GIVE THE LAND BACK KRITIK 1NC......................................................................................................................................2 1NC......................................................................................................................................3 1NC......................................................................................................................................4 1NC......................................................................................................................................5 LINK: ASSISTANCE ...............................................................................................................6 LINK: HUMAN RIGHTS ...........................................................................................................7 LINK: LAW ...........................................................................................................................9 LINK: INTERNATIONAL LAW .................................................................................................10 IMPACT: ENVIRONMENT ......................................................................................................12 IMPACT: ENVIRONMENT ......................................................................................................14 IMPACT: ENVIRONMENT ......................................................................................................15 IMPACT: STATE KEY TO CAPITALISM ....................................................................................16 A2: PERM ...........................................................................................................................17 A2: REALISM ......................................................................................................................18 A2: EXTINCTION .................................................................................................................19 A2: CAP GOOD ...................................................................................................................20 A2: IDENTITY/LAND K..........................................................................................................21 A2: IDENTITY/LAND K..........................................................................................................22 A2: CHURCHILL INDICTS .....................................................................................................23 A2: CHURCHILL INDICTS .....................................................................................................24 ***KRITIKS GOOD***............................................................................................................25 2AC – DEBATE CAN BE USED FOR MOVEMENTS......................................................................26 KNOWLEDGE IS SUBJECTIVE.................................................................................................27 LIMITS BAD.........................................................................................................................28 LIMITS BAD.........................................................................................................................29 A2: LIMITS INEVITABLE........................................................................................................30 A2: “YOU LEAD TO IMPLICIT LIMITS”....................................................................................31 POLICY MAKING BAD...........................................................................................................32 A2: “POLICY-ONLY FOCUS GOOD”........................................................................................33 A2: “POLICY-ONLY FOCUS GOOD”........................................................................................34 A2: “WE LEAD TO POLICY CHANGE”.....................................................................................35 AT: “DO IT ON THE AFF/NEG”...............................................................................................36
1NC First with the Link A. The 1AC is a typical leftist response to international oppression oppression that remains silent in the face of the on-going colonization of native North America. The plan serves as a mask for the state, making it appear benevolent, even as its existence is contingent upon a continuing legacy of colonization that guarantees continued international international exploitation, turning the case. Ward Churchill 1996 (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, BA and MA in I’ll debunk some of this nonsense in a moment, but first I want to take up the posture of self-proclaimed leftist radicals in the same connection. And I’ll do so on the basis of principle, because justice is supposed to
the pervasive and near-total silence of the Left in this connection has been quite illuminating. Non-Indian activists, with only a handful of exceptions, persistently plead that they can’t really take a coherent position on the matter of Indian land rights because “unfortunately,” they’re “not really conversant with the issues” (as if these were tremendously complex). Meanwhile, they do virtually nothing, generation after generation, to inform themselves on the topic of who actually owns the ground they’re standing on. The record can be played only so many times before it wears out and becomes just another variation of “hear no evil, see no evil.” At this point, it doesn’t take Albert Einstein to figure out that the Left doesn’t know much about such things because it’s never wanted to know, or that this is so because it’s always had its own plans for utilizing land it has no more right to than does the status quo it claims to oppose. The usual technique for explaining this away has always been a sort of pro forma acknowledgement that Indian land rights are of course “really important stuff” (yawn), but that one” really doesn’t have a lot of time to get into it (I’ll buy your book, though, and keep it on my shelf, even if I never read it). Reason? Well, one is just “overwhelmingly preoccupied” with working on “other important issues” (meaning, what they consider to be more important issues). Typically enumerated are sexism, racism, homophobia, class inequities, militarism, the environment, or some combination of these. It’s a pretty good evasion, all in all. Certainly, there’s no denying any of these issues their due; they are all important, obviously so. But more important than the question of land rights? There are some serious problems of primacy and priority imbedded in the orthodox script. To frame things clearly in this regard, lets hypothesize for a moment that all of the various non-Indian movements concentrating on each of these issues were suddenly successful in accomplishing their objectives . Lets imagine that the United States as a whole were somehow transformed into an entity defined by matter more to progressives than to rightwing hacks. Let me say that
the parity of its race, class, and gender relations, its embrace of unrestricted sexual preference, its rejection of militarism in all forms, and its abiding concern with environmental protection (I know, I know, this is a
When all is said and done, the society resulting from this scenario is still, first and foremost, a colonialist society, an imperialist society in t he most fundamental sense possible with all that this implies. This is true because the scenario does nothing at all to address the fact that whatever is happening happens on someone else’s land, not only without their consent, but through an adamant disregard for their rights to the land. Hence, all it means is that the immigrant or invading population has rearranged its affairs in such a way as to make itself more comfortable at the continuing expense of indigenous people. The colonial equation remains intact and may even be reinforced by a greater degree of participation, and vested interest in maintenance of the colonial order among the settler population at large. The dynamic here is not sheer impossibility, but that’s my point).
very different from that evident in the American Revolution of the late 18th century, is it? And we all know very well where that led, don’t we? Should we therefore begin to refer to socialist imperialism, feminist imperialism, gay and lesbian imperialism, environmental imperialism, African American, and la Raza imperialism? I would hope not. I would hope this is all just a matter of confusion, of muddled priorities among
all that is necessary to correct the situation is a basic rethinking of what must be done., and in what order. Here, I’d advance the straightforward premise that the land rights of “First Americans” should serve as a first priority for everyone seriously committed to accomplishing positive change in North America. But before I suggest everyone jump off and adopt this priority, I suppose it’s only fair that I interrogate the converse of the proposition: if making things like class i nequity and people who really do mean well and who’d like to do better. If so, then
sexism the preeminent focus of progressive action in North America inevitably perpetuates the internal colonial structure of the United States, does the reverse hold true? I’ll state unequivocally that it does not. There is no indication whatsoever that a restoration of indigenous sovereignty in Indian Country would foster class stratification anywhere, least of all in Indian Country. In fact, all indications are that when left to their own devices, indigenous peoples have consistently organized their societies in the most class-free manners. Look to the example of the Haudenosaunee Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy). Look to the Muscogee (Creek) Confederacy. Confederacy. Look to the confederations of the Yaqui and the Lakota, and those pursued and nearly perfected by Pontiac and Tecumseh. They represent the very essence of enlightened egalitarianism and democracy. democracy. Every imagined example to the contrary brought forth by even the most arcane anthropologist can be readily offset by a couple of dozen other illustrations along the lines of those I just mentioned.
1NC Would sexism be perpetuated? Ask one of the Haudenosaunee clan mothers, who continue to assert political leadership in their societies through the present day. Ask Wilma Mankiller, current head of the Cherokee nation , a people that traditionally led by what were called “Beloved Women.” Ask a Lakota woman—or man, for that matter—about who it was that owned all real property in traditional society, and what that meant in terms of parity in gender relations. Ask a traditional Navajo grandmother grandmother about her social and political role among her people. Women in most traditional native societies not only enjoyed political, social, and economic parity with men, they often held a preponderance of power in one or more of these spheres. Homophobia? Homosexuals of both genders were (and in many settings still are) deeply revered as special or extraordinary, and therefore spiritually significant, within most indigenous North American cultures. The extent to which these realities do not now pertain in native societies is exactly the extent to which Indians have been subordinated to the mores of the invading, dominating culture. Insofar Insofar as restoration of Indian land rights is tied directly to the reconstitution of traditional indigenous social, political, and economic modes, you can see where this leads: the relations of sex and sexuality accord rather well with the aspirations of feminist and gay rights activism. How about a restoration of native l and rights precipitating some sort of “environmental holocaust”? Let’s get at least a little bit real here. If you’re not addicted to the fabrications of Smithsonian anthropologists about how Indians lived, or George Weurthner’s Eurosupremacist Earth First! Fantasies about how we beat all the wooly mammoths and mastodons mastodons and saber-toothed cats to death with sticks, then this question isn’t even on the board. I know it’s become fashionable among Washington Post editorialists to make snide references to native people “strewing refuse in their wake” as they “wandered nomadically about the “prehistoric” North American landscape. landscape. What is that supposed to imply? That we, who were mostly “sedentary agriculturalists” in any event. Were dropping plastic and aluminum cans as we went? Like I said, lets get real. Read the accounts of early European arrival, despite the fact that it had been occupied by 15 or 20 million people enjoying a remarkably high standard of living for nobody knows how long: 40,000 years? 50,000 years? Longer? Now contrast that reality to what’s been done to this continent over the past couple of hundred years by the culture Weurthner, the Smithsonian, and the Post represent, and you tell me about environmental devastation. That leaves militarism and racism. Taking the last first, there really is no indication of racism in traditional Indian societies. To the contrary, the record reveals that Indians habitually intermarried between groups, and frequently adopted both children and adults from other groups. This occurred in pre-contact times between Indians, and the practice was broadened to include those of both African and European origin—and ultimately Asian origin as well—once contact occurred. Those who were naturalized by marriage or adoption were considered members of the group, pure and simple. This was always the Indian v iew. The Europeans and subsequent Euroamerican Euroamerican settlers viewed things rather differently, however, and foisted off the notion that Indian identity should be determined primarily by “blood quantum,” an outright eugenics code similar to those developed in places like Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. Now that’s a racist construction if there ever was one. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, a lot of Indians have been conned into buying into this anti-Indian absurdity, and that’s something to be overcome. But there’s also solid indication that quite a number of native people continue to strongly resist such things as the quantum system. As to militarism, no one will deny that Indians fought wars among themselves both before and after the European invasion began. Probably half of all indigenous peoples in North America maintained permanent warrior societies. This could perhaps be reasonably construed as “militarism,” but not, I think, with the sense the term conveys within the European/Euro-American European/Euro-American tradition. There were never, so far as anyone can demonstrate,, wars of annihilation fought in this hemisphere prior to the Columbian arrival, none. In fact, it seems that it was a more or less firm principle of indigenous warfare not to kill, the object being to demonstrate demonstrate personal bravery, something that could be done only against a live opponent. There’s no honor to be had in killing another person, because a dead person can’t hurt you. There’s no risk. This is not to say that nobody ever died or was seriously injured in the fighting. They were, just as they are in full contact contemporary sports like football and boxing. Actually, these kinds of Euro-American games games are what I would take to be the closest modern parallels to traditional interIndian warfare. For Indians, it was a way of burning excess testosterone out of young males, and not much more. So, militarism in the way the term is used today is as alien to native tradition as smallpox and
Not only is it perfectly reasonable to assert that a restoration of Indian control over unceded lands within the United States would do nothing to perpetuate such problems as sexism and classism, but the reconstitution of indigenous societies this would entail stands to free the affected portions of North America from such maladies altogether. Moreover, it can be said that the process should have a tangible impact in terms of diminishing such oppressions elsewhere. The principles is this: sexism, racism, and all the rest arose here as a concomitant to the emergence and consolidation of the Eurocentric nation-state form of sociopolitical and economic organization. Everything the state does, everything it can do, is entirely contingent on its maintaining its internal cohesion, a cohesion signified above all by its pretended territorial integrity, its ongoing domination of Indian Country. Given this, it seems obvious that the literal dismemberment of the nation-state inherent to Indian land recovery correspondingly reduces the ability of the state to sustain the imposition of objectionable relations within itself. It follows that realization of indigenous land rights serves to undermine or destroy the ability of the status quo to continue imposing a racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, militaristic order on nonIndians.
atomic bombs.
1NC Finally the Alternative A. The Alternative is to reject the Affirmative and pursue indigenous land return as a first priority. This act of impossible realism solves the case—Colonization case—Colonization is the root cause of oppression, and exploitation. Only a return to an indigenous politics can remedy the ills of colonialism. Ward Churchill 1996 (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, BA and MA in Communications from Sangamon State, From A Native Son pgs 85-90)
The question which inevitably arises with regard to indigenous land claims, especially in the United States, is whether they are “realistic.” The answer, of course is, “No, they aren’t.” Further, no form of decolonization has ever been realistic when viewed within the construct of a colonialist paradigm. It wasn’t realistic at the time to expect George Washington’s rag-tag militia to defeat the British military during the American Revolution. Just ask the British. It wasn’t realistic, as the French could tell you, that the Vietnamese should be able to defeat U.S.-backed France in 1954, or that the Algerians would shortly be able to follow in their footsteps. Surely, it wasn’t reasonable to predict that Fidel Castro’s pitiful handful of guerillas would overcome Batista’s regime in Cuba, another U.S. client, after only a few years in
in order to begin their struggles at all, anti-colonial fighters around the world have had to abandon orthodox realism in favor of what they knew to be right. To paraphrase Bendit, they accepted as their agenda, a redefinition of reality in terms deemed quite impossible within the conventional wisdom of their oppressors. And in each case, they succeeded in their immediate quest for liberation. The fact that all but one (Cuba) of the examples used subsequently turned out to hold colonizing pretensions of its the mountains. And the Sandinistas, to be sure, had no prayer of attaining victory over Somoza 20 years later. Henry Kissinger, among others, knew that for a fact. The point is that in each case,
own does not alter the truth of this—or alter the appropriateness of their efforts to decolonize themselves—in themselves—in the least. It simply means that decolonization has yet to run its course, that much remains to be done. The battles waged by native nations in North America to free themselves, and the lands upon which they depend for ongoing existence as discernible peoples, from the grip of U.S. (and Canadian) internal
Given that their very survival depends upon their perseverance in the face of all apparent odds, American Indians have no real alternative but to carry on. They must struggle, and where there is struggle here is always hope. Moreover, the unrealistic or “romantic” dimensions of our aspiration to quite literally dismantle the territorial corpus of the U.S. state begin to erode when one considers that federal domination of Native North America is utterly contingent upon maintenance of a perceived confluence of interests between prevailing governmental/corporate elites and common non-Indian citizens. Herein lies the prospect of long-term success. It is entirely possibly that the consensus of opinion concerning non-Indian “rights” to colonialism are plainly part of this process of liberation.
exploit the land and resources of indigenous nations can be eroded, and that large numbers of non-Indians will join in the struggle to decolonize Native North America. Few non-Indians wish to identify with or defend the naziesque characteristics characteristics of US history. To the contrary most seek to deny it in rather vociferous fashion. All things being equal, they are uncomfortable uncomfortable with many of the resulting attributes of federal postures and actively oppose one or more of these, so long as such politics do not intrude into a certain range of closely guarded self-interests. This is where the crunch comes in the realm of Indian rights issues. Most nonIndians (of all races and ethnicities, and both genders) have been indoctrinated to believe the officially contrived notion that, in the event “the Indians get their land back,” or even if the extent of present federal
Hence even progressives who are most eloquently inclined to condemn US imperialism abroad and/or the functions of racism and sexism at home tend to deliver a blank stare or profess open “disinterest” when indigenous land rights are mentioned. Instead of attempting to come to grips with this most fundamental of all issues the more sophisticated among them seek to divert discussions into “higher priority” or “more important” topics like “issues of class and gender equality” in which “justice” becomes synonymous with a redistribution of power and loot deriving from the occupation of Native North America even while occupation continues. Sometimes, Indians are even slated to domination is relaxed, native people will do unto their occupiers exactly as has been done to them; mass dispossession dispossession and eviction of non-Indians, especially Euro-Americans is expected to ensue.
receive “their fair share” in the division of spoils accruing from expropriation of their resources. Always, such things are couched in terms of some “greater good” than decolonizing the .6 percent of the U.S. population which is indigenous. Some Marxist and environmentalist groups have taken the argument so far as to deny that Indians possess any rights distinguishable from those of their conquerors. AIM leader Russell Means snapped the picture into sharp focus when he observed n 1987 that: so-called progressives in the United States claiming that Indians are obligated to give up their rights because a much larger group of non-Indians “need” their resources is exactly the same as Ronald Reagan and Elliot Abrams asserting that the rights of 250 million North Americans outweigh the rights of a couple million Nicaraguans (continues).
1NC Leaving aside the pronounced and pervasive hypocrisy permeating these positions, which add up to a phenomenon elsewhere described as “settler state colonialism,” the fact is that the specter driving even most radical non-Indians into lockstep with the federal government on questions of native land rights is largely illusory. The alternative reality posed by native liberation struggles is actually much different: While government propagandists propagandists are wont to trumpet—as they did during the Maine and Black Hills land disputes of the 1970s—that an Indian win would mean individual non-Indian property owners losing everything, the native position has always been the exact opposite. Overwhelmingly, the lands sought for actual recovery have been governmentally and corporately held. Eviction of small land owners has been pursued only in instances where they have banded together—as they have during certain of the Iroquois claims cases—to prevent Indians from recovering any land at all, and to otherwise deny native rights. Official sources contend this is inconsistent with the fact that all non-Indian title to any portion of North America could be called into question. Once “the dike is breached,” they argue, it’s just a matter of time before “everybody has to start swimming back to Europe, or Africa or wherever.” Although there is considerable technical accuracy to admissions that all non-Indian title to North America is illegitimate, Indians have by and large indicated they would be content to honor the cession agreements entered into by their ancestors, even though the United States has long since defaulted. This would leave somewhere close to two-thirds of the continental United States in non-Indian hands, with the real rather than pretended consent of native people. The remaining one-third, the areas delineated in Map II to which the United States never acquired title at all would be recovered by its rightful owners. The government holds that even at that there is no longer sufficient land available for unceded lands, or their equivalent, to be returned. In fact, the government itself still directly controls more than one-third of the total U.S. land area, about 770 mill ion acres. Each of the states also “owns” large tracts, totaling about 78 million acres. It is thus quite possible—and always has been —for all native claims to be met in full without the loss to non-Indians of a single acre of privately held land. When it is considered that 250 million-odd acres of the “privately” “privately” held total are now in the hands of major corporate entities, the real dimension of the “threat” to small land holders (or more accurately, lack of it) stands revealed. Government spokespersons spokespersons have pointed out that the disposition of public lands does not always conform to treaty areas. While this is true, it in no way precludes some process of negotiated land exchange wherein the boundaries of indigenous nations are redrawn by mutual consent to an exact, or at least a much closer conformity. All that is needed is an honest, open, and binding forum—such as a new bilateral treaty process—with process—with which to proceed. In fact, numerous native peoples have, for a long
there will still be at least some nonIndians “trapped” within such restored areas. Actually, they would not be trapped at all. The federally imposed genetic criteria of “Indian –ness” discussed elsewhere in this book notwithstanding, indigenous nations have the same rights as any other to define citizenry by allegiance (naturalization) rather than by race. Non-Indians could apply for citizenship, or for time, repeatedly and in a variety of ways, expressed a desire to participate in just such a process. Nonetheless, Nonetheless, it is argued,
some form of landed alien status which would allow them to retain their property until they die. In the event they could not reconcile themselves to living under any jurisdiction other than that of the United States, they would obviously have the right to leace, and they should have the r ight to compensation from their own government (which got them into the mess in the first place). Finally, and one suspects this is the real crux of things from the government/corporate perspective, any such restoration of land and attendant sovereign prerogatives to native nations would result in a truly massive loss of “domestic” resources to the United States, thereby impairing the country’s economic and military capacities (see “Radioactive Colonialism” Colonialism” essay for details). For everyone who queued up to wave flags and tie on yellow ribbons during the United States’ recent imperial adventure in the Persian Gulf, this prospect may induce a certain psychic trauma. But, for progressives at least, it should be precisely the point. When you think about these issues in
the great mass of non-Indians in North America really have much to gain and almost nothing to lose, from the success of native people in struggles to reclaim the land which is rightfully ours. The tangible diminishment of US material power which is integral to our victories in this sphere stands to pave the way for realization of most other agendas from anti-imperialism to environmentalism, from African American liberation to feminism, from gay rights to the ending of class privilege – pursued by progressive on this continent. Conversely, succeeding with any or even all of these other agendas would still represent an inherently oppressive situation in their realization is contingent upon an ongoing occupation of Native North America without the consent of Indian people. Any North American revolution which failed to free indigenous territory from non-Indian domination would be simply a continuation of colonialism in another form. Regardless of the angle from which you view the matter, the liberation of Native North America, liberation of the land first and foremost, is the key to fundamental and positive social changes of many other sorts. One thing they say, leads to another. The question has always been, of course, which “thing” is to the first in the sequence. A preliminary formulation for those serious about achieving radical change in the United States might be “First Priority to First Americans” Put another way this would mean, “US out of Indian Country.” Inevitably, the logic leads to what we’ve all been so desperately seeking: The United States – at least what we’ve come to know it – out of North America altogether. From there it can be permanently banished from the planet. In its stead, surely we can join hands to create something new and infinitely better. That’s our vision of “impossible realism.” Isn’t it time w e all worked on attaining it? this way,
Link: Assistance Public health assistance only addresses a symptom of a larger overall problem caused by colonialism. The Kritik solves the rot cause of the case harms Thomas W. Pogge, Professor Moral & Political Philosophy, Columbia University, 20 04 [The Ethics of Assistance: Assistance: morality and the distant needy, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee, p. 262] These passages suggest that poverty is due to domestic factors, not to foreign influences. This empirical view about poverty leads rather directly to the important moral error to be exposed: to the false idea that the problem of world poverty concerns us citizens of the rich countries mainly as potential helpers. I will therefore examine in detail the empirical view of the domestic causation of severe poverty, showing why it is false and also why it is so widely held in the developed world. It is well to recall that existing peoples have arrived at their present levels of social, economic and cultural development through an historical process that was pervaded by enslavement, colonialism, even genocide. Though these monumental crimes are now in the past, they have left a legacy of great inequalities which would be unacceptable even if peoples were now masters of their own development. Even if the peoples of Africa had had, in recent decades, a real opportunity to achieve similar rates of economic growth as the developed countries, achieving such growth could not have helped them overcome their initial 30:1 disadvantage in per capita income. income . Even if, starting in 1960, African annual growth in per capita income had been a full percentage point above ours each and every year, the ratio would still be 20:1 today and would not be fully erased until early in the twenty-fourth century. It is unclear then whether we may simply take for granted the existing inequality as if it had come about through choices freely made within each people. By seeing the problem of poverty merely in terms of assistance, we overlook that our enormous economic advantage is deeply tainted by how it accumulated over the course of one historical process that has devastated the societies and cultures of four continents. continents .
Link: Human Rights The concept of human rights excludes indigenous perspectives by universalizing Eurocentric norms. The native is considered savage and in need of western saviors. Makau Mutua, Professor of Law and Director, Human Rights Center, SUNY-Buffalo School of Law, 2002 [“Terrorism and Human Rights: Power, Culture, and Subordination,” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review , p. lexis]
The international law of human rights, arguably the most benign of all the areas of international law, seeks the universalization of European cultural, philosophical, and political norms and social structures. It is largely a culturally specific doctrine which is expressed in the idiom of the [*5] same culture. The human rights corpus is driven -normatively and descriptively --by what I have called the savage-victim-savior metaphor, in which human rights is a grand narrative of an epochal contest that pits savages against victims and saviors. 5 In this script of human rights, democracy and western liberalism are internationalized to redeem savage non-Western cultures from themselves, and to alleviate the suffering of victims, who are generally non-western and non-European. non-European. The images of the savage Taliban, the Afghan victims mired in pre-modernity, and the American saviors put the metaphor in sharp relief. In the human rights idiom, North America and the European West --acting generally under the guise of the United Nations and other multilateral agencies -- are the saviors of hapless victims whose salvation lies only in the transformation of their savage cultures through the imposition of human rights. The human rights corpus is presented as a settled normative edifice, as a glimpse of an eternal, inflexible truth. As a result, attempts to question or reformulate a truly universal regime of rights, one that reflects the complexity and the diversity of all cultures, have generally been viewed with indifference or hostility by the official guardians of human rights. This refusal to create a culturally complex and diverse human rights corpus is all the more perplexing because the view that the human rights doctrine is an ideology with deep roots in liberalism and democratic forms of government is beyond question. In fact, an increasing number of scholars now realize that the cultural biases of the human rights corpus can only be properly situated within liberal theory and philosophy. Understood from this position, human rights are an i deology with a specific cultural and ethnographic
human rights corpus expresses a cultural bias, and its chastening of a state is therefore a cultural project. If culture is not defined as some discrete, exotic, and peculiar practice which is frozen in time but rather as the dynamic totality of ideas, forms, practices, and structures of any given society, then human rights is an expression of a particular European-American culture. The advocacy of human rights across cultural borders is then an attempt to displace the local non-Western culture with the "universal" culture of human rights. Human rights therefore become the universal culture. It is in this sense that the "other" culture, that which is non-European, is the savage in the human rights corpus and its discourse. fingerprint. The
Human rights and international law are both otherizing discourses that construct the native as primitive and backward. These labels easily shift to discourses of terrorism that justify violence. Makau Mutua, Professor of Law and Director, Human Rights Center, SUNY-Buffalo School of Law, 2002 [“Terrorism and Human Rights: Power, Culture, and Subordination,” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review , p. lexis]
international law -- including its post-1945 expression through the United Nations -- is largely about ordering the lives of non-European native peoples. The purpose of such ordering is to create a world in which American and European interests are not threatened or injured by political and cultural paradigms that may be inconsistent with those interests. That is why the "othering" process is absolutely essential if Western hegemony is to be maintained. Although that process is arduous and usually only produces an elite that has no depth in its own society, the West regards that as the first and necessary step towards the recovery or It bears saying that the history of
reclamation of primitive, backward, and pre-modern societies. As American officials have put it, the "Afghan swamp must first be drained." The West has no illusion that Afghani society will turn into a modern, Western political democracy overnight. But at the very least it can under the tutelage of the United Nations and other multi-lateral agencies and donors be defanged of virulent anti-Westernism, and placed on a
the native savage has always been racialized in human rights discourse and international law. He has been defined as dumb, meek, lazy, backward, primitive, and incompetent. This is the classic European view of the native. But in Western discourse, the native has also been depicted as dangerous, recovery track -- a linear ladder-like progression towards modernity. It is important to note that
particularly when he has challenged European authority in the anti-colonial movement. The Mau Mau of Kenya, for example, who took up arms against British colonialists were regarded as particularly dangerous. This is where the native savage morphs into a terrorist, primarily because he pursues his political objectives by deploying armed force as an instrument of the struggle. Both the Mau Mau and the Algerian FLN were regarded as terrorists, as was Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. The post-September 11 crisis returns the world to the image of the native savage as a terrorist. In terms of norm-creation in human rights, this image makes it less likely that advocates of cultural pluralism will get a fair hearing. It creates an environment that is intolerant of debate, particularly if the thrust of the dissent is to question the sanctity of liberal values, which the terrorists are now accused of attacking.
Link: Law The law is inherently Eurocentric and the appearance appearance of legality is used to disguise the colonialist intentions of the plan. Kenneth B. Nunn, prof. of law, University of Florida School of Law, in 19 97 [“Law as a Eurocentric Enterprise,” Law and Inequality I nequality , Spring, p. lexis] Although the European was liberal with his law, he was parsimonious with his rights, and this is especially true in regard to the right of self-determination. self-determination . This potent combination is a constant feature of European contact with other cultures and thus merits further attention. European colonizers dominated the majority peoples of the world, took their land, and destroyed or corrupted their cultures. cultures. Yet these colonizers always proceeded "legally" through treaties or the dictates of international law. law. Ani argues convincingly that the European preoccupation with "legalizing" their conquests served the double purpose of disarming t heir victims and bolstering the European self-image. self-image. A key part of the European belief system is faith in the linear notion of "progress," the belief that later historical developments are superior to preceding ones and that the course of human history flows from worse to better. This, in combination with the European conviction that white culture was superior to the world's other cultures made European conquest a matter of pride and self-esteem. Their conquests needed to be "legal" in order to provide the full psychological benefits. In addition, the export of European law was deemed as synonymous with the export of European "civilization" and thus synonymous with progress The concept of "codified law" is a definite ingredient of that of civilization; for with civilization, according to European ideology, comes order and legality assures "lasting order" - not moral conduct but consistent and predictable conduct. So that the "civilized" way - the European way - is to bring laws, however forcibly, and the structures of European culture ("civilization") to those whom one treats immorally and for whom one has no respect. respect. From a pragmatic perspective, then, the law cannot be viewed as a positive force for change. The law must be viewed for what it is, a necessary component for the extension of white power around the globe. globe . Although the introduction of law into indigenous societies brought order, it did not - it could not - bring peace. Instead "law was in the vanguard of what its own proponents saw as a "belligerent civilization,' bringing "grim presents' with its penal regulation regulation and, in the process, inflicting an immense violence." Consequently, the best choice for people of color who choose to resist white dominance is to reject the law, to become "out/laws," since "by refusing to relate to Western order, these individuals [*363] ... succeed in robbing [Europeans] of a potent tool for psychological and ideological enslavement." enslavement ."
Link: International Law By definition, international law is a universalizing universalizing discourse that assimilates and eliminates native worldviews. This approach guarantees U.S. domination of the globe. Makau Mutua, Professor of Law and Director, Human Rights Center, SUNY-Buffalo School of Law, 2002 [“Terrorism and Human Rights: Power, Culture, and Subordination,” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review , p. lexis]
international law is founded, treat the universe as a theater for European and North American military, political, economic, and cultural interests. 2 This global white European supremacy over non-European peoples is premised on the notion of Europe as the center of the universe, Christianity as the fountain of civilization, the innateness of capitalist economics, and political imperialism as a necessity. 3 In this scheme of
Those biases, on which
international law, the West is the point of reference for the world, and every other country or region is incidental to the [*4] European West. In the current global terror-driven crisis, public discourse discourse implies that the Judeo-Christian tradition is the moral and naturalist foundation of civilization and r eason, without which full humanity is unattainable. In historical terms, Christianity was coupled with the colonial project, fusing
Political imperialism -- defined today as global American leadership -- is an indispensable paradigm in the ordering of the relationship between Europeans and non-European peoples, with the manifest duty of European peoples to convey the gifts g ifts of civilization to backward and uncivilized races. Thus international law orders the world into the European and the non-European, and gives primacy to the former. This is done by creating the notion of the hierarchy of cultures and peoples. The fundamental principles of international law evidence this inflexible view of the discipline. Sovereignty and statehood are defined in such a way as to exclude or subordinate non-European societies. 4 Membership in international society is a prerogative of American and European Europe an powers, which w hich alone decide d ecide who -- - and on what terms te rms -belongs to this international society and can benefit from the privileges of international law. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Afghanistan where the United States has arrogated to itself the right to dismantle the state, and to recreate it. The current p reserves, and crisis leaves no doubt about the identity of the masters of the universe. The international legal order erects, preserves, advances the European and American domination of the t he globe. the church, state, and empire. Capitalism was constructed as innate in humans, and therefore the basis for the regimes of the ownership, protection, and distribution of global resources.
International International Law naturalizes the collective identity of the state, legitimizing complete control of the nation by the state apparatus. The plan is not a radical gesture toward the Other, but a way that the state maintains internal domination through the perpetuation of the overall international system. Trimble, Prof. of Law University of California , in 1990 [Philip, “International Law, World Order, and Critical Legal Studies,” Stanford Law Review, Feb., p. lexis]
governments love international law. Contrary to the realist/idealist view of law as a restraint on unruly governments, international law confirms much more authority and power than it denies . For example, the basic rule of international law is that a state generally has the exclusive authority to regulate conduct within its territory. International law thus confers authority to control entry and exit, to establish police control, to determine economic structure, to tax, to regulate, and to reinforce in many other ways the power and legitimacy of government. Public international law also grants governments sovereignty over air space and control over the continental shelf and economic resources 200 miles into
A quick look at the "rules" of international law shows why
the sea. Of course, each rule conferring authority on a government denies it to all others. The United States government may be restrained in attempts to enforce its law in Canada, and Japanese fisherman may be barred from fishing near California's coast. Nevertheless, governments have little interest in extending their authority to that extent, at least when compared with their interest in controlling matters at home. For the most part, governments do not want to invade other countries or apply their law or send their fishermen to other territories. To be sure, there are exceptions, and these exceptions can be of vital importance to
Even the rules of public international law that expressly restrain government authority may at the same time give a government an excuse to impose its authority throughout its own society so that it can effectively discharge its obligations under international law. International human rights law, for example, promotes national judicial review , general criminal law procedures, and a host of objectives that can best be met by assertions of national the actors involved. In the aggregate, however, they are less important than the effect of the general rules.
government power, especially against village or other traditional structures . For example, a government's international responsibility for injuries to aliens gives that government a mandate to control local officials and practices. Even when the rules do prevent a government from doing something that it otherwise wants to do , such as denying overflight rights to a hostile state's aircraft (contrary to the Chicago Convention), it may decide to forgo the short-term advantages derived from violating those rules because it has an overriding interest in maintaining the overall system The . The rules comprising the system as a whole enable each government to achieve welfare goals for important parts of its population, and hence solidify its standing and legitimacy . Thus, the United States government may decide not to block transit of Cuban aircraft over United States territory because because it derives support from the airline industry [*834] and the traveling public, both of which in turn benefit from transit over Cuba
The The rules of international law accordingly are very congenial to governments. They mostly justify or legitimate the practical exercise of state power. or from the system of which such transit rights are an integral part.
Impact: Environment Next to the Impacts A. The colonialism of early America is the root cause of wars today—they are extensions of genocidal carnage against native people Paul Street, author, March 11, 2004. [“Those Who Deny the Crimes of the Past Reflections on American Racist Atrocity Denial, 1776-2004,” http://thereitis.org/display http://thereitis.org/displayarticle242.htm article242.html] l]
It is especially important to appreciate the significance of the vicious, often explicitly genocidal "homeland" assaults on native-Americans, which set foundational racist and national-narcissist national-narcissist patterns for subsequent U.S. global butchery, disproportionately directed at non-European non-European people of color. The deletion of the real story of the so-called "battle of Washita" from the official Seventh Cavalry history given to the perpetrators of the No Gun Ri massacre is revealing.Denial about Washita and Sand Creek (and so on) encouraged US savagery at Wounded Knee, the denial of which encouraged US savagery in the Philippines, the denial of which encouraged US savagery in Korea, the denial of which encouraged US savagery in Vietnam, the denial of which (and all before) has recently encouraged US savagery in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's a vicious circle of recurrent violence, well known to mental health practitioners who deal with countless victims of domestic violence living in the dark shadows of the imperial homeland's crippling, stunted, and indeed itself occupied social and political order. Power-mad US forces deploying the latest genocidal war tools, some suggestively named after native tribes that white North American "pioneers" tried to wipe off the face of the earth (ie, "Apache," "Blackhawk," "Blackhawk," and "Comanche" helicopters) are walking in bloody footsteps that trace back across centuries, oceans, forests and plains to the leveled villages, shattered corpses, and stolen resources of those who Roosevelt acknowledged as America's "original inhabitants." Racist imperial carnage and its denial, like charity, begin at home. Those who deny the crimes of the past are likely to repeat their offenses in the future as long as they retain the means and motive to do so.
B. Indigenous land return sparks global decolonization movements that are critical to averting environmental collapse and extinction. George E. Tinker, Iliff School of Technology, 19 96 [Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice, ed. Jace Weaver, p. 171-72]
the recognition of indigenous sovereignty as a priority is an overreaching one that involves more than simply justice for indigenous communities around the world. Indeed, such a political move will necessitatea rethinking of consumption patterns in the North, and a shift in the economics of the North will cause a concomitant shift also in the Twothirds World of the South. The relatively simple act of recognizing the sovereignty of the Sioux Nation and returning to it all state-held lands in the Black Hills (for example, National Forest and National Park lands) would generate immediate international interest in the rights of the indigenous, tribal peoples in all state territories. In the United States alone it is estimated that Indian nations still have legitimate (moral and legal) claim to some two-thirds of the U.S. land mass. Ultimately, such an act as return of Native lands to Native control would have a significant ripple effect on other states around the worldwhere indigenous peoples still have aboriginal land claims and suffer the ongoing results of conquest and displacement in their own territories. American Indian cultures and values have much to contribute in the comprehensive reimagining of the Western value system that has resulted in our contemporary ecojustice crisis. The main point that must be made is that My suggestion that we take
there were and are cultures that take their natural environment seriously and attempt to live in balance with the created whole around them in ways that help them not overstep environmental limits. Unlike the West’s consistent consistent experience of alienation from the natural world, these cultures of indigenous peoples consistently experienced themselves as part of the that created whole, in relationship with everything else in the world. They saw and continue to see themselves themselves as having responsibilities, just as every other creature has a particular role to play in maintaining the balance of creation as an ongoing process. This is ultimately the spiritual rationale for annual ceremonies like the Sun Dance or Green Corn Dance. As another example, Lakota peoples planted cottonwoods cottonwoods and willows at their campsites as they broke camp to move on, thus beginning the process of reclaiming the land humans had necessarily trampled through habitation habitation and encampment. We now know that indigenous rainforest peoples in what is today called the state of Brazil had a unique relationship to the forest in which they lived, moving away from a cleared area after farming it to a point of reduced return and allowing the clearing to be reclaimed as jungle. The group would then clear a new area and begin a new cycle of production. The whole process was relatively sophisticated and functioned in harmony with the jungle itself. So extensive was their movement that some scholars are now suggesting that there is actually very little of what might rightly be called virgin forest in what had been considered the “untamed” wilds of the rainforest. What I have described here is more than just a coincidence or, worse, some romanticized romanticized falsification of Native memory. Rather, I am insisting that there are peoples in the world who live with an acute and cultivated sense of their intimate participation in the natural world as part of an intricate whole. For indigenous peoples, this means means that when they are presented with the concept concept of development, it is sense-less. Most significantly, one must realize that this awareness is the result of self-conscious effort on the part of the traditional American Indian national communities and is rooted in the first instance in the mythology and theology of the people. At its simplest, the worldview of American Indians can be expressed as Ward Churchill describes it: Human beings are free (indeed, encouraged) to develop their innate capabilities, but only in ways that do not infringe upon other elements – called “relations,” in the fullest dialectical dialectical sense of the word – of nature. Any activity going beyond this is considered as “imbalanced,” “imbalanced,” a transgression, transgression, and is strictly prohibited. For example, engineering was and is permissible, but only insofar as it does not permanently alter the earth itself. Similarly, agriculture was widespread, but only within norms that did not supplant natural vegetation. Like the
Given the reality of eco-devastation threatening all of life today, the survival of American Indian cultures and cultural values may make the difference for the survival and sustainability for all the earth as we know it. What I have suggested implicitly is that the American Indian peoples may have something of values – something corrective to Western values and the modern world system – to offer to the world. The loss of these gifts, the loss of the particularity of these peoples, today varieties of species in the world, each culture has contributed to make for the sustainability of the whole.
threatens the survivability of us all. What I am most pas passionately sionately arguing is that that we must commit to the struggle for the just and moral survival of Indian peoples as peoples of the earth, and that this struggle is for the sake of the earth and for the sustaining of all life. It is now imperative that we change the modern value of acquisitiveness and the political systems and economics that consumption has generated. The key to making this massive massive value shift in the world system may lie in the international recognition of indigenous political sovereignty and selfdetermination. Returning Native lands lands to the sovereign control of Native peoples around the world, beginning in the United States, is not simply just; the survival of all may depend on it.
Impact: Environment Indigenous knowledge knowledge is key to achieving an understanding of how to properly manage the environment B.
Rajasekaran, Center for Indigenous Knowled Knowledge ge for Agriculture and Rural Development, Iowa State, 1993
(“A framework for incorporating indigenous knowledge systems into agricultural
research, extension, and NGOs for sustainable agricultural development.” Studies in Technology and Social Change No. 21. Technology and Social Change Program, Iowa State University, 1993, http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/docs/004-201/004-201.html)
Indigenous knowledge is local knowledge that is unique to a given culture or society (Warren, 1987). Indigenous knowledge is the systematic body of knowledge acquired by local people through the accumulation accumulation of experiences, informal experiments, and intimate understanding of the environment in a given culture (Rajasekaran, 1993). According According to Haverkort (1991), indigenous knowledge is the actual knowledge of a given population that reflects the experiences based on traditions and includes more recent
these people are well informed about their own situations, their resources, what works and doesn't work, and how one change impacts other parts of their system(Butler and Waud, 1990). 1.2 Value of experiences with modern technologies. Local people, including farmers, l andless laborers, women, rural artisans, and cattle rearers, are the custodians of indigenous knowledge systems. Moreover,
indigenous knowledge knowledge Indigenous knowledge knowledge is dynamic, changing through indigenous mechanisms mechanisms of creativity and innovativeness as well as through contact with other local and international knowledge systems
Indigenous knowledge systems often are elaborate, and they are adapted to local cultural and environmental conditions (Warren, 1987). Indigenous knowledge systems are tuned to the needs of local people and the quality and quantity of available resources(Pretty and Sandbrook, 1991). They pertain to various cultural (Warren, 1991). These knowledge systems systems may appear simple to outsiders but they represent mechanisms to ensure minimal livelihoods for local people.
norms, social roles, or physical conditions. Their efficiency lies in the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. circumstances. According to Norgaard (1984, p. 7): Traditional knowledge has been viewed as part of a romantic
traditional knowledge treated as knowledge per se in the mainstream of the agricultural and development and environmental management management literature, as knowledge that contributes to our understanding of agricultural production and the maintenance and use of environmental systems. 1.3 Diversity of indigenous knowledge knowledge Indigenous knowledge systems are: adaptive skills skills of local people usually derived from many years of experience, that have often been communicated through "oral traditions" and learned through family members over generations (Thrupp, 1989),timetested agricultural and natural resource management practices, which pave the way for sustainable agriculture past, as the major obstacle to development, as a necessary starting point, and as a critical component of a cultural alternative to modernization. Only very rarely, however, is
Impact: Environment Continued lack of understanding of indigenous people and their practices leads to further decimation of the environment environment B.
Rajasekaran, Center for Indigenous Knowled Knowledge ge for Agriculture and Rural Development, Iowa State, 1993
(“A framework for incorporating indigenous knowledge systems into agricultural
research, extension, and NGOs for sustainable agricultural development.” Studies in Technology and Social Change No. 21. Technology and Social Change Program, Iowa State University, 1993, http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/docs/004-201/004-201.html)
Undermining farmers' confidence in their traditional knowledge can lead them to become increasingly dependent on outside expertise (Richards, 2.7 Consequences of disregarding indigenous knowledge systems
1985; Warren, 1990). Small-scale farmers are often portrayed as backward, obstinately conservative, resistant to change, lacking innovative ability, and even lazy (IFAP, 1990, p. 24). The International Federation of
Lack of understanding of traditional agriculture which further leads to a communication gap between promoters and practitioners giving rise to myths; myths; The accomplishments accomplishments of farmers often are not recognized, because they are not not recorded in writing or made known; and Poor involvement of farmers and their organizations in integrating, consolidating, and disseminating what is already known. One of the greatest greatest consequences of the under-utilization of of indigenous knowledge systems, according to Atteh (1992, p. 20), is the: Loss and nonnonutilization of indigenous knowledge [which] results in the inefficient allocation of resources and manpower to inappropriate planning strategies which have done little to alleviate rural poverty. With little contact with rural people, planning experts and state functionaries have attempted to implement programs which do not meet the goals of rural people, or affect the structures and processes that perpetuate rural poverty. Human and natural resources in rural areas have remained inefficiently used or not used at all. There is little congruence between planning objectives and realities facing the rural people. Planners think they know what is good for these `poor', `backward', `ignorant', and `primitive' people. 2.8 Need for a Agricultural Producers (IFAP) enumerated certain reasons for such a perception:
conceptual framework Despite continuous importance importance given to linkages between research-extension-farmer research-extension-farmer while developing, disseminating, and utilizing sustainable agricultural technologies, several sociopolitical and institutional factors act as constraints for such an effective linkage (Oritz et al., 1991). After a decade of rhetoric about feedback of farmers' problems to extension workers and scientists, a large gap
Researchers perceived extension agents and institutions to be ineffective and unclear about their mandate, making researchers reluctant to work with extension. When researchers did work with extension agents, they tended to look down on them and view them as little more than available menial labor, an attitude strongly resented by the extension workers. Keeping these potential constraints in conventional transfer of technology, a framework for incorporating indigenous knowledge systems into agricultural research and extension has been developed with the following salient salient features: strengthening the capacities of regional research and and extension organizations; organizations; building upon local people's knowledge that are acquired through various processes such as farmer-to-farmer communication, communication, and farmer experimentation; identifying the need for extension scientist/ remains between the ideal and reality (Haugerud and Collinson, 1991). Kaimowitz (1992: 105) provided illustrations to support the above statement:
social scientist in an interdisciplinary regional research team; formation of a sustainable technology development consortium consortium to bring farmers, researchers, NGOs, and extension workers together well ahead of the
working with the existing organization and management of research and public sector extension; bringing research-extensionresearch-extensionprocess of technology development; generating technological technological options rather than fixed technical packages (Chambers et al., 1989);
farmer together at all stages is practically difficult considering the existing bureaucracies and spatial as well as academic distances among the personnel belonging to these organizations. Hence, utilizing the academic knowledge gained by some extension personnel personnel (subject matter specialists) during the process of validating farmer experiments; outlining areas that research and extension organizations need to
understanding that it is impractical to depend entirely on research stations for innovations considering the inadequate human resource capacity of the regional research system. concentrate on during the process of working with farmers.
Impact: State Key to Capitalism Without the state to prop it up, the entire capitalist system would fall apart, from the top down. Preston 2003. (Keith, Essayist at American Revolutionary Vangaurd, "Philosophical Anarchism and the Death of
The amalgam of Big Business and Big Government, consolidated on an international scale, represents a centralization of wealth and power of so great a degree as to jeopardize the future of humanity. What sort of economic order would accompany the political victory of anarchism? Economic decentralization would naturally follow political decentralization. As the massive, bureaucratic nationstates currently being incorporated into the New World Order collapsed and disappeared, the corporate entities propped up and protected by these states would also vanish. Just as the dissolution of centralized political power would result in the sovereignty and self-determination of communities and associations, so would these entities be able to develop their own unique economic identities. Economic resources of all types, from land to industrial facilities to infrastructure to high technology, would fall into the hands of particular communities and popular organizations. Such entities would likely organize themselves into a myriad of economic institutions. institutions. It can be expected that workers would play a much greater l eadership role in the formation of future economies as workers access to resources and
The result would likely be an economic order where the worker-oriented enterprise replaces the capitalist corporationas the dominant mode of bargaining power, both individually and collectively, would likely be greatly enhanced.
economic organization.
Indigenous land return destroys the sovereignty of the State, and collapsed capitalism Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar in Sociology at Yale, 19 97 [States? Sovereignty? The Dilemmas Dilemmas of Capitalists in an Age of Transition, http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwso http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwsovty.htm] vty.htm]
The sovereignty of the states - their inward and outward sovereignty within the framework of an interstate system - is a fundamental pillar of the capitalist world-economy. If it falls, or seriously declines, capitalism is untenable as a system. I agree that it is in decline today, for the fir st time in the history of the modern world-system.
A2: Perm Must insist on hierarchies—The Alternative must be a priority or it risks being neutralized neutralized as just any other political issue Ward Churchill 2003 (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, BA and MA in Communications from Sangamon State, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, Page 8)
On balance, U.S., “progressives” have devoted far more time and energy over the past decade to combating the imaginary health effects of “environmental tobacco smoke” and demanding installation of speed bumps in suburban neighborhoods—that is, to increasing their own comfort level—than to anything akin to a coherent response to the U.S. genocide in Iraq. The underlying mentality is symbolized quite well in the fact that, since they were released in the mid-1990s, Jean Baudrillard’s allegedly “radical” screed. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place , has outsold Ramsey Clark’s The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq , prominently subtitled The Children are Dying , by a margin of almost three to one. The theoretical trajectory entered into by much of the American left over the past quartercentury exhibits a marked tendency to try and justify such evasion and squalid selfindulgence through the expedient of rejecting “hierarchy, in all its forms.” Since “hierarchy” may be taken to include “anything resembling an order of priorities,” we are faced thereby with the absurd contention that all issues are of equal importance(as in the mindless slogan, “There is no hierarchy to oppression”). From there, it becomes axiomatic that the “privileging” of any issue over another-genocide, say, over fanny-pinching in the workplace—becomes not only evidence of “elitism,” but of “sexism,” and often “homophobia” to boot (as in the popular formulation holding that Third World anti-imperialism is inherently nationalistic, and nationalism is inherently damaging to the rights of women and gays). Having thus foreclosed upon all options for concrete engagement engagement as mere “reproductions of the relations of oppression,”
the left has largely neutralized itself , a matter reflected most conspicuously in
the applause it bestowed upon Homi K. Bhabha’s preposterous 1994 contention that writing,which writing,which he likens to “warfare,” should be considered the only valid revolutionary act.
A2: Realism Realism is informed by colonialist views of human nature that depict the savage native as proof of the need for the state. This serves to absolve the state of its role in genocide Anthony J. Hall, Department of Native American Studies University of Lethbridge, April 15, 19 99 [“Ethnic Cleansing of Native North American People,” http://www.akha.org/con http://www.akha.org/content/internatio tent/international/ethniccle nal/ethniccleansingofnor ansingofnorthamerican thamericanindigenouspeo indigenouspeople.html] ple.html] To now read all these years later Mr. McKayís dismissive comments about Bruce Clark as the infamous loser in Temagami and countless and other cases, raises the question of strange argumentative concoctions youíd need to win before a judge with the deep prejudices and sparce historical knowledge of a Mr. Justice Steele. While I thought he was the last word in judicial ethnocentrism, ethnocentris m, Mr. Justice Allan McEachern managed to outdo his Ontario counterpart in the ruling of the lower court on the Delgamuukw case. Mr. McEachern, McEachern, who doubles as chair of the judgeís own self regulating regulating body, pronounced that Indians have almost nothing of worth to retain for either themselves or the world from their own Indigenous cultures. To make this point, the BC jurist actually quoted Thomas Hobbes, who used imaginary North American Indians in 1651, to argue that life without a dictatorial ruler is “nasty, brutish and short.” Accordingly, to properly understand the genesis of Dr. Clarkís legal interpretation, interpretation, you need to know someting someting of the nature of his formative experiences with with judges that, in my view, were unusually extreme in their ethnocentric hostility to Indian peoples and Indian cultures. What emerged for him from this experience, was a dawning recognition that the stakes of the contentions over Aboriginal and treaty rights are so big, and the legacy of legal impropriety so old and so well protected by layer upon layer of dubious and overtly racist legal precedent, that it is almost unimaginable that any judge would take the responsibility of overturning this status quo-- of overturning this institutionalized complicity in genocide that is so deeply ingrained in the framework of North American experience that it is made to seem normal and natural and simply a fact of life.
A2: Extinction By presenting nuclear extinction as the single most important impact, the AFF naturalizes naturalizes and legitimizes the on-going colonization of the indigenous periphery. Masahide Kato, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawaii, 19 93 [“Nuclear Globalism: Traversing Rockets, Satellites, and Nuclear War via the Strategic Gaze,” Alternatives, p.351] By representing the possible extinction as the single most important problematic of nuclear catastrophe (posing it as either a threat or a symbolic void), nuclear criticism disqualifies the entire history of nuclear violence, the "real" of nuclear catastrophe as a continuous and repetitive process. process. The "real" of nuclear war is designated by nuclear critics as a "rehearsal" (Derrik De Kerkbove) or "preparation" (Firth) for what they reserve as the authentic catastrophe. The history of nuclear violence offers, at best, a reality effect to the imagery of "extinction." Schell summarized the discursive position of nuclear critics very succinctly, by stating that nuclear catastrophe should not be conceptualized conceptualized "in the context of direct slaughter of hundreds of millions people by the local effects." Thus the elimination of the history of nuclear violence by nuclear critics stems from the process of discursive "delocalization" of nuclear violence. Their primary focus is not local catastrophe, but delocalized, unlocatable, "global" catastrophe. catastrophe . The elevation of the discursive vantage point deployed in nuclear criticism through which extinction is conceptualized parallels that of the point of the strategic gaze: nuclear criticism raises the notion of nuclear catastrophe to the "absolute" point from which the fiction of "extinction" is configured. configured . Herein, the configuration configuration of the globe and the conceptualization conceptualization of "extinction" reveal their interconnection via the "absolutization" of the strategic gaze. In the same way as the fiction of the totality of the earth is constructed, the fiction of extinction is derived from the figure perceived through the strategic gaze. In other words, the image of the globe, in the final instance, is nothing more than a figure on which the notion of extinction is being constructed. constructed . Schell, for instance, repeatedly encountered difficulty in locating the subject involved in the conceptualization of extinction, which in turn testifies to its figural origin: "who will suffer this loss, which we somehow regard as supreme? We, the living, will not suffer it; we will be dead. Nor will the unborn shed any tears over their lost chance to exist; to do so they would have to exist already."
A2: Cap Good Capitalism guarantees the extermination of the indigenous periphery. It is part of the logic of colonization Masahide Kato, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawaii, 19 93 [“Nuclear Globalism: Traversing Rockets, Satellites, and Nuclear War via the Strategic Gaze,” Alternatives, p.347] The vigorous invasion of the logic of capitalist accumulation into the last vestige of relatively autonomous space in the periphery under late capitalism is propelled not only by the desire for incorporating every fabric of the society into the division of labor but also by the desire for "pure" destruction /extermination of the periphery. periphery . The penetration of capital into the social fabric and the destruction of nature and preexisting social organizations by capital are not separable. However, what we have witnessed in the phase of late capitalism is a rapid intensification of the destruction and extermination of the periphery. In this context, capital is no longer interested in incorporating some parts of the periphery into the international division of labor. The emergence of such "pure" destruction /extermination of the periphery can be explained, at least partially, by another problematic of late capitalism formulated formulated by Ernest Mandel: the mass production of the means of destruction. Particularly, the latest phase of capitalism distinguishes itself from the earlier phases in its production of the "ultimate" means of destruction /extermination, ie., nuclear weapons .
A2: Identity/Land K Land Key to Culture Land is the cornerstone cornerstone for Indigenous culture: governance, ancestry and religion, society, all depend on it. ,Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, 2005 (Hope M.; A Civic-Republican Babcock ,Professor Vision of "Domestic Dependent Nations" in the Twenty-First Twenty-First Century: Tribal Sovereignty Re-envisioned, Re-envisioned, Reinvigorated, and Reempowered; 2005 Utah L. Rev. 443; Lexis; JLS) But it is said, that they are averse to society and a social life. Can anything be more inapplicable than this to a people who always live in towns or clans? Or can they be said to have no "republique," who conduct all their affairs in national councils, who pride themselves in their national character, who consider an insult or injury done to an individual by a stranger as done to the whole, and who resent it accordingly. In short, this picture is not applicable to any nation of Indians I have ever known or heard of in North America. America. n418 [*537] The republican principle principle of having of having a place within which to practice the art of being a good citizen is (and always has been) central to tribal society. society . Indian tribes have always had a concept of territory and boundaries. Most tribes assigned hunting territories to villages or lineages, which other tribes and tribal members knew of and respected. respected . n419 Tribes also recognized (and still recognize) recognize) territory through mythical or sacred claims, and the burial sites of lineages and clans marked territory for most, if not all tribes. tribes . n420 Today, a tribe's traditional homeland is the "centerpiece of contemporary Indian life." life." n421 Tribal lands and their resources are not only sustaining for the tribe, but are the tribe's cultural and spiritual base - where ancestors are buried, and spirits live - and the very topography topography can provide cleansing and rebirth. n422 You cannot understand how the Indian thinks of himself in relation to the world around him unless you understand his conception of what is appropriate; particularly what is morally appropriat e within the context of that relationship. The native American ethic with respect to the physical world is a matter of reciprocal appropriation: appropriations in which man invests himself in the landscape, and at the same time incorporates the landscape into his own most fundamental experience. experience . n423
A2: Identity/Land K Land Key to Culture There’s no chance of offense here, land provides the internal link to all facets of Indigenous culture and ways of life. Apache. LL.M., 2001, Harvard Law School; Ph.D., 1995, Northwestern University; J.D., 2000, University of Bradford, Chiricahua Apache. Miami. Assistant Professor of Law, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2003 (William; "With a Very Great Blame on Our Hearts": n1 Reparations, Reconciliation, Reconciliation, and an American Indian Plea for Peace with Justice; 27 Am. Indian L. Rev. 1; Lexis; JLS)
The relationship between the land and Indian people is fundamental to their physical and cultural survival as distinct, autonomous groups. Indian land is constitutive of the Indian cultural identit y n111 and designative of the boundaries of the Indian cultural universe . n112 Indian land transmits knowledge knowledge about history, links people to their ancestors, and provides a code of appropriate moral behavior. From the moment of first contact with European "discoverers," [*26] Indians proclaimed a sacred responsibility to preserve and transmit Indian land, and with it, identity , religion, and culture, to successive generations . n113 The discharge of that responsibility was compromised compromised by federal policies of land acquisition ranging from fraud and deceit to expropriation and outright theft. Throughout Throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, prudence directed Euro-Americans to formally recognize militarily potent Indian tribes as independent societies societies and accord them diplomatic recognition as sovereigns. n114 Even subsequent to the defeats of France in the Seven Years' War in 1763 and Britain in the War of Independence in 1781, the Euro-American Euro-American foothold in North America remained tenuous, and ongoing military insecurity stymied territorial ambitions while stifling any notions of conquest. Moreover, the United States' land hunger was largely
Still, if during its first several decades of existence the fledgling government was obliged to recognize the sovereignty of Indian nations and to respect Indian lan d titles as a matter of international and domestic law, n117 from the moment of its creation th e United States was crafting legal solutions to the "problems caused by the . . . fact that the Indian s were here when the white man arrived[.] " slaked by available space within the original thirteen colonies, and land acquisitions from Indian tribes were of necessity accomplished accomplished by treaties of cession n115 after peaceful negotiations. n116 [*27]
Land is the center of Indigenous culture Pommersheim , Professor of Law at South Dakota University, 19 93
(Frank; Making All the Difference: The Native American
Testimony and the Black Hills; 69 N. Dak. L. Rev. 337; Lexis; JLS) Such a wide-ranging legal and historical controversy as the Black Hills issue inevitably requires that analytic attention be paid to context and situatedness. For the Sioux Nation, land restoration is a cornerstone cultural commitment. Economic considerations are important, but not as central. The Black Hills land is of primary importance because of its sacredness, its nexus to the cultural well being of Lakota people, and its role as a mediator in their relationship with all other livin g things. As noted by Gerald Clifford, Chairman of the Black Hills Steering Committee, "until we get back on track in our relationship to the earth, we cannot straighten out any of our relationships t o ourselves, to other people." n68 Land is inherent to Lakota people. It is their cultural centerpiece - the fulcrum of material and spiritual well being. Without it, there is neither balance nor center. The Black Hills are a central part of this "sacred text" and constitute constitute its prophetic core: As part of the "sacred text," the land - like sacred texts in other traditions -is not primarily a book of answers, "but rather a principal symbol of, perhaps the principal symbol of, and thus a central occasion of recalling and heeding, the fundamental aspirations aspirations of the tradition." It
The land, therefore, constantly evokes the fundamental Lakota aspirations to live in harmony with Mother Earth and to embody th e traditional virtues of wisdom, courage, generosity, and fortitude. The "sacred text" itself summons the heart and the spirit to difficult labor. In this sense, the "sacred text" constantly disturbs - it serves a prophetic function in the life of the community.
guarantees nothing, nothing, but it does hold the necessary potential to successfully mediate the past of the tradition with its present predicament.
A2: Churchill Indicts Don’t believe any of this nonsense. All the evidence proves that the charges are simply politically motivated and are just empty assertions. MAYER 2006 (Tom, Professor of Sociology at Colorado University, "The Report on Ward Churchill," June 1 9, http://www.swans.com http://www.swans.com/library/ar /library/artt 1 2/zig094.html)
By addressing only a tiny fragment of his writings, the report implies that Ward tries to overawe and hoodwink his readers with spurious documentation. Anyone who reads an essay like "Nits Make Lice: The Extermination of North American Indians 1607- 1996" with its 612 footnotes will get a very different impression. Churchill, they will see, goes far beyond most writers of broad historical overviews in trying to support his claims. He often cites several references in the same footnote. Ward is deeply engaged with the materials he references and frequently comments extensively upon them. He typically mounts a running critique of authors like James Axtell, Steven Katz, and Deborah Lipstadt. Readers will see that Churchill is familiar with a formidable variety of materials and can engage in a broad range of intellectual discourses. Like most scholars,Churchill practices an implicitly Bayesian (a statistical term) form of analysis. That is, he evaluates the plausibility of assertions and the credibility of evidencepartly on the basis of his prior beliefs. That government officials connived in generating the 1837-40 smallpox epidemic seems far more plausible to Ward than to the investigating committee precisely because he thinks this
He discounts many of the so-called primary sources cited in the report because their authors despise Indians or wish to conceal their own culpabilityin spreading the epidemic. And contrary to what the report says, many first rate scholars focus on proving their own hypotheses rather than considering all available evidence evenhandedly. Einstein, for example, spent the last three decades of his life trying to disprove quantum mechanics while largely disregarding evidence in its favor. This is not research misconduct. The operational definition of academic misconduct used by the investigating committee is so broad that virtually anyone who writes anything might be found guilty. Not footnoting an empirical is what American governments are inclined to do.
claim is misconduct. Citing a book without giving a page number is misconduct. Referencing a source that only partially supports an assertion is misconduct. Referencing contradictory sources without without detailing their contradictions is misconduct. Citing a work considered by some to be unserious or inadequate is misconduct. Footnoting an erroneous claim without acknowledging the error is misconduct. Interpreting a text
this list of transgressions could be greatly expanded. I strongly suspect that many people who vociferously support the report have read neither it nor any book or essay Ward Churchill has ever written. Perhaps this should be deemed a form of academic misconduct. differently than does its author is misconduct. misconduct. Ghost writing an article is misconduct. misconduct. Referencing a paper one has ghost written without acknowledging authorship authorship is misconduct. No doubt
A2: Churchill Indicts The plagiarism claims against Churchill are not only false, but grossly unfair compared to other authors who did the exact same thing! MAYER 2006 (Tom, Professor of Sociology at Colorado University, "The Report on Ward Churchill," June 19, http://www.swans.com/librar http://www.swans.com/library/art y/art l2/zig094 .html) I have finally finished a careful reading of the 124 page report about the alleged academic misconduct of Ward Churchill. Often, but not always, I have been able to compare the statements in the report with the relevant writings of Professor Churchill. Although the report by the committee on research misconduct clearly entailed prodigious labor, it is a flawed document requiring careful analysis. The central flaw in the report is grotesque exaggeration about the magnitude and gravity of the improprieties committed by Ward Churchill. The sanctions recommended by the investigating committee are entirely out of whack with those imposed upon such luminaries as Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Lawrence Tribe, all of whom committed plagiarisms far more egregious than anything attributed to Professor Churchill. The text of the report suggests that the committee's judgments about the seriousness of Churchill's misconduct were contaminated by political considerations. This becomes evident on page 97 where the
...
committee acknowledges that "damage done to the reputation of the University of Colorado as an academic institution is a consideration in our assessment of the seriousness of Professor Churchill's conduct." Whatever damage the University may have sustained by employing Ward Churchill derives from his controversial political statements statements and certainly not from the obscure footnoting practices nor disputed authorship issues investigated by the committee. Indeed, the two plagiarism charges refer to publications that are now fourteen years old. Although these charges had been made years earlier, they were not considered worthy of investigation until Ward Churchill became a political cause celebre. celebre. Using institutional institutional reputation to measure misconduct misconduct severity amounts to importing politics through the back door. The report claims that Professor Churchill engaged in fabrication and falsification. falsification . To make these claims it stretches the meaning of these words almost beyond recognition. Fabrication implies an intent to deceive. There is not a shred of evidence that the writings of Ward Churchill contain any assertion that he himself did not believe . The language used in the report repeatedly drifts in an inflammatory direction: disagreement becomes misinterpretation, misinterpretation becomes misrepresentation, misinterpretation becomes falsification. Ward may be wrong about who was considered an Indian under the General Allotment Allotment Act of 1887 or about the origins of the 1837-1840 smallpox epidemic among the Indians of the northern plains, but the report does not establish that only a lunatic or a liar could reach his conclusions on the basis of available evidence.
***Kritiks Good***
2AC – Debate Can Be Used For Movements Debate is a place for the voice of the oppressed – this is the key arena for our movement Warner and Bruschke 3 (Ede, University of Loiusville, John, CSU Fullerton, “GONE ON DEBATING:” COMPETITIVE ACADEMIC DEBATE AS A TOOL OF EMPOWERMENT EMPOWERMENT FOR URBAN AMERICA)JFS These arguments are theoretical; they cannot speak as
powerfully as the voices of those who have experienced both the oppression of an education system failing from the “unique synergy between lack of funding and anachronistic pedagogical practices.” Ed Lee, who now holds a Master’s degree and works for an Urban Debate League in San Francisco, recounts his experience as an urban debater: Educated in the public school system of inner-city Atlanta, my high school experience was tragically similar to the one depicted depicted above. My savior, like many others, others, was the Atlanta the Atlanta Urban Debate League. It provided the opportunity to question the nefarious rites of passage (prison, drugs, and drinking) that seem to be uniquely debilitating to individuals in the poor urban communities. In enclaves of poverty, there is also an undercurrent of nihilism and negativity that eats away at the soul of the community. hopeless. The solution is to offer people a choice beyond minimum Adults are hopeless. Children follow their lead and become hopeless. wage or or prison. Urban Debate Leagues provide that. Debating delivers a galaxy of alternatives and opportunity for those who are only offered hopelessness and were unnecessary elements of our culture that existed becaused they (predominantly) go unquestioned. Questioning the very nature nature of our existence is at the heart of the debate process. I am left wondering what would occur if debate became as compulsory in inner-city educational culture as football and basketball? Imagine graduating from high school each year millions of underprivileged teenagers with the ability to articulate their needs, the needs of others, and the ability to offer solutions. I am convinced that someone would be forced to listen. Urban debate Leagues offers a pedagogical tool that simultaneously opens the mind to alternatives and empowers students to t ake control of their lives. Half of the time, students are disseminating information and forming arguments about complex philosophical and political issues. In the other half, they they answer the arguments arguments of others. Self-reflexivity is an inherent part of the the activity. Debating gives students students the Contemporary educational techniques teach one side of the ability to articulate the partiality of all critical assessments. issue and universalize it as the only “truth.” Debate forces students to evaluate evaluate both sides, and determine their independent contextualized contextualized truth. Additionally, unlike the current pedagogy, debate allows everything to be questioned…The ability to question subjectivities presented as the objective truth makes debate uniquely empowering for individuals disenfranchised by the current system. It teaches students to interrogate their own institutionalized neglect and the systemic unhindered oppression oppression of others. It is one of the few venues we are able to question authority. (pp. 95-6) Given the possibilities an urban debate program presents, it is worth examining the practical possibilities for a revitalization of urban debate. One thing is clear: Urban debate is under-utilized at present. Many urban debate programs died in the late sixties and early seventies as the result of massive budget cuts . As tax revenues diminished diminished in educational coffers, debate programs, programs, always treated as just one of the “extracurricular” activities, got lost in efforts to stop the institutional bleeding by “doing more with less.” While college debate is more vibrant, as early as 1975 major college debate organizations were acknowledging the lack of diversity in intercollegiate forensics. Little has changed over the past twenty-five years; minority participation remains exceptionally low at the two major national policy debate tournaments, the Cross Examination Debate Association championship and the National Debate Tournament (Hill, 1997; Stepp, 1997)
Knowledge is Subjective Knowledge production is based on a violent subjectivity Chow 6 (Rey, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Modern Culture & Media Studies, Comparative Literature, and English, The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work, Duke University Press, pg. 40-41) Often under the modest and apparently innocuous agendas of fact gathering and documentation, the "scientific" and
"objective" production of knowledge during peacetime about the various special "areas" became the institutional institutional practice that substantiated and elaborated the militaristic conception of the world as target.52 In other words, despite the claims about the apolitical and di sinterested nature of the pursuits of higher l earning, activities undertaken under the rubric of economics, political science, and so forth, are fully inscribed in area studies, such as language training, historiography, anthropology, economics, the politics and ideology of war. To that extent, the disciplining, research, and development of so-called academic information information are part and parcel of a strategic logic . And yet, if the production of knowledge (with its vocabulary of aims and goals, research, data analysis, experimentation, and verification) in fact shares the same scientific and military premises as war —if, —if, for instance, the ability to translate a difficult language can be regarded as equivalent to the ability to break military codes53—is it a surprise that it is doomed to fail in its avowed attempts to "know" the other cultures? Can "knowledge" that is derived from the same kinds
of bases as war put an end to the violence of warfare, or is such knowledge not simply warfare's accomplice, destined to destroy rather than preserve the forms of lives at which it aims its focus? As long as knowledge is produced in this self-referential manner, as a circuit of targeting or getting the other that ultimately consolidates the omnipotence and omnipresence of the sovereign "self"/"eye"—the "I"—that is the United States, the other will have no choice but remain just that—a target whose existence justifies only one thing, its destruction by the bomber. As long as the focus of our study of Asia remains the United States, and as long as this focus is not accompanied by knowledge of what is happening elsewhere at other times as well as at the present, such study will
ultimately confirm once again the self-referential function of virtual worlding that was unleashed by the dropping of the atomic bombs, with the United States always occupying the position of the bomber , and other cultures always viewed as the military and information target fields. In this manner, events whose historicity does not fall into the epistemically closed orbit of the atomic bomber—such as the Chinese reactions to the war from a primarily anti-Japanese point of view that I alluded to at the beginning of this chapter—will never receive the attention that is due to them. " Knowledge, " however conscientiously gathered and however large in volume, will
lead only to further silence and to the silencing of diverse experiences. 54 This is one reason why, as Harootunian remarks, area studies has been, since its inception, haunted by "the absence of a definable object"- and by "the problem of the vanishing object."
Limits Bad A focus on limits engenders violent practices by stopping productive discussions. Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin, Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies , 34(3), p. 733-734)JM A subliminal orientation is attentive to what is bubbling along under the surface. It is mindful of how conscious attempts to understand conceal more than they reveal, and purposeful efforts of progressive change may engender more violence than they erase. For these reasons, Connolly emphasises that ‘e thical artistry’ has an element of naïveté and innocence. One is not quite sure what one is doing. Such naïveté need not lead us back to the idealism of the romantic period. ‘One should not be naïve about naïveté’, Simon Critchley would say.56 Rather, the challenge of change is an experiment . It is not locked up in a predetermined
conception of where one is going. It involves tentatively exploring the limits of one’s being in the world, to see if different interpretations are possible, how those interpretations might impact upon the affects below the level of conscious thought , and vice versa. This approach entails drawing upon multiple levels of thinking and being, searching for changes in sensibilities that could give more weight to minor feelings or to arguments that were previously ignored .57 Wonder needs to be at the heart of such experiments, in contrast to the resentment of an intellect angry with its own limitations . The ingre d i e n t of wonder is necessary to disrupt and suspend the normal pre s s u res of returning to conscious habit and control . This exploration beyond the conscious implies the need for an ethos of theorising and acting that is quite diff e rent from the mode directed towards the cognitive justification of ideas and concepts. Stephen White talks about ‘circ u i t s of reflection, affect and arg umentation’.58 Ideas and principles provide an orientation to practice , the implications
of that practice feed back into our affective outlook, and processes of argumentation argumentation introduce other ideas and affects. The shift, here, is from the ‘vertical’ search for foundations in ‘ skyhooks’ above or ‘foundations’ below, to a ‘horizontal’ movement into the unknown.
We must incorporate alternative perspectives in order to stop violence. Bleiker 1 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Studies , 30(3), p. 519)JM Hope for a better world will , indeed, remain slim if we put all our efforts into searching for a mimetic understanding of the international. Issues of global war and Third World poverty are far too serious and urgent to be left to only one form of inquiry , especially if this mode of thought suppresses important faculties and fails to understand and engage the crucial problem of representation. We need to employ the full register of human perception and intelligence to understand the phenomena of world politics and to address the dilemmas that e manate from them. One of the key challenges, thus, consists of legitimising a greater variety of a pproaches and insights to world politics. Aesthetics is an important and necessary addition to our interpretative repertoire. It helps us understand why the emergence, meaning and significance significance of a political event can be appreciated only once we scrutinise the representational practices that have constituted the very nature of this event.
Limits Bad Limits exclude and are an innately subjective process -- Objectifying rules obliterates agency Bleiker 3 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, Contemporary Political Theory, Theory, 2, p. 39-40)JM Approaching the political - and by extension dilemmas of agency requires tolerance towards various forms of insight and levels of analysis , even if they contradict each other’s internal logic. Such differences often only appear as contradictions because we still strive for a universal standard of reference that is supposed to subsume all the various aspects of life under a single totalizing standpoint (Adorno, 1992, 17–18). Every process of revealing is at the same time a process of concealing. Even the most convincing position cannot provide a form of insight that does not at the same time conceal other perspectives . Revealing always occurs within a frame. Framing is a way of ordering, and ordering banishes banishes all other forms of revealing . This is, grossly simplified, a position that resonates throughout much of Heidegger’s work (1954, 35). Taking this argument to heart is to recognize that one cannot rely on one form of revealing alone. An adequate understanding of human agency can be reached only by moving back and forth between various insights . The point , then, is not to end up with a grand synthesis, but to make most out of each specific form of revealing (for an exploration of this theme, via an analysis of Kant’s Critique of Judgement , see Deleuze, 1994).
A2: Limits Inevitable Language has an infinite number of constructions – there are no limits Warsi no date (jilliani, linguistics author, jilaniwarsi.tripod.com/language.pdf)JFS Language provides opportunities to send the message that has never been sent before and to understand novel messages. It also suggests that number of sentences in language is limitless. Any speaker can construct a sentence that has never been constructed before. It is this feature of language that is referred to as productivity or creativity of language .
Language has no limits – politics transcends to the personal level and becomes infinite Okadigbo 2 (Chuba, former African Senate President, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChatAfriK/message/2824 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChatAfriK/message/2824)JFS )JFS Dialogue has no limits especially when the dialogue leads to a general, consensual agreement. The purpose of politics is the well-being of the masses; the common good is the object of politics . These calculations focus on the subject of power and politics . Where politics stops, government begins. Where government stops, politics begins . Now, I Yes.
give you one example. Do you know, Mr. Editor, that there are already manipulations in the press to reduce the impeachment saga into a regional affair between North and South? By not being emotive but intellectual about it, I watch that argument with e very discretion. Dialogue
is of the essence right now . If you allow any emotive, temperamental or tribal argument in the calculus, we will lose the objective of state policy
Dialogue is limitless and allows new possibilities for thought CII no date (The Co-Intelligence Institute non-profit research institute, http://www.co-intelligence.org/Pdialogue.html)JFS The late quantum physicist David Bohm observed that both quantum mechanics and mystical traditions suggest that our beliefs shape the realities we evoke. He further postulated that thought is largely a collective phenomenon, made possible only
through culture and communication . Human conversations arise out of and influence an ocean of cultural and transpersonal transpersonal meanings in which we live our lives, and this process he called dialogue. Most conversation c onversations s, of course, lack the fluid, deeply connected quality suggested by this oceanic metaphor. They are more like ping-pong ping-pong games, with participants hitting their very solid ideas and well-defended positions back and forth . Such conversations are properly called discussions. "Discussion," Bohm noted, derives from the same root word as "percussion" and "concussion," a root that connotes striking, shaking and hitting. Dialogue , in contrast, involves joining our thinking and feeling into a shared pool of
meaning which continually flows and evolves, carrying us all into new , deeper levels of understanding none of us could have foreseen. Through dialogue "a new kind of mind begins to come into being ," observed Bohm, "based on the development of common meaning... People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning, which is capable of constant development and change ." Bohm's approach to dialogue involved participants working together to understand the assumptions underlying their individual and collective beliefs. Collective reflection on these assumptions could reveal blind spots and incoherences from which participants could then free themselves, leading to greater collective understanding and harmony. Bohm maintained that such collective
learning increases our collective intelligence intelligence . (For links to sites, groups, and listservs working with Bohm's approach to dialogue, click here.) (For Bohm's introduction to g roup dialogue, click here.)
A2: “You “You Lead to Implicit Limits” Dialogue is intersubjective Kent et al 2 (Michael L. Kent, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Strategic Communication, Maureen Taylor, Ph.D., is Gaylord Family Chair of Strategic Communication, Sheila M. McAllister-Spooner, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Communication, Communication, Monmouth University, Research in dialogic theory and public relations)
Since dialogue is intersubjective, it necessitates interpretation and understanding understanding by all parties involved. Dialogue Dialogue necessitates that all participants are willing to exert themselves on the part of others in a dialogue to understand often- diverse positions. Commitment to interpretation also means that efforts are made to grasp the positions , beliefs, and values of others before their positions can be equitably evaluated (Gadamer, 1994; Ellul, 1985; Makay & Brown, 1972).
These intersubjective limits are better than imposed limits for self/other worth Kent et al 2 (Michael L. Kent, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Strategic Communication, Maureen Taylor, Ph.D., is Gaylord Family Chair of Strategic Communication, Sheila M. McAllister-Spooner, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Communication, Communication, Monmouth University, Research in dialogic theory and public relations) Genuine dialogue, involves more than just a commitment to a relationship . Dialogue occurs when individuals (and sometimes groups) agree to set aside their di fferences long enough to come to an understanding of the others’ positions. Dialogue Dialogue is not equivalent to agreement . Rather, dialogue is more akin to intersubjectivity where both parties attempt to understand and appreciate the values and interests of the other . Dialogue is both Socratic and Kantian. Dialogue rests on an acknowledgement acknowledgement of the worth of the other as other as well as a willingness to “continue the conversation ”— not for purposes of swaying the other with the strength of one’s erudition, but as a means of understanding the other and reaching mutually satisfying positions.
Open-ended dialogue solves colonizing tendencies of externally imposed limits Hawkins and Muecke 3 (Gay and Stephen, Culture and Waste, p. 54, Google Books) Monologue is the narcissistic conversation that the 'West has with itself key feature of which is that the other never gets to talk bark on its terms.
Mono Mo nolo logu gue e is a prac pr acti tice ce of powe po wer r , of course. sinc si nce e it invo involv lves es sile si lenc ncin ing g the th e peop pe ople le wh whos ose e wo word rds s and though. wou ld requ re quir ire e a brea break k with with self se lf=a =abs bsor orpt ptio ion. n. Much Mu ch of wh what at pass pa sses es for fo r conv conver ersa sati tion on is actu ac tual ally ly mono mo nolo logu gue e beca be cau u se it is cons co nstr truc ucte ted d arou ar ound nd a self se lf=o =oth ther er stru st ruct ctur ure e such such that that the the "oth "o ther er.. is the the abse ab senc nce e or reflection of self se lf In cont rast. dial dialogu ogue e is inte inters rsub ubje ject ctiv ive e It is an open openen ende ded d meet me etin ing g of subj subjec ects ts.. Emil Fackenheim articulates two main precepts f or structuring the ground for ethical dialogue .' The first that dialogue begi be gins ns wh wher ere e one one is, is , and an d thus thus is alwa al ways ys situ si tuat ated ed;; the second is that dial dialog ogue ue is Open, Ope n, and an d I thus th us tha th at the th e outc ou tcom ome e is not no t know kn own n in adva ad vanc nce. e. Openne Ope nness ss produc pro duces es refl re fl exivity, to that one's own round becomes destabilized. In ope op en dial di alog ogue ue one on e hold ho lds s one' on e's s self se lf avail va ilab able le to be surprised, to be challenged, and to be knock kno cked ed out of narcis nar cissis sism m. Dialogue breaks up monologue, it clears a round for meeting, generating a place where people cm speak on their own terms. It thus requires attentive listening and an open mind. Construed in this way, dialog dia logue ue is a decolo dec oloniz nizing ing pract pra ctice ice leadin lea ding g
towar tow ard d unpre unp redic dictab table le outcom out comes es..
Guilar 6 (Joshua, School of Communication and Culture In dialogic education, students, teachers, and c ontent are related intersubjectively intersubjectively.. Different disciplines have contributed to the understanding of such relations. One source for understanding the intersubjective nature of instruction is the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1982: 1960; Smith, 1993). Gadamer proposed a dialogical mode of knowing
through shared conversation regarding the interpretation of texts. An educational community is intersubjective intersubjective in all parties relate to one another as having a sense of agency and a unique perspective. perspective. In such a community there is not a knowing subject (e.g., the teacher) and a known object (e.g., the student or the content of
nature when
instruction). Rather, all three elements—the teacher, the student, and the content—relate in an intersubjective, interpretive community. In this community, roles such as teacher and student are still significant. However, the nature of the dialogic conversation changes
power relations in contrast to conventional pedagogy. Particularly, the nature of the conversation is such that the students become agents in the hermeneutic community. Students’ roles change from being passive learners to perspective, a student co-creates along with other students and the teacher a becoming co-creators. In expressing his or her perspective, shared world in which difference is expressed and respected. Power is shared mutually in this co-created community.
Policy Making Bad Policy making framework makes a commodity of violence – ensures its continuance – and is unethical Makau 96 (Josina., Ph.D. in Rhetoric at the University of California-Berkeley, California-Berkeley, Responsible Communication, Argumentation Instruction in the Face of Global Perils) Weisel's critique of German education prior to world war II points to another danger of traditional argumentation instruction . Like the Nazi doctors, students in traditional argumentation argumentation courses are taught "how to reduce life and the mystery of life
to abstraction." Weisel urges educators to teach students what the Nazi doctors never learned – that people are not abstractions. abstractions . Weisel urges educators to learn from the Nazi experience the importance of humanizing their charges, of teaching students to view life as special, 'with its own secrets, its own treasures, treasures, its own sources of anguish and with some measure of triumph.' triumph.' Trained as technocrats technocrats with powerful suasory skills but little understanding , students participating in traditional argumentation courses would have difficulty either grasping or appreciating the importance of Weisel's critique. Similarly, they would have difficulty grasping or appreciating Christian's framework for an ethic of technology an approach that requires above all, openness, trust and care. The notion of conviviality would be particularly alien to these trained technocrats. Traditionally trained debaters are also likely to fail to grasp the complexity of issues. Trained to view problems in black and white terms and conditioned to turn to "expertise" for solutions, students, and traditional courses become subject to ethical blindness. As Benhabib noted, 'Moral blindness implies not necessarily an evil or unprincipaled person, but one who can not see the moral texture of the situation confronting him or her.' These traditional debaters, deprived of true dialogic encounter , fail to develop 'the capacity to represent' to themselves the 'multiplicity of viewpoints, the variety of perspectives, the layers of meaning, etc. which constitute a situation'. They are thus inclined to lack 'the kind of sensitivity to particulars, which most agree is essential for good and perspicacious judgment.' Encouraging student to embrace the will to control and to gain mastery, to accept uncritically a sovereign view of power, and to maintain distance from their own and others 'situatedness,' the traditional argumentation course provides an unlikely site for nurturing guardians of our world's precious resources. It would appear, in fact, that the argumentation course foster precisely
the 'aggressive and manipulative intellect bred by modern science and discharged into the administration of things' associated with most of the world's human made perils . And is therefore understandable that feminist and others critics would write so harshly of traditional argumentation of debate.
A2: “Policy-Only Focus Good” Their limitation of politics to the state denies creativity which eliminates the things that makes life worth living and perverts politics. Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin, Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies , 34(3), p. 735-736)JM Promoting Promoting aesthetic engagements with politics is not to replace social scientific enquiries or to suggest that art offers a solution to all problems. The point, rather, is that the key political challenges of our time , from terrorism to poverty, are far too complex not to employ the full register of human intelligence and creativity to deal with them . Aesthetic engagements with the sublime are central to this endeavour. But to remain valid, such engagements must go beyond a mere process of aestheticising the political. Establishing societal models based on beauty and harmony has led to dangerous political experiments. We need to acknowledge, along with George Kateb, that the aesthetic is a dominant force in human life . But we need to do so while
recognising the potentially problematic practice of searching for stability amidst chaos and contingency contingency through a resort to beauty as the ultimate value . In his view, such ‘unaware and unrationalized aestheticism’ is responsible for a great deal of immorality.60 In attempts to transform the ambivalent experience of the sublime into something unambiguously ‘beautiful’, moral limits are often ignored. In contrast to aesthetic ‘cravings’, then, the challenge is to cultivate an appreciation of sublimity in
the everyday, and to use the aesthetic not to mask our fears of the uncertain, but to recognise them and search for ways of living comfortably with the contingent dimensions of life.
The conception of politics devolves to a form of absolute control that overlimits the realm of the political, making true representation impossible & violence inevitable. Bleiker and Leet 6 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, and Martin, Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute, Millennium: Institute, Millennium: Journal of International Studies , 34(3), p. 736)JM ethics we find here is very different from the automatic and codified that prevails in politics . This is so because prevailing approaches to scholarship and d ecision-making have stated a clear preference for the conscious in the fields of politics and ethics , to the point of imposing order in an attempt to repress ambivalence. The ethical significance of the aesthetic ensues from the effort to be mindful about the inherent violence of such forms of representation. It involves relaxing pressures always working to cut the world down to the size and shape of our fears, needs and desires. Morton Schoolman, for instance, argues that the a esthetic refers to a kind of openness and An aesthetic engagement with the sublime inevitably contains an ethical component. But the form of ethics
much of the theory and practice of international
responsiveness that contrasts sharply with those tendencies in the modern world towards control and the repression of difference. He distinguishes ‘formal reason’ which ‘finds what is unknown and diff e rent from thought to be an obstacle
to its
emancipation emancipation from fear’, from an ‘ aesthetic reason’ that is ‘unafraid of the unfathomable in which it finds the source of its receptivity to the diversity of diff e rent forms of life’.61 John Gray illustrates the practical dimensions of this position by reminding us that consciousness can actually be an obstacle, that the most accomplished pianist, for instance, is at his or her most skilful when playing with the least amount of self-awareness .62 Similarly, in the domain of ethics, the conscious self can be both the source of
moral behaviour and an obstacle to it.
A2: “Policy-Only Focus Good” Expanding what counts as politics is critical to solve environmental crisis. Mallory 8 (Chaone, prof of environmental philosophy @ Villanova U, [http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org/ISEEIAEPpapers/2008/Mallory.pdf] AD: 7/9/10)JM Although I think that Sandilands overstates the case somewhat— environmental environmental
movements, even those which utilize fairly conventional discourses and strategies, are always self-consciously calling for political action and thus understand themselves as political actors as such— nonetheless Sandilands points out something very significant. One of the most salient questions for environmentalists is not how to best e xploit existing political avenues for the sake of making gains for the more-than-human world, not about how humans ought best “represent” the interests of nature in incorrigibly anthropocentric political arenas, but to question, and ultimately reconfigure reconfigure what counts as politics itself; to revise, or rupture where necessary , traditional political categories and assumptions about who or what counts as a political subject and what counts as political action and speech, and challenge the instrumentalist view of politics in favor of a view that considers politics politics as a space where ecological subjectivities subjectivities are formed, contested, destabilized, and re-formed. Ecofeminist political philosophy wonders how nature can have a voice in the polis . This leads to other sorts of philosophical tasks and questions, as Sandilands notes.
The kritik doesn’t preclude politics – it allows for an understanding of it that can solve problems more effectively. Studies, Feminism After Postmodernism, Postmodernism, p. 67-68)JM Zalewski 2K (Marysia, Director, Centre for Gender Studies, Feminism A typical postmodern claim is that power is not something that is simply or only repressive. In keeping with a desire to dismantle dualistic thinking, postmodernists refuse to perceive power as fundamentally opposed to resistance, hence the intertwined phrase; power/resistance. Indeed, the idea that there is a monolithic monolithic power ‘out there’ , whether that is patriarchy, racism or capitalism, can lead to
a
sense of fatalism and despair , which is hardly the best way to achieve emancipatory ends, postmoderns might argue. This links into the notion of productive power introduced earlier, which implies that the persistent battle over the meanings of things will inevitably foster new forms of resistance and new meanings emerge from this. T he battles over the words 'queer' and 'nigger* serve as good examples of this. The
consistent postmodern emphasis on disputing meanings and displacing traditional ideas and values, to a questioning and dishevelling of modernist definitions and certainties about what counts as politics . This imposition of the authority of correct meaning is something that postmodernists are keen to expose. Postmodernists also resist the idea that their views of the subject and epistemology epistemology lead to an inability to be political or do politics. If we think of a specific postmodern method, deconstruct ion, we can understand it as something that questions the terms in which we understand the political , rather than an abandonment of the political. Surely, postmodernists argue, questioning what counts as politics is a political act? Rethinking what the political is can allow a whole range of differences of opinions to appear . Additionally, rather than concentrating on the 'why' of things, postmodernists prefer to focus on effects . So instead of a sking. 'Why are women oppressed?', postmodernists postmodernists are more likely to ask . For example. 'What are the effects of beliefs about the "proper" roles for questions questions about the effects of particular practices inevitably leads
women such as those espoused by the Catholic Church?' Or in other (postmodern) words. "How do women gel said [or described] as "good wives" by the Catholic Church?' Questioning foundations , beliefs about who and what 'the subject is' and opening the notion o f politics surely counts as taking
feminist responsibility responsibility seriously?
A2: “We Lead to Policy Change” Academics don’t influence policy Barnett 6 (Michael What the Academy Can Teach by Academy and Policy, Vol. 28 (2) - Summer 2006 the Harold Stassen Prof of IR at the Humphrey Institute and Profof Poli Sci at the U of Minnesota http://hir.harvard.edu/index.php?page= http://hir.harvard.edu/index.php?page=article&id=1553&p=1) article&id=1553&p=1) TBC 7/9/10 Over the years I have had a recurring encounter at professional meetings: a cluster of academics, discussing the implications of their research, worry
that the findings, if ripped out of context and misappropriated by government officials, could have unintended unintended consequences. A debate follows about whether academics are responsible for how their research is used and, if so, how they can control its interpretation and appropriation. I have always been bemused by these exchanges—academ exchanges—academics ics worry about the implementation of their ideas, without realizing that policymakers simply might not care
what international relations scholars have to say, let alone listen to their opinions. At these moments I am reminded of a classic exchange in Casablanca between Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart. Lorre asks, “You despise me, don’t you, Rick?” Bogart replies, “I guess I would if I thought about you.” Although US government officials are not nearly as dismissive of academics and their ideas as Bogart was of Lorre, they certainly have a low threshold for academic research. Some of their dismissiveness is understandable. Policymakers need to act in complex situations defined by tremendous uncertainty and with some knowledge of the key participants before deciding what to do. Academic knowledge rarely meets this standard of “ usability .” Yet the impatience of policymakers cannot be completely
It also is a result of a general intolerance for theory and frustration with the ways in which academics collect and analyze information information. This dismissal of scholarly knowledge and research can be attributed to the kind of knowledge they desire.
dangerous in several ways, including a failure both to acknowledge important developments in world affairs that should affect policy and to recognize the positive effects of thinking like a scholar.
Academics don’t influence policy – Methodology Barnett 6 (Michael What the Academy Can Teach by Academy and Policy, Vol. 28 (2) - Summer 2006 the Harold Stassen Prof of IR at the Humphrey Institute and Profof Poli Sci at the U of Minnesota http://hir.harvard.edu/index.php?page= http://hir.harvard.edu/index.php?page=article&id=1553&p=1) article&id=1553&p=1) TBC 7/9/10 Academics pay considerable attention to sources, data, methods, and research design . While there are places in
often what passes for research in government is not scientifically driven observation observation but rather arguments that conform to the political realities of the moment. Academics consider alternative hypotheses and appeal to evidence to show why their proposed argument is superior to existing explanations. Many policymakers do not . Academics privilege relatively long, exhaustive, footnote-crowded footnote-crowded papers that methodically consider an issue from all angles. Policymakers, as they rise in status, become less likely to read anything longer than three pages . I learned the art of writing memos that did not exceed two pages, stripped complex processes the foreign policy bureaucracy that approximate this logic of inquiry,
down to their bare b ones, and simplified issues to the point of being simple-minded and one-dimensional. The immediate victims of this makeover were nuance, complexity, and contingency. Academics tend toward probabilistic statements, while
policymakers favor deterministic deterministic, “if-then” statements. Academics tend to favor conclusio c onclusions ns that are provisional provisional and invariably call for further study, while policymakers assert their findings with an air of confidence that suggests that no further debate is needed.
Academics don’t influence policy – Academics aren’t accessible Barnett 6 (Michael What the Academy Can Teach by Academy and Policy, Vol. 28 (2) - Summer 2006 the Harold Stassen Prof of IR at the Humphrey Institute and Profof Poli Sci at the U of Minnesota http://hir.harvard.edu/index.php?page= http://hir.harvard.edu/index.php?page=article&id=1553&p=1) article&id=1553&p=1) TBC 7/9/10 The fast-paced policy world left little time to read academic research , though there were occasions when scholarly findings penetrated the thick walls of government. These successful “crossover” ideas shared certain attributes. They were easily digestible. If scholarly research is to have an impact, it must be presented in a “talking points” formula—relatively short, simplified, representations of the world. A good, if somewhat extreme, example is Foreign Policy magazine. It used to re semble Foreign Affairs with relatively lengthy, serious examinations of contemporary issues. Several years ago Foreign Policy switched to a new format with fewer articles and a preference for simplified statements (globalization is a myth) and highly provocative, sometimes inflammatory claims (Mexicans are taking over the United States) as well as many bright, multicolored graphics. There is, in essence, a preference for style over substance, for
simplicity over complexity. A close friend of mine who works in the US Department of State tells me that he and his colleagues like the change in part because it is their version of People magazine .
AT: “Do it on the aff/neg” "Do it on the neg" marginalizes our arg. Bleiker 1 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Studies , 30(3), p. 523)JM A second and related shortcoming of early postmodern contributions is their focus on criticising/deconstructing the shortcomings of dominant Realist and Liberal approaches to international political theory. While essential at a time when there was little space for alternative knowledge, this process of critique has nevertheless limited the potential of postmodern contributions . Discourses of power politics and their framing of political practice cannot overcome all existing theoretical and practical
dilemmas . By articulating critique in relation to arguments advanced by orthodox approaches to ir , the impact of critical voices remains confined within the larger discursive boundaries boundaries that were established through through the initial framing of these debates.
"Run it as an advantage” pigeon-holes our args. Bleiker 1 (Roland, prof of International Relations @ U of Queensland, Brisbane, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Studies , 30(3), p. 523)JM My suggestion is, thus, to ‘forget IR theory’, to see beyond a narrowly defined academic discipline discipline and to refuse tying future possibilities possibilities to established forms of life .57 Instead of seeking nostalgic comfort and security in the familiar interpretation of long gone epochs, even if they are characterised by violence and insecurity, conscious forgetting opens up possibilities for a dialogical understanding of our present and past . Rather than further entrenching current security dilemmas by engaging with the orthodox discourse that continuously gives meaning to them, forgetting forgetting tries to escape the v icious circle by which these social practices serve to legitimise and objectivise objectivise the very discourses that have given rise to them.
“Do it on the aff” compromises our arguments. Herring 6 (Eric, Reader in International Politics at the University of Bristol, [http://mil.sagepub.com/content/35/1/ [http://mil.sagepub.com/content/35/1/105.full.pdf] 105.full.pdf] AD: 7/9/10)JM Insider activism (that is, intellectual and policy work within mainstream institutions ) risks co-option and deradicalisation. For some, being an activist scholar necessarily involves being an anti-military, anti-state, anti-capitalist outsider opposing British-backed US foreign policy , but there is no consensus on this.21 The risks of co-option and deradicalisation needs to be considered in relation to context , strategy and tactics as well as theorised understandings of the underlying characteristics of those mainstream institutions. To insist on or assume pacifism, anarchism, socialism and opposition to all aspects of British and US foreign policy misses what may turn out to be the ambiguous, contingent, factionalised and therefore potentially progressive aspects of the military, the state, capitalism and the foreign policies of Britain and the United States.
Framework = Exclusion and that's Bad (1) Frameworks Open To Alternative Arguments/Viewpoints Are Key To Break Down Patriarchy and Systems of Dominance Foss and Griffen 1995 (Sonja, associate professor of Communication Studies at Ohio State, Cindy, assistant professor of Speech Communication Communication at Colorado State, “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for Invitational Rhetoric, Communication Monographs, March)Professor March)Professor of Speech Communication, University of Denver, HC) The introduction of invitational rhetoric to the array of rhetorical forms available also serves a greater heuristic, inventive function than rhetoric previously has allowed. Traditional theories of rhetoric occur within preimposed or preconceived frameworks that are reflexive and reinforce the vocabularies and tenets of those frameworks. In rhetoric in which the rhetor seeks to impose change on others, an idea is adapted to the audience or is presented in ways that will be most persuasive to the audience; as a result, the idea stays lodged within the confines of the rhetorical system in which it was framed . Other may challenge the idea but only w ithin the confines of the framework of the dispute already established. The inventive potential of rhetoric is restricted as the interaction converts the idea to the experience required by the framework. Invitational rhetoric, rhetoric, on the other hand, aims at converting experience “to one of the many views which are indeterminately possible” (Holmberg, 1977, p. 237). As a result, much is open in invitational rhetoric that is not in traditional rhetorics —the potential of the audiences to contribute to the generation of ideas is enhanced, the means used to present ideas are not those that limit the ideas to what is most persuasive for the audience, the view of the kind of environment that can be created in the interaction is expanded, and the ideas that can be considered multiply.
The privileging of inventions in invitational rhetoric allows for the development of interpretations, perspectives, courses of actions, and solutions to problems different from those allowed in traditional models of rhetoric . Rather than the discovery of how to make a case, invitational rhetoric employs invention to discover more cases, a process Daly (1984) describes as one of creating “an atmosphere in which further creativity may flourish … [w]e become breathers/creators of free space . We are windy, stirring the stagnant spaces with life” (p. 18). The inclusion of an invitational rhetoric in the array of rhetorics available suggests the need to revise and expand rhetorical constructs of various kinds to take into account the nature and function of this form. Invitational rhetoric suggests, for example, that the traditional view of the audience as an opponent ought to be questioned. It challenges the traditional conception of the notion of rhetorical strategies as means to particular ends in that in invitational rhetoric, the means constitute the ends. It
suggests the need for a new schema of ethics to fit interactional goals other than inducement of others to adherence to the rhetor’s own beliefs. Finally, invitational rhetoric provides a mode of communication for women and other marginalized groups to use in their efforts to transform systems of domination and oppression. At first glance, invitational rhetoric may seem to be incapable of resisting and transforming oppressive systems such as patriarchy because the most it seems able to do is to create a space in which representatives of an oppressive system understand a different—in this case, a feminist—perspective but do not adopt it. Although invitational rhetoric is not designed to create a specific change, such as the transformation of systems of oppression into ones that value and nurture individuals, it may produce such
Invitational rhetoric may resist an oppressive system simply because it models an alternative to the system by being “itself an Other way of thinking/speaking” (Daly, 1978, p. xiii)— it it presents an alternative feminist vision rooted in affirmation and respect and thus shows how an alternative looks and works . Invitational rhetoric thus may transform an oppressive system precisely because it does not engage that system on its own terms, using arguments developed from the system’s framework or orientation. Such arguments usually are co-opted by the dominant system (Ferguson, 1984) and provide the impetus “to strengthen, refine, and embellish the original edifice,” entrenching the system further (Johnson, 1989, pp. 16-17). Invitational rhetoric, in contrast, enables rhetors to disengage from the dominance and mastery so common to a system of oppression and to create a reality of equality and mutuality in its place, allowing for options and possibilities not available within the familiar, dominant framework . an outcome.
Your interpretation creates a system of exclusion in which certain discourses become “Truth” foreclosing all other truths. Harvard and Cambridge, Discourse Bleiker, 2003. (Roland, Professor of International Relations Harvard and Human Agency, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. p. 27-28) ‘It is within discourse, ’ one of Foucault’s much rehearsed passages (1976, 133) notes, ‘ that power and knowledge articulate each other .’ .’ The work of the French historian and philosopher epitomizes what is at stake in questions of discourse and agency. For Foucault, discourses are subtle mechanisms that frame our thinking process. They determine the limits of what can be thought, talked and written in a normal and rational way. In every society the production of discourses is controlled , selected, organized and diffused by certain procedures. This process creates systems of exclusion in which one group of discourses is elevated to a hegemonic status, while others are condemned to exile. Discourses give rise to social rules that decide which statements most people recognize as valid, as debatable or as undoubtedly false. They guide the selection process that ascertains which propositions from previous periods or foreign cultures are retained, imported, valued, and which are forgotten or neglected (see Foucault, 1969, 1971, 1991, 59–60). Not everything is discourse, but everything is in discourse . Things exist independently of discourses, but we can only assess them through the lenses of discourse, through the practices of knowing, perceiving and sensing, which we have acquired over time. Discourses render social practices intelligible and rational and by doing so mask the ways in which they have been constituted and framed. Systems of domination gradually become accepted as normal and silently penetrate every aspect of society. They cling to the most remote corners of our mind, for, as Nietzsche (1983, 17) once expressed it, ‘all things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their emergence out of unreason thereby becomes improbable. ’
Framework = Exclusion and that's Bad (2) Defining human agency with an all inclusive statement creates a hierarchy in which all other discourses foreclosed. Roland Bleiker, 2003. (Professor of International Relations Harvard and Cambridge, Discourse and Human Agency, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. p. 37-38) A conceptualization of human agency cannot be based on a parsimonious proposition, a one-sentence statement that captures something like an authentic nature of human agency. There is no essence to human agency, no core that can be brought down to a lowest common denominator, that will crystallize crystallize one day in a long sought after magic formula . A search for such an elusive centre would freeze a specific image of human agency to the detriment of all others. The dangers of such a totalizing position have been well rehearsed. Foucault (1982, 209), for instance, believes that a theory of power is unable to provide the basis for analytical work, for it assumes a prior objectification of the very power dynamics the theory is trying to assess. Bourdieu (1998, 25) speaks of the ‘imperialism of theuniversal’ and List (1993, 11) warns us of an approach that ‘subsumes, or, rather, pretends to be able to subsume everything into one concept, one theory, one position.’ Such a master discourse, she claims, inevitably oppresses everything everything that does not fit into its particular view of the world.
The construction of identity rests on assumption that a static, all encompassing self can be created and maintained-this causes the marginalization and eradication of difference Connoly in 2k2 (William, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science @ Johns Hopkins University, Identity/Difference, Identity/Difference, expanded edition) wHere in a nutshell is the thesis of this study: to confess a. particular identity is also to belong to difference. To come to terms affirmatively affirmatively with the complexity of that connection is to support an ethos of identity and difference suitable to a democratic culture of deep pluralism. A few more things can be said to unpack that thesis, and I proceed by reviewing, refining, and augmenting a few formulations. An identity is established established In relation to a series series of differences that have become become socially recognized. recognized. These differences are essential to its being. If they did not coexist as differences, it would not exist in its distinctness and solidity. Entrenched in this indispensable indispensable relation is a second set of tendencies. . . to congeal established identities identities into fixed forms, thought and lived as If their structure expressed the true order of things.... Identity requires difference in order to be, and it converts difference into otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty. (Identity\Difference, (Identity\Difference, 64) Identity is relational and collective. My personal identity is defined through the collective constituencies with which I identify or am identified by others (as white, male, American, a sports fan, and so on); it is further specified by comparison to a variety of things I am not. Identity, then, is always connected to a series of differences that help it be what it is. The initial tendency is to describe the differences on which you depend in a way that gives privilege or priority to you. Jews, said Kant, are legalistic; that definition allowed him to define KantianChristian morality as a more spiritual orientation to duties and rights. Atheists, said Tocqueville, are restless, egoistic, and amoral, lacking the spiritual source of morality upon which stability, trustworthiness, trustworthiness, and care for others are anchored. That definition definition allowed him to honor the American passion to exclude professed atheists from public office. Built into the dynamic of identity is a polemical temptation to translate differences differences through which it is specified into moral failings or abnormalities. The pursuit of identity feeds the polemicism Foucault describes in the epigraph at the beginning of this essay. You need identity to act and to be ethical, but there is a drive to diminish difference to complete itself inside the pursuit of identity. There is thus a paradoxical element in the politics of identity. It is not an airtight paradox conforming to a textbook example in logic, but a social paradox that might be negotiated. It operates as pressure to make space for the fullness of self-identity for one constituency by marginalizing, demeaning, or excluding the differences on which it depends to specify itself. The depth grammar of a political theory is shaped, first, by the way in which it either acknowledges or suppresses this paradox, and, second, by whether it negotiates it pluralistically or translates it into an aggressive politics of exclusive universality. universality. Traditionally, Traditionally, the first problem of evil is the question of how a benevolent, omnipotent God could allow intense suffering in the world. Typically, the answer involves attribution of free will to humans to engender a gap between the creative power of the God and the behavior of humanity. What I call in this book “the second problem of evil” flows from the social logic of identity\difference identity\difference relations. It is the proclivity to marginalize or demonize difference to sanctify the identity you confess. Intensifying Intensifying the second problem of evil is the fact that we also experience the source of morality through our most heartfelt experiences of identity. How could someone be moral, many believers say, without belief in free will and God? How could a morally responsible agent, others say, criticize the Enlightenment, the very achievement that grounds the moral disposition they profess? Don’t they presuppose the very basis they criticize?
Framework = Exclusion and that's Bad (3) The language game in which our society is entrenched takes terms such as 'international' and makes them social practices that assign nation-states priority, legitimizes all political practices, no matter how violent they may be. Harvard and Cambridge, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Bleiker, 2000. (Roland, Professor of International Relations Harvard Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2000. p. 230-31) A second dissident strategy consists of creating new concepts in order to avoid the subjugating power of existing ones. The challenge of conceptualising forms of dissent that transgress the spatial givenness of international politics is a case in point. How is one to designate this novel political dynamic and the transformed context within which they unfold? The term 'international', initially initially coined by Jeremy Bentham, appears inadequate, for it semantically endows the nation-state with a privileged position — a privilege that no longer corresponds, at least in many instances, to the realities of global politics. In an effort to obtain an understanding of the word that reaches beyond state-centric visions, various authors have searched for more adequate concepts. R. B. J. Walker, for instance, speaks not of international relations, but of 'world politics', which he defines 'as an array of political processes that extend beyond the territoriality and competence of a single political community and affect large proportions of humanity'. 49 Christine Sylvester employs the term 'relations international', thereby placing the emphasis on the various relational aspects of world politics, rather than the perceived centrality of nation-states. 50 James Rosenau scrutinises the domain of 'post-international politics' — a sphere in which interactions are carried out not by states and nonstate actors, but by 'sovereignty bound' and 'sovereignty free' actors. 51 While endorsing these various conceptual innovations, this book has primarily relied on the term 'transversal' to capture the increasingly diffused and cross-territorial nature of contemporary dissident practices. New concepts can help to widen the purview of traditional perceptions of international relations, but it is important to emphasise that the issue of representation representation can never be solved, or even understood, at a purely terminological terminological level. From the perspective of the later Wittgenstein, there is no logical and authentic relationship between, for instance, the meaning of term 'international' and a state-centric view of the world. 'International' 'International' is only what we make of the term. The main problem is a discursively entrenched entrenched language game in which the term 'international' embodies social practices that assign nation-states priority and thus legitimise and objectivise ensuing political practices, no matter how violent they may be. Knowing the dangers of exclusion and objectification objectification inherent in any form of conceptualising does not release us from the need to employ concepts in order to express our thoughts. What, then, is the point? Adorno claims that we must not turn the necessity to operate with concepts into the virtue of assigning them priority. 52
Ground It is bad to believe in permanent, stable foundations because human agency is always changing and the grey area between objectivism and relativism is ignored Harvard and Cambridge, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Bleiker, 2000. (Roland, Professor of International Relations Harvard Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2000. p. 13) Departing from both a discursive fatalism and an overzealous belief in the autonomy of human action, I search for a middle ground that can draw together positive aspects of both opposing traditions of thought. I am, in this sense, following authors such as Pierre Bourdieu and Richard Bernstein, for whom the central opposition that characterises our time, the one between objectivism and relativism, is largely misleading misleading and distorting. It is itself part of a seductive dichotomy that is articulated in either/or terms: either there is an ultimate possibility of grounding knowledge in stable foundations, or there are no foundations at all, nothing but an endless fall into a nihilist abyss. 33 But there are no Either/Or extremes. There are only shades of difference, subtleties that contradict the idea of an exclusionary vantage- point. point. My own attempt at overcoming the misleading misleading dichotomy between objectivism and relativism revolves around two major propositions, which I will sustain and expand throughout this book: (1) that one can theorise discourses and still retain a concept of human agency; and (2) that one can advance a positive notion of human agency that is neither grounded in a stable foundation nor dependent upon a presupposed notion of the subject. The point of searching for this middle ground is not to abandon foundations as such, but to recognise that they are a necessary part of our effort to make sense of an increasingly complex and transversal world. We need foundations to ground our thoughts, but foundations impose and exclude. They should not be considered as stable and good for all times. They must be applied in awareness of their function and with a readiness to adjust them to changing circumstances.
Limits The Affirmatives Framework Arguments Call for Limitations in How Things are to Be Interpreted-this is The Same Obsession with Limits Characterized by Modern Thought. We Must Reject Limits in Favor of The Possibilities of New Political Thought Dillon in 96 (Michael, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at The University of Lancaster, The Politics of Security) What is most at issue here, then, is the question of the limit and of how to finesse the closure of the fatally deterministic or apocalyptic thinking to which the issue of limits ordinarily gives rise in onto-theological thought: as the authoritative specification specification of an eschaton; as the invocation of our submission to it; or in terms of the closure of what it is possible for us to say, do and be in virtue of the operation of it. The question of the limit has therefore to be posed in a way that invokes a thinking which resists the siren calls of fatal philosophers and historians alike. That is why limits have to be thought differently, and why the question concerning limits has to be posed, instead, in terms of that which keeps things in play (for ‘ demarcation is lacking nothing can come to presence as it is’) exciting a thinking, in particular, which seeks continuously to keep ‘open the play of [ possibility by subtracting the sense of necessity, completeness, and smugness from established organ-izations of life’, all of which are promoted by an insistence upon security.
Education (1) State-centricity makes critical understanding of the world impossible. Biswas December 2007, (Shampa, Professor of Politics at Whitman College, “Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist,” Millennium: Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, p. 125-126 In making a case for the exilic orientation, it is the powerful hold of the nation-state upon intellectual thinking that Said most bemoans. 31 The nation-state of course has a particular pride of place in the study of global politics. The state-centricity of International Relations has not just circumscribed circumscribed the ability of scholars to understand a vast ensemble of globally oriented movements, exchanges exchanges and practices not reducible to the state, but also inhibited a critical intellectual intellectual orientation to the world outside the national borders within which scholarship is produced. Said acknowledges the fact that all intellectual work occurs in a (national) context which imposes upon one’s intellect certain linguistic boundaries, particular (nationally framed) issues and, most invidiously, certain domestic political constraints and pressures, but he cautions against the dangers of such restrictions upon the intellectual imagination. 32 Comparing the development of IR in two different national contexts – the French and the German ones – Gerard Holden has argued that different intellectual influences, different historical resonances of different issues, different domestic exigencies shape the discipline discipline in different contexts. 33 While this is to be expected to an extent, there is good reason to be cautious about how scholarly sympathies are expressed and circumscribed when the reach of one’s work (issues covered, people affected) so obviously extends beyond the national context. For scholars of the global, the (often unconscious) hold of the nation-state can be especially pernicious in the ways that it limits the scope and range of the intellectual imagination. Said argues that the hold of the nation is such that even intellectuals progressive progressive on domestic issues become collaborators of empire when it comes to state actions abroad. 34 Specifically, he critiques nationalistically based systems of education and the tendency in much of political commentary to frame analysis in terms of ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ - particularly evident in coverage of the war on terrorism - which automatically sets up a series of (often hostile) oppositions to ‘others’. He points in this context to the rather common intellectual tendency to be alert to the
abuses of others while remaining blind to those of one’s own. 35
Kritiks provide the crucial link between knowledge and action- a reorientation of political discourse towards epistemological concerns Owen 02, (David, Reader in Political Theory at the University of Southampton, “Reorienting International Relations: On Pragmatism, Pluralism Pluralism and Practical Reasoning”, Millennium: Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/ http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/653) reprint/31/3/653) Another way of elucidating what is involved in this re-orientation is to note that it links knowledge (and the value of knowledge) to action by encouraging reflection on problems and problem-constitution problem-constitution. With respect to the former, it orients IR to questions that are both epistemic and ethical: what are the effects of this kind of practice? Should we seek to govern these practices? If so, how? At what cost? With respect to the latter, it orients IR to critical reflection on both the political constitution of such-and-such practice as a problem potentially requiring government and IR’s own disciplinary constitution of such-and-such practice as a problem requiring government. In other words, it orients IR both to the task of addressing problematic practices but also to the task of reflecting on how these practices are constituted as problematic; that is, the nature of the assumptions, inferences, etc. that are brought to bear in this process of problem-constitution. Thus, for example, IR is oriented to addressing the problem posed by refugees in terms of how this problem is governed and how existing ways of governing it may be improved . However, IR is also oriented to reflection on the background picture against which this problem is constituted as a problem including , for example, the assumption that the liberty and welfare of the human population is best served by its division into the civic populations of sovereign states who have a primary duty to their own populations. In other words, while addressing the refugee problem as it is constituted, IR also involves reflecting on the plausibility and value of features of its current constitution constitution as a problem, such as this assumption concerning sovereignty and human welfare. If this argument has any cogency, it follows that rather than conceiving of IR in terms of a theoretical
war of all against all, we acknowledge that there is a role for different kinds of theoretical practice in IR that engage with different problem-constitution? The issues. How though are we to judge between rival positions within these different levels? Between rival accounts of problems and of problem-constitution? pragmatist response is to argue that such judgement involves attending to the capacity of the contesting accounts to guide our judgement and action. But how is this capacity to be judged? Responding to this question requires that we turn to the pragmatism’s concern with growth .
Education (2) Critical and cross-disciplinary approaches to IR reinvigorate the practice – critical approaches are key to improving the policymaking scene Biswas December 2007, (Shampa, Professor of Politics at Whitman College, “Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist,” Millennium: Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, p. 124 What Said offers in the place of professionalism is a spirit of ‘amateurism’ – ‘the desire to be moved not by profit or reward but by love for and unquenchable interest in the larger picture, in making connections across lines and barriers, in refusing to be tied down to a specialty, in caring for ideas and values despite the restrictions of a profession’, an amateur intellectual being one ‘who considers that to be a thinking and concerned member of a society one is entitled to raise moral issues at the heart of even the most technical and professionalized activity as it involves one’s country, its power, its mode of interacting with its citizens as well as with other societies’. ‘(T)he intellectual’s intellectual’s spirit as an amateur’, Said argues, ‘can enter and transform the merely professional routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead of doing what one is supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal project and original thoughts.’ 24 This requires not just a stubborn intellectual independence, but also shedding habits, jargons, tones that have inhibited IR scholars from conversing with thinkers and intellectuals outside the discipline, colleagues in history, anthropology, cultural studies, comparative literature, sociology as well as in non-academic venues, who raise the question of the global in different and sometimes contradictory ways. Arguing that the intellectual’s role is a ‘non-specialist’ one, 25 Said bemoans the disappearance of the ‘general secular intellectual’ – ‘figures of learning and authority, whose general scope over many
Discarding the professional strait- jacket of expertise-oriented expertise-oriented IR to venture into intellectual terrains that raise questions of global power and cultural negotiations in a myriad of intersecting and cross-cutting ways will yield richer and fuller conceptions of the ‘politics’ of global politics. Needless to say, inter- and cross- disciplinarity will also yield richer and fuller conceptions of the ‘global’ of global politics. It is to that that I turn next. fields gave them more than professional competence, that is, a critical intellectual style’. 26
Rules Bad (1) The Aff assumes that their framework is eternally truthful, the only method to epistemological understanding. They critique anything that does not agree with them, and reject it as heresy; in reality, their set of rules is just as false, with no access to special knowledge Johnston 99 (Ian, Research Associate, Vancouver Island U, "There's Nothing Nietzsche Couldn't Teach Ya A bout the Raising of the Wrist". http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/nietzs.htm)SLS
The analogy I want to put on the table is the comparison of human culture to a huge recreational complex in which a large number of different games are going on. Outside people are playing soccer on one field, rugby on another, American football on another, and Australian football on another, and so on. In the club house different groups of people are playing chess, dominoes, poker, and so on. There are coaches, spectators, trainers, and managers involved in each game. Surrounding the recreation complex is wilderness. These games we might use to characterize different cultural groups: French Catholics, German Protestants, scientists, Enlightenment rationalists, European socialists, liberal liberal humanitarians, American democrats, free thinkers, or what have you. The variety represents the rich diversity of intellectual, ethnic, political, and other activities. The situation is not static of course. Some games have far fewer players and fans, and the popularity is shrinking; some are gaining popularity rapidly and increasingly taking over parts of the territory available available. Thus, the traditional sport of Aboriginal the Democratic capitalist game of baseball is growing exponentially, as is the lacrosse is but a small remnant of what it was before contact. However, materialistic materialistic science game of archery. And they may well combine their efforts to create a new game or merge their leagues. When Nietzsche looks at Europe historically what he sees is that different games have been going on like this for centuries. He further sees that many of the participants in any one game have been aggressively convinced that their game is the "true" game, that it corresponds with the essence of games or is a close match to the wider game they imagine going on in the natural world, in the wilderness beyond the playing fields. So they have spent a lot of time producing their rule books and coaches' manuals and making claims about how the principles of their game copy or reveal or approximate the laws of nature. This has promoted and still promotes a good deal of bad feeling and fierce arguments. Hence, in addition any one game itself, within the group pursuing it there have always been all sorts of sub-games debating the nature of the activity, refining the rules, arguing over the correct version of the rule book or about how to educate the referees and coaches, and so on. Nietzsche's first goal
hese games are not eternally true, but have a history. Rugby began when a soccer player broke the rules and picked up the ball and ran with it. American football developed out of rugby and has changed and is still changing. Basketball had a precise origin which can be historically located. Rule books are written in languages which have a history by people with a deep psychological point to prove: the games are an unconscious expression of the particular desires of inventive games people at a very particular historical moment; these rule writers are called Plato, Augustine, Socrates, Kant, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Galileo, and so on. For various reasons they believe, or claim to believe, that the rules they come up with reveal something about the world beyond the playing field and are therefore "true" in a way that other rule books are not; they have, as it were, privileged access to reality and thus record, to use a favorite metaphor of Nietzsche's, the text of the wilderness. In attacking such claims, Nietzsche points out, the wilderness bears no relationship at all to any human invention like a rule book (he points out that nature is "wasteful beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, is to attack this dogmatic claim about the truth of the rules of any particular game. He does this, in part, by appealing to the tradition of historical scholarship which shows that t
fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power--how could you live according to this indifference. Living--is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature" (Epigram 9).
Because there is no connection with what nature truly is, such rule books are mere "foreground" pictures, fictions dreamed up, reinforced, altered, and discarded for contingent historical reasons. Moreover, the rule books often bear a suspicious resemblance to the rules of grammar of a culture (thus, for example, the notion of an ego as a thinking subject, Nietzsche points out, is closely tied to the rules of European languages which insist on a subject and verb construction as an essential part of any statement). So how do we know what we have is the truth? And why do we want the truth, anyway? People seem to need to believe that their games are true. But why? Might they not be better if they accepted that their games were false, were fictions, having nothing to do with the reality of nature beyond the recreational complex? If they understood the fact that everything they believe in has a history and that, as he says in the Genealogy of Morals, "only that which has no history can be defined," they would understand that all this proud history of searching for the truth is something quite different from what philosophers who have written rule books proclaim. Furthermore these historical changes and developments occur accidentally, accidentally, for contingent reasons, and have nothing to do with the games, or any one game , shaping itself in accordance with any ultimate game or any given rule book of games given by the wilderness, which is indifferent to what is going on. And there is no basis for the belief that, if we look at the history of the development of these games, we discover some progressive evolution of games towards some higher type. We may be able, like Darwin, to trace historical genealogies, to construct a narrative, but that narrative does not reveal any clear direction or any final goal or any progressive development. The genealogy of games indicates that history is a record of
The assertion that there is such a thing as progress is simply one more game, one more rule added by inventive minds (who need to believe in progress); it bears no relationship to nature beyond the sports complex. Ditto for science. So long as one is playing on a team, one follows the rules
contingent change.
and thus has a sense of what constitutes right and wrong or good and evil conduct in the game, and this awareness is shared by all those carrying out the same endeavour. To pick up the ball in soccer is evil (unless you are
different cultural communities have different standards of right and wrong conduct. These are determined by the artificial inventions called rule books, one for each game. These rule books have developed the rules historically; thus, they have no permanent status and no claim to privileged access. the goalie); and to punt the ball while running in American football is permissible but stupid; in Australian football both actions are essential and right. In other words,
Rules Bad (2) The wilderness surrounding the recreational complex of framework is reality- we cannot comprehend it no matter how we may try to proclaim truth through our dogmatic rules Johnston 99 (Ian, Research Associate, Vancouver Island U, "There's Nothing Nietzsche Couldn't Teach Ya A bout the Raising of the Wrist". http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/nietzs.htm)SLS
Aristotle maintains that there is a way of discovering and appealing to some authority outside any particular game in order to adjudicate moral and knowledge claims which arise in particular games or in conflicts between different games. Plato, of course, also believed in the existence of such a standard, but proposed a different route to discovering it. Now Nietzsche emphatically denies this possibility. A nyone who tries to do what Aristotle recommends is simply inventing another game (we can call it Super-sport) and is not discovering anything true about the real nature of games because reality (that's the wilderness surrounding us) isn't organized as a game . In fact, he argues, that we have created this recreational complex and all the activities which go on in it to protect ourselves from nature (which is indifferent to what we do with our lives), not to copy some recreational rule book which that wilderness reveals. Human culture exists as an
In other words,
affirmation of our opposition to or contra st with nature, not as an extension of rules which include both huma n culture and nature. That's why falsehoods about nature mig ht well be a lot more useful than truths, if they
If we think of the wilderness as a text about reality, as the truth about nature, then, Nietzsche claims, we have no access whatsoever to that text. What we do have is access to conflicting interpretations, none of them based on privileged access to a "true" text. Thus, the soccer players may think they and their game is superior to rugby and the rugby players, because soccer more closely represents the surrounding wilderness, but such statements about better and worse are irrelevant. There is nothing rule bound outside the games themselves. Hence, all dogmatic claims about the truth of all games or any particular game are false. enable us to live more fully human lives.
Creating epistemological frameworks creates fanatical followers- they will ostracize anyone who steps against them with violence and other nefarious means Johnston 99 (Ian, Research Associate, Vancouver Island U, "There's Nothing Nietzsche Couldn't Teach Ya A bout the Raising of the Wrist". http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/nietzs.htm)SLS
the offside rule in soccer. Without that the game could not proceed in its traditional way. Hence, soccer players see the offside rule as an essential part of their reality, and as long as soccer is the only game in town and we have no idea of its history (which might, for example, tell us about the invention of the off-side rule), then the offside rule is easy to interpret as a universal, a necessary requirement for social activity, and we will find and endorse scriptural texts which reinforce that belief, and our scientists will devote their time to linking the offside rule with the mysterious rumblings that come from the forest. And from this, one might be led to conclude that the offside rule is a Law of Nature, something which extends far beyond the realms of our particular game into all possible games and, beyond those, into the realm of the wilderness itself. Of course, there were powerful social and political forces (the coach and trainers and owners of the team) who made sure that people had lots of reasons for believing in the unchanging verity of present arrangements. So it's not surprising that we find plenty of learned books, training manuals, and locker room exhortations urging everyone to remember the offside rule and to castigate as "bad" those who routinely forget about that part of the game. We will also worship those who died in defence of the offside rule. And naturally any new game that did not recognize the offside rule would be a bad game, an immoral way to conduct oneself. So if some group tried to start a game with a different offside rule, that group would be attacked because they had violated a rule of nature and were thus immoral. But for contingent historical reasons, Nietzsche argues, that situation of one game in town did not last. The recreational unity of the area split up, and the growth of historical scholarship into the past demonstrated all too clearly that there was overwhelming evidence that all the various attempts to show that one particular game was privileged over any of the others, that there was one true game, are false, dogmatic, trivial, deceiving, and so on. For science has revealed that the notion of a necessary connection between the rules of any game and the wider purposes of the wilderness is simply an ungrounded assertion. There is no way in which we can make the connections between the historically derived fictions in the rule book and the mysterious and ultimately unknowable directions of irrational we cannot nature. To play the game of science, we have to believe in causes and effects, but there is no way we can prove that this is a true belief and there is a danger for us if we simply ignore that fact. Therefore, prove a link between the game and anything outside it. And history has shown us, just as Darwin's natural history has demonstrated, that all apparently eternal issues have a story, a line of development, a genealogy. Thus, concepts, like species, have no reality--they are temporary fictions imposed for the sake of defending a particular arrangement. Hence, God is dead. There is no eternal truth any more, no rule book in the sky, no ultimate referee or international Olympic committee chairman. Nietzsche Take, for example,
didn't kill God; history and the new science did. And Nietzsche is only the most passionate and irritating messenger, announcing over the PA system to anyone who will listen that someone like Kant or Descartes or Newton who thinks that what he or she is doing can be defended by an appeal to a system grounded in the truth of nature has simply been mistaken. So What's the Problem? This insight is obvious to Nietzsche, and he is troubled that no one seems to be worried about it or even to have noticed it. So he's moved to call the matter to our attention as stridently as possible, because he thinks that this realization requires a fundamental shift in how we live our lives. For Nietzsche Europe is in crisis. It has a growing power to make life comfortable and an enormous energy. But people seem to want to channel that energy into arguing about what amounts to
Why is this insight so worrying? Well, one point is that dogmatists get aggressive. Soccer players and rugby players who forget what Nietzsche is pointing out can start killing each other over questions which admit of no answer, namely, questions about which group has the true game, which group has privileged access to the truth. Nietzsche senses that dogmatism is going to lead to warfare, and he predicts that the twentieth century will see an unparalleled extension of warfare in the name of competing dogmatic truths. Part of his project is to wake up the people who are intelligent enough to respond to what he's talking about so that they can recognize the stupidity of killing each other for an illusion which they mistake for some "truth." competing fictions and to force everyone to adhere to a particular fiction.
