is a way of trying to cope with various bits of the universe; ethics is a matter of trying to cope with other bits.
Mathematics helps physics do its job; literature and the arts help ethics do its. Some of these inquiries come up with propositions, some
with narratives, some with paintings. The question of what propositions to assert, which pictures to look at, what narratives to listen to and
comment on and retell, are all questions about what will help us get what we want (or about what we should want). No. The question of
whether the pragmatist view of truth-that it is t a profitable topic-is itself true is thus a question about whether a post-
Philosophical culture is a good thing to try for. It is not a question about what the word true means, nor about
the requirements of an adequate philosophy of language, nor about whether the world exists independently of our minds, nor
about whether the intuitions of our culture are captured in the pragmatists slogans. There is no way in which the issue
between the pragmatist and his opponent can be tightened up and resolved according to criteria agreed to by both sides.
This is one of those issues which puts everything up for grabs at once -where there is no point in trying to find
agreement about the data or about what would count as deciding the question. But the messiness of the issue is not a reason
for setting it aside. The issue between religion and secularism was no less messy, but it was important that it got decided as it did.
responsibility for what comes in the future. For we are all responsible, humanly responsible for what happens in the
world. Do we have the right to interfere in internal conflict? Not just the right but the duty. Remember the
Holocaust. To avoid war, we watched-silently and, so, complicitly, unleashing darker, deadlier demons. What
should we have done about Yugoslavia? Something. Much earlier. We must vigilantly listen for the early warning
signs of threats to freedoms and lives everywhere. We must keep the clamorous opposition to oppression and violence
around the world incessant and loud. Cry out! Cry havoc! Call murderers murderers. Do not avoid violence when avoidance
begets more violence. There are some things worth dying for. Do not legitimize the bloodletting in Bosnia or anywhere by
negotiating with the criminals who plotted the carnage. Do not join the temporizers. Take stands publicly: in words; in
universities and boardrooms; in other corridors of power; and at local polling places. Take stands prefer-ably in written words, which
have a longer shelf life, are likelier to stimu-late debate, and may have a lasting effect on the consciousnesses of some
among us.
Extinction
Ketels 96 [Violet. Prof of English @ Temple. Havel to the Castle! The Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, Vol 548, No 1. Nov 1996]JFS
Characteristically, Havel raises lo-cal experience to universal relevance. "If today's planetary civilization has any hope of
survival," he begins, "that hope lies chiefly in what we understand as the human spirit." He continues: If we don't wish to
destroy ourselves in national, religious or political discord; if we don't wish to find our world with twice its current
population, half of it dying of hunger; if we don't wish to kill ourselves with ballistic missiles armed with atomic
warheads or eliminate ourselves with bacteria specially cultivated for the purpose; if we don't wish to see some people go
desperately hungry while others throw tons of wheat into the ocean; if we don't wish to suffocate in the global
greenhouse we are heating up for ourselves or to be burned by radiation leaking through holes we have made in the ozone; if
we don't wish to exhaust the nonrenewable, mineral resources of this planet, without which we cannot survive; if, in
short, we don't wish any of this to happen, then we must-as humanity, as people, as conscious beings with spirit, mind and a
sense of responsibility-somehow come to our senses. Somehow we must come together in "a kind of general mobilization
of human consciousness, of the human mind and spirit, human responsibility, human reason." The Prague Spring was "the inevitable
consequence of a long drama originally played out chiefly in the theatre of the spirit and the con-science of society," a process
triggered and sustained "by individuals willing to live in truth even when things were at their worst." The
process was hidden in "the invisible realm of social consciousness," conscience, and the subconscious. It was indirect, longterm, and hard to measure. So, too, its continuation that exploded into the Velvet Revolution, the magic moment when 800,000 citizens,
jamming Wenceslas Square in Prague, jingled their house keys like church bells and changed from shouting 'Truth will prevail to chanting"
Havel to the castle."
pointless. They associate American patriotism with an endorsement of atrocities: the importation of African slaves, the
slaughter of Native Americans, the rape of ancient forests, and the Vietnam War. Many of them think of national pride as appropriate only
for chauvinists: for the sort of American who rejoices that America can still orchestrate something like the Gulf War, can still bring deadly
force to bear whenever and wherever it chooses. When young intellectuals watch John Wayne war movies after reading
Heidegger, Foucault, Stephenson, or Silko, they often become convinced that they live in a violent, inhuman, corrupt
country. They begin to think of themselves as a saving remnant-as the happy few who have the insight to see
through nationalist rhetoric to the ghastly reality of contemporary America. But this insight does not move
them to formulate a legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in a national hope. The contrast between
national hope and national self-mockery and self-disgust becomes vivid when one compares novels like Snow Crash and Almanac of the
Dead with socialist novels of the first half of the century-books like The Jungle, An American Tragedy, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter
were written in the belief that the tone of the Gettysburg Address was absolutely right, but that our country would have to transform itself
in order to fulfill Lincoln's hopes. Transformation would be needed because the rise of industrial capitalism had made the
individualist rhetoric of America's first century obsolete. The authors of these novels thought that this rhetoric should be replaced by one
in which America is destined to become the first cooperative commonwealth, the first classless society. This America would be one in
which income and wealth are equitably distributed, and in which the government ensures equality of opportunity as well as individual
liberty. This new, quasi-communitarian rhetoric was at the heart of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal. It set the tone for the
American Left during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Walt Whitman and John Dewey, as we shall see, did a great deal to
shape this rhetoric. The difference between early twentieth-century leftist intellectuals and the majority of their
contemporary counterparts is the difference between agents and spectators. In the early decades of this
century, when an intellectual stepped back from his or her country's history and looked at it through
skeptical eyes, the chances were that he or she was about to propose a new political initiative. Henry Adams was, of
course, the great exception-the great abstainer from politics. But William James thought that Adams' diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a
symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse. James's pragmatist theory of truth was in part a reaction against
the sort of detached spectators hip which Adams affected. For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and self-deception was pointless
unless accompanied by an effort to give America reason to be proud of itself in the future. The kind of proto- Heideggerian
cultural pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed , to James, decadent and cowardly. "Democracy," James wrote, "is a
kind of religion, and we are bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and utopias are the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one with a
spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. "2
Failure to engage in the political process will result in the takeover by the extreme
right, leading to discrimination and war worldwide.
Rorty 98 (prof of philosophy at Stanford, Richard, 1998, achieving our country pg. 89-94)JFS
Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist
movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the
American future. The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will
sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported.
Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers-them- selves desperately afraid of being downsized-are not going to let themselves
be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the
system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for-someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug
bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis
novel It Cant Happen Here may then be played out. For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In
1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic. One thing that is very likely to
happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out.
Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words "nigger" and "kike" will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism
which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will
come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel
about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet. But such a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of selfishness. For
after my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make his peace with the international superrich, just as Hitler made his with
the German industrialists. He will invoke the glorious memory of the Gulf War to provoke military adventures which will generate short-term
prosperity. He will be a disaster for the country and the world. People will wonder why there was so little resistance to his evitable rise.
Where, they will ask, was the American Left? Why was it only rightists like Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the consequences of
globalization? Why could not the Left channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossessed? It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the twentieth
century, no longer have a Left. Since nobody denies the existence of what I have called the cultural Left, this amounts to an admission that that Left is
unable to engage in national politics. It is not the sort of Left which can be asked to deal with the consequences of globalization. To get the country
to deal with those consequences, the present cultural Left would have to transform itself by opening relations with the residue of
the old reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions. It would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of talking less about stigma.
I have two suggestions about how to effect this transition. The first is that the Left should put a moratorium on theory. It should try to kick
its philosophy habit. The second is that the Left should try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans. It should ask the public to consider
how the country of Lincoln and Whitman might be achieved. In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey's Reconstruction in
Philosophy in which he expresses his exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the rubric of "individualism versus communitarianism."
Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a common defect. They are all committed to the logic of general notions
under which specific situations are to be brought. What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or that concrete human being, this or that
special institution or social arrangement. For such a logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts and their
dialectical relationships with one another. Dewey was right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction. He was wrong
when he went on to say that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one which supplies "the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the
established order. "9 For such ascents are now more common on the Left than on the Right. The contemporary academic Left seems to think that
the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the established order you can be. The more sweeping and novel your
conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique. When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been
"inadequately theorized," you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis,
or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. Theorists of the Left think that dissolving political agents into plays of
differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan's impossible object of desire, helps to subvert the established order.
Such subversion, they say, is accomplished by "problematizing familiar concepts." Recent attempts to subvert social institutions by problematizing concepts have produced a few very good books. They have also produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its
worst. The authors of these purportedly "subversive" books honestly believe that they are serving human liberty. But it is
almost impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a candidate,
or a political strategy. Even though what these authors "theorize" is often something very concrete and near at hand-a current TV show, a media
celebrity, a recent scandal-they offer the most abstract and barren explanations imaginable. These futile attempts to philosophize one's way
into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach
to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations. These result in an intellectual environment
which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most
frightening of which is called "power." This is the name of what Edmundson calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as
evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook."10
today legitimizes itself by declaring that politics is impossible (110). The present is thus marked by more than
politics paradoxical essence the suppression of the political. It is characterized by the explicit
acknowledgement of depoliticization as the contemporary states legitimizing ideal. Accordingly, Ranciere identifies
several elements of contemporary post-politics as they confirm the impossibility of politics and hence legitimize the state: the spread of
law, the generalization of expertise, and the practice of polling for opinion (112). Polling, for example, renders the people as
identical to the sum of its parts (105). Their count is always even and with nothing left over, he writes, And this people
absolutely equal to itself can always be broken down into its reality: its socioprofessional categories and its age brackets,
(105). It is worth nothing that Rancieres emphasis on law repeats the juridification thesis Habermas offered already in the nineteen
eighties. For Habermas, the problem was laws encroachment on the lifeworld. Excess regulation risked supplanting the communicative
engagement of participants in socio-political interaction. For Ranciere, the problem is a legal resolution of conflict that forecloses
**Generic K Answers
*Statism
today. To conceive of the modern state as a unified entity loses sight of the fact that today's governmental
society and today's state, no less than the sovereign-state of political theorists, is not a unified whole. Perhaps,
Foucault suggests, the State is no more than a composite reality and a mythical abstraction whose importance is
a lot more limited than many of us think. Maybe what is really important for our modern times ... is not so
much the State-domination of society, but the "governmentalisation" of the State.48
and are less willing to take action to assert their views. That means that neither the state nor the opposition can
mobilize them to take action for or against anything. As a result, the opposition cannot easily get large numbers
of people to demonstrate even if the opposition is taking positions that polls suggest most people agree with.
And the government cannot draw on popular support even when it may be doing things that the people have
said they want. That means that the size of demonstrations for or against anything or anyone are an increasingly poor indicator of what the
people want or do not want the state to do. Second, precisely because people are focusing on their private lives and taking responsibility for
them, they are likely to become increasingly upset when the state attempts to intervene in their lives even for the most benign purposes,
particularly if it does so in an ineffective manner. Such attitudes, widespread in many countries and important in limiting the power of state
institutions, nonetheless pose a particular danger to countries making the transition from communism to democracy. While those views help
promote the dismantling of the old state, they also virtually preclude the emergence of a new and efficient one. As a result, these countries are
often likely to find themselves without the effective state institutions that modern societies and economies require if they are to be well
regulated. And third, countries with depoliticized populations are especially at risk when they face a crisis. The
governments cannot count on support because people no longer expect the governments to be able to deliver.
world attitude. It is a fairly clean and tight worldview, zealously bulletproof, and it scares me. I want the natural world, the greater
community of life beyond our species, with all its beautiful and terrifying manifestations, and its vibrant landscapes to survive intact I think
about this a lot. A quick collapse of global civilization, will almost certainly lead to greater explosive damage to the
biosphere, than a mediated slower meltdown. When one envisions the collapse of global society, one is not
discussing the demise of an ancient Greek city-state, or even the abandonment of an empire like the Mayans.
The end of our global civilization would not only result in the death of six billion humans , just wiping natures slate
clean. We also have something like 5,000 nuclear facilities spread across the planets surface. And this is just one
obvious and straightforward fact cutting across new radical arguments in favor of a quick fall. We have inserted
ourselves into the web of life on planet Earth, into its interstitial fibers, over the last 500 years. We are now a big part of the worlds dynamic
biological equation set its checks and balances. If we get a fever and fall into social chaos, even just considering our non-nuclear
toys laying about, the damage will be profound. It will be much more devastating than our new visionaries of post-
apocalyptic paradise have prophesized. If one expands upon current examples of social chaos that we already see, like Afghanistan
or Darfur, extrapolating them across the globe, encompassing Europe, Asia, North and South America, and elsewhere, then one can easily
imagine desperate outcomes where nature is sacrificed wholesale in vain attempts to rescue human life. The outcomes would be beyond
ugly; they would be horrific and enduring. That is why I cannot accept this new wave of puritanical anarcho-apocalyptic theology. The end-
point of a quick collapse is quite likely to resemble the landscape of Mars, or even perhaps the Moon . I love life. I
do not want the Earth turned barren. I think that those who are dreaming of a world returned to its wilderness state are lovely, naive romantics
dangerous ones. Imagine 100 Chernobyls spewing indelible death. Imagine a landscape over-run with desperate and starving
humans, wiping out one ecosystem after another. Imagine endless tribal wars where there are no restraints on
the use of chemical and biological weapons. Imagine a failing industrial infrastructure seeping massive quantities of deadly toxins
into the air, water and soil. This is not a picture of primitive liberation, of happy post-civilized life working the organic
farm on Salt Spring Island.
powerful emerges to solve this problem. The coalition grants members privileges, creates rents through limited
access to valuable resources and organizations, and then uses the rents to sustain order. Because fighting reduces their rents,
coalition members have incentives not to fight so as to maintain their rents. Natural states necessarily limit access to organizations and
restrict competition in all systems. Failing to do so dissipate rents and therefore reduces the incentives not to fight.
We call this order the natural state because for nearly all of the last 10,000 years of human history indeed, until just the last two
centuries the natural state was the only solution to the problem of violence that produced a hierarchical society with
significant wealth. In comparison with the previous foraging order, natural states produced impressive economic growth, and even today
we can see the impressive wealth amassed by many of the early civilizations. In contrast to open access orders, however, natural states
have significant, negative consequences for economic growth.
*Language
No Alternative
The alt is exactly like the link or the perm solves Totalizing rejection of the aff
premises is a right-wing fascistic tactic to control the terms of debate Liberal
reason defines progressive politics and solves best
Hicks 9 (Stephen PhD Phil, http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/hicks-ep-ch4.pdf)
What links the Right and the Left is a core set of themes: antiindividualism, the need for strong government, the
view that religion is a state matter (whether to promote or suppress it), the view that education is a process of socialization,
ambivalence about science and technology, and strong themes of group conflict, violence, and war. Left and Right have
often divided bitterly over which themes have priority and over how they should be applied . Yet for all of their
differences, both the collectivist Left and the collectivist Right have consistently recognized a common enemy:
liberal capitalism, with its individualism, its limited government, its separation of church and state, its fairly constant view that
education is not primarily a matter of political socialization, and its persistent Whiggish optimism about prospects for peaceful trade and
cooperation between members of all nations and groups. Rousseau, for example, is often seen as being a man of the Left, and he has
influenced generations of Left thinkers. But he was also inspirational to Kant, Fichte, and Hegelall men of the Right. Fichte in turn was
used regularly as a model for Right thinkers but he was also an inspiration for Left socialists such as Friedrich Ebert, president of the
Weimar Republic after World War I. Hegels legacy, as is well known, took both a Right and a Left form. While the details are messy the
broad point is clear: the collectivist Right and the collectivist Left are united in their major goals and in identifying their major opposition.
None of these thinkers, for example, ever has a kind word for the politics of John Locke. In the twentieth century, the same trend
continued. Scholars debated whether George Sorel is Left or Right; and that makes sense given that he inspired and admired both Lenin
and Mussolini. And to give just one more example, Heidegger and the thinkers of the Frankfurt School have much more in common
politically than either does with, say, John Stuart Mill. This in turn explains why thinkers from Herbert Marcuse to Alexandre Kojve to
Maurice Merleau-Ponty all argued that Marx and Heidegger are compatible, but none ever dreamed of connecting either to Locke or Mill.
The point will be that liberalism did not penetrate deeply into the main lines of political thinking in Germany. As was the
case with metaphysics and epistemology, the most vigorous developments in social and political philosophy of the nineteenth and early
twentieth century occurred in Germany, and German socio-political philosophy was dominated by Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and
Heidegger. By the early twentieth century, accordingly, the dominant issues for most Continental political thinkers were not
whether liberal capitalism was a viable optionbut rather exactly when it would collapseand whether Left or Right collectivism
had the best claim to being the socialism of the future. The defeat of the collectivist Right in World War II then meant
that the Left was on its own to carry the socialist mantle forward. Accordingly, when the Left ran into its own
major disasters as the twentieth century progressed, understanding its fundamental commonality with the collectivist
Right helps to explain why in its desperation the Left has often adopted fascistic tactics.
Their certainty about the effects of language belies the nature of human agency and
the importance of context, making us powerless in the face of language Extricating
the language from the plan doesnt make the words go away Confrontation via
the permutation solves best
Butler 97 (Judith, Excitable Speech, UC-Berkeley, p. 13)
Indeed, recent effort to establish
up the possibility of agency where agency is not the restoration of a sovereign autonomy in speech, a replication of conventional
notions of mastery.
sovereignty wanes. The one who acts (who is not the same as the sovereign subject) acts precisely to the extent that he or
she is constituted as an actor and, hence, operating within a linguistic field of enabling constraints from the
outset.
They cant solve the case--Censoring words transforms politics into a fight over
language rather than the institutions that generate true violence. Perm solves
Brown 1 [Wendy Brown, professor at UC-Berkeley, 2001 Politics Out of History, p. 35-36]JFS
Speech codes kill critique, Henry Louis Gates remarked in a 1993 essay on hate speech. Although Gates was referring to what
happens when hate speech regulations, and the debates about them, usurp the discursive space in which one might have offered a
substantive political response to bigoted epithets, his point also applies to prohibitions against questioning from within selected political
practices or institutions. But turning political questions into moralistic onesas speech codes of any sort donot
only prohibits certain questions and mandates certain genuflections, it also expresses a profound hostility toward
political life insofar as it seeks to preempt argument with a legislative and enforced truth. And the realization of
that patently undemocratic desire can only and always convert emancipatory aspirations into reactionary ones. Indeed, it insulates those
aspirations from questioning at the very moment that Weberian forces of rationality and bureaucratization are quite likely to be
domesticating them from another direction. Here we greet a persistent political paradox: the moralistic defense of critical
practices, or of any besieged identity, weakens what it strives to fortify precisely by sequestering those practices
from the kind of critical inquiry out of which they were born. Thus Gates might have said, Speech codes, born of social
critique, kill critique. And, we might add, contemporary identity-based institutions, born of social critique, invariably become conservative
as they are forced to essentialize the identity and naturalize the boundaries of what they once grasped as a contingent effect of historically
specific social powers. But moralistic reproaches to certain kinds of speech or argument kill critique not only by
displacing it with arguments about abstract rights versus identity-bound injuries, but also by configuring political injustice and
political righteousness as a problem of remarks, attitude, and speech rather than as a matter of historical,
political-economic, and cultural formations of power. Rather than offering analytically substantive accounts
of the forces of injustice or injury, they condemn the manifestation of these forces in particular remarks or
events. There is, in the inclination to ban (formally or informally) certain utterances and to mandate others, a
politics of rhetoric and gesture that itself symptomizes despair over effecting change at more significant
levels. As vast quantities of left and liberal attention go to determining what socially marked individuals say,
how they are represented, and how many of each kind appear in certain institutions or are appointed to various commissions, the
sources that generate racism, poverty, violence against women, and other elements of social injustice
remain relatively unarticulated and unaddressed. We are lost as how to address those sources; but rather than examine this
loss or disorientation, rather than bear the humiliation of our impotence, we posture as if we were still fighting the big and
good fight in our clamor over words and names. Dont mourn, moralize
Their language Ks imply a relativism about language that equates right and wrong
with effectiveness, allowing their evidence to employ a bias that you should be
skeptical toward
Hicks 9 (Stephen PhD Phil, http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/hicks-ep-ch4.pdf)
This explains the harsh nature of much postmodern rhetoric. The regular deployments of ad hominem, the setting up of straw men, and
the regular attempts to silence opposing voices are all logical consequences of the postmodern epistemology of
language. Stanley Fish, as noted in Chapter Four, calls all opponents of racial preferences bigots and lumps them in with
the Ku Klux Klan. Andrea Dworkin calls all heterosexual males rapists6 and repeatedly labels Amerika a fascist state.7 With
such rhetoric, truth or falsity is not the issue: what matters primarily is the languages effectiveness. If we now add to the
postmodern epistemology of language the far Left politics of the leading postmodernists and their firsthand
awareness of the crises of socialist thought and practice, then the verbal weaponry has to become explosive.
their attitudes in non-debate contexts. Under these conditions, the debaters will not have the moderating effects of the critic or
the other debaters. Simply put, sexism at home or at lunch is worse than sexism in a debate round because in the
round there is a critic to provide negative though not punitive feedback. The publicization effects of
censorship are well known. "Psychological studies reveal that whenever the government attempts to censor speech,
the censored speech - for that very reason - becomes more appealing to many people" (Strossen 559). These studies would
suggest that language which is critiqued by language "arguments" becomes more attractive simply because of the critique. Hence
language "arguments" are counterproductive. Conclusion Rodney Smolla offered the following insightful assessment of the
interaction between offensive language and language "arguments": The battle against {offensive speech} will be fought
most effectively through persuasive and creative educational leadership rather than through punishment and coercion...
The sense of a community of scholars, an island of reason and tolerance, is the pervasive ethos. But that ethos should be advanced with
education, not coercion. It should be the dominant voice of the university within the marketplace of ideas; but it should not preempt that
marketplace. (Smolla 224-225).1 We emphatically concur. It is our position that a debater who feels strongly enough about a
given language "argument" ought to actualize that belief through interpersonal conversation rather than
through a plea for censorship and coercion. Each debater in a given round has three minutes of cross-examination time during
which he or she may engage the other team in a dialogue about the ramifications of the language the opposition has just used. Additionally
even given the efficacy of Rich Edwards' efficient tabulation program, there will inevitably be long periods between rounds during which
further dialogue can take place.
a problem by editing the language which is symptomatic of that problem will generally trade off with solving
the reality which is the source of the problem . There are several reasons why this is true. The first, and most obvious, is that
we may often be fooled into thinking that language "arguments" have generated real change. As Graddol and
Swan observe, "when compared with larger social and ideological struggles, linguistic reform may seem quite a
trivial concern," further noting "there is also the danger that effective change at this level is mistaken for real social change" (Graddol &
Swan 195). The second reason is that the language we find objectionable can serve as a signal or an indicator of the
corresponding objectionable reality. The third reason is that restricting language only limits the overt expressions of any
objectionable reality, while leaving subtle and hence more dangerous expressions unregulated. Once we drive the objectionable
idea underground it will be more difficult to identify, more difficult to root out, more difficult to counteract,
and more likely to have its undesirable effect. The fourth reason is that objectionable speech can create a
"backlash" effect that raises the consciousness of people exposed to the speech. Strossen observes that "ugly and
abominable as these expressions are, they undoubtably have had the beneficial result of raising social consciousness about the underlying
societal problem..." (560).
*Biopower
No Link Government
No link their link arguments presume governmentality and biopower remain
linked this relationship is fundamentally broken now
Fraser 3 (Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Politics and Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty of Political
and Social Science (The New School for Social Research) (Nancy, Constellations, Vol 10, No 2, p. 165-166)
The preceding account of fordist discipline assumes at least three empirical propositions that no longer hold true
today. It assumes, first, that social regulation is organized nationally, that its object is a national population living in a
national society under the auspices of a national state, which in turn manages a national economy. It assumes, second, that social
regulation constitutes a nonmarketized counterpart to a regime of capital accumulation, that it is concentrated in
the zone of the social, and that its characteristic institutions are the governmental and nongovernmental agencies that comprise the
(national) social-welfare state. It assumes, finally, that regulations logic is subjectifying and individualizing, that in
enlisting individuals as agents of self-regulation, it simultaneously fosters their autonomy and subjects them
to control, or rather, it fosters their autonomy as a means to their control. If these propositions held true in
the era of fordism, their status is doubtful today. In the post-89 era of postfordist globalization, social interactions
increasingly transcend the borders of states. As a result, the ordering of social relations is undergoing a major shift in scale,
equivalent to denationalization and transnationalization. No longer exclusively a national matter, if indeed it ever was, social ordering now
occurs simultaneously at several different levels. In the case of public health, for example, country-based agencies are
increasingly expected to harmonize their policies with those at the transnational and international levels. The
same is true for policing, banking regulation, labor standards, environmental regulation, and counterterrorism.9 Thus, although
national ordering is not disappearing, it is in the process of being decentered as its regulatory mechanisms
become articulated (sometimes cooperatively, sometimes competitively) with those at other levels. What is emerging, therefore, is a
new type of regulatory structure, a multi-layered system of globalized governmentality whose full contours have yet to be determined. At
the same time, regulation is also undergoing a process of desocialization . In todays hegemonic neoliberal variant of
globalization, massive, unfettered, transnational flows of capital are derailing the Keynesian project of national
economic steering. The tendency is to transform the fordist welfare state into a postfordist competition state, as countries scramble
to cut taxes and eliminate red tape in hopes of keeping and attracting investment.10 The resulting race to the bottom fuels
myriad projects of deregulation, as well as efforts to privatize social services, whether by shifting them onto the market or by
devolving them onto the family (which means, in effect, onto women). Although the extent of such projects varies from country to country,
the overall effect is a global tendency to destructure the zone of the (national) social, formerly the heartland of
fordist discipline. Decreasingly socially concentrated, and increasingly marketized and familialized, postfordist processes of social ordering
are less likely to converge on an identifiable zone. Rather, globalization is generating is a new landscape of social
regulation, more privatized and dispersed than any envisioned by Foucault. Finally, as fordist discipline
wanes in the face of globalization, its orientation to self-regulation tends to dissipate too. As more of the
work of socialization is marketized, fordisms labor-intensive individualizing focus tends to drop out. In
psychotherapy, for example, the time-intensive talk-oriented approaches favored under fordism are increasingly excluded from insurance
coverage and replaced by instant-fix pharma-psychology. In addition, the enfeeblement of Keynesian state steering means more
unemployment and less downward redistribution, hence increased inequality and social instability. The resulting vacuum is more likely to
be filled by outright repression than by efforts to promote individual autonomy. In the US, accordingly, some observers posit the
transformation of the social state into a prison-industrial complex, where incarceration of male minority youth becomes the favored
policy on unemployment.11 The prisons in question, moreover, have little in common with the humanist panopticons described by
Foucault. Their management often subcontracted to for-profit corporations, they are less laboratories of self-reflection than hotbeds of
racialized and sexualized violence of rape, exploitation, corruption, untreated HIV, murderous gangs, and murderous guards. If such
prisons epitomize one aspect of postfordism, it is one that no longer works through individual self-governance. Here, rather, we encounter
the return of repression, if not the return of the repressed. In all these respects, postfordist globalization is a far cry from
logic of social engineering. This notion is not at all at odds with the core of Foucauldian (and Peukertian)
theory. Democratic welfare states are regimes of power/knowledge no less than early twentieth-century
totalitarian states; these systems are not opposites, in the sense that they are two alternative ways of
organizing the same thing. But they are two very different ways of organizing it. The concept power should
not be read as a universal staring night of oppression, manipulation, and entrapment, in which all political
and social orders are grey, are essentially or effectively the same. Power is a set of social relations, in
which individuals and groups have varying degrees of autonomy and effective subjectivity. And discourse is,
as Foucault argued, tactically polyvalent. Discursive elements (like the various elements of biopolitics) can
be combined in different ways to form parts of quite different strategies (like totalitarianism or the
democratic welfare state); they cannot be assigned to one place in a structure, but rather circulate.
that it is impossible to be in a world without biopower, because as soon as a constraint has been lifted,
another one sets into place. Foucault uses the historical example of the French revolution and how the
French overthrew their government, a constraint that led to their suffering at the time, but then had to face
a new governmental power. The power structures circulate if individualism is preserved, and that, Foucault
explains, is the sole priority of a society: to ensure that it does circulate. As soon we try to infringe on a
constraint and use power to limit it, we are stopping this cycle, only increasing biopower within the
constraint itself.
constraint of individualism in itself, therefore any attempt other than the attempt of the individual to end
that constraint is already deviating that biopolitical limitation the individual . Attempting to change a
constraint will only lead to a greater biopolitical constraint over the individual. Any attempt to end the
suffering of the individual will only lead to more suffering. Essentially, this action is the destruction of that
constraint altogether, but a destruction of a constraint can be as devastating, if not more devastating, than
the status quo itself. The constraint cannot be destroyed by any means, it can only be limited through use of power over the initiation
of that constraint. What can seem like agonizing to one outside the constraint can be a simple form of life for another within it. Changing
that form of life tremendously increases the power structures over the individuals within the constraint, further leading to power over that
individual's mind. Interference can devastate the mind of the individual, making the lifting of the constraint even more difficult. In
particular instances, it takes more exertion of power to deviate a system than to control it. Breaking free in
essence, is the only possible change that can be enacted by the individual as a means of deviating the
constraint. Examining the contextuality of the historical abstract can lead us to a possible non-biopolitical deviation of the status quo.
Instead of attempting the impossible, destroying the constraint altogether, the individual can lift that constraint through the visualization
of its context. Only when the individual discovers the source of his suffering can he truly be free from that constraint.
the emergence of a form of power that seizes us in the core of our being, subjection, the investment by
power of the formation of our subjectivity itself. Nevertheless, for Foucault, resistance is not merely a permanent
possibility, but an inevitable corollary of power. Resistance is presupposed by power: to induce someone to
do something implies that they otherwise would have done something else. This means that power can only
occur where there is already an inclination that runs contrary to it . As Foucault puts it, Resistance comes first.*iii+ Still,
power is ubiquitous, as is resistance animal activity inevitably implies the existence of both, as a matter of
some animals trying to get others to conform to their will, and the inevitable excess of the will of the victim
over that of the wielder of power.
can also empower politically simply because the exclusion is already a form of address which unwittingly
provides implicit recognition. Power includes by excluding, but in a way that might be different from a ban.
This insight is precisely the one that Foucault was developing in his last writings, in his definition of freedom as "agonism" (Foucault 1983:
208-228): "Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free" (221). The hierarchical, exclusionary essence of
social structures demands as a condition of its possibility an equivalent implicit recognition of all, even in the mode of exclusion. It is on
the basis of this recognition that politics can sometimes arise as the vindication of equality and the challenge
to exclusion. 49. This proposal rests on a logic that challenges Agambens reduction of the overcoming of the classical
conceptualisation of potentiality and actuality to the single Heideggerian alternative. Instead of collapsing or dualistically separating
potentiality and actuality, one would find in Hegels modal logic a way to articulate their negative, or reflexive, unity, in the notion of
contingency. Contingency is precisely the potential as existing, a potential that exists yet does not exclude the possibility of its opposite
(Hegel 1969: 541-554). Hegel can lead the way towards an ontology of contingency that recognises the place of contingency at the core of
necessity, instead of opposing them. The fact that the impossible became real vindicates Hegels claim that the impossible should
not be opposed to the actual. Instead, the possible and the impossible are only reflected images of each
other and, as actual, are both simply the contingent. Auschwitz should not be called absolute necessity
(Agamben 1999a: 148), but absolute contingency. The absolute historical necessity of Auschwitz is not "the
radical negation" of contingency, which, if true, would indeed necessitate a flight out of history to conjure up
its threat. Its absolute necessity in fact harbours an indelible core of contingency, the locus where political
intervention could have changed things, where politics can happen. Zygmunt Baumans theory of modernity and his
theory about the place and relevance of the Holocaust in modernity have given sociological and contemporary relevance to this alternative
historical-political logic of contingency (Bauman 1989). 50. In the social and historical fields, politics is only the name of the contingency
that strikes at the heart of systemic necessity. An ontology of contingency provides the model with which to think together both the
possibility, and the possibility of the repetition of, catastrophe, as the one heritage of modernity, and the contingency of catastrophe as
logically entailing the possibility of its opposite. Modernity is ambiguous because it provides the normative resources
to combat the apparent necessity of possible systemic catastrophes. Politics is the name of the struggle
drawing on those resources. 51. This ontology enables us also to rethink the relationship of modern subjects
to rights. Modern subjects are able to consider themselves autonomous subjects because legal recognition
signals to them that they are recognised as full members of the community, endowed with the full capacity
to judge. This account of rights in modernity is precious because it provides an adequate framework to
understand real political struggles, as fights for rights. We can see now how this account needs to be complemented by the
notion of contingency that undermines the apparent necessity of the progress of modernity. Modern subjects know that their rights are
granted only contingently, that the possibility of the impossible is always actual. This is why rights should not be taken for
granted. But this does not imply that they should be rejected as illusion, on the grounds that they were
disclosed as contingent in the horrors of the 20th century. Instead, their contingency should be the reason
for constant political vigilance. 52. By questioning the rejection of modern rights, one is undoubtedly unfaithful to the letter of
Benjamin. Yet, if one accepts that one of the great weaknesses of the Marxist philosophy of revolution was its inability to constructively
engage with the question of rights and the State, then it might be the case that the politics that define themselves as the
articulation of demands born in the struggles against injustice are better able to bear witness to the
"tradition of the oppressed" than their messianic counterparts.
the activities of, say, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or large parts of
the Department of Health and Human Servicesthe most one could argue for, I think, is a presumption that any
restriction on the rightful exercise of liberty is unconstitutional unless and until the government convinces a
hierarchy of judges that such restrictions are both necessary and proper .77 One might even argue that this
formulation is truest to the original understanding of the Constitution.78 The problem, of course, is that the courts have never read the
Constitution to include such a broad ruleand they are unlikely ever to do so. Although it is a signpost of modernity, the meaning of the
Constitution nonetheless also reflects and changes in response to the forces of modernity that include the development of biopolitics.
Without broad-based liberty claims, procedural and substantive due process provide the most obvious
avenues for relief. One of the touchstones of procedural due process, however, is the balancing of individual interests against
government interests and the interests of the process itself.79 Such claims do not prevent biopolitical regulation; rather they merely
require it to work through channels in which individuals may be heard. The fact that, for example, a welfare recipient has
the right to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner does not make the provision and
administration of welfare benefits less biopolitical in any meaningful way. The person being heard, whatever the
outcome of the hearing, has still been inspected, recorded, and placed within a rationally-defined category that is managed, perhaps
perfectly appropriately, for the greater good.
hand, at least claims to be able to both postulate the omnipresence and ubiquity of power, even as inscribed
on our very bodies, and still allow for the possibility of resistance and oppositional transformation. The
question, though, is how? How can he both universalize the domination of subjectless power and still leave
space for the empowerment of marginalized voices? In fact he sometimes uses his refusal to speak for oppositional voices as
a shield to hide behind; we cannot allow his refusal to speak for marginalized voices to excuse him from addressing the difficult questions
regarding resistancemade even more difficult, given the context of power in which resistances arise and are said to be products.This
leads us then to consider more closely his notion of resistance. Granted, he need not provide a blueprint for the form oppositional
struggles must or should take, still, his thesis of the ubiquity of normalizing and disciplinary power, along with its
implication for his theory of the subject as an effect and also the vehicle of such power, forces us to ask
questions such as: How is resistance possible, where does it come from, why would it arise? How can we
affect conscious choices for resistance or subvert those powers which both constitute and oppress it? Does
Foucault's analysis of the ubiquity of power eliminate reference to a thinking/willing subject who might
motivate resistances? In short, the thesis that "we cannot abandon our own order, even where we would
attack it," renders Foucault's theory of power problematic for the possibility of resistance, and an evaluator
of Foucault interested in the formation of oppositional struggles, and the voicing of marginalized voices, can
both respect his refusal to shape those struggles while at the same time refusing to thereby be put off from
demanding a more constructive (or even coherent) notion of resistance and transformation.
regulate the culture via legislation advancing its version of the common good, perhaps it is inevitable that
biopower more often gives rise to a more objectionable brand of biopolitics. For instance, in the realm of
reproductive rights one finds increasing attempts by the state to control mechanisms relating to the biological
beginnings of life, even as individuals attempt to assert claims to autonomy and rights to self-determination. It is
to this particular expression of biopolitics that our discussion now returns.
instead, the conflict led to the Afghan War which lasted ten years, taking an enormous human and economic
toll. Only after the Soviet withdrawal could the Afghan people take control of their government. The Soviets
let the Afghan people take care of it themselves. It so happened to be that when the Soviets lifted their
biopower, the Taliban seized control of the government and exerted far greater biopower than before. The
truth is, however, that lifting a biopolitical constraint is an endless process. Foucault himself states the fact that it is
impossible to be in a world without biopower, because as soon as a constraint has been lifted, another one
sets into place. Foucault uses the historical example of the French revolution and how the French overthrew
their government, a constraint that led to their suffering at the time, but then had to face a new
governmental power. The power structures circulate if individualism is preserved, and that , Foucault explains, is
the sole priority of a society: to ensure that it does circulate. As soon we try to infringe on a constraint and
use power to limit it, we are stopping this cycle, only increasing biopower within the constraint itself.
power in general, i.e. the social clearing, or is he describing bio-power, which is uniquely discrete, continuous and
bottom-up? This seeming problem is cleared up, I think, if we remember Heidegger's account of onto-theology. Like the
understanding of being, power, always, in fact, "comes from everywhere," in that it is embodied in the
background of everyday practices. But what these background practices have made possible up to recently is monarchical and
state-juridical power, i.e. power administered from above. But now, Foucault tells us, things have changed: To conceive of power [in these
terms] is to conceive of it in terms of a historical form that is characteristic of our societies: the juridical monarchy. Characteristic yet
transitory. For while many of its forms have persisted to the present, it has gradually been penetrated by quite new mechanisms of power
that are probably irreducible to the representation of law. Just as for Heidegger the technological understanding of being, by treating
everything as resources, levels being to pure ordering, and so gets rid of all onto-theology --the idea that some entity is the ground of
everything -- so bio-power reveals the irrelevance of questions of the legitimacy of the state as the source of
power. Foucault says: At bottom, despite the differences in epochs and objectives, the representation of
power has remained under the spell of monarchy. In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the
king. Hence the importance that the theory of power gives to the problem of right and violence, law and illegality, freedom and will, and
especially the state and sovereignty. That is, just as total mobilization cannot be understood by positing subjects and
objects, so normalization works directly through new sorts of invisible, continuous practices of control
Foucault calls micro-practices. The everyday person to person power relations whose coordination produces the
style of any regime of power are, indeed, everywhere . But in earlier regimes of power they are not micro-practices. Only
disciplinary power works meticulously by ordering every detail. So, while for Foucault all forms of power are bottom up and the
understanding of power as monarchical misses this important fact, nonetheless bio-power is bottom-up in a new and
dangerously totalizing way, so that understanding power on the model of the power of the king (the equivalent
of onto-theology) covers up an important change in how our practices are working.
Agamben 2k (professor of philosophy at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, Means Without
End: Notes on Politics, p. 113-115.) PMK
While the state in decline lets its empty shell survive everywhere as a pure structure of sovereignty and domination, society as a whole is instead irrevocably delivered to the form of consumer society, that is, a society in
which the sole goal of production is comfortable living. The theorists of political sovereignty, such as Schmitt, see in all this the
surest sign of the end of politics. And the planetary masses of consumers, in fact, do not seem to foreshadow any new figure of the polis (even
when they do not simply relapse into the old ethnic and religious ideals). However, the problem that the new politics is facing is precisely this: is
it possible to have a political community that is ordered exclusively for the full enjoyment of wordly life? But, if we look closer, isnt this
precisely the goal of philosophy? And when modern political thought was born with Marsilius of Padua, wasnt it defined precisely by the
recovery to political ends of the Averroist concepts of sufficient life and well-living? Once again Walter Benjamin, in the TheologicoPolitical
Fragment, leaves no doubts regarding the fact that The order of the profane should be erected on the idea of happiness. The definition of
the concept of happy life remains one of the essential tasks of the coming thought (and this should be achieved in such a way that this
concept is not kept separate from ontology, because: being: we have no experience of it other than living itself). The happy life on
which political philosophy should be founded thus cannot be either the naked life that sovereignty posits as a
presupposition so as to turn it into its own subject or the impenetrable extraneity of science and of modern
biopolitics that everybody today tries in vain to sacralize. This happy life should be, rather, an absolutely
profane sufficient life that has reached the perfection of its own power and of its own communicabilitya life
over which sovereignty and right no longer have any hold.
instead, the conflict led to the Afghan War which lasted ten years, taking an enormous human and economic
toll. Only after the Soviet withdrawal could the Afghan people take control of their government. The Soviets
let the Afghan people take care of it themselves. It so happened to be that when the Soviets lifted their
biopower, the Taliban seized control of the government and exerted far greater biopower than before . The
truth is, however, that lifting a biopolitical constraint is an endless process. Foucault himself states the fact that it is
impossible to be in a world without biopower, because as soon as a constraint has been lifted, another one
sets into place. Foucault uses the historical example of the French revolution and how the French overthrew
their government, a constraint that led to their suffering at the time, but then had to face a new
governmental power. The power structures circulate if individualism is preserved, and that , Foucault explains, is
the sole priority of a society: to ensure that it does circulate. As soon we try to infringe on a constraint and
use power to limit it, we are stopping this cycle, only increasing biopower within the constraint itself.
Dreyfus 04 (Hubert, PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University and Professor at U.C. Berkeley, Being and
Power: Heidegger and Foucault, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_being.html) PMK
This raises an important question. When Foucault describes power as "coming from everywhere" is he describing power
in general, i.e. the social clearing, or is he describing bio-power, which is uniquely discrete, continuous and bottomup? This seeming problem is cleared up, I think, if we remember Heidegger's account of onto-theology. Like the
understanding of being, power, always, in fact, "comes from everywhere," in that it is embodied in the
background of everyday practices. But what these background practices have made possible up to recently is monarchical and statejuridical power, i.e. power administered from above. But now, Foucault tells us, things have changed: To conceive of power [in these terms] is
to conceive of it in terms of a historical form that is characteristic of our societies: the juridical monarchy. Characteristic yet transitory. For while
many of its forms have persisted to the present, it has gradually been penetrated by quite new mechanisms of power that are probably
irreducible to the representation of law. Just as for Heidegger the technological understanding of being, by treating everything as resources,
levels being to pure ordering, and so gets rid of all onto-theology --the idea that some entity is the ground of everything -- so bio-power
reveals the irrelevance of questions of the legitimacy of the state as the source of power. Foucault says: At
bottom, despite the differences in epochs and objectives, the representation of power has remained under the
spell of monarchy. In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king. Hence the importance that the theory of
power gives to the problem of right and violence, law and illegality, freedom and will, and especially the state and sovereignty. That is, just as
total mobilization cannot be understood by positing subjects and objects, so normalization works directly
through new sorts of invisible, continuous practices of control Foucault calls micro-practices. The everyday person to
person power relations whose coordination produces the style of any regime of power are, indeed, everywhere .
But in earlier regimes of power they are not micro-practices. Only disciplinary power works meticulously by ordering every detail. So, while for
Foucault all forms of power are bottom up and the understanding of power as monarchical misses this important fact, nonetheless bio-
power is bottom-up in a new and dangerously totalizing way, so that understanding power on the model of the
power of the king (the equivalent of onto-theology) covers up an important change in how our practices are working.
No Impact
Totalitarianism and Ethnic Racism caused the Holocaust, NOT biopolitics.
Dickinson 4 (Edward, Biopolitics, Facism, Democracy, Central European History v37 n1, Ass. Prof. Hist. at
University of Cincinnati)
In an important programmatic statement of 1996 Geoff Eley celebrated the fact that Foucaults ideas have fundamentally
directed attention away from institutionally centered conceptions of government and the state . . . and
toward a dispersed and decentered notion of power and its microphysics. 48 The broader, deeper, and less visible
ideological consensus on technocratic reason and the ethical unboundedness of science was the focus of his interest.49 But the
power-producing effects in Foucaults microphysical sense (Eley) of the construction of social bureaucracies
and social knowledge, of an entire institutional apparatus and system of practice ( Jean Quataert), simply do
not explain Nazi policy.50 The destructive dynamic of Nazism was a product not so much of a particular
modern set of ideas as of a particular modern political structure, one that could realize the disastrous potential of those
ideas. What was critical was not the expansion of the instruments and disciplines of biopolitics, which occurred everywhere in Europe.
Instead, it was the principles that guided how those instruments and disciplines were organized and used, and
the external constraints on them. In National Socialism, biopolitics was shaped by a totalitarian conception of
social management focused on the power and ubiquity of the vlkisch state. In democratic societies, biopolitics has
historically been constrained by a rights-based strategy of social management. This is a point to which I will return
shortly. For now, the point is that what was decisive was actually politics at the level of the state. A comparative
framework can help us to clarify this point. Other states passed compulsory sterilization laws in the 1930s indeed,
individual states in the United States had already begun doing so in 1907. Yet they did not proceed to the next steps adopted
by National Socialism mass sterilization, mass eugenic abortion and murder of the defective. Individual . gures in, for example,
the U.S. did make such suggestions. But neither the political structures of democratic states nor their legal and
political principles permitted such policies actually being enacted. Nor did the scale of forcible sterilization in
other countries match that of the Nazi program. I do not mean to suggest that such programs were not
horrible; but in a democratic political context they did not develop the dynamic of constant radicalization
and escalation that characterized Nazi policies. The radicalizing dynamic of the Nazi regime was determined, however, not
only by its structure but also by its ideology. The attentive reader will have noticed a degree of conceptual slippage in many of the
quotations used in the foregoing pages between ethnic racialism and eugenics, between eugenic murder and the Final Solution. This
slippage between racialism and racism is not entirely justified. After the rigors of the Goldhagen debate, it takes
some sangfroid to address the topic of anti-Semitism in Germany at all.But it appears from the current literature that there was no direct
connection between anti- Semitism and eugenic ideas. Some German eugenicists were explicitly racist; some of those
racist eugenicists were anti-Semites; but anti-Semitism was not an essential part of eugenic thought. As Peter
Fritzsche among many others has pointed out, racism really is at the heart of the Nazi discourse of segregation,
and the fantastic vision of all-out racial war that motivated the Nazis is not explained merely by the logic
of enlightened rationalism, technocracy, and scientism .51 Eugenics did not pave the way for the murder of
millions of Jews. Ethnic racism and particularly anti-Semitism did.
No Impact
The final solution was the byproduct of a unique understanding of the relationship
between Jews and Germans. Biopolitics does NOT necessitate extermination of the
Other.
Dickinson 4 (Edward, Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy, Central European History v37 n1, Ass. Prof. Hist. at
University of Cincinnati)
And yet, it is clear that anti-Semitism and eugenics did not imply, presuppose, or necessitate each other . The Nazi
variant of biopolitical modernity was in fact quite idiosyncratic. It is very difficult to assess the place of explicitly ethnic
racist thinking in the development of eugenics; but despite a resurgence of interest in the differing character and fate of ethnic groups
after about 1927, on the whole ethnic racism appears to have become gradually less interesting to eugenicists
from the late imperial period forward. The Nazis shifted the balance quite suddenly and forcibly in favor of
ethnic racial thought after 1933. It may
for many people in the early 1930s; but it seems equally likely that the moderation of eugenics in the 1920s may have increased the appeal
of the Social Democratic Party (as the strongest advocate, among the non-Nazi political parties, of eugenic policies) while actually
discrediting the Nazis more dated ideas.53 In fact, it may be useful to consider not only what eugenic ideas and
euthanasia policy contributed to the implementation of the Final Solution, but also how momentum toward
the Final Solution shaped Nazi eugenics. The context for Nazi eugenic policies was shaped fundamentally by
the Nazis sense that Germany was in a permanent racial war with the Jews (or communists and democrats, which
in the Nazi worldview amounted to the same thing). The urgency of Nazi eugenic policy the scope of forcible sterilization, the
murder of tens of thousands of defective people derived not just from the normal fear of degeneration typical of
eugenics since its inception, but also from a quite extraordinary understanding of the immediacy of racial
confrontation.
The holocaust was the result of a series of unique conditions, not the endpoint of all
biopolitical regimes.
Ranibow and Rose 3 (Paul/Nikolas, Thoughts On The Concept of Biopower Today, The Molecular Science
Institute, Professor of Anthropology at University of Chicago, Professor of Sociology at James Martin White)
Holocaust is undoubtedly one configuration that modern biopower can take. This, as we have already implied, was
also Foucaults view in 1976: racisms allows power to sub-divide a population into subspecies known as races, to fragment it, and to allow a
relationship in which the death of the other, of the inferior race, can be seen as something that will make life in general healthier and
purer: racism justifies the deathfunction in the economy of biopower by appealing to the principle that the
death of others makes one biologically stronger insofar as ones is a member of a race or a population (2003:
258). The Nazi regime was, however, exceptional a paroxysmal development: We have, then, in Nazi society
something that is really quite extraordinary: this is a society which has generalized biopower in an absolute sense, but
which has also generalized the sovereign right to kill to kill anyone, meaning not only other people but also
its own people a coincidence between a generalized biopower and a dictatorship that was at once absolute
and retransmitted throughout the entire social body (2003: 260). Schmitt argued, erroneously in our view, that the state
of exception was the guarantee of modern constitutional power. But the articulation of biopower in the form it took under
National Socialism was dependent upon a host of other historical, moral, political and technical conditions.
Holocaust is neither exemplary of thanato-politics, nor is it in some way the hidden dark truth of biopower.
*Security
end of dialogue provoked by apocalypse? For what it is worth, my apocalyptic counsel is that we must attempt an
openness to dialogue even in this absolute vulnerability and risk. The world is certainly not a safe place, and it will
surely continue not to be such, short of something apocalyptic. Needed, ever again, is something on the order of an apocalypse,
not just a new attitude or a new anything that we can ourselves simply produce. Philosophy itself, thought through to its own end,
can hardly resist concluding that only a god can save us (Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten). But can not our attitude make a
difference- perhaps make possible the advent of apocalypse beyond all our powers, even those of our own imaginations? I will wager an
answer to this question only in the operative mood. May we bring a voice speaking up for mutual understanding onto
the horizon of discourse in our time, a time marked by the terrifying sign of apocalyptic discourse. May we do
this not by judging apocalyptic discourse, but by accepting that our condition as humans is as much to be judged as to judge and
that all our relatively justified judgments are such to the extend that they offer themselves to be judged rather than standing on their own
ground as absolute. In other words, may our discussions remain open to apocalypse , open to what we cannot represent or
prescribe but can nevertheless undergo in a process of transformation that can be shared with others and that may be
genuinely dialogue.
Our encounter with the apocalypse is an aesthetic approach this opens up space for
imagining a new world
Franke 9 (Associate Prof of Comparative lit at Vanderbilt William Poetry and Apocalypse Page 40) JFS
Envisioning an end to the game of the present in all spheres of social and political life, with its embittered alignments and its
entrenched impasses, as insidiously difficult as that may be for us to do (as Becketts Endgame so wittily insinuates), enables us to
envisage, and so also to beginning to enact, new possibilities. And yet, apocalypse, as the advent of the end, is nothing that
we can do, though we can be aware of and perhaps cooperate with its happening to us. Indeed, from a certain point of view,
this is already what our tradition itself is all about. Apocalyptic, as the ultimate expression of transcendent, metaphysical vision in
poetry, rather than being taken as an aberration, symptomatic of a pathology of Western civilization that could be cured,
should be accepted as part of the whole and as standing for the possibility of renewal inherent within this tradition.
From this type of imagination, new and different proposals unceasingly draw their inspiration. All representations and
imaginings have their limits. Apocalypse thematizes this inherent destiny for every order of imagination to have its end and give place to a
new, thitherto unimaginable order. Every imagination of the end in apocalyptic style is the occasion for new orientation
toward the open space we call the future. This future, however, is not for us to name, in the end, since it is beholden to the Other.
And this may mean and has meant, in the terms forged by a certain tradition embracing Dante, Celan, and Stevens being beholden to
an apocalypse, to the revelation of the eternity that surpasses us utterly and unutterably.
with apocalypticist positions, and so can do no more than turn their violence in the opposite direction. The
bracketing or banning of apocalyptic discourse, even when only by ostracizing it, does not solve the problem posed by this
form of communication so difficult to accommodate alongside other in an open, neutral forum of debate. It shifts the imposition of
an absolute from the level of the expressed, the propositions affirmed, to the unending, free, unjudged and unjudgeable
status of conversation itself: anything may be said, but nothing must be said that would call into question this
activity of unrestricted discourse and mark its limits against something that could perhaps reduce it to vanity and, in effect, end it. That
would be a threat to the dialogues own unimpeachable power of self-validation. Higher powers, such as those revealed, at least
purportedly, by apocalypse, must be leveled in the interest of this power of our own human Logos that we feel ourselves to be in command
of, or that is, at any rate, relatively within our control. Of course, the we here depends on who is the most dialectically powerful, and its
established not without struggle and conflict.
Rejection of the apocalyptic vision entrenches an apocalyptic theology which dictates absolute
truth censorship of aesthetics destroys dialogue
Franke 9 (Associate Prof of Comparative lit at Vanderbilt William Poetry and Apocalypse Page 83-84)JFS
Yet this rejection of apocalyptic vision itself involves a claim, and it is not without pretenses of its own. It
wishes to draw the bounds of legitimate representations and to circumscribe what ought and ought not be
brought to the table as lying within the compass of discussion. And to set the limits and establish the law for
representation is in and of itself to assume a position beyond all representation . 97 There is perhaps an
apocalyptic theology (or its negation and inversion) buried even here, a belief about what ultimately is true or, at any rate,
about what makes a difference or really matters in the end. Rather than attempting to exorcise this residual haunting
presence of truth, or at least of a pretended disclosure of what is decisive in the end, I submit that we should accept it as
belonging to the very dialogical nature of our common pursuit. For to the extend that we gather to talk and exchange
views with one another and argue over them, we are seeking some generally valid and communicable understanding .
And yet the dialogue can have no pre-established framework that would not be biased the work of some and the imposition on others.
Any delimitation of a framework for dialogue, unless they have previously accepted the conditions that are not of their own making, does
presuppose what in crucial respects is indistinguishable from an absolute theological type of authority, a sort of positively given
revelation.
Predictions Good
Predictions are imperfect but inevitable and critical to preventing major war
Kagan & Kagan 2k (Donald & Frederick, American Enterprise, While America Sleeps, p. 5)
Predicting the future is a difficult and uncertain business, but for those who make international and military policy
there is no escape from it. Any future course of action rests on assumptions about how events are likely to develop and
how political and military leaders will try to shape and react to them. Simply to project the behavior of the past in a straight line
into the future is a mistake, for history does not repeat itself with precision. A far worse mistake, however, is to project a future
that is entirely different from the past, to assume that all previous human behavior has been made irrelevant by some developments or
discoveries. It is tempting to construct a vision of the future that, however pleasing, is entirely unprecedented and
most unlikely. Men have been making such optimistic projections since the eighteenth century, at least, predicting the end
of war because of new conditions and always turning out to be devastatingly wrong. For all its shortcomings, past
behavior remains the most reliable predictor of future behavior. History can enlighten critical elements of the debate
over our national security policy by examining what once was as a way of conceiving what might be. The center of any argument
against the need to maintain large armed forces and an active foreign policy as a way of preventing war is
the refusal to admit that we could face a serious threat in a very short time . A corollary to that refusal is the
assumption that warning signs will be seen well before the threat materializes.
Kurasawa 4 (Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology @ York University of Toronto, Cautionary Tales: The Global
Culture of Prevention and the Work of Foresight,
http://www.yorku.ca/kurasawa/Kurasawa%20Articles/Constellations%20Article.pdf, AD: 7/11/09) jl
In addition, farsightedness has become a priority in world affairs due to the appearance of new global threats and
the resurgence of older ones. Virulent forms of ethno-racial nationalism and religious fundamentalism that had mostly been kept
in check or bottled up during the Cold War have reasserted themselves in ways that are now all-too-familiar civil warfare, genocide,
ethnic cleansing, and global terrorism. And if nuclear mutually assured destruction has come to pass, other dangers are filling
the vacuum: climate change, AIDS and other diseases (BSE, SARS, etc.), as well as previously unheralded genomic perils
(genetically modified organisms, human cloning). Collective remembrance of past atrocities and disasters has
galvanized some sectors of public opinion and made the international communitys unwillingness to
adequately intervene before and during the genocides in the ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda, or to take remedial steps in the case
of the spiraling African and Asian AIDS pandemics, appear particularly glaring. Returning to the point I made at the beginning of this
paper, the significance of foresight is a direct outcome of the transition toward a dystopian imaginary (or what Sontag has called the
imagination of disaster).11 Huxleys Brave New World and Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, two groundbreaking dystopian novels of the
first half of the twentieth century, remain as influential as ever in framing public discourse and understanding current techno-scientific
dangers, while recent paradigmatic cultural artifacts films like The Matrix and novels like Atwoods Oryx and Crake reflect and give
shape to this catastrophic sensibility.12 And yet dystopianism need not imply despondency, paralysis, or fear. Quite the opposite, in fact,
since the pervasiveness of a dystopian imaginary can help notions of historical contingency and fallibilism gain traction against their
determinist and absolutist counterparts.13 Once we recognize that the future is uncertain and that any course of
action produces both unintended and unexpected consequences, the responsibility to face up to potential
disasters and intervene before they strike becomes compelling . From another angle, dystopianism lies at the core of
politics in a global civil society where groups mobilize their own nightmare scenarios (Frankenfoods and a lifeless planet for
environmentalists, totalitarian patriarchy of the sort depicted in Atwoods Handmaids Tale for Western feminism, McWorld and a global
neoliberal oligarchy for the alternative globalization movement, etc.). Such scenarios can act as catalysts for public debate and sociopolitical action, spurring citizens involvement in the work of preventive foresight. Several bodies of literature have touched upon this seachange toward a culture of prevention in world affairs, most notably just-war theory,14 international public policy research,15 and writings
from the risk society paradigm.16 Regardless of how insightful these three approaches may be, they tend to skirt over much of what is
revealing about the interplay of the ethical, political, and sociological dynamics that drive global civil society initiatives aimed at averting
disaster. Consequently, the theory of practice proposed here reconstructs the dialogical, public, and transnational work of farsightedness,
in order to articulate the sociopolitical processes underpinning it to the normative ideals that should steer and assist in substantively
thickening it. As such, the establishment of a capacity for early warning is the first aspect of the question that we need to tackle.
predictions helps inform policy discourse, because it helps make sense of events unfolding in the world
around us. And by clarifying points of disagreement, making explicit forecasts helps those with contradictory
views to frame their own ideas more clearly. Furthermore, trying to anticipate new events is a good way to test
social science theories, because theorists do not have the benefit of hindsight and therefore cannot adjust
their claims to fit the evidence (because it is not yet available). In short, the world can be used as a laboratory to
decide which theories best explain international politics. In that spirit, I employ offensive realism to peer into
the future, mindful of both the benefits and the hazards of trying to predict events.
political forecasting is bound to include some error . Those who venture to predict, as I do here, should therefore proceed
these hazards,
social scientists should nevertheless use their theories to make predictions about the future . Making predictions helps
inform policy discourse, because it helps make sense of events unfolding in the world around us. And by clarifying points of disagreement, making explicit
forecasts helps those with contradictory views to frame their own ideas more clearly. Furthermore, trying to
anticipate new events is a good way to test social science theories, because theorists do not have the benefit of
hindsight and therefore cannot adjust their claims to fit the evidence (because it is not yet available). In short, the world can
be used as a laboratory to decide which theories best explain international politics . In that spirit I employ offensive realism to
with humility, take care not to exhibit unwarranted confidence, and admit that hindsight is likely to reveal surprises and mistakes. Despite
peer into the future, mindful of both the benefits and the hazards of trying to predict events.
Identifying causal forces of past events helps predict the future and better enable
policymakers to respond to future crises
Walt 5 (Prof, Kennedy School of Government @ Harvard (Stephen M., Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2005. 8:2348,
pg. 31, The Relationship Between Theory and Policy in International Relations,
http://www.iheid.ch/webdav/site/political_science/shared/political_science/3452/walt.pdf)
PREDICTION IR theories can also help policy makers anticipate events. By identifying the central causal forces at
work in a particular era, theories offer a picture of the world and thus can provide policy makers with a better
understanding of the broad context in which they are operating. Such knowledge may enable policy makers to
prepare more intelligently and in some cases allow them to prevent unwanted developments. To note an obvious
example, different theories of international politics offered contrasting predictions about the end of the Cold War. Liberal theories generally offered optimistic
forecasts, suggesting that the collapse of communism and the spread of Western-style institutions and political forms heralded an unusually peaceful era
(Fukuyama 1992, Hoffman et al. 1993, Russett 1995, Weart 2000). By contrast, realist
Sokal 96 (Professor of Physics at New York University, 1996 (A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html)
Why did I do it? While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious. What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of
nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of
objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical relevance. At its
best, a journal like Social Text raises important questions that no scientist should ignore -- questions, for example, about how corporate
and government funding influence scientific work. Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to further the discussion of these matters.
In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the
problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There is a real world; its
properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend
otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths -the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language. Social Text's acceptance of
my article exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory -- meaning postmodernist literary theory -- carried to its logical extreme. No
wonder they didn't bother to consult a physicist. If all is discourse and ``text,'' then knowledge of the real world is
superfluous; even physics becomes just another branch of Cultural Studies. If, moreover, all is rhetoric and ``language
games,'' then internal logical consistency is superfluous too : a patina of theoretical sophistication serves equally well.
Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue; allusions, metaphors and puns substitute for evidence and logic. My own article is, if
anything, an extremely modest example of this well-established genre. Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness
is emanating from the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face. For most of the past two centuries, the
Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of
objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful -- not to mention
being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent turn of many ``progressive'' or ``leftist'' academic humanists and social scientists
toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for
progressive social critique. Theorizing about ``the social construction of reality'' won't help us find an effective
treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in
history, sociology, economics and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity.
Kwan and Tsang 1 (Kai-Man, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University,
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, Eric W. School of Business Administration, Wayne State University, Detroit,
Michigan, U.S.A, December, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 22, No. 12 (Dec., 2001), pp. 1163-1168, Realism
and Constructivism in Strategy Research: A Critical Realist Response to Mir and Watson,) CH
The problem with Mir and Watson here is again their failure to distinguish different kinds of real- ism. It is
important to distinguish a dogmatic realist from a critical realist. Both believe that theories can be true or
false, and rigorous scientific research can move us progressively towards a true account of phenomena.
Dogmatic realists further believe that current theories correspond (almost) exactly to reality, and hence
there is not much room for error or critical scrutiny. This attitude is inspired by (but does not strictly follow
from) a primitive version of positivism which believes in indubitable observations as raw data and that an
infallible scientific method can safely lead us from these data to universal laws. In contrast, critical realists, though
believing in the possibility of progress towards a true account of phenomena, would not take such progress for granted. Exactly because
they believe that reality exists independently of our minds, our theories, observations and methods are all fallible. Critical realists also insist
that verification and falsification are never conclusive, especially in social sciences. So critical testing of theories and alleged universal laws
need to be carried out continuously. A more detailed description of critical realism, which is now a growing movement transforming the
intellectual scene.
Realism Inevitable
The power politics of realism enter into any possible system even a critical approach
leads back into realism.
Murray 97 (Alastair J.H., Prof. of Poli. Theory at Univ. of Edinburgh, Reconstructing Realism: Between Power
Politics and Cosmopolitan Ethics, pp. 130)
The other members of the group varied in their emphases, but there are clear parallels to this formulation in their conceptions which
suggest its employment as a framework to assist understanding. The extent to which power infuses all social relations ,
the extent to which all social structures are marred by relations of domination and subordination, forms a pervasive theme
throughout their work. It was this awareness of the intrusion of power into all social relations that generated their emphasis
on 'the inevitable imperfections of any organization that is entangled with the world . l 1 " As Morgenthau once
put it, the ideal 'can never be fully translated into political reality but only at best approximated ... there shall always be an
element of political domination preventing the full realization of equality and freedom' . "9 The principal focus
of this critique of the corrupting influence of power was, of course, international relations. Here, economic and legal
mechanisms of domination are ultimately reduced to overt violence as the principal mechanism of
determining political outcomes. The diffusion of power between states effectively transforms any such
centrally organized mechanisms into simply another forum for the power politics of the very parties that it is
supposed to restrain. As Kennan put it: The realities of power will soon seep into anv legalistic structures which
we erect to govern international life. They will permeate it. They will become the content of it; and the structure will
replace the form.' 1:1 The repression of such power realities is , however, impossible; the political actor must
simply 'seek their point of maximum equilibrium '. This conception of the balance of ultimately aimed, in Morgenthaus
words, 'to maintain the stability of the system without destroying the multiplicity of the elements composing it'. First,
it was designed to prevent universal domination, to act as a deterrent to the ambitions of any dominant great power and as a
safeguard against any attempt to establish its sway over the rest of the system.]-'4 Second, it was designed to preserve the
independence and freedom of the states of the system, particularly the small states. 1" I Only through the operation of the balance of
power between great powers can small powers gain any genuine independence and any influence in the international system.1-"
However, as Morgenthau pointed out, whilst, in domestic society, the balance of power operates in a context characterized by the
existence of a degree of consensus and by the presence of a controlling central power, these factors are lacking in international
relations and, thus, the balance is both much more important and yet much more flawed, the maintenance of equilibrium being
achieved at the price of large-scale warfare and periodic eliminations of smaller states.] 7
States inherently compete with each other through any means necessary realism is
the only possible system.
Mearsheimer 1 (John, Prof. of Poli Sci at the Univ. of Chicago, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 35)
All states are influenced by this logic, which means that not only do they look for opportunities to take advantage of one
another, they also work to ensure that other states do not take advantage of them. After all, rival states are driven by the same logic, and
most states are likely to recognize their own motives at play in the actions of other states. In short, states ultimately pay attention
to defense as well as offense. They think about conquest themselves, and they work to check aggressor
states from gaining power at their expense. This inexorably leads to a world of constant security
competition, where states are willing to lie, cheat, and use brute force if it helps them gain advantage over their
rivals. Peace, if one defines that concept as a state of tranquility or mutual concord, is not likely to break out in this world.
States naturally act based upon external influences of competition this forces
realism to be the only viable system of international relations.
Mearsheimer 1 (John, Prof. of Poli Sci at the Univ. of Chicago, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 17)
This gloomy view of international relations is based on three core beliefs. First, realists, like liberals, treat states as the principal actors in
world politics. Realists focus mainly on great powers, however, because these states dominate and shape international
politics and they also cause the deadliest wars. Second, realists believe that the behavior of great powers is
influenced mainly by their external environment, not by their internal characteristics . The structure of the
international system, which all slates must deal with, largely shapes their foreign policies. Realists tend mint to draw sharp distinctions
between good and bad states, because all great powers act according to the same logic regardless of their culture,
political system, or who runs the government.27 It is therefore difficult to discriminate among states, save for differences in
relative power. In essence, great powers are like billiard balls that vary only in size.28 Third, realists hold that calculations about
power dominate states thinking, and that states compete for power among themselves. That competition
sometimes necessitates going to war, which is considered an acceptable instrument of statecraft. To quote Carl von Clausewitz,
the nineteenth-century military strategist, war is a continuation of politics by other means.29 Finally, a zero-sum quality
characterizes that competition, sometimes making it intense and unforgiving. States may cooperate with each other on
occasion, but at root they have conflicting interests.
behaviors are extremely complex, they are almost never explainable through a single factor. Decades of
research have led most analysts to reject monocausal explanations of war. For instance, international relations theorist J.
David Singer suggests that we ought to move away from the concept of causality since it has become associated
with the search for a single cause of war; we should instead redirect our activities toward discovering
explanationsa term that implies multiple causes of war, but also a certain element of randomness or chance
in their occurrence.
connection with the war system. There is much more that could be said about any one of these structures, and
other factors which could be examined. Here I wish to note one important point: attention should not be focussed on
one single factor to the exclusion of others. This is often done for example by some Marxists who look only at
capitalism as a root of war and other social problems, and by some feminists who attribute most problems to
patriarchy. The danger of monocausal explanations is that they may lead to an inadequate political practice. The
revolution may be followed by the persistence or even expansion of many problems which were not addressed
by the single-factor perspective. The one connecting feature which I perceive in the structures underlying war is an unequal
distribution of power. This unequal distribution is socially organised in many different ways, such as in the large-scale structures for state
administration, in capitalist ownership, in male domination within families and elsewhere, in control over knowledge by experts, and in the
use of force by the military. Furthermore, these different systems of power are interconnected. They often support each other, and
sometimes conflict. This means that the struggle against war can and must be undertaken at many different levels. It
ranges from struggles to undermine state power to struggles to undermine racism, sexism and other forms of domination at the level of the
individual and the local community. Furthermore, the different struggles need to be linked together. That is the motivation for analysing the
roots of war and developing strategies for grassroots movements to uproot them
No Impact
The security dilemma doesnt apply to situations where states pose genuine threats
Schweller 96
(Randall, professor of political science at Ohio State, Security Studies, Spring, p. 117-118)
The crucial point is that the security dilemma is always apparent, not real. If states are arming for something other than security;
that is, if aggressors do in fact exist, then it is no
seeks expansion, then the security dilemma similarly fades away. It is only the misplaced fear that others harbor aggressive
designs that drive the security dilemma.
most obvious embarrassment to the spiral model is posed when an aggressive power will not respond in kind to
conciliation. Minor concessions, the willingness to treat individual issues as separate from the basic conflict, and even an offer to
negotiate can convince an aggressor that the status quo power is weak. Thus in 1903 Russia responded to British
ex-pressions of interest in negotiating the range of issues that divided them by stiffening her position in the Far East, thus
increasing the friction that soon led to the Russo-Japanese War. 54 Whatever the underlying causes of Anglo-German
differences before World War I, once the naval race was under way the kaiser interpreted any hesitancy in the British build-ing as indicating
that, as he had predicted, the British economy could not stand the strain. As he read a dispatch describing a debate on naval esti- mates in
Parliament in which more attention was paid to the costs of the program than to the two-power standard, the kaiser scribbled in the mar-gin:
They respect our firm will, and must bow before the accomplished fact *of the Gennan naval program+! Now further quiet building. 55 And,
as events of the 1930s show, once an aggressor thinks the defenders are weak, it may be impossible to change this
image short of war. Unambig-uous indicators of resolve are infrequent, and the aggressor is apt to think that the
defender will back down at the last minute. Concessions, made in the incorrect belief that the other is a status quo power are
especially apt to be misinterpreted if the other does not under- stand that the state's policy is based on a false image. The spiral theorists have
made an important contribution by stressing the serious conse-quences that flow from the common situation when a status quo power does
not realize that others see it as aggressive, but they have ignored the other side of this coin. Aggressors often think that their
intentions are obvious to others and therefore conclude that any concessions made to them must be the result
of fear and weakness. Thus, by the time of Mu-nich, Hitler seems to have believed that the British realized his ambitions were not
limited to areas inhabited by Germans and concluded that Chamberlain was conciliatory not because he felt Germany
would be sated but because he lacked the resolve to wage a war to oppose Ger-man domination of the Continent.
Since Hitler did not see that British policy rested on analysis of German intentions that was altered by the seizure of the non-German parts of
Czechoslovakia he could not under-stand why British policy would be different in September 1939 than it had been a year earlier. 56 Even when
the adversary aims for less than domination, concessions granted in the context of high conflict will lead to new demands if the adversary
concludes that the state's desire for better relations can be ex-ploited. Thus Germany increased her pressure on France in the first Moroccan
crisis after the latter assumed a more conciliatory posture and fired the strongly anti-German foreign minister. Similar dynamics pre-ceded the
outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. More recently. the United States responded to Japanese concessions in the fall of 1941 not by making
counter-concessions, but by issuing more extreme demands. Less frequently, even a status quo power may interpret conciliation as indicating
that the other side is so weak that expansion is possible at little risk. As Herman Kahn notes, prophecies can be self-denying. To trust a
person and place him in a position where he can make gains at your expense can awaken his acquisitiveness and lead him to behave in an
untrustworthy manner.57 Similarly, a states lowered level of arms can tempt the other to raise, rather than lower, its
forces. For example, the United States probably would not have tried to increase NATO's canven-tional forces in the 1960s were it not for the
discovery that the Soviet Union had fewer troops than had been previously believed, thereby bringing within grasp the possibility of defending
West Europe without a resort to nuclear weapons. It is also possible that the Soviets drastically increased their misslle forces in the late 1960s
and early 1970s not only because of the costs of remaining in an inferior position but also because they thought the United States would allow
them to attain parity.
domestic processes, Wendt has overlooked the irony of constructivism: that the mutability of human ideational
structures at the do-mestic level reinforces leaders great uncertainty about future intentions at the interstate
level. The security dilemma, with all its implications, is real and per-vasive. It cannot be talked away through
better discursive practices. It must be faced.
No Solvency
Abandoning realism doesnt eliminate global violencealternative worldviews will
be just as violent or worse
O'Callaghan 2 (Terry, lecturer in the school of International Relations at the University of South Australia,
International Relations and the third debate, ed: Jarvis, 2002, p. 79-80) [George = postmodernist guy]
In fact, if we explore the depths of George's writings further, we find remarkable brevity in their scope, failing to engage with practical issues
beyond platitudes and homilies. George, for example, is concerned about the violent, dangerous and war-prone character of the present
international system. And rightly so. The world is a cruel and unforgiving place, especially for those who suffer the
indignity of human suffering beneath tyrannous leaders, warrior states, and greedy self-serving elites. But surely
the problem of violence is not banished from the international arena once the global stranglehold of realist
thinking is finally broken? It is important to try to determine the levels of violence that might be expected in a nonrealist world. How will
internecine conflict be managed? How do postmodernists like George go about managing conflict between marginalized
groups whose "voices" collide? It is one thing to talk about the failure of current realist thinking, but there is
absolutely nothing in George's statements to suggest that he has discovered solutions to handle events in
Bosnia, the Middle East, or East Timor. Postmodern approaches look as impoverished in this regard as do realist perspectives.
Indeed, it is interesting to note that George gives conditional support for the actions of the United States in Haiti and Somalia "because on
balance they gave people some hope where there was none" (George, 1994:231). Brute force, power politics, and interventionism do
apparently have a place in George's postmodem world. But even so, the Haitian and Somalian cases are hardly in the same intransigent
category as those of Bosnia or the Middle East. Indeed, the Americans pulled out of Somalia as soon as events took a turn for the worse and, in
the process, received a great deal of criticism from the international community. Would George have done the same thing? Would he
have left the Taliban to their devices in light of their complicity in the events of September 11? Would he have left the
Somalians to wallow in poverty and misery? Would he have been willing to sacrifice the lives of a number of young men and women (American,
Australian, French, or whatever) to subdue Aidid and his minions in order to restore social and political stability to Somalia? To be blunt, I
wonder how much better off the international community would be if Jim George were put in charge of foreign affairs. This is not a fatuous
point. After all, George wants to suggest that students of international politics are implicated in the trials and tribulations of international
politics. All of us should be willing, therefore, to accept such a role, even hypothetically. I suspect, however, that were George actually to
confront some of the dilemmas that policymakers do on a daily basis, he would find that teaching the Bosnian
Serbs about the dangers of modernism, universalism and positivism, and asking them to be more tolerant and
sensitive would not meet with much success. True, it may not be a whole lot worse than current realist approaches, but the point is
that George has not demonstrated how his views might make a meaningful difference. Saying that they will is not
enough, especially given that the outcomes of such strategies might cost people their lives. Nor, indeed, am I asking
George to develop a "research project" along positivist lines. On the contrary, I am merely asking him to show how his position
can make a difference to the "hard cases" in international politics. My point is thus a simple one. Despite George's
pronouncements, there is little in his work to show that he has much appreciation for the kind of moral
dilemmas that Augustine wrestled with in his early writings and that confront human beings every day. Were this the case, George
would not have painted such a black-and- white picture of the study of international politics.
**Misc
*Narratives
the narrow group of interest will share the agenda. One might hope that progressives could be somewhat open-minded. But as
Stanley Fish has observed, "to say that one's mind should be open sounds fine until you realize that it is equivalent
to saying that one's mind should be empty of commitments , should be a purely formal device." n165 Assuming that a
broad base of progressive factions can mold diverse individuals -with distinct notions of identity-into a cohesive
whole is simply asking the framework of progressive thought to do something that, in the end, it cannot.
Contemporary narratives of identity seek to resolve the questions of authority that plague progressivism, but they
lack the power that religion once held. In an earlier era, progressives could unite behind an over-arching paradigm that commanded
them to "do as they would be done by." n166 Since widely shared cultural assumptions fueled the progressive agenda
of early decades, slavery was vanquished and monopolies were crushed. But increasingly subjective narratives of
identity command obeisance only within narrow spheres , not translating easily into the realities of other social worlds. The
interpretation of the world facilitated by these narrow identities-including a well-defined course of future action-is
accessible only to those who share their cultural assumptions. This interpretation may, in fact, challenge the social worlds
established by other progressives. In the end, it seems that progressive narratives, like Frye's romances, end where they began,
but with a difference. n167 Questions of authority and feelings of dissonance remain in the larger progressivism, but those
who gain new identities now live in temporary worlds of absolutes.
generated interactively through normatively structured performances and interactions. Even the most personal of
narratives rely on and invoke collective narratives symbols, linguistic formulations, structures, and vocabularies of
motive without which the personal would remain unintelligible and uninterpretable. Because of the conventionalized
character of narrative, then, our stories are likely to express ideological effects and hegemonic assumptions. [ 10] We
are as likely to be shackled by the stories we tell (or that are culturally available for our telling) as we are by the form of
oppression they might seek to reveal. In short, the structure, the content, and the performance of stories as they are defined and
regulated within social settings often articulate and reproduce existing ideologies and hegemonic relations of power and
inequality. It is important to emphasize that narratives do more than simply reflect or express existing ideologies. Through
their telling, our stories come to constitute the hegemony that in turn shapes social lives and conduct "The
hegemonic is not simply a static body of ideas to which members of a culture are obliged to conform" (Silberstein 1988:127). Rather,
Silberstein writes, hegemony has "a protean nature in which dominant relations are preserved while their
manifestations remain highly flexible. The hegemonic must continually evolve so as to recuperate alternative
hegemonies." In other words, the hegemonic gets produced and evolves within individual, seemingly unique, discrete
personal narratives. Indeed, the resilience of ideologies and hegemony may derive from their articulation within
personal stories. Finding expression and being refashioned within the stories of countless individuals may lead to a
polyvocality that inoculates and protects the master narrative from critique. The hegemonic strength of a
master narrative derives, Brinkley Messick (1988:657) writes, from "its textual, and lived heteroglossia *, s]ubverting
and dissimulating itself at every turn"; thus ideologies that are encoded in particular stories are "effectively
protected from sustained critique" by the fact that they are constituted through variety and contradiction.
Research in a variety of social settings has demonstrated the hegemonic potential of narrative by illustrating how narratives can contribute to the
reproduction of existing structures of meaning and power. First, narratives can function specifically as mechanisms of social
control (Mumby 1993). At various levels of social organization ranging from families to nation-states storytelling instructs us
about what is expected and warns us of the consequences of nonconformity . Oft-told family tales about lost fortunes or
spoiled reputations enforce traditional definitions and values of family life (Langellier & Peterson 1993). Similarly, bureaucratic
organizations exact compliance from members through the articulation of managerial prerogatives and
expectations and the consequences of violation or challenge (Witten 1993). Through our narratives of courtship, lost accounts,
and failed careers, cultures are constructed; we "do" family, we "do" organization, through the stories we tell (Langellier & Peterson 1993).
Second, the hegemonic potential of narrative is further enhanced by narratives' ability to colonize consciousness.
Well-plotted stories cohere by relating various (selectively appropriated) events and details into a temporally
organized whole (see part I above). The coherent whole, that is, the configuration of events and characters arranged in believable
plots, preempts alternative stories. The events seem to speak for themselves; the tale appears to tell itself. Ehrenhaus (1993) provides
a poignant example of a cultural meta-narrative that operates to stifle alternatives. He describes the currently dominant cultural narrative
regarding the United States's involvement in the Vietnam War as one that relies on themes of dysfunction and rehabilitation. The story, as
Ehrenhaus summarizes it, is structured as a social drama which characterizes both the nation and individual Vietnam veterans as having
experienced a breakdown in normal functioning only recently resolved through a process of healing. This narrative is persuasive because
it reiterates and elaborates already existing and dominant metaphors and interpretive frameworks in American
culture concerning what Philip Rieff (1968) called the "triumph of the therapeutic" (see also Crews 1994). Significantly, the therapeutic motif
underwriting this narrative depicts veterans as emotionally and psychologically fragile and, thus, disqualifies them as creditable witnesses. The
connection between what they saw and experienced while in Vietnam and what the nation did in Vietnam is severed. In other words, what
could have developed as a powerful critique of warfare as national policy is contained through the image of
illness and rehabilitation, an image in which "'healing' is privileged over 'purpose' [and] the rhetoric of recovery
and reintegration subverts the emergence of rhetoric that seeks to examine the reasons that recovery is even
necessary" (Ehrenhaus 1993:83). Constituent and distinctive features of narratives make them particularly potent
forms of social control and ideological penetration and homogenization. In part, their potency derives from the fact
that narratives put "forth powerful and persuasive truth claims claims about appropriate behavior and values that are
shielded from testing or debate" (Witten 1993:105). Performative features of narrative such as repetition, vivid
concrete details, particularity of characters, and coherence of plot silence epistemological challenges and often
generate emotional identification and commitment. Because narratives make implicit rather than explicit claims
regarding causality and truth as they are dramatized in particular events regarding specific characters, stories elude challenges,
testing, or debate. Van Dijk (1993) has reported, for instance, that stories containing negative images and stereotypes of
nonwhite persons are less subject to the charge of racism when they recount personal experiences and
particular events. Whereas a general claim that a certain group is inferior or dangerous might be contested on empirical grounds, an
individual story about being mugged, a story which includes an incidental reference to the nonwhite race of the assailant, communicates a similar message but
under the protected guise of simply stating the "facts." The causal significance or relevance of the assailant's race is, in such a tale, strongly implied
but not subject to challenge or falsifiability. Thus representations, true and/or false, made implicitly without either validation
or contest, are routinely exchanged in social interactions and thereby occupy social space. Third, narratives
contribute to hegemony to the extent that they conceal the social organization of their production and
plausibility. Narratives embody general understandings of the world that by their deployment and repetition
come to constitute and sustain the life-world. Yet because narratives depict specific persons existing in
particular social, physical, and historical locations, those general understandings often remain unacknowledged.
By failing to make these manifest, narratives draw on unexamined assumptions and causal claims without
displaying these assumptions and claims or laying them open to challenge or testing. Thus, as narratives depict
understandings of particular persons and events, they reproduce, without exposing, the connections of the specific story
and persons to the structure of relations and institutions that made the story plausible . To the extent that the
hegemonic is "that order of signs and practices, relations and distinctions, images and epistemologies that
come to be taken-for-granted as the natural and received shape of the world and everything that inhabits it"
(Comaroff & Comaroff 1991), the unarticulated and unexamined plausibility is the story's contribution to hegemony.
The following two examples drawn from recent sociolegal research illustrate the ways in which legally organized narrativity helps
produce the taken-for-granted and naturalized world by effacing the connections between the particular and
the general. Sara Cobb (1992) examines the processes through which women's stories of violence are "domesticated " (tamed
and normalized) within mediation sessions. Cobb reports that the domestication of women's stories of violence are
a consequence of the organization of the setting in which they are told: within mediation, the storyteller and her
audience are situated within a normative organization that recognizes the values of narrative participation over
any substantive moral or epistemological code or standard. Being denied access to any external standards, the stories the women
tell cannot therefore be adjudged true or compelling. The stories are interpreted as one version of a situation in which
"multiple perspectives are possible." Cobb demonstrates how this particular context of elicitation specifically buries and
silences stories of violence, effectively reproducing women's relative powerlessness within their families. With
women deprived of the possibility of corroboration by the norms of the mediation session, their stories of
violence are minimized and "disappeared." As a consequence, the individual woman can get little relief from the situation that
brought her to mediation: she is denied an individual legal remedy (by being sent from court to mediation) and at the same time denied access
to and connections with any collective understanding of or response to the sorts of violence acknowledged by the law (through the
organization of the mediation process). Through this process, "violence, as a disruption of the moral order in a
community, is made familiar (of the family) and natural the extraordinary is tamed, drawn into the place where
we eat, sleep and [is] made ordinary" (ibid., p. 19). Whereas mediation protects narratives from an interrogation of their truth
claims, other, formal legal processes are deliberately organized to adjudicate truth claims. Yet even in these settings, certain types of truth
claims are disqualified and thus shielded from examination and scrutiny. The strong preference of courts for individual narratives operates to impede
the expression (and validation) of truth claims that are not easily represented through a particular story. Consider, for example, the Supreme Court's
decision in the McClesky case (1986). The defendant, a black man who had been convicted of the murder of a police officer, was sentenced to
death. His Supreme Court appeal of the death sentence was based on his claim that the law had been applied in a racially discriminatory way,
thus denying him equal protection under the law. As part of McClesky's appeal, David Baldus, a social scientist, submitted an amicus brief in
which he reported the results of his analysis of 2,000 homicide cases in that state (Baldus 1990). The statistical data revealed that black
defendants convicted of killing white citizens were significantly more likely to receive the death sentence than white defendants convicted of
killing a black victim. Despite this evidence of racial discrimination, the Court did not overturn McClesky's death sentence. The majority
decision, in an opinion written by Justice Powell, stated that the kind of statistical evidence submitted by Baldus was simply not sufficient to
establish that any racial discrimination occurred in this particular case. The court declared, instead, that to demonstrate racial discrimination, it
would be necessary to establish that the jury, or the prosecutor, acted with discriminatory purpose in sentencing McClesky.[ 11] Here, then, an
unambiguous pattern of racial inequity was sustained through the very invocation of and demand for subjectivity (the jury's or prosecutor's
state of mind) and particularity (the refusal to interpret this case as part of a larger category of cases) that are often embodied in narratives. In
this instance, relative powerlessness and injustice (if one is to believe Baldus's data) were preserved, rather than challenged, by the demand for
a particular narrative about specific concrete individuals whose interactions were bounded in time and space. In other words, the Court held
that the legally cognizable explanation of the defendant's conviction could not be a product of inferential or deductive comprehension (Mink
1970; Bruner 1986). Despite its best efforts, the defense was denied discursive access to the generalizing, and authoritative, language of social
logico-deductive science and with it the type of "truths" it is capable of representing. The court insists on a narrative that effaces the
relationship between the particular and the general, between this case and other capital trials in Georgia. Further, the McClesky decision
illustrates not only how the demand for narrative particularity may reinscribe relative powerlessness by obscuring the connection between the
individual case and larger patterns of institutional behavior; it also reveals how conventionalized legal procedures impede the demonstration of
that connection.[ 12] The court simultaneously demanded evidence of the jurors' states of mind and excluded such evidence. Because jury
deliberations are protected from routine scrutiny and evaluation, the majority demanded a kind of proof that is institutionally unavailable.
Thus, in the McClesky decision, by insisting on a narrative of explicit articulated discrimination, the court calls for a kind of narrative truth that
court procedures institutionally impede. As these examples suggest, a reliance on or demand for narrativity is neither unusual
nor subversive within legal settings. In fact, given the ideological commitment to individualized justice and case-bycase processing that characterizes our legal system, narrative, relying as it often does on the language of the
particular and subjective, may more often operate to sustain, rather than subvert, inequality and injustice. The
law's insistent demand for personal narratives achieves a kind of radical individuation that disempowers the
teller by effacing the connections among persons and the social organization of their experiences. This argument is
borne out if we consider that being relieved of the necessity, and costs, of telling a story can be seen as liberatory and collectively empowering.
Insofar as particular and subjective narratives reinforce a view of the world made up of autonomous individuals interacting only in immediate
and local ways, they may hobble collective claims and solutions to social inequities (Silbey 1984). In fact, the progressive achievements of
workers' compensation, no-fault divorce, no-fault auto insurance, strict liability, and some consumer protection regimes derive directly from
the provision of legal remedies without the requirement to produce an individually crafted narrative of right and liability.
explosive counter-tales, it is also possible to make a fetish of breaking silence. Even more than a fetish, it is
possible that this ostensible tool of emancipation carries its own techniques of subjugation--that it converges
with non-emancipatory tendencies in contem- porary culture (for example, the ubiquity of confessional discourse and rampant
personalization of political life), that it establishes regulatory norms, coincides with the disciplinary power of confession,
in short, feeds the powers we meant to starve . While attempting to avoid a simple reversal of feminist valorizations of breaking
silence, it is this dimension of silence and its putative opposite with which this Article is concerned. In the course of this work, I want to make
the case for silence not simply as an aesthetic but a political value, a means of preserving certain practices and dimensions of existence from
regulatory power, from normative violence, as well as from the scorching rays of public exposure. I also want to suggest a link between, on the
one hand, a certain contemporary tendency concerning the lives of public figures--the confession or extraction of every detail of private and
personal life (sexual, familial, therapeutic, financial) and, on the other, a certain practice in feminist culture: the compulsive putting into public
discourse of heretofore hidden or private experiences--from catalogues of sexual pleasures to litanies of sexual abuses, from chronicles of
eating disorders to diaries of homebirths, lesbian mothering, and Gloria Steinam's inner revolution. In linking these two phenomena--the
privatization of public life via the mechanism of public exposure of private life on the one hand, and the compulsive/compulsory cataloguing of
the details of women's lives on the other--I want to highlight a modality of regulation and depoliticization specific to our age that is not simply
confessional but empties private life into the public domain, and thereby also usurps public space with the relatively trivial,
rendering the political personal in a fashion that leaves injurious social, political and economic powers
unremarked and untouched. In short, while intended as a practice of freedom (premised on the modernist conceit that the truth shall
make us free), these productions of truth not only bear the capacity to chain us to our injurious histories as well as
the stations of our small lives but also to instigate the further regulation of those lives, all the while depoliticizing their conditions.
interpellating women as unified in their victimization, and casting the "free speech" of men as that which "silences" and
thus subordinates women, MacKinnon not only opposes bourgeois liberty to substantive equality, but
potentially intensifies the regulation of gender and sexuality in the law, abetting rather than contesting the production of
gender identity as sexual. In short, as a regulatory fiction of a particular identity is deployed to displace the hegemonic
fiction of universal personhood, the discourse of rights converges insidiously with the discourse of disciplinarity
to produce a spectacularly potent mode of juridical-regulatory domination. Again, let me emphasize that the
problem I am seeking to delineate is not specific to MacKinnon or even feminist legal reform. Rather,
MacKinnon's and kindred efforts at bringing subjugated discourses into the law merely constitute examples of
what Foucault identified as the risk of re-codification and re- colonisation of "disinterred knowledges" by those "unitary
discourses, which first disqualified and then ignored them when they made their appearance." n23 They
exemplify how the work of breaking silence can metamorphose into new techniques of domination , how our
truths can become our rulers rather than our emancipators, how our confessions become the norms by which we are
regulated.
counter-cultures of resistance . . . when confessing injury becomes that which attaches us to the injury, paralyzes us within
it, and prevents us from seeking or even desiring a status other than injured. In an age of social identification through attributes
marked as culturally significant--gender, race, sexuality, and so forth--confessional discourse, with its truth-bearing status in a postepistemological universe, not only regulates the confessor in the name of freeing her as Foucault described that logic, but
extends beyond the confess- ing individual to constitute a regulatory truth about the identity group. Confessed
truths are assembled and deployed as "knowledge" about the group. This phenomenon would seem to undergird a range of
recurring troubles in feminism, from the "real woman" rejoinder to post-structuralist deconstructions of her, to totalizing descriptions of
women's experience that are the inadvertent effects of various kinds of survivor stories. Thus, for example, the porn star who feels miserably
exploited, violated and humiliated in her work invariably monopolizes the truth about sex work; as the girl with math anxieties constitutes the
truth about women and math; as eating disor- ders have become the truth about women and food; as sexual abuse and viola- tion occupy the
knowledge terrain of women and sexuality. In other words, even as feminism aims to affirm diversity among women and women's experiences, confession as the site of production of truth and its convergence with feminist suspicion and deauthorization of truth from other
sources tends to reinstate a unified discourse in which the story of greatest suffering becomes the true story of woman. (I think this constitutes
part of the rhetorical power of MacKinnon's work; analytically, the epistemological superiority of confes- sion substitutes for the older, largely
discredited charge of false consciousness). Thus, the adult who does not suffer from her or his childhood sexual experi- ence, the lesbian who
does not feel shame, the woman of color who does not primarily or "correctly" identify with her marking as such--these figures are excluded as
bonafide members of the categories which also claim them. Their status within these discourses is that of being "in denial," "passing" or being a
"race traitor." This is the norm-making process in feminist traditions of "breaking silence" which, ironically, silence and exclude
the very women these traditions mean to empower. (Is it surprising, when we think in this vein, that there is so little feminist writing on
heterosexual pleasure?) But if these practices tacitly silence those whose experiences do not parallel those whose suffering is
most marked (or whom the discourse produces as suffering markedly), they also condemn those whose sufferings they record to a
permanent identification with that suffering. Here, we experience a temporal ensnaring in 'the folds of our own discourses'
insofar as we identify ourselves in speech in a manner that condemns us to live in a present dominated by the past. But what if
speech and silence aren't really opposites? Indeed, what if to speak incessantly of one's suffering is to silence the possibilities of
overcoming it, of living beyond it, of identifying as something other than it? What if this incessant speech not only overwhelms the
experiences of others, but alternative (unutterable? traumatized? fragmentary? inassimilable?) zones of one's own experience?
Conversely, what if a certain modality of silence about one's suffering--and I am suggesting that we must consider modalities of silence as
varied as modalities of speech and discourse--is to articulate a variety of possibilities not otherwise available to the sufferer?
Victimization turns and outweighs the case causes oppression and denies agency
Kappeller 95 (Susanne, Associate Prof @ Al-Akhawayn University, The Will to Violence: The Politics of
Personal Behavior, pg. 18)
There cannot therefore in the context of specific womens actions be continued and undifferentiated talk of womens
powerlessness ~ viewed simply in relation to men, the state, the power of leading capitalists or any other more powerful groups
which can always be found. The discussion about power relations among women or within the womens movement should have
once and for all dispelled the simplistic view of women as powerless, impotent or victims. On the contrary, we
are trying to gain an understanding of the position each of us has in a variety of power structures, where we are
sometimes on the side of the oppressed, sometimes of the oppressors, in a complex network of relative power relations which have to be
specifically analysed in each situation and cannot be determined simply in terms of social identities. Moreover, feminism has produced an
analysis if not of action generally, at any rate of sexual violence which not only emphasizes the abusers will and choice of action, but also
uniquely recognizes the survivors action of resisting, and in this her will to resist. While violence constitutes precisely the
violators attempt to reduce his victims freedom of action to nought where the ultimate consequence is indeed her total
victimization in death the survivors survival means that she has recognized and made use of her remaining, even if minimal, scope for
action. Feminist analysis sees in the survivor not a passive victim, but a person and agent who has successfully sought to resist. This means
recognizing even in her virtual powerlessness the still existing potential for action. Resistance by definition means acting in
situations of violence and oppression where our freedom- of action is severely limited and circumscribed. All
the more vital that we recognize what scope for action there is. All the more vital, also, that we recognize how
much greater is our scope of action and resistance most of the time, compared to the extremity of victimization
in experiences of lifethreatening violence and enslavement - which we invoke metaphorically and all too
lightly by claiming victim status on account of oppression.
an "authentic" other, as exemplified by their constant requests for more "ethnic" writings. In their search for
ethnic specimens to increase their own knowledge, white feminists were not ready to deal with the complexity
of positionality and consequently eagerly participated in the commodification of ethnic identity. They
contributed to "a fetishization of women of color that once again reconstitutes them as other caught in the gaze
of white feminist desire" (Friedmah 1995, 11). Like Costner, Western theorists are searching for the authentic other in ethnic difference
and an idealized past. In Writing Diaspora, Chow (1993) quotes a sinologist complaining about the fact that Chinese writers are losing their
heritage. She compares the orientalist's desire to save the perishing traditions of "native" cultures and the "culture collecting" tendencies of
"new historicism" to the work of primatologists capturing specimens for the safe enjoyment of white audiences at home. She also notes that in
East Asian studies, political and cultural difference is frequently used as a judgment of authenticity. "Natives" of communist China are
treated as communist specimens who ought to be faithful to their nation's official political ideology. This focus
on authenticity and national identity is often accompanied by pressures to concentrate on the "internal" and
specific problems of a culture and serves to gloss over the impact of imperialism. "Native others are thus put to
the difficult task of "authentically" representing their culture. Like the white model on the cover of a Japanese
magazine, they are forced to stage their "exoticism" and turned into cultural icons. For instance, while she acknowledges
that her work as a cultural critic is intimately related to her experience as an Asian American woman, Leslie Bow (1995) expresses her
discomfort with the fact that her Asian body serves to authenticate her "knowledge claims" about Asian Americans, Asian women, and, to some
extent, women of color within the academy. As she explains, "[This] makes me acutely aware that we can be positioned not only according to
our own agenda, but to that of others" (pp. 41-42). Furthermore, if the representation is judged inadequate--that is, if their
work does not fit the dominant group's nostalgic notion of authenticity--native others are exposed to the danger
of being charged with self-interest. Chow mentions the case of the Chinese poet Bei Dao accused of being "supremely translatable" by
a Western sinologist, or her own experience of being deemed not "really" Chinese. Others, judged to be authentic enough by the
dominant group, may become canonized in the academy and championed as a major cultural voice (Lakritz
1995). Those token "native informants" can be used to assuage the guilt and hide the ignorance of a majority concerned
with including multiculturalism in its curriculum, a majority that, in the process of granting space to select informants, keeps
control over the terms of the debate. Another side effect of this forced positioning is exclusion from the
dominant discourse. As Trinh Minh-ha (1992, 164) puts it, "We have been herded as people of color to mind only our own culture." Uma
Narayan (1989) notes that scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origin often see the "darker side" of their identity
played up, while the fact that they are distanced from the groups they are supposed to represent is ignored . On a
more general level, Chow (1993) observes that the framing of Chinese literature as minority discourse impedes its ascension to the status of
world literature, as the rhetoric of universals ensures its ghettoization. She maintains that Chinese literature is thus trapped in its minority
status because it is that status that gives it legitimacy. Furthermore, Chow (1993) notes that within Chinese studies, minority discourse is
not simply a fight for the content of oppression but also a fight for the ownership of speaking . She explains that male
Chinese authors often denounce feminist scholarship in their efforts to defend tradition, sinocentrism, and heritage. By doing so, such authors
claim the minority discourse for themselves and in turn relegate Chinese women to minority status within the field of Asian studies. Thus, a
feminist perspective may be considered compromising for minority scholars who can easily be accused of cultural betrayal (Bow 1995; Zavella
1996). For instance, bell hooks has been accused of committing acts of betrayal when turning her feminist critique to African American males.
She warns that such practices can lead to hazardous self-censorship within minority communities. As she notes, "The equation of truth-
telling with betrayal is one of the most powerful ways to promote silence" (hooks 1994, 68). The claims of Japanese
feminists have often similarly been dismissed as manifestations of Western influence (Fujieda and Fujimura-Fanselow 1995)--that is, as not
"truly" Japanese (see also Gamham 1993). But while minority discourse can be a trap, it can also serve the interests of academics in the West.
Chow (1993) charges Chinese intellectuals speaking within the American academy on behalf of the neglected other in China with a certain level
of dishonesty, especially if the former do not acknowledge the privilege afforded by their position overseas. She notes that scholars working in
Western institutions might have more in common with their white middle-class colleagues than with the women "back home" they are
supposed to represent. As she writes, "If it is true that 'our' speech takes its `raw materials' from the suffering of the
oppressed, it is also true that it takes its capital from the scholarly tradition, from the machineries of literacy
and education, which are affordable only to a privileged few " (p. 114). Bow (1995) similarly questions the self-positioning of
some scholars, including Trinh Minh-ha and Gayatri Spivak, as Third World cultural critics rather than Asian Americanists. She wonders about
the effects of disavowing American national affiliation on the part of scholars benefiting from American resources. Finally, the fact that the
act of speaking itself is necessarily embedded in structures of domination and reinforces the speaker's authority
over "subaltern subjects" spoken for or about raises the question of whether the subaltern can ever speak. According to Spivak,
she or he cannot. As Spivak puts it, "If the subaltern can speak then, thank God, the subaltern is not subaltern any more" (quoted in Chow 1993,
36). Thus, Spivak urges us to recognize the double bind of identification that either results in the subaltern's protection against her own kind
(Dunbar saving the Lakota Sioux women from the patriarchal attitudes of the men in their own culture) or in the assimilation of her voice into
the project of imperialism (Khan's "ethnic" writings embraced by white feminists).
Their narcissistic movement begs for attention, ensuring hegemonic elites will notice
it and crush it
Carlson 96 (Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature in the Ph.D. Program at the City
University of New York, Marvin A., Performance: A critical Introduction, p. 181)
So much attention has been given to the social importance of visibility, in fact, that Peggy Phelan, in her recent book Unmarked (1993), has
cautioned that the operations of visibility itself need to be subjected to more critical inquiry . In stressing performances
ability to make visible, feminists have not considered the power of the invisible, nor the unmarked quality of live performance, which becomes
itself through disappearance. Without seeking to preserve itself through a stabilized copy, it plunges into visibility
in a maniacally charged present and disappears into memory, into the realm of invisibility and the unconscious
where it eludes regulation and control. Phelan cites the performance works of Angelika Festa as work in which she appears in order
to disappear appearing as a motionless figure wearing a mirror as a mask (You Are Obsessive, Eat Something, 1984) or
hanging for hours from a slanted pole, her eyes covered and her body wrapped in cocoon like sheets (Untitled Dance (with fish and others),
1987). Traditional representation, committed to resemblance and repetition, attempts to establish and control
the other as same. This is the strategy of voyeurism, fetishism, and fixity, the ideology of the visible. If
performance can be conceived as representation without reproduction, it can disrupt the attempted totalizing
of the gaze and thus open a more diverse and inclusive representational landscape. As Elwes has noted, women
performers should never stay the same long enough to be named, fetishized .
*Irony
between speaker and auditor, or between curator and museum visitor; and "the final responsibility for deciding
whether irony actually happens in an utterance or not (and what that ironic meaning is) rests, in the end, solely with the
interpreter" (45), rather than with the initiating ironist. The political force of this shift from a receptive recognition to a
kinetic "happening," as the author herself admits, is to dislodge the commonplace that those who don't "get" particular
ironies lack the cognitive skills the rest of us enjoy. "Interpretive competence" is a term often used in speech act theory; Hutcheon
sets out to banish it--with its ironist-centric perspective--from the lexicon of irony, in favor of the more egalitarian concept of felicitously
overlapping (or not) "communities": the cultural competence that interpreters are said to need might be more a matter of overlapping
discursive communities between both participants. In a sense, then, it would be less a matter of the competence of one than of what Dan
Sperber and Diedre Wilson have called the relevance of the context to both. (96; emphasis in original)
their cage:'32 This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It's critical and
destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony's singularly unuseful when it
comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent
irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to
at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I've had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with
a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300-page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but
somehow . . . oppressed. Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing
and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative
task of then establishing a superior
governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical
rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves in other words, they just become better tyrants. And make no mistake:
irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an
ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don't really mean what I'm saying." So what does irony
as a cultural norm mean to say? That it's impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell
the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today's irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean." Anyone with the
heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the
oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without
attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate
itself.
ironized by a member of its own ranks. This choice of practical examples gently undermines Hutcheon's claim that
irony can be used by any group for any reason. Her theory, however, is useful in its very gesture to dissociate
irony from unilateral political ramifications; and her recognition of the interpretive vicissitudes that result from one's individuality
and simultaneous "membership" in a community fruitfully takes into account contemporary debates about
identity politics and obligation. Yet the emphasis on individuals and their particular matrices of discursive communities makes
any irony seem more accidental than political. Hutcheon repeatedly uses "happens" to describe irony's operation: "that's the
verb I think best describes the process." The verb is appropriate: the great, unnamed determinant of Irony's Edge is hap,
happenstance, the sheer (remote) chance that discursive communities will overlap and irony will "happen."
The chanciness of irony leads us to question--appropriately, in this self-proclaimed age of irony--whether there could
ever be a coherent "politics of irony" at all.
Irony cant challenge the dominant ideology not linked to a political movement
Bewes 97 (Timothy, Assistant Professor of English at University of Sussex, Cynicism and Postmodernity, p.
41) JFS
There is a second, more obviously `dangerous' way in which irony functions as a kind of ideological sophistry. `The greatest
advantage that irony gives to those who possess it [sic],' writes Toby Young, is `the ability to resist passionate political
movements'. The extent to which irony, or laughter, might be harnessed by forces of political reaction is obvious. Slovenian
critic Slavoj Zizek provides perhaps the most lucid account of this in the opening chapter of his The Sublime Object of Ideology. With reference
to Peter Sloterdijk's distinction between `cynicism' and `kynicism', cynicism as irony, says Zizek, has replaced the classical Marxist notion of
`false consciousness' as the dominant operational mode of ideology. The ruling ideology is no longer even meant to be taken
seriously, according to Zizek. Irony as an end in itself represents the rapid commodification of a strategy that once
provided a legitimate means of challenging the dominant ideology. Kynicism, by taking itself too seriously, becomes
vulnerable to precisely its own critical processes the moment when, as Sloterdijk says, `critique changes sides', and cynicism is perversely
reconstituted as a "negation of the negation" of the official ideology'.66 Toby Young's version of irony is a psychic reification, a critique
that no longer has an object, that exists solely and absurdly as an assertion of superiority over all conditions of
representation. Since in principle nothing escapes its invective, enlightened cynicism is in effect a disabled critique that mistakes its own
absence for a kind of universalized rigour.
is
aiming very high, at the very heart of our heartless social system, as captured well by the title of her second chapter,
Laughter Against Hubris: A Preemptive Strike. It is a matter of deploying the comedic modes against imperial hubris, as a strike against
empire itself. Irony absolutely abounds in this crazy social system, from the couple whose money went toward a
dirt bike rather than health insurance to the role that exotic financial instruments (such as the bizarre
phenomenon of naked short selling) have played in the current economic crisis, to say nothing of a seven-hundredbillion-dollar bailout for capitalists who are criminal rip-off artists on a scale and who are playing the central
contradiction of capitalism, of socialized production and privatized accumulation, at a pitch that Marx could not have imagined.
Surely there is a large role for ridicule here, but perhaps even much more for simple, outright condemnation and even more for, as Marx
said, the weapons of criticism to go over to criticism by weapons! Irony, on the one hand, works differently from simple ridicule (even
if it can fill out a certain kind of ridicule); among other complexities it always comes in at an angle, so to speak, and not simply straight on.
On the other hand, for this very reason, it may not be able to play an emancipatory role in a world that is so upside
downor, at the very least, wed better be careful in how we approach the question of a politics of irony.
capture the full range of poetic engagement she describes. However, her analysis of Baudelaires irony is a good example of
the way that she rehabilitates the theory of [End Page 161] modern poetry by mediating between seemingly opposed views. In this case,
she critiquesand yet claims for her own purposesdeconstructionisms radicalization of irony as constitutive
indeterminacy of meaning, pointing out that, while the latter captures the breakdown of meaning associated with the
psychological condition of trauma, it also threatens to undermine the critical edge of irony in a normative context (37).
She resists dehistoricizing the aporia produced by irony, insisting that even a fractured discourse exists in
historical context within a shared representational context or habitus (49).
ad lineup. The song, written in the early seventies by draft-dodging punk pioneer Iggy Stooge (aka Iggy Pop), was originally a
mock celebration of the Vietnam War and American testosterone-driven culture. Reborn and stripped of any ironic
message, "Search and Destroy" is now the soundtrack to a testosterone-driven basketball game and marketing
strategy. I suppose it's only a matter of time until "Kill the Poor" sells Nikes too , most likely providing the musical
backdrop to a scene of Nike-wearing ghetto kids playing aggressive b-ball.
spices up materialism, making it seem less banal, that is, populist, thus giving Pop art the look of deviance
characteristic of avant-garde art. In Pop art it is no more than a simulated effect. I dwell on irony because it is opposed to
spirituality, not to say incommensurate with it, and also its supposedly more knowing alternative, and because irony has become the ruling
desideratum of contemporary art, apparently redeeming its materialism. This itself is ironical, for contemporary materialistic
society and its media have discovered the advantage of being ironical about themselves, namely, it spares them the
serious trouble of having to change. This suggests that irony has become a form of frivolity. It is no longer the
revolutionary debunking understanding it once claimed to be , e.g., in Jasper Johnss American flag paintings, but an
expression of frustration.
***Kritiks Good***
**Epistemology
we
read Walt warning of the danger of postmodernism as a kind of theoretical decadence since issues of peace and
war are too important for the field [of IR] to be diverted into a prolix and self-indulgent discourse that is divorced
from the real world,12 or find Keohane asserting sniffily that Neither neorealist nor neoliberal institutionalists are content with
interpreting texts: both sets of theorists believe that there is an international political reality that can be partly understood, even if it will
always remain to some extent veiled.13 We should be wary of such denunciations precisely because the issue at stake
for the practitioners of this prolix and self-indulgent discourse is the picturing of international politics and the implications of
this picturing for the epistemic and ethical framing of the discipline , namely, the constitution of what phenomena are
appropriate objects of theoretical or other forms of enquiry. The kind of accounts provided by practitioners of this type are not
competing theories (hence Keohanes complaint) but conceptual reproblematisations of the background that
informs theory construction, namely, the distinctions, concepts, assumptions, inferences and assertability warrants that are taken
for granted in the course of the debate between, for example, neorealists and neoliberal institutionalists (hence the point-missing
character of Keohanes complaint). Thus, for example, Michael Shapiro writes: The global system of sovereign states has been
familiar both structurally and symbolically in the daily acts of imagination through which space and human identity are
construed. The persistence of this international imaginary has helped to support the political privilege of
sovereignty affiliations and territorialities. In recent years, however, a variety of disciplines have offered conceptualizations
that challenge the familiar, bordered world of the discourse of international relations.14 The point of these remarks is to call
critically into question the background picture (or, to use another term of art, the horizon) against which the disciplinary
discourse and practices of IR are conducted in order to make this background itself an object of reflection and evaluation. In a
similar vein, Rob Walker argues: Under the present circumstances the question What is to be done? invites a degree of arrogance that is
all too visible in the behaviour of the dominant political forces of our time. . . . The most pressing questions of the age call not
only for concrete policy options to be offered to existing elites and institutions, but also, and more crucially, for a serious
rethinking of the ways in which it is possible for human beings to live together.15 The aim of these comments is to draw to our
attention the easily forgotten fact that our existing ways of picturing international politics emerge from , and in
relation to, the very practices of international politics with which they are engaged and it is entirely plausible (on standard Humean
grounds) that, under changing conditions of political activity, these ways of guiding reflection and action may lose their epistemic and/or
ethical value such that a deeper interrogation of the terms of international politics is required. Whether or not one agrees with Walker that
this is currently required, it is a perfectly reasonable issue to raise. After all, as Quentin Skinner has recently reminded us, it is
remarkably difficult to avoid falling under the spell of our own intellectual heritage . . . . As we analyse and reflect on
our normative concepts, it is easy to become bewitched into believing that the ways of thinking about them
bequeathed to us by the mainstream of our intellectual traditions must be the ways of thinking about them.16 In this
respect, one effect of the kind of challenge posed by postmodernists like Michael Shapiro and Rob Walker is to prevent us from becoming
too readily bewitched.
Owen 2 (David, Reader in Political Theory at the University of Southampton, Millennium: Journal of
International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/653)JFS
The third dimension concerns the relationship between positivist IR theory and critical IR theory, where Whites distinction enables us to
make sense of a related confusion, namely, the confusion between holding that forms of positivist IR theory (e.g., neorealism and
neoliberal institutionalism) are necessarily either value-free or evaluative. It does so because we can now see that, although forms of
positivist IR theory are not normative theories, they presuppose a background picture which orients our thinking
through the framing of not only what can be intelligibly up for grabs as true-or-false (the epistemic framing) but also what can be
intelligibly up for grabs as good-or-bad (the ethical framing). As Charles Taylor has argued, a condition of our intelligibility as
agents is that we inhabit a moral framework which orients us in ethical space and our practices of epistemic theorising
cannot be intelligibly conceived as existing independently of this orientation in thinking .21 The confusion in IR
theory arises because, on the one hand, positivist IR theory typically suppresses acknowledgement of its own
ethical presuppositions under the influence of the scientific model (e.g., Waltzs neorealism and Keohanes neoliberal institutionalism),
while, on the other hand, its (radical) critics typically view its ethical characteristics as indicating that there is an evaluative or
normative theory hidden, as it were, within the folds of what presents itself as a value-free account. Consequently,
both regard the other as, in some sense, producing ideological forms of knowledge; the positivists claim is that critical IR
theory is ideological by virtue of its explicitly normative character, the critical theorists claim is that positivist IR theory is
ideological by virtue of its failure to acknowledge and reflect on its own implicit normative commitments. But this mutual disdain is
also a product of the confusion of pictures and theories . Firstly, there is a confusion between pictures and theories combined
with the scientistic suppression of the ethical presuppositions of IR theory. This finds expression in the thought that we need to get
our epistemic account of the world sorted out before we can engage responsibly in ethical judgement about
what to do, where such epistemic adequacy requires the construction of a positive theory that can explain the
features of the world at issue. An example of this position is provided by Waltzs neorealism.22 Against this first position, we may
reasonably point out that epistemic adequacy cannot be intelligibly specified independently of background ethical commitments
concerning what matters to us and how it matters to us. Secondly, there is the confusion of pictures and theories combined with the
moralist overestimation of the ethical (ideological) commitments of IR theory. This finds expression in the thought that we need to get our
ethical account sorted out before we can engage responsibly in epistemic judgement about what to know, where such ethical adequacy
requires the construction of a moral theory and, more particularly, a moral ideal that can direct the enterprise of epistemic
theorising. An example of this position is provided by Linklater s version of critical IR theory.23 Against this position, we can reasonably
point out that the kind of ethical adequacy required does not entail the construction of a moral ideal but only the existence of
some shared ethical judgements concerning what matters to us that orient our epistemic enquiries. The dual confusion
in question leads fairly straightforwardly to the thought that what is at stake here are incompatible epistemological commitments and
hence that debate between positivist and critical forms of IR theory needs to be conducted at an
epistemological level. However, as my remarks indicate, this thought is mistaken insofar as the apparent incompatibility from which
it derives is an illusion.
"objective" production of knowledge during peacetime about the various special "areas" became the institutional
practice that substantiated and elaborated the militaristic conception of the world as target.52 In other words, despite
the claims about the apolitical and disinterested nature of the pursuits of higher learning, activities undertaken under the rubric
of area studies, such as language training, historiography, anthropology, economics, political science, and so forth, are fully
inscribed in the politics and ideology of war. To that extent, the disciplining, research, and development of so-called
academic information are part and parcel of a strategic logic. And yet, if the production of knowledge (with its
vocabulary of aims and goals, research, data analysis, experimentation, and verification) in fact shares the same scientific and
military premises as warif, for instance, the ability to translate a difficult language can be regarded as equivalent to the ability to
break military codes53is it a surprise that it is doomed to fail in its avowed attempts to "know" the other cultures? Can "knowledge"
that is derived from the same kinds of bases as war put an end to the violence of warfare, or is such
knowledge not simply warfare's accomplice, destined to destroy rather than preserve the forms of lives at which it
aims its focus? As long as knowledge is produced in this self-referential manner, as a circuit of targeting or getting the other that ultimately
consolidates the omnipotence and omnipresence of the sovereign "self"/"eye"the "I"that is the United States, the other will have no
choice but remain just thata target whose existence justifies only one thing, its destruction by the bomber. As long as the focus of our
study of Asia remains the United States, and as long as this focus is not accompanied by knowledge of what is happening elsewhere at
other times as well as at the present, such study will ultimately confirm once again the self-referential function of
virtual worlding that was unleashed by the dropping of the atomic bombs, with the United States always
occupying the position of the bomber, and other cultures always viewed as the military and information target fields. In this
manner, events whose historicity does not fall into the epistemically closed orbit of the atomic bombersuch as the Chinese reactions to
the war from a primarily anti-Japanese point of view that I alluded to at the beginning of this chapterwill never receive the attention that
is due to them. "Knowledge," however conscientiously gathered and however large in volume, will lead only to further silence
and to the silencing of diverse experiences.54 This is one reason why, as Harootunian remarks, area studies has been,
since its inception, haunted by "the absence of a definable object"-and by "the problem of the vanishing object."
**Ontology
Santoni 85 (Ronald, Prof of Philosphy @ Denison U, Nuclear War Philosophical Perspectives, pp. 153-4)
In contrast, Zimmerman, who essentially restates the position of the German existentialist Martin Heidegger, argues that the origins of
the arms race are deeper then psychological. Thus, the arms race is rooted in a radical misunderstanding of who
we are as human beings, and is also a particularly dangerous symptom of anthropocentric humanism an idolatrous
modern humanism which, among other defects, both self-centeredly views the human being as the only being which possesses any
intrinsic worth or value and understands human beings as things; e.g., as their egos, bodies, or pesonae. Adherents to two competing
views of anthropocentric humanism, the two nuclear giants vie to secure the earth and all of its commodities. Each regards as a threat to
its individual goals of power, security and domination of the Earth. Each prepares to annihilate the other for the sake of its won idolatrous,
self-logical misunderstanding of both human and nonhuman being (the latter perceived as raw material to be consumed by human
kinds). Our craving to consume things betrays insecurity and expresses the sense of ontological isolation we experience
as a result of anthropocentric humanisms subject-object dualism. Our distorted images and anxieties about the enemy stem in
part from the arrogant view that other people, advocating a divergent ideology and a different form of humanism, must stand as obstacles
to our controlling or appropriating the world. 6 Each sides preparations for nuclear wear epitomize the dark side of modern humanism
its distorted drive to domination the Earth at any cost to lie. So steeped are we in this eco-centered humanism that we
remain anchored to it as we try to find our way beyond it. It accounts for our resort to psychological maneuvers which Fox
discusses, not the other way round. Given this analysis, what is needed to liberate us from the spiral of the arms race is
no less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of what it means to be a human being. We need a more
profound humanism that both acknowledges the uniqueness of the human being (we are not things but the awareness or opening in
which things manifest themselves) and recognizes that the highest human possibility is not to dominate other beings but to serve them
by letting them reveal themselves as they are. As Zimmerman and Heidegger put it, we must let beings be we must take the
anxiety that reveals to us the facticitiy of our death, that returns us to the truth of who we are that summons us to relinquish old
destructive patterns and open new creative ways. Only when we accept the creative disclosures of anxiety, recollect what we have
forgotten, refuse to be controlled by fear, and being in terms of open awareness and love will eliminate the threat of the
Other and the motive for the arms race. Although Zimmerman appear to agree with Fox concerning our need to admit to
ourselves our anxiety and fear, and to see through our self-deceptive efforts to evade the possibility of our extinction, it is clear that for
Zimmerman the cure to our contemporary malady demand first and foremost a correction on our ontology in
our understanding of and attitude toward being rather then a correction of our psychology. Coming to understand who we are in relation
to the rest of being is a prerequisite to understanding and overcoming the psychological aberrations that spawn,
nourish and hold us hostage to the arms race. Trying to own up to fear and anxiety without succumbing to delusive defense
mechanisms in the matter that Fox prescribes requires, for Zimmerman, addressing our self-understanding and approach to all beings:
only then will language be able to speak through us in a new way; only then will we be more open to serve than to dominate. I agree
with Zimmerman that the underlying causes of the arms race are deeper than psychological, that the psychological fears and distortions
which heat the arms are an outcome of our idolatrous attitude to ourselves and our exploitative attitude to other beings. I believe that the
problem of what constitutes a person represents the fundamental philosophical issue of the twentieth century, and that it is in our
confusions about and failures to discern the distinguishing ontological features of a human being that we find the bases of vexing
contemporary problems of violence and dehumanization. These problems reflect the way in which we violate the dignity, freedom and
autonomy of human reality, in which we treat persons as things. The Zimmerman-Heidegger analysis serves to underscore my conviction
that our present preoccupations with violence and preparations for nuclear war reveal a distorted existential perspective on all being,
not just human being. We objectify human reality and are quite ready to devour the rest of Being for our human
Zimmerman 85 (Michael, Prof of Philosophy @ U of Colorado, Nuclear War Philosophical Perspectives, pp.
135-36)
We live in an age of crisis. Crises threaten to destroy established states of affairs, but crises are also
opportunities for creating something novel and beautiful. At first glance, it would appear that the nuclear
arms race is the most pressing crisis facing us. Surely if this arms race ends like those before it, we will destroy much of
humanity as well as many other forms of life that share the Earth with us. The nuclear arms race, however, as I shall argue in the
following essay, may only be a symptom of a deeper crisis that has been developing for many centuries. This
crisis has to do with how we understand ourselves as human beings . Today, human beings in the so-called
developed countries regard humankind as the center of reality, the source of all meaning, and the only beings with intrinsic
value. I shall use the term anthropocentric humanism to refer to this way of understanding who we are. The dark side of
humanism is often ignored in favor of the positive dimensions of the humanism with which we are more familiar. The positive thrust of
humanism includes its recognition of the importance of individual human freedom and its affirmation of the dignity of humankinds. The
dark side of humanism involves an arrogant human-centeredness that reduces the nonhuman world to the
status of a commodity whose only value lies in its usefulness for human purposes . According to the German
philosopher Martin Heidegger, conceiving of ourselves as masters of all beings, we adopt a false sense of superiority that undermines our
true humanity. In the following essay, which will make use of some of Heideggers thoughts about human existence in the nuclear age, I
argue that this same drive to dominate the natural world is present in the armed struggle between nations. The current
nuclear arms race can be interpreted as a conflict between two great representatives of anthropocentric
humanism, the United States and the Soviet Union. Strangely, each nation is prepared to annihilate the other side in order to defend the
principles of true humanism. Marxists and capitalist alike regard their life as the only legitimate fulfillment of the Enlightenment ideal of
human progress and freedom. But to a large extent both superpowers are guided by anthropocentric humanism, whose
highest aim is power and security, Hence, neither superpower can rest content until the other side is eliminated or at least
neutralized. Paradoxically, the quest for total security leads to total insecurity, as we are finding out now that the nuclear
arms race is moving to even more threatening levels. In my view, the dangers of nuclear war will not be eliminated, even
though some arms controls might be successfully negotiated, until there occurs a basic shift in our
understanding of what it means to be human . The positive side of humanism, which has some insight into what it means to be
fully human, points in the right direction, but the dark of anthropocentric side predominates today. Let us consider for a moment
Heideggers view that anthropocentric humanism is the underling disorder, of which the nuclear arms race is but
Campbell and Shapiro 96 (eds., Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, pg. 96)
As Heidegger-himself an especially revealing figure of the deep and mutual implication of the philosophical and the political-never tired of
pointing out, the relevance of ontology to all other kinds of thinking is fundamental and inescapable. For one
cannot say anything about that is, without always already having made assumptions about the is as such.
Any mode of thought, in short, always already carries an ontology sequestered within it. What this ontological
turn does to other-regional-modes of thought is to challenge the ontology within which they operate. The implications of that review
reverberate through the entire mode of thought, demanding a reappraisal as fundamental as the reappraisal ontology has demanded of
philosophy. With ontology at issue, the entire foundations or underpinnings of any mode of thought are
rendered problematic. This applies as much to any modern discipline of thought as it does to the question of
modernity as such, with the exception, it seems, of science, which, having long ago given up the ontological questioning of when it
called itself natural philosophy, appears now, in its industrialized and corporatized form, to be invulnerable to ontological perturbation.
With its foundations at issue, the very authority of a mode of thought and the ways in which it characterizes the critical issues of freedom
and judgment (of what kind of universe human beings inhabit, how they inhabit it, and what counts as reliable knowledge for them in it) is
also put in question. The very ways in which Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other continental philosophers challenged Western ontology,
simultaneously, therefore reposed the fundamental and inescapable difficulty, or aporia, for human being of decision and judgment. In
other words, whatever ontology you subscribe to, knowingly or unknowingly, as a human being you still have to
act. Whether or not you know or acknowledge it, the ontology you subscribe to will construe the problem of
action for you in one way rather than another. You may think ontology is some arcane question of
philosophy, but Nietzsche and Heidegger showed that it intimately shapes not only a way of thinking, but a
way of being, a form of life. Decision, a fortiori political decision, in short, is no mere technique. It is instead
a way of being that bears an understanding of Being, and of the fundaments of the human way of being
within it. This applies, indeed applies most, to those mock-innocent political slaves who claim only to be
technocrats of decision making. While Certain continental thinkers like Blumenberg and Lowith, for example, were prompted to
interrogate or challenge the moderns claim to being distinctively modern, and others such as Adorno questioned its enlightened
credentials, philosophers like Derrida and Levinas pursued the metaphysical implications (or rather the implications for metaphysics) of the
thinking initiated by Kierkegaard, as well as by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The violence of metaphysics, together with another way of
thinking about the question of the ethical, emerged as the defining theme of their work. Other, notably Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard,
Baudrillard, and Bataille turned the thinking of Nietzsche and Heidegger into a novel kind of social and political critique of both the regimes
and the effects of power that have come to distinguish late modern times; they concentrated, in detail, upon how the violence identified
by these other thinkers manifested itself not only in the mundane practices of modern life, but also in those areas that claimed to be most
free of it, especially the freedom and security of the subject as well as its allied will to truth and knowledge. Questioning the appeal to the
secure self-grounding common to both its epistemic structures and its political imagination, and in the course of reinterrogating both the
political character of the modern and the modern character of the political, this problematization of modernity has begun to prompt an
ontopolitcally driven reappraisal of modern political thought.
we are nonetheless also free, however, to deny demissions commission and are prone ordinarily to do so. Such is the common
anti-political fallenness which technology has made its own, in its own specific enterprisingly narcotic way, from which the political has to
be recovered in our age. The radical hermeneutical phenomenology which issues from Heideggers thinking and questioning shows how we
understand as we do because we exist as we do. Understanding as we do in the way that we exist, we came, in the
tradition The topos of encounter 85 of the West, to think metaphysically. Metaphysics asked about the truth of
Being, of what is, but answered with an account of the truth of the Being of beings, that is to say of things we
find present to hand. Truth was therefore thought to be lodged in the truthfulness of the assertion about the
Being of beings. In the absence of God it came to be founded in the subject making the assertion. The result
was the dominance of the representative-calculative thought of modern subjectivity in which truth is a
measure of the adequation of the correspondence between the thinking subjects assertions and entities
themselves. (Such that: For representational thinking everything comes to be a being. 18 Even Being.) Hence,
the absolute centrality of the subject in the modern age. For a flakey subject riven with Otherness and
bearing difference within itselfbecomes an absolute abhorrence to truth itself when truth and knowledge
demand a secure and reliable subject for their certain foundation : But not every way of being a self is subjectivity.19
Heideggers entire corpus of thinking is tenaciously devoted to uncovering metaphysics missed ontology not only in the various projects
(ontology, epistemology, phenomenology)and the core concept (correctness), method (logic) and epistemological ambition (theory, or
the report of the sight of the truth)of Western thought, but also in the very life of the West itself (technicity). Show Heidegger a thinker,
a thought, a practice or a way of life and he will go after the ontologyontic (metaphysical) as well as fundamentalsequestered there. In
this respect, his lecture course, Basic Questions of Philosophy. Selected Problems of Logic, is a virtual text book on the way he habitually
proceeds.20 In every epistemology, too, there is an ontology. Because we are as we understand and think, in
our modern political practices as well as in our political science or knowledge of politics where a wellfounded modesty about scientific pretensions is expressedthere therefore lurks the ontology of
metaphysics. Heideggers deconstruction of metaphysics consequently leads to the following chain of thought, in which we must also
never lose sight of the mutually disclosive twofold duality of Being and beings. Thrown, we exist. Existing, we project and understand.
Existing, understanding and projecting as thrown we are obliged to think.21 Thinking we think Being. Thinking Being, we have not only
come to think (ontologically) the Being of beings, but also the Being of Being as an, albeit Supreme, being (onto-theology). Thrown into
existing as understanding and thinking we inhabit worlds. The world we inhabit expresses the ways in which we have come to understand
and think. The end of the way that we thinkmetaphysicsis technology. Technology is the mounting oblivion
of the aletheic truth of the Being of human being, and the radical impoverishment of human beings capacity
to create and live in a world, a condition globalised by the ballistic power of technologys trajectory. We,
therefore, think the political in the way that we do because of the way that we think. Thinking the political in
the way that we do because of the way that we think, the political too has become technologised such that
politics threatens to become identical with technicity. The political problematic of the modern age, as Heidegger might have
expressed it, is the globalisation of technology as politics and the globalisation of politics as technology. Thinking differently, Heidegger
necessarily, therefore, came to think the political differently as well. Specifically, when he came to think differently about the political he
inevitably did so through the different thought of the truth of Being, and the Being of truth, to which his entire deconstructive mode of
thought was devoted. That different thought of truth was primarily expressed and explored through his rethinking of the Greek word for
truth, aletheia, where truth is the truth of disclosure in which revealing and concealing are simultaneously involved. We cannot think with
and against Heideggers thought of the political therefore without appreciating how the political arises for him through the aletheic
character of truth. Truth and politics are as intimately related for Heidegger, therefore, as ever they are in modern thought.
**A2: Utilitarianism/Consequentialism
survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals,
including the right to life. The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of
militarists for ever-larger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs . During World War II,
native Japanese-Americans were herded, without due process of law, to detention camps. This policy was later upheld by the Supreme
Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the general context that a threat to national security can justify acts otherwise blatantly
unjustifiable. The survival of the Aryan race was one of the official legitimations of Nazism. Under the banner of
survival, the government of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid, heedless of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war
has seen one of the greatest of the many absurdities tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them.
But it is not only in a political setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner
offers in Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival . For Jacques
Monod, in Chance and Necessity, survival requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and political system. In
genetics, the survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic
traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided medical
efforts to find means by which those suffering from such common genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and thus
procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul Ehrlich, whose works
have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to contemplate governmentally enforced abortions and a
denial of food to surviving populations of nations which have not enacted population-control policies. For all these reasons it is possible
to counterpoise over against the need for survival a "tyranny of survival." There seems to be no imaginable
evil which some group is not willing to inflict on another for sake of survival, no rights, liberties or dignities
which it is not ready to suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked.
Dictators never talk about their aggressions, but only about the need to defend the fatherland to save it from destruction at the hands of
its enemies. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to
reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential tyranny
survival as value is that it is capable, if not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values . Survival can become an
obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive single-mindedness that will stop at nothing. We come here to the fundamental moral
dilemma. If, both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all
human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to lifethen how will it be possible to honor
and act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings which makes them worthy of survival. To
put it more strongly, if the price of survival is human degradation, then there is no moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure
that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories. Yet it would be the defeat of all defeats if, because human beings
could not properly manage their need to survive, they succeeded in not doing so.
utility is "not a goal" but a "by-product," "entirely derived from the prior requirement to treat people with equal
consideration" (CPP, p. 31) Kymlicka says, "If utilitarianism is best seen as an egalitarian doctrine, then there is no independent
commitment to the idea of maximizing welfare" (CPP, p. 35, emphases added). But how can this be? (i) What is there about the formal
principle of equal consideration (or for that matter occupying a universal point of view) which would imply that we maximize the aggregate
of individuals' welfare? Why not assume, for example, that equal consideration requires maximizing the division of welfare (strict equality,
or however equal division is to be construed); or, at least maximize the multiple (which would result in more equitable distributions than
the aggregate)? Or, why not suppose equal consideration requires equal proportionate satisfaction of each person's interests (by for
example, determining our resources and then satisfying some set percentage of each person's desires) . Or finally we might rely on some
Paretian principle: equal consideration means adopting measures making no one worse off. For reasons I shall soon discuss, each of these
rules is a better explication of equal consideration of each person's interests than is the utilitarian aggregative method, which in effect
collapses distinctions among persons. (2) Moreover, rather than construing individuals' "interests" as their actual (or rational) desires,
and then putting them all on a par and measuring according to intensity, why not construe their interests lexically, in terms of a hierarchy
of wants, where certain interests are, to use Scanlon's terms, more "urgent" than others, insofar as they are more basic needs? Equal
consideration would then rule out satisfying less urgent interests of the majority of people until all means have been taken to satisfy
everyone's more basic needs. (3) Finally, what is there about equal consideration, by itself, that requires maximizing anything? Why does it
not require, as in David Gauthier's view, optimizing constraints on individual utility maximization? Or why does it not require sharing a
distribution? The point is just that, to say we ought to give equal consideration to everyone's interests does not, by itself,
imply much of anything about how we ought to proceed or what we ought to do. It is a purely formal principle, which
requires certain added, independent assumptions, to yield any substantive conclusions. That (i) utilitarian procedures maximize is not
a "by-product" of equal consideration. It stems from a particular conception of rationality that is explicitly incorporated into the
procedure. That (2) individuals' interests are construed in terms of their (rational) desires or preferences, all of which are
put on a par, stems from a conception of individual welfare or the human good: a person's good is defined subjectively ,
as what he wants or would want after due reflection. Finally (3), aggregation stems from the fact that, on the classical view, a single
individual takes up everyone's desires as if they were his own, sympathetically identifies with them, and chooses to
maximize his "individual" utility. Hare, for one, explicitly makes this move. Just as Rawls says of the classical view, Hare "extend[s] to
society the principle of choice for one man, and then, to make this extension work, conflat[es] all persons into one through the imaginative
acts of the impartial sympathetic spectator" (TJ, p. 27). If these are independent premises incorporated into the justification of
utilitarianism and its decision procedure, then maximizing aggregate utility cannot be a "by-product" of a procedure that gives
equal consideration to everyone's interests. Instead, it defines what that procedure is. If anything is a by-product here, it
is the appeal to equal consideration. Utilitarians appeal to impartiality in order to extend a method of individual practical rationality
so that it may be applied to society as a whole (cf. TJ, pp. 26-27). Impartiality, combined with sympathetic identification, allows a
hypothetical observer to experience the desires of others as if they were his own, and compare alternative courses of action according to
their conduciveness to a single maximand, made possible by equal consideration and sympathy. The significant fact is that, in this
procedure, appeals to equal consideration have nothing to do with impartiality between persons. What is really being
given equal consideration are desires or experiences of the same magnitude. That these are the desires or experiences of
separate persons (or, for that matter, of some other sentient being) is simply an incidental fact that has no substantive effect
on utilitarian calculations. This becomes apparent from the fact that we can more accurately describe the utilitarian principle in terms
of giving, not equal consideration to each person's interests, but instead equal consideration to equally intense interests, no matter where
they occur. Nothing is lost in this redescription, and a great deal of clarity is gained. It is in this sense that persons enter into utilitarian
calculations only incidentally. Any mention of them can be dropped without loss of the crucial information one needs to
learn how to apply utilitarian procedures. This indicates what is wrong with the common claim that utilitarians
emphasize procedural equality and fairness among persons, not substantive equality and fairness in results . On the
contrary, utilitarianism, rightly construed, emphasizes neither procedural nor substantive equality among persons. Desires and
experiences, not persons, are the proper objects of equal concern in utilitarian procedures. Having in effect read persons out of the picture
at the procedural end, before decisions on distributions even get underway, it is little wonder that utilitarianism can result in such
substantive inequalities. What follows is that utilitarian appeals to democracy and the democratic value of equality are
misleading. In no sense do utilitarians seek to give persons equal concern and respect.
interpretation, the "fundamental goal" (LCC, p. 33) of utilitarianism is not persons, but the goodness of states
of affairs. Duty is defined by what best brings about these states of affairs. " [M] aximizing the good is primary, and we count individuals
equally only because that maximizes value. Our primary duty isn't to treat people as equals, but to bring about
valuable states of affairs" (LCC, p. 27). It is difficult to see, Kymlicka says, how this reading of utilitarianism can be
viewed as a moral theory. Morality, in our everyday view at least, is a matter of interpersonal obligations-the
obligations we owe to each other. But to whom do we owe the duty of maximizing utility? Surely not to the
impersonal ideal spectator . . . for he doesn't exist. Nor to the maximally valuable state of affairs itself, for states of affairs
don't have moral claims." (LCC, p. 28-29) Kymlicka says, "This form of utilitarianism does not merit serious consideration as a political
morality" (LCC, p. 29). Suppose we see utilitarianism differently, as a theory whose "fundamental principle" is "to treat people as equals"
(LCC, p. 29). On this egalitarian reading, utilitarianism is a procedure for aggregating individual interests and desires, a procedure for
making social choices, specifying which trade-offs are acceptable. It's a moral theory which purports to treat people as equals, with equal
concern and respect. It does so by counting everyone for one, and no one for more than one. (LCC, p. 25)
fatal. Risk is being imposed on individuals who have not consented to it in any meaningful sense. Finally, risk is
unintentional in the sense that imposing risk on others is not an objective of Acme's plan.'4 We may assume its executives in fact would be
tremendously relieved if they could avoid the risk.
realization that, standing alone, he does not count for much. A strategy of weighing gains against risks thus
renders the status of any specific risk victim substantially contingent upon the claims of others, both those who may share his
victim status and those who stand to gain from the risky activity. The anxiety to preserve some fundamental place for the
individual that cannot be overrun by larger social considerations underlies what H.L.A. Hart has aptly termed the "distinctively
modern criticism of utilitarianism,"58 the criticism that, despite its famous slogan, "everyone [is] to count for
one,"59 utilitarianism ultimately denies each individual a primary place in its system of values. Various
versions of utilitarian ism evaluate actions by the consequences of those actions to maximize happiness, the net of pleasure over
pain, or the satisfaction of desires.60 Whatever the specific formulation, the goal of maximizing some mea sure of
utility obscures and diminishes the status of each individua l. It reduces the individual to a conduit, a reference
point that registers the appropriate "utiles," but does not count for anything independent of his monitoring function.61 It also
produces moral requirements that can trample an individual , if necessary, to maximize utility, since once
the net effects of a proposal on the maximand have been taken into account, the individual is
expendable. Counting pleasure and pain equally across individuals is a laudable proposal, but counting only plea sure and pain
permits the grossest inequities among individuals and the trampling of the few in furtherance of the utility of the many. In
sum, utilitarianism makes the status of any individual radically contingent. The individual's status will be
preserved only so long as that status con tributes to increasing total utility. Otherwise, the individual can be discarded.
Owen 2 (David, Reader in Political Theory at the University of Southampton, Millennium: Journal of
International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/653)JFS
First, human acts and consequences should both be construed broadly to include, in the former case, human practices
in general and, in the latter case, effects ranging from transformations of being to transformations of environment
across both material and conceptual registers. Second, Deweys point concerning the perception of consequences draws to
our attention the fact that the visibility of consequences is dependent on the background picture in terms of which
the practices in question are situated and hence the central role that world-disclosure plays in the
constitution of forms of government. Third, Deweys stress on the relationship between common perception and actioncoordination directed to governing the effects of the practices in question. Fourth, and particularly importantly, the reflexive character of
this starting point, that is, the fact the efforts at governing the effects of certain practices themselves involve
practices which have consequences. This fourth point is significant because it indicates that Dewey is providing a way of
accounting not only for the emergence and development of forms of government, but also for the emergence and
development of forms of contesting or governing government (such as, for example, criticism in the sense of an art of
reflexive indocility which protests against being governed like this, at this costs and with these consequences). In other words, Deweys
pragmatist approach to the issue of government links perception, knowledge and action in orienting itself to
our conduct and the ways in which we seek to conduct our conduct. Although this approach may be readily
aligned with the burgeoning literature within IR on government and governance , a literature prompted in part by
Kratochwil and Ruggie,25 it has two significant advantages with respect to this literature. First, the focus on perception opens up
a space within which questions of the background picture informing the discourse and practices of
international relations can be perspicuously posed. Second, its reflexive application to practices of government
and governance clarifies the relationship between government and freedom such that the legitimacy of
practices of government is seen to depend not simply on its efficacy but on the consent of those who are
governed by it. This starting point is, as I have noted, very general and since our concern is not with government in general, but with
government of the common or public affairs of humanity, it is appropriate to note that Dewey specifies this more restricted sense by
distinguishing between public transactions, transactions which have significant effects for others beyond those involved in the transaction,
and private transactions, transactions whose significant effects do not extend beyond the parties engaged in the transaction.26 This is still
fairly general, not to mention rough and ready, but that may not be a bad thing since, on this account, publics are formed on the basis of
the shared practical judgement that a given (type of) transaction has consequences of extensive significanceand it would be wholly
against Deweys general ethical orientation to seek to specify standards of significance in advance, as I shall illustrate in the next section. It
follows from this account that (political) publics are specified relative to practices of political government in terms
of advocating a practice of government at a given level and/or in terms of contesting a practice, or proposed
practice, of government. Publics can be local, regional, national, transnational or global, and publics form,
dissolve and reform over time some may be relatively enduring, others relatively passing. In the contemporary context, we may take it as
a strength of Deweys approach that it does not presuppose what we might call methodological statecentrism; on the
contrary, precisely because it takes government as its focus, it is methodologically suited
**A2: Pragmatism
human intellectual life, and of an anti-essentialist, historicist conception of philosophical thought. To read Dewey his way, however,
Rorty explicitly sets about separating the "good" from the "bad" Dewey. (See "Dewey's Metaphysics," CP, 72-89, and
"Dewey between Hegel and Darwin", in Saatkamp, 1-15.) He is critical of what he takes to be Dewey's backsliding into
metaphysics in Experience and Nature, and has no patience for the constructive attempt of Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Rorty thus
imposes a scheme of evaluation on Dewey's works which many scholars object to. Lavine, for instance, claims that "scientific
method" is Dewey's central concept (Lavine 1995, 44). R.W. Sleeper holds that reform rather than elimination of metaphysics and
epistemology is Dewey's aim (Sleeper 1986, 2, chapter 6). Rorty's least favourite pragmatist is Peirce, whom he regards as subject to both
scheme-content dualism and to a degree of scientism. So it is not surprising that Haack, whose own pragmatism draws inspiration from
Peirce, finds Rorty's recasting of pragmatism literally unworthy of the name. Rorty's key break with the
pragmatists is a fundamental one; to Haack's mind, by situating himself in opposition to the epistemological
orientation of modern philosophy, Rorty ends up dismissing the very project that gave direction to the works of the
American pragmatists. While classical pragmatism is an attempt to understand and work out a novel legitimating
framework for scientific inquiry, Haack maintains, Rorty's "pragmatism" (Haack consistently uses quotes) is simply an
abandonment of the very attempt to learn more about the nature and adequacy conditions of inquiry. Instead of aiding us
in our aspiration to govern ourselves through rational thought, Rorty weakens our intellectual resilience and leaves us
even more vulnerable to rhetorical seduction. To Haack and her sympathisers, Rorty's pragmatism is dangerous,
performing an end-run on reason, and therefore on philosophy.
the laws of physics end up frustrated, maimed, or dead, while those who violate the moral law (however it is
understood) suffer no predictable set of consequences at all. It cant be that Nazi scientists and Manhattan Project
scientists were interested in the same physics, but had rather different morals and politics. It cant be that the
academic community in physics is global, transcending culture and nationality, while most moral debate is parochial in
the worst sense of that term, that is, tracking the interests and horizons of particular classes, cultural traditions, and experiences.
Rorty objects, however, that brute facts about the presence or absence of consensuswhether about planetary orbits or
about sodomyare to be explained sociologically rather than epistemologically. For this to be persuasive, however, we
would need to hear the details about how the actual sociological explanation goes, and Rorty, alas, never offers any.
About the only explanatorily relevant psychosocial factor in the offing is that humans everywhere share an interest in
predicting the future course of their experience, but that simply explains why the Scientific Norm works for human purposes, and why
Nazis and social democrats share the same physics, but not the same morals. But that is a sociological
explanation that simply underlines the fundamental difference between morals and science.
practices whose criteria of belief and action have nothing to do with practical considerations. And when we take those
practices seriously, natural science and morality seem to be very different indeed .
opposing ways of thinking of ones life: objectivity or solidarity. The first is defined as a pursuit of justification for knowledge
independent of appearance, or standing in relation to a nonhuman reality (Rorty 1991, p. 21). Solidarity is, on the other hand sought
among the relations of individuals in a community without the detachment of a Gods eye view. Rorty proposes that we accept
solidarity, looking at knowledge [and truth] as a compliment paid to the beliefs *+ we think so well justified that, for
the moment, further justification is not needed (Rorty 1991, p. 24). Problematic to Rortys pragmatism is that it leaves us in a
regress in attempt to justify our knowledge. Additionally, even if we accept his theory as coherent, coherence
can be grounded in falsity and truth alike. At the heart of our desire for objectivity, is not to seek Truth for its own sake as Rorty
contends (Rorty 1991, p. 21), but to seek truth for the very purpose of reasoned communal discourse. While we should always be willing to
adjust our beliefs and grow, a view that Rorty espouses, his view of knowledge in fact hinders our ability to move forward .
rebuild the boat in which they sail. Being afloat, they cannot abandon the ship and rebuild it from scratch, so
they must choose to stand firm on certain planks of the ship while rebuilding others. They, of course, choose to
stand firm on those planks that are the most sturdy and reliablethe ones that work the bestthough there may come a
point when the sailors will tear those up too and replace them with new ones. Our epistemological situation, on this Quinean
pragmatic view, is the same. In figuring out what we ought to believe, we necessarily stand firm on certain epistemic planks
in our best-going theory of the world, the one that, to date, has worked the best. To be sure, we cannot rule out that we may
one day want to replace those planks toojust as our predecessors replaced planks like the truth is what the Good Book says
and Newtonian mechanics describes the laws governing all matterbut that is just to renounce absolute certainty and
accept fallibilism as fundamental to our epistemological situation .
theory of the world) and rebuild the whole edifice from scratch by reference to nonparochial (nonhistorical)
standards of truth and warrant. (On Quines view, there is no Archimedean point of cosmic exile from which to leverage our theory
of the world.17) We must necessarily rely on certain epistemic criteriacriteria for what we ought to believeany time we
ask about the justification of any other belief (including beliefs about epistemic criteria). That is just to say that we must stand
firm on certain planks in the boat while rebuilding (or figuring out whether we ought to rebuild) any other planks. The only question,
then, is which planks we ought to stand firm on because they work so well.
debate that debate in both the high schools and colleges in this country is assumed to take place nowhere, even
though the issues that are debated are profoundly historical, which means that positions are always
represented from the perspective of power, and a matter of life and death. I find it grotesque that in the debate
world, it doesnt matter which position you take on an issue say, the United States unilateral wars of preemption as
long as you score points. The world we live in is a world entirely dominated by an exceptionalist America
which has perennially claimed that it has been chosen by God or History to fulfill his/its errand in the wilderness. That claim is powerful
because American economic and military power lies behind it. And any alternative position in such a world is virtually powerless. Given this
inexorable historical reality, to assume, as the protocols of debate do, that all positions are equal is to efface the
imbalances of power that are the fundamental condition of history and to annul the Moral authority inhering in the position of the
oppressed. This is why I have said that the appropriation of my interested work on education and empire to this
transcendental debate world constitute a travesty of my intentions. My scholarship is not disinterested. It
is militant and intended to ameliorate as much as possible the pain and suffering of those who have been oppressed by the
democratic institutions that have power precisely by way of showing that their language if truth, far from being disinterested
or objective as it is always claimed, is informed by the will to power over all manner of others. This is also why I told my interlocutor
that he and those in the debate world who felt like him should call into question the traditional objective debate
protocols and the instrumentalist language they privilege in favor of a concept of debate and of language in which life
and death mattered. I am very much aware that the arrogant neocons who now saturate the government of the Bush
administration judges, pentagon planners, state department officials, etc. learned their disinterested argumentative skills in
the high school and college debate societies and that, accordingly, they have become masters at disarming the just
causes of the oppressed. This kind leadership will reproduce itself (along with the invisible oppression it perpetrates) as long
as the training ground and the debate protocols from which it emerges remains in tact. A revolution in the debate world
must occur. It must force that unworldly world down into the historical arena where positions make a difference. To invoke the late
Edward Said, only such a revolution will be capable of deterring democracy (in Noam Chomskys ironic phrase), of
instigating the secular critical consciousness that is, in my mind, the sine qua non for avoiding the immanent global
disaster towards which the blind arrogance of Bush Administration and his neocon policy makers is leading.
strong liberal
defence of debating both sides separates speech from conviction. Debating both sides does
so by de-coupling the sincerity principle from the arguments presented by a debater. In place
of the assumption that a debater believes in what he or she argues, debating both sides grooms one to appreciate the process of debate as a
method of democratic decision-making. We argue the debating both sides controversy articulates debate to Cold War liberal discourses of
American exceptionalism by folding the norm of free and full expression onto the soul of the debater. In turn, a debater willing to debate both
sides becomes a representative of the free world. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how debating both sides as a technique of moral
development works alongside specific aesthetic modes of class subjectivity increasingly associated with the efforts of the knowledge class to
legitimize the process of judgment. Debating both sides reveals how the globalization of liberalism is less about a set of universal norms and
more about the circulation and uptake of cultural technologies. In the first part of this essay, we will offer a thick description of how the
relationship between speech and conviction led to the ethical problematization of debating both sides. In the second part of the essay, we
contextualize this history through an encounter with Cold War liberalism and the importance of debating both sides as a technology capable of
generating a commitment to free speech. The third section of the paper will describe how debate re-invents itself as a game of freedom that
instils the ethical attributes of deliberative democracy by re-coding debating both sides as necessary to the moral development of students.4
Debate and the problem of conviction In the United States, the 1920s and 1930s saw a veritable explosion in the popularity of intercollegiate
debate. To accommodate the growing numbers of students wishing to debate and the rising costs of hosting and travelling to debates, the
model of annual contests between rival schools gave way to triangular and quadrilateral debating leagues and eventually to the debate
tournament. Intercollegiate debating underwent major transformations during this period, many of them brought on by tournament
competition.5 Perhaps the most significant #/ and certainly the most controversial #/ transformation resulting from tournament debating was
the practice of having participants debate both sides of the proposition. Debating both sides, its proponents argued, had the pragmatic benefit
of allowing more teams to participate in more debates and to make scheduling tournaments much more efficient. There was, as well, the
pedagogical benefit of rewarding those students with the most refined skills in marshalling evidence and formulating arguments in support of
their respective positions. By the 1950s, debating both sides had become so prevalent that the West Point National Debate Tournament, the
largest and most prestigious tournament of the day, mandated it as a condition of participation.6 The growing professionalization of
tournament debating carried out in extra-curricular competitive spaces increasingly relied on debating both sides.1 0 2 CULTURAL STUDIES As a
tournament progresses, a student moves from one side of the resolution to the next, a switch in sides, demarcated by the next round of
debate. The technique of debating both sides increases the efficiency of debate to train students in critical thinking and argumentative
advocacy by modifying the side of the resolution the debater advocates. Since each debate is a situated rhetorical event with changing
interlocutors and different individual judges, each debate round allows a unique pedagogical opportunity to learn and evaluate behaviour. The
relationship between debate as a competitive activity amenable to pedagogical intervention and debating both sides as a specific technique of
debate pedagogy and tournament administration, however, did not appear naturally, but was the effect of intellectual struggle. While the
opposition to debating both sides probably reaches back to the challenges against the ancient practice of dissoi logoi , we want to turn our
attention to the unique cultural history of debate during the Cold War. In the midst of Joseph McCarthys impending censure by the US Senate,
the US Military Academy, the US Naval Academy and, subsequently, all of the teacher colleges in the state of Nebraska refused to affirm the
resolution #/ Resolved: The United States should diplomatically recognize the Peoples Republic of China. Yet, switch-side debating remained
the national standard, and, by the fall of 1955, the military academies and the teacher colleges of Nebraska were debating in favour of the next
resolution. Richard Murphy (1957), however,was not content to let the controversy pass without comment. Murphy launched a series of
criticisms that would sustain the debate about debate for the next ten years. Murphy held that debating
would surely hold in contempt any public actor who spoke with equal force, and
without genuine conviction, for both sides of a public policy question. Why, asked Murphy,
would we exempt students from the same ethical obligation? Murphys master ethic #/ that a public
utterance entails a public commitment #/ rested on a classical rhetorical theory that refuses the modern distinctions between cognitive claims
of truth (referring to the objective world), normative claims of right (referring to the intersubjective world), and expressive claims of sincerity
(referring to the subjective state of the speaker), although this distinction, and Murphys refusal to make it, would surface as a major point of
contention in the 1960s for the proponents of debating both sides.7 Murphy is avoiding the idea that the words spoken by a debater can be
divorced from what the speaker actually believes to be true, right, or good (expressive claims of sincerity). For Murphy, to stand and publicly
proclaim that one affirmed the resolution entailed both a claim that the policy being advocated was indeed the best possible choice, given
extant social conditions, and that one sincerely believed that her or his arguments were true and right. In other words, a judge should not make
a distinction between the merits of the case presented and the sincerity of the advocates presenting it; rather, the reasons supporting a policy
and the ethos of the speakers are mutually constitutive forms of proof. The interdependency of logos and ethos was not only a matter of
rhetorical principle for Murphy but also a foundational premise of public reason in a democratic society. Although he never explicitly states why
this is true, most likely because he assumed it to be self-evident, a charitable interpretation of Murphys position, certainly a more generous
interpretation than his detractors were willing to give, would show that his axiom rests on the following argument: If public reason is to have
any legitimate force, auditors must believe that advocates are arguing from conviction and not from greed, desire or naked self-interest.
If
auditors believe that advocates are insincere, they will not afford legitimacy to their claims
and will opt to settle disputes through force or some seemingly neutral modus vivendi such
as voting or arbitration. Hence, sincerity is a necessary element of public reason and,
therefore, a necessary condition of critical deliberation in a democratic society. For Murphy, the
assumption of sincerity is intimately articulated to the notion of ethical argumentation in a democratic political culture. If a speaker were to
repudiate this assumption by advocating contradictory positions in a public forum, it would completely undermine her or his ethos and result in
the loss of the means of identification with an audience. The real danger of undermining the assumption of sincerity was not that individual
speakers would be rendered ineffective #/ although this certainly did make training students to debate both 1 0 4 CULTURAL STUDIES sides bad
rhetorical pedagogy. The
debate both sides is a form of blackmail and that the separation of speech and conviction courts sophistry #/ are
answered by this position. On the one hand, if debating both sides of a question is an ethical duty, requiring students to do so as a
condition of participation is not an immoral imposition but rather an ethical and pedagogical duty. On the other hand, given the political
dangers that privileging personal conviction over democratic process courts, divorcing speech from conviction is a prerequisite to democratic
legitimacy. In so doing, ones convictions should be reassigned so as to promote a commitment to debate as the fundamental process of a
democratic form of public deliberation. The practice of debating both sides does not warrant support simply because it is ethical; it does so
because it is an effective pedagogical technique for inculcating the communicative ethics necessary for democratic citizenship. According to
Day, Debating both sides teaches students to discover, analyze, LOST CONVICTIONS 1 1 1 and test all the arguments, opinions, and evidence
relevant to a decision. In addition, it provides an opportunity for students to substantiate for themselves the assumption that truthful
positions may be taken on both sides of controversial questions (1966, p. 13).
consensus consists of the view, common to both its admirers and detractors, that postmodern political
thought is corrosively skeptical, that it relentlessly uncouples its critical pretensions from any constructive normative
commitment. Jacques Derrida once made a comment which, by its very incongruity, highlights the postmodern consensus. He
confessed to an interviewer: "Indeed, I cannot conceive of a radical critique which would not be ultimately motivated
by some sort of affirmation, acknowledged or not."'This remark should seem highly discordant to anyone who has witnessed the
persistent jousting between critics and defenders of postmodernism.2 The postmodern consensus takes as primitive precisely what
Derrida, surprisingly but rightly in my estimation, deems inconceivable.
where the dialectic posits affirmation as the theoretical and practical product of the suffering of the negative, potentia
presents affirmation as that which destroys the will to nothingness that fuels the negative dialectic; and
whereas the dialectic seeks transformation through the negation of the negation, potentia constitutes transformation as the
affirmation of affirmation. Do not think, Foucault affirms, that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even
though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation)
that possesses revolutionary force (preface to Deleuze and Guattari xiiixiv). It is toward the self-productive potentiality of the
multitude that Foucaults later work movestoward a creative militancy that enacts resistance as counterpower
his work that potentially afford escape from the postmodern consensus. Political theorists commonly present the promise of a
dialogical ethics and the notion of resistance to suggest how Foucault indeed does strike, however tentatively, an affirmative
stance. On this view, dialogical ethics and resistance each occupy and extend the sort of "space for freedom" that
could facilitate a "possible transformation" of extant practices and institutions. I argue that both themes comport poorly with
conventional understandings of Foucault's writings on power precisely insofar as they exhibit the crucial value he places on relations of
communication. Consequently, both the promise of a dialogi- cal ethics and the concept of resistance prompt us to reexamine those
conventional understandings.
Affirmation is critical
Heiner 3 (Brady, U of Padua, differences: a Jnl of Feminist Cultural Studies, 15.1, Muse)
Here we can see an explosion and return of masks similar to what Foucault referred to above when invoking Nietzsche. The aggression
that drives the negation-beyond-negation of his early work resolutely differs from the inherent sadness of the dialectic; the negativity
of total critique manifests itself as affirmation. [A]ggression, Deleuze affirms, is the negative, but the negative as
the conclusion of positive premises, the negative as the product of activity, the negative as the consequence of the power of
affirming (Nietzsche 121). Like Nietzsche, Foucault flees from the labor of opposition and the suffering of the negative in
order to enact *End Page 32+ the warlike play of difference, affirmation and the joy of destruction (191). For the negative
dialectic lacks a will that goes beyond it; it has no power of its own but remains a mere reaction to (a mere representation of) power. 11
Deleuze describes this ontological emptiness of negativity in the context of a discussion of Nietzsche: Nietzsches
enemy [. . .] is the dialectic which confuses affirmation with the truthfulness of truth or the positivity of the real;
and this truthfulness, this positivity, are primarily manufactured by the dialectic itself with the products of the negative. The being of
Hegelian logic is merely thought being, pure and empty, which affirms itself by passing into its own opposite. But this being was never
different from its opposite, it never had to pass into what it already was. Hegelian being is pure and simple nothingness; and the becoming
that this being forms with nothingness, that is to say with itself, is a perfectly nihilistic becoming; and affirmation passes through
negation here because it is merely the affirmation of the negative and its products. (183) Therefore, Deleuze
continues, An activity which does not raise itself to the powers of affirming, an activity which trusts only in the
labor of the negative is destined to failure; in its very principle it turns into its opposite (196). Separated from
the power of affirmationthe creative motor of beingthe dialectic can do nothing but reactively turn against
itself. Separated from what it can do, Deleuze argues, active force does not evaporate. Turning back against itself it produces pain
(128). The aim of total critique, as distinguished from the dialectic, is a different way of feelinganother sensibility. The aim of total
critique is the constitution of a joyful practice. 12 In all of Foucaults work, he actively dismantles the reactive conception of
power as negativityas that which says no. 13 He reaffirms Nietzsches discovery that the dialectic only produces a phantom of
affirmation. 14 Whether in the form of an overcome opposition or a resolved contradiction, the image of positivity yielded by the dialectic
is a radically false one (196). 15 Through the nondialectical negation enacted in the limit-experience, Foucault affirms that
positivity is not a theoretical and practical product of negation itself, 16 but rather that which destroys the will
to nothingness that fuels the dialectic. Positivity, first taking form in the becoming-active joy of annihilation, the affirmation of
annihilation and destruction, clears the terrain for a truly active, which is to say, a joyful [End Page 33] practice of
constitution (Nietzsche 3). For only an unrestrained aggression against the established essencethe death of the adversarycan
procure the opportunity for a positive creation. Only by the light of this conflagrant destruction is it possible to discern the potentialities of
contemporary thought and practice.
**State-Centricity Bad
Bleiker 2k (Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei
and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social
Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press)
While opening up the study of global politics to a variety of new domains, most efforts to rethink the international have not gone as far as
they could have, or, indeed, should have gone. Here too, questions of conceptualisation and representation are of crucial
importance. Campbell stresses that for all their efforts to understand a wide range of global phenomena,
most approaches to international theory have displayed a remarkably persistent compulsion to anchor an
under standing of the complexities of global life in a 'something-national' formulation whether it is
'international', 'multinational', or 'transna tional'.14Representative for such forms of conceptualising is Mark Zacher's seemingly sensible
claim that 'non-state actors such as multi national corporations and banks may increase in importance, but there are few signs that they
are edging states from centre stage'.15 Debates about the role of human agency display similar state-centric
tendencies. There are disagreements on various fronts, but virtually all discussions on agency in international
theory remain focused on conceptualising state behaviour. Alexander Wendt, who has been instrumental in
bringing issues of agency to the study of international relations, has been equally influential in directing
ensuing discussions on a state-centric path. He explicitly and repeatedly acknowledges 'a commitment to
states as units of analysis' and constructs much of his theoretical work around an examination of states and
the constraints within which they operate.16 Here too, the logic behind adapting a state-centric form of
representation rests on the assumption that 'as long as states are the dominant actors in international
politics, it is appropriate to focus on the identity and agency of the state rather than, for example, a
transnational social movement'.17 Questions of agency in international theory should not and cannot be
reduced to analyses of state behaviour. This book demonstrates how an instance of transversal dissent may influence
global politics at least as much as, say, a diplomatic treatise or a foreign policy decision. At a time when
processes of globalisation are unfolding and national boundaries are becoming increasingly porous, states
can no longer be viewed as the only consequential actors in world affairs. Various scholars have thus begun to question
the prevalent spatial modes of representation and the artificial separation of levels of analysis that issues from them. They suggest, as
mentioned above, that global life is better understood as a series of transversal struggles that increasingly
challenge what Richard Ashley called 'the paradigm of sovereign man.' Transversal struggles, Ashley emphasises, are
not limited to established spheres of sovereignty. They are neither domestic nor international. They know no
final boundaries between inside and out side.18 And they have come to be increasingly recognised as central
aspects of global politics. James Rosenau is among several scholars who now acknowledge that it is along the shifting frontiers of
trans versal struggles, 'and not through the nation state system that people sort and play out the many contradictions at work in the global
scene'.19
We can claim our agency only by rejecting the state-centric view of politics.
Bleiker 2k (Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei
and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social
Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press)
Questions of agency have been discussed extensively in international theory, mostly in the context of the socalled structureagency debate. Although strongly wedded to a state-centric view, this debate nevertheless
evokes a number of important conceptual issues that are relevant as well to an understanding of transversal dynamics. The
roots of the structureagency debate can be traced back to a feeling of discontent about how traditional approaches to international
theory have dealt with issues of agency. Sketched in an overly broad manner, the point of departure looked as follows: At one end of the
spectrum were neorealists, who explain state identity and behaviour through a series of structural restraints that are said to emanate from
the anarchical nature of the international system. At the other end we find neoliberals, who accept the existence of anarchy but seek to
understand the behaviour of states and other international actors in terms of their individual attributes and their ability to engage in
cooperative bargaining. If pushed to their logical end-point, the two positions amount, respectively, to a structural determinism and an
equally farfetched belief in the autonomy of rational actors. 24 The structureagency debate is located somewhere between these two
poles. Neither structure nor agency receive analytical priority. Instead, the idea is to understand the
interdependent and mutually constitutive relationship between them. The discussions that have evolved in the wake of
this assumption are highly complex and cannot possibly be summarised here. 25 Some of the key premises, though, can be recognised by
observing how the work of Anthony Giddens has shaped the structureagency debate in international relations. Giddens speaks of the
'duality of structure,' of structural properties that are constraining as well as enabling. They are both 'the
medium and outcome of the contingently accomplished activities of situated actors'. 26 Expressed in other
words, neither agents nor structures have the final word. Human actions are always embedded in and
constrained by the structural context within which they form and evolve. But structures are not immutable
either. A human being, Giddens stresses, will 'know a great deal about the conditions of reproduction of the
society of which he or she is a member'. 27 The actions that emerge from this awareness then shape the
processes through which social systems are structurally maintained and reproduced.
Bleiker 2k (Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei
and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social
Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press)
To expand the scope of international theory and to bring transversal struggles into focus is not to declare the
state obsolete. States remain central actors in international politics and they have to be recognised and theorised as
such. In fact, my analysis will examine various ways in which states and the boundaries between them have mediated the formation,
functioning and impact of dissent. However, my reading of dissent and agency makes the state neither its main focus nor
its starting point. There are compelling reasons for such a strategy, and they go beyond a mere recognition that a state-centric
approach to international theory engenders a form of representation that privileges the authority of the state and thus
precludes an adequate understanding of the radical transformations that are currently unfolding in global life.
Michael Shapiro is among an increasing number of theorists who convincingly portray the state not only as an institution, but also, and
primarily, as a set of 'stories' of which the state-centric approach to international theory is a perfect
example. It is part of a legitimisation process that highlights, promotes and naturalises certain political
practices and the territorial context within which they take place. Taken together, these stories provide the
state with a sense of identity, coherence and unity. They create boundaries between an inside and an
outside, between a people and its others. Shapiro stresses that such state-stories also exclude, for they seek 'to
repress or delegitimise other stories and the practices of identity and space they reflect.' And it is these
processes of exclusion that impose a certain political order and provide the state with a legitimate rationale
for violent encounters.22
Said most bemoans. 31 The nation-state of course has a particular pride of place in the study of global politics. The statecentricity of International Relations has not just circumscribed the ability of scholars to understand a vast
ensemble of globally oriented movements, exchanges and practices not reducible to the state, but also
inhibited a critical intellectual orientation to the world outside the national borders within which scholarship
is produced. Said acknowledges the fact that all intellectual work occurs in a (national) context which imposes upon
ones intellect certain linguistic boundaries, particular (nationally framed) issues and, most invidiously,
certain domestic political constraints and pressures, but he cautions against the dangers of such restrictions
upon the intellectual imagination. 32 Comparing the development of IR in two different national contexts the French and the
German ones Gerard Holden has argued that different intellectual influences, different historical resonances of different issues, different
domestic exigencies shape the discipline in different contexts. 33 While this is to be expected to an extent, there is good reason to be
cautious about how scholarly sympathies are expressed and circumscribed when the reach of ones work (issues covered, people affected)
so obviously extends beyond the national context. For scholars of the global, the (often unconscious) hold of the nation-state can be
especially pernicious in the ways that it limits the scope and range of the intellectual imagination. Said argues that the hold of the nation is
such that even intellectuals progressive on domestic issues become collaborators of empire when it comes to state actions abroad. 34
Specifically, he critiques nationalistically based systems of education and the tendency in much of political commentary to frame analysis in
terms of we, us and our - particularly evident in coverage of the war on terrorism - which automatically sets up a series of (often
hostile) oppositions to others. He points in this context to the rather common intellectual tendency to be alert to
number of theorists who convincingly portray the state not only as an institution, but also, and primarily, as
a set of 'stories' of which the state-centric approach to international theory is a perfect example. It is part
of a legitimisation process that highlights, promotes and naturalises certain political practices and the
territorial context within which they take place. Taken together, these stories provide the state with a sense of
identity, coherence and unity. They create boundaries between an inside and an outside, between a people and its others. Shapiro
stresses that such state-stories also exclude, for they seek 'to repress or delegitimise other stories and the
practices of identity and space they reflect.' And it is these processes of exclusion that impose a certain political order and
provide the state with a legitimate rationale for violent encounters.
The state sustains collective identity through an increasing process of oppressive power
struggles, culminating in violence
Connoly in 2k2 (William, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science @ Johns Hopkins University, Identity/Difference,
expanded edition)
In several domains, the state no longer emerges as a consummate agent of efficacy, even though it expands as a pivotal agent of power.4
A crack in the very unity of "power" has opened up. We have entered a world in which state power is simultaneously
magnified and increasingly disconnected from the ends that justify its magni- fication. As obstacles to its
efficacy multiply, the state increasingly sustains collective identity through theatrical displays of punishment and revenge against those elements that threaten to signify its inefficacy. It launches dramatized
crusades against the internal other (low-level criminals, drug users, disloyalists, racial minor- ities, and the underclass), the
external other (foreign enemies and terrorists), and the interior other (those strains of abnormality, subversion, and perversity
that may reside within anyone). The state becomes, first, the screen upon which much of the resentment against
the adverse effects of the civilization of produc- tivity and private affluence is projected; second, the vehicle
through which rhetorical reassurances about the glory and durability of that civilization are transmitted
back to the populace; and third, the instrument of campaigns against those elements most disturbing to the
collective identity. In the first instance, the welfare apparatus of the state is singled out for criticism and reformation. In the second,
the presidency is organized into a medium of rhetorical diversion and reassurance. In the third, the state disciplinary-police-punitive
apparatus is marshaled to constitute and stigmatize constituencies whose terms of existence might otherwise provide signs of defeat,
injury, and sacrifice engendered by the civilization of productivity itself. <p206>
**Answers To
AT: Predictability
Unpredictability is inevitable embracing this fact, however, allows us to live
meaningful lives.
Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin, Senior
Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(3), p. 729-730)JM
Dramatic, sublime events can uproot entrenched habits, but so can a more mundane cultivation of wonder and curiosity. Friedrich
Nietzsche pursued such a line of enquiry when reflecting upon what he called the after effects of knowledge. He considered how
alternative ways of life open up through a simple awareness of the fallibility of knowledge . We endure a series of
non-dramatic learning experiences as we emerge from the illusions of childhood. We are confronted with being
uprooted from the safety of the house. At first, a plunge into despair is likely, as one realises the contingent nature of
the foundations on which we stand and the walls behind which we hide and shiver in fear: All human life is sunk deep in untruth;
the individual cannot pull it out of this well without growing profoundly annoyed with his entire past, without finding
his present motives (like honour) senseless, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions that urge one on to
the future and to the happiness in it.43 The sense of meaninglessness, the anger at this situation, represents a reaction
against the habits of ones upbringing and culture. One no longer feels certain, one no longer feels in control. The
sublime disruption of convention gives rise to the animosity of loss. The resentment may last a whole lifetime. Nietzsche insists, however,
that an alternative reaction is possible. A completely different after effect of knowledge can emerge over time if we
are prepared to free ourselves from the standards we continue to apply, even if we do no longer believe in them. To be sure, the:
old motives of intense desire would still be strong at first , due to old, inherited habit, but they would gradually
grow weaker under the influence of cleansing knowledge. Finally one would live among men and with oneself as in nature,
without praise, reproaches, overzealousness, delighting in many things as in a spectacle that one formerly had only to fear.44 The elements
of fear and defensiveness are displaced by delight if and when we become aware of our own role in constructing the scene around us. The
cleansing knowledge of which Nietzsche speaks refers to exposing the entrenched habits of representation of
which we were ignorant. We realise, for example, that nature and culture are continuous rather than radically distinct. We may have
expected culture to be chosen by us, to satisfy our needs, to be consistent and harmonious, in contrast to the strife, accident and instinct
of nature. But just as we can neither predict a thunderstorm striking nor prevent it, so we are unable ever to
eliminate the chance of a terrorist striking in our midst . We can better reconcile ourselves to the
unpredictability and irrationality of politics and culture by overcoming our childhood and idealistic illusions. The
cultivation of the subliminal, then, can dilute our obsession with control by questioning the assumptions about nature and culture in which
this obsession is embedded. Without this work of cultivation, we are far more vulnerable once hit by the after effects of
knowledge. We find ourselves in a place we never expected to be, overwhelmed by unexamined habits of fear and loathing.
But if, as Nietzsche suggests, we experiment with the subliminal disruptions encountered in the process
of
growing up, we may become better prepared. We may follow Bachelards lead and recognise that the house not only offers
us a space to withdraw from the world when in fear, but also a shelter in which to daydream, to let our minds wander and explore
subliminal possibilities. That, Bachelard believes, is indeed the chief benefit of the house: it protects the dreamer .45
task in an interesting way. The Foucauldian educational task becomes not the common sense one of making the
uncertain certain, the unfamiliar familiar.8 That is the logic of the examination, which assumes prior fixed knowledge which
individuals must acquire. Rather, Foucault would regard education as primarily a matter of making the certain
uncertain, the familiar unfamiliar, the given contingent. If nothing else, this educational ideal embodies more than a little of
the spirit of Deweyan inquiry.
AT: Limits
A focus on limits engenders violent practices by stopping productive discussions.
Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin, Senior
Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(3), p. 733-734)JM
A subliminal orientation is attentive to what is bubbling along under the surface. It is mindful of how conscious attempts to
understand conceal more than they reveal, and purposeful efforts of progressive change may engender more violence than
they erase. For these reasons, Connolly emphasises that ethical artistry has an element of navet and innocence. One is not quite sure
what one is doing. Such navet need not lead us back to the idealism of the romantic period. One should not be nave about navet,
Simon Critchley would say.56 Rather, the challenge of change is an experiment . It is not locked up in a predetermined
conception of where one is going. It involves tentatively exploring the limits of ones being in the world, to see if
different interpretations are possible, how those interpretations might impact upon the affects below the level
of conscious thought, and vice versa. This approach entails drawing upon multiple levels of thinking and being,
searching for changes in sensibilities that could give more weight to minor feelings or to arguments that were
previously ignored.57 Wonder needs to be at the heart of such experiments, in contrast to the resentment of an
intellect angry with its own limitations. The ingre d i e n t of wonder is necessary to disrupt and suspend the normal pre s s u
res of returning to conscious habit and control. This exploration beyond the conscious implies the need for an ethos of theorising
and acting that is quite diff e rent from the mode directed towards the cognitive justification of ideas and concepts. Stephen White talks
about circ u i t s of reflection, affect and arg umentation.58 Ideas and principles provide an orientation to practice , the
implications of that practice feed back into our affective outlook, and processes of argumentation introduce
other ideas and affects. The shift, here, is from the vertical search for foundations in skyhooks above or foundations below, to a
horizontal movement into the unknown.
Limits exclude and are an innately subjective process -- Objectifying rules obliterates agency
Bleiker 3 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, Contemporary Political Theory,
2, p. 39-40)JM
Approaching the political - and by extension dilemmas of agency requires tolerance towards various forms of insight
and levels of analysis, even if they contradict each others internal logic. Such differences often only appear as
contradictions because we still strive for a universal standard of reference that is supposed to subsume all the various
aspects of life under a single totalizing standpoint (Adorno, 1992, 1718). Every process of revealing is at the same
time a process of concealing. Even the most convincing position cannot provide a form of insight that does not
at the same time conceal other perspectives. Revealing always occurs within a frame. Framing is a way of ordering, and ordering
banishes all other forms of revealing. This is, grossly simplified, a position that resonates throughout much of Heideggers work
(1954, 35). Taking this argument to heart is to recognize that one cannot rely on one form of revealing alone. An adequate
understanding of human agency can be reached only by moving back and forth between various insights . The
point, then, is not to end up with a grand synthesis, but to make most out of each specific form of revealing (for an
exploration of this theme, via an analysis of Kants Critique of Judgement, see Deleuze, 1994).
resistance, but also enables it (once one knows where to look for it, as Covaleskie says). Similarly, educators should consider the
possibility that Foucaults insight might enable, rather than hinder, a deeper understanding of what Dewey meant by discipline as
intelligent inquiry. For Foucault, once one recognizes that ones aims are the product of power relations, they becomes
contingent and arbitrary. What once seemed inevitable and natural, now seems open to inquiry and
investigation. Thus, the teacher may come to realize that she has unconsciously been shaping her classroom behavior to conform to
the imperatives of an assessment driven educational system. Even after recognizing this, she may continue to regard her behavior as in
many respects beyond her control. For example, she may find herself unable simply to refuse to prepare her students for
the test, because theyll fail and she might lose her job. But the fact that she now recognizes her behavior as an effect of
power, and thus no longer legitimate, may also open up for her a new field of action for resistance.
accept and tolerate steadily increasing degrees of subjection. Aside from the more historical and methodological aspects discussed in
the preceding two sections, Foucault's work also offers nuanced understandings of the manifestations, functioning and effects of
contemporary educational institutions and practices. Such institutions, where relations of power and knowledge come to support and link
up with each other in more or less constant ways, form what Foucault called 'blocks of capacitycommunicationpower'. These
'regulated and concerted systems' fuse together the human capacity to manipulate words, things and people, adjusting
abilities and inculcating behaviour via 'regulated communications ' and 'power processes', and in the process structuring
how teaching and learning take place. What distinguishes educational institutions from prisons, armies, and hospitals
is that the former emphasize 'communication' above 'capacity' and 'power' (Foucault, 1982:218-219).184 Deacon
Universities, like schools, are multifaceted amalgamations of economic, political, judicial and epistemological relations of
power, which still reflect the exclusionary and inclusionary binaries of their origins: university campuses are relatively
artificial enclaves where students are expected to absorb socially desirable modes of behaviour and forms of knowledge before being
recuperated into society. Foucault predicted that universities will become increasingly important politically, because they
multiply and reinforce the power-effects of an expanding stratum of intellectuals and, not least, as a result of new global demands for
active, multi-skilled and self-regulated citizens.
Only our method provides students with the means to criticize education itself,
fundamentally expanding the scope of our turns
Mourard 1 (Roger, Wastenaw CC-College of educ,
http://inkido.indiana.edu/research/onlinemanu/papers/focault.pdf)
Critical scholarship in education is largely confined to critique about education as a discrete social and cultural
institution. The shortcoming is that such work does not really step outside of the histories and practices of schooling. This
inferiority unjustifiably limits the possibilities for critical scholarship in several ways. First, it does not encourage
borrowing ideas from other fields and disciplines that could provide a new vantage point for critique . Second, it
places conceptual barriers on critical reflection about education. These boundaries consist of the basic components of
schooling that place a context around students, such as curricula, teachers, classrooms, methods, grade levels, and
administrators.
AT: Education
Orienting ourselves to understanding experts is a bad educational lens We can
more effectively combat covert control through thinking outside the box
Biswas 7 (Professor of Politics at Whitman College, December, Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading
Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, p.
124)
What Said offers in the place of professionalism is a spirit of amateurism the desire to be moved not by
profit or reward but by love for and unquenchable interest in the larger picture , in making connections across lines
and barriers, in refusing to be tied down to a specialty, in caring for ideas and values despite the restrictions of a profession, an
amateur intellectual being one who considers that to be a thinking and concerned member of a society one
is entitled to raise moral issues at the heart of even the most technical and professionalized activity as it
involves ones country, its power, its mode of interacting with its citizens as well as with other societies.
(T)he intellectuals spirit as an amateur, Said argues, can enter and transform the merely professional
routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead of doing what one is
supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal
project and original thoughts. 24 This requires not just a stubborn intellectual independence, but also shedding habits, jargons,
tones that have inhibited IR scholars from conversing with thinkers and intellectuals outside the discipline, colleagues in history,
anthropology, cultural studies, comparative literature, sociology as well as in non-academic venues, who raise the question of the global in
different and sometimes contradictory ways. Arguing that the intellectuals role is a non-specialist one, 25 Said bemoans the
disappearance of the general secular intellectual figures of learning and authority, whose general scope over many fields gave them
more than professional competence, that is, a critical intellectual style. 26 Discarding the professional strait- jacket of
expertise-oriented IR to venture into intellectual terrains that raise questions of global power and cultural
negotiations in a myriad of intersecting and cross-cutting ways will yield richer and fuller conceptions of the
politics of global politics. Needless to say, inter- and cross- disciplinarity will also yield richer and fuller
conceptions of the global of global politics. It is to that that I turn next.
Language has no limits politics transcends to the personal level and becomes infinite
the well-being of the masses; the common good is the object of politics . These calculations focus on the subject
of power and politics. Where politics stops, government begins. Where government stops, politics begins. Now, I give you
one example. Do you know, Mr. Editor, that there are already manipulations in the press to reduce the impeachment saga into a regional
affair between North and South? By not being emotive but intellectual about it, I watch that argument with every discretion. Dialogue is
of the essence right now. If you allow any emotive, temperamental or tribal argument in the calculus, we will lose the
objective of state policy
through culture and communication. Human conversations arise out of and influence an ocean of cultural and
transpersonal meanings in which we live our lives, and this process he called dialogue. Most conversations, of course,
lack the fluid, deeply connected quality suggested by this oceanic metaphor. They are more like ping-pong
games, with participants hitting their very solid ideas and well-defended positions back and forth. Such conversations are
properly called discussions. "Discussion," Bohm noted, derives from the same root word as "percussion" and "concussion," a root that
connotes striking, shaking and hitting. Dialogue, in contrast, involves joining our thinking and feeling into a shared pool of
meaning which continually flows and evolves, carrying us all into new , deeper levels of understanding none of
us could have foreseen. Through dialogue "a new kind of mind begins to come into being ," observed Bohm, "based
on the development of common meaning... People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be
interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning, which is capable of constant
development and change." Bohm's approach to dialogue involved participants working together to understand the assumptions
underlying their individual and collective beliefs. Collective reflection on these assumptions could reveal blind spots and incoherences from
which participants could then free themselves, leading to greater collective understanding and harmony. Bohm maintained that such
collective learning increases our collective intelligence. (For links to sites, groups, and listservs working with Bohm's
approach to dialogue, click here.) (For Bohm's introduction to group dialogue, click here.)
Their limits are socially constructed and we have impacts to the specific limits they
construct
Rorty 99 (Richard, Atlantic Monthly, Yale-Phil, http://www.wsu.edu/~kimander/phonysciencewars.htm)
These philosophers can agree with the social constructionists that notions like "the homosexual" and "the Negro" and "the
female" are best seen not as inevitable classifications of human beings but rather as inventions that have done more
harm than good. But they are not sure that "X is a social construction" adds much to "talking about X is not
inevitable, and there are probably better ways of talking." They see the point of Foucault's famous observation that in the
nineteenth century homosexuality was "transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism of
the soul." Foucault went on to say, "The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a
species." They agree that we would have been better off with the commonsensical thought that some men
prefer to have sex with other men than with the sophisticated attempt to ground this preference in a deep, dark
psychopathology. But they think that the energy Foucault's disciples have put into arguing that something is a social construction
would be better put into proposing some alternative social construction: a more effective and less damaging way of talking about what is
going on. All our controversial ways of talking are, to be sure, choices that society has made about how to classify
things. In that sense these classifications are of course socially constructed. But the interesting question is whether anybody can
suggest a better classification.
theory of agency. Quite apart from indicating an inability to think outside the boundaries of a certain way of conceptualising the
world, this criticism also indicates an ahistorical reading of Foucaults work. If in his earlier work he doesnt discuss in
detail the interiority of the way people made decisions about action, his work is all about showing that these decisions were
not inevitable and that the current configuration of culture is not the result of some pre-determined process.
Quite the contrary in fact. There is a good deal of accident, chance, and petty politicking which operates in any situation making its
outcome unpredictable.
These intersubjective limits are better than imposed limits for self/other worth
Kent et al 2 (Michael L. Kent, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Strategic Communication, Maureen Taylor,
Ph.D., is Gaylord Family Chair of Strategic Communication, Sheila M. McAllister-Spooner, Ph.D., is Assistant
Professor of Communication, Monmouth University, Research in dialogic theory and public relations)
Genuine dialogue, involves more than just a commitment to a relationship . Dialogue occurs when individuals (and
sometimes groups) agree to set aside their differences long enough to come to an understanding of the others positions.
Dialogue is not equivalent to agreement. Rather, dialogue is more akin to intersubjectivity where both parties
attempt to understand and appreciate the values and interests of the other. Dialogue is both Socratic and Kantian.
Dialogue rests on an acknowledgement of the worth of the other as well as a willingness to continue the
conversationnot for purposes of swaying the other with the strength of ones erudition, but as a means of understanding
the other and reaching mutually satisfying positions.
would require a break with self=absorption. Much of what passes for conversation is actually monologue bec
ause it is constructed around a self=other structure such that the "other. is the absence or reflection of self In co
ntrast. dialogue is intersubjective It is an openended meeting of subjects. Emil Fackenheim articulates two main precepts
for structuring the ground for ethical dialogue.' The first that dialogue begins where one is, and thus is always situated; t
he second is that dialogue is Open, and I thus that the outcome is not known in advance. Openness produces refl
exivity, to that one's own round becomes destabilized. In open dialogue one holds one's self available to be surprised, to b
e challenged, and to be knocked out of narcissism. Dialogue breaks up monologue, it clears a round for meeting, generating a
place where people cm speak on their own terms. It thus requires attentive listening and
an open mind. Construed in this way, dialogue is a decolonizing practice leading toward unpredictable
outcomes.
knowing through shared conversation regarding the interpretation of texts. An educational community is
intersubjective in nature when all parties relate to one another as having a sense of agency and a unique
perspective. In such a community there is not a knowing subject (e.g., the teacher) and a known object (e.g., the
student or the content of instruction). Rather, all three elementsthe teacher, the student, and the contentrelate in an intersubjective,
interpretive community. In this community, roles such as teacher and student are still significant. However, the nature of the
dialogic conversation changes power relations in contrast to conventional pedagogy. Particularly, the nature of the
conversation is such that the students become agents in the hermeneutic community. Students roles change from
being passive learners to becoming co-creators. In expressing his or her perspective, a student co-creates along with
other students and the teacher a shared world in which difference is expressed and respected. Power is shared
mutually in this co-created community.
AT: Shively
It is no longer a question of searching for Truth, but rather of accepting difference and
facilitating dialog within that difference
Bleiker 98 (asst. prof. of International Studies at Pusan National University (Roland, Retracing and redrawing
the boundaries of events: Postmodern interferences with international theory, Alternatives, Oct-Dec 1998, Vol. 23,
Issue 4)
Accepting
difference and facilitating dialogue becomes more important than searching for the elusive Truth . But
dialogue is a process, an ideal, not an end point. Often there is no common discursive ground, no language that can
establish a link between the inside and the outside. The link has to be searched first. But the celebration of
difference is a process, an ideal, not an end point. A call for tolerance and inclusion cannot be void of power. Every social order, even
the ones that are based on the acceptance of difference, excludes what does not fit into their view of the
world. Every form of thinking, some international theorists recognize, expresses a will to power, a will that cannot but "privilege, oppress,
and create in some manner."[54] There is no all-encompassing gaze. Every process of revealing is at the same time a
process of concealing. By opening up a particular perspective, no matter how insightful it is, one conceals
everything that is invisible from this vantage point. The enframing that occurs by such processes of revealing, Martin
Heidegger argues, runs the risk of making us forget that enframing is a claim, a disciplinary act that "banishes
man into that kind of revealing that is an ordering." And where this ordering holds sway, Heidegger continues, "it drives out
every other possibility for revealing."[55] This is why one must move back and forth between different, sometimes
incommensurable forms of insights. Such an approach recognizes that the key to circumventing the ordering
mechanisms of revealing is to think in circles--not to rest too long at one point, but to pay at least as much attention to
linkages between than to contents of mental resting places. Inclusiveness does not lie in the search for a utopian, allencompassing worldview, but in the acceptance of the will to power--in the recognition that we need to evaluate and
In the absence of authentic knowledge, the formulation of theoretical positions and practical action requires modesty.
judge, but that no form of knowledge can serve as the ultimate arbiter for thought and action. As a critical practice, postmodernism must
deal with its own will to power and to subvert that of others. This is not to avoid accountability, but to take on responsibility in the form of
bringing modesty to a majority.
dilemmas. By articulating critique in relation to arguments advanced by orthodox approaches to IR, the impact of
critical voices remains confined within the larger discursive boundaries that were established through the
initial framing of these debates.
future possibilities to established forms of life.57 Instead of seeking nostalgic comfort and security in the familiar
interpretation of long gone epochs, even if they are characterised by violence and insecurity, conscious forgetting opens up
possibilities for a dialogical understanding of our present and past . Rather than further entrenching current
security dilemmas by engaging with the orthodox discourse that continuously gives meaning to them, forgetting tries to
escape the vicious circle by which these social practices serve to legitimise and objectivise the very
discourses that have given rise to them.
deradicalisation. For some, being an activist scholar necessarily involves being an anti-military, anti-state, anti-capitalist
outsider opposing British-backed US foreign policy, but there is no consensus on this.21 The risks of co-option and
deradicalisation needs to be considered in relation to context , strategy and tactics as well as theorised understandings of
the underlying characteristics of those mainstream institutions. To insist on or assume pacifism, anarchism, socialism and
opposition to all aspects of British and US foreign policy misses what may turn out to be the ambiguous, contingent,
factionalised and therefore potentially progressive aspects of the military, the state, capitalism and the foreign
policies of Britain and the United States.
the oppression of an education system failing from the unique synergy between lack of funding and anachronistic
pedagogical practices. Ed Lee, who now holds a Masters degree and works for an Urban Debate League in San Francisco, recounts his
experience as an urban debater: Educated in the public school system of inner-city Atlanta, my high school experience was tragically
similar to the one depicted above. My savior, like many others, was the Atlanta Urban Debate League. It provided the
opportunity to question the nefarious rites of passage (prison, drugs, and drinking) that seem to be uniquely
debilitating to individuals in the poor urban communities. In enclaves of poverty, there is also an undercurrent
of nihilism and negativity that eats away at the soul of the community. Adults are hopeless. Children follow their lead
and become hopeless. The solution is to offer people a choice beyond minimum wage or prison. Urban Debate Leagues provide
that. Debating delivers a galaxy of alternatives and opportunity for those who are only offered hopelessness and were
unnecessary elements of our culture that existed becaused they (predominantly) go unquestioned. Questioning the
very nature of our existence is at the heart of the debate process. I am left wondering what would occur if debate became as
compulsory in inner-city educational culture as football and basketball? Imagine graduating from high school each year millions
of underprivileged teenagers with the ability to articulate their needs, the needs of others, and the ability to
offer solutions. I am convinced that someone would be forced to listen. Urban debate Leagues offers a pedagogical tool
that simultaneously opens the mind to alternatives and empowers students to take control of their lives. Half of
the time, students are disseminating information and forming arguments about complex philosophical and political issues. In
the other half, they answer the arguments of others. Self-reflexivity is an inherent part of the activity. Debating gives students the ability to
articulate the partiality of all critical assessments. Contemporary educational techniques teach one side of the issue and
universalize it as the only truth. Debate forces students to evaluate both sides, and determine their independent
contextualized truth. Additionally, unlike the current pedagogy, debate allows everything to be questionedThe ability
to question subjectivities presented as the objective truth makes debate uniquely empowering for individuals
disenfranchised by the current system. It teaches students to interrogate their own institutionalized neglect and
the systemic unhindered oppression of others. It is one of the few venues we are able to question authority. (pp.
95-6) Given the possibilities an urban debate program presents, it is worth examining the practical possibilities for a
revitalization of urban debate. One thing is clear: Urban debate is under-utilized at present. Many urban debate
programs died in the late sixties and early seventies as the result of massive budget cuts. As tax revenues diminished in
educational coffers, debate programs, always treated as just one of the extracurricular activities, got lost in efforts to stop the institutional
bleeding by doing more with less. While college debate is more vibrant, as early as 1975 major college debate organizations were
acknowledging the lack of diversity in intercollegiate forensics. Little has changed over the past twenty-five years; minority participation
remains exceptionally low at the two major national policy debate tournaments, the Cross Examination Debate Association
championship and the National Debate Tournament (Hill, 1997; Stepp, 1997)
AT: Policymaking
Policy making framework makes a commodity of violence ensures its continuance
and is unethical
Makau 96 (Josina., Ph.D. in Rhetoric at the University of California-Berkeley, Responsible Communication,
Argumentation Instruction in the Face of Global Perils)
Weisel's critique of German education prior to world war II points to another danger of traditional argumentation instruction . Like the Nazi
doctors, students in traditional argumentation courses are taught "how to reduce life and the mystery of life
to abstraction." Weisel urges educators to teach students what the Nazi doctors never learned that people are not
abstractions. Weisel urges educators to learn from the Nazi experience the importance of humanizing their charges, of
teaching students to view life as special, 'with its own secrets, its own treasures, its own sources of anguish and with
some measure of triumph.' Trained as technocrats with powerful suasory skills but little understanding , students
participating in traditional argumentation courses would have difficulty either grasping or appreciating the importance of Weisel's critique.
Similarly, they would have difficulty grasping or appreciating Christian's framework for an ethic of technology an approach that requires
above all, openness, trust and care. The notion of conviviality would be particularly alien to these trained technocrats. Traditionally trained
debaters are also likely to fail to grasp the complexity of issues. Trained to view problems in black and white terms and conditioned to turn
to "expertise" for solutions, students, and traditional courses become subject to ethical blindness. As Benhabib noted, 'Moral blindness
implies not necessarily an evil or unprincipaled person, but one who can not see the moral texture of the situation confronting him or her.'
These traditional debaters, deprived of true dialogic encounter , fail to develop 'the capacity to represent' to themselves the 'multiplicity of
viewpoints, the variety of perspectives, the layers of meaning, etc. which constitute a situation'. They are thus inclined to lack 'the kind of
sensitivity to particulars, which most agree is essential for good and perspicacious judgment.' Encouraging student to embrace the will to
control and to gain mastery, to accept uncritically a sovereign view of power, and to maintain distance from their own and others
'situatedness,' the traditional argumentation course provides an unlikely site for nurturing guardians of our world's precious resources. It
would appear, in fact, that the argumentation course foster precisely the 'aggressive and manipulative intellect
bred by modern science and discharged into the administration of things' associated with most of the
world's human made perils. And is therefore understandable that feminist and others critics would write so harshly of traditional
argumentation of debate.
Their limitation of politics to the state denies creativity which eliminates the things
that makes life worth living and perverts politics.
Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin, Senior
Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(3), p. 735-736)JM
Promoting aesthetic engagements with politics is not to replace social scientific enquiries or to suggest that art
offers a solution to all problems. The point, rather, is that the key political challenges of our time, from terrorism to poverty, are
far too complex not to employ the full register of human intelligence and creativity to deal with them. Aesthetic
engagements with the sublime are central to this endeavour. But to remain valid, such engagements must go beyond a mere process
of aestheticising the political. Establishing societal models based on beauty and harmony has led to dangerous political experiments. We
need to acknowledge, along with George Kateb, that the aesthetic is a dominant force in human life . But we need to do
so while recognising the potentially problematic practice of searching for stability amidst chaos and
contingency through a resort to beauty as the ultimate value . In his view, such unaware and unrationalized aestheticism
is responsible for a great deal of immorality.60 In attempts to transform the ambivalent experience of the sublime into something
unambiguously beautiful, moral limits are often ignored. In contrast to aesthetic cravings, then, the challenge is to cultivate an
appreciation of sublimity in the everyday, and to use the aesthetic not to mask our fears of the uncertain, but to recognise
them and search for ways of living comfortably with the contingent dimensions of life.
The conception of politics devolves to a form of absolute control that overlimits the
realm of the political, making true representation impossible & violence inevitable.
Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin, Senior
Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(3), p. 736)JM
An aesthetic engagement with the sublime inevitably contains an ethical component. But the ethics we find here is very different
from the automatic and codified form of ethics that prevails in much of the theory and practice of international politics.
This is so because prevailing approaches to scholarship and decision-making have stated a clear preference for the
conscious in the fields of politics and ethics, to the point of imposing order in an attempt to repress
ambivalence. The ethical significance of the aesthetic ensues from the effort to be mindful about the
inherent violence of such forms of representation. It involves relaxing pressures always working to cut the world
down to the size and shape of our fears, needs and desires. Morton Schoolman, for instance, argues that the aesthetic refers to
a kind of openness and responsiveness that contrasts sharply with those tendencies in the modern world towards control and the
repression of difference. He distinguishes formal reason which finds what is unknown and diff e rent from thought to
be an obstacle to its emancipation from fear, from an aesthetic reason that is unafraid of the unfathomable in
which it finds the source of its receptivity to the diversity of diff e rent forms of life.61 John Gray illustrates the practical dimensions of this
position by reminding us that consciousness can actually be an obstacle, that the most accomplished pianist, for instance, is at his or her
most skilful when playing with the least amount of self-awareness .62 Similarly, in the domain of ethics, the conscious self can
environmentalists is not how to best exploit existing political avenues for the sake of making gains for the more-than-human world,
not about how humans ought best represent the interests of nature in incorrigibly anthropocentric political arenas, but to question,
and ultimately reconfigure what counts as politics itself; to revise, or rupture where necessary, traditional
political categories and assumptions about who or what counts as a political subject and what counts as political action and
speech, and challenge the instrumentalist view of politics in favor of a view that considers politics as a space
where ecological subjectivities are formed, contested, destabilized, and re-formed. Ecofeminist political philosophy
wonders how nature can have a voice in the polis. This leads to other sorts of philosophical tasks and questions, as Sandilands
notes.
The kritik doesnt preclude politics it allows for an understanding of it that can
solve problems more effectively.
Zalewski 2K (Marysia, Director, Centre for Gender Studies, Feminism After Postmodernism, p. 67-68)JM
A typical postmodern claim is that power is not something that is simply or only repressive. In keeping with a desire to dismantle dualistic
thinking, postmodernists refuse to perceive power as fundamentally opposed to resistance, hence the intertwined phrase;
power/resistance. Indeed, the idea that there is a monolithic power out there , whether that is patriarchy, racism or
capitalism, can lead to a sense of fatalism and despair , which is hardly the best way to achieve emancipatory ends,
postmoderns might argue. This links into the notion of productive power introduced earlier, which implies that the persistent battle over
the meanings of things will inevitably foster new forms of resistance and new meanings emerge from this. The battles over the words
'queer' and 'nigger* serve as good examples of this. The consistent postmodern emphasis on disputing meanings and
displacing traditional ideas and values, inevitably leads to a questioning and dishevelling of modernist definitions
and certainties about what counts as politics. This imposition of the authority of correct meaning is something that
postmodernists are keen to expose. Postmodernists also resist the idea that their views of the subject and
epistemology lead to an inability to be political or do politics. If we think of a specific postmodern method, deconstruct
ion, we can understand it as something that questions the terms in which we understand the political , rather
than an abandonment of the political. Surely, postmodernists argue, questioning what counts as politics is a political act? Rethinking
what the political is can allow a whole range of differences of opinions to appear . Additionally, rather than
concentrating on the 'why' of things, postmodernists prefer to focus on effects. So instead of asking. 'Why are women
oppressed?', postmodernists are more likely to ask questions about the effects of particular practices . For
example. 'What are the effects of beliefs about the "proper" roles for women such as those espoused by the Catholic Church?' Or in other
(postmodern) words. "How do women gel said [or described] as "good wives" by the Catholic Church?' Questioning foundations,
beliefs about who and what 'the subject is' and opening the notion of politics surely counts as taking feminist responsibility
seriously?
A focus on politics proper is neither inevitable nor natural The presumption that
we should debate politics and produce research on politics proper reifies
policymaking as a verified truth which devolves agency, obscures social change, and
naturalizes state violence Put away your limits and ground das: The historical
moment of the state is tiny; debate is older and more robust
Lemke 97 (Thomas, German Science Foundation-heisenberg fellow,
http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/publikationen/Indigestible%20Meal%20-%20Proofs.pdf)
It follows that an analytics of government takes seriously the historical and systematic importance of political knowledge (Foucault, 1997:
67) for state analysis. Historically, the emergence and stability of state agencies is intimately tied to the incessant
generation, circulation, storage and repression of knowledge. The constitution of the modern state was closely
connected with the rise of the human sciences and the production of knowledge about the population and
individuals. It depended on information concerning the physical condition of the national territory, diplomatic and secret knowledge
about the strengths and weaknesses of foreign states, and other forms of knowledge that made objects visible and rendered them into a
calculable and programmable form. State actors and agencies used statistical accounts, medical expertise, scientific
reports, architectural plans, bureaucratic rules and guidelines, surveys, graphs, and so on to represent events and entities as
information and data for political action. These inscription devices (Latour, 1986) made it possible to define problems, specify areas
of intervention, calculate resources, and determine political goals (Burke, 2000; Vismann, 2000; Desrosires, 2002; Collin and Horstmann,
2004). In systematic terms, political knowledge plays a dual role in the constitution of the modern state. On the one hand, political
rationalities provide cognitive and normative maps that open up spaces of government which are
intrinsically linked to truth. State agencies produce and proliferate forms of knowledge that enable them to act upon the governed
reality. On the other hand, the state is constituted by discourses, narratives, world-views and styles of thought that allow
political actors to develop strategies and realize goals. What is more, these symbolic devices even define what it means to
be an actor, who may qualify as a political actor and citizen (Nullmeier, 1993; Meyer, 1999; Steinmetz, 1999a; Mller,
Raufer and Zifonun, 2002; Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003). Finally, it would be a misunderstanding to reduce political
knowledge to scientific reasoning and rational argumentation since it is also embodied in routine action, cultural selfevidence and normative orientations. Thus the state is not only a material structure and a mode of thinking, but also a
lived and embodied experience, a mode of existence (see Maihofer, 1995; Sauer, 2001: 11012). This analytical perspective
has two important theoretical merits. First, the commonplace contrast between state formation and policymaking
loses credibility, since the former is not a single event but an enduring process in which the limits and contents of state
action are permanently negotiated and redefined. It follows that policies that affect the very structure of the state are part of the
ongoing process of stateformation (Steinmetz, 1999b: 9; Gottweis, 2003). Second, this approach makes it possible to include
the observers position in the process of theory construction. Political and sociological knowledge , operating
with dualisms like individual and state, knowledge and power, and so on, plays a constitutive role in the emergence and
reproduction of concrete forms of statehood. It provides a symbolic infrastructure that maps possible sites of
intervention, and it is also inside this cultural framework that subjects define and live their relation to the
state (Demirovic, 1998: 4950; Mitchell, 1991: 94; Rose and Miller, 1992: 182).
adhere to representational habits that have become equally objectified and problematic. Many of them are social
scientists for whom knowledge about the facts of the real world emerges from the search for valid inferences
by the systematic use of well-established procedures of inquiry.3 But relatively little practical knowledge has
emerged from these efforts, even after successive generations of social scientists have refined their models and methods. Our
insights into the international have not grown substantially, nor have our abilities to prevent deadly conflicts . From
Kosovo to Afghanistan violence remains the modus operandi of world politics. Even proponents of scientific research lament that
students of international conflict are left wrestling with their data to eke out something they can label a finding.4
have unintended consequences. A debate follows about whether academics are responsible for how their research is used and, if
so, how they can control its interpretation and appropriation. I have always been bemused by these exchanges
academics worry about the implementation of their ideas, without realizing that policymakers simply might
not care what international relations scholars have to say, let alone listen to their opinions. At these moments I am reminded of a classic
exchange in Casablanca between Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart. Lorre asks, You despise me, dont you, Rick? Bogart replies, I guess I
would if I thought about you. Although US government officials are not nearly as dismissive of academics and their ideas as Bogart
was of Lorre, they certainly have a low threshold for academic research . Some of their dismissiveness is understandable.
Policymakers need to act in complex situations defined by tremendous uncertainty and with some knowledge of the key participants
before deciding what to do. Academic knowledge rarely meets this standard of usability. Yet the impatience of policymakers
cannot be completely attributed to the kind of knowledge they desire. It also is a result of a general intolerance for theory and
frustration with the ways in which academics collect and analyze information. This dismissal of scholarly knowledge
and research can be dangerous in several ways, including a failure both to acknowledge important developments in world affairs that
should affect policy and to recognize the positive effects of thinking like a scholar.
Barnett 6 (Michael What the Academy Can Teach by Academy and Policy, Vol. 28 (2) - Summer 2006 the
Harold Stassen Prof of IR at the Humphrey Institute and Profof Poli Sci at the U of Minnesota
http://hir.harvard.edu/index.php?page=article&id=1553&p=1) TBC 7/9/10
Academics pay considerable attention to sources, data, methods, and research design . While there are places in the
foreign policy bureaucracy that approximate this logic of inquiry, often what passes for research in government is not
scientifically driven observation but rather arguments that conform to the political realities of the moment.
Academics consider alternative hypotheses and appeal to evidence to show why their proposed argument is superior to
existing explanations. Many policymakers do not. Academics privilege relatively long, exhaustive, footnotecrowded papers that methodically consider an issue from all angles. Policymakers, as they rise in status, become less likely to
read anything longer than three pages. I learned the art of writing memos that did not exceed two pages, stripped complex
processes down to their bare bones, and simplified issues to the point of being simple-minded and one-dimensional. The immediate
victims of this makeover were nuance, complexity, and contingency. Academics tend toward probabilistic statements, while
policymakers favor deterministic, if-then statements. Academics tend to favor conclusions that are provisional
and invariably call for further study, while policymakers assert their findings with an air of confidence that
suggests that no further debate is needed.
articles and a preference for simplified statements (globalization is a myth) and highly provocative, sometimes inflammatory claims
(Mexicans are taking over the United States) as well as many bright, multicolored graphics. There is, in essence, a preference for
style over substance, for simplicity over complexity. A close friend of mine who works in the US Department
of State tells me that he and his colleagues like the change in part because it is their version of People
magazine.
Amsden, DiCaprio, and Robinson 9 (Alice, prof of Political Economics at MIT, Alisa, Research
Fellow at UNU-WIDER, and James, prof of Government at Harvard U, August,
[http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles/en_GB/05-08-2009/] AD: 7/9/10)JM
Elites also impact development outcomes through their control over decision-making processes that allocate
political resources within a society. This introduces two additional channels through which their activities impact growth in the long
run. The first is that elites have the resources to design and implement institutions that favour their interests .
Such institutions may promote participation and information flow. Or they may simply cement the position of a particular
group within the governance structure. Another feature of elite control over institutions is that they are able to influence how
both elites and non-elites within a society perceive different issues. Elites control how issues are framed
through their ability to distribute or withhold information, and their influence over and within the media. Even where there is a free
media, it depends on elites for information, and can choose to present issues that reflect a particular bias. The extent to which these
channels are used for social or personal welfare gain varies among societies. But the fact that these channels exist in every
society highlights the fact that if elites can be induced to adopt developmental behaviour, it can have a
disproportionately positive impact on growth and development.
autonomously. Once it was determined that political elites were the vital factor in creating a successful democratic
transition, two case studies were examined which allowed us insight into how political elites work and what they must do in order to
succeed.
Their version of the aff is strategic politics that produces tyrannical control
Smith 9 (Neil, CUNY-Anthro, http://neil-smith.net/news/another-revolution-is-possible-foucault-ethics-andpolitics)
But Foucault must be defended. He was writing only months after Iranian oil workers sparked the revolution by going on strike
and at a time when the hijacking of the revolt by a theocratic elite was far from certain. For him, in the spring of 1979,
the Iranian movement still defied that `law of revolutions whereby the tyranny lurking within them
comes to the surface. Yet the controversy over Foucaults revolu- tionism has largely sidestepped a central and symptomatic dilemma
in Foucaults forceful defense of revolution, and here he may be on less secure ground. Insofar as the penchant for revolt is, as he suggests,
universal, this sits very awkwardly with the subjectivity of revolution to which he is just as equally attuned. To span the
breach between universality and irreducibility on the one side and subjectivity on the other Foucault proposes a theoretical ethics. This
theoretical ethics is opposite to, and for Foucault replaces, any strategic politics; it is explicitly antistrategic, he says.
Potential tyranny lurks not only in revolt, he implies, but equally in a strategic politics. As an intellectual, he feels
that his role therefore is to keep watch, a bit behind politics, over what must unconditionally limit it.
theories, that take the individual as base point, and a management of the body, that divides the anatomy into a series of
potentials, should be antagonistic to say the least. Which might be why disciplinary techniques often come as challenges to
liberal rights to privacy and bodily integrity. The standard move of declaring someone pathological or deviant , in
serious need of help, is to exclude them from the liberal body, from being a candidate for ordinary ethical relations between
citizens. In other words if politics is taken to appropriately be concerned with the individual person, then it can only
be a form of biopolitics. It is a way of organising the mass-population as though it were a collection of atomic
particles. As you point out through Hacking the person is an entity that is generated and categorised through many forms of auto-
management. However, if politics takes the relevant aspects of personhood to be attributes that all persons (supposedly) share-alike, such
as reason, autonomy and universal rights then the only division that matters is the original division of the population into individual
persons. Hence, once liberal political theory is taken up, all relevant decisions of division are already made for it.
possesses solely a political meaning, Foucault is able to show that up until well into the 18 th century the problem of
government was placed in a more general context. Government was a term discussed not only in political tracts, but
also in philosophical, religious, medical and pedagogic texts. In addition to control/management by the state or the
administration, "government" also signified problems of self-control, guidance for the family and for children,
management of the household, directing the soul, etc. For this reason, Foucault defines government as conduct, or, more
precisely, as "the conduct of conduct" and thus as a term which ranges from "governing the self" to "governing others". All in all, in his
history of governmentality Foucault endeavors to show how the modern sovereign state and the modern autonomous
individual co-determine each other's emergence (Lect. Feb. 8, 1978/1982b, 16/17; Foucault, 1982a, 220-1; Senellart, 1995).
certain things as givens; therefore if you write about them in order to influence the policy debate, you tend
to have to write as if they are given as well. For academics such 'givens' are rarely seen as such. This has extremely
important political and intellectual consequences since it questions the very notion of talking 'truth' to
power. It is more a case of accepting the policy agenda of those to whom one is talking and then giving them a series of alternative ways
of proceeding. I see no connection between this and speaking 'truth to power'. I can also admit the tendency to make what one says
acceptable to those 'listening', so as to ensure that one is indeed 'listened to'. But more importantly, why should academics take
the policy agenda of governments as the starting point? Why do we privilege that starting point rather than
the needs and wants of the have-nots in our society or in the global political system? Indeed, maybe speaking
'truth to power' is itself a very political act, albeit in the name of academic neutrality, an act that supports the existing
division of resources in the world. This situation is made all the worse once the possibility arises of getting
funding from policy-making bodies, however much the individual academic wants to maintain the independence of his or her
research. In my view, academics need a critical distance from which to look at the activities of governments.
Perhaps the greatest form of isolation and self-righteousness is to accept the policy-makers' view of the world
as the starting point, so that the academic sees the world as the policy-maker sees it. Where would
questions of gender, famine, and racism fit into that world-view? Yet aren't these every bit as 'political' and
'international' as the traditional agenda? This seems to me to take us very far indeed from the idea of 'speaking truth to power'; the
danger must be of telling the powerful what they want to hear and of working within their world-view. Of
course, academics spend much time trying to avoid these dangers, and Wallace himself cannot be accused of simply adopting the agenda
of the powerful, but surely he would admit that these dangers are profound and very difficult to avoid, especially if one wants to have
influence and prestige within the policy-making community. My objection is really to those who pretend that any of this
Policy pros cant slap us down People have power through agency
Bleiker 98 (asst. prof. of International Studies at Pusan National University, Roland, Retracing and redrawing
the boundaries of events: Postmodern interferences with international theory, Alternatives, Oct-Dec 1998, Vol. 23,
Issue 4)
In rendering meaningful, one is not describing or representing, one is intervening .[29] An event today is no
longer apprehensible through traditional spatial understandings of world politics. Advances in economic,
technological, and informational domains have led to what could be called a "deterritorialization" of the
world, a situation in which "the local is instantly global."[32] This transformation has rendered obsolete the
convention of investigating world politics through several distinct levels of analysis .[33] David Campbell argues
convincingly that globalized life is best seen "as a series of transversal struggles rather than as a complex of inter-national, multi-national or
trans-national relations."[34] The latter, he points out, are modes of representation that have strong investments in the very borders that
are currently being questioned. By contrast, to conceptualize global politics as a site of transversal struggles is to draw
attention to the multiple and multilayered interactions that make up contemporary life. It is to recognize the
complex cross-border flow of people, goods, ideas, capital-in short, "the increasing irruptions of accelerated and nonterritorial
contingencies upon our horizons."[35] (A world political event, such as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, cannot be
understood through a spatial mode of representation that relies on a distinction between different levels of
analysis. The key dynamics took place in various interstices, in the transversal gray zones that loom along the
boundaries between local, domestic, and international politics . The processes that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall are
thus best characterized as a series of diverse but interconnected occurrences that transgressed the spatial and political givenness of both
East German and Cold War international politics.)[36]
Bleiker 00 (Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere,
Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of
Social Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University
Press)
An approach that specifies operational schemes recognises these limits to cognition. Instead of establishing a new and better theory of
agency, it is content with formulating a framework that facilitates understanding of how human agency is incessantly constituted and
reconstituted in the context of transversal struggles. Expressed in de Certeau's language, one must comprehend forms of action
in the context of their regulatory environment. Such an approach departs from ways in which traditional
philosophy (and, by extension, international theory) has framed the understanding of human action. This framing process has revolved
around three ways of explaining action: teleological, causal and intentional. 39 My analysis breaks with most elements that are entailed in
this mode of analysis. It does not assume that agency can be assessed only by establishing links between means
and ends. It does not assume that every form of agency needs an identifiable agent that causes an
identifiable outcome. It does not assume that agency occurs only if it stands in a relationship with a declared
intention. What is left of the concept of human agency if one no longer relies upon causal, teleological and intentional explanations?
The Interlude situated between chapters 7 and 8 deals with this question at a conceptual level. Its objective is to outline a framework that
facilitates an understanding of the discursive conditions that are necessary for the exertion of human agency. From this vantage point, the
most potent forms of transversal dissent operate in tactical, rather than strategic ways. They move along an
indeterminate trajectory, transgress political boundaries and slowly transform values. They becomes visible
and effective only through maturation over time and space.
through tactic and temporality. Despite their power to frame the world, discourses are not monolithic forces
that crush everything in sight. They are often thin, unstable, fragmented. They contain cracks. By moving from
epistemological to ontological levels of analysis, the inquiry explores the ways in which people can resist
discursive domination (chapter 7). Human beings have hyphenated identities. Furthermore, these identities are not frozen
in time, but part of a constantly unfolding process of becoming. By tapping into these multiple and shifting
dimensions of Being, individuals are able to think and act beyond the narrow confines of the established
discursive order. They engage in everyday forms of resistance that allow them to reshape the social context in which they are
embedded. Such forms of discursive dissent can be found in countless seemingly insignificant daily acts of defiance. They transform
values, transgress boundaries and may eventually promote social change far more effectively than the socalled great events of international politics.
Cede the political fails reinforces capitalism and strengthens the right
Dean 8 (Joan, Politics Without Politics, political theorist,
http://publishing.eur.nl/ir/darenet/asset/15161/oratiejodidean.pdf)JFS
Democracy, though, is inadequate as a language and frame for left political aspiration. Here are two reasons why; there are
others. First, the right speaks the language of democracy . It voices its goals and aspirations in democratic terms.
One of the reasons given for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example, was the goal of bringing democracy to the Middle
East. Similarly, leftists in the United States urge inclusion and participation, and so do those on the political right. The right complains
about the exclusion of conservatives from the academy and God from politics. They, too, try to mobilize grass-root support and
increase participation. There is nothing particularly left, then, about inclusion and participation. These are
elements of democracy the right also supports. This rightwing adoption of democratic ideals prevents the left from
occupying the position of a political alternative to the right if left positions are the same right ones then the
left isnt an alternative. Slavoj Zizek describes this situation where ones enemy speaks ones language as victory in defeat (2008, p.
189). When one's enemy accepts one's terms, one's point of critique and resistance is lost, subsumed. The dimension of antagonism
(fundamental opposition) vanishes. A second reason democracy is inadequate as an expression of left aspiration is that
contemporary democratic language employs and reinforces the rhetoric of capitalism: free choice, liberty, satisfaction,
communication, connection, diversity. Like any media savvy corporation, democratic activists want to ensure that voices are
heard and opinions registered. Corporations and activists alike are united in their preoccupation with awareness:
people need to be aware of issues, of products , of products as signs of issues. In this concrete sense, Zizek is right to claim that
attachment to democracy is the form our attachment to capital takes (2002, p. 273; 2008, p. 184). In the consumption
and entertainment-driven setting of the contemporary United States, ones commitments to capitalism are expressed as
commitments to democracy. They are the same way of life, the same daily practices of aware-ing oneself and expressing ones
opinion, of choosing and voting and considering ones choice a vote and ones vote a choice.
left complaining or whining might even be the primary mode of left theorizing today. We wallow in misery,
in the deadlock in which we find ourselves. But whereas my emphasis is on democracy as the name of left
deadlock, of the fantasy of politics without politics, others view the current problem as a crisis of de- democratization
(Wendy Brown) or de-politicization (Jacques Ranciere). As Ranciere makes clear in his writings from the nineties , elements of the
depoliticization thesis resonate with mainstream political discussions of the end of ideology, the rise of
consensus politics, and even the neoliberal withering away of the state, that is, the revisioning of the state as just
another contractor of economic serviceswe were told that the era of big government was over. Financial crises that manifest
themselves in the U.S. in 2008 and led to what the Bush administration presented as a necessary 700 billion dollar bailout of banks and
institutions too big to fail quickly made this notion seem quaint and unconvincing. Nonetheless, the theme of depoliticization has been a
pronounced one in the United States and Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It makes sense, then, to consider this theme more
closely, interrogating its suppositions and their applicability in the contemporary setting. If the diagnosis of de- democraticization and depoliticization is correct, then left politics should seek more democracy, should attempt re-politicization. But if I am right about the
contemporary democratic deadlock, then a politics that reasserts democracy as the solution to all our
problems will continue to entrap us in the same old circuits of defeat. It will fail , moreover, to attend to the
politicizations already conditioning the current conjuncture.
interdependent and mutually constitutive relationship between them. The discussions that have evolved in the wake of
this assumption are highly complex and cannot possibly be summarised here. 25 Some of the key premises, though, can be recognised by
observing how the work of Anthony Giddens has shaped the structureagency debate in international relations. Giddens speaks of the
'duality of structure,' of structural properties that are constraining as well as enabling. They are both 'the
medium and outcome of the contingently accomplished activities of situated actors'. 26 Expressed in other
words, neither agents nor structures have the final word. Human actions are always embedded in and
constrained by the structural context within which they form and evolve. But structures are not immutable
either. A human being, Giddens stresses, will 'know a great deal about the conditions of reproduction of the
society of which he or she is a member'. 27 The actions that emerge from this awareness then shape the
processes through which social systems are structurally maintained and reproduced.
We meet by discussing the state, but a procedural focus reads the narrative of state
primacy as natural and inevitable
Bleiker 2k (Roland, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the
University of Queensland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics)
To expand the scope of international theory and to bring transversal struggles into focus is not to declare the
state obsolete. States remain central actors in international politics and they have to be recognised and
theorised as such. In fact, my analysis will examine various ways in which states and the boundaries between them have mediated the formation,
functioning and impact of dissent. However, my reading of dissent and agency makes the state neither its main focus nor its starting point. There are
compelling reasons for such a strategy, and they go beyond a mere recognition that a state-centric approach to international theory engenders a form of
representation that privileges the authority of the state and thus precludes an adequate understanding of the radical transformations that are currently
Michael Shapiro is among an increasing number of theorists who convincingly portray the
state not only as an institution, but also, and primarily, as a set of 'stories' of which the state-centric
approach to international theory is a perfect example. It is part of a legitimisation process that highlights,
promotes and naturalises certain political practices and the territorial context within which they take place.
Taken together, these stories provide the state with a sense of identity, coherence and unity. They create boundaries
between an inside and an outside, between a people and its others. Shapiro stresses that such state-stories also exclude, for
they seek 'to repress or delegitimise other stories and the practices of identity and space they reflect.' And it is
unfolding in global life.
these processes of exclusion that impose a certain political order and provide the state with a legitimate rationale for violent encounters.
magnified and increasingly disconnected from the ends that justify its magni- fication. As obstacles to its efficacy
multiply, the state increasingly sustains collective identity through theatrical displays of punish- ment and
revenge against those elements that threaten to signify its inefficacy. It launches dramatized crusades against
the internal other (low-level criminals, drug users, disloyalists, racial minor- ities, and the underclass), the external other (foreign
enemies and terrorists), and the interior other (those strains of abnormality, subversion, and perversity that may reside within anyone).
The state becomes, first, the screen upon which much of the resentment against the adverse effects of the
civilization of produc- tivity and private affluence is projected; second, the vehicle through which rhetorical
reassurances about the glory and durability of that civilization are transmitted back to the populace; and third,
the instrument of campaigns against those elements most disturbing to the collective identity. In the first instance,
the welfare apparatus of the state is singled out for criticism and reformation. In the second, the presidency is organized into a medium of
rhetorical diversion and reassurance. In the third, the state disciplinary-police-punitive apparatus is marshaled to constitute and stigmatize
constituencies whose terms of existence might otherwise provide signs of defeat, injury, and sacrifice engendered by the civilization of
productivity itself. <p206>