similar “complex” template with a headerv.web.umkc.edu/vegam/2007sdi/critical aff.doc · web...

UMKC SDI 2K7Louie/Todd Critical SSA Aff

The Index The Index.................................................................................................................................................................11AC..........................................................................................................................................................................21AC..........................................................................................................................................................................31AC..........................................................................................................................................................................41AC..........................................................................................................................................................................51AC..........................................................................................................................................................................61AC..........................................................................................................................................................................71AC..........................................................................................................................................................................8Sub-Saharan Africa Link.........................................................................................................................................9African’s Dehumanized.........................................................................................................................................10Banking Model of Education Bad.........................................................................................................................11Debate Norms = Bad.............................................................................................................................................12Challenge Racism Key..........................................................................................................................................13We allow for hyphenated identities.......................................................................................................................14Debate Key Site.....................................................................................................................................................15Aff key non-colonial dialogue...............................................................................................................................16Ballot key (1/2)......................................................................................................................................................17Ballot Key (2/2).....................................................................................................................................................18Perm: Do Both.......................................................................................................................................................19No Neg Can Solve our aff.....................................................................................................................................20AT: Framework.....................................................................................................................................................21AT: DA..................................................................................................................................................................22AT: DA – Cuomo (1/2)..........................................................................................................................................23AT: DA – Cuomo (2/2)..........................................................................................................................................24AT: DA..................................................................................................................................................................25Dillon Impact Card................................................................................................................................................26Discursive Violence Bad.......................................................................................................................................27

1/27


1AC

We have been brought here today to debate a topic that has to do with Africa but before we can debate this topic we have to answer some question does African want our help does? Why do we have to defend Eurocentric policy? Why is the resolution force us to defend a racist notion of sub-Sahara?

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its public health assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa.

The framer of the resolution intended for us to defend the resolution in it entirety. This will inevitable increase the Eurocentric domination in debate. Every team this year will have to endorse the term sub-Sahara Africa; this is problematic in many ways. When you use the term “sub-Sahara” Africa you identify 400 million African as being sub human (3/5th of a human being) contributing to the dehumanization that has been inherent for 500 years starting with colonialism, slavery, and other exclusion that have been perpetuated by Euro-centrism

The term ‘sub-Saharan African” is an example of Eurocentric dominance. It gives the notion threat African are sub human this blatant racist mindset is only amplified in the resolution http://www.southwark.tv/quest/apFeedback.asp Kubara Zamani 07

It would appear that we still don’t seem to be any closer at establishing, conclusively, what the West media and allied institutions mean by ‘sub-Sahara Africa’. Could it, perhaps, just be a benign reference to all the countries ‘under’ the Sahara, whatever their

distances from this desert, to interrogate our final, fourth probability? Presently, there are 53 sovereign states in Africa. If the five north Africa Arab states are said to be located ‘above’ the Sahara, then 49 are positioned ‘under’. The latter would therefore include all the five countries mentioned above whose north frontiers incorporate the southern stretches of the desert, countries in central Africa (the Congos,

Rwanda, Burundi, etc., etc), for instance, despite being 2000-2500 miles away, and even the southern African states situated 3000-3500 miles away! In fact, all these 49 countries, except Sudan (alas, not included for the plausible reason already cited!), which is clearly ‘under’ the Sahara and situated within the same

latitudes as Mali, Niger and Chad, are all categorised by the West as ‘sub-Sahara Africa’. To replicate this obvious farce of a classification elsewhere in the world , the following random exercise is not such an indistinct scenario: - Australia hence becomes ‘sub-Great Sandy Australia’ after the hot deserts that cover much of west and central Australia - East Russia, east of the Urals, becomes ‘sub-Siberia Asia’ - China, Japan and Indonesia are reclassified ‘sub-Gobi Asia’ - Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam become ‘sub-Himalaya Asia’- All of Europe is ‘sub-Arctic Europe’ - Most of England, central and southern counties, is renamed ‘sub-Pennines Europe’ - East / southeast France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia are ‘sub-Alps Europe’- The Americas become ‘sub-Arctic Americas’ - All of South America south of the Amazon is proclaimed ‘sub-Amazon South America’; Chile could be ‘sub-Atacama South America’- Most of New Zealand’s South Island is renamed ‘sub-Southern Alps New Zealand’ - Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama become ‘sub-Rocky North America’- The entire Caribbean becomes ‘sub-Appalachian Americas’CODE Rather than some benign construct, ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is, in the end, a bizarre nomenclatural code that the West employs to depict an African-led sovereign state - anywhere in Africa, as distinct from an Arab-led one. It is of course the West’s non-inclusion of the Sudan in this grouping, despite its majority African population and

geographical location, which gives the game away! More seriously to the point, though, the West uses ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ to create the stunning effect of a supposedly shrinking African geographical landmass in the popular imagination, coupled with the continent’s supposedly attendant geo-strategic global ‘irrelevance’. ‘Sub-Sahara Africa’ is undoubtedly a racist geo-political signature in which its users aim repeatedly to present the imagery of the desolation, aridity, and hopelessness of a desert environment. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of 700 million Africans do not live anywhere close to the Sahara, nor are their lives so affected by the implied impact of the very loaded meaning that this dogma intends to convey. Except this increasingly pervasive use of ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ is robustly challenged by rigorous African-centred scholarship and publicity work, the West will

2/27

http://www.southwark.tv/quest/apFeedback.asp


1AC succeed in the coming decade to effectively substitute the name of the continent ‘Africa’ with ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ and the name of its peoples, ‘Africans’, with ‘sub-Sahara Africans’ or worse still ‘sub-Saharans’ in the realm of public memory and reckoning. BANE It should be noted that this characterisation of Africa comes in the wake of the virtual collapse of the continent’s economy in the 1980s. This was caused by the catastrophic failure of the so-called ‘economic structural adjustment programme’, formulated by the World Bank / IMF and implemented on the ground by the infamous African kakistocratic regimes. The age long terms of the glaring asymmetrical Africa-West socioeconomic relations, that have always favoured the West, worsened even further for Africans. Even though tagged a ‘developing continent’, Africa crucially became a net-exporter of capital to the West as a result, a cardinal feature of its economy since 1981. In these past 26 years, Africa has transferred the gargantuan sum of US?subject=From Website'>700 billion to the West. These exports include those routinely made by thieving heads of state and other state officials. The other stunning consequence of the economy’s collapse is the flight of its middle classes to the West and elsewhere. They are part of the 12 million Africans who have fled the continent in the past 20 years and who are now the principal external source of capital generation and transfer to Africa. In 2003, they dispatched the impressive sum of US?subject=From Website'>200 billion to Africa. These African emigres also include the cream of the post-restoration of independence intelligentsia (scholars, scientists, writers, artists, journalists, doctors, nurses, other medical / health professionals, engineers, accountants, teachers, etc., etc), very talented men and women who presently enrich, quite ironically, the West’s intellectual and cultural heritage most profoundly.

It cannot be stressed too often that the extant (European-created) African states that are immanently hostile to the overriding interests of the African humanity have not ceased to be havens that continuously enrich the West most dramatically. The flip side of the coin that tells the tale of the extraordinary wealth which the West and its African regime-clients expropriate from Africa, day in, day out, is the emaciated, starving and dying child, woman and man that has been the harrowing image of the African on television screens and other publicity channels across the world. At stake, of course, is the case that the state in Africa demonstrates a glaring inability to fulfil its basic role to provide security, welfare and transformative capacities for society’s developmental needs and objectives. It is still a conqueror’s and conquest state, precisely the way the European creator envisioned its ontology. It is virtually at war with its peoples, a genocide-state that has murdered 15 million in Biafra, Rwanda, Darfur and southern Sudan, the Congos and elsewhere on the continent in the past 40 years. It is the bane of African social existence. Africans now have no choice but to dismantle this state (‘sub-Sahara’, ‘sub-sub-Sahara’, ‘proto-Sahara’, ‘quasi-Sahara’, ‘supra-Sahara’, whatever!) and create new state forms that expressly serve their interests and aspirations. This is the most pressing African task of the contemporary era. - Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of ‘Biafra Revisited’ (African Renaissance, 2006)

~ NUBIART COMMENT: The professor’s article echoes what we at Nubiart have been saying for years that the use of 'sub-Saharan' is for two purposes: as a code for distinguishing the 'poor impoverished dark-skinned' southern part from the Arab 'north' (for which Europeans still have some hope, even if they are Muslims) and to stop the Afrikan unity which was coming about during the years of Nkrumah, Fanon, etc.

'Sub-Saharan' is used by western commentators and politicians as a subliminal code for subhuman and subnormal. Continuing the three-fifths human and monkey / ape propaganda they have been peddling for the last couple of centuries. The phrase ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ became prominent at the same time as Afrikan children in Europe and America were being mis-educated and labeled ‘Educationally Sub-Normal (ESN)’ by racist education systems. The ‘Afrikans as monkey / ape / gorilla’ psyche of the European continues. This week a European in South Afrika was jailed for 20 years for murdering a Zimbabwean farmworker he considered a baboon and ill-treating four other farmworkers.

We should stop using ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ as many countries straddle or are actually in the Sahara as the Prof correctly points out and some

Afrikan countries are over 3000 miles from the Sahara so what is their connection to it. We should stick to country or regional names recognising that all of Afrika is Afrikan and encourage all Afrikans (and guests, migrants, diasporans and commentators on the continent) to live up to some level of pan-Afrikan economic, political and moral standards.”Nubiart also rejects the term ‘Ex-patriate’ for European migrants, immigrants and workers to other countries. They are the same as Afrikan migrants, (whether economic or political) who travel to other countries with the intention of seeing what it is like and studying or doing business. Ex-patriate is too cosy and paternalistic a term for the exploitation and mayhem many Europeans abroad engage in.

3/27


1AC The lines that draw the Sub-Saharan are nothing more than racist politics, excluding Africans from civilization make them sub-human. Owen’Alik Shahadah ( )Black history linguistics for a new African Reality http://www.itzcaribbean.com/linguistics_african.php 2 k7

The notion of some invisible border, which divides the North of African from the South, is rooted in racism, which in part assumes that sand is an obstacle for African people. This barrier of sand hence confines Africans to the bottom of this make-believe location, which exists neither linguistically, ethnically, politically or physically . The Sahara is a broad desert belt, which encompasses countries like Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan, and Mauritania, and hence are neither “sub” nor “North Africa.” In addition, many African communities historically have traveled freely across this European barrier set for Africans. Moreover millions of indigenous Africans are ethnic natives in Morocco, Libya, Algeria, and Egypt, so even ethnically North Africa is not a non-African territory and testimony to this is the rock art found in this region showing native Africans hunting there 10,000 years ago. Mansa Musa famous Hajj traveled through North Africa in the 13th century so why assume Africans would be confined to this nonsensical designation called sub-Saharan Africa?. Again, Eurocentric dialectics is at play in the insatiable need to categorize and define things solely on superficial limited physical observation. Hence, sharp definitions, physical quantities are pre-emphasized in Eurocentric mental navigation of the world around. Sub-Saharan Africa sets-up the premises for the confiscation of any “civilization” which happen to occur in African territory. These malicious definitions have been inherited by the victims of European imperialism and normalize into African language and reality. Sub-Saharan Africa is a racist byword for "primitive," a place, which has escaped advancement . Hence, we see statements like “no written languages exist in Sub-Saharan Africa.” “Ancient Egypt was not a Sub-Saharan African civilization.” Sub-Sahara serves as an exclusion, which moves, jumps and slides around to suit negative generalization of Africa. Europeans place an emphasis on written script, and subsequent definitions of “advance” and “primitive” are rooted in this pre-concept. It can be said however that most of the world has, historically an oral tradition. However, both formulas for preserving history can be found in Africa : oral and written. However, attempts to exclude Africa from civilization have hit upon an obstacle when the Ge'ez script exists in Ethiopia . To solve this apparent contradiction the argument moves to, “it was introduced from another people,” and the new claim "they were a half-Arab people." At no point in time can Africans be allowed to be seen to have fostered anything, which Europe labels as artifacts of civilization. So either the invisible borders comes into play and civilizations are assigned to North Africa (“non-Black”) or gifts given to Africans from external non-African sources via miscegenation and conquest. It is said that natural barriers justify the separation of North and Southern Africa, but the Sahara is only one such barrier in Africa. Ethiopia is more "cut-off" from the rest of Africa due to its mountain ranges. There are barriers due to the impassible forest of central Africa. There are also the great Southern desert belts; interestingly enough Africans have been occupying these deserts from the beginning of human history. There is no climate change when we enter Libya, there is no religious change, and we can argue there is no profound cultural changes which wouldn’t be witness moving from Ethiopia to Southern Sudan. Arabic is spoken in Djibouti just as in Sudan; all of these are South of the make-believe line. Somalia and Djibouti are part of the same political Islamic alignment (Arab League) just like many so-called Arab countries. Thus the legitimacy of Sub-Saharan Africa seems to be rooted in some more mischievous foundation. In this respect to discuss Africa from the context of Sub (a word which has links to sub-human, sub-culture, i.e. a very negative word) absolutely distorted view of African cultures north and south of the equator. Viewing culture from these limiting vantages-points poisons the flexibility and deeper appreciate of subtle complexities shared by these unique cultures. In a nutshell it is more obstructive, outside of science and rooted in extreme racist politics. There is more similarity between Mali culture and the culture of the nomadic Berber people than Bantu groups in the Congo . Amhara culture is radically different from say Ghana, and it can be argued to have a deeper relationship with Yemen (which it annexed in antiquity). So a black and white view of African culture only serves racist generalizations. Historians would like to point to the unilateral influence on African culture by non-African people, never is Africa seen to be the givers of cultural influence outside of its locality . This was extended to the extreme to say Nubians offered nothing to a supposed Caucasoid Egypt. This impossible assertion means that for thousands of years there was only a unilateral cultural and technological exchange. No culture in history shows a unilateral exchange, not even the "Great British Empire," which dietary culture has been completely altered in a mere 20 years by Asian and Caribbean immigration. There is also the notion of "other" suggested in Ancient Egyptian writings, which is now being used to suggest they were of a different race to the nubians. Lopsided scholarship will always try to work outside of established human behavior. When Ethiopian art depicts the people of Southern Sudan there is an artistic difference between how Ethiopians paint themselves and how they paint "other" Africans: This doesn’t mean Ethiopians are not African.( see above fig.) Ghanaians do the same thing. Ethnic differences do not mean racial differences.

4/27


1AC

If we don’t change this we will continue to breed socialized policy makers who comply to the flawed system which thus continue oppression caused by Eurocentric dominates.

The system of thinking of the west misguides our minds the only way to fight back this victimization is to liberate our self’s

Molefi Kete Asante 2005(Dr. Molefi Kete Asante is Professor, Department of African American Studies at Temple University.) http://www.asante.net/scholarly/afrocentricity.html

Periodically there appears a book that runs counter to the wisdom of experience in the African American community. Against Race by the sociologist Paul Gilroy is just such a book. Gilroy, a British scholar, who teaches at Yale University, made a reputation in the states with the postmodern work, The Black Atlantic. I see this book as a continuation of that work’s attempt to deconstruct the notion of African identity in the United States and elsewhere. Of course it runs squarely against the lived experiences of the African Americans. The history of discrimination against us in the West, whether the United States or the United Kingdom or other parts of the western world, is a history of assaulting our dignity because we are Africans or the descendants of Africans. This has little to do with whether or not we are on one side of the ocean or the other. Such false separations, particularly in the context of white racial hierarchy and domination, are nothing more than an acceptance of a white definition of blackness. I reject such a notion as an attempt to isolate Africans in the Americas from their brothers and sisters on the continent, and of course, to continue the separations of Africans in Britain from each other. It is as serious an assault and as misguided as the 1817 Philadelphia conference that argued that the blacks in the United States were not Africans but "colored Americans" and therefore should not return to Africa. To argue as Gilroy does that Africans in Britain and the United States are part of a "Black Atlantic" is to argue the "colored American" thesis all over again. It took us one hundred and fifty years to defeat the notion of the "colored American" in the United States and I will not stand idly by and see such misguided notion accepted as fact at this late date in our struggle to liberate our minds. We are victimized in the West by systems of thinking, structures of knowledge, ways of being, that take our Africanity as an indication of inferiority, something to be overcome. I see this position as questioning the humanity and the dignity of African people. Despite what looks like acceptance of Africans on a political level, it is racist at the core, because it is an acceptance of what whites find acceptable, that is, the idea that certain blacks are no longer Africans. The easiest and quickest way in the United States to assume that position is to say that "you never left anything in Africa" or "you are not an African nor a black but an American" or to say "Africa never did anything for me." You become immediately accepted as an honorary white.

5/27


1AC The Arbenz study, which offers statistical proof that black, Hispanic and female debaters, rich or poor, lose more often and get lower speaker points than rich or poor white debaters do. His study shows that the problems of racism, sexism and classism which are examples of Eurocentric dominates are mirrored in high school debate.

Also, Tim Wise, a white man, wrote in his book White Like Me, that debate is a game of white privilege. To succeed, you have to spend thousands on summer camp. Worse, its entire method is Eurocentric and exclusionary. This is due to the speed of the speeches, the emphasis on obscure evidence and, above all, the object of the game being to win at all costs. “Personal principles don’t matter,” Wise wrote. And he rightly observed that this is a turn-off to so-called minorities that causes minorities to be excluded from the world of debate

If we allow the chain of the Eurocentric to influence politics this would lead to the destruction of humanity

6/27


1AC

When west try to save humanity in inevitable destroys it

Sousa Santos April 2003 http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2003/63/santos.html

According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to save humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism, with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the period of imperialist struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many other colonial wars. This is how it was under Stalinism, with the Gulag, and under Nazism, with the Holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system. With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the Western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it.

Sacrificial genocide arises from a totalitarian illusion manifested in the belief that there are no alternatives to the present-day reality, and that the problems and difficulties confronting it arise from failing to take its logic of development to ultimate consequences. If there is unemployment, hunger and death in the Third World, this is not the result of market failures; instead, it is the outcome of market laws not having been fully applied. If there is terrorism, this is not due to the violence of the conditions that generate it; it is due, rather, to the fact that total violence has not been employed to physically eradicate all terrorists and potential terrorists.

This political logic is based on the supposition of total power and knowledge, and on the radical rejection of alternatives; it is ultra-conservative in that it aims to reproduce infinitely the status quo. Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history. During the last hundred years, the West has experienced three versions of this logic, and, therefore, seen three versions of the end of history: Stalinism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority; and neoliberalism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the market. The first two periods involved the destruction of democracy. The last one trivializes democracy, disarming it in the face of social actors sufficiently powerful to be able to privatize the state and international institutions in their favor. I have described this situation as a combination of political democracy and social fascism. One current manifestation of this combination resides in the fact that intensely strong public opinion, worldwide, against the war is found to be incapable of halting the war machine set in motion by supposedly democratic rulers.

7/27


1AC

The presentation of the affirmative is key to the process of rehumanization- this is the only way to reclaim agency and create a transformatory praxisGottlieb, State Teachers’ College Seminar Hakibbutzim Tel Aviv, AND La Belle university of Pittsburgh, 90(Esther E and Thomas J. “Ethnographic Contextualization of Freire’s Discourse: Consciousness-Raising Theory and Practice” in Anthropology & Education Quarterly Vol. 21 No. 1 march jstor)3. "Prophetic vision." The third part of the jeremiad, according to Bercovitch, involves the enunciation of a prophetic vision of the future when the gap between the present state and the ideal state set out by the scriptural precedent will be closed once and for all. In Freire's discourse, this is the future time when the gap between the present state of dehumanization and the ideal state of full humanity will be closed.Only the dehumanized can restore, or rather (since the state of full humanity never existed in historical reality) create humanity. Man cannot be liberated by others, but can only liberate himself with others (p.53).What are the means by which this liberating rehumanization is to be achieved? "Propaganda, management, manipulation-all arms of domination-cannot be the instruments of [men's] rehumanization.The only effective instrument is a humanizing pedagogy" (p. 55). Education can rehumanize insofar as it can be a humanistic and liberating praxis. Freire insists that the "authentic solution" of the oppressor oppressed contradiction lies in the rehumanizing process. Rehumanization can be achieved through a problem-posing education of the oppressed, using empirical knowledge of their own reality in a dialogue that reflects on their world in order to transform it.

The ballot is crucial to our project: By problematizing the term sub-Saharan Africa and relating it to the exclusion that occurs in debate is an educational process that involves a discourse that rehumanizes the bodies of the oppressed. This is crucial to transforming the debate round, the topic and the debate community

8/27


Sub-Saharan Africa Link Topic education gives of the notion that the framers of the topic are to be placed on top of a Knowledge hierarchy giving them the power of controlling what we learn and know. Reinforcing oppressive power structures evident in society Tyehimbe (African academics) oct 11 2004 Education: Myths and Implications2k7http://www.rastaspeaks.com/tyehimba/2004/1110.htmlEducation justifies the status quo of inequality by creating the myth that those at the top of the social hierarchy deserve their power and privilege, and that they have attained their status according to merit. Conversely, those that did not succeed in the system are seen as having only themselves to blame. Thus the education disguises the ills of a society built upon greed and injustices such as racism, classism and sexism . It is those that have succeeded and conformed

to the education systems that have the means to express themselves in the mainstream. And it is those who embody into the preferred characteristics of society around ethnicity, color, wealth, residence etc who are most capable of 'success' in the education system. By giving the preference to such voices, the mainstream media reinforces the silence of many who have legitimate experiences that the nation needs to hear to heal itself.

Most importantly, educational models that have arisen in a European context cannot properly deal with the peculiarities of a country borne out of centuries of colonialism . This is not to say that the theories are useless or that they should be totally disregarded. Rather, every aspect of our local reality needs to be re-examined and re-interpreted from our perspective, thus developing unique indigenous problem-solving methods that encompass our collective histories, culture and ancestral wisdom. This would naturally involve coming to terms with the fact that the formal education system in Trinidad and Tobago and other places does not truly educate, which must then lead to a greater consideration of the theories and

mechanisms that can truly empower people. This is not apart from dealing with other social issues. The myths of meritocracy and equality in the education system is intimately linked to the many other social myths that people have internalized as truth.

9/27


African’s Dehumanized African American are systemically dehumanized by society James M. Jones (Department of Psychology University of DelawareU.S.A.) 1999 http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~culture/jones.htmMy second assumption is that the driving force behind the cultural psychology of African Americans is the fact of their systematic dehumanization over centuries, and their continued presence in the society that has dehumanized them. Adaptations to oppression call upon psychological tendencies and capacity to guide their deployment. Since African Americans continue to live within the society that has victimized and dehumanized them, the adaptations are ongoing, and their consequences are cumulative.

10/27


Banking Model of Education Bad The banking model of education creates a relationship of domination between human beings negating the value to lifeGottlieb, State Teachers’ College Seminar Hakibbutzim Tel Aviv, AND La Belle university of Pittsburgh, 90(Esther E and Thomas J. “Ethnographic Contextualization of Freire’s Discourse: Consciousness-Raising Theory and Practice” in Anthropology & Education Quarterly Vol. 21 No. 1 march jstor)Deconstructing the oppressor's figures of speech. As part of his denunciation of the present state of dehumanization, Freire undertakes to identify and lay bare or deconstruct the figures of speech that underliethe discourse of the oppressive status quo, particularly in education. Education as banking is the metaphor that Freire sees as underlying the oppressors' approach to education. Freire follows the logic of the banking metaphor to its ultimate conclusion. If people are containers or depositories with definite boundaries, and education is depositing, then when the container is full it can be filed away. Thus, the banking approach to education "masks the effort to turn men into automatons-the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human" (p. 61). In other words, the logical conclusion of the banking metaphor for education is for the oppressor to reduce men to things the metonymy that will be analyzed next. "For the oppressors, 'human beings' refers only to themselves; other people are things" (p. 43). In the expression "people are things,"which Freire identifies as underlying the oppressors' discourse, one concept ("things") is being used to refer to quite another concept("people"), but not in the way that a metaphor transfers meaning from one frame of reference to another. This is not a metaphor but a metonymy:' "Metonymy . . . has primarily a referential function, that is it allows us to use one entity to stand for another" (Lakoff and Johnson 1980:36). But metonymy is not merely a referential device; it serves a reductionist function as well. In the context of oppression, the oppressor owns things and dominates people; both people and things are parts of the whole that comes under the oppressor's control. By substituting one part for another through the implicit metonymy of "people as things," the oppressor can assert his ownership of people in the same way that he asserts ownership of things. This is exactly how Freire accuses the oppressors-reducing people to things. This metonymical reduction of people to things, of course, stands in the strongest contradiction to Freire's own discourse, which asserts over and over the full humanity of the oppressed: "people as human beings.

11/27


Debate Norms = Bad The hegemonic discourse of traditional debate produces exclusion – we must problematize these norms to prevent their continued diffusion Bleiker, professor of Poly Sci Univ of Queensland Brisbane, 2K3(Roland, “Discourse and Human Agency” Contemporary Political Theory Vol. 2 # 1) 'It is within discourse,' one of Foucault's much rehearsed passages (1976, 133) notes, 'that power and knowledge articulate each other.' The work of the French historian and philosopher epitomizes what is at stake in questions of discourse and agency. For Foucault, discourses are subtle mechanisms that frame our thinking process. They determine the limits of what can be thought, talked and written in a normal and rational way. In every society the production of discourses is controlled, selected, organized and diffused by certain procedures. This process creates systems of exclusion in which one group of discourses is elevated to a hegemonic status, while others are condemned to exile. Discourses give rise to social rules that decide which statements most people recognize as valid, as debatable or as undoubtedly false. They guide the selection process that ascertains which propositions from previous periods or foreign cultures are retained, imported, valued, and which are forgotten or neglected (see Foucault, 1969, 1971, 1991, 59-60).Not everything is discourse, but everything is in discourse. Things exist independently of discourses, but we can only assess them through the lenses of discourse, through the practices of knowing, perceiving and sensing, which we have acquired over time. Discourses render social practices intelligible and rational -- and by doing so mask the ways in which they have been constituted and framed. Systems of domination gradually become accepted as normal and silently penetrate every aspect of society. They cling to the most remote corners of our mind, for, as Nietzsche (1983, 17) once expressed it, 'all things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their emergence out of unreason thereby becomes improbable.'

12/27


Challenge Racism Key When we challenge the racist structure you can tear down the oppressor

James M. Jones (Department of Psychology University of DelawareU.S.A.) 1999 http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~culture/jones.htmThese core assumptions about "race" established a normative set of beliefs and expectations about the superiority of whites and the inferiority of blacks that have been handed down over centuries.Anti-racism activities have been carried out within the racism paradigm. Challenging racist assumptions leads anti-racist activities to eliminate both the "superiority" assumption for whites and the "inferiority" assumption for blacks. As a result, the arguments against both assumptions are based on the premise that differences between blacks and whites are trivial. These differences, however, have been measured by human characteristics that are validated on the beliefs that emanate from a western, Anglo-American cultural worldview. Within this perspective, Blacks are validated only to the extent that they are believed to be similar to whites.My aim in this paper is to consider the implications of this cultural racism analysis for African Americans. Specifically, I consider the possibility that adaptations to

racism both create and reflect racial differences in psychological processes. Psychological differences among racial groups derive from different cultural origins, and evolve along different pathways as a result of different experiences with race. Blacks were dehumanized within American culture, and their adaptation to and liberation from that experience required the utilization and evolution of psychological mechanisms founded in their African cultural origins.

13/27


We allow for hyphenated identities The 1ac and our call for the ballot is recognition and support for the hyphenated identities we are able to create within the debate round. The revelation of the intersections of class, race, gender and nationality have on the debate community and it’s approach to the topic of Africa allows for a transcendence of the Eurocentric discourse that plagues the community and is the only way to achieve any form of political agencyBleiker, professor of Poly Sci Univ of Queensland Brisbane, 2K3(Roland, “Discourse and Human Agency” Contemporary Political Theory Vol. 2 # 1) While there are obvious and perhaps even incommensurable differences between Heidegger and feminist theory, there are also strong and reinforcing parallels. They are above all located in the political potential that is contained in recognizing the constructed dimensions of Being and in the tension between identity and difference (see Heidegger, 1969). For feminist authors, this potential does not only lie in the Heideggerian temporal aspects of Being, in future possibilities that are already contained in the existential self-aware of Dasein. It is captured at least as much by drawing attention to the multiple dimensions of Being that exist simultaneously. This is to say that for many feminists, potential for resistance is to be found not so much, or at least not only, in differences between men and women, not even in differences among women. Strategies of dissent can emerge from exploring differences within women. The terms fractured or hyphenated identities are most commonly used to convey the theoretical starting point for this innovative approach to difference. Braidotti (1989, 93) speaks for many when arguing that the synthesizing power of the term 'I' is nothing but a grammatical necessity, 'a theoretical fiction that holds together the collection of differing layers, the integrated fragments of the very-receding horizon of my identity' (see also Ferguson, 1993, 153-183; Haraway, 1991, 155-161; Harding, 1986, 163-196; Trinh, 1989, 95-96). Women (and men) have multiple, fractured and ambivalent subjectivities that move back and forth between such terrains of identity as class, race, gender, nationality, language and sexual preference. This conceptualization of Being displays important parallels with that of Heidegger, for in both temporal or simultaneous dimensions, Being is always already that which it is not. Discursive domination is a crucial force to be reckoned with. However, it is not the end of the story. There are ways of eluding discourse. There are glimmers of hope. There are fractured visions of human agency.

What exactly is the potential for resistance contained in these hyphenated identities? How can they lead to expressions of human agency? Some of the above feminist authors claim convincingly that hyphenated identities open up chances for undermining the regulatory norms established by these very identities. They give individuals the opportunity to escape the suffocating impact of discursive orders, to seek out its cracks and weaknesses, and explore the enabling potential that lingers in them. Ferguson employs the term 'mobile subjectivities' to capture possibilities that arise from moving back and forth among various hyphenated identities and its corresponding mental resting places. This process not only entails travelling across and along axes of power, domination and resistance, but also destabilizes the regulatory norms that have been constructed through the delineation of these identities (Ferguson, 1993, 158-163). By being aware of the arbitrary and excluding nature of identity constructions, such as class, race or gender, individuals gain the possibility of taking part in daily processes that slowly but constantly redraw the political boundaries of identities. Haraway talks in a similar vein of 'situated knowledges,' of how moving back and forth between various subjectivities can open up multiple visions. The point is, she emphasizes, not to ground one's knowledge in stable standpoints, but to explore visions of change that unfold through multidimensional, shifting and always eluding hyphens of identity (Haraway, 1991, 183-201). Potential for human agency is then contained in the transgression of boundaries that has been enabled through an awareness of the flexibility contained in various forms of identities.

14/27


Debate Key Site The educational forum of debate is a crucial site for challenging eurocentric knowledge claimsLander, professor of sociology and Latin American studies at the Venezuelan Central University in Caracas, 2K6(Edgardo, “Eurocentrism and Colonialism in Latin American Social Thought” Nepantla: Views from South 1.3)The problem with Eurocentrism in the social sciences is not only that its fundamental categories were created for a particular time and place and later used in a more or less creative or rigid manner to study other realities. The problem lies in the colonial imaginary from which Western social sciences constructed its interpretation of the world. This imaginary has permeated the social sciences of the whole world, making a great part of the social knowledge of the peripheral world equally Eurocentric.7 In those disciplines, the experience of European societies is naturalized: Its economic organization—the capitalist market—is the “natural form of organizing production. It corresponds to an individual universal psychology” (Wallerstein 1996, 20). Its political organization—the modern European nation-state—is the “natural” form of political existence. The different peoples of the planet are organized according to a notion of progress: on one hand the more advanced, superior, modern societies; on the other, backward, traditional, nonmodern societies. In this sense, sociology, political theory, and economics have not been any less colonial or less liberal than anthropology or orientalism, disciplines where these assumptions have been more readily acknowledged. This is the basis of the cognitive and institutional network of development and of structural adjustment politics promoted by the Washington consensus.8 It is a colonial system of knowledge that expresses and legitimizes the modern colonial world-system. Europe’s dominating position in the world structure of colonialism established a monopoly of the locus of enunciation of “objective,” scientific knowledge about the modern world (Mignolo 1995, 329). It is a perspective with only one subject (white, European, with the exclusion of every other subject and every other form or style of knowledge). This leads to the naturalization of this power structure, which comes to be explained as resulting from hierarchical differences in race, culture, [End Page 527] or other classifying systems, which always envision the modern West as the maximum expression of human development. Any difference between the cultural patterns of the hegemonic powers and the rest of the world is seen as the expression of the intrinsic inferiority of all others, or as hindrances to be supplanted (forcefully if necessary) through the European-led civilizing or modernizing process. This system of knowledge has proved to be long-lasting and has outlived colonialism as a foundation of today’s worldwide hegemonic structure of power (Quijano 2000). It is not the same to assume that the historical patrimony of the social sciences is merely parochial as to conclude that it is also colonial. The implications are drastically different. If our social-science heritage were just parochial, knowledge related to Western societies would not need any questioning. It would be enough to expand the reach of the experiences and realities to be studied in other parts of the world. We could complete theories and methods of knowledge which thus far have been adequate for some determined places and times, but less adequate for others. The problem is a different one when we conclude that our knowledge has a colonial character and is based upon assumptions that imply and “naturalize” a systematic process of exclusion and subordination of people based on criteria of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and culture. This perspective introduces crude distortions not only in knowing others, but also in the self-understanding of European and northern societies.

15/27

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nepantla/v001/1.3lander.html#endnote:8%23endnote:8

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nepantla/v001/1.3lander.html#endnote:7%23endnote:7


Aff key non-colonial dialogue The affirmative is key to providing space for a non-colonial dialogue to emergeLander, professor of sociology and Latin American studies at the Venezuelan Central University in Caracas, 2K6(Edgardo, “Eurocentrism and Colonialism in Latin American Social Thought” Nepantla: Views from South 1.3)To recognize the colonial character of the hegemonic forms of knowledge in the contemporary world would imply more difficult and complex challenges than those identified in The Gulbenkian Report. This knowledge is intertwined in complex and inseparable manners in the articulations of power of contemporary societies. Only a timid and partial dialogue with other subjects and cultures would be achieved by incorporating into the social sciences representatives of those subjects and cultures that were once excluded. As is acknowledged in the report, this requires long learning and socializing processes in certain truth-systems, at the end of which one could well expect that only internal criticisms of the discipline would be likely. Given, for example, the current demarcations of economics, there are limited possibilities for the formulation, from within that discipline, of radically different alternatives to mainstream liberal economics. Liberal cosmology (a conception of human nature, of wealth, of the relationship of man to nature, of progress) is incorporated as a fundamental metatheoretical premise in the disciplinary constitution of that field of knowledge. [End Page 528] The achievement of effective intercultural, horizontal democratic communications, noncolonial and thus free of domination, subordination, and exclusion, requires a debate beyond the limits of the official disciplines of modern sciences, open to dialogues with other cultures and other forms of knowledge. Apart from epistemological rigidities and the overwhelming burden of institutional and academic inertia, the main obstacles are political. The possibilities for democratic communications are severely limited by the profound differences of power that exist today between different cultures and between different peoples.

16/27


Ballot key (1/2) The ballot serves as a form of tactical action the supports the resistance to the hegemonic Eurocentric thought of the resolution and the debate community- this is key to the eventual transformation of the communityBleiker, professor of Poly Sci Univ of Queensland Brisbane, 2K3(Roland, “Discourse and Human Agency” Contemporary Political Theory Vol. 2 # 1) The last, and perhaps most difficult task left, is to figure out how operational schemes, contingent foundation or rhizomes can be employed to imbue discursive dissent with the capacity to exert human agency. Ensuing attempts inevitably differ, but they generally diverge from how traditional philosophy has framed the understanding of human action, that is, in teleological, causal and intentional terms (see Bubner, 1982, 125-156). An anti-essentialist approach to understanding human agency does not establish links between means and ends; it does not assume that every form of agency needs an identifiable agent that causes an identifiable outcome; and it does not limit agency to those outcomes that stand in a relation with a declared intention.

Contrasting strategic and tactical action may help to clarify the problems entailed in conceptualizing agency. In a strategic form of dissent, agent and target can be separated and the attempt is usually made to articulate a causal relation between them. An identifiable agent (as a protest march) exerts influence on an identifiable target (as a change in policy desired by the march.) A non-essentialist understanding of human agency cannot rely on such strategic and causal assumptions. The duality of cause and effect as we commonly perceive it does not exist, Nietzsche (1982a, 127-131) already knew. What there is, instead, is a continuum of complex factors from which we arbitrarily isolate a few pieces and fit them neatly into the image we had already made ourselves of the world.A specification of operational schemes aims at understanding human action in tactical, rather than strategic terms. The link between action and outcome in tactical forms of dissent is diffused, subtle and impossible to articulate through a causal formula. In contrast to strategic action, de Certeau explains, tactical forms of resistance have no clearly specified target, no visible place to exert influence on. There is no direct causal relation between the subject of will and the exterior circumstances at which this will is directed. Tactical actions cannot be autonomous from their target. They always insinuate themselves into the Other, without seizing it entirely, but yet without being able to keep their distance (de Certeau, 1990, xlvi).

Take the rather mundane example of a critical and environmentally aware consumer in an industrialized society who refuses to buy milk that is bottled in non-reusable glass. Alone this shopper does not stand a chance of exerting human agency in the traditional sense. However, if a substantial part of the population engages in similar daily acts of protest producers will eventually be compelled to adjust to changed market conditions. But where is the agent and the causal relation in this form of protest? One cannot pick out a particular shopper who epitomizes this tactical and collective act of dissent. Consumers may have a whole range of reasons for refusing to buy milk in non-reusable glass bottles. They may, for example, have environmental concerns, oppose commercial dairy farmers or be vegan. Moreover, where is the target of this tactical form of dissent? Is it the supermarket? The retailer? The producer of glass bottles? The farmer who delivers milk? Government authorities who fail to impose sufficient environmental standards? Fellow shoppers who still buy milk bottled in non-reusable glass? Or even the society as a whole, of which the said shopper is as much part as anybody else?A tactic does not have the possibility of perceiving its adversary in a space that is distinct, visible and objectifiable. Indeed, the space of tactic is always the space of the Other (de Certeau, 1990, 60-61).

17/27


Ballot Key (2/2) This is to say that a tactical form of dissent, like shopping, cannot keep its distance from the object of the action. It always operates in the terrain of the opponent. Tactical actions leave their assigned places, enter a world that is too big to be their own, but also too tightly woven to escape from. Since tactic does not have a specific target and cannot separate between the I and the Other, it can never conquer something, it can never keep what it wins. Tactic must always seize the moment and explore cracks that open up in discursive orders. It must constantly manipulate its environment in order to create opportunities for social change (de Certeau, 1990, xlvi-ii, 61).

It is through the concept of temporality that we can appreciate the ways in which tactical actions unleash their transformative potential. The causality entailed in such manifestations of human agency, as far as one can speak of causality in this diffused context, is always mediated through time. Tactical action, de Certeau stresses, operates along 'indeterminate trajectories.' This means, in a first instance, that tactic works discursively, that it transforms values and becomes visible and effective only through maturation over time. In a second instance, the indeterminacy of the trajectory refers to the fact that tactical actions defy the spatial logic established by the organizing procedures of a particular system. Expressed in de Certeau's somewhat idiosyncratic language, tactical actions cannot be perceived as a conventional succession of events in space. Rather, they evoke a temporal movement through space, but one that focuses on the diachronic succession of points, rather than the figure that these points establish on a supposedly synchronic and achronic space. The latter view, de Certeau stresses, would make the mistake of reducing a 'temporal articulation of places into a spatial sequence of points' (de Certeau, 1990, 58-59).

The above-mentioned refusal to buy milk bottled in non-reusable glass may help to clarify the suggestion that tactical manifestations of human agency are not bound by spatial dynamics. The consumer who changes his/her shopping habits engages in a tactical action that escapes the spatial controlling mechanisms of established political and economic boundaries. The effect of such a tactical action is not limited to the localized target, say, the supermarket. Over an extended period of time, and in conjunction with similar actions, such tactical dissent may affect practices of production, trade, investment, advertisement and the like. The manifestations that issue from such actions operate along an indeterminate trajectory insofar as they promote a slow transformation of values whose effects transgress places and become visible and effective only by maturation over time. In the case of tactical protest actions of environmentally sensitive consumers, it may still be too early to ascertain a definitive manifestation of human agency. However, various indicators render such an assertion highly likely. Changing attitudes and consumption patters, including an increasing concern for environmental issues, have produced easily recognizable marketing shifts in most parts of the industrial world. For instance, health food sections are now a common feature in most supermarkets. And there is empirical evidence that suggests that consumer preferences for costly 'ethical' production technologies can lead to increased competition between producers, which, in turn, may gradually increase the level of adoption of such ethical technology (Noe and Rebello, 1995, 69-85).

18/27


Perm: Do Both Perm- do both- our aff is an effort to highlight the contingency of identities – despite contradictions we must engage in tolerance of different perspectives and move forward utilizing the valuable insights that different perspectives revealBleiker, professor of Poly Sci Univ of Queensland Brisbane, 2K3(Roland, “Discourse and Human Agency” Contemporary Political Theory Vol. 2 # 1) 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 other's 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, 17-18). 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 Heidegger's 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 Kant's Critique of Judgement , see Deleuze, 1994).

THE PERM SOLVES-EVEN INCOMMENSURABLE EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES DO NOT PRECLUDE US FROM JOINING TOGETHER IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST VIOLENCEButler, Prof at UC – Berkeley, 2K4(Judith, Precarious Life pg. 48)We could have several engaged intellectual debates going on at the same time and find ourselves joined in the fight against violence, without having to agree on many epistemological issues. We could disagree on the status and character of modernity and yet find ourselves joined in asserting and defending the rights of indigenous women to health care, reproductive technology, decent wages, physical protection, cultural rights, freedom of assembly. If you saw me on such a protest line, would you wonder how a postmodernist was able to muster the necessary “agency” to get there today? I doubt it. You would assume that I had walked or taken the subway! By the same token, various routes lead us into politics, various stories bring us onto the street, various kinds of reasoning and belief. We do not need to ground ourselves in a single model of communication, a single model of reason, a single notion of the subject before we are able to act. Indeed, an international coalition of feminist activists and thinkers—a coalition that affirms the thinking of activists and the activism of thinkers and refuses to put them into distinctive categories that deny the actual complexity of the lives in question— will have to accept the array of sometimes incommensurable epistemological and political;beliefs and modes and means of agency that bring us into activism.

19/27


No Neg Can Solve our aff You can not access the 1ac. You misunderstand the nature of this affirmative. Our discourse and representations matter. The 1ac is 8 minutes of discursive critique that you can’t access by saying ditto or have some else do it. Criticism of imperialist discourse must take place at the cite of U.S. discourse. Shome, Professor of Communication, 96 (Raka, “Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon: An "Other" View,” Communication Theory, February, p. 42-43) Among others, two questions that are central to the postcolonial project are: how do Western discursive practices, in their representations of the world and of themselves, legitimize the contemporary global power structures? To what extent do the cultural texts of nations such as the United States and England reinforce the neo-imperial political practices of these nations? These are very important questions to investigate for they illustrate how, in the present times, discourses have become one of the primary means of imperialism. Whereas in the past, imperialism was about controlling the "native" by colonizing her or him territorially, now imperialism is more about subjugating the "native" by colonizing her or him discursively.There are a number of reasons, some of course very obvious, why the focus on Western discursive imperialism-especially that of the United States and England-has been a relatively major preoccupation of post-colonial criticism. Here I will mention two. The first has to do with the historical relation of colonialism between the East and the West. While discursive imperialism is and was surely in operation in countries that have wielded considerable influence in world politics, such as Japan and the former USSR, these countries do not have the same history of centu ries of global colonialism and expansion behind them as England and France, for example. The historically colonized lands of the East such as India, Africa, parts of South East Asia, and Latin America do not have the same relation of subjection and subordination with them as they do with Western empires.The second reason, which today is even more important, has to do with the tremendous global media presence of Western nations, and it is here that the U.S. role as a neoimperial power gets established. U.S. communication products (both print and televisual, popular and academic) penetrate most parts of the world. As Said (1993) notes, "[R]arely before in human history has there been so massive an intervention of force and ideas from one culture to another as there is today from America to the rest of the world" (p. 319). The issue is not merely one of technological or cultural power but also one of linguistic power. The universality of English makes communication products produced in the United States and England accessible to most parts of the world. In the case of the United States, such accessibility is even more significant be-cause it is backed by financial and technological resources that are able to transport its culture to almost every part of the world. It is this tremendous global American presence that invites examination of U.S. discourses as neocolonial texts; for texts, after all, are sites of power that reflect the politics of their surroundings.

20/27


AT: Framework It is impossible to separate the ethics, representations and rhetoric from the plan. Evaluating the consequences of the plan is just one part of a policy maker’s job. All actions, even foreign policies, have an ethical dimension. We must criticize ethics. Frost 05 (Mervyn, professor of international politics at Kings College, London, The Idea of Global Civil Society: Politics and ethics in a globalizing era, editied by Randall D germain and Michael Kenny, p. 126-127)In discipline which has been exposed to constructivist insights we know thatwe cannot expect to find any essential difference between politics and ethicswhich is fixed for all time. What we can do, though, is note how the way in which we normally use these words supports a certain interpretation of a coredifference between them. We often use the term 'unethical' to indicate an act which breaches a fundamental constitutive norm of some practice within which a person is constituted as an actor of this or that kind.The breach of such fundamental norms threatens all actor's very standing as anactor in the practice in question. As examples to illustrate this, consider a soldier,government or state that indiscriminately kills civilians, a president who enricheshimself at taxpayers' expense, a citizen who betrays his or her country anacademic who plagiarizes, a husband who beats his wife or sells his children. Inall of these a participant in a practice breaks a fundamental constitutive rule of that practice arid faces the possibility of what might broadly be termed 'excommunication’ from the practice in question. To face a charge of ethicalmisconduct is to face a grave charge indeed. We all fear such charges becausewhere they succeed, they threaten our very constitution, our standing, as who weunderstand ourselves to be. It is thus not surprising that those who faceallegations of' ethical misconduct will often dispute it. Ethical criticism is, one might say, always aimed at challenging an actor’s behaviour or standing in terms of the values taken to underpin an existing practice at the most profound level. The formal definition of ethics then is: Ethical conduct is conduct in accordance with the values embedded is the practices within which we are constituted as actors of this or that kind. On this view all action has an ethical dimension in that it either adheres, or fails to adhere, to the values embedded in the practice in which it takes place. Thus Robin Cook’s commitment to a foreign policy with an ethical dimension was imply an articulation of what is always the case. All foreign policies (and all other policies) are open to scrutiny in terms of the ethical dimension of the practice within which they are situated. A foreign policy maker cannot opt out of this dimension. Ethical analysis then involves some or all of the following: close scrutiny of the values embedded in a certain practice, scrutiny of the fit between an individual action and the values embedded in the practice in which the act is located, and, the examination of the values embedded in the practice and those to be found in other social practices. Since we are all concurrently participants in any number of different and changing practices, it is to be expected that we would have an ongoing interest in determining whether the ethics embedded in these practices cohere or not. In international relations a major interest for all of us at present is, does the ethic embedded in the GSC cohere with that to be found in the practice of sovereign states? Politics is different. To engage in politics is to engage in a purposeful activityan instrumental activity, of a certain kind. Not all actions are political, only someare. Most usages of 'this is politics' fit the following definition: Political acts arewords and deeds aimed at maintaining or changing the baste rules of a particular social practice. Politics often involves concerted action. In 1968 students engaged in politicswhen they challenged the basic rules of association of universities. In 1999 alarge body of activists at Seattle challenged the rules of association of globalcapitalism. Politics in states is that wide field of action which is ultimatelyconcerned with the rules of who gets what, where, when and how. Politics isalways aimed, one might say, at rearranging social practices or preventing thembeing rearranged. We are now in a position to notice all interesting set of relationships between ethics and politics. It follows from the analyses produced above that although political acts are aimed at bringing about a certain result, they themselves, like all social actions, are acts which take place within given practices with their own embedded ethics, So we may ask of any political act: Is it(or was it) ethical? For example: Is it ethical to use campaign funds for private ends, to deploy troops forthe purpose of policing, to provide international aid with conditionalities of acertain kind attached, to intervene in such cases, and so on? Furthermore, we need to note that political actions are often promptedand motivated by ethical criticisms. The international political struggle againstapartheid started with a set of ethical criticisms directed against the National Partygovernment's policies towards Black South Africans. The government of SouthAfrica, the international community claimed, was failing to respect the rights ofa majority of South Africans to participate in democratic self-government. Theseethical charges resulted in South Africa being deemed a pariah in the communityof states. 'The ethical allegations, then, formed the basis for a long political struggleto change the constitution of the South African state.

21/27


AT: DA Their impacts are based upon realist predictions of international power politics. These predictions are rarely correct and their rationalizing objectivity denies the notion of human agency.Bleiker 97 (Roland, Human Agency, Popular Dissent and Global Politics, p.48-49)

Prediction, in particular, is a highly problematic standard to evaluate the adequacy of theoretical propositions. Indeed, most international relations theories do not fare well when judged by such a measuring device. Consider, once more, the case of East Germany. None of the influential contributions to international theory was able to anticipate, let alone predict, the momentous transformations that took place when the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Soviet-led alliance system fell apart . If existing theories revealed anything, it was how closely they were intertwined with the Cold War and ensuing perceptions of world politics. 'An empire collapsed,' Jean Elshtain points out, 'and many, if not most, practitioners of international relations were entirely unprepared. It seems that precisely when theories of international politics should have best served us, they failed rather strikingly, overtaken, as it were, by politics itself .,s3 For Elshtain this crucial failure demands a rethinking of what theory is and does. 'If 1989 taught us nothing else,' she stresses, 'it should have taught us humility.,s4 For others, such as Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, the inability of international theory to anticipate the collapse of the Cold War system calls for a more specific, but equally fundamental, rethinking of the agency problematique'.ss This book is devoted to the latter task - and reassessing questions of evaluation is an integral part of it . The very notion of prediction does, by its own logic, annihilate human agency. To assert that international relations is a domain of political dynamics whose future should be predictable through a convincing set of theoretical propositions is to assume that the course of global politics is to a certain extent predetermined. From such a vantage-point there is no more room for interference and human agency, no more possibility for politics to overtake theory. A predictive approach thus runs the risk of ending up in a form of inquiry that imposes a static image upon a far more complex set of transversal political practices. The point of a theoretical inquiry, however, is not to ignore the constantly changing domain of international relations. Rather, the main objective must consist of facilitating an understanding of transversal struggles that can grapple with those moments when people walk through walls precisely when nobody expects them to do so. Prediction is a problematic assessment tool even if a theory is able to anticipate future events. Important theories, such as realist interpretations of international politics, may well predict certain events only because their theoretical premises have become so objectivised that they have started to shape decision makers and political dynamics. Dissent, in this case, is the process that reshapes these entrenched perceptions and the ensuing political practices.

22/27


AT: DA – Cuomo (1/2) Their representation of war as an event entrenches violence as usual undermining political resistance – we need to elevate the concerns of everyday violence like our case impactsCuomo, assistant professor of philosophy and women's studies at the University of Cincinnati, 96(Chris, “War is not just an event: reflections on the significance of everyday violence” Hypatia v11.n4 Fall 1996)Philosophical attention to war has typically appeared in the form of justifications for entering into war, and over appropriate activities within war. The spatial metaphors used to refer to war as a separate, bounded sphere indicate assumptions that war is a realm of human activity vastly removed from normal life, or a sort of happening that is appropriately conceived apart from everyday events in peaceful times. Not surprisingly, most discussions of the political and ethical dimensions of war discuss war solely as an event - an occurrence, or collection of occurrences, having clear beginnings and endings that are typically marked by formal, institutional declarations. As happenings, wars and military activities can be seen as motivated by identifiable, if complex, intentions, and directly enacted by individual and collective decision-makers and agents of states. But many of the questions about war that are of interest to feminists - including how large-scale, state-sponsored violence affects women and members of other oppressed groups; how military violence shapes gendered, raced, and nationalistic political realities and moral imaginations; what such violence consists of and why it persists; how it is related to other oppressive and violent institutions and hegemonies - cannot be adequately pursued by focusing on events. These issues are not merely a matter of good or bad intentions and identifiable decisions. In "Gender and 'Postmodern' War," Robin Schott introduces some of the ways in which war is currently best seen not as an event but as a presence (Schott 1995). Schott argues that postmodern understandings of persons, states, and politics, as well as the high-tech nature of much contemporary warfare and the preponderance of civil and nationalist wars, render an event-based conception of war inadequate, especially insofar as gender is taken into account. In this essay, I will expand upon her argument by showing that accounts of war that only focus on events are impoverished in a number of ways, and therefore feminist consideration of the political, ethical, and ontological dimensions of war and the possibilities for resistance demand a much more complicated approach. I take Schott's characterization of war as presence as a point of departure, though I am not committed to the idea that the constancy of militarism, the fact of its omnipresence in human experience, and the paucity of an event-based account of war are exclusive to contemporary postmodern or postcolonial circumstances.(1) Theory that does not investigate or even notice the omnipresence of militarism cannot represent or address the depth and specificity of the everyday effects of militarism on women, on people living in occupied territories, on members of military institutions, and on the environment. These effects are relevant to feminists in a number of ways because military practices and institutions help construct gendered and national identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman entities and communities during peacetime. Lack of attention to these aspects of the business of making or preventing military violence in an extremely technologized world results in theory that cannot accommodate the connections among the constant presence of militarism, declared wars, and other closely related social phenomena, such as nationalistic glorifications of motherhood, media violence, and current ideological gravitations to military solutions for social problems. Ethical approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and military practices are woven into the very fabric of life in twenty-first century technological states lead to crisis-based politics and analyses. For any feminism that aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and political options, crisis-based ethics and politics are problematic because they distract attention from the need for sustained resistance to the enmeshed, omnipresent systems of domination and oppression that so often function as givens in most people's lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the false belief that the absence of declared armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is particularly easy for those whose lives are shaped by the safety of privilege, and who do not regularly encounter the realities of

23/27


AT: DA – Cuomo (2/2) militarism, to maintain this false belief. The belief that militarism is an ethical, political concern only regarding armed conflict, creates forms of resistance to militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control. Antiwar resistance is then mobilized when the "real" violence finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege is directly threatened, and at that point it is difficult not to respond in ways that make resisters drop all other political priorities. Crisis-driven attention to declarations of war might actually keep resisters complacent about and complicitous in the general presence of global militarism. Seeing war as necessarily embedded in constant military presence draws attention to the fact that horrific, state-sponsored violence is happening nearly all over, all of the time, and that it is perpetrated by military institutions and other militaristic agents of the state. Moving away from crisis-driven politics and ontologies concerning war and military violence also enables consideration of relationships among seemingly disparate phenomena, and therefore can shape more nuanced theoretical and practical forms of resistance. For example, investigating the ways in which war is part of a presence allows consideration of the relationships among the events of war and the following: how militarism is a foundational trope in the social and political imagination; how the pervasive presence and symbolism of soldiers/warriors/patriots shape meanings of gender; the ways in which threats of state-sponsored violence are a sometimes invisible/sometimes bold agent of racism, nationalism, and corporate interests; the fact that vast numbers of communities, cities, and nations are currently in the midst of excruciatingly violent circumstances. It also provides a lens for considering the relationships among the various kinds of violence that get labeled "war." Given current American obsessions with nationalism, guns, and militias, and growing hunger for the death penalty, prisons, and a more powerful police state, one cannot underestimate the need for philosophical and political attention to connections among phenomena like the "war on drugs," the "war on crime," and other state-funded militaristic campaigns. I propose that the constancy of militarism and its effects on social reality be reintroduced as a crucial locus of contemporary feminist attentions, and that feminists emphasize how wars are eruptions and manifestations of omnipresent militarism that is a product and tool of multiply oppressive, corporate, technocratic states.(2) Feminists should be particularly interested in making this shift because it better allows consideration of the effects of war and militarism on women, subjugated peoples, and environments. While giving attention to the constancy of militarism in contemporary life we need not neglect the importance of addressing the specific qualities of direct, large-scale, declared military conflicts. But the dramatic nature of declared, large-scale conflicts should not obfuscate the ways in which military violence pervades most societies in increasingly technologically sophisticated ways and the significance of military institutions and everyday practices in shaping reality. Philosophical discussions that focus only on the ethics of declaring and fighting wars miss these connections, and also miss the ways in which even declared military conflicts are often experienced as omnipresent horrors. These approaches also leave unquestioned tendencies to suspend or distort moral judgement in the face of what appears to be the inevitability of war and militarism.

24/27


AT: DA Claims that realism are inevitable trap us in a type of tunnel vision that portrays realism as the only feasible politic. Acknowledging that there is a way out can provide the answer.Bleiker 97, Roland, Senior Lecturer University of Queensland Australia, Jan-Mar. (Alternatives- Social Transformation and Human Governance "Forget IR Theory"Vol.22 No.1 Lynne Rienner)p. 58-59

To forget orthodox IR theory is not to ignore the IR practices that -have framed our realities. Countless events of the past such as the Holocaust, cannot and should not be simply chased out of our collective memory. Nor is it to run a blind eye toward the violent nature that characterizes present world politics. Forgetting is not only a negative process, a neglecting and overlooking, but a necessary part of our existence, something we often do without being aware of it. Jeanette Winter: They say that every snowflake is different. If (but were true, how could we go on', -How could we ever get up and off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it? By forgetting, cannot keep in mind too many things. There is only the present and nothing to remember.The task, then, becomes one of turning forgetting from, a selective, arbitrary, and unconscious constitution of things past into an active, conscious, and more inclusive. process. Instead of perpetuating IR nostalgia, seeking comfort and security in the familiar interpretations of long-gone epochs, even if they are characterized violence and insecurity, conscious first opens up possibilities for a dialectical understanding of our present and past. It refuses to tie fu ture possibilities to established forms of life. Rather than further en trenching current security dilemmas by engaging with the ortho dox discourse that continuously gives meaning to them , forgetting tries to escape the vicious circle by which these social practices set 4c to legitimize and objectivize the very discourses that have given rise to them. Forgetting becomes an instrument of dialogue and inclusion; it reorients our memories, becomes active by turning into forge(t) and for(to)get. From this vantage point, forgetting is a process or remembering, or, seen from Milan Kundera's reversed perspective, "remembering is a form of forgetting." I will draw primarily upon the work of Friedrich Nietzsche to explore the process of forgetting orthodox IR theory. This is not to es sent ial ize Nietzsche or tender hire heroic but to employ his work as a s te p p i n g s to n e , a source to provoke thought before it, too, has to be forgotten in order not to turn into a new orthodoxy. The process of forgetting, for Nietzsche, is a process of healing:Only now do I believe you healed: for healed is who forgot..Nietzsche ended up with this position by dealing with a set of methodological di lemmas s imi lar to those I am trying to address in this

article. The need to forget emerges from recognizing the prob lematic links that are commonly drawn between cause and effect. Such a duality, Nietzsche claims, probably never existed. We merely establish arbitrary links between things that we consider important, isolate a couple of pieces out of a continuum of complex and intertwined events. This is why it is futile to search for a causal origin in this web of human life and to think we could somehow ground a better world on this form of flawed insight "How fool ish i t would be, "Nietzsche claims, "to suppose that one only needs to point out this origin and this misty shroud of delusion in order to destroy the world that counts for real, so-called. "reality.”

25/27


Dillon Impact Card Calculative thought is the zero point of the holocaustDillon, Professor of Poly Sci @ University of Lancaster, 99(Michael “Another Justice” Political Theory Vol. 27 No. 2 April pg. 165)Economies of evaluation necessarily require calculability.35 Thus no valuation without mensuration and no mensuration without indexation. Once rendered calculable, however, units of account are necessarily submissible not only to valuation but also, of course, to devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to the point of counting as nothing. Hence, no mensuration without demensuration either. There is nothing abstract about this: the declension of economies of value leads to the zero point of holocaust. However liberating and emancipating systems of value—rights—may claim to be, for example, they run the risk of counting out the invaluable. Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Herewith, then, the necessity of championing the invaluable itself. For we must never forget that, “we are dealing always with whatever exceeds measure.”36 But how does that necessity present itself? Another Justice answers: as the surplus of the duty to answer to the claim of Justice over rights. That duty, as with the advent of another Justice, is integral to the lack constitutive of the human way of being.

26/27


Discursive Violence Bad Unmasking Otherizing representations is our first step for political change

Bayoumi 2004 (Moustafa, Associate Professor of English at Brooklyn College, “Our Philological Home is the Earth,” Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 26, Iss. 4, Fall, p. 53 -)Affiliation is the key to unmasking and unlocking these cultural logics. Said explains that his use of the term affiliation "has to do with mappings and drawing connections in the world between practices, individuals, classes, formations... Above all, affiliation is a dynamic concept; it's not meant to circumscribe but rather to make explicit all kinds of connections that we tend to forget and that have to be made explicit and even dramatic in order for political change to take place."18 Affiliation is, in other words, the manner in which cultural authority is built, and unmasking its connections and networks is the first step toward inaugurating political change. In Orientalism, Said writes that "Western techniques of representation that make the Orient visible [to the West] ... rely upon institutions, traditions, conventions, agreed-upon codes of understanding for their effects, not upon a distant and amorphous Orient,"19 and Said's Orientalism is a practice in criticism to excavate authority precisely by making the affiliations clear, by drawing out the networks and connections between the institutions of validation-travelogues, literature, government reports, scholarship-that made the body of Orientalism what it was (and sadly too often still is). Affiliation, in this regard combines both Michel Foucault's notion of a "discourse," with its idea of how knowledge is constituted through a network of institutional and social practices, with Antonio Gramsci's idea of "hegemony," namely the manner in which authority is consecrated

through cultural consent. And it is the affiliative order of Orientalism that allowed it, as a style of thought, to exist and to have authority over the Orient through its representation of that part of the world and all of its peoples.

Colonization leads to extinctionPorter 1998 (Robert B., Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Tribal Law and Government Center, University of Kansas, “A Proposal to the Hanodaganyas to Decolonize Federal Indian Control Law,” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Summer, 31 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 899)

Nonetheless, this otherwise natural process was dramatically altered by colonization. These colonizing efforts were accomplished by force and often with great speed, producing dramatic changes within Indigenous societies and interfering with the natural process of

adaptation and change. n345 This disruption has had a genocidal effect; n346 groups of Indigenous [*954] peoples that existed 500 years ago no

longer exist. n347 There should be no doubt that their extinction was not an accident - it was the product of a concerted effort to subjugate and eliminate the native human population in order to allow for the pursuit of wealth and manifest destiny. n348 As a result, extinction is the most dramatic effect of colonization. Allowed to run its full course, colonization will disrupt and destroy the natural evolutionary process of the people being colonized to the point of extinction.

27/27

similar “complex” template with a headerv.web.umkc.edu/vegam/2007sdi/critical aff.doc · web...

Documents