framework - georgetown 2014

8/12/2019 Framework - Georgetown 2014

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notes

None of these cards are highlighted- you should do that yourself so you can familiarize yourself with

them. The 2nc overview is also more of a guide- you have to fill large parts of that out yourself based on

what you want from the cards.


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framework


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1nc

Resolved is legislative

Parcher 1- Jeff Parcher, former debate coach at Georgetown, Feb 2001

http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200102/0790.html

Pardon me if I turn to a source besides Bill. American Heritage Dictionary: Resolve: 1. To make a firm decision about. 2. Todecide or express by formal vote. 3. To separate something into constiutent parts See Syns at *analyze* (emphasis in orginal) 4. Find a solution

to. See Syns at *Solve* (emphasis in original) 5. To dispel: resolve a doubt. - n 1. Firmness of purpose; resolution. 2. A determination or

decision. (2) The very nature of the word "resolution" makes it a question. American Heritage: A course of action determined or

decided on. A formal statement of a decision, as by a legislature. (3) The resolution is obviously a

question. Any other conclusion is utterly inconceivable. Why? Context. The debate community

empowers a topic committee to write a topic for ALTERNATE side debating. The committee is not a

random group of people coming together to "reserve" themselves about some issue. There is context -

they are empowered by a community to do something. In their deliberations, the topic community

attempts to craft a resolution which can be ANSWERED in either direction. They focus on issues like

ground and fairness because they know the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will be

resolved by determining the policy desirablility of that resolution. That's not only what they do, but it's

what we REQUIRE them to do. We don't just send the topic committee somewhere to adopt their own

group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the preliminary wording

of a resolution sent to others to be answered or decided upon. (4) Further context: the word resolved is

used to emphasize the fact that it's policy debate. Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by

legislative bodies. A resolution is either adopted or it is not. It's a question before a legislative body.

Should this statement be adopted or not. (5) The very terms 'affirmative' and 'negative' support my

view. One affirms a resolution. Affirmative and negative are the equivalents of 'yes' or 'no' - which, ofcourse, are answers to a question.

USFG should means the debate is only about government policy

Ericson 3(Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal ArtsCalifornia Polytechnic U., et al., The

Debaters Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)

The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key elements,

although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-orientedpropositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---The United States in The United States should adopt a policy of freetrade. Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb should the first part of a

verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put

a program or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase

free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs,

discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred.

The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the


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affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform

the future action that you propose.

Voting issue

Preparation and clashchanging the topic post facto manipulates balance of prep,

which structurally favors the aff because they are able to choose the initial framework

for debate and permute non-competitive counter-methodologiesstrategic fairness

on a limited topic is key to engaging a well-prepared opponentthey force us to give

up every other pursuit for win debates

Harris 13(Scott, April 5 This ballot by Scott Harris

http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?topic=4762.0, nkj)

I understand that there has been some criticism of Northwesterns strategy in this debate round. This criticism is premised on the ideathat they ran framework instead of engagingEmporias argument about home and the Wiz. I think this criticism is unfair.

Northwesterns framework argument did engage Emporias argument. Emporia said that you should

vote for the team that performatively and methodologically made debate a home. Northwesterns

argument directly clashed with that contention. My problem in this debate was with aspects of the execution of theargument rather than with the strategy itself. It has always made me angry in debates when people have treated topicality as if it were a less

important argument than other arguments in debate. Topicality is a real argument. It is a researched strategy. It is an

argument that challenges many affirmatives. The fact that other arguments could be run in a debate or

are run in a debate does not make topicality somehow a less important argument. In reality, for many of youthat go on to law school you will spend much of your life running topicality arguments because you will find that words in the law matter. The

rest of us will experience the ways that word choices matter in contracts, in leases, in writing laws and in many

aspects of our lives. Kansas ran an affirmative a few years ago about how the location of a comma in alaw led a couple of districts to misinterpret the law into allowing individuals to be incarcerated in jail for

two days without having any formal charges filed against them. For those individuals the location of the

comma in the law had major consequences. Debates about words are not insignificant. Debates about

what kinds of arguments we should or should not be making in debates are not insignificant either. The

limits debate is an argument that has real pragmatic consequences. I found myself earlier this year judging Harvardseco-pedagogy aff and thought to myselfI could stay up tonight and put a strategy together on eco-pedagogy, but then I thought to myself

why should I have to? Yes, I could put together a strategy against any random argument somebody makes employing an energy metaphor but

the reality is there are only so many nights to stay up all night researching. I would like to actually spend time playing catch with my children

occasionally or maybe even read a book or go to a movie or spend some time with my wife. A world where there are an infinite

number of affirmatives is a world where the demand to have a specific strategy and not run framework

is a world that says this community doesnt care whether its participants have a life or do well in school

or spend time with their families. I know there is a new call abounding for interpreting this NDT as a mandate for broader morediverse topics. The reality is that will create more work to prepare for the teams that choose to debate the topic but will have little to no effect

on the teams that refuse to debate the topic. Broader topics that do not require positive government action or are

bidirectional will not make teams that wont debate the topic choose to debate the topic. I think that is a conjob. I am not opposed to broader topics necessarily. I tend to like the way high school topics are written more than the way college topics are

written. I just think people who take the meaning of the outcome of this NDT as proof that we need to make it so people get to talk about

anything they want to talk about without having to debate against topicality or framework arguments

are interested in constructing a world that might make debate an unending nightmare and not a very


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good home in which to live. Limits, to me, are a real impact because I feel their impact in my everyday

existence.

Debates a gamefairness and rules come first

Villa 96Dana Villa Political Theory @ UC Santa Barbara Arendt and Heidegger: the Fate of the

Political p. 37

If political action is to be valued for its own sake, then the content of political action must be politics in

the sense that political action is talk about politics. The circularity of this formulation, given by George Kateb, is

unavoidable. It helps if we use an analogy that Kateb proposes, the analogy between such a purely political politics and a game. A game,

writes Kateb, is not about anything outside itself, it is its own sufficient worldthe content of any game is

itself. What matters in a game is the play itself, and the qualityof this play is utterly dependent upon

the willingness and ability of the players to enter the world of the game. The Arendtian conception of politics is

one in which the spirit animating the play (the sharing of words and deeds)comes before all elsebefore personal

concerns, groups, interests, and even moral claims. If allowed to dominate the game, these elements detracts from

the play and from the performance of action. A good game happens only when the players submit

themselves to its spirit and do not allow subjective or external motives to dictate the play. A good

game, like genuine politics, is played for its own sake.

A limited topic is key to decision-making and advocacy skills

Steinberg and Freeley 8*Austin J. Freeley is a Boston based attorney who focuses on criminal,

personal injury and civil rights law, AND David L. Steinberg , Lecturer of Communication Studies @ U

Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making pp45-

Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a difference of opinion or a conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If

everyone is in agreement on a tact or value or policy, there is no need for debate: the matter can be settled by unanimous consent. Thus, for

example, it would be pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four," because there is simply no controversy about

this statement. (Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no clash of ideas, proposals, interests, or expressed positions

on issues, there is no debate. In addition, debate cannot produce effective decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to

be answered. For example, general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal immigration. How many illegal immigrants are in the

United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they

commit crimes? Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a problem that some do not

speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should they have

the opportunity- to gain citizenship? Docs illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country? Do illegal immigrants do work that

American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human beings at risk due to their status? Are they abused by

employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? I low are their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical

obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification can!, or

enforce existing laws against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to

be addressed by a conversation about the topic area of illegal immigration. Participation in this "debate" is likely to be emotional and

intense. However, it is not likely to be productive or useful without focus on a particular question and

identification of a line demarcating sides in the controversy. To be discussed and resolved effectively,

controversies must be stated clearly. Vague understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor

decisions, frustration, and emotional distress,as evidenced by the failure of the United States Congress to make progress onthe immigration debate during the summer of 2007.

Someone disturbed by the problem of the growing underclass of poorly educated, socially

disenfranchised youths mightobserve, "Public schools are doing a terrible job! They are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly


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qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain order in their classrooms." That same

concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision, such as "We ought to do something about

this" or. worse. "It's too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about the state of

public education could join together to express their frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and emotions

regarding the schools, but without a focus for their discussions, they could easily agree about the sorry

state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions.A gripe session would follow. But if a

precise question is posedsuch as "What can be done to improve public education?"then a more profitable area of

discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a concrete solution step.One or morejudgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies. The

statements "Resolved: That the federal government should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities" and "Resolved:

That the state of Florida should adopt a school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with educational problems in a

manageable form, suitable for debate. They provide specific policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference.

To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing limits

on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined. If we merely talk about"homelessness" or "abortion" or "crime'* or "global warming" we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to establish profitable

basis for argument. For example, the statement "Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword" is debatable, yet fails to provide much

basis for clear argumentation. If we take this statement to mean that the written word is more effective than physical force for some purposes,

we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose.

Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized

argument. What sort of writing are we concerned withpoems, novels, government documents, website development, advertising, or what?

What does "effectiveness" mean in this context? What kind of physical force is being comparedfists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear

weapons, or what? A more specific question might be. "Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring

Liurania of our support in a certain crisis?" The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as "Resolved: That the United

States should enter into a mutual defense treatv with Laurania." Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet

maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative

interpretation of the controversy by advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing

interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that

debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of difference, which will beoutlined in the following discussion.

Government policy discussions are key

Esberg and Sagan 12*Jane Esberg is special assistant to the director at New York University's Center

on. International Cooperation. She was the winner of 2009 Firestone Medal, AND Scott Sagan is a

professor of political science and director of Stanford's Center for International Security and

Cooperation NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy,

2/17 The Nonproliferation Review, 19:1, 95-108

These governmentor quasi-government think tank simulationsoften provide very similar lessons for high-level

players as are learned by students in educational simulations. Government participants learn about the

importance of understanding foreign perspectives, the need to practice internal coordination, and thenecessity to compromise and coordinate with other governments in negotiations and crises.During the ColdWar, political scientist Robert Mandel noted how crisis exercises and war games forced government officials to overcome bureaucratic

myopia, moving beyond their normal organizational roles and thinking more creatively about how others might react in a crisis or conflict.6

The skills of imagination and the subsequent ability to predict foreign interests and reactions remain

critical for real-world foreign policy makers. For example, simulations of the Iranian nuclear crisis*held in 2009 and 2010 at theBrookings Institutions Saban Center and at Harvard Universitys Belfer Center, and involving former US senior officials and regional

experts*highlighted the dangers of misunderstanding foreign governments preferences and misinterpreting their subsequent behavior. In both


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simulations, the primary criticism of the US negotiating team lay in a failure to predict accurately how other

states, both allies and adversaries, would behave in response to US policy initiatives.7

By university age, students often have a pre-defined view of international affairs, and the literature on

simulations in education has long emphasized how such exercises force students to challenge their

assumptions about how other governments behave and how their own government works.8 Since

simulations became more common as a teaching toolin the late 1950s, educational literature has expounded

on their benefits, from encouraging engagement by breaking from the typical lecture format, to

improving communication skills, to promoting teamwork.9 More broadly, simulations can deepen

understanding by asking students to link fact and theory, providing a context for facts while bringing

theory into the realm of practice.10 These exercises are particularly valuable in teaching international affairs for many of the same

reasons they are useful for policy makers: they force participants to grapple with the issues arising from a world in

flux.11 Simulations have been used successfully to teach students about such disparate topics as European politics, the Kashmir crisis, and

US response to the mass killings in Darfur.12 Role-playing exercises certainly encourage students to learn political

and technical facts* but they learn them in a more active style. Rather than sitting in a classroom and

merely receiving knowledge, students actively research their governments positions and actively

argue, brief, and negotiate with others.13 Facts can change quickly; simulations teach students how tocontextualize and act on information.14

Substantive constraints on the debate are key to pluralism and agonistic democracy

Dryzek 6Professor of Social and Political Theory, The Australian National University (John,

Reconciling Pluralism and Consensus as Political Ideals, American Journal of Political Science,Vol. 50, No.

3, July 2006, Pp. 634649)

Mouffe is a radical pluralist: By pluralism I mean the end of a substantive idea of the good life (1996, 246). But neither Mouffe nor Young

want to abolish communication in the name of pluralism and difference; much of their work advocates sustained attention to

communication. Mouffe also cautions against uncritical celebration of difference, for some differencesimply subordination and should therefore be challenged by a radical democratic politics (1996, 247). Mouffe

raises the question of the terms in which engagement across difference might proceed. Participants should ideally accept that

the positions of others are legitimate, though not as a result of being persuaded in argument. Instead, it

is a matter of being open to conversion due to adoption of a particular kind of democratic attitude that

converts antagonism into agonism, fighting into critical engagement, enemies into adversaries who are

treated with respect. Respect here is not just (liberal) toleration, but positive validation of the position

of others. For Young, a communicative democracy would be composed of people showing equal respect,

under procedural rules of fair discussion and decisionmaking(1996, 126). Schlosberg speaks of agonistic

respect as a critical pluralist ethos(1999, 70).

Mouffe and Young both want pluralism to be regulated by a particular kind of attitude, be it respectful, agonistic, or even in Youngs (2000, 16

51) case reasonable. Thus neither proposes unregulated pluralism as an alternative to (deliberative) consensus.

This regulation cannot be just procedural, for that would imply anything goes in terms of the

substance of positions. Recall that Mouffe rejects differences that imply subordination. Agonistic ideals

demand judgments about what is worthy of respect and what is not. Connolly (1991, 211) worries about dogmaticassertions and denials of identity that fuel existential resentments that would have to be changed to make agonism possible. Young seeks

transformation of private, self-regarding desires into public appeals to justice (2000, 51). Thus for Mouffe, Connolly, and Young alike,

regulative principles for democratic communication are not just attitudinal or procedural; they also refer


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searching in the academic databases. There was an unintended effect, however: After doing ... the

project, instructional group students also felt more confident than the other students in their ability to

get good information from Yahoo and Google. It may be that the library research experience increased

self-efficacy for any searching, not just in academic databases. (Larkin 2005, 144)

Larkin's study substantiates Thomas Worthcn and Gaylcn Pack's (1992, 3) claim that debate in the

college classroom plays a critical role in fostering the kind of problem-solving skills demanded by the

increasingly rich media and information environment of modernity. Though their essay was written in

1992 on the cusp of the eventual explosion of the Internet as a medium, Worthcn and Pack's framing of

the issue was prescient: the primary question facing today's student has changed from how to best

research a topic to the crucial question of learning how to best evaluate which arguments to cite and

rely upon from an easily accessible and veritable cornucopia of materials.

There are, without a doubt, a number of important criticisms of employing debate as a model for

democratic deliberation. But cumulatively, the evidence presented here warrants strong support for

expanding debate practice in the classroom as a technology for enhancing democratic deliberative

capacities. The unique combination of critical thinking skills, research and information processing skills,

oral communication skills, and capacities for listening and thoughtful, open engagement with hotly

contested issues argues for debate as a crucial component of a rich and vital democratic life. In-class

debate practice both aids students in achieving the best goals of college and university education, and

serves as an unmatched practice for creating thoughtful, engaged, open-minded and self-critical

students who are open to the possibilities of meaningful political engagement and new articulations of

democratic life.

Expanding this practice is crucial, if only because the more we produce citizens that can actively and

effectively engage the political process, the more likely we are to produce revisions of democratic life

that are necessary if democracy is not only to survive, but to thrive. Democracy faces a myriad of

challenges, including: domestic and international issues of class, gender, and racial justice; wholesale

environmental destruction and the potential for rapid climate change; emerging threats to international

stability in the form of terrorism, intervention and new possibilities for great power conflict; and

increasing challenges of rapid globalization including an increasingly volatile global economic structure.

More than any specific policy or proposal, an informed and active citizenry that deliberates with greater

skill and sensitivity provides one of the best hopes for responsive and effective democratic governance,

and by extension, one of the last best hopes for dealing with the existential challenges to democracy in

an increasingly complex world.

Therestopical versions that can use most of the 1ac...changes by debate

Policymaking is essential to create permanent, codified change at every level of

society

Themba-Nixon 2K(Makani, Executive Director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping

communities use media and policy advocacy to advance health equity and justice. Changing the Rules:

What Public Policy Means for Organizing Colorlines 3.2)


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"This is all about policy," a woman complained to me in a recent conversation. "I'm an organizer." The flourish and passion with which she

made the distinction said everything. Policy is for wonks, sell-out politicians, and ivory-tower eggheads. Organizing

is what real, grassroots people do. Common as it may be, this distinction doesn't bear out in the real

world. Policy is more than law. It is any written agreement(formal or informal) that specifies how an

institution, governing body, or community will address shared problems or attain shared goals. It spells

out the terms and the consequences of these agreements and is the codification of the body's values-as

represented by those present in the policymaking process.Given who's usually present, most policies

reflect the political agenda of powerful elites. Yet, policy can be a force for change-especially when we

bring our base and community organizing into the process.In essence, policies are the codification of power

relationships and resource allocation. Policies are the rules of the world we live in. Changing the world

means changing the rules. So, if organizing is about changing the rules and building power, how can

organizing be separated from policies? Can we really speak truth to power, fight the right, stop

corporate abuses, or win racial justice without contesting the rules and the rulers, the policies and the

policymakers? The answer is no-and double no for people of color. Today, racism subtly dominates nearly

every aspect of policymaking.From ballot propositions to city funding priorities,

policy is increasingly about thecontrol, de-funding, and disfranchisement of communities of color. What Do We Stand For? Take the publicconversation about welfare reform, for example. Most of us know it isn't really about putting people to work. The right's message was framed

around racial stereotypes of lazy, cheating "welfare queens" whose poverty was "cultural." But the new welfare policy was about moving

billions of dollars in individual cash payments and direct services from welfare recipients to other, more powerful, social actors. Many of us

were too busy to tune into the welfare policy drama in Washington, only to find it washed up right on our doorsteps. Our members are

suffering from workfare policies, new regulations, and cutoffs. Families who were barely getting by under the old rules are being pushed over

the edge by the new policies. Policy doesn't get more relevant than this. And so we got involved in policy-as

defense. Yet we have to do more than block their punches. We have to start the fight with initiatives of

our own. Those who do are finding offense a bit more fun than defense alone.Living wage ordinances, youthdevelopment initiatives, even gun control and alcohol and tobacco policies are finding their way onto the public agenda, thanks to focused

community organizing that leverages power for community-driven initiatives. - Over 600 local policies have been passed to regulate the

tobacco industry. Local coalitions have taken the lead by writing ordinances that address local problems and organizing broad support for them.

- Nearly 100 gun control and violence prevention policies have been enacted since 1991. - Milwaukee, Boston, and Oakland are among thecities that have passed living wage ordinances: local laws that guarantee higher than minimum wages for workers, usually set as the minimum

needed to keep a family of four above poverty. These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how organizing for local policy advocacy

has made inroads in areas where positive national policy had been stalled by conservatives. Increasingly, the local policy arena is where the

action is and where activists are finding success. Of course, corporate interests-which are usually the target of these

policies-are gearing up in defense. Tactics include front groups, economic pressure, and the tried and

true: cold, hard cash. Despite these barriers, grassroots organizing can be very effective at the smaller scale of local politics. At the locallevel, we have greater access to elected officials and officials have a greater reliance on their constituents for reelection. For example, getting

400 people to show up at city hall in just about any city in the U.S. is quite impressive. On the other hand, 400 people at the state house or the

Congress would have a less significant impact. Add to that the fact that all 400 people at city hall are usually constituents, and the impact is

even greater. Recent trends in government underscore the importance of local policy. Congress has enacted a series of measures devolving

significant power to state and local government. Welfare, health care, and the regulation of food and drinking water safety are among the areas

where states and localities now have greater rule. Devolution has some negative consequences to be sure. History has taught us that, for social

services and civil rights in particular, the lack of clear federal standards and mechanisms for accountability lead to uneven enforcement and

even discriminatory implementation of policies. Still, there are real opportunities for advancing progressive initiatives in this more localized

environment. Greater local control can mean greater community power to shape and implement important social policies that were heretofore

out of reach. To do so will require careful attention to the mechanics of local policymaking and a clear blueprint of what we stand for. Getting It

in Writing Much of the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of demands. By getting into the policy arena

in a proactive manner, we can take our demands to the next level. Our demands can become law, with

real consequences if the agreement is broken. After all the organizing, press work, and effort, a group should leave a

decisionmaker with more than a handshake and his or her word. Of course, this work requires a certain amount of

interaction with "the suits," as well as struggles with the bureaucracy, the technical language, and the


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all-too-common resistance by decisionmakers. Still, if it's worth demanding, it's worth having in writing-

whether as law, regulation, or internal policy. From ballot initiatives on rent control to laws requiring

worker protections, organizers are leveraging their power into written policies that are making a real

difference in their communities. Of course, policy workis just one tool in our organizing arsenal, but it is a tool we simply

can't afford to ignore. Making policy work an integral part of organizing will require a certain amount of

retrofitting. We will need to develop the capacity to translate our information, data, and experience intostories that are designed to affect the public conversation. Perhaps most important, we will need to

move beyond fighting problems and on to framing solutions that bring us closer to our vision of how

things should be. And then we must be committed to making it so.


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2nc feminism

Framework is totally feminist- we dont preclude you from remaining rooted in your

identity but common ground is crucial to a communicative ethic that allows us to

forge a politics of solidarity in difference

Lister 97(Ruth. Hypatia. Vol 12, No. 4. Citizenship in Feminism: Identity, Action, and Locale. Dialecticsof Citizenship. JSTOR)

The third plank is a commitment to dialogue. This commitment has been expressed under a number of rubrics;

most notably, "dialogic," "deliberative," or "communicative" democracy. Underlying them is Habermas's

notion of a "communicative ethic," which emphasizes the crucial role of free and open public

communication and deliberation between citizens as the basis of democratic political legitimation. This

has been used critically by a number of feminist political theorists who envisage such public dialogue as

the framework for the articulation of difference in which diverse voices, particularly those normally

excluded from public discourse, have an equal right to be heard. Unlike Habermas himself, for those feministsthe point of such dialogue is not to arrive at agreement on "the" general interest, but instead to

promote the development of views and the exercise of judgement, having taken account of different

viewpoints. This commitment to dialogue is premised on the belief that it enables new positions to

emerge as other viewpoints are acknowledged. The importance of dialogue in which "each group

becomes better able to consider other groups'" standpointswithout relinquishing the uniqueness of its own standpoint

or suppressing other groups' partial perspectives is underlinedalso by Patricia Hill Collins as typical of Afrocentric feminist

thought(1991, 236). Nira Yuval-Davis (1997), drawing on the work of a group of Italian feminists, calls this a process of "rooting" and

"shifting," in which participants remain rooted in their own identities and values but at the same time are

willing to shift views in dialogue with those of other identities and values. This,Yuval-Davis suggests,

represents a "transversal" dialogue or politics, which depends on participants avoiding uncritical

solidarityand the homogenization of "the other." How to turn such theoretical ideas into practical realities is, of course,another question. As Yuval-Davis warns, in some situations, conflicting interests are not reconcilable in this way and, by and large, political

systems do not provide the time and space for such dialogue. Moreover, there is a tendency to underestimate the difficulties some groups, in

particular the poor and economically marginalized, would have in entering the dialogue in the first place. Nevertheless, we can point to

examples to show that such a transversal politics is possible.To take just two from conflict areas: during the

period of transition to the new South Africa, a Women's National Coalition was formed, which

represented an "extraordinary convergence of women across geographical, racial, class, religious and

political lines" and "a forum through which women who harbored deep animosities could also identify

common concerns"(Kemp et. al., 1995, 150-51). Through a process of dialogue and negotiation and despite

fissures and disagreements, the coalitiondrafted a Women's Charter for Effective Equality, which gave women in their

diversity a voice in the writing of the new constitution. The opportunity to have a voice at such a historic

time, combined with a focus on a clear, specific goal, is believed to have provided the impetus to workthrough the differences that existed. A second example can be found in Northern Ireland. In a photo essay, titled "Different

Together," Cynthia Cockbum describes how a form of transversal politics is being pursued by Belfast women's

centers: Individual women hold on to their political identities-some long for a united Ireland, others feel deeply

threatened by the idea. But they have identified a commonality in being women, being community based and

being angry at injustice and inequality, that allows them to affirm and even welcome this and other

kinds of difference. (1996a, 46) Two Belfast women who gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Opsahl Commission explained that, in


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their experience, cooperation was easier "when the deliberations and activities are directed towards the

issues which matter" in women's lives, by which they meant the struggle to improve the quality of life in

the disadvantaged communities in which they lived.5 Cockbum(1996b), drawing also on women's projects in Bosnia and

Israel, found a number of factors which facilitated working across communal divisions, including a clear

practical focus and a sensitivity in defining agendas. Each case revealed a commitment to working with

the "other" and an affirmation of "difference." This was combined with an acknowledgment ofdifferences within each group and of the fluidity of ethnic identities, as well as a willingness to look

outward; for instance, in Belfast, to women in local Indian and Chinese communities. None of this was easy; but these

examples suggest that with commitment, it is possible to forge a politics of solidarity in difference.


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15/24

at: distancing

DEBATE roleplay specifically activates agency

Hanghoj 8

(http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlin

ger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdfThorkild Hanghj, Copenhagen, 2008 Since this PhD project began in 2004, thepresent author has been affiliated with DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media

Materials), which is located at the Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern

Denmark. Research visits have taken place at the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-

KIT), the Institute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab

Denmark at the School of Education, University of Aarhus, where I currently work as an assistant professor)

Thus, debate gamesrequireteachers to balance the centripetal/centrifugal forces of gaming and teaching,to be able toreconfigure their discursive authority, and to orchestrate the multiple voices of a dialogical game space in relation to particular goals. These

Bakhtinian perspectives provide a valuable analytical framework for describing the discursive interplay between different practices and

knowledge aspects when enacting (debate) game scenarios. In addition to this, Bakhtins dialogicalphilosophyalso offers an

explanation of why debate games(and other game types) may be valuablewithin an educational context. One of the central

features of multi-player games is that players are expected to experience a simultaneously real and imagined scenarioboth in

relation to an insiders(participant) perspective and to an outsiders(co-participant) perspective.According to Bakhtin, the

outsiders perspectivereflects a fundamental aspect of human understanding: In order to understand, it is immensely

important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding in time, in space, in culture.

For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can

be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others (Bakhtin, 1986: 7). As

the quote suggests, every person is influenced by others in an inescapably intertwined way, and consequently no voice can be said to be

isolated. Thus, it is in the interaction with other voices that individuals are able to reach understanding and find their

own voice. Bakhtin also refers to the ontological process of finding a voice as ideological becoming, which represents the

process of selectively assimilating the words of others (Bakhtin, 1981: 341). Thus, by teaching and playing debate scenarios,it is

possible to support students in their process of becoming not only themselves, but also in becoming articulate and

responsivecitizens in a democratic society.
http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdfhttp://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdfhttp://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdfhttp://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdfhttp://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdfhttp://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf


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at: critical pedagogy

They will always win that the principles of their advocacy are good in the abstract

we can only debate the merits of their 1AC if they defend specific consequences of

political implementation

Michael Ignatieff, Carr professor of human rights at Harvard, 2004Lesser Evils p. 20-1

As for moral perfectionism, this would be the doctrine that a liberal state should never have truck with dubious moral means and should spare

its officials the hazard of having to decide between lesser and greater evils. A moral perfectionist position also holds that

states can spare their officials this hazard simply by adhering to the universal moral standards set out in

human rights conventions and the laws of war. There are two problems with a perfectionist stance, leaving

aside the question of whether it is realistic. The first is thatarticulating nonrevocable, nonderogable moral standards

is relatively easy. The problem is deciding how to apply them in specific cases.What is the line betweeninterrogation and torture, between targeted killing and unlawful assassination, between preemption and aggression? Even when legal and

moral distinctions between these are clear in the abstract,abstractions are less than helpful when political leaders

have to choose between them in practice.Furthermore, the problem with perfectionist standards isthat they contradict each other. The same person who shudders, rightly, at the prospect of torturing a suspect might be prepared tokill the same suspect in a preemptive attack on a terrorist base. Equally, the perfectionist commitment to the right to life might preclude such

attacks altogether and restrict our response to judicial pursuit of offenders through process of law. Judicial responses to the problem of terror

have their place, but they are no substitute for military operations when terrorists possess bases, training camps, and heavy weapons. To stick

to a perfectionist commitment to the right to life when under terrorist attack might achieve moral consistency at the price of leaving us

defenseless in the face of evildoers. Security, moreover, is a human right, and thus respect for one right might lead us to betray another.


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at: rules/predictability bad

No link to rules or predictability badour argument isn't rules-based in the sense they

identify, its a set of contestable guidelines for evaluating competitions. Rejecting the

topic because rules are oppressive doesnt solveand only a standard like the

resolution is limited enough to enable preparation and testing but has enough internal

complexity to solve their impact

Armstrong 2KPaul B. Armstrong, Professor of English and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Winter 2000, The Politics of Play: The Social

Implications of Iser's Aesthetic Theory, New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 1, p. 211-223

Such a play-spacealso opposes the notion that the only alternative tothe coerciveness of consensus must

beto advocate the sublime powers of rule-breaking.8 Iser shares Lyotards concern that to privilege harmony and agreement in aworld of heterogeneous language games is to limit their play and to inhibit semantic innovation and the creation of new games. Lyotards

endorsement of the sublimethe pursuit of the unpresentable by rebelling against restrictions, defying norms, andsmashing the limits of existing paradigmsis undermined by contradictions, however, which Isers explication of play recognizes

and addresses. The paradox of the unpresentable, as Lyotard acknowledges, is that it can only be manifested through a game

of representation. The sublime is, consequently, in Isers sense, an instance of doubling. If violating norms creates new

games, this crossing of boundaries depends onand carries in its wake theconventions and structures it

oversteps. The sublime may be uncompromising, asocial, and unwilling to be bound by limits, but its pursuit of what is not

contained in any orderor system makes it dependent on the forms it opposes. The radicalpresumption of the

sublime is not only terroristic in refusing to recognizethe claims of other games whose rules it declines to

limit itself by. It isalso naive and self-destructive in itsimpossible imagining that it can do without the

others it opposes. As a structure of doubling, the sublime pursuit of the unpresentable requires a play-space that includes other, less

radical games with which it can interact. Such conditions of exchangewould be provided bythe nonconsensual

reciprocity ofIserian play. Isers notion of play offers a way of conceptualizing power which acknowledges the necessity

and force ofdisciplinary constraints without seeing them asunequivocally coerciveand determining. The contradictory

combination of restriction and opennessin how play deploys power is evidentin Isers analysis of regulatory and

aleatory rules. Even theregulatory rules, which set down the conditionsparticipants submit to in order to play a

game, permitacertain range of combinationswhile also establishing a code of possible play. . . . Since these rules limit

thetext game without producing it, they are regulatory but not prescriptive. They do no more than set the aleatory in motion,

and the aleatory rule differs from the regulatory in that it has no code of its own (FI 273). Submitting tothe discipline of regulatory

restrictions is both constraining and enabling because it makes possible certain kinds of interaction that

the rules cannot completely predict or prescribe in advance. Hencethe existence of aleatory rules that are not

codifiedas part of the game itself but arethe variable customs, procedures, and practices for playing it. Expert facility with

aleatory rules marks the difference, for example,

between someone who just knows the rules of a game andanother who really knows how to play it. Aleatory rules are more flexibleand openended and more susceptible to

variation than regulatory rules, but they too are characterized bya contradictory combination of constraint and

possibility, limitation and unpredictability,


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19/24

Identity politics bad

1. They force the commodification of autobiography in exchange for the ballot- thissubverts their performance by requiring outsiders become exemplary participants in

the very culture they criticize

Coughlin 95(Anne M. Coughlin, Associate Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School August, 1995,

Regulating the Self: Autobiographical Performances in Outsider Scholarship, Virginia Law Review, 81

Va. L. Rev. 1229, Lexis)

Although Williams is quick to detect insensitivity and bigotry in remarks made by strangers, colleagues, and friends, her taste for irony fails her

when it comes to reflection on her relationship with her readers and the material benefits that her autobiographical performances have earned

for her.196 Perhaps Williams should be more inclined to thank, rather than reprimand, her editors for behaving as readers of autobiography

invariably do. When we examine this literary faux pas-the incongruity between Williams's condemnation of her editors and the professionalbenefits their publication secured her-we detect yet another contradiction between the outsiders' use of autobiography and their desire to

transform culture radically. Lejeune's characterization of autobiography as a "contract" reminds us that autobiography

is a lucrative commodity. In our culture, members of the reading public avidly consume personal stories,197 which surely explains why

first- rate law journals and academic presses have been eager to market outsider narratives. No matter how

unruly the self that it records, an autobiographical performance transforms that self into a form of

"property in a moneyed economy"198 and into a valuable intellectual assetin an academy that requires its members

to publish.199 Accordingly, we must be skeptical of the assertion that the outsiders' splendid publication

record is itself sufficient evidence of the success of their endeavor.20 Certainly, publication of a best seller maytransform its author's life, with the resulting commercial success and academic renown.201 As one critic of autobiography puts it, "failures do

not get pub- lished."202 Whilewriting a successful autobiography may be momentous for the individual author,

this success has a limited impact on culture. Indeed, the transformation of outsider authors into"success stories" subverts outsiders' radical intentions by constituting them as exemplary participants

within contemporary culture, willing to market even themselves to literary and academic consumers.203

What good does this transformation do for outsiders who are less fortunate and less articulatethan middle-

class law professors?204 Although they style themselves cultural critics, the storytellers generally do not reflect

on the meaning of their own commercial success, nor ponder its entanglement with the cultural values

they claim to resist. Rather, for the most part, they seem content simply to take advantage of the peculiarly

American license, identified by Professor Sacvan Bercovitch, "to have your dissent and make it too."205

2. Their narrative is centered on the Western idealized notion of the self- thisrecreates the cultural hegemony they criticize by prioritizing the subjectivity of the

performer over collective solutions for racism

Coughlin 95(Anne M. Coughlin, Associate Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School August, 1995,

Regulating the Self: Autobiographical Performances in Outsider Scholarship, Virginia Law Review, 81

Va. L. Rev. 1229, Lexis)


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IV. The Autobiographical Self The outsider narratives do not reflect on another feature of auto-

biographical discourse that is perhaps the most significant obstacle to their goal to bring to law an

understanding of the human self that will supersede the liberal individual. Contrary to the outsiders'

claim that their personalized discourse infuses law with their distinctive experiences and political

perspectives, numerous historians and critics of autobiography have insisted that those who participate

in autobiographical discourse speak not in a different voice, but in a common voice that reflects their

membership in a culture devoted to liberal values.206 As Sacvan Bercovitch puts it, American cultural

ideals, including specifically the mythic connection between the "heroic individual . . . [and] the values of

free enterprise," are "epitomized in autobiography."207 In his seminal essay on the subject, Professor

Georges Gusdorf makes an observation that seems like a prescient warning to outsiders who would

appropriate autobiography as their voice. He remarks that the practice of writing about one's own self

reflects a belief in the autonomous individual, which is "peculiar to Western man, a concern that has

been of good use in his systematic conquest of the universe and that he has communicated to men of

other cultures; but those men will thereby have been annexed by a sort of intellectual colonizing to a

mentality that was not their own."208 Similarly, Albert Stone, a critic of American autobiography, arguesthat auto-biographical performances celebrate the Western ideal of individualism, "which places the self

at the center of its world."209 Stone begins to elucidate the prescriptive character of autobiographical

discourse as he notes with wonder "the tenacious social ideal whose persistence is all the more

significant when found repeated in personal histories of Afro-Americans, immigrants, penitentiary

prisoners, and others whose claims to full individuality have often been denied by our society."'2

Precisely because it appeals to readers' fascination with the self-sufficiency, resiliency and uniqueness of

the totemic individual privileged by liberal political theory, there is a risk that autobiographical discourse

is a fallible, even co-opted, instrument for the social reforms envisioned by the outsiders. By affirming

the myths of individual success in our culture, autobiography reproduces the political, economic, social

and psychological structures that attend such success.21' In this light, the outsider autobiographies

unwittingly deflect attention from collective social responsibility and thwart the development of

collective solutions for the eradication of racist and sexist harms. Although we may suspect in some

cases that the author's own sense of self was shaped by a community whose values oppose those of

liberal individualism, her decision to register her experience in autobiographical discourse will have a

significant effect on the self she reproduces.212 Her story will solicit the public's attention to the life of

one individual, and it will privilege her individual desires and rights above the needs and obligations of a

collectivity. Moreover, literary theorists have remarked the tendency of autobiographical discourse to

override radical authorial intention. Even where the autobiographer self-consciously determines to

resist liberal ideology and represents her life story as the occasion to announce an alternative political

theory, "[t]he relentless individualism of the genre subordinates" her political critique.213 Inevitably, at

least within American culture, the personal narrative engrosses the readers' imagination. Fascinated bythe travails and triumphs of the developing autobiographical self, readers tend to construe the text's

political and social observations only as another aspect of the author's personality. Paradoxically,

although autobiography is the product of a culture that cultivates human individuality, the genre seems

to make available only a limited number of autobiographical protagonists.214 Many theorists have

noticed that when an author assumes the task of defining her own, unique subjectivity, she invariably

reproduces herself as a character with whom culture already is well-acquainted.215 While a variety of

forces coerce the autobiographer to conform to culturally sanctioned human models,216 the pressures


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exerted by the literary market surely play a significant role. The autobiographer who desires a material

benefit from her performance must adopt a persona that is intelligible, if not enticing, to her

audience.217 As I will illustrate in the sections that follow, the outsider narratives capitalize on, rather

than subvert, autobiographical protagonists that serve the values of liberalism.

3. Appeals to personal experience replace analysis of group oppression with personal

testimony. As a result, politics becomes a policing operationthose not in an identity

group are denied intellectual access and those within the group who dont conform to

the affs terms are excluded. Over time, this strategy LIMITS politics to ONLY the

personal. This devastates structural change, and turns the caseit demands that

political performance assimilate to very limited norms of experience

Scott 92(Joan Harold F. Linder Professor at the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced

Study in Princeton Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity October Summer p. 16-19)

The logic of individualism has structured the approach to multiculturalism in many ways. The call for

tolerance of difference is framed in terms of respect for individual characteristics and attitudes; group

differences are conceived categorically and not relationally, as distinct entities rather than

interconnected structures or systems created through repeated processes of the enunciation of

difference. Administrators have hired psychological consulting firms to hold diversity workshops which

teach that conflict resolution is a negotation between dissatisfied individuals. Disciplinary codes that

punish "hate-speech" justify prohibitions in terms of the protection of individuals from abuse by other

individuals, not in terms of the protection of members of historically mistreated groups from

discrimination, nor in terms of the ways language is used to construct and reproduce asymmetries of

power. The language of protection, moreover, is conceptualized in terms of victimization; the way to

make a claim or to justify one's protest against perceived mistreatment these days is to take on the

mantle of the victim. (The so-called Men's Movement is the latest comer to this scene.) Everyone--

whether an insulted minority or the perpetrator of the insult who feels he is being unjustly accused-

now claims to be an equal victim before the law. Here we have not only an extreme form of

individualizing, but a conception of individuals without agency. There is nothing wrong, on the face of it,

with teaching individuals about how to behave decently in relation to others and about how to

empathize with each other's pain. The problem is that difficult analyses of how history and social

standing, privilege, and subordination are involved in personal behavior entirely drop out. Chandra

Mohanty puts it this way: There has been an erosion of the politics of collectivity through the

reformulation of race and difference in individualistic terms. The 1960s and '70s slogan "the personal ispolitical" has been recrafted in the 1980s as "the political is personal." In other words, all politics is

collapsed into the personal, and questions of individual behaviors, attitudes, and life-styles stand in for

political analysis of the social. Individual political struggles are seen as the only relevant and legitimate

form of political struggle.5 Paradoxically, individuals then generalize their perceptions and claim to

speak for a whole group, but the groups are also conceived as unitary and autonomous. This

individualizing, personalizing conception has also been behind some of the recent identity politics of

minorities; indeed it gave rise to the intolerant, doctrinaire behavior that was dubbed, initially by its


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internal critics, "political correctness." It is particularly in the notion of "experience" that one sees this

operating. In much current usage of "experience," references to structure and history are implied but

not made explicit; instead, personal testimony of oppression replaces analysis, and this testimony comes

to stand for the experience of the whole group. The fact of belonging to an identity group is taken as

authority enough for one's speech; the direct experience of a group or culture-that is, membership in it-

becomes the only test of true knowledge. The exclusionary implications of this are twofold: all those notof the group are denied even intellectual access to it, and those within the group whose experiences or

interpretations do not conform to the established terms of identity must either suppress their views or

drop out. An appeal to "experience" of this kind forecloses discussion and criticism and turns politics

into a policing operation: the borders of identity are patrolled for signs of nonconformity; the test of

membership in a group becomes less one's willingness to endorse certain principles and engage in

specific political actions, less one's positioning in specific relationships of power, than one's ability to use

the prescribed languages that are taken as signs that one is inherently "of" the group. That all of this

isn't recognized as a highly political process that produces identities is troubling indeed, especially

because it so closely mimics the politics of the powerful, naturalizing and deeming as discernably

objective facts the prerequisites for inclusion in any group. Indeed, I would argue more generally that

separatism, with its strong insistence on an exclusive relationship between group identity and access to

specialized knowledge (the argument that only women can teach women's literature or only African-

Americans can teach African-American history, for example), is a simultaneous refusal and imitation of

the powerful in the present ideological context. At least in universities, the relationship between

identity-group membership and access to specialized knowledge has been framed as an objection to the

control by the disciplines of the terms that establish what counts as (important, mainstream, useful,

collective) knowledge and what does not. This has had an enormously important critical impact,

exposing the exclusions that have structured claims to universal or comprehensive knowledge. When

one asks not only where the women or African-Americans are in the history curriculum (for example),

but why they have been left out and what are the effects of their exclusion, one exposes the process by

which difference is enunciated. But one of the complicated and contradictory effects of theimplementation of programs in women's studies, African-American studies, Chicano studies, and now

gay and lesbian studies is to totalize the identity that is the object of study, reiterating its binary

opposition as minority (or subaltern) in relation to whatever is taken as majority or dominant.

4. Incorporating personal narratives into debate forces us to do violence against

ourselves- vote neg to accommodate the interruption of knowability and reject the

unconscious as recuperable

Butler 1(Judith is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature

at the University of California, Berkeley, 1 Giving an Account of Oneself, Diacritics 31.4 22-40, Project

Muse)


23/24

But here, and for the time being, my concern is with a suspect coherence that sometimes attaches to narrative

and, specifically, with the way in which narrative coherence may foreclose upon an ethical resource,

namely, an acceptance of the limits of knowability in oneself and others.It may even be that to hold a person

accountable for his or her life in narrative form is to require a falsification of that life in the name of a

certain conception of ethics. Indeed, if we require that someone be able to tell in story form the reasons

why his or her life has taken the path it has, that is, to be a coherent autobiographer, it may be that weprefer the seamlessness of the story to something we might tentatively call the truth of the person, a

truth which, to a certain degree, and for reasons we have already suggested, is indicated more radically as an

interruption.It may be that stories have to be interrupted, and that for interruption to take place, a story has to be underway. This bringsme closer to the account of the transference I would like to offer, a transference that might be understood as a repeated ethical practice.

Indeed, if, in the name of ethics, we require that another do a certain violence to herself, and do it in front

of us, offering a narrative account or, indeed, a confession, then, conversely, it may be that by

permitting, sustaining, accommodating the interruption, a certain practice of nonviolence precisely

follows. If violence is the act by which a subject seeks to reinstall its mastery and unity, then nonviolence may well follow from living thepersistent challenge to mastery that our obligations to others require. Although some would say that to be a split subject, or a subject whose

access to itself is opaque and not self-grounding, is precisely not to have the grounds for agency and the conditions for accountability, it may be

that this way in which we are, from the start, interrupted by alterity and not fully recoverable to

ourselves, indicates the way in which we are, from the start, ethically implicated in the lives of others.The point here is not to celebrate a certain notion of incoherence, but only to consider that our incoherence is ineradicable but nontotalizing,

and that it establishes the way in which we are implicated, beholden, derived, constituted by what is beyond us and before us. If we say

that the self must be narrated, that only the narrated self can be intelligible, survivable, then we say that

we cannot survive with an unconscious. We say, in effect, that the unconscious threatens us with an

insupportable unintelligibility, and for that reason we must oppose it. The "I" who makes such an utterance will

surely, in one form or another, be besieged precisely by what it disavows. This stand,and it is a stand, it must

be a stand, an upright, wakeful, knowing stand, believes that it survives without the unconscious or, if it accepts an

unconscious, accepts it as something which is thoroughly recuperable by the knowing "I," as a

possession perhaps, believing that the unconscious can be fully and exhaustively translated into what is

conscious. It is easy to see this as a defended stance, for it remains to be known in what this particular defense consists. It is, after all, thestand that many make against psychoanalysis itself. Inthe language which articulates the opposition to a non-narrativizable

beginning resides the fear that the absence of narrative will spell a certain threat, a threat to life, and will pose

the risk, if not the certainty, of a certain kind of death, the death of a subject who cannot, who can never, fully

recuperate the conditions of its own emergence. But this death, if it is a death, is only the death of a certain

kind of subject, one that was never possible to begin with, the death of a fantasy, and so a loss of what

one never had. One goes to analysis, I presume, to have someone receive one's words, and this produces a quandary, since the one whomight receive the words is unknown in large part, and so the one who receives becomes, in a certain way, an allegory for reception itself, for

the phantasmatic relation to receiving that is articulated to, or at least in the face of, an Other. But if this is an allegory, it is not reducible to a

structure of reception that would apply equally well to everyone, although it would give us the general structures within which a particular life

might be understood. We, as subjects who narrate ourselves in the first person, encounter in common

something of a predicament. Since I cannot tell the story in a straight line, and I lose my thread, and I start again, and I forgetsomething crucial, and it is to hard to think about how to weave it in, and I start thinking, thinking, there must be some conceptual thread that

will provide a narrative here, some lost link, some possibility for chronology, and the "I" becomes increasingly conceptual,

increasingly awake, focused, determined, it is at this point that the thread must fall apart. The "I" who

narrates finds that it cannot direct its narration, finds that it cannot give an account of its inability to

narrate, why its narration breaks down, and so it comes to experience itself, or, rather, reexperience

itself, as radically, if not irretrievably, unknowing about who it is.And then the "I" is no longer imparting

a narrative to a receiving analyst or Other. The "I" is breaking down in certain very specific ways in front


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of the Otheror, to anticipate Levinas, in the face of the Other (originally I wrote, "the in face of the Other," indicating that my syntax was

already breaking down) or, indeed, by virtue of the Other's face. The "I" finds that, in the face of an Other, it is breaking

down. It does not know itself, and perhaps it never will. But is that the task, to know itself, to achieve an

adequate narrative account of a life?And should it be? Is the task to cover over the breakage, the rupture,

which is constitutive of the "I" through a narrative means that quite forcefully binds the elements

together in a narration that is enacted as if it were perfectly possible, as if the break could be mendedand defensive mastery restored?

5. Their 1ac author concludes neg- the US is obviously not perfect but were definitely

not colonialist

Ferraro 02 (The Ruth C. Lawson Professor of International Politics Mount Holyoke College AB,

Dartmouth College; MIA, Columbia University; PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) The Myth

of Engagement: America as an Isolationist World Power April 2002https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/afp/myth.htm)

The United States could have chosen to exercise world power along formal imperial lines-it could have

acquired colonies, and there were many opportunities for it to do so. 3 The United States did annex the

Philippines, and has a very ambiguous relationship to Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and other

American territories. For most of its history, however, the land and peoples that it acquired, with the

exception of the indigenous nations of North America, were ultimately assimilated as fully equal

participants in the American government. The deliberate choice to forgo the colonial option is a

distinctive attribute of American foreign policy, and some American leaders, such as Woodrow Wilson

and Franklin Roosevelt, injected the idea of self-determination into the discourse of world politics in

powerful and revolutionary ways. But the choice also made it very difficult for the United States to

maintain a visible and effective presence abroad. Ultimately, the United States is obliged to maintain

military bases abroad in order to exercise its power on a global scale, and there are significant problems

with that approach. 4
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/afp/myth.htmhttps://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/afp/myth.htm

framework - georgetown 2014

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