The aff solves and is quare theory: our advocacy is a radical

method traditionally used by slaves to upset the dominant

structures of power
Halberstam 11. J. J. Jack Halberstam, professor of English at the University of Southern California, The
Queer Art of Failure

Failure can be counted within that set of oppositional tools that James C. Scott
called the weapons of the weak (1987: 29). Describing peasant resistance in
Southeast Asia, Scott identified certain activities that looked like indifference or
acquiescence as hidden transcripts of resistance to the dominant order. Many
theorists have used Scotts reading of resistance to describe different political
projects and to rethink the dynamics of power; some scholars, such as Saidiya
Hartman (1997), have used Scotts work to describe subtle resistances to slavery
like working slowly or feigning incompetence. The concept of weapons of the
weak can be used to recategorize what looks like inaction, passivity, and lack of
resistance in terms of the practice of stalling the business of the dominant. We can
also recognize failure as a way of refusing to acquiesce to dominant logics of power
and discipline and as a form of criti que. As a practice, failure recognizes that
alternatives are embedded already in the dominant and that power is never total or
consistent; indeed failure can exploit the unpredictability of ideology and its
indeterminate qualities.

Turn: The usage of queer is good it is reclaiming a term

traditionally used to discriminate against us they cede
queer to hegemonic powers and reinforce exclusion
Norton 2 [Rictor Norton, American writer on literary and cultural history, particularly gay history; Queer
Language; A Critique of Social Constructionism and Postmodern Queer Theory; 07/16/2002; accessed 07/16/2015;
<http://www.rictornorton.co.uk/social23.htm>.]

Dyke, faggot, gay, queer: these are queer-words . When straights heard them for the first
time in the 1930s or 1950s they did not know what they meant. Because they had not
created them queers had. When the mollies were tried in the early eighteenth century, the judges and
juries heard words they had never heard before and phrases they did not understand: bit a blow, caterwauling,
caudle-making, indorse, madge culls, to do the story, Battersead. In a homosexual trial in Britain in the 1950s the
jury had to be handed a glossary of queer terms so that they could comprehend the testimony they were about to

These are not words of hegemonic social control: these are

words indigenous to an ethnic culture. The fact that they happen to be fairly
modern queer-words does not mean that queer culture is a modern invention: these
particular words have simply superseded earlier queer words such as 'molly' and 'tribade', both of
which have had a longer history than dyke, faggot, gay, queer.
hear (Higgins 1996).

Counterinterp: The affirmative should be in the direction of the

topic by defending a mechanism curtailing surveillance - the
resolution should serve as an invitation to dialogue only our
interpretation preserves a balance between the clash of
civilizations now occurring within debate. That assures there is
always neg ground on things like surveillance good.
Galloway Asst Prof and Director of Debate @ Samford 2k7
Ryan-former GMU debater; Dinner and Conversation at the Argumentative Table:
Reconceptualizing Debate as an Argumentative Dialogue; CONTEMPORARY
ARGUMENTATION AND DEBATE; Vol. 28; p. 1-3.
By definition, debate coaches are contentious and the history of modern debate has been marked by an inter-play of collegiality and competition

modern debate has amped up natural levels of antagonism so

that it now exists in a clash between one group that employs an argumentative
style heavily centered on evidence and speed against another that seeks to
criticize the form and style of these debates. Debates between the two factions
are frequently conceived as a clash of civilizations (Solt, 2004, p.44). Rhetoric from both
sides often reaches a fever pitch. Tim ODonnell of Mary Washington Universitys judging philosophy says that, right
(Bruschke, 2004, p. 82). However,

nowthere is a war going onand the very future of policy debate as an educationally and competitively coherent activity hangs in the balance
(2008). The other side of the coin is equally forthright. Asha Cerian offered in her judge philosophy to vote on Ks [kritiks] and alternative forms of
debate. And thats it (2007). Similarly, Andy Ellis has posted a series of you-tube videos to e-debate calling for a more radical approach. In one
video entitled Unifying the opposition, Ellis describes debate as a war and calls for insurgents seeking to overthrow existing debate practices (Ellis,
While these views are extreme, long-time observers have noted changes in the tone and
tenor of debate discussions. Jeff Parcher observed that the fragmentation of the 2004 National Debate Tournament seemed
viscerally different than previous disputes (2004, p. 89). These disagreements seem highly personalized
and wrought with frustrations, anxiety, resistance, and backlash (Zompetti, 2004, p. 27).
2008b).

One coach noted that the difference between the current era of factionalization and controversies of the past is that, no one left counter-warrant

Much of the controversy involves the resolution itself, and whether

teams should have to defend the resolution, or whether they can mount a
broader criticism of the activity (Snider, 2003). Steve Woods notes that, Academic debate is now
entering a third state, a critical turn in the activity. The identifying element of
this change is that abandonment of the role playing that the construct of fiat
enabled (Woods, 2003, p. 87). This journal previously (2004) addressed issues regarding the growing divide in policy debate.
However, the role of the debate resolution in the clash of civilizations was largely ignored. Here, I defend the notion that
activist approaches of critical debaters can best flourish if grounded in topical
advocacy defined in terms of the resolution. This approach encourages the
pedagogical benefits of debates about discourse and representations while
preserving the educational advantages of switch-side debate . Debaters increased
reliance on speech act and performativity theory in debates generates a need to
step back and re-conceptualize the false dilemma of the policy only or kritik
only perspective. Policy debates theoretical foundations should find root in an
overarching theory of debate that incorporates both policy and critical
exchanges. Here, I will seek to conceptualize debate as a dialogue, following the theoretical foundations of Mikhail Bakhtin
(1990) and Star Muir (1993) that connects the benefits of dialogical modes of argument to
competitive debate.
Ideally, the resolution should function to negotiate
traditional and activist approaches . Taking the resolution as an invitation to a
dialogue about a particular set of ideas would preserve the affirmative teams
obligation to uphold the debate resolution. At the same time, this approach
debates in tears.

licenses debaters to argue both discursive and performative advantages. While this view
is broader than many policy teams would like, and certainly more limited than many critical teams would prefer, this approach
captures the advantages of both modes of debate while maintaining the stable
axis point of argumentation for a full clash of ideas around these values . Here, I begin with
an introduction to the dialogic model, which I will relate to the history of switch-side debate and the current controversy. Then, I will defend my
conception of debate as a dialogical exchange. Finally, I will answer potential criticisms to the debate as a dialogue construct.

The resolution tasks us for a motion or expression regarding it

it doesnt have to be about policy implementation. Defining
specific words in the resolution misses the point because that
doesnt address how the affirmative is supposed to engage
with the resolution
Blacks Law Dictionary 2009 (definitive legal resource for lawyers, law students and
laypeople alike. Edited by the worlds foremost legal lexicographer, Bryan A. Garner, Blacks Law Dictionary is
known for its clear and precise legal definitions, substantive accuracy, and stylistic clarity making it the most
widely used law dictionary in the United States. It is the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court
opinions and has been cited as a secondary legal authority in many U.S. Supreme Court cases. The Deluxe Ninth
Edition is the most recent, comprehensive, and relevant BLD today, Deluxe Ninth Edition)

resolution. (17c) 1. Parliamentary law. A main motion that formally expresses the
sense, will, or action of a deliberative assembly (esp. a legislative body). A
resolution is a highly formal kind of main motion, often containing a preamble, and
one or more resolving clauses in the form, Resolved, That. concurrent
resolution. (17c) A resolution passed by one house and agreed to by the other. It
expresses the legislatures opinion on a subject but does not have the force of law.
joint resolution. (17c) A legislative resolution passed by both houses. It has the
force of law and is subject to executive veto. [Cases: Statutes 22, 229.] simple
resolution. (18c) A resolution passed by one house only. It expresses the opinion
or affects the internal affairs of the passing house, but it does not have the force of
law. 2. Formal action by a corporate board of directors or other corporate body
authorizing a particular act, transaction, or appointment. Also termed corporate
resolution. shareholder resolution. A resolution by shareholders, usu. To ratify the
actions of the board of directors. 3. A document containing such an expression or
authorization.

The law has an ideological monopoly because were scared of

lawlessness
John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff 2007, * Professor and Oppenheimer Fellow of
African and African American Studies and of Anthropology at Harvard University,
Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation, ** Professor of African and
African American Studies and of Anthropology (Law and Disorder in the Postcolony:
An Introduction, University of Chicago Press, pp. 22)
The modernist nation-state, it hardly needs saying, has always been erected on
a scaffolding of legalities. Nor only the modernist nation-state. In classical
Greece, too, Hannah Arendt (1998: 19495) observes, the laws [were] like the

wall around the city: Before men began to act, a definite space had to be
secured and a structure built where all subsequent actions could take place, the
space being the public realm of the polis and its structure the law. The
metaphorical link here between the architectural and the jural is noteworthy.
Thomas Hobbes (1995: 109), whose specter hovers close to the disorderly surfaces
of life in the postcolony, was even more explicit: Laws [are] the walls of
government, and nations. Since the dismantling of the wall that marked the end
of the Cold War and, with it perhaps, the ideological monopoly over the
political exercised by the modernist nation-statelaw has been further
fetishized, even as, in most postcolonies, higher and higher walls are built
to protect the propertied from lawlessness, even as the language of legality
insinuates itself deeper and deeper into the realm of the illicit. The Law,
uppercase again but not now as a Nigerian criminal alias, has become the
medium in which politics are played out, in which conflicts are dealt with
across otherwise incommensurable axes of difference, in which the workings of the
free market are assured,62 in which social order is ostensibly erected and the
substance of citizenship made manifest (see chapter 2 below). Lawfulness,
argues Roger Berkowitz (2005: ii), has replaced justice as the measure of
ethical action in the world. Indeed, as the measure of a great deal of
action beyond the ethical as well.

Their overdetermination of what activism and engagement

looks like is precisely the pointtheir topical version,
predictability, and decision-making arguments are clever
smokescreens for the violence of the conformity machine
Svirsky 10. Marcelo Svirsky, professor of critical and cultural theory at Cardiff
University (UK), Introduction: Beyond the Royal Science of Politics, Deleuze
Studies Vol 4: 2010, pg. 3
Rather than problematising the political, this royal understanding of activism
uses its metric power to axiomatise politics, while simultaneously repressing
activist experiences that refuse simply to align with the given of formal
politics. An example of this can be seen in the hostility of western states towards
organisations such as Wikileaks or the Animal rights movement, each of which
are immersed in creative acts of citizenship that actualise ruptures. Such new
scenes and acts are constantly at risk of being appropriated by this royal
science of politics, which imposes upon them a model that channels civic
participation according to established rules and concepts. Activisms that seek
only to guarantee the workings of representative democracy are essentially slave
activisms; they dwell in safety and their impact and potential is expected to be
absorbed without drawing the system into new structures of resonance. The
assumption that mass participation is the lifeblood of representative democracy
not only imposes a particular model of the political, it also reinforces a
pejorative way to conceive activism. By positing representative democracy (or
any other regime) as the reified model of political process, theory necessarily
idealises certain forms of involvement over others. For example, classical
participatory theory is often blind to [unable to comprehend] the creative

significance of the activist energies being unfolded in such events as critical

teaching in schools, revolutionary philosophical writing, the deconstructive
effect of a critical assemblage that confronts patriarchal power, or of civic
homosexuality which disrupts heterosexism. In fact, the assumptions underlying
representative participation are troublesome for at least two reasons. Firstly,
participation in the formal political process of representative democracy does not
in itself necessarily implicate a critical attitude or action, seeking a less repressive
and more creative life. To evidence this, it is enough to keep in mind some fearful
recent examples of mass political support for representative state violence, as
occurred last May when thousands of Israelis marched in Tel Aviv and the streets of
Jerusalem to back the killing by the Israeli Defence Forces of nine activists from the
Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, as
they boarded the Mavi Marmara ship sailing to Gaza as part of a humanitarian
flotilla. Similarly, we might remain mindful of other, no less electrifying, cases of
popular support for wars and genocides in South America, Asia, Eastern Europe and
Africa, or of events such as the Holocaust. In these instances, mass participation
more accurately falls within the Reichian analysis of a popular desire for
fascismwhich lies worlds away from a participatory liberalism that idealises
the commitment of the public to activist citizenship (see Isin 2009) and to the
tolerant good life that western democracy claims to represent. Secondly, passivity
is not necessarily a sign of political anaemia, but may be a cultural expression
that requires local explanation. Here, research at times confuses the visible
with the political: absence of visible mass participation might be a sign of
unconscious and pre-conscious compliance with ongoing forms of oppression, and
can impact more energetically on the perpetuation of a regime than can tangible
acts of the body these modes of active abandonment produce the reign of
daily microfascisms. After Deleuze and Guattari, political activism may be
approached in a fundamentally different way: without an image, without a form.
As Deleuze and Guattari make clear, the interaction between royal and nomad
science produces a constantly shifting borderline, meaning that there is
always some element that escapes containment by the iron collars of
representation (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 367; see also Deleuze 1994). This
occurs when the plane of consistency is passionately thrown against the plane
of organisation, when a nomad element inserts itself in political struggles in
which, for instance, the boundaries of citizenship are challenged and reopened
(as occurred in the struggle associated with the sans-papiers movement, see Isin
2009), or barriers of ethnic segregation are challenged by new forms of
interculturalism (as occurs with bilingual forms of education). It is through these
smallest deviations that smooth types of political activity dwell within the
striated forms of state politics (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 371). Deleuzes and
Deleuze and Guattaris political philosophies have created some of the conceptual
tools which may be put to innovative use in activism that seeks to break with
repressive traditions. Their alien relation to the standards set by the royal science of
politics (see Patton 2000) an alienation laid out in the philosophical resources they
draw on, in the issues and concepts that characterise their work and, principally, in
the incessant movement of their thought points towards a richer philosophical

weaponry with which to confront and possibly overcome political inhibitions, in

both knowledge and practice.

Their normativity cultivates a passive subject. Making the

choice to be outside of the norm is key to building individuality
and tolerancethis is the highest ethical priorityvoting
negative allows for stagnation of decision-making skills and
destroys freedom
Clifford 2001 (Michael, Associate Professor of Philosophy with the Institute for
the Humanities and the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Mississippi State
University, Political Genealogy After Foucault. Routledge, London, Great Britain.
pp. 78-80)
Although On Liberty bifurcates self and society, there is no hypostatization of
society such that it ( la G. W. F. Hegel) transcends the self. Actually, the bifurcation
simply reflects the traditional political opposition between sovereign and subject,
whose separation is structured according to certain arbitrary limits imposed on the
exercise of power. In On Liberty this limitation is achieved by reserving an
absolutely inviolable region of personal freedom. Assuming that the harm-to-others
principle is respected, any attempt to dictate coercively what goes on within this
region of freedom will always be illegitimate. Moreover, utility demands that society
build provisions for the exercise of this freedom in the political structure, that each
of us respect the freedom of his neighbors. No matter how distasteful we find their
behavior or lifestyle, as long as what they do poses no harm to us, as long as it does
not affect prejudicially the concerns of others, we have no right to interfere. This
applies to each isolated individual as well as to society as a whole. Thus, whereas
for the Greeks the principal virtue to be cultivated was moderation, in Mills society
the principal virtue is toleration: it is absolutely essential that different persons
should be allowed to lead different lives (OL, 61). Freedom is meaningless unless
we develop a mutual respect for one another, for the inherent integrity of whatever
life course each of us chooses. Tolerance may seem like a rather passive virtue; to
acquire it does not seem to require the rigorous sort of regimen associated with
Hellenic care of the self. Yet, given that custom has been so pervasive in its rule
over standards of acceptable conduct, and that so natural to mankind is
intolerance (OL, 8), tolerance demands an active, attentive kind of self-restraint.
Custom saps our strength. It causes us to desire nothing strongly. . . . Its result is
weak feelings and weak energies (OL, 66, 67). Thus, the virtue of toleration
requires an ongoing struggle with ourselves, with the inclination to accept
uncritically the dictates of custom, of received opinion, of our own personal likes
and dislikes, a struggle to resist the tendency in ourselves to prescribe general
rules of conduct and endeavor to make everyone conform to the approved
standard (OL, 66). Moreover, tolerance requires a certain amount of courage, a
willingness to accept the unknown, to give free scope to variety, to permit
experimentation in personal lifestyles. Without tolerance, there can be no freedom.
Yet, strictly speaking, freedom is not the object of tolerance. The object of tolerance

is the cultivation of individuality. Individuality is made possible by the free space

of activity opened as an effect of tolerance. Individuality is not, however, something
that immediately and automatically springs full-blown the moment society decides
to respect certain regions of personal liberty. Individuality must be developed,
nurtured, cultivated. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and
set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and
develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which
make it a living thing (OL, 5657). This requires a fairly rigorous attention to self.
The self must ask itself such questions as, what do I prefer? or, what would suit my
character and disposition? or, what would allow the best and highest in me to have
fair play and enable it to grow and thrive? (OL, 58). Such questions allow the self to
prioritize itself, to set itself apart from society and its dictates, to initiate, in short, a
process of self-formation whereby one can become an individual. To become an
individual one must exercise ones sovereignty over oneself. One must endeavor to
actualize the distinctive human faculties of perception, judgment, discrimination,
reason, and moral sensibility. These faculties are exercised only in making a
choice (OL, 56). Choice distinguishes the true individual from the person who lives
in ape-like conformity to the standards of custom. It is only the exercise of
independent choice that cultivates the qualities of authentic individuality. As Mill
explains, He who chooses his plan for himself employs all his faculties. He must
use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather
materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness
and self control to hold on to his decision. And these qualities he requires and
exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he determines
according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one (OL, 56). An individual is
not someone who comes to his or her freedom fully formed. An individual must
actively use freedom to give shape to her existence. To form oneself as an individual
one must actively attend to oneself, to the myriad of capacities and faculties
involved in making a choice. Cultivating the faculties and qualities involved in
choosing ones own way gives one the strength to resist the dictates of custom and
social expectation. In this way the self can become an individual. The shape of
individuality is a matter for each of us to decide. In fact, On Liberty puts a premium
on our forming ourselves of our own design, whatever the result: If a person
possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of
laying out his existence is the best, not because it is best in itself, but because it his
own mode (OL, 64). Yet however we lay out our existence, forming ourselves as
individuals is a matter of work, ethical work. Individuality is a project that requires
exercising choice, employing our faculties, strengthening our character. In fact,
there is perhaps no higher endeavor to which we should direct our energies than the
formation of ourselves as individuals, according to Mill: Among the works of man
which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in
importance surely is man himself (OL, 56).

Their offense is solved by this debate but we have external

offensetheir interpretation obscures antagonism which
results in violence and erases dissent
Mouffe 2009 (Chantal, University of Westminster professor of political theory,
The Democratic Paradox, Verso, 2009, p. 30-31)
What Rawlss view of the well-ordered society eliminates is the democratic struggle
among adversaries, that is, those who share the allegiance to the liberaldemocratic principles, but while defending different interpretations of what liberty
and equality should mean and to which kind of social relations and institutions they
should apply. This is why in his liberal utopia legitimate dissent would have been
eradicated from the public sphere. How has he been led to defend such a position?
Why doesnt his conception of democracy leave any space for the agonistic
confrontation among contested interpretations of the shared liberal-democratic
principles? The answer lies, I believe, in his flawed conception of politics, which is
reduced to a mere activity of allocating among competing interests susceptible to a
rational solution. This is why he thinks that political conflicts can be eliminated
thanks to a conception of justice that appeals to individuals idea of rational
advantage within the constraints established by the reasonable. According to his
theory, citizens need as free and equal persons the same goods because their
conception of the good however distinct their content require for their
advancement roughly the same primary goods, that is, the same basic rights,
liberties, and opportunities, and the same all-purpose means such as income and
wealth, with all of these supported by the same social bases of self-respect. 11
Therefore, once the just answer to the problem of distribution of these primary
goods has been found, the rivalry that previously existed in the political domain
disappears. Rawlss scenario presupposes that political actors are only driven by
what they see as their rational self-advantage. Passions are erased from the realm
of politics, which is reduced to a neutral field of competing interests. Completely
missing from such an approach is the political in its dimension of power,
antagonism and relationships of forces. What political liberalism is at pains to
eliminate is the element of undecidability which is present in human relations. It
offers us a picture of the well-ordered society as one from which through rational
agreement on justice antagonism , violence, power and repression have
disappeared. But it is only because they have been made invisible through a clever
stratagem: the distinction between simple and reasonable pluralism. In that way,
exclusions can be denied by declaring that they are the product of the free exercise
of practical reason that establishes the limits of possible consensus. When a point
of view is excluded it is because this is required by the exercise of reason; therefore
the frontiers between what is legitimate and what is not legitimate appear as
independent of power relations. Thanks to this legerdemain, rationality and morality
provide the key to solving the paradox of liberalism: how to eliminate its
adversaries while remaining neutral. Alas, it is not enough to eliminate the political
in its dimension of antagonism and exclusion from ones theory to make it vanish
from the real world. It does come back, and with a vengeance. Once the liberal
approach has created a framework in which its dynamics cannot be grasped, and
where the institutions and the discourses are missing that could permit that

potential antagonisms manifest themselves under an agonistic mode, the danger

exists that instead of a struggle among adversaries, what will take place is a war
among enemies. This is why, far from being conducive to a more reconciled society,
this type of approach ends up by jeopardizing democracy.

Their focus on bureaucratic structures of power obscures our

own responsibility
Kappeler, 95 [Susanne, The Will to Violence, p. 10-11]
We are the war' does not mean that the responsibility for a war is shared collectively and diffusely by an entire society - which would
be equivalent to exonerating warlords and politicians and profiteers or, as Ulrich Beck says, upholding the notion of `collective
irresponsibility', where people are no longer held responsible for their actions, and where the conception of universal responsibility
becomes the equivalent of a universal acquittal.' On the contrary, the object is precisely to analyse the specific and differential
responsibility of everyone in their diverse situations. Decisions to unleash a war are indeed taken at particular levels of power by
those in a position to make them and to command such collective action. We need to hold them clearly responsible for their

our habit of
focusing on the stage where the major dramas of power take place tends
to obscure our sight in relation to our own sphere of competence, our own
power and our own responsibility - leading to the well-known illusion of
our apparent `powerlessness and its accompanying phenomenon, our so-called political
disillusionment. Single citizens - even more so those of other nations - have come to feel
secure in their obvious non-responsibility for such large-scale political
events as, say, the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina or Somalia - since the decisions for such
events are always made elsewhere. Yet our insight that indeed we are not responsible for the decisions of
decisions and actions without lessening theirs by any collective `assumption' of responsibility. Yet

a Serbian general or a Croatian president tends to mislead us into thinking that therefore we have no responsibility at all, not even
for forming our own judgement, and thus into underrating the responsibility we do have within our own sphere of action. In

it seems to absolve us from having to try to see any relation

between our own actions and those events, or to recognize the
connections between those political decisions and our own personal
decisions. It not only shows that we participate in what Beck calls `organized irresponsibility', upholding the apparent lack of
particular,

connection between bureaucratically, institutionally, nationally and also individually organized separate competences. It also proves

For we
tend to think that we cannot `do' anything, say, about a war, because we deem
ourselves to be in the wrong situation; because we are not where the major decisions are
made. Which is why many of those not yet entirely disillusioned with
politics tend to engage in a form of mental deputy politics, in the style of
`What would I do if I were the general, the prime minister, the president, the foreign minister or the
minister of defence?' Since we seem to regard their mega spheres of action as the
only worthwhile and truly effective ones, and since our political analyses tend to dwell there first of
all, any question of what I would do if I were indeed myself tends to peter
out in the comparative insignificance of having what is perceived as
`virtually no possibilities': what I could do seems petty and futile. For my own
the phenomenal and unquestioned alliance of our personal thinking with the thinking of the major powermongers:

action I obviously desire the ra nge of action of a general, a prime minister, or a General Secretary of the UN - finding expression in
ever more prevalent formulations like `I want to stop this war', `I want military intervention', `I want to stop this backlash', or `I want

'We are this war', however, even if we do not command the troops
or participate in so-called peace talks, namely as Drakulic says, in our `non-comprehension:
our willed refusal to feel responsible for our own thinking and for working out our own
understanding, preferring innocently to drift along the ideological current of
prefabricated arguments or less than innocently taking advantage of the advantages these offer. And we `are'
a moral revolution."

the war in our `unconscious cruelty towards you', our tolerance of the `fact that you have a yellow form for refugees and I don't' our readiness, in other words, to build identities, one for ourselves and one for refugees, one of our own and one for the `others'.

We share in the responsibility for this war and its violence in the way we
let them grow inside us, that is, in the way we shape `our feelings, our
relationships, our values' according to the structures and the values of
war and violence.

Alternative forms of debate still solve their standards

Steinberg and Freeley 2008 (Austin j. Freeley, Late, John Carroll University
and David L Steinberg, University of Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical
Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, p.232-3)
As has been discussed earlier in this book (Chapters 2, 4, and 6), one thing intrinsic
to debate is self-examination and change. Although what you have read thus far in
this chapter will provide a sound traditional framework for policy and value debate,
the traditions are slowly evolving. An unbounded creativity in practice has evolved,
with new conceptions of fiat as the reflexive authority of those participating in the
debate round itself, and with critical examination of the battle to give rhetorical
space to marginalized voices and open the debate experience to more viewpoints,
standpoints, and cultures. Debate approaches may disregard the traditional
frameworks in favor of storytelling, hip-hop, music and film, poetry, and other novel
challenges to the conventional approaches. In more subtle structures, debaters can
build their comparative advantage cases with philosophical foundations. More
radical challenges to tradition may offer argumentation (sometimes in aesthetic
forms) to defend the resolution and/or to challenge the framework of policy debate.
Critical approaches focus on philosophical and value-based interpretations of
propositional terms, and performance-based approaches find clash in music, visual
communication, role playing, and other creative forms of self expression. Elizabeth
Jones of Louisville University presented the following rap as a part of her affirmative
case in favor of U.S. withdrawal from NATO: Roma people feel just like me, tired of
being deprived of their liberty. Relegated to ghettos, held as slaves, poor health
care leading to early graves. Prison scars, from prison bars, walking round the
prison yard. No running water, no heat, no jobs, and everything you've seemed to
love, you've lost. While the rich get richer, who's paying the cost? George Soros, Bill
Clinton, to Dick Cheney, the so-called bearers of democracy. NATO represents the
military wing, of the all-powerful capitalist regime. While you think gangsters listen
to rap and sag, They really wear suits and carry leather bags. Politicians with the
power to pick, define, and choose who will win and who will lose. Not hearing the
Roma or Palestine, I guess it depends how genocide is defined. SOURCE: USED BY
PERMISSION OF ELIZABETH JONES.

They said clash but we access their forms of debatecreative

interpretation of the topic still creates clash
Steinberg and Freeley 2008 (Austin j. Freeley, Late, John Carroll University
and David L Steinberg, University of Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical
Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, p.45)
Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still
too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of
writing are we concerned withpoems, novels, government documents, website

development, advertising, or what? What does "effectiveness" mean in this context?

What kind of physical force is being comparedfists, dueling swords, bazookas,
nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be, "Would a mutual
defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our
support in a certain crisis?" The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate
proposition such as "Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual
defense treaty with Laurania." Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by
arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to say that
debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by
advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the
controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that
debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of
difference, which will be outlined in the following discussion.

Fairness is used by those in power to maintain it only our

form of debate leads to real change
Delgado 92, Law Prof at U. of Colorado, 1992 [Richard, Shadowboxing: An
Essay On Power, In Cornell Law Review, May]
We have cleverly built power's view of the appropriate standard of conduct into the
very term fair. Thus, the stronger party is able to have his [their] way and see himself
[themselves] as principled at the same time. Imagine, for example, a man's likely reaction to the
suggestion that subjective considerations -- a woman's mood, her sense of pressure or intimidation, how she felt
about the man, her unexpressed fear of reprisals if she did not go ahead -- ought to play a part in determining
whether the man is guilty of rape. Most men find this suggestion offensive; it requires them to do something they
are not accustomed to doing. "Why," they say, "I'd have to be a mind reader before I could have sex with anybody?"
"Who knows, anyway, what internal inhibitions the woman might have been harboring?" And "what if the woman
simply changed her mind later and charged me with rape? What we never notice is that women can "read" men's
minds perfectly well. The male perspective is right out there in the world, plain as day, inscribed in culture, song,
and myth -- in all the prevailing narratives. These narratives tell us that men want and are entitled to sex, that it is
a prime function of women to give it to them, and that unless something unusual happens, the act of sex is ordinary
and blameless. We believe these things because that is the way we have constructed women, men, and "normal"
sexual intercourse. Notice what the objective standard renders irrelevant: a downcast look; ambivalence; the
question, "Do you really think we should?"; slowness in following the man's lead; a reputation for sexual selectivity;
virginity; youth; and innocence. Indeed, only a loud firm "no" counts, and probably only if it is repeated several
times, overheard by others, and accompanied by forceful body language such as pushing the man and walking
away briskly. Yet society and law accept only this latter message (or something like it), and not the former, more
nuanced ones, to mean refusal. Why? The "objective" approach is not inherently better or more fair. Rather, it is
accepted because it embodies the sense of the stronger party, who centuries ago found himself in a position to

Allowing ourselves to be drawn into reflexive, predictable

arguments about administrability, fairness, stability, and ease of determination
points us away from what really counts: the way in which stronger parties have
managed to inscribe their views and interests into "external" culture, so that we are
now enamored with that way of judging action. First, we read our values and
preferences into the culture; then we pretend to consult that culture meekly and
humbly in order to judge our own acts. A nice trick if you can get away with it.
dictate what permission meant.

No uniqueness for lundberg

Hester, 2013. This is a note posted to the CEDA Forums. The note is from Mike
Hester, an extremely successful and influential policy debate coach at University of
West Georgia. I have had a lot of respect for him through the years. -Alfred Snider,
editor November 22, 2013, 01:27:03 AM.

http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php/topic,5407.msg11974.html#msg11974
To whom it may concern,
CEDA-NDT Debate is a hot mess right now. There are so many things wrong, it can
sometimes seem like they're all related. Maybe they are (reference Homer
Simpson's "one big ball of lies" explanation to Marge), but a delineation may still
provide some guidance as to what we can change, what we may have to accept,
and where (if anywhere) we may go from here...
the foundation
We no longer have one, and haven't for more than two decades. Fewer and fewer
debate coaches are communication scholars, which is fine because Communication
Departments don't consider us anything more than the bastard cousins who show
up at the family reunion piss-drunk and demanding more potato salad. Our activity
long ago (40 years?) lost any resemblance to a public speaking event attracting
outside audiences. The problem is we vacated that academic space without being
able to find a home anywhere else. Despite the pious assumptions of some with
"policy" in mind, we are not a legitimate "research" community of scholars.
The "portable skills" we currently engrain in our students via practice are: all
sources are equivalent, no need for qual ifications; "quoting" a source simply means
underlining ANY words found ANYWHERE in the document, context and intent are
irrelevant; and we are the only group outside of Faux News that believes one's
argument is improved by taking every point of logic to its most absurd extreme.
Simply put, 99.9% of the speech docs produced in debates would receive no better
than a C (more likely F) in any upper division undergraduate research-based class.
Comically, we are the public speaking research activity that is atrocious at oral
persuasion and woefully in violation of any standard research practices. But this
letter is not intended to bury Debate, even though it's hard to praise it in its current
state. Before any peace treaty ending the Paradigm Wars can be signed and ratified,
an honest appraisal of where Debate fits in the Academy is necessary.