T

Our interpretation is that the affirmative should defend topical

action based on the resolution.

1. The text of the resolution calls for debate on hypothetical

government action
Ericson 3 (Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts California
Polytechnic U., et al., The Debaters Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key
elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An
agent doing the acting ---The United States in The United States should adopt a policy
of free trade. Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence .
2. The verb shouldthe first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the
should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into
action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The
phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of
increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action.
Nothing has yet occurred. The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur . What
you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an
audience to perform the future action that you propose.

2. Resolved before the colon means its introducing a

normative statement
Army Officer School 4 (5-12, # 12, Punctuation The Colon and Semicolon,
http://usawocc.army.mil/IMI/wg12.htm)
The colon introduces the following: a. A list, but only after "as follows," "the following," or a noun for which the list is an
appositive: Each scout will carry the following: (colon) meals for three days, a survival knife, and his sleeping bag. The company had
four new officers: (colon) Bill Smith, Frank Tucker, Peter Fillmore, and Oliver Lewis. b. A long quotation (one or more paragraphs): In
The Killer Angels Michael Shaara wrote: (colon) You may find it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have been
many versions of that battle [Gettysburg] and that war [the Civil War]. (The quote continues for two more paragraphs.) c. A formal
quotation or question: The President declared: (colon) "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The question is: (colon) what
can we do about it? d. A second independent clause which explains the first: Potter's motive is clear: (colon) he wants the
assignment. e. After the introduction of a business letter: Dear Sirs: (colon) Dear Madam: (colon) f. The details following an
A formal resolution, after the word
announcement For sale: (colon) large lakeside cabin with dock g.
"resolved:"Resolved: (colon) That this council petition the mayor.

3. USFG is an institution, not us as individual citizens

Blacks Law Dictionary 99 (Seventh Edition Ed. Bryan A. Garner (chief))
Federal government 1. A national government that exercises some degree of control
over smaller political units that have surrendered some degree of power in
exchange for the right to participate in national political matters.
Vote NEG
1. Procedural fairness is most importantit establishes
expectations for preparation and facilitates respectful and
productive debate between well-prepared opponents.
Massaro 89 Professor of Law at the University of Florida (Toni, Legal
Storytelling: Empathy, Legal Storytelling, and the Rule of Law: New Words, Old
Wounds?, Michigan Law Review, Lexis)
B. The Rule-of-Law Model as Villain Most writers who argue for more empathy in the law concede that law must
resort to some conventions and abstract principles. That is, they do not claim that legal rules are, as rules,
intrinsically sinister. Rather, they argue that we should design our legal categories and procedures in a way that
encourages the decisionmakers to consider individual persons and concrete situations. Generalities, abstractions,
and formalities should not dominate the process. The law should be flexible enough to take emotion into account,
and to respond openly to the various "stories" of the people it controls. We should, as I have said, move toward
despite their acknowledgment that some ordering and rules are
"minimalist" law. Yet
necessary, empathy proponents tend to approach the rule-of-law model as a villain .
Moreover, they are hardly alone in their deep skepticism about the rule-of-law model. Most modern legal theorists
Some even question the
question the value of procedural regularity when it denies substantive justice. n52
whole notion of justifying a legal [*2111] decision by appealing to a rule of law, versus
justifying the decision by reference to the facts of the case and the judges' own
reason and experience. n53 I do not intend to enter this important jurisprudential debate, except to the
limited extent that the "empathy" writings have suggested that the rule-of-law chills judges' empathic reactions. In
this regard, I have several observations. My first thought is that the rule-of-law model is only a
model. If the term means absolute separation of legal decision and "politics," then it surely is both unrealistic
and undesirable. n54 But our actual statutory and decisional "rules" rarely mandate a
particular (unempathetic) response. Most of our rules are fairly open-ended.
"Relevance," "the best interests of the child," "undue hardship," "negligence," or "freedom of speech" -- to name
legal concepts -- hardly admit of precise definition or consistent, predictable
only a few
application. Rather, they represent a weaker, but still constraining sense of the
rule-of-law model. Most rules are guidelines that establish spheres of relevant
conversation, not mathematical formulas. Moreover, legal training in a common law system
emphasizes the indeterminate nature of rules and the significance of even subtle variations in facts. Our legal
tradition stresses an inductive method of discovering legal principles. We are taught
to distinguish different "stories," to arrive at "law" through experience with many
stories, and to revise that law as future experience requires . Much of the effort of most first-
year law professors is, I believe, devoted to debunking popular lay myths about "law" as clean-cut answers, and to
As a
illuminate law as a dynamic body of policy determinations constrained by certain guiding principles. n55
practical matter, therefore, our rules often are ambiguous and fluid standards that
offer substantial room for varying interpretations. The interpreter, usually a judge,
may consult several sources to aid in decisionmaking . One important source necessarily will be
the judge's own experiences -- including the experiences that seem to determine a person's empathic capacity. In
fact, much ink has been spilled to illuminate that our stated "rules" often do not dictate or explain our legal results.
Some writers even have argued that a rule of law may be, at times, nothing more than a post hoc rationalization or
attempted legitimization [*2112] of results that may be better explained by extralegal (including, but not
necessarily limited to, emotional) responses to the facts, the litigants, or the litigants' lawyers, n56 all of which may
The opportunity for contextual and empathic decisionmaking therefore
go unstated.
already is very much a part of our adjudicatory law, despite our commitment to the
rule-of-law ideal. Even when law is clear and relatively inflexible, however, it is not
necessarily "unempathetic." The assumed antagonism of legality and empathy is belied by our
experience in rape cases, to take one important example. In the past, judges construed the general, open-ended
standard of "relevance" to include evidence about the alleged victim's prior sexual conduct, regardless of whether
the conduct involved the defendant. n57 The solution to this "empathy gap" was legislative action to make the law
more specific -- more formalized. Rape shield statutes were enacted that controlled judicial discretion and
specifically defined relevance to exclude the prior sexual history of the woman, except in limited, justifiable
situations. n58 In this case, one can make a persuasive argument not only that the rule-of-law model does explain
these later rulings, but also that obedience to that model resulted in a triumph for the human voice of the rape
survivor. Without the rule, some judges likely would have continued to respond to other inclinations, and admit this
testimony about rape survivors. The example thus shows that radical rule skepticism is inconsistent with at least
some evidence of actual judicial behavior. It also suggests that the principle of legality is potentially most critical for
people who are least understood by the decisionmakers -- in this example, women -- and hence most vulnerable to
the principle of legality reflects a deeply
unempathetic ad hoc rulings. A final observation is that
ingrained, perhaps inescapable, cultural instinct. We value some procedural
regularity law for law's sake" because it lends stasis and structure to our
often chaotic lives. Even within our most intimate relationships, we both establish
"rules," and expect the other [*2113] party to follow them. n59 Breach of these
unspoken agreements can destroy the relationship and hurt us deeply,
regardless of the wisdom or "substantive fairness" of a particular rule. Our
agreements create expectations, and their consistent application fulfills the
expectations. The modest predictability that this sort of "formalism" provides
actually may encourage human relationships. n60

Any criticism of rules links much harder to eliminating them

Tonn 5 Prof of Communication @ Maryland (Mari Boor, Taking Conversation,
Dialogue, and Therapy Public, Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8.3)
This widespread recognition that access to public deliberative processes and the
ballot is a baseline of any genuine democracy points to the most curious irony of
the conversation movement: portions of its constituency . Numbering among the most fervid
dialogic loyalists have been some feminists and multiculturalists who represent groups historically denied both the
right to speak in public and the ballot. Oddly, some feminists who championed the slogan "The Personal Is Political"
to emphasize ways relational power can oppress tend to ignore similar dangers lurking in the appropriation of
conversation and dialogue in public deliberation. Yet the conversational model's emphasis on empowerment
through intimacy can duplicate the power networks that traditionally excluded females and nonwhites and gave rise
Formalized participation
to numerous, sometimes necessarily uncivil, demands for democratic inclusion.
structures in deliberative processes obviously cannot ensure the elimination of
relational power blocs, but, as Freeman pointed out, the absence of formal rules leaves
relational power unchecked and potentially capricious. Moreover, the privileging of the
self, personal experiences, and individual perspectives of reality intrinsic in the conversational
paradigm mirrors justifications once used by dominant groups who used their own
lives, beliefs, and interests as templates for hegemonic social premises to oppress
women, the lower class, and people of color. Paradigms infused with the therapeutic language of
emotional healing and coping likewise flirt with the type of psychological diagnoses once ascribed to disaffected
women. But as Betty Friedan's landmark 1963 The Feminist Mystique argued, the cure for female alienation was
neither tranquilizers nor attitude adjustments fostered through psychotherapy but, rather, unrestricted
opportunities.102 [End Page 423]The price exacted by promoting approaches to complex
public issuesmodels that cast conventional deliberative processes, including the
marshaling of evidence beyond individual subjectivity, as "elitist" or "monologic"can be steep.
Consider comments of an aide to President George W. Bush made before reports concluding Iraq harbored no
weapons of mass destruction, the primary justification for a U.S.-led war costing thousands of lives. Investigative
reporters and other persons sleuthing for hard facts, he claimed, operate "in what we call the reality-based
community." Such people "believe that solutions emerge from [the] judicious study of discernible reality." Then
baldly flexing the muscle afforded by increasingly popular social-constructionist and poststructuralist models for
conflict resolution, he added: "That's not the way the world really works anymore . . . We're an empire now, and
when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that realityjudiciously, as you willwe'll act
again, creating other new realities."103 The recent fascination with public conversation and dialogue most likely is a
product of frustration with the tone of much public, political discourse. Such concerns are neither new nor
completely without merit. Yet, as Burke insightfully pointed out nearly six decades ago, "A perennial embarrassment
in liberal apologetics has arisen from its 'surgical' proclivity: its attempt to outlaw a malfunction by outlawing the
function."The attempt to eliminate flaws in a process by eliminating the entire
process, he writes, "is like trying to eliminate heart disease by eliminating
hearts."104 Because public argument and deliberative processes are the "heart" of
true democracy, supplanting those models with social and therapeutic conversation and
dialogue jeopardizes the very pulse and lifeblood of democracy itself.

2. Agreement about topic is a pre-requisite to any meaningful

discussion thats crucial to developing advocacy skills.
Shively 2k Professor of Political Science, Texas A & M
(Ruth, Political Theory and Partisan Politics, p. 181-2)
The requirements thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say no tothey must reject and limitsome ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must

they must say yes to the idea of rational persuasion. This

say yes to some things. In particular,

means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the
basic accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake in thinking that
agreement marks the end of contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on

principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of
contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of
intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no agreement

except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue
about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of
argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree
about what it is that is being debated before we can debate it . For instance, one cannot
have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a
musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if ones target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor
can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In
other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or
communication about what is being contested. Registers, demonstrators, and debaters must
have some shared ideas about the subject and/or terms of their disagreements. The participants
and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrators audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the

contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how
one might go about intelligibly contesting it . In other words, contestation rests on some basic
agreement or harmony. The point may seem trite, as surely the ambiguists would agree that basic terms must be shared before they can be resisted and
problematized. In fact, they are often very candid about this seeming paradox in their approach: the paradoxical or "parasitic" need of the subversive for an order to subvert. But
admitting the paradox is not helpful if, as usually happens here, its implications are ignored; or if the only implication drawn is that order or harmony is an unhappy fixture of human life.

For what the paradox should tell us is that some kinds of harmonies or orders are, in fact, good for resistance; and some
ought to be fully supported. As such, it should counsel against the kind of careless rhetoric that lumps all orders or harmonies together as arbitrary and inhumane. Clearly some

basic accord about the terms of contest is a necessary ground for all further
contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged ambiguists, they
cannot admit to these implications, for to open the door to some agreements or reasons as
good and some orders as helpful or necessary, is to open the door to some sort of rationalism. Perhaps they might just

continue to insist that this initial condition is ironic, but that the irony should not stand in the way of the real
business of subversion. Yet difficulties remain. For agreement is not simply the initial
condition, but the continuing ground, for contest . If we are to successfully communicate our disagreements, we cannot simply
 For debate and contest are forms of
agree on basic terms and then proceed to debate without attention to further agreements.

dialogue: that is, they are activities premised on the building of progressive
agreements. Imagine, for instance, that two people are having an argument about
the issue of gun control. As noted earlier, in any argument, certain initial agreements will be
needed just to begin the discussion. At the very least, the two discussants must agree on
basic terms: for example, they must have some shared sense of what gun control
is about; what is at issue in arguing about it; what facts are being contested , and so on. They
must also agreeand they do so simply by entering into debatethat they will not use violence or threats in making their cases and that they are willing to listen to, and to be
persuaded by, good arguments. Such agreements are simply implicit in the act of argumentation.', Imagine, then, that our two discussants have the following kind of exchange: Mary
Cuns don't kill people; people kill people. Tom: Yes, but guns make it a lot easier for people to kill one another. Mary: That's not necessarily true. There are lots of other murder
weaponsknives or rat poison, for instancethat may be just as handy and lethal. At this point, the argument reaches an impasse. Tom has presented i claim that Mary does not
accept. Thus, if the argument is to continue, Tom must either find a way to convince Mary oi this claim or he must go on to a different line of argument. Let us say that, in this case, lorn
backs up his initial claim with further evidence. Perhaps he has some evidence to show that people are less apt to survive a gunshot wound than they are to survive being stabbed or
poisoned. Mary then relents on this point: Mary: All right, I'll grant you that gun shot wounds an? more apt to kill people. But that's exactly the reason I want lo own a gunso I can
effectively protect myself and my family. Tom: Well I sympathize with that motive, but 1 don't think owning a gun is the best way to protect yourself. In fact, I've heard that people who
own guns are more apt to get injured or killed themselves than to protect themselves against an intruder. Mary: What?! I find that very difficult to believe. Here, again, our
discussants reach an impasse. If the argument is to go further, they must either find a way to agree on the disputed claim, or move on to another claim (if there is one). Thus, if Tom has
some further evidence that Mary will find convincing, they can continue this line of reasoning; if he does not, then they must move on to something else or give up the argument
completely. This is the ordinary ebb and flow of debate. Argument continues .is long as there is some hope of progress in coming to agreement or as long as there are other lines of
argument to be explored. But if there comes a point a I which the two sides run out of new claims or cannot igree about the facts supporting claims already made, the argument is
effectively over. The participants may continue to shout at one another, as they often do, but there is no longer anything positive or informative that can come from their interaction.
There is nothing more to be learned and nothing that either side will find convincing. The point here is that in arguingand the point holds equally for other forms of contestwe
assume that it is possible to educate or persuade one another. We assume that it is possible to come to more mutual understandings of an issue and that the participants in an argument

Otherwise, there is no point to the exercise; we are simply talking at

are open to this possibility.

or past one another. At this point, the ambiguists might respond that, even if there
are such rules of argument, they do not apply to the more subversive or radical activities
they have in mind. Subversion is, after all, about questioning and undermining such seemingly "necessary" or universal rules of behavior. But, again, the response to the ambiguist

must be that the practice of questioning and undermining rules, like all other social practices, needs a certain

order. The subversive needs rules to protect subversion. And when we look more
closely at the rules protective of subversion, we find that they are roughly the rules
of argument discussed above. In fact, the rules of argument are roughly the rules of democracy or civility: the delineation of boundaries necessary to protect speech and
action from violence, manipulation and other forms of tyranny.

3. Switching sides within the competitive yet limited

parameters of the topic avoids group polarization and untested
advocacythis does not limit argumentative styles, but only
tying those to topical advocacy ensures clash which is the only
vehicle for education debate provides
Poscher 16 (Ralf Poscher, Director at the Institute for Staatswissenschaft and
Philosophy of Law at the University of Freiburg, Why We Argue About the Law: An
Agonistic Account of Legal Disagreement, Metaphilosophy of Law, Tomasz Gizbert-
Studnicki/Adam Dyrda/Pawel Banas (eds.), Hart Publishing, forthcoming, dml)
Hegels dialectical thinking powerfully exploits the idea of negation. It is a central feature of spirit and
consciousness that they have the power to negate. The spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face
and tarrying with it. This [] is the magical power that converts it into being.102 The tarrying with the negative is
the labour of the negative103. In a loose reference to this Hegelian notion
part of what Hegel calls
Gerald Postema points to yet another feature of disagreements as a necessary ingredient of
the process of practical reasoning. Only if our reasoning is exposed to contrary
arguments can we test its merits. We must go through the labor of the
negative to have trust in our deliberative processes .104 This also holds where we seem to be
in agreement. Agreement without exposure to disagreement can be deceptive in various
ways. The first phenomenon Postema draws attention to is the group polarization effect. When a
group of likeminded people deliberates an issue, informational and reputational cascades produce more extreme
 The polarization and biases that are well
views in the process of their deliberations.105
documented for such groups106 can be countered at least in some settings by the
inclusion of dissenting voices. In these scenarios, disagreement can be a cure for
dysfunctional deliberative polarization and biases .107 A second deliberative dysfunction
mitigated by disagreement is superficial agreement, which can even be manipulatively used in the
sense of a presumptuous We108. Disagreement can help to police such distortions of deliberative
processes by challenging superficial agreements . Disagreements may thus signal that a deliberative
process is not contaminated with dysfunctional agreements stemming from polarization or superficiality.
Protecting our discourse against such contaminations is valuable even if we do
not come to terms. Each of the opposing positions will profit from the catharsis
it received by looking the negative in the face and tarrying with it. These
advantages of disagreement in collective deliberations are mirrored on the individual level. Even if the
probability of reaching a consensus with our opponents is very low from the
beginning, as might be the case in deeply entrenched conflicts, entering into an exchange of
arguments can still serve to test and improve our position. We have to do the
labor of the negative for ourselves. Even if we cannot come up with a line of
argument that coheres well with everybody elses beliefs , attitudes and dispositions, we can
still come up with a line of argument that achieves this goal for our own personal
beliefs, attitudes and dispositions. To provide ourselves with the most coherent system of our own beliefs,
attitudes and dispositions is at least in important issues an aspect of personal integrity to borrow one of
In hard cases we must in some way lay out
Dworkins favorite expressions for a less aspirational idea.
the argument for ourselves to figure out what we believe to be the right answer . We
might not know what we believe ourselves in questions of abortion, the death penalty, torture, and
stem cell research, until we have developed a line of argument against the
background of our subjective beliefs, attitudes and dispositions . In these cases it might
be rational to discuss the issue with someone unlikely to share some of our more
fundamental convictions or who opposes the view towards which we lean. This
might even be the most helpful way of corroborating a view, because we know
that our adversary is much more motivated to find a potential flaw in our
argument than someone with whom we know we are in agreement . It might be more
helpful to discuss a liberal position with Scalia than with Breyer if we want to make sure that we have not
It would be too narrow an understanding of our
overlooked some counterargument to our case.
practice of legal disagreement and argumentation if we restricted its purpose to
persuading an adversary in the case at hand and inferred from this narrow
understanding the irrationality of argumentation in hard cases, in which we know
beforehand that we will not be able to persuade. Rational argumentation is a much more complex practice in a
Argumentation with an adversary can have purposes
more complex social framework.
beyond persuading him: to test ones own convictions, to engage our
opponent in inferential commitments and to persuade third parties are only
some of these; to rally our troops or express our convictions might be others. To
make our peace with Kant we could say that there must be a hope of coming to terms with someone though not
necessarily with our opponent, but maybe only a third party or even just ourselves and not necessarily only on the
issue at hand, but maybe through inferential commitments in a different arena. f) The Advantage Over Non
Argumentative Alternatives It goes without saying that in real world legal disagreements, all of the reasons listed
above usually play in concert and will typically hold true to different degrees relative to different participants in the
debate: There will be some participants for whom our hope of coming to terms might still be justified and others for
whom only some of the other reasons hold and some for whom it is a mixture of all of the reasons in shifting
the
degrees as our disagreements evolve. It is also apparent that, with the exception of the first reason,
rationality of our disagreements is of a secondary nature. The rational does not
lie in the discovery of a single right answer to the topic of debate, since in hard cases
 our disagreements are instrumental to rationales
there are no single right answers. Instead,
which lie beyond the topic at hand, like the exploration of our communalities or
of our inferential commitments. Since these reasons are of this secondary
nature, they must stand up to alternative ways of settling irreconcilable
disagreements that have other secondary reasons in their favor like swiftness of decision making or using
fewer resources. Why does our legal practice require lengthy arguments and
discursive efforts even in appellate or supreme court cases of irreconcilable legal disagreements? The
closure has to come by some nonargumentative mean and courts have always relied on them.
For the medieval courts of the Germanic tradition it is bequeathed that judges had to fight it out literally if they
disagreed on a question of law though the king allowed them to pick surrogate fighters.109 It is understandable
that the process of civilization has led us to nonviolent non argumentative means to determine the law. But what
was wrong with District Judge Currin of Umatilla County in Oregon, who in his late days decided
inconclusive traffic violations by publicly flipping a coin?110 If we are counting heads at the end of our lengthy
argumentative proceedings anyway, why not decide hard cases by gut voting at the outset
and spare everybody the cost of developing elaborate arguments on
questions, where there is not fact of the matter to be discovered? One reason lies in the
mixed nature of our reasons in actual legal disagreements. The different second order reasons can be held apart
analytically, but not in real life cases. The hope of coming to terms will often play a role at least for some time
the objectives listed above could
relative to some participants in the debate. A second reason is that
not be achieved by a nonargumentative procedure. Flipping a coin, throwing dice or
taking a gut vote would not help us to explore our communalities or our
inferential commitments nor help to scrutinize the positions in play. A third reason is
the overall rational aspiration of the law that Dworkin relates to in his integrity account111. In a justificatory
sense112 the law aspires to give a coherent account of itself even if it is not the only
right one required by equal respect under conditions of normative
disagreement.113 Combining legal argumentation with the non argumentative
decision making procedure of counting reasoned opinions serves the coherence
aspiration of the law in at least two ways: First, the labor of the negative reduces the
chances that constructions of the law that have major flaws or inconsistencies built
into the arguments supporting them will prevail . Second, since every position must be
a reasoned one within the given framework of the law, it must be one that
somehow fits into the overall structure of the law along coherent lines. It thus
protects against incoherent checkerboard treatments114 of hard cases. It is
the combination of reasoned disagreement and the nonrational decision
making mechanism of counting reasoned opinions that provides for both in hard
cases: a decision and one of multiple possible coherent constructions of the law. Pure nonrational
procedures like flipping a coin would only provide for the decision part. Pure
argumentative procedures which are not geared towards a decision procedure
would undercut the incentive structure of our agonistic disagreements.115 In the
face of unresolvable disagreements endless debates would seem an idle enterprise. That the debates are
about winning or losing helps to keep the participants engaged. That the
decision depends on counting reasoned opinions guarantees that the
engagement focuses on rational argumentation. No plain nonargumentative procedure
would achieve this result. If the judges were to flip a coin at the end of the trial in hard cases, there
would be little incentive to engage in an exchange of arguments. It is
specifically the count of reasoned opinions which provides for rational scrutiny in
our legal disagreements and thus contributes to the rationales discussed above. 2. THE SEMANTICS OF
AGONISTIC DISAGREEMENTS The agonistic account does not presuppose a fact of the matter, it is not accompanied
by an ontological commitment, and the question of how the fact of the matter could be known to us is not even
 the agonistic account of legal disagreement is not confronted with the metaphysical or
raised. Thus
must still come up
epistemological questions that plague onerightanswer theories in particular. However, it
with a semantics that explains in what sense we disagree about the same issue
and are not just talking at cross purposes. In a series of articles David Plunkett and Tim Sundell
have reconstructed legal disagreements in semantic terms as metalinguistic negotiations on the usage of a term
Even though
that at the center of a hard case like cruel and unusual punishment in a deathpenalty case.116
the different sides in the debate define the term differently, they are not talking
past each other, since they are engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation on the use of the
same term. The metalinguistic negotiation on the use of the term serves as a semantic
anchor for a disagreement on the substantive issues connected with the term because of its
functional role in the law. The cruel and unusual punishmentclause thus serves to argue about the permissibility
of the death penalty. This account, however only provides a very superficial semantic commonality. But the
commonality between the participants of a legal disagreement go deeper than a discussion whether the term
bank should in future only to be used for financial institutions, which fulfills every criteria for semantic
negotiations that Plunkett and Sundell propose. Unlike in mere semantic negotiations, like the on the
disambiguation of the term bank, there is also some kind of identity of the substantive issues at stake in legal
disagreements. A promising route to capture this aspect of legal disagreements might be offered by recent semantic approaches that try to accommodate the externalist
challenges of realist semantics,117 which inspire onerightanswer theorists like Moore or David Brink. Neo descriptivist and twovalued semantics provide for the theoretical or
interpretive element of realist semantics without having to commit to the ontological positions of traditional externalism. In a sense they offer externalist semantics with no ontological
strings attached. The less controversial aspect of the externalist picture of meaning developed in neo descriptivist and twovalued semantics can be found in the deferential structure
that our meaningproviding intentions often encompass.118 In the case of natural kinds, speakers defer to the expertise of chemists when they employ natural kind terms like gold or
water. If a speaker orders someone to buy $ 10,000 worth of gold as a safe investment, he might not know the exact atomic structure of the chemical element 79. In cases of doubt,
though, he would insist that he meant to buy only stuff that chemical experts or the markets for that matter qualify as gold. The deferential element in the speakers intentions
In the case of the law, the meaningproviding intentions connected to the
provides for the specific externalist element of the semantics.

provisions of the law can be understood to defer in a similar manner to the best overall theory or interpretation of
the legal materials. Against the background of such a semantic framework the conceptual unity of a linguistic
practice is not ratified by the existence of a single best answer, but by the unity of the interpretive effort that
extends to legal materials and legal practices that have sufficient overlap119 be it only in a historical
perspective120. The fulcrum of disagreement that Dworkin sees in the existence of a single right
answer121 does not lie in its existence, but in the communality of the effort if
only on the basis of an overlapping common ground of legal materials,
accepted practices, experiences and dispositions. As two athletes are
engaged in the same contest when they follow the same rules, share the
same concept of winning and losing and act in the same context, but follow
very different styles of e.g. wrestling, boxing, swimming etc. They are in the same contest,
even if there is no single best style in which to wrestle, box or swim. Each, however, is
engaged in developing the best style to win against their opponent, just as two
lawyers try to develop the best argument to convince a bench of judges.122 Within such
a semantic framework even people with radically opposing views about the
application of an expression can still share a concept, in that they are engaged
in the same process of theorizing over roughly the same legal materials and
practices. Semantic frameworks along these lines allow for adamant disagreements
without abandoning the idea that people are talking about the same concept. An
agonistic account of legal disagreement can build on such a semantic framework, which can explain in
what sense lawyers, judges and scholars engaged in agonistic disagreements are not
talking past each other. They are engaged in developing the best interpretation
of roughly the same legal materials, albeit against the background of diverging
beliefs, attitudes and dispositions that lead them to divergent conclusions in hard cases.
Despite the divergent conclusions, semantic unity is provided by the largely overlapping
legal materials that form the basis for their disagreement. Such a semantic
collapses only when we lack a sufficient overlap in the materials. To use an example
of Michael Moores: If we wanted to debate whether a certain work of art was just, we share neither paradigms
nor a tradition of applying the concept of justice to art such as to engage in an intelligible controversy.
 Case
Their own 1ac cite says the Mosuo doesnt want people to
speak for them
Lugu Lake Mosuo Cultural Development Association 06
(http://www.mosuoproject.org/statement.htm, Statement of Purpose
The purpose of the Mosuo Cultural Development Association is to provide whatever assistance and support we can
to help the Mosuo achieve the goals that they themselves have set. To this end, there are several primary principles
Any
to all work that we do: 1) All projects and priorities are determined by Mosuo leaders in the Association.
non-Mosuo who are involved serve in an advisory/supportive position, to help the
Mosuo accomplish those goals. Anyone seeking to come in and tell the Mosuo what
they should do, or to run their own projects, will not be included in our work . 2) All
projects focus on long-term, sustainable development. None of our projects just give money as handouts. We do not
seek to make the Mosuo dependent on outside aid, but rather to assist them in developing greater independence.
3)No promotion, marketing, or advertising for our programs will ever
present the Mosuo as a poor, pitiful people. The Mosuo we work with are
strong, determined, and proud of their culture. They have already accomplished much on
their own, despite meager resources and significant obstacles. We seek to show that determination, strength, and
pride to everyone else, and encourage others to work with them as partners. 4) Anyone and everyone, regardless of
we insist that anyone
race, religion, or gender, is welcome to work with us and support us. However,
working with the Association refrain from religious proseletyzation, or any other 'personal' agenda.
People coming in with the express purpose of "changing" the Mosuo -- their religious beliefs, their cultural practices,
etc. -- is not welcome. 5) Everyone working with the Association is expected to abide by the laws in China; and
particularly not to use their work/experience with the Mosuo as an excuse for anti-Chinese statements or political
Our work is non-political, done for the benefit of the Mosuo people; those who
work.
seek to use the Mosuo for their own political purposes not only act selfishly, but also
endanger much of the very positive work that is being done.

The Other is a reflection of the egocentric self The Affirmative visualizes,

surveys and records the pain of the victimized subject from a position of
power and safety this imperial gaze produces knowledge that serves two
functions:
1. It maps the other into a subject position defined by victimhood and
establishes the ability of the West to judge, discipline and govern alterity
from above.
2. It places the West back in the center of the Others narrative by
establishing the Other as victim, we establish our own societys position as
the evil conqueror our character has changed, but our role in the play has
not.
Spurr93(ProfessorofEnglishatUniversityofIllinois,TheRhetoricofEmpirep.1517)

Intheirdisparateways,Agee,Omang,andMccarthy,areallconcernedwiththeoverpoweringandpotentially
destructiveeffectofthegaze.Butasanyvisualartistknows,thegazeisalsotheactiveinstrumentof
construction,orderandarrangement.Whatonemightcalltheideologyofthegazetakesononeofitsclearest
formsintheconventionofthecommandingview.Oneknowstheimportanceofthecommandingviewthe
panoramicvistatoarchitecture,landscapepainting,andsitesoftourism,aswellastoscientificresearch,military
intelligence,andpolicesurveillance:itoffersaestheticpleasureononehand,informationandauthorityontheother.
Thiscombinationofpleasureandpowergivesthecommandingviewaspecialrole
injournalisticwriting,
conveysasenseofmasteryovertheunknown
especiallyinthecolonialsituation,forit andoverwhatisoften
perceivedbytheWesternwriterasstrange
andbizarre.Atthesametimethecommandingviewisanoriginatinggestureof
colonizationitself,makingpossibletheexplorationandmappingofterritorywhichservesasthepreliminarytoacolonialorder. Inhisdiscussionofthe
intimaterelationbetweenpowerandvisualsurveillance,Michel FoucaultrecallsthePanopticon.JeremyBenthamseighteenthcentury
designforacircularprisondividedintoindividualcells,allofwhichcouldbeobservedfromthesinglevantagepointofacentraltower(1977:
200228).ThisarchitecturaldesignhasservedasthemodelformodernprisonssuchasStatevilleinJoliet,Illinois,aswellasforotherinstitutions
theeyecansurveyanentire
wheredisciplineandproductivityaremosteconomicallymonitoredbyanarrangementwhere
operationataglance,
while
remaining
freetofocuson
theminutest
detail.Hence,thewidespreaduseofthe
panopticprincipleinschools,libraries,hospitals,andfactories.Inanalyzingthisprinciple,Foucaultnotesthatwhat
guaranteescontrolinthePanopticonistheanalyticalarrangementofspace:thecircularstructureofthe
buildingisdividedintocellsofuniformsize,eachofwhichcanbeseenfromthesameangleandatthesame
distancefromthecentralpoint.The powerisexercisedoverthosewhodwellinthisfieldofvision
andis
thereforenoncorporal:itdependson
thespatial
configurationratherthan
ontheuseof
force.Thismeansthat
thepositionofvisualauthorityisequallyaccessibletoanyonewhooccupiesthecenterofthestructure:theeyeofa
workeroraschoolboycommandsthesameviewasthatofaprisonwarden.Furthermore,aseriesofpartitionsand
observerremainsinvisibleto
blindsensurethatthe thosewhoare
theobjects
ofsurveillance
makingthe
PanopticonwhatFoucaultcallsamachineryof
dissymmetry,disequilibrium,and
difference
.
Fortheobserver,
sightconferspower; fortheobserved,visibilityisatrap.IhaveborrowedtheimageofthePanopticoninorder
principlehasbearingonanyoccasion
tosuggestthatits wherethesuperiorandinvulnerablepositionofthe
observerconincideswiththeroleofaffirmingthepoliticalorderthatmakesthatpositionpossible.Thedevice
ofthecommandingviewincolonialistwritingconstitutesonesuchoccasion.LikethesupervisorinthePanopticon,
thewriterwhoengagesthisviewreliesforauthorityontheanalyticarrangementofspacefromapositionof
visualadvantage.Thewriterisplacedeitheraboveoratthecenterofthings,yetapartfromthem,sothatthe
organizationandclassificationofthingstakesplaceaccordingtothewritersownsystemofvalue.Interpretation
ofthescenereflectsthe
circumspective
forceofthegaze,whilesuppressingtheansweringgazeoftheother
.
Inthisdisproportionateeconomyofsightthewriterpreserves,onamaterialandhumanlevel,therelationsof
powerinherentinthelargersystemoforder.

The affirmative occupies the position of the Maoist, surveying and

recording information about the Other. Their focus on the ways in which
specific populations are otherized produces them as an object of knowledge
this intellectualized approach solidifies violent power relations.
Chow93(Rey,AndrewW.Mellon,ProfessoroftheHumanitiesatBrownUniversity,WritingDiaspora:
ContemporaryTacticsofInterventioninContemporaryCulturalStudies,IndianaUniversityPress,pg.1213.)

IntheculturalstudiesoftheAmericanacademyinthe1990s.TheMaoistisreproducingwithprowess.Wesee

thisintheway termssuchasoppression,
victimization
,andsubalternity
arenowbeingused.Contrary
eMaoistturnstheprecisely
totheOrientalistdisdainforthecontemporarynativeculturesinthenonWest,th
disdainedotherintotheobjectofhis/herstudyand,insomecasesidentification.Inamixtureofadmirationand
moralist,theMaoistsometimesturnsallpeoplefromnonWesternculturesintoageneralizedsubaltern
thatisthenusedtofloganequallygeneralizedWest.Becausetherepresentationoftheotherassuch
ignores(1)theclassandintellectualhierarchieswithintheseothercultures,whichareusuallyaselaborateas
thoseintheWest,and(2)thediscursivepowerrelationsstructuringtheMaoistsmodeofinquiryand
valorization,itproducesawayoftalkinginwhichnotionsoflack,subalternity,victimizationandsoforthare
drawnuponindiscriminately,oftenwiththeintentionofspotlightingthespeakersownsenseofalterityand
politicalrighteousness.AcomfortablywealthywhiteAmericanintellectualIknowclaimedthathewasathird
worldintellectualcitingasoneofhiscredentialshismarriagetoaWesternEuropeanwomanofpartJewish
heritage;aprofessorofEnglishcomplainedaboutbeingvictimizedbythestructuredtimeatanIvyLeague
Institution,meaningthatsheneededtobeontimeforclasses;agraduatestudentofupperclassbackgroundfrom
oneoftheworldspoorestcountriestoldhisAmericanfriendsthathewasofpoorpeasantstockinorderto
authenticatehisidentityasaradicalthirdworlderrepresentative;maleandfemaleacademicsacrosstheU.S.
frequentlysaytheywererapedwhentheyreportexperiencesofprofessionalfrustrationandconflict.Whether
sincereordelusional,suchcasesofselfdramatizationalltaketherouteofselfsubalternization,whichhas
increasinglybecometheassuredmeanstoauthorityandpower.Whattheseintellectualsaredoingisrobbingthe
termsofoppressionoftheircriticalandoppositionalimport,andthus
deprivingtheoppressedofeventhe
vocabularyofprotestandrightfuldemand.Theoppressed,whosevoicesweseldomhear,arerobbedtwice
the
firsttimeoftheireconomicchances,thesecondtimeoftheirlanguage,whichisnolongerdistinguishable
fromthosewhohavehadourconsciousnessesraised.

Attempts at knowledge of the Other is the enabling mechanism for the

destruction of alterity. Their attempts to fill in the blind spots in our map of
all human interaction ensures that we can only see the individuals they
debate about as targets for US bombs.
Chow2k6(ReyChow,HumanitiesandModernCulture&MediaStudiesatBrownUniversity,2006TheAgeof
theWorldTarget:SelfReferentialityinWar,Theory,andComparativeWork,401)

Oftenunderthemodestapparentlyinnocuousagendasof factgatheringand
documentation,thescientificand
objectiveproductionofknowledgeduringpeacetimeaboutthevariousspecialareasbecamethe

institutionalpracticethatsubstantiated andelaboratedthe
militaristicconception
oftheworldastarget.In
otherwords,despitetheclaimsabouttheapoliticalanddisinterestednatureofthepursuitsofhigherlearning,
activitiesundertakenundertherubricofareastudies,suchaslanguagetraining,historiography,anthropology,
economics,politicalscience,andsoforth,arefullyinscribedinthepoliticsandideologyofwar.Tothatextent,
thedisciplining,research,and developmentofsocalledacademicinformationarepartandparcelofastrategic
logic.Andyet,ifthe
productionofknowledge(withitsvocabularyofaimsandgoals,research,dataanalysis,
experimentation,andverification)infactshares thesame
scientificand
militarypremisesaswarif,for
instance,theabilitytotranslateadifficultlanguagecanberegardedasequivalenttotheabilitytobreakmilitary

codesisitasurprisethatitis doomedtofail
initsavowedattemptstoknowtheother
cultures?Can
knowledgethatisderivedfromthesamekindsofbasesaswarputanendtotheviolenceofwarfare,oris
suchknowledgenotsimplywarfaresaccomplice,destinedtodestroyratherthanpreservetheformsoflives
atwhichitaimsitsfocus?Aslongasknowledgeisproducedinthisselfreferentialmanner,asacircuitof
targetingorgettingtheotherthat
ultimately
consolidatestheomnipotence
andomnipresence
ofthe
sovereign
self/eyetheIthatistheUnitedStates,theother willhavenochoicebut
remainjustthatatarget

whoseexistencejustifiesonlyonething,its destructionbythebomber.AslongasthefocusofourstudyofAsia
remainstheUnitedStates,andaslongasthisfocusisnotaccompaniedbyknowledgeofwhatishappening
elsewhereatothertimesaswellasthepresent,suchstudywillultimatelyconfirmonceagaintheselfreferential
functionofvirtualworldingthatwasunleashedbythedroppingoftheatomicbombs,withtheU nited
S
tates
alwaysoccupying
thepositionofthebomber,andother
cultures
always
viewedasthemilitary
and
informationtarget
fields.Inthismanner,eventswhosehistoricitydoesnotfallintotheepistemicallyclosedorbit
oftheatomicbombersuchastheChinesereactionstothewarfromaprimarilyantiJapanesepointofviewthatI
alludedtoatthebeginningofthischapterwillneverreceivetheattentionthatisduetothem.Knowledge,
howeverconscientiouslygatheredandhoweverlargeinvolume,willleadonlytofurthersilenceandtothe
silencingofdiverseexperiences.Thisisonereasonwhy,asHarootunianremarks,areastudieshasbeen,sinceits
inception,hauntedbytheabsenceofadefinableobjectandbytheproblemofthevanishingobject.

ThealternativeisSaidsnotionofacademicexile.Thisisthedisavowalofoursuperiority
asintellectuals.Inabdicatingourpositionastheobserverweescapetheconfinesand
boundariesthatthenationstateplacesoncriticaldiscourse.Therejectionofthe
affirmativeistheproverbialrecognitionthatthepanoptic,intellectualizationtheyutilize
deprivesalterityoftheverytermsoftheiroppression,andthatthepositionoftheexileisa
betterontologicalframeworkforcriticism.

Biswas 7(ShampaBISWAS,Politics@Whitman,EmpireandGlobalPublicIntellectuals:ReadingEdwardSaid
asanInternationalRelationsTheorist,Millennium36)
SaidhaswrittenextensivelyandpoignantlyabouthisownexilicconditionsasaPalestinianschooledintheWestern
literarycanonandlivingintheheartofUSempire.27Butmoreimportantly,he has also articulated exile as a style of
thought and habitation which makes possible certain kinds of ontological and epistemological openings. Speaking of
exile as a metaphorical condition,28 Said describes it as the state of never being fully adjusted, of always feeling outside,
of restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others, of a kind of curmudgeonly disagreeableness.
Exile,hesays, is the condition that characterizes the intellectual as someone who is a marginal figure outside the
comforts of privilege, power, being-at-homeness.29Notjustforeignersbutlifelongmembersofasociety,canbe
suchoutsiders,sothat(e)venifoneisnotanactualimmigrantorexpatriate,itisstillpossibletothinkasone,to
imagineandinvestigateinspiteofbarriers,andalwaystomoveawayfromthecentralizingauthoritiestowardsthe
margins,whereyouseethingsthatareusuallylostonmindsthathavenevertraveledbeyondtheconventionaland
comfortable.30What Said privileges here is an intellectual orientation, rather than any identarian claims to knowledge; there is
much to learn in that for IR scholars. In making a case for the exilic orientation, it is the powerful hold of the nation-state upon
intellectual thinking that Saidmostbemoans.31The nation-state of course has a particular pride of place in the study of
global politics. The state-centricity of International Relations has not just circumscribed the ability of scholars to
understand a vast ensemble of globally oriented movements , exchanges and practices not reducible to the state, but
also inhibited a critical intellectual orientation to the world outside the national borders within which scholarship is
produced.Saidacknowledgesthefactthatallintellectual work occurs in a (national) context which imposes upon
ones intellect certain linguistic boundaries, particular (nationally framed) issues and, most invidiously, certain domestic
political constraints and pressures, but he cautions against the dangers of such restrictions upon the intellectual imagination.32
ComparingthedevelopmentofIRintwodifferentnationalcontextstheFrenchandtheGermanonesGerard
Holdenhasarguedthatdifferentintellectualinfluences,differenthistoricalresonancesofdifferentissues,different
domesticexigenciesshapethedisciplineindifferentcontexts.33Whilethisistobeexpectedtoanextent,thereis
goodreasontobecautiousabouthowscholarlysympathiesareexpressedandcircumscribedwhenthereachof
oneswork(issuescovered,peopleaffected)soobviouslyextendsbeyondthenationalcontext.For scholars of the
global, the (often unconscious) hold of the nation-state can be especially pernicious in the ways that it limits the scope and range
of the intellectual imagination. Said argues that the hold of the nation is such that even intellectuals progressive on
domestic issues become collaborators of empire when it comes to state actions abroad.34Specifically, he critiques
nationalistically based systems of education and the tendency in much of political commentary to frame analysis in terms of we,
us and our - particularly evident in coverage of the war on terrorism - which automatically sets up a series of (often hostile)
oppositions to others.Hepointsinthiscontexttotherathercommonintellectualtendencytobealerttotheabusesof
otherswhileremainingblindtothoseofonesown.35Itisfairtosaythatthejostlingandunsettlingofthenation
statethatcriticalInternationalRelationsscholarshavecontributedtohasstilldonelittletodislodgethecentralityof
thenationstateinmuchofInternationalRelationsandForeignPolicyanalyses. Raising questions about the state-
centricity of intellectual works becomes even more urgent in the contemporary context in which the hyperpatriotic
surge following the events of 11 September 2001 has made considerable inroads into the US academy. The attempt to
make the academy a place for the renewal of the nation-state project is troubling in itself; for IR scholarsintheUS,such
attemptscanonlylimitthereachofaglobalsensibilitypreciselyatatimewhensuchglobalityisevenmoreurgently
needed.Saidwarns against the inward pull of patriotism in times of emergency and crisis, and argues that even for an
intellectual who speaks for a particular cause, the task is to universalize the crisis ,togivegreaterhumanscopetowhata
particularraceornationsuffered,toassociatethatexperiencewiththesufferingsofothers.36Heisadamantthat
thisisthecaseevenforbeleagueredgroupssuchasthePalestinianswhoseverysurvivalisdependenton
formulatingtheirdemandsinanationalistidiom.37Americanintellectuals,asmembersofasuperpowerwith
enormousglobalreachandwheredissensioninthepublicrealmisnoticeablyabsent,carryspecialresponsibilityin
thisregard.38What the exilic orientation makes possible is this ability to universalise by enabling first, a double
perspective that never sees things in isolation so that from the juxtaposition of ideas and experiences one gets a better,
perhaps even more universal idea of how to think, say, about a human rights issue in one situation by comparison with
another,39 and second, an ability to see things not simply as they are, but as they have come to be that way,as
contingenthistoricalchoicesmadebymenandwomenthatarechangeable.40The second of these abilities
displaces the ontological givenness of the nation-state in the study of global politics; for the intellectual who feels
pulled by the demands of loyalty andpatriotism, Said suggests, [n]ever solidarity before criticism, arguing that it is the
intellectuals task to show how the nation is not a natural or god-given entity but is a constructed, manufactured, even
in some cases invented object, with a history of struggle and conquest behind it.41Thefirstoftheseabilities
interjectsacomparativistapproachascriticaltothestudyofglobalpolitics,locatingonesworkinatemporaland
spatialplanethatisalwayslargerthanonesimmediate(national)contextandintheprocesshistoricisingand
politicisingwhatmayappearnaturalisedinanyparticular(national)context.ThenowfamouspassagefromHugoof
StVictor,citedbyAuerbach,appearsinSaidswritingsonatleastfourdifferentoccasions:Themanwhofindshis
homelandsweetisstillatenderbeginner;hetowhomeverysoilisashisnativeoneisalreadystrong;butheis
perfecttowhomtheentireworldisasaforeignland.Thetendersoulhasfixedhisloveononespotintheworld;the
strongmanhasextendedhislovetoallplaces;theperfectmanhasextinguishedhis.
 Cap K
Identity politics fragment the Event by attempting to cling
onto outmoded structures of cultural difference that prevents
universal coalitions against capitalism.
Badiou 8 (Alain Badiou, Mathematician and Former Chair of Philosophy @ Ecole
Normale Suprieure, The Communist Hypothesis, New Left Review edition 49,
wcp)
The political problem, then, has to be reversed. We cannot start from an analytic agreement on the existence of the
The disagreement is not over
world and proceed to normative action with regard to its characteristics.
qualities but over existence. Confronted with the artificial and murderous division of
the world into twoa disjunction named by the very term, the West we must
affirm the existence of the single world right from the start, as axiom and principle.
The simple phrase, there is only one world , is not an objective conclusion. It is
performative: we are deciding that this is how it is for us. Faithful to this point, it is then a
question of elucidating the consequences that follow from this simple declaration. A first consequence is
the recognition that all belong to the same world as myself : the African worker I see in the
restaurant kitchen, the Moroccan I see digging a hole in the road, the veiled woman looking after children in a park.
That is where we reverse the dominant idea of the world united by objects and
signs, to make a unity in terms of living , acting beings, here and now. These people,
different from me in terms of language, clothes, religion, food, education, exist exactly as I do
myself; since they exist like me, I can discuss with themand, as with anyone else, we can agree
and disagree about things. But on the precondition that they and I exist in the same
world. At this point, the objection about cultural difference will be raised: our world is
made up of those who accept our values democracy, respect for women, human rights. Those
whose culture is contrary to this are not really part of the same world; if they want
to join it they have to share our values, to integrate. As Sarkozy put it: If foreigners want to
remain in France, they have to love France; otherwise, they should leave. But to place conditions is already to have
abandoned the principle, there is only one world of living men and women. It may be said that we need to take the
laws of each country into account. Indeed; but a law does not set a precondition for belonging to
the world. It is simply a provisional rule that exists in a particular region of the
single world. And no one is asked to love a law, simply to obey it. The single world of living women
and men may well have laws; what it cannot have is subjective or cultural
preconditions for existence within itto demand that you have to be like everyone
else. The single world is precisely the place where an unlimited set of differences
exist. Philosophically, far from casting doubt on the unity of the world, these differences are its principle of
existence. The question then arises whether anything governs these unlimited
differences. There may well be only one world, but does that mean that being French, or a Moroccan living in
France, or Muslim in a country of Christian traditions, is nothing? Or should we see the persistence of such identities
as an obstacle? The simplest definition of identity is the series of characteristics and
properties by which an individual or a group recognizes itself as its self. But what is this
self? It is that which, across all the characteristic properties of identity, remains
more or less invariant. It is possible, then, to say that an identity is the ensemble of
properties that support an invariance. For example, the identity of an artist is that by which the
invariance of his or her style can be recognized; homosexual identity is composed of everything bound up with the
invariance of the possible object of desire; the identity of a foreign community in a country is that by which
membership of this community can be recognized: language, gestures, dress, dietary habits, etc.Defined in
this way, by invariants, identity is doubly related to difference: on the one hand,
identity is that which is different from the rest; on the other, it is that which does
not become different, which is invariant. The affirmation of identity has two further
aspects. The first form is negative. It consists of desperately maintaining that I am
not the other. This is often indispensable, in the face of authoritarian demands for integration, for example.
The Moroccan worker will forcefully affirm that his traditions and customs are not those of the petty-bourgeois
The second
European; he will even reinforce the characteristics of his religious or customary identity.
involves the immanent development of identity within a new situation rather like
Nietzsches famous maxim, become what you are. The Moroccan worker does not
abandon that which constitutes his individual identity, whether socially or in the
family; but he will gradually adapt all this, in a creative fashion, to the place in
which he finds himself. He will thus invent what he isa Moroccan worker in Paris
not through any internal rupture, but by an expansion of identity. The political
consequences of the axiom, there is only one world, will work to consolidate what
is universal in identities. An examplea local experimentwould be a meeting held recently in Paris,
where undocumented workers and French nationals came together to demand the abolition of persecutory laws,
police raids and expulsions; to demand that foreign workers be recognized simply in terms of their presence: that
no one is illegal; all demands that are very natural for people who are basically in the same existential situation
people of the same world.

Capitalism causes structural violence and risks extinction

through environmental destruction.
Robinson 16 (William I, PhD in Sociology and Professor of sociology, global
studies and Latin American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35596-sadistic-capitalism-six-urgent-matters-
for-humanity-in-global-crisis)
In these mean streets of globalized capitalism in crisis, it has become profitable to turn
poverty and inequality into a tourist attraction . The South African Emoya Luxury Hotel and Spa
company has made a glamorized spectacle of it. The resort recently advertised an opportunity for tourists to stay
"in our unique Shanty Town ... and experience traditional township living within a safe private game reserve
environment." A cluster of simulated shanties outside of Bloemfontein that the company has constructed "is ideal
for team building, braais, bachelors [parties], theme parties and an experience of a lifetime," read the ad. The
luxury accommodations, made to appear from the outside as shacks, featured paraffin lamps, candles, a battery-
operated radio, an outside toilet, a drum and fireplace for cooking, as well as under-floor heating, air conditioning
and wireless internet access. A well-dressed, young white couple is pictured embracing in a field with the
corrugated tin shanties in the background. The only thing missing in this fantasy world of sanitized space and
glamorized poverty was the people themselves living in poverty. Escalating inequalities fuel capitalism's chronic
The "luxury shanty town" in South Africa is a fitting metaphor
problem of over-accumulation.
for global capitalism as a whole. Faced with a stagnant global economy, elites
have managed to turn war, structural violence and inequality into
opportunities for capital, pleasure and entertainment. It is hard not to
conclude that unchecked capitalism has become what I term "sadistic capitalism,"
in which the suffering and deprivation generated by capitalism become a source of
aesthetic pleasure, leisure and entertainment for others. I recently had the opportunity to
travel through several countries in Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, East Asia and
throughout North America. I was on sabbatical to research what the global crisis looks like on the ground around the
Everywhere I went, social polarization and political tensions have reached
world.
explosive dimensions. Where is the crisis headed, what are the possible outcomes and what does it tell
us about global capitalism and resistance? This crisis is not like earlier structural crises of world
capitalism, such as in the 1930s or 1970s. This one is fast becoming systemic. The crisis of humanity
shares aspects of earlier structural crises of world capitalism, but there are six novel, interrelated
dimensions to the current moment that I highlight here, in broad strokes, as the "big picture" context in which
countries and peoples around the world are experiencing a descent into chaos and uncertainty. 1) The level of
global social polarization and inequality is unprecedented in the face of out-of-control, over-
accumulated capital. In January 2016, the development agency Oxfam published a follow-up to its report on global
62 billionaires --
inequality that had been released the previous year. According to the new report, now just
control as much wealth as one half
down from 80 identified by the agency in its January 2015 report --
of the world's population, and the top 1% owns more wealth than the other 99%
combined. Beyond the transnational capitalist class and the upper echelons of the global power bloc, the richest
20 percent of humanity owns some 95 percent of the world's wealth, while the bottom 80 percent has to make do
This 20-80 divide of global society into haves and the have-nots is the
with just 5 percent.
new global social apartheid. It is evident not just between rich and poor countries, but within each
country, North and South, with the rise of new affluent high-consumption sectors alongside the downward mobility,
Escalating inequalities fuel capitalism's
"precariatization," destabilization and expulsion of majorities.
chronic problem of over-accumulation: The transnational capitalist class cannot find productive
outlets to unload the enormous amounts of surplus it has accumulated , leading to stagnation in the
world economy. The signs of an impending depression are everywhere. The front page of
the February 20 issue of The Economist read, "The World Economy: Out of Ammo?" Extreme levels of social
polarization present a challenge to dominant groups . They strive to purchase the
loyalty of that 20 percent, while at the same time dividing the 80 percent, co-opting
some into a hegemonic bloc and repressing the rest. Alongside the spread of
frightening new systems of social control and repression is heightened
dissemination through the culture industries and corporate marketing
strategies that depoliticize through consumerist fantasies and the
manipulation of desire. As "Trumpism" in the United States so well illustrates, another
strategy of co-optation is the manipulation of fear and insecurity among the downwardly
mobile so that social anxiety is channeled toward scapegoated communities. This
psychosocial mechanism of displacing mass anxieties is not new, but it appears to
be increasing around the world in the face of the structural destabilization
of capitalist globalization. Scapegoated communities are under siege, such as the Rohingya in
Myanmar, the Muslim minority in India, the Kurds in Turkey, southern African immigrants in South Africa, and Syrian
21st century
and Iraqi refugees and other immigrants in Europe. As with its 20th century predecessor,
fascism hinges on such manipulation of social anxiety at a time of acute capitalist
crisis. Extreme inequality requires extreme violence and repression that lend
to projects of 21st century fascism. 2) The system is fast reaching the ecological
limits to its reproduction. We have reached several tipping points in what
environmental scientists refer to as nine crucial "planetary boundaries. " We have already
exceeded these boundaries in three areas -- climate change, the nitrogen cycle and diversity loss. There have been
for the first time
five previous mass extinctions in earth's history. While all these were due to natural causes,
ever, human conduct is intersecting with and fundamentally altering the earth
system. We have entered what Paul Crutzen, the Dutch environmental scientist and Nobel Prize winner, termed
the Anthropocene -- a new age in which humans have transformed up to half of the world's surface. We are
altering the composition of the atmosphere and acidifying the oceans at a rate that
undermines the conditions for life. The ecological dimensions of global crisis cannot
be understated. "We are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open
and which will forever be closed," observes Elizabeth Kolbert in her best seller, The Sixth Extinction. "No other
creature has ever managed this ... The Sixth Extinction will continue to determine the course of life long after
everything people have written and painted and built has been ground into dust." Capitalism cannot be held solely
responsible. The human-nature contradiction has deep roots in civilization itself. The ancient Sumerian empires, for
example, collapsed after the population over-salinated their crop soil. The Mayan city-state network collapsed about
AD 900 due to deforestation. And the former Soviet Union wrecked havoc on the environment. However, given
capital's implacable impulse to accumulate profit and its accelerated
commodification of nature, it is difficult to imagine that the environmental
catastrophe can be resolved within the capitalist system . "Green capitalism"
appears as an oxymoron, as sadistic capitalism's attempt to turn the ecological
crisis into a profit-making opportunity, along with the conversion of poverty into
a tourist attraction. 3) The sheer magnitude of the means of violence is
unprecedented, as is the concentrated control over the means of global
communications and the production and circulation of knowledge, symbols and
images. We have seen the spread of frightening new systems of social control and
repression that have brought us into the panoptical surveillance society and the age
of thought control. This real-life Orwellian world is in a sense more perturbing than that described by George
Orwell in his iconic novel 1984. In that fictional world, people were compelled to give their obedience to the state
("Big Brother") in exchange for a quiet existence with guarantees of employment, housing and other social
necessities. Now, however, the corporate and political powers that be force obedience even as the means of
survival are denied to the vast majority. Global apartheid involves the creation of "green zones" that are cordoned
off in each locale around the world where elites are insulated through new systems of spatial reorganization, social
control and policing. "Green zone" refers to the nearly impenetrable area in central Baghdad that US occupation
forces established in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The command center of the occupation and select Iraqi
elite inside that green zone were protected from the violence and chaos that engulfed the country. Urban areas
around the world are now green zoned through gentrification, gated communities, surveillance systems, and state
and private violence. Inside the world's green zones, privileged strata avail themselves of privatized social services,
consumption and entertainment. They can work and communicate through internet and satellite sealed off under
the protection of armies of soldiers, police and private security forces. Green zoning takes on distinct forms in each
locality. In Palestine, I witnessed such zoning in the form of Israeli military checkpoints, Jewish settler-only roads and
the apartheid wall. In Mexico City, the most exclusive residential areas in the upscale Santa Fe District are
accessible only by helicopter and private gated roads. In Johannesburg, a surreal drive through the exclusive
Sandton City area reveals rows of mansions that appear as military compounds, with private armed towers and
electrical and barbed-wire fences. In Cairo, I toured satellite cities ringing the impoverished center and inner
suburbs where the country's elite could live out their aspirations and fantasies. They sport gated residential
complexes with spotless green lawns, private leisure and shopping centers and English-language international
schools under the protection of military checkpoints and private security police. In other cities, green zoning is
subtler but no less effective. In Los Angeles, where I live, the freeway system now has an express lane reserved for
those that can pay an exorbitant toll. On this lane, the privileged speed by, while the rest remain one lane over,
stuck in the city's notorious bumper-to-bumper traffic -- or even worse, in notoriously underfunded and
underdeveloped public transportation, where it may take half a day to get to and from work. There is no barrier
separating this express lane from the others. However, a near-invisible closed surveillance system monitors every
movement. If a vehicle without authorization shifts into the exclusive lane, it is instantly recorded by this
surveillance system and a heavy fine is imposed on the driver, under threat of impoundment, while freeway police
warfare and police containment have
patrols are ubiquitous. Outside of the global green zones,
become normalized and sanitized for those not directly at the receiving end of
armed aggression. "Militainment" -- portraying and even glamorizing war and
violence as entertaining spectacles through Hollywood films and television police shows, computer
games and corporate "news" channels -- may be the epitome of sadistic capitalism. It
desensitizes, bringing about complacency and indifference. In between the green
zones and outright warfare are prison industrial complexes, immigrant and refugee
repression and control systems, the criminalization of outcast communities and
capitalist schooling. The omnipresent media and cultural apparatuses of the
corporate economy, in particular, aim to colonize the mind -- to undermine the
ability to think critically and outside the dominant worldview. A neofascist
culture emerges through militarism, extreme masculinization, racism and racist
mobilizations against scapegoats. 4) We are reaching limits to the extensive
expansion of capitalism. Capitalism is like riding a bicycle: When you stop pedaling
the bicycle, you fall over. If the capitalist system stops expanding outward, it
enters crisis and faces collapse. In each earlier structural crisis, the system went
through a new round of extensive expansion -- from waves of colonial conquest in earlier centuries,
to the integration in the late 20th and early 21st centuries of the former socialist countries, China, India and other
There are no longer any new territories
areas that had been marginally outside the system.
to integrate into world capitalism. Meanwhile, the privatization of education, health care,
utilities, basic services and public land are turning those spaces in global society that were outside of capital's
control into "spaces of capital." Even poverty has been turned into a commodity. What is there left to commodify?
Where can the system now expand? With the limits to expansion comes a turn toward
militarized accumulation -- making wars of endless destruction and
reconstruction and expanding the militarization of social and political
institutions so as to continue to generate new opportunities for
accumulation in the face of stagnation. 5) There is the rise of a vast surplus
population inhabiting a "planet of slums," alienated from the productive economy,
thrown into the margins and subject to these sophisticated systems of social
control and destruction. Global capitalism has no direct use for surplus humanity. But indirectly, it
holds wages down everywhere and makes new systems of 21st century slavery
possible. These systems include prison labor, the forced recruitment of miners at gunpoint by warlords
contracted by global corporations to dig up valuable minerals in the Congo, sweatshops and exploited immigrant
communities (including the rising tide of immigrant female caregivers for affluent populations). Furthermore, the
global working class is experiencing accelerated "precariatization." The "new precariat" refers to the proletariat that
faces capital under today's unstable and precarious labor relations -- informalization, casualization, part-time, temp,
immigrant and contract labor. As communities are uprooted everywhere, there is a rising reserve army of immigrant
labor. The global working class is becoming divided into citizen and immigrant workers. The latter are particularly
attractive to transnational capital, as the lack of citizenship rights makes them particularly vulnerable, and
therefore, exploitable. The challenge for dominant groups is how to contain the real and potential rebellion of
surplus humanity, the immigrant workforce and the precariat. How can they contain the explosive contradictions of
this system? The 21st century megacities become the battlegrounds between mass
resistance movements and the new systems of mass repression. Some populations
in these cities (and also in abandoned countryside) are at risk of genocide, such as those in Gaza,
zones in Somalia and Congo, and swaths of Iraq and Syria. 6) There is a disjuncture between a
globalizing economy and a nation-state-based system of political authority .
Transnational state apparatuses are incipient and do not wield enough power and
authority to organize and stabilize the system, much less to impose regulations on
runaway transnational capital. In the wake of the 2008 financial collapse, for instance, the governments
of the G-8 and G-20 were unable to impose transnational regulation on the global financial system, despite a series
Elites historically have attempted to resolve
of emergency summits to discuss such regulation.
the problems of over-accumulation by state policies that can regulate the anarchy of
the market. However, in recent decades, transnational capital has broken free from
the constraints imposed by the nation-state. The more "enlightened" elite representatives of the
transnational capitalist class are now clamoring for transnational mechanisms of regulation that would allow the
global ruling class to reign in the anarchy of the system in the interests of saving global capitalism from itself and
from radical challenges from below. At the same time, the division of the world into some 200 competing nation-
states is not the most propitious of circumstances for the global working class. Victories in popular struggles from
below in any one country or region can (and often do) become diverted and even undone by the structural power of
transnational capital and the direct political and military domination that this structural power affords the dominant
groups. In Greece, for instance, the leftist Syriza party came to power in 2015 on the heels of militant worker
struggles and a mass uprising. But the party abandoned its radical program as a result of the enormous pressure
exerted on it from the European Central Bank and private international creditors. The Systemic Critique of Global
A growing number of transnational elites themselves now
Capitalism
recognize that any resolution to the global crisis must involve
redistribution downward of income. However, in the viewpoint of those from
below, a neo-Keynesian redistribution within the prevailing corporate power
structure is not enough. What is required is a redistribution of power downward and
transformation toward a system in which social need trumps private profit. A global
rebellion against the transnational capitalist class has spread since the
financial collapse of 2008. Wherever one looks, there is popular, grassroots and
leftist struggle, and the rise of new cultures of resistance : the Arab Spring; the
resurgence of leftist politics in Greece, Spain and elsewhere in Europe; the
tenacious resistance of Mexican social movements following the
Ayotzinapa massacre of 2014; the favela uprising in Brazil against the
government's World Cup and Olympic expulsion policies; the student strikes in Chile; the remarkable
surge in the Chinese workers' movement; the shack dwellers and other poor people's campaigns in South Africa;
Occupy Wall Street, the immigrant rights movement, Black Lives Matter ,
fast food workers' struggle and the mobilization around the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in the United
States. This global revolt is spread unevenly and faces many challenges. A number of these
struggles, moreover, have suffered setbacks, such as the Greek working-class movement and, tragically, the Arab
Spring. What type of a transformation is viable, and how do we achieve it ?
How we interpret the
global crisis is itself a matter of vital importance as politics polarize worldwide
between a neofascist and a popular response. The systemic critique of global
capitalism must strive to influence, from this vantage point, the discourse and
practice of movements for a more just distribution of wealth and power.
Our survival may depend on it.

Our alternative is to affirm the truth event of the Communist

Hypothesis. This round is crucial in the battle to politicize the
masses.
Badiou 10 (Alain, Mathematician and Former Chair of Philosophy @ Ecole Normale
Suprieure, The Idea of Communism, pg. 11-14, wcp)
Why do the event and its
We will now ask: why is it necessary to resort to this ambiguous operation?
consequences also have to be exposed in the guise of a fact often a violent one that is
accompanied by different versions of the cult of personality? What is the reason for this
historical appropriation of emancipatory politics? The simplest reason is that the ordinary history,
the history of individual lives, is confined within the State. The history of a life, with neither
decision nor choice, is in itself a part of the history of the State, whose conventional mediations are the family,
The heroic, but individual, projection of
work, the homeland, property, religion, customs, and so forth.
an exception to all the above as is a truth procedure also aims at being shared
with everyone else; it aims to show itself to be not only an exception but also a
possibility that everyone can share from now on. And that is one of the Ideas
functions: to project the exception into the ordinary life of individuals, to fill what
merely exists with a certain measure of the extraordinary. To convince my own
immediate circle husband or wife, neighbours and friends, colleagues that the fantastic
exception of truths in the making also exists, that we are not doomed to lives
programmed by the constraints of the State. Naturally, in the final analysis, only the
raw, or militant, experience of the truth procedure will compel one or
another persons entry into the body of truth. But to take him or her to the
place where this experience is to be found to make him or her a spectator of, and
therefore partly a participant in, what is important for a truth the mediation of the
Idea, the sharing of the Idea, are almost always required. The Idea of communism
(regardless of what name it might otherwise be given, which hardly matters: no Idea is definable by its name) is
what enables a truth procedure to be spoken in the impure language of the State,
and thereby for the lines of force by virtue of which the State prescribes what is
possible and what is impossible to be shifted for a time. In this view of things, the
most ordinary action is to take someone to a real political meeting, far from their
home, far from their predetermined existential parameters, in a hostel of workers
from Mali, for example, or at the gates of a factory. Once they have come to the
place where politics is occurring, they will make a decision about whether to
incorporate or withdraw. But in order for them to come to that place, the Idea
and for two centuries, or perhaps since Plato, it has been the Idea of communism
must have already shifted them in the order of representations, of History and of
the State. The symbol must imaginarily come to the aid of the creative flight from
the Real. Allegorical facts must ideologize and historicize the student in an ill-lit room must momentarily be
enlarged to the dimensions of Communism and thus be both what it is and what it will have been as a moment in
the local construction of the True. Through the enlargement of the symbol, it must become
visible that just ideas come from this practically invisible practice. The five-person
meeting in an out-of-the-way suburb must be eternal in the very expression of its
precariousness. That is why the real must be exposed in a fictional structure. The
second reason is that every event is a surprise. If this were not the case, it would
mean that it would have been predictable as a fact, and so would be inscribed in the
history of the State, which is a contradiction in terms. The problem can thus be
formulated in the following way: how can we prepare ourselves for such surprises?
And this time the problem really exists, even if we are already currently militants of
a previous events consequences, even if we are included in a body-of-truth.
Granted, we are proposing the deployment of new possibilities. However, the event to
come will turn what is still impossible, even for us, into a possibility. In order to anticipate,
at least ideologically or intellectually, the creation of the newness of the possibilities that the
truth procedure of which we are the militants has brought to light, which are real
possibilities, but an Idea that also involves the formal possibility of other
possibilities, ones as yet unsuspected by us. An Idea is always the assertion
that a new truth is historically possible. And since the forcing of the impossible
into the possible occurs via subtraction from the power of the State, an Idea can be
said to assert that this subtractive process is infinite. It is always formally possible
that the dividing line drawn by the State between the possible and the impossible
may once again be shifted, however radical its previous shifts including the one in
which we as militants are currently taking part may have been. That is why one of
the contents of the communist Idea today as opposed to the theme of communism
as a goal to be attained through the work of a new State is that the withering
away of the State, while undoubtedly a principle that must be apparent in any
political action (which is expressed by the formula politics at a distance from the State as an obligatory
refusal of any direct inclusion in the State, of any request for funding from the State, of any participation in
is also an infinite task, since the creation of new political truths will
elections, etc.),
always shift the dividing line between Statist , hence historical, facts and the eternal
consequences of an event. With this in mind, I will now conclude by turning to the contemporary
inflections of the Idea of communism. In keeping with the current reassessment of the Idea of communism, as I
the words function can no longer be that of an adjective, as in communist
mentioned,
party, or communist regimes. The party-form, like that of the socialist State, is no longer suitable for
providing real support for the Idea. This problem moreover first found negative expression in two crucial events of
the 1960s and 1970s: the Cultural Revolution in China and the amorphous entity called May 68 in France.Later,
new political forms, all of which are of the order of politics without a party, were
and are still being tried out. Overall, however, the modern, so-called democratic
form of the bourgeois State, of which globalized capitalism is the cornerstone, can
boast of having no rivals in the ideological field. For three decades now, the word
communism has been either totally forgotten or practically equated with criminal
enterprises. That is why the subjective situation of politics has everywhere become
so incoherent. Lacking the Idea, the popular masses confusion is
inescapable. Nevertheless, there are many signs this book, and the conference on which it is based, for
example suggesting that this reactionary period is coming to an end. The historical
paradox is that, in a certain way, we are closer to problems investigated in the first
half of the nineteenth century than we are to those we have inherited from the
twentieth century. Just as in around 1840, today we are faced with an utterly cynical capitalism, which is
certain that it is the only possible option for a rational organization of society. Everywhere it is implied
that the poor are to blame for their own plight , that Africans are backward, and the future belongs
either to the civilized bourgeoisies of the Western world or to those who, like the Japanese, choose to follow the
same Path. Today, just as back then, very extensive areas of extreme poverty can be
found even in the rich countries. There are outrageous, widening inequalities
between countries, as well as between social classes. The subjective, political gulf
between Third World farmers, the unemployed, and poor wage-earners in our so
called developed countries, on the one hand, and the Western middle classes on
the other, is absolutely unbridgeable and stained with a sort of indifference
bordering on hatred. More than ever, political power, as the current economic crisis
with its single slogan of rescue the banks clearly proves, is merely an agent of
capitalism. Revolutionaries are divided and only weakly organized, broad sectors of working-class youth have
fallen prey to nihilistic despair, the vast majority of intellectuals are servile. In contrast to all this, though
just as isolated as Marx and his friends were at the time when the retrospectively
famous Manifesto of the Communist Party came out in 1848, there are nonetheless
more and more of us involved in organizing new types of political processes among
the poor and working masses and in trying to find every possible way to support the
re-emergent forms of the communist Idea in reality. Just as at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the victory of the communist Idea is not at issue , as it would
later be, far too dangerously and dogmatically, for a whole stretch of the twentieth
century. What matters first and foremost is its existence and the terms in
which it is formulated. In the first place, to provide a vigorous subjective existence to the communist
hypothesis is the task those of us gathered here today are attempting to accomplish in our own way. And it is, I
By combining intellectual constructs, which are always global and
insist, a thrilling task.
universal, with experiments of fragments of truth, which are local and singular, yet
universally transmissible, we can give new life to the communist hypothesis or
rather to the Idea of communism, in individual consciousness. We can usher in the third of
this Ideas existence. We can, so we must.