BEING WEIRD IS BAD



WEST COAST DEBATE

THEORY HANDBOOK

VOLUME 4

Performance Theory

Edited by Brian Simmonds, Matt Taylor, and Jim Hanson

Written and Researched by

Andrew Nolan

Austin Case

Beth Schueler

Brian Simmonds

Cameron Grant

Charles Olney

David Cram-Helwich

David Peterson

Dean Sweberg

Ken Johnson

Kyle Krohn

Matthias Bostick

Mike Sobek

Patrick Spiece

Paul Johnson

Sarah Stone

Stephen Shafer

Steve Sawyer

Todd Lyden

Tristan Morales

WEST COAST DEBATE

THEORY HANDBOOK VOLUME 4

Performance Theory

Edited by Brian Simmonds, Matt Taylor, and Jim Hanson

Written and Researched by

Andrew Nolan, Austin Case, Beth Schueler, Brian Simmonds, Cameron Grant, Charles Olney, David Cram-Helwich, David Peterson, Dean Sweberg, Ken Johnson, Kyle Krohn, Matthias Bostick, Mike Sobek, Patrick Spiece, Paul Johnson, Sarah Stone, Stephen Shafer, Steve Sawyer, Todd Lyden, Tristan Morales,

Finding Arguments in this Handbook

Use the table of contents on the next pages to find the evidence you need or the navigation bar on the left. We have tried to make the table of contents as easy to use as possible. You’ll find affirmatives, disadvantages, counterplans, and kritiks listed alphabetically in their categories.

Using the arguments in this Handbook

We encourage you to be familiar with the evidence you use. Highlight (underline) the key lines you will use in the evidence. Cut evidence from our files, incorporate your and others’ research and make new files. File the evidence so that you can easily retrieve it when you need it in debate rounds. Practice reading the evidence out-loud; Practice applying the arguments to your opponents’ positions; Practice defending your evidence in rebuttal speeches.

Use West Coast Evidence as a Beginning

We hope you enjoy our evidence files and find them useful. In saying this, we want to make a strong statement that we make when we coach and that we believe is vitally important to your success: DO NOT USE THIS EVIDENCE AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR YOUR OWN RESEARCH. Instead, let it serve as a beginning. Let it inform you of important arguments, of how to tag and organize your arguments, and to offer citations for further research. Don’t stagnate in these files--build upon them by doing your own research for updates, new strategies, and arguments that specifically apply to your opponents. In doing so, you’ll use our evidence to become a better debater.

Copying West Coast Evidence

Our policy gives you the freedom to use our evidence for educational purposes without violating our hard work.

You may print and copy this evidence for those on your team.

You may not electronically share nor distribute this evidence with anyone other than those on your team unless you very substantially change each page that of material that you share.

For unusual situations, you can e-mail us at wcdebate@ and seek our consent.

Ordering West Coast Materials

1. Visit the West Coast Web Page at

2. E-mail us at wcdebate@

You can also call us at 888-255-9133; fax us at 877-781-5058; or write to West Coast Publishing; 2344 Hawk Drive; Walla Walla WA 99362

Copyright 2003. West Coast Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

Visit our web page!

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 2

FRAMEWORKS FOR EVALUATION IN DEBATE 5

Traditional forms of debate are bad 9

Traditional forms of debate are good 10

The Policy-Making Framework is good 11

The policy-Making framework is bad 12

Focusing on the government is good 13

Focusing on the government is bad 14

Perspective taking is good 15

Perspective taking is bad 16

Switch side debate is good 17

Switch side debate is bad 18

Rhetoric and discourse matter 19

Rhetoric and discourse don’t matter 20

Punishing language is good 21

Punishing language is bad 22

Apologies are Good 23

Apologies alone are inadequate 24

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DEBATER’S PERSPECTIVE 25

Deliberative Democracy is untenable and ineffective 26

Deliberative democracy is good 27

FREE Floating subjectivity is bad 28

Free floating subjectivity is good 29

Genealogy is bad 30

Genealogy is bad 31

Global politics are bad 32

Global politics are good 33

Identity Politics are Bad 34

Identity politics are Good 35

Interpretation is bad 36

Interpretation is good 37

Levinas’s ethics of being for the other are bad 38

Levinas’s ethics of being for the other are good 39

Listening is bad 40

Listening is good 41

Nihilism is bad 42

Nihilism is good 43

Standpoint epistemology is the best way of knowing 44

Standpoint epistemology is bad 45

The spectacle of death is bad 46

The Spectacle of death is good 47

Relativism is good 48

Universalism is bad 49

Universalism is good 50

ACTIVISM IN DEBATE 51

Activism within debate rounds is Beneficial 54

Activism within debate rounds is harmful 55

Academic work does spur activism 56

Academic work doesn’t spur activism 57

Academics as politics is good 58

Academics as politics is bad 59

Convincing people of idea/policies causes activism 60

Convincing people of ideas/policies does not cause activism 61

speaking truth to power is bad 62

Speaking truth to power is good 63

Demands are good 64

Demands are bad 65

PERFORMANCE IN DEBATE 66

Art is bad 69

Being weird is bad 70

Being weird is good 71

Civil disobedience is bad activism 72

Civil disobedience is good activism 73

Dance is a bad form of activism 74

Dance is a good form of activism 75

Disaster Imagery is bad 76

Disaster Imagery is good 77

Drawing and Painting are bad forms of activism 78

Drawing and Painting are forms of good activism 79

Empathy is bad 80

Empathy is good 81

Environmental conservation is bad 82

Environmental conservation is good 83

Fasting is ineffective because it requires shock value 84

Fasting transcends boundaries and creates empathy with the other 85

Fiction is bad 86

Fiction is good 87

Film is a bad form of activism 88

Film is a good form of activism 89

Folk music is a bad form of activism 90

Folk music is a good form of activism 91

Graffiti is a good form of expression 92

Graffiti is bad 93

Graffiti should be tolerated rather than prohibited 94

Humor is bad 95

Humor is good 96

Internet Activism is not successful and wastes resources 97

Internet activism is successful 98

Irony is bad 99

Irony is good 100

Letter Writing is Bad 101

Letter Writing is good 102

Monuments and museums are bad 103

Monuments and museums are good 104

Murals are bad 105

Murals are a bad strategy for activism 106

Murals are a good form of activism 107

Murals are a good tool for activism 108

Music is bad 109

Music is good 110

Narratives are bad 111

Narratives are good 112

Photography as activism is bad 113

Photography is a good form of activism 114

Poetry is good 115

Posters are bad and can be censored 116

Posters are good, they can speak directly to the people 117

Protest Marches are a problematic form of activism 118

Protest Marches can result in profound change 119

Public disruption is a bad form of activism 120

Public disruption is necessary for social change 121

Public disruption is a good form of activism 122

Punk music is bad 123

Puppetry is bad for politics 124

Puppetry is good for politics 125

Rallies are a bad form of activism 126

Rallies are a good form of activism 127

Rap is a good strategy for activism 128

Rap is bad 129

Sewing and similar activities are effective activism 130

Sewing and similar activities are not effective activism 131

Silence is a useful debate strategy 132

Silence is bad 133

Slam Poetry is bad 134

Speeches are a good form of activism 135

Speeches are a bad form of activism 136

Street Performance is bad 137

Street Performance is good 138

Street Theater is no longer effective 139

Student walkouts are good activism 140

Student walkouts are bad 141

Strikes are an ineffective form of political action 142

Strikes are not an effective form of activism 143

Teach-Ins can lead to failure 144

Teach-Ins inspire activism and change 145

Television is good for activism 146

Television is bad 147

Violent RESISTANCE is bad 148

Violent RESISTANCE is BAd 149

Visual Arts are a good form of activism 150

Visual arts are a bad form of activism 151

FRAMEWORKS FOR EVALUATION IN DEBATE

By Tristan Morales

Northwestern University

Recent developments in critical arguments have led members of the debate community to afford sizeable attention to understanding and adapting to all levels of critiques. While these critique arguments have been around for some time, the increased frequency of their use, and their establishment as a stable and sustainable part of affirmative and negative strategy, requires debaters to prepare for a wide variety of critical arguments on both sides of the debate. Strong

Defenses of the respective frameworks for evaluating the debate, while often overlooked, can be extremely valuable both in staying ahead of the competition when running critical arguments and ensuring a stable lines of defense against negative critiques and critique affirmatives. “Framework” in this context generally refers to the role of the ballot established for the judge—or the criterion for evaluation used—when he or she is issuing a decision This essay is intended to establish a general line of arguments that may frequently be useful in debates, especially when one side is critiquing and the other side is making more traditional policy arguments.

NEGATIVE: RUNNING A CRITIQUE

This is the area which has experienced the most development framework-wise and the one which allows the most innovation in establishing a framework for the debate. Most affirmatives accept as given the idea that the role of ballot is to arrive at a decision as to whether a particular policy option is better than the options the status quo has to offer. In this world the judge is supposed to act as if he or she was in control of a branch or all three branches of the federal government. Affirmatives generally reference the term ‘should’ in the resolution as providing them the ability to allow the judge to determine whether or not the particular policy they discuss should be put in action or not.

The negative has a variety of ways to make their critical argument a viable position. In fact, critiques do not necessarily require that the framework of the affirmative be attacked in order to successfully win the debate. One option for the negative is to simply argue that their critical argument functions as a reason the affirmative’s policy is a bad idea. For instance, suppose the affirmative policy argued in favor of having the Congress decide to prohibit the fishing of a particular type of fish and their advantage centered around both the unjust nature of fishing for that certain species and the potential dangers posed to the ocean environment. A negative might argue that prohibiting fishing for one species does not eliminate either the incentive of businesses to continue the fishing process nor the potential profits which make it lucrative to do so. Thus the negative could claim that the businesses would both circumvent the Congressional decision, thus largely decreasing the affirmative’s ability to solve for either or their harms. They could also claim that since the incentive to fish remains, businesses would backlash against the policy and shift their efforts to other species, perhaps on a larger scale. This would mean that the affirmative made both the potentially unjust practice of fishing more likely, worsened the damage to the ocean environment, and increased a system of global capitalism that the negative could claim is bad.

The difficulty with the above critique argument, and with critiques designed to simply prove the policy the affirmative proposes would make the problem worse, is that they generally run into problems proving the uniqueness to their argument. That is, it is difficult to prove that the amount of suffering or death the affirmative policy would stop would actually be less than the amount it would cause. In the above example, it would be difficult for any negative to quantify precisely the amount of fish that corporations would begin to target, precisely which fish it would be newly targeted, and how much capitalism would increase if the affirmative were to get its policy passed. One reason for this is that the link argument used by the negative is one largely removed from general policy literature. It begins with the assumption that corporations are destructive in their motivation for pure profit and that global capitalism is largely dangerous. The arguments written in support of this claim are often largely academic and theoretical, discussing more abstract issues about the workings of the world in general. As such, authors of these arguments rarely go into the amount of detailed policy specifics necessary to overcome the specificity of affirmative solvency evidence. The authors of both philosophical and academic criticisms also generally speak of the evils of systems that are fairly firmly entrenched in global politics and global society, rather than discussing how a particular policy could tip the scales and fully institutionalize the state, capitalism etc. This exacerbates the difficulty of making your critique unique enough to prove the affirmative makes the world worse. This is not to say that those wishing to run critique arguments should fully dismiss accepting the affirmative’s framework because of the difficulty of winning debate, it is simply to say that it is the most difficult type of critique to execute effectively. If you are able to put together a critique argument specific enough to the affirmative so as to prove that the affirmative makes the problem worse, and able to overcome the general difficulties listed above then this type of critique requires the least amount of additional work in dealing with the affirmative’s arguments about fiat and the ballot as Congress’ action.

For the majority of critique arguments that cannot adequately defeat the affirmative within their own framework without substantial difficulty, there are a couple of ways the framework—that is to say, the role of the ballot—can be used to help you win the debate. The first is to call into question whether the judge should view themselves as policymakers within the federal government. This can either be the central element of your critique, critiquing simply the affirmative’s conception of themselves in this role of decision-making, or simply as a part of a larger critiquing more centered on the particular affirmative case. This determination should be made largely on the amount of leverage the affirmative attempt to generate by placing themselves in the role of the government and the amount of their general critique answers that are based on this role of the ballot.

In recent years academics such as Pierre Schlag, Jessica Kulynych have challenged the claim the conception of democratic politics which states that a citizen’s primary political obligation is to imagine what the government should do. Instead they argue that this focus purely on institutions and government encourages the individual to focus on details which are both far removed from their daily lives and decisions which they are unlikely to be able to affect any time in the near future. Certainly a portion of the debate community each year heads off to work in positions that may influence government policy but no one is likely to generate the authority of all branches of government that fiat delegates to debaters.

Challenging both the origins and the value of a fiat-based approach to the debate forces the affirmative to defend not only their particular affirmative but also the fundamental assumptions behind their decision to focus on government policy. If enough attention is devoted to challenging the affirmative’s framework, it can also force the affirmative to defend the likelihood of their policy’s implementation as a result of their affirmative. Most affirmative’s will respond that this question is irrelevant, a “should/would” question, something that fiat is designed to eliminate debate about. But this only begs the question of the affirmative’s criticism: whether or not fiat’s elimination of debate about particular issues that we as individuals can actually affect is more beneficial or destructive to attempts to get the policies passed.

Additionally, a thesis of nearly all criticisms and even most affirmative arguments defending democratic citizen’s discussion of government policy rely on the assumption that the individual should be generally interested in alleviating the harms their policy is designed to solve. If the negative is able to prove through their criticism that the affirmative’s focus on government actually makes implementing methods of alleviating the harm more likely it puts the affirmative in a very defensive position. For instance, if the affirmative proposes banning military entry into protected aquatic environmental areas and claims a militarism advantage, and if the negative is able to prove that their focus on government policy makes it more difficult to challenge militarism in our daily lives, the negative is in a good position to win their critique argument.

Establishing a framework like this is a requirement for critique arguments which focus on the language or representations used by the affirmative. This is because it would be difficult to prove that a particular debater portraying a group of people in their speech in a racist or sexist manner would be enough to trigger a nuclear war or large-scale suffering it is unlikely to outweigh the affirmative’s policy. Thus it is necessary to establish the importance of representations or language in affecting our daily lives.

One additional framework twist that can be employed here is to claim that the role of the ballot is to include the affirmative policy but reject all potentially damaging language or representations of the affirmative. For example, when running a gender criticism the negative may establish the role of the judge as a feminist critique, who should accept the beneficial parts of the 1AC but reject all elements which are demonstrated to link to the criticism.

One thing that is important for the negative in to establish the importance of education as compared to fairness concerns. Affirmatives will often argue that it is unfair for them to be forced to defend all of their representations or prove their unpopular policy could actually get passed. However the language that might be used in a debate, if racist or sexist for example, may have more impact on an individual debater and the judge than abstract discussions of policy. The same is true of solutions that might actually be able to challenge the source of the affirmative’s harms. they provide the most useful tools open to debaters and are actively excluded by the affirmative’s framework.

Also, for the same reasons the affirmative frequently references debate as a search for the best policy option, the negative’s alternative provides the best course of action for the judge to embrace. Additionally, these critique debates are unlikely to ever fully overtake policy debate, thus the educational benefits of policy debates will not vanish. The negative’s framework does not eliminate policy discussions, rather it forces them to better defend their focus on government, thus improving their role as democratic citizens.

RUNNING A CRITIQUE AFFIRMATIVE

The arguments advanced above to be utilized by negative’s running critiques are useful when running an affirmative designed to focus more on the ballot as a tool for individual and social change rather than government policy. Since most of these affirmatives are designed to focus on low-level change, it is particularly important in all contexts to establish the role of the ballot.

This is because the importance of their affirmative risks being lost when compared to disadvantages with large impacts. Additionally, critique affirmatives are usually unable to make many of the theoretical arguments against critique alternatives, thus a strong defense of their framework is important to prevent alternatives that include all of the affirmative except for one word, for instance.

AFFIRMATIVES ANSWERING A CRITIQUE

The expansion of critical arguments and developments for the negative which have made framework arguments offensive, makes it all the more important for policy affirmatives to be well prepared to defend their framework. Effectively countering the wide variety of critical approaches to an affirmative requires they be able to use their policy-making framework to regain the leverage of their policy impacts and government focus.

On the theoretical side, the affirmative must be able to establish a strong defense of the importance of fairness questions in comparison to educational concerns. While it may be true that it is valuable to learn about a wide variety of topics that may have an affect on our lives more than government policy, there must be a certain limit to what can be discussed and effectively debated on both sides in the context of a single debate.

It would undoubtedly be valuable to discuss the negative effects of genocide or sexual violence, etc., however the establishment of a debate topic and debaters requirement to research accordingly limits the amount of topics that can an affirmative can be prepared to discuss. This relates to negative critique arguments which criticize the language of the debaters, one particular term or phrase used in their evidence, or the negative’s presentation of a seemingly utopian alternative. In each context the issue at hand may be valuable to discuss, and the utopian alternative may present the best conceivable course of action for the world, but it would be very difficult for the affirmative to prepare to defend against all of these conceivable criticisms that are largely unrelated to the question of the policy that they have proposed. Good, fair debate requires evidence and adequate preparation on both sides and policy affirmatives would have a difficult time preparing for all potential criticisms simply because they are educational.

Language criticisms in particular may unjustly focus their criticism on the particular debaters at hand, both avoiding the central question of whether or not the policy in question is a good idea and alienating the debaters involved. For instance, a congressional bill is unlikely to be completely rejected by the members of the Congress simply because it contains one word that is potentially harmful or because the author of the bill made a potentially harmful statement while arguing the case for the bill. Overt harmful language is not only fairly infrequent, it also can be remedied with actions like speaker point deductions for the debater or debaters who made the statement or by simply dismissing the piece of evidence in question.

In general, there is a strong body of literature to counter the arguments of Schlag, Kulynych and authors of the like. This entails both defenses of focusing on the government and of debating out policy proposals. Authors like Richard Rorty and John Rawls have written extensively about the democratic process, and the strength that can be attained by citizens debating out the merits of a particular policy proposal. While citizens may not directly control all three branches of the government during their lifetime, there is an ever-present capability to influence local, state, and even federal officials through the process of lobbying, letters, town meetings etc. This fact makes it important for citizens to remain educated on policy issues, even those that may initially seem divorced from their everyday lives.

Beyond that, the debate community is a training ground for intellectual activity, one where individuals attain a higher level of knowledge about policy-making and particular policies than in almost any other education forum. As such, they not only have the potential to educate others in their respective communities but also to eventual use their policy skills to achieve the status of policy-maker. Generally, critique arguments and the frameworks they establish risk alienating those individuals who want to discuss policy issues. For those who have chosen to partake in the educational activity of discussing policy issues, whether for pure enjoyment or to help strengthen their role as a democratic citizens, critique arguments can often distract from this pursuit.

Another distinction is also generally important in defending a policy framework. First, just as many critique frameworks don’t exclude policy discussions, a policy framework does not exclude critique arguments. The educational benefits of critical literature and critical debates can still be accessed as long as the negative relates their critique to the plan and the particular policy proposal articulated by the affirmative. This can even allow the negative to advance an alternative, as long as the link to the affirmative isn’t based on representations or language iterated by the debaters.

NEGATIVE ANSWERING A CRITIQUE AFFIRMATIVE

Negative’s attempting to use framework arguments against a critique affirmative should stress that their policy framework doesn’t exclude the affirmative from discussing critical arguments, it just requires they defend their policy. The goal of the negative is simply to stress the importance of a limit on the topic in order to ensure fair debates. Once again, the most important thing when attempting to defeat critique affirmatives is proving that fairness is both a prerequisite to fair debate and more important than the education stressed by the affirmative.

CONCLUSION

Arguing the framework used to evaluate the debate is an often underutilized tool by debaters. What criterion the judge employs can often be the difference between victory and defeat for both teams making policy arguments and teams making critique arguments.

Traditional forms of debate are bad

1. Traditional debate is exclusionary

Fast debate focused entirely on skills with manipulating the line-by-line excludes the vast majority of people living in this country. Non-traditional forms can be understood and participated in by those who do not have access to the resources and time to develop the exclusive skill set of policy debate.

2. Traditional debate eliminates the role of the judge

The judge has little role to play in their framework. Rather than perpetuating the myth that the judge can be an objective and impartial adjudicator, non-traditional frameworks encourage the judge to find his or her own place within the debate. Embracing subjectivity allows a more honest evaluation of the debate.

3. linear rationality shuts out other voices, which is the root of violence

Gloria Anzaldúa , Chicana tejana-lesbian-feminist poet, Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987, p. 58-59.

Like many Indians and Mexicans, I did not deem my psychic experiences real. I denied their occurrences and let my inner senses atrophy. I allowed white rationality to tell me that the existence of the "other world" was mere pagan superstition. I accepted their reality, the "official" reality of the rational, reasoning mode which is connected with external reality, the upper world, and is considered the most developed consciousness—the consciousness of duality. The other mode of consciousness facilitates images from the soul and the unconscious through dreams and the imagination. Its work is labeled "fiction," make-believe, wish-fulfillment. White anthropologists claim that Indians have "primitive" and therefore deficient minds, that we cannot think in the higher mode of consciousness—rationality. They are fascinated by what they call the "magical" mind, the "savage" mind, the participation mystique of the mind that says the world of the imagination—the world of the soul—and of the spirit is just as real as physical reality. In trying to become "objective," Western culture made "objects" of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing "touch" with them. This dichotomy is the root of all violence. Not only was the brain split into two functions but so was reality.

4. Traditional debate generates a reliance on expert opinions

The obsession with evidence teaches us to believe and accept only that which is supported by analysis from outside our own experience. Non-traditional formats recognize that each individual can contribute to the round in an important fashion regardless of what evidence they may have found.

5. Non-traditional debate increases education on real-world questions

No one in debate has the ability to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty or regulate corporations who run oil tankers. We do, however, have to live our own lives. Debates obsessed with rational calculation of policy choices inhibit our capability to recognize the importance of constituting ourselves. Non-traditional formats are a more honest way to understand ourselves and our relationship to the topic.

6. Non-traditional debate contests the hegemony of the rules of proper communication

Roland Bleiker, Ph. D Candidate, Australian National University, Alternatives, January-March, 1997, p. 70-71.

Communication, in this case, should be as un-restrained as possible such that "claims to truth and rightness can be discursively redeemed,” albeit, one should add, through a rationalism and universalism that is violently anti-Bakhtinian and anti-Adornian. Closer to the familiar terrain of IR we find Christine Sylvester’s feminist method of empathetic cooperation, which aims at opening up questions of gender by a "process of positional slippage that occurs when one listens seriously to the concerns, fears, and agendas of those one is unaccustomed to heeding when building social theory.” But how does one conceptialize such attempts if concepts can never do justice to the objects they are trying to capture? The daring task is, as we know from Adorno, to open up with concepts what does not fit into concepts, to resist the distorting power of reification and return the conceptual to the nonconceptual.

Traditional forms of debate are good

1. Debate jargon and technique are educational

It forces us to pay attention to details. It teaches research skills that are helpful to us all. We adopt a certain language strategically for the purposes of debate to look at complex arguments.

2. Non-traditional debate is impossible to adjudicate

Without the line-by-line everything will become subjective. The judge will be forced to make unpredictable cross-applications. They will incorporate information they got in other rounds which we can never be prepared to predict. Only keeping some form of coherence allows the debate to be between the two teams rather than between one team and the judge.

3. Traditional debate facilitates the questioning of expert opinion

It relies on good arguments and clashing evaluations which they destroy the unquestioned authority of experts. The point of debate through clash is to make subjective evaluations of how different and competing stories interact, which is the ultimate goal of non-traditional styles.

4. Traditional debate incorporates style without eliminating substance

Jeff Parcher, Director of Forensics at Georgetown University, “Re: Jeff P--Is the resolution a question?,” E-Debate Archives, February 26, 2001, p. np. Accessed May 31, 2003,



BTW - my notions do not eliminate the notion of performance - they merely contextualize them within a discussion that can be limited and fair. It merely requires the performance be relevant by a reasonable criteria (ie the resolution). Also, debates have speaker points. It seems fairly obvious to me that the debate ballot is a clear dichotomy. One affirms or negates the resolution/plan and then gives speaker points to reward or punish performance. Obviously, I realize that performance impacts truth. But that's only a reason why a focus on the resolutional question coopts the performative criteria. Of course a good performance gets rewared in both points and in the decision itself. That's why we don't need to make it JUST about performance. We already take the perfromance into account inevitably. Mixing it further simply makes us drift aimlessly.

5. Fast debate increases education

The more we say, the more arguments we have to deal with and the more incentive there is to do increased amounts of research and learn about the topic. It also forces debaters to think on their feet and incorporate more information into a coherent story.

6. Style is irrelevant. Meaning is more important than the way it is presented

Brian Richardson, Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland, “Linearity and its Discontents: Rethinking Narrative Form and Ideological Valence,” College English, v62, n6, July, 2000, p. 692.

In fact, most narrative forms, strategies, and techniques are largely devoid of any inherent ideological valence. A century’s passionate debates over the repressive or liberatory nature of a type of narrator, form of time, use of cause, or transparency of fictionality is, I suggest, fundamentally mistaken. Such debates are also inevitably ahistorical, since they remove the formal technique from the horizon of expectation of its original reception—a horizon that was itself altered by the very appearance of the work. By extension, I suggest we treat with extreme skepticism any claims that large, multiform aesthetics such as those of modernism, or postmodernism, or realism, or romanticism are intrinsically progressive or regressive. I suggest instead that they are not intrinsically anything at all. Individual works of course may embody left- or right-wing ideas, or frequently a combination of both, but complex literary movements are not and cannot be so easily designated, since clever writers (unless of course they are operating under conditions of rigorous censorship) can always get their thoughts across whatever the style, form, or medium. Or, as Jay Clayton has said in a similar context, “narrative is equally able to confirm the bourgeois subject, disperse that subject, or reconstruct it in a postcritical formation” (48).

The Policy-Making Framework is good

1. the policy-making framework is critical to affirmative ground

Lack of plan-focus creates an enormous negative side bias. Absent plan-focus, the negative can just read a slew of links. The affirmative can’t take them all out, and they can’t be turned because the negative will just claim to advocate any turn. The affirmative is required to defend something and speak first, but the negative can spend the entire 1NC criticizing one concept.

2. Intellectual honesty is preserved by the policy-making framework

The resolution says should, implying questions of desirability. One shouldn’t lie to oneself for the sake of political projects. Lack of plan focus removes the possibility of engaging in a useful debate about the political goals in question.

Jeff Parcher, Director of Forensics at Georgetown University, “Kirk's Post,” E-Debate Archives, February 20, 2001, p. np, Accessed May 31, 2003,

The judge comes to the debate knowing a few things. The time limits, the room #, the teams to debate etc. One of those things a judge knows is the resolution. The resolution typically asks a question - "Should the U.S. government do XXXXXXXX." Typically the affirmative team offers some example of the resoution known as a plan that says by proxy - "The U.S. government should do XXXXXX." The intervention come when someone says "ignore that question - theres a more important social/political/cultural question to be answered." The negative typically asks the judge to make a political statement and vote negative because of how language affects people, even though the first question, "Should the government do the plan," could be answered in the affirmative. I think most of what you said is not relevant to this, dare I say, "dichotomy." For me, to ignore question 1 is to lie. It seems analogous to saying that I would give a student that's written an 'A' paper a 'C' because I think it will motivate them to work harder. A good political 'real world' result. Intellectual honesty should preclude me from using the grade to achieve political/'real world' results. Going down the second road seems to have such obvious problems that I sometimes wonder how anyone could seriously contemplate doing so.

3. Plan-focused debate is the only predictably coherent framework

Policy debate is an internally coherent framework that everyone understands. It has taken 20 years of innovations to reach this predictable and fair balance. Critique frameworks are constantly in flux. Lack of clarity will always disadvantage the affirmative. It forces theory debates, renders many arguments irrelevant, and allows the negative to tweak exactly what they have to defend as the debate continues.

4. Plan-focused debate preserves the benefits of switch-side debating

Refusing to compare plans eliminates the positive function of the resolution. Forcing teams to defend that “the USFG should” in one debate and the opposite in another forces teams to take both sides, which is necessary for an ethics of listening.

5. the policy-making framework is critical to good decision-making

Decisions should depend on rational choice, not on emotions. Town meetings prove this. People should vote for proposals regardless of how they personally feel about the individuals who present them. The critique framework tries to model the a vacuous presidential debate where how someone speaks is more important than what they propose.

6. the policy-making framework avoids name-calling

Debate purely about discourse turns debate into an elaborate dance of trying not to say anything rather than affirming positive change.

7. Plan-focused debate preserves education

Without plan-focus, the debate degrades into attempts to catch up to nebulous alternatives. It creates an incentive to debate theory because it’s the only way to leverage offense. That trades off with comparison of substantive questions. Even if they reasons plan-focused debate is bad, it’s still a better framework than endless theory.

The policy-Making framework is bad

1. Critical frameworks are the only way to make debate meaningful

Representations are inevitable. Only our framework gives us the ability to evaluate and possibly address those representations. They will continue to wreak their silent damage without critical awareness. Calls for competitive equity fall on deaf ears when that equity preserves an oppressive system.

2. Critical frameworks expand the scope of political analysis

Our conception of fiat forces them to defend the words they say, and thus the topic itself, beyond the rote repetition of the plan text. As advocates, they should be able to defend their plan as a representation of the resolution they choose to uphold.

3. Critique-focused debate forces us to recognize the importance of our discursive choices and political identity

David Ingram, Professor Of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, 1994, p. 246.

Elsewhere Foucault takes issue with Habermas's idealization of consensual communication, denying that "there could be a state of communication which would be such that the games of truth could circulate freely, without obstacles, without constraint and without coercive effects." Stated bluntly, Foucault thinks that Habermas's assessment of the prescriptive value to be accorded unconstrained consensus is too utopian. It is being blind to the fact that relations of power are not something bad in themselves, from which one must free one's self. I don't believe there can be a society without relations of power, if you understand them as means by which individuals try to conduct, to determine the behavior of others. The problem is not of trying to dissolve them in the utopia of a perfectly transparent communication, but to give one's self the rules of law, the techniques of management, and also the ethics, the ethos, the practice of self, which would allow these games of power to be played with a minimum of domination.

4. Critical frameworks do not eviscerate predictable ground

Plenty of ground exists to debate the merits of political advocacy along with comparing policy options. This framework does not preclude consideration of political consequences; it just forces teams to explain in what realm those consequences are relevant

5. Critical frameworks sidestep the myth of objectivity

Traditional debate buys into this myth, giving the judge little more role than to pile bodies on a scale to weigh risks. It is important to remember the judge has agency and feelings which enter into the decision. Assumptions that enter into the decision which are normally hidden ought be brought into the open and discussed. The net result is less intervention since it’s a mutual process.

6. Debating in the realm of fiat just replicates subordination

Michel Foucault, philosopher, The Foucault Effect, edited by Graham Burchell et al, 1991, p. 173.

But paralysis isn’t the same thing as anaesthesis—on the contrary. It’s in so far as there’s been an awakening to a whole series of problems that the difficulty of doing anything comes to be felt. Not that this effect is an end in itself. But it seems to me that ‘what is to be done’ ought not to be determined from above by reformers, be they prophetic or legislative, but by a long work of comings and goings, of exchanges, reflections, trials, different analyses. (the social workers you are talking about don’t know which way to turn, this just goes to show that they’re looking, and hence are not anaesthesized or sterilized at all — on the contrary. And it’s because of the need not to tie them down or immobilize them that there can be no question for me of trying to tell ‘what is to be done’. If the questions posed by the social workers you spoke of are going to assume their full amplitude, the moss important thing is not to bury them under the weight of prescriptive, prophetic discourse. The necessity of reform mustn’t be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: ‘Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a reform.’ That’s ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction which concludes: this then is what needs so be done, Is should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn’t have so lay down the law for the law. It isn’t a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed so what is.

Focusing on the government is good

1. Learning what the government should do is important

Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities, University of Virginia, Achieving Our Country, 1998, p. 98-99.

The cultural Left often seems convinced that the nation-state is obsolete, and that there is therefore no point in attempting to revive national politics. The trouble with this claim is that the government of our nation-state will be, for the foreseeable future, the only agent capable of making any real difference in the amount of selfishness and sadism inflicted on Americans. It is no comfort to those in danger of being immiserated by globalization to be told that, since national governments are now irrelevant, we must think up a replacement for such governments. The cosmopolitan super-rich do not think any replacements are needed, and they are likely to prevail. Bill Readings was right to say that “the nation-state [has ceased] to be the elemental unit of capitalism,” but it remains the entity which makes decisions about social benefits, and thus about social justice. The current leftist habit of taking the long view and looking beyond nationhood to a global polity is as useless as was faith in Marx’s philosophy of history, for which it has become a substitute. Both are equally irrelevant to the question of how to prevent the reemergence of hereditary castes, or of how to prevent right-wing populists from taking advantage of resentment at that reemergence.

2. Focusing on public policy is necessary to preserve democracy

Michael Gross, Political Science at University of Haifa, Ethics and activism : the theory and practice of political morality, 1997, p. 40.

While self-development is valuable for its own sake it is also necessary to insure stability and prevent political injustice. The role of government is not merely paternalistic. Its very integrity must be guaranteed as it acts to shape, transform, and elevate the interests of its citizens. If any democracy is to survive as a viable political structure, at least some citizens are obligated to use their refined capabilities to police public policy and guarantee social justice.

3. Speaking in terms of the state is essential to prevent roll back of gains

Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Canadian Dimension, May 15, 1997, p. 12.

My short-term goals are to defend and even strengthen elements of state authority which, though illegitimate in fundamental ways, are critically necessary right now to impede the dedicated efforts to 'roll back' the progress that has been achieved in extending democracy and human rights. State authority is now under severe attack in the more democratic societies, but not because it conflicts with the libertarian vision. Rather the opposite: because if offers (weak) protection to some aspects of that vision. In today's world, I think, the goals of a committed anarchist should be to defend some state institutions from the attack against them, while trying at the same time to pry them open to more meaningful public participation - and ultimately, to dismantle them in a much more free society; if the appropriate circumstances can be achieved.

4. We must look to the state to regulate the worst manifestations of oppression

Barbara Epstein, NQA, “Grassroots Environmental Change and Strategies for Social Change,” February 28, 2000, p. np, Accessed November 13, 2001,

In the context of the right's campaign to dismantle the welfare state and align state policy with the interests of the rich, it seems appropriate for progressive social movements to turn back to the state as an arena of struggle, though without abandoning the effort to transform consciousness, without which any effective challenge to the right is unimaginable. Issues of political power, the distribution (and use) of resources, and of culture and ideology seem increasingly intertwined: environmentalism, for instance, addresses all three. The demand of the toxics/environmental justice movement for a state that has more power to regulate the corporations, a state that is accountable to the public rather than the corporations. seems entirely appropriate, and possibly a basis for a broader demand that the state power over the corporations be reasserted and expanded, and that state power be exercised on behalf of public welfare and especially the welfare of those who are most vulnerable.

Focusing on the government is bad

1. The state is a fiction. Focusing on the government preserves its tyranny

Max O’Connor, Editor of Extropy, “Deep Anarchy – An Eliminativist View of ‘The State,’” Extropy, Winter 1990, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

Voters are statist because they legitimize the system. The person who uses the power of a "State" agency unjustly against someone (rent control, for example) is being statist. Anyone voting for, verbally supporting, or turning a blind eye to statism is thereby statist. In so far as there is any sense to talk of "the State" then, it is talk of statist behavior. And this is not confined to easily specifiable individuals. We may all be statist at times. Perhaps even the least statist of us sometimes choose statism in order to protect ourselves against worse behavior by others. In a corrupt system, behavior that you would otherwise reject may be the only rational course of action. This is the tragedy of the institutional effects of statism. For example, in a socialist country where everything is owned by "the State" (= everything is run in a statist manner), you may face the choice of working in a statist institution or starving. In this country, if you wish to mail a letter first class, you must choose between the "government" monopoly or nothing. What are you to do?12 5: Bringing About a Better Anarchy We already live in an anarchy. There is no "State." There are only individuals acting in a statist manner, often because they believe it to be right, to be necessary, and because they see no alternative.

2. The state only exists if it is accepted. Refusing to focus on it frees us.

Frederick Mann, founder of Terra Libra, Language: Tool Of Tyranny Or Revolution?, 1995, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

In general, I refer to the phenomenon of tyrants using certain hoax-words to dupe their victims, and the phenomenon of the victims (including freedom activists who haven't sufficiently examined the hoax-words and the consequences of their use) reinforcing and spreading the hoax-words on which the power of tyrants primarily depends. (By the way, no tyrant or tyrant-agent has ever used physical force against me personally. No cop has ever drawn a gun in my presence. All the attempts by tyrants to coerce me have been in the form of words, including hoax-words such as "law.") A key question to identify these hoax-words: In the absence of this word (or any of its equivalents) how would the power of tyrants be affected? (This is for starters, other questions are also involved in identifying the hoax-words.) For example, if tyrants didn't have the word "law" (or any equivalent), how would their power be affected?

3. Making demands on the state ensures continued oppression

Roger Kropotkin, NQA, “Instead of a Primer,” December 4, 2001, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

Direct action has nothing to do with pressuring any part of a government to alter a policy; it is by definition anti-statist. Attempting to alter a government policy is called lobbying; it is aimed at representatives, and so cannot be direct action. Presenting a list of demands or protesting a particular policy, in the hopes of getting noticed by the state (whose rulers will then somehow change something about the way it operates), is never direct action, even if the means used to pressure legislators are illegal. Direct action is when we do things for ourselves, without begging, asking, or demanding that someone in authority help us.

4. Freedom can exist only in rejecting the focus on governments

Clair Wolfe, NQA, Concerned Citizens Opposed to Police States, June 30, 1997, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

If "working within the system" could halt tyranny, the tyrants would outlaw it. Why do you think they encourage you to vote, to write letters, to talk to them in public forums? It's to divert your energies. To keep you tame. "The system" as it presently exists is nothing but a rat maze. You run around thinking you're getting somewhere. Your masters occasionally reward you with a little pellet that encourages you to believe you're accomplishing something. And in the meantime, you are as much their property and their pawn as if you were a slave. In the effort of fighting them on their terms and with their authorized and approved tools, you have given your life's energy to them as surely as if you were toiling in their cotton fields, under the lash of their overseer. The only way we're going to get off this road to Hell is if we jump off. If we, personally, as individuals, refuse to cooperate with evil.

Perspective taking is good

1. Rejoinder forces advocates to always see the opposing argument from the perspective of its proponents

Gordon Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Communication, U. Pitt, Argumentation and Advocacy, Fall 1998, p.56-57.

By assuming a reflexive stance that relentlessly destabilizes and interrogates the assumptions undergirding particular public advocacy projects, debaters can add a crucial element of reflection to their practice. Such reflection can highlight the potential dangers of political engagement and generate strategies to negotiate these pitfalls through shared discussion. Coverstone's fear that the radical heterogeneity of political opinions found in the debate community "means that mass political action is doomed to fail" (1995, p. 9) is accurate as a diagnosis of the utopian prospects for a monolithic and ideologically consistent social movement to spring forth from the ranks of activist debate participants. However, Coverstone overlooks the emancipatory potential of smaller groups within the debate community to organize with like-minded colleagues. While the radical heterogeneity of political orientation in the debate community likely blocks the formation of a homogenous mass political movement, the same diversity also has the potential to support a panoply of ideologically diverse (and even contradictory) micro-movements. Although participants in these smaller movements may be advocating different causes and pursuing distinct strategies of intervention, the common thread linking their projects together is a quest to develop argumentation skills as tools to impact events unfolding in fields of social action.

2. Perspective taking is a critical strategic essentialism

Michael Kilburn NQA, Emory University, Spring, 1996, p. np, Accessed March 23, 2001,

Essentialism is bad, not in its essence -- which would be a tautology -- but only in its application. The goal of essentialist critique is not the exposure of error, but the interrogation of the essentialist terms. Uncritical deployment is dangerous. Critique is simply reading the instructions for use. Essentialism is like dynamite, or a powerful drug: judiciously applied, it can be effective in dismantling unwanted structures or alleviating suffering; uncritically employed, however, it is destructive and addictive. Spivak's strategy is deconstructivist, like that of a good lawyer: when on defense, prod the prosecution's narrative until the cracks begin to appear and when prosecuting, piece together a case by understanding the criminal's motivation. "Strategic essentialism" is like role-playing, briefly inhabiting the criminal mind in order to understand what makes it tick. The Subaltern Studies group, for example, succeeds in unraveling official Indian history by particularizing its narrative: "a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest"(The Spivak Reader 214). This is also the way Spivak uses deconstruction, for example, without fully subscribing to it as a viable philosophic system or practice, much less a political program. Or, as she puts it, "[Deconstruction] is not the exposure of error. It is constantly and persistently looking into how truths are produced." (Arteaga interview) "Although I make specific use of deconstruction, I'm not a Deconstructivist" (Post-Colonial Critic).

3. Perspective taking fosters critical thinking

Gordon Mitchell, director of debate and associate professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh, Strategic Deception: Rhetoric, Science And Politics In Missile Defense Advocacy, published on eDebate, June 20, 2002, p. np, Accessed May 27, 2003,

But there are rich rewards for participants who master policy debate’s special vocabulary, learn its arcane rules, and acclimate themselves to the style of rapid-fire speaking needed to keep up with the flow of arguments. The rigorous dialectical method of debate analysis cultivates a panoramic style of critical thinking that elucidates subtle interconnections among multiple positions and perspectives on policy controversies. The intense pressure of debate competition instills a relentless research ethic in participants. An inverted pyramid dynamic embedded in the format of contest rounds teaches debaters to synthesize and distill their initial positions down to the most cogent propositions for their final speeches.

Perspective taking is bad

1. ONE CANNOT SEPARATE “SPEAKING FOR” FROM STRUCTURES OF DOMINATION

Linda A. Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy, Syracuse University, CULTURAL CRITIQUE, Winter 1991/1992, p. 15.

The claim here is that “politics is connected to truth” follows necessarily from premise 1. Rituals of speaking are politically constituted by power relations of domination, exploitation, and subordination. Who is speaking, who is spoken of, and who listens is a result, as well as an act, of political struggle. Simply put, the discursive context is a political arena. To the extent that this context bears on meaning, and meaning is in some sense the object of truth, we cannot make an epistemic evaluation of the claim without simultaneously assessing the politics of the situation. According to the first premise, though we cannot maintain a neutral voice we may at least all claim the right and legitimacy to speak. But the second premise dis-authorizes some voices on grounds which are simultaneously political and epistemic.

2. REPRESENTING THE VIEWS OF OTHERS IS OPPRESSIVE AND DISEMPOWERING

Linda A. Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy, Syracuse University, CULTURAL CRITIQUE, Winter 1991/1992, p. 26.

Given this, we have to pay careful attention to the discursive arrangement in order to understand the full meaning of any given discursive event. For example, in a situation where a well-meaning First World person is speaking for a person or group in the Third World, the very discursive arrangement may reinscribe the “hierarchy of civilizations” view where the United States lands squarely at the top. This effect occurs because the speaker is positioned as authoritative and empowered, as the knowledgeable subject, while the group in the Third World is reduced, merely because of the structure of the speaking practice, to an object and victim that must be championed from afar, thus disempowered. Though the speaker may be trying to materially improve the situation of some lesser-privileged group, the effects of her discourse is to reinforce racist, imperialist conceptions and perhaps also to further silence the lesser-privileged group’s own ability to speak and be heard.

3. ATTEMPTS TO TAKE ON THE PAIN OF OTHERS IS BOTH INCOHERENT AND GROTESQUE

Elizabeth V. Spelman, Professor of Philosophy, Smith College, OVERCOMING RACISM AND SEXISM, 1995, p. 184.

Similarly, the idea that one can slip on another’s experiences, the way in which you might slip on her coat, is an almost incoherent notion that can take grotesque expressions—as in designer-line “homeless” fashions, which according to some news reports are the next gift from Paris, and the likes of which have been in my neighborhood recently, in store-front mannequins draped in sleeping bags. Make a fashion statement by putting on the experience of homelessness. Or, as an ad in the New York Times suggests: men wear Calvin Klein jeans, and make people think you’ve had the experience of being one of the workers who dug the subway tunnels of Manhattan. There are experiences we desperately don’t want to have, but we seem ready to attach ourselves, at a safe distance, to any glamour that comes to be associated with such experiences. To borrow a phrase my mother used in another context, some of us use others as “spiritual bellhops,” relieved that they actually have had experiences we simply want to have the appearance of having had.

4. ONLY THE OPPRESSED “SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES” CAN CHALLENGE OPPRESSION

Linda A. Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy, Syracuse University, CULTURAL CRITIQUE, Winter 1991/1992, p. 7.

The recognition that there is a problem in speaking for others has arisen from two sources. First, there is a growing recognition that where one speaks from affects the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend one’s location. In other words, a speaker’s location (which I take here to refer to their social location, or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker’s claims, and can serve either to authorize or disauthorize one’s speech. The creation of women’s studies and African-American studies departments was founded on this very belief: that both the study of and the advocacy for the oppressed must come to be done principally by the oppressed themselves, and that we must finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in the social location between speakers and those spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said.

Switch side debate is good

1. Switch side debating is essential to the ethics of listening

JP Lacy, Assistant Debate Coach at Wake Forest University, “Re: [eDebate] Fwd: Re: Posthumanism's Place,” E-Debate Archives, February 26, 2002, p. np, Accessed February 27, 2002,

,

You must be referring to a different type of institutionalized debate. In the form of debate we practice, it matters greatly what side one takes. We agree to argue about a topic and to take the *opposite side* from our opponents. This structural constraint makes all the difference. This kind of debating--where we argue and *listen* to both sides of a topic--is a practice in an ethics of listening & engagement which can't be replicated by other institutionalized forms of argument. This is an ethics that demands that we use all our faculties to understand, to hear what others say: Understand well enough that we are capable of articulating their best arguments ourselves. It matters what side one takes because if we just agreed with our opponents about the topic at hand, we would be practicing multi-level marketing rather than *engaging* arguments.

2. Switch-side debating is necessary to examine diverse political agendas and politics

Ann Marie Baldonado, NQA, Emory University, Fall, 1996, p. np, Accessed March 23, 2001,



The mass media tends to take representations of the subaltern as allegorical, meaning that since representations of the marginalized are few, the few available are thought to be representative of all marginalized peoples. The few images are thought to be typical, sometimes not only of members of a particular minority group, but of all minorities in general. It is assumed that subalterns can stand in for other subalterns. A prime example of this is the fact that actors of particular ethnic backgrounds were often casted as any ethnic "other". (Some examples include Carmen Miranda in The Gang's All Here (1943), Ricardo Mantalban in Sayonara (1957), and Rudolph Valentino in The Son of the Sheik ). This collapsing of the image of the subaltern reflects not only ignorance but a lack of respect for the diversity within marginalized communities. Shohat also suggests that representations in one sphere--the sphere of popular culture--effects the other spheres of representation, particularly the political one: The denial of aesthetic representation to the subaltern has historically formed a corollary to the literal denial of economic, legal, and political representation. The struggle to 'speak for oneself' cannot be separated from a history of being spoken for, from the struggle to speak and be heard. (173) It cannot be ignored that representations effect the ways in which actual individuals are perceived.

3. Reversing Perspectives Via Negative Rejoinder Is Crucial To Fruitful Discourse

Michel Rosenfeld, Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Cardozo Law Review, March, 1996, p. 812-813.

The answer to the second question - namely, whether communicative action can carve out a common ground for justice encompassing all of its perspectives - depends on the nature of the procedural devices involved in communicative action as well as on the existence of material conditions making it plausible for the reversal of perspectives (undertaken by actors engaged in communicative action) to generate fruitful consensuses or compromises. As conceived by Habermas, communicative action requires each participant to have an equal opportunity to present claims for consideration and a universal commitment to be swayed only by the force of the better argument. Thus, the only legitimate normative regulations under Habermas's proceduralist paradigm would be those which have been assented to by all the participants in rational discourses who might be affected. Moreover, in the context of legal as opposed to moral norms, Habermas stipulates that assent could be based on bargaining and compromise as well as on consensus. Finally - and an important advance over Rawlsian contractarianism - the needs, wants, and interests of participants in communicative action are not taken by Habermas to be immutable; rather they are subject to evolution and transformation pursuant to dialogical exchanges. Because communicative action, as conceived by Habermas, can contribute to the formation of opinions and wills, it is not simply relegated to finding overlapping interests; it is also equipped to harmonize interests through dialogical transformation.

Switch side debate is bad

1. Playing the Devil’s Advocate fails to facilitate useful discussion

Gary Marx, Communications for a Sustainable Future at the University of Colorado, “Recent Developments in Undercover Policing,” 1997, p. np, Accessed May 31, 2003,

There is a difference between helping to identify the right questions and having the right factual and then normative answers. Having the right questions is a first step. I think I have those and I have many of the factual answers, but I am far from the normative and policy answers. My initial concern was to identify the issues and encourage public discussion, and only secondarily to offer solutions. Indeed these topics are fascinating because there often are no solutions in the usual sense. The mannered debates of the academy are very different from the raucous rhetoric of the radio talk show open to all callers. The ethic of many of the ideologues I encountered in publicizing the book on television and radio was one of simple expediency: say anything that will advance your case. The standards of logic, evidence, fairness, and civility that in principle characterize scientific debate were not much in evidence.

2. True change is only possible if advocates believe what they argue

David Dellinger, veteran pacifist leader, University of Essex: writer, radio broadcaster and sociologist, Radical Citizenship: The New American Activism, 1987, p. x.

By applying this concept to his own relationship with the reader, Bouchier shows that he takes seriously one of the book’s other precepts: namely, that those of us who advocate social and political change will benefit from striving to embody the values we are trying to realize in the wider (and, we hope, future) society. The author calls this the principle of prefigurative organization, which simply means that the organizations through which we work function most consistently and successfully if they operate as pilot projects for the new forms of human relatedness they advocate.

3. public reason requires sincerity

James Boettcher, Ph.D., Philosophy, Boston College, “Rawls and Gaus on the Idea of Public Reason,” Thinking Fundamentals, IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences, Vol. 9: Vienna, 2000, p. np, Accessed January 17, 2003,

In this regard, Rawls formulates a principle of political legitimacy based on the “criterion of reciprocity”: “Our exercise of political power is proper only when we sincerely believe that the reasons we would offer for our political actions – were we to state them as government officials – are sufficient, and we also reasonably think that other citizens might also reasonably accept those reasons” (Rawls 1997, 771). Two aspects of the principle of legitimacy are noteworthy. First, like Gaus, Rawls acknowledges that the exercise of public reason involves offering not simply reasons we believe to be persuasive or effective, but ones which we sincerely believe to be good.

4. Debate should be about formulating activism, not playing Devil’s Advocate

Gordon Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh, Argumentation and Advocacy, Fall, 1998, p. 46-47.

As two prominent teachers of argumentation point out, “Many scholars and educators term academic debate a laboratory for testing and developing approaches to argumentation” (Hill and Leeman 1997, p. 6). This explanation of academic debate squares with descriptions of the study of argumentation that highlight debate training as preparation for citizenship. As a safe space that permits the controlled “testing” of approaches to argumentation, the academic laboratory, on this account, constitutes a training ground for “future” citizens and leaders to hone their critical thinking and advocacy skills.While an isolated academic space that affords students an opportunity to learn in a protected environment has significant pedagogical value (see e.g. Coverstone 1995, p. 8-9), the notion of the academic debate tournament as a sterile laboratory carries with it some disturbing implications, when the metaphor is extended to its limit. To the extent that the academic space begins to take on characteristics of a laboratory, the barriers demarcating such a space from other spheres of deliberation beyond the school grow taller and less permeable. When such barriers reach insurmountable dimensions. argumentation in the academic setting unfolds on a purely simulated plane, with students practicing critical thinking and advocacy skills in strictly hypothetical thought-spaces.

Rhetoric and discourse matter

1. Debate should focus on the ethics of representations

Roxanne Lynn Doty, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Arizona State University, Imperial Encounters, 1997, p. 169-171.

This both opens up and limits possibilities, generates alternative sites of meanings and political resistances that give rise to practices of reinscription that seek to reaffirm identities and relationships. The inherently incomplete and open nature of discourse makes this reaffirmation an ongoing and never finally completed project. In this study I have sought, through an engagement with various discourses in which claims to truth have been staked, to challenge the validity of the structures of meaning and to make visible their complicity with practices of power and domination. By examining the ways in which structures of meaning have been associated with imperial practices, I have suggested that the construction of meaning and the construction of social, political, and economic power are inextricably linked. This suggests an ethical dimension to making meaning and an ethical imperative that is incumbent upon those who toil in the construction of structures of meaning. This is especially urgent in North-South relations today: one does not have to search very far to find a continuing complicity with colonial representations that ranges from a politics of silence and neglect to constructions of terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, international drug trafficking, and Southern immigration to the North as new threats to global stability and peace.

2. Representational violence is an essential focus for debate

Ann Marie Baldonado, NQA, Emory University, Fall, 1996, p. np, Accessed March 23, 2001,



This collapsing of the image of the subaltern reflects not only ignorance but a lack of respect for the diversity within marginalized communities. Shohat also suggests that representations in one sphere--the sphere of popular culture--effects the other spheres of representation, particularly the political one: The denial of aesthetic representation to the subaltern has historically formed a corollary to the literal denial of economic, legal, and political representation. The struggle to 'speak for oneself' cannot be separated from a history of being spoken for, from the struggle to speak and be heard. (173) It cannot be ignored that representations effect the ways in which actual individuals are perceived. Although many see representations as harmless likenesses, they do have a real effect on the world. They are meant to relay a message and as the definition shows, 'influence opinion and action'. We must ask what ideological work these representations accomplish. Representations or the 'images or ideas formed in the mind' have vast implications for real people in real contexts. Both the scarcity and the importance of minority representations yield what many have called " the burden of representation". Since there are so few images, negative ones can have devastating affects on the real lives of marginalized people.

3. Rhetorical choices must be criticized

Jessica Kulynych, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Winthrop University, Polity, Winter, 1997, p. 341.

Consider, for example, a public hearing. When seen from a discursive, legitimation perspective, deliberation and debate are about the sincere, controlled attempt to discern the best, most rational, least biased arguments that most precisely express an interlocutor's ideas and interests. In practice, however, deliberation is a much less deliberative and much more performative activity. The literary aspects of debate--irony, satire, sarcasm, and wit--work precisely on the slippage between what is said and what is meant, or what can be said and what can be conceived. Strategies such as humor are not merely rational, but visceral and often uncontrollable, as is the laughter that is evoked from such strategies. Performative actions are not alternative ways of deliberating; rather they are agonistic expressions of what cannot be captured by deliberative rationality. As such, they resist the confines of that rationality and gesture toward places where words, arguments, and claims are not enough. Without an understanding of the performative aspect of political action, Hager cannot explain how citizens are able to introduce genuinely new and different "ways of perceiving and naming the world" into a realm where such epistemic standards are unimaginable. It is in the process of acting as citizens in a technical bureaucratic setting, where citizen action is by definition precluded, that alternative, epistemic standards of evaluation become possible. Only when scholars recognize the performative will they be able to grasp the intricacies of contemporary political action and the possibilities for an actually diverse and participatory democracy.

Rhetoric and discourse don’t matter

1. Representational violence does not implicate concrete action

Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities, University of Virginia, Truth, Politics, and Postmodernism, Spinoza Lectures, 1997, p. 51-52.

I am all for getting rid of the metaphysics of presence, but I think that the rhetoric of impossibility and unrepresentability is counterproductive overdramatization. It is one thing to say that we need to get rid of the metaphor of things being accurately represented, once and for all, as a result of being bathed in the light of reason. This metaphor has created a lot of headaches for philosophers, and we would be better off without it. But that does not show that we are suddenly surrounded by unrepresentables; it just shows that `more accurate representation' was never a fruitful way to describe intellectual progress. Even if we agree that we shall never have what Derrida calls "a full presence beyond the reach of play"; our sense of the possibilities open to humanity will not have changed. We have learned nothing about the limits of human hope from metaphysics, or from the philosophy of history, or from psychoanalysis. All that we have learned from `post-modern' philosophy is that we may need a different gloss on the notion of `progress' than the rationalistic gloss which the Enlightenment offered. We have been given no reason to abandon the belief that a lot of progress has been made by carrying out the Enlightenment's political program. Since Darwin we have come to suspect that whether such progress is made will be largely a matter of luck. But we have been given no reason to stop hoping to get lucky.

2. Problematization doesn’t require rejection

Michel Foucault, philosopher, Ethics Subjectivity and Truth, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume One, Ed. Paul Rabinow, 1997, p. 114.

And no doubt fundamentally it concerns my way of approaching political questions. It is true that my attitude isn’t a result of the form of critique that claims to be a methodical examination in order to reject all possible solutions except for the one valid one. It is more on the order of “problematization”—which is to say, the development of a domain of acts, practices, and thoughts that seem to me to pose problems for politics. For example, I don’t think that in regard to madness and mental illness there is any “politics” that can contain the just and definitive solution. But I think that in madness, in derangement, in behavior problems, there are reasons for questioning politics; and politics must answer these questions, but it never answers them completely. The same is true for crime and punishment: naturally, it would be wrong to imagine that politics has nothing to do with the prevention and punishment of crime, and therefore nothing to do with a certain number of elements that modify its form, its meaning, its frequency; but it would be just as wrong to think that there is a political formula likely to resolve the question of crime and put an end to it.

3. Representational violence is distinct from real violence

Elana Gomel, Tel-Aviv University, “Written in Blood: Serial Killing and Narratives of Identity,” Post Identity, Volume 2, Number 1, Winter 1999, p. 24-25.

The universal Man of the Enlightenment has been reconceptualized as the universal killer, armed with the most potent of weapons—representation. In their Introduction to the collection typically entitled Violence of Representation Armstrong and Tennenhouse offer the basic formula of this approach: “The violence of representation is the suppression of difference” (8). In this particular reading of Foucault the discursive constructedness of identity is directly responsible for corporeal violence inflicted by some (post)modern subjects upon others. In his recent book Serial Killerr and in the series of articles that preceded it Mark Seltzer applies this insight to the fascinating and grisly phenomenon of serial killing, variously identified also as “stranger killing” and sometimes “lust murder”. For Seltzer the enigma of the serial killer’s personality consists in “an experience of typicality at the level of the subject” The serial killer, I will be arguing, is in part defined by such a radicalized experience of typicality within. Simply put, ‘murder by numbers’ (as serial murder has been called) is the form of violence proper to statistical persons. (30-1) Violence of representation, representation of violence and violence per se smoothly link into an unbroken chain, leading from statistics to mayhem and from typology of subjects to fingertyping of putrefying bodies. My goal in this essay is to put a hitch into this chain, to question the easy fit between discursive moulds of identity and the individual self-experience of serial killers, and to suggest that represenration may be not so much the cause of violence as a post factum defence against it.

Punishing language is good

1. responsibility for word choices is essential to a transformative politics

Gordon Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh, Argumentation and Advocacy, Fall, 1998, p. 46-47.

Building on Felski's argument that "it is not tenable to assume that hermetically sealed forums for discussion and debate can function as truly oppositional spaces of discourse" (1989, p. 171), Giroux points to Foucault and Gramsci as scholars who have made engagement with broader public spheres a matter of academic responsibility. Academics can no longer retreat into their careers, classrooms, or symposiums as if they were the only public spheres available for engaging the power of ideas and the relations of power. Foucault's (1977) notion of the specific intellectual taking up struggles connected to particular issues and contexts must be combined with Gramsci's (1971) notion of the engaged intellectual who connects his or her work to broader social concerns that deeply affect how people live, work, and survive (Giroux 1991, p. 57; see also Giroux 1988, p. 35).

2. Language is critical to politics

Roland Bleiker, Senior Lecturer and Coordinater of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Queensland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, 2000, p. 217.

A sustained engagement with the philosophy of language is necessary to recognise the potential for transversal social change that is entailed in dissident practices that interfere with the linguistically entrenched objectification of global politics. This chapter is, of course, unable to survey this complex issue in an exhaustive way. The focus will rest with two authors, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, who represent key elements of an approach that perceives language not as a way of representing the world, but as an activity, a way of life. An engagement with this approach serves to prepare the ground for a practical and more overtly political reading of language and its relation to transversal struggles. Language, then, is no longer seen as a mere medium of communication. It is also the very site where politics is carried out. Critiquing practices of global politics is thus a process that cannot be separated from critiquing the languages through which these practices have become normalised and objectified.

3. Injurious speech must be punished, even if we forgive the offender

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard University, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, 1998, p. 15.

In theory, forgiveness does not and should not take the place of justice or punishment.31 Forgiveness marks a change in how the offended feels about the person who committed the injury, not a change in the actions to be taken by a justice system. Philosopher Jeffrie Murphy explains, "[b]ecause I have ceased to hate the person who has wronged me it does not follow that I act inconsistently if I still advocate his being forced to pay compensation for the harm he has done or his being forced to undergo punishment for his wrongdoing—that he, in short, get his just deserts. Advocating punishment for a wrongdoer one has forgiven in fact is well supported by reference to the impersonal processes of a justice system, the inherent operations of a theory of deserts, or a commitment to treat offenders as full members of a community that demands responsibility by autonomous actors for their actions.

4. Language is action – their discursive choices shape their politics

Roland Bleiker, Senior Lecturer and Coordinater of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Queensland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, 2000, p. 221-222.

Hanna Pitkin, for instance, shows how our understanding of action may be enriched by asking no longer what action is or how it functions, but how we talk about it, how language games guide the implementation of this particular aspect of practice. Language thus becomes action itself because 'we use language not merely to talk about action, but to act - to carry on actions, to teach actions, to plan or produce actions, to assess actions done and redress any ways in which they have gone wrong'." With Wittgenstein, language is revealed as one of the most central aspects of our lives and, by extension, of politics. It is self-evident that in today's age of globalisation this political dimension entails very explicit transversal components. At a time when media-networks and other technological features facilitate an immediate and global flow of information, the political struggle over language is a worldwide struggle. Language has thus become one of the central features that fuses the local with the global, and elevates the transversal linkages between them to the site where many decisive political battles are waged.

Punishing language is bad

1. Language critiques are counter-productive for progressive politics

David Foster Wallace, Chair in Creative Writing at Pomona College and MacArthur Fellow, Atlantic Monthly, April 2001, p. 54-55.

There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact—in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself—of vastly more help to conservatives and the U.S. status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were. Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth, I would be delighted to watch PCE progressives spend their time and energy arguing over whether a poor person should be described as "low-income" or "economically disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous" rather than constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates on corporations. (Not to mention that strict codes of egalitarian euphemism serve to burke the sorts of painful, unpretty, and sometimes offensive discourse that in a pluralistic democracy leads to actual political change rather than symbolic political change. In other words, PCE functions as a form of censorship, and censorship always serves the status quo.)

[PCE IS DAVID FOSTER WALLACE’S ABBRIVIATION FOR POLITICALLY CORRECT ENGLISH.]

2. Punishment of language is not transformative

Jurgen Habermas, Max Plank Institute for Social Sciences, The Theory of Communicative Action VI, translation by McCarthy, 1984, p.294-295.

A speaker can pursue perlocutionary aims only when he deceives his partner concerning the fact that he is acting strategically-when, for example, he gives the command to attack in order to get his troops to rush into a trap, or when he proposes a bet of $3,000 in order to embarrass others, or when he tells a story late in the evening in order to delay a guest's departure. It is certainly true that in communicative action unintended consequences may appear at any time; but as soon as there is a danger that these will be attributed to the speaker as intended results, the latter finds it necessary to offer explanations and denials, and if need be, apologies, in order to dispel the false impression that these side effects are perlocutionary effects.

3. we must pursuade the mainstream, not expand the horizon of the unsayable.

Andrew Sullivan, Editor of the New Republic, Virtually Normal, 1995, p. 88-91.

It might be argued, of course, that culture is politics; and that the creation of a queer cultural presence, the subversion of certain norms of gender, the expansion of the horizons of what is sayable and unsayable, the redefinition of what is normal, the "subversive and parodic redeployment of power," is a political strategy in itself. And to some extent, of course, that is true. Radicals are partly what make moderates look moderate. But to see queer politics as essentially instrumental to liberal politics is to condescend to it. Its critique is far deeper and its goals far more profound than making gay Republicans look more appealing. And it is hard to see the latter as a coherent liberationist enterprise. Moreover, mere cultural redeployment in a free society is always subject to a cultural response; by expanding the possibility of queer expression, one also expands the possibility of normal expression.

4. Prosecuting us for our speech destroys effective activism.

Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley, Performativity and Performance, Ed. Parker and Sedgwick, 1995, p. 204.

That words wound seems incontestably true, and that hateful, racist, misogynist, homophobic speech should be vehemently countered seems incontrovertibly right. But does understanding from where speech derives its power to wound alter our conception of what it might mean to counter that wounding power? Do we accept the notion that injurious speech is attributable to a singular subject and act? If we accept such a juridical constraint on thought - the grammatical requirements of accountability - as a point of departure, what is lost from the political analysis of injury when the discourse of politics becomes fully reduced to juridical requirements?? Indeed, when political discourse is collapsed into juridical discourse, the meaning of political opposition runs the risk of being reduced to the act of prosecution.

Apologies are Good

1. Accepting apologIES reinforces the moral community against transgression

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard University, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, 1998, p. 114-115

At heart, the apology depends upon a paradox. No matter how sincere, an apology cannot undo what was done, and yet "in a mysterious way and according to its own logic, this is precisely what it manages to do An apology is inevitably inadequate. Nevertheless, forgiveness, while not compelled by apology, may depend upon it. The mystery of apology depends upon the social relationships it summons and strengthens; the apology is not merely words. " Crucial here is the communal nature of the process of apologizing. An apology is not a soliloquy. Instead, an apology requires communication between a wrongdoer and a victim; no apology occurs without the involvement of each party. Moreover, the methods for offering and accepting an apology both reflect and help to constitute a moral community. The apology reminds the wrongdoer of community norms because the apology admits to violating them." By retelling the wrong and seeking acceptance, the apologizer assumes a position of vulnerability before not only the victims but also the larger community of literal or figurative witnesses.

2. Forgiveness is powerful: reject self-destructive grudges

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard University, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, 1998, p. 14.

Forgiveness: Reaching for a response far from vengeance, many people, from diverse religious traditions, call for forgiveness. The victim should not seek revenge and become a new victimizer but instead should forgive the offender and end the cycle of offense. When we have been injured by another's offense, we should seek to reconnect and recognize the common humanity of the other, and grant forgiveness to underscore and strengthen our commonality.28 Through forgiveness, we can renounce resentment, and avoid the self-destructive effects of holding on to pain, grudges, and victimhood. The act of forgiving can reconnect the offender and the victim and establish or renew a relationship; it can heal grief; forge new, constructive alliances; and break cycles of violence."

3. FORGIVENESS PREVENTS RESENTMENT AND HOSTILITY

Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of South Africa, Exploring Forgiveness, Ed. Robert D. Enright and Joanna North, 1998, p. xiii-xiv.

Without forgiveness there is no future. Of course, we here in South Africa are a living example of how forgiveness may unite people. Our history makes this surprising in many ways. Our miracle almost certainly would not have happened without the willingness of people to forgive, exemplified spectacularly in the magnanimity of Nelson Mandela. His forgiveness still leaves the world gasping at the sheer wonder of it, especially in light of his long imprisonment. Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. It is opening the door for the other person to have a chance to begin again. Without forgiveness, resentment builds in us, a resentment which turns into hostility and anger. Hatred eats away at our well-being.

4. Apologies are a genuine act of remembering wrongdoing

Nicholas Tavuchis, professor at University of Manitoba, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation, 1991, p. 8.

In these admittedly general terms, then, apology expresses itself as the exigency of a painful remembering, literally of being mindful again, of what we were and had as members and, at the same time, what we have jeopardized or lost by virtue of our offensive speech or action. And it is only by personally acknowledging ultimate responsibility, expressing genuine sorrow and regret, and pledging henceforth (implicitly or explicitly) to abide by the rules, that the offender simultaneously recalls and is re-called to that which binds. As shared mementos, apologies require much more than admission or confession of the unadorned facts of wrongdoing or deviance. They constitute—in their most responsible, authentic, and, hence, vulnerable expression—a form of self-punishment that cuts deeply because we are obliged to retell, relive, and seek forgiveness for sorrowful events that have rendered our claims to membership in a moral community suspect or defeasible.

Apologies alone are inadequate

1. Apologies without honesty and action are meaningless

Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of South Africa, Exploring Forgiveness, Ed. Robert D. Enright and Joanna North, 1998, p. xiii-xiv.

Forgiveness is not pretending that things are other than they are. Forgiveness is not cheap. It is facing the ghastliness of what has happened and giving the other person the opportunity of coming out of that ghastly situation. When you say to me, "I am sorry," in my Christian understanding I am then constrained by the Gospel imperative to forgive. Yet, this is not the end of the story. You see, if you have stolen my pen and you say you are sorry, and I forgive you and you still retain my pen, then I must call into question the authenticity of your contrition. I must—as part of the process of reconciliation, of forgiving, of healing, of the willingness to make good—appropriate restitution. The world is on the brink of disaster if we don't forgive, accept forgiveness, and reconcile. Forgiveness does not mean amnesia. Amnesia is a most dangerous thing, especially on a community, national, or international level. We must forgive, but almost always we should not forget that there were atrocities, because if we do, we are then likely to repeat those atrocities.

2. attempts to escape from their sin devalue THEIR APOLOGY

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard University, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, 1998, p. 114-115.

At heart, the apology depends upon a paradox. No matter how sincere, an apology cannot undo what was done, and yet "in a mysterious way and according to its own logic, this is precisely what it manages to do An apology is inevitably inadequate. Nevertheless, forgiveness, while not compelled by apology, may depend upon it. The mystery of apology depends upon the social relationships it summons and strengthens; the apology is not merely words. " Crucial here is the communal nature of the process of apologizing. An apology is not a soliloquy. Instead, an apology requires communication between a wrongdoer and a victim; no apology occurs without the involvement of each party. Moreover, the methods for offering and accepting an apology both reflect and help to constitute a moral community. The apology reminds the wrongdoer of community norms because the apology admits to violating them." By retelling the wrong and seeking acceptance, the apologizer assumes a position of vulnerability before not only the victims but also the larger community of literal or figurative witnesses. Expressions of regret and remorse usually are vital to an apology offered by one individual to another. Distinguishing the superficial from the heartfelt is important to sorting the apology from the dodge. Nicholas Tavuchis, who has developed a sustained sociology of apology, argues that "[t]o apologize is to declare voluntarily that one has no excuse, defense, justification, or explanation for an action (or inaction).” He offers in detail the example of Richard Nixon's resignation speech to illustrate how a statement of regret can fall short of an apology. Nixon never mentioned much less acknowledged specific charges. Instead he tried to explain his decisions in light of lost congressional support for his policies, poor judgment, and errors committed in pursuit of higher national interests. Any diversion from accepting responsibility is not an apology. Because of this I stringent requirement, an apology may indeed afford victims and I bystanders something that trials, truth-telling, and monetary I reparations or property restitutions cannot. Full acceptance of responsibility by the wrongdoer is the hallmark of an apology.

3. Forgiveness doesn’t prevent or exclude the duty to punish

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard University, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, 1998, p. 15.

In theory, forgiveness does not and should not take the place of justice or punishment. Forgiveness marks a change in how the offended feels about the person who committed the injury, not a change in the actions to be taken by a justice system. Philosopher Jeffrie Murphy explains, "[b]ecause I have ceased to hate the person who has wronged me it does not follow that I act inconsistently if I still advocate his being forced to pay compensation for the harm he has done or his being forced to undergo punishment for his wrongdoing—that he, in short, get his just deserts. Advocating punishment for a wrongdoer one has for- given in fact is well supported by reference to the impersonal processes of a justice system, the inherent operations of a theory of deserts, or a commitment to treat offenders as full members of a community that demands responsibility by autonomous actors for their actions. Forgiveness in this sense need not be a substitute for punishment.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DEBATER’S PERSPECTIVE

By Patrick Speice

former debater, Wake Forest University

At its most basic level, debate can be considered a game of perspective taking. One side begins the debate by taking a particular position on an issue and the other team reacts by arguing against the idea. The participants in a debate are forced to take opposing positions, facilitating clash. It is this sort of dialectical exchange that characterizes all debate, and without such a two-way dialogue, debate would cease to be debate. Instead, it would be mere discussion of issues with each side presenting its own arguments and not engaging the other’s position. The most successful debaters are those who are able to understand and argue various perspectives.

Initially, it is easy to document the importance of perspective in evaluating arguments. The CEO of a major corporation is likely to be more easily persuaded to support President Bush’s proposed tax cut on dividends than someone that has made no investments. Applied to the debate context, judges make decisions about which team wins particular arguments based on the perspective that they believe has been advocated more successfully. Different perspectives can also inform which types of arguments a judge evaluates as more important than others. For example, some debaters claim that discourse is the focus of the debate, meaning that questions of the plan’s desirability are subjugated to concerns about the rhetoric of the teams. Others claim that the judge should evaluate the debate from the perspective of a critic of performance, deciding the winner of the debate solely on the aesthetic value of the team’s presentation. These teams are likely to be more prepared to defend their arguments from within their perspective, giving them an advantage over their opponents.

While the tax cut example in the previous paragraph demonstrates how different political perspectives can inform policy preferences over single issues, debaters frequently advance arguments that seek to guide the judge’s perspective in evaluating entire rounds. Arguing for the judge to adopt a particular perspective can greatly aid a team in making (and winning) certain types of arguments. For example, an affirmative that claims to protect indigenous people may argue that the judge should adopt the “standpoint of the oppressed.” This perspective, known as “standpoint epistemology,” means that at the end of the debate, the judge should decide the debate as if he or she were a member of the indigenous group that the plan seeks to aid. This is obviously a powerful tool for the affirmative, as a judge that positioned him or herself as the targeted beneficiary of the affirmative plan would be likely to find the justifications for such a plan compelling. There are a plethora of other argument forms that call on the judge to view the debate through a particular perspective. A small sampling of this type of argument would include the positions articulated above; those that call on the judge to prefer “acting locally, not globally”; arguments that call on the judge to evaluate the arguments based on the empathy that a particular position evokes; or arguments that ask the judge to “listen to the voice” of a particular person or group.

There are two main ways that the negative can attack such a strategy. Impact turning is relatively straightforward. If the affirmative argues that the judge should take on the “standpoint of the oppressed,” the negative could simply argue that using a standpoint perspective is a bad way to evaluate suffering (perhaps it essentializes the experiences of the individuals in the group in question). Similarly, the negative could argue for the necessity of a global approach to solving problems against a team that calls on the judge to act locally, or a team could argue that empathy is a poor evaluative tool, as it would allow atrocities to occur (for example, should we have been empathetic to Hitler’s claim that the Jews were reducing valuable living space in Germany in the 1930s?). Link turning perspective arguments is a bit trickier, but can be accomplished in two ways. First, the negative could argue that the affirmative is incompatible with their own perspective. For example, a negative team that sought to link turn a standpoint perspective may argue that the oppressed group would oppose the plan or be harmed by it. Second, a negative team could argue that the reasons that they have advanced to reject the plan operate within the affirmative’s perspective, neutralizing any tactical advantage that the affirmative could gain. These same methods for defeating perspective arguments can be used by an affirmative team that encounters a negative team arguing for a particular perspective.

Deliberative Democracy is untenable and ineffective

1. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY FOSTERS TYRANNY AND IS INEFFECTIVE

James Gardner, Professor of Law, TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW ASSOCIATION, Winter 1996, p. 447.

The deficiencies of deliberative democracy are even better illustrated by examining the kind of citizens it is likely to constitute. Deliberative democracy theorists seem to think that these citizens will be generous, open-minded and self- sacrificing. For the reasons set out in the previous section, I think it far more likely that deliberative democracy would constitute citizens who are ineffectual, tyrannical, obstructionist, and in general poorly suited for the kind of life demanded of citizens in a large, modern republic. First, citizens of a deliberative democracy are likely to live in a constant state of frustration because they are unable to live up to deliberative democracy's unrelenting demands of openness, good faith, and authenticity in dialogue. Every debate cut off in heated argument or terminated short of agreement is a failure, and deliberative democracy implies that the failure is one of character because it likely results from laziness and insufficient openness.

2. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY ENTRENCHES THE SUBORDINATION OF DISEMPOWERED GROUPS

Lynn Sanders, Political Science Professor, POLITICAL THEORY, June 1997, p. 349.

If we assume that deliberation cannot proceed without the realization of mutual respect, and deliberation appears to be proceeding, we may even mistakenly decide that conditions of mutual respect have been achieved by deliberators. In this way, taking deliberation as a signal of democratic practice paradoxically works undemocratically, discrediting on seemingly democratic grounds the views of those who are less likely to present their arguments in ways that we recognize as characteristically deliberative. In our political culture, these citizens are likely to be those who are already underrepresented in formal political institutions and who are systematically materially disadvantaged, namely women; racial minorities, especially Blacks; and poorer people.

3. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY IS UNTENABLE: CITIZENS WILL BE UNWILLING TO INVEST THE RESOURCES NECESSARY FOR DELIBERATION

Christopher Schroeder, Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies, LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Summer 2002, p. 118.

In the case of individuals choosing between deliberative and private pursuits, while there is good evidence that citizens will invest some resources in participating in public affairs, that evidence comes nowhere near suggesting they will invest resources of the magnitude deliberative theory demands. The behavior necessary to satisfy the demands of deliberation stands quite outside anything that can be achieved, just as deliberative theorists concede. While conceding this reality, though, they ignore its implications. It is worth a moment to reflect on both the reality and the implications.

4. DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY HINDERS COLLECTIVE POLITICAL ACTION

James Gardner, Professor of Law, TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW ASSOCIATION, Winter 1996, p. 447.

Second, citizens of a deliberative democracy are likely to be uncooperative and obstructionistic. Many of the personal benefits of democracy flow, as we have seen, from the sense of self-mastery that citizens gain when they have an opportunity to participate meaningfully in the governmental processes that affect their lives. Because deliberative democracy is so heavily weighted toward protecting minorities, and because it so strongly emphasizes consensus, just about the only way for citizens to feel like they are actually influencing the process of collective decision making is to exercise a veto. Moreover, since deliberative democracy indirectly teaches minorities the legitimacy of maintaining the integrity of group or individual identity against outside pressures for change, people who believe that they are in the minority are especially likely to dig in their heels, further obstructing the possibility of collective political action.

Deliberative democracy is good

1. Deliberative democracy prevents exploitation

John Rawls, James Bryant Conant University Professor Emeritus at Harvard, The Law of Peoples, 1999, p. 138-139.

The definitive idea for deliberative democracy is the idea of deliberation itself. ‘When citizens deliberate, they exchange views and debate their supporting reasons concerning public political questions. They suppose that their political opinions may be revised by discussion with other citizens; and therefore these opinions are not simply a fixed outcome of their existing private or nonpolitical interests. It is at this point that public reason is crucial, for it characterizes such citizens’ reasoning concerning constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. ‘While I cannot fully discuss the nature of deliberative democracy here, I note a few key points to indicate the wider place and role of public reason. There are three essential elements of deliberative democracy. One is an idea of public reason, although not all such ideas are the same. A second is a framework of constitutional democratic institutions that specifies the setting for deliberative legislative bodies. The third is the knowledge and desire on the part of citizens generally to follow public reason and to realize its ideal in their political conduct.

2. Deliberative democracy ensures sensible decisions

John Rawls, James Bryant Conant University Professor Emeritus at Harvard, The Law of Peoples, 1999, p. 138-139.

Deliberative democracy also recognizes that without widespread education in the basic aspects of constitutional democratic government for all citizens, and without a public informed about pressing problems, crucial political and social decisions simply cannot be made. Even should farsighted political leaders wish to make sound changes and reforms, they cannot convince a misinformed and cynical public to accept and follow them. For example, there are sensible proposals for what should be done regarding the alleged coming crisis in Social Security: slow down the growth of benefits levels, gradually raise the retirement age, impose limits on expensive terminal medical care that prolongs life for only a few weeks or days, and finally, raise taxes now, rather than face large increases later.

3. Deliberative democracy subverts ignorance and coercion

Christopher Peters, Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago Law School, Columbia Law Review, March, 1997, p. 398.

Dewey - who, as we have already seen, was fond of broad, quotable aphorisms about what "democracy is" - saw democracy as in part the method of "persuasion through public discussion carried on not only in legislative halls but in the press, private conversations and public assemblies." It was "the substitution of ballots for bullets, of the right to vote for the lash ... [of] the method of discussion for the method of coercion." The "democratic faith" was, for Dewey, a "faith in the possibility of conducting disputes, controversies and conflicts as cooperative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself." The process of deliberation had to be more than merely a clash of competing viewpoints; it had to be characterized by reasons offered by either side, by "science" and "intelligence." But when these conditions were present, deliberation produced better decisions not only from the legislature, but from the electorate itself: "The act of voting is in a democratic regime a culmination of a continued process of open and public communication in which prejudices have the opportunity to erase each other; ... [and] continued interchange of facts and ideas exposes what is unsound and discloses what may make for human well-being."

4. Only public deliberation subverts phone-call democracy

Lisa Monaco, J.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable, 1996, p. 92.

The solution to the failures of phone call democracy lies in rehabilitating the role of the legislature itself. Both the civic republican and attorneyship models simply offer other ingredients to the mix, such as fealty to communication with constituents or a place for independent judgment. While both point to important weaknesses in the current process, neither looks for a solution in the institution. The answer may not be in more direct participation but in more deliberation. Deliberation should come in the form of legislators reflecting on their role in the institution as filters of ideas, and gatherers of information to make reasoned decisions, rather than in the form of filibuster.

FREE Floating subjectivity is bad

1. Postmodern subjectivity can exist only by strengthening capitalism

Laura Bartlett Snyder, Doctoral Fellow in the English Department at Louisville, “The Body Politic: The Intersection of Body & Economics,” 2000, p. np, Accessed October 15, 2002,

My thought is that global capitalism needs postmodern theories of subjectivity because they produce subjects who are seamlessly articulated with the structures of global capitalism. While postmodern subjectivity may seem wildly radical at first—breaking down boundaries between genders, between machines and humans—the similarities between its subjectivities and the structures of global capitalism are eerily similar. Fluidity, flexibility, and boundary dissolution equally describe both. The celebration of the loss of the unified, coherent subject of modernity and the new fluid, flexible, fragmented subject of postmodernity is the stuff of “Millenial Dreams,” Paul Smith’s term for the rhetoric of globalization and the array of ideological forms which interpellate the desired subject of global capitalism. Smith writes that “the annunciation of globalization itself is part of the ideological battery used to interpellate subjects in the current conjuncture . . . and attempt to regulate the moral and cultural practices of subjects” (46). I agree with Tereas Ebert that post-al theories are complicit with patriarchal capitalism.

2. Floating subjectivity reinforces patterns of domination

Kevin Cryderman, “Jane and Louisa: The Tapestry Of Critical Paradigms,” 2000, p. np, Accessed November 7, 2001,

Dirlik claims that the 'happy pluralism' of postcolonialism -- such as its emphasis on flux, borderlands and liminal space -- does not so much oppose elite unified narratives of nations and cultures as it does reinforce them. Dirlik also links this trend of "fluid subject positions" (98) in postmodernism to postcolonialism and Global Capitalism: "in the age of flexible production, we all live in the borderlands. Capital, deterritorialized and decentered, establishes borderlands where it can move freely, away from the control of states and societies but in collusion with states against societies" (Dirlik 87). Moreover, the problem "presented by postcolonial discourse" is "a problem of liberating discourse that divorces itself from the material conditions of life, in this case Global Capitalism as the foundational principle of contemporary society globally" (99).

3. Focusing on transitional subjectivities cements oppression

Aihwa Ong, Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationality, 1999, p. 13.

Some scholars dwell on narratives of sacrifice, which are associated with enforced labor migrations, as well as on critiques of the immorality of development. Others, who write about displacements in “borderland” areas, emphasize subjects who struggle against adversity and violation by affirming their cultural hybridity and shifting positions in society. The unified moralism attached to subaltern subjects now also clings to diasporan ones, who are invariably assumed to be members of oppressed classes and therefore constitutionally opposed to capitalism and state power. Furthermore, because of the exclusive focus on texts, narratives, and subiectivities, we are often left wondering what are the particular local-global structural articulations that materially and symbolically shape these dynamics of victimhood and ferment.

4. Fluid subjectivity does violence to those who live on the borderlands

Linda Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Syracuse, “Mestizo Identity,” The Idea of Race, ed. By Robert Bernasconi and Tommy Lott, 2000, p. 152-153.

Liberation is associated with the refusal to be characterized, described, or classified, and the only true strategy of resistance can be one of negation, a kind of permanent revolution on the metaphysical front. Unfortunately, nomadic subjectivity works no better than assimilationist doctrine to interpellate mixed identity: the nomad self is bounded to no community and represents an absence of identity rather than a multiply entangled and engaged identity. This is not the situation of mixed-race peoples who have deep (even if problematic) ties to specific communities; to be a free-floating unbound variable is not the same as being multiply categorized and ostracized by specific racial communities. It strikes me that the postmodem nomadic vision fits far better the multinational CEO with fax machine and cellular phone in hand who is bound to, or by, no national agenda, tax structure, cultural boundary, or geographical border. And what this suggests is that a simplistic promotion of fluidity will not suffice.

Free floating subjectivity is good

1. Perverse forms of identity can break down capitalist domination

Gilles Deleuze, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris, and Felix Guattari, Psychoanalyst at La Borde Clinic, Anti-Oedipus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972, p. 376.

Subject-groups in their turn derive from subjugated groups by way of ruptures in the latter. Capitalism is continually cutting off the circulation of flows, breaking them and deferring the break, but these same flows are continually overflowing, and intersecting one another according to schizzes that turn against capitalism and slash into it. Capitalism, which is always ready to expand its interior limits, remains threatened by an exterior limit that stands a greater chance of coming to it and cleaving it from within, in proportion as the interior limits expand. That is why the lines of escape are singularly creative and positive: they constitute an investment of the social field that is no less complete, no less total than the contrary investment. The paranoiac and the schizoid investments are like two opposite poles of unconscious libidinal investment, one of which subordinates desiring-production to the formation of sovereignty and to the gregarious aggregate that results from it, while the other brings about the inverse subordination, overthrows the established power, and subjects the gregarious aggregate to the molecular multiplicities of the productions of desire.

2. Free-floating identity is necessary to combat the free flow of capital

Gerald Raunig, Philosopher and art theoretician at the University of Klagenfurt and the University of Luneburg, “A War-Machine Against Empire,” translated by Lucinda Rennison, May 2002, p. np, Accessed May 31, 2003,

In the face of this normality, there is a need for practices of opposition to the mechanisms of the information and control society using tactics, which - like the deterritorialised flows of capital - cannot be fixed in one place, cannot be settled down. Opposed to the flows of capital, however, these practices should continually create uncontrolled, self-determined lines of rupture. And here we find ourselves in the zones adjacent to artistic-political intervention within the context of the global protests with their spontaneous actions, tactical attacks and rapid appropriation of new situations, with their lines of flight in and through nomadic space. The PublixTheatreCaravan acts along a line of flight, it attacks, it is offensive, in brief: it is a war-machine in the Deleuzian sense. This is by no means an attribution of any specific form of violence. On the contrary, the war-machine points beyond the discourses of violence and terror; and it is precisely this machine that sets out to oppose the violence of the state apparatus, the order of representation. Conversely, the state apparatus attempts to force the power of representation onto what cannot be represented, for example by turning the Caravan into a "Black Block": it is exactly the war-machine that opposes these mechanisms of representation or, following Hardt and Negri, the militant, who rediscovers not representational, but constituent activity.

3. Nomad subjectivity can rupture the system and create lines of escape

Gilles Deleuze, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris, and Felix Guattari, Psychoanalyst at La Borde Clinic, Anti-Oedipus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972, p. 377.

In each case the problem is different: it is not enough to construct a new socius as full body; one must also pass to the other side of this social full body, where the molecular formations of desire that must master the new molar aggregate operate and are inscribed. Only by making this passage do we reach the revolutionary break and investment of the libido. This cannot be achieved except at the cost of, and by means of a rupture with, causality. Desire is an exile, desire is a desert that traverses the body without organs and makes us pass from one of its faces to the other. Never an individual exile, never a personal desert, but a collective exile and a collective desert. It is only too obvious that the destiny of the revolution is linked solely to the interest of the dominated and exploited masses. But it is the nature of this link that poses the real problem, as either a determined causal link or a different sort of connection. It is a question of knowing how a revolutionary potential is realized, in its very relationship with the exploited masses or the “weakest links” of a given system. Do these masses or these links act in their own place, within the order of causes and aims that promote a new socius, or are they on the contrary the place and the agent of a sudden and unexpected irruption, an irruption of desire that breaks with causes and aims and overturns the socius, revealing its other side? In the subjugated groups, desire is still defined by an order of causes and aims, and itself weaves a whole system of macroscopic relations that determine the large aggregates under a formation of sovereignty.

Genealogy is bad

1. Using a genealogy as a means to approach objective truth is impossible

C.G. Prado, Professor of Philosophy, Queens University, STARTING WITH FOUCAULT, 1995, pg. 39

Foucault’s genealogical accounts and analyses are met with reiteration of what they oppose or differently explain. His historicization of rationality is met with charges of irrationality on the grounds that rationality can only be ahistorical; and his relativism of truth is met with charges that he cannot mean “real” truth on the grounds that he presupposes objective truth in making any claims at all and denies it at the cost of intelligibility. Even though odd to say so, this is all it should be. Genealogy would fail if it succeeded in displacing established philosophical principles and methods and became codified and itself established as the dominant truth of an era. Genealogy cannot cease to be marginal and oppositional and still be genealogy. What genealogy offers musts always need saying; its analyses must always strike the orthodox as counterintuitive and its arguments must at first seem to not be arguments at all in appearing to violate proper—read “accepted”—intellectual procedures.

2. GENEALOGY falls prey to the same fate of historicity

Richard Bernstein, Dean of the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, CRITIQUE AND POWER. Ed. Kelly. pg. 220

“Genealogy,” according to Habermas, “is overtaken by a fate similar to that which Foucault had seen in the human sciences.” “To the extent that it retreats into the reflectionless objectivity of a nonparticipatory, aesthetic description of kaleidoscopically changing practices of power, genealogical historiography emerges from its cocoon as precisely the presentistic, relativistic, cryptonormative illusory science that it does not want to be. Let me explain what Habermas means. By “presentistic” Habermas is referring to the “felicitous positivistic” stance that Foucault claimed for himself in describing the contingent power/knowledge regimes. This is the “cool façade of a radical historicism.” But this stance requires withholding or bracketing any evaluative judgment of the kaleidoscopically changing practices. Such pure “ascetic description” leads to relativism in the sense that there is no basis or position from which one can evaluate or judge this passing array of power/knowledge regimes. It is like adopting the panoptical gaze. But Foucault does not consistently assume such a “position,” nor is it even possible. He exhibits “the passions of aesthetic modernism.” He assumes a position of “arbitrary partisanship of a criticism that cannot account for its normative foundations. Foucault, Habermas claims, is “incorruptible enough to admit these incoherences,” but this doesn’t mean that he escapes from them.

3. Genealogy cannot function as being explanatory of the past while criticizing it—it becomes just another narrative that the genealogist would oppose.

C.G. Prado, Professor of Philosophy, Queens Univeristy, STARTING WITH FOUCAULT: 2nd Edition, 2000. pg. 38

Foucault describes genealogical tracing of the descent and emergence of concepts, ideas, and institutions as “gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary.” But genealogy’s claimed meticulously documentary nature poses a problem that we encountered earlier. Foucault’s critics pose the question: How can genealogy be documentary in nature without violating its historicist conception? The problem is the same as noted in connections with archaeology. Foucault can be read as implicitly but inconsistently contending—or as committed to contending—that genealogy can get things right. It then looks as if genealogy must be exempted from its own contentions about happenstance and lowly beginnings. It is difficult to see how genealogical analyses themselves remain historicist in nature while exposing the constructed nature of all other disciplinary truths. It does look as if the way genealogy exposes alleged events—determining essences as constructed is by tracing objective sequences of events that have been distorted by ideological or other factors. The claim that those sequences have been misinterpreted in being made to look integrated and teleological, seems to entail that the genealogical account of those events is the correct and the alternative, as we saw with archaeology, is to accept that genealogical accounts are just so many more stories on an equal footing with the stories the genealogy opposes.

Genealogy is bad

1. GENEALOGY EMPOWERS SUBMERGED VOICES ALLOWING FOR RESISTANCE AGAINST POWER

Jana Sawicki, Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at Williams College, Disciplining Foucault, 1991, pg. 25.

So Foucault is in fact pessimistic about the possibility of controlling history. But this pessimism need not lead to despair. Only a disappointed traditional revolutionary would lapse into fatalism at the thought that much of history is out of our control. Foucault's emphasis on resistance is evidence that he is not fatalistic himself, but merely skeptical about the possibilities of global transformation. He has no particular utopian vision. Yet, one need not have an idea of utopia in order to take seriously the injustices in the present. Furthermore, the past has provided enough examples of theoretical inadequacy to make Foucault's emphasis on provisional theoretical reflection reasonable. In short, genealogy as resistance involves using history to give voice to the marginal and submerged voices which lie "a little beneath history"-the voices of the mad, the delinquent, the abnormal, the disempowered. It locates many discontinuous and regional struggles against power both in the past and present. These voices are the sources of resistance, the creative subjects of history.

2. Genealogy is superior to historical interpretation.

Tim Spurgin, Professor of English at Lawrence Univerisity, HANDOUT ON FOUCAULT, "NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY", September 26, 1997, p. np, accessed June 1, 2003,

In general, history is bad. It's linear, heading in a single direction and never wavering from its pre-set course. It's teleological, concerned with beginnings and endings. It's comforting, usually reinforcing the bourgeois "myth of progress." And it's "metaphysical," confident of its ability to get at ultimate origins and truths. Genealogy, by contrast, is good. It's not linear--it follows a kind of branching structure. It's not teleological--and indeed it considers the search for origins not just fruitless but laughable. It's not comforting--because it explicitly rejects the myth of progress. And it's trying real hard not to be "metaphysical," either. Instead of worrying about God or Truth or Human Nature (note the capital letters, please), the genealogist—as Foucault himself explains--"shortens [her] vision to those things nearest it--the body, the nervous system, nutrition, digestion, and energies" (89).

3. The uses of genealogy can help our understanding of the past

Erica Noriega, California State Northridge, Graduate Student, PHILOSOPHY WEBPAGE, November 12, 2002, accessed June 1, 2003,



Foucault believed that the past can continually offer us insight and knowledge when examined in concurrence with current events and concerns. Rather than using the linear structure often adopted by historians, this event leads to this which leads to this, genealogy implements a branching structure that allows for a variety of viewpoints and perspectives. In order to develop a genealogical history, one must reject the notion of objectivity and any notion of Truth, decrease the distance between the observer and the observed event, and allow for one’s own beliefs to be incorporated within the historical story. Through the use of genealogy, our understanding of the past, as well as the present, can be greatly enriched.

Global politics are bad

1. The idea of a global world anesthetizes us from engaging in real local struggles

Jayan Nayar, School of Law, University of Warwick, Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, Fall, 1999, p. 629.

We are today bombarded by images of our "one world." We speak of the world as "shrinking" into a "global village." We are not all fooled by the implicit benign-ness of this image of "time-space" contracted--so we also speak of "global pillage." This astuteness of our perceptions, however, does not prevent us from our delusion of the "global;" the image of the "global" world persists even for many activists amongst us who struggle to "change" the world. This is recent delusion. It is a delusion which anesthetizes us from the only world which we can ever locate ourselves in and know--the worlds of "I"-in relationships. The "I" is seldom present in "emancipatory" projects to change the world.

2. Thinking globally ignores real suffering

Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities, University of Virginia, Achieving Our Country, 1998, p. 98-99.

The current leftist habit of taking the long view and looking beyond nationhood to a global polity is as useless as was faith in Marx’s philosophy of history, for which it has become a substitute. Both are equally irrelevant to the question of how to prevent the reemergence of hereditary castes, or of how to prevent right-wing populists from taking advantage of resentment at that reemergence. When we think about these latter questions, we begin to realize that one of the essential transformations which the cultural Left will have to undergo is the shedding of its semiconscious anti-Americanism, which it carried over from the rage of the late Sixties. This Left will have to stop thinking up ever more abstract and abusive names for “the system” and start trying to construct inspiring images of the country.

3. Framing struggles as global disempowers

Jayan Nayar, School of Law, University of Warwick, Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, Fall, 1999, p. 629.

The advance in technologies of image-ing enables a distanciation of scrutiny, from the "I"-world of relationships to the "global"-world of abstractions. As we become fixated with the distant, as we consume the images of "world" as other than here and now, as we project ourselves through technological time-space into worlds apart from our here and now, as we become "global," we are relieved of the gravity of our present. We, thus, cease the activism of self (being) and take on the mantle of the "activist" (doing). This is a significant displacement. That there is suffering all over the world has indeed been made more visible by the technologies of image-ing. Yet for all its consequent fostering of "networks," images of "global" suffering have also served to disempower. By this, we mean not merely that we are filled with the sense that the forces against which the struggle for emancipations from injustice and exploitation are waged are pervasive and, therefore, often impenetrable, but, more importantly, that it diverts our gaze away from the only true power that is in our disposal--the power of self-change in relationships of solidarities.

4. Images of global world order must be betrayed

Jayan Nayar, School of Law, University of Warwick, Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, Fall, 1999, p. 628.

Notwithstanding the globalization of social concern and the transnationalization of professionalized critique and reformatory action, struggles against violence remain energized, persistent and located. They are waged through the bodies of lives lived in experiential locations against real instruments of terror, functioning within embodied sites of violence. Non-information and non-representation of the existence of such struggles, and non-learning of the wisdoms thus generated do not negate their truths or the vibrancy of their socialities. "We" are participants in ordered worlds, not merely observers. The choice is whether we wish to recognize our own locations of ordered violence and participate in the struggle to resist their orderings, or whether we wish merely to observe violence in far-off worlds in order that our interventionary participation "out there" never destabilizes the ground upon which we stand. I suggest that we betray the spirit of transformatory struggle, despite all our expressions of support and even actions of professionalized expertise, if our own locations, within which are ordered and from which we ourselves order, remain unscrutinized.

Global politics are good

1. The local is utilized to fulfill the interests of elites

David Engel, SUNY – Buffalo School of Law, “Injury and Identity: The Damaged Self in Three Cultures,” April 24, 1999, p. np, Accessed November 16, 2002,

Judges, like politicians, understand the power of the myth of the local. They may attempt to legitimate their pronouncements about order and responsibility by relying on romanticized images of schools, families, and communities, selectively rendered and stripped of contestation and ambiguity. Although citizens differ about particular local norms or practices, most would respond to the importance of “local-ness” itself as a value in opposition to intrusions by big government, big business, or “alien” persons into local settings. By using, and inevitably distorting, the norms and practices they discover in local settings, the spokespersons for state law shield themselves from the accusation that they are intruding on the common sense of ordinary people. They legitimate their decisions as mere reflections of a mythic local community. Of course, the law’s selectivity and distortion shapes identities in particular ways. Law transforms symbols and images drawn from local settings and redeploys them as authoritative pronouncements that can potentially change the very settings from which they are drawn.

2. Privileging the local cements cultural oppression

Aihwa Ong, Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationality, 1999, p. 33-34.

. He suggests that an alternative imagination that draws on “narratives of community” would be a formidable challenge to narratives of capital. This brilliant work, however, is based on the assumption that both modernity and capitalism are universal forms, against which non-Western societies such as India can only mobilize “pre-existing cultural solidarities such as locality, caste, tribe, religious community, or ethnic identity.” This analytical opposition between a universal modernity and non-Western culture is rather old-fashioned it is as if Chatterjee believes the West is not present in Indian elites who champion narratives of the indigenous community.

3. The local replicates the call for authenticity which destroys representation

Gareth Griffiths, professor of English at University of Western Australia, De-scribing Empire, 1994, p. 71.

Whilst it is true that the various Australian Aboriginal peoples may increasingly wish to assert their sense of the local and the specific as a recuperative strategy in the face of the erasure of difference characteristic of colonialist representation, such representations, subsumed by the white media under a mythologized and fetishized sign of the ‘authentic’, can also be used to create a privileged hierarchy of Australian Aboriginal voice. This voice in practice may serve to represent that community as a divided one as well as to construct a belief in the society at large that issues of recovered ‘traditional’ rights are of a different order of equity from the right to general social justice and equality. Whilst this may be in part the unintentional product of a worthy liberal desire to recuperate Australian Aboriginal culture, it also frequently results, as in the case I have given, in the media construction of the ‘authentic’ Australian Aboriginal in opposition to the ‘inauthentic’ political activists whose claim is undermined (the metaphor is an appropriate one) by a dismissal of their right to represent Australian Aboriginal culture in any meaningful or legitimate way.

4. Global strategies can be pursued by the South. Criticism denies agency

Nederveen Pieterse, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Jan 21, Third World Quarterly, 2000, p. 175.

According to Escobar (1992), the problem with ‘development’ is that it is external, based on the model of the industrialized world, and what is needed instead are ‘more endogenous discourses.’ The assertion of ‘endogenous development’ calls to mind dependency theory and the ‘foreign bad, local good’ position (Kiely, 1999). According to Rajni Kothari, ‘where colonialism left off, development took over’ (1988: 143). This view is as old as the critique of modernisation theory. It calls to mind the momentum and pathos of decolonisation and the familiar cultural homogenisation thesis, according to which Western media, advertising and consumerism induce cultural uniformity. All this may be satisfying as the sound of a familiar tune, but it is also one-sided and old-hat. In effect, it denies the agency of the Third World.

Identity Politics are Bad

1. IDENTITY POLITICS ARE DISASTROUS

Christina Hutchins, Graduate Theological Union, “Poetry as performativity and excess: An essay on politics and anti-foundational academic discourse, and seven poems on sedimentation,” Paideusis, Volume 2, 1999, accessed June 6, 2003,

Though an identity-based politics has been and continues to be a powerful tool for people who are marginalized and brutally oppressed, often simultaneously creating a general tolerance and appreciation for real human difference within and between cultures, a politics based on identity categories also appears to be one of the factors repeatedly implicated in the tearing apart of present and future worlds by wars of words, bombs, guns, and embargos limiting access to food and other resources. Identity-based politics too often bolster attitudes of "us" against "them," threatening even the vision or possibility of a peace which might sustain and empower all persons. Politics based on identity are limited because they are always based on principles of exclusion, on binarisms of "I am ____, because I am not ____." Much of the scholarly anti-foundationalist discourse presently occurring among post-structuralist, postmodern, post-colonial, third-wave feminist and other contemporary theorists critiques any ideological stance or political praxis which bases itself primarily or solely on categorical "identity," since such identities are often implicated in, enforced, and created by the very repressive regimes which they may be seeking to resist. In other words, when the second blank space in the sentence above, is filled in with a hegemonic identifier such as "white, man, straight, wealthy, physically able, Christian, etc...," the first blank space becomes dependent upon its opposition to the second space for its own definition. In such a way, non-hegemonic identities may be understood not as essential differences, but as cultural constructions, which even when used in resistant ways, may continue to reify hegemonic powers of definition and binary categorization, reinforcing the universalizing tendencies of dominant positions.

2. USING IDENTITY CATEGORIES IS COMPLICIT WITH GROUP DISCRIMINATION

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Oregon Law Review, Fall, 1996, p. 677.

On quite different grounds, Wendy Brown criticizes a city ordinance against discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation that covers a long list of group identities, including not only the familiar categories of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability, but also the category of appearance. She objects to this effort to render as equivalent the risks faced by African-Americans and white teens who dye and spike their hair; she worries that the use of identity categories even in a remedial mode becomes complicit with the regulatory regimes that produce them; she cautions against the regulation that obscures the effects of social power. Similarly, Kristin Bumiller has examined the danger that civil rights laws require individuals to claim the status of victims in a way that recapitulates their group-based exclusions.

3. IDENTITY POLITICS CREATES INTER-GROUP STRIFE

Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr., Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, FLORIDA LAW REVIEW, p. 526.

The other side of the notion of identity politics is also an issue of some misappropriation. Politics that centers on the identity of participants in legal question is frowned upon. When an oppressed social group organizes politically to fight that oppression, we can not normally say that organizing is wrong. So if that is not wrong, how can identity politics be wrong? The answer given by its critics is that identity politics must ultimately make identity the only issue. Organizing along racial, gender, or sexual orientation community lines is wrong, because these community concerns will trump the concerns of what we hold in common. "Identity politics" is a bad phrase because it connotes narrow parochial factional concerns, and, as we learned from the Federalist papers, the danger of such factions. We have only to look at former Yugoslavia to see the dangers of identity politics. Identity politics leads to war, strife and discord. Only through the imposition of the common good can these horrors be avoided.

Identity politics are Good

1. Refusing identity politics cements racism

bell hooks, “Postmodern Blackness,” Postmodern Culture, 1990, accessed January 27, 2002,

The postmodern critique of "identity," though relevant for renewed black liberation struggle, is often posed in ways that are problematic. Given a pervasive politic of white supremacy which seeks to prevent the formation of radical black subjectivity, we cannot cavalierly dismiss a concern with identity politics. Any critic exploring the radical potential of postmodernism as it relates to racial difference and racial domination would need to consider the implications of a critique of identity for oppressed groups. Many of us are struggling to find new strategies of resistance. We must engage decolonization as a critical practice if we are to have meaningful chances of survival even as we must simultaneously cope with the loss of political grounding which made radical activism more possible. I am thinking here about the postmodernist critique of essentialism as it pertains to the construction of "identity" as one example. Postmodern theory that is not seeking to simply appropriate the experience of "otherness" in order to enhance its discourse or to be radically chic should not separate the "politics of difference" from the politics of racism. To take racism seriously one must consider the plight of underclass people of color, a vast majority of whom are black. For African-Americans our collective condition prior to the advent of postmodernism and perhaps more tragically expressed under current postmodern conditions has been and is characterized by continued displacement, profound alienation and despair.

2. THE SOCIAL POWER OF IDENTITY CATEGORIES REQUIRES DEALING WITH THEM

Jon Cruz, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, MULTICULTURALISM, 1996, p. 34-35.

It would be the height of arrogance to dismiss as socially constructed moral fictions the meanings that are charged in the identities we inherit and inhabit, for it is in these cultural interstices that we live our socially and institutionally marked everyday lives. On the surface is where we do the bulk of our thinking, swim in our emotions, navigate with our institutionally traversed common sense. We dwell in the inner logic of these surface spheres, our modern social cells; they govern experience and enable us to feel so deep. Historical forces much larger than our individual or collective selves compel us to take on our raced, gendered, and classed places, and to adjust to the fields in which these identities are located. We live and act in their names, working with the combination of plus or minus signs that accrue around them. As modernity churns on, new identity formations hitherto nonexistent, or previously denied, denigrated, devalued, undermined, punished, and repressed, continue to emerge. They register, understandably so, as major psychic as well as social victories. The indulgence in identity politics afforded by multiculturalism can make us feel more whole, more like subjects than objects. Yet could it be that our sense of the social whole may be shrinking? For multiculturalism also appears now to be the latest unfolding of a half-gratifying, half-debilitating social logic. It functions in the contemporary context as a political-demographic fix, and as a patching of fissures that have opened on the social surfaces over the last quarter century. Inheritors of this cultural logic speak in a language of subjectivity and place, and are busy maintaining popular memory; overseers of the new multi-cultural workforce speak of diversity management. These seem to be the preferred views that embrace the notion of social autonomy and domestic(ated)pluralism.

Interpretation is bad

1. Interpretation does violence

D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, Fall 1999, p. np, Accessed May 21, 2001,

How we respond to others establishes our commitment to them. The response to a literary text is a pledge: critics bind themselves to a view of it by what they take themselves to be responsible for. To borrow Niebuhr’s example, our eyelids react to light with pure reflex, but as a self—an interpretive being—you or I respond to it as light, an experience to which we assume that a certain kind of response is called for (Niebuhr 63). As I am defining it, then, responsibility is the activity of responding appropriately. Responsibility acts upon the assumption that events (including exchanges between human beings) demand a response which is neither arbitrary nor predetermined, but self-willed and adjusted to circumstance; that human events are not signs to be deciphered, but occasions to be respected. A meal, a cry for help, a musical performance, a confession of error, the fondness for another: when we act responsibly we do not ask what such experiences mean, but how they are to be acknowledged. The ethical question precedes the interpretive. If we have to compare, analyze, and relate events—if we wish to stand by a response or justify it—we confront the interpretive question; yet even then interpretation is not the detailed self-consistent specification of a meaning, but the carrying out of our responsibility, our sense of exactly what events require of us.

2. Interpretation does violence to the other. It steals their agency

Angela Cavender Wilson, doctoral candidate in American history at Cornell University, Natives and Academics Researching and Writing About American Indians, 1998, p. 25.

Work done in the fields of anthropology and folklore often has served to fill this void for historians in recent years, but even this work is often fraught with its own problems. Native people have, in most instances, had very little to say about the interpretations, analyses, and translations developed from the stories they willingly shared. It has been my experience that many of these works are filled with misinterpretations, mistranslations, lack of context, and lack of understanding (although certainly some exceptions exist in which scholars have been successful in incorporating Native voices into their work). At the very least these oral accounts collected by non- indian anthropologists, ethnographers, and folklorists should be discussed with knowledgeable elders to determine the accuracy of their assumptions and the appropriateness of their use (preferably with those within the same family from which the original information was collected) before they are used in contemporary histories.

3. A text must be seen as summons BEFORE IT IS something to interpret

D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, Fall 1999, p. np, Accessed May 21, 2001,

Perhaps more than any other genre, Holocaust literature poses the ethical question of responsibility. Not that it traffics in blame or guilt. Rather, Holocaust literature summons a counterfactual moral response—a response to past events that is counter to the fact that they are past repairing. In as far as it is an account of collective harm, Holocaust literature confronts its readers with the question whether responsibility is to be shared by them, despite the fact that they are not to blame. Holocaust texts provoke the disquieting question "What is being asked of me?" To answer this question fully interpretation is required, but unless there is a prior response of a certain kind—unless the Holocaust text is received as a summons—the problem of interpretation does not even arise. Thus interpretation contributes to the moral life by making it possible for a person to respond appropriately (though counterfactually) to human need. The way of reading that I am describing here is different in kind from what is customarily expected in literary study. It is not the discovery of meanings beneath an intelligible surface of words. It is not a matter of meaning at all, but of need. Ethically responsible reading does not seek to unmask the interests behind the Holocaust text, but rather to preserve it as the matchless revelation of a personality, requiring love.

Interpretation is good

1. Refusal to interpret leaves the texts as static objects. This fails to actualize responsibility

D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, Fall 1999, p. np, Accessed May 21, 2001,

As I am defining it, then, responsibility is the activity of responding appropriately. Responsibility acts upon the assumption that events (including exchanges between human beings) demand a response which is neither arbitrary nor predetermined, but self-willed and adjusted to circumstance; that human events are not signs to be deciphered, but occasions to be respected. A meal, a cry for help, a musical performance, a confession of error, the fondness for another: when we act responsibly we do not ask what such experiences mean, but how they are to be acknowledged. The ethical question precedes the interpretive. If we have to compare, analyze, and relate events—if we wish to stand by a response or justify it—we confront the interpretive question; yet even then interpretation is not the detailed self-consistent specification of a meaning, but the carrying out of our responsibility, our sense of exactly what events require of us. What we understand to be called for and appropriate—our responsibility to experience—is the genetic code out of which the specific features of interpretation develop. The concept of interpretive responsibility that I am advancing here is not intended to be polemical, because it is descriptive and pragmatic, not prescriptive and theoretical.

2. Texts cannot stand alone. The reader must interpret them

D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, Fall 1999, p. np, Accessed May 21, 2001,

Holocaust texts provoke the disquieting question "What is being asked of me?" To answer this question fully interpretation is required, but unless there is a prior response of a certain kind—unless the Holocaust text is received as a summons—the problem of interpretation does not even arise. Thus interpretation contributes to the moral life by making it possible for a person to respond appropriately (though counterfactually) to human need. The way of reading that I am describing here is different in kind from what is customarily expected in literary study. It is not the discovery of meanings beneath an intelligible surface of words. It is not a matter of meaning at all, but of need. Ethically responsible reading does not seek to unmask the interests behind the Holocaust text, but rather to preserve it as the matchless revelation of a personality, requiring love.

3. context matters. We must search for the author via textual reading

Edward Said, Orientalism, 1978, p. 23-24.

Lane’s authority and the opportunities provided for citing him discriminately as well as indiscriminately were there because Orientalism could give his text the kind of distributive currency that he acquired. There is no way, however, of understanding Lane’s text; this is equally true of Renan, Sacy, Lamartine, Schlegel, and a group of other influential writers. Foucualt believes that in general the individual text or author counts for very little; empirically, in the case of Orientalism (and perhaps nowhere else) I find this not to be so. Accordingly my analyses employ close textual readings whose goal is to reveal the dialectic between individual text or writer and the complex collective formation to which his work is a contribution.

4. Only interpretation can allow the possibility of creating justice

D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, Fall 1999, p. np, Accessed May 21, 2001,

What this indicates is that the Holocaust does not belong only to history but also to possibility. If we cannot affect its outcome we can still do something about its meaning. Events mean nothing in themselves; they must be interpreted. But what this also indicates is that meaning arises from our responsibility. The counterfactual possibility of doing something appropriate about the Holocaust is what creates our responsibility to it, and if what we want is to discover its meaning—that is, to interpret the Holocaust—then our interpretation must be shaped and guided by our responsibility.

Levinas’s ethics of being for the other are bad

1. THE CERTAINTY INVOLVED IN “BEING FOR THE OTHER” COULD ALLOW FOR EVIL

Didier Pollefeyt, Professor of Moral Theology at Katholieke Universiteit, Ethics After the Holocaust, 1999, p. 37.

An ethical God can only judge. Here the danger and terror of ethics arises. The paradox is that Nazism could also be interpreted along these lines, as becomes clear in the thought of Peter Haas. Nazism seems to be founded on a definite, ruthless (indeed perverted) "ethical" code. Nazism was in all possible respects merciless. Whoever did not comply with its "ethical" demands inevitably "deserved" to be eliminated. Of course, Levinas's ethics and Nazi ethics are fundamentally different (see my contribution to this volume), precisely because Levinas's ethics is centered on openness and Nazi ethics on closedness. But at the same time, Levinas's ethics should also be questioned as to its possibility of becoming fanatic in confrontation with evildoers. We must there- fore also put forth the question: "What comes after ethics?"

2. Levinas’ godlike Other reifies the Western object of knowledge he criticizes

Peter Haas, of Jewish literature and thought from Vanderbilt University, Ethics After the Holocaust, 1999, p. 18.

I close by pointing out that much of the language Grob uses to describe Levinas's "alternative" to the received Western tradition is strikingly reminiscent of traditional language in the West about God. God has always been the truly-Other, who comes from an "exterior realm," an "outside of being" who always challenges our self-suffi- ciency and complacency. In fact, I think it is not coincidental that after critiquing the tendency of the West to establish objects of knowledge, all of which have capital letters—the Good, the Truth, the Just—Levinas posits his own: the Other. In the end Levinas is not outside the history of Western intellectual discourse, but very much inside it. This suggests that what is needed is a true openness to the other (not Other) voices that are out there, not the imposition of one Other for a different Other.

3. LEVINASIAN ETHICS CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR MULTIPLE RESPONSIBILITIES

David Campbell, professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, ed. by Campbell and Shapiro, 1999, p. 35-36.

Suggestive though it is for the domain of international relations where the bulk of the work on ethics can be located within a conventional perspective on responsibility — Levinas's formulation of responsibility, subjectivity, and ethics nonetheless possesses some problems when it comes to the implications of this thought for politics. What requires particular attention is the means by which the elemental and omnipresent status of responsibility, which is founded in the one-to-one or face-to-face relationship, can function in circumstances marked by a multiplicity of others. Although the reading of Levinas here agrees that "the ethical exigency to be responsible to the other undermines the ontological primacy of the meaning of being," and embraces the idea that this demand "unsettles the natural and political positions we have taken up in the world and predisposes us to a meaning that is other than being, that is otherwise than being:" how those disturbances are negotiated so as to foster the maximum responsibility in a world populated by others in struggle remains to be argued. To examine what is a problem of considerable import given the context of this essay, I want to consider Levinas's discussion of "the third person," the distinction he makes between the ethical and the moral, and—of particular importance in a consideration of the politics of international action—the role of the state in Levinas's thought.

Levinas’s ethics of being for the other are good

1. Recognizing the Other allows the re-evaluation of social relations

Leonard Grob, Professor of Philosophy at Farleigh Dickinson University, Ethics After the Holocaust, 1999, p. 47.

Finally, if it is not just another abstraction in a history of philosophical abstractions, how does the face-to-face encounter help us to realize our goal of a post-Holocaust ethics? How can it help us to prevent future genocides? Is Levinas's depletion of the ethical relation descriptive or prescriptive in nature? It must be recalled that Levinas is writing against the backdrop of centuries—no, millennia—within which moral, legal, and religious systems have failed to protect us from the threat and, all-too- often, the reality of genocidal acts. Levinas does not offer us just another set of moral directives akin to those ultimately derived from a base of egoist ontology. Rather, he endeavors to ground all modes of thinking and acting in a ground of all grounds: the call to responsibility sounded by the Other. This call undergirds, and thus stands outside any traditional descriptive/prescriptive distinction. Levinas's thought provides a context of all contexts for what it means to be moral, prompting us to rethink from the bottom up, where we stand in relation to others Where do we stand? We stand, in every aspect of our lived experience, as called to account for ourselves. Levinas brings to our attention that which, at bottom, is requisite for action which would refuse our potential for genocide. Whether it be those aspects of my being traditionally analyzed, let us say, by behavioral, social, or any other (alleged) science of humankind, each and every part of my being must now be looked at as founded in a fundamental call to responsibility. The human sciences must indeed be called upon in the endeavor to combat genocide, but they must no longer ground themselves in an egoist base.

2. The Holocaust demonstrates that we must actualize our responsibility

Leonard Grob, Professor of Philosophy at Farleigh Dickinson University, Ethics After the Holocaust, 1999, p. 299-300.

For Levinas, the ontological primacy of our responsibility for the other person is also continually in danger of not being realized in practice. It is most often obscured by our desire to appropriate the other for our own ends, to see the other impersonally, as a means to an end beyond him or herself. We are in constant danger of "totalizing" all that is, of subsuming the ultimately unsubsumable "face" of the other to categories of our own making. The primacy of relating to the sacred other is thus, for both Buber and Levinas, continually in need of actualization: We stand in need of a call, a summons to become who we most fundamentally are. The Holocaust was an extraordinary moment in human history when impersonal, totalizing forces congealed so fully as to make expendable the members of an entire people. We must learn from the Holocaust to act so as to realize the relational potential in our humanity which Buber and Levinas have named. The actions of rescuers who risked all to stand steadfastly before the face of the Other—these actions constitute such a response to the Holocaust. We must strive to emulate these rescuers in the face of the evils of our own time and place.

3. OBLIGATION TO THE OTHER SUPERCEDES ALL OTHER CONCERNS

D. G. Myers, English and religious studies at Texas A & M, Comparative Literature, Fall 1999, p. 266-288, accessed June 6, 2003,

Since the first stirrings of consciousness are the gnawings of conscience, the first question before the human subject is the ethical: how are you going to respond to this uneasy sense of being "not guilty, but accused"? All human action, every effort to budge from the passivity of subjectivity, is a response to ethical challenge. Hence ethics are "first philosophy," logically prior to any other mode of thought. Socrates’ deontological advice that it is better to suffer injustice than to cause it (Gorgias 469c) is of small assistance to [one] him who is rasped by the mauvaise conscience that [one] he has already caused injustice. "Self-consciousness is not an inoffensive action in which the self takes note of its being," Levinas says; "it is inseparable from a consciousness of justice and injustice" ("Religion for Adults" 16). What he proposes is to replace deontology with a counterfactual ethics of responsibility. If I am not guilty of hurting another I cannot be blamed for it, but if I nevertheless feel accused of it I can take responsibility for it. In this way perhaps I can both ease my conscience and begin to repair any damage that I might have caused. My responsibility to the person I might have hurt—the human Other or Autrui, in Levinas’s terminology—preempts any claims of my own.

Listening is bad

1. Listening only creates a staging ground for the subaltern

John Beverley, Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at Pittsburgh, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Critical Theory, 1999, p.69-70.

She was trying to show that behind the good faith of the liberal academic or the committed ethnographer or solidarity activist in allowing or enabling the subaltern to speak lies the trace of the colonial construction of an other—an other who is conveniently available to speak to us (with whom we can speak or feel comfortable speaking with). This neutralizes the force of the reality of difference and antagonism our own relatively privileged position in the global system might give rise to. Elzbieta Sklodowska has in mind something similar when she argues that, despite its appeal to the authority of an actual subaltern voice, testimonio is in fact a staging of the subaltern by someone who is not subaltern, as in Lyotard's notion of the differend (where a dispute is carried out according to the terms and language of one of the parties to the dispute). In particular, testimonio is not, in Sklodowska's words, "a genuine and spontaneous reaction of a 'multiform-popular subject' in conditions of postcoloniality, but rather continues to be a discourse of elites committed to the cause of democratization."" The appeal to authenticity and victimization in the critical validation of testimonio stops the semiotic play of the text, Sklodowska implies, fixing the subject in a unidirectional gaze that deprives it of its reality. Fixes the testimonial narrator as a subject, that is, but also fixes us as subjects in what Althusser would have called a relation of double specularity created by the idealization or sublimation of subaltern otherness, which in the end also isolates us from our reality.

2. Listening to voices hides the process of dispossession

John Beverley, Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at Pittsburgh, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Critical Theory, 1999, p. 38-40.

Moreover, in making the shift from "objectivity" to "solidarity," we cannot simply disavow representation under the pretext that we are allowing the subaltern to "speak for itself" (that is Spivak's main point in "Can the Subaltern Speak?"). And there is a way in which the (necessarily?) liberal political slant Rorty gives the idea of solidarity may also be, as the 1960s slogan has it, part of the problem rather than part of the solution, because it assumes that "conversation" is possible across power/exploitation divides that radically differentiate the participants." Solidarity based on an assumption of equality and reciprocity does not "lean that contradictions are suppressed in the name of a heuristic notion of merger or identification with the subaltern: Foucault's point about the embarrassment of "speaking for others" is pertinent here.

3. Opening space to speak is irrelevant

Carolyn D'Cruz, LaTrobe University, Australia, “What Matter Who's Speaking?" Authenticity and Identity in Discourses of Aboriginality in Australia,” Jouvert, Volume 5, Issue 3, Summer 2001, p. np, Accessed November 7, 2001,

That is, regardless of their intentions to accommodate diversity, all participants in the debate seemed fixed upon the notion of having to choose the most suitable 'discourse of Aboriginality', to borrow Hollinsworth's phrase. In doing so, they unwittingly quell the diversity inhering in Aboriginal identities, and restrict the capacity for representations to shift in accordance with the specificity of a particular situation and institutional site. In other words, the status accorded to the speaking subject within the Oceania discussion becomes complicit in preserving the idea of a unitary sovereign subject, even though some participants, like Hollinsworth, might like to avoid this.

4. Listening to the subaltern re-entenches power relationships

Benjamin Graves, Brown University, 1998, p. np, Accessed January 11, 2001,

Although Spivak acknowledges the "epistemic violence" done upon Indian subalterns, she suggests that any attempt from the outside to ameliorate their condition by granting them collective speech invariably will encounter the following problems: 1) a logocentric assumption of cultural solidarity among a heterogeneous people, and 2) a dependence upon western intellectuals to "speak for" the subaltern condition rather than allowing them to speak for themselves. As Spivak argues, by speaking out and reclaiming a collective cultural identity, subalterns will in fact re-inscribe their subordinate position in society.

Listening is good

1. The stories of the oppressed must be heard

Kathryn Shanley, associate English professor in the American Indian Program at Cornell University, Studying Native America, 1998, p. 134-135.

Karl Kroeber, in his book on the relationship between ecology and literature, expresses well the connections I am drawing between community- building and local knowledge, as well as literature's place within an academic program/department and the world beyond the academy. Ecological literary criticism, according to Kroeber, denies the view that art is practically trivial and of no significance to physical, social, or ethical problems, and is sympathetic to the romantic premise that the imaginativeness essential to poetry is the primary human capability enabling us to interact in a responsible manner with our environment. Acts of imagination such as are realized in poems, therefore, ins', contribute to the resolution of practical social and ethical difficulties, and commentators should endeavor to speak not to an elite or a coterie but to as wide an audience as possible. The [English] romantics never forgot what today we too frequently overlook. that the most important elements of our environment are our fellow human beings- most of whom, thank goodness, are not academic critics. In the context of Kroeber's remarks, poetry means something other than the rarefied artifact of a "high" culture. Poems created by indigenous people have always functioned both practically to fulfill "the people's" responsibility toward Nature and each other and aesthetically to please the senses. In fact. most poetry occasions in traditional Indian settings are multimedia events. Poetic imagination, as Kroeber envisions it, fits into the seamless whole of connectedness to the environment. Th

2. The dispossessed deserve to be heard

Devon Mihesuah, associate professor of history at Northern Arizona University, Natives and Academics Researching and Writing About American Indians, 1998, p. 47-48.

Even fewer writers use literature and poetry as resources. Because many Indian women writers possess empirical data that cannot find acceptance in historical or anthropological works, literature is one effective outlet for their stories. Scott Momaday has commented that "language is the repository of. . . knowledge and experience." Would the textualization of oral stories or of literature composed from influences of oral stories not have messages of import for readers? Works written by culturally aware Indian women are derived from their consciousness, filled with experience and knowledge of tribal ritual. Chicana feminist Alvina Quintana says that when women writers free their writings of patriarchal discourse, language becomes "a vehicle for the demystification through self-representation of that unity we call woman. ,130 Indeed, it is through their writings that we can learn that Indian women were and are powerful; they were and are as complex as their cultures are diverse. Their works are worth a look.

3. listening to stories invigorates social movements and overcomes alienation

Sandra Ruffin. Associate Professor of Law, at the St. Thomas University School of Law. “Postmodernism, Spirit Healing, and the Proposed Amendments to the Indian Child Welfare Act,” McGeorge Law Review, Summer, 1999, p. 324.

A significant portion of this Article was originally presented as a speech for a panel on the Indian Child Welfare Act at a Symposium entitled: "Tribal Sovereignty- Back To The Future," held December 1-2, 1994, at the St. Thomas University School of Law. Although my exposure to, and interest in, Native American life predates this Symposium by some two decades, the Symposium revitalized my own experience of Native American life as a teacher of Native American children in Phoenix, Arizona. That revitalized experience urges me to start this Article by thanking the indigenous peoples living throughout North and South America for expressing a way of life that is connected and illuminating, and, in my view, consistent with, yet beyond, our postmodern theoretical understanding of humankind's relational being. This Article suggests that a "phenomenology of connectedness" is available to us through the lives and cultural narratives of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and that phenomenology can impact the existential crisis experienced by Indian children. As a new epistemological source for law, it will inform and require a transformative jurisprudence that applies tribal law to the configuration of custody arrangements involving "Indian" children made in state forums. In addition, the phenomenology of connectedness has profound implications for the transformation of the alienated character of our present social condition.

Nihilism is bad

1. Nihilism can’t deal with radical evil

Rob Atkinson, Professor of Law, Florida State University College of Law, Florida State University Law Review, Fall, 2000, p. 356.

I should, perhaps, point out that Nihilism is not the worst “-ism” afoot in the land. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, it is a particularly unstable position; once you become too firmly committed to valuing nothing, nothing becomes, paradoxically, the thing you value. More dangerously, Nihilism can transmogrify from an essentially passive absence of commitment to valuing anything into an all-too-active commitment to destroying everything. This distinction is nicely captured in the realist fear, not so much that Nihilism will become Nazis, as that Nihilists will have no answer to Nazism. See id. at 956-57. It is also nicely captured in the following exchange in the movie The Big Lebowski: Dude (Jeff Bridges): They were Nihilists man, they kept saying they believe in nothing. Walter (John Goodman): Nihilists! F— me, I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.

2. nihilism translates into disabling skepticism

David Zlotnick, Associate Professor of Law at the Roger Williams University School of Law, Washington & Lee Law Review, Summer, 2001, p. 982.

Often, these discussions reference the Nazi flirtation with Nietzchian nihilistic thought and argue that nihilism provides no basis for opposing the Holocaust. See, e.g. Laurence Doug-las, Wartime Lies: Securing the Holocaust in Law and Literature, 7 Yale J.L. & Human. 367 (1995); Gregory H. Hartman, Is An Aesthetic Ethos Possible? Night Thoughts After Auschwitz, 6 Cardozo Stud. L. & Literature 135 (1994); Daniel Stern, The Fellowship of Men That Die: The Legacy of Albert Camus, 10 Cardozo Stud. L. & Literature 183 (1998). One such critic argues that "[i]n the absence of some empirical truth about human nature or some transcendental realm of moral reality, there is no indubitable source for securing our most cherished moral values from a disabling skepticism . . . . With nothing else to secure moral justification, diverse or conflicting social practices seem to stand beyond rational approval or condemnation . . . . Postmodernism - with its rejection of meta- narratives, deconstruction of meaning, and decentering of the self - looks like a radicalized version of skepticism that threatens a frightening descent into intellectual and moral chaos."

3. Focusing on theorizing paralyzes resistance to oppression

Maxine Eichner, J.D. at Yale Law School, Harvard Civil Right-Civil Liberties Law, Winter, 2001, p. np.

Even when postmodernists have made positive proposals, they have tended to be pitched at a theoretical level far above the specific political tradeoffs necessary for a viable strategy of resistance. Richard Rorty calls such proposals "futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance [that] are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations." Critics have argued that such postmodern projects, often phrased in the form of vague admonitions to embrace tolerance, respect the Other in its otherness, or resist oppression, "empty the category of the political."

4. Nihilism makes living together impossible

Anthony Cook, Associate Professor at Georgetown Law, New England Law Review, Spring, 1992, p. 753.

Put differently, if one can reduce all attempts to articulate universally valid principles, theories and visions of social order and transformation to instances of contextual political construction in which a particular conception of the good life has no epistemologically sound foundation, is not every social construct merely an instance of naked power incapable of ultimate justification? How, then, is living together possible? How can we talk from our own experiences and values in ways that bind others with different experiences and values when every attempt to impose our values on others is incapable of objective justification? Does not every attempt to universalize entail an oppressive projection of our own desires, agendas and visions onto others with different histories and trajectories, making us guilty of the very thing that necessitated the critique of modernism from the start?

Nihilism is good

1. Nihilism clears the way for true values to emerge

James Singer, NQA, “Nihilism and the Eternal Recurrence,” CSULA's Online Journal of Philosophy, 2003, p. 2, Accessed May 28, 2003,

All values are still devalued but the devaluation is seen as only the transitional stage. In active nihilism, the goallessness as such becomes the affirmation of life. The old values are not simply replaced or inverted. The active nihilist smashes and sweeps away the old values until only the rubble of the old values are left on the floor. The wanting of new values is not the driving force for the active nihilist. She looks for something completely different. The active nihilist uses the devaluation as a clearing away of the old values to make room for the revaluation. She uses a hammer to smash the hollow values that bound her previously and then uses the same hammer to affirm life, to rebuild. The revaluation of all values is the rebuilding, an affirmation of life, a “yes!” saying to life. The active nihilist sees the devaluation of all values as possibility.

2. Nihilism is necessary for the continuation of society. Destruction must precede rebuilding

James Singer, NQA, “Nihilism and the Eternal Recurrence,” CSULA's Online Journal of Philosophy, 2003, p. 4-5, Accessed May 28, 2003,

In the eternal recurrence, nihilism is a devaluing of the highest values up until now. The revaluation is preceded by the devaluation of all values, but the devaluation is also following the revaluation. The new dawn of the revaluation is already standing on the edge of a devaluation of all values. The devaluation still pushes us towards a positing of new values. The destruction of the old values brings forth a building of new values again and again. For this to be a complete movement the old values must be completely done away with. Even the idea of values as such may be thrown out.

3. Nihilist skepticism paves the way for true freedom

Janette Poulton, education officer for the Victorian Association for Philosophy in School, The Age, April 9, 2003, p. 9.

He distances himself from what he calls "sick" selfishness and says that for an authentic life, you should liberate your self from trivial pleasures and discover newer, higher ones. His "super man" has better things to do than worry about either being a "goodie", or getting pleasured, or in discovering the true nature of the soul. But what are these higher things? Nietzsche asserts that faith in a principle - be it patriotism, art, religion, convention - or in the righteousness of a way of life, is wishful thinking. His advice is to abolish reverence for "fundamental truths", for in so doing we abolish a fantasy world created from our need for certainty. To achieve this we must treat every "truth" as a hypothesis. He is urging us to live a life informed by an active and relentless scepticism. For Nietzsche, the good life consists of living happily with the ensuing uncertainty, in "being practised in maintaining (oneself) on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses".

4. Nihilism frees us from our beliefs

S.R. Prozak, Founding Member of the American Nihilist Underground Society, “Nihilism,” American Nihilist Underground Society, 1988, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

The "positive" effects of nihilism on the mind of a human being are many. Like the quieting of distraction and distortion within the mind brought about by meditative focus, nihilism pushes aside preconception and brings the mind to focus within the time of the present. Influences which could radically skew our perceptions - emotions, nervousness, paranoia, or upset, to name a few - fade into the background and the mind becomes more open to the task at hand without becoming spread across contemplations of potential actions occurring at different levels of scale regarding the current task. Many human errors originate in perceiving an event to be either more important than it is, or to be "symbolically" indicative of relevance on a greater scale than the localized context which it affects, usually because of a conditioned preference for the scale of eventiture existing before the symbolic event.

Standpoint epistemology is the best way of knowing

1. STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY PROVIDES MORE RATIONAL CRITERIA FOR JUDGING KNOWLEDGE AND RECOGNIZES THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICS

Margaret Davies, Law Lecturer, and Nan Seuffert, Law Lecturer, HASTINGS WOMEN’S LAW JOURNAL, Summer 2000, p. np.

Therefore, valuing knowledge which explicitly acknowledges location or standpoint epistemology is valuable as a strategy. We value located knowledge and the "view from below' partly because we believe that these approaches currently provide more rational criteria for judging knowledge than the spurious claims to objectivity of traditional legal knowledge. Additionally, these approaches have the elementary political and ethical values of recognition and respect for others. Such an ethic requires us - as middle-class, White feminists - to take a position of reflective ignorance in relation to others, admitting that our understanding of the world might be completely useless in another context, even while we are attempting to claim space from a mainstream discourse like law. In contrast to a universally "grounded' knowledge, therefore, knowledge valued for its strategic benefits explicitly recognizes the connection between politics and knowledge.

2. STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY FACILITATES SUBSTANTIAL TRUTH CLAIMS WHILE INCORPORATING THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OTHER

Gary Chartier, Lecturer in Business Ethics, UCLA ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN LAW JOURNAL, Spring 2001, p. 127.

The successful practice of an Asian American jurisprudence requires the recognition of truthful narratives of oppression and the condemnation of structures and behaviors that subordinate and exclude. A standpoint epistemology enables us to identify truthful narratives and unjust actions and institutions without giving up either outsider perspectives or substantial claims to truth. Employing such an epistemology means starting with the beliefs we have, and the perspectives and understandings we have acquired as the result of our (interpreted) experience. But it does not mean resting content with those beliefs, perspectives, and understandings, as if we were insulated against surprises and inoculated against truths that our background assumptions might make it difficult for us to apprehend. Thus, adopting a standpoint epistemology does not preclude openness to the Other that is the prerequisite to any serious quest for truth.

3. STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY EXPANDS KNOWLEDGE, FOSTERING A MORE IMPARTIAL AND CLEARER ACCOUNT OF SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS AND PRACTICES.

Sandra Harding, Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education Director, IS SCIENCE MULTI-CULTURAL? POSTCOLONIALISM, FEMINISMS, AND EPISTEMOLOGIES, 1998, p. 155.

Again, the standpoint from such marginalized lives on whether and how scientific and technological changes work can lead to a more objective account than can analyses restricted to what looks reasonable from the perspective of the groups who most benefit from scientific and technological change. “The winner names the age” the historians say, acknowledging that the winners’ name for the age may not be the most accurate one from more objective standpoints. Starting from the “losers” lives can systematically expand our knowledge. This is one way of talking about how people marginalized, dominated, oppressed, or otherwise disadvantaged by a dominant culture have fewer interests in ignorance about how such a culture and its practices actually work than do those that benefit from it. Anyone who starts out thinking about science funding, or environmental destruction, or medical research from the perspective of the lives of those who bear a disproportionate share of the costs of these activities can learn to “follow the interests” of the latter to arrive at less partial and distorted accounts of science and technology institutions and practices.

Standpoint epistemology is bad

1. STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY CREATES ADVERSARIAL POLITICS AND DESTROYS ALLIANCES

Katharine T. Bartlett, Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, HARVARD LAW REVIEW, February 1990, p. 876-877.

A final difficulty with standpoint epistemology is the adversarial we/they politics it engenders. Identification from the standpoint of victims seems to require enemies, wrongdoers, victimizers. Those identified as victims ("we") stand in stark contrast to others ("they"), whose claim to superior knowledge becomes not only false but suspect in some deeper sense: conspiratorial, evil-minded, criminal. You (everyone) must be either with us or against us. Men are actors -- not innocent actors, but evil, corrupt, irredeemable. They conspire to protect male advantage and to perpetuate the subordination of women. Even women must choose sides, and those who chose badly are condemned. This adversarial position hinders feminist practice. It impedes understanding by would-be friends of feminism and paralyzes potential sympathizers. Even more seriously, it misstates the problem that women face, which is not that men act "freely" and women do not, but that both men and women, in different but interrelated ways, are confined by gender. The mystifying ideologies of gender construction control men, too, however much they may also benefit from them. As Jane Flax writes, "Unless we see gender as a social relation, rather than as an opposition of inherently different beings, we will not be able to identify the varieties and limitations of different women’s (or men’s) powers and oppressions within particular societies." In short, gender reform must entail not so much the conquest of the now-all-powerful enemy male, as the transformation of those ideologies that maintain the current relationships of subordination and oppression.

2. VICTIMIZATION DOES NOT GIVE SPECIAL ACCESS TO TRUTH. NON-VICTIMS MUST BE HEARD

Katharine T. Bartlett, Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, HARVARD LAW REVIEW, February 1990, p. 874-875.

In addition to imposing too broad a view of gender, standpoint epistemologists also tend to presuppose too narrow a view of privilege. I doubt that being a victim is the only experience that gives special access to truth. Although victims know something about victimization that non-victims do not, victims do not have exclusive access to truth about oppression. The positions of others -- co-victims, passive by-standers, even the victimizers -- yield perspectives of special knowledge that those who seek to end oppression must understand.

3. STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY ESSENTIALIZES WOMEN AND REINFORCES OPPRESSION

Katharine T. Bartlett, Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, Volume 103, February 1990, p. 873-874.

Despite the valuable insights offered by feminist standpoint epistemology, however, it does not offer an adequate account of feminist knowing. First, in isolating gender as a source of oppression, feminist legal thinkers tend to concentrate on the identification of woman’s true identity beneath the oppression and thereby essentialize her characteristics. Catharine MacKinnon, for example, in exposing what she finds to be the total system of male hegemony, repeatedly speaks of "women’s point of view," of "woman’s voice," of empowering women "on our own terms," of what women "really want," and of standards that are "not ours." Ruth Colker sees the discovery of women’s "authentic self" as a difficult job given the social constructions imposed upon women, but nonetheless, like MacKinnon, insists upon it as a central goal of feminism. Robin West, too, assumes that woman has a "true nature" upon which to base a feminist jurisprudence. Although the essentialist positions taken by these feminists often have strategic or rhetorical value, these positions obscure the importance of differences among women and the fact that factors other than gender victimize women. A theory that purports to isolate gender as a basis for oppression obscures these factors and even reinforces other forms of oppression. This error duplicates the error of other legal theories that project the meaning speakers give to their own experiences onto the experiences of others.

The spectacle of death is bad

1. The spectacle of death encodes our assumptions about the modern world

Virginijus Kincinaitis, NQA, “Desiring, Looking, Photographing. From Symbol Toward Allegory,” Lithuanian photography. Yesterday and Today, 2000, p. 79.

Telemedia uses insecurity, shock, and danger for inciting pleasure. For example, death scenes take up a place of a universal archetipal spectacle in this pleasure industry; a passive consumer is thrown into a mythic chaos beyond death and life. Passively watching destruction and creation, he can savour his position of an observer. Intensifying orgy of death realism becomes a serious rival to pornography. Total functional realism triumphs in both spheres, which display striptease of bodily functions, a body as a neutral mechanism. One plunges into the ecstasy of virtual deaths away from ontological insecurity of this world. The more numerous deaths, the more vital the body of their consumer. Thus death turns into its opposite. Only watching the death of the other can determine my sense of vitality, can form a mechanism of self-reflection [C.Bataille]. This experience of topical moment can only be satiated with more and more victims, blood, exact circumstances of killing and dying, details of catastrophs, more precise death prehistory and effect. One longs for a distinct mechanism of how death is functioning. The cathartic function of our subconscious feeds not so much on the brutality of action films as on immediate reportages from various sites of prevailing death and destruction, cruelty and absurdity.

2. The spectacle of death is a function of an alienated culture that depersonalizes victims

JoAnn Conrad, University of Missouri, Columbia, “Reviews,” Cultural Analysis, Volume 1, 2000, p. np, Accessed May 31, 2003,

One of the effects of reading both Of Men and Monsters and Serial Killers together is that the widely invoked and seldom questioned fear/fantasy complex is productively uncoupled. This expands their individual meanings and allows us to investigate the particular functions and consequences of both fear and fascination as separate phenomena. In our fear of the threat of violence, we ourselves are the hypothetical victims, the objects of violence. Fascination with the serial killer, on the other hand, can be seen as related not to the potential for danger, but to the effect of violence, and it is in this context that Seltzer's articulation of "America's wound culture" is the most persuasive. Our voyeuristic involvement with the effects of the crimes themselves depersonalizes the victims, highlighting instead the particular, and in many cases increasingly macabre, details of the crime, repeating and recounting the tally, distancing and anesthetizing the gore in its mechanical reproduction. In this way the crimes of serial killers are linked not only to the spectacle of mass murder (cf. coverage of the Columbine High School shootings), but to the spectacle of death, dishonor, and disgrace of public figures (linking the coverage and reaction to the deaths of Princess Diana and of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and the "exposition" of the details of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal).

3. The spectacle of death reinforce the transient nature of contemporary existence

Virginijus Kincinaitis, NQA, “Desiring, Looking, Photographing. From Symbol Toward Allegory,” Lithuanian photography. Yesterday and Today, 2000, p. 79-80.

Metaphors of world-wide fire, bloody clouds, iron completed the scenario of the myth of revolution. Meant for mere consumerism current images of steaming human fodder are visually gorged upon: belonging to mere gastronomy they have no teophanic justification. The excess of information flow and its diversity rejects possibility of feedback. According to J. Baudrillard, "contemporary society doesn't express itself, it is being observed and inspected. It doesn't reflect itself, it is given a trial." This is a mass devoid of any critical potency, affected by a simple photoreportage. Formulating a greater need for information, photoreportage becomes artificial necessity. Besides, the very spectacle of death encodes continuity in itself. Death should reveal man's finite, animal, bestial aspect of his existence at bottom, but it is impossible: human stops existing at the moment when his bestial origin dies. Bestiality and humanness cannot survive without each other. Man would have to die in order to open up for himself. In order to see himself dying, man should die while staying alive. Death itself should become a self-cognition at the very instant of destructing a conscious being. That's why man needs the vision of a real death in detail. In this respect, media information on death focuses on both primary consumerist and existential levels. Archetypal need for cultural spectacle, debris of collective sacrifice skip along the surface of "objective" photoreportage.

The Spectacle of death is good

1. The spectacle of death allows us to come to terms with ourselves

Thomas Wiedemann, NQA, Emperors and Gladiators, 1992, p. 179-180.

When an emperor was at Rome, then his personal presence at munera was expected. An emperor who was unpopular might be criticised either for being too interested in these games, or not interested enough: the tightrope which each emperor had to walk was a necessary consequence of the ambiguous position of the emperor as both autocrat and servant of the Roman people. . . . The Colosseum was built on the site of Nero's highly unpopular Golden House, on land he had sequestered from its owners after the fire of AD 64; when Vespasian had a amphitheatre built on the site, he was symbolizing his own legitimacy as emperor by claiming that he had restored to the Roman people its right to decide on life and death. . . . On each occasion when they fought, gladiators enacted a spectacle of death and rebirth, and they did that in the presence of the Roman people, enabling individuals to come to terms with their mortality by reflecting on the unprecedented power and continuity of Rome's universal rule.

2. The spectacle of death allows us to CREATE ourselves as political agents

Alison Futrell, NQA, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power, 1997, p. 212-213.

This was not gratuitous display, however, not simply exotica; the spectacles served the public good as well as the interests of the Roman center. Here was public pleasure as well as law and order, here was the conquest of the Roman world as well as its integration in the creation of a new balance, a working sociopolitical order. The amphitheater was Roman power, Roman agency, the ability to define and construct the space in which significant actions, resonant in a Roman and provincial interpretation, were made real, given active form, drawing on the spirit of the Roman people and the basic impulses of a mythic past to create and to celebrate a new world order.

3. The spectacle of death is the only way to come to terms with death

Frank Gonzalez-Crussi, M.D. Pathologist at Children's Memorial Hospital, “Confronting the Margin,” June 2, 2000, , Accessed 1/23/03

He never seems to be looking for comprehensive concepts, conclusions, or intellectual approaches to death. He is not striving to create a philosophy of death; he is merely describing the experience of living beings. Since death cannot be understood, conceptualized, reduced to system, or dealt with syllogistically, the only thing left is to look at it. Such is the gist of the Mexican attitude. The gaze will not penetrate to the essence of the problem. It will barely skim its surface, but that is all we can do. And this is what Tolstoy does: to describe tirelessly, to evoke every detail of the external corporeality of death, to all the minutiae.

4. images of violence generate social change

Michael Jonathan Grinfeld, NQA, Psychiatric Times, September 2002, p. np, Accessed January 23, 2003,

When it comes to stories about trauma, Yehuda commented that requiring journalists to anticipate the impact of their stories may be too much to hope for at this time. "I really believe [journalists] are trying to tell a story and that they believe it's their responsibility to tell their story accurately," she said. "They don't necessarily believe it's their responsibility to look after the mental health welfare of the [people] they're reporting about and they may not be wrong about that. And that's really what the question is: What is the media's responsibility? I'm not sure that a journalist has the same responsibility as a mental health worker." Instead, Yehuda said that the intent of the coverage is key, and that even if images or stories depict troubling events, there may be an important educational purpose that should not be subverted. For instance, footage of concentration camps liberated at the end of World War II play an important societal role. "If that kind of imagery is used for the right reason and with the right intention, it can have the right effect, even if it's disturbing and even if it depicts things that are traumatizing because sometimes you have to see how bad it is in order to effect social change," Yehuda said.

Relativism is good

1. HISTORY PROVES THAT ATTEMPTS TO FIND AND ENFORCE UNIVERSALS LEADS TO VIOLENCE—WE MUST ACCEPT THAT WE LIVE IN A RELATIVISTIC WORLD

Walter Truett Anderson, Fellow, The Meridian Institute, THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TRUTH: DECONFUSING AND RE-CONSTRUCTING THE POSTMODERN WORLD, 1995, p. 8.

I’d sum it all up this way: People in premodern, traditional societies had an experience of universality but no concept of it. They could get through their days and lives without encountering other people with entirely different worldviews—and, consequently, they didn’t have to worry a lot about how to deal with pluralism. People in modern civilizations have had a concept of universality—based on the hope (or fear) that some genius, messiah or tyrant would figure out how to get everybody on the same page—but no experience of it. Instead, every way, every trade mission, every migration brought more culture shocks. No, in the postmodern era, the very concept of universality is, as the deconstructionists say, “put into question.” The old strategies of conquest, repression an conversion are still being strenuously applied in many places—labeled now by nifty euphemisms like “ethnic cleansing”—but they aren’t very effective. Its begins to look like we’re all going to have to get used to a world of multiple realities.

2. TRUTH IS A PRODUCT OF POWER; THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE, UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE

Michel Foucault, Chair of History of Systems of Thought, College de France, POWER/KNOWLEDGE: SELECTED INTERVIEWS AND OTHER WRITINGS 1972-1977, 1980, p. 93-94.

What I mean is this: in a society such as ours, but basically in any society, there are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterise and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse. There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth. This is the case for every society, but I believe that in ours the relationship between power, right and truth is organised in a highly specific fashion. If I were to characterise, not its mechanism itself, but its intensity and constancy, I would say that we are forced to produce the truth of power that our society demands, of which it has need, in order to function: we must speak the truth; we are constrained or condemned to confess or to discover the truth. Power never ceases its interrogation, its inquisition, its registration of truth: it institutionalises, professionalises and rewards its pursuit. In the last analysis, we must produce truth as we must produce wealth, indeed we must produce truth in order to produce wealth in the first place. In another way, we are also subjected to truth in the sense in which it is truth that makes the laws, that produces the true discourse which, at least partially, decides, transmits and itself extends upon the effects of power. In the end, we are judged, condemned, classified, determined in our undertakings, destined to a certain mode of living or dying, as a function of the true discourses which are the bearers of the specific effects of power.

3. WE CANNOT CREATE A UNIVERSAL VISION OF THE WORLD—EACH OF US IS A PRODUCT OF OUR ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE

Richard Rorty, Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University, PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL HOPE, 1999, p. 14-15.

This Deweyan claim entails a picture of human beings as children of their time and place, without any significant metaphysical or biological limits on their plasticity. It means that a sense of moral obligation is a matter of conditioning rather than of insight. It also entails that the notion of insight (in any area, physics as well as ethics) as a glimpse of what is there, apart from any human needs and desire, cannot be made coherent. As William James puts it, ‘The trail of the human serpent is all over.’ More specifically, our conscience and our aesthetic taste are, equally, products of the cultural environment in which we grew up. We decent, liberal humanitarian types (representatives of the moral community to which both my reviewers and I belong) are just luckier, not more insightful, than the bullies with whom we struggle.

Universalism is bad

1. the universal reinstitutes subordination of differences

Judith Butler, Rhetoric Professor at University of California at Berkeley, New Left Review, January/February 1998, p. 43-44.

Within the academy, the effort to separate race studies from sexuality studies from gender studies marks various needs for autonomous articulation, but it also invariably produces a set of important, painful, and promising confrontations that expose the ultimate limits to any such autonomy: the politics of sexuality within African American Studies, the politcs of race within queer studies, within the study of class, within feminism, the question of misogyny within any of the above, the question of homophobia within feminism, to name a few. This may seem to be precisely the tedium of identitarian struggles that a new, more inclusive Left hopes to transcend. And yet, for a politics of ‘inclusion’ to mean something other than the redomestication and resubordination of such differences, it will have to develop a sense of alliance in the course of a new form of conflictual encounter. When new social movements are cast as so many ‘particularisms’ in search of an overarching universal, it will be necessary to ask how the rubric of universal itself only became possible through the erasure of the prior workings of social power. This is not to say that universals are impossible, but rather that they become possible only through an abstraction from its location in power that will always be falsifying and territorializing, and calls to be resisted at every level. Whatever universal becomes possible- and it may be that universals only become possible for a time, ‘flashing up’ in Benjamin’s sense- will not be the result of a difficult labour of translation in which social movements offer up their points of convergence against a background of ongoing social contestation.

2. Universalizing criticisms prevent the oppressed from gaining voice

Rosemary J. Coombe, Law Professor at the university of Toronto, Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, ed. Bruce Ziff, 1997, p. 86-87.

Hooks asserts that an identity politics , however necessary as a stage in the liberation of subordinated peoples, must eschew essentialist notions of identity and fashion selves that emerge from the meeting of diverse epistemologies, habits of being, concrete class locations, and radical political commitments. A return to “identity” and “culture” is necessary as a means more of locating oneself in a political practice than in the embrace of the positivism projected by cultural nationalism. Hooks links this political project to a feminist anti-essentialism which also links identity to a history and a politics rather than an essence: Identity politics provides a decisive rejoinder to the generic human thesis, and the mainstream methodology of Western political theory. If we combine the concept of identity politics with conception of the subject as positionality, we can conceive of the subject as non-essentialized and emergent from historical experience. In the face of continuing racisms and ethnocentrisms, assertions of identity and culture should not be dismissed and critiques of essentialism must recognize the very different positions occupied by subaltern groups. Abstract and universalizing criticisms of essentialism may appear to oppressed peoples a threatening- once again preventing those who have suffered the crippling effects of colonization or domination to gain or regain a hearing. It never surprises me when black folks respond to the critique of essentialism, especially when it denied the validity of identity politics, by saying, “Yeah, it is easy to give up identity, when you’ve got one.”

3. Political action must be tailored to the scale of the causes

Pascal Bruckner, Author, Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt, 1986, p. 162-164.

To be effective, solidarity has to be circumscribed and channeled. Other solidarities can be based on it, but only as aims sought by other people. To be effective, responsibility must choose a limited field of action and a specific geographic area (which is not related to its distance). Without this, it is indeterminant, blind.

Our need for political action and sympathy beyond national borders must be tailored to the scale of causes in a particular area, beyond which there is nothing but the hubbub and babbling of the news media. In this respect, too much generosity is suspicious. A fellowship that expresses itself in general terms and that is incapable even of saying the name of those people whom it helps is the solidarity of armchair windbags. It dies of its own purity, from choosing everything. It is nothing but a grandiose slogan, like the postwar label “existentialist,” which was invoked everywhere and everytime. It gives support to the most dissimilar causes with the same enthusiasm. The same people who support Poland in December support the PLO with similar arguments, and six months later will support some other guerilla movement.

Universalism is good

1. Any stance that abandons universalism collapses in on itself

Joseph Wagner, NQA, “The Revolt Against Reason: Mistaken Assumptions In Post-Positivist Relativism,” Critical Thinking: Focus on Social and Cultural Inquiry, ed. Wendy Oxman-Michelli and Mark Weinstein, May 2, 2000, p. np, Accessed January 22, 2001,

Relativism goes awry because of its tendency to confuse distinct categories and issues. In this case it confuses an epistemic issue with a normative one. Normatively, post-positivist relativism tells us that the universalism and objectivity of science and ethics seem insensitive to non-Western cultures or even subordinate subcultures, groups, and classes within Western societies. It reminds us that 'knowledge is power,' and that power is frightful. It commends relativism to those excluded groups and recommends that each group recapture the 'fleeting images' and 'subjective memories' that constitute its group meanings and form the basis for social and political solidarity. Each community is encouraged to articulate values implicit in such archeology (Giroux 1991). Perhaps these are commendable prescriptions, especially if we believe there is value in solidarity and in capturing meanings that make life in a community worthwhile. But by themselves these are inadequate prescriptions for liberation or emancipation from domination.

2. Universalism is necessary to overcome parochial differences

Joseph Wagner, NQA, “The Revolt Against Reason: Mistaken Assumptions In Post-Positivist Relativism,” Critical Thinking: Focus on Social and Cultural Inquiry, ed. Wendy Oxman-Michelli and Mark Weinstein, May 2, 2000, p. np, Accessed January 22, 2001,

If subordinate groups find objectivity hostile, then they deny a common ground that is prior to or takes precedence over the parochial differences in beliefs and values. If they can only appeal to that which is unique in their group, if they can appeal to values that move only them, then they fail. They fail to appeal to the values of the dominant group; they fail to make any claim upon the dominant group; and thereby concede to a struggle that is simply a matter of power. Unfortunately, the dominant group, by definition has power. Thus the normative prescriptions of relativism are practically as well as logically self-defeating. Alternatively, objective principles of justice and mutual respect make moral and political claims which ought to be honored by all persons, nations, and cultures. These are universal claims, the only sorts of claims which assert obligation on those who are dominant as well as those who are subordinate. Only universal claims of justice are the kind that cannot be discharged by the rejoinder, 'those are simply your tastes and preferences, not mine,' because only universal claims are grounded on the fundamental commonality of human beings and human societies, not upon the ineradicable differences between them. Such universality resides in the common reason and common truths (empirical and moral), which make differences possible as well as shared understanding and appreciation.

3. Cultural relativism collapses because it rejects non-relativist cultures

Allan Bloom, Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at University of Chicago, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987, p. 36-37.

One should conclude from the study of non-Western cultures that not only to prefer one’s own way but to believe it best, superior to all others, is primary and even natural—exactly the opposite of what is intended by requiring students to study these cultures. What we are really doing is applying a Western prejudice—which we covertly take to indicate the superiority of our culture—and deforming the evidence of those other cultures to attest to its validity. The scientific study of other cultures is almost exclusively a Western phenomenon, and in its origin was obviously connected with the search for new and better ways, or at least for validation of the hope that our own culture really is the better way, a validation for which there is no felt need in other cultures. If we are to learn from those cultures, we must wonder whether such scientific study is a good idea. Consistency would seem to require professors of openness to respect the ethnocentrism or closedness they find everywhere else. However, in attacking ethnocentrism, what they actually do is to assert unawares the superiority of their scientific understanding and the inferiority of the other cultures which do not recognize it at the same time that they reject all such claims to superiority.

ACTIVISM IN DEBATE

By Patrick Speice

Former debater, Wake Forest University

Since the introduction of the critique into the debate community in the early 1990s, critical argument forms have evolved rapidly and new types have constantly emerged. One relatively recent innovation concerns a line of argumentation that makes the case for debate as a site of political activism. Political activism refers to the notion that the participants of a debate may act as agents of social change, and therefore, a debate round may have actual political effects in the “real world.” Arguing for debate as a site for activism can be an immensely powerful tool for both affirmative and negative teams that seek to cast their arguments in a light that gives them a level of significance above and beyond that afforded to most traditional arguments. For if it is true that a debate has the potential to affect the real world, then the judge’s job at the end of the debate may have broader implications than simply assigning one team a win and one a loss. As such, activism in debate raises many unique theoretical questions.

THE EFFECT OF AN ACTIVIST FRAMEWORK FOR DEBATE

Calls for activism fundamentally change the nature of debate. A traditional policy debate focuses on the net desirability of a proposed policy action. The affirmative team argues that their plan, if adopted in the real world, would have beneficial effects. The negative argues that if the affirmative plan were adopted, it would not be net beneficial versus the status quo or a competitive policy option.

Viewing debate as an activist enterprise may alter the way that a judge decides a debate and the way that the debaters argue. For example, some affirmative teams that claim to solve racism may argue that voting affirmative is equivalent to taking a stand that racism is never acceptable, even if the negative successfully argues that the plan does not solve racism. Moreover, the affirmative may argue that even if there is a large disadvantage to voting for the plan (in a fiated world), the real world effects of condemning racism simply outweigh that disadvantage.

Most notably, affirmative teams will argue that fiat is utopian. That is, at the conclusion of a debate, if the judge votes affirmative, the plan is not enacted, and the disadvantages that the negative claims will not actually occur. Therefore, the more important impacts to weigh are those related to the political effects of the debate on the participants. In the example given above, the affirmative might claim that a negative ballot would send the message that concerns about racism are not important, which could legitimize racist actions. In essence, the affirmative argues that their advocacy is not necessarily for the plan, but for challenging racism. If the judge accepts this view, then the disadvantages probably do not matter because they do not actually occur and the real world benefit of condemning racism is significant.

FORMS OF ACTIVISM IN DEBATE

Political activism in debate can take many forms, though there are several components that are generally present in any defense of debate as a site for activism. First, an activist strategy requires a warranted relationship between the in-round activity and something that occurs outside of the round. Second, the judge must be told how to evaluate the round given that his or her decision will have actual political effects. Third, there should be some articulation or defense of why the debate should not be simply about whether or not the plan would be good if implemented.

Frequently, arguments in favor of debate as a site for political activism incorporate claims about language and performance. If it is true that the arguments made in a debate can affect the way that people view the real world, then language and the way that it is delivered becomes an important variable in deciding a debate. For example, few would argue that the content of a State of the Union address could be more effectively communicated if it were delivered by the president as a rap or symbolically in a piece of art. Similarly, the potential value of using satirical presentation or irony is evident by the socially transformative nature of works of literature like George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. The method that is used to communicate an idea and the way that it is delivered can have profound implications for whether or not the message is effectively received by the target audience. Accordingly, teams will use a variety of tactics to communicate their ideas and they will argue that the method they have chosen is the most effective way to achieve their goal.

The benefits of adopting a model of debate that seeks to incorporate political activism are twofold. First, teams that argue for altering the landscape of academic debate to focus on influencing the real world will indict the notion that debate is just a game. While debate can be played as a game, it is more valuable to recognize that debaters can influence relevant social issues. Some may argue that engaging the public sphere outside of a debate round is required of the debate community, as those who understand and research public policy issues are the most qualified to act as agents of social change. In short, activism in debate is good because it enables and motivates the debate community to influence the real world debates that shape society.

ACTIVISM AND DEBATE STRATEGY

The second benefit of adopting a model of debate that argues for political activism is strategic. Simply put, the teams that ask the judge to vote for them because of their activist stance can win more debates than those that do not. If a team is able to convince the judge that the round should be decided based on the better activist strategy or message, they will usually emerge with a victory.

A simple example demonstrates the utility of arguing for such a decision calculus. If an affirmative team plays rap that challenges racism as part of the defense of their plan, they may argue that challenging racism is valuable to endorse and that rap is the best method for doing so, as the lyrics come from someone who has actually experienced racial discrimination. This places the negative in a tough position, as the affirmative argues that the judge should vote for them because they have advocated a rejection of racism, and that the way that they presented their argument is uniquely valuable in that respect. Arguing that racism is good or that the perspectives of those who have experienced discrimination have no value are not very appealing negative strategies for obvious reasons.

RESPONSES TO THE ACTIVIST TURN

There are several ways to attack arguments that call on the judge to evaluate the round as an activist. A team on either the affirmative or the negative can employ these suggestions, though the examples given here assume that the affirmative team is the one arguing for debate as a site of political activism. Initially, the negative can frequently argue against the medium that the affirmative has chosen. Some forms of communication are more open to interpretation than others, and the audience’s varying interpretations may hinder the success of an activist project.

For example, different people may interpret a piece of art or an abstract poem that is presented to prove a point very differently. Some may even interpret the art or poem in question as meaning the opposite of what the affirmative intended. This is a serious concern with some literary devices such as irony, where some people may not realize that the affirmative team is being ironic. Some forms of argument, such as rap, may be controversial for excessive use of profanity or misogynistic messages. Using such a strategy, therefore, may distract from the intended message or alienate otherwise sympathetic supporters of a particular cause. Of course, the number of methods available to communicate ideas is virtually limitless, and teams may encounter activist strategies that they have no evidence to indict. Accordingly, it may be useful to argue against the theoretical legitimacy of activism in debate.

Evaluating the debate as an activist may not be fair to both teams. As noted above, a team that asks the judge to become an activist for their cause will usually drastically skew the debate in their favor by doing so. While virtually all of the arguments in a debate favor one team or the other, allowing an affirmative team to call for activism uniquely hurts the negative.

In a traditional debate, the negative team can predict what the likely affirmative cases will be and can prepare generic negative strategies accordingly. By calling for the judge to evaluate the round as an activist, the affirmative is essentially asking the judge to divorce their decision from whether or not the plan is desirable.

Instead, they may ask the judge simply to vote for one of the ideas they presented, which is much less predictable for the negative. It is certainly possible that an affirmative may limit their call for activism to the desirability of the plan (that is, the judge should become an activist for the plan). In this situation, the negative can run all of the normal arguments that they would run in a traditional fiat debate. If the judge is going to become an activist with the potential of affecting the real world, he or she should be certain that the cause they are supporting is a good idea before blindly endorsing it. Traditional policy arguments generally serve to prove or disprove the desirability of a plan, and a good activist would not endorse a bad policy.

Finally, viewing debate as a site for political activism may force judge intervention. There are no clearly established criteria for evaluating two performances against one another. How can the debate be resolved if each team plays music that speaks out against racism? Comparing two good performances is likely to require a subjective decision by the judge about which one was better. Moreover, some judges may feel uncomfortable endorsing a position that they do not personally agree with, even if a team wins their argument. If voting for a certain argument requires the judge to take an overtly political action, they may intervene in the debate and vote against the team who won the argument because they do not agree with the politics of the argument in question. If the judge is unable to determine what the criteria are for evaluating a debate, and subjective decisions will therefore be made about which performance or whose language the judge thinks is most valuable, debate would cease to be an educationally rewarding enterprise.

Activism within debate rounds is Beneficial

1. DEBATE IS A UNIQUE TRAINING GROUND FOR FUTURE ACTIVISTS

Alan Coverstone, Coach at Princeton High School, UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: CHINA CARDS, 1995, p. np, WFU Debaters Resource Guide Web Page, accessed June 10, 2003,

Debate teaches individual decision-making for the information age. No other academic activity available today teaches people more about information gathering, assessment, selection, and delivery. Most importantly, debate teaches individuals how to make and defend their own decisions. Debate is the only academic activity that moves at the speed of the information age. Time is required for individuals to achieve escape velocity. Academic debate holds tremendous value as a space for training. Mitchell's reflections are necessarily more accurate in his own situation. Over a decade of debate has well positioned him to participate actively and directly in the political process. Yet the skills he has did not develop overnight. Proper training requires time. While there is a tremendous variation in the amount of training required for effective navigation of the public sphere, the relative isolation of academic debate is one of its virtues. Instead of turning students of debate immediately outward, we should be encouraging more to enter the oasis. A thirsty public, drunk on the product of anyone who claims a decision, needs to drink from the pool of decision-making skills. Teaching these skills is our virtue.

2. MITCHELL’S CALL FOR DEBATERS TO TURN THEIR ACTIVISM OUTWARD IS HARMFUL

Alan Coverstone, Coach at Princeton High School, “An Inward Glance: A Response to Mitchell’s Outward Activist Turn,” UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: CHINA CARDS, 1995, p. np, WFU Debaters Resource Guide Web Page, accessed June 10, 2003, .

Mitchell's call for an outward activist turn among academic debate practitioners is, indeed, a wake up call. The problems inherent in political discourse today are manifold. As the information age gathers momentum, the power of the information "haves" in society dramatically increases. As masters of information, academic debaters are uniquely situated to direct the future flow of political life in America. Mitchell's work is important for its potential to elevate our awareness of the latent power we possess and the responsibilities such power confers upon us. There is value in the inspiration he provides for individual and collective participation in the democratic process. By identifying channels of influence that are open to debate practitioners, he enables effective involvement. Yet, Mitchell goes too far. In two important areas, his argument is slightly miscalibrated. First, Mitchell underestimates the value of debate as it is currently practiced. There is greater value in the somewhat insular nature of our present activity than he assumes. Debate's inward focus creates an unusual space for training and practice with the tools of modem political discourse. Such space is largely unavailable elsewhere in American society. Second, Mitchell overextends his concept of activism. He argues fervently for mass action along ideological lines. Such a turn replaces control by society's information elite with control by an elite all our own. More than any other group in America today, practitioners of debate should recognize the subtle issues upon which political diversity turns. Mitchell's search for broad themes around which to organize mass action runs counter to this insight. As a result, Mitchell's call for an outward activist turn threatens to subvert the very values it seeks to achieve.

3. ACTIVISM CAN WIN DEBATES IF THE JUDGE MAKES THEIR DECISION BASED EVIDENCE

Serena Turley and R.J Dolbin, debaters at California State University Fullerton, “CEDAW Affirmative,” PLANET DEBATE, February 3, 2003, p. np, Planet Debate Case List Web Page, accessed June 10, 2003,

Reality is socially constructed, so is debate. Form is content and structuring debate in a certain way determines the sort of arguments that are accepted and valued in our community. Debate can be more than

assuming one way of debating. Any closed system can justify itself. To win a debate where different systems are compared requires better evidence. We've got it. Our call to the judge is to vote for who has

better evidence on the question of what debate should be.

Activism within debate rounds is harmful

1. TEAMS CLAIM THEY WILL TAKE ACTIONS THAT THEY NEVER FOLLOW THROUGH WITH

Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor and Director of Debate at the University of Pittsburgh, THE ROSTRUM, January 1998, p. 11-20.

This year, a Wake Forest team advocated a counterplan which promised that they would personally contact human rights NGOs and plead for them to better value and respect Palestinian people and culture. The Wake Forest debaters, Sean Nowak and Armen Nozarabhian, secured a negative ballot in a round against Texas with this counterplan, but have apparently not yet implemented its mandates.

2. ACTIVISM THAT STAYS WITHIN THE ROUND IS USELESS, DEBATERS NEED TO SHOW THAT THEY CAN CARRY THEIR PLAN INTO THE “REAL WORLD”

Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor and Director of Debate at the University of Pittsburgh, THE ROSTRUM, January 1998, p. 11-20.

Should debaters advance reflexive fiat action plans calling for mobilization by more people than just themselves, proof would need to be supplied to demonstrate that such support could be obtained / would be forthcoming. This pragmatic check would prevent the advocacy of unrealistic action plans which would include reluctant participants.

3. DEBATERS ARE NOT ABLE TO REFINE ACTIVIST SKILLS IN DEBATE BECAUSE

They are too often only speaking to like minded people. This does not teach them how to create change, it only teaches them to rally like minded people around a particular cause.

4. ALLOWING FOR TRUE ACTIVISM IN DEBATE WOULD COMPLETELY TRANSFORM THE GAME. DEBATE WOULD NO LONGER BE A COMPETITIVE ACTIVITY BUT RATHER WEEKENDS FILLED WITH STRATEGIZING SESSIONS FOR FUTURE ACTIVISM.

5. ACTIVISM MUST BE FORCED TO EXTEND BEYOND THE DEBATE ROUND

Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor and Director of Debate at the University of Pittsburgh, “Reflexive Fiat: Incorporating the Outward Activist Turn into Contest Strategy,” THE ROSTRUM, January 1998, p.11-20.

Critics of the academic debate community rightly deride its hermetically sealed orientation as evidence of abdication of the community’s civic responsibility to funnel at least some of its considerable expertise and resources directly into the ailing body politic. A good argument can be made that one of the theoretical conventions that tightens this hermetic seal is the received view of simulated, “external” fiat. In this piece, I have proposed not an enlargement, but a retreat from this view of fiat as a step designed to facilitate an activist outward turn in academic debate. Putting the stamp of legitimacy on the strategy of reflexive fiat involves sanctioning the merit of this activist outward turn and providing a useful outlet for its realization.

6. THE AFFIRMATIVE IS LIMITED TO ADVOCATING GOVERNMENT ACTION

The word should in the resolution relegates the affirmative team to using external fiat and only allows them to claim the government as their actor. This means it is only viable for negative teams to use reflexive fiat which virtually insures counterplans, because they could actually happen, would be more advantageous. This guarantees unfair debates.

Academic work does spur activism

1. INTELLECTUAL WORK SERVES AS A CRITICAL RESOURCE FOR ACTIVISTS

Milan Rai, independent peace researcher, CHOMSKY’S POLITICS, 1995, p. 156.

Chomsky suggests that the intellecutal can make an important contribution to the struggle for peace and justice by agreeing to serve as a ‘resource,’ providing information and analysis to popular movements. Intellectuals have the training, facilities, access to information and opportunity to organize and control their own work, to enable them to make ‘a very significant contribution to people who are trying to escape the confines of indoctrination and to understand something about the real world in which they live; in particular, to people who may be willing to act to change this world’. For the same reasons, intellectuals can be active and effective organizers. Furthermore, by virtue of their privilege, intellectuals are also often ‘visible’ and can exploit their privilege in valuable and important ways.

2. WORLDY ACADEMIC WORK IS DEMOCRATIZING AND SPURS ACTIVISM

Gordon R. Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Pittsburgh, ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY, Fall 1998, p. 47.

In basic terms the notion of argumentative agency involves the capacity to contextualize and employ the skills and strategies of argumentative discourse in fields of social action, especially wider spheres of public deliberation. Pursuit of argumentative agency charges academic work with democratic energy by linking teachers and students with civic organizations, social movements, citizens and other actors engaged in live public controversies beyond the schoolyard walls. As a bridging concept, argumentative agency links decontextualized argumentation skills such as research, listening, analysis, refutation and presentation, to the broader political telos of democratic empowerment. Argumentative agency fills gaps left in purely simulation-based models of argumentation by focusing pedagogical energies on strategies for utilizing argumentation as a driver of progressive social change. Moving beyond an exclusively skill-oriented curriculum, teachers and students pursuing argumentative agency seek to put argumentative tools to the test by employing them in situations beyond the space of the classroom. This approach draws from the work of Kincheloe (1991), who suggests that through "critical constructivist action research," students and teachers cultivate their own senses of agency and work to transform the world around them.

3. ACADEMICS FOSTER ACTIVISM BY LEGITIMATING DISSENT

Suzie Mackenzie, columnist, THE GUARDIAN, January 4, 2003, p. 20.

What does the intellectual have to offer that isn't already out there? "Dissent," Rose says. "It is the task of the intellectual to think thoughts, to say things, that can't be said anywhere else. What I think goes most frighteningly and disturbingly wrong in politics is that people hold intransigently to their ideals. They admit no flaw, no break in (their own) system." You can't argue with this, it's what any good liberal intellectual would say.

4. WORLDLY ENGAGEMENT FOSTERS ACTIVISM WITHIN THE ACADEMY

Gordon R. Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Pittsburgh, ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY, Fall 1998, p. 47.

Encounters with broader public spheres beyond the realm of the academy can deliver unique pedagogical possibilities and opportunities. By anchoring their work in public spaces, students and teachers can use their talents to change the trajectory of events, while events are still unfolding. These experiences have the potential to trigger significant shifts in political awareness on the part of participants. Academic debaters nourished on an exclusive diet of competitive contest round experience often come to see politics like a picturesque landscape whirring by through the window of a speeding train. They study this political landscape in great detail, rarely (if ever) entertaining the idea of stopping the train and exiting to alter the course of unfolding events. The resulting spectator mentality deflects attention away from roads that could carry their arguments to wider spheres of public argumentation. However, on the occasions when students and teachers set aside this spectator mentality by directly engaging broader public audiences, key aspects of the political landscape change, because the point of reference for experiencing the landscape shifts fundamentally.

Academic work doesn’t spur activism

1. ACADEMIC OPINIONS ARE IRRELEVANT TO POLITICAL ACTION

Richard A. Posner, Judge, Judge, United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School, PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS: A STUDY OF DECLINE, 2001, p. 5.

Today, then, the typical public intellectual is a safe specialist, which is not the type of person well suited to play the public intellectual’s most distinctive, though not only, role, that of critical commentator addressing a nonspecialist audience on matters of public concern. That is a niche role, perhaps little more than a walk-on part in the play of politics, culture, and society. And often the wrong things are criticized. But it is something, and something for which few modern academic intellectuals have the requisite perspective, temperament, character, and knowledge. Their efforts to play the role are likely to yield little more than mistaken prophecy and superficial policy advice.

2. ACADEMIC IDEALS ARE SWAMPED BY POLITICAL REALITIES

Roger W. Bowen, President, State University of New York at New Paltz, VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY, July 15, 2001, p. 600.

We are dealing here with conflicting culture: one is the free-thinking academy where intellectual risk-taking, critical thinking, debate, and challenging both authority and convention are commonplace. The other culture, the political, is Clauswitzian, i.e., war by other means. Politics means battle, competition, confrontation, disagreement, discord, factionalism, and contests for power and control. Politics searches not for truth, but for victory. It produces winners and losers, and power differentials determine the outcome. The academic, on the other hand, explores the murky gray area that lies, ill-defined, between contending positions. While the academic culture thrives on ambiguity, the political depends on eliminating ambiguity. The two are so unalike that they should be kept apart. The academic will always lose to the poltical if a contest for dominance occurs. If you doubt this, then only recall the trial of Socrates.

3. UNIVERSITY STRUCTURE RENDERS ACADEMIC PUNDITRY POLITICALLY IRRELEVANT

Richard A. Posner, Judge, Judge, United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS: A STUDY OF DECLINE, 2001, p. 6.

The public intellectuals I mainly discuss are distinguished academics. Their difficulty in contributing to social betterment is the failure of the market rather than of individuals. And it is not a complete failure; I shall give examples of worthwhile contributions that modern academic public intellectuals have made. Many of those contributions, however, are better regarded as modest extensions of academic work (for example, translating it into langauge that the lay public can understand) than as distinctive contributions of public intellectuals; they bespeak the academic moonlighting as a journalist. And many of the distinctive contributions are negative in the sense of combating the fallacies and follies of other public intellectuals. I believe that it is fair to say that the position, the contribution, most precisely the social significance of the public intellectual is deteriorating in the United States and that the principles reasons are the growth and character of the modern university.

4. SPECIALIZATION AND LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY UNDERMINE THE POLITICAL EFFECTIVENESS OF ACADEMIC WORK

Richard A. Posner, Judge, Judge, United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School, PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS: A STUDY OF DECLINE, 2001, p. 7-8.

Among the points emphasized in Part One are the decline of the independent intellectual; the debilitating impact, to which I have already alluded, on the public intellectual of academization and specialization of knowledge; the tendency of public intellectual’s media celebrity to be inverse to his scholarly renown; the problem of quality control that afflicts this market as a result, among other things, of a failure ot keep track of public intellectuals’ frequently mistaken diagnoses and prognoses; and the fatuity of supposing that the “marketplace of ideas” can be relied upon to optimize the performance of the public intellectual, given the serious knowledge deficits of his audience in an age of specialized knowledge and the incentives and constraints that play upon him. At least when conceived of as someone who is attempting to make a serious contribution to the improvement of public understanding, the public intellecual lacks accountability, an essential attribute of sellers in a well-functioning market. He lacks it in comparison not only to the academic doing academic work but also to the journalist, the politician, and the policy analyst.

Academics as politics is good

1. ACADEMICS HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

Edward W. Said, University Professor, Columbia University, THE POLITICS OF DISPOSSESSION: THE STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINIAN SELF-DETERMINATION, 1969-1994, 1994, p. 317.

Reengagement with intellectual processes has very little to do with being politically correct, or citing fashionable names, or striking acceptable poses, but rather having to do with a return in a way to a kind of old-fashioned historical, literary, and above all, intellectual scholarship based upon the premise that human beings, men and women, make their own history. And just as things are made, they can be unmade and re-re-remade. That sense of intellectual and political and citizenry empowerment is what I think the intellectual class needs. There’s only one way to anchor oneself, and that is by affiliation with a cause, with a political movement. There has to be some identification, not with the powers that be, with the Secretary of State or the great leading philosopher of the time or sage; there has to be an affiliation with matters involving justice, principle, truth, conviction. Those don’t occur in a laboratory or a library. For the American intellectual, that simply means, at bottom, in a globalized environment, that there is today one superpower, and the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, based upon profit and power, has to be altered from an imperial one to one of coexistence among human communities that can make and remake their own histories together. This seems to me to be the number-one priority---there’s nothing else. An American has a particular role.

2. PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT MAKES SCHOLARSHIP MORE RELEVANT

Daniel C. Brower, Assistant Professor of Communication, Arizona State University and Catherine R. Squires, Assitant Professor of Communication and of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan, ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY, Winter 2003, p. 211.

Should contemporary academics strive to make their work more “public”? If so, what forms might public intellectual work take? We answer the first question in the affirmative. And in the spirit of reclaiming the possibility of public intellectualism, we propose the following outline for understanding and performing public intellectual. First, we advocate a parrticular perception conception toward the university. Following Dewey, Eberly, and Mitchell (2000), we call for recognizing the university as a type of public that is inextricably bound to other spheres (such as the state and the official economy). This perception orientation affirms the potential impact of the university classroom, the importance of intellectual work at the university, and the possibility of making that work relevant elsewhere.

3. ACADEMICS SHOULD REPRESENT CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES FOR THE PUBLIC

Edward W. Said, University Professor, Columbia University, REPRESENTATIONS OF THE INTELLECTUAL, 1994, p. 11.

The central fact for me is, I think, that the intellectual is an individual endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opInion to, as well as for, a public. And this role has an edge to it, and cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than produce them), to be someone who cannot esaily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d’etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.

4. ACADEMIC PRIVILEGES CREATE AN OBLIGATION TO CHALLENGE POWER STRUCTURES

Milan Rai, independent peace researcher, CHOMSKY’S POLITICS, 1995, p. 141-142.

The central issue, Chomsky argues, is the question of honesty: ‘It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth to power and to expose lies.’ The duty to tell the truth is particularly important for intellectuals because of the special privilege they possess: they ‘are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.’ In the West, intellectuals also have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression’: ‘for a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology, and class interest through which the events of current history are presented to us.’

Academics as politics is bad

1. ACADEMICS AS POLITICS IS INEFFECTIVE AND CORRUPTS THE LEARNING PROCESS

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor, Princeton University, interviewed by Jenny Attiyeh, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, August 22, 2002, p. 12.

No, not as an intellectual, because your responsibility as an intellectual is to deepen your understanding and therefore our understanding.... I think our university life would be corrupted irremediably if you said to everybody in the university, beyond understanding, you have an obligation to go out and change those parts of the world that your understanding can help change. I don't think we're especially good at it - practical wisdom doesn't come with theoretical understanding usually. Do we think Einstein would have made a better leader for Britain ... than Winston Churchill? I don't think so!

2. ACADEMIC POLITICIZATION UNDERMINES UNIVERSITIES’ QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE

Bradford P. Wilson, Executive Director of the National Assocation of Scholars and former Professor of Political Science, Ashland University, NATIONAL FORUM PHI KAPPA PHI JOURNAL, Winter 1999, p. 18.

The culture wars in higher education are not between a political left and a political right, or between liberals and conservatives. They are between those who wish to politicize academic life as part of a larger agenda of social transformation, and those who see in the university the only institution in American life where knowledge is valued for its own sake, where students can be forgiven a temporary lack of social concern and engagement for the sake of remedying a more fundamental deprivation, their lack of self-knowledge. The cure, insofar as there is one, is to be found in a liberal education, not in an identity-fix offered by the latest multicultural initiative.

3. POLITICS AND ACADEMICS HAVE FUNDAMENTALLY CONTRADICTORY GOALS

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor, Princeton University, interviewed by Jenny Attiyeh, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, August 22, 2002, p. 12.

The fundamental vocation of the intellectual is to figure things out, you know, intellego, to understand. And politics isn't about understanding, politics is about getting things done. Understanding can be an instrument of getting things done, but nuance and complexity of understanding can be an obstacle to getting things done. Politics - it's the art of the possible, and sometimes in order to do the best that can be done, you have to ride roughshod over what are, for an intellectual, important distinctions - for example, between the truth and the untruth.

4. DEMANDS OF POLITICAL RELEVANCE DESTROY THE FOUNDATION OF THE ACADEMY

Wendy Brown, Professor of Women’s Studies, University of California-Santa Cruz, THEORY AND EVENT 2:2, 1998, p. np.

I think it is a terrible mistake to conflate or identify academic and political work. To see Left academics as necessarily confining their intellectual endeavors, their theorizing, the texts they love, their reflections, to that which is politically useful in an immediate way, is, I think, a serious error. It is a mistake just as it would be a mistake to claim that Alan Sokal is no Leftist because he is a physicist and is poorly versed in social theory, and I would never make such a silly claim. But I think it is equally silly to suggest that everything any of us ever write or say must have immediate political cache. What we do in the academy is think, and to constrain that thinking entirely to what is understandable and useful outside the academy is basically to eliminate the point of the academy's existence. It is to constrain the space of imagination, open-ended search, and inquiring into our own knowledge and beliefs, all of which are the life-blood of intellectual work. For me, to stop calling into question that which I believed yesterday, to stop examining ideas I have always been attached to, would literally be to stop thinking. It would be to go into a kind of political automatic, as opposed to using the great privilege of being an intellectual, to keep digging up the political ground we stand on. It would also be to constrain the space of original critique that has always been so vital to Left projects.

Convincing people of idea/policies causes activism

1. PARTICIPATION IN ACTIVISM MOVEMENTS OCCURS WHEN BELIEFS ARE SHARED

Luther Gerlach, professor emeritus of anthropology, University of Minnesota, NETWORKS AND NETWARS, 2001 pg. 301.

Movement ideology operates on two levels. All participants share basic belief or core themes, which are sometimes articulated as slogans or aphorisms. The ecology movement used such concepts as ecosystem, interdependence, limited resources, renewable resources, spaceship earth, and no-growth economy. Wise Use has employed the concept of balance - the harmonizing of economy and ecology. At another level is a myriad of different interpretations and emphases on these themes. Disagreement may generate splits, but shared beliefs contribute to a sense of participating in a single movement. Sometimes these unifying tenets become master concepts that shape the discourse not only of movements, but of society as a whole.

2. INDIVIDUALS ARE EMPOWERED WHEN THEY BELIEVE AND CAN HAVE AN IMPACT

James Herrick, D.S.W., University of Washington, PAPER BEFORE THE NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING CONFERENCE, “Empowerment Practice and Social Change,” November 1995, p.np, New Social Movements Website, accessed June 4, 2003,



The historical and current conception of empowerment practice focuses primarily on individual enlightenment and emancipation in a way that is not directly relevant to collective action and social transformation. Margot Breton’s recent review of the literature of empowerment practice and subsequent analysis reflects the essence of the problem: “Even though one has experience empowering cognitive and behavioral changes, it is difficult to argue that one is empowered as long as those personal and interpersonal changes have no impact on socially unjust situations which affect one’s life” (Breton, 1994, p 31).

3. ACTIVIST MOVEMENTS PROVIDE SHARED BELIEFS AND MEANS TO HAVE IMPACT

Luther Gerlach, professor emeritus of anthropology, University of Minnesota, NETWORKS AND NETWARS, 2001, pg. 301.

Core beliefs can be shared because they are ambiguous and flexible, and they vary locally because they can be changed situationally. In 1972, biologists and early environmental evangelist Rene Dubos coined the term “thinking globally, acting locally” to warn that programs to protect the global environment cannot easily be translated everywhere into local actions but must be tailored to suit local ecological, economic, and cultural conditions (Dubos, 1981). By the 1980s, environmentalists had given the phrase multiple meanings. Some used it to encourage people to act locally on environmental problems in expectation that actions would combine to produce desirable global results. Some used it to imply that global exigencies override local ones. Some used it to claim that local actions serving local causes helped meet the challenge of global poverty and pollution (Gerlach, 1991).

Convincing people of ideas/policies does not cause activism

1. ACTIVIST IDEAS BECOME ABSORBED BY THE MAINSTREAM CULTURE

David S. Meyer, University of California, Irvine, Center for the Study of Democracy paper, CLAIMING CREDIT: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MOVEMENT SUCCESS, presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 14, 2000, p.np., Center for the Study of Democracy Website, accessed June 4, 2003,

Rochon (1998: 195-196) notes the irony, explaining, “... it is at precisely this point that the influence of the critical community in shaping understanding so the issue begins to wane. As the culture takes hold of a new idea, adaptation occurs to make the concept fit with existing cultural beliefs... as the wider culture takes possession of the concept there will develop an even wider sort of opinion. In effect, the critical community loses exclusive ownership of the issue precisely because new concepts are now part of the wider culture. As a consequence of this expanding interest, people outside of the critical community begin to portray themselves (and be accepted by the media) as “experts” on the issue.

2. COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS PREVENTS PEOPLE FROM TURNING ACTIVIST

Thomas Rochon, Director of the School for Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate University, CULTURE MOVES; IDEAS, ACTIVISM, AND CHANGING VALUES, 1998, p. 95-96.

Movement participation is unlikely to be rewarding in the same ways as participation in other types of organizations. Movements can not pay wages as corporations do. They often can not rely on intrinsic interest in their activities, as hobby clubs do. The opportunities they offer for political influence are more uncertain than those of other forms of political association. At the same time, the costs of movement participation can be high, for movement protests are not infrequently punished by the community or by the authorities... Hundreds of thousands of activists have taken risks in dozens of major movement mobilizations during the 19th and 20th centuries. As a purely statistical matter, advocates of expected utility analysis may take comfort in the hundreds of millions of American who have never made a substantial sacrifice for a collective goal.

3. DISENCHANTMENT WITH SYSTEM PRECLUDES GROWING ACTIVISM

David S. Meyer, University of California, Irvine, Center for the Study of Democracy paper, CLAIMING CREDIT: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MOVEMENT SUCCESS, presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 14, 2000, p.np, Center for the Study of Democracy Website, accessed June 4, 2003, .

Rhetoric about “ending welfare as we know it,” fighting a “war” against drugs after losing one against poverty, or adopting “zero tolerance” for crime or environmental pollution predominates. There is a mismatch of a political discourse that emphasizes absolutes with a political process that prizes compromise and incrementalism. Thus, the dynamics of contemporary American politics virtually mandate that more people are going to be disappointed most of the time and ambitious reformers are going to be quicker to see defeats than victories. The growth of government activity since the 1960s, legitimating and encouraging more single issue groups and social movements, exacerbates this dynamic of disappointment (Godwin and Ingram 1980).

speaking truth to power is bad

1. Speaking truth to power colonizes the other. The truth they speak becomes the truth we want to hear.

John Beverley, Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at Pittsburgh, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Critical Theory, 1999, p.36.

In truth, what Stoll is able to show is that some rather than much of Menchu's story involves what he calls "mythic inflation" (232). But the point remains: if the power of testimonio is ultimately grounded in the presumption of witnessing and speaking truth to power, then any evidence of "invention" should be deeply troubling. Gayatri Spivak anticipates one possible reply to Stoll's question when she remarks—in the course of an interview published in 1990—that "perhaps the proper question of someone who has not been allowed to be the subject of history is to say: What is man that he was obliged to produce such a text of history?"" As I noted in the introduction, Spivak's notorious claim that the subaltern cannot speak as such is meant to underline the fact that if the subaltern could speak in a way that really mattered to us, that we would feel compelled to listen to, it would not be subaltern. Spivak is saying, in other words, that one of the things being subaltern means is not mattering, not being worth listening to. Stoll's argument with Rigoberta Menchu, by contrast, is precisely with the way in which her book in fact "matters."

2. The obsession with speaking from the perspective of the oppressed eviscerates truth

David Stoll, The Nation, June 14, 1999, p. 34.

It is hardly "blaming the victim" for me to point out that Ladino-led guerrillas did not represent Mayan Indian villagers as seamlessly as Menchu claimed in 1982. Mayans told many interviewers that they were "caught in the crossfire," but such statements were carefully deleted from solidarity videos. Grandin and Goldman know that the first guerrilla comandantes in Guatemala were US-trained army officers fleeing from a failed putsch, who then led the Guatemalan left into the trap of Guevara-ismo, as diagnosed by Jorge Castaneda, Jon Lee Anderson and many other sympathetic analysts. The reviewers are right that the guerrillas are not responsible for right-wing terror in Latin American history, but that hardly proves that armed struggle is the best or inevitable response. What if the main result is to provide an excuse for more repression? One of the dangers of Menchu's story is that as the expression of a novice cadre, it enshrined a rationale for guerrilla warfare that continues to enchant the latte left in New Haven long after it has lost its appeal in rural Guatemala.

3. Speaking truth to power is a more subtle form of colonialism

John Gledhill, Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, “Moral Ambiguities and Competing Claims to Justice,” 1999, p. np, Accessed February 4, 2003,

This suggests that a little reflexivity might be appropriate, and that reliance on a ‘moral intuition’ within the human bond between the anthropologists and her or his ‘others’ may be a cause for concern. Some would see the anthropologist, like the tourist, as a structurally neo-colonial phenomenon, irrespective of the individual’s good intentions or politics (Bruner, 1989). Even if we assume that the bond forged between the anthropologist and her or his subjects can transcend their mutual social and cultural positioning, and that anthropology can ultimately be about people rather than ‘bearers of cultures’, it still seems important to try to stand back and ask ourselves where our sensibilities (or lack of sensibilities) come from and how they might correspond to developments in the world that we inhabit.

4. Speaking truth to power is not transformative

Delores Williams, Union Theological Seminary, April, 1994, p. np, Accessed Feburary 4, 2003,

West claims his basic aim in life is to speak the truth to power with love so that the quality of everyday life for ordinary people is enhanced and white supremacy is stripped of its authority and legitimacy." One wonders: Who is the power to whom West will speak the truth with love? Does he think that his speech and love, by themselves, are efficacious enough to improve the quality of life of ordinary people and inspire power to give up power? Though West's expressed aim is reminiscent of Martin Luther King's words, life, and work, West, unlike King, does not have the masses of live bodies supporting his words and pressuring power to make concessions that challenge the authority of white supremacy.

Speaking truth to power is good

1. Intellectuals must speak truth to power

Annette Lansink, senior lecturer in law at the University of Venda, “Speaking Truth To Power,” Mail & Guardian, December 1, 2000, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

Intellectual work requires intellectual space and independence. An informed description of intellectuals extends beyond those individuals whose role is to provide the dominant class with forms of moral, ideological and intellectual leadership, and hence become propagators of its ideologies. The Palestinian scholar and cultural critic Edward Said puts it succinctly when he states that intellectuals must speak truth to power. In his opinion the intellectual is foremost an individual "endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public ... someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than reproduce them) to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations ..."

2. Speaking truth to power is the only way to assert our humanity

Dr. Manning Marable, Professor of History and the Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University, “The Symbols of Prejudice,” , April 30, 1997, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

Our government deals with poverty by imprisoning the black, brown and the poor. The structures of power and privilege deny real opportunity to millions of people. The great strength and power of the Black Freedom Movement in the U. S. has been its capacity to link politics with morality. What we have fought for is a world without stereotypes, without the oppressive symbols that divide and destroy people from each other. The real challenge before us in the construction of a real democracy in America is in learning to listen to our mutual voices and histories. We must "speak truth to power" to reclaim our common humanity.

3. Speaking truth to power is the only way to achieve justice and freedom

Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, United States Supreme Court, “Speech to the Judiciary at the High Court, Hong Kong,” February 5, 1999, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

If you, however, believe there are neutral principles in the law; if you believe there are transcendent principles illuminating the idea of freedom and human spirituality; if you believe the doctrine and the principles of the law, in the hands of a sensitive, dedicated, and independent judiciary, can contribute to making our society more decent, more compassionate, more tolerant; then you believe in judicial independence. Of course I accept the latter proposition. I say this not to lecture you, but to indicate my admiration for your unyielding efforts to preserve the Rule of Law here in Hong Kong. You must speak reason to your litigants. You must speak justice to society. You must speak truth to power. If you do, when the history of this time is written, then it will likely say to future generations that, because of what you have done here, freedom prevails in Hong Kong. Freedom, which must survive here and flourish here, is the freedom to which all human kind must always aspire.

4. Speaking truth to power is necessary to combat the institutional power of those in authority

Annette Lansink, senior lecturer in law at the University of Venda, “Speaking Truth To Power,” Mail & Guardian, December 1, 2000, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

Unlike Kekana's intellectual, Said warns against succumbing to the temptation to curtail scepticism in favour of conformity in order to serve and win rewards from the government. Intellectuals should be servants of the truth and not of power. This form of engagement will therefore not include singing sycophantic praises to the new regime; but neither does it exclude giving credit where credit is due. Its focus involves articulating and representing views, opinions and philosophies in the process of "speaking truth to power". The latter would also apply if one expands the category of intellectual to include all those who are involved in the production and dissemination of knowledge, the intellectuals as professionals. Similarly, the French philosopher Michel Foucault's "specific" intellectual includes experts in their field or discipline, whether in the service of the state or against it, in relation to local forms of power.

Demands are good

1. Demands function as metaphorical condensations for broader change

Slavij Zizek, senior researcher in the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, “A Leftist Plea for 'Eurocentrism,'” Journal of Critical Inquiry, Summer, 1998, Volume 24, Number 4, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

From my own political past, I remember how, after four journalists were arrested and brought to trial by the Yugoslav army in Slovenia in 1988, I participated in the Committee for the Protection of the Human Rights of the Four Accused. Officially, the goal of the committee was just to guarantee fair treatment for the jounalists; however, the committee turned into the major oppositional political force, practically the Slovenian version of the Czech Civic Forum of the East German Neues Forum, the body that coordinated democratic opposition, a de facto representative of civil society. Four items made up the program of the committee: the first three directly concerned the accused, while the devil residing in the details, of course, was the fourth item, of the arrest of the four accused and thus to contribute to creating the circumstaces in which such arrests would no longer be possible--a coded way of saying that we wanted the abolishment of the existing socialist system. Our demand--"Justice for the accused four!"--started to function as the metaphoric condensaton of the demand for the global overthrow of the socialist regime. For that reason, in almost daily negotiations with the committee, Communist Party officials were always accusing us of having a hidden agenda, claiming that the liberation of the accused four was not our true goal, that is, that we were exploiting and manipulating the arrest and trial for other, darker political goals.

2. Demands require compliance

Karin Bendixen, NQA, “Universal Design on the Agenda in Norway,” Form & Funktion, June 2002, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

Several initiatives have already been launched with regard to the requirement for universal design in the built environment. A governmental committee is presently going through the Norwegian building and planning regulations with the explicit task of examining how current legislation and its enforcement have provided results in terms of accessibility for all in the built environment. Another initiative is a comprehensive programme for renovating school buildings. The government has put NOK 15 billion at the disposal of public authorities that want to renovate school buildings. “We have also incorporated a requirement for accessibility for all in this project. And here we know that architects, planners and suppliers will be forced to show how they intend to comply. Consequently, we believe in the importance of making demands and making sure that such demands are complied with.

4. Demands cannot be ignored

Hetty Eisenberg, NQA, “The Politics of Protest,” Perspective, January, 1997, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

Students may get riled up while talking to each other about things Harvard, but few seem to be willing to organize active tactics to make certain that the university changes its policy or even hears our grievances. Students may have great ideas, but what we seem to lack is a strong voice. In order for the University to recognize that our well-founded claims are strongly supported, it might be necessary to do something like organize or take part in anything from a protest to a sit-in/walk-out. Even if becoming very vocal does not sway University policy, it attracts attention from students at other universities, involved external organizations, and the media. If a number of students decide to aggressively make demands, the institution cannot possibly avoid at least listening to them.

5. Demands reverse power relations, granting authority to the dispossessed

Slavij Zizek, senior researcher in the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, “A Leftist Plea for 'Eurocentrism,'” Journal of Critical Inquiry, Summer, 1998, Volume 24, Number 4, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

The political struggle proper is therefore never simply a rational debate between multiple interests but, simultaneously, the struggle for one's voice to be heard and recognized as that of a legitimate partner. When the excluded, from the Greek demos to Polish workers, protested against the ruling elite (the aristocracy or nomenklatura), the true stakes were not only their explicit demands (for higher wages, better working conditions, and so forth) but their very right to be heard and recognized as an equal participant in the debate.

Demands are bad

1. Demands fail to inspire change

Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., “Compassionate Communication,” Miracles Magazine, August, 1995, p. np, Accessed November 15, 2002,



At an early age, most of us were taught to speak and think Jackal. This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately it provokes defensiveness, resistance and counterattack. Giraffe bids us to speak from the heart, to talk about what is going on for us - without judging others. In this idiom, you give people an opportunity to say yes, although you respect no for an answer. Giraffe is a language of requests; Jackal is a language of demands. Human beings the world over say they want to contribute to the well-being of others, to connect and communicate with others in loving, compassionate ways. Why then, is there so much disharmony and conflict? Setting out to find answers, I discovered that the language many of us were taught interferes with our desire to live in harmony with one another. At an early age, most of us were taught to speak and think jackal. This is a moralistic classification idiom that labels people; it has a splendid vocabulary for analyzing and criticizing. Jackal is good for telling people what's wrong with them: "Obviously, you're emotionally disturbed (rude, lazy, selfish)." The jackal moves close to the ground. It is so preoccupied with getting its immediate needs met that it cannot see into the future.

2. Requests are necessary for ethical communication with the other

Lucia Wolfe, editor of PAGES, the magazine for B.C. Teachers for Peace and Global Education, Teacher Newsmagazine, Volume 13, Number 1, September, 2000, p. np, Accessed December 6, 2002,

Peaceful thinking and behaviour must be taught and valued above violence and violent communication.” In his keynote address, “Non-violent Communication/ Compassionate Communication: The Giraffe Language,” Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, director of educational services, The Centre for Non-violent Communication, Texas, introduced his audience to the language of the giraffe and the language of the jackal. The giraffe has the largest heart (26 lbs) of any land animal, is tall enough to look into the future, and lives its life with gentility and strength. It is a language of compassion; whereas the language of the jackal is a language of demands. Speaking of the peace process in Northern Ireland, Rev. Ruth Patterson said, “There has been much talk of the need for compromise in any movement toward peace. I prefer to talk of generosity.

3. The language of demands inspire intransigence

Donna Morse, Mediator, The Diamond, April, 2002, p. np, Accessed December 28, 2002,

Through its emphasis on deep listening-to ourselves as well as others, Non Violent Communication fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. The form is simple and yet powerfully transformative. Dr. Rosenberg teaches people to make careful observations free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that affect us. We learn to be aware of our own deeper capacity to listen and speak to each other in a way that promotes compassion and generosity of spirit. Unfortunately, our cultural conditioning often leads us to observe and listen through filters, and to demand rather than request. Sadly, these tactics tend to decrease the possibility of having our needs met. Conflict and violence erupt as each tries to protect what they value.

4. Demands alienate those whom we attempt to persuade and preserve docile citizenship

Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., “Compassionate Communication,” Miracles Magazine, August, 1995, p. np, Accessed November 15, 2002,



In a Jackal culture, feelings and wants are severely punished. People are expected to be docile, subservient to authority, slave like in their reactions, and alienated from their feelings and needs. In a Giraffe culture, we learn to express our feelings, needs, and requests without passing judgment or attacking. We request, rather than demand. And we are aware of the fine line of distinction between these two types of statements. In Jackal, we expect other people to prove their love for us by doing what we want.

PERFORMANCE IN DEBATE

By Tristan Morales

Northwestern University

Over any given period of time, a certain level of evolution in the practices and principles that define any activity are just about inevitable. In sports, cutting edge conditioning practices may change the face of a particular game, making it more about speed and strength than in previous times. In an educational setting, technology may allow previously unseen opportunities to analyze current events alongside the history and theory of textbooks and former learning materials. These examples are not mere speculation about what might occur in an abstract sports or educational setting; baseball, basketball, and schools of all levels have all been significantly affected.

WHAT IS PERFORMATIVE?

For those who say that the recent activist turn of the debate community represents a threat to the activity as a whole, these examples should urge caution. Much like the other examples, the activist turn does in some sense challenge the very heart of the activity, the type and style of argument accepted by the community. However, another similarity remains with the other two examples above: the inclusion and acceptance of new levels of argument is not intended to remove completely the old practices and principles of the activity but rather to supplement them to generate improvement.

In some sense it is difficult to establish a firm definition of what counts as activism when discussing new forms of argument in the activity. In some sense, this is precisely the point of new forms of critical and activism lines of argument. The reason these arguments are perceived as so distinct from the previous habits of policy debate is because they can entail so many lines of performative or argumentative strategy. Policy debate has almost universally featured strict habits in which the affirmative placed themselves in the role of the federal government and argued in favor of a single policy proposal, and the negative responded with strict policy arguments about why the federal government enacting the particular policy is bad. In contrast, activism in debate may involve hip-hop music, poetry, narrative, dialogue between teammates, a focus on the role of judge as individual, a call for discussing the impact of arguments upon individuals as well as the federal government, and a variety of other potential arguments. Generally the inclusion of things like hip-hop, poetry, and narrative is considered the most radical of the activist elements.

SO HOW IS THAT DEBATE?

The overriding question, most capable of simplifying the issue at hand is this paper is one most likely faced by many debaters and judges at one time: What does this poetry have to do with the resolution and what the federal government should do in its decision-making practices? Explanations frequently used to respond to this question generally employ some variation of one or two phrases, “language shapes reality” or “form is substance.” Thus to understand the inclusion of activist elements in debate it is helpful to break down what exactly is meant by these two phrases.

The easiest way to understand the idea that language shapes reality is by example. When someone repeats a racist statement, they are simply employing language rather than engaging in any actual physical action, yet at the same time that racist statement itself enacts a level of pain onto its victim. Thus the act of speaking in this context is not merely a communicative exchange designed to eventually cause others to take part in hurtful actions against a minority, it itself enacts that violence. Thus language both lures us into believing in the truth of potentially damaging statements and stereotypes, it also partakes in action which may potentially harm individuals.

Within the debate community, overtly racist statements are few and far between but this does not mean that the language we employ does not itself carry a forceful weight. For instance, say that an affirmative reads a series of harms arguments claiming that Native Americans take part in high levels of drug use, violent crime, and sexual violence this discussion may have more of an effect on the debaters, judges, and community than simply providing a training ground for discussing policy arguments. These harms arguments used in the above example may very well be accurate, however, they may very well influence the way we think about Native Americans generally. Stereotypes may form, where individuals become weary of Native Americans because of the perceived high levels of violence committed by the group. In this sense, the language of an affirmative may very well shape the reality of the way we interact with Native American individuals.

The other statement, form is substance, is very similar. It relies on the idea that we can draw out certain concepts from seemingly abstract forms of communication and that in general the way we communicate is as important in affecting the world as the “actions” that we take. These two phrases form the basis of new activist elements in debate because they give credence to the idea that communicating ideas through a variety of mechanisms may constitute action at least to the extent of any traditional discussion of public policy.

Most of these activist methods of approaching the resolution are often referred to as performative because they mirror a performance similar to theatre or public forum. So to return to the question of what impact poetry might have in relation to the question of the resolution, it is important to remember the two common phrases above. Poetic approaches to the resolution generally address a series of ideas related to the resolution. Consider two affirmative who may wish to speak of more humane ways to treat the ocean communities. A traditional policy affirmative would do this by finding a federal plan mechanism designed to eliminate or create an activity which could halt activities harmful to these communities.

A team wishing to create a more activist approach to the situation, might craft a series of poems or musical lyrics describing either the actions detrimental to ocean communities or the necessity of treating them with respect etc. While the policy team makes explicit its commitment to a particular policy goal, the activist team brings across that same message through a more non-traditional mechanism. Their idea is that in the same way language generally can create reality and the patterns of thought which direct our interactions with the world, their poetry or various activist activities can have a sizeable affect on people’s opinion of various subjects intimately related to policy, in this case aquatic ocean communities.

JUSTIFYING THE ACTIVIST AND PERFORMATIVE APPROACH

The general hope of these activist debaters arises from the hope that their innovations can help create a more reflexive debate community, more aware of the affect individuals and the mechanisms they use to communicate can have on shaping the world. Traditional policy debate has been subject to criticism for its role in potentially obscuring the role of individuals in their influence on policy and the world in general. Because the focus of these traditional policy debates is only what the government should do, there is frequently little discussion of how individuals may go about achieving some of the goals discussed in their policy proposals. For instance, given the example of the Native American’s affirmative, a policy affirmative would claim that government action is the only effective avenue for alleviating the problem, thus leaving out the discussion of how we as debaters could actually take action to help alleviate the problem.

Many of the arguments used in favor of traditional policy debate can also be used to support a more expansive view of debate, one inclusive of new more non-traditional methods of affirming and negating. Those in support of policy debate generally reference the need for policy debate to help us become more educated on issues of public policy in order to increase our role in strengthening democracy. The assumption of this argument is that debates about issues of policy can help individuals reach decisions about which policies should be supported and which policies they should encourage others to support.

This same assumption, however, also supports a line of argument in support of activism in debate. If debate about ideas within the community influences the goals or policies which individuals choose to support in their non-debate, community lives then even a debate about abstract ideas and goals achieved through non-traditional mechanisms like hip-hop or poetry should be just as capable of situating people for decision-making processes outside of any particular debate round.

DOES ACTIVIST DEBATE COUNT AS ACTIVISM?

One question that arises when attempting to understand the new activist element in the debate community is whether or not a speech in a high school or college debate can actually qualify as an exercise in activism. This arises from the common perception in both academic and media outlets that activism is simply the act of physical public protest seen in situations like Vietnam, the Civil Rights era, and most recently, the period leading up to the American invasion of Iraq. The elements of organization, coalition-building, outward protest beyond the confines of an academic setting, and general media spotlighting are all largely missing from any single debate round.

However, this should not necessarily disqualify non-traditional debate arguments as constituting a form of activism. The collection of highly intelligent, knowledgeable, and articulate individuals found within the debate community, and the amount of time debaters and coaches devote to the activity makes a division between the “real world” of politics difficult to maintain and the unique ability of the community to have an influence on politics hard to deny. Thousands and thousands of coaches and debaters pass through the community each year and the community thus plays a strong role in establishing the political and social views and perceptions of a sizeable chunk of individuals.

Another, possibly more troubling, question has been raised about the relationship between forms of outward activism displayed in situations like Iraq and the kinds of activism produced in debates. The question centers on whether or not activism in debates makes people more or less likely to engage in the more outward forms of activism.

One line of argument claims that there is only a certain amount of energy that individuals have to devote to any activist projects, and thus forms of activism in debate may inadvertently discourage individuals from translating their protests or poetics beyond the debate community. This argument seemingly draws support from general analysis of the tradeoff between debate and other outside activities. Even the most committed of individuals finds it difficult enough to balance class work and debate alone. Asking for genuine commitment of time and energies to any other significant activities is nearly impossible. The environment and time commitment necessary for participation in the debate community makes it difficult for any individuals to spend their evenings or weekends protesting on the city streets.

In the end, it is certainly not guaranteed that individuals who engage in forms of activist debate would re-direct their time towards outward activist efforts if they weren’t a part of the debate community. As such, debate may at least provide an additional avenue for individuals to take part in a level of political participation and valuable social and political education.

Overall, the move toward a more activist debate community brings exciting new innovations and challenging new obstacles.

Art is bad

1. RATING ART IS DESTRUCTIVE FOR THE ARTIST

David Bayles and Ted Orland, artists, authors and workshop teachers, Art & Fear, 2002, p 70-73.

In a healthy artistic environment, that energy is directed inward to fulfill one’s own potential. In a healthy artistic environment, artists are not in competition with each another. Unfortunately, healthy artistic environments are about as common as unicorns. We live in a society that encourages competition at demonstrably vicious levels, and sets a hard and accountable yardstick for judging who wins. It’s easier to rate artists in terms of the recognition they’ve received (which is easily compared) than in terms of the pieces they’ve made (which may be as different as apples and waltzes.) And when that happens, competition centers not on making work, but on collecting the symbols of acceptance and approval of that work—N.E.A. Grants, a Show at Gallerie d’jour, a celebrity profile in The New Yorker and the like. Taken to extremes, such competition slides into needless (and often self-destructive) comparison with the fortunes of others. W.C. Fields became enraged at the mere mention of Charlie Chaplin’s name; Milton suffered lifelong depression from ongoing self-comparison with Shakespeare; Solieri went a bit more insane each time he compared his music to Mozart’s. (And who among us would welcome that comparison!?) Fear that you’re not getting your fair share of recognition leads to anger and bitterness. Fear that you’re not as good as a fellow artist leads to depression. Admittedly, few of us are above feeling a momentary stab of pain when someone else wins the fellowship we sought, or a secret rush of triumph when we scoop up the same prize. (Kingsley Antis allowed that when he’d start writing a new novel, part of his motive was, “I’m going to show them, this time!”) But occasional competitive grousing is a healthy step removed from equating success with standing atop the bodies of your peers. If nothing else it’s hard to claim victory when your imagined competitors may be entirely unaware of your existence — after all, some may have already been dead for a century. Quite plausibly they don’t win, while you — sooner or later — will lose. In some forms of comparison, defeat is all but inevitable. But regardless of the yardstick used, all competitors share one telling characteristic: they know where they rank in the pack. Avid competitors check their ranking constantly.

2. RANKING ART IS NOT USEFUL, BAD ART IS KEY TO A PRODUCTIVE ARTISTIC PROCESS

David Bayles and Ted Orland, artists, authors and workshop teachers, Art & Fear, 2002, p 70-73.

In theory this is a perfectly valid approach — the tricky part is finding the right yardstick for measuring your accomplishments. What makes competition in the arts a slippery issue is simply that there’s rarely any consensus about what your best work is. Moreover, what’s important about each new piece is not whether it is better or worse than your previous efforts, but the ways in which it is similar or different. The meaningful comparison between two Bach fugues is not how they rank, but how they work. When things go really well in your artmaking, all the pieces you make have a life to them, regardless of how they stack up as personal favorites. After all, they’re all your babies. It can even be argued that you have an obligation to explore the possible variations, given that a single artistic question can yield many right answers. Productive times encourage you to build an extended body of work, one where all the pieces (even the flawed sketches that will never see the gallery wall) have a chance to play.

3. ARTISTIC CHALLENGES TO CONFORMITY ONLY CEMENT THE DOMINANT LANGUAGE

Lee Spinks, Ph. D, lectures in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, “Writing, Politics, and the Limit: Reading J. H. Prynne's "The Ideal Star-Fighter,"” Intertexts, Fall 2000, p. 144.

For Prynne's work takes as its subject the very status of writing, and the epistemological practices writing both produces and brings into question, in a cultural sphere dominated by the power of instrumental reason to enforce a principle of "equivalence" where "whatever does not conform to the rule of computation and utility is suspect" (Adorno and Horkheimer 6). The importance of style, or the mode of relation between thought and its representation, to this question becomes apparent when we consider that the failure to challenge this universal principle of equivalence means to accept that the "identity of everything with everything else is paid for in that nothing may at the same time be identical with itself" (Adorno and Horkheimer 12). Yet any challenge to this process of abstraction and exchange based upon the formal autonomy or "difference" of style is vulnerable to Adorno's charge that it is through difference and exchange "that non-identical individuals and performances become commensurable and identical" (Adorno, Negative Dialectics 146-47).

Being weird is bad

1. Radical politics are empirically co-opted by the right

Robert Allen Warrior, Department of English at Stanford, Native American Perspectives on Literature and History, ed. Alan Veile, 1995, p. 58.

After Wounded Knee, the leaders of AIM spent most of their time in court or hiding as fugitives. They, in Deloria’s words, “understand the gut issues that people of reservation communities and in the cities really care about.... They can rally a high percentage of people in any Indian community because they are really at the same place mentally and emotionally as those people are”5 (McKale 52). At one level, then, Deloria understood that AIM and other aggressive, militant groups had achieved mass support greater than earlier national Indian organizations had. At another level, though, he was concerned that the heat of the moment had guided Native activism into losing its sense of historical perspective and becoming a victim of its own success. With the movement “stalled in its own rhetoric” and no longer able to capture national attention, the conservatives and moderates on the national Indian scene found themselves reaping the greatest benefits of the often-courageous actions of AIM and the traditionals (Deloria,”Religion” 30; Forbes 124).

2. Complex discourse is elitist. saying things simply is critical

Roland Bleiker, Senior Lecturer and Coordinater of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Queensland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, 2000, p. 235.

The difficulty of his style severely limits possibilities for the expression of dissent and human agency. As long as a critical text is only accessible to a small circle of intellectuals who invest the time to decipher it, solve its puzzles and explore its contradictions, critical knowledge will continue to reside in the margins, hegemonies will remain unchallenged, and practices of dominating will persist. The semantics of negative dialectics do not constitute a suitable linguistic tool of dissent at a time when the spread of global media networks increasingly fuse information with the language of entertainment.

3. Inaccessibility makes their performance unhelpful

Gloria Anzaldúa , Chicana tejana-lesbian-feminist poet, Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987, p. 232-233.

For us, it is not always easy to have people read our work or deal with our art. If the work is not interesting or entertaining enough, forget it. So I have to keep all these different issues regarding the reception of my work in mind and try to compromise. For example, if I had made Borderlands too inaccessible to you by putting in too many Chicano terms, too many Spanish words, or if I had been more fragmented in the text than I am right now, you would have been very frustrated. So there are certain traditions in all the different genres—like autobiography, fiction, poetry, theory, criticism—and certain standards that you have to follow. Otherwise you are almost naked. It is like when you write a dissertation: there are certain rules you have to apply; otherwise they won't pass you. My whole struggle is to change the disciplines, to change the genres, to change how people look at a poem, at theory or at children's books. So I have to struggle between how many of these rules I can break and how I still can have readers read the book without getting frustrated. These are the things that have to happen first.

4. Opacity of argument renders their strategy ineffective. Accessibility is more important for political messages

Joe Sartelle, NQA, Bad Subjects, Issue # 3, November 1992, p. np, Accessed March 2, 2003,

For it is not entirely a cynical joke within academia that the more obscure and difficult your argument is, the more impressed (or intimidated) your audience will be. Since I am convinced that most of us claim, in varying degrees, to read and understand more theory than we actually do, when confronted with a theoretically dense and opaque article or talk, our response is more likely to be a vaguely threatened "Wow! How smart!" rather than "Huh? What are you talking about?" -- out of fear that we will be seen as intellectually deficient and thus unprepared to compete on the professional market. After all, the very last thing anyone wants in this profession is to seem stupid. Currently, the situation in academia is one in which an awful lot of very smart people are being rewarded for producing a great deal of arguably very bad writing -- "bad" in this case because its very nature is to exclude all but a very specialized group of readers.

Being weird is good

1. Confusion is essential to subversion

Roland Bleiker, University of Queensland, Australia, Political Studies, 1999, p. 675.

Poetic attempts to embrace otherness are, by definition, difficult to decipher. The dialogical poem must, after all, stretch language games to be able to speak to the Other. This is why Celan believes that poems lead a subversive. subterranean existence' The message in the bottle may not be picked up immediately. At the point of its release there may be no language to make sense out of the bottled plea for dialogue. Celan's poem 'The Straitening', for example, has not yet been able to alter social dynamics as powerfully as did 'Deathfugue'. It is still too difficult

2. Clear language reinforces the discourse of rationality by implying easily defined concepts and closure

Roland Bleiker, Ph. D Candidate, Australian National University, Alternatives, January-March, 1997, p. 72.

Clear language is domination; it imposes closure. Even if it is critical, an argument presented in a straightforward writing style can, at best, articulate an alternative position and replace one orthodoxy with another one. it is unable to open up thinking space. Or so at least claims Adorno. In defiance of all Cartesian methodological rules, he rejects as dangerous the proposition that one ought to move from the simple to the complex and that one must demonstrate clearly and explicitly each step that leads up to the articulation of a particular utterance. Adorno justifies this unusual position with the argument that the true value of a thought is measured ac- cording to its distance From the continuities of orthodox knowledge. This is lo say that the closer a thought gets to the generally accepted standards of writing and representing, the more it loses its dialectical and antithetical Function. Hence, Adorno attempts to open up thinking space by writing in an unusual style—unusual in word choice, concept usage, syntax, sentence Flow and many other aspects.

3. Non-political expression in politics provide the most acute challenge to unjust institutions

Agnes Heller, Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and Ferenc Fehér, formerly Professor in the Humanities at the New School for Social Research, The Postmodern Political Condition, 1988, p. 77-78.

Furthermore, the democratic principle of the citizen’s active political participation is not to be supported by a defensive argument alone but also by an offensive argument. People who choose political action as a vocation, including so-called professional revolutionaries, are inclined to take the prevailing norms and rules of the political sphere for granted. People who switch to and fro between the political sphere and other spheres, can enliven a certain critical potential. Without imposing alien norms on the political sphere, they can still challenge the taken-for-granted character of one or another political rule, in particular, the justice, the viability and the rationality of certain institutions. The broader the life experience, the more multifarious the needs of political actors, the greater is the likelihood that just norms and rules might be substituted for existing ones.

4. Encountering the bizarre is the only way to force change

Roland Bleiker, Ph. D Candidate, Australian National University, Alternatives, January-March, 1997, p. 71.

Communication, in this case, should be as un-restrained as possible such that "claims to truth and rightness can be discursively redeemed,” albeit, one should add, through a rationalism and universalism that is violently anti-Bakhtinian and anti-Adornian. Closer to the familiar terrain of IR we find Christine Sylvester’s feminist method of empathetic cooperation, which aims at opening up questions of gender by a "process of positional slippage that occurs when one listens seriously to the concerns, fears, and agendas of those one is unaccustomed to heeding when building social theory.” But how does one conceptialize such attempts if concepts can never do justice to the objects they are trying to capture? The daring task is, as we know from Adorno, to open up with concepts what does not fit into concepts, to resist the distorting power of reification and return the conceptual to the nonconceptual. This disenchantment of the concept is the antidote of critical philosophy.

Civil disobedience is bad activism

1. non violent action is unrealistic and used to manipulate people

Ward Churchill, Keetoowah Cherokee, Associate chair of the ethnic studies department and professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 2000, p. 30.

Pacifists, with seemingly endless repetition, pronounce that the negativity of the modern corporate-fascist will atrophy thought defection and neglect once there is a sufficiently positive social vision to take its place. Known in the Middle Ages as alchemy, such insistence on the repetition of insubstantial themes and failed experiments to obtain a desired result has long been consigned to the realm of fantasy, discarded by all but the most wishful or cynical (who use it to manipulate people). I don’t deny the obviously admirable emotional content of the pacifist perspective. Surely we can all agree that the world should become a place of cooperation, peace and harmony. Indeed, it would be nice if everything would just get better while nobody got hurt, including the oppressor who (temporarily and misguidedly) makes everything bad. Emotional niceties, however, do not render a viable politics.

2. non violent resistance leads to mass death

Ward Churchill, Keetoowah Cherokee, Associate chair of the ethnic studies department and professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 2000, p. 32.

Pacifism possesses a sublime arrogance in its implicit assumption that its adherents can somehow dictate the terms of struggle in any contest with the state. Such a supposition seems unaccountable in view of the actual record of passive/nonviolent resistance to state power. Although a number of examples can by mustered with which to illustrate this point – including Buddhist resistance to U.S. policies in Indochina, and the sustained efforts made to terminate white supremacist rule in southern Africa – none seems more appropriate than the Jewish experience in Hitlerian Germany (and later in the whole of occupied Europe). The record is quite clear that, while a range of pacifist forms of countering the implications of Nazism occurred within the German Jewish community during the 1930s, they offered virtually no physical opposition to the consolidation of the nazi state. (…) By 1945, Jewish passivity and nonviolence in the face of the weltanschauung der untermenschen had done nothing to prevent the loss of millions of lives

3. civil disobedients never succeed in changing laws: courts condemn them

Tara Adams Ragone, Senior Articles Editor, Annual Survey of American Law, Annual Survey of American Law, 1999, p. 311-312.

Courts almost unanimously reject defendants' efforts to invoke the necessity defense in indirect civil disobedience political protest cases. As discussed above, courts generally do not excuse conduct that violates a law simply because the defendant wishes to express moral or political opposition to a law or policy. More specifically, in applying the four elements of the necessity defense to indirect civil disobedients, many courts find the defendants' evidence insufficient as a matter of law to establish the second and fourth elements of the necessity defense. That is, the defendants cannot establish a lack of reasonable legal alternatives or a reasonable belief that there will be a direct causal relationship between their actions and the avoidance of the greater harm. Because these two prongs most commonly frustrate indirect civil disobedients, this discussion will focus on them.

4. Previous movements’ success was only based on backings of violence

Carl Webb, nqa, COLLUSION ONLINE, volume 20, February 2001, accessed May 31, 2003, pg np., .

Churchill looks in particular at the popularly quoted 'successes' of the movements headed by MK Gandhi in India, and Dr. Martin Luther King in North America. In both these instances he argues that the 'success' of the movements in gaining their demands depended massively upon the threat of violence from other sources against the British and American governments respectively. In the case of North America, the pressure came from "the context of armed self-defense tactics being employed for the first time by rural black leaders.and the eruption of black urban enclaves. It also coincided with the increasing need of the American state for internal stability due to the unexpectedly intense and effective armed resistance mounted by the Vietnamese against US aggression in Southeast Asia."

Civil disobedience is good activism

1. civil disobedience is effective in changing laws and protecting liberties

John Cartwright and Susan Thistlethwaite, professor of ethics at Boston University and president of Chicago theological seminary, just peacemaking: ten practices for abolishing war, 1998, p. 40.

Civil disobedience has been practiced by pacifists and by individuals devoted to such causes as prohibition and women's suffrage. It also has been widely employed worldwide by oppressed groups that want to emulate the success of Gandhi and King. The tactic is often effective in changing laws and protecting liberties. Resistance to war and military preparations is a frequent reason for civil disobedience. It can take the form of refusal to serve in the armed forces (conscientious objection) or unlawful demonstrations such as those aimed at nuclear armament and the Vietnam War. Civil disobedience has been shown to be a powerful political force when people have sought to liberate themselves from foreign domination within their own countries. In such cases, civil disobedience, when combined with mass withdrawal of cooperation in the form of strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, and the like, holds great promise of effectiveness.

2. nonviolent civil disobedience and success of a democracy are connected

Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, chairman of the board of overseers of Tufts University and political speech-writer who worked in 3 presidential campaigns, a force more powerful, 2000, p. 489.

As nonviolent action has become more commonplace, it also has been studied more extensively than ever before. Looking back on the century, political scientists and historians have seen a relationship between the way a nation overcomes authoritarian or outside rule and its ability to build a civil society and sustain democracy. When a popular movement succeeds in using nonviolent action to achieve political power, its members have had to develop abilities and exemplify the spirit that are later critical in maintaining democracy: empowering individuals to take public action, building consensus on behalf of common objectives, and insisting that laws and leaders earn the consent of the people. Nonviolent power becomes not only a means of achieving change; it becomes the first line of defense for a society's most sacred values.

3. civil disobedience led to the civil rights movement’s success

Blake D. Morant, Associate Professor of Law, Washington & Lee University School of Law, Alabama Law Review, Fall 1998, p. 81.

Armed with the sense of moral purpose bound within the constructs of natural law, Dr. King then advances a naturalist critique against human-made laws which do not further the ends of justice. This, of course, serves as the ideological justification for Dr. King's embrace of nonviolent, civil disobedience against laws which run counter to those basic constructs of freedom, justice, and dignity. Dr. King's moralistic, nonviolent stance against unjust laws, i.e., those laws, rules, or customs that fail to advance equality and justice for the typically disenfranchised, had been a continual theme in many of his works. In 1961, Dr. King addressed the nobility of civil disobedience even to the point of arrest as a proper cause for a higher order of law:

4. civil disobedience is key to exposing those in control to true repression

Osha Neumann, attorney in private practice in Berkeley, CA, cultural politics and social movements, 1995, p. 71.

The key tactic for incorporating the experience of freedom into the struggle for liberation was civil disobedience. The act of disobeying the authority of the state allows there to come briefly into existence a zone of genuine freedom. In everyday life the forces of repression are omnipresent but veiled. Civil disobedience is the reagent that precipitates those repressive forces out of the formless fluidity of our humdrum existence. It compels them to array themselves against us and in so doing to take up a definable space. Once that space was denned, we could stand outside it. Where one stands at the moment of confrontation (the segregated lunch counter; the road to the recruiting center; facing the snapping dogs, the cops thumping their nightsticks, the curses) is liberated territory. Freedom blossoms at the point of confrontation because there the forces of repression take off their mask.

Dance is a bad form of activism

1. DANCE IS OFTEN MISINTERPRETED AND DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND

Charles J. Stivale, Professor of Romance Languages at Wayne State Univerisity, Articulating the Global and the Local: Globalization and Cultural Studies, Ed. Kellner, p. 146

One only need experience dancing with a novice partner, male or female, or even more pointedly, alongside couples unable or unwilling to follow the coded "flow," to understand Deleuze & Guattari's formula, "It is a question of keeping at a distance the forces of chaos knocking at the door" (ATP 320). For such chaos, and even physical damage, can result on the dance floor through ineffective communication from the "lead" through hands, arms and often cheek-to-cheek contact, or as is more often the case, between couples ineffectively maintaining the territorial "critical distance."

2. DANCE IS EASILY MISUNDESTOOD

Domique Nicola, “Sacred Dance: Dance and Female Empowerment,” December 31, 2002, Accessed June 6, 2003,

Dancing seems to move power through the body, and it shows. A good dancer becomes the music they are moving to, or seems to channel some great power from the first dancer that ever put two steps together. However, such movements can always be misinterpreted as a sexual come-on. Perhaps this is why temple dances were kept secret, away from the eyes of men that would see only the roll of a hip or turn of an arm.

3. DANCING IS DANGEROUS

David Lemmons, Pastor, WHY MY CHILDREN DON’T DANCE, April 20, 1997, Accessed June 6, 2003,

1. "The difference between dancing and wrestling is that some holds in wrestling are barred," this statement was not made by a preacher, but by Arthur Murray, a popular dance teacher. 2. Some years back, the FBI put out a tract in which they listed six ways young people get hurt. Dancing was among the six. The others were: drinking, gambling, reckless driving, parking & petting, and mixed swimming.

4. DANCE IS USED TO PROMOTE HETEROSEXISM

Lisa Eisenbud, The Advocate, THE POLITICS OF DANCING, 2001, Accessed June 6, 2003,

It’s funny that a dance should inspire all this thought and emotion for me, considering that dances barely played a role in my life. It’s clear that, while these events are but one cog in the wheel of children’s development, they are a powerful heterosexual symbol even to kids who avoid them. And I know that the children dancing in front of me will soon be inundated with traditional mating rituals: dances, dating, prom courts, even hallway gossip.

Dance is a good form of activism

1. DANCE IS AN EFFECTIVE FORM OF POLITICAL ACTIVISM

Australian Broadcasting Corporation, DANCE POLITICS, June 4, 2001, Accessed June 6, 2003,

The 'unifying power' of music has meant it has long been a powerful device for protest movements and environmental campaigns. More recently, the dance music culture has embraced a range of environmental and social issues creating an aspect of the culture that has been described as "techno-activist".

2. DANCE CATALYZES POSITIVE POLITICAL ACTION

Susan Luchman. Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. FreeNRG: Notes from the Edge of the Dance Floor. Ed. St. John. p. 233.

In the 1990s, one of the more interesting and contentious claims to have emerged from within dance music cultures (in particular those involved in raving per se as a personal and collective practice) is that it functions as a model of positive political action, opening up new spaces for joyous and non-oppressive experiences of both self and community. While progressive claims vis-a-vis electronic dance music practices should not be taken on face value, there certainly remain clear instances where contemporary dance musics, dance and the spirit of 'carnivale' have been employed strategically by diverse groups of activists both in Australia and overseas. As a vehicle for oppositional political movements, raving (or more specifically its music and dance), as a claiming of space — both physical and metaphysical — has provided a locus for creative oppositional activism in the nineties and beyond.

3. TECHNO MUSIC HAS BEEN USED TO PROMOTE A PROACTIVE SOCIAL AGENDA

Australian Broadcasting Corporation, DANCE POLITICS, June 4, 2001, p. np, Accessed June 6, 2003,

Proponents of techno activism often assert that their enjoyment of techno music brings them together and their political persuasions unite them. Techno activist groups have recognised this and utilised multimedia dance parties to publicise their views. Australian environmental "techno-tribalism" can trace its roots back to the UK and the emergence of the mobile sound system collective in the late '80s. Whilst these groups drew on a number of influences, it was their convergence with the growing DiY anarcho-punk movement that saw aspects of the dance culture moving towards a more proactive social agenda (eg. the anti-roads and Reclaim the Streets movements).

4. DANCE’S UNIVERSALITY ALLOWS IT TO BE A GOOD MEANS TOWARDS AWAKENING HUMAN DIGNITY AND EMPOWERING AWARENESS

Verna Post, Hawaii Community College, “Community Colleges,” SOCIAL ACTIVISM THROUGH DANCE, March 1998, p. 5.

Cultural artists, such as Trina Nahm-Mijo, deal with universal themes to overcome violence, war, and oppression to awaken human dignity, and they offer their audiences empowered awareness, which can lead to social action. In the classroom through her innovative, holistic approach to teaching, Trina Nahm-Mijo also integrates the humanities with the social sciences and bring a passion similar to the social activism she has demonstrated in Chungshindae and Wheels.

5. DANCE CAN BE USED TO PROMOTE ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM

Australian Broadcasting Corporation, DANCE POLITICS, June 4, 2001, p. np, Accessed June 6, 2003,

Common imagery employed in the promotion and decoration of these 'bush' raves emphasises the reunification of humans with their natural environment, tribalism and unity. These events are closely connected to the trance/ecologist motifs that dominate dance culture in areas like New South Wales' north coast. Tranceplant is a prime example of this kind of environmental techno-activist group that plants trees and then throws an electronic music party to celebrate. Oms Not Bombs is also concerned with environmental issues like uranium mining and nuclear testing, but also activates for social issues such as aboriginal land rights.

Disaster Imagery is bad

1. DISASTER IMAGERY NUMBS US TO VIOLENCE AND TRAUMAS, CAUSING US TO DISENGAGE FROM THE OTHER AND ALL RESPONSIBILITY

Arthur Kleinman, Prof. of Anthropology at Harvard, VIOLENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY, 2000 p. 235

The moral implications of violence at a distance are even more disturbing when we consider the change in social experience that is occurring in society. The appeal of experiences of suffering to mobilize solidarity and social action are transformed via the media into a dismay of images. We are outside the field of responsibility; we need feel nothing, risk nothing, lose nothing. We can change the channel, or turn the TV off, or (in the instance cited) turn the page. When we don’t, we are caught up in a confusing and morally dangerous process of commodification and consumption of trauma. We require ever more detail of hurt and suffering to authenticate the reality. Over time, as this experience of representations of human misery be- comes normative, we alter the social experience of witnessing from a moral engagement to a (visual) con- sumer experience. We consume images for the trauma they represent, the pain they hold (and give?). The implications of that change are deeply compromising to the very idea of existential responses to human conditions, such as witnessing.

2. DISASTER IMAGERY PRESENTS AN OVERSIMPLIFIED WORLDVIEW, ESSENTIALIZING THE OTHER, AND MAKIND TRAUMAS VOID FROM MORALITY

Arthur Kleinman, Prof. of Anthropology at Harvard, VIOLENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY, 2000 p. 235.

Images are an absence of presence (Shapiro 1998: xii). The artistry of the photojournalist personifies col- lective violence as the trauma felt by mother and child. What is left out is the politics, political economy, institutionalization, and moral economy of the Bosnian disaster. The image materializes complex problems in the simplifying picture of mother and daughter and the “natural” shock of the comparison piece. This is part of the process of essentializing trauma, providing it with a normative space and normal appropriations in the global order. Yet what fails to project into the photo is precisely the specifics of the social context that make this historical situation distinctive. It is the danger of normalizing images of violence that is the matter; for that process transmogrifies moral experience, appropriating it for new uses – commercial, political – and for purposes of cultural control.

3. REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HARMS AS DISASTER CREATE THESE HARMS AS ENTERTAINMENT IN THE ROUND, DETACHING US FROM THE REAL EXPERIENCE.

Slavoj Zizek, Senior Researcher at the University of Ljubjana, WELCOME TO THE DESERT OF THE REAL, October 2002.

In today’s market, we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol. Virtual reality simply generalizes this procedure of offering a product deprived of its substance, of the resisting hard kernel of the Real – in the same way decaffeinated coffee smells and tastes like the real coffee without being the real one, Virtual Reality is experienced as reality without being one. However, what awaits us at the end of this process of virutalization is that we begin to experience “real reality” itself as a virtual entity. For the large majority of the public, the World Trade Center explosions were events on the TV screen, and when we watched the oft-repeated shot of frightened people running towards the camera ahead of the giant cloud of dust from the collapsing tower, was the framing of the shot itself not reminiscent of the spectacular shots in catastrophe movies, a special effect which outdid all others, since, as already Jeremy Bentham knew, reality is the best appearance of itself?

4. DISASTER IMAGERY CREATES MORAL FATIGUE – PEOPLE FEEL HELPLESS TO SOLVE

Arthur and Joan Kleinman, Prof. of Anthropology at Harvard University, DAEDALUS, Winter 1996, p. np.

Another effect of the postmodern world’s political and economic appropriation of images of such serious forms of suffering at a distance is that it has desensitized the viewer. Viewers are overwhelmed by the sheer number of atrocities. There is too much to see, and there appears to be too much to do anything about. Thus, our epoch’s dominating sense that complex problems can be neither understood nor fixed works with the massive globalization of images of suffering to produce moral fatigue, exhaustion of empathy, and political despair.

Disaster Imagery is good

1. REPRESENTATIONS OF SUFFERING ARE NECESSARY TO CRAFT POLICY RESPONSES

Arthur and Joan Kleinman, Prof. of Anthropology at Harvard University, DAEDALUS, Winter 1996, p. np.

Our critique of appropriations of suffering that do harm does not mean that no appropriations are valid. To conclude that would be to undermine any attempt to respond to human misery. It would be more destructive than the problem we have identified; it would paralyze social action. We must draw upon the images of human suffering in order to identify human needs and to craft humane responses.

2. IMAGE EVENTS ALLOW A SPACE FOR KRITIK’S AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Kevin Michael Deluca, assistant professor of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia, IMAGE POLITICS; THE NEW RHETORIC OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM, 1999, pp. 21-22.

In other words, although today’s televisual public sphere is not the liberal public sphere of which Habermas dreams, wherein a reasonable public through deliberative discussion (note the congruence with rhetoric’s emphasis on reasoned discourse) achieves a rational public opinion (a dream that “made possible the democratic control of state activites [Habermas, 1974, p. 50] and still “grounds the constitutional state normatively” [Peters, 1993, p. 544; see also habermas 1974, pp. 52-53]), neither is it the medieval public sphere of representative publicity that Habermas fears, a site where rulers stage their status in the form of spectacles before the ruled. Rather, in today’s televisual public sphere corporations and states (in the persons/bodies of politicians) stage spectacles (advertising and photo ops) certifying their status before the people/public and subaltern counterpublics participate though the performance of image events, employing the consequent publicity as a social medium through which to hold corporations and states accountable, help form public opinion, and constitute their own identities as subaltern counterpublics. Critique through spectacle, not critique versus spectacle.

3. DISASTER IMAGERY EMPIRICALLY SOLVES ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

Kevin Michael Deluca, assistant professor of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia, IMAGE POLITICS; THE NEW RHETORIC OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM, 1999, p. 3.

These tactical image events have driven numerous successful campaigns that have resulted in the banning of commercial whaling, harvesting of baby harp seals, and ocean dumping of nuclear wastes; the establishment of a moratorium in Antarctica on mineral and oil exploration and their extraction; the blocking of numerous garbage and hazardous waste incinerators; the requirement of turtle excluder devices on shrimp nets; the banning of the disposal of plastics at sea by the United States; and much more.

4. MEDIA IMAGE EVENTS DRAW ATTENTION TO ISSUES. THIS ALLOWS FOR CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT AND REVOLUTION WITHOUT ARMED CONFLICT.

Kevin Michael Deluca, assistant professor of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia, IMAGE POLITICS; THE NEW RHETORIC OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM, 1999, pp. 4-5.

In a book written shortly before Greenpeace’s first image event, original member and early director Hunter argued that all revolutions are attempts to change the consciousness of the “enemy,” and pointed out that in the past the “ only medium through which a revolution could communicate itself was armed struggle.” Today, however, the mass media provide a delivery system for strafing the population with mind bombs (Hunter, 1971, pp. 214-224). This philosophy of mass media has translated into a practice of staging image events based on the argument that “when you do an action it goes through the camera and into the minds of millions of people. The things that were previously out of mind now become commonplace. Therefore, you use the media as a weapon” (Hunter, quoted by Watson, in Scarce, 1990, p. 104) Fellow original Greenpeace member Watson elaborates. “The more dramatic you can make it, the more controversial it is, the more publicity you will get... The drama translates into exposure. Then you tie the message into the exposure and fire it into the brains of millions of people in the process” (quoted in Scarce, 1990, p. 104).

Drawing and Painting are bad forms of activism

1. PROTESTERS OFTEN VIOLATE THE LAW WITH DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS

Michael O’Sullivan, Staff Writer, WASHINGTON POST, May 23, 2003, p. T52.

Like Dick Detzner's "The Sacrifice of Sprout," a painting of an angel stopping the Jolly Green Giant from killing Sprout (as in the Bibical story of Abraham and Isaac), most of the works in "Illegal Art" involve the issue of trademark or copyright infringement -- sometimes both. To me, however, the most interesting pieces transcend this narrowly framed definition of illegality. Take Michael Hernandez de Luna's fake postage stamps. While they abuse trademarked designs, such as the color and shape of Viagra pills (not to mention the name), the more intriguing element is the artist's abuse -- make that manipulation -- of the U.S. Postal Service. You see, Hernandez de Luna actually sends his artwork though the mail, and "Illegal Art" includes a few canceled letters. It would have been fun to see the work of J.S.G. Boggs, an artist who draws and spends fake cash, or the work of painter Ron English, who sometimes runs afoul not just of trademark and/or copyright law in his appropriation of corporate logos, but of trespass and vandalism statutes when he alters commercial billboards in broad daylight.

2. PAINTING PROTEST MESSAGES ON BUILDINGS CAN BE COSTLY

Jason Bartlett, Reporter, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, April 21, 2003, p. 5.

A Central Coast protester who says he "captured the spirit of the nation" by painting a huge anti-war slogan on the Sydney Opera House has vowed to help repay the mammoth repair bill.

David Burgess, 32, who cut his teeth in environmental activism on the Coast over the past decade, is appealing to supporters to help pay for his stand. The Wollombi Valley resident and his co-accused Dr Will Saunders, a British scientist in Australia on a working visa, faced court last week charged with malicious damage and willfully marking premises without consent after they roller-painted "No War" on the national icon. The pair were arrested immediately after the March 18 incident. The damage bill for their handiwork could reach about $111,000, the court was told. The amount shocked Mr Burgess. "I guess we first realised it would be pretty big last week but when they said the amount in court it was bigger than we thought," he said. "Obviously we want to pay as much as we can out of our wages but the whole amount would send us bankrupt. I don't think declaring myself bankrupt would be fair to the taxpayers of NSW so we are looking at a range of options including fundraisers and things like that. We have had hundreds of letters of support and offers to help."

3. PAINTING CANNOT SPUR ACTIVISM BECAUSE OF ITS ARTIFICIAL NATURE

Jeanne L. Schroeder, Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, CORNELL LAW REVIEW, January 1999, p. l/n

In his Rouen Cathedral series, Claude Monet attempted the impossible task of capturing the moment. Traditional painting fails because it has an artificial permanence that experience lacks. Life is within time, but painting is outside of time; life is a process, a painting is an event. In the moment of experience, we lose ourselves in ecstasy. We stand outside ourselves and have no consciousness that we are having the experience because we are one with the experience. The instant we become aware that we are experiencing something, we no longer enjoy it in its immediacy. Future enjoyment is always mediated by anticipation, and past enjoyment is always mediated by memory.

4. DISPLAYING POLITICALLY DISRUPTIVE PAINTINGS CAN THREATEN MUSEUM FUNDING

CITYLAW, “Free Speech: Museum Prevails in "Sensations" Case,” November / December, 1999, p. np.

The Brooklyn Museum arranged for the controversial exhibit, Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, to be presented beginning in October 1999. The show included many works which have sparked protests, including one of animal body parts in formaldehyde and a painting of the Madonna ornamented with elephant dung. These pieces prompted Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to decry the exhibit and proclaim the City will not subsidize an enterprise that desecrates someone's religion. The Brooklyn Museum, built with City funds on City land, operates under a lease and contract with the City dating back more than 100 years which provides that the City pay maintenance costs, that various City officials hold ex officio seats on the board, in exchange for which the Museum provides free access and educational programs for school children. Relying on these provisions, the Mayor threatened to stop the maintenance payments (nearly $ 500,000 a month) and began efforts to eject the Museum. The City argued that the Museum's $ 9.75 charge for the exhibit, which excluded minors, violated the lease provisions.

Drawing and Painting are forms of good activism

1. PAINTING CAN ADDRESS ISSUES THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO DISCUSS

Heather Birdsong, artist, “What I Learned in School,” VIOLATED, 2002, accessed May 29, 2003,

"Thousands of girls of every race and economic group are encountering sexual violence and harassment [in school] that impede their access to education…many girls interrupt their education or leave school altogether because they feel vulnerable to sexual assault," wrote HRW in a press release. Female students are raped, molested, beaten, and forced into silence by their attackers, who often are their teachers and trusted peers. In the painting, the girl's face is bruised and swollen, her one useful eye looking around in fear. The bright colors of the piece and the apparent innocence of the boys seated behind her parody the gravity of the situation, as the schools' refusal to help the victims or acknowledge the crimes continue to gloss over the truth in favor of the reputations of their school and students.

2. DRAWINGS CAN BE USED TO EDUCATE AND PROTEST

Elizabeth Howie, Reporter, “Protest Maps and Engraved Bodies,” THE INDEPENDENT ONLINE, November 13, 2002, p. np, accessed May 29, 2003,

A grid of maps in two horizontal rows line the walls of the John Hope Franklin Center Gallery. But where one might expect to find the slate blue-gray and flat green functionality of traditional maps, instead there is a kaleidoscopic, almost psychedelic liveliness, as if a 1960s flower child skilled in the arts of batik and tie-dye had collaborated with a medieval manuscript illuminator. They're drawings from a series called "Places the United States has Bombed," and they're included in Protesting Cartography, elin o'Hara slavick's current show at Duke University. In depicting aerial views of U.S. bomb targets, the drawings ask the viewer to consider the consequences of activities so removed from the daily lives of most Americans. As slavick puts it, "They are first and foremost protest drawings."

3. ONE OF PICASSO’S MOST FAMOUS PAINTINGS WAS DONE AS A POLITICAL PROTEST

Paul M. Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, Leo Huberman, Editors of Monthly Review, “Notes form the Editors,” MONTHLY REVIEW, April 2003, p. 2.

The second example of how art has become a casualty of the present war campaign is the covering up of the reproduction of Picasso ’s Guernicain the United Nations in New York. Sixty-six years ago this month, in the late afternoon of a busy market day on April 26,1937,Nazi bombers dropped incendiary bombs and other explosives on the town of Guernica (also spelled Gernika)in the Basque region in Spain in one of the first massive aerial bombings of civilian populations. In carrying out the bombing, Hitler ’s Germany was assisting its fascist ally, General Francisco Franco, against the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War. The bombing of Guernica was designed to break the fierce resistance of the Basque population. In three hours of relentless bombing 1,600 civilians were killed or wounded. The town burned for three days. The civilian carnage in Guernica outraged the entire world. On May 1,1937,more than a million workers demonstrated in Paris in the largest May Day crowds ever seen in that city, with many of the demonstrators protesting the bombing. On that same day Picasso began his sketches for his painting, Guernica, one of the greatest paintings of the twentieth century and the best known artistic expression of the horrors of war. The painting in black and white was approximately eleven feet high by twenty-six feet wide.

DRAWINGS HAVE BEEN PLACED ON THE INTERNET TO PROTEST UNFAIR TAX LAWS

David Astor, Associate Editor, “Tax Protest Art Appears Online,” EDITOR & PUBLISHER, September 21, 1996, p. 42.

More than 65 artists -- including a number of syndicated cartoonists --have created online drawings tweaking a California politician. The drawings are in the "Brad Sherman Portrait Gallery" on the National Cartoonists Society's (NCS) Web site. Sherman, a Democrat running for U.S. Congress, is a member and former chairman of California's Board of Equalization (BOE). "Brad Sherman is largely responsible for the taxes on reproduction rights to artwork in California," notes the site. "Reproduction rights to intellectual property should not be taxed." The site also notes, "BOE's tax regulations are so crazy and complex that almost every California artist violates them. Taxes may or may not be due depending on how the artist delivers his artwork, how the client uses the art, who scans the art . . . or for a host of other arbitrary reasons."

Empathy is bad

1. True empathy is impossible. it allows people to evade responsibility

Dr John Fitzsimmons and Dr Wally Woods, Faculty of Arts, Health and Sciences at Central Queensland University, “Chapter 3 - Herman Melville's ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ and ‘Benito Cerino,’” 2000, p. np, Accessed November 8, 2002,

Anderson believes that the lawyer’s charity seems to go beyond what most would have given. This raises a question, he believes, which underpins the story: is it possible to perform acts of altruism without, finally, having regard to self–interest? What this suggests is that Christ’s commandments reflect an ideal, one that the rest of us find impossible to live up to because, at a certain point, we all turn back to self–preservation (that is, unlike Christ who went "all the way" and gave up his life) (386). The contrast between capitalism (Wall Street being one of its dominant symbols) with its self–interest, and the Christ–like Bartleby could not, Anderson argues, be stronger. He concludes that the "divine–logos," which Bartleby represents, shows itself as an impossible practice within the confines of "institutionalised self–interest" (386). Or to put it another way, if we are our brother’s keeper, Bartleby, in demanding to be kept without offering anything in return, is so exasperating that even the apparently charitable lawyer gives in and moves out when Bartleby refuses to quit his offices (387).

2. The attempt to empathize turns into revulsion for the incurable other

Ted Billy, Department of English at SUNY Binghamton, “Eros and Thanatos in ‘Bartleby,’” Arizona Quarterly, 31, 1975, p. np, Accessed November 8, 2002,

There is only one thing wrong with the narrator's charitable behavior toward Bartleby--it doesn't work. No amount of well-meaning humanitarianism can unravel the knot of tension built into the conflict of eros and thanatos in human nature. The narrator is most vulnerable to appeals to the bond of "fellow-feeling." He finds it difficult to divorce himself from Bartleby's plight. "The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam" (p. 40). Bartleby's corrosive individuality would not permit him to share this sentiment. His self is severed from its natural relation to life. The narrator's original feeling of pity turns to repulsion when Bartleby's pervasive despair infects him with the hopelessness of ever relieving the scrivener's anguish. "Disarmed" and "unmanned" by Bartleby's fatalistic resignation, the narrator feels "sundry twinges of impotent rebellion" (p. 38) in the antagonism. Despite the constant sympathy he expresses for the scrivener, the narrator is overburdened by the afflictive "millstone" of Bartleby on his conscience. The cross is too heavy for this Christian to bear.

3. A strategy of empathy cannot succeed. It transforms into revulsion

William Hamilton, Sarasota, Florida, “Bartleby and He: The Strange Hermeneutic of Herman Melville,” Melville Society Extracts, September, 1989, p. np, Accessed November 7, 2002,

Bartleby, in his passivity and silence, embodies Jesus' commandment to love God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30; Deut. 6:5). No reservations or excuses. The New Testament is quite clear about that. Bartleby is the God who demands everything. There are stages in the lawyer's response to the Bartleby--God. At first, he enjoys the self-approval he bestows on himself for not becoming angry with Bartleby's refusals. He senses a common humanity binding him to the scrivener, but this compassion quickly turns to revulsion and fear. He finally turns to love, but it is a love adopted as a strategy to elicit a response. It is a love too careful and self-interested, lacking the wildness and ecstasy of that genuine faith that Melville longed for, had contempt for, and lacked. Nothing seems to be able to persuade Bartleby to leave the lawyer, so the lawyer tries to leave Bartleby, "this intolerable incubus." But not even the flight from God works, as the Psalmist knew. Failing in his messenger's task, Bartleby as God prefers to die, a suicide of a failed savior. God dies in lower Manhattan, and the American nation is doomed to roll on godless, decent, complacent, bewildered, blind to the demonic forces at loose in the land. Melville blames the hermeneutic failure on both messenger-message and world. The message fails because it is grounded on pure agape, not on prudence or justice. Bartleby is the Dead Letter Office, answering no prayers from the lawyer whose preference for the easy life rendered him deaf to the radical demand for love.

Empathy is good

1. Genuine empathy is necessary for change

David Cohen and Hannah Rosenthal, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Rethinking Schools, v17 n1, Fall, 2002, p. np, Accessed February 5, 2003,

In your editorial, you state that "as educators, we ought to care not just for children here but all over the world." I agree. Regarding the murders of children and adults in Israel, however, you are virtually silent, stating only that "nothing in this editorial should be read to minimize this suffering." I'm sorry, but that one little sentence does not excuse the insensitivity that pervades the editorial. I was especially shocked that you wrote, "we can nurture empathy for the lives of Palestinians" without suggesting any attempt to understand the suffering of Israelis who have been killed, maimed, or who are living in constant fear.

2. Empathy is intrinsically worthwhile

Thomas Dilworth, “Narrator of "Bartleby": The Christian-Humanist Acquaintance of John Jacob Astor,” Papers on Language & Literature, Winter, 2002, v38 i1 p49, p. 43.

Only a fundamentalist Freudian would maintain that simple love or charity is impossible in this world. J. Hillis Miller absolves the lawyer (and, for some reason, the reader) because, he says, "we cannot identify our ethical responsibility to a person we cannot identify, whose story we cannot tell" (174-5). Apparently Miller is unimpressed with the parable of the Good Samaritan who helps an anonymous, unconscious man, about whom he knows only one thing, which he is predisposed to dislike, that he is a Jew. Bartleby is precisely what the teller of that parable would mean by the lawyer's "neighbor." Bartleby may not be helpable in practical terms, but love is not reducible to effective aid. Like any person, Bartleby is, according to Jesus, worthy of love. It might conceivably take the form now called 'tough love,' though that, too, would probably not have helped him. Richard Abcarian thinks that the story is chiefly about "the inability of love and compassion to reach those to whom it [sic] is proffered" (214). He is wrong, I think, but he has a point. Love might not have helped Bartleby, but since there is none in the lawyer, or too little, we shall never know. Not that it matters. The lawyer's loving Bartleby would have been enough--for the reader if not for Bartleby. Love is gratuitous, a value in itself, good regardless of its effects.

3. True change requires true empathy for the perspective of all parties

David Cohen and Hannah Rosenthal, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Rethinking Schools, v17 n1, Fall, 2002, p. np, Accessed February 5, 2003,

There is little use in arguing whose suffering led to whose suffering, and what violent actions are justified as a result. If peace is to come, it depends on empathy, and a vision of what is to be gained by both sides if they take the necessary risks for peace. I only ask that my fellow teachers, and Rethinking Schools, recognize that both sides are suffering, both sides need sympathy and support, and both sides should be viewed critically in their shortcomings. David B. Cohen, Palo Alto, Calif. ISRAEL WANTS PEACE Your editorial suggests that Israel's true aim in rooting out an organized system of terror, which has deliberately murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians, is to destroy the Palestinian "cultural infrastructure." This cynical assessment disregards Israel's continued efforts towards peace and blatantly ignores Israel's right, and its duty, to protect its citizens from harm. Furthermore, while the editorial is concerned with the state of the Palestinian education system, it makes no mention of the appalling anti-Semitism and incitement to violence found in textbooks distributed to Palestinian school children by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

4. Respect for all sides is necessary

Paula Amann, NQA, Washington Jewish Week, February 6, 2003, p. np, Accessed February 5, 2003,

"It helped me to be able to approach a conflict from both sides, to see both sides of an issue," he reflected. "When you see both sides, it's easier to work out conflict." Demand for the course has grown since Hassassian and Kaufman launched it six years ago. Aiming for 20 students for this summer, they ended up with 35 enrolled, including Arabs and Jews. "The beauty of the exercise is that both Jewish and Arab students have said they opened up to the other side," said Kaufman in an interview last week. "This is what I want to create ‹ empathy and understanding."

Environmental conservation is bad

1. INDIVIDUAL LIFESTYLE CHANGE IS NEITHER POSSIBLE NOR NECESSARY.

Ted Trainer, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social Work, University of New South Wales, THE CONSERVER SOCIETY, 1995, pp. 211-212.

When confronted with the limits to growth view there is a tendency to conclude that one ought to change one’s own lifestyle in conserver society directions. This is indisputably desirable and worthwhile, but I want to argue that it is in general far from the most important commitment. First, it is not at all easy for most people to change their lifestyles far in the direction of conserver society while they are living within this society. Most of us have little choice but to have a car, buy food that has been transported a long way, use sewers, and work in a job of questionable social worth. Again, the main problems are the structures and systems within which we are trapped. These condemn most of us to doing a lot of consuming and polluting. We can with effort change some things about our lifestyle, e.g., many of us could grow more food and wear out old clothes. But we will not get to conserver society through individuals resolving to change their personal lifestyles because most of the problem is to do with social structures, not lifestyles. Individual decisions to live more simply will not contribute much to getting those town banks established or to planting edible landscape beside the railway lines, because such decisions will not help more people to understand and eventually vote for those structural changes.

2. INDIVIDUAL CONSERVATION IS MEANINGLESS.

Ian Hodge, Gilbey Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS, 1995, p. 193.

A related explanation to the limits to what we can do as individuals to improve the environment is that actions by private individuals only affect a relatively small part of the overall economy. Very many decisions which are of importance for the environment are made by firms and by employees in central and local government. While, of course they are still ‘individuals’ the criteria against which they make decisions are laid down for them, essentially to follow the interests of shareholders or the rules specified in legislation. A manager of a firm may personally favour actions to promote environmental quality, but he can only take them if they are in the firm’s interests, i.e. where they will add to its profitability. This is not to say that such actions will not be taken, just that the options for action are limited.

3. RECYCLING IS INEFFECTIVE AND BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.

Ian Hodge, Gilbey Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS, 1995, pp. 192-193.

Efforts to recycle paper, aluminium and plastics have expanded greatly in recent years. Individuals, private groups and local authorities go to considerable lengths to collect and sort household rubbish. But even once it has been collected and sorted, it is not necessarily put to good use as there is not always a market for the recyclable material. Regulations introduced in Germany have caused a massive expansion of the volume of material put into the recycling stream, and as a consequence prices have been forced down to the point where in some instances it has become practically valueless. Sometimes it still has to be thrown away. Even when some materials are recycled, the benefits to the environment may be trivial or non-existent. Most paper comes from softwood plantations in the northern hemisphere. These are generally not threatened environments and timber extraction is of limited concern. The long-term supply of softwood for pulp is not seriously at risk. Further, some paper recycling processes are themselves a source of environmental hazard. Recycling has become a major source of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the North American (Ireat Lakes. These chemicals have been used in making carbonless copy paper. When paper is recycled, the chemicals from the paper can contaminate watercourses.

Environmental conservation is good

1. CONSERVATION IS CRITICAL ON BOTH A COMMUNITY AND INDIVIDUAL LEVEL.

David E. Driver, founder and publisher of The Noble Press, DEFENDING THE LEFT, 1992, p. 109.

Although we must address the health of the environment on a national level—and from a global perspective—much can still be done locally. Communities can introduce measures to encourage the use of mass-transit systems, to ban products such as styrofoam packaging, or to prevent the construction of toxic-waste dumps. They can also push public officials to make local government buildings more energy efficient and to assure that vehicles purchased by their local governments are fuel efficient. In addition, there is a lot that you can do on your own. You can participate in or help set up recycling programs at home, at school, or on the job. You can boycott companies that pollute the environment. You can purchase energy-efficient or water-saving appliances and devices. And you can use mass transit, a bicycle, or walk whenever possible. At the least, you can read one of the many books that outline the hundreds of individual actions we all can take to help preserve the environment.

2. COMMUNITY ACTION IS VITAL TO THE SUCCESS ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS.

David E. Driver, founder and publisher of The Noble Press, DEFENDING THE LEFT, 1992, pp. 147-148.

Community-based, grass-roots activism is the most effective way for progressives to bring about political and economic change. Despite the political cataclysm on the national level, locally based movements continue to push their communities forward. It is on the community level that the influence of big business and the entrenched elite is weakest and the power of the people, through shared self-interest, is strongest. By actively working through local government, whether as Democrats, independents, or through third parties, progressives can overpower corporate interests to pass laws and elect legislators that truly serve the needs of their communities. While corporations spend billions of dollars on Washington lobbyists and campaign contributions for state and national politicians, the cost of buying clout on a community-by-community level is prohibitive. As a result, influence on the community level is determined less by money and more by grass-roots participation. This is where groups with active memberships, such as labor unions, consumer organizations, social justice groups, and grass-roots environmental groups are strongest.

In a community, the desire for a clean environment, effective educational and health systems, personal safety, and economic well-being is shared by all. These common desires, along with face-to-face contact among neighbors, serve as catalysts for community involvement. Through community activism, people begin to realize that social problems are not someone else’s, but their own. They see that the answers are not in Washington, but right at home. This realization is political empowerment. When the political process begins at home, community-based groups can educate and encourage individual participation through enlightened self-interest. And by heightening individuals’ awareness of the broader issues that create local grievances, communities can connect neighborhood concerns with national and even international issues. This connection is the key to building solidarity, understanding, and support, both in America and throughout the world.

3. RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT CONSERVATION AMONG INDIVIDUALS IS CRITICAL.

Ted Trainer, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social Work at the University of New South Wales, THE CONSERVER SOCIETY, 1995, p. 210.

The transition from consumer to conserver society is therefore entirely an educational problem. Only if and when we have helped a sufficient number of people to understand a) that consumer society is unsustainable and b) that there are great alternatives, will there be any chance of making the necessary changes. The most important task to be taken up right now is simply to contribute as effectively as one possibly can to raising public awareness about these themes.

Fasting is ineffective because it requires shock value

1. FASTING LOOSES ITS SHOCK VALUE OVER TIME

LOS ANGELES TIMES, June 10, 1993, p. 1A.

Of course, some protesters go too far. Venice gadfly Jerry Rubin (not the member of the Chicago Seven) has gone on so many fasts to support nuclear disarmament/the homeless/boardwalk performers that he admits he no longer gets much attention when he announces one of his juice fasts. "I could imagine a reporter saying, 'Jerry Rubin on another hunger strike? What's new about that? Tell me when he is eating,' " he quipped.

2. FASTING ONLY WORKS WITH MEDIA ATTENTION

Michael Ledeen, Current Affairs Author, NATIONAL REVIEW, November 25, 2002, p. np.

It would help, too, if some of our misnamed "major media" devoted some energy to this hugely important but almost totally unreported story. Students have been on hunger strike in Isfahan for weeks, but not a word about it has been published or spoken over here. The monster Friday demonstrations received only token coverage, and most of that spoke as if the regime had put them down with little difficulty.

Fasting transcends boundaries and creates empathy with the other

1. FASTING ENCOURAGES EMPATY WITH THE OTHER

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, March 5, 2003, p. np.

Pope John Paul II stepped up his crusade against a looming war in Iraq, urging the world's Christians to stage a fast for peace on the same day as his envoy is to meet US President George W. Bush. The pope said the day of fasting on Wednesday would remind people of the long years of suffering endured by Iraqi citizens as a result of the international embargo against the country. The fast will coincide with a meeting Wednesday between Bush and the pope's special envoy, Cardinal Pio Laghi, who the pope has entrusted with a special plea to restrain the US leader from waging war against Iraq. The fast is the latest in a series of efforts to avert a war by the pope, who has emerged as one of the most prominent opponents against a US-led conflict with Iraq. In recent weeks, he has received leaders ranging from Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the US' key ally on Iraq, and Tuesday held talks with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The pontiff said the day of fasting Wednesday should "provide greater understanding of the difficulties and sufferings or our brothers confronted by hunger, misery and war."

2. FASTING DELIVERS A MESSAGE THAT TRANSENDS THE BOUNDRIES OF TRADITIONAL DEBATE

Ceylon Mooney, works for Voices in the Wilderness, “Break Ranks, Let Iraq Live,” COUNTER PUNCH, August 24, 2002, p. np, Accessed May 26, 2003,

Out of frustration, out of obligation, out of compassion and the desire to clearly articulate the truth when words fail, this fast is one way to argue outside the limitations of conventional debate. As Americans, we must shatter myths, foil political soothsayers, and create alternatives to the normal routines. We need to build bridges, petition both the American and Iraqi governments to engage in more diplomatic efforts, and do the person-to-person diplomacy that our elected officials won't do, not that there aren't opportunities.

Fiction is bad

1. Reliance on fiction assumes the story alone is enough

D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, Fall 1999, p. np, Accessed May 21, 2001,

In his essay "Reality and Its Shadow," Levinas argues that art (including literature) is irresponsible in as far as it encourages the contemplation of images, breeding passivity and paralysis. In tragedy, for example, the suffering of another is offered for enjoyment—the tragic pleasure, as it is sometimes called—instead of evoking the responsibility to relieve suffering. The tragic artist freezes or immobilizes the face of suffering, detaching it from the human reality. Every artistic representation is the image of an absent other, because an image is what a person leaves behind in withdrawing her being from it. Literature conceals this absence by soliciting the contemplation of the image, reality’s "shadow." Criticism is the ethical activity of restoring literature to responsibility by reattaching images to the human reality (130-43).

2. Literature fails to undermine the hegemonic modes of representation

John Beverley, Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at Pittsburgh, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Critical Theory, 1999, p.4.

Our hypothesis in Literature and Politics was that the dominant forms of modern Central American literature—poetry in particular—had become a material force—an ideological practice, in the sense Louis Althusser gives the term—in the construction of the revolutionary movements that were vying for power in the region. However, as Marc and I struggled to finish the book we were struck with a growing sense of the limitations of literature as a form of popular empowerment and agency—limitations revealed dramatically for us in the debates around the poetry workshop experiment in Nicaragua and in the question of testimonio as a narrative form that resisted in some ways being treated simply as a new kind of literature.

3. Literature is not superior to legal and political discourse

Lawrence Douglas, associate professor in the department of law, jurisprudence, and social thought at Amherst College, “Language, Judgment, and the Holocaust,” Law and History Review, v19 n1, Spring 2001, p. np.

According to Bilsky, Halevi's conjuring of Troy and Faust did more than encapsulate his harsh condemnation of Kastner. Instead, Bilsky argues, it tells us something more general about the relationship between legal argument and literary example. Halevi's provocative (mis)use of literary tropes reveals, then, that the "turn to literature" does not necessarily result in a more nuanced or morally sophisticated understanding of history on the part of the jurist. Challenging any tendency to essentialize discourse, Bilsky makes the important argument that law is not intrinsically limited as a representational discourse; conversely, literature cannot claim a monopoly on representational completeness or a superior capacity to portray historical fact in its ineluctable complexity.

4. Fact is superior to fiction

Oyvind Vagnes, NQA, “Remembering civic trauma: narratives of cultural authority,” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures, Fall-Winter, 2002, p. 33.

Perhaps we have. That popular culture will provide mythologies of September 11 is not only likely, it is certain. An abundance of narratives will seek to describe and emplot the collective shattering experience and national trauma of the terrorist attacks. Perhaps, something not entirely dissimilar to the contest for cultural authority that has come to characterize the Kennedy assassination narration will be evident in the various mediations of recent events. In January 2002, USA Today informed its readers that novelists were at a loss: What happens to novels when fact suddenly becomes stranger than fiction? Or fiction is suddenly too close to fact? After Sept. 11, can novelists compete with reality as seen on live TV? Should they even try? (10) A tendency to think of national trauma as potential narrative in popular culture is evident in crime writer Richard Hoyt's comments to the paper: I don't think writers should try to out-shock morons like Osama Bin Laden... Why would readers want physical action when they can turn on the tube and watch the World Trade Center collapsing? The striking cynicism of such musings only reflect the significance of critical attention to the contest for cultural authority in the "unbounded cultural sphere."

Fiction is good

1. Fiction is useful to unravel oppression

Gloria Anzaldúa , Chicana tejana-lesbian-feminist poet, Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987, p. 235-236.

Well, I think it was because I am interested in multiple projects. I have an incredible hunger to experience the world. And I can best experience the world by writing about it, thinking about it or making little drawings about it. I always want to do a thorough job. So when I start out with an idea like that of Nepantla or border crossing, for example, I want to be able to unravel it for different readers—for the academic professors and students as well as for children and the average person. I want to do it through different media, through poetry, fiction and through theory because each of these genres enriches the others. For example, a lot of the adult books I am writing have impact on the children's books and vice versa. It all provides me with this rich, rich field in which to work. Therefore I would never accept any genre boundaries in my work. Every now and then people say to me, "Why don't you do just one thing and finish that?" Like, for example, the "La Llorona" sequel of Borderlands—the reading, writing and speaking. Why don't you just perfect one chapter and then go to the other? "And my answer always is: "I don't work that way." For example, the bridge idea I tried in anthologies, in the theoretical work, in poetry and in fiction. So there is always the person who is a bridge to other cultures. Connections between different cultures, between different generations and so on.

2. Fiction is part of a micro-politics of resistance

Max O’Connor, Editor of Extropy, “Deep Anarchy – An Eliminativist View of ‘The State,’” Extropy, Winter 1990, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

What is needed is a micro-politics, a politics of individual behavior. We should seek to minimize our own contribution to statism, and to persuade others to do the same. We should withhold all support for statism whenever possible without seriously endangering ourselves. We should avoid paying tax-extortion (the life blood of statism) and should pay no heed to unjust laws whenever we can. We should encourage a cultural change, by rewarding and praising voluntaristic and anti-statist behavior, art, fiction, movies, and role-models and by pointing out what is wrong with their contraries. And in doing this a sense of humor can only help us. Sometimes it is a grim fight, but extropians are dynamic optimists and realize that hard fights against stupidity and coercion are best fought with high ideals conjoined with humor and understanding, not anger, hatred, or violence. Our goal is to increase understanding and increase rationality and responsibility, not to destroy. One of the four central extropian principles is that of self-responsibility for one's values, choices, and thinking. Living up to this principle is the best way to fight statism and to bring about the universal extropian community proper to intelligent beings. A focus on the individual and the rationality of behavior will not only break down statism, but all other forms of collectivist irrationality such as racism, sexism, and nationalism.

3. literature incites an ethical response

D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, Fall 1999, p. np, Accessed May 21, 2001,

According to Levinas, it is not poets but critics who return literature to its ethical responsibility. In his essay "Reality and Its Shadow," Levinas argues that art (including literature) is irresponsible in as far as it encourages the contemplation of images, breeding passivity and paralysis. In tragedy, for example, the suffering of another is offered for enjoyment—the tragic pleasure, as it is sometimes called—instead of evoking the responsibility to relieve suffering. The tragic artist freezes or immobilizes the face of suffering, detaching it from the human reality. Every artistic representation is the image of an absent other, because an image is what a person leaves behind in withdrawing her being from it. Literature conceals this absence by soliciting the contemplation of the image, reality’s "shadow." Criticism is the ethical activity of restoring literature to responsibility by reattaching images to the human reality (130-43). A literary text makes a claim on its readers that is logically prior to meaning, because it is all that remains of a being. This is particularly true of the Holocaust text, to which the indifference of the other—the nightmare of not being listened to—is a constant threat.

Film is a bad form of activism

1. ACTIVIST FILMS BREED HATE FROM THE INFLUENTIAL

Christopher A. Bracey, Visiting Assistant Professor, Northwestern University School of Law, “Louis Brandeis and the Race Question,” Alabama Law Review, Spring 2001, p. 875-876.

Frequently, however, mainstream social commentators took a more hateful approach, which reflected both a fascination with and profound loathing of Americans blacks. No person's work greater exemplified this horrific tradition than that of Thomas Dixon, Jr. Dixon's first book, The Leopard's Spots encapsulates the core principles of early twentieth century antiNegro mythology. For instance, one of Dixon's characters observes: "One drop of Negro blood makes a Negro. It kinks the hair, flattens the nose, thickens the lip, puts out the light of intellect, and lights the fires of brutal passions." Dixon followed this early success with The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, which was eventually converted into a screenplay for the cinematic breakthrough The Birth of a Nation. One historian characterized Dixon's works as "orgies of hatred" in which "his Negro characters, when they were not clowns, all seemed to be either contemplating or swiftly fleeing after the rape of a white woman." The Birth of a Nation met with immediate popular success, and was a favorite among Southerners, including President Woodrow Wilson and Edward White, then Chief Justice and former member of the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, Wilson screened the film at the White House for "the Chief Executive and the Cabinet and their families," after which Wilson is said to have remarked that Griffith's film was "like writing history with lightning . . . and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."

2. FILMS OFFER ONE DIMENSIONAL PORTRAYALS OF CERTAIN GROUPS VILIFYING THEM

Susan M. Akram, Associate Clinical Professor at Boston University School of Law, and Kevin R. Johnson, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, UC Davis, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ANNUAL SURVEY OF AMERICAN LAW, 2002, p. 308-309.

Racism against Arabs is not all the work of political activists. Importantly, feeding on existing stereotypes in U.S. society about Arabs and Muslims, media and film have found a ready audience for dangerous and one-dimensional images. Such depictions contribute to the racialization of Arabs and Muslims. In addition, in a study on anti-Arab racism, Professor Abraham documents a range of racial epithets, intolerant speech, and violence directed at Arabs by private citizens and public officials. Jack Shaheen's review of U.S. films offers convincing evidence of the vilification of Arabs and Muslims by the movie industry. Shaheen catalogues hundreds of Hollywood movies in which Arabs or Muslims are portrayed as terrorists or otherwise placed in a negative, often non-human, light. Muslims are shown as hostile invaders, or "lecherous, oily sheikhs intent on using nuclear weapons." A far-too-common scene shows a mosque with Arabs at prayer, then cuts away to showing civilians being gunned down.

3. THE GOVERNMENT UTILIZES FILM FOR RACIST PROPAGANDA PURPOSES

Susan M. Akram, Associate Clinical Professor at Boston University School of Law, and Kevin R. Johnson, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, UC Davis, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ANNUAL SURVEY OF AMERICAN LAW, 2002, p. 309-310.

The U.S. Department of Defense has cooperated with Hollywood in making more than a dozen films showing U.S. soldiers killing Arabs and Muslims. Audiences apparently embrace the demonization in these movies. As Shaheen notes, to my knowledge, no Hollywood WWI, WWII, or Korean War movie has ever shown America's fighting forces slaughtering children. Yet, near the conclusion of [the movie] Rules of Engagement, US marines open fire on the Yemenis, shooting 83 men, women, and children. During the scene, viewers rose to their feet, clapped and cheered. Boasts director Friedkin, "I've seen audiences stand up and applaud the film throughout the United States." One-sided film portrayals omit images of Arabs and Muslims as ordinary people with families and friends, or as being outstanding members of communities, scholars, writers, or scientists. Few U.S. movies have depicted Arabs or Muslims in a favorable light, and even fewer have included them in leading roles. Commentators rarely criticize the unbalanced depiction of Arabs and Muslims. The stereotyping and demonizing of Arabs and Muslims by American films may well have gone largely unnoticed because they are entirely consistent with widespread attitudes in U.S. society.

Film is a good form of activism

1. FILM CAN BE USED TO ADDRESS HARMFUL CULTURAL PRACTICES

Erin L. Han, Staff Writer of Boston College Third World Law Journal, BOSTON COLLEGE THIRD WORLD LAW JOURNAL, Winter 2002, p. 180.

The success of "alternate rites ceremonies" in certain communities demonstrates the need for continued innovation in developing non-legal techniques to address the practice of female circumcision. Future innovation might harness popular culture through contemporary theater, music, and films. These popular forms of communication and expression can be used to eliminate one of the primary motivating forces behind female circumcision by changing aesthetic preferences and ideals that favor a circumcised woman. Changes in cultural ideals are a necessary precursor to legislation seeking to regulate or eradicate female circumcision at a local level.

2. FILM HAS RECENTLY BEGUN TO CREATE A POSITIVE IMAGE OF THE LGB COMMUNITY

David M. Skover & Kellye Y. Testy, professorial colleagues at Seattle University School of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, January 2002, p. 233-234.

If Madison Avenue has been flirting heavily with LesBiGays as of late, surely Hollywood has climbed enthusiastically into their beds. Contemporary films depict more LesBiGays than ever before, and the characters are increasingly positive, charming, and life-affirming. The guilt-laden pathos of the "invert," portrayed in sporadic, earlier films like The Children's Hour and Boys in the Band, has surrendered either to the high camp of comedic figures such as the transvestite Zaza in La Cage aux Folles and the drag queen, Arnold, in Torch Song Trilogy, or to the higher taste of stylish and sensitive LesBiGay friends so often found at weddings, as in Four Weddings and a Funeral and My Best Friend's Wedding. Importantly, production companies now realize that there are sizeable audiences for art films and bigger-budget pictures that celebrate the productive lives and self-accepting loves of LesBiGays, whether the run-of-the-mill types in Trick and The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, or the extraordinary icons in Personal Best and Wilde. The fantasy machine of modern filmmaking is fueled by images of LesBiGays: more ecstatic, more unconditional, and sexier images than could have been thought possible twenty-five years ago.

3. FILMS CAN BREAKDOWN CULTURAL STEREOTYPES

Margaret E. Montoya, Professor of Law, University of New Mexico, DENVER UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, 2001, p. np.

In Post Colonial Economies of Desire: Legal Re-presentations of the Sexual Subaltern, Professor Ratna Kapur uses the narrative and imagery in the Indian film "India Cabaret" to introduce her bold analysis of the ways in which Indian sex workers are represented in cultural images and how such images are used to justify the need for legal regulation, especially in antitrafficking legislation proposed by Western feminists. Professor Kapur uses both postcolonial and feminist theory to shatter our stereotypical and moralistic perceptions of sex workers both in past historical and contemporary periods. Her discussion of "home" and "family" as privileged and uncontaminated ("uncontaminated by the colonial encounter") cultural spaces offers some provocative insights into the ways that women's work raising families and homemaking can be put into the service of those who would restrict women's rights, in and out of the home. While her focus is India and the Hindu Right, her analysis has applicability outside of India and should be of interest to those of us who see similar manipulation of Latinas by organized churches and the political Right in the U.S. The policing that the global HIV/AIDS crisis is foisting on many communities of color, in and out of India, increases the criminalization of certain behaviors (e.g., those that place people "at risk") and increases the surveillance of certain populations (e.g., sex workers). The challenge for feminists is to promote treatment and prevention programs for substance abuse and HIV/AIDS without falling into the grasp of religious and ideological zealots.

Folk music is a bad form of activism

1. FOLK MUSIC FAILS TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO ADOPT NEW POSITIONS

Jon Pareles, Music Critic, NEW YORK TIMES, March 9, 2003, p. 5.

Has a protest song ever changed someone's mind? It's impossible to say. A precisely aimed topical song, like Bob Dylan's "Hurricane," can focus public attention on a specific cause. Conceivably John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" made some people think twice. But genuine, partisan protest songs usually reach people who already agree with them. Their job is less to persuade than to provide slogans and jingles to rally the converted and convince them that they're not alone.

2. OVER-BROAD THEMES IN FOLK MUSIC DILUTE THEIR EFFECTIVENESS

Jerry Rodnitzky, Professor of History at the University of Texas-Arlington, POPULAR MUSIC AND SOCIETY, Winter 1999, p. 105.

Increasingly, however, the folk-rock protest song radiated general discontent and a vague, anti-establishment mood, as opposed to focusing on specific issues or evils. The protest flavor was still there, and if anything the fervor had increased, yet the lyrics were now less important and often could not be heard clearly over the music anyway. This new psychedelic music registered a protest of form rather than substance. The music often featured sexually explicit lyrics, high creativity, and nonconformist delivery. It presented a hazy but direct protest to white, middle-class America. Protest songs had been diluted by their success. By 1966, the most popular folk-rock songs of Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds, and others had largely evaporated into an existential haze. By trying to be all things to all people, the songs became universal protest ballads. One could read whatever one wanted into the lines. By saying everything, they in effect said nothing.

3. CONTEMPORARY FOLK MUSIC IS TOO APOLITICAL TO SPUR SOCIAL CHANGE

THE BOSTON GLOBE, November 29, 1998, p. 14.

In its quiet way, folk music is all the rage these days. More coffeehouses offering acoustic music pepper Greater Boston than at any time since the great folk revival of the 1960s. Those who remember that era, however, will also notice how much quieter folk music has become. They might wonder, to paraphrase Pete Seeger, "Where have all the protest songs gone? Long time passing." Like much of American culture, folk music seems to have lost its rabble-rousing edge. Today's coffeehouse stage seems mainly peopled by confessional songwriters whose lyrics may have topical aspects, but are rarely overtly political.

4. COMMERCIALIZATION DOOMS POLITICAL FOLK MUSIC

John Cougar Mellencamp, Musician, and Rick Karr, NPR Reporter, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, March 29, 2003, p. np.

KARR: Mellencamp says as a teen-ager, he marched against the Vietnam War in Washington and he listened to protest music. Back then, he says, record companies and radio broadcasters could embrace songs with anti-war messages, but that freedom has evaporated, he says, as media conglomerates have taken over the record and radio industries and shunned anything that might alienate even one listener. Mr. MELLENCAMP: They are publicly owned companies. They have to dance to the piper now. They haven't got time to fool with young artists who want to write protest songs because, you know, they have to sell records. They have to sell time on the radio stations. KARR: This week, stations got advice along those lines from consulting firm McVay Media. The company issued what it calls a war manual for broadcasters which suggests that in order to hold on to listeners, stations play the national anthem and pledge of allegiance daily. The four-page memo does not include any mention of anti-war messages.

5. FOLK MUSIC DIVIDES PEOPLE

John Rahn, Professor of Music at the University of Washington, PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC, Summer 1993, p. 58.

An artwork can draw a line between two groups of people. It can do this intentionally, as in certain political or racist productions; it can fall "naturally" into this role, as in, say, Country and Western music or any folk music; or it can be objectified and used as a tool for drawing a line, like a national anthem. Almost any music can fall prey to such divisional instrumentality.

Folk music is a good form of activism

1. FOLK MUSIC CREATES IDENTITY FOR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, SUSTAINING MEMBERSHIP

Anthony Pratkanis, Professor of Psychology at the University of California-Santa Cruz, and Marlene Turner, Professor of Organization and Management at San Jose State University, JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, Spring 1996, p. 187.

The development of a social identity for a grassroots movement performs a very important function: it serves to sustain membership (Bettencourt, Dillman, & Wollman, this issue; Hinkle, Fox-Cardamone, Haseleu, Brown, & Irwin, this issue). Protest movements typically develop unique social identities - whether it is represented in the distinctive garb of 16th century Anabaptist protesters, folk music at a movement rally, the donning of a McGovern button, or the costume of a Yippie. Much research and analysis has shown that identities are useful for creating a fully mobilized and cohesive movement (Morris & Mueller, 1992).

2. FOLK MUSIC REAFFIRMS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Rob Rosenthal, Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University, POPULAR MUSIC AND SOCIETY, Fall-Winter 2001, p. 11-24, Infotrac, Accessed June 5, 2003.

Mention "movement music" and people tend to summon up an image of demonstrators under siege from police linking arms and singing "We Shall Overcome." The function there seems obvious: music--in this case, the act of collectively making music--helps to lift the spirits of those already involved in social movement activity. Virtually all those who write on this topic agree that music serves this purpose, one we might call spirit maintenance or reaffirmation or something along those lines, clearly an essential function for movements.

3. FOLK MUSIC CONFERS POLITICAL POWER AND ENABLES SOCIAL MOVEMENTS TO EFFECTIVELY CHALLENGE OPPRESSION

Patricia A. Shifferd, Project Director of the American Composer’s Forum, “First We Make Music,” COMMUNITY ARTS NETWORK READING ROOM, 2003, p. np, Community Arts Network Web Page, Accessed June 5, 2003,

We need to give further attention to the political role of music. Music is used to confirm the legitimacy of rulers and to encourage loyalty to the state. This has been the case as long as there have been complex polities; the Egyptian hieroglyphs that portray musicians in religious or courtly processions are just one example. The playing of "Hail to the Chief" when the President of the United States enters is another. Music raises patriotic fervor and develops military discipline. The repeated public singing of Irving Berlin’s "God Bless America" during the weeks following the terrorist attack of September 11 contributed to the general patriotic intensification of the period. Music as a legitimizer of political power is especially potent when combined with religious, mythical or historical imagery. At the same time, music is used by those who wish to challenge the power of the state or of other social institutions. Social movements of many kinds are energized by music – union songs, civil rights songs, antiwar songs, environmental songs, songs for democratic reform are examples. Sometimes songs of protest are folk tunes that become identified with a cause. For example, the song of equality now known across the world, "We Shall Overcome," was adapted as a union song from African-American spirituals; it then came back to the African-American community as the anthem of their movement for civil rights.

4. FOLK MUSIC MOBILIZES SOCIAL MOVEMENTS BY INCREASING PARTICIPATION

Rob Rosenthal, Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University, POPULAR MUSIC AND SOCIETY, Fall-Winter 2001, p. 11.

If music can educate and recruit, it seems equally plausible that it can play a role in mobilization. That is, it should be able to help persuade those who identify with the movement but remain inactive to take the step into concrete movement activity, and to persuade those already engaged not only to maintain their activities (as in "spirit maintenance") but to go beyond what they would otherwise have done. For example, "singing at mass meetings held in community churches `really helped to create the culture of action'" that was necessary for the Southern Civil Rights movement, Bernice Reagon has written.

Graffiti is a good form of expression

1. GRAFFITI PROVIDES AN EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR YOUTH TO CRITIQUE SOCIETY

Carolyn Stienat, NQA, ART CRIMES ONLINE, p. np, accessed June 14, 2003,

The opinion is being promoted that any form of Graffiti is the starting point for a criminal career. This is how teenagers are driven into crime - conscious or unconscious. However, here in Wiesbaden colorful pieces of art were created, which enhanced the disconsolate architecture of this city and which contributed to transform gray concrete walls into a huge gallery - and all that for free?! These paintings are not the property of anybody and that shows the power and uniqueness of graffiti in a society which is mainly characterized by property-rights and capitalism. From this point of view, should we not look at these paintings as a constructive criticism of today's unpleasant cities, the disconsolation of concrete walls and the transformation of values into goods? From this theoretical perspective Graffiti stands up against the total market economy of capitalism, which interferes with all aspects of our life in society and leaves only little space for "irrational", non-profit focused creativity and fantasy. The teenagers that are interested in HipHop and especially in Graffiti, explicitly want to participate in this form of culture and are no longer willing to be fed with "easy-to-digest" leisure time offers designed by industry.

2. GRAFFITI ALLOWS FOR A UNIQUE EXPRESSION OF CULTURE

Sonik, Graffiti Artist, ART CRIMES ONLINE, p. np, accessed June 14, 2003,

Each and every graffiti writer has been given the tremendous gift of a substantial culture and art form which has allowed for their expression and the ability to say things previously unsayable. That's one hell of a debt to carry, but each writer can do something about repaying it. The best way to repay the culture is to contribute something individual and unique back to it. Again, this comes back to style. Aside from the personal gains one attains from developing one's own voice, if writers do the work it takes to create a style that is truly unique and personal, they have begun to repay the culture which sustains them. Individuality is hard, lonely work - and to the writers out there who may be reading this: if you have not gone to the trouble of developing your own style and are content to make pretty pictures that feed off of the work of so many others, consider yourself a cultural leech. You have no business in this vital art form if you do nothing to keep it vital.

3. GRAFFITI SERVES AS SYMBOLIC RESISTANCE

Bradley J. Bartolomeo, Union College, GRAFFITI IS PART OF US, Anthropology Honors Thesis, 2001, p. np, accessed June 14,2003,

Symbols lie at the core of every culture. Objects or behaviors that contain a shared meaning between members of a culture, symbols contain the ability to unify people through a common understanding. Kottak explains, "A symbol is something verbal or nonverbal, within a particular language or culture, that comes to stand for something else." He continues, "There is no obvious, natural, or necessary connection between the symbol and what it symbolizes" (Kottak 1996:25). In the case of graffiti, the 'writings on the wall' have stood as symbols of resistance and a general discontent with contemporary social realities and the 'status-quo'. Graffiti and art alike are the epitome of implied symbolism and as Kottak clarifies, "As is true of all symbols, the association between a symbol (water) and what is symbolized (holiness) is arbitrary and conventional" (Kottak 1996:25). This arbitrary association is the reason why graffiti is indicative of resistance in popular culture. Although the cryptically constructed letters may often disguise the verbal message of graffiti, its identification in contemporary culture as a symbol for resistance is universally understood. Kottak continues to explain the significance of the symbol to culture in this passage:

For hundreds of thousands of years, people have shared the abilities on which culture rests. These abilities are to learn, to think symbolically, to manipulate language, and to use tools and other cultural products in organizing their lives and coping with their environments. Every contemporary human population has the ability to symbol and thus to create and maintain culture. (Kottak 1996:26) Images on the wall, which are viewed by people in their daily lives, stand as a symbol of resistance. Every person in our society helps create contemporary culture, and by doing so, people construct the framework by which symbolic meaning is possible. Symbols are manifestations of an ability to communicate effectively, and in particular, graffiti is only one symbol, which is part of a greater symbolic system — contemporary American culture. Graffiti is equated to resistance through the essence of cultural communication — the symbol.

Graffiti is bad

1. CHEMICAL WASHES NEEDED TO REMOVE GRAFFITI CAN BE DEADLY

Jeff Chang, NQA, VILLAGE VOICE, September 9, 2002, accessed June 14, 2002,

Austin notes that by 1973 John Lindsay was spending $10 million a year in anti-graffiti efforts. Through the city's bankruptcy and continued train accidents, politicians still somehow found $20 million to establish "the Buff." The chemical washing of graffitied trains not only left cars a dull color, it was harmful: hundreds of workers became sick and one man died of exposure. And in 1983, Michael Stewart was killed by transit cops for writing on a 14th Street station wall, yet another fatal example of the effects of bad theory.

2. GRAFFITI IS ONE OF THE CRIMES OFTEN ASSOCIATED WITH GANG ACTIVITY

Joan W. Howarth, Professor of Law, Golden Gate University, HASTINGS CONSTITUTIONAL LAW QUARTERLY, Summer 2000, p. np.

In addition to seeking prohibitions against a number of specific law violations and a general prohibition against any lawbreaking, the prosecutors also included within the proposed order a provision preventing any of the three hundred Doe defendants from refusing consent to any personal or vehicle search or seizure. The prosecutors sought to prohibit a variety of nuisance activities, from littering to blocking ingress and egress. The order sought also would have prevented graffiti by prohibiting the possession of markers and paint, and prevented drug trafficking by prohibiting the possession of drugs or communications equipment, the approaching of cars, or any welcoming of short-term visitors. Thus the prosecutor's idea was to use the civil law of public nuisance abatements to effectively criminalize the low-level, annoying behaviors of gang members. In this, the public nuisance anti-gang injunction is consistent with other "broken windows" or public order policing and prosecutorial initiatives, including Chicago's broad anti-loitering ordinance struck down by the Supreme Court in City of Chicago v. Morales.

3. GRAFFITI IS A HIGHLY VISIBLE WAY TO EXPRESS HATE

Nancy Levit, Professor of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, OHIO STATE LAW JOURNAL, 2000, p. 874-875.

Antigay zealots increased their violence in late century. The pistol-whipping death of college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in October of 1998 drew attention to antigay violence for a time. The national media reported the array of antigay crimes as follows: graffiti, vandalism, offensive and intimidating language, and physical assaults. But when four months later gay Alabama textile worker Billy Jack Gaither was beaten to death with an ax handle and his body sacrificially burned, the outcry was muted. In February of 1999, when openly gay 17-year-old Adam Colton founded a Gay-Straight Alliance at his high school in Marin County, California, and three teenage males beat him senseless and carved the word "fag" into his arms and stomach with a ball point pen, the brutality received little airplay outside of California. It was simply not news that a member of an unpopular group was targeted for violence. A recent Pennsylvania State University study revealed that "80 percent of gay youths reported having been physically abused, 44 percent faced physical threats, and 17 percent were physically harmed." The sad truth is that gay-bashing is not unusual.

4. MINOR OFFENSES LIKE GRAFFITI CAN LEAD TO MORE SERIOUS CRIMES

Anthony C. Thompson, Professor of Clinical Law at New York University, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY, 2002, p. np.

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani used the Broken Windows theory to declare war on low level offenses. This led to the design and implementation of an aggressive policing approach to quality-of-life offenses. Giuliani's administration vigorously enforced laws against public drinking, public urination, illegal peddling, squeegee cleaning of car windshields by street-people, panhandling, prostitution, loitering, graffiti spraying, and turnstile jumping. According to Mayor Giuliani, aggressive enforcement of these laws was a necessary prerequisite to combating serious crime - such as murders and robberies - because minor disorderly offenses can lead to serious crime. The city administration utilized a zero tolerance policy, directing police to make arrests for a wide range of offenses that were not previously viewed as custodial offenses.

Graffiti should be tolerated rather than prohibited

1. GRAFFITI IS A WAY TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES

Sherri Cavan, PhD., Department of Sociology at San Francisco State University, "The Great Graffiti Wars of the Late 20th Century", Paper presented at the Pacific Sociological Association, 1995, p. np.

These authorized distinctions between "good graffiti" and "bad graffiti" suggest that the "graffiti problem" is about constraints on freedom of expression. Graffiti gives voice to unusual, unpopular, unacceptable, inaccessible ideas, expressing them in unorthodox and unauthorized places. When graffiti is forbidden by the authorities, it is a crime. As a social practice, it is most frequently (but not exclusively) done by powerless, marginal people, people without social and/or economic resources, people without property rights. Those who own space have few restraints on what they can express. Although the freedom of expression of the propertied classes has been tested on more than one occasion by neighbors protesting one another's taste in art and/or politics, American courts have generally sided with the right of the individual to self-expression. For example, when the case of "too many Christmas lights" was brought before the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas upheld the lower courts ruling that the offender reduce his Christmas display (Dec., 1994). The accused was not prohibited from embellishing his property, only admonished to keep that expression "within limits". People without property rights find themselves in a very different situation. Having no economic assets there is no place they can express themselves freely. Rather than being appreciated for their creative spirit and the colorful contribution they make to the urban landscape, they are introduced to law breaking by those who criminalize their behavior.

2. ATTEMPTS TO IRRADIATE GRAFFITI SYMBOLIZE THE DESIRE TO DESTROY “THE OTHER”

Jeremiah Luna, Creative writer who graduated from UC Berkeley, BAD SUBJECTS, April 1995, p. np.

What is hindering us from participating in public games of meaning? Our public spaces are tightly controlled by the interests of capital and the capitalist state. The stifling of our ability to adorn our surroundings is a prime example of the depravity of our common condition under late capitalism. Unless a person has a lot of money, access to public walls is blocked. And if by some chance someone does have the money required, she or he is usually obligated to produce more capital with the images that adorn those public walls by selling something. In other words, by advertising. Those that rebel against the demands of a capitalism bent on selfreproduction face punishment at the hands of the capitalist state, whether in the form of fines or imprisonment. No matter how vociferously the mainstream media trumpets its 'objectivity', it works in unison with this captialist state, serving to disseminate capitalist ideology. It wins public consent and compliance with the repressive laws that prohibit grafitti and other acts of meaning-creation that fail to conform with the overarching commercial logic that dominates our public space. Evidence of this complicity on the part of the media is not hard to find. A series of articles on the problem of grafitti that have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle with in the last two years are typical. The underlying assumptions which motivate these articles betray what I will call an exterminationist logic, very much like the one described by philsopher Philipe Lacoue-Labarthe in his recent book Heidegger, Art and Politics. Labarthe claims that Auschwitz and the unspeakable exterminations that took place there revealed the deepest contradictions of the 'civilized' West, manifesting the most brutal functionalism latent in the desire to achieve perfection by eliminating all traces of the undesirable Other. He writes that 'nowhere else in history has the will to clean, to totally eradicate a 'stain' been so compulsively enacted without the least ritual.' The rhetoric of the articles in the San Francisco Chronicle reveals this same 'will-to-clean', though for ends that are admittedly not quite so extreme! Still, the compulsion to eradicate undesirable traces of the Other's presence is clearly related to the compulsion to eradicate the Others themselves (a compulsion recently attested to by the spate of anti-immigration campaigns around the world, including the one that gave California Proposition 187).

Humor is bad

1. HUMOR LEADS STOPS ANYONE FROM BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY

Jedediah Purdy, senior correspondent and JD, Yale Law School, “Age of Irony,” The American Prospect, vol. 9 no. 39, July 1, 1998, p. np, Accessed April 15, 2003,

The ironic stance also doubts the depth of human relationships. Management guru Tom Peters urges the young and ambitious to “brand” themselves, to advance their lives as they would market a new product. “Starting today,” Peters writes, “you’re every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop” f see “How Low Can You Go?” TAP, March-April 1998]. We should make ourselves distinctive, keep our target audience in view, and not forget the bottom line. Marketing becomes a form of life. And lust as we are too savvy to take commercials seriously, so we cannot attach ourselves too closely to people who we know are peddling themselves, and whose loyalties are the salesman’s rather than the friend’s. Peters’s advice chimes eerily with the contemporary mood. There is a suspicion afoot that marketing is not a bad metaphor for what most of us do, most of the time. Doubting the depth of relationships comes with doubting the depth of personalities, and we are skeptical of the idea that people have anything like a “core self,” a bedrock of character and belief where, if we can just reach it, we can stand with confidence.

2. HUMOR DEVALUES THAT WHICH DESERVES SOLEMNITY.

Jedediah Purdy, senior correspondent and JD, Yale Law School, “Age of Irony,” The American Prospect, vol. 9 no. 39, July 1, 1998, p. np, Accessed April 15, 2003,

This is not just something we watch; it is something we do. Irony is one of the prevalent personal styles. and something of a marker for the generation under 35. Although there is nothing so simple as a culture— or even a subculture—of irony, the attitude forms one of the most prominent strands of our thounht and behavior. The ironic individual is a bit like Seinfeld without a script: at ease in banter, rich in allusion, and almost debilitatingly self-aware. The implications of her [sic: or his] words are always present to her rsic: or him]. Like the motifs of Wayne’s World, our phrases are caught up in webs that we did not weave, from their history on The Brady Bunch to the President’s recent use of them to their role in Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul or Marianne Williams’s Course in Miracles. (Just try to say “I feel your pain” in earnest tones. and see if you don’t feel like never using earnest tones again.) Faced with a choice between clich~ and silence. the ironist in more earnest moments offers strings of disclaimers. sometimes explicit, more often conveyed in gesture or tone, insisting on the inadequacy of her sentences even as she relies on them. In lighter moods she revels in cliche. creating the oft-reported impression that today’s youthful conversation is an amalgam of pop-culture references, snatches of old song lyrics, and bursts of laughter at what would otherwise seem the most solemn moments.

3. THE DANGER IN BAD HUMOR IS THAT SOME PEOPLE MIGHT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY

Jedediah Purdy, senior correspondent and JD, Yale Law School, “Age of Irony,” The American Prospect, vol. 9 no. 39, July 1, 1998, p. np, Accessed April 15, 2003,

The dictum that historic events occur twice—first as tragedy. then as farce—has never been much use except as an insult to alleged second-timers. More and more. though. it is true of popular culture. For about six years now, beginning with the Saturday Night Live-inspired movie Wayne’s World, programmers and screenwriters have turned their own archives into a sajiric resource. Wayne’s World was a pastiche of pop culture, mostly of 1 970s vintage, in which heavy metal lyrics blended with stock characters and catch phrases from sitcoms and cartoons. Several years later, MTV presented Beavis and Butt-head, a cartoon whose eponymous anti-heroes spend their time watching MTV—and mercilessly mocking its melodramatic, oversexed videos. Now, from comedies to commercials, viewers are invited to ioin TV programmers in celebrating just how much moreclever they are than TV programmers. Everyone is in on the ioke. which is not at anybody’s expense. but at the expense of the very idea that anyone would take the whole thing seriously.

Humor is good

1. LAUGHTER ALLOWS US TO GET OUTSIDE TIME AND SPACE

Byron Hawk, no date, p. np, accessed 1/20/02,

"In his preface to The Order of Things, Michel Foucault notes that the idea for his book arose out of his response to a passage in Borges; it arose "out of the laughter that shattered . . . all the familiar landmarks of [his] thought--our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography" (xv). This laughter is not (only) the laughter that Aristotle attributes to Gorgias, the laughter that opposes meaninglessness to meaning (Rhetoric III, 18). Rather it is a laughter that shatters what Jacques Derrida calls the very "fabric of meaning" ("From Restricted," 259) through which the notion of meaninglessness becomes meaningful, through which meaninglessness operates as the dirty underside (the negation) of meaning, or, in Gorgias's case, vice versa. This book arose out of Foucault's tossing of this metaphor: laughter as an explosion of the border zones of thought" (ddd).

2. LAUGHTER SPURS RADICAL CHANGE

Peter Myers, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 'Civilization' And Its Discontents: Nature And Law In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The Legal Studies Forum, 1998, p. 557.

In an early description of the idyllic perfection of the natural life in the raft society, Huck mentions that "it wasn't often that we laughed, only a little kind of low chuckle" (92). The presence of laughter marks the manifold imperfection of existing, conventional societies. But as the raft society of Huck and Jim proves unsustainable, and more generally, the perfection of the human condition proves unachievable, the presence of laughter provides not only a spur to ameliorative action, but more profoundly a consolation for our incapacity to effect truly radical, transformative change. The pleasure of comedy lends support to a more profound sort of moderation, as it reaffirms and helps make bearable the truth concerning the ultimate, unalterable imperfection of all political regimes, all forms of society, and all human beings. By reminding us of our subjection to a common, imperfect human condition, this wise, humane form of comedy dissipates our anger and therewith our desire to become tyrants or form mobs, and replaces it with patience and compassion.

3. LAUGHTER IS GOOD FOR HEALTH

Larry Axmaker, EdD, PhD, Health Plus, Vanderbilt University, no date, p. np, Accessed May 23, 2003,

Over the past few decades, doctors and other researchers have found evidence that laughter and humor are often effective in assisting pain management and promoting healing--especially in children. Laughter seems to be a factor in increased ability to withstand pain. Laughter-causing situations can range from watching cartoon videos, old "I Love Lucy" or "Abbot and Costello" shows, sharing humorous experiences, making puns, or snappy one-liners.

4. LAUGHTER EMPIRICALLY SOLVES HEALTH PROBLEMS

Larry Axmaker, EdD, PhD, Health Plus, Vanderbilt University, May 23, 2003,

A study currently being conducted at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA is trying to determine if laughter can help strengthen the immune systems in children with depressed immune systems. The study, called Rx Laughter, has also studied the value of laughter in helping young cancer patients manage pain and anxiety. Children in general have been shown to laugh more often and more spontaneously than adults.

According to Rx Laughter researcher Margaret Stuber, M.D., "Laughter seems to induce a relaxation response in the autonomic nervous system. We think it could be used to help children who are undergoing painful procedures or who suffer from pain-expectation anxiety." The Rx Laughter study started by working with hundreds of children to determine what makes kids laugh. One way used to determine the therapeutic effectiveness of laughter was to ask children to hold their arms in cold water as long as they could-up to three minutes. Those watching funny videos reported less pain and could keep their arms in the cold water longer than those not watching the videos.

Children watching funny videos while undergoing painful medical procedures needed less pain medication during and after the procedures.

Internet Activism is not successful and wastes resources

1. INTERNET ACTIVISM DOES NOT HAVE THE SAME VISIBILITY AS PUBLIC PROTEST

Joanna Massey, Globe Staff Correspondent, THE BOSTON GLOBE, April 3, 2003, p. 1.

Much of that "talking" is done not in person, but on the computer, through Internet activism fueled in a large part by students. "In the past, you went to a rally to protest or let go of your anger, but now you'll see someone posting something on-line and someone else comes along and says 'yeah, I agree with that,' " said Peter Beisheim, a religious studiesprofessor at Stonehill. "If you do it on the Internet, it doesn't have the same visibility."

2. LAW SUITS CAN SHUT DOWN ACTIVIST WEB PAGES

Anita Ramasastry, Assistant Professor of Law, “The Law and Politics of Internet Activism,” FINDLAW’S WRIT, June 5, 2002, p. np, Find Law’s Legal Commentary, Accessed May 22, 2003,

The Yes Men is not the only group to feel the heat. Within the past few years, several other websites have received legal notices asking them to shut down their parody sites, or risk being in violation of U.S. copyright and trademark laws.For example, Reverend Jerry Falwell is not happy with the parody sites and - both of which were launched by an Illinois resident who was angered by Falwell's accusations relating to the September 11th terrorist attacks and their purported connection to gays and lesbians. The homepage shows Falwell sticking his foot in his mouth repeatedly. In October 2001, Falwell's lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter to the websites' owner, charging him with trademark infringement. More recently, The Republican Party of Texas threatened to file a lawsuit against the website . The site, modeled after , lampoons several state GOP incumbent candidates for refusing to return tens of thousands of dollars in PAC money contributed by Enron employees.

3. INFORMATION OVERLOAD CAN BOG DOWN ACTIVIST POTENTIAL

Katja Cronauer, Master’s Student at the University of British Colombia, “Activism and the Internet,” TOAD’S WORLD, April 30, 2002, p. np, Accessed May 26, 2003,

Another crucial issue for anyone using the Internet is the problem of 'information overload'. For many issues, one is likely to find more information than necessary and may find oneself following link after link on the World Wide Web, or reading numerous emails from various electronic mailing lists. How much information does one need though before one can take action? One may, for example, end up spending a lot of time retrieving information and/or voicing one's opinion online without having to make a commitment to online and/or offline activities. While the Internet may thus prevent users from comitting to working with a group, it may also allow for different types of involvement not possible otherwise. Examples are giving input or feedback to group activities, asking questions, or retrieving and passing on information when one is not able to attend group activities or not comfortable speaking up during offline group activities. In these cases, ideally, the Internet may provide a new entry point into activism, or for new ways of thinking about politics and one's own role in that. However, online activities may take up so much time that users feel unable to spend more time working with the activist groups. Or their online activities may give them the impression that they achieved enough, so that they feel no need to get further involved with the activist groups.

Internet activism is successful

1. INTERNET ACTIVISM ALLOWS CITIZENS TO TURN THE TABLES ON BIG BROTHER

Jim Puzzanghera, NQA, OTTOAWA CITIZEN, December 20, 2002, p. D19.

Internet activists have a message for John Poindexter, the head of a controversial Pentagon research project to find terrorists by searching the everyday transactions of Americans: Threaten to invade our privacy, we'll invade yours. They've plastered Mr. Poindexter's e-mail address and home phone number on dozens of Web sites, forcing him to block all incoming calls. They've posted satellite images of his suburban Washington house and maps showing how to get there. And they've created online forms to collect even more personal data on him. "If you are a store clerk, study the photos above. Learn this face. If you are a shipping clerk, study this name," reads a site titled 'The John Poindexter Awareness Office,' () a play on Mr. Poindexter's Information Awareness Office at the Pentagon. "When and if you see Mr. Poindexter purchase something, travel somewhere or do, well, anything -- send us a tip describing your observations. We will display the information received right here on this Web site." It's all an attempt to turn the tables on Mr. Poindexter, a retired admiral who is trying to create a vast database of information, from credit card purchases to medical files, and develop software to search it for signs of terrorist activity. The project, called Total Information Awareness, has outraged civil libertarians since it became widely known last month – and spurred some people to do a little database surfing of their own.

2. INTERNET ACTIVISM WILL DEMONSTRATE HOW INTOLERABLE GOVERNMENT SNOOPING CAN BE

Jim Puzzanghera, NQA, OTTOAWA CITIZEN, December 20, 2002, p. D19.

"Some people are suspicious that the ... Total Information Awareness system will be used to harass and track the activities of people who some significant fraction of society don't agree with," wrote Mr. Gilmore. "It would be good to have an early public demonstration of just how bad life could become for such targeted citizens." Mr. Poindexter makes an inviting target for such a demonstration, said Declan McCullagh, editor of the Politech mailing list, which focuses on politics and technology. Mr. Poindexter was a national security adviser to former president Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1986 and was a key figure in the covert Iran-Contra gun-trading scheme. He was convicted of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying documents and obstructing justice although he was later acquitted on a technicality. "This anger is manifesting itself in this strange sort of Internet activism, " Mr. McCullagh said. "I think there's a sense of, if you want to watch us then be prepared to be watched yourself."

3. INTERNET INFO-WARS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE LONG-TERM SURVIVAL OF INDIGENOUS ACTIVISTS

Stefan Wray, CADRE Laboratory for New Media, “Electronic Civil Disobedience and the World Wide Web of Hacktivism,” SWITCH, 1999, p. np, Accessed May 25, 2003,

Theorizing about grassroots or bottom-up Information Warfare doesn't nearly get as much attention as the dominant models and as a consequence there is not much written on the subject. 11 The case of the global pro-Zapatista networks of solidarity and resistance offers a point of departure for further examination of grassroots infowar. One feature of Zapatista experience over the course of the last 5 years is that it has been a war of words, as opposed to a prolonged military conflict. This is not to say there isn't a strong Mexican military presence in the state of Chiapas. Quite the contrary is true. But fighting technically ended on January 12, 1994 and since then there has been a ceasefire and numerous attempts at negotiation.12 What scholars, activists, and journalists, on both the left and the right, have said is that the Zapatistas owe their survival at this point largely to a war of words. This war of words, in part, is the propaganda war that has been successfully unleashed by Zapatista leaders like Subcommandante Marcos as well as non-Zapatista supporters throughout Mexico and the world. Such propaganda and rhetoric has, of course, been transmitted through more traditional mass communication means, like through the newspaper La Jornada. But quite a substantial component of this war of words has taken place on the Internet. Since January 1, 1994 there has been an explosion of the Zapatista Internet presence in the forms of email Cc: lists, newsgroups, discussion lists, and web sites.

Irony is bad

1. IRONY DESTROYS COALITIONS

Ellen Winter, NQA, The Point of Words, 1988, p. 28.

The victim of an ironic remark may or may not perceive the speaker’s ironic intent. If the victim fails to perceive the irony, he becomes a victim in a second sense as well—by virtue of being too obtuse to understand the irony. When there is such a naive victim, there is usually a double audience: there is the naive victim who misses the point, and there is the party who not only gets the point but also laughs silently with the speaker at the naive victim’s lack of understanding (Fowler, 1965). Irony thus can be used to polarize an audience into initiates and noninitiates. The ironist conveys one meaning to the uninitiated and another to the initiated. Hence, the ironist solidifies [their] relationship with those who agree with [their] indirect meaning and distances himself [or herself] from those who agree with his literal meaning (Kaufer, 1981). For instance, one might say, “There’s nothing wrong with spending money on defense and cutting back on programs to help the poor” in the presence of two people, one of whom is a fiscal conservative and one of whom is a New Deal Democrat. The speaker intends the liberal (whose political views he shares) to recognize his utterance as ironic; but he intends the conservative (who will agree with the literal meaning of his remarks) to take him literally. In this situation there is a double audience. Moreover, the victim of the irony is a victim in two ways: he is first of all the object of the speaker’s attack (the speaker is ridiculing those who hold the position espoused); and he is also the victim in the eyes of the speaker and the confederate by virtue of missing the point.

2. IRONY CANNOT SUCCEED

Jedediah Purdy, senior correspondent and JD, Yale Law School, “Age of Irony,” The American Prospect, vol. 9 no. 39, July 1, 1998, p. np, Accessed April 15, 2003,

Instead, we more and more suppose that we are quantum selves—iust spin, all the way down. Amon~.the -things that the savvy know better than to take too seriously are people—inasmuch as they ask to be taken seriously. In this view, irony is not a cop-out from deeper risks and relationships. but the only honest attitude. For all its readvlau2hter. the ironic mood is secretly sad. Tom Peters’s doctrine has rather grand predecessors, notably Oscar Wilde, who declared, “The first rule of life is to be as artificial as possible. No one has yet discovered what the second rule is.” But Wilde drew from wells that are now mostly dry. Despite his talk of artificiality, he was in some measure a romantic who believed that he displayed his true identity by flouting convention; his was not exactly a quantum self. Moreover, his eccentricities had the charge and thrill of dramatic dissent in a conventional era. Now, as cultural commentators ceaselessly observe, the fashions of dissent are on sale at specialty boutiques. Between Madonna and the fistfight between Jesus and Santa Claus that opened the cartoon series South Park, there is less and less left in convention whose flouting can elicit shock. A culture without pieties is as flat as one whose piousness is unleavened by irony. The ironic stance invites us to be self-absorbed, but in selves that we cannot believe to be especially interesting or significant. And so, despite our assiduous efforts to defend ourselves from disappointment, a quiet, pervasive sense of it is abroad.

3. IRONY IS AN EXCUSE NOT TO ADVOCATE SOMETHING WHOLEHEARTEDLY

Jedediah Purdy, senior correspondent and JD, Yale Law School, “Age of Irony,” The American Prospect, vol. 9 no. 39, July 1, 1998, p. np, Accessed April 15, 2003,

Irony does not stand alone. It is a way of passing judgment—or placing bets—on what kinds of hope the world will support. Jerry Seinfeld’s stance resists disappointment by reflising to identify strongly with any project, relationship, or aspiration. We may not vote ivith Maureen Dowd, but if we take her attitude toward politics, we will never feel betrayed. When we are ironists. we would rather watch the wheel than putdown chips. What are we so shy of’? We surely mistrust our own capacity to bear disappoititment. So far as we are ironists. we are determined not to be made suckers. We will not be caught out having staked a good part of our all on a false hope— personal, political, or both. This is ageneration accustomed to seeing its immediate predecessor as a bit naive, a bit irresponsible, and often a bit blameworthy for those foibfes. Douglas Coupland, the author who coined the term “Generation X,” presents his protagonists’ parents as clueless at best, wild-eyed and acid-scarred at worst—all victims of an innocence that our ironists are determined not to revisit. Recent polls showing that college freshmen have fewer grand hopes and more drive to make money than ever in memory show less the grand avidity of Gordon Gecko than a weary suspicion that nothing else is worth the risk.

Irony is good

1. LANGUAGE CAN BE EMPLOYED IRONICALLY TO ORDER THE WORLD SUCESSFULLY

Poetry Magic, editors, “Continental Thought,” 2000, , accessed 1/9/02

Yet reality can only be partially created in words. Mostly we learn by seeing and doing, and there are many types of knowledge - riding a bicycle, developing a taste in painting, social interaction - where words cannot take us far. We remember places and faces without preserving them in words - obviously so, or identity parades would not be successful. But what of more abstract concepts like truth, honesty, kindness - how do these have existence outside words? Because they must. Even Derrida will rewrite his paragraphs, and in doing so acknowledge that the first drafts did not fully express what he meant. That meaning need not have final or complete expression, and probably never can have. Philosophers are always finding exceptions, qualifications, further considerations. Language is constantly modifying and being modified by our need for a consistent understanding of ourselves and our place in the scheme of things. Perhaps what Derrida is attacking is the common practice of philosophy. He understands the irony, if not absurdity, of employing as weapons the very words he criticises. But the campaign is guerrilla warfare, attack and retreat, with no ground held. Awareness of the fundamental problems is what he aims at - problems which persist even if we ground understanding in brain processes and regard words as articulations of behaviour which is largely instinctive and unconscious. In that light, Derrida's revelations are not revelations at all, only late and perhaps sensible reactions to the overblown claims of philosophy, which is how he is read by pragmatists like Rorty and Margolis.

2. IRONY MUST BE INCORPERATED INTO A DEBATE STRATEGY

Richard Rorty, philosopher, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 1989, p. 14-15.

If we could bring ourselves to accept the fact that no theory about the nature of Man or Society or Rationality, or anything else, is going to synthesize Nietzsche with Marx or Heidegger with Habermas, we could begin to think of the relation between writers on autonomy and writers on justice as being like the relation between two kids of tools--as little in need of synthesis as are paintbrushes and crowbars. One sort of writer lets us realize that the social virtues are not the only virtues, that some people have actually succeeded in re-creating themselves. We thereby become aware of our half-articulate need to become a new person, one whom we as yet lack words to describe. The other sort reminds us of the failure of our institutions and practices to live up to the convictions to which we are already committed by the public, shared vocabulary we use in daily life. The one tells us that we need not speak only the language of the tribe, that we may find our own words, that we may have a responsibility to ourselves to find them. The other tells us that that responsibility is not the only one we have. Both are right, but there is no way to make both speak a single language. This book tries to show how things look if we drop the demand for a theory which unifies the public and private, and are content to treat the demands of self-creation and of human solidarity as equally valid, yet forever incommensurable. It sketches a figure whom I call the "liberal ironist." I borrow my definition of "liberal" from Judith Shklar, who says that liberals are the people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we do. I use "ironist" to name the sort of person who faces up to the contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires--someone sufficiently historicist and nominalist to have abandoned the idea that those central beliefs and desires refer back to something beyond the reach of time and chance. Liberal ironists are people who include among these ungroundable desires their own hope that suffering will be diminished, that the humiliation of human beings by other human beings may cease. For liberal ironists, there is no answer to the question, "Why not be cruel?"--no noncircular theoretical backup for the belief that cruelty is horrible. Nor is there an answer to the question "How do you decide when to struggle against injustice and when to devote yourself to private projects of self-creation?" This question strikes liberal ironists as just as hopeless as the questions "Is it right to deliver n innocents over to be tortured to save the lives of m x n innocents? If so, what are the correct values of n and m?" or the question "When may one favor members of one's own family, or one's community, over other, randomly chosen, human beings? Anybody who thinks that there are well-grounded theoretical answers to this sort of questions--algorithms for resolving moral dilemmas of this sort--is still, in his heart, a theologian or a metaphysician. He believes in an order beyond time and change which both determines the point of human existence and establishes a hierarchy of responsibilities.

Letter Writing is Bad

1. SCHOLARS SHOULD NOT USE LETTER WRITING TO BOOST UNQUALIFIED OPINIONS

Stephen M. Griffin, Vice Dean and Rutledge C. Clement, Jr. Professor of Public and Constitutional Law, Tulane School of Law, BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, April 2002, p. np.

In the wake of the impeachment and acquittal of President Clinton, a curious controversy has broken out over the proper role of legal scholars in public debates. Neal Devins, Ward Farnsworth, and others have argued that letters submitted to Congress by law professors opposing President Clinton's impeachment were ill-advised efforts to trade on the impression of scholarly expertise in an area in which most of them had none. The basic thrust of their critique is not that the arguments in the Clinton anti-impeachment letter were wrong or even unreasonable, but that there is something improper about soliciting signatures from masses of legal academics who may know very little individually about the question at issue.

2. ACADEMICS USE POLITICAL LETTER WRITING FOR PERSONA GAIN, NOT SOCIETAL GAIN

Neal Devins, Goodrich Professor of Law and Lecturer in Government, College of William and Mary, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1999, p. 185-190.

Many of the law professor and historian signatories were animated by partisanship and self-interest, not scholarship. Needless to say, there is a real temptation for academics who want to be part of the fray, who want to see their names in print, who want to tell their families that they did something that mattered, to sign a mass letter. Other academic letter signers may not care at all about celebrity. They may, however, care a great deal about the President's ability to pursue his agenda. In particular, partisan Democrats who voted for the President and support his policies may sign the letter for political reasons. As it turns out (surprise), the academy is overwhelmingly left-liberal, overwhelmingly Democratic. Take the case of the law professors. "Only [ten] percent of [them] characterize themselves as conservative to some degree," while more than eighty percent of them are registered Democrats. Therefore, many legal academics see Kenneth Starr - who argued against abortion rights and affirmative action as the Bush administration's Solicitor General - as their nemesis.

3. ACADEMIC LETTER WRITERS OFTEN CANNOT DEFEND WHAT THEY ARE WRITING

Neal Devins, Goodrich Professor of Law and Lecturer in Government, College of William and Mary, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, 1999, p. 185-190

But do the responsibilities of academic freedom attach to joint letters? After all, no one expects that each and every signatory has played a hand in the letter's drafting. For similar reasons, it is to be expected that many signatories agree with the conclusions but not the reasoning of the letters they sign. Moreover, with the academy's glitterati spearheading these letter-writing campaigns, it is to be expected that some signatories (who care that the letter's reasoning be well thought out but know nothing about impeachment, gun control, or whatever) sign on because they assume that these leading lights would not lead them astray. Finally, some signatories consider the letter's reasoning beside the point. Their signature, instead, is about partisanship and nothing else. Being able to explain why academics (who cannot defend the reasoning of these letters) sign these missives does not justify this practice. Rather, these letters go out of their way to make clear that they are sending a professional, not a political, message. Writing as "scholars," "historians," "law professors," and "teachers of constitutional law," these letters tout the self-described academic expertise of their signatories. While it is to be expected that the academics signing these letters support the outcomes they advocate, it is not to be expected that many of them cannot defend (and may well not support) the letters' reasoning. Indeed, it is the reasoning of academics - not the conclusions they reach - which justifies academic freedom. It is therefore a perversion of academic freedom to treat professional expressions of expert opinion as nothing more than a plebiscite of personal preferences.

Letter Writing is good

1. THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT SHOWS LETTER WRITING CAN SPUR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS.

Janet Mabin, Social Anthropologist and Lecturer in the School of Education at the Open University, LETTER WRITING AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE, ed. David Barton and Nigel Hall, 1999, p. 163.

It has been argued that letter writing provides a transitional space between public and private lives. For example, Gring-Pemble (1998) describes the role of private correspondence in the consciousness raising of feminists in nineteenth century North America as a "pre-genesis" stage of the women's rights movement. Women, denied access to public life, used the exchange of letters to try out and refine particular ideas and beliefs, develop a shared ideology, and create a space in the public arena.

2. LETTER WRITING CAN CAUSE PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION

Janet Mabin, Social Anthropologist and Lecturer in the School of Education at the Open University, LETTER WRITING AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE, ed. David Barton and Nigel Hall, 1999, p. 163.

While some letter writers had come to the correspondence with strong prior concerns about social justice, others developed political awareness and interest in the course of the correspondence. British letter writers reported their raised awareness of conditions on death row, and of the abuse, racism and injustice experienced by many prisoners at various points in their lives. They wrote of their distress and feelings of powerlessness when execution dates for their penfriends were issued, and those British letter writers whose penfriends had been finally executed talked of shock and grief and feelings of helplessness and panic. In one case the prisoner had maintained he was innocent. One British man wrote, "It is a travesty, a shallow ritualistic response to the complexities and potentialities of an individual human being. I have felt degraded; their death has diminished me." As a result of correspondence and their own subsequent reading in the area, many letter writers reported that they had learned a considerable amount about the death penalty and about the U.S. legal system.

3. LETTER WRITING CAN INVOLVE A COMMUNITY IN A GRASSROOTS STRUGGLE

Chester L. Mirsky and David Porter; Professor of Clinical Law, New York University Law School, and Associate Professor of Political Science at SUNY/Empire State College, ALBANY LAW ENVIRONMENTAL OUTLOOK, 2002, p. np.

Our experience acknowledges the significance for local participatory political culture of a wide base of volunteer community organizations--at least some of which engage in political activity. The pre-existence of a local environmental group is especially crucial. n86 But the dynamic growth of specific anti-project organizations and their wider support networks depends greatly as well on existing rich associational bases ("social capital")--from Little League parent friendships and religious affiliations to neighborhood associations, local school contacts, the local arts community and numerous other organized groups. At whatever level of contribution, dozens of individuals are prepared through past associational experience to offer their talents in the mundane activities of fund-raising, letter-writing, phone trees, distributing petitions and posters, organizing potlucks, preparing visual exhibits and walking picket lines. This wealth of participatory skills, based on pre-existing associational life, is essential to sustain a local struggle. Naturally, a drawn-out anti-project campaign further develops the local reservoir of such talents for future grassroots participatory vitality.

4. LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGNS CAN SPUR LEGISLATION

Natsu Taylor Saito, Associate Professor at Georgia State University College of Law, BOSTON COLLEGE LAW REVIEW, December, 1998, p. np.

By the 1970s a movement for redress had begun to take root in the Japanese American community, and in 1980 activist groups formed the National Coalition for Redress/Reparation which organized support for redress through letter-writing campaigns and public education events. At the urging of Senator Daniel Inouye, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. After hearings across the nation, the Commission issued its report, Personal Justice Denied, acknowledging the "grave injustices" suffered by the interned Japanese Americans. In August 1988 Congress enacted the Civil Liberties Act, which provided $ 20,000 for each surviving internee, an apology signed by President Reagan and a public education fund. The CLA, while providing symbolic redress, did not acknowledge that the Japanese American internment was either illegal or unconstitutional.

Monuments and museums are bad

1. Museums are tools of hegemonic domination

Brian Durrans, Deputy Keeper in the Department of Ethnography of the British Museum, “Behind the scenes: Museums and selective criticism,” Anthropology Today, August, 1992, p. 11.

Since the Second World War, museums and material culture seemed marginal to most debates on the social role of anthropology. Recently, however, ethnographic exhibitions have become a hot issue. It is not that curators have become more daring - the occasional display has always aroused enthusiasm or dissent - but that displaying, especially of or by cultural 'Others', is increasingly seen as overtly or implicitly political. Exhibitions, and museums themselves, have come to be criticized as hegemonic devices of cultural elites or states. They distort and hence mask the oppression of the cultures they supposedly represent; and their ideological messages appear as 'truth' because museums do not or cannot reveal to their publics the actual choices and negotiations through which cultures are (mis)represented in particular objects or displays.

2. Monuments cement the modern amalgamation of war and tourism

Debbie Lisle, School of Politics, Queens University of Belfast, Alternatives, 25, 2000, p. 92-93.

War and tourism are strange bedfellows. It is not easy to see how violence and human atrocity are connected to the leisure practices of foreign holidays. Indeed, it would be more appropriate to suggest that the two events are rigorously separated, that modern tourism explicitly avoids areas of violence in order to provide the safest possible vacation spots for tourists. One can imagine a peaceful vacation in Hawaii, but Sierra Leone? or Kosovo? While contemporary warfare does not enter the spatial remit of modern tourism, the commemoration of historical battles in the form of war memorials, military museums, and battle reenactments makes up a large part of contemporary tourist practice. Therefore, the separation of war and tourism can be understood in the following way: if war is located "elsewhere," tourism can ensure the safety of its consumers, and if war happened "back then," tourism emerges as the principal mechanism by which subjects can access and commemorate already resolved conflicts. This article argues that the separation of war and tourism is repeatedly held in place by an overarching discourse of global security that allows subjects to locate and understand prevailing images of safety and danger. More specifically, it argues that the safety/danger opposition at the heart of global security shapes the practices of modern tourism. Continually locating places where the world is under threat—from states, areas, and regions to cities and neighborhoods—produces a powerful discursive map that not only instructs global powers to intervene in these "hot spots," it also instructs tourists to choose holiday destinations that meet their security requirements.

3. Museums are pretentious excuses for elitism

Veronica Williams, NQA, Sunday Star Times, May 18, 2003, p. 13.

MY DAD needs dialysis. He won't be around to see if Team New Zealand wins or loses the next America's Cup. That $ 34 million could have paid for 400 people on one year of dialysis. I'm pleased the overstayer is getting life-saving treatment, but New Zealand could help more than one overstayer as well as all the Kiwis needing life-saving treatment - dialysis, heart by-passes, whatever. New Zealand can afford to look after its people's health, but it chooses not to. Rather, they are sacrificed to boat races for the rich, unnecessary overseas travel for politicians, snooty art galleries, pompous museums, silly preservation of wildlife by DoC, and a burdensome, unworking education system.

4. Museums fail to recognize the need for democratic access to art

Brian Durrans, Deputy Keeper in the Department of Ethnography of the British Museum, “Behind the scenes: Museums and selective criticism,” Anthropology Today, August, 1992, p. 11.

As Exhibiting Cultures shows, art historical curators who regard at least certain masterworks as capable of communicating cross-culturally the aesthetic values of their makers have become easy prey. Their stance is open to legitimate objections (e.g. McLeod 1991), yet postmodernist and consumer-political criticism also targets the training and experience necessary to connoisseurship, implying that democratic access is denied where effort is necessary for understanding. The brutal truth, however, is that visitor access to information formally available in museums, no less than in libraries or through the education system itself, varies markedly according to class and other dimensions of social division.

Monuments and museums are good

1. Symbolic monuments challenge the commodiFication of suffering

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard University, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, 1998, p. 131-132.

In contrast, concrete reparations—whether in the form of monetary compensation, restitution of misappropriated property or even apologies—may seem more appealing. The danger here is that reparations elevate things over persons, commodities over lives, money over dignity. "The salvation and redemption of the graters, kettles, and chairs, even if it were to happen, has bearing on the course of human events only if we humans have also been turned into objects. Symbolic reparations such as the creation of peace parks for children or schools named for individuals murdered during the atrocity challenge this equation of persons and things and potentially speak to the individuality and dignity of those who were victimized.

2. Creating a memorial helps to re-imagine the war/tourism dichotomy

Debbie Lisle, School of Politics, Queens University of Belfast, Alternatives, 25, 2000, p. 92-93.

To reveal the boundary between war and tourism as a performance (albeit a powerful one) is to illustrate how these discrete events actually collapse into one another. By positioning the banal workings of tourism alongside the serious activities of warfare, the safety/danger opposition at the heart of global security is exposed to its own excesses and impurities. For example, tourists are now marching on the war zones of Sarajevo and Kuwait, and cultural sites like Luxor have recently become the explicit targets of terrorism's war against tourism. This article argues that the connections between war and tourism disrupt and resist the prevailing images of safety and danger that attempt to hold them apart. More importantly, reimagining the war/tourism divide prevents the hegemonic discourse of global security from completing itself, stabilizing its boundaries, and securing a totalized presence.

3. Museums are crucial to democracy

Staff Writer, UzDessert, “Museum is a Mirror of History,” 1999, p. np, Accessed May 28, 2003,

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of museums in the cultural life of the Republic. They perform not only an enlightening role but also facilitate the education and bringing up the younger generation in the spirit of patriotism, humanism and pride for their great ancestors who made a great contribution into the development of the world civilization.

4. Memorials best maintain memory

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard University, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, 1998, p. 138-141.

More literal and concrete forms of commemoration and monuments use sculptures and paintings, museums, plays, and poems. Shared spaces and experiences enabled by public art do not produce singular or coherent memories, but they can enable ways to hold and reveal, in common, competing memories. Memorials can name those who were killed; they can depict those who resisted and those who rescued. They can accord honor and confer heroic status; they can express shame, remorse, warning, shock. Devoting public spaces to memories of atrocities means devoting time and energy to decisions about what kinds of memories, images, and messages to embrace, critique, and resist.

5. Museums and repositories of art can best explore mass atrocity

Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard University, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, 1998, p. 142.

In addition to monuments, other artistic responses to mass atrocity explore the possibilities of provocation and disturbance. Historian Lawrence Langer emphasizes that art by survivors themselves can afflict "our desire to redesign hope from the shards of despair with the vision of an anguish that is recordable but not redeemable. "Art of the unthinkable should disturb as well as commemorate. Similarly, critic David Roskies explains how art of the Holocaust makes readers "partners in poetic resurrection with specific and yet other works recall ancient archetypes, remote from specific events and persons. Holocaust art so often avoids human figures and shocks with disharmony and disorientation.

Murals are bad

1. MURALS ARE TOO PERMANENT AND DON'T REACH ENOUGH PEOPLE

Bill Rolston, Professor of Sociology, University of Ulster, POLITICS AND PAINTING: MURALS AND CONFLICT IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1991, p. 113.

In this way Cubans have followed in the footsteps of the Soviet Revolution that also rejected murals as a worthwhile form of propaganda. Berger (1969, quoted in Sterner 1970, pp. xxvii) justifies the Soviet decision in the following terms. "Oil painting, sculpture and in most cases mural painting, do not as media lend themselves to propaganda. Their facture suggests too great a degree of permanence. Furthermore, they are functionally inefficient media for propaganda purposes. A painting or statue can only be in one place at one time, seen by a limited number of people. The possible modern media for propaganda film, the ideogrammatic (not naturalistic) poster, the booklet, certain forms of theater, the song and declamatory poetry.

2. MURALS ONLY SHOW A ONE-SIDED VIEW OF HISTORY

Douglas Birch, Sun Foreign Staff, BALTIMORE SUN, May 11, 2003, p. 2A.

Park Pobedy boasts the Metro's two newest acquisitions, floor-to-ceiling murals by one of Russia's most famous, prolific and politically connected artists, Zurab Tsereteli. (Back in the 1990s Tsereteli failed to persuade Baltimore to carry out one of his designs, a 31-story statue of Christopher Columbus, in the Inner Harbor.) A favorite of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, Tsereteli has created monuments scattered across Moscow and around the world. But the artist is probably best-known for what some consider a kitschy curiosity - a 15-story bronze statue of Peter the Great planted along the Moscow River. Depending on your point of view, the colossal Russian czar either looks seized by inspiration or half-crazed. In one mural, Tsereteli pieced together a group portrait of the Russian generals who pursued Napoleon during his retreat from Moscow. (The station is near a Triumphal Arch erected in memory of the victory over Napoleon.) In the other, a crowd celebrates around a statue of a Soviet soldier amid the rubble of a ruined city. In one hand, the soldier holds a sword. In the other, he holds a boy he rescued from the ruins. The statue, based on one erected by East German authorities in Berlin's Treptower Park, is cherished by Soviet army veterans. "The central figure is historical," explains Sergei Abrigosov, a retired military officer, as Metro trains shriek in and out of the busy station. "He was a Russian soldier who went into Berlin and dug a small boy out of the ruins. He is a symbol of how the Soviet Army saved the whole world." Many Germans, of course, recall the brutality of the conquering Soviet army. But there is no hint of discord in Tsereteli's mosaic. And that seems just fine with Abrigosov, who praises the work as "extraordinary."

3. MURALS CAN PORTRAY RACIST AND DESTRUCTIVE VIEWS TO A LARGE AUDIENCE

Maurice E.R. Munroe, Professor of Law, Thomas M. Cooley Law School; Barrister-at-Law (Middle Temple). LL.B., ALBANY LAW REVIEW, 2000, p. np.

She was buxom and bare to the waist. He was completely naked and he could not take his eyes off her, but his fascination would prove fatal. He was in a metal frame with a high pulley wheel and a low one. Around his neck was a noose. The other end of the rope went over the high pulley wheel, down behind his back, under the low pulley wheel, between his legs, and was knotted around his maleness. The system was ingenious. As his excitement rose, he would slowly strangle himself to death. She was blonde, and he was unmistakably black, but I cannot remember if he had a tail. I saw this large mural in 1974 on the wall of a restaurant in downtown Amsterdam, Holland. I would be surprised to find such an image prominently displayed in a restaurant in the center of a major American city. Yet, I believe that this mural, in gross and exaggerated form, reflects the attitudes of many Americans. The mural reflects the belief that blacks are different and inferior. It says that they are less intelligent and enterprising than whites, that they are unable to control their emotions and their sexuality, that they lust after white women. After all, to escape his fate, all the prisoner had to do was close his eyes. It also says that there is something exotic, almost unnatural, about interracial sex. Finally, this mural reflects another more sinister notion, namely that blacks as a group pose a threat to society, and must be controlled. These attitudes form the basis of racial prejudice in America today.

Murals are a bad strategy for activism

1. MURALS WILL CAUSE MODERN ART TOO ENTRENCHED IN WESTERN IDEALS.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, September 17, 2000, Section 2, p. 36.

By the end of the 1920's the mural movement was so dominant that it had inspired a backlash; still, it got the lion's share of attention. Modern art was already too entrenched in the Western world to be stifled (except in the places where it was outlawed), but it could be pushed out of the spotlight.

2. ELITES ARE NOT INCLUDED IN MURALS AND MAY WHITE WASH THEM

SUN-SENTINEL (Fort Lauderdale, FL), October 23, 1994, P. 4f.

With class and economic divisions in the last few centuries, murals became a form of social protest by the disenfranchised. It isn't members of the elite who draw on walls. They are more likely to whitewash these public messages of rebellion.

3. MURALS SUBJECT TO WHITE WASHING BY URBAN RENEWAL CREWS

SUN-SENTINEL (Fort Lauderdale, FL), October 23, 1994, P. 4f.

Presently in the United States, the mural movement is strongest in Los Angeles, where Chicano artists follow in the tradition of Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco. The outlaws among muralists are graffiti artists, whose garish spray-painted cartoonlike designs are often whitewashed over by urban renewal crews.

4. EMPERICALLY MURALS BREED CONFLICT

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, May 3, 1995, p. 8-A.

Members of the USM were accused of anti-Semitism last year when they supported keeping the Malcolm X mural that critics said included anti-Jewish symbols and overtones. After several clashes among different student groups and police, the mural was sandblasted off the student union wall.

5. EMPIRICALLY MURALS CAUSE BACKLASH

THE NEWS, May 20, 1997, p. np.

The 24-square-meter mural, equal in proportion Pablo Picasso's "Guernica," addressed war but also included a self-portrait by Cuevas and the voluminous figure of a football player. While it was Cuevas who came up with the concept for "Mural Efimero," the work was painted by an "unknown" artist under Cuevas' supervision. The backlash against the mural was immediate and strong -- Cuevas was called a "showoff and a joker." But Cuevas was already used to antagonistic responses.

6. MURALS DETERIORATE OVER TIME

CHICAGO SUN-TIME, March 30, 1999, p. 9.

It's likely the mural failed to receive proper care over the years because the museum focused on showcasing technological progress, rendering the iron and steel exhibit and its artifacts obsolete, art historians say.

Murals are a good form of activism

1. MURALS UNITE AND EDUCATE THE COMMUNITY

DAILEY BRUIN ONLINE, July 5, 2000, p. np, Accessed June 10, 2003,



These murals help unite the community. This is a form of activism because people of different backgrounds, ages and ethnicities can come together to help create murals. Another form of activism through art is the recent exhibit at Kerckhoff Art Gallery called "APEyes." The exhibit allowed Asian American artists in the UCLA community to express their experiences and concerns. This is a form of activism because other people can look at the pieces and learn from them.

2. MURALS EDUCATE AND SPEAK TO WIDE AUDIENCES

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDENT ACTIVISM WEB MAGAZINE, March 27, 2000, Accessed June 10, 2003,

Have a meaningful message. Murals should not only be aesthetically beautiful, but should also educate, challenge, and inspire. At their best, murals are layered with meaning and speak to wide audiences, unveiling their messages over time. Some messages are literal, some symbolic and abstract.

3. MURALS LEAD TO OTHER TYPES OF ACTIVISM

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDENT ACTIVISM WEB MAGAZINE, March 27, 2000, Accessed June 10, 2003,

Build success and hope. Participants not only learn how to make a mural, they gain skills and confidence to take on future community projects. If students realize what they can accomplish by working together on the mural, they will take away a powerful lesson on what people can do if they organize, collaborate, and work together to make their neighborhoods/lives better.

4. MURALS TELL STORIES OF ALMOST ALL EXCLUDED MINORITIES.

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDENT ACTIVISM WEB MAGAZINE, March 27, 2000, Accessed June 10, 2003,

Expand the concept of history and history makers. Murals give voice and presence to those communities and historical events often excluded in our society--women, people of color, gender issues, working class people, freedom fighters, etc. Mural making is a perfect time to go beyond the text books and have students and teachers get out into community, incorporate local concerns, and through oral histories and photos, access the richness and wisdom of our students’ families

5. MURALS FOSTER DEMOCRATIC ACTIVISM AND CHANGE WORLD FOR THE BETTER.

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDENT ACTIVISM WEB MAGAZINE, March 27, 2000, Accessed June 10, 2003,

Bring people together. Making murals using collaborative and democratic methods, provides a tiny microcosms, a working model of the world we want to build. Even though we can’t create total unity and cooperation among all people, doesn’t meant we shouldn’t paint and aspire towards it. With this in mind, as an organizing tool, murals can bring students, parents, and school staff personally closer together.

Murals are a good tool for activism

1. MURALS ARE A TOOL FOR ACTIVISM BECAUSE THEY MAKE ART ACCESSIBLE

Miranda Bergman, Artist, ART ON THE LINE, ed. Jack Hirschman, 2002, p. 360.

People's art is a powerful weapon in revolutionary struggle. Murals are an art form that is out in the street for everyone, where people can watch and participate in the process of art being made, talk to the artists, share their ideas, opinions and criticisms. There is a mystique build up around art in a bourgeois society: only the gifted few with God-given "talent," can be artists. How art gets created and how to develop these skills are kept from everyday people: mystified. Murals break down that mystery because everyone around can see the whole process, from the preparation of the blank wall to the first sketch, the layers of paint, the changes, the mistakes. The finished painting emerges through a process visible to all. Neighbors participate in the ideas included in the design, and often in the actual painting. This public and open process strengthens and encourages the creativity in people, and gives ideas for new possibilities and projects in their lives.

2. MURALS CAN BE DISPLAYED TO SHOW THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF THE COMMUNITY.

Miranda Bergman, Artist, ART ON THE LINE, ed. Jack Hirschman, 2002, p. 360.

Art reflects social conditions, and we want our art to be where the poor and working people are, not in a private gallery for high prices. We want our art to be relevant and take a clear stand. Murals can be effective inside buildings as well as outside on the street. Where ever they are murals are not a commodity, they can't be bought and sold.

3. MURALS HAVE BEEN USED IN REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLES AROUND THE WORLD

Bill Rolston, Professor of Sociology, University of Ulster, POLITICS AND PAINTING: MURALS AND CONFLICT IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1991, p. 113.

In this sense only, republican muralists appear to be close to the Mexican muralists of an earlier generation. Both have been active participants in a liberation struggle and have used their artistic skills to further the cause. But there are enough differences between them to make this comparison faulty as well. The republican painters of Northern Ireland are not and never will be established artists, because they see themselves as revolutionaries using art as a weapon, not artists "doing their bit" for the revolution. Untrained and sometimes remarkably nonreflective about their work, they have learned to use this weapon on the job, in the heat of battle as it were.

4. MURALS CONTRIBUTE TO AESTHETIC EXPERIENCES THAT MAKE CULTURAL CONNECTIONS

Sarah Harding, Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, ARIZONA STATE LAW JOURNAL, Summer, 1999, p. np.

Part of this process is recognizing the value of other connections, particularly those associated with aesthetic experiences. Objects and customs can become intrinsically valuable in foreign contexts. The Parthenon Marbles, potlatch masks, and Teotihuac ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download