***1NC***

1nc
Interpretation and violation---the affirmative should defend the
desirability of topical government action.
Jon M Ericson 3, Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts California
Polytechnic U., et al., The Debaters Guide, Third Edition, p. 4
each topic contains certain key
elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An
agent doing the acting ---The United States in The United States should adopt a
policy of free trade. Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the
sentence. 2. The verb shouldthe first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow
should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or
policy into action through governmental means . 4. A specification of directions
or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions,

topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing
interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred.

The entire debate is

about whether something ought to occur . What you agree to do, then, when you accept the
affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you
propose.
Reduce is quantitative
Dictionary.com 15
reduce [ri-doos, -dyoos] Spell Syllables Synonyms Examples Word Origin verb
(used with object), reduced, reducing. 1. to bring down to a smaller
extent, size, amount,number , etc.:
First, they destroy engagement
Predictable stasis ensures research accessibility and negative ground.
Even if public policy isnt the best focus for activism, its crucial for
dialogue because its grounded in consistent reporting and academic
work.
Two impacts 1) Changing the topic post facto structurally favors the af by
manipulating the balance of prep. Af bias is reason enough to vote for us,
because debate is a competitive game thats meaningless without
constraints.
2) Limited procedural constraints are essential to have well-prepared
opponents. The af transforms debate into a monologue means their
arguments are presumptively false because they havent been subjected
to well researched scrutiny.
Second, they destroy mechanism education
Their model of debate creates a disincentive to substantive research.
Failure to defend the actor and mechanism of the resolution allows them
to shift their advocacy to the terms most favorable to them.

The impact is absolutism and forces the neg into extremist generics
undermines education and drives teams to the academic margins, ruining
scholarship
Debates focused on detailed points of disagreement are key to political
change
Gutting 13 (Gary, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. A Great
Debate Feb 19 2013) http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/a-greatdebate/?emc=eta1
political debates seldom deserve the
name. For the most part representatives of the rival parties exchange one-liners: The rich can afford to pay more is met by Tax increases kill jobs. Slightly more
This is the year of what should be a decisive debate on our countrys spending and debt. But our

sophisticated discussions may cite historical precedents: There were higher tax rates during the post-war boom versus Reagans tax cuts increased revenues. Such volleys
still dont even amount to arguments: they dont put forward generally accepted premises that support a conclusion. Full-scale speeches by politicians are seldom much more
than collections of such slogans and factoids, hung on a string of platitudes. Despite the name, candidates pre-election debates are exercises in looking authoritative, imposing
their talking points on the questions, avoiding gaffes, and embarrassing their opponents with zingers (the historic paradigm: There you go again.). There is a high level of
political discussion in the editorials and op-eds of national newspapers and magazines as well as on a number of blogs, with positions often carefully formulated and supported

we seldom see a direct and sustained confrontation of rival

positions through the dialectic of assertion, critique, response and counter-critique. Such
exchanges occur frequently in our law courts (for example, oral arguments before the Supreme Court) and in discussions of scientific papers. But they are not a
significant part of our deliberations about public policy. As a result, partisans typically
remain safe in their ideological worlds, convincing themselves that they hold to obvious
truths, while their opponents must be either knaves or fools with no need to think
through the strengths of their rivals positions or the weaknesses of their own. Is there
any way to make genuine debates sustained back-and-forth exchanges , meeting high intellectual
standards but still widely accessible part of our political culture? (I leave to historians the question of whether there are historical precedents like
with argument and evidence. But even here

the Webster-Hayne or Lincoln-Douglas debates.) Can we put our politicians in a situation where they cannot ignore challenges, where they must genuinely engage with one

A first condition is that the debates be focused on

specific points of major disagreement. Not, How can we improve our economy? but Will tax cuts for the wealthy or stimulus spending on
infrastructure do more to improve our economy? This will prevent vague statements of principle that dont
address the real issues at stake. Another issue is the medium of the debate. Written discussions, in print or online could be easily arranged, but
personal encounters are more vivid and will better engage public attention. They should not, however, be merely
extemporaneous events, where too much will depend on quick-thinking and an
engaging manner. We want remarks to be carefully prepared and open to considered
responses.
another in responsible discussion and not just repeat talking points?

The impact is large scale material violence

Capulong 9 (Assistant Professor of Law, University of Montana)
(Eduardo R.C., CLIENT ACTIVISM IN PROGRESSIVE LAWYERING THEORY, CLINICAL LAW
REVIEW, 16 Clinical L. Rev. 109, Fall, 2009)
Motivating client

activism
resistance

under dynamic social conditions

requires the
That task

constant
reassessment of
requires
specific activist goals

development and

assessment and

a political

perspective that measures that

and its possibilities.
in turn
the development of
within the
context of such analyses, and perhaps broader, national and international strategy--what some call the political "next step." This is particularly true today, when the economic crisis plaguing capitalism, the "war on terror"

Instances of failure need to be part of that analysis, because

they teach us much about why otherwise promising activist efforts do not become
sustained mass movements
and climate change undeniably have world-wide dimensions.

, too,

of the sort to which we all aspire.

Thus, the theoretical need is two-fold: to construct a broader organizing perspective from a political standpoint, and to consider activism writ large. Without reading the pulse of prevailing social conditions, it is easy to

We will not build a mass movement though sheer perseverance

miscalculate what that next step ought to be.

--a linear,
idealist conception of change at odds with dynamic social conditions. By the same token, we may underestimate the potential of such mass activism if we focus simply on the local dimensions of our work.

political consciousness and action requires a constant

organizational and political calibration and modulation often missing from theoretical
scholarship
The dialectic between a dynamic social context and

. Without such a working perspective, we are apt to be either ultra-left or overly conservative. As Jim Pope put it recently in the context of new forms of labor organizing: "If we limit our vision of
the future to include only approaches that work within the prevailing legal regime and balance of forces, then we are likely to be irrelevant when and if the opportunity for a paradigm shift arises." n449 The cyclical nature
of labor organizing, he argues, mirrors politics generally:
American political life as a whole has likewise alternated between periods characterized by public action, idealism, and reform on the [*189] one hand, and periods of private interest, materialism, and retrenchment on
the other. A prolonged private period spawns orgies of corruption and extremes of wealth and poverty that, sooner or later, ignite passionate movements for reform. n450
C. 'Activism': Towards a Broader, Deeper, Systematic Framework
In progressive lawyering theory, grassroots activism is frequently equated with "community organizing" and "movement" or "mobilization" politics. n451 Indeed, these methods have come to predominate activist lawyering
in much the same way as "public interest law" has come for many to encompass all forms of progressive practice. "Activism" is, of course, broader still. Even on its own terms, the history of community organizing and
social movements in the United States includes two vitally important traditions frequently given short shrift in this realm: industrial union organizing and alternative political party-building. n452 In this section, my aim is
not to catalogue the myriad ways in which lawyers and clients can and do become active (methodically or institutionally)--which, given human creativity and progress, in any event may be impossible to do--but rather to
problematize three assumptions: first, the tendency to define grassroots activity narrowly; second, the notion that certain groups--for example "the poor" or the "subordinated"--are the definitive agents of social change;
and finally, the conviction that mass mobilization or movement-building, by itself, is key to social transformation.
1. Grassroots Activism
There are countless ways in which people become socially or politically active. Yet even the more expansive and sophisticated considerations of activism in progressive lawyering theory tend to unnecessarily circumscribe
activism. For example, Cummings and Eagly argue that we need to "unpack" the term "organizing." n453 Contrasting two strategies of the welfare rights movement in the 1960s, these authors distinguish between
"mobilization as short-term community action and organizing as an effort to build long-term institutional power." n454 In the same breath, however, they define organizing "as shorthand for a range of community-based

practices," n455 even though at least some activism, for example union organizing or, say, [*190] fasting, might not be best characterized as "community-based."
What is required is a larger framework that takes into account the sum total of activist initiatives. Lucie White argues that we need to "map out the internal microdynamics of progressive grassroots initiatives ... observe
the multiple impacts of different kinds of initiatives on wide spheres of social and political life ... and devise typologies, or models, or theories that map out a range of opportunities for collaboration." n456 This map would
be inadequate--and therefore inaccurate--if we include certain activist initiatives and not others. But that is precisely what the progressive lawyering literature has done by failing to regularly consider, for example, union
organizing or alternative political party-building.
2. Agents of Social Change: Identity, Class and Political Ideology As with our definition of activism, here, too, the problem is a lack of clarity, breadth or scope, which leads to misorientation. Have we defined, with
theoretical precision, the social-change agents to whom we are orienting--e.g., the "people," the "poor," the "subordinated," "low-income communities" or "communities of color?" And if so, are these groupings, so defined,
the primary agents of social change? By attempting to harmonize three interrelated (yet divergent) approaches to client activism--organizing on the bases of geography and identity, class and the workplace, and political
ideology--modern community organizing simultaneously blurs and balkanizes the social-change agents to whom we need to orient. What, after all, is "community?" In geographic terms, local efforts alone cannot address
social problems with global dimensions. n457 As Pope observed of workers' centers: "the tension between the local and particularistic focus of community unionism and the global scope of trendsetting corporations like
Wal-Mart makes it highly unlikely that community unionism will displace industrial unionism as 'the' next paradigm of worker organization." n458 On the other hand, members of cross-class, identity-based "communities"
may not necessarily share the same interests. In the "Asian American community," Ancheta explains: using the word "community" in its singular form is often a misnomer, because Asian Pacific Americans comprise many
communities, each with its own history, culture and language: Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Lao, Lao-Mien, [*191] Hmong, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Samoan, Tongan,
Guamanian, Native Hawaiian, and more. The legal problems facing individuals from different communities defy simple categorization. The problems of a fourth-generation Japanese American victim of job discrimination, a
monolingual refugee from Laos seeking shelter from domestic violence, an elderly immigrant from the Philippines trying to keep a job, and a newcomer from Western Samoa trying to reunite with relatives living abroad all
present unique challenges. Add in factors such as gender, sexual orientation, age, and disability, and the problems become even more complex. n45 Angela Harris echoes this observation by pointing out how some
feminist legal theory assumes "a unitary, 'essential' women's experience [that] can be isolated and described independently of race, class, sexual orientation, and other realities of experience." n460 The same might be
said of the "people," which, like the "working class," may be too broad. Other categorizations--such as "low-income workers," "immigrants", and the "poor", for example--may be too narrow to have the social weight to
fundamentally transform society. In practice, progressive lawyers orient to the politically advanced among these various "communities." In so doing, then, we need to acknowledge that we are organizing on the basis of
political ideology, and not simply geography, identity or class. Building the strongest possible mass movement, therefore, requires an orientation not only towards certain "subordinated" communities, but to the politically
advanced generally. Otherwise, we may be undermining activism writ large. This is not to denigrate autonomous community efforts. As I have mentioned, subordinated communities of course have the right to selfdetermination, i.e. to organize separately. But the point is not simply to organize groups of people who experience a particular oppression, but rather to identify those who have the social power to transform society.
Arguing that these agents are the collective, multi-racial working class, Smith explains: The Marxist definition of the working class has little in common with those of sociologists. Neither income level nor self-definition are
[sic] what determine social class. Although income levels obviously bear some relationship to class, some workers earn the same or higher salaries than some people who fall into the category of middle class. And many
people who consider themselves "middle [*192] class" are in fact workers. Nor is class defined by categories such as white and blue collar. For Marx the working class is defined by its relationship to the means of
production. Broadly speaking, those who do not control the means of production and are forced to sell their labor power to capitalists are workers. n461 The practical consequence of this very well may be that we redefine
who we represent as clients and consider activism or potential activism outside subordinated communities, for example union activity and alternative political-party building, as part of our work.
3. From Movementism to Political Organization

any effort at fundamental social transformation is doomed without

effective political leadership
Dogged as our work is in the activist realm,

. Such leadership, in turn, requires work not often associated with "activism," such as, for example, theoretical study. n462 "Movementism," n463 by
which I mean the conviction that building a mass movement is the answer to oppression and exploitation, has its limitations. Even though activism itself is perhaps the best school for political education, we have an

fundamental social transformation will only come about if

there are political organizations clear enough, motivated enough, experienced enough,
large enough, embedded enough and agile enough to respond to the twists and turns
endemic in any struggle for power The problem
is not our analytic
weaknesses, but the opportunistic, strategic, and political character of our subject
enormous amount to learn from our predecessors. In the final analysis,

."

," as Bellow astutely observed, "

." n464 Such

opportunities typically occur when there is a confluence of three factors: a social crisis; a socio-economic elite that finds itself divided over how to overcome it; and a powerful mass movement from below. As I understand

successful social transformations occur when there is

organization
the nature of social change,

a fourth element:

political

Conclusion
Client activism is not a monolithic, mechanical object. Most of the time, it is neither the gathering mass movement many of us wish for, nor the inert, atomized few in need of external, professional motivation. Rather,
activism is a phenomenon in constant ebb and flow, a [*193] mercurial, fluid complex shaped by an unremitting diversity of factors. The key through the maze of lawyering advice and precaution is therefore to take a
hard, sober look at the overarching state of activism. Are our clients in fact active or are they not? How many are and who are they? What is the nature of this period? Economically? Politically? Culturally? What are the
defining issues? What political and organizing trends can be discerned? With which organizations are our clients active, if any? What demands are they articulating, and how are they articulating them?

This is a complex evaluation, one requiring the formulation, development and constant
assessment and reassessment of an overarching political perspective

. My aim in this Article is to begin to theorize

the various approaches to this evaluation. In essence, I am arguing for the elaboration of a systematic macropolitical analysis in progressive lawyering theory. Here, my purpose is not to present a comprehensive set of
political considerations, but rather to develop a framework for, and to investigate the limitations of, present considerations in three areas: strategic aims; prevailing social conditions; and methods of activism. Consciously
or not, admittedly or not, informed and systematic or not, progressive lawyers undertake their work with certain assumptions, perspectives and biases. Progressive lawyering theory would be a much more effective and
concrete guide to action--to defining the lawyer's role in fostering activism--if it would elaborate on these considerations and transform implicit and perhaps delimited assumptions and approaches into explicit and
hopefully broader choices.
Over the past four decades, there has been remarkable continuity and consistency in progressive lawyers' use of litigation, legislation, direct services, education and organizing to stimulate and support client activism. The
theoretical "breaks" to which Buchanan has referred n465 have not been so much about the practice of lawyering itself, but rather about unarticulated shifts in ultimate goals, societal analyses, and activist priorities, each
necessitated by changes in the social, economic, and political context. That simply is another way of stating the obvious: that progressive lawyers change their practices to adapt to changing circumstances. The recurrent
problem in progressive lawyering theory is that many commentators have tended to generalize these practice changes to apply across social circumstances. In so doing, they displace and often replace more fundamental
differences over strategic goals, interpretation of social contexts, and organizing priorities with debates over the mechanics of lawyering practice.
The argument is turned on its head: we often assume or tend to [*194] assume agreement over the meanings and underlying conceptual frameworks relating to "fundamental social change," current political analysis, and
"community organizing," and debate lawyering strategy and tactics; but instead we should be elaborating and clarifying these threshold political considerations as a prerequisite to using what we ultimately agree to be a
broad and flexible set of lawyering tools. In effect, the various approaches to lawyering have become the currency by which scholars have debated politics and activism. The irony is that our disagreements are less about
lawyering approaches per se, I believe, than they are about our ultimate political objectives, our analyses of contemporary opportunities, and our views of the optimal paths from the latter to the former. The myriad
lawyering descriptions and prescriptions progressive lawyering theory offers are of limited use unless they are anchored in these primary considerations. How do we decide if we should subscribe to "rebellious" and not
traditional "public interest" lawyering, for example, or "collaborative" over "critical" lawyering, if we do not interrogate these questions and instead rush too quickly into practical questions? The differences among these
approaches matter precisely because they have different political goals, are based on different political analyses, and employ different political activist strategies.
Activist lawyers already engage in these analyses--necessarily so. To foster client activism, they must read prevailing social conditions and strategize with their clients about the political next step, often with an eye toward
a long-term goal. But I don't think we necessarily engage in these analyses as consciously, or with as full a picture of the history and dynamics involved or options available, as we could. Often this is because there simply
isn't time to engage these questions. Or perhaps not wanting to dominate our clients, we squelch our own political analysis and agenda to allow for organic, indigenous leadership from below. But if we are truly
collaborative--and when we feel strongly enough about certain political issues--we engage on issues and argue them out. In either event, we undertake an unsystematic engagement of these fundamental issues at our
peril.

only organized
masses of people can alter
exploitative and
oppressive institutions and bring about lasting fundamental social change, then,
we need to be clear about which tactics can bring about such a sustained effort
Without concrete and comprehensive diagnoses of ultimate political goals,
social and economic contexts, and organizing priorities, progressive legal practice will
fail
If we adhere to the belief that

, politicized

or replace

as progressive

lawyers,

legal

in

each historical moment.

to live up to its potential.

Our interpretation is open to contestation but comparatively better than a

model that allows affirmation of anything whatsoever nothing theyve
said invalidates the utility of a model of debate centered around state
praxis as a regulative ideal their model reduces politics to luck
Ruti 15 (Prof. of English and Critical Theory @ U. Toronto, Between Levinas and
Lacan: Self, Other, Ethics, pp. 170-176)
we do not have any choice but to admit that the
version of universality we conjure into existence and the a priori norms that support this universality
inevitably arises in a particular context : it is historically and culturally specific even as it strives to transcend
this specificity. But and my point here mirrors the argument I made about rationality above this does not mean that
our universalism is intrinsically worthless ; while the loss of metaphysical
After the collapse of metaphysical justifications for universality,

foundations for our normative systems complicates their claim to universality, it

does not automatically invalidate them. This is exactly what Allen is getting at in the passage I quoted at the beginning of
this chapter: we make a mistake if we assume that our only options are either the
delusion of being able to transcend our context into a realm of "pure" universality or
a descent into "anything-goes" relativism. More specifically, Allen argues that we can profess the universal validity of
some of our principles such as the principles of equality, reciprocity, or mutual respect as long as we remain aware that these principles are derived
from the historical and cultural resources of Western modernity. In this manner, Allen advocates what she calls "principled contextualism": we may take
our norms "to be universal and context transcendent, as long as we recognize that the notions of universalizability and context transcendence are

"it may turn

out from some future vantage point that our normative ideals are themselves , in some
ways that we have yet to realize, pernicious and oppressive" (PS 180). That is, we need to be "more historically self-conscious and modest about
the status of our normative principles" (PS 180); among other things, we need to be open to the possibility that our
principles can be contested. Yet this does not imply that "we are incapable of making
normative judgments in light of such principles" (PS 180).
themselves situated in the context of late Western modernity" (PS 180). An important part of this recognition is the admission that

Allen is looking for a way out of nihilistic relativism by proposing that our awareness that we must continuously interrogate our ethical principles does not
mean that these principles are devoid of all value. Nor does our recognition that our principles cannot be divorced from their context mean that we cannot

our principles can be context-transcending

without being context-neutral. This, as we saw in Chapter 2, is Butler's argument in Parting Ways, even if she ends up
claim that they are capable of transcending their context; that is,

backpedaling on the univcrsalist implications of her approach. 14 More important for our present purposes, this is how Allen arrives at the "historical a

"The historical specificity of our a priori categories , their

does not cancel the power of
these categories to order our existence. However, if we want others to be convinced
by our a priori ideals, we need to persuade them through a democratic
process. If the Enlightenment resorted to aggression to spread its views,
the Habermasian democratic method , according to Allen, relies on more collectively
formed public opinions. Allen's point is akin to the one Benhabib makes through her notion of "democratic iterations":
rather than the solitary Kantian subject trying to figure out in the abstract what
everyone might conceivably agree on, the Habermasian approach offers a model
where social agents collaborate with each other to forge a perspective that
everyone can agree on. This junction of compatible views, then, becomes the current "historical
a priori," the current version of the universal.
Any given "historical a priori" can obviously take hegemonic forms. I grant , as does Allen,
that we need to remain vigilant about the constitutive exclusions that a priori norms often imply. Yet the merits
of a normative system that is brought into being through a continuous
democratic process a process that can accommodate the tensions of
rethinking , refinement, and renegotiation also seem considerable. Borrowing from Fraser,
one could say that the historical a priori is always open to reframing. Such reframing happens , for instance, when
individuals or groups who have been excluded from a given ethical frame demand
admission to it, thereby automatically altering the parameters of the frame. Proposing that
priori" I have referred to in passing. As Allen explains,

rootedness in historically variable social and linguistic practices and institutions" (PS 31-2)

"misframing" may be "the defining injustice of a globalizing age," Fraser advocates echoing Butler's observations about the necessity of revising the
frames of perception that eliminate some populations from the status of the fully human "an enlarged, transnational sense of who counts as one's fellow

when the frame shifts say, from a national to a transnational one so does the
historical a priori: an a priori that was formulated in a given national context might
not be appropriate for a transnational one. There must thus be a period of readjustment, but this does not imply the
subjects of justice." 15 This implies that

neutralization of the a priori as some cultural relativists might assume but merely its reconfiguration. Or, to restate the larger argument I have tried to

the concept of the historical a priori requires that we admit that an a priori
principle can be normatively meaningful even as it is open to alteration ; the a priori as I
noted above holds until it is deemed somehow flawed or unjust. In Fraser's words, "The result would be a grammar
of justice that incorporates an orientation to closure necessary for
political argument, but that treats every closure as provisional subject to question,
articulate,

possible suspension, and thus to reopening" (SJ72).

this model "reflexive justice," specifying that it

scrambles the opposition between the Habermasian democratic model on the one hand and
The model Fraser advocates hence treats every ethical closure as provisional. Fraser calls

the more poststructuralist, Marxist, and skeptical model (which she calls "agonistic") the model that dominates
contemporary progressive criticism on the other. If the first of these is sometimes accused of being
excessively normalizing, the second-which is essentially the model I have been analyzing in this book (with the exception of
Levinas) is, as Fraser puts it, "often seen as irresponsibly reveling in abnormality" (SJ73 ). Against this
backdrop, the advantage of Fraser's model is the following:

Like agonistic models, reflexive justice valorizes the moment of opening , which
breaches the exclusions of normal justice, embracing claimants the latter has silenced and disclosing injustices the
latter has occluded-all of which it holds essential for contesting injustice. Like discourse ethics, however,
reflexive justice also valorizes the moment of closure, which enables
political argument, collective decision-making, and public action all of
which it deems indispensable for remedying injustice. (SJ73-4)
In this manner, Fraser declares the standard opposition between the Habermasians and the
agonists to be a false one, for it is possible to admit the best insights of both by
acknowledging the value of both opening ( contestation ) and closure
(binding norms that enable ethical and political decisions). Such an approach
rejects relativism, enabling normative judgments and political interventions,
but without thereby locking the content of such judgments and
interventions into a fixed, immutable definition.
All of this of course implies that there is one norm that stands above every other : what Fraser calls
"the overarching normative principle of parity of participation" (SJ60). On this view, Fraser explains,
"Overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalized obstacles that prevent some people from participating on a par with others, as full partners in

one needs a base-level faith in the

democratic process even as one acknowledges that it is always going to
fall short of its own ideals. Like Levinasian justice, which knows that it will never he able to live up to the demands of ethics,
concrete democratic formations are invariably guilty , humiliated by their failures, but
this cannot , for the Habermasians at least, discourage us to the point that we stop trying
to improve them. As Benhabib explains:
As with any normative model, one can always point to prevailing conditions of inequality , hierarchy,
exploitation and domination, and prove that "this may be true in theory but not so in practice"
(Kant). The answer to this ancient conflict between norm and reality is simply to say that if all were as it
ought to be in the world, there would be no need to build normative
models , either. The fact that a normative model does not correspond to reality
is no reason to dismiss it , for the need for normativity arises precisely because humans measure the reality they inhabit in the
light of principles and promises that transcend this reality. The relevant question therefore is: Does a
given normative model enable us to analyze and distill the rational
principles of existing practices and institutions in such a fashion that we
can then use these rational reconstructions as critical guidelines for
measuring really existing democracies? 16
Allen sums up the matter by noting that though imbalances of power are important for
Habermasian critical theory to grapple with, the solution to this "can only be
more discourse or debate" (PS 18). This continued faith in the perfectibility of the democratic process is what distinguishes
social interaction" (SJ 60). In other words, for Fraser's paradigm to function,

the Habermasian feminists I have cited in this chapter from the thinkers perhaps, again, with the exception of Levinas I have discussed in earlier

thinkers , as well as those aligned with these thinkers, would in fact ridicule the
Habermasian stance for its naive inability to recognize how power
corrupts the democratic process , how, for example, neoliberalism and global
capitalism have torn democracy into shreds. As Wendy Brown explains, "This is a political condition in which the
chapters of this book. The latter

substance of many of the significant features of constitutional and representative democracy have been gutted, jettisoned, or end- run, even as they

continue to be promulgated ideologically, served as a foil and shield for their undoing and for the doing of death elsewhere." 17 Indeed, what good can the
ideal of participatory parity do in the context of biopolitical and other invisible forces of power that constitute us as compliant subjects well before we

If our psychic lives, including our unconscious desires, fantasies, and motivations, are
shaped by hegemonic power, then participatory parity seems like a mere stopgap
measure something that makes us feel slightly better about being nothing but the obedient marionettes of power.
understand the basic principles of such parity?

I agree with such pessimism about the Habermasian democratic process. But I am not
convinced that the alternative approaches I have analyzed in this book necessarily fare any
better in terms of being capable of addressing the problem of power. I have

To some degree

already explained my reservations about the ability of Zizek and Badiou to do so. Butler may at first glance seem more competent in this regard, given
that the critique of disciplinary power has always been central to her theory. Yet, as I have demonstrated, I am not reassured by her assertion that
opposing power is a matter of negotiating with it. Nor am I persuaded by the haphazardness of her understanding of resistance a haphazardness that
arises from her rejection of agency. Take her assertion that the Benjaminian messianic rupture of divine violence outlined in Chapter 3 offers the
possibility of a political intervention based on distraction:
Perhaps we need to be more distracted, as Baudelaire was said to be, in order to be available to the true picture of the past to which Benjamin refers.
Perhaps, at some level that has implications for the political point I hope to bring out here, a certain disorientation opens us to the chance to wage a fight
for the history of the oppressed.JS

Butler here ofers disorientation and chance rather than action, choice, or
decision as a political strategy. As she adds, "We have to be provisional situationists, seizing the chance to fight when
it appears" (PW 110).
This is not a new problem, for long before Butler's turn to ethics, she wrote, in relation to our tendency to identify with the power structures that subjugate
us: "The very categories that arc politically available for identification restrict in advance the play of hegemony, dissonance and rearticulation. It is not
simply that a psyche invests in its oppression, but that the very terms that bring the subject into political viability orchestrate the trajectory of
identification and become, with luck, the site for a disidentificatory resistance."19 I have already expressed my dissatisfaction with the idea that the

I want to call attention to Butler's reduction of

resistance here configured as a practice of disidentification to a kind of lucky
break from the generalized background of power. Allen has noted the same problem, arguing that luck is
too flimsy a basis for political resistance , and pointing out, furthermore, that Butler's reluctance
to theorize the social world as anything but hegemonic makes it difficult for
her to envision the possibility of social solidarity, including
nonsubordinating, nonstrategic forms of mutual recognition. As Allen asserts:
Without a more fully developed and less ambivalent notion of recognition, Butler is left unable
to explain the possibility of collective or , ultimately, individual resistance .... Without an account of how
psyche invariably "invests in its oppression," but in the present instance

the recognition of our commonality provides the basis for political community and collective resistance, Butler is left suggesting that the transformation
from identification to disidentification, from signification to resignification, from subjectivation to a critical desubjectivation, is nothing more than a matter
of luck. (PS 93)

As complicated and potentially flawed as the democratic ideal of

participatory parity may be, it still seems like a better basis for political
action than dumb luck.

Exactly.

1nc
Baudrillards political theory succumbs to a neoliberalism who operates
precisely through the seductive play of subject-object reversals we need
an engaged anti-capitalist praxis
Gane 15 (Mike, professor emeritus @ Loughborough University, The Cultural
Logics of Neoliberalism Baudrillards Account, Cultural Politics, Volume 11, Issue 1,
pp. 9-12)
Jacques Donzelot was a colleague of Baudrillards at Nanterre and taught a course jointly with him. His recollections subsume Baudrillards contributions to
a kind of patasociology, an extreme analysis. In fact, no one is more radical and all other radicalisms seem ridiculous as a result. But there is a

The patasociologist . . . denies sociological truth and indeed truth itself; denies good in the
name of evil and reality in the name of the simulacrum. . . . Does he have a system of thought? Yes, if
downside:

you want to put it that way. But, as with Nietzsche, it is a system-dismantling system (Donzelot 2011: 368). This judgment is one-sided, since

Baudrillard did produce a system that is open to correction; in other words, it was certainly not in denial of truth and, in
some respects, was simply not radical enough to deal with the ruthless radicalism of
neoliberalization and neoliberal doctrine and practice (see Klein 2007; Peck 2010) or the wider
effects, such as the emergence of the seventh continentthe circulating mass of
plastic in the oceans. The strange resort to pataphysics to evoke the
neoliberal world seems to be an ornament and not vital or indeed radical at
all , as Donzelot claims. Baudrillard bizarrely absolves pataphysics from his semioclasm. In the
logic of neoliberal games, the subject-object polarities are reversed: the
world thinks us. In terms of pataphysics, it is essential to play Baudrillard against Baudrillard,
for if, as he says, the world itself has become pataphysical, it satirizes us , mocks us, ridicules us, toys
with us. He once asked of the tactic used by Exxon: The American government asks the multinational for a
general report on all its activities through- out the world. The result is twelve volumes of a thousand pages each . . . where is the information? (1990a: 13). But where is his analysis of the dissimulation of the
manufacture of uncertainty developed? (see Oreskes and Conway 2010). Yet his famous injunction that the task of
thought is to make the world , if possible, even more enigmatic and unintelligible (2001: 151) is
the perfect formula of the neoliberal worlds eforts at such agnatology ; this
has been defined by Mirowski as the manufacture of doubt and uncertainty and, as such, goes far
beyond propaganda, since its hallmark techniques thrive off a hermeneutics of
suspicion, with the result that the populace can maintain the comfortable fiction that it is not being manipulated by the obscure interests funding
the initiatives (Mirowski 2013: 22627). These moves within contemporary neoliberalism complicate considerably the
classical conception of market knowledge as truth by Hayek , or veridiction by Foucault ([2004] 2010:
34). With the switch of polarities has come, especially after the revelatory events of 2008, a
situation in which the banks and the corporations become too big to fail. Baudrillard
remarks in an interview with Francois LYvonnet that he was again thinking of the importance of pataphysics because: Once achieved, this integral reality
is the Ubuesque accomplishment par excellence! Pataphysics might be said to be the only response to this phenomenon, both in its total confusionits
neither critical nor transcendent, its the perfect tautology of this integral reality, its the science of sciencesand at the same time its the monstrousness

Baudrillard was, in this crucial instance, reluctant in the end to let go of his
pataphysical project and to follow its flourishing in the object ; he did not say: Ubu thinks us. But
of it too (2004: 5).

something in the gaze from the Other had certainly changed (LYvonnets own discussion of Baudrillards pataphysics [2013: 4958] does not register this
change).

If we follow this back to the turning point in the mid-1970s of the BNP
advertisement, Baudrillard refers to this once more in The Transparency of Evil, noting: [The] banker got up
like a vampire, saying, I am after you for your money. A decade has already gone by since this kind of
obscenity was introduced, with the governments blessing, into our social mores. At the time we thought the ad feeble because of its aggressive vulgarity.
In point of fact it was a prophetic commercial, full of intimations of the future shape of social relationships, because it operated, precisely, in terms of

And in one of his last texts, Baudrillard again refers to the BNP
campaign, this time linked to the theme of evil : What was new and scandalous was having these words come
disgust, avidity and rape (1993c: 73).

direct from the bankers themselves, the truth coming straight from the mouth of Evil . . . of the dominant power itself, and that power, secure in the
knowledge of its total immunity (2010b: 57).
We can now turn back to his initial analysis. It was first published in 1974 in Utopie (Baudrillard [1974] 2006, which reproduces the images from the banks
campaign) and included in 1976 in LEchange Symbolique et la Mort as a long footnote about the advertisement: Votre argent minteressedonnant donnantvous me pretez votre argent, je vous fais profiter de ma banque (1976: 53). He makes four points. First, this statement about value is usually
hidden: Candour is a second-degree mask of exploitation. Second, there is a macho complicity where men share the obscene truth of capital. Hence the
smell of lechery . . . of the eyes glued to your money as if it were your genitals . . . a perverse provocation which is much more subtle than the simplistic
seduction of the smile . . . the slogan quite simply signifies: I am interested in your arsefairs fairlend me your buttocks and Ill bugger you. Third,
there is the crucial switch behind this new obscenity: the law of equivalence of value ( a = a ; a = a + a ) is no longer dominant, thus this apparent
restatement of it is a supplementary mystification. In so many words: Capital no longer thrives on the rule of any economic law, which is why the law can
be made into an advertising slogan, falling into the sphere of the sign and its manipulation. Fourth, it might be thought this advertisement simply reveals
the desire for open extraction of profit, but in fact, there is a new tautology here. A bank is a bank, not a = a + abut A is A: that is to say a bank is a
bank, a banker is a banker, money is money, and you can do nothing about it.9
Perhaps this is Ubu reborn as banker, or en route to become the new cynically aggressive UbuUbu as vampire? It is certainly clear that this is not the

There is something
curiously static and nostalgic in Baudrillards relation to pataphysics (1976);
he said the only strategy against the hyperrealist system is some form of
pataphysics. And thirty years later, in The Intelligence of Evil (2005): Integral Reality corresponds
to the pataphysical sphere. . . . Ubu is the very symbol of this plethoric reality and, at the same time, the only response to the
maternal mode of participative repression Baudrillard described in consumerism ([1969] 2001).

Integral Reality, the only solution that is truly imaginary in its fierce irony, its grotesque fullness. The great spiral belly of Pa Ubu is the profile of our world
and its umbilical entombment (2005: 45).

There is a kind of nostalgia for the pataphysics that he

adopted in his youth (and that, as he admitted, played havoc with his early career [2004: 45]). And if we turn to his early piece on
pataphysics, we can see that his relationship to it was far from being unambiguoushe rejected it in favor of Artauds theater of cruelty, for pataphysics

It was both a basis of ironic critique that he wanted and

one that he had already rejected one that he never worked through,
developed, and assessed. It remained as it always was, a precocious but childish
unchanging resource that he had disavowed : pataphysics was a kind of esoteric parenthesis and
pataphysics isnt a reference for me . . . things have to be lostthey disappear, disperse like anagrams in what follows (2004: 6). Baudrillard
could not let go of a pataphysics, and it remained an obscure object. No one has yet
studied the way in which it functions in his writings (though see Genosko 1994; Teh 2006). It is linked
to a concept of freedom that is quite different from that of the neoliberals. For
neoliberals, one must accept the responsibility as a subject, for the objective
conditions of ones own life. But, Baudrillard argues: As long as I am subject to
objective conditions, I am still an object, I am not wholly freeI have to be freed from that freedom itself. And this is
is impossible ([1948] 2005: 215).

possible only in play, in that more subtle freedom of play, the arbitrary rules of which paradoxically free me, whereas in reality I am kept in chains by my

But pataphysics remained a favorite toy, not anagrammatic; it is the

image of the world (in its absurdity), and it is the only response to the world (by treating
it as a method of finding imaginary solutions to problems that do not exist). Thus if there is an occlusion of the ways in
which the world is reconstructed in alignment with liberalization , it
nevertheless shows through, and Ubu is a medium of ventriloquous evil (2010b: 61). For
example, Baudrillard could write acutely on the burning of cars in the banlieues in
France in The Pyres of Autumn (2006), for as he said, notoriously, even signs must burn ([1972] 1981:
163), but the initiation ritual of the student Bullingdon Club at Oxford
University the club of which both Cameron and Osborne were previously members which involved burning a
50 note in front of a tramp , and which came to light in the British press in
February 2013, is a newly invented neoliberal ritual that Baudrillard did not
foresee. 10
own will (2001: 5657).

Extinction.
Parr 13 (Adrian, Assoc. Prof. of Philosophy and Environmental Studies @ U. of
Cincinnati, THE WRATH OF CAPITAL: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, pp.
145-147)
an economic meltdown; a frantic sell-off of public land
to the energy business as President George W Bush exited the White House; a prolonged, costly, and
unjustified war in Iraq; the Greek economy in ruins; an escalation of global food prices;
A quick snapshot of the twenty-first century so far:

bee colonies in global extinction; 925 million hungry reported in 2010; as of 2005, the world's
five hundred richest individuals with a combined income greater than that of the
poorest 416 million people, the richest 10 percent accounting for 54 percent of global income; a planet on the
verge of boiling point; melting ice caps; increases in extreme weather conditions;
and the list goes on and on and on.2 Sounds like a ticking time bomb, doesn't it? Well it is.
It is shameful to think that massive die-outs of future generations will put to pale comparison the 6 million
murdered during the Holocaust; the millions killed in two world wars; the genocides
in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Darfur; the 1 million left homeless and the
316,000 killed by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The time has come to wake up to the warning signs.3
The real issue climate change poses is that we do not enjoy the luxury of incremental change anymore.
We are in the last decade where we can do something about the situation. Paul Gilding, the former head
of Greenpeace International and a core faculty member of Cambridge University's Programme for Sustainability, explains that "two
degrees of warming is an inadequate goal and a plan for failure ;' adding that "returning to below one
degree of warming . . . is the solution to the problem:'4 Once we move higher than 2C of warming, which is what is
projected to occur by 2050, positive feedback mechanisms will begin to kick in, and then
we will be at the point of no return. We therefore need to start thinking very
differently right now.
We do not see the crisis for what it is; we only see it as an isolated symptom that we
need to make a few minor changes to deal with. This was the message that Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez
delivered at the COP15 United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen on December 16, 2009, when he declared: "Let's talk about the cause. We should

the cause of this disastrous

panorama is the metabolic, destructive system of the capital and its model:
capitalism .5
The structural conditions in which we operate are advanced capitalism. Given this fact, a few adjustments here and there to
that system are not enough to solve the problems that climate change and
environmental degradation pose.6 Adaptability, modifications, and displacement, as I
have consistently shown throughout this book, constitute the very essence of capitalism. Capitalism
adapts without doing away with the threat. Under capitalism, one deals with threat not by
challenging it, but by buying favors from it , as in voluntary carbon-offset schemes. In the process, one
gives up on one's autonomy and reverts to being a child. Voluntarily offsetting a bit
of carbon here and there, eating vegan, or recycling our waste, although well intended, are not solutions to
the problem, but a symptom of the free market's ineffectiveness. By casting a scathing look at the
neoliberal options on display, I have tried to show how all these options are ineffective. We are not buying
indulgences because we have a choice; choices abound, and yet they all lead us
down one path and through the golden gates of capitalist heaven .
not avoid responsibilities, we should not avoid the depth of this problem. And I'll bring it up again,

For these reasons, I have underscored everyone's implication in this structure myself included. If anything, the book has been an act of outrage

outrage at the deceit and the double bind that the "choices" under capitalism
present, for there is no choice when everything is expendable. There is nothing
substantial about the future when all you can do is survive by facing the absence of
your own future and by sharing strength , stamina, and courage with the people around you. All
the rest is false hope.
In many respects, writing this book has been an anxious exercise because I am fully aware that reducing the issues of environmental degradation and

each
and every one of us has certain skills that can contribute to making the solutions
that we introduce in response to climate change and environmental degradation
more effective and more realistic. In light of that view, I close with the following proposition, which I mean in the most
optimistic sense possible: our politics must start from the point that after 2050 it may all be
over.
climate change to the domain of analysis can stave off the institution of useful solutions. But in my defense I would also like to propose that

This debate is about competing methodologies. The question at the end of

the debate is whose ethical orientation best catalyzes political

organization against Capital. Vote negative to affirm the Communist

Hypothesis.
Badiou 09 (Alain, Prof. @ European Graduate School, Former chair of Philosophy @ cole Normale Superieure, The Meaning
of Sarkozy, pgs. 97-103 bb)
I would like to situate the Sarkozy episode, which is not an impressive page in French history, in a broader horizon. Let us picture a kind of Hegelian fresco of recent world history - by
which I do not, like our journalists, mean the triad Mitterrand-Chirac-Sarkozy, but rather the development of the politics of working-class and popular emancipation over nearly two
centuries.
Since the French Revolution and its gradually universal echo, since the most radically egalitarian developments of that revolution, the decrees of Robespierre's Committee of Public
Safety on the 'maximum' and Babeuf's theorizations, we know (when I say 'we', I mean humanity in the abstract, and the knowledge in question is universally available on the paths of

communism is the right hypothesis. Indeed, there is no other , or at least I am not aware of
those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the
market economy, to parliamentary democracy - the form of state suited to
capitalism and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous
inequalities. What do we mean by 'communism'? As Marx argued in the 1844 Manuscripts, communism is an idea regarding the destiny of the human
species. This use of the word must be completely distinguished from the meaning of the adjective
'communist' that is so worn-out today , in such expressions as 'communist parties', 'communist states' or 'communist world' - never mind
emancipation) that
one. All

that 'communist state' is an oxymoron, to which the obscure coinage 'socialist state' has wisely been preferred. Even if, as we shall see, these uses of the word belong to a time when the

'communist' means first of all, in a negative sense - as we can read in its canonical text The
that the logic of classes, of the fundamental subordination of people who actually work for a dominant class, can be
overcome. This arrangement, which has been that of history ever since antiquity, is not inevitable. Consequently, the
oligarchic power of those who possess wealth and organize its circulation , crystallized in the
might of states, is not inescapable. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of
hypothesis was still coming-to-be. In its generic sense,
Communist Manifesto -

wealth and even the division of labour: every individual will be a 'multi-purpose worker', and in particular people will circulate between manual and intellectual work, as well as between
town and country. The private appropriation of monstrous fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state separate from civil society, with
its military and police, will no longer seem a self-evident necessity. There will be, Marx tells us - and he saw this point as his major contribution - after a brief sequence of 'proletarian
dictatorship' charged with destroying the remains of the old world, a long sequence of reorganization on the basis of a 'free association' of producers and creators, which will make

'Communism' as such only denotes this very general set of intellectual

representations. This set is the horizon of any initiative , however local and limited in time it may be, that
breaks with the order of established opinions - the necessity of inequalities and the state instrument for protecting these - and
composes a fragment of a politics of emancipation. In other words, communism is what Kant called an 'Idea', with a
regulatory function, rather than a programme. It is absurd to characterize communist principles in the sense I have defined
them here as utopian, as is so often done. They are intellectual patterns , always actualized in a different fashion, that serve
to produce lines of demarcation between different forms of politics. By and large, a
particular political sequence is either compatible with these principles or opposed to
them, in which case it is reactionary. 'Communism', in this sense, is a heuristic hypothesis that is very frequently used in political argument, even if the word itself does not appear.
possible a 'withering away' of the state.

If it is still true, as Sartre said, that 'every anti-communist is a swine', it is because any political sequence that, in its principles or lack of them, stands in formal contradiction with the
communist hypothesis in its generic sense, has to be judged as opposed to the emancipation of the whole of humanity, and thus to the properly human destiny of humanity. Whoever
does not illuminate the coming-to-be of humanity with the communist hypothesis - whatever words they use, as such words matter little - reduces humanity, as far as its collective
becoming is concerned, to animality. As we know, the contemporary - that is, the capitalist name of this animality - is 'competition'. The war dictated by self-interest, and nothing more.

the communist hypothesis has no doubt existed in a practical state since the
beginnings of the existence of the state. As soon as mass action opposes state coercion in the name of egalitarian justice, we have the
As a pure Idea of equality,

appearance of rudiments or fragments of the communist hypothesis. This is why, in a pamphlet titled De l'ideologie, which I wrote in collaboration with the late lamented Francois Balmes

Popular revolts, such as that of the slaves led by

Spartacus, or that of the German peasants led by Thomas Munzer, are examples of
this practical existence of communist invariants. However, in the explicit form that it was given by certain thinkers and activists
and was published in 1976, we proposed to identity 'communist invariants.'2

of the French Revolution, the communist hypothesis inaugurates political modernity. It was this that laid low the mental structures of the ancien regime, yet without being tied to those
'democratic' political forms that the bourgeoisie would make the instrument for its own pursuit of power. This point is essential: from the beginning, the communist hypothesis in no way
coincided with the 'democratic' hypothesis that would lead to present-day parliamentarism. It subsumes a different history and different events. What seems important and creative
when illuminated by the communist hypothesis is different in kind from what bourgeois-democratic historiography selects. That is indeed why Marx, giving materialist foundations to the
first effective great sequence of the modern politics of emancipation, both took over the word 'communism' and distanced himself from any kind of democratic 'politicism' by
maintaining, after the lesson of the Paris Commune, that the bourgeois state, no matter how democratic, must be destroyed. Well, I leave it to you to judge what is important or not, to
judge the points whose consequences you choose to assume against the horizon of the communist hypothesis. Once again, it is the right hypothesis, and we can appeal to its principles,

Sartre said in an interview, which I paraphrase: If the communist

hypothesis is not right, if it is not practicable, well, that means that humanity is not a thing in
itself, not very different from ants or termites. What did he mean by that? If competition, the 'free market', the sum of little pleasures, and the walls that protect you from the desire
of the weak, are the alpha and omega of all collective and private existence, then the human animal is not worth a cent. And it
is this worthlessness to which Bush with his aggressive conservatism and crusader spirit, Blair the Pious with his militarist rhetoric,
and Sarkozy with his 'work, family, country' discipline, want to reduce the existence of the immense
majority of living individuals. And the 'Left' is still worse , simply juxtaposing to this
vacant violence a vague spirit of charity. To morbid competition, the pasteboard victories of daddy's boys and girls, the ridiculous
whatever the declensions or variations that these undergo in different contexts.

supermen of unleashed finance, the coked-up heroes of the planetary stock exchange, this Left can only oppose the same actors with a bit of social politeness, a little walnut oil in the
wheels, crumbs of holy wafer for the disinherited - in other words, borrowing from Nietzsche, the bloodless figure of the 'last man. To put an end once and for all to May '68 means
agreeing that our only choice is between the hereditary nihilism of finance and social piety. It not only means accepting that communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, not only
acknowledging that the Parti Communiste Francais has been wretchedly defeated, but also and above all it means abandoning the hypothesis that May '68 was a militant invention

precisely aware of the failure of state 'communism'. And thus that May '68, and still more so the five years that followed, inaugurated a new sequence for the genuine communist
hypothesis, one that always keeps its distance from the state. Certainly, no one could say where all this might lead, but we knew in any case that what was at stake was the rebirth of
this hypothesis. If the thing that Sarkozy is the name of succeeds in imposing the necessity of abandoning any idea of a rebirth of this kind, if human society is a collection of individuals
pursuing their self-interest, if this is the eternal reality, then it is certain that the philosopher can and must abandon the human animal to its sad destiny.

But we shall

not let a triumphant Sarkozy dictate the meaning of our existence , or the tasks of philosophy. For what we
are witnessing in no way imposes such a renunciation of the communist hypothesis, but simply a consideration of the moment at which we find ourselves in the history of this
hypothesis.

case
Recuperating old French philosophy is a last grasp at theoretical radicality
with no political significance Dont rehabilitate Baudrillard, dont vote for
Michigan
Graeber 8 (David, Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics,
THE SADNESS OF POST-WORKERISM or ART AND IMMATERIAL LABOUR
CONFERENCE: A SORT OF REVIEW pp. 4-5)
Instead of trying to take on the arguments point by pointas I said, this is only a sort of reviewlet me instead throw out some initial thoughts on what

I am less interested in entering into the ring and batting

around arguments for whether Foucault or Deleuze are better suited for helping us
realize the radical potential in the current historical moment, as to ask such
questions are being batted about by Italian revolutionaries, in an art museum, in the
first place. Here I can make four initial observations, all of which, at the time, I found mildly surprising:
1) There was almost no discussion of contemporary art. Just about every piece of art discussed was within
the presentations had in common. In other words,

what might be called the classic avant garde tradition (Dada, Futurism, Duchamp, Abstract Expressionism...) Negri did take his history of art forms up
through the 60s, and Bifo mentioned Banksy. But that was about it.

While all of the speakers could be considered Italian autonomists

2)
and they were ostensibly there
to discuss Immaterial Labor, a concept that emerged from the Italian autonomist tradition, surprisingly few concepts specific to that tradition were

the theoretical language drew almost exclusively on the familiar heroes of

French 68 thought: Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari ... At one point,
deployed. Rather,

the editor of Multitude, Eric Alliez, in introducing Negri made a point of saying that one of the great achievements of his work was to give a second life to
such thinkers, a kind of renewed street cred, by making them seem once again relevant to revolutionary thought.
3) In each case, the presenters used those French thinkers as a tool to create a theory about historical stagesor some cases, imitated them by coming

For each, the key question was: what is the right term with which
What makes our time unique?

up with an analogous theory of stages of their own.

characterize the present?

Is it that we have passed from a society of discipline, to one of security,
or control? Or is it that regimes of conjunction been replaced by regimes of connection? Have we experienced a passage from formal to real subsumption?
Or from modernity to postmodernity? Or have we passed postmodernity too, now, and entered an entirely new phase?
4) All of them were remarkably polite. Dramatically lacking was anything that might provoke discomfort in even the stodgiest Tate Britain curator, or even,
really, any of their wealthiest patrons. This is worthy of note no one can seriously deny the speakers radical credentials. Most had proved themselves
willing to take genuine personal risks at moments when there was any reason to believe some realistic prospect of revolution was afoot. There was no
doubt that, had some portion of Londons proletariat risen up in arms during their stay, most if not all would have immediately reported to the barricades.
But since they had not, their attacks or even criticisms were limited to other intellectuals: Badiou, Ranciere, Agamben.

Why, for example, would one wish to

argue that in the year 2008 we live in a unique historical moment, unlike anything
that came before, and then act as if this moment can only really be described
through concepts French thinkers developed in the 1960s and 70sthen illustrate
ones points almost exclusively with art created between 1916 and 1922?
These observations may seem scattershot but I think taken together they are revealing.

This does seem strangely arbitrary but I suspect there is a reason. We might ask: what does the moment of Futurism, Dada, Constructivism and the rest,
and French 68 thought, have in common? Actually quite a lot. Each corresponded to a moment of revolution: to adopt Immanuel Wallersteins
terminology, the world revolution of 1917 in one case, and the world revolution of 1968 in the other. Each witnessed an explosion of creativity in which a

they marked
the last moment at which it was possible to plausibly claim that breaking all the
ruleswhether violating artistic conventions, or shattering philosophical assumptionswas itself, necessarily, a
subversive political act as well.
longstanding European artistic or intellectual Grand Tradition effectively reached the limits of its radical possibilities. That is to say,

This is particularly easy to see in the case of the European avant garde. From Duchamps first readymade in 1914, Hugo Balls Dada manifesto and tone
poems in 1916, to Malevichs White on White in 1918, culminating in the whole phenomenon of Berlin dada from 1918 to 1922, one could see
revolutionary artists perform, in rapid succession, just about every subversive gesture it was possible to make: from white canvases to automatic writing,
theatrical performances designed to incite riots, sacrilegious photo montage, gallery shows in which the public was handed hammers and invited to
destroy any piece they took a disfancy to, objects plucked off the street and sacralized as art. All that remained for the Surrealists was to connect a few
remaining dots, and the heroic moment was over. One could still do political art, of course, and one could still defy convention. But it became effectively
impossible to claim that by doing one you were necessarily doing the other, and increasingly difficult to even try to do both at the same time. It was
possible, certainly, to continue in the Avant Garde tradition without claiming ones work had political implications (as did anyone from Jackson Pollock to
Andy Warhol), it was possible to do straight-out political art (like, say, Diego Rivera); one could even (like the Situationists) continue as a revolutionary in
the Avant Garde tradition but stop making art, but that pretty much exhausted the remaining possibilities.

What happened to Continental philosophy after May 68 is quite similar.

Assumptions were shattered, grand declarations abounded (the intellectual equivalent of Dada
manifestos): the death of Man, of Truth, The Social, reason, dialectics, even Death itself.

But the end result was roughly the same. Within a decade, the possible radical
positions one could take within the Grand Tradition of post-Cartesian philosophy had
been, essentially, exhausted. The heroic moment was over. Whats more, it became increasingly
difficult to maintain the premise that heroic acts of epistemological subversion
were revolutionary or even particularly subversive in any other sense. In fact
their effects seemed if anything depoliticizing . Just as purely formal avant garde
experiment proved perfectly well suited to grace the homes of conservative
bankers , and Surrealist montage to become the language of the advertising
industry, so did poststructural theory quickly prove the perfect philosophy
for self-satisfied liberal academics with no political engagement at all .
If nothing else this would explain the obsessive-compulsive quality of the constant
return to such heroic moments. It is, ultimately, a subtle form of conservatism
or, perhaps one should say conservative radicalism, if such were possiblea nostalgia for the days
when it was possible to put on a tin-foil suit, shout nonsense verse, and watch staid
bourgeois audiences turn into outraged lynch mobs; to strike a blow against
Cartesian Dualism and feel that by doing so, one has thereby struck a blow for
oppressed people everywhere.
Theyre wrong about info-overload simulation has changed politics, not
rendered it impossible -- we have to mobilize new public spheres
Axford et al, 97 (Barrie, and Richard Huggins are Lecturers at the Department of
Politics, School of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, ANTI-POLITICS OR
THE TRIUMPH OF POSTMODERN POPULISM IN PROMOTIONAL CULTURES? The
Public, Vol. 4.3)
even if one
accepts the general thrust of Baudrillards arguments, the gap between such
abstractions and the rough and tumble of everyday politics may seem too wide to
bridge.
there are important
emancipatory implications here for politics,
especially for
forms of political participation
Nevertheless, it is clear that these ideas can and do cause disquiet, particularly over the potential for the manipulation of consciousness which resides in a media- brokered hyper-real. And

We believe that

and gener- ally

ideas about publicness and

. To address these, we will look more closely at some of the qualities of a mediatised

politics, emphasising (1) the changing character of pub- licness and the shifting boundaries of the public sphere, and (2) the question of visibility and the consequences for actors who conduct politics fully in the frame of media. The
notion of a (bourgeois) public sphere, no matter how constructed, is only an heuristic device for understanding and analysing one element of the organisation of societies, and not a neat model of the scope for all action and
interaction, organisation and communication. Yet much discussion of the concept treats it as an ideal which defines the discursive and the moral spaces of any healthy civil society (Keane 1991; Habermas 1974; 1989). Such
prescriptions are understandable, but their effect has been to assign universal qualities to particular forms of publicness (Keane 1981; Habermas 1989). As a consequence there is not only a reluctance to accept the democratic
potential which may (or may not) follow from the application of information technology to political life, but also an unwillingness to acknowledge the democratic authenticity of many sorts of politics which traffic on or beyond the

critics see new

communications technologies and the spaces created by them as extensions of
existing
institutions and practices, even where they are viewed as dangerous
boundaries of democratic elitism, preferring to dismiss them with epithets such as postmodern or anti-politics. At least part of the problem here is that

and familiar

instrumentalities. The idea that new media and the spaces of interaction created by them may be fashioning new contexts for interaction, sociality and even identity formation is rarely canvassed, save by enthusiasts. To some extent

this is a result of the paucity of empirical evidence on the impact of information

Critics have difficulties imagining a democratic
politics, or
public sphere which is not configured by the exigencies of usual
politics
this narrowing of the limits of politics has received a good deal of
criticism from those already marginalised
such as feminists
and

communications technologies on political life, but in large measure it is a problem of imagination.

a vision of the

, despite the fact that

by particularistic definitions of the public sphere,

(Fraser 1989;

Calhoun 1993). Although it is now commonplace to talk about the transformation of democracy (McGrew 1997) due to a variety of forces, even fairly radical formulations work within quite narrow conceptual parameters. In a recent
exegesis on democratising the European Union, James Goodman (1997) points to the ways in which transnational social movements are challenging both territorial definitions of the European polity and the model of elite governance
which has been characteristic of the EU. Rightly, he says that the processes of regionalisation and globalisation are contributing to the creation of a post-Westphalian polity in Europe and that the prospects for a non-statist,
cosmopolitan and participative democracy are enhanced as a result. All this constitutes a re-imagination of Europe, but very few commentators are prepared to entertain the more radical idea of a European ecumene which is
constituted out of the networks and communities of interest and sustained by communications technology (Axford 1995; Axford and Huggins 1996b). At the moment this sort of conception is quite unconventional, and might even be
construed as anti-political, modifying, perhaps dispensing with received wisdom about the processes driving European integration and about the nature of Europeanising and democratising forces. The same could be said about
attempts during recent election campaigns in the United States and the United Kingdom to encourage first time voters and young people generally to register and vote, and to raise their consciousness of political and social issues.

The Rock the Vote campaign

, which included national tours by well-known comedians, television personalities and rock musicians (hence the name) was heir to a history of show

significance
lies in its calculated eliding of the realms of politics and culture in new and primarily
cultural milieu
At one level the technique is pure lifestyle marketing
At another level the decision to register
business involvement with politics and political causes. However, neither the pedigree of the campaign nor the motives of its framers, are the most significant things about it. The

of Rock the Vote

the rock concert, the record store (the Virgin Megastore stocked voter registration cards during the run up to the general election in the UK) and the club, where the stock-in-trade is image

and style.

must be cool, rather like buying into a political version of the Pepsi-Max experience.

if these people and organisations think its acceptable to vote, then it

or not to register

becomes an aesthetic judgement of the degree to which the acts of registration and
of voting sync with perceived standards of taste and style.
In fact the Rock the Vote pitch was deliberately non-partisan and low-

key, recognising that it would have been distinctly un-cool to do other than point out to young people that voting is a good thing to do. But during the general election campaign the Ministry of Sound (a British music co-operative)
produced a series of shocking poster ads depicting, among other things, a public urinal with the words piss on niggers sprayed on to the walls, and the injunction to use your vote, you can be sure hell use his. Their intent was to

Members of focus
groups of young people
were excited by the production values employed and moved by
the sheer power of the visual images
This was a politics with
which they could engage
it may be possible to dismiss these things as mere flummery
engage young people by dealing with issues of concern to them, such as racism, rather than through the issues which dominated the official and indeed the media campaign agendas.

, run by the authors during the British General Election 1997, were ambivalent about this campaign. They saw it as a piece of targeted political marketing with an

underlying political bias. At the same time they

of homophobes, racists and field sports enthusiasts.

, partly because it was untainted by the usual partisan knockabout, partly because of the issues espoused, and partly because it was presented in such a dramatic

and honest fashion. Now,

, rather than as harbingers of a new

style of politics, or as indicators of real discontent. For example, the young people in our groups were low on partisan commitment, but where they voted, they voted conventionally. Overall it is difficult to say what this tells us about
the nature of commitment and about the motivation to vote for one party rather than another, and any such speculation is outside the scope of this paper. At all events in a mediatised political culture the effects of particular media
and media messages are perhaps of less long-term interest than the extent to which the media now frame all political discourses and open up new spaces for what is, in effect, political communication. Rock the Vote, party and group
Web sites, even the Virgin Megastore can be seen as part of the transformation of the public sphere and of the forums in which political discourse can legitimately take place. They can also be seen as part of what John Thompson

The ease with which

even peripheral political forces and issues can become visible using electronic
communications may itself be a proper rejoinder to those who see in these
developments no more than techno-populism
(1995) calls the transformation of visibility which is afforded by the accessibility of new forms of electronic communication and by the speed with which information is traded.

, the dumbing of political discourse, or the opportunity for clever politicians to manage their image. But the

transformation of visibility also has the potential to discommode even the slickest of politicians, because in mediatised cultures, visibility is a two-edged sword. During the 1996 US Presidential elections individuals could register on
their PCs to receive the Bob Dole gaffe-line which gave a daily record of any gaffes made by the prospective presidential candidate and his entourage. In this way Doles political opponents were able to turn his tribulations over
support for the tobacco industry into a caricature of Dole as Butt-Man and flood the images around the global information superhighway. An extended illustration will help to underline the point about the advantages and dangers of
visibility in promotional cultures and introduce some preliminary thoughts on the ways in which media literate voters might read political messages. On a recent cover of the popular football fanzine WSC: When Saturday Comes
(June 1996) was a picture of Tony Blair and the sometime manager of Newcastle United Football Club, Kevin Keegan. This picture and others showing the Labour leader with Keegan had appeared in all the national dailies and on
television news. It is instructive to deconstruct this image. The leader of the New Labour Party engineers a photo- opportunity with the popular Kevin Keegan great player, great bloke and a footballing, business and style
success. Having enjoyed a successful playing career for Liverpool, Hamburg and England, Keegan, returning to his roots, became the new messiah of Newcastle United Football Club, taking them from near relegation from the
British first division to challenge for the Premiership title and European honours in the space of a few years. Furthermore, Keegan did this by buying expensive, flair players and encouraging skilful, exciting attacking football. In a
heavily marketed and promoted sport Keegans team was the trumpeted as reclaiming its place in the pantheon of great northern football clubs along with Liverpool and Manchester United. So, the cover of When Saturday Comes is
rich in symbolism and implied connections. Keegan the popular hero returns to lift faded Newcastle to its former glories, and his success is a paradigm case of being able to make it in a meritocratic (not to say a classless) Britain, and
a paradigm too for the resurrection of the North. Football pro- vides the link to the past-signifying the true value of locality and the deep roots of working class culture and to the future, which is now bright with promise. There are
other messages too. Clearly, Keegan is adept at functioning in both worlds. He is true to his past, but has recognised the importance of tapping into the rich vein of capital, business sense and experience which (in the shape of the
Newcastle Chair- man, Sir John Hall) are the acceptable legacy of the Thatcher years. Hall was a com- mercial success, Keegan sought to emulate that success on the field with the same panache. Here was no Gradgrind of the
football world. The parallels with an ambitious Tony Blair and New Labour are obvious, and for Blair the association with football in general and Keegan in particular was very seduc- tive. Keegans progress to the status of a 1990s
football icon, his habit of winning and his ability to seem credible to both terraces culture and the world of big business, were all attractive to Blair, who was faced with his own struggle to balance the pull of nos- talgia against the
shock of the new, and look the part of a future prime minister to a still sceptical British public. Also attractive was the fact that after the doldrums of the 1980s, when football was a metaphor for many of the ills of British society, the
game in the 1990s had become the new style signifier, the acme of cool and a marketing executives dream. Football (like New Labour) has reinvented itself, to the extent that the Euro-96 competition held in England in the summer
of 1996, saw a flowering of patriotism as a sort of populist chic, exemplified most obviously in the success of the song Footballs Coming Home. For politicians the game is no longer a cause of hand- wringing, but celebration and

positive image management

is now a central part of any electoral contest. But the Keegan-Blair motif
carries a number of hidden charges
runs the risk of being de-coded by professional journalists as part of their own
intensely reflexive view of the world
an opportunity to parade their street-cred. So far, so predictable, since

through manipulation of the news media as well as through direct forms of

marketing

, while redolent with

imagery which is seemingly advantageous for New Labour, also

, which nicely demonstrate Thompsons ideas on visibility. First,

it

and of their professional status in it. Indeed, WSCs picture has Keegan saying Ive been giving Tony some tips on how to keep a big

lead and goes some way to subvert the positive image and its ostensible meanings. Television jour- nalists, talking over shots of Blair playing head tennis with Keegan also resorted to what is by now the standard journalistic ploy
when faced with blatant attempts at news management; that is they pointed out that this was exactly what was going on. Second, a season is a long time in football, just as a week is a long time in politics, and Keeganss star, so
high in June had waned by December, all in the media spotlight. This downturn in fortunes is, of course, the whole point of the WSC picture. Third, the impact of this highly self-referential and media intensive world on the public is
hard to judge. Certainly we can say that despite serious or frivolous deconstruction of campaign imagery by voters, Blair won the general election by several lengths. But while this is true, again it is not the most significant point for

Contra Baudrillard, high levels of media literacy, fluency and access, coupled
with the polylogical nature of the electronic communications, at least allow for the
possibility of subversive interventions, for counter-cultural and oppositional views
and for the scurrilous or non-standard reading of texts. A mediatised politics
enhances these pos- sibilities rather than the opposite .
the political
hyper-real, the role of style, performance, pastiche and inter-textuality are
increasingly central
this discussion.

In this world of

, sometimes with unsettling consequences. For example, the British Channel 4 television programme, Brass Eye plays on the coding and encoding of material in television news

and current affairs programmes in the United Kingdom. But while employing the techniques used by broadcast profes- sionals, it also tries to subvert them by undermining their self-assigned status as ex- perts and mediators of
reality. The programme uses interviews with actual politicians, professional experts and other legislators, having fed them a self-incriminating and often preposterous story line. In one edition the then Conservative MP for Basildon
was encouraged to join an anti-drugs campaign for a fictitious new designer drug called cake. Through a clever use of style, image and pastiche the programme cre- ates a situation in which media hungry politicians and pundits
become the agents of their downfall. So akin to the delivery of actual news and current affairs television is Brass Eye, that viewers are often left unsure of the authenticity of the item. Reality becomes hyper-realilty and the medium
becomes the message, but through a parody of its own pretensions. Now clearly what we think of such developments will depend very much from where we write within the present cultural milieu and on where we stand on the
interpretation of anti-political phenomena. The Triumph of Postmodern Populism? Much of what we have said above seems to us to intimate and in some measure to realise what might be called a postmodern populism, in which
visibility, image and designer pastiche, as well as redefinitions of the public sphere are all significant features. Of course it is relatively easy to cull a range of evidence survey data on popular attitudes to politicians, anecdotes
about leading politicians love of football, mem- bership figures for political parties, or anecdotes about Bill Clintons preferences in underwear as told on MTV during the 1992 presidential campaign but much more difficult to effect
a convincing or unequivocal argument about the changing nature of a media-saturated politics. Below we offer some elaboration of the concept of postmodern populism (with apologies to Paul Piccone for taking some licence with his

the idea of a postmodern

politics trades upon the sense that contemporary politics is undergoing radical
changes.
original idea) and look to tie the Idea to both phenomenal aspects of contempo- rary politics, and to sentiments. First, and at its most general,

For example, in a recent polemic, Martin Jacques (1993) talks about the meltdown of the formal bound- aries of politics and political discourses as part of the crisis of the nation-state and of modernity itself.

Jaques is particularly concerned with the seismic tremors in Italian politics during the 1990s, but his vision of epochal change is more widely applicable. In this scenario, the world of conventional political parties and the state is
being invaded by the growing clamour of groups, movements and institutions from civil society to produce a heady cultural brew whose perception and experience of reality is increasingly mediated by what Vattimo calls the
giddy proliferation of communications (1992). Of course, it is possible to cavil at Jaquess description of current trends in these terms. In Italy, for example, the scale of anti-party populism may be less profound than Berlusconis
success in 1994 suggested (Bardi 1996). Forza Italia was and probably still is a distillation of the television and communications revolution served up in digestible populist form, but of late there are signs that it is attempting to clothe
itself in the style of more conventional, modernist, mass parties (Newell and Bull 1997). Of course even this retraditionalisation may itself be no more than a marketing ploy, or a pragmatic response to difficult times, rather than a
demonstration of the powerful inertia in Italian politics or of the enduring qualities of modern organisational forms. Either way, Berlusconi has still to be understood as a tele-phenomenon. But as a de- scription of popular attitudes to
parties and governments, Jaquess apocalyptic thesis also requires some modification when applied outside Italy. In Britain, as Paul Webb notes (1997), party penetration of society (though not the state) has become shallower since
the early 1960s, but anti-party manifestations are still lower than might be ex- pected, although the basis for this judgement is unclear. Even if true, it might simply be due to the well-documented gap between attitudes and
behaviour, or could reflect the fact that apparent continuities hide more complex and confused sentiments which are producing ambivalence and not coherence of identity (Poguntke and Scarrow 1996). On this the Italian case may
still be instructive, since it is hard not to agree with Statham (1996, 545) that politics there has undergone a substantive and qualitative change between the First and (putative) Second Republics. To repeat, this is not just a matter of

The very fact that politics has now

to be framed by and
in the idiom of electronically based media, itself has
profound consequences for the characteristics, organization and even the goals of
political processes
the growing
sophistication and availability of technology provides resources for an
political parties fighting each other through the media, or of using the me- dia as a strategic resource, as Statham properly argues.
, pace Castells,

, political actors and political institutions (1996, 476). This is not quite the determinism it might first appear, since, as we shall argue later,

increased reflexivity
Postmodern politics
preoccupied by mediation, image, simulation, network and spectacle
, although it goes without saying that there are critics of this position.

, in Italy, as elsewhere,

is

(Morley and Robins 1994). Most critically

of all, postmodern populism emerges as an implicit challenge to the very idea of transcen- dental meanings and forms. To that extent it is undoubtedly a form of anti-(usual)- politics. Second, postmodern populism surfaces as an

Perceptions of a growing democratic deficit

may all point to an actual crisis of motivation on
the part of sections of the voting public
expression of a growing frustration with usual politics and usual politicians.

, the inadequacy of systems of

accountability, accusations of endemic sleaze and systematic negativity during campaigns,

, and maybe a nascent legitimation crisis too. This conclusion may be somewhat premature, given the paucity of empirical

research in the field, but some evidence reveals what may be a profound ambivalence. For example, a recent survey among students in the UK conducted for the Sunday Times and a more qualitative investigation of the general
population by the market intelli- gence agency FCB, showed that people are disenchanted with politicians in general, but not necessarily with politics. Research conducted by the authors during the 1997 general election campaign in
the UK, found that although young people professed themselves detached from the routines of adversarial politics and frequently from the issues which so dominated the headlines during the campaign, they were moved by
advertising and by issues which centred on racism, environmentalism, homophobia and sexism, all still very much on the sidelines of usual politics. Of course youth apart, cynicism sits more easily with some audiences than with
others. Sentimentality and personal revelations, which featured prominently in speeches to both the Republican and Democratic Conventions in the USA in the 1996 campaign, still play to a full house in American elections. Such
apparent candour may have had European observers reaching for the vomit bag, but in the United States, at least, strategists remain convinced of the need to appeal directly to the public, and of the value of linking political
platforms to personal experience in ways that seem to break down the perceived distance between the politician on the podium and the public at home. Yet the revelatory style of the platform address, larded with apercu about little
Joes accident, a favourite sister s problems with drugs, or a parents illness as formative event, and the mock intimacy of the leader biopic, do carry with them potentially lethal charges for the protagonists. Attempts to humanise
politics in this way may breed familiarity and possibly contempt. At such a pass, the threat to demo- cratic procedures lies less in the ability of cleverly marketed politicians to gull voters and more in the cynicism engendered in the
public. For all this, Bill Clinton was able to secure re-election despite the charges of sleaze and the scent of scandal rising from the Whitewater affair, even without the soft-focus appeal to his Arkansas-Kennedy boyhood which struck
so many responsive chords in 1992. Tony Blair too, less than wholeheartedly received with sections of the electorate, notably women voters and the young, still managed to bring his party home to a landslide win in 1997. But the
problem for any new (tele) populist broom, messianic figure or country- cousin populist in the Ross Perot style, hoping to pick up the emotional slack in the system, is to fashion a platform that goes beyond mere nationalist rhetoric,
anti- governmentalism, revivalist or redemptionist tub-thumping and obsequies to the free- market, to fashion a new sort of politics. Now it may be no more than a datum, but the most publicised versions of this sort of thing (if we
were to exclude the brands on offer during the contest for the Russian presidency in 1996) do tend to occupy ground marked out by the New Right local autonomy, economic individualism and cul- tural particularity. Berlusconis
platform, especially in 1994, was marked by a clear neo-conservative agenda limiting welfare provision, reducing income taxes and letting the market into many more areas of life. But some strains with a New Left provenance also
surface, echoing grass-roots populism or communitarianism of the American variety, rather than discredited European variants linked to fascism. Very often, the message and the style of such movements is confused. Umberto
Bossis pilgrimage along the valley of the Po in September 1996, to publicise his plans for an independent Padania was (as it turned out) an unhappy blend of showbiz-derived nationalist rhetoric (he likened himself to the Scottish
hero William Wallace, but in a form invented by movie star Mel Gibson in the film Braveheart) and green fascism (his bodyguards wore green shirts to symbolise, they said, the fertility of the Po val- ley). By and large the public
were unmoved. The message here is that tele-tribunes have to be credible as well as telegenic. In the UK general election of 1997, a critically ill James Goldsmith of the Referendum Party, appeared to the members of focus groups
run by the authors, as manic and his message as apocalyptic and therefore uncon- vincing. Third, postmodern populism is often linked to the demise or transcendence of left- right politics (Giddens 1994) and, depending on the
pathological image employed, its replacement with either a politics founded on the reconstruction of palpable commu- nities and identities, or, more usually a politics in which all sorts of identities are rela- tives under the impact of

the point here is not to suggest that all politics can be reduced to media
effects
Rather, it is to note the extent to which the
multiplication and diversification of lived worlds has shifted
the basis of
political conflict in old-style class divisions to what is often called a politics of
identity
electronic media. However,

, or that people have become detached from, or indifferent to values and interests.

(note shifted, not eclipsed)

(Albrow 1996; Axford 1995). The relativisation of identities under, for ex- ample, globalising pressures, is already a datum for those style consultants, therapists and pollsters whose task it is to understand and

anticipate public sentiments. As a result activities in many areas of life are becoming decontextualised. New and more labile forms of sociality either coexist with, overlay, or replace older ones. Lifestyles and maybe identities too
become more a matter of style and fashion to suit changing circumstances, than an enduring expression of habits of the heart (Bellah et al. 1985). Not for everyone of course. Doreen Massey (1995) has written convincingly of the
power geometry involved in social and cultural relationships, which effectively in- hibits choice and this is a pertinent reminder not to overstate the extent of a fluid postmodern socioscape. Still, these shifts need to be canvassed
and their import for usual politics more fully understood. Multiple configurations (Albrow 1996) and we still need more information on a politics thus configured make conventional politicians uneasy because they are less
amenable to mobilisation and less disposed to appeals couched in terms of overarching values or whole identities. Diversity of cul- ture and of identity, challenges (though not always at the level of organised political forms) any
claims to complete authenticity and any attempt to amorphise experience. Now it will be obvious that this sort of reasoning runs up against the usual objections to the idea of a postmodern politics, namely that 1) it augurs no more
than a rabid pluralism, which is discriminating of neither demand nor method, and 2) that it reduces big issues to language games and morality to entertainment values and ques- tions of style. But in promotional cultures, the
conventional separation of form from content is increasingly meaningless, as we have argued above. In such a milieu (no- where fully realised in the political realm) style as an expression of life choices is a way (perhaps the way) of
telling people who they are. As Dick Hebdige (1989) has argued, style has become the distinctive life expression of a culture or sub-culture, in which performance, preparation, and credibility replace irrational signifiers of worth
and status. This is not just a matter of people being seduced by images of morally and aesthetically pleasing lifestyles to which they can aspire, or which are embodied in some product promoter (handsome young men and women in
toothpaste ads, party leaders with cuddly families) and none of it makes social relations hopelessly plural, or turns life into a supermarket of meanings, each as bland as the next (Bauman 1992). The proliferation of information
supplies resources for increased reflexivity and con- trol, although in the nature of the argument it is not possible to be entirely sanguine about this prospect. Our focus groups of young people veered between an almost nostalgic

under
postmodern populist conditions it is useful to see the mediatisation of politics as
facilitating the spread of cultural capital to wider sections of the population.
desire for more hard information about party platforms at election times and a dismissive attitude to the volume of boring material conveyed through the print and broadcast media. Fourth,

For example, Forza

Italias televisualist brand of politics might be taken as a sort of hermeneutic, rather than (or as well as) a product of a cynical attention to the power of television. Too whimsical, possibly, and certainly such a view contrasts sharply

empirical work on media influence shows not so

much the direct effects of media outputs, as the capacity of different audiences to
interpret and reinterpret material depending on local circumstances and other
contingencies.
unlike the anti-politics the- sis, this
argument does not leave the individual at sea in an ocean of Baudrillardian hypertechnology.
with what Morley and Robins (1994, 224) call the hypodermic effect of television. But

Much more work has to be done on the reception of political communications, but

Of course just how far electronic communications can function as a life-good requires more investigation. While it is hard to treat the antics of the shock- jocks of American radio (Howard Stern,

Rush Limbaugh, etc.) as part of a postmodern hermeneutic, we should perhaps suspend disbelief given our insistence on the scope for new manifestations of publicness in a postmodern populism. In the same vein, the more critical
and constructivist view of audience reception of messages, syncs with the media-wise and laid-back responses to advertising of the untargetable under 30 s. Today s under 30 s are happy with the idea of advertising as a cultural
form, they have grown up with it. It is trashy and throwaway and not something to be taken too seriously. Neither is it particularly life enhancing or identity threatening it is just there. This is an important insight to carry against

Warnings of the dangers in a televisual politics, the tendency of advertising

to turn concerned citizens into victims of the three minute culture, often ignore the
fact that people seem perfectly able to attach meanings to and detach them from
potent visual symbols. Young people today do not have a reverence for the medium
of television, it is simply part of the cultural furniture of living, and not a deviation
from more authentic verbal and written cultures.
the anti-politics thesis.

Baudrillards attempt to deploy death as radical outside to the system is

reinternalized and ignored it adopts the teleological position it criticizes
Noys 10 (Benjamin, Prof. of Critical Theory @ U. of Chichester, The Persistence of
the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Critical Theory, pp. 5-9)
Baudrillards 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
Jean

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

Baudrillards 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 Baudrillards earlier work, is that perhaps
[t]here is as much libidinal intensity in capitalist exchange as in the
alleged symbolic exchange. 26 Baudrillards reversible point is vitiated
by capitals own powers of intensity. For Lyotard, Baudrillard fails to draw all the consequences of a radically
only the replica or mirror of capitalist circulation.23 The difficulty is that

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.

These texts trace their own pattern of acceleration and outbidding as they try to
exceed each other and a deterritorialising capitalism. Collectively they embody a
shared desire to exacerbate capitalism to the point of collapse, aiming to outradicalise Marx and Engelss argument that capitalism liberates us from feudal, patriarchal, and idyllic relations by drowning these
relations in the icy water of egotistical calculation.27 Heretical as they no doubt are, and they each make much of this, we should not forget that these
are Marxist heresies. It is probably unsurprising that this micro-sequence of theory is often regarded as a terminal point, if not as symptomatic of the
excesses that come from doing theory (even Lyotard later referred to Libidinal Economy as his evil book).28 I will not take this peculiarly anti-intellectual
line, because I want to argue that this accelerationist theoretical excrescence is an engagement with, and re-formulation of, the political situation of the
time. Against those interpretations that argued the failure of May 68 was due to the lack of a Party or equivalent form of organisational discipline, this
orientation gives a hyper-theoretical and abstracted form to the libertarian impulses of that moment. This accounts for the still pertinent refusal of Lyotard
to engage in the normative language of perversion, or the lashing out of Deleuze and Guattari against paranoia as the signature disorder of domination
including for revolutionary militants.29 The accelerationists are, however, engaged with an ambiguous situation. On the one hand, they try to stay
faithful to the libertarian effects of May 68 that involved the breaking-up of pre-existent moral and social constraints, especially in education, sexuality
and gender relations; on the other hand, they also try to find a liberating dynamic in the unleashing of capital flows due to the withdrawal of the post-war
regulative mechanisms in the 1970s. They at once accept this situation and then try to direct it, we could even say surf it, to libertarian ends.30

While the accelerationists maintain a figure of revolution or

revolt traced along existing tendencies of capitalism, they became
increasingly detached from any actual social or political agency that could
actuate this politics. Where are the schizophrenics? What exactly would be the subject of Lyotards libidinal band? How
can the dead or symbolic exchange produce resistance? In the retreat of political
experimentation during the 1970s the potential subject of this politics what Lyotard sarcastically dubbed the
good hippy31 disappears. This then leaves only one subject: the desire of capital.32 At the theoretical level the more any outside from
The difficulties are obvious.

capitalism is eliminated, and the less convincing any internal force of overturning appears, the more unnecessary any subjectivity appears to be:
capitalism will do the work for us. Agency disappears into a funda- mental passivity becoming agents of capital which is congruent with forms of
passive market-formed agency such as the Smithian invisible hand.33

Accelerationism, in another unintentional irony, risks restoring the most teleological forms of
Second International Marxism. The slogan of Bernsteins revisionism was the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the

movement is everything;34 the accelerationists put a twist on this: the movement would achieve the aim. The un-nuanced celebration of the supposedly
emancipatory possibilities secreted at the nucleus of capital left this orientation high-and-dry when capitalism counter-attacked in the purity of its own
desire for accumulation. As Moishe Postone states: With their critical gaze fixed upon what proved to be another passing configuration of capitalism,
poststructuralist approaches backed into a still newer configuration, a neoliberal social universe with which they were ill-prepared to deal.35 While the
accelerationists could offer a critique of the codified normative orderings of welfare or Fordist capitalism, and puncture some illusions concerning
representation or organisation on the left, when capitalism itself became purer these theories lost purchase.36

During the 1980s those who had adopted an accelerationist position responded to
this crisis by taking up more classical positions, trying to establish relatively stable points of resistance that were
not absolutely congruent with capitalist flows. While maintaining a faith in imma- nence, in A Thousand Plateaus (1980) Deleuze and Guattari paid far
more attention to the dangers in pursuing a full-blown schizo deter- ritorialisation of desire.37 To produce the consistency of a body without organs

Lyotard
no longer praised the capitalist enhancement of bodily jouissance in the
environment of the factory, but took refuge in the shelter of the Jewish (or as he preferred
jewish) thinking that the Other is the law , opposed to the Heideggerian Western thinking of the Other as being.40 This was
predicated on a return to Kant, in which the sub- limity of the law replaced the untrammelled jouissance of the worker. Baudrillard
retained most fidelity to his own negative accelerationism of an autophagous
capitalism. In The Transparency of Evil (1990) he figured this immanent collapse of the system
through the metaphor of autoimmune disorder,41 but now even Baudrillard bolstered
this with an insistence on the Others indestructibility. 42
requires an art of dosages, since overdose is a danger,38 and it is not to be carried out with a sledgehammer but with a very fine file.39

The collapse of accelerationism under the pressure of capitalist

recomposition, coupled to the desire to preserve a point of resistance to
capitalism, tended to lead to the localisation of that point as transcendent
to capitalism. In different forms these positions now risked re-constituting alterity as what Derrida called the tout-Autre (the totally or
completely Other),43 courting the danger that they would become functionally indistinguishable from a transcendent religious conception. This
configuration actually re-connected to elements within critical theory that had undergone a rightward shift in the 1960s, such as Horkheimers rather

the search for a final bulwark against

the advance of disenchantment could all too quickly lead to the mysticism of the
deus absconditus.
undialectical invocations of the entirely other (ein ganz Anderes).44 In both cases

Baudrillard is just wrong he overreads the role of the media, which can
be a pretty accurate source of information and is subject to falsification
King 98 http://eric.exeter.ac.uk/exeter/bitstream/10036/71394/1/King
%2520Baudrillard%2520Telos.pdf King, A (1998). "Baudrillard's Nihilism and the End
of Theory". Telos (New York, N.Y.) (0090-6514), 1998 (112), p. 89. Anthony King is a
Professor in Sociology. His main areas of research are football, social theory and
latterly, the military. He has published widely in international journals and his two
most recent books are, The European Ritual and The Structure of Social Theory (see
research page for details and downloadable papers). Although diverse, his research
is concerned with analysing contemporary social change in Europe through
anthropological studies situated within the context of wider institutional
transformation.
The Fictitiousness of Hyperreality In severing the dialectical process of interpretation at its first and most assertive point and in raising his most cursory
impressions of television culture to a definitive analysis of that culture, Baudrillard seriously misrepresents the transformations which have occurred over

Baudrillards notion of hyperreality cannot be defended as an account

of recent cultural transformations, although he is undoubtedly correct to point to the
importance of television as a central element in contemporary culture . It is a startling
the last three decades.

development that in the last thirty years, practically everyone in the West is able to see footage of events from almost anywhere, and this footage is

Baudrillard is wrong to leap to the

conclusion that reality is obliterated by the television screen . Television does not
create an entirely false reality either in its representation of the world or with its
reception by viewers. Television coverage is informed by the understandings and interpretations of the society to which it broadcasts and
by those who work in it. Thus, any footage is an interpretation of the world according to a
particular culture and, consequently, it is necessarily limited . Programmers try to render this
invariably misleading, even though it is apparently so compelling and realistic. However,

interpretation of the world as compelling as possible to attract viewers and to sustain their claims, but those images are always and necessarily social;

images are not free-floating, mere

simulacra but, on the contrary, concrete moves in a cultural practice . They refer
not so much to the reality of the situations they portray but rather to the society to
which they communicate these images, and they only make sense to viewers insofar as viewers are thoroughly
embedded in that culture. Similarly, television viewers do not regard these images as empty,
referenceless and fragmentary. On the contrary, just as the creation of these images is embedded in the intepretive practice of
they are the historical products of a particular culture. Then the

making sense of the world, so the viewers try to interpret these images to make sense of their world. Whether the program be a soap opera or news

viewers interpret the images according to their cultural understandings31

Rather than becoming the
primary and prior cultural factor in contemporary society, television is embedded in
and dependent upon pre-existing and historically produced understandings . Furthermore,
footage,

although those understandings are under constant revision in order to make sense of new information.

the footage does not exist above and beyond the lives of viewers but, as the briefest autobiographical consideration will reveal, television is employed as
a resource, wherein new interpretations derived from its footage are used in the renegotiation of social relations.

Hyperreality theory is wrong

Hobbs 07 (Mitchell, Lecturer and PhD Candidate (Sociology and Anthropology),
The University of Newcastle, Australia, REFLECTIONS ON THE REALITY OF THE IRAQ

WARS: THE DEMISE OF BAUDRILLARDS SEARCH FOR TRUTH?, Fall, 2007,

http://www.tasa.org.au/conferences/conferencepapers07/papers/379.pdf)
As has been noted by Barry Smart (2000) (and others), Baudrillards theorising, which has its roots in neo-Marxism, eventually led
him to the proposition that if current sociological critique was incapable of ascertaining truth because reality was being superseded
by de-contextualised images (or, rather, signs), then a new system of social inquiry was needed, one capable of breaking out of the
endless cycle of simulacra and the intellectual inertia brought about by the meta-physical dead end of capitalism. To this end,

Baudrillard sought to employ a fatal strategy or fatal theory, where he could highlight
the deceptions of hyper-reality by pushing them into a more real than real
situation, to force them into a clear over-existence which is incompatible with that of the real (Baudrillard cited in Smart,
2000:464). Accordingly, by claiming that the Gulf War did not take place, Baudrillard was seeking to push our
thinking of this event beyond the orthodox political economic approach, in order to
draw attention to the simulated nature of the news media and to the antithetical
consequences of this seemingly endless use and reproduction of images and
simplistic narratives deprived of socio-historic contexts. 2.2 BRIDGING THE REALITY GULF: FROM
BAUDRILLARD TO KELLNER Although Baudrillards work on simulation and simulacra is valuable in highlighting the relationship
between the mass media and reality, and, in particular, the ways in which media content (images and narratives) come to be de-

his theses are per se insufficient for the analysis of the

contemporary mass media. For instance, as media theorist and researcher Douglas Kellner (2003:31) notes,
beyond the level of media spectacle, Baudrillard does not help readers understand events such as the
Gulf War, because he reduces the actions of actors and complex political issues
to categories of simulation and hyper-reality , in a sense erasing their
concrete determinants. Kellner, who like Baudrillard, has written extensively on media spectacles, including the
Gulf Wars, sees Baudrillards theory as being one-dimensional, privilege[ing] the form of media
technology over its content, meaning anduse (Kellner, 1989:73). In this regard, Baudrillard
does not account for the political economic dimensions of the news media, nor the
cultural practices involved with the production of news (Kellner, 1989:73-74). Thus, he suffers from
contextualised,

the same technologically deterministic essentialism that undermined the media theories of Marshall McLuhan, albeit in a different
form (Kellner, 1989:73-74). Although Kellner (2003:32) believes that Baudrillards pre-1990s works on the consumer society, on the
political economy of the sign, simulation and simulacra, and the implosion of [social] phenomenon are useful and can be deployed
within critical social theory, he prefers to read Baudrillards later, more controversial and obscure, work as science fiction which

to understand war and its relationship with the

in the contemporary era it is, then, necessary to move beyond
Baudrillards spectacular theory of media spectacle . For although our culture
is resplendent with images, signs and narratives, circulating in a seemingly
endless dance of mimicry (or, rather, simulacra), there are observable social
institutions and practices producing this semiotic interplay . Although all that is solid
might melt into air (Marx and Engles, 2002:223), appearances and illusions are not an end for
sociological analysis, but are rather a seductive invitation to further social inquiry. As
anticipates the future by exaggerating present tendencies. In order
media

the research of Douglas Kellner (1992; 1995; 2005) has shown, when media spectacles are dissected by critical cultural analysis, re-

Images and narratives can be traced back to their sources:

whether they lie in Hollywood fantasies or government spin. In short, by assessing the
veracity of competing texts, war (as understood by media audiences) can be re-connected to
its antecedents and consequences . Indeed, through wrestling with the ideological spectres of myth and
narrative, and by searching widely for critically informed explanations of
diferent events, the social sciences can acquire an understanding of the
truthfulness of media representations; of the authentic in a realm
bewildered by smoke and mirrors. As long as there are competing media
voices on which to construct a juxtaposition of truths, sociologists can, to a
certain extent, force the media to grapple with their own disparate reflections.
contextualisation is possible.

We do, in fact, know the diference between simulation and realitythe

media plays a healthy role in the public sphere.

March, 95 James Marsh, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University, 95, Critique,

Action, and Liberation, pp. 292-293
Such an account, however, is as one-sided or perhaps even more one-sided than that of naive
modernism. We note a residual idealism that does not take into account socioeconomic realities already pointed out such as the corporate
nature of media, their role in achieving and legitimating profit, and their function of manufacturing consent. In such a postmodernist account is a
reduction of everything to image or symbol that misses the relationship of
these to realities such as corporations seeking profit, impoverished
workers in these corporations, or peasants in Third-World countries trying to conduct elections. Postmodernism
does not adequately distinguish here between a reduction of reality to image
and a mediation of reality by image. A media idealism exists rooted in the influence of structuralism and
poststructuralism and doing insufficient justice to concrete human experience , judgment, and
free interaction in the world.4 It is also paradoxical or contradictory to say it really is true
that nothing is really true, that everything is illusory or imaginary . Postmodemism
makes judgments that implicitly deny the reduction of reality to image. For example, Poster and Baudrillard do want to say that we really are in a new age
that is informational and postindustrial. Again, to say that everything is imploded into media images is akin logically to the Cartesian claim that everything
is or might be a dream. What happens is that dream or image is absolutized or generalized to the point that its original meaning lying in its contrast to

We can discuss Disneyland as reprehensible because

we know the diference between Disneyland and the larger, enveloping
reality of Southern California and the United States.5 We can note also that postmodernism misses the reality of the accumulationnatural, human, and social reality is lost.

legitimation tension in late capitalism in general and in communicative media in particular. This tension takes different forms in different times. In the

reality occasionally manifested

itself in the media in such a way that the electorate responded critically to
corporate and political policies. Coverage of the Vietnam war, for example, did help turn people against the war. In the 1980s, by
United States in the 1960s and 1970s, for example, social, economic, and political

contrast, the emphasis shifted more toward accumulation in the decade dominated by the great communicator. Even here, however, the majority
remained opposed to Reagans policies while voting for Reagan. Human and social reality, while being influenced by and represented by the media,
transcended them and remained resistant to them.6 To the extent that postmodernists are critical of the role media play, we can ask the question about

Why, in the absence of normative conceptions of rationality and freedom, should media
dominance be taken as bad rather than good? Also, the most relevant contrasting, normatively structured
the normative adequacy of such a critique.

alternative to the media is that of the public sphere, in which the imperatives of free, democratic, nonmanipulable communicative action are
institutionalized. Such a public sphere has been present in western democracies since the nineteenth century but has suffered erosion in the twentieth

the public sphere

remains normatively binding and really operative through
institutionalizing the ideals of free, full, public expression and discussion; ideal, legal requirements taking
century as capitalism has more and more taken over the media and commercialized them. Even now

such forms as public service programs, public broadcasting, and provision for alternative media; and social movements acting and discoursing in and
outside of universities in print, in demonstrations and forms of resistance, and on media such as movies, television, and radio.7

Fuck them.
Latour 93 (Bruno, Prof. and vice-president for research @ Sciences Po Paris, We
Have Never Been Modern, pp. 131)
Modernization was ruthless toward the premoderns, but what can we say about
postmodernization? Imperialist violence at least offered a future, but sudden
weakness on the part of the conquerors is far worse for, always cut off from the
past, it now also breaks with the future. Having been slapped in the face with
modern reality, poor populations now have to submit to postmodern hyperreality.
Nothing has value; everything is a reflection, a simulacrum, a floating sign; and that
very weakness, they say, may save us from the invasion of technologies, sciences,
reasons. Was it really worth destroying everything to end up adding this insult to
that injury? The empty world in which the postmoderns evolve is one they
themselves, and they alone, have emptied, because they have taken the moderns
at their word. Postmodernism is a symptom of the contradiction of modernism, but it
is unable to diagnose this contradiction because it shares the same upper half of
the Constitution the sciences and the technologies are extrahuman but it no
longer shares the cause of the Constitutions strength and greatness the

proliferation of quasi-objects and the multiplication of intermediaries between

humans and nonhumans allowed by the absolute distinction between humans and
nonhumans.

***2NC***

Presence
A. Vote neg US government definition broader ones open
up the whole map and wreck limits
Merelli 4/2/14 http://qz.com/374138/these-are-all-the-countries-where-the-us-

has-a-military-presence/ Annalisa is a reporter at Quartz. She hails from Bergamo

(Italy) but has worked and lived in Paris and Delhi before settling in the US (for
now). She was the founding editor of art, culture and lifestyle portal The India Tube
and a writer and editor at Narratively, Global Voices, Timbuktu, Motherland, W+K
Delhi, and Fabrica. She holds a master's degree in semiotics and a bachelor's
degree in mass communication from the University of Bologna.
On Mar. 24, US president Barack Obama announced that all 9,800 US troops
currently stationed in Afghanistan will remain until the end of 2015. This generated
a fair amount of criticism: it was, after all, Obamas promise that the last American
troop would leave the country in 2014. Those expecting the US to leave
Afghanistan, however, should take a minute to consider this: the US still hasnt left
Germany. In fact, there are quite a few places the US hasnt left, and while certainly
most of them dont pose a threat to American soldiers, they reveal a pattern about
the US staying, rather than leaving. According to official information provided by the
Department of Defense (DoD) and its Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) there
are still about 40,000 US troops, and 179 US bases in Germany, over 50,000 troops
in Japan (and 109 bases), and tens of thousands of troops, with hundreds of bases,
all over Europe. Over 28,000 US troops are present in 85 bases in South Korea, and
have been since 1957. Altogether, based on information contained in the DoDs
latest Base Structure Report (BSR), the US has bases in at least 74 countries and
troops practically all over the world, ranging from thousands to just one in some
countries (it could be a military attache, for instance). By comparison, France has
bases in 10 countries, and the UK has bases in seven. Calculating the extent of the
US military presence abroad is not an easy task. The data released by the
Department of Defense is incomplete, and inconsistencies are found within
documents. Quartz has requested clarification from the Department of Defense, but
hasnt received a response. In his forthcoming book Base Nation: How US Military
Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, David Vine, associate professor of
anthropology at American University details the difficulties of assessing the US
military presence abroad. He writes: according to the most recent publicized count,
the U.S. military currently still occupies 686 base sites outside the fifty states and
Washington, DC. While 686 base sites is quite a figure in its own right, that tally
strangely excludes many well-known U.S. bases, like those in Kosovo, Kuwait, and
Qatar. Less surprisingly, the Pentagons count also excludes secret (or secretive)
American bases, like those reported in Israel and Saudi Arabia. There are so many
bases , the Pentagon itself doesnt even know the true total. That is not the only
issueeven a definitive count of bases would include a wide range of facilities.
Base itself is an umbrella term that includes locations referred to as post,
station, camp, or fort by different military bodies. Vine explains: bases come
in all sizes and shapes, from massive sites in Germany and Japan to small radar
facilities in Peru and Puerto Rico. [] Even military resorts and recreation areas in
places like Tuscany and Seoul are bases of a kind; worldwide, the military runs more
than 170 golf courses. The map below represents US military bases abroad,

according to the official BSR, and from independent research conducted by Vine
(and Quartz) using verified news reports as well as cross-referencing information
with Google Maps. This map does not take into account NATO bases, including a
rumored base in Turkmenistan and a base in Algeria, reported by Wikileaks to be a
suspected US base. Most of the countries appear to have a small concentration of
US bases (below 10). Thats compared to Germanys 179, Puerto Ricos 37, or Italys
58. The largest military footprint remains in countries that the US invaded in WWII,
while its presence in areas of more recent contention, such as the Middle East, is
somewhat reduced, at least in terms of bases. It has been noted by commentators
before that not all the bases are of significant size. However, given the information
available its hard to truly gauge the size of the different installation. Vine writes:
The Pentagon says that it has just 64 active major installations overseas and that
most of its base sites are small installations or locations. But it defines small as
having a reported value of up to $915 million. In other words, small can be not so
small. The information about troops abroad, too, isnt completely clear, which
makes it difficult to know the true extent of the American military footprint. IHS
Janes armed forces analyst Dylan Lehrke told Quartz that its hard to even settle on
the definition of military presence for the government, that means bases
or deployed troops, although it would seem acceptable to include other forms of
presence: Surely one could say that the US has a military presence in Syria at
the moment. They may not have bases and troops on the ground but we should
include the warplanes in the sky. The US military arguably has more presence in
Syria than it does in Germany []. To take this idea further , it would also be
rational to say the US has a military presence wherever it uses unmanned aerial
vehicles to strike targets. All the countries that have some sort of American
military presencefrom one military attache to the troops involved in Iraq and
Afghanistanessentially results in highlighting pretty much the entire world
(Russia included, where the DoD reports having 24 military personnel). Taking into
account a sizable troop presence, existence of bases, and whether the US is
conducting drone strikes (Yemen, Syria, Pakistan) in a country results in the
geographic representation of US military power abroad as below:

Massumi
The necessity of becoming does not imply the destruction of all
limits, but precisely the opposite: unruled play accomplishes
nothing. Establishing poetic-procedural rules is the key to
making spaces of self-formation sustainable and useful Massumi and Manning 15 (Brian, Prof of Communications @ U of Montreal,
and Erin, University Chair in Relational Art and Philosophy @ Concordia U, The
Politics of Affect, ebook)
Erin Manning: Deleuze takes up the concept of necessity from Nietzsche. Nietzsche
places the question of necessity in the event's asking this comes across very
clearly in the passage in Thus Spoke Zarathustra called Moment what is the
mode of existence created in the necessity of this particular decision? What he
means by decision in this context is also a kind of Whiteheadian notion of decision,
understood as the cut propelling the continuing of a process, similar to the concept
of transduction in Simondon. It is not individual will. It isnt about my going into this
way of living because I judge it necessary for me but rather, as you said, how the
event constructs its own forms of necessity. This means that at many stages in our
practices and processes we are faced with having to re-conceive how we
might encounter necessity. Sometimes the necessity is really frustrating. It
doesn't appear as we wished or imagined it would appear. This kind of approach
to necessity demands an incredible flexibility and real rigour in the
techniques and enabling constraints put into place and what effects they
produce. It demands a return to the question of what the stakes are. How are they
generated? What kinds of skills are available? How does this particular act cocompose with other acts in the making? All of those questions bear their own
processes of necessity. We see our work as composing procedurally and technically
with those necessities in a way that produces modes of existence we can live with.
Brian Massumi: We talk a lot about what we do as a form of aesthetic politics.
We think of it as aesthetic in an extended sense of that word, as referring to the
process of experience. What the SenseLab does is experiment collectively with the
process of experience as a practice of the event. When we say the word aesthetic
and put it together with politics a lot of the people bristle because they think of
the aesthetic as sort of a realm of free play of unconstrained expression .
For us, on the contrary, the aesthetic is immediately in connection with
necessities of life. There have to be stakes for any activity to be compelling. The
reason why a lot of people are drawn to the kinds of events the SenseLab
organizes is that they feel they are beaten down in the situations they live in
every day in their home contexts and institutions. It is not that there is no
freedom in institutional contexts, but the options for resistance are preformatted by the modes of conformity that come to dominate the
situation . There is little room for invention. People come to our events out of a
sense of necessity, as an issue of survival. Many feel held back or battered down,
and can't see how to keep going. They may feel chronically fatigued, or that their
creative potential is being drained. Their powers of resistance have been taxed too
many times, and they're looking for some way to recharge. It's not an escape

into an aesthetic field of free choice and unfettered expression. It's a life
necessity. What we provide in response to these yearnings isn't an unconstrained
environment. We often repeat: if anything goes, nothing will come . What we
do is set in place, poetico-procedurally, enabling constraints . These are
mechanisms designed to set certain conditions in place allowing for an
inventive interaction to occur that is something like a structured
improvisation . The situation is positively constrained : conditioned in a way
that we hope will create the conditions for a process of collective expression to
unfold, in the course of which something unexpected might emerge . The hope
is that what does emerge might feed forward into further experimentation,
beyond this event's perishing , in a kind of contagion of collective potential .
For us the aesthetic is not an escape from life. Quite the opposite: it is a different
way of engaging with the necessities of life. It is the element of necessity , and
the collectivity of the process from the very start to beyond its perishing, that
make this kind of experimentation with expressive potential political . It's a
practice of a politics to come, to paraphrase the term of Deleuze's we talked about
earlier.

AT Impose Order
Our interpretation is not a hegemonic imposition, but a
negotiated construction of a model of debate that ofers the
best political possibility and access refusing deliberative
norms a priori is a worse mode of political engagement
Ruti 15 (Prof. of English and Critical Theory @ U. Toronto, Between Levinas and

Lacan: Self, Other, Ethics, 168-170)

In this context, it is worth emphasizing that whatever the rationalist failings of the
Habermasian ideal of deliberative democratic process, Habermas himself appears to
recognize the impurity of reason when he writes, "There is no pure reason that
might don linguistic clothing only in the second place. Reason is by its very nature
incarnated in contexts of communicative action and in structures of the lifeworld."
11 There is a great deal of disagreement among Habermasians regarding the extent
to which Habermas manages to transcend a metaphysical notion of rationality, but
what interests me here is that he seems to acknowledge that the ideal speech
situation is a regulative ideal rather than an empirical fact : like Derrida's
democracy to come, it is something we can aspire toward but will always fail
to reach. Yet our failure is perhaps not quite as inevitable (and therefore
paralyzing) as it is in relation to the Levinasian demand that we revere the faces of
those who persecute us or in relation to the related Derridean demand that we
forgive the unforgivable. Because it is empirically possible to assess various
speech situations to look at who is included and who is excluded, who
dominates and who remains silent, and so on the ideal makes it possible to
distinguish between speech situations that approximate it and others that
do not. This, in turn, means that situations where the socially powerful control the
outcome as they could easily do in Badiou's model, for instance are
automatically deemed invalid. One could of course squabble endlessly about
how these judgments are made , yet it is also the case that, on a very basic
level, it is probably not that difficult to arrive at a reasonable evaluation : if
I see that men speak more than women, that whites speak more than blacks, that
some participants pressure others to agree with their views, or that one
communication style say, an aggressively rationalist one overwhelms other
styles, I will immediately deem the speech situation defective. And if I fail to do so,
then I have not understood or refuse to respect the rules of the game, which
makes me ineligible for the democratic process to begin with. From this perspective,
a sexist or racist speech situation, for example, would not pass the test.
Though no actual speech situation is perfect, the Habermasian approach
ofers a nugget of insight that the ethical models I have outlined in this book
lack and that I think is essential for our ability to overcome some of the impasses
of these models: the possibility of a priori norms that are binding without
being metaphysically grounded. One of the main reasons that the antiEnlightenment thinkers I have discussed reject a priori norms is that they
assume that such norms are irreversibly rooted in the Enlightenment
metaphysical tradition. Again, there is considerable disagreement, even among

Habermas's followers, about the degree to which Habermas himself might still be
stuck in this tradition. But his feminist interlocutors, among others, have shown that
a priori ethical principles do not necessarily need to be anchored in
metaphysical conjectures about right and wrong but can, rather, be brought
into existence through a continuous and open-ended communicative
process. That is, a priori norms can be context-transcending (universally valid)
without being fixed for all times to come; they can be normatively compelling
while at the same time being amenable to revision. Perhaps one could say
that if Badiou approaches every situation as a clean slate, Habermasian feminists
approach situations as being governed by a priori norms that are operative for the
time being, until they are replaced by new (or at least modified) ones.
To state the matter more concretely, Habermasian universality must accommodate
the ongoing articulation of what Benhabib calls "democratic iterations." Benhahib
borrows the term iteration from Derrida, which may account for the fact that,
despite her longstanding disputes with Butler, her understanding of it is close to
that of Butler: "In the process of repeating a term or a concept, we never simply
produce a replica of the original usage and its intended meanings: rather, every
repetition is a form of variation." 12 For this reason, democratic iterations
allow meaning to travel from one context say, one culture to another in a
flexible manner , so that universalization is not a matter of one context say,
Western societies imposing its views on others but rather an (always
temporary) agreement reached through a complex give and take between
different contexts. Needless to say, the universal that is constructed in this manner
is only legitimate if everyone each "particularity" concerned has had an
equal opportunity to participate in its formulation. As I have conceded, this
can be difficult to accomplish in practice, particularly in today's world of global
power imbalances, but as an ideal it holds a great deal of promise.
Commenting on the tension between the universal and the particular, Benhabib
observes, "The point is not to deny this tension by embracing only one or another of
these moral alternatives but to negotiate their interdependence, by resituating and
reiterating the universal in concrete contextss." 13 Such "interactive universalism"
depends on processes of translation (say, between different cultures) because, as
Benhabib specifies, a universalization always requires "local contextualization,
interpretation, and vernacularization by self-governing peoples" (DA 118). On this
view, universalism is not a static metaphysical notion but rather something that is
constructed contextually, in changing, and often conflicting, cultural and crosscultural settings.

AT Aesthetics
Grounding resistance in poetry relies on a transcendent visions of
resistance that claim to stand outside politics- its actually the most
violent. We have to account for the materiality of historic conditions
instead of making claims to the sublime.

Russ Castronovo 3 [Geo-Aesthetics: Fascism, Globalism, and Frank Norris boundary 2

30:3, 2003.. Jean Wall Bennett Professor of English and American Studies University of
Wisconsin-Madison]

Aesthetics are doubly global. Formalist concerns for shape, structure, and unity
enable the agglomeration of populations into a single conceptual unit. Meanwhile,
imperial expansion seems as beautiful as an ever-reforming cone, assembling the
detritus of cultures and the ruin of centuries into the grander project of civilization.
An unstoppable market force, the invasion of Asia occurs with neither clash nor
conflict, since the migration of capitalism and militarism only augurs the return of
the West to its ultimate origins in the East. This prehistoric unity reveals the world
system as an objet dart. And no useless piece of art is this. Global aesthetics
educate citizens in an inclusive politics, its lessons encapsulated in the wheat that pro- vides the
sustenance of a whole world, the food of an entire People (177). Discrete peoples become the
People, their bodies and spirits sustained not so much by a single vision
as a single commodity. Global form installs the demos as the crucial criterion of
production and distribution. The entire People are unified and beautiful: they
represent the only demographic that unites aesthetic judgment, economic
rationality, and moral sense. When The Octopus celebrates the wheats ability to feed the masses, it assumes the
role of Presleys abortive epic to represent the voice of an entire people, where all people
should be included (910). If the world is hungry, let it eat wheat and seek satisfaction in an unwritten poem of the
West. The aestheticized globea development beyond Schillers aesthetic Stateneed not fear the
distractions of fremde Sitten, because foreignness no longer signifies when the people
attain an all-inclusive form that permits no outside. This appeal to the popular
prettifies a system that also exploits the popular. Beneath this schizophrenic logic that
alternately redeems global capitalism and indicts its antidemocratic mechanisms lies
the deeper unity of an entire People nourished and abused by production. At once the beneficiary of industrial production and the
victim of markets, the demos as an aesthetic category achieves a unity that proves elusive in the material terrain of history. This
literary take on early-twentieth-century globalization claims the activities of the consummate artist as the ethos of the world citizen.
As Norris surveyed the possibility of a world without frontiers, he looked for- ward to a dawning cosmopolitanism when we who now
arrogantly boast of ourselves as Americans . . . may realize that the true patriotism is the brotherhood of man and know that the

This world citizen is the artist whose aesthetic sensibility allows

for conceptualization of humanity as a single united form. Like the shipping magnate who heralds
whole world is our nation.45

Markets as the watchword of a new era of international capital, Norris locates the future of the American novel in the writer who
would have sounded the world-note; he would be a writer not national, but international, and his countrymen would be all

With its comprehensive pretensions that make

nation-states anachronistic, the world-note of mass democracy echoes with
postfascist tones. Yet the utopia that includes all people is also an obligatory
order that leaves no choice to opt out of a total system of representation. As the
sole locus of political identity, the global conception of humanity reduces multivocality to the singularity of voice that herds the demos into the enclave of all.
Democracy is mobilized for authoritarian purposes under the spectacle of
the popular as a global unit. Such is Benjamins worry in observing how
potentially egalitarian forms of technological reproduction eventuate in fascist
representation. The newsreel that elevates everyone . . . from passer-by to movie
extra also de-individuates the demos by capturing persons as a mass movement .47
Form predominates: it matters only that the people are united and not
humanity, not the citizens of any one nation.46

what they are united for or against; the people exist simply as an
aesthetic object. Wholeness and unity do not relate to the content of history; instead these formal properties, as Schiller
first recognized, answer to the impassive cri- teria of the beautiful: In a truly beautiful work of art the content should do nothing,
the form everything . . . only from the form is true aesthetic freedom to be expected. Therefore, the real artistic secret of the master

The people display a capacity for

freedom only when the content of their specific identities is encapsulated,
regulated, and managed by form. Form , as Norris would later insist, establishes totalizing
criteria in which abstract aesthetic principles converge with the historical conditions
of international commodities at the turn of the century: just as everything flows into the
formal properties of the artwork, the pressures of globalization force every political
tendency from democracy to fascism into alignment.
consists in his annihilating the material by means of the form (AE, 106).

AT: Ressentiment
Resentment of particular aspects of the world is inevitable and
necessary to spur action acting to change the world is life
affirming
Connolly 11 (William E., A World of Becoming, Duke University Press)
By "belief in this world:' neither Deleuze nor I, again, means that the established
distribution of power, exploitation, and inequality now in place is to be protected,
though some critics love to jump to this conclusion. Such arrangements make
people suffer too much, and they rest upon the repression of essential features of
the contemporary condition, including the minoritization of the world occurring at a
more rapid pace. Exploitation and domination are things to contest and oppose, as
Deleuze did actively while embracing the points reviewed above. The restoration of
belief in this world provides an existential resource to draw upon as those struggles
are fought energetically and creatively. Nor do we mean that it is always illegitimate
to resent your place in the world. Resentment is often a needed impetus to action,
even if it carries the danger of becoming transfigured into ressontimont. It is
existential resentment we worry about most, the kind that is apparent today in
practices of capitalist greed, religious exclusivity; media bellicosity, authoritarian
strategies, sexual narrowness, and military aggression. We mean, first, positive
affirmation of the cosmos in which human beings are set, as you yourself
understand that cosmos, second, coming to terms in a positive way with the
enduring modem fact of interruptions in experience and the faster pace at which
minorithation occurs, and third, accepting the contestability of your existential
creed without profound resentment of that condition.

T Version
Engaging with state actors in anti-basing activism is inevitable
and can be efective their fears of cooption are wrong
Yeo 11 (Assistant Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America)
(Andrew, Activists, Alliances, and Anti-U.S. Base Protests , Cambridge University Press, pg 196-7)
In the previous section, 1 covered several policy implications and prescriptions for U.S. overseas basing strategy . What insights and
lessons can be drawn for anti-base movements? I offer four sets of recommendations for activists regarding anti-base
movement strategy and advocacy. The first suggestion stems directly from the security consensus framework: when

possible,
activists should form ties with political elites. As discussed in the introductory chapter, U.S. base policies are
ultimately decided by government officials. Therefore, anti-base movements gain greater leverage and
influence on basing policy outcomes when they form ties with key elites . This was certainly the case
with successful anti-base movements such as the Anti-Treaty Movement in the Philippines and No
Bases Coalition in Ecuador. Although not included in this volume, ties qeen Puerto Rican anti-base activists and several U.S.
congressional repre utatives helped activists shut down Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Vieques it, Loo-i. The support of several
prominent U.S. political figures such as Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson, and the direct involvement of U.S. representatives 11ch as
Nydia M. Velasquez and Luis V. Gutierrez, increased publicity and political leverage for the Vieques movement.57 Encouraging anti-base
movements to form ties with sympathetic elites seems u'f-evident. Yet, one might find surprising the level of resistance to this suggestion
by some activists. Ties to political elites raise the specter of co -optation. The lack of trust in politicians, the political
establishment, or more generally formal politics often stems from activists' own experience and interaction with government officials over
the course of several movement episodes. This attitude was expressed by several anti-base activists in South Korea, Japan, and even the
Philippines. Activists in \ticeura also faced heated discussions over strategy: Should they maintain support for radical left parties? At the
local level, should movement leaders move from informal to more formal avenues of politics? Although the wariness of

movements in engaging formal political actors is understandable, research across several anti -base
movement episodes suggests that movements that form alliances with political elites and engage base
politics through both formal and informal channels tend to have a greater impact on basing policy
outcomes.

***1NR***

at depressing
Papoulias and Callard 10 (Constantina, PhD in Cultural Studies, former Senior
Lecturer, Media Culture and Communications at Middlesex University (at pub time),
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience,
Kings College London, and Felicity, PhD in Cultural/Medical Geography from Johns
Hopkins, Reader in Social Science for Medical Humanities in the Department of
Geography, and Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing,
both at Durham University, Biologys Gift: Interrogating the Turn to Affect, Body &
Society, Vol. 16(1): 2956)
theory today imagines that attention to affect can contribute to the production of an
afoundational biology capable of destabilizing the pull of language and subjectivation upon our
bodies. In so doing, the spontaneous philosophy characterizing such theoretical practices shares many of the
political commitments of its predecessor: the desire to understand and do justice to
performative force, contingency and the emergence of the new is the same in both. Affect theorists
Good

have used scientists research on affect to buttress their call to think beyond the accumulation upon the body of an ideological hexis. Affect comes to

This conceptualization of affect involves , we have argued,

significant distortions of the neurobiological and developmental
psychological literature . While there is a growing tendency in some corners of neuroscience to
consider affectivity as the root of subjectivity, the dynamism of affective bodies in
neuroscientific models is arrested at one end through the supplementary use of evolution (in the
hypothesis that reflexes are pre-set to ensure survival) and at the other through the assumption that the self
emerges and is only able to survive through the acquisition of patterns of
regulated affect, which constitute its hexis. In the accounts of developmental psychology, the infants potentialities can come to organize a
name the inherent dynamism and mutability of matter.

stable self only insofar as the mother can regulate the infants internal space and assist in the production of a multimodal, behavioural, homeostatic
system in the infant. To put it differently, if for neurobiologists and neuroscientists, life is being redefined as self-organizing, extended networks, as
processual and dynamic, these redefinitions have tended to point to the neural infrastructure of consciousness (Damasios cellular time) and not to our

cultural theorys engagement with the

neurobiology of affect occludes the centrality of afect regulation in neuroscientific
experience of the lived present (subjective time).25 We have argued that

writings and, unwittingly, envisages the subject as a kind of preverbal Sternian infant. In these readings, it is as though the biological status of the
organism is constantly reset at infancy.

affects have come to take a much greater role in neuroscience, they do not necessarily work in relation to
an emancipatory script . Affect theorists seek to enlist affectivity in the service of the bodys creative potential,
thereby frequently choosing to ignore affects central role in the regulation of the self . LeDouxs formulations
While

concerning the low road of neural processing do not necessarily have any consequences for the way that we are subject to particular ideologies. The
logic of neuronal firing does not necessarily imply that our bodies have the capacity as such to circumvent the internalization of particular discourses or
ideologies about the self.
None of what we have argued here should be taken to imply that affectively freighted encounters or experiences can never undo the embodied patterns of

patterns of affect and affective response can

and do shift through the arduous processes of various kinds of therapy, for example, or the shattering impact of trauma. Nor are we suggesting
hexis. There are indeed numerous bodies of literature that suggest that

that a consideration of the affective, or indeed of biology as such, is inappropriate for cultural theory. Our own disciplinary locations and interdisciplinary
backgrounds gainsay a return to secure disciplinary bases: one of us is a social scientist with a humanities background who collaborates with behavioural
geneticists and neuroscientists to explore the models of sociality at play in neuroscientific research; the other explores how research concerning memory

Our impetus here comes not from a

desire to prescribe the appropriate the good objects for cultural theory, but rather to perturb the ease with which
the very distinction between good and not-so-good theory comes to be made . In so
doing, we seek not to argue that to focus on the role of affect in social life is misguided, but rather to interrogate the
prioritization and translation and mis-translation of particular scientific knowledge
in the concretion of what is becoming known in the humanities and parts of the
social sciences as afect theory . Clive Barnett, in his close reading of current political ontologies of affect, argues that
and subjectivity has migrated across the social sciences, psychoanalysis and cultural studies.

William Connollys neuropolitics of affect supposes that certain philosophical problems can be cleared up if and when science develops the proper
understanding of the human brain (Barnett, 2008: 193). And those philosophical problems are, ultimately, of concern to Connolly because of their

ramifications for politics. On Barnetts account, Connolly takes up certain neuroscientific writings (in particular, neurophysiological research on the
halfsecond delay between receiving sensory data and consciously interpreting it) to undergird his model of political transformation, through which
interventions upon that non-reflective bodily space before thought and interpretation are able to have much wider political outcomes. Likewise, Hansens
investment in neuroscientific and psychological literature that focuses on how affects work beneath perception is driven by a cultural-political

If it is possible, then, to
the central drive of affect theory is towards the development of a
distinctive kind of embodied politics, it is perhaps not surprising that the translation
of scientific knowledge upon which it relies frequently involves mis-steps . For political
commitment, one in which it is the body itself that has the capacity to create the unpredictable, the experimental, the new.
contend that

projects are expert indeed at making good use of all manner of arguments and resources in the service of their cause.26

both of us share Clare Hemmings concern that one of the most powerful
effects of the turn to affect within cultural theory is rhetorical , whereby the
positivity of affect theorists contrasts with the bleak pessimism of social
determinists, political economists and discourse analysts , and implicitly attempts to move those sorry souls
In this regard,

into a more productive frame of mind (Hemmings, 2005: 551). Here we would do well to turn again to John Guillorys discussion of the spontaneous

In his analysis of cultural critics earlier polemics against the conceptualization of

nature in scientific accounts, Guillory claimed that the spontaneous philosophy animating these lay in
the assumption that there was a necessary relation between such
conceptualizations and a particular reactionary politics (e.g. the marginalization of
women, the biologization of race, and so on ), that, in other words, epistemological positions
have a necessary relation to political positions (2002: 475). In the current emergence of
affect theory this assumption remains though one might need to replace Guillorys
focus on epistemology with affect theorys preoccupation with ontology . In short, an
essentially dynamic, self-organizing biology/nature is presented as the guarantor for an
emancipatory and creative politics.
philosophy of a disciplinary domain.

Finally, the borrowing of concepts from other disciplinary fields is of course not confined to writings on affect and biology. This article seeks to open a

More consideration needs to be given

to how distinctions between what are seen as legitimate versus illegitimate and,
indeed, productive versus unproductive borrowings are effected, and where and with what
consequences they shift. The current interdisciplinary traffic between the natural sciences and the already interdisciplinary field of
space in which the process of cross-disciplinary appropriations can be interrogated.

cultural theory cannot be divorced from other current developments in the relationship between the arts and the sciences or, indeed, from the very history
of the distinction between humanities and sciences. An analysis of this traffic would need to consider that disciplines have distinct methods for producing
output and distinct histories of legitimation. While such distinctiveness is never the result of perfect insulation the history of the interimplication of the
humanities and natural sciences is rich and fascinating it does nevertheless beg the question of what it would mean for the humanities to poach

We have already
discussed Massumis explicit desire to poach scientific concepts and indeed he
informs us that [s]cientists shouldnt feel threatened by these respectful betrayals (2002: 21). But what exactly is a respectful
betrayal? Clearly, there is no unified or transparent transdisciplinary metalanguage that can act as a conduit for concepts to travel between the
scientific vocabulary and findings, and to re-contextualize those into their own regulated environments.27

humanities and the sciences; as John Cromby comments, in his analysis of the challenges facing the integration of social science with neuroscience:

the
poaching of a concept may demand the forgetting of the discursive system and
modes of argumentation that have given rise to it and of the specific network of
relations that give it meaning. This problem is acute in the case of afect : what
different disciplines have their own cultures, frames of reference, methods, objectives and languages (2007: 150). In this context,

affect designates within neuroscience (let alone in other bordering disciplines) is subject to vigorous contestation, and so if affect theory argues for a non-

how can it afford to do so without acknowledging the contested

origins of the very concepts it employs to legitimize this understanding? Particular concepts
cannot be simply borrowed across disciplines without mobilizing disciplinary boundary struggles. Thus any encounter with
affectivity is also necessarily an encounter with the methodologies and processes of
legitimation characteristic of the natural sciences . Any interdisciplinary gesture must explicitly address, rather
discursive understanding of affect,

than wish away, such supplementary traffic.

the gulf war happened

The focus on representations of the Gulf War masks the slow and brutal
violence enacted by modern warfare the critique replicates the
Pentagons propaganda and shuts down any chance for progressive
coalitions for change
Krishna 93 (Sankaran, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at
Manoa, Alternatives, Summer, p. 397-401)
Postmodern Amnesias: Resurrecting the Dead in Iraq
I have absolutely no idea what the Iraqi casualties are, and I tell you, if I have anything to say about it, we're never going to get into the body-count

Between 100,000 and 200,000

Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed in the Gulf War and an estimated
300,000 were injured. In contrast to this, fewer than four hundred Allied soldiers died, many of them due to "friendly fire."25 In two
business. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf24 Well, the numbers are in, if anybody cares.

weeks, the Allied forces managed to kill almost four times as many Iraqis as all the US soldiers who died in Vietnam, which should indicate the magnitude

Coverage of the war was closely orchestrated by the Pentagon, and, eager
to be in on the story, the news networks were complicitous in the selective
coverage, giving up any liberal pretensions of being impartial observers .26 One of the obvious
of the violence.

and distressing aspects of the war was the ineffectiveness of the antiwar movement in derailing the momentum during the months of build up, and the
incredible degree of censorship of media coverage of the war by the Pentagon." In this context, some of the poststructuralist analyses of the war
(examined here through Der Derian's chapter in AD; Shapiro's chapter on security policy in the video age in RP, and his article on the Gulf War published
recently;28 and Chaloupka's sections on the impact of speed and technology on the modern warrior in KN) have been invaluable in their depiction of the
alienation and complicity produced through a hyperreal and almost real-time media coverage. The objectification of the Iraqis; the role of electronic
simulations in rendering the Iraqi people content-less; the annihilation of space by time and the obsoleteness of conventional spatiotemporal axes in
describing and understanding what Der Derian describes as the first "cyberwar"; the intertextuality of the war itself, with both foe and friend often getting

Yet overemphasizing
the new forms of representations of the war in the media can become
politically problematic. First, a focus on the newness of "cyberwar"
detracts attention from the fact that in many ways the Gulf War was very
much in the mold of previous conflicts. Far from indicating any shift from the
material to the perceptual, this conflict was about territory, oil, and
reasserting US hegemony. Second, one ought not to confuse the actual nature of
the Gulf War with the Pentagon's close orchestration of its media coverage . In this regard,
information from the same sources (CNN)all these have been highlighted by critical international theorists.

quotes such as the following leave this reviewer with a sense of disquiet: The consequence . . . is that in modern warfare, as the aim of battle shifts from
territorial, economic, and material gains to immaterial, perceptual fields the spectacle of war is displaced by the war of spectacle. (AD: 191) For several
reasons (technological, political, and theoretical), the warrior has ceased to hold any kind of possibility. Instances where the warrior seems to be present
Panama, Liberia, Grenada, Afghanistan, even the Persian Gulfquickly present themselves as failures, spectacles, or exercises in nostalgia. (KN: 24)

Contrasted with this supposed dematerialization of war , territory, and the

warrior, and a supposedly new era of cyberwars of sign systems, a few enduring
realities seem to need reiteration : The war in Iraq was over one of those
stubborn geopolitical facts of the present eraoil. It was preceded by a Hannibalesque build-up lasting more than six months (in contrast to all this talk about
speed). The overwhelming percentage of the bombs used in Iraq were not "smart"
bombs; in fact nearly 93 percent of the 88,500 tons of bombs used in that
war were not precision-guided but "dumb" bombs. US bombs are estimated to have
"missed" their targets about 70 percent of the time (needless to add, a "missed target" probably means higher
civilian casualties). Far from being a "clean" war (as General Powell and others suggested during the conflict), the
weapons systems used were deliberately designed to increase human casualties
and suffering. Thus, the Multiple-Launch Rocket System; the Army Tactical Missile System; the "Adam" bombs designed to "spin out tiny darts
with razor edges; phosphorous 1 or 2 square kilometers, destroying all human life through asphyxiation or through implosion of the lungs, leaving no
chance for survival" and replicating tactical nuclear weapons in their destructivenessall these and more were used on the traffic jam on the road
connecting Kuwait to Iraq, where thousands of soldiers and civilians (including migrant laborers) were trapped and became a turkey-shoot for US

By emphasizing the technology and speed in the Gulf War,

endlessly analyzing the representation of the war itself, without a
simultaneous exposition of the "ground realities," postmodernist analyses wind
up, unwittingly, echoing the Pentagon and the White House in their claims
that this was a "clean" war with smart bombs that take out only defense
installations with minimal "collateral damage." One needs to reflesh the Gulf
War dead through our postmortems instead of merely echoing , with Virilio and others, the
"disappearance" of territory or the modern warrior with the new technologies; or the
intertext connecting the war and television; or the displacement of the spectacle
of war by the war of spectacle." Second, the emphasis on the speed with which the
annihilation proceeded once the war began tends to obfuscate the long build-up to
the conflict and US complicity in Iraqi foreign and defense policy in prior times. Third, as the details provided above show, if there was anything
"technology."29

to highlight about the war, it was not so much its manner of representation as the incredible levels of annihilation that have been perfected. To
summarize: I am not suggesting that postmodernist analysts of the war are in agreement with the Pentagon's claims regarding a "clean" war; I am

their preoccupation with representation, sign systems, and with

the signifier over the signified, leaves one with little sense of the
annihilation visited upon the people and land of Iraq. And, as the Vietnam
War proved and Schwarzkopf well realized, without that physicalistic sense of
violence, war can be more effectively sold to a jingoistic public. In this regard, Der Derian's point that
suggesting that

the nature of antiwar protest movements has to change, has to recognize the fact that one can no longer wait for the body bags to come home, is one that
merits attention. He notes, in a sharp attack on the left's anti-Gulf War movement: "Like old generals the anti-war movement fought the last war ... a
disastrous war of position, constructing ideologically sound bunkers of facts and history while the 'New' World Order fought a highly successful war of

Der
Derian's further assertion , that a postmodern critique of the Gulf War
mobilization would be somehow more efective, sounds less convincing. An
alternative, late-modern tactic against total war was to war on totality itself, to
delegitimize all sovereign truths based on class, nationalist, or internationalist metanarratives ... better strategically to play with
maneuver ... with high speed visuals and a high-tech aesthetics of destruction." (AD: 176-77) While this point is, perhaps, debatable,

apt critiques of the powerful new forces unleashed by cyberwar than to hold positions with antiquated tactics and nostalgic unities. (Al): 177-178;

The dichotomous choice presented in this excerpt is straightforward

emphasis in original)
: one
either indulges in total critique, delegitimizing all sovereign truths, or one is committed to "nostalgic," essentialist unities that have become obsolete and
have been the grounds for all our oppressions. In offering this dichotomous choice, Der Derian replicates a move made by Chaloupka in his equally
dismissive critique of the more mainstream nuclear opposition, the Nuclear Freeze movement of the early 1980s, that, according to him, was operating
along obsolete lines, emphasizing "facts" and "realities" while a "postmodern" President Reagan easily outflanked them through an illusory Star Wars
program. (See KN: chapter 4) Chaloupka centers this difference between his own supposedly total critique of all sovereign truths (which he describes as
nuclear criticism in an echo of literary criticism) and the more partial (and issue-based) criticism of what he calls "nuclear opposition" or "antinuclearists"

the unhappy' choice forced upon the reader is to join Chaloupka in his
total critique of all sovereign truths or be trapped in obsolete essentialisms.
This leads to a disastrous politics, pitting groups that have the most in
common (and need to unite on some basis to be effective) against each other.
Both Chaloupka and Der Derian thus reserve their most trenchant critique for political
groups that should , in any analysis, be regarded as the closest to them in terms of
an oppositional politics and their desired futures. Instead of finding ways to live with
these differences and to (if fleetingly) coalesce against the New Right, this fratricidal
critique is politically suicidal. It obliterates the space for a political
activism based on provisional and contingent coalitions, for uniting behind a
common cause even as one recognizes that the coalition is compromised of groups
that have very differing (and possibly unresolvable) views of reality. Moreover, it fails to consider the
possibility that there may have been other, more compelling - reasons for the
"failure" of the Nuclear Freeze movement or anti-Gulf War movement. Like many a
worthwhile cause in our times, they failed to garner sufficient support to
influence state policy. The response to that need not be a totalizing critique that
delegitimizes all narratives. The blackmail inherent in the choice offered by Der Derian and
at the very outset of his book. (KN: xvi) Once again,

between total critique and "ineffective" partial critique, ought to be

transparent. Among other things, it effectively militates against the construction of provisional
or strategic essentialism in our attempts to create space for an activist politics. In the
Chaloupka,

next section, I focus more widely on the genre of critical international theory and its impact on such an activist politics.

Their thesis overly generalizes the completeness of illusion and hyperreality since it is impossible to verify whether or not there has been a
total break from all past forms of social relations, we should discount their
claims that our representations are meaningless.
TlMOTHY W. LUKE 91 [*], Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Power and politics in hyperreality: The critical project of Jean Baudrillard. By:
Luke, Timothy W., Social Science Journal, 03623319, 1991, Vol. 28, Issue 3, Ebsco

Baudrillard's critical project clearly outlines a fascinating and innovative

appraisal of the often confusing and contradictory tendencies in
contemporary society that are usually labelled as "postmodernity ."
Nonetheless, there are considerable weaknesses as well as great strengths in Baudrillard's
system of analysis. The tenacity of "reality" or "modernity" in several spheres of
everyday life, for example, often still overshadows "hyperreality." Thus, it seems that
Baudrillard's major flaw is mistaking a handful of incipient developments
or budding trends for a full-blown or completely fixed new social order .
The total break with all past forms of social relations cannot be verified
either from within or from outside of Baudrillard's frameworks. While he denies
finding much systematicity in hyperreal capitalism and sees the end of "production" and "power" in the rise of
seduction, Baudrillard still clings to the image of a powerful exploitative system in his call to the masses to
recognize "that a system is abolished only by pushing it into hyperlogic."( n21) This twist in his thinking raises

Why does a social order that no longer really exists need his
theoretical intervention to be transformed by mass resistance if it is not
real, powerful or productive? Likewise, if the history of power and production has
ended, then why does Baudrillard envision today's best radical opposition
to capital and the state assuming the form of hyperconformity by pushing "the
system" into a hyperlogical practice of itself to induce the crisis that might
abolish it? On the other hand, Baudrillard's strategy of "hyperconformity," as a means
of radical resistance, does not seriously challenge the consumerist modes of domination
important questions.

intrinsic to transnational corporate capitalism. Moreover, its ties to consumer subjectivity do not even begin to
address other possible strategies of resistance following lines drawn by gender, race, ethnicity, language or ecology.

he does not advance any new conceptions of postmodern justice

or articulate alternative principles to represent meaningful narratives
about values in hyperreality. Thus, Baudrillard also can be tarred with the
brush of neoconservatism, like many other postmodernist critics of society.( n22) Baudrillard
tends to misplace the concreteness of the relations that he is
investigating, lumping everything into the category of "seduction" which,
in turn, totally subsumes such complex factors as power, production, sex, and
economy into one universal force . He claims somewhat contradictorily that "seduction . . . does
Unlike Lyotard,

not partake of the real order." Yet, at the same time, "seduction envelops the whole real process of power, as well
as the whole real order of production, with this never-ending reversibility and disaccumulation--without which

While Baudrillard makes these claims, he

never really demonstrates definitely how this all works with carefully
considered evidence.
neither power nor production would even exist."( n23)

fuck them
Merrin 1 (William, Prof. of School of Cultural Studies, Leeds Metropolitan
University, To play with phantoms: Jean Baudrillard and the Evil Demon of the
Simulacrum Economy and Society Volume 30 Number 1 bb)
The power of the simulacrum , therefore, may prove to be greater than Baudrillard
realized. On a personal level this is certainly the case. In a candid 19845 interview he reveals that his courtship of its demon
became an unlivable experience: I stopped working on simulation. I felt I was going totally nuts (1993a: 105). The simulacrum,
however, could not be so easily disposed of. Despite his desire to cast off this yoke of simulacres and simulation (1993a: 184), the

It has, appropriately,
as the real philosophy of

simulacrum has thrived, becoming an idea popularly and irrevocably identified with Baudrillard.

exerted its simulacral power to appear in the popular imagination

Jean Baudrillard, eclipsing his critique , and all other aspects of his work and career. Journalistic

commentary and student texts are typical here in identifying the simulacrum as Baudrillards sole approved project. Thus the
problem of finding Baudrillards flat is turned into an obvious and banal hook by one interviewer, who takes the opportunity to
enquire whether Baudrillard himself . . . might be a simulacrum: Does he really exist? (Leith 1998: 14). More importantly for
Baudrillard, however, is the simulacral efficacy of doubling the theoretical strategy of employing simulation which, quite naturally,
has a simulacral effect. The theory of simulation Baudrillard did not believe in has now been realized: as the Japanese interviewer

once it is
true, the simulacrum becomes a commonplace, robbed of its capacity to
arouse the worlds denial and thus its critical force : if there is nothing beyond the simulacrum then
makes clear, the simulacrum has become reality. Volatized in, and as, the real, its victory is the concepts defeat:

it is not even open to question but is simply our absolute banality, our everyday obscenity (Zurbrugg 1997: 11). Hence
Baudrillards emphasis upon the theoretical challenge of the simulacrum. Once realized, unless as Baudrillard hopes it can itself

Opposing Baudrillard with the simulacrum

is, therefore, the most effective means of critique. For his work is not wrong, but too true:
the simulacrum has become reality and this is his end ; the game is over. It is, therefore, in the
hyperdefence of Baudrillard that we find a means of leaving him behind. With his success, Baudrillard disappears. If we
want him to survive, we must condemn him as a nihilistic proponent of
the simulacrum and oppose him with an outraged, vituperic, moral appeal
to reality , as Kellner and Norris do; thereby restoring his work to life. For, if it is only in its contradiction that it can live as a
be reversed against simulation, then this critical function is lost.
with its success

provocation and diabolical challenge, then once it is true this ends. Kellner and Norris, therefore, may yet prove to be Baudrillards
greatest defenders. Baudrillard, of all people, should have anticipated his disappearance, for the simulacrums demonic power rests
also in its attraction for, and hold over, humanity. Aristotle, for example, recognized this, writing of this instinctive pleasure of
imitation in man, the most imitative of living creatures (1997: 5), while Nietzsche also speaks of the delight in simulation and of
its effects in exploding as a power that pushes aside ones so-called character, ooding it and at times extinguishing it (1974:
para. 361). One courts this demon, therefore, at ones own risk, as it captivates and overwhelms our personality. As the author of
the Psalms cautioned the makers and worshippers of idols, they that make them are like unto them: so is everyone who trusteth in
them (Barasch 1992: 20). The efficacy of simulation and the danger of disappearance are key themes in Roger Caillois influential
essay on animal mimicry and the mimetic instinct no less powerful in insects than in man (Caillois 1984). The instinct of mimesis
parallels primitive magic, Caillois says, though it is a mimetic spell which is too strong for those who cast it. For the insects it is a
spell which has caught the sorcerer in his own trap (1984: 27) Phylia, for example, browse among them- selves, taking each
other for real leaves (1984: 25). So, Caillois argues, simulation absorbs the simulator, leading to their mimetic assimilation to the
surroundings with a consequent psychasthenic loss of distinction, personality, and also, in a thanatophilic movement, the loss of
the signs of life itself (1984: 28, 30). Simulation, therefore, nally overwhelms the simulator: as Caillois warns in the epigram which

So Baudrillards game
has the same result. If the simulacrum has been realized; if simulation is now our
everyday banality, then Baudrillard is condemned to a lifeless disappearance as a
sorcerer trapped by his own magical invocation, absorbed by his own simulation.
opens his article, Take care: when you play with phantoms, you may become one (1984: 17).

Baudrillard may not believe in the ghost of the simulacrum, but he himself becomes this very ghost. His game with phantoms ends,
as Caillois knew it would, with his own phantasmatic transformation, with his apparitional disappearance. But this is only fitting, for
in the pact with the devil it is always your soul that is the stake.

the state
The State is a fiction, but treating it as ontologically as if real allows us
to productively utilize analysis of state power to produce change
Hay 14 (Colin, Centre d'etudes europeennes, Sciences Po, Neither real nor
fictitious but as if real'? A political ontology of the state, The British Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 65.3)
A final perspective
treats the state
as neither real nor
fictitious, but as belonging to an entirely separate ontological category the as if
real.
The
state
cannot be discerned directly but are only
rendered visible to us as analysts through their efects. They are
conceptual abstractions, but
profoundly ontologically significant in that they are
at least partially generative of the practices and processes which we can directly
observe. This perspective sees the state as as if real but neither real nor purely
fictitious.
For all conceptual abstractions of this kind
are at least partially fictitious in that the category they posit draws
attention to certain dimensions of social and political reality at the expense of
others. They are
conceptual abstractions facilitating analytical parsimony
, in many respects the most alluring,

(and other similar conceptual abstractions)

This stance one might label a genuine (and genuinely ontological) as-if-realism in that it ascribes a distinct ontological status to the category of things (properly) referred to as as if real.

, in such a view, is one such thing. Such referents are complex in that they

, as in the other formulations,

they are

The purely fictitious qualification here is in fact very important.

(the state, patriarchy,

the class structure and so forth)

, in other words,

; and such

analytical parsimony always comes at a price. Thus, the positing of patriarchy as as if real draws attention to what are arguably the defining features of all instances of domestic violence. But it does so by diverting attention at the

This brings us to a crucial difference

between as if realism
and the realism which typically informs (critical)
theories of the state
For as if realists can be very clear about
the
distortions engendered by positing structures like the state
they do not need to make the pretence that such abstractions are
ever capable of capturing the full complexity of social and political
processes and practices
In positing the state as as if real they acknowledge
the partially fictitious character of the abstraction they construct, taking
responsibility for the necessarily distorting depiction of the realities
it
purports, in a suitably stylized manner, to capture and describe.
same time from other features of each such instance which could be (or become) the subject of an alternative analysis.
(in fact in all three of its variants)

(and patriarchy and the class structure).

(inevitable)

, the class structure

and patriarchy;

(the real).

(the real processes and practices)

That, I believe, is a very good reason for commending

as if realism over philosophical realism as an ontological basis for state theory.

As this hopefully serves to make clear, I think that all three variants of the as if realist position set out above are preferable, at least normatively, to the realist alternative (as defended by Bhaskar in Harre and Bhaskar 2005).
Crucially, all agree that the positing of the state as as if real is in no way a relegation of its analytic status or import. That it may not exist (position 1), does not exist (position 2) or exists (only) as as if real (position 3) does not
make it less significant; in fact it merely clarifies its analytical role and its explanatory import.
But this is perhaps not the only advantage of the as if realist position that I have sought to set out. For it can, I contend, resolve without abandoning the concept of the state, the central difficulty of studying the state identified by
Philip Abrams in the late 1970s (in a classic essay published only posthumously in 1988).
Abrams' beautifully, if trenchantly, stated argument is that the very concept of the state (as a distinct and unified entity with a common identity) is not only an abstraction (often a political abstraction) but also, crucially, a distorting
abstraction which prevents us from seeing more clearly the almost inevitable disparity between the idealized representation of the state in such terms and the practices authorized in the name of the state. In the process, as we have
already seen, he differentiates between the distorting and reifying concept of the state (which he rejects and would have us reject), the grubby complexity of the state system (our shared object of analysis) and the idea of the state
in and through which political subjects typically orient their behaviour to generate what I have termed state effects (a process he would have us acknowledge). But his central conviction is that it is the concept of the state which
prevents us from seeing the state system as really it is. As he suggests,
the state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. It is itself the mask which prevents us from seeing political practice as it is. (1988: 82).
His solution to this problem is simple to dispense with the concept of the state altogether so that we might better see the disparity between the idea of the state to which it gives rise and the practices in and through which the
claim to power which that idea authorizes makes manifest. As he puts it,
the state is, in sum, a bid to elicit support for or tolerance of the insupportable and intolerable by presenting them as something other than themselves. (1988: 76).

if we concede that the state is only ever a

conceptual abstraction, a means to the end of seeing state practices
as linked and connected, and a distorting abstraction at that
then there is no danger that our use of the concept of the state
commits us to perpetrating the mystification Abrams sees as inherent
it
is the pretence that the state is real that perpetrates the mystification we need to
resist.
accepting the as if real character of the state might help contribute to
the demystification of the state
But there is another way, one that is opened up as a possibility by acknowledging the state to be as if real. For

(the practices authorized in the name of

the state)

(one which draws attention to certain features of state

practices at the expense of others),

that

in the appeal to

the concept of the state. Indeed, as soon as we accept the as if real character of the state we are on the way to the demystification of the (problematic) idea of the state that Abrams finds so troubling. For, in Abrams' terms,

To see why

idea that Abrams calls for, we need only explore the implications of the preceding analysis for our understanding of the paradoxical agency and

unity of the state respectively. It is to this task that I now turn.

The problem of state agency

Political ontology is dominated by the structureagency debate (see, for instance, Bates 2006; Cerny 1990; Hay 2002, 2009; McAnulla 2005). It is perhaps hardly surprising then that the ontology of the state has generated its own
variant of the structureagency problem (Smith 2009). This is concerned principally with the seemingly paradoxical place of the state in existing state theory as both agent and structure. As we have already seen, in many
(philosophically) realist treatments of the state (in Marxism perhaps most obviously, but also in much neo-statist and neo-institutionalist writing), the state is a largely structural term. In such a conception, the state is depicted, in
essence, as a site or locus of power investing those with access to the resources it provides with a range of capacities which they would otherwise not possess. This is a conception which arguably has considerable promise and
avoids many of the pitfalls into which much state theory falls. It is a conception to which we will return presently. However, it is important to acknowledge that this is by no means the typical conception of the state, either within state
theory or social and political science more generally.
For, really from its first inception, the concept of the state has more typically been used to refer to agency than structure as in phrases like the state taxes its citizens, the state wages war and the state demands the presentation
of a passport at its border. Such a conception is almost certainly a fiction and it is most definitely a personification and an objectification. As Andrew Vincent puts it, when we speak of the state performing actions we personify it, we
attribute to it a status equivalent to a unique personality an agent or subject which acts (1987: 8). It is difficult not to see this as a simplification, perhaps even a crass simplification, and a distorting simplification at that yet it has
become almost part of the logical grammar of the concept.
To see why this is so, it is perhaps instructive to return to the etymology of the term itself. The concept of the state is derived from the Latin status, meaning literally social status, stature or standing, specifically of an individual
within a community. By the fourteenth century the use of the term to refer to the standing or status (indeed to the stateliness) of rulers, distinguishing and setting them apart from those subject to their rule, was commonplace. The
idea that the state resides in the body of the ruler, indeed that the state and the sovereign are synonymous, makes this a characteristically pre-modern formulation (Marin 1988; Shennan 1974; Skinner 1989). As this suggests, at
this point the state was indeed an agential term, referring to the distinctive traits and characteristics of the sovereign.
The development of a distinctively modern conception of the state would take a further three centuries. A first step was taken by the authors of the so-called mirror-for-princes writings, most famously Machiavelli (1988) in his Il
Principe (The Prince). In this literature, the state (lo stato) now became synonymous not only with the prince himself, but with the character of the political regime, the geographical area over which sovereign authority was claimed
and maintained, and the very institutions of government required to preserve such authority (1988). Here, in effect, the distinction between the state as structure and the state as agent became blurred for the first time.
A second development came with the republican political theory of the Renaissance (see Skinner 1978; Viroli 1992). This movement championed the cause of a self-governing republican regime that might inaugurate a state or
condition of civic liberty. The state was here presented as claiming and enjoying a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, and as deriving the authority for this claim not from the power or stature of its ruler(s), but from the
people themselves. The state is referred to for the first time as a distinct apparatus of government and hence as a structure which rulers have a duty to maintain and which will outlast their rule, as opposed to an extension of the
latter's innate authority or, indeed, agency.
The final step came with the rise of the absolutist state in Europe in the seventeenth century. Here, in particular in the writings of Bodin (1576) and Hobbes (1651), the state is eventually conceptualized as truly separate from the
powers of both the ruler and the ruled. Three aspects of this formulation set it apart as a distinctively modern conception of the state: (i) individuals within society are presented as subjects of the state, owing duties and their
allegiance not to the person of a ruler but to the state itself (as an institution or structure); (ii) the authority of the state is singular and absolute; and (iii) the state is regarded as the highest form of authority in all matters of civil
government (Skinner 1989: 90). The state now comes to be seen as a distinct form of authority independent of those who give effect to its power as structure rather than as agency.
Yet this in no sense marks the end of a state theoretical tradition which casts the state as agent. Twentieth century state theory is dominated by such a conception. Until at least the 1980s, the political sociology of the state has been
concerned centrally with characterizing the state in terms of its agency (or at least in terms of the outcomes to which its agency might be seen to give rise). Postwar US political science in particular has been a battleground between
competing input theories of the state (pluralism, elite theory, instrumentalist Marxism, even at the margins, instrumentalist feminism). Such approaches typically paid little or no attention to the state itself (as a distinct institutional
form, configuration or complex providing differential access to a range of capacities and resources). Instead they treated the state as something of a black box an instrument if not of unlimited powers then certainly of very
considerable powers that might be captured by particular interests who might use it to their own specific ends and purposes (see also Smith 2003, 2009).
In a way these various theories of the state might be seen to have used the concept of state agency heuristically with pluralists, elite theorists and the like effectively asking themselves whether the outcomes of state decisionmaking processes were consistent with the idea of a singular state agency. In so far as they convinced themselves that this was indeed the case, they attributed this to the capture of the state by sectional interests and not, of
course, to the workings of any more hard-wired or institutional of logics (such as the structural dependence of the state on capital accumulation). And, of course, they reached very different conclusions (compare Dahl 1961b, 1977
with Domhoff 1987, 1990; Miliband 1969; Mills 1956; and Lukes 1974).
But arguably it is not what these perspectives dispute but what these literatures share that makes them so problematic as theories of the state. Two aspects of this are particularly worthy of attention.
First, as already noted, to attribute any systematicity in the biases discerned in state power solely and exclusivity to the inputs into the political process, such that any pattern exhibited in the distributional asymmetries arising from
state policy is seen as a product of state capture, is nave in the extreme. And it is also the most thorough disavowal of the concept of the state itself. For the state is reduced to something fought over, but with absolutely no bearing
whatsoever either on the outcome of the contest nor on the uses to which state power might be put. The state, in such a conception, becomes an empty vessel about which we need to know precisely nothing in order to comprehend
fully the generation of political outcomes.
Second, and arguably more significantly, the entire debate is couched exclusively in terms of an interest-based and entirely instrumental conception of political behaviour. Political actors all political actors it seems are motivated
solely by the promotion of the sectional interests they are assumed to serve. This, it need hardly be pointed out, is a profoundly limited, bleak and depressing view of human behaviour and it eliminates at a stroke the very
possibility of the state acting more nobly in pursuit of the collective public good (Flinders 2012; Hay 2007a; Stoker 2006). The best that can perhaps be hoped for, as in pluralism, is that the careful choice of democratic rules and
institutional checks and balances might serve to minimize the chances of systematic capture of the state by a particular (and hence dominant) interest and that a diversity of interests capturing different aspects of government
might, in effect, cancel one another out. But the point is that the projection of such a narrowly instrumental set of behavioural/motivational assumptions onto potential candidates for office essentially ensures that we should seek to
make do with as little state as possible.
There is, of course, a serious irony here. For, both in the republican tradition inaugurated by Machiavelli and, indeed, in Hobbes, the very rationale for the existence of the state is couched precisely in terms of its capacity to provide
collective public goods. Indeed, in Hobbes the irony is all the more acute since he derives the very need for the Leviathan in the first place from the inherently undesirability of the nasty, brutish and short life we are all destined to
suffer if the state of nature is allowed to persist unchecked.7 It need hardly be pointed out that the presumption that the state of nature persists is the starting point for instrumentalism's (normative) anti-statism.
As this implies, there is another whole tradition of writing on the state whose lineage can arguably be traced all the way from Machiavelli and Hobbes to much contemporary institutionalism. This, despite Hobbes's derivation of the
need for the state in the first place from the state of nature, is resolutely more open-ended in its account of human agency and it affords a much greater role to the state itself in shaping societal outcomes (for good or ill). It tends to
see the state less as a single agency in itself so much as a set of institutional sites or contexts within which political agency is both authorized (in the name of the state) and enacted/institutionalized by those thereby authorized.
Two elements, in particular, of the potential analytical utility offered by the concept of the state in this conception might usefully be identified and differentiated. Both are concerned with the ability to contextualize political behaviour:
the first relates to the structural and/or institutional contextualization of political actors, the second to the historical contextualization of political behaviour and dynamics. I consider each in turn.
The state as institutional contextualization
Within this broadly institutionalist conception, the state is seen to provide a context within which political actors are embedded and with respect to which they might usefully be situated analytically. The state, in such a conception,
provides (a significant part of) the institutional landscape which political actors must negotiate (see also Duran and Thoenig 1996: esp. 610). This landscape is, in Bob Jessop's terms, strategically selective in that it is more
conducive to certain strategies, and by extension, to the realization of certain goals and preferences, than others (1990: 910; see also Hay 2002: 12731). It provides the unevenly contoured backdrop to political conflict,
contestation and change a strategic terrain with respect to which actors must successfully orient themselves if they are to realize their intentions (whether instrumental or normative).
As this perhaps serves to suggest, within such a framework (a framework elsewhere referred to as the strategicrelational approach see Hay 2002; Jessop 2008) the appeal to the concept of the state tends to draw the political
sociologist's attention to and to sharpen her purchase on the opportunities and, more often than not, the constraints that political actors face in realizing their intentions. A political sociology informed by such an institutionalist
theory of the state is less likely to see political actors in voluntarist terms as free-willed subjects in almost complete control of their destiny able to shape political realities in the image of their preferences and volitions. For, in
contrast to voluntarism and more agent-centred accounts, institutionalists tend to see the ability of actors to realize their intentions as conditional upon often complex strategic choices made in densely structured institutional
contexts which impose their own strategic selectivity (the pattern of opportunities and constraints they present).
Such considerations are important and have the potential to provide a valuable and much-needed corrective to the tendency of an at times behaviouralist-dominated political science mainstream to see actors' preferences alone as
the key to explaining political outcomes. State theory of this latter kind reminds us that the access to political power associated with a landslide electoral triumph does not necessarily bring with it the institutional and/or strategic
capacity to translate such a mandate into lasting social, political and economic change (see, classically, Pierson 1990). If political will and the access to positions of power and influence were all that were required, wholesale political
change would be endemic. That this is not the case suggests the value of institutionally contextualizing abstractions like the state. And these, in turn, encourage a rather more sanguine assessment of political opportunity structures
(Tarrow 1998).
Yet such valuable insights do not come without their own dangers. Institutionalist theories of the state have at times been characterized by a tendency to structuralism. Indeed, this would seem to be the pathology to which they are
most prone. In at least some of their many variants, Marxism, historical and sociological institutionalism, green theory, feminism and even public choice theory, have all legitimately been accused of structuralism. For each has, at
times and in certain forms, appealed to essential and non-negotiable characteristics of the state (its capitalism, its patriarchy, its complicity in the destruction of the natural environment, and so forth) reproduced independently of
political actors. Such essentialism is both fatalistic and apolitical; it does nothing to enhance the analyst's purchase on political reality. Indeed, in a sense it denies that there is a political reality to be interrogated (on politics as the
antithesis of fate, see Gamble 2000; Hay 2007a). Yet whilst structuralism has proved an almost perennial target for critics of state theory, contemporary theories of the state would seem more acutely aware of its dangers than at any
point in the past. Indeed, the recent development of state theory can at least in part be read as a retreat from structuralism.
The state as historical contextualization
If the appeal to the concept or abstraction of the state serves to sensitize political analysts to the need to contextualize political agency and agents institutionally, then no less significant is its role in sensitizing political analysts to
the need to contextualize the present historically. The two are intimately connected.
The characteristic concern of the political scientist with government and the holders of high office tends to be associated with an analytical focus on the present. Within this conventional framework, the determinants of political
outcomes are invariably seen to lie in factors specific to a particular context at a particular point in time typically, the motivations and intentions of the actors immediately involved and their access to positions of power and
influence. This largely ahistorical approach is immediately problematized by appeal to the concept of the state. For whilst governments come and go, the state, understood as an institutional ensemble, persists as it evolves over
time. That evolution is shaped by the intended and unintended consequences of governing strategies and policies. Yet this is a reciprocal relationship. For, at any given point in time, the strategic contexts in which governments find
themselves are in turn a reflection of the strategic capacities and competences of the institutions of the state and the constraints and opportunities these impose. To understand the capacity for governmental autonomy is, then, to
assess the extent of the institutional, structural and strategic legacy inherited from the past. It is, in short, to understand the dynamic relationship between state and governmental power over time.
An example may serve to reinforce the point. If the institutions of the British state in 2010 (when Britain's first ConservativeLiberal Democrat coalition government was elected) looked different from those in 1997 (when the first
New Labour administration of Tony Blair took office), then this is likely to have exerted a significant influence on the autonomy of the incoming coalition administration. Yet, as this example perhaps already serves to indicate, there is
a certain danger of structuralism here too. The newly incumbent administration certainly had to grapple with the institutional, political and above all economic legacy of its inheritance in 2010. Yet, in our desire to contextualize
historically we may come to overemphasize the burden the past places on the present (this, in a sense, is part of the bias engendered by the appeal to the conceptual abstraction of the state). In so doing we may inadvertently
absolve contemporary political actors of all responsibility for the consequences of their conduct attributing, say, the absence of a credible growth strategy to the legacy of New Labour and the global financial crisis when it might
more plausibly be attributed to the lack of an animating political and economic conviction shared between the coalition partners. State theory, perhaps especially in its neo-institutionalist form, is possibly rather too predisposed to
see continuity, inertia and, at best, incremental evolution over time (Schmidt 2006). States, like governments, change and, under certain conditions, despite their path dependent nature, they may change surprisingly rapidly. It is
important, then, that historical contextualization does not lead us to an historically undifferentiated account of the endless reproduction of the status quo ante. As this suggests, whilst the appeal to the concept of the state can
certainly heighten our sensitivity to historical dynamics, it need not necessarily do so. An overly structuralist and overly historicized account may dull rather than sharpen our analytical purchase on questions of change over time
(Marsh 2010). Yet, as already noted, contemporary theories of the state are perhaps rather more acutely aware of this danger than their predecessors. Recent developments in the theory of the state are characterized by their
emphasis upon the uneven pace of the state's development over time (see for instance Jessop 2006, 2008; Pierson 2004; Thelen 2004).
The paradoxical unity of the state
This brings us to a consideration of a final set of issues present undoubtedly in the previous sections but thus far in a largely unacknowledged form. They relate to the, again paradoxical, unity of the state (see also Abrams 1988: 79).
The ontological question here is whether the state is a single entity, a question of course very similar to whether it can be seen to exhibit a singular agency. This is another difficult set of issues, but what is again immediately clear is
that in most of the lay discourse of politics, the state is both treated as an agent and as a singular entity as in examples like the state raises taxes considered earlier. But state theorists who have reflected on this issue typically
regard such formulations at best to be a convenient and distorting fiction (see for instance, Abrams 1988; Jessop 2006: 112, 123; see also Foucault 1975). The more one thinks about it, the less the state is credibly conceived as a
singular entity certainly as a singular agency. For if the state is perhaps best understood as an authority (or, better still, an authorizing identity) and an associated set of discourses which legitimates and sanctions certain practices
and certain forms of behaviour whilst constituting specific institutional contexts in which these might take place (Foucault 2004; Mitchell 1991), then it is almost bound to authorize what will turn out to be different and incompatible
things in different contexts. Such practices may well be unified in the sense that they are authorized in the same (or similar) ways and by the same authority (though even that is debatable); but no unity of practice, process or
outcome is in any sense guaranteed by this and it is in fact most unlikely.
There are then at least two rather different dimensions to the problematic and paradoxical unity of the state. The first relates to the question of the boundaries of the state what is in and what is outside the state. As Max Weber
famously notes, there are no activities that states have always performed and (scarcely) any that none have performed (1978[1921]). Similarly, as Philippe Schmitter rather disarmingly puts it, the modern state is an amorphous
complex of agencies with ill-defined boundaries performing a variety of not very distinctive functions (1985: 33). The state is, then, an institutional complex; not a single entity but an entity comprised other entities. What these
various institutional contexts have in common is that they, and the social practices to which they give rise, are authorized in the name of the state but potentially very little else. This almost inevitably generates a series of
boundary questions (see also Mitchell 1991). Is the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the (operationally independent) Bank of England a part of the British state and does its nominal and/or practical operational independence
have any legitimate bearing on the answer to that question? It is, of course, very difficult to be definitive neither answer seems in principle wrong and it is perhaps even tempting to see the MPC as both in and outside of the
state in different respects (it would certainly seem wrong to offer an account of it which did not take some cognisance of the mandate for the conduct of monetary policy set by the state in defining the terms of its independence). But
the point is that the MPC is by no means the exception to the rule here most state agencies and many non-state agencies pose precisely the same kinds of boundary question.

This is already a fairly intractable problem in defining and circumscribing the

boundaries of the state. Yet there is arguably a more fundamental problem still. This
relates not so much to the boundaries of the state but to the internal coherence and
consistency of the policies, practices and processes that occur within this
institutional complex. This is likely to remain a problem even if we are able to reach
a consensus on what counts as in and outside of the state. For the degree of
coordination within the state apparatus
is almost bound to be insufficient to
ensure the kind of coherence and consistency that the notion of a unified state
would seem to imply. Different parts of the state do different things in different ways
with different degrees of autonomy to yield
a great variety of contradictory
(however defined)

, in all likelihood,

effects.
, any attempt to impose
some unity or common purpose upon
disaggregated state institutions will almost certainly yield differential results
But this
suggests a way forward. In so far as
the state has a unity it has a dynamic , contested and provisional unity
State projects
may be seen as tendencies
reinforcing the unity of the state ; just as the development over time of
institution-specific practices, habits, conventions and the like might typically be
seen as counter-tendencies to the unification of the state.
the state is
neither singular and unified nor disaggregated and fragmented it is the
constant product of the interaction of tendencies and counter-tendencies
pulling in either direction.
Moreover

or re-impose

some more

coordinating than others (for practical illustrations of which see Hay and Farrall 2011, 2014).

perhaps

(Hay 1999).

conscious attempts to impose a new coherence and reform trajectory upon the state

As this suggests,

Conclusion: towards a political ontology of the state

That in turn suggests a political ontology of the state in three parts. The state is
neither real nor fictitious , but a conceptual abstraction whose value is best
seen as an open analytical question; the state possesses no agency per se though it
serves to define and construct a series of contexts within which political agency is
both authorized
and enacted
and the state is a dynamic institutional
complex whose unity is at best partial and the constantly evolving outcome of
unifying tendencies and dis-unifying counter-tendencies. Conceived of in this way,
the state may not exist but it is a potentially extremely valuable analytical
abstraction.
the key to resolving the difficulty of studying the state
is not the abandonment of the concept of the state to which he
points but
the recognition that the state is in fact a conceptual
abstraction which belongs like patriarchy and the class structure to the
realm of the as if real and not to the real.
(in the name of the state)

As this suggests,

Abrams in the late 1970s

, instead,

/institutionalized;

identified by Philip

ressentiment
Ressentiment gets shit doneyou have to hate yourself to change
yourselfand that comparatively outweighs any negative efects to
ressentimentthe passivity of the alternative ensures RENEWED
weakness under the guise of empowerment
Solomon 3 (Robert C., Prof of Philosophy @ UT-Austin, Living with Nietzsche: What
the Great Immoralist Has to Teach Us, p. 102-5)
Contrary to the most familiar accounts of Nietzsches ethics and many of his own
uncompromising condemnatory statements, Nietzsche has mixed feelings about
resentment. If creativity is one of the highest virtues and it certainly seems to be for himthen
resentment would seem to be one of the most virtuous emotions, for it is certainly
among the most creative, perhaps even more so than inspirational love. (Compare the schemes of Iago and Richard the Third with the witless reactions
of Othello and Orlando, for example.) Insofar as language and insight, ruthless criticism and mastery of
irony are skills worth praisingNietzsche is perfectly willing to build an entire self out of them24 then resentment
would seem to be one of the most accomplished emotions as well, more articulate
than even the most righteous anger, more clever than the most covetous envy,
more critical than the indifferent spirit of reason would ever care to be . Not surprisingly, our
greatest critics and commentators are men and women of resentment . Nietzsche is surely right,
that our most vocal and influential moralists are men and women of deep resentment
whether or not this is true of morality as such. Our revolutionaries are men
and women of resentment . In an age deprived of passionif Kierkegaard is to be believedthey
alone have the one dependable emotional motive, constant and obsessive,
slowburning but totally dependable and durable. Through resentment, they get
things done. Whatever else it may be, resentment is not inefectual .
Resentment may be an emotion that begins with an awareness of its
powerlessness, but by way of compensation (or expression), resentment has
forged the perfect weaponan acid tongue and a strategic awareness of the world,
which in most social contexts guarantees parity if not victory in most social
conflicts. (I exclude bars in such places as Dallas and San Bernadino, where a rapier tongue can quickly get one killed.) Thus the irony, the dramatic
turnaround of fortunes, in Nietzsches transvaluation of values, where defensive
resentment overpowers defenseless self-confidence and the sense of inferiority
overwhelms its superiors. The neo-Nietzschean stereotypes are too often portrayed
as the cultivated, noble master versus the cloddish, vulgar slave. To be sure, the descriptions in Nietzsches
Genealogy certainly encourage such a reading. But the typology that actually counts in the genealogy of
resentment and morals is the articulate slave and the comparatively tongue-tied,
even witless master. It is the slave who is sufficiently ingenious to do what even
Nietzsche despairs of doing: he or she invents new values. And it is the master,
not the slave, who becomes decadent and dependent and allows him- or
herself to be taken in by the strategies of resentment . Hegel had it right in the Phenomenology; so did
Joseph Losey in his 1963 movie The Servant. Speech is the swordplay of the impotent, but in the absence of
real swords it is often overpowering. Language may be the political invention of the
herd (as Nietzsche suggests in The Gay Science), but it is also the medium in which real power is
expressed and exchanged. Irony is the ultimate weapon of resentment, and as Socrates so ably demonstrated, it turns ignorance into power, personal
weakness into philosophical strength. It is no wonder that Nietzsche had such mixed feelings about his illustrious predecessor who created the tyranny of reason as the successful
expression of his own will to power. Nietzsche used irony and genealogy as Socrates used dialectic, to undermine and ultimately dominate others and their opinions.

Nietzsche tells us that certain emotions drag us down with their stupiditybut
resentment is surely not one of them. There is no emotion more clever, more
powerful, more life-preserving if not life-enhancing , no emotion more
conducive to the grand act of revenge that Nietzsche himself wishes to perpetrate
on modernity and the Christian world. Resentment creates its own power , which
displaces its own targets and (even despite itself) satisfies its desire for revenge. Thus the victory of the slave over the master in
Hegels Phenomenology. Thus the victory, writ large, of slave morality . The felt
impotence of resentment should not be confused with its expression , which is a
kind of arrogance, or with the practical results of resentment, which sometimes tend to be
powerful and efective indeed . Thus what Nietzsche despises about resentmentand an ethics built out of resentmentis not its lack of
success, which he often acknowledges and even admires (e.g., in Genealogy of Morals, where he comments, The Jews were the priestly nation of ressentiment par excellence, in whom
there dwelt an unequaled popular-moral genius and A race of such men of ressentiment is bound to become eventually cleverer than any noble race);25 nor can it be its
expression, even when it is vicious. It is true that vengeance often is vicious, insensitive to and uncaring about the needs of others, even if it is overly sensitive to its own sense of
slight or offense. But it is hard to find Nietzschean grounds for an attack on viciousness or a defense of pity. Nobles as masters can be (and sometimes ought to be) cruel, so it is not
cruelty as such that Nietzsche abhors. Indeed, although Nietzsche is sometimes suspicious of cruelty as an expression of impotence and resentment (one takes out on others what
one cannot express to ones actual oppressor), he discusses cruel historical spectacles with remarkably little disgust or criticism. Indeed, he even notes that without cruelty there is

One
might argue, of course, that the means that resentment employs in obtaining power
are hypocritical: one gains power by denying ones power and one advances ones
self-interest by appearing to be indifferent to ones self-interest (for example, by pointing to the rules or
defending ones action strictly in the name of some principle.) The man of ressentiment is devious. His spirit loves hiding places, secret
no festival and to see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle. 26

paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment; he understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be

But it is not clear to what extent such duplicity and deception

is hypocrisy rather than just smart strategy . Despite its display of indifference
and disdain for power, resentment exemplifies the obsession with power. But
isnt this what the will to power is all about or is there supposed to be
some further (moral) prohi- bition, power, yes, but not by hook or by crook? Why
should we suddenly be so moral about a motive that bypasses or undercuts
Morality? And does the fact that resentment is reactive rather than active carry
any critical weight?28 For all of his harsh comments, I think that our conclusion
should be that Nietzsche has grudging respect for resentment as an emotional
strategy, thus making his own continuous displays of resentment both more excusable and more interesting.
provisionally self-deprecating and humble. 27