AT Kritik Folder

Abelism
Ableist is inevitable
Kesler 11 (Jennifer Kesler is a freelance online writer and proclaimed “feminist blogger”. She is the
creative lead at Lojo Group, a branding, marketing and advertising agency based in Sacramento,
California. What Privilege: “Replacing “crazy” for ableism and preciseness of language.” Published
February 10th, 2011. Accessed July 25th, 2015. http://whatprivilege.com/replacing-crazy-for-ableism-and-
preciseness-of-language/) TheFedora

There are some other words which may or may not be ableist, depending who you talk to. Perhaps this is
the right time to say that I have had depression and anxiety issues since childhood and personally don’t
find “crazy” ableist except when it’s being used to describe a person who’s not conforming to your
expectations. Different people have different sensitivities. To be safe, dumping all of the following words
from your publication vocabulary would be wise. But they are not indisputably ableist – there is debate.
Lunatic/lunacy. Refers to the belief that the moon could make people deranged, which we now know is
just silly. But it’s still a mental health label, and calling someone a lunatic is a little like calling one of
those armchair diagnoses we discussed above. I think “lunacy”, however, is acceptable, as in “This law
the politician has proposed is sheer lunacy.” That suggests a very real phenomenon, in which humans get
swept up in a mob mentality and develop horrifically bad judgment. But that’s the only context I use it
in. [See comments for arguments that lunacy is ableist.] Nuts. Purely a euphemism for crazy, so most
people who find crazy ableist will also object to it. But, again with the varying sensitivities.

Janelle Monáe’s use of abelist metaphors for freedom obscures the experience of
disability and props up ableism, despite intentions
Bailey 12 [Moya Bailey, Graduate student at Emory’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program
with a focus on African-American Studies, Digital Humanities, Disability Studies, History of Medicine,
Media Studies & Popular Culture, Queer Theory/Sexuality Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies;
“Vampires and Cyborgs: Transhuman Ability and Ableism in the work of Octavia Butler and Janelle
Monáe”; Social Text Journal; 01/04/2012; accessed 07/28/2015;
<http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/vampires_and_cyborgs_transhuman_ability_and_ableis
m_in_the_work_of_octavia_butler_and_janelle_monae/>.] Janelle Monae’s work is used in a lot of
fugitivity affs.

Like Butler, Janelle Monáe is interested in the transhuman possibilities of the body. Her alter ego, Cindi
Mayweather, is an android from the distant future who does the impossible: falls in love with a human.
This taboo animates a droid army to hunt and destroy her. Monáe’s album The ArchAndroid is the rock
opera of Mayweather’s life on the run. As she attempts to remain true to her feelings, she struggles with
the perceptions of the power structure who see her as wild, unstable, and crazy as she flouts the
conventions of an ableist and human-centered world. Her body, like Shori’s is a threat to the conventions
of her community, troubling the meticulously maintained division of man and machine. The ArchAndroid
provides a window into Cindi Mayweather’s experience. The track “Faster” highlights her escape from
the Droid Army. The invocation of the ableist slur “schizo” is supposed to be liberatory. She is talking
about running for freedom, and schizophrenia is representative of the liberation she hopes to achieve.
She sings: “I’m running, I’m running, running, running. I’m shaking like, shaking like a schizo.” Similarly, in
the track “Alive” Monáe makes schizophrenia a metaphor for heightened consciousness. In reference to
dance, she sings “That’s when I come alive, like a schizo running wild, that’s when I come alive, now let’s
go wild!” If you’ve seen a Monáe live show, she does, as the kids say, “go off,” with dance moves that
rival James Brown in their explosiveness. It is when Cindi feels most alive that society, in the form of
medication, the droid army and institutional pressure, tries to squelch her boundary-breaking expression
by forcing her to conform to an unanimated norm. Monáe’s critique is powerful but the sting of words
that support ableism remains. Janelle Monae Feat. Big Boi – Tightrope from Fred Romano on Vimeo.
The video for “Tightrope” portrays Monáe and fellow institutionalized patients trying to break free of the
repressive watchful eye of the powers that be through dance and song. She goes through walls and into
the woods to escape those who would limit her expression. The video provides a visual critique of the
ways in which disability is policed through showing the nurse’s attempts to medicate and thwart the
revolutionary dance party of the patients. The audience is privy to the soul-crushing nature of the
institution and we delight in the patients’ stolen moments of freedom of expression in dance, their
powerful and uncontrollable hidden magic exposed. For Butler and Monáe, transhuman disabled bodies
offer possibility and freedom that simple humanity forecloses. Monáe’s use of disability as metaphor
supports her alter ego’s search for a freedom in a world much like our own. However, by reducing
disability to metaphor and by using ableist language, the real lives of disabled people are obscured .
Butler’s depiction of Shori’s hybrid body serves as a flash point for eugenic impulse, allowing an
investigation of the deep seated racial prejudices of our time. However, punishing characters through
impairment makes disability into retribution, a just sentence for wrongdoing in an ableist world that
doesn’t make accommodations for people who need them. Butler and Monáe open up conversations
about disability that are messy and fraught, but they do so in arenas that traditional disabilities studies
scholarship neglects.

Abelism causes sustained trauma

Wierzbowski, Clinical Social Work Intern at the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program, 11

(Jessica Lynn Wierzbowski, 2011, Smith College, “The effects of systemic ableism on those with a

visual impairment : a theoretical perspective,” http://scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=2104&context=theses, accessed 7/12/17, CD)

Herman (1992) recognizes that ―traumatic events produce profound and lasting changes in
physiological arousal, emotions, cognition, and memory (p. 34). Herman (1992) continues by pointing
out a person ―may find herself in a constant state of vigilance and irritability without knowing why.
Traumatic symptoms have a tendency to become disconnected from their source and to take on a life of
their own (p. 34). While reading about trauma and its impact on people, specifically those with a visual
impairment in his case, one must remember trauma is subjective. What one person considers traumatic,
someone else may not perceive as such. ―

Trauma theory holds that there are biopsychosocial consequences to any individual when he/she
sustains a serious threat. The person responds to what has happened in order to preserve physical and
emotional integrity but there is a possibility that the physical, psychological, and social consequences
may in fact become harmful to the individual (Bills, 2003, p. 191-192). This can be displayed through an
example Brown (2008) presents in her chapter, which was summarized in additional detail in Chapter II.
Brown (2008) spoke of a male graduate student of Psychology who is Deaf. In his endeavor to attend
graduate school he finds himself in an enactment of past ableism. The way in which he is being left out
of optional classroom causes an emotional trigger from when he felt isolated as a child. Ultimately this
leads him to display avoidance in present day, which is demonstrated by his failing out of school (Brown,
2008). This scenario can hold true for someone with a visual impairment. Those with a visual impairment
can feel isolated from various daily activities. These activities can be perceived as mundane by the
population, but significant to those who cannot perform them. Brown (2008) explains ableism as a risk
factor for trauma and therefore one can present with the symptoms of PTSD. Brown (2008) expands on
this by linking trauma to ableism and the exploration of self-devaluation that ableist attitudes bring to
those with a disability.

Studies of ableism rely on ableist assumptions

Imrie ’96 (Rob Imrie has experience as a professor of Geography at Kings College and at London: Royal
Holloway University of London. The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British
Geographers): “Ableist geographies, disablist spaces: towards a reconstruction of Golledge's 'Geography
and the disabled'’ article revised in February 1995. Accessed July 25 th, 2015.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/622489?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) TheFedora

Geographers have only recently started to research and write about the experiences of people with
disabilities, yet there is some evidence that they are replicating some of the more problematical aspects
of what we might term an 'ableist sociology'. Its main features are the utilization of conceptions of
disability which are reducible to the functionalimitations of people with disabilities, the assertion of the
normality (and naturalness) of able-bodiedness, the notion that disability is abnormal, even a product of
deviant behaviour, and the assumption that the goal of society is to return disabled people back to a
normal state (whatever that is). Any notion of celebrating, even recognizing, the vitality of difference
seems beyond the emergent ableist geographies. This paper provides a critique of such geographies by
considering the shortcomings of one of the more recent contributions in the genre, that by Golledge
(1993). Introduction In recent times, geographers have made significant contributions to our
understanding of both race and gender in the social construction of environments, yet have had little to
say about the geography of people with disabilities (Laws 1994; McDowell 1992). While this reflects, in
part, the relative absence of people with disabilities in academia, it also relates to their relative
powerlessness in society more generally and to wider social discourses, and practices, which tend to
portray disabled people as inferior, dependent and, by implication, of little or no value. Such conceptions
are, as Oliver (1990) notes, still dominant and the term 'disablism' has been coined to describe socio-
political processes which marginalize and oppress disabled people (Imrie and Wells 1993; Oliver 1990).
As Oliver (1990) has commented, people with disabilities are people too, yet sociological theory, from
where the dominant theorizations of disability stem, is, as Abberley (1987) notes, theoretically backward
and a hindrance rather than a help. The dominant strands of theory individualize the nature and
experiences of disability, suggesting that it is akin to a medical condition that requires treatment and/or
a cure. In this way, any negative experiences which disabled people encounter in, for instance, moving
around their environments or failing to obtain employment, is conceptualized as linked to individual
impairment rather than resulting from forms of social and political discrimination While such
conceptions are subject to a growing critique, particularly by people with disabilities themselves,
geographers have only started to research and write about the experiences of disabled people, yet there
is evidence that they too are replicating some of the more problematical aspects of what we might term
an 'ableist' sociology (see Andrews 1983; Golledge 1991, 1993). Its main features are the utilization of
conceptions of disability which are reducible to the functional limitations of people with disabilities, the
assertion of the normality (and naturalness) of able-bodiedness, the notion that disability is abnormal,
even a product of deviant behaviour, and the assumption that the goal of society is to return disabled
people back to a normal state (whatever that is). Any sense of celebrating, even recognizing, the vitality
of difference seems beyond the emergent ableist geography. In turn, the methodological individualism,
underpinning ableist conceptions of geography and the disabled, is generating studies devoid of
structural socio-political content or of little understanding of how societal values, attitudes and
structures may be conditioning the experiences of people with disabilities

Our Critical advocacy key to fight abliest structures of policy debate- demands of the
state fail
Richter 16’ [Zach Richter,Communication Studies, University of California, San Diego; M.S., Disability
Studies, University of Illinois Chicago. “The Disabled Person’s Struggle In Round & Beyond: Taking Back
Formerly Ableist Educational Spaces in the Post-Ada Generation”, National Journal of Speech and
Debate, Vol. IV: Issue III, http://site.theforensicsfiles.com/NJSD.4-3.pdf LMcf]

My part of this dialogue has been to add, what has been lacking in discussions about disability and
accessibility, a dimension of the historical political struggle within institutions. In my analysis, I first place
disabled people in the policy debate world in the context of a wider movement of disabled people in the
West who have been activated at least in the 1950s or 1960s, but have proliferated and been more or
less in successful in institutional ways since the 1980s. The disabled struggle in debate mimics the
struggle of people like Ed Roberts who fought for educational equity in universities. The disabled
person’s movement in debate is just one more node of a spread-out disabled person’s movement to end
ableist segregation on an institutional level and to point out and oppose the lesser funding received in
disability ghettos condoned by the government. The initial framing that my analysis draws upon is the
language of the social model of disability that explicitly indicts institutional segregation for suppressing
disabled public presence and disabled accomplishment, as well doing violence regularly to disabled
people of all different types. Debate as an enterprise has been un-reflexive about the level of
accessibility at events and has only recently enjoyed several controversies beginning in debate rounds
that have challenged the systematic inaccessibility that plagues the inter-collegiate and inter-high school
leagues. This panel was organized to offer solutions, but many of my fellow panelists have noted that
some issues with debate, such as the lack of American Sign Language options, are intractable––the
debate world has systematically and routinely refused to act on or consider possible solutions. These
issues are particularly revelatory in terms of what Charlton describes as the “hierarchy of disability” that
structures which types of disabled people make it into which spaces.13 By and large, those able to
access debate are those disabled people who have had invisible disabilities, such as learning disabilities
or psychiatric issues. Disabled people impaired in other ways, such as blind and deaf debaters, are
present in lesser numbers, receding down to developmentally disabled people who are never present in
the debate world. Due to debate’s existence, enveloped by a culture of high achievement, there is an
implicit expectation that debaters who are too disabled should not debate. This type of suggestion
ignores the centrality of a forensic education to the necessary self-advocacy that disabled people must
undertake in order to receive education, medical help, and often to interact with the public. In-round
advocacy has a similarity to plying your case to a superior; this interaction with power is very basic
and is key to life within the current systems. I frame the battle for accessibility in policy debate as part
of a wider battle for accessibility in education and, wider than that, a battle for accountability for the
harms that the modern nation-state and corporation has dealt to the disabled person. In many
educational institutions of higher and preparatory learning, the communicative situation of the
classroom is organized such that order is favored over wider inclusion. The field of educational studies
has been a driving influence in disability studies because of the effort of enlightened educational
thinkers, such as Doug Biklen and others, to support alternative mediated forms of communication as
well as those involved in the inclusive education movement. People involved in debate have long placed
the activity as intended for the elite and, as a consequence of that decision, have felt no need to include
impaired people. However, in the contemporary ideology connected to disability rights of self-advocacy,
one finds a way of being disabled that is indeed more involved in argumentation and advocacy than
nondisabled existence. In the agreement that is classroom accommodations, the education system
places an onus upon the disabled person to persuasively engage their instructors in order to receive
needed access. My presentation must call upon a recent example of organizational policies in the debate
world in which the National Debate Tournament (NDT) posted an accessibility statement that harmed
both disabled and black debaters. It took significant lobbying on the part of a wide coalition of debate
people across the nation to correct the problematic language. Even then, the language of the NDTs
access statement was oriented around reacting to the possibility of inaccessibility, not to build debate in
such a way that disabled people were considered and included in their full capacity from the start and in
advance. In the concept of universal design, gleaned from the work of Mace,14 we are offered an image
of what might be considered a crip optimism: redesigning the world for all body types, mental,
psychiatric and health statuses. This concept is preferred over the tendency for institutions to be in a
defensive posture fearing disabled response. The Americans with Disabilities Act has been passed for 20
years but we have not seen the time of enthusiastic compliance yet. At this time , disability activists
must repeatedly threaten various institutions with continuing demands and protests , and a few
nonprofits must support several cases. But overall there will be more cases of inaccessibility and
architectural exclusion than can be possibly compensated for. Disabled people wait too long at the door
of policymakers, for their lack of strictness and of local businesses, developers and municipalities to
increasingly build in ways that include a wide diversity of types of bodies. The time is now for those
reading this to strike against the educational, political, social, business and all other types of
organizations that are not actively experimenting with ways of being more accessible.

The 1AC is key further combat ableism in debate and create an inclusive community-
without means further violence and exclusion in debate
Robinson 94 (Mary Robinson: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Disability
Awareness in Action: “Are Disabled People Included?: An Exposure Document on the Violation of
Disabled People's Human Rights and the Solutions Recommended Within the UN Standard Rules”
published in 1994. Accessed July 24th, 2015.)TheFedora

Human Rights and Disabled Persons The United Nations General Assembly, in 1981, adopted as the
theme of the Year of Disabled Persons the slogan "Full Participation and Equality"; this meant
recognition at the highest possible political level of the right to full participation of disabled people in the
societies to which they belong. This has since become widely accepted as the overall goal of all
development efforts in the disability field. During the UN Decade of Disabled Persons, 1983-1992, when
the policies and programmes outlined in the World Programme of Action were to be implemented, some
significant developments were achieved but there was too little progress. So the international disability
community requested that the United Nations should assume a strong leadership role and find more
concrete guidelines for development. As a result the Standard Rules were elaborated and unanimously
adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 48/96 of 20 December 1993. UN Special Rapporteur
Lindqvist stated that: "The ideas and concepts of equality and full participation for persons with
disabilities have been developed very far on paper, but not in reality. In all our countries, in all types of
living conditions, the consequences of disability interfere in the lives of disabled persons to a degree
which is not at all acceptable .... When a person is excluded from employment because he is disabled, he
is being discriminated against as a human being. If a general education system is developed .... and
disabled children are excluded, their rights are being violated". Even though it is difficult to have precise
figures, it is estimated that more than 10 per cent of the world's total population have some type of
disabling physical or mental impairment. This translates into the fact that approximately 25 per cent of
the entire population are directly affected by disability. These figures are testimony to the enormous size
of the problem and highlight the impact of disability on every society. Quantification alone is not a
sufficient basis for evaluating the actual gravity of the problem; disabled persons frequently live in
deplorable conditions, owing to the presence of physical and social barriers which prevent their
integration and full participation in the community. Millions of children and adults worldwide are
segregated and deprived of their rights and are, in effect, living on the margins. This is unacceptable. This
year of commemoration by the international community of the 50th anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, provides an opportunity to examine what has been achieved and to reflect
what needs to be accomplished in the future. The motto of the anniversary 'All Human Rights for All'
expresses what we must commit ourselves to securing in the years ahead. The provisions of the
Declaration call for the respect of the rights of all human beings - recognition of the dignity of all
humans, with or without disabilities. We must all be aware that no society can enjoy full development
without proper consideration of all members and that there is no acceptable future for a society where
individuals are excluded and deprived of their rights and dignity.

Ableism is the root cause of other discrimination

Wolbring ‘8 - Associate Professor Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, Past President of
Canadian Disability Studies Association and member of the board of the Society for Disability Studies
(Gregory, 2008 pp 252–258, “The politics of Ableism,” http://secure.gvsu.edu/cms3/assets/3B8FF455-
E590-0E6C-3ED0F895A6FBB287/the_politics_of_ableism.pdf)//LC
Sexism is partly driven by a form of ableism that favours certain abilities, and the labelling of women as
not having those certain necessary abilities is used to justify sexism and the dominance of males over
females. Similarly, racism and ethnicism are partly driven by forms of ableism, which have two
components. One favours one race or ethnic group and discriminates against another. The book The Bell
Curve (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) judged human beings on their ‘cognitive abilities’ (their IQ). It
promoted racism by claiming that certain ethnic groups are less cognitively able than others. The ableist
judgement related to cognitive abilities continues justifying racist arguments. Casteism, like racism, is
based on the notion that socially defined groups of people have inherent, natural qualities or
‘essences’that assign them to social positions, make them fit for specific duties and occupations
(Omvedt,2001).The natural inherent qualities are ‘abilities’ that make them fit for specific duties and
occupations.

The impact is ableist violence

Zelinger 15 (Julie Zeilinger: a freelance author from the Barnard College class of 2015. Mic.com: “6 Forms
of Ableism We Need to Retire Immediately” published July 7 th, 2015. Accessed July 24th, 2015.
http://mic.com/articles/121653/6-forms-of-ableism-we-need-to-retire-immediately)

Nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States has a disability, according to a 2012 Census Bureau report. Yet
many forms of discrimination against the disability community not only persist, but are actually largely
normalized and even integrated into our culture's very understanding (or, more accurately, disregard) of
disabled people's experiences. Ableism refers to "discrimination in favor of able-bodied people,"
according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But the reality of ableism extends beyond literal
discriminatory acts (intentional or not) to the way our culture views disabled people as a concept.
Ableism is also the belief that people with disabilities "need to be fixed or cannot function as full
members of society" and that having a disability is "a defect rather than a dimension of difference,"
according to the authors of one 2008 Journal of Counseling & Development article on the topic, as
reported by Feminists with Disabilities. This interpretation of difference as defect is the true root of
ableist acts that cause far too many to feel marginalized, discriminated against and ultimately devalued
in this society. Here are just six forms of this behavior that, though largely normalized, need to be retired
immediately. 1. Failing to provide accessibility beyond wheelchair ramps Source: Getty Perhaps the most
obvious form of discrimination people with disabilities face is the inability to access places and services
open to their able-bodied counterparts — even with laws in place to prevent such inequality. As Tumblr
user The (Chronically) Illest noted, while most people think "just [putting] wheelchair ramps
everywhere" is sufficient, true accessibility accommodates all types of disabilities — not just physical
disabilities that specifically bind people to wheelchairs. Accommodations can also include "braille,
seeing-eye dogs/assistant dogs, ergonomic workspaces, easy to grip tools, closed captions ... class note-
takers, recording devices for lectures" and other services and alterations. Though accessibility is certainly
a matter of convenience and equity, a lack of accessible resources can impact the very wellbeing of
people with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities have reported not being able to receive health care
because their providers' facilities weren't accessible, and one study found that women with disabilities
particularly face increased difficulty accessing reproductive health care, just to name two examples. 2.
Using ableist language Source: Getty Ableism has become undeniably naturalized in the English
language. Many people not only use words like "crazy," "insane" or "retarded" without a second thought,
but many adamantly defend their use of these terms, decrying anybody who questions their right to do
so as too "politically correct" or "sensitive." But this personal defense fails to recognize that ableist
language is not about the words themselves so much as what their usage suggests the speaker feels
about the individuals they represent. "When a critique of language that makes reference to disability is
not welcome, it is nearly inevitable that, as a disabled person, I am not welcome either," Rachel Cohen-
Rottenberg wrote in a 2013 Disability and Representation article. But beyond individual feelings, ableist
language can contribute to a foundation of more systemic oppression of people with disabilities as a
group. "If a culture's language is full of pejorative metaphors about a group of people," Cohen-
Rottenberg continued, that culture is more likely to view those individuals as less entitled to rights like
"housing, employment, medical care, education, access, and inclusion as people in a more favored
group." 3. Able-bodied people failing to check their privilege Source: Getty It may not seem like a big
deal in the moment, but able-bodied individuals fail to recognize the privilege of having access to every
and any space accessible. As Erin Tatum points out at Everyday Feminism, plenty of people may not
directly discriminate against people with disabilities but effectively do so by using resources allocated
for them. For example, many able-bodied people use handicapped bathroom stalls or take up space in
crowded elevators, rather than taking the stairs and leave room for people with disabilities who don't
have other options, without a second thought. While these actions may not be the product of ill will,
they are evidence of the way able-bodied privilege manifests in our society. There's a general cultural
notion that "disability is something inherently negative," Allie Cannington, a board member of the
American Association of People with Disabilities, told Mic. "There's a level of silencing that happens, and
erasing of the disabled experience as an important experience because able-bodied experiences are
the privileged experiences in our society."

Ableism must be challenged in rhetoric

Cherney, 11 (James L. Cherney, 2011, "The Rhetoric of Ableism," Disability Studies Quarterly, http://dsq-
sds.org/article/view/1665/1606)

*edited

In this essay I analyze ableism as a rhetorical problem for three reasons. First, ableist culture sustains
and perpetuates itself via rhetoric; the ways of interpreting disability and assumptions about bodies
that produce ableism are learned. The previous generation teaches it to the next and cultures spread it
to each other through modes of intercultural exchange. Adopting a rhetorical perspective to the
problem of ableism thus exposes the social systems that keep it alive. This informs my second reason
for viewing ableism as rhetoric, as revealing how it thrives suggests ways of curtailing [dimishing] its
growth and promoting its demise. Many of the strategies already adopted by disability rights activists to
confront ableism explicitly or implicitly address it as rhetoric. Public demonstrations, countercultural
performances, autobiography, transformative histories of disability and disabling practices, and critiques
of ableist films and novels all apply rhetorical solutions to the problem. Identifying ableism as rhetoric
and exploring its systems dynamic reveals how these corrective practices work. We can use such
information to refine the successful techniques, reinvent those that fail, and realize new tactics. Third, I
contend that any means of challenging ableism must eventually encounter its rhetorical power. As I
explain below, ableism is that most insidious form of rhetoric that has become reified and so widely
accepted as common sense that it denies its own rhetoricity—it "goes without saying." To fully address
it we must name its presence, for cultural assumptions accepted uncritically adopt the mantle of
"simple truth" and become extremely difficult to rebut. As the neologism "ableism" itself testifies, we
need new words to reveal the places it resides and new language to describe how it feeds. Without
doing so, ableist ways of thinking and interpreting will operate as the context for making sense of any
acts challenging discrimination, which undermines their impact, reduces their symbolic potential, and
can even transform them into superficial measures that give the appearance of change yet elide a
recalcitrant ableist system.

Recognizing ableist speech is an act against ableism on the whole – ableism is so

ingrained as to not be questioned, yet their language sanctions and reinforces it
Cherney 11 [James L Cherney, former college debater, PhD in Communication and Culture @
Westminster, and undergraduates in Public Speaking, Body Rhetoric, and the Disability Rights
Movement; “The Rhetoric of Ableism”; Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol 31 No 3; 2011; accessed
07/31/2015; <http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1665/1606>.]

Recognizing ableism requires a shift in orientation, a perceptual gestalt framed by the filter of the term
"ableism" itself. The same texts that broadcast "Ableism!" to those oriented to perceive it are usually
read innocently even when viewed from a liberal, humanitarian, or progressive perspective. Ableism is
so pervasive that it is difficult to identify until one begins to interrogate the governing assumptions of
well-intentioned society. Within the space allowed by these rhetorical premises, ableism appears
natural, necessary, and ultimately moral discrimination required for the normal functioning of
civilization. Consider a set of stairs. An ableist culture thinks little of stairs, or even sees them as elegant
architectural devices—especially those grand marble masterpieces that elevate buildings of state. But
disability rights activists see stairs as a discriminatory apparatus—a "no crips allowed" sign that only
those aware of ableism can read—that makes their inevitable presence around government buildings a
not-so-subtle statement about who belongs in our most important public spaces. But the device has
become so accepted in our culture that the idea of stairs as oppressive technology will strike many as
ludicrous. Several years ago when I began to study ableism, a professor—unconvinced of the value of the
project—questioned my developing arguments by pointing to a set of steps and exclaiming, "Next you'll
be telling me that those stairs discriminate!" He was right. The professor's surprise suggests that
commonplace cultural assumptions support themselves because the very arguments available against
them seem unwarranted and invalid. Interrogating stairs was such an outrageous idea that a simple
reductio ad absurdum argument depicted the critique of ableism as a fallacy. As an ingrained part of the
interpretive frameworks sanctioned by culture, ableism gets reinforced by the everyday practice of
interpreting and making sense of the world. Using this idea of what ableism does at the intersection of
rhetoric and ideology, I next develop a way of understanding how it operates. I argue that this way of
conceiving ableist thinking as rhetorical practice identifies potential approaches for challenging
ableism

Continued ableist assumptions in the academic space destroy education

Hehir ‘7 (Thomas Hehir is Professor of Practice and Director of the School Leadership Program, Harvard
Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Educational Leadership: “Confronting
Ableism.” Published in February, 2007. Accessed July 20 th, 2015.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb07/vol64/num05/Confronting-
Ableism.aspx)TheFedora

Negative cultural attitudes toward disability can undermine opportunities for all students to participate
fully in school and society. When Ricky was born deaf, his parents were determined to raise him to
function in the “normal” world. Ricky learned to read lips and was not taught American Sign Language.
He felt comfortable within the secure world of his family, but when he entered his neighborhood school,
he grew less confident as he struggled to understand what his classmates seemed to grasp so easily.
Susan, a child with dyslexia, entered kindergarten with curiosity about the world around her, a lively
imagination, and a love of picture books. Although her school provided her with individual tutoring and
other special education services, it also expected her to read grade-level texts at the same speed as her
nondisabled peers. Susan fell further and further behind. By 6th grade, she hated school and avoided
reading. These two examples illustrate how society's pervasive negative attitude about disability—which
I term ableism—often makes the world unwelcoming and inaccessible for people with disabilities. An
ableist perspective asserts that it is preferable for a child to read print rather than Braille, walk rather
than use a wheelchair, spell independently rather than use a spell-checker, read written text rather than
listen to a book on tape, and hang out with nondisabled kids rather than with other disabled kids.
Certainly, given a human-made world designed with the nondisabled in mind, children with disabilities
gain an advantage if they can perform like their nondisabled peers. A physically disabled child who
receives the help he or she needs to walk can move more easily in a barrier-filled environment. A child
with a mild hearing loss who has been given the amplification and speech therapy he or she needs may
function well in a regular classroom. But ableist assumptions become dysfunctional when the education
and development services provided to disabled children focus on their disability to the exclusion of all
else. From an early age, many people with disabilities encounter the view that disability is negative and
tragic and that “overcoming” disability is the only valued result (Ferguson & Asch, 1989; Rousso, 1984).
In education, considerable evidence shows that unquestioned ableist assumptions are harming disabled
students and contributing to unequal outcomes (see Allington & McGill-Franzen, 1989; Lyon et al., 2001).
School time devoted to activities that focus on changing disability may take away from the time
needed to learn academic material. In addition, academic deficits may be exacerbated by the ingrained
prejudice against performing activities in “different” ways that might be more efficient for disabled
people—such as reading Braille, using sign language, or using text-to-speech software to read. The
Purpose of Special Education What should the purpose of special education be? In struggling with this
issue, we can find guidance in the rich and varied narratives of people with disabilities and their families.
Noteworthy among these narratives is the work of Adrienne Asch, a professor of bioethics at Yeshiva
University in New York who is blind. In her analysis of stories that adults with disabilities told about their
childhood experiences (Ferguson & Asch, 1989), Asch identified common themes in their parents' and
educators' responses to their disability. Some of the adults responded with excessive concern and
sheltering. Others conveyed to children, through silence or denial, that nothing was “wrong.” For
example, one young woman with significant vision loss related that she was given no alternative but to
use her limited vision even though this restriction caused her significant academic problems. Another
common reaction was to make ill-conceived attempts to fix the disability. For example, Harilyn Rousso,
an accomplished psychotherapist with cerebral palsy, recounts, My mother was quite concerned with
the awkwardness of my walk. Not only did it periodically cause me to fall but it made me stand out,
appear conspicuously different—which she feared would subject me to endless teasing and rejection. To
some extent it did. She made numerous attempts over the years of my childhood to have me go to
physical therapy and to practice walking “normally” at home. I vehemently refused her efforts. She could
not understand why I would not walk straight. (1984, p. 9) In recalling her own upbringing and
education, Asch describes a more positive response to disability: I give my parents high marks. They did
not deny that I was blind, and did not ask me to pretend that everything about my life was fine. They
rarely sheltered. They worked to help me behave and look the way others did without giving me a sense
that to be blind—“different”—was shameful. They fought for me to ensure that I lived as full and rich a
life as I could. For them, and consequently for me, my blindness was a fact, not a tragedy. It affected
them but did not dominate their lives. Nor did it dominate mine. (Ferguson & Asch, 1989, p. 118) Asch's
narrative and others (Biklen, 1992) suggest that we can best frame the purpose of special education as
minimizing the impact of disability and maximizing the opportunities for students with disabilities to
participate in schooling and the community. This framework assumes that most students with disabilities
will be integrated into general education and educated within their natural community. It is consistent
with the 1997 and 2004 reauthorizations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which
requires that individualized education program (IEP) teams address how the student will gain access to
the curriculum and how the school will meet the unique needs that arise out of the student's disability.
Finally, this framework embraces the diverse needs of students with various disabilities as well as the
individual diversity found among students within each disability group. Falling Short of the Goal
Minimizing the impact of disability does not mean making misguided attempts to “cure” disability but
rather giving students the supports, skills, and opportunities needed to live as full a life as possible with
their disability. Maximizing access requires that school practices recognize the right of students with
disabilities to participate fully in the school community—not only in academic programs, but also in
sports teams, choruses, clubs, and field trips. A look at common problems encountered by students with
low-incidence disabilities, specific learning disabilities, and emotional disturbances illustrates that
schools still have a long way to go in fulfilling the purpose of special education. Students with Low-
Incidence Disabilities In Adrienne Asch's case, minimizing the impact of her blindness meant learning
Braille, developing orientation and mobility skills, and having appropriate accommodations available that
gave her access to education. Asch also points out that because of New Jersey's enlightened policies at
the time, she could live at home and attend her local school, so she and her family were not required to
disrupt their lives to receive the specialized services she needed. Unfortunately, many students today
with low-incidence disabilities like blindness and deafness are not afforded the opportunities that Asch
had in the early 1950s. Parents sometimes face the choice of sending their children to a local school that
is ill equipped to meet their needs or to a residential school with specialized services, thus disrupting
normal family life. Parents should not be forced to make this Hobson's choice. Services can be brought to
blind and deaf students in typical community settings, and most students can thrive in that environment
(Wagner, Black-orby, Cameto, & Newman, 1993; Wagner & Cameto, 2004). It is up to policymakers to
ensure that such services are available. Students with Specific Learning Disabilities Because students
identified as having learning disabilities are such a large and growing portion of the school population,
we might expect that these students would be less likely to be subjected to ableist practices. The
available evidence, however, contradicts this assumption. Many students with dyslexia and other specific
learning disabilities receive inappropriate instruction that exacerbates their disabilities. For example,
instead of making taped books available to these students, many schools require those taught in regular
classrooms to handle grade-level or higher text. Other schools do not allow students to use computers
when taking exams, thus greatly diminishing some students' ability to produce acceptable written work.
The late disabilities advocate Ed Roberts had polio as a child, which left him dependent on an iron lung.
He attended school from home in the 1960s with the assistance of a telephone link. When it was time
for graduation, however, the school board planned to deny him a diploma because he had failed to meet
the physical education requirement. His parents protested, and Ed eventually graduated (Shapiro, 1994).
We can hardly imagine this scenario happening today, given disability law and improved societal
attitudes. Yet similar ableist assumptions are at work when schools routinely require students with
learning disabilities to read print at grade level to gain access to the curriculum or to meet proficiency
levels on high-stakes assessments. Assuming that there is only one “right” way to learn—or to walk, talk,
paint, read, and write—is the root of fundamental inequities. Seriously Emotionally Disturbed Students
Perhaps no group suffers from negative attitudes more than students who have been identified as having
serious emotional disturbance (SED)—and no other subpopulation experiences poorer outcomes.
Students with SED drop out of school at more than double the rate of nondisabled students. Only 15
percent pursue higher education, and approximately 50 percent are taught in segregated settings (U.S.
Department of Education, 2003; Wagner & Cameto, 2004). For large numbers of students with serious
emotional disturbance, their IEPs are more likely to include inappropriate responses to control the most
common symptom of their disability—acting-out behavior—than to provide the accommodations and
support the students need to be successful in education. Only 50 percent of students with SED receive
mental health services, only 30 percent receive social work services, and only 50 percent have behavior
management appropriately addressed in their IEPs (Wagner & Cameto, 2004). What do these students
typically receive through special education? They are commonly placed in a special classroom or school
with other students with similar disabilities (U.S. Department of Education, 2003)—often with an
uncertified teacher. Placing such students in separate classes without specific behavioral supports,
counseling, or an expert teacher is unlikely to work. Substantial evidence, indicates, however, that
providing these students with appropriate supports and mental health services can significantly reduce
disruptive behavior and improve their learning (Sugai, Sprague, Horner, & Walker, 2000). Such supports
are most effective when provided within the context of effective schoolwide discipline approaches, such
as the U.S. Department of Education's Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports program
(www.pbis.org). Schoolwide approaches also produce safer and better-run schools for all students.
Guidelines for Special Education Decision Making The goal of minimizing the impact of disability and
maximizing opportunities to participate suggests several guidelines for serving students with disabilities.

We should put ableism at the forefront of our discussion- reject ableist discourse
Campbell ‘3- Dissertation (Fiona Anne, 2003, “The Great Divide: Ableism and Technologies of Disability
Production”, http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15889/1/Fiona_Campbell_Thesis.pdf, accessed 6/29/12, JK)

The danger otherwise is to continue to reproduce dominant discourses that represent people with
disabilities as passive victims lacking agency. As such, this doctorate is one way of asserting resistance; it
is a ‘transgressive’ piece of writing (research), which seeks to “interrupt existing ideologies and
exploitations of disability”1 (Fine cited in Zarb, 1992: 133). Discourse analysis is a primary method of
epistemological ‘interruption’. As Foucault (1980a: 52) explains, “the exercise of power perpetually
creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power”. Foucault once
suggested that his work should be used as “little tool boxes” and this doctorate takes up that offer
(Morris, 1979: 115). Amongst other things, Foucault’s method of discourse analysis enables an
examination into the way ‘disability’ is put into discourse, acknowledging that the terrain of discourse is
itself a site of struggle and competition (Foucault, 1976: 11; Foucault, 1984a: 110). Throughout this
doctorate the use of discourse analysis makes transparent the sometimes bloody (but often hidden and
little alluded to) battles of over meaning (and limitations) of the neologism ‘disability’. Foucaultian
discourse analysis can assist in revealing ways ‘disability’ and ‘ableism’ comes to be produced, encoded
and exhibited. Discourse analysis can be undertaken in a threefold manner. Firstly, by examining at the
textual level the way ‘disability’ is put into specific narratives – be they historical or theoretical; secondly,
at a discursive level, it is possible to reveal patterns (uneven as they may be) related to the
representation of ‘normative’ corporeal ontologies and inquire into what has been excluded, minimised,
been disqualified or has been considered marginal (Foucault, 1980b: 82); Thirdly, at the level of the
social, such analysis enables the operation of sovereign power in the form of ideology and hegemonic
technologies to be revealed exposing liberalism’s figuring of the sovereign ‘individual’ as a fabrication2.
In order to name the violence – epistemic, psychic, ontological and physical, experienced by people
whose bodies have been marked as corporeally intolerable or ambiguous, the extrication of discursive
formations can reveal the concealed ‘gaze’ of the ‘underlying subject’ of discourse: the
pursuit/conformation of the phantomological body of the liberal self. I want to show that there is an
intrinsic link between the productions of sovereign selves, ways relationality and embodiment are
understood, the figuring of ‘disabled’ bodies, as Othered and the production of practices of ableism. The
task of poststructuralist methodologies is not to look for coherent patterns that can contribute towards a
broad universalist explanatory narrative of disablement, rather the challenge of this doctorate (and
poststructuralist methodologies) is to log, to document, to discern “… the innumerable accidents and
myriad twists and turns of human practice …” that continue to produce and mediate conceptualisations
of ableness and disablement (Prior, 2002, 66). In chapter 3, section 3.2.4, a re-reading of the Hebrew
Bible call of Moses and in chapter 6, section 6.3 on the case of Clint Hallam I have departed from a
specifically Foucaultian form of discourse analysis. In these sections, I have adapted methods better
suited to the subjects’ disciplinary base, e.g. biblical exegetical analysis (see Brenner, 1997; Brenner and
van Dijk Hemmes, 1993) and media content analysis (see Berelson, 1952; Holsti, 1969; Kellehear, 1993).
Of particular interest is Foucault’s analytics of power that employs the analysis of ‘dividing practices’4
that facilitate techniques of surveillance that “function ceaselessly …[wherein]… the gaze is alert
everywhere” (Foucault, 1977a: 195). It is the role of technician’s ‘gaze’ operating within the context of
biomedical realism that classifies, monitors, modifies and documents the ‘unruly’, transforming us into
“subjected and practiced … ‘docile’ bodies” (Foucault, 1977a: 138). Taking on board the conceptual tool
of the gaze, this doctorate inverts the usual gaze employed in the study of disability, namely empirical
observations via ableist prisms of those bodies considered as aberrant or pathological. Instead, my
methodological engagements aim to shift the gaze, to invert it, to examine the ways disability is known
by continually returning to and thus focusing our attention on the practices and formations of ableism.
Ableist language stigmatizes the disabled
Aaron 15 (Jessi Elana Aaron is an assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of
Florida. The Washington Post: “‘Lame,’ ‘stand up’ and other words we use to insult the disabled without
even knowing it” published May 13th, 2015. Accessed July 25th, 2015.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/13/lame-stand-up-and-other-words-we-
use-to-insult-the-disabled-without-even-knowing-it/)TheFedora

New meanings aren’t random At the same time, much media attention has been paid to the use of slurs
such as retarded. Similarly, the stigma associated with psychiatric disabilities has left its mark on many
words, rendering them insults, such as crazy and insane.

The other teams Kritik of ableist language further propagates real ableism and
distracts from actual problems
Lilo 14 (N/A, Disabled person, “Stupid,” The Unpopular Opinions, http://the-unpopular-
opinions.tumblr.com/post/82297505485/if-you-think-words-like-stupid-dumb-or-lame, accessed
02/6/16)

If you think words like “stupid,” “dumb” or “lame” are ableist slurs, then you are an idiot. Oh no, is idiot
an ableist slur too? *rolls eyes*

Those words haven’t been used to describe mentally/physically disabled people in such a long time, and
as a disabled person, it seriously pisses me off that people from tumblr think it’s more important to
avoid using a bunch of (mostly harmless) words instead of facing actual problems in our society
regarding disabled people (e.g. lack of wheelchair access at certain schools and other public buildings,
the stigmas and stereotypes surrounding disabled people, the fact that many carers are physically and
mentally drained because caring for another is a full-time job with no vacation time, the fact that many
severely disabled people end up in nursing homes for the elderly rather than age-appropriate disability
homes, etc)

Nope, instead we are told the most important thing is that nobody should use words like “stupid” or
“dumb” or “lame” because it might offend mentally and physically disabled people. Are you fucking
serious!? Does nobody seem to get how how fucking offensive that is?! People with mental disabilities
aren’t stupid, people with physical disabilities aren’t lame, and these word should never be used that
way!

Using them as a way to describe or insult disabled people is so ridiculously out-of-date that not even Mr
Burns from The Simpsons would use them in that way! Nowadays they’re common words. They’ve
evolved to have completely new meanings. It’s okay to say “ugh, I’m so stupid” after flunking a test.
Everybody KNOWS you don’t mean “I’m as stupid as a mentally disabled person!” But by associating
them with mentally/physically disabled people, you’re basically TURNING those words into slurs. Now
whenever someone says that “stupid” and “idiot” are ableist, the first thought when someone hears that
word is disabled people. Mentally and physically disabled people should never even cross your mind
when you use those words!
Ableism isn’t a bunch of words that some tumblr blogger put together to “educate"able-bodied people
on how not to offend those with disabilities. Ableism is remaining ignorant to genuine issues in our
society regarding disabilities and disability care. Ableism is associating words like "stupid” and “lame”
with people like me.

And if you call me ableist for saying you’re stupid, I’ll hit you with my cane

The alternative is to recognize and challenge ableist assumptions in the educational

space of debate by rejecting the aff
Hehir 07 (Thomas Hehir is Professor of Practice and Director of the School Leadership Program, Harvard
Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Educational Leadership: “Confronting
Ableism.” Published in February, 2007. Accessed July 20 th, 2015.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb07/vol64/num05/Confronting-
Ableism.aspx)TheFedora

The U.S. education system has made major strides in improving education opportunities for students
with disabilities. More of these students are finishing high school than ever, and record numbers are
moving on to employment and higher education (Wagner & Cameto, 2004). Much of this improvement
has taken place because of the work of school leaders throughout the United States.

To continue and expand this progress, however, educators must recognize and challenge the ableist
assumptions that still permeate the culture and guide much special education practice. Students with
disabilities need carefully constructed, individual instructional programs that recognize the effects of
their disability while creating opportunities for them to learn and fully participate in school and society.

Ableism in the debate space excludes those with disabilities from participation. Only
challenging ableist practices solves.
Zelinger 7/7 (Julie Zeilinger: a freelance author from the Barnard College class of 2015. Mic.com: “6
Forms of Ableism We Need to Retire Immediately” published July 7 th, 2015. Accessed July 24th, 2015.
http://mic.com/articles/121653/6-forms-of-ableism-we-need-to-retire-immediately)TheFedora

Nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States has a disability, according to a 2012 Census Bureau report. Yet
many forms of discrimination against the disability community not only persist, but are actually largely
normalized and even integrated into our culture's very understanding (or, more accurately, disregard) of
disabled people's experiences. Ableism refers to "discrimination in favor of able-bodied people,"
according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But the reality of ableism extends beyond literal
discriminatory acts (intentional or not) to the way our culture views disabled people as a concept.
Ableism is also the belief that people with disabilities "need to be fixed or cannot function as full
members of society" and that having a disability is "a defect rather than a dimension of difference,"
according to the authors of one 2008 Journal of Counseling & Development article on the topic, as
reported by Feminists with Disabilities. This interpretation of difference as defect is the true root of
ableist acts that cause far too many to feel marginalized, discriminated against and ultimately devalued
in this society. Here are just six forms of this behavior that, though largely normalized, need to be retired
immediately. 1. Failing to provide accessibility beyond wheelchair ramps Source: Getty Perhaps the most
obvious form of discrimination people with disabilities face is the inability to access places and services
open to their able-bodied counterparts — even with laws in place to prevent such inequality. As Tumblr
user The (Chronically) Illest noted, while most people think "just [putting] wheelchair ramps
everywhere" is sufficient, true accessibility accommodates all types of disabilities — not just physical
disabilities that specifically bind people to wheelchairs. Accommodations can also include "braille,
seeing-eye dogs/assistant dogs, ergonomic workspaces, easy to grip tools, closed captions ... class note-
takers, recording devices for lectures" and other services and alterations. Though accessibility is certainly
a matter of convenience and equity, a lack of accessible resources can impact the very wellbeing of
people with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities have reported not being able to receive health care
because their providers' facilities weren't accessible, and one study found that women with disabilities
particularly face increased difficulty accessing reproductive health care, just to name two examples. 2.
Using ableist language Source: Getty Ableism has become undeniably naturalized in the English
language. Many people not only use words like "crazy," "insane" or "retarded" without a second thought,
but many adamantly defend their use of these terms, decrying anybody who questions their right to do
so as too "politically correct" or "sensitive." But this personal defense fails to recognize that ableist
language is not about the words themselves so much as what their usage suggests the speaker feels
about the individuals they represent. "When a critique of language that makes reference to disability is
not welcome, it is nearly inevitable that, as a disabled person, I am not welcome either," Rachel Cohen-
Rottenberg wrote in a 2013 Disability and Representation article. But beyond individual feelings, ableist
language can contribute to a foundation of more systemic oppression of people with disabilities as a
group. "If a culture's language is full of pejorative metaphors about a group of people," Cohen-
Rottenberg continued, that culture is more likely to view those individuals as less entitled to rights like
"housing, employment, medical care, education, access, and inclusion as people in a more favored
group." 3. Able-bodied people failing to check their privilege Source: Getty It may not seem like a big
deal in the moment, but able-bodied individuals fail to recognize the privilege of having access to every
and any space accessible. As Erin Tatum points out at Everyday Feminism, plenty of people may not
directly discriminate against people with disabilities but effectively do so by using resources allocated
for them. For example, many able-bodied people use handicapped bathroom stalls or take up space in
crowded elevators, rather than taking the stairs and leave room for people with disabilities who don't
have other options, without a second thought. While these actions may not be the product of ill will,
they are evidence of the way able-bodied privilege manifests in our society. There's a general cultural
notion that "disability is something inherently negative," Allie Cannington, a board member of the
American Association of People with Disabilities, told Mic. "There's a level of silencing that happens, and
erasing of the disabled experience as an important experience because able-bodied experiences are
the privileged experiences in our society."

The alternative is to reject the affirmative for its ableist assumptions in order to
endorse inclusion of disabled people in the debate space
Hehir 07 (Thomas Hehir is Professor of Practice and Director of the School Leadership Program, Harvard
Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Educational Leadership: “Confronting
Ableism.” Published in February, 2007. Accessed July 20 th, 2015.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb07/vol64/num05/Confronting-
Ableism.aspx)TheFedora
Keep integration into the general education environment the priority. IDEA's requirement that all
students be educated in the least restrictive environment has resulted in significant positive change for
students with disabilities. Research has shown that including students with disabilities in the general
education environment improves academic achievement (Wagner et al., 1993). Inclusion also plays a
central role in the integration of disabled people into all aspects of society, both by giving students the
education they need to compete and by demonstrating to nondisabled students that disability is a
natural aspect of life. For most students with disabilities, integration into regular classes with appropriate
accommodations and support should be the norm.

Ableism critique bad for a laundry list of reasons

Cogburn 14 (Jon Cogburn: Professor in the Philosophy department at Louisiana State University, Baton
Rouge, LA. Jon Cogburn’s Blog: “What I should have said about anti-anti-ableism” published September
7th 2014. Accessed July 27th, 2015. http://drjon.typepad.com/jon_cogburns_blog/2014/09/what-i-
should-have-said.html) TheFedora

I find many charges of ableism in the blogosphere to be problematic for a variety of reasons: The way
that the problem of ableism is focused on in blogospheric exchanges often undermines the suffering and
heroic struggles of many disabled people. Much of the struggle is against reality itself, not the social
configuration theroff. It may very well be bad to call an idea "insane," but to reduce the badness of doing
so to the wrongness of negative perceptions of insanity strikes me as cruel to the insane.* It's a real drag
to be mentally ill. I don't find the focus on anti-ableism to be psychologically healthy with respect to
dealing with my own limited disabilities.With many of them there's just no possible world where the
world could accomodate me. I have to accommodate myself to the world. Consider dementia, a
disability perhaps most of us will face at some point. Yes we desperately need social institutions that
lighten misery of the demented, but it will still suck to be demented and to have demented family
members no matter what anyone does. In such cases wisdom lies in accommodating yourself to the
world, not bemoaning the way society doesn't accomodate you. This is a really difficult struggle, but it's
reality. We don't need the protection of Shelley Tremaine (God bless her for all of the important work
that she does) when she berates people for ableist speech. I find this protection infantilizing. I find the
self-congratulatory nature of liberal speech policing to be off putting. With the important exceptions of
the R word campaign and various anti-bullying efforts relating to GLBT issues, I don't think that
censorious academic bloggers make very much of a real political difference. The pretense that we do
probably prevents many of us from putting in the real work to make a difference. While political
correctness is an important and necessary solution to the kind of bullying shown in the first two seasons
of Mad Men, I agree with Freddie DeBoer that policing of speech in social media has been really
destructive. When we take such delight in denouncing people who we don't agree with in terms of moral
censure, we end up just preaching to the converted. I have tried to indicate that I realize there are moral
dangers attendant to each point. Most importantly every human life has immeasurable value and I don't
mean to imply anything otherwise when I mention that reality presents problems for most disabled
people in ways that go above and beyond our contemporary organization of society. I also realize that for
most adult disabled people, it becomes a part of your identity and if things are going well something that
you would not cast away, for that would be casting yourself away.
Use the ballot to reject ableist rhetoric
Cherney 11 (James, Wayne State University, “The Rhetoric of Ableism”, Disabilities Study Quarterly, Vol.
31 No. 3, http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1665/1606)

If we locate the problem in disability, then the ableist absolves his or her responsibility for discrimination
and may not even recognize its presence. If we locate the problem in ableism, then the ableist must
question her or his orientation. The critic's task is to make ableism so apparent and irredeemable that
one cannot practice it without incurring social castigation. This requires substantial vigilance, for ableist
thinking pervades the culture. For example, as I write this, I am tempted to use medical metaphors to
explain the task and script something like "we cannot simply excise the tumor of ableism and heal the
culture, for it has metastasized and infiltrated every organ of society." Yet this metaphor relies on an
ableist perspective that motivates with the fear of death and turns to medical solutions to repair a body
in decay. Using it, I would endorse and perpetuate ableist rhetoric, just as I would by using deafness as a
metaphor for obstinacy ("Marie was deaf to their pleas for bread") or blindness to convey ignorance
("George turned a blind eye to global warming"). The pervasiveness of these and similar metaphors, like
the cultural ubiquity of using images of disabled bodies to inspire pity, suggest the scale of the work
ahead, and the ease with which one can resort to using them warns of the need for critical evaluation of
one's own rhetoric. Yet the task can be accomplished. Just as feminists have changed Western culture by
naming and promoting recognition of sexism, the glass ceiling, and patriarchy—admittedly a work in
progress, yet also one that can celebrate remarkable achievements—we can reform ableist culture by
using rhetoric to craft awareness and political action.

Criticism of ableist slurs isn’t the Orwellian suggestion you seem to think it is
Omum 14 (Omum22 is the pen name of a writer for the organization Small But Kinda Mighty, a website
devoted to information related to ableism and ableist concepts. Small But Kinda Mighty: “Five things to
consider before using ableist language” Published August 19 th, 2014. Accessed July 25th, 2015.
http://smallbutkindamighty.com/2014/08/19/five-things-consider-using-ableist-language/)TheFedora

I’m not stifling free speech. Everyone has the right to use language others consider inappropriate, but if
you use it in a public forum I want you to understand its consequences. All I’m asking of everyone is to
think before they use terms that stigmatize, offend and do concrete, measurable damage to others.
Please don’t dismiss this as political correctness. I’m not advocating the imposition of some sort of
Orwellian Newspeak – I’m challenging people to think before they speak (or write) and to reconsider
many of the assumptions they have about language. I’m not trying to impose an antiseptic new world
order, in fact I’m hoping to encourage people to challenge the current one. I’m not policing tone. I have
no problem with people being profane, insulting, judgemental and angry – in fact I’ve written separately
about how useful anger is when confronting injustice. When people use ableist terms it doesn’t annoy
me, in and of itself. It’s so baked into our everyday language that we have all used words like “idiot”,
“insane” and “moron”. What I find upsetting and frustrating is when people are so attached to using
harmful language that they insult you if you question its use.

“Crazy” is an ableist slur

Kesler 11 (Jennifer Kesler is a freelance online writer and proclaimed “feminist blogger”. She is the
creative lead at Lojo Group, a branding, marketing and advertising agency based in Sacramento,
California. What Privilege: “Replacing “crazy” for ableism and preciseness of language.” Published
February 10th, 2011. Accessed July 25th, 2015. http://whatprivilege.com/replacing-crazy-for-ableism-and-
preciseness-of-language/) TheFedora

If you’ve arrived at the conclusion that the word “crazy” is ableist, or at least makes some people
uncomfortable, or is commonly misused and overused to the point of losing its meaning, you may be
struggling to find substitute words. This post is for you. I’ve put together a list of many words that convey
better what you mean when you say “crazy” and the specific usages and contexts where they make
sense. And fear not: many of them are colorful, and all of them pack punch. NOTE: these terms are
meant to describe and label, not insult. While some of the words I mention could be screamed at a
fellow driver who just did something incredibly reckless, this list is meant more for discussion and
published writing (including blogs). It’s meant more for the writer who, say, is tempted to call Todd Akin
“crazy” for his remarks about rape in 2012, but realizes that might stigmatize people who have mental
illnesses and wants a better term. Be careful with the use of ANY of these terms, as they are all
controversial in some ways, inappropriate in some contexts, etc. It is not possible to compile a list of
perfectly “safe” terms to describe antisocial behavior – what’s recognized as “antisocial” isn’t even the
same in every culture or region. Finding the word You’ll have to ask yourself what you actually mean in
order to figure out how to convey your thought to someone who’s not living in your head with you. I’m
not going to get into every possible usage of crazy, i.e., “the weather’s crazy all over the place.” I’m sure
you can figure out alternative terms and phrases for those things on your own. I am going to cover some
replacements for “crazy” in the context of describing human beings. Because mental illness is not well-
understood (and most people receive little or no education in it, even with what’s considered a good
liberal arts education), it can be a struggle to express better how someone’s just plain “crazy.” This list
will help.

“Idiot” and “stupid” are ableist slurs

Omum 14 (Omum22 is the pen name of a writer for the organization Small But Kinda Mighty, a website
devoted to information related to ableism and ableist concepts. Small But Kinda Mighty: “Five things to
consider before using ableist language” Published August 19 th, 2014. Accessed July 25th, 2015.
http://smallbutkindamighty.com/2014/08/19/five-things-consider-using-ableist-language/)TheFedora

One person who engaged with me on twitter took the view that in describing Rob Ford as an “idiot” and
as “stupid”, he was merely being factually descriptive. I see this an awful lot and in my view it’s one of
the most insidious forms of ableism. We see it everywhere, this idea that people who are “smart” are
somehow better, more superior than others. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of education and
completely deplore ignorance. I’m talking about how certain people assume that others who do not
share their views are therefore intellectually inferior. The Fords play on this to rally people to their cause
– when they talk about “downtown elites” and “lefties” the dog-whistle they are blowing is to tell their
supporters, “hey, these people think they are better and smarter than you”. It builds resentment and it’s
something that we inflame and reinforce every time we accuse the Fords and their supporters of
stupidity.
Lame is an ableist slur
Aaron 15 (Jessi Elana Aaron is an assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of
Florida. The Washington Post: “‘Lame,’ ‘stand up’ and other words we use to insult the disabled without
even knowing it” published May 13th, 2015. Accessed July 25th, 2015.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/13/lame-stand-up-and-other-words-we-
use-to-insult-the-disabled-without-even-knowing-it/)TheFedora

As author, multimedia storyteller and wheelchair user Ju Gosling explains, “the oppression and exclusion
of disabled people by society is currently enshrined in our language.” Focusing on physical disability, let’s
take a closer look at how this happens. Descriptions of the physically disabled Though it may seem easy
enough to rid ourselves of the language thought of as offensive at a given moment in time, a glance at
the history of such terms makes it clear that erasing words will not erase the social structures behind
them. Instead, words referring to disfavored groups tend to go through what psychologist Steven Pinker
has called the “euphemism treadmill.” With regard to physical disability, for instance, just in the past few
decades, several terms have been run off the track: Since the 8th century, lame was commonly used in
everyday speech to describe a physical disability or a limp, before it started to be used as a negative
descriptor in the 20th century. With time, this use of lame was abandoned in favor of new terms that
had not (yet) acquired such undesirable connotations and were therefore considered less offensive, such
as handicapped. But by the 1980s, many abandoned handicapped for disabled, or, influenced by the
“people first” movement, people with disabilities. Some hyper-euphemized terms, such as differently-
abled and alter-abled, never enjoyed widespread acceptance among disability communities or among
the general public. Another term, physically challenged, was both limited in scope and quickly parodied –
for example, “vertically challenged” for “short” – and it quickly fell out of common use. Some of these
changes coincided with groundbreaking civil rights legislation, like IDEA, a 1975 law that guarantees
access to education for children with disabilities, and the ADA, a comprehensive civil rights law, passed in
1990, that prohibits disability-based discrimination and seeks to guarantee equal opportunities for social
inclusion for those with disabilities. Nonetheless, social marginalization and poverty remain tied to
disability. For this reason, language policing is nothing more than a wild goose chase. Even if it succeeds,
without concurrent social change, it’s destined to fail: for every new term that emerges, it will eventually
be transformed in everyday speech to mean something negative. New meanings aren’t random At the
same time, much media attention has been paid to the use of slurs such as retarded. Similarly, the
stigma associated with psychiatric disabilities has left its mark on many words, rendering them insults,
such as crazy and insane. So why isn’t more attention being paid to words like lame? In the case of
physical disability, once-neutral lame now describes someone who is “inept, naive, easily fooled; spec.
unskilled in the fashionable behavior of a particular group, socially inept.” Those who use these
expressions tend to try to justify their use in one of two ways. First, disability is (in their view) actually a
bad thing. As one blogger explained: It’s not okay to call a coward a pussy, or a bad thing gay, they argue,
because there’s nothing bad about having a vagina or being homosexual. But there IS something bad
about not being mobile! In fact, it’s no fun at all, just totally miserable. All other things held equal, isn’t it
better to be not-lame than lame? (It goes without saying that many people with disabilities would object
to having their identity hijacked as the automatic stand-in for all things bad.) Second, it can be argued –
and with some legitimacy – that some of these terms no longer generally refer to disability. Languages
change. New meanings emerge from old ones. But that’s the point: new meanings are not random.
Having undergone a process linguists call semantic bleaching, lame has lost some elements of its
meaning over time. While physical impairment is no longer part of its (new) meaning, my study of its use
in Time Magazine since 1923 showed that it has retained the social meanings associated with disability
in the 20th century: awkwardness, stupidity, femininity, lack of social graces and sophistication, and
more. Today’s lame is an attitudinal echo.

Ableism is a system of oppression and that must be conquered

Siebers, University of Michigan Literary and Cultural Criticism Professor, 09

[Tobin, 10-28-09, Disability Aesthetics, “The Aesthetics of Human Disqualification”,

http://www.isu.edu/~garijose/Pages/Course%20Syllabi/PDF/Aesthetics/SiebersDisabiityA2.pdf, Pg 26,
Accessed 7-6-14, CX]

Oppression is the systematic victimization of one group by another. It is a form of intergroup violence.
That oppression involves “groups,” and not “individuals,” means that it concerns identities, and this
means, furthermore, that oppression always focuses on how the body appears, both on how it appears
as a public and physical presence and on its specific and various appearances. Oppression is justified
most often by the attribution of natural inferiority—what some call “in-built” or “biological”
inferiority. Natural inferiority is always somatic, focusing on the mental and physical features of the
group, and it figures as disability. The prototype of biological inferiority is disability. The
representation of inferiority always comes back to the appearance of the body and the way the body
makes other bodies feel. This is why the study of oppression requires an understanding of aesthetics—
not only because oppression uses aesthetic judgments for its violence but also because the signposts
of how oppression works are visible in the history of art, where aesthetic judgments about the
creation and appreciation of bodies are openly discussed.

One additional thought must be noted before I treat some analytic examples from the historical record.
First, despite my statement that disability now serves as the master trope of human disqualification, it is
not a matter of reducing other minority identities to disability identity. Rather, it is a matter of
understanding the work done by disability in oppressive systems. In disability oppression, the physical
and mental properties of the body are socially constructed as disqualifying defects, but this specific
type of social construction happens to be integral at the present moment to the symbolic
requirements of oppression in general. In every oppressive system of our day, I want to claim, the
oppressed identity is represented in some way as disabled, and although it is hard to understand, the
same process obtains when disability is the oppressed identity. “Racism” disqualifies on the basis of
race, providing justification for the inferiority of certain skin colors, bloodlines, and physical features.
“Sexism” disqualifies on the basis of sex/gender as a direct representation of mental and physical
inferiority. “Classism” disqualifies on the basis of family lineage and socioeconomic power as proof of
inferior genealogical status. “Ableism” disqualifies on the basis of mental and physical differences, first
selecting and then stigmatizing them as disabilities. The oppressive system occults in each case the fact
that the disqualified identity is socially constructed, a mere convention, representing signs of
incompetence, weakness, or inferiority as undeniable facts of nature.
As racism, sexism, and classism fall away slowly as justifications for human inferiority—and the critiques
of these prejudices prove powerful examples of how to fight oppression—the prejudice against disability
remains in full force, providing seemingly credible reasons for the belief in human inferiority and the
oppressive systems built upon it. This usage will continue, I expect, until we reach a historical moment
when we know as much about the social construction of disability as we now know about the social
construction of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Disability represents at this moment in time the final
frontier of justifiable human inferiority.

Their conception of poetry relies upon ableist notions of ‘vision’ and ‘sound’ – their
author
Šišovski ’13 – graduate engineer-architect and graduate professor of philosophy at Euro-Balkan
university (Jordan, “MARTIN HEIDEGGER ON POETIC DWELLING”, September-October, 2013, Blesok no.
92, Peer Reviewed, *we don’t endorse gendered language) //J.N.E

e. Images Heidegger considered that the poet uses the most appropriate tool for this expression of the
invisible through the visible, the image. He considers that poetry speaks in images because: Because
poetry takes that mysterious measure, to wit, in the face of the sky, therefore it speaks in "images." This
is why poetic images are imaginings in a distinctive sense: not mere fancies and illusions but imaginings
that are visible inclusions of the alien in the sight of the familiar. The poetic saying of images gathers the
brightness and sound of the heavenly appearances into one with' the darkness and silence of what is
alien. By such sights the god surprises us. In this strangeness he proclaims his unfaltering nearness.
(2001: 223-224) The poetic image it can be added, nor is a meteorological description of the weather,
nor some journalistic coverage of an event or place. The poet takes the event and turns it into an inner
image of reality, into an icon of the unspeakable. The man is an image of the divine. The man is an icon
of the Deity! Thus arises their coming together. Furthermore, interpreting the poem, Heidegger says:
"The shade of the night"—the night itself is the shade, that darkness which can never become a mere
blackness because as shade it is wedded to light and remains cast by it. The measure taken by poetry
yields, imparts itself—as the foreign element in which the invisible one preserves his presence—to what
is familiar with the sights of the sky.

Stupid is an ableist term

Monje, 14 (Michael Scott Monje Jr describes themselves as Autistic. Queer. Non-Conforming. Known
disability and queer author. 2-21-2014, "Deconstructing "Stupid"," Shaping Clay,
http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/02/deconstructing-stupid.html)

The question is: Is this ableist? Does the use of figurative, personified, idiomatic stupidity excuse the
ableist connotations in the literal definition? I would say no. It's not hard to understand why I would
say no, either. If the general reason to use "stupid" instead of "bad" or "frustrating" is to evoke the
idea of slowness or a lack of perceptive ability, then it must be an ableist term. It can not be anything
but that, since it places a value judgment on the speed at which someone is able to cognitively process
(and/or on the precision of it), which is the same thing as making a value judgment about people with
cognitive disabilities, because their disability causes behavior which the word "stupid" places a
negative value judgment upon. It can be argued, though, that this does not necessarily make "stupid" a
slur. Not all ableist terms are necessarily recognized as slurs, nor are all ableist terms used as slurs. How
can we tell, then, if stupid is a slur or not? There are many conflicting definitions about what constitutes
a slur, after all. Even among the people who all agree that "stupid" is a slur, there are a variety of reasons
for doing so. How can we definitively say whether or not a word is being used as a slur? That's hard to
say, but I would argue that a word can safely be considered a slur when a few criteria are met: When the
people are affected by the negative use of the word as a pejorative even though they are not the target
of the pejorative. When the idiomatic use of a word with problematic connotations serves to normalize
those problematic connotations so that they become accepted as a priori virtues by a privileged class.
When a confluence of the first two items on this list results in an objectively measurable disadvantage, in
terms of access to basic resources and/or upward mobility within a society. I believe that something can
be said to be a slur if one of the first two items on that list is satisfied. I accept that there are people who
will disagree with me. I think, though, that if all three of those criteria are met, then the word must be a
slur.

The alternative is to reject the aff’s ableist rhetoric- by failing to undermine the
rhetorical foundation of ableism, the aff allows the destructive impacts of ableism be
recreated
Cherney 11 (James L. Cherney- Wayne State University Disability Studies Quarterly Vol. 31 No 3 (2011)
accessed 7-4-17 “The Rhetoric of Ableism” <http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1665/1606>)

Every orientation, perspective, and ideology has its basis somewhere; we are taught to understand the
world as we do. In other words, we learn meaning—it does not arise naturally from objects or
relationships. In Hall's words, "there is no one, final, absolute meaning—no ultimate signified, only the
endlessly sliding chain of signification."6 Earlier, Kenneth Burke argued similarly that "Stimuli do not
possess an absolute meaning" and pointed out that "Even a set of signs indicating the likelihood of death
by torture has another meaning in the orientation of a comfort-loving skeptic than it would for the
ascetic whose world-view promised eternal reward for martyrdom." Burke concludes: "Any given
situation derives its character from the entire framework of interpretation by which we judge it."7 From
the perspective of ableism as a framework of interpretation, we identify its dimensions by examining the
linguistic codes and rhetorical assumptions that govern sense making. As Burke put it, "We discern
situational patterns by means of the particular vocabulary of the cultural group into which we are born.
Our minds, as linguistic products, are composed of concepts (verbally molded) which select certain
relationships as meaningful." In other words, meaning exists primarily as a function of language rather
than a natural or necessary consequent of material objects or bodies. Our comprehension of reality itself
arises from our perspective, so "different frameworks of interpretation will lead to different conclusions
as to what reality is."8 Complicating the simple materiality of things does not necessarily entail rejecting
material existence: things can exist as simultaneously material and rhetorical constructs. Material might
be experienced "directly" by a body, but what—and how—this material "is" depends on filters that
shape perception. Repeated stress on a knee may promote swelling, strain ligaments, and alter the
shape of cartilage. Depending on the way it is described, this might be understood as "injury," expected
"wear and tear," or "a natural consequence of running long distances." If the condition causes pain, it
might be considered "trauma," a "danger signal," or the simple "cost that one pays for extraordinary
performance." To say and understand what happened we use "stress," "swelling," "ligaments," and
"cartilage" as concepts that we have created to relate to the experience in particular ways. Substitute
"stress" with "strenuous activity," "work," "play," or "abuse" and the condition changes yet its materiality
remains the same. Exchange "swelling," with "inflammation," "being sore," "recovery mechanisms," or
"cushioning," and this alters the proscribed treatments. Replace "ligaments" and "cartilage" with
"tissues," "sinews," "flesh," or "well designed structural components" and the anatomy itself becomes
something else. The event could not be explained at all if the words were lost or it involved something
unnamed. The context in which observers place something and the implications of the words used to
make it meaningful rhetorically construct the experience. We say what happened, and if we do not or
cannot, then the characteristics of the event remain undefined, unfixed, and mutable. Material may exist
independently of our subjective awareness, but what something is, how it should be, and why it matters
cannot exist except as a function of language. Whatever the factual (or material, or empirical, or
scientific) status of disability, my only concern here is the concept's meaning. Disability is a loaded term,
weighted down with tools and supplies sufficient for the task of making difference. Such baggage begs to
be unpacked. But the project quickly becomes complicated because the ropes that bind the luggage are
largely invisible as common sense. Racism and sexism may have no legitimate place in this "civilized"
world, but the precepts governing modern civility continue to allow an ableist orientation . This requires
those who would undermine ableist thinking to step outside of the rhetorical foundations bounded by
ableist assumptions in order to recognize ableism as a destructive and dangerous perspective. In
rhetorical terms, the problem is one of studying from within a rhetoric that denies its own rhetoricity.
Researchers have addressed this issue with other rhetorics. Michael Calvin McGee and John R. Lyne used
the term "antirhetoric" to describe the "cool, comfortably neutral technical reason (associated in the
public mind with computing machines and sterile laboratories)" that scientists since Plato have sought to
perfect.9 As McGee and Lyne make clear, antirhetorics are still a form of rhetoric, whose "appeal to
objective knowledge and its accompanying denunciation of rhetoric is one of the most effective
rhetorical strategies."10 Similarly, in their study of the Law and Economics movement, Edward M.
Panetta and Marouf Hasian, Jr. used the term "anti-rhetoric," which they define as "any foundational
quest for truth that privileges itself as the only or primary 'rational,' 'objective,' and 'neutral' means of
acquiring epistemic knowledge."11 Practicioners of anti-rhetorics deny their own rhetoricity so as to
appear value neutral, mere messengers of the truth, who by being above the sticky political world of
rhetoric are not tainted with its excesses. Recognizing ableism requires a shift in orientation, a
perceptual gestalt framed by the filter of the term "ableism" itself. The same texts that broadcast
"Ableism!" to those oriented to perceive it are usually read innocently even when viewed from a liberal,
humanitarian, or progressive perspective. Ableism is so pervasive that it is difficult to identify until one
begins to interrogate the governing assumptions of well-intentioned society. Within the space allowed
by these rhetorical premises, ableism appears natural, necessary, and ultimately moral discrimination
required for the normal functioning of civilization. Consider a set of stairs. An ableist culture thinks little
of stairs, or even sees them as elegant architectural devices—especially those grand marble
masterpieces that elevate buildings of state. But disability rights activists see stairs as a discriminatory
apparatus—a "no crips allowed" sign that only those aware of ableism can read—that makes their
inevitable presence around government buildings a not-so-subtle statement about who belongs in our
most important public spaces. But the device has become so accepted in our culture that the idea of
stairs as oppressive technology will strike many as ludicrous. Several years ago when I began to study
ableism, a professor—unconvinced of the value of the project—questioned my developing arguments by
pointing to a set of steps and exclaiming, "Next you'll be telling me that those stairs discriminate!" He
was right.

The rhetoric of disability allows ableism to be learned and promote a culture of

discrimination, only challenging that which seems innocuous can change the
widespread, unwitting acceptance of ableist thinking
Cherney 11 [James L Cherney, former college debater, PhD in Communication and Culture @
Westminster, and undergraduates in Public Speaking, Body Rhetoric, and the Disability Rights
Movement; “The Rhetoric of Ableism”; Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol 31 No 3; 2011; accessed
07/31/2015; <http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1665/1606>.]

As Disability Studies continues its exploration of disability in society, scholars have paid growing attention
to the rhetoric of disability. This scholarship approaches the subject from different angles, but it
generally works with similar premises including the position that rhetoric can shape the way disability is
understood and (in)forms its political implications. These studies range from considering how rhetoric
crafts disability to examining how ideas of disability impact theories of rhetoric. Brenda Jo Brueggemann
explores how rhetoric constructs the disability of deafness, revealing how Hearing culture oppresses
Deaf culture.1 Jay Dolmage shows how contemporary histories have "imported [exclusion] into the
classical world" and oversimplified the complex views of disability that informed that era's influential
theories of rhetoric.2 James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson's Embodied Rhetorics collects several
works covering the terrain between these studies.3 I seek to build upon these authors' valuable work by
continuing to examine rhetoric but turning to a related yet different focus: I analyze ableism instead of
disability. While disability and ableism clearly relate, I consider attending to the latter to be similar to
studying racism instead of race. Neither project makes sense without the other, and arguably studying
disability has greater potential for promoting awareness and emancipatory politics, but studying ableism
promises unique results such as identifying the identical mechanisms that propagate different types of
discrimination. In this essay I analyze ableism as a rhetorical problem for three reasons. First, ableist
culture sustains and perpetuates itself via rhetoric; the ways of interpreting disability and assumptions
about bodies that produce ableism are learned. The previous generation teaches it to the next and
cultures spread it to each other through modes of intercultural exchange. Adopting a rhetorical
perspective to the problem of ableism thus exposes the social systems that keep it alive. This informs my
second reason for viewing ableism as rhetoric, as revealing how it thrives suggests ways of curtailing its
growth and promoting its demise. Many of the strategies already adopted by disability rights activists to
confront ableism explicitly or implicitly address it as rhetoric. Public demonstrations, countercultural
performances, autobiography, transformative histories of disability and disabling practices, and critiques
of ableist films and novels all apply rhetorical solutions to the problem. Identifying ableism as rhetoric
and exploring its systems dynamic reveals how these corrective practices work. We can use such
information to refine the successful techniques, reinvent those that fail, and realize new tactics. Third, I
contend that any means of challenging ableism must eventually encounter its rhetorical power. As I
explain below, ableism is that most insidious form of rhetoric that has become reified and so widely
accepted as common sense that it denies its own rhetoricity—it "goes without saying." To fully address it
we must name its presence, for cultural assumptions accepted uncritically adopt the mantle of "simple
truth" and become extremely difficult to rebut. As the neologism "ableism" itself testifies, we need new
words to reveal the places it resides and new language to describe how it feeds. Without doing so,
ableist ways of thinking and interpreting will operate as the context for making sense of any acts
challenging discrimination, which undermines their impact, reduces their symbolic potential, and can
even transform them into superficial measures that give the appearance of change yet elide a
recalcitrant ableist system.

The introduction of their K is bad—calling us out for using an unintentionally offensive

term might embarrass us, but it doesn’t do anything to address ableist oppression
Kinzel 11 — Lesley Kinzel, blogger and social justice writer, has written for Newsweek and Marie Claire,
was named one of the Feminist Press’s “40 Feminists Under 40,” 2011 (“On our difficult language, and
the calling-out of,” Two Whole Cakes—a blog about body politics, social justice activism, and pop-cultural
criticism from a feminist perspective, March 30th, Available Online at
http://blog.twowholecakes.com/2011/03/on-our-difficult-language-and-the-calling-out-of-same)

We throw “that’s ableist” or “that’s racist” or “that’s fatphobic” around, I suspect, in the hope that such
heavy judgement-bearing words will shock and embarrass the speaker out of using the offending
language. And sometimes, it can work, at least in the short term, when we are merely thinking of our
own self-preservation. But beyond that instant, this is not constructive activism. Using surprise, guilt, or
humiliation as negative reinforcement to change behavior does nothing to instruct the person in
question on why their behavior is causing problems; they stop simply because they don’t want to get in
trouble. While the power shift this approach employs may feel awfully satisfying to those of us who have
labored under some degree of oppression for much our lives—we get to dictate the terms of
engagement, for once—merely shifting the power from one hand to another does nothing to change the
destructive use of said power against us.¶ This practice of shaming people into behaving a certain way or
using certain language does not truly address the underlying inclination; it does not unpack the thinking
that allowed that speaker to feel entitled to say those things in the first place. Fear can be an effective
motivator, but it’s not often a productive one, if our goal is broad and lasting cultural change. It is, after
all, fear that motivates folks of all sizes to diet, that keeps queer folks in the closet, that makes women
afraid to walk alone at night, that compels people of color to keep their heads down even in the face of
overt discrimination and just get by. It is fear and shame that locks the systems that marginalize us in
place, and as Audre Lorde has explained, in one of the most brilliant pieces of writing on social justice
ever put to paper, there is little we can do while still holding on to the master’s tools.¶ Those of us who
stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been
forged in the crucibles of difference — those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who
are older — know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and
sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the
structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our
differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about
genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as
their only source of support.¶ Ideally, people should stop using certain language because they have
developed an understanding of why that language is oppressive, and how their use of it contributes to
inequality and marginalization, and not because they are afraid or ashamed of confusing social
repercussions they do not understand. What we need is a commitment to giving people clear
explanations—be they angry, or impassioned, or blunt—of why their words or behavior are problematic,
or upsetting, or damaging. We need to resist relying on comfortable jargon to call people out, and to
ditch the erroneous presumption that making someone feel stupid will encourage them to read more
about a subject. It doesn’t work. Fear and shame don’t help people to understand how the language we
use and the actions we undertake, even in our own small individual spheres, all conspire to create a
social environment that oppresses us. Fear breeds resentment and, sometimes, hatred. These are not
things we need more of. These are the things that put us here in the first place.

The aff’s defense of the logic of the prison industrial complex leads to ongoing ableism
in the U.S- only by abolishing prisons will we be able to properly solve for the
discrimination towards those who are disabled
Ben-Moshe 11 [Liat, Assistant Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Toledo | “Disabling
Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA”, Critical Sociology 39,
December 20, 2011, R.F]

Another set of studies that examine the connection between medicalization, criminalization and
imprisonment is the gathering of statistics around the prevalence of disability, especially labels of mental
illness and mental retardation, among the imprisoned population. Statistics on ‘criminally mentally ill’ or
people with mental illness diagnoses in jails and prisons are generally hard to come by, especially
historically. This is one of the reasons why claims of increasing rates of mental illness in prisons post-
deinstitutionalization is hard to support, as there is no comparative data pre-deinstitutionalization that
can be used as a baseline for such comparisons. Although several attempts have been made to estimate
the number of prisoners who have a psychiatric diagnosis, it is impossible to quantify their number with
any degree of precision, even if taking the label of ‘mental illness’ as a viable construct. The American
Psychiatric Association reports in 2000 that ‘up to 5% [of prisoners] are actively psychotic’ and that as
many as one in five prisoners were seriously mentally ill (APA, 2000: xix). Other attempts to estimate
their prevalence appear to have used a substantially more expansive definition of mental illness. The
Bureau of Justice Statistics (1999) reports that 16 percent of state prison inmates either identified as
having ‘a mental condition’ or having stayed overnight in a mental hospital. The statistics for women
prisoners are particularly stark. The same study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics based on a survey of
prisoners, found that ‘29 percent of white females, 20 percent of black females and 22 percent of
Hispanic females in State prison were identified as mentally ill. Nearly four in ten white female inmates
aged twenty-four or younger were mentally ill’ (BJS, 1999). Even when taking the construct of ‘mental
retardation’ as a pure label, which is dependent on socio-historical power/knowledge paradigms, there is
no precise measurement for the number of prisoners who are labeled as mentally retarded. A policy
brief states that while those with intellectual disabilities comprise 2 to 3 percent of the general
population, they represent 4 to 10 percent of the prison population, with an even greater number of
those in juvenile facilities and in jails (Petersilia, 2000). One study that looked at the number of people
with disabilities in state and federal prisons found that less than 1 percent of inmates had physical
disabilities while 4.2 percent had ‘mental retardation’ (Veneziano and Veneziano, 1996). It is also
important to note that the construct of ‘mental retardation’ cannot be entirely separated from that of
‘mental illness’, as there are many, especially those who end up in prisons and jails, that are labeled as
both, and the types of discrimination they are facing is compounded by unfounded beliefs and lack of
services in relation to both disabilities. Analyzing imprisonment from a disability studies lens will
necessitate a closer look at the social and economic conditions of disablement and incarceration rather
than looking at disability as a cause for criminal acts. Prisoners are not randomly selected and do not
represent all statuses of society. The majority of prisoners are poor, and are people of color. Poverty is
known to cause a variety of impairments and disabling conditions. In addition it is crucial to emphasize
that the prison environment itself is disabling – from hard labor in toxic conditions and materials to
closed wards with poor air quality, circulation of drugs and unsanitary needles, and lack of medical
equipment and medication (Russell and Stewart, 2001). It is also crucial to take an expansive view of
what constitutes ‘disability’ in such environments. For instance, the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS among
prisoners and the various impairments that come with aging in a disabling environment such as a prison,
as a result of prolonged sentencing policies, should be analyzed critically by sociologists and disability
studies scholars. Disability in this framework is not a natural biological entity, but related to economic
and social conditions that lead to an increased chance of both disablement and imprisonment.
Regardless of the percentages, it has become clear that while in prisons or jails, those with disability or
psychiatric diagnoses are often discriminated against. Far too frequently, when there is no serious effort
to provide mental health treatment, the only semblance of treatment offered is psychotropic
medication, and often in such circumstances it is ill prescribed and controlled (see American Association
on Mental Retardation, 2005). Because of lack of access, prisoners with physical disabilities cannot leave
their cells, including going to the bathroom or showering. The lack of basic human needs in the penal
system is brought to full light in the heart wrenching stories of prisoners with disabilities. Like in the case
of Newman v. Alabama, finding systemic constitutional violations of prisoners’ rights in the Alabama
prison system, including the death of a quadriplegic inmate, who spent many months in the hospital
confined to a bed, leading to bedsores, which developed maggots from lack of care ‘until the stench
pervaded the entire ward’ (see ADAPT, 2005). What such horrific stories show is not the uniqueness of
the disability experience behind bars, but both systemic disablement within society at large and the
inherent cruelty and inhumanity of the penal system as a whole. Similarly, conditions of confinement
may cause further mental deterioration in prisoners entering the system with diagnoses of ‘mental
illness’ or intellectual disabilities. Most court cases show that the right to (re)habilitation is often not
fulfilled in jails, prisons and institutions, and that this further distresses those incarcerated and worsens
their mental and physical health overall. Those incarcerated (in institutions or prisons) with labels of
intellectual disabilities may in fact lose crucial life skills that they had before they were imprisoned such
as ‘loss of the ability to communicate, perform daily self-care, remain physically safe, and to maintain
even rudimentary emotional stability’ (American Association on Mental Retardation, 2005). Prisoners
who are identified as mentally ill or exhibit ‘disruptive behaviors’ are often sanctioned to ‘administrative
segregation’ in separate units, which are often isolation units. These segregated forms of incarceration,
such as supermax or SHU (security housing units), are likely to cause or exacerbate mental and physical
ill-health of those incarcerated. Haney (2003) lists ‘rage, loss of control, paranoia, hallucinations, and
selfmutilations’ as some of the adverse effects prisoners secluded in supermax and solitary confinement
had experienced. The reason why these figures are so crucial is because there is much at stake in
counting the percentage of disabled prisoners, in terms of research, policy and activism. In terms of
policy and legislation, it is clear that if one can prove sufficiently that there is a large percentage of
prisoners with a specific disability, then it would require a specific solution such as requesting more
hospital units to be built in specific prisons or prescribing more medications on a particular unit. For
activists, using statistics that demonstrate the high prevalence of disabled prisoners could lead in several
directions. If one is an activist in NAMI (National Alliance of Mental Illness), for instance, then these
statistics are used to show that deinstitutionalization failed and that prisons and jails had become a
dumping ground for those labeled as mentally ill with the lack of other alternatives. Such campaigns,
which have been ongoing since the early 1990s, call in essence for the (re)hospitalization of those with
psychiatric diagnosis (see Torrey, 1996 for example). However, if one is an activist in broader or more
radical social justice initiatives, they might use these statistics to showcase the cruelty of the criminal
‘justice’ system and call for the just treatment of all prisoners (such as abolishing the use of isolation
units or forced medication overall). The downturn of such arguments, much like those in the calls to
abolish the death penalty for those who are labeled as intellectually disabled, is that they can turn into
arguments that reproduce ableist rhetoric and may seem to call for the release of some prisoners (i.e.
those most disabled) but not others.

Alt causes to racism and ableism in schools – teacher segregation, less funding
Resmovits ’14 (Joy Resmovits is a reporter for the Huffington Post, “American Schools Are STILL Racist,
Government Report Finds,” Huffington Post, March 21, 2014,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/21/schools-discrimination_n_5002954.html) -- sk

Public school students of color get more punishment and less access to veteran teachers than their white
peers, according to surveys released Friday by the U.S. Education Department that include data from
every U.S. school district.

Black students are suspended or expelled at triple the rate of their white peers, according to the U.S.
Education Department’s 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data Collection, a survey conducted every two years. Five
percent of white students were suspended annually, compared with 16 percent of black students,
according to the report. Black girls were suspended at a rate of 12 percent — far greater than girls of
other ethnicities and most categories of boys.

At the same time, minority students have less access to experienced teachers. Most minority students
and English language learners are stuck in schools with the most new teachers. Seven percent of black
students attend schools where as many as 20 percent of teachers fail to meet license and certification
requirements. And one in four school districts pay teachers in less-diverse high schools $5,000 more than
teachers in schools with higher black and Latino student enrollment.

Such discrimination lowers academic performance for minority students and puts them at greater risk of
dropping out of school, according to previous research. The new research also shows the shortcomings
of decades of legal and political moves to ensure equal rights to education. The Supreme Court’s
landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling banned school segregation and affirmed the right to
quality education for all children. The 1964 Civil Rights Act guaranteed equal access to education.
“This data collection shines a clear, unbiased light on places that are delivering on the promise of an
equal education for every child and places where the largest gaps remain,” U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan said in a statement. “In all, it is clear that the United States has a great distance to go to
meet our goal of providing opportunities for every student to succeed.”

Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder plan to announce the survey results on Friday. The
information, part of an ongoing survey by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, highlights
longstanding inequities in how schools leave minority students and students with disabilities at a
disadvantage. For the first time since 2000, the new version of the survey includes results from all 16,500
American school districts, representing 49 million students.

“Unfortunately, too many children don’t have equitable access to experienced and fully licensed
teachers, as has again been proven by the data in this report,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the
National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union. “This is a problem that can and must
be addressed.”

Daria Hall, K-12 policy director at the Education Trust, an advocacy group, also called for action. “The
report shines a new light on something that research and experience have long told us — that students
of color get less than their fair share of access to the in-school factors that matter for achievement,” she
said. “Students of color get less access to high level courses. Black students in particular get less
instructional time because they’re far more likely to receive out of school suspensions or expulsions. And
students of color get less access to teachers who’ve had at least a year on the job and who have at least
basic certification. Of course, it’s not enough to just shine a light on the problem. We have to fix it.”

Ableism impact
Garland-thomson 02, Rosemarie Garland-thomson is Associate Professor in the Women's Studies
Department at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work focuses on feminist theory and disability
studies in the humanities. She is the author of Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in
American Literature and Culture, editor of Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, and
co-editor of Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. She is currently writing a book on staring and
one on the cultural logic of euthanasia, 2002(“Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory”,
NWSA Journal 14.3, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/37970#authbio, Accessed 7/10/2017)

Subjugated bodies are pictured as either deficient or as profligate. For instance, what Susan Bordo
describes as the too-muchness of women also haunts disability and racial discourses, marking
subjugated bodies as ungovernable, intemperate, or threatening (1993). The historical figure of the
monster, as well, invokes disability, often to serve racism and sexism. Although the term has expanded to
encompass all forms of social and corporeal aberration, monster originally described people with
congenital impairments. As departures from the normatively human, monsters were [End Page 8] seen
as category violations or grotesque hybrids. The semantics of monstrosity are recruited to explain gender
violations such as Julia Pastrana, for example, the Mexican Indian "bearded woman," whose body was
displayed in nineteenth-century freak shows both during her lifetime and after her death. Pastrana's live
and later her embalmed body spectacularly confused and transgressed established cultural categories.
Race, gender, disability, and sexuality augmented one another in Pastrana's display to produce a
spectacle of embodied otherness that is simultaneously sensational, sentimental, and pathological
(Thomson 1999). Furthermore, much current feminist work theorizes figures of hybridity and excess such
as monsters, grotesques, and cyborgs to suggest their transgressive potential for a feminist politics
(Haraway 1991; Braidotti 1994; Russo 1994). However, this metaphorical invocation seldom
acknowledges that these figures often refer to the actual bodies of people with disabilities. Erasing real
disabled bodies from the history of these terms compromises the very critique they intend to launch and
misses an opportunity to use disability as a feminist critical category. Such representations ultimately
portray subjugated bodies not only as inadequate or unrestrained but at the same time as redundant
and expendable. Bodies marked and selected by such systems are targeted for elimination by varying
historical and cross-cultural practices. Women, people with disabilities or appearance impairments,
ethnic Others, gays and lesbians, and people of color are variously the objects of infanticide, selective
abortion, eugenic programs, hate crimes, mercy killing, assisted suicide, lynching, bride burning, honor
killings, forced conversion, coercive rehabilitation, domestic violence, genocide, normalizing surgical
procedures, racial profiling, and neglect. All these discriminatory practices are legitimated by systems of
representation, by collective cultural stories that shape the material world, underwrite exclusionary
attitudes, inform human relations, and mold our senses of who we are. Understanding how disability
functions along with other systems of representation clarifies how all the systems intersect and mutually
constitute one another.

Ableism is the root cause patriarchy and racism

Wolbring 8’ [Gregor Wolbring, Associate Professor Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, Past
President of Canadian Disability Studies Association and member of the board of the Society for
Disability Studies (USA, ) http://secure.gvsu.edu/cms3/assets/3B8FF455-E590-0E6C-
3ED0F895A6FBB287/the_politics_of_ableism.pdf ;

Sexism is partly driven by a form of ableism that favours certain abilities, and the labelling of women as
not having those certain necessary abilities is used to justify sexism and the dominance of males over
females. Similarly, racism and ethnicism are partly driven by forms of ableism, which have two
components. One favours one race or ethnic group and discriminates against another. The book The Bell
Curve (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) judged human beings on their ‘cognitive abilities’ (their IQ). It
promoted racismby claiming that certain ethnic groups are less cognitively able than others. The ableist
judgement related to cognitive abilities continues justifying racist arguments. Casteism, like racism, is
based on the notion that socially defined groups of people have inherent, natural qualities or
‘essences’that assign them to social positions, make them fit for specific duties and occupations
(Omvedt,2001).The natural inherent qualities are ‘abilities’ that make them fit for specific duties and
occupations.

to foster a more accessible debate space.

Ableism grounds sexism & racism

Gregor Wolbring, 2008 Associate Professor Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, Past
President of Canadian Disability Studies Association and member of the board of the Society for
Disability Studies (USA), The politics of Ableism, Development (2008) 51, 252–258.
doi:10.1057/dev.2008.17 [p253]
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gregor_Wolbring/publication/5219934_The_Politics_of_Ableism/
links/00b7d52cb0c993fcb3000000.pdf

Ableism against disabled people (Wolbring, 2007a, b, c) reflects a preference for species-typical
normative abilities leading to the discrimination against them as ‘less able’ and/or as ‘impaired’disabled
people (Wolbring, 2004, 2005). This type of ableism is supported by the medical, deficiency, impairment
categorization of disabled people (medical model) (Wolbring, 2004, 2005). It rejects the ‘variation of
being’, biodiversity notion and categorization of disabled people (social model). It leads to the focus on
‘fixing’ the person or preventing more of such people being born and ignores the acceptance and
accommodation of such people in their variation of being (Wolbring, 2005). Ableism has also long been
used to justify hierarchies of rights and discrimination between other social groups, and to exclude
people not classified as ‘disabled people’. Sexism is partly driven by a form of ableism that favours
certain abilities, and the labelling of women as not having those certain necessary abilities is used to
justify sexism and the dominance of males over females. Similarly, racism and ethnicism are partly
driven by forms of ableism, which have two components. One favours one race or ethnic group and
discriminates against another. The book The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) judged human
beings on their ‘cognitive abilities’ (their IQ). It promoted racism by claiming that certain ethnic groups
are less cognitively able than others. The ableist judgement related to cognitive abilities continues
justifying racist arguments. Casteism, like racism, is based on the notion that socially defined groups of
people have inherent, natural qualities or ‘essences’ that assign them to social positions, make them fit
for specific duties and occupations (Omvedt,2001).The natural inherent qualities are ‘abilities’ that make
them fit for specific duties and occupations.

Avoiding Ableism is impossible – it means different things to different people

Kessler 11 (Jennifer, online writer “What Privilege: “Replacing “crazy” for ableism and preciseness of
language.”. http://whatprivilege.com/replacing-crazy-for-ableism-and-preciseness-of-language/,
02/10/11)

There are some other words which may or may not be ableist, depending who you talk to. Perhaps this is
the right time to say that I have had depression and anxiety issues since childhood and personally don’t
find “crazy” ableist except when it’s being used to describe a person who’s not conforming to your
expectations. Different people have different sensitivities. To be safe, dumping all of the following words
from your publication vocabulary would be wise. But they are not indisputably ableist – there is debate.
Lunatic/lunacy. Refers to the belief that the moon could make people deranged, which we now know is
just silly. But it’s still a mental health label, and calling someone a lunatic is a little like calling one of
those armchair diagnoses we discussed above. I think “lunacy”, however, is acceptable, as in “This law
the politician has proposed is sheer lunacy.” That suggests a very real phenomenon, in which humans get
swept up in a mob mentality and develop horrifically bad judgment. But that’s the only context I use it
in. [See comments for arguments that lunacy is ableist.]

Rhetoric isn’t important – the k overfocuses on disability – the inevitability of linguistic slip ups makes
this more confusing
Rose '04 Damon Rose "Don't call me handicapped!"Editor of BBC disability website Ouch! Monday, 4
October, 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3708576.stm

Due to popular rubbishing of what is referred to as "political correctness', many disabled commentators
now publicly say they don't care how people refer to them. But privately they fume if someone calls
them "handicapped" or "brave". Last year Ouch! ran a poll to try and determine what really are the most
vilified words and expressions around disability. Unsurprisingly "retard" came top as the most offensive
followed by "spastic".When breaking down the figures though, it was interesting to see that disabled
people had voted "special" as fifth most offensive. "Special service", "special school" and "special needs"
are phrases used in an attempt to be positive about disability. But in the same way women don't like
being elevated to "lady", disabled people find it patronising to be lifted to the status of special. It
differentiates them from normal, but in a saccharine manner. Disabled people are different, but not
better or more important. Besides, putting them on a pedestal does not appear to be shifting attitudes
or solving the appalling disability unemployment situation. Clearly, language in this field is a hotch-potch
of confusion.

Ableism must be rejected – the issue is apriori

Siebers 9 -- University of Michigan, Professor of Literary and Cultural Criticism (Tobin, “The Aesthetics of
Human Disqualification”, Lecture, http://www.google.com/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F
%2Fdisabilities.temple.edu%2Fmedia%2Fds
%2Flecture20091028siebersAesthetics_FULL.doc&ei=LWz4T6jyN8bHqAHLkY2LCQ&usg=AFQjCNGdkDuSJ
kRXMHgbXqvuyyeDpldVcQ&sig2=UCGDC4tHbeh2j7-Yce9lsA, Oct 28, 2009, tony)

Oppression is the systematic victimization of one group by another. It is a form of intergroup violence.
That oppression involves “groups,” and not “individuals,” means that it concerns identities, and this
means, furthermore, that oppression always focuses on how the body appears, both on how it appears
as a public and physical presence and on its specific and various appearances. Oppression is justified
most often by the attribution of natural inferiority—what some call “in-built” or “biological” inferiority.
Natural inferiority is always somatic, focusing on the mental and physical features of the group, and it
figures as disability. The prototype of biological inferiority is disability. The representation of inferiority
always comes back to the appearance of the body and the way the body makes other bodies feel. This is
why the study of oppression requires an understanding of aesthetics—not only because oppression uses
aesthetic judgments for its violence but also because the signposts of how oppression works are visible
in the history of art, where aesthetic judgments about the creation and appreciation of bodies are
openly discussed. ¶ One additional thought must be noted before I treat some analytic examples from
the historical record. First, despite my statement that disability now serves as the master trope of human
disqualification, it is not a matter of reducing other minority identities to disability identity. Rather, it is a
matter of understanding the work done by disability in oppressive systems. In disability oppression, the
physical and mental properties of the body are socially constructed as disqualifying defects, but this
specific type of social construction happens to be integral at the present moment to the symbolic
requirements of oppression in general. In every oppressive system of our day, I want to claim, the
oppressed identity is represented in some way as disabled, and although it is hard to understand, the
same process obtains when disability is the oppressed identity. “Racism” disqualifies on the basis of race,
providing justification for the inferiority of certain skin colors, bloodlines, and physical features. “Sexism”
disqualifies on the basis of sex/gender as a direct representation of mental and physical inferiority.
“Classism” disqualifies on the basis of family lineage and socioeconomic power as proof of inferior
genealogical status. “Ableism” disqualifies on the basis of mental and physical differences, first selecting
and then stigmatizing them as disabilities. The oppressive system occults in each case the fact that the
disqualified identity is socially constructed, a mere convention, representing signs of incompetence,
weakness, or inferiority as undeniable facts of nature. ¶ As racism, sexism, and classism fall away slowly
as justifications for human inferiority—and the critiques of these prejudices prove powerful examples
of how to fight oppression—the prejudice against disability remains in full force , providing seemingly
credible reasons for the belief in human inferiority and the oppressive systems built upon it. This usage
will continue, I expect, until we reach a historical moment when we know as much about the social
construction of disability as we now know about the social construction of race, class, gender, and
sexuality. Disability represents at this moment in time the final frontier of justifiable human inferiority.

Law good.
Mor, Tel Aviv University LLB, 2006

[Sagit, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities: Vol. 18: Iss. 1, Article 3, “Between Charity, Welfare, and
Warfare: A Disability Legal Studies Analysis of Privilege and Neglect in Israeli Disability Policy”
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1309&context=yjlh, p.137]

The turn from viewing disability as the problem, to analyzing ableism¶ and the power relations within
which disability is constituted,¶ characterizes the disability rights era. Yet the shift to rights carries the
risk¶ of neglecting welfare. Thus, disability rights advocates tend to be¶ conflicted about, if not entirely
opposed to, disability allowances policies,¶ arguing that these policies reinforce the marginality of
people with¶ disabilities.338 Nonetheless, the reality of poverty and unaccommodated¶ workplaces as
well as the realization that welfare law is a major site of¶ production of meaning calls for critical
engagement with those issues. The¶ meaning of disability cannot be transformed without transforming
the¶ structure of welfare.

Law key.
Mor, Tel Aviv University LLB, 2006

[Sagit, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities: Vol. 18: Iss. 1, Article 3, “Between Charity, Welfare, and
Warfare: A Disability Legal Studies Analysis of Privilege and Neglect in Israeli Disability Policy”
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1309&context=yjlh, p.71]

The move to the social and the political also implicates the law in¶ various ways. Focusing on the place
of law in that scheme of power¶ exposes ableism as a legalized system: a system of stated and
unstated¶ norms that have been codified into legal arrangements, whether by¶ addressing people with
disabilities or by ignoring them. Consequently, the¶ profound and distinctive power of law to generate
disablement, to exclude,¶ and to confine, by defining rights, entitlements, and duties, is revealed. By¶
legalizing ableism the law becomes constitutive of disability in itself. At¶ the same time, that shift can
also lead to a greater explicit mobilization of¶ the law to redress the wrongs of the past, to become an
apparatus of¶ change, a source of hope, and a tool in reconstructing society.27

Vote affirmative. Challenging ableism at the rhetorical level is crucial to dismantle

systems of oppression.
Cherney 11 — James L. Cherney, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Wayne
State University, 2011 (“The Rhetoric Of Ableism,” Disability Studies Quarterly, Volume 31, Number 3,
Available Online at http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1665/1606, Accessed 11-29-2012)

In this essay I analyze ableism as a rhetorical problem for three reasons. First, ableist culture sustains and
perpetuates itself via rhetoric; the ways of interpreting disability and assumptions about bodies that
produce ableism are learned. The previous generation teaches it to the next and cultures spread it to
each other through modes of intercultural exchange. Adopting a rhetorical perspective to the problem of
ableism thus exposes the social systems that keep it alive. This informs my second reason for viewing
ableism as rhetoric, as revealing how it thrives suggests ways of curtailing its growth and promoting its
demise. Many of the strategies already adopted by disability rights activists to confront ableism explicitly
or implicitly address it as rhetoric. Public demonstrations, countercultural performances, autobiography,
transformative histories of disability and disabling practices, and critiques of ableist films and novels all
apply rhetorical solutions to the problem. Identifying ableism as rhetoric and exploring its systems
dynamic reveals how these corrective practices work. We can use such information to refine the
successful techniques, reinvent those that fail, and realize new tactics. Third, I contend that any means of
challenging ableism must eventually encounter its rhetorical power. As I explain below, ableism is that
most insidious form of rhetoric that has become reified and so widely accepted as common sense that it
denies its own rhetoricity—it "goes without saying." To fully address it we must name its presence, for
cultural assumptions accepted uncritically adopt the mantle of "simple truth" and become extremely
difficult to rebut. As the neologism "ableism" itself testifies, we need new words to reveal the places it
resides and new language to describe how it feeds. Without doing so, ableist ways of thinking and
interpreting will operate as the context for making sense of any acts challenging discrimination, which
undermines their impact, reduces their symbolic potential, and can even transform them into superficial
measures that give the appearance of change yet elide a recalcitrant ableist system.

Feminist movements repeatedly fail to address ableism

Whitestone 15 (Sara Whitestone is a writer, photographer, and teacher at John Jay college, NYC.
Everyday Feminism: “How Mainstream Feminism Continues to Perpetuate Ableism (And How We Can
Change That)” published January 29th, 2015. Accessed July 24th, 2015.
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/how-feminism-perpetuates-ableism/)TheFedora

Disabilities make up the largest “minority” group that includes the most diversity, and anyone can
experience or acquire a disability at any point in their life. And yet even in feminist and social justice
spaces, ableism persists. We continue to use ableist metaphors and language in these spaces. Often, we
use these phrases as ways to describe our thoughts, but ultimately we continue to equate disability as a
Bad Thing and use ableist language for its negative connotation. And we wonder why disabled people
often feel that mainstream feminism leaves both disabled people and disability issues out of the
conversation entirely. When disabled people are continually overlooked as a marginalized identity, it
makes the consequences of our oppression even worse. So until disabilities are no longer seen as an
inherently Bad Thing (which is a whole other conversation), we need to be very intentional about not
using ableist language – especially when talking about social justice. As feminists, our conversations have
to change. Common Ableist Phrases Found Within Feminist Discourse (And What to Say Instead) Despite
knowing that ableist language matters, much of the phrasing used in feminist discourse is, believe it or
not, ableist. Here are a few examples! 1. ‘They’re Blind to Their Privilege’ Not everyone is able to
recognize their privilege. And when people can’t seem to recognize it, people often say they’re “blind” to
it. In this phrase, “blind” is equated with “ignorant.” That’s not what being blind means. Blindness is a
physical condition of the eyes — it’s not a way to describe someone who lacks critical understanding.
And to continue referring to blindness in this context only furthers the stigma and misconceptions that
surround the condition and the people with it. Instead, say “They don’t recognize their privilege.” 2.
‘Falls on Deaf Ears’ This phrase is an expression for people who refuse to try to understand something
we might be explaining. It refers to people who willingly choose to ignore our perspective. This
associates deafness with unwillingness or inability to understand. Those who are d/Deaf or hard of
hearing don’t need to hear to understand! Instead, say “They refuse to understand” or “They didn’t
realize.” 3. ‘Racists (Homophobes, Misogynists, Etc.) Are Emotionally Crippled’ “Crippled” is commonly
used to describe the “brokenness” of something. Unfortunately, “crippled” has also been used as a
hurtful slur against disabled people — it describes them as broken. And disabled people are not broken.
Some disability activists are choosing to reclaim the words “crip” and “gimp.” But non-disabled feminists
cannot reclaim a slur that has not been used against them. Instead, say “Racists are assholes” or “Racists
are unable to connect with their humanity and emotions.” 4. ‘The World Has Gone Autistic’ This phrase
is trying to describe how detached or even selfish our society can be — which only serves to validate the
outrageous stigma against autistic people. Due in part to awful organizations like Autism Speaks, us
allistic individuals might believe that autism causes an inability to communicate, connect, and empathize
– but that’s just not true. Autism, while it varies in complexity, is a diversion from neurotypicality. People
on the spectrum are still human, despite what others might be saying. Instead, say “The world has
become disconnected”. 5. Other Subtle Ableist Phrasing While slurs are easier to recognize in our
phrases, we also use language that is ableist without the negative connotation. Even words that don’t
seem hurtful are used specifically to describe and set apart certain disabilities — for example, “special” is
still used to other people with intellectual disabilities. We also tend to erase disabled identities through
our language. Phrases like “Can’t you see what I mean,” “Do you hear what I’m saying,” or even
“standing in solidarity” are still exclusive. These phrases assume that everyone can actually see, hear, or
stand. This constructs a norm that a lot of us can’t perform in. How We Dehumanize Disabled People
One of the most popular ways that temporarily non-disabled allies try to show their support of disabled
people is through what’s known as “people first language.” They promise not to “put the disability
before the person” and therefore choose to say “people with disabilities” instead of “disabled people.”
And while the intent is good, the “people first language” movement relies on the fact that disabled
people are consistently not seen as human. While it’s up to the individual to decide whether or not they
identify with their disability, disabled people often face the reality that non-disabled people only identify
them as their disability. For example, to some people, I’m simply known as “the wheelchair girl.” The
people first language movement and statements like “I don’t see you as disabled” are meant to be
positive, but they just reinforce the mainstream belief that disability is dehumanizing. And when people
with disabilities are not recognized as individual human beings, we are made into props. We are seen as
“less than” and therefore deserving of only pity or charity. On the other hand, if we are not being pitied,
then we are being praised. We are seen as extraordinary and inspirational, simply because we’ve
managed to live while disabled. The late disability rights activist and comedian Stella Young calls this
common phenomenon inspiration porn. Inspiration porn is the name given to any propaganda meant to
“inspire” temporarily non-disabled people with examples of individuals with disabilities. Inspiration porn
is for the viewer’s pleasure and education. Inspiration porn reminds temporarily non-disabled people
that their lives “can’t be that bad.” As if living with a disability is the worst thing that can happen to a
person. This puts an expectation on people with disabilities to serve as educational props for temporarily
non-disabled people. It dehumanizes any person with a disability, as if our only purpose is to validate
others. Entering feminist or social justice spaces as the only — or even the first — disabled person is
common for me and many other disabled activists. And this common dehumanizing rhetoric isn’t exactly
welcoming. All it does is make it easy to tokenize or ignore people with disabilities. Intersectionality Must
Include Disability If we really want equity for all, we have to be intersectional and understand how our
own biases and our own privileges — especially when unchecked and ignored — will stop us from
achieving our ultimate goal as feminists. For example, reproductive rights are a concern for most
feminists. But disabled people continue to face additional challenges that go ignored – like inaccessible
clinics and higher risks and costs of abortions. When we advocate for reproductive rights, but ignore how
that struggle intersects with disability, we fail to achieve our goal as intersectional feminists. And we
can’t continue to ignore disability rights when the results of the continued injustices are devastating.
People with disabilities experience higher rates of hate-crimes, violence, and sexual assaults. Not only do
we have to consider disability rights in our feminist movements, we also need to recognize the
intersection of race, sexuality, class, and so on for those who are also disabled. For example, as a white
woman, I learned to appreciate mainstream feminism for working to close the wage gap so that I can get
paid the same amount as my male counterparts. However, what mainstream feminism doesn’t include is
the fact that women of color continue to make even less than me. Additionally, the substantial pay gap
for disabled employees or the fact that disabled people are half as likely to be employed goes completely
unaddressed. People of color experience higher rates of disability. Sexuality, gender identity, and gender
expression are often completely disregarded for disabled folks, as other people can’t often “see past the
disability.” People with mental health diagnoses or disabilities are ten times more likely to be
incarcerated than treated in a hospital. Feminism can’t allow these intersectional issues to be after-
thoughts or sidebars along the mainstream’s dialogue. Accessibility or Bust One way to ensure that we
aren’t ignoring disability rights is to invite disability activists in the conversation and make sure we’re
providing accessibility while doing so. There are many different types of disabilities. Even if we have the
same disability, it doesn’t mean that we use the same accommodations. We can start making our spaces
more inclusive and accessible by simply asking what accommodations we need to provide by those who
are participating. However, we can’t wait for someone with a disability to show up to make these
changes. Some things we can start to do as allies without being asked or told, like ensuring a universally
designed accessible space.
Ableism supports neoliberal institutions that use disabled individuals as huge sources
of income
Zelinger 7/15 (Julie Zeilinger: a freelance author from the Barnard College class of 2015. Mic.com: “6
Things You Must Know About The Disabilities We Can't See” published July 15 th, 2015. Accessed July 24th,
2015. http://mic.com/articles/122187/5-things-you-must-know-about-the-disabilities-we-can-t-
see)TheFedora

5. Dealing with these disabilities can be enormously expensive. Source: Wikimedia In addition to social
struggles, invisible disabilities are costly to deal with. While the Affordable Care Act requires health
insurers to provide coverage to those with pre-existing health conditions, people with disabilities still
have to shoulder costs associated with their conditions. For example, Sanders was prescribed medication
that personally cost her $500 a bottle, and only lasted 12 days. Even with two forms of medical
insurance, she paid about $5,000 of a $200,000 surgery — which was just one of three procedures she
needed. In addition to the straight financial costs the experience cost Sanders time and energy — she
spent countless hours on the phone fighting and negotiating various medical bills, she told Mic, and
perhaps detrimentally continued to work throughout her recovery because she couldn't afford not to.

Thus we demand these changes be made within summer debate institutes inorder to
make debate a more accessible place.
Dhillon 16’ [ Kiranjeet Kaur Dhillon, Ph.D Candidate, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “Accessibility &
Debate Camps”, Vol. IV: Issue III, April 2016, http://site.theforensicsfiles.com/NJSD.4-3.pdf LMcf]

Summer high debate camps play a vital role within the debate community. Every summer, members of
the CEDA/NDT community teach high school debaters throughout the country. In addition, members of
the CEDA/NDT community run these debate camps. Given the connection between CEDA/NDT members
and summer debate camps and that high school debaters may become or think about becoming
CEDA/NDT members after they graduate from high school, it is important that accessibility is discussed
and implemented in these spaces. Furthermore, some may argue that the primary purpose of summer
camps at intercollegiate CEDA/NDT schools is to pay for the CEDA/NDT’s school travel during the year
based on what camps earn during the summer. However, summer camps have an ethical responsibility to
ensure all spaces facilitate the health and safety of all campers. In order to do so effectively, camps
should consider the following six suggestions to begin to move towards accessibility within summer
debate camps. First, camps should brainstorm and develop accessibility guidelines/policies. Then camps
should ensure accessibility polices are viewable (perhaps a link on a camp webpage) to campers, their
parent(s)/guardian(s), their coaches, and all summer staff. One example of establishing published
accessibility guidelines is the proposal for CEDA hosting accessibility guidelines.12 Second, camps should
include space on their application that allows for campers to disclose their accessibility needs, if they so
chose. Furthermore, camps should also include language that informs campers that disclosure of
accessibility needs will not hinder them from being considered into their desired summer program.
Third, similar to harassment and/or diversity training at higher education institutions, camps should
require all summer debate staff to undergo a mandatory training/meeting in accessibility resources and
services. Part of this training should inform all staff members that, while campers are provided space on
their applications to disclose any disability or accessibility needs, many may choose not to. As a result, all
staff members should be prepared to professionally address disability and accessibility needs as they
arise. Fourth, camps should hire a staff member whose sole responsibility is to supervise and coordinate
a quiet room for campers. Supervision is important because high school debaters are minors whom
camps assume responsibility for while campers are away from their parent(s)/guardian(s). Fifth, camps
should coordinate with professional counselors with whom campers can see and speak to. Counselors
may be sought either through a non-profit or may be associated with the university. Sixth, camps should
hire at least one accessibility coordinator who is responsible for arranging any necessary appointments,
coordination with parent(s)/guardian(s), accessibility of food, and other accessibility concerns. Some
requirements for being an accessibility coordinator may include knowledge in mental health studies,
disability studies, and accessibility. If possible, camps should hire two accessibility coordinators (a day
accessibility coordinator and an evening accessibility coordinator).

Backdoor reform is key to solve, not abolishment – their evidence

Burger et al 14

(Eric, Research Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown, L. Jean Camp, Associate professor at the
Indiana University School of Information and Computing, Dan Lubar, Emerging Standards Consultant at
RelayServices, Jon M Pesha, Carnegie Mellon University, Terry Davis, MicroSystems Automation Group,
“Risking It All: Unlocking the Backdoor to the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” IEEE USA, 7/20/2014, pg. 1-5,
Social Science Research Network, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
abstract_id=2468604)//duncan

This paper addresses government policies that can influence commercial practices to weaken security in
products and services sold on the commercial market. The debate on information surveillance for
national security must include consideration of the potential cybersecurity risks and economic
implications of the information collection strategies employed. As IEEE-USA, we write to comment on
current discussions with respect to weakening standards, or altering commercial products and services
for intelligence, or law enforcement. Any policy that seeks to weaken technology sold on the commercial
market has many serious downsides, even if it temporarily advances the intelligence and law
enforcement missions of facilitating legal and authorized government surveillance.∂ Specifically, we
define and address the risks of installing backdoors in commercial products, introducing malware and
spyware into products, and weakening standards. We illustrate that these are practices that harm
America’s cybersecurity posture and put the resilience of American cyberinfrastructure at risk. We write
as a technical society to clarify the potential harm should these strategies be adopted. Whether or not
these strategies ever have been used in practice is outside the scope of this paper.∂ Individual computer
users, large corporations and government agencies all depend on security features built into information
technology products and services they buy on the commercial market. If the security features of these
widely available products and services are weak, everyone is in greater danger. There recently have been
allegations that U.S. government agencies (and some private entities) have engaged in a number of
activities deliberately intended to weaken mass market, widely used technology. Weakening commercial
products and services does have the benefit that it becomes easier for U.S. intelligence agencies to
conduct surveillance on targets that use the weakened technology, and more information is available for
law enforcement purposes. On the surface, it would appear these motivations would be reasonable.
However, such strategies also inevitably make it easier for foreign powers, criminals and terrorists to
infiltrate these systems for their own purposes. Moreover, everyone who uses backdoor technologies
may be vulnerable, and not just the handful of surveillance targets for U.S. intelligence agencies. It is the
opinion of IEEE-USA’s Committee on Communications Policy that no entity should act to reduce the
security of a product or service sold on the commercial market without first conducting a careful and
methodical risk assessment. A complete risk assessment would consider the interests of the large swath
of users of the technology who are not the intended targets of government surveillance.∂ A methodical
risk assessment would give proper weight to the asymmetric nature of cyberthreats, given that
technology is equally advanced and ubiquitous in the United States, and the locales of many of our
adversaries. Vulnerable products should be corrected, as needed, based on this assessment. The next
section briefly describes some of the government policies and technical strategies that might have the
undesired side effect of reducing security. The following section discusses why the effect of these
practices may be a decrease, not an increase, in security.∂ Government policies can affect greatly the
security of commercial products, either positively or negatively. There are a number of methods by
which a government might affect security negatively as a means of facilitating legal government
surveillance. One inexpensive method is to exploit pre-existing weaknesses that are already present in
commercial software, while keeping these weaknesses a secret. Another method is to motivate the
designer of a computer or communications system to make those systems easier for government
agencies to access. Motivation may come from direct mandate or financial incentives. There are many
ways that a designer can facilitate government access once so motivated. For example, the system may
be equipped with a “backdoor.” The company that creates it — and, presumably, the government agency
that requests it — would “know” the backdoor, but not the product’s (or service’s) purchaser(s). The
hope is that the government agency will use this feature when it is given authority to do so, but no one
else will. However, creating a backdoor introduces the risk that other parties will find the vulnerability,
especially when capable adversaries, who are actively seeking security vulnerabilities, know how to
leverage such weaknesses.∂ History illustrates that secret backdoors do not remain secret and that the
more widespread a backdoor, the more dangerous its existence. The 1988 Morris worm, the first
widespread Internet attack, used a number of backdoors to infect systems and spread widely. The
backdoors in that case were a set of secrets then known only by a small, highly technical community. A
single, putatively innocent error resulted in a large-scale attack that disabled many systems. In recent
years, Barracuda had a completely undocumented backdoor that allowed high levels of access from the
Internet addresses assigned to Barracuda. However, when it was publicized, as almost inevitably
happens, it became extremely unsafe, and Barracuda’s customers rejected it.∂ One example of how
attackers can subvert backdoors placed into systems for benign reasons occurred in the network of the
largest commercial cellular operator in Greece. Switches deployed in the system came equipped with
built-in wiretapping features, intended only for authorized law enforcement agencies. Some unknown
attacker was able to install software, and made use of these embedded wiretapping features to
surreptitiously and illegally eavesdrop on calls from many cell phones — including phones belonging to
the Prime Minister of Greece, a hundred high-ranking Greek dignitaries, and an employee of the U.S.
Embassy in Greece before the security breach finally was discovered. In essence, a backdoor created to
fight crime was used to commit crime.
Backdoor reform is key to solve, not abolishment
Burger et al 14

(Eric, Research Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown, L. Jean Camp, Associate professor at the
Indiana University School of Information and Computing, Dan Lubar, Emerging Standards Consultant at
RelayServices, Jon M Pesha, Carnegie Mellon University, Terry Davis, MicroSystems Automation Group,
“Risking It All: Unlocking the Backdoor to the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” IEEE USA, 7/20/2014, pg. 1-5,
Social Science Research Network, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
abstract_id=2468604)//duncan

This paper addresses government policies that can influence commercial practices to weaken security in
products and services sold on the commercial market. The debate on information surveillance for
national security must include consideration of the potential cybersecurity risks and economic
implications of the information collection strategies employed. As IEEE-USA, we write to comment on
current discussions with respect to weakening standards, or altering commercial products and services
for intelligence, or law enforcement. Any policy that seeks to weaken technology sold on the commercial
market has many serious downsides, even if it temporarily advances the intelligence and law
enforcement missions of facilitating legal and authorized government surveillance.∂ Specifically, we
define and address the risks of installing backdoors in commercial products, introducing malware and
spyware into products, and weakening standards. We illustrate that these are practices that harm
America’s cybersecurity posture and put the resilience of American cyberinfrastructure at risk. We write
as a technical society to clarify the potential harm should these strategies be adopted. Whether or not
these strategies ever have been used in practice is outside the scope of this paper.∂ Individual computer
users, large corporations and government agencies all depend on security features built into information
technology products and services they buy on the commercial market. If the security features of these
widely available products and services are weak, everyone is in greater danger. There recently have been
allegations that U.S. government agencies (and some private entities) have engaged in a number of
activities deliberately intended to weaken mass market, widely used technology. Weakening commercial
products and services does have the benefit that it becomes easier for U.S. intelligence agencies to
conduct surveillance on targets that use the weakened technology, and more information is available for
law enforcement purposes. On the surface, it would appear these motivations would be reasonable.
However, such strategies also inevitably make it easier for foreign powers, criminals and terrorists to
infiltrate these systems for their own purposes. Moreover, everyone who uses backdoor technologies
may be vulnerable, and not just the handful of surveillance targets for U.S. intelligence agencies. It is the
opinion of IEEE-USA’s Committee on Communications Policy that no entity should act to reduce the
security of a product or service sold on the commercial market without first conducting a careful and
methodical risk assessment. A complete risk assessment would consider the interests of the large swath
of users of the technology who are not the intended targets of government surveillance.∂ A methodical
risk assessment would give proper weight to the asymmetric nature of cyberthreats, given that
technology is equally advanced and ubiquitous in the United States, and the locales of many of our
adversaries. Vulnerable products should be corrected, as needed, based on this assessment. The next
section briefly describes some of the government policies and technical strategies that might have the
undesired side effect of reducing security. The following section discusses why the effect of these
practices may be a decrease, not an increase, in security.∂ Government policies can affect greatly the
security of commercial products, either positively or negatively. There are a number of methods by
which a government might affect security negatively as a means of facilitating legal government
surveillance. One inexpensive method is to exploit pre-existing weaknesses that are already present in
commercial software, while keeping these weaknesses a secret. Another method is to motivate the
designer of a computer or communications system to make those systems easier for government
agencies to access. Motivation may come from direct mandate or financial incentives. There are many
ways that a designer can facilitate government access once so motivated. For example, the system may
be equipped with a “backdoor.” The company that creates it — and, presumably, the government agency
that requests it — would “know” the backdoor, but not the product’s (or service’s) purchaser(s). The
hope is that the government agency will use this feature when it is given authority to do so, but no one
else will. However, creating a backdoor introduces the risk that other parties will find the vulnerability,
especially when capable adversaries, who are actively seeking security vulnerabilities, know how to
leverage such weaknesses.∂ History illustrates that secret backdoors do not remain secret and that the
more widespread a backdoor, the more dangerous its existence. The 1988 Morris worm, the first
widespread Internet attack, used a number of backdoors to infect systems and spread widely. The
backdoors in that case were a set of secrets then known only by a small, highly technical community. A
single, putatively innocent error resulted in a large-scale attack that disabled many systems. In recent
years, Barracuda had a completely undocumented backdoor that allowed high levels of access from the
Internet addresses assigned to Barracuda. However, when it was publicized, as almost inevitably
happens, it became extremely unsafe, and Barracuda’s customers rejected it.∂ One example of how
attackers can subvert backdoors placed into systems for benign reasons occurred in the network of the
largest commercial cellular operator in Greece. Switches deployed in the system came equipped with
built-in wiretapping features, intended only for authorized law enforcement agencies. Some unknown
attacker was able to install software, and made use of these embedded wiretapping features to
surreptitiously and illegally eavesdrop on calls from many cell phones — including phones belonging to
the Prime Minister of Greece, a hundred high-ranking Greek dignitaries, and an employee of the U.S.
Embassy in Greece before the security breach finally was discovered. In essence, a backdoor created to
fight crime was used to commit crime.

We must actively reject ableism and confront abled privilege – ableism shapes our
assumptions and understanding of the world, dehumanizing those lacking privilege.
Phillips 15 – Kiah Phillips, contributor to Respectfully Connected, a blog that focuses on ableism and
emphasizes neurodiversity, 2015 (“So, What is Ableism?”, Respectfully Connected, February 27, Available
Online at http://respectfullyconnected.blogspot.com/2015/02/so-what-is-ableism.html, accessed
7/21/15, KM)

Ableism is a form of discrimination or prejudice against individuals with physical, mental, or

developmental disabilities that is characterized by the belief that these individuals need to be fixed or
cannot function as full members of society (Castañeda & Peters, 2000). As a result of these
assumptions, individuals with disabilities are commonly viewed as being abnormal rather than as
members of a distinct minority community (Olkin & Pledger, 2003; Reid & Knight, 2006). Because
disability status has been viewed as a defect rather than a dimension of difference, disability has not
been widely recognized as a multicultural concern by the general public as well as by counselor
educators and practitioners. Laura Smith, Pamela F. Foley, and Michael P. Chaney, “Addressing Classism,
Ableism, and Heterosexism in Counselor Education”, Journal of Counseling & Development, Summer
2008, Volume 86, pp 303-309. When our boy was first diagnosed as autistic, I had never heard the term
"Ableism". I have to be honest, I probably still didn't hear it until well beyond the first anniversary of that
day. I had no idea of just how much this concept, this idea, this reality was going to coincide with our
boy's life then - and to a lesser but still significant extent, our lives as parents too, for very different
reasons of course. However, once my thinking shifted from the pathology perspective; common among
most professional "experts" and vast numbers of parents, to the neurodiversity model, I began to
recognise the degree to which the thinking of many neurotypical people revels in the inherent
discrimination, prejudice and privilege of ableism. These same people would be aghast at comments
containing racism, sexism or homophobia as but three examples, yet when it comes to ableism,
somehow there is a collective societal blind spot - or so it would seem. So what is going on here? Could
it really be that people simply do not know what ableism is? - at least in the sense that they don't see it
as obviously as they would other forms of discrimination, or are people aware and as a society, we
willfully turn our heads in ignorance the way we used to in relation to discrimination in other areas such
as race or sexuality? In other words, is this an issue of recognition or willful ignorance? For me
personally, I have to own it; I was painfully ignorant of the issues facing people with disabilities but I
cannot ignore the fact that I also carried a privilege that I was not even aware of: I am neurotypical and
in a society where (currently) the majority is neurotypical and all infrastructure and societal norms fit
around that majority, which means I have advantages conferred upon me that I do not have to think
about, hence - to some extent - my lack of awareness. That makes my life easier - and even possible, in
some instances. These are things that a person with a different neurological make-up, such as autism,
cannot take for granted. Every institution of society is based around a neurology that differs from theirs
and this places them at an immediate disadvantage. You might think, well, autistic people should just try
to fit in, or that society has a right to expect all people to conform to the socially acceptable ways of
behaving, socially acceptable values or ideas of what a successful, "functioning" person looks like. If you
do, either by accidental default or by willful ignorance, you are exhibiting ableism. Just as I used to,
before my beautiful boy opened my eyes and tore open my mind and my heart. When was the last time
someone insisted on using functioning labels in a conversation with you about a person who is autistic?
How often have you heard "experts" claim that autistics must be able to pass as indistinguishable from
their neurotypical peers? How often have you heard it said that autistics must not engage in self-
stimulatory behaviour because it makes them stand out? What about repetitive actions or "hyper-focus
on a specific interest"? I know that you'll have heard people tell you that this prevents the autistic person
from functioning. I know that I have. But break it down......please; Functioning as what? Because as far as
I understand it, an autistic whom is engaging in those self-regulatory actions, is functioning well as an
autistic person, which is who they are, after all is said and done. But wait - the assumption is that the
goal is to function as closely to neurotypical as possible, right? To fit into the society that is established
around the normative values of it's majority? You see I have an issue with that right there; because that
is ableism. There are many variations on this theme. I read commentary constantly where parents
concern themselves that their autistic child may never marry and have children; that they may not
achieve financial success (whatever that means) or have a career. Aside from the fact that many autistic
people do, despite all obstacles, meet those measures of success, there are many people with a
neurotypical neurology who do not. I wonder why there is a generally held assumption that an autistic
person only meets with deemed success when they are able to pass as a neurotypical person or adopt
the values of a society whose majority does not speak for them? The undercurrent of every
conversation that involves autistic people needing to be fixed, to fit in, to be cured, to be avoided in
the first place, to engage in normative behaviour, to not perseverate on specific interests, to change
who they are, is underpinned by the ableist assumption that to be neurotypical is better, that
neurological variance is "less than". Less than what? Let me try that another way, if you will: how would
it sit with you if I said that women were less valuable than men? That Asian people were better than
Europeans? That homosexual people should be forced to marry into heterosexual couplings? You see the
nonsense - not to mention the outrage that these views would cause? Yet I can be told that my beautiful
child should be everything that he is not and cannot ever be (without destroying himself in the process) -
and scant few of my neurotypical brethren are here to pick up the mantle of outrage and demand
change. I ask myself: Is it because they are willfully looking the other way? But you. I am hoping that
you, you will stand with me.

Objectivism is patently ableist.

Breslin 14 Joseph Breslin, staff writer at the Washington Times, December 31, 2014, “Ayn Rand: The
good, bad & obscene or why objectivism is flawed”,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/31/ayn-rand-good-bad-obscene-or-why-objectivism-
flawe/

Finally, it should be quite obvious that in all societies, a substantial number of individuals are in no
position to look after their own self interest. Infants, children, many of the elderly and the physically and
mentally infirm—the latter whom Rand called “subnormal” and “ungifted”—cannot look after their own
rational self interest. They require others to sacrifice their own freedom and apparent self-
actualization. Moreover, every human being must exist, at some point in his life, i n a state of
dependency upon the care of others. Even Ayn Rand was a child at one time. * Now an Objectivist can
avoid this issue by pointing out that there are some who will take care of these people because they
happen to find it fulfilling, but exactly what he cannot say is that such people, simply in virtue of being
people, merit or are owed such care. Therein lays the secret monstrosity of Rand’s philosophy. It is with
this sort of thing in mind that Whitaker Chambers, in his famous review of Atlas Shrugged quipped:
“From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To
a gas chamber — go!” Rand, reacting against the aggressive collectivism of our day, which treats every
individual person as a mere fungus, a mere node of the Great Organism called Society , preached an
individualism that is just as anti-personal.

Curtail cannot abolish

Supreme Court of Connecticut 85

(IN RE JUVENILE APPEAL (85-AB), Lexis)

1. In an attempt to suggest that the statutory right to a private hearing under General Statutes § 46b-122
is not really nullified by their opinion, the majority points to General Statutes § 46b-124. While
recognizing, as they must, that their position does result in publicity, they nevertheless argue that § 46b-
124 by prohibiting disclosure of records and proceedings in juvenile matters does "curtail the additional
publicity that a public trial would generate." Two points should be made to counter this "justification."
First, as one court said: "[I]n common parlance, or in law composition, the word `curtail' has no such
meaning as `abolish.'" State v. Edwards, 207 La. 506, 511, 21 So.2d 624 (1945). Rather, it means "`to cut
off the end, or any part, of; hence to shorten; abridge; diminish; lessen; reduce.'" Id. Second, the
statutory right to a private hearing in § 46b-122 does not talk at all in terms of relativity, of something is
to be diminished, lessened or reduced. It confers a right that is not to be diluted, let alone nullified.

Repeal means to abolish, this is in the context of law

Merriam-Webster No Date (Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, is an American company
that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries, Repeal synonyms, http://www.merriam-
webster.com/thesaurus/repeal)

Repeal¶ noun¶ Synonyms and Antonyms of REPEAL the doing away with something by formal action
<the repeal of Prohibition during Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term>¶ Synonyms abatement,
abolishment, abrogation, annulment, avoidance, cancellation (also cancelation), defeasance, dissolution,
invalidation, negation, nullification, quashing, repeal, rescindment, voiding

Use the ballot to reject ableist rhetoric in every instance

Cherney, Wayne State University, 11

[James, 2011, Disabilities Study Quarterly, “The Rhetoric of Ableism”, Vol. 31 No. 3, http://dsq-
sds.org/article/view/1665/1606, Accessed 7-5-14, CX]

If we locate the problem in disability, then the ableist absolves his or her responsibility for discrimination
and may not even recognize its presence. If we locate the problem in ableism, then the ableist must
question her or his orientation. The critic's task is to make ableism so apparent and irredeemable that
one cannot practice it without incurring social castigation. This requires substantial vigilance, for
ableist thinking pervades the culture. For example, as I write this, I am tempted to use medical
metaphors to explain the task and script something like "we cannot simply excise the tumor of ableism
and heal the culture, for it has metastasized and infiltrated every organ of society." Yet this metaphor
relies on an ableist perspective that motivates with the fear of death and turns to medical solutions to
repair a body in decay. Using it, I would endorse and perpetuate ableist rhetoric, just as I would by using
deafness as a metaphor for obstinacy ("Marie was deaf to their pleas for bread") or blindness to convey
ignorance ("George turned a blind eye to global warming"). The pervasiveness of these and similar
metaphors, like the cultural ubiquity of using images of disabled bodies to inspire pity, suggest the
scale of the work ahead, and the ease with which one can resort to using them warns of the need for
critical evaluation of one's own rhetoric. Yet the task can be accomplished. Just as feminists have
changed Western culture by naming and promoting recognition of sexism, the glass ceiling, and
patriarchy—admittedly a work in progress, yet also one that can celebrate remarkable achievements—
we can reform ableist culture by using rhetoric to craft awareness and political action.

The word “hysterical” is both sexist and ableist

Jean, Disabled Feminists writer, 09
[Abby, 10-13-09, Forward, “Ableist Word Profile: Hysterical”,
http://disabledfeminists.com/2009/10/13/ableist-word-profile-hysterical/, Accessed 7-6-14, CX]

Today’s word: hysterical. There are a lot of different contemporary definitions of the word (Merriam-
Webster, Cambridge, Encarta), but the theme among all of them is emotions that are extreme and
unmanageable. A movie described as hysterically funny is likely funnier than most and may cause you to
laugh uncontrollably and snort soda out your nose. Someone at a funeral who is crying loudly and who
cannot seem to stop crying would likely be described as crying hysterically. But while your mental picture
of the movie-goer laughing hysterically could have been either a man or a woman, the person hysterical
with grief or worry is much more likely to be a woman than a man. That’s no accident – the history of
this term is very gendered.

The word itself is derived from the Latin word hystericus, meaning “of the womb,” and from the Greek
word hysterikos, meaning “of the womb, suffering in the womb,” from the Greek word hystera, meaning
“womb.” And they understood the uterus to be the direct cause of hysteria. As Hannah S. Decker writes,
“Various ancient Greek philosophers and physicians, including Plato, had argued that the uterus is an
independent entity within a woman’s body… these thinkers concluded that the uterus had an ardent
desire to create children. If the womb remained empty for long after the owner’s puberty, it became
unhappy and angry and began to travel through the body. In its wanderings it pressed against various
bodily organs, creating “hysterical” — that is, uterus-related — symptoms.”

So when someone on a blog tells me to chill out because it sounds like I’m hysterical about an issue, the
etymological meaning is that my failure to put a baby in my uterus (which has independent will and
agency inside my body) has caused it to become angry, loose itself from its mooring, and start floating
around inside of my body until it bangs into my brain and starts making me unreasonably upset.

There’s also a strong historical tradition of labeling women as “hysterical” in order to silence,
marginalize, or even kill them. During the Roman Catholic inquisitions, thousands of European women
were tortured and burnt as witches because they were thought to show signs of hysteria. But it was
during the Nineteenth Century that things really got going. Some doctors considered the force of the
uterus so powerful that it might overcome the brain and cause a woman to have pathological sexual
feelings, “requiring” the physicians to “medically manipulate” the genitals in order to release the woman
from control of her uterus. Yes, you read that right, the doctors were obligated to fondle their patients
sexually for their own medical good. Conveniently, both mental or emotional distress and any physical
symptom could be an indication of a woman’s hysteria, so doctors could diagnose literally any woman as
hysterical.

Once hysterical women were no longer burned at the stake, the most common treatment was to send
them to bed or to an asylum to prevent any activity or thought that would inflame their hysteria. This
was an extremely effective way to marginalize or silence women, as any protest that she was not
hysterical would be seen as conclusive proof that the diagnosis of hysteria had been correct. This meant,
practically, that any woman categorized as hysterical was forever silenced and lost all credibility.

That’s a whole big mess of etymology and history, so let’s unpack that a bit. When I am told I am
hysterical, there is both 1) the implication that I am excessively or unreasonably emotional AND 2) the
implication that my condition is unique to my femaleness. It’s also 3) implied that hysterical
statements (or even statements from hysterical people) should be discounted and hysterical people
need to change in order to participate in the discussion, or should be removed from it entirely. Now
let’s look at each one of those individually.

The first is a criticism of and dismissal of my personal emotions based on the observer’s judgment on
whether they conform to what “normal” or “reasonable” emotions would be for that situation. The idea
of “extremeness” is built into every definition of the word, implying that there is an assumed agreed-
upon “normal” range for emotions. In the past, that likely meant “emotions acceptable to white men
with money.” Currently, though, the idea is strikingly parallel to current definitions of mental disabilities
and mental health diagnoses in the DSM-IV, which require that a specific set of symptoms “must cause
significant impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning” in order for a person to
meet diagnostic criteria. This means that thee idea of emotions that are outside the “normal” range of
experience to the degree that they affect a person’s function is the very definition of mental illness. So
the accusation of “hysteria,” with the implication that the hysterical person has abnormally extreme
emotions, is very clearly an accusation of mental illness. And remember part 3 — the conclusion that a
hysterical person (or a person with a mental disability, by equivalency) should be discounted in
discussions because of their hysteria/disability. THAT IS ABLEIST.

But that’s not all. The other implication of the term is that this over-emotional condition is a uniquely
female condition and is caused directly by female reproductive organs being sad about not having a
baby. While that’s not literally how it’s meant today, it still feels like a slightly nicer way of saying “you’re
just upset because it’s that time of the month,” another way to marginalize and dismiss females based
explicitly on their femaleness. It’s a way to say “that sounds like something a woman would say when
she’s being super woman-y and influenced by being a woman.” And again, this is assumed to be a reason
to discount the information or perspective offered and to exclude that person from the conversation.
THAT IS SEXIST.

And here’s where the intersectionality comes in. Hysterical is a handy dandy insta-dismissal that slams
two marginalized groups at the same time – and it only works because to be related to either group is
considered to make you lesser. It also means that this word, with its invocation of both ableism and
sexism, is particularly sharp when aimed at women with disabilities. That’s why arguments like “It’s
sexist because it makes all women sound like crazies! Who’d want to be a crazy!” are extremely
problematic – not only does the word rely on both sexism and ableism, it relies on the interaction
between those two axes of oppression to be a super strong word.
 Baudrillard
Baudrillard’s discourse is rooted in a fear of the other.
Aaron Schwabach (2003) Kosovo, Law & Literature, 15:1, 1-21,Aaron Schwabach Professor of Law
J.D., University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall); B.A., Antioch College

The word “Oriental” in this context has an odd ring to American ears. To Americans “Oriental” is an
outmoded term once used to refer to the countries, cultures, inhabitants, and artifacts of East
Asia. To Europeans in general, however, and to the French in particular, the term refers to what
Americans generally still refer to as the Middle East. And to academics everywhere the word
inevitably suggests the work of Edward Said.34 Orientalism was at one time the term used in
European universities for the study of the countries of the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, South
and East Asia. The European “Orientalists”—writers and academics—created an image of the
“Orient” in the European popular consciousness bearing only occasional resemblance to the original:
a perfect Baudrillardian simulacrum except for the fact that it was largely constructed before the days
of television, relying almost exclusively on the medium of print. Said uses the term “Orientalism” to
refer not only to the academic discipline but also to the simulacral Orient created by it: a textual
Orient.35 He describes the creations of the Orientalists as “highly stylized simulacra, elaborately
wrought imitations of what a live Orient might be thought to look like. To an American, perhaps, it
may seem especially bizarre that a resident of France would repeatedly insist on the Otherness of
Arabs and Islam. 37 France, after all, is a diverse and pluralistic democracy with nearly two million
Muslims among its fifty-nine million inhabitants.38 In 1992, 1.72 million Muslims lived in France,
making Muslims more than twice as numerous there as Protestants;39 this number included
614,207 Algerians and 572,652 Moroccans.40 Many of these persons, of course, are French
citizens. Perhaps it is these he is thinking of when he says, “The Arabs: there where they should not
be (immigrants) . . .” To a resident of a country where even conservative standardbearers extol the
benefits of immigration41 it may be difficult to understand the assumption that immigrants “should
not be” there.42 On the other hand, my bafflement and, indeed, disgust at the racism contained in
this assumption may only prove Baudrillard’s point that “[T]he Americans . . . cannot imagine the
Other, nor therefore personally make war upon it.”43 In this thought Baudrillard echoes the earlier
words of Said: “Unlike the Americans, the French and the British . . . have had a long tradition of
what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the
Orient’s special place in European Western experience.”44 The Orient, Said concludes, is the
source of one of Europe ’s “deepest and most recurring images of the Other.”45 It does not hold a
similar place in the American worldview. Baudrillard, however, is unable to free himself from the
Orientalism his culture has inculcated in him, and therefore is insistent on the Otherness of Arabs
and Islam. He conflates the two terms, and draws no distinction between largely Arab Iraq and non-
Arab Iran. The goal of the West is to meet “the challenge of Islam, with its irreducible and dangerous
alterity.”46 The “refractory forces on the planet” include “Islam in its entirety.”47 Of course,
Baudrillard apparently disapproves of these aims, and of those who would see Islam as the Other.
But the mere fact that he imputes this belief to others suggests that he sees Islam in this way—as
Other in its entirety—and tells us more about the author than about those he addresses. From an
American perspective, at least, this insistence is bizarre. Baudrillard’s “uncontrollable elements”
include, among others, the 1.72 million Muslims of France, many of whom must be Mr. Baudrillard’s
neighbors, colleagues and, at one time, students. Many, born in France, are every bit as French as
Mr. Baudrillard himself.48 Throughout this work, as indeed in all his work, Baudrillard affects an air of
cynical detachment, as if prepared to sneer at any reader foolish enough to take him seriously or to
believe that he actually means the outrageous things that he says. But racism, even affected racism,
causes real damage. Baudrillard, despite his rejection of everything up to and including reality, is
evidently a product of his time and his culture: As Said points out, France has played a greater role
than any country (with the possible exception of the United Kingdom) in the development of
Orientalism.49 But Islam and its adherents are not the only Others here. The Americans, those
“missionar[ies] bearing electroshocks”50 serve equally as signifiers or at least exemplars of
everything that is un-French. Seen in this way, the book becomes nothing more than the
curmudgeonly and xenophobic rant of a cranky old French person dismayed to find his country
embroiled in a conflict between two equally despised sets of foreigners. Baudrillard’s unquestioning
acceptance of a Eurocentric and even racist value system is not all that surprising in light of the
obvious consequences of his thinking. An obvious extension of the argument that the Gulf War did
not take place, or did not take place in any meaningful way, is that the Holocaust did not take place,
nor did the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda or the Balkans. The latter two had not occurred at the
time of Baudrillard’s writing, of course. The former, though, was an outgrowth of the same intellectual
tradition as Baudrillard’s self-conscious bourgeois nihilism; Pol Pot (then Saloth Sar) and Sary Ieng
(then Kim Trang) acquired much of their ideology, including Andre Malraux’s doctrine of necessary
violence, at the Sorbonne.51 It would be unkind to conclude from this that the principal export of
French universities is bad ideas. It might be even less kind to expand upon this idea, taking
colonialism, communism, fascism, Orientalism and various other isms into account, and conclude
that the principal export of Europe is bad ideas. It thus comes as something of a relief to find that
some of Baudrillard’s numerous critics consider that he has nothing of value to contribute: In fact, his
thought does not develop at all. He is simply an aphorist who seized upon half a dozen borrowed
concepts twenty-odd years ago and has rung changes on them ever since. Thus it is both frustrating
and deceptive to seek progressive modulations between one text and another. They are all basically
one book, and any fifty consecutive pages of Baudrillard are essentially the whole of Baudrillard.52
More recently, the United States has found itself involved in a postmodern conflict of another sort:
One in which there is no clearly defined “enemy.” For most of us, the war is defined by simulacra: the
videos, endlessly repeated, of the hijacked airliner crashing into the south tower of the World Trade
Center, and the videos of the towers collapsing. We have seen these images so many times, woven
into so many different commentaries (each a creative work in itself ) in so many media, that the
original event may be difficult to distinguish from the precessing simulacra. But it is not impossible to
distinguish. To dismiss the underlying reality (and horror) of the event, as Baudrillard does with the
Gulf War, is facile, meaningless, and morally empty. Real people died; real people continue to suffer
as a result. The concept of simulacrum is useful for understanding the relationship between events
and experience, but simulacra, even those generated by a single event, are not necessarily
symmetrical. Simulacral or not, the experience of war by TV viewers is not the same as the
experience of war by its participants and victims. While the war may not have taken place for Jean
Baudrillard, and even less so for me, for example (I didn’t even watch it on television), it definitely
took place for the Iraqis, Kuwaitis, Palestinians, Saudi Arabians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans and
others involved.
Baudrillard’s discourse is rooted in a fear of the other.
Aaron Schwabach (2003) Kosovo, Law & Literature, 15:1, 1-21,Aaron Schwabach Professor of Law J.D.,
University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall); B.A., Antioch College

The word “Oriental” in this context has an odd ring to American ears. To Americans “Oriental” is an
outmoded term once used to refer to the countries, cultures, inhabitants, and artifacts of East Asia. To
Europeans in general, however, and to the French in particular, the term refers to what Americans
generally still refer to as the Middle East. And to academics everywhere the word inevitably suggests the
work of Edward Said.34 Orientalism was at one time the term used in European universities for the study
of the countries of the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, South and East Asia. The European
“Orientalists”—writers and academics—created an image of the “Orient” in the European popular
consciousness bearing only occasional resemblance to the original: a perfect Baudrillardian simulacrum
except for the fact that it was largely constructed before the days of television, relying almost exclusively
on the medium of print. Said uses the term “Orientalism” to refer not only to the academic discipline but
also to the simulacral Orient created by it: a textual Orient.35 He describes the creations of the
Orientalists as “highly stylized simulacra, elaborately wrought imitations of what a live Orient might be
thought to look like. To an American, perhaps, it may seem especially bizarre that a resident of France
would repeatedly insist on the Otherness of Arabs and Islam. 37 France, after all, is a diverse and
pluralistic democracy with nearly two million Muslims among its fifty-nine million inhabitants.38 In 1992,
1.72 million Muslims lived in France, making Muslims more than twice as numerous there as
Protestants;39 this number included 614,207 Algerians and 572,652 Moroccans.40 Many of these
persons, of course, are French citizens. Perhaps it is these he is thinking of when he says, “The Arabs:
there where they should not be (immigrants) . . .” To a resident of a country where even conservative
standardbearers extol the benefits of immigration41 it may be difficult to understand the assumption
that immigrants “should not be” there.42 On the other hand, my bafflement and, indeed, disgust at the
racism contained in this assumption may only prove Baudrillard’s point that “[T]he Americans . . . cannot
imagine the Other, nor therefore personally make war upon it.”43 In this thought Baudrillard echoes the
earlier words of Said: “Unlike the Americans, the French and the British . . . have had a long tradition of
what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s
special place in European Western experience.”44 The Orient, Said concludes, is the source of one of
Europe ’s “deepest and most recurring images of the Other.”45 It does not hold a similar place in the
American worldview. Baudrillard, however, is unable to free himself from the Orientalism his culture has
inculcated in him, and therefore is insistent on the Otherness of Arabs and Islam. He conflates the two
terms, and draws no distinction between largely Arab Iraq and non-Arab Iran. The goal of the West is to
meet “the challenge of Islam, with its irreducible and dangerous alterity.”46 The “refractory forces on
the planet” include “Islam in its entirety.”47 Of course, Baudrillard apparently disapproves of these aims,
and of those who would see Islam as the Other. But the mere fact that he imputes this belief to others
suggests that he sees Islam in this way—as Other in its entirety—and tells us more about the author
than about those he addresses. From an American perspective, at least, this insistence is bizarre.
Baudrillard’s “uncontrollable elements” include, among others, the 1.72 million Muslims of France, many
of whom must be Mr. Baudrillard’s neighbors, colleagues and, at one time, students. Many, born in
France, are every bit as French as Mr. Baudrillard himself.48 Throughout this work, as indeed in all his
work, Baudrillard affects an air of cynical detachment, as if prepared to sneer at any reader foolish
enough to take him seriously or to believe that he actually means the outrageous things that he says. But
racism, even affected racism, causes real damage. Baudrillard, despite his rejection of everything up to
and including reality, is evidently a product of his time and his culture: As Said points out, France has
played a greater role than any country (with the possible exception of the United Kingdom) in the
development of Orientalism.49 But Islam and its adherents are not the only Others here. The Americans,
those “missionar[ies] bearing electroshocks”50 serve equally as signifiers or at least exemplars of
everything that is un-French. Seen in this way, the book becomes nothing more than the curmudgeonly
and xenophobic rant of a cranky old French person dismayed to find his country embroiled in a conflict
between two equally despised sets of foreigners. Baudrillard’s unquestioning acceptance of a
Eurocentric and even racist value system is not all that surprising in light of the obvious consequences of
his thinking. An obvious extension of the argument that the Gulf War did not take place, or did not take
place in any meaningful way, is that the Holocaust did not take place, nor did the genocides in Cambodia,
Rwanda or the Balkans. The latter two had not occurred at the time of Baudrillard’s writing, of course.
The former, though, was an outgrowth of the same intellectual tradition as Baudrillard’s self-conscious
bourgeois nihilism; Pol Pot (then Saloth Sar) and Sary Ieng (then Kim Trang) acquired much of their
ideology, including Andre Malraux’s doctrine of necessary violence, at the Sorbonne.51 It would be
unkind to conclude from this that the principal export of French universities is bad ideas. It might be
even less kind to expand upon this idea, taking colonialism, communism, fascism, Orientalism and
various other isms into account, and conclude that the principal export of Europe is bad ideas. It thus
comes as something of a relief to find that some of Baudrillard’s numerous critics consider that he has
nothing of value to contribute: In fact, his thought does not develop at all. He is simply an aphorist who
seized upon half a dozen borrowed concepts twenty-odd years ago and has rung changes on them ever
since. Thus it is both frustrating and deceptive to seek progressive modulations between one text and
another. They are all basically one book, and any fifty consecutive pages of Baudrillard are essentially the
whole of Baudrillard.52 More recently, the United States has found itself involved in a postmodern
conflict of another sort: One in which there is no clearly defined “enemy.” For most of us, the war is
defined by simulacra: the videos, endlessly repeated, of the hijacked airliner crashing into the south
tower of the World Trade Center, and the videos of the towers collapsing. We have seen these images so
many times, woven into so many different commentaries (each a creative work in itself ) in so many
media, that the original event may be difficult to distinguish from the precessing simulacra. But it is not
impossible to distinguish. To dismiss the underlying reality (and horror) of the event, as Baudrillard does
with the Gulf War, is facile, meaningless, and morally empty. Real people died; real people continue to
suffer as a result. The concept of simulacrum is useful for understanding the relationship between events
and experience, but simulacra, even those generated by a single event, are not necessarily symmetrical.
Simulacral or not, the experience of war by TV viewers is not the same as the experience of war by its
participants and victims. While the war may not have taken place for Jean Baudrillard, and even less so
for me, for example (I didn’t even watch it on television), it definitely took place for the Iraqis, Kuwaitis,
Palestinians, Saudi Arabians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans and others involved.
Baudrillard’s politics fragment the left – destroy coalitions necessary for material
change
Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics – MIT, ‘95

(Noam, http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html)

A final point, something I've written about elsewhere (e.g., in a discussion in Z papers, and the last
chapter of Year 501). There has been a striking change in the behavior of the intellectual class in recent
years. The left intellectuals who 60 years ago would have been teaching in working class schools, writing
books like "mathematics for the millions" (which made mathematics intelligible to millions of people),
participating in and speaking for popular organizations, etc., are now largely disengaged from such
activities, and although quick to tell us that they are far more radical than thou, are not to be found, it
seems, when there is such an obvious and growing need and even explicit request for the work they
could do out there in the world of people with live problems and concerns. That's not a small problem.
This country, right now, is in a very strange and ominous state. People are frightened, angry,
disillusioned, skeptical, confused. That's an organizer's dream, as I once heard Mike say. It's also fertile
ground for demagogues and fanatics, who can (and in fact already do) rally substantial popular support
with messages that are not unfamiliar from their predecessors in somewhat similar circumstances. We
know where it has led in the past; it could again. There's a huge gap that once was at least partially
filled by left intellectuals willing to engage with the general public and their problems. It has ominous
implications, in my opinion.

Baudrillard’s analysis of simulation is Orientalist – creates hierarchal structure that

reproduces violence
Almond 7 (Ian, literary scholar and writer, Professor of World Literature at Georgetown University,
Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd, “THE NEW ORIENTALISTS: Postmodern representations of Islam
from Foucault to Baudrillard”) RR Jr

The passage is remarkable for a number of points. First of all, we in the West are hampered by truth.
Here Baudrillard, bringing in both Nietzsche and Derrida, seems to link the history of mimesis, of truth
and representation, in the West with a certain naïveté. This naïveté, it seems, is ultimately logocentric –
the delusion of correspondence theory, still nurtured by modernity, that an image must necessarily
correspond to ‘something’ on the other side of it. Arabs (and, oddly enough, Romanians – not for the
first time does the Islamic East and the Soviet/Orthodox East become united in common opposition to
Protestant capitalism) possess a cynicism which enables them to see truth as purely functional, rather
than representational. Of course, the unpleasant implication of the passage is that lies are second-nature
to the Arab mind – unhampered 170 | Islam, ‘theory’ and Europe by the burden of sincerity, enlightened
as to the real nature of ‘unconditional simulacra’, the irrelevance of the signifier to the signified, the Arab
sees no distinction between truth and lies, between fact and fiction, between the genuine and the fake.
Although this idea is reminiscent of a common Western conviction of nihilism in the Oriental mind – the
secret maxim of Nietzsche’s Assassins (‘Nothing is true. Everything is Allowed’) – Baudrillard provides a
surprisingly original justification for this cliché by an appeal to the iconoclast/Islamic prohibition of the
image, a historical reference he has already made use of elsewhere (see Baudrillard’s belief that the
Iconoclast’s ‘rage to destroy images arose precisely because they sensed this omnipotence of
simulacra’).14 Because Muslims and iconoclasts already believe images to be haram or unclean, they
have no moral reservations about misusing them in order to obtain what they desire. Hence the West’s
naïveté which rises from its idolatry of the image, its over-sanctification of a non-existent truth, its
deluded belief in the image’s divine referent. Baudrillard’s Arabs, the passage suggests, manipulate
images with greater dexterity than their Western counterparts because they know them to be nothing
more than idols, false gods, empty signs. For all its Islamic stereotypes and Oriental clichés, the most
positive gesture towards Islam in Baudrillard’s text lies in his straightforward recognition of the
‘Enlightenment Fundamentalist’ (p. 80), an acknowledgement which, while omitting to exempt Islam
from the charge of fundamentalism, sees standard ‘rational’ objections to it as groundless, dogmatic and
equally dangerous: ‘We do not practise hard, fundamentalist traditionalism, we practise soft, subtle and
shameful democratic traditionalism by consensus. However, consensual traditionalism (that of the
Enlightenment, the Rights of Man, the Left in power, the repentant intellectual and sentimental
humanism) is every bit as fierce as that of any tribal religion or primitive society’ (p. 79). If Islam is an
honest, open, unashamed fundamentalism, the beliefs one could almost redefine here as ‘Western
traditionalism’ are more hypocritical, forever pretending to be something they are not, forever claiming
their opposites (superstition, religion, tribalism) to be radically different from themselves. This denial of
the Enlightenment’s universal exclusiveness and moral/ontological superiority over the superstitions and
tribalisms it tries to denounce is a gesture we have seen in all the thinkers examined in this book – an
unconscious sympathy with Islam as an unjustly defamed primitivism, an impatience with modernity’s
self-denial and 200-year-old ignorance of what it really is.

Baudrillard’s theories have no statistical basis and are painfully vague

Dutton, 90 [Denis, philosopher hater extraordinaire, “Jean Baudrillard,” Philosophy and Literature, vol. 4,
pg. 234-5, //MW]

To this list of charges I would add only that, when it isn’t unintelligible, almost everything Baudrillard
says is either trite or somehow — vaguely or baldly — false. We are not allowed long to forget that
Baudrillard is a sociology professor. Poster believes that “Baudrillard’s work is invaluable in beginning to
comprehend the impact of new communication forms on society.” I’d advise anyone seeking to
understand the broad implications of computer and video technologies for information and
entertainment to search elsewhere, but if you want to know which way the wind is blowing in “theory,”
this is the place. The selections in this book begin in 1968, when Baudrillard was still some kind of a
Marxist, and continue through “The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media” (1985). This last
piece proposes the familiar notion that we are imprisoned in a world of media simulations, video
phantasms, and that we cannot come to know the real not because we are ignorant but because we are
overinformed: “we will never in the future be able to separate reality from its statistical, simulative
projection in the media.” This isn’t an uncertainty we’ve experienced in the past, but a brand new kind of
uncertainty brought about by an excess of information. So much for the trite part about video
simulations replacing reality and media/ information overload. The false part comes when Baudrillard
talks about the public reaction to this. The response of “the masses” (he still fancies bits of Marxist
parlance) to the media is silence — people get even with public opinion polls, television, advertising, and
so forth by plunging themselves into a state of stupor. Like McLuhan, Baudrillard doesn’t want to call this
sort of thing good or bad; unlike McLuhan, he gives very few examples of the phenomena he purports to
describe. There are no examples whatsoever of how public silence, passivity, and alienation serve as
“strategies” to counter and undermine the oppression of the media. And how could he give an example
of this? To be sure, there is an abundance of stupified people out there sitting in front of television
screens; but to portray their stupefaction as a form of calculated revenge on the media is frivolous
without even being interesting.

Baudrillard’s analyses assume a homogenized and orientalist perception of the Arab

world and Asia
Almond, I. (2007). New Orientalists, The : Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to
Baudrillard (1). London, US: I.B.Tauris. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu Ian
Almond is a literary scholar and writer. He is Professor of World Literature at Georgetown University
School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Educated in the UK, Almond received his PhD in Literature at
Edinburgh University. TE

This exclusive concern with surface, these impromptu and uninformed evaluations, an instinct for
controversial imagery, the mocking imitation-cum-sincere replication of Orientalist stereotypes and the
tacit, unquestioning conviction of his own enlightened Western identity will all be features of
Baudrillard’s general approach to the Islamic East. Unlike Derrida, whose Jewish Algerian background
protects him from any basic charge of ignorance about Islamic culture, or Foucault, who at least made an
effort to read Corbin before his trip to Iran, Baudrillard appears to be relatively unburdened by any
deeper knowledge of Islam or its socio-political history. In a universe where the flow of events ‘bear no
relation to any reality whatsoever’, where the various manifestations of signs form their ‘own pure
simulacrum’, 7 the superficiality of Baudrillard’s knowledge of Islam, far from constituting any kind of
handicap, becomes a means of obtaining a clearer and purely imagistic perspective on the issue at hand,
unclouded by the mendacious illusions of depth, research and ‘background knowledge’. The paucity of
Baudrillard’s knowledge of the Middle East is revealed in the eagerness with which he embraces the
Oriental, whether it is the ‘Oriental logic’ of Saddam Hussein, 8 or the use of The Thousand and One
Nights to justify extempore observations on the Iraqi leader’s concept of time. 9 In ‘Hypotheses sur le
terrorisme’ we even see a fable from the Turkish sage Nasreddin Hoja employed to introduce
Baudrillard’s own hypothesis on the ‘meaning’ – or more accurately, non-meaning – of September 11.
Occasionally Baudrillard confounds Arabs together with Indians and Chinese in order to make a
particularly non-Western point, as we see towards the end of Fatal Strategies in his remarks on the
Peking Opera. The passage is one in which Baudrillard praises the harmonious objectification of the
Chinese Theatre – how ‘everything is arranged: felinity, avoidance, advance, retreat, confrontation’, p.
176); 10 the scope of the observations quickly broaden, however, to an explicit commendation of how
the Oriental sees combat as ‘never [being] confrontational … but stratagems’, of how the Oriental mind
has a truer understanding ‘of the world as play and ceremony’, in contrast to its Western counterpart,
which is forever involved in a futile struggle with the other ‘to annex the empty heart of truth’ (p. 177).
Like Foucault’s Confucians, Baudrillard’s Chinese dancers have perfectly submitted their jarring
individualities to the order of the ceremony. The staging of their perfectly rehearsed movements
encourages this conviction of the Oriental as having better understood – in a less combatative, more
holistic way – the flux of simulacra than the truth-obsessed, agonistic Occidental. This superior grasp of
how ‘everything is linked and connected, but never with a connection of meaning’ (p. 176) is quickly
extended to the Moroccan or Egyptian moving in their bazaar: The difference can be felt even in the
movements of crowds and masses: while in the Western space of the subway, the city, the market,
people bump against each other, fighting for space, or at best, avoiding each other’s trajectories, in an
aggressive promiscuity, the crowds in the Orient, or in an Arab casbah, know how to move differently,
glide with presentiment (or consideration), care, even in a tight space, the interstitial spaces the meat-
cutter of the Chuang-Tzu was talking about, through which his blade passes effortlessly. (p. 177) Perhaps
it would be unfair to ask if the Oriental’s inhumanity played a part in rendering him more amenable to
this superior harmony. Only a belief-system that sees an Oriental closer to an unthinking object than a
free-thinking subject would praise the former for a wise, knowing acquiescence to ceremony and ritual,
instead of the ignorant, quibbling, Occidental insistence on freedom and the will to act. This becomes
clarified in Fatal Strategies: What people have always wanted to conserve is control over them and over
their rule: that of birth and death, but also of the eclipse of stars, the rapture of passion, and the
revolving of the natural cycle. It is only our modern culture that has capitulated to this form of obligation
and entrusted everything to that informed and formless form of freedom called chance. (p. 174)
Following Nietzsche and Foucault, Baudrillard maintains this linking of the Oriental (Chinese, Arab,
Indian) with a more authentic, pre-modern understanding of power. However, the formula is slightly
different: if Nietzsche saw Orientals as not being ashamed of using power, Foucault reiterated the idea
from the other end of the equation, believing Orientals to be more accommodating to holistic
collectivities than their Western counterparts. Baudrillard, for all his desire to oublier Foucault, seems to
be suggesting the same conclusion in his remarks on Chinese theatre: the Oriental on the high street and
the Arab in his bazaar are both creatures who lend themselves easily to the rituals and ceremonies
around them, not possessing the Western desire to ‘occupy the blind spot around which the battle is
arrayed’ (p. 177). In other words, as Arabs don’t have wills of their own – not having undergone,
presumably, the Cartesian/Kantian discoveries of their selves – the selflessness and complete
commitment required of them by hierarchies and collectivities provide no frustration, no dilemma. Any
critique of what Baudrillard calls ‘our modern culture’ and its obsession with freedom and choice – that
‘formless form of freedom called chance’ – will naturally enlist the Arab and the Oriental as alternatives
to the Western illusion of freedom. As Baudrillard’s Arabs appear to have no problem with being
playthings in the order of something larger than themselves, they become inevitable examples in the
text of Fatal Strategies, examples to be cited in the endeavour to ‘pass over to the side of the object’ (p.
205). 11

Baudrillard’s colonial biases are ever present in his work which plays off of racist
perceptions of Arabs.
Almond, I. (2007). New Orientalists, The : Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to
Baudrillard (1). London, US: I.B.Tauris. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu Ian
Almond is a literary scholar and writer. He is Professor of World Literature at Georgetown University
School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Educated in the UK, Almond received his PhD in Literature at
Edinburgh University. TE *edited for ablest language

Nevertheless, our concern is not so much with the political/ sociological feasibility of Baudrillard’s
theory, but how it translates itself into an Arab context. Probably the first thing to be said about the
above selection of quotations is that Baudrillard appears untroubled by the unmistakably colonial
implications a term such as ‘the Arab masses’ may have. The phrase ‘Arab masses’ itself is an expression
no French thinker can use, not even ironically, without re-evoking a long succession of French colonial
observations on the non-individuality and tribal, clannish inclinations of the Arab mind, its inherent
resistance to democracy and critical thinking, and so on. With all their echoes of Renan’s ‘Semitic’ and
D’Herbelot’s racial categorizations of the Arab, Baudrillard’s remarks on the easily led nature of the ‘Arab
masses’ cannot escape their colonial genealogy. Moreover, in contrast to everything he had written
about the Western masses five years earlier, Baudrillard appears to be using the phrase ‘masses’ in its
more conventional sense, rather than any ironic, secretly subversive meaning. The Western masses, we
will recall, are ‘deeply aware that they do not have to make a decision about themselves and the world’
(p. 215); in other words, their passivity is an authentic one, a conscious choice, a decision not to take
decisions. No trace of this ironic de-volition, of what Baudrillard calls a strategic ‘expulsion of the
obligation of being responsible’ (ibid.), seems to be found in Baudrillard’s ‘Arab masses’. Forever the
victim of Saddam their ‘hero’, forever deluded by his Saladin-like ‘aura’, forever manipulated and
controlled by their despot, the ‘Arab masses’ do not appear to have any of the depth and sophistication
of their Western counterparts. At no point in the text of The Gulf War do we receive the impression that
the ‘Arab masses’ are aware of the game that is being played, that there is anything even remotely
symbiotic about their relationship to Saddam, or that their willingness to perform the role of abject
masses has even the slightest degree of self-irony about it. The subtlety and connivance of Baudrillard’s
theory of the masses, it seems, is applicable only to the West. That Baudrillard should attribute unironic
docility to the Arabs is confusing, as, elsewhere in the text of The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Arabs – in
particular their leaders – appear to enjoy a superior grasp of the flexibility of truth than their more naïve
Western counterparts. At times this superiority is seen in terms of a cannier understanding of the nature
of symbolic exchange (p. 55); as always, Baudrillard does not hesitate to employ Oriental clichés as
metaphors, in this case that of Saddam Hussein the carpet-seller, ‘more gifted for the scam’: … whereas
Saddam Hussein, for his part, bargains his war by overbidding in order to fall back, attempting to force
the hand by pressure and blackmail, like a hustler trying to sell his goods. The Americans understand
nothing in this whole psychodrama of bargaining, they are had every time until, with the wounded pride
of the Westerner, they stiffen and impose their conditions. (p. 54) How quickly we are back to the wily
Arab, cunning and sly, cheating the fat, rich, slightly stupid American tourist with his overpriced carpets.
What appears to limit the Americans in this contest is, somewhat predictably, their honesty – unlike the
sly Arab, the goodnatured American plays fair, has no understanding of the usefulness of mendacity, of
the advantageous pliability of truth: ‘If the other wants to play, to trick and to challenge, they will
virtuously employ their force’ (ibid.). In this respect, at least, the Arab emerges as a more intelligent, if
more dishonest player, an intelligence and superior bargaining-ability that Baudrillard is keen to attribute
not simply to the inherent mendacity and slyness of the Arab (though doubtless this is the determining
factor) but also to a wider, non-economic grasp of what lies in the concept of exchange – not simply the
price, but also the time of the exchange, the honour, the language of the procedure. ‘The Americans’,
Baudrillard tells us, ‘take no account of these primitive subtleties’ (p. 55). The remark is, in one sense,
quite generous for all its ordinary unoriginality: it is modernity that, blinded by its worship of the
number, the price, has been rendered stupid and inflexible when faced with the ‘primitive’ sophistication
of the Arab. At other times, however, Baudrillard seems to suggest another reason for the ease with
which the Arab deals in untruth: Seeing how Saddam uses his cameras on the hostages, the caressed
children, the (fake) strategic targets, on his own smiling face, on the ruins of the milk factory, one cannot
help thinking that in the West we still have a hypocritical vision of television and information, to the
extent that, despite all the evidence, we hope for their proper use. Saddam, for his part, knows what the
media and information are: he makes a radical, unconditional, perfectly cynical and therefore perfectly
instrumental use of them. … these cynics alone are right about information when they employ it as an
unconditional simulacrum. We believe that they are immorally perverted images. Not so. They alone are
conscious of the profound immorality of images. (p. 46) The passage is remarkable for a number of
points. First of all, we in the West are hampered by truth. Here Baudrillard, bringing in both Nietzsche
and Derrida, seems to link the history of mimesis, of truth and representation, in the West with a certain
naïveté. This naïveté, it seems, is ultimately logocentric – the delusion of correspondence theory, still
nurtured by modernity, that an image must necessarily correspond to ‘something’ on the other side of it.
Arabs (and, oddly enough, Romanians – not for the first time does the Islamic East and the
Soviet/Orthodox East become united in common opposition to Protestant capitalism) possess a cynicism
which enables them to see truth as purely functional, rather than representational. Of course, the
unpleasant implication of the passage is that lies are second-nature to the Arab mind – unhampered by
the burden of sincerity, enlightened as to the real nature of ‘unconditional simulacra’, the irrelevance of
the signifier to the signified, the Arab sees no distinction between truth and lies, between fact and
fiction, between the genuine and the fake. Although this idea is reminiscent of a common Western
conviction of nihilism in the Oriental mind – the secret maxim of Nietzsche’s Assassins (‘Nothing is true.
Everything is Allowed’) – Baudrillard provides a surprisingly original justification for this cliché by an
appeal to the iconoclast/Islamic prohibition of the image, a historical reference he has already made use
of elsewhere (see Baudrillard’s belief that the Iconoclast’s ‘rage to destroy images arose precisely
because they sensed this omnipotence of simulacra’). 14 Because Muslims and iconoclasts already
believe images to be haram or unclean, they have no moral reservations about misusing them in order to
obtain what they desire. Hence the West’s naïveté which rises from its idolatry of the image, its over-
sanctification of a non-existent truth, its deluded belief in the image’s divine referent. Baudrillard’s
Arabs, the passage suggests, manipulate images with greater dexterity than their Western counterparts
because they know them to be nothing more than idols, false gods, empty signs.

Baudrillard’s understanding of hyperreality is reductive and ignores individual’s agency

Vitucci 4 [Francisco, “Critic Of Baudrillard”]

Images push their way into the fabric of our social lives. They enter into how we look and what we earn,
and they are still with us when we worry about bills, housing and bringing up children. They compete for
attention through shock tactics, reassurance, sex and mystery, and by inviting viewers to participate in
series of visual puzzles. Billboard advertising showing an image without a code impose themselves,
infuriatingly, on the most recalcitrant passer-by (McRobbie, 1994, 18). Accordingly, audiences or viewers,
lookers or users are no more simple-minded multitudes, but rather active and conscious counterparts.
The more the interconnections between audiences and media representations become intricate, the
more the former division between ‘reality’ and ‘virtuality’ seems to fade in a kind of renewed, interactive
and collaborative form: Baudrillard’s pessimistic thesis is that the media appear to extend themselves
generously to their audience in a gesture designed to demonstrate democratic embrace while in fact
merely extending the sphere of their influence and control. A less pessimistic postmodernist account
might instead emphasize not just the flow of images and texts as they circulate through the new
economy of the sign but also the flow of active agents, whose role in the production and distribution of
the image is not as robotic as Baudrillard would suggest. Such an account would also require much more
analysis of the occupational culture and experience of media workers employed in this postmodern de-
regulated sector, as well as of their audiences. (…) The problems with the old model of the moral panic
are as follows. First it assumed a clear distinction between the world of the media and the world of
social reality. But in one simple sense the media are as much a part of social reality as any other
component can be. We do not exist in social unreality while we watch television or read the newspaper,
nor are we transported back to reality when we turn the TV off to wash the dishes or discard the paper
and go to bed. Indeed perhaps there is no pure social reality outside the world of representation. Reality
is relayed to us through the world of language, communication and imagery. Social meanings are
inevitably representations and selections (idem, 1994, 216-217). This approach seems to be backed up
also by other thinkers’ theories such as those of Marshall MacLuhan who arguing that the ‘the medium
is the message’ (1967) agrees on the ability of mass broadcasting to create visual symbols and mass
action as a liberating force in human affairs. According to this ‘technological utopianism’ associated with
postmodernism, digital communication would make the fragmentation of modern society a positive
feature, since individuals can seek out those artistic, cultural and community experiences which they
regard as being correct for themselves. In other words, the individual becomes able to form its identity
and to structure the ‘truth’ from fragments while gaining, at the same time, the independence to
organize his own environment. On this escort, McRobbie (1994) seems to recall somehow the concepts
explained by MacLuhan when she states that ‘real life means talking about what was on TV last night’ .
Also other authors like Lyotard (1979), debating about the possibly positive outcomes of mass media and
in particular about computerization of society, states that bringing people knowledge in the form of
information, it will produce more liberty for the entire social system.

Being as leftist as possible dooms Baurdillard’s resistance to capital

Noys 10 --- Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Chichester (Benjamin, 2010, “THE
PERSISTENCE OF THE NEGATIVE,” Edinburgh University Press, 7-2-16, pages 4-6)//jonah

Let us return to the history of post- 68 theory with this orientation in mind. Antonio Negri endorses the
hypothesis of Michael Hardt that: ‘while in the nineteenth century France did politics and Germany did
metaphysics, in the twentieth century France did metaphysics and Italy did politics’.11 My argument is
that particularly in the 1970s France did metaphysics as a means of doing politics. I want to begin by
isolating a series of theoretical interventions made in the early 1970s, which all responded to the new
libertarian mood induced by May ’68. The confluence of various discourses of liberation, notably sexual
liberation, produced new discourses of contestation directed against capitalism, but also against the
limits of the existing left. While many on the left responded to the rapid ebbing of the events of May
with calls to Maoist or Leninist discipline, others argued the need to pursue the quasi- anarchist path of
liberation from all structures of discipline – left or right. Three works were key expressions of this
tendency, and were often grouped together, despite mutual antagonisms, as the ‘philosophy of desire’:
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Anti- Oedipus (1972); Jean- François Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy
(1974); and Jean Baudrillard’s Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976). These texts all display their authors’
formation by currents of the ultra- left,12 and each tries to outdo the other in terms of their radicalism.
In particular they reply to Marx’s contention that ‘[t]he real barrier of capitalist production is capital
itself’,13 by arguing that we must crash through this barrier by turning capitalism against itself. They are
an exotic variant of la politique du pire: if capitalism generates its own forces of dissolution then the
necessity is to radicalise capitalism itself: the worse the better. We can call this tendency
accelerationism. 14 Whereas the Anglo- American New Left had sought out the negation of capital in the
supposedly unintegrated subjects of revolt, such as the lumpen- proletariat, students or the peasantry,
accelerationists tried to identify new subjects of revolt as being those most radically within capitalism. If,
as Lyotard put it, ‘desire underlies capitalism too’,15 then the result is that: ‘there are errant forces in the
signs of capital. Not in its margins as its marginals, but dissimulated in its most “nuclear”, the most
essential exchanges’. What the accelerationists affirm is the capitalist power of dissolution and
fragmentation, which must always be taken one step further to break the fetters of capital itself. For
Deleuze and Guattari the problem of capitalism is not that it deterritorialises, but that it does not
deterritorialise enough. It always runs up against its own immanent limit of deterritorialisation – the
reterritorialisation of the decoded fl ows of desire through the ‘machine’ of the oedipal grid. In the face
of the deterritorialising axiomatic of capital we have ‘[n]ot to withdraw from the process, but to go
further, to “accelerate the process”, as Nietzsche put it: in this matter, the truth is that we haven’t seen
anything yet.’ 17 It is the fi gure of the schizophrenic, not to be confused with the empirical psychiatric
disorder, which instantiates this radical immersion and the coming of a new porous and collective
‘subject’ of desire. The schizophrenic is the one who ‘seeks out the very limit of capitalism: he is its
inherent tendency brought to fulfi lment’.18 Contrary to Deleuze and Guattari’s faith in a subject who
would incarnate a deterritorialisation in excess of capitalism, Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy denies any
exteriority, insisting that capital itself ‘is the unbinding of the most insane drives’,19 which releases
‘mutant intensities’.20 The true form of capital is incarnated in the a- subjective fi gure of the libidinal
‘band’ – a Möbius strip of freely circulating intensities with neither beginning nor end. The extreme
results of such a position are summarised in Lyotard’s notorious statement on the experience of the
worker in the nineteenth century – the most overt acceptance of all the consequences of an
accelerationist position: there is jouissance in it, the English unemployed did not have to become
workers to survive, they – hang on tight and spit on me – enjoyed the hysterical, masochistic, whatever
exhaustion it was of hanging on in the mines, in the foundries, in the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it,
enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic body which was indeed imposed upon them, they enjoyed
the decomposition of their personal identity, the identity that the peasant tradition had constructed for
them, enjoyed the dissolutions of their families and villages, and enjoyed the new monstrous anonymity
of the suburbs and the pubs in morning and evening.21 The Marxist concept of alienation collapses
because there is nothing left to alienate – capital itself is jouissance. There is no longer a true or real
economy of desire somehow repressed or alienated by capital, but only the fl ickering appearance of a
disenchanted libidinal economy on the far side of capitalism. Jean Baudrillard’s Symbolic Exchange and
Death (1976) is a more ambivalent and uneasy example of accelerationism. If Lyotard outbids Deleuze
and Guattari then, initially, Baudrillard outbids Deleuze and Guattari and Lyotard. He argues that their
collective retention of the signifier of desire leaves them all locked into a dialectics of liberation tied to
the functioning of the system. As he would later put it in Forget Foucault (1977) the attempt ‘to
rediscover a phantasmal and instinctual truth of the body in desire, is still only to unearth the psychic
metaphor of capital.’ 22 In a critique of accelerationism avant la lettre Baudrillard argues that this
‘compulsion toward liquidity, flow, and an accelerated circulation’ is only the replica or mirror of
capitalist circulation.23 The difficulty is that Baudrillard’s own catastrophising strategy comprises a kind
of negative accelerationism in which he seeks the point of immanent reversal that inhabits and
destabilises capital. In Symbolic Exchange and Death this is the ‘death- function’, which ‘cannot be
programmed and localised’.24 Against the law of value that determines market exchange Baudrillard
identifies this ‘death- function’ with the excessive and superior form of ‘symbolic exchange’ which is
‘based on the extermination of value’.25 We have reached the (literally) terminal point of resistance to
capitalism. The problem for this strategy, pointed out by Lyotard in Libidinal Economy when reacting to
Baudrillard’s earlier work, is that perhaps ‘[t]here is as much libidinal intensity in capitalist exchange as
in the alleged “symbolic” exchange’.26 Baudrillard’s reversible point is vitiated by capital’s own powers
of intensity. For Lyotard, Baudrillard fails to draw all the consequences of a radically immanent thought:
the abandonment of any critique or critical position. It is an irony, as we shall see, that Lyotard himself
would soon return to the relative certainties of Kantian critique.

Reality has not died, but merely been sent to the global south – baudrillard’s
Eurocentric understanding of capitalism obscures massive violence done on the
periphery
Robinson 13 [Andrew Robinson Jean Baudrillard and Activism: A critique]

One limit to Baudrillard’s theory is his tendency to over-totalise. Baudrillard is talking about tendential
processes, but he often talks as if they are totally effective. There are still, for instance, a lot of uncharted
spaces, a lot of unexplained events, a lot of things the system can’t handle. While Baudrillard is
describing dominant tendencies in the present, these tendencies coexist with older forms of capitalism,
in a situation of uneven development. The persistence of the system’s violence is a problem for
Baudrillard’s perspective: the smooth regime of neutralisation and inclusive regulation has not ended
older modalities of brutality. At times, Baudrillard exaggerates greatly the extent to which the old
authoritarian version of capitalism has been replaced by subtle regimes of control. He exaggerates the
extent to which contemporary capitalism is tolerant, permissive and ‘maternal’. This may be because his
works were mostly written in France in the 1970s-80s, when the dominant ethos was still largely social-
democratic. What Baudrillard recognises as the retrograde version of capitalism associated with the
right-wing was to return with a vengeance, especially after 911. Another problem is a lack of a Southern
dimension. Like many Northern authors, Baudrillard’s approach mainly applies to the functioning of
capitalism in the North. The penetration of the code is substantially less in countries where information
technology is less widespread. In parts of Africa, even simple coding exercises such as counting votes or
recording censuses are extremely difficult. This is for the very reasons of respondent reflexivity which
Baudrillard highlights. People will under-record themselves to stay invisible, or over-record themselves to
obtain benefits. And without massive resources to put into its bureaucracies, the system is unable to find
enough people who will act as transmitters for the code. Instead, people use their power to extract what
they can from the system. Explosions still happen regularly in the South. Furthermore, a contracting
system ‘forcibly delinks’ large portions of the globe. Its power on the margins is lessened as its power at
the core is intensified. As the system becomes ever more contracted and inward-looking, liberated zones
may appear around the edges. Without an element of border thinking, Baudrillard tends to exaggerate
the system’s completeness and effectiveness. Baudrillard assumes that any excess is everywhere
absorbed into the code. He ignores the persistence of borderlands. And when he talks about the South,
he admits that the old regime of production might still exist here: people still work seeking betterment;
colonial wars are fought to destroy persisting symbolic exchange; Saddam was not playing the Gulf War
by the rules of deterrence. The Arab masses are still able to become inflamed by war or non-war; Iran
and Iraq can still fight a real war, not a simulated non-war. So perhaps only a minority, only the included
layers within the North, are trapped within simulation and the ‘masses’. Perhaps reality has not died, but
been displaced to the South. It seems, therefore, premature to suggest that the system has
encompassed all of social life in the code. To be sure, its reach has expanded, but it has also forcibly
delinked large areas of the globe. The penetration of simulated reality into everyday life varies in its
effectiveness. At the limit, as in Somalia, simulated states collapse under their own irrelevance. In other
cases, an irrelevant state hovers over a largely autonomous society. And the struggle Baudrillard
advocated in his early works against subordination as labour-power is not simply theoretical. In fact,
there is a constant war, fought at various degrees of intensity, between the system and its others,
especially in highly marginal parts of the global South: Chiapas, Afghanistan, the Niger Delta, Somalia,
West Papua, rural Colombia, Northeast India, the Andes… The system continues to be drawn into these
conflicts, despite its apparent self-deterrence from total nuclear annihilation.

Baudrillard romanticizes disabled bodies

Campbell 9 (Fiona Kumari Campbell, “Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness”,
2009, https://www.freelists.org/archives/sig-dsu/08-2013/pdfyWdtytodrO.pdf)

In my discussion on internalised ableism in Chapter 2, I have already made mention of the numbers of
disabled people standing in line to join the queue of the enhanced. These are the disabled people who
live out their lives from an ableist standpoint where disability can only be viewed from the perspective of
negative ontology. The anti-disabled disabled re at worst norm junkies and at best norm emulators. Jean
Baudrillard rather discourteously in my opinion suggests that disabled people would make excellent
candidates in the transhuman project:

Such are the blind, and the handicapped; mutant figures because mutilated and hence close to
commutation, closer to this telepathic, telecommuniational universe than we others: humans all-too-
human, condemned by our lack of disabilities to conventional forms of work. By the force of
circumstance the disabled person is a potential expert in the motor or sensorial domain. And it is not by
chance that the social is aligning itself more and more with the handicapped, and their operational
advancement they can become wonderful instruments because of their handicap. They may precede us
on the path towards mutation and dehumanization. (Baudrillard, 1988 cited Over boe, 1999, p. 21)

This romanticisation of suffering bodies (endemic to certain kinds of Christian theology) has been
replaced by a new Baudrillardian transhuman romanticism, where disabled people are likened in closer
proximity to the twilight zone of mutation. Some disabled people with a mindfulness towards their
impairment gravitate to transhumanism in order to gain supra-abilities. We have to cast our minds
beyond the dust of a mere instrumental argument about the attraction of post-human technologies for
disabled people and focus on the discursive shifts in the overall meaning and positioning of abnormality.
My interest is in the ‘lot’ of those able-bodied people – who may become the ‘new disabled’, the new
aberrancy, and oppositional sentiency produced by the transhuman.

My hunch is that whilst the movement towards transhumanism may bring gifts for the movement
towards transhumanism may bring gifts for the contemporary ‘needy’, the transhuman project, as it is
founded on an unbridled form of ableism combined with an ‘obsessive technological compulsion’, will
involve a meagre shuffling of the deckchairs – a rearranging of ‘bums in seats’. The rankings remain the
same (albeit with new labels that tell us and others who we are). Transhumanism reasserts systems of
ranking bodies; vertical and horizontal rankings creating global raced divides. Its appetite is fed by the
moral panic of a world awash with disorders, enveloped by dementia as the population ages (Chatterjee,
2007).

The schema of Hughes (2001) further diminishes the ‘rights’ of people with intellectual disability (only
having the right to life) and bears with it an inference that enhancement technologies can do ‘nothing’
for those deemed severely retarded [sic]. Little is said within this new ranking about the creation or
broadening of new kinds of ‘intellectual’ disability because of the emergence of cognitively enhanced
post-humans and the stripping or delimitation of characteristics deemed to be cognitive. The point being
that not all cognitive enhancements will be valued. There may be a division between those
enhancements that transcend or favour disembodied virtues, rather than enhancements geared towards
the senses or emotions. Within this world of the transhuman ableism as an ethos is undisputed. ON first
sight a transhumanist understanding of disability would appear to be progressive in its rejection of the
disabled body as defective. However, since normalcy is under its logic quashed and the pathological is
expanded, ALL human bodies are defective!

What do Extropian’s and other transhumanists think about human impairment, anomalous bodies
regarded as disabled? It is hard to tell – explicit discussion about disability concerns in the literature has
been limited (for exceptions, see Bostrom, 2006; Wolbring, 2006a, 2007). However, my intuition is that
disability as a form of legitimate sensibility would be frowned upon. Stock (2002), for instance, appears
ambivalent – he notes that deaf people who want deaf children can utilise new reproductive
technologies to make that selection. Yet when it comes to any ethical consideration of these choices,
Stock’s response is that these choices should be left to parents until these choices amount to child abuse
or endanger society. Simplicity of the argument aside, Stock demonstrates little awareness of contested
notions of child abuse and social

Your aff is our aff now

Baudrillard 76 [Jean, brilliant French philosopher, professor of sociology and philosophy at Université de
Paris-IX Dauphine, Symbolic Exchange and Death, p. 36-38]

We will not destroy the system by a direct, dialectical revolution of the economic or political
infrastructure. Everything produced by contradiction, by the relation of forces, or by energy in general,
will only feed back into the mechanism and give it impetus, following a circular distortion similar to a
Moebius strip. We will never defeat it by following its own logic of energy, calculation, reason and
revolution, history and power, or some finality or counter-finality. The worst violence at this level has no
purchase, and will only backfire against itself. We will never defeat the system on the plane of the real:
the worst error of all our revolutionary strategies is to believe that we will put an end to the system on
the plane of the real: this is their imaginary, imposed on them by the system itself, living or surviving only
by always leading those who attack the system to fight amongst each other on the terrain of reality,
which is always the reality of the system. This is where they throw all their energies, their imaginary
violence, where an implacable logic constantly turns back into the system. We have only to do it violence
or counter-violence since it thrives on symbolic violence - not in the degraded sense in which this
formula has found fortune, as a violence 'of signs' , from which the system draws strength, or with which
it 'masks' its material violence: symbolic violence is deduced from a logic of the symbolic (which has
nothing to do with the sign or with energy): reversal, the incessant reversibility of the counter-gift and,
conversely, the seizing of power by the unilateral exercise of the gift. 25 We must therefore displace
everything into the sphere of the symbolic, where challenge, reversal and overbidding are the law, so
that we can respond to death only by an equal or superior death. There is no question here of real
violence or force, the only question concerns the challenge and the logic of the symbolic. If domination
comes from the system's retention of the exclusivity of the gift without counter-gift - the gift of work
which can only be responded to by destruction or sacrifice, if not in consumption, which is only a spiral
of the system of surplus-gratification without result, therefore a spiral of surplus-domination, a gift of
media and messages to which, due to the monopoly of the code, nothing is allowed to retort; the gift,
everywhere and at every instant, of the social, of the protection agency, security, gratification and the
solicitation of the social from which nothing is any longer permitted to escape - then the only solution is
to turn the principle of its power back against the system itself: the impossibility of responding or
retorting. To defy the system with a gift to which it cannot respond save by its own collapse and death.
Nothing, not even the system, can avoid the symbolic obligation, and it is in this trap that the only
chance of a catastrophe for capital remains. The system turns on itself, as a scorpion does when
encircled by the challenge of death. For it is summoned to answer, if it is not to lose face, to what can
only be death. The system must itself commit suicide in response to the multiplied challenge of death
and suicide. So hostages are taken. On the symbolic or sacrificial plane, from which every moral
consideration of the innocence of the victims is ruled out, the hostage is the substitute the alter-ego of
the 'terrorist' - the hostage's death for the terrorist's. Hostage and terrorist may thereafter become
confused in the same sacrificial act. The stakes are death without any possibility of negotiation, and
therefore return to an inevitable overbidding. Of course, they attempt to deploy the whole system of
negotiation, and the terrorists themselves often enter into this exchange scenario in terms of this
calculated equivalence (the hostages' lives against some ransom or liberation, or indeed for the prestige
of the operation alone). From this perspective, taking hostages is not original at all, it simply creates an
unforeseen and selective relation of forces which can be resolved either by traditional violence or by
negotiation. It is a tactical action. There is something else at stake, however, as we clearly saw at The
Hague over the course of ten days of incredible negotiations: no-one knew what could be negotiated,
nor could they agree on terms, nor on the possible equivalences of the exchange. Or again, even if they
were formulated, the 'terrorists' demands' amounted to a radical denial of negotiation. It is precisely
here that everything is played out, for with the impossibility of all negotiation we pass into the symbolic
order, which is ignorant of this type of calculation and exchange (the system itself lives solely by
negotiation, even if this takes place in the equilibrium of violence). The system can only respond to this
irruption of the symbolic (the most serious thing to befall it, basically the only 'revolution') by the real,
physical death of the terrorists. This, however, is its defeat, since their death was their stake, so that by
bringing about their deaths the system has merely impaled itself on its own violence without really
responding to the challenge that was thrown to it. Because the system can easily compute every death,
even war atrocities, but cannot compute the death-challenge or symbolic death, since this death has no
calculable equivalent, it opens up an inexpiable overbidding by other means than a death in exchange.
Nothing corresponds to death except death. Which is precisely what happens in this case: the system
itself is driven to suicide in return, which suicide is manifest in its disarray and defeat. However
infinitesimal in terms of relations of forces it might be, the colossal apparatus of power is eliminated in
this situation where (the very excess of its) derision is turned back against itself. The police and the army,
all the institutions and mobilised violence of power whether individually or massed together, can do
nothing against this lowly but symbolic death. For this death draws it onto a plane where there is no
longer any response possible for it (hence the sudden structural liquefaction of power in '68, not
because it was less strong, but because of the simple symbolic displacement operated by the students'
practices). The system can only die in exchange, defeat itself to lift the challenge. Its death at this instant
is a symbolic response, but a death which wears it out. The challenge has the efficiency of a murderer.
Every society apart from ours knows that, or used to know it. Ours is in the process of rediscovering it.
The routes of symbolic effectiveness are those of an alternative politics. Thus the dying ascetic
challenges God ever to give him the equivalent of this death. God does all he can to give him this
equivalent 'a hundred times over' , in the form of prestige , of spiritual power, indeed of global
hegemony But the ascetic's secret dream is to attain such an extent of mortification that even God would
be unable either to take up the challenge , or to absorb the debt . He will then have triumphed over God,
and become God himself. That is why the ascetic is always close to heresy and sacrilege, and as such
condemned by the Church, whose function it is merely to preserve God from this symbolic face-to-face,
to protect Him from this mortal challenge where He is summoned to die, to sacrifice Himself in order to
take up the challenge of the mortified ascetic. The Church will have had this role for all time, avoiding
this type of catastrophic confrontation (catastrophic primarily for the Church) and substituting a rule-
bound exchange of penitences and gratifications, the impressario of a system of equivalences between
God and men. The same situation exists in our relation to the system of power All these institutions, all
these social, economic, political and psychological mediations, are there so that no-one ever has the
opportunity to issue this symbolic challenge, this challenge to the death, the irreversible gift which, like
the absolute mortification of the ascetic, brings about a victory over all power, however powerful its
authority may be. It is no longer necessary that the possibility of this direct symbolic confrontation ever
takes place. And this is the source of our profound boredom. This is why taking hostages and other
similar acts rekindle some fascination: they are at once an exorbitant mirror for the system of its own
repressive violence, and the model of a symbolic violence which is always forbidden it, the only violence
it cannot exert: its own death. S

Baudrillard’s theorization precludes activism and causes EXTINCTION!!!! IT’S

BASICALLY DDEV
Robinson 13 (Andrew, political theorist and activist based in the UK, “Jean Baudrillard and Activism: A
critique,” Ceasefire Magazine, February 7, 2013, https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-
baudrillard-14/)
There are serious limits to Baudrillard’s work, in terms of his hostility to ‘minority’ struggles. Many of his
formulations are inadvertently sexist and racist. There are also times when Baudrillard comes across as
ableist in his critiques of the therapeutic. There are also times when Baudrillard attacks activism in strong
terms: Hippies reproduce capitalist ideology; Feminists displaying images of porn are actually being
seductive, against their will; The left is keeping capitalism alive with its moral critiques and its quests for
meaning. There are times when it is hard to tell if Baudrillard is a reactionary, attacking the concerns of
progressives, or an ultra-left, criticising every rebellion as insufficiently extreme. If one looks past such
problems, however, there are important implications in Baudrillard’s work for emancipatory practice.
Baudrillard’s work was clearly an influence on Negri’s early work. Ideas such as the reduction of the
system to command, the spread of diffuse apparatuses of power and the panic of the system in the face
of its own arbitrariness reappear in texts such as Time for Revolution. The idea of the ‘code’ or system
functioning as a self-propelled irrational machine is also reminiscent of primitivists such as Fredy
Perlman. Baudrillard seems to see the regime of the code as the high-point of civilisation, in an almost
anarcho-primitivist sense. Where he differs from such analyses is that he sees the core of civilisation not
in technology or the domestication of desire or the ‘political principle’ of state power, but in the denial
and suppression of symbolic exchange. Baudrillard is partly thinking through the issue of diffuse power.
In capitalist and statist social regimes, power is immensely concentrated. He also gives a particular spin
to the distinction between expressive and instrumental. We can link the idea of the ‘code’ to
preventionism and its impact on protest. As discussed above, Baudrillard’s idea of initiatory groups could
also be applied to activist ‘neo-sects’. Baudrillard also offers answers to some of the big questions of
today regarding psychological barriers to revolt. The loss of reality might explain why hope for liberation
seems so hard to come by, and why revolutionary movements now seem to lack a clear vision of
transformation. The Immediatist Potlatch would be an example of gift-exchange as political action.
Occupation of the remainders and waste-grounds of cities has been a constant aspect of dissident
practice, from Traveller communities such as Dale Farm and shanty-towns in the global South, to
reclaimed factories used as squats, to projects such as South Central Farm. Reversibility could also be
thought of in terms of vendettas and cost-imposition. These return to the system the power it exercises,
reversing it. Another useful way to extend Baudrillard’s work is to cross-read it with Open Marxist views
of capitalism as a process which must constantly be reproduced to exist. Simulation is not a finished
process. It has to be constantly repeated in order to be kept active. The process of deterrence (or
counterinsurgency) is therefore an ongoing process. Baudrillard is often misread as celebrating the end
of reference and the triumph of self-referential signs. It is easy to see how this misunderstanding came
about, since he advocates outbidding the system in its own disintegration. He doesn’t think it’s possible
or desirable to “go back” to production or fixed meanings. But the central point of his work is still anti-
capitalist. He sees the system as unable to provide anything referential or emotionally meaningful. He
sees it as a kind of totalitarian engine of permanent mobilisation for the empty goal of its own
reproduction. Even in his ‘fatalistic’ later works, he remains fiercely opposed to the code and the system.
Baudrillard’s critique of Marx is interesting, and I think largely valid. What he puts in place of Marx’s
theory is, however, contentious. His recent work gives the impression of a disillusioned Situationist
seeking to find an alternative to revolution in a world where none is apparent. As a result, he finds ways
to read conformist mass practices as unconscious resistances, irrational systemic functioning and
implosion, and so on. Baudrillard is also too prone to conflate system collapse with liberation. There are
scenarios of implosion which would not lead to liberation. One might, for instance, think of climate
change due to overconsumption as a scenario of system-collapse. This would bring about the end of the
code, but also possibly the end of humanity. In some ways, the idea of implosion echoes Sing Chew’s
theory of world-system collapse. Based on previous episodes of collapse, Chew argues that the world-
system will collapse when it reaches its ecological limits. It won’t explode; it will collapse inwards and
break down as the processes which sustain it are reversed. Each ‘civilisation’ is followed by a ‘dark age’.
Populations move outwards from cities, power is diffused, and local knowledge replaces global
knowledge. This is not quite what Baudrillard has in mind, but similar enough to be suggested as an
effect of continued implosion. Or maybe implosion should be compared to the ‘extraordinary
communities’ of disaster, to the sudden collapse of the system’s management structures after which
people take over their own self-management (as in Argentina), to the fraying round the edges of a
system which can no longer secure the code at its more remote limits (as in Africa). Perhaps as the code
burns itself up, we will be left occupying wastelands where we are finally free, but at great cost. Hence,
an implosive collapse of the system might give rise to a hope for other social forms. It might, after all, be
liberation in disguise. What of the crucial concept of ‘symbolic exchange’? Baudrillard’s discussion of
symbolic exchange oscillates between three poles. Firstly, it refers to the experience of living in an
embedded society, with rituals, exchanges and local knowledges. Secondly, it refers to the crisis-effects
of the decomposition of the code, which create symbolic exchange as their effect. Thirdly, it refers to a
kind of experience beyond the regime of simulation, through arbitrary connections. The political effects
of the process Baudrillard advocates is thus rather ambiguous. Does the rise of symbolic exchange herald
a return to embedded forms of social relations, to some kind of modern band or tribe which reproduces
aspects of embedded forms, or something else entirely?

Baudrillard’s entire argument is our alt solvency and link warrants --- capitalism is
important for the communist goal by serving as unifying goal to inspire collective
resistance
Gilman-Opalsky 10 --- Associate Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Political Science
at the University of Illinois (Richard Gilman-Opalsky, 2010, "Selectively Forgetting Baudrillard: Rescuing
Praxis From The Wreckage." Theory In Action. Vol. 3 Issue 2, 6-30-2016, pages 13-14)//jonah

Also, he attacks any romanticization of the proletarian subject position, arguing that this leads to
reification of capitalist production as an independent variable. In other words, Marx’s conception of
revolution requires capitalist production, and the whole history of Marxism since Marx’s death has been
unconsciously trapped in a fetishization of production derived from a distinctly capitalist logic. Marxism
celebrates a revolutionary subject that owes its existence to capitalism, and whose special powers are
concentrated in them by their immiseration within the producing class. To counter this, Baudrillard
draws our attention to the rebelliousness of the elderly, of women, of racial, ethnic, and even linguistic
minorities, dropouts, and young people, pointing to other locations for subversion and revolt than the
working class. He writes: “This position of revolt is no longer that of the economically exploited; it aims
less at the extortion of surplus value than at the imposition of the code, which inscribes the present
strategy of social domination… It is a revolt of those who have been pushed aside, who have never been
able to speak or have their voices heard… These revolts do not profile class struggle… The working class
is no longer the gold standard of revolts and contradictions. There is no longer a revolutionary subject of
reference.”12 With this, Baudrillard effectively destabilizes the rigidity of certain readings of historical
materialism in more orthodox variations of Marxism (I would include Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács
here who were both critical of orthodox Marxism yet maintained the working class as “a revolutionary
subject of reference.”). From another location, not circumscribed by economic exploitation, revolt no
longer “mirrors” the capitalist fixation on production. But revolt from other places is not concentrated in
any certain social group or subject position. It is, therefore, not inexorable, not determined by political-
economic structures, and certainly not predictable.

Death occurs through seduction and indecipherable complicity. In our fleeing from
death by endlessly resolving constructed threats, we inevitably run towards it. As
Baudrillard’s tale suggests, wherever we go, we will always find Samarkand.
Baudrillard 03. Jean Baudrillard, French sociologist and cultural theorist, former professor at European
Graduate School, Death in Samarkand Translated by Brian Singer 2003
http://insomnia.ac/essays/death_in_samarkand/

An ellipsis of the sign, an eclipse of meaning: an illusion. The mortal distraction that a single sign can
cause instantaneously. Consider the story of the soldier who meets Death at a crossing in the
marketplace, and believes he saw him make a menacing gesture in his direction. He rushes to the king's
palace and asks the king for his best horse in order that he might flee during the night far from Death, as
far as Samarkand. Upon which the king summons Death to the palace and reproaches him for having
frightened one of his best servants. But Death, astonished, replies: "I didn't mean to frighten him. It was
just that I was surprised to see this soldier here, when we had a rendez-vous tomorrow, in Samarkand."
Yes, one runs towards one's fate all the more surely by seeking to escape it. Yes, everyone seeks his own
death, and the failed acts are the most successful. Yes, signs follow an unconscious course. But all this
concerns the truth of the rendez-vous in Samarkand; it does not account for the seduction of the story,
which is in no way an apologue of truth. What is astounding about the story is that this seemingly
inevitable rendez-vous need not have taken place. There is nothing to suggest that the soldier would
have been in Samarkand without this chance encounter, and without the ill-luck of Death's naive
gesture, which acted in spite of itself as a gesture of seduction. Had Death been content to call the
soldier back to order, the story would lose its charm. Everything here is hinged on a single, involuntary
sign. The gesture does not appear to be part of a strategy, nor even an unconscious ruse; yet it takes on
the unexpected depth of seduction, that is, it appears as something that moves laterally, as a sign that,
unbeknownst to the protagonists (including Death, as well as the soldier), advances a deadly command,
an aleatory sign behind which another conjunction, marvelous or disastrous, is being enacted. A
conjunction that gives the sign's trajectory all the characteristics of a witticism. No one in the story has
anything to reproach himself with - or else the king who lent his horse, is as guilty as anyone else. No.
Behind the apparent liberty of the two central characters (Death was free to make his gesture, the
soldier to flee), they were both following a rule of which neither were aware. The rule of this game,
which, like every fundamental rule, must remain secret, is that death is not a brute event, but only
occurs through seduction, that is, by way of an instantaneous, indecipherable complicity, by a sign or
signs that will not be deciphered in time. Death is a rendez-vous, not an objective destiny. Death cannot
fail to go since he is this rendez-vous, that is, the allusive conjunction of signs and rules which make up
the game. At the same time, Death is an innocent player in the game. This is what gives the story its
secret irony, whose resolution appears as a stroke of wit [trait d'esprit], and provides us with such
sublime pleasure - and distinguishes it from a moral fable or a vulgar tale about the death instinct. The
spiritual character [trait spirituel] of the story extends the spirited character [trait d'espritgestuel] of
Death's gesture, and the two seductions, that of Death and of the story, fuse together. Death's
astonishment is delightful, an astonishment at the frivolity of an arrangement where things proceed by
chance: "But this soldier should have known that he was expected in Samarkand tomorrow, and taken
his time to get there..." However Death shows only surprise, as if his existence did not depend as much
as the soldier's on the fact that they were to meet in Samarkand. Death lets things happen, and it is his
casualness that makes him appealing - this is why the soldier hastens to join him. None of this involves
the unconscious, metaphysics or psychology. Or even strategy. Death has no plan. He restores chance
with a chance gesture; this is how he works, yet everything still gets done. There is nothing that cannot
not be done, yet everything still preserves the lightness of chance, of a furtive gesture, an accidental
encounter or an illegible sign. That's how it is with seduction... Moreover, the soldier went to meet
death because he gave meaning to a meaningless gesture which did not even concern him. He took
personally something that was not addressed to him, as one might mistake for oneself a smile meant for
someone else. The height of seduction is to be without seduction. The man seduced is caught in spite of
himself in a web of stray signs. And it is because the sign has been turned from its meaning or
"seduced", that the story itself is seductive. It is when signs are seduced that they become seductive.
Only signs without referents, empty, senseless, absurd and elliptical signs, absorb us.

Baudrillard’s politics are deeply conformist. Playing with the pieces of hyper-reality is
to totally buy into the system and shuts down any real alternatives. You feel like an
outlaw critic when you actually pose no challenge to the system.
Donahue, 1 - Department of English, Gonzaga University (Brian, “Marxism, Postmodernism, Žižek,”
Postmodern Culture, 12.2, Project Muse)//gingE

According to Žižek, theorists of postmodern society who make much of the usurpation of the Real by the
simulacrum either long nostalgically for the lost distinction between them or announce the final
overcoming of the "metaphysical obsession with authentic Being," or both (he mentions Paul Virilio and
Gianni Vattimo, and we might add Baudrillard to the list). In either case they "miss the distinction
between simulacrum and appearance": What gets lost in today's plague of simulations is not the firm,
true, nonsimulated Real, but appearance itself. To put it in Lacanian terms: the simulacrum is imaginary
(illusion), while appearance is symbolic (fiction); when the specific dimension of symbolic appearance
starts to disintegrate, imaginary and real become more and more indistinguishable.... And, in
sociopolitical terms, this domain of appearance (that is, symbolic fiction) is none other than that of
politics.... The old conservative motto of keeping up appearances thus today obtains a new twist:... [it]
stands for the effort to save the properly political space. ("Leftist" 995-96) Making the same argument
about a slightly different version of this problem, Žižek writes that the standard reading of "outbursts of
'irrational' violence" in the postmodern "society of the spectacle" is that "our perception of reality is
mediated by aestheticized media manipulations to such an extent that it is no longer possible for us to
distinguish reality from its media image" (Metastases 75). Violent outbursts in this context are thus seen
as "desperate attempts to draw a distinction between fiction and reality... [and] to dispel the cobweb of
the aestheticized pseudo-reality" (75). Again with reference to the Lacanian triad of Imaginary-Symbolic-
Real, Žižek argues that this analysis is "right for the wrong reasons": What is missing from it is the crucial
distinction between imaginary order and symbolic fiction. The problem of contemporary media resides
not in their enticing us to confound fiction with reality but, rather, in their "hyperrealist" character by
means of which they saturate the void that keeps open the space for symbolic fiction. A society of
proliferating, promiscuous images is thus not overly fictionalized but is, on the contrary, not
"fictionalized" enough in the sense that the basis for making valid statements, the structure
guaranteeing intersubjective communication, the order permitting shared narratives and, to use
Jameson's term, "cognitive mapping"11--in short, the realm of the Symbolic--is short-circuited by an
incessant flow of images, which solicit not analysis and the powers of thought but rather nothing more
than blank, unreflective enjoyment. The kind of subjectivity that corresponds to this hyperreal,
spectacularized society without a stable Symbolic order is what Žižek calls in Looking Awry the
"pathological narcissist" (102). That is, following the predominance of the "'autonomous' individual of
the Protestant ethic" and the "heteronomous 'organization man'" who finds satisfaction through "the
feeling of loyalty to the group"--the two models of subjectivity corresponding to previous stages of
capitalist society--today's media-spectacle-consumer society is marked by the rise of the "pathological
narcissist," a subjective structure that breaks with the "underlying frame of the ego-ideal common to the
first two forms" (102). The first two forms involved inverted versions of each other: one either strove to
remain true to oneself (that is, to a "paternal ego-ideal") or looked at oneself "through the eyes of the
group," which functioned as an "externalized" ego-ideal, and sought "to merit its love and esteem"
(102). With the stage of the "pathological narcissist," however, the ego-ideal itself is dissolved: Instead of
the integration of a symbolic law, we have a multitude of rules to follow--rules of accommodation telling
us "how to succeed." The narcissistic subject knows only the "rules of the (social) game" enabling him to
manipulate others; social relations constitute for him a playing field in which he assumes "roles," not
proper symbolic mandates; he stays clear of any kind of binding commitment that would imply a proper
symbolic identification. He is a radical conformist who paradoxically experiences himself as an outlaw.
(102)

Baudrillard is intellectual garbage

Gilman-Opalsky 10 - Associate Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Political Science at
the University of Illinois (Richard Gilman-Opalsky, 2010, "Selectively Forgetting Baudrillard: Rescuing
Praxis From The Wreckage." Theory In Action. Vol. 3 Issue 2, 6-30-2016, pages 10-12)

Baudrillard’s work ends up (although it does not begin so) in total renunciation of elements and
assumptions that all of his contemporaries, in varying ways, continue to accept. And, more than his
contemporaries, Baudrillard extends and applies Debord’s theory of the spectacle, which too many have
glossed over or ignored.4 However, Baudrillard’s expansion of and revision to the theory of the spectacle
leads him to conclusions both imprecise and dangerous. While Baudrillard sees theory as a game largely
for his own pleasure, Debord sees theory as the first and indispensable substance of revolutionary praxis
—the practice of theory and the theory of practice.5 According to Baudrillard, the world can only be
understood in various and incomplete ways, or endured, but never effectively intervened in with theory
and praxis. Much of the detritus of philosophy lies in the wake of Baudrillard’s work, but we can rescue
praxis from the wreckage. One of the problems here, which is perhaps not Baudrillard’s fault, is that he is
far more influential and widely read than Debord. True, Baudrillard is often completely and unfairly
discarded and even neglected without the slightest serious consideration or mention.6 But other times,
he is a celebrated figure of the postmodern and post-Marxist left who has breathed much life into
cultural studies programs throughout the US and whose work sits at the center of important and
contentious debates about war and terrorism. From either point of view, his work has been both
polarizing and impacting. Yet, it is my contention that Baudrillard is a wrong turn. His work is a scenic
route indeed, with some eye-opening views and flourishes of logic and language, and also, it is not one
without its occasional serious contributions. But there is a proverbial fork in the road for radical politics.
Baudrillard has himself said that he has “maintained a position of distrust and rejection. That’s the only
‘radicalness’ I can claim.”7 From the early 1980s up until his death in 2007, Baudrillard not only
abandoned any extant or conceivable radical politics, but also, he wrote books full of arguments against
all normative theory, against latent impulses for it, and against any interest in emancipatory
transformations of the world. By radical politics let me be clear that I am working within a loose field,
certainly a socialist milieu, a post-Marxism informed by anarchism, and this places me on a similar
terrain as many of the other thinkers mentioned above. I understand socialism (as I have argued
elsewhere) as a countervailing force to capitalism and its multifarious forms of privatization (in cultural
and political as well as economic spheres). From this point of view, if we follow Baudrillard, we end up
with too much fun and games, that is to say, too much of the personal pleasures of intellectual
masturbation, too much provocative diversion to sustain any responsible consideration of human
suffering, of oppression and of growing fatal inequities, let alone a way forward out of these things. For
a way forward, we must find our way backward from Baudrillard. This claim does not rest on a
reactionary defense of structuralism, truth, reality, history and collective action. To the contrary, I find
much of Baudrillard’s criticisms of these convincing—Baudrillard has provided many important
correctives that have yet to be properly heeded. So, I do not set out to critique Baudrillard from a purely
political point of view (although that is a part of my concern). In addition to the problem of politics,
Baudrillard makes dire metaphysical errors based on false association, and his reasoning and
argumentation often fail to convince even Baudrillard himself. After his The Mirror of Production (1973),
and aside from occasional self-conscious remarks, Baudrillard’s critique is increasingly subsumed by a
narrow concern about the condition of privileged peoples in bourgeois societies, and he egregiously fails
to account for the worst of suffering in the diverse manifold of human experience. Indeed, what
Baudrillard’s work ultimately provides is a mirror of bourgeois intellectualism. In short, while
Baudrillard’s work is indispensable for the evolution of a critical theory of capitalism and its culture, his
attack on the viability of socialist projects and normative theory must be refuted for both philosophical
and political reasons. It is possible, I maintain, to recognize the failure of past revolutionary projects
without abandoning revolutionary theory and collective action. The abandonment of the latter seems
inevitable following the development of Baudrillard’s work, and we must not follow it.

The collapse of reality is either inevitable or has already happened – it’s just a
question of whether we try foolishly clinging on to it.
Baudrillard ’97 (Jean; “Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact” pg 15-18)
Andy Warhol worked with any image available, in order to eliminate the imaginary and to make a pure
visual product of it. Unconditional simulacrum. Steve Miller (and all those who are reprogramming the
video-image, the scientific cliché and the synthesized image 'aestheti-cally') does exactly the opposite.
They make art with anti-art material. They use the machine to remake art. He (Warhol) is a machine. The
true technical metabolism is Warhol; Steve Miller only simulates the machine and he uses technique in
order to make illusion. Warhol gives us the very illusion of technique — technique as radical illusion —
far superior today to that of painting. In this sense, even a machine can become famous, and Warhol
never aspired to anything but this mechanical celebrity, without consequence and without trace. A
photogenic celebrity simply related to the demand of everything, of every individual to be seen, and to
be selected and acknowledged. That is what Warhol does; he is only the agent for the ironic
disappearance of things. He is only the medium for this huge publicity which the world makes for itself
through technique, through images, forcing our imagination to surrender, breaking the mirror that we
are holding up to it, hypocritically, in order to capture it for our profit. Through images, through technical
artefacts of all sorts, of which those of Warhol are the modern ideal-type, it is the world that imposes its
discontinuity on us, its fragmentation, its stereophony, its artificial instantaneousness. Evidence of the
Warhol machine, this extraordinary machine filtering the material evidence of the world. Warhol's
images are not banal because they reflect a banal world, but because they result from the absence of
any claim by the subject to be able to interpret the world. They result from the elevation of the image to
pure figuration, without the least transfiguration. No transcendence any more, but a potentialization of
the sign, which, losing all natural signification, shines in the void with all its artificial splendour. Warhol is
the first to intro-duce modem fetishism, transaesthetic illusion, that of an image as such, without quality,
a presence without desire. But what are modem artists doing, anyway? The artists of the Renaissance
believed that they were making religious pictures while in fact they were creating artworks. Are our
modern artists, who believe they are producing artworks, not doing something completely different?
Could it be that the objects they produce are something completely different from art? Fetish-objects for
example, but disenchanted ones, purely decorative objects (Roger Caillois would say: hyperbolic orna-
ments). Objects that are literally superstitious in the sense that they no longer assume the sublime
nature of art nor a belief in art, but which nevertheless keep the idea and superstition of art alive. The
same process as sexual fetishism, which is itself sexually disinvolved. The fetishist denies both the reality
of sex and sexual pleasure. He doesn't believe in sex, only in the idea of sex (which itself of course is
asexual). In the same way we no longer believe in art, but only in the idea of art (which for itself of
course is not aesthetic, but ideological). This is why art, being nothing more than an idea, is now working
on ideas. The bottle rack of Duchamp is an idea; the Campbell's box by Warhol is an idea; Yves Klein
selling air for a blank cheque in a gallery, this is an idea. All these are ideas, signs, allusions, concepts.
This no longer means anything at all; but it signifies anyway. What we call art today seems to witness an
unavoidable void. Art is tranvested by ideas, and ideas are tranvested by art. It's our form of
transexuality, of trans-vestism enlarged to the whole field of art and culture. Equally tran-sexual are
those kinds of art crossed by an idea, crossed by the empty signs of art, and by the signs of their own
disappearance. All modern art is abstract in the sense that it is crossed by the idea far more than it is
crossed by the imagination of forms and substances. All modern art is conceptual in the sense that it
fetishizes the concept, the stereotype of a cerebral model of art, exactly as that which is fetishized in
merchandise is not the real value, but an abstract stereotype of value. Dedicated to this fetishist and
decorative ideology, art no longer has an existence of its own. In this sense we might say that we are on
the way to the disappearance of art as a specific activity. This may lead us either to a reversion of art into
technique and pure artisanal quality, possibly transferred into the sphere of electronics, as we can see
every-where today. Or towards a primary ritualism, where everything will be used as an aesthetic
gadget, and art will end up as universal kitsch, exactly as religious art in its time ended up as Saint-
Sulpicien kitsch. Who knows? Art as such may only have been a parenthesis, a sort of ephemeral luxury
of the species. The distressing thing is that this crisis of art will probably last for ever. And the difference
between Warhol and all those who comfort themselves in this perpetual crisis is that with Warhol the
crisis of art is over and virtually obsolete. Is there still any aesthetic illusion? And if not, is the way open
to a transaesthetic illusion? To a radical one, that of the secret, of seduction, of magic? Is there still,
within our hypervisibility, transparence, virtu-ality, a place for an image? A place for an enigma? A place
for the real events of perception, a place for an effective power of illusion, a true strategy of forms and
appearances? Despite the modern mythology of a liberation of forms, we must say that forms and
figures cannot be liberated, cannot be free. Our task is not to free them, but to capture them, to make
them relate to each other and to generate each other. Objects whose secret is not in the 'centrifugal'
expression of their representative form (or deformation), but on the contrary, in their attraction towards
the centre and in their subsequent dispersion into the cycle of metamorphosis. There are two ways of
achieving, of going beyond representation: either that of its endless deconstruction where painting looks
at itself dying, in a sort of umbilical nostalgia, always reflecting its lost history. Or, simply to give up
representation, forgetting all the trouble of interpretation, forgetting the critical violence of sense and
counter-sense, in order to join the matrix of the appearance of things and the matrix of the distribution
of forms. This is the very form of illusion, the very concept of playing (illudere). Going beyond a form is
to pass from one form to another, whereas going beyond an idea is to negate the idea. This second
strategy defines the intellectual position of illusion and is often that of modern painting's challenge to
the world, whereas the former strategy exemplifies the very principle of illusion for which there is no
other destiny of form than the form itself. In this sense we must have illusionists who know that art and
painting are illusion, and are as far from intellectual criticism as from aesthetics properly speaking (which
already supposes a discrimination between the beautiful and the ugly). Illusionists who know that all art
is first a form of trompe-l'oeil, a 'life trick', just as all theory is a 'sense trick' — trompe-le-sens, and that
all painting, far from being an expressive version of the world, and thus pretending to veracity, consists in
setting up snares in which the supposed reality of the world may be naive enough to become trapped.
Just as theories do not consist of having ideas (and thus of flirting with the truth), but consist of setting
up traps into which meaning naively falls. Of finding, in short, a form of fundamental seduction. A
dimension beyond aesthetic illusion, which I would call anthropological, in order to designate the generic
function of designing the world just as it appears to us long before it makes sense, long before it is
interpreted or represented, and long before it becomes real. Not the negative and superstitious illusion
of another world. But the positive illusion of this world, of the operatic scene of the world, of the
symbolic operation of the world, of the vital illusion of appearances about which Nietzsche spoke —
illusion as a primitive scene, acting and happening long before and much more fundamentally than the
aesthetic scene. The sphere of artefacts goes largely beyond art. The realm of art and aesthetics is that
of the conventional management of illusion, of a con-vention that neutralizes the delirious effects of
illusion, which neutral-izes illusion as an extreme phenomenon. Aesthetics constitutes a sort of
sublimation, a mastery of the radical illusion of the world. Other cul-tures accepted the evidence of this
original illusion by trying to deal with it in a symbolic balance. We, the modern cultures, no longer
believe in this illusion of the world, but in its reality (which of course is the last and the worst of
illusions). We have chosen to exorcize this illusion through this civilized form of simulacrum, which we
call the aesthetic form. Illusion has no history. Aesthetic form has one. But because it has a history it also
has an end, and it may be now that we can see the fall, the failure, the fading of this conditional font, of
this aesthetic form of the simulacrum — in favour of the unconditional simulacrum, that is, of the
primitive scene of illusion, where we may join again with the rituals and phantasmagories of symbolic
cultures, and with the fatality of the object.

The aff's K of patriarchy allows the system to fake its own death.
Baudrillard 90 [seduction, 9-10]

Nowhere is it a question of seduction, the body worked by artifice (and not by desire), the body seduced,
the body to be 10 SEDUCTION seduced, the body in its passion separated from its truth, from that ethical
truth of desire which obsesses us - that serious, profoundly religious truth that the body today
incarnates, and for which seduction is just as evil and deceitful as it once was for religion . Nowhere is it
a question of the body delivered to appearances. Now, seduction alone is radically opposed to anatomy
as destiny. Seduction alone breaks the distinctive sexualization of bodies and the inevitable. phallic
economy that results. Any movement that believes it can subvert a system by its infrastructure is naive.
Seduction is more intelligent, and seemingly spontaneously so. Immediately obvious - seduction need
not be demonstrated, nor justified - it is there all at once, in the reversal of all the alleged depth of the
real, of all psychology, anatomy, truth, or power. It knows (this is its secret) that there is no anatomy, nor
psychology, that all signs are reversible. Nothing belongs to it, except appearances - all powers elude it,
but it "reversibilizes" all their signs. How can one oppose seduction? The only thing truly at stake is
mastery of the strategy of appearances, against the force of being and reality. There is no need to play
being against being, or truth against truth ; why become stuck undermining foundations, when a light
manipulation of appearances will do. Now woman is but appearance. And it is the feminine as
appearance that thwarts masculine depth . Instead of rising up against such "insulting" counsel, women
would do well to let themselves be seduced by its truth, for here lies the secret of their strength, which
they are in the process of losing by erecting a contrary, feminine depth.
 Borders
“Borderless world” rhetoric and criticism of the border reproduce neoliberalism and
globalization – the root cause of border violence is the divide between labor and
capital – only the alternative solves
DeFazio 2

[Kimberly DeFazio, (professor of English @ University of Wisconsin La-Crosse),“Whither Borders?”, Red

Critique May/June 2002, http://redcritique.org/MayJune02/whitherborders.htm, Accessed 7/15/15, AX]

Until recently the leaders of big business couldn't boast enough about the new "borderless" economy
—a post-national world of global prosperity in which capital, labor, goods and services circulate freely
—and its limitless opportunities for travel, commerce, and communication. So borderless was this new
world, these triumphalist narratives suggested, that like all identities the border between rich and poor
worldwide was being blurred in a continuum of boundless consumption. As corporate consultant Kenichi
Ohmae has argued, "as the 21st century approaches and as what I call the four 'I's'—industry,
investment, individuals, and information—flow relatively unimpeded across national borders, the
building-block concepts appropriate to a 19th-century, closed-country model of the world no longer
hold" (The End of the Nation State vii). Borderlessness had become a code for the new global freedom.
Yet with the emergence of the so-called war on terror, the borders have "returned" to the borderless
economy, and "freedom" is being redefined. It appears that the Bush Administration is concerned with
nothing other than securing US borders, tightening controls and channeling billions of dollars of public
funds to new and already existing national security, police and intelligence departments. The borders, it
seems, had become too "permeable". Suddenly we are told that the US borders are dangerously
insecure, and the preservation of American freedom now lies in the suspension of virtually all
democratic rights, including far-reaching new surveillance technologies to police all borders of the US,
as a means of distinguishing "safe" immigrants from "dangerous" ones, "us" from "them", the
"civilized" from the "barbarians". Immigrants are under attack not only in the US, but throughout
Europe (or "Fortress Europe", as it has become known), where a number of far-right politicians have
come to prominence on anti-immigrant policies, pulling with them to the right "new social democrats"
such as Tony Blair. And in one of the most violent manifestations of bordering, Israel has begun
constructing a physical barrier further imprisoning Palestinians behind a 12 mile long security fence,
separating "peace-loving" Israelis from, as Israeli government official Effi Eitam put it recently, Palestinian
"animals". The borderlessness of the new economy now appears as what it always was: a deadly farce,
with freedom another name for the free market. For, it is not only the recent corporate scandals that
have exposed the great economic crisis now shaking the foundations of society worldwide, but the
actual decline of the living and working conditions of the vast majority of the world's people, more
and more of whom are forced to live under increasingly desperate situations of poverty, hunger,
illness, illiteracy and rampant destruction caused by imperialist wars—while a tiny global ruling elite
accumulates ever more wealth and control over world resources. The borderless world, in short, was
never without borders. It was always founded on the border of exploitation; that is, the relation
between the propertyless and the property owners. Those who have only their labor to sell because
they do not own the means of production on one side, and on the other those who own the means of
production and therefore compel all who do not to work for them, in exchange for wages which
represent only a fraction of the value actually produced. The "return" of the border since September
11 represents the exacerbation of the antagonism between labor and capital: an antagonism which
exceeds all national borders. This relation between workers and owners is the fundamental "border"
hidden beneath the euphoric rhetoric of borderlessness—a rhetoric that has found expression in the
last decade not only in the managerial philosophy of corporate gurus and the third-way policies of US
and European state officials, but in the high-theory idiom of postmodern "hybridity" and the more
popular discourse of the Internet. What is at stake in the new emphasis on reinstituting borders
(whether through the "crisis" of the INS, the new surveillance technologies, the rolling back of civil
rights, the exclusion and incarceration of non-citizens…) has little to do with actually securing the US
border or ensuring the security of citizens. Rather, it is aimed at concealing the fundamental class
conflict by targeting as "other" any who do not conform to the US corporate agenda. It is primarily
aimed at diverting attention from what lies at the core of the global economic crisis—namely that it is a
system built on the ever-widening gap between rich and poor worldwide—while scaring working
people into accepting the suspension of the rights of some so that capital can better exploit the labor
of the entire working class. The return of the border is, in short, a cynical alibi for restructuring the
national security state and reorganizing the workforce to make up for the lost profits in the wake of the
recession which began well before 9-11.

Borderland doesn’t solve – most likely to replicate status quo hierarchies

Orozco-Mendoza PhD Student Department of Political Science @ UMass-Amherst 2008 Elva Fabiola
“Borderlands Theory: Producing Border Epistemologies with Gloria Anzaldúa” Masters Thesis submitted
to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05062008-175949/unrestricted/Final_thesis_corrected.pdf

From another perspective, it assumed that Anzaldúa’s theory would automatically take us to a safe
land, namely, that the Borderlands now transformed into a place that has become familiar, agreeable,
and even safe. Since the aim is to heal the self, to put it together, to make it knowledgeable, it is implied
that this reconciliation at the inner level will follow the processes in Borderlands with the desired
outcomes. In this regard, awareness in the sense Anzaldúa intended, should not be taken for granted,
since it is probable that the exposition to the Borderlands may lead us to reject the epistemologies of
the other and to identify largely with western knowledge. One may decide that the west is better,
white is better, capitalism is better than everything else that exists around. In sum, the colonized may
wish to remain colonized, no matter how irrational or nonsensical that decision would be. Lugones
also sees this risk when she states, we feel the temptation to stay within the "confines of the normal"
since reality and we in it are familiar to ourselves. We always may feel the temptation to engage in
political activity without this preparation [Borderlands processes], as if oppression did not touch our
selves (Lugones, 2005: 92). Perhaps the colonized decides that despite all the things that have been
imposed on her, colonization is better. It is possible that she decides that she is too angry, that she
wants to take revenge and revolts against the system instead of negotiating or mediating, or she can
decide that the theory does not make a big difference to her life so she puts the theory aside. The
possibilities that identity suffers a transformation are there, yes, but it does not mean that these will
be positive for the self for this can be a false agency.

As a theory that addresses the inner self, the Borderlands theory can possibly, although not forcibly,
work towards the empowerment and liberation from different forms of oppression, and towards the
undermining of western epistemologies that claim for them the right to explain the world rightly.
However, although Borderlands theory directly confronts those who hold power, we cannot assume
that the system that one tries to confront is a democratic one. That is, Anzaldúa calls white-Anglos to
assume historical responsibility for forcing Mexico to cede half of its territory, for vandalizing Mexicans
after the war forcing them to leave behind their lands, for taking their corporations to Mexico and Latin-
America to use Latin Americans as a source of cheap labor, for having Mexican-Americans/Chicanos and
illegal immigrants in the United States doing the hard work in exchange for few dollars, for extracting
Mexico’s wealth out of Mexico leaving the country impoverished, for doing all these things based on the
argument that their neighbors were inferior. In Borderlands Anzaldúa calls America accountable for
being an oppressor in almost the entire world, and, in doing so she assumed that the democratic
values of this country would respond to her call, yet neither United States nor Western Europe have
ever shown any intention to heal the open wound by publicly recognizing that colonialism and
economic exploitation are something negative. On the contrary, colonialism, imperialism, and now
globalization are for the most part justified in the name of freedom, democracy, God, reason, etc. As
Mignolo and Tlostanova state, “[Border resisting projects] have yet to find a way in which ‘either-or’ is
a deadlock, which seems to be maintained by the success of capitalism in wearing different masks
(liberal. Islamic, etc)” (Mignolo and Tlostanova, 2006: 217).

Borderlands framing liberalism and capitalism

Venator-Santiago Assistant Professor Latino Politics, Public Law, and Political Theory @ UConn 2008
Charles R. “Huntington's White Patriotism and Anzaldua's Brown Nationalism” FIU Law Review 33 Hein
Online

While it is beyond the scope of this paper to rehash the counter critiques of the LatCrit approach,52 I do
want to suggest that the focus on anti-essentialism and the multiple dimensions of subordination leave
a door open to a critique of racism and xenophobia that can draw on a traditional Marxist left. This
approach, however, demands that categories of oppression should not be reduced to mere class
relations. Rather, what is at stake is a concern with multiple relations of power and an understanding
of context in multiple ways. Huntington's racist and xenophobic narrative provides us with yet another
example of the ways in which right-wing positions continue to legitimate ideologies of human
subordination in the name of white Anglo-Saxon protestant patriotism in a capitalist system. Anzaldua's
argument neglects to challenge the role of capitalism in shaping the contours of racial, albeit hybrid,
national space. Both narratives draw on essentialist constructions of race and the reification of a
nationalist narrative in ways that continue to perpetuate a liberal ethos, an ethos that has found a
constant companion in capitalist forms of subordination and exploitation. The LatCrit approach can
offer potential insights into the ways that both Huntington's and Anzaldua's narratives reproduce
capitalist constructions of race and nation, and how these can become normative guides for the
development of legal ideologies.
Displacing bordered security is a pre-requisite for addressing fundamental dangers to
collective existence.
Stephen GRAHAM School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape @ Newcastle University ’12 “Digital
Medieval” Surveillance & Society 9 (3) p. 326-327

Cosmopolitan Security?

A final, crucial question emerges here. Above all these concerns, caveats, and crises we must consider
how a successful counter-politics of security might be mobilized, which resists and recasts the violent
shift towards a biopolitics of preemption, exception and managing the consequences of extreme
polarization. Such a counterpolitics must seek to challenge not only the mythologies sustaining
ubiquitous bordering. It must also confront the transnational complexes that feed off the way the
extending and all-pervasive mantra of militarized ‘security’ now works to permeate every crevice of
everyday urban life (Parr 2006). In the current context it is profoundly subversive to ask the simple
question: What might a politics of security be that actually addresses the real risks and threats that
humankind faces in a rapidly urbanizing world prone to resource exhaustion, spiraling food, energy and
water insecurity, biodiversity collapse, hyper-automobilisation, financial crises, and global warming and
does this from a cosmopolitan rather than xenophobic and militaristic starting point? Or where it is the
human, urban or ecological aspects of security that are foregrounded, rather than tawdry machinations
and imagineering which surrounds constellations of states and transnational corporations, integrated
through the dubious and corrupt relationships with burgeoning security-industrial-military complexes?

Such a process must clearly begin by contesting the increasingly widespread mobilisation of ‘hard’ – i.e.
profitable – borders and security strategies to question whether these actually do anything but
exacerbate vicious circles of fear and isolation, and quests for the holy grail of certainty, through
technological omniscience combined with architectures of withdrawal for the wealthy, mobile, or
powerful. “The growth of enclave societies,” Bryan Turner (2007) writes, “makes the search for
cosmopolitan values and institutions a pressing need, but the current trend towards the erection of walls
against the dispossessed and the underclass appears to be inexorable” (301).

Such cosmopolitan notions of urban, human and ecological security must be open to – indeed forged
through – difference. They must work against the habitual translation of difference into objectification,
Otherness and violence. They must assert the reinstatement of rights within states of reception as
means to overcome the murderous sovereignties which surround the states of exception which
increasingly characterize neoliberal capitalism. Finally, such a counter-politics must reject and reverse
tendencies toward the ubiquitous bordering of mobility, circulation and social life based on ideas of
ubiquitous bordering deployed both within and without the territorial limits of ‘homeland’ states.

A useful starting point here is provided by the work of philosopher, Adrian Parr. He urges that a viable
counter politics to the ubiquitous border must start by opening up the “parameters of this debate in a
way that no longer understands the outside as terrifying and a source of contamination, against which
the inside defensively freezes itself in an effort to contain and ward-off encroachment” (2006: 106).

National identity prevents an effective response to global problems --- only articulating a shared
identity can prevent extinction.
Rogers Smith, 2003. Professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania and PhD Harvard
University. Stories Of Peoplehood, The Politics and Morals of Political Membership, p. 166-169.

It is certainly important to oppose such evolutionary doctrines by all intellectually credible means. But
many have already been widely discredited; and today it may well prove salutary, even indispensable, to
heighten awareness of human identity as shared membership in a species engaged in an ages-long
process of adapting to often dangerous and unforgiving natural and man-made environments.20 When
we see ourselves in the light of general evolutionary patterns, we become aware that it is genuinely
possible for a species such as ourselves to suffer massive setbacks or even to become extinct if we
pursue certain dangerous courses of action. That outcome does not seem to be in any human's interest.
And when we reflect on the state of our species today, we see or should see at least five major
challenges to our collective survival, much less our collective nourishing, that are in some respects truly
unprecedented. These are all challenges of our own making, however, and so they can all be met
through suitably cooperative human efforts. The first is our ongoing vulnerability to the extraordinary
weapons of mass destruction that we have been building during the last half century. The tense
anticipations of imminent conflagration that characterized the Cold War at its worst are now behind us,
but the nuclear arsenals that were so threatening are largely still with us, and indeed the governments
and, perhaps, terrorist groups possessed of some nuclear weaponry have continued to proliferate. The
second great threat is some sort of environmental disaster, brought on by the by-products of our efforts
to achieve ever-accelerating industrial and post-industrial production and distribution of an incredible
range of good and services. Whether it is global warming, the spread of toxic wastes, biospheric
disruptions due to new agricultural techniques, or some combination of these and other consequences
of human interference with the air, water, climate, and plant and animal species that sustain us, any
major environmental disaster can affect all of humanity. Third, as our economic and technological
systems have become ever more interconnected, the danger that major economic or technological
failures in one part of the world might trigger global catastrophes may well increase. Such
interdependencies can, to be sure, be a source of strength as well as weakness, as American and
European responses to the East Asian and Mexican economic crises of the 1990s indicated. Still, if global
capitalism were to collapse or a technological disaster comparable to the imagined Y2K doomsday
scenario were to occur, the consequences today would be more far-reaching than they would have been
for comparable developments in previous centuries. Fourth, as advances in food production, medical
care, and other technologies have contributed to higher infant survival rates and longer lives, the world's
population has been rapidly increasing, placing intensifying pressures on our physical and social
environments in a great variety of ways. These demographic trends, necessarily involving all of humanity,
threaten to exacerbate all the preceding problems, generating political and military conflicts, spawning
chronic and acute environmental damages, and straining the capacities of economic systems. The final
major challenge we face as a species is a more novel one, and it is one that may bring consciousness of
our shared "species interests" even more to the fore. In the upcoming century, human beings will
increasingly be able to affect their own genetic endowment, in ways that might potentially alter the very
sort of organic species that we are. Here as with modern weapons, economic processes, and population
growth, we face risks that our efforts to improve our condition may go disastrously wrong, potentially
endangering the entire human race. Yet the appeal of endowing our children with greater gifts is suffi-
ciently powerful that organized efforts to create such genetic technologies capable of "redesigning
humans" are already burgeoning, both among reputable academic researchers and less restrained, but
well-endowed, fringe groups.21 To be sure, an awareness of these as well as other potential dangers
affecting all human beings is not enough by itself to foster moral outlooks that reject narrow and
invidious particularistic conceptions of human identity. It is perfectly possible for leaders to feel that to
save the species, policies that run roughshod over the claims of their rivals are not simply justified but
morally demanded. Indeed, like the writers I have examined here, my own more egalitarian and
cosmopolitan moral leanings probably stem originally from religious and Kantian philosophical influ-
ences, not from any consciousness of the common "species interests" of human beings. But the ethically
constitutive story which contends that we have such interests, and that we can see them as moral
interests, seems quite realistic, which is of some advantage in any such account. And under the
circumstances just sketched, it is likely that more and more people will become persuaded that today,
those shared species interests face more profound challenges than they have in most of human history.
If so, then stressing our shared identity as members of an evolving species may serve as a highly credible
ethically constitutive story that can challenge particularistic accounts and foster support for novel
political arrangements. Many more people may come to feel that it is no longer safe to conduct their
political lives absorbed in their traditional communi ties, with disregard for outsiders, without active
concern about the issues that affect the whole species and without practical collaborative efforts to
confront those issues. That consciousness of shared interests has the potential to promote stronger and
much more inclusive senses of trust, as people come to realize that the dangers and challenges they face
in common matter more than the differences that will doubtless persist. I think this sort of awareness of
a shared "species interests" also can support senses of personal and collective worth, though I
acknowledge that this is not obviously the case. Many people find the spectacle of the human species
struggling for survival amidst rival life forms and an unfeeling material world a bleak and dispiriting one.
Many may still feel the need to combine acceptance of an evolutionary constitutive story with religious
or philosophical accounts that supply some stronger sense of moral purpose to human and cosmic
existence. But if people are so inclined, then nothing I am advocating here stands in the way of such
combinations. Many persons, moreover, may well find a sustaining sense of moral worth in a conception
of themselves as contributors to a species that has developed unique capacities to deliberate and to act
responsibly in regard to questions no other known species can yet conceive: how should we live? What
relationships should we have, individually and collectively, to other people, other life forms, and the
broader universe? In time, I hope that many more people may come to agree that humanity has shared
responsibilities of stewardship for the animate and physical worlds around us as well as ourselves,
ultimately seeking to promote the flourishing of all insofar as we are capable and the finitude of
existence permits. But even short of such a grand sense of species vocation, the idea that we are part of
humanity's endeavor to strive and thrive across ever-greater expanses of space and time may be one
that can inspire a deep sense of worth in many if not most human beings. Hence it does not seem
unrealistic to hope that we can encourage increased acceptance of a universalistic sense of human
peoplehood that may help rein in popular impulses to get swept up in more parochial tales of their
identities and interests. In the years ahead, this ethical sensibility might foster acceptance of various
sorts of transnational political arrangements to deal with problems like exploitative and wildly fluctuat -
ing international financial and labor markets, destructive environmental and agricultural practices,
population control, and the momentous issue of human genetic modifications. These are, after all,
problems that appear to need to be dealt with on a near-global scale if they are to be dealt with
satisfactorily. Greater acceptance of such arrangements would necessarily entail increased willingness to
view existing governments at all levels as at best only "semi-sovereign," authoritative over some issues
and not others, in the manner that acceptance of multiple particularistic constitutive stories would also
reinforce. In the resulting political climate, it might become easier to construct the sorts of systems of
interwoven democratic international, regional, state and local governments that theorists of "cos-
mopolitan democracy," "liberal multicultural nationalism," and "differentiated democracy" like David
Held, Will Kymlicka, Iris Young, William Connolly, and Jurgen Habermas all envision.

Your aff is just the last stage in the US process of moving its most egregious
surveillance of immigrants outside of its boarders
Torney 2k

John Torpey is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Chair of the International Studies Faculty Board at
the University of California, Irvine, The Invention of the Passport. IG

During the same period when the law had come to impose strict documentary surveillance on the
Chinese in response to the wishes of political interests in the Western states of the country, the
regulation of immigration was becoming more and more clearly understood as a mandate of the federal
government in the United States. Hearings by joint congressional committees to determine the goals of
US immigration policy had led to recommendations aiming "not to restrict immigration, but to sift it, to
separate the desirable from the undesirable immigrants, and to permit only those to land on our shores
who have certain physical and moral qualities." 26 In pursuit of this objective, immigration regulation
came to focus on those who might be a burden on the public purse and those regarded as
"unassimilable" or otherwise unworthy of inclusion in the American civic body. Against this background,
Congress adopted the Immigration Act of 1891, which placed the regulation of immigration under the
authority of the Secretary of the Treasury, created a new Superintendent of Immigration within the
Treasury Department, strengthened the enforcement provisions of earlier laws, and installed twenty-
four border inspection stations. All of these measures contributed to the bureaucratic institutionalization
of immigration control, which for the first time had become national in character as a consequence of
this legislation. Yet for the time being, Chinese immigration continued to be regulated by the Exclusion
Acts, whereas that from Europe was governed by the Superintendent of Immigration - a fact that,
ironically, allowed the Chinese more leeway to challenge their treatment in the courts. 27 In keeping
with the recommendations of the congressional inquiries into the aims of American immigration policy,
the administrative structures called forth by the 1891 law were designed to enable the government to
distinguish between those who were thought to be good 101 25 THE INVENTION OF THE PASSPORT
candidates for American citizenship, and those who were not. These priorities promoted a process
whereby all immigration would be administered by the same bureaucracy (even if different groups of
potential immigrants were subjected to different policies). With the increasing prevalence of eugenics
and other race-conscious approaches to population management , the ranks of those held to be
unworthy of admission into or citizenship in the United States expanded beyond the Chinese to include a
variety of groups regarded as impure, unclean, idiotic, nonwhite, or incapable of understanding the
principles of republicanism. The proliferation of the categories of excludables pushed in the direction of
a more uniform administration of immigration control, and in the early 1900s the separate
administration of Asian and European immigrant streams disappeared as the drift toward the
"nationalization" of immigration regulation became consolidated institutionally. In 1903, the work of the
Commissioner General of Immigration in the Treasury Department was transferred to a full-fledged
Bureau of Immigration in the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor, and Chinese
immigration fell under its purview along with that of Europeans. The exclusion of the Chinese was
rendered permanent in 1904, a harbinger of things to come for other Asian and European national
groups - as long as the necessary documents could be created and imposed. In 1907, the "Gentlemen's
Agreement" closed off the access of Japanese laborers to the United States when the Japanese
government agreed to stop issuing them passports, a policy later extended to Japanese women who
were to travel to the United States as "picture brides" of future husbands whom they knew only as a
photograph. The situation was more complicated with Filipinos, subjects but not citizens of the United
States after acquisition of the islands from Spain. As US "nationals" - persons "owing allegiance, whether
citizens or not, to the United States" - they could not be subjected to restrictive immigration laws.
Ironically, however, the acquisition of overseas possessions such as the Philippines forced the US
government to expand access to passports to a variety of non-citizen "nationals," reversing the general
trend toward distribution of those documents exclusively to citizens. 28 Along with the growing worries
about the racially inferior, concerns also spread that various categories of persons would render the
American stock less wholesome in political, moral, or medical terms. The latter fear soon helped give
birth to the Public Health Service and to legislation excluding those with contagious illnesses. US
restrictions on the admission of the medically dubious stimulated the development overseas of both
governmental and steamship company efforts to insure that would-be emigrants would pass muster
when they arrived in American ports. 29 Gradually, many of the activities associated with US 102
TOWARD THE "CRUSTACEAN TYPE OF NATION" immigrant inspection would be transferred abroad, as
control of immigration moved from the territorial borders of the United States to the emigrant-
sending countries themselves - a development that would dramatically enhance the capacity of states
to restrict the influx of outsiders.

Surveillance at the border is inevitable. Counter surveillance and de-bordering are

necessary acts of counter-hegemonic resistance. The plan makes it harder to deploy
counter surveillance along the border.
Walsh 2010 [James, Prof. @ UC Santa Barbara, “Form Border Control to Border Care: The Political and
Ethical Potential of Surveillance”, Surveillance and Society 8:2]

Although existing research has illuminated the role of surveillance in monitoring and managing mobile
populations, it has tended to overlook other important activities, including the strategic use of
surveillance by activist groups. As a result, scholarship has generally interpreted watching, locating, and
identifying as innately authoritative and disempowering practices directed toward gatekeeping and
exclusion. But what happens when observational technologies and strategies are turned against the
state’s gatekeepers and surveillance systems? How should such instances impact scholarly
understandings of surveillance as a potential tool of resistance, empowerment and democratization? In
addressing these questions, I assess two interventions employed to address the human consequences of
contemporary immigration control: (1) counter-surveillance and (2) strategic and symbolic acts of ‘de-
bordering’. While both share common interests in rendering perceived injustice visible, they can be
differentiated based on their tactics and overriding objectives. The first refers to the use of surveillance
to promote transparency and democratic accountability by ‘watching the watchers’ and turning the gaze
of authority against itself (see Huey et al. 2006). ‘De-bordering’, meanwhile, represents broader
transformative approaches that employ surveillance to humanize the border environment. While it also
seeks to alter existing arrangements, unlike counter-surveillance, such actions are more systemic or
counter-hegemonic; rather than implementing a direct response or counter-gaze, they pursue ethical
and practical activities that assist migrants, recast the terms of official discourse, and challenge existing
institutional arrangements.

Their theory reifies capitalism via obsession with status quo social constructions
Venator-Santiago Assistant Professor Latino Politics, Public Law, and Political Theory @ UConn 2008
Charles R. “Huntington's White Patriotism and Anzaldua's Brown Nationalism” FIU Law Review 33 Hein
Online

Despite the problems present in Huntington's defense of a white Anglo- Saxon Protestant patriotic
identity, his argument echoes similar conceptual arguments used by Chicana nationalists like Gloria
Anzaldua. Although the political premises of Huntington and Anzaldfia's narratives have different goals,
it is readily evident that both rely on a nationalist ideological framework to achieve the respective ends
of their arguments. In fact, both Huntington and Anzaldua end up defending a nationalist narrative
that continues to reproduce a petty-bourgeoisie form of capitalism through the reification of
essentialist social constructions. Ironically, rather than engaging concrete material injustices, both
Huntington and Anzaldua resort to founding racial myths and ideological psychobabble in order to
substantiate what turns out to be a project that reifies a capitalist status quo. In the interest of space, I
limit my discussion to two fundamental points that illustrate my argument, namely, the use of racial,
founding myths and the social construction of a consciousness that avoids the present. I argue that a
critical approach rooted in a leftist tradition should not lose sight of the influence of capitalism in
shaping the contours of subordinated and exploited identities.

Huntington's anxieties with Mexicans and immigrants of Latin American heritage seem to be fueled by a
sort of "underclass", nationalist rhetoric that describes most Latin American immigrants as "poor,
unskilled, and not well educated" and seeking to colonize spaces within the United States.28 His main
anxiety centers on the idea that Mexican immigrants, in particular, will seek to create an autonomous
region in the Southwest that will secede from the United States, which will lead to a civil war between
white nativists and immigrants. Ironically, Chicana writers like Gloria Anzaldua, as well as others, have
not only defended the nationalist rhetoric underpinning Huntington's argument, but have embraced
the nationalist borderlands debate as a central part of a subaltern narrative. Of course, it must be
remembered that, while the political objectives may differ between Huntington and Anzaldua's
narratives, at a conceptual level both rely on a similar set of myths and rhetorical claims.

Borders are developed through objective mapping mentality

Anzaldúa, Scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory, 1987
[Gloria E., Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, p. 3, J.J.]

The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.
And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third
country—a border culture. Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to
distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a
vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a
constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. Los atravesados live here:
the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the half-breed,
the half dead; in short, those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the "normal."
Gringos in the U.S. Southwest consider the inhabitants of the borderlands transgressors, aliens-whether
they possess documents or not, whether they're Chicanos, Indians or Blacks. Do not enter, trespassers
will be taped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot. The only “legitimate” inhabitants are those in power, the
whites and those who align themselves with whites. Tension grips the inhabitants of the borderlands like
a virus. Ambivalence and unrest reside there and death is no stranger.

Borders turn the case.

Salter 05(Mark B.; Professor at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa; Ph.D., Political
Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1999; M.Sc., International Relations, London School
of Economics, London, 1995; B.A. (Hons), Politics and Liberal Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines,
1994; “At the Threshold of Security: A Theory of International Borders;” Global Surveillance and Policing:
Borders, Security, Identity, P 36-50, 2005, Elia Zureik and Mark B. Salter, eds.)TKH

We might point to three dynamics of this border control mechanism: the weaknesses of biometrics, the
reliance on technological fixes to an inherently psycho-governmental problem, and the failure of risk
management as a strategy for security. In short, states are faced with a dilemma in the post-9/11 world:
a totalitarian strategy to increase their surveillance of domestic (and international) populations so that
they might ‘know’ more; or the bifurcation of world regions and world populations into safe and
dangerous in a way that completely replicates the nineteenth-century imperial model of the colonial
world and reverses any modern movement towards freedom of mobility. Borders in either case become
mechanisms of state control – for either those on the inside or those on the outside.

Prefer our interpretation:

Its predictable: You should be able to justify how you characterize the ocean on an
ocean topic.
Its fair: The representations and characterizations of the 1AC are key negative ground,
we shouldn’t have to only talk about hypothetical policies.
Its key to critical education: Without discussions of characterizations we are doomed
to misrepresentations and bad decision making.
Critical theory—especially critical geography—is the most pragmatic form of scholarship and melds
different types of education.
Arias 10. (Santa Arias, Associate Professor at the University of Kansas. Rethinking space: an outsider’s
view of the spatial turn. February 6, 2010.
http://amitay.haifa.ac.il/images/9/90/Arias_2010_rethinking_space.pdf) MMG

A point of convergence between disciplines in the humanities and social sciences has been provided
by critical theory, particularly the ideas of the Frankfurt School, French poststructuralists, and many
other philosophers who have sought to show the multiple meanings of space and the play of social
relations across geographic surfaces as they pertain to language, identity, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and
power. Without doubt, critical theory has become the backbone of the cross-disciplinary dialogue that
has enriched, diversified, and provided a theoretical apparatus to academic scholarship. At the
forefront of interdisciplinary research are the complexities, silences, and problematic relationship
between interpreters (i.e., readers, artists, viewers), texts, and the worlds they represent. With the
works of Lefebvre, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida, as interpreted by critical human geographers, the
entrance of spatiality into other fields has allowed for ‘‘lateral mappings’’ that resulted, in my view, of a
more nuanced understanding of the relationships of history and geography.2 Spatiality is
interdisciplinary by nature and it has impacted other disciplines beyond history, such as religion,
philosophy, anthropology, sociology, education, media studies, and literature and cultural studies, to
name just a few. Critical geographers have provided the tools to challenge historicist approaches that
view space as a given entity, inert and naturalized, in order to engage in an interpretative human
geography. Jonathan Murdoch (2006) outlines the important influence of poststructuralism in geography
in order to understand its focus on power and social relations and networks and spatial entanglements:
‘‘It is a way of shifting spatial imaginaries so that new forms of geographical practice come into being.
From a post-structuralist perspective, no longer should geographical practitioners be detached from
heterogeneity…they should be subsumed within the complexities and multiplicities of various kinds’’
(197).

Questions of epistemology come before policymaking and directly determine its success.

IIDA 06. (Akira IIDA, Professor, College of Law, Nihon University. February 2006. Cognitive Issues in Policy
Making. https://www.mof.go.jp/pri/research/discussion_paper/ron133e.pdf. ) MMG

In any policy making exercise, whether it is about matters of economic, social or political problems,
both domestic and international, such as diplomatic relations or national defense, there are various
cognitive issues that affect the design and implementation of the policy. Without correct cognition of
the actuality and history regarding the problems in question, or without correct cognition of the
problems that might arise in the process of the policy implementation, the policy making exercise is
bound to fail. Yet, in the history of economics, sociology or the study of the diplomacy or of national
defense, philosophical inquiry about “cognitive issues in policy making” has been very poor. More
specifically, on one hand, epistemologists have hesitated to go into this kind of inquiry, since policy
making always embraces questions of values or other subjective judgments, and hence, objectivity is
not assured. On the other hand, the attention of the economist, sociologist, or analysts on diplomacy
and national defense has focused on the analysis of relationships among the economic, social,
diplomatic or defense factors, while neglecting the cognitive issues in policy making itself. Policy makers
should have far better knowledge in this area, but they have paid scarce attention to it, despite their
policy failures, caused by their failures to recognize the factors that really mattered in the case in
question.

More Framework Cards

Simulation fails, methodological criticism key to examine discursive foundations and critique spatiality.

Leonardo 03. CSU Long Beach. Resisting Capital:¶ Simulationist and Socialist Strategies.
http://gse3.berkeley.edu/faculty/ZLeonardo/ResistingCapital.pdf MMG

I have argued that critical theory must work through the distortions¶ of capital. As such, the act of
reading becomes not only an exercise¶ of representation, but a potentially transformative event
(Freire 1993).¶ Throughout this essay, I assessed the viability of both simulationist¶ and socialist
theories as modes of explanation for the postmodern¶ condition. In addition, I evaluated their capacity
to intervene into or¶ resist with meaningful strategies relations of capital. Finally, the essay¶ critiqued
simulationism and socialism for their praxiological value. Clearly,¶ Baudrillard’s simulation theory of the
hyperreal represents a unique¶ innovation in social theory that challenges any universalist,
transcendental¶ explanation of the social. En route to its unpredictable ends, simulation¶ theory
pronounces the death of certain modernist themes, like production¶ and depth, both of which link with
Marxist discourse. Despite these¶ formidable challenges to socialist epistemology, simulation theory
falls short¶ of a sustainable position because it denies the possibility of systematic¶ opposition since
this would be tantamount to admitting that a system is¶ currently in place. Socialist societies may not
obliterate oppression once and for all, but a historical materialist critique is a process that attends¶ to
the conditions of exploitation as they historically appear. In a time¶ of real as well as theoretical crisis,
the promises of Marxism remain a potential, not a guarantee. It is not only attentive to language, but
the¶ language of concrete people. It takes discourse seriously but also constructs a discourse for
transformation of reality. Despite the possibility that it¶ may never realize a practical condition free of
contradictions, Marxism¶ is a discourse committed to ending human exploitation. In our current¶
formation, Marxism’s incessant critique of capitalism makes it one of the¶ most stable threats in the
unstable conditions of postmodernity.

Use the ballot to reclaim social pedagogy—skills and knowledge are force multipliers for inequality
unless we prioritize resistance in education—it’s your academic responsibility

Giroux, cultural studies prof, 5—Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at
McMaster University, selected as the Barstow Visiting Scholar for 2003 at Saginaw Valley State University,
named as Distinguished Scholar at multiple institutions, Ph.D. (Henry, Fast Capitalism, 1.2 2005, “Cultural
Studies in Dark Times: Public Pedagogy and the Challenge of Neoliberalism,” RBatra)

In opposition to these positions, I want to reclaim a tradition in radical educational theory and cultural
studies in which pedagogy as a critical practice is central to any viable notion of agency, inclusive
democracy, and a broader global public sphere. Pedagogy as both a language of critique and possibility
looms large in these critical traditions, not as a technique or a priori set of methods, but as a political
and moral practice. As a political practice, pedagogy is viewed as the outgrowth of struggles and
illuminates the relationships among power, knowledge, and ideology, while self-consciously, if not self-
critically, recognizing the role it plays as a deliberate attempt to influence how and what knowledge
and identities are produced within particular sets of social relations. As a moral practice, pedagogy
recognizes that what cultural workers, artists, activists, media workers, and others teach cannot be
abstracted from what it means to invest in public life, presuppose some notion of the future, or locate
oneself in a public discourse. The moral implications of pedagogy also suggest that our responsibility as
intellectuals for the public cannot be separated from the consequences of the knowledge we produce,
the social relations we legitimate, and the ideologies and identities we offer up to students as well as
colleagues. Refusing to decouple politics from pedagogy means, in part, creating those public spaces for
engaging students in robust dialogue, challenging them to think critically about received knowledge
and energizing them to recognize their own power as individual and social agents. Pedagogy has a
relationship to social change in that it should not only help students frame their sense of
understanding, imagination, and knowledge within a wider sense of history, politics, and democracy
but should also enable them to recognize that they can do something to alleviate human suffering, as
the late Susan Sontag (2003) has suggested. Part of this task necessitates that cultural studies theorists
and educators anchor their own work, however diverse, in a radical project that seriously engages the
promise of an unrealized democracy against its really existing and greviously incomplete forms. Of crucial
importance to such a project is rejecting the assumption that theorists can understand social problems
without contesting their appearance in public life. More specifically, any viable cultural politics needs a
socially committed notion of injustice if we are to take seriously what it means to fight for the idea of
the good society. Zygmunt Bauman (2002) is right in arguing that "if there is no room for the idea of
wrong society, there is hardly much chance for the idea of good society to be born, let alone make
waves" (p. 170). Cultural studies' theorists need to be more forceful, if not more committed, to linking
their overall politics to modes of critique and collective action that address the presupposition that
democratic societies are never too just, which means that a democratic society must constantly
nurture the possibilities for self-critique, collective agency, and forms of citizenship in which people
play a fundamental role in shaping the material relations of power and ideological forces that affect
their everyday lives. Within the ongoing process of democratization lies the promise of a society that
is open to exchange, questioning, and self-criticism, a democracy that is never finished, and one that
opposes neoliberal and neoconservative attempts to supplant the concept of an open society with a
fundamentalist market-driven or authoritarian one. Cultural studies theorists who work in higher
education need to make clear that the issue is not whether higher education has become
contaminated by politics, as much as recognizing that education is already a space of politics, power,
and authority. At the same time, they can make visible their opposition to those approaches to
pedagogy that reduce it to a set of skills to enhance one's visibility in the corporate sector or an
ideological litmus test that measures one's patriotism or ratings on the rapture index. There is a
disquieting refusal in the contemporary academy to raise broader questions about the social, economic,
and political forces shaping the very terrain of higher education—particularly unbridled market forces,
fundamentalist groups, and racist and sexist forces that unequally value diverse groups within relations
of academic power. There is also a general misunderstanding of how teacher authority can be used to
create the pedagogical conditions for critical forms of education without necessarily falling into the
trap of simply indoctrinating students. For instance, many conservative and liberal educators believe
that any notion of critical pedagogy that is self-conscious about its politics and engages students in ways
that offer them the possibility for becoming critical—what Lani Guinier (2003:6) calls the need to
educate students "to participate in civic life, and to encourage graduates to give back to the community,
which through taxes, made their education possible"—leaves students out of the conversation or
presupposes too much or simply represents a form of pedagogical tyranny. While such educators believe
in practices that open up the possibility of questioning among students, they often refuse to connect the
pedagogical conditions that challenge how and what students think at the moment to the next task of
prompting them to imagine changing the world around them so as to expand and deepen its democratic
possibilities. Teaching students how to argue, draw on their own experiences, or engage in rigorous
dialogue says nothing about why they should engage in these actions in the first place. How the culture
of argumentation and questioning relates to giving students the tools they need to fight oppressive
forms of power, make the world a more meaningful and just place, and develop a sense of social
responsibility is missing in contemporary, progressive frameworks of education. While no pedagogical
intervention should fall to the level of propaganda, a pedagogy which attempts to empower critical
citizens can't and shouldn't try to avoid politics. Pedagogy must address the relationships between
politics and agency, knowledge and power, subject positions and values, and learning and social
change while always being open to debate, resistance, and a culture of questioning. Liberal educators
committed to simply raising questions have no language for linking learning to forms of public minded
scholarship that would enable students to consider the important relationship between democratic
public life and education, or that would encourage students pedagogically to enter the sphere of the
political, enabling them to think about how they might participate in a democracy by taking what they
learn into new locations and battlegrounds—a fourth grade classroom, a church, the media, a politician's
office, the courts, a campus—or for that matter taking on collaborative projects that address the myriad
of problems citizens face on a local, national, and global level in a diminishing democracy. In spite of the
professional pretense to neutrality, academics in the field of cultural studies need to do more
pedagogically than simply teach students how to argue and question. Students need much more from
their educational experience. Democratic societies need educated citizens who are steeped in more than
the skills of argumentation. And it is precisely this democratic project that affirms the critical function
of education and refuses to narrow its goals and aspirations to methodological considerations. As Amy
Gutmann (1999) argues, education is always political because it is connected to the acquisition of
agency, the ability to struggle with ongoing relations of power, and is a precondition for creating
informed and critical citizens who act on the world. This is not a notion of education tied to the alleged
neutrality of the academy or the new conservative call for "intellectual diversity" but to a vision of
pedagogy that is directive and interventionist on the side of producing a substantive democratic society.
This is what makes critical pedagogy different from training. And it is precisely the failure to connect
learning to its democratic functions and goals that provides rationales for pedagogical approaches that
strip critical and democratic possibilities from what it means to be educated. Cultural studies theorists
and educators would do well to take account of the profound transformations taking place in the public
sphere and reclaim pedagogy as a central element of cultural politics. In part, this means once again
recognizing, as Pierre Bourdieu (2003) has insisted, that the "power of the dominant order is not just
economic, but intellectual—lying in the realm of beliefs"(p. 66), and it is precisely within the domain of
ideas that a sense of utopian possibility can be restored to the public realm. Such a task suggests that
academics and other cultural workers actively resist the ways in which neoliberalism discourages
teachers and students from becoming critical intellectuals by turning them into human data banks.
Educators and other cultural workers need to build alliances across differences, academic disciplines, and
national boundaries as part of broader efforts to develop social movements in defense of the public
good and social justice. No small part of this task requires that such groups make visible the connection
between the war at home and abroad. If the growing authoritarianism in the U.S. is to be challenged, it is
necessary to oppose not only an imperial foreign policy, but also the shameful tax cuts for the rich, the
dismantling of the welfare state, the attack on unions, and those policies that sacrifice civil liberties in
the cause of national security. Opposing the authoritarian politics of neoliberalism, militarism, and
neoconservatism means developing enclaves of resistance in order to stop the incarceration of a
generation of young black and brown men and women, the privatization of the commons, the attack on
public schools, the increasing corporatization of higher education, the growing militarization of public
life, and the use of power based on the assumption that empire abroad entails tyranny and repression at
home. But resistance needs to be more than local or rooted in the specificity of particular struggles.
Progressives need to develop national and international movements designed to fight the new
authoritarianism emerging in the United States and elsewhere. In part, this means revitalizing social
movements such as civil rights, labor, environmental, and anti-globalization on the basis of shared values
and a moral vision rather than simply issue-based coalitions. This suggests organizing workers,
intellectuals, students, youth, and others through a language of critique and possibility in which
diverse forms of oppression are addressed through a larger discourse of radical democracy, a discourse
that addresses not only what it means to think in terms of a general notion of freedom capable of
challenging corporate rule, religious fundamentalism, and the new ideologies of empire, but also what
it might mean to link freedom to a shared sense of hope, happiness, community, equality, and social
justice. Democracy implies a level of shared beliefs, practices, and a commitment to build a more
humane future. Politics in this sense points to a struggle over those social, economic, cultural, and
institutional forces that make democracy purposeful for all people. But this fundamentally requires
something prior—a reclaiming of the social and cultural basis of a critical education that makes the
very struggle over democratic politics meaningful and understandable as part of a broader affective,
intellectual, and theoretical investment in public life (Couldry 2004).

Borders and place come before and determine politics – where we locate political authority is a
prerequisite to political engagement

Walker 9 [RBJ, Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada,
After the Globe, Before the World, p 33-35]

The list of challenges to established political conventions is undoubtedly long. It offers ample potential
for scholarly squabbles and public debates about sequencing and priorities. It certainly exceeds the
analytical competence of established disciplinary traditions of scholarship, not least because established
scholarly disciplines are already overcommitted to specific sequences and priorities. It feeds multiple
disputes about the interpretation of information and the specific ontological, epistemological and
axiological commitments these interpretations should stimulate. Specific claims sometimes lead to
sophisticated conceptual and empirical innovation; though they also lead to disputes about the grounds
on which conceptual and empirical sophistication might now be judged. Sometimes such claims generate
wild speculation, righteous indignation, and desperate affirmations of entrenched theoretical traditions;
though they also intensify suspicions that the grounds on which we have come to think about both
tradition and radical possibility are now precisely what is being called into question. Most significantly,
claims about specific trends and problems generate further claims about the limitations of established
forms of political authority, especially about the always uncertain relationship between various
practices of power and the territorially located institutions and procedures through which
deployments of, and responses to, power are understood to be legitimate. Whether in relation to
narratives about new or intensified trends and dangers, or to contestations over basic principles that
have long been taken for granted, claims that we need to be more imaginative in our ability to work
together (as the political animals of the polis, as Aristotle would put it, as participants in some
community as we tend to put it now) increasingly run up against the multiple ways in which our
authoritative expressions of political engagement are firmly located in a particular somewhere: within
and between the spatial boundaries of modern states. 7 To imagine some other way of being political,
it is often assumed, is also to imagine future possibilities without the benefit of those boundaries,
those lines of both discrimination and relation that have shaped our most basic assumptions about
what it means to be modern political subjects capable of responding to specific challenges or to more
general structural and historical transformations. This is what gives such disconcerting force to claims
that we need to reimagine where and what political life might be. To articulate suspicions that political
life often fails to take place where it is supposed to take place is to generate multiple questions about
how to engage with whatever politics is supposed to be from those places within which it is supposed
to occur. To contemplate the implications of various claims about the speed, acceleration and temporal
contingency of contemporary political practices is to generate questions about how such practices can be
contained and organized within the spatial boundaries of a particular somewhere. To claim that the
boundaries of the modern state and the modern system of states are being displaced is to provoke
uncertainty about where we are or what we might be as political subjects. To suspect that
contemporary political life exceeds the instrumental and/or imaginative capacities of modern subjects
conceiving themselves to be citizens of a particular somewhere is to raise doubts about our capacity to
think about the prospects for liberty, equality, security and democracy, and thus about how we might
still claim to be both members of a particular community and participants in some more broadly
defined community, perhaps even one encompassing the entirety of humankind. To contemplate the
possibilities of resistance or emancipation in relation to claims about the failings of the modern state,
or to envisage plans for updating the United Nations so as to meet demands for fairer and more effective
forms of governance, or to make claims about the significance of social movements that are somehow
new, a civil society that is somehow global, or forms of violence that require still more violence, is to
come up against many well defined boundaries, whether understood as physical borders or as other,
less tangible forms of limitation: limits in space, limits in time, and limits in our capacity to imagine
where and what we are in space and in time. Most disturbingly, to try to respond to claims that the
problems of our age are worldwide in scope, involving complex economic, ecological and cultural
processes that exceed the grasp of established political authorities, is to generate profound doubts
about our capacity to engage with a world that has already been excluded as the necessary condition
under which modern political authority has been constituted in the formalized spaces of abstractly
sovereign jurisdictions. Consequently, it is now scarcely possible to engage with contemporary political
life without some sense that we risk speaking in terms that have lost much of their grip not only upon
important empirical events but even more so upon the theoretical principles through which we are
encouraged to make sense of and respond to empirical events. While many specific problems or trends
attract pragmatic responses requiring little attention to conceptual coherence or to grandiose notions
of spatiotemporality, once these responses impinge on established principles of political authority,
responsibility, liberty, equality, security and democracy – upon the principles through which we have
come to understand the possibilities and limits of a politics of modern subjects enabled within and
between modern sovereign states the spatiotemporal organization of what counts as a coherent and
acceptable form of political life quickly become of great controversy. In the meantime, ambitious one-
liners are thrown around as once merely speculative concepts are puffed up for the talk shows, the best-
seller lists, the quick sound-bites and the executive summaries. Claims about globalization,
postmodernity, a conflict of civilizations, a coming anarchy, a third way, a risk society, a tipping point
or a new empire blind us in a momentary glare, and then fade as complexities impinge and
contingencies are brought to order. The stories we are told about contemporary transformations vary
enormously. Anyone who claims to know how to offer a reasoned scholarly judgement about what they
add up to is certainly tempting the fates. Nevertheless, in my judgement it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that our capacity to know how to engage with political possibilities because we know where
those possibilities are to be engaged is in serious trouble. Much of this trouble arises in those contexts
that we call the international: that strange and very puzzling place in which we are encouraged to
imagine ourselves engaged in a politics that encompasses, or might one day encompass, the entire
world; as if a politics both enabled by and sustaining the ambitions of specifically modern subjects could
ever encompass the entire world from which such subjects have been separated as the necessary but
impossible condition under which they can celebrate their liberties, equalities and securities.

Focus on discourse and representations is key in the context of our criticism – threat construction and
the securitization of national identities legitimize violent intervention in the name of United States
hegemony – critical analysis is necessary.

Slater, 2004 [David Slater, Emeritus Professor of Political Geography, & Associate Fellow of the Institute
for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking
North-South Relations, Blackwell Publishing Ltd]

In the light of Olney’s dictum, it can be noted that an expansion of spatial power or the establishment
of a new spatial-political order needs a justification, an ensemble of ideas and concepts that can
provide a moral and cultural foundation. Moreover, in the context of relations with other societies,
and specifically in the Americas, remembering Jefferson’s notion of the United States having a
‘hemisphere to itself’, the construction of a geopolitical identity included the positing of difference as
inferiority and danger. The outside world contained threats to security and to the diffusion of mission.
The perceived threat of disorder and chaos to the rule of the emerging American Empire could be
taken as an example of the key relation between the perception of threat and the geopolitics of
intervention to maintain a sense of security. It can be argued here that any discussion of threats to
order and stability must be linked to discourses of identity and difference. What exactly is being
threatened? What are the discourses or regimes of truth that are immanent in the power relations that
seek to preserve order? In the case of nineteenth-century US power, the spread of progress and a
civilizational mission were predominantly envisaged as being rooted in a specifically ‘American
destiny’. There were the pressures of economic expansion, but the USA’s representation of itself to the
world, the construction of a project of leadership (backed by the capacity and willingness to deploy
force) was crucial to any understanding of the geopolitics of interventionism. Threats and perceptions
of disorder are predicated on governing visions which are one expression of the complex intersections
of power and cultural representation. But these visions are also a reflection of a hegemonic ambition.
Further, in a context that is international, where the intersubjectivity that is a pivotal part of power
relations stretches across national boundaries, and therefore national cultures, and where the attempt
to develop a hegemonic project comes up against nationalist opposition, one kind of counter-
geopolitics, the resistance to imperial persuasion, has been strikingly resilient, even if it has never been
the only tendency, as will be mentioned below. What needs to be remembered, as I shall suggest
below, is that in any account of the power/discourse intersection, the effectiveness of counter-
discourses or counter-representations to Empire ought to be included as a significant part of the
analysis.

Discourse comes first – shapes and sustains power relations

Herod, Tuathail, and Roberts 98 Andrew Herod is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of
Georgia, Athens. Gearoid O Tuathail is Associate Professor of Geography at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
Susan M. Roberts is Assistant Professor of Geography and member of the Committee on Social Theory at
the University of Kentucky. “An Unruly World?: Globalization, Governance and Geography” February 20,
1998 page 32-34

These tenets (Lakoff 1987) lead to a view of the world that is very different from the purified and
purifying Joshua discourse, which we might call, after Jowitt (1992) and Serres (1995a), the "Genesis
discourse." It is a view of the world in which "borders are no longer of fundamental importance;
territorial, ideological and issue boundaries are attenuated, unclear, and confusing" (Jowitt 1992: 307).
It is a view of the world in which knowledge has become an archipelago of islands of epistemic stability
in a sea of disorder, fluctuations, noise, randomness and chaos. Whereas in the Joshua discourse order is
the rule and disorder is the exception, in the Genesis discourse disorder is the rule and order the
exception and, as a result, "what becomes more interesting are the transitions and bifurcations, the long
fringes, edges, verges, rims, brims, auras, crenellates, confines . . . all the shores that lead from one to
another, from the sea of disorder to the coral reefs of order" (Latour 1987a: 94-5).¶ Obviously, such a
view has a number of consequences, of which two are particularly significant. First, the favored
epistemological stance is, to use Wittgenstein's (1978) feline phrase, "not empiricism yet realism."
That may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it is, in fact, an argument for a limited but not total
form of relativism which argues that individuals understand the same domain of experience in
different and inconsistent ways and that this is a necessary condition of knowledge (Diamond 1991).
Since even the most disinterested of analysts is engaged in social projects any a priori claim to
epistemological privilege is impossible. Second, knowledge is no longer seen as a form of empire-
building in which "a powerful critique is one that ties, like a bicycle wheel, every point of a periphery to
one of the center through the intermediary of a proxy. At the end holding the center is tantamount to
holding the world" (Latour 1987a: 90). At best, knowledge is, in Lakoff's (1987) phrase, "radial." That is:¶
THE RISE OF SOFT CAPITALISM¶ central truths are true by virtue of the directness of fit between the
preconceptual structure of experience and the conceptual structure in terms of which the sentence is
understood. But most of the sentences we speak and hear and read and write are not capable of
expressing central truths; they are sentences that contain concepts that are very general or very specific
or abstract or metaphorical or metonymic or display other kinds of 'indirectness' relative to the direct
structuring of experience. Not that they need to be any less true, but they aren't central examples.¶
(Lakoff 1987: 297)¶ Discourses produce power relations. Within them, stories are spun which
legitimate certain kinds of constructs, subject positions, and affective states over others. The myths
and fables of the Joshua discourse were particularly powerful. Specifically, four of these myths and fables
did serious work in producing a particular kind of world which is now so often called "modern" that we
no longer realize the cultural specificity of the description or the strength of the investments we have
placed in it. The first of these myths was an old Enlightenment "chestnut" — the myth of total
knowledge. Somehow - though we don't have this facility yet — we could get to know everything that is
going on. Every movement of an ant and every rustling of a leaf could be tracked and explained. Every
human culture could be laid open to inspection and documentation. Every practical skill could be
analyzed down to its last detail and then transcended. This myth was supported by a second: that the
world was set up in such a way as to allow this — that the world was an ordered, homogeneous,
quantitatively different multiplicity. The world was defined by oneness, consistency and integrity which,
in turn, acted as an ideal terrain on which purified theoretical orders could operate and permeate. The
third myth was of a material world which could be separated out from the world of the imagination,
from the world of symbols and semiotics. There was no sense, therefore, of a world in which materials
are interactively constituted, in which "objects, entities, actors, processes - all are semiotic effects" (Law
and Mol 1995: 277). The fourth myth was one of individuality. This was the idea that knowledge comes
from the operation of a God-like gaze which emanates from an individual focal point. Human capacities,
therefore, could be framed as being the result of an innate endowment that every individual received at
the point of conception. There was, in other words, no grasp of the individual as being a modulated
effect (Thrift 1991), of human capacities as arising out of: emergent properties of the total
developmental system constituted by virtue of an individual's situation, from the start, within a wider
field of relations — including most importantly, relations with other persons. In short", social relations,
far from being the mere resultant of the association of discrete individuals, each independently 'wired
up' for ¶ co-operative or enthusiastic behaviour, constitute the very ground from¶ which human
existence unfolds.

Mechanics/ATs

AT: Permutation

The permutation functions with an us-them system; only the alt can solve – stepping outside of the
social construction of ocean compartmentalization is key to breaking down spatial barriers.

Steinberg 9. (Philip E. Steinberg, Department of Geography, Florida State University. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 99. 2009, pp. 467–495 C 2009 by Association of American
Geographers. http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/Annals%20Offprint2.pdf. ) MMG
Theorists within and beyond the discipline of geography increasingly realize that boundaries are not
simply lines that enclose and define territories. Boundaries also regulate and are reproduced by acts of
movement. Movement, beyond and across, as well as within a bounded territory, serves to reproduce
the territory that is being bounded. It follows that to understand the history of a territorial entity one
must go beyond tracing the spatially fixed activities that occur within that territory or the discursive
strategies through which the territory is made to appear natural. One must also trace the acts of
movement that occur within, across, and outside the territory’s boundaries and the designation of
specific spaces of movement as beyond territorial control. In short, one cannot understand the
construction of “inside” space as a series of territories of fixity, society, modernization, and
development without simultaneously understanding the construction of “outside” space as an arena
of mobility that is deemed unsuitable for territorial control.

The permutation fails – squo state action is grounded in IR orthodoxies that reinforce spatial
territorialization and European domination. Rethinking current geopolitics must happen first.

Fitzpatrick 08. John Edmond Fitzpatrick, University of Queensland. The Atlantic peace: European
expansion overseas and the international system/ international society dialectic. 2008.
http://www.polsis.uq.edu.au/OCIS/Fitzpatrick.pdf. MMG

In conventional IR language, this paper attempts a rethinking of IR orthodoxies about the intersection
between the historical evolution and the geographical expansion of the modern international system.
Before approaching the English school, therefore, I take up an important contribution to the critical IR
debate by an historical geographer – John Agnew’s 1999 article on ‘mapping political power beyond
state boundaries’.6 Agnew starts with several problems in ‘the conventional understanding of the
geography of political power’: notably its ‘timeless conception of statehood’ and its assumptions
about ‘a fundamental opposition between “domestic” and “foreign’ affairs” in the contemporary
world’. He then proposes a more flexible way of approaching the problem, based on the historical
interplay of four different models or patterns of ‘historical spatialities of power’. The first and oldest
model is that of an ‘ensemble of worlds’: a pattern of scattered ‘cultural areas or civilisations with limited
communication and interaction between them’. Though each area has ‘fuzzy external boundaries’, each
also nurtures ‘a sense of a profound difference beyond its own boundaries without any conception of
the particular character’ of other areas. Time is cyclical or seasonal with dynasties and seasons replacing
one another in natural sequence. Political power is largely internally-oriented and directed towards
dynastic maintenance and internal order. Its spatiality rests on a strongly physical conception of space
as distance to be overcome or circulation to be managed. The second model, also old but becoming
widespread only in the era of European overseas expansion, is that of a ‘field of forces’. This is the
geopolitical model of states as rigidly defined territorial units in which each state can gain power only
at the expense of others and each has total control over its own territory. It is akin to a field of forces in
mechanics in which the states exert force on one another and the outcome of the mechanical contest
depends on the populations and resources each can bring to bear … All of the attributes of politics, such
as rights, representation, legitimacy, and citizenship, are restricted to the territories of individual states.
The presumption is that the realm of geopolitics is beyond such concerns. Force and the potential use
of force rule supreme beyond state boundaries. Time is ordered on a rational global basis so that
trains can run on time, workers can get to work on time, and military forces can coordinate their
activities.7 The third model is the ‘hierarchical network’ – essentially a world economy organized
along core/semi-periphery/periphery lines - which begins its rise through the 19th century ‘in and
around the framework provided by the state system’ (i.e. the then dominant ‘field of forces’). The
fourth is that of an ‘integrated world society’, which acquires real significance only in the late-20th
century and which - like the hierarchical network - will not be considered further in this paper. Figure 1
reproduces Agnew’s basic mapping of the long-term historical interplay of these four ‘spatialities of
power’, with some significant changes to his internal periodization of the post-1500 era, and with my
Atlantic peace era shaded in to the right of the diagram.8 This representation highlights the paradoxical
proposition foreshadowed in the introduction about the progress of Atlantic European expansion by
the early 19th century: on the one hand, it was rapidly breaking down the relative isolation of the
large territorial cores in the pre-modern ensemble of worlds and definitively establishing a near-global
field of forces; on the other, it was simultaneously implanting a new system of mutually-recognized
soveriegnties outside Europe, in which vast areas were being 'domesticated' by one or other Atlantic
power, and effectively removed from at least the military arena of that same global field of forces.

Complete Negativity is key- only through imagining political praxis can we create change

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The

Limits of Sovereign Power” pg 137-38)

Prima facie, Agamben seems to lead in somewhat pessimistic, even despairing, directions. Indeed, his
diagnosis of the relationship between politics and life, analysis of the production of bare life in zones of
indistinction, and prognosis that ‘we are all virtually homines sacri’ imply a bleak picture of the
possibility for contestation, change and, in short, politics. For this reason, Andreas Kalyvas argues that
Agamben's portrayal of the ‘unstoppable march to the camp’ is ‘totalistic […], and though it is concerned
with politics and its eclipse, it is itself quite un-political’.15 William Connolly arrives at a similar
conclusion: ‘Agamben […] carries us through the conjunction of sovereignty, the sacred, and biopolitics
to a historical impasse’.16 In an interview in 2004, however, Agamben replied to his critics: I've often
been reproached for (or at least attributed with) this pessimism that I am perhaps unaware of. But I
don't see it like that. There is a phrase from Marx, cited by Debord as well, that I like a lot: ‘the
desperate situation of society in which I live fills me with hope’. I don't see myself as pessimistic.17 By
now a growing number of scholars have identified a more ‘positive’ moment in Homo Sacer. On Jenny
Edkins's view, a bleak assessment of Agamben's work, such as that reached by Kalyvas and Connolly,
‘overlooks a significant facet of Agamben's work, where he seeks to propose an alternative to, and
indeed a contestation of, sovereign biopolitics’.18 Central to Agamben's thinking about ethical–
political praxis and resistance against sovereign biopolitics is his conception of the subject (p.137) as
an interval or remainder between what he refers to as practices of subjectification and de-
subjectification.19 According to Agamben, the biopolitical terrain of global politics can be understood as
‘a kind of desubjectification machine: it's a machine that both scrambles all the classical identities and
[…] a machine that […] recodes these very same dissolved identities’.20 For Agamben it is possible to
think through the potential for resistance by rendering the machine inoperative on its own terms.21
Agamben's thought does not lead to nihilism or passivity but calls for the radical invention of new
practices: ‘a movement on the spot, in the situation itself’.22 In The Time That Remains [2005],
Agamben gives the example of St Paul's negotiation with the Jewish law that divides Jews and non-Jews.
Agamben is interested in the way in which, instead of applying a universal principle to argue against this
sovereign cut, Paul intervenes by taking the law on on its own terms. According to Agamben, Paul does
this by dividing the division itself: by introducing a further division between the Jew according to the
flesh and the Jew according to the spirit. This division of the division means that, instead of a simple
separation between Jews/non-Jews, there are now ‘Jews who are not Jews, because there are Jews who
are Jews according to the flesh, not the spirit, and [non-Jews] who are [non-Jews] according to the flesh,
but not according to the spirit’.23 Consequently, a remainder is produced that renders the applicability
and operativity of the law ineffective: a new form of subject that is neither a Jew nor a non-Jew but a
‘non-non-Jew’.24 Applying this logic to contemporary conditions, Agamben places his hope for a kind
of minority politics in this form of unworking of the system or biopolitical machine from within: One
should proceed in this way, from division to division, rather than by asking oneself: ‘What would be
the universal communal principle that would allow us to be together?’To the contrary. It is a matter,
confronted with the divisions introduced by the law, of working with what disables them through
resisting, through remaining – résister, rester, it's the same root.25 Elsewhere, Agamben links the move
to render the system inoperative with notions of ‘profanation’, meaning to violate or transgress, and
play.26 He illustrates the logic of profanation through play with the (p.138) example of the cat that plays
with the ball of string as if it were a mouse. The game frees the mouse from being cast as prey and at the
same time the predatory activity of the cat is shifted away from the chasing and killing of the mouse:
‘and yet, this play stages the very same behaviours that define hunting’.27 With this example Agamben
seeks to demonstrate the profanatory potential in play as a means of creating a new use of something
by deactivating an old one. The ultimate call is to subvert the given machine or apparatus according to
its own logic: ‘to wrest from the apparatuses – from all apparatuses – the possibility of use that they
have captured’.28

AT: Utopian Alt

Utopian theory key to creating real solutions and motivating change.

Löwy 05. Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is emeritus research
director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.
CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM VOLUME 16 NUMBER 2. What Is Ecosocialism? P.20. MMG

Utopia? In its etymological sense (“nowhere”), certainly. However, if one does not believe, with Hegel,
that “everything that is real is rational, and everything that is rational is real,” how does one reflect on
substantial rationality without appealing to utopias? Utopia is indispensable to social change, provided
it is based on the con- tradictions found in reality and on real social movements. This is true of
ecosocialism, which proposes a strategic alliance between “reds” and “greens”—not in the narrow sense
used by politicians applied to social-democratic and green parties, but in the broader sense between the
labor movement and the ecological movement—and the movements of solidarity with the oppressed
and exploited of the South.

Aff Answers
Rejection of State Bad

The alt’s rejection of the states makes it seem stronger than it actually is. This dooms the alt to
reproduce the hierarchal structures we critique.

Guattari and Rolnik, schitzoanalysts, revolutionaries, 1986

[Felix and Suely, Molecular Revolution in Brazil, p. 120-121]

Comment: It's good that you mentioned those homosexuals who worked within the system as lawyers
and succeeded in shaking it up. Here, everyone looks down on the institutional part.¶ Guattari: That's
silly.¶ Comment: They think that dealing with the institutional side is reformism, that it doesn't change
anything. As far as they're concerned, the institutions should be ignored because only one kind of thing
is worthwhile, anarchism—which I question deeply. I think it's very naive, as you yourself say, to ignore
the state on the basis that "it's useless," or "it oppresses us," and therefore to leave it aside and try to
do something totally from outside, as though it might be possible for us to destroy it like that.¶ Suely
Rolnik: This malaise in relation to institutions is nothing new; on the contrary, the feeling is particularly
strong in our generation which, since the 1960s, has taken institutions as one of its main targets. But
it's true that the malaise has been especially pronounced in Brazil over the last few years, and in my view
this must have to do with an absolutely objective (and obvious) fact, which is the hardness of the
dictatorship to which we were subjected for so long. The rigidity of that regime is embodied in all the
country's institutions, in one way or another; in fact, that constituted an important factor for the
permanence of the dictatorship in power over so many years.¶ But I think that this antiinstitutional
malaise, whatever its cause, doesn't end there: the feeling that the institutions are contaminated
territories, and the conclusion that nothing should be invested in them, is often the expression of a
defensive role. This kind of sensation is, in my view, the flip side of the fascination with the institution
that characterizes the "bureaucratic libido." These two attitudes really satisfy the same need, which is
to use the prevailing forms, the instituted, as the sole, exclusive parameter in the organization of oneself
and of relations with the other, and thus avoid succumbing to the danger of collapse that might be
brought about by any kind of change. Those are two styles of symbiosis with the institution: either
"gluey" adhesion and identification (those who adopt this style base their identity on the "instituted"),
or else repulsion and counteridentification (those who adopt this style base their identity on negation
of the "instituted," as if there were something "outside" the institutions, a supposed "alternative"
space to this world).¶ Seen in this light, both "alternativism" and "bureaucratism" restrict themselves
to approaching the world from the viewpoint of its forms and representations, from a molar
viewpoint; they protect themselves against accessing the molecular plane, where new sensations are
being produced and composed and ultimately force the creation of new forms of reality,. They both
reflect a blockage of instituting power, an impossibility of surrender to the processes of singularization, a
need for conservation of the prevailing forms, a difficulty in gaining access to the molecular plane, where
the new is engendered. It's more difficult, to perceive this in the case of "alternativism," because it
involves the hallucination of a supposedly parallel world that ¶ emanates the illusion of unfettered
autonomy and freedom of creation; and just when we think we've got away from "squareness" we risk
succumbing to it again, in a more disguised form. In this respect, I agree with you: the institutions aren't
going to be changed by pretending that they don't exist. Nonetheless, it's necessary to add two reserves.
In the first place, it's obvious that not every social experimentation qualified by the name of
"alternative" is marked by this defensive hallucination of a parallel world. And secondly, x it's self-
evident that in order to bear the harshness of an authoritarian regime there is a tendency to make
believe that itdoesn't exist, so as not to have to enter into contact with sensations of frustration and
powerlessness that go beyond the limit of tolerability (indeed, this is a general reaction before any
traumatic experience). And in order to survive, people try in so far as possible to create other territories
of life, which are often clandestine.

Permutation

We must approach borders with pragmatism – they are inevitable and sometimes necessary

Agnew No Date (John Agnew – Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, “Borders
on the mind: re-framing border thinking”, Ethics & Global Politics,
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/856/258.pdf // JJ)

Be that as it may, it is implicit in this understanding that borders can serve a¶ number of vital socio-
political purposes. One is straightforwardly instrumental:¶ borders help clearly demarcate institutional
and public-goods based externality¶ fields. If spending on infrastructure projects (education, highways,
etc.), for example,¶ must necessarily be defined territorially, as Michael Mann has argued, and the¶
revenues raised concomitantly, then borders are necessary to define who is eligible¶ and who is not to
share in the benefits of the projects in question. 21 Thus, absent¶ territorial restrictions on eligibility,
cross-border movements of people would¶ undermine the essentially contractual obligations that
underpin both state infra-¶ structural power and the autonomous role of the state that depends on it.
So, liberal¶ conceptions of borders can be less inchoate than frequently alleged, if understood¶ solely
in terms of defense of rights in property, but only if refocused on the provision¶ of public goods rather
than on the protection of private property. 22¶ Less liberal or instrumental in character are the ways
in which borders help focus¶ on the question of political identity. This has four aspects to it. The first
and most¶ traditional is the claim to sovereignty and its realization since the eighteenth century¶ as a
territorial ideal for a people endowed with self-rule. Typically, all struggles to¶ extend and deepen
popular rule, associated usually with such terms as ‘democracy’,¶ have been bound up with the
sovereignty ideal. Who shall rule around here? has been¶ the rallying cry across all political revolutions.
Thus, recently, Jeremy Rabkin has¶ defined sovereignty as the ‘authority to establish what law is
binding ... in a given¶ territory’. 23 From this viewpoint, laws can only be enforced when the
institutional¶ basis to that law is widely accepted. It depends on popular acceptance and agreement¶ to
allow coercion in the absence of compliance. Intuitively, the reach of institutions¶ must begin and it
must end somewhere. This is a fairly conservative understanding of¶ political identity. Beyond it lie
several other versions of how political identity is served¶ by borders.¶ One is that identities themselves,
our self-definitions, are inherently territorial.¶ Contrary to a liberal sense of the isolated self, from this
perspective all identities are¶ based on kinship and extra-kinship ties that bind people together
overwhelmingly¶ through the social power of adjacency. From clan and tribe to nation, group¶
membership has been the lever of cultural survival. Rather than merely incidental,¶ borders are
intrinsic to group formation and perpetuation. Thus, a self-defined¶ political progressive such as Tom
Nairn can speak openly of a ‘social nature’ that¶ requires ‘belonging’ and ‘can be chosen and self-
conscious’, which can result in¶ people coming to feel ‘more strongly*and less ambivalently*about their
clan,¶ football team or nation, than about parents, siblings and cousins who directly helped¶ to form
them’. 24 Many nations today are still actively in pursuit of their very own¶ state with its very own
borders. 25 Kurds rioting in Turkey and Tibetans protesting¶ Chinese rule are only two of a myriad of
recent examples. Elsewhere, there is a revival¶ of spatially complex forms of citizenship, as in Spain and
the United Kingdom,¶ where people can simultaneously belong to several polities differentially
embedded¶ within existing states. 26 Of course, this was once quite common all over Europe.

Some degree of borders are necessary – we should focus on the shifting nature of territorial borders
rather than trying to abolish them altogether

Elden 11 (Stuart Elden – professor of political geography at Durham University, “Territory without
Borders”, Harvard International Review (8/21/2011), http://hir.harvard.edu/archives/2843 // JJ)

What does it mean to speak of ‘territory without borders’? Let me say immediately that this is not the
same as the ‘borderless world’ argument, nor in agreement with the idea that geography no longer
matters. While borders are less important in some places, such as within much of Europe, in others
they continue to be crucial. The US-Mexico border, the external border policing of Europe, and the
Israeli wall in the West Bank are only the most striking examples of the continual importance of
borders. I am not suggesting that we should comprehend the modern world through a lens that
understands globalization as de-territorialization. Indeed, it is the concomitant processes of re-
territorialization—the constant making and remaking of territories—that should perhaps be more of
the focus in our empirical and political studies.¶ Nor am I using the phrase as a way of describing
modes of political organizations such as Schengenland, which seeks to dispense with border controls.
Schengenland has indeed been described as a ‘territory without borders’; it would be more accurate to
describe it as an area with uneven borders. While it is true that mobility in Schengenland is much easier
for those individuals whose status is good and whose papers are in order, mobility is restricted and
strictly monitored through transnational security and policing for those who fail to meet these
characteristics.

Deconstruction cannot be confined to one method or the movement will fail

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The

Limits of Sovereign Power” pg 146-47)

Derrida is notoriously hesitant to define deconstruction because any attempt at such a definition
would be ironic. In his ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’, Derrida writes: ‘What deconstruction is not?
Everything of course! What is deconstruction? Nothing of course!’70 More accessible accounts of the
basic moves of deconstructive thought can be found in Positions [1981] and Limited Inc. [1988]. Derrida
insists that (p.147) a deconstructive strategy or way of reading always involves a double and
simultaneous movement: Deconstruction cannot be restricted or immediately pass to a neutralization:
it must, through a double gesture, double science, a double writing – put into practice a reversal of the
classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that
deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticizes and that is
also a field of non-discursive forces.71
An outright rejection of borders fails. Reframing our concepts of borders in terms of effects is crucial to
cultivate a politics attentive to lived experience

Agnew 8

(John, Department of Geography, UCLA, “Borders on the mind: re-framing border thinking” Ethics &
Global Politics Vol. 1, No. 4, 2008)

¶ Fourthly, and finally, policing borders still has a powerful normative justification in¶ the defense of
that territorial sovereignty which serves to underpin both liberal and¶ democratic claims to (Lockean)
popular rule. Now such claims may frequently be¶ empirically fictive, particularly in the case of imperial
and large nation-states, but the¶ logic of the argument is that, absent effective worldwide government,
the highest¶ authority available is that of existing states .68 How such states police their borders, of¶
course, should be subject to transparent and open regulation. But why it is popularly¶ legitimate to
engage in policing functions in the way they are carried out cannot¶ simply be put down to mass docility
in the face of an omnipotent (because it is¶ omniscient) state apparatus. National populations do worry
about their borders¶ because their democracy (or other, familiar, politics) depends on it. The border is
a¶ continuing marker of a national (or supranational) political order even as people, in¶ Europe at
least, can now cross it for lunch.69 The problem here is that democratic¶ theory and practice is not yet
up to dealing with the complexities of a world in which¶ territories and flows must necessarily co-
exist. If one can argue, as does Arash¶ Abizadeh, that ‘the demos of democratic theory is in principle
unbounded’, this still¶ begs the question of who is ‘foreigner’ and who is ‘citizen’ in a world that is still¶
practically divided by borders.70 As Sofia Nasstrom puts the problem succinctly: ‘it is¶ one thing to
argue that globalization has opened the door to a problem within¶ modern political thought, quite
another to argue that globalization is the origin of¶ this problem’.71 Until political community is
redefined in some way as not being coextensive¶ with nation-state, we will be stuck with much of
business as usual.¶ Currently then, given the strong arguments about what borders do and the¶
problems that they also entail, a more productive ethic than thinking either just with¶ or just against
them would be to re-frame the discussion in terms of the impacts that¶ borders have; what they do
both for and to people. From this perspective, we can¶ both recognize the necessary roles of borders
and the barriers to improved welfare¶ that they create. In the first place, however, this requires re-
framing thinking about¶ borders away from the emphasis on national citizenship towards a model of
what¶ Dora Kostakopoulou calls ‘civic registration’.72 Under this model, the only condition¶ for
residence would be demonstrated willingness to live according to democratic rule¶ plus some set
requirements for residency and the absence of a serious criminal¶ record. Such a citizenship model
requires a reconceptualization of territorial space¶ as a ‘dwelling space’ for residents and, thus, a move
away from the nationalist¶ narratives which cultivate ‘the belief that territory is a form of property to be
owned¶ by a particular national group, either because the latter has established a¶ ‘‘first occupancy’’
claim or because it regards this territory as a formative part of¶ its identity’.73 In a world in which wars
and systematic violations of human rights¶ push millions to seek asylum across borders every year, this
rethinking is¶ imperative.74¶ In the second place, and by way of example, from this viewpoint it is
reasonable ‘to¶ prefer global redistributive justice to open borders. To put it bluntly, it is better to¶ shift
resources to people rather than permitting people to shift themselves towards¶ resources’.75
Currently much migration from country-to-country is the result of the¶ desire to improve economic well-
being and enhance the life-chances of offspring. Yet,¶ people often prefer to stay put, for familial,
social, and political reasons, if they can.¶ There seems no good basis, therefore, to eulogize and
institutionalize movement as¶ inherently preferable to staying put. If adequate mechanisms were
developed to¶ stimulate development in situ, many people who currently move would not. Not only¶
people in destination countries associate their identities with territory.¶ Using the standard of a decent
life, therefore, can lead beyond the present impasse¶ between the two dominant views of borders
towards a perspective that re-frames¶ borders as having both negative and positive effects and that
focuses on how people¶ can both benefit from borders and avoid their most harmful effects. In
political vision¶ as in everyday practice, therefore, borders remain as ambiguously relevant as ever,¶
even as we work to enhance their positive and limit their negative effects.

Imagining multiple genealogies of place-based practices challenges the current epistemology of

dominance and subalternity.

Escobar 2001

(Arturo, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Culture sits in places:
reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization” Political Geography 20)

It might seem paradoxical to assert that the identities that can been as emerging¶ in the cultural–
environmental domain today might simultaneously be attached to¶ place and most open to what
remains unimagined and unthought in biological, cultural,¶ and economic terms. These identities
engage in more complex types of mixing¶ and dialectics than in the most recent past. The dynamic of
place, networks, and¶ power at play today in many ambits suggests that this is the case. Subaltern
strategies¶ of localization still need still to be seen in terms of place; places are surely connected¶ and
constructed yet those constructions entail boundaries, grounds, selective connection,¶ interaction, and
positioning, and in some cases a renewal of history-making¶ skills. Connectivity, interactivity an
positionality are the correlative characteristics¶ of the attachment to place (Escobar, 1999b,c), and
they derive greatly from the modes¶ of operation of the networks that are becoming central to the
strategies of localization¶ advanced by social movements (and, of course, by capital in different ways).
Networks¶ can be seen as apparatuses for the production of discourses and practices that¶ connect
nodes in a discontinuous space; networks are not necessarily hierarchical but¶ can in some cases be
described as self-organizing, non-linear and non-hierarchical¶ meshworks, as some theorists of
complexity think of them at present (De Landa,¶ 1997). They create flows that link sites which,
operating more like fractal structures¶ than fixed architectures, enable diverse couplings (structural,
strategic, conjunctural)¶ with other sites and networks. This is why I say that the meaning of the
politics of¶ place can be found at the intersection of the scaling effects of networks and the¶
strategies of the emergent identities. As Rocheleau put it eloquently, this calls for¶ an interest in “the
combination of people-in-place and people-in-networks, and the¶ portability (or not) of people’s ways of
being-in-place and being-in-relation with¶ humans and other beings” (D. Rocheleau, personal
communication).¶ It has been said that the ideas and practices of modernity are appropriated and
reembedded¶ in locally-situated practices, giving rise to a plethora of modernities¶ through the
assemblage of diverse cultural elements, and that often times this process¶ results in counter-
tendencies and counter-development, defined as “the process by¶ which multiple modernities are
established” (Arce & Long, 2000: 19). The challenge¶ for this constructive proposal is to imagine
multiple modernities from multiple directions,¶ that is, from multiple genealogies of place-based (if
clearly not place-bound)¶ practices. It is at this level that “the postdevelopment moment” is of
relevance, at¶ least in some recent reinterpretations of the concept. For Fagan (1999), for instance,¶ the
construction of a post-development politics must start with a consideration of¶ material struggles and
the cultural politics around them, critically engage with dominant¶ development discourse by
acknowledging its problems, and imagine transformation¶ strategies fully cognizant of how cultural
production is associated with power.¶ “Reconstituted” development workers, researchers, and activists
might thus begin to¶ outline a more substantial post-development strategy. More than an anti-
development¶ movement, this strategy point at the construction of post-development scenarios that¶
incorporate a pedagogical orientation towards change. A movement towards the¶ defense of place
might well be an element in this strategy. This defense is of course¶ not the only source of hope and
change, but an important dimension of them.¶ The critique of the privilege of space over place, of
capitalism over non-capitalism,¶ of global cultures and natures over local ones is not so much, or not
only, a critique¶ of our understanding of the world but of the social theories on which we rely to¶ derive
such understanding. This critique also points at the marginalization of intellectual¶ production on
globalization produced in the “peripheries” of the world (Slater,¶ 1998). The critique, finally, is an
attempt to bring social theory into line with the¶ views of the world and political strategies of those
who exist on the side of place,¶ non-capitalism and local knowledge — and effort to which
anthropologists and ecologists¶ are usually committed. Dominance and subalternity, as Guha (1988)
forcefully¶ demonstrated, are complex social and epistemological phenomena. Those frameworks¶
that elide the historical experience of the subaltern and that participate in the¶ erasure of subaltern
strategies of localization can also be said to participate in the¶ prose of counterinsurgency. Conversely,
if it is true that politically enriched forms¶ of difference are always under construction, there is hope
that they could get to¶ constitute new grounds for existence and significant rearticulations of
subjectivity¶ and alterity in their economic, cultural and ecological dimensions.¶ In the last instance,
anthropology, political geography and political ecology can¶ contribute to re-state the critique of
current hegemonies as a question of the utopian¶ imagination: Can the world be reconceived and
reconstructed from the perspective¶ of the multiplicity of place-based practices of culture, nature and
economy? Which¶ forms of “the global” can be imagined from multiple place-based perspectives?¶
Which counter-structures can be set into place to make them viable and productive?¶ What notions of
politics, democracy and the economy are needed to release the¶ effectivity of the local in all of its
multiplicity and contradictions? What role will¶ various social actors — including technologies old and
new — have to play in order¶ to create the networks on which manifold forms of the local can rely in
their encounter¶ with the multiple manifestations of the global? Some of these questions will have¶ to
be given serious consideration in our efforts to give shape to the imagination of¶ alternatives to the
current order of things.

Totalizing rejections of globalization fail – the reappropriation space is necessary for any challenge to
borders

Escobar 2001
(Arturo, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Culture sits in places:
reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization” Political Geography 20)

Let us start with a enlightening critique of capitalocentrism in recent discourses¶ of globalization. This
critique is intended to enable us to free up the space for thinking¶ about the potential value of other
local models of the economy in ways that also¶ apply to models of nature or development.
Geographers Julie Graham and Katherine¶ Gibson present a powerful case against the claim, shared by
mainstream and left¶ theories alike, that capitalism is the hegemonic, even the only present form of
economy,¶ and that it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. In this view, capitalism¶ has been
endowed with such dominance and hegemony in these theories, that¶ it has become impossible to
think social reality differently, let alone to imagine¶ capitalism’s suppression. All other realities
(subsistence economies, “biodiversity¶ economies”, Third World forms of resistance, cooperatives and
minor local initiatives, the recent barter and solidarity economies in various parts of the world, etc.)¶ are
thus seen as opposite, subordinate, or complementary to capitalism, never as¶ sources of a significant
economic difference. Their critique applies to most theories¶ of globalization and even of
postdevelopment, to the extent that the latter situate¶ capitalism “at the center of development
narratives, thus tending to devalue or marginalize¶ possibilities of noncapitalist development” (Gibson-
Graham, 1996: 41). By¶ criticizing capitalocentrism, these authors seek to liberate our ability for seeing
noncapitalisms¶ and building alternative economic imaginaries9.¶ This reinterpretation challenges the
inevitability of capitalist “penetration” that is¶ assumed in much of the literature on globalization: ¶
In the globalization script…only capitalism has the ability to spread and invade.¶ Capitalism is presented
as inherently spatial and as naturally stronger than the¶ forms of noncapitalist economy (traditional
economies, “Third World” economies,¶ socialist economies, communal experiments) because of its
presumed capacity to¶ universalize the market for capitalist commodities…Globalization according to¶
this script involves the violation and eventual death of “other” noncapitalist forms¶ of economy…All
forms of noncapitalism become damaged, violated, fallen, subordinated¶ to capitalism…How can we
challenge the similar representation of globalization¶ as capable of “taking” the life from noncapitalist
sites, particularly the¶ “Third World”? (Gibson-Graham, 1996: 125, 130)¶ From this perspective, not
everything that emerges from globalization can be said¶ to conform to the capitalist script; in fact,
globalization and development might propitiate¶ a variety of economic development paths; these could
be theorized in terms¶ of postdevelopment in such a way that “the naturalness of capitalist identity as
the¶ template of all economic identity can be called into question” (Gibson-Graham, 1996:¶ 146). They
could also be conceived of, as Mayfair Yang does in her farsighted¶ application of Gibson-Graham to the
changing and multiple Chinese economies, in¶ terms of the hybridity of economies; what she means by
this is that many of today’s¶ economic formations in China are composed of both capitalist and a whole
array of¶ non-capitalist forms. With this reinterpretation, Yang challenges us to entertain the¶ idea that
“indigenous economies do not always get ploughed under with the entrance¶ of capitalism, but may
even experience renewal and pose a challenge to the spread¶ of capitalist principles and stimulate us
to rethink and rework existing critiques of¶ capitalism” (Yang, 1999: 5).¶ What is certain is that we no
longer seem to be sure about what is there “on the¶ ground” after centuries of capitalism and five
decades of development. Do we even¶ know how to look at social reality in ways that might allow us
to detect elements¶ of difference that are not reducible to the constructs of capitalism and
modernity?¶ The role of ethnography has of course been particularly important in this respect.¶ In the
1980s, a number of ethnographies documented active and creative resistance¶ to capitalism and
modernity in various settings10. Resistance by itself, however, is¶ only suggestive of what is going on in
many communities, stopping short of showing¶ how people actively continue to create and reconstruct
their lifeworlds and places.¶ Successive works characterized the local hybridized models of the economy
and the¶ natural environment maintained by peasants and indigenous communities. The attention¶
paid, particularly in Latin American anthropology and cultural studies, to cultural¶ hybridization is
another attempt at making visible the dynamic encounter of practices¶ originating in many cultural and
temporal matrices, and the extent to which local¶ groups, far from being passive receivers of
transnational conditions, actively shape¶ the process of constructing identities, social relations, and
economic practice (see¶ Escobar, 1995 for a review of this literature). These lines of inquiry have
reached¶ sophisticated levels in the provision of nuanced accounts of the encounter between¶
development, modernity, and local culture in postcolonial settings (see, for instance,¶ Gupta, 1998; Arce
& Long, 2000). These bodies of literature, however, are yet to¶ be related systematically to the project of
rethinking place from the perspective of¶ practices of cultural, ecological, and economic difference
among Third World communities¶ in contexts of globalization and postcoloniality. This link might
enable¶ researchers to foreground the political aspects of their critique, not infrequently¶ rendered
intractable by the emphasis on the heterogeneity, hybridity, localization,¶ and differentiation of forms
and practices.¶ If the goal of Gibson-Graham was to provide an alternative language — a new¶ class
language in particular — for addressing the economic meaning of local practices,¶ and if the goal of
the postdevelopment literature is similarly to make visible¶ practices of cultural and ecological
difference which could serve as the basis for¶ alternatives, it is necessary to acknowledge that these
goals are inextricably linked¶ to conceptions of locality, place, and place-based consciousness. Place is
central to¶ issues of development, culture and the environment and is equally essential, on the¶ other,
for imagining other contexts for thinking about the construction of politics,¶ knowledge and identity.
The erasure of place is a reflection of the asymmetry that¶ exist between the global and the local in
much contemporary literature on globalization,¶ in which the global is associated with space, capital,
history and agency while¶ the local, conversely, is linked to place, labor, and tradition — as well as with¶
women, minorities, the poor and, one might add, local cultures11. Some feminist¶ geographers have
attempted to correct this asymmetry by arguing that place can also¶ lead to articulations across space,
for instance through networks of various kinds¶ (Chernaik, 1996); this leaves unresolved, however, the
relation between place and¶ location, as well as the question of boundaries.¶ More fundamental
perhaps in Dirlik’s analysis are the consequences of the neglect¶ of place for current categories of
social analysis such as class, gender, and race (and¶ we should add the environment here), which make
such categories susceptible of¶ becoming instruments of hegemony. To the extent that they are
significantly sundered¶ from place in discourses of globalization and deterritoralization, contemporary¶
notions of culture do not manage to escape this predicament, for they tend to assume¶ the existence of
a global power structure in which the local occupies a necessarily¶ subordinate position. Under these
conditions, is it possible to launch a defense of¶ place in which place and the local do not derive their
meaning only from their¶ juxtaposition to the global? A first step in resisting the marginalization of
place,¶ continuing with Dirlik’s exposition, is provided by Lefebvre’s notion of place as a¶ form of lived
and grounded space and the reappropriation of which must be part of¶ any radical political agenda
against capitalism and spaceless and timeless globalization.¶ Politics, in other words, is also located in
place, not only in the supra-levels¶ of capital and space. Place, one might add, is the location of a
multiplicity of forms¶ of cultural politics, that is, of the cultural-becoming-political, as it has become
evident¶ with rainforest and other ecological social movements12.

AT: Alt

Cedes the Political

ALT FAILS – even an active refusal cedes the political

Redfield 5 [Peter, Ph.D. Anthropology at UC Berkeley, professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill,
“Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis,” Cultural Anthropology 20(3)] ***MSF = Medecins Sans Frontieres
(Doctors Without Borders)

Here the context of MSF’s “ethic of refusal” comes most sharply into focus.¶ The group’s insistence on a
politics of witnessing combined with its abstention¶ from taking a directly political role stems from an
unwillingness to accept the extended state of emergency within which it generally operates. Simply to
denounce¶ situations would achieve no immediate humanitarian ends and to endorse political¶ agendas
would potentially sacrifice the present needs of a population for the hope¶ of future conditions. But to
maintain formal neutrality at all times without protest¶ would mimic the classic limitations of the Red
Cross movement that the founders¶ of MSF originally rejected. Confronted with such a range of
unsatisfying options¶ while still being committed to humanitarian values, MSF’s ideological strategy¶ is
to claim a position of “refusal” in the form of action taken with an outspoken,¶ troubled conscience.

The practical application of this approach varies according to the situation.¶ In truly exceptional
circumstances MSF has found itself forced out or has chosen to withdraw. For example, during the
highly televised Ethiopian famine of¶ 1984–85, the French section was forced to leave after accusing
the regime of using both famine and relief aid to effect a forced resettlement policy. During the¶ dark
Rwandan spring a decade later, MSF publicly proclaimed its helplessness¶ with a bitter, angry refrain:
“you can’t stop genocide with doctors.” The French¶ section both denounced the political complicity of
its national government and¶ issued its first call for some form of military intervention to halt the
slaughter.¶ Upset at the flagrant manipulation of aid by the perpetrators of genocide in the¶ aftermath,
MSF–France subsequently pulled out of the Rwandan refugee camps¶ in Zaire and Tanzania at the end
of 1994 and then condemned the new Rwandan¶ regime for the forcible repatriation and massacre of
Hutu refugees. Although other¶ MSF sections followed different strategic lines of action amid heated
debate, they¶ all eventually withdrew from the camps by the end of 1995, publicly protesting¶ the
continuing political situation within them. Most recently and poignantly, the organization withdrew
from Afghanistan following the murder of five members of¶ a team from MSF–Holland in 2004. After
more than two decades of continuous¶ presence, the organization felt that the altered political
circumstances of U.S.-led¶ coalition efforts to administer a post-Taliban reconstruction had eliminated
the¶ “humanitarian space” necessary for its operations.

Race Turn

Critical geography cannot effectively combat race – whiteness is too inscribed in the study
Price 2010 [Patricia L. Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, Florida International

University, At the crossroads: critical race theory and critical geographies of race in Progress in Human
Geography 34(2) page 156 ]

Critical geographic studies of whiteness are not, however, without their own critics. Alastair Bonnett
(1996), for instance, makes the (problematic) assertion that the tendency to focus on blackness or
whiteness is a particularly ‘American obsession’ that does not reflect the subtler reality of race in other
places. Yet there is very little intentionally comparative critical geographic research on race, such that
Bonnett’s claim is difficult to substantiate empirically. What is perhaps more troubling – and easier to
document – is the remarkably persistent whiteness of geography’s practitioners. According to some,
the popularity of white studies in geography may in fact simply reflect the whiteness of geographers,
and as such constitute a zone of racial solipsism, or worse, a comfort zone rather than a space of truly
critical engagement with racism (let alone anti-racism; Pulido, 2002; Mahtani, 2006). The prominence
of white studies in geographic studies of race may in fact not simply reflect but also unwittingly act to
reinforce white dominance in geography (Nash, 2003).

Cutting

Notes

New alt possibility view the liquid nature of the ocean as it escapes human coding.

An Open Borders politics is the only way to combat the harms of borders
Hughes 13 [Bob, Bob Hughes was one of the five co-signatories of the 2003 No One Is Illegal Manifesto.
He has been engaged in various campaigns against detention and in support of migrants and asylum
seekers for the past 12 years, and is currently writing about what a world that took equality seriously
would be like, August 16, 2013, “Open borders for a sustainable future”,
https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/bob-hughes/open-borders-for-sustainable-future]

Killings and deaths as unbearable as Jimmy Mubenga’s, in front of the passengers and crew of a British
Airways aircraft, at Heathrow in 2010, are not only common in the ‘war on immigration,’ they are
inevitable. His was one of at least 20 deaths in Britain’s immigration system; a figure dwarfed by the
17,000 who have died at Europe’s borders since 1993 - the year when immigration detention first began
to grow in Britain.¶ In September 2003, five of us set up No One Is Illegal, UK, to denounce claims made
by the British Government that this system could be made ‘fair’ or ‘humane.’ The brutal language of
politicians like Home Secretary David Blunkett openly belied any real concern to be humane. Moreover, it
is physically impossible to stop people moving when they need to, without harming them or their
families, especially if they are not rich. And incredibly, nobody has ever come up with a clear reason why
this cruelty is necessary.¶ To us, these laws are explicable only by racism, driven largely by the media,
which successive governments have sought to appease. They have ended up undermining the rule of law
itself, a fact which should concern everybody.¶ As our manifesto puts it: 'Under all other laws it is the act
that is illegal, but under immigration law it is the person who is illegal.' Literally and explicitly, people are
now arrested and imprisoned, deported and abused and killed, or simply left to die in whatever way
happens to befall them, just for being who they are, not for anything they may have done or even might
do.¶ Failing to challenge this nonsense involves failing to challenge a force that will happily destroy
society and is doing so, and which we all recognise and were taught about in school: the force of
arbitrary, authoritarian power; the mindset that believes that rules are more important than lives, and
that defers to power and holds the weak in contempt; the 'hard-headed realist', 'cruel to be kind', 'tough
choices' brigade that is also happy to cut benefits for the sick, drive down wages and destroy jobs—and
then blame the poor for their own poverty, while pouring our money into aggressive foreign wars (and
creating further refugees to demonise).¶ Their hypocrisy cries out to be exposed. The tougher they talk,
the further they distance themselves from the dirty work. The bigger the stench, the longer the chain of
departments, directorates, sub-directorates, agencies, contractors and subcontractors separating the
upright politician from the racist thugs with the shaved heads, enthusiastically implementing their
policies.¶ How can any society thrive which harbours and nourishes such an industry? The prison
companies, the deportation companies, the special 'courts' (so-named only recently) where well-paid
careers are to be had by the morally-confused but ambitious. And so on ... a monster that must be fed
and fed and fed, as long as the tough-talking hypocrites continue to play the game they've embarked
upon and now couldn't get out of even if they wanted to.¶ What would happen, if we said ‘This emperor
has no clothes’? What if we were to scrap these anti-immigrant laws?¶ It’s extraordinary how little hard
evidence anyone has found to justify the hysteria. We should be ashamed! Millions could probably have
been raised from poverty with the money that's been spent on reports and books and articles debating
whether the impact of scraping the laws would be beneficial to the economy or not, or if not to the
economy, to 'social cohesion', or some other newly-discovered precious item that might possibly be
affected.¶ Let's just say it would probably be copeable-with. After all, we coped with foreigners before
all these laws came along, which wasn't all that long ago. The problem, insofar as there has ever been
one, is the racists, and the inequality that feeds racism.¶ If we cannot quite bring ourselves to think of a
world without borders, how about a world where borders do something useful? I would be proud to
belong to a country within whose borders anybody who could get themselves here could feel safe at last,
and cared for; a country where the hospitals and doctors treat you because you are ill, not because you
are a national citizen; where the schools and universities educate you because you want to learn; a
country whose representatives speak out clearly and forthrightly against tyranny and warmongering and
the destruction of people's livelihoods wherever they are, and who use our collective resources to help
people and fight injustice.¶ If we are concerned about how much such an 'idealistic' setup would cost,
why not question why so many things that used to be available when needed now have a financial cost?
Let's take everything that is important to life, to people's health and happiness, back out of the money
economy. To a surprisingly large extent, this would only mean going back a few years to the time before
our public services acquired 'internal markets' - a time when the British National Health Service, for
example, gave almost the best value for money in the world in terms of health outcomes. Which raises
the exciting thought that a society with fewer price-tags is a lower-impact society (as suggested in Kate
Pickett and Richard Wilkinson's recent book about inequality, The Spirit Level). Scrapping anti-immigrant
laws, and following through the implications, could lead us to the sustainable future we all supposedly
aspire to.¶ But surely I am talking about socialism? Or communism or anarchism?¶ My modest demand
is a politics that respects people, which will not harm people without a very good reason. In fact, this is
already supposed to be a basic principle of law. As the Royal College of Surgeons says on its letterhead:
"First, Do No Harm". Or as the wise prince in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice put it (I paraphrase):
"Do what the hell you like, as long as you do not spill one drop of blood".¶ Is this 'politically realistic'?
'Hard-headed realists' often tell us that opposing immigration controls is politically impossible, because
public opinion is now so implacably hostile to immigration. Indeed, the steady stream of anti-immigrant
yarns over the years by the likes of the Daily Mail and the Murdoch press have had some effect:
'immigration' is now at or near the top of public concerns in public opinion surveys.¶ This brings up two
questions: first, since when does a grownup democracy crucify people 'by popular demand'? And
second, do these polls really reflect what people think?¶ We often ask the people we meet in shops,
airports and elsewhere what they think about immigration controls. Almost always we get answers like:
'we ought to be able to go where we like: we're all humans!' We wondered whether perhaps the biggest
political grouping in Britain might be the people who think they're the only ones in Britain who think
immigration controls are mad.¶ Two years ago, the extraordinarily principled company Lush Cosmetics
financed a YouGov poll, to test a proposition drafted by No One Is Illegal: "People should be free to live
and work wherever they wish, and enjoy all the same rights as all other residents. No One Is Illegal." 54%
either agreed or strongly agreed. 31% had no clear opinion. Only 16% either disagreed or strongly
disagreed.¶ YouGov designed a subsidiary set of questions to tease out people's feelings about controls,
and whether they should apply to everyone or just to other people. This showed somewhat higher
support for controls, but with only a slight bias against foreigners, and nothing like the blanket
opposition to immigration promoted by the media. So, at the very least, the public is much less clear on
this issue than the media and the politicians say they are. There is room for debate.¶ And it suggests that
in spite of everything they've been put through these last thirty or so years, British people are still
normal, sane people; not savages or fascists. That is consistent with the sense that many people have,
that politics has left the people behind, in a whirl of heavily-armed paranoia and high-impact fantasy. An
Open Borders politics could be the start of public re-engagement with politics and a transformation of
our political system.

Brown People on the borderlands of America are consumed for profit.

The Seattle Times

Seattle Times editorial board, Stop detaining immigrants to fill quotas in ICE facilities¶http://
www.seattletimes .com/ opinion/editorials/stop-detaining-immigrants-to-fill-quotas-in-ice-facilities/ ?
utm_ source= facebook&utm_ medium=social&utm_campaign=article_left ,June 16, 2015

A SCATHING watchdog report by the Detention Watch Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights
adds fuel to the growing criticism against exorbitant taxpayer funding for private prison contractors.¶
Detention of any civil prisoner should be based on the severity of the alleged crimes, not on a bed
quota that guarantees private prisons make a profit at the expense of human rights of detainees.
Congress should end the practice of guaranteeing minimum profits for corporations that now operate
many U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities. The United States spends
more than $2 billion a year to detain immigrants, and there are few signs that investment improves
public safety.¶ The contracts between ICE and the private industry lack accountability or transparency.
We do know that Congress requires ICE to operate at least 34,000 daily detention beds nationwide,
and much of that work is farmed out to for-profit prison corporations. These contractors are paid
regardless of whether the bed minimum is met. Here in Washington, the GEO Group runs the Northwest
Detention Center in Tacoma and is guaranteed a minimum of at least 1,181 beds. (ICE reports about
1,400 prisoners are currently detained there.)¶ Congress needs to get rid of this bed quota now and
start exploring more alternatives to incarceration that have proved to reduce costs and keep families
together. Remember: Many of these detainees pose no threat to society and have committed civil
violations, such as overstaying a visa.¶ With a bed quota and discount pricing in place, there’s no real
incentive for ICE agents to explore non-prison options like community monitoring that cost a fraction
of the estimated daily $164 price tag of locking up each detainee.” ¶ Federal elected officials also
should ban a “tiered pricing” system that allows the contractors to give ICE discounted pricing when the
number of detainees exceeds minimum guarantees. The report reveals troubling examples of how this
practice leads some federal officials to pressure their employees to fill the beds.¶ With a bed quota
and discount pricing in place, there’s no real incentive for ICE agents to explore non-prison options like
community monitoring that cost a fraction of the estimated daily $164 price tag of locking up each
detainee. Last month, The Seattle Times editorial board pushed for Congress to support a bill to end
unnecessary detentions.¶ In Tacoma, reports of human-rights abuses have lingered for months, leading
to hunger strikes and prison conflicts. The GEO Group’s contract to run the center expired in April, but it
has been extended through June 30 as negotiations continue. The company insists it meets industry
standards, providing “high quality services in safe, secure and humane environments, and … strongly
refutes allegations to the contrary.Ӧ Nonetheless, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, recently wrote to
ICE Director Sarah Saldaña imploring her to consider alternatives to detention. Short of this, he
appropriately encouraged her to increase transparency in the negotiations with GEO Group and to set
stricter standards that ensure human rights are not being abused Detainees should be more than a
number to meet a quota.¶

Reasons to prefer
Limits – allowing foreign surveillance explodes the limits of the topic to include other
countries
Ground – disad links are based off of data collection within the United States
Voting issue for competitive equity

2nc Within Extensions

Domestic surveillance means within the United States

Pegarkov 6 – editor

Daniel, National Security Issues, 2006, p. 156-7

Title III does not define “international or foreign communications” or “domestic.” It is unclear under the
language of this section whether communications that originate outside the United States but are
received within U.S. territory, or vice versa, were intended to be treated as foreign, international or
domestic. Recourse to the plain meaning of the words provides some illumination. Webster’s New
Collegiate Dictionary (1977), in pertinent part, defines “international” to mean “affective or involving
two or more nations” or “of or relating to one whose activities extend across national boundaries.”
Therefore, “international communications” might be viewed as referring to communications which
extend across national boundaries or which involve two or more nations. “Foreign” is defined therein, in
pertinent part, as “situated outside a place or country; esp situated outside one’s own country.” Thus,
“foreign communications” might be interpreted as referring to communications taking place wholly
outside the United States. “Domestic” is defined, in pertinent part, in Webster’s to mean “of, relating to,
or carried on within and esp. one’s own country.” Therefore, “domestic communications” may be defined
as communications carried on within the United States.

Domestic means within the United States—that excludes foreign or international

Oxford Dictionaries – no date

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/domestic

Existing or occurring inside a particular country; not foreign or international

It’s within the US’s geographic territory

Sladick 12 – blogger for the Tenth Amendment Center

Kelly, “Battlefield USA: The Drones are Coming”

http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2012/12/battlefield-usa-the-drones-are-coming/

In a US leaked document, “Airforce Instruction 14-104”, on domestic surveillance is permitted on US

citizens. It defines domestic surveillance as, “any imagery collected by satellite (national or commercial)
and airborne platforms that cover the land areas of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and
the territories and possessions of the US, to a 12 nautical mile seaward limit of these land areas.” In the
leaked document, legal uses include: natural disasters, force protection, counter-terrorism, security
vulnerabilities, environmental studies, navigation, and exercises.

Domestic means the contiguous United States

FSSI 13 - Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative

GSA Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI) Wireless, Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA),
http://www.gsa.gov/portal/mediaId/172035/fileName/FSSIWirelessRFQAmendment0011.action

2 Performance Work Statement All capabilities shall be offered unless specified “as available” in which
case the capability must be offered only if the Contractor offers it commercially. The Contractor shall not
propose additional service plans beyond those specified in Tables 3-1 (Voice Service Plans), 3-2 (Data
Add-On Service Plans), and 3-3 (Data Only Service Plans). 2.1 Wireless Service and Network Coverage
Area The Contractor shall provide domestic wireless voice and data service to areas that are populated
by more than 90% of the United States population. Domestic is defined as the contiguous United States,
Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. The Contractor shall also provide international
coverage areas as commercially available; as a minimum, it shall include Canada, China, France,
Germany, Netherlands, Israel, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. For both domestic and
international coverage, the Contractor shall specify geographies covered and type of services available
(voice, data and technology (LTE, etc)).
Aff – Within the United States/Includes Foreign

Domestic refers to activity within the United States, but can involve foreign intelligence information

Truehart 2 – J.D., Boston University School of Law, 2002

Carrie, CASE COMMENT: UNITED STATES v. BIN LADEN AND THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE EXCEPTION TO
THE WARRANT REQUIREMENT FOR SEARCHES OF "UNITED STATES PERSONS" ABROAD, Boston University
Law Review, April 2002, Lexis

n18. 50 U.S.C. 1801-1829 (1994 & Supp. V 1999). This Case Comment uses the word "domestic" to refer
to searches and investigations conducted within the United States. The term "domestic foreign
intelligence investigations" at first glance seems like an oxymoron, but it is not. As used in this Case
Comment, the term refers to investigations conducted within the United States to obtain foreign
intelligence information - that is, information pertaining to foreign nationals and their respective
governments or international groups - as opposed to investigations conducted within the United States
to obtain domestic intelligence information - that is, information pertaining to United States persons
only. Notice that a United States person residing in the United States, however, could become the target
of a foreign intelligence investigation if the Government were investigating that individual's relationship
with a foreign government or international terrorist group. In other words, the difference between
whether an investigation is a "domestic foreign intelligence investigation" or a "domestic intelligence
investigation" turns on whether the investigation focuses in part on a foreign government or
international group.

It can target the agent of a foreign power

Donohue 15 - Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Laura, “SECTION 702 AND THE COLLECTION OF INTERNATIONAL TELEPHONE AND INTERNET CONTENT”
38 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 117, Winter, lexis

C. The Protect America Act Four months after McConnell's proposal, Congress passed the Protect
America Act (PAA), easing restrictions on the surveillance of foreigners where one (or both) parties were
located overseas. n53 In doing so, it removed such communications from FISA's definition of "electronic
surveillance," narrowing the term to include only domestic communications. The attendant restrictions,
such as those related to probable cause that the target be a foreign power or an agent thereof, or likely
to use the facilities to be placed under surveillance, or specifications related to the facility in question,
dropped away.

Aff – AT Limits

All electronic data is stored outside the United States—they would make every aff untopical because
there’s no clear line

Tracy 15

Sam, “NSA WHISTLEBLOWER JOHN TYE EXPLAINS EXECUTIVE ORDER 12333” 3/18,
http://warrantless.org/2015/03/tye-12333/
It’s been widely reported that the NSA, under the constitutionally suspect authority of Section 215 of the
PATRIOT Act, collects all Americans’ phone metadata. Congress has not yet passed any reforms to this
law, but there have been many proposals for changes and the national debate is still raging. Yet
Americans’ data is also being collected under a different program that’s entirely hidden from public
oversight, and that was authorized under the Reagan-era Executive Order 12333.

That’s the topic of a TEDx-Charlottesville talk by whistleblower John Napier Tye, entitled “Why I spoke
out against the NSA.” Tye objected to NSA surveillance while working in the US State Department. He
explains that EO 12333 governs data collected overseas, as opposed to domestic surveillance which is
authorized by statute. However, because Americans’ emails and other communications are stored in
servers all over the globe, the distinction between domestic and international surveillance is much less
salient than when the order was originally given by President Reagan in 1981.

Geography is a bad interp and outdated

Sanchez 14 - Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute

Julian, “Snowden: Year One” 6/5, http://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/06/05/julian-sanchez/snowden-

year-one

The second basic fact is that modern communications networks obliterate many of the assumptions
about the importance of geography that had long structured surveillance law. A “domestic” Internet
communication between a user in Manhattan and a server in Palo Alto might, at midday in the United
States, be routed through nocturnal Asia’s less congested pipes, or to a mirror in Ireland, while a
“foreign” e-mail service operated from Egypt may be hosted in San Antonio. “What we really need to do
is all the bad guys need to be on this section of the Internet,” former NSA director Keith Alexander likes
to joke. “And they only operate over here. All good people operate over here. All bad guys over here.” It’s
never been quite that easy—but General Alexander’s dream scenario used to be closer to the truth.
State adversaries communicated primarily over dedicated circuits that could be intercepted wholesale
without much worry about bumping into innocent Americans, whereas a communication entering the
United States could generally be presumed to be with someone in the United States. The traditional
division of intelligence powers by physical geography—particularized warrants on this side of the border,
an interception free-for-all on the other—no longer tracks the reality of global information flows.

*1nc United States Persons

Interpretation – the aff can only be about surveillance against United States persons

Small 8 – United States Air Force Academy

Matthew, His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic Surveillance, Civil Liberties and Executive Power during
Times of National Crisis, 2008,
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf

Before one can make any sort of assessment of domestic surveillance policies, it is first necessary to
narrow the scope of the term “domestic surveillance.” Domestic surveillance is a subset of intelligence
gathering. Intelligence, as it is to be understood in this context, is “information that meets the stated or
understood needs of policy makers and has been collected, processed and narrowed to meet those
needs” (Lowenthal 2006, 2). In essence, domestic surveillance is a means to an end; the end being
intelligence. The intelligence community best understands domestic surveillance as the acquisition of
nonpublic information concerning United States persons (Executive Order 12333 (3.4) (i)). With this
definition domestic surveillance remains an overly broad concept.

Violation – the affirmative deals with surveillance of foreign nationals

It’s a voting issue because they explode the limits of the topic by allowing affirmatives dealing with
immigration and counter-intelligence

2nc United States Persons Extensions

Domestic surveillance only involves United States persons – it’s court defined and distinct

McCarthy 6 – former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Andrew, “It’s Not “Domestic Spying”; It’s Foreign Intelligence Collection” National Review, 5/15, Read
more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/122556/its-not-domestic-spying-its-foreign-
intelligence-collection-andrew-c-mccarthy

Eggen also continues the mainstream media’s propagandistic use of the term “domestic surveillance [or
'spying'] program.” In actuality, the electronic surveillance that the NSA is doing — i.e., eavesdropping on
content of conversations — is not “domestic.” A call is not considered “domestic” just because one party
to it happens to be inside the U.S., just as an investigation is not “domestic” just because some of the
subjects of interest happen to reside inside our country. Mohammed Atta was an agent of a foreign
power, al Qaeda. Surveilling him — had we done it — would not have been “domestic spying.” The calls
NSA eavesdrops on are “international,” not “domestic.” If that were not plain enough on its face, the
Supreme Court made it explicit in the Keith case (1972). There, even though it held that judicial warrants
were required for wiretapping purely domestic terror organizations, the Court excluded investigations of
threats posed by foreign organizations and their agents operating both within and without the U.S. That
is, the Court understood what most Americans understand but what the media, civil libertarians and
many members of Congress refuse to acknowledge: if we are investigating the activities of agents of
foreign powers inside the United States, that is not DOMESTIC surveillance. It is FOREIGN counter-
intelligence. That, in part, is why the statute regulating wiretaps on foreign powers operating within the
U.S. — the one the media has suddenly decided it loves after bad-mouthing it for years as a rubber-
stamp — is called the FOREIGN Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The United States has never needed
court permission to conduct wiretapping outside U.S. territory; the wiretapping it does inside U.S.
territory for national security purposes is FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION, not “domestic
surveillance.”

Domestic is only US citizens

Powell 72 – US Supreme Court Justice

UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN ET AL.
(PLAMONDON ET AL., REAL PARTIES IN INTEREST) No. 70-153 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
407 U.S. 297; 92 S. Ct. 2125; 32 L. Ed. 2d 752; 1972 U.S. LEXIS 38

8 Section 2511 (3) refers to "the constitutional power of the President" in two types of situations: (i)
where necessary to protect against attack, other hostile acts or intelligence activities of a "foreign
power"; or (ii) where necessary to protect against the overthrow of the Government or other clear and
present danger to the structure or existence of the Government. Although both of the specified
situations are sometimes referred to as "national security" threats, the term "national security" is used
only in the first sentence of § 2511 (3) with respect to the activities of foreign powers. This case involves
only the second sentence of § 2511 (3), with the threat emanating -- according to the Attorney General's
affidavit -- from "domestic organizations." Although we attempt no precise definition, we use the term
"domestic organization" in this opinion to mean a group or organization (whether formally or informally
constituted) composed of citizens of the United States and which has no significant connection with a
foreign power, its agents or agencies. No doubt there are cases where it will be difficult to distinguish
between "domestic" and "foreign" unlawful activities directed against the Government of the United
States where there is collaboration in varying degrees between domestic groups or organizations and
agents or agencies of foreign powers. But this is not such a case.

2nc No FISA

FISA courts are only foreign

Berman 14 - Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

Emily Berman, Regulating Domestic Intelligence Collection, 71 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 3,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol71/iss1/5

Another barrier to enlisting the FISC in intelligencecollection governance is that the intelligence-
collection activities governed by the Guidelines extend beyond the scope of the FISC’s jurisdiction. The
FISC oversees electronic foreign intelligence surveillance and physical searches of premises connected
with foreign powers.322 It has no role in overseeing purely domestic surveillance of Americans absent
probable cause that those Americans are agents of a foreign power.323 The content of the Guidelines
and the activities they regulate—such as physical surveillance of Americans, infiltration of religious or
political groups, the use of informants, requests for internet history— rarely fall within the FISC’s
jurisdiction. Individuals who wish to challenge FBI activity—if they can establish standing—do not have
access to the FISC.324 Thus, it is unclear what role the FISC could play in reviewing many activities in
which the FBI engages.

Aff – Yes FISA

Surveillance authorized by FISA is domestic surveillance—contextual evidence proves

Wagner 9 - J.D., expected May 2010, The George Washington University Law School

Mike, Warrantless Wiretapping, Retroactive Immunity, and the Fifth Amendment, George Washington
Law Review, November, 2009, lexis
Subject to certain narrowly defined exceptions, n20 electronic government surveillance on U.S. soil is
prohibited unless the FISC first determines that there is probable cause to believe that the target is an
agent of a foreign power and that the place at which the surveillance is directed is being used by a
foreign power or its agent. n21 If the government ignores this warrant requirement and engages in
electronic domestic surveillance anyway, it will be found to have violated FISA. n22 In such a case, FISA
creates a direct private cause of action for anyone "who has been subjected to ... electronic surveillance"
in violation of FISA. n23 Interestingly, FISA specifically contemplated the potential civil liability of private
telecommunications providers assisting in government surveillance, but the Act made clear that such
private carriers would be protected from civil suit only when they assisted the government "in
accordance with the terms of a court order, [*208] statutory authorization, or certification" in writing
from the Attorney General. n24

FISA constraints are designed to curtail the executive’s ability to conduct domestic surveillance

Bast and Brown 14 - Associate Professor of Legal Studies, Department of Legal Studies, University of
Central Florida and an attorney in private practice

Carol and Cynthia, GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION: SMALL-WORLD PROBLEM EMPHASIZES CRITICAL NEED FOR
BUSINESS STRATEGIES IN RESPONSE TO THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT, 2014, Michigan
State Law Review, 2014, lexis

In 1978, when Congress first adopted FISA, its intent was to place significant restrictions on the executive
branch's authority to [*1092] conduct domestic surveillance, not enlarge the powers available to the
President. n410 Likewise, when Congress enacted the original NSL statutes, telephone companies and
banks served as the contemplated recipients for these limited information requests allowable only in
very narrowly defined situations. n411 There is more than a little irony in the fact that both FISA and
NSLs began as protective devices to ensure individual privacies and limit government intrusion, and
today, both have morphed into something quite different from their predecessors. It is of little surprise
that many of the consequences that now threaten American businesses were unimaginable over three
decades ago when the government first introduced these tools, and when considered through the
"small-world" theory of networking, these consequences have an impact with a magnitude wholly
incomprehensible in 1978.

*1nc Covert

Interpretation – surveillance must be covert

Baker 5 – MA, CPP, CPO

(Brian, “Surveillance: Concepts and Practices for Fraud, Security and Crime Investigation,”
http://www.ifpo.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/surveillance.pdf)

Surveillance is defined as covert observations of places and persons for the purpose of obtaining∂
information (Dempsey, 2003). The term covert infers that the operative conducting the∂ surveillance is
discreet and secretive. Surveillance that maintains a concealed, hidden, undetected∂ nature clearly has
the greatest chance of success because the subject of the surveillance will act∂ or perform naturally.
Remaining undetected during covert surveillance work often involves∂ physical fatigue, mental stress,
and very challenging situations. Physical discomfort is an∂ unfortunate reality for investigators, which
varies from stinging perspiration in summer to hard∂ shivers during the winter.

Violation – the aff curtails surveillance that is not covert

Reasons to prefer –

Limits—allowing the ending of public surveillance explodes the limits of the topic by
allowing affirmatives that deal with programs that known surveillance like detention
facilities
Ground—key to neg ground like terrorism and politics disads
Voting issue for competitive equity

2nc Covert Extensions

Must be covert

IJ 98

(Info Justice, OPERATIONS, SURVEILLANCE AND STAKEOUT PART 1,

http://www.infojustice.com/samples/12%20Operations,%20Surveillance%20And%20Stakeout%20Part
%201.html)

Surveillance is defined as the systematic observation of persons, places, or things to obtain information.
Surveillance is carried out without the knowledge of those under surveillance and is concerned primarily
with people.

Even the broadest definition doesn’t include information provided with consent

Pounder 9 – PhD, Director, Amberhawk Training and Amberhawk Associates

(Chris, “NINE PRINCIPLES FOR ASSESSING WHETHER PRIVACY IS PROTECTED IN A SURVEILLANCE

SOCIETY,” Scholar)

This paper uses the term "surveillance" in its widest sense to include data sharing and the revealing of
identity information in the absence of consent of the individual concerned. It argues that the current
debate about the nature of a "surveillance society" needs a new structural framework that allows the
benefits of surveillance and the risks to individual privacy to be properly balanced.

2nc Most Common

Surveillance is most often covert

Glancy 12 – Professor of Law, Santa Clara University Law School. B.A. Wellesley College, J.D. Harvard Law
School

Dorothy, SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE: PRIVACY IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES, Santa Clara Law Review, 2012,
Lexis
Surveillance is a relatively modern idea. Even the word, "surveillance," is fairly new to the English
language. It was borrowed from the French by the British at the turn of the nineteenth century to refer
to looking over an area, usually from a high place, for strategic information about a battlefield or
prospective confrontation. n92 Early in the twentieth century, surveillance usually suggested use of
technology to enhance human abilities to see over wide distances to collect comprehensive information
about an adversary. n93 Since then, [*1208] the word, "surveillance," has been used in a wide variety of
careful-watching contexts from medical surveillance of diseases and immune responses, to physical
stakeouts of crime suspects, to mass-scale electronic and network surveillance for gathering intelligence
or for seeking evidence of anomalous or criminal behavior. Surveillance is also a psychological technique
used to affect human behavior through pervasive monitoring of activities and areas to discourage people
from violating rules or laws. Although surveillance most often means covert collection of information, it
can also refer to overt watching aimed at modifying the behavior of those watched. An example of overt
surveillance is red-light cameras. These devices are often prominently placed as ever-present watchers at
intersections so that drivers are deterred from entering intersections while the stoplight is red. n94 One
purpose of overt surveillance is to affect the behavior of those being watched, to assure that individual
behavior conforms to societal norms. If an autonomous vehicle user were informed that his or her
vehicle continuously reports its speed to law enforcement authorities, that user would be more likely to
direct the vehicle to conform to the speed limit, rather than exercise personal autonomy in deciding not
to conform. n95 Similarly, autonomous vehicles could overtly monitor the behavior of vehicle users so
that instances of user activities such as smoking or drinking alcohol are sensed and recorded.

Law Enforcement Investigation

Surveillance refers to any method of investigation carried out by law enforcement officials

Simmons 13 – Professor of Law, Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University

Ric, PRIVACY, SECURITY, AND HUMAN DIGNITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE: ENDING THE ZERO-SUM GAME:
HOW TO INCREASE THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE FOURTH AMENDMENT, Harvard Journal of Law & Public
Policy, Spring 2013, Lexis

n13 Throughout this Article I will use the word "surveillance" to cover any method of investigation
carried out by law enforcement officials, from accessing a Department of Motor Vehicles database to
wiretapping a telephone to strip-searching a suspect. This rather awkward terminology is required
because the term "search" has a very particular meaning in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence as a
method of surveillance that implicates the Fourth Amendment to the degree that it requires probable
cause or a warrant. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350-53 (1967).

Persons

Systematic observation of persons

Wang 11 – PhD, Vice President for Information Services and Chief Information Officer for the RF

Hao, “Protecting Privacy in China,” p. 27

Surveillance is defined as the systematic investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of
one or more persons. Traditionally, surveillance has been undertaken by physical means, such as
guarding prisons. In recent decades, it has been enhanced through image amplification devices such as
high-resolution satel¬lite cameras.6"1 Most of them are readily available in China today. However, some
of them are also privacy invasive. They render current Chinese legal protections seriously inadequate.
These devices may include: (I) microphones or listening devices that can be concealed; (2) miniature
tape recorders; (3) hidden cameras such as cell phone cameras; (4) hidden monitors that operated by
remote control; (5) infrared devices enabling photographs to be taken at night; (6) miniature
transmitters; and so on.

RIPA definition proves---it’s about persons

Martellozzo 12 – PhD, Criminologist, specialises in sex offenders' use of the internet and online child
safety

Elena, “Online Child Sexual Abuse,” Google Book

During online undercover operation, the use of surveillance is common practice. Surveillance is defined
in section 48(2) of the RIPA and includes: a monitoring, observing or listening to persons, their
movements, their conversations or their other activities or communications b recording anything
monitored, observed or listened to in the course of the surveillance and c surveillance by or with the
assistance of a surveillance device. There are two types of surveillance: directed and intrusive
surveillance. Directed surveillance is defined in section 26(2) of the RIPA. It requires a directed
surveillance authority if: • it comprises covert observation or monitoring by whatever means • it is for
the purpose of a specific investigation or specific operation • it will or is likely to obtain private
information about any person, not just the subject of the operation (this is I lie key element that engages
also with Article 8ofthef.CHR)but • it docs not include observations conducted in an immediate response
to spontaneous events. The last point refers to a scenario where on patrol, police officers notice
someone acting suspiciously near a house. Because this is an immediate event or circumstance,
authority for surveillance is not required (Harficld and liarficld 2005: :M). Therefore, directed surveillance
includes instances where the police or other authorised public authorities follow an individual in the
public, monitor and record their movements (The Crown Prosecution Service 07/07/08). Intrusive
surveillance is defined in section 26 (http://www.bishop-accountability
.org/reports,''2004_02_27_JohnJay/LitReview/l_3_|J_TheoriesAnd.pdf) of the RIPA and it comprises: •
covert surveillance • carried out in any residential premises or In any private vehicle and which involves
• the presence of an individual on the premises or in the vehicle or • the use of a surveillance device.

AT Drones

Drones don’t do surveillance—they are reconnaissance and monitoring

Leachtenauer 1 – Defense Consultant

(John, “Surveillance and Reconnaissance Imaging Systems,” p. 1)

Surveillance and reconnaissance (S&R) systems are defined here as remote sensing imaging systems
used to acquire military, economic, and political intelligence information. Classically, reconnaissance is
defined as the act of reconnoitcring or making a preliminary inspection. In the military sense, it involves
determining the lay of the land and the disposition of enemy forces. Economically, it may be a survey to
detect oil-bearing strata. Any imaging system that can acquire imagery of relatively large ground areas
can be used for reconnaissance. Surveillance is defined as maintaining close observation of a group or
location. Frequent imaging of enemy forces is the classic application. Monitoring crop vigor or civil unrest
can also be considered surveillance. The implication here is the need for frequent or even continuous
coverage. In a practical sense, most S&R systems can perform both reconnais-sance and surveillance by
virtue of the ability to trade ofT resolution and area of coverage. The Predator unmanned aerial vehicle
(UAV), for example, flies a video system with both a long focal length lens for high resolution surveil-
lance and a short focal length lens for lower resolution reconnaissance. The LANDSAT multispectral
satellite is used for both reconnaissance and sur-veillance applications, the only difference being the
number of images ac-quired of the same ground area.

Limits Good

Narrow definitions are preferable---otherwise ‘surveillance’ is completely unlimited

Walby 5 – PhD, Associate Professor, University of Winnipeg, Department of Criminal Justice

Kevin, “Institutional Ethnography and Surveillance Studies: An Outline for Inquiry,” Surveillance & Society
3(2/3): 158-172

The emerging transdisciplinary field of surveillance studies suffers from an overabundance of speculative
theorizing and a dearth of rigorous empirical research. Of course, many monographs, articles, and
reports tangentially related to the study of surveillance are based on social scientific practice, and many
of the classic works that constitute surveillance studies itself are not purely speculative but engage
through research with the social world they investigate (see, for instance, Rule, 1973; Braverman, 1974;
Marx, 1988). Researching surveillance involves “watching” and needs to be accompanied by an ethics of
honesty, sympathy and respect as it regards researchers and their respondents. Still, there is no
overarching method in this area of study. Nor should there be only one overarching method. When we
use the word “surveillance” we often forget how amazingly diverse the forms, linkages, and processes
captured by the word are. That surveillance is a signifier referring to face-to-face supervision, camera
monitoring, TV watching, paparazzi stalking, GPS tailing, cardiac telemonitoring, the tracking of
commercial/internet transactions, the tracing of tagged plants and animals, etc., points to an impossible
and always receding signified. Nevertheless, we need to refer to these processes, and at present time
surveillance is the term. We also need ways of inquiring into these processes. The search is on for the
methods of inquiry needed to give surveillance studies continuity and legitimacy in the sport de combat
of social science.

The same technology that is used to monitor and observe migrants on the border has
been used by border activists as mechanisms of empowerment and resistance.
Walsh 2010 [James, Prof. @ UC Santa Barbara, “Form Border Control to Border Care: The Political and
Ethical Potential of Surveillance”, Surveillance and Society 8:2]
Many scholars have already noted how border control and surveillance exceed the exclusive purview of
nation-states and are also carried out by emergent practitioners such as supranational institutions,
municipalities, private security firms, airlines, travel agents, and vigilante patrols (Guiraudon 2001; Walsh
2008). While emphasizing the distributed and heterogeneous nature of surveillance, I also intend to
reorient analysis by illuminating how private citizens and civil-society actors have used observational
technologies and practices as mechanisms of empowerment—here defined as a demonstrable
improvement in the economic, juridical, social, or symbolic status of marginalized groups. Paying
attention to such dynamicsshould result in a more nuanced understanding of border control as a
complex institutional field defined by negotiation and struggle among multiple actors, both internal
and external to the state, and help assess the activists’ use of surveillance in protecting migrants and
in promoting a moral geography of recognition, responsibility and hospitality. This paper is divided as
follows. First, with particular attention to the US-/Mexico border, I summarize received scholarship on
globalization, surveillance, and national boundaries. Second, I apply studies emphasizing surveillance’s
flexibility and ambiguity to the institutional field of the border. Here I argue that, along with restricting
entry and expelling ‘undesirables’, observational technologies and practices may also be applied to
promoting human security and challenging perceived injustice. Finally, before offering a brief summary
and conclusion, I situate this argument empirically, analyzing the use and framing of surveillance by
border activists. This third section also assesses each group’s transformative potential and its relations
with state authorities and official border practitioners.

The borderlands exists wherever two or more cultures collide whether along physical
border cities or psychological and spacially.
Hames-Garcia, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies Education, 2000

(Michael, “How to Tell a Mestizo from an Enchirito: Colonialism and National Culture in the Borderlands,”
Diacritics, Volume: 30(4), p. 114)

Additionally, whereas a strict, territory-based nationalism can be an obstacle when trying to work, for
example, with Filipino workers to unionize vineyards (what does one do with an Asian in Aztlán?),
Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, present “wherever two or more cultures edge each other,” allow for a
framework of cooperation between “los atravesados” (border crossers). The oppressed, whether
citizens of Aztlán or not, are all inhabitants of the Borderlands. In Borderlands, “mestiza consciousness”
ties itself through various referents to the knowledge of Chicana and Mexican women. In this way, as
with the borderlands, there always remains an original source for Anzaldúa’s work in the material
existence of a specific population. For Anzaldúa, it has always been important to address an audience
beyond a single national, ethnic, sexual, or gender group, yet she notes in a 1982 interview that she
finds the best way to do this is to write “very concretely about particulars” [Interviews 60]. She
alternates this concrete, particular writing with a more prophetic, mythic mode. In these other passages,
she elaborates a mythology that can be tailored to concrete existence, however, as she describes in a
later interview: “A lot of times I will start with a cultural figure from the precolonial: Coatlicue, or la
Llorona. Then I look at the experience in 1997 that Chicanos and Chicanas are going through, and I try to
see a connection to what was going on then” [Lunsford 17].
Violation – the border is not domestic
BHC No Date

United States- Mexico Border Health Commission, a binational health commission in July 2000 with the
signing of an agreement by the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States and the
Secretary of Health of México. On December 21, 2004, the Commission was designated as a Public
International Organization by Executive Order of the President, “Border Relation”,
http://www.borderhealth.org/border_region.php//SRawal

The United States-México border region is defined as the area of land being 100 kilometers (62.5
miles) north and south of the international boundary (La Paz Agreement). It stretches approximately
2000 miles from the southern tip of Texas to California. The population for this expanse of land is
estimated to be approximately 12 million inhabitants. This population is expected to double by the year
2025. The combined population of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California is 61,637,146 (2000
Census). The estimated combined population of the six Mexican border states in 1990 was 12,246,991.
Two of the ten fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States - Laredo and McAllen - are
located on the Texas-México border. Additionally, there are 154 Native American tribes totaling 881,070
Native Americans living in the 4 U.S. border states. In the actual border region, there are approximately
25 Native American Nations.

Open borders devastate the agenda

Johnson 3 – JD @ Harvard, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of California at Davis,
Professor of Law and Chicana/o Studies; Director, Chicana/o Studies Program

(Kevin, “LAW AND THE BORDER: Open Borders?,” 51 UCLA L. Rev. 193, Lexis)

Any serious mention of the taboo subject of "open borders" long has been the political kiss of death for
serious immigration reformers. 10 Politicians do not consider open borders a viable policy option,
presumably because of the public's seemingly natural predisposition, particularly in times of social
stress, toward restrictionist measures. Immigration law scholars ordinarily avoid discussing open borders
without much of an explanation; alternatively, they brush off the possibility as hopelessly impractical. 11
Needless to say, arguments for opening the borders to all migrants would face stubborn, probably
vociferous, resistance. Legitimate fears of the various possible adverse social, economic, and political
impacts on U.S. society would be invoked. In addition, nativism and racism, a strong undercurrent to this
country's immigration history, likely would infect the debate as well.

Border surveillance reforms unpopular

Rigney 14 (http://usfinancepost.com/new-cbs-poll-shows-obama-and-immigration-reform-remain-
unpopular-18999.html, New CBS poll shows Obama and immigration reform remain unpopular, Patrick
Rigney, Patrick Rigney is a freelance writer with experience writing political speeches, radio
advertisements, research works, and financial analysis pieces. He has a love of all things involving politics
and history, May 23, 2014)

According to a new CBS poll, President Obama’s approval ratings sit at a dismal 43 percent. The newly
released poll also shows that the American public would prefer it if the government enforced its
current immigration laws before offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The May 22 poll questioned
1,009 adults, and it found that 48 percent of respondents disapprove of Obama’s record. A mere 42
percent rate Obama’s economic record positively, only 43 percent support his healthcare policy, and 39
percent support his foreign policy. These are pretty dismal numbers for a president, even one facing a
second-term rut. If the President’s ratings remain this low, his own party is likely to face massive losses in
this year’s midterm elections. Democrats are struggling to hold onto the Senate, and this has to do with
the fact that President Obama remains incredibly unpopular. Many Democrats have been attempting to
distance themselves from President Obama and his signature healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act.
Just 37 percent of adults say that “addressing the status of illegal immigrants” should be a higher priority
for the federal government. Respondents also heavily favored increasing border security over providing
amnesty for illegal immigrants. Independents choose increasing border security over amnesty by a 55
to 35 percent margin. Republicans favored security by a 64 to 31 percent margin. Even Democrats
support border enforcement over amnesty by 6 percentage points. CBS notes that these numbers
displaying the relative popularity of border security and amnesty have not changed since July of last year.
The Daily Caller reports “That’s a problem for Obama, his progressive allies, and for business donors.
They’re collectively pressuring GOP leaders to back the Senate immigration bill that would effectively
double the annual inflow of guest workers and immigrants, long before new border and airport security
checks survive lawsuits by pro-immigration groups.” Should Democrats continue their push for
immigration reform without increased border security, the party may be setting itself up for a public
relations nightmare going into the 2014 midterm elections. The Daily Caller notes that the CBS poll most
likely is understating the public’s opposition to new immigration reform, as a Rasmussen survey
conducted last year found that only 10 percent of Americans know the current inflow of illegal
immigrants per year (roughly 1 million.) If the public had an accurate understanding of the number of
illegal immigrants who enter the country each year, public support for amnesty would be even lower
than it already is at this point in time.

Borders is a Eurocentric notion that creates the “Other” through a re-inscription of

racism and patriarchy and is responsible for the overreach of state power
Paasi 2005
[Anssi, Anssi Paasi is Professor and Head of the Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland.
“Bordering Space”, Chapter 1: The Changing Discourses on Political Boundaries Mapping the
Backgrounds, Contexts and Contents, pp 17-19]

Although regional transformation seems to be a perpetually accelerating phenomenon, we have for a

long time been used to living with certain large-scale socio-spatial facts in our modern world, prominent
among which has been the existence of states and their boundaries, a certainty that has been canonized
in international law and in the actions of the United Nations. This fact has dominated international
relations, even though it is well-known that most currently existing states are not nation-states, in the
sense that several ethno-national groups co-exist within them, either peacefully or in conflict. Some of
these groups may be¶ struggling fiercely for autonomy or a state of their own.¶ Most of the existing
political boundaries were originally created by the¶ European nation-states, so that De Vorsey and Biger
(1995, see also Burghardt,¶ 1996) are ready to argue that it is difficult to identify any international
boundary r¶ that has not directly involved a European state at some stage of its evolution. Similarly, it
was the peoples from the continent of Europe that imposed a model of the space of states and a specific
state-centred structure of political economy on the rest of the planet, beginning in the 17th century - a
model that involved boundaries and frontiers (Shapiro, 1999). Boundaries have been a key category in
political geography and political science since the 19th century, but it was above all the collapse of the
East-West divide at the beginning of the 1990s that gave rise to a new interest in political boundaries.¶
The 1990s and the first years of the new millennium have witnessed a dramatic increase in boundary
studies all over the world, but particularly in Europe. The themes have varied from problems associated
with the existing state boundaries to the roles of symbolic borders in the construction of contested social
identities. Particularly important topics of research have been the diverging forms of cross- border
interaction, emerging new regionalizations and region-building projects. Not only have the roles of
concrete state boundaries been evaluated but also the¶ 18 B/ordering Space¶ symbolic and
metaphorical roles of all kinds of social, political, cultural and historical borders (Newman and Paasi,
1998; Anderson and O'Dowd, 1999; Donnan and Wilson, 1999; van der Velde and van Houtum, 2000).
The sociologists Lamont and Molnar (2002) have noted in their review of the boundary¶ literature how
the idea of boundaries has been associated with research into such divergent topics as cognition, social
and collective identity, commensuration, census categories, cultural capital, cultural membership, racial
and ethnic group positioning, hegemonic masculinity , professional jurisdictions, scientific controversies,
group rights, immigration or contentious politics, and this list is by no means exhaustive.¶ Geographers
have also expanded their traditional ideas of political boundaries as frozen lines and have begun to map
the roles and functions of boundaries as institutions, symbols and discourses that are `spread'
everywhere in society, so that they are not confined to the border areas themselves (Paasi, 1996).
Attention has been paid to boundary-drawing practices, whether conceptual and cartographic,
imaginary and actual, or social and aesthetic (O'Tuathail and Dalby, 1998). These practices are always
part of broader social action and have typically been based on the processes of `Othering', i.e. the
construction of symbolic/cultural boundaries between `us' and `the Other'. Spatializations of identity,
nation and danger, for instance, are examples of boundary-drawing practices which are always contested
and reflect power relations (Campbell, 1992; Tickner, 1995). These practices, in which national (spatial)
socialization and education play a crucial role, manifest themselves in such areas as foreign policy, media
discourses and popular culture (Paasi, 2003a).¶ Another topical example of boundary-producing
practices concerns geopolitically challenging spatializations based on supra-national forms of culture,
especially those referred to as `civilizations', as suggested by Huntington (1993) in his much debated -
and criticized - treatise (O'Tuathail, 1996; Nierop, 2001).¶ As far as the changing roles of political
boundaries, and state boundaries in particular, are concerned, Anderson (1996) reminds us that current
(political, A.P.) boundaries are not merely lines on maps, forming unproblematic backgrounds and limits
to political life, but crucial elements in achieving an understanding of political life. He notes how any
examination of the justifications for boundaries will normally raise dramatic questions on such themes as
citizenship, identity, political loyalty, exclusion, inclusion and the ends of the state. These questions are
increasingly important in the present world, characterized as it is by the flows of economic assets,
information, refugees and immigrants. Inspired by these seemingly border-eroding processes, some
authors have claimed that boundaries, and even states, will vanish or at least lose their role in the
contemporary world. However, the simultaneous strengthening of old ideologies such as (ethno-)regio-
nalism and nationalism seems to make a mockery of the most utopian visions of the borderless world.¶
The future role of boundaries is not, of course, an either-or question, and we certainly will not be able to
write boundaries off in our academic discussions. What is needed is a deeper scrutiny of the social
practices and discourses in which boundaries are produced and reproduced. I will argue in this paper
that state power and the ideas of sovereignty, citizenship and identity still provide the social, political
and cultural framework for `reading' the contextual but simultaneously re-¶ scaling meanings of
boundaries and the power relations that are involved in the very constitution of them. The constantly
advancing process of constructing the European Union, for instance, is transforming the existing
geopolitical ideas on political boundaries and will inevitably fuse the spatial scales in this specific
context, but this does not detract from the fact that the state still remains important (Paasi, 2001).¶ New
approaches to border research suggest that political boundaries - as well as territories and their inherent
symbolisms and institutions - are social constructs and processes rather than stable entities. A historical
perspective is therefore inevitable in any account on the meanings of political boundaries. This paper will
therefore begin with a brief analysis of the history of state territoriality, before reflecting on different
boundary drawing practices and the meanings of boundaries as ideologies, forms of symbolism and
markers of identity. A critical analysis will then be made of the contrasting boundary narratives that are
currently emerging in the globalizing world. This will be followed by some methodological suggestions
for future border research.

Domestic surveillance is the collection of information within national borders

Avilez et al, 14 - Ethics, History, and Public Policy Senior Capstone Project at Carnegie Mellon University
(Marie, “Security and Social Dimensions of City Surveillance Policy” 12/10,
http://www.cmu.edu/hss/ehpp/documents/2014-City-Surveillance-Policy.pdf

Domestic surveillance – collection of information about the activities of private individuals/organizations

by a government entity within national borders; this can be carried out by federal, state and/or local
officials

Pushes for more open borders are capitalist and hurt the poorer countries the most.
Sell 2012

(Hannah Sell, leading member of the Socialist Party and its predecessor since the 1980s, Currently on the
Socialist Party's Executive Committee, Socialism Today 160 - July/August 2012, “Capitalism, globalisation
and migration”, http://www.socialismtoday.org/160/migration.html)

Consequences in the neo-colonial world...¶ THE FREER MOVEMENT of labour is one aspect of
globalisation. It is the freedom of capitalism to increase exploitation through a race to the bottom,
maximising profits by holding down wages. Other campaigners for freer labour are more honest – and
crude – about this than the authors of Exceptional People. The Economist, for example, evangelises for
open borders, bluntly arguing that increased immigration means lower wages. In 2002, its survey on
migration stated: "The gap between labour’s rewards in the poor and the rich countries, even for
something as menial as clearing tables, dwarfs the gap between the prices of traded goods from
different parts of the world. The potential gains [profits] from liberalising migration therefore dwarf
those from removing barriers to world trade".¶ No capitalist government has implemented
completely open borders, which would be too politically destabilising for them to contemplate.
However, while severe repression of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants from Africa, Asia, and
Latin America remains the norm in every advanced capitalist country, many have also consciously
loosened border controls, in most cases covertly.¶ For migrant workers it is a very limited freedom to be
able to travel the globe if that is the only way to feed your family. What kind of freedom is it to hand
your family’s savings to people smugglers and then, if you are lucky, after an often dangerous journey,
end up working without papers for less than the minimum wage?¶ The authors of Exceptional People
accept that migration is not a painless process. They liken it to the economist Joseph Schumpeter’s
description of capitalism’s ‘creative destruction’. But any problems, they assert, are largely short-term or
secondary, with the long-term consequences overwhelmingly positive for migrants, and for the
countries they move to and leave.¶ However, the statistics in the book do more to prove the
‘destruction’ than the ‘creation’. The argument that increased migration benefits migrants’ countries of
origin is repeatedly undermined. The exodus leaves some of the poorest countries completely denuded
of skilled workers: "More than 70% of university graduates from Guyana and Jamaica move to
developed countries, and other countries have similarly high percentages of graduates leaving". Malawi,
a particularly horrendous example, "lost more than half its nursing staff to emigration over a recent
period of just four years, leaving only 336 nurses to serve a population of 12 million. Meanwhile vacancy
rates stand at 85% for surgeons and 92% for paediatricians".¶ Nor can the authors argue that
‘remittances’ (money sent home to family and friends) develop the economies of migrant workers’
countries of origin. Remittances have grown dramatically "from about $31.1 billion in 1990, they are
estimated to have reached $316 billion by 2009". While they can have a major effect on the lives of
individuals and communities, Exceptional People concedes that "there are a very small number of
countries, however, for which remittance flows are substantial relative to GDP, and in only eleven
countries are remittances larger than merchandise exports".

Borders are a Eurocentric notion which re-inscribe racism, patriarchy and are
responsible for the spreading of state power
Paasi 2005 [Anssi, Anssi Paasi is Professor and Head of the Department of Geography, University of Oulu,
Finland. “Bordering Space”, Chapter 1: The Changing Discourses on Political Boundaries Mapping the
Backgrounds, Contexts and Contents, pp 17-19]

Although regional transformation seems to be a perpetually accelerating phenomenon, we have for a

long time been used to living with certain large-scale socio-spatial facts in our modern world, prominent
among which has been the existence of states and their boundaries, a certainty that has been canonized
in international law and in the actions of the United Nations. This fact has dominated international
relations, even though it is well-known that most currently existing states are not nation-states, in the
sense that several ethno-national groups co-exist within them, either peacefully or in conflict. Some of
these groups may be¶ struggling fiercely for autonomy or a state of their own.¶ Most of the existing
political boundaries were originally created by the¶ European nation-states, so that De Vorsey and Biger
(1995, see also Burghardt,¶ 1996) are ready to argue that it is difficult to identify any international
boundary r¶ that has not directly involved a European state at some stage of its evolution. Similarly, it
was the peoples from the continent of Europe that imposed a model of the space of states and a specific
state-centred structure of political economy on the rest of the planet, beginning in the 17th century - a
model that involved boundaries and frontiers (Shapiro, 1999). Boundaries have been a key category in
political geography and political science since the 19th century, but it was above all the collapse of the
East-West divide at the beginning of the 1990s that gave rise to a new interest in political boundaries.¶
The 1990s and the first years of the new millennium have witnessed a dramatic increase in boundary
studies all over the world, but particularly in Europe. The themes have varied from problems associated
with the existing state boundaries to the roles of symbolic borders in the construction of contested social
identities. Particularly important topics of research have been the diverging forms of cross- border
interaction, emerging new regionalizations and region-building projects. Not only have the roles of
concrete state boundaries been evaluated but also the¶ 18 B/ordering Space¶ symbolic and
metaphorical roles of all kinds of social, political, cultural and historical borders (Newman and Paasi,
1998; Anderson and O'Dowd, 1999; Donnan and Wilson, 1999; van der Velde and van Houtum, 2000).
The sociologists Lamont and Molnar (2002) have noted in their review of the boundary¶ literature how
the idea of boundaries has been associated with research into such divergent topics as cognition, social
and collective identity, commensuration, census categories, cultural capital, cultural membership, racial
and ethnic group positioning, hegemonic masculinity , professional jurisdictions, scientific controversies,
group rights, immigration or contentious politics, and this list is by no means exhaustive.¶ Geographers
have also expanded their traditional ideas of political boundaries as frozen lines and have begun to map
the roles and functions of boundaries as institutions, symbols and discourses that are `spread'
everywhere in society, so that they are not confined to the border areas themselves (Paasi, 1996).
Attention has been paid to boundary-drawing practices, whether conceptual and cartographic,
imaginary and actual, or social and aesthetic (O'Tuathail and Dalby, 1998). These practices are always
part of broader social action and have typically been based on the processes of `Othering', i.e. the
construction of symbolic/cultural boundaries between `us' and `the Other'. Spatializations of identity,
nation and danger, for instance, are examples of boundary-drawing practices which are always contested
and reflect power relations (Campbell, 1992; Tickner, 1995). These practices, in which national (spatial)
socialization and education play a crucial role, manifest themselves in such areas as foreign policy, media
discourses and popular culture (Paasi, 2003a).¶ Another topical example of boundary-producing
practices concerns geopolitically challenging spatializations based on supra-national forms of culture,
especially those referred to as `civilizations', as suggested by Huntington (1993) in his much debated -
and criticized - treatise (O'Tuathail, 1996; Nierop, 2001).¶ As far as the changing roles of political
boundaries, and state boundaries in particular, are concerned, Anderson (1996) reminds us that current
(political, A.P.) boundaries are not merely lines on maps, forming unproblematic backgrounds and limits
to political life, but crucial elements in achieving an understanding of political life. He notes how any
examination of the justifications for boundaries will normally raise dramatic questions on such themes as
citizenship, identity, political loyalty, exclusion, inclusion and the ends of the state. These questions are
increasingly important in the present world, characterized as it is by the flows of economic assets,
information, refugees and immigrants. Inspired by these seemingly border-eroding processes, some
authors have claimed that boundaries, and even states, will vanish or at least lose their role in the
contemporary world. However, the simultaneous strengthening of old ideologies such as (ethno-)regio-
nalism and nationalism seems to make a mockery of the most utopian visions of the borderless world.¶
The future role of boundaries is not, of course, an either-or question, and we certainly will not be able to
write boundaries off in our academic discussions. What is needed is a deeper scrutiny of the social
practices and discourses in which boundaries are produced and reproduced. I will argue in this paper
that state power and the ideas of sovereignty, citizenship and identity still provide the social, political
and cultural framework for `reading' the contextual but simultaneously re-¶ scaling meanings of
boundaries and the power relations that are involved in the very constitution of them. The constantly
advancing process of constructing the European Union, for instance, is transforming the existing
geopolitical ideas on political boundaries and will inevitably fuse the spatial scales in this specific
context, but this does not detract from the fact that the state still remains important (Paasi, 2001).¶ New
approaches to border research suggest that political boundaries - as well as territories and their inherent
symbolisms and institutions - are social constructs and processes rather than stable entities. A historical
perspective is therefore inevitable in any account on the meanings of political boundaries. This paper will
therefore begin with a brief analysis of the history of state territoriality, before reflecting on different
boundary drawing practices and the meanings of boundaries as ideologies, forms of symbolism and
markers of identity. A critical analysis will then be made of the contrasting boundary narratives that are
currently emerging in the globalizing world. This will be followed by some methodological suggestions
for future border research.

Borders are a Eurocentric notion that are responsible for the ethnic conflicts in the
Middle East and Africa
Agnew 2008 [John, Agnew is currently Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University in New
York. Dr. Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and
the Mediterranean World., “Borders on the mind: re-framing border thinking,” Ethics and Global Politics,
pg 5, http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/856/258.pdf]

¶ To many commentators on borders, however, they are explicitly deemed as arbitrary,¶ contingent, or
even perverse. Most importantly, international borders are not just¶ any old boundaries. To begin with,
worldwide, it is hard to find a single international¶ boundary that has not been inspired by the example
and practices of an originally¶ European statehood. Much of this was the direct result of the imposition
and¶ subsequent breakup of European empires outside of Europe into state-like units,¶ even if, as in
Latin America, there was rather more local inventiveness than there was¶ at a later date in Asia and
Africa. But it has also been more broadly the result of the¶ spread of a model of territorial statehood, a
state-centered political economy, and the¶ association of democracy with territorial citizenship from
Europe into the rest of¶ the world. At one and the same time, both a political ideal and set of socio-
political¶ practices, the imagination of territorial statehood rests on imitation and diffusion of¶
established political models that define what is and what is not possible in the world¶ at any particular
time and in any particular place.¶ J. Agnew¶ 6¶ (page number not for citation purpose)¶ European (and,
later, American) cultural hegemony has thus ‘written the script’¶ for the growth and consolidation of a
global nation-state system. The model of¶ statehood has had as its central geographical moment the
imposition of sharp borders¶ between one state unit (imagined as a nation-state, however implausible
that usually¶ may be) and its neighbors. Previously in world history, a wide range of types of polity¶ co-
existed without any one*empire, city-state, nomadic network, dynastic state, or¶ religious polity*serving
as the singular model of ‘best political practice’. It is only¶ with the rise of Europe to global
predominance that an idealized European territorial¶ state became the global archetype. Part of the
political tragedy of the contemporary¶ Middle East and Africa, for example, lies in the attempted
reconciliation of the EuroAmerican¶ style territorial state of sharp borders with ethnic and religious
identities¶ distributed geographically in ways that do not lend themselves to it.36¶ Lurking behind
bordering everywhere is the effect of that nationalism which has¶ come along with the territorial nation-
state: that being perpetually in question,¶ national identity has to be constantly re-invented through the
mobilization of¶ national populations (or significant segments thereof). Borders, because they are at¶
the edge of the national-state territory, provide the essential focus for this collective¶ uncertainty.37
Even as defined strictly, therefore, but also by remaining in perpetual¶ question, state borders provide
the center of attention for more generalized elite, and¶ sometimes popular, anxiety about what still
remains to be achieved by the state for¶ the nation.38 The everyday nationalism in which borders are
implicated as central¶ moments, then, is not a project that simply takes place at the border or simply¶
between adjacent states.39 Indeed, it is only secondarily territorial in that its origins¶ often lie in distant
centers and in scattered Diasporas where elites and activists¶ engage in the task of defining and
defending what they understand as the nationstate’s¶ borders, the better to imagine the shape or geo-
body of their nation. Consider,¶ for example, the histories of Irish nationalism and Zionism with their
origins in¶ scattered Diasporas.

We can’t escape the importance of national borders – they are a legitimate starting
point.
Liam O’DOWD Sociology @ Queens (Belfast) ’10 “From a borderless world to a world of borders:
bringing history back in” Environment and Planning D Advanced Online Publication 3-1-2010 p. 3-4

Devaluing state borders in contemporary border studies Influential studies of globalisation and critiques
of `the container state', `embedded statism', methodological nationalism, and the `state as territorial
trap' (for an early overview, see Brenner, 1999) have found a receptive audience, especially in European
border studies. These critiques, allied to accounts of the demise of the `Westphalian' or `Weberian'
state, have become part of the conventional wisdom underlying studies of borders and globalisation.
Europe and its borders are represented as the main exemplar and source of the new globalised,
postnational, even cosmopolitan, world order (Balibar, 2004; Beck and Grande, 2007). Implicit in much of
this commentary is that Europe, successively the progenitor of the great modern empires and the
national state system, is once again accorded a vanguard role in postnational geopolitical change. In this
vision, although state borders remain, albeit in reconfigured form, their status is in secular decline, not
least because their functions have been diffused among other territorial and nonterritorial entities.
Despite the diminishing role accorded to state borders in the emerging global order, they are retained,
implicitly at least, as the hinge or fulcrum of contemporary border studies (and, indeed, of globalisation
studies as such). The territorially bounded state remains an abiding reference point for the study of
border change of the measur- ing stick by which contemporary social change is assessed, even among
those who are most critical of state-centric approaches. State borders continue to be deeply constitutive
of the way in which contemporary social scientists think about social change, mobility and immobility,
inclusion and exclusion, domestic and foreign, national and international, internal and external, us and
them. For the critics of statism, it was only by the end of the 20th century that the social sciences had
been able to break decisively with the state-centric epistemology which dominated the modern social
sciences since their inception in the late 19th century (Brenner, 1999, page 46). Even in Europe, however,
the sternest critics of statism continue to think with state borders if not always about the historical ways
in which they have come into being and how they continue to change. At one level, the extent to which
states implicitly frame social science thinking is scarcely surprising given the heavy institutional
dependence of the specialised social sciences on (particular) national states (Wimmer and Glick Shiller,
2002). Much contemporary analysis of borders and globalisation insists that escaping from the state-
centric thinking is the sine qua non for grasping the novelty and the promise of the new world order. Yet,
`escape' is far more difficult than such observers imagine. Contemporary social science (especially in
Europe and the USA) remains symbiotically tied to particular states and groups of states. Proclaiming the
advent of a new world `beyond the nation-state', where the significance of state borders is in absolute
decline, is less convincing when social science practice is so tied to the world view emanating from (the
dominant Western) states. In privileging spatial analysis, that is, space over time, much contemporary
border study lacks an adequate historical analysis of state and nation formation; they over- emphasise
the novelty of contemporary forms of border change and globalisation and, in the process, fail to register
the extent to which we continue to live in a `world of diverse states', shot through with the legacy of
empires, past and present.

Borders and place come before and determine politics – where we locate political
authority is a prerequisite to political engagement
Walker 9 [RBJ, Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada,
After the Globe, Before the World, p 33-35]

The list of challenges to established political conventions is undoubtedly long. It offers ample potential
for scholarly squabbles and public debates about sequencing and priorities. It certainly exceeds the
analytical competence of established disciplinary traditions of scholarship, not least because established
scholarly disciplines are already overcommitted to specific sequences and priorities. It feeds multiple
disputes about the interpretation of information and the specific ontological, epistemological and
axiological commitments these interpretations should stimulate. Specific claims sometimes lead to
sophisticated conceptual and empirical innovation; though they also lead to disputes about the grounds
on which conceptual and empirical sophistication might now be judged. Sometimes such claims generate
wild speculation, righteous indignation, and desperate affirmations of entrenched theoretical traditions;
though they also intensify suspicions that the grounds on which we have come to think about both
tradition and radical possibility are now precisely what is being called into question. Most significantly,
claims about specific trends and problems generate further claims about the limitations of established
forms of political authority, especially about the always uncertain relationship between various
practices of power and the territorially located institutions and procedures through which
deployments of, and responses to, power are understood to be legitimate. Whether in relation to
narratives about new or intensified trends and dangers, or to contestations over basic principles that
have long been taken for granted, claims that we need to be more imaginative in our ability to work
together (as the political animals of the polis, as Aristotle would put it, as participants in some
community as we tend to put it now) increasingly run up against the multiple ways in which our
authoritative expressions of political engagement are firmly located in a particular somewhere: within
and between the spatial boundaries of modern states. 7 To imagine some other way of being political,
it is often assumed, is also to imagine future possibilities without the benefit of those boundaries,
those lines of both discrimination and relation that have shaped our most basic assumptions about
what it means to be modern political subjects capable of responding to specific challenges or to more
general structural and historical transformations. This is what gives such disconcerting force to claims
that we need to reimagine where and what political life might be. To articulate suspicions that political
life often fails to take place where it is supposed to take place is to generate multiple questions about
how to engage with whatever politics is supposed to be from those places within which it is supposed
to occur. To contemplate the implications of various claims about the speed, acceleration and temporal
contingency of contemporary political practices is to generate questions about how such practices can be
contained and organized within the spatial boundaries of a particular somewhere. To claim that the
boundaries of the modern state and the modern system of states are being displaced is to provoke
uncertainty about where we are or what we might be as political subjects. To suspect that
contemporary political life exceeds the instrumental and/or imaginative capacities of modern subjects
conceiving themselves to be citizens of a particular somewhere is to raise doubts about our capacity to
think about the prospects for liberty, equality, security and democracy, and thus about how we might
still claim to be both members of a particular community and participants in some more broadly
defined community, perhaps even one encompassing the entirety of humankind. To contemplate the
possibilities of resistance or emancipation in relation to claims about the failings of the modern state,
or to envisage plans for updating the United Nations so as to meet demands for fairer and more effective
forms of governance, or to make claims about the significance of social movements that are somehow
new, a civil society that is somehow global, or forms of violence that require still more violence, is to
come up against many well defined boundaries, whether understood as physical borders or as other,
less tangible forms of limitation: limits in space, limits in time, and limits in our capacity to imagine
where and what we are in space and in time. Most disturbingly, to try to respond to claims that the
problems of our age are worldwide in scope, involving complex economic, ecological and cultural
processes that exceed the grasp of established political authorities, is to generate profound doubts
about our capacity to engage with a world that has already been excluded as the necessary condition
under which modern political authority has been constituted in the formalized spaces of abstractly
sovereign jurisdictions. Consequently, it is now scarcely possible to engage with contemporary political
life without some sense that we risk speaking in terms that have lost much of their grip not only upon
important empirical events but even more so upon the theoretical principles through which we are
encouraged to make sense of and respond to empirical events. While many specific problems or trends
attract pragmatic responses requiring little attention to conceptual coherence or to grandiose notions
of spatiotemporality, once these responses impinge on established principles of political authority,
responsibility, liberty, equality, security and democracy – upon the principles through which we have
come to understand the possibilities and limits of a politics of modern subjects enabled within and
between modern sovereign states the spatiotemporal organization of what counts as a coherent and
acceptable form of political life quickly become of great controversy. In the meantime, ambitious one-
liners are thrown around as once merely speculative concepts are puffed up for the talk shows, the best-
seller lists, the quick sound-bites and the executive summaries. Claims about globalization,
postmodernity, a conflict of civilizations, a coming anarchy, a third way, a risk society, a tipping point
or a new empire blind us in a momentary glare, and then fade as complexities impinge and
contingencies are brought to order. The stories we are told about contemporary transformations vary
enormously. Anyone who claims to know how to offer a reasoned scholarly judgement about what they
add up to is certainly tempting the fates. Nevertheless, in my judgement it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that our capacity to know how to engage with political possibilities because we know where
those possibilities are to be engaged is in serious trouble. Much of this trouble arises in those contexts
that we call the international: that strange and very puzzling place in which we are encouraged to
imagine ourselves engaged in a politics that encompasses, or might one day encompass, the entire
world; as if a politics both enabled by and sustaining the ambitions of specifically modern subjects could
ever encompass the entire world from which such subjects have been separated as the necessary but
impossible condition under which they can celebrate their liberties, equalities and securities.

The striation of nature through borders is inherently managerial – environmental

policy becomes disciplinary
Luke 99 (Timothy W. Luke – Ph.D., Washington University, St. Louis, Political Science, University
Distinguished Professor and Chair at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, “Ecocritique in
Context: Technology, Democracy and Capitalism as Environment”, presented at ASLE (6/4/1999-
6/6/1999), http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim653.htm // JJ)

Perhaps the early origins of "the environment" as a term, or its historical emergence as
concept/word/idea, might prove suggestive here. This archeological move does not uncover a stable
nominal essence; it simply reilluminates semiotic qualities carried in the expression today that, first,
accompany the term from its earliest origins, and, second, throw light upon its discursive applications. In
this original sense, which is brought into English from Old French, an environment is the result of an
action from, or the state of being produced by a verb: "to environ." And, environing as a verb is, in fact, a
type of military, policing or strategic action. To environ is to encircle, encompass, envelop or enclose. It is
the physical activity of surrounding, circumscribing, or ringing around something. Its use even suggests
stationing guards around, thronging with hostile intent, or standing watch over some person or place. To
environ a site or a subject is to beset, beleaguer or besiege that place or person.¶ An environment, as
either the means of such activity or the product of these actions, now might be read in a more
suggestive manner, especially in light of how most environmental knowledge is produced and consumed.
It can be the encirclement, a circumscription, or the beleaguerment of places and persons in a strategic
disciplinary policing of space. An environmental policy, in turn, is already a disciplining move, aimed at
(re)constructing some expanse of space--a locale, a biome, a planet as biospheric space or some city,
any region, the global economy as technospheric territory--within a discursive envelope of policing
regulation. Within such enclosures, many flavors of environmental expertise can arm environmental
activists, policy-makers or regulators, who stand watch in these surroundings, surveying from their
bureaucratic battlements those zones of encircled space that include or exclude forces, agents, and
ideas.¶ Even if we understand environment in these terms, there are many different ways to track down
the various interrelationships of all living creatures to all of their natural and artificial environments.
Earth, the solar system, this galaxy antedate humanity by billions of years, and nothing that humanity
has done up to this point has altered significantly many basic astrophysical, geological, or meteorological
processes. Chaos theory, of course, says everything can be changed by anything, but right now we do not
have the abilities to make many reliable forecasts. Nonetheless, we could heed the caution signs of
chaotic linkages, and recognize how our industrial/social/cultural metabolisms as collectives of causation
are beginning to leave more enduring traces upon the planet, particularly in the oceans and
atmosphere.¶ First formulated in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel, the term "ecology" pertains to "the science of
the relations of living organisms to the external world, their habitat, customs, energies, parasites, etc."
(cited in Worster, 1979: 192). Allegedly, ecology can be operationalized as "a subversive science"
(Shepard and McKinley, 1969: 9), but many others see it being misused as the subversion of science
(Bramwell, 1994; Lewis, 1992; Ray, 1990; Rubin, 1994). In both forms, however, the scientists acting in
the name of this science rarely examine the totality of all relations between living organisms and the
external world: in part, this is because there is no consensus about where, why, and how the external
world can be redacted from living organisms; and, in part, it is due to a privileging of operational
research programs that assume a biocentric understanding of organisms or a geocentric reading of the
external world that deflects many sciences away from more systemic artificial aspects of the external
world.

Metaphorical readings of the “borderlands” displace the cultural reality of the site in
favor a particular vision that silences the Mexican perspective
Vaquera-Vásquez, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Southwest Studies, ’98 (Santiago, “WANDERING IN
THE BORDERLANDS: MAPPING AN IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF THE BORDER”, Latin American Issues,
Texas A&M - Latin American Issues 14 Article 6, AA).
http://sites.allegheny.edu/latinamericanstudies/latin-american-issues/volume-14/#article-vi)

In contemporary cultural theory, the metaphor of the Borderlands has become a repository in which all
manners of cultural Otherness is contained. The assumption is that "border thinking" posits a
contestatory space for emerging cultures; it shapes the concepts of national and cultural authenticity
and promotes global and transnational processes. The border has become referred to so often, as Trinh
T. Minh-ha notes, that "it already runs the risk of being reduced to yet another harmless catchword
expropriated and popularized among progressive thinkers" (2). And yet, the Borderlands metaphor
resonates even more at the end of the century, when borders are continually crossed and recrossed. In
focusing on geographic borderlands, more specifically, the borderlands between Mexico and the United
States, metaphorical readings often displace the cultural reality of the site in favor of a particular
border vision. In cultural discourse on the US/Mexico Borderlands, the dominant inscriptions are most
often that of the Chicano and that of a global communal space. The region has been variously encoded
as Aztlán--the pre-Columbian mythic past which is the cornerstone of the Chicano movement--and more
recently as "Borderlands," the universal cultural construct representing the encounter of diverse
cultures, genders, social classes, and world-views. As observed by Claire Fox, the Borderlands has come
to replace Aztlán as "the metaphor of choice to designate a communal space" (61). This favoring of a
universal reading of the Borderlands in contemporary criticism tends towards the collapsing of the
distinct geographic differences between border regions and the abrogation of the cultural production
of writers and critics in that region for an authentication of the border "reality" through a small
number of primarily Chicano critics and writers. In this appropriation of the border, the Mexican
perspective is largely silenced; there has been little interest in promoting the vision of the border as
viewed from the northern Mexican border provinces.1 As a result, the image of the borderlands that is
generally preferred is far removed from the multi-faceted reality of the site, a fact which puts into
question the validity of the Borderlands metaphor: To what degree does current discourse on the
Borderlands illuminate the border region, and to what degree does it obscure the very region to which
much of this discourse is addressed? The present work aims to redress this oversight by focusing on the
diverse "imaginative geographies" which arise from the Borderlands. In so doing, the work contributes to
the formulation of a more extensive and complete account of border culture in general, and of the
US/Mexico border in particular.

Domestic welfare drives the desire for boarder control

Torney 2k

John Torpey is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Chair of the International Studies Faculty Board at
the University of California, Irvine, The Invention of the Passport. IG

The process through which states monopolized the legitimate means of movement thus took hundreds
of years to come to fruition. It followed the shift of orientations from the local to the "national" level that
accompanied the development of "national" states out of the panoply of empires and smaller city-states
and principalities that dotted the map of early modern Europe. The process also paralleled the
rationalization and nationalization of poor relief, for communal obligations to provide such relief were
an important source of the desire for controls on movement. Previously in the domain of private and
religious organizations, the administration of poor relief gradually came to be removed from their
purview and lodged in that of states. As European states declined in number, grew in size, and fostered
large-scale markets for wage labor outside the reach of landowners and against the traditional
constraints imposed COMING AND GOING by localities, the provision of poor relief also moved from the
local to the national arena. 9 These processes, in turn, helped to expand "outward" to the "national"
borders the areas in which persons could expect to move freely and without authorization. Eventually,
the principal boundaries that counted were those not of municipalities, but of nation-states. The process
took place unevenly in different places, following the line where modern states replaced non-territorial
forms of political organization 10 and "free" wage labor replaced various forms of servitude. Then, as
people from all levels of society came to find themselves in a more nearly equal position relative to the
state, state controls on movement among local spaces within their domains subsided and were replaced
by restrictions that concerned the outer "national" boundaries of states. Ultimately, the authority to
regulate movement came to be primarily a property of the international system as a whole - that is, of
nation-states acting in concert to enforce their interests in controlling who comes and goes. Where
pronounced state controls on movement operate within a state today, especially when these are to the
detriment of particular "negatively privileged" status groups, we can reliably expect to find an
authoritarian state (or worse). The cases of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, apartheid-era South Africa,
and Communist China (at least before the 1980s) bear witness to this generalization. The creation of the
modern passport system and the use of similar systems in the interior of a variety of countries - the
product of centuries-long labors of slow, painstaking bureaucratic construction - thus signaled the dawn
of a new era in human affairs, in which individual states and the international state system as a whole
successfully monopolized the legitimate authority to permit movement within and across their
jurisdictions. The point here is obviously not that there is no unauthorized (international) migration, but
rather that such movement is specifically "illegal"; that is, we speak of "illegal" (often, indeed, of
"undocumented") migration as a result of states' monopolization of the legitimate means of movement.
What we now think of as "internal" movement - a meaningless and anachronistic notion before the
development of modern states and the state system - has come to mean movement within national or
"nation-states." Historical evidence indicates clearly that, well into the nineteenth century, people
routinely regarded as "foreign" those from the next province every bit as much as those who came from
other "countries."

Theories of multiracial identity rely on heteronormative assumptions

Turner 2014

[Turner, Jessie D. PhD in Chicana and Chicano Studies from UC Santa Barbara, Instructor of women’s and
gender studies at University of Southern Florida. “Reconsidering the Relationship Between New
Mestizaje and New Multiraciality as Mixed-Raced Identity Models”. Journal of Critical Mixed Race
Studies. 2014.]

While conceptions of new mestizaje emphasize Mexican indigeneous and Spanish mixing, they also
move beyond ethnoracial terms to critically and consistently prioritize considerations of gender and
sexuality.53 In fact, these theorists are foundational to not only Chicana feminism, but also to queer
studies. Conversely, mixings within the context of sexuality are not yet adequately attended to or
centrally framed in discourses of new multiracial identity. It is important to mention that there are,
however, a handful of scholars who challenge the heteronormativity implicit in mixedrace
theorization.54 Not surprisingly, the scope of this work emphasizes parallels between biracial and
bisexual experiences and identities specifically, though some work does extend to gay, lesbian, and queer
sexualities more broadly. It can be argued that heterosexuality is normative within mixed race studies
because conceptions of racial mixing and being first- or second-generation mixed race are largely
based in biological conceptions of race and reproduction. The primary battles revolved around
questions of legal heteronormative marriage, families, and racial proscription. This national discourse
was emphasized not only for African Americans, but also for Mexican Americans and other racial groups.
For Mexican Americans, however, there was not the same inevitable sense of permanence.55
Furthermore, though Chicano nationalism did promote in-group procreation, new mestizaje is no longer
delimited in such a way. Even as the focus on biological ethnoracial mixing in multiracial studies is
understandable given the social and legal history of race in the United States, the field can learn from
new mestizaje theorization by prioritizing a more intersectional analysis of mixed-race identity that does
not continue to reproduce predominantly heteronormative, and many times without gendered analysis,
understandings of race and self that singularize possibilities of being.

New Mestizaje theory reentrenches the very problems that it seeks to eliminate: 3
warrants.
Turner 2014

[Turner, Jessie D. PhD in Chicana and Chicano Studies from UC Santa Barbara, Instructor of women’s and
gender studies at University of Southern Florida. “Reconsidering the Relationship Between New
Mestizaje and New Multiraciality as Mixed-Raced Identity Models”. Journal of Critical Mixed Race
Studies. 2014.]
New mestizaje theory is well-known for its discussion of liminality, multiplicity, fluidity, selfintegration,
and self-creation, and multiracial studies has undeniably employed this work in its own development.
For example, several authors cite Anzaldúa in theorizing multiracial identity.40 Such use of her work
demonstrates the fundamental similarities between new mestiza/o and new multiracial day-to-day
experiences of self. Not only can the latter inherit from the former, but the former can also learn from
extensions of the original theory, such as its central applicability to contemporarily mixed people who do
not singularly identify as Chicana/o. While both new mestiza/o and new multiracial identity
constructions have great liberatory motivations and potential, they can also support racial erasure,
essentialism, binaries, and white supremacy. For instance, for all of Anzaldúa’s theorization of identity
fluidity and multiplicity, it has been argued that she preferences a romanticized bygone indigenous
identity that exists at the cost of erasing a present indigenous subjectivity.41 In a similar vein, several
scholars critique and warn of the dangers of factions of the multiracial movement’s inattention to
racism and white supremacy, or even its employment of white supremacist ideologies in order to
escape blackness.42 Furthermore, it has been suggested that multiracial identity discourse, while
aiming to break down racial binaries, actually creates a new binary between multiracial- and
monoracial-identified people.43

Mestizaje identity is antiblack

Lovell Banks 2006

[Lovell Banks, Taunya University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. “Mestizaje and the
Mexican Mestizo Self: No Hay Sangre Negra, so There is no Blackness” Southern California
Interdisciplinary Law Journal Vol 15 No 2. 2006.]

According to English professor Suzanne Bost, the words mestiza and mestizaje are unstable terms
whose definitions varies depending on the context. Bost writes that the invocation of mestizaje by
contemporary scholars “as a universal emblem for new frontiers of Americanness … potentially
undermines universalist identity categories” because the term cannot escape the historical baggage
that accompanied this mixture of races. Carole Boyce Davies, another English professor, is more explicit
about the internal contradictions of these terms. She argues that often mestizo or mestiza is used as a
term of separation to distance individuals from people who identify or are identified “as ‘African,’
‘Afro-‘ or ‘Black.’” Bost is more explicit on this point saying that the embrace by American academics of
mestizaje is suspect because it tends to privilege lighter-skinned people while ignoring “the continued
oppression of darker-skinned peoples as the dominant culture seeks out the familiar (the whiteness)
within the other.”

We are at the borderline – Antibiotic resistance is a looming threat

Painter 4/30, Painter 4/30/14, USA Today, “WHO sounds alarm on widespread 'superbug' infections,”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/30/who-alarm-superbug-infections/8502853/,
NR

Doctors in the United States, including those at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have
used similarly strong words of late about so-called "superbugs" and "nightmare bacteria." They
applauded WHO for sounding the alarm on a problem seen every day in U.S. hospitals and doctors'
offices. "It's scary. It's not over exaggerated," says Barbara Murray, an infectious-disease expert at the
University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of
America. "It's here and it's now. In hospital settings, it's bad and in some community settings, it's bad."
Steve Solomon, who directs a CDC office devoted to the issue, says: "The threat is tremendous. We are
truly threatened with falling off the edge of this cliff into the post-antibiotic era. But I'm also optimistic.
The commitment to address this issue is strong."

Borders are key to solving poverty and providing equality – this form of social
solidarity only exists in national borders
Agnew 2008 [John, Agnew is currently Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University in New
York. Dr. Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and
the Mediterranean World., “Borders on the mind: re-framing border thinking,” Ethics and Global Politics,
pg 5, http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/856/258.pdf]

A second theme in how borders serve political identity is a broadly social¶ democratic emphasis on how
social solidarity within national borders furthers goals¶ such as diminished poverty, increased equality of
opportunity, and given the absence¶ of effective global-level institutions, macroeconomic regulation and
stabilization. To¶ Paul Hirst, for example, as sources of power are increasingly ‘pluralistic’, the state¶
becomes even more important in providing a locus for political solidarity.28 In¶ particular, he writes,
‘Macroeconomic policy continues to be crucial in promoting¶ prosperity, at the international level by
ensuring stability, and at the national and¶ regional levels by balancing co-operation and competition.
Governments are not just¶ municipalities in a global market-place’.¶ 29

Waste good
Borgerson and Rehn 4 “General Economy and Productive Dualisms” (Janet and Alf, PhD in Philosophy
from City University London; Chair of Organization at Åbo Akademi University)//pday

Waste shows us the spaces that neither dualism nor fluidity can capture. Within classical economics,
waste indicates sub-optimization, irrationality, disutility. For Bataille, waste is the human condition of
radical incompleteness and the constituting possibility of death. Bataille’s general economy should not
lead us to a vision of waste as that which is not enough, but rather waste as overflowing excess. In
contrast, gender and organization texts, explicitly or implicitly, suggest that gender can be ‘wasted,’ in
the more traditional sense — hence, a lack or loss of gender, or genderlessness. For example, feminine
energy, as a thing to be managed, often eludes the organization, and consequently appears wasted
(see, for example, Vinnicombe and Colwill, 1995). Such approaches posit dualist gender as energy in
different forms, and thus imagines efficiencies lost if both are not harvested.

Similarly, attempts at raising consciousness have suggested that a more gender-diverse managerial
presence — for example, more women, understood as bearing traits of an essential femininity, in
positions of power — would serve as a panacea for a number of corporate ills, from sloppy accounting
to bad human relations practices. Such thinking is well in line with the representation of organizations
as closed systems that need to be optimized. Fluid thinking regarding gender does something similar.
Gender, as fluid, only allows for specific movements between dualist poles, presenting more fixed
positions at either extreme (a greater or lesser concentration of feminine or masculine traits) as
wasted opportunity. Such strategies strive toward optimization — seen in the way the dualist mindset
operates even in its critique — and render the fluid merely another form of positioning, or
management. If we comprehend waste as a part of general economy, we recognize that what is
missing in such theorizing is the possibility for — in fact, the desirability of — radical waste.

ISIS will infiltrate US borders

Kredo, 14 [Adam, Senior writer at The Washington Free Beacon, The Washington Free Beacon, “U.S.
Confirms ISIL Planning Infiltration of U.S. Southern Border”, 9/10/14, http://freebeacon.com/national-
security/u-s-confirms-isil-planning-infiltration-of-u-s-southern-border/,6/28/15]JRO

Following publication of Francis Taylor’s remarks, a DHS spokesperson contacted the Washington Free
Beacon to clarify his comments about the exact threat ISIL poses to the southern border. “There is no
credible intelligence to suggest that there is an active plot by ISIL to attempt to cross the southern
border,” the DHS spokesperson said. A senior Homeland Security (DHS) official confirmed to Congress on
Wednesday that militants associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) are
planning to enter the United States via the porous southern border. Francis Taylor, under secretary for
intelligence and analysis at DHS, told senators during a hearing that ISIL supporters are known to be
plotting ways to infiltrate the United States through the border. “There have been Twitter, social media
exchanges among ISIL adherents across the globe speaking about that as a possibility,” Taylor told Sen.
John McCain (R., Ariz.) in response to a question about “recent reports on Twitter and Facebook of
messages that would urge infiltration into the U.S. across our southwestern border.” “Certainly any
infiltration across our border would be a threat,” Taylor said, explaining that border security agents are
working to tighten measures that would prevent this from taking place. “I’m satisfied we have the
intelligence and the capability on our border that would prevent that activity,” Taylor said. However,
McCain was dubious, referring to recent videos released by activist James O’Keefe showing him crossing
the border while wearing an Osama bin Laden mask. Asked by McCain why agents did not stop O’Keefe,
Taylor could not provide an answer. “You can’t answer it because they weren’t there to stop him,”
McCain responded. “The fact is there are thousands of people who are coming across our border who
are undetected and not identified, and for you to sit there and tell me that we have the capability or now
have the proper protections of our southwest border, particularly in light of the urgings over Facebook
and Twitter [by ISIL] for people to come across our southwestern border, is a great concern to the
citizens of my state.” Taylor admitted that more must be done to shore up border security in light of
ongoing threats. “The security at the southwestern border is of great concern to the department and I
certainly understand the concerns of the citizens of your state,” he told McCain. “If I gave you the
impression I thought the border security was what it needed to be to protect against all the risks coming
across the state that’s not what I meant to say.” There is little evidence to prove that ISIL militants or
other terror actors would be stopped if they attempt to cross the border, McCain said. “I don’t think
there’s any doubt, I don’t see when you look at ISIS and the growth and influence of ISIS that it would be
logical [to claim they would be stopped], as they’re saying on Facebook and Twitter, to come across our
southwest border because they can get across,” he said. Other U.S. officials have warned ahead of
President Obama’s speech this evening that ISIL is growing in strength and seeking the capability to
attack America directly. “We remain mindful of the possibility that an ISIL-sympathizer—perhaps
motivated by online propaganda—could conduct a limited, self-directed attack here at home with no
warning,” Matthew Olsen, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said in a recent speech.
“We have seen ISIL use a range of media to tout its military capabilities, executions of captured soldiers,
and consecutive battlefield victories,” Olsen said. “More recently, the group’s supporters have sustained
this momentum on social media by encouraging attacks in the U.S. and against U.S. interests in
retaliation for our airstrikes. ISIL has used this propaganda campaign to draw foreign fighters to the
group, including many from Western countries.”

Domestic is within a country

YourDictionary 15 YourDictionary definition and usage example. Copyright © 2015 by LoveToKnow Corp

http://www.yourdictionary.com/domestic

domestic [dō mes′tik, də-]

adjective

Domestic is defined as something related to the home or family, something occurring within a country,
an animal that has been tamed, or a person who is fond of the tasks of running a home.

Family relations are an example of domestic relations.

Terrorism that occurs within your own country is referred to as domestic terrorism.

A dog that is kept as a house pet is an example of a domestic animal.

A woman who likes to cook and clean and bake is an example of someone who is domestic.

Reasons to prefer –
Limits—allowing the ending of public surveillance explodes the limits of the topic by
allowing affirmatives that deal with programs that known surveillance like detention
facilities
Ground—key to neg ground like terrorism and politics disads
T is a voter-

Limits- They justify doing many things outside of surveillance which expands the research too much. This
kills clash and productive debate because the negative can’t effectively prepare for those many
affirmatives.

2nc Covert Extensions

Must be covert

IJ 98

(Info Justice, OPERATIONS, SURVEILLANCE AND STAKEOUT PART 1,

http://www.infojustice.com/samples/12%20Operations,%20Surveillance%20And%20Stakeout%20Part
%201.html)
Surveillance is defined as the systematic observation of persons, places, or things to obtain
information. Surveillance is carried out without the knowledge of those under surveillance and is
concerned primarily with people.

Even the broadest definition doesn’t include information provided with consent

Pounder 9 – PhD, Director, Amberhawk Training and Amberhawk Associates

(Chris, “NINE PRINCIPLES FOR ASSESSING WHETHER PRIVACY IS PROTECTED IN A SURVEILLANCE

SOCIETY,” Scholar)

This paper uses the term "surveillance" in its widest sense to include data sharing and the revealing of
identity information in the absence of consent of the individual concerned. It argues that the current
debate about the nature of a "surveillance society" needs a new structural framework that allows the
benefits of surveillance and the risks to individual privacy to be properly balanced.

2nc Most Common

Surveillance is most often covert

Glancy 12 – Professor of Law, Santa Clara University Law School. B.A. Wellesley College, J.D. Harvard Law
School

Dorothy, SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE: PRIVACY IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES, Santa Clara Law Review, 2012,
Lexis

Surveillance is a relatively modern idea. Even the word, "surveillance," is fairly new to the English
language. It was borrowed from the French by the British at the turn of the nineteenth century to refer
to looking over an area, usually from a high place, for strategic information about a battlefield or
prospective confrontation. n92 Early in the twentieth century, surveillance usually suggested use of
technology to enhance human abilities to see over wide distances to collect comprehensive information
about an adversary. n93 Since then, [*1208] the word, "surveillance," has been used in a wide variety
of careful-watching contexts from medical surveillance of diseases and immune responses, to physical
stakeouts of crime suspects, to mass-scale electronic and network surveillance for gathering
intelligence or for seeking evidence of anomalous or criminal behavior. Surveillance is also a
psychological technique used to affect human behavior through pervasive monitoring of activities and
areas to discourage people from violating rules or laws. Although surveillance most often means covert
collection of information, it can also refer to overt watching aimed at modifying the behavior of those
watched. An example of overt surveillance is red-light cameras. These devices are often prominently
placed as ever-present watchers at intersections so that drivers are deterred from entering intersections
while the stoplight is red. n94 One purpose of overt surveillance is to affect the behavior of those being
watched, to assure that individual behavior conforms to societal norms. If an autonomous vehicle user
were informed that his or her vehicle continuously reports its speed to law enforcement authorities, that
user would be more likely to direct the vehicle to conform to the speed limit, rather than exercise
personal autonomy in deciding not to conform. n95 Similarly, autonomous vehicles could overtly
monitor the behavior of vehicle users so that instances of user activities such as smoking or drinking
alcohol are sensed and recorded.

Politics Links

Obama will fight for border control- Recent meeting proves

Wolfgang 14 (Ben Wolfgang: Covers the White House for The Washington Times, “Obama: I’ve fought
against activists who believe there should be open borders”, The Washington Times, 12/9/2014,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/9/obama-ive-fought-against-activists-open-borders/,
Accessed: 7/17/15, RRR)

Critics say President Obama went too far with his executive action granting amnesty to more than 4
million illegal immigrants — but behind the scenes, the president said he’s pushed back against those
who believe the U.S. should have an open border with Mexico.¶ At a town-hall meeting in Nashville on
Tuesday, Mr. Obama defended the idea of a strong U.S-Mexico border and said he’s had heated
debates with activists who want that border to disappear.¶ “There have been times, honestly, I’ve had
arguments with immigration rights activists who say, effectively, ‘There shouldn’t be any rules. These are
good people. Why should we have any enforcement like this?’ My response is, ‘In the eyes of God,
everybody is equal … I don’t make any claims my child is superior to anybody else’s child. But I’m the
president of the United States, and nation states have borders,’” the president said. “If we had no
system of enforcing our borders and our laws, I promise you, everybody would try to come here.Ӧ Mr.
Obama added that it would be fundamentally unfair to erase the nation’s southern border.¶
“Sometimes it’s just an accident that one person lives in a country that has a border with the U.S. and
another person — in Somalia, it’s a lot harder to get here,” he said.

Obama will fight the plan – Currently increasing funding for border surveillance

Knauth 14 (Dietrich Knauth, “Obama Seeks $39M In Drone Funding For Border Surveillance”, Law360,
7/9/2014, http://www.law360.com/articles/555799/obama-seeks-39m-in-drone-funding-for-border-
surveillance, Accessed: 7/17/15, RRR)

Law360, New York (July 9, 2014, 5:08 PM ET) -- The Obama administration on Tuesday requested $39
million for aerial surveillance, including unmanned aircraft operations, as part of an effort to stop an
influx of refugee children from crossing the U.S.'s southern border.

The administration has called on Congress to provide $3.7 billion in emergency funding, spread out
among the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Health and Human Services and State, to
combat what it called a “humanitarian crisis.”

The White House said that children, both accompanied and on their own, are fleeing Central America in
alarming numbers and that as a result, it needs more border surveillance and security, as well as a
surge in enforcement personnel, from immigration judges to asylum officers.

The DHS would get a significant portion of the president's request, with $1.1 billion going to Immigration
and Customs Enforcement and $433 million going to Customs and Border Protection. The CBP's share
includes $39.4 million to increase air surveillance capabilities that would support 16,526 additional flight
hours for border surveillance and 16 additional crews for unmanned aerial systems to improve detection
and interdiction of illegal activity, according to a White House fact sheet.

Schumer supports systematic border surveillance and militarization

On The Issues 14 (On The Issues, "Charles Schumer on Immigration",

www.ontheissues.org/International/Charles_Schumer_Immigration.htm, 12/14/2014, sr)

What changes to our current immigration policy do you support? A: I support further securing our
borders; prohibiting hiring of undocumented immigrants by requiring job applicants to present a
secure Social Security card; creating jobs by attracting the world's best and brightest to America, and
keeping them here; requiring undocumented immigrants to register with the government, pay taxes,
and earn legal [status or face deportation.] Establishes specified benchmarks which must be met before
the guest worker and legalization programs may be initiated: operational control of the border with
Mexico; Border Patrol increases; border barriers, including vehicle barriers, fencing, radar, and aerial
vehicles; detention capacity for illegal aliens apprehended crossing the US-Mexico border; workplace
enforcement, including an electronic employment verification system; and Z-visa alien processing.
Within 18 months, achieves operational control over U.S. land and maritime borders, including:
systematic border surveillance through more effective use of personnel and technology; and physical
infrastructure enhancements to prevent unlawful border entry Defines "operational control" as the
prevention of all unlawful U.S. entries, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, narcotics,
and other contraband.

Terror DA

1NC UQ + Link

Border Patrol is stretched thin now – it must be expanded, not curtailed, in order to prevent the threat
of Islamic terrorism – and specifically ISIS poses a threat to the US through Mexico

Chiaramonte 14 (Perry Chiaramonte is a reporter for FoxNews.com, “Border crisis could provide cover to
ISIS operatives, say experts” Fox News, July 7th, 2014, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/07/isis-
could-take-advantage-weakened-us-border-for-terrorist-attack/) //RL

The border crisis could be the perfect opportunity for Islamic terrorists looking to sneak sleeper cells
into the U.S., say experts. ¶ Patrols on the Mexican border have been stretched to the breaking point
in recent weeks by a tidal wave of immigrants from Central America. Among the estimated 60,000
people who have streamed across is a small percentage of what agents term "Special Interest Aliens,"
or SIAs. Terrorism experts say airport security is effective at keeping dangerous jihadists out, but the
border breakdown could be America's Achilles heel - providing an entry point for groups like ISIS.¶
“It's impossible to say that ISIS will soon be active on our border, but some groups will be,” said retired
Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a security and defense analyst and Fox News contributor. “The one thing
that all of the squabbling jihadi groups in the Middle East and North Africa have in common is that
they want to strike the U.S., both for what they view as vengeance and because, in terrorist circles,
striking the U.S. is how you confirm that you're a major player.”¶ “If you pay the cartels enough, they
will sneak you across or assist in getting anything you want across the border."¶ - Shawn Moran, vice
president and spokesperson for the Border Patrol Council¶ It’s long been known that a percentage,
albeit small, of illegals caught sneaking across from Mexico hail from terror-sponsoring states. And
some of the Islamic terror groups have ties to Latin American drug cartels and gangs, including MS-13.
The combination of terrorists' desire to infiltrate the border and gangs' know-how could prove
dangerous to American security, say experts.¶ “It’s obviously a concern,” Shawn Moran, vice president
and spokesperson for the Border Patrol Council, told FoxNews.com. “If you pay the cartels enough, they
will sneak you across or assist in getting anything you want across the border.¶ “It’s definitely a
nightmare scenario if they use the borders, north or south, to cross and conduct a terrorist attack,”
Moran added.¶ Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the record wave of illegal immigrants includes record numbers
of SIAs.¶ “We have record high numbers of other than Mexicans being apprehended at the border,”
Perry told Fox News. “These are people that are coming from states like Syria that have substantial
connections back to terrorist regimes and terrorist operations. So we're seeing record, historic high
numbers of these individuals being apprehended.”

2NC UQ

ISIS plans a nuclear strike on the US through Mexico in the next 10 months - and specifically such a WMD
terrorist attack would have drastic effects on the US economy

Slavo 5/26 (Marc, journalist, http://www.infowars.com/report-terrorist-nuke-attack-may-be-carried-out-

inside-the-united-states-in-next-12-months/) //RL

With nuclear material having been stolen on multiple occasions in Mexico, and close terrorist ties to
intelligence organizations in the middle east, it appears that if an organization was committed to
acquiring nuclear material they could do so. Finding the scientists to build such a weapon, whether
dirty or actual, wouldn’t be all that difficult. Moreover, smuggling such a device into the U.S. is
possible, as evidenced by a 2011 report which confirms that at least one nuclear weapon of mass
destruction was seized as it entered the United States.¶ According to a report from Zero Hedge, such a
plan may be in the works over the next twelve months, as the Islamic State claims it may be actively
pursuing a nuclear weapon intended for detonation on American soil.¶ Three weeks after the first
supposed attack by Islamic State supporters in the US, in which two ISIS “soldiers” wounded a security
guard before they were killed in Garland, Texas, the time has come to raise the fear stakes.¶ In an
article posted in the terrorist group’s English-language online magazine Dabiq (which as can be see
below seems to have gotten its design cues straight from Madison Avenue and is just missing glossy
pages filled with ‘scratch and sniff’ perfume ads ) ISIS claimed that it has enoughmoney to buy a
nuclear weapon from Pakistan and “carry out an attack inside the United States next year.”¶ In the
article, the ISIS columnist said the weapon could be smuggled into the United States via its southern
border with Mexico.¶ Curiously, the author of the piece is John Cantlie, a British photojournalist who
was abducted by ISIS in 2012 and has been held hostage by the organization ever since; he has appeared
in several videos since his kidnapping and criticized Western powers.¶ As the Telegraph notes, “Mr
Cantlie, whose fellow journalist hostages have all either been released or beheaded, has appeared in the
group’s propaganda videos and written previous pieces. In his latest work, presumed to be written under
pressure but in his hall-mark style combining hyperbole, metaphor and sarcasm, he says that President
Obama’s policies for containing Isil have demonstrably failed and increased the risk to America.”¶ Cantlie
describes the following “hypothetical” scenario in Dabiq :¶ Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto
the table. The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilayah in Pakistan
to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region. ¶
The weapon is then transported overland until it makes it to Libya, where the muj?hid?n move it
south to Nigeria. Drug shipments from Columbia bound for Europe pass through West Africa, so
moving other types of contraband from East to West is just as possible.¶ The nuke and accompanying
mujahadin arrive on the shorelines of South America and are transported through the porous borders
of Central America before arriving in Mexico and up to the border with the United States.¶ From there
it’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel and hey presto, they’re mingling with another 12
million “illegal” aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car.¶ Cantlie continues:¶
Perhaps such a scenario is far-fetched but it’s the sum of all fears for Western intelligence agencies and
it’s infinitely more possible today than it was just one year ago. And if not a nuke, what about a few
thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive?¶ That’s easy enough to make. The Islamic State make
no secret of the fact they have every intention of attacking America on its home soil and they’re not
going to mince about with two muj?hid?n taking down a dozen casualties if it originates from the
Caliphate. They’ll be looking to do something big, something that would make any past operation look
like a squirrel shoot, and the more groups that pledge allegiance the more possible it becomes to pull off
something truly epic.¶ Remember, all of this has happened in less than a year. How more dangerous
will be the lines of communication and supply a year on from today? If the West completely failed to
spot the emergence of the Islamic State and then the allies who so quickly pledged allegiance to it
from around the world, what else of massive significance are they going to miss next?¶ One can, of
course, debate just how much the West “failed to spot the emergence of ISIS” considering it was not
only the CIA which initially trainedthe terrorist organization in Jordan in 2012, but according to recently
declassified Pentagon documents, the US was well aware the outcome its attempt to overthrow Syria’s
Assad would have on the region, in the process “creating” ISIS, aka al Qaeda 2.0.¶ In other words, even
the “hypothetical operation” involving a nuclear attack on US soil would implicitly have the blessing of
the US government. Which, considering the way the stock market surges every time the US economy
deteriorates further on its way towards recession, probably means that a mushroom cloud appearing
in some major US metropolitan area is just what the E-mini algos would need to send the S&P500 limit
up.¶ Source: Zero Hedge¶ We have definitive confirmation via declassified documents that the Islamic
State is a creation of the U.S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency, and their influence
across the middle east was predicted well in advance of anyone ever having heard the name ISIS or ISIL.
We also know that false flag operations, such as the German Reichstag fire of 1933, are often used by
governments (or rogue elements within a government) to implement changes to existing political and
social paradigms.¶ It could be that this nuclear threat is a psychological operation designed to elicit fear
in the populace so that they go along willingly with legislative actions like the Patriot Act which further
erode individual rights in the name of protecting us from terrorism, or to justify large scale military
operations on U.S. soil, including but not limited to this summer’s Jade Helm exercises.¶ Or, certainly
within the realm of possibility, is the notion that at some point a rogue terror element, the origination
and loyalty of which makes absolutely no difference in the end, is planning on detonating a nuclear
device on U.S. soil.¶ Perhaps this is one reason for why the elite are rapidly investing in secret
hideaways. Perhaps they know it’s time to start exiting large metropolitan areas ahead of whatever is
coming. Perhaps it all starts with a bang and a mushroom cloud, soon followed by panic, riots, looting,
and of course, the unprecedented domestic military response that would be necessitated by a
widespread breakdown of civil order.¶ We can only speculate, but the fact is that another large-scale
attack on U.S. soil would usher in a new era in the Land of the Free.¶ Admittedly, we have delved deep
into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory, but we leave the reader the following quote to consider within
the context of this current threat:¶ The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary
change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl
Harbor. ¶ Project for a New American Century, 2000 (PDF Link)¶ Signed by Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, et. al.¶ At the very least the American people are being psychologically conditioned to
accept their own enslavement. At worst, an event such as this would be used to plunge the world into
the next great war.

2NC Link

Terrorists use lax border security to get to the US from Mexico – ISIS is just 8 miles from the border

Chasmar 4/14 (Jessica, continuous news writer for The Washington Times, covering topics on culture
and politics, “Islamic State operating in Mexico just 8 miles from U.S. border: report”, The Washington
Times, April 14th, 2015, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/14/islamic-state-operating-in-
mexico-just-8-miles-fro/) //RL

The Islamic State terror group is operating a camp in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, just
eight miles from the U.S. border, Judicial Watch reported Tuesday.¶ Citing sources that include a
“Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector,” the conservative watchdog
group reported that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is organizing only a few miles from El
Paso, Texas, in the Anapra neighborhood of Juárez and in Puerto Palomas.¶ Judicial Watch sources said
that “coyotes” working for the notorious Juarez Cartel are smuggling Islamic State terrorists across the
U.S. border between the New Mexico cities of Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, as well as “through the
porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas.”¶ “These specific areas were targeted for
exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative
safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was already
ongoing,” Judicial Watch reported.¶ Mexican intelligence sources say the Islamic State intends to
exploit the railways and airport facilities in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, New Mexico.¶ “The sources
also say that ISIS has ‘spotters’ located in the East Potrillo Mountains of New Mexico (largely managed
by the Bureau of Land Management) to assist with terrorist border crossing operations,” Judicial
Watch reported. “ISIS is conducting reconnaissance of regional universities; the White Sands Missile
Range; government facilities in Alamogordo, NM; Ft. Bliss; and the electrical power facilities near
Anapra and Chaparral, NM.”

T – Domestic

1NC

First, Interpretation: Domestic surveillance is surveillance within national borders

Avilez et al 14 Marie Avilez et al, Carnegie Mellon University December 10, 2014 Ethics, History, and
Public Policy Senior Capstone Project Security and Social Dimensions of City Surveillance Policy

http://www.cmu.edu/hss/ehpp/documents/2014-City-Surveillance-Policy.pdf

Domestic surveillance – collection of information about the activities of private

individuals/organizations by a government entity within national borders; this can be carried out by
federal, state and/or local officials

Violation- the border

BHC No Date

United States- Mexico Border Health Commission, a binational health commission in July 2000 with the
signing of an agreement by the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States and the
Secretary of Health of México. On December 21, 2004, the Commission was designated as a Public
International Organization by Executive Order of the President, “Border Relation”,
http://www.borderhealth.org/border_region.php//SRawal

The United States-México border region is defined as the area of land being 100 kilometers (62.5
miles) north and south of the international boundary (La Paz Agreement). It stretches approximately
2000 miles from the southern tip of Texas to California. The population for this expanse of land is
estimated to be approximately 12 million inhabitants. This population is expected to double by the year
2025. The combined population of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California is 61,637,146 (2000
Census). The estimated combined population of the six Mexican border states in 1990 was 12,246,991.
Two of the ten fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States - Laredo and McAllen - are
located on the Texas-México border. Additionally, there are 154 Native American tribes totaling 881,070
Native Americans living in the 4 U.S. border states. In the actual border region, there are approximately
25 Native American Nations.

Second, Domestic surveillance is surveillance of US persons

Small 8 MATTHEW L. SMALL. United States Air Force Academy 2008 Center for the Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Presidential Fellows Program paper "His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic
Surveillance, Civil Liberties and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis"
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf

Before one can make any sort of assessment of domestic surveillance policies, it is first necessary to
narrow the scope of the term “domestic surveillance.” Domestic surveillance is a subset of intelligence
gathering. Intelligence, as it is to be understood in this context, is “information that meets the stated or
understood needs of policy makers and has been collected, processed and narrowed to meet those
needs” (Lowenthal 2006, 2). In essence, domestic surveillance is a means to an end; the end being
intelligence. The intelligence community best understands domestic surveillance as the acquisition of
nonpublic information concerning United States persons (Executive Order 12333 (3.4) (i)). With this
definition domestic surveillance remains an overly broad concept. This paper’s analysis, in terms of
President Bush’s policies, focuses on electronic surveillance; specifically, wiretapping phone lines and
obtaining caller information from phone companies. Section f of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 defines
electronic surveillance as:

Violation- Undocumented people are not US persons

Jackson et al 9 Brian A. Jackson, Darcy Noricks, and Benjamin W. Goldsmith, RAND Corporation

The Challenge of Domestic Intelligence in a Free Society RAND 2009 BRIAN A. JACKSON, EDITOR

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG804.pdf

3 Federal law and executive order define a U.S. person as “a citizen of the United States, an alien
lawfully admitted for permanent residence, an unincorporated association with a substantial number
of members who are citizens of the U.S. or are aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a
corporation that is incorporated in the U.S.” (NSA, undated). Although this definition would therefore
allow information to be gathered on U.S. persons located abroad, our objective was to examine the
creation of a domestic intelligence organization that would focus on—and whose activities would center
around—individuals and organizations located inside the United States . Though such an agency might
receive information about U.S. persons that was collected abroad by other intelligence agencies, it would
not collect that information itself.

T is a voter-

They explode limits—

First, Allowing the surveillance of non-US persons means they open the debate to immigration. This is a
whole new literature base which is large enough to be a topic in itself.

Second, They open the topic outside of our borders which means they justify any aff which cooperates
with other countries and transnational agreements the decrease surveillance—this massively expands
the topic and makes for unproductive debate

OFFCASE – VIRTUAL WALL (KS)

Politics Links

Obama will fight for border control- Recent meeting proves

Wolfgang 14 (Ben Wolfgang: Covers the White House for The Washington Times, “Obama: I’ve fought
against activists who believe there should be open borders”, The Washington Times, 12/9/2014,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/9/obama-ive-fought-against-activists-open-borders/,
Accessed: 7/17/15, RRR)

Critics say President Obama went too far with his executive action granting amnesty to more than 4
million illegal immigrants — but behind the scenes, the president said he’s pushed back against those
who believe the U.S. should have an open border with Mexico.¶ At a town-hall meeting in Nashville on
Tuesday, Mr. Obama defended the idea of a strong U.S-Mexico border and said he’s had heated
debates with activists who want that border to disappear.¶ “There have been times, honestly, I’ve had
arguments with immigration rights activists who say, effectively, ‘There shouldn’t be any rules. These are
good people. Why should we have any enforcement like this?’ My response is, ‘In the eyes of God,
everybody is equal … I don’t make any claims my child is superior to anybody else’s child. But I’m the
president of the United States, and nation states have borders,’” the president said. “If we had no
system of enforcing our borders and our laws, I promise you, everybody would try to come here.Ӧ Mr.
Obama added that it would be fundamentally unfair to erase the nation’s southern border.¶
“Sometimes it’s just an accident that one person lives in a country that has a border with the U.S. and
another person — in Somalia, it’s a lot harder to get here,” he said.

Obama will fight the plan – Currently increasing funding for border surveillance

Knauth 14 (Dietrich Knauth, “Obama Seeks $39M In Drone Funding For Border Surveillance”, Law360,
7/9/2014, http://www.law360.com/articles/555799/obama-seeks-39m-in-drone-funding-for-border-
surveillance, Accessed: 7/17/15, RRR)

Law360, New York (July 9, 2014, 5:08 PM ET) -- The Obama administration on Tuesday requested $39
million for aerial surveillance, including unmanned aircraft operations, as part of an effort to stop an
influx of refugee children from crossing the U.S.'s southern border.

The administration has called on Congress to provide $3.7 billion in emergency funding, spread out
among the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Health and Human Services and State, to
combat what it called a “humanitarian crisis.”

The White House said that children, both accompanied and on their own, are fleeing Central America in
alarming numbers and that as a result, it needs more border surveillance and security, as well as a
surge in enforcement personnel, from immigration judges to asylum officers.

The DHS would get a significant portion of the president's request, with $1.1 billion going to Immigration
and Customs Enforcement and $433 million going to Customs and Border Protection. The CBP's share
includes $39.4 million to increase air surveillance capabilities that would support 16,526 additional flight
hours for border surveillance and 16 additional crews for unmanned aerial systems to improve detection
and interdiction of illegal activity, according to a White House fact sheet.

Schumer supports systematic border surveillance and militarization

On The Issues 14 (On The Issues, "Charles Schumer on Immigration",

www.ontheissues.org/International/Charles_Schumer_Immigration.htm, 12/14/2014, sr)

What changes to our current immigration policy do you support? A: I support further securing our
borders; prohibiting hiring of undocumented immigrants by requiring job applicants to present a
secure Social Security card; creating jobs by attracting the world's best and brightest to America, and
keeping them here; requiring undocumented immigrants to register with the government, pay taxes,
and earn legal [status or face deportation.] Establishes specified benchmarks which must be met before
the guest worker and legalization programs may be initiated: operational control of the border with
Mexico; Border Patrol increases; border barriers, including vehicle barriers, fencing, radar, and aerial
vehicles; detention capacity for illegal aliens apprehended crossing the US-Mexico border; workplace
enforcement, including an electronic employment verification system; and Z-visa alien processing.
Within 18 months, achieves operational control over U.S. land and maritime borders, including:
systematic border surveillance through more effective use of personnel and technology; and physical
infrastructure enhancements to prevent unlawful border entry Defines "operational control" as the
prevention of all unlawful U.S. entries, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, narcotics,
and other contraband.

Terror DA

1NC UQ + Link

Border Patrol is stretched thin now – it must be expanded, not curtailed, in order to prevent the threat
of Islamic terrorism – and specifically ISIS poses a threat to the US through Mexico

Chiaramonte 14 (Perry Chiaramonte is a reporter for FoxNews.com, “Border crisis could provide cover to
ISIS operatives, say experts” Fox News, July 7th, 2014, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/07/isis-
could-take-advantage-weakened-us-border-for-terrorist-attack/) //RL

The border crisis could be the perfect opportunity for Islamic terrorists looking to sneak sleeper cells
into the U.S., say experts. ¶ Patrols on the Mexican border have been stretched to the breaking point
in recent weeks by a tidal wave of immigrants from Central America. Among the estimated 60,000
people who have streamed across is a small percentage of what agents term "Special Interest Aliens,"
or SIAs. Terrorism experts say airport security is effective at keeping dangerous jihadists out, but the
border breakdown could be America's Achilles heel - providing an entry point for groups like ISIS.¶
“It's impossible to say that ISIS will soon be active on our border, but some groups will be,” said retired
Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a security and defense analyst and Fox News contributor. “The one thing
that all of the squabbling jihadi groups in the Middle East and North Africa have in common is that
they want to strike the U.S., both for what they view as vengeance and because, in terrorist circles,
striking the U.S. is how you confirm that you're a major player.”¶ “If you pay the cartels enough, they
will sneak you across or assist in getting anything you want across the border."¶ - Shawn Moran, vice
president and spokesperson for the Border Patrol Council¶ It’s long been known that a percentage,
albeit small, of illegals caught sneaking across from Mexico hail from terror-sponsoring states. And
some of the Islamic terror groups have ties to Latin American drug cartels and gangs, including MS-13.
The combination of terrorists' desire to infiltrate the border and gangs' know-how could prove
dangerous to American security, say experts.¶ “It’s obviously a concern,” Shawn Moran, vice president
and spokesperson for the Border Patrol Council, told FoxNews.com. “If you pay the cartels enough, they
will sneak you across or assist in getting anything you want across the border.¶ “It’s definitely a
nightmare scenario if they use the borders, north or south, to cross and conduct a terrorist attack,”
Moran added.¶ Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the record wave of illegal immigrants includes record numbers
of SIAs.¶ “We have record high numbers of other than Mexicans being apprehended at the border,”
Perry told Fox News. “These are people that are coming from states like Syria that have substantial
connections back to terrorist regimes and terrorist operations. So we're seeing record, historic high
numbers of these individuals being apprehended.”

2NC UQ
ISIS plans a nuclear strike on the US through Mexico in the next 10 months - and specifically such a WMD
terrorist attack would have drastic effects on the US economy

Slavo 5/26 (Marc, journalist, http://www.infowars.com/report-terrorist-nuke-attack-may-be-carried-out-

inside-the-united-states-in-next-12-months/) //RL

With nuclear material having been stolen on multiple occasions in Mexico, and close terrorist ties to
intelligence organizations in the middle east, it appears that if an organization was committed to
acquiring nuclear material they could do so. Finding the scientists to build such a weapon, whether
dirty or actual, wouldn’t be all that difficult. Moreover, smuggling such a device into the U.S. is
possible, as evidenced by a 2011 report which confirms that at least one nuclear weapon of mass
destruction was seized as it entered the United States.¶ According to a report from Zero Hedge, such a
plan may be in the works over the next twelve months, as the Islamic State claims it may be actively
pursuing a nuclear weapon intended for detonation on American soil.¶ Three weeks after the first
supposed attack by Islamic State supporters in the US, in which two ISIS “soldiers” wounded a security
guard before they were killed in Garland, Texas, the time has come to raise the fear stakes.¶ In an
article posted in the terrorist group’s English-language online magazine Dabiq (which as can be see
below seems to have gotten its design cues straight from Madison Avenue and is just missing glossy
pages filled with ‘scratch and sniff’ perfume ads ) ISIS claimed that it has enoughmoney to buy a
nuclear weapon from Pakistan and “carry out an attack inside the United States next year.”¶ In the
article, the ISIS columnist said the weapon could be smuggled into the United States via its southern
border with Mexico.¶ Curiously, the author of the piece is John Cantlie, a British photojournalist who
was abducted by ISIS in 2012 and has been held hostage by the organization ever since; he has appeared
in several videos since his kidnapping and criticized Western powers.¶ As the Telegraph notes, “Mr
Cantlie, whose fellow journalist hostages have all either been released or beheaded, has appeared in the
group’s propaganda videos and written previous pieces. In his latest work, presumed to be written under
pressure but in his hall-mark style combining hyperbole, metaphor and sarcasm, he says that President
Obama’s policies for containing Isil have demonstrably failed and increased the risk to America.”¶ Cantlie
describes the following “hypothetical” scenario in Dabiq :¶ Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto
the table. The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilayah in Pakistan
to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region. ¶
The weapon is then transported overland until it makes it to Libya, where the muj?hid?n move it
south to Nigeria. Drug shipments from Columbia bound for Europe pass through West Africa, so
moving other types of contraband from East to West is just as possible.¶ The nuke and accompanying
mujahadin arrive on the shorelines of South America and are transported through the porous borders
of Central America before arriving in Mexico and up to the border with the United States.¶ From there
it’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel and hey presto, they’re mingling with another 12
million “illegal” aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car.¶ Cantlie continues:¶
Perhaps such a scenario is far-fetched but it’s the sum of all fears for Western intelligence agencies and
it’s infinitely more possible today than it was just one year ago. And if not a nuke, what about a few
thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive?¶ That’s easy enough to make. The Islamic State make
no secret of the fact they have every intention of attacking America on its home soil and they’re not
going to mince about with two muj?hid?n taking down a dozen casualties if it originates from the
Caliphate. They’ll be looking to do something big, something that would make any past operation look
like a squirrel shoot, and the more groups that pledge allegiance the more possible it becomes to pull off
something truly epic.¶ Remember, all of this has happened in less than a year. How more dangerous
will be the lines of communication and supply a year on from today? If the West completely failed to
spot the emergence of the Islamic State and then the allies who so quickly pledged allegiance to it
from around the world, what else of massive significance are they going to miss next?¶ One can, of
course, debate just how much the West “failed to spot the emergence of ISIS” considering it was not
only the CIA which initially trainedthe terrorist organization in Jordan in 2012, but according to recently
declassified Pentagon documents, the US was well aware the outcome its attempt to overthrow Syria’s
Assad would have on the region, in the process “creating” ISIS, aka al Qaeda 2.0.¶ In other words, even
the “hypothetical operation” involving a nuclear attack on US soil would implicitly have the blessing of
the US government. Which, considering the way the stock market surges every time the US economy
deteriorates further on its way towards recession, probably means that a mushroom cloud appearing
in some major US metropolitan area is just what the E-mini algos would need to send the S&P500 limit
up.¶ Source: Zero Hedge¶ We have definitive confirmation via declassified documents that the Islamic
State is a creation of the U.S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency, and their influence
across the middle east was predicted well in advance of anyone ever having heard the name ISIS or ISIL.
We also know that false flag operations, such as the German Reichstag fire of 1933, are often used by
governments (or rogue elements within a government) to implement changes to existing political and
social paradigms.¶ It could be that this nuclear threat is a psychological operation designed to elicit fear
in the populace so that they go along willingly with legislative actions like the Patriot Act which further
erode individual rights in the name of protecting us from terrorism, or to justify large scale military
operations on U.S. soil, including but not limited to this summer’s Jade Helm exercises.¶ Or, certainly
within the realm of possibility, is the notion that at some point a rogue terror element, the origination
and loyalty of which makes absolutely no difference in the end, is planning on detonating a nuclear
device on U.S. soil.¶ Perhaps this is one reason for why the elite are rapidly investing in secret
hideaways. Perhaps they know it’s time to start exiting large metropolitan areas ahead of whatever is
coming. Perhaps it all starts with a bang and a mushroom cloud, soon followed by panic, riots, looting,
and of course, the unprecedented domestic military response that would be necessitated by a
widespread breakdown of civil order.¶ We can only speculate, but the fact is that another large-scale
attack on U.S. soil would usher in a new era in the Land of the Free.¶ Admittedly, we have delved deep
into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory, but we leave the reader the following quote to consider within
the context of this current threat:¶ The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary
change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl
Harbor. ¶ Project for a New American Century, 2000 (PDF Link)¶ Signed by Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, et. al.¶ At the very least the American people are being psychologically conditioned to
accept their own enslavement. At worst, an event such as this would be used to plunge the world into
the next great war.

2NC Link

Terrorists use lax border security to get to the US from Mexico – ISIS is just 8 miles from the border
Chasmar 4/14 (Jessica, continuous news writer for The Washington Times, covering topics on culture
and politics, “Islamic State operating in Mexico just 8 miles from U.S. border: report”, The Washington
Times, April 14th, 2015, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/14/islamic-state-operating-in-
mexico-just-8-miles-fro/) //RL

The Islamic State terror group is operating a camp in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, just
eight miles from the U.S. border, Judicial Watch reported Tuesday.¶ Citing sources that include a
“Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector,” the conservative watchdog
group reported that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is organizing only a few miles from El
Paso, Texas, in the Anapra neighborhood of Juárez and in Puerto Palomas.¶ Judicial Watch sources said
that “coyotes” working for the notorious Juarez Cartel are smuggling Islamic State terrorists across the
U.S. border between the New Mexico cities of Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, as well as “through the
porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas.”¶ “These specific areas were targeted for
exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative
safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was already
ongoing,” Judicial Watch reported.¶ Mexican intelligence sources say the Islamic State intends to
exploit the railways and airport facilities in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, New Mexico.¶ “The sources
also say that ISIS has ‘spotters’ located in the East Potrillo Mountains of New Mexico (largely managed
by the Bureau of Land Management) to assist with terrorist border crossing operations,” Judicial
Watch reported. “ISIS is conducting reconnaissance of regional universities; the White Sands Missile
Range; government facilities in Alamogordo, NM; Ft. Bliss; and the electrical power facilities near
Anapra and Chaparral, NM.”

T – Domestic

1NC

First, Interpretation: Domestic surveillance is surveillance within national borders

Avilez et al 14 Marie Avilez et al, Carnegie Mellon University December 10, 2014 Ethics, History, and
Public Policy Senior Capstone Project Security and Social Dimensions of City Surveillance Policy

http://www.cmu.edu/hss/ehpp/documents/2014-City-Surveillance-Policy.pdf

Domestic surveillance – collection of information about the activities of private

individuals/organizations by a government entity within national borders; this can be carried out by
federal, state and/or local officials

Violation- the border

BHC No Date

United States- Mexico Border Health Commission, a binational health commission in July 2000 with the
signing of an agreement by the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States and the
Secretary of Health of México. On December 21, 2004, the Commission was designated as a Public
International Organization by Executive Order of the President, “Border Relation”,
http://www.borderhealth.org/border_region.php//SRawal
The United States-México border region is defined as the area of land being 100 kilometers (62.5
miles) north and south of the international boundary (La Paz Agreement). It stretches approximately
2000 miles from the southern tip of Texas to California. The population for this expanse of land is
estimated to be approximately 12 million inhabitants. This population is expected to double by the year
2025. The combined population of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California is 61,637,146 (2000
Census). The estimated combined population of the six Mexican border states in 1990 was 12,246,991.
Two of the ten fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States - Laredo and McAllen - are
located on the Texas-México border. Additionally, there are 154 Native American tribes totaling 881,070
Native Americans living in the 4 U.S. border states. In the actual border region, there are approximately
25 Native American Nations.

Second, Domestic surveillance is surveillance of US persons

Small 8 MATTHEW L. SMALL. United States Air Force Academy 2008 Center for the Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Presidential Fellows Program paper "His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic
Surveillance, Civil Liberties and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis"
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf

Before one can make any sort of assessment of domestic surveillance policies, it is first necessary to
narrow the scope of the term “domestic surveillance.” Domestic surveillance is a subset of intelligence
gathering. Intelligence, as it is to be understood in this context, is “information that meets the stated or
understood needs of policy makers and has been collected, processed and narrowed to meet those
needs” (Lowenthal 2006, 2). In essence, domestic surveillance is a means to an end; the end being
intelligence. The intelligence community best understands domestic surveillance as the acquisition of
nonpublic information concerning United States persons (Executive Order 12333 (3.4) (i)). With this
definition domestic surveillance remains an overly broad concept. This paper’s analysis, in terms of
President Bush’s policies, focuses on electronic surveillance; specifically, wiretapping phone lines and
obtaining caller information from phone companies. Section f of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 defines
electronic surveillance as:

Violation- Undocumented people are not US persons

Jackson et al 9 Brian A. Jackson, Darcy Noricks, and Benjamin W. Goldsmith, RAND Corporation

The Challenge of Domestic Intelligence in a Free Society RAND 2009 BRIAN A. JACKSON, EDITOR

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG804.pdf

3 Federal law and executive order define a U.S. person as “a citizen of the United States, an alien
lawfully admitted for permanent residence, an unincorporated association with a substantial number
of members who are citizens of the U.S. or are aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a
corporation that is incorporated in the U.S.” (NSA, undated). Although this definition would therefore
allow information to be gathered on U.S. persons located abroad, our objective was to examine the
creation of a domestic intelligence organization that would focus on—and whose activities would center
around—individuals and organizations located inside the United States . Though such an agency might
receive information about U.S. persons that was collected abroad by other intelligence agencies, it would
not collect that information itself.

T is a voter-

They explode limits—

First, Allowing the surveillance of non-US persons means they open the debate to immigration. This is a
whole new literature base which is large enough to be a topic in itself.

Second, They open the topic outside of our borders which means they justify any aff which cooperates
with other countries and transnational agreements the decrease surveillance—this massively expands
the topic and makes for unproductive debate

SFO K

1NC

Speaking to the suffering of other bodies denies them humanity

Alcoff 89

Linda Alcoff, ”The Problem of Speaking for Others”, last date cited 1989,
http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html//SRawal

The recognition that there is a problem in speaking for others has followed from the widespread
acceptance of two claims. First, there has been a growing awareness that where one speaks from
affects both the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to
transcend her location. In other words, a speaker's location (which I take here to refer to her social
location or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker's claims, and can
serve either to authorize or dis-authorize one's speech. The creation of Women's Studies and African
American Studies departments were founded on this very belief: that both the study of and the
advocacy for the oppressed must come to be done principally by the oppressed themselves, and that
we must finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location between speakers and
those spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said. The unspoken premise
here is simply that a speaker's location is epistemically salient. I shall explore this issue further in the
next section. The second claim holds that not only is location epistemically salient, but certain privileged
locations are discursively dangerous. In particular, the practice of privileged persons speaking for or on
behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reenforcing the
oppression of the group spoken for. This was part of the argument made against Anne Cameron's
speaking for Native women: Cameron's intentions were never in question, but the effects of her writing
were argued to be harmful to the needs of Native authors because it is Cameron rather than they who
will be listened to and whose books will be bought by readers interested in Native women. Persons
from dominant groups who speak for others are often treated as authenticating presences that confer
legitimacy and credibility on the demands of subjugated speakers; such speaking for others does
nothing to disrupt the discursive hierarchies that operate in public spaces. For this reason, the work of
privileged authors who speak on behalf of the oppressed is becoming increasingly criticized by
members of those oppressed groups themselves.

AT: we’re speaking ABOUT them not for

Speaking ABOUT others always results in speaking FOR them and constructing their subject positions
—they are intertwined

Alcoff 89

Linda Alcoff, ”The Problem of Speaking for Others”, last date cited 1989,
http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html//SRawal

In the examples used above, there may appear to be a conflation between the issue of speaking for
others and the issue of speaking about others. This conflation was intentional on my part, because it is
difficult to distinguish speaking about from speaking for in all cases. There is an ambiguity in the two
phrases: when one is speaking for another one may be describing their situation and thus also speaking
about them. In fact, it may be impossible to speak for another without simultaneously conferring
information about them. Similarly, when one is speaking about another, or simply trying to describe
their situation or some aspect of it, one may also be speaking in place of them, i.e. speaking for them.
One may be speaking about another as an advocate or a messenger if the person cannot speak for
herself. Thus I would maintain that if the practice of speaking for others is problematic, so too must be
the practice of speaking about others.8 This is partly the case because of what has been called the
"crisis of representation." For in both the practice of speaking for as well as the practice of speaking
about others, I am engaging in the act of representing the other's needs, goals, situation, and in fact,
who they are, based on my own situated interpretation. In post-structuralist terms, I am participating
in the construction of their subject-positions rather than simply discovering their true selves. Once we
pose it as a problem of representation, we see that, not only are speaking for and speaking about
analytically close, so too are the practices of speaking for others and speaking for myself. For, in speaking
for myself, I am also representing my self in a certain way, as occupying a specific subject-position,
having certain characteristics and not others, and so on. In speaking for myself, I (momentarily) create
my self---just as much as when I speak for others I create them as a public, discursive self, a self which
is more unified than any subjective experience can support. And this public self will in most cases have
an effect on the self experienced as interiority.

Tuck & Yang

All of the following could potentially work

Recognition

The AFF’s politics of recognition ties reinscribes oppression by tying subjecthood to suffering

Tuck and Yang 14 [Eve, & K.W., 2014, “R-Words: Refusing Research.” In n D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.)
Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223-248).
Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage Publications. Pp. 228]
The costs of a politics of recognition that is rooted in naming pain have been¶ critiqued by recent
decolonizing and feminist scholars (Hartman, 1997, 2007;¶ Tuck, 2009). In Scenes of Subjection, Sadiya
Hartman (1997) discusses how recognizing¶ the personhood of slaves enhanced the power of the
Southern slaveowning¶ class. Supplicating narratives of former slaves were deployed effectively¶ by
abolitionists, mainly White, well-to-do, Northern women, to generate portraits¶ of abuse that ergo
recognize slaves as human (Hartman, 2007). In response, new¶ laws afforded minimal standards of
existence, “making personhood coterminous¶ with injury” (Hartman, 1997, p. 93), while
simultaneously authorizing necessary¶ violence to suppress slave agency. The slave emerges as a legal
person only when¶ seen as criminal or “a violated body in need of limited forms of protection”¶ (p.
55). Recognition “humanizes” the slave, but is predicated upon her or his¶ abjection. You are in pain,
therefore you are. “[T]he recognition of humanity¶ require[s] the event of excessive violence, cruelty
beyond the limits of the¶ socially tolerable, in order to acknowledge and protect the slave’s person”
(p. 55).¶ Furthermore, Hartman describes how slave-as-victim as human accordingly¶ establishes
slave-as-agent as criminal. Applying Hartman’s analysis, we note how¶ the agency of Margaret Garner
or Nat Turner can only be viewed as outsider¶ violence that humane society must reject while
simultaneously upholding the¶ legitimated violence of the state to punish such outsider violence.
Hartman asks,¶ “Is it possible that such recognition effectively forecloses agency as the object of¶
punishment . . . Or is this limited conferral of humanity merely a reinscription of¶ subjugation and
pained existence?” (p. 55).

The affirmative attempts to historicize the action of the subaltern by rendering it into a recognizable
people. This project of academic integration obliterates the subaltern.

Spivak 5 [Gayatri, Prof. Comparative Literature and Society @ Columbia, 2005, “Scattered speculations
on the subaltern and the popular,” Postcolonial Studies Vol 8 No 4, p. 476]

Subaltern is to popular as gender is to sex, class to poverty, state to nation.¶ One word inclines to
reasonableness, the other to cathexis / occupation¶ through desire. ‘Popular’ divides between
descriptive (as in presidential or TV¶ ratings), evaluative (not ‘high’, both a positive and a negative
value,¶ dependent on your ‘politics’), and contains ‘people’, a word with immense¶ range, from ‘just
anyone’, to the ‘masses’ (both a positive and a negative¶ political value, depending on your politics). The
reasonable and rarefied¶ definition of the word subaltern that interests me is: to be removed from all¶
lines of social mobility. The disciplinary interest of literary criticism is in the singular and the¶
unverifiable. In ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ it was the peculiar and singular¶ subalternity of the young
Bhubaneswari Bhaduri that seemed of interest.1¶ Her story was my mother Sivani Chakravorty’s
testimony. The question of¶ veridicality / of the evidentiary status of testimony, sometimes taken for¶
granted in unexamined oral history / has to be thought of here.¶ Gilles Deleuze’s notion of singularity is
both complex and simple. In its¶ simplest form, the singular is not the particular because it is an
unrepeatable¶ difference that is, on the other hand, repeated / not as an example of a¶ universal but as
an instance of a collection of repetitions. Singularity is life as¶ pure immanence, what will be, of this life,
as life. As the name Bhubaneswari¶ Bhaduri became a teaching text, it took on this imperative / repeat
as¶ singular /, as does literature.2 If the thinking of subalternity is taken in the general sense, its lack of
access¶ to mobility may be a version of singularity. Subalternity cannot be generalised¶ according to
hegemonic logic. That is what makes it subaltern. Yet it is a¶ category and therefore repeatable. Since
the general sense is always mired in¶ narrow senses, any differentiations between subalternity and the
popular¶ must thus concern itself with singular cases and thus contravene the¶ philosophical purity of
Deleuze’s thought.3 The starting point of a singular itinerary of the word ‘subaltern’ can be¶ Antonio
Gramsci’s ‘Southern Question’ rather than his more general¶ discussions of the subaltern. I believe that
was the basic starting point of¶ the South Asian Subaltern Studies collective / Gramsci, a Communist,¶
thinking beyond capital logic in terms of unequal development. Subsequently, Partha Chatterjee
developed a nuanced reading of both Gramsci and¶ Foucault.4 It is from ‘Some Aspects of the Southern
Question’, then, that we can move¶ into Ranajit Guha’s ‘On Some Aspects of the Historiography of
Colonial¶ India’.5 ‘Subaltern’ in the early Guha was the name of a space of difference.¶ And the word
was indistinguishable from ‘people’. Although Guha seems to¶ be saying that the words ‘people’ and
‘subaltern’ are interchangeable, I think¶ this is not a substantive point for him. At least in their early
work, the¶ members of the Subaltern Studies collective would not quarrel with the¶ notion that the
word ‘subaltern’ and the idea of the ‘popular’ do not inhabit a¶ continuous space. Yet their failure to
make this distinction has led to a certain¶ relaxing of the word ‘subaltern’ that has undermined its
usefulness. The slide¶ into the ‘popular’ may be part of this. Subalternity is a position without
identity. It is somewhat like the strict¶ understanding of class. Class is not a cultural origin, it is a sense
of economic¶ collectivity, of social relations of formation as the basis of action. Gender is¶ not lived
sexual difference. It is a sense of the collective social negotiation of¶ sexual differences as the basis of
action. ‘Race’ is not originary; it assumes¶ racism. Subalternity is where social lines of mobility, being
elsewhere, do not¶ permit the formation of a recognisable basis of action. The early subalternists¶
looked at examples where subalternity was brought to crisis, as a basis for¶ militancy was formed. Even
then colonial and nationalist historiography did¶ not recognise it as such. Could the subaltern speak,
then? Could it have its¶ insurgency recognised by the official historians? Even when, strictly speaking,¶
they had burst the outlines of subalternity? This last is important. Neither the¶ groups celebrated by the
early subalternists nor Bhubaneswari Bhaduri, in so¶ far as they had burst their bonds into resistance,
were in the position of¶ subalternity. No one can say ‘I am a subaltern’ in whatever language. And¶
subaltern studies will not reduce itself to the historical recounting of the ¶ details of the practice of
disenfranchised groups and remain a study of the ¶ subaltern.

Suffering

Research is used to commodify pain narratives and damage representations to reproduce oppression
with the justification of the academy

Tuck and Yang 14 [Eve, & K.W., 2014, “R-Words: Refusing Research.” In n D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.)
Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities
https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/evetuck/files/2013/12/Tuck-and-Yang-R-Words_Refusing-Research.pdf]

Urban communities, and other disenfranchised communities. Damage-centered researchers may

operate, even benevolently, within a theory of change in which harm must be recorded or proven in
order to convince an outside adjudicator that reparations are deserved. These reparations presumably
take the form of additional resources, settlements, affirmative actions, and other material, political, and
sovereign adjustments. Eve has described this theory of change as both colonial and flawed, because it
relies upon Western notions of power as scarce and concentrated, and because it requires
disenfranchised communities to posi-tion themselves as both singularly defective and powerless to
make change (2010). Finally, Eve has observed that “won” reparations rarely become reality, and that in
many cases, communities are left with a narrative that tells them that they are broken.Similarly, at the
center of the analysis in this chapter is a concern with the fixation social science research has exhibited
in eliciting pain stories from com-munities that are not White, not wealthy, and not straight. Academe’s
demon-strated fascination with telling and retelling narratives of pain is troubling, both for its
voyeurism and for its consumptive implacability. Imagining “itself to be a voice, and in some
disciplinary iterations, the voice of the colonised” (Simpson, 2007, p. 67, emphasis in the original) is not
just a rare historical occurrence in anthropology and related fields. We observe that much of the work
of the academy is to reproduce stories of oppression in its own voice. At first, this may read as an
intolerant condemnation of the academy, one that refuses to forgive past blunders and see how things
have changed in recent decades. However, it is our view that while many individual scholars have cho-
sen to pursue other lines of inquiry than the pain narratives typical of their disciplines, novice
researchers emerge from doctoral programs eager to launch pain-based inquiry projects because they
believe that such approaches embody what it means to do social science. The collection of pain
narratives and the theories of change that champion the value of such narratives are so prevalent in the
social sciences that one might surmise that they are indeed what the academy is about. In her
examination of the symbolic violence of the academy, bell hooks (1990) portrays the core message from
the academy to those on the margins as thus: No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you
better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I
want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a
way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself anew. I am still author, authority.
I am still colonizer the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk. (p. 343) Hooks’s
words resonate with our observation of how much of social science research is concerned with providing
recognition to the presumed voiceless, a recognition that is enamored with knowing through pain.
Further, this passage describes the ways in which the researcher’s voice is constituted by, legitimated by,
animated by the voices on the margins. The researcher-self is made anew by telling back the story of the
marginalized/subaltern subject. Hooks works to untangle the almost imperceptible differences between
forces that silence and forces that seemingly liberate by inviting those on the margins to speak, to tell
their stories. Yet the forces that invite those on the margins to speak also say, “Do not speak in a voice of
resistance. Only speak from that space in the margin that is a sign of deprivation, a wound, an unfulfilled
longing. Only speak your pain” (hooks, 1990, p. 343).

Research is used to commodify pain narratives- a refusal to enagage in research is necessary

Tuck and Yang 14 [Eve, & K.W., 2014, “R-Words: Refusing Research.” In n D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.)
Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities
https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/evetuck/files/2013/12/Tuck-and-Yang-R-Words_Refusing-Research.pdf]

Research is a dirty word among many Native communities (Tuhiwai Smith,1999), and arguably, also
among ghettoized (Kelley, 1997), Orientalized(Said, 1978), and other communities of overstudied
Others. The ethicalstandards of the academic industrial complex are a recent development, and likeso
many post–civil rights reforms, do not always do enough to ensure that socialscience research is deeply
ethical, meaningful, or useful for the individual or com-munity being researched. Social science often
works to collect stories of pain andhumiliation in the lives of those being researched for
commodification. However,these same stories of pain and humiliation are part of the collective
wisdom thatoften informs the writings of researchers who attempt to position their intellectualwork
as decolonization. Indeed, to refute the crime, we may need to name it. Howdo we learn from and
respect the wisdom and desires in the stories that we (over)hear, while refusing to portray/betray
them to the spectacle of the settler colonialgaze? How do we develop an ethics for research that
differentiates between power—which deserves a denuding, indeed petrifying scrutiny—and people?
Atthe same time, as fraught as research is in its complicity with power, it is one ofthe last places for
legitimated inquiry. It is at least still a space that proclaims tocare about curiosity. In this essay, we
theorize refusal not just as a “no,” but as atype of investigation into “what you need to know and what I
refuse to write in”(Simpson, 2007, p. 72). Therefore, we present a refusal to do research, or a
refusalwithin research, as a way of thinking about humanizing researchers. We have organized this
chapter into four portions. In the first three sections,we lay out three axioms of social science research.
Following the work of EveKosofsky Sedgwick (1990), we use the exposition of these axioms to
articulateotherwise implicit, methodological, definitional, self-evident groundings (p. 12)of our
arguments and observations of refusal. The axioms are: (I) The subalterncan speak, but is only invited to
speak her/our pain; (II) there are some forms of knowledge that the academy doesn’t deserve; and (III)
research may not be theintervention that is needed. We realize that these axioms may not appear self-
evident to everyone, yet asserting them as apparent allows us to proceed towardthe often unquestioned
limits of research. Indeed, “in dealing with an open-secret structure, it’s only by being shameless about
risking the obvious that wehappen into the vicinity of the transformative” (Sedgwick, 1990, p. 22). In
thefourth section of the chapter, we theorize refusal in earnest, exploring ideas thatare still forming.Our
thinking and writing in this essay is informed by our readings of postco-lonial literatures and critical
literatures on settler colonialism. We locate much ofour analysis inside/in relation to the discourse of
settler colonialism, the particu-lar shape of colonial domination in the United States and elsewhere,
includingCanada, New Zealand, and Australia. Settler colonialism can be differentiatedfrom what one
might call exogenous colonialism in that the colonizers arrive at a place (“discovering” it) and make it a
permanent home (claiming it). The perma-nence of settler colonialism makes it a structure, not just an
event (Wolfe, 1999).The settler colonial nation-state is dependent on destroying and erasingIndigenous
inhabitants in order to clear them from valuable land. The settlercolonial structure also requires the
enslavement and labor of bodies that have been stolen from their homelands and transported in order
to labor the land stolenfrom Indigenous people. Settler colonialism refers to a triad relationship,
betweenthe White settler (who is valued for his leadership and innovative mind), the dis-appeared
Indigenous peoples (whose land is valued, so they and their claims to itmust be extinguished), and the
chattel slaves (whose bodies are valuable butownable, abusable, and murderable). We believe that this
triad is the basis of theformation of Whiteness in settler colonial nation-states, and that the interplay
oferasure, bodies, land, and violence is characteristic of the permanence of settlercolonial
structures.Under coloniality, Descartes’ formulation, cognito ergo sum (“I think, thereforeI am”)
transforms into ego conquiro (“I conquer, therefore I am”; Dussel, 1985;Maldonado-Torres, 2007;
Ndlvou-Gatsheni, 2011). Nelson Maldonado-Torres(2009) expounds on this relationship of the
conqueror’s sense-of-self to hisknowledge-of-others (“I know her, therefore I am me”). Knowledge of
self/Others became the philosophical justification for the acquisition of bodies and territo-ries, and
the rule over them. Thus the right to conquer is intimately connected tothe right to know (“I know,
therefore I conquer, therefore I am”). Maldonado-Torres (2009) explains that for Levi Strauss, the
self/Other knowledge paradigmis the methodological rule for the birth of ethnology as a science (pp. 3–
4). Settler colonial knowledge is premised on frontiers; conquest, then, is an exerciseof the felt
entitlement to transgress these limits. Refusal, and stances of refusal inresearch, are attempts to place
limits on conquest and the colonization of knowl-edge by marking what is off limits, what is not up for
grabs or discussion, what issacred, and what can’t be known. To speak of limits in such a way makes
some liberal thinkers uncomfortable, andmay, to them, seem dangerous. When access to information,
to knowledge, to theintellectual commons is controlled by the people who generate that
information[participants in a research study], it can be seen as a violation of shared standards of
justice and truth. (Simpson, 2007, p. 74) By forwarding a framework of refusal within (and to) research
in this chapter, weare not simply prescribing limits to social science research. We are making
visibleinvisibilized limits, containments, and seizures that research already stakes out.

Overcoming

The attempt to overcome the conditions of modernity, the founding original violences which constitutes
our current epistemologies is the logic of settler colonialism. It operates on a fetishization of
woundedness.

Tuck and Yang 14 [Eve, & K.W., 2014, “R-Words: Refusing Research.” In n D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.)
Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223-248).
Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage Publications. Pp. 228-9]

As numerous scholars have denoted, many social science disciplines emerged¶ from the need to provide
justifications for social hierarchies undergirded by¶ White supremacy and manifest destiny (see also
Gould, 1981; Selden, 1999;¶ Tuck & Guishard, forthcoming). Wolfe (1999) has explored how the
contoured¶ logic of settler colonialism (p. 5) can be mapped onto the microactivities of¶ anthropology;
Guthrie (1976) traces the roots of psychology to the need to “scientifically”¶ prove the supremacy of the
White mind. The origins of many social¶ science disciplines in maintaining logics of domination, while
sometimes¶ addressed in graduate schools, are regularly thought to be just errant or inauspicious¶
beginnings—much like the ways in which the genocide of Indigenous¶ peoples that afforded the
founding of the Unites States has been reduced to an¶ unfortunate byproduct of the birthing of a new
and great nation. Such amnesia¶ is required in settler colonial societies, argues Lorenzo Veracini,
because settler colonialism is “characterized by a persistent drive to supersede the conditions of¶ its
operation,” (2011, p. 3); that is, to make itself invisible, natural, without origin¶ (and without end), and
inevitable. Social science disciplines have inherited¶ the persistent drive to supersede the conditions
of their operations from settler¶ colonial logic, and it is this drive, a kind of unquestioning push
forward, and not¶ the origins of the disciplines that we attend to now. We are struck by the pervasive
silence on questions regarding the contemporary¶ rationale(s) for social science research. Though a
variety of ethical and¶ procedural protocols require researchers to compose statements regarding the¶
objectives or purposes of a particular project, such protocols do not prompt¶ reflection upon the
underlying beliefs about knowledge and change that too often¶ go unexplored or unacknowledged.
The rationale for conducting social science¶ research that collects pain narratives seems to be self-
evident for many scholars,¶ but when looked at more closely, the rationales may be unconsidered, and
somewhat¶ flimsy. Like a maritime archaeological site, such rationales might be best¶ examined in situ,
for fear of deterioration if extracted. Why do researchers collect¶ pain narratives? Why does the
academy want them? An initial and partial answer is because settler colonial ideology believes that,¶ in
fiction author Sherril Jaffe’s words, “scars make your body more interesting,”¶ (1996, p. 58). Jaffe’s work
of short, short of fiction bearing that sentiment as title¶ captures the exquisite crossing of wounds and
curiosity and pleasure. Settler¶ colonial ideology, constituted by its conscription of others, holds the
wounded¶ body as more engrossing than the body that is not wounded (though the person¶ with a
wounded body does not politically or materially benefit for being more¶ engrossing). In settler
colonial logic, pain is more compelling than privilege,¶ scars more enthralling than the body unmarked
by experience. In settler colonial¶ ideology, pain is evidence of authenticity, of the verifiability of a
lived life.¶ Academe, formed and informed by settler colonial ideology, has developed the¶ same
palate for pain. Emerging and established social science researchers set out¶ to document the
problems faced by communities, and often in doing so, recirculate¶ common tropes of dysfunction,
abuse, and neglect.

MISC

AFF CARD

JAMES JAY CARAFANO • 7/13/14 (“Immigrants ignore U.S. immigration laws because Obama won't
enforce them”, June 13th, 2014, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/immigrants-ignore-u.s.-
immigration-laws-because-obama-wont-enforce-them/article/2550787, Accessed 7/16/15, EHS MSK)

Today, the flood of unaccompanied minors illegally crossing the border makes Napolitano's declaration
look foolish. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services reported it had custody of about
2,000 minors who had entered illegally, without a parent. This year more than 52,000 unaccompanied
children have been apprehended at the South Texas border alone. Why the dramatic upsurge? It comes
following the president's 2012 declaration that his administration would defer, virtually automatically,
deportation of minors unlawfully present in the U.S. Over the last year, “coyotes” have been using that
promise as a marketing tool for their people smuggling business. Coupling this announcement with
disastrous policies towards El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala -- the three countries from which most
of these children come -- Obama has done much to undermine all the enforcement measures that had
stemmed the tide of illegal migration. Now Washington has stepped in with three proposals to solve the
problem. First, the president has asked for $3.8 billion in “emergency” spending. That's a laughable
request intended mostly as a sound bite for the White House to claim it is doing something. Little of
the money would go toward making the border more secure. A lot would go to hiring immigration
judges -- a two-year process that hardly qualifies as emergency spending. If there are legitimate
additional needs Congress should just address them in the annual appropriations bill. Second, some
want to cut foreign aid to punish El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. But, Congress has to be careful
not to gut programs that help those nations battle the gangs and cartels that have made life there so
difficult. Indeed, by withholding security assistance funds over the last few years, Washington has
inadvertently fueled the problems many Central Americans seek to flee. Third, there is a move to
amend current law to allow for expedited removal of minors from countries that are noncontiguous
with the United States. If done right, that policy change would actually help over the long-term. Even
under expedited removal, U.S. officials must fully consider a child’s safety in their decision-making. After
all, once the U.S. takes custody of a minor, it’s responsible for that child. Today's border crisis offers an
important lesson: When an administration ignores the law or only pretends to enforce it, no one
pretends to obey it. The consequences are self-evident.

AFF CARD

PEÑA NIETO 2015 /ENRIQUE, The President of Mexico, January 06 2015, “Why the U.S.-Mexico
Relationship Matters”, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/us-mexico-relationship-
enrique-pea-nieto-113980.html#.Va-yhni4lao/ Franzy

To ensure the prosperity of our border we have worked together to improve security and facilitate
trade. Every minute, nearly a million dollars worth of products cross our land border. Additionally, our
countries have begun several infrastructure projects to make the border region a catalyst for growth
and innovation. These projects include the San Diego-Tijuana airport pedestrian bridge, the railway
crossing at Matamoros-Brownsville, and six new inspection booths at the Nogales port of entry. We
have also reduced average waiting times at the San Ysidro-Chaparral crossing on the California-Baja
California border from 3.5 hours to half-an-hour.

Our commitment to education has allowed us to take advantage of the synergies built through FOBESII
and between our initiatives “Proyecta 100,000” and “100,000 Strong in the Americas.” Last year, we
launched the webpage Mobilitas, a platform to help students find educational opportunities in both
countries. Furthermore, 23 cooperation agreements have been signed between Mexican and American
states and universities. Altogether, we were able to reach our 2014 goal: 27,000 Mexican students are
attending almost 200 universities across the U.S.

The United States and Mexico have recognized that the challenges and opportunities we face on
immigration should be addressed from a broad regional perspective and based upon the principle of
shared responsibility. Consequently, we are committed to working with our neighbors in Central
America to foster development and prosperity in that region.

Over 34 million people of Mexican origin live in the U.S., 22.9 million of whom were born here. Mexican-
Americans are socially and economically active members of their communities, and they maintain a
strong binational identity. These communities are pillars of the relationship between our countries and
will help us build a more prosperous shared future.

My government applauds President Obama’s recently announced Immigration Accountability

Executive Action, which acknowledges the positive economic and social impact of Mexican immigrants
to their communities in the U.S. Furthermore, these measures will allow immigrants to increase their
contributions to American society and live without fear of being separated from their families. My
administration will continue to work with the U.S. government by providing services and consular
assistance in order to improve the well-being of the Mexican community in this country. In order to
raise living standards in Mexico—which will discourage undocumented immigration—my government
has embarked upon a transformational path. We have sought to enhance my country’s
competitiveness, strengthen the rights of the Mexican people and consolidate our democracy.

Questions of epistemology come before policymaking and directly determine its

success.
IIDA 06. (Akira IIDA, Professor, College of Law, Nihon University. February 2006. Cognitive Issues in Policy
Making. https://www.mof.go.jp/pri/research/discussion_paper/ron133e.pdf. ) MMG

In any policy making exercise, whether it is about matters of economic, social or political problems,
both domestic and international, such as diplomatic relations or national defense, there are various
cognitive issues that affect the design and implementation of the policy. Without correct cognition of
the actuality and history regarding the problems in question, or without correct cognition of the
problems that might arise in the process of the policy implementation, the policy making exercise is
bound to fail. Yet, in the history of economics, sociology or the study of the diplomacy or of national
defense, philosophical inquiry about “cognitive issues in policy making” has been very poor. More
specifically, on one hand, epistemologists have hesitated to go into this kind of inquiry, since policy
making always embraces questions of values or other subjective judgments, and hence, objectivity is
not assured. On the other hand, the attention of the economist, sociologist, or analysts on diplomacy
and national defense has focused on the analysis of relationships among the economic, social,
diplomatic or defense factors, while neglecting the cognitive issues in policy making itself. Policy makers
should have far better knowledge in this area, but they have paid scarce attention to it, despite their
policy failures, caused by their failures to recognize the factors that really mattered in the case in
question.

Borders are key to social solidarity that solves poverty, equality, and are key to
macroeconomic regulation
Agnew 8 (John, Agnew is currently Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University in New York. Dr.
Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and the
Mediterranean World., “Borders on the mind: re-framing border thinking,” Ethics and Global Politics, pg
5, http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/856/258.pdf)

A second theme in how borders serve political identity is a broadly social democratic emphasis on how
social solidarity within national borders furthers goals such as diminished poverty, increased equality of
opportunity, and given the absence of effective global-level institutions, macroeconomic regulation and
stabilization. To Paul Hirst, for example, as sources of power are increasingly ‘pluralistic’, the state
becomes even more important in providing a locus for political solidarity.28 In particular, he writes,
‘Macroeconomic policy continues to be crucial in promoting prosperity, at the international level by
ensuring stability, and at the national and regional levels by balancing co-operation and competition.
Governments are not just municipalities in a global market-place’
The biopolitics of borders justifies the management of life and death, pushing
immigrants to extreme situations and insurmountable danger
Ajana ‘05 (Btihaj, Lecturer in Culture, Digital Humanities & Creative Industries Education Lead (Digital
Humanities, Surveillance, and Biopolitics),
http://www.sociology.org/content/2005/tier1/ajana_biopolitics.pdf) Franzy

The biopolitics of borders is precisely the management of that waiting-to-live, the management of that
non-life (the waiting-to-live and the non-life of those who are forcibly placed in detention centres), and
at times, it is the management of death. The death of thousand of refugees and ‘clandestine’ migrants
drowned in the sea (for instance, in the Strait of Gibraltar which is argued to be becoming the world’s
largest mass grave), asphyxiated in trucks (as was the fate of 58 Chinese immigrants who died in 2000
inside an airtight truck at the port of Dover) , crushed under trains (the case of the Channel Tunnel) and
killed in deserts (in the US-Mexican border for example). It is the management of ‘bodies that do not
matter’. It is the management of the bodies of those to whom the status of the ‘homo sacer’
(Agamben, 1998: 8) is attributed. It is the management of those whose death has fallen into the abyss of
insignificance and whose killing is not sacrificial (except to the few). On the other hand, the biopolitics of
borders is also the management of ‘life’; the life of those who are capable of performing ‘responsible
self-government’ (Rose, 1999: 259) and self-surveillance i.e. those who can demonstrate their
‘legitimacy’ through ‘worthy’ computer-readable passports/ID cards that provide the ontological basis
for the exercising and fixing of identity and citizenship at the border. The juxtaposition of death and life
at the borders is by no means an ad hoc occurrence but an affirmation of the inadequate immigration
policies and the ‘immanentist’ (Nancy, 1991: 3) politics of absolute enclosure. From this emerges the
issue of ‘sorting’ that may override the term ‘racism’ as long as it is not designated to a specific race or
insofar as it is ‘racism without race’ as Balibar prefers to put it. Racism for Foucault (2003 [1976]: 255)
(and here racism has a figurative function just as the metaphors of leprosy and plague do) is that which
creates fragmentation within the biological continuum and caesuras within species-bodies so that
biopolitical sorting and (sub)divisions could take place between those who are deemed to be ‘superior’
and those who are made to be perceived as the ‘inferior’ type all with the aim to preserve the ‘well-
being’, ‘safety’, ‘security’ and ‘purity’ of the ‘healthy’ (powerful) population (‘virtues’ which are
undoubtedly contributing to the naturalisation and taken-forgrantedness of institutional racism, and the
inscription of modes of exclusionary differentiations in many subtle ways so that the need of
accountability is made redundant.) Embedded within this biopolitical overdetermination is a murderous
enterprise. Murderous not insofar as it involves extermination (although this might still be the case) but
inasmuch as it exerts a biopower that exposes ‘someone to death, increasing the risk of death for
some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on’ (Foucault 2003 [1976]:
256), and inasmuch as it is ‘based on a certain occluded but inevitable and thus constitutive violence’
(Zylinska, 2004: 530); a symbolic violence (manifested, for instance, in the act of ‘naming’ as Butler (in
Zylinska, 2004) and Derrida argue ‘asylum seekers’, ‘detainees’, ‘deportees’, ‘illegal immigrants’, etc) as
well as a material one (for example, placing ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘illegal immigrants’ in detention
centres), attesting to that epistemic impulse to resuscitate the leftover of late modernity and the residual
of disciplinary powers that seek to eliminate and ostracise the unwanted-other through the insidious
refashioning of the ‘final solution’ for the asylum and immigration ‘question’. Such an image has been
captured by Braidotti (1994: 20): Once, landing at Paris International Airport, I saw all of these in
between areas occupied by immigrants from various parts of the former French empire; they had
arrived, but were not allowed entry, so they camped in these luxurious transit zones, waiting. The dead,
panoptical heart of the new European Community will scrutinize them and not allow them in easily: it is
crowded at the margins and non-belonging can be hell. The biopolitics of borders stands as the
quintessential domain for this kind of sorting, this kind of racism pervading Western socio-political
imaginary and permeating the rhetoric of national and territorial sovereignty despite its monolithic
use of euphemism. It is precisely this task of sorting and this act of fragmenting that contemporary
modes of border security and surveillance are designed making ‘the management of misery and
misfortune … a potentially profitable activity’ (Rose, 1999: 260) and evaporating the political into a
perpetual state of technicism (Coward, 1999: 18) where ‘control’ and ‘security’ are resting upon vast
investments in new information and communications technologies in order to filter access and minimise,
if not eradicate, the infiltration and ‘riskiness’ of the ‘unwanted’. For instance, in chapter six of the White
Paper, ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven’ (2002), the UK government outlines a host of techniques and
strategies aimed at controlling borders and tightening security including the use of Gamma X-ray
scanners, heartbeat sensors, and millimetric wave imaging to detect humans smuggled in vehicles. Other
surveillance techniques involve the use of biometrics which consists of an ‘enrolment phase’ (European
Commission, 2005: 46) where physical attributes such as fingerprints, DNA patterns, retina, iris, face,
voice, etc are used to collect, process, and store biometric samples onto a database for subsequent
usage during the ‘recognition phase’ in which these data are matched against the real-time data input in
order to verify identity. Authorities have been keen on integrating biometric identifiers into ID cards and
passports as a means of strengthening security, enhancing modes of identification and facilitating the
exchange of data between different countries. Further application of biometrics in information sharing
can be seen in the EU-wide database EURODAC (Koslowski, 2003: 11), used to store the fingerprints of
asylum applicants in order to prevent multiple applications in several member states or what is referred
to as the so-called ‘asylum shopping’. Added to that, the employment of a broad array of private actors
(employers, banks, hospitals, educational institutions, marriage register offices, etc) to perform the role
of ‘gatekeepers’ (Lahav, in Koslowski, 2003: 5) (or more accurately, ‘borderkeepers’) and reinforce
immigration controls from within the internal and ubiquitous borders, constituting ‘a multiplicity of
points for the collection, inscription, accumulation and distribution of information relevant to the
management of risk’ (Rose, 1999: 260), and the administration of life and death.

This surveillance causes two forms of biopolitical control in the form of extreme order and extreme
exclusion.

Ajana 2005 (Btihaj Ajana. Lecturer in Culture, Digital Humanities & Creative Industries @ King’s College
London. “Surveillance and Biopolitics,” Electronic Journal of Sociology thw_)

In a chapter called Panopticism, Foucault (1975) begins by outlining two major forms through which
discipline and surveillance were exerted. The first being the spatialisation of the plague-stricken town by
means of segmenting and immobilising space as well as placing individuals within enclosures and under
severe and permanent supervision. Such surveillance involves ‘tactics of individualizing disciplines’
(Foucault, 1975: 199) which proceed from a system of ‘permanent registration’ (registering the details of
each inhabitant of the town) as well as mechanisms of distribution (in which each inhabitant is related to
his [their] place, his [their] body and his condition) so that the disease is met by order, eradicating any
confusion that may emerge out of the ‘mixing’ of bodies, be these living or dead. The second
organisational form is that of the treatment of the leper which, unlike ‘the plague and its segmentations’,
functions by means of separation and exclusion of the leper from the healthy community through
mechanisms of ‘branding’, ‘dichotomisation’ and ‘exile-enclosure’. From these two different images
(plague and leprosy) which underlies the two different projects (segmentation and separation), Foucault
goes on to explain the two ways of exerting (political) power: discipline on the hand (as is the case with
the plague), and exclusion on the other (as is the case with leprosy). However, and despite the difference
of the two modes, they are ‘not incompatible ones’ (Foucault, 1995: 199) for power functions by way of
excluding the ‘infected’ (here, the image of the leper stands as an emblematic figure of ‘beggars’,
‘vagabonds’, ‘madmen’, etc, just as the image of the plague symbolises ‘all forms of confusion and
disorder’) and individualising the excluded so much so that lepers (all those who are symbolised by this
image) are treated as plague victims (all those who are caught up within disorderly spaces). Hence,
power is but a concurrent amalgamation of the two forms, and according to Foucault, Bentham’s
Panopticon is par excellence ‘the architectural figure of this composition’ (1975: 200). Bentham’s
utilitarian plan for a prison which is based on an observing supervisor placed in a central tower and who
can see without being seen, serves as a compelling paradigm for the kind of surveillance that is intrinsic
to the compound power of exclusion and individualization. As Elden (2002: 244) explains, the model of
the Panopticon is where the space of exclusion (of the figurative leper) ‘is rigidly regimented and
controlled’ (as is the case with the figurative plague victim). The idea that ‘visibility is a trap’ (Foucault,
1975: 200) (i.e. the presence of the tall tower at the centre does not necessarily mean the supervisor is
watching), that ‘collective’ individualities are overridden by separated ‘individualities’ (the treatment of
lepers as a plague victims – the trinity of segmentation, individualisation and separation) and that power
is ‘unverifiable’ (uncertainty about whether/when one is being watched), is what makes the model of
Panopticon such a subtle and effective architectural apparatus. Power does not need to be enforced but
merely ‘internalised’ through mechanisms of self-regulation. Such mechanisms render the observed as
simultaneously the bearer (subject) of and the one subjected to power. Not that the Panopticon is
merely a method of observation devoid of other disciplinary modes of power but it is also a machine
that could be used to ‘carry out experiments, to alter behaviour, to train or correct individuals’ (Foucault,
1975: 203) within a variety of institutional spaces, ranging from prisons to schools, hospitals, factories,
etc. It is, hence, the way in which the metaphor of the Panopticon encapsulates different technologies
and spaces of surveillance and discipline that Foucault places the notion of disciplinary society under the
umbrella of panopticism in order to capture the diagrammatic strategies underlying power relations and
in which ‘positions’ and ‘identities’ are fundamental features vis-à-vis the functioning of ‘panoptical’
surveillance.:

The discourse of the border has structured the American identity to be an exclusive,
overshadowing entity that dictates social relations between those that are “inside” the
borders and those that are excluded
Cisneros 14- Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and affiliate faculty in
the Department of Latina/Latino Studies and the Center for Writing Studies. His research focuses on the
ways in which social and political identities are rhetorically constructed and contested in the public
sphere. He specializes in issues of citizenship, race/ethnicity, Latin@ identity, and immigration. (Jonathan
Xavier Inda & Julie A. Dowling, “Governing Immigration through Crime”, pg. 252-253)//cl

Persistent public controversy about immigration and its impact on society points to a deep public anxiety
about the integrity of the nation. As a recent essay by D. Robert DeChaine argues, "the specter of the
border haunts the language of social relations."' Obsession over the literal and symbolic border
between American and foreigner, between us and them, is motivated in part by fear of the dilution and
dissolution of US citizenship. As a result, alienization of the non-citizen is fundamental to the rhetorical
maintenance of US identity. Discursive bordering is a "double-edged sword," for in order to make
citizenship (or American- ness, in this case) a special and desired identity, it must not only be desirable
but also exclusive and difficult to attain.' Migrants and racial and ethnic minorities, among other
minority groups, have served as "others" through which US identity is constituted in part. Consequently,
many scholars have traced how contemporary mass media discourse, popular culture, and political
rhetoric surrounding immigration attempt to "border" the nation, shoring up the demarcations between
citizen and alien through constructions of race, culture, and gender.' However, while (rhetorical)
bordering may be our obsession, it is not totalizing. Discourses of US national identity certainly define
the border between citizen and non-citizen and also structure the lives of immigrants, who live in the
shadows as "impossible subjects."' However, migrants regularly struggle with these dominant logics of
the border and of US citizenship; they are not merely victims of alienization and exclusion. We know that
"citizenship enactment necessarily involves hegemonic struggles over the very meaning of the term
'citizen' in a multipublic sphere."' Dominant discourses of US citizenship are contested through
alternative attempts to (re)border the civic imaginary. Just as the border is drawn to exclude migrants
based on their legal, racial, ethnic, or other "difference," borders can be redrawn to reshape the
contours of US citizenship. In this chapter I show how migrants, who embody a "troublesome"
ambivalence and ambiguity as transnational subjects, resist and rewrite dominant representations of the
ideal US citizen

Due to little legal regulations, border agents have the ability to use extreme forces
against anyone on the border
Frey 2012 [John Carlos, April 20, An Emmy award winning freelancing journalist, “What’s going on with
border patrol? Insufficient Training and Little Public Oversight have led to problems, including violence
against migrants,” Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/20/opinion/la-oe-frey-
border-patrol-violence-20120420]

By policy, border officials do not make their use-of-force protocol public. When they can fire a weapon
and why is kept secret. With insufficient training and little public oversight, perhaps it's no surprise that
since May 2010, there have been at least eight documented cases of extreme use of force against
unarmed and non-combative migrants resulting in death. Families and advocates of the victims seeking
answers have been met with silence. The cases, some more than 2 years old, remain under investigation
and therefore the Justice Department is not forthcoming with details.¶ The story of Anastacio
Hernandez Rojas, 42, an undocumented immigrant who came to the United States at the age of 16, is
just one example of a law enforcement agency using deadly force without repercussion. I learned of his
case while researching and reporting a television segment about the Border Patrol and its use of
excessive force.¶ Hernandez lived and worked in San Diego for more than 25 years, raising his five U.S.-
born children. In May 2010, in the process of being deported for being undocumented, Hernandez was
severely beaten and shocked with a Taser and killed. The segment features new video from witnesses
who watched as Hernandez, handcuffed and lying on the ground, was surrounded by about 20 border
officials.¶ One witness on the Mexico side of the border said the agents were hitting Hernandez with
their batons over and over again while other agents punched and kicked him. A Border Patrol supervisor
arrived on the scene, but instead of intervening, he permitted the agents to continue. Another official
yelled at the officers to clear away from Hernandez's body before shooting Hernandez with his Taser.
Before he fired, the agent yelled "Quit resisting!" despite the fact that Hernandez lay handcuffed on the
ground.¶ The command was likely intended for the ears of the gathering crowd of witnesses. In the
video, you can hear Hernandez cry, "Ayudame, por favor, ayudame" (Help me, please, help me). People
began to shout at the officers, asking them to stop. At one point, an officer tied Hernandez's ankles
before the beating continued. All told, witnesses say, the attack lasted nearly 30 minutes.¶ The same
witnesses told me Hernandez offered little or no resistance. One said she felt like she was watching
someone being murdered — a conclusion later confirmed by the San Diego coroner's office, which
classified the death as a homicide. As a result of the brutal beating, Hernandez suffered a heart attack.
An autopsy also revealed several loose teeth; bruising to his chest, stomach, hips, knees, back, lips, head
and eyelids; five broken ribs; and a damaged spine.¶ Hernandez's case isn't unique. Sergio Adrian
Hernandez Guereca was 15 years old when he was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent in 2010. He
was standing in Mexico while the agent fired his weapon from the U.S. side of the border. In 2011,
Ramses Barron Torres, 17, and Jose Alfredo Yanez, 40, were shot and killed in Mexico while Border Patrol
agents were on the U.S. side. Border Patrol reports state that these three victims were shot and killed for
throwing rocks — an act, according to a Border Patrol official, that is considered a use of deadly force.

Border terrorism now- border crisis weakens the border

Chiaramonte 7/7/2014 – Technology, and International Expert at Fox News (Perry, “Border crisis could
provide cover to ISIS operatives, say experts”, Fox News, July 07, 2014,
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/07/isis-could-take-advantage-weakened-us-border-for-terrorist-
attack/) */LEA

The border crisis could be the perfect opportunity for Islamic terrorists looking to sneak sleeper cells
into the U.S., say experts. Patrols on the Mexican border have been stretched to the breaking point in
recent weeks by a tidal wave of immigrants from Central America. Among the estimated 60,000 people
who have streamed across is a small percentage of what agents term "Special Interest Aliens," or SIAs.
Terrorism experts say airport security is effective at keeping dangerous jihadists out, but the border
breakdown could be America's Achilles heel - providing an entry point for groups like ISIS. “It's
impossible to say that ISIS will soon be active on our border, but some groups will be,” said retired Army
Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a security and defense analyst and Fox News contributor. “The one thing that all of
the squabbling jihadi groups in the Middle East and North Africa have in common is that they want to
strike the U.S., both for what they view as vengeance and because, in terrorist circles, striking the U.S. is
how you confirm that you're a major player.” “If you pay the cartels enough, they will sneak you across or
assist in getting anything you want across the border." - Shawn Moran, vice president and spokesperson
for the Border Patrol Council It’s long been known that a percentage, albeit small, of illegals caught
sneaking across from Mexico hail from terror-sponsoring states. And some of the Islamic terror groups
have ties to Latin American drug cartels and gangs, including MS-13. The combination of terrorists'
desire to infiltrate the border and gangs' know-how could prove dangerous to American security, say
experts. “It’s obviously a concern,” Shawn Moran, vice president and spokesperson for the Border Patrol
Council, told FoxNews.com. “If you pay the cartels enough, they will sneak you across or assist in getting
anything you want across the border. “It’s definitely a nightmare scenario if they use the borders, north
or south, to cross and conduct a terrorist attack,” Moran added. Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the record
wave of illegal immigrants includes record numbers of SIAs. “We have record high numbers of other
than Mexicans being apprehended at the border,” Perry told Fox News. “These are people that are
coming from states like Syria that have substantial connections back to terrorist regimes and terrorist
operations. So we're seeing record, historic high numbers of these individuals being apprehended.”
Some policy experts say that, while it’s possible for groups like ISIS to cross at the border, it may not be
necessary for them to achieve their deadly means. “Big picture, we need to look at how terrorist attacks
have evolved since 9/11,” Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis for Stratfor, a geopolitical
intelligence firm, told FoxNews.com. “The old model was to sneak operatives in, but it has really changed
in recent years. It’s emanating from the grassroots. People who already reside in a targeted country are
recruited or those who can enter a country legally with proper documentation.” And ISIS, despite its
bluster, is probably not yet capable of launching an attack on American soil, Stewart said. “They really
haven’t shown a capacity to import their attacks,” he said. “They haven’t worked towards conditioning
operatives for terrorist attacks. It’s a very different than the training for the insurgency.” James Phillips, a
senior research fellow for the Heritage Foundation, said the U.S. can never completely protect itself from
terrorist infiltration. “The real danger is Europeans that have already been recruited who could fly into
the country legally,” he said. “I wouldn’t rule out the Canadian border, either. Many operatives from
other terrorist groups have entered the U.S. from the north.

Discourses of statehood reliant on stability, integrity, unity, geographic coherence and

which understand borders as “containers” project a masculine notion of sovereignty
that constructs women’s bodies as abject and as threatening to practices of
sovereignty. Their securitization requires the abjection and elimination or confinement
of women across and within borders.
Wilcox 2015 (Lauren B., University Lecturer in Gender Studies and the Deputy Director of the Centre for
Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge, “Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in
International Relations,” 86-87)CJQ

Sovereignty produces the state as a unified, singular entity: the body politic has one body and speaks
with a single voice (Gatens 1996, 23). The body politic is represented as a generic, individual body, but
of course there is no such thing. Rather, among other markers of difference, bodies are always sexed.
Feminists have argued that this body politic is not only constituted by the exclusion of women, but also
relies on masculine representations of bodies. The analogization of the state to a body, characterized by
sharply delineated borders between inside and outside and between different units (other states,
other bodies), is a representation of bodies (and thus states) as masculine and fully grown, without the
inevitable decline of the life cycle (Cavarero 2002, 114)—the eternal body of the sovereign, rather than
his fleshy, decaying body. The unitary of the state—one sovereign speaking on behalf of the state, and
the social contract constituted by the voices of men (Pateman 1988; Gatens 1996)—is an erasure of
sexual difference, using the masculine to represent the human. The production of the state as a self-
contained and bounded body reproduces sovereignty as a masculine practice. The representation of the
state as a kind of container is sometimes considered a natural or inevitable metaphor. Lakoff (1987)
asserts that because we live in bodies that are containers, we experience everything as inside a
container or outside it. Because of our embodied experience, the “container” model of the state has an
essential basis in our bodily life. However, the actual experience of embodiment for all people is not of
self-contained bodies demarcated from the world by the boundaries of the skin, and experiencing one’s
body as a container is more common to men than to women (Battersby 1999). The modern, self-
contained, bounded body that is seen as the normative body is culturally associated with white,
heterosexual, able-bodied men rather than women, racial “others,” sexual minorities, or disabled
persons. Women’s bodies have not so much been constructed as absence, or lack, but as leaking or
fluid, through a mode of seepage or liquidity (Grosz 1994, 203; Shildrick, 1997). As such, women’s
bodies have been figured as abject in their instability and their refusal to obey borders. These non-
normative bodies are seen as particularly vulnerable and, as such, not suitable for full status as a
sovereign subject.3 Sovereign practices reproduce subjects and states in terms of masculine solidity and
containment, which are destabilized by the practices of suicide bombing that violate the boundaries that
sovereignty erects.

Using the borderlands at a metaphor is problematic and leads to the dislodgment of

the reality behind it.
Vaquera-Vásquez, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Southwest Studies at New Mexico University, 98

[Santiago, 2006, “WANDERING IN THE BORDERLANDS: MAPPING AN IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF THE

BORDER,” Latin American Issues, 14 (6), http://sites.allegheny.edu/latinamericanstudies/latin-american-
issues/volume-14/, accessed 7-3-14, J.J.]

While the vision of the border as a metaphor for a hybrid, communal zone may be appealing, it has
further advanced the displacement and “invisibilation” of the borderlands reality, and particularly, of
northern Mexico. As noted at the outset, and corroborated throughout the present discussion, much of
the Chicano cultural discourse has ignored the Mexican perspective.6 If there is a conception of Mexico
at all, it is as an echo, a cultural tie in the past-such a trace is evident in the works of Anzaldúa and
Mora-or as a zone of poverty and lawlessness, as in much of the media portrayals, the political discourse
out of Washington D.C. and Mexico City, and such works as Luis Alberto Urrea’s Across the Wire, in which
the author documents the hardships of Tijuana’s lower classes. While the latter work is a powerful
testimonial, exposing the terrible conditions of the poor on the border, it also maintains the
stereotypical image of Tijuana–and on a larger scale, the perception of the border region–as a zone of
corruption.7 A necessary component of the present Borderlands project. then, is the in-depth study of
northern Mexican border perspective.
Referencing the borderlands at a metaphor leads to the collapse of diverse differences
between regions and their cultural products
Vaquera-Vásquez, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Southwest Studies at New Mexico University, 98

[Santiago, 2006, “WANDERING IN THE BORDERLANDS: MAPPING AN IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF THE

BORDER,” Latin American Issues, 14 (6), http://sites.allegheny.edu/latinamericanstudies/latin-american-
issues/volume-14/, accessed 7-3-14, J.J.]

In focusing on geographic borderlands, more specifically, the borderlands between Mexico and the
United States, metaphorical readings often displace the cultural reality of the site in favor of a
particular border vision. In cultural discourse on the US/Mexico Borderlands, the dominant inscriptions
are most often that of the Chicano and that of a global communal space. The region has been variously
encoded as Aztlán–the pre-Columbian mythic past which is the cornerstone of the Chicano movement–
and more recently as “Borderlands,” the universal cultural construct representing the encounter of
diverse cultures, genders, social classes, and world-views. As observed by Claire Fox, the Borderlands
has come to replace Aztlán as “the metaphor of choice to designate a communal space” (61). This
favoring of a universal reading of the Borderlands in contemporary criticism tends towards the
collapsing of the distinct geographic differences between border regions and the abrogation of the
cultural production of writers and critics in that region for an authentication of the border “reality”
through a small number of primarily Chicano critics and writers.

In this appropriation of the border, the Mexican perspective is largely silenced; there has been little
interest in promoting the vision of the border as viewed from the northern Mexican border provinces.1
As a result, the image of the borderlands that is generally preferred is far removed from the multi-
faceted reality of the site, a fact which puts into question the validity of the Borderlands metaphor: To
what degree does current discourse on the Borderlands illuminate the border region, and to what
degree does it obscure the very region to which much of this discourse is addressed? The present work
aims to redress this oversight by focusing on the diverse “imaginative geographies” which arise from
the Borderlands. In so doing, the work contributes to the formulation of a more extensive and complete
account of border culture in general, and of the US/Mexico border in particular.

The adoption of the mestiza identity erases all cultural traditions and history where it
becomes one disembodied metaphor anyone can claim.
Donadey , Department of European Studies and Women’s Studies at SDSU,‘7 (Anne, Department of
European Studies and Women’s Studies at San Diego State University, “Overlapping and Interlocking
Frames for Humanities Literature Studies: Assia Djebar, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Gloria Anzaldua,” College
Literature, Fall, Volume: 34(4), p. 23,AA)

In an important essay on the centrality of Anzaldúa’s work, Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano cautions against
“universalizing the theory of mestiza or border consciousness, which the text painstakingly grounds in
specific historical and cultural experiences” (1998, 13) in order to preclude “[a]ppropriative readings” in
which everyone becomes a mestiza and difference and specificity are erased (14; see also Phelan 1997;
Castillo 2006). While I agree with Yarbro-Bejarano that what Emma Pérez (1999) would call Anzaldúa’s
“decolonial imaginary” should not be flattened out by a post-modern translation of the concept of
borderlands that would erase its historical and cultural grounding by turning it into a disembodied
metaphor that all can come to claim, it is also important to remember that Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La
Frontera has at least two levels of address: one deals with the specificity of the Chicana/o history in the
U.S./Mexican borderlands; the other seeks to make a space for Chicanas/os and others whose identities
cannot be reduced to binaries in a variety of locations, including the academy. Anzaldúa’s first words in
Borderlands/La Frontera emphasize this very multiplicity of addresses: “The actual physical borderland
that I’m dealing with in this book is the Texas-U.S. Southwest/Mexican border. The psychological
borderlands, the sexual borderlands and the spiritual borderlands are not particular to the Southwest.”
(1999, 19). Thinking of academic fields of study through the model of borders and borderlands is, I
believe, a way to follow up on an important insight of Anzaldúa’s, rather than an appropriation of her
work.

We are “The Crossed”, the mixed, the mestiza—constantly crossing over and cross-
pollinizing identity, making an “alien” to society where you don’t quite fit in
Anzaldúa, Scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory, 1987

[Gloria E., Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, p. 77, J.J.]

Pg. 77- the borderlands

Jose Vascocelos, Mexican philosopher, envisaged una raza mestiza, una mezcla de razas afines, una raza
de color—la primera raza sintesis del globo. He called it a cosmic race, la raza cosmica, a fifth race
embracing the four major races of the world. Opposite to the theory of the pure Aryan, and to the policy
of racial purity that white America practices, his theory is one of inclusivity. At the confluence of two or
more generic streams, with chromosomes constantly "crossing over." this mixture of races, rather than
resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid progeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich
gene pool. From this racial, ideological, cultural and biological cross-pollinization, an "alien"
consciousness is presently in the making—a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a
consciousness of the borderlands.

Una lucha de fronteras / A Struggle of Borders

Because I am mestiza,
continually walk out of one culture and into another,
because I am in all cultures at the same time,
alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro,
me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio.
Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me hablan
simultáneamente.

The borderlands become a colonist project of the west—it becomes a practice of

orientalism
Vaquera-Vásquez, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Southwest Studies at New Mexico University, 98
[Santiago, 2006, “WANDERING IN THE BORDERLANDS: MAPPING AN IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF THE
BORDER,” Latin American Issues, 14 (6), http://sites.allegheny.edu/latinamericanstudies/latin-american-
issues/volume-14/, accessed 7-3-14, J.J.]

Cultural criticism on the Borderlands has created a discursive practice which arises from the meeting
of the so-called “First World” with a geographic “Other,” the “Third World.” This type of project, in
which a critical field is marked out through a geographic region, is similar to the practice of
“Orientalism” critically reviewed by Edward Said. However, where Orientalism becomes a colonialist
project by the West to control the East-through a discourse which displaces the geographic differences
between the East and West into one single vast imagined territory-Borderlands criticism, and its
controlling forces, arises from within the area in question.2Just as Said reads Orientalist works through
the “imagined geographies” that the works construct, so too can the borderlands be subjected to a
topographical reading. The region that is now the southwestern United States, and formerly Spanish and
then Mexican territory, comprises the largest body of work in what we can term a “Borderlands project,”
a project which is a discursive field made up of historical chronicles, linguistic documents, artistic and
literary works, and distinct political and social realities. This is an ongoing work that has been under
construction since the 16th century Spanish chronicles describing the region. However, rather than map
the history of this area-such a historical review extends well beyond the purview of this study --the
present work presses forward to the twentieth century to note recent formulations of the border as
the Borderlands.

Engaging institutional debate is necessary to solve the material impacts of the aff –
with immigration reform being coopted by the far right it is essential to inject policy
debate with institutional solutions
Venator-Santiago Assistant Professor Latino Politics, Public Law, and Political Theory @ UConn 2008
Charles R. “Huntington's White Patriotism and Anzaldua's Brown Nationalism” FIU Law Review 33 Hein
Online

Over the years, LatCrit has been encouraging a conversation across disciplines. Unfortunately, the work
of academics and poets like Huntington and Anzaldfia provide normative arguments that contribute to
various legal and public policy debates. At this particular time when immigration reform is on the
legislative agenda and when right-wing rhetoric has been shaping the contours of the limits for legal
reform, it is imperative that scholars engage these debates. A LatCrit approach could use as a starting
point the relationship between these debates and the law, race, and nationalism.

Neither Huntington nor Anzaldua's arguments offer much in the form of a conceptual critique of law.
Huntington's argument is reminiscent of a right-wing, original intent approach to the interpretation of
law. Huntington's argument would encourage us to look at the "original" principles and interpretations
embraced by the founding "fathers" as a guide to interpreting the constitution. His argument would
ignore the important and radical transformations of both the constitutional text and the interpretation of
the law that have resulted from long and protracted struggles. Huntington's argument neglects to
consider how these socio-legal changes have been part of a mutually constitutive story of nation-state
building that has abandoned the founding principles of his white Anglo-Saxon protestant patriotic
identity. Simply put, the history of changes in law and society are descriptive of a new and constantly
changing United States-American identity.

In contrast, Anzaldua's argument seems to suggest a focus on the penumbras of the law. Anzaldua's
argument suggests that there is a need to break with the fixed dualities present in law in order to
open up a more fluid space to re-think the law. Law can become something else that is more malleable
and open to multiple sources beyond black letter law and the positivist influences of a formalist
approach. This conception, however, leaves us with a quandary, namely, to what extent will this
fluidity lend itself to take measure position on questions of justice. Stated differently, to what extent
can the law be used to prohibit injustices? Yet, Anzaldua also suggests that law, here understood as a
concrete institution, may become irrelevant when the new mestiza consciousness takes hold of the
borderland subject. Perhaps Anzaldua's critique may lead to an anarchic conception of society where
law no longer matters. The ambiguities in Anzaldfla's narrative leave open either of these possibilities.

The aff’s rhetoric of a big-stick war for America hegemony ignores the fact that the
Chicano already lives in a war- we have for the past 150 years- and are held hostage in
no man’s borderland.
Anzaldúa 87 [Gloria Anzaldúa, Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was an American scholar of Chicana cultural
theory, feminist theory, and queer theory | “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,” Aunt Lute
Books, 1987, 11-12]

We have a tradition of migration, a tradition of long walks. Today we are witnessing la migración de los
pueblos mexicanos, the return odyssey to the historical mythological Aztlán. This time, the traffic is from
south to north. El retorno to the promised land first began with the Indians from the interior of Mexico
and the mestizos that came with the conquistadores in the 1500s. Immigration continued in the next
three centuries, and, in this century, it continued with the braceros who helped to build our railroads
and who picked our fruit.. Today thousands of Mexicans are crossing the border legally and illegally; ten
million people without documents have returned to the Southwest. Faceless, nameless, invisible,
taunted with "Hey cucaracho" (cockroach). Trembling with fear, yet filled with courage, a courage born of
desperation. Barefoot and uneducated, Mexicans with hands like boot soles gather at night by the river
where two worlds merge creating what Reagan calls a frontline, a war zone. The convergence has
created a shock culture, a border culture, a third country, a dosed country. Without benefit of bridges,
the "mojados" (wetbacks) float on inflatable rafts across el rio Grande, or wade or swim across naked,
clutching their clothes aver their heads. Holding onto the grass, they pull themselves along the banks,
with a prayer to Virgen de Guadalupe on their lips: Ay virgencita morena, mi madrecita, dame tu
bendición. The Border Patrol hides behind the local McDonalds on the outskirts of Brownsville, Texas or
some other border town. They set traps around the river beds beneath the bridge.14 Hunters in army-
green uniforms stalk and track these economic refugees by the powerful nightvision of electronic sensing
devices planted in the ground or mounted on Border Patrol vans. Cornered by flashlights, frisked while
their arms stretch over their heads "los mojados are handcuffed, locked in jeeps, and then kicked back
across the border. One out of every three is caught. Some return to enact their rite of passage as many
as three times a day. Some of those who make it across undetected fall prey to Mexican robbers such as
those in Smugglers' Canyon on the American side of the border near Tijuana. As refugees in a homeland
that does not want them, many find a welcome hand holding out only suffering, pain, and ignoble death.
Those who make it past the checking points of the Border Patrol find themselves in the midst of 150
years of racism in Chicano barrios in the Southwest and in big northern cities. Living in a no-man's-
borderland, caught between being treated as criminals and being able to eat, between resistance and
deportation, the illegal refugees are some of the poorest and the most exploited of any people in the
U.S. It is illegal for Mexicans to work without green cards. But big farming combines, farm bosses and
smugglers who bring them in make money off the "wetbacks'" labor-they don't have to pay federal
minimum wages, or ensure adequate housing or sanitary conditions.

The alternative must come first – border violence is the expression of an antagonism
between workers and capital – only targeting neoliberalism itself and building a cross-
border workers movement can avoid replicating the failures of globalization
DeFazio 2

[Kimberly DeFazio, (professor of English @ University of Wisconsin La-Crosse),“Whither Borders?”, Red

Critique May/June 2002, http://redcritique.org/MayJune02/whitherborders.htm, Accessed 7/15/15, AX]

If it were really the "universal" interests of the "host nation" that immigration policies work to serve,
and not big business, all members of the nation would see their living and working conditions improve.
Instead, in all nations, the conditions of the majority of working people have drastically deteriorated,
while corporate profits have skyrocketed. If immigration (and the permeability of borders) were really
used to benefit all members of the national population "immigration" would be used to ensure all
people had adequate resources to meet all their needs, rather than pit workers against one another to
compete for disappearing jobs with dwindling wages and dwindling basic resources such as water and
medicine. In spite of capitalist ideologues' best efforts at constructing imaginary borders, it is,
increasingly, the class position of workers everywhere—their lack of access to the means of production
and, as a result, the increasing lack of access to all other social resources necessary to survive—that is
becoming clear: not their "national" insecurity but their material insecurity. The ruling classes, in short,
are proving daily their utter incapacity to actually secure the material conditions of citizens, even while
they attempt to divert all attention onto matters of national insecurity. Contrary to the new security
doctrines of the Bush Administration, the closing of borders to immigrants will not safeguard
"American" jobs or increase "Americans'" prosperity or freedom. On the contrary, such strategies,
which justify the terrible plundering of nations and people for the benefit of a transnational ruling
class, imperil the lives of working people everywhere. Accepting restrictions on immigrants' rights
means accepting that only a select group of people deserve to live a life free from police harassment;
that only a select few should have the right to safe working conditions and resources to meet basic
needs such as food, healthcare and education. One should resist these efforts to erode the rights of
workers and instead, for the benefit of all working people, demand full rights for all immigrants. It is
time to see "borders" for what they are: corporate barriers to a struggle for economic and social
justice that must unite all workers, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, gender or
sexuality. Only a political movement advancing under the banner of meeting the needs of all workers
regardless of their "national" identity can put an end to the divisive borders that capitalism has
erected and bring out the true lesson of recent events: that it is neither "immigrants" nor even
"terrorists" that represent the most dangerous threat to the lives of working people, but the bosses
who steal their labor.

“Fluid” borders and distinctions between domestic and international are used to
dismantle indigenous tribes and culture – a “static” understanding of border is key to
native resistance
Grande 4 (Sandy, Ph.D. Kent State University, Associate Professor of Education at Connecticut College,
“Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought”, January 1 st 2004, Pages 112-113)

Whether it is land, spiritual practice, or genetic material that is being mined, appropriated, and sold, the
logic of domination remains the same- in the eyes of U.S. law and policy the collective rights and
concerns of indigenous peoples are considered subordinate to individual rights. Thus, the extension of
marketplace logic to the realms of cultural and intellectual property not only extends the power of the
whitestream but also diminishes the power of indigenous communities, continuing the project of
cultural imperialism that began over five hundred years ago. In view of the above, it is clear to see how
postmodernism - the notion of fluid boundaries, the relativizing of difference and negation of grand
narratives-primarily serves whitestream America. The multiphrenia of postmodern plurality, its "world of
simulation" and obliteration of any sense of objective reality, has given rise to a frenetic search for the
"authentic" led by culture vultures and capitalist bandits fraught with "imperialist nostalgia."25 In
response, American Indian communities have restricted access to the discursive spaces of American
Indian culture and identity and the nondiscursive borders of American Indian communities. In short,
the notion of fluidity has never worked to the advantage of indigenous peoples. Federal agencies have
invoked the language of fluid or unstable identities as the rationale for dismantling the structures of
tribal life. Whitestream America has seized upon the message of relativism to declare open season on
Indians, and whitestream academics have employed the language of signification and simulation to
transmute centuries of war between indigenous peoples and their respective nation-states into a
"genetic and cultural dialogue" (Valle and Torres 1995, 141). Thus, in spite of its "democratic" promise,
postmodernism and its ludic theories of identity fail to provide indigenous communities the theoretical
grounding for asserting their claims as colonized peoples, and, more important, impede construction of
transcendent emancipatory theories. Despite the pressures of cultural encroachment and cultural
imperialism, however, indigenous communities continue to evolve as sites of political contestation and
cultural empowerment. They manage to survive the dangers of colonialist forces by employing proactive
strategies, which emphasize education, empowerment, and self-determination, and defensive tactics
that protect against unfettered economic and political encroachment. Thus, whatever else the borders
of indigenous communities may or may not demarcate, they continue to serve as potent geographic
filters of all that is non-Indian—dividing between the real and metaphoric spaces that differentiate
Indian country from the rest of whitestream America.

The state frames the debate on questions of science which inevitably destroys
objectivity
Borders, Fellow at Phillips Foundation, 9
(Max, Robert Novak, Dec 4, [washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/examiner-opinion-zone/separation-science-
and-state] AD: 6-27-11, jam)

In America, religion flourishes. It gets no subsidies from the government except for various tax
exemptions. There is religious diversity and religious dynamism. In Europe, governments have
subsidized Roman Catholicism and Protestantism over the years. In these countries, religion either
languishes or tends to be monolithic. But don’t take my word for it. Read the work of Laurence
Iannaccone, a top expert on the economics of religion. The more the government gets mixed up in
religion, science – or anything for that matter – the more bias, corner-cutting and groupthink is likely to
result. Climate science is starting to look like a really good example of this effect. Indeed, if you are one
that thinks the $23 million Exxon-Mobil has thrown at climate change skepticism has lead to “bias,”
consider the $79 billion since 1989 in government largess that has gone to “consensus” climate science.
Wait. You don’t think government-funded scientists face perverse incentives? Think again. One of the
principle players in the Climategate scandal has, himself, received over $3 million for his contributions
to the IPCC’s body of research. When you consider that climate skepticism has gotten 1/1000th of that
from Big Oil, accusations that the oil industry has corrupted the debate start to look a little silly. “But the
government’s charge is only to find the truth!” they’ll cry. “They don’t have a stake in the outcome.”
(Now look in the mirror and say that three times with a straight face.) For politicians, $79 billion is an
investment in the trillions in ROI they can expect from cap-and-trade revenues—not to mention all the
green energy special interests groups that will jockey to fill their campaign coffers. I know, I know. Many
bureaucrats are honest folks. But the idea that government scientists and their funders are immune to
incentives because they get our tax dollars is, well, laughable. Of course, none of this is to argue that
scientific truth doesn’t stand on its own. Arguments should be judged on their merits and on accurate
observable data, not whether they were funded by oil money or Barack Obama’s federal credit card. So
here’s a radical idea: how about the separation of Science and State modeled after the 1st
Amendment? I can hear the outcries: “Heavens! What will be the fate of science if government funding
dries up? It will disappear! We won’t get pure research!” Again, there are plenty of analogs in American
religion. But more importantly, no one ever stops to ask what kinds of science never emerges because
central bureaucrats decide to pick and choose what’s important and what’s not--using our scarce
resources to pick those winners and losers. With a decentralized system of science funded via private
patronage and university-based philanthropy, we may not get capital-T Truth to rise up and glow above
the people like a beacon. But we will get more diversity and less politicization. Then we’ll be more likely
to get a natural coalescence of the scientific community around a view – one subject to the forces of
refutation, rather than politics and activism.

Their framework is unethical. It allows us to abandon our ecological responsibility. We

need a political methodology that connects us to the environment.
Seckinelgin 06 – lecturer in international social policy at the Department of Social Policy, London School
of Economics and Political Science; reader in International Social Policy [Hakan. “The Environment and
International Politics”. http://guessoumiss.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/the-environment-and-
international-politics.pdf. Pg. 149-152.]//jwang
The possibility of the political as an ecological process may be grounded in the position of human being.
The ethical responsibility of being with others obliges human being to think ecologically and to consider
the claims of those beings whose lives are not necessarily clear to us, the Unheimlich.... It locates human
being as a part of the ecological context in contact with beings ... The meaning of ‘ecological’, then, is not
strictly limited to the issue area of the so-called environment but belongs to a larger relationality where
human beings are located with others It is in the relationality of being-in-the-world that human beings
face each other and other beings. The discussion of Dasein's being constituted as being there, as always
situated within a certain context, and locating its potentiality for Being, in other words, its becoming, to
the concept of care, responsibility ... to other beings with which Dasein is in-the- world-on -Earth,
establishes the pre-ontological condition of understanding relationality and morals constituted for
epistemic disciplines, sciences. The original ethos as an ecological relationality is based on an
unprivileged location of human being on Earth in the midst of other beings. None the less, this ethos
does not reduce the natural human capacity to influence its surroundings. By recognising the human
ability to change, it attributes to human beings the responsibility of care for other beings. In doing so,
the being of others becomes an existential issue for Dasein. It is in responsibility, in responding to the
ecological call, that Dasein faces its potentiality for Being.

The tension between Da, there, of Dasein and its ecological being, Dasein's authenticity as its
potentiality-for-Being, may be seen as the location of the political. It is in the overcoming of the limits
established by everydayness, thereness, that Dasein politicizes its being. Judith Butler observes that ‘to
claim that politics requires a stable subject is to claim that there can be no political opposition to that
claim’ (Butler 1992: 4). The decision about who is the subject of the political forecloses the political
space. In its everydayness, Dasein is then constituted among agents that are already established, human
subjects. Dasein's ecological relationality is reduced to the relationality limited by the everydayness, the
political that is foreclosed. The constitution of Dasein as the subject of politics robs it of its ecological
context. In other words, in the everydayness Dasein is excluded from the larger context in which this
thereness is located. Within it, politics is restricted within the boundaries of a foreclosure. As the limits
of the political are represented in the agents, political contestation remains within the foreclosure. Those
who are disqualified or ignored in the constitution of the political cannot become parties to the
discussion. Problems related to those identities are either ignored or reduced/translated to the
problems of the agents of the political. By thinking in terms of an ecological context and Dasein, as
located in this context, the methodological bind represented in the human subject as an agent of the
political is unsettled.

By attempting to realise its potentiality for Being, its authenticity, human being/Dasein recovers its place
as a contingent being in the larger ecological context. This recovery, then, contests the limits of politics
established as the normality. It tries to relocate the abstracted human subject back to its ecological
location. It attempts to overcome the idle talk of the normal. In its relational structure, anxious Dasein
recognises its responsibility to the other that is ignored within the foreclosed political space. As a result,
Dasein is forced to transgress its limits deployed by everydayness, as a state of unquestioned normality.
Through an existential relationship with the Unheimlich, the foreclosed political is forced to its limits.
The established agents and their political discussion are problematised by ecological relationality. Here, a
methodological turn may be observed.
By understanding the political according to the relations implied within the ecological context of a
question, this move breaks the bind of analysing a problem according to the foreclosed space of the
political where already decided concepts reformulate the problem. In other words, the political does not
dictate the definition of what is political in terms of agency. However, it becomes a dynamic process
where what is political is decided according to a given situation and the ecological relations reflected
within it. Since political contestation is taken out of the closure of normality, the political may be
questioned in terms of its ethos, since a certain political settlement and the ethical relations within it
may become contested by an ecological context. The political is secured by the ecological ethics rather
than an abstracted resolution that fixes the possibilities of the political to limited subject positions. In the
end. this turn shows a methodological move where a question that is analysed within an ecological
context may come up with a new configuration of the political and a relationality.

The methodological contention of the study of international relations (IR) in explaining the political
through ‘the international' as the space of politics, and states and other institutions as agents of this
politics, has foreclosed the discussion of politics within IR. Since the political has been articulated as a
matter of relations between states.10 the possibility of political objection to this framework within IR is
limited to the discussions of the role of states and international organisations. By deciding the subject of
the political, IR ignores those issues that cannot be accommodated within its structure. It also means
that it ignores the impact of these politics on those areas that are structurally ignored, such as the
subject matter of the present study, or in other cases where subjects are created by placing people in
categorical units of patients, the poor and refugees. Since these identities are not in the domain of the
politics as actors, a question about the ethos of ‘the international' as a political space cannot be brought
within the discourse; no political opposition (Butler 1992; 4) to ‘the international'. ‘The international' is
established as the everydayness, a sociological space, that creates the boundaries of thinking. The limits
of the space combined with the stable subjects of the political give substance to what is political. The
substance of the political is always considered according to the stable subject positions. The relationship
between the stable subjects represents the ethical relations and the political concerns.

The ecological context presented in this study unsettles this stable internalised perspective of IR. It
shows that what is being ignored is none the less implicated in the discussions of ‘the international'. The
foreclosure of the political and subsequent indifference to the context does not invalidate the existential
relationship. By revealing this connection and showing the limited understanding prevalent in IR, the
political cohesion represented in ‘the international' is questioned. The definitive authority of ‘the
international' on the political has been delegitimised. What is political becomes an issue related to a
particular question and the relations presented within it.

The ethos of questioning within the foreclosed political sphere of IR is criticised. In criticising it the
ecological ethics systematically counters the grounding assumptions of IR. In locating the political in
relation to the attempt to recover ecological relationality. the method of understanding and questioning
becomes a dynamic process. This points to a politics of becoming and contestation rather than an
affirmation of a foreclosed space. Therefore, a disciplinary boundary as an essential, secure ground of
understanding represents an impasse.
This attempt also questions various critical proposals to discuss ethics within the discipline. The renewed
interest in ethics within the discipline11 suggests a turn for IR. None the less, as the discussion of
normative questions is aimed at the political defined within IR, the ethos of IR as a framework becomes
obscured. Ethics seems to be considered as a prescriptive performance in which certain political
behaviour is established as correct, without considering the general perspective of the political within
which this prescription is located. From a philosophical point of view an ethical discussion presents a
new relationality between the subjects as well as introducing new subjects, and the resulting political
proposal may not necessarily resemble the political expressed in the international. Attempting to keep
the political resolution of the international intact and to discuss the ethics therein represents a
questionable method. A plethora of philosophical positions is imported into the discipline without
considering the ontological assumptions of these concepts necessary to reformulate the conceptual
frameworks. Put differently, ethics expressed as relationality is not allowed to reformulate the questions
but is applied to explain already posed questions within the international as an a posteriori analytical
tool. The problem is not only that this a posteriori approach bans the mutability of thinking, but the
problem is also related to the issue of how far the ethical positions imported are compatible with the
ethical position implicit in the formulation and the problem of‘the international'.12

The method of existential/ecological questioning exposes this methodological bind within the discipline.
It shows that the understanding of IR represents an ontological bind that is reiterated constantly through
its application of an international/ sovereignty binary. The method of understanding both in
conventional and in critical variance performs a thinking based on the permanence of everydayness
without questioning the fundamental assumptions implicit in the location of subject in its thereness. in
'the international. The subject of the political exists in the idle talk of international politics, where the
codified positions obscure the possibility of vigilance for those identities representing the limits of the
political. The inability for vigilance, the loss of political imaginary, represents the abandonment of
existential responsibility. The disciplinary method exercised as a boundary maintenance mechanism
overdetermines the possibility of thinking. The ecological ethics, discussed as an existential method, on
the other hand, remains as a method based on the philosophical thinking of relations through ecological
ethics rather than a method based on a foreclosed domain of politics or social science disciplines.13 By
pointing out a relationality, by being vigilant to the life of the Unheimlich, it remains a methodological
tool for resisting the closure of the political to contestation.14 This position represents the political that
is both transformative and ethical.15

In this study, then. I observed the international and IR as the thereness, everydayness, of the subject.
The philosophical discussion and the methodological move have questioned the ethical, implied in the
area, without observing the limits put by the thereness of‘the international'. In this, the questioning
located itself in the ecological ethics and the concept of responsibility implicit in this ethical argument.
being-y\ith-others-in-the-world. The move revealed that the discipline cannot consider the ethos of its
own formation and guarantee its legitimacy through its methodology based on a priori knowledge of
what can be studied. The philosophical constitution of human being as a becoming within the ecological
context, an ecological witness, does not foreclose the relationship between human beings and other
beings. An ecological relationality remains dynamic, and thus the political and thinking about the
political are connected to a perpetual thinking process about an ecological context. As grounded in this
existential ethics, the method remains a methodological tool for both thinking politically and acting
politically without being foreclosed. It keeps the political discussion open without overdetermining the
substance of it. Therefore, it does not try to arrive at a ground/tribunal from which the substance of the
ethical and of the political can be legislated. Although this method arguably becomes limited with its
language, it provides an important way of looking at those questions which are foreclosed under the
concepts used in a way of intellectual ‘common sense’, based largely on disciplinary divides and
imperatives in the social sciences, such as refugees, health behaviour, international health, free markets,
the poor and poverty reduction, imposed on people constructed as beneficiaries of the policies defined
by these concepts. Thus a new space is opened. Since this move of looking at an issue opens up a new
process of questioning, it is far from being a romantic reflection on a theme of a metaphysics.

In this way. the study concludes as a discussion of an existential methodology, which leaves the political
open to be determined by a given ecological context, constituting itself as a perpetual methodological
move in resistance to normality.

Simulation fails, methodological criticism key to examine discursive foundations and

critique spatiality.
Leonardo 03. CSU Long Beach. Resisting Capital:¶ Simulationist and Socialist Strategies.
http://gse3.berkeley.edu/faculty/ZLeonardo/ResistingCapital.pdf MMG

I have argued that critical theory must work through the distortions¶ of capital. As such, the act of
reading becomes not only an exercise¶ of representation, but a potentially transformative event
(Freire 1993).¶ Throughout this essay, I assessed the viability of both simulationist¶ and socialist
theories as modes of explanation for the postmodern¶ condition. In addition, I evaluated their capacity
to intervene into or¶ resist with meaningful strategies relations of capital. Finally, the essay¶ critiqued
simulationism and socialism for their praxiological value. Clearly,¶ Baudrillard’s simulation theory of the
hyperreal represents a unique¶ innovation in social theory that challenges any universalist,
transcendental¶ explanation of the social. En route to its unpredictable ends, simulation¶ theory
pronounces the death of certain modernist themes, like production¶ and depth, both of which link with
Marxist discourse. Despite these¶ formidable challenges to socialist epistemology, simulation theory
falls short¶ of a sustainable position because it denies the possibility of systematic¶ opposition since
this would be tantamount to admitting that a system is¶ currently in place. Socialist societies may not
obliterate oppression once and for all, but a historical materialist critique is a process that attends¶ to
the conditions of exploitation as they historically appear. In a time¶ of real as well as theoretical crisis,
the promises of Marxism remain a potential, not a guarantee. It is not only attentive to language, but
the¶ language of concrete people. It takes discourse seriously but also constructs a discourse for
transformation of reality. Despite the possibility that it¶ may never realize a practical condition free of
contradictions, Marxism¶ is a discourse committed to ending human exploitation. In our current¶
formation, Marxism’s incessant critique of capitalism makes it one of the¶ most stable threats in the
unstable conditions of postmodernity.
Critical theory—especially critical geography—is the most pragmatic form of
scholarship and melds different types of education.
Arias 10. (Santa Arias, Associate Professor at the University of Kansas. Rethinking space: an outsider’s
view of the spatial turn. February 6, 2010.
http://amitay.haifa.ac.il/images/9/90/Arias_2010_rethinking_space.pdf) MMG

A point of convergence between disciplines in the humanities and social sciences has been provided
by critical theory, particularly the ideas of the Frankfurt School, French poststructuralists, and many
other philosophers who have sought to show the multiple meanings of space and the play of social
relations across geographic surfaces as they pertain to language, identity, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and
power. Without doubt, critical theory has become the backbone of the cross-disciplinary dialogue that
has enriched, diversified, and provided a theoretical apparatus to academic scholarship. At the
forefront of interdisciplinary research are the complexities, silences, and problematic relationship
between interpreters (i.e., readers, artists, viewers), texts, and the worlds they represent. With the
works of Lefebvre, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida, as interpreted by critical human geographers, the
entrance of spatiality into other fields has allowed for ‘‘lateral mappings’’ that resulted, in my view, of a
more nuanced understanding of the relationships of history and geography.2 Spatiality is
interdisciplinary by nature and it has impacted other disciplines beyond history, such as religion,
philosophy, anthropology, sociology, education, media studies, and literature and cultural studies, to
name just a few. Critical geographers have provided the tools to challenge historicist approaches that
view space as a given entity, inert and naturalized, in order to engage in an interpretative human
geography. Jonathan Murdoch (2006) outlines the important influence of poststructuralism in geography
in order to understand its focus on power and social relations and networks and spatial entanglements:
‘‘It is a way of shifting spatial imaginaries so that new forms of geographical practice come into being.
From a post-structuralist perspective, no longer should geographical practitioners be detached from
heterogeneity…they should be subsumed within the complexities and multiplicities of various kinds’’
(197).

The alternative is to unground ourselves – use the ballot to affirm the multiplicity of
Earth’s terrains
Gordillo 4/3(GastónGordillo – Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia,
“The Oceanic Void: The Eternal Becoming of Liquid Space”, Opaque Planet: Outline of a Theory of
Terrain, Space and Politics: Essays on the spatial and affective pulse of politics
(4/3/2014),http://spaceandpolitics.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-oceanic-void.html // JJ)

My analysis of oceanic space draws from recent efforts in the humanities to examine geo-physical forces
in terms of their own materiality and rhythms, without reducing them to their social appropriations by
human societies. The literature on “the social construction of nature” played an important role in
undermining the dualism between society and nature and in showing that society is not external to
“nature.” Yet this perspective often reduces “nature” to the passive, malleable background upon which
active, human-centered forces operate. Phillip Steinberg’s The Social Construction of the Ocean is the
best book devoted to analyzing the geography of the oceans. Steinberg shows with great detail and
sophistication how human societies have made use of and conceptualized the ocean in different
historical periods and in different parts of the world. He demonstrates that far from being a space
“empty” of sociality, the ocean has been socialized at multiple levels and is a crucial component of
global currents of trade and relations of territorial power. And while the book does not examine how
the liquid nature of oceanic space escapes human coding, Steinberg leaves the door open for a non-
constructivist view of the ocean when he writes, at the end of his book, that this remains an important
and pending question: that in being “a space of nature,” some crucial dimensions of oceanic space are
not reducible to their social uses, most notably the fact that “the sea never stops moving” (p. 210)¶ In
his essay, I take this ever-mobile nature of oceanic space as my starting point. This is also a dimension
that Steinberg's most recent work on oceanic spatiality is exploring (as the conversation we have in the
comments below make clear). But I prefer to view the ocean not as a space of nature but as a spatial
set within the terrain of planet Earth. As several authors have noted, the notion of nature is too loaded
with transcendental connotations to be salvaged as a useful analytic concept, even if we add the usual
disclaimers about the need to overcome the society-nature dualism. This problem is clear in the very
idea that the ocean is a “natural space,” for this implies that places made by humans are not natural,
thereby reintroducing the distinction between society and nature that is publicly disavowed. Terrain is
the absolute temporal materialization of what we abstract as "nature." Seas, mountains, roads, rivers,
cities, farms, bridges, forests: they are the type of singularities that envelope our ever-fleeting bodies as
part of the terrain of planet Earth. As I have argued here, I see terrain as involving all existing, three-
dimensional material forms (human made or not) that are constitutive of space as we know it: that is,
the tangible space of this world. ¶This analysis of the ocean as a spatial set within the terrain implies a
materialist, object-oriented, and affective lens but more importantly a geometric eye and perception.
This is why a theory of terrain demands a Spinozian sensibility built in critical dialogue with the two last
philosophical titans of the world: Deleuze and Badiou. The starting principle of a theory of terrain is
that of its pure material multiplicity. This means that the materiality of the terrain is not homogenous,
but the opposite. Spinoza argued that the body is made up of hard, soft, and liquid elements: bones,
flesh, and blood. Likewise, the planetary terrain is defined by a multiplicity of physical densities and
textures, involving hard, soft, gaseous, and liquid elements engaging in different degrees of
temperature. The ocean is certainly the largest expression of liquid space on Earth. Comprising over
two-thirds of the surface of the planet, the oceanic void has been one of the most powerful and
determining spatial forces in human history.Its most defining feature is that, for the human body, it
creates the generalized ungrounding we call drowning. The history of imperial and capitalist expansion
into the totality of the planet has revolved, to a great extent, around technological efforts to counter
this ungrounding created by the eternal, ever-mobile becoming of liquid space.

Territoriality justifies genocide and violence as preservation of sovereignty and power.

Mbembé and Rendall 2K. Joseph-Achille Mbembe: He obtained his Ph.D. in History at the University of
Sorbonne in Paris, France, in 1989. He subsequently obtained a D.E.A. in Political Science at the Institut
d’Etudes Politiques. Steven Rendall studied philosophy and chemistry at San Francisco State University,
the College of Notre Dame and UC Berkeley. At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and
Sovereignty in Africa. http://publicculture.org/articles/view/12/1/at-the-edge-of-the-world-boundaries-
territoriality-and-sovereignty-in-africa. MMG
From a philosophical point of view, globalization might be compared with what Heidegger called “the
gigantic” (das Riesige). For among the characteristics of the gigantic as he understood it were both the
elimination of great distances and the representation—producible at any time—of daily life in
unfamiliar and distant worlds. But the gigantic was for him above all that through which the quantitative
became an essential quality. From this point of view, the time of the gigantic was that in which “the
world posits itself in a space beyond representation, thus allocating to the incalculable its own
determination and unique historical character.”1 If at the center of the discussion on globalization we
place the three problems of spatiality, calculability, and temporality in their relations with
representation, we find ourselves brought back to two points usually ignored in contemporary
discourses, even though Fernand Braudel had called attention to them. The first of these has to do with
temporal pluralities, and, we might add, with the subjectivity that makes these temporalities possible
and meaningful. Braudel drew a distinction between “temporalities of long and very long duration,
slowly evolving and less slowly evolving situations, rapid and virtually instantaneous devia-tions, the
quickest being the easiest to detect.”2 He went on to emphasize—and this was the second point—the
exceptional character of what he called world time (le temps du monde). For him, time experienced in
the dimensions of the world had an exceptional character insofar as it governed, depending on the
period and the location, certain spaces and certain realities. But other realities and other spaces escaped
it and remained alien to it.3 The following notes, although they adopt the notion of long duration and
relativize the airtightness of the distinctions mentioned above, nonetheless differ in several respects
from Braudel’s theses. They are based on a twofold hypothesis. First, they assume that temporalities
overlap and interlace. In fact, Braudel’s postulate of the plurality of temporalities does not by itself
suffice to account for contemporary changes. In the case of Africa, long-term developments, more or less
rapid deviations, and long-term temporalities are not necessarily either separate or merely juxtaposed.
Fitted within one another, they relay each other; sometimes they cancel each other out, and sometimes
their effects are multiplied. Contrary to Braudel’s conviction, it is not clear that there are any zones on
which world history would have no repercussions. What really differ are the many modalities in which
world time is domesticated. These modalities depend on histories and local cultures, on the interplay of
interests whose determinants do not all lead in the same direction. The central thesis of this study is that
in several regions considered— wrongly—to be on the margins of the world, the domestication of world
time henceforth takes place by dominating space and putting it to different uses. When resources are
put into circulation, the consequence is a disconnection between people and things that is more
marked than it was in the past, the value of things generally surpassing that of people. That is one of
the reasons why the resulting forms of violence have as their chief goal the physical destruction of
people (massacres of civilians, genocides, various kinds of killing) and the primary exploitation of
things. These forms of violence (of which war is only one aspect) contribute to the establishment of
sovereignty outside the state, and are based on a confusion between power and fact, between public
affairs and private government.4 In this study, we are interested in a specific form of domestication and
mobilization of space and resources: the form that consists in producing boundaries, whether by
moving already existing ones or by doing away with them, fragmenting them, decentering or
differentiating them. In dealing with these questions, we will draw a distinction between Africa as a
“place” and Africa as a “territory.” In fact, a place is the order according to which elements are
distributed in relationships of coexistence. A place, as Michel de Certeau points out, is an instantaneous
configuration of positions. It implies a stability. As for a territory, it is fundamentally an intersection of
moving bodies. It is defined essentially by the set of movements that take place within it.5 Seen in this
way, it is a set of possibilities that historically situated actors constantly resist or realize.6 Over the past
two centuries the visible, material, and symbolic boundaries of Africa have constantly expanded and
contracted. The structural character of this instability has helped change the territorial body of the
continent. New forms of territoriality and unexpected forms of locality have appeared. Their limits do
not necessarily intersect with the official limits, norms, or language of states. New internal and external
actors, organized into networks and nuclei, claim rights over these territories, often by force. Other ways
of imagining space and territory are developing. Paradoxically, the discourse that is supposed to
account for these transformations has ended up obscuring them. Essentially, two theses ignore each
other. On one hand, the prevailing idea is that the boundaries separating African states were created by
colonialism, that these boundaries were arbitrarily drawn, and that they separated peoples, linguistic
entities, and cultural and political communities that formed natural and homogeneous wholes before
colonization. The colonial boundaries are also said to have opened the way to the Balkanization of the
continent by cutting it up into a maze of microstates that were not economically viable and were
linked more to Europe than to their regional environment. On this view, by adopting these distortions
in 1963 the Organization of African Unity (OAU) adhered to the dogma of their intangibility and gave
them a kind of legitimacy. Many of the current conflicts are said to have resulted from the imprecise
nature of the boundaries inherited from colonialism. These boundaries could not be changed except in
the framework of vigorous policies of regional integration that would complete the implementation of
defense and collective security agreements.7

Territoriality reinforces political and imperial otherization – using ocean space as a tool
for hierarchical control and domination.
Steinberg 01. (Phillip Steinberg, Ph.D. Clark University. The Social Construction of the Ocean, Published
by the Cambridge University Press in 2001. Page 24-25.) MMG

With the rise of pre-modern civilizations, territoriality took on new functions appropriate to the social
structure of these societies. Territoriality began to be used by the ruling classes to define which people
and resources belonged under their control and to define exactly what the relationship of control
should be. Territoriality was used to create and enforce hierarchical social relations within the society.
Limiting certain people’s access to certain spaces came to serve as a means toward the end of
reproducing social hierarchy. Territories were constructed as molds for other social relationships, not
necessarily pertaining to the direct relationship between people and place. Additionally, territoriality
began to be used for classification purposes: whether one lived within a society’s territory and
whether one controlled (owned) a portion a portion of that territory had social implications
transcending land-use and land access issues. The development of territoriality continues with the
advent of capitalist and modernity. Already under hierarchical civilizations, territoriality occasionally
had been utilized to reify impersonal bureaucratic relationships ant to obscure sources of power. These
uses of territoriality became more prevalent and more refined under capitalism. Most significant,
though, was the way in which territoriality under capitalism became constructed in such a way as to
support the concept of abstract, "emptiable" space: The repealed and conscious use of territory as an
instrument to define, control, and mold a fluid people and dynamic events leads to a sense of abstract,
emptiable space. It makes community seem to be artificial; it makes the future appear geographically as
a dynamic relationship between people and events on the one hand and territorial molds on the other.
And it makes space seem to be only contingently related to events... A modern use of territory is based
most of all upon a sufficient political authority of power to match the dynamics of capitalism: to help
repeatedly move, mold, and control human spatial organization at vast scales...Territory becomes
conceptually and even actually emptiable and this presents space as both a real and emptiable surface
or stage on which events occur. (Sack 1986: 78, 87)

Epistemology focus is useless, focus on productive action is better

Hellmann, Prof of Poli Sci, 9 [Gunther Hellmann is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at AICGS and a professor
of political science at Goethe University, “Beliefs as Rules for Action: Pragmatism as a Theory of Thought
and Action” International Studies Review, Volume 11, Issue 3, Pages 638-662]

While this is not the place for an in-depth analysis of the possible causes of the resurgent interest in
pragmatism, a pointer at two connected factors may be allowed. The first relates to the disturbances in
international politics in the aftermaths of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in
1989/1990 and the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in September 2001. The second has to do with an
increasing appreciation in IR of an internal perspective on such real world developments—that is, a
perspective which tries to understand how individual and collective actors make sense of such
occurrences. Such a turn to an internal (or reconstructive) perspective—as opposed to an external (or
explanatory) perspective has accompanied, among others, the rise of "constructivism" and
"postmodernism" in general and the refinement of a diverse set of "discursive" approaches in particular.
This confluence of real world developments and disciplinary shifts provided an extremely fertile soil for
the rediscovery of the much older tradition of pragmatism. This is due to the fact that pragmatism
promises to steer a clear course between the Scylla of eternal repetition without any sensorium for
novelty (positivism) and the Charybdis of aloof criticism without a sufficiently strong grounding in
everyday real-life problems (postmodernism). Pragmatism's attractiveness stems, at least in part, from
its anti-"istic" disposition. In contrast to other "paradigms" or "research programs" in IR, it does not lend
itself as easily to paradigmatist treatment (cf. Lapid 1989). Richard Bernstein suggested that pragmatism
ought to be thought of as a tradition in the sense of a "narrative of an argument" which is "only
recovered by an argumentative retelling of that narrative which will itself be in conflict with other
argumentative retellings." In this view, the history of pragmatism has not only been a conflict of
narratives "but a forteriori, a conflict of metanarratives" (Bernstein 1995:54). Thus, whereas many
Realists, Liberals, or Constructivists are keen on building research programs, most pragmatists abstain
from such endeavors (and the paradigmatic battles that necessarily accompany fights over the true
core), not least because most of them sympathize with Richard Rorty's plea for "liberal irony." As "liberal
ironists" accept the contingency of language, they are also accepting the impossibility of reaching any
such things as a "final vocabulary" (Rorty 1989:73–95). As this forum shows, the very diverse recourse to
different pragmatist themes that social philosophers such as Richard Bernstein, Jürgen Habermas
(1999:7–64), Hilary Putnam (1987, 1995), Richard Rorty (1982, 1998), and Nicholas Rescher (1995) note
with regard to philosophical debates, also shows up in the reception of pragmatism in IR.1 In the spirit of
this diversity in recovering the pragmatist tradition, one way to claim a distinctive accent is to present
pragmatism as a coherent theory of thought and action (Hellmann 2009). "Theory" is synonymous here
with "doctrine" or "axiom"—a belief held to be true, or, more pragmatically still, a tool to think about
thought and action which is held to enable us to cope better. The core of this theory is the primacy of
practice—"perhaps the central" principle of the pragmatist tradition (Putnam 1995:52; emphasis in
original). According to this principle, the inevitability of individual as well as collective action is to be
thought of as the necessary starting point of any theorizing about thought and action. Most social action
is habitualized. As William James put it, our beliefs live "on a credit system." They "'pass,' so long as
nothing challenges them" (James [1907] 1995:80). Yet as we cannot flee from interacting with our
environment and as the world keeps interfering with our beliefs, we have to readjust. In such
"problematic situations," a (very practical) form of "inquiry" helps us to find appropriate new ways of
coping with the respective problems at hand. Experience (that is, past thoughts and actions of ourselves
as well as others), expectation (that is, intentions as to desired future states of the world we act in as
well as predictions as to likely future states), and creative intelligence merge in producing a new belief
(Dewey [1938] 1991:41–47, 105–122, 248–251; see also Jackson in this forum). The shorthand which
many pragmatists have used to express this interplay is that beliefs are rules for action (Peirce [1878]
1997:33; James [1907] 1995:18) This very condensed version of the core of pragmatism has far-reaching
consequences. The view that a belief is a habit of action implies, among other things, that all anyone can
have (and needs to have) is his or her own point of view. As a matter of fact this "insistence on the agent
point of view" is just another way of expressing the primacy of practice and the "epistemology" that
follows from it: "If we find that we must take a certain point of view, use a certain 'conceptual system,'
when we are engaged in practical activity, in the widest sense of 'practical activity,' then we must not
simultaneously advance the claim that it is not really 'the way things are in themselves'" (Putnam
1987:70) From Dewey onwards, pragmatists have rejected the "spectator theory of knowledge" which
Putnam alludes to here—that is, the view that our beliefs do (or can) somehow "correspond" to some
reality "out there." No doubt: we have to cope with reality, but to do so successfully, our beliefs do not
have to "correspond" to it. For pragmatists, beliefs are not to be thought of as "a kind of picture made
out of mind-stuff" which represents reality. Rather they are "tools for handling reality" (Rorty 1991:118).
Most importantly our beliefs are tools which depend in a fundamental way on language. Thus, Dewey
properly called language "the tool of tools" (Dewey [1925] 1981:134) directly following on Charles
Sanders Peirce, the very first exponent of what later became to be known as the "linguistic turn" (Rorty
[1967] 1992). For pragmatists, Peirce's famous line about man being thought (my language is the sum
total of myself; for a man is the thought; Peirce [1868] 2000:67) had in many ways foreshadowed an
obvious solution to a philosophical debate which had dominated for centuries (and continues to do so in
some quarters even now). Rather than positioning themselves on either side in the debate on "realism"
versus "antirealism" pragmatists reject the very distinction as it relies misleadingly on an understanding
of truth as accurate representation. Yet as Donald Davidson convincingly argued "beliefs are true or false,
but they represent nothing. It is good to be rid of representations, and with them the correspondence
theory of truth, for it is thinking there are representations that engenders intimations of relativism"
(Davidson [1998] 2002:46). The radical conclusion after having gotten rid (with Quine and Davdison) of
all three "dogmas of empiricism," then, is that language is a tool for coping with the world rather than
for representing reality or for finding truth. Moreover, as is the case with any kind of tool, languages are
"made rather than found" (Rorty 1989:7). Just as the craftsperson may have to adapt his or her tools in
dealing with new types of tasks so human beings in general are always dependent on coming up with
new descriptions for new situations to cope adequately. Yet neither these descriptions nor the
vocabularies on which they are based are "out there." Rather, descriptions are the result of the
intelligent use of words and vocabularies which have been invented and adapted in a gradual process of
collective habituation. As Markus Kornprobst argues in this forum, the use of analogies or metaphors is a
particularly good illustration of this point. In this sense, methods provide the central tools for science
(which Dewey defined as "the perfected outcome of learning"). Two points are worth emphasizing in this
context. First, as Dewey put it, "never is method something outside of the material." Rather, good
scholarship (as "methodized" inquiry) is characterized by making intelligent connections between subject
matter and method. As there is always a danger of methods becoming "mechanized and rigid, mastering
an agent instead of being powers at command for his own ends," the scholar has to strike a proper
balance between proven techniques based on prior experience with similar problems on the one hand
and innovation based on the novelty (or "problematicness") of the problem at hand on the other. "Cases
are like, not identical." Therefore, existing methods, "however authorized they may be, have to be
adapted to the exigencies of particular cases" (all quotes from Dewey [1916] 2008; see also Sil in this
forum). Second, the central role attached to methods as tools for problem-solving also has implications
with regard to two other key concepts usually addressed as a sort of trinity in elaborating one's position
vis-à-vis science and scholarship, that is, ontology and epistemology. Pragmatism, in essence, dispenses
with both. The "question of ontology"—that is, the question of "what exists" (Wendt 1999:22)—which
scientific realists, among others, consider to be of central importance, does not arise for pragmatists
simply because an "as if" assumption usually suffices to deal with those aspects of reality (for example,
an "international system" or a "state"), which we cannot observe directly. Consequently, an "ontological
grounding" of science is only worrisome if one had reason to worry about "the really real" (Rorty
1991:52). Pragmatists see none. The state is experienced as "real" when I pay taxes or refuse to go to
war for it. Thus, establishing intersubjective understandings as to how to deal successfully with reality is
all that is needed. This is another way of describing what pragmatists view as "knowledge": The quality
of a certain description of reality (in terms of specific conceptual distinctions and choices of
vocabularies) will show in its consequences when we act upon it. Knowledge in this sense is, as
Wittgenstein has argued, "in the end based on acknowledgement" (Wittgenstein 1975:§378). The
"question of epistemology" similarly dissolves as the answer to it is the same one which pragmatists give
to the question of action: you settle for a belief (as a rule for action) through inquiry. Thinking and acting
are two sides of the same coin. The question of how people think would become a problem only if there
were a problem with the way people think. But, as Louis Menand has pointedly put it, "pragmatists don't
believe there is a problem with the way people think. They believe there is a problem with the way
people think they think"—that is, they believe that alternative "epistemologies" which separate thought
and action are mistaken as they create misleading conceptual puzzles. In dissolving the question of
epistemology in the context of a unified theory of thought and action pragmatism therefore "unhitches"
human beings from "a useless structure of bad abstractions about thought" (Menand 1997:xi).
We must approach borders with pragmatism – they are inevitable and sometimes
necessary
Agnew No Date (John Agnew – Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, “Borders
on the mind: re-framing border thinking”, Ethics & Global Politics,
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/856/258.pdf // JJ)

Be that as it may, it is implicit in this understanding that borders can serve a¶ number of vital socio-
political purposes. One is straightforwardly instrumental:¶ borders help clearly demarcate institutional
and public-goods based externality¶ fields. If spending on infrastructure projects (education, highways,
etc.), for example,¶ must necessarily be defined territorially, as Michael Mann has argued, and the¶
revenues raised concomitantly, then borders are necessary to define who is eligible¶ and who is not to
share in the benefits of the projects in question. 21 Thus, absent¶ territorial restrictions on eligibility,
cross-border movements of people would¶ undermine the essentially contractual obligations that
underpin both state infra-¶ structural power and the autonomous role of the state that depends on it.
So, liberal¶ conceptions of borders can be less inchoate than frequently alleged, if understood¶ solely
in terms of defense of rights in property, but only if refocused on the provision¶ of public goods rather
than on the protection of private property. 22¶ Less liberal or instrumental in character are the ways
in which borders help focus¶ on the question of political identity. This has four aspects to it. The first
and most¶ traditional is the claim to sovereignty and its realization since the eighteenth century¶ as a
territorial ideal for a people endowed with self-rule. Typically, all struggles to¶ extend and deepen
popular rule, associated usually with such terms as ‘democracy’,¶ have been bound up with the
sovereignty ideal. Who shall rule around here? has been¶ the rallying cry across all political revolutions.
Thus, recently, Jeremy Rabkin has¶ defined sovereignty as the ‘authority to establish what law is
binding ... in a given¶ territory’. 23 From this viewpoint, laws can only be enforced when the
institutional¶ basis to that law is widely accepted. It depends on popular acceptance and agreement¶ to
allow coercion in the absence of compliance. Intuitively, the reach of institutions¶ must begin and it
must end somewhere. This is a fairly conservative understanding of¶ political identity. Beyond it lie
several other versions of how political identity is served¶ by borders.¶ One is that identities themselves,
our self-definitions, are inherently territorial.¶ Contrary to a liberal sense of the isolated self, from this
perspective all identities are¶ based on kinship and extra-kinship ties that bind people together
overwhelmingly¶ through the social power of adjacency. From clan and tribe to nation, group¶
membership has been the lever of cultural survival. Rather than merely incidental,¶ borders are
intrinsic to group formation and perpetuation. Thus, a self-defined¶ political progressive such as Tom
Nairn can speak openly of a ‘social nature’ that¶ requires ‘belonging’ and ‘can be chosen and self-
conscious’, which can result in¶ people coming to feel ‘more strongly*and less ambivalently*about their
clan,¶ football team or nation, than about parents, siblings and cousins who directly helped¶ to form
them’. 24 Many nations today are still actively in pursuit of their very own¶ state with its very own
borders. 25 Kurds rioting in Turkey and Tibetans protesting¶ Chinese rule are only two of a myriad of
recent examples. Elsewhere, there is a revival¶ of spatially complex forms of citizenship, as in Spain and
the United Kingdom,¶ where people can simultaneously belong to several polities differentially
embedded¶ within existing states. 26 Of course, this was once quite common all over Europe.
Utopian theory key to creating real solutions and motivating change.
Löwy 05. Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is emeritus research
director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.
CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM VOLUME 16 NUMBER 2. What Is Ecosocialism? P.20. MMG

Utopia? In its etymological sense (“nowhere”), certainly. However, if one does not believe, with Hegel,
that “everything that is real is rational, and everything that is rational is real,” how does one reflect on
substantial rationality without appealing to utopias? Utopia is indispensable to social change, provided
it is based on the con- tradictions found in reality and on real social movements. This is true of
ecosocialism, which proposes a strategic alliance between “reds” and “greens”—not in the narrow sense
used by politicians applied to social-democratic and green parties, but in the broader sense between the
labor movement and the ecological movement—and the movements of solidarity with the oppressed
and exploited of the South.

Focus on underlying structures producing violence outweighs a one shot linear cause
for conflict
Hendrick 9 (Diane, University of Bradford, Dept of Peace Studies, “Complexity Theory and Conflict
Transformation: An Exploration of Potential and Implications”, Centre for Conflict Resolution, June)

John Paul Lederach, drawing on Wheatley, has found the notion of ―process-structures to be of value in
understanding this notion of change and stability. Wheatley uses other terms than Maturana and Varela :
"things that maintain form over time yet have no rigidity of structure." (Wheatley, 2006 p. 16) (emphasis
added). Lederach is concerned to show a combination of linearity and circularity in the dynamics of
conflicts. His representation of complexity concepts is filtered but has, therefore, the advantage that it is
not a direct translation of terms from one realm to another with the inherent dangers mentioned above.
He stresses connection but it is important for him to understand this in social systems as ―relationship‖.
In the circular change process he describes there are non-linear relationships in terms of unpredictability
and disproportionality (no linear progress in this sense) at the same time, however, the system is moving
in a certain direction (time irreversibility). He understands system properties as the context of
relationships out of which conflict episodes emerge. He recognises the importance of discovering the
underlying patterns in the system that are producing the conflicts. As Lederach notes a systemic
approach requires a reorientation from a focus on events and specific outcomes to the recognition of
patterns that emerge over time, and here he echoes the advice of Peter Senge when he refers to the
human tendency to a ―fixation on events: ―We are conditioned to see life as a series of events, and for
every event, we think there is one obvious cause...such explanations may be true as far as they go, but
they distract us from seeing the longer-term patterns of change that lie behind the events and from
understanding the causes of those patterns". (Senge, 1990; 2006 p. 2)

Turn: Cosmopolitan attempts to transcend national borders re-produce violent

identities.
Ronald NIEZEN Anthro @ McGill ‘7 “Postcolonialism and the Utopian Imagination” Israel Affairs 13 (4) p.
informa
The idea of a diasporic or self-exiled intelligentsia possessing the only legitimate way to transcend the
imperialist power interests in social knowledge is not an attractive solution to many of those who see
themselves as oppressed colonial subjects. To them, knowledge must have more than the blunt edges of
detached humanist contemplation; it must be a source of self-discovery and liberation. Said himself was
not immune to the attractions of nationalist identification and commitment. It is possible to see the
tension between the ideal discomforts of exile and the politically tangible consolations of nationalism
manifested in Said's own engagement in the struggle for Palestinian freedom, in which he emphasized
only the self-affirmation that emerges from oppression, while overlooking the violent realities of their
political struggle - all the while extolling the virtues of cosmopolitan self-criticism. There is a sense in
which he was profoundly oblivious to the dangers that follow from subjection. Although rejecting
nationalism, Said failed to consistently recognize that one of the worst possible consequences of political
oppression is the political disfigurement of the oppressed, bringing out in them malignant forms of
collective self-discovery and counter-hatred. The irony of a cosmopolitan humanism that develops its
own versions of cultural essentialism and self-stereotyping has become a wider feature of the
postcolonial critique of Western cultural imperialism. In this literature, nationalist contentions follow
almost naturally from the emphasis on cultural incommensurability. If the research agendas of Western
scholarly traditions are inevitably associated with power and interests in dominated societies, it follows
(or at least has followed for some of Said's postcolonial acolytes) that the only legitimate form of cultural
description is cultural self-affirmation. Insofar as postcolonial theory advocates cultural research, it
pursues a methodology intended to be empowering, rooted in cultural sensitivity and affirmation,
survival struggles, the maintenance of difference, using research practices that are sympathetic, that
recover, redefine and recreate the realities of distinct peoples, free from the positional superiority of
Western knowledge and the legacies of cultural imperialism.4 But if this approach is made exclusive, if
any uninvited, uncomfortable assertion, observation or judgement is to be excoriated from the scholarly
agendas of the Occident (or its sympathizers), then all that remains is the kind of research that has
always been implicated in the foundation myths of nations, which have long included themes of
liberation from oppression, uncovering a peoples' innermost being, defining one's own citizenship,
becoming self-determining in a distilled and pure sense, tinged with political love. And if, as is now
widely recognized, nationalism begins with ethnography and history, then imagine how much more likely
it is that uncritical auto-ethnography and auto-history will contribute to bounded, xenophobic forms of
collective imagination. More ominously, the sense of collective discovery is also often part of an
essentialism of the oppressive 'other', including those within one's own self-defined ranks who are seen
as refusers or apostates of the national faith. Postcolonialism, in other words, has difficulty reconciling its
sweeping critique of Western cultural imperialism with its encouragement of the tendency towards
collective self-affirmation that follows from counter-imperialist rediscovery.
 Agamben
Agamben cedes the political --- his theories are consolatory and insufficiently
supported
Virno, June 2002 – italian professor of philosophy teaching the University of Rome (Paolo, Interview with
Paolo Virno for Archipélago number 54, http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpvirno2.htm)//roetlin

Agamben is a problem. Agamben is a thinker of great value but also, in my opinion, a thinker with no
political vocation. Then, when Agamben speaks of the biopolitical he has the tendency to transform it
into an ontological category with value already since the archaic Roman right. And, in this, in my opinion,
he is very wrong-headed. The problem is, I believe, that the biopolitical is only an effect derived from the
concept of labor-power. When there is a commodity that is called labor-power it is already implicitly
government over life. Agamben says, on the other hand, that labor-power is only one of the aspects of
the biopolitical; I say the contrary: over all because labor power is a paradoxical commodity, because it is
not a real commodity like a book or a bottle of water, but rather is simply the potential to produce. As
soon as this potential is transformed into a commodity, then, it is necessary to govern the living body
that maintains this potential, that contains this potential. Toni (Negri) and Michael (Hardt), on the other
hand, use biopolitics in a historically determined sense, basing it on Foucault, but Foucault spoke in few
pages of the biopolitical - in relation to the birth of liberalism - that Foucault is not a sufficient base for
founding a discourse over the biopolitical and my apprehension, my fear, is that the biopolitical can be
transformed into a word that hides, covers problems instead of being an instrument for confronting
them. A fetish word, an "open doors" word, a word with an exclamation point, a word that carries the
risk of blocking critical thought instead of helping it. Then, my fear is of fetish words in politics because it
seems like the cries of a child that is afraid of the dark..., the child that says "mama, mama!",
"biopolitics, biopolitics!". I don't negate that there can be a serious content in the term, however I see
that the use of the term biopolitics sometimes is a consolatory use, like the cry of a child, when what
serves us are, in all cases, instruments of work and not propaganda words.

Agamben is anthropocentric- his foundational structures of thought are all determined

by the concept of the human.
Calarco 2k (Matthew Calarco, “On the borders of language and death: Agamben on the question of the
animal,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 44, p. 91) JB

Even where Agamben ventures a figure beyond the refugee in order to rethink community (such as
"whatever singularity" in The Coming Community or the "sacred person" in Homo Sacer), these
"concepts" remain analogous in form to the refugee. Whatever singularities, sacred persons, and
refugees all find their being in im-propriety, in ex-propriation, in a form of existence that is irreducible to
bios and the State. What is troubling about these figures as they function in Agamben's discourse is that
they are all to a certain extent limited to human beings alone. While we do not mean to imply here that
Agamben relies on a humanist subject to ground his politics, we do want to suggest that his rethinking of
the ground of the coming community remains anthropocentric. And it is this anthropocentric limit to
which we are responding in forming our question.
Playing with the law solves
Kotsko 13 (Adam Kotsko is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Shimer College in Chicago and the
translator of Giorgio Agamben’s Sacrament of Language: An Archeology of the Oath, The Highest
Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, and Opus Dei: An Archeology of Duty. “How to Read
Agamben” 6/4/13 http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/how-to-read-agamben)///CW

Many critics of the War on Terror, including Judith Butler, have used Agamben’s terminology to mount a
kind of moral critique of American foreign policy. One might say, for instance, that the US government is
wrong to create a kind of exceptional law-free zone in Guantánamo Bay, because that results in turning
the detainees into bare life — which is bad. And certainly it is; yet Agamben’s political work is a little too
complex to fit easily into this kind of moralizing discourse. For Agamben, the answer to the problem
posed by sovereign power cannot be to return to the “normal” conditions of the rule of law, because
Western political systems have always contained in their very structure the seeds that would grow into
our universalized exception. It can’t be a matter of refraining from reducing people to “bare life,”
because that is just what Western legal structures do. The extreme, destructive conjunction of sovereign
authority and bare life is not a catastrophe that we could have somehow avoided: for Agamben, it
represents the deepest and truest structure of the law.¶ Now may be the time to return to that Kafka
story about Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalus, entitled “The New Attorney.” (The text is available
here. I recommend you take a moment to read it — it’s very short, and quite interesting.) In this brief
fragment, we learn that Bucephalus has changed careers: he is no longer a warhorse, but a lawyer. What
strikes Agamben about this story is that the steed of the greatest sovereign conqueror in the ancient
world has taken up the study of the law. For Agamben, this provides an image of what it might look like
not to go back to a previous, less destructive form of law, but to get free of law altogether:¶ One day
humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to
their canonical use but to free them from it for good…. This liberation is the task of study, or of play. And
this studious play is the passage that allows us to arrive at that justice that one of Benjamin’s
posthumous fragments defines as a state of the world in which the world appears as a good that
absolutely cannot be appropriated or made juridical.¶ The law will not be simply done away with, but it
is used in a fundamentally different way. In place of enforcement, we have study, and in place of solemn
reverence, play. Agamben believes that the new attorney is going the state of emergency one better: his
activity not only suspends the letter of the law, but, more importantly, suspends its force, its dominating
power. ¶ Agamben’s critical work always aims toward these kinds of strange, evocative
recommendations. Again and again, we find that the goal of tracking down the paradoxes and
contradictions in the law is not to “fix” it or provide cautionary tales of what to avoid, but to push the
paradox even further. Agamben often uses the theological term “messianic” to describe his
argumentative strategy, because messianic movements throughout history — and here Agamben would
include certain forms of Christianity — have often had an antagonistic relationship to the law (primarily,
but not solely, the Jewish law, or Torah). Accordingly, he frequently draws on messianic texts from the
Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions for inspiration in his attempt to find a way out of the destructive
paradoxes of Western legal thought.
The basis of Agamben’s philosophy is based on a false dichotomy between bios and
zoe found in Aristotle’s text – this paradoxically turns the case because Agamben
attempts to posit himself as the first to discover the truth which makes his work a
form of sovereignty
Swiffen 12 (Amy Swiffen is a professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Concordia University. She has
a PhD from the University of Alberta. Her intellectual background is in socio-legal studies and social
and political theory. Her areas of expertise include sociological theory, deviance studies, criminology,
ethics, biopolitics, psychoanalysis and the philosophy of law “Derrida Contra Agamben: Sovereignty,
Biopower, History” 9/30/12 Societies)///CW

Derrida’s issue with this conception of sovereignty is multi-layered. As mentioned above, he begins¶ by
pointing out how it involves the naming of firsts: Agamben “Wants to be the first to announce an¶
unprecedented new thing (…) and also to be the first to recall that in fact it’s always been like that,¶
from time immemorial ([1], p. 332).” Indeed, Agamben claims both that the ‘‘Production of a¶
biopolitical body [is] the originary activity of sovereign power,” and that the politicization of bare life¶ in
the state of exception is the “Decisive event of modernity ([2], pp. 4, 6).” That is, he claims to be¶
uncovering the essence of sovereignty in the state of exception, while at the same time identifying the¶
entry of bare life into the polis as distinguishing of modernity. Derrida insists that the confusions and¶
contradictions inherent in this formulation are obscured by the naming of firsts. To illustrate, let us¶ turn
more closely to the attribution of the zoe/bios distinction to Aristotle and scrutinize whether it can¶
indeed be found in his ancient text.¶ For Agamben’s theory to hold, the difference between zoe and bios
must really be present in¶ Aristotle. However, Derrida points out several instances where Aristotle
seems to use the term zoe in a¶ way that contradicts the interpretation that Agamben puts forward. One
significant exception would¶ seem to be the famous definition of the human being as politikon zoon
(‘political animal’). With the¶ term politikon zoon, Aristotle seems to be describing a zoe that is political.
In fact, Derrida points out¶ that zoe, or zen (‘to live’), is used repeatedly by Aristotle in the Politics to
describe the human as a¶ political animal, and each time he “Never fails to specify” that the human
zoon is political “By nature”¶ (physei) (Aristotle quoted in [1], p. 315). This specification implies that the
descriptor ‘political’ refers¶ to how humans live naturally, and is thus a qualification of their animal life.
Being political is a natural¶ attribute of human life and their specific difference from other animals. The
definition of the human as¶ politikon zoon, therefore, would seem to be a glaring exception to the
zoe/bios distinction. Agamben¶ addresses the issue by claiming that there is no contradiction if one
interprets the meaning of the¶ qualifier politikon properly. Here is the passage:¶ It is true that in a
famous passage of the same work [the Politics], Aristotle defines man as a politikon zoon¶ (Politics
1253a, 4). But here (aside from the fact that in attic Greek the verb bio nai is practically never used¶ in
the present tense), “political” is not an attribute of the living being as such, but rather as a specific¶
difference that determines the genus zoon ([2], p. 2).¶ Agamben is arguing that there is a difference
between an attribute of a living being and a specific¶ difference that defines the living being. Yet,
Derrida’s position is that this difference is neither certain ¶ nor clear. The phrase politikon zoon implies
both: “The specific difference or the attribute of man’s¶ living, in his life as a living being, in his bare life,
if you will, is to be political ([1], p. 330).” There is¶ no clear difference between the two notions. They
seem to be “Perfectly reciprocal” and¶ ‘complementary’ ideas ([1], p. 330). Thus, Derrida insists that
Aristotle did not oppose zoe and bios as¶ Agamben suggests. The concept of politikon zoon implies there
was never any such distinction in his¶ concept of the political; for Aristotle, “Man is that living being who
is taken by politics: he is a¶ politically living being, and essentially so ([1], p. 348).” Thus, Derrida claims
that it is ‘obvious’ that¶ Aristotle is already “Thinking of biopolitics ([1], p. 349).” However, the division in
life that apparently¶ structures sovereignty is not based in his ancient text in the way that Agamben
implies. The distinction¶ is of Agamben’s own making much more than the argumentative gesture he
deploys would suggest.¶ It is evident that Derrida agrees with Agamben that biopower is an important
concept in the¶ contemporary moment. He notes the “Incredible novelties in bio-power” that must be
addressed, but¶ there is an issue concerning the “conceptual strategies relied on” to characterize these
novelties ([1],¶ pp. 330, 326). Derrida’s reading of Aristotle demonstrates the zoe/bios distinction, which
is “The¶ frontier along which Agamben constructs his whole discourse,” does not go deep enough to
function as¶ an originary political relation ([1], p. 321). Moreover, the insistence on seeing historical
and¶ philosophical origins, exemplified by the reading of the bios/zoe division in Aristotle is, in effect,¶
producing the very sovereign form of exclusion that Agamben criticizes in his work. This is not to¶
suggest that Derrida’s position is that ancient texts are not relevant to contemporary politics. On the¶
contrary, they are ‘indispensable’ for understanding the “Bio-powers or zoo-powers of what we call¶ the
modernity of ‘our time’ ([1], p. 333).” The issue however is how to conceive of the relationship¶ between
these texts and ‘our time,’ how to think history neither in terms of ‘diachronic succession’ nor¶
‘synchronic simultaneity’ ([1], p. 333). Agamben’s approach involves thinking history in terms of “A¶
decisive and founding event ([1], p. 333).” Derrida’s criticism intends to compel a reconsideration of¶ this
way of “Thinking history, of doing history, of articulating a logic and a rhetoric onto a thinking of¶ history
([1], p. 332).”¶ The difference in conceiving history corresponds to a difference in the two thinkers’
positions on¶ the future of sovereignty. On the one hand, Derrida rejects conceptualizing sovereignty in
terms of an¶ essential relation. The readings in The Beast and the Sovereign suggest instead that
sovereignty has¶ “More than one ground (…) more than one solid and single threshold ([1], p. 334).” This
is not to¶ suggest Derrida leaves us with an abyssal void or groundless depth underlying the concept;
rather, it¶ suggests that there are multiple forms of partition, division, and condition that broach a
sovereignty¶ that is imagined to be indivisible. If this is correct then it is not possible to oppose
sovereignty¶ because sovereignty is not one thing.14 For instance, to unconditionally oppose
sovereignty would¶ mean opposing classical principles of freedom and self-determination. There is no
way to¶ conceptualize freedom without a certain sovereignty. Thus, it is impossible to reject
sovereignty¶ without also threatening the value of liberty. The issue is therefore not a choice between
sovereignty¶ ¶ and non-sovereignty but among ways of sharing, transferring, translating, and dividing
sovereignty.15¶ In contrast, Agamben’s formulation conceives sovereignty in terms of an essential
relation to bare life.¶ The idea of an essential political relation implies that it might be possible to
overcome sovereign¶ politics, if only the relation were discarded.16 Sovereignty could be abandoned
and a ‘coming¶ community’ ushered in, in which there would be no exception of the fact of living from
the form of¶ life [20].17
The concept of “play” is inherently exclusionary of gender difference – Agamben’s
concept of Playland and biopolitics only apply to males which turns the case and
makes biopolitics inevitable
Mills 8 (Catherine Mills is currently an ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor of Bioethics in the
Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University. I was previously employed at University of Sydney,
Australia, and have been Lecturer in Philosophy at University of New South Wales, and the Australian
National University. I completed a PhD in Philosophy at the Australian National University. My main
research interests lie in the areas of biopolitics and bioethics. “Playing with Law: Agamben and Derrida
on Postjuridical Justice”, The Agamben Effect p. 23-24)///CW

As I have argued elsewhere, to the extent that relationality enters into Agamben’s thought, it does so
early in the form of autoaffection. But this radical rejection of relationality appears to be premised on
the elimination of alterity altogether, including the alterity internal to and constitutive of autoaffection.
The question that can be asked here, then, is what the cost of this would be. To make clear the weight of
this question let me briefly consider one way in which this neglect of alterity and difference plays out. As
I mentioned previously, Agamben takes his initial inspiration for his conception of play as an interruption
of calendrical time from Collodi’s description of Playland in Pinocchio. One notable characteristic of this
description that Agamben passes over in silence is that Playland is populated entirely by boys. Without
taking this issue up in detail, the question that poses itself here is to what extent this idyllic conception
of play is actively premised on the exclusion of gender difference. In what way would the presence of a
girl or girls disrupt, interrupt, or undo the cacophonous, indifferent play of boys? Not dissimilarly,
Agamben is silent on issues of gender in reference to Aristotle’s distinction between the life of the oikos
and politics, even though it is insistently present in the designation of the oikos as the domain of
reproduction that necessarily precedes and supports the life of politics. As Derrida sharply remarks, the
distinction of bios and zoe is not as straightforward as Agamben takes it to be. The point here is not that
"girls" or "women" should, as if they could, simply be added to the scene of the play or biopolitics in
such a way that the scene itself and the conceptual framework built on it would remain without
substantial change. Nor is the point to simply note the exclusion of women from Agamben’s
philosophical lexicon at an explicit textual level—the consistent use of gender-specific pronouns as if
their reference were universal may sill be indicative of a philosophical blindness or “amnesia,” but it does
not reach to the depths of the problem in itself. For what would it be to ask the “question of gender”
within the messianic framework that Agamben proposes? Indeed, can such questions he asked within
that framework?

Government is the reason biopower exists

Nadesan, 08 (Majia Holmer, professor of communication in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences
in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, “Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday
Life”, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QEqTAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=
%22economic+security
%22+and+biopower+and+agamben&ots=iSmmUdVRPC&sig=c0GAKJJxPEdjnZJV7BjudTumxH4#v=snippet
&q=biopower%20and%20government&f=false)//BW
Foucault contended that the emergence of the early modern liberal state depended upon the institution
of more diffuse, but ultimately more pervasive, forms of government that slowly replaced the
authoritarian and repressive power of the feudal sovereign. In the premodern era—prior to the
development of the modern state—power was largely localized in the corporeal body of the sovereign
monarch, who exercised his or her will absolutely on those within his or her scope of execution, or
territory, in the form of the power of life and death (Foucault, 2003b). Foucault observed: “it is at the
moment when the sovereign can kill that he exercises his right over life” (Z003b, p. 240), However,
sovereign power was subtly transformed across time with the development of the modern state through
three important developments. First, state and sectional interests motivated by security and wealth
extended “governable spaces," beginning in the sixteenth century but particularly in the late eighteenth
century. Second, the development of new ways of thinking about government—principally in relation to
juridical administration, the state‘s appropriation of pastoral power over the administration of
population, and curtailment of sovereignty over political economy—altered the nature and operations of
societal control and power leading ultimately to more diffuse, but simultaneously permeating,
technologies of government. Third, these changes realigned sovereignty around the power and the right
“to make live and let die" (2003h, p. 241) as sovereignty became entwined with biopower, Foucault’s
genealogy of the transformation from sovereignty to government began by exploring how sovereignty
and political rule started to he theorized in political philosophy. In particular, Foucault was interested in
the development of rationalities of government in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that
articulated the responsibilities and modes of conduct appropriate for sovereign and patriarchal
authorities in the context of the evolution of the early modern state. Foucault specifically focused on
how seventeenth century texts on the art of government created lines of continuity between the
government of the family and the government of the state, These lines of continuity addressed the twin
problem of maximizing “population-wealth,” a dilemma seen as vital for securitizing the territorially
delimited nation and central to the administrative practices of police. Accordingly, Foucault described
how the rationalities of government developed during the seventeenth century included (a) “the art of
self- government, connected with morality“; (h) “the art of properly governing a family,“ which belongs
to “oeconomy”; and (c) “the science of ruling the state" (1979b, p. 9). Foucault read these seventeenth-
century texts as articulating a continuum linking the diverse forms of government. Foucault used the
term police to describe “the downwards line, which transmits to individual behavior and the running of
the family the sample principles as the government of the state” {1979b, pp. 9-10). In contrast, the
proper training of the sovereign—his pedagogy—ensures the upward continuity of the arts of
government.

Agamben trivializes and decontextualizes the Holocaust

Marion 6 (Esther – SUNY Brockport, “The Nazi Genocide and the Writing of the Holocaust Aporia: Ethics
and Remnants of Auschwitz,” in MLN, Volume 121, Number 4, 2006,
https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mln/v121/121.4marion.html)

I find it disturbing that Agamben, citing Benjamin to criticize the commodification of the body, evokes in
the same breath automobile accidents, an advertisement for stockings, and the image and memory of
the Nazi genocide as points of access to "whatever being." While I am not suggesting that he recuperates
or glamorizes atrocity, which he claims not to do, appropriating Holocaust victims and "daily [human]
slaughter" to call for anonymous being turns genocide to pulp. In the stockings ad, "neither an image of
the divinity nor an animal form, the body now became something truly whatever." Rather than seeking
"the whatever body," or "a resemblance without archetype—in other words, an Idea" in images of
extermination camps, perhaps Holocaust memory should "link together image and body" in historical
and human terms. Perhaps "the double chains of biological destiny and individual biography" of
Auschwitz should be reconstructed rather than gladly surpassed. In Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and
Bare Life, Agamben takes a very different approach to the Holocaust. Following the thread of Foucault's
thinking of biopolitics, he posits the extermination camps—in disturbing and absurd revisionist terms
—"not as a historical fact and an anomaly belonging to the past (even if still verifiable) but in some way
as the hidden matrix and nomos of the political space in which we are still living."17 Reflecting on how
states decide the ethico-political question of what life is worthy of being lived, he elaborates the "zone of
indistinction" between zoe and bios, between bare life versus qualified life, and human versus animal
life.18 This question, as we have seen, is developed subsequently in Homo Sacer III, Remnants of
Auschwitz, in which, however, Agamben departs from a biopolitical historical frame to transform the
human/non-human dichotomy into a philosophically [End Page 1018] grounded question of subjectivity
in the "ethical subject," the survivor, who bears witness to the inhuman. The problem in this conception
of self lies in the tension that arises from the historical life to which this self is consigned and the use of
the Holocaust in this paradigm that disparages the real. This may be felt most acutely at the end of
Agamben's text. He argues that "Levi's paradox" (a phrase Agamben coins) and in fact all Holocaust
testimonies "articulate a possibility of speech solely through an impossibility, and in this way, mark the
taking place of a language as the event of a subjectivity" (164). To say that the survivor bears witness to
the Muselmann, the name for that which cannot be said in language, and "speaks only on the basis of an
impossibility of speaking," Agamben relies on the historical silence of this figure to articulate his
structure. In Agamben's formulation of "Levi's paradox," "I was a Muselmann" (165) implies a direct
contradiction of Agamben's model of the absolute, silent witness. Considering Agamben's reflections in
The Coming Community and Potentialities, it is clear that the model of the self he is putting forth is
embodied in his reading of the Holocaust survivor who like Bartleby and the messianic Aher exists as
potentiality revealing the event of language, the capacity to speak. This construct displaces entirely the
historical and individual memorial nature of the survivor. While Agamben paradoxically claims that the
fact that there are actual Muselmänner who bear witness to their experiences adds weight to his
argument, their testimony does not articulate "this extreme formulation" (165) of paradox. Are we to
hear in their testimonies of cruel suffering and degradation in the Nazi death camps "the unsaid," "an
essential lacuna"? The same question that arises when Agamben speaks of the poetic self presses here:
What status is left for the historical self in a subject that is "the central threshold through which pass
currents of the human and the inhuman" (135)? Agamben eliminates the human survivor and his or her
living testimony: "the witnesses—are neither the dead nor the survivors, neither the drowned nor the
saved. They are what remains between them" (164). What remains of the Nazi genocide if its testimony
is heard as the silence of an ideal theoretical subject?

Derrida fundamentally misunderstands Agamben – he’s a dumbass

Donahue 13 (Luke Donahue is a writer who specializes in deconstruction, “Erasing Differences
between Derrida and Agamben” 2013 Oxford Literary Review p. 29-30)///CW
While Part One of Homo Sacer focuses on the sovereign who appears¶ most in the law, Part Two focuses
on the banished ex-citizen who¶ appears most devoid of law and most animal. This exile is homo sacer,¶
excluded from the legal order. But while exiled from the polis, he is¶ not completely abandoned to
animal life: just as the sovereign state¶ of exception still holds a relation to law, so too does homo sacer.
When¶ Agamben calls homo sacer bare life, he does not mean that bare life is the¶ pure, unqualified life
of zoe. Rather, bare life is a ‘zone of indistinction’¶ between zoe and bios, between life that is absolutely
animal and life¶ that is qualified as human and political. While bare life is commonly¶ confused with zoe,
Agamben says clearly: ‘Neither political bios nor¶ natural zoe, sacred life is the zone of indistinction in
which zoe and bios¶ constitute each other in including and excluding each other’ (HS, 90).7¶ What is
more, while bare life is the play between bios and zoe, there is¶ no bios or zoe prior to the bare life of
homo sacer. Just as nature and¶ culture only appear after the originary confusion between them, so
the¶ condition of possibility of the appearance of either pure bios or pure¶ zoe is the originary co-
contamination that ‘precedes’ either of them.¶ Derrida continually misunderstands these points when
he identifies¶ bare life with zoe, as in the following apposition: ‘bare life (zoe)’.8¶ This confusion gives
Derrida the impression that ‘Agamben is required¶ to demonstrate that the difference between zoe and
bios is absolutely¶ rigorous’ (BS, 326). But Agamben’s point is just the opposite: the¶ distinction never
was rigorous. There never was an original unity or¶ an original and secure difference.

Human rights enforce the authority of the sovereign by delineating citizenry

throughout humanity
Agamben, 1998 - Professor of philosophy at the University of Verona (Giorgio; “Homo Sacer: Sovereign
Power and Bare Life”; pg. 75-77; http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/biopolitics/HomoSacer.pdf; DOA
7/19/15 || NDW)

A simple examination of the text of the Declaration of 1789 shows that it is precisely bare natural life –
which is to say, the pure fact of birth – that appears here as the source and bearer of rights. “Men,” the
first article declares, “are born and remain free and equal in rights” (from this perspective, the strictest
formulation of all is to be found in La Fayette’s project elaborated in July 1789: “Every man is born with
inalienable and indefeasible rights”). At the same time, however, the very natural life that, inaugurating
the biopolitics of modernity, is placed at the foundation of the order vanishes into the figure of the
citizen, in whom rights are “preserved” (according to the second article: “The goal of every political
association is the preservation of the natural and indefeasible rights of man”). And the Declaration can
attribute sovereignty to the “nation” (according to the third article: “The principle of all sovereignty
resides essentially in the nation”) precisely because it has already inscribed this element of birth in the
very heart of the political community. The nation – the term derives etymologically from nascere (to be
born) – thus closes the open circle of mans birth. 2.2. Declarations of rights must therefore be viewed as
the place in which the passage from divinely authorized royal sovereignty to national sovereignty is
accomplished. This passage assures the exceptio of life in the new state order that will succeed the
collapse of the ancien régime. The fact that in this process the “subject” is, as has been noted,
transformed into a “citizen” means that birth – which is to say, bare natural life as such – here for the
first time becomes (thanks to a transformation whose biopolitical consequences we are only beginning
to discern today) the immediate bearer of sovereignty. The principle of nativity and the principle of
sovereignty, which were separated in the ancien régime (where birth marked only the emergence of a
sujet, a subject), are now irrevocably united in the body of the “sovereign subject” so that the
foundation of the new nation-state may be constituted. It is not possible to understand the “national”
and biopolitical development and vocation of the modern state in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries if one forgets that what lies at its basis is not man as a free and conscious political subject but,
above all, man’s bare life, the simple birth that as such is, in the passage from subject to citizen, invested
with the principle of sovereignty. The fiction implicit here is that birth immediately becomes nation such
that there can be no interval of separation [scarto] between the two terms. Rights are attributed to man
(or originate in him) solely to the extent that man is the immediately vanishing ground (who must never
come to light as such) of the citizen. Only if we understand this essential historical function of the
doctrine of rights can we grasp the development and Metamorphosis of declarations of rights in our
century. When the hidden difference [scarto] between birth and nation entered into a lasting crisis
following the devastation of Europe’s geopolitical order after the First World War, what appeared was
Nazism and fascism, that is, two properly biopolitical movements that made of natural life the exemplary
place of the sovereign decision. We are used to condensing the essence of National Socialist ideology
into the syntagm “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden). When Alfred Rosenberg wanted to express his
party’s vision of the world, it is precisely to this hendiadys that he turned. “The National Socialist vision
of the world,” he writes, “springs from the conviction that soil and blood constitute what is essential
about Germanness, and that it is therefore in reference to these two givens that a cultural and state
politics must be directed” (Blut und Ehre, p. 242). Yet it has too often been forgotten that this formula,
which is so highly determined politically, has, in truth, an innocuous juridical origin. The formula is
nothing other than the concise expression of the two criteria that, already in Roman law, served to
identify citizenship (that is, the primary inscription of life in the state order): ius soli (birth in a certain
territory) and ius sanguinis (birth from citizen parents). In the ancien régime, these two traditional
juridical criteria had no essential meaning, since they expressed only a relation of subjugation. Yet with
the French Revolution they acquire a new and decisive importance. Citizenship now does not simply
identify a generic subjugation to royal authority or a determinate system of laws, nor does it simply
embody (as Chalier maintained when he suggested to the convention on September 23,1792, that the
title of citizen be substituted for the traditional title monsieur or sieur in every public act) the new
egalitarian principle; citizenship names the new status of life as origin and ground of sovereignty and,
therefore, literally identifies – to cite Jean-Denis Lanjuinais’s words to the convention – les membres du
souverain, “the members of the sovereign.” Hence the centrality (and the ambiguity) of the notion of
“citizenship” in modern political thought, which compels Rousseau to say, “No author in France... has
understood the true meaning of the term ‘citizen.’ “ Hence too, however, the rapid growth in the course
of the French Revolution of regulatory provisions specifying which man was a citizen and which one not,
and articulating and gradually restricting the area of the ius soli and the ius sanguinis. Until this time, the
questions “What is French? What is German?” had constituted not a political problem but only one
theme among others discussed in philosophical anthropologies. Caught in a constant work of
redefinition, these questions now begin to become essentially political, to the point that, with National
Socialism, the answer to the question “Who and what is German?” (and also, therefore, “Who and what
is not German?”) coincides immediately with the highest political task. Fascism and Nazism are, above
all, Biopolitics and the Rights of Man 77 redefinitions of the relations between man and citizen, and
become fully intelligible only when situated – no matter how paradoxical it may seem – in the
biopolitical context inaugurated by national sovereignty and declarations of rights.
 DnG
D&G can’t escape capitalism
Zizek, 4 (Slavoj. Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana University, 2004,
interviewed by Glyn Daly, Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at
University College, Northampton, Conversations With Zizek, p. 151-52)

Would this be a kind of twisted version of Deleuze and Guattari? It’s virtually the opposite of Deleuze
and Guattari, because they have this idea of capitalist schizophrenia, the bad paranoia, which then
explodes into a good revolutionary schizophrenia. But I think that Deleuze and Guattari are dangerously
close to some kind of pseudo anti-psychiatry celebration of madness. I think that madness is something
horrible — people suffer — and I’ve always found it false to try and identify some liberating dimension in
madness. In any case, the limit that the social psychologists are referring to is of a far more
straightforward kind. For example, according to some American estimates at least 70 per cent of today’s
academics and professors are on either Prozac or some other form of psychotropic drug. It is no longer
the exception. It is literally that in order to function we already need psycho-pharmacy. So that is the
limit: we will simply start getting crazy. But I don’t buy this notion of an external limit. I think that
capitalism has this incredible capacity of turning catastrophe into a new form of access. Capitalism can
turn every external limit to its development into a challenge for new capitalist investment. For example,
let us assume that there will be some big ecological catastrophe. I think that capitalism can simply turn
ecology itself into a new field of market competition, like, you know, who will produce the better
product, which will be ecologically better.

Deleuze’s concept of the war machine is violent.

Zizek 7 (Slavoj, U of Ljubljana, Mao Zedong: the Marxist Lord of Misrule, Lacan.com,
http://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm)

This capitalist reappropriation of the revolutionary dynamics is not without its comic side-effects. It was
recently made public that, in order to conceptualize the IDF urban warfare against the Palestinians, the
IDF military academies systematically refer to Deleuze and Guattari, especially to Thousand Plateaux,
using it as "operational theory" - the catchwords used are "Formless Rival Entities", "Fractal Manoeuvre",
"Velocity vs. Rhythms", "The Wahabi War Machine", "Postmodern Anarchists", "Nomadic Terrorists".
One of the key distinctions they rely on is the one between "smooth" and "striated" space, which reflect
the organizational concepts of the "war machine" and the "state apparatus". The IDF now often uses the
term "to smooth out space" when they want to refer to operation in a space as if it had no borders.
Palestinian areas are thought of as "striated" in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls,
ditches, road blocks and so on: The attack conducted by units of the IDF on the city of Nablus in April
2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier-General Aviv Kokhavi, as "inverse geometry", which he
explained as "the reorganization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions".
During the battle soldiers moved within the city across hundreds of metres of overground tunnels carved
out through a dense and contiguous urban structure. Although several thousand soldiers and Palestinian
guerrillas were manoeuvring simultaneously in the city, they were so "saturated" into the urban fabric
that very few would have been visible from the air. Furthermore, they used none of the city's streets,
roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved
horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of
movement, described by the military as "infestation", seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic
interiors as thoroughfares. The IDF's strategy of "walking through walls" involves a conception of the city
as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare "a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever
contingent and in flux. [28] So what does it follow from all this? Not, of course, the nonsensical
accusation of Deleuze and Guattari as theorists of militaristic colonization - but the conclusion that the
conceptual machine articulated by Deleuze and Guattari, far from being simply "subversive," also fits the
(military, economic, and ideologico-political) operational mode of today's capitalism. - How, then, are we
to revolutionize an order whose very principle is constant self-revolutionizing? This, perhaps, is THE
question today, and this is the way one should REPEAT Mao, re-inventing his message to the hundreds of
millions of the anonymous downtrodden, a simple and touching message of courage: "Bigness is nothing
to be afraid of. The big will be overthrown by the small. The small will become big." The same message
of courage sustains also Mao's (in)famous stance towards a new atomic world war: We stand firmly for
peace and against war. But if the imperialists insist on unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of
it. Our attitude on this question is the same as our attitude towards any disturbance: first, we are against
it; second, we are not afraid of it. The First World War was followed by the birth of the Soviet Union with
a population of 200 million. The Second World War was followed by the emergence of the socialist camp
with a combined population of 900 million. If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is
certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room
left on earth for the imperialists.

Deluzian concepts of desire are flawed and fail

Zizek 5 (Zizek, Slavoj. “Objet a as Inherent Limit to Capitalism: on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.”
Lacan.com. 2005)

So the critics of Communism were in a way right when they claimed that the Marxian Communism is an
impossible fantasy - what they did not perceive is that the Marxiam Communism, this notion of a society
of pure unleashed productivity outside the frame of Capital, was a fantasy inherent to capitalism itself,
the capitalist inherent transgression at its purest, a strictly ideological fantasy of maintaining the thrust
to productivity generated by capitalism, while getting rid of the "obstacles" and antagonisms that were -
as the sad experience of the "really existing capitalism" demonstrates - the only possible framework of
the effective material existence of a society of permanent self-enhancing productivity. So where,
precisely, did Marx go wrong with regard to the surplus-value? One is tempted to search for an answer in
the key Lacanian distinction between the object of desire and the surplus-enjoyment as its cause. Recall
the curl of the blond hair, this fatal detail of Madeleine in Hitchcock's Vertigo. When, in the love scene in
the barn towards the end of the film, Scottie passionately embraces Judy refashioned into the dead
Madeleine, during their famous 360-degree kiss, he stops kissing her and withdraws just long enough to
steal a look at her newly blond hair, as if to reassure himself that the particular feature which makes her
into the object of desire is still there... So there is always a gap between the object of desire itself and its
cause, the mediating feature or element that makes this object desirable. And, back to Marx: what if his
mistake was also to assume that the object of desire (the unconstrained expanding productivity) would
remain even when deprived of the cause that propels it (the surplus-value)? The same holds even more
for Deleuze, since he develops his theory of desire in direct opposition to the Lacanian one. Deleuze
asserts the priority of desire over its objects: desire is a positive productive force which exceeds its
objects, a living flow proliferating through the multitude of objects, penetrating them and passing
through them, in no need of any fundamental lack or "castration" that would serve as its foundation. For
Lacan, however, desire has to be sustained by an object-cause: not some primordial incestuous Lost
Object on which desire remains forever transfixed and whose unsatisfying substitutes all other objects
are, but a purely formal object which causes us to desire objects that we encounter in reality. This
object-cause of desire is thus not transcendent, the inaccessible excess forever eluding our grasp, but
behind the subject's back, something that from within directs desiring. And, as is the case with Marx, it is
Deleuze's failure to take into account this object-cause that sustains the illusory vision of
unconstrained productivity of desire - or, in the case of Hardt and Negri, the illusory vision of multitude
ruling itself, no longer constrained by any totalizing One. We can observe here the catastrophic political
consequences of the failure to develop what may appear a purely academic, "philosophical," notional
distinction.

Identity is fluid – the self is constantly becoming which disproves the thesis of identity
politics – in other words, no tag could ever do this card justice
Zizek ‘4 (slavoj mah boi, general philosopher, “The Ongoing Soft Revolution”, Critical Inquiry, wcp)

And, to go even a step further, is the practice of fist-fucking not the exemplary case of what Deleuze
called the "expansion of a concept?" The fist is put to a new use; the notion of penetration is expanded
into the combination of the hand with sexual penetration , into the exploration of the inside of a body.
No wonder Foucault, Deleuze's Other, was practicing fisting: is fist-fucking not the sexual invention of
the twentieth century, a new model of eroticism and pleasure? It is no longer genitalized, but focused
just on the penetration of the surface, with the role of the phallus being taken over by the hand, the
autonomized partial object par excellence. And, what about the so-called Transformer or animorph toys,
a car or a plane that can be transformed into a humanoid robot, an animal that can be morphed into a
human or robot. Is this not Deleuzian? There are no "metaphorics" here; the point is not that the
machinic or animal form is revealed as a mask containing a human shape but, rather, the existence of the
becoming-machine or becoming-animal of the human, the flow of continuous morphing. What is blurred
here is also the divide machine/living organism: a car transmutes into a humanoid/cyborg organism.
And, is the ultimate irony not that, for Deleuze, the sport was surfing, a Californian sport par excellence if
there ever was one? No longer a sport of self-control and domination directed towards some goal, it is
just a practice of inserting oneself into a wave and letting oneself be carried by it. Brian Massumi
formulated clearly this deadlock, which is based on the fact that today's capitalism already overcame the
logic of totalizing normality and adopted the logic of the erratic excess:

Deleuzean resistance fails – the BwO is opposed to binaries and retrenches the logic
they criticize
Mann, 95 - Professor of English at Pomona (Paul, “Stupid Undergrounds,” PostModern Culture 5:3,
Project MUSE)//jml
Intellectual economics guarantees that even the most powerful and challenging work cannot protect
itself from the order of fashion. Becoming-fashion, becoming-commodity, becoming-ruin. Such instant,
indeed retroactive ruins, are the virtual landscape of the stupid underground. The exits and lines of flight
pursued by Deleuze and Guattari are being shut down and rerouted by the very people who would take
them most seriously. By now, any given work from the stupid underground's critical apparatus is liable to
be tricked out with smooth spaces, war-machines, n - 1s, planes of consistency, plateaus and
deterritorializations, strewn about like tattoos on the stupid body without organs. The nomad is already
succumbing to the rousseauism and orientalism that were always invested in his figure; whatever
Deleuze and Guattari intended for him, he is reduced to being a romantic outlaw, to a position opposite
the State, in the sort of dialectical operation Deleuze most despised. And the rhizome is becoming just
another stupid subterranean figure. It is perhaps true that Deleuze and Guattari did not adequately
protect their thought from this dialectical reconfiguration (one is reminded of Breton's indictment
against Rimbaud for not having prevented, in advance, Claudel's recuperation of him as a proper
Catholic), but no vigilance would have sufficed in any case. The work of Deleuze and Guattari is evidence
that, in real time, virtual models and maps close off the very exits they indicate. The problem is in part
that rhizomes, lines of flight, smooth spaces, BwOs, etc., are at one and the same time theoretical-
political devices of the highest critical order and merely fantasmatic, delirious, narcissistic models for
writing, and thus perhaps an instance of the all-too-proper blurring of the distinction between criticism
and fantasy. In Deleuze-speak, the stupid underground would be mapped not as a margin surrounding a
fixed point, not as a fixed site determined strictly by its relation or opposition to some more or less
hegemonic formation, but as an intensive, n-dimensional intersection of rhizomatic plateaus.
Nomadology and rhizomatics conceive such a "space" (if one only had the proverbial nickel for every
time that word is used as a critical metaphor, without the slightest reflection on what might be involved
in rendering the conceptual in spatial terms) as a liquid, colloidal suspension, often retrievable by one or
another techno-metaphorical zoning (e.g., "cyberspace"). What is at stake, however, is not only the
topological verisimilitude of the model but the fantastic possibility of nonlinear passage, of multiple
simultaneous accesses and exits, of infinite fractal lines occupying finite social space. In the strictest
sense, stupid philosophy. Nomad thought is prosthetic, the experience of virtual exhilaration in
modalities already mapped and dominated by nomad, rhizomatic capital (the political philosophy of the
stupid underground: capital is more radical than any of its critiques, but one can always pretend
otherwise). It is this very fantasy, this very narcissistic wish to see oneself projected past the frontier into
new spaces, that abandons one to this economy, that seals these spaces within an order of critical
fantasy that has long since been overdeveloped, entirely reterritorialized in advance. To pursue
nomadology or rhizomatics as such is already to have lost the game. Nothing is more crucial to
philosophy than escaping the dialectic and no project is more hopeless; the stupid-critical underground
is the curved space in which this opposition turns back on itself.

Deleuze’s philosophy ignores suffering and makes us inactive—only the aff can activate
agency
Hallward, 6 – Professor in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex
University, London (Peter, “Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation”, p. 161-162)
Now Deleuze understands perfectly well why ‘most of the objections raised against the great
philosophers are empty’. Indignant readers say to them: ‘things are not like that […]. But, in fact, it is not
a matter of knowing whether things are like that or not; it is a matter of knowing whether the question
which presents things in such a light is good or not, rigorous or not’ (ES, 106). Rather than test its
accuracy according to the criteria of representation, ‘the genius of a philosophy must first be measured
by the new distribution which it imposes on beings and concepts’ (LS, 6). In reality then, Deleuze
concludes, ‘only one kind of objection is worthwhile: the objection which shows that the question raised
by a philosopher is not a good question’, that it ‘does not force the nature of things enough’ (ES, 107; cC
WP, 82). Deleuze certainly forces the nature of things into conformity with his own question. Just as
certainly however, his question inhibits any consequential engagement with the constraints of our actual
world. For readers who remain concerned with these constraints and their consequences, Deleuze’s
question is not the best available question. Rather than try to refute Deleuze, this book has tried to show
how his system works and to draw attention to what should now he the obvious (and perfectly explicit)
limitations of this philosophy of unlimited affirmation. First of all, since it acknowledges only a unilateral
relation between virtual and actual, there is no place in Deleuze’s philosophy for any notion of change,
time or history that is mediated by actuality In the end, Deleuze offers few resources for thinking the
consequences of what happens within the actually existing world as such. Unlike Darwin or Marx, for
instance, the adamantly virtual orientation of Deleuze’s ‘constructivism’ does not allow him to account
for cumulative transformation or novelty in terms of actual materials and tendencies. No doubt few
contemporary philosophers have had as an acute a sense of the internal dynamic of capitalism — but
equally, few have proposed so elusive a response as the virtual ‘war machine’ that roams through the
pages of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Like the nomads who invented it, this abstract machine operates
at an ‘absolute speed, by being “synonymous with speed”’, as the incarnation of ‘a pure and
immeasurable multiplicity; an irruption of the ephemeral and of the power of metamorphosis’ (TP, 336,
352). Like any creating, a war machine consists and ‘exists only in its own metamorphoses’ (T~ 360). By
posing the question of politics in the starkly dualistic terms of war machine or state — by posing it, in the
end, in the apocalyptic terms of a new people and a new earth or else no people and no earth — the
political aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy amounts to little more than utopian distraction. Although no
small number of enthusiasts continue to devote much energy and ingenuity to the task, the truth is that
Deleuze’s work is essentially indifferent to the politics of this world. A philosophy based on
deterritorialisation, dissipation and flight can offer only the most immaterial and evanescent grip on the
mechanisms of exploitation and domination that continue to condition so much of what happens in our
world. Deleuze’s philosophical war remains ‘absolute’ and ‘abstract’, precisely, rather than directed or
‘waged’ [menee]. Once ‘a social field is defined less by its conflicts and contradictions than by the lines of
flight running through it’, any distinctive space for political action can only be subsumed within the more
general dynamics of creation or life. And since these dynamics are themselves anti-dialectical if not anti-
relational, there can be little room in Deleuze’s philosophy for relations of conflict or solidarity, i.e.
relations that are genuinely between rather than external to individuals, classes, or principles.

War Machine creates violence.

Deleuze and Guattari 1987 (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; A Thousand Plateus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, http://projectlamar.com/media/A-Thousand-Plateaus.pdf//AGY)
We now come to three successive problems. First, is the battle the "object" of war? But also, is war the
"object" of the war machine? And finally, to what extent is the war machine the "object" of the State
appara- tus? The ambiguity of the first two problems is certainly due to the term "object," but implies
their dependency on the third. We must nevertheless approach these problems gradually, even if we are
reduced to multiplying examples. The first question, that of the battle, requires an immediate dis-
tinction to be made between two cases: when a battle is sought, and when it is essentially avoided by
the war machine. These two cases in no way coin- cide with the offensive and the defensive. But war in
the strict sense (according to a conception of it that culminated in Foch) does seem to have the battle as
its object, whereas guerrilla warfare explicitly aims for the nonbattle. However, the development of war
into the war of movement, and into total war, also places the notion of the battle in question, as much
from the offensive as the defensive points of view: the concept of the nonbattle seems capable of
expressing the speed of a flash attack, and the counterspeed of an immediate response.104 Conversely,
the development of guerilla warfare implies a moment when, and forms under which, a bat- tle must be
effectively sought, in connection with exterior and interior "support points." And it is true that guerrilla
warfare and war proper are constantly borrowing each other's methods and that the borrowings run
equally in both directions (for example, stress has often been laid on the inspirations land-based guerrilla
warfare received from maritime war). All we can say is that the battle and the nonbattle are the double
object of war, according to a criterion that does not coincide with the offensive and the defensive, or
even with war proper and guerrilla warfare. That is why we push the question further back, asking if war
itself is the object of the war machine. It is not at all obvious. To the extent that war (with or without the
battle) aims for the annihilation or capitulation of enemy forces, the war machine does not necessarily
have war as its object (for example, the raid can be seen as another object, rather than as a partic- ular
form of war). But more generally, we have seen that the war machine was the invention of the nomad,
because it is in its essence the constitutive element of smooth space, the occupation of this space,
displacement within this space, and the corresponding composition of people: this is its sole and
veritable positive object (nomos). Make the desert, the steppe, grow; do not depopulate it, quite the
contrary. If war necessarily results, it is because the war machine collides with States and cities, as forces
(of stri-ation) opposing its positive object: from then on, the war machine has as its enemy the State, the
city, the state and urban phenomenon, and adopts as its objective their annihilation. It is at this point
that the war machine becomes war: annihilate the forces of the State, destroy the State-form. The Attila,
or Genghis Khan, adventure clearly illustrates this progression from the positive object to the negative
object. Speaking like Aristotle, we would say that war is neither the condition nor the object of the war
machine, but necessarily accompanies or completes it; speaking like Derrida, we would say that war is
the "supplement" of the war machine. It may even happen that this supplementarity is comprehended
through a progressive, anxiety-ridden revelation. Such, for example, was the adven- ture of Moses:
leaving the Egyptian State behind, launching into the desert, he begins by forming a war machine, on the
inspiration of the old past of the nomadic Hebrews and on the advice of his father-in-law, who came
from the nomads. This is the machine of the Just, already a war machine, but one that does not yet have
war as its object. Moses realizes, little by lit- tle, in stages, that war is the necessary supplement of that
machine, because it encounters or must cross cities and States, because it must send ahead spies (armed
observation), then perhaps take things to extremes (war of annihilation). Then the Jewish people
experience doubt, and fear that they are not strong enough; but Moses also doubts, he shrinks before
the revela- tion of this supplement. And it will be Joshua, not Moses, who is charged with waging war.
Finally, speaking like Kant, we would say that the relation between war and the war machine is necessary
but "synthetic" (Yahweh is necessary for the synthesis). The question of war, in turn, is pushed further
back and is subordinated to the relations between the war machine and the State apparatus. States
were not the first to make war: war, of course, is not a phenomenon one finds in the universality of
Nature, as nonspecific violence. But war is not the object of States, quite the contrary. The most archaic
States do not even seem to have had a war machine, and their domination, as we will see, was based on
other agencies (comprising, rather, the police and prisons). It is safe to assume that the intervention of
an extrinsic or nomad war machine that counterattacked and destroyed the archaic but powerful States
was one of the mysterious reasons for their sudden annihilation. But the State learns fast. One of the
biggest questions from the point of view of universal history is: How will the State appropriate the war
machine, that is, consti- tute one for itself, in conformity with its size, its domination, and its aims? And
with what risks? (What we call a military institution, or army, is not at all the war machine in itself, but
the form under which it is appropriated by the State.) In order to grasp the paradoxical character of such
an undertak- ing, we must recapitulate the hypothesis in its entirety. (1) The war machine is that nomad
invention that in fact has war not as its primary object but as its second-order, supplementary or
synthetic objective, in the sense that it is determined in such a way as to destroy the State-form and city-
form with which it collides. (2) When the State appropriates the war machine, the latter obviously
changes in nature and function, since it is afterward directed against the nomad and all State destroyers,
or else expresses relations between States, to the extent that a State undertakes exclusively to destroy
another State or impose its aims upon it. (3) It is pre- cisely after the war machine has been appropriated
by the State in this way that it tends to take war for its direct and primary object, for its "analytic" object
(and that war tends to take the battle for its object). In short, it is at one and the same time that the
State apparatus appropriates a war machine, that the war machine takes war as its object, and that war
be- comes subordinated to the aims of the State.

The Israeli Defense Forces uses the War Machine.

Lambert 10 (Gregg Lambert, Professor of Humanities and Founding Director of the Humanities Centre at
Syracuse University; “The War Machine and ‘a people who revolt,’” Theory & Event 13.3,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v013/13.3.lambert.html// AGY)

In saying this, of course, I realize that this last association has become extremely inconvenient today in
relation to the image of the suicide bomber, the member of an anomalous and nomadic band, who
walks into a public square to explode his own organs precisely in an effort, it seems, to ward off the State
form. Equally problematic are the recent reports of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the war-machine
being employed by the IDF as a manual for counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist strategy. One of the
most perverse ironies is that in their “appropriation” of Deleuze and Guattari’s theory (but also that of
Guy Debord), is the IDF’s “complete identification” with the principle of exteriority that is actually
ascribed to the nomadic war-machine. In this regard, perversion bears the Hegelian meaning of
“inversion” (verkerht), described by Brigadier-General Aviv Kokhavi, as an “inverse geometry,” or “the
reorganization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions.” The inversion or
reversal represented in this tactic is that it is the IDF that defines itself as a war-machine that is always
external to the Palestinian State Apparatus (Beirut), which is itself defined as a striated space of
alleyways, doorways, windows (the various traps created by normal spatial thinking). Consequently, from
this “positive discovery” they develop three major axioms of counter-insurgency: doors are not for
entering or leaving, windows are not for looking through; instead, move only through the walls.
Palestinian areas could indeed be thought of as “striated” in the sense that they are enclosed by fences,
walls, ditches, road blocks and so on.’10 However, what is revealing, albeit problematic, in the IDF’s
complete identification with the principle of exteriority that belongs to the war machine is this: the
overall objective of the IDF is not consistent with the goals of State Power traditionally defined as
extending a line of domination through the protection and replenishment of the organs of State power.
Rather, the tactical objectives are purely aligned with the goals of the war-machine: to destroy the
organs of State Power, to deny to the Palestinian State Form its ability to replenish its own organs, to
“create a little smooth space” in the middle of Beirut, to “de-territorialize” Lebanon.

The War Machine fails because it offers no cohesion. Need to find social change to
solve.
Hallward 06 (2006; Peter Hallward, Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University
London, specializes in Deleuze, Foucault, Sartre, Badiou, Ranciere; Out of this World: Deleuze and the
Philosophy of Creation, Verso London, pg. 162-164// AGY)

Deleuze writes a philosophy of (virtual) difference without (actual) others. He intuits a purely internal or
self-differing difference, a difference that excludes any constitutive mediation between the differed. Such
a philosophy precludes a distinctively relational conception of politics as a matter of course. The politics
of the future are likely to depend less on virtual mobility tan on more resilient forms of cohesion, on
more resistant forms of defence. Rather than align ourselves with the nomadic war machine, our first
task should be to develop appropriate ways of responding to the newly aggressive techniques of
invasion, penetration and occupation which serve to police the embattled margins of empire. In a
perverse twist of fate, it may be that today, in places like Palestine, Haiti, and Iraq, the agents of
imperialism have more to learn from Deleuzian rhizomatics than do their opponents. As we have
repeatedly seen, the second corollary of Deleuze’s disqualification of actuality concerns the paralysis of
the subject or actor. Since what powers Deleuze’s cosmology is the immediate differentiation of creation
through the infinite proliferation of virtual creatings, the creatures that actualize these creatings are
confined to a derivative if not limiting role. A creature’s own interests, actions or decisions are of
minimal or preliminary significance at best: the renewal of creation always requires the paralysis and
dissolution of the creature per se. The notion of a constrained or situated freedom, the notion that a
subject’s own decisions might genuine consequences – the whole notion, in short, of strategy – is
thoroughly foreign to Deleuze’s conception of thought. Deleuze obliges us, in other words, to make an
absolute distinction between what a subject does or decides and what is done or decided through the
subject. By rendering this distinction absolute he abandons the category of the subject altogether. He
abandons the decisive subject in favour of our more immediate subjection to the imperatives of creative
life or thought. Deprived of any strategic apparatus, Deleuze’s philosophy thus combines the self-
grounding sufficiency of pure force or infinite perfection with our symmetrical limitation to pure
contemplation or in-action. On the one hand, Deleuze always maintains that ‘there are never any criteria
other than the tenor of existence, the intensification of life’. Absolute life or creation tolerates no norm
external to itself. The creative movement that orients us out of the world does not depend on a
transcendent value beyond the world. After Spinoza, after Nietzsche, Deleuze rejects all forms of moral
evaluation or strategic judgment. Every instance of decision, every confrontation with the question ‘what
should we do?’, is to be resolved exclusively in terms of what we can do. An individual’s power or
capacity is also its ‘natural right’, and the answer to the question of what an individual or body should do
is again simplicity itself – it should go and will always go ‘as far as it can’ (WP, 74; EP, 258). But on the
other hand, we know that an individual can only do this because its power is not that of the individual
itself. By doing what it can, an individual only provides a vessel for the power that works through it, and
which alone acts – or rather, which alone is. What impels u to ‘persevere in our being’ has nothing to do
with us as such. So when, in the conclusion of their last joint project, Deleuze and Guattari observe the
‘vitalism has always had two possible interpretations’, it is not surprising that they should opt for the
resolutely in-active interpretation. Vitalism, they explain, can be conceived either in terms of ‘an Idea
that acts but is not, and that acts therefore only from the point of view of an external cerebral
knowledge; or of a force that is but does not act, and which is therefore a pure internal Feeling [Sentir]’.
Deleuze and Guattari embrace this second interpretation, they choose Leibnizian being over Kantian act,
precisely because it disables action in favour of contemplation. It suspends any relation between a living
and the lived, between a knowing and the know, between a creating and the created. They embrace it
because what feeling ‘preserves is always in a state of detachment in relation to action and even to
movement, and appears as a pure contemplation without knowledge’. As Deleuze understands, living
contemplation proceeds at an immeasurable distance from what is merely lived, known or decided. Life
lives and creation creates on a virtual plane that leads forever out of our actual world. Few philosophers
have been as inspiring as Deleuze. But those of us who still seek to change our world and to empower its
inhabitants will need to look for our inspiration elsewhere.

The War Machine causes singularity- takes movements out of politics which is key to
solve.
Somers-Hall 07 (2007; Henry Somers-Hall, Professor of Philosophy at Royal Holloway at Universty of
London; “The Politics of Creation,”
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/formerresearchstudents/henry-somers-
hall/the_politics_of_creation-henry_somers-hall.pdf// AGY)

Peter Hallward’s study of Deleuze aims “to go right to the heart of [his] philosophy”2 through the
charting of one “broadly consistent course”, that of the implications of Deleuze’s presumption that Being
is creativity. In charting such a course, Hallward is able indeed to provide what is a thorough and
consistent interpretation of the work of Deleuze, showing admirable familiarity with both bibliographical
and thematic aspects of the Deleuzian system. In asserting that there is an essentially stable project
throughout Deleuze’s philosophical development, Hallward draws on the full resources of Deleuze’s
writing across (almost) all major domains, and there is certainly some truth to his claim that the guiding
theme of Deleuze’s philosophy is creativity. If philosophy is to be seen as the creation of concepts, surely
our primary task is to unravel the concept of creation. In performing this task of identifying both
conceptual slippages and continuities between the various terms and periods of Deleuze’s writings,
Hallward is indeed able to present the work of Deleuze as providing a coherent interpretation of Being.
In doing so, Peter Hallward rejects an explanation of Deleuze’s system based on the parallels with
modern scientific models, instead rightly resituating Deleuze within the tradition of philosophy.
Fundamental to this is the recognition of the importance of Bergson as a key precursor, which means
that Hallward does not fall into the trap of interpreting Deleuze as a thinker of the multiple through a
false reading of Deleuzian difference as diversity. In his interpretation of Deleuze, however, Hallward
displays a degree of hostility to what he takes to be both the aims and the consequences of Deleuze’s
ontology. In his focus on creation, which ‘precedes’ the individual itself as differentiated, Hallward will
argue, Deleuze is only able to fulfil his magical formula, “PLURALISM = MONISM”3 by subordinating the
organism to the process of creation itself. This is because creation, which generates the plurality which
Deleuze wishes on the surface to take account of, cannot itself partake in this plurality, for to do so
would be to reduce creation to pure actuality itself, and the actual, Hallward argues, is not real. The task
of the organism, if we are to follow Deleuze, is therefore to “recapture in individual existences, and
follow to the source from which it emanates, the particular ray that, conferring upon each of them its
own nuance, reattaches it thereby to the universal light.”4 This process, which Hallward characterises
through the idea of subtraction, is the key to a new relation between the fields of philosophy, science,
and art. Whilst art “dilates our perception,”5 opening us up to the possibility of experiencing the
virtuality of the world, its effect can only be negative. As the work of Francis Bacon shows, the aim of art
may be to paint forces, but ultimately this can only be achieved through the trace which is left on the
canvas. “Art ‘enriches our present but scarcely enables us to go beyond it’ into the virtual continuity of
time as a continuous whole.”6 Art is thus this process of following to the source our own individual
existences. To move beyond this, however, we require philosophy, the “smile without the cat, as it
were.”7 On Hallward’s reading, it is philosophy’s aim to extract from the state of affairs the pure (virtual)
event, and thus to sever ties with actuality altogether. In this move, philosophy becomes mysticism,
“fully spiritualised and dematerialised,”8 and thus a moment of pure affirmation. Reliant on this
movement are all of the positive traits of Deleuze’s philosophy,9 but this also leads to one particular trait
which makes Deleuze’s position politically absolutely untenable. The move to a philosophy of the virtual
means a move to a philosophy of absolute affirmation, within which the political action of the creature in
the face of oppression no longer has meaning. One escapes the world through a line of flight which takes
‘one’ (if this term can still find any applicability) to the extra-worldly. The consequences of this for
political action seem devastating for Hallward. On the one hand, any idea of such a thing as solidarity, or
even opposition, seems to become impossible. If our aim is to return to the universal light (or even
simply if there is such a universal light), then the possibility of either of these stances, which rely on our
relations as creatures to other creatures, becomes impossible. The singularity of creation obscures the
possibility of any kind of difference between things, as all things are really one, making relation
impossible. Instead, we simply have difference differenciating itself. Action is dissolved in the whole. “By
doing what it can, an individual only provides a vessel for the power that works through it, which alone
acts – or rather, which alone is. What impels us to ‘persevere in our being’ has nothing to do with us as
such.”10 What this makes problematic is any kind of genuine engagement with concrete political
situations, at a time when such an engagement is clearly called for. Instead of this, on Hallward’s reading,
Deleuze is arguing that one should move to pure contemplation of the world. “The real preoccupation of
[Hallward’s] book concerns the value of this advice.”11
Fail to make actual change- their authors keep the dialogue going only to make sure
change does not occur.
Zizek 02 (2002; Slavoj Zizek; “The Prospects of Radical Politics Today,” in: Documenta11_platform1:
Democracy Unrealized. Hatje Cantz. p. 67-85. English; http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-
zizek/articles/the-prospects-of-radical-politics-today///AGY)

Let us take two predominant topics of today's American radical academia: postcolonial and queer (gay)
studies. The problem of postcolonialism is undoubtedly crucial; however, "postcolonial studies" tend to
translate it into the multiculturalist problematic of the colonized minorities' "right to narrate" their
victimizing experience, of the power mechanisms which repress "otherness," so that, at the end of the
day, we learn that the root of postcolonial exploitation is our intolerance toward the Other, and,
furthermore, that this intolerance itself is rooted in our intolerance toward the "Stranger in Ourselves,"
in our inability to confront what we repressed in and of ourselves. The politico-economic struggle is thus
imperceptibly transformed into a pseudo-psychoanalytic drama of the subject unable to confront its
inner traumas ... The true corruption of American academia is not primarily financial, it is not only that
they are able to buy many European critical intellectuals (myself included – up to a point), but
conceptual: notions of "European" critical theory are imperceptibly translated into the benign universe
of Cultural Studies chic. My personal experience is that practically all of the "radical" academics silently
count on the long-term stability of the American capitalist model, with the secure tenured position as
their ultimate professional goal (a surprising number of them even play on the stock market). If there is a
thing they are genuinely horrified of, it is a radical shattering of the (relatively) safe life environment of
the "symbolic classes" in the developed Western societies. Their excessive Politically Correct zeal when
dealing with sexism, racism, Third World sweatshops, etc., is thus ultimately a defense against their own
innermost identification, a kind of compulsive ritual whose hidden logic is: "Let's talk as much as possible
about the necessity of a radical change to make sure that nothing will really change!" Symptomatic here
is the journal October: when you ask one of the editors to what the title refers, they will half-
confidentially signal that it is, of course, that October – in this way, one can indulge in the jargonistic
analyses of modern art, with the hidden assurance that one is somehow retaining the link with the
radical revolutionary past ... With regard to this radical chic, the first gesture toward Third Way
ideologists and practitioners should be that of praise: they at least play their game straight and are
honest in their acceptance of global capitalist coordinates, in contrast to the pseudo-radical academic
Leftists who adopt toward the Third Way the attitude of utter disdain, while their own radicality
ultimately amounts to an empty gesture which obligates no one to anything determinate.

The aff’s rejection of the state dooms them to reproduce the hierarchal structures they
critique. Their author concludes neg.
Guattari and Rolnik 86 (Felix and Suely, schitzoanalysts and revolutionaries, 1986, “Molecular Revolution
in Brazil, p.120-121)

Comment: It's good that you mentioned those homosexuals who worked within the system as lawyers
and succeeded in shaking it up. Here, everyone looks down on the institutional part.¶ Guattari: That's
silly.¶ Comment: They think that dealing with the institutional side is reformism, that it doesn't change
anything. As far as they're concerned, the institutions should be ignored because only one kind of thing
is worthwhile, anarchism—which I question deeply. I think it's very naive, as you yourself say, to ignore
the state on the basis that "it's useless," or "it oppresses us," and therefore to leave it aside and try to do
something totally from outside, as though it might be possible for us to destroy it like that.¶ Suely Rolnik:
This malaise in relation to institutions is nothing new; on the contrary, the feeling is particularly strong in
our generation which, since the 1960s, has taken institutions as one of its main targets. But it's true that
the malaise has been especially pronounced in Brazil over the last few years, and in my view this must
have to do with an absolutely objective (and obvious) fact, which is the hardness of the dictatorship to
which we were subjected for so long. The rigidity of that regime is embodied in all the country's
institutions, in one way or another; in fact, that constituted an important factor for the permanence of
the dictatorship in power over so many years.¶ But I think that this antiinstitutional malaise, whatever its
cause, doesn't end there: the feeling that the institutions are contaminated territories, and the
conclusion that nothing should be invested in them, is often the expression of a defensive role. This kind
of sensation is, in my view, the flip side of the fascination with the institution that characterizes the
"bureaucratic libido." These two attitudes really satisfy the same need, which is to use the prevailing
forms, the instituted, as the sole, exclusive parameter in the organization of oneself and of relations with
the other, and thus avoid succumbing to the danger of collapse that might be brought about by any kind
of change. Those are two styles of symbiosis with the institution: either "gluey" adhesion and
identification (those who adopt this style base their identity on the "instituted"), or else repulsion and
counteridentification (those who adopt this style base their identity on negation of the "instituted," as if
there were something "outside" the institutions, a supposed "alternative" space to this world).¶ Seen in
this light, both "alternativism" and "bureaucratism" restrict themselves to approaching the world from
the viewpoint of its forms and representations, from a molar viewpoint; they protect themselves against
accessing the molecular plane, where new sensations are being produced and composed and ultimately
force the creation of new forms of reality,. They both reflect a blockage of instituting power, an
impossibility of surrender to the processes of singularization, a need for conservation of the prevailing
forms, a difficulty in gaining access to the molecular plane, where the new is engendered. It's more
difficult, to perceive this in the case of "alternativism," because it involves the hallucination of a
supposedly parallel world that ¶ emanates the illusion of unfettered autonomy and freedom of creation;
and just when we think we've got away from "squareness" we risk succumbing to it again, in a more
disguised form. In this respect, I agree with you: the institutions aren't going to be changed by
pretending that they don't exist. Nonetheless, it's necessary to add two reserves. In the first place, it's
obvious that not every social experimentation qualified by the name of "alternative" is marked by this
defensive hallucination of a parallel world. And secondly, x it's self-evident that in order to bear the
harshness of an authoritarian regime there is a tendency to make believe that itdoesn't exist, so as not to
have to enter into contact with sensations of frustration and powerlessness that go beyond the limit of
tolerability (indeed, this is a general reaction before any traumatic experience). And in order to survive,
people try in so far as possible to create other territories of life, which are often clandestine.

Turn – Deleuze’s war machine is itself violent.

Zizek 7 (Slavoj, U of Ljubljana, Mao Zedong: the Marxist Lord of Misrule, Lacan.com,
http://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm)
There IS thus, beyond all cheap jibes and superficial analogies, a profound structural homology between
the Maoist permanent self-revolutionizing, the permanent struggle against the ossification of State
structures, and the inherent dynamics of capitalism. One is tempted to paraphrase here Brecht, his
"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a new bank?", yet again: what are the
violent and destructive outbursts of a Red Guardist caught in the Cultural Revolution compared to the
true Cultural Revolution, the permanent dissolution of all life-forms necessitated by the capitalist
reproduction? It is the reign of today's global capitalism which is the true Lord of Misrule. No wonder,
then, that, in order to curb the excess of social disintegration caused by the capitalist explosion, Chinese
officials not celebrate religions and traditional ideologies which sustain social stability, from Buddhism to
Confucianism, i.e., the very ideologies that were the target of the Cultural Revolution. In April 2006, Ye
Xiaowen, China's top religious official, told the Xinhua News Agency that "religion is one of the important
forces from which China draws strength," and he singled out Buddhism for its 'unique role in promoting
a harmonious society," the official formula for combining economic expansion with social development
and care; the same week, China hosted the World Buddhist Forum. [27] The role of religion as the force
of stability against the capitalist dynamics is thus officially sanctioned - what is bothering Chinese
authorities in the case of sects like Falun Gong is merely their independence from the state control. (This
is why one should also reject the argument that Cultural Revolution strengthened socialist attitudes
among the people and thus helped to curb the worst disintegrative excesses of today's capitalist
development: quite on the contrary, by undermining traditional stabilizing ideologies like Confucianism,
it rendered the people all the more vulnerable to the destabilizing effects of capitalism.) This capitalist
reappropriation of the revolutionary dynamics is not without its comic side-effects. It was recently made
public that, in order to conceptualize the IDF urban warfare against the Palestinians, the IDF military
academies systematically refer to Deleuze and Guattari, especially to Thousand Plateaux, using it as
"operational theory" - the catchwords used are "Formless Rival Entities", "Fractal Manoeuvre", "Velocity
vs. Rhythms", "The Wahabi War Machine", "Postmodern Anarchists", "Nomadic Terrorists". One of the
key distinctions they rely on is the one between "smooth" and "striated" space, which reflect the
organizational concepts of the "war machine" and the "state apparatus". The IDF now often uses the
term "to smooth out space" when they want to refer to operation in a space as if it had no borders.
Palestinian areas are thought of as "striated" in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls,
ditches, road blocks and so on: The attack conducted by units of the IDF on the city of Nablus in April
2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier-General Aviv Kokhavi, as "inverse geometry", which he
explained as "the reorganization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions".
During the battle soldiers moved within the city across hundreds of metres of overground tunnels carved
out through a dense and contiguous urban structure. Although several thousand soldiers and Palestinian
guerrillas were manoeuvring simultaneously in the city, they were so "saturated" into the urban fabric
that very few would have been visible from the air. Furthermore, they used none of the city's streets,
roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved
horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of
movement, described by the military as "infestation", seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic
interiors as thoroughfares. The IDF's strategy of "walking through walls" involves a conception of the city
as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare "a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever
contingent and in flux. [28] So what does it follow from all this? Not, of course, the nonsensical
accusation of Deleuze and Guattari as theorists of militaristic colonization - but the conclusion that the
conceptual machine articulated by Deleuze and Guattari, far from being simply "subversive," also fits the
(military, economic, and ideologico-political) operational mode of today's capitalism. - How, then, are we
to revolutionize an order whose very principle is constant self-revolutionizing? This, perhaps, is THE
question today, and this is the way one should REPEAT Mao, re-inventing his message to the hundreds of
millions of the anonymous downtrodden, a simple and touching message of courage: "Bigness is nothing
to be afraid of. The big will be overthrown by the small. The small will become big." The same message
of courage sustains also Mao's (in)famous stance towards a new atomic world war: We stand firmly for
peace and against war. But if the imperialists insist on unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of
it. Our attitude on this question is the same as our attitude towards any disturbance: first, we are against
it; second, we are not afraid of it. The First World War was followed by the birth of the Soviet Union with
a population of 200 million. The Second World War was followed by the emergence of the socialist camp
with a combined population of 900 million. If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is
certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room
left on earth for the imperialists.

Nomadology turn- Nomads are futile- affirming the Nomad and war machine creates
an inherent dialectic that creates no change.
Mann 95 (1995; Paul Mann, Professor of English at Pomona College; “Stupid Undergrounds,”
http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.595/mann.595//AGY)

Intellectual economics guarantees that even the most powerful and challenging work cannot protect
itself from the order of fashion. Becoming-fashion, becoming-commodity, becoming-ruin. Such instant,
indeed retroactive ruins, are the virtual landscape of the stupid underground. The exits and lines of flight
pursued by Deleuze and Guattari are being shut down and rerouted by the very people who would take
them most seriously. By now, any given work from the stupid underground's critical apparatus is liable to
be tricked out with smooth spaces, war-machines, n - 1s, planes of consistency, plateaus and
deterritorializations, strewn about like tattoos on the stupid body without organs. The nomad is already
succumbing to the rousseauism and orientalism that were always invested in his figure; whatever
Deleuze and Guattari intended for him, he is reduced to being a romantic outlaw, to a position opposite
the State, in the sort of dialectical operation Deleuze most despised. And the rhizome is becoming just
another stupid subterranean figure. It is perhaps true that Deleuze and Guattari did not adequately
protect their thought from this dialectical reconfiguration (one is reminded of Breton's indictment
against Rimbaud for not having prevented, in advance, Claudel's recuperation of him as a proper
Catholic), but no vigilance would have sufficed in any case. The work of Deleuze and Guattari is evidence
that, in real time, virtual models and maps close off the very exits they indicate. The problem is in part
that rhizomes, lines of flight, smooth spaces, BwOs, etc., are at one and the same time theoretical-
political devices of the highest critical order and merely fantasmatic, delirious, narcissistic models for
writing, and thus perhaps an instance of the all-too-proper blurring of the distinction between criticism
and fantasy. In Deleuze-speak, the stupid underground would be mapped not as a margin surrounding a
fixed point, not as a fixed site determined strictly by its relation or opposition to some more or less
hegemonic formation, but as an intensive, n-dimensional intersection of rhizomatic plateaus.
Nomadology and rhizomatics conceive such a "space" (if one only had the proverbial nickel for every
time that word is used as a critical metaphor, without the slightest reflection on what might be involved
in rendering the conceptual in spatial terms) as a liquid, colloidal suspension, often retrievable by one or
another techno-metaphorical zoning (e.g., "cyberspace"). What is at stake, however, is not only the
topological verisimilitude of the model but the *fantastic* possibility of nonlinear passage, of multiple
simultaneous accesses and exits, of infinite fractal lines occupying finite social space. In the strictest
sense, stupid philosophy. Nomad thought is prosthetic, the experience of virtual exhilaration in
modalities already mapped and dominated by nomad, rhizomatic capital (the political philosophy of the
stupid underground: capital is more radical than any of its critiques, but one can always pretend
otherwise). It is this very fantasy, this very narcissistic wish to see oneself projected past the frontier into
new spaces, that abandons one to this economy, that seals these spaces within an order of critical
fantasy that has long since been overdeveloped, entirely reterritorialized in advance. To pursue
nomadology or rhizomatics as such is already to have lost the game. Nothing is more crucial to
philosophy than escaping the dialectic and no project is more hopeless; the stupid-critical underground
is the curved space in which this opposition turns back on itself. It is not yet time to abandon work that
so deeply challenges our intellectual habits as does that of Deleuze and Guattari, and yet, before it has
even been comprehended, in the very process of its comprehension, its fate seems secure. One pursues
it and knows that the pursuit will prove futile; that every application of these new topologies will only
serve to render them more pointless. The stupid optimism of every work that takes up these figures is,
by itself, the means of that futility and that immanent obsolescence. One must pursue it still.

Affirming nomadism disregards the potential consequences of their ethics. Failing to

calculate in the context of political strategy makes oppression inevitable and turns
solvency
Neigh 10 (September 2, 2010; Scott Neigh; “Review: Crack Capitalism,”
https://canadiandimension.com/blog/view/review// AGY)

There also seems to be an element of resisting the urge to define cracks in some kind of formal way
while still retaining the right to know them when you see them, which waves a similar kind of red flag for
me in that it potentially helps to organize our perception of and response to oppressive practices in ways
that are not necessarily useful. I can imagine, for example, some sort of rural compound populated by
fundamentalist Christians who reject capitalist social relations and are largely self-sufficient, but who are
explicitly and virulently patriarchal. I suspect Holloway would argue this is not really a crack based on the
quote above and some of the surrounding material, but it isn’t clear to me, given how it is currently
theorized, that this has any more of a basis than just not liking that particular grouping. Such a space
could quite conceivably reject the logic of capital but still be horrendously oppressive. In contrast, I can
imagine some sort of rural, vaguely anarcho-inspired, hippyish commune that says all the right things, is
explicitly against all forms of oppressive nastiness, but that through various cultural practices and
material barriers is a pretty unfriendly place for people of colour and not very supportive of everyday
political work of/in communities of colour. I can imagine, moreover, such a place being regarded by
broader left-ish publics as a genuine crack, and worthy of forms of solidarity and cooperation and
admiration that the compound above is not. I’m not saying anything about how these two hypotheticals
should be regarded and responded to, just pointing out that the book’s minimalist approach to the
content of spaces that break in some respect with the logic of capital and try to do things differently but
that (by the book’s own admission are likely to) reproduce oppressive practices and relations in other
respects is basically to avoid the issue, which is unhelpful. So. The point I’m making is that cracks and
their potentially oppressive contents are undertheorized and I can see ways in which that
undertheorization and the ways in which it is justified could be ways to escape dealing with that
oppression, even given an acknowledgment that imperfections are inevitable. There are also some
tensions in the theory that deserve more attention. For instance, there is no question that the book
opposes sectarianism and puritanical politics, and encourages ways of work that avoid them. Yet there
are also passages in which florid language about refusing to compromise with the state, and about the
centrality of the revolt against labour rather than of labour, sounds pretty sectarian and puritanical.
Again, this is an inevitable tension, and one that can only be resolved in the course of doing things. But I
would still like to have heard more of what Holloway had to say about navigating such tensions in
practice. I also feel a faint anxiety that this approach would lead to us – meaning people struggling
against capitalism and other oppressions in diverse ways and under diverse banners – to miss something,
in the sense that its rejection of the state form and its rejection of dissident theorizing that is done from
the standpoint of the totality might cause us to overlook something. I fundamentally agree with both of
those stances, but I think it is probably good that people in revolutionary traditions that do not accept
them will continue to challenge them.

Their affirmation of lines of flight and deterritorialization makes concrete solvency

impossible. By constructing a state-war machine dualism, they deter focus from the
real, material exploitation in the world.
Hallward, 6 (Peter. After working in the French department at King's College London (1999-2004), he
joined the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy in 2005, when it was based at Middlesex
University, and he moved to Kingston with other members of the CRMEP in 2010. Out of This World:
Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation. London: Verso, 2006. 161-62. Print.)TB

Now Deleuze understands perfectly well why ‘most of the objections raised against the great
philosophers are empty’. Indignant readers say to them: ‘things are not like that […]. But, in fact, it is not
a matter of knowing whether things are like that or not; it is a matter of knowing whether the question
which presents things in such a light is good or not, rigorous or not’ (ES, 106). Rather than test its
accuracy according to the criteria of representation, ‘the genius of a philosophy must first be measured
by the new distribution which it imposes on beings and concepts’ (LS, 6). In reality then, Deleuze
concludes, ‘only one kind of objection is worthwhile: the objection which shows that the question raised
by a philosopher is not a good question’, that it ‘does not force the nature of things enough’ (ES, 107; cC
WP, 82). Deleuze certainly forces the nature of things into conformity with his own question. Just as
certainly however, his question inhibits any consequential engagement with the constraints of our actual
world. For readers who remain concerned with these con straints and their consequences, Deleuze’s
question is not the best available question. Rather than try to refute Deleuze, this book has tried to show
how his system works and to draw attention to what should now he the obvious (and perfectly explicit)
limitations of this philosophy of unlimited affirmation. First of all, since it acknowledges only a unilateral
relation between virtual and actual, there is no place in Deleuze’s philosophy for any notion of change,
time or history that is mediated by actuality In the end, Deleuze offers few resources for thinking the
consequences of what happens within the actually existing world as such. Unlike Darwin or Marx, for
instance, the adamantly virtual orientation of Deleuze’s ‘constructivism’ does not allow him to account
for cumulative transformation or novelty in terms of actual materials and tendencies. No doubt few
contemporary philosophers have had as an acute a sense of the internal dynamic of capitalism — but
equally, few have proposed so elusive a response as the virtual ‘war machine’ that roams through the
pages of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Like the nomads who invented it, this abstract machine operates
at an ‘absolute speed, by being “synonymous with speed”’, as the incarnation of ‘a pure and
immeasurable multiplicity; an irruption of the ephemeral and of the power of metamorphosis’ (TP, 336,
352). Like any creating, a war machine consists and ‘exists only in its own metamorphoses’ (T~ 360). By
posing the question of politics in the starkly dualistic terms of war machine or state — by posing it, in the
end, in the apocalyptic terms of a new people and a new earth or else no people and no earth — the
political aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy amounts to little more than utopian distraction. Although no
small number of enthusiasts continue to devote much energy and ingenuity to the task, the truth is that
Deleuze’s work is essentially indifferent to the politics of this world. A philosophy based on
deterritorialisation, dissipation and flight can offer only the most immaterial and evanescent grip on the
mechanisms of exploitation and domination that continue to condition so much of what happens in our
world. Deleuze’s philosophical war remains ‘absolute’ and ‘abstract’, precisely, rather than directed or
‘waged’ [menee]. Once ‘a social field is defined less by its conflicts and contradictions than by the lines of
flight running through it’, any distinctive space for political action can only be subsumed within the more
general dynamics of creation or life. And since these dynamics are themselves anti-dialectical if not anti-
relational, there can be little room in Deleuze’s philosophy for relations of conflict or solidarity, i.e.
relations that are genuinely between rather than external to individuals, classes, or principles.

Much of Deleuze and guattarian theory is based on the ideals of making animals. This
act is inherently wrong as it constrains us into the anthropological machine and
human-nature delineation.
Iveson 13 (Richard Iveson, University of Queensland Postdoctoral Research Fellow Centre for Critical and
Cultural Studies, Continental philosophy, “Deeply Ecological Deleuze and Guattari: Humanism’s
Becoming-Animal,” http://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/issue%2008/iveson.html, Spring 2013,

Moreover, we can see that what have been thus divided are not “actual” nonhuman animals. The
categories denote, that is to say, neither a zoological classification nor even what for Deleuze and
Guattari constitutes the reality of nonhuman animals, as we shall see. Rather, the three categories
represent the three possible ways in which nonhuman animals might be treated [traité], that is, in which
they might be constituted in relation to humans: a dog can be treated as a pack, a panther can be
treated as a “pet” or as a model. In short, Oedipal, State, and demonic are not three ways of being-
animal, but rather three ways in which humans may produce other animals. We are thus contained
within an (actual or virtual) human domain, constrained within the anthro-tropo-logical machine of
human recognition and of the proper and improper ways of re-presenting a nonhuman being. Whether
that is as a “pet” or as a “pack,” this exceptional tropological function, this uniquely human capacity to
constitute something as something, is itself symptomatic of an all too familiar human-animal
discontinuity founded upon the possession of language being awarded to human animals alone.
DnG’s project hasn’t been neutral. The Israeli military state reads Deleuze and
Guattari, and use the tactics that they criticize. This proves that no reading of any text
is neutral. Theory and practice connect in all sorts of unpredictable ways, which often
turn violent. This is one more reason why the ballot needs to directly concern itself
with its orientation to structures of black suffering
Dean 16 [Jodi Dean, professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges NY, “Why the
Israeli Army Loves Deleuze,” http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2006/09/why_the_israeli.html,
9/26/06]

Fascinating link from a former student. Excerpts here, but read the whole thing: frieze. Naveh, a retired
Brigadier-General, directs the Operational Theory Research Institute, which trains staff officers from the
IDF and other militaries in ‘operational theory’ – defined in military jargon as somewhere between
strategy and tactics. He summed up the mission of his institute, which was founded in 1996: ‘We are like
the Jesuit Order. We attempt to teach and train soldiers to think. […] We read Christopher Alexander, can
you imagine?; we read John Forester, and other architects. We are reading Gregory Bateson; we are
reading Clifford Geertz. Not myself, but our soldiers, our generals are reflecting on these kinds of
materials. We have established a school and developed a curriculum that trains “operational
architects”.’4 In a lecture Naveh showed a diagram resembling a ‘square of opposition’ that plots a set of
logical relationships between certain propositions referring to military and guerrilla operations. Labelled
with phrases such as ‘Difference and Repetition – The Dialectics of Structuring and Structure’, ‘Formless
Rival Entities’, ‘Fractal Manoeuvre’, ‘Velocity vs. Rhythms’, ‘The Wahabi War Machine’, ‘Postmodern
Anarchists’ and ‘Nomadic Terrorists’, they often reference the work of Deleuze and Guattari. War
machines, according to the philosophers, are polymorphous; diffuse organizations characterized by their
capacity for metamorphosis, made up of small groups that split up or merge with one another,
depending on contingency and circumstances. (Deleuze and Guattari were aware that the state can
willingly transform itself into a war machine. Similarly, in their discussion of ‘smooth space’ it is implied
that this conception may lead to domination.) I asked Naveh why Deleuze and Guattari were so popular
with the Israeli military. He replied that ‘several of the concepts in A Thousand Plateaux became
instrumental for us […] allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have
otherwise. It problematized our own paradigms. Most important was the distinction they have pointed
out between the concepts of “smooth” and “striated” space [which accordingly reflect] the
organizational concepts of the “war machine” and the “state apparatus”. In the IDF we now often use the
term “to smooth out space” when we want to refer to operation in a space as if it had no borders. […]
Palestinian areas could indeed be thought of as “striated” in the sense that they are enclosed by fences,
walls, ditches, roads blocks and so on.’5 When I asked him if moving through walls was part of it, he
explained that, ‘In Nablus the IDF understood urban fighting as a spatial problem. [...] Travelling through
walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice.’6 To understand the IDF’s tactics
for moving through Palestinian urban spaces, it is necessary to understand how they interpret the by
now familiar principle of ‘swarming’ – a term that has been a buzzword in military theory since the start
of the US post cold War doctrine known as the Revolution in Military Affairs. The swarm manoeuvre was
in fact adapted, from the Artificial Intelligence principle of swarm intelligence, which assumes that
problem-solving capacities are found in the interaction and communication of relatively unsophisticated
agents (ants, birds, bees, soldiers) with little or no centralized control. The swarm exemplifies the
principle of non-linearity apparent in spatial, organizational and temporal terms. The traditional
manoeuvre paradigm, characterized by the simplified geometry of Euclidean order, is transformed,
according to the military, into a complex fractal-like geometry. The narrative of the battle plan is replaced
by what the military, using a Foucaultian term, calls the ‘toolbox approach’, according to which units
receive the tools they need to deal with several given situations and scenarios but cannot predict the
order in which these events would actually occur.7 Naveh: ‘Operative and tactical commanders depend
on one another and learn the problems through constructing the battle narrative; […] action becomes
knowledge, and knowledge becomes action. […] Without a decisive result possible, the main benefit of
operation is the very improvement of the system as a system.’8 This may explain the fascination of the
military with the spatial and organizational models and modes of operation advanced by theorists such
as Deleuze and Guattari. Indeed, as far as the military is concerned, urban warfare is the ultimate
Postmodern form of conflict. Belief in a logically structured and single-track battle-plan is lost in the face
of the complexity and ambiguity of the urban reality. Civilians become combatants, and combatants
become civilians. Identity can be changed as quickly as gender can be feigned: the transformation of
women into fighting men can occur at the speed that it takes an undercover ‘Arabized’ Israeli soldier or a
camouflaged Palestinian fighter to pull a machine-gun out from under a dress. For a Palestinian fighter
caught up in this battle, Israelis seem ‘to be everywhere: behind, on the sides, on the right and on the
left. How can you fight that way?’9 ... In addition to these theoretical positions, Naveh references such
canonical elements of urban theory as the Situationist practices of dérive (a method of drifting through a
city based on what the Situationists referred to as ‘psycho-geography’) and détournement (the
adaptation of abandoned buildings for purposes other than those they were designed to perform).
These ideas were, of course, conceived by Guy Debord and other members of the Situationist
International to challenge the built hierarchy of the capitalist city and break down distinctions between
private and public, inside and outside, use and function, replacing private space with a ‘borderless’
public surface. References to the work of Georges Bataille, either directly or as cited in the writings of
Tschumi, also speak of a desire to attack architecture and to dismantle the rigid rationalism of a postwar
order, to escape ‘the architectural strait-jacket’ and to liberate repressed human desires. In no uncertain
terms, education in the humanities – often believed to be the most powerful weapon against
imperialism – is being appropriated as a powerful vehicle for imperialism. The military’s use of theory is,
of course, nothing new – a long line extends all the way from Marcus Aurelius to General Patton.

Their message may appear sincere, but we can’t know that they aren’t secretly the Israeli War
Machine. This is the plight of becoming in an age of supposed transparency.

Stohl, Stohl and Leonardi 16 (Cynthia Stohl, Professor in the Communication department at the
University of California Santa Barbara, Michael Stohl, Dean of communication at UCSB, and Paul M.
Leonardi, Professor of technology management at UCSB, “Managing Opacity: Information Visibility and
the Paradox of Transparency in the Digital Age,” International Journal of Communication vol. 10 pg. 123-
137) *edited for ablest language

To argue, theoretically, that information visibility is tantamount to transparency, as many observers do, is
to hold, empirically, that information is available, is approved for dissemination, and is easily accessible
to third parties. On its face, such an argument makes good sense. If just one of those attributes of
visibility is missing, or exists at low levels, third parties cannot see information, and, consequently, they
will be unable to reconstruct the decision path that an organization followed or the outcomes of past
decisions. In short, there will be no transparency. This traditionally proposed relationship between
visibility and transparency is illustrated in Figure 1, in which varying levels of visibility are placed on the x
axis and varying degrees of transparency are placed on the y axis. As the figure illustrates, the traditional
view of the relationship between visibility and transparency is linear: More visibility results in greater
transparency. Visibility Figure 1. Theorizing the relationship between visibility and transparency. It is also
possible, however, that the relationship between visibility and transparency can be curvilinear, such that
the more visibility you have, the less transparency—more opacity—is achieved. This effect is illustrated
in Figure 1 by the “proposed relationship” line. In other words, what we propose is a transparency
paradox. Increasing the availability, approval, and accessibility of information, which makes it more
visible, can have the paradoxical effect of making decision-making paths in organizations more opaque
rather than more transparent. In his 1934 play, The Rock, T. S. Eliot presciently asked, “Where is the
knowledge we have lost in information?” Whether we use the predigital lens of Eliot or the high-
definition lenses of today, his question raises the specter of the transparency paradox. Visibility may
produce a flood of information, drowning us in a sea of unstructured and boundless data that
overwhelms our cognitive and interpretive capabilities, and hence renders information meaningless or
confusing and opaque. Considering the practical as well as theoretical implications of decoupling
visibility from transparency, we suggest two possible paths by which greater levels of availability,
approval, and accessibility of information may lead to less rather than more transparency: inadvertent
and strategic opacity. Inadvertent Opacity: Information Hides in Plain Sight The first path by which high
levels of visibility and transparency become decoupled is when increasing the attributes of visibility
produces such great quantities of information that important pieces of information become
inadvertently hidden in the detritus of information made visible—that is, the information hides in plain
sight. This unintended or inadvertent opacity results from the lack of informational, temporal, or
structural boundaries that typically have been in place to manage the flow of information. In these cases,
the necessary information is available, approved, and accessible, but it is rendered meaningless because
of recipients’ cognitive limitations—or what has traditionally been labeled information overload (Toffler,
1970) or interpretive blinders (see Bazerman & Chugh, 2006 for a discussion of why people may not see
what is put before them). Of course, it may not only be the limited capacities of receivers that render
information opaque. Opacity may result from the interpretative propensities of message receivers who
may reshape and adapt information in ways quite distinct from the intended meaning. Moreover,
organizations certainly cannot control what a message means for recipients (Christensen & Cornelissen,
2011). The porous boundaries and affordances of digital media have widely expanded the possibilities
for making huge amounts of information available, approved, and accessible for mass audiences and
inadvertently hidden or opaque. The abilities afforded by the digital environment to access, process, and
transmit information to mass audiences with little extra effort (or cost) through e-mail blasts, repetitive
retweets, or other types of social media distribution—what we label macrotargeting—also means that
many messages that would have been withheld, targeted to a select group of recipients, or sent only
once because of the cost of production and transmission are now digitally disseminated to very large
numbers of people and often repeated in multiple waves of messages. Whether the information indexes
intentions, actions, and/or decisions, recipients may or may not be interested in this information, they
may be unfamiliar with the source of the message or focused on other things, and/or they may
represent an irrelevant or inappropriate audience for the information. Thus, the message is ignored.
Furthermore, individuals who do not perceive the source or the message(s) to be relevant or interesting
enough to access initially or open and process the information once may very well treat the unexpected
information as junk mail or spam and immediately delete or ignore it. Furthermore, recipients of the
messages may experience information fatigue, so that they ignore almost all messages regardless of
their relevance or importance. As several scholars have noted, when exposure to too much information
and technologies begins to predominate the communication landscape, individuals tend to shut down
and cease processing both relevant and irrelevant, high-priority as well as low-priority messages (see
Edmunds & Morris, 2000). Strategic Opacity: Hiding Information in Plain Sight Strategic opacity is at the
core of the second path of decoupling visibility and transparency. Actors who wish to keep certain
information hidden from view but who are bound by transparency regulations or norms can produce
opacity by strategically increasing the availability, approval, and accessibility of information. In these
cases, so much information is visible that unimportant pieces of information will take so much time and
effort to sift through that receivers will be distracted from the central information the actor wishes to
conceal. By strategically producing opacity, an actor can hide information in plain sight such that they are
still appearing to comply with expectations for transparency. And this is not necessarily problematic. As
Eisenberg notes in his seminal work on strategic ambiguity (1984), conforming to transparency
expectations also may alienate constituencies and prevent meaningful dialogue. Opacity, vagueness, and
even misdirection can foster cohesion and identity among organizational stakeholders. Strategic opacity
through the manipulation of the attributes of visibility is not dependent upon digital technologies,
although their development has certainly enhanced possibilities. In digital terms, strategic opacity is
steganography cover writing, or what the IT community calls stego—the art of hiding information inside
of information so that the recipient does not detect the presence of other messages present (Porter,
2013). As discussed earlier, the affordances of digital media enable organizations to send a very large set
of messages to mass audiences cheaply and quickly (macrotargeting). These same capabilities also
enable easy and cheap audience segmentation and provide the opportunity for what we label
microtargeting—strategic and sequential data presentation that makes information available, approved
for access, and accessible while enabling greater opacity in the guise of visibility. For example, digital
media provides the opportunity to craft special briefings of information and strategically chosen frames
prior to collective macro-announcements in ways that were not possible before. Similar to the temporal
effect found in information cascades (Chierichetti, Kleinberg, & Panconesim, 2014), these messages help
shape how future information will be encoded, stored, retrieved, and acted upon, and they provide
opportunities to increase the opacity of seemingly transparent messages. When the macro-
announcement with its much fuller information set and more neutral framing arrives, the previously
targeted audiences are less likely to fully investigate/interrogate the material, because they already
“know” what is being presented. Thus, organizations have the capacity to not only tailor messages in a
strategic way (message processes) but introduce the information in various strategically chosen frames
that help shape how future information will be encoded , stored, retrieved, and processed, providing
the opportunity to increase the opacity of seemingly transparent messages. Conclusion Digital
transformations have made possible rapidly expanding sources and dissemination of information and
ever greater capabilities for storage, retrieval, and processing of that information. We have argued that it
is the combination of the availability of information, the approval to disseminate, and the accessibility of
the information in the context of organizational settings and purpose that illustrates the complex
relationship between visibility and transparency and their effects on understanding and utilizing the
information. We have explored the individual and interactive importance of each of these three
attributes and how understanding these mechanisms enables disentangling visibility from transparency.
Finally, we have uncovered the transparency paradox, explaining how opacity can result even when all
three attributes of visibility operate at high levels. The transparency paradox goes beyond the idea that
when there is an abundance of information available, it is often difficult to obtain useful, relevant
information. The transparency paradox indicates that availability, accessibility, and approval of
information need to be managed to produce not only visibility but effective use of that information. The
transparency paradox raises important questions for scholars and practitioners interested in open
decision making and deliberative democracy. There are many other mechanisms and dynamics of
inadvertent and strategic opacity beyond macro- and microtargeting that need to be explored.
Understanding these mechanisms will increase our ability to unpack the relationship between and
management of visibility and transparency. For example, what are the information minimums and
maximums for (a) effective decision making, (b) effective monitoring of organizational conduct, or even
(c) being well informed about the issues and choices? What are the unintended consequences of greater
availability, approval, and accessibility? Further investigation of the trade-offs among the three attributes
of visibility is required both to produce more effective and visible organizational processes and decisions
and to understand how organizations may manipulate their presentation of information in the
information age as regulations, norms, and capacities continue to change.

The politics of facialiality is ALWAYS a question of degrees of deviance from the face of
whiteness. DnG use the term “Jesus Christ Superstar” jokingly. You should be aware
that blackness cannot be measured in terms of degrees of deviance, it is categorically
outside of this theory of the face and subjectivity from this perspective. This is why the
face of blackness is always being effaced by the technologies of slavery.
Kr0ll 15 [Joe Kroll, graduate student in comparative literature at the UC Irvine, “Facing the Light: Deleuze
and the Critique of Faciality,” https://uci.academia.edu/JoeKrall 3/13/15]
*edited for ablest language

I will begin with a brief note on method: In this paper I would like to present a response to Deleuze and
Guattari’s description of the abstract machine of faciality in the seventh chapter of A Thousand Plateaus,
which offers up a description of the process of facial determination as localized around the figure of the
white face, personified in Jesus Christ. I argue that this description fails to account for the manner in
which this white face’s construction is dependent on a prior violence against the figure of the black
face, a figure implicit in, but continually repressed by the Deleuzean schemata. In order to do this I will
situate the faciality chapter against a counter construction of the face that I read in the visual apparatus
of Minneapolis hip-hop artist I Self Devine’s music video for the song Exist to Remain. Following Frank
Wilderson’s work in Red, White & Black, I present this video not as an analogy for the metaphysical
principles under discussion—this would make the mistake of thinking the grammar of anti-black violence
as placed within the metaphysical thought-world of Deleuzean philosophy rather than as its enabling
condition. Instead I present the video as a demonstration—and I mean this term in the mathematical
sense—of a certain narrative and representational logic, the logic of anti-blackness. Or, to put a finer
point on the matter, as a demonstration of metaphysics’ a priori reliance on a certain performance of
anti-black violence. As Deleuze and Guittari develop their critique through the model of a “black
hole/white wall system,” before we can directly address “Year Zero”, it is worth grounding our discussion
with a few points from Deleuze’s earlier, ontological work, Difference and Repetition (“Year Zero” 179).
Deleuze opens the first chapter of the work, “Difference in Itself”, with a description of the way that
thoughts of blackness and whiteness structure indifference: Indifference has two aspects: the
undifferentiated abyss, the black nothingness, the indeterminate animal in which everything is dissolved
—but also the white nothingness, the once more calm surface upon which float unconnected
determinations like scattered members: a head without a neck, an arm without a shoulder, eyes without
brows. The indeterminate is completely indifferent, but such floating determinations are no less
indifferent to each other (Difference and Repetition 28). Blackness, here, operates by bearing the mark
nothingness in the ontological field, where it serves to disarticulate the possibility of Being—“everything
is dissolved.” Deleuze characterizes this movement as an animalistic (perhaps not an entirely pejorative
term for Deleuze) violence; indifference is produced in this instance through the dissolution of the
structures of perception as the coordinates of determination become disjoint and an absolute
indeterminacy takes hold. Whiteness, by contrast, renders the field indifferent by fracturing the relations
between determinations. Rather than produce the non-Being of indeterminacy, whiteness affirms
positive Being by providing a “calm surface” for the appearance of determination. “Head…arm…[and]
eyes” come into Being dissociated from the “neck…shoulder…[and] brows” which would provide
geographic coordination for their appearance through association, yet still they appear. What the
previous description provides for us, then, is a description of different forms of indifference. By bringing
these indifferences into contact, rendering them finite in a co-presence or a relationality, rather than
their former infinite solitudes (for certainly the comparative description does exactly the work of
constructing a relation between the two formerly infinite fields), we construct difference itself, an
operation that Deleuze calls “thought.” “[T]hought is that moment in which determination makes itself
one, by virtue of maintaining a unilateral and precise relation to the indeterminate. Thought ‘makes’
difference” (Difference and Repetition 29). Yet here we see something troubling. The white field of
indifference supports determinations by providing a surface for them to dissociatively slide across, yet
determination “makes itself” only through a relation to the indeterminate, or the ontologically black.
Indeed, for Deleuze “[d]ifference is the state in which one can speak of determination as such”
(Difference and Repetition 28). The white field thus depends on maintaining a relation to black, yet the
indeterminate black nothingness is characterized by no such dependency. The Deleuzean model is thus
capable of thinking blackness as such and in itself, yet the construction of a pure whiteness, or an infinite
field of white indifference, is possible only by eliminating or (to use the phenomenological term)
reducing blackness. Whiteness is thus parasitically or “unilaterally” related to blackness. This relation,
which we call “difference or determination as such is also cruelty” (Difference and Repetition 28). What
remains most troubling here, is the way in which this recognition of determination as cruelty follows the
prior description of the nature of the ontological markers. Whiteness attains its characteristic of
calmness in this reduction, which is to say that its calmness, the peace which renders determinations
stable within the field, is ontologically grounded in the repression or the forgetting of a prior cruelty.
Blackness, by contrast, attains its violent function of dissolution only in the active recognition of its
overtaking determination. That is to say that blackness is violent not in itself, or in its essential and
ontological character, but rather in its undoing of a determination which it makes possible a priori. The
opening description thus functions to invert the scales and relations of violence. Whiteness is
parasitically dependent on the violent eradication of blackness, yet it appears as peaceful tranquility.
Blackness is self-stabilizing and prior, yet it appears destructive and posterior. The face then, as it
appears in the later work, “Year Zero”, emerges through the function of “an abstract machine of faciality”
that unites these ontological fields through their co-delimitation within the horizon of a “surface-holes,
holey surface, system” (“Year Zero” 168; 170). This system brings together “black hole[s]” and “white
wall[s],” representational objects that bear the markers of the two poles of indifference discussed in the
earlier work (“Year Zero” 177). Again this combination generates the possibility of determination, which
is here elaborated along two lines: the face “delimit[s] a field that neutralizes in advance any expressions
or connections unamenable to the appropriate significations” and “form[s] a loci of resonance that
select[s] the sensed or mental reality and make[s] it conform in advance to a dominant reality” (“Year
Zero” 168). The structure of determination presented here is that of a violent reduction of the field of
indeterminate possibility to the singularity of an overdetermined, univocal expression: the face as
collapse. And yet, for Deleuze and Guattari, this power is not bound up in any face at all, in the generality
of this-or-that face, but rather in the “entirely specific idea” of “Christ… your average ordinary White
Man” (“Year Zero 176;178). Here the power of determination is linked with the divine power of the
Christ figure and distributed along the lines of white raciality, in a move that configures racism away from
a model of interiority and exteriority to an operation “by the determination of degrees of deviance in
relation to the White-Man face” (“Year Zero” 178). Racism’s “cruelty [in this system] is equaled only by
its incompetence and naïveté” and understanding which subsumes all bodies under the heading of a
more or less deviant whiteness (“Year Zero” 178). To elaborate the functioning of this schema, Deleuze
and Guatarri turn to a series of examples drawn from artistic mediation. The most illuminating of these
examples is their description of the film screen as analogue for the facial function. Here, the white wall
of the face is transformed into the reflective surface of a film screen off which significations bounce. The
black holes which mar this surface interrupt the purity of this reflective behavior, generating
determination through the relativity of the topographic distribution. The affirmation of the bounce is
reduced by the negativity the holes’ nonbounce and a differential field is thereby generated. What
Deleuze and Guatarri neglect in this construction is the way in which the facial machine, conceived here
as the film screen, gains its power only within the horizon of a more significant and prior machine: the
projector itself. The face-as-screen gains its power and even its function only within the beam of a
projected light. What else, after all, could bounce from the screen? What mediates the bounce? Seen in
this wider frame, the distribution of the light authorizes the screen as screen, the hole as hole. The
screen is that part of the field which, allying itself with the light, bounces, multiplying the light in an
unlimited escalation of intensity. The hole is that part of the field that sets itself against the light,
swallowing the light and halting its propagation. Against Deleuze and Guatarri I ask us instead to think of
the framing of the face they offer as a white face overdetermined by the light . Its sanctity and its power
derive from the alliance between the light and the white, whiteness’s position in the Deleuzean
framework as that which intensifies the light. We might ask then, what the face does outside of this
overdetermination. Might we introduce instead a different principle with which to over(or
under)determine the face? I suggest that I Self Devine’s video does exactly this work, demonstrating
through the logic of its construction a different critique of the face, a critique which recognizes the
politics of the black/white antagonism. The video opens for us with the domestic scene of black life,
showing the artist engaged in the patterns of familial exchange, and accoutered with the adornments of
contemporary domestic life: the French press, house keys, waffles. I read this scene as an invocation of
the life-world, the establishment of a horizon within which the business of the domestic scene may take
place. Against this the video offers us a second scene in which we find I Self Devine standing alone in a
darkened space adjacent from a television. This second scene serves to demonstrate a space outside of
the overdetermination of the light. This is signaled by the strobic effect of the light, which burts into the
space in momentary illuminations only to recede again, unable to assert itself as the dominant mode of
signification. Like Deleuze and Guatarri, I Self Devine metaphorizes facial construction through a media
object, in this case the television screen in the dark space. Yet, unlike D&G, I Self Devine’s
metaphorization recognizes the alliance between screen and light through their unified embodiment.
Here is not a screen which bounces the light, but rather a screen which produces it in harsh flashes. The
high contrast nature of the filming shows renders these flashes as violent impositions on the darkened
space. They fix the face in stills that haunt the space in the light’s disappearance, violently imposing a
fixed determination on the structure of a face that experiences flux and movement only between these
punctuations. In view of this conflict, I Self Devine’s choice to wear sun glasses functions as a moment of
self-preservation, the donning of an armor against the light and its anti-black operation. Moving back to
the domestic scene, we find the explication of a narrative wherein I Self Devine leaves his home and
makes his way to a bus station. Here, he and others watch transfixed as a dispute erupts between a
white man and a black man. The conflict, which begins with a muttered phrase by the white man, quickly
escalates past words as both men draw knives. As they fight a second white man enters the scene. Non-
witness to the originary insult, this third man finds the conflict mid-fight, yet siding immediately with the
fighting white man, this new arrival draws a gun and executes the black man, ending the conflict. Yet is
this resolution unexpected? The arrival of this second man on the scene has been given special
significance by a particular use of the camera. His face, shot at an upward angle, is illuminated by some
source outside the frame to such an extent that the light appears to emanate from his skin itself. How
are we to read this image if not as an allusion to the traditional iconography of Christ, who is frequently
(if not always) depicted as the source or conduit of a divine light. This white man is here anointed Christ
in order to deliver a violent death to the black man. Following the shot, we see the white spectators flee
the scene while the present black spectators stand transfixed, unable to escape the violence of the
scene. As the music winds down and the final moments play out, we watch as a pool of black blood
pushes its way into the light, asserting the reality of anti-black violence over and against the illusionary
whiteness produced by lighting of the scene. This recognition, which Deleuze represses, sets the film to
running backwards, disarticulating the narrative and nullifying the prior fantasy of black domestic life.

The trend of trying to achieve a universalized standard of ‘competence’ in schools is a

violent act of territorializing domination that paves the way for large-scale imperialism
Guattari 15 (Felix, psychoanalyst turned schizoanalyst and half of DnG, “Lines of Flight: For Another
World of Possibilities”, Semiotic Optional Matter, pages 135-137, December 17, 2015)
-critique of a standard of “competence” in schools, something like Common Core maybe, or the
standards charter schools set for kids to meet.

Generative linguistics presents competence to us as a sort of neutral instrument in the service of the
creative production of discourse. One gains access to the sky of linguistic universals outside of any social
or historical contingency. And for everything that remains obscure, one falls back on the miracles of
heredity! But there is no grammaticality in itself, no competence in itself. Competence and performance
are always relative. Any crystallization of a competence as a norm, as a framing of diverse concrete
performances, is always synonymous with the establishing of a position of power . There is no general
competence, it is always linked to a particular - political, social, economic, religious, aesthetic, etc.
terrain. That doesn't signify that it doesn't put into play abstract means - abstract machines - which
spring up like mutations of the machinic phylum of the hum an 'branch: But they do not depend on
grammars based on structural universals (for a long time capitalist political economy has wanted to
present itself as the general grammar of a possible economy!) There is no performance, that of a child at
school, for example, other than in relation to the kind of competence that is fixed in the framework of
educational micropolitics, of a given society in a given era. In a general fashion, every competence will
involve political relations between nations, regions, political classes, castes, ethnic groups, etc. Theories
of the universality of competence rest on the in itself simple idea that the individual's capacity for
linguistic production exceeds his or her effective discursive production - his or her performances; in
other words, that s/he has at his or her disposal a machine of expression that puts into play abstract
schema, and that this machine is much more than the simple totalization of the series of utterances it is
capable of producing. No doubt! But the relations between this 'competence machine' and the
productions that it performs can be inverted. The machine itself is produced by its production. How
could it be any different? Where else could it come from? From an innate linguistic faculty? Competence
and performance interact constantly. At a given moment, competence - the machinic virtuality of
expression - holds the keys to the deterritorialization of stratified and stereotypical utterances; at
another moment, a particular semiotic production deterritorializes an overly rigid syntax. A competence
that is territorialized on a given social space - a group, an ethnicity, a trade, etc. - can be relegated to the
rank of a sub-competence, the effect of which will be to devalorize the different kinds of performance
which are associated with it, then, as a function of the modification of relations of force that are present,
or of a transformation of the local micropolitics of desire , this same competence can 'take power' in a
bigger social space and become a regional, national or imperial competence ... A style imposes itself, a
patois becomes an aristocratic way of speaking, a technical language contaminates vernacular languages,
a minor literature takes on a universal importance ... Let's be clear that the processes of political
agitation do not just concern the diffusion of morphemes but put into play all the drivers of language.
There is universality of speech acts and as language is inseparable from these acts, there is no
universality of language. Every sequence of linguistic expression is associated with a network of semiotic
chains of all sorts (perceptual, mimetic, gestural, imagistic, etc.). Every signifying utterance thus
crystallizes a mute dance of intensities that plays out on social and individuated bodies at the same time.
From language to glossolalia, all the transitions are possible. There are no linguistic universals. The
examples of universals proposed by the Chomskyans, such as the existence of the morpho-phonological
organization of double articulation on the plane of expression, for example, are machinic characteristics,
which concern the conditions of possibility of language and which are as extrinsic to it as the range of
phonic articulations on the basis of which a phonological semiotics might be established. These
supposed universals are only the specific traits of a particular substance of expression, what Christian
Metz calls the 'pertinent traits of matters of expression' on the basis of which semiotically formed
substances are constituted. Heredity is often brought to the fore to explain the speed with which
language is learned. But let’s consider the fact that in a milieu that is 'impregnated' with musical
semiotics, a four-year-old can attain genuine musical competence: is one going to account for this on the
basis of a hereditary 'montage' of the capacity to read and of the highly specialized capacity with one's
hands we know is needed, for each musical instrument? The idea is absurd! The hypothesis concerning
universals at the level of content is even more fragile. The organization of contents, the constitution of a
homogeneous field of representation, always corresponds to the crystallization of a power formation.
Neither can any category, any mode of categorization be considered as such as being universal and as
being programmed by a hereditary code. It is always a social field, a micropolitical field that overcodes
the cutting out of contents. Hereditary programming can only play on strata that are extrinsic to
language and, besides, nothing allows one to consider that it is itself linked to a system of universals
(unless one considers, for example, genes as such a system, but that would imply once again a
misunderstanding of the role played by the other physico-chemical strata). What good is invoking
universals if their existence in fact depends on contingent relations between heterogeneous strata? The
stability that in fact obtains for the genetic code has nothing universal about it, any more than does the
structure of matter. Its stratification, the fact that it is reverted to, that one finds it everywhere doesn't
imply the erecting of a transcendent formalism, but the putting into play of mutational abstract
machines.
 Fem
And, Deleuzian thought solves feminism
Claire Colebrook 2002 (Understanding Deleuze) Page xxxix-xl

Feminists have also seen the work of Deleuze as helpful in thinking beyond the closed questions of
humanism. Often, movements like feminism are divided over the question of whether to include women
within humanity, arguing that we are all equal, or to argue for women’s essential difference. The
feminisms that followed existentialism and phenomenology, such as the work of Simone de Beauvoir
(1908–86), argued that women were ‘Other’: always defined in opposition to, or as negations of man
(Beauvoir 1969). Deleuze-inspired feminists have challenged this negative account by insisting that the
images of both men and women are the result of prehuman and micropolitical productions; both are
produced through a multiplicity of relations and connections, with neither grounding or preceding the
other. One of the famous phrases from A Thousand Plateaus, ‘a thousand tiny sexes’, has been taken up
by writers like Elizabeth Grosz, who sees the unified human body as the effect of processes of desire and
becoming (Grosz 1994a). Against existentialism and phenomenology, Deleuze argued that whatever
image we have of ourselves, we are affected by forces that lie beyond our active decision . Freedom
needs to be redefined, not as the isolated decision of self-present human agents, but as the power to
affirm all those powers beyond ourselves, which only an expanded perception can approach.

Not our feminism – hydrorelationality derives its value from its MATERIAL SPECIFICITIY
Niemanas 13

Neimanis, Astrida. "Feminist subjectivity, watered." Feminist Review 103.1 (2013): 23-41.

Astrida Neimanis (BA McGill, MSc London School of Economics, PhD York) Chair of the Editorial Board of
PhaenEx: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Affiliated Researcher,
Posthumanities Hub (TEMA Gender), Linkoping University, SE.

The body of water as feminist figuration is thus firmly embedded in the urgent but diverse water-related
concerns of our twenty-first century. While resonant with other feminist terms (such as companion
species and transcorporeality), its critical force comes from retaining this specificity, and a debt to the
actual (widely imperilled) waters from which it sources its figurative power. The body of water is not
simply the ‘fluid’ subject, and indeed, we should be wary of the ubiquity of fluid metaphors within
contemporary theory, and ask constantly after their motivations and effects.3 We do not have to care
about fluidity as a conceptual trope, and invocations of fluidity can be indifferent to water. Fluidity is an
abstracted quality, but water is a living substance that sustains this earth, to which we have obligations.
It belongs to specific places, and transforms in specific ways across various membranes. Water has phase
states (only one of which is dominantly fluid), a specific chemistry and physical rules that apply to it
uniquely. Water is vulnerable in specific ways to anthropogenic assault, but can still wipe out hundreds
of thousands of humans with a single rogue wave. For these reasons, ‘water’ and ‘fluidity’ are not simply
interchangeable terms. It is such specificity to which I now turn to examine in more detail. Close
attention to the scientifically informed logics of water reveals a series of ways, beyond the abstractly
‘fluid’, in which thinking with water can open possibilities for thinking about—and embodying—feminist
subjectivity.

Many Femminists are ableists

Shipley 11 (Diane, Writer for the Washington Post “Caitlin Moran and feminism’s ableism problem”)

This week sees the publication of award-winning journalist Caitlin Moran’s first book, How to Be a
Woman. Part memoir, part feminist treatise, it was excerpted in The Times this weekend, complete with
pictures of her styled as Rosie the Riveter. Excited to read it, I enjoyed the description of her adolescence
until I read one line that I’m convinced made my heart stop beating for a second. Talking about herself at
age 13, Moran writes: I am, by and large, boundlessly positive. I have all the joyful ebullience of a retard.
I’m not sure what’s more offensive: that she used a word the majority of people with a developmental
disability find demeaning, that she’s promoting such a facile stereotype, or that while Moran advocates
against misogyny, she apparently sees no problem with using language that another marginalised group
finds hateful. This may be a particularly egregious example, but she’s not the only feminist to use ableist
language or demonstrate this type of ignorance. As a woman with disabilities, I often feel ostracized by
mainstream feminist media, which seems almost exclusively focused on the experiences of able-bodied
people. Disability rights too often feels like an afterthought. Last Autumn, Feministing’s coverage of Jon
Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity didn’t spare one sentence to suggest that the name played on fears
around mental illness, conflating it with poor judgement. (When one commenter pointed this out, they
were given the “I’m sorry you were offended” treatment.) But I shouldn’t have been surprised: in 2009, a
group of women feminists with disabilities and their allies challenged the site over its history of ableist
language use and scant representation of disability issues. Of particular concern was one writer’s
complaint that having doors opened for her made her feel (horrors!) “like an invalid”. Meanwhile, Jezebel
has reported incorrect information about Bipolar Disorder and ran a series in which a guest blogger
‘diagnosed’ reality TV stars with mental illnesses, as an explanation for their unreasonable behaviour.
When some readers complained about the ableist nature of these posts, editors advised them to “skip
them”. It’s even more disappointing when discriminatory language is used by feminist academics whose
job it should be to question oppression. I recently checked out Rosalind Gill’s Gender and the Media
from the library and was dismayed to find that the author states magazines aimed at young women “can
produce some almost Schizophrenic splits in which girls have no language to talk about their own
experiences”. Echoing this sentiment, in March Lisa Solod wrote a piece for The Huffington Post which
asked, “Is feminism schizophrenic or what?” Clearly we’re supposed to be shocked by this invocation of a
severe mental illness, despite the writers having no understanding of the disorder (it’s nothing to do with
split personalities). Worse, they don’t seem to have grasped that people with Schizophrenia might not
want their experiences turned into a cheap metaphor by able-bodied people for the sake of hyperbole.
Maybe you think none of these things matter because they’re not intended to offend. But they’re all
rooted in ignorance of what living with a disability involves and help perpetuate the idea that people
with disabilities are somehow inferior. That’s not necessarily a conscious choice, but it is thoughtless,
and what makes it worse is that it’s sanctioned by the culture we live in. No one at Caitlin Moran’s
publishing house or The Times appears to have questioned her use of the R word, and I can’t understand
why. The fact that women have been historically discriminated against doesn’t give able-bodied women
the right to discount the feelings of people with disabilities. In fact, when they persist in doing so, it’s
doubly disappointing.

Becoming-women allows for feminism to break from essentialist feminism to a form of

feminism that instead acknowledges the difference between women while still
allowing political action
Claire Colebrook, 2000, is an Australian cultural theorist, currently appointed Edwin Erle Sparks
Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. Deleuze and Feminist Theory. Edinburgh, Scotland.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. April 14, 2000. PDF.

Why Deleuze? Why now? One answer to this problem might appear to lie in Gilles Deleuze’s affirmation
of difference, thus placing him and his work in a far more general resistance to the Western metaphysical
tradition’s commitment to being as self-identical. Perhaps, as the postmodern attention to language and
signification has demonstrated, what something is is an effect of a dispersed system of relations and
differences, with relativity being that which conditions experience but remains necessarily beyond
experience. One should no longer strive to know or determine being, and in this liberation from some
ultimate ground one abandons all moralism, prescriptivism and hierarchy. The postmodern world is a
world without meta-narratives or authority only because it is also a world without ground. When
Deleuze and Guattari insist that relations are external to the terms related (Deleuze and Guattari 3), they
challenge the common sense assumption that our experienced world and its order are the direct and
immediate outcome of underlying identities or substances. The general appeal of Deleuze for feminism
has, for some time now, resulted from the identification of Deleuze as a philosopher of difference: as a
critic of ultimately determining substance, as an antidote to the Hegelian interpretation of difference as
the mere vehicle for identity and knowledge, and as an antagonist of all that is Platonic, stable or unified.
Both the excitement and the alarm generated by Gilles Deleuze’s concept of “becoming-woman” lay in
its seemingly post-modern potential. Feminists had long noted that appeals to essence, nature, being or
necessity had done them no favours. As long as “woman” had a nature, patriarchy could be explained
and justified. While postmodernism in general appeared to offer a liberating anti-foundationalism, where
women were no longer tied to their biology or history, Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis on difference
and becoming actually offered “woman” as the key to all becomings (Deleuze and Guattari 275). In this
regard, while reservations were expressed about the appropriation of the feminine for yet one more
liberating theory that had not yet considered the concrete embodiment of women’s struggles, Deleuze
could also be hailed as part of a postmodern pantheon of difference. Here, Deleuzean “becoming” would
free the concept of woman from its humanist and patriarchal dependency on man, remove all thought of
a prescriptive, identity-based or essentialist feminism, and enable sexual difference to be thought
beyond its usual binary and hierarchical figures. While post-modernism in general is an anti-essentialism,
Deleuze’s becoming-woman has the added benefit of tying the project of fluidity, non-identity, difference
and mobility to that which has always been identified with natural inertia, biology, timelessness and non-
transcendence--the feminine. Woman or the feminine would be the key to all becomings, then, not
because of any essence, but because man or the human has been constructed as that which establishes
the truth of identity and presence. Woman could be affirmed strategically as that which has always been
associated with the other of man; “becomingwoman” signals that space or imagined other necessary to
the production of the male subject as the truth and order of female matter. Until relatively recently
feminist approaches to Deleuze have therefore been oriented by the problem of difference’s anti-
essentialist force. Early assessments of Deleuze expressed reservations about the affirmation of
difference and non-identity just as women were beginning to form their own subject positions (Jardine).
Deleuze could be placed within a tradition of male subjectivity that defines itself in opposition to the
mere fixity of being. As Rosi Braidotti noted in Patterns of Dissonance, a celebration of postmodern non-
identity can function as yet one more maneuver in a tradition of modern Cartesianism that defines the
subject as other than any object, as nothing more than the mastery and negation of being-in-itself. While
Braidotti has subsequently turned to Deleuze in an affirmative spirit, she nevertheless tempers her
celebration of becoming and nomadic wandering with the recognition that some minimal concept of
identity or subject position is necessary for political action. Braidotti herself desists from giving a fully-
fledged theoretical answer to the relation between difference and identity but her recognition of the
problem opens the way for those feminists who have been stringently critical of the affirmation of
difference per se. In opposition to those who have located Deleuze within an affirmative destruction of
essence, identity, being and nature, are those feminists who regard difference as a doxa, as a definite
position, value and decided term within a political arena. The clearest expression of the political and
necessary problems in any unthinking celebration of difference is given in Rita Felski’s landmark essay
“The Doxa of Difference,” where, according to Felski, Deleuzean feminism is yet one more example of an
unreflective celebration of difference. Difference is, as Felski points out, never difference in itself.
Difference is always articulated, defended, defined and used from socially and politically constituted
positions. Felski’s criticism, although it includes Braidotti’s turn to Deleuze in its sights, actually offers one
of the best opportunities for realizing the feminist potential in Deleuze’s philosophy. If feminists are
going to be different--if sexual difference can delimit and point beyond the Western logos-- then
difference needs to be thought differently, and not just affirmed as one more revolutionary concept.
Deleuzean feminists have, over the past decade, recognized the problem of the social and political
meaning of difference and have therefore supplemented Deleuze’s project with the analysis of the
figures and senses of difference that have inevitably been defined through the image of gender
(Lorraine; Olkowski). One should not just affirm “woman” as the other, as different and beyond the
strictures of patriarchy; one should, following Irigaray, look at the way oppositions between identity and
difference have been defined on the model of the male subject. Only then can becoming-woman be
affirmed as more than the celebration of what is different from man. Only then can difference be
thought not as a value within a field of already defined terms but as what goes beyond the image of man
as a thinking being who recognizes, defines and orders difference-- what Deleuze refers to as the “image
of thought” (Difference and Repetition). It is possible to criticize Felski for having missed the unique
nature of the Deleuzean project. Yes, the postmodern affirmation of difference is an uncritical
celebration of a specific value that always emerges from some specific political and social condition, but
Deleuze’s difference is not to be conflated with a bland postmodernism. Just as Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri have pointed out that global capitalism is enabled and sustained by the simple affirmation
of difference and that only the production of a common humanity can effect the imagination of a point
beyond the exchange, equivalence and ungrounded flow of capital, so one could turn to Deleuze’s
difference as radically other than any postmodern notion of a free flow of signifiers. But in order to
recognize the force of Deleuze’s difference in this sense--as critical of postmodern capitalism’s flows of
signification--one needs to take Felski’s criticism of difference seriously. If Deleuzean difference is not a
refusal of fixed positions and a retreat from political force just what is it? Here we need to turn to the
feminist work on Deleuze that approaches difference as sexual difference (Grosz), and perhaps we also
need to flirt with the concept of essence, a concept that Deleuze himself was capable of articulating in
ways that were compatible with positive difference. Today, perhaps, the great divide in the thought of
sexual difference lies in the Lacan/Deleuze binary, a binary that, like all other simple dualisms, organizes
a complex field of relations, differences, distinctions and contraries. On the one hand, following the
seductive mobilization of Lacan by Joan Copjec (1994) and Slavoj Žižek, one could see sexual difference
as the figure through which being comes to be. In order to say that anything is at all some difference
needs to be marked between self and other, between presence and absence, and thought must both
struggle to think the “all” of being and recognize an “all” that lies beyond thought. This conflict between
that which must think all, and that which is not-all is parcelled out into the two logics of male and female
subjectivity. Male subjectivity is structured around the abandonment or negation of an outside, and,
concomitantly, the “lure of transcendence” or the idea of an “all” to be captured by thought (Copjec
2002, 9). Woman stands for that other logic or non-phallic jouissance, for it recognizes that being is not-
all; feminine desire is not oriented to totality. On the other hand, Deleuze offers a way of thinking sexual
difference beyond the male-female binary, not because of an anti-essentialism, but because of a far
more rigorous essentialism. For if one really thinks, if one encounters what is in its radical singularity as
possessing a power, force and potential--a capacity to relate--that goes beyond constituted terms, then
sexual difference no longer explains the thought (by a subject) of being. Rather, thinking is sexual
difference, the desiring response of life to life. And if life is sexually different--becoming through creation,
encounter, striving and production--then no single point of creation, such as the difference between
male and female bodies, can stand for or explain life or creation as such. Sexual difference is not,
thereby, subsumed beneath a general notion of difference. For the concept itself is seen as an event of
sexual difference, as one of the ways in which life preserves in its being, enables action and effects
relations--relations that are both the effect of an encounter but that also determine what each point of
relative stability in any encounter is. Thought can only have a world because something offers itself to be
thought, but this neither determines what thinking is, nor does it exhaust the potential of the world to
produce other encounters, beyond those of thought or what we have taken thought to be. One might
have to think different styles of thinking, different modes of conceptualization, different responses to life
on the basis of different bodily forces. If biologism and essentialism have been placed as pejoratives in
postmodern feminist discourse this is because biology has been seen as a determinism, where social
relations flow from the being of bodies or the essence of individuals. But Deleuze’s biological life does
not have its basis in a plane of substances that then produce relations. On the contrary, one can--and
one should--strive to imagine different worlds where the essences, singularities and differences of life
are not reduced to any single logic or set of relations, such as the relation between man and woman. In
this regard, one could go beyond the idea that Deleuze offers a future to feminism by giving women a
way of thinking essence as a potential to become, and say that feminism offers Deleuzean philosophy a
future. If difference is to be more than just a single flow or system of relations then one might need to
begin with at least one other sexed subject, one other body whose desire is not that of subject grasping
the being of an object.
Capitalism co-opts feminist movements
Fraser professor of philosophy and politics at the New School for Social Research in New York 13

[ Nancy Fraser, “How feminism became capitalism's handmaiden - and how to reclaim it”, TheGuardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/feminism-capitalist-handmaiden-neoliberal
MSteph]

As a feminist, I've always assumed that by fighting to emancipate women I was building a better world –
more egalitarian, just and free. But lately I've begun to worry that ideals pioneered by feminists are
serving quite different ends. I worry, specifically, that our critique of sexism is now supplying the
justification for new forms of inequality and exploitation. In a cruel twist of fate, I fear that the
movement for women's liberation has become entangled in a dangerous liaison with neoliberal efforts
to build a free-market society. That would explain how it came to pass that feminist ideas that once
formed part of a radical worldview are increasingly expressed in individualist terms. Where feminists
once criticised a society that promoted careerism, they now advise women to "lean in". A movement
that once prioritised social solidarity now celebrates female entrepreneurs. A perspective that once
valorised "care" and interdependence now encourages individual advancement and meritocracy.
What lies behind this shift is a sea-change in the character of capitalism. The state-managed capitalism
of the postwar era has given way to a new form of capitalism – "disorganised", globalising, neoliberal.
Second-wave feminism emerged as a critique of the first but has become the handmaiden of the
second. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that the movement for women's liberation
pointed simultaneously to two different possible futures. In a first scenario, it prefigured a world in
which gender emancipation went hand in hand with participatory democracy and social solidarity; in a
second, it promised a new form of liberalism, able to grant women as well as men the goods of
individual autonomy, increased choice, and meritocratic advancement. Second-wave feminism was in
this sense ambivalent. Compatible with either of two different visions of society, it was susceptible to
two different historical elaborations. As I see it, feminism's ambivalence has been resolved in recent
years in favour of the second, liberal-individualist scenario – but not because we were passive victims of
neoliberal seductions. On the contrary, we ourselves contributed three important ideas to this
development.

One contribution was our critique of the "family wage": the ideal of a male breadwinner-female
homemaker family that was central to state-organised capitalism. Feminist criticism of that ideal now
serves to legitimate "flexible capitalism". After all, this form of capitalism relies heavily on women's
waged labour, especially low-waged work in service and manufacturing, performed not only by young
single women but also by married women and women with children; not by only racialised women,
but by women of virtually all nationalities and ethnicities. As women have poured into labour markets
around the globe, state-organised capitalism's ideal of the family wage is being replaced by the newer,
more modern norm – apparently sanctioned by feminism – of the two-earner family.

Never mind that the reality that underlies the new ideal is depressed wage levels, decreased job
security, declining living standards, a steep rise in the number of hours worked for wages per
household, exacerbation of the double shift – now often a triple or quadruple shift – and a rise in
poverty, increasingly concentrated in female-headed households. Neoliberalism turns a sow's ear into a
silk purse by elaborating a narrative of female empowerment. Invoking the feminist critique of the
family wage to justify exploitation, it harnesses the dream of women's emancipation to the engine of
capital accumulation.

Feminism has also made a second contribution to the neoliberal ethos. In the era of state-organised
capitalism, we rightly criticised a constricted political vision that was so intently focused on class
inequality that it could not see such "non-economic" injustices as domestic violence, sexual assault and
reproductive oppression. Rejecting "economism" and politicising "the personal", feminists broadened
the political agenda to challenge status hierarchies premised on cultural constructions of gender
difference. The result should have been to expand the struggle for justice to encompass both culture and
economics. But the actual result was a one-sided focus on "gender identity" at the expense of bread
and butter issues. Worse still, the feminist turn to identity politics dovetailed all too neatly with a
rising neoliberalism that wanted nothing more than to repress all memory of social equality. In effect,
we absolutised the critique of cultural sexism at precisely the moment when circumstances required
redoubled attention to the critique of political economyFinally, feminism contributed a third idea to
neoliberalism: the critique of welfare-state paternalism. Undeniably progressive in the era of state-
organised capitalism, that critique has since converged with neoliberalism's war on "the nanny state"
and its more recent cynical embrace of NGOs. A telling example is "microcredit", the programme of
small bank loans to poor women in the global south. Cast as an empowering, bottom-up alternative to
the top-down, bureaucratic red tape of state projects, microcredit is touted as the feminist antidote
for women's poverty and subjection. What has been missed, however, is a disturbing coincidence:
microcredit has burgeoned just as states have abandoned macro-structural efforts to fight poverty,
efforts that small-scale lending cannot possibly replace. In this case too, then, a feminist idea has been
recuperated by neoliberalism. A perspective aimed originally at democratising state power in order to
empower citizens is now used to legitimise marketisation and state retrenchment. In all these cases,
feminism's ambivalence has been resolved in favour of (neo)liberal individualism. But the other,
solidaristic scenario may still be alive. The current crisis affords the chance to pick up its thread once
more, reconnecting the dream of women's liberation with the vision of a solidary society. To that end,
feminists need to break off our dangerous liaison with neoliberalism and reclaim our three
"contributions" for our own ends. First, we might break the spurious link between our critique of the
family wage and flexible capitalism by militating for a form of life that de-centres waged work and
valorises unwaged activities, including – but not only – carework. Second, we might disrupt the passage
from our critique of economism to identity politics by integrating the struggle to transform a status order
premised on masculinist cultural values with the struggle for economic justice. Finally, we might sever
the bogus bond between our critique of bureaucracy and free-market fundamentalism by reclaiming the
mantle of participatory democracy as a means of strengthening the public powers needed to constrain
capital for the sake of justice.

White feminist movements exclude “women of color”

M.A. Jaimes Guerrero 2003, Professor of Women and Gender Studies, leading Native American and
Mestiza author, scholar, activist, novelist and poet, “’Patriarchal Colonialism’ and Indigenism:
Implications for Native Feminist Spirituality and Native Womanism”, Hypatia, Vol. 18
One perspective on "feminism" among Native American women is that the¶ Emphasis has been on
individuality as conceived by early Western feminists¶ who wanted more equality with men in the
prevailing patriarchal sociopoliti- cal structures in U. S. American society and who premised their
struggle on¶ democratic ideals for gender equity(Jaimes1998,413-39 orJaimes1999a,1-25;¶
seealsoJaimesandHalsey1992).Starting with the suffragettes women among the upper and middle
classes demanded the vote for "white" women within this historical legacy of the women's movement
(Kerberand De Hart 1999, Introduction),but they were not concerned with other "women of color" in
this democratic pursuit. Therefore, Native American women perceived this early¶ feminism as a
reaction to an existing patriarchal sociopolitical system not concerned with the racialized oppression-as a
result of Euroamerican racism-of¶ other marginalized women and subcultural groups of "ethnic
minorities," such as Native Americans as tribal peoples, or with the impact of U. S. colonialism on their
traditional ways of life. Feminists of these earlier and more exclusive times were focused on
challenging sexism and the chauvinistic behavior of men, in general, toward women in mainstream
populations. These feminists were generally more educated in Euroamerican hegemony, married, and
of the middle class, in contrast to their "women of color" counterparts.

Redetermining the female subject position must start outside of current forms of
theory and we must account for the differences inside of the female subject position
Braidotti 93 Rosi Braidotti, Rosi Braidotti is a Philosopher and Distinguished University Professor at
Utrecht University as well as director of the Centre for the Humanities in Utrecht, Embodiment, Sexual
Difference, and the Nomadic Subject, Hypatia, Volume 8, Number 1, 1993, pg. 5-7.

Conceptually, the distinction between philosophy and thinking is made necessary by the fact that I see
philosophy today as being incapable of thinking about the very questions that I see as central: the female
subject, in the framework of the feminist project of sexual difference. This is because philos- ophy is for
me intrinsically connected to domination, power, and violence; I see philosophy as requiring mechanisms
of exclusion and domination as part of its standard practices. Philosophy is a hegemonic discipline whose
historical task has been to legislate among possible forms of knowledge, codifying certain modes of
thinking that then become legitimated as scientifically acceptable. Philosophy is all about discursive
power. Consequently, as Foucault (1977) convincingly argues, philosophy creates itself through what it
excludes as much as through what it asserts; philosophy asserts its values through the exclusion of
many-women, nonwhites, non- learned, etc. The structural necessity of these pejorative others, these
"slaves" of philosophy who stand in a specular relation to the philosophical utterance, makes me doubt
the theoretical capacity, let alone the moral and political willingness, of this discipline to act in a
nonhegemonic, nonexclusionary manner. What is also at stake is the legacy of critical theory and its
attempt to separate philosophy from instrumental reason, but I cannot deal with this point here.6 Even
more specifically, my reading of Deleuze's analysis of thinking (Deleuze 1970, 1972) has convinced me of
a sort of structural aporia in philosophical discourse. Discourse-the production of ideas, knowledge,
texts, and sci- ences-is something that philosophy relates to and rests upon, in order to codify and
systematize it. Discourse being, however, a complex network of interrelated trutheffects, it far exceeds
philosophy's power of codification. So philosophy has to "run after" all sorts of new discourses (women,
postcolonial subjects, the audiovisual media and other new technologies, etc.) in order to incorporate
them into its way of thinking (Foucault 1971). In light of the intrinsinc link between philosophy and
discursive power, the question then becomes, What can motivate today a woman's choice of/for
philosophy? How can one go on doing philosophy? Deleuze and Irigaray, in very different ways, point to
what I see as the answer: they focus on the "desire for philosophy" as an epistemophilic drive, i.e., a will-
to-know that is funda- mentally affective. In other words, they build on the logo-philic side of philos-
ophy and remind us that philosophy used to signify the love of, the desire for, higher knowledge. Thus,
quoting Spinoza and Nietzsche, Deleuze banks on the affective substratum as a force capable of freeing
philosophy from its hegemonic habits. Affectivity in this scheme is prediscursive: there is such a thing as
a pre- philosophical moment in the establishment of a philosophical stance, a moment in which one
chooses for philosophy. This prephilosophical moment of desire is not only unthought, but it remains
nonthought at the very heart of philosophy, because it is that which sustains the very activity of
philosophiz- ing (Braidotti N.d.a). In other words, we are left with the problem of what is ontologically
there but propositionally excluded by necessity in the philosophical utterance. There is the unspoken
and the unspeakable desire for thought, the passion for thinking, the epistemophilic substratum on
which philosophy later erects its discursive monuments. I am interested in this substratum and how it
can help us dislodge the monuments. I want to emphasize that desire is what is at stake in the feminist
politics of pursuing alternative definitions of female subjectivity. The notion of desire in this
configuration is not a prescriptive one: the desire to become and to speak as female feminist subjects
does not entail the specific content of women's speech. What is being empowered is women's
entitlement to speak, not the propositional content of their utterances. What I want to focus on is
women's desire to become, not a specific model for their becoming. The feminism of sexual difference
should be read as emphasizing the political importance of desire as opposed to the will, and of stressing
its role in the constitution of the subject. Not just libidinal desire, but rather ontological desire, the
desire to be, the tendency of the subject to be, the predisposition of the subject toward being. Feminist
theory, far from being a reactive kind of thought, expresses women's ontological desire, women's
structural need to posit themselves as female subjects-that is to say, not as disembodied entities, but
rather as corporeal and consequently sexed beings. Indeed, following Adrienne Rich (Rich 1976, 1979,
1985), I believe that the redefinition of the female feminist subject starts with the revaluation of the
bodily roots of subjectivity, rejecting the traditional vision of the knowing subject as universal, neutral,
and consequently gender-free. This "positional" or situated way of seeing the subject states that the
most important location or situation is the rooting of the subject into the spatial frame of the body. The
first and foremost of locations in reality is one's own embodiment. Rethinking the body as our primary
situation is the starting point for the epistemological side of the "politics of location," which aims at
grounding the discourse produced by female feminists. The body, or the embodiment of the subject, is a
key term in the feminist struggle for the redefinition of subjectivity; it is to be understood as neither a
biological nor a sociological category, but rather as a point of overlapping between the physical, the
symbolic, and the sociological. In other words, the starting point for feminist redefinitions of female
subjectivity is paradoxical: it is a new form of materialism that nonetheless inherits the corporeal
materiality of the poststructuralists and thus places emphasis on the embodied and therefore sexually
differentiated structure of the speaking subject. In feminist theory one speaks as a woman, although the
subject "woman" is not a mono- lithic essence defined once and for all, but rather the site of multiple,
complex, and potentially contradictory sets of experience, defined by overlapping vari- ables.
Deleuze’s notion of the fold is necessary for black feminists to inherit historical
conditions and allow for the creation of new identities as a means of resistance
Davidson 10 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, Dr. Davidson is Assistant Professor of Business
Communication in the Price College of Business, co-director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Center
for Social Justice, and Faculty-in-Residence for Couch Residence Hall. She is the author of The Rhetoric of
Race and co-editor of two volumes: Critical Perspectives on bell hooks and Convergences: Black
Feminism and Continental Philosophy. Her research interests include: rhetorical theory and criticism,
black feminism, and black philosophical thought, Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental
Philosophy, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, pg. 128-131.

In turning to Deleuze, I do not intend to provide a systematic overview of Deleuze’s work; instead my
focus will be on the implications of Delueze’s notion of the fold for black feminist thought. This choice of
focus is not arbitrary because, as Tom Conley observes, the notion of the fold “counts among the most
vital and resonate terms in [Delueze’s] copious and varied writings.”33 Importantly, Deleuze develops his
notion of the fold as a part of his analysis of power structures. In that analysis, Deleuze raises a question
about the power of resistance that should be of central concern to all black feminists, including duCille.
Deleuze writes: “What remains, then, except an anonymous life that shows up on when it clashes with
power, argues with it, exchanges ‘brief and strident words,’ and then fades back into the night, what
Foucault called ‘the life of infamous men,’ whom he asked us to admire by virtue of ‘their misfortune,
race or uncertain madness?’ ”34 With this question, Deleuze wonders whether marginalized groups,
such as black women, can produce any real change in speaking truth to power. What, in other words, is
the point of struggling against the proverbial wall of racism, classism, gender discrimination, and
economic oppression, if these struggles are destined to fade “back into the night”? This is certainly an
understandable reaction on the part of many black women “who are daily beaten down, mentally,
physically, and spiritually—women who are powerless to change their condition in life.” One mark of
their victimization, as hooks notes, is that they “accept their lot in life without visible question, without
organized protest, without collective anger or rage.”35 In the face of such a reality, the question shared
by both Deleuze and black feminists concerns whether there can be any source for resistance against
power structures, and if so, what those resources are. Deleuze’s notion of the fold, I want to suggest, is
potentially significant in this regard. Like duCille and other black feminists, Deleuze is not so much
concerned with alterity as with subjectivity, especially the becoming of subjects who are unable to self-
define, to become themselves, or to create themselves anew due to the pressures of social forces. For
this reason, Deleuze’s notion of the fold can provide new and valuable resources for addressing
questions of black female subjectivity raised by duCille and others. The French term pli, as Conley
explains, refers “both to a twist of fabric and to the origins of life, bears a lightness and density that
marks many of the philosopher’s refl ection on questions of being and on the nature of events.”36 What
is thought-provoking about Deleuze’s notion of the fold is that, like a piece of fabric, it maintains its
physical presence but at the same time can create new spaces within its formation of new crevices and
pleats. This is why the fold is capable of “bearing almost infinite conceptual force.”37 Through its
multiple foldings, the subject maintains access to the internal and external aspects of her being. This
means that “[a] person’s relation with his or her body becomes both an “archive” and a “diagram,” a
collection of subjectivations and a mental map charted on the basis of the past and drawn from the
events and elements in the ambient world.”38 With this notion of the fold, then, I want to suggest that
the folding of the subject provides an interesting model for thinking about the way in which black
females can both inherit a historical condition and at the same time create new identities within that
condition. It bears noting that there is not an inside or outside prior to the fold, instead the fold creates
the inside as well as the outside. The inside and outside of the fold are two sides of a single surface.
Conley adds: “Thus the fold allows the body and the soul of the subject to be and to become in the
world through “intensions” . . . felt about “extensions” in space. Because the inside and outside are
conjoined by the point of view of the soul on the world, the apprehension of the condition of possibility
of variation allows the subject to think about how it inflects and is inflected by the mental and
geographical milieus it occupies.”39 That said we need to ask whether there can be an inside of thought
for black women who are caught up in systems of power and trapped in the position of other forgotten.
Has the internal been forgotten? If so, how can it be recovered? Echoing the insights of Fanon and hooks,
duCille seeks a way for black women to escape the external gaze that fixes black women in the static,
illusionary position of the other. This is accomplished through the recovery of a black female identity
that is no longer a marker of alterity but is capable of speaking its own name. In this attempt, Deleuze is
an important ally, because his notion of the fold signifies a way of producing an identity internally. Like
duCille, Deleuze rejects the idea of an ahistorical subjectivity whose identity would escape from the
vicissitudes of history and the external world. Instead of being ahistorical and fixed, both thinkers would
agree that subjectivity must be achieved, in other words, that there is a struggle for subjectivity. Conley
explains that this struggle is a “battle to win the right to have access to difference, variation, and
metamorphosis.”40 Similarly, duCille describes the nature of this struggle in terms of the struggle by
black women to become the authors of their own text. Through this struggle, they seek to establish a
space of their own, as something other than the other. The fact that this is a “struggle” suggests that the
formation of positive subjectivity can only occur through resistance to existing systems of power.
Subjectivity, according to Deleuze, is in a certain sense defined by its power to resist, because “diffuse
centers of power do not exist without points of resistance that are in some way primary”41 What type of
internal relation to oneself is established by folds? In folding, one is able to encounter another self, in a
different way from the identity imposed by external, marginalizing forces. Deleuze explains the dual
nature of this relation to oneself in the following terms: “On the one hand, there is a ‘relation to oneself’
that consciously derives from one’s relation with others; on the other, there is equally a ‘self
constitution’ that consciously derives from the moral code as a rule for knowledge.”42 In addition to the
various forces that define the subject from the outside, Deleuze acknowledges the “moral code” to know
thyself.43 In this respect, his notion of the fold can be useful to black feminists who seek to counter the
commodification and colonization of black women. This operation is at work in duCille’s reference to the
many women who have preserved counterhistories and countermemories of black women. Importantly,
Deleuze emphasizes that this counter-history need not be a mere reaction to a prior set of historical
conditions. Instead, the relation to oneself has an independent status. As Deleuze explains: “It is as if the
relation of the outside folded back to create a doubling, allowed a relation to oneself to emerge, and
constitute an inside which is hollowed out and develops its own unique dimension. . . . [T]he relation to
oneself that is self-mastery, ‘is a power that one brought to bear on oneself in the power that one
exercised over others.’ ”44 Deleuze, like duCille, is interested in establishing a positive notion of
difference. Instead of being a product of a relation to something else, positive difference is something
like “the right to difference, variation and metamorphosis.”45 This means that the struggle for
subjectivity is not just a reaction to a prior situation; instead it is a creative force and a source of change.
Along these lines, Deleuze’s fold provides a space for black women to create a positive identity from a
perspective and position internal to themselves. As Deleuze suggests, it is “a differentiation that leads to
a folding, a reflection.”46 Folding is thus not merely about resisting the external; it is primarily about
creating a “relation to oneself”47 Since the process of folding functions “beneath the codes and rules of
knowledge and power,” what is also critical is that the folds are “apt to unfold and merge with them, but
not without new folding being created in the process.”48 It is important to emphasize that Deleuze does
not intend the fold as a retreat from the external world, since the outside and the inside are not distinct
from one another.49 Rather, while the fold provides a safe place for encountering oneself, what is as
critical is that black feminist subjectivity also unfold. It is in unfolding that she may encounter the world
in a newly constructed identity that can resist external constitution: “unfolding means becoming.”50
Conclusion This chapter is an attempt to challenge the postmodern identification of black women as
other. Ann duCille, like a number of other black feminists, suggests that the postmodern identification of
black women as a site of alterity and difference has at the best been ineffective and at the worst,
harmful, to the liberation of black women. Instead of emphasizing their alterity, duCille is concerned
with the subjectivity of black women and suggests that they be regarded as sacred texts. The problem
with postmodern discourse and its predecessors is that they speak about black women without giving
them authorship or voice. Instead of being objects of interpretation, duCille calls for black women to
establish authorship. In carrying out this project, Deleuze’s notion of the fold is useful, because it offers a
site of creative resistance. The fold opens up a space in which black female identity can interact with
itself and bring about a convergence between the outside and the inside of thought.

Perm : Do the K through feminist reflection – the issue has already been confronted
and resolved by feminist scholars
(Ball 05, Kirstie, “Organization, Surveillance and the Body: Towards a Politics of Resistance”, Volume
12(1): 89–108 ISSN 1350–5084 Copyright © 2005 SAGE, Open University Business School, UK,
http://org.sagepub.com/content/12/1/89.full.pdf)

It is the final concern that will be explored at length in this section. Briefly, the corporeal turn in
sociology emerged from an identification of the body as an ‘absent-presence’ (Shilling, 1993) in the work
of Marx, Weber and, latterly, a number of social constructionists (Butler, 1990; Burkitt, 1999). More
recent writers such as Goffman (1963), Foucault (1980), Bourdieu (1977, 1990) and Elias (1991) have also
alluded to the concept of the body in their various analyses of social action and structure. Debate
surrounding this reclaiming of the body has been raised by feminist writers, who have called for
careful reflexivity in the process (Witz, 2000). Disrupting many of the dualisms through which work on
the body has been explored as gendered, Witz (2000) claims that the bodies originally written out of
sociology were gendered as embodied males. This is because of a tendency in traditional sociology to
over- corporealize women; in other words, to explain women in terms of bodily capacities of sex,
sexuality and reproduction, affording them little sociality. Many of the scholars whose projects involve
‘re-embodying’ sociology are male and, without feminist reflection on an embodied ontology within
sociology, the subject is in danger of reclaiming an abject male body, rather than those of males and
females. It is with this in mind, as well as the difficulties in writing about the embodied sensual world,
that an embodied politics of resistance to surveillance is considered.

Feminist analysis often erases animal oppression, just as patriarchy does

Adams, 90 [Carol J: teacher at Perkins School of Theology, Dallas. The Sexual Politics of Meat. Pg. 60-61]

In constructing stories about violence against women, feminists have drawn on the same set of
cultural images as their oppressors. Feminist critics perceive the violence inherent in representations
that collapse sexuality and consumption and have titled this nexus “carnivorous arrogance” (Simone De
Beauvoir), “gynocidal gluttony” (Mary Daly), “sexual cannibalism” (Kate Miller), “psychic cannibalism”
(Andrea Dworkin), “metaphysical cannibalism” (Ti-Grace Atkinson); racism as it intersects with sexism
has been defined by bell hooks in distinctions based on meat eating: “The truth is—in sexist America,
where women are objectified extensions of male ego, black women have been labeled hamburger and
white women prime rib.”72 These feminist theorists take us to the intersection of the oppression of
women and the oppression of animals and then do an immediate about-face, seizing the function of
the absent referent to forward women’s issues and so imitating and complementing a patriarchal
structure. Dealing in symbols and similes that express humiliation, objectification, and violation is an
understandable attempt to impose order on a violently fragmented female sexual reality. When we
use meat and butchering as metaphors for women’s oppression, we express our own hog-squeal of the
universe while silencing the primal hog-squeal of Ursula Hamdress herself. When radical feminist talk as
if cultural exchanges with animals are literally true in relationship to women, they exploit and co-opt
what is actually done to animals. It could be argued that the use of these metaphors is as exploitative
as the posing of Ursula Hamdress: an anonymous pig somewhere was dressed, posed, and
photographed. Was she sedated to keep that pose or was she, perhaps, dead? Radical feminist theory
participates linguistically in exploiting and denying the absent referent by not including in their vision
Ursula Hamdress’s fate. They butcher the animal/woman cultural exchanges represented in the
operation of the absent referent and then address themselves solely to women, thus capitulating to
the absent referent, part of the same construct they wish to change.73 What is absent rom much
feminist theory that relies on metaphors of animals’ oppression for illuminating women’s experience
is the reality behind the metaphor. When Mary Daly suggests raiding the Playboy’s playground to let out
“the bunnies, the bitches, the beavers, the squirrels, the chicks, the pussycats, the cows, the nags, the
foxy ladies, the old bats and biddies, so that they can at last begin naming themselves” we, her readers
know that she is talking about women and not about actual bunnies, bitches, beavers, and so on.74 Butr,
I argue, she should be. Otherwise, feminist theorists’ use of language describes, reflects, and
perpetuates oppression by denying the extent to which these oppressions are culturally analogous.

Critical pedagogy is only good for WHITE women—can’t solve, makes feminist
pedagogy key
Hoodfar 17—Homa Hoodfar is a Canadian-Iranian sociocultural anthropologist and professor emerita of
anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal. While she is most widely known for her work on
Western perceptions of the veil or hijab in its varied forms, meanings, and historical uses,[1] much of her
work has focused on women's roles in public life in Muslim societies,[2] with particular attention to how
religious symbols and interpretations have been variously used to support and repress women's status.
[3] (“Feminist Anthropology and Critical Pedagogy: The Anthropology of Classrooms’ Excluded Voices,”
Canadian Journal of Education, available on http://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-
rce/article/viewFile/2636/1945, accessed on 7/26/2017, LC)

Critical pedagogy challenges the exclusionary practices of racism, sexism, ablism, and heterosexism in
the dominant society. The exponents of critical pedagogy have rejected the traditional view of classroom
instruction in favour of approaches that challenge the status quo. In this paper, by reviewing some of my
teaching experiences as a woman of colour, I demonstrate that not all teachers teach pedagogy in the
same way. Based on my observations, I argue that debates on critical pedagogy should include voices
from outside the dominant social groups and ethnicities, be they teachers’ or students’ voices.
Furthermore, the success of teaching for social change depends on our ability to incorporate these
critical approaches in conventional courses and subject matters where, in my experience, not all students
would welcome unconventional classroom relations. La pédagogie critique conteste les pratiques
d’exclusion que sont, dans les groupes sociaux dominants, le racisme, le sexisme, l’hétérosexisme et la
discrimination fondée sur les déficiences. Les chefs de file de la pédagogie critique rejettent
l’enseignement traditionnel au profit d’approches qui mettent en question le statu quo. Dans cet article,
l’auteure démontre, tout en analysant certaines de ses expériences pédagogiques en tant que Noire, que
tous les enseignants n’enseignent pas la pédagogie de la même manière. Se fondant sur ses
observations, l’auteure soutient que les débats sur la pédagogie critique devraient inclure des points de
vue provenant d’ethnies ou de groupes sociaux non dominants, qu’il s’agisse des points de vue des
enseignants ou des élèves. Le succès de la pédagogie eu égard aux changements sociaux dépend de
notre aptitude à incorporer ces approches critiques dans les matières et les cours traditionnels où,
d’après l’expérience de l’auteure, tous les élèves ne sont pas disposés à accueillir favorablement des
méthodes d’enseignement non traditionnelles. Critical pedagogy challenges the exclusionary practices of
racism, sexism, ablism, and heterosexism in dominant society.2 Although exponents of critical pedagogy,
therefore, begin theoretically with a recognition that subject position matters, this attention to race, sex,
gender, and sexuality has not carried over into the practice of critical pedagogy. By critical pedagogy, I
refer to rejecting the traditional view that classroom instruction is an objective process removed from
the crossroads of power, history, and social context, while attempting to encourage more critical
teaching and learning methods. The techniques used to challenge the status quo are not themselves
appreciated as gendered and racialized. Put simply, what works for a white female teacher may not work
for a black female teacher, regardless of a shared commitment to be critical. During the last two decades,
teachers of different feminist perspectives have tried to adapt their critical approaches to conventional
scholarship by addressing the way the dominant culture, through its universalistic views, creates and
perpetuates social inequality. The goal is to encourage students to develop a critical and analytical
approach to the social systems of which they are a part. This currently evolving synthesis has been
painfully difficult. If we begin with the early feminists’ attempts to add women (read white middle class
women) to the universalist view of the dominant cultures of North America and Western Europe,
perhaps the most significant and painful break-through has been to overcome the blockade of
“sisterhood is universal” which in effect had authorized the more privileged women to talk for all other
women (bell hooks, 1988; Lazreg, 1988; Mohanty, 1991; Spelman, 1988). Thereafter, feminist
scholarship(s) slowly moved on not only to recognize the social and cultural differences among women
but to hear and to recognize, though reluctantly, the other voices of feminism(s). We can now link
oppression of women to other forms of oppression, thus making feminists’ concerns and the agenda for
social change broader than sexism.3 Critical/feminist pedagogy has been advocated essentially as
teaching to influence and to subvert the social system. However, the incorporation of critical pedagogy in
the classroom has proved more problematic and challenging than simply including more diverse and
critical material in the curriculum. There is a tacit agreement that a central objective of critical pedagogy
is to encourage students to develop their ability to analyze and assess critically the social structure
(Cannon, 1990; de Danaan, 1990; de Lauretis, 1986; Nelson, 1986; Weiler, 1988). Students should be
assisted to locate themselves, as well as others, in the social system so as to assess the way they and
others have been shaped by and in turn shape their social environments, albeit to various degrees and in
different directions depending on their social positions (Razack, 1990). One of a teacher’s important
roles, therefore, is to facilitate students’ connection of their daily and life experiences to the critical
literature, much of which is written in highly abstract language. Giving voice to students’ life experiences
and contextualizing these experiences in the social system have become the major strategy for
encouraging critical analysis of the socio-economic environment (Frankenberg & Martens, 1985). A first
step, however, is for teachers to locate themselves in the structure of the society and the classroom.
They can then initiate a discussion of difference. Taking advantage of teachers’ privileged position in the
classroom, they can help students recognize that their interactions with one another and with their
teachers are structured by the inequality of power between them.

Finally, Feminist critique fails because of its ground in identity – rather we must focus
on alternating intensity in order to create the positive difference.
Claire Colebrook 2002 (Understanding Deleuze) Page 45

By contrast, Deleuze produces a politics of desire. Intensities may not be meaningful, but they are no less
political; it is not the message that we consume in culture but the investment in intensities.

Society is ordered not by the imposition of meanings but by the production of styles. Deleuze argues for
a ‘micropolitics’—how do specific qualities such as whiteness, softness, curvaceousness— signs of a
desire that is singular and impersonal—come to be coded as signs of ‘the feminine’? We have femininity
not because we have imposed difference but because we have abstracted certain qualities and taken
them as signifiers. The problem comes when desired intensities—such as the image of Monroe—are
taken to be a signifier for woman in general; this is how the ‘social machine’, according to Deleuze,
‘overcodes’ desire. It reduces intensive difference— the investment in impersonal qualities such as
blondeness, curvaceousness, vulnerability—to extensive difference—the investment in ‘woman’ or
‘femininity’. We can look at Andy Warhol’s repetition of Monroe’s image in relation to this reduction of
intensive difference. Warhol’s art takes the signifiers of modern America—everything from Marilyn
Monroe to Campbell’s soup tins—and repeats them as intensities. Monroe becomes a certain shape of
lips and hair. The soup tin becomes the design-label, its colours, lettering and logo. The repetition of the
image precludes us from seeing its uniqueness or being; we are given imaging and appearance itself. So
that it is not that we have identities such as femininity or American home-life that we then signify
through images—there is no ‘woman’ or ‘America’ other than the proliferation of intensities. Identity
occurs with the reduction of intensities to a signifier , when we imagine the intensity as the image of
some thing—when we think our love of apple pie signifies our Americanness. The reverse is the case;
identities are formed from desires, such as investments in colours, body-parts, tastes and styles. Desire is
originally productive, connective and intensive, the investment in qualities that are neither masculine
nor feminine but singular. Through repetition and coding these qualities are read as signifiers of some
individual essence that precedes and governs the intensities.

Contemporary feminism fails to take into account matters of race – that eliminates
space for black female identity
Carby, ‘82. Hazel V. Carby is professor of African American Studies and of American Studies at Yale
University. “White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood.”
https://crabgrass.riseup.net/assets/163126/versions/1/carby%20white%20woman%20listen.pdf –
clawan

Much contemporary debate has posed the question of the relation between race and gender, in terms
that attempt to parallel race and gender divisions. It can be argued that as processes, racism and sexism
are similar. Ideologically for example, they both con- struct common sense through reference to
"natural" and "biological" differences. It has also been argued that the categories of race and gender are
both socially constructed and that, therefore, they have little internal coherence as concepts.
Furthermore, it is possible to parallel racialized and gendered divisions in the sense that the possibilities
of amelioration through legislation appear to be equally ineffectual in both cases. Michele Barrett,
however, has pointed out that it is not possible to argue for parallels because as soon as historical
analysis is made, it becomes obvious that the institutions which have to be analyzed are different, as are
the forms of analysis needed. We would agree that the construction of such parallels is fruitless and
often proves little more than a mere academic exercise; but there are other reasons for our dismissal of
these kinds of debate. The experience of black women does not enter the parameters of parallelism. The
fact that black women are subject to the simultaneous oppression of patriarchy, class, and "race" is the
prime reason for not employing parallels that render their posi- tion and experience not only marginal
but also invisible. In arguing that most contemporary feminist theory does not begin to adequately
account for the experience of black women, we also have to acknowledge that it is not a simple question
of their absence, and consequently the task is not one of rendering their visibility. On the contrary we
will have to argue that the process of accounting for their historical and contemporary position does, in
itself, challenge the use of some of the central categories and assumptions of recent mainstream
feminist thought. We can point to no single source for our oppression. When white feminists emphasize
patri- archy alone, we want to redefine the term and make it a more complex concept. Racism ensures
that black men do not have the same relations to patriarchal/capitalist hierar- chies as white men. In the
words of the Combahee River Collective: We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive
in Black women's lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race
from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simul- taneously.
We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely
sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.
Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not
advocate the fractionalisation that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black
people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not
need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle
together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism. (Combahee
River Collective 1983, 213) It is only in the writings by black feminists that we can find attempts to
theorize the interconnection of class, gender, and race as it occurs in our lives, and it has only been in the
autonomous organizations of black women that we have been able to express and act upon the
experiences consequent upon these determinants. Many black women had been alienated by the
nonrecognition of their lives, experiences, and herstories in the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM).
Black feminists have been and are still demanding that the existence of racism must be acknowledged as
a structuring feature of our relationships with white women. Both white feminist theory and practice
have to rec- ognize that white women stand in a power relation as oppressors of black women. This
compromises any feminist theory and practice founded on the notion of simple equality.

Thus we affirm Third World Feminism as a lens for kick starting revolution. Third World
Feminism allows for a departure from other globalized forms of feminism by
understanding intersections of oppression to create individualized strategies that fight
back against colonialism.
Herr ’14 (Ranjoo Seodu Herr Associate Professor, Philosophy Ph.D., State University of New York at
Buffalo, “Reclaiming Third World Feminism: or Why Transnational Feminism Needs Third World
Feminism”, pgs. 5-6, 2014, NAE)

From Mohanty’s critique of white global feminism above, two constitutive ideas, among others, of Third
World feminism that adequately theorize about and address Third World women’s oppression can be
identified. The first is that Third World feminists must carefully examine and analyze Third World
women’s oppression and resistance on the ground in their historical specificity by paying attention to
intersections of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and nation pertaining to their locations (Mohanty 1991b,
2–3). Studies that have adhered to this idea reveal that Third World women’s resistance often does not
involve an explicit demand for gender equality or radical social restructuring in order to achieve feminist
goals. Instead, Third World women tend to opt for gradual changes that result from their collaboration
with their male counterparts to enhance their communal influence vis-à-vis other members and to
improve living standards of their families and of the community itself (see Jayawardena 1986; Ong 1987;
Shiva 1993; Basu 1995; Pardo 2001; Forbis 2003; Basu 2010). Also, local women’s activisms tend to be
aligned with other local social movements, such as national, pro-democracy, or human-rights
movements. However, as Amrita Basu has aptly pointed out, even in these mixed activisms “women
ultimately take up questions of gender inequality even if this was not their initial objective” (Basu 1995,
19). The second constitutive idea is the importance of recognizing Third World women’s “historical and
political” agency and paying due respect to it. This is not difficult to do when close attention is paid to
their activism on the ground, as Third World women have been engaging in various forms of local
activism to enact positive changes in their particular locations. Since they are active agents of positive
change, Third World women’s viewpoints must receive due respect. Yet there is another, more
fundamental, reason that Third World women’s viewpoints deserve respect. As feminist standpoint
theory has correctly argued, “marginalized” social locations are especially propitious for producing “less
partial and distorted,” and even “objective,” understanding of the human condi- tion (Harding 1993, 56,
62). Thus, the marginalized status of Third World women enables them to have “epistemic advantage”
(56) or “epistemic privilege” (Mohanty 2002, 511, 515) concerning events and conditions that affect their
lives. Third World feminists must therefore recognize the agency of Third World women and respect their
diverse viewpoints and activisms, even if these may not conform to their preconceived notions about
feminist activism. Instead of imposing their own feminist preconceptions on Third World women, Third
World feminists must “identify and reenvision forms of collective resistance that women, especially, in
their different communities enact in their everyday lives” (515). Having identified the two constitutive
ideas of Third World feminism, a more precise definition of Third World feminism can now be stipulated:
Third World feminism encompasses feminist perspectives on Third World women that (1) generate more
reliable analyses of and recommendations for addressing Third World women’s multidimensional and
complex oppression through careful examinations of their local conditions in their historical specificity;
and (2) respect the agency and voices of Third World women engaged in diverse forms of local activism.

Black feminists and white feminists have historically had different experiences. Absent
a racial analysis of gender, black women will constantly be overshadowed by the needs
of the white feminsits to their detriment.
Kelley 02 [KELLEY Professor of History and Africana studies @ NYU 2k2 (Robin D.G.-frequent contributor
to the New York Times and author of Hamer and Hoe, Race Rebels as well as Yo Mama’s
Disfunktional; FREEDOM DREAMS: The Black Radical Imagination; pp.144-146.]

Black feminist writings, in both The Black Woman and elsewhere (i.e. Angela Davis’s pioneering 1871
essay “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves”) extended the discussion of
revolution from public institutions and the workplace to the home, the family, even the body. The
exploitation of women’s labor within families, sexual assault, and birth control were among the more
highly debated topics. For example, whereas many “second wave” feminists understood motherhood as
inherently oppressive because it doomed (white middle-class) women to a lonely life as suburban
housewives, black women were forced by economic circumstance into low-wage labor and never had the
luxury of spending a lot of time with their families. Most black working women wanted more choices,
more time, and more resources rather than an outright rejection of motherhood itself. Besides, black
women had had a very different experience with birth control. While white women demanded greater
access to contraceptives and abortion as a road to sexual freedom, black women were fighting forced
sterilization and family planning policies that sought to limit black births. After World War I, the birth
control movement, led by none other than the militant women’s rights activist Margaret Sanger, formed
an alliance with the eugenicist movement. Together they advocated limiting fertility among the “unfit,”
which included poor black people. Sanger viewed birth control as “the very pivot of civilization” and “the
most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.” Sanger, along with Dr. Clarence Gamble
(the mastermind behind the massive sterilization of women in Puerto Rico in the 1950s), launched the
notorious Negro Project in 1938 to promote birth control among Southern African Americans. Birth
Control centers were established in black communities all over the South during the 1930s; the number
of black women sterilized involuntarily rose exponentially and continued to rise through the 1970s. As
Dorothy Roberts writes in Killing the Black Body, “It was a common belief in the South that Black women
were routinely sterilized without their informed consent and for no valid medical reason. Teaching
hospitals performed unnecessary hysterectomies on poor Black women as practice for their medical
residents. This sort of abuse was so widespread in the South that these operations came to be known as
‘Mississippi appendectomies.’” Given the historical links between the early birth control movement and
eugenics, Fran Beal was not off track when she described family planning policies under racism as a
potential road to “outright surgical genocide.” Indeed, black feminists criticized the National Abortion
Rights League’s support for abortion on demand and immediate access to voluntary sterilization. The
Committee to End Sterilization Abuse, an organization made up primarily of women color, wanted
guidelines that would prevent the practice of obtaining consent for sterilization during labor or
immediately after childbirth, or for an abortion under the threat of losing welfare benefits. They argued
that abortion or sterilization on demand did not acknowledge the class and race biases in reproductive
policy, the life circumstances that compelled poor women to abort, or the long history of forced
sterilization imposed on women of color.

Patriarchy’s not the root cause

Bell ‘6

(Duncan, senior lecturer – Department of Politics and International Studies @ Cambridge University,
“Beware of false prophets: biology, human nature and the future of International Relations theory,”
International Affairs 82, 3 p. 493–510)

Writing in Foreign Aff airs in 1998, Francis Fukuyama, tireless promulgator of the ‘end of history’ and
now a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, employed EP reasoning to argue for the central
role in world politics of ‘masculine values’, which are ‘rooted in biology’. His argument starts with the
claim that male and female chimps display asymmetric behaviour, with the males far more prone to
violence and domination. ‘Female chimps have relationships; male chimps practice realpolitik.’
Moreover, the ‘line from chimp to modern man is continuous’ and this has signifi cant consequences for
international politics.46 He argues that the world can be divided into two spheres, an increasingly
peaceful and cooperative ‘feminized’ zone, centred on the advanced democracies, and the brutal world
outside this insulated space, where the stark realities of power politics remain largely masculine. This
bifurcation heralds dangers, as ‘masculine policies’ are essential in dealing with a masculine world: ‘In
anything but a totally feminized world, feminized policies could be a liability.’ Fukuyama concludes the
essay with the assertion that the form of politics best suited to human nature is—surprise, surprise—
free-market capitalist democracy, and that other political forms, especially those promoted by feminists
and socialists, do not correspond with our biological inheritance.47 Once again the authority of science
is invoked in order to naturalize a particular political objective. This is a pattern that has been repeated
across the history of modern biology and remains potent to this day.48 It is worth noting in brief that
Fukuyama’s argument is badly flawed even in its own terms. As anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson
states, Fukuyama’s claims about the animal world display ‘a breathtaking leap over a mountain of
contrary evidence’.49 Furthermore, Joshua Goldstein concludes in the most detailed analysis of the
data on war and gender that although biological differences do play a minor role, focusing so heavily
on them is profoundly misleading.50 The simplistic claims, crude stereotyping and casual use of
evidence that characterize Fukuyama’s essay unfortunately recur throughout the growing literature on
the biology of international politics.
Their Feminsim links- it enforces the same paradigm of control over and domination of
nature which is impossible. Feminism cannot transcend nature to find material parity
with those benefitted and calls for equality ignore the Environmental destruction
Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, sociologist and author for the Women’s and Environmental movements
in Germany. Phycisits, philosopher and feminist, director of the research foundation for science,
technology and natural resource policy. Book: Ecofeminism. 1993. p.7

To 'catch-up' with the men in their society, as many women still see as the main goal of the feminist
movement, particularly those, who promote a policy of equalization, implies a demand for a greater, or
equal share of what, in the existing paradigm, men take from nature. This, indeed, has to a large extent
happened in Western society: modem chemistry, household technology, and pharmacy were
proclaimed as women's saviours, because they would 'emancipate' them from household drudgery.
Today we realize that much environmental pollution and destruction is causally linked to modem
household technology. Therefore, can the concept of emancipation be compatible with a concept of
preservingt he earth as our life base? From the perspective of these victims, the illusory character of
this project becomes clear. Because, for them, this means not only, as noted above, the destruction of
their survival base and so on but also that ever to attain (through so-called catching-up development)
the same material level as those who benefited from this process is impossible. Within a limited
planet, there can be no escape from necessity. To find freedom does not involve subjugating or
transcending the 'realm of necessity', but rather focusing on developing a vision of freedom,
happiness, the 'good life' within the limits of necessity, of nature. We call this vision the subsistence
perspective, because to 'transcend' nature can no longer be justified, instead, nature's subsistence
potential in all its dimensions and manifestations must be nurtured and conserved. Freedom within
the realm of necessity can be universalized to all; freedom from necessity can be available to only a
few.

Pragmatism is the best frame for feminist critiques of the law – any reason our
approach is good means you should vote for the perm
Brake 07

Deborah L. Brake, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Clev. St. L. Rev., 2007, “Title IX
as Pragmatic Feminism”, 55:513

II. PRAGMATISM AND ITS PROMISE FOR FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY

The resurgence of academic interest in pragmatism as a theoretical framework in law is largely a

response to frustration with, and perhaps fatigue from, the search for a coherent foundational theory of
law.5 Foundational theory strives for a unifying principle that justifies legal intervention and directs, top-
down, law's approach to legal problems.' Foundational theory seeks legitimacy from its (aspirational)
consistency with core principles and rejects result-oriented methods of analysis. Specific legal principles
are derived from more general principles of justice through normative reasoning. Counter to
foundationalism, pragmatism rejects the possibility of deducing legal rules from a priori moral principles
and the dichotomy between moral values and "mere" convention.
Pragmatism developed as an alternative to, and critique of, foundational theory. As a philosophical
movement, pragmatism originated in the late 19th century and flourished in the first quarter of the 20th
century. Today it is understood as a distinctly American philosophical movement, led by major thinkers
such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey and (less officially), Oliver Wendell Holmes
Because it is often defined as a historical movement, the substance of pragmatism is difficult to pin
down, in part because pragmatism's intellectual creators diverged significantly in their views, which took
many nuanced turns and shifted over time. Nevertheless, the American pragmatists shared a common
critique of normative, deductive philosophy and an emphasis on the practical, experiential consequences
of a concept.8 The classical pragmatists rejected dichotomies between theory and action, and
emphasized the interrelationships between action, values and knowledge.9 They valued theory for what
it could do, rather than for its abstract coherence or logical purity.

The resurgence of pragmatism in the legal academy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is generally
attributed to the work of Richard Rorty, which draws upon (even as it departs from, in some respects)
the classical American pragmatic thinkers.'" Like the earlier pragmatists, Rorty's work is known for its
"attacks on foundationalism, essentialism, and scientism."" As Rorty explains, referring to two well-
known legal theorists, "[Ronald] Dworkin and [John Hart] Ely want a distinction between principle and
policy, which pragmatists must refuse them." 12 Whether understood as an extension of classical
American pragmatism or a significantly different neo-pragmatist movement,' 13 Rorty's work has had a
significant impact on the legal academy and the philosophy of law. 14

As a framework for legal theory, pragmatism is eclectic and diverse. So much so that one critic of
pragmatism's influence on legal theory, Susan Haack, has described legal pragmatism as "a desperately
confusing scholarly mare's nest.15 She criticizes legal scholars who draw on pragmatism to signal a
plethora of different ideas, including an aversion to theory, creativity in solving legal problems, a
dismissal of meta-theory as a basis for claims about the "truth," the privileging of concrete over abstract
approaches, a critique of formalism, and an attention to context and open dialogue, to name just a
few.16 [footnote 16 starts here] 6Id. at 71-73. Legal pragmatism is not so much anti-theory as a call for a
reevaluation of how we theorize. It rejects a dichotomy between theory and practice, urging instead an
approach to theory that is anchored in the real world, rejects abstraction, and is suitable for changing
social life. Cf id. at 85 (offering a similar interpretation of Oliver Wendall Holmes's approach to legal
theory). [footnote 16 ends here] Similarly, pragmatism's broad appeal to legal scholars with otherwise
irreconcilably divergent positions has caused some critics to question how a theory that appeals to such
a discordant group can have any substance at all.17 If feminists, critical race theorists, and judge and
scholar Richard Posner are all relying on pragmatism, they ask, is there any "there" there, or is
pragmatism merely a mirror reflecting what each scholar brings to it?

However, pragmatism's ability to accommodate a number of different ideas and political perspectives
should not necessarily be an indictment. Feminist legal theory itself is host to a plurality of different
ideas and approaches, yet still has meaning as a framework for legal theory." Like feminism, even though
pragmatism serves as an intellectual base for a broad array of possibly diverging ideas, it is still possible
to discern some common features of a pragmatist approach.
One notable feature of pragmatism is its embrace of a method of justification that relies on internal
norms rather than external "objective" ones. As Richard Warner explains, pragmatism approaches the
question, "[what makes the prevailing norms the right ones?" with the recognition that:

[S]uch assessment is always internal to the norms in question. We assess how well our norms work by
using those very norms. The distinctively pragmatic claim about justification is that there can be no
external standard of evaluation: our norms of justification neither have nor need a ground outside
themselves. 9

Catharine Wells makes a similar point when she identifies as a core feature of pragmatism the insight
that no separable "truth" can serve as a foundation for a wider theory."0 In other words, to return to the
example of Title IX, instead of measuring the worth of the law by its coherence with some external
standard of justice, a pragmatist would measure the worth of any particular interpretation of Tile IX by
evaluating how well it works according to what we take to be the goals of Title IX itself.

A related feature of pragmatism is its rejection of unifying normative theory and the project of deducing
specific principles from meta-principles of justice. In this vein, Thomas Grey has described pragmatism's
core feature as "freedom from theory guilt. "2" Catharine Wells cites Grey's admonition as an antidote to
the legal academy's obsession with normative theory. 2 Although pragmatism is not antitheory per se, it
is skeptical of global theory. 3 As Wells explains, pragmatism frees us from the straightjacket of
normative theory, where legal questions have to fit into a systematic agenda, and the push for a "unified
theory of the whole world."24 In this way, pragmatism is empirical, not epistemological.2 5 In other
words, the rightness of a theory turns on how it works, not its logical foundations.

A third feature of pragmatism is its emphasis on the importance of perspective in making sense of
observations.26 Pragmatism treats knowledge as contingent and the product of a knowledge-seeking
community at a particular time. Knowledge does not exist in the abstract, "out there" waiting to be
discovered. Perspective is critical in making sense of the world. Since there is no "neutral" perspective,
the best we can do is continually strive to challenge and broaden the perspective that we bring to a
problem.

Even after identifying core features of pragmatism, there is still a great deal of open space in pragmatism
as a legal method. Pragmatism is more of an indictment of a particular kind of normative theorizing than
it is a recipe for any specific direction in theorizing. As Catharine Wells, a proponent of pragmatism,
acknowledges, "Once one is freed from the demands of global theory, however, it is not quite clear what
happens next. 27

Pragmatism's open space has served as a launching point for critics of pragmatism who have chided
critical legal theorists, primarily critical race theorists and feminists, for using pragmatism to bolster their
substantive agendas. These critics have questioned the use of pragmatism by critical legal theorists,
charging that they rely on pragmatism to bring legitimacy to their movement but distort pragmatism in
the process.28 They contend that pragmatism's rejection of objective moral truth and its agnosticism
toward particular substantive values provide no traction for social critiques with a substantive vision of
justice, such as critical race theory or feminism.
However, this criticism overlooks the possibility of a dialectical relationship between pragmatism and
critical theory, in which each school of thought enriches the other, rather than remaining fixed and
constant.29 For example, feminism's focus on women's experience can help ensure that pragmatism
lives up to its commitment to the centrality of experience in producing knowledge by making sure that
women's experiences are fully included and incorporated.30 Similarly, feminism's commitment to the
importance of gender to understanding social, cultural and legal phenomena can help answer the
burning question left by pragmatism of which contexts matter in applying its experiential approach to
theory.3 Pragmatism's agnosticism about the superiority of any particular perspective risks obscuring
hidden commitments that in fact privilege a particular perspective. Feminism's insights into the gender
dimensions of the illusory "view from nowhere" can help keep pragmatism honest and illuminate the
places where various perspectives diverge and where they share common ground. 2 Finally, feminism's
substantive commitment to gender justice can help fill the void of substantive values in pragmatism and
help pragmatism in its project to seek "recourse to the practices and institutions of everyday life, both to
dismantle the social and political structures of oppression and to develop better alternatives." 3 Rather
than viewing feminism's appropriation of pragmatist ideas as "distorting" pragmatism, we should
recognize the value of mapping the intersections of pragmatism and feminism to facilitate a cross-
pollination of ideas, some of which overlap, and some of which challenge and reshape ideas in the
other.34

As feminism has the potential to enrich pragmatism, so too does pragmatism contain insights valuable to
feminist theorizing. Even if pragmatism is largely about method and not itself a foundation for
substantive values,35 feminists have long understood the importance of method. Indeed, a number of
feminist legal scholars have found important intersections between pragmatism and feminist legal
methods. For example, Margaret Jane Radin describes pragmatism's substantial area of overlap with
feminist legal theory as: "a commitment against abstract idealism, transcendence, foundationalism, and
atemporal universality; and in favor of immanence, historicity, concreteness, situatedness, contextuality,
embeddednes, narrativity of meaning." 6 Pragmatism's rejection of formalism, emphasis on experience,
affinity for interdisciplinary work, and understanding of knowledge as situational make it a hospitable
intellectual framework for exploring feminist critiques of law and society.

One feature of pragmatism that particularly resonates with feminist scholars is its emphasis on context in
any evaluation of the "correctness" of a legal result or moral principle. As Martha Minow and Elizabeth
Spellman explain, "A pragmatist casts doubt on the possibility of sovereign reason, removed from
historical situations .... Minow and Spellman rearticulate feminism's and pragmatism's parallel calls for
relentless attention to the importance of context. While some critics have dismissed this call for context
as redundant, insisting that we are all always already "in context,"38 the reality of context does not in
itself prevent the errors of abstract theorizing. While pragmatism does not identify which elements of
context to emphasize, greater recognition of why and how context matters can draw more attention to,
and dialogue about, which contexts matter and why. Feminism's substantive values and visions for
gender equality can help provide answers to such questions.

Another useful feature of pragmatism for feminists is its approach to knowledge as situated, and not
simply "objective," discoverable or already "out there." Catharine Wells praises pragmatism for its
sophisticated understanding of knowledge, as contingent, situated, and relational."a Knowledge does
not exist apart from the knowledge-seeker. As Wells explains, pragmatism recognizes that "beliefs are
not simply efforts to record the truth; they are constitutive of who we are and what we do."40
Pragmatism invites a critical approach to consciousness and accepted "truths" that is helpful to
feminists: it highlights the importance of social construction in "what we think we know."4 Of particular
importance to feminist theorizing, pragmatism facilitates the understanding that "'what works' is a
relative concept" depending on "what are our goals? What is the time frame? And what values must be
preserved?"4 " Wells finds this approach to knowledge liberating, rather than nihilistic, and encouraging
of creativity. As she explains, "[i]f all knowledge is partial, then we must be eclectic and pluralistic in our
appreciation of individual theories." 43

This understanding of knowledge as partial and situated can help feminists resist the legal academy's
tendency to insist on theoretical consistency and unifying theory. As Wells explains, the quest for grand
theory can be stifling by insisting that you can't get to X until you have a coherent theory for Y in relation
to X. She offers as an example,

the way in which feminist theorists were frequently prevented from discussing gender differences until
they offered a theory as to whether such differences were innate or learned. Since questions of nature
and nurture are generally unanswerable, the effect of these interruptions was to silence an important
set of discussions.44

A similar demand for theoretical coherence has forced feminist theorists to stay stuck in the equal
treatment/special treatment debate, refusing feminists the option of picking any approach that cannot
be justified across the board or parsed with principled and not merely ad hoc distinctions.

Pragmatism also supports feminism's rejection of a dichotomy between theory and practice and its push
for an integrative praxis. Pragmatism rejects dualities, and the pragmatist movement sharply rebuked
foundational/normative theorists who treat theory as separate from practical experience. The classical
pragmatists predated feminists in using the term "praxis" to call for a synthesizing of theory and
action.45 Pragmatism's refusal to view abstraction as a higher order of thinking, detachable from the
concrete, offers support for feminist methods that explore how the particular and concrete shape our
understanding of what is just and moral. As Martha Fineman has instructed, "the task of feminists
concerned with the law and legal institutions must be to create and explicate feminist methods and
theories that explicitly challenge and compete with the existing totalizing nature of grand legal
theory."46

Perhaps pragmatism's greatest contribution to feminist legal scholarship has been its utility in
responding to the double-bind that arises when women challenge their subordination. Margaret Jane
Radin, for example, has argued that pragmatism is especially useful for grappling with the double-bind,
which materializes wherever there is gender oppression, and sets up a dilemma about how to address
it."

One of the classic double-binds that has consumed much feminist energy is the question of how best to
respond to gender inequality that is tied to the condition of pregnancy. On the one hand, discrimination
against pregnant women might be addressed by requiring employers to treat men and women the same
with regard to all physically limiting conditions, so that employers would have to treat pregnancy as
comparable to other medical conditions. While this approach might stop employers from singling out
pregnancy for uniquely adverse treatment, it does nothing to challenge masculine workplace norms that
do not accommodate or account for women's experience of pregnancy and childbearing. An alternative
approach might require employers to bend their workplace rules and structures to better fit women's
experience of pregnancy, mandating, for example, paid leaves and other workplace accommodations
necessary for women to become mothers and still keep their jobs. However, this approach risks further
stigmatizing women as different and inferior laborers by making the employment of women more
expensive and highlighting women's reproductive activity, marking them as less committed and reliable
workers.49 The impossibility of solving the one problem without creating others is known as the double-
bind.50

Professor Radin explains that pragmatism helps feminists respond to the doublebind by releasing them
from the drive to solve it once and for all with a uniform, consistent strategy. The ideal would be to
dissolve the dominant conception of gender that produces the double-bind. However, doing this requires
greater social empowerment than the dominant conception of gender allows. In order to make progress,
Radin argues, we need to work within nonideal conditions to transition toward the' ideal. As she
explains, "We must look carefully at the nonideal circumstances in each case and decide which horn of
the dilemma is better (or less bad), and we must keep re-deciding as time goes on."5 " This requires
feminist strategies that are particular, tailored to the specific problem at hand, and continually
reevaluated as social conditions change. Pragmatism reminds us, "There is no general solution; there are
only piecemeal, temporary solutions.52 [footnote 52 starts here] 52 Id. at 1701; see also id. at 1704
("The pragmatist solution is to confront each dilemma separately and choose the alternative that will
hinder empowerment the least and further it the most. The pragmatist feminist need not seek a general
solution that will dictate how to resolve all double-bind issues. Appropriate solutions may all differ,
depending on the current stage of women's empowerment, and how the proposed solution might move
the current social conception of gender and our vision of how gender should be reconceived for the
future. Indeed, the "same" double-bind may demand a different solution tomorrow from the one we
find best today."). [footnote 52 ends here]

While pragmatism has much to offer feminism, feminists should also be aware of the risks of following a
pragmatist approach. One charge leveled against pragmatism that should be of particular concern to
feminists is that it invites moral relativism and that its rejection of universal truth obstructs efforts to
promote justice. Some feminist scholars sympathetic to pragmatism have responded by pointing out that
the very absence of moral absolutes presents an opportunity to strengthen our moral commitments
because it necessitates greater attention to how we define our own communities and commitments.
Feminist scholar and defender-of-pragmatism Joan Williams begins her answer to the charge of
relativism by reminding us that there is no neutral position from which to distill absolute, universal
principles. 3 Rather, the perception of moral certainties reflects deeply ingrained, unarticulated beliefs
that the community holds about itself. As Williams explains, responding to the assertion of a widely
shared belief in an absolute moral position that torture is wrong:
[T]hese certainties reflect not abject truth, but the grammar of what it means to be us. The torture of
innocents is wrong because it violates our culture's celebration of the individual and our sense of the
essential dignity and equality of human beings.5 [CMLawl]

Professor Williams' response turns the relativism objection into a virtue of pragmatism, by exposing the
reality that the process of defining a community's moral commitments is not an exercise of abstract
deductive reason but a community defining act. In Williams' words, "Ethical choices offer not
opportunities for appeal to absolutes, but the chance to find out who we are and who we want to be." 5
The articulation and defense of our moral commitments without appeal to "objective" truth "offers us a
chance to step back and examine the structure of our form of life, to assess the hidden costs of our
ideals." 6 Thus, pragmatism forces us to take responsibility for the reach of our moral commitments,
their limits as well as their breadth. As Williams concludes:

Pragmatists should object to the notion of moral absolutes not because we want people to be free to
torture or enslave, but because using the language of absolutes lets us evade the troubling fact that our
moral choices fall on a continuum on which we set limits far short of our power to intervene.57

Thus, Williams makes a strong case that pragmatism's rejection of moral absolutes is not only compatible
with feminism, but enriches feminism's commitment to holding communities accountable for the values
they select. The rejection of absolutes also promotes a feminist agenda by drawing attention to the
importance of perspective in evaluating how well our chosen values work and whom they serve.

The charge of moral relativism leveled against pragmatism is also vulnerable to criticism for its premise
that pragmatism invites a conception of truth that is individualistic. However, pragmatism insists upon a
collective approach to seeking out truth and knowledge. Hilary Putnam, for example, a leading modem
philosopher of pragmatism, dismisses the claim that pragmatism lets each person pick his or her own
truth. As he explains:

Some critics even read [William] James-against repeated statements to the contrary, explicit and implicit,
in his writing-as holding that if the consequences of believing that p are good for you, then p is "true for
you." Let me say once and for all that James never used the notion of "true for me" or "true for you."
Truth, he insists, is a notion which presupposes a community, and, like Peirce, he held that the widest
possible community, the community of all persons (and possibly all sentient beings) in the long run, is
the relevant one. 8

Instead of promoting an individualistic conception of truth, pragmatism emphasizes the importance of

community in the pragmatist method of truth-seeking, and demands that the truth-seeking community
be defined inclusively. 9

Pragmatism's emphasis on the importance of inclusive communities in the truthseeking process is

particularly helpful to feminists, who have long critiqued the claims of universal knowledge that emerge
from communities that are not representative of women's voices. For these reasons, the relativist
objection should not persuade feminists to keep their distance from pragmatism.

Another potential drawback to pragmatism is that it leaves itself vulnerable to charges of theoretical
inconsistency as part of a backlash against progressive change. A legal strategy that does not fit into a
theoretically pure framework might prompt charges of a double-standard or ad hoc instrumentalism that
lacks a persuasive foundation. However, my own sense is that theoretical consistency is no more likely to
succeed in defusing or preventing a backlash."0 A backlash reflects a power struggle rather than a search
for truth or purity of ideas. Rather than striving for theoretical consistency to fend off the inevitable
backlash that accompanies progress toward gender equality, feminists should meet the backlash head-
on by seeking to shift the cultural norms that give it life and power.

Having sketched the contours of pragmatism and its promise for feminist legal theory, the remainder of
this article will examine Title IX as an example of a pragmatic feminist approach, and evaluate the law
through a pragmatist lens. Before considering Title IX's approach to theory and how it works, however, it
is important to take stock of the context of the problem the law is addressing since, to a pragmatist,
context is everything. The complexity of gender subordination in sports both demonstrates the need
for a pragmatic approach and provides crucial detail for considering the effectiveness of Title IX.
Pragmatism's exhortation to build legal strategy from the ground up, rather than deducing it from
abstract principles of justice, requires that any evaluation of the law's theory be based on an
understanding of the social problem of gender inequality in sports.

Title IX’s pragmatic feminism is good/effective

Brake 07

Deborah L. Brake, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Clev. St. L. Rev., 2007, “Title IX
as Pragmatic Feminism”, 55:513

IV. TITLE IX's PRAGMATIC FEMINISM

Since subordination is multi-dimensional and constantly evolving, no one global theory of equality is
sufficiently comprehensive to combat it. Title IX's more pragmatic mix and match approach to theory
holds promise, and may be part of the reason why Title IX has had more success in escaping some of
the pitfalls of other discrimination laws. From the beginning, the sense that intercollegiate athletics was
a "unique" setting for sex discrimination law allowed for room to experiment and depart from the typical
formal equality approach that generally dominates sex discrimination laws.109 Instead of simply
borrowing from Title VII's approach to workplace discrimination, for example, the promulgation of the
Title IX regulations and policies governing athletics involved a more reflective process of asking what
works.110 More so than other discrimination laws, Title IX defies easy characterization in terms of its
theoretical underpinnings, drawing from multiple theoretical frameworks.

For example, some aspects of Title IX's approach to sports correspond to liberal feminism and an equal
treatment model, characterized by an approach that seeks equality on the same terms as men, to the
extent that women are similarly situated to men."' For example, Title IX's equal treatment standard
measures equal athletic opportunity by comparing the benefits accorded to male and female athletes.
Under the equal treatment standard, educational institutions must provide equal treatment to female
and male athletes with respect to a list of factors, including facilities, scheduling of games and practices,
coaching, equipment and uniforms."' This is an equal treatment/liberal feminist standard because it does
not question the ways in which athletic sports programs are structured based on a male model, or the
imbalance in the numbers of men and women who benefit from this model. Instead, it defines equality
in terms of the benefits accorded to those women who are similarly situated to men by virtue of their
position as athletes.

Likewise, equality with respect to athletic scholarships is also governed by an equal treatment/liberal
feminist approach. Female athletes are entitled to an equal opportunity to receive athletic scholarship
awards, measured by a standard requiring proportionality in men's and women's scholarship awards
compared to their respective sports participation levels." 3 Under this standard, if women are forty
percent of the school's intercollegiate athletes, they should receive about forty percent of the school's
scholarship dollars. This is a decidedly liberal feminist approach since it does not question the underlying
male bias in the structure of sports (i.e., the greater numbers of men who participate) and only requires
equality insofar as women are similarly situated to men by virtue of their status as varsity athletes. Like
the equal treatment standard, this legal test permits any inequality to be fixed either by reducing the
awards to male athletes or increasing the scholarship funds awarded to women, another feature of an
equal treatment model.

A third example of how Title IX incorporates a liberal feminist approach is in its limited guarantee of a
right to try out for a place on a team in a sport offered only to the other sex." 4 With one important
exception, women who do not have access to a sport that is offered to men may try out for a place on
the men's team. This is a classic formal equality approach, since only those women who can compete
with men on men's terms will benefit from a standard giving them an equal right to try out. An exception
to this right limits the reach of the equal treatment standard in this instance, rendering it a particularly
anemic example of liberal feminism. The equal try-out right applies only to non-contact sports, and
contact sports are defined very broadly."' Thus, the legal standard itself defines women and men as not
similarly situated for the purposes of competing together in contact sports, a judgment that is premised
on stereotyped notions about women's vulnerability and need for protection."' In that respect, the
contact sports exception makes the right to try-out a very weak version of liberal feminism.

The first two liberal feminist standards require group-based equal treatment (e.g., female athletes
overall are entitled to equal benefits and scholarships compared to male athletes overall), while the third
requires equal treatment on an individual level (an individual female athlete who is sufficiently talented
may play on certain men's teams). Both the group-based and individual liberal feminist approaches are
assimilationist in that they do not challenge the structure of sports, but seek to secure equal treatment
for similarly situated women.

One value of the liberal feminist approach is its power to contest overblown and subordinating notions
of difference by asserting women's similarity to men in deserving the same level of scholarship
opportunities, sport benefits, and, to a lesser extent, the chance to try out for certain sports." 7 The
liberal feminist approach facilitates challenges to the ideology of gender difference by asserting the
similarity of male and female athletes and the prominence of an athletic identity first and foremost,
without regard to gender. This approach has had some success in increasing the value placed on
women's sports and in creating more cultural space for female athleticism by celebrating elite female
athletes. Through claims of similarity and the celebration of elite female athletes, female athletes have
come closer (although they still remain a distant second) to securing the privileges, status and esteem
previously reserved for men in sports. These changed cultural norms in turn have spurred the growth of
women's sports by encouraging more women to seek out athletic opportunity and benefit from
competitive sports.

A very different theory of equality is reflected in Title IX's test for equal participation opportunities, the
locus of the three-part test, the measure of Title IX compliance that has generated the most
controversy." 8 The underlying model for this part of Title IX is not liberal feminism, but a more
substantive equality approach that seeks to accommodate and value women's differences in sports. The
influence of the substantive equality/accommodation model is apparent in several ways. First, the Title
IX regulations presume and accommodate gender differences in athletic interests and abilities-without
identifying the source or nature of the difference-by permitting athletic teams to be offered separately
on the basis of sex if selection is based on competitive skill or the sport offered is a contact sport." '
Because intercollegiate and interscholastic programs nearly always select athletes on the basis of skill,
separate men's and women's sports teams are the norm. The implicit rationale is similar to an
affirmative action rationale, justifying the gender-conscious treatment as a way of ensuring meaningful
athletic opportunities for women.

The second way in which the equal participation measure reflects substantive equality, and even a
different voice approach, is in its refusal to require a mirror imaging of the men's and women's athletic
programs. Having allowed for sexseparate teams, one approach to equality would be to require women
and men to have identical sport offerings. This would be more of a group-based equal treatment
approach, requiring every sport offered for one sex to be offered to the other. The risk of such an
approach, of course, is that women's sports programs would not serve women's own sports interests as
much as simply mirror the programs selected for and chosen by men. Limiting women to the sports that
men play does not necessarily meet women's interests in sports if women prefer different sports.
Instead of a rigid, formal equality approach premised on gender similarity, the Title IX regulations
assume women may have different interests in sports than men, and therefore require schools to equally
accommodate those interests. Thus, women's sports programs are supposed to include sports that
reflect women's interests, as the men's offerings presumably reflect men's interests. This is akin to a
"different voice" approach to equality, in which equality claims are premised on asserted gender
difference (wherever it comes from) and the desired outcome is not just identical treatment but the
equal valuing of women's distinct perspectives.120

The model for participation opportunities, then, is gender-conscious rather than gender-blind. The
advantage of such a gender-conscious approach is that it does not premise equal opportunity on
women's threshold similarity to men. Instead, it searches for a measure of equality that acknowledges
and values gender difference. It creates space for women's sports to exist and develop without
necessarily mirroring the opportunities selected for men. The message of honoring and valuing gender
difference in sports is somewhat at odds with the message underlying equal treatment claims, which
assert that women are similar to men in relevant respects for the purpose of benefiting from sports. Yet
both messages hold truth and are valuable in asserting claims of gender equality.

The different voice/substantive equality approach poses its own set of risks, however, primarily that by
accommodating and emphasizing women's difference in sports it will reinforce the marginalization and
subordination of women in sports.' Much of women's second class status in sports is predicated on an
ideology of difference and the notion that women's sports are not similar to men's sports with respect to
the criteria that go into valuing them, such as marketability and audience appeal. Emphasizing gender
difference in sports risks bolstering the notion that women's sports are less valuable than men's sports
because they don't match the athleticism, level of competition, or other qualities that generate audience
interest in sports. Especially to the extent that different voice approaches fail to identify the source of
gender difference, the approach may reinforce notions that gender differences in sport are inherent and
that the different valuations of men's and women's sports are natural and unproblematic.

It is at this point that Title IX doctrine becomes quite interesting from a theoretical perspective. The test
for measuring Title IX compliance in participation opportunities within the context of sex-separate
programs tempers these risks of the different voice approach by setting up a legal framework that
critically examines the source of gender difference and holds institutions accountable for the ways in
which they construct gender difference in some respects. The three-part test for participation
opportunities operates against the backdrop of sex-separate programming in which women's and men's
sports offerings frequently diverge. For Title IX to provide any real assurance of equal participation
opportunity, some measure of equality had to be developed to ensure that a separate women's sports
program, unmoored from men's programming, would offer women sufficient opportunities in the sports
they want to participate in. The test developed for this purpose is the so-called three-part test for
participation opportunities.

Under this test, schools must comply with any one of three compliance measures by: (1) offering
participation opportunities in numbers substantially proportionate to enrollment (for example, if women
are fifty percent of the student body, they would have to represent roughly fifty percent of the school's
intercollegiate athletes); or (2) demonstrating a continuing history of program expansion that is
responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex; or (3) fully and
effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of members of the underrepresented sex through
the existing sport offerings. 122 This test has been upheld by courts against many challenges arguing that
it discriminates against men, who allegedly are more interested in sports and thus deserving of
disproportionate opportunities compared to their enrollment.'23 In rejecting such reverse discrimination
challenges, courts have taken a critical approach to gender differences in sports interest, closely
examining how educational institutions themselves construct sports interests through their disparate
athletic offerings to men and women.'24 The case law takes a decidedly social constructionist approach
to gender difference, rejecting wholesale assertions that gender differences in sports interests are innate
and justify offering a smaller share of opportunities to women.

Title IX's approach to ensuring women equal participation in sports thus departs from the typical liberal
feminist approach in discrimination law, which requires the equal treatment of persons who are already
similarly situated, by not tying the equality measure to a prior showing of women's similar interest and
ability in sports. 2 It also departs from the different voice model which is generally agnostic toward the
source of gender difference. Instead of accepting gender differences in athletic interests as natural or
even societal, the rationale behind the three-part test holds institutions accountable for their role in
constructing, reinforcing and perpetuating gender differences in interests. Applying this rationale, courts
have refused to excuse gender imbalances in athletic opportunities based on gender differences in
current interest levels.' 6 This critical approach to difference might be called structuralism or substantive
equality with a critical approach to difference. It is gender-conscious, focusing on equality of results
instead of a formal equality of process, yet it is decidedly social constructionist (with a particular focus
on the role of specific institutions rather than society in general) in its understanding of difference. At its
best, this approach avoids the pitfalls of liberal feminism, by eschewing reliance on assertions of
sameness to make an equality claim, and avoids the essentialism of the different voice/accommodation
model by critically examining the source and implications of asserted difference.

By working on multiple fronts simultaneously, with different theoretical approaches targeting different
dimension of inequality, Title IX has had notable success in loosening the cultural norms that constrain
and devalue female athleticism. Because women are not shoehorned into programs designed for men,
more women develop athletic interests, which both respond to and spur greater opportunities to play.
And because women athletes are promised baseline resources and benefits comparable to those given
men (at least ideally, although this aspect of Title IX is clearly under-enforced), there are limits to and
tools for fighting the marginalization and second-class status that often accompany activities that are
feminized by assertions of gender difference. Title IX's amalgam of legal theory thus works
simultaneously on the problems of marginalization (the exclusion of women from valued athletic
opportunities) and cultural imperialism (the devaluation of female athleticism and the marking of
female athletes as "other"), while creating opportunities for resisting the cultural norms that support
all the faces of gender oppression in sports.

Feminist jurisprudence is beneficial to all people

Juergens 91(Ann is a faculty member at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, “Feminist Jurisprudence:
Why Law Must Consider Women's Perspectives”,10(2), P.32,
http://open.mitchellhamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1111&context=facsch)MRS

Feminist Jurisprudence asserts that each of us has a perspective and must become more conscious of
that perspective. We must learn to take all kinds of other people's experiences into account when
arriving at solutions for our clients, our constituents, our communities. One of the values in having
women, poor people, and men of color allowed to enter law schools, courtrooms and legislatures is that
different lenses are focused on the law. The power of perspective was illuminated in the '80s by Carol
Gilligan, a social scientist who sparked much of the thinking that we refer to as Feminist Jurisprudence.
Gilligan wondered why girls and women consistently scored lower than boys and men on tests for moral
development. She found that the scales for measuring moral development were developed by men
researchers using male subjects. Those moral development scales were used for years. Yet no one before
asked the question that now seems obvious: might the test be unconsciously biased? Might the testers
have failed to take into account their male point of view when finding that females were less morally
developed than males? Gilligan's research found that girls more often approached problems with an
"ethic of care," while boys more often used an "ethic of justice." Further research has shown that
women in our society, when responding to moral dilemmas, are more likely to ask how everyone can be
taken care of and relationships maintained, while men are more likely to ask which individual's rights are
higher on the justice ladder. Men tend to place a higher value on rules, competition, and reason; women
tend to value relation- ships, nurturing, and empathy. It is still a matter of debate whether those and
other differences between men and women are innate or good-the result of women's ability and training
to bear and nurture children-or whether the caring traits have been inculcated in women for the comfort
and pleasure of men, the group in power. A proponent of the latter view is Catherine MacKinnon,
another thinker who has inspired much feminist legal scholarship. MacKinnon began prodding the liberal
women's movement in the late '70s on grounds that the push for equality had not addressed the real
issues of male dominance and the reduction of women to sex objects. She was a law professor at the
University of Minnesota when she co-authored the Minneapolis antipornography ordinance, which
redefined pornography as discrimination against women and sparked much debate about free speech
and violence against women. (The ordinance was passed by the Minneapolis City Council in December,
1983, then vetoed by Mayor Donald Fraser.) MacKinnon's ideas have been influential. She is credited
with developing the now orthodox idea that sexual harassment in the workplace is a form of
discrimination. Until the latter half of the '70s, sexual harassment on the job was not considered an
actionable injury to women, and several national studies showed that it was very common. Now defined
as a violation of Title VII, it was the first area of discrimination law where the perspective of the victim
was legally as important as the intentions of the perpetrator. MacKinnon (now a professor at the
University of Michigan Law School) points out that sexual harassment law is also the first time in history'
'that women have defined women's injuries in a law." Feminist Jurisprudence, which includes the work
of many scholars, lawyers, judges, legal workers, legislators, and scientists, is looking at methods of
lawyering, at the content of the law, and at the structure of the law. For example, Leslie Bender, a
professor at Syracuse University Law School, has developed the idea that torts rules should incorporate
care and concern into their standards, rather than focusing solely on reason and caution. Bender will
deliver the annual Pirsig lecture at William Mitchell College of Law this fall (see page 16). The laws of
wills and marital property have been critiqued by Prof. Mary Louise Fellows, holder of the Everett Fraser
chair at the University of Minnesota Law School, in her inaugural lecture earlier this year. She is the first
woman to hold an endowed chair at the entire University of Minnesota, not just the law school. Fellows
said the failure of most states to adopt community property laws, in spite of their income tax advantage,
was the result of an unwillingness to give women property rights based on their contributions to the
family. In a majority of states, including Minnesota, a husband may have the duty to provide for the
"maintenance" of his wife, but her right to " his " wages is contingent on surviving him; nor can she
direct the disposition of that money unless she survives him. The problems with the criminal law from a
women's perspective are being debated in the popular press as well as in law journals. Acquaintance
rape, the facts of a battered woman's life, the blame rape victims face when prosecuting their rapists,
sentencing of sex offenders, and intraspousal immunity from rape are being examined. Many who look
at these issues call for change in the law and for change in society. Feminist Jurisprudence is not just for
women. It is not about replacing all the male values with female values. It is about being inclusive of
women, and of all people who differ from the norms of the law as it is today. The endeavor will
necessarily shake up established relations between the family, the workplace and the state. Lawyers,
judges, legislators- all of us-should get ready for the changes.
 Zizek
Zizek theories don’t do anything, orthodox Marxism is the only way
Stephen Tumino 2001 (Stephen, teaches at the City University of New York Kingsborough. “What is
Orthodox Marxism and Why it Matters Now More Than Ever Before”,
http://redcritique.org/spring2001/whatisorthodoxmarxism.html)

Zizek provides another example of the flexodox parody of Marxism today. Capitalism in Orthodox
Marxism is explained as an historical mode of production based on the privatization of the means of
subsistence in the hands of a few, i.e., the systemic exploitation of labor by capital. Capitalism is the
world-historic regime of unpaid surplus-labor. In Zizek's writings, capitalism is not based on exploitation
in production (surplus-labor), but on struggles over consumption ("surplus-enjoyment"). The Orthodox
Marxist concepts that lay bare the exploitative production relations in order to change them are thus
replaced with a "psycho-marxist" pastiche of consumption in his writings, a revisionist move that has
proven immensely successful in the bourgeois cultural criticism. Zizek, however, has taken to
representing this displacement of labor (production) with desire (consumption) as "strictly correlative"
to the concept of "revolutionary praxis" found in the texts of Orthodox Marxism (e.g., "Repeating
Lenin"). Revolutionary practice is always informed by class consciousness and transformative cultural
critique has always aimed at producing class consciousness by laying bare the false consciousness that
ruling ideology institutes in the everyday. Transformative cultural critique, in other words, is always a
linking of consciousness to production practices from which a knowledge of social totality emerges.
Zizek, however, long ago abandoned Orthodox Marxist ideology critique as an epistemologically naïve
theory of "ideology" because it could not account for the persistence of "desire" beyond critique (the
"enlightened false-consciousness" of The Sublime Object of Ideology, Mapping Ideology,. . . ). His more
recent "return to the centrality of the Marxist critique" is, as a result, a purely tropic voluntarism of the
kind he endlessly celebrates in his diffusionist readings of culture as desire-al moments when social
norms are violated and personal emotions spontaneously experienced as absolutely compulsory (as
"drive"). His concept of revolutionary Marxist praxis consists of re-describing it as an "excessive" lifestyle
choice (analogous to pedophilia and other culturally marginalized practices, The Ticklish Subject 381-8).
On this reading, Marxism is the only metaphorical displacement of "desire" into "surplus-pleasure" that
makes imperative the "direct socialization of the productive process" (Ticklish Subject 350) and that thus
causes the subjects committed to it to experience a Symbolic death at the hands of the neoliberal
culture industry. It is this "affirmative" reversal of the right-wing anti-Marxist narrative that makes Zizek's
writings so highly praised in the bourgeois "high-theory" market—where it is read as "subtle" and an
example of "deep thinking" because it confirms a transcendental position considered above politics by
making all politics ideological. If everything is ideology then there can be no fundamental social change
only formal repetition and reversal of values (Nietzsche). Zizek's pastiche of psycho-marxism thus
consists in presenting what is only theoretically possible for the capitalist—those few who have already
met, in excess, their material needs through the exploitation of the labor of the other and who can
therefore afford to elaborate fantasies of desire—as a universal form of agency freely available to
everyone. Psycho-marxism does what bourgeois ideology has always done—maintain the bourgeois
hegemony over social production by commodifying, through an aesthetic relay, the contradictions of the
wages system. What bourgeois ideology does above all is deny that the mode of social production has an
historic agency of its own independent of the subject. Zizek's "return" to "orthodox" Marxism erases its
materialist theory of desire—that "our wants and their satisfaction have their origin in society" (Marx,
Wage-Labour and Capital, 33) and do not stand in "excess" of it. In fact, he says exactly the opposite and
turns the need for Orthodox Marxist theory now into a phantom desire of individuals: he makes "class
struggle" an effect of a "totalitarian" desire to polarize the social between "us" and "them" (using the
"friend/enemy" binary found in the writings of the Nazi Carl Schmitt, Ticklish Subject 226).

Seriously, he thinks the Holocaust is not only okay, but didn’t go far enough
Rée 12 --- writer, philosopher and historian (Jonathan, “Less Than Nothing by Slavoj Žižek – review”,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/27/less-than-nothing-slavoj-zizek-review?
newsfeed=true)//trepka

Žižek refuses to indulge in sanctimonious regrets over the failings of 20th-century communism. He has
always had a soft spot for Stalin, and likes to tell the story of Uncle Joe's response when asked which of
two deviations was worse: both of them are worse, he said, with perfect Lacanian panache. Žižek's
objection to Stalinism is not that it involved terror and mass murder, but that it sought to justify them by
reference to a happy communist tomorrow: the trouble with Soviet communism, as he puts it, is "not
that it is too immoral, but that it is secretly too moral". Hitler elicits similar even-handedness: the
unfortunate Führer was "trapped within the horizon of bourgeois society", Žižek says, and the "true
problem of nazism" was "not that it went too far … but that it did not go far enough".