Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
1NC Shell
We no longer live in a functioning democracy- the industrial military
complex controls educational models and produces a cycle of endless
warfare that the aff can never resolve. Their attempt at a simulation of the
USFG only hides the insidiousness of a political system that no longer
serves its citizenry.
Hedges 15
(Chris, American journalist, activist, & author, best-selling author of several books
including War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002)- a finalist for the National
Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy
and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009), Death of the Liberal Class (2010), Wages
of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt, pg. 1-2)/Dhruv
We live in a revolutionary moment. The disastrous economic and political
experiment that attempted to organize human behavior around the dictates of the
global marketplace has failed. The promised prosperity that was to have raised
the living standards of workers through trickle-down economics has been
exposed as a lie. A tiny global oligarchy has amassed obscene wealth, while
the engine of unfettered corporate capitalism plunders resources; exploits
cheap, unorganized labor; and creates pliable, corrupt governments that
abandon the common good to serve corporate profit. The relentless drive by
the fossil fuel industry for profits is destroying the ecosystem, threatening the
viability of the human species. And no mechanisms to institute genuine
reform or halt the corporate assault are left within the structures
of power, which have surrendered to corporate control. The
citizen has become irrelevant. He or she can participate in heavily
choreographed elections, but the demands of corporations and banks are
paramount. History has amply demonstrated that the seizure of power by a
tiny cabal, whether a political party of a clique of oligarchs, leads to
despotism. Governments that cater exclusively to a narrow
collapse, they do so with dizzying speed. When the aging East German dictator
Erich Honecker, who had been in power for thirteen years, was unable to get
paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig in the fall of 1989, the regime
was finished. He lasted another week in power. The same refusal to employ
violence doomed the Communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. In
Romania the army general on whom the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had
depended to crush protests was the general who condemned him to death in a
hasty show trial on Christmas Day. Tinisias Ben Ali and Egypts Hosni Mubarak
also lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces and the
military to fire into crowds. Historians and political philosophers have often
described these episodic revolutionary moments in human history, which are not
confined by national borders, as waves. Walter Benjamin, in his essay about
Goethes novel Elective Affinities, makes the same point. The novel is about the
decay of institutions, and most importantly the ideas and rituals that
sustain them, lost their hold over the imagination. In these moments,
Benjamin argues, the mythic and the ideas of visionary cause people to abandon
established mores and traditions to revolt . Benjamin noted that the role
of the critic, like that of the rebel, is to steer the reader or the
population, toward the mysterious forces embodied in great art, or
in revolutionary visions. Language restricts both art and the possibilities of
re-creating human society. In these movements, it matters more what
is felt, Benjamin understood, than what is said. Immanuel Kant made
much the same distinction between transcendental and critical forces in human
existence. Once the transcendental is liberated through the decay
McAteer 11
(Michael, instructional specialist, BridgeValley Community & Technical College, We
(Heart) Afghanistan, For Now, http://michaelmaczesty.blogspot.com/2011/06/we-heartafghanistan-for-now.html)/Dhruv
I have a great deal of sympathy for the people of Afghanistan. While I have never visited the
country, whatever footage I have seen in the news, in documentaries, like Restrepo and other
clips, it just looks miserable. Desperately poor people, living in nearly uninhabitable terrain
with housing and infrastructure that looks about as desperate as can be. On top of not having
anything that anyone would want, they have been (nearly) constantly invaded or imposed
upon by outside forces since Biblical times, but most recently (recently being the past 30
years) it has been Russia and now us. That has to suck! Imagine being a young afghan boy or
girl who has never known their country to not be engaged in full-on war by foreign occupiers
in the United States and invaders by the Russians, and it isnt over yet. That means that
there is another generation of Afghan children being born into war. I realize that this
predicament is not singular to Afghanistan, that children in Iraq, Congo, Bosnia
and Sudan are also born into warfare and it appears that some of
their eventual children will grow up in future wars, given the way
things are looking so far this century. But, while Afghanistan is technically our
first bout of war overseas this century, it is merely our latest military crush on a foreign soil
since the 1950s. President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously and frankly spoke to the American
people in his final speech in office, January 16, 1961, that we (American people)
the creation of building, staff and administration whose sole purpose is to plan for
future military conflict. It looks like President Eisenhowers
nightmare has risen off of the table of Dr. Frankenstein and has gone
down to the global village to menace the townspeople. The towns
people in this analogy are not really that far from the Afghani, Iraqi
and Vietnamese populations which we have occupied since the
time of this address in 1961. As a country, we have failed to adhere to
Eisenhowers message and our now beholden to a industrial-military complex
which can barely refuse to cut back on spending of any sort, because it would
cost American jobs. Case in point, the state of Wisconsin has gone from 48th
to 16th in defense contracts in 2011. Why Wisconsin, why now? The short
answer is the U.S. Army. The Army has bought $10 billion dollars worth of
contracts from Department of Defense in 2010, (Journal Sentinel). From beef
to hot-weather boots, millions of dollars were awarded for Wisconsin
companies. If you are a Wisconsin or Arkansas or Georgia congressman, you
are a big winner in your district for bringing home those much needed jobs,
and no one once to see them go away once they are in place. So, not unlike
Tiger Beat magazine, searching the horizon for the next teen heart throb,
the Pentagon has to keep their proverbial heartshaped eyes peeled looking for the next military
sweetheart to direct our industrial-military assets
toward. Like, a long time agolike, the U.S. was so into Viet
Namlike hardcoreOkay, I will drop the teeny bop tone in explaining what I
am attempting to say. In the 1960s, during the cold war, and being so over
South Korea, we just had to have Vietnam - OMG! We got embroiled in a very
murky land war which was quite costly in lives and treasure and a war that
we have nothing to show for. Once the newness of our military love
affair with that armed conflict wore off, we had to move on.
Unfortunately, Russia was not into us at all, which didnt make them a likely
target for our military love machine. We played the field in South America in
the 1980s with Panama and Equidor but never really found a home for our
forces, until stars again filled our Pentagons eyes in 1990. Our once and
future love, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. It was like being asked to the
prom by the boy that all of the girls want - our military complex could eat off
of that conflict for a long time! We did, for a while, but Saddam shrank away
and we were left holding our military hats in hand with nowhere to go. Finally,
September 11th came and by 2002, our military was back in the game.
Afghanistan won our hearts, minds, federal budget (billions of dollars a week
to fund) and all of the restand we are still in love! Afghanistan also has the
added benefit of dysfunctional partners in Iraq and Pakistan who are also very
sexy to our military planners. Those two countries are so militarily codependent that it looks like we will never be breaking up with themever.
We never really left the dessert the first time from the Kuwaiti
conflict and we are building permanent bases in Iraq and
Afghanistan. I left my heart in KabulI can here Tony Bennett croon. But, if
history is any indicator, our industrial-military complex is fickle. Here
today, gone tomorrow. Call it, flavor of the decade. Oh yeah babyI am
into you. I will be with you forever Afghanistan But talk is cheap. Just ask
Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq (soon) and Russia. So, who is next on the U.S.
heart throb list? If you ask me, we arent done with South America. We
love those exotic middle-eastern contracts, but I suspect that we will
be looking for something south of the border. Somewhere with lots
of exploitable resources like ethanol, coffee, sugar and cocaine and
a nice strip of mountaintop real estate to build a couple of first class
bases. Teens are notoriously impulsive when it comes to love, they lack the
maturity to appreciate what it takes to make responsible decisions which
might affect them long term - like not wanting to go to college to pursue their
career as a rock star. President Eisenhower was loosely speaking about this in
his final address, you dont have to take my word for it, listen to him
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we
peer into societys future, we you and I, and our government must avoid
the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and
convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage
the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also
of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to
survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent
phantom of tomorrow.
economy. As The Fiscal Times recently reported: Just how well have U.S.
defense firms done in the past few years? To put it in context, in the past 24
months, the U.S. stock market has been on a nearly unprecedented tear. Since
April of 2013, the Standard & Poors 500 index has soared, increasing in value by
more than 30 percent. Compared to a broad index of the defense industry, the
S&P 500 looks like a bad investment. Since April of 2013, the Dow Jones U.S.
Aerospace and Defense Total Stock Market Index has grown at double the rate
of the S&P, increasing in value by 60 percent.... The reason for defense firms
continued success, according to a report issued this month by SIPRI, is that the
U.S. has been the outlier in that respect recently. Excluding the USA, total
military expenditure for the rest of the world has increased continuously since
1998 and was up by 3.1 per cent in 2014, the report concluded. This, of course,
raises the issue that the term "US defense industry" is, in large part, a
misnomer. It would be more accurately called the US war industry. This
L AFRICOM
Their plan does not meaningfully remove the presence of AFRICOM from
the region which operates through secrecy and constantly keeping the
public disengaged from what is actually happening in the region
Hudson 12
(Adam Hudson, BA in International Relations, Stanford University, writer and
freelance journalist on staff @ Truthout, Alternet and The Nation, He covers
national security, human rights and international relations, U.S. expands its
shadow wars in Africa Free your mind: Think outside the box, July 23, 2012,
http://adamhudson.org/2012/07/23/u-s-expands-its-shadow-wars-in-africa/)
Last June, the Washington Post published two articles about secret U.S.
intelligence operations in Africa. The first details how the U.S. military is
expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa,
establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts
from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator. Codenamed Creek Sand, the classified surveillance program utilizes small,
unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes. The planes are
equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track
infrared heat patterns, and vacuum up radio and cellphone signals and
refuel on isolated airstrips favored by African bush pilots. These planes are
unarmed and used for surveillance. According the Post, Ouagadougou (WAHgah-DOO-goo), the capital of Burkina Faso, one of the most impoverished
countries in Africa, is the key hub of this spying network. About a dozen of
such air bases have been established in Africa since 2007. Most of the
operations are small and run out of secluded hangars at African military
bases or civilian airports. The spy planes fly to Mali, Mauritania, and the
Sahara, to search for members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Normally, surveillance operations are left for the CIA to do. But the Post
rightly points out that this program highlights the ways in which Special
Operations forces are blurring the lines that govern the secret world of
intelligence. In addition, the drone program, which is largely run by the CIA,
shows how the lines between military operations and intelligence are blurred.
The military will carry out surveillance activities, in addition to
military operations, while the CIA will carry out military operations,
such as drone strikes, in addition to intelligence-gathering activities.
While they are different bureaucracies, U.S. special operations forces and the
CIA carry out many of the same functions, largely in secrecy. This makes
them favored tools for Americas power projection. The second Washington
Post article also touches upon the U.S. militarys secret surveillance
operations in Africa but adds a key revelation the use of private
contractors. To add another layer of secrecy to these missions, the U.S.
military uses private contractors to carry out the secret spying missions in
Africa. According to the Post, contractors supply the aircraft as well as the
Somalias problems much worse. Drones, drone bases, airstrikes and air wars
Finally, the United States also carries out airstrikes in East Africa
with drones, manned aircraft, and naval ships firing missiles. The U.S.
airstrikes in Somalia during Ethiopias 2006-2009 invasion and occupation
were an example of this. Recently, an Italian aviation blogger and Wired
reported that the U.S. is flying F-15Es, based in Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti,
throughout the Indian Ocean conducting airstrikes against al-Qaeda affiliates
in Yemen and Somalia. The U.S. already built secret drone bases in the
Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. One drone base is in Ethiopia
and is already operational. Another is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the
Indian Ocean, while another is in the Arabian Peninsula. The purpose of the
drone bases is to carry out targeted killings by drones in hotspots like Yemen
and Somalia. While drone strikes are increasing in Yemen, the U.S., since
2007, has launched around half a dozen drone strikes in Somalia, killing
dozens of people. However, there are many U.S. airstrikes carried out in
Somalia by conventional aircraft. Then there was the 2011 NATO intervention
in Libya (which was AFRICOMs first mission). A popular uprising against a
brutal dictator that began in February 2011 was quickly co-opted by NATO.
For six months, Libyan rebels fought on the ground, while NATO provided air
support through naval bombardments and airstrikes. The intervention was
called for to protect Libyan civilians from a supposed impending massacre by
Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafis forces against Libyans in Benghazi.
While Qadhafis force did commit atrocities against the Libyan people (both
during his rule and the civil war), it is difficult to tell whether Qadhafi would or
could have committed a massacre in Benghazi on the large scale that was
predicted by those calling for intervention. Regardless, the humanitarian
justification for the intervention was undermined by the humanitarian
disaster of NATOs seven-month bombing of Libya. According to a New York
Times investigative report, NATO bombing killed between 40 and 70 (possibly
more) civilians and caused significant damage to civilian infrastructure. At
the end of the six-month civil war, some estimates put the total casualty
count on both sides at around 30,000 killed and 50,000 wounded. This
resulted from fighting by Libyan rebels, Qadhafis forces, and NATO bombing.
While this is not a complete counting, it does show that an intervention
claiming to protect civilians clearly did not. In addition, the NATO-backed
Libyan rebels committed their share of awful atrocities. Most notably were
racist killings, arrests of, and attacks against black Libyans and sub-Saharan
African migrants who were suspected of being Qadhafis mercenaries.
However, there was little to no evidence to prove they were Qadhafis
mercenaries. The primary motivation for these abuses was largely anti-black
racism. Countering China, access to resources, and destabilizing Africa There
are deeper geopolitical reasons for Washingtons increasing
militarism in Africa, namely to counter the influence of China and
gain access to vital resources and markets . In the past decade, China
has been increasing its influence in Africa. China increased trade relations
with African countries, promoted development, and, recently, pledged $20
billion in credit for Africa over the next three years. This is because Africa
is an important source of natural resources and markets for Chinas
growing economy. At the same time, this results in China turning a blind
eye to the human rights abuses of its trading partners. Chinas growing
influence in Africa worries many in the U.S. government. In building
economic and political ties with resource-rich African countries,
China gets access to resources and markets that the U.S. will not. As
a result, this increases Beijings power vis--vis Washingtons and
tips the geopolitical scale in Chinas favor. This would weaken
Americas global hegemony and strengthens Chinas. Moreover,
Chinas model of state-led capitalist economic development in Africa offers a
counterpoint to the U.S.s model of neoliberal, free market capitalism. The
failure of both models is that they undermine the political and economic selfdetermination of African countries and the African citizenry. However, this
will not dissuade China and the U.S. from competing against each
other in their respective scrambles for Africa. Africa is rich in natural
resources. The continent is home to oil, natural gas, diamonds,
timber, gold, cobalt, copper, and coltan, which is used in electronic
devices, such as computers. By 2020, it is expected that a one-quarter of
the U.S.s oil imports will come from Africa. U.S. oil companies, such as
ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, operate in African countries, such
as Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Nigeria. Almost
immediately after the 2011 Libyan civil war ended, several multinational oil
companies rushed to Libya for access to its plentiful oil reserves. So it is no
wonder that China and the United States would compete against each other
for access to Africas plentiful resources. As China increases economic
ties with African countries (an example of its soft power), the U.S.
will utilize military power in Africa to counter it . Obamas new
military strategy, entitled Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership:
Priorities for 21st Century Defense, emphasizes the need to
counter Chinas power. The new strategy also calls for investing
heavily in special operations forces, drone aircraft, and cyberwarfare, while retaining full-spectrum superiority in other arenas.
America is also expanding its forces in the Asia-Pacific to assert its
power and counter China. Therefore, the creation of AFRICOM ,
expanding drone and air warfare, secret prisons, use of private
military contractors, training African militaries, arming and
supporting authoritarian governments, opportunistically backing
invasions, and secret spying operations should be seen in this light.
Its not just about fighting terrorism. Securing access to vital
resources, global trade, and countering Chinas influence are the
key geopolitical motivations behind Americas increasing militarism
in Africa. In the end, this will lead to more problems in Africa. The U.S.backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is an example how militarism in Africa
does more harm than good. After the fall of Qadhafi, largely thanks to the
NATO intervention, Libya is still mired in reprisals and violence. In addition, an
unintended consequence of the NATO intervention in Libya was a coup in
Mali, a U.S. ally in the War on Terror. After the war, Tuareg fighters from
Qadhafis military left the Libya and began an uprising in Mali that has
created instability and uncertainty in the Sahel region. Backing authoritarian
regimes stifles the growth of indigenous democracy and self-determination on
the African continent. Militaristic policies, such as drone and air warfare,
running secret prisons, using private military contractors, and backing
oppressive governments lead to more human rights abuses and unintended
consequences that destabilize the continent and create new problems. While
militarism is geopolitically beneficial to the United States and its multinational
corporations, the people of Africa receive the short end of the stick.
L Northeast Asia
Status quo politics is a sham and roleplaying does nothing to challenge
U.S control in Northeast Asia and the globalized industrial-military
complex.
Feffer 8
(John, Author and Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy
Studies, Asias Hidden Arms Race: Six Countries Talk Peace While Preparing for War,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174893/john_feffer_the_growing_military_industrial_co
mplex_in_asia)/Dhruv
Read all about it! Diplomats remain upbeat about solving the nuclear
stand-off with North Korea; optimists envision a peace treaty to replace
the armistice that halted, but failed to formally end, the Korean War 55
years ago. Some leaders and scholars are even urging the
transformation of the Six Party Talks over the Korean nuclear issue,
involving the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the two Koreas,
into a permanent peace structure in Northeast Asia. The countries in
the region all seem determined to make nice right now. Yasuo Fukuda,
the new Japanese prime minister, is considerably more pacific than his
predecessor, the ultra-nationalist Shinzo Abe. The new South Korean
president, Lee Myung-bak, despite his conservative credentials, is
committed to continuing the previous president's engagement policy
with North Korea and plans to reach out to Japan via his first postinaugural state visit. The party that won the recent Taiwanese
parliamentary elections, the Kuomintang, wants to rebuild bridges to
the Mainland and, when it comes to the Communist Party there, mend
fences the ruling Democratic Progressive Party tried to pull down.
Beijing, for its part, is being super-conciliatory toward practically
everyone in this Olympic year. Despite all this peace-talk, something
else, quite momentous and hardly noticed, is underway in the region.
The real money in Northeast Asia is going elsewhere. While in the news
sunshine prevails, in the shadows an already massive regional arms
race is threatening to shift into overdrive. Since the dawn of the
twenty-first century, five of the six countries involved in the Six Party
Talks have increased their military spending by 50% or more. The sixth,
Japan, has maintained a steady, if sizeable military budget while
nonetheless aspiring to keep pace. Every country in the region is now
eagerly investing staggering amounts of money in new weapons
systems and new offensive capabilities. The arms race in Northeast
Asia undercuts all talk of peace in the region. It also sustains a growing
global military-industrial complex. Northeast Asia is where four of the
Perhaps in response to objections by the PRC, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are
described in the following terms: The United States maintains robust but
unofficial relations with the people on Taiwan, governed by the Taiwan
Relations Act (TRA) and guided by the three U.S.-PRC joint communiques. We
have consistently held that the Taiwan issue is a matter for the Chinese
people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to resolve. The United States has an
abiding interest that any resolution be peaceful. In accordance with the TRA
and consistent with the three U.S.-PRC communiques, the United States
sells defensive arms to Taiwan to enable it to maintain a sufficient
self-defense capability. Our limited arms sales have contributed to
maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and to creating an
atmosphere conducive to the improvement of cross-Strait relations, including
dialogue.12 In summary, the U.S. East Asia- Pacific security strategy
of the 1990s is said to contribute to "stability" in the region in every
major military aspect. The impact of U.S. forward-deployed forces is
described as preventing conflict, fostering peace-oriented
economics, preventing regional arms races, and reducing regional
tensions. U.S. sponsored military exercises, training, and arms sales
are said to produce the same results.
General Links
L Extinction
Extinction has already occurred for the black bodies
destroyed by the USFG- impacts are SYSTEMIC while their
claims are only speculative- neg shines light on
institutional racism and spurs change
Omolade 84
(Barbara Omolade Calvin Colleges first dean of multicultural affairs, Women
of Color and the Nuclear Holocaust, Reviewed work(s):Source: Women's
Studies Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2, Teaching about Peace, War, and Women in
the Military (Summer, 1984), p. 12Published by: The Feminist Press at the City
University of New York, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40004305 Accessed:
26/08/2012
the movement for nuclear dis-armament must overcome
its reluctance to speak in terms of power, of institutional racism , and
imperialist military terror. The issues of nuclear disarmament and peace have been
mystified because they have been placed within a doomsday frame
which separates these issues from other ones, saying, "How can we talk about struggles
against racism, poverty, and exploitation when there will be no world after they drop the bombs?" The
struggle for peace cannot be separated from, nor considered more
sacrosanct than, other struggles concerned with human life and
change. In April, 1979, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency released a report on the effects
of nuclear war that concludes that, in a general nuclear war between the United
States and the Soviet Union, 25 to 100 million people would be
killed. This is approxi-mately the same number of African people
who died between 1492 and 1890 as a result of the African slave
trade to the New World. The same federal report also comments on the destruction of ur-ban
To raise these issues effectively,
housing that would cause massive shortages after a nuclear war, as well as on the crops that would be
people of color, the world as we knew it ended centuries ago . Our world,
with its own languages, customs and ways, ended. And we are only now beginning to see with increasing
The
"death culture" we live in has convinced many to be more concerned
with death than with life, more willing to demon-strate for "survival
at any cost" than to struggle for liberty and peace with dignity . Nuclear
clarity that our task is to reclaim that world, struggle for it, and rebuld it in our, own image.
disarmament becomes a safe issue when it is not linked to the daily and historic issues of racism, to the
ways in which people of color continue to be murdered.
and genocide have already been declared on our jobs, our housing,
our schools, our families, and our lands . As women of color, we are warriors, not
pacifists. We must fight as a people on all fronts, or we will continue to die as a people. We have fought in
people's wars in China, in Cuba, in Guinea- Bissau, and in such struggles as the civil rights movement, the
women's movement, and in countless daily encounters with land-lords, welfare departments, and schools.
reduced, and we would no longer witness fresh fish being airfreighted from Bangladesh to Europe. A
related factor linked with nuclear extinctionism is a belief that nuclear war is the most pressing issue
facing humans. I disagree, both morally and politically, with the stance that preventing nuclear war has
argue[9] - then to try to prevent war without making common cause with other social movements will not
L Law = Colonialist
Reformism Link- Their epistemological orientation
towards the law is subservient to neocolonialist ideals
that justify racialized violencereform only masks the
contradiction that is inherent within the law
Cho and Valdes 11
(Francisco Valdes, Professor of Law, University of Miami, and Sumi Cho,
Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law, Critical Race Materialism:
Theorizing Justice in the Wake of Global Neoliberalism, - Law ReviewVOLUME 43 JULY 2011 NUMBER 5)/Dhruv
The role of lawand the rule of laware key features of the accumulation
structures and histories we etched above. As Michel Foucault observed, [i]n Western societies since
the Middle Ages, the exercise of power has always been formulated in terms of law. 58 In continuing to
help contextualize Crenshaws opening querywhy law?we trace in this section how the historical use
misuse of law within the nation-state system emerge as the substantive and
structural glue for the status quo that we examine here. For centuries, during the
and
consolidation of the nation-state world system, human progress was the express project of national law.
more entangled with every other major social institution with magic before it became religion, with
religion before it became culture, with culture before it became nation, with nation before it became
as it is now central to the consolidation of nation-states into an increasingly globalized international socio-
been at the core of modernitys constitution. But this historical process also exploited within and across the
emergent nation-states the weaknesses of the human being. 60 Laws repeatedly were crafted to prevent
the individual human from fulfilling primal needs without paying a stiff price. So law was constructed to
facilitate exploitation of the poor by the richof the less able by the moreas an integral element of the
formation of nation-states, and even as the emergent ruling elites proclaimed commitments to
diametrically opposite values, again like democracy, equality, and autonomy. 61 Similarly, law was
then, law becomes the tool for implementing expressly repudiated valueslike structural, law-based,
identity-oriented inequalityand for deflecting formally endorsed social goals, like equal opportunity for
all. Through the centuries, this gigantic contradiction has spurred historical and continuing justice claims
seeking to harmonize laws material or cultural effects with societys overtly professed values.
Spanos 13
(William V., English Professor @ Binghamton University, Shock and Awe:
American Exceptionalism and the Imperatives of the Spectacle in Mark Twain's A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, p.174)/Dhruv
In the epigraph of this chapter from Donald E. Peases magisterial New American
Exceptionalism, the author, referring to the Bush administrations
substitution of the homeland security state and the exceptional violence
it justifies for the earlier belief in the myth of Virgin Land in the wake of
9/11, points directly to the inordinate power of the spectacle over the
American people: These exceptions will maintain the power to
L Terror Rhetoric
Their mapping of terrorism is a ploy to propagate the
military industrial complex through the rationalization of
state based war and the deligtimization of certain forms
of violence
Butler 09
(Judith, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature
and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley
Frames of War, p.152-155)
What Walzer calls "terrorism"is one such instance, and he warns against any efforts to explain or justify
this phenomenon. As we know, "terrorist"
form of violence his scheme puts outside of reflection and debate is patently unreasonable and non-
terrorism in Walzer's work in order to show how such definitions not only carry normative force, but also
effectively--and without justification-~make normative distinctions. Asad writes: I am not interested here in
the question, "When are particular acts of violence to be condemned as evil, and what are the moral limits
to justified counter-violence." I am trying to think instead about the following question: "What does the
adoption of particular definitions of death dealing do to military conduct in the world. Asad's point is that
L Armed Forces
Aff makes war more frequent and worse the reduction in
physical troops only leads to a shift in offensive military
operations (i.e drones and cybersecurity) where they can
exploit other countries
Druck 12
Judah A., B.A., Brandeis University, 2010; J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School,
2013, Cornell Law Review [Vol. 98:209, DRONING ON: THE WAR POWERS
RESOLUTION AND THE NUMBING EFFECT OF TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN
WARFARE, http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/ research/cornell-lawreview/upload/Druck-final.pdf)
Despite the limited nature of the U.S. intervention, questions concerning the legality of the Presidents
actions quickly arose.6 Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR),7 which was enacted in the wake of
protests during the Vietnam War, the President is required to cease any use of military forces in
hostilities within sixty days of the conflicts beginning unless he receives congressional authorization to
the contrary.8 Having acted without any support from Congress in the first sixty days, the President had
seemingly presented a clear example of a WPR violation. Yet President Obama and State Department legal
adviser Harold Koh rejected this view by arguing that the use of force in Libya had not involved the type of
hostilities covered by the WPR.9 Emphasizing the absence of U.S. casualties and lack of exposure to
exchanges of fire with hostile forces, the President stood firmly behind his decision to intervene in Libya
without consulting Congress.10 Legislators, pundits, and academics alike broadly criticized this legal
generally failed to prevent presidents from using military action in an arguably illegal manner.13 In those
situations, courts,14 legislators,15 and social movements16 have failed to challenge this sort of
we
can examine the apathetic treatment of President Obamas actions
in Libya in a different light, one that focuses on the changing nature
and conception of warfare itself. Contrary to larger scale conflicts
like the Vietnam War, where public (and political) outrage set the
stage for Congresss assertion of war-making power through the
WPR,17 the recent U.S. intervention did not involve a draft , nor a
change in domestic industry (requiring, for example, civil- ians to ration food), and,
perhaps most importantly, did not result in any American casualties .18
presidential action, setting the stage for President Obamas similar neglect of the WPR. But perhaps
Consequently, most analyses of the Libyan campaign focused on its monetary costs and other economic
harms to American taxpayers.19 This type of input seems too nebulous to cause any major controversy,
especially when contrasted with the concurrent costs associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.20
In a sense, less is at stake when drones, not human lives, are on the
front lines, limiting the potential motivation of a legislator, judge, or
antiwar activist to check presidential action.21 As a result, the level
of nonexecutive involvement in foreign military affairs has
decreased. The implications are unsettling: by ameliorating many of the
concerns often associated with large-scale wars, technology-driven
warfare has effectively removed the publics social and political
limitations that previously discouraged a President from using
L - Crisis Focus
Default to structural impacts and social changenuclear war
doesnt cause extinctiontheir existential framing causes
serial policy failure and eliminates a focus on prevention
western Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States. The majority of the
world's population - in places such as Africa, South America and South Asia would be unscathed. Writer Jonathan Schell in his book The Fate of the
Earth argued that nuclear war could indeed lead to human extinction,
something he called "the second death" - the first death being one's own
death - and therefore the issue was of paramount importance (Schell, 1982).
Schell's argument relied on the effects of ozone depletion and was not
supported by scientific work at the time. In 1983, scientists reported on
new studies of the effect of dust and smoke lofted into the upper atmosphere
by nuclear explosions and subsequent fires, blocking the sun and leading to
lowered temperatures, a consequence called "nuclear winter." Although once
again the spectre of extinction was hinted at, it was never likely that cold
weather and darkness could kill everyone; it would affect countries in the
northern hemisphere most severely (Pittock, 1987). Atmospheric scientist
Carl Sagan used the prospect of nuclear winter to argue that immediate
drastic cuts in nuclear arsenals were imperative (Sagan 1983-84). However,
this seemed to have little effect on nuclear weapons states. While
debates over the effects of nuclear war continued, this seemed to have little
effect on popular opinion. After all, prior to nuclear winter studies, people
already thought nuclear war was devastating. But this belief did not
translate into popular action. With the end of the cold war in 1989, the
international movement against nuclear war faded into virtual invisibility.
Whereas in 1982 millions of people had marched against nuclear war, less
than a decade later most peace organisations had shrunk to a few core
campaigners. The peace movement periodically surged in following years,
most dramatically in 1990-91 against the first Gulf war and in 2003 against
the invasion of Iraq. The issue of nuclear war had dropped from the main
agenda. Yet this was not because the danger had disappeared. US and
Russian nuclear arsenals declined in size after the 1980s but remained ample
to kill tens of millions of people and possibly trigger nuclear winter. The
government of Pakistan in 1998 demonstrated nuclear capability and in 20012 tensions between India and Pakistan dramatically increased: a nuclear war
was averted, but it may have been a near miss. The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, a magazine addressing nuclear and other matters, since 1947 has
published a "doomsday clock" indicating the number of minutes until
midnight, with midnight signifying nuclear war. The editors over the years
have moved the clock nearer or further from midnight depending on their
assessment of the global risk of nuclear war. Even though the anti-nuclear
war movement faded after the 1980s, the Bulletin 's doomsday clock is still
ominously close to midnight. Although the risk and likely consequences of
nuclear war seem less today than during the height of the cold war,
significant dangers remain, including existing arsenals, nuclear terrorism and
the possibility of more governments developing nuclear weapons (Cirincione
2008). Nuclear war, as a social issue, has several important similarities with
climate change. Both are enormous in their potential impacts on the
environment and human life. Both seem to have a tipping point beyond which
catastrophe seems unavoidable or irreversible: the outbreak of nuclear war
and positive feedback momentum in global warming. Both issues are remote
in the sense that there are few impacts on most people in the world in the
here and now: they are looming problems. If or when they eventuate, there
will be major effects on future generations. Both, so it seems to many
campaigners, seem to require governments to act, even though governments
have played major roles in causing the problems. Nuclear war would, most
probably, be a sudden event, whereas climate change is occurring gradually.
Even so, there is a similarity in knowledge about these events. Nuclear war
could occur any time, though it is more probable at times of heightened
international tension: there is a significant uncertainty about whether and
when nuclear war might occur. There are also significant uncertainties
concerning climate change: how fast it is occurring and when key events such
as melting of Arctic ice might happen. The similarities between the issues of
nuclear war and climate change suggest that campaigners should try to learn
lessons from previous movements (Overy 1982; Young 1984). In particular,
the trajectory of the international movements against nuclear war offers
several lessons for climate change campaigners. Firstly, the anti-nuclearweapons movements expanded dramatically yet collapsed just a few years
later, even though the underlying problem - the risk of major catastrophe
from nuclear war - remained much the same. This suggests that movements
should aim to become sustainable, building structures or approaches that can
maintain popular involvement over the long term. Secondly, crisis framing
was insufficient to create the huge mobilisation necessary to bring about
fundamental change in the nuclear system. Indeed, campaigners using
thinking like that of Jonathan Schell and Carl Sagan, who argued that nuclear
war was the ultimate catastrophe, failed to impart their sense of crisis to
government decision-makers. Thirdly, crisis framing appeared to put an
emphasis on short-term solutions implemented by governments - an
orientation to reformism (Roberts 1979). This sort of framing neglected the
development of long-term activism to bring about changes in the structure of
state system that underlies the nuclear threat (Barnet 1972; Kovel 1983;
Martin 1984). Ever since the development of nuclear weapons, opponents
have argued that they are so horrible that they should never be used. Yet
numerous governments have developed and deployed them, their leaders
seemingly unperturbed by arguments based on the common good. Antinuclear movements have come and gone and nuclear armaments have
remained, even though the alleged justification for having them - the threat
from the enemy - appeared to disappear with the end of the cold war. The
persistence of nuclear armaments suggests that the driving forces behind
them are deeper than the standard justification offered by governments:
deterrence. Arguably, ongoing commitments to nuclear weapons - and to
military strength more generally - are linked to the maintenance of state
power, the link between state power and corporate interests (including via
military-industrial complexes), military systems, and science and technology
geared to military priorities. Whatever the precise explanation, the point here
is that getting rid of nuclear weapons is not just a matter of convincing a few
people at the top that the world would be better off without them - that has
been attempted for decades without much success. Nuclear weapons are part
of an institutionalised war system. That means that getting rid of them
has to be a long-term process of social change, including challenges to the
systems in which the nuclear mentality thrives, and developing alternatives.
Moving forward on this long-term process requires vision, commitment and
strategic thinking. Alarming people by the spectre of nuclear devastation and
the possibility of human extinction might work for short-term goals but has
had limited success in helping long-term efforts to transform the war system.
There is another disadvantage of seeing nuclear war as an all-or-nothing
struggle, as either preventing nuclear war or suffering the ultimate
catastrophe. It means peace activists are not prepared for the aftermath of
an actual nuclear war (Martin 1982c). It is possible that a nuclear exchange
could be limited, for example a few bombs exploded in a hot spot such as
the Middle East or South Asia, an attack by terrorists who have acquired
weapons, or an accidental launch of nuclear missiles. The result could be
massive loss of life - from tens of thousands of people to a few million, for
example - but still far from putting human survival at risk, indeed less
than some previous wars. A limited nuclear exchange is a possibility, but
peace activists are completely unprepared because so much campaigning
has used crisis framing with the message "we'd better stop nuclear
weapons or it's all over." This would be like fire brigades putting all
their energy into warning people about the consequences of fires
but not preparing to deal with an actual one. Nuclear war creates much
bigger fires than any brigade has had to deal with, but the principle is the
same.
Alternative
Ali 15
(Tariq, Tariq Ali is a British Pakistani writer, journalist, and filmmaker and
editor of New Left Review, How to End Empire, published 2/13/15, date
accessed 8/2/15, Jacobin Magazine,
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/tariq-ali-imperialism-extremecentre/)//JS
Capitalism was once considered the epitome of economic evil, to such an
extent that until recently the very word was avoided by its practitioners or
apologists; it was the system that dared not speak its name. Freedom was
the preferred euphemism during most of the twentieth century. No longer.
Capitalism has outed itself and, despite its troubles, is now lauded by banker
and politician, portentous pundit and airhead breakfast TV host alike, on the
grounds that no alternative is or ever could be desirable. Therefore the least
departure from capitalist norms on any continent, however moderately
expressed or practiced, arouses the frenzy of the privileged and their
retinues. Fear of the unexpected uprisings, electoral revolts that
challenge the status quo, street protests by the young, peasant
jacqueries compels the global elites to depend, in the last
instance, on the threat or use of US military strength to settle every
dispute in their favor. This creates a level playing field for the global
rich alone, regardless of the resulting slaughter. Baghdad, Helmand,
Tripoli, Kinshasa tell the tale. Not since the interwar years has conflict
been incited so shamelessly, and with such frightening frivolity. The
combination of unchallengeable military power and the political
intoxication it produces sweeps all else to the side. What the whole
world knows to be false is proclaimed by the United States to be the
truth, with media networks, vassals, and acolytes obediently in tow .
The triumph of crude force is portrayed as a mark of intelligence or courage;
criminal arrogance is described as moral energy. Of course, such
aggression doesnt always succeed politically and, in most cases, the
chaos it unleashes is much worse than what existed before. But the
economic gains are palpable: the privatization of Libyan and Iraqi oil
are the most salient examples. How can hope be sustained in such a
world? First, by shedding all illusions about the capacity of the
rulers of the world to reform themselves . The conditions and
circumstances that have enabled US imperial power to reach its
present level of ascendancy are hardly a secret. And the questions
currently being debated are extremely relevant. What are the limits of US
power? What factors might contribute to its decline? How is US hegemony
exercised today? The answers would take into account Americas size, natural
resources, technology, manpower, and military superiority, compared to
those of its economic rivals, and also consider how long domestic consent to
such an existence is liable to continue. A well-meaning, if obvious, shortcut is
to indulge in wishful thinking, which comes in various guises. The simplest of
these queries the very notion of an imperial United States of America,
especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some write of the
differences between the old European pattern of colonization and the current
variant, employing a sleight of mind to give Washington a clean bill of health.
Such a view ignores institutions and emphasizes individuals. To present the
aggressive post-9/11 forward march as the initiative of crazies
(Cheney/Rumsfeld), or a dumb and malign George W. Bush,
encourages amnesia. The fact that Obama/Clinton have effectively
continued the policies of the preceding administration and , in some
cases, gone beyond them suggests that Bush and his associates did
not have a monopoly on craziness. The political literature on the
decline and coming fall of the American Empire has proliferated in recent
years, and is equally unsatisfactory. There is an air of desperation.
Setbacks are interpreted as crushing defeats, while deluded hopes
fasten onto the rise of China, or Putins Russia, or even onto political
Islam. In reality, the imperial highway is unconquered and
unconquerable from without; the only serious exit route lies within
the country. What combination of social forces at home can defeat
the labyrinthine power structures of the United States? However
bleak such a vision might appear at the moment, there is no other on the
horizon. A good patriot today is made to feel that she must, of necessity,
also be pro-imperialist. More skeptical citizens who believe that the
Empires military bases should be dismantled, its troops brought
home, its military expenditure reduced, and America itself redefined
as just a large state among others, only using force when it is
directly threatened, are viewed as bad patriots, which is to say, little
more than backstabbing traitors. They are by default the enemy within.
They are regarded as such not only at home, but also by those who
fear US withdrawal abroad: vassal politicians and states in Europe,
Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the loyal few in South America. The
rulers of the only vassal continent Australia would, given its geography,
be equally disturbed to contemplate independence. Yet in both the Arab
world and the heartlands of Western capitalism, the systemic order imposed
through the Washington Consensus since the collapse of the Soviet Union has
appeared to be in forward flight. The Arab world seeks to escape its recent
history, while some European states, in the grip of parliamentary paralysis,
dream of external deliverance from the very bankers who were responsible
for the crash of 2008. The atrophy of the productive economy in the
United States and large swathes of the European Union reveal a malady
that was already at an advanced stage, even as some claimed that
the disease had been defeated forever. In response, the optimists
argued that the US was confronted by an involution similar to the one that
had afflicted Britain at the heyday of its empire. Questions long treated
as defunct began to be raised again, if only on the margins of the
political system. The impact of this doubt on popular consciousness
has spread rapidly. The events have laid bare the weaknesses of the
system, exposed its bald patches, and revealed yet again that the
motive force underlying empires, wars, and conquest for the last two
thousand years is not ideology, but the drive to accumulate and
monopolize the distribution and flow of wealth by all necessary
means. The struggle to extract and transport gold and silver may
have been replaced by split-second, push-button transfers on tiny
machines, like the Thompson gun has been replaced by the drone, but
the masters of our world are playing the same ruthless game as
their forebears. 2011 witnessed the concatenation of two crises. One was
symbolized by the spate of Arab uprisings challenging indigenous and
Western-backed despotisms in the name of freedom. These events were
much more reminiscent of the 1848 upheavals in continental Europe than of
the springtime of the peoples of 1989, which effectively exchanged one
form of dependence for another, seeing in neoliberal capitalism the only
future. The other blew in like a breeze through public spaces and university
campuses once again, and the noise of mass uproar could be heard on more
than one continent. Mediterranean Europe in particular was engulfed by
general strikes and mass mobilizations numbering millions. Do these
disruptions herald the birth of a new social order, inside or outside
capitalism? The answer from the upper classes is a resounding No. They
have been hard at work using the state to bail out (Europe) or stimulate (US)
the existing neoliberal system. The notion that there might be a managerial
revolt from within the system, a technocrats uprising, belongs to the realm of
science fiction. It has no precedent in history. Any change from above or
within the existing structures is unlikely, unless the threats from
below become too strong to resist . The democratic shell within
which Western capitalism has, until recently, prospered is showing a
number of cracks. Since the nineties democracy has, in the West, taken the
form of an extreme center, in which center-left and center-right collude to
preserve the status quo; a dictatorship of capital that has reduced political
parties to the status of the living dead. How did we get here? Following the
collapse of communism in 1991, Edmund Burkes notion that in all societies
consisting of different classes, certain classes must necessarily be
uppermost, and that the apostles of equality only change and pervert the
natural order of things, became the wisdom of the age, embraced by
servant and master alike. Nevertheless, money corrupted politics. Leading
politicians of the extreme center became rich during their years in power.
Many were given consultancies as soon as they left office, as part of a
sweetheart deal with the companies concerned. Throughout the heartlands
Impacts
Structural Violence
Structural violence is the proximate cause of all war- creates priming that
psychologically structures escalation
This large and at first sight messy Part VII is central to this anthologys thesis. It
encompasses everything from the routinized, bureaucratized, and utterly banal
violence of children dying of hunger and maternal despair in Northeast Brazil
(Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33) to elderly African Americans dying of heat stroke
in Mayor Dalys version of US apartheid in Chicagos South Side (Klinenberg,
Chapter 38) to the racialized class hatred expressed by British Victorians in their
olfactory disgust of the smelly working classes (Orwell, Chapter 36). In these
readings violence is located in the symbolic and social structures that
overdetermine and allow the criminalized drug addictions, interpersonal
bloodshed, and racially patterned incarcerations that characterize the US inner
city to be normalized (Bourgois, Chapter 37 and Wacquant, Chapter 39).
Violence also takes the form of class, racial, political self-hatred and adolescent
self-destruction (Quesada, Chapter 35), as well as of useless (i.e. preventable),
rawly embodied physical suffering, and death (Farmer, Chapter 34). Absolutely
central to our approach is a blurring of categories and distinctions between
wartime and peacetime violence. Close attention to the little violences
produced in the structures, habituses, and mentalites of everyday life shifts
our attention to pathologies of class, race, and gender inequalities. More
important, it interrupts the voyeuristic tendencies of violence studies that
risk publicly humiliating the powerless who are often forced into complicity
with social and individual pathologies of power because suffering is often a
solvent of human integrity and dignity. Thus, in this anthology we are
positing a violence continuum comprised of a multitude of small wars and
invisible genocides (see also Scheper- Hughes 1996; 1997; 2000b) conducted
in the normative social spaces of public schools, clinics, emergency rooms,
hospital wards, nursing homes, courtrooms, public registry offices, prisons,
detention centers, and public morgues. The violence continuum also refers to the
ease with which humans are capable of reducing the socially vulnerable into
expendable nonpersons and assuming the license - even the duty - to kill, maim,
or soul-murder. We realize that in referring to a violence and a genocide
continuum we are flying in the face of a tradition of genocide studies that argues
for the absolute uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust and for vigilance with
respect to restricted purist use of the term genocide itself (see Kuper 1985;
Chaulk 1999; Fein 1990; Chorbajian 1999). But we hold an opposing and
alternative view that, to the contrary, it is absolutely necessary to make just such
existential leaps in purposefully linking violent acts in normal times to those of
abnormal times. Hence the title of our volume: Violence in War and in Peace. If
(as we concede) there is a moral risk in overextending the concept of genocide
into spaces and corners of everyday life where we might not ordinarily think to
find it (and there is), an even greater risk lies in failing to sensitize ourselves, in
misrecognizing protogenocidal practices and sentiments daily enacted as
normative behavior by ordinary good-enough citizens. Peacetime crimes,
such as prison construction sold as economic development to
impoverished communities in the mountains and deserts of California, or
the evolution of the criminal industrial complex into the latest peculiar
institution for managing race relations in the United States (Waquant,
Chapter 39), constitute the small wars and invisible genocides to which
we refer. This applies to African American and Latino youth mortality
statistics in Oakland, California, Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York
City. These are invisible genocides not because they are secreted away
or hidden from view, but quite the opposite. As Wittgenstein observed, the
things that are hardest to perceive are those which are right before our
eyes and therefore taken for granted. In this regard, Bourdieus partial and
unfinished theory of violence (see Chapters 32 and 42) as well as his concept
of misrecognition is crucial to our task. By including the normative everyday
forms of violence hidden in the minutiae of normal social practices - in the
architecture of homes, in gender relations, in communal work, in the exchange of
gifts, and so forth - Bourdieu forces us to reconsider the broader meanings and
status of violence, especially the links between the violence of everyday life and
explicit political terror and state repression, Similarly, Basaglias notion of
peacetime crimes - crimini di pace - imagines a direct relationship between
wartime and peacetime violence. Peacetime crimes suggests the possibility that
war crimes are merely ordinary, everyday crimes of public consent applied
systematically and dramatically in the extreme context of war. Consider the
parallel uses of rape during peacetime and wartime, or the family resemblances
between the legalized violence of US immigration and naturalization border raids
on illegal aliens versus the US government- engineered genocide in 1938,
known as the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Peacetime crimes suggests that
everyday forms of state violence make a certain kind of domestic peace possible.
Internal stability is purchased with the currency of peacetime crimes, many of
which take the form of professionally applied strangle-holds. Everyday forms of
state violence during peacetime make a certain kind of domestic peace
possible. It is an easy-to-identify peacetime crime that is usually maintained as a
public secret by the government and by a scared or apathetic populace. Most
subtly, but no less politically or structurally, the phenomenal growth in the United
States of a new military, postindustrial prison industrial complex has taken place
in the absence of broad-based opposition, let alone collective acts of civil
Answers To Blocks
As part of their commitment to the development of agency, each of the Louisville debaters engages in
recognition of their privilege, in an attempt to make their social locations visible and relevant to their
rhetorical stance.
FW Proper
The role of the judge should be to facilitate ethical
scholarship and advocaies this means that it is a
question of how we think about problems and construct
solutions not just a the particular policy. We should use
this round to examine system of warfare NOT singular,
flash point, impact scenarios.
Bleiker 03
(Roland, Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland
Discourse and Human Agency Contemporary Political Theory. Avenel:
Mar.Vol. 2, Iss. 1; Page 21-22)
Confronting the difficulties that arise with this dualistic dilemma, I have
sought to advance a positive concept of human agency that is neither
grounded in a stable essence nor dependent upon a presupposed notion of
the subject. The ensuing journey has taken me, painted in very broad
strokes, along the following circular trajectory of revealing and concealing:
discourses are powerful forms of domination. They frame the parameters
of thinking processes. They shape political and social interactions. Yet,
discourses are not invincible. They may be thin. They may contain cracks.
By moving the gaze from epistemological to ontological spheres, one can
explore ways in which individuals use these cracks to escape aspects of
the discursive order. To recognize the potential for human agency that
opens up as a result of this process, one needs to shift foci again, this time
from concerns with Being to an inquiry into tactical behaviors. Moving
between various hyphenated identities, individuals use ensuing mobile
subjectivities to engage in daily acts of dissent, which gradually transform
societal values. Over an extended period of time, such tactical expressions
of human agency gradually transform societal values. By returning to
epistemological levels, one can then conceptualize how these transformed
discursive practices engender processes of social change. I have used
everyday forms of resistance to illustrate how discourses not only frame
and subjugate our thoughts and behaviour, but also offer possibilities for
human agency. Needless to say, discursive dissent is not the only practice
of resistance that can exert human agency. There are many political actions
that seek immediate changes in policy or institutional structures, rather
than 'mere' shifts in societal consciousness. Although some of these
actions undoubtedly achieve results, they are often not as potent as they
seem. Or, rather, their enduring effect may well be primarily discursive,
rather than institutional. Nietzsche (1982b, 243) already knew that the
greatest events 'are not our loudest but our stillest hours.' This is why he
stressed that the world revolves 'not around the inventors of new noise,
but around the inventors of new values.' And this is why, for Foucault too,
the crucial site for political investigations are not institutions, even though
they are often the place where power is inscribed and crystallized. The
fundamental point of anchorage of power relations, Foucault claims, is
always located outside institutions, deeply entrenched within the social
nexus. Hence, instead of looking at power from the vantage point of
institutions, one must analyse institutions from the standpoint of power
relations (Foucault, 1982, 219-222).
(1) the subjection of the processes of whitestream schooling to critical pedagogical analyses;
(2)
the project of
decolonization demands students to acquire not only the
knowledge of "the oppressor" but also the skills to dismantle
and negotiate the implications of such knowledge.
Concurrently, traditional perspectives on power, justice, and
relationships are essential, both to defend against further cooptation and to build intellectual solidaritya collectivity of
indigenous knowledge. In short, "the time has come for people
who are from someplace Indian to take back the discourse on
Indians" (Alfred 1999,143).
and significance of each separate component. I wish to underscore that
In order to justify
and legitimize
certain courses of action , and to render these possible and effective, scientific
knowledge forms an important component both for efforts of persuading and
mobilizing different groups, and for formulating and establishing policy practices. This
can he grasped through the concept of poli1y stories. A policy story can be defined as follows: A set of
factual, causal claims, normative principles and a desired objective,
all of which are constructed as a more or less coherent argument a story which points to
a problem to be addressed and the desirability and adequacy of adopting a specific policy approach to
resolve it. This conceptualization incorporates how politically motivated actors integrate scientifically
produced imowledge in the form of facts, concepts or theories in order to i) convince others that a certain
phenomenon is a problem, (ii) demonstrate that this problem is best understood in a certain way as shown
by the facts presented, and (iii) link these factual claims to normative principles giving moral force to the
argument that it should be resolved. This perspective thus subjects the factual dimensions of political
processes to the interests and normative commitments of actors, in the sense that knowledge is used to
justify and legitimize calls for adopting certain policies to resolve what is seen to be a problem that 'ought'
to be resolved. The formulation is partly inspired by Rein and Schuss (1991. 265), who refer to
the
knowledge that once formed part of an argument for a policy is now
story, and the establishment in practice of the policy advocated in a policy story: That is:
AT: Permutation
Praxis is key the permutation is politically and
intellectually incoherent since it foregoes an
unconditional commitment to stopping the military
industrial complex combining our strategies ensures
cooption
Megoran 08
(Nick, Department of Geography, University of Newcastle, UK, Militarism,
Realism, Just War, or Nonviolence?, Jan 1, Geopolitics, EBSCO, CMR)
Every student
engagement must
not merely
who
also
to morality, and
the political
is
also
the potential of critical geopolitics to be taken seriously outside a small, selfselecting readership. My objection thus far is not to just war theory per se. It provides a framework for reasoning about
warfare that regards it as an evil to be deployed in only exceptional circumstances, and (despite its name), its pre- sumption is against
violence. We liv e in a messy and complicated and vio- lent world. Just war theorys insistence, against realism and militarism, that military
violence is not beyond the le gitimate sphere of moral reasoning is important, and the arguments for the occasional and limited use of force to
restore peace and rectify injustice are strong ones. If critical geopolitics wishes to locate itself explicitly in this school of thought, it will find
compel- ling reasons for doing so and many allies already there. By this process, it will certainly refine and advance the project (of critical
geopolitics) with an injection of intellectual rigour. As I have suggested with reference to Toals critique of the 1991 US war on Iraq as being
about American identity, it could in turn also make an original contribution to thought about the category of just intention . However, whilst
about exposing the power-knowledge relationships at the heart of geopolitical reasoning, 91 and denaturalising the global order by portraying it as socially and historically constructed 92 through an examination of the geographical assumpti ons, designations, and understandings
that enter into the making of world politics 93 and how places and people are stitched together to narrate and explain events. 94 It is all of
explicitly eschews the resort to force, is a project that has only recently begun to be studied and
theorised in a system atic manner, and ha s already yielded many promising results. 96 Personally, like a growing number of people, I am
persuaded by the case for a Christian praxis of nonviolence . 97 Geopolitics
has a long and bloody history of providing arguments for war 98
critical geopolitics should reject the temptation to provide more , and
place its capa- bilities and insights in the service of this exciting relatively new and under- resourced proj ect,
theory , realism, or militarism . In his history of twentieth-century geopolitical thought, Polelle observed that it led its
believers to be resigned to the necessity of violent international conflict. 99 It would be deeply ironic if critical geopolitics we re to make the
same mis- take in the twenty-first.
marginalized groups in the universality of the nation-state, advocating a kind of multicultural nationalism. Liberal scholars of this era
rea- soned "democracy could not 'live up to its faith in the potentialities of
human beings' if all Americans were not allowed the opportunity to
participate" and "by the same token, American bodies" could not represent or
"operate as the new carriers of the national narrative of expandable
democracy if they were segregated spatially and, disenfranchised legally,
economically, and culturally" (Mitchell 2001, 54). Thus, in the postwar years,
"the philosophy of American pluralism was framed as an extension
of equality of opportunity to all members of the national body,
particularly those disenfranchised by racism" (Mitchell 2001, 55). As it
evolved, this general spirit informed edu- cational theory and practice in the
Progressive education movement of the 1930s and 1940s, the intergroup
education movement of the 1950s, and the multicultural movement from the
1960s to the present day. Contemporary revolutionary scholars critique
liberal models of democracy and education, naming their "politics of
inclusion' as an accomplice to the broader project of assimilation.
Specifically, they argue that such models ig- nore the historic,
economic, and material conditions of "difference," conspic- uously
averting the whitestream gaze away from issues of power. Critical
scholars therefore maintain that while liberal theorists may invest in
the "the- oretical idealism" of democracy, they remain "amnesiatic
toward the contin- ued lived realities of democratically induced
oppression" (Richardson and Villenas 2000, 260). In contradistinction to
liberal models of democratic education, revolu- tionary scholars call attention
to the "democratically induced" subjugation and oppression experienced by
colonized and marginalized groups. Building upon this understanding, such
scholars work to reenvision American ed- ucation as a project "rooted in a
radical and liberatory politics," replacing liberal conceptions of democracy
with Marxist formulations of a socialist democracy (Richardson and Villenas
2000, 261). In so doing, they recon- stitute democracy as a perpetually
unfinished process, explicitly linked to an anticapitalist agenda. As such, the
discourse on education and democracy is re-centered around issues of power,
dominance, subordination, and stratification.
Affirmative
Bezroukov 15
Dr. Nikolai, Senior Internet Security Analyst at BASF Corporation and
webmaster of Open Source Software University, Neoliberalism as a New,
More Dangerous, Form of Corporatism, Last . modified July 27,
http://softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/index.shtml
agency, the private companies are not required to tell the public
exactly what they do, often citing business confidentiality (Georgette
Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch in
Darfur quoted in Chatterjee 2004). The shared impression though is that the
growing reliance on contractors does hamper the institutional mechanisms
that usually trigger political discussion and control over armed operations.
The failure of institutional mechanisms that ought to trigger debates
restricts the voices that are heard in the political discussion. One of
the key functions of public debate about military involvement in
conflicts is that this debate ensures that the various political
alternatives and options are raised and debated. This is a concern
not only for opposition policy-makers, lobbyists and NGO groups who
resent the concentration of information and control at the level of
the executive and the security administration. The military
establishment which relies heavily on institutional mechanisms to
be heard is also concerned about current developments. They
worry about the unorthodox channels through which policy makers
get their information and the risk of being pulled into (a growing
number of) overseas adventures (Cohen 2005).
The evolving dispositions and positions in the field of security
accentuate the displacement of political debate away from the public
realm. The expert status of private contractors and their increasing authority
places narrow and technical discussions of conflicts at the centre.
Contractors professionalism is the main reason for this: they are trained to
see the world as security professionals, to analyse security problems and
suggest solutions. The competitive pressure of the markets where each firm
has to sell its vision goes far in explaining the pressure these professionals
are under to promote their particular version. The result is that the lack of
institutional prompted debate is combined with a displacement of broader
public debate by narrow, technically oriented discussions with focus is on the
responsibility to effectively supply the security demanded and the
assumptions is that markets are quasi markets are best suited for the task.
Disappearing from view in the process are voices that advocate an
alternative understandings of the conflict, suggest privileging other
means than military ones and other strategies.
alternatives prevent
the use of courts for redistributive purposes in the interest of
equality, by consigning the rights of disadvantaged citizens to
institutions with minimal power to enforce or protect them . It is,
legal institutions is preserved, and the stability of the social system reinforced. Not incidentally,
litigationbe eliminated.)
,
hardly a novel development in American history but one that needs little encouragement from the spread of alternative dispute-settlement
institutions. It is social context and political choice that determine whether courts, or alternative institutions, can render justice more or less
accessibleand to whom. Both can be discretionary, arbitrary, domineeringand unjust. Law can symbolize justice, or conceal repression. It
can reduce exploitation, or facilitate it. It can prohibit the abuse of power, or disguise abuse in procedural forms. It can promote equality, or
communitarian search for justice without law has deteriorated beyond recognition into a stunted off-shoot of the legal system. The historical
But
injustice without law is an even worse possibility, which misguided
enthusiasm for alternative dispute settlement now seems likely to encourage.
progression is clear: from community justice without formal legal institutions to the rule of law, all too often without justice.
Our legal culture too accurately expresses the individualistic and materialistic values that most Americans deeply cherish to inspire optimism
disguised means of preaching incrementalism and thereby maintaining the current power structure. To avoid this, CLS
scholars urge law professors to abandon the case method, give up the effort to find rationality and order in the case
law, and teach in an unabashedly political fashion.
The
CLS
familiar, imperialistic and wrong . Minorities know from bitter experience that occasional court
victories do not mean the Promised Land is at hand . The critique is imperialistic in that it tells
minorities and other oppressed peoples how they should interpret
events affecting them. A court order directing a housing authority to
disburse funds for heating in subsidized housing may postpone the
To help break the mental chains and clear the way for the
creation of a new and better world, Crits practice "trashing"a
process by which law and social structures are shown to be
contingent, inconsistent and irrationally supportive of the status
qua without good reason. CLS scholars' idealism has a familiar ring to minority ears. We
cannot help but be reminded of those fundamentalist preachers who
have assured us that our lot will only improve once we "see the
light" and are "saved."
differently.
that, in a sense,
racism is
part of the DNA of the American legal system, a sort of genetic flaw. I
think that really is a fair statement of the heart of critical race theory. Although I understand the frustration
is wrong. It underestimates
our capacity to change the legal system, and it ignores important parts of our
legal history. In the end, despite the good intentions of people who favor that view, this thesis
of inherent racism will only interfere with public dialogue about racial
issues and make it more difficult for us to confront our important racial
problems today. As I was getting ready to leave for the airport, my wife gave me a final piece of
that leads people to that conclusion, I continue to think that it
advice about this debate. She said, "Don't be too reasonable." Nevertheless, I would like to begin by
stressing some common ground that I think may get lost because the debate format naturally encourages
us to take adversarial positions. In reality, Professor Delgado and I share a great deal in our views of law
and American society. Both of us see the issue of racial inequality as being central and requiring the most
serious possible attention. Both of us reject the conservative dogma of color blindness, and both of us, as I
think will be shown tonight, believe that one imperative need is for dialogue and discussion of this topic if
we are to make any progress. So we do have something in common. But we also have a fundamental
disagreement, I think, a disagreement that is illustrated by the fact that we are on the opposite sides of
this debate about the inherent racism of American law. As Professor Delgado said in his introductory
remarks, critical race theory's view is essentially that racism is embedded in the DNA of American law. And
that in effect, racism is not merely a widespread blemish on American law, but is instead, a radical
infection that goes right to the heart of the legal system. I disagree with that for reasons that I will
hopefully make clear. *375 I think that
legal system. I think that it is based on a misunderstanding of some of the fundamental principles of
the system. I think in the end, despite what I know are Professor Delgado's good intentions, that the
inherent racism position (and critical race theory, in general) risks being more destructive
than constructive in terms of advancing our national conversation on race. I noticed that Professor Delgado
postponed the issue of inherent racism, or the inherency of racism, until his next ten minutes. I may also
put off, to some extent, my discussion of that point as well, though I will refer to it briefly. Let me begin
with the vision of the American legal system that Professor Delgado presented in his first twenty minutes. I
do not intend to deny the reality of the dark side of American law in American legal history, and that dark
middle class in the last generation or generation and a half, and the *376 integration of important
American institutions such as big-city police forces, which are important in the day-to-day lives of many
minority people. The military has sometimes been described as the most successfully integrated institution
in American society. We all know, as well, that the number of minority lawyers has risen substantially. In
state and federal legislatures, there was no such thing as a black caucus in Congress thirty or forty years
ago, because there would not have been enough black people present to call a caucus. And do not forget
the considerable evidence of sharp changes in white attitudes over that period in a more favorable and
tolerant direction. It is true that there is much in our history that we can only look back on with a feeling of
the
accusation that the American legal system is inherently racist lacks
perspective in the sense that it seems to imply that there is something
specifically American about this problem. If you look around the world, societies
shame, but there is also much to be proud of that we should not forget. I also think that
virtually everywhere are struggling with the problems of ethnic and cultural pluralism, and are trying to
find ways to incorporate diverse groups into their governing structures. I think if you look around the world,
including even countries like France which Professor Delgado referred to, it is far from clear that we are
You
can always paint a picture of despair by only focusing on the things that
go wrong, and much of the critical race theory literature that I have read along those lines reminds me
doing worse than the others. In some ways, I think we are doing considerably better than most.
a great deal of the work that is being done by people at the opposite end of the political spectrum. If you
read Robert Bork's latest book "Slouching Toward Gomorrah," [FN22] it reads exactly like Derrick Bell,
[FN23] only in reverse. While Bell sees an inherent flaw of racism that we can never overcome and that will
haunt us forever, Bork sees an inherent flaw of egalitarianism that we can never overcome and that has
want to say a few words about that now, although I will probably need to come back to that after Professor
Delgado's next segment. It seems to me the most powerful criticisms of our society or our legal system are
that it does not live up to its own ideals. For example, how could Thomas Jefferson, the author of the
Declaration of Independence, also have been an owner of slaves? That puts the question in stark terms.
How can a legal system that prides itself on equality still allow some of the outcomes that Professor
Delgado has detailed? I think those are powerful criticisms. But what I find most disturbing about much of
critical race theory is the argument that it is not the performance that is the problem-it is the ideals. That it
is not that Jefferson did not live up to the Declaration of Independence, it is that the ideals of the
Enlightenment, the ideals of the Declaration of Independence themselves are inherently and "genetically"
flawed, that are themselves inherently racist. That, as Professor Delgado has said before, "normal legal
discourse" is itself racist-or, as Alex Johnson has said, that ordinary, supposedly neutral standards of merit
are secretly color coded for Whites only, or are presented in a white voice. [FN24] One of the primary tasks
that we took on ourselves in the book was to try to both document the academic support for that position
and then to try to explain why we considered it to be so fatally flawed. It obviously resonates with a lot of
postmodernist and post-critical legal studies scholarship. There is a sort of trendiness to talking about the
forth. As a result, people invest their time combing the Internal Revenue Code for deductions that might
seem *378 more favorable to one group than another group, rather than looking at what is the stark and
overwhelming problem-not how people's income is taxed but who is earning how much and why. So we
become more and more obsessed with looking for more and more subtle flaws. Furthermore, at least in the
it leads to a breakdown in
debate, even both among people who are essentially on the liberal side of the spectrum and indisputes
with their opponents. For example, consider the attacks on liberals like Randy Kennedy, a black professor
on the Harvard Law School faculty. We see how people, who are in some sense fundamentally allies, who
all support affirmative action and think racial problems are very important, find it impossible to hold a
discussion because of this search for motives, hidden agendas, and biases. We see the same thing within
critical legal studies in which two figures in the movement, MarkTushnet and Gary Peller, bludgeoned each
other in the pages of the Georgetown Law Journal [FN25] about their motivations and potential racism, etc.
I do not think that is the way we can move forward. This thesis also has been destructive of dialogue with
outsiders, with the rest of American society, with people who are not already believers in critical race
theory or the inherent racism of American society and law. For example, at my own law school, a young
member of our faculty, Jim Chen, wrote an article about racial inter-marriage [FN26] that was considered to
be inappropriate by some other minority group members. An entire issue [FN27] of the Iowa Law Review
was published, dedicated not only to criticizing his views, which I think was entirely appropriate, but to
speculations about the kinds of twisted motives that could lead a member of a minority group to take a
Delgado earlier, on Daniel Moynihan, who has been a staunch liberal, strongly concerned about minorities
during his entire career, and yet has been anathemized for making what were considered to be politically
*379 incorrect statements. I do not think this is going to lead us forward. And finally, what I fear the most
is the response that seemed to be implied by one of the audience questions earlier. If it is true that
American society is inherently racist, doesn't that mean that it is essentially hopeless? Now this conclusion
does not logically follow from that premise, any more than it logically follows that if certain character traits
have a genetic basis then it is hopeless to do anything about them. But nevertheless, we all recognize that
when we are talking about individuals and biology, these genetic theories tend to discourage the idea of
reform, and tend to reinforce, as a matter of social reality, the view that any bad behavior that we see is
just inherent. I think we can expect to see the same kind of thing when we are dealing with the sociological
equivalent involving the claim that there is this inherent genetic flaw in American society. You can see this
most clearly in Derrick Bell's writings, which are redolent of despair and which, in that respect, curiously
resemble Robert Bork's writings, who is similarly convinced that the genetic flaws of American society will
prevent it from ever achieving his vision of justice. It is true that we cannot afford to forget our history. It is
that if we remain
totally obsessed with the flaws of the past, fixated on their
inevitability, we are unlikely to be able to move past them and move forward. And
in particular, it seems to me that if we approach today's problems primarily as an issue
in finger-pointing, in blaming somebody or another, or in finding the culprit, then we are not
likely to be able to unite our society in a quest toward attacking those
serious problems.
true that much of that history is unfortunate, if not worse. But it is also true
Aff Perm
Perm: do both. We should strive for a pragmatic
synthesis of critical theory and political analysis. This
translates to real world change.
Guerra-Pujol 2006
[Franscisco, Associate Professor at Catholic University of Puerto Rico School of
Law, Cornel West, Meet Richard Posner: Towards a Critical-Neoclassical
Synthesis, 17 Berkeley La Raza Law Journal 39]
Thus far we have seen that a critical-neoclassical synthesis is
feasible. Critical theory can benefit from borrowing the
methodologies of economics, while at the same time, the rational
choice and efficiency assumptions of neoclassical theory are not
incompatible with the goals of critical scholars. But when it comes to
policy, no real synthesis appears to be possible. Posnerian economics and
critical theory are just too far apart on matters of policy: the pro-market, free
trade policies of neoclassical theory are radically different from the
collectivist and communitarian policies of critical theory. In fact, while there
are some irreconcilable differences, especially over distributional issues, in
this section I hope to show that the divergence over policy is more apparent
than real. Most commentators tend to automatically associate neoclassical
theory with a particular set of politico-legal policies, specifically, the primacy
of markets and free trade and the sanctity of private property. This 'guilt by
association' is certainly understandable. Neoclassical economists frequently
employ their theories and models to justify pro-market solutions to social
problems. In reality, however, neoclassical economics is actually quite
pragmatic and instrumental when it comes to policy. For example,
neoclassical theory admits the possibility of 'market failures' and
recognizes that, in such cases, markets and property rights may not
necessarily produce the greatest amount of social wealth.
Accordingly, if it can be shown that collective ownership of a
particular resource (such as a public park or a lighthouse) is more
efficient or cost-effective than private ownership, then neoclassical
theory, in principle, favors the collective solution. Even Oliver Wendell
Holmes, a champion of Social Darwinism, eugenics, and laissez-faire
economics, recognized this point: 'I have no a priori objection to socialism any
more than to polygamy. Our public schools and our post office are socialist,
and whenever it is thought to pay I have no objection'.29 This quote captures
the pragmatic nature of neoclassical policy. 30 Notice that the same
pragmatic analysis also applies to such broad concepts as property
rights, political freedom, and individual liberty. People often have
the misconception that neoclassical theory is about economic
freedom and property rights. But neoclassical economics is not
absolutist; it does not value freedom or private property for its own
sake. There are times when liberty and property rights must be
restricted for the greater good. For example, there can be no doubt that
compulsory seat-belt laws or compulsory vaccinations restrict people's
freedom. But if it can be shown that these freedom-reducing policies are a
cost-effective and practical way of reducing accident costs and the spread of
dangerous epidemics, then the economic approach will not object to the
reduction in freedom in these cases. Critical theory could thus adopt this
same pragmatic approach as a point of departure on matters of
policy. Critical scholars must recognize that there are many possible
ways of achieving the goals of anti-subordination and community
building and that some ways are more cost-effective and more
positive-sum than others. Just as neoclassical theory must be open
to the possibility of non-market solutions and collective ownership
(i.e., when such methods are shown to be more cost-effective than
the market for producing social wealth), critical theory must also be
open to market exchange and property rights, especially when such
methods are shown to be effective methods for diminishing
subordination and oppression. In addition to public policy at the
'macro' level, LatCrit guru Francisco Valdes has often talked about
the need for 'performing the theory' (i.e. putting into practice what
we preach).31 After all, there is no point in talking about
antisubordination if we don't engage in this behavior ourselves. For
instance, as critical scholars, we like to emphasize the larger
academic, family, and cultural communities that we belong to. So,
one type of policy question that naturally arises is, what type of
academic communities do we want to belong to? Don't we want to build
a more nurturing and supportive community of scholars, one embracing a
more rich diversity of peoples and viewpoints? In this respect, both
critical scholars and economists could learn from the example of
Aaron Director, a remarkable scholar who died at the age of 102 in
2004. Aaron Director is considered one of founders of the Chicago
school of 'law and economics' (along with Henry Simons, who we met
earlier, and Ronald Coase, William Landes, and Richard Posner). After Henry
Simon's untimely death in 1946, Director was appointed to the law school at
Chicago, where he taught antitrust and established the Journal of Law and
Economics, the first of its kind. According to Gary Becker, Director was
deeply concerned by the problem of wealth inequality, though he
was deeply skeptical of legal intervention in many areas of the
economy, such as rent control and minimum wage laws.32 But
Director's greatest contribution was the true sense of community he
built at Chicago. Instead of publishing articles or remaining aloof
from his students and peers, Director established close personal
relationships with his students and colleagues, mentoring them,
always willing to listen and engage in conversation. It is said that
'Director was at his best in a conversation with one or a few people'
and that 'he was an extraordinary conversationalist'.33 Furthermore,
he was noted for his deep thought, wide reading, and careful
to overwhelm us.
people today are aware that the world, as they know it, may come to an end. This loss of certainty that
my
colleagues and I have worked with tens of thousands of people in North America, Europe, Asia,
and Australia, helping them confront and explore what they know and feel about what is
happening to their world. The purpose of this work, which was first known as Despair and
Empowerment Work, is to overcome the numbing and powerlessness that result
from suppression of painful responses to massively painful realities. As their grief and fear
for the world is allowed to be expressed without apology or argument and validated as a
wholesome, life-preserving response , people break through their avoidance
mechanisms, break through their sense of futility and isolation . Generally what they break
there will be a future is the pivotal psychological reality of our time. Over the past twelve years
It is the distress we feel on behalf of the larger whole of which we are a part.
And, when it is so defined, it serves as a trigger or getaway to a more encompassing sense of
identity, inseparable from the web of life in which we are as intricately connected
as cells in a larger body. This shift in consciousness is an appropriate, adaptive response. For the crisis
that threatens our planet , be it seen in its military, ecological, or social aspects,
derives from a dysfunctional and pathogenic notion of the self . It is a mistake
suffering with.
about our place in the order of things. It is the delusion that the self is so separate and fragile that we must
delineate and defend its boundaries, that it is so small and needy that we must endlessly acquire and
endlessly consume, that it is so aloof that we can as individuals, corporations, nation-states, or as a
species be immune to what we do to other beings.
meaningless, reified compromises such as the proposition that racism originally emerges from capitalist
social relations but then takes on a life of its own. This is not the place to recount this hoary debates
unfortunate history or to parse its myriad expressions. To the extent that it organizes the whiteness
discourse it perpetuates a tendency to formulate American racial dynamics on psychological or other
bases that are disconnected from political economy and the reproduction of labor relations and attendant
from capricious attachments. No doubt, the modern state has undermined traditional values of tolerance
and pluralism, subjecting indigenous society to Western-centered rationality. But tradition can also conceal
refuge in a blind celebration of tradition. Outside, the state continues to inflict a self-producing security
there
are always sites of resistance that can be recovered and sustained. A
rejection of the state as a superfluous leftover of modernity that continues to straitjacket the
South Asian imagination must be linked to the project of creating an ethical and humane order
based on a restructuring of the state system that privileges the mighty and the rich over
dilemma; inside, it has stunted the emergence of more humane forms of political expression. But
the weak and the poor.74 Recognizing the constrictions of the modern Third World state, a
cultural influences, society can constrain or empower ordinary people to act by giving them relatively equal access to the
victimization and practices like white structural oppression belie human agency (e.g., right action). Although ordinary
people like blacks exercised human agency within the crucible of slavery, Critical Race Theory (CRT) builds its
methodology on the idea that law, race, and power oppress ordinary people, denying them the right to live free and to act
purposefully. Race Crits have developed deconstructive approaches to unearth how law and race form powerful, objective
relations of whites over blacks, men over women, natives over foreigners. Relying on this methodology and these
approaches, Race Crits, especially in early writings, analyzed unconscious white racism. Given CRTs early development,
Crits can redress white structural oppression and engage in antisubordination struggles, so that ordinary people can use
their human agency. In this regard, Robert A. Williams advocates for Critical Race Practice (Practice). Eric K. Yamamoto
sues for Critical Race Praxis (Praxis). For Williams, traditional legal scholarship, especially ethereal writings, cannot alter
ordinary peoples lives. Exploiting people of colors personal and social circumstances for institutional gains like tenure,
Williams asserts that these Race Crits become little more than vampires, feeding on a peoples misery, caring selfishly for
themselves, and giving nothing back. By not using their writings to redress day-to-day issues, these Race Crits ignore
ordinary peoples oppression. To overcome this gap, Practice requires left scholars to teach law students, especially
through clinical legal education, how to empower Native people and their perspectives. Under Praxis, Yamamoto argues
that left scholars must serve ordinary peoples practical needs. Right now, these scholars do not relate to political lawyers
and community activists. By existing in separate worlds, neither group has helped to co-create racial justice. As such,
theoretical writings and traditional civil rights strategies move institutions not toward racial justice, but toward liberal
solutions. So long as this gap continues, law will retreat from racial justice. In surmounting this gap, Yamamoto requires
scholars, lawyers, and activists to work together (e.g., consortium). Under Practice or Praxis, Williams and Yamamoto
intend to pursue a justice concept, in which antisubordination becomes the singular end. This end promises to give to
ordinary people, especially those engaged in interracial conflict, the human agency (or empowerment) that they lack. For
example, Yamamoto advocates for a racial group agency, one oddly standing on racial identity and personal
CRT
methodology, Williams and Yamamoto assume that ordinary people like blacks lack
human agency and personal responsibility. They presume that white
responsibility. Unfortunately, Practice and Praxis cannot achieve this end. Relying on classical
structural oppression buries ordinary people alive under the weight of liberal
all
beings have agency. Despite the sheer weight of the legal violence, slaves
never forgot their innate right to be free; they retained a pure consciousness that never
legalisms like Equal Protection, rendering them subtextual victims. I disagree. Pure consciousness is always prior, and
sentient
itself was enslaved. Moreover, slaves acted purposefully when they picked cotton and when they fought to be free.
Slaves planned revolts, killed masters, overseers, and each other, ran away, picked
cotton, and betrayed other co-conspirators; all examples of human agency . Today, despite danger
and violence, ordinary people co-create lives of joy, peace, and happiness. Antebellum slaves co-created spaces in which
discrimination have subordinated the lives of ordinary people. Put succinctly, white structural oppression (e.g.,
supremacy) impacts the micropractices of ordinary people. By implication, it
social values, and personal responsibility. If so, then criminal courts mock ordinary people
like blacks when the state punishes them for committing crimes. If so, the New York Times unfairly punished Jayson Blair,
and he was correct to fault it for encouraging plagiarism and for rewarding his unprofessional behavior. Failing to address
these implications, Williams and Yamamoto direct us to white structural oppression and divert us from the real, practical
control that ordinary people exercise when they go to work or commit a crime. In this way, Williams and Yamamoto can
only empower ordinary people if they eradicate white racism, for only then will ordinary people have human agency.
Practice and Praxis fail because they ignore how ordinary people use mind constructs. A mind construct means any
artificial, causal, or interdependent arrangement of facts, factors, elements, or ideas that flows from our inner awareness.
Representing core beliefs, a mind construct allows us to make sense of our personal experiences and social reality. A mind
construct is not reality, but ordinary people believe that it is. Practice and Praxis also fail because they refuse to
deconstruct mind constructs of ordinary people. Intending to adhere to CRTs methodology, Williams and Yamamoto
believe that these mind constructs cannot co- create experiences, and thus white structural oppression must be an
mindsets co-create racial oppression, other mind constructs cannot. Whites have power; others do not. Whites victimize
blacks; ordinary people cannot co-create their own oppression experience. Working within CRT methodology, Williams and
Yamamoto have tied personal liberty not only to liberal legalism and white appreciation, but also to CRTs liberal agenda.
Ordinary people have always had human agency. But Race Crits cannot imagine this power. They must alter our core
beliefs to sustain their theories. A core belief flows from feelings and imaginations, and ordinary people reinforce this
belief through words and deeds. From this core belief, ordinary people co-create their experiences and realities. Core
beliefs, experiences, and realities are concentric circles, overlapping and indistinguishable. For example ,
race
consciousness (a core belief) denies ordinary people full experiences, and at the
same, it co-creates what they seek to avoid. Yet, race consciousness is simply a mind
construct. In this Article, race consciousness constitutes a belief (or a mind construct) that encourages ordinary people to
point accusatory fingers at white racism, an emotional balm for that which naturally flows from their feelings,
imaginations, and actions. Part I lays out the framework of Practice and Praxis, illustrating how these frameworks link
themselves to a central feature of CRTstructural determinism. Part II critiques CRTs mindset doctrine and naming our
own reality, arguing that they are corollaries of structural determinism. Part III presents an incomplete model for a pure
consciousness theory of human agency, an approach that conjoins pure consciousness, conscious mind (inner and outer
ego), and co-creative principles as powerful elements in the co-creation of a range of personal experiences and social
and so Race Crits cannot liberate anyone from so-called oppressive experiences. Nevertheless, I should point out that
people, relying on a pure consciousness theory of agency, can choose what personal
experiences and social realities they would like to co-create, thus reminding them
ordinary
that they are human gods who simply play the role of victims.
AT: Speculation
Empiricism is the most useful form of knowledge when we
discuss social issuesinherently key to better forms of
politics
Walt, 5
Stephen M., Prof, Kennedy School of Government @ Harvard, Annual Review
of Polit. Sci. 2005. 8:2348, pg. 25-26, The Relationship Between Theory
and Policy in International Relations,
http://www.iheid.ch/webdav/site/political_science/shared/political_science/345
2/walt.pdf) MH
Policy decisions can be influenced by several types of knowledge. First, policy
makers invariably rely on purely factual knowledge (e.g., how large are the
opponents forces? What is the current balance of payments?). Second,
decision makers sometimes employ rules of thumb: simple decision rules
acquired through experience rather than via systematic study (Mearsheimer
1989).3 A third type of knowledge consists of typologies, which classify
phenomena based on sets of specific traits. Policy makers can also rely on
empirical laws. An empirical law is an observed correspondence between two
or more phenomena that systematic inquiry has shown to be reliable. Such
laws (e.g., democracies do not fight each other or human beings are more risk averse with respect to losses than to
gains) can be useful guides even if we do not know why they occur, or if our
explanations for them are incorrect. Finally, policy makers can also use
theories. A theory is a causal explanation it identifies recurring relations
between two or more phenomena and explains why that relationship obtains.
By providing us with a picture of the central forces that determine real-world
behavior, theories invariably simplify reality in order to render it
comprehensible.