Understanding the Harms of Structural Racism and Policing

Notes
One frustration that is expressed by debaters/coaches that are interested in debating race is that few debaters
are willing to exercise their switch side debate skills and actually engage both sides of the conversation. Far too
often debaters simply reach for their framework files and hope that they can win that fairness/predictability
will win the day. The ongoing competitive success of teams debating race has demonstrated that the gut check
to framework strategy works for a limited amount of time. Eventually, like all good debaters, the best race
debaters master the argument that they debate against the most and gear much of their arguments from the
beginning of the debate on to answer this predictable strategy. For many of you, however, framework will still
be the option that you prefer either for competitive or ideological reasons. For others of you, framework
arguments are just more comfortable. This file is an attempt to engage in the conversation over race for the
debaters interested in expanding their argumentative options.
Three important notes about this file:
1- This file includes both sides: we have tried to the best of our ability to present the arguments for debating
race including defenses of methods, defenses of terminal impacts, answers to framework, answers to the Cap K,
etc...We believe that one of the key reasons that people gut check to framework is because they do not
understand the race arguments enough to feel comfortable engaging their opponents on the substance of their
claims. We found the process of cutting the affirmative articles/books invaluable and would highly recommend
that you not simply skip to the neg section of the file if you want to have the best chance to win with this file.
2- There is no such thing as a monolithic race team. One of the most damaging ethos moments in debate is
when someone makes an argument against a race team that does not apply. It shows a basic ignorance that
carries a performative element. It is one thing to get a link to politics wrong, it is a whole different problem to
assert that the other teams method is disempowering to people of color and get the method wrong. If you are
going to use any portion of this file, you must first understand the variety of arguments made by teams
debating race. That requires you to actually scout and research your opponents arguments.
3- There is some overlap with the framework file. The over-extension K, the personal experiences bad
arguments, and other arguments appear in both. Make sure that you have read both files closely to make sure
that you avoid redundancy.
*****AFF****
*RACISM/POLICING IMPACTS
Racism= Structural/ Daily
Ignoring structural racism plays into the faade of white ethics- perpetuates racism through
constant, seemingly normal policing, without recognizing the evil of the system
Martinot and Sexton 03- *prof at San Francisco State University**PhD in ethnic studies from
UC Berkeley, Director, African American Studies at UC Irvine (Steve and Jared, The Avant-garde of white
supremacy, http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~marto/avantguard.htm//MGD)
They prowl, categorizing and profiling, often turning those
profiles into murder violence without (serious) fear of

being called to account, all the while claiming impunity. What jars the imagination is not the fact of impunity
itself, but the realization that they are simply people working a job, a job they secured by making an application at
the personnel office. In events such as the shooting of Amadou Diallo, the true excessiveness is not in the massiveness of the
shooting, but in the fact that these cops were there on the street looking for this event in the first place, as a
matter of routine business. This spectacular evil is encased in a more inarticulable evil of banality, namely, that
the state assigns certain individuals to (well-paying) jobs as hunters of human beings, a furtive protocol for which this
shooting is simply the effect. But they do more than prowl. They make problematic the whole notion of social responsibility
such that we no longer know if the police are responsible to the judiciary and local administration or if the city is
actually responsible to them, duty bound by impunity itself. To the extent to which the police are a law unto themselves,
the latter would have to be the case. This unaccountable vector of inverted social responsibility would resonate
in the operating procedures in upper levels of civil administration as well. That is, civil governmental structures
would act in accordance with the paradigm of policingwanton violence legitimized by strict conformity to
procedural regulations. For instance, consider the recent case of a 12 year old African-American boy sentenced to prison for life without parole
for having killed a 6 year old African-American girl while acting out the moves he had seen in professional wrestling matches on TV. In demanding this
sentence, the prosecutor argued that the boy was a permanent menace to society, and had killed the girl out of extreme malice and consciousness of what
he was doing. A 12 year old child, yet Lionel Tate was given life without parole. In the name of social sanctity, the judicial system successfully terrorized
yet another human being, his friends, and relatives by carrying its proceduralism to the limit. The corporate media did the rest; several "commentators"
ridiculed Tate's claim to have imitated wrestling moves, rewriting his statement as a disreputable excuse: "pro wrestling made me do it." (San Francisco
Chronicle, 3/25/01) Thus, they transformed his nave awareness of bodies into intentional weaponry and cunning.
One could surmise, with greater justification than surmising the malice of the child, that the prosecutor made a significant career
step by getting this high-profile conviction. Beyond the promotion he would secure for a job well done, beyond the mechanical
performance of official outrage and the cynicism exhibited in playing the role, what animus drove the prosecutor to demand such a sentence? In the
face of the prosecutions sanctimonious excess, those who bear witness to Tates suffering have only inarticulate
outrage to offer as consolation. With recourse only to the usual rhetorical expletives about racism , the
procedural ritualism of this white supremacist operation has confronted them with the absence of a real means
of discerning the judiciarys dissimulated machinations. The prosecutor was the banal functionary of a civil
structure, a paradigmatic exercise of wanton violence that parades as moral rectitude but whose source is the
paradigm of policing. All attempts to explain the malicious standard operating procedure of US white
supremacy find themselves hamstrung by conceptual inadequacy ; it remains describable, but not
comprehensible. The story can be told, as the 41 bullets fired to slaughter Diallo can be counted, but the ethical
meaning remains beyond the discursive resources of civil society , outside the framework for thinkable thought. It is, of course,
possible to speak out against such white supremacist violence as immoral, as illegal, even unconstitutional. But the impossibility of thinking through to
the ethical dimension has a hidden structural effect. For those who are not racially profiled or tortured when arrested, who
are not tried and sentenced with the presumption of guilt, who are not shot reaching for their identification, all
of this is imminently ignorable. Between the inability to see and the refusal to acknowledge, a mode of social
organization is being cultivated for which the paradigm of policing is the cutting edge. We shall have to look
beyond racialized police violence to see its logic . The impunity of racist police violence is the first implication of its ignorability to white
civil society. The ignorability of police impunity is what renders it inarticulable outside of that hegemonic formation. If ethics is possible for
white civil society within its social discourses, it is rendered irrelevant to the systematic violence deployed
against the outside precisely because it is ignorable. Indeed, that ignorability becomes the condition of possibility
for the ethical coherence of the inside. The dichotomy between a white ethical dimension and its irrelevance to
the violence of police profiling is the very structure of racialization today. It is a twin structure, a regime of
violence that operates in two registers, terror and the seduction into the fraudulent ethics of social order; a
double economy of terror, structured by a ritual of incessant performance. And into the gap between them, common sense, which cannot
account for the double register or twin structure of this ritual, disappears into incomprehensibility. The language of common sense, through which we
bespeak our social world in the most common way, leaves us speechless before the enormity of the usual, of the business of civil procedures.
Repetition of Instances
White supremacy is hidden by its seeming ordinariness- rejecting it requires breaking the cycle
of repetition of white hegemony and policing
The gratuitousness of its repetition bestows upon white supremacy
an inherent discontinuity . It stops and starts

self-referentially, at whim. To theorize some political, economic, or psychological necessity for its repetition, its unending
return to violence, its need to kill is to lose a grasp on that gratuitousness by thinking its performance is
representable. And therein it hides. If the hegemony of white supremacy is already (and only) excessive, its acts of
repetition are its access to unrepresentability; they dissolve its excessiveness into invisibility as simply daily
occurrence. We can, for example, name the fact of Albert Woodfoxs nearly 30-year solitary confinement in Angola Prison, but it exceeds the capacity
of representation. (The ideological and cultural structure that conceives of and enables doing that to a person in the first place is
inarticulable.) The inner dynamic of our attempts to understand its supposedly underlying meaning or purpose masks
its ethic of impunity from us. White supremacy is nothing more than what we perceive of it; there is nothing
beyond it to give it legitimacy, nothing beneath it nor outside of it to give it justification. The structure of its banality is the
surface on which it operates. Whatever mythic content it pretends to claim is a priori empty. Its secret is that it has no depth. There is no dark
corner that, once brought to the light of reason, will unravel its system. In each instance of repetition, "what is repeated is the emptiness of
repetition," an articulation that "does not speak and yet has always been said " (Foucault 54). In other words, its truth lies in
the rituals that sustain its circuitous contentless logic; it is, in fact, nothing but its very practices.
Racial Contract
White supremacy is consistently overlooked- exploring the Racial Contact is key
Mills 97 ( Associate Prof of Philosophy @ U Illinois, Chicago 1997 Charles-; The Racial Contract; p. 1-3)
White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today. You will
not find this term in introductory, or even advanced, texts in political theory. A standard under graduate philosophy course
will start off with Plato and Aristotle, perhaps say something about Augustine, Aquinas, and Machiavelli, move on to Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Marx, and
then wind up with Rawls and Nozick. It will introduce you to notions of aristocracy, democracy, absolutism, liberalism, representative government,
socialism, welfare capitalism, and libertarianism . But though it covers more than two thousand years of Western political
thought and runs the ostensible gamut of political systems, there will be no mention of the basic political
system that has shaped the world for the past several hundred years. And this omission is not accidental.
Rather, it reflects the fact that standard textbooks and courses have for the most part been written and
designed by whites, who take their racial privilege so much for granted that they so not even see it as political,
as a form of domination. Ironically, the most important political system of recent global history-the system of domination by which white
people have historically ruled over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over nonwhite people-is not seen as a political system at all. It is
just taken for granted, it is the background against which other systems, which we are to see as political, are
highlighted. This book is an attempt to redirect your vision, to make you see what, in a sense, has been there all along. Philosophy has
remained remarkably untouched by the debates over multiculturalism, canon reform, and ethnic diversity
racking the academy both demographically and conceptually, it is one of the "whitest" of the humanities.
Blacks, for example, constitute only about 1 percent of philosophers in North American universities-a hundred
or so people out of more than ten thousand- and there are even fewer Latino, Asian American, and Native
American philosophers.1 Surely this underrepresentation itself stands in need of an explanation, and in my
opinion it can be traced in part to a conceptual array, and a standard repertoire of concerns whose abstractness
typically elides, rather than genuinely includes, the experience of racial minorities . Since (white) women have the
demographic advantage of numbers, there are of course far more female philosophers in the profession than nonwhite philosophers (though still not
proportionate to women's percentage of the population), and they have made far greater progress in developing alternative conceptualizations. Those
African American philosophers who do work in moral and political theory tend either to produce general work indistinguishable from that of their white
peers or to focus on local issues (affirmative action, the black "underclass") or historical figures (W. E. B. DuBois, Alain Locke) in a way that does not
aggressively engage the broader debate. What is needed is a global theoretical framework for situating discussions of race
and white racism, and thereby challenging the assumptions of white political philosophy, which would
correspond to feminist theorists' articulation of the centrality of gender, patriarchy, and sexism to traditional
moral and political theory. What is needed, in other words, is a recognition that racism (or, as I will argue,
global white supremacy) is itself a political system, a particular power structure of formal or informal rule,
socioeconomic privilege, and norms for the differential distribution of material wealth and opportunities,
benefits and burdens, rights and duties. The notion of the Racial Contract is, I suggest, one possible way of
making this connection with mainstream theory, since it uses the vocabulary and apparatus already developed
for contractarianism to map this unacknowledged system.
AT War O/W
Focus on international wars intentionally glosses over wars occurring on the domestic frontallows for the vicious, racist policing of minorities
Rodriguez 09- PhD in ethnic studies from UC Berkeley, prof at UC Riverside (Dylan, The Terms of
Engagement: Warfare, White Locality, and Abolition, Critical Sociology, vol. 36 no. 1 p. 151-173//MGD)
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the recent proliferation of antiwar liberal and progressive discourses challenging the
militarized US global regime of the Bush Administrations War on Terror, the circumstances, scenes, and locations of
warfare have been

insidiously periodized and re-sited not incidentally by the antiwar left itself to the nominal historical and geographic
exteriors of the USA. There is a political-discursive circuit bridging the extra-national and global military mobilizations of the US state, including
its knowledge-producing and violence-enhancing techniques, and the loyal opposition and dissension of the establishment US left to a state-induced
global war that it alleges is being conducted under false, flawed, or immoral pretensions. The energy conducted by this political-
discursive circuit (as with all functioning circuits) reproduces each of the nominally opposed elements of its bridge while, uniquely, generating
bodies of social thought (embodied by scholars, pundits, activists, state figures, and public media forms) and political performances (rallies, antiwar
agendas/manifestos, and rituals of public debate) that instruct a particular common sense of what war is. This common sense
obscures and consistently disavows
the material continuities between state-formed technologies of warmaking across

re-forming the US Homeland as a place of relative peace or at least as a place that
is not at war wherein state-produced and state-proctored institutionalizations of massive racist violence are
unrecognizable as such, and articulations of the current emergencies of domestic warfare e.g. by prison and penal
historical moments and geographies, while
abolitionists (Critical Resistance Publications Collective 2000), radical women of color antiviolence activists (INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
2006), and imprisoned radicals and revolutionaries (Hames-Garcia 2004; Rodrguez 2006) are held with suspicion as the allegations of
those (simply) unwilling to concede the fundamental tenability and universal reformability of the US social and state
forms. I am thus addressing a modality of war that is most often contained and disappeared into the categorically unremarkable:
that which is so taken-for-granted, assumed so organic to the production of the social landscape, that it is quite
literally not worthy of extended remark, much less sustained critical comment or analysis . As such, this historical
present is a warfare mosaic that refuses simplifying categorization precisely because its composition absorbs the
identification of its observers, and (following Althussers formulation) hails social subjects with individualizing narratives of national
vindication. The discursive techniques of this war subsume regularly available, locally recognizable artifacts of martial law
(e.g. announced and valorized police roundups of gangs and illegal aliens), a racist police state (euphemized as racial
profiling), and deeply political or proto-political civil insurrection (e.g. rioting, cop assassination, and property destruction) under the rubrics
of law, policing, justice, and (most importantly) peace or peacekeeping. In the context of this political-cultural national
production, ordinary people are not merely witnesses to state-waged atrocity in their midst, but are (sometimes
overlappingly) its participants, enablers, victims, and strategists. How is it that a national project so consistently and
openly reproduced through technologies of warmaking in its domestic and/or immanent geographies of nation-building (including
multiple frontiers and borderlands) can now generally avoid a scrutiny of critical intellectual (and radical political) emergency? Can a
theoretical rubric that focally situates the peculiar (though not unique or globally exceptional) white supremacist social
logic of US nation-building facilitate such a critical, radical scrutiny and praxis? I have chosen to elaborate these
overarching arguments and provocations through brief meditations on two overlapping, symbiotic, and historically specific articulations of US domestic
warfare: a) the current statecraft of Homeland Security as a formally multiculturalist and democracy-building national project that sustains a white
supremacist technology of locality-making (the social fabrication of a sense of place); and b) the post-1970s emergence of a US racist state that
persistently enunciates itself as a commonly domestic warmaking regime, such that its established terms of political engagement elaborate the structural
necessity of racist state violence as policing to the viability of the US national form itself. These projects mutually reproduce white
bodily integrity as a fundamental and necessary national-racial entitlement, a historically situated reification that forms the political and
conceptual premises of national, popular, and critical discourses more generally. In both cases, I am concerned with displacing the
arrested, default liberal political discourses and activist practices of an establishment/progressive left that is
politically unwilling and structurally unable to adequately address the conditions of US white supremacy in its
current articulations. Because the intent of these tracings is to suggest a genealogical trajectory rather than to fully exhaust the analytical and textual
depths of each topic, the primary task of this essay is to clarify the premises and embedded implications of a specific analytical framework as well as to
elaborate a political articulation that derives from this theoretical and conceptual positioning. I ask the reader to conceptualize this as praxis, or activist
theoretical work, rather than a conventional academic essay that moves from the pretenses of objectivity or scientific disinterest.
AT Obama/ Multiculteralism
Their logic of multiculturalism is paternalistic- only serves to retrench racism

The ascendance of the Obama administration signifies this complex tension between universal (white) humanity,
non-white subjection to logics of disposability/genocide, and multiculturalist empowerment in continuity
with the violence of the white supremacist state. White supremacy is historically characterized by a periodic
flexibility of phenotype (e.g. first black president as white supremacist nation-buildings moral/political
vindication) that is already determined by the structural durability of the social logics of racial
dominance/violence. Thus, To consider white supremacy as essential to American national formation (rather than an extremist deviation or
incidental departure from it) inaugurates a deeper theorization of how this material logic of violence overdetermines the social, political, economic, and
cultural structures that compose American white locality/globality and, crucially, generates the common sense indispensable to its ordering. It thus is
within the confines of Homeland Security as white supremacist territoriality a structure of feeling that organizes the cohesion of racial and spatial
entitlement that multiculturalism is recognized as a fact of life, an empirical feature of the world that is
inescapable and unavoidable, something to be tolerated, policed, and patriotically valorized at once and in turn. On the one
hand, white locality is a site of existential identification that generates (and therefore corresponds to) a white supremacist
materiality. As subjects (including ostensibly non-white subjects) identify with this sentimental structure a process that is not
cleanly agential or altogether voluntary they enter a relation of discomforting intimacy with embodied threats to their
sense of the local. Those alien bodies and subjects, whose movement suggests the possibility of disruption and disarticulation, become
objects of a discrete discursive labor as well as material/military endeavors. Most importantly, they become specified
and particularized sites for white localitys punitive performances: racialized punishment , capture, and discipline are
entwined in the historical fabric of white supremacist social formations from conquest and chattel enslavement onward, and
the emergence of white localitys hypermobility has necessitated new technologies commensurate with the
hyperpresence actual and virtual of white subjectivities. As white bodies and subjects exert the capacity to manifest authority and presence in
places they both do and do not physically occupy (call the latter absentee white supremacy for shorthand), the old relations of classical
white supremacist apartheid are necessarily and persistently reinvented: racial subjection becomes a
technology of inclusion that crucially accompanies and is radically enhanced by ongoing proliferations of racist
state and state-sanctioned violence. Further, this logic of multiculturalist white supremacist inclusion does not exclusively
rely on strategies of coercion or punishment to assimilate others such as in the paradigmatic examples of bodily subjection that
formed the institutional machinery of Native American boarding and mission schools (Adams 1995; Smith 2005), but instead builds upon the
more plastic and sustainable platforms of consensus and collective identity formation. I do not mean to suggest that
either consensus building or identity formation are benign projects of autonomous racial self-invention, somehow operating independently of the
structuring relations of dominance that characterize a given social formation. Rather, I am arguing that t he social technologies of white
supremacy are, in this historical moment, not reducible to discrete arrangements of institutionalized (and state legitimated) violence
or strategies of social exclusion (Da Silva 2007) but are significantly altered and innovated through the crises of bodily
proximity that white locality bears to its alien (and even enemy) populations. It is in these moments of discomfort, when white locality is
internally populated by alien others who have neither immigrated nor invaded the space, but have in multiple ways become
occupied by the praxis of white locality construction, that logics of incorporation and inclusion become crucial to the
historical project of white supremacist globality.
Wilderson- Ontological Death

Blackness is a condition of ontological death a vocabulary to describe this loss doesnt exist
the only way to break out of this structure is a complete destruction of civil society and the
epistemological foundations it rests on.
Wilderson No Date [Frank, Ass. Prof of African American Studies UC-Irvine Afro Pessimism http://ucipc.com/members/2008/06/23/afro-pessimism/ //liam]
Afro-Pessimism theorizes Blackness as a position of accumulation and fungibili ty (Saidiya Hartman); as condition
or relationof ontological death; rather than celebrate it as an identity of cultural plenitude. One of the guiding questions of my engagement with
Afro-Pessimism is: How are the political stakes of analysis and aesthetics raised and altered if we theorize the structural relation between Blacks and
Humanity as an antagonism (an irreconcilable encounter) as opposed to a conflict? The following question was asked on a graduate student exam for a
Critical Theory Seminar, entitled Sentient Objects and the Crisis of Critical Theory, that I taught Fall Quarter 2006. Question: Why are the theorists
under consideration [in this seminar] called Afro-Pessimists, and what characteristics do they have in common? Afro-Pessimists are framed as
suchbecause they theorize
an antagonism, rather than a conflicti.e. they perform a kind of work of understanding rather than that
to posit seemingly untenable solutions to the problems they raise . [The Afro-Pessimists argue] that
violence toward the black person happens gratuitously, hence without former transgression, and the even if the
means of repression change (plantation was replaced by prison, etc.), that doesnt change the structure of the repression
itself. Finally (and this is important in terms of the self-definition of the white person), a lot of repression happens on the level of
representation, which then infiltrates the unconscious of both the black and the white person Since these
structures are ontological, they cannot be resolved (there is no way of changing this unless the world as we know it comes an end);
of liberation, refusing
this is why the [Afro-Pessimist relational-schema] would be seen as the only true antagonism (while other repressive relations like class and gender
would take place on the level of conflictthey can be resolved, hence they are not ontological). [The Afro-Pessimists] work toward delineating a
relation rather than focus on a cultural object. Something that all the Afro-Pessimists seem to agree upon regarding social death are notions of kinship
(or lack there of), the absence of time and space to describe blackness There is no grammar of suffering to describe their loss
because the loss cannot be named. [The Afro-Pessimists] theorize the workings of civil society as contiguous with slavery, and discuss the
following as bearing witness to this contiguity: the inability of the slave (or the being-for-the-captor) to translate space into place and time into event; the
fact that the slave remains subject to gratuitous violence (rather than violence contingent on transgression); the natal alienation and social death of the
slave. [T]he Afro-Pessimists all seek tostage a metacritique of the current discourse identified as critical theory by excavating an antagonism that
exceeds it; to recognize this antagonism Jared, Frank, Taehyung forces a mode of death that expels subjecthood and forces objecthood [upon Blacks].
For Fanon, the solution to the black presence in the white world is not to retrieve and celebrate our African heritage, as
was one of the goals of the Negritude project. For Fanon, a
revolution that would destroy civil society, as we know it would be a

more adequate response. I think the Afro-Pessimist such as Hartman, Spillers, and Marriott would argue there is no place for the black, only
prosthetics, techniques which give the illusion of a relationality in the world. Like the work of Jared Sexton, Saidiya Hartman, David Marriott, Hortense
Spillers, Frantz Fanon, Lewis Gordon, Joy James, and others, my poetry, creative prose, scholarly work, and film production are predicated on the notion
that slavery did not end in 1865; the United States simply made adjustments to the force of Black resistance without diminishing the centrality of Black
captivity to the stability and coherence of civil society.
Wilderson- White Body Bad

The Affirmative makes a fundamentally flawed assumption that there can be a reconciliation
between the apparatus of white America and Red and Black bodies.
The West is only able to maintain its hegemony because it disavows the genocidal act of clearing
that maintains the coherence of the white body.
Wilderson 10 [Frank Unspeakable Ethics, Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S.
Antagonisms, 141-5, //liam]
Well over twenty thousand Westerns and frontier films have been shot and released since the dawn of cinema.5 Even though they may only appear in a
small percentage of the films and for relatively few minutes, Native Americans are central to the libidinal economy of the entire genre. The
Western's cinematic imaginary casts the "Savage" as a "clear and probable" danger lurking just beyond the
Settler's clearing. The clearing, then, is imagined by the Western as a space whose safety is under constant, if
sometimes unspoken threat from "Savages" who inhabit the "frontier" or who, typically at the beginning of a film, have inexplicably
"jumped the reservation." Clearing, in the Settler/"Savage" relation, has two grammatical structures, one as a noun and the other as a verb. But the
Western only recognizes clearing as a noun. Westerns call on us to bow our heads reverently, to give this noun a proper name and refer to it fondly, the
way Christians gave the child a proper name and called it "the Little Baby Jesus." Similarly, the Western interpellates us with such reverence to the
clearing, whose proper name might be the Little Baby Civil Society, a genuflection bestowed on the clearing by, for example, Stagecoach and other films
by John Ford. But prior to the clearing's fragile infancy, that is, before its cinematic legacy as a newborn place name, it labored not across the land as a
noun but as a verb on the body of the "Savage," speaking civil society's essential status as an effect for genocide. What would happen to the libidinal
economy of civil society if, over the course of one hundred years, it had been subjected to twenty thousand cinematic mirrors, films about itself in which
it was cast not as an infant cartography of budding democratic dilemmas, but as a murderous projection, a juggernaut for extermination? Given the
centrality of the White child, the infant, to the Western's cinematic solicitation of faith in the ethics of the Little Baby Civil Society, how shattered might
that faith become were the films to reveal that the newborn babe suckled Indian blood instead of White breast milk?6 The sinews of civil institutionality
could not sustain themselves libidi-nally under such conditions. And civil society would lose its mid- to late twentieth-century elasticity. There
would be, for example, no social space for the White cultural progressive who revels in Native American lore,
studies Indian place names, or otherwise derives pleasure and an enhanced sense of purpose from his or her
respect for Indian culturejust as there would be no social space for the White person who romanticizes the history of the
pioneering West while neglecting the genocide that clears the space for this history. (These two personas are not so far
apart.) Anyone who was White and did not speak, socially and libidinally, in what would be a hyperarticulate and
thoroughly self-conscious anti-Indian fascism would find him- or herself unable to broker relations with other
members of civil society, for the ruse of social, sexual, and political hybridity which Whiteness manages to convince itself of, would become
untenable at best, treasonous at worse. One could not, for example, be in favor of Native American sweat lodge ceremonies, fishing or gaming rights and
be, simultaneously, enfranchised within civil society. Such postcolonial or democratic questions would become structurally
impossible: one would either be among the living or among the deadbut not, as is assumed today, both . Cinema
comes into existence during the 1890s, precisely when the Little Baby Civil Society was being weaned from its self-image as a murderous projection and
establishing itself as a site where the leadership of ideas (hegemony) replaces direct relations of force, a place where a robust political, sexual, and social
hybridity counteracts crude Manichean negotiations of violence. Early cinema is on the cusp of that attempt . A moment when the "we" of
White subjectivity is moving from "We are murderers" toward "We are citizens." What is important for our
investigation is the centrality of "Savage" ontology and the institutionality of cinema to the rhetoric, rather than
the actual history, of this transition (where, as I have indicated, "transition" is merely a euphemism for
disavowal).
Wilderson- AT Social Reform

Regardless of social reforms, the black body is still excluded from the social order. An
antagonistic method is the only accurate way to describe the suffering.
Wilderson 10 [Frank, Assoc prof of African American Studies Cal-Irvine, Red, White, & Black, pp 2-5
//liam]
What are we to make of a world that responds to the most lucid enunciation of ethics with violence? What are
the foundational questions of the ethico-political? Why are these questions so scandalous that they are rarely
posed politically, intellectually, and cinematicallyunless they are posed obliquely and unconsciously, as if by accident? Give Turtle
Island back to the "Savage." Give life itself back to the Slave. Two simple sentences, fourteen simple words, and the structure of U.S. (and perhaps
global) antagonisms would be dismantled. An "ethical modernity" would no longer sound like an oxymoron. From there we could busy ourselves with
important conflicts that have been promoted to the level of antagonisms, such as class struggle, gender conflict, and immigrants' rights. One cannot
but wonder why questions that go to the heart of the ethico-political , questions of political ontology, are so unspeakable
in intellectual meditations, political broadsides, and even socially and politically engaged feature films. Clearly they can be spoken,
even a child could speak those lines, so they would pose no problem for a scholar , an activist, or a filmmaker. And yet, what is
also clearif the filmogra-phies of socially and politically engaged directors, the archive of progressive
scholars, and the plethora of left-wing broadsides are anything to go byis that what can so easily be spoken is
now (500 years and 250 million Settlers/Masters on) so ubiquitously unspoken that these two simple sentences, these fourteen words
not only render their speaker "crazy" but become themselves impossible to imagine. Soon it will be forty years since
radical politics, left-leaning scholarship, and socially engaged feature films began to speak the unspeakable.2 In the 1960s and early 1970s the questions
asked by radical politics and scholarship were not Should the United States be overthrown? or even Would it be overthrown? but when and howand,
for some, what would come in its wake. Those steadfast in their conviction that there remained a discernable quantum of ethics in the United States writ
large (and here I am speaking of everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. prior to his 1968 shift, to the Tom Hayden wing of Students for Democratic
Society, to the Julian Bond and Marion Barry faction of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to Bobby Kennedy Democrats) were
accountable, in their rhetorical machinations, to the paradigmatic Zeitgeist of the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the Weather
Underground. Radicals and progressives could deride, reject, or chastise armed struggle mercilessly and cavalierly
with respect to tactics and the possibility of "success," but they could not dismiss revolution-as-ethic because
they could not make a convincing caseby way of a paradigmatic analysisthat the United States was an
ethical formation and still hope to maintain credibility as radicals and progressives. Even Bobby Kennedy (as a
U.S. attorney general) mused that the law and its enforcers had no ethical standing in the presence of Blacks .3 One
could (and many did) acknowledge America's strength and power. This seldom rose to the level of an ethical
assessment, however, remaining instead an assessment of the "balance of forces." The political discourse of
Blacks, and to a lesser extent Indians, circulated too widely to wed the United States and ethics credibly . The raw
force of COINTELPRO put an end to this trajectory toward a possible hegemony of ethical accountability. C onsequently, the power of
Blackness and Redness to pose the question and the power to pose the question is the greatest power of allretreated as did
White radicals and progressives who "retired" from the struggle. The question lies buried in the graves of young
Black Panthers, AIM warriors, and Black Liberation Army soldiers, or in prison cells where so many of them
have been rotting (some in solitary confinement) for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and at the gates of the academy where the
"crazies" shout at passersby. Gone are not only the young and vibrant voices that effected a seismic shift on the political landscape, but also the
intellectual protocols of inquiry, and with them a spate of feature films that became authorized, if not by an unabashed revolutionary polemic, then
certainly by a revolutionary Zeitgeist. Is it still possible for a dream of unfettered ethics , a dream of the Settlement and the Slave
estate's4 destruction, to manifest itself at the ethical core of cinematic discourse when this dream is no longer a constituent element of
political discourse in the streets or of intellectual discourse in the academy? The answer is "no" in the sense that, as history has shown, what cannot be
articulated as political discourse in the streets is doubly foreclosed on in screenplays and in scholarly prose, but "yes" in the sense that in even the most
taciturn historical moments, such as ours, the grammar of Black and Red suffering breaks in on this foreclosure, albeit like the somatic compliance of
hysterical symptomsit registers in both cinema and scholarship as a symptom of awareness of the structural antagonisms. The election of
President Barack Obama does not mitigate the claim that this is a taciturn historical moment. Neoliberalism
with a Black face is neither the index of a revolutionary advance nor the end of anti-Blackness as a constituent
element of U.S. antagonisms. If anything, the election of Obama enables a plethora of shaming discourses in
response to revolutionary politics and "legitimates" widespread disavowal of any notion that the United States
itself, and not merely its policies and practices, is unethical . Between 1967 and 1980, we could think cinemati-cally and
intellectually of Blackness and Redness as having the coherence of full-blown discourses. From 1980 to the present, however, Blackness and Redness
manifest only in the rebar of cinematic and intellectual (political) discourse, that is, as unspoken grammars. This grammar can be discerned in the
cinematic strategies (lighting, camera angles, image composition, and acoustic design), even when the script labors for the spectator to imagine social
turmoil through the rubric of conflict (i.e., a rubric of problems that can be posed and conceptually solved) as opposed to the rubric of antagonism (an
irreconcilable struggle between entities, or positions, the resolution of which is not dialectical but entails the obliteration of one of the positions). In
other words, even when films narrate a story in which Blacks or Indians are beleaguered with problems that the script insists are conceptually coherent
(usually having to do with poverty or the absence of "family values"), the nonnarrative, or cinematic, strategies of the film often disrupt this coherence by
posing the irreconcilable questions of Red and Black political ontologyor nonontology. The grammar of antagonism breaks in on the
mendacity of conflict. Semiotics and linguistics teach us that when we speak, our grammar goes unspoken. Our grammar is assumed. It is the
structure through which the labor of speech is possible.5 Likewise, the grammar of political ethics the grammar of assumptions regarding the ontology
of sufferingwhich underwrites film theory and political discourse (in this book, discourse elaborated in direct relation to radical action), and which
underwrites cinematic speech (in this book, Red, White, and Black films from the mid-1960s to the present) is also unspoken. This
notwithstanding, film theory, political discourse, and cinema assume an ontological grammar, a structure of
suffering. And this structure of suffering crowds out others, regardless of the sentiment of the film or the spirit
of unity mobilized by the political discourse in question.
Recent social advances dont mean anything the conditions of slavery might seem nicer, but at
the end of the day youre still a slave.
Wilderson and Howard 10 [Frank, Assoc prof of African American Studies, Percy, Psychotherapist, Frank
Wilderson, Wallowing in the Contradictions, Part 2 http://percy3.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/frankwilderson-wallowing-in-the-contradictions-part-2/ //liam]
FW
Yeah. Orlando Patterson wrote a book called Slavery and Social Death , and Im not sure Patterson would agree with
where Ive taken this but what I like about his book is he says that work is an experience of slavery but it doesnt define slavery. He says that
slavery is general dishonor, that the being is dishonored regardless of what he or she does natal alienation of
the being whose family ties or kinship structure in his or her mind is not respected by anyone else. (Slavery is also
punctuated by) openness to gratuitous violence, which is a body that you can do anything with . And what interests
me is that if that becomes the definition of a slave, the slave can work, but the slave can also sit on a divan and eat bon-bons.
PH
Absolutely.
FW
You know? In my hometown of New Orleans in the days of physical slavery you could buy the slave to inject them with poisons to watch them
die. So whats interesting to me is that, as I was saying earlier today, theres a way in which the Arabs and the Europeans came to
a
consensus (not sitting down at a table but over years), that Africa is a place where people are generally dishonored, where
we do not respect their kinship structures and where their bodies are available to us to do to them whatever we
would. This has been our (Black peoples) place ever since then. Once I got to that and started thinking that through it occurred to
me that cinema was just another place in which the Black Body was possessed and deployed in the way that one would possess and deploy a slave in any
other context.
PH
Right.
FW
And that there is no reformist program for ridding ourselves of that . I mean, its like if were gonna get out of that
were gonna be in a whole new world order.

PH
Right. And its interesting because you look at film as just a context, a context for this process to occur. You know, one can I think Say the same
thing about the NBA.
FW
Exactly, yeah.
PH
It brings back the scenario in which the slave can eat bon-bons and make $20-million a year.
FW
Exactly, exactly.
PH
But youre still a slave, because to me, that really sort of encapsulates the whole conceptualization of fungibility.
The current order derives its ontological consistency in opposition to blackness, trying to work
within this system is definitionally impossible. Instead, striving for impossible reparations is
the only way to create a politics beyond current comprehension.
Wilderson, Wallowing in the Contradictions, Part 1 http://percy3.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/frank-bwilderson-%E2%80%9Cwallowing-in-the-contradictions%E2%80%9D-part-1/ //liam]
FW Reparations
suggests a conceptually coherent loss. The loss of land, the loss of labor power, etc. In other words, there has to be
some form of articulation between the party that has lost and the party that has gained for reparations to make
sense. No such articulation exists between Blacks and the world . This is, ironically, precisely why I support the Reparations Movement;
but my emphasis, my energies, my points of attention are on the word Movement and not on the word Reparation . I support the movement because I
know it is a movement toward the end of the world; a movement toward a catastrophe in epistemological
coherence and institutional integrityI support the movement aspect of it because I know that repair is impossible; and any struggle
that can act as a stick up artist to the world, demanding all that it cannot give ( which is everything ), is a movement
toward something so blindingly new that it cannot be imagined. This is the only thing that will save us. PH As a
Psychotherapist, I was very interested to see your contrasting Frantz Fanon and Lacan concerning their conceptualizations of potential paths to emancipation in the libidinal
economy, as you put it. I am ashamed to admit that I have never read Fanon, but have read Lacan. Please illuminate your idea that the stark difference in their
conceptualizations of conflict/antagonism differ are based on the fact that Lacan would still see Blacks as fundamentally situated in personhood, but that Fannon (and
yourself) see Blacks as situated a priori in absolute dereliction. FW This is a big question, too big for a concise answerI think I take about thirty to forty pages to try and get
my head around this in the book. But the key to the answer lies in the concept of contemporaries. Fanon rather painfully and meticulously shows us how the human race is a
community of contemporaries. In addition, this community
vouchsafes its coherence (it knows its borders) through the presence of
Blacks. If Blacks became part of the human community then the concept of contemporaries would have no
outside; and if it had no outside it could have no inside . Lacan assumes the category and thus he imagines the analysands problem in terms of
how to live without neurosis among ones contemporaries. Fanon interrogates the category itself. For Lacan the analysands suffer psychically due to problems extant within
the paradigm of contemporaries. For Fanon, the analysand suffers due to the existence of the contemporaries themselves and the fact that s/he is a stimulus for anxiety for
those who have contemporaries. Now,
a contemporarys struggles are conflictualthat is to say, they can be resolved because

they are problems that are of- and in the world. But a Blacks problems are the stuff of antagonisms: struggles
that cannot be resolved between parties but can only be resolved through the obliteration of one or both of the
parties. We are facedwhen dealing with the Blackwith a set of psychic problems that cannot be resolved through any
form of symbolic intervention such as psychoanalysisthough addressing them psychoanalytically we can begin to explain the antagonism (as I have done in
my book, and as Fanon does), but it wont lead us to a cure.
*AT FRAMEWORK
Discussion of Race Key

Public discourse and deliberation of the intersection of race and education are critical to
producing social change
Reid-Brinkley, 8 (Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley, University of Pittsburgh Department of Communications, THE HARSH REALITIES OF
ACTING BLACK: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND
STYLE 2008)
So, within public discourse, how race is coded rhetorically in public deliberation is of critical importance in
evaluating the efficacy of efforts to increase racial and ethnic diversity. We need knowledge of how rhetorical
style in American public deliberation functions within a race, 7 class, and gender hierarchy. How is race signified in
public deliberations? How does this signification impact efforts to create a more diverse or inclusive public sphere? How do language, social structures,
practices and styles signify race? And, how does white privilege affect the deliberation process? These series of questions must inform our critical efforts
at understanding the rhetoric of race, ethnicity and diversity in American education discourse. Racism is ever so much more subtle now
than it has been in the past. It is this subtle nature of racism and white privilege that provide a cover for the
normal, everyday practices that reproduce racial separations and social dominance.32 We can only study
these normal, everyday practices of subtle racism by studying localized examples of racial conflict . The
dependence on standards and accountability discourse is especially significant when attached
to discussions of racial inequity in student academic performance. 33 In terms of the European context, Gillborn
notes that such reform efforts have resulted in higher rates of minority academic underachievement.34 Educational psychology scholar Jerome Taylor
argues that the conditions are similar in the American context.35 In America, this persistent problem within
public education has been connected to the black/ white achievement gap mentioned above. The last two
decades have indicated a measured decline in the academic achievement of black students in relation to white students
in the U.S., particularly as measured by standardized testing measures. Reform efforts designed to offset the inequities in the
educational experience of the poor and racial and ethnic minorities demonstrates a limited effectiveness in
reversing the current underachievement trend. Thus, America faces a grave difficulty in resolving this situation.
We find it difficult to understand why such a situation exists in the first place. In essence, it is difficult to believe that the Civil Rights Movement and the
passage of legal legislation to end segregation and 8 discriminatory practices, targeted at racial and ethnic minorities, did not permanently resolve the
problem. Theoretically, all Americans have equal access to the tools that are necessary to lead a successful life
with the full benefits of citizenship. The Civil Rights Movement and the Womens Movement ensured that racial and ethnic minorities and
women achieved equality with white men and thus barriers to their successful participation in society had been removed. If equality has been
achieved, and yet we find that the heretofore excluded populations are still unable to achieve the educational
and economic heights of the American dream, then one must look to that population for the
explanation rather than to American society in general.
Roleplaying Bad
Roleplaying detaches debaters from real world participation playing the United States
Federal Government promotes an imperialist paradigm
STYLE 2008)
So, within public discourse, how race is coded rhetorically in public deliberation is of critical impor
Mitchell observes that the stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a sense of detachment associated with the
spectator posture.115 In other words, its participants are able to engage in debates where they are able to distance
themselves from the events that are the subjects of debates. Debaters can throw around terms like torture,
terrorism, genocide and nuclear war without blinking. Debate simulations can only serve to distance the
debaters from real world participation in the political contexts they debate about. As William Shanahan remarks: the topic established a
relationship through interpellation that inhered irrespective of what the particular political affinities of the debaters were. The relationship was both
political and ethical, and needed to be debated as such. When we blithely call for United States Federal Government
policymaking, we are not immune to the colonialist legacy that establishes our place on this
continent. We cannot wish away the horrific atrocities perpetrated everyday in our name
simply by refusing to acknowledge these implications (emphasis in original).116 118 The objective stance of the
policymaker is an impersonal or imperialist persona. The policymaker relies upon acceptable forms of evidence, engaging in
logical discussion, producing rational thoughts. As Shanahan, and the Louisville debaters note, such a stance is integrally
linked to the normative, historical and contemporary practices of power that produce and maintain varying
networks of oppression. In other words, the discursive practices of policy-oriented debate are developed within,
through and from systems of power and privilege. Thus, these practices are critically implicated in the
maintenance of hegemony. So, rather than seeing themselves as government or state actors, Jones and Green choose to perform
themselves in debate, violating the more objective stance of the policymaker and require their opponents to
do the same.
Fairness=Excusionary
Roleplaying detaches debaters from real world participation playing the United States
Federal Government promotes an imperialist paradigm
STYLE 2008)
So, within public discourse, how race is coded rhetorically in public deliberation is of critical impor
Mitchell observes that the stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a sense of detachment associated with the
spectator posture.115 In other words, its participants are able to engage in debates where they are able to distance
themselves from the events that are the subjects of debates. Debaters can throw around terms like torture,
terrorism, genocide and nuclear war without blinking. Debate simulations can only serve to distance the
debaters from real world participation in the political contexts they debate about. As William Shanahan remarks: the topic established a
relationship through interpellation that inhered irrespective of what the particular political affinities of the debaters were. The relationship was both
political and ethical, and needed to be debated as such. When we blithely call for United States Federal Government
policymaking, we are not immune to the colonialist legacy that establishes our place on this
continent. We cannot wish away the horrific atrocities perpetrated everyday in our name
simply by refusing to acknowledge these implications (emphasis in original).116 118 The objective stance of the
policymaker is an impersonal or imperialist persona. The policymaker relies upon acceptable forms of evidence, engaging in
logical discussion, producing rational thoughts. As Shanahan, and the Louisville debaters note, such a stance is integrally
linked to the normative, historical and contemporary practices of power that produce and maintain varying
networks of oppression. In other words, the discursive practices of policy-oriented debate are developed within,
through and from systems of power and privilege. Thus, these practices are critically implicated in the
maintenance of hegemony. So, rather than seeing themselves as government or state actors, Jones and Green choose to perform
themselves in debate, violating the more objective stance of the policymaker and require their opponents to
do the same.
AT They Exclude the Neg

Only deconstructing racism can solve their fairness and democracy claims- framework
arguments are just instances of policing which prevent true injustice from being challenged
This confluence of repetition and transformation, participation and
subjection gets conjugated inversely so that the

target becomes the aggressor and the uniformed aggressors become a priesthood, engineering a political
culture whose construction is the practice of whiteness. What are wholly and essentially immanent are the structures
of racist reason that produce practices without motive. "Police procedures" become pure form because they are
at once both self-defined and subordinated to the implicit prerogatives of this political culture. They empty the law of any
content that could be called justice, substituting murderousness and impunity. The "social procedures" that burgeon in the wake of this
engineering also become pure form, emptying social exchange as the condition of white social cohesion. It flattens all ideals of political life to
a Manichean structure that it depicts as whiteness versus evil. It is a double economy. On the one hand, there is an
economy of clearly identifiable injustices, spectacular flash points of terror, expressing the excesses of the state-sanctioned system of racial
categorization. On the other, there is the structure of inarticulability itself and its imposed unintelligibility, an economy of the loss of meaning,
a hyper-economy. It is this hyper-economy that appears in its excess as banal; a hyper-injustice that is reduced and
dissolved in the quotidian as an aura, while it is refracted in the images of the spectacular economy itself. Between the spectacular as the rule and the
banal as excess, in each of the moment of its reconstruction, the law of white supremacist attack signifies that there is no law.
This hyper-economy, with its hyper-injustice, is the problem we confront. The intractability of racism lies in its hidden and
unspeakable terror, an implicate ethic of impunity. A repetition of violence as standard operating (police) procedure,
an insidious common sense, renders any real notion of justice or democracy on the map of white supremacy wholly alien and
inarticulable.
AT State Reform
State reform fails- it looks to the government to arbitrate the injustice its police agents first
perpetuated. Only radical critique can shatter traditional concepts of racism.
In 1998, Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex, a national conference and strategy-session, reposed
the
question of the relations between white supremacy and state violence. Fascism was the concept often used to link these two
terms and the prison industrial complex was considered to be its quintessential practice. The political-intellectual discourse generated
at and around Critical Resistance shattered the narrow definitions of racism that characterize many conventional (even
leftist) accounts and produced instead a space for rethinking radical alternatives. This sort of shift in the political
landscape has been imperative for a long time now. The police murder of Amadou Diallo comes to mind as an
event requiring such re-conceptualization . The Diallo killing was really plural since it involved other police
murders as imminent in the same event. Diallos killing was plural beyond his own many deaths in those few seconds, a killing that took place in the
eyes of his friends and family from as far away as Guinea. In the immediate wake of his killers' acquittals, the NYPD murdered
Malcolm Ferguson, a community organizer who had been active in attempting to get justice for Diallo. (The police
harassed Fergusons within the next year and arrested his brother on trumped up charges). Two weeks after Fergusons murder, the police killed
Patrick Dorismund because he refused to buy drugs from an undercover cop, because he fought back when the
cop attacked. The police then harassed and attacked Dorismunds funeral procession in Brooklyn a week later, hospitalizing several in attendance.
(The police took the vendetta all the way to the grave). Tyisha Miller was murdered in her car in Riverside, California by four cops who knocked on the
window of her car and found that she simply didn't respond. Angela Davis tells the story of "Tanya Haggerty in Chicago, whose cell
phone was the potential weapon that allowed police to justify her killing," just as Daillo's wallet was the "gun"
at which four cops fired in unison. To the police, a wallet in the hand of black man is a gun whereas that same
wallet in the hand of a white man is just a wallet. A cell phone in the hands of a black woman is a gun; that
same phone in a white womans hand is a cell phone. There were local movements in each of these cities to protest
acts of police murder and in each case the respective city governments were solicited to take appropriate action. Under
conventional definitions of the government, we seem to be restricted to calling upon it for protection from its own
agents. But what are we doing when we demonstrate against police brutality, and find ourselves tacitly calling
upon the government to help us do so? These notions of the state as the arbiter of justice and the police as the
unaccountable arbiters of lethal violence are two sides of the same coin. Narrow understandings of mere racism
are proving themselves impoverished because they cannot see this fundamental relationship. What is needed is
the development of a radical critique of the structure of the coin. There are two possibilities: first, police violence is a deviation
from the rules governing police procedures in general. Second, these various forms of violence (e.g., racial profiling, street
murders, terrorism) are the rule itself as standard operation procedure. For instance, when the protest movements
made public statements they expressed an understanding of police violence as the rule of the day and not as a
shocking exception. However, when it came time to formulate practical proposals to change the fundamental nature of
policing, all they could come up with concretely were more oversight committees, litigation, and civilian review
boards ("with teeth"), none of which lived up to the collective intuition about what the police were actually
doing. The protest movements readings of these events didnt seem able to bridge the gap to the programmatic. The language in which we
articulate our analyses doesnt seem to allow for alternatives in practice. Even those who take seriously the
second possibility (violence as a rule) find that the language of alternatives and the terms of relevance are
constantly dragged into the political discourse they seek to oppose, namely, that the system works and is
capable of reform.
State norms serve to perpetuate a sense of white belonging at the price of black exclusionbecomes a culture of racial profiling and nonchalant, organized violence
What keeps getting repeated here? It is not just the repetition of derogation or acts of police impunity. While
the police wreak

havoc on the lives of those they assault, exercising a license implicit in and extending racial profiling, they
engage in a vital cultural labor. On the one hand, racial profiling enables those unprofiled (the average white man
and white women who are linked to one) to ignore the experience of social dislocation that profiling produces. They may recognize
the fact of profiling itself, but they are free from the feeling of dread. Indeed, profiling creates insouciance in an atmosphere of
organized violence. Official discourse seeks to accustom us to thinking about state violence as a warranted part
of the social order. For them the security of belonging accompanies the re-racialization of whiteness as the
intensification of anti-blackness. The police elaborate the grounds for the extension of a renewed and
reconfigured white supremacist political economic order . On the other hand, there is terror and the police are its vanguard. The
law, clothed in the ethic of impunity, is simply contingent on the repetition of its violence. One cannot master it,
regardless of the intimacy or longevity of one's experience with it. One can only sense its frightening closeness as a probability, as serial states of brutality
or derogation. The dread and suffering of those in the way of these repeated spasms of violence is always here and always on the horizon. In the face of
racial profiling by the police, however prepared those profiled may be for that aggression, it always appears unexpectedly.
White society re-creates itself through manipulating knowledge- claims of superficial

understanding only play into the system. True challenges require questioning of not only state
policies but broader societal structures.
The foundations of US white supremacy are far from stable. Owing to the instability of white supremacy, the
social structures of whiteness must ever be re-secured in an obsessive fashion . The process of re-inventing
whiteness and white supremacy has always involved the state, and the state has always involved the utmost paranoia. Vast
political cataclysms such as the civil rights movements that sought to shatter this invention have confronted the state as
harbingers of sanity. Yet the states absorption and co-optation of that opposition for the reconstruction of the white social order has
been reoccurring before our very eyes. White supremacy is not reconstructed simply for its own sake, but for the sake of
the social paranoia, the ethic of impunity, and the violent spectacles of racialization that it calls the
"maintenance of order" all of which constitute its essential dimensions. The cold, gray institutions of this societycourts, schools,
prisons, police, army, law, religion, the two-party system become the arenas of this brutality, its excess and spectacle, which they then
normalize throughout the social field. It is not simply by understanding the forms of state violence that the structures of
hyper-injustice and their excess of hegemony will be addressed. If they foster policing as their paradigmincluding imprisonment, police
occupations, commodified governmental operations, a renewed Jim Crow, and a re-criminalization of race as their version of social orderthen to
merely catalogue these institutional forms marks the moment at which understanding stops. To pretend to understand
at that point would be to affirm what denies understanding. I nstead, we have to understand the state and its order as a mode of
anti-production that seeks precisely to cancel understanding through its own common sense. For common
sense, the opposite of injustice is justice; however, the opposite of hyper-injustice is not justice. The existence of hyper-injustice implies
that neither a consciousness of injustice nor the possibility of justice any longer applies. Justice as such is incommensurable with and
wholly exterior to the relation between ordinary social existence and the ethic of impunity including the modes of
gratuitous violence that it fosters. The pervasiveness of state-sanctioned terror, police brutality, mass
incarceration, and the endless ambushes of white populism is where we must begin our theorizing. Though
state practices create and reproduce the subjects, discourses, and places that are inseparable from them, we can no longer
presuppose the subjects and subject positions nor the ideologies and empiricisms of political and class forces. Rather, the analysis of a
contingent yet comprehensive state terror becomes primary. This is not to debate the traditional concerns of radical leftist
politics that presuppose (and close off) the question of structure, its tenacity, its systematic and inexplicable gratuitousness.
The problem here is how to dwell on the structures of pervasiveness, terror, and gratuitousness themselves rather than simply
the state as an apparatus. It is to ask how the state exists as a formation or confluence of processes with de-centered agency,
how the subjects of state authorityits agents, citizens, and captivesare produced in the crucible of its ritualistic
violence.
AT Cede the Political

FW Reparations

Progressive movements are too timid and fail- inevitably adopt they underlying tenets of racism
There are oppositional political movements of course; some are
progressive, fewer are radical. But each encounters

a certain internal limitation. For instance, there are movements seeking to make the police more accountable to legal
and communal standards of conduct; but their role then becomes one of making the state work better and more
efficiently. They work, perhaps unwittingly, at reconstructing and not dismantling the white state. What they fail
to understand or accept is that the police are already accountable, but to something out of reach of the principles of
justice or democracy. There is a (largely symbolic) multiracial or mixed race movement that understands itself to be
the very transcendence of race but, in mixing and matching races supposed to really exist, it subsumes the products of racism in
ways that recall many dimensions of white supremacist thinking. The ethic of retribution that legitimates the expanding prisonindustrial complex in the US and beyond is one of these products. Even political opposition to that ethic outside the prison wall falls prey to certain
acceptance of criminal law; in other words, it assumes that the prison is essential to social order. This acceptance is unacceptable from the point of view
of the violence and violation engendered by the prison regime. Political (or politicized) prisoners demand an epistemology of a different order, one that
challenges the internal limits of opposition in a radical waythe dream of prison abolition. How can one critically discuss policing and
imprisonment without interrogating the very notions of freedom, citizenship, and democracy? How is one to think seriously
about (the ends of) race without rethinking gender, sexuality, and the body? How can any economic questions be raised in this country
where movements for reparations and against sweatshops and prisons are becoming paramount on the left without confronting the specter
of slavery? How can we think political economy without also disturbing even radical critique and its historicist narratives of development, progress,
and the primacy of production?
Notions of leftist solidarity with radicals merely maintain distance that inhibits political change
El Kilombo Intergalactico 07 (Collective in Durham NC that interviewed Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos BEYOND RESISTANCE:
EVERYTHING,libcom.org/files/beyondresistance.pdf//MGD)
In our efforts to forge a new path, we found that an old friendthe Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation,
EZLN)was already taking enormous strides to move toward a politics adequate to our time, and that it was thus necessary to attempt an evaluation of
Zapatismo that would in turn be adequate to the real event of their appearance. That is, despite the fresh air that the Zapatista uprising
had blown into the US political scene since 1994, we began to feel that even the inspiration of Zapatismo had been
quickly contained through its insertion into a well-worn and untenable narrative: Zapatismo was another of
many faceless and indifferent third world movements that demanded and deserved solidarity from leftists in the
global north. From our position as an organization composed in large part by people of color in the United States, we
viewed this focus on solidarity as the foreign policy equivalent of white guilt, quite distinct from any authentic impulse
toward, or recognition of, the necessity for radical social change. The notion of solidarity that still pervades much of the
Left in the U.S. has continually served an intensely conservative political agenda that dresses itself in the
radical rhetoric of the latest rebellion in the darker nations while carefully maintaining political action at a distance
from our own daily lives, thus producing a political subject (the solidarity provider) that more closely resembles a
spectator or voyeur (to the suffering of others) than a participant or active agent, while simultaneously working to reduce the
solidarity recipient to a mere object (of our pity and mismatched socks). At both ends of this relationship, the
process of solidarity ensures that subjects and political action never meet; in this way it serves to make change an a priori
impossibility. In other words, this practice of solidarity urges us to participate in its perverse logic by accepting the
narrative that power tells us about itself: that those who could make change dont need it and that those who need change
cant make it. To the extent that human solidarity has a future, this logic and practice do not! For us, Zapatismo was (and continues to be) unique
exactly because it has provided us with the elements to shatter this tired schema. It has inspired in us the ability, and impressed upon us the necessity, of
always viewing ourselves as dignified political subjects with desires, needs, and projects worthy of struggle. With the publication of The 2 Sixth
Declaration of the Lacandn Jungle in June of 2005, the Zapatistas have made it even clearer that we must move beyond appeals to this
stunted form of solidarity, and they present us with a far more difficult challenge: that wherever in the world we may be located, we must
become companer@s (neither followers nor leaders) in a truly global struggle to change the world. As a direct response to this call, this
analysis is our attempt to read Zapatismo as providing us with the rough draft of a manual for contemporary political action that
eventually must be written by us all.
Reform within the political system is futile- engagement with the state props up inequality
Second, we must reassess the grounds for potential
political change. If we are to take the Zapatistas seriously and conclude that
the politics of the politicians is a sphere that functions through the simulation of public opinion through polls and the
circulation of sound bites and imagesto administer the interests of transnational capital, it would be near suicide to continue to do
politics as a competition for influence within that sphere. No matter how well-intentioned or progressive a given
party or platform may be, the proximity of politicians to the vertical structure and logic of the State today assures
only their complete functionality to the larger system of inequalities. In addition, we must remind ourselves that these politicians
are not there to simulate for just any power; they are there to simulate social peace for a global power that is today greater than the collective power of
any particular state. Thus, any opposition that limits itself to the level of a single state, no matter how powerful, may be futile.
Yet, at the same time that these futilities surface, other strategies and tactics simultaneously emerge within this new situation, strategies that rise to the
challenge of the contemporary impasse faced by our previous social visions. Consider for example the tremendous inspiration provided by the following
lines written by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos; what appears at first as poetic license should be read more carefully as the outline of a brilliant
strategy for our times: The social ship is adrift, and the problem is not that we lack a captain. It so happens that the
rudder itself has been stolen, and it is not going to turn up anywhere. There are those who are devoted to imagining that
the rudder still exists and they fight for its possession. There are those who are seeking the rudder, certain that it must have been left
somewhere. And there are those who make of an island, not a refuge for self-satisfaction but a ship for finding
another island and another and another11
The lefts efforts are nothing more than crisis management- they forego opportunities at
abolition of total war in the US by embracing flawed state knowledge production
Thus, behind the din of progressive and liberal reformist struggles over public
policy, civil liberties, and law, and

beneath the infrequent mobilizations of activity to defend against the next onslaught of racist, classist, ageist, and
misogynist criminalization, there is an unspoken politics of assumption that takes for granted the mystified
permanence of domestic warfare as a constant production of targeted and massive suffering , guided by the logic of
normalized and mundane black, brown, and indigenous subjection to the expediencies and essential violence of the American (global) nation-building
project. To put it differently: despite the unprecedented forms of imprisonment, social and political repression, and violent policing that compose the
mosaic of our historical time, the establishment left (within and perhaps beyond the USA) really does not care to envision, much
less politically prioritize, the abolition of US domestic warfare and its structuring white supremacist social logic
as its most urgent task of the present and future. The non-profit and NGO left, in particular, seems content to engage in desperate (and
usually well-intentioned) attempts to manage the casualties of domestic warfare, foregoing the urgency of an
abolitionist praxis that openly, critically, and radically addresses the moral, cultural, and political premises of
these wars. In so many ways, the US progressive/left establishment is filling the void created by what Ruth Wilson Gilmore has called the violent
abandonments of the state, which forfeits and implodes its own social welfare capacities (which were already
insufficient at best) while transforming and (productively) exploding its domestic warmaking functionalities
which Gilmore (2007b: 445) says are guided by a frightening willingness to engage in human sacrifice. Yet, at the same time that the state has
been openly galvanizing itself to declare and wage violent struggle against strategically targeted local populations, the
establishment left remains relatively unwilling and therefore institutionally unable to address the questions of social
survival, grass roots mobilization, radical social justice, and social transformation on the concrete and everyday
terms of the very domestic war(s) that the state has so openly and repeatedly declared as the premises of its own
coherence. Given that domestic warfare composes both the common narrative language and concrete material production of the state, the
question remains as to why the establishment left has not understood this statecraft as the state of emergency that the
condition so openly, institutionally encompasses (war!). Perhaps it is because critical intellectuals, scholar activists, and
progressive organizers are underestimating the skill and reach of the state as a pedagogical (teaching)
apparatus, that they have generally undertheorized how the state so skillfully generates (and often politically
accommodates) sanctioned spaces of political contradiction that engulf dissent and counter-state, antiracist,
and antiviolence organizing.
Grass roots protest movements solve
Rodriguez 09- PhD in ethnic studies from UC Berkeley, prof at UC Riverside
(Dylan, The Terms of
Our historical moment suggests the need for a principled political rupturing of existing techniques and strategies that
fetishize and fixate on the negotiation, massaging, and management of the worst outcomes of domestic warfare.
One political move long overdue is toward grass roots pedagogies of radical dis-identification with the state, in
the trajectory of an anti-nationalism or anti-patriotism, that reorients a progressive identification with the creative
possibilities of insurgency (this is to consider insurgency as a politics that pushes beyond the defensive maneuvering of resistance). While
there are rare groups in existence that offer this kind of nourishing political space (fromthe L.A.-based Youth Justice Coalition to
the national organization INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence), they are often forced to expend far too much energy
challenging both the parochialisms of the hegemonic non-profit apparatus and the sometimes narrow politics of
the progressive US left.
*AFF METHODS*
Burn it Down
Violent revolution is key to empowerment and unity
Fanon 61- revolutionary, existentialist thinker (Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 51-52)
When it is achieved during a war of liberation the mobilization of the masses introduces the notion of common
cause, national destiny, and collective history into every consciousness. Consequently, the second phase, i.e, nation building,
is facilitated by the existence of this mortar kneaded with blood and rage. This then gives us a better understanding of the
originality of the vocabulary used in underdeveloped countries. During the colonial period the people were called upon to fight against oppression.
Following national liberation they are urged to fight against poverty, illiteracy, and underdevelopment. The struggle, they say, goes on. The people realize
that life is an unending struggle. The violence of the colonized, we have said, unifies the people. By its very structure colonialism
is separatist and regionalist. Colonialism is not merely content to note the existence of tribes, it reinforces and differentiates them. The colonial
system nurtures the chieftainships and revives the old marabout confraternities. Violence in its practice is totalizing and national. As a result, it harbors
in its depths the elimination of regionalism and tribalism. The nationalist parties, therefore, show no pity at all toward the kaids and the traditional
chiefs. The elimination of the kaids and the chiefs is a prerequisite to the unification of the people. At the individual level, violence is a cleansing
force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens
them, and restores their self-confidence. Even if the armed struggle has been symbolic, and even if they have
been demobilized by rapid decolonization, the people have time to realize that liberation was the achievement
of each and every one and no special merit should go to the leader. Violence hoists the people up to the level of the
leader. Hence their aggressive tendency to distrust the system of protocol that young governments are quick to establish. When they have used
violence to achieve national liberation, the masses allow body to come forward as liberator. They prove themselves to
be jealous of their achievements and take care not to place their future, their destiny, and the fate of their homeland into the hands of a living god. Totally
irresponsible yesterday, today they are bent on understanding everything and determining everything . Enlightened by violence, the
peoples consciousness rebels against any pacification . The demagogues, the opportunists and the magicians now have a difficult
task. The praxis which pitched them into a desperate man-to-man struggle has given the masses a ravenous taste
for the tangible. Any attempt at mystification in the long term becomes virtually impossible.
Hip Hop Good

Rhetorically engaging the African-American body through Hip-Hop needs to precede any
political discussion because politics REVOLVES around their oppression and liberation and is
therefore necessary to understanding how politics FUNCTIONS which remains untouched
under their articulation of the focus of debate
Cohen 2k6 [Cathy Cohen is a Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago. She is the author of the book The
Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics and the co-editor of the anthology Women Transforming Politics.) "African
American Youth: Broadening our Understanding of Politics, Civic Engagement and Activism ." Youth Activism . N.p., 7 June 2006. Web.18 Jan.
2012.<http://ya.ssrc.org/african/Cohen/>//liam]
Arguably more than any other subgroup of Americans, African American youth reflect the challenges of inclusion and empowerment in the post-civil
rights period. When one looks at a wide array of some of the most controversial and important issues challenging the country, African American young
people are often at the center of these debates and policies. Whether the issue is the mass incarceration of African Americans, the controversy
surrounding Affirmative Action as a policy to redress past discriminatibn, the increased use of high stakes testing to regulate standards of education,
debates over appropriate and effective campaigns for HIV and AIDS testing and prevention programs, or efforts to limit comprehensive sex education in
public schools, most of these initiatives and controversies are focused on, structured around, and disproportionately impact young, often marginally
positioned African Americans. In contrast to the centrality of African American youth to the politics and policies of the
country, their perspectives and voices have generally been absent from not only public policy debates, but also
academic research. As the presence of African American youth as policy targets or perceived threat in the public mind has increased, researchers
actually have less systematic information on the political ideas and actions of this group than we did 30 years ago. Increasingly, researchers and
policy-makers have been content to detail and measure the behavior and negative outcomes of young African
Americans with little concern for measuring and analyzing their attitudes, ideas, wants, desires and politics . As
researchers, it is time to recommit ourselves to understanding and exploring the politics, activism and political attitudes of African American youth in all
of their complexity. While researchers and policy-makers may be paying less attention to the ideas and politics of African American youth, these young
people continue to engage in both traditional and extra-systemic politics. The history of black youth activism personifies struggles
among those disenfranchised to force the country to live up to its promise of equality and justice. Clearly, the work of
young African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement is what most people reference when thinking about black youth activism; nearly all the leaders of
this historic movement where young people under the age of 30. African American young people lead boycotts, freedom rides, voter registration drives
and rallies across the south. African American high school students sacrificed their safety and often disobeyed their parents wishes as they engaged in
civil disobedience, filling the jails with their young bodies. But no matter how important young African Americans proved to be to the Civil Rights
Movement, they have been equally active and instrumental in other movements and politics. Whether it is the Black Power movement, the Antiapartheid movement, or the organized mobilization against mass incarceration, African American youth have been and continue to be at the center of
these efforts, providing leadership, analysis, and energy. We must, therefore, expand our understanding of when and where politics happens, pursuing
the larger question of what is political and what counts as politics for young African Americans. For example, there has been a continuous
debate in the hip hop community, among journalists and a few researchers, about hip hop as a cultural vehicle of politics
for African American youth. In a series of focus groups I held with African Americans ages 18-21 in Chicago in 2004, there was general
agreement among participants thathip hop culture was especially influential in the lives of younger African Americans and had the potential to be a
significant political force. One participant proclaimed , If just half the folks who listen to rap music could come together, this
government wouldnt know what hit them." Another explained, Hip hop is where we can talk to each other about all
the things done wrong to us. Ironically, in the realm of politics, traditional researchers have been the last to take
the political influence of hip hop seriously, focusing their work instead on traditional measures of politics, and
the questions of whether young people vote and if they are engaged in standard forms of civic activity . And while I,
as a political scientist, am interested in young African Americans and their engagement in traditional forms of participation (including voting), I am
also interested in the evolving notion of hip hop as not only a cultural form, but also a significant mode of
political expression. In the last presidential election, the presence of the hip hop community was visible. Whether it was P. Diddys Citizen
Change Campaign that used the slogan vote or die, or Russell Simmons Hip Hop Summit Action Network, or even Eminems release of Mosh just
weeks before the 2004 presidential election, all these factors could be hypothesized to influence the politics and activism of African American youth in
ways that the Democrats and Republicans never approached. Moreover, beyond the electoral sphere, hip hop artists and cultural workers are to be found
among those public celebrities and activists willing to lend their names and energy to issues such as AIDS, debt relief for Africa, and opposition to the
prison industrial complex. Finally,the use of hip-hop across the world as a cultural form of rebellion is evident in countries such as Cuba, Brazil, and
South Africa. Thus, as researchers,we would be negligent if we did not fully explore the connections being made by
young African Americans between hip hop culture and politics. For example, does this group understand hip hop to
be an alternative mode of political action, making visible their political, social and economic condition ? To what
degree do the themes evident in hip hop culture shape or influence the political thoughts and actions of African American youth? Empirically, does
listening to certain forms of hip hop lessen or increase the probability that individuals will engage in politics, develop oppositional political attitudes, or
feel greater alienation from the political system?
Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy challenges traditional paradigms, while providing a framework to
challenge systems that reproduce social inequality. Their belief that debate is a meritocratic
educational system derives from a position of privledge.
Akorn 09 (A. A. Akorn, San Francisco State University, Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy as a Form of Liberatory Praxis, 2009)
In this article I combine hip hop studies with critical pedagogy to introduce a new framework called CHHP . CHHP
differs from hip hop pedagogy because it simultaneously (1) foregrounds race and racism and their
intersectionality with other forms of oppression; (2) challenges traditional paradigms, texts, and theories used to
explain the experiences of students of color; (3) centralizes experiential knowledge of students of color; (4)
emphasizes the commitment to social justice; and finally, (5) encourages a transdisciplinary approach (Solorzano
& Delgado Bernal, 2001). Embedded in this framework is a pedagogical approach that uses Freires problem-posing method and case study research as
tools for helping student teachers to identity and name the societal and systemic problems students of color face, analyze the causes of the problem, and
find solutions (Smith-Maddox & Solorzano, 2002, p. 80). This framework is important precisely because it challenges the role
that schools play in reproducing social inequality. Schools use hidden and official curricula that promote the hegemony of the
dominant class (Apple, 1990), and embrace pedagogies that devalue the voices and backgrounds of urban and suburban students of color (Friere, 1970;
McLaren, 2002). School cultures and practices encourage students to believe that a meritocratic educational system exists, that students are responsible
for their own failure (Akorn, 2008a, MacLeod, 1987), and that issues of racial inequality, hip hop, and social justice are not worthy of study inside or
outside schools. CHHP challenges these assumptions by suggesting that transformative education for the poor and
disempowered begins with the creation of pedagogic spaces where marginalized youth are enabled to gain a
consciousness of how their own experiences have been shaped by larger social institutions . Undoubtedly, it is difficult,
however not impossible, to change the tacit beliefs, understandings, and world views that institutions of higher learning often hold toward youth of
color and low-income youth. However, I contend that by implementing CHHP it is possible to increase the space in the
curriculum for students to unlearn their stereotypical knowledge of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and
other axes of social difference while analyzing, problem solving, and theorizing what it means to be part of a
diverse population (Smith-Maddox & Solorzano, 2002)
Hip Hop as a liberatory practice functions within a historical and cultural manner that
challenges the white education system
Akorn 09 [A. A. Akorn, San Francisco State University, Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy as a Form of Liberatory Praxis, 2009 //liam]
In trying to make sense of the relationship between hip hop and critical pedagogy, I argue that the use of hip hop as a liberatory practice
is rooted in the long history of the Black freedom struggle and the quest for self-determination for oppressed
communities around the world. As early as the late 1970s, hip hop artists, such as KRS-One, also known as
The Teacher, criticized the educational system, its power, its practices, and its pedagogy . In particular, The Teacher
was concerned about the role of an embedded Eurocentricity in the U.S. public school curricula and its impact on Black children and youth. In You Must
Learn (KRS-One, 1989) The Teacher flows: It seems to me in a school thats ebony, African history should be pumped up steadily, but its not and this
has got to stop. In another rhyme that sounds like it is straight out of a Black History Class, KRS-One (1989) further elucidates the importance of our
real history: No one told you about Benjamin Banneker, a brilliant Black man (who created an) almanac... Granville Woods made the walkie talkie,
Louis Latimer improved on Edison, Charles Drew did a lot for medicine, Garret Morgan made the traffic light, Harriet Tubman freed the slaves at night.
By using Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy (CHHP) as a form of literacy for freedom, KRS-One paved the way for a
younger generation of critical hip hop pedagogies. For example, New York Based Hip-Hopers, dead prez, draw on Malcolm
X, Carter G. Woodson, and other Black freedom fighters in they schools, while offering a scathing critique of
the ways in which Black folks remain mentally incarcerated if and when we rely on a Eurocentric education
system rather than developing curriculum that reflects our own culture, history, socioeconomic, and spiritual
realities (Alridge, 2005). According to dead prez (2000): They schools cant teach us shit. My people need freedom, we trying to get all we can get
Tellin me white mans lies straight bullshit. They schools aint teaching us what we need to survive, they schools dont educate, they teach people lies
Through the use of imagininga term Alridge (2005) describes as the process by which Hip Hoppers reproduce or
evoke images, events, people and symbols for the purpose of placing past ideas into closer proximity to the
present (p.229)they they schools (dead prez, 2000) video is able to illuminate both symbolic and active forms of racism by equating the image of
the noose with the ways in which the U.S. educational system means a slow death for too many students of color (Tatum, 1997)
Current structures of education lead us to being passive receptacles ready to replicate the
current oppressive educational system
The elements that form the basic core of CHHP draw on YPAR, Freirian pedagogy, and critical race theory to challenge racism and other intersections of
social difference in order to prepare young people to be prospective teachers inside and outside of urban and suburban schools. Freires work, in
particular, provides
us with the foundations for a theory of democratic schooling that is linked to serving the most
marginalized groups in our society. His critical praxis starts from the premise that all education is political, and thus schools are never
neutral institutions (Smith-Maddox & Solozano, 2002). Freire (1970) firmly believed that one of the ways that schools maintain and
reproduce the existing social order is by using the banking method of education (p.71). This approach often leads to: (1)
students being viewed as passive receptacles waiting for knowledge to be deposited from the teacher , (2) monodirectional pedagogical formats whereby students do not feel their thoughts and ideas are important enough to warrant a
two-way dialogue with teachers; (3)cradle classrooms, in which students are dependent on teachers for the acquisition of knowledge; and
(4) students viewing schools as key mechanisms in the reproduction of inequality rather than places where
education is seen as a practice of freedom, a place to build critical consciousness, and social mobility (Ginwright
&Cammarota, 2002)
Hip Hop helps fight racism by invading the homes of the white youth
Reid 09 [Shaheem, MTV News Hip-Hop Has Done More Than Any Politician To Improve Race Relations. March 20, 2009 //liam]
Jay-Z believes the influence that he and his peers have had on society goes beyond simply entertaining and showing people fresh new dances, the fliest
clothes or high-priced luxury items. In the new issue of Best Life magazine, the Brooklyn-born mogul speaks about the powerful effect hiphop has had on the country. "[Hip-hop] has changed America immensely," He is quoted in the magazine as saying. "Hiphop has done more than any leader, politician, or anyone to improve race relations." "Racism is taught in the
home ... and it's very hard to teach racism to a teenager who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg ," Jay continued. "It's hard to
say, 'That guy is less than you.' The kid is like, 'I like that guy, he's cool. How is he less than me?' "
They look at Hip Hop through a lens of homogeneity. Not all hip hop is bad, it can be
revolutionary
Even though for generations Black people have successfully undertaken the task of educating our own children and youth, teachers in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first century have been slow to critically engage with hip hop as a viable discursive space full of liberatory potential. I am not
suggesting that all forms of hip hop are emancipatory, revolutionary, or even resistivemany forms are not
and some are quite the opposite. However, I am suggesting that given the long history of socio-political conscious hip
hop as a tool for illuminating problems of poverty, police brutality, patriarchy, misogyny, incarceration, racial
discrimination, as well as love, hope joyacademic institutions under-utilization of hip hops liberatory
potential in the classroom is surprising.
Middle Passage
The collective trauma of slavery is the founding moment of modernity this forever renders
modernity suspect we must continue to indict imperial modernity as we look toward the
future
Eshun 92 [Kodwo Eshun MA in Arts, Course Leader of Arts at Goldsmiths College ,Further Considerations of
Afrofuturism) Page 3 //liam]
Imagine a team of African archaeologists from the futuresome silicon, some carbon, some wet, some dryexcavating a site,
a museum from their past: a museum whose ruined documents and leaking discs are identifiable as belonging to our present, the early twentyfirst century. Sifting patiently through the rubble, our archaeologists from the United States of Africa, the USAF,
would be struck by how much Afrodiasporic subjectivity in the twentieth century constituted itself through the
cultural project of recovery. In their Age of Total Recall, memory is never lost . Only the art of forgetting. Imagine
them reconstructing the conceptual framework of our cultural moment from those fragments. What are the parameters of that moment, the edge of that
framework? In our time, the USAF archaeologists surmise, imperial racism has denied black subjects the right to belong to
the enlightenment project, thus creating an urgent need to demonstrate a substantive historical presence. This
desire has over determined Black Atlantic intellectual culture for several centuries. To establish the historical
character of black culture, to bring Africa and its subjects into history denied by Hegel et al., it has been
necessary to assemble counter memories that contest the colonial archive , thereby situating the collective
trauma of slavery as the founding moment of modernity . In an interview with critic Paul Gilroy in his anthology Small Acts, novelist
Toni Morrison argued that the African subjects that experienced capture, theft, abduction, mutilation, and slavery were
the first moderns. They underwent real conditions of existential homelessness, alienation, dislocation, and
dehumanization that philosophers like Nietzsche would later define as quintessentially modern. Instead of civilizing
African subjects, the forced dislocation and commodification that constituted the Middle Passage meant that
modernity was rendered forever suspect. Ongoing disputes over reparation indicate that these traumas continue to shape
the contemporary era. It is never a matter of forgetting what it took so long to remember . Rather, the vigilance
that is necessary to indict imperial modernity must be extended into the field of the future.
Reframing the middle passage in an afro-futurist narrative helps preserve the memory of past
atrocities and prevents future ones from occurring.
Yaszek 5 [Lisa, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Georgia Tech School of Literature,
Communication and Culture, TANDF 57 (Volume 25, No. 3)Afrofuturism, Science Fiction, and the History of
the Future http://sdonline.org/42/afrofuturism-science-fiction-and-the-history-of-the-future/ //liam]
In conclusion, I want to propose two reasons why it is important to recover the history of Afrofuturism as it has
unfolded over the past two centuries. The first reason is a scholarly one, and has to do with our understanding of literary
and cultural history. The past two decades have been marked by an explosion of interest in literary
representations of science and technology. These studies tend to follow a very specific and very raced trajectory :
they tell us that white authors including T.S. Eliot, Thomas Pynchon, and William Gibson are the real founders of modern technocultural narrative and
that authors of color did not engage in this kind of storytelling until identity politics exploded in the 1960s. Thus it seems that white authors got there
By
recovering Afrodiasporic future story telling traditions we gain a better understanding of the important
intellectual and aesthetic work that these authors have performed on both national and global cultural fronts.
In doing so, we also learn more about how Afrofuturism transforms science fiction and other modes of
technologically engaged literature today. My second reason for wanting to direct attention to Afrofuturism is political. From the
ongoing war on terror to Hurricane Katrina, it seems that we are trapped in an historical moment when we can
think about the future only in terms of disaster and that disaster is almost always associated with the racial
other. Of course, there are many artists, scholars, and activists who want to resist these terrifying new representations of the future. As a literary
scholar myself, I believe that one important way to do this is to identify the narrative strategies that artists have used in
the past to express dissent from those visions of tomorrow that are generated by a ruthless, economically selfinterested futures industry. Hence my interest in Afrofuturism, which assures us that we can indeed just say no to those
bad futures that justify social, political, and economic discrimination. In doing so this mode of aesthetic
expression also enables us to say yes to the possibility of new and better futures and thus to take back the global
cultural imaginary today.
first, and that people of color have been mere respondents to the new literary forms of twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But this just isnt true!
Performative Pedagogy
Performative pedagogy locates power in the body and asks questions that are the condition of
possibility for the radical challenge of white hegemony
Warren and Fassett, 2004 [The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved Theatre Topics 14.2
(2004) 411-430John T. Warren is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Studies at Bowling
Green State University, where he teaches courses in performance, culture, identity, and power. Deanna L.
Fassett is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at San Jos State University,
where she teaches courses in instructional communication and critical, feminist, and performative
pedagogies //liam]
Performative pedagogy, as a method and theory of the body, can ask questions in a way that points to the structure and
machinery of whiteness. It can put flesh to the concept of whiteness. It can point to whitenesss perceived absence. It can name the norm.
Performative pedagogy, in this way, can serve as a pedagogy of the oppressorit can ask those in positions of power (via
sex, race, class, or sexuality) to question their own embodied experiences by demanding that they encounter the other
through the mode of performance. For if whiteness functions in dominant discourse as the unmarked center of
cultural power, then a performative pedagogy can and must ask how we can create a ground for subversion .
Performative pedagogy, as a method of enfleshment that brings theory to the body, can question the normal, stable,
inevitable actualization of race, nurturing subversive possibility. Thus, in order to foreground and engage such constitutive performances, we
designed a series of workshops that serve to create space for students to take up and take apart whiteness in their bodies, to make discernable what is
already physical by adding heightened critical reflection to that embodiment. These workshops are a means for participants to consider whiteness, to
consider the role they play in the making and unmaking of cultural oppression, and to begin subverting the invisibility of whiteness.
Performance Allows Alternate Means to Rethink the System Outside of Current Boundaries
Yaszek 5- [Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies School of Literature, Communication,
and Culture (Lisa, June/September 2005, Rethinking History. Vol. 9, No. 2/3, pp. 297-313. An Afrofuturist
Reading of Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man//liam]
In essence, then, the invisible mans basement home becomes a kind of time- and spaceship
that carries him outside of the known world, providing him with a new perspective from which
he can see both the multiple aspects of the Afrodiasporic experience and its complex relations
to the many strands of American reality. Much like Kodwo Eshuns ideal Afrofuturist subject, then, Ellisons protagonist begins
to experience the kind of multiple consciousness that is itself the first step towards the creation of a new and more egalitarian multiracial futurity.
Significantly, the invisible mans ability to multiply his consciousness directly correlates with his increasing mastery over new technologies. As Alexander
G. Weheliye notes in his discussion of sonic Afromodernity, the hegemony of vision and visual technologies is a
distinctly raced one in which the privileged look of white subjects deduces supposed inferior
racial characteristics from the surface of the black subjects skin (2003, p. 107). By way of contrast, sonic
technologies that enable the recording and mass distribution of sound both transform and extend what Weheliye identifies as the two main techniques
of cultural communication in African America: orality and music (ibid., p. 102). These technologies are useful for both
musicians and other artists who incorporate sonic elements into their work because they open
up possibilities for thinking, hearing, seeing, and apprehending the subject in a number of
different arenas that do not insist on monocausality (ibid.). In many respects, the sonic
functions like the science fictional in Afrodiasporic art: both provide alternate means by
which to rethink history and subjectivity outside of dominant visual and discursive structures.
Three Tier Process

Adopt a three tier process based on
1)personal experience
2) organic intellectuals
3) academic intellectuals
This is the best way to verify truth claims while incorporating personal knowledge that is a vital
check on privilege and exclusion
Reid-Brinkley 08- PhD from UGA, professor of communications at the University of Pittsburgh
(Shanara, THE HARSH REALITIES OF ACTING BLACK: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION
THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND STYLE,)
The process of signifyin engaged in by the Louisville debaters is not simply designed to critique the use of traditional
evidence. As Green argues, their goal is to challenge the relationship between social power and knowledge.57 In other words,
those with social power within the debate community are able to produce and determine legitimate
knowledge. These legitimating practices usually function to maintain the dominance of normative knowledgemaking
practices, while crowding out or directly excluding alternative knowledge -making 83 practices. The Louisville
framework looks to the people who are oppressed by current constructions of power. 58 Jones and Green offer an
alternative framework for drawing claims in debate speeches, they refer to it as a three-tier process: A way in which you
can validate our claims, is through the three-tier process. And we talk about personal experience, organic intellectuals,
and academic intellectuals. Let me give you an analogy. If you place an elephant in the room and send in three blind
folded people into the room, and each of them are touching a different part of the elephant. And they come back outside and
you ask each different person they gone have a different idea about what they was talking about. But, if you let those
people converse and bring those three different people together then you can achieve a greater truth .59 Jones
argues that without the three tier process debate claims are based on singular perspectives that privilege those with
institutional and economic power. The Louisville debaters do not reject traditional evidence per se, instead they
seek to augment or supplement what counts as evidence with other forms of knowledge produced outside of
academia. As Green notes in the double-octo-finals at CEDA Nationals, Knowledge surrounds me in the streets, through my peers, through personal
experiences, and everyday wars that I fight with my mind.60 The thee-tier process: personal experience, organic intellectuals,
and traditional evidence, provides a method of argumentation that taps into diverse forms of knowledgemaking practices. With the Louisville method, personal experience and organic intellectuals are placed on par with
traditional forms of evidence. While the Louisville debaters see the benefit of academic research, they are also
critically aware of the normative practices that exclude racial and ethnic minorities from policy-oriented
discussions because of their lack of training and expertise. Such exclusions prevent radical solutions to racism,
classism, sexism, and homophobia from being more permanently addressed. According to Green: bell hooks talks about how
when we rely solely on one perspective to make our claims, radical liberatory theory becomes rootless. Thats the reason why we use a three-tiered
process. Thats why we use alternative forms of discourse such as hip hop. Thats also how we use traditional evidence and our personal narratives so you
dont get just one perspective claiming to be the right way. Because it becomes a more meaningful and educational view as far as how we achieve our
education.61 The use of hip hop and personal experience function as a check against the homogenizing function of
academic and expert discourse. Note the reference to bell hooks. Green argues that without alternative perspectives, radical
libratory theory becomes rootless. The term rootless seems to refer to a lack of grounded-ness in the material circumstances that academics
or experts study. In other words, academics and experts by definition represent an intellectual population with a level of
objective distance from that which they study. For the Louisville debaters, this distance is problematic as it prevents the
development of a social politic that is rooted in the community of those most greatly affected by the status of
oppression.
-Organic Intellectuals Good

Focus on organic intellectuals is key- only way to reconcile the ivory tower with political change
Hall 96- professor emeritus at Open University, cultural theorist, former president of the
British Sociological Association (Stuart, Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, p. 20//MGD)
In Cultural studies and its theoretical legacies Hall argues that cultural studies always needs to hold both theoretical and political
questions in an ever irresolvable, but permanent, tension (shades perhaps of Althussers conception of moments of what he called
teeth-gritting harmony), constantly allowing the one to irritate and bother and disturb the other, because if you lose
that tension, you can do extremely fine intellectual work, but you will have lost intellectual practice, as a
politics. As so often with Hall, the key to this perspective is Gramsci, and, in particular, Gramscis conception of the role of the organic
intellectual. In his own actions, Hall has demonstrated his commitment to living out the contradictions of the role of the
organic intellectual identified by Gramsci the commitment to being at the very forefront of intellectual, theoretical
work and, simultaneously, the commitment to the attempt to transmit the ideas thus generated, well beyond
the confines of the intellectual class.
Organic ideology is key- only way to privilege the subordinate class and create unified
movements
And the role of an opened up ideology is crucial to these struggles. What Hall calls an organic ideology, that is
one arising from the shared material conditions of various formations of the people, can act to unify them and
construct for them something approaching a class identity, a class consciousness. This organic ideology unifies by
providing forms of intelligibility which explain the collective situation of different social groups: an organic
ideology, then, empowers the subordinate. Feminism is a clear and potent example of an organic ideology
working to unify and empower. (Incidentally, the comparative lack of acknowledgement of feminism in Halls work is both surprising and
unfortunate.) The notion of an ideology empowering the subordinate rather than the dominant may seem, on the face of it,
a surprising one but it is a vital part of Halls respect for the subordinate, for their power to resist the dominant, and to maintain awkward social
contradictions.
Organic intellectualism does not forego theory- integrates it into vital political activism on the
frontlines
But I think it is very important that Gramscis thinking around these questions certainly captures part of what we were about.
Because a second aspect of Gramscis definition of intellectual work, which I think has always been lodged somewhere close to the notion of cultural
studies as a project, has been his requirement that the organic intellectual must work on two fronts at one and the same
time. On the one hand, we had to be at the very forefront of intellectual theoretical work because, as Gramsci says, it is
the job of the organic intellectual to know more than the traditional intellectuals do: really know, not just
pretend to know, not just to have the facility of knowledge, but to know deeply and profoundly. So often
knowledge for marxism is pure recognitionthe production again of what we have always known! If you are in the game of
hegemony you have to be smarter than them. Hence, there are no theoretical limits from which cultural studies can turn
back. But the second aspect is just as crucial: that the organic intellectual cannot absolve himself or herself
from the responsibility of transmitting those ideas , that knowledge, through the intellectual function, to those who do not
belong, professionally, in the intellectual class. And unless those two fronts are operating at the same time, or at
least unless those two ambitions are part of the project of cultural studies, you can get enormous theoretical advance without any
engagement at the level of the political project. Im extremely anxious that you should not decode what Im
saying as an anti-theoretical discourse. It is not anti-theory, but it does have something to do with the
conditions and problems of developing intellectual and theoretical work as a political practice. It is an extremely
difficult road, not resolving the tensions between those two requirements, but living with them. Gramsci never asked us to resolve them, but he gave us a
practical example of how to live with them. We never produced organic intellectuals (would that we had) at the Centre. We never connected with that
rising historic movement; it was a metaphoric exercise. Nevertheless, metaphors are serious things. They affect ones practice. Im trying to redescribe
cultural studies as theoretical work which must go on and on living with that tension.
-Personal Experience Good
Using personal experience does not create a confessional formatits an opportunity to share
experience and expose disenfranchisement
Reid-Brinkley 6/24/12
(Dr. Shanara R. Reid-Brinkley, June 24, 2012, Personalized Debate and the Difficulty of Building Coalitions,
http://resistanceanddebate.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/personalized-debate-and-the-difficulty-of-building-coalitions-2/)FS
You make a few assumptions about the use of personal experience in debate that I want to question. Most of the students who
use personal
experience in debate are not doing so to just win the round. The students of color (and their allies) that make
race centric arguments are not just talking about their personal experience to win a ballot. There are way more
easy ways to win a ballot than to make yourself vulnerable by discussing your personal experience. Their use of
personal experience is a choice to share, to offer those who have never encountered the issues they face an opportunity to put names to the
faces of real people facing real problems. Debate encourages us to remain disconnected from the subject matter and makes
it easier to ignore the cries of the disenfranchised. That you assume they are asking you to engage personally
just to win the debate is incorrect. Instead, they are asking you to open yourself up to honest engagement which
requires that you make yourself vulnerable too. It is out of that space of vulnerability that real empathy across
difference can be built. This is not about individual debate rounds, its about the very nature of the debate community. When they ask you to
invest yourself personally, they are asking you to join hands and put your body on the line, just like they do every time they step foot in the hostile
environment of national debate tournaments.
Inclusion of personal experience is inevitable and necessary to confront power structures,

which must be explored and not merely accepted as stasis points for debate
Butler 6/25/12
(Butler, Judy, June 25, 2012, Some Thoughts on the Role of Personal Experience and Debate,
http://resistanceanddebate.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/some-thoughts-on-the-role-of-personal-experience-and-debate/)FS
The question is not do we debate from our personal experiences (I have never heard a team say we personally experience
oppression and you dont so we win) but whose personal experiences do the structure of topics reflect I would humbly suggest that t hey
presuppose a relation to the state as a neutral, natural and normal tool of policy, that you can program in a goal
and out comes an OUTCOME not an historically AND CURRENTLY hostile institution that was anything but
neutral in its subjugation of you and those who look like you 18 to 24 year old black males know they disproportionably populate
the jails as a class their FRIENDS go to jail, it is not a statistic that they just read about and the concomminent day to day reality of
the policing of young black men that requires a great deal of real, in person contact between the security organs of the state and those young men and
not much of it is positive or feels like protection the statistics are glaringly apparent.
Pretending debate or any policy making deliberation can be somehow separated in anything but a very surface
and artificial way from ones personal experience is counterintuitive you can acknowledge it or not but I defy you to teach
novice debaters how to debate without appealing and referring to their personal experiences
-Experts Bad
Appealing to experts silences alternate voices, buttresses neoliberalism, and perpetuates
discrimination
Kothari 05- Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, (Uma,
Authority and Expertise: The Professionalisation of International Development and the Ordering of Dissent, Antipode//MGD)
I discuss the successful co-optation of alternative approaches to international development into the mainstream
neoliberal agenda of multi-lateral and bi-lateral agencies, and argue that this is enabled by the ongoing professionalisation
and technicalisation of the UK development industry. I suggest here that an increasingly technocratic and tool-kit approach to
development has exacerbated the depoliticisation of development and the atheoretical perspective of much development discourse. This h as been
achieved by limiting the effectiveness of critical voices and contesting discourses through their conscription
into neoliberal discourses and practices. I focus upon how the key figure of the development expert acts as an agent in
consolidating unilinear notions of modernising progress , construed as the only force capable of destroying
archaic superstitions and relations, at whatever social, cultural and political cost (Escobar 1997:86). Through this
agency, experts embody the unequal relationship between the First and Third Worlds, and between donors and
aid recipients, and exemplify the process through which development is located within institutionalised practices. This production of the professional
development expert, identified as such not solely because of the extent and form of their knowledge but often because of who they are and where they
come from, legitimises and authorises their interventions by valorising their particular technical skills and reinforcing
classifications of difference between, for example, the developed and developing worlds (see Bhabha 1994).
Their appeal to experts replicates the paternalism of colonialism- establishes police as the only
source of knowledge
Kothari 05- Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, (Uma,
I begin with an examination of the post-war production of the development expert and the reproduction of
systems of
expertise and forms of authority that they articulate. To highlight the rising status and importance of the expert, I subsequently contrast
the contemporary development professional with the British colonial officer, a figure who was frequently opposed to
these new systems of expertise and subjectivity. Many former colonial officers who subsequently worked for the aid
industry condemn post-independence development experts as self-designated professionals arguing that they possess limited
knowledge and experience of the countries for which they advise, design and implement policies. This discussion exemplifies the
continuities and divergences from colonialism to development and, more importantly, the trajectory from colonial rule to the
neoliberal agenda and discourse of contemporary international development. The third section demonstrates the constraining effects of designating and
channelling expertise and the subsequent co-optation of potentially critical discourses. This discussion focuses
upon the creation of professionals and the exclusive forms of knowledge that surround the practice of participatory
developmenta popular approach that through its incorporation into mainstream, orthodox development has led to its widespread adoption in
development policy and practice reflecting, in part, the continuing universalising project and strategies of neoliberalism (see Kothari and Minogue
2002). These refer primarily to the policies of economic reform, minimalist states, privatisation and principles of marketbased economics and the policy
instruments of, for example, the World Bank and IMFs structural adjustment programmes that enable them. But neoliberal policies further extend to,
and affect, social, cultural and political issues including processes of social change and development, access to rights and justice as well as forms of
individual and community dispossession (see Harvey 2003).
Reliance on experts necessarily silences the voices of minorities- leads to racism and
eurocentrism
Kothari 05- Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester,
(Uma,
Development is predicated on the assumption that some people and places are more developed than others and therefore those
who are developed have the knowledge and expertise to help those who are not (Parpart 1995:221). These often
unspoken assumptions are highly problematic but continue to prevail in development thinking and are embodied in the ideas
and practices of the professional. The forms of expertise produced are developed in part by reasserting (colonial) dichotomies
that distinguish between the modern and the traditional, whereby the traditional culture , forms of social
organisation, production and beliefs of the Third World are seen as outmoded and in need of being succeeded by more
modern, inevitably Western, attitudes and practices. As Escobar writes: Development fostered a way of conceiving of
social life as a technical problem, as a matter of rational decision and management to be entrusted to that group of people the
development professionals whose specialized knowledge allegedly qualified them for the task. Instead of seeing
change as a process rooted in the interpretation of each societys history and cultural tradition . . . these professionals
sought to devise mechanisms and procedures to make societies fit a pre-existing model that embodied the structures and
functions of modernity. (1997:91) Escobar (1995) also maintains that principles of authority are in operation within development
discourse which involve the role of the expert who continually identifies problems, categorises and labels them and then intervenes to resolve them.
Indeed, the use of these technical assistance experts, as they used to be known in the 1950s, is central to most development interventions
(Crewe and Harrison 1998:93) and consequently, as shown below, development schemes r eflect
a form of cultural imperialism founded on
ideas about the professional, expert and expertise. Crucially, however, these are not neutral categories but are notions reconfigured
through neoliberal development imaginaries. They are taken up by prevailing ideological orthodoxies contemporaneously and ideas about
professionalism, for example, have been absorbed by neoliberal thought and operationalised in development practice. Furthermore , by privileging
certain groups of individuals and particular forms of knowledge, they articulate a eurocentrism that is highly
gendered and racialised. There is also a discursive practice in development that shapes who can speak, from
what points of view, with what authority, and according to what criteria of expertise; it sets the rules that must be
followed for this or that problem, theory or object to emerge and be named, analysed, and eventually transformed into a policy or plan (Escobar
1997:87). Supporting this view, Crewe and Harrison (1998) suggest that the perception of the ignorance of local people
sometimes emerges out of their lack of familiarity with the latest development techniques , although these have often
emerged out of Western fashions which are necessarily updated so rapidly that building expertise in them is always just beyond the reach of local
development practitioners. Indeed, experts are also able to confirm the legitimacy of their role and intervention by claiming to possess the latest and
more advanced expertise (Crewe and Harrison 1998:97). This superior knowledge relies on constant reiteration and renewal of technical language,
methods and orthodoxies (109) and as Chambers posits, the rate of obsolescence of development fashions and ideas has accelerated (1993:1).
-AT Our Authors Are Inclusive

Efforts at inclusion are meant to dodge criticism- they merely institutionalize alternative
discourse into the neoliberal mainstream
Kothari 05- Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester,
Accordingly, in the 1980s the World Bank and other multi- and bilateral development agencies appeared to encourage
(Uma,
these seemingly
alternative approaches incorporating concerns around issues of participation, gender, empowerment and
environment onto their agenda (see World Bank, World Development Reports). Forms of alternative development become
institutionalised and less distinct from conventional, mainstream development discourse and practice (Pieterse 1998). Following
co-optation, these discourses became increasingly technicalised in order to fit into the more formalised
development planning frameworks and models favoured by these organisations. This process was enabled by the relatively
weak theoretical rootedness of some of these formative approaches that allowed them to be more easily
encompassed. This strategy of appropriation reduced spaces of critique and dissent, since the inclusion and
appropriation of ostensibly radical discourses limited the potential for any challenge from outside t he mainstream to
orthodox development planning and practices: the conscription of critical discourses into the mainstream is often
accompanied with a watering down of the challenges and political commentary that went with their
construction (Kothari and Minogue 2002:11). As these approaches were adopted they were embedded within a neoliberal
discourse (Rist 1997) and became increasingly technicalised, subject to regimes of professionalisation which
institutionalised forms of knowledge, analytical skills, tools, techniques and frameworks. These competencies were, in turn, acquired
through training schemes and courses of study, producing professional experts ready to go into the field and apply these criteria in the
practice of development. Indeed, as Francis writes, PRAs distinctive combination of personal transformation, political empowerment and
methodological practice is above all embodied in and transmitted through specialized training (2001:79).
*AT Ks
AT AfroPessimism
Perm
Permutation do both:
Afro pessimism is not a totalizing rejection of black social life, just an acknowledgment that the
social life is not lived in the world everyone else occupies
Sexton 11 [Jared, University of California, Irvine (Program in African American Studies);] The Social Life of
Social Death: On Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism
http://www.yorku.ca/intent/issue5/articles/pdfs/jaredsextonarticle.pdf //liam]
[24] To speak of black social life and black social death , black social life against black social death, black social life as black social
death, black social life in black social deathall of this is to find oneself in the midst of an argument that is also a profound
agreement, an agreement that takes shape in (between) meconnaissance and (dis)belief. Black optimism is not the negation of the
negation that is afro-pessimism, just as black social life does not negate black social death by inhabiting it and
vitalizing it. A living death is as much a death as it is a living. Nothing in afro-pessimism suggests that there is
no black (social) life, only that black life is not social life in the universe formed by the codes of state and civil
society, of citizen and subject, of nation and culture, of people and place, of history and heritage, of all the things that colonial society has in common
with the colonized, of all that capital has in common with laborthe modern world system. Black life is not lived in the world that the
world lives in, but it is lived underground, in outer space. This is agreed. That is to say, what Moten asserts against afro-pessimism
is a point already affirmed by afro-pessimism, is, in fact, one of the most polemical dimensions of afro-pessimism as a project: namely, that black life is
not social, or rather that black life is lived in social death. Double emphasis, on lived and on death. Thats the whole point of
the enterprise at some level. It is all about the implications of this agreed- upon point where arguments
(should) begin, but they cannot (yet) proceed.
AfroPessimism Good
Regardless of social reforms, the black body is still excluded from the social order. An
antagonistic is the only accurate way to describe the suffering.
Wilderson 10 [Frank, Assoc prof of African American Studies Cal-Irvine, Red, White, & Black, pp 2-5
//liam]
What are we to make of a world that responds to the most lucid enunciation of ethics with violence? What are
the foundational questions of the ethico-political? Why are these questions so scandalous that they are rarely
posed politically, intellectually, and cinematicallyunless they are posed obliquely and unconsciously, as if by accident? Give Turtle
Island back to the "Savage." Give life itself back to the Slave. Two simple sentences, fourteen simple words, and the structure of U.S. (and perhaps
global) antagonisms would be dismantled. An "ethical modernity" would no longer sound like an oxymoron. From there we could busy ourselves with
important conflicts that have been promoted to the level of antagonisms, such as class struggle, gender conflict, and immigrants' rights. One cannot
but wonder why questions that go to the heart of the ethico-political , questions of political ontology, are so unspeakable
in intellectual meditations, political broadsides, and even socially and politically engaged feature films. Clearly they can be spoken,
even a child could speak those lines, so they would pose no problem for a scholar , an activist, or a filmmaker. And yet, what is
also clearif the filmogra-phies of socially and politically engaged directors, the archive of progressive
scholars, and the plethora of left-wing broadsides are anything to go byis that what can so easily be spoken is
now (500 years and 250 million Settlers/Masters on) so ubiquitously unspoken that these two simple sentences, these fourteen words
not only render their speaker "crazy" but become themselves impossible to imagine. Soon it will be forty years since
radical politics, left-leaning scholarship, and socially engaged feature films began to speak the unspeakable.2 In the 1960s and early 1970s the questions
asked by radical politics and scholarship were not Should the United States be overthrown? or even Would it be overthrown? but when and howand,
for some, what would come in its wake. Those steadfast in their conviction that there remained a discernable quantum of ethics in the United States writ
large (and here I am speaking of everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. prior to his 1968 shift, to the Tom Hayden wing of Students for Democratic
Society, to the Julian Bond and Marion Barry faction of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to Bobby Kennedy Democrats) were
accountable, in their rhetorical machinations, to the paradigmatic Zeitgeist of the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the Weather
Underground. Radicals and progressives could deride, reject, or chastise armed struggle mercilessly and cavalierly
with respect to tactics and the possibility of "success," but they could not dismiss revolution-as-ethic because
they could not make a convincing caseby way of a paradigmatic analysisthat the United States was an
ethical formation and still hope to maintain credibility as radicals and progressives. Even Bobby Kennedy (as a
U.S. attorney general) mused that the law and its enforcers had no ethical standing in the presence of Blacks .3 One
could (and many did) acknowledge America's strength and power. This seldom rose to the level of an ethical
assessment, however, remaining instead an assessment of the "balance of forces." The political discourse of
Blacks, and to a lesser extent Indians, circulated too widely to wed the United States and ethics credibly . The raw
force of COINTELPRO put an end to this trajectory toward a possible hegemony of ethical accountability. C onsequently, the power of
Blackness and Redness to pose the question and the power to pose the question is the greatest power of allretreated as did
White radicals and progressives who "retired" from the struggle. The question lies buried in the graves of young
Black Panthers, AIM warriors, and Black Liberation Army soldiers, or in prison cells where so many of them
have been rotting (some in solitary confinement) for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and at the gates of the academy where the
"crazies" shout at passersby. Gone are not only the young and vibrant voices that effected a seismic shift on the political landscape, but also the
intellectual protocols of inquiry, and with them a spate of feature films that became authorized, if not by an unabashed revolutionary polemic, then
certainly by a revolutionary Zeitgeist. Is it still possible for a dream of unfettered ethics , a dream of the Settlement and the Slave
estate's4 destruction, to manifest itself at the ethical core of cinematic discourse when this dream is no longer a constituent element of
political discourse in the streets or of intellectual discourse in the academy? The answer is "no" in the sense that, as history has shown, what cannot be
articulated as political discourse in the streets is doubly foreclosed on in screenplays and in scholarly prose, but "yes" in the sense that in even the most
taciturn historical moments, such as ours, the grammar of Black and Red suffering breaks in on this foreclosure, albeit like the somatic compliance of
hysterical symptomsit registers in both cinema and scholarship as a symptom of awareness of the structural antagonisms. The election of
President Barack Obama does not mitigate the claim that this is a taciturn historical moment. Neoliberalism
with a Black face is neither the index of a revolutionary advance nor the end of anti-Blackness as a constituent
element of U.S. antagonisms. If anything, the election of Obama enables a plethora of shaming discourses in
response to revolutionary politics and "legitimates" widespread disavowal of any notion that the United States
itself, and not merely its policies and practices, is unethical . Between 1967 and 1980, we could think cinemati-cally and
intellectually of Blackness and Redness as having the coherence of full-blown discourses. From 1980 to the present, however, Blackness and Redness
manifest only in the rebar of cinematic and intellectual (political) discourse, that is, as unspoken grammars. This grammar can be discerned in the
cinematic strategies (lighting, camera angles, image composition, and acoustic design), even when the script labors for the spectator to imagine social
turmoil through the rubric of conflict (i.e., a rubric of problems that can be posed and conceptually solved) as opposed to the rubric of antagonism (an
irreconcilable struggle between entities, or positions, the resolution of which is not dialectical but entails the obliteration of one of the positions). In
other words, even when films narrate a story in which Blacks or Indians are beleaguered with problems that the script insists are conceptually coherent
(usually having to do with poverty or the absence of "family values"), the nonnarrative, or cinematic, strategies of the film often disrupt this coherence by
posing the irreconcilable questions of Red and Black political ontologyor nonontology. The grammar of antagonism breaks in on the
mendacity of conflict. Semiotics and linguistics teach us that when we speak, our grammar goes unspoken. Our grammar is assumed. It is the
structure through which the labor of speech is possible.5 Likewise, the grammar of political ethics the grammar of assumptions regarding the ontology
of sufferingwhich underwrites film theory and political discourse (in this book, discourse elaborated in direct relation to radical action), and which
underwrites cinematic speech (in this book, Red, White, and Black films from the mid-1960s to the present) is also unspoken. This
notwithstanding, film theory, political discourse, and cinema assume an ontological grammar, a structure of
suffering. And this structure of suffering crowds out others, regardless of the sentiment of the film or the spirit
of unity mobilized by the political discourse in question.
The Affirmative makes a fundamentally flawed assumption that there can be a reconciliation
between the apparatus of white America and Red and Black bodies.
The West is only able to maintain its hegemony because it disavows the genocidal act of clearing
that maintains the coherence of the white body.
Wilderson 10 [Frank Unspeakable Ethics, Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S.
Antagonisms, 141-5, //liam]
Well over twenty thousand Westerns and frontier films have been shot and released since the dawn of cinema.5 Even though they may only appear in a
small percentage of the films and for relatively few minutes, Native Americans are central to the libidinal economy of the entire genre. The
Western's cinematic imaginary casts the "Savage" as a "clear and probable" danger lurking just beyond the
Settler's clearing. The clearing, then, is imagined by the Western as a space whose safety is under constant, if
sometimes unspoken threat from "Savages" who inhabit the "frontier" or who, typically at the beginning of a film, have inexplicably
"jumped the reservation." Clearing, in the Settler/"Savage" relation, has two grammatical structures, one as a noun and the other as a verb. But the
Western only recognizes clearing as a noun. Westerns call on us to bow our heads reverently, to give this noun a proper name and refer to it fondly, the
way Christians gave the child a proper name and called it "the Little Baby Jesus." Similarly, the Western interpellates us with such reverence to the
clearing, whose proper name might be the Little Baby Civil Society, a genuflection bestowed on the clearing by, for example, Stagecoach and other films
by John Ford. But prior to the clearing's fragile infancy, that is, before its cinematic legacy as a newborn place name, it labored not across the land as a
noun but as a verb on the body of the "Savage," speaking civil society's essential status as an effect for genocide. What would happen to the libidinal
economy of civil society if, over the course of one hundred years, it had been subjected to twenty thousand cinematic mirrors, films about itself in which
it was cast not as an infant cartography of budding democratic dilemmas, but as a murderous projection, a juggernaut for extermination? Given the
centrality of the White child, the infant, to the Western's cinematic solicitation of faith in the ethics of the Little Baby Civil Society, how shattered might
that faith become were the films to reveal that the newborn babe suckled Indian blood instead of White breast milk?6 The sinews of civil institutionality
could not sustain themselves libidi-nally under such conditions. And civil society would lose its mid- to late twentieth-century elasticity. There
would be, for example, no social space for the White cultural progressive who revels in Native American lore,
studies Indian place names, or otherwise derives pleasure and an enhanced sense of purpose from his or her
respect for Indian culturejust as there would be no social space for the White person who romanticizes the history of the
pioneering West while neglecting the genocide that clears the space for this history. (These two personas are not so far
apart.) Anyone who was White and did not speak, socially and libidinally, in what would be a hyperarticulate and
thoroughly self-conscious anti-Indian fascism would find him- or herself unable to broker relations with other
members of civil society, for the ruse of social, sexual, and political hybridity which Whiteness manages to convince itself of, would become
untenable at best, treasonous at worse. One could not, for example, be in favor of Native American sweat lodge ceremonies, fishing or gaming rights and
be, simultaneously, enfranchised within civil society. Such postcolonial or democratic questions would become structurally
impossible: one would either be among the living or among the deadbut not, as is assumed today, both . Cinema
comes into existence during the 1890s, precisely when the Little Baby Civil Society was being weaned from its self-image as a murderous projection and
establishing itself as a site where the leadership of ideas (hegemony) replaces direct relations of force, a place where a robust political, sexual, and social
hybridity counteracts crude Manichean negotiations of violence. Early cinema is on the cusp of that attempt . A moment when the "we" of
White subjectivity is moving from "We are murderers" toward "We are citizens." What is important for our
investigation is the centrality of "Savage" ontology and the institutionality of cinema to the rhetoric, rather than
the actual history, of this transition (where, as I have indicated, "transition" is merely a euphemism for
disavowal).
Blackness is a condition of ontological death a vocabulary to describe this loss doesnt exist
the only way to break out of this structure is a complete destruction of civil society and the
epistemological foundations it rests on.
Wilderson No Date [Frank, Ass. Prof of African American Studies UC-Irvine Afro Pessimism http://ucipc.com/members/2008/06/23/afro-pessimism/ //liam]
Afro-Pessimism theorizes Blackness as a position of accumulation and fungibili ty (Saidiya Hartman); as condition
or relationof ontological death; rather than celebrate it as an identity of cultural plenitude. One of the guiding questions of my engagement with
Afro-Pessimism is: How are the political stakes of analysis and aesthetics raised and altered if we theorize the structural relation between Blacks and
Humanity as an antagonism (an irreconcilable encounter) as opposed to a conflict? The following question was asked on a graduate student exam for a
Critical Theory Seminar, entitled Sentient Objects and the Crisis of Critical Theory, that I taught Fall Quarter 2006. Question: Why are the theorists
under consideration [in this seminar] called Afro-Pessimists, and what characteristics do they have in common? Afro-Pessimists are framed as
suchbecause they theorize
an antagonism, rather than a conflicti.e. they perform a kind of work of understanding rather than that
to posit seemingly untenable solutions to the problems they raise . [The Afro-Pessimists argue] that
violence toward the black person happens gratuitously, hence without former transgression, and the even if the
means of repression change (plantation was replaced by prison, etc.), that doesnt change the structure of the repression
of liberation, refusing
itself. Finally (and this is important in terms of the self-definition of the white person), a lot of repression happens on the level of
representation, which then infiltrates the unconscious of both the black and the white person Since these
structures are ontological, they cannot be resolved (there is no way of changing this unless the world as we know it comes an end);
this is why the [Afro-Pessimist relational-schema] would be seen as the only true antagonism (while other repressive relations like class and gender
would take place on the level of conflictthey can be resolved, hence they are not ontological). [The Afro-Pessimists] work toward delineating a
relation rather than focus on a cultural object. Something that all the Afro-Pessimists seem to agree upon regarding social death are notions of kinship
(or lack there of), the absence of time and space to describe blackness There is no grammar of suffering to describe their loss
because the loss cannot be named. [The Afro-Pessimists] theorize the workings of civil society as contiguous with slavery, and discuss the
following as bearing witness to this contiguity: the inability of the slave (or the being-for-the-captor) to translate space into place and time into event; the
fact that the slave remains subject to gratuitous violence (rather than violence contingent on transgression); the natal alienation and social death of the
slave. [T]he Afro-Pessimists all seek tostage a metacritique of the current discourse identified as critical theory by excavating an antagonism that
exceeds it; to recognize this antagonism Jared, Frank, Taehyung forces a mode of death that expels subjecthood and forces objecthood [upon Blacks].
For Fanon, the solution to the black presence in the white world is not to retrieve and celebrate our African heritage, as
was one of the goals of the Negritude project. For Fanon, a
revolution that would destroy civil society, as we know it would be a

more adequate response. I think the Afro-Pessimist such as Hartman, Spillers, and Marriott would argue there is no place for the black, only
prosthetics, techniques which give the illusion of a relationality in the world. Like the work of Jared Sexton, Saidiya Hartman, David Marriott, Hortense
Spillers, Frantz Fanon, Lewis Gordon, Joy James, and others, my poetry, creative prose, scholarly work, and film production are predicated on the notion
that slavery did not end in 1865; the United States simply made adjustments to the force of Black resistance without diminishing the centrality of Black
captivity to the stability and coherence of civil society.
Recent social advances dont mean anything the conditions of slavery might seem nicer, but at
the end of the day youre still a slave.
Wilderson, Wallowing in the Contradictions, Part 2 http://percy3.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/frankwilderson-wallowing-in-the-contradictions-part-2/ //liam]
Orlando Patterson wrote a book called Slavery and Social Death , and Im not sure Patterson would agree with
He says that
slavery is general dishonor, that the being is dishonored regardless of what he or she does natal alienation of
the being whose family ties or kinship structure in his or her mind is not respected by anyone else. (Slavery is also
punctuated by) openness to gratuitous violence, which is a body that you can do anything with . And what interests
me is that if that becomes the definition of a slave, the slave can work, but the slave can also sit on a divan and eat bon-bons.
FW
Yeah.
where Ive taken this but what I like about his book is he says that work is an experience of slavery but it doesnt define slavery.
PH
Absolutely.
FW
You know? In my hometown of New Orleans in the days of physical slavery you could buy the slave to inject them with poisons to watch them
die. So whats interesting to me is that, as I was saying earlier today, theres a way in which the Arabs and the Europeans came to
a
consensus (not sitting down at a table but over years), that Africa is a place where people are generally dishonored, where
we do not respect their kinship structures and where their bodies are available to us to do to them whatever we
would. This has been our (Black peoples) place ever since then. Once I got to that and started thinking that through it occurred to
me that cinema was just another place in which the Black Body was possessed and deployed in the way that one would possess and deploy a slave in any
other context.
PH
Right.
FW
And that there is no reformist program for ridding ourselves of that . I mean, its like if were gonna get out of that
were gonna be in a whole new world order.

PH
Right. And its interesting because you look at film as just a context, a context for this process to occur. You know, one can I think Say the same
thing about the NBA.
FW
Exactly, yeah.
PH
It brings back the scenario in which the slave can eat bon-bons and make $20-million a year.
FW
Exactly, exactly.
PH
But youre still a slave, because to me, that really sort of encapsulates the whole conceptualization of fungibility.
FW Reparations

AT Cap K
Suboordinating racism to class relations removes any possibility of reform
Leftist approaches that come as close to radical critique as any already fall short. The liberal ethos looks at racism as
ignorance, something characteristic of the individual that can be solved at a social level through education and democratic procedure . For Marxist
thought, racism is a divide-and-conquer strategy for class rule and super-exploitation . However, the idea that it is
a strategy assumes that it can be counter-strategized at some kind of local or individual level rather than existing
as something fundamental to class relations themselves. For anti-colonialist thinking, racism is a social ideology
that can be refuted, a structure of privilege to be given up, again at the local or individual level. Where liberalism
subordinates the issue of racism to the presumed potentialities of individual development, Marxism subordinates the issue of race to
class relations of struggle, and anti-colonial radicalism pretends its mere existence as a "movement" is the first step toward eradicating racism.
But liberalisms social democracy pretends that state oligarchy is really interested in justice. And the more radical critiques subsume the
issue of racism in promises of future transformations of the power relations to which de-racialization is
deferred.
Placing other issues before racism is a failed epistemological attempt to evade guilt and
responsibility for racial inequities
In both arenas a hidden depth, a secret drive, an unfathomed animus is
postulated and a procedure derived that will

plumb that depth, excavate the problem, dredge out the muck that causes these aberrant behaviors that we call
racism. And in both approaches an issue is skirted. It is as if there were something at the center of white supremacy
that is too adamantine, off of which the utmost of western analytic thought slides helplessly toward the
simplistic, the personal or the institutional. The supposed secrets of white supremacy get sleuthed in its spectacular
displays, in pathology and instrumentality, or pawned off on the figure of the "rogue cop." Each approach to race subordinates it to
something that is not race, as if to continue the noble epistemological endeavor of getting to know it better. But
what each ends up talking about is that other thing. In the face of this, the lefts anti-racism becomes its passion. But
its passion gives it away. It signifies the passive acceptance of the idea that race, considered to be either a real property of a
person or an imaginary projection, is not essential to the social structure, a system of social meanings and categorizations. It is the
same passive apparatus of whiteness that in its mainstream guise actively forgets that it owes its existence to the killing
and terrorizing of those it racializes for the purpose, expelling them from the human fold in the same gesture of
forgetting. It is the passivity of bad faith that tacitly accepts as "what goes without saying" the postulates of white
supremacy. And it must do so passionately since "what goes without saying" is empty and can be held as a "truth" only through an obsessiveness. The
truth is that the truth is on the surface, flat and repetitive, j ust as the law is made by the uniform. Like going to the state to
protect us from the police, these critiques approach a variety of white ideologies and disciplines as a means of
gaining insight into white supremacy. It is a project dedicated to only looking so far at race , racism, or white supremacy
so as to avoid the risk of seeing oneself there, implicated as either perpetrator or victim . In effect, all of these
theories remain disguises for the role of race and racism as social categorization. Once one recognizes that the power relations that
categorize as such are genocidal, as Joy James has demonstrated, then the very discriminatory hierarchy that structures them must already subsume as
strategies for itself the class struggles, privileges, educational facilities and juridical operations to which the left goes. The task of the critique of
white supremacy is to avoid these general theoretical pitfalls and to produce new analyses, modes of apprehension, and
levels of abstraction.
Put your cap k away this is bigger than breaking down the capitalist system, its a destruction
of the world as we know it.
Wilderson, Wallowing in the Contradictions, Part 2 http://percy3.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/frankwilderson-wallowing-in-the-contradictions-part-2/ /liam]
What Im trying to say is at the level of relations of power, what does it mean to be Black? In the way that Marx said, at the
level of the relations of power what does it mean to be a worker? Well, what it means to be a worker is that one
goes through ones life captive to two questions; how long will I have to work and how much will I have to do?
FW
And that the only things that change ones life are the particulars of those questions when you change jobs, when you earn more money, etc., etc. But why
he calls capitalism unethical is because those are paradigmatic questions for one class of people, and the other
class of people doesnt have those questions.
And so what I think is that theres so much talk about hybridity, diversity, and possibility that what
I want to contribute to the world is a
text about impossibility, Blackness as a space of impossibility.
Now having said that, there are things I do to manage myself, to help me
be okay, know what the world is saying or whatever, in a place where everyone sees me as their object, you know. One of the things I said in
psychoanalysis and another thing that I do is consult regularly with a teacher, Babalawo, who consults ancestors to help me. But Im, Im a little cautious
and uh, uncomfortable with incorporating that into my political analysis and my political philosophy. One, because I dont write about, I dont write
the answer to Lenins question, what is to be done? I think, I believe that the liberation of Black people is
tantamount to moving into an epistemology that we cannot imagine. Once Blacks become incorporated and
recognized I dont think we have the language or the concepts to think of what that is. Its not like moving from
Capitalism to Communism, its like the end of the world.
Antiracist movements are a prerequisite to capitalist struggles- k/t ensure minority
participation and engage in political protest, rather than leftist theory
West 98- professor of African American studies at Princeton, Honorary Chair of the
Democratic Socialists of America (Cornel, Socialism and Antiracism: Two Inseparable Yet Not Identical Goals,
http://race.eserver.org/toward-a-theory-of-racism.html)
It should be apparent that racist practices directed against black, brown, yellow, and red people are
an integral element of U. S.
history, including present day American culture and society. This means not simply that Americans have inherited racist attitudes and
prejudices, but, more importantly, that institutional forms of racism are embedded in American society in both visible and
invisible ways. These institutional forms exist not only in remnants of de jure job, housing, and educational discrimination and political
gerrymandering. They also manifest themselves in a de facto labor market segmentation, produced by the exclusion of
large numbers of peoples of color from the socioeconomic mainstream. (This exclusion results from limited educational
opportunities, devastated families, a disproportionate presence in the prison population, and widespread police brutality. ) It also should be evident tha t
past Marxist conceptions of racism have often prevented U. S. socialist movements from engaging in antiracist
activity in a serious and consistent manner. In addition, black suspicion of white-dominated political movements
(no matter how progressive) as well as the distance between these movements and the daily experiences of peoples of
color have made it even more difficult to fight racism effectively. Furthermore, the disproportionate white middleclass composition of contemporary democratic socialist organizations creates cultural barriers to the participation by
peoples of color. Yet this very participation is a vital precondition for greater white sensitivity to antiracist
struggle and to white acknowledgment of just how crucial antiracist struggle is to the U. S. socialist movement. Progressive organizations
often find themselves going around in a vicious circle. Even when they have a great interest in antiracist struggle, they are unable to
attract a critical mass of people of color because of their current predominately white racial and cultural
composition. These organizations are then stereotyped as lily white, and significant numbers of people of color refuse to join. The only
effective way the contemporary democratic socialist movement can break out of this circle (and it is possible because
the bulk of democratic socialists are among the least racist of Americans) is to be sensitized to the critical importance of antiracist
struggles. This conscientization cannot take place either by reinforcing agonized white consciences by means of guilt,
nor by presenting another grand theoretical analysis with no practical implications. The former breeds
psychological paralysis among white progressives, which is unproductive for all of us; the latter yields important discussions but
often at the expense of concrete political engagement . Rather what is needed is more widespread participation by
predominantly white democratic socialist organizations in antiracist struggles--whether those struggles be for the political, economic, and
cultural empowerment of Latinos, blacks, Asians, and Native Americans or antiimperialist struggles against U.S. support for oppressive regimes in South
Africa, Chile, the Philippines, and the occupied West Bank . A major focus on antiracist coalition work will not only lead
democratic socialists to act upon their belief in genuine individuality and radical democracy for people around the world; it also
will put socialists in daily contact with peoples of color in common struggle. Bonds of trust can be created only within
concrete contexts of struggle. This interracial interaction guarantees neither love nor friendship. Yet it can yield more understanding and the realization
of two overlapping goals-- democratic socialism and antiracism. While engaging in antiracist struggles, democratic socialists can
also enter into a dialogue on the power relationships and misconceptions that often emerge in multiracial
movements for social justice in a racist society. Honest and trusting coalition work can help socialists unlearn
Eurocentrism in a self-critical manner and can also demystify the motivations of white progressives in the movement for social justice. We must
frankly acknowledge that a democratic socialist society will not necessarily eradicate racism. Yet a democratic socialist society is
the best hope for alleviating and minimizing racism, particularly institutional forms of racism. This conclusion depends on a candid evaluation that
guards against utopian self-deception. But it also acknowledges the deep moral commitment on the part of democratic socialists of all races to the dignity
of all individuals and peoples--a commitment that impels us to fight for a more libertarian and egalitarian society. Therefore concrete antiracist
struggle is both an ethical imperative and political necessity for democratic socialists . It is even more urgent as
once again racist policies and Third World intervention become more acceptable to many Americans . A more
effective democratic socialist movement engaged in antiracist and antiimperialist struggle can help turn the
tide. It depends on how well we understand the past and present, how courageously we act, and how true we remain to our democratic socialist ideals of
freedom, equality, and democracy.
Their cap K serves to silence the voice of racial identity politics and amounts to paternalismbecomes a middle class default
Ross 2k- Professor of English and African-American Studies at UVA (Marlon, Pleasuring Identity, or the
Delicious Politics of Belonging, New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 827-850 JSTOR)
Although in his contribution Eric Lott targets Professor Michaels's comments and his own recent feud with Timothy Brennan (who unfortunately is not
included in this volume) rather than Ken's argument, what Eric says about "left and liberal fundamentalists" who "simply and
somewhat penitently"
urge us to "'go back to class'" could also be directed at Ken's conclusion. Ken writes, "Crafting a political
left that does not merely reflect existing racial divisions starts with the relatively mundane proposition that it is
possible to make a persuasive appeal to the given interests of working and unemployed women and men, regardless of
race, in support of a program for economic justice." On this one, I side with Eric, rather than Tim and Ken. Standing on the left depends on
whose left side we're talking about. My left might be your right and vice versa, because it depends on what direction we're facing, and what direction
depends on which identities we're assuming and affirming. Eric adds, "Even in less dismissive [than Tim's] accounts of new social movements
based not on class but on identities formed by histories of injustice, there is a striking a priori sense of
voluntarism about the investment in this cause or that movement or the other issue as though determining the most
fundamental issue were a matter of the writer's strength of feeling rather than a studied or analytical sense of the ever-unstable balance of forces in a
hegemonic bloc at a given moment." I agree, but I'll risk mangling what Eric says by putting it more crassly. Touting class or "economic
justice" as the fundamental stance for left identity is just another way of telling everybody else to shut up so I
can be heard above the fray. Because of the force of "identity politics," a leftist white person would be leery of
claiming to lead Blacks toward the promised land, a leftist straight man leery of claiming to lead women or queers, but, for a number
of complex rationalizations, we in the middle class (where all of us writing here currently reside) still have few qualms about volunteering to lead, at least
theoretically, the working class toward "economic justice." What Eric calls here "left fundamental ism," I'd call, at the risk of sounding harsh,
left paternalism. Of the big identity groups articulated through "identity politics, " economic class remains the
only identity where a straight white middle-class man can still feel comfortable claiming himself a leading
political voice, and thus he may sometimes overcompensate by screaming that this is the only identity that really
matters which is the same as claiming that class is beyond identity. Partly this is because Marxist theory and Marx
himself (a bourgeois intellectual creating the theoretical practice for the work ers' revolution) stage the model for working-class
identity as a sort of trans-identification, a magical identity that is transferable to those outside the group who
commit themselves to it wholeheartedly enough. If we look back, we realize even this magical quality is not special to
a history of class struggle, as whites during the New Negro movements of the early twentieth century felt that they were
vanguard race leaders because they had putatively imbibed some essential qualities of Negroness by cross-identifying with the folk and their culture.
Their historical analysis is incorrect- racism is the root cause of capital exploitation
Wilderson- prof of African American studies and drama at UC Irvine (Frank B. III, The Prison Slave as
Hegemony's (Silent) Scandal, Social Justice, San Francisco: 2003. Vol. 30, Iss. 2; pg. 18)
By examining the strategy and structure of the Black subject's absence in, and incommensurability with, the key categories of Gramscian theory, we come
face to face with three unsettling consequences: (1) The Black American subject imposes a radical incoherence upon the
assumptive logic of Gramscian discourse and on today's coalition politics. In other words, s/he implies a scandal. (2) The
Black subject reveals the inability of social movements grounded in Gramscian discourse to think of white supremacy
(rather than capitalism) as the base and thereby calls into question their claim to elaborate a comprehensive
and decisive antagonism. Stated another way, Gramscian discourse and coalition politics are indeed able to imagine the
subject that transforms itself into a mass of antagonistic identity formations, formations that can precipitate a crisis in
wage slavery, exploitation, and hegemony, but they are asleep at the wheel when asked to provide enabling
antagonisms toward unwaged slavery, despotism, and terror. (3) We begin to see how Marxism suffers from a kind of
conceptual anxiety. There is a desire for socialism on the other side of crisis, a society that does away not with
the category of worker, but with the imposition workers suffer under the approach of variable capital. In other words, the mark
of its conceptual anxiety is in its desire to democratize work and thus help to keep in place and insure the
coherence of Reformation and Enlightenment foundational values of productivity and progress. This scenario
crowds out other postrevolutionary possibilities , i.e., idleness. The scandal, with which the Black subject position
"threatens" Gramscian and coalition discourse, is manifest in the Black subject's incommensurability with, or
disarticulation of, Gramscian categories: work, progress, production, exploitation, hegemony, and historical selfawareness. Through what strategies does the Black subject destabilize - emerge as the unthought, and thus the scandal of
historical materialism? How does the Black subject function within the "American desiring machine" differently
than the quintessential Gramscian subaltern, the worker? Capital was kick-started by the rape of the African continent, a
phenomenon that is central to neither Gramsci nor Marx . According to Barrett (2002), something about the Black body
in and of itself made it the repository of the violence that was the slave trade. It would have been far easier and
far more profitable to take the white underclass from along the riverbanks of England and Western Europe than to
travel all the way to Africa for slaves. The theoretical importance of emphasizing this in the early 21st century is twofold. First, capital
was kick-started by approaching a particular body (a black body) with direct relations of force, not by
approaching a white body with variable capital. Thus, one could say that slavery is closer to capital's primal
desire than is exploitation. It is a relation of terror as opposed to a relation of hegemony. Second, today, late capital is
imposing a renaissance of this original desire, the direct relation of force, the despotism of the unwaged relation. This renaissance
of slavery, i.e., the reconfiguration of the prison-industrial complex has, once again, as its structuring metaphor and primary
target the Black body. The value of reintroducing the unthought category of the slave, by way of noting the absence of the Black subject, lies in
the Black subject's potential for extending the demand placed on state/capital formations because its reintroduction into the discourse expands the
intensity of the antagonism. In other words, the positionality of the slave makes a demand that is in excess of the demand
the positionality of the worker. The worker demands that productivity be fair and democratic (Gramsci's new
the slave demands that production stop, without
recourse to its ultimate democratization. Work is not an organic principle for the slave. The absence of Black
subjectivity from the crux of radical discourse is symptomatic of the text's inability to cope with the possibility
that the generative subject of capitalism, the Black body of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the generative subject that resolves late
made by
hegemony, Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat, in a word, socialism). In contrast,
capital's over-accumulation crisis, the Black (incarcerated) body of the 20th and 21st centuries, do not reify the basic categories that structure conflict
within civil society: the categories of work and exploitation.
Perm solves best- their colorblind approach perpetuates whiteness

Squires and Kubrin 06- *professor of sociology and chair of the Department of Sociology at
GW, ** associate professor of sociology at GW, coeditor of Crime and Society (Gregory and Charis, Race,
Opportunity and Uneven Development in Urban America, http://nhi.org/online/issues/147/privilegedplaces.html)
In response, it is argued that while the quality of life for racial minorities has improved over the years, such
approaches simply do not recognize the extent to which race and racism continue to shape the opportunity
structure in the United States. Colorblindness is often a euphemism for what amounts to a retreat on race and the
preservation of white privilege in its many forms. In a world of scarce resources, class-based remedies dilute
available support for combating racial discrimination and segregation. From this perspective, it is precisely the
controversy over race that the class-based proponents fear, which demonstrates the persistence of racism and
the need for explicitly anti-racist remedies, including far more aggressive enforcement of fair housing, equal
employment and other civil rights laws. On the other hand, race-based remedies alone may not resolve all the problems
associated with race and urban poverty given the many non-racial factors that contribute to racial disparity as indicated above. In
reality, both approaches are required. Class-based policies (such as increasing the minimum wage and earned income tax credit,
implementing living wage requirements) and race-based initiatives (more comprehensive affirmative action and related diversity
requirements), are essential if the underlying patterns of privilege are to be altered.
*****NEG*****
*NEG METHODS ANSWERS*
General (Activism Bad)
Debate= Wrong Venue

Even if they make race visible, since its a debate and we have to give a 1NC/2AC, we are literally
incapable of agreeing with them. Teams write blocks and cut strats to beat them, not to
cooperate in changing the community. They actively trade-off with productive public noncompetitive discourse outside of roundsprefer our evidence because its specific to debate
practice, not just academia
Atchison and Panetta 9 [Jarrod Atchison, Director of Debate @ Trinity University, and Edward Panetta, Director of Debate @ the
University of Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future, p. 317-34 //liam]
The larger problem with locating the debate as activism perspective within the competitive framework is
that it overlooks the

communal nature of the community problem. If each individual debate is a decision about how the debate
community should approach a problem, then the losing debaters become collateral damage in the activist strategy
dedicated toward creating community change. One frustrating example of this type of argument might include a judge voting for an activist team in an
effort to help them reach elimination rounds to generate a community discussion about the problem. Under this scenario, the losing team serves
as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of community change. Downplaying the important role of competition and
treating opponents as scapegoats for the failures of the community may increase the profile of the winning team and the community
problem, but it does little to generate the critical coalitions necessary to address the community problem, because
the competitive focus encourages teams to concentrate on how to beat the strategy with little
regard for addressing the community problem. There is no role for competition when a judge decides that it is important to
accentuate the publicity of a community problem. An extreme example might include a team arguing that their opponents academic institution had a
legacy of civil rights abuses and that the judge should not vote for them because that would be a community endorsement of a problematic institution.
This scenario is a bit more outlandish but not unreasonable if one assumes that each debate should be about what is best for promoting solutions to
diversity problems in the debate community. If the debate community is serious about generating community change , then
it is more likely to occur outside a traditional competitive debate. When a team loses a debate because the
judge decides that it is better for the community for the other team to win, then they have sacrificed two
potential advocates for change within the community. Creating change through wins generates backlash through losses. Some
proponents are comfortable with generating backlash and argue that the reaction is evidence that the issue is
being discussed. From our perspective, the discussion that results from these hostile situations is not a productive
one where participants seek to work together for a common goal. Instead of giving up on hope for change and agitating for wins
regardless of who is left behind, it seems more reasonable that the debate community should try the method of public
argument that we teach in an effort to generate a discussion of necessary community changes . Simply put, debate
competitions do not represent the best environment for community change because it is a competition for a win and only one team can win any given
debate, whereas addressing systemic century-long community problems requires a tremendous effort by a great number of people.
Individual debate activism fails- insulated from community at large, excludes others,
undermines opportunity for coalition and consensus building
Atchison and Panetta 9 [Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant Professor and Director of debate at Wake Forest
University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric Associate Professor University of Pitt and Director of Debate at Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and
Speech Communication, Historical Developments and Issues for the Future, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the
Future, The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed. (Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009) p. 317-334
//liam]
This section will address the "debate as activism ~ perspective that argues that the appropriate site for addressing community problems in individual
debates. In contrast to the "debate as innovation" perspective, which assumes that the activity is an isolated game with educational benefits, proponents
of the "debate as activism" perspective argue that individual debates have the potential to create change in the debate community and society at large. If
the first approach assumed that debate was completely insulated, this perspective assumes that there is no substantive insulation between individual
debates and the community at large. From our perspective, using individual debates to create community change is an
insufficient strategy for three reasons. First, individual debates are, for the most part, insulated from the community at
large. Second, individual debates limit the conversation to the immediate participants and the judge, excluding
many important contributors to the debate community . Third, locating the discussion within the confines of a
competition diminishes the additional potential for collaboration, consensus, and coalition building .
The first problem that we isolate is the difficulty of any individual debate to generate community change . Although any debate
has the potential to create problems for the community (videotapes of objectionable behavior, etc.), rarely does anyone debate have the
power to create communitywide change. We attribute this ineffectiveness to the structural problems inherent
in individual debates and the collective forgetfulness of the debate community . The structural problems stem from the
current tournament format that has remained relatively consistent for the past 30 years. Debaters engage in preliminary debates in
rooms that are rarely populated by anyone other than the judge. Judges are instructed to vote for the team that
does the best debating, but the ballot is rarely seen by anyone outside the tabulation room . Given the limited number
of debates in which a judge actually writes meaningful comments, there is little documentation of what actually
transpired during the debate round. During the period when judges interact with the debaters, here are often external pressures (filing
evidence, preparing for the next debate, etc.) that restrict the ability of anyone outside the debate to pay attention to the judges' justification for their
decision. Elimination debates do not provide for a much better audience because debates still occur
simultaneously, and travel schedules dictate that most of the participants have left by the later elimination
rounds. It is difficult for anyone to substantiate the claim that asking a judge to vote to solve a community
problem in an individual debate with so few participants is the best strategy for addressing important
problems.
This creates a negative backlash which forfeits coalitions and alliances
Atchison and Panetta 9 [Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant Professor and Director of debate at Wake Forest
University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric Associate Professor University of Pitt and Director of Debate at Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and
Speech Communication, Historical Developments and Issues for the Future, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the
Future, The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed. (Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009) p. 317-334
//liam]
If the debate community is serious about generating community change, then it is more likely to occur outside a traditional competitive debate. When
a team loses a debate because the judge decides that it is better for the community for the other team to win,
then they have sacrificed two potential advocates for change within the community. Creating change through
wins generates backlash through losses. Some proponents are comfortable with generating backlash and
argue that the reaction is evidence that the issue is being discussed. From our perspective, the discussion that results
from these hostile situations is not a productive one where participants seek to work together for a common
goal. Instead of giving up on hope for change and agitating for wins regardless of who is left behind, it seems more reasonable that the
debate community should try me method of public argument that we reach in an effort to generate a discussion
of necessary community changes. Simply put, debate competitions do not represent the best environment for
community change because it is a competition for a win and only one team can win any given debate, whereas
addressing systemic century-long community problems requires a tremendous effort by a great number of
people. The "debate as innovation" perspective views each debate in a vacuum with little to no consequences on any other community. The "debate as
activism" perspective views each debate as a site of resistance where the debate community can confront problems in an effort to change. Both extremes
replicate the education versus competition tension that has been a part of the debate community ever since the move away from the literary societies. In
the final section of this chapter, we outline a potential solution to the divergent perspectives that is based on tournament
experimentation. Our goal is to outline a blueprint for a community dialogue that could be replicated week in and week out at regional and
national tournaments throughout the country.
Use of Ballot Bad

They rely on a juridical concept of power. They hold whites responsible, call for a win & a loss
McWhorter 5 [Ladelle, Prof. of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Richmond, Philosophy & Social Criticism, vol 31 nos 56, 2005,
p. 533556 //liam]
In the growing body of literature that makes up what has in recent years come to be called Whiteness Studies,
observations like the following are commonplace: Whiteness has, at least within the modern era and within
Western societies, tended to be constructed as a norm, an unchanging and unproblematic location, a position
from which all other identities come to be marked by their difference (Bonnett, 1996: 146).1 According to Whiteness Studies
theorists, the white race functions not so much as a race, one among many, as, at times at least, the race the real
human race and, at other times, no race, simply the healthy, mature norm of human existence as opposed to
all those other groups of people who are somehow off-white, off-track, more or less deviant. Whiteness, the
racial norm in Western industrial societies, is at one and the same time the exemplar of human being and the
unmarked selfsame over against the racially marked other (s).2 This understanding of whiteness emerged in the late 1980s and
1990s as race scholars in the USA and the UK began to treat white identity as an epistemic object, in contrast to many earlier race theorists who studied
non-whites primarily.3 By taking whiteness as an object of study, these scholars problematized the status of the white race as an unmarked norm and
exposed the racism implicit in its having that status. Thus, it seemed, these new race theorists had discovered a potentially very powerful tool for
dismantling racism. Revealing the ways in which whiteness functions as a racial norm, they began to denaturalize it and thereby rob it of some of its
power to order thought and practice. Their scholarship was and is, deliberately and unapologetically, deeply engaged political activism. Feminist
sociologist Ruth Frankenberg articulates this confluence of theory and practice well when she writes: Naming whiteness and white people helps dislodge
the claims of both to rightful dominance (Frankenberg, 1993: 234). While readers of the work of Michel Foucault may well be struck by the deep
affinities between Foucaultian genealogy, counter-memory, and counter-attack on the one hand and Whiteness Studies denaturalization of heretofore
largely unquestioned racial categories on the other, surprisingly most writers in the Whiteness Studies movement seem all but unaware of Foucaults
analytics of biopower and his descriptions of normalization.4 Their repeated observation that whiteness functions as a norm
and their close analyses of its unmarked status come not out of an awareness of Foucaultian genealogy but rather
out of sociological studies of institutional racism like Omi and Winants Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the
1990s (1994). Their work sounds like Foucaults at times, but if they are moving toward an analysis that is like his
in some ways, it is from a starting point that is radically different. In this paper I will argue that, in part because of the
limitations imposed by that different starting point, Whiteness Studies theorists typically miss their mark both
naalytically and politically. Their major problem lies in the fact that they still work within what Foucault calls a
juridical conception of power, a conception that simply does not capture the ways in which power operates in
modern industrialized societies, especially in relation to the so obviously bio-political phenomenon of racial
oppression.
Their juridical model of power leads to useless action
Campbell 98 [David, (Yes The Same Campbell,) Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle in England.
http://calliope.jhu.edu/journals/theory_&_event/v002/2.1r_campbell.html //liam]
With her own rhetorical virtuosity and acute philosophical acumen, Butler sets out to interrogate the assumptions behind key arguments concerned with
hate speech and the strategies to counter it. In so doing, she begins from a particular position sympathetic to those worried by hate speech in order to
make a specific point that diverges from their normal position: That words wound seems incontestably true, and that hateful, racist, misogynist,
homophobic speech should be vehemently countered seems incontrovertibly right. But does understanding from where speech derives its power to
wound alter our conception of what it might mean to counter that wounding power? Do we accept the notion that injurious speech is attributable to a
singular subject and act? If we accept such a juridical constraint on thought - the grammatical requirements of accountability - as a point of departure,
what is lost from the political analysis of injury? Indeed, when political discourse is collapsed into juridical discourse, the meaning of political opposition
runs the risk of being reduced to the act of prosecution (50). The collapse into juridical discourse, backed by the power of the state or specific agents of
the state, is obvious in the scenes above, and Butler's anxiety about the minimalization of political opposition - particularly in the first case, where the
dubious nature of the 'offence' diverts attention from racism more generally - appears fully justified. The question is,
however, whether the nonjuridical and nonstate forms of agency and resistance Butler places her faith in are up to the task set for them. Let's leave that
concern to hang for a bit. Let us first ask how it is that the dominant modes of dealing with hate speech appear universally juridical? In answering that
question, Butler demonstrates well the way in which critically interpretative thought can combine a series of theoretical assumptions to demonstrate the
limitations of prevalent discourses and alternative possibilities. In so doing, Excitable Speech is a powerful statement in response to those who would
maintain that arguments imbued with the idea of a "modernity without foundations" (161) evacuate ethico-political concerns from our horizon. Those
who argue that hate speech demands juridical responses assert that not only does the speech communicate, but
that it constitutes an injurious act. This presumes that not only does speech act, but that "it acts upon the
addressee in an injurious way" (16). This argumentation is, in Butler's eyes, based upon a "sovereign conceit" whereby
speech wields a sovereign power, acts as an imperative, and embodies a causative understanding of
representation. In this manner, hate speech constitutes its subjects as injured victims unable to respond
themselves and in need of the law's intervention to restrict if not censor the offending words, and punish the speaker: This
idealization of the speech act as a sovereign action (whether positive or negative) appears linked with the idealization of sovereign state power or, rather,
with the imagined and forceful voice of that power. It is as if the proper power of the state has been expropriated, delegated to its citizens, and the state
then rememerges as a neutral instrument to which we seek recourse to protects as from other citizens, who have become revived emblems of a (lost)
sovereign power (82). Two elements of this are paradoxical. First, the sovereign conceit embedded in conventional renderings of hate speech comes at a
time when understanding power in sovereign terms is becoming (if at all ever possible) even more difficult. Thus the juridical response to hate speech
helps deal with an onto-political problem: "The constraints of legal language emerge to put an end to this particular historical anxiety [the
problematisation of sovereignty], for the law requires that we resituate power in the language of injury, that we accord injury the status of an act and
trace that act to the specific conduct of a subject" (78). The second, which stems from this, is that (to use Butler's own admittedly hyperbolic
formulation) "the state produces hate speech." By this she means not that the state is the sovereign subject from which the various slurs emanate, but
that within the frame of the juridical account of hate speech "the category cannot exist without the state's ratification, and this power of the state's
judicial language to establish and maintain the domain of what will be publicly speakable suggests that the state plays much more than a limiting
function in such decisions; in fact, the state actively produces the domain of publicly acceptable speech, demarcating the line between the domains of the
speakable and the unspeakable, and retaining the power to make and sustain the line of consequential demarcation" (77). The sovereign conceit
of the juridical argument thus linguistically resurrects the sovereign subject at the very moment it seems most
vulnerable, and reaffirms the sovereign state and its power in relation to that subject at the very moment its
phantasmatic condition is most apparent. The danger is that the resultant extension of state power will be
turned against the social movements that sought legal redress in the first place (24)
Using experience to establish the validity of knowledge makes politics and scholarship
exclusionary, not emancipatory. Instead of making the personal political, this framework
makes the political only personal.
Scott 92 [Joan, School of Social Science at Brown, Multiculturalism and the politics of identity, October v 61 Summer p. 17-18 //liam]
There is nothing wrong, on the face of it, with teaching individuals about how to behave decently in relation to others and about how to empathize with
each other's pain. The problem is that difficult analyses of how history and social standing, privilege, and subordination are involved in personal
behavior entirely drop out. Chandra Mohanty puts it this way: There has been an erosion of the politics of collectivity through
the reformulation of race and difference in individualistic terms . The 1960s and '70s slogan "the personal is political" has been
recrafted in the 1980s as "the political is personal." In other words, all politics is collapsed into the personal, and questions of
individual behaviors, attitudes, and life-styles stand in for political analysis of the social . Individual political struggles
are seen as the only relevant and legit-imate form of political struggle.5 Paradoxically, individuals then generalize their perceptions and claim to speak
for a whole group, but the groups are also conceived as unitary and autonomous. This individualizing, personalizing conception has also
been be-hind some of the recent identity politics of minorities ; indeed it gave rise to the intolerant, doctrinaire
behavior that was dubbed, initially by its internal critics, "political correctness ." It is particularly in the notion of
"experience" that one sees this operating . In much current usage of "experience," references to structure and history are
implied but not made explicit; instead, personal testimony of oppression re-places analysis, and this testimony
comes to stand for the experience of the whole group. The fact of belonging to an identity group is taken as authority enough for one's
speech; the direct experience of a group or culture-that is, membership in it-becomes the only test of true
knowledge. The exclusionary implications of this are twofold: all those not of the group are denied even intellectual access to
it, and those within the group whose experiences or interpretations do not conform to the established terms of
iden-tity must either suppress their views or drop out . An appeal to "experience" of this kind forecloses
discussion and criticism and turns politics into a policing operation : the borders of identity are patrolled for signs of
nonconformity; the test of membership in a group becomes less one's willingness to endorse certain principles and engage in specific political actions,
less one's positioning in specific relationships of power, than one's ability to use the prescribed languages that are taken as signs that one is inherently
"of" the group. That all of this isn't recognized as a highly political process that produces identities is troubling indeed, especially because it so closely
mimics the politics of the powerful, naturalizing and deeming as discernably objective facts the prerequisites
for inclusion in any group.
***Three Tier Process***
AT Organic Intellectuals
No bright line for what constitutes an organic intellectual- no theorist or professor is wholly
removed from political activism
Impossible to delineate who is an organic intellectual inevitably fall prey to wishful thinking
and academic pessimism
Hall 96 (Stuart, Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, p. 266//MGD)
I tried on many occasions, and other people in British cultural studies and at the Centre especially have tried, to describe what it is we
thought we were doing with the kind of intellectual work we set in place in the Centre. I have to confess that, though Ive
read many, more elaborated and sophisticated accounts, Gramscis account still seems to me to come closest to expressing what it is I think we
were trying to do. Admittedly, theres a problem about his phrase the production of organic intellectuals. But there is no
doubt in my mind that we were trying to find an institutional practice in cultural studies that might produce an
organic intellectual. We didnt know previously what that would mean, in the context of Britain in the 1970s, and we werent
sure we would recognize him or her if we managed to produce it. The problem about the concept of an organic
intellectual is that it appears to align intellectuals with an emerging historic movement and we couldnt tell then,
and can hardly tell now, where that emerging historical movement was to be found. We were organic intellectuals
without any organic point of reference; organic intellectuals with a nostalgia or will or hope (to use Gramscis phrase from
another context) that at some point we would be prepared in intellectual work for that kind of relationship, if such a conjuncture ever
appeared. More truthfully, we were prepared to imagine or model or simulate such a relationship in its absence: pessimism of
the intellect, optimism of the will.
This approach is idealistic and nave- organic intellectuals have no advantage over traditional
scholars or activists
Fischman and McLaren 5 (Gustavo and Peter, Rethinking Critical Pedagogy and the Gramscian and Freirean Legacies: From Organic to
Committed Intellectuals or Critical Pedagogy, Commitment, and Praxis, Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, Volume 5 Number 4, 2005 425447//MGD)
One of the main challenges of Gramscis (1971) framework, and one that is repeated by many in the field of education,
is
contesting the supposed categorical assumption that organic intellectuals must develop some sort of
supranatural level of consciousness, avoiding or overcoming the contradictory personal and social struggles
present in everyday life. At the same time, this valorization of the role of one small group of leaders and organizers
replicates the heroic myths of romantic idealism of the past century, which in turn reflects its positivistic heritage, and a firm belief in
that of
the existence of a normal and teleological line of progress for all societies (i.e., from backward societies to capitalistic forms to socialist and finally
communist societies).
Turn- organic intellectuals are not radical enough- makes overturning capitalism impossible
Fischman and McLaren 5- professor at Arizona State, prof at UCLA (Gustavo and Peter, Rethinking Critical
Pedagogy and the Gramscian and Freirean Legacies: From Organic to Committed Intellectuals or Critical Pedagogy, Commitment, and Praxis, Cultural
Studies Critical Methodologies, Volume 5 Number 4, 2005 425-447//MGD)
One of the main goals of these diverse coalitions should be to suffocate the authoritarian power of the state and
curb its ability to support other structures of oppression. To do so demands moving beyond localized radical
struggles and the creation of networks of micropolitical struggles. This does not mean we reject community-based
multiform politics, but rather stress the need to coordinate our single-issue and micropolitical efforts so that the power of the
states apparatus is not underestimated and can be effectively challenged. Of course, we also acknowledge that the state is not
the all-encompassing and indomitable structure of domination that orthodox Marxists have often claimed, as there exist
fault lines than enable challenges from below. But we also recognize that state formations, whereas more fluid in the context of
global markets and the internationalization of capital, have not become obsolete. In fact, they are functionally necessary to promote
the reproduction of capitalist social relations and their transnational expansion. Although we agree with Boggs (1993) that
a reconstituted definition of the organic intellectual emphasizes transnational social movements that are not
necessarily linked to social identity or class formation, we worry that such a dialectical movement between intellectuals and
social forces or movements is insufficiently powerful, at present, to overturn the highly integrated power
structures of global capitalism associated with the economic exploitation of the masses, ecological genocide, and bureaucratic domination.
AT Personal Experiences Good For Debate
Their prioritization of experience as the starting point for all political action is a dangerous
epistemological move which elevates identity over deliberationtheir methodology is a
breeding ground for violent factionalism, not progressive politics.
Ireland, 2002 [Craig , American CultureBilkent The Appeal to Experience and its Consequences,
Cultural Critique 52 Fall 2002 p.87-89 //liam]
Once an arcane philosophical term, experience over the last three decades has become a general buzzword. By the 1970s, experience
spilled over into the streets, so to speak, and it has since then become the stuff of programmatic manifestos and has been
enlisted as the ground from which microstrategies of resistance and subaltern counterhistories can be erected.
But for all the blows and counterblows that have carried on for over three decades between those who appeal to the counterhegemonic potential of
experience and those who see such appeals as naive voluntarism, such debates show no signs of abating. On the contrary, they have become yet more
strident, as can be seen by Michael Pickering's recent attempt to rehabilitate the viability of the term "experience" for subaltern historiography by turning
to E. P. Thompson and Dilthey and, more recently still, by Sonia Kruks's polemical defense of experience for subaltern inquiry by way of a reminder that
poststructuralist critics of experience owe much to those very thinkers, from Sartre to Merleau-Ponty, whom they have debunked as if in oedipal
rebellion against their begetters. Such debates over experience have so far gravitated around issues of epistemology and agency, pitting those who
debunk experience as the stuff of an antiquated philosophy of consciousness against those who argue that subaltern experience provides an enclave
against strong structural determination. Lost in such debates, however, have been the potential consequences of appeals to immediate experience as a
ground for subaltern agency and specificity. And it is just such potential consequences that will be examined here. These indeed demand our attention,
for more is at stake in the appeal to experience than some epistemological faux pas. By so wagering on the
perceived immediacy of experience as the evidence for subaltern specificity and counterhegemonic action,
appeals to immediate experience, however laudable their goal, end up unwittingly naturalizing what is in fact
historical, and, in so doing, they leave the door as wide-open to a progressive politics of identity as to a retreat
to neoethnic tribalism. Most alarming about such appeals to [End Page 87] experience is not some failure of epistemological nerve
it is instead their ambiguous political and social ramifications. And these have reverberated beyond academia and
found an echo in para-academia so much so that experience has increasingly become the core concept or key word of
subaltern groups and the rallying call for what Craig Calhoun calls the "new social movements" in which "experience is made
the pure ground of knowledge, the basis of an essentialized standpoint of critical awareness" (468 n.64). The consequences of such
appeals to experience can best be addressed not by individually considering disparate currents, but by seeking
their common denominator. And in this regard, E. P. Thompson will occupy the foreground. It is safe to say that what started as an altercation
between Thompson and Althusser has since spawned academic and para-academic "histories from below" and subaltern
cultural inquiries that, for all their differences, share the idea that the identities and counterhistories of the
disenfranchised can be buttressed by the specificity of a group's concrete experience s. Much theorizing on experience by
certain cultural and historiographical trends, as many have already pointed out, has been but a variation on a persistent Thompsonian theme in which
Thompson's "kind of use of experience has the same foundational status if we substitute 'women's' or 'black' or 'lesbian' or 'homosexual' for 'working
class'" (Scott, 786).
Personal focus on race fails

Tonn 5
(Tonn, Mari Boor, Professor of Communications at the University of Maryland, Fall 2005, Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public,
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 8, Issue 3, Fall)FS
The Conversation on Race visibly demonstrates the inertia endemic in a discursive model lacking direction and
mechanisms for closure. Five months into the racial dialogue, White House aides conceded no consensus had
emerged even on fundamental goals: whether the initiative should formulate race related policy or merely
explore racial attitudes.86 Moreover, Clinton himself expressed weariness over the failure in public meetings to move
beyond the repetitive airing of personal opinion on issues such as affirmative action,87 concurring with critics that we need
structure for the discussion . . . so we can actually get something done. 88 Months more of racial conversation,
however, produced few substantive results.
The University of New Hampshires extended dialogue over the proposed conversational forum engendered similar
fatigue and inaction. Arguments forwarded by both camps centered on pivotal differences between debate
and conversation, problem-solving tasks and relational aims , and formal and informal modes of gauging opinions. Ironically,
more than one lengthy conversation over the conversational proposal produced no action, leading one
exhausted participant to observe, This [process] goes to the heart of my frustration with ever making this
[conversational Forum] viable.89 As Burke maintains, while some symbolic forms contain a way in, way through, and way out, others
lead us in and leave us there. 90
Discussing social location creates a confessional format, privileging selfish apology over responsibility and reform
Tonn 5
Clintons Conversation on Race not only exemplified the frequent wedding of public dialogue and therapeutic
themes but also illustrated the failure of a conversation-as-counseling model to achieve meaningful social
reform. In his speech inaugurating the initiative, Clinton said, Basing our self-esteem on the ability to look down on others is not the American way . .
. Honest dialogue will not be easy at first . . . Emotions may be rubbed raw, but we must begin. Tempering his stated goal of concrete solutions was the
caveat that power cannot compel racial community, which can come only from the human spirit.72
Following the presidents cue to self-disclose emotions, citizens chiefly aired personal experiences and
perspectives during the various community dialogues. In keeping with their talk-show formats, the forums showcased what
Orlando Patterson described as performative race talk, public speech acts of denial, proclamation, defense,
exhortation, and even apology, in short, performances of self that left little room for productive public
argument.73 Such personal evidence overshadowed the facts and realities Clinton also had promised to explore,
including, for example, statistics on discrimination patterns in employment, lending, and criminal justice or expert testimony on cycles of dependency,
poverty, illegitimacy, and violence.
Whereas Clinton had encouraged honest dialogue in the name of responsibility and community , Burke argues
that The Cathartic Principle often produces the reverse. [C]onfessional, he writes, contains in itself a kind of
personal irresponsibility, as we may even relieve ourselves of private burdens by befouling the public
medium. More to the point, a thoroughly confessional art may enact a kind of individual salvation at the expense
of the group, performing a sinister function, from the standpoint of overall-social necessities .74 Frustrated
observers of the racial dialoguemany of them African Americansechoed Burkes concerns. Patterson, for example,
noted, when a young Euro-American woman spent nearly five minutes of our conversation in Marthas Vineyard . . . publicly confessing her racial
insensitivities, she was directly unburdening herself of all sorts of racial guilt feeling. There was nothing to argue
about.75 Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson invoked the game metaphor communication theorists often link to skills
in conversation,76 voicing suspicion of a talking cure for racial ailments that included neither exhaustive racial
data nor concrete goals. The game, wrote Jackson, is to get rid of responsibility for racism while doing nothing to
solve it.77
Conversations about personal experience reinforce hierarchies while causing complacency
Tonn 5
In certain ways, Schudsons initial reluctance to dismiss public conversation echoes my own early reservations, given the ideals of egalitarianism,
empowerment, and mutual respect conversational advocates champion. Still, in the spirit of the dialectic ostensibly underlying dialogic premises, this
essay argues that various negative consequences can result from transporting conversational and therapeutic paradigms into public problem solving. In
what follows, I extend Schudsons critique of a conversational model for democracy in two ways: First, whereas Schudson primarily offers a theoretical
analysis, I interrogate public conversation as a praxis in a variety of venues, illustrating how public conversation and dialogue have been coopted to
silence rather than empower marginalized or dissenting voices. In practice, public conversation easily can emulate what feminist political
scientist Jo Freeman termed the
tyranny of structurelessness in her classic 1970 critique of consciousness raising groups in the womens
contrary to its promotion as a means to
neutralize hierarchy and exclusion in the public sphere, public conversation can and has accomplished the
reverse. When such moves are rendered transparent, public conversation and dialogue, I contend, risk increasing rather than
diminishing political cynicism and alienation. Second, whereas Schudson focuses largely on ways a conversational model for democracy
liberation movement,15 as well as the key traits Irving L. Janis ascribes to groupthink.16 Thus,
may mute an individuals voice in crafting a resolution on a given question at a given time, I draw upon insights of Dana L. Cloud and others to consider
ways in which a therapeutic, conversational approach to public problems can stymie productive, collective action in two
respects.17 First, because
conversation has no clearly defined goal, a public conversation may engender inertia as
participants become mired in repeated airings of personal experiences without a mechanism to lend such
expressions direction and closure. As Freeman aptly notes, although [u]nstructured groups may be very effective in
getting [people] to talk about their lives[,] they arent very good for getting things done . Unless their mode of operation
changes, groups flounder at the point where people tire of just talking.18 Second, because the therapeutic bent of much public
conversation locates social ills and remedies within individuals or dynamics of interpersonal relationships,
public conversations and dialogues risk becoming substitutes for policy formation necessary to correct
structural dimensions of social problems. In mimicking the emphasis on the individual in therapy, Cloud warns, the therapeutic
rhetoric of healing, consolation, and adaptation or adjustment tends to encourage citizens to perceive
political issues, conflicts, and inequities as personal failures subject to personal amelioration .19
Unstructured dialogue focused on the personal causes inactionit disincentivizes action and leaves participants
without a mechanism to act
Tonn 5
Approaching public controversies through a conversational model informed by therapy also enables political
inaction in two respects. First, an open-ended process lacking mechanisms for closure thwarts progress toward
resolution. As Freeman writes of consciousness raising, an unstructured, informal discussion leaves people with no place to
go and the lack of structure leaves them with no way of getting there.70 Second, the therapeutic impulse to emphasize
the self as both problem and solution ignores structural impediments constraining individual agency. Therapy,
Cloud argues, offers consolation rather than compensation, individual adaptation rather than social change, and
an experience of politics that is impoverished in its isolation from structural critique and collective action.
Public discourse emphasizing healing and coping, she claims, locates blame and responsibility for solutions in the
private sphere.71
Discussions of social location are an ineffective formattheyre inherently inaccurate
Tonn 5
Contributing to the ineffectiveness of a therapeutic approach in redressing social problems is its common pairing
with
what Burke terms incantatory imagery, wherein rhetors invite persons to see themselves in an idealized
form.78 Comparing a current conflicted self against a future self individuals aspire to become is a therapeutic staple, a technique Clinton mimics in his
speech on race. In one breath, he acknowledges persistent racial discrimination and prejudice; in another, he overtly invites audience members to
picture themselves in saintly fashion: Can we be one America respecting, even celebrating, our differences, but embracing even more what we have in
common? 79 But outside private therapy, this strategy rarely results in honest selfdisclosure, especially regarding
thorny issues such as race. Andrew Hacker argues that individuals seldom speak candidly about race in public; rather,
they express an idealized self with ideas and feelings they desire or, more commonly, believe they should
possess, a phenomenon evident even in anonymous polling. 80 The hazard of blending the confessional with the
incantatory, Burke writes, is a sentimental and hypocritical false reassurance that society is on the proper course,
rendering remedial action unnecessary.81 This danger is compounded if the problem initially has been couched as essentially attitudinal
rather than structural, as Clinton did: We have torn down the barriers in our laws. Now we must break down the barriers in our lives, our minds and our
hearts.82 Indeed, in commenting on the therapeutic bent of the Conversation on Race, William L. Taylor argues that the late Bayard Rustins
reservations about the social-psychological approach to race were prescient: Rustin said he could envision America being persuaded
figuratively to lie down on the psychiatrists couch to examine their feelings about race. They would likely arise,
he said, pronouncing themselves either free or purged of any bias. And nothing would have changed. 83 Furthermore,
identification intrinsic in narrative experiences is doubleedged; while identification can neutralize domination
by creating empathy, identification also can fortify hegemony. As Cornell West warns, the privileging of emotional responses to
racism and racial self-identities over other data can contribute to racial reasoning, which blacks employ to their peril. To illustrate, he points to the
failure of black leadership to challenge the qualifications by typical measures of black Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, opting instead to
submit to deceptive racial solidarity built upon premises of black authenticity.84 Because the problems plaguing contemporary black America,West
writes, result from a complex amalgam of structural and behavioral factors,85 weaving solutions demands analysis of data beyond
subjective personal narratives and performances of self-identity.

Dont let them get away with playing the all your evidence is a product of racism cardtheir
epistemological account is reductionist and empiricism is valid. Personal insight is nonfalsifiable and has no brightlinethe rejection of all Eurocentric methods means they are too
arbitrary to generate real discussion.
Niemonen 10 [Jack Niemonen, American Sociologist, 41(1), 48-81, Public Sociology or Partisan Sociology? The Curious Case of Whiteness
Studies //liam]
Despite recognition that racial classification systems are not constant, proponents of whiteness studies treat
whites as if they were an immutable, bounded, and cohesive category (Bonnett 2003; Eichstedt 2001; Gabriel 2000; Giroux
1997; Hartigan 1997; Keating 1995; Kincheloe 1999; Kolchin 2002; Levine-Rasky 2000; McCarthy 2003; Pugliese 2002; Sidorkin 1999; Yans 2006 ).
They posit a generic white subject, both privileged and unaware of the extent of that privilege . However, even if whites
coalesce at certain historical junctures, we cannot conclude that the category white is an entity that will continue
indefinitely in the absence of antiracist initiatives (McDermott and Sampson 2005; Yans 2006; cf. Niemonen 2007). Reification has
the unintended consequence of neglecting how the construction of racial identities is a negotiated, indeed manipulative, process (Bonnett 1998;
Rockquemore 2002). In doing so, proponents of whiteness studies understate the contradictions, inconsistencies, and
ambivalences within white and nonwhite identities. They assume before the fact that whites regard whiteness rather than nationality,
ethnicity, religion, or class as the main factor that separates the civilized from the uncivilized. And, they oversimplify the challenges that nonwhites face
by implying that their problems are largely race-related and hence attributable to racism (Croteau et al. 2002; Hartigan 2002; Kolchin 2002; Mansfield
and Kehoe 1994; Warren and Twine 1997). Emphasizing the unifying interest in, and reproduction of, dominance minimizes how the boundaries of racial
categories are negotiated, reinforced, or challenged in daily life (Alcoff 1998; Bash 2006; Perera 1999). Largely ignored are the complicated interactions
between race, class, and sex, and the struggles of many whites to acquire privileges in a class-stratified society, especially economic security and some
degree of self-autonomy (Bonnett 1997; Eichstedt 2001; Hartigan 1997, 2000b; Hubbard 2005; Kolchin 2002; Lee 1999; Winders 2003). Reifying
the concept of race fails to capture the processes through which it acquires meaning, confers status, or exerts a
structuring effect (Bash 2006; Lewis 2004). By suppressing intra-group divisions and contradictions, whiteness studies ignore how multiple
statuses work together in peoples lives (cf. Brekhus 1998; Merton 1972) and perpetuate an us-them view of differencethe binary perspective that is at
the core of racist discourses. The reification of racial categories endows them with causal potential and predictive ability, implying that all persons
classified as white will exhibit the undesirable traits associated with whiteness, since being white is a condition with distinct, identifiable, but largely
negative attributes that are in need of corrective attention (Alcoff 1998; Bash 2006; Hartigan 2000b; Keating 1995; Santas 2000; Scott 2000). In a
reversal of the historical equation, white has become reprehensible whereas nonwhite has become virtuous
(Gillborn 1996; Keating 1995). Whiteness studies posit racism as a mono-causal explanation for almost everything. All
other forces, including the class struggle, are relegated to the margins. William Julius Wilsons work is
dismissed out-of-hand as a defense of the culture of poverty thesis (e.g., Harrison 1998; Ladson-Billings 1996; Welcome 2004).
Racism is the problem. Therefore, whites either actively resist its reproduction or they perpetuate existing
inequalities (Hartigan 2000b; Kolchin 2002; Moon and Flores 2000; Troyna 1994). This premise allows for the subsequent argument that whiteness
is the source of oppression. If it is eradicated, then social justice will emerge (Moon and Flores 2000; Trainor 2002). Once whiteness is
demonized, whites have no choice but to view their selvesironicallyin the context of a deficit model that
identifies their failings, after which they may redeem themselves by becoming race traitors. Whites are
required to renounce their whiteness but at the same time celebrate the alternatives. Such arguments inevitably
result in anger and bafflement (Gillborn 1996; Kolchin 2002). The concept of racism suffers from conceptual inflation; it is used to mark any
racially suspect attitude, behavior, policy, or practice (Blum 2002). It is defined as a property of whites who act against nonwhites (Gabriel 2000;
Mansfield and Kehoe 1994; Pearce 2003). Whiteness studies proponents dodge the questions of whether or not whites can be victims of racism, and
whether or not nonwhites atrocities against other nonwhites should be regarded as racist. They generally conclude that nonwhites cannot be racist, for
the latter are not beneficiaries of a white-privileged world. Nonwhites lack the power to institutionalize the means that would disadvantage whites and
advantage themselves (Eichstedt 2001; Gillborn 1996; Johnson et al. 2000; Ladson-Billings 1996; Tehranian 2000). Being cast as nonwhite means that
one cannot escape thinking about race; it means being wounded, hurt, and hampered (Johnson et al. 2000; Leonardo 2004). Thus, in serving as a term
of moral reproach, racism has joined vices such as dishonesty, cruelty, cowardice, and hypocrisy (Blum 2002). As opposed to recognizing that rationality,
objectivity, and truth are themselves contested concepts that have been the subject of centuries of philosophical debate, whiteness studies conflate this
history into a reductive, indeed monolithic, Eurocentrism. Painting Eurocentrism as the enemy creates the impression that it is static over time. It is
caricatured as the claim thatWestern epistemology is omnipresent and wielded as a weapon of indoctrination against nonwhites. The struggle
against Eurocentrism is transformed into an epistemological project in which the necessary, if not sufficient,
condition for overcoming privilege is to disclose the truth about it (Kruks 2005). However, standpoint
epistemologies may not constitute a satisfactory alternativ e (Aya 2004; Hammersley 1993). For example, on what grounds
can the claim be made that one or more groups have privileged insight into reality? It cannot be declared before
the fact; otherwise, all groups may make the same claim with no possibility of adjudication (Hammersley 1993).
Although distinctive insights are possiblefor example, as demonstrated in the work of Patricia Hill Collins the claim that nonwhites have
privileged access to the world whereas whites do not is Am Soc (2010) 41:4881 65 implausible at best (Hammersley 1993;
Srivastava 1996). Such an argument begs the question of how a correct perception of the world is achieved. In other words, the argument that personal
experience occupies the same epistemological ground as social science is rife with logical and empirical problems. By grounding their
framework on the epistemology of provenance (that only the oppressed can claim epistemic authority by virtue of their experiences),
proponents of whiteness studies have blurred the distinction between scientific justification and folk beliefs.
Personal experiences may be atypical or distorted by self-interest. Yet, to suggest so devolves into debates
about the speakers authenticity and his or her right to speak. If an objective understanding of the world is
impossible, then sociological concepts such as concentration effects may be more sophisticated, but no more
valid, than the accounts offered by anybody else. If so-called higher values are little more than the hegemonic
tactics of whites, and if the epistemology of provenance decides truth and falsehood, or right and wrong, then
knowledge is local convention, and any outsider who disputes that claim is a racist (Aya 2004). Sociological research may
not escape from normative concerns. However, this body of work is much more sophisticated than the proponents of witnesses studies claim (cf. Alba
1999; Bash 1979; Lee 1999; Lubienski 2003; Mckee 1993; Niemonen 2002). Even if the worth of this work should be evaluated by its public relevance,
the claim on the part of whiteness studies proponents that its validity should be evaluated in the same way is questionable. Proponents of
whiteness studies imply that true understanding is impossible across bounded groups because the latter
construct discourses thatby virtue of the postulates of standpoint epistemologycannot be communicated
across boundaries without violating their authenticity (Sidorkin 1999). This premise creates a dilemma: How is it
possible to appeal to social justice, while at the same time disavowing the possibility of authentic
communication (Sidorkin 1999)? In fact, the boundaries between discourses are drawn too rigidly as a result of a
conception of the social that is fixed, static, and homogenous (Merton 1972). In this context, whiteness is an
arbitrary designation that underpins a political project that could not succeed in the absence of reification.
Experts Good
Intellectuals key- some fields require specialized knowledge
Bronner 04- prof of political science at Rutgers, PhD from Berkeley (Stephen, Reclaiming the Enlightenment,
Columbia University Press, p. 77-78)
But praise for the amateur also has
its limits. To ignore the need for critical disciplinary intellectuals with various forms
scientific expertise is to abdicate responsibility for a host of issues involving knowledge of fields ranging from
physics and genetics to electronics and even environmentalism. There is surely an overabundance of jargon and
mystification and, as has been mentioned before, the need exists for a new sensitivity to the vernacular. 39 But it is also the case that
complex issues sometimes require complex language and, often for good reasons, fields generate their own
vocabularies. A judgment is undoubtedly necessary with respect to whether the language employed in a work is necessary
for illuminating the issue under investigation: that judgment, however, can never be made in advance. There must be
a place for the technocrat with a political conscience as surely as for the humanist with a particular specialty. The battle against
oppression requires a multi-frontal strategy. Best to consider the words of Primo Levi who understood the critical intellectual as a
person educated beyond his daily trade, whose culture is alive insofar as it makes an effort to renew itself, and keep up to date, and w ho
does not react with indifference or irritation when confronted by any branch of knowledge, even though,
obviously, he cannot cultivate all of them.
of
The alternative to expertise is nave faith- Palin prove this is disastrous

Harris 08- Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA, CEO of Project Reason (Sam, When Atheists Attack,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/09/19/when-atheists-attack.html)
The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself:
how
has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which
extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to
undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their
lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we
consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose
thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions , then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to
have a beer with, someone down-to-earthin fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated. I believe
that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing
more complexand dangerouswith each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president,
Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from
empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any
person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth
of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.
Our argument is not that experts are infallible, but that they are credible - their totalizing
rejection is too extreme
Walton 97- PhD from the University of Toronto (Douglas, Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority, p. 29-30,
Google Books)
The problem with appeal
to expert opinion as a type of argument is that people in the past have tended to swing to extremes.
The modern viewpoint has tended to assume that the method of science is the only kind of thinking that has validity
and represents the truth. This view tends to defer to authority too much, thinking of the expert in absolute terms as someone who
knows everything about his or her subject and who, consequently, cannot be questioned with any credibility by a non-expert. The postmodernist
viewpoint, going to the other extreme, rejects authority as an elitist conception and refuses to defer to it at all.
The problem with this pendulum reaction is that appeal to expert opinion as a type of argument cannot be evaluated
reasonably. We need to seek out a middle way between these extremes if it is to be analyzed as a rational and useful kind of argument .
Expert opinion needs to be treated as an argument that has some weight of presumption in its favor, but is not
absolute, and is inherently open to critical questioning.
T/ disdain for expertism devolves into jingoism
Lilla 08- professor of humanities at Columbia (Mark, The Perils of Populist Chic,
http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB122610558004810243.html?mod=article-outset-box)
The die was cast. Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders'
counter-intellectuals. Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League
of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function
within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that
intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as
universities; in fact, one
tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel
Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats
while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio
and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape
that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them. Back in the '70s, conservative intellectuals loved to talk about "radical chic," the
well-known tendency of educated, often wealthy liberals to project their political fantasies onto brutal revolutionaries and street thugs, and romanticize
their "struggles." But "populist chic" is just the inversion of "radical chic," and is no less absurd, comical or ominous. Traditional conservatives were
always suspicious of populism, and they were right to be. They saw elites as a fact of political life, even of democratic life. What matters in
democracy is that those elites acquire their positions through talent and experience , and that they be educated to serve
the public good. But it also matters that they own up to their elite status and defend the need for elites. They must be friends of democracy while
protecting it, and themselves, from the leveling and vulgarization all democracy tends toward. Writing recently in the New York Times, David Brooks
noted correctly (if belatedly) that conservatives' "disdain for liberal intellectuals" had slipped into "disdain for the educated
class as a whole," and worried that the Republican Party was alienating educated voters. I couldn't care less about the future of the Republican
Party, but I do care about the quality of political thinking and judgment in the country as a whole. There was a time when conservative intellectuals
raised the level of American public debate and helped to keep it sober. Those days are gone. As for political judgment, the promotion of Sarah Palin as a
possible world leader speaks for itself. The Republican Party and the political right will survive, but the conservative intellectual tradition is already dead.
And all of us, even liberals like myself, are poorer for it.
***Burn it Down***
Violence Bad
Present-day Haiti proves burning it down is not a sustainable political strategy. Only way to
achieve gratuitous freedom is to affirm your identity within material conditions
Newman, Postdoctoral fellow: University of Western Australia, conducting research in the area of contemporary political and social though, 200 3
(Saul, Stirner and Foucault, Postmodern Culture)
Moreover, Foucault is able to see freedom
as being implicated in power relations because , for him, freedom is more

than just the absence or negation of constraint. He rejects the "repressive" model of freedom which
presupposes an essential self--a universal human nature--that is restricted and needs to be liberated . The liberation of an
essential subjectivity is the basis of classical Enlightenment notions of freedom and is still central to our political imaginary. However, both Foucault and
Stirner reject this idea of an essential self--this is merely an illusion created by power . As Foucault says, "The man described
for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than
himself" (Discipline 30). While he does not discount acts of political liberation--for example when a people tries to liberate itself from colonial
rule--this cannot operate as the basis for an ongoing mode of freedom. To suppose that freedom can be
established eternally on the basis of this initial act of liberation is only to invite new forms of domination . If
freedom is to be an enduring feature of any political society it must be seen as a practice--an ongoing strategy and mode of action that continuously
challenges and questions relations of power. This practice of freedom is also a creative practice--a continuous process
of self-formation of the subject. It is in this sense that freedom may be seen as positive. One of the features that characterizes modernity,
according to Foucault, is a Baudelairean "heroic" attitude toward the present. For Baudelaire, the contingent, fleeting nature of
modernity is to be confronted with a certain "attitude" toward the present that is concomitant with a new mode
of relationship that one has with oneself. This involves a reinvention of the self: "This modernity does not
'liberate man in his own being'; it compels him to face the task of producing himself " (Foucault, "What" 42). So, rather
than freedom being a liberation of man's essential self from external constraints, it is an active and deliberate
practice of inventing oneself. This practice of freedom may be found in the example of the dandy, or flneur, "who makes of his body, his
behavior, his feelings and passions, his very existence, a work of art" (Foucault, "What" 41-2). It is this practice of self-aestheticization that
allows us, according to Foucault, to reflect critically on the limits of our time. It does not seek a metaphysical place beyond all limits,
but rather works within the limits and constraints of the present. More importantly, however, it is also a work
conducted upon the limits of ourselves and our own identities. Because power operates through a process of
subjectification--by tying the individual to an essential identity--the radical reconstitution of the self is a necessary act of
resistance. This idea of freedom, then, defines a new form of politics more relevant to contemporary regimes of power: " The political, ethical,
social, philosophical problem of our days is not to liberate the individual from the State and its institutions, but
to liberate ourselves from the State and the type of individualisation linked to it " (Foucault, "Subject" 216).
Violence can never achieve racial justice
MLK 66 (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., In I Have a Dream, ed. James Washington, 1986)
Conditions are such for Negroes in America that all Negroes ought to be fighting aggressively. It is -as
ridiculous for a Negro to raise the question of self-defense in relation to nonviolence as it is for a soldier on the
battlefield to say he is not going to take any risks . He is there because he believes that the freedom of his country is worth the risk of his
life. The same is true of the nonviolent demoristrator. He sees the misery of his people so clearly that he
volunteers to suffer in their behalf and put an end to their plight. Furthermore, it is extremely dangerous to
organize a movement around self-defense. The line between defensive violence and aggressive or retaliatory
violence is a fine line indeed. When violence is tolerated even as a means of self-defense there is grave danger
that in the fervor of emotion the main fight will be lost over the question of self -defense. When my home was bombed
in 1955 in Montgomery, many men wanted to retaliate, to place an armed guard on my home. But the issue there was not my life, but whether Negroes
would achieve first class treatment on the city's buses. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have
lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors. I must continue by faith or it is too great a burden to bear and
violence, even in self-defense, creates more problems than it solves. Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end
to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear.
Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.
Rejecting Violence Is An Imperative For Survival

MLK 67 (Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet Of Conscience, p. 67-68)
This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without.
Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night, Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its
ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and goodwill toward all men can no longer be
dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don't have goodwill toward men in this world, we will destroy
ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power. Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is
obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force,
but the very destructive power of modern weapons of warfare eliminates even the possibility that war may any
longer serve as a negative good. And so, if we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has a right
to survive, then we must find an alternative to war-and so let us this morning explore the conditions for peace. Let us this morning
think anew on the meaning of that Christmas hope: "Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Men." And as we explore these conditions, I would like to suggest
that modern man really go all out to study the meaning of nonviolence. its philosophy and its strategy. We have experimented with the
meaning of nonviolence in our struggle for racial justice in the U nited States, but now the time has come for man
to experiment with nonviolence in all areas of human conflict, and that means nonviolence on an international scale. Now let me
suggest first that if we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional . Our loyalties must transcend
our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live
alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must
either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.
Non-Violence Is The Only Escape From Oppression

Wink and Wink 94- *Associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, ** late Professor Emeritus
at Auburn Theological Seminary, former Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace
(Stephen and Walter
Auburn Theological Seminary; Saint Louis University Law Journal, Winter, 1993-1994)
Violent opposition to the dominating system risks perpetuating precisely
the system it seeks to transcend. "Whoever

fights monsters," warned Nietzsche, "should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." For the most part, where
movements of the oppressed lash out at the dominant group the cycle of violence escalates and it ends by either
destroying or further marginalizing that movement in society, or by establishing that movement as the new
oppressor. But if we sit passively by, we become accessories by our inaction to the injustice of the system. Somehow, we must swim against
the tide of the current paradigm in an effort to find another way to oppose this system. The principle of nonviolence is
grounded in the immorality of domination. We assert this immorality without resorting (for the moment) to stories
about absolute truths, practical reasonableness, or pragmatic principles for support. We need not address these issues to
talk about the palpable effects of the system and assert that our lives need not include these effects.
Nonviolence, or the recognition of the other's essential humanity, provides a methodology for transforming the current system without
simply replicating it: it shows the promise of transcending the current paradigm . If domination is to be transcended, it will require a
critique and methodology from outside that system. The Judeo-Christian tradition provides one such standpoint, though it is pierced with ambiguity,
since both religions have been deeply penetrated by domination and violence. When one strips away later creedal assertions and simply regards the
teachings of the biblical prophets and Jesus of Nazareth as a critique of domination, however, one discovers an astonishing strategy for transforming the
prevailing paradigm. In his teachings on nonviolence and the love of enemies, Jesus articulated a vision of the possibility of a domination-free order. It
was not until Mahatma Gandhi (and, later, Martin Luther King, Jr.), however, that nonviolence was operationalized and used effectively in modern
society. More recently, the year 1989 witnessed thirteen nonviolent revolutions, all but one of them successful, involving a third
of the human race. Though still in its infancy, nonviolence as a means of social change has at last demonstrated its viability.
Nonviolence, as a practice, allows individuals to engage the system without ultimately succumbing to its methods. In
this sense, nonviolence is less a moral edict than it is a practical tool for dismantling the mechanism of domination .
As de la Boetie pointed out, we are the dominator's eyes, hands and feet; the power he exerts is in the myth that is internalized by both
the dominated and the dominator. This is the source of the leverage of domination. The myth provides an intentional blindness toward the
humanity of those the dominator must suppress as objects of his power. The myth teaches that these objects are incapable of wielding the responsibility
for maintaining order that has been thrust upon the dominator by virtue of his place in society. The acceptance of this story as true and natural allows for
its perpetuation. By exposing the myth and its supporting ideology of objectification and resulting superiority, its power evaporates like
a mirage in the desert. The dominator is forced to come to terms with the humanity of the other as he is no longer
protected by the story of his "rightful" position. In the same way that it is difficult for those who live in a two-dimensional world to visualize a cube, it can
be difficult to conceptualize just how nonviolence disarms the dominator . Moreover, nonviolence has been repeatedly
confused with nonresistance, passivity, and supine acceptance of wrong. Jesus told several stories that concretely illustrate the practical effects
of nonviolence and, yet, the popular misinterpretation of these stories has led to much of the confusion between passivity and nonviolence. An example
of this is Jesus' teaching about turning the other cheek. In the historical context of this story, Jesus was not enjoining his peasant audience
to compound injury by deliberately inviting additional blows. Rather, he was urging his hearers to neither
capitulate to evil, nor oppose it violently , but to seek a third way. He taught, "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also."
This refers, not to a blow with the fist to the right cheek (which would require use of the left hand), but a backhand. The backhand was not intended to
injure physically but psychically: its purpose was to humiliate, dehumanize, demean, and shame an upstart inferior and re-insert such a person into his
or her social role. It was administered by a superior to an inferior: master to slave, husband to wife, parent to child, Roman to Jew. " Turning the
other cheek" is an act of defiance. The "inferior" refuses to be re-inserted into the inferior role . By physically turning
the other cheek, the oppressed person creates a logistical problem: it is now impossible to repeat the backhand since the other's nose is now in the way.
(This scene can only be fully understood by physically demonstrating it.) Because of the Semitic taboo against using the left hand, the aggressor's
only alternative is to actually strike a blow. But a blow with the fist would establish the parties as equals and
destroy the dominator's leverage. Jesus is urging his hearers, who are accustomed to such treatment ("if anyone strikes you"), to refuse to accept it any
longer, thus forcing the dominators to recognize them as human beings. He challenges them to refuse to be humiliated any longer. This forced
acknowledgment of equality is certainly no way to avoid trouble; the master or parent may respond with a flogging. But it breaks the
cycle of domination by an act of defiance that shatters the myth and changes the existing power relations. There
are two other examples Jesus gives that have been similarly misunderstood. "If anyone sues you for your outer garment, give him your under garment as
well" does not mean, as it has been so often taken, that one should submit to every injustice. Rather, the poor person whose long cloak is being possessed
as collateral for a loan in default is counseled by Jesus to strip off his undergarment and subject the court to his or her nakedness. In those times, the
taboo of public nakedness placed the greater shame on the onlookers rather than on the naked person. The effect of this command was that the creditor
could only take advantage of the debtor at the creditor's social peril. Thus, a negotiation is fostered that by its very existence acknowledges the power of
the debtor. The tables are turned, the truth is unveiled and the oppressed discover that they can assert power even when the legal system is rigged to
their disadvantage. The remarkable thing about this exercise is that it illuminates the nakedness of the dominator once the mythic cloak of power is
removed. The myth of redemptive violence and domination is a tale spun from invisible thread. In a third example, Jesus
alludes to the Roman legal right of angaria, whereby a soldier could force a civilian to carry his pack one mile but no further. To force a civilian to carry
his pack a second mile would be an infraction of Roman military law. When Jesus suggests carrying the soldier's pack two miles, he is not advising his
peasant audience simply to be nice and extend themselves, but to put the soldier in legal jeopardy. One can imagine the soldier's confusion and
consternation as the civilian strides boldly ahead after the mile marker is passed. Why is he doing this? Will he report this to the centurion? Is the soldier
in danger of punishment? The soldier, so used to exercising power, has lost control of this situation entirely. Once again, the peasant has found a way to
step outside of the domination system and force the soldier to confront him as an equal. We are taught that biological evolution
prepared us for two responses to threat: flight or fight. Either we submit, withdraw, flee, surrender, or we strike back in kind.
Nonviolence represents a third way, neither passive nor violent: active nonviolent resistance. Jesus, through these teachings, exhorted his
usually supine hearers to seize the moral initiative and find a creative alternative to violence. The system is confounded when people
refuse to accept their assigned roles. Just by refusing to sit in the back of a bus, Rosa Parks catalyzed an
avalanche of social change in this country. The powerful can be forced by non-injurious coercive action to recognize and acknowledge the humanity
of those whom they normally suppress, and, in the process, recover their own humanity. Similarly, the capacity to recognize the humanity
of one's oppressors (loving one's enemies) makes it possible for each party to a conflict to be reconciled. Nonviolence
is the only truly viable option for the powerless. We scarcely have begun to tap the power of this ancient but recently burgeoning
method for overcoming domination. Tolstoy wrote Mahatma Gandhi in 1910 stating that the non-violent resistance campaign in South Africa "[is] the
most important activity the world can at present take part in, and in which not Christendom alone but all the people of the earth will participate."
Non-Violence Transforms The Cycle Of Violence

Stephen and Walter
Auburn Theological Seminary; Saint Louis University Law Journal, Winter, 1993-1994)
That we are at the end of an era is not something that can be proved scientifically. One senses it or one does not. One knows by intuition that the old
images, as Archibald MacLeish says in The Metaphor, have lost their meaning. The old images may yet have some meaning, but their grip has loosened
sufficiently to allow us to consider alternatives. We are now faced with the opportunity to dismantle the myth of redemptive
violence and break the cycle of domination. The fragmented exclusivity of our separate struggles for justice must be discarded for the
common ground of opposition to the domination system in all its forms; it is the common enemy. Through the recognition and
acknowledgment of each other's humanity, we can open a way to a new possibility for life. Life outside this
cycle. In the legal context, this principle requires the recognition and rectification of inequality under the law. It requires the recognition of the
humanity of those oppressed by the operation of law as practiced. It requires the acknowledgment by the legal system of the objectification and
subsequent harm to women by pornography. It requires the recognition that the law's perspective remains that of men. It requires the recognition that
the colorblindness of the constitution means that it mainly sees white. It requires that people acknowledge and celebrate their cultural and linguistic
differences and support each other's full participation in society. How can violence be redemptive when it only begets more and more
violence and exacts a continuing price from each participant. That is not the path to victory, only defeat . The
battle we must fight is not against the dominators as individuals, but the system in which all are victims. The struggle must be joined, not
against something so as to overcome or dominate it, but rather to transcend the domination system itself -- the paradigm of our
existence. The choice between joining the system or fighting against it remains a choice that serves the system
in either case -- it is a zero-sum game, a Hobson's choice. The alternative is to seek a third way in every human
endeavor; a way that shifts the context from domination to a partnership among people; a way that affirms the
humanity of one's enemies and seeks their well-being along with our own in a community of equals where the
humanity of all is affirmed.
Turn: Questioning The Inevitability Of Violence Is A Moral Imperative
Understanding the system that creates domination through violence brings to light the choice available to
individuals and societies: either continue in the complacency that is complicit in its evil and the reactionary violence
that feeds it, or engage the system in a way that demands a new possibility for justice -- a possibility that does not
include domination violence. It is precisely this possibility that the system in which we live desperately tries to
keep hidden. In Part II of this Article, we question whether domination violence is really necessary for the establishment and propagation of human
societies. Part III discusses the origins of domination violence and the pervasive system it founded. Part IV provides a brief sketch of the development of
law and its attendant inequality as instrument and exemplar of this system of domination violence. Part V then offers not an alternative paradigm, but
interim methods for extricating ourselves from the grip of the current system -- a task we believe to be a moral
imperative
AT State Bad
Institutional approaches are crucial to effectively challenge the flawed state policies.
Grossberg, 92 [Lawrence, Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, We Gotta Get
Out of this Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture, page 388-389 //liam ]
The demand for moral and ideological purity often results in the rejection of any hierarchy or organization. The
question-can the master's tools be used to tear down the master's house?-ignores both the contingency of the
relation between such tools and the master's power and, even more importantly, the fact that there may be no
other tools available. Institutionalization is seen as a repressive impurity within the body politic rather than as
a strategic and tactical, even empowering, necessity. It sometimes seems as if every progressive organization is
condemned to recapitulate the same arguments and crisis, often leading to their collapse. 54 For example, Minkowitz
has described a crisis in Act Up over the need for efficiency and organization, professionalization and even hierarchy,55 as if these inherently
contradicted its commitment to democracy. This is particularly unfortunate since Act Up, whatever its limitations, has proven itself an effective and
imaginative political strategist. The problems are obviously magnified with success, as membership, finances and activities grow. This refusal of
efficient operation and the moment of organization is intimately connected with the Left's appropriation and
privileging of the local (as the site of democracy and resistance). This is yet another reason why structures of alliance are inadequate, since they
often assume that an effective movement can be organized and sustained without such structuring. The Left needs to recognize the
necessity of institutionalization and of systems of hierarchy, without falling back into its own authoritarianism.
It needs to find reasonably democratic structures of institutionalization, even if they are impure and
compromised.
***Performative Pedagogy***
Experience Focus Bad- Epistemology
Their prioritization of experience as the starting point for all political action is a dangerous
epistemological move which elevates identity over deliberationtheir methodology is a
breeding ground for violent factionalism, not progressive politics.
Once an arcane philosophical term, experience over the last three decades has become a general buzzword. By the 1970s, experience
spilled over into the streets, so to speak, and it has since then become the stuff of programmatic manifestos and has been
enlisted as the ground from which microstrategies of resistance and subaltern counterhistories can be erected.
But for all the blows and counterblows that have carried on for over three decades between those who appeal to the counterhegemonic potential of
experience and those who see such appeals as naive voluntarism, such debates show no signs of abating. On the contrary, they have become yet more
strident, as can be seen by Michael Pickering's recent attempt to rehabilitate the viability of the term "experience" for subaltern historiography by turning
to E. P. Thompson and Dilthey and, more recently still, by Sonia Kruks's polemical defense of experience for subaltern inquiry by way of a reminder that
poststructuralist critics of experience owe much to those very thinkers, from Sartre to Merleau-Ponty, whom they have debunked as if in oedipal
rebellion against their begetters. Such debates over experience have so far gravitated around issues of epistemology and agency, pitting those who
debunk experience as the stuff of an antiquated philosophy of consciousness against those who argue that subaltern experience provides an enclave
against strong structural determination. Lost in such debates, however, have been the potential consequences of appeals to immediate experience as a
ground for subaltern agency and specificity. And it is just such potential consequences that will be examined here. These indeed demand our attention,
for more is at stake in the appeal to experience than some epistemological faux pas. By so wagering on the
perceived immediacy of experience as the evidence for subaltern specificity and counterhegemonic action,
appeals to immediate experience, however laudable their goal, end up unwittingly naturalizing what is in fact
historical, and, in so doing, they leave the door as wide-open to a progressive politics of identity as to a retreat
to neoethnic tribalism. Most alarming about such appeals to [End Page 87] experience is not some failure of epistemological nerve
it is instead their ambiguous political and social ramifications. And these have reverberated beyond academia and
found an echo in para-academia so much so that experience has increasingly become the core concept or key word of
subaltern groups and the rallying call for what Craig Calhoun calls the "new social movements" in which "experience is made
the pure ground of knowledge, the basis of an essentialized standpoint of critical awareness" (468 n.64). The consequences of such
appeals to experience can best be addressed not by individually considering disparate currents, but by seeking
their common denominator. And in this regard, E. P. Thompson will occupy the foreground. It is safe to say that what started as an altercation
between Thompson and Althusser has since spawned academic and para-academic "histories from below" and subaltern
cultural inquiries that, for all their differences, share the idea that the identities and counterhistories of the
disenfranchised can be buttressed by the specificity of a group's concrete experience s. Much theorizing on experience by
certain cultural and historiographical trends, as many have already pointed out, has been but a variation on a persistent Thompsonian theme in which
Thompson's "kind of use of experience has the same foundational status if we substitute 'women's' or 'black' or 'lesbian' or 'homosexual' for 'working
class'" (Scott, 786).
Their methodological dogmatism causes a prioritization of knower over knowledge, causing

politics to degenerate into us versus them squabbles which are totally absent of the type of
critical deliberation they claim to bring to the forefrontthe presentation of their affirmative is
a double turn with its content.
Moore and Miller 99 [Rob, Cambridge, Johan, University of Cape Town, The Discourse of Voice and the
Problem of Knowledge and Identity in the Sociology of Education, British Journal of Sociology of Education
20 (2) p. 199-200]
The pedagogic device (Bernstein, 1990) of voice discourse promotes a methodology in which the explication of a
method's social location precludes the need to examine the content of its data as grounds for valid explanation .
Who says it is what counts, not what is said. This approach favours an ethnography that claims to reveal the
cultural specificity of the category --the 'voice' of membership. What is held to be the facts, to be the case, is only soand can only be so-from a particular perspective. The world thus viewed is a patchwork of incommensurable
and exclusive voices or standpoints. Through the process of sub-division, increasingly more particularised identity categories come into
being, each claiming the unique specificity of its distinctive experience and the knowledge authorised by it. The consequence of the abolition
of the knowledge boundary that follows from the epistemological theses of postmodernism is the increasing
specialisation of social categories (see Maton, 1998). Maton describes this process of proliferation in terms of the way such 'knower'
discourses, ... base their legitimation upon the privileged insight of a knower, and work at maintaining strong
boundaries around their definition of this knower-they celebrate difference where 'truth' is defined by the
'knower' or 'voice'. As each voice is brought into the choir, the category of the privileged 'knower' becomes
smaller, each strongly bounded from one another, for each 'voice' has its own privileged and specialised
knowledge. The client 'knower' group thus fragments, each fragment with its own representative ... The procession
of the excluded thus becomes, in terms of the privileged 'knower', an accretion of adjectives, the 'hyphenation' which knower modes often proclaim as
progress. In summary, with the emergence of each new category of knower, the categories of knowers become
smaller, leading to proliferation and fragmentation within the knowledge formation . (ibid., p. 17)
As Maton argues, this
The device that welds

knowledge to standpoint, voice and experience, produces a result that is inherently unstable, because the
anchor for the voice is an interior authenticity that can never be demonstrated, only claimed (Taylor, 1992; Siegel,
1997; Fuss, 1990, 1995). Since all such claims are power claims, the authenticity of the voice is constantly prone to a
purifying challenge, 'If you do not believe it you are not one of us' (Hammersly & Gomm, 1997, para. 3.3) that gears down
to ever more rarefied specialisations or iterations of the voice category; an unstoppable spiral that Bernstein (1997, p. 176) has referred to as the
'shrinking of the moral imagination [10]. As Bernstein puts it, 'The voice of a social category (academic discourse, gender subject,
occupational subject) is constructed by the degree of specialisation of the discursive rules regulating and legitimising
the form of communication ' (1990, p.23). If categories of either agents or discourse are specialised, then each category necessarily has its own
specific identity and its own specific boundaries. The speciality of each category is created, maintained and reproduced only
if the relations between the categories of which a given category is a member are preserved. What is to be
preserved? The insulation between the categories. It is the strength of the insulation that creates a space in which a category can
move promotes a fundamental change in the principle of legitimation-from what is known (and how) to who knows it.
become specific. If a category wishes to increase its specificity, it has to appropriate the means to produce the necessary insulation that is the prior
condition to its appropriating specificity. (ibid.) Collection codes employ an organisation of knowledge to specialise categories of person, integrated
codes employ an organisation of persons to specialise categories of knowledge (Bernstein, 1977, pp. 106-111). The instability of the social
categories associated with voice discourse reflects the fact that there is no stable and agreed-upon way of
constructing such categories. By their nature, they are always open to contestation and further fragmentation.
In principle, there is no terminal point where 'identities' can finally come to rest. It is for this reason that this
position can reappear so frequently across time and space within the intellectual field-the same move can be
repeated endlessly under the disguise of 'difference'. In Bernstein's terms, the organisation of knowledge is, most significantly, a
device for the regulation of consciousness. The pedagogic device is thus a symbolic ruler of consciousness in its selective
creation, positioning and oppositioning of pedagogic subjects. It is the condition for the production,
reproduction, and transformation of culture. The question is: whose ruler, what consciousness ? (1990, p. 189) The
relativistic challenge to epistemologically grounded strong classifications of knowledge removes the means
whereby social categories and their relations can be strongly theorised and effectively researched in a form that
is other than arbitrary and can be challenged by anyone choosing to assert an alternative perspective or
standpoint.
While we agree with the pedagogic goals of their project, they must be separated from the
flawed epistemology in which they are couched. Only a negative ballot is able to make possible
the type of progressive politics upon which their solvency is predicated.
Our purpose in this paper is to raise some issues about epistemological debates and approaches to knowledge
in the sociology of education . Our starting point is the observation that since the phenomenologically inspired New Sociology
of Education in the early 1970s to postmodernism today, approaches that question epistemological claims about the objectivity
of knowledge (and the status of science, reason and rationality, more generally) have occupied an influential position in the field.
In earlier times, this approach was often referred to as the 'sociology of knowledge' perspective. Yet then, as now, it is precisely the idea of knowledge
that is being challenged. Such approaches adopt, or at least favour or imply, a form of perspectivism which sees knowledge and truth
claims as being relative to a culture, form of life or standpoint and, therefore, ultimately representing a particular perspective and social interest rather
than independent, universalistic criteria. They complete this reduction by translating knowledge claims into
statements about knowers. Knowledge is dissolved into knowing and priority is given to experience as specialised by category
membership and identity (Maton, 1998). For instance, a so-called 'dominant' or 'hegemonic' form of knowledge,
represented in the school curriculum, is identified as 'bourgeois', 'male', or 'white'-as reflecting the
perspectives, standpoints and interests of dominant social groups. Today, the most common form of this approach is that
which, drawing upon postmodernist and poststructuralist perspectives, adopts a discursive concern with the explication of 'voice'. Its major distinction is
that between the dominant voice and those ('Others') silenced or marginalised by its hegemony. As Philip Wexler (1997, p.9) has recently observed:
'The postmodern emphasis on discourse and identity remain overwhelmingly the dominant paradigm in
school research, and with few exceptions, gives few signs of abating' (see also Delamont, 1997). The main move is to attach
knowledge to categories of knowers and to their experience and subjectivities. This privileges and specialises
the subject in terms of its membership category as a subordinated voic e. Knowledge forms and knowledge relations are
translated as social standpoints and power relationships between groups. This is more a sociology of knowers and their
relationships than of knowledge. What we will term 'voice discourse' is our principle concern, here. Historically, this approach has
also been associated with concerns to reform pedagogy in a progressive direction. At the time of the New Sociology of
Education in the early 1970s, this move was expressed in the debate between 'new' sociologists such as Michael Young (1971, 1976) and the philosophical
position associated with R.S. Peters and Paul Hirst. More recently, it has been associated with developments such as anti-sexist,
multicultural and postcolonial education, and with postmodernist critiques of the 'En- lightenment Project' and 'grand
narratives'. The crucial issue, for such approaches, is that where social differentiation in education and the
reproduction of social inequalities are associated with principles of exclusion structured in and through
educational knowledge. Hence, the critique of knowledge and promotion of progressive pedagogy is understood as
facilitating a move from social and educational exclusion to inclusion and the promotion of social justice . This
history can be summarised as follows: in the early 1970s, the New Sociology of Education produced a critique of insulated knowledge codes by adopting a
'sociology of knowledge' perspective that claimed to demystify their epistemological pretensions to cognitive superiority by revealing their class base and
form. Knowledge relations were transcribed as class relations [1]. In the late 1970s, feminism challenged the masculinist bias of class analysis and turned
attention to the gendered character of educational relations, rewriting knowledge relations in terms of patriarchy. This was in turn followed by a focus
upon race. In the 1980s, the primary categories employed by gender and race approaches fragmented as various groups contested the vanguardist claims
of the earlier proponents of those perspectives to be representing the interests of women or blacks in general. The category 'woman', for instance,
fragmented into groups such as women of colour, non-heterosexual women, working-class women, third-world women and African women (Wolpe,
1998). These fractions of gender and race were further extended by a range of sexualities and, to some degree (although never so successfully), by
disabilities. Under this pressure of fragmentation, there was a rapid shift away from political universalism to a
thoroughgoing celebration of difference and diversity; of decentred, hyphenated or iterative models of the self
and, consequently, of identity politics. This poststructuralist celebration of diversity is associated with
proclamations of inclusiveness that oppose the alleged exclusiveness of the dominant knowledge form that is
revealed when its traditional claims to universalism and objectivity are shown for what they really are-the
disguised standpoints and interests of dominant groups. On this basis, epistemology and the sociology of
knowledge are presented as antithetical. The sociology of knowledge undertakes to demystify epistemological
knowledge claims by revealing their social base and standpoint . At root, this sociology of knowledge debunks epistemology. The
advocacy of progressive moral and political arguments becomes conflated with a particular set of (anti-)
epistemological arguments (Siegel, 1995; Maton, 1999). At this descriptive level, these developments are usually
presented as marking a progressive advance whereby the assault upon the epistemological claims of the dominant or 'hegemonic' knowledge code (rewritten in its social form as 'power') enables a succession of previously
marginalised, excluded and oppressed groups to enter the central stage, their histories to be recovered and their 'voices' joined
freely and equally with those already there [2]. Within this advance, the voice of reason (revealed as that of the ruling class white heterosexual male) is
reduced simply to one among many, of no special distinction. This is advance through the multiplication of categories and their differences. Disparities of
access and representation in education were (and are) rightly seen as issues that need addressing and remedying, and in this respect constitute a genuine
politics. It is important to stress, here, that the issues are real issues and the work done on their behalf is real work. But the
question is: is this politics best pursued in this way? The tendency we are intending to critique, then, assumes an
internal relation between: (a) theories of knowledge (epistemological or sociological); (b) forms of education (traditional or
progressive); and (c) social relations (between dominant and subordinated groups). This establishes the political default settings
whereby epistemologically grounded, knowledge-based forms of education are politically conservative, while
'integrated' (Bernstein, 1977) or 'hybrid' (Muller & Taylor, 1995) knowledge codes are progressive. On this basis, socially
progressive causes are systematically detached from epistemologically powerful knowledge structures and from
their procedures for generating and promoting truths of fact and value. For us, the crucial problem , here, is that
these default settings have the effect of undermining the very argumentative force that
progressive causes in fact require in order to press their claims. The position of voice discourse and its
cognate forms within the sociology of education has, also, profoundly affected theory and research within the field, with little
attention being paid to structural level concerns with social stratification and a penchant for small-scale,
qualitative ethnographic methods and 'culturalist' concerns with discursive positioning and identity (Moore, 1996a;
Hatcher, 1998). We will argue that this perspective is not only politically self-defeating, but also intellectually
incoherent-that, in fact, progressive claims implicitly presuppose precisely the kind of 'conservative' epistemology
that they tend to reject and that, to be of value, the sociology of education should produce knowledge in the
strong sense. This is important because the effects of the (anti-) epistemological thesis undermine the
possibilities of producing precisely that kind of knowledge required to support the moral/political objectives .
Indeed, the dubious epistemological assumptions may lead not only to an 'analytical nihilism that is contrary to
(their) political project' (Ladwig, 1995, p.222), but also to pedagogic conclusions that are actively counterproductive
and ultimately work against the educational interests of precisely those groups they are meant to help ( Stone,
1981; Dowling, 1994). We agree, thus, with Siegel that, '... it is imperative that defenders of radical pedagogy distinguish their
embrace of particular moral/political theses from untenable, allegedly related, epistemological ones' (ibid., p.34).
Experience Focus Bad- Biologism Turn

Externally, their fetishization of lived experience degenerates into a crude biologism which
manifests itself in racial violence.
More is involved here than some epistemological blunder. In their bid to circumvent ideological mediation by turning to the
presumed immediacy of experience, Thompsonian experience-oriented theories advance an argument that is not so
much theoretically specious as it is potentially dangerous: there is nothing within the logic of such an argument that
precludes the hypostatization of other nondiscursive bases for group membership and specificitybases that
can as readily be those of a group's immediate experiences as they can be those of a group's presumed
materially immediate biological characteristics or physical markers of ethnicity and sexuality . If the criterion for the
disruptive antihegemonic potential of experience is its immediacy, and if, as we have just seen, such a criterion can readily lead to a
fetishization of the material body itself, then what starts out as an attempt to account for a nonmediated locus of
resistance and agency [End Page 95] can end up as a surenchre of immediacy that by but a nudge of a cluster of circumstances
can propel toward what Michael Piore's Beyond Individualism calls "biologism"an increasingly common trend whereby "a person's
entire identity resides in a single physical characteristic, whether it be of blackness, of deafness or of
homosexuality" (quoted in Gitlin, 6). Blut und Boden seem but a step away. The step from a wager on immediate experience, whether from theories
hoping to account for agency or from groups struggling for cultural recognition, to rabid neoethnic fundamentalisms is only a possible step and not a
necessary one; and the link between these two trends is certainly not one of affinity, and still less one of causality. What the parallelism between the two
does suggest, however, is that in spite of their divergent motivations and means, they both attempt to ground group
specificity by appealing to immediacyby appealing, in other words, to something that is less a historical product or
a mediated construct than it is an immediately given natural entity, whether it be the essence of a Volk, as in
current tribalisms, or the essence of material experiences specific to groups, as in strains of Alltagsgeschichte and certain subaltern endeavors. If
a potential for biologism and the specter of neoethnic tribalism are close at hand in certain cultural theories
and social movements, it is because the recourse to immediate experience opens the back door to what was
booted out the front doorit inadvertently naturalizes what it initially set out to historicize. The tendency in appeals to
experience toward naturalizing the historical have already been repeatedly pointed out by those most sympathetic to the motivations behind such
appeals. Joan W. Scotthardly an antisubaltern historianhas argued, as have Nancy Fraser, Rita Felski, and others, that it is precisely by predicating
identity and agency on shared nonmediated experiences that certain historians of difference and cultural theorists in fact "locate resistance outside its
discursive construction and reify agency as an inherent attribute of individuals"a move that, when pushed to its logical conclusion, "naturalizes
categories such as woman, black, white, heterosexual and homosexual by treating them as given characteristics of individuals" (Scott, 777). Although
such a tendency within experienceoriented theories is rarely thematized, and rarer still is it intended, it nevertheless logically follows from the argument
according to which [End Page 96] group identity, specificity, and concerted political action have as their condition of possibility the nonmediated
experiences that bind or are shared by their members. On the basis of such a stance, it is hardly surprising that currents of gay identity politics (to take
but one of the more recent examples) should treat homosexuality, as Nancy Fraser has noted, "as a substantive, cultural, identificatory positivity, much
like an ethnicity" (83). It may seem unfair to impute to certain experience-oriented theories an argument that, when carried to its logical conclusion, can
as readily foster an emancipatory politics of identity as it can neoethnic tribalism. The potential for biologism hardly represents the intentions of
experience-oriented theories; these, after all, focus on the immediacy of experience, rather than on the essence of a group, in order to avoid strong
structural determination on the one hand, and the naturalizing of class or subaltern groups on the other. But if there cannot be a discursive
differentiation of one experience from anotherthe counterhegemonic potential of experience is predicated on

its prediscursive immediacy, and mediation is relegated to a supplemental and retrospective operationand if
a nondiscursive or ideologically uncontaminated common ground becomes the guarantor of group authenticity,
then the criterion for group specificiy must be those elements that unite groups in nondiscursive ways. And
such elements can as readily be those of a group's shared nonmediated experience, such as oppression, as they
can be those of a group's biological characteristics. At best, "the evidence of experience ," Scott notes, "becomes the
evidence for the fact of difference, rather than a way of exploring how differences are established" (796); at worst,
the wager on the immediacy of experience fosters tribalistic reflexes that need but a little prodding before
turning into those rabid, neoethnic "micro fascisms" against which Flix Guattari warned in his last essay before his death (26-27).
Experience Focus Bad- Non-Falsifiable

Using experience automatically legitimizes the speakers knowledge non-falsifiable claims
prevent discursive inquiry, this destroys education and argumentation
Scott 91 [Joan W., University of Wisconsin, Ph.D; University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, Assistant Professor;
Northwestern University, Assistant Professor; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Associate Professor,
Professor; Brown University, Nancy Duke Lewis University Professor, Pembroke Center for Teaching and
Research on Women, Founding Director; Institute for Advanced Study, Member, Professor, Harold F. Linder
Professor, The Evidence of Experience, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Summer, 1991), p. 783-84 //liam]
The concepts of experience described by Williams preclude inquiry into processes of subject-construction; and they avoid
examining the relationships between discourse, cognition, and reality, the relevance of the position or situatedness of
subjects to the knowledge they produce, and the effects of difference on knowledge. Questions are not raised about, for example,
whether it matters for the history they write that historians are men, women, white, black, straight, or gay;
instead, as de Certeau writes, "the authority of the 'subject of knowledge' [is measured] by the elimination of everything
concerning the speaker" ("H," p. 218). His knowledge, reflecting as it does something apart from him, is legitimated and presented as
universal, accessible to all. There is no power or politics in these notions of knowledge and experience. An example of the way
"experience" establishes the authority of an historian can be found in R. G. Collingwood's Idea of History, the 1946 classic that has been required reading in historiography
courses for several generations. For Collingwood, the ability of the historian to reenact past experience is tied to his autonomy, "where by autonomy I mean the condition of
being one's own authority, making statements or taking action on one's own initiative and not because those statements or actions are authorized or prescribed by anyone
else."'9 The question of where the historian is situated-who he is, how he is defined in relation to others, what the political effects of his history may be-never enters the
discussion. Indeed, being free of these matters seems to be tied to Collingwood's definition of autonomy, an issue so critical for him that he launches into an uncharacteristic
tirade about it. In his quest for certainty, the historian must not let others make up his mind for him, Collingwood insists, because to do that means giving up his autonomy as
an historian and allowing someone else to do for him what, if he is a scientific thinker, he can only do for himself. There is no need for me to offer the reader any proof of this
statement. If he knows anything of historical work, he already knows of his own experience that it is true. If he does not already know that it is true, he does not know enough
about history to read this essay with any profit, and the best thing he can do is to stop here and now.20 For Collingwood it
is axiomatic that experience is a

reliable source of knowledge because it rests on direct contact between the historian's perception and reality
(even if the passage of time makes it necessary for the historian to imaginatively reenact events of the past). Thinking on his own means owning his
own thoughts, and this proprietary relationship guarantees an individual's independence, his ability to read the
past correctly, and the authority of the knowledge he produces. The claim is not only for the historian's autonomy, but also for his
originality. Here "experience" grounds the identity of the researcher as an historian. Another, very different use of "experience" can be found in E. P. Thompson's Making of
the English Working Class, the book that revolutionized social and labor history. Thompson specifically set out to free the concept of "class" from the ossified categories of
Marxist structuralism. For this project "experience" was a key concept. "We explored," Thompson writes of himself and his fellow New Left historians, "both in theory and in
practice, those junction-concepts (such as 'need', 'class', and 'determine') by which, through the missing term, 'experience', structure is transmuted into process, and the
subject re-enters into history."21 Thompson's notion of experience joined ideas of external influence and subjective feeling, the structural and the psychological. This gave him
a mediating influence between social structure and social consciousness. For him experience meant "social being"-the lived realities of social life, especially the affective
domains of family and religion and the symbolic dimensions of expression. This definition separated the affective and the symbolic from the economic and the rational.
"People do not only experience their own experience as ideas, within thought and its procedures," he maintained, "they also experience their own experience as feeling" ("PT,"
p. 171). This statement grants importance to the psychological dimension of experience, and it allows Thompson to account for agency. Feeling, Thompson insists, is "handled"
culturally as "norms, familial and kinship obligations and reciprocities, as values or (through more elaborated forms) within art and religious beliefs" ("PT," p. 171). At the
same time it somehow precedes these
forms of expression and so provides an escape from a strong structural
determination.
Experience denies us the ability to scrutinize your epistemology this produces a bad model of
debate
Scott 91 [Joan W., University of Wisconsin, Ph.D; University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, Assistant Professor;
Northwestern University, Assistant Professor; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Associate Professor,
Professor; Brown University, Nancy Duke Lewis University Professor, Pembroke Center for Teaching and
Research on Women, Founding Director; Institute for Advanced Study, Member, Professor, Harold F. Linder
Professor, The Evidence of Experience, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Summer, 1991), p. 788-89 //liam]
By definition, he argues, history is concerned with explanation; it is not a radical hermeneutics, but an attempt to account for the origin, persistence, and
disappearance of certain meanings "at particular times and in specific sociocultural situations" ("IH," p. 882). For him explanation requires a separation
of experience and meaning: experience is that reality which demands meaningful response. "Experience," in Toews's usage,
is taken to be so self-evident that he never defines the term. This is telling in an article that insists on establishing the
importance and independence, the irreducibility of "experience." The absence of definition allows experience to
resonate in many ways, but it also allows it to function as a universally understood category-the undefined
word creates a sense of consensus by attributing to it an assumed, stable, and shared meaning. Experience , for
Toews, is a foundational concept. While recognizing that meanings differ and that the historian's task is to analyze the different meanings produced in
societies and over time, Toews protects "experience" from this kind of relativism. In doing so he establishes the possibility for objective
knowledge and for communication among historians, however diverse their positions and views. This has the effect (among
others) of removing historians from critical scrutiny as active producers of knowledge. The insistence on the separation of
meaning and experience is crucial for Toews, not only because it seems the only way to account for change, but also because it protects the world from
"the hubris of wordmakers who claim to be makers of reality" ("IH," p. 906).
Juridical Turn
Judging performance backfires. It presumes a counterproductive juridical model of power
Butler 95 [Judith, Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley, Performativity and Performance, Ed. Parker and
Sedgwick, 1995, p. 204 //liam]
That words wound seems incontestably true, and that hateful, racist, misogynist, homophobic speech should be
vehemently countered seems incontrovertibly right. But does understanding from where speech derives its power to wound alter
our conception of what it might mean to counter that wounding power ? Do we accept the notion that injurious speech is
attributable to a singular subject and act? If we accept such a juridical constraint on thought - the grammatical
requirements of accountability - as a point of departure, what is lost from the political analysis of injury when
the discourse of politics becomes fully reduced to juridical requirements ?? Indeed, when political discourse is
collapsed into juridical discourse, the meaning of political opposition runs the risk of being reduced to the act
of prosecution. How is the analysis of the discursive historicity of power unwittingly restricted when the subject is presumed as the point of
departure for such an analysis? A clearly theological construction, the postulation of the subject as the causal origin of the performative act is understood
to generate that which it names; indeed, this divinely empowered subject is one for whom the name itself is generative.
More ev
Campbell 98 [Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle in England.
http://calliope.jhu.edu/journals/theory_&_event/v002/2.1r_campbell.html //liam]
With her own rhetorical virtuosity and acute philosophical acumen, Butler sets out to interrogate the assumptions behind key arguments concerned with
hate speech and the strategies to counter it. In so doing, she begins from a particular position sympathetic to those worried by hate speech in order to
make a specific point that diverges from their normal position: That words wound seems incontestably true, and that hateful, racist, misogynist,
homophobic speech should be vehemently countered seems incontrovertibly right. But does understanding from where speech derives its power to
wound alter our conception of what it might mean to counter that wounding power? Do we accept the notion that injurious speech is attributable to a
singular subject and act? If we accept such a juridical constraint on thought - the grammatical requirements of accountability - as a point of departure,
what is lost from the political analysis of injury? Indeed, when political discourse is collapsed into juridical discourse, the meaning of political opposition
runs the risk of being reduced to the act of prosecution (50). The collapse into juridical discourse, backed by the power of the state or specific agents of
the state, is obvious in the scenes above, and Butler's anxiety about the minimalization of political opposition - particularly in the first case, where the
dubious nature of the 'offence' diverts attention from racism more generally - appears fully justified. The question is,
however, whether the nonjuridical and nonstate forms of agency and resistance Butler places her faith in are up to the task set for them. Let's leave that
concern to hang for a bit. Let us first ask how it is that the dominant modes of dealing with hate speech appear universally juridical? In answering that
question, Butler demonstrates well the way in which critically interpretative thought can combine a series of theoretical assumptions to demonstrate the
limitations of prevalent discourses and alternative possibilities. In so doing, Excitable Speech is a powerful statement in response to those who would
maintain that arguments imbued with the idea of a "modernity without foundations" (161) evacuate ethico-political concerns from our horizon. Those
who argue that hate speech demands juridical responses assert that not only does the speech communicate, but
that it constitutes an injurious act. This presumes that not only does speech act, but that "it acts upon the
addressee in an injurious way" (16). This argumentation is, in Butler's eyes, based upon a "sovereign conceit" whereby
speech wields a sovereign power, acts as an imperative, and embodies a causative understanding of
representation. In this manner, hate speech constitutes its subjects as injured victims unable to respond
themselves and in need of the law's intervention to restrict if not censor the offending words, and punish the speaker: This
idealization of the speech act as a sovereign action (whether positive or negative) appears linked with the idealization of sovereign state power or, rather,
with the imagined and forceful voice of that power. It is as if the proper power of the state has been expropriated, delegated to its citizens, and the state
then rememerges as a neutral instrument to which we seek recourse to protects as from other citizens, who have become revived emblems of a (lost)
sovereign power (82). Two elements of this are paradoxical. First, the sovereign conceit embedded in conventional renderings of hate speech comes at a
time when understanding power in sovereign terms is becoming (if at all ever possible) even more difficult. Thus the juridical response to hate speech
helps deal with an onto-political problem: "The constraints of legal language emerge to put an end to this particular historical anxiety [the
problematisation of sovereignty], for the law requires that we resituate power in the language of injury, that we accord injury the status of an act and
trace that act to the specific conduct of a subject" (78). The second, which stems from this, is that (to use Butler's own admittedly hyperbolic
formulation) "the state produces hate speech." By this she means not that the state is the sovereign subject from which the various slurs emanate, but
that within the frame of the juridical account of hate speech "the category cannot exist without the state's ratification, and this power of the state's
judicial language to establish and maintain the domain of what will be publicly speakable suggests that the state plays much more than a limiting
function in such decisions; in fact, the state actively produces the domain of publicly acceptable speech, demarcating the line between the domains of the
speakable and the unspeakable, and retaining the power to make and sustain the line of consequential demarcation" (77). The sovereign conceit
of the juridical argument thus linguistically resurrects the sovereign subject at the very moment it seems most
vulnerable, and reaffirms the sovereign state and its power in relation to that subject at the very moment its
phantasmatic condition is most apparent. The danger is that the resultant extension of state power will be
turned against the social movements that sought legal redress in the first place (24)
Subjectivity
Performative pedagogy fails. It works no better than chance.
Pendlebury 5 [Shirley, Professor of Education, head, Division of Curriculum, University of the Witwatersrand, in The Routledge
Falmer Reader in Philosophy of Education, Wilfred Carr, 2005, p. 57 //liam]
Performative pedagogy calls on the teacher to see her own slippery position, to be aware and wary of her own authorial and authoritative
positioning. It takes
subjectivity seriously through a radical turn to specificity , an ever-shifting play of relationships, perspectives
and voices where, if anyone has authority, it is the learner and then only at the moment of expression. Learner-centredness
here rests on an apparent presumption in favour of the view from below apparent because it involves something of a pretence by
the teacher and because there is no singular view from below, but many. Taking subjectivity seriously in this way thwarts the very
project it intends to quicken and undermines the constitutive goods of teaching . How so? For a start, without
normative benchmarks, anything goes. By treating all voices and views as equally valid , Carmen Luke (herself a feminist)
argues, the feminist teacher risks a dangerous sameness: Views and voices from everywhere and every body
potentially are views and voices from nowhere and no body (Luke, 1996: 291). If anything goes, then changing
learners perceptions becomes a matter of chance and if the teacher has a role at all, it is to play stagehand to happenstance. Here
teaching would seem to be thoroughly luck-dependent, leaving the teacher without resources to establish the enabling conditions for
fulfilling the definitive ends of her practice (cf Pendlebury 1995).
Victimhood Turn
Narratives of suffering permanently relate subjectivity to victimhood and exclude anyone who
does not fit the model of subordination
Brown 96 (Wendy Brown is Professor of Women's Studies and Legal Studies, and is Co-Director of the Center
for Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The University of Chicago Law School
Roundtable 1996, //liam)
If, taken together, the two passages from Foucault we have been considering call feminists to account in our compulsion to put everything about
women into discourse, they do not yet exhaust the phenomenon of being ensnared 'in the folds of our own discourses.' For if the problem I have been
discussing is easy enough to see--indeed, largely familiar to those who track techniques of co-optation--at the level of legal and bureaucratic discourse,
it
is altogether more disquieting when it takes the form of regulatory discourse in our own sub- and countercultures of resistance . . . when confessing injury becomes that which attaches us to the injury, paralyzes us
within it, and prevents us from seeking or even desiring a status other than injured. In an age of social identification
through attributes marked as culturally significant--gender, race, sexuality, and so forth-- confessional discourse, with its truth-bearing
status in a post-epistemological universe, not only regulates the confessor in the name of freeing her as Foucault
described that logic, but extends beyond the confessing individual to constitute a regulatory truth
about the identity group. Confessed truths are assembled and deployed as "knowledge" about the group.
This phenomenon would seem to undergird a range of recurring troubles in feminism, from the "real woman" rejoinder to post-structuralist
deconstructions of her, to totalizing descriptions of women's experience that are the inadvertent effects of various kinds of survivor stories. Thus, for
example, the porn star who feels miserably exploited, violated and humiliated in her work invariably monopolizes the truth about sex work; as the girl
with math anxieties constitutes the truth about women and math; as eating disorders have become the truth about women and food; as sexual abuse
and violation occupy the knowledge terrain of women and sexuality. In other words, even as feminism aims to affirm diversity among women and
women's experiences, confession as the site of production of truth and its convergence with feminist suspicion and deauthorization of truth from other
sources tends to reinstate a unified discourse in which the story of greatest suffering becomes the true story of woman. (I think this constitutes part of the
rhetorical power of MacKinnon's work; analytically, the epistemological superiority of confession substitutes for the older, largely discredited charge of
false consciousness). Thus, the adult who does not suffer from her or his childhood sexual experience, the lesbian who does not feel shame, the woman
of color who does not primarily or "correctly" identify with her marking as such--these figures are excluded as bonafide members of the categories which
also claim them. Their status within these discourses is that of being "in denial," "passing" or being a "race traitor." This is the norm-making
process in feminist traditions of "breaking silence" which, ironically, silence and exclude the very women these
traditions mean to empower. (Is it surprising, when we think in this vein, that there is so little feminist writing on heterosexual pleasure?) But
if these practices tacitly silence those whose experiences do not parallel those whose suffering is most marked
(or whom the discourse produces as suffering markedly), they also condemn those whose sufferings they record to a
permanent identification with that suffering. Here, we experience a temporal ensnaring in 'the folds of our
own discourses' insofar as we identify ourselves in speech in a manner that condemns us to live in a present
dominated by the past. But what if speech and silence aren't really opposites? Indeed, what if to speak incessantly of one's
suffering is to silence the possibilities of overcoming it, of living beyond it, of identifying as something other than it? What if this
incessant speech not only overwhelms the experiences of others, but alternative (unutterable? traumatized? fragmentary?
inassimilable?) zones of one's own experience ? Conversely, what if a certain modality of silence about one's suffering--and I am suggesting
that we must consider modalities of silence as varied as modalities of speech and discourse--is to articulate a variety of possibilities not otherwise
available to the sufferer?
***Hip Hop***
Consumerism Turn
Hip hop is inevitably marketed to white consumers- turns black culture into a commodity that
can be tossed away
Hartigan 5- prof of anthropology @ UT, PhD from University of California, Santa Cruz
(John, South Atlantic Quarterly 104.3, Summer, Culture against Race: Reworking the Basis for Racial Analysis//MGD)
One might be tempted to assume that Gilroys stance is largely polemical, but his critique is thoroughgoing, as
is his call to reject

this desire to cling on to race and go on stubbornly and unimaginatively seeing the world on the distinctive
scales that it has specified. In spite of powerful, novel efforts to fundamentally transform racial analysissuch as the
emergence of whiteness studies or analyses of the new racismGilroy is emphatic in demand[ing]
liberation not from white supremacy alone, however urgently that is required, but from all racializing and raciological
thought, fromracialized seeing, racialized thinking, and racialized thinking about thinking (40). In contrast to Visweswaranand,
interestingly, voicing concerns over cultural politics that resonate with Dominguezs critique Gilroy sees a host of problems in black
political cultures that rely on essentialist approaches to building solidarity (38).14 Nor does he share Harrisons
confidence in making racism the centerpiece of critical cultural analysis. Gilroy plainly asserts that the starting point of this book is that the era of New
Racism is emphatically over (34). A singular focus on racism precludes an attention to the appearance of sharp
intraracial conflicts and does not effectively address the several new forms of determinism abroad (38, 34). We
still must be prepared to give effective answers to th e pathological problems represented by genomic racism, the
glamour of sameness, and the eugenic projects currently nurtured by their confluence (41). But the diffuse threats posed by
invocations of racially essentialized identities (shimmering in the glamour of sameness) as the basis for articulating black
political cultures entails an analytical approach that countervails against positing racism as the singular focus of
inquiry and critique.15 From Gilroys stance, to articulate a postracial humanism we must disable any form of racial vision and
ensure that it can never again be reinvested with explanatory power . But what will take its place as a basis for talking about the
dynamics of belonging and differentiation that profoundly shape social collectives today? Gilroy tries to make clear that it will not be culture, yet this
concept infuses his efforts to articulate an alternative conceptual approach. Gilroy conveys many of the same reservations about culture articulated by
the anthropologists listed above. Specifically, Gilroy cautions that the culturalist approach still runs the risk of naturalizing and normalizing hatred and
brutality by presenting them as inevitable consequences of illegitimate attempts to mix and amalgamate primordially incompatible groups (27). In
contrast, Gilroy expressly prefers the concept of diaspora as a means to ground a new form of attention to collective identities. As an alternative
to the metaphysics of race, nation, and bounded culture coded into the body, Gilroy finds that diaspora is a
concept that problematizes the cultural and historical mechanics of belonging (123). Furthermore, by focusing
attention equally on the sameness within differentiation and the differentiation within sameness, diaspora
disturbs the suggestion that political and cultural identity might be understood via the analogy of
indistinguishable peas lodged in the protective pods of closed kinship and subspecies (125). And yet, in a manner similar to
Harrisons prioritizing of racism as a central concern for social inquiry, when it comes to specifying what diaspora entails and how it works , vestiges
of culture reemerge as a basis for the coherence of this new conceptual focus . When Gilroy delineates the elements and
dimensions of diaspora, culture provides the basic conceptual background and terminology. In characterizing the Atlantic diaspora and
its successor-cultures, Gilroy sequentially invokes black cultural styles and postslave cultures that have supplied a
platform for youth cultures, popular cultures, and styles of dissent far from their place of origin (178). Gilroy explains how the cultural
expressions of hip-hop and rap, along with other expressive forms of black popular culture , are marketed by the
cultural industries to white consumers who currently support this black culture (181). Granted, in these uses of
culture Gilroy remains critical of absolutist definitions of culture and the process of commodification that
culture in turn supports. But his move away from race importantly hinges upon some notion of culture. We may be
able to do away with race, but seemingly not with culture.
Rap and hip hop are tools to be exploited by corporations- images of rap as a platform just
entrench racism
Kitwana 2- fellow at the Jamestown Project, think tank @ Harvard
(Bakari, The Hip Hop Generation, p. 9-11//MGD)
Let us begin with popular culture and the visibility of Black youth within it. Today,
more and more Black youth are turning to rap

music, music videos, designer clothing, popular Black films, and television programs for values and identity. One can find the
faces, bodies, attitudes, and language of Black youth attached to slick advertisements that sell what have
become global products, whether its Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Reebok and Nike sneakers, films such as Love Jones and Set it Off, or popular
rap artists like Missy Elliot and Busta Rhymes. Working diligently behind the scene and toward the bottom line
are the multinational corporations that produce, distribute, and shape these images. That Black youth in New Orleans,
Louisiana, and Champaign, Illinois, for example, share similar dress styles, colloquialisms, and body language with urban kids from Los Angeles,
Chicago, and New York City is not coincidental. We live in an age where corporate mergers, particularly in media and
entertainment, have redefined public space. Within this largely expanded public space, the viewing public is constantly
bombarded by visual images that have become central to the identity of an entire generation . Within the arena
of popular culture, rap music more than anything else has helped shape the new Black youth culture . From 1997 to
1998, rap music sales showed a 31 percent increase, making rap the fastest growing music genre, ahead of country, rock, classical, and all other musical
forms. By 1998 rap was the top-selling musical format, outdistancing rock music and country music, the previous leading sellers. Rap musics
prominence on the American music scene was evident by the late 1990s- from its increasing presence at the Grammys (which in 1998, for example,
awarded rapper Lauryn Hill five awards) to its pervasiveness in advertisements for mainstream corporation like AT&T, The Gap, Levis, and so on.
Cultural critic Cornel West, in his prophetic Race Matters (Beacon Press, 1993), refers to this high level of visibility of young blacks ,
primarily professional athletes and entertainers, in American popular culture as the Afro-Americanization of white youth . The
Afro-Americanization of white youth has been more a male than female affair given the prominence of male athletes and the cultural weight of male pop
artists. This process results in white youth-male and female- imitating and emulating black male styles of
walking, talking, dressing and gesticulating in relations to others. The irony in our present moment is that just as young
black men are murdered, maimed, and imprisoned in record numbers, their styles have become
disproportionately influential in shaping popular culture. Whereas previously the voices of young Blacks had been
locked out of the global ages public square, the mainstreaming of rap music now gave Black youth more
visibility and a broader platform than we ever had enjoyed before. At the same time, it gave young Blacks across the country who identified
with it and were informed by it a medium through which to share a national culture. In the process, rap artists became the dominant
public voice of this generation. Many have been effective in bringing the generations issues to the fore. From NWA to Master P, rappersthrough their lyrics, style, and attitude- helped to carve a new Black youth identity into the national landscape. Rappers access to global media and their
use of popular culture to articulate many aspects of this national identity renders rap music central to any discussion of the new Black youth culture.
The irony in all this is that the global corporate structure that gave young Blacks a platform was the driving
force behind our plight.
Stereotypes Turn
Hip hop reinforces stereotypes-gives racism a green card
Kitwana 2- fellow at the Jamestown Project, think tank @ Harvard
(Bakari, The Hip Hop Generation, p. xxi//MGD)
A final obstacle is the unprecedented influence Black youth have achieved through popular culture , especially
via the hip-hop phenomenon. Young Blacks have used this access, both in pop film and music, far too much to
strengthen associations between Blackness and poverty , while celebrating anti-intellectualism, ignorance, irresponsible
parenthood, and criminal lifestyles. This is the paradox: given hip-hops growing influence, these Birth of a Nationstyled representations receive a free pass from Black leaders and organizations seeking influence with the younger
generation. These depictions also escape any real criticism from non-Black critics who , having grown tired of the race card,
fear being attacked as racist. Void of open and consistent, criticism, such widely distributed incendiary ideas (what cultural critic Stanley
Crouch calls the new minstrelsy) reinforce myths of Black inferiority and insulate the new problems in African
American culture from redemptive criticism.
Pragmatism Tradeoff
Be real hip hop revolution is a pipe dream and calls for it preclude realistic action
McWhorter 2008 [John, William Simon Fellow in American Studies at Columbia University, Senior Fellow
at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Former Associate Professor of Linguistics at U.C. Berkeley and
Cornell, Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford, M.A. in American Studies from NYU, contributing editor to The
New Republic and City Journal, All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Cant Save Black America, pp.42-44 //liam]
The politics of hip-hop is exactly like this. Being oppositional feels good and makes for good rhymes spit over
great beats. But meanwhile, black people's lives are improving in ways that have nothing do with sticking up
their middle fingers. They are overcoming in the real America, the only America they will ever know. The hip-hop ethos, ever assailing the
suits, cannot even see any of this, because it is all about that upturned middle finger . The beat is better over here. But what
about the great things going on where there is no beat? Hip-hop, quite simply, doesn't care. Why would it? It's music. Too often for it to be an accident, I
have found that people making big claims about the potential for hip-hop to affect politics or create a revolution have mysteriously little interest in
politics as traditionally understood, or political change as it actually happens, as opposed to via dramatic revolutionary uprisings. Rehashing that
too many black men are in prison, they know nothing about nationwide efforts to reintegrate ex-cons into
society. Whipping up applause knocking Republicans, they couldn't cite a single bill making its way through Congress related to the black condition
(and there are always some). They are not, really, political junkies at all. The politics that they intend when referring to its
relationship to hip-hop is actually the personal kind: to them, politics is an attitude. Attitude alone will do
nothing for that ex-con. Efforts that help that ex-con are sustained in ongoing fashion quite separately from
anything going on in the rap arena or stemming from it. This means that if we are really interested in moving
forward, then in relation to that task, hip-hop does not merit serious interest. Hip-hop is a style, in rhythm, dress code, carriage, and
attitude. But there is style and there is substance. Hip-hop's style, however much it makes the neck snap, is ill-conceived to create substance
for black people or anyone else.
Hip hops call for a destruction of the system wont get anybody anywhere political actions to
make real world change are the best and only way to improve the lives of the oppressed
McWhorter 2008 [John, William Simon Fellow in American Studies at Columbia University, Senior Fellow
at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Former Associate Professor of Linguistics at U.C. Berkeley and
Cornell, Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford, M.A. in American Studies from NYU, contributing editor to The
New Republic and City Journal, All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Cant Save Black America, pp.135-139
//liam]
The "message" of hip-hop can be fairly described as saying two things. The first one; "Things really suck." The
second: "Things will keep sucking until there is a revolution where the white man finally understands and does
a complete 180-degree turn." I see this as a message of weakness and passivity. I see it that way for a very specific reason: there is no
logical way that the revolution in question could ever happen. It may be fun to think about, but in the light of day, it is nothing but
an idle fantasy. The sixties will not happen again. I say that not because I have some problem with how our Civil Rights heroes made the sixties happen. I
say that not because I have some reserved, bourgeois antipathy toward noise. I am not saying that protest is inappropriate. I am
saying that the call to turn the system upside down was useful and bore fruit in the fifties and sixties as the
result of a chance confluence of several factors that could never occur again . I stress: it was useful and it bore fruit. I fully
understand my debt to my elders. It was useful and it bore fruitthen, but now is not then. I am saying that today, the call to turn the system upside
down is not effective in addressing the problems we face in our own era, and when wielded, it does little but provide for street theater without actually
helping anyone. The problems are different. Real solutions will go far beyond telling white people to stop doing
something. Once again; that indeed was the kind of solution that worked in the fifties and sixties. But now it is not. And for that reason, I believe that
politics regarding black America that can be classified as revolutionary, radical, or nationalist disregard the very people those politics claim to be
concerned about. Rap of a "revolution," of we "niggas" rising up from a cage, and you are preaching a message of defeat, stasis, impotencebecause what
you are really saying is that black America will only improve when whites again change the way they think. We all know none of that shows any sign of
ever happening. It appeals merely in the artistic sense. Rapping Things suck" and leaving it there is not prophetic but weak. Wack, I might say. It's like
someone singing "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" . . . and then just sitting there, as you ache to hear them complete it with "How I wonder what you are." Or,
more apropos, imagine Jay-Z on Reasonable Doubt yelling "Can I kick it?" and the track just ending there. Obviously, what's supposed to come next is
"Yes, you can!!!!" In other words, on inequality, can we kick it? Yes, we canif we get back to real civil rights and start fetishizing solutions rather than
postures. We get nowhere in thinking that to be political is just to, as it were, "kick it," in the sense of making
noise, enjoying the idle self-medication of being angry. Jay-Z accusing the Bush administration of racism in "Minority Report" is one
thing, but it is still a static gesture. Hes saying: shit! I seek more than this in something presented to me as politically significant. In 2008, all
indications are that black America is going to overcome rather quietly. Definitely but quietly. "Ain't long for you get y'all acres," Black Thought tells us,
the subtext being that just over the horizon, blacks will finally get that forty acres and a mule. But no, it's not going to go down that way, not with that
brand of drama. Some will never be able to muster much interest in change that happens quietly, graduallyor even definitively. Change it may be, but
not interesting. Not worthy of writing articles about. Not worthy of mentioning at book signings. Not the shit. This is because they are wedded to a
fantastical notion that change will happen in a way that starkly gets back at "whiteness" and occurs to the kind of beat that gets them moving in their
seats. 'These people are, in the end, pleasing themselves rather than thinking seriously about how the nation
operates and how to carve a space within it where black people who need help can get it . Those of us interested
in helping people which is different from Utopian leftist incantationsmust walk on by. What really helps
people? Frankly, it has no beat. You can't dance to it. It isn't in anyone's face. It is, in a worda word used in an
original sense that hip-hop has distracted us fromreal . REASONS FOR HOPE Snapping our necks to beats and rhymes will have
no effect on what happens in the congressional chamber. But all is not lost. Unlike in 1920, we have the advantage that the Civil Rights revolution did
happen forty years ago, and mainstream attitudes in America did change. They did not change in such a way as to be interested in a black Civil Rights
revolution occurring again. But as the result of awareness of the first one, philanthropists are wide open to funding efforts targeted at poor black people.
Grassroots organizations like the Harlem Children's Zone are supported in part by rich white people, after all. Corporations are behind organizations like
this in any city: in Indianapolis, Christamore House, helping turn lives around in the inner city, is backed by Eli Lilly. In 1920, to most people with
money, black uplift efforts sounded about as important as saving spotted owls. Washington may not be set to apply a Marshall Plan to black ghettoes
and it's not an easy question as to just where the funds would go under such a plan (e.g., recall that flooding bad schools with money results in wellfunded bad schools). However, Washington does create programs like No Child Left Behind, the Faith-Based Initiatives, the Second Chance Act
reintegrating ex-cons into society, and the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act. There are flaws in all of them. But in 1920 all of them
would have sounded like something from the fourth dimension. As they would have as late as 1990. As late as 2000, efforts that have now culminated in
the Second Chance Act were seen as rewarding the "undeserving poor." We have something to work with today. Of course racism is still
around. But in deciding what is possible today, black people must do their grandparents the courtesy of
remembering what America was like in the old days. In this, black people will also do themselves a courtesy, in working from
what is constructive and positive about our times. Smoking out one more indication that racism is still alive in
subliminal ways must be less interesting to us than coping, dealing, building. If black people did this when they
weren't even allowed to eat with white people in public, then surely we can do this now. Pretend that black
people need the total eclipse of racism to do anything better than okay, and you are disappointing the spirits of
our elders.
AT Must Use Hip Hop/ Ev Bad

Their framework doesnt preclude us from reading evidence, compare it to their performance
Reid-Brinkley 2008 [Shanara, THE HARSH REALITIES OF ACTING BLACK: HOW AFRICANAMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE
AND STYLE, pp. 82-85 http://www.comm.pitt.edu/faculty/documents/reidbrinkley_shanara_r_200805_phd.pdf //liam)
Greens repetition of the phrase it doesnt take is delivered in an angry and rhythmic tone. Green appears to be loud-talkin her opponents, in essence
she indicates her frustration and disgust with their reliance on expertise. The repetition of the phrase seems designed to demonstrate the irony of
experts who identify and define for people what is occurring when people have the ability to observe it for themselves. Even more important, her tone
implies distrust for expertise, particularly the kind that often attempts to mask reality or convince people to ignore what they see, whether intentionally
or unintentionally. Her intent seems to be to raise the common knowledge of the average person to the level of real knowledge. In other words, she
questions the normative acceptance of expert testimony in contrast to lay testimony. She notes that the common person can make observations about
the practices of state institutions and international organizations. Such observations may be even more legitimate as the average person has less direct
connection to the levers of institutional power. Greens argument also represents the significance of social knowledge as oppositional to expert
knowledge within the traditions of black communication practices. If expertise is not a necessity in interrogating the actions and practices of
institutional state apparatuses, then Greens argument begs the question of why the debate community continues to privilege expert evidence. Such a
privileging of expertise creates parameters through which certain kinds of speakers have the right to speak through public discourse. It is not that
Louisville rejects the use of traditional evidence types. Note the following argument from Greens 2AR in the octo-finals against Wake Forest: One of
the things that they talk about how they talk about debate research is a unique space and things of that nature. Ok, granted, we understand that you
know, were not saying that research is bad or things of that nature, its how you use that research is what
becomes the problem. 56 In other words, the practice of signifyin is not as simple as an outright rejection or
negation of traditional or dominant practices . The process of signifyin engaged in by the Louisville debaters is
not simply designed to critique the use of traditional evidence . As Green argues, their goal is to challenge the relationship
between social power and knowledge. 57 In other words, those with social power within the debate community are able to produce and determine
legitimate knowledge. These legitimating practices usually function to maintain the dominance of normative knowledgemaking practices, while
crowding out or directly excluding alternative knowledge-making practices. The Louisville framework looks to the people who are oppressed by current
constructions of power. 58 Jones and Green offer an alternative framework for drawing claims in debate speeches, they refer to it as a three-tier
process: A way in which you can validate our claims, is through the three-tier process. And we talk about personal experience, organic intellectuals, and
academic intellectuals. Let me give you an analogy. If you place an elephant in the room and send in three blind folded people into the room, and each
of them are touching a different part of the elephant. And they come back outside and you ask each different person they gone have a different idea
about what they was talking about. But, if you let those people converse and bring those three different people together then you can achieve a greater
truth. 59 Jones argues that without the three tier process debate claims are based on singular perspectives that privilege those with institutional and
economic power. The Louisville debaters do not reject traditional evidence per se, instead they seek to augment or
supplement what counts as evidence with other forms of knowledge produced outside of academia . As Green notes
in the doubleocto-finals at CEDA Nationals, Knowledge surrounds me in the streets, through my peers, through personal experiences, and everyday
wars that I fight with my mind. 60 The thee-tier process: personal experience, organic intellectuals, and traditional evidence, provides a method of
argumentation that taps into diverse forms of knowledge-making practices. With the Louisville method, personal experience and
organic intellectuals are placed on par with traditional forms of evidenc e. While the Louisville debaters see the benefit of
academic research, they are also critically aware of the normative practices that exclude racial and ethnic minorities from policy-oriented discussions
because of their lack of training and expertise. Such exclusions prevent radical solutions to racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia from being more
permanently addressed. According to Green: bell hooks talks about how when we rely solely on one perspective to make our claims, radical liberatory
theory becomes rootless. Thats the reason why we use a three-tiered process. Thats why we use alternative forms of discourse such as hip hop. Thats
also how we use traditional evidence and our personal narratives so you dont get just one perspective claiming to be the right way. Because it becomes a
more meaningful and educational view as far as how we achieve our education.
***Middle Passage***
*Note
If you dont want to read the counternarrative, the Afro Pessimism DA has the same argument without the
narrative
Haiti Counternarrative
The 1ACs ontological critique of civil society and modern democracy argue that the Slave and
the Black cannot be Human. That because humanity, freedom, and autonomy are qualities
defined in opposition to the Slave, that we should trash modern humanist strategies of
expanding the circle of Humanity. The ontological form of the affs critique asks questions
about Being what is and what it is possible to be. They say it is impossible to be a Black
subject or a human without a slave.
We criticize the absoluteness of the ontological critique of the Human, the modern, and the
Slave. Their absolute ontological division between Master and slave or human and slave does
violence to slaves and dooms our political strategy to one of unsuccessful revolutionary
violence.
A) Modernity and civil society
Our historical reading of the relationship between slavery and civil society and humanity
honors the legacy of slave revolution. The Haitian revolution contained and expanded ideas
trafficked in civil society of universal humanity.
DASH 10 [J. Michael Africana Studies French, Social and Cultural Analysis @ NYU 10 Book Review:
Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and The Radical Enlightenment Slavery & Abolition 31 (1) p.
142-143 //liam ]
Universal Emancipation argues against the French appropriation of universalism as the exclusive product of the revolution of 1789. From the broad focus
of Nesbitts narrative, the age of revolution becomes a truly global phenomenon and furthermore, the Haitian revolution surpassed that of the metropole
in realising the goal of universal freedom. This is not a new story. Michel Rolph Trouillot, for instance, argued in 1995 The Haitian revolution
was the ultimate test to the universalist pretensions of both the French and the American revolutions .1 Later, for
another major scholar Laurent Dubois, the Haitian Revolution represented the pinnacle of Enlightenment universalism.2 Furthermore, C.L.R. James in
the Black Jacobins reminded us that the revolutionary events in Frances colony would take the French Revolution further than was ever intended. The
slaves of St Domingue were left out of the universalist claims of 1789 but they used its ideals to press for their freedom. As James put it, the slaves
had heard of the revolution and had construed it in their own image . . . they had caught the spirit of the thing.
Liberty, equality, Fraternity.3 Nesbitt asserts that there is nothing surprising about the fact that the slaves caught the spirit of the thing since
they needed no interpreter but the fact that they were on the so-called periphery of the modern world-system in 1791 meant that the truth of 1789
could be most fully comprehended (36). Furthermore, the Haitian revolution serves to disprove the notion that there was any
single Enlightenment project but a variegated complex of multiple enlightenments (20). Consequently, the
former slaves of St Domingue were not passively parroting ideas imported from France but autonomously
exercised their faculty of judgement in order to illuminate the universal implications of the natural rights
tradition in ways unthinkable for the North American or Parisian political class (60). In rejecting a linear filiation
between Enlightened Europe and savage colony, Nesbitt scrambles centres and peripheries and challenges the silencing of the Haitian Revolution by
asserting that it succeeded in displacing the center of modernity . . . not only for a small peripheral island but for the entire world system (131). The
revolution is rendered thinkable through an intricate discussion of the universally operative nature of
Spinozas concept of natural law and Kantian universalism, which meant human beings were free to define
themselves in their differential singularity (101). For Nesbitt the abstract concept of freedom or liberte emanating from Europe was
reinterpreted by the ex-slaves of St Domingue as libete and formed the basis for the creation of a self-regulating egalitarian bossale state. In this regard,
he ventures where historians of the Haitian revolution fear to tread. For historians, the impact of ideas on the revolution is hard to quantify and is
therefore underplayed. He speculates that political awareness came through such transnational Atlantic sites as waterfronts and marketplaces. The
slaves then transformed this Enlightenment-derived liberty into the idea of absolute freedom for post-plantation
St Domingue. Since Universal Emancipation depends on no new research into the circumstances of the Haitian revolution, Nesbitt depends heavily
on the work of Carolyn Fick and the late Gerard Barthelemy to make his case for the importance popular insurgency inthe making of the revolution. In
their refusal of large-scale agrarian capitalism, the exslaves produced an egalitarian peasant system that could harmonise
social relations without recourse to government, police, or legal code . He follows Bathelemy in citing social strategies, such as
the refusal of technological innovation, the subdivision of property from generation to generation, and active caco resistance to the outside world that
supported bossale egalitarianism. Haitian peasant society is presented as a maroon enclave beyond the reach of the liberal individualism and boundless
consumerism of the West. This seems a puzzling departure from both Eugene Genovese and Michel-Rolph Trouillot who are cited at other times with
approval. Genovese argued in From Rebellion to Revolution that the great achievement of the Haitian revolution was the attempt
to create a modern black state and not continue the restorationist practices of marronage .4 Similarly, Trouillot has
argued that those who insist on the isolation of the moun andeyo or the dualist sociologists have missed the depth of
penetration of urban civil society by the peasantry.5 In both instances, Haitian peasants are seen to be part of a
global process and not the worlds indigestible other . The modern heroes of Nesbitts spirited narrative of mass-based revolution are
the agronomist turned broadcaster Jean Dominique and the priest turned politician Jean Bertrand Aristide. In both instances, heroic popular resistance
masks the much more complex reality of the spread of modern technology, of cassettes and transistor radios in rural Haiti, and the doctrine of liberation
theology spread by the grassroots church or ti legliz. The idealising of strategic marronnage and stateless egalitarianism in Haiti is aimed ultimately at
all who believe that the coming shift from unlimited consumerism to an ethics of global responsibility will require fundamental changes to the
sociopolitical system that has brought us to the brink of disaster (171). It might have been more useful to think of the New World context and not the
new World order. Oddly enough there is no reference, except for a fleeting allusion to Brazilian music at the end, to other instances of the radicalisation
of the idea of the rights of man in the hemisphere. What of Guadeloupe, for instance, which had a parallel history at the turn of the century? Do other
peasant societies in the Caribbean share Haitis bossale culture? Trouillot claims to have learned more about the Haitian peasantry after fifteen months
doing fieldwork on the peasantry of Dominica than he did during eighteen years in Port-au-Prince. 6 What Nick Nesbitt does very persuasively is
present the Haitian revolution as the most radical revolution of its time. He is less convincing in enlisting the Haitian moun andeyo in his campaign
against global capitalism.
B) Humanity
We should not abandon the category of universal humanity. Anti-slavery abolition and its
intersections with critiques of gendered citizenship drew on universal humanity as a source of
solidarity.
GILROY 9 [Paul, Anthony Giddens Prf. of Social Theory @ London School of Economics 9 Race and the
Right to be Human p. 6-11 //liam]
At times, the movement against slavery was extended into a comprehensive assault on racial hierarchy which
invoked an idea of universal humanity (by no means always religious in origin) as well as an idea of inalienable rights1. That alternative
provides my point of departure this evening. It was articulated in distinctive accents which were neither bourgeois nor liberal2. It requires us to follow a
detour through colonial history which has come under revisionist pressure as a result of recent attempts to revive imperial relations. That dubious
development has made it imperative to place the wests avowal of modern, liberal, humanistic and
humanitarian ideas in the context of the formative encounter with native peoples whose moral personality and
humanity had long been placed in doubt. The approach I favour requires seeing not just how all-conquering
liberal sensibilities evolved unevenly into considerations of human rights but how a range of disputes over and
around the idea of universal humanityits origins, its hierarchies and varying moral and juridical dispositions were connected to
struggles over race, slavery, colonial and imperial rule, and how they in turn produced positions which would
later be narrated and claimed as liberal. This agonistic enterprise necessitates a different genealogy for human rights than is
conventional3. It begins with the history of conquest and European expansion and must be able to encompass the evolving debates over how colonies
and slave plantation systems were to be administered4. At its most basic, it must incorporate the contending voices of Las Casas and Sepulveda. It should
be able to analyze the contrapuntality of a text like Thomas Hobbes Leviathan with the introduction of Englands Navigation Acts and illuminate the
relationship between John Lockes insightful advocacy on behalf of an emergent bourgeoisie and his commitment to the colonial improvers doctrine of
the vacuum domicilium. This counter-narrative would certainly include the Treaty of Utrecht and the Assiento. It could terminate uneasily in the
contemporary debates about torture and rendition or in discussion about the institutionalisation of rightslessness which floods into my mind each time I
navigate the halls of the Schiphol complex. Focusing on that combination of progress and catastrophe through a
postcolonial lens yields a view of what would become the liberal tradition moving on from its seventeenth
century origins in a style of thought that was partly formed by and readily adapted to colonial conditions5 . This
helps to explain how an obstinate attachment to raciology recurs. Struggles against racial hierarchy have
contributed directly and consistently to challenging conceptions of the human . They valorised forms of humanity that were
not amenable to colour-coded hierarchy and, in complicating approaches to human sameness, they refused the full, obvious force of natural differences
even when they were articulated together with sex and gender. These struggles shaped philosophical perspectives on the fragile
universals that had come into focus initially on the insurgent edges of colonial contact zones where the violence
of racialized statecraft was repudiated and cosmopolitan varieties of care took shape unexpectedly across the
boundaries of culture, civilization, language and technology6. One early critique of the humanitarian language and tacit
racialization of the enlightenment ideal had been delivered by the militant abolitionist David Walker in his 1830 commentary on the US constitution:
Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in particular, and very expressly, to those of the United States of America. His famous text supplies a
useful symbolic, starting point for generating the new genealogy we require. Erecting secular demands over the foundation of a revolutionary, Pauline
Christianity, Walker made the problem of black humanity and related issues of rightspolitical and humanintrinsic to his insubordinate conception of
world citizenship. His plea that blacks be recognized as belonging to the human family was combined with a view of their natural rights as being
wrongfully confiscated in the condition of slavery which could, as a result of their exclusion, be justifiably overthrown7. His address was primarily
offered to the coloured citizens of the world but the tactical reduction of that universalist argument to the parochial problem of joining the US as full
citizens soon followed. The consequences of that change of scale can be readily seen in the humanistic abolitionism that followed. Frederick Douglass
particularly in his extraordinary 1852 speech on the meaning of the 4th of July to the slave8, spoke directly to the US in the name of its polluted national
citizenship. His indictment of slavery was a cosmopolitan one in which the eloquent facts of plantation life were judged, just as Walker had suggested
they should be, through global comparisons. They were compared with all the abuse to be found in the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World
(and in) South America. Douglass concluded that for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. He continued, again
echoing Walker: Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves
acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. . . . . . How
should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of
it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.9 In
demanding equality based on natural rights and exploring the relationship of debased citizenship and tainted
law to racialized life, Douglass was drawing upon the thinking of an earlier cohort of abolitionist writers . Many of
them had, like Walker and other anti-slavery radicals, practiced a chiliastic Christianity that built upon St. Paul with incendiary consequences which
could not be limited by the heading of anti-slavery. Consider the way in which Angelina Grimk had articulated the concept of human rights in her 1836
Appeal To The Christian Women of The South: . . . man is never vested with . . . dominion over his fellow man; he was never told that any of the human
species were put under his feet; it was only all things, and man, who was created in the image of his Maker, never can properly be termed a thing, though
the laws of Slave States do call him a chattel personal; Man then, I assert never was put under the feet of man, by that first charter of human rights
which was given by God, to the Fathers of the Antediluvian and Postdiluvian worlds, therefore this doctrine of equality is based on the Bible10. Grimk
elaborated upon this inspired refusal of the reduction of people to things in a memorable (1838) letter to her friend Catherine Beecher (the older sister of
Harriet Beecher Stowe). There, she connected the notion of divinely instituted human rights to a growing sense of what it would mean for women to
acquire political rights. Her insight was framed by a deep engagement with the problem of a gendered alienation from the humanity of species being:
The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to better understanding of our own. I have found the Anti-slavery cause to be the high school of
morals in our landthe school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught, than in any other. Here a great
fundamental principle is uplifted and illuminated, and from this central light rays innumerable stream all around . Human beings have rights,
because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grown out of their moral nature, they have essentially the
same rights. 11 It is not easy to assimilate this variety of critical reflection to the political traditions inherited by modern liberalism from
revolutionary France. The foregrounding of race is, for example, a fundamental and distinguishing feature as is the suggestion that reflecting upon the
thwarted rights of slaves promotes a richer understanding of the rightslessness known by women. Here, slavery was not only a political metaphor. A
different kind of connection was being proposed: whoever we are, we can learn about our own situation from studying the
suffering of others which instructively resembles it. This approach makes the disinterest in abolitionism shown
by todays liberal chroniclers of human rights struggles all the more perplexing . The long battle to appropriate the language
and political morality of human rights re-worked the assumptions which had led to articulating the unthinkable prospects of black citizenship and black
humanity in the form of the ancient rhetorical questions immortalized in Wedgewoods porcelain: Am I not a Man and a brother? Am I not a Woman
and a sister?. The liberatory recognition solicited by those inquiries was pitched against the corrosive power of
racial categories and mediated by the cosmopolitan power of human shame. It asked that the social divisions
signified by phenotypical difference be set aside in favour of a more substantive human commonality. It
promised an alternative conception of kinship that could deliver a world purged of injustice in general and
racial hierarchy in particular.
Enlightenment understandings of humanity were always fractured anti-Imperial strands in
universal humanity should be recognized. There was a robust strand of anti-Imperial
universalism that criticized dispossession and slavery.
MUTHU 3 [Sankar, Poli Sci @ Chicago Enlightenment Against Empire p. 266-271 //liam]
Universal Dignity, Cultural Agency, and Moral Incommensurability Do commitments to the idea of a shared humanity, to human
dignity, to cross-cultural universal moral principles, and to cross-cultural standards of justice rest upon
assumptions and values that unavoidably denigrate, or that disturbingly undermine respect for, cultural
pluralism, that is, the wide array of human institutions and practices in the world ?16 Are they imperialistic either
explicitly, to justify Europes political, military, and commercial subjugation of the non-European world, or implicitly, by indicating a rank ordering of
superior and inferior peoples, which could then be used to justify a more indirect, quasi-imperial civilizing process? The aforementioned commitments
are sometimes collectively gathered under the term Enlightenment universalism and, as we have seen, they are
such assertions mask and distort a

complex reality. In this case, they obscure the multiplicity of universalisms across eighteenth-century European
political thought, each with distinct foundational claims, varying relationships to conceptualizations of human diversity and to humanity (which
sometimes considered to constitute the core of the Enlightenment project. I have suggested already that
themselves differ from thinker to thinker, and even from text to text), and different political orientations toward the nature and limits of state power in
theory and in practice. These philosophical sensibilities and approaches can yield remarkably dif ferent political arguments toward foreign peoples,
international justice, and imperialism. Thus, rather than ask whether the Enlightenment project and Enlightenment universalism are compatible with
an appreciation of cultural pluralism or whether they are at bottom imperializing ideologies, it is more constructive to pose more precise
and historically accurate versions of such questions with regard to particular texts and thinkers. In this book, I have
studied a distinctive variant of Enlightenment writings against empire, one which includes the philosophical and political arguments of Diderot, Kant,
and Herder. While there is no such thing as Enlightenment universalism as such, let alone a larger Enlightenment project, there is nonetheless an
identifiable set of philosophical and political arguments, assumptions, and tendencies about the relationship between universal and pluralistic concepts
that animates the strand of Enlightenment political thought under study here. With this in mind, one can more meaningfully ask what the relationship is
between universalism, pluralism, and incommensurability in such political philosophies, and how precisely they yield anti-imperialist political
commitments. Answers to these more circumscribed questions can be given by better understanding the core elements of Diderots, Kants, and Herders
political philosophies, and how they differ from earlier (and, indeed, from many later) understandings and judgements of empire. Immanuel Kant
remarks pointedly in Toward Perpetual Peace that the Europeans who landed and eventually settled in the New World often denied indigenous peoples
any moral status. When America, the Negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape, and so forth were discovered, they were, to them [to Europeans],
countries belonging to no one [die keinem angehorten], since they counted the inhabitants as nothing. (8:358, emphasis added) What
philosophical concepts and arguments were necessary for New World peoples to be counted finally as
something and especially to be considered as equals, as they were eventually in some crucial respects, by antiimperialist political thinkers in the Enlightenment era? In this section, I focus on what I have taken in this book to be the
philosophically most robust strand of Enlightenment anti-imperialist political thought.17 Despite the many differences in the ethnographic sources that
Diderot, Kant, and Herder consulted, the philosophical languages that these thinkers employed, and the particular concepts they drew upon to attack
European empires, their anti-imperialist arguments intriguingly overlap in important respects. Thus, in this section, I identify and elucidate the family
resemblances that exist among their philosophical arguments and rhetorical strategies, and discuss the underlying assumptions, ideas, and intellec tual
dispositions that make their version of anti-imperialist political thinking conceptually possible. In contrast to what is effectively the premiss of the kinds
of familiar questions asked at the opening of this section, the commitments of Diderot, Kant, and Herder to moral universalism, cultural diversity, partial
incommensurability, and the delegitimization of empire are not fundamentally in tension but rather reinforce one another. Overall, there are three
principal philosophical sources of Enlightenment anti-imperialism. The first and most basic idea is that human
beings deserve some modicum of moral and political respect simply because of the fact that they are human. This
humanistic moral principle alone, however, was far from sufficient for engendering an anti-imperialist politics. The whole modern tradition of natural
right and social contract theory held this view in some form. Moreover, Amerindians in particular were explicitly described by such thinkers as the pure,
natural humans of the state of nature. Yet much of this tradition of modern political thought, from Grotius onward, was either agnostic about
imperialism or lent philosophical support to European empires. Not every understanding of what it means fundamentally to be a human fosters the
philosophical materials necessary to build a more inclusive and pluralistic political theory that could serve as the basis of anti-imperialist arguments.
Indeed, as I will argue, some understandings of humanity that are manifestly egalitarian can nevertheless impede such a development. Second,
therefore, these anti-imperialist arguments rested upon the view that human beings are fundamentally cultural
beings. Diderot, Kant, and Herder all contend that the category of the human is necessarily marked by cultural difference; in this view, humanity is
cultural agency. This thicker, particularized view of the human subject, paradoxically, helped to engender a more inclusive and meaningful moral
universalism. Third, a fairly robust account of moral incommensurability and relativity was also necessary for
the
rise of anti-imperialist political thought. The anti-imperialist arguments offered by Diderot, Kant, and Herder all partly rest upon the view
that peoples as a whole are incommensurable. From this perspective, entire peoples cannot be judged as superior or inferior along a universal scale of
value. Moreover, in distinct but closely related ways, these thinkers argue that our cultural freedom produces a wide variety of individual and collective
practices and beliefs that are incommensurable, given their view that many practices and beliefs lie outside the bounds of a categorical judgement or
universal standard. When these three conceptual developments were brought together, the strand of Enlightenment anti-imperialist political theory that
I have identified became philosophically possible. I want to reiterate here that this framework is not meant to elucidate all of the anti-imperialist
arguments that one can find in the philosophical writings of the Enlightenment era. Moreover, the distinc tive intellectual dispositions, personal
idiosyncrasies, and domestic political commitments of Enlightenment-era thinkers significantly shaped their particular arguments on the issue of
empire. Still, as I will show, these three philosophical ideas play a crucial role in enabling the development of a rich
strand of anti-imperialist political theory in the late eighteenth century . In discussing the development of a more inclusive and
anti-imperialist political theory, my focus in this section (as it has been generally in this book) is on Europeans political attitudes toward nonEuropeans. Many thinkers in non-European societies clearly operated with similarly self-centred conceptions, but my emphasis throughout is on
Europeans intellectual responses to the fact of cultural difference and imperial politics, not with non-European peoples understandings of each other or
of their accounts of European peoples. Nor do I examine here the variety of intra-European distinctions between allegedly superior and inferior groups,
those, for instance, involving linguistic, geographical, class, religious, and gender differences, which of course historically also legitimated differential
treatment within European societies. Thus, I do not intend to argue that Enlightenment anti-imperialist political philosophies are inclusive as such, for
their underlying principles do not necessarily (and, in the eighteenth century, they manifestly did not) support egalitarian arguments against every form
of exclusion. As I have noted, the first idea that enables Enlightenment anti-imperialism first both historically and analyticallyis that foreigners are
human beings and, consequently, that they deserve moral respect, however understood. The development, in other words, of some variant
of a humanistic moral universalism ensured that the shared humanity of both Europeans and non-Europeans
would be acknowledged and given some due. The philosophical and political legacy with which Enlightenment
anti-imperialist thinkers struggled, as they themselves understood, was one of exclusion . As they often noted, ethical
principles of respect and reciprocity had been limited almost always to (some) members of ones own tribe, polis, nation, religion, or civilization.
Accordingly, the distinction between ones own society, however defined, and the barbaroi (others, foreigners), whether justified outright or tacitly
assumed, influenced not only the anthropological conceptions of, and popular understandings about, foreign peoples, but also legitimated the often
brutally differential treatment of various groups. It is along these lines that Kant expresses dismay, in a lecture on moral philosophy, at what he calls the
error that the [ancient] Greeks displayed, in that they evinced no goodwill towards extranei [outsiders, or foreigners], but included them all, rather, sub
voce hostes _ barbari [under the name of enemies, or barbarians]. (27:674) In the long history of imperial exploits, actions that in at least some contexts
might have provoked outrage in ones own land not only gained legitimacy on foreign soil but were deemed praiseworthy, noble, and even morally
obligatory abroad. While European imperialists in the New World, writes Diderot, faithfully observe their own laws, they will violate the rights of other
nations in order to increase their power. That is what the Romans did.18 Enlightenment anti-imperialists recognized that such Janus-faced practices
constituted the very core of imperial activity from the empires of the ancient world to the imperial conquests and commercial voyages of their day. The
fact of difference itself lay at the heart of such inconsistent behaviour from Europeans initial encounters with Amerindians onward, as Diderot notes:
[t]he Spaniard, the first to be thrown up by the waves onto the shores of the New World, thought he had no duty to people who did not share his colour,
customs, or religion. 19 Not wanting to single out the Spanish, Diderot suggests further that the Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and Danes all
followed in precisely the same spirit of exclusion and injustice. From an anthropological viewpoint, such discoveries of non-European peoples no doubt
played a role in Europeans changing conceptions of humanity. From Herodotus onward, of course, travel narratives played a central role in
contemplating what it might mean to be, in some fundamental sense, a human being. Given that theorizations of human nature relate, in complicated
ways, to changing understandings of the range and characteristics of human societies, institutions, and practices, the European discovery of new lands
and peoples accordingly generated further, and at times more complex, theorizations of humanity.20 Moreover, from the sixteenth century onward,
thinkers were particularly keen to consult and appropriate the latest ethnographic reports. In part, the heightened interest no doubt complemented, and
may in part have resulted from, what is often described as the intellectual revolution in natural philosophy and the resulting emphasis on
experimentation, empirical study, and inductive reasoning in fields such as astronomy, but also (especially from the mid-seventeenth century onward) in
the study of human anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Although many of Humes contemporaries did not share his hope of introducing the
experimental method to moral philosophy, there was nonetheless a widespread presumption that an understanding of the human condition needed to
take account, in some manner, of the growing anthropological literature that detailed the vast range of human experiences, customs, and practices
throughout the globe.21 This turn toward what Georges Gusdorf has called human science, however, requires a stable referent for what counts as
human while also upsetting the stability of the term by focusing attention increasingly on human difference.22 In this sense, the attempt at identifying
the most salient features of humanity was often an erratic and inherently conflicted task, as John Locke argued it would have to be, given the very nature
of our self-knowledge.
The slave represents the infra-human not the non-human. Included as only partly human the
status of the slave has historically been contested by appeals to universal human community.
As with Uncle Toms Cabin the fact that this type of political activity simultaneously contained
negative effects for our understanding of the slave doesnt mean it should be rejected.
GILROY 9 [Paul, Anthony Giddens Prf. of Social Theory @ London School of Economics 9 Race and the
Right to be Human p. 13-15 //liam ]
The structure of sentimental feeling articulated by Harriet Beecher Stowe was instrumental in the formation of a trans-national moral collectivity and in
winning recognition of the suffering humanity of the slave whom it was no longer possible to dismiss as a brute. Through her voice and chosen genre,
distinctive patterns of heteropathic identification appear to have leaked not only into Europe but further afield as well. Uncle Toms Cabin
helped to compose a cosmopolitan chapter in the moral history of our world . Is all of that potential for political
action and pedagogy to be damned now because campus anti-humanism doesnt approve of the dubious
aesthetic and moral registers in which an un-exotic otherness was initially made intelligible? The scale of the historical
and interpretative problems posed by the case of Uncle Toms Cabin can only be glimpsed here. George Bullen, keeper of books at the British Museum
compiled a bibliographic note included in the repackaged 1879 edition. He revealed that almost three decades after publication, Stowes novel had been
translated into numerous languages including Dutch, Bengali, Farsi, Japanese, Magyar and Mandarin. Fourteen editions had been sold in the German
language during the first year of publication and a year later, seventeen editions in French and a further six in Portuguese had also appeared. In Russia,
the book had been recommended as a primer in the struggle against serfdom and was duly banned. The first book to sell more than a million copies in
the US, the publication of Stowes novel was a world historic event. Though it cemented deeply problematic conceptions of slave
passivity, redemptive suffering and indeed of racial type, it was also instrumental in spreading notions of black
dignity and ontological depth as well as the anti-racist variety of universal humanism that interests me. This combination
merits recognition as a potent factor in the circulation of a version of human rights that racial hierarchy could not qualify or interrupt. The example of
Stowe draws attention to issues which would reappear through the nineteenth century as part of struggles to defend indigenous peoples, to improve the
moral and juridical standards of colonial government and to reform the immorality and brutality of Europes imperial order. This activity was not always
altruistically motivated. How those themes developed in the period after slavery is evident from the para-academic work of campaigners like Harriet
Colenso, Ida B. Wells, Roger Casement and E.D. Morel. The constellation of writings produced by these critical commentators
on racism, justice and humanity needs to be reconstructed in far greater detail than is possible here . They can
nonetheless be seen to comprise a tradition of reflection on and opposition to racial hierarchy that, even now, has the power, not only to disturb and
amend the official genealogy provided for Human Rights but also to re-work it entirely around the tropes of racial difference. Allied with parallel
insights drawn from struggles against colonial power, these interventions contribute to a counterhistory of the
contemporary conundrum of rights and their tactical deployment . This neglected work remains significant
because debate in this field is increasingly reduced to an unproductive quarrel between jurists who are
confident that the world can be transformed by a better set of rules and sceptics who can identify the limits of
rights talk, but are almost always disinterested in racism and its metaphysical capacities . Thinkers like Wells and Morel
were alive to what we now call a deconstructive approach. They identified problems with rights-talk and saw the way that racial difference mediated the
relationship of that lofty rhetoric to brutal reality. They grasped the limits of rights-oriented institutional life empirically and saw how rights-claims
entered into the battle to extend citizenship. But, their vivid sense of the power of racism meant that the luxury of any casual anti-humanism could not be
entertained. They wished to sustain the human in human rights and to differentiate their own universalistic
aspirations from the race-coded and exclusionary humanisms which spoke grandly about all humanity but
made whiteness into the prerequisite for recognition. Their alternative required keeping the critique of race and
racism dynamic and demanding nothing less than the opening of both national- and world-citizenship to
formerly infrahuman beings like the negro. Grimk, Wells and the rest appealed against racism and injustice in humanitys name. Their
commentaries might even represent the quickening of the new humanism of which Frantz Fanon would speak years later. The movement these
commentators created and mobilized persisted further into the twentieth century when new causes and
opportunities were found that could repeat and amplify its critique of racialized political cultures and
terroristic governmental administration . The political significance of humanity is both terrible and terribly
important. Though the concept of humanity makes us guilty, it also is a pre-requisite for a politics that can fight
atrocity.
Radical humanism takes up the burden and the ambiguity of humanity. Identification with
common humanity across lines of oppression opens up possibilities for everyday political
virtue.
GILROY 9 [Paul, Anthony Giddens Prf. of Social Theory @ London School of Economics Race and the Right
to be Human p. 20-23 //liam ]
Arendt and Agamben are linked by their apparent distaste for analyzing racism and by their complex and critical relations to the idea of the human. This
combination of positions can facilitate hostility to the project of human rights which is then dismissed for its inability to face the political and strategic
processes from which all rights derive and a related refusal to address the analytical shortcomings that arise from the dependence of human rights on an
expansion of the rule of lawwhich can incidentally be shown to be fully compatible with colonial crimes23. Histories of colonial power and
genealogies of racial statecraft can help to explain both of these problems and to break the impasse into which the analysis
of human rights has fallen. This is another reason why anti-racism remains important. It does not argue naively for a
world without hierarchy but practically for a world free of that particular hierarchy which has accomplished
untold wrongs. The possibility that abstract nakedness was not so much a cipher of insubstantial humanity but a sign of racial hierarchy in
operation arises from the work of concentration camp survivors. Jean Amry recognized his own experience through a reading of Fanon. Primo Levi, his
fellow Auschwitz inmate and interlocutor, who interpreted the lagers brutal exercises in racial formation as conducted for the benefit of their
perpetrators, suggested that racisms capacity to reconcile rationality and irrationality was expressed in the dominance of outrage over economic profit.
Both men saw infrahuman victims made to perform the subordination that race theory required and anticipated but which their bodies did not
spontaneously disclose. Inspired by Levi, by the philosophical writings of Jean Amry, and various other observers of and commentators on the
pathologies of European civilisation, we should aim to answer the corrosive allure of absolute sameness and purity just as they did, with a historical and
moral commitment to the political, ethical and educational potential of human shame. Though being ashamed may sometimes appear
to overlap with sentimentality or even to be its result, they are different. Excessive sentimentality blocks
shames productivity, its slow, humble path towards ordinary virtue. Shame arises where identification is
complicated by a sense of responsibility. Sentimentalism offers the pleasures of identification in the absence of
a feeling of responsible attachment. Amry was an eloquent proponent of what he called a radical humanism.
Through discovering his Jewishness under the impact of somebodys fist but more especially as a result of having been tortured by the Nazis, he acquired
a great interest in a politics of dignity which could answer the governmental actions that brought racial hierarchy to dismal life. Perhaps for that very
reason, he found through his post-war reading of Fanon, that the lived experience of the black man . . .
corresponded in many respects to my own formative and indelible experience as a Jewish inmate of a
concentration camp. . .. He continued: I too suffered repressive violence without buffering or mitigating
mediation. The world of the concentration camp too was a Manichaean one: virtue was housed in the SS blocks, profligacy, stupidity, malignance and
laziness in the inmates barracks. Our gaze onto the SS-city was one of envy and lust as well. As with the colonized Fanon, each of us fantasized at least
once a day of taking the place of the oppressor. In the concentration camp too, just as in the native city, envy ahistorically transformed itself into
aggression against fellow inmates with whom fought over a bowl of soup while the whip of the oppressor lashed at us with no need to conceal its force
and power.24 With Levi and Fanon, Amry shared a commitment to extracting humanistic perspectives from the
extremity he had survived in the lager. In a famous [1964] essay exploring his experiences at the hands of the Gestapo, he insisted that
torture was the essence25 of the Third Reich and in making that case, shows how these issues should become important again in comprehending and
criticising the brutal, permissive conduct of the war on terror.
Alt Solves
The alternative solves the case

Moten 8 [Professor of Modern Poetry @ Duke,Fred, THE CASE OF BLACKNESS, Criticism, Spring 2008,
Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 177218 //liam]
Sexton and Copeland turn to the Fanon of Black Skins, White Masks, the phenomenologist of (the lived experience of) blackness, who provides for them
the following epigraph: I came into the world imbued with the will to fi nd a meaning in things, my spirit fi lled with the desire to attain to the source of
the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects. (Black Skins, 77) [Jarrivais dans le monde, soucieux de faire lever un sens
aux choses, mon me pleine du dsir dtre lorigine du monde, et voici que je me dcouvrais objet au milieu dautres objets.]7 Fanon writes of
entering the world with a melodramatic imagination , asPeter Brooks would have itone drawn toward the occult
installation of the sacred in things, gestures (certain events, as opposed to actions, of muscularity), and in the subterranean
field that is, paradoxically, signaled by the very cutaneous darkness of which Fanon speaks . That darkness turns
the would-be melodramatic subject not only into an object but also into a sign the hideous blackamoor at the entrance of
the cave, that world underneath the world of light that Fanon will have entered , who guards and masks our hidden motives
and desires.8 Theres a whole other economy of skins and masks to be addressed here . However, I will defer that address in
order to get at something (absent) in Sexton and Copeland. What I am after is something obscured by the fall from prospective subject to object that
Fanon recitesnamely, a transition from thing(s) (choses) to object (objet) that turns out to version a slippage or movement that could be said to
animate the history of philosophy. What if we bracket the movement from (erstwhile) subject to object in order to
investigate more adequately the change from object to thing (a change as strange as that from the possibility of intersubjectivity
that attends majority to whatever is relegated to the plane or plain of the minor)? What if the thing whose meaning or value has never
been found finds things, founds things? What if the thing will have founded something against the very
possibility of foundation and against all anti- or post-foundational impossibilities ? What if the thing sustains itself
in that absence or eclipse of meaning that withholds from the thing the horrifc honorific of object? At the same
time, what if the value of that absence or excess is given to us only in and by way of a kind of failure or inadequacyor, perhaps more precisely, by way of
a history of exclusion, serial expulsion
Cedes Power to Whites

Their claim that blackness is a site of absolute dereliction at the level of the real
overparticularizes death and grants excessive power to whiteness- only double ghostedness
produces effective politics and analysis of violence
Peterson 7 [Christopher, Lecturer @ University of Western Sidney, Kindred Specters: Death, Mourning, and
American Affinity, //liam]
What I am calling redoubled ghostliness situates racial and sexual minorities in intimate contact with death . This
heightened proximity to mortality is not only social, moreover, but material. As Karla Holloway observes in Passed On: African-American Mourning
Stories, black Americans historically have had a particular vulnerability to an untimely death, from lynching to suicides, from police violence to disease.
25 Echoing Holloway, Abdul JanMohamed argues that African Americans are death-bound-subject[s]...formed, from
infancy on, by the imminent and ubiquitous threat of death . 26 Tracing the emergence of this subject in Richard Wrights fiction,
JanMohamed argues that slaves, and by extension, emancipated black Americans, live under a constantly commuted death sentence. Drawing from
Heideggers account of death in Being and Time, JanMohamed notes that, if natural death marks the termination of life and,
thereby, retroactively defines the entirety of life, then this is even more so the case for the slave because he
faces the imminent presence of death on a mundane basis (284). JanMohamed is certainly right that Heideggers account of death
does not provide a detailed account of deaths unequal social and historical distribution. Yet, in correcting this elision, JanMohamed reduces death to
its political deployment. He writes: The existential description of death tends to be radically agnostic about the source or agency of death....For the
slave, death is not an eventuality that somehow comes or arrives in the natural course of events . . . but rather something deliberately brought and
imposed on him by another, by the master. (15) The problem with this formulation , however, is that it figures death as
originally exterior to the slave, coming to inhabit him only via the masters monopolistic violence . As Bauman
astutely observes with regard to the modern interdiction of mortality, we do not hear of people dying of mortality. They die only
of individual causes, they die because there was an individual cause (138, his emphasis). Hence, we ought to say that the
slaves availability to death is first conditioned by his having a body, which means that death is both what
comes or arrives and is what the master wields as a form of coercive control . 27 If finitude were always embodied in
the agency of the master, then death would name a condition unique to the slave as such (294). Indeed, by insisting on a radical
disjunction between the death that haunts all life and the historical particularity of the immanent death to
which African Americans are uniquely bound, JanMohamed reinscribes the exceptionalist logic through which
the master evades death by projecting it onto the slave. In short, JanMohameds analysis overparticularizes death,
thereby reproducing the state of exception that he seeks to avoid . According to this logic, the master presides over the slaves
life and death all the while exempting himself from the death that he deploys. 28 While JanMohamed contends that the slave, unlike the master, has
always already been condemned to death in the present, this presumes that the masters ontology is not also always already put into question by the
spectrality that disturbs each and every present (282). Death is not a final punctuation mark that retroactively defines the
syntax of ones life (298). On the contrary, death stretches along the syntax of each and every life according to
incommensurate social and political grammars. To speak of the redoubled ghostliness of racial and sexual
minorities, then, is not to subsume the particularity of social death under a universal being-toward-death that
effaces political and social distinctions . Unlike what has often been said of death, spectrality is not the great equalizer. However, one
cannot fully separate the particularity of social death from the generality of each subjects being-toward-death, as if finitude were reducible to its
political distribution, or for that matter, to its external imposition . This does not mean that we should turn our attention away
from the particular political and material losses exacted by the history of racism and heterosexism in America .
Indeed, the readings of literary texts by Chesnutt, Morrison, and Faulkner offered in subsequent chapters bear witness to this violence while working to
rethink the laws erasure of minority kinship in relation to the absence that founds all social relations. Before turning to those literary readings,
however, the remainder of this chapter aims to elaborate further how kinship is implicated in a dialectical negation that
precedes any legal effacement of particular kinship relations.
Nihilism Turn/Ahistorical
They assume that anti-black animus arises from nothingness but its caught up in a broader web
of historical power relationships like Islamophobia and nativism
Charoenying 8 [Timothy, citing Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Prof of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley,
Islamophobia & Anti-Blackness: A Genealogical Approach, http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobiaanti-blackness-genealogical-approach //liam]
The year 1492
marked a major turning point in the trajectory of Western Civilization . Elementary age children are taught
famously crossed the Atlantic. An equally significant event that year, was the Spanish conquest of alAndalusa Moorish province on the southern Iberian peninsula established eight centuries earlierand more importantly , the last major
Muslim stronghold on the European continent. Critical race scholars have argued that these two events would not only
shift the geopolitical balance of power from the Orient to the Occident, but fundamentally alter conceptions
about religious and racial identity. According to Nelson Maldonado-Torres, of the University of California, Berkeley, the expulsion of the
this as the year Columbus
Moors from continental Europe marked a transition from an age of imperial relations between Christian and Muslim empires, to an age of European
colonial expansion throughout the known world. The discovery of godless natives in the Americas would also inspire the
great debates between Las Casas and Seplveda in 1550 on the nature of the human soul. Such a geopolitical and
philosophical shift, Maldonado-Torres argues, would lead to a Eurocentric, re-categorization of humanity based upon religous
and ultimately racialdifferences. Maldonado-Torres has proposed that anti-black racism is not simply an extension of
some historical bias against blacks, but rather, is an amalgam of old-world Islamophobia linked to the history
of the Iberian peninsula, and to the notion of souless beings embodied in popular conceptions about the
indigenous natives of the Americas. These beliefs would contribute to an ideological basis for, and justification
of, colonial conquests in the name of cultural and religious conversion, as well as pave the way for the
enslavement and human trafficking of sub-Saharan Africans.
Their nihilism turns the case greatest comparative threat

Miah quoting West in 94 [Malik Miah, Cornel West's Race Matters, May-June, http://www.solidarityus.org/node/3079 //liam]
In the chapter, Nihilism in Black America, West observes The liberal/conservative discussion conceals the most basic issue now facing
Black America: the nihilistic threat to its very existence. This threat is not simply a matter of relative economic deprivation and
political powerlessness -- though economic well-being and political clout are requisites for meaningful Black progress. It is primarily a question
of speaking to the profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair so
widespread in Black America. (12-13) Nihilism, he continues, is to be understood here not as a philosophic
doctrine ... it is, far more, the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaningless, hopelessness, and
(most important) lovelessness. (14) Nihilism is not new in Black America. . . . In fact, West explains,the major enemy of Black
survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic Threat -- that is, loss of
hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.
The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without
meaning there can be no struggle. (14-15)
Social Death/ Determinism Turn

The affirmatives choice to frame the nature of oppression through the rhetorical and
ideological frame of social death entrenches pessimism and despair
Brown 09 [Vincent Brown is Professor of History and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard
University. AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, DECEMBER 2009
http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/documents/brown-socialdeath.pdf //liam]
Slavery and Social Death was widely reviewed and lavishly praised for its erudition and conceptual rigor. As a result of its success, social death has
become a handy general denition of slavery, for many historians and non-historians alike. But it is often forgotten that the concept of social
death is a distillation from Pattersons breathtaking surveya theoretical abstraction that is meant not to
describe the lived experiences of the enslaved so much as to reduce them to a least common denominator that
could reveal the essence of slavery in an ideal-type slave, shorn of meaningful heritage. As a concept, it is what Frederick Cooper
has called an agentless abstraction that provides a neat cultural logic but ultimately does little to illuminate the
social and political experience of enslavement and the struggles that produce historic transformations. Indeed, it is
difcult to use such a distillation to explain the actual behavior of slaves, and yet in much of the scholarship that followed in the wake of Slavery and
Social Death, Pattersons abstract distillates have been used to explain the existential condition of the enslaved. Having emerged from the discipline of
sociology, social death t comfortably within a scholarly tradition that had generally been more alert to
deviations in patterns of black life from prevailing social norms than to the worldviews, strategies, and social tactics of people in
black communities. Together with Pattersons work on the distortions wrought by slavery on black families, social death reected
sociologys abiding concern with social pathology; the pathological condition of twentieth-century black life
could be seen as an outcome of the damage that black people had suffered during slavery .University of Chicago
professor Robert Park, the grand-pe`re of the social pathologists, set the terms in 1919: the Negro, when he landed in the United States, left behind
almost everything but his dark complexion and his tropical temperament. 8 Pattersons distillation also conformed to the nomothetic imperative of
social science, which has traditionally aimed to discover universal laws of operation that would be true regardless of time and place, making the
synchronic study of social phenomena more tempting than more descriptive studies of historical transformation. Slavery and Social Death took shape
during a period when largely synchronic studies of antebellum slavery in the United States dominated the scholarship on human bondage, and
Pattersons expansive view was meant to situate U.S. slavery in a broad context rather than to discuss changes as the institution developed through time.
Thus one might see social death as an obsolete product of its time and tradition, an academic artifact with limited purchase for contemporary
scholarship, were it not for the concepts reemergence in some important new studies of slavery. 9 WIDELY ACKNOWLEDGED AS AMONG themost
onerous of social institutions, slavery has much to tell us about the way human beings react to oppression. At the same time, the extreme nature
of the institution naturally encourages a pessimistic view of the capacity for collective agency among
subjugated people. As a result, trends in the study of slavery, as with the study of dominancemore generally, often divide
between works that emphasize the overwhelming power of the institution and scholarship that focuses on the
resistant efforts of the enslaved. In turn, this division frames a problem in the general understanding of political
life, especially for the descendants of the powerless. It might even be said that these kinds of studies form different and opposing
genreshopeful stories of heroic subalterns versus anatomies of doom that compete for ascendance. In recent years, if the invocation of
Pattersons social death is any indication, the pendulum seems to have swung decidedly toward despair.
Their methodology is flawedTheir focus on social death disempowers social agency and
pushes us away from political activism. We should recognize that we live in a world where
culture creates opportunities for us to find empowerment and we should reject the notion that
oppression is form of social death
Brandom 10
[Eric Brandom Brown v Agamben V. Brown, 'Social Death and Political Life in the Study of
Slavery', The American Historical Review, 114, (2009), pp 1231-1249.
http://ebrandom.blogspot.com/2009/12/brown-v-agamben.html //liam]
This essay is most straightforwardly a corrective to what Brown sees as the misuse (overuse) of Orlando Pattersons categorical definition of slavery as
social death. According to Brown, historians have often taken what Patterson meant as an ideal type definition to be a
description of reality itself. Historians have long rejected, however, the basic result of such a definition: that it would strip slaves of agency.
Manifestly, historians have pointed out, slaves had agency. One need look no further than the continuous rebellions and
occasional revolutions to emerge from new world slavery to see this. Browns real goal, though, is deeper than this. In step with his historical
work in The Reapers Garden, Brown wants to retell the story of slavery from the perspective of what we might call the
micro-politics, or cultural politics, of everyday life. Brown argues that what he calls mortuary politics, conflict and negotiation over death, burial,
and associated rituals, are of the greatest importance. One might make this argument in many contexts, but Caribbean slavery is a privileged
field. Increasingly, it the worldview forged in the 18th century experience of slavery and revolution has come to be
recognized as central to modernity as such (European, Atlantic, or even if you like, Capitalist). Mortuary politics is found to be central to
the world of slavery, to the movement of the Haitian Revolution, and thus to modernity. One effect of Browns argument, or rather one consequence of
the argument that he wants to make, is a firm and empirically-oriented rejection of Giorgio Agamben. Brown deals with this in a few paragraphs
explaining the limits of an Agambenian perspective such as that taken in Ian Baucoms Specters of the Atlantic. Agambens notion of bare life ,
for Brown, is
piggybacked into the historical study of slavery as a sort of compliment to and intensification of
Pattersonian social death. Brown doesnt exactly want to re-open old debates about agency (vs structure!), but he does want to argue
that it is plainly wrong to see Caribbean slaves as without culture, in the sense of without resources or
community. He cites William Sewells recent definition of culture, commenting, practices of meaning are better seen as tools to be used than as
possessions to be lost. There are several somewhat separable issues here. First, there is the methodological question of how one should think about
culture and agency. In this, I simply agree with Brown. I prefer to treat culture (or, qua intellectual historian, unit ideas) as a bundle of tools to be
manipulatedtools that empower, but also limit, channel, and react upon, those that wield them. Then there is the more empirical question of the
admissibility and utility of the notion of social death in the study of slave systems, say specifically in the Caribbean. Not having read all the relevant
texts, I defer with enthusiasm to Brown. What I have read leads me to believe that he is entirely correct.
Their methodology of constructing any form of barrier in life as social death precludes
liberation and makes greater manipulation and oppression inevitable
Muhwati 05 [Itai Muhwati Department of African Languages and Literature, University of Zimbabwe
http://ir.uz.ac.zw:8080/jspui/bitstream/10646/515/1/Muhwati-Mass-Neurosis.pdf //liam]
The physical wreckage and spiritual paralysis that is by definition an expression of this image, leads to an
agonising realisation that, in lifes vicissitudes, and lifes race of race survival, African people remain
undeveloped and fledgling stutters. The images of characters in these novels whose titles are vapid project Africans as victims of collective
inertia, wallowing in cultural and historical amnesia and disintegrating in irretrievable mentacide. As a result , in terms of agency and
mobility, the African race remains glued on the starting line, quite overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable
hurdles in the race of life. Through the choice of titles, most of the writers seem to have adopted a modality that
inordinately projects social death and a host of other social sicknesses as new forms of social identity in the
contemporary dispensation. While their absolutisation of mass neurosis, closure and entrapment might be said to be a reflection of the state of the nation
in the post independence period, it is also estimable that such images of social sickness, paralysis and mass neurosis can be
by Africas anthropological detractors in their justification of a static and back pedalling African race, particularly along
the evolutionary spectrum, which is presented as a universal standard of valuation. The paper also puts forth argument that, the
adoption of an axiological paradigm that legitimises closure and race entrapment nullifies any prospects towards racial
manipulated
salvation. It is an act of defining the African race as doomed. Such a definition which trivialises the African existential trajectory pays homage to the
subversive labels that Europe has generously donated to Africa. Such labels include Third World; Underdeveloped; Dark Continent; Poor majority,
cultural other and many more. These are designations that bespeak helplessness and mass neurosis.
The rhetorical frame they choose in framing life as death makes disempowerment inevitable
and risks extinction
As natural speakers of African languages, there is need for African people to be careful of not using the natural
gift that language is to disempower themselves. When language is recklessly used, it can become one of the subtle forms
of ideological and pedagogical disempowerment. Language constitutes one of the oldest and effective forms of technology that humanity has always
deployed for the purposes of transcendence. For that reason, the language or discourse that a people adopt and adapt can
enhance or 5 negate survival. Henry Paget (1997: 15) explores the African possibilities of visualising themselves as finite sites of agency. He
advises us that: It is the fate of this capacity for agency that is crucial for our attitudes toward existence. Through its
sense of agency, an individual or group makes an estimate of its chances for successful self-assertion or
strategic intervention vis--vis its environment. Success or failure in such undertakings are [sic] important determinants of our
attitudes.
Their methodology of viewing life experiences as death destroys agency and makes death a
permanent condition of life. If you think that every barrier you confront in life murders your
spirit than life becomes constant death. If you define someone running topicality against you as
an act of genocide than every barrier you confront in life becomes the experience of death.
Several examples:
1. My teacher made me write a paper on a topic she chosespirit death
2. I got a bad grade in class---spirit death
3. I lost a debate roundspirit death.
This is supported:
Stories in Masango Mavi as well the general social picture in Mapenzi reflect an annihilatory vision. Such a vision centralises closure and entrapment.
The story titled Mashiriapungana (complex/ difficult situation) in Masango Mavi presents a people whose
future is frighteningly bleak. The characters are so overcome with death to the extent of losing belief in the
project of life. A closer examination on their condition shows that they no longer die once but several times
because they have adopted a nihilist vision. However, such a social vision is dangerous in that it subverts
agency and participation while entrenching surrender and defeatist attitudes as social ideals. J ames Baldwin
(1963:13) comments on the ramifications of embodying such a vision. He observes in the letter to his brother that, he [died] before he died because
he really believed whatpeople said about him. Death is so prevalent in this story. The author tells us that: Vanhu vapabasa pake vaiva vashoma asi
painge pagara pachingobatanwa maoko zuva nezuva. Dzimwe nguva aishaya kuti paizopera makore gumi kambani yainge ichiri kushandirwa naiye
neshamwari dzake here (14). Fellow workers were very few yet it had become a norm to exchange condolences almost every day. At times he was not
sure if the same company would still have the same workers in ten years time. The integrity of a nation revolves around the physical presence of its
people. Such physical presence depends on a host of other factors which include the emotional, psychological and spiritual health of a people. When
death and other forces of degeneration tend to out manoeuvre life and forces of regeneration , existence
becomes a nullity. Some of the characters even prepare for their death in advance because life is said to have become very short. Chiwome
caricatures such people and presents them as neurotics. However, the neurosis is so prevalent to the extent that chances of survival for the race are
questionable. This is the kind of mass neurosis that leads to closure and entrapment. When the race loses faith in
both the present and the future, individual and group development becomes a mirage .
***Wilderson***
*Social Death K (Wilderson)*

A) The logic of social death replicates the violence of the middle passage rejection is necessary
to honor the dead
Brown 2009 professor of history and of African and African American Studies specializing in Atlantic Slavery (Vincent, Social Death and
Political Life in the Study of Slavery, http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/documents/brown-socialdeath.pdf)
But this was not the emphasis of Pattersons argument. As a result, those he has inspired have often conflated his exposition of slaveholding ideology
with a description of the actual condition of the enslaved. Seen as a state of being, the concept of social death is ultimately out
of place in the political history of slavery. If studies of slavery would account for the outlooks and maneuvers of
the enslaved as an important part of that history, scholars would do better to keep in view the struggle against
alienation rather than alienation itself. To see social death as a productive peril entails a subtle but significant shift in perspective, from
seeing slavery as a condition to viewing enslavement as a predicament, in which enslaved Africans and their descendants never
ceased to pursue a politics of belonging, mourning, accounting, and regeneration. In part, the usefulness of social death as
a concept depends on what scholars of slavery seek to explainblack pathology or black politics, resistance or attempts to remake social life? For too
long, debates about whether there were black families took precedence over discussions of how such families were formed; disputes about whether
African culture had survived in the Americas overwhelmed discussions of how particular practices mediated slaves attempts to survive; and scholars
felt compelled to prioritize the documentation of resistance over the examination of political strife in its myriad forms. But of course, because slaves
social and political life grew directly out of the violence and dislocation of Atlantic slavery, these are false choices. And we may not even have to choose
between tragic and romantic modes of storytelling, for history tinged with romance may offer the truest acknowledgment of the tragedy confronted by
the enslaved: it took heroic effort for them to make social lives. There is romance, too, in the tragic fact that although scholars may never be able to give a
satisfactory account of the human experience in slavery, they nevertheless continue to try. If scholars were to emphasize the efforts of
the enslaved more than the condition of slavery, we might at least tell richer stories about how the endeavors of
the weakest and most abject have at times reshaped the world. The history of their social and political lives lies
between resistance and oblivion, not in the nature of their condition but in their continuous struggles to
remake it. Those struggles are slaverys bequest to us.
B) This is an apriori question
African American history has grown from the kinds of peoples histories that emphasize a progressive struggle toward an ultimate victory over the
tyranny of the powerful. Consequently, studies that privilege the perspectives of the enslaved depend in some measure on the chronicling of heroic
achievement, and historians of slave culture and resistance have recently been accused of romanticizing their subject of study.42 Because these scholars
have done so much to enhance our understanding of slave life beyond what was imaginable a scant few generations ago, the allegation may seem unfair.
Nevertheless, some of the criticisms are helpful. As the historian Walter Johnson has argued, studies of slavery conducted
within the terms of social history have often taken agency, or the self-willed activity of choice-making
subjects, to be their starting point.43 Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that many historians would find themselves charged with depicting
slave communities and cultures that were so resistant and so vibrant that the social relations of slavery must not have done much damage at all. Even if
this particular accusation is a form of caricature, it contains an important insight, that the agency of the weak and the power of the
strong have too often been viewed as simple opposites. The anthropologist David Scott is probably correct to suggest that for most
scholars, the power of slaveholders and the damage wrought by slavery have been pictured principally as a negative or limiting force that restricted,
blocked, paralyzed, or deformed the transformative agency of the slave.44 In this sense, scholars who have emphasized slaverys corrosive power and
those who stress resistance and resilience share the same assumption. However, the violent domination of slavery generated
political action; it was not antithetical to it. If one sees power as productive and the fear of social death not as
incapacity but as a generative forcea peril that motivated enslaved activity a different image of slavery
slides into view, one in which the object of slave politics is not simply the power of slaveholders, but the very
terms and conditions of social existence.
2NC O/V
Wildersons view of social death dismisses transformative politics

By focusing on the horror of slavery, rather than the progressive politics which emerged from
it, Wilderson dismisses all forms of African American innovation and resistance
Regaining agency by rejecting this deterministic approach is a prerequisite- thats Brown
Turns Case Grammar of Suffering
TURNTheir essentialist understanding of the history of the slavery silences and obscures the
languages of gratuitous freedom
WRITING THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY in a way that emphasizes struggles against social alienation requires some readjustment in commonplace
understandings of culture and politics. Historians and social scientists have often debated the question of slave cultures
and the cultures of slavery through residual Victorian understandings of culture as the civilizational achievements of the
West, Africa, or various other groups, to be attained, lost, or re-created. The meanings attributed to things are often taken to
indicate complete and integrated systems of belief and behavior, even identities, that corresponded to distinct
population groups. This approach has been subjected to critical scrutiny in a number of disciplines.45 While culture may still refer to what
William Sewell, Jr. has called the particular shapes and consistencies of worlds of meaning in different places and times that somehow fit together
despite tension and conflict, the fluidity of this definition would suggest that practices of meaning are better seen as tools to be used than as possessions
to be lost.46 And though culture is still sometimes portrayed as a holistic set of worldviews or attitudes commensurate with circumscribed populations,
historical writers should begin from a different point of departure, highlighting instead particular meanings as
situational guides to consequential actionmotivations, sometimes temporary, that are best evaluated in terms
of how they are publicly enacted, shared, and reproduced. The focus would be less on finding an integrated and coherent ethos
among slaves and more on the particular acts of communication that allowed enslaved people to articulate idioms of
belonging, similarity, and distinction. The virtues of this method are on display in James Sidburys Becoming African in America: Race and
Nation in the Early Black Atlantic, which shows how Anglophone black people expressed their sense of being African in
tension with, and in partial opposition to, memories and experiences of the indigenous cultures of Africa,
rather than directly out of them.47 The meaning of the category African was not merely a reflection of
cultural tenacity but the consequence of repeated acts of political imagination.
Ext. B
Claiming social death turns the aff

1) It reinforces the notion of black deviance
2) It uses the language of modernity they criticize
3) It applies a snapshot picture of antebellum slavery to justify its assertion
Having emerged from the discipline of sociology, social death fit comfortably within a scholarly tradition
that had generally

been more alert to deviations in patterns of black life from prevailing social norms than to the worldviews,
strategies, and social tactics of people in black communities . Together with Pattersons work on the distortions wrought by slavery
on black families, social death reflected sociologys abiding concern with social pathology; the pathological
condition of twentieth-century black life could be seen as an outcome of the damage that black people had suffered during slavery.
University of Chicago professor Robert Park, the grand-pe`re of the social pathologists, set the terms in 1919: the Negro, when he landed in the United
States, left behind almost everything but his dark complexion and his tropical temperament.8 Pattersons distillation also conformed to
social science, which has traditionally aimed to discover universal laws of operation that
would be true regardless of time and place, making the synchronic study of social phenomena more tempting than more descriptive
studies of historical transformation. Slavery and Social Death took shape during a period when largely synchronic studies of
antebellum slavery in the United States dominated the scholarship on human bondage, and Pattersons expansive
view was meant to situate U.S. slavery in a broad context rather than to discuss changes as the institution
developed through time. Thus one might see social death as an obsolete product of its time and tradition, an
academic artifact with limited purchase for contemporary scholarship, were it not for the concepts reemergence in some
the nomothetic imperative of
important new studies of slavery.9
No method for Wildersons study treat their arguments as assertions

Ellison 2011 Ph.D. from University College, London (Mary, Book Review: Red, White and Black: cinema and the structure of US antagonisms,
Race Class OctoberDecember 2011 vol. 53 no. 2 100-103)
These are two illuminating, but frustratingly flawed books. Their approaches are different, although both frequently quote Frantz Fanon and Jacques
Lacan. Frank Wilderson utilises the iconic theoreticians within the context of a study that concentrates on a
conceptual ideology that, he claims, is based on a fusion of Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism and
psychology. He uses a small number of independent films to illustrate his theories. Charlene Regester has a more practical framework. She divides
her book into nine chapters devoted to individual female actors and then weaves her ideological concepts into these specific chapters. Both have a
problem with clarity. Regester uses less complex language than Wilderson, but still manages to be obtuse at times. Wilderson starts from
a position of using ontology and grammar as his main tools, but manages to consistently misuse or
misappropriate terms like fungible or fungibility. Wilderson writes as an intelligent and challenging author, but is often frustrating.
Although his language is complicated, his concepts are often oversimplified. He envisions every black person in film as a
slave who is suffering from irreparable alienation from any meaningful sense of cultural identity. He believes
that filmmakers, including black filmmakers, are victims of a deprivation of meaning that has been condensed
by Jacques Lacan as a wall of language as well as an inability to create a clear voice in the face of gratuitous violence. He cites Frantz
Fanon, Orlando Patterson and Hortense Spiller as being among those theorists who effectively investigate the issues of black structural noncommunicability. His own attempts to define what is black?, a subject?, an object?, a slave?, seem bound
up
with limiting preconceptions, and he evaluates neither blackness nor the red that is part of his title in any truly
meaningful way.
T/ Agency
Social death is a reductionist concept that does little to actually explain the slave experience
this pessimistic view erases notions of agency of the oppressed people.
Brown 09 [Vincent; AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 2009
become a handy general definition of slavery, for many historians and non-historians alike. But it is often forgotten that the concept of social
could reveal the essence of slavery in an ideal-type slave, shorn of meaningful heritage.6 As a concept, it is what
Frederick Cooper has called an agentless abstraction that provides a neat cultural logic but ultimately does little to
illuminate the social and political experience of enslavement and the struggles that produce historic
transformations.7 Indeed, it is difficult to use such a distillation to explain the actual behavior of slave s, and yet in
much of the scholarship that followed in the wake of Slavery and Social Death, Pattersons abstract distillates have been used to explain the existential
condition of the enslaved. Having emerged from the discipline of sociology, s ocial death fit comfortably within a scholarly
tradition that had generally been more alert to deviations in patterns of black life from prevailing social norms
than to the worldviews, strategies, and social tactics of people in black commun ities. Together with Pattersons work on the
distortions wrought by slavery on black families, social death reflected sociologys abiding concern with social pathology; the pathological condition
of twentieth-century black life could be seen as an outcome of the damage that black people had suffered during slavery. University of Chicago professor
Robert Park, the grand-pe`re of the social pathologists, set the terms in 1919: the Negro, when he landed in the United States, left behind almost
everything but his dark complexion and his tropical temperament.8 Pattersons distillation also conformed to the nomothetic
imperative of social science, which has traditionally aimed to discover universal laws of operation that would be
true regardless of time and place, making the synchronic study of social phenomena more tempting than more
descriptive studies of historical transformation. Slavery and Social Death took shape during a period when largely synchronic studies of
antebellum slavery in the United States dominated the scholarship on human bondage, and Pattersons expansive view was meant to situate U.S. slavery
in a broad context rather than to discuss changes as the institution developed through time. Thus one might see social death as an
obsolete product of its time and tradition, an academic artifact with limited purchase for contemporary
scholarship, were it not for the concepts reemergence in some important new studies of slavery .9 WIDELY
ACKNOWLEDGED AS AMONG the most onerous of social institutions, slavery has much to tell us about the way human beings react to oppression. At
the same time, the extreme nature of the institution naturally encourages a pessimistic view of the capacity for
collective agency among subjugated people. As a result, trends in the study of slavery, as with the study of dominance more
generally, often divide between works that emphasize the overwhelming power of the institution and scholarship
that focuses on the resistant efforts of the enslaved . In turn, this division frames a problem in the general
understanding of political life, especially for the descendants of the powerless . It might even be said that these kinds of
studies form different and opposing genreshopeful stories of heroic subalterns versus anatomies of doomthat compete for ascendance. In recent
years, if the invocation of Pattersons social death is any indication, the pendulum seems to have swung
decidedly toward despair.
*1NC Fronline vs Wildersons Method*

The core of Wildersons argument is based in
a. Antonio Negris marxism
b. psychoanalysis in film study
c. sextons concept of the libidinal economy based on unconscious drives
Wilderson 10 (Frank, Assoc prof of African American Studies Cal-Irvine, Red, White, & Black, pp 7-8 ajones)
The aim of this book is to embark on a paradigmatic analysis of how dispossession is imagined at the
intersection of (a) the most unflinching meditations (metacommentaries) on political economy and libidinal economy, (e.g., Marxism,
as in the work of Antonio Negri, and psychoanalysis, as in the work of Kaja Silverman), (b) the discourse of political
common sense, and (c) the narrative and formal strategies of socially or politically engaged films. In other words, a paradigmatic analysis asks, What are
the constituent elements of, and the assumptive logic regarding, dispossession which underwrite theoretical claims about political and libidinal
economy; and how are those elements and assumptions manifest in both political common sense and in political cinema? Charles S. Maier argues that a
metacommentary on political economy can be thought of as an "interrogation of economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises
in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behavior not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained."7 Jared
Sexton describes libidinal economy as "the economy, or distribution and arrangement, of desire and
identification (their condensation and displacement), and the complex relationship between sexuality and the
unconscious." Needless to say, libidinal economy functions variously across scales and is as "objective" as political economy. It is linked not only to
forms of attraction, affection, and alliance, but also to aggression, destruction, and the violence of lethal consumption. Sexton emphasizes that
it is "the whole structure of psychic and emotional life," something more than, but inclusive of or traversed by,
what Antonio Gramsci and other Marxists call a "structure of feeling "; it is "a dispensation of energies, concerns, points of
attention, anxieties, pleasures, appetites, revulsions, and phobias capable of both great mobility and tenacious fixation."8 This book interrogates
the assumptive logic of metacommentaries on political and libidinal economy, and their articulations in film,
through a subject whose structure of dispossession (the constituent elements of his or her loss and suffering) they cannot theorize: the
Black, a subject who is always already positioned as Slave. The implications of my interrogation reach far beyond film studies, for these
metacommentaries not only have the status of paradigmatic analyses, but their reasoning and assumptions permeate the private and quotidian of
political common sense and buttress organizing and activism on the left.
a. the totalizing materialism of scholars like Negri is self contradictory and messianistic
Quinby 04 (Lee, Chair Distinguished Teaching in Humanities Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Empires New Clothes, p. 233 ajones)
Demonstrating Empires millennial drift is a complicated undertaking, in no small part because of Hardts and Negris tendency to say one
thing and yet do another. For example, even though they explicitly claim a nonprophetic stance by stating that they can see
only shadows of the figures that will animate our future (205), much of what actually animates the book is its prophetic vision
of the nature and role of the militant, the poor, the nomad, the new barbarian, and the multitude. In place of specific and concrete
analysisa hallmark of a genealogical approachthey stamp their theory with messianic categories that
diminish rather than expand our understanding of productive and reproduc tive life. This contradiction is
particularly noteworthy because Empires millennialism is what makes it compelling. Millennial rhetoric stirs
the imagination toward exhilarating poles of fear and hope , promising a culminating and righteous telos to those who adhere to its
tenets of belief. It is hard not to be drawn in. A second interrelated contradiction arises from the fact that Hardt and Negri specifically reject
transcendence, making numerous explicit claims for the immanence of their materialist approach, often
drawing on Foucault to help make their case. In their opening pages, for example, they rule out the idea that order is dictated by a
single power and a single center of rationality transcendent to global forces (3). Nevertheless, their recurrent appeals to certain
categories of thought cast their theoretical framework back into transcen dental molds integral to
millennialism, which is both totalizing and abstractionist in its history and basic formulation .
b. Psychoanalytic film studies reintrench exclusion, conflate social structure with signification,
and marginalize movements
Seiter 88 PHD, Nenno Endowed Chair in Television Studies at USC's School of Cinematic Arts. ( Ellen Re-vision: the limits of psychoanalysis
from Jump Cut, A Review of Contemporary Media no. 33, Feb. 1988, pp. 59-61
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC33folder/ReVisionReview.html ajones)
Our attention turns from the woman's gaze to the woman's voice in Kaja Silverman's "Disembodying the
Female Voice." Her formal analysis of the sound/ image relation in terms of gender concentrates on the conspicuous absence of a female voice-over
in classical cinema. This absence symptomizes the exclusion of the female subject from the production of discourse. Silverman's essay has implications
for the practice of feminist filmmaking, and it invites the re-analysis of Hollywood films with attention to the construction of the soundtrack and to the
way the films obsessively refer the female voice to the female body. Silverman discusses the use of the "disembodied" female voice-over in a number of
films directed by women, finding Yvonne Rainer's JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN (1971) a powerful example of this formal strategy. The final essay in the
volume, Teresa de Lauretis' "Now and Nowhere: Roeg's BAD TIMING" is the most indebted to discourse theory. In its choice of topic, it seems the most
puzzling essay to find in a book on feminist film criticism. Nicholas Roeg's film BAD TIMING concerns the police investigation of a psychoanalyst who is
suspected of attempting to murder and then raping his lover. De Lauretis' choice of this particular film seems to be a kind of worst-case exercise in
proving Foucault's assertion that "the points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network." She also admires the director as auteur a great
deal. I cannot summarize Dc Lauretis' complex argument here, but I would suggest her analysis is seriously limited by concentrating on a film such as
BAD TIMING, which does not offer most women what it has offered de Lauretis. These four essays contribute many original and stimulating ideas to
feminist film criticism. The emphasis on theoretical perspectives derived from psychoanalysis, however, seriously
limits their appeal to a wider feminist readership. Many feminist filmmakers and critics will certainly be troubled by the dearth of
references to feminist theorists working outside of film or semiotics, and will be alienated by the frequency with which the names of the fathers appear
here. Only Linda Williams' piece has the kind of skepticism about psychoanalysis that most feminists demand. When Mary Ann Doane cites Freud's case
study on masochism, "A Child Is Being Beaten," she comes dangerously close to offering Freud's reports on women patients
as empirical evidence of the structures of the feminine unconscious . The influence of psychoanalysis can also be seen in the
choice of films to write about. Women's films and horror films contain a lot of vulgar Freudianism, which makes
psychoanalytic approaches particularly inviting. Kaja Silverman discusses this work of many women
filmmakers, such as Yvonne Rainer, whose films deal on an overt narrative level with psychoanalytic principles. Silverman excludes other
filmmakers whose work has broader social implications , such as Michelle Citron. De Lauretis chooses a film that is literally about a
psychoanalyst. Altogether they emphasize English-language and avant-garde cinema to the exclusion of other kinds of film and fail to consider class and
Finally, the theoretical perspectives employed in these four essays have reproduced the heterosexism of their
model, psychoanalysis. Lesbianism is scarcely mentioned in any essay except B. Ruby Rich's "From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation:
MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM (reprinted from JUMP CUT, No. 24-25. March, 1981). Lesbian filmmakers, writers and journals are
consistently excluded from the historical overview in the introduction. Thus lesbianism is marginalized to one
essay in the volume and one film in history (as something of the exotic past, Weimar Germany). In a book that purports to see "difference differently,
revising the old apprehension of sexual difference and making it possible to multiply differences," this is inexcusable. B. Ruby Rich's article, along with
Judith Mayne's "The Woman at the Keyhole: Women's Cinema and Feminist Criticism" and Christine Gledhill's "Recent Developments in Feminist Film
Criticism," are the broadest in scope and the most accessible articles in the book. While teaching feminist film courses at the University of Oregon for the
past several years, I have found Rich's essay on MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM to have a profound impact on students, opening up a wide range of critical
issues and stimulating discussion throughout the course. The integration of textual analysis of the film with its production history and a sophisticated
analysis of the film's social, cultural and political context make Rich's essay an exemplary piece of feminist film criticism. In "The Woman at the
Keyhole," Judith Mayne relates feminist literary criticism to issues addressed in films made by and for women. Mayne discusses the relation between the
film and the novel, and she examines both as meditations on the split between the public and the private spheres, arguing that we should consider
voyeurism in this context. Mayne's overview includes women as writers of fiction, as critics, and as filmmakers. She places some of the critical questions
raised by feminist film criticism in an historical perspective. Mayne defines feminism as "the attempt to theorize female experience into modes of
resistance and action." Christine Gledhill reflects this concern in her extremely useful theoretical summary and analysis, the first essay in the volume.
Gledhill traces the ideas of Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan as they have been used by feminist film critics,
especially Pam Cook, Claire Johnston and Laura Mulvey. This essay offers both a lucid explication of the theories involved and a careful analysis of the
way these theories have directed feminist film criticism away from understanding women in social practices other
than cinema by "conflating the social structure of reality with its signification." These theories have also pulled
feminist film criticism away from considering the "intersection of gender with class and racial differences
among others" because they have adopted Lacan's theory of the subject with its attention to the constitutive
force of language. Gledhill describes the entrapment that has resulted from these theoretical applications in this way: " The unspoken
remains unknown, and the speakable reproduces what we know patriarchal reality." She calls for feminist
critics to pay attention to what they have left out as they have emphasized the power of narrative structure, to
pay attention to "the material conditions in which it functions for an audience." We must not privilege film
discourse to the exclusion of all other discourses and practices, according to Gledhill, and we must attend to the interactions and
contradictions among these. The act of re-vision will involve an ongoing evaluation of the consequences of employing
psychoanalysis, semiotics and structuralism as dominant theoretical paradigms. We will need to integrate a
much broader spectrum of feminist thought in our work. We will need to listen to women of color, lesbians and working class
women. And as teachers and critics we must keep in mind Adrienne Rich's words: "Our struggles can have meaning and our privileges however
precarious under patriarchy can be justified only if they can help to change the lives of women whose gifts and whose very being continue to be
thwarted and silenced."[1]
c. Sexton ignores other forms of racial opression, erases identity, and cherry picks evidence
reject his ideas
Spickard 09 - University of California, Santa Barbara (Paul Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism (review)
American Studies - Volume 50, Number 1/2, Spring/Summer 2009, pp. 125-127 ajones)
One of the major developments in ethnic studies over the past two decades has been the idea (and sometimes the advocacy) of multiraciality. From a
theoretical perspective, this has stemmed from a post-structuralist attempt to deconstruct the categories created by the European Enlightenment and its
colonial enterprise around the world. From a personal perspective, it has been driven by the life experiences in the last half-century of a growing number
of people who have and acknowledge mixed parentage. The leading figures in this scholarly movement are probably Maria Root and G. Reginald Daniel,
but the writers are many and include figures as eminent as Gary Nash and Randall Kennedy. A small but dedicated group of writers has resisted this
trend: chiefly Rainier Spencer, Jon Michael Spencer, and Lewis Gordon. They have raised no controversy, perhaps [End Page 125] because their books
are not well written, and perhaps because their arguments do not make a great deal of sense. It is not that there is nothing wrong with the literature and
the people movement surrounding multiraciality. Some writers and social activists do tend to wax rhapsodic about the glories of intermarriage and
multiracial identity as social panacea. A couple of not-very-thoughtful activists (Charles Byrd and Susan Graham) have been coopted by the Gingrichian
right (to be fair, one must point out that most multiracialists are on the left). And, most importantly, there is a tension between some Black intellectuals
and the multiracial idea over the lingering fear that, for some people, adopting a multiracial identity is a dodge to avoid being Black. If so, that might
tend to sap the strength of a monoracially-defined movement for Black community empowerment. With Amalgamation Schemes, Jared
Sexton is trying to stir up some controversy. He presents a facile , sophisticated, and theoretically informed intelligence,
and he picks a fight from the start. His title suggests that the study of multiraciality is some kind of plot, or at the very least an illegitimate
enterprise. His tone is angry and accusatory on every page. It is difficult to get to the grounds of his argument,
because the cloud of invective is so thick, and because his writing is abstract, referential, and at key points
vague. For Sexton (as for the Spencers and Gordon) race is about Blackness, in the United States and around the world. That is silly,
for there are other racialized relationships. In the U.S., native peoples were racialized by European intruders in
all the ways that Africans were, and more: they were nearly extinguished. To take just one example from many
around the world, Han Chinese have racialized Tibetans historically in all the ways (including slavery) that Whites
have racialized Blacks and Indians in the United States. So there is a problem with Sexton's concept of race as Blackness . There is also a
problem with his insistence on monoraciality. For Sexton and the others, one cannot be mixed or multiple; one
must choose ever and only to be Black. I don't have a problem with that as a political choice, but to insist that it is the only
possibility flies in the face of a great deal of human experience, and it ignores the history of how modern racial
ideas emerged. Sexton does point out, as do many writers, the flawed tendencies in multiracial advocacy mentioned in the second paragraph above.
But he imputes them to the whole movement and to the subject of study, and that is not a fair assessment. The main problem is that Sexton
argues from conclusion to evidence, rather than the other way around. That is, he begins with the conclusion
that the multiracial idea is bad, retrograde, and must be resisted. And then he cherry-picks his evidence to fit
his conclusion. He spends much of his time on weaker writers such as Gregory Stephens and Stephen Talty
who have been tangential to the multiracial literature. When he addresses stronger figures like Daniel, Root, Nash, and
Kennedy, he carefully selects his quotes to fit his argument, and misrepresents their positions by doing so . Sexton
also makes some pretty outrageous claims. He takes the fact that people who study multiracial identities are often studying aspects of family life (such as
the shaping of a child's identity), and twists that to charge them with homophobia and nuclear family-ism. That is simply not accurate for any of the main
writers in the field. The same is true for his argument by innuendo that scholars of multiraciality somehow advocate mail-order bride services. And
sometimes Sexton simply resorts to ad hominem attacks on the motives and personal lives of the writers
themselves. It is a pretty tawdry exercise. That is unfortunate, because Sexton appears bright and might have written a much better book detailing
his hesitations about some tendencies in the multiracial movement. He might even have opened up a new direction for productive study of racial
commitment amid complexity. Sexton does make several observations that are worth thinking about, [End Page 126] and surely this intellectual
movement, like any other, needs to think critically about itself. Sadly, this is not that book.
theres no basis for the unconscious model

OBrien & Jureidini, 2 (Gerard & Jon, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide & PhD (Flinders) is a
child psychiatrist who has completed a doctorate in philosophy of mind, Dispensing With the Dynamic Unconscious, Philosophy, Psychiatry, &
Psychology 9.2, project muse ajones)
IT IS THE PRIMARY TENET of psychoanalysis that there is a subterranean region of our minds inhabited by
mental entitiessuch as thoughts, feelings, and motivesthat are actively prevented from entering consciousness
because of their painful or otherwise unacceptable content. These mental entities, in spite of being consciously inaccessible, are
assumed to have a profound impact on our conscious mental life and behavior, and in so doing are thought to be responsible for
many of the psychopathologies, both major and minor, to which we are subject. This conjectured subterranean region of our minds is
nowadays known as the dynamic unconscious, and there is no more important explanatory concept in all of psychoanalytic theory.
Yet, despite its importance to psychoanalytic thought and practice, and despite almost a century of research effort since its
first systematic articulation, the dynamic unconscious is in deep trouble. The methodologic difficulties associated
with theorizing about this putative mental underworld are legion (Grunbaum 1984), and recent years have seen a
growing skepticism about the very notion of a dynamic unconscious and with it the whole apparatus of
psychoanalysis (see, for example, Crews 1996). In the face of these difficulties, a number of proponents of psychoanalysis have turned to
contemporary cognitive science for assistance (see, for example, Epstein 1994; Erdelyi 1985; Shevrin 1992; and Westen 1998). Their aim has been to
show that psychoanalytic conjectures about the dynamic unconscious receive a great deal of support from the empirical evidence in favor of the cognitive
unconscious. By variously integrating the dynamic unconscious with the cognitive unconscious (Epstein 1994) or extending the cognitive unconscious to
cover psychical entities and processes traditionally associated with the dynamic [End Page 141] unconscious (Westen 1998), the hope is that the
struggling psychoanalytic concept will be buttressed by its healthier counterpart in cognitive science. It is our contention, however, that this hope is
misplaced. Far from supporting the dynamic unconscious, recent work in the cognitive science suggests that
the time has come to dispense with this concept altogether. We will defend this claim in two ways. First, we will argue that
any attempt to shore up the dynamic unconscious with the cognitive unconscious is bound to fail, simply
because the latter, as it is understood in contemporary cognitive science, is incompatible with the former as it is
traditionally conceived by psychoanalytic theory. Second, we will show how psychological phenomena traditionally cited as
evidence for the operation of a dynamic unconscious can be accommodated more parsimoniously by other
means. But before we do either of these things, and to set the scene for our subsequent discussion, we will offer a very brief recapitulation of the
dynamic unconscious, especially as it was originally conceived by Sigmund Freud.
Agency Disad
a. Wildersons social death argument is too sweeping, denies Black agency, and cannot
translate to politics
B 11
(Dr. Sar Maty, Professor of Film University of Portsmouth and Co-Editor The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, The US Decentred: From
Black Social Death to Cultural Transformation, Cultural Studies Review, 17(2), September, p. 385-387 ajones)
WILDERSONS WHITE WATCH SEES RED ON BLACK: SOME WEAKNESSES A few pages into Red, White and Black, I feared that it would just be a
matter of time before Wildersons blackassocialdeath idea and multiple attacks on issues and scholars he disagrees
with run (him) into (theoretical) trouble. This happens in chapter two, The Narcissistic Slave, where he critiques black film theorists and
books. For example, Wilderson declares that Gladstone Yearwoods Black Film as Signifying Practice (2000) betrays a kind of conceptual anxiety with
respect to the historical object of study ... it clings, anxiously, to the filmastextaslegitimateobject of Black cinema. (62) He then quotes from
Yearwoods book to highlight just how vague the aesthetic foundation of Yearwoods attempt to construct a canon can be. (63) And yet Wildersons
highlighting is problematic because it overlooks the Diaspora or African Diaspora, a key component in
Yearwoods thesis that, crucially, neither navelgazes (that is, at the US or black America) nor pretends to properly engage with black film.
Furthermore, Wilderson separates the different waves of black film theory and approaches them, only, in terms
of how a most recent one might challenge its precedent. Again, his approach is problematic because it does not
mention or emphasise the interconnectivity of/in black film theory. As a case in point, Wilderson does not link Tommy Lotts
mobilisation of Third Cinema for black film theory to Yearwoods idea of African Diaspora. (64) Additionally, of course, Wilderson seems unaware that
Third Cinema itself has been fundamentally questioned since Lotts 1990s theory of black film was formulated. Yet another consequence of ignoring the
African Diaspora is that it exposes Wildersons corpus of films as unable to carry the weight of the transnational
argument he attempts to advance. Here, beyond the UScentricity or social and political specificity of [his] filmography, (95) I am talking
about Wildersons choice of films. For example, Antwone Fisher (dir. Denzel Washington, 2002) is attacked unfairly for failing to acknowledge a grid of
captivity across spatial dimensions of the Black body, the Black home, and the Black community (111) while films like Alan and Albert Hughess
Menace II Society (1993), overlooked, do acknowledge the same grid and, additionally, problematise Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act
(STEP) policing. The above examples expose the fact of Wildersons dubious and questionable conclusions on black film. Red, White and Black
is particularly undermined by Wildersons propensity for exaggeration and blinkeredness . In chapter nine, Savage
Negrophobia, he writes: The philosophical anxiety of Skins is all too aware that through the Middle Passage, African culture became Black style ...
Blackness can be placed and displaced with limitless frequency and across untold territories, by whoever so chooses. Most important, there is nothing
real Black people can do to either check or direct this process ... Anyone can say nigger because anyone can be a nigger. (235)7 Similarly, in chapter
ten, A Crisis in the Commons, Wilderson addresses the issue of Black time. Black is irredeemable, he argues, because, at no time in history had it been
deemed, or deemed through the right historical moment and place. In other words, the black moment and place are not right because they are the ship
hold of the Middle Passage: the most coherent temporality ever deemed as Black time but also the moment of no time at all on the map of no place at
all. (279) Not only does Pinhos more mature analysis expose this point as preposterous (see below), I also wonder what Wilderson makes of the
countless historians and sociologists works on slave ships, shipboard insurrections and/during the Middle Passage,8 or of groundbreaking jazzstudies
books on crosscultural dialogue like The Other Side of Nowhere (2004). Nowhere has another side, but once Wilderson theorises
blacks as socially and ontologically dead while dismissing jazz as belonging nowhere and to no one, simply
there for the taking, (225) there seems to be no way back. It is therefore hardly surprising that Wilderson ducks the need
to provide a solution or alternative to both his sustained bashing of blacks and anti Blackness.9 Last but not least,
Red, White and Black ends like a badly plugged announcement of a bad Hollywood films badly planned sequel :
How does one deconstruct life? Who would benefit from such an undertaking? The coffleapproaches with its answers in tow. (340)
b. Denying Agency is independently wrong should be rejected

Mahoney 92
(MARTHA R. MAHONEY Associate Professor, University of Miami School of Law. Southern California Law Review University of Southern California
March, 1992 Exit: Power and the Idea of Leaving in Love, Work and
the Confirmation Hearings 65 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1283 lawrev; lexis ajones)
Once exit is defined as the appropriate response to abuse, then staying can be treated as evidence that abuse never happened . If abuse is
asserted, "failure" to exit must then be explained. When that "failure" becomes the point of inquiry, explanation
in law and popular culture tends to emphasize victimization and implicitly deny agency in the person who has been
harmed. Denying agency contradicts the self-understanding of most of our society, including many who share
characteristics and experiences of oppression with the person who is being harmed. The conservative insistence
that we are untrammeled actors plays on this sensibility, merging rejection of victimization with an ideology
that denies oppression. The privatization of assaults on women makes it particularly difficult to identify a
model of oppression and resistance, rather than one of victimization and inconsistent personal behavior .
Fatalism Disad
a. Wildersons ontology makes fatalism inevitable and offers no alt
B (teaches film at Portsmouth University (UK). He researches race, the postcolonial, diaspora, the transnational
Caribbean cinemas and film festivals) 11
and
film
genre,
African
and
(Sar Maty, The US Decentred, Cultural Studies Review, volume 17 number 2 September 2011 ajones)
In chapter nine, Savage Negrophobia, he writes: The philosophical anxiety of Skins is all too aware that through the Middle Passage, African culture
became Black style ... Blackness can be placed and displaced with limitless frequency and across untold territories, by
whoever so chooses. Most important,
process
there is nothing real Black people can do to either check or direct this
... Anyone can say nigger because anyone can be a nigger. (235)7 Similarly, in chapter ten, A Crisis in the Commons, Wilderson
addresses the issue of Black time. Black is irredeemable, he argues, because, at no time in history had it been deemed, or deemed through
the right historical moment and place. In other words, the black moment and place are not right because they are the ship hold of the Middle
Passage: the most coherent temporality ever deemed as Black time but also the moment of no time at all on the map of no place at all. (279 ) Not
only does Pinhos more mature analysis expose this point as preposterous
(see below),
I also wonder what
Wilderson makes of the countless historians and sociologists works on slave ships, shipboard
insurrections and/during the Middle Passage,8 or of groundbreaking jazzstudies books on crosscultural
dialogue like The Other Side of Nowhere (2004). Nowhere has another side, but once Wilderson theorises blacks
as socially and ontologically dead while dismissing jazz as belonging nowhere and to no one, simply there for the taking, (225)
there seems to be no way back. It is therefore hardly surprising that Wilderson ducks the need to provide a
solution or alternative to both his sustained bashing of blacks and anti Blackness.9 Last but not least, Red, White and Black ends
like a badly plugged announcement of a bad Hollywood films badly planned sequel: How does one deconstruct life? Who would benefit
from such an undertaking? The coffle approaches with its answers in tow. (340)
b. Turns their args greatest comparative threat

Miah quoting West in 94
(Malik Miah, Cornel West's Race Matters, May-June, http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/3079 ajones)
In the chapter, Nihilism in Black America, West observes The liberal/conservative discussion
conceals the most basic issue

now facing Black America: the nihilistic threat to its very existence . This threat is not simply a matter of relative
economic deprivation and political powerlessness -- though economic well-being and political clout are
requisites for meaningful Black progress. It is primarily a question of speaking to the profound sense of psychological depression,
personal worthlessness, and social despair so widespread in Black America. (12-13) Nihilism, he continues, is to be understood here not as a
philosophic doctrine ... it is, far more, the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaningless, hopelessness, and (most important)
lovelessness. (14) Nihilism is not new in Black America. . . . In fact, West explains, the major enemy of Black survival in America
has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic Threat -- that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For
as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The selffulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning
there can be no struggle. (14-15)
Wilderson is too extreme in his opposition to reformism his book does not offer much of a
contemporary strategy.
Graham 9
Dr. Shane Graham Associate Professor of English at Utah State University. Review of Frank B. Wilderson III, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and
Apartheid, Cambridge, MA, South End Press, 2008, 501 pp. (pbk) 978-0-8960-8783-5 Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies
Vol. 10, No. 4, October 2009, 479494 via Taylor & Francis Online Database ajones)
Were you upset, offended, or outraged by Breyten Breytenbach's recent article in Harper's Magazine, in which he took Nelson Mandela to task for all the
failings of the post-apartheid administrations? If you were bothered by Breytenbach's piece, I would recommend avoiding Frank Wilderson's
Incognegro. In it, the author recalls
declaring in 1989 that Madiba would be of greater service to the revolution dead
than alive. Throughout the book he repeatedly rails against Mandela's people as agents for an accommodationist, neoliberal agenda. He even recounts a speech he attended in 1994 by the newly elected state president, in which he stood up and grilled Mandela about plans
for the Reconstruction and Development Program. This all culminated in 1995 with a phone call from a Mail & Guardian reporter who asked for a
comment because Nelson Mandela thinks youre a threat to national security (470). The book jacket declares that Wilderson is one of only two
Americans ever to be a member of the African National Congress (ANC). An African American, he first visited South Africa in 1989 on a brief research
expedition, during which he met the Tswana woman he would later marry. He settled more permanently in Johannesburg in 1991, where he was soon
elected to the executive council of the local and sub-regional branches of the ANC. But even as he was holding aboveground positions in the newly
unbanned liberation party, he was also working with an underground cell loyal to Chris Hani and Winnie Mandela, in defiance of Nelson Mandela's
decision to disband Umkhonto we Sizwe and cease all covert operations. In this capacity, Wilderson gathered information on [visiting] Americans and
worked on psychological warfare, propaganda, disinformation, and general political analysis (276). From his position as lecturer, first at Wits University
and later at the Soweto campus of Vista University, he was charged with capturing as much territory (real and imagined) of the university-industrial
complex before the ANC came to power as possible (143). Wilderson's perspective on the events of 19891996 is unique: he sees the seminal moments
of South Africa's transition both as an insider (as an elected official in the ANC) and as an outsider who never fully gains the trust of the party's power
structure. And whereas even a couple of years ago his condemnations of the New South Africa and its economic policies might have struck many
middle-class South African readers as strident and delusional, the predictions he recalls making now seem undeniably prescient in light of the recent
power shift within the ANC. After all, one wonders whether Jacob Zuma's demagoguery would have ever found political traction had Thabo Mbeki's wing
of the party not succeeded in prioritizing laissez-faire liberalism above material reparations for the poor. Had Wilderson been content to
write a political memoir of his modest but interesting role in the South African transition, it would have been a
slender but compelling, occasionally even gripping, book. Instead, Wilderson gives us a sprawling 500-page tome that
attempts to serve not just as political memoir but also as autobiography, therapeutic exercise, and character assassination against
former colleagues, to whom he gives very thinly veiled pseudonyms. As an account of growing up black in the white United States, Incognegro
offers a few engaging stories: he visited Fred Hampton's house in Chicago at age thirteen, soon after Hampton had been shot dead by police; and he took
part in battles with the police and national guard in Berkeley in 1969. Otherwise, though, the book's representation of the black
experience in America covers familiar ground and adds little to our understanding of that experience beyond
fresh layers of indignation and rage.
Reject Wildersons call for absolutism no movement is anti-establishment enough for him
Graham 9
Dr. Shane Graham Associate Professor of English at Utah State University. Review of Frank B. Wilderson III, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and
Apartheid, Cambridge, MA, South End Press, 2008, 501 pp. (pbk) 978-0-8960-8783-5 Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies,
Vol. 10, No. 4, October 2009, 479494 via Taylor & Francis Online Database ajones)
The difficulty of reviewing a book such as this is that the
author would no doubt respond to any criticism (of the book's tone, for
by attacking the reviewer as a
deluded quisling of the global capitalist establishment and blah, blah, blah (to quote Wilderson's own paraphrase of Mandela's
instance, or of its clumsy, self-consciously postmodern structure, which jumps randomly between time frames )
response to his aforementioned question). In my pre-emptive self-defence, I can only emphasize again that it is this memoir's narcissism and selfindulgent tone that made it an unpleasant read for me, not its politics. There is no doubt that the revolution let down a lot of
people. But it was always going to let down Frank Wilderson because it seems that, for him, nothing can ever be
pure enough.
2NC O/V
Multiple Das to Wildersons method
Three reasons his arguments are grounded in poor theory
1- His reliance on Negris Marxism is riddled with contradictions and relies on an unfeasible,
messianic rescue from materialism- falls prey to totalizing methodology- thats Quinby
2- Use of psychoanalytic film leads to further exclusion- marginalizes women, entrenches
patriarchy, which destroys any hope for intersectional collaboration against oppression- thats
OBrien
3- Adopts Sextons adversarial, Black-only ideology- deliberately ignores mixed causes of
identity by relying on a sole race focus
This cherry picks historical examples of oppression and destroys any opportunities at building
coalitions- turns case- thats Spickard
Independently, Wildersons arguments destroy agency and lead to fatalism
They portray oppression as inevitable and deny the agency of transformative black movements
This leads to a loss of hope which is the single most effective way to undermine transformative
struggles- thats Ba and Micah
And finally the participation DAWilderson is radical by the most liberal of standards
Rails against Mandela, labels prominent leaders as sellouts
This alienates almost every active movement- none are pure enough to meet Wildersons
ideology
Creates impossible standards which abandon pragmatic reform
xt: method indict
His unverifiable generalizations are understandable because he relies of Lacanian and Marxist
structuralism Well quote Wildersons method section
Wilderson 10 (Frank, Assoc prof of African American Studies Cal-Irvine, Red, White, & Black, ajones)
A Note on Method 23-24
Throughout this book I use White, Human, Master, Settler, and sometimes non-Black interchangeably to connote a paradigmatic entity that exists
ontologically as a position of life in relation to the Black or Slave position, one of death. The Red, Indigenous, or "Savage" position exists liminally as
half-death and half-life between the Slave (Black) and the Human (White, or non-Black). I capitalize the words Red, White, Black, Slave, Savage, and
Human in order to assert their importance as ontological positions and to stress the value of theorizing power politically rather than culturally. I want to
move from a politics of culture to a culture of politics (as I argue in chapter a). Capitalizing these words is consistent with my argument that the array of
identities that they contain is important but inessential to an analysis of the paradigm of power in which they are positioned. Readers wedded to cultural
diversity and historical specificity may find such shorthand wanting. But those who may be put off by my pressing historical and
cultural particularities-culled from history, sociology, and cultural studies, yet neither historical, sociological,
nor, oddly enough, cultural-should bear in mind that there are precedents for such methods, two of which make
cultural studies and much of social science possible: the methods of Karl Marx and Jacques Lacan. Marx pressed the
microcosm of the English manufacturer into the service of a project that sought to explain economic
relationality on a global scale. Lacan's exemplary cartography was even smaller: a tiny room with not much more than a sofa and a chair, the
room of the psychoanalytic encounter. As Jonathan Lee reminds us, at stake in Lacan's account of the psychoanalytic encounter is the realization of
subjectivity itself, "the very being of the subject. "31 I argue that "Savage' Human, and Slave should be theorized in the way we theorize worker and
capitalist as positions first and as identities second, or as we theorize capitalism as a paradigm rather than as an experience-that is, before they take on
national origin or gendered specfficity Throughout the course of this book I argue that "Savage' Human, and Slave are more essential to our
understanding of the truth of institutionality than the positions from political or libidinal economy. For in this trio we find the key to our world's creation
as well as to its undoing. This argument, as it relates to political economy, continues in chapter i, "The Ruse of Analogy:' In chapter 2, "The Narcissistic
Slave," I shift focus from political economy to libidinal economy before undertaking more concrete analyses of films in parts 2, 3, and 4. No one makes
films and declares their own films "Human" while simultaneously asserting that other films (Red and Black) are not Human cinema. Civil society
represents itself to itself as being infinitely inclusive, and its technologies of hegemony (including cinema) are mobilized to manufacture this assertion,
not to dissent from it. In my quest to interrogate the bad faith of the civic "invitation;' I have chosen White cinema as the sine qua non of Human cinema.
Films can be thought of as one of an ensemble of discursive practices mobilized by civil society to "invite:' or interpellate, Blacks to the same variety of
social identities that other races are able to embody without contradiction, identities such as worker, soldier, immigrant, brother, sister, father, mother,
and citizen. The bad faith of this invitation, this faux interpeLlation, can be discerned by deconstructing the way cinema's narrative strategies displace
our consideration and understanding of the ontological status of Blacks (social death) onto a series of fanciful stories that are organized around conflicts
which are the purview only of those who are not natally alienated, generally dishonored, or open to gratuitous violence, in other words, people who are
White or colored but who are not Black. (I leave aside, for the moment, the liminality of the Native American position-oscillating as it does between the
living and the dead.) Immigrant cinema of those who are not White would have sufficed as well; but, due to its exceptional capacity to escape racial
markers, Whiteness is the most impeccable embodiment of what it means to be Human. As Richard Dyer writes, "Having no content, we [White people]
can't see that we have anything that accounts for our position of privilege and power . . . . The equation of being white with being human secures a
position of power:' He goes on to explain how "the privilege of being white... is not to be subjected to stereotyping in relation to one's whiteness. 'White
people are stereotyped in terms of gender, nation, class, sexuality, ability and so on, but the overt point of such typification is gender, nation, etc.
Whiteness generally colonises the stereotypical definition of all social categories other than those of race.' Unlike Dyer, I do not meditate on the
representational power of Whiteness, "that it be made strange:' divested of its imperial capacity, and thus make way for representational practices in
cinema and beyond that serve as aesthetic accompaniments for a more egalitarian civil society in which Whites and non-Whites could live in harmony.
Laudable as that dream is, I do not share Dyer's assumption that we are all Human. Some of us are only part Human ("Savage") and some of us are Black
(Slave). I find his argument that Whiteness possesses the easiest claim to Humanness to be productive. But whereas Dyer offers this argument as a
lament for a social ill that needs to be corrected, I borrow it merely for its explanatory power-as a way into a paradigmatic analysis that clarifies
structural relations of global antagonisms and not as a step toward healing the wounds of social relations in civil society. Hence this book's
interchangeable deployment of White, Settler, and Master with-and to signify-Human. Again, like Lacan, who mobilizes the
psychoanalytic encounter to make claims about the structure of relations writ large, and like Marx, who
mobilizes the English manufacturer to make claims about the structure of economic relations writ large, I am
mobilizing three races, four films, and one subcontinent to make equally generalizable claims and argue that the
antagonism between Black and Human supercedes the "antagonism" between worker and capitalist in political economy, as well as the gendered
"antagonism" in libidinal economy. To this end, this book takes stock of how socially engaged popular cinema participates in the systemic violence that
constructs America as a "settler society" (Churchill) and "slave estate" (Spilers). Rather than privilege a politics of culture(s)-that is, rather than examine
and accept the cultural gestures and declarations which the three groups under examination make about themselves-1 privilege a culture of politics: in
other words, what I am concerned with is how White film, Black film, and Red film articulate and disavow the matrix of violence which constructs the
three essential positions which in turn structure US. antagonisms.
Wilderson is ahistorical-- he assumes that anti-black animus arises from nothingness but its
caught up in a broader web of historical power relationships like Islamophobia and nativism
Charoenying (citing Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Prof of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley) 8
(Timothy, Islamophobia & Anti-Blackness: A Genealogical Approach, http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia-anti-blackness-genealogical-approach)
The year 1492
marked a major
turning point in the trajectory of Western Civilization. Elementary age children are taught this as the year Columbus
famously crossed the Atlantic. An equally significant event that year, was the Spanish conquest of al-Andalus a Moorish province on the
southern Iberian peninsula established eight centuries earlierand more importantly, the last major Muslim stronghold on the European continent.
Critical race scholars have argued that these two events would not only shift the geopolitical balance of power from the
Orient to the Occident, but fundamentally alter conceptions about religious and racial identity . According to Nelson
Maldonado-Torres, of the University of California, Berkeley, the expulsion of the Moors from continental Europe marked a transition from an age of
imperial relations between Christian and Muslim empires, to an age of European colonial expansion throughout the known world. The discovery of
godless natives in the Americas would also inspire the great debates between Las Casas and Seplveda in 1550 on the nature of the human soul. Such
a geopolitical and philosophical shift, Maldonado-Torres argues, would lead to a Eurocentric, re-categorization of
humanity based upon religousand ultimately racialdifferences . Maldonado-Torres has proposed that anti-black
racism is not simply an extension of some historical bias against blacks, but rather, is an amalgam of old-world
Islamophobia linked to the history of the Iberian peninsula, and to the notion of souless beings embodied in
popular conceptions about the indigenous natives of the Americas. These beliefs would contribute to an
ideological basis for, and justification of, colonial conquests in the name of cultural and religious conversion, as
well as pave the way for the enslavement and human trafficking of sub-Saharan Africans .
xt: psychoanalysis bad method
Psychoanalysis is a closed system of assertion that doesnt describe reality

Perpich 5 (Dian Professor of PHILOSOPHY AT Vanderbilt Figurative Language and the Face in Levinass Philosophy Philosophy and Rhetoric
vol. 38:2)
Levinass hesitations about the value of psychoanalysisindeed, what might be called his allergic reactions to psychoanalysisare similarly based.
Psychoanalysis, he writes, casts a basic suspicion on the most unimpeachable testimony of self-consciousness
(1987b, 32). Psychological states in which the ego seems to
have a clear and distinct grasp of itself are reread by psychoanalysis as

a reality that is totally inaccessible to the self and that is the expression of a social reality or a
historical influence totally distinct from its [the egos] own intention (34). Moreover, all of the egos protests
against the interpretations of analysis are themselves subject to further analysis, leaving no point exterior to
the analysis: I am as it were shut up in my own portrait (35). Psychoanalysis threatens an infinite regress of meaning, a
recursive process that leads from one symbol to another , from one symptom to another with no end in sight and no way to break
into or out of the chain of signifiers in the name of a signified. The real world is transformed into a poetic world, that is, into a
world without beginning in which one thinks without knowing what one thinks (35). Put less poetically, Levinass worry is
symbols for
that psychoanalysis furnishes us with no fixed point or firm footing from which to launch a critique and to break with social and historical
determinations of the psyche in order to judge society and history and to call both to account. Indeed, his uncharacteristic allusion to clear and distinct
ideas betrays his intention: to seek, against both religious and psychoanalytic participations, for a relationship in which the ego is an absolute,
irreducible singularity, within a totality but still separate from it, that is, still capable of a relation with exteriority. To seek such a relation is, Levinas
says, to ask whether a living man [sic] does not have the power to judge the history in which he is engaged, that is, whether the thinker as an ego, over
and beyond all that he does with what he possesses, creates and leaves, does not have the substance of a cynic (35). The naked being who confronts me
with his or her alterity, the naked being that I am myself and whose being counts as such is now naked not with an erotic nudity but with the nudity of a
cynic who has thrown off the cloak of culture in order to present him- or herself directly and in person through this chaste bit of skin with brow, nose,
eyes, and mouth (41). Levinas picks up the thread of this worry about psychoanalysis in Ethics and Discourse, the main section of The Ego and the
Totality. To affirm humankind as a power to judge history, he claims, is to affirm rationalism and to reject the merely poetic thought which thinks
without knowing what it things, or thinks as one dreams (40). The impetus for psychoanalysis is philosophical, Levinas admits; that is, it shares initially
in this affirmation of rationalism insofar as it affirms the need for reflection and for going underneath or getting behind unreflected consciousness and
thought. However, if its impetus is philosophical, its issue is not insofar as the tools that it uses for reflection turn
out to be some fundamental, but elementary, fables ... which, incomprehensibly, would alone be unequivocal,
alone not translate (or mask or symbolize) a reality more profound than themselves (40). Psychoanalysis
returns one, then, to the irrationalism of myth and poetry rather than liberating one from them . It resubmerges one
within the cultural and historical ethos and mythos in a way that seems to Levinas to permit no end to interpretation and thus no power to judge. He
imagines psychoanalysis as a swirling phantasmagoria in which language is all dissimulation and deception. One can find ones bearings in all this
phantasmagoria, one can inaugurate the work of criticism only if one can begin with a fixed point. The fixed point cannot be some
incontestable truth, a certain statement that would always be sub ject to psychoanalysis; it can only be the
absolute status of an interlocutor, a being, and not a truth about bein gs (41). In this last claim, the fate of
Heideggerian fundamental ontology that is an understanding of Being rather than a relation to beings (or to a
being, a face) is hitched to the fate of psychoanalysis and both linked to participation, the nocturnal chaos
that threatens to drown the ego in the totality .
This is non-falsifiable and fails no support for generalizing from the particular
Robinson (PhD Political Theory, University of Nottingham) 05
(Theory and Event, Andrew, 8:1, The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique ajones)
One of the functions of myth is to cut out what Trevor Pateman terms the "middle level" of analytical concepts, establishing a short-circuit between highlevel generalizations and ultra-specific (pseudo-) concrete instances. In Barthes's classic case of an image of a black soldier saluting the French flag, this
individual action is implicitly connected to highly abstract concepts such as nationalism, without the mediation of the particularities of his situation.
(These particularities, if revealed, could undermine the myth. Perhaps he enlisted for financial reasons, or due to threats of violence). Thus, while myths
provide an analysis of sorts, their basic operation is anti-analytical: the analytical schema is fixed in advance, and the
relationship between this schema and the instances it organizes is hierarchically ordered to the exclusive
advantage of the former. This is precisely what happens in Lacanian analyses of specific political and cultural
phenomena. iek specifically advocates 'sweeping generalizations' and short-cuts between specific instances and
high-level abstractions, evading the "middle level". 'The correct dialectical procedure... can be best described as a direct jump from
the singular to the universal, bypassing the mid-level of particularity'. He wants a 'direct jump from the singular to the universal',
without reference to particular contexts.
xt: no alt bad
Responsibility for actual alternative or failure is inev

Day 9
(Christopher, The Historical Failure of Anarchism: Implications for the Future of the Revolutionary Project,
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/historical_failure_of_aanarchism_chris_day_kasama.pdf ajones)
Finally revolutionaries have a responsibility to have a plausible plan for making revolution . Obviously
there are
not enough revolutionaries to make a revolution at this moment. We can reasonably anticipate that
the future will bring

upsurges in popular opposition to the existing system. Without being any more specific about where those upsurges might occur it seems clear that it
is from the ranks of such upsurges that the numbers of the revolutionary movement will be increased, eventually leading to a revolutionary situation
(which is distinguished from the normal crises of the current order only by the existence of a revolutionary movement ready to push things further).
People who are fed up with the existing system and who are willing to commit themselves to its overthrow will look around for likeminded people who
have an idea of what to do. If we dont have a plausible plan for making revolution we can be sure that there will be
somebody else there who will. There is no guarantee that revolutionary-minded people will be spontaneously drawn to anti-authoritarian
politics. The plan doesnt have to be an exact blueprint. It shouldnt be treated as something sacred. It should be subject to constant
revision in light of experience and debate. But at the very least it needs to be able to answer questions that have been
posed concretely in the past. We know that we will never confront the exact same circumstances as previous revolutions. But we should
also know that certain problems are persistent ones and that if we cant say what we would have done in the past we should not expect people to think
much of our ability to face the future. There is a widespread tendency in the anarchist movement (and on the left in general) to say
that the question of how we are going to actually make a revolution is too distant and therefore too abstract to
deal with now. Instead it is asserted that we should focus on practical projects or immediate struggles. But the practical projects or immediate
struggles we decide to focus on are precisely what will determine if we ever move any closer to making revolution. If we abdicate our
responsibility to try to figure out what it will take to actually make revolution and to direct our current work
accordingly we will be caught up in an endless succession of practical projects and immediate struggles and when confronted with a
potentially revolutionary situation we will be pushed to the side by more politically prepared forces (who
undoubtedly we will accuse of betraying the revolution if they dont shoot all of us). We will be carried by the tide of history instead of attempting to
steer our own course. And by allowing this to happen again it will be we who have really betrayed the revolution. The net result of the refusal to deal
with what it will actually take to make a revolution is that anarchism has become a sort of directionless but militant reformism. We are either building
various counter-institutions that resemble nothing so much as grungier versions of the social services administered by different churches; or we
are throwing ourself into some largely reactive social struggle in which our actions are frequently bold and
courageous, but from which we never build any sort of ongoing social movement (let alone a revolutionary
organization).
at: antiblackness
anti-blackness vs whiteness studies is a distinction without a difference. The effects and

political mechanisms are indistinguishable
Sullivan 1 - Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at Penn State at University Park (Shannon Living Across & Through Skins :
Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism & Feminism06/2001 p161-162 ajones)
This experiment demonstrates that pro-whiteness and anti-blackness
can be distinguished psychologically. The different

ways in which the egalitarian nonracist participants responded to the inadmissible confession in the case of
white and black defendants shows that those participants were not biased against blackness, but were biased in
favor of whiteness. However, in support of Ignatievs position against thinking of whiteness as preserved, the experiment also
demonstrates that the effects of pro-whiteness and anti-blackness disadvantage black people in equivalent
ways. Even though the distinction between anti-blackness and pro-whiteness can be useful for distinguishing
different types of psychological reactions to situations involving race, it does not mean that pro-whiteness does not have
adverse effects on people of color. This is signicant because the effects, not the mere psychology, of pro-whiteness are most
relevant to racism and its elimination. As compared to a black defendant who made no incriminating confession, a black defendant who
did make such a confession was treated fairly by the egalitarian white participants. Compared to a white defendant who made such a confession, the
black defendant who confessed was not treated fairly by the white egalitarians. The white defendant received benecial treatment that the black
defendant did not, disadvantaging the black defendant in a signicant way solely because of the defendants race. Even if one claims that the
black defendant received justice while the white defendant received mercy, the verdicts are racist because they
awarded special treatment to the white defendant because he or she was white. While the anti-outgroup bias of
traditional racists and the proingroup bias of egalitarian nonracists do so in different ways, both unfairly
discriminate based on race. Both pro-whiteness and anti-blackness attitudes are racist because they have racist
effects.
Wilderson is ahistorical-- he assumes that anti-black animus arises from nothingness but its
caught up in a broader web of historical power relationships like Islamophobia and nativism
Charoenying (citing Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Prof of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley) 8
(Timothy, Islamophobia & Anti-Blackness: A Genealogical Approach, http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia-anti-blackness-genealogical-approach)
The year 1492 marked a major turning point in the trajectory of Western Civilization. Elementary age children are taught this as the year Columbus
famously crossed the Atlantic. An equally significant event that year, was the Spanish conquest of al-Andalus a Moorish province on the
southern Iberian peninsula established eight centuries earlierand more importantly, the last major Muslim stronghold on the European continent.
Critical race scholars have argued that these two events would not only shift the geopolitical balance of power from the
Orient to the Occident, but fundamentally alter conceptions about religious and racial identity . According to Nelson
Maldonado-Torres, of the University of California, Berkeley, the expulsion of the Moors from continental Europe marked a transition from an age of
imperial relations between Christian and Muslim empires, to an age of European colonial expansion throughout the known world. The discovery of
godless natives in the Americas would also inspire the great debates between Las Casas and Seplveda in 1550 on the nature of the human soul. Such
a geopolitical and philosophical shift, Maldonado-Torres argues, would lead to a Eurocentric, re-categorization of
humanity based upon religousand ultimately racialdifferences . Maldonado-Torres has proposed that anti-black
racism is not simply an extension of some historical bias against blacks, but rather, is an amalgam of old-world
Islamophobia linked to the history of the Iberian peninsula, and to the notion of souless beings embodied in
popular conceptions about the indigenous natives of the Americas. These beliefs would contribute to an
ideological basis for, and justification of, colonial conquests in the name of cultural and religious conversion, as
well as pave the way for the enslavement and human trafficking of sub-Saharan Africans .
AT: Libidinal Economy
Their claims to a libidinal economy are a sham. Historicizing slavery and capitalism through
the lens of social death effaces the agency and lived experiences of the slave.
Specters of the Atlantic is a compellingly sophisticated study of the relation between the epistemologies
underwriting both modern slavery and modern capitalism, but the books discussion of the politics of antislavery is fundamentally incomplete. While Baucom brilliantly traces the development of melancholy realism as an oppositional discourse
that ran counter to the logic of slavery and finance capital, he has very little to say about the enslaved themselves. Social death, so well suited to the
tragic perspective, stands in for the experience of enslavement. While this heightens the readers sense of the way
Atlantic slavery haunts the present, Baucom largely fails to acknowledge that the enslaved performed
melancholy acts of accounting not unlike those that he shows to be a fundamental component of abolitionist
and human rights discourses, or that those acts could be a basic element of slaves oppositional activities. In many
ways, the effectiveness of his text depends upon the silence of slavesit is easier to describe the continuity of
structures of power when one downplays countervailing forces such as the political activity of the weak . So
Baucoms deep insights into the structural features of Atlantic slave trading and its afterlife come with a cost. Without engagement with the
politics of the enslaved, slaverys history serves as an effective charge leveled against modernity and capitalism,
but not as an uneven and evolving process of human interaction, and certainly not as a locus of conflict in
which the enslaved sometimes won small but important victories. 11
adheres to patterson
Wilderson adheres to Patterson

Bruker 2011 Temple University (Malia, Review: RED, WHITE & BLACK: CINEMA AND THE STRUCTURE OF U.S. ANTAGONISMS, Journal
of Film & Video; Winter2011, Vol. 63 Issue 4, p66-69)
Wilderson aligns himself with Afro-pessimists such as Hortense Spillers, Ronald Judy, David Marriott, Saidiya Hartman, Orlando Patterson, and Jared
Sexton, whom he references throughout the book. In the lengthy and dense chapter The Narcissistic Slave, Wilderson builds heavily on the work of
Franz Fanon to argue against the possibility of Lacan and Lacanian film theory to apply to black people. Whereas Lacan was aware of how language
precedes and exceeds us, he did not have Fanons awareness of how violence also precedes and exceeds Blacks (76). Wilderson sees Lacans process of
full speech for whites as contingent on the black Other as a frame of reference, which remonumentalizes the (White) ego and is an accomplice to social
stability, despite its claims to the contrary (75).
Pattersons work is the foundation of the theory
Brown 2009 professor of history and of African and African American Studies specializing in Atlantic Slavery (Vincent, Social Death and Political Life
in the Study of Slavery, http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/documents/brown-socialdeath.pdf)
Slavery and Social Death was widely reviewed and lavishly praised for its erudition and conceptual rigor. As a result of its success , social death has
become a handy general definition of slavery, for many historians and non-historians alike. But it is often
forgotten that the concept of social death is a distillation from Pattersons breathtaking surveya theoretical
abstraction that is meant not to describe the lived experiences of the enslaved so much as to reduce them to a
least common denominator that could reveal the essence of slavery in an ideal-type slave, shorn of meaningful heritage.6 As a concept, it is
what Frederick Cooper has called an agentless abstraction that provides a neat cultural logic but ultimately
does little to illuminate the social and political experience of enslavement and the struggles that produce
historic transformations.7 Indeed, it is difficult to use such a distillation to explain the actual behavior of slaves, and yet in much of the
scholarship that followed in the wake of Slavery and Social Death, P attersons abstract distillates have been used to explain the
existential condition of the enslaved.
***TOPICAL ACCESS TO DISCUSSING RACE***
Buses
Modern bus system key to race tolerance and integration
Mann 96- director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, former delegate to the U.N. World
Conference Against Racism (Eric, A New Vision for Urban Transportation, Strategy Center Publications, Los Angeles//MGD)
Los Angeles could have a first-class public mass transit system, serving low-income people, wellpaid working people
and even the upper middle class, if they are willing, that is, to mingle with the masses. It could serve Latinos, African Americans,
Asian/Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and whites, women and men, inner city and suburbs, students, the
elderly, and the disabled. In theory, this first class mass transit system could dramatically reduce auto use, and reduce
noxious and lethal emissions from autos, thereby improving the public health. It could bring low-income workers to their
jobs, help out-of-work workers look for jobs before President Clintons five year and starve rule takes effect, serve night-shift janitors
and day-shift professionals. By dramatically reducing auto use, it could generate more pedestrian centers, bringing the races
together through a transportation system that is more social and far more rich culturally than the private automobile.
By dramatically reducing fares, increasing service, and giving high-speed buses the right-of-way, it could increase daily mass transit usesome estimate
doubling the present level of bus riders from 350,000 to 700,000 per day over a decade of consistent improvement. A first-class bus system
that comes on-time and with such regularity that you dont need to call the MTA for a schedule would
allow the elderly to break out of

their home-prison of fear and aloneness, allow disabled residents in wheelchairs rapid and courteous service, permit high school
students from the inner city to travel to good schools around the county in a reasonable amount of time, and allow
working men and women to take their children to childcare , visit their sick relatives, and take the entire family to a park or beach
without a care or a car. In theory this new vision of urban transportation could cure as many ills as penicillin, jogging, and a
low-fat, high-fiber diet combinedproviding green jobs to produce electric buses in job-starved areas, creating new bus shelters and bus depots in
blighted communities, and allowing an exhausted working class to consider going to parks, museums, and free concerts miles away. Moreover, with an
immediate moratorium on rail funding and either a movement or a court-imposed policy for massive funding of the bus system, the following key
demands of the Billions for Buses plan would make this vision come to life.
New Orleans
Transportation infrastructure is the crux of racism in New Orleans- mass transport for
evacuation is crucial to breaking down the racial barriers which led to mass minority death
during Katrina
Wailoo et al. 10 (Keith Wailoo- B.A, 1984, Yale University; M.A., 1989, and Ph.D. (History and Sociology of Science), 1992, University of
Pennsylvania; joint appointment: Associate Professor of History, Karen M. ONeill- Karen M. ONeill studies how land and water policies change the
standing of program beneficiaries and experts and change government's claims to authority and power., Jeffrey Dowd- graduate student, Roland AnglinAssociate Research Professor; Director, Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) Rutgers
University-Newark ; Katrinas Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in America; 11/2010; pages 23-27)
A landmark decision most known today for its application beyond transportation, Plessy v. Ferguson provided the legal basis for basis for separate
schools, restaurants, theaters, hospitals, cemeteries, and public facilities of all kinds from 1896 through 1954, when the legal doctrine of separate but
equal was overturned by the Supreme Courts Brown v. Board of Education decision. However, in wake of recent events in New Orleans,
the issues involved in Plessys support of segregated transportation retain their relevance and are worth
revisiting. For, despite the broad applications that would shape its subsequent history, Plessy ultimately turned on the issue of
public access to transportation, which Justice John Marshall Harlan, the sole dissenter on the Plessy verdict, discussed
with great eloquence. Railroads, he noted, were public highways. Although privately owned, they served the public and
exercised public functions, as demonstrated by legislatures use of the public-spirited right of eminent domain
to seize land for the construction of railroad tracks. The right to eminent domain nowhere justifies taking property for private use,
he emphasized. Accordingly, Harlan reasoned, all citizens should have equal rights to the use of the railroads as a matter of
civil rights. Personal Liberty, he maintained, citing Blacks Constitutional Law, consists of the power of locomotion, or
changing situation, or removing ones person to whatsoever places ones inclination may direct. Harlans
words are newly resonant in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, where we saw a tremendous failure in
the power of personal locomotion that was largely defined by race. Katrinas illustration of persistent and
pervasive racial inequalities regarding transportation in the United States suggests how little this nation has
really traveled since Plessy. Described by some as a wake-up call about racial inequality in America, Katrina left behind in the
Superdome, stranded on the rooftops of their homes, and paddling through the waters that flooded New Orleans a group of residents who
were overwhelmingly black. Also among those unable to evacuate were prisoners, the elderly and disabled people, both black and white
many of whom did not survive. Indeed, the old and the sick number prominently among Katrinas fatalities for obvious reasons. What unifies this
group is their social status as immobile people, a status overcome during emergencies only if adequate money and planning are in place. But what
explains that race, rather than age and physical fragility, was the common factor that united the vast majority of those who remained in the city after
Katrina struck? Of the 270,000 Katrina survivors stuck in New Orleans, 93 percent were black. And those left behind
shared characteristics that are often unevenly distributed by race. They
were predominantly poor and unskilled: 77 percent had a

high school education or less, 68 percent had neither money in the bank nor a useable credit card, and 57
percent had total household incomes of less than $20,000 per year . Poverty is one of the major reasons why many of the
evacuees did not manage to leave before the storm. They lacked the resources to either travel or support themselves once they had relocated. Moreover ,
the evacuees also tended to share one characteristic closely related to both their racial and economic
demographics: 55 percent had no car or other way to evacuate . In this respect, Hurricane Katrinas victims were not unique to
New Orleans. Although no longer legally prohibited from traveling freely on the nations public highways, like
their segregation era counterparts, many contemporary African Americans both in New Orleans and elsewhere
experience a similar restriction on their mobility, largely as a consequence of low levels of car ownership and a
deficient public transportation system. Access to Transportation Across the nation, African Americans are three times more
likely to lack a car then whites. Latinos come in second when it comes to carlessness they are two and half
times more likely to own no vehicle. The racial shape of this disparity becomes clear when one looks at the
statistics: only 7 percent of white families in the United States own no vehicle, as compared with 21 percent of
black households, 17 percent of Latino households, 15 percent of Native American households, and 13 percent
of Asian Americans households and disparities with whites are even greater in urban areas. Across the nation, people of color are
also less able to rely on the cars they do own for longer trips, as might be required during emergencies like
evacuation. Their cars are usually significantly older and cheaper than those owned by whites . Stereotypes about
African Americans favoring Cadillacs not withstanding, cars owned by blacks and Latinos have median values in the $5,000 range, while the value of
cars owned by white family households averages well over $12,000. Meanwhile, the many blacks and Latinos who own no car are still worse off, as
automobile owners typically have better access to employment, healthcare, affordable housing, and other necessities. More to the point, as
Katrina demonstrated, in a disaster, access to a car can be a matter of life or death. This is especially true in
urban areas such as New Orleans, where people of color constitute a larger portion of the population than
they do in the country as a whole. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, people of color make up 30 percent of the nations population, but 73
percent of the population in New Orleans. In the counties affected by Hurricane Rita, Katrina, and Wilma in 2005, blacks
and Latinos made up 24 percent and 14 percent of the carless households, respectively, whereas only 7 percent
of white households lacked a car. These statistics acquire real urgency in the case of disasters such as the hurricanes of 2005. Unlike the
citizens of nations such as Germany, Japan, Holland, and Britain, all of which have fairly comprehensive public transportation systems in place,
The
stranding of African Americans in New Orleans , then, can be read through the intersection of economics and
racial discrimination. Although urban dwellers in metropolitan areas with effective public transportation, like New York city, sometimes choose
Americans who have no access to cars are carless in a society where an automobile is often crucial to both daily life and emergency transportation.
not to own automobiles as a matter of convenience, not owning a car is inconvenient in many other American cities. The infrastructure of the highway
informs the preparation of America as a nation obsessed with cars and ownership. As a result, in the Big Easy, as in most of the nations urban areas,
public transit is considered a mode of last resort or a novelty for tourists and special events. Most middle-class
residents seldom use public transit and so have little reason to support it. As a result, service quality is
minimal, and poorly integrated into the overall transport system. African Americans , however, depend on public
transportation despite its many limitation . For low-income African Americans in New Orleans and elsewhere, the economic
challenges posed by car ownership and American car culture are only compounded by the expensive and
exclusionary forms of discrimination that attend virtually every economic transaction required to buy and
maintain an automobile. African Americans routinely pay more for cars of similar value than whites. Though no
research group has yet produced a national study of this, a 1996 class action suit against an Atlanta-area car dealership revealed that the dealership
routinely made between two and seven times as much profit on cars sold to African Americans as compared with vehicles sold to whites. Moreover,
broader evidence from a study performed by economists Ian Ayres and Peter Siegelman suggests that such practices are not unusual. Audits of the car
prices offered to more than three hundred pairs of trained testers dispatched to negotiate with Chicago-area car dealerships produced final price offers
on which black males were asked to pay $1,100 more than white males for identical vehicles, while the prices offered to black and whte women exceeded
those offered to white men by $410 and $92, respectively. Once they do buy a car, blacks and Latinos alike are often required to
pay a significantly higher annual percentage rate than whites on car loans on average, 7.5 percent as compared with 6
percent, which accounts to a difference of $900 over the life of a six-year loan on a $20,000 car. Car insurance differentials , while they vary
from state to state, are even more striking. In California, a recent proposal to eliminate zip code insurance premium pricing by the California
Insurance Commissions (the outcome of which has yet to be resolved) illuminates the problem. The Consumers Union found that Californias largest
insurance companies typically charge a female driver with a perfect driving record and twenty-two years driving experience an average of 12.9 percent, or
$152, more if she lives in a predominantly Latino zip code versus a non-Hispanic white area. In some cases, differentials were as high as 66 percent the
surcharge imposed on the predominantly African American residents of Baldwin Hills, California. Another less well documented, but
perhaps more formidable barrier to car ownership among black urbanites is the lack of affordable parking in
many of their neighborhoods. Suburban development around cities such as New Orleans was designed with car ownership (as well as white
flight) in mind, but the older housing stock and apartment buildings that dominate many urban areas do not include garages or space for parking.
Moreover, as tourism and business travel increasingly displace other forms of commerce in many historic cities,
even less parking is available to residents making car ownership ever more expensve and difficult in many
inner-city neighborhoods.
Transportation infrastructure is critical to evacuation
Wolshon, 06 Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Louisiana State University (Brian, The
Aftermath of Katrina,
http://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/TheAftermathofKatrina/EvacuationPlanningandEngineeringforHurricaneKatrina.aspx)//BZ
Although little can be done to alter the weather, we can prepare for the eventuality of hurricanes and other natural
and man-made hazards. For decades, engineers and scientists have been developing techniques, strategies, and materials
to help the built environment withstand the effects of hurricanes. In addition, building and zoning codes have been changed to
keep critical infrastructure away from hazardous areas to minimize the risks of flood and wind damage. The only way to protect people,
however, is to evacuate them when threats arise, but this is often easier said than done. At the fundamental level, the
concept of evacuation is simplemove people away from danger . In reality, evacuations, particularly evacuations on a
mass scale, are complex undertakings. As the nation clearly saw during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it is not always possible to evacuate
everyone who is in danger. The most obvious problem is the sheer scope of the event. Hurricane evacuations may involve millions of people over
hundreds of thousands of square miles. In addition, because evacuations are inconvenient and disruptive, evacuees often
delay travel decisions until the threat appears imminent, thus compressing the enormous travel demand into
shorter time periods. One complicating factor is that transportation infrastructure is neither planned nor
designed to accommodate evacuation-level demand ; building enough capacity to move the population
of an entire city in a matter of hours is simply not economically, environmentally, or socially feasible . Roadways
are not even designed to be delay-free under routine peak-period condition s. The effectiveness of an evacuation is also
greatly affected by human behavior and socioeconomics. No matter how threatening the conditions, some people refuse or are unable to leave. Despite
these difficulties, the evacuation of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina was widely viewed as a success; data show that more people were able to leave the
city in a shorter time than had been thought possible. There were also apparent failures, however, particularly in the evacuation of low-mobility groups.
This article highlights the development of the evacuation management plan for Hurricane Katrina and summarizes some of the facts, findings, and
unresolved issues. The discussion is presented from the perspective of a transportation engineer and centers primarily on the highway-based aspects of
the evacuation, including demand, capacity, and issues related to the non-evacuees. This article also presents some lessons learned and how they may be
applied to other locations and other threat scenarios and identifies unanswered questions and research needs that should be addressed in the future. The
Katrina Evacuation Plan The city of New Orleans has long been considered a disaster waiting to
happen. For those who prepare for, respond to, and study such events, the level of death and destruction wrought by
Katrina was not outside the realm of possibil ity. Although a complete evacuation of the city has been the cornerstone of
hurricane preparedness planning for the region, the highway evacuation plan used for Katrina evolved over a period of many years based on valuable
lessons learned from prior storms in Louisiana and elsewhere.
Transportation (General)
Transportation policy is the root of transportation inequality this lies at the heart of racial,
environmental inequality, and classism.
Pastor et al. 06 [Manuel Pastor is codirector of the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Robert D. Bullard is Ware Professor of Sociology and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. James K. Boyce
is professor of economics at the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Alice Fothergill is assistant professor
of sociology at the University of Vermont. Rachel Morello-Frosch is Carney Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine at Brown University. Beverly
Wright is professor of sociology and director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University.] Environment, Disaster and
Race After Katrina http://urbanhabitat.org/files/Pastor.Bullard.etc.Env.Katrina.pdf
How consequential is racial inequality in environmental conditions? A Southern California study estimating lifetime
cancer risk from air toxins shows, for example, that risk declines as income rises, but is still around 50 percent
higher at all income levels for African Americans, Latinos and Asians. And lead poisoning, commonly triggered by
conditions in older housing, is five times more common among Black children than white children. Disaster Vulnerability and
Environmental Justice The social dynamics that underlie the disproportionate environmental hazards faced by lowincome communities and minorities also play out in the arena of disaster prevention, mitigation, and recovery .
In a sense, environmental justice is about slow-motion disastersand disasters reveal environmental injustice in a
fast-forward mode. Both revolve around the axes of disparities of wealth and power. Lack of wealth heightens the risks that
individuals and communities face for three reasons. First, it translates into a lack of purchasing power to secure private
alternatives to public provision of a clean and safe environment for all . Second, it translates into less ability to
withstand shocks (such as health bills and property damage) that wealth would cushion. Third, it translates through the
shadow prices of costbenefit analysis into public policies that place a lower priority on protecting less
valuable people and their assets. In the aftermath of Katrina, there is an added risk that transfers could turn New Orleans into a little more
than a theme park for affluent tourists. In the vicious circle of disaster vulnerability, those with less wealth face greater
risks, and when disaster strikes, their wealth is further sapped. But risk is not just about money: even
middleclass African Americans, Latinos, and Asians face elevated environmental risks. This reflects systematic
differences in power and the legacy of racial discrimination . Power also shows up in private decisions by firms choosing where to
site hazards and how much to invest in environmental protection: their choices are constrained not only by government regulations, but also by informal
governance exercised by mobilized communities, civil society, and the press (see Pargal et al. 1997; Boyce 2004). In both public and private arenas, then,
power disparities drive outcome disparitiesand the resulting patterns reflect race and ethnicity as well as
wealth. 1 Why? Land, Markets, and Power The power explanation suggests that low-income people and communities of
color are systematically disadvantaged in the political decision-making process . This argument can incorporate the other
explanations: what seems to be rational land use, after all, may be predetermined by political processes that designate disenfranchised communities as
sacrifice zones (see Pulido 2000; Boone and Modarres 1999; Wright 2005). Indeed, land use decisions often build on accumulated disadvantage. In the
largely Latino community of Kettleman City in Californias Central Valley, for example, an effort to place a toxic waste incinerator in a
landfill already proximate to the city was viewed as building on existing dis-amenities but
added insult to injury for an already
overburdened community (Cole and Foster 2001). Likewise, income is a marker of political power as well as of market strength. The interplay
of land use, income, and power means that certain variables used in statistical analysessuch as zoning and household wealth carry multiple
explanations. To demonstrate convincingly that power is behind siting decisions requires the inclusion of some variables that are directly and irrefutably
connected to power differentials. The most important of these variables is race . 2 Disparate patterns by race, particularly when
most clearly point to the role

of unequal influence and racial discrimination. Racially disparate outcomes are also important in their own
right. They can result from processes that are not so much a direct exercise of power as essentially embedded in
the nature of our urban form, including housing segregation and real estate steering, informal methods that
exclude communities from decision-making processes (including less provision of information regarding health risks), the past
placement of hazards (which justifies new hazards as rational land use), and other forms of less direct institutionalized or
structural racism (see Feagin and Feagin 1986; Institute on Race and Poverty 2002). And it is precisely racialized risk that has
galvanized a movement for environmental equity rooted in civil rights law and activism . Race and racism
therefore are at the heart of the evidentiary debate . It is Not Just Hazards Environmental and
transportation justice are at the heart of emergency preparedness and emergency response . The
former provides a guidepost to who is most likely to be vulnerable to the disaster itself, and the latter provides
information about who will need the most help when disaster strikes. It is to the intersection of disaster vulnerability with race,
income, and other social characteristics that we now turn.
one has controlled for income and other variables involved in the land-use and market-dynamics explanations,
Urban Sprawl
Transportation is Key to solving urban sprawl- thats the proximate cause or racism and
employment discrimination
Squires and Kubrin 06- *professor of sociology and chair of the Department of Sociology at
GW, ** associate professor of sociology at GW, coeditor of Crime and Society (Gregory and Charis, Race,
Opportunity and Uneven Development in Urban America, http://nhi.org/online/issues/147/privilegedplaces.html//MGD)
If there is one single factor that is most critical for determining access to the good life, it might
be employment.
This is particularly true in the United States where individuals and households are far more dependent on their
jobs to secure basic goods and services than is the case with virtually all other industrialized nations. The importance
of place and race have long been recognized by spatial mismatch theorists who posit that lower-income
residents of poorer communities generally reside in or near central cities while job growth has been greater in
outlying suburban communities. Those most in need of employment, therefore, find it not only more difficult to
learn about available jobs but also more expensive to get to those jobs when they find one. As of 2000, no racial
group was more physically isolated from jobs than blacks . The metropolitan areas with higher levels of blackwhite housing segregation were those that exhibited higher levels of spatial mismatch between the residential location of
blacks and the location of jobs. Compounding these troubles are the mental maps many employers draw, in which they attribute various jobrelated characteristics (such as skills, experience, attitudes) to residents of certain neighborhoods. A job applicants address often has an independent
effect that makes it more difficult, particularly for racial minorities from urban areas, to secure employment. Moreover, recent research by Devah Pager,
assistant professor of sociology at Princeton, has found that it is easier for a white person with a felony conviction to get a job than a black person with no
felony convictions, even among applicants with otherwise comparable credentials or where blacks had slightly better employment histories. Such
divergent employment experiences, of course, contribute directly to the income and wealth disparities. In many cities, racial differences in poverty levels,
employment opportunities, wages, education, housing and health care, among other things, are so strong that the worst urban conditions in which whites
reside are considerably better than the average conditions of black communities. In Toward a Theory of Race, Crime and Urban Inequality, from Crime
and Inequality, Robert Sampson and William Julius Wilson assert that in not one U.S. city with a population over 100,000 do blacks live in ecological
equality with whites when it comes to the basic features of economic and family organization. A depressing feature of these developments is that many of
these differences reflect policy decisions which, if not designed expressly to create disparate outcomes, have
contributed to them nevertheless. Policy Matters It has been argued that individuals or households make
voluntary choices, based on their financial capacity, in selecting their communities when moving to those areas offering
the bundle of services for which they are willing or able to pay. That is, they vote with their feet. But many urban scholars have
noted the role of public policies and institutionalized private practices (such as tax policy, transport
patterns, land use planning) that serve as barriers to individual choice in housing markets and as
contributors to spatial inequality in metropolitan areas. Most households select their neighborhoods on the basis of the services, jobs,
cultural facilities and other amenities that are available within the constraints of their budgets. Critical for many households is a dense network of
families, friends and various social ties that bind them to particular locations. Even the most distressed neighborhoods, including some notorious public
housing complexes, often have a culture, social organization and other attributes that residents want to retain. Community, defined in many different
ways, attracts and retains residents of all types of neighborhoods. But, again, these choices are made in a context shaped by a range of public policy
decisions and private institutional practices over which most individuals have little control. Those decisions often have, by design,
exclusionary implications that limit opportunities, particularly for low-income households and people of color. The conflict and hassles
that racial minorities face outside their communities lead some to choose a segregated neighborhood for their home, even when they could afford to live
elsewhere. Such decision making is framed and limited by a range of structural constraints. Individuals exercise choice, but those choices do not reflect
what is normally understood as voluntary. If suburbanization and sprawl reflect the housing choices of residents, they are constrained choices. Many
factors contributed to the development of sprawling suburban communities: the long-term 30-year mortgage featuring low
down payment requirements; availability of federal insurance to protect mortgage lenders; federal financing to support a secondary
market in mortgage loans (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), which dramatically increases availability of mortgage
money; tax deductibility of interest and property tax payments; and proliferation of federally funded highways. The federal governments
underwriting rules for Federal Housing Administration and other federal mortgage insurance products, and enforcement of racially restrictive covenants
by the courts, along with overt redlining practices by mortgage lenders and racial steering by real estate agents, virtually guaranteed the patterns of racial
segregation that were commonplace by the 1950s. Concentration of public housing in central-city high-rise complexes reinforced the patterns of
economic and racial segregation that persist today. Exclusionary zoning ordinances of most suburban municipalities that created minimum lot size and
maximum density requirements for housing developments (often prohibiting construction of multifamily housing) complemented federal policy.
Government policy has also encouraged the flight of businesses and jobs from cities to surrounding suburban
communities and beyond. Financial incentives including infrastructure investments, tax abatements and depreciation allowances favoring new
equipment over reinvestment in existing facilities all have contributed to the deindustrialization and disinvestment of urban communities. Often such
investments subsidize development that would have occurred without that assistance. As one observer noted, Subsidizing economic development in the
suburbs is like paying teenagers to think about sex. The end result is often an unintended subsidy of private economic activity by jurisdictions that
compete in a race to the bottom in efforts to attract footloose firms and mobile capital, starving traditional public services like education for
resources in the process. A downward spiral is established that further undercuts the quality of life. Place, Privilege and Policy One of the more
unfortunate debates in recent years has been over the question of whether race-specific or universal remedies are more appropriate for addressing the
issues of race and urban poverty. (An even more unfortunate debate, of course, is with those who simply think we have done enough, or perhaps too
much, and that neither race nor class remedies are needed.) The primary attraction of the universal, or class-based, approaches, according to its
proponents, is pragmatism. Recognizing the many common interests of poor and working households of any color, it is argued that the most significant
barriers confronting these groups can be addressed with policy initiatives and other actions that do not ignite the hostility often associated with racebased discussions and proposals. Race-neutral policies that assist all of those who are working hard but not quite making it reinforce traditional values of
individual initiative and the work ethic, thereby providing benefits to people who have earned them rather than to the so-called undeserving poor. Given
the socioeconomic characteristics of racial minorities in general, it is further argued that such approaches will disproportionately benefit these
communities, nurturing integration and greater opportunity in a far less rancorous environment than is created with debates over race-specific
approaches. Given the race fatigue among many whites (and underlying prejudices that persist), class-based approaches are viewed as a much more
feasible way to address the problems of urban poverty that affect many groups, but particularly racial minorities. In response, it is argued that while the
quality of life for racial minorities has improved over the years, such approaches simply do not recognize the extent to which race and racism continue to
shape the opportunity structure in the United States. Colorblindness is often a euphemism for what amounts to a retreat on race and the preservation of
white privilege in its many forms. In a world of scarce resources, class-based remedies dilute available support for combating racial discrimination and
segregation. From this perspective, it is precisely the controversy over race that the class-based proponents fear, which demonstrates the persistence of
racism and the need for explicitly anti-racist remedies, including far more aggressive enforcement of fair housing, equal employment and other civil
rights laws. On the other hand, race-based remedies alone may not resolve all the problems associated with race and urban poverty given the many nonracial factors that contribute to racial disparity as indicated above. In reality, both approaches are required. Class-based policies (such as increasing the
minimum wage and earned income tax credit, implementing living wage requirements) and race-based initiatives (more comprehensive affirmative
action and related diversity requirements), are essential if the underlying patterns of privilege are to be altered. Uncommon Allies Many constituencies
that traditionally find themselves at odds with each other can find common ground on a range of policies designed to combat sprawl, concentrated
poverty and segregation. Identifying and nurturing such political coalitions is perhaps the key political challenge. Coalitions
that cut across interest groups and racial groups are essential. Many land use planning, housing and housing finance policy proposals, for example, are
generally articulated in colorblind terms. Fair-share housing requirements, tax-based revenue sharing and inclusionary zoning are universal in character,
although they often have clear racial implications. Many suburban employers are unable to find the workers they need, in part because of the high cost of
housing in their local communities. Often there are local developers who would like to build affordable housing and lenders who are willing to finance it,
but local zoning prohibits such construction. These interests could join with anti-poverty groups and affordable housing advocates to challenge the
traditional exclusionary suburban zoning ordinances. Developers, planners and affordable housing advocates came together in Wisconsin and secured
passage of a state land use planning law that provided financial incentives to local municipalities who developed plans for increasing the supply of
affordable housing units in their jurisdictions. Similarly, school choice and fair housing groups two groups that rarely ally might recognize that
severing the link between the neighborhood in which a family lives and the school that children must attend may well reduce homebuyers concerns with
neighborhood racial composition. This would reduce one barrier to both housing and school segregation while giving students more schooling options.
In many cities, developers, lenders, community development corporations, environmental groups, local
governments and others are coming together to sponsor transit-oriented development. Such developments
create new jobs for working families in locations that are accessible by public transportation, reducing traffic
congestion, infrastructure costs and other disamenities. Growing such development would yield greater
efficiencies in public investment, fewer environmental costs and more job opportunities.
***Afro Pessimism K***

We criticize the absoluteness of the ontological critique of the Human, the modern, and the
Slave. Their absolute ontological division between Master and slave or human and slave does
violence to slaves and dooms our political strategy to one of unsuccessful revolutionary
violence.
A) Modernity and civil society
Our historical reading of the relationship between slavery and civil society and humanity
honors the legacy of slave revolution. The Haitian revolution contained and expanded ideas
trafficked in civil society of universal humanity.
DASH 10 [J. Michael Africana Studies French, Social and Cultural Analysis @ NYU 10 Book Review: Universal Emancipation: The Haitian
Revolution and The Radical Enlightenment Slavery & Abolition 31 (1) p. 142-143 //liam ]
Universal Emancipation argues against the French appropriation of universalism as the exclusive product of the revolution of 1789. From the broad focus
of Nesbitts narrative, the age of revolution becomes a truly global phenomenon and furthermore, the Haitian revolution surpassed that of the metropole
in realising the goal of universal freedom. This is not a new story. Michel Rolph Trouillot, for instance, argued in 1995 The Haitian revolution
was the ultimate test to the universalist pretensions of both the French and the American revolutions .1 Later, for
another major scholar Laurent Dubois, the Haitian Revolution represented the pinnacle of Enlightenment universalism.2 Furthermore, C.L.R. James in
the Black Jacobins reminded us that the revolutionary events in Frances colony would take the French Revolution further than was ever intended. The
slaves of St Domingue were left out of the universalist claims of 1789 but they used its ideals to press for their freedom. As James put it, the slaves
had heard of the revolution and had construed it in their own image . . . they had caught the spirit of the thing.
Liberty, equality, Fraternity.3 Nesbitt asserts that there is nothing surprising about the fact that the slaves caught the spirit of the thing since
they needed no interpreter but the fact that they were on the so-called periphery of the modern world-system in 1791 meant that the truth of 1789
could be most fully comprehended (36). Furthermore, the Haitian revolution serves to disprove the notion that there was any
single Enlightenment project but a variegated complex of multiple enlightenments (20). Consequently, the
former slaves of St Domingue were not passively parroting ideas imported from France but autonomously
exercised their faculty of judgement in order to illuminate the universal implications of the natural rights
tradition in ways unthinkable for the North American or Parisian political class (60). In rejecting a linear filiation
between Enlightened Europe and savage colony, Nesbitt scrambles centres and peripheries and challenges the silencing of the Haitian Revolution by
asserting that it succeeded in displacing the center of modernity . . . not only for a small peripheral island but for the entire world system (131). The
revolution is rendered thinkable through an intricate discussion of the universally operative nature of
Spinozas concept of natural law and Kantian universalism, which meant human beings were free to define
themselves in their differential singularity (101). For Nesbitt the abstract concept of freedom or liberte emanating from Europe was
reinterpreted by the ex-slaves of St Domingue as libete and formed the basis for the creation of a self-regulating egalitarian bossale state. In this regard,
he ventures where historians of the Haitian revolution fear to tread. For historians, the impact of ideas on the revolution is hard to quantify and is
therefore underplayed. He speculates that political awareness came through such transnational Atlantic sites as waterfronts and marketplaces. The
slaves then transformed this Enlightenment-derived liberty into the idea of absolute freedom for post-plantation
St Domingue. Since Universal Emancipation depends on no new research into the circumstances of the Haitian revolution, Nesbitt depends heavily
on the work of Carolyn Fick and the late Gerard Barthelemy to make his case for the importance popular insurgency inthe making of the revolution. In
their refusal of large-scale agrarian capitalism, the exslaves produced an egalitarian peasant system that could harmonise
social relations without recourse to government, police, or legal code . He follows Bathelemy in citing social strategies, such as
the refusal of technological innovation, the subdivision of property from generation to generation, and active caco resistance to the outside world that
supported bossale egalitarianism. Haitian peasant society is presented as a maroon enclave beyond the reach of the liberal individualism and boundless
consumerism of the West. This seems a puzzling departure from both Eugene Genovese and Michel-Rolph Trouillot who are cited at other times with
approval. Genovese argued in From Rebellion to Revolution that the great achievement of the Haitian revolution was the attempt
to create a modern black state and not continue the restorationist practices of marronage .4 Similarly, Trouillot has
argued that those who insist on the isolation of the moun andeyo or the dualist sociologists have missed the depth of
penetration of urban civil society by the peasantry.5 In both instances, Haitian peasants are seen to be part of a
global process and not the worlds indigestible other . The modern heroes of Nesbitts spirited narrative of mass-based revolution are
the agronomist turned broadcaster Jean Dominique and the priest turned politician Jean Bertrand Aristide. In both instances, heroic popular resistance
masks the much more complex reality of the spread of modern technology, of cassettes and transistor radios in rural Haiti, and the doctrine of liberation
theology spread by the grassroots church or ti legliz. The idealising of strategic marronnage and stateless egalitarianism in Haiti is aimed ultimately at
all who believe that the coming shift from unlimited consumerism to an ethics of global responsibility will require fundamental changes to the
sociopolitical system that has brought us to the brink of disaster (171). It might have been more useful to think of the New World context and not the
new World order. Oddly enough there is no reference, except for a fleeting allusion to Brazilian music at the end, to other instances of the radicalisation
of the idea of the rights of man in the hemisphere. What of Guadeloupe, for instance, which had a parallel history at the turn of the century? Do other
peasant societies in the Caribbean share Haitis bossale culture? Trouillot claims to have learned more about the Haitian peasantry after fifteen months
doing fieldwork on the peasantry of Dominica than he did during eighteen years in Port-au-Prince. 6 What Nick Nesbitt does very persuasively is
present the Haitian revolution as the most radical revolution of its time. He is less convincing in enlisting the Haitian moun andeyo in his campaign
against global capitalism.
B) Humanity
We should not abandon the category of universal humanity. Anti-slavery abolition and its
intersections with critiques of gendered citizenship drew on universal humanity as a source of
solidarity.
GILROY 9 [Paul, Anthony Giddens Prf. of Social Theory @ London School of Economics 9 Race and the Right to be Human p. 6-11 //liam]
At times, the movement against slavery was extended into a comprehensive assault on racial hierarchy which
invoked an idea of universal humanity (by no means always religious in origin) as well as an idea of inalienable rights1. That alternative
provides my point of departure this evening. It was articulated in distinctive accents which were neither bourgeois nor liberal2. It requires us to follow a
detour through colonial history which has come under revisionist pressure as a result of recent attempts to revive imperial relations. That dubious
development has made it imperative to place the wests avowal of modern, liberal, humanistic and
humanitarian ideas in the context of the formative encounter with native peoples whose moral personality and
humanity had long been placed in doubt. The approach I favour requires seeing not just how all-conquering
liberal sensibilities evolved unevenly into considerations of human rights but how a range of disputes over and
around the idea of universal humanityits origins, its hierarchies and varying moral and juridical dispositions were connected to
struggles over race, slavery, colonial and imperial rule, and how they in turn produced positions which would
later be narrated and claimed as liberal. This agonistic enterprise necessitates a different genealogy for human rights than is
conventional3. It begins with the history of conquest and European expansion and must be able to encompass the evolving debates over how colonies
and slave plantation systems were to be administered4. At its most basic, it must incorporate the contending voices of Las Casas and Sepulveda. It should
be able to analyze the contrapuntality of a text like Thomas Hobbes Leviathan with the introduction of Englands Navigation Acts and illuminate the
relationship between John Lockes insightful advocacy on behalf of an emergent bourgeoisie and his commitment to the colonial improvers doctrine of
the vacuum domicilium. This counter-narrative would certainly include the Treaty of Utrecht and the Assiento. It could terminate uneasily in the
contemporary debates about torture and rendition or in discussion about the institutionalisation of rightslessness which floods into my mind each time I
navigate the halls of the Schiphol complex. Focusing on that combination of progress and catastrophe through a
postcolonial lens yields a view of what would become the liberal tradition moving on from its seventeenth
century origins in a style of thought that was partly formed by and readily adapted to colonial conditions5 . This
helps to explain how an obstinate attachment to raciology recurs. Struggles against racial hierarchy have
contributed directly and consistently to challenging conceptions of the human . They valorised forms of humanity that were
not amenable to colour-coded hierarchy and, in complicating approaches to human sameness, they refused the full, obvious force of natural differences
even when they were articulated together with sex and gender. These struggles shaped philosophical perspectives on the fragile
universals that had come into focus initially on the insurgent edges of colonial contact zones where the violence
of racialized statecraft was repudiated and cosmopolitan varieties of care took shape unexpectedly across the
boundaries of culture, civilization, language and technology6. One early critique of the humanitarian language and tacit
racialization of the enlightenment ideal had been delivered by the militant abolitionist David Walker in his 1830 commentary on the US constitution:
Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in particular, and very expressly, to those of the United States of America. His famous text supplies a
useful symbolic, starting point for generating the new genealogy we require. Erecting secular demands over the foundation of a revolutionary, Pauline
Christianity, Walker made the problem of black humanity and related issues of rightspolitical and humanintrinsic to his insubordinate conception of
world citizenship. His plea that blacks be recognized as belonging to the human family was combined with a view of their natural rights as being
wrongfully confiscated in the condition of slavery which could, as a result of their exclusion, be justifiably overthrown7. His address was primarily
offered to the coloured citizens of the world but the tactical reduction of that universalist argument to the parochial problem of joining the US as full
citizens soon followed. The consequences of that change of scale can be readily seen in the humanistic abolitionism that followed. Frederick Douglass
particularly in his extraordinary 1852 speech on the meaning of the 4th of July to the slave8, spoke directly to the US in the name of its polluted national
citizenship. His indictment of slavery was a cosmopolitan one in which the eloquent facts of plantation life were judged, just as Walker had suggested
they should be, through global comparisons. They were compared with all the abuse to be found in the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World
(and in) South America. Douglass concluded that for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. He continued, again
echoing Walker: Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves
acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. . . . . . How
should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of
it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.9 In
demanding equality based on natural rights and exploring the relationship of debased citizenship and tainted
law to racialized life, Douglass was drawing upon the thinking of an earlier cohort of abolitionist writers . Many of
them had, like Walker and other anti-slavery radicals, practiced a chiliastic Christianity that built upon St. Paul with incendiary consequences which
could not be limited by the heading of anti-slavery. Consider the way in which Angelina Grimk had articulated the concept of human rights in her 1836
Appeal To The Christian Women of The South: . . . man is never vested with . . . dominion over his fellow man; he was never told that any of the human
species were put under his feet; it was only all things, and man, who was created in the image of his Maker, never can properly be termed a thing, though
the laws of Slave States do call him a chattel personal; Man then, I assert never was put under the feet of man, by that first charter of human rights
which was given by God, to the Fathers of the Antediluvian and Postdiluvian worlds, therefore this doctrine of equality is based on the Bible10. Grimk
elaborated upon this inspired refusal of the reduction of people to things in a memorable (1838) letter to her friend Catherine Beecher (the older sister of
Harriet Beecher Stowe). There, she connected the notion of divinely instituted human rights to a growing sense of what it would mean for women to
acquire political rights. Her insight was framed by a deep engagement with the problem of a gendered alienation from the humanity of species being:
The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to better understanding of our own. I have found the Anti-slavery cause to be the high school of
morals in our landthe school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught, than in any other. Here a great
fundamental principle is uplifted and illuminated, and from this central light rays innumerable stream all around . Human beings have rights,
because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grown out of their moral nature, they have essentially the
same rights. 11 It is not easy to assimilate this variety of critical reflection to the political traditions inherited by modern liberalism from
revolutionary France. The foregrounding of race is, for example, a fundamental and distinguishing feature as is the suggestion that reflecting upon the
thwarted rights of slaves promotes a richer understanding of the rightslessness known by women. Here, slavery was not only a political metaphor. A
different kind of connection was being proposed: whoever we are, we can learn about our own situation from studying the
suffering of others which instructively resembles it. This approach makes the disinterest in abolitionism shown
by todays liberal chroniclers of human rights struggles all the more perplexing . The long battle to appropriate the language
and political morality of human rights re-worked the assumptions which had led to articulating the unthinkable prospects of black citizenship and black
humanity in the form of the ancient rhetorical questions immortalized in Wedgewoods porcelain: Am I not a Man and a brother? Am I not a Woman
and a sister?. The liberatory recognition solicited by those inquiries was pitched against the corrosive power of
racial categories and mediated by the cosmopolitan power of human shame. It asked that the social divisions
signified by phenotypical difference be set aside in favour of a more substantive human commonality. It
promised an alternative conception of kinship that could deliver a world purged of injustice in general and
racial hierarchy in particular.
Enlightenment understandings of humanity were always fractured anti-Imperial strands in
universal humanity should be recognized. There was a robust strand of anti-Imperial
universalism that criticized dispossession and slavery.
MUTHU 3 [Sankar, Poli Sci @ Chicago Enlightenment Against Empire p. 266-271 //liam]
Universal Dignity, Cultural Agency, and Moral Incommensurability Do commitments to the idea of a shared humanity, to human
dignity, to cross-cultural universal moral principles, and to cross-cultural standards of justice rest upon
assumptions and values that unavoidably denigrate, or that disturbingly undermine respect for, cultural
pluralism, that is, the wide array of human institutions and practices in the world ?16 Are they imperialistic either
explicitly, to justify Europes political, military, and commercial subjugation of the non-European world, or implicitly, by indicating a rank ordering of
superior and inferior peoples, which could then be used to justify a more indirect, quasi-imperial civilizing process? The aforementioned commitments
are sometimes collectively gathered under the term Enlightenment universalism and, as we have seen, they are
such assertions mask and distort a

complex reality. In this case, they obscure the multiplicity of universalisms across eighteenth-century European
political thought, each with distinct foundational claims, varying relationships to conceptualizations of human diversity and to humanity (which
sometimes considered to constitute the core of the Enlightenment project. I have suggested already that
themselves differ from thinker to thinker, and even from text to text), and different political orientations toward the nature and limits of state power in
theory and in practice. These philosophical sensibilities and approaches can yield remarkably dif ferent political arguments toward foreign peoples,
international justice, and imperialism. Thus, rather than ask whether the Enlightenment project and Enlightenment universalism are compatible with
an appreciation of cultural pluralism or whether they are at bottom imperializing ideologies, it is more constructive to pose more precise
and historically accurate versions of such questions with regard to particular texts and thinkers. In this book, I have
studied a distinctive variant of Enlightenment writings against empire, one which includes the philosophical and political arguments of Diderot, Kant,
and Herder. While there is no such thing as Enlightenment universalism as such, let alone a larger Enlightenment project, there is nonetheless an
identifiable set of philosophical and political arguments, assumptions, and tendencies about the relationship between universal and pluralistic concepts
that animates the strand of Enlightenment political thought under study here. With this in mind, one can more meaningfully ask what the relationship is
between universalism, pluralism, and incommensurability in such political philosophies, and how precisely they yield anti-imperialist political
commitments. Answers to these more circumscribed questions can be given by better understanding the core elements of Diderots, Kants, and Herders
political philosophies, and how they differ from earlier (and, indeed, from many later) understandings and judgements of empire. Immanuel Kant
remarks pointedly in Toward Perpetual Peace that the Europeans who landed and eventually settled in the New World often denied indigenous peoples
any moral status. When America, the Negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape, and so forth were discovered, they were, to them [to Europeans],
countries belonging to no one [die keinem angehorten], since they counted the inhabitants as nothing. (8:358, emphasis added) What
philosophical concepts and arguments were necessary for New World peoples to be counted finally as
something and especially to be considered as equals, as they were eventually in some crucial respects, by antiimperialist political thinkers in the Enlightenment era? In this section, I focus on what I have taken in this book to be the
philosophically most robust strand of Enlightenment anti-imperialist political thought.17 Despite the many differences in the ethnographic sources that
Diderot, Kant, and Herder consulted, the philosophical languages that these thinkers employed, and the particular concepts they drew upon to attack
European empires, their anti-imperialist arguments intriguingly overlap in important respects. Thus, in this section, I identify and elucidate the family
resemblances that exist among their philosophical arguments and rhetorical strategies, and discuss the underlying assumptions, ideas, and intellec tual
dispositions that make their version of anti-imperialist political thinking conceptually possible. In contrast to what is effectively the premiss of the kinds
of familiar questions asked at the opening of this section, the commitments of Diderot, Kant, and Herder to moral universalism, cultural diversity, partial
incommensurability, and the delegitimization of empire are not fundamentally in tension but rather reinforce one another. Overall, there are three
principal philosophical sources of Enlightenment anti-imperialism. The first and most basic idea is that human
beings deserve some modicum of moral and political respect simply because of the fact that they are human. This
humanistic moral principle alone, however, was far from sufficient for engendering an anti-imperialist politics. The whole modern tradition of natural
right and social contract theory held this view in some form. Moreover, Amerindians in particular were explicitly described by such thinkers as the pure,
natural humans of the state of nature. Yet much of this tradition of modern political thought, from Grotius onward, was either agnostic about
imperialism or lent philosophical support to European empires. Not every understanding of what it means fundamentally to be a human fosters the
philosophical materials necessary to build a more inclusive and pluralistic political theory that could serve as the basis of anti-imperialist arguments.
Indeed, as I will argue, some understandings of humanity that are manifestly egalitarian can nevertheless impede such a development. Second,
therefore, these anti-imperialist arguments rested upon the view that human beings are fundamentally cultural
beings. Diderot, Kant, and Herder all contend that the category of the human is necessarily marked by cultural difference; in this view, humanity is
cultural agency. This thicker, particularized view of the human subject, paradoxically, helped to engender a more inclusive and meaningful moral
universalism. Third, a fairly robust account of moral incommensurability and relativity was also necessary for
the
rise of anti-imperialist political thought. The anti-imperialist arguments offered by Diderot, Kant, and Herder all partly rest upon the view
that peoples as a whole are incommensurable. From this perspective, entire peoples cannot be judged as superior or inferior along a universal scale of
value. Moreover, in distinct but closely related ways, these thinkers argue that our cultural freedom produces a wide variety of individual and collective
practices and beliefs that are incommensurable, given their view that many practices and beliefs lie outside the bounds of a categorical judgement or
universal standard. When these three conceptual developments were brought together, the strand of Enlightenment anti-imperialist political theory that
I have identified became philosophically possible. I want to reiterate here that this framework is not meant to elucidate all of the anti-imperialist
arguments that one can find in the philosophical writings of the Enlightenment era. Moreover, the distinc tive intellectual dispositions, personal
idiosyncrasies, and domestic political commitments of Enlightenment-era thinkers significantly shaped their particular arguments on the issue of
empire. Still, as I will show, these three philosophical ideas play a crucial role in enabling the development of a rich
strand of anti-imperialist political theory in the late eighteenth century . In discussing the development of a more inclusive and
anti-imperialist political theory, my focus in this section (as it has been generally in this book) is on Europeans political attitudes toward nonEuropeans. Many thinkers in non-European societies clearly operated with similarly self-centred conceptions, but my emphasis throughout is on
Europeans intellectual responses to the fact of cultural difference and imperial politics, not with non-European peoples understandings of each other or
of their accounts of European peoples. Nor do I examine here the variety of intra-European distinctions between allegedly superior and inferior groups,
those, for instance, involving linguistic, geographical, class, religious, and gender differences, which of course historically also legitimated differential
treatment within European societies. Thus, I do not intend to argue that Enlightenment anti-imperialist political philosophies are inclusive as such, for
their underlying principles do not necessarily (and, in the eighteenth century, they manifestly did not) support egalitarian arguments against every form
of exclusion. As I have noted, the first idea that enables Enlightenment anti-imperialism first both historically and analyticallyis that foreigners are
human beings and, consequently, that they deserve moral respect, however understood. The development, in other words, of some variant
of a humanistic moral universalism ensured that the shared humanity of both Europeans and non-Europeans
would be acknowledged and given some due. The philosophical and political legacy with which Enlightenment
anti-imperialist thinkers struggled, as they themselves understood, was one of exclusion . As they often noted, ethical
principles of respect and reciprocity had been limited almost always to (some) members of ones own tribe, polis, nation, religion, or civilization.
Accordingly, the distinction between ones own society, however defined, and the barbaroi (others, foreigners), whether justified outright or tacitly
assumed, influenced not only the anthropological conceptions of, and popular understandings about, foreign peoples, but also legitimated the often
brutally differential treatment of various groups. It is along these lines that Kant expresses dismay, in a lecture on moral philosophy, at what he calls the
error that the [ancient] Greeks displayed, in that they evinced no goodwill towards extranei [outsiders, or foreigners], but included them all, rather, sub
voce hostes _ barbari [under the name of enemies, or barbarians]. (27:674) In the long history of imperial exploits, actions that in at least some contexts
might have provoked outrage in ones own land not only gained legitimacy on foreign soil but were deemed praiseworthy, noble, and even morally
obligatory abroad. While European imperialists in the New World, writes Diderot, faithfully observe their own laws, they will violate the rights of other
nations in order to increase their power. That is what the Romans did.18 Enlightenment anti-imperialists recognized that such Janus-faced practices
constituted the very core of imperial activity from the empires of the ancient world to the imperial conquests and commercial voyages of their day. The
fact of difference itself lay at the heart of such inconsistent behaviour from Europeans initial encounters with Amerindians onward, as Diderot notes:
[t]he Spaniard, the first to be thrown up by the waves onto the shores of the New World, thought he had no duty to people who did not share his colour,
customs, or religion. 19 Not wanting to single out the Spanish, Diderot suggests further that the Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and Danes all
followed in precisely the same spirit of exclusion and injustice. From an anthropological viewpoint, such discoveries of non-European peoples no doubt
played a role in Europeans changing conceptions of humanity. From Herodotus onward, of course, travel narratives played a central role in
contemplating what it might mean to be, in some fundamental sense, a human being. Given that theorizations of human nature relate, in complicated
ways, to changing understandings of the range and characteristics of human societies, institutions, and practices, the European discovery of new lands
and peoples accordingly generated further, and at times more complex, theorizations of humanity.20 Moreover, from the sixteenth century onward,
thinkers were particularly keen to consult and appropriate the latest ethnographic reports. In part, the heightened interest no doubt complemented, and
may in part have resulted from, what is often described as the intellectual revolution in natural philosophy and the resulting emphasis on
experimentation, empirical study, and inductive reasoning in fields such as astronomy, but also (especially from the mid-seventeenth century onward) in
the study of human anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Although many of Humes contemporaries did not share his hope of introducing the
experimental method to moral philosophy, there was nonetheless a widespread presumption that an understanding of the human condition needed to
take account, in some manner, of the growing anthropological literature that detailed the vast range of human experiences, customs, and practices
throughout the globe.21 This turn toward what Georges Gusdorf has called human science, however, requires a stable referent for what counts as
human while also upsetting the stability of the term by focusing attention increasingly on human difference.22 In this sense, the attempt at identifying
the most salient features of humanity was often an erratic and inherently conflicted task, as John Locke argued it would have to be, given the very nature
of our self-knowledge.
The slave represents the infra-human not the non-human. Included as only partly human the
status of the slave has historically been contested by appeals to universal human community.
As with Uncle Toms Cabin the fact that this type of political activity simultaneously contained
negative effects for our understanding of the slave doesnt mean it should be rejected.
GILROY 9 [Paul, Anthony Giddens Prf. of Social Theory @ London School of Economics 9 Race and the Right to be Human p. 13-15 //liam ]
The structure of sentimental feeling articulated by Harriet Beecher Stowe was instrumental in the formation of a trans-national moral collectivity and in
winning recognition of the suffering humanity of the slave whom it was no longer possible to dismiss as a brute. Through her voice and chosen genre,
distinctive patterns of heteropathic identification appear to have leaked not only into Europe but further afield as well. Uncle Toms Cabin
helped to compose a cosmopolitan chapter in the moral history of our world . Is all of that potential for political
action and pedagogy to be damned now because campus anti-humanism doesnt approve of the dubious
aesthetic and moral registers in which an un-exotic otherness was initially made intelligible? The scale of the historical
and interpretative problems posed by the case of Uncle Toms Cabin can only be glimpsed here. George Bullen, keeper of books at the British Museum
compiled a bibliographic note included in the repackaged 1879 edition. He revealed that almost three decades after publication, Stowes novel had been
translated into numerous languages including Dutch, Bengali, Farsi, Japanese, Magyar and Mandarin. Fourteen editions had been sold in the German
language during the first year of publication and a year later, seventeen editions in French and a further six in Portuguese had also appeared. In Russia,
the book had been recommended as a primer in the struggle against serfdom and was duly banned. The first book to sell more than a million copies in
the US, the publication of Stowes novel was a world historic event. Though it cemented deeply problematic conceptions of slave
passivity, redemptive suffering and indeed of racial type, it was also instrumental in spreading notions of black
dignity and ontological depth as well as the anti-racist variety of universal humanism that interests me. This combination
merits recognition as a potent factor in the circulation of a version of human rights that racial hierarchy could not qualify or interrupt. The example of
Stowe draws attention to issues which would reappear through the nineteenth century as part of struggles to defend indigenous peoples, to improve the
moral and juridical standards of colonial government and to reform the immorality and brutality of Europes imperial order. This activity was not always
altruistically motivated. How those themes developed in the period after slavery is evident from the para-academic work of campaigners like Harriet
Colenso, Ida B. Wells, Roger Casement and E.D. Morel. The constellation of writings produced by these critical commentators
on racism, justice and humanity needs to be reconstructed in far greater detail than is possible here . They can
nonetheless be seen to comprise a tradition of reflection on and opposition to racial hierarchy that, even now, has the power, not only to disturb and
amend the official genealogy provided for Human Rights but also to re-work it entirely around the tropes of racial difference. Allied with parallel
insights drawn from struggles against colonial power, these interventions contribute to a counterhistory of the
contemporary conundrum of rights and their tactical deployment . This neglected work remains significant
because debate in this field is increasingly reduced to an unproductive quarrel between jurists who are
confident that the world can be transformed by a better set of rules and sceptics who can identify the limits of
rights talk, but are almost always disinterested in racism and its metaphysical capacities . Thinkers like Wells and Morel
were alive to what we now call a deconstructive approach. They identified problems with rights-talk and saw the way that racial difference mediated the
relationship of that lofty rhetoric to brutal reality. They grasped the limits of rights-oriented institutional life empirically and saw how rights-claims
entered into the battle to extend citizenship. But, their vivid sense of the power of racism meant that the luxury of any casual anti-humanism could not be
entertained. They wished to sustain the human in human rights and to differentiate their own universalistic
aspirations from the race-coded and exclusionary humanisms which spoke grandly about all humanity but
made whiteness into the prerequisite for recognition. Their alternative required keeping the critique of race and
racism dynamic and demanding nothing less than the opening of both national- and world-citizenship to
formerly infrahuman beings like the negro. Grimk, Wells and the rest appealed against racism and injustice in humanitys name. Their
commentaries might even represent the quickening of the new humanism of which Frantz Fanon would speak years later. The movement these
commentators created and mobilized persisted further into the twentieth century when new causes and
opportunities were found that could repeat and amplify its critique of racialized political cultures and
terroristic governmental administration . The political significance of humanity is both terrible and terribly
important. Though the concept of humanity makes us guilty, it also is a pre-requisite for a politics that can fight
atrocity.
Radical humanism takes up the burden and the ambiguity of humanity. Identification with
common humanity across lines of oppression opens up possibilities for everyday political
virtue.
GILROY 9 [Paul, Anthony Giddens Prf. of Social Theory @ London School of Economics Race and the Right to be Human p. 20-23 //liam ]
Arendt and Agamben are linked by their apparent distaste for analyzing racism and by their complex and critical relations to the idea of the human. This
combination of positions can facilitate hostility to the project of human rights which is then dismissed for its inability to face the political and strategic
processes from which all rights derive and a related refusal to address the analytical shortcomings that arise from the dependence of human rights on an
expansion of the rule of lawwhich can incidentally be shown to be fully compatible with colonial crimes23. Histories of colonial power and
genealogies of racial statecraft can help to explain both of these problems and to break the impasse into which the analysis
of human rights has fallen. This is another reason why anti-racism remains important. It does not argue naively for a
world without hierarchy but practically for a world free of that particular hierarchy which has accomplished
untold wrongs. The possibility that abstract nakedness was not so much a cipher of insubstantial humanity but a sign of racial hierarchy in
operation arises from the work of concentration camp survivors. Jean Amry recognized his own experience through a reading of Fanon. Primo Levi, his
fellow Auschwitz inmate and interlocutor, who interpreted the lagers brutal exercises in racial formation as conducted for the benefit of their
perpetrators, suggested that racisms capacity to reconcile rationality and irrationality was expressed in the dominance of outrage over economic profit.
Both men saw infrahuman victims made to perform the subordination that race theory required and anticipated but which their bodies did not
spontaneously disclose. Inspired by Levi, by the philosophical writings of Jean Amry, and various other observers of and commentators on the
pathologies of European civilisation, we should aim to answer the corrosive allure of absolute sameness and purity just as they did, with a historical and
moral commitment to the political, ethical and educational potential of human shame. Though being ashamed may sometimes appear
to overlap with sentimentality or even to be its result, they are different. Excessive sentimentality blocks
shames productivity, its slow, humble path towards ordinary virtue. Shame arises where identification is
complicated by a sense of responsibility. Sentimentalism offers the pleasures of identification in the absence of
a feeling of responsible attachment. Amry was an eloquent proponent of what he called a radical humanism.
Through discovering his Jewishness under the impact of somebodys fist but more especially as a result of having been tortured by the Nazis, he acquired
a great interest in a politics of dignity which could answer the governmental actions that brought racial hierarchy to dismal life. Perhaps for that very
reason, he found through his post-war reading of Fanon, that the lived experience of the black man . . .
corresponded in many respects to my own formative and indelible experience as a Jewish inmate of a
concentration camp. . .. He continued: I too suffered repressive violence without buffering or mitigating
mediation. The world of the concentration camp too was a Manichaean one: virtue was housed in the SS blocks, profligacy, stupidity, malignance and
laziness in the inmates barracks. Our gaze onto the SS-city was one of envy and lust as well. As with the colonized Fanon, each of us fantasized at least
once a day of taking the place of the oppressor. In the concentration camp too, just as in the native city, envy ahistorically transformed itself into
aggression against fellow inmates with whom fought over a bowl of soup while the whip of the oppressor lashed at us with no need to conceal its force
and power.24 With Levi and Fanon, Amry shared a commitment to extracting humanistic perspectives from the
extremity he had survived in the lager. In a famous [1964] essay exploring his experiences at the hands of the Gestapo, he insisted that
torture was the essence25 of the Third Reich and in making that case, shows how these issues should become important again in comprehending and
criticising the brutal, permissive conduct of the war on terror.
2NC O/V
The affirmatives afro-pessimism undermines humanitys universalism and prevents the
possibility of change
A modern approach to racism requires a rejection of social isolationism
This mandates an approach which acknowledges intersectionality and universalism- thats
Gilroy and Dash
Their critique of whiteness undermines the role that anti-imperialist movements, feminism in
the Civil War have had in combating racism- thats Muthu
Unproductive skepticism has to be replaced with a cosmopolitanism history- this is not nave,
but accepts that even flawed systems can be net forces for good- thats Gilroy
Ahistorical
They assume that anti-black animus arises from nothingness but its caught up in a broader web
of historical power relationships like Islamophobia and nativism
Charoenying 8 [Timothy, citing Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Prof of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley, Islamophobia & Anti-Blackness: A
Genealogical Approach, http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia-anti-blackness-genealogical-approach //liam]
The year 1492 marked a major turning point in the trajectory of Western Civilization . Elementary age children are taught
this as the year Columbus
famously crossed the Atlantic. An equally significant event that year, was the Spanish conquest of alAndalusa Moorish province on the southern Iberian peninsula established eight centuries earlierand more importantly , the last major
Muslim stronghold on the European continent. Critical race scholars have argued that these two events would not only
shift the geopolitical balance of power from the Orient to the Occident, but fundamentally alter conceptions
about religious and racial identity. According to Nelson Maldonado-Torres, of the University of California, Berkeley, the expulsion of the
Moors from continental Europe marked a transition from an age of imperial relations between Christian and Muslim empires, to an age of European
colonial expansion throughout the known world. The discovery of godless natives in the Americas would also inspire the
great debates between Las Casas and Seplveda in 1550 on the nature of the human soul. Such a geopolitical and
philosophical shift, Maldonado-Torres argues, would lead to a Eurocentric, re-categorization of humanity based upon religous
and ultimately racialdifferences. Maldonado-Torres has proposed that anti-black racism is not simply an extension of
some historical bias against blacks, but rather, is an amalgam of old-world Islamophobia linked to the history
of the Iberian peninsula, and to the notion of souless beings embodied in popular conceptions about the
indigenous natives of the Americas. These beliefs would contribute to an ideological basis for, and justification
of, colonial conquests in the name of cultural and religious conversion, as well as pave the way for the
enslavement and human trafficking of sub-Saharan Africans.
Their nihilism turns the case greatest comparative threat
Miah quoting West in 94 [Malik Miah, Cornel West's Race Matters, May-June, http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/3079 //liam]
In the chapter, Nihilism in Black America, West observes The liberal/conservative discussion conceals the most basic issue now facing
Black America: the nihilistic threat to its very existence. This threat is not simply a matter of relative economic deprivation and
political powerlessness -- though economic well-being and political clout are requisites for meaningful Black progress. It is primarily a question
of speaking to the profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair so
widespread in Black America. (12-13) Nihilism, he continues, is to be understood here not as a philosophic
doctrine ... it is, far more, the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaningless, hopelessness, and
(most important) lovelessness. (14) Nihilism is not new in Black America. . . . In fact, West explains,the major enemy of Black
survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic Threat -- that is, loss of
hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.
The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without
meaning there can be no struggle. (14-15)
Social Death Links

The affirmatives choice to frame the nature of oppression through the rhetorical and
ideological frame of social death entrenches pessimism and despair
Brown 09 [Vincent Brown is Professor of History and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. AMERICAN HISTORICAL
REVIEW, DECEMBER 2009 http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/documents/brown-socialdeath.pdf //liam]
become a handy general denition of slavery, for many historians and non-historians alike. But it is often forgotten that the concept of social
could reveal the essence of slavery in an ideal-type slave, shorn of meaningful heritage. As a concept, it is what Frederick Cooper
has called an agentless abstraction that provides a neat cultural logic but ultimately does little to illuminate the
social and political experience of enslavement and the struggles that produce historic transformations. Indeed, it is
difcult to use such a distillation to explain the actual behavior of slaves, and yet in much of the scholarship that followed in the wake of Slavery and
Social Death, Pattersons abstract distillates have been used to explain the existential condition of the enslaved. Having emerged from the discipline of
sociology, social death t comfortably within a scholarly tradition that had generally been more alert to
deviations in patterns of black life from prevailing social norms than to the worldviews, strategies, and social tactics of people in
black communities. Together with Pattersons work on the distortions wrought by slavery on black families, social death reected
sociologys abiding concern with social pathology; the pathological condition of twentieth-century black life
could be seen as an outcome of the damage that black people had suffered during slavery .University of Chicago
professor Robert Park, the grand-pe`re of the social pathologists, set the terms in 1919: the Negro, when he landed in the United States, left behind
almost everything but his dark complexion and his tropical temperament. 8 Pattersons distillation also conformed to the nomothetic imperative of
social science, which has traditionally aimed to discover universal laws of operation that would be true regardless of time and place, making the
synchronic study of social phenomena more tempting than more descriptive studies of historical transformation. Slavery and Social Death took shape
during a period when largely synchronic studies of antebellum slavery in the United States dominated the scholarship on human bondage, and
Pattersons expansive view was meant to situate U.S. slavery in a broad context rather than to discuss changes as the institution developed through time.
Thus one might see social death as an obsolete product of its time and tradition, an academic artifact with limited purchase for contemporary
scholarship, were it not for the concepts reemergence in some important new studies of slavery. 9 WIDELY ACKNOWLEDGED AS AMONG themost
onerous of social institutions, slavery has much to tell us about the way human beings react to oppression. At the same time, the extreme nature
of the institution naturally encourages a pessimistic view of the capacity for collective agency among
subjugated people. As a result, trends in the study of slavery, as with the study of dominancemore generally, often divide
between works that emphasize the overwhelming power of the institution and scholarship that focuses on the
resistant efforts of the enslaved. In turn, this division frames a problem in the general understanding of political
life, especially for the descendants of the powerless. It might even be said that these kinds of studies form different and opposing
genreshopeful stories of heroic subalterns versus anatomies of doom that compete for ascendance. In recent years, if the invocation of
Pattersons social death is any indication, the pendulum seems to have swung decidedly toward despair.
Their methodology is flawedTheir focus on social death disempowers social agency and
pushes us away from political activism. We should recognize that we live in a world where
culture creates opportunities for us to find empowerment and we should reject the notion that
oppression is form of social death
Brandom 10 [Eric Brandom Brown v Agamben V. Brown, 'Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery', The American Historical
Review, 114, (2009), pp 1231-1249. http://ebrandom.blogspot.com/2009/12/brown-v-agamben.html //liam]
This essay is most straightforwardly a corrective to what Brown sees as the misuse (overuse) of Orlando Pattersons categorical definition of slavery as
social death. According to Brown, historians have often taken what Patterson meant as an ideal type definition to be a
description of reality itself. Historians have long rejected, however, the basic result of such a definition: that it would strip slaves of agency.
Manifestly, historians have pointed out, slaves had agency. One need look no further than the continuous rebellions and
occasional revolutions to emerge from new world slavery to see this. Browns real goal, though, is deeper than this. In step with his historical
work in The Reapers Garden, Brown wants to retell the story of slavery from the perspective of what we might call the
micro-politics, or cultural politics, of everyday life. Brown argues that what he calls mortuary politics, conflict and negotiation over death, burial,
and associated rituals, are of the greatest importance. One might make this argument in many contexts, but Caribbean slavery is a privileged
field. Increasingly, it the worldview forged in the 18th century experience of slavery and revolution has come to be
recognized as central to modernity as such (European, Atlantic, or even if you like, Capitalist). Mortuary politics is found to be central to
the world of slavery, to the movement of the Haitian Revolution, and thus to modernity. One effect of Browns argument, or rather one consequence of
the argument that he wants to make, is a firm and empirically-oriented rejection of Giorgio Agamben. Brown deals with this in a few paragraphs
explaining the limits of an Agambenian perspective such as that taken in Ian Baucoms Specters of the Atlantic. Agambens notion of bare life ,
for Brown, is
piggybacked into the historical study of slavery as a sort of compliment to and intensification of
Pattersonian social death. Brown doesnt exactly want to re-open old debates about agency (vs structure!), but he does want to argue
that it is plainly wrong to see Caribbean slaves as without culture, in the sense of without resources or
community. He cites William Sewells recent definition of culture, commenting, practices of meaning are better seen as tools to be used than as
possessions to be lost. There are several somewhat separable issues here. First, there is the methodological question of how one should think about
culture and agency. In this, I simply agree with Brown. I prefer to treat culture (or, qua intellectual historian, unit ideas) as a bundle of tools to be
manipulatedtools that empower, but also limit, channel, and react upon, those that wield them. Then there is the more empirical question of the
admissibility and utility of the notion of social death in the study of slave systems, say specifically in the Caribbean. Not having read all the relevant
texts, I defer with enthusiasm to Brown. What I have read leads me to believe that he is entirely correct.
Their methodology of constructing any form of barrier in life as social death precludes
liberation and makes greater manipulation and oppression inevitable
The physical wreckage and spiritual paralysis that is by definition an expression of this image, leads to an
agonising realisation that, in lifes vicissitudes, and lifes race of race survival, African people remain
undeveloped and fledgling stutters. The images of characters in these novels whose titles are vapid project Africans as victims of collective
inertia, wallowing in cultural and historical amnesia and disintegrating in irretrievable mentacide. As a result , in terms of agency and
mobility, the African race remains glued on the starting line, quite overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable
hurdles in the race of life. Through the choice of titles, most of the writers seem to have adopted a modality that
inordinately projects social death and a host of other social sicknesses as new forms of social identity in the
contemporary dispensation. While their absolutisation of mass neurosis, closure and entrapment might be said to be a reflection of the state of the nation
in the post independence period, it is also estimable that such images of social sickness, paralysis and mass neurosis can be
by Africas anthropological detractors in their justification of a static and back pedalling African race, particularly along
The paper also puts forth argument that, the
adoption of an axiological paradigm that legitimises closure and race entrapment nullifies any prospects towards racial
manipulated
the evolutionary spectrum, which is presented as a universal standard of valuation.
salvation. It is an act of defining the African race as doomed. Such a definition which trivialises the African existential trajectory pays homage to the
subversive labels that Europe has generously donated to Africa. Such labels include Third World; Underdeveloped; Dark Continent; Poor majority,
cultural other and many more. These are designations that bespeak helplessness and mass neurosis.
The rhetorical frame they choose in framing life as death makes disempowerment inevitable
and risks extinction
As natural speakers of African languages, there is need for African people to be careful of not using the natural
gift that language is to disempower themselves. When language is recklessly used, it can become one of the subtle forms
of ideological and pedagogical disempowerment. Language constitutes one of the oldest and effective forms of technology that humanity has always
deployed for the purposes of transcendence. For that reason, the language or discourse that a people adopt and adapt can
enhance or 5 negate survival. Henry Paget (1997: 15) explores the African possibilities of visualising themselves as finite sites of agency. He
advises us that: It is the fate of this capacity for agency that is crucial for our attitudes toward existence. Through its
sense of agency, an individual or group makes an estimate of its chances for successful self-assertion or
strategic intervention vis--vis its environment. Success or failure in such undertakings are [sic] important determinants of our
attitudes.
Social Death T/ Agency
Social death is a reductionist concept that does little to actually explain the slave experience
this pessimistic view erases notions of agency of the oppressed people.
Brown 09 [Vincent; AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 2009
become a handy general definition of slavery, for many historians and non-historians alike. But it is often forgotten that the concept of social
could reveal the essence of slavery in an ideal-type slave, shorn of meaningful heritage.6 As a concept, it is what
Frederick Cooper has called an agentless abstraction that provides a neat cultural logic but ultimately does little to
illuminate the social and political experience of enslavement and the struggles that produce historic
transformations.7 Indeed, it is difficult to use such a distillation to explain the actual behavior of slave s, and yet in
much of the scholarship that followed in the wake of Slavery and Social Death, Pattersons abstract distillates have been used to explain the existential
condition of the enslaved. Having emerged from the discipline of sociology, s ocial death fit comfortably within a scholarly
tradition that had generally been more alert to deviations in patterns of black life from prevailing social norms
than to the worldviews, strategies, and social tactics of people in black commun ities. Together with Pattersons work on the
distortions wrought by slavery on black families, social death reflected sociologys abiding concern with social pathology; the pathological condition
of twentieth-century black life could be seen as an outcome of the damage that black people had suffered during slavery. University of Chicago professor
Robert Park, the grand-pe`re of the social pathologists, set the terms in 1919: the Negro, when he landed in the United States, left behind almost
everything but his dark complexion and his tropical temperament.8 Pattersons distillation also conformed to the nomothetic
imperative of social science, which has traditionally aimed to discover universal laws of operation that would be
true regardless of time and place, making the synchronic study of social phenomena more tempting than more
descriptive studies of historical transformation. Slavery and Social Death took shape during a period when largely synchronic studies of
antebellum slavery in the United States dominated the scholarship on human bondage, and Pattersons expansive view was meant to situate U.S. slavery
in a broad context rather than to discuss changes as the institution developed through time. Thus one might see social death as an
obsolete product of its time and tradition, an academic artifact with limited purchase for contemporary
scholarship, were it not for the concepts reemergence in some important new studies of slavery .9 WIDELY
ACKNOWLEDGED AS AMONG the most onerous of social institutions, slavery has much to tell us about the way human beings react to oppression. At
the same time, the extreme nature of the institution naturally encourages a pessimistic view of the capacity for
collective agency among subjugated people. As a result, trends in the study of slavery, as with the study of dominance more
generally, often divide between works that emphasize the overwhelming power of the institution and scholarship
that focuses on the resistant efforts of the enslaved . In turn, this division frames a problem in the general
understanding of political life, especially for the descendants of the powerless . It might even be said that these kinds of
studies form different and opposing genreshopeful stories of heroic subalterns versus anatomies of doomthat compete for ascendance. In recent
years, if the invocation of Pattersons social death is any indication, the pendulum seems to have swung
decidedly toward despair.
Totalizing/ Nihilism Bad

Reject their totalizing understandings of race only by abandoning essentialism can we
construct new understandings of blackness in the world and challenge the nihilism threatening
productive movements.
bell hooks 90 [POSTMODERN BLACKNESS, Postmodern Culture vol.1
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Postmodern_Blackness_18270.html //liam]
It is sadly ironic that the contemporary discourse which talks the most about heterogeneity , the decentered subject, declaring
breakthroughs that allow recognition of otherness, still directs its critical voice primarily to a specialized audience , one that shares a
common language rooted in the very master narratives it claims to challenge . If radical postmodernist thinking is to have a transformative impact then a
critical break with the notion of "authority" as "mastery over" must not simply be a rhetorical device, it must be reflected in habits of being, including styles of writing as well as chosen subject matter. Third-world scholars, especially elites,
and white critics who passively absorb white supremacist thinking , and therefore never notice or look at black people on the streets, at their jobs, who render us
invisible with their gaze in all areas of daily life, are not likely to produce liberatory theory that will challenge racist domination, or to
promote a breakdown in traditional ways of seeing and thinking about reality, ways of constructing aesthetic
theory and practice. From a different standpoint Robert Storr makes a similar critique in the global issue of Art in America when he asserts: To be sure, much postmodernist critical
inquiry has centered precisely on the issues of "difference" and "otherness." On the purely theoretical plane the exploration of these concepts has produced some important results, but in the absence of any sustained research into what artists of
Endless second guessing about the latent imperialism of

intruding upon other cultures only compounded matters, preventing or excusing these theorists from
investigating what black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American artists were actually doing . Without adequate concrete knowledge of and
color and others outside the mainstream might be up to, such discussions become rootless instead of radical.
contact with the non-white "other," white theorists may move in discursive theoretical directions that are threatening to and potentially disruptive of that critical practice which would support radical liberation struggle. The postmodern critique
of "identity," though relevant for renewed black liberation struggle, is often posed in ways that are problematic. Given a pervasive politic of white supremacy which seeks to prevent the formation of radical black subjectivity, we cannot cavalierly
dismiss a concern with identity politics. Any critic exploring the radical potential of postmodernism as it relates to racial difference and racial domination would need to consider the implications of a critique of identity for oppressed groups.
We must engage decolonization as a critical practice if we are to have meaningful

chances of survival even as we must simultaneously cope with the loss of political grounding which made
radical activism more possible. I am thinking here about the postmodernist critique of essentialism as it pertains to the construction of "identity" as one example. Postmodern theory that is not seeking to
Many of us are struggling to find new strategies of resistance.
simply appropriate the experience of "otherness" in order to enhance its discourse or to be radically chic should not separate the "politics of difference" from the politics of racism. To take racism seriously one must consider the plight of
underclass people of color, a vast majority of whom are black. For African-Americans our collective condition prior to the advent of postmodernism and perhaps more tragically expressed under current postmodern conditions has been and is
There is increasing class division and

differentiation, creating on the one hand a significant black middle-class, highly anxiety- ridden , insecure, willing to be co-opted
and incorporated into the powers that be, concerned with racism to the degree that it poses constraints on upward social mobility ; and, on the other, a vast and growing black
underclass, an underclass that embodies a kind of walking nihilism of pervasive drug addiction, pervasive alcoholism, pervasive homicide, and an exponential rise in
suicide. Now because of the deindustrialization, we also have a devastated black industrial working class. We are talking here about tremendous hopelessness. This
hopelessness creates longing for insight and strategies for change that can renew spirits and reconstruct
grounds for collective black liberation struggle. The overall impact of the postmodern condition is that many other groups now share with
black folks a sense of deep alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of a sense of grounding, even if it is not
informed by shared circumstance. Radical postmodernism calls attention to those sensibilities which are shared across the boundaries of
class, gender, and race, and which could be fertile ground for the construction of empathy--ties that would promote recognition of common
commitments and serve as a base for solidarity and coalition. "Yearning" is the word that best describes a common
psychological state shared by many of us, cutting across boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexual practice .
Specifically in relation to the postmodernist deconstruction of "master" narratives, the yearning that wells in the
hearts and minds of those whom such narratives have silenced is the longing for critical voice . It is no accident that "rap" has usurped
characterized by continued displacement, profound alienation and despair. Writing about blacks and postmodernism, Cornel West describes our collective plight:
the primary position of R&B music among young black folks as the most desired sound, or that it began as a form of "testimony" for the underclass. It has enabled underclass black youth to develop a critical voice, as a group of young black men
The postmodern
sensibility appropriates practices as boasts that announce their own--and consequently our own--existence , like a
rap song boasting of the imaginary (or real--it makes no difference) accomplishments of the rapper. They offer forms of empowerment not only in the face of nihilism
but precisely through the forms of nihilism itself: an empowering nihilism, a moment of positivity through the
production and structuring of affective relations . Considering that it is as a subject that one comes to voice, then the postmodernist focus on the
critique of identity appears, at first glance, to threaten and close down the possibility that this discourse and
practice will allow those who have suffered the crippling effects of colonization and domination to gain or
regain a hearing. Even if this sense of threat and the fear it evokes are based on a misunderstanding of the postmodernist political project, they nevertheless shape responses . It never surprises me when black folk respond to
the critique of essentialism, especially when it denies the validity of identity politics, by saying "yeah, it's easy to give up identity, when you got one." Though an apt and oftentimes appropriate comeback, this does not really intervene in the
discourse in a way that alters and transforms. We should indeed suspicious of postmodern critiques of the "subject" when they surface at
a historical moment when many subjugated people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time . Criticisms of directions
told me, a "common literacy." Rap projects a critical voice, explaining, demanding, urging. Working with this insight in his essay "Putting the Pop Back into Postmodernism," Lawrence Grossberg comments:
in postmodern thinking should not obscure insights it may offer that open up our understanding of African-American experience. The critique of essentialism encouraged by postmodernist thought is useful for African-Americans concerned with
We have too long had imposed upon us, both from the outside and the inside, a narrow
constricting notion of blackness. Postmodern critiques of essentialism which challenge notions of universality
and static over-determined identity within mass culture and mass consciousness can open up new possibilities for the construction of
the self and the assertion of agency. Employing a critique of essentialism allows African-Americans to acknowledge the way in which class mobility has altered collective black experience so that racism
does not necessarily have the same impact on our lives. Such a critique allows us to affirm multiple black identitie s, varied black experience . It
also challenges colonial imperialist paradigms of black identity which represent blackness one-dimensionally
in ways that reinforce and sustain white supremacy. This discourse created the idea of the "primitive" and promoted the notion of an "authentic" experience, seeing as "natural" those
reformulating outmoded notions of identity.
Abandoning essentialist notions would be a serious challenge to racism .

Contemporary African- American resistance struggle must be rooted in a process of decolonization that
continually opposes reinscribing notions of "authentic" black identity . This critique should not be made synonymous with the dismissal of the struggle of
oppressed and exploited peoples to make ourselves subjects. Nor should it deny that in certain circumstances that experience affords us a privileged critical location from which to speak. This is not a reinscription
of modernist master narratives of authority which privilege some voices by denying voice to others . Part of our
struggle for radical black subjectivity is the quest to find ways to construct self and identity that are oppositional and liberatory.
The unwillingness to critique essentialism on the part of many African-Americans is rooted in the fear that it
will cause folks to lose sight of the specific history and experience of African-Americans and the unique sensibilities and culture that arise
from that experience. An adequate response to this concern is to critique essentialism while emphasizing the significance of
"the authority of experience." There is a radical difference between a repudiation of the idea that there is a black
"essence" and recognition of the way black identity has been specifically constituted in the experience of exile
and struggle. When black folks critique essentialism, we are empowered to recognize multiple experiences of black identity that are the lived conditions which make diverse cultural productions possible. When this diversity is
expressions of black life which conformed to a pre-existing pattern or stereotype.
ignored, it is easy to see black folks as falling into two categories--nationalist or assimilationist, black-identified or white-identified. Coming to terms with the impact of postmodernism for black experience, particularly as it changes our sense of
identity, means that we must and can rearticulate the basis for collective bonding. Given the various crises facing African-Americans (economic, spiritual, escalating racial violence, etc.) we are compelled by circumstance to reassess our
relationship to popular culture and resistance struggle Many of us are as reluctant to face this task as many non-black postmodern thinkers who focus theoretically on the issue of "difference" are to confront the issue of race and racism.
***Agamben Exclusion K***

Politics of identity is necessarily founded in exclusion- turns case
McLoughlin 09- PhD in philosophy from the University of New South Wales, lecturer at
Adelaide Law School (Daniel, April, The Politics of Caesura: Giorgio Agamben on Language and the Law, Law Critique (2009) 20:163
176//MGD)
The traditional determination
of political identity is one of inclusion and exclusion, that is, of belonging to a class or
set by virtue of common features. This logic is common to a range of formulations of political community, from
that of the nation state, with its division between citizens and aliens, to the politics of gender, sexuality, or race. In this paper, I
will refer to this political logic as the politics of identity, because all of these approaches to politics ground community in an
identity unified by a particular shared characteristic. While this logic is central to the tradition of political philosophy, Agamben is
not, however, known for his engagement with it. The politics of identity appears in Homo Sacer only as something whose
traditional logic has ceased functioning, having unravelled in modernity through the generalisation of the
sovereign exception. Further, Agambens best known work on community, The Coming Community, is explicitly directed against the politics of
identity. For Agamben the future of political thought rests not in an attempt to revive traditional concepts of
community, but the attempt to overcome it through a politics of radical singularity , a whatever being that is
neither being with this or that characteristic, nor being deprived of all characteristics, but rather being such that
it always matters (Agamben 1993, p. 1). However, as we can observe from these two examples, the understanding of political
community as determined by identity and belonging is an abiding, if submerged, concern of Agambens, for it is the political
tradition over and against which his analysis emerges. The problem I face in this section then is Agambens understanding of the politics of belonging,
and its relationship to both law and language. This analysis will establish the frame within which Agambens account of the limits of language and
politics should be understood in the remainder of this essay. It is Agambens recent text, The Time That Remains, that offers a key to understanding this
problem, as it contains two important treatments of the issue of political identity and its relationship to law. The first is the idea of nation that
features in his discussion of the relationship between Israel and the Torah. The second is the concept of calling or vocation,
which appears in Pauls discussion of the relationship between the messianic community and political status. The former appears to be an
immediately juridical problem, while the latter reflects what we might call a professionthat is, a socialeconomic
category pertaining to someones public persona, and which does not appear to have any immediate juridical significance. Despite
the seeming differences between these two articulations of the logic of belonging, Agamben posits an originary
unity between them, and the argument for their unity casts light on the sense in which Agamben uses the term law, and will enable us to observe
its relationship to the nature and structure of language. In the Jewish tradition the Torah is understood as a dividing wall or fence
that separates Jews from non-Jews (Agamben 2005a, p. 47). As a consequence, Agamben argues the principle of the law is thus division.
The fundamental partition of Jewish law is the one between Jews and non-Jews , or in Pauls words, between Iudaioi and
ethne (Agamben, 2005a, p. 47). Iudaioi are members of the nation of Israel, the elected people, and this status as being-Jewish is defined by the
common characteristic of being a party to this pact, that is, being subject to Gods law. To generalise this logic, to be part of the political
community of the nation is to be subject to the same law, t he juridical order marking common belonging to the set. While it is the
Torah that defines the Jewish community, modernity thinks this belonging in the conjunction between state, law and people,
and membership as a citizen in the political community is defined through the rights and obligations of positive
law. Further, as we observe in the distinction between iudaioi and ethne , the definition of political identity and community through
inclusion in a law, necessarily articulates a simultaneous exclusion of those who are outside or indifferent to it.1 In
Paul, this is the division between Jew and non-Jew, and in the modern nation-state the division between citizens and aliens.2 To produce political
community through law is thus to produce a shared identity through common belonging to a legal order, and this generates a division between inclusion
or membership in the political group nation, and exclusion from it.
Calls for belonging are appeals to a common identity which asserts a law-like regime of
exclusionary politics
McLoughlin 09- PhD in philosophy from the University of New South Wales, lecturer at
Adelaide Law School (Daniel, April, The Politics of Caesura: Giorgio Agamben on Language and the Law, Law Critique (2009) 20:163
176//MGD)
Agambens discussion of the logic of political division in The Time That Remains appears to locate it as operating in
two different spheresfirst, the juridical problem of nation; second, the politico-economic problem of calling.
Apropos the latter, Agamben identifies a shift from a calling that pertains to ones total identity, to the narrower
modern notion of vocation. However, all of these forms of political and economic determination are possible only on the
basis of a more originary sense in which Agamben, drawing on Paul, deploys the term klesis. It is this notion of klesis that gives us
the key to both the broad determination of the concept law at operation in Agambens work, and its relationship to language.
Paul uses the term both to describe being called as an apostle, and also to state that those called by the messiah should remain in their calling
(Agamben 2005a, p. 19). Paul thus writes that circumcision is nothing, and the foreskin is nothing Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he
was called. Art though being called a slave? Care not for it (Paul, I Corinthians 7:1920). For Paul, undergoing the former, messianic klesis,
being called by the messiah, does not entail abandoning the latter, ones worldly calling. What is important about this passage for our discussion is
that Paul uses klesis to describe both the fundamental division of the juridical order (circumcision/foreskin, Jew/goy), and the
socio-political and economic division of class ( slave/free man). Klesis here is simply a matter of being called, and
while being called a slave, or being called a Jew, are social, political and economic problems, to be called is also a
problem of language. Thus, while modernity limits the notion of calling to the economic sphere, there is a more
fundamental politico-linguistic logic at operation here, that unites the seemingly disparate spheres of the
political, juridical and economic. To be called, is to be subject to the law in the broadest sense as Agamben puts it
elsewhere, it is to be in a worldly or juridical-factical condition. This is related to the signifying function of language because, for Agamben, law is, in
a fundamental way, like language. To use signifying language is to determine categorically an entity as being- x, and
this determination groups an entity together with others designated by a general name. Likewise, law produces
determinate identities through the application of abstract normative categories to entities, or in the language that Agamben uses in Homo Sacer,
applying law to life. Thus being-Jewish is determined by the application of the juridical categories of the Jewish Law to an individual, while being-aslave is determined by the application of the laws of property to people. Law and language both operate by grouping entities
through the name on the basis of a common identity, and they achieve this by bringing words into relation with
things, designating particularities as belonging to certain sets on the basis of shared characteristics. The most
fundamental of these borders is that designated by the law of the political communityin Paul, this is the division between the iudaioi and the ethne, but
in the language of the modern nation-state, it is the split between citizens and aliens, the parties to the social contract and those who fall outside it.
Within the wall demarcated by the national law there are further divisions, such as those of class, gender, family, and race, all of which are legal
phenomenon, understood in its broadest sense as a mechanism that regulates and produces sociopolitical identities. Law and language are
machines for producing determinate identities. To be politically determined as the member of a group is to be subject
to a law of naming, that is, to be called and hence divided through the performative power of language . Law and politics are
thus to be thought for Agamben in relation to language, and the ability of law to generate political identity is grounded in the linguistic logic of the name.
2NC O/V
Calls for identity politics and community belonging retrench exclusion and turn case
The idea of a personal community builds an ideological fence around outsiders
The calling and vocation of the community morph into law-like imperatives which reassert
power structures and pigeon hole outsiders into fixed identities in opposition to the movementthats McLoughlin
This turns their ethics and inclusion claims
***Black/White Paradigm K***
Generalizing descriptions of race make genocide possible

(John, South Atlantic Quarterly 104.3, Summer, Culture against Race: Reworking the Basis for Racial Analysis //MGD)
These racial identities define the type of subjects that Visweswaran advocates bringing into view via a conception of race which is socially dynamic
but historically meaningful, even though their objectification potentially risks
contributing, unintentionally, to the current

resurgence in sociobiological notions of race. Visweswarans approach brings race to the fore of critical analysis ,
but the problem is that it also risks reproducing racial thinking in much the way culture has been accused of perpetuating
race. Herbert Lewis highlights the perils in efforts to articulate this broader sensibility concerning race.8 Where Visweswaran strives to reanimate the
richly connotative 19th century sense of race, with its invocations of blood as a form of collectivity that encompasses numerous elements that we
would today call cultural, Lewis cautions against a return to the pre-Boasian conception that combines race, culture,
language, nationality and nationality in one neat package (980). And though the equation of racial identity with the forms of persecution
and exploitation highlighted by Visweswaran is insightful, Lewis observes that, pursued further, this logic reactivates a concept that indissolubly
connects groups of people and their appearance with beliefs about their capacity and behavior (ibid.).Given the
criteria she lists, Lewis argues, it follows presumably that we should recognize as races all those who have suffered
one or another form of ill-treatment. Certainly Jews would now return to the status of a racial group (as the Nazis
contended), as do Armenians, Gypsies (Rom), Untouchables (Dalits) in India, East Timorese, Muslim and Croats in
Bosnia and Serbs in Croatia, educated Cambodians in Pol Pots Cambodia, both Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and
Burundi (ibid.). Every similarly subjected group would be reinscribed and reidentified with the very terms used
initially to distinguish them for exploitation and persecution . Dominguezs concerns about cultures propensity for perpetuating the
very termsof hierarchies of differential valuesthat constitute the hegemony seem equally relevant to this attempt to ensconce race at the forefront of
critical social analysis. There follow interminable questions of subdividing and distinguishing such races. Visweswarans description of the processes
that produce Chicanos and Puerto Ricans as races leads Lewis to ask, Are these two different races or one? Can
rich, powerful, and selfassured Puerto Ricans belong to this race? Do Dominicans, Ecuadorians, and Cubans each get to be their own
race, or can they all be in one race with Chicanos and Puerto Ricans because they all speak (or once spoke) Spanish? Can Spanish-speakers
from Spain belong, too? (980). The problem with formulating research in terms of race is that it becomes very
difficult to proceed without reproducing various racialized logics that promote the notion that groups are
essentially differentiatedexperientially and in terms of innate capacities and dispositionsby race.9 This is a problem that Gilroy takes as a
basis for his critique of raciology, which I will examine further below.
Their white supremacy approach is essentialist- reproduces the most dangerous forms of
racism and is doomed to fail
One might be tempted to assume that Gilroys stance is largely polemical, but his critique is thoroughgoing, as
is his call to reject

this desire to cling on to race and go on stubbornly and unimaginatively seeing the world on the distinctive
scales that it has specified. In spite of powerful, novel efforts to fundamentally transform racial analysissuch as the
emergence of whiteness studies or analyses of the new racismGilroy is emphatic in demand[ing]
liberation not from white supremacy alone, however urgently that is required, but from all racializing and raciological
thought, fromracialized seeing, racialized thinking, and racialized thinking about thinking (40). In contrast to Visweswaranand,
interestingly, voicing concerns over cultural politics that resonate with Dominguezs critique Gilroy sees a host of problems in black
political cultures that rely on essentialist approaches to building solidarity (38).14 Nor does he share Harrisons
confidence in making racism the centerpiece of critical cultural analysis. Gilroy plainly asserts that the starting point of this book is that the era of New
Racism is emphatically over (34). A singular focus on racism precludes an attention to the appearance of sharp
intraracial conflicts and does not effectively address the several new forms of determinism abroad (38, 34). We
still must be prepared to give effective answers to th e pathological problems represented by genomic racism, the
glamour of sameness, and the eugenic projects currently nurtured by their confluence (41). But the diffuse threats posed by
invocations of racially essentialized identities (shimmering in the glamour of sameness) as the basis for articulating black
political cultures entails an analytical approach that countervails against positing racism as the singular focus of
inquiry and critique.15 From Gilroys stance, to articulate a postracial humanism we must disable any form of racial vision and
ensure that it can never again be reinvested with explanatory power . But what will take its place as a basis for talking about the
dynamics of belonging and differentiation that profoundly shape social collectives today? Gilroy tries to make clear that it will not be culture, yet this
concept infuses his efforts to articulate an alternative conceptual approach. Gilroy conveys many of the same reservations about culture articulated by
the anthropologists listed above. Specifically, Gilroy cautions that the culturalist approach still runs the risk of naturalizing and normalizing hatred and
brutality by presenting them as inevitable consequences of illegitimate attempts to mix and amalgamate primordially incompatible groups (27). In
contrast, Gilroy expressly prefers the concept of diaspora as a means to ground a new form of attention to collective identities. As an alternative
to the metaphysics of race, nation, and bounded culture coded into the body, Gilroy finds that diaspora is a
concept that problematizes the cultural and historical mechanics of belonging (123). Furthermore, by focusing
attention equally on the sameness within differentiation and the differentiation within sameness, diaspora
disturbs the suggestion that political and cultural identity might be understood via the analogy of
indistinguishable peas lodged in the protective pods of closed kinship and subspecies (125). And yet, in a manner similar to
Harrisons prioritizing of racism as a central concern for social inquiry, when it comes to specifying what diaspora entails and how it works , vestiges
of culture reemerge as a basis for the coherence of this new conceptual focus . When Gilroy delineates the elements and
dimensions of diaspora, culture provides the basic conceptual background and terminology. In characterizing the Atlantic diaspora and
its successor-cultures, Gilroy sequentially invokes black cultural styles and postslave cultures that have supplied a
platform for youth cultures, popular cultures, and styles of dissent far from their place of origin (178). Gilroy explains how the cultural
expressions of hip-hop and rap, along with other expressive forms of black popular culture , are marketed by the
cultural industries to white consumers who currently support this black culture (181). Granted, in these uses of
culture Gilroy remains critical of absolutist definitions of culture and the process of commodification that
culture in turn supports. But his move away from race importantly hinges upon some notion of culture. We may be
able to do away with race, but seemingly not with culture.
The alt is to engage in a cultural discussion- sole race focuses prevent effective listening
The countervailing point to concerns about past misuses of culture in relation to race is that the culture concept
holds perhaps the most powerful counterweight to racial thinking, since it depicts, on the one hand, the mutable and
artificial aspects of racial identification , and, on the other, all the forms of commonality that undercut racialized
inscriptions of essential orders. However, the work of these and other ethnographers neither directly addresses nor specifically counters the charge
leveled by Abu-Lughod and Dominguez concerning racial impacts and implications of using culture.25 Nor should my efforts here to articulate a positive
role for culture in response to this critique be regarded as a refutation of their arguments or a rejection of the claims that there are negative racial effects
to invoking this concept. Even though I think we need culture to make sense of race, I recognize that Abu-Lughod and Dominguez are right that we
need to remain circumspect about the potential for culture to reinscribe racial thinking . The uses I am
advocating here will require continued vigilance. To use culture in relation to race will necessarily depend on also
engaging with and disrupting popular uses and imaginings of the term that do equate its subjects with static,
traditional, and unchanging exotic entities. But it is exactly this type of engagement with embedded assumptions that underscores the
central reason for making renewed use of culture in relation to race. From my efforts to teach students about race, I realize that without an
overarching attention to culture it is very hard to, first, convey the extent of racial thinking and, second, effectively
engage the multiple, overlapping structures of perception and experience that reproduce racial identities and
collectives. Many people cannot begin to recognize how thoroughly the significance of race informs social life unless they have the ability to first grasp
culture as a field of intelligibility that structures their actions and perception. Fundamentally, one needs a cultural vision in order to
denaturalize the view of race as a natural order of difference. In the United States, in particular, it is critical to engage the
processes of socialization that lead whites to see each other as individuals and, in contrast, to see peoples of color as representatives of vaguely
comprehended groups. Historian George Lipsitz, in analyzing the economic, political, and social bases for white
dominance, labels this process the possessive investment in whiteness.26 One of the keys to disabusing white
people of this powerful form of racial thinking and perception involves getting whites to recognize the profound
group circumstances that contour life chances in racial terms in the United States. That is, we must critically frame and
analyze the collective forms that benefit whites as a group, regardless of individuals personal sentiments about
the significance of race. And this work must be done against the grain of white Americans socialization to see the world strictly in terms of
individuals. Such a thoroughgoing socialization can best be disrupted and critically objectified by the concept of culture. A cultural perspective
addresses both this inability to grasp the distinctive social conditioning that individualism entails and the attendant
ignorance of how collective processes shape our experiences and the very ground of the social order.27 This approach has
the potential to engage whites racial thinking, at least initially, by shifting discussions away from the charged
accusations of racism and onto a groundthe subject of socialization that may be more conducive to both
thinking about race and recognizing its intersection with other critical categories of social identity. We cannot
effectively think through the processes of racial identification and disidentification without a cultural
perspective.28 An inability to grasp culture and its dynamics is central to why many whites are unable to think
critically about race or to grasp its various manifestations and operations . Without some understanding that our experience
of the world is culturally contoured, it is difficult to regard racism asmore than just an individual failing or a vaguely perceived institutional byproduct. Without a recognition of the interlocking aspects of cultural perceptions and categorical identities, race
appears as just another isolated subject of political correctness. But by starting with basic cultural dynamics, it
is easy to show how race both inflects and is shaped by judgments Americans make about whether or not certain people
appear to be nice, or friendly, or hardworkingeach reflecting crucial categorical demarcations that ostensibly make no mention of race but that
certainly operate at times in racial registers. A cultural perspective allows us to place race simultaneously in the mix of everyday
life, shaping perceptions that ostensibly do not appear racial, but without reductively asserting that everything is
about race.
2NC O/V
Their focus on race ignores alternate, cultural forms of differences

Meshing culturally different but racially similar groups together without an eye to difference
has created historys worse genocides- Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, Sunni and Shiite Muslims
prove
Independently replicates a sociobiological mentality towards race which reduces the value of
human life and opens the floodgates to moral atrocity like social Darwinism- thats Hartigan
The alt is to engage the harms of the 1AC through a cultural perspective rather one than zoomed
in on race
Disrupting static identity notions involves the greatest number of people in identity movements
Evades the trap of scapegoating all people who dont belong to a particular racial group and
involves alternate perspectives in social progress- proves the alternative is methodologically
superior
Turns Case
Turns the aff we can never solve white racism

Perea 10 [Cone, Wagner, Nugent, Johnson, Hazouri & Roth Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law, Juan, AN ESSAY ON THE
ICONIC STATUS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND ITS UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, Vol.
18:1, Fall, p. 57-58, http://scs.student.virginia.edu/vjspl/18.2/Perea.pdf //liam]
Lastly, recognizing a fuller scope of civil rights struggles is important in helping us understand the full measure
of unremedied past injustice. If we take no account of denials of civil rights to Mexican Americans, American
Indians, and Native Hawaiians, among other groups, then we underestimate dramatically the scope of white
racism. Every struggle against racism and oppression deserves recognition . The iconic status of the African-American Civil
Rights Movement is a testament to the power of righteous struggle. While it certainly deserves its hallowed place in our history and our hearts, we should
be careful that its long shadow not obscure the importance of other righteous struggles. If we care about justice, we should always be attuned to struggles
for greater justice, whether or not they resemble the African-American struggle for civil rights. As inspiring as the African-American
struggle has been, we may find additional inspiration, and more possibilities for justice, if we cast our gaze
beyond the African-American Civil Rights Movement, gazing further back, further forward, and to the side.
Other Races Impact

The conception of race through a black/white paradigm marginalizes other races, excluding
them from relevant policy discussions
Perea 97- prof of law @ UF, visiting prof @ Harvard, leading scholar on race and the law
(Juan, The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race, California Law Review//MGD)
Paradigms of race shape our understanding of race and our definition of racial
problems. The most pervasive and

powerful paradigm of race in the United States is the Black/White binary paradigm. I define this paradigm as the
conception that race in American consists, either exclusively or primarily, of only two constituent racial groups,
the Black and the White. Many scholars of race reproduce this paradigm when they write and act as though only
the Black and the White races matter for purposes of discussing race and social policy with regard to race. The mere
recognition that other people of color exist, without careful attention to their voices, their histories, and their real
presence, is merely a reassertion of the Black/White paradigm . If one conceives of race and racism as primarily of
concern only to Blacks and Whites, and understands other people of color only through some unclear analogy
to the real races, this just restates the binary paradigm with a slight concession to demographics. My assertion is that our
shared understanding of race and racism is essentially limited to this Black/White binary paradigm. This paradigm defines,
but also limits, the set of problems that may be recognized in racial discourse . Kuhns notion of normal science, which further
articulates the paradigm and seeks to solve the problems perceivable because of the paradigm, also applies to normal research on race. Given the
Black/White paradigm, we would expect to find that much research on race is concerned with understanding the dynamics
of
the Black and White races and attempting to solve the problems between Blacks and Whites. Within the paradigm, the relevant material facts
are facts about Blacks and Whites. In addition, the paradigm dictates that all other racial identities and groups in the United States
are best understood through the Black/White binary paradigm . Only a few writers even recognize that they use
a Black/White paradigm as the frame of reference through which to understand racial relations. Most writers simply assume the
importance and correctness of the paradigm, and leave the reader grasping for what ever significance descriptions of
the Black/White binary relationship have for other people of color. As I shall discuss, because the Black/White binary paradigm is
so widely accepted, other racialized groups like Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are often
marginalized or ignored altogether. As Kuhn writes, those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all.
The exclusion of Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans in the Black/White paradigm
plays into white domination
Bowman 1- prof of law @MSU, JD from Duke
(Kristi, Duke Law Journal The New Face of School Desegregation, http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?50+Duke+L.+J.+1751//MGD)
White privilege is reinforced when racial and ethnic groups are conceptualized not as White, African American,
Latino, Asian American, Native American, etc., but instead as White or Non-White. Acknowledgement of
differences among groups disappears in a White-Non-White paradigm, because instead of allowing racial or
ethnic groups to identify themselves by what they are,238 all Non- [*pg 1787] White groups are explicitly identified
by what they are not, and only by reference to whiteness. Although aspects of a specific Non-White group might be easier to identify
than "White culture," this occurs because White culture is mainstream culture. The culture of a specific Non-White group appears
distinctive because it deviates from the norm. Professor Martha Mahoney notes that a term such as "racially identifiable" in the context
of housing and urban development generally refers "to locations that are racially identifiably black."239 The same is true in the context of education:
racially identifiable means racially identifiably Non-White. The White-Non-White paradigm reinforces the power dynamic of the
acted and the acted upon, of presence and absence, of the defining and the defined. The
power that Whites receive from their

unearned privilege in the White-Non-White duality "is, in fact, permission to escape [the debate of race] or to
dominate."240 When federal courts reinforce this dynamic in the name of school desegregation, they perpetuate the
normalized, mainstream practices and institutions that reinforce racial inequality. It is often these practices and institutions that are
most damaging in terms of perpetuating oppression because they are not usually questioned. They are conceptualized as just normal.241 In
contemporary school desegregation jurisprudence, Whites are normalized, and all Non-Whites are collapsed into the
category of "other." Like African Americans, Latinos have been the victims of state-sanctioned educational segregation;242 but if courts gave
attention to the present differences between African Americans and Latinos, courts' remedial orders would likely be structured differently. As will be
discussed below, the recognition of Latinos and African Americans as distinct groups that continue to suffer different harms is easily within reach.
Exclusion Link
Focus on the black/white binary marginalizes other races- reworking these perceptions is key
The point of critical theory generally is to demonstrate shortcomings in our current understandings of legal and social structures and perhaps to suggest
alternatives that improve upon these shortcomings. One implication of this Article is that, to the extent that critical theory has focused
on questions of race, it is still tightly bound by the Black/White binary paradigm . Although this is much less true of critical
race theory in particular, as some writers have focused on the points of view and histories of many racialized American groups, a true paradigm shift
away from the Black/White paradigm will only occur when such scholarship is more widely promulgated and accepted than is currently the case. My
review of important literature on race establishes the existence of the Black/White binary paradigm and its structuring of writing on race. The
normal science of race scholarship specifies inquiry into the relationship between Blacks and Whites as the
exclusive aspect of race relations that needs to be explored and elaborated. As a result, much relevant legal history and information
concerning Latinos/as and other racialized groups is simply omitted from books on race and constitutional law. The
omission of this history is extraordinarily damaging to Mexican Americans and other Latinos/as. By omitting this
history, students get no understanding that Mexican Americans have long struggled for equality. The absence of
Latinos/as from histories of racism and the struggle against it enables people to maintain existing stereotypes
of Mexican Americans. These stereotypes are perpetuated even by Americas leading thinkers on race. Ignorance of Mexican-American history
allows Andrew Hacker to proclaim that Hispanics are passive spectators in social struggle, and allows Cornel West to imply that Latino/a struggles
against racism have been slight through significant. To the extent that the legitimacy of claims for civil rights depends on a public perception of having
engaged in struggle for them, the omission of this legal history also undermines the legitimacy of Latino/a claims for civil rights. This may explain why
courts treat Latino/a claims of discrimination with such indifference. Paradigmatic descriptions and study of White racism against
Blacks, with only cursory mention of other people of color, marginalizes all people of color by grouping them,
without particularity, as somehow [*1258] analogous to Blacks. Other people of color are deemed to exist only
as unexplained analogies to Blacks. Thus, scholars encourage uncritical readers to continue to assume the
paradigmatic importance of the Black/White relationship and to ignore the experiences of other Americans who also are subject
to racism in profound ways. Critical readers are left with many important questions: Beyond the most superficial understanding of aversion to
non-White skin color, in what ways is White racism against Blacks explanatory of or analogous to White racism against Latinos/as, Asian Americans,
Native Americans, and others? Given the unique historical legacy of slavery, what does a deep understanding of White-Black racism contribute to
understanding racism against other Others? Why are other people of color consistently relegated to parenthetical status
and near-nonexistence in treatises purporting to cover their fields comprehensively? It is time to ask hard
questions of our leading writers on race. It is also time to demand better answers to these questions about inclusion, exclusion,
and racial presence, than perfunctory references to other people of color. In the midst of profound demographic changes, it
is time to question whether the Black/White binary paradigm of race fits our highly variegated current and future
population. Our normal science of writing on race, at odds with both history and demographic reality, needs
reworking.
Ext: Impacts
Black/white paradigms prevent effective coalitions to challenge racism and mask the American
caste system
Delgado 2k- prof @ Seattle Law, Pulitzer Prize nominee
(Richard, May, Derrick Bells Toolkit- Fit to Dismantle That Famous House? New York University Law Review, lexis, d.a. 7-13//MGD)
Black/white or any other kind of binary thinking can also warp minorities' views of themselves and their relation
to
whites. As social scientists know, Caucasians occasionally select a particular minority group as a favorite , usually a
small, non-threatening one, and make that group overseers of the others or tokens to rebut any inference that the
dominant group is racist. n110 Minorities may also identify with whites in hopes of gaining status or benefits
under specific statutes, such as the naturalization statute, that limit benefits to whites. n111 The siren song of specialness may also
predispose a minority group to believe [*300] that it is uniquely victimized and entitled to special consideration
from iniquitous whites. Latino exceptionalists, for example, sometimes point out (if only privately) that Latinos have the worst rates of poverty
and school dropout; n112 are soon to be the largest group of color in the United States; n113 fought bravely in many foreign wars and earned numerous
medals and commendations; n114 and are racialized in perhaps the greatest variety of ways of any group, including language, accent, immigration status,
perceived foreignness, conquered status, and certain particularly virulent stereotypes. n115 Needless to say, specialness lies entirely in the eye of the
beholder and can be maintained only by presenting a particular interpretation of history as the only true one. 6. Impairment of the Ability to Generalize
and Learn from History: Reinventing the Wheel Binary thinking and exceptionalism also impair the ability to learn from
history; they doom one to reinvent the wheel. For example, when recent scholars put forward the theory of interest
convergence to account for the ebb and flow of black fortunes, n116 the theory came as a genuine breakthrough,
enabling readers to understand a vital facet of blacks' experience. Yet, the long train of Indian treaty violations , n117 as well as
Mexicans' treatment in the wake of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, n118 might have led commentators to
arrive at that insight earlier and to mold it into a broader, more powerful form. By the same token, the treatment of Asians,
with one group first favored, [*301] then disfavored when conditions change, n119 might have inspired a similar, more nuanced theory. n120 And in
Mexican American jurisprudence, Westminster School District v. Mendez, n121 decided seven years before Brown v. Board of Education, marked the first
time a major court expressly departed from the rule of Plessy v. Ferguson in a challenge to de jure segregation. n122 Had it not been for a single alert
litigator on the staff of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who recognized the case's importance and insisted that the organization participate in Mendez as
amicus, n123 Mendez would have been lost to African Americans and the road to Brown would have been harder and longer. n124 Finally, when Mexican
Americans were demanding their rights, George Sanchez, anticipating one of the arguments that the NAACP used to great effect in Brown - namely, that
continued discrimination against blacks endangered the United States's moral leadership in the uncommitted world - argued that mistreatment of
Latinos in the United States could end up injuring the country's relations with Latin America. n125 Earlier, the Japanese in California had effectively
deployed a similar argument when San Francisco enacted a host of demeaning rules. n126 Writings by Derrick Bell n127 and Gerald Rosenberg n128
pointing out the limitations of legal reform for minorities are foreshadowed in [*302] the experience of American Indians when the state of Georgia
refused to abide by the Supreme Court's ruling in Worcester v. Georgia n129 and President Andrew Jackson did nothing to enforce it. n130 After Bell
wrote his signature Chronicle of the Space Traders, n131 Michael Olivas observed that Latino and Cherokee populations had experienced literal removal
several times in history. n132 7. Impairment of Coalitions Finally, dichotomous thought impairs groups' ability to forge useful
coalitions. For example, neither the NAACP nor any other predominantly African American organization filed
an amicus brief challenging Japanese internment in Korematsu v. United States, n133 or in any of the other cases contesting
that practice. n134 Earlier, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a politically moderate litigation organization for
Latinos, distanced itself from [*303] other minority groups and even from darker-skinned Latinos by pursuing the "other
white" strategy. n135 And in Northern California, Asians, Mexican Americans, and blacks recently have been at loggerheads over admission to
Lowell High School and UC-Berkeley. n136 Sometimes, minority groups do put aside differences and work together successfully. For example, Chineseand Spanish-speaking parents successfully challenged monolingual instruction in San Francisco in Lau v. Nichols. n137 Jews and blacks marched hand
in hand in the sixties. n138 A coalition of California Latinos and Asians collaborated in litigation striking down Proposition 187, which denied social
services and public education to undocumented immigrants. n139 And another coalition of minority groups has been working to change the nearly allwhite lineup on current television programs. n140 The school desegregation case Mendez v. Westminster School District, n141 which (as I described
earlier n142 ) was a rare exception to the inability of minority groups to generalize from other groups' experiences, is worth recounting in some detail as
an example of minority groups working together successfully. By the 1920s, Mexican immigration had made Mexican Americans the largest minority
group in California. n143 Although state law did not require school districts to segregate Mexican American schoolchildren, pressure from parents led
most school boards to do so on the pretext that the Mexican children's language difficulties made this in their best educational interest. n144 On March
2, 1945, a small group of Mexican American parents filed suit in federal district court to enjoin that practice. n145 The court [*304] ruled, nearly a year
later, that because California lacked a segregation statute, the doctrine of "separate but equal" did not apply. n146 Moreover, it found that sound
educational reasons did not support separation of the Mexican children, that separation stigmatized them, and ruled the practice unconstitutional. n147
The school districts appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, at which point the case came to the attention of the American Jewish Congress and
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. n148 The NAACP's amicus brief, prepared by Robert Carter, advanced many of the same arguments the attorneys for
the Mexican plaintiffs had put forward in the trial court, but added a new one based not on legal doctrine or precedent, but on social science. n149
Relying heavily on data collected by Ambrose Caliver, an African American researcher employed by the U.S. Department of Education, Carter argued
that racial segregation would inevitably lead to inferior schools for minorities because few school districts could afford the cost of a dual system and
would inevitably cut corners with the schools for Mexicans and blacks. n150 Citing the work of Gunnar Myrdal and others, Carter also argued that racial
segregation demoralized and produced poor citizenship among minority individuals and thus contravened public policy. n151 The NAACP's brief was
cautious and incremental in arguing that segregation invariably led to spending differentials. At the same time, its social science was rudimentary,
relying as it did on studies of the adverse effects of segregation in general, rather than on studies showing that segregated education harmed minority
schoolchildren. n152 A second brief authored by a group of social scientists and submitted by lawyer and historian Carey McWilliams supplied many of
the links missing from the NAACP's brief. n153 The social scientists marshalled studies showing that young children were especially vulnerable to the
crippling effects of forced racial separation and were quick to absorb the lesson of their own inferiority. n154 Segregation became a psychologically
damaging "badge of inferiority" that could not be squared [*305] with the Fourteenth Amendment. n155 This more narrowly targeted argument was the
very one the NAACP would adopt, years later, in Brown v. Board of Education. n156 Although the Ninth Circuit affirmed the trial court opinion, it did so
on the narrow ground that California law lacked any provision for the segregation of the Mexican schoolchildren. n157 Two months later, Governor Earl
Warren eliminated that loophole by signing a bill repealing all of California's statutes requiring racial segregation. n158 Thus, official segregation in
California came to an end. While the appeal was pending, the NAACP sent their brief to William Hastie, one of the principal figures in the campaign
against segregated schooling. n159 Appreciating its significance, Hastie wrote to Thurgood Marshall, encouraging him to develop the argument
contained in the social scientists' brief, "with as little delay as possible." n160 Marshall agreed, and assigned Annette H. Peyser, a young staff member
with a background in social science, to do so. n161 She did, and other social scientists, learning of the NAACP's interest, pursued their own studies of the
intrinsic harm of forced racial separation, n162 many of which found their way into the graduate school litigation cases, n163 and ultimately into Brown
itself. n164 The Mendez case demonstrates that narrow nationalism not only deprives one of the opportunity to join with
other groups, n165 it also closes one off from the experiences and lessons of othe rs. It can conceal how the
American caste system, in a complex dance, disadvantages one group at one time and advantages it at another. n166 It can
[*306] disguise the way American society often affirmatively pits groups against one another , using them as agents
of each other's subordination, n167 or uses mistreatment of one group as a template for discrimination against
another. n168 Because almost all racial binaries consist of a nonwhite group paired with whites, they predispose
outgroups to focus excessively on whites, patterning themselves after and trying to gain concessions from them,
or aiming to assimilate into white society. n169
Black/White dichotomies pit different races against one another to entrench discrimination
Judith's entrancement with Bluebeard may stand as a metaphor for the dichotomous quality that afflicts much racial thought
today.
civil rights thinking deems a single group paradigmatic , n40
with the experiences and concerns of other groups receiving attention only insofar as they may be analogized to
those of this group. n41 Binary thinking often accompanies what is called "exceptionalism," the belief that one's [*291]
group is, in fact, so unusual as to justify special treatment , n42 as well as nationalism, the belief that the primary business
of a minority group should be to look after its own interests. n43 Consider now, the many ways that binary thinking - like
Judith's initial refusal to consider the fates of Bluebeard's three previous wives - can end up harming even the group whose fortunes
one is inclined to place at the center. 1. Shifting Tides: How Society Arranges Progress for One Group to Coincide with Repression of Another
The history of minority groups in America reveals that while one group is gaining ground, another is often
losing it. From 1846 to 1848, the United States waged a bloodthirsty and imperialist war against Mexico in which
it seized roughly one-third of Mexico's territory (and later colluded with crafty lawyers and land-hungry Anglos to cheat the Mexicans
who chose to remain in the United States of their lands guaranteed under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). n44 Yet only a few years later, the
North fought an equally bloody war against the South, ostensibly to free the slaves. n45 During Reconstruction (1865 to 1877), slavery
was disbanded, the Equal Protection Clause was ratified, and black suffrage was written into law. n46 Yet, this
generosity did not extend to Native Americans: In 1871, Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act, providing that no Indian
nation would be recognized as independent and capable of entering into a treaty with the United States. n47 A few years later, the Dawes Act
broke up land held jointly [*292] by tribes, resulting in the loss of nearly two-thirds of Indian lands . n48 In 1879,
n39 As scholars such as Juan Perea have pointed out, traditional
Article XIX of the California constitution n49 made it a crime for any corporation to employ Chinese workers. n50 And in 1882 Congress passed the
Chinese Exclusion Laws n51 that were soon upheld in Chae Chan Ping v. United States. n52 Goodwill toward one group, then, does not necessarily
translate into the same for others. In 1913, California's Alien Land Law n53 made it illegal for aliens ineligible for naturalization to lease land for more
than three years, a measure that proved devastating for the Japanese population, many of whom derived their livelihood from agriculture. n54 A few
years later, Congress eased immigration quotas for Mexicans because they were needed by large farm owners. n55 Go figure. During the first half of this
century, Indian boarding schools sought to erase Indian history and culture , n56 while California segregated black
and Chinese schoolchildren to preserve the purity of young Anglo girls. n57 Yet, in 1944, Lopez v. Seccombe n58 found
segregation of Mexicans from public parks to violate the Equal Protection Clause , n59 and a short time later a federal court
declared California's practice of requiring Mexican American children to attend separate [*293] schools unconstitutional. n60 And, in a horrific
twist, in the 1940s, the United States softened its stance toward domestic minorities, who were needed in the war
industries and as cannon fodder on the front, but turned its back on Jews fleeing the Holocaust. n61 Shortly after the war, at a time
when vistas were beginning to open up for returning black servicemen, Congress reversed its policy of giving United States citizenship to Filipino World
War II veterans. n62 Even today, the patchwork of progress for one group coming with retrenchment for another continues. For example, at a time when
Indian litigators are winning striking breakthroughs for tribes, n63 California has been passing a series of anti-Latino measures, including English-Only,
n64 Proposition 187, n65 and restrictions on bilingual education. n66 [*294] 2. Affirmative Pitting of One Disadvantaged Group Against
the Other Not only does binary thinking conceal the checkerboard of racial progress and retrenchment , it can
hide the way dominant society often casts minority groups against one another, to the detriment of both . For
example, in colonial America, white servants had been treated poorly . n67 In 1705, however, when the slave
population was growing, Virginia gave white servants more rights than they had enjoyed before, to keep them from
joining forces with slaves. n68 In the same era, plantation owners treated house slaves (frequently lighter skinned than their
outdoor counterparts) slightly better than those in the fields, recruited some of them to spy on their brothers and
sisters in the field, and rewarded them for turning in dissidents . n69 In the years immediately following the Civil War, southern
plantation owners urged replacing their former slaves, whom they were loath to hire for wages, with Chinese labor. n70 They succeeded: In 1868,
Congress approved the Burlingame Treaty with China, under which larger numbers of Chinese were permitted to travel to the United States. n71
Immediately following the Civil War, the Army recruited newly freed slaves to serve as Buffalo Soldiers putting down Indian rebellions in the West. n72
In People v. Hall, n73 the California Supreme Court used legal restrictions on blacks and Native Americans to justify banning Chinese from testifying
against whites in criminal trials. The court wrote: It can hardly be supposed that any Legislature would attempt... excluding domestic negroes and
Indians, who not unfrequently have correct notions of their obligations to society, and turning loose upon the community the more degraded tribes of the
same species, who have nothing in common with us, in language, country or laws. n74 [*295] Similarly, Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy
v. Ferguson staunchly rebuked segregation for blacks, but supported his point by disparaging the Chinese, who
had the right to ride with whites. n75 And, in 1912, when the House of Representatives debated the question of American citizenship for Puerto Ricans,
During California's
Proposition 187 campaign, proponents curried black votes by portraying Mexican immigrants as competitors
for black jobs. n77 Earlier, even the sainted George Sanchez exhorted his fellow Mexican Americans to oppose further emigration from Mexico, on
the ground that it would hurt Mexican Americans already here. n78 3. Over-Identification with Whites Sometimes the pitting of
one minority group against another, inherent in binary approaches to race, takes the form of exaggerated
identification with whites at the expense of other groups. For example, early in Mississippi's history, Asians sought to be declared
politicians used the supposed failure of other minority groups to justify withholding rights from the newly colonized. n76
white so that they could attend schools for whites. n79 Early litigators followed a similar "other white" policy on behalf of Mexican Americans, [*296]
arguing that segregation of Mexican Americans was illegal because only the variety directed against blacks or Asians was expressly countenanced by law.
n80 Chinese on the West Coast responded indignantly to People v. Hall, n81 the Chinese testimony case, on the grounds that it treated them the same as
supposedly inferior Negroes and Indians. n82 Later, Asian immigrants sought to acquire United States citizenship but learned that a naturalization
statute that had stood on the books for 150 years, beginning in 1790, denied citizenship to anyone other than whites. n83 In a series of cases, some
of which reached the United States Supreme Court, Asians
from China, Japan, and India sought to prove that they were
white. n84 Anglocentric norms of beauty divide the Latino and black communities, enabling those who most
closely conform to white standards to gain jobs and social acceptance, and sometimes to look down on their
darker-skinned brothers and sisters. n85 Box-checking also enables those of white or near-white appearance to
benefit from affirmative action without suffering the worst forms of social stigma and exclusion. n86
Latino/a Identity Impact

Attempting to fit Latinos/as into the black-white binary relegates them to the powerless othererases identity that cant be categorized by paradigms
AT Education Disparity on the FW debate- Latinos/as cant receive as much from the school system because of the way theyre classified in the
white/black system
Scholars refer to Latinos as both a racial and an ethnic group,52 but trying to classify Latinos in only one category (race or ethnicity)
illustrates the problematic nature of the categories themselves. If Latinos are viewed as a separate race in order
to be on par with African Americans, then their ethnic identity will have been collapsed into their racial identity.
Given the history of slavery and the continued demarcation line of skin color that have created the Black White racial
binary,53 there is little room within the racial framework for a distinct Latino racial category. Alternatively, if
Latinos are viewed only as an ethnic group, then to fit within the larger Black White binary they must also be
assigned to one of the two racial groups. As will be discussed later, the Census Bureau has taken this approach,
classifying Latinos as racially White in every decennial census except the 1930 Census.54 The only way for Latinos to receive
the full benefits of school desegregation is for the discourse to shift away from the restrictive BlackWhite 55
and race-ethnicity binaries. As Professor Jerome Culp suggests, the most important category of social construction may
not be the demarcation of race, ethnicity, or nationality, but that of other.56 The role of other connotes
powerlessness, and it is not necessary to distinguish among race, ethnicity, and nationality if one is in a
marginalized group. The classification of Non-White embodies otherness.
Black white binaries marginalize other forms of discrimination and excuse other forms of
racial violence
Binary thinking can also impair moral insight and reasoning for whites. Justice John Harlan, author of the famous dissent in
Plessy v. Ferguson, n87 wrote a shockingly disparaging opinion on the Chinese [*297] just a few years earlier in the Chinese Exclusion case, Chae Chan
Ping. n88 Recently, Asian American scholars have pointed out how the great Justice turns out to have suffered a blind spot that besmirches his
reputation. n89 Similarly, others have pointed out how Earl Warren, who enjoys towering fame as a liberal justice who
supported civil rights for blacks and, as governor of California, put an end to school segregation for Asian and Mexican American
schoolchildren, was a prime mover in the effort to remove Japanese Americans to concentration camps in the beginning
months of World War II. n90 Until recently, most historians and biographers embraced the official version in which
Warren played at most a minor role. n91 It seems quite likely that binary, monocular thinking made possible the
selective empathy that enabled these two famous figures to misstep as they did . n92 Binary thinking can easily
allow one to believe that America made only one historical mistake - for example, slavery. n93 If so, the prime order
of business is to redress that mistake by making its victims whole; the concerns of other groups would come
into play only insofar as they resemble, in kind and seriousness, that one great mistake. But simplifications of that form are
always debatable, never necessary, and rarely wise. As a leading Native American scholar put it: "To the Indian people it has
seemed quite unfair that churches and government agencies concentrated their efforts primarily on the blacks.
By defining the problem as one of race and making race refer solely to black, Indians were systematically excluded from
consideration." n94 The truth is that all the groups are exceptional; each has been racialized in different ways; none is the paradigm or template for
the others. n95 [*298] Blacks were enslaved. n96 Indians were massacred and then removed to the West . n97 Japanese
Americans were relocated in the other direction. n98 African Americans are stereotyped as bestial or happy-go-lucky, depending on society's shifting
needs; n99 Asians, as crafty, derivative copycats or soulless drones; n100 Mexicans as hot-tempered, romantic, or close to the earth. n101 Blacks are
racialized by reason of their color; Latinos, Indians, and Asians on that basis but also by reason of their accent,
national origin, and, sometimes, religion as well. All these groups were sought as sources of labor; Indians and
Mexicans, as sources of land. n102 Puerto Ricans, Indians, and Mexicans are racialized by reason of conquest. n103 Latinos, Indians, and Asians are
pressured to assimilate; blacks to do the opposite. n104 The matrix of race and racialization thus is constantly shifting, sometimes overlapping, for the
four main groups. n105 [*299] This differential racialization renders binary thinking deeply problematic. Consider the
recent trial of Ronald Ebens for the murder of Vincent Chin, whom he beat to death for being a "Jap"
supposedly responsible for the loss of jobs in the automobile industry . n106 After Ebens's first trial in Detroit, which resulted
in a twenty-five year jail sentence, was overturned for technical reasons, his attorney moved for a change of venue on the ground that Ebens could not be
tried fairly in that city. n107 The motion was successful, and the second trial was held in Cincinnati, where Ebens was acquitted. n108 A
United States Commission on Civil Rights report speculated that the acquittal resulted from the limitations of
the black/white paradigm of race, which may have misled the Cincinnati jury, sitting in a city where Asian Americans are
few, into disbelieving that racism against Asians played a part in the crime: The ultimate failure of the American justice
system to convict Ebens of civil rights charges, perhaps partly because of the Cincinnati jury's difficulty in believing in the existence
of anti-Asian hatred, also implies that many Americans view racial hatred purely as a black-white problem and
are unaware that Asian Americans are also frequently targets of hate crimes.
Invisibility of other races in relation to blacks and whites entrenches marginalization

Luna 3- JD U of Cali-Berkeley
(Eduardo, How the Black/White Paradigm Renders Mexicans/Mexican Americans and Discrimination Against Them Invisible, La Raza Law
Journal//MGD)
The omission of Mexican/Mexican American experiences extends far beyond legal academia. Indeed, Mexican/Mexican Americans
are
poorly represented in popular media such as the news, and the film, television, and music industries. The invisibility of
Mexicans/Mexican Americans is partly attributable to the Black/White paradigm. Scholars and popular media
alike almost exclusively utilize the Black/White paradigm to conceptualize race/ethnicity. The paradigm
promulgates Black experiences but fails to represent Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and other non-Black
minority groups adequately. The coverage of the Los Angeles riots by news media supports such an assertion .
The Los Angeles riots took place in late April and early May of 1992. The catalyst for the social unrest is largely attributed to the acquittal of the four
white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King. The resulting riot claimed 55 lives and injured more than 2,300 persons. More than one
thousand buildings were damaged or destroyed and the resulting property damage was estimated in the billions of dollars. Amont the images in the news
media presented were police officers beating Rodney King, Black rioters beating the White motorist Reginald Denny, confrontations between Korean
storeowners and rioters and finally, rioters looting. The news media paid considerable attention to the role racial/ethnic discrimination played in
precipitating the riots. However, the journalistic and scholarly works focused on the dynamics between Whites, Blacks
and Koreans. Mexicans/Mexican Americans were all but excluded from the discussion. Professor Perea notes that, only
on published article focuses exclusively on describing and explaining the role of Latinos during the Los Angeles riots. The anthology contains works by
Black, Asian, and White scholars. Their articles detail the perspectives of their respective communities concerning the riots. The anthologys analysis
is inexcusably incomplete, especially when considering the role Mexicans/Mexican Americans played in the riots. The majority of
the victims of early riot violence were Latinos. A full third of the dead victims of the riots were Latinos . Between
twenty and forty percent of the businesses damaged were Latino owned, and Latinos comprised one half of all the arrested. These statistics are far from
surprising because Latinos, primarily Mexicans/Mexican Americans, comprise over half of South Central Los Angeles population. Considering these
statistics, what should be surprising is the lack of attention visual and print media gave to Mexicans/Mexican Americans perspectives concerning the
riots. Media coverage and scholarly analyses of the Los Angeles riots provide a poignant example of how the
Black/White paradigm distorts the lens through which we view racial/ethnic group dynamics in the U nited States.
Under the Black/White paradigm, Mexicans/Mexican Americans are omitted from racial/ethnic analyses, their harms
and grievances are under-reported and their marginalization is exacerbated.
B/W Paradigm Alt

Debates are the key starting point for removing paradigms
Another objection that critics might raise to this work is that I am merely substituting another, nearly equalizing oppressive paradigm for the
Black/White binary paradigm. In other words, the critique would be that I am advocating a Black/White/Latino/a paradigm which would give
Latinos/as more visibility but would render even more invisible Asian Americans, Native Americans, Gypsies, and other racialized groups. This is not the
case. I have demonstrated that the Black/White binary paradigm renders invisible and irrelevant the history of every
group other than Whites and Blacks. The rest of us become part of the undifferentiated mass of minorities or
people of color. While I have used Mexican-American legal history to demonstrate the inadequacy of the
Black/White paradigm, and I have written from my point of view as a Latino scholar, I have used this history to
illustrate how much is lost in the service of normal science and research on race, and how the introduction of omitted history can
present a radically different picture of what we are taught to believe about the story of struggles for equality. I know that just as much is lost
regarding Asian-American and Native-American legal history. In like manner, scholars must also present this
omitted history prominently as part of the development of constitutional law and other legal subjects. My argument is really an
argument against the use of paradigms of race, against orthodox attempts to understand the experiences of
every racialized group by analogy to Blacks, and for the development of particularized understanding of the histories of each and every
racialized group. Finally, I do not see my efforts as divisive. If anything, the paradigm I criticize is divisive because of its silencing
of many groups. Coalition between Blacks and Latinos/as, for example, depends upon Latinos/as being active
participants in debates about racism and racial justice. It requires mutual understanding of the particularities
of each others condition and of the particular ways in which White racism affects members of different groups.
Debates about race must account for class and cultural similarities
From a somewhat different tack, both Brumann and Sewell argue that a key dimension of deployments of the
culture concept is its

ability to reference a general aspect of human activity acquired through learning (in contrast to instinct) that systematically
imbues material and social relations with meaning. Sewell observes, This distinction between culture as theoretical category and culture as concrete and
bounded body of beliefs is . . . seldom made.Yet it seems to me crucial for thinking clearly about cultural theory. 18 With this distinction in place, one
can invoke culture in relation to race without delineating or implying discrete, essentialized forms , such as
white culture and black culture. Such an approach has been crucial to my work on whiteness in the United States.19 There are
certainly plenty of reasons for depicting starkly opposed, racial perspectives on topics of contemporary concern such as
whether racism is declining or whether affirmative action should be supported or discontinuedbut just as striking to
me are the overarching commonalities that white and black Americans share in viewing the world in
characteristically American cultural terms. In my ethnographic fieldwork in three distinct neighborhoods in Detroit an innercity, underclass zone; an adjacent gentrifying area; and an outlying working-class neighborhood I found, in each of these sites, local idioms
and discourses that whites and blacks speak with varying degrees of commonality in positioning themselves, neighbors, and
strangers in relation to identities marked in terms of both class and race. 20 These commonalities are linked to class
structures that cross racial lines and that turn on charged intraracial contests over belonging and difference. Such idioms are cultural but do
not parse along the racial lines of whiteness and blackness. Other ethnographers studying racial dynamics in the United States have also identified
discursive forms that whites and people of color share.21 Steven Gregorys study of black middle-class homeowners is an excellent example.22 Gregorys
attention to the construction of black class identities through the political culture of grass-roots activism (17)
opens a view onto social forms that operate across racial lines and yet are also distinctly inflected in the process of
racial formation. In analyzing the way black middle-class residents of Queens speak a homeowners discourse, Gregory revealsin
concerns over local social service agencies and their clients points of interracial commonalities along the lines of class
interests. Furthermore, Gregorys account of how these homeowners interpret, debate, and publicly perform the
present meanings of black class divisions and racial identities (ibid.) provides a nuanced reading of processes of
racial identification and disidentification that would not be possible either by relying solely upon the concept of race
or by paying too little attention to cultural dynamics.
Inquiry into the histories of other racial groups is k/t solve marginalization
The very conscious recognition and use of White-against-Black racism
as a paradigm , while a significant step towards clarity in the
intellectual tools we use to understand racism, also has its limitation s. Feagin and Vera assert that deeper inquiry into the paradigmatic
relationship is a necessary condition for understanding the racism experienced by any other racialized American minority groups. They assert, in
essence, that normal, paradigmatic research is the key to solving pervasive, multiple racisms. The Black/White paradigm, thus asserted, may become an
even more unyielding and impenetrable form of study and discourse than it was before. All other racial studies must be dependent upon the results of
normal science. In my view, Feagin
and Vera are wrong in asserting that a deeper understanding of the Black-White
relationship will be necessary to promote understanding of the particularities of other racisms. I agree with Feagin and Vera that
an understanding of White-against-Black racism may be helpful in understanding the deployment of racism against other non-Whites, for example in
understanding the persistent use and tolerance of segregation against non-White peoples. However, an exclusive focus on the Black-White
relationship, and the concomitant marginalization of other people of color, can operate to prevent understanding
of other racisms and to obscure their particular operation. For example, the attribution of foreignness to
Latinos/as and Asian Americans, or discrimination on the basis of language or accent, are powerful dynamics as
played out against these groups that do not appear to be as significant in the dynamics of White-against-Black racism . Thus
the White Racism books, spanning three decades, all reproduce and reify the same Black/White binary paradigm of race. In Kuhns terminology, these
books represent the normal science of scholarship on White racism, consisting of exploration and elaboration of the Black/White binary paradigm.
Only the most recent White racism book, by Feagin and Vera, makes explicit the Black-White paradigm and its key assumption: that somehow a deeper
understanding of the Black-White relationship will yield understanding of the racism experienced by Latinos/as, Asian Americans, Native Americans,
and other racialized American groups. After three decades of books on White Racism focusing only on racism against Blacks, one can fairly ask how
much anyone understands about racism against Latinos/as and the particular forms that such racism takes? The obvious answer is not very much. For
example, one could study the American Black/White relationship forever and never understand the language and accent discrimination faced by many
Latinos/as and Asian Americans. Today Latinos/as can be fired from their jobs merely for speaking Spanish in the workplace, and Asian Americans can
be passed over for hire because their accent is not quite right. Despite nominal statutory protection from such discrimination under the national origin
provisions of Title VII, the courts remain almost uniformly indifferent and find no actionable discrimination in such cases. The reason for this
indifference is that such discrimination does not fit the Black/White binary paradigm of race discrimination.
Redressing the particular forms of discrimination experienced by Latinos/as, Asian Americans, Native
Americans and other racialized groups requires very careful inquiry into the particular histories of these groups
and the forms of discrimination they have experienced. But recognition of the importance and particularity of groups other than Blacks and Whites
requires inquiry well beyond the paradigm, inquiry beyond the current bounds of normal science and research. From the point of view of LatCrit
studies, then, the issue becomes why there is such a rigid and unyielding commitment to an exclusively Black-
White understanding of race that is clearly underinclusive and inaccurate. Robert Blauner, writing in 1972, recognized and
forcefully criticized the Black/White binary paradigm. His critique may be applied generally to scholar who have embraced and reified the binary
paradigm while ignoring actual racial complexity. Blauner noted that Mexican Americans cannot be understood within the confines of the Black/White
paradigm not the model of immigration and assimilation. The encounter between Mexican-Americans and the United States is sui generis, it cannot be
forced into the ethnic model of immigration-assimilation nor into the category of black/white relations. That is why Chicanos, painfully aware of their
unique history, resent and resist being classified, interpreted, or understood through analogs with the Afro-American.
Erasing the black/white binary solves for liberation from discrimination

Minority groups in the United States should consider abandoning all binaries, narrow nationalisms, and
strategies
that focus on cutting the most favorable possible deal with whites, and instead set up a secondary market in
which they negotiate selectively with each other. For example, instead of approaching the establishment
supplicatingly, in hopes of a more favorable admission formula at an elite school or university system, Asians might approach African
Americans with the offer of a bargain. That bargain might be an agreement on the part of the latter group to support Asians with respect to
an issue important to them - for example, easing immigration restrictions or supporting bilingual education in public schools - in return for their own
promise not to pursue quite so intently rollbacks in affirmative action or set-asides for black contractors. The idea would be for minority
groups to assess their own preferences and make tradeoffs that will , optimistically, bring gains for all concerned.
Some controversies may turn out to be polycentric, presenting win-win possibilities so that negotiation can advance goals important to both sides
without compromising anything either group deems vital. Like a small community that sets up an informal system of barter, exchanging jobs
and
services moneylessly, thus reducing sales and income taxes, this approach would reduce the number of times minorities
approach whites hat in hand. Some gains may be achievable by means of collective action alone. When it is
necessary to approach whites for something, a nonbinary framework allows that approach to be made in full
force. It also deprives vested interests of the opportunity to profit from flattery, false compliments, and mock sympathy ("Oh, your terrible history.
Your group is so special. Why don't we...."). Ignoring the siren song of binaries opens up new possibilities for coalitions
based on level-headed assessment of the chances for mutual [*307] gain. It liberates one from dependence on a
system that has advanced minority interests at best sporadically and unpredictably . It takes interest convergence to a new
dimension. Bluebeard's Castle could just as easily have served as an allegory about gender imbalance and the social construction of marriage between
unequals. Although Bell does not draw this lesson from it, it is certainly as implicit in the French fairy tale as the lesson Bell extracts about black
progress. Seen through this other lens, a straightforward solution, one that Judith apparently never contemplated, would have been to engage in
collaborative action with Bluebeard's three previous wives against their common oppressor, the gloomy noble bent on subjugating them all - in short, an
injection of feminist solidarity. Persisting in an unsuccessful strategy, waging it with more and more energy, can prove a
counsel of despair. Sometimes, as with the black/white binary, one needs to turn a thought structure on its side ,
look at it from a different angle, and gain some needed distance from it, before the path to liberation becomes clear.
AT Marginalizes Black Oppression
They misunderstand the argument- Black history is a cornerstone of racial studies but we
should analyze other instances or racial injustice as well
One might object that I am distorting history by suggesting that slavery and the experience of Black Americans
has not been of central importance in the formation of American society. I believe this objection misunderstands my
arguments. There can be no question, I think, that slavery and the mistreatment of Blacks in the United States were
crucial building blocks of American society. The fact that the text of the Constitution protects slavery in so many places demonstrates the
importance of slavery in the foundation of the country. The constitutional, statutory and judicial attempts to create more equality for Blacks, imperfect as
these all have been, correspond to the history of mistreatment of Blacks. My argument is not that this history should not be an
important focus of racial studies. Rather, my argument is that the exclusive focus on the development of
equality doctrines based solely on the experience of Blacks, and the exclusive focus of most scholarship on the
Black-White relationship, constitutes a paradigm which obscures and prevents the understanding of other
forms of inequality, those experienced by non-White, non-Black Americans. The Black/White binary paradigm,
by defining only Blacks and Whites as relevant participants in civil rights discourse and struggle, tends to produce
and promote the exclusion of other racialized peoples, including Latinos/as, Asian Americans and Native
Americans, from this crucial discourse which affects us all. This exclusion is both the power and the stricture of the Black/White binary paradigm. Its
power derives from the fact that a limited subject of inquiry makes possible the study of the Black-White relationship in extraordinary detail and with
great insight. Its stricture, however, is that it has limited severely our understanding of how White racism operates with particularity against other
racialized people. Furthermore, the binary paradigm renders the particular histories of other racialized peoples
irrelevant to an understanding of the only racism- White racism against Blacks- that the paradigm defines to be important. This perceived
irrelevance is why the history of Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans is so frequently missing
from the texts that structure our thinking about race.
AT K of Latino/a
The term latino is part of strategic essentialism- our discourse has the goal of revealing social
inequality and mobilizing against it
While abstract conceptions of race have existed for centuries, the origin of a common Latino identity is uncertain. As employed in
contemporary American society, the Latino group label generally applies to those with Central American, South
American, or Caribbean heritage. Though the use of the term Latino has been criticized as overly broad 57 and
arguably repeats the same sort of essentialization I seek to avoid through deconstructing the WhiteNon-White
paradigm,58 my approach is to be, in Professor Stephanie Wildmans term, strategically essentialist59 with the goal of
illuminating socially constructed inequality . Latinos in the United States share many commonalties, illustrated by the shared social
treatment of those labeledand thus viewedas Latinos,60 and by their economic position.61 The mutable, non-fixed nature of group
identity is illustrated by the perception that Latinos who were not born in the U nited States must learn to per-form the
American Latino identity.62 Despite variations in the education levels, income, and political power that may
distinguish Chicanos, Puertoriqquenos, Cuban Americans, and those with Central or South American heritage ,
Latino students uniformly face increasing levels of school segregation in all parts of the country.63
***Community Bad K***

Attempting to solve minorities rights through inclusion ensures violence
Glowacka 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Community and the Work of Death: Thanato-Ontology in Hannah Arendt and Jean-Luc Nancy,
Dorota Glowacka ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HUMANITIES; ADJUNCT PROFESSOR MA(Wroclaw), PhD(SUNY)
Reflecting on the correlation between nationalism and totalitarianism, Arendt presses the question about
multi-ethnic national communities, which were artificially carved out by the Peace Treaty of Versailles, and in which
different 'proper names', circumscribed by often conflicting political stakes, were monstrously lumped together .
Arendt reflects on what she believes to have been the colossal failure of the Versailles and minority treaties of 1918-1919, and on the
plight of the millions of stateless and minority people who, as a result of this 'disastrous experiment' (1973: 270),
had lost a political guarantee of their supposedly inalienable human rights and thus suddenly found themselves as if
outside the pale of humanity altogether. As Nancy's list of bloodied proper names dramatically manifests, after
World War II, the precarious condition of the stateless people and of the ethnic minorities in Europe only
became aggravated, and today, the question not only remains urgent but also has become pressing on the global scale.6 In
'The Nazi Myth', Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe augment Arendt's analysis by identifying t he correlation between the flourishing of the
totalizing communitarian myths and the metaphysical logic of subjective identification .
Ideas of community create binaries between insiders and outsiders-leads to passivity in the
face of genocide
Glowacka 06- PhD from SUNY, Professor of Humanities at University of Kings College (Dorota,
Community and the Work of Death: Thanato-Ontology in Hannah Arendt and Jean-Luc Nancy, Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006)
http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewArticle/38/46//MGD)
'Why is the idea of community so powerful that it is possible for its members to willingly die for such limited imaginings?'
(Anderson, 1983: 7) The anthropologist's answer is that the Western conception of community has been founded on the mythical bond of death between
its members, who identify themselves as subjects through the apology of the dead heroes. Yet is not this endless
recitation of prosopopeia, which serves as the self-identificatory apparatus par excellence, also the most deadly mechanism of
exclusion? Whose voices have been foreclosed in the self-addressed movement of the epitaph? Indeed, who, in turn, will have to suffer a
death that is absolute, whose negativity will not be sublated into the good of communal belonging, so that community can
perpetuate itself? 'Two different deaths': it is the 'they' who will perish, without memory and without a
remainder, so that the 'we' can be endlessly resurrected and blood can continue to flow in the veins of the
communal body, the veins now distended by the pathos of this recitation. The question I would like to ask in this paper is whether there can be the
thinking of community that interrupts this sanguinary logic. A collectivity that projects itself as unified presence has been the
predominant figure of community in the West. Such community reveals itself in the splendor of full presence, 'presence to
self, without flaw and without any outside' (Nancy, 2001:15; 2003a: 24), through the re-telling of its foundational myth. By infinitely
(self)communicating the story of its inauguration, community ensures its own transcendence and immortality. For Jean-Luc
Nancy, this immanent figure of community has impeded the 'true' thinking of community as being-together of
humans. Twelve years after writing his seminal essay 'The Inoperative Community', Nancy contends that 'this earth is anything but a sharing of
humanity -- it is a world lacking in world' (2000: xiii). In Being Singular Plural (1996), Nancy returns to Heidegger's discussion of Mitsein (Being-with)
in Being and Time, in order to articulate an ontological foundation of being-together or being-in-common and thus to move away from the homogenizing
idiom of community. Departing from Heidegger's habit of separating the political and the philosophical, however, Nancy situates his analysis
in the context of global ethnic conflicts, the list of which he enumerates in the 'Preface',3 and to which he returns, toward the end of the
book, in 'Eulogy for the Mle (for Sarajevo, March 1993)'. The fact that Nancy has extended his reflection on the modes of beingtogether to include different global areas of conflict indicates that he is now seeking to re-think 'community' in a
perspective that is no longer confined to the problematic of specifically Western subjectivity . This allows me to add to
Nancy's 'necessarily incomplete' list the name of another community-in-conflict: the Polish-Jewish community, and to consider, very briefly, the tragic
fact of the disappearance of that community during the events of the Holocaust and in its aftermath. Within a Nancean problematic, it is possible to
argue that the history of this community in Poland, which has been disastrous to the extent that it is now virtually extinct, is related, as in Sarajevo, to a
failure of thinking community as Being-with. What I would like to bring out of Nancy's discussion, drawing on the Polish example in particular, is that
rethinking community as being-in-common necessitates the interruption of the myth of communal death by
death understood as what I would refer to, contra Heidegger, as 'dying-with' or 'Being-in-common-towards-death'. Although Nancy himself is reluctant
to step outside the ontological horizon as delineated by Dasein's encounter with death and would thus refrain from such formulations, it is when he
reflects on death (in the closing section of his essay 'Of Being Singular Plural' in Being Singular Plural), as well as in his analysis of the 'forbidden'
representations of Holocaust death in Au fond des images (2003b), that he finds Heidegger's project to be lacking (en sufferance). This leads me to a
hypothesis, partly inspired by Maurice Blanchot's response to Nancy in The Unavowable Community (1983), that the failure of experiencing
the meaning of death as 'dying-with' is tantamount to the impossibility of 'Being-with'. In the past and in the present, this
failure has culminated in acts of murderous, genocidal hatred, that is, in attempts to erase a collectivity's
proper name, and it is significant that many of the proper names on Nancy's list fall under the 1948 United Nations'
definition of the genocide as 'acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or
religious group'.4 The Polish national narrative has been forcefully structured by communal identification in
terms of the work of death, resulting in a mythical construction from which the death of those who are perceived as
other must be excluded. It is important to underscore that the history of Polish-Jewish relations has never been marred by violence of genocidal
proportions on the part of the ethnic Poles. I will argue nevertheless that what
this history discloses is a fundamental failure to

produce modes of co-habitation grounded in ontological being-in-common. As became tragically apparent
during the Holocaust and in its aftermath, Poles' disidentification with their Jewish neighbors led to an overall
posture of indifference toward (and in some cases direct complicity in) their murder. Again, I will contend that this
failure of 'Being-with' in turn reveals a foreclosure of 'dying-with' in the Polish mode of communal belonging, that is, a violent
expropriation of the Jewish death. At this fraught historical juncture of ontology and politics, I find it fruitful to engage Nancy's forays into
the thinking of death and the community with Hannah Arendt's reflection on the political and social space. In 'The Nazi Myth' (1989), which Nancy coauthored with Lacoue-Labarthe, Arendt's definition of ideology as a self-fulfilling logic 'by which a movement of history is explained as one consistent
process' (The Origins of Totalitarianism, qtd in Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, 1989: 293) is the starting point for the analysis of the myth. Nancy and
Lacoue-Labarthe elaborate Aredn't analysis in order to argue that the will to mythical identification, which saw its perverse
culmination in the extermination of European Jews during the Nazi era, is inextricable from the general
problematic of the Western metaphysical subject. It is also in that essay that Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe condemn 'the thought that
puts itself deliberately (or confusedly, emotionally) at the service of an ideology behind which it hides, or from whose struggle it profits', citing
Heidegger's ten month-involvement with National Socialism as an example par excellence.
Reject the aff- Rejection is the only way to deconstruct the myth of the community
Morin 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Putting Community Under Erasure: Derrida and Nancy on the Plurality of Singularities Marie-Eve Morin
Department of Philosophy. 3-45 Assiniboia Hall. University of Alberta.
Thus the community of human beings excludes animals,
and the community of beings in general excludes ghosts. To escape

this double violence, it is necessary, according to Derrida, to cut the bond that binds me to, or excludes me
from, a group. Only then will there be an experience of the other, or a relation to the other, which will respect and do
justice to its otherness, its difference. Though Nancy does not criticise fraternity directly, his discussion of the
interruption of myth serves the same purpose. The myth presents the community to the community itself ; it is the
identificatory mechanism of a community. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy explain: A myth is a fiction in the strong, active sense
of shaping or moulding, or as Plato himself says, of 'plasticity': it is a fictionning, whose role is to propose, if not to
impose, models and types, -- types by whose imitation an individual ' or a city, or a whole people ' can grasp and
identify itself. (Lacoue-Labarthe & Nancy, 1991: 34) The interruption of myth means that it becomes impossible for us to
represent our common origin. Because the genealogical relation rests on a phantasmatic commonality of origin,
the loss of common origin means the impossibility of recognising each other as brother. In their having been
interrupted, myths do not disappear, but they no longer function as the ground of communal belonging: it becomes
impossible for us to gather around the narration of our common origin . The interruption does not build a community , it unworks it, that is, it lets a space open in the identification of the community with itself. This un-working is the active
incompleteness of community: it prevents the community from effecting itself as work.
2NC O/V
The affs appeal to community replicates the failed efforts at social integration of incongruous
groups which followed the Treaty of Versailles and precipitated the Second World War
Forced multiethnic inclusion is the disastrous experiment- leads to intra-community
resentment and anger- thats Glowacka
The alternative is to reject the myth of community- Morin indicates this is not a cold-hearted
abandonment of empathy or fraternity, but rather a protest against the forced shaping to
norms which occur in communities and lead to indifference and hostility
-Identity Erasure
Communities lead to identity erasure- neutralize difference

Morin 06- prof of philosophy at the University of Alberta (Marie-Eve, Putting Community Under Erasure: Derrida
and Nancy on the Plurality of Singularities, Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006)
First, communities tend to neutralise differences by treating all
members as brothers, that is, as the same. The other

belongs to my community only insofar as he is like me, and the 'us' - - the group of those who belong together -- appears as
a homogeneous group. It is because of this tendency to homogenise that fraternity can include apparent nonbrothers (such as women) and that the fraternal community can present itself as universal . The woman gets
included in fraternity when she becomes a brother for humanity, that is, when she is not (completely) woman anymore. Because
'man' is the archetype of humanity and 'brother' the archetype of the relation between siblings, the woman can become human
or sibling only insofar as she resembles the archetypes of 'man' or 'brother '. Fraternity as a process of
universalisation is a process of inclusion, but here 'to include' means to neutralise difference. Second, communities
are inscribed in a field of opposition; they define themselves in an oppositional logic, by excluding 'them,' that is, those who
do not belong, those who are not 'brothers,' not 'the same'. If I can identify my brothers, then by using the same criterion, I can also identify those
who are not my brothers. All groups function in the same way: they define a criterion which functions as a wall erected around
the group, a wall filled with certain type of openings that let only the right elements in. Of course, some criteria of
appurtenance are more inclusive than others because they are shared by more people. But no matter how inclusive
a group is, it is always possible to find elements that are excluded. Thus the community of human beings excludes animals, and
the community of beings in general excludes ghosts. To escape this double violence, it is necessary, according to Derrida, to cut the
bond that binds me to, or excludes me from, a group. Only then will there be an experience of the other, or a
relation to the other, which will respect and do justice to its otherness, its difference. Though Nancy does not criticise
fraternity directly, his discussion of the interruption of myth serves the same purpose. The myth presents the community to the community itself; it is
the identificatory mechanism of a community. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy explain: A myth is a fiction in the strong, active sense of shaping or moulding,
or as Plato himself says, of 'plasticity': it is a fictionning, whose role is to propose, if not to impose, models and types, -- types by whose imitation an
individual ' or a city, or a whole people ' can grasp and identify itself. (Lacoue-Labarthe & Nancy, 1991: 34) The interruption of myth means
that it becomes impossible for us to represent our common origin . Because the genealogical relation rests on a phantasmatic
commonality of origin, the loss of common origin means the impossibility of recognising each other as brother. In their
having been interrupted, myths do not disappear, but they no longer function as the ground of communal belonging: it
becomes impossible for us to gather around the narration of our common origin. The interruption does not
build a community, it un-works it, that is, it lets a space open in the identification of the community with itself.
This un-working is the active incompleteness of community: it prevents the community from effecting itself as work.
-Ext: Community Bad

Community is oppositional- creates war and ethnic cleansing
Norris 2k- PhD in political philosophy from UC Santa Barbara, assistant prof at UC Santa
Barbara (Andrew, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Myth of the Common, Constellations Volume 7, No 2, 2000, Wiley//MGD)
Nancy, however, is deeply suspicious of this understanding of community. On his account, the move from the
individual to the community will do us no good if the community is understood as being a subject of the same
sort as the individual. In the end this will only produce a politics of identity in which different identities and interests
are defined in opposition to one another. Though this is an implication of the communitarian argument that Sandel and Taylor do not
emphasize, it is clearly recognized by Hegel, who argues that war is a fundamental possibility of political life, one that is not entirely regrettable. It is a
fundamental possibility because the state is, vis--vis other states, an individual, and individuality essentially implies negation. Hence
even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an
opposite and create an enemy.10 And it is not an absolute evil because war allows for the display of martial courage, in which the citizen
transcends his limited position and becomes one with the universal in the form of the state.11 External conflict and its possible glorification is
not the only or even the most pressing danger Nancy would associate with the politics of communal identity. He
argues that conceiving of the community or the state as a subject entails that we understand the community to have
an identity that is immanent to it, and that needs to be brought out, and put to work. In Nancys terminology, the
community as subject necessarily implies the community as subject-work. If ones true or higher or more universal
self is found in ones shared communal identity, it becomes the work of politics to acknowledge and bring forth that
immanent communal identity. This will entail not merely conflict with other political identities, but the
purification of ones own community. To realize their political identity, Serbians must unite so as to become
more truly Serbian; doing so requires that they slough off what is not truly Serbian. Put more bluntly, it requires
that they cleanse their community of foreigners, and rid themselves of the influence of such. In Nancys terms, people like Milosevic
seek to put community to work. When it is not simply the blind pursuit of power or the expression of base passions, politics for such people is a matter
of discovering the immanent or implicit identity of a group and setting it to work, drawing it out and allowing it to express itself in functional activity.
The conception of politics as work thus relies upon and follows from the conception of community as immanent identity: Community
understood as work or through its works would presuppose that the common being, as such, be objectifiable
and producible.12
Rejecting political agency creates border-like divides between different communities
Mitropoulos and Neilson 06- **PhD from Yale, professor at the Institute for Culture and Society
at the University of Western Sydney (Angela and Brett, Cutting Democracy's Knot,
Therefore, alongside the democracy of the market--and in relation to European premonitions of a globally extended constitution and citizenship-- there
is the democracy of the border. It is well known that the border, no matter how constantly it recomposes itself, entails
processes of selective inclusion as well as exclusion. But, contrary to recent insistences that the border constitutes (according to
Etienne Balibar, among others) the 'non-democratic' element of the demos, democracy no less than the market is the democratic element par excellence
in the foundation of citizenship and politics. This is to say, there can be no democracy without the border. Even if that border is
imagined as coextensive with the circumference of the planet itself, the
border as a technology of inclusion-exclusion can still

function, whether as the internal demarcation between 'passive' and 'active' forms of citizenship (which can be
traced in the historically parallel trajectories of the granting of citizenship to more people alongside increasing
stratifications within citizenship), or in the recourse to the revocation of citizenship itself, whose criteria and
rulings have by no means disappeared but, today, proliferate. This is merely to note the formal operations of citizenship laws,
without having touched on the casual operations of border technologies, as they are articulated through, say, the police checkpoints in the banlieues no
less than in the demands that migrants (whether this status as a migrant is legal or semantic) must continually prove their belonging. In any case,
without the border, there is neither demos nor kratos. This is why Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri can call, in the final chapters of
Empire (2000), for a global citizenship under the sign of 'absolute democracy'. Yet, t he
diplomacy that might seemingly favour the

proposition of democracy as an empty placeholder for the question of 'constituent power' fails to confront the politics of the
demos and the kratos that invocations of democracy set to work, not least because diplomacy is already a
technique of statecraft and a form of address that distinguishes and fuses kratos and demos.
Rejection alt
Rejection of their plan creates a different mode of politics
Mitropoulos 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Home About Log In Register Search Current Archives Reviews InterZone CSeARCH Cutting
Democracy's Knot Angela Mitropoulos
The possibility of, as we would put it,
a non-sovereign decision--of a distributed or diffuse decision that does not rely

on the mystical and auto-representative identity of the people--is the question around which the critique of
democracy turns. And while one might frame such a decision around, say, the way in which languages or forms of
life might change, the attempt to reign it back to some new political subject, figured either as the many or the
one, reinstates the endless oscillation between citizen and subject on the terrifyingly familiar and empty
grounds of democracy as we know it. Democracy, we argue, binds us, and what 'us' might mean, in certain ligatures. It leaves us
bound in an indissoluble knot, where divergent tendencies--the many and the one, citizen and subject, law and
sovereignty, society and community--tighten against each other in ways that are at once mutually reinforcing and
mutually antagonistic. To cut this knot involves a kind of total risk. It means breaking the swing between abstract
formalism and substantive identity that democracy, as a political form, 'manages' but also is. And, thus, far from amounting to a radical
gesture, cutting this knot is the uninsurable action that restores politics as a question of relation, of the tie and the
decision to tie or not, of who it is that might enter into relation, and so on. These are the questions through which politics as a
praxis might be reopened. It is, in short, a break for freedom that cannot be integrated to the tendencies of the
day but which slices through the present with an incision that scrambles all tenses and leaves the political up for grabs.
Perm Answer
It obviously links the 1AC was riddled with notions of community and inclusion; you cant
undue a speech act.
The permutation fails- it reinforces notions of community and agreement that erase difference
Secomb 2K (Fractured Community Linnell Secomb Special Issue: Going Australian: Reconfiguring Feminism and Philosophy Volume 15, Issue 2,
pages 133150, May 2000
Despite these deficiencies within liberal Enlightenment universalism, Benhabib argues that a
post-Enlightenment universalism is still

viable. This, she suggests, would be "interactive not legislative, cognizant of gender difference not gender blind ,
contextually sensitive and not situation indifferent" (1992, 3). Benhabib proposes a universalist theory of community
which attempts to overcome the problems of Enlightenment thinking . This vision of community involves a "a
discursive, communicative concept of rationality"; "the recognition that the subjects of reason are finite, embodied
and fragile creatures, and not disembodied cogitos or abstract unities of transcendental apperception"; and "a shift from legislative to interactive
rationality" (1992, 56). This reformulated universalist model of community would be founded on "a moral
conversation in which the capacity to reverse perspectives, that is, the willingness to reason from the others'
point of view, and the sensitivity to hear their voice is paramount" (1992, 8). Benhabib argues that this model does not assume
that consensus can be reached but that a "reasonable agreement" can be achieved. This formulation of community on the basis of a
conversation in which perspectives can be reversed, also implies a new understanding of identity and alterity. Instead of the generalized other, Benhabib
argues that ethics, politics, and community must engage with the concrete or particular other. A theory that only engages with the generalized other sees
the other as a replica of the self. In order to overcome this reductive assimilation of alterity, Benhabib formulates a univetsalist community which
recognizes the concrete other and which allows us to view others as unique individuals (1992, 10). Benhabib's critique of universalist liberal theory and
her formulation of an alternative conversational model of community are useful and illuminating. However, I suggest that her vision still
assumes the desirability of commonality and agreement, which, I argue, ultimately destroy difference. Her
vision of a community of conversing alterities assumes sufficient similarity between alterities so that each can
adopt the point of view of the other and, through this means, reach a "reasonable agreement." She assumes the
necessity of a common goal for the community that would be the outcome of the "reasonable agreement."
Benhabib's community, then, while attempting to enable difference and diversity, continues to assume a commonality of
purpose within community and implies a subjectivity that would ultimately collapse back into sameness. Moreover,
Benhabib's formulation of community, while rejecting the fantasy of consensus, nevertheless privileges
communication, conversation, and agreement. This privileging of communication assumes that all can
participate in the rational conversation irrespective of difference. Yet this assumes rational interlocutors, and rationality
has tended, both in theory and practice, to exclude many groups and individuals, including: women, who are
deemed emotional and corporeal rather than rational ; non-liberal cultures and individuals who are seen as intolerant
and irrational; and minoritarian groups who do not adopt the authoritative discourses necessary for rational
exchanges. In addition, this ideal of communication fails to acknowledge the indeterminacy and multiplicity of meaning in all speech and writing. It
assumes a singular, coherent, and transparent content. Yet, as Gayatri Spivak writes: "the verbal text is constituted by concealment
as much as revelation. [T]he concealment is itself a revelation and visa versa" (Spivak 1976, xlvi). For Spivak, Jacques Derrida, and other
deconstructionists, all communication involves conttadiction, inconsistency, and heterogeneity. Derrida's concept of
diffrance indicates the inevitable deferral and displacement of any final coherent meaning. The apparently rigorous
and irreducible oppositions that structure language, Derrida contends, are a fiction. These mutually exclusive dichotomies turn out to
be interrelated and interdependent: their meanings and associations, multiple and ambiguous (Derrida 1973, 1976). While Benhabib's
objective is clearly to allow all groups within a community to participate in this rational conversation, her formulation fails to recognize either
that language is as much structured by miscommunication as by communication, or that many groups are
silenced or speak in different discourses that are unintelligible to the majority . Minority groups and discourses
are frequently ignored or excluded from political discussion and decisionmaking because they do not adopt the
dominant modes of authoritative and rational conversation that assume homogeneity and transparency. The feminist critiques of
community have usefully revealed the exclusion of difference and the abstraction from the specificity of
corporeal existence which characterize the dominant philosophical models of community. Many feminist theorists, however, continue to endorse
the apparent necessity of a final agreement or a unifying solidarity within community. While some, like Young, propose an alternative politics "conceived
as a relationship of Strangers" (Young 1992, 234), there continues, even in this endorsement of heterogeneity, to be an assumption that
these diverse strangers would share a common goal and that this would be the basis for the polity. The goal for Young is a radical,
egalitarian democratic politics (24856) which enables the differentiation, variety, eroticism, and publicity of city life (23641). While Young overcomes
the liberal and communitarian imperative of unity and fusion of identity she continues to endorse a commonality in the goal and purpose of community.
I suggest, however, that this risks the re-creation of an affinity between the strangers of the city which would once
again undermine their difference through a fusion of common political projects and goals which would create a merging
of alterity into an identity founded on common purpose. In order to overcome the unifying and totalizing tendency of community it is necessary both to
emphasize the specificity of citizens, as Benhabib has done, and the radical differences of strangers within the polity which is the basis of Young's
formulation of city life. However, in order to avoid a final conflation into sameness through the creation of a common
goal it is also necessary to envisage a community without common ends and projects . Jean-Luc Nancy's work on
UNWORKING COMMUNITY
a radical departure from the universalist conceptions of both community and
community develops this possibility by describing community as an "unworking" without common purpose.
Nancy's thinking on community marks
subjectivity. Nancy's vision of community and singularity, formulated in the light of Heidegger's Dasein and Mitsein, puts in question accepted ideas
about human existence and society (Heidegger 1992). For Nancy, as for Heidegger, the human existence is not an individual, subject, or citizen, but, in
Heidegger's terms, a "being-there," or in Nancy's, a "singularity." For Nancy, the human existence is a singularity that is from the outset an inclining
towards others and a sharing with and exposure to others.
The holocaust was not an aberration- the western conception of community ensures
totalitarianism and genocide will break out
Norris 2K (Jean-Luc Nancy and the Myth of the Common Andrew Norris Constellations Volume 7, No 2, 2000.
When it is not simply the blind pursuit of power or the expression of base passions, politics for such people is a
matter of discovering the immanent or implicit identity of a group and setting it to work, drawing it out and
allowing it to express itself in functional activity . The conception of politics as work thus relies upon and follows
from the conception of community as immanent identity: Community understood as work or through its works would
presuppose that the common being, as such, be objectifiable and producible.12 If this is taken to suggest that
Hegel or Sandel are indistinguishable from Nazis and racist Serbian nationalists, one would surely be right to reject the
argument out of hand. But Nancy is hardly this simplistic. What the holocausts of our century have revealed is
not that Hegel is really Milosevic; nor have they revealed that totalitarianism is immanent to the West. Given Nancys rejection of the logic
of immanent identity, that would only land him in an obvious contradiction. As he and Lacoue-Labarthe argue, Nazism does not sum up the
West, nor represent its necessary finality. But neither is it possible to push it aside as an aberration , still less as
a past aberration. A comfortable security in the certitudes of morality and of democracy not only guarantees
nothing, but exposes one to the risk of not seeing the arrival , or the return, of that whose possibility is not due
to any simple accident of history.13 Here a comparison with Hannah Arendt who greatly influences Nancy might be helpful. In The
Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt attacks those political theories that center around the defense of human rights. She
does so not because she is eager to see such rights violated, but because, ironically, their direct defense can
undermine them. On her account, what is needed is rather a recognition of the ultimate basis of civil rights what she
terms the right to have rights.14 This basis Arendt finds in political action. Properly understood, human rights are civil rights: they are based on forms
of human action, not a set of moral truths about the laws of God or nature.15 It is as political, not legal, actors that we are granted rights; and it is
through political action that we defend those rights. But to do so successfully, we must defend them at their foundations: we must defend the right and
the preconditions necessary to engage in political action. To neglect this, and to concentrate solely on the rights that are attached to
politically passive and invisible legal subjects leads us to misdirect our resistance to totalitarianism a
misdirection that may prove fatal. In a similar vein, Nancy argues that our victories against totalitarianism and ethnic
cleansing will remain intermittent at best if we resist them only by supporting a rival community, one
committed to norms and values that are, if nothing else, at least better than those of racists and Nazis. What is
required is an understanding of how totalitarianism can erupt in the midst of what seems to be a civilized
community or nation-state an understanding that will allow us to resist totalitarianism in its genesis. To do that we need to ask what the
relationship is between our civilization and totalitarianism. There is a temptation to avoid this question, and to assume that totalitarian and racist
movements such as Nazism are solely or essentially the result of evil, or pathology. But Nazism was not wholly devoid of sense. To all too many people
it made all too much sense. To
assume that all of those people were mad or evil or benighted will not allow us to
understand what attracted them to totalitarianism . If our history is one of arbitrary eruptions of insanity, we
would seem to be helpless in the face of an equally arbitrary future . If fascism and genocide are truly insane, they will lack all
internal logic which will make them all but impossible to resist in their genesis. Contesting this, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe write: There is a logic of
fascism. This also means that a certain logic is fascist, and that this logic is not wholly foreign to the general logic of rationality inherent in the
metaphysics of the Subject.16 Put more plainly, this means that what we today count as politically rational has something in common with what counted
for rational politics in Nazi Germany.
Link Wall
No matter what the aff changes, selection inclusion ensures exclusion
Mitropoulos 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Home About Log In Register Search Current Archives Reviews InterZone CSeARCH Cutting
Democracy's Knot Angela Mitropoulos
Therefore, alongside the democracy
of the market--and in relation to European premonitions of a globally extended

constitution and citizenship--there is the democracy of the border. It is well known that the border, no matter how
constantly it recomposes itself, entails processes of selective inclusion as well as exclusion. But, contrary to
recent insistences that the border constitutes (according to Etienne Balibar, among others) the 'non-democratic' element of
the demos, democracy no less than the market is the democratic element par excellence in the foundation of
citizenship and politics. This is to say, there can be no democracy without the border. Even if that border is imagined as coextensive with the
circumference of the planet itself, the border as a technology of inclusion-exclusion can still function, whether as the internal
demarcation between 'passive' and 'active' forms of citizenship (which can be traced in the historically parallel
trajectories of the granting of citizenship to more people alongside increasing stratifications within citizenship), or in
the recourse to the revocation of citizenship itself, whose criteria and rulings have by no means disappeared but, today,
proliferate. This is merely to note the formal operations of citizenship laws, without having touched on the casual
operations of border technologies, as they are articulated through, say, the police checkpoints in the banlieues no less than
in the demands that migrants (whether this status as a migrant is legal or semantic) must continually prove their belonging. In any case,
without the border, there is neither demos nor kratos. This is why Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri can call, in the final chapters of Empire (2000), for a
global citizenship under the sign of 'absolute democracy'. Yet, the diplomacy that might seemingly favour the proposition of democracy as an empty
placeholder for the question of 'constituent power' fails to confront the politics of the demos and the kratos that
invocations of democracy set to work, not least because diplomacy is already a technique of statecraft and a form of address that distinguishes and fuses
kratos and demos.
Transportation discussion is key to reduce metropolitan fragmentation and prop up notions of

community
Orfield 99- fellow at Brookings, law professor and director of the Institute of Race and Poverty
at the University of Minnesota (Myron, Metropolitics: A regional agenda for community and stability, Forum for Social Economics
Volume 28, Issue 2, 1999)
In order to stabilize the central cities and older suburbs and prevent metropolitan polarization, there are six
substantive and one structural reform that must be accomplished on a metropolitan scale. The reforms are interrelated
and reinforce each other substantively and politically. The first three reforms are the most significant in terms of the socioeconomic stability of
the core. They are (1) fair housing, (2) property tax-base sharing, and (3) reinvestment. Together, these reforms deconcentrate poverty, provide resource
equity, and support the physical rebuilding necessary to bring back the middle class and private economy. The second three, (4) land
planning/growth control (5) welfare reform/public works, and (6) transportation/transit reform, reinforce the first
three and allow them to operate efficiently and sustainably. In addition, these reforms provide for growth that is
balanced socioeconomically, accessible by transit, economical with governmental resources, and environmentally conscious. It
is extraordinarily likely that these reforms can only be accomplished, administered, and sustained by an elected metropolitan
government. Finally, a panoply of tax and public finance reforms should occur to overcome the perverse incentives created
by generations of a highly fragmented, over-regulated local marketplace.
Impact Extensions
The process of community inclusion neutralizes difference and ensures exclusion
Morin 6 (Culture Machine, Vol 8 (2006) Putting Community Under Erasure: Derrida and Nancy on the Plurality of Singularities Marie-Eve Morin
Department of Philosophy. 3-45 Assiniboia Hall. University of Alberta.
First, communities tend to neutralise differences by treating
all members as brothers, that is, as the same. The other

belongs to my community only insofar as he is like me, and the 'us' - - the group of those who belong together -- appears as
a homogeneous group. It is because of this tendency to homogenise that fraternity can include apparent nonbrothers (such as women) and that the fraternal community can present itself as universal . The woman gets included in
fraternity when she becomes a brother for humanity, that is, when she is not (completely) woman anymore.
Because 'man' is the archetype of humanity and 'brother' the archetype of the relation between siblings, the woman can become
human or sibling only insofar as she resembles the archetypes of 'man' or 'brother'. Fraternity as a process of
universalisation is a process of inclusion, but here 'to include' means to neutralise difference. Second,
communities are inscribed in a field of opposition; they define themselves in an oppositional logic, by excluding
'them,' that is, those who do not belong, those who are not 'brothers,' not 'the same'. If I can identify my brothers, then by using the
same criterion, I can also identify those who are not my brothers. All groups function in the same way: they
define a criterion which functions as a wall erected around the group, a wall filled with certain type of openings
that let only the right elements in. Of course, some criteria of appurtenance are more inclusive than others because they are shared by more
people. But no matter how inclusive a group is, it is always possible to find elements that are excluded.
The creation of a mythical community is what allows for war
Norris 2K (Jean-Luc Nancy and the Myth of the Common Andrew Norris Constellations Volume 7, No 2, 2000.
Nancy, however, is deeply suspicious of this understanding of community. On his account, the move from the
individual to the community will do us no good if the community is understood as being a subject of the same
sort as the individual. In the end this will only produce a politics of identity in which different identities and interests
are defined in opposition to one another. Though this is an implication of the communitarian argument that Sandel and Taylor do not
emphasize, it is clearly recognized by Hegel, who argues that war is a fundamental possibility of political life, o ne that is not entirely
regrettable. It is a fundamental possibility because the state is, vis--vis other states, an individual, and individuality essentially implies negation. Hence
even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an
opposite and create an enemy.10 And it is not an absolute evil because war allows for the display of martial courage, in which the citizen
transcends his limited position and becomes one with the universal in the form of the state.11 External conflict and its possible
glorification is not the only or even the most pressing danger Nancy would associate with the politics of
communal identity. He argues that conceiving of the community or the state as a subject entails that we
understand the community to have an identity that is immanent to it, and that needs to be brought out, and put
to work. In Nancys terminology, the community as subject necessarily implies the community as subject-work. If
ones true or higher or more universal self is found in ones shared communal identity, it becomes the
work of politics to acknowledge and bring forth that immanent communal identity. This will entail not merely
conflict with other political identities, but the purification of ones own community. To realize their political
identity, Serbians must unite so as to become more truly Serbian; doing so requires that they slough off what is not truly
Serbian. Put more bluntly, it requires that they cleanse their community of foreigners, and rid themselves of the influence of
such. In Nancys terms, people like Milosevic seek to put community to work.
Personal complicity with community is the ultimate incentive for these acts of violence and
genocide
Suzanne Uniacke, Prof. Philosophy @ U of Wollongong, June, 99 (International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 7, Iss. 2)
We bear responsibility for the outcome of anothers actions, for instance, when we provoke these actions (Iago); or when we
supply the means (Kevorkian), identification (Judas), or incentive (Eve); or where we encourage another to act as he [or she] does
(Lady Macbeth). Despite his disclaimer, Pilate cannot acquit himself entirely of the outcome of what others decide simply by ceding
the judgment to them. In these examples agents are indirectly, partly responsible for the outcomes of what others do in virtue of
something they themselves have done . But indirect, partial responsibility for what another person does can also arise through an
agents non-intervention and be grounded in intention or fault ; for example, when Arthur does not prevent Brian killing Catherine, because
Arthur wants Catherine dead, or because Arthur simply cannot be bothered to warn her or call the police. Of course attributions of indirect, partial responsibility can be
dif cult. And as far as absolutism is concerned, the relevant sense of brings about, outlined earlier, will sometimes be quite stretched where an agent is attributed with
responsibility for what someone else does. All the same, by our non-intervention we can help bring about some things that are directly
and voluntarily caused by others.29

Modernity isnt the root cause of violenceits always proximately caused. The alternative leaves us unable to deal
with any global problems.
Curtler 97 PhD Philosophy, Hugh, rediscovering values: coming to terms with postnmodernism 44-7
The second and third concerns, though, are more serious and to a degree more legitimate. The second concern is that "reason is the product of
the Enlightenment, modern science, and Western society, and as such for the postmodernists, it is guilty byassociation of all the errors
attributed to them, [namely], violence, suffering, and alienation in the twentieth century, be it the Holocaust, world wars, Vietnam, Stalin's
Gulag, or computer record-keeping . . ." (Rosenau 1992, 129). Although this is a serious concern, it is hardly grounds for the rejection of
reason, for which postmodernism calls in a loud, frenetic voice. There is precious little evidence that the problems of the twentieth century are the
result of too much reason! On the contrary. To be sure, it was Descartes's dream to reduce every decision to a calculation, and in ethics, this dream bore
fruit in Jeremy Bentham's abortive "calculus" of utilities. But at least since the birth of the social sciences at the end of the last century, and with
considerable help from logical positivism, ethics (and values in general) has been relegated to the dung heap of "poetical and metaphysical nonsense,"
and in the minds of the general populace, reason has no place in ethics, which is the proper domain of feeling. The postmodern concern to
place feelings at the center of ethics, and judgment generally which is the third of their three objections to modern reason
simply plays into the hands of the hardened popular prejudice that has little respect for the abilities of human
beings to resolve moral differences reasonably. Can it honestly be said of any major decision made in
thiscentury that it was the result of "too much reason" and that feelings and emotions played no part? Surely
not.Can this be said in the case of any of the concerns reflected in the list above: are violence, suffering, and alienation, or the
Holocaust, Vietnam, Stalin's Gulag, or Auschwitz the result of a too reasonable approach to human problems?
No one could possibly make this claim who has dared to peek into the dark and turbid recesses of the human psyche. In every case, it is
more likely that these concerns result from such things as sadism, envy, avarice, love of power, the "death wish," or
short-term self-interest, none of which is "reasonable."One must carefully distinguish between the methods ofthe sciences, which
are thoroughly grounded in reason and logic, and the uses men and women make of science. The warnings of romantics such as Goethe (who was himself
no mean scientist) and Mary Shelley were directed not against science per se but rather against the misuse of science and the human tendency to become
embedded in the operations of the present moment. To the extent that postmodernism echoes these concerns, I would share them without hesitation.
But the claim that our present culture suffers because of an exclusive concern with "reasonable" solutions to human problems, with a fixation on the
logos, borders on the absurd.What is required here is not a mindless rejection of human reason on behalf of "intuition,"
"conscience," or "feelings" in the blind hope that somehow complex problems will be solved if we simply do
whatever makes us feel good. Feelings and intuitions are notoriously unreliable and cannot be made the center
of a workable ethic. We now have witnessed several generations of college students who are convinced that "there's no disputing taste" in the arts
and that ethics is all about feelings. As a result, it is almost impossible to get them to take these issues seriously. The notion that we can trust our feelings
to find solutions to complex problems is little more than a false hope. We are confronted today with problems on a scale heretofore
unknown, and what is called for is patience, compassion (to be sure), and above all else, clear heads. In a word,
what is called for is a balance between reason and feelingsnot the rejection of one or the other. One need only recall
Nietzsche's own concern for the balance between Dionysus and Apollo in his Birth of Tragedy. Nietzscheknew better than his followers, apparently, that
one cannot sacrifice Apollo to Dionysus in the futile hope that we can rely on our blind instincts to get us out of the hole we have dug for ourselves.
***Determinism K***
The portrayal of the African race as stuck, motionless, perpetuates deterministic attitudes and
undermines racial advancement
Muhwati 06- Department of African Languages and Literature, University of Zimbabwe (Itai,Mass
Neurosis, Entrapment, Closure and the Races Race of Life in Masango Mavi (1998) and Mapenzi (1999), ir.uz.ac.zw/jspui/handle/10646/515//MGD)
The African image in quite a number of literary creations in Zimbabwean literature is palpably bedridden in intensive care. This
image finds revelation in the titles themselves. The physical wreckage and spiritual paralysis that is by definition an
expression of this image, leads to an agonising realisation that, in lifes vicissitudes, and lifes race of race survival,
African people remain undeveloped and fledgling stutters. The images of characters in these novels whose titles are vapid
project Africans as victims of collective inertia, wallowing in cultural and historical amnesia and disintegrating
in irretrievable mentacide. As a result, in terms of agency and mobility, the African race remains glued on the
starting line, quite overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable hurdles in the race of life . Through the choice of
titles, most of the writers seem to have adopted a modality that inordinately projects social death and a host of other social sicknesses as new forms of
social identity in the contemporary dispensation. While their absolutisation of mass neurosis, closure and entrapment might
be said to be a reflection of the state of the nation in the post independence period, it is also estimable that such images of
social sickness, paralysis and mass neurosis can be manipulated by A fricas anthropological detractors in their
justification of a static and back pedalling African race , particularly along the evolutionary spectrum, which is presented as a
universal standard of valuation. The paper also puts forth argument that, t he adoption of an axiological paradigm that legitimises
closure and race entrapment nullifies any prospects towards racial salvation. It is an act of defining the African
race as doomed. Such a definition which trivialises the African existential trajectory pays homage to the subversive labels that Europe has
generously donated to Africa. Such labels include Third World; Underdeveloped; Dark Continent; Poor majority, cultural other and many more. These
are designations that bespeak helplessness and mass neurosis.
Embracing forward optimism is the only chance for progress- crucial for opportunity and
justice
While the picture might be said to be generally true, the authors vision remains nihilist and alarmist. It creates an impression that this is a
race that is not synonymous with growth and continuity . Such a picture is spiritually disempowering and
energy sapping. It has the capacity to engender life-threatening behaviours as people compete to act out their
roles before the fixed end. It imposes limits to where we can go as a race. It is fixating. We argue that, whatever the
circumstances and however debilitating and menacing, African people should simply reject such asphyxiating images. One might
even hazard to say that the same version of our life as portrayed in Mashiriapungana pays homage to the efforts of western social scientists on Africa
whose statistical data on chances of Africans survival is carefully crafted in order to signal disaster for Africa. This is crucial for the titillation
of the western progeny.
2NC O/V
This affs representation of the African race as stunted, struggling creates social inertia and a
negative determinism which ensures mass neurosis and undermines social change
This is not to deny the historical oppression of race- however, embracing the alts forward
optimism is the only way to prevent spiritual disempowerment which chokes off the potential
for progress- thats Muhwati
Ext: Link
Portrayals of race as underprivileged, suffering feed entrapment and neurosis
Muhwati 06- Department of African Languages and Literature, University of Zimbabwe
(Itai,Mass
A people whose social theory is vague and mangled are likely to find it difficult to persevere in the race of life. A closer
look at titles that are part of Zimbabwean literature, including the titles of the novels analysed in this paper, testily problematises our social existence.
One is left wondering whose social theory informs creativity and indeed the generality of the nation. Evidence from the above titles confirms a
bastardised, truncated and self-immolating social theory. Such a theory fixes Zimbabwean people in a context of
non possibilities, closure and entrapment. We are forced to write against the popularisation of such a creative
disposition which on closer examination turns out to be a darker version of white neurosis and decadence. In the race of
life, where the ultimate objective is to claim our share of the trophies of life, the challenge is to constantly engage and re-engage,
create and re-create vitalising and nourishing ideals . The situation in Zimbabwe in the 1990s and beyond demands that we not only
propose and confirm a social theory that acknowledges the stasis and social death inherent in the country , but
more importantly, increase awareness on ability to overcome forces inimical to the realisation of life as a great
ceremony. Responsible acts of creation always endeavour to strike a balance between opposites - that is, life and death. Both Mabasa and Chiwome
embrace the surreal tradition to parade the entrapped and neurotic condition of the race.
-AT Denies Utopia

Utopian visions are little more than dreams- embraces escapist fantasy and abandons active
engagement
These dreams reflect peoples ambitions and their expectations of independence. Succumbing to dreams in such a
manner is an indication of the failure to take life head on. Dreams become an avenue to escape engagement.
Since they are escapist, it entails an abandonment of the race. Again, dreams are largely spiritual. However, any meaningful
engagement in the race of life should strive on the concatenation of both the physical and the spiritual . To live life in the spiritual alone is
purely to disengage from the urge to be immersed in the thick of things . Nonetheless, through the zeal shown by Tongai,
Chiwome shows that the African race is a race of runners. It is only the hostile environment punctuated with corruption, nepotism and favouritism
which subverts peoples ability to finish the race. Life in the city is presented as crippling. There are a number of expenses that thwart investment and
personal growth. Tongai can not save any money to accomplish his personal goals. He has to pay for water, electricity food and other expenses that
require money. This is the reason why Tongai escapes into the surreal world, the world of dreams. Life becomes
indomitable and overwhelming.
***Homogenization K ***
Turn: Homogenization. They presume their performance interrupts white supremacy because
it grew out of resistance. It papers over other views in African American culture. When you
assume a language only expresses resistance, it prevents dialectic to change those ideas.
John h. Mcclendon III, Bates College Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 4, 20 04. P.308-9
Additionally, the function of various forms of social stratificationespecially the impact of class contradictionsharbors the real possibility for different
ideological responses to commonly experienced conditions of life. In the manner of the Marxist conception of ideology, as found in The German
Ideology, I presume that philosophy (ontology) is a form of ideology (Marx and Engels 1976). Hence, only on the presupposition that the African
American community is socially homogeneous can it plausibly be argued that African Americans all share the same ontology. Given it is not the case that
the African American community is homogeneous, then there is no plausible warranting for the belief that all African Americans share a common
ontology. This leads directly to point three and my charge of Yancys (and Smithermans) vindicationism, where he argues that resistance to
white supremacy is the defining characteristic of African American culture and hence language. When African
American vindicationism is bereft of dialectical theory and method, as a determinate philosophical approach to African American culture, it neglects a
very important aspect of the historical dialectic of African Ameri can culture, viz. that African American culture is not in any way a
monolithically formed culture where there are only manifestations of resistance . There is more to African
American history and culture than a continuous line of resistance to oppression , for, by way of example, not all
African Americans sang the spirituals with an eye to joining the Underground Railroad (Fisher 1990). Some believed
that freedom was wearing a robe in heaben and that washing in the blood of Jesus would make one as white as the snow. Or that loyalty to Massa was
the highest virtue and resistance and revolt were of the greatest folly. The modern day connotation for Uncle Tom did not enter the lexicon of African
American language without the historical presence of real, existing Toms. It is no accident that there is the current exercise in African American
locution of playing on this word (Tom) whenever Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Tomto- us is mentioned among African American political speakers.
After all, the historical record indicates that the failure of Gabriel Prossers, Denmark Veseys, and Nat Turners slave insurrections were due in part to
other slaves that were more loyal to Massa than their own liberation. Mind you that those who ratted out the slave revolts shared in
the same language, ate the same food, lived the same experiences, but also had a different worldview (conception of reality) and set of values.
The idea that social ontology and identity among African Americans, past and present, are preeminently the same for all
is the sort of reductionism that flattens out the cultural, social, political, and ideological landscape called
African American culture. Albeit, resistance is cardinal and crucial to any description, definition, and interpretation of African American
culture, nonetheless, it is not exhaustive of its actualities and even of its future possibilities. African American culture in its full
substance and scope is more complex than a singular thrust in the monodirection of resistance . Rather, African
American culture historically constitutes an ensemble of traditions in which we are able , for analytical purposes, to
locate what are two primary and yet contradictory forms, viz. one of resistance and another of accommodation .
This internal dialectic is undermined when a scenario of resistance sans accommodation gains support via
vindicationism.
Its preaching to the choir: little transformative potential

Lynn Clarke, Department of Communication Studies and Theatre, Vanderbilt University, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 4, 20 04.,
p. 321
Returning to the question of creative powers compassYancys account of Nommo raises problems here as well. In the account, recall,
the words
generative function funds an oppositional way of speaking (Yancy 2004, 289). Among other products, the speech acts of
resistance manifest themselves in a black identity and reality based on a presumption of shared interests
among African American selves.4 At the same time, however, Nommos creative force is conceptually detached from the
words power to constitute intersubjective relations between selves and others within the African American
community. Thus, Yancys concept of Nommo only admits a generative power to create identification among
blacks who already agree to the presence and terms of shared interest. The power of this Nommo fails to reach
those African Americans who disagree with black majoritarian terms. This relatively minimal compass of power suggests that
Nommos potential to define black community and reality may need to be reconceptualized beyond the presumptions of shared experience and common
values to consider Nommos potential to forge relations between African Americans who are divided on the terms of their present and future.
Performance isnt a round winner. They dont win for using it. Claiming it does leaves no space
for dissent or deliberation.
Lynn Clarke, Department of Communication Studies and Theatre, Vanderbilt University, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 4, 20 04.,
p. 319-21
Notwithstanding the importance of creative speech to philosophy of language and to a communitys self-formation, it remains unclear whether the
collective resistance embodied in AAL meets certain interests expressed by those in whose name it is theorized. To be sure, and as Yancy argues,
oppositional speech matters to the lives of the oppressed. Yet, questions remain about the terms and relations of Nommos creativity and its significance
for AAL. Conceptually, there is no account of whether Nommo is oriented toward coerced or communicatively
reasoned terms of communal harmony. This absence raises a question of relation: Should AAL be understood as linguistic
resistance without intent to relate to self-defined black individuals who disagree with black majoritarian terms?
Put another way, do the terms of Yancys AAL community open a space of interaction within Black America for the
sort of opposition that Yancys linguistic framework defends? Equally important, do these terms direct attention to
speech practices that have the potential to render the dissent productive of black peoples deliberation on the
legitimacy of their communitys self-understanding? Extending the boundaries of humane community a bit further, might the power
of Nommo move beyond the constitution of African American identity, experience, and community, to promote the intersubjective transformation of
oppressive social norms as Fanon both worked for and hoped (Fanon 1967, 100, 222)? Asked in brief, these questions may be folded into two queries:
what compass of creative power should a philosophy of language attribute to (the speech of) AAL, and how
might this power be held accountable to the very members of the community in whose name(s) AAL is said to
create? If there is good reason to commend the presupposition of shared nonidentity that informs these two questions, neither a sheerly
instrumental Nommo nor a sheerly oppositional theory of AAL may do .2 Addressing the second question first,
the problem of holding power accountable to those in whose name it speaks is apparent in certain deployments
of Nommo as instrumental force. The speech practice of call and response is a striking example. In Yancys
invocation of Nommo to account for this dynamic co-signing and co-narrating of a shared communicative
reality, a speaker makes a verbal point to an audience charged with responding (293). The conceived, expected response is
one of approval. If not received, the audience will likely be deemed dead. Knowles-Borishade, who comes closest to
thinking the question of Nommo and dissent, offers a somewhat different account. In it, responders co-create the callers messagethe Word by either
sanctioning or rejecting it spontaneously during the speech, based on the perceived morality and vision of the Caller and the relevance of the
message (Knowles- Borishade 1991, 49798). According to Knowles-Borishade, call and response aims at consensus determined by the people
themselves (49394). Through the process of checks and balances that constitutes call and response, levels of perfected social interaction are
promoted. Yet, in Yancys and Knowles- Borishades discussions of call and response, an account of disagreement and its
potential to hold power accountable does not appear . At most, disagreement is figured as privatized rejection. The
grounds of this response remain unknown to the speaker and audience members, among whom reasons for
dissent may vary. In the face of silent rejection, the accounts of AALs call and response are mum on what ought happen next. The dead
audience plays no transparent cognitive- practice role. The caller is free to cast his word-spell . The absense of
accountability in a sheerly productive word appears more readily in Asantes conception of African communication. In it, the group is thought to take
precedence over the individual (Asante 1998, 74). To Asante, this strong collective mentality warrants a focus on the aesthetic dimension of speech in
traditional African public discourse. The focus is relatively narrow, prompting a declaration that, The African speaker means to be a poet; not a
lecturer, inducing compulsive relationships and invoking the audiences inner needs through the inherent power of concrete images (91).
Though reason may matter on this account of Nommo, it is tough to see how and why. Indeed, talk of reason appears relatively
unimportant in Asantes traditional understanding of African public discourse (75, 9091). Creativitys
highlight shines in the absence of an explicit role for communicative reason in public speech. 3 Accountability
appears as a non-issue, lurking uncomfortably in the shadow of creative power.
2NC O/V
Their method of performance constructs monolithic interpretations of African American
identity and papers over alternative viewpoints
This reductionist conception of identity is doomed to failure- while it resonates with those who
already share similar viewpoints, it alienates those the performance is trying to persuade who
dont already agree with their viewpoints- thats McClendon and Clarke
Dont buy into their claims that they should win because they were first to perform
This shields their arguments from scrutiny and promotes a lack of accountability
Theres no inherent reason to prefer performance-thats Clarke
2NC Appropriation Turn
Turn: Appropriation
Shannon Sullivan, Penn State University, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 4, 20 04. P. 301-2
While a white/Anglo persons learning Spanish can begin to balance the relationship of power and knowledge between white/Anglo and
Latino worlds, it also can have the opposite effect of increasing the hegemony of the white world. This occurs when
white people learn a language other than Standard American Language Spanish, African American Language, or
otherwiseprecisely to dominate the world that speaks that language . Certainly this happened during times of
colonialist conquest, but it also continues today as business corporations and advertising firms in the United
States learn (bits of) African American Language and Spanish to better market products that promise the
exoticism of Blackness and the spiciness of Latino culture. (Standard, middleclass whiteness is so unhip nowadays, as Yancy notes [Yancy
2004, 276].) It also can happen in less insidious ways, however, such as when white people learn another language
to (try to) break out of their white solipsism. Even in these well-intentioned instances, the protection provided
to minority races by white peoples ignorance of their languages can be eroded once white people begin to
understand and speak them.
2NC White Fill In
Turn: Opens space for white hegemony

Shannon Sullivan, Penn State University, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 4, 20 04, p. 302
This point was brought home to me when a Latina friend and philosopher explained that she did not want white/Anglo
people to learn Spanish because their knowledge would intrude on the Spanish/Latina world that she and other
Spanish-speaking philosophers are able to create in the midst of white/Anglodominated conferences.2 Opening up her world
to white/Anglo philosophers tends to result in the destruction of a valuable point of resistance to white racism.
Because of the dominance of white people in philosophy in the United States, she frequently is forced to travel
to white worlds and wants to preserve a small space that is relatively free of white people and the issues of race
and racism that their presence inevitably (though not necessarily deliberately) produces.
Inclusion Calls Turn Case

The call for more inclusion and tolerance risks a faade of change that reproduces the
structures they criticize.
Zizek 97 [Slavoj iek, bearded Slovenian, 1997 Repeating Lenin, http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm //liam]
One is therefore tempted to turn around Marx's thesis 11: the first task today is precisely NOT to succumb to the temptation to
act, to directly intervene and change things (which then inevitably ends in a cul de sac of debilitating impossibility: "what can one do
against the global capital?"), but to question the hegemonic ideological coordinates. If, today, one follows a direct call to act, this
act will not be performed in an empty space it will be an act WITHIN the hegemonic ideological coordinates: those who
"really want to do something to help people" get involved in (undoubtedly honorable) exploits like Medecins sans frontiere,
Greenpeace, feminist and anti-racist campaigns, which are all not only tolerated, but even supported by the media, even if they seemingly enter
the economic territory (say, denouncing and boycotting companies which do not respect ecological conditions or which use child labor) they are
tolerated and supported as long as they do not get too close to a certain limit. This kind of activity provides the
perfect example of interpassivity2: of doing things not to achieve something, but to PREVENT from something really
happening, really changing. All the frenetic humanitarian, politically correct, etc., activity fits the formula of "Let's go on changing something all
the time so that, globally, things will remain the same!".
AT Language First
A) Debate about social and political structures in favor of discussions on the minutia of
terminology. While language matters, material forces are an important structuring factor in
the way language plays in our negotiation of reality. To assume that it is all about language
misses important structural conditions of racism which they cannot access.
Best & Kellner 91 [Stephen Best and Douglas Kellner, UT-Austin, 1991, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, p. 259-60 //liam]
Postmodern theorists do not do social theory per se, but rather eclectically combine fragments of sociological analysis, literary and cultural
readings, historical theorizations, and philosophical critiques. They tend to privilege cultural and philosophical analysis over
social theory and thereby fail to confront the most decisive determinants of our social world . Yet we believe - against
much postmodern theory - that the project of social theory itself continues to be a valuable one. Just as individuals need cognitive maps
of their cities to negotiate their spatial environment, they also need maps of their society to intelligently
analyze, discuss, and intervene in social processes. For us, social theories provide mappings of contemporary
society: its organization; its constitutive social relations, practices, discourses, and institutions; its integrated
and interdependent features; its conflictual and fragmenting features; and its structures of power and modes of
oppression and domination. Social theories analyze how these elements fit together to constitute specific
societies, and how societies work or fail to function
B) Language is a constant negotiation. We understand that language is never static nor is
meaning ever closed off. We still have to try to communicate ideasOur framing represents our
best attempt to communicate with the imperfect system we have.
Biesecker 89 [Barbara Biesecker, professor of communication at UGA, 1989 Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from Within the Thematic of
Differance, in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol 22., No. 2 //liam]

But what about this diffirance? Why should rhetorical critics struggle with this complicated internal division that is said to inhabit all writing, structure
all speech, and scandalize all texts? What is so critical about this seemingly critical difference? In his essay "differance" Derrida provides a possible
answer: "Differance is what makes the movement of signification possible . . . ." The play of differance , as Derrida puts
it, is
"the possibility of conceptuality, of the conceptual system and process in general:"

will thus be the movement of play that "produces" (and not by something that is simply an activity)
these differences, these effects of difference. This does not mean that the differance which produces differences
is before them in a simple and in itself unmodified and indifferent present. Differance is the nonfull, nonsimple
"origin"; it is the structured and differing origin of differences.22
To repeat, differance makes signification possible. Only to the extent that we are able to differ, as in spatial
distinction or relation to an other, and to defer, as in temporalizing or delay, are we able to produce anything.
What we note as differance
''Differance" is, as Derrida puts it, "the formation of form." Here we do well to look a bit closer at an essay in which Derrida provides an extensive
structural description of differance and then proceeds to discuss at even greater length its enabling power. In "Linguistics and Grammatology" he says,
[differance] does not depend on any sensible plentitude, audible or viable, phonic or graphic. It is, on the contrary, the condition of such a plenitude.
Although it does not exist, although it is never a thing-present outside of all plentitude, its possibility is by rights anterior to all that one calls sign . . .
concept or operation, motor or sensory. This differance is therefore not more sensible than intelligible and it permits the articulation of signs among
themselves the same abstract order ... or between two orders of expression. It permits the articulation of speech and writingin the colloquial senseas
it founds the metaphysical opposition between the sensible and the intelligible, then between signifier and signified, expression and content, etc.
Derrida's differance is, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak points out, the name for "the lack at the origin that is the condition of
thought and experience"; all writing in the narrow sense, like all speech, marks the play of this productive non-identity. "
Differance, Derrida writes, is the structural condition which makes it possible for us to perform any act.
***Identity Politics K***

Sole focus on identity politics is flawed- excludes other methods of truth verification and
adopts a reductionist approach to the attitudes of all minorities
Scott 92- professor of social science at Princeton (Joan, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity, October, Vol. 61,
The Identity in Question (Summer, 1992), pp. 12-19, JSTOR//MGD)
There is nothing wrong, on the face of it, with teaching
individuals about how to behave decently in relation to others

and about how to empathize with each other's pain. The problem is that difficult analyses of how history and
social standing, privilege, and subordination are involved in personal behavior entirely drop out. Chandra Mohanty
puts it this way: There has been an erosion of the politics of collectivity through the reformulation of race and difference
in individualistic terms. The 1960s and '70s slogan "the personal is political" has been recrafted in the 1980s as "the
political is personal." In other words, all politics is collapsed into the personal , and questions of individual behaviors,
attitudes, and life-styles stand in for political analysis of the social. Individual political struggles are seen as the
only relevant and legitimate form of political struggle .5 Paradoxically, individuals then generalize their
perceptions and claim to speak for a whole group, but the groups are also conceived as unitary and autonomous. This
individualizing, personalizing conception has also been behind some of the recent identity politics of minorities;
indeed it gave rise to the intolerant, doctrinaire behavior that was dubbed, initially by its internal critics, "political correctness."
It is particularly in the notion of "experience" that one sees this operating. In much current usage of "experience," references to
structure and history are implied but not made explicit; instead, personal testimony of oppression replaces analysis, and this
testimony comes to stand for the experience of the whole group. The fact of belonging to an identity group is
taken as authority enough for one's speech; the direct experience of a group or culture -that is, membership in itbecomes the only test of true knowledge . The exclusionary implications of this are twofold: all those not of the
group are denied even intellectual access to it, and those within the group whose experiences or interpretations
do not conform to the established terms of identity must either suppress their views or drop out . An appeal to
"experience" of this kind forecloses discussion and criticism and turns politics into a policing operation: the
borders of identity are patrolled for signs of nonconformity; the test of membership in a group becomes less one's
willingness to endorse certain principles and engage in specific political actions, less one's positioning in specific relationships of power,
than one's ability to use the prescribed languages that are taken as signs that one is inherently "of" the group.
That all of this isn't recognized as a highly political process that produces identities is troubling indeed, especially because it so closely mimics
the politics of the powerful, naturalizing and deeming as discernably objective facts the prerequisites for inclusion in any group.
Privileging identity-based knowledge is a bad model- falls prey to the same criticisms of
systemic knowledge
Gur-Ze'ev 98- Lecturer, Faculty of Education at the University of Haifa (Ilan, EDUCATIONAL THEORY / Fall
1998 / Volume 48 / Nuiiibcr 4 Toward a Nonrepressive Critical Pedagogy, JSTOR//MGD)
From this perspective, the consensus reached by the reflective subject taking
part in the dialogue offered by critical

pedagogy is naive, especially in light of its declared anti-intellectualism on the one hand and its pronounced
glorification of the feelings, experience, and self-evident knowledge of the group on the other. Critical pedagogy, in its
different versions, claims to inhere and overcome the foundationalism and transcendentalism of the Enlightenments emancipatory
and ethnocentric - arrogance, as exemplified by ideology-critique, psychoanalysis, or traditional metaphysics. Marginalized feminist
knowledge, like the marginalized, neglected, and ridiculed knowledge of the Brazilian farmers, as presented by Freire or Kathleen Weiler, is
represented as legitimate and relevant knowledge, in contrast to its representation as the hegemonic instrument of
representation and education. This knowledge is portrayed as a relevant, legitimate, and superior alternative to hegeinonic education and the
knowledge this represents in the center. It is said to represent an identity that is desirable and promises to function
successfully. However, neither the truth value of the marginalized collective memory nor knowledge is
cardinal here. Truth is replaced by knowledge whose supreme criterion is its self-evidence, namely the potential
productivity of its creative violence, while the dialogue in which adorers of difference take part is implicitly represented as one of the desired
productions of this violence. My argument is that this marginalized and repressed self-evident knowledge has no superiority
over the self-evident knowledge of the oppressors. Relying on the knowledge of weak, controlled, and
marginalized groups, their memory and their conscious interests, is no less naive and dangerous than relying on
hegemonic knowledge. This is because the critique of Western transcendentalism, foundationalism, and ethnocentrism
declines into an uncritical acceptance of marginalized knowledge , which becomes foundationalistic and
ethnocentric in presenting the truth, the facts, or the real interests of the group -even if conceived as valid only for
the group concerned. This position cannot avoid vulgar realism and naive positivism based on the facts of selfevident knowledge ultimately realized against the self-evidence of other groups.
***Onto Focus K***

A) LINKtheir assumption of ontological blackness essentializes blackness as a racial category
subservient to whiteness
Welcome 2004 completing his PhD at the sociology department of the City University of New York's Graduate Center (H. Alexander, "White Is
Right": The Utilization of an Improper Ontological Perspective in Analyses of Black Experiences, Journal of African American Studies, Summer-Fall
2004, Vol. 8, No. 1 & 2, pp. 59-73)
In many of the studies of blacks, the experiences of whites, not blacks, are used as the backing for the
construction of the warrants/rules that are employed to evaluate black experiences , delimiting the "concepts and
relationships that can exist" in the black community. The life histories of whites are used as the standard against which black
experiences are measured and as the goals to which blacks are encouraged to strive. The employment of this
ontology fallaciously limits the range of black agency, producing deceitful narratives where the navigation of
the social environment by blacks is dictated by either a passive response to, or a passive adoption of, white
scripts. This ontology erroneously limits descriptions and evaluations of black experiences, excluding viable causal determinants of the socioeconomic status of blacks and constructing restricted descriptions of black agency. The utilization of whiteness to determine and/or
evaluate blackness begins when whiteness and white life histories come to represent what is "right." "White is right"
is a sarcastic phrase that was an extremely popular slur during the Black Power movement in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s; the utilization of this
phrase represents a form of social critique that takes exception to both the privileging of white biographies as accurate descriptions of history and the
reconstitution of these histories as a template that blacks and other people of color should follow for navigating social environments and achieving
positive social mobility. Part of the prominence of the "white is right" perspective comes from the numerical superiority of whites. As a group, whites
have been in the majority throughout the history of the United States and the prominence of the white experience has been used to argue that white
experiences should be used as a social template. It has been used as such in the works of Robert Park (1939) and Gunnar Myrdal (1944), both of whom
suggested that by copying the patterns of whites, blacks would achieve positive social mobility. However, use of the numerical superiority of whites to
support claims about the "rightness" of white experiences relies on the equation of quantitative dominance with qualitative dominance and the
employment of the fallacious argumentum ad populum. The actual source of the dominance of the "white is right" perspective
lies in the dynamics of power. The location of the origins of the dominant ideology in power relations is
conceptualized in the work of Michel Foucault (1980), who theorized that power is imbricated with discourse:
We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a
hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces
it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it (p. 101). Key to the deployment of discourses is
an underlying strategy. As such, the prominence of the "white is right" perspective can be traced to attempts to
create an "order," or a way of thinking. Foucault's theoretical lens supports the hypothesis that the privileging of white experiences
and the use of these experiences as an ontological framework for the analyses of black experiences is an effect
of power imbalances.
B) Turns Case essentialism makes true insurrection impossible
Newman, Postdoctoral fellow:University of Western Australia, conducting research in the area of contemporary political and social though, 200 3
(Saul, Stirner and Foucault, Postmodern Culture)
The idea of transgressing and reinventing the self--of freeing the self from fixed and essential identities--is also a central theme in Stirner's thinking. As
we have seen, Stirner shows that the notion of human essence is an oppressive fiction derived from an inverted Christian idealism that tyrannizes the
individual and is linked with various forms of political domination. Stirner describes a process of subjectification which is very similar to Foucault's:
rather than power operating as downward repression, it rules through the subjectification of the individual , by
defining him according to an essential identity. As Stirner says: " the
State betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a

man . . . it imposes being a man upon me as a duty" (161). Human essence imposes a series of fixed moral and rational ideas on the individual, which
are not of his creation and which curtail his autonomy. It is precisely this notion of duty, of moral obligation--the same sense of duty that is
the basis of the categorical imperative--thatStirner finds oppressive. For Stirner, then, the individual must free him- or herself
from these oppressive ideas and obligations by first freeing himself from essence--fromthe essential identitythat is imposed on him.
Freedom involves, then, a transgression of essence, a transgression of the self. But what form should this transgression take? Like Foucault, Stirner is
suspicious of the language of liberation and revolution--it is based on a notion of an essential self that supposedly throws off the chains of external
repression. For Stirner, it is precisely this notion of human essence that is itself oppressive. Therefore, different strategies of freedom are called for--ones
that abandon the humanist project of liberation and seek, rather, to reconfigure the subject in new and non-essentialist ways. To this end, Stirner calls
for an insurrection: Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an
overturning of conditions, of the established condition or status, the state or society, and is accordingly a political or social act; the latter
has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but
from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising but a rising of individuals, a getting up without regard to the arrangements
that spring from it. The revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be
arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on "institutions." It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers,
the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the established. (279-80) So while a revolution aims at transforming existing
social and political conditions so that human essence may flourish, an insurrection aims at freeing the individual from this very essence. Like Foucault's
practices of freedom, the insurrection aims at transforming the relationship that the individual has with himself. The insurrection starts, then, with the
individual refusing his or her enforced essential identity: it starts, as Stirner says, from men's discontent with themselves. Insurrection does not aim at
overthrowing political institutions. It is aimed at the individual, in a sense transgressing his own identity--the outcome of which is, nevertheless, a
change in political arrangements. Insurrection is therefore not about becoming what one is --becoming human, becoming man--
but about becoming what one is not.This ethos of escaping essential identities through a reinvention of oneself has many important
parallels with the Baudelarianaestheticization of the self that interests Foucault. Like Baudelaire's assertion that the self must be treated as a
work of art, Stirner sees the self--or the ego--as a "creative nothingness," a radical emptiness which is up to the individual to define: "I do not
presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself" (135). The
self, for Stirner, is a process, a continuous flow

of self-creating flux--it is a process that eludes the imposition of fixed identities and essences: "no concept expresses me, nothing that is
designated as my essence exhausts me" (324). Therefore, Stirner's strategy of insurrection and Foucault's project of care for the self are both contingent
practices of freedom that involve a reconfiguration of the subject and its relationship with the self. For Stirner, as with Foucault, freedom is an undefined
and open-ended project in which the individual engages. The insurrection, as Stirner argues, does not rely on political institutions to grant freedom to
the individual, but looks to the individual to invent his or her own forms of freedom. It is an attempt to construct spaces of autonomy within relations of
power, by limiting the power that is exercised over the individual by others and increasing the power that the individual exercises over himself. The
individual, moreover, is free to reinvent himself in new and unpredictable ways, escaping the limits imposed by human essence and universal notions of
morality. The notion of insurrection involves a reformulation of the concept of freedom in ways that are radically post-Kantian. Stirner suggests, for
instance, that there can be no truly universal idea of freedom; freedom is always a particular freedom in the guise of the universal. The universal freedom
that, for Kant, is the domain of all rational individuals, would only mask some hidden particular interest. Freedom, according to Stirner, isan
ambiguous and problematic concept, an
"enchantingly beautiful dream" that seduces the individual yet remains

unattainable, and from which the individual must awaken. Furthermore, freedom is a limited concept. It is only seen in its narrow
negative sense. Stirner wants, rather, to extend the concept to a more positive freedom to. Freedom in the negative sense involves only self-abnegation-to be rid of something, to deny oneself. That is why, according to Stirner, the freer the individual ostensibly becomes, in accordance with the
emancipative ideals of Enlightenment humanism, the more he loses the power he exercises over himself. On the other hand, positive freedom--or
ownness--is a form of freedom that is invented by the individual for him or herself. Unlike Kantian freedom, ownness is not guaranteed by universal
ideals or categorical imperatives. If it were, it could only lead to further domination: "The man who is set free is nothing but a freed man [...] he is an
unfree man in the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin" (152). Freedom must, rather, be seized by the individual. For freedom to have any
value it must be based on the power of the individual to create it. " My freedom becomes complete only when it is my--might; but by
this I cease to be a merely free man, and become and own man" (151). Stirner was one of the first to recognize that the true basis of freedom is power. To
see freedom as a universal absence of power is to mask its very basis in power. The theory of ownness is a recognition, and indeed an affirmation, of the
inevitable relation between freedom and power. Ownness is the realization of the individual's power over himself--the ability
to create his or her own forms of freedom,which are not circumscribed by metaphysical or essentialist categories. In this sense, ownness
is a form of freedom that goes beyond the categorical imperative. It is based on a notion of the self as a contingent and open field of possibilities, rather
than on an absolute and dutiful adherence to external moral maxims.
2NC O/V
The affs use of black ontology adopts an essentialist approach of whiteness which uses
whiteness as the measuring stick against which blackness is compared
This underlying discourse limits black agency and turns case
Limiting the power of the individual makes coalition building and effective movements
impossible- thats Newmand
Link Ontological Blackness = Essentialist
ontological blackness is essentializing and denies black agency

Pinn 2004 Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota (Anthony B., Black Is, Black Aint: Victor Anderson,
African American Theological Thought, and Identity, Dialog: A Journal of Theology . Volume 43, Number 1)
This connection between ontological blackness and religion is natural because: ontological blackness
signifies the totality of black

existence, a binding together of black life and experience . In its root, religio, religion denotes tying together, fastening behind, and
binding together. Ontological blackness renders black life and experience a totality. 13 According to Anderson, Black theological
discussions are entangled in ontological blackness. And accordingly, discussions of black life revolve around a theological
understanding of Black experience limited to suffering and survival in a racist system . The goal of this theology is to find
the meaning of black faith in the merger of black cultural consciousness, icons of genius, and post-World War II Black defiance. An admirable goal to
be sure, but here is the rub: Black theologians speak, according to Anderson, in opposition to ontological whiteness
when they are actually dependent upon whiteness for the legitimacy of their agenda . Furthermore, ontological
blacknesss strong ties to suffering and survival result in blackness being dependent on suffering, and as a
result social transformation brings into question what it means to be black and religious . Liberative outcomes ultimately
force an identity crisis, a crisis of legitimation and utility. In Andersons words: Talk about liberation becomes hard to justify where
freedom appears as nothing more than defiant self-assertion of a revolutionary racial consciousness that
requires for its legitimacy the opposition of white racism. Where there exists no possibility of transcending the blackness that
whiteness created, African American theologies of liberation must be seen not only as crisis theologies; they remain theologies in a crisis of
legitimation.14 This conversation becomes more refined as new cultural resources are unpacked and various religious alternatives acknowledged. Yet
the bottom line remains racialization of issues and agendas, life and love. Falsehood is perpetuated through the hermeneutic of
return, by which ontological blackness is the paradigm of Black existence and thereby sets the agenda of Black
liberation within the postrevolutionary context of present day US A. One ever finds the traces of the Black aesthetic which
pushes for a dwarfed understanding of Black life and a sacrifice of individuality for the sake of a unified Black faith. Yet differing experiences of racial
oppression (the stuff of ontological blackness) combined with varying experiences of class, gender and sexual oppression call into question the value of
their racialized formulations. Implicit in all of this is a crisis of faith, an unwillingness to address both the glory and
guts of Black existencenihilistic tendencies that, unless held in tension with claims of transcendence, have the potential to
overwhelm and to suffocate. At the heart of this dilemma is friction between ontological blackness and
contemporary postmodern black lifeissues, for example related to selecting marriage partners, exercising freedom of movement,
acting on gay and lesbian preferences, or choosing political parties.15 How does one foster balance while embracing difference as positive? Anderson
looks to Nietzsche.
Rejection Solves
Pinn 2004 Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota (Anthony B., Black Is, Black Aint: Victor Anderson,
African American Theological Thought, and Identity, Dialog: A Journal of Theology . Volume 43, Number 1)
Viewing these issues from the context of overtly religious thought, it is reasonable to say that Black religious studies participates in this ideological game
by demonstrating the uniqueness of Black religion in opposition to White religious expression. Ontological blackness denotes a
provincial or clan-ness understanding of Black collective life, one that is synonymous with Black genius and its orthodox activities
and attitudes. Race is reified, that is, treated as an objectively existing category independent of historically contingent factors and subjective intentions
in the writings of historical and contemporary African American cultural and religious thinkers. 9 To avoid this dilemma, African
American criticism must be pragmatic enough to subvert all racial discourse and cultural idolatry, and
sensitive enough to appreciate diverse and utopian or transcendent visions of life.10 When this is done, both
the friction between cultural and religious criticism highlighted by Said and preoccupation with blackness
physically and culturallyare resolved. Room is made for a religiously informed cultural criticism.
***Over Extension K***

Their role of the ballot argument overextends the political by claiming that this debate space
represents something more than a competition for a win. Arguing that the ballot carries
discursive significance is the same logic as the discourse theory of citizenship which claims
every action is political.
Rufo and Atchison, 2011
(Ken Rufo, Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of Georgia, Jarrod Atchison, Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of Georgia, Review of
Communication, Vol. 11, No. 3, July 2011, pp. 193 215)
Laclau (1996) has written about the inherent emptiness at the heart of the hegemonic formulation, and
here we
would suggest that the political as a conceptual edifice enjoys the same fundamental insolvency . For Laclau,
these empty signifiers exist because any system of signification is structured around an empty place resulting
from the impossibility of producing an object, which, nonetheless, is required by the systematicity of the
system (p. 40). An empty signifier structures the relations between agents that comprise the larger system via
their relation to each other, but does so while supplying none of the substance that structures those relations.
As such, the political has ceased to be a regional category ... the political is, in some sense, the anatomy of the
social world, because it is the moment of the institution of the social ... which involves, as we know, the
production of empty signifiers in order to unify a multiplicity of heterogeneous demands in equivalential
chains. (Laclau, 2005, p. 154) Understood this way, it would be a mistake to think that the political is constituted by
an aggregate of individual components: policy makers, citizens, civic institutions, and so on. Instead, the
political provides a constitutive conceptual umbrella that then makes possible the thinking of the citizen as that
entity, that idiot, that is always already both a member of the body politic and its inadequate and lifethreatening missing piece. To summarize, the best way to reconcile the various disciplinary deployments of the citizen
thus far culled from the pages of our communication journals is to understand the citizen as epiphenomenal. This is to say that
the citizen operates/appears discursively as an after effect of our thinking of the political, or put differently,
that the political body produces the individual citizen as a function of its own incompleteness, rather than
being the as-yet-incomplete project of a multitude of quasi-functioning citizens. This explanation provides a way of
understanding citizens and citizenship commensurate with the use of these terms in our own disciplines research efforts; the question of whether or not
this reflects some objective determination about the contours of politics can be left for others to decide.
They continue..
Asens argument proceeds from an acknowledgment of the participation gap we noted previously , and the attendant
concerns that American democracy is under threat from an absence of citizen participation. Too often, Asen avers, these discourses key on accounts of
what qualifies as citizenship and then proceed to inquire whether these qualities or practices are present in sufficient numbers to indicate a healthy
political order. For Asen (2004), this approach dooms itself to failure and obsolescence: Rather than asking what counts as citizenship, we should ask:
how do people enact citizenship? (p. 191). By focusing on how people enact citizenship, Asen suggests, we can develop a
process-oriented, discourse theory of citizenship that sees citizenship as a series or mode of public
engagement(s), rather than the specific and rarefied domain of a few privileged acts. Citizens can thus enact
their citizenship through practices as diverse as voting, which Asen dubs the quintessential act of citizenship
(p. 205), blogging, conversing with neighbors, buying a particular cup of coffee, and so on. And the so on goes
on and on and on; as Asen puts it, a mode cannot be contained easily. As a mode citizenship cannot be
restricted to certain people, places or topics (p. 195). Hence, the major motivation behind Asens work: to think
and affirm political subjectivity in a way that minimizes or even precludes the exclusion of citizens from the
possibility of public engagement (pp. 192 194). He writes that a discursive conception of citizenship may offer one
case ... of an affirmative articulation of public subjectivity (p. 192). This begs certain questions about the nature
of subjectivity, intention, and agency, of course*questions Asen believes are answered or addressed, in part, by
the idea of process and modality. In addition, Asen also makes plain his interest in theorizing subjectivity
through citizenship, a claim that effectively circumscribes some of the larger debates about subjectivity by
placing them within the context of the process of public engagement in a democratic articulation of the
political. And we should make clear that, for Asen, the larger horizon against which citizenship is to be understood is that of public engagement and
democracy. 6 Asen (2004) writes of situating democracy via the discourse theory of citizenship; he writes of democratic renewal and of democracys
spirit manifesting in its most quotidian enactments (p. 196). Drawing on Deweys notion that democracys the idea of community life itself, Asen
explains that a democracy means that individuals participate, groups work together to liberate individual potential, and that human interaction in
its broadest sense secures democracy (2004, p. 197; 2002, p. 345). The discourse theory of citizenship is at the same time a
theorizing (or presupposition) about the nature of the political itself, at least in as much as the political is
understood as being broadly democratic, and as an invocation or extrapolation of publicness from what might
otherwise be private circumstances (e.g., choosing a consumer good or debating with neighbors over dinner).
History demonstrates to us that this over-extension carries with it the seeds of tyranny instead
of resistance.
A Fascism of/and the Political If our feeling of foreboding seems absurd, it does so because of two historical
trends. The first is the apotheosis of the political in the 19th and 20th centuries, starting with massive spread of
enfranchisement and the increasing demand for inclusion within the political process. Hence, slogans like
everything is politics or the personal is political, wherein the implication is that every action carries with it
political realities, consequences, or overtones. Ones choice of church, a kindness to a stranger, the goods or
services we consume, the entertainment we enjoy, the food we eat, the way we dress, the way we vote, the way
we argue, what we argue about*all are political acts. The political has become so pervasive that it has become
commonplace to assume its status as the unsurpassable master horizon of our age. Carl Schmitt, writing in the
early 1930s, was one of the first to warn against the overextension of the political. Its encroachment into areas
of life that were not, at one point, obviously political resulted in an interpenetration of the state and society, a
condition he called the total state. Therein ostensibly neutral domains*religion, culture, education, the
economy*then cease to be neutral in the sense that they do not pertain to state and to politics. As a polemical
concept against such neutralizations and depoliticalizations of important domains appears the total state,
which potentially embraces every domain. This results in the identity of state and society. In such a state,
therefore, everything is at least potentially political.... (Schmitt, 1996, p. 22) For advocates of this penetration, what
is happening is a recognition of certain political realities, but for Schmitt the total state made impossible any
real accounting of the political, because in the absence of any sphere absolutely distinct from the political, the
political lost its specific meaning. While some might contend that the failure to recognize the political
ramifications results in a hidden politics, Schmitt countered, In actuality it is the total state which no longer
knows anything absolutely nonpolitical... (p. 25). What becomes hidden in the total state, in other words, is
the very character of the political itself. For Schmitt, the political is to be defined by the distinction between friend and enemy, a
distinction that added significant conceptual clarity but that also misconstrued the limits of the political in its relationship to the community. In some
ways, it might be more accurate to suggest that Schmitt offered an historically contingent accounting for the political for the time in which he was
writing, wherein the friend and enemy distinction was the sine qua non of international relations. But the friend and the enemy can be more broadly
understood as figures that produce particular instantiations of community, of a polis, and that pose that community as a question of relation to other
equally posed communities. It is here that the work of Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy (1997) compliments Schmitt, as they
understand the political as the question of the figure of a community, or of figuration in general. Put
differently, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe see the political as the will ... to realize an essence-in-common on the
basis of a figure of that in-common (p. xxii). The figure, whatever it might be, or the process of figuration that
makes identification with a common figure possible in the first place, constitutes a horizon of intelligibility that
overdetermines what we think of as a politics. The figure of the friend, and the figure of the enemy, or the
immigrant, or the terrorist, provide a sort of ontological shorthand that produces and structures particular
political arrangements. Railing against the sense of the obviousness (the blinding obviousness) of politics, the
everything is political... (p. 112), Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe suggest what is needed is a more rigorous questioning and determination of the
political, in its specific essence. The figure of the citizen, so prominently on display in the work of our field, prompts exactly these sorts of questions, in
that any determination of the citizen is necessarily a determination of the extent and comportment of the political per se.
Our alternative is to vote __________ to resist the over-extension of the political. Their
consistent call for you to use your ballot to support change is the over-extension of the political
that always focuses on increasing political participation. Before you consider using your ballot
in the name of change you must confront the fascist nature of holding our entire community
hostage to their inspection.
The mention of fascism is of particular importance here in this debate . As a field, we are entering an era of thinking about the
public determined on the one hand by a theoretical interrogation of how discourses circulate and constitute a variety of publics and on the other hand a
material explosion of distribution channels and media saturation that ensure the robustness with which discourses circulate. The American people
are increasingly offered more ways to contribute, to participate, to receive news, to listen and read pundits and
commentators of all stripes, to see entertainments political function, to be conscious of their consumer choices
for the sake of labor, partisanship, the environment, and so on. We are seeing, then, a massive opportunity for
inclusion within the public/political realm, in a way that parallels the growth of mass communications media
and enfranchisement in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is the cosmic soup from which Fascism first emerged,
an invention created afresh for the era of mass politics (Paxton, 2004, p. 16). We cannot help but be concerned,
amidst talk of Minute Men militias and Tea Parties, about what may emerge as a result of the current changes.
Hence, our interest in promoting a note of caution. We think it time to ask ourselves as a discipline: when do we
reach a point of oversaturation, when citizen participation in the political becomes less determined by the
danger of lack and more determined by the danger of excess ? Nancy (2008) suggests that Every time the
political refers to such a totalizing property, there is indeed totalitarianism. That is to say, the horizon of this
thought is that of a political absorption or assumption of every sphere of existence (p. 25). 8 Perhaps this seems
too strongly worded, but it nonetheless matches the historical record for fascist states. Paxton (2004)
summarizes that record thusly: fascist regimes tried to redraw so radically the boundaries between private and
public that the private sphere almost disappeared. Robert Ley, head of the Nazi Labor Office, said that in the
Nazi state, the only private individual was someone asleep. For some observers, this effort to have the public
sphere swallow up the private sphere entirely is indeed the very essence of fascism. (p. 144)
2NC O/V
Claiming the debate space is political extends political significance to all personal actions
This leads to encroachment in the private sphere which is the foundation of fascism
Allows religion, culture, personal decisions to be publicly condemned
This empirically leads to theocracy, genocide, witch hunts which turn their exclusion claims
and independently create mass suffering
The alternative is to vote negative to resist their overextension of the ballot and affirm debate
as an arena free from fascist inspection
Fascism Link
Personal politics allows masses to be led into fascism and dictatorship- caudillos prove
Fitzgibbon 57- former prof of political science at UCLA (Russell, The Party Potpourri in Latin America, The Western
Political Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1957), pp. 3-22//MGD)
In almost all other countries - though it is always dangerous to generalize too dogmatically -
the "parties" (and probably we are justified in

so much the adjunct of personalism in politics, were individually so
dependent on the career of the single person whose property they constituted, that to think of them as operating on
the same basis as our Federalists and Republicans, our Whigs and Democrats and again Republicans, is entirely misleading.
In our own party history we have little to compare to this very prevalent picture of nineteenth-century Latin-American parties
unless it be the brief "period of personal politics" which followed the War of 1812. Those few years represented an anomaly in United States
party development; the same phenomenon was far from atypical in Latin America. If most Latin-American parties very largely lacked the
organizational characteristics of those in the United States or Britain, they certainly far surpassed them in the role played by the
individual leader. This was the omnipresent and often glamorous caudillo. The word cannot well be translated into English-it
putting the word in quotation marks) were
loses so much of overtone and color in the process. It is true that the caudillo had some elements of the party boss in Jersey City or Chicago or Kansas
City or Memphis, but he was and is significantly different from a Hague or a Kelly or a Pendergast or a Crump. The latter breed usually avoided the
limelight and frequently operated deviously; the caudillo as often gloried in every lumen of calcium glare he could
command. He was a man on horseback, a man whose gaudy uniform had to be ample to accommodate all the medals, ribbons, and braid which he
either devised for himself or exchanged prodigally with his fellow caudillos. The caudillo's European cousin, the dictator, says
Neumann, "is responsible to no man but to God and the nation (who are conveniently removed from any direct
interference), and in his very irresponsibility he is revered by the emotional, rootless, and amorphous masses
seeking mystery, devotion, and the miraculous." 10 The party was largely incidental in the power structure erected by the caudillo. S o
completely did he dominate it that it often took its popular designation from his name , family or Christian: thus we
have the Peronistas (in this case a legal as well as a popular name), the Monttvaristas, Arnulf- istas, and many others.l1 Even in a country where
party stability probably exceeds that of any other in Latin America - Uruguay - the major parties, or at least the leading wings of them, are known as
Batllistas and Herreristas as commonly as they are called Colorados and Blancos. We have very little in United States experience which can provide a
counterpart for the Latin- American caudillo. Possibly the closest example would be Huey Long, who for a number of years operated as the erratic,
publicity-seeking, strong- willed, egocentric owner of the Democratic party in Louisiana. But the Democratic party in Louisiana did not disintegrate with
Long's removal from the scene and in that way it differed from many caudillo-dominated parties in Latin America. In this latter aspect our best example,
and indeed one of only a few illustrations, would be found in the relationship of Theo- dore Roosevelt to the short-lived Progressive party which followed
him on his brief crusade to Armageddon with something of the fanatic fervor of a caudillo's party in Latin America. If we search for the nature
of the bond which links the member of this kind of party to its leader , i.e., the caudillo, we must look beyond the sorts
of linkages which would be familiar in this or various other countries in determining party membership, e.g., the promise
of political patronage or electoral support or business concessions, the fact that it is socially or regionally comme il faut to belong to one
party or another, even the irrational reason that one's father belonged to the same party. It is in the subtle area of the charismatic
appeal of the caudillo to his followers that much of the Latin-American political affinity is to be explained. The bemedaled uniform and
the constant and effective use of political symbols doubtless exercise at least a mild mesmerism over those who fall especially within
the visual range of the party leader. If to such attractions the jefe can add the oratori- cal arts of the demagogue he often becomes
irresistible. An Ecuadorian opponent of Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra once testified: I was violently opposed to his policies
and uniformly voted against them. One day, however, President Velasco Ibarra came to congress to deliver
personally a message urging passage of one of his projects.... Never before had I heard such a speech! When it was
finished the president and congress were unashamedly in tears, and we stood up and voted unanimously for his
bill. . . . On my way home, I scolded myself many times, for I had been a fool , such a fool, to vote for his insane
measure! 12 Max Weber perhaps best analyzes the nature of the relationship when he writes that the leader's charismatic claim breaks down if his
mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent... . He does not derive his "right" from their will, in the
manner of an election. Rather, the reverse holds: it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to
recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader . . . Pure charisma does not know any "legitimacy" other than that flowing
from personal strength, that is, one which is constantly being proved. The charismatic hero does not deduce his authority from codes and statutes . . . nor
does he deduce his authority from traditional custom or feudal vows of faith. . .. The charismatic leader gains and maintains authority solely by proving
his strength in life.... If [his followers] do not fare well, he is obviously not the master sent by the gods.1" Weber doubtless wrote those phrases without
the Latin-American political landscape in mind but they admirably describe the relationship which even yet exists between the caudillo and his "party" or
following. Michels also well described, more than forty years ago, the phenomenon of charismatic party leadership.14 By long psychologic
conditioning the man in the ranks, despite his own individualism, is attuned to accept uncritically the personal
leadership of a magnetic caudillo. To borrow the title of a popular television program, it is a "person to person" relationship.
"In this respect," a Latin-American writer well puts it, "the masses possess a rare feminine sense. From initial admiration they pass easily
to adherence and obedience, and from there to unconditional submission. The chief or leader or caudillo then
becomes an oracle, and on occasion is invested with almost divine attributes." 15 After death he is occasionally politically canonized, as
witness Rosas and Evita Per6n in Argentina, Saravia in Uruguay, and various others.16
Individual politics comes at a direct tradeoff with rational government
Why did a reasonable facsimile of a biparty system
persist through much of the nineteenth century in Colombia,
Uruguay, and Chile? The question is much easier to ask than to answer. In all three countries political issues early arose which cut much more
deeply than in most of the Latin-Ameri- can states. In Colombia and Chile at an early date and in Uruguay after the advent of Batlle at the end of the
century these issues were intensified by valid and significant socioeconomic differences between parties. The three countries went further than most in
perfecting and extending downward a systematic development of party machinery. Personalism, though not obliterated, gave way in
degree to
the discipline of ideology and organization. And, as Weber puts it, "It is the fate of charisma, whenever it
comes into the permanent institutions of a community, to give way to powers of tradition or of rational
socialization. This waning of charisma generally indicates the diminishing importance of individual action. And
of all those powers that lessen the importance of individual action, the most irresistible is rational discipline."
18
Fascism Turns Genocide/ Racism

Fascism justifies genocide, otherization, and racism- provides license to hate
Kallis 09- professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Lancaster University, PhD from
Edinburgh (Aristotle,Genocide and Fascism the Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe, p. 85-6//MGD)
The following two chapters explore the ingredients, contours, and consequences of the fascist ideological synthesis
between national rebirth and cleansing. The former pointed to an ideal state for the individuals (the new man), the
national community, and the nation-state as its historic-political vessel- the three bound together into a single
utopian vision. The latter was both the precondition and the consequence of the vision of rebirth, purging the
national community from allegedly threatening and/or harmful others and thus preparing it for the future state
of a full sovereign existence. It is this latter element of cleansing- and its incorporation into the core message of rebirth- that is of
particular interest to this book, for it helped shape a redemptive licence to hate directed at particular others and render
the prospect of their elimination more desirable, more intelligible, and less morally troubling. Through this
license to hate, fascism produced a discourse of permissible hatred against them that helped nurture and later
unleash suppressed eliminationist tendencies, first on the level of collective consciousness, and later in terms of violent
action. It also legitimized the use of violence against them- as a formulative experience for the new man and
the reborn national community, as the expression of the nations full sovereignty, and as the necessary vehicle for the production of an ideal
new order.
AT Fascism is Progressive
Ideologist parties inevitably fail at reform- lose touch with the people
Another difficulty faced by many of these parties is that they so often
become so deeply involved in the implications of their

ideologies that they fail to respond to the exigencies of practical politics. Latins, in Latin America and elsewhere, are
said to be fond of playing with ideas but this fondness, at least in Latin America, is often not accompanied by a corresponding intellectual discipline and toughness which would enable the ideas to be properly assorted and evaluated.
Hence, the ideology-based parties have in some instances tended to lose touch with reality and progress, such concrete
realities as the growth of industrialization, changing patterns of land tenure, etc. Latin-American Socialist parties provide a good case in point. Being
originally Marxian, their orientation should be toward the working classes. But in country after country they
have become increasingly doctrinaire, academic, and intellectualized. They have developed undeniably articulate leaders and
their newspapers have had highly stimulating editorial pages, but Latin-American Socialist parties have had relatively little genuine influence over the
masses; they have allowed that role to be pre-empted by such organizations as the Communist parties and the Peronista party in Argentina. Jorge
Gaitan, the later-to-be-murdered Colom- bian political leader, put it neatly when he said, in almost the only English phrase he used in an evening of
conversation with me in 1944, that the Colombian Socialist party lacked "political sex appeal." "Th e Socialist weakness," wrote Ray Josephs
about the Argentine party (but it could describe other Latin-American Socialist parties as well), "lies
in addiction to theory and

philosophy and what we might call their lack of practical, sound common sense." 23
Ext: Ballot Overextension Links

They overextend the role of the ballot- mixing competition and cooperation undermines
democratic processes
Schudson 97- Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard, former prof of communication and sociology at
UCSD, current prof of journalism at Columbia (Michael, Why conversation is not the soul of democracy, Critical Studies in
Mass Communication Volume 14, Issue 4//MGD)
Still, the egalitarian advice was within a context. There
was also advice on the ways to speak to one's superiors and inferiors, and it did
not have to be said at all that some people were outside the conversation. Spontaneity was encouraged yes, but
there was also advice on how to produce it. Cooperation yes, but the early manuals also recognized the
competitiveness in conversation and the desire to shine. Historian Peter Burke (1995) concludes that "a truly general theory
of conversation should discuss the tension and the balance between the competitive and cooperative principles,
between equality and hierarchy, between inclusion and exclusion, and between spontaneity and study, rather than placing all the weight on the first item
in each of these pairs." (p. 92) Recognizing a tension between principles in conversation is one way to arrive at a more coherent and realistic view of
conversation. I propose, alternatively, that two rather different ideals of conversation are intertwined and confused . One ideal could be termed
the sociable model of conversation, the other the problem-solving model. The distinguishing feature of the
sociable ideal is its insistence that conversation be non-utilitarian. In a conversation, as political philosopher Michael Oakeshott wrote, the aim is
not inquiry, there is no hankering after a conclusion. Neither informing nor persuading are crucial. Reasoning "is not
sovereign" and conversation "does not compose an argument." Conversation has no end outside itself. It is "an unrehearsed
intellectual adventure" and "as with gambling, its significance lies neither in winning nor in losing, but in
wagering"8 (Oakeshott, 1962, p. 198; see also Shapin, 1994, pp 114-121).3
Church/State Links
Seperating individual conduct from political stances is k/t separation of church and state
Audi 89- professor of philosophy at Notre Dame (Robert, The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of
Citizenship, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer, 1989), pp. 259-296//MGD)
The issue of separation of church and state has great moral, legal, and
political importance, and the subject currently
holds special interest. An unprecedented number of people are injecting religion into politics ; pressures are mounting both to
have religious observances in public schools and to support sectarian education through tax revenues; and the United States Supreme Court may soon be
reinterpreting constitutional constraints on the relation between religion and public life. In this article I approach the separation of church and state
from a conceptual and moral standpoint. My broadest aim is to build a framework that clarifies certain moral, legal, and
political questions about religion and civil life. My specific purpose is to develop a theory of separation of
church and state that serves two major ends. The first is to clarify the traditional separation doctrine as usually
understood-as addressed above all to governmental institutions. The second aim is wider and has not so far received substantial treatment in the
literature: it is to ascertain what restrictions on individual conduct should, in a free and democratic society, accompany a commitment to separation of
church and state. I Part I interprets the separation doctrine. Part II considers its basis. Part III applies the doctrine to some important current issues.
Parts IV and V introduce the second phase of my theory, concerning the obligations of citizens in a free and democratic society;
here I
propose principles of separation for individual conduc t. The concluding sections apply the principles of
individual conduct and explore the connections among religion, morality, and democracy.
The personal is political mentality allows religious views to infiltrate politics- the abortion
debate proves
Sahar and Karasawa 05- *PhD from UCLA, professor of psychology at Wheaton College,
**Professor of Psychology Nagoya University, Japan (Gail and Kaori, Is the Personal Always Political? A Cross-Cultural
Analysis of Abortion Attitudes, BASIC AND APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, 27(4), 285296//MGD)
The personal is political, a phrase used frequently during the womens liberation movement, seems to
capture the nature of the abortion issue very well in the United States. It is difficult to conceive of a deeply personal
issue as politically charged as abortion. Certainly, it is among the most politically divisive domestic legal issues of our
time. One predominant explanation for the contentiousness of the issue in the United States is that contrasting
beliefs about abortion represent entirely different worldviews or value systems (Luker, 1984). Luker argued that the prolife and pro-choice activists, who define the nature of the conflict in the United States, differ strongly in many deeply held
values regarding sexuality, gender roles, and even the meaning of life. The abortion debate calls these values into
question and causes individuals to feel that their entireworld viewis under assault (p. 158). In terms of psychological
theories, this worldview approach to abortion attitudes brings to mind the symbolic politics model , which holds that
individuals acquire learned affective responses or symbolic predispositions toward particular symbols during
early socialization (Sears, Lau, Tyler, & Allen, 1980). These predispositions are activated by political symbols
encountered later in life and influence attitudes toward such symbols. Political ideology, morality, and religiosity are
examples of potent symbolic predispositions that have been shown to influence attitudes and policy preferences (e.g., see Sears &
Huddy, 1990) and are linked to abortion attitudes in the United States. For example, in the United States, abortion approval is negatively related to
religiosity (Cook, Jelen,&Wilcox, 1992; Hall&Ferree, 1986; Harris& Mills, 1985; Szafran & Clagett, 1988;Wilcox, 1990; Zucker, 1999), as well as moral
traditionalism and political conservatism (Granberg & Granberg, 1980; Zucker, 1999). That is, the more religious, morally traditional, and politically
conservative individuals are, the less they approve of abortion. In addition, the pro-life position has been associated with endorsement of traditional
gender roles (Luker, 1984).
Seperating the personal and political is k/t fair governance

Farney 09- Political Studies Department, Queens University (James, The Personal Is Not Political: The Progressive
Conservative Response to Social Issues, American Review of Canadian Studies Vol. 39, No. 3, September 2009, 242252//MGD)
The central claim of this article is that the response of Canadian conservatives to the extension of same-sex rights and the liberalization of abortion
during the late 1960s to the early 1990s while deeply conservative was not socially conservative, as the term is now understood. Social
conservatism accepts that the personal has become politicized and seeks to use political means to promote traditionalist
notions of correct sexual behavior and family structure. Progressive Conservatives, on the other hand, consistently
portrayed such issues as moral, rather than political, and sought to minimize the linkage between the
conservative position on social issues and conservative positions on other issues. This buffering was portrayed not
merely as an electoral necessity but as a necessary implication of the partys ideology. One can characterize this response as
a refusal to acknowledge the extension of politics: the personal was not, and should not become, politicized.
Church/State Mpx
Religious liberty is k/t all human rights and preventing atrocity- history overwhelmingly proves
Scharffs 04- JD from Yale Law, professor of law at Brigham Young University (Brett, The Autonomy of
Church and State, lexis//MGD)
Religious liberty is at once the grandparent and the neglected stepchild of international human rights norms .21
Recognized at least since the first century A.D., religious liberty, in this now secular era, has lost some of its urgency, perhaps due to the marginalization
of religious belief, at least among academic and policy elites, and perhaps due to the inevitable conflicts that arise between religious rights and other
important human rights.22 But because of the fundamental importance of religious liberty and the horrific problems
with religious fanaticism, the once neglected grandparent has again moved to the fore . As Arcot Krishnaswami observed
over forty years ago in his influential study of religious liberty, [ t]he right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is
probably the most precious of all human rights, and the imperative need today is to make it a reality for every
single individual regardless of the religion or belief that he professes, regardless of his status, and regardless of his condition in life.23
Nevertheless, whether viewed with a wide historical lens from antiquitythrough the Roman Empire and the
Middle Agesor through a prism focused on the terrible middle years of the last century and the attempted
extermination of the Jewish people, or with a focus on the events of September 11, 2001, religion has served as a
factor in much of the pain and suffering that human beings inflict upon one another. 24 Given the importance of
religious liberty and the dangers associated with religious fanaticism and hatred, finding and developing
appropriate approaches that allow for freedom of religion or belief while guarding against atrocities such as those
mentioned above must be counted as one of the most pressing and vexing problems facing the world today .25
Coercion Mpx
Separation of church and state k/t solving worst instances of government coercion
It is plain that a society without religious liberty is simply not adequately
free. Moreover, freedom is required for

democracy, at least in any sense of 'democracy' relevant here.9 Thus, if one's ideal is a free and democratic society,
one wants a social (presumably constitutional) framework to guarantee at least this: (I) freedom of religious belief,
understood to prohibit the state or anyone else from inculcating religious beliefs in the general population, where this is taken to exclude or restrict
cultivation of competing religious beliefs; (2) freedom of worship, involving, minimally, a right of peaceable religious assembly, as well as a right
to offer prayers by oneself; and (3) freedom
to engage in (and to teach one's children) the rites and rituals of one's religion , provided
these practices do not violate certain basic moral rights. Clearly, then, a free and democratic society should adopt the libertarian principle. Without
the freedom it guarantees, there would be inadequate protection against governmental coercion.
Discrimination Mpx
Church/state separation k/t prevent religious takeover that leads to mass discrimination
The case for the equalitarian principle is more complicated. The (or a) central premise is
that if the state prefers one or more

religions, people might well find it hard to practice another, or would at least feel pressure to adopt the (or a) religion
favored by the state. The degree of pressure would tend to be proportional to the strength of governmental preference. T he pressure
might be as great as requirement of a certain religious affiliation as a condition for holding a government job,
or as minor as inviting clergy from just one religion to officiate at certain ceremonies. Any governmental preference, however, creates
some tendency for greater power to accrue to the preferred religion, particularly if it is that of the majority. Such
concentrations of power easily impair democracy, under which citizens should have equal opportunities to
exercise political power on a fair basis, even if certain disproportionate powers do not actually (or at least do not directly) restrict
anyone's liberty. Moreover, when a state establishes or prefers a given religion , it is to be expected (though it is perhaps not
inevitable) that certain laws will significantly reflect the outlook on life associated with that religion . These are among
the reasons why a free and democratic society should adopt the equalitarian principle. Even when the libertarian principle is respected, the
equalitarian principle is needed for protection against governmental discrimination.
Mpx Magnifier- Social Condemnation

Failure to keep religion out of state policy leads to social condemnation of all outsiders- turns
racism and discrimination
What is the rationale for the neutrality principle? Recall that religious liberty, broadly conceived,
includes the freedom

to reject religious views. If the state shows preference for religious institutions as such (or for religion in general), there
may well be pressure to adopt a religion, and quite possibly discrimination against those who do not. On the other hand,
there are kinds of governmental preference that are consistent with religious liberty; hence, the neutrality principle cannot be simply derived from the
libertarian principle. There are many domains of possible preference for the religious: prayer sessions in public schools, exemptions from combat duty, and eligibility to adopt children are examples. Such
preference may also tend toward political

domination by the religious. Thus, even if there is protection both from religious tyranny and from
discriminatory exclusions on religious grounds, govemmental preference of the religious as such is likely to give them
political, economic, and other advantages that threaten a proper democratic distribution of political power. It
can also reduce the level of free exercise of liberty, as opposed to its mere legal scope . What is legally
permitted, or even solicitously protected by law, may still seem to many people too trouble- some to be
worthwhile in day-to-day life. If, for example, exercising a freedom goes against governmental policy or even
social tradition, it may be costly. Consider someone who declines to participate in state-sponsored patriotic
activities; here, and surely even in absenting oneself from state- or community-sponsored voluntary prayer sessions, one
might conspicuously separate oneself from most others.
AT Emancipatory
Their approach fails- doesnt challenge the structures which are the root cause of exclusion
Squire 02- PhD candidate in womens studies (Sarah, The Personal and the Political: Writing the Theorists Body,
Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 17, No. 37, 2002//MGD)
One example of a poststructural approach to experience is that of feminist
historian Joan Scott, who has critiqued the use of

experience as a foundational concept located within a realm of reality outside of discourse.3 In examining
appeals to experience in corrective accounts of normative history, Scott identifies the ways in which experience
is viewed as an incontestable form of evidence which rests upon a referential notion: what could be truer , after
all, than a subjects own account of what he or she has lived through?4 Previously ignored standpoints are often taken as
transparently self-evident once uncovered, making visible (and thus truthful, given a scopophilic epistemological frame) kinds
of experience otherwise unrecognised. This view of experience, while politically cogent, leaves unchallenged the
assumptions and practices which excluded different experience in the first place.5 Evidence for difference is
established, Scott argues, but not how that difference is constructed and constituted within subjects.
Personal politics create binaries amongst personal experiences that do not fit a political moldturns exclusion
Squire 02- PhD candidate in womens studies (Sarah, The Personal and the Political: Writing the Theorists Body,
Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 17, No. 37, 2002//MGD)
In this kind of approach, attention is drawn to
the discursive processes which position subjects and produce their

experiences.6 Experience is, in this instance, not something that is possessedpackage-likeby individuals, but
something that is produced in the construction of individuals themselves. Feminism, as with other social
movements, has been organised around experience as a unifying commonality that establishes womens
identity and agency, and hence their political and theoretical legitimacy. However, to view experience in this way
necessarily excludes other forms of experiencenotably differences among and within womenas well as leaving
unproblematised the historically and culturally situated ways in which we come to understand our experiences.
The point here is not that experience isnt important, butto put it more bluntlyhow it is that we experience our experience. Experience cannot be
viewed outside of, or prior to, particular discursive moments. The theorisation of experience therefore needs to be one that does not merely make
experience visible as in a literal rendition of a previously excluded or overlooked difference (such as in bringing to light the different experiences of
women who practise eating disorders). The deployment and interpretation of the personal should not be that which
renders it as singular and atemporal, or as outside of the practice of theory. Rather, reference to personal experience needs to
encompass a critical interrogation of its own articulation.
Personal Subjugation Module

Turn- claiming the political is personal heists social responsibility onto individuals- deflects
guilt onto the victim
Tobach 94- PhD in comparative psychology from NYU (Ethel, . . . Personal is Political is Personal is Political . . .
Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 50. No. I , 1994. pp. 221-244//MGD)
If Hawkesworth (1987) is correct, and as it appears to me from the comments by people about the meaning of the slogan, she is,
how did the

slogan come to deemphasize the political and emphasize the personal? Several processes may have been involved: 1. The
severe effects of sexism on individuals mental and physiological state required some form of relief and the small group
discussions were reasonable vehicles for seeking relief. This could be used without the consequences (payment, record of having sought help) of seeking
professional help. Many women seek or are put in therapeutic positions whether they wish it or not. This happens ,
for instance, when
women are in prison or when they are dealing with social agencies or private physicians. These
are usually situations in which the personal problem is seen as the responsibility of the individual rather than
the result of societal problems. 2, It was difficult to develop political programs that would unite women for effective action. The personal
activity was in the end easier. 3. It was difficult to develop action programs (political) in the academic setting without
endangering the futures of the students and the faculty. Examination of the feasibility of developing a
personal/political aspect to feminism in academia is needed.
Personal politics fail- subject the person, rather than the ideology, to repression
I was also reminded of the slogan that integrated the individual and society. When I first heard the slogan personal is political, it
rang a clarion note of validity for personal, political, and scientific activity. It epitomized the uniquely human process of conscious activity, an aspect of
behavioral evolution I have been studying (Tobach, 1974, 1981, 1988, 1991b). It reflected a commitment that I and political co-workers have struggled to
realize and understand. It reminded me of examples of the integration of the political and personal in the field of research in which I had earned my
living. Above all, it presented a way to formulate approaches to problems and to problem solving. I wish to tell three narratives that
exemplify the issues inherent in the slogan. Each of the narratives illustrates the interconnectedness of the
personal (as exemplified in the intellectual, scientific, or academic labor of the individual) with the societal significance of that labor.
The second and third narratives explicate the centrality of history-the need for vigilance to understand the
implications of scientific work for societal policies and practices. It is the general applicability of the persona Upolitica1 concept that brings the
narratives together. The three narratives are as follows: 1. Feminism in academi a. It was feminist theory and practice that produced the slogan.
The origins and contemporary status of the slogan are discussed. 2. Comparative psychology, ethology, and sociobiology. This
narrative focuses on the use of science to support repressive policies. It also raises questions about the responsibility of scientists for human welfare. 3.
The T. C. Schneirla narrative demonstrates the ever present danger of espousing unpopular theories in a
repressive, or potentially repressive, atmosphere.

No solvency- all people would have to have the same personal experiences
The forms, the policies, and the practices of government typically reflect
the biases of those who have the power to

determine the politics. To envision that governments can be changed to reflect the personal experiences of
those who have been without power is a radical idea. It indicates a relation of forces that is somehow different
from the typical description based on forms of society (slaveowning, feudal, monarchical, republican), or of class relations, or of religion. Rathe r it
speaks to some universal experience that underlies all the politics and all the states, that could apply not only to
the condition of women but to the consciousness of all those who suffered from the genocidal practices of states
against groups of people because of their race or ethnicity as well.
Democracy Module
Personal conversations are not the foundation of the public sphere- create dangerous
encroachments into democratic norms
THE NOTIONS of "civil society" and "the public sphere" have drawn attention to the character of "talk" as a
constitutive feature of democracy. When Jiirgen Habermas writes that "a portion of the public sphere comes into
being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body" (1974, p. 79), conversation is granted an
exceedingly important political role. If democracy is, as it has often been called, government by discussion, or, more
precisely, "government by rational and free public discussion among legally equal citizens," conversation must lie close to its heart.1 This
was certainly the view of John Dewey. For him, talk was the central feature of democratic life. The chief requirement for revitalizing public life, he wrote
in 1927, is "the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public" (Dewey, 1927, p.
208). Such high authority notwithstanding, it is this claim that I want to criticize. I do so in a friendly spirit; that is, I am criticizing a
notion I myself find very appealing. But I also think
it has been misleading, perhaps dangerously so.
The spontaneity of personal conversation undermines democratic norms

But what is-or what was or what might bethis
ideal conversation at the very soul of democratic life? Are we to imagine

it as a form of social life spontaneous and free? This would seem to be an important part of what makes conversation central.
But it would be wrong to assume that the spontaneous is the authentic or true. An emphasis on the
spontaneous draws attention away from the contrivances necessary for democracy indeed, it draws attention away from
the fact that democracy is a contrivance. I will argue that democratic talk is not essentially spontaneous but essentially rule-governed,
essentially civil, and unlike the kinds of conversation often held in highest esteem for their freedom and their wit, it is essentially oriented to
problem-solvingle.
Problem solving models are distinct from personal, social conversations- rules are necessary to
improve the quality of the game, engage with opponents, and provide inclusionary norms
Both the sociable and problem-solving models of conversation emphasize the equality of conversational
partners. Inside the conversation, equality, civility, and fairness reign. But the barriers to entry differ. The
sociable model emphasizes cultivation and sensibility; conversational partners should develop subtle capacities for fresh,
entertaining, and responsive talk. The problemsolving model, in contrast, focuses on argument, the conversational
partners' capacity to formulate and respond to declarative views of what the world is and what it should be like.
The sociable model sees conversation as an end-in-itself, an aesthetic pleasure. The problem-solving model
sees conversation as a means to the end of good government . More strongly, it pictures conversation itself as a
model of good government. The skill or capacity of a competent participant in sociable conversation is verbal
facility, wit, and sociability itself. The capacity of the participant in problem-solving conversation is
reasonablenessas political theorist William Galston puts it, it is both "the willingness to listen seriously to a range of views" and "the willingness
to set forth one's own views intelligibly and candidly as the basis of a politics of persuasion " (1991, p. 227). The recuperative and interactive
nature of conversation makes it particularly apt as a model both of sociability on the one hand and of public reasoning on the other. So does its
essentially cooperative character. Even in an argument, there is mutual support-if only in the agreement to stay engaged,
to keep focused on the other person, and to not abandon the talk for either sticks and stones, on the one hand, or
"the silent treatment" on the other. Even in a hostile exchange, philosopher Paul Grice's (1975/1989) "Cooperative Principle"
is often satisfied, that participants speak according to "the accepted purpose and direction of the talk exchange "
in which they are engaged. In the sociable conversation, talk's interactive engagement provides the quality of a rich
gamesay, chesswith plenty of constraints on moves, but with little predictability of outcome. Likewise, the
communicative virtue of problem-solving conversation is not the speaking or the listening or even their close
proximity. It is the interaction of the participants and the ongoing capacity for each statement to be revised in
accord with the prompts or responses of the other. This, in turn, depends on a degree of good will. An argument
out of control is a conversation where each statement's ambiguity is read in the most hostile way possible. If the
husband and wife are fighting, and one says, "I can't take this any more, I'm going out," the other may reply, "So you don't love me any more? You want a
divorce? You're leaving me?" It might have been just as logical to respond, "Okay, maybe we both need to cool off for awhile." Just because people
are in a conversation, there is no guarantee that they will take advantage of conversation's recuperative powers.
Not the fact of conversation but the norms that govern it make it serviceable for democratic self-government.
There is many a slip twixt conversation and democratic government. Because that is so, the ground rules of
conversation are more important than the spontaneity that may arise therein. Conversation can be and, without
appropriate training, education, and social equality, normally is , highly inegalitarian. The rules of democratic conversation can
help protect the slow of speech, who are otherwise disenfranchised by the articulate and by the glib.
Debate= Own Space

Fear of embarrassment is human- that necessitates public debate as an arena removed from the
personal to provide a lab for testing ideas without risking personal humiliation
The fear of embarrassment the Vermonters express is
a fundamental human characteristic. Charles Darwin argued that

every human expression of emotion except one has an analogue in other species . The distinctively human
manifestation of emotion is blushing; Darwin explains that it is "the thinking what others think of us, which excites a blush." We blush,
in a word, because we are embarrassed. For sociologist Erving Goffman (1981), the effort to avoid embarrassments provides
the central and continuous drama to human social life. It is no accident that the situations Goffman regularly
analyzed are public ones. There are situations where the possibility of embarrassment is minimized,
particularly where people feel completely at home or where religious or political fervor or the passion of love make
people practically asocial, that is, relatively insensitive to the opinions of mere acquaintances or strangers. But in
public meetings, streetcorner conversations, and other interaction with acquaintances in public, the
presentation of self and the embarrassment risked by it come to the fore (see Schudson, 1984). We should perhaps
distinguish two kinds of conversations in democracies , both of them necessary, but in radically different ways,
to the functioning of democratic society. In homogeneous conversation, people talk primarily with others who
share their values and they expect that conversation will reinforce them in the views they already share . In
these conversations, people may test their opinions , to be sure, and venture ideas that may not be warmly
received, but they do so in full knowledge that they agree on fundamentals and that the assumptions that they share will make such experimentation
safe. People may be prepared in these familial conversations for citizenship in the more daunting form of
heterogeneous conversation. Here, in what we might term "truly public" conversation, citizens talk with other
citizens who may not share their views and values. In these conversations, friendly testing is all but impossible;
in these settings, there are penalties for expressing uncertainty and doubt, rewards for speaking with
conviction and certainty. Tempers may flare and working partnerships may be frayed or severed. But there may also be the exhilaration of
achieving agreement (or, for one side or another, of extracting concessions) and in the face of the hurdle of heterogeneity getting the public business
done.5
Democracy is fundamentally uncomfortable- that necessitates rules of engagement for fairminded deliberation-only way to prevent personal intimidation
Conversation provides no magic solution to problems of democracy. Democracy has little to do with intimacy
and little to do with community. It can be thrilling, it can be boring, it can provoke anxiety, it is often
uncomfortable. I rarely enjoy the deliberative discourse of publics assembled in relatively large numbers to make
decisions. I prefer two-person conversations to large gatherings. I prefer seminars to large assemblies. The larger the group, the more I
want rules of engagement because I am slow of speech. This is part of what the romance of-conversation fails to
understand. There is another thing I would add, as a coda, that the romance of conversation fails to grasp. Democracy sometimes
requires withdrawal from conversation, withdrawal from common public subjects. Democracy, as Stephen Holmes suggests (1995,
pp. 202235), may insist that even talk itself be constrained. 3 In the United States, the dangers of disunion and dismemberment of state
and civil society by religious passions led to the First Amendment and now a 200-year history of a specific Constitutional efforts to keep religion out of
political discussion. Democracy may, in a sense, choose to gag its political deliberations, removing them to civil society or the
private sphere. Democracies may even choose to
gag directly political speech in the interests of fair-minded deliberation.

The most familiar instance of this, practiced throughout the United States, is a prohibition on political speech within a
certain specified distance of polling places on election day. Here speech is treated as action, as a form of
intimidation or unfair advantage. Legislators around the country have concluded that a moat of political silence
should surround the castle of the polling place. In voters last steps toward the voting booth, collective rights of political
expression are sacrificed to individual rights of personal deliberation.
Seperation K/T Democracy

Having norms steer conversation is k/t democracy
Conversation at large is the DNA or germ plasm of
social life. It has the capacity to replicate, to combine, to exceed

itself. It is inherently neither public nor private but social. It exists not only in democracies. Conversation in democracy
may differ from conversation elsewhere not because democracy bubbles up from conversation but because democratic political
norms and institutions instruct and shape conversations to begin with. Nothing in conversation itself necessarily
suggests democracy, not even its formal egalitarianism; in early modern Europe, it suggested, if anything, aristocracy because
it depended on cultivation. It may be that democracy sets up norms that affect even familial or homogeneous
conversations in democracy. Citizenship seeps from the common political forum into private settings . Where this
happens, in the family, for instance, it becomes difficult for the parent to answer the child's "Why should I?" with "Because I said so." The norm of
reason-giving competes with the assumption of parental authority. Democracy creates democratic conversation more than
conversation naturally creates democracy. As philosopher George Kateb has suggested, democracy cultivates a certain kind
of self, subtly, incompletely, but effectively nonetheless. The "mere status of citizen," he writes, which makes a person eligible to
run for office or to vote, "is a continuous incitement to claim the status of citizen . . . in all nonpolitical relations
of life. Indeed, the incitement is to politicize the nonpolitical relations of life and thus to democratize them"
(Kateb, 1992, p. 40).
Over Extension K: Exclusion Impacts

Claiming that everything is political removes any agency for participating in or withdrawing
from the political. This is the precursor to mass exclusion because it simply takes a majority to
determine that any action represents a threat to the bodypolitic. If you truly care about
preventing exclusion then you must preserve a space for debate outside of politics by voting
negative
We believe Asens work, despite its many benefits and growing popularity, gives rise to some fundamental questions. First, what does agency
look like in such a formulation? If citizenship affirms public subjectivity, and subjectivity is theorized through
citizenship, have we simply sidestepped the issue of agency and the subject by way of a sort of self-referential
loop? If subjectivity is affirmed by the citizen enacting their citizenship and this citizenship cannot be restricted
to people or topics, then who is this subject that acts, how are we to ascertain the mechanisms, processes or
structures that allow or disallow a choice of or for political action in the first place? Asen (2004) understands this,
to be sure, convinced as he is that by considering the activities of citizens ... we may also learn something
about the category of citizen by considering processes of citizenship (pp. 204 205). This claim strikes us as
recursive, and ultimately uncompelling; if the citizen is determined by their how of citizenship, then the
something we learn about the category of citizen is always already determined by the almost infinitely prolific
range of hows. But since nothing bounds the range of these potential enactments, this tells us nothing about
the qualifying processes that might structure citizenship, nor the resulting anchors and affinities by which we
might think of the figure of the citizen. In other words, it works persuasively only if we allow for a bleeding or
confluence of the citizen and the discourse theory of citizenship*only if we assume that the one is coterminous
with the other, and many of the obvious questions of subjectivity and publicity are simply left unresolved and
in abeyance. Indeed, when Asen actually articulates the shift from the what to the how of citizenship, he does
so by asking how do people enact citizenship? As such, the relation between subject and practice is one of
agent (people) and act (enacting citizenship), wherein the action of a particular agent constitutes citizenship as
a discursive reality. Phrased this way, the how of citizenships procession is always already and by necessity a
concatenation of whats, and how one assesses those enactments will require passing through a bramble of
presuppositions woven from ones various ideologies. Here, those presuppositions include rather
unproblematic notions of intentionality (witness Asens discussion of coffee purchases as enactments of
citizenship, which acquire their political value from a critics post hoc divination of a consumers private
motivations), as well as certain presumptions about the viability and desirability of participation in political
affairs. Hence, a second set of questions: if voting is the quintessential moment of citizenship, if consumerism
may be the secret horizon of citizen engagement, if trailing a motorcade in the wake of ones recent loss of
employment shows creative citizenship, if discussions with neighbors and strangers alike all qualify as
illustrations of how citizenship proceeds, then what action, what how, what step could one take that would
possibly not qualify as one of citizenships many modes of engagement? In effect, given the cohesive stretch of a
discursive thinking of the citizen, and with the dismissal of any sense of categories or duties that would mark
the threshold between the authentic citizen and its other, doesnt this model simply transform the whole of life
into default political activity? In other words, doesnt it condemn us to citizenship irrespective of our wishes?
Doesnt it result in a refiguring of existence as a form of theoretically coerced public engagement? As Brouwer and
Asen (2010) suggest elsewhere, when it comes to public engagement, Circulation happens in many ways*we prefer to
recognize all of them (p. 7). Surely, advocates of this more fluid, multimodal understanding of the citizen
would take umbrage; after all, they are simply casting about for a way of framing the citizen in the
contemporary political scene that opens up space for resistance and critique and new, productive modes of
engagement. The alternative, as Asen (2004) suggests, is the conventional wisdom of the citizen as a class, as the
possession of citizens or a status attribute (pp. 203 204). But it is a mistake to believe that there are only two ways of thinking
citizenship*one as a citizens process and one as the citizens possession. A third way would be to think of the citizen as the possession of citizenship, to
see in citizenship a certain juridical, social, and political determination that stamps the subject as a subject qua citizen, that imposes upon subjectivity
the obligation toward public engagement and ones incorporation into the political. Understanding citizen thusly resolves the tensions that Asens work
likewise addresses, but it does so with a far more suspicious and limiting sense of the extent and value of the political. Asen concludes by writing: The
power of citizenship engagement arises in important respects from its capacity to refashion social norms and beliefs and to recast nonpolitical activities
as political (p. 207). 7 Considered alongside the inability to limit the conceptual range of citizenship and coupled with the compulsion toward political
participation, such a proclamation strikes us with foreboding rather than enthusiasm, for it portends a political without end or outside.
AT: This Space is Already Political

Turn: The assertion that there is no space outside the political is the dangerous precursor to
facism that will ultimately make debate MORE exclusive
As we have seen, the functional consequence of our fields imprecise use of the citizen, and of attempts like those of Asens to rectify
and
enhance our understanding of citizenship are in danger of eclipsing the private and subsuming it under the
public, of theoretically producing subjectivity as defined by its citizenship, of thinking of citizenship as an
inescapable conceptual inclusion in the political, while at the same time maintaining a totalizing obviousness of
the political that lacks any specificity other than its overarching encroachment. There is nothing wrong with
public engagement, with practicing ones citizenship, in being political; but there is something wrong, and even
dangerous, in producing theory that excludes its own outside in the name of ending exclusions. Citizenship is,
as Fletcher (2009) reminds us, dangerous ... Its danger ought not to lead to abandonment but to vigilance (p.
234). There are some bridges that should not be built over and over again without question, and some
connections that are more coercive than liberating. The circulation of political discourses has swelled such that
we might as well harken to circulations roots: the political as circus, the big top under which all things political
happen. There is a point at which circulation becomes bound by the political, its loose ends and outliers tied together like those bundles of rods that
served as the symbol of Roman power and as an inspiration to the Italian fascists, the fasces; and the moment at which circus gives way to fasces rests
very much on the pivot of how we conceptualize and enact citizen and citizenship. On the one hand, we see in our field a casual and imprecise use of the
term citizen, one that has grown in popularity and that often aligns the citizen as an agent outside of the state, even as it yearns to prompt somehow their
more robust inclusion. On the other hand, we have a discourse theory of citizenship that sees all citizens as always and
already incorporated into the body politic. While the first use-pattern envisions a citizen semantically distinct and normatively
obligated to be political, the latter sees the citizen as ontologically coterminous with the political as such.
Either path would have us arrive at the same destination, a destination of an excessive political,
even a fascist political loosely construed, and a destination we should be approaching with far
more caution and vigilance than we as a discipline are now. Our hope is that this paper will encourage others to
consider the trends of our field and our community anew, and to consider the dangers of this excess and
extremity rather than focus so heavily on those tragic consequences that flow primarily from ones exclusion
from an imagined, ideal political order. We should begin to inquire into a way of living, a being-with of
community that is, strictly speaking, not political.
***Post Racialism K***
The struggle of 21st century politics is not a struggle oriented around race; rather, it is the very
concept of race which has come to inhibit and constrain radical politics. The affirmatives
deployment of the concept of race as the organizational focus of political struggle is a
smokescreen which obscures the dynamics of oppression the very deployment of race as a
concept itself is the lynchpin of racialized oppression.
Darder and Torress 4 [Antonia Darder, Prof of education policy studies at U of Illinois, and Rodolfo Torress, Associate prof of
latino studies at UC Irvine, After Race: Racism after multiculturalism, p. 1-2 //liam]
Over a century ago, W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk proclaimed one of his most cited dictums: "The problem of the 20th Century i:s the
problem of the color line" (1989, 10). In this book we echo his sentiment, but with a radical twist . The problem of the twenty-first century
is the problem of "race"-an ideology that has served well to successfully obscure and disguise class interests
behind the smokescreen of multiculturalism, diversity, difference, and more recently, whiteness . Whether the terms
of analysis are "race," " racial identity," "race consciousness," or "political race ," the category of "race" and its many derivatives
function as the lynchpin of racism, which " forbids its objects to be other than members of a race" (Fields 2001, 49).
As Barbara Fields has noted with respect to African Americans, Afro-Americans themselves have fought successively for different ways of naming
themselves as people . ... Each name, once accepted into the general public vocabulary, has simply become a variant word for Afro Americans' race. A
sense of peoplehood, nationhood, or comradeship in struggle may be available to others; but, for persons of African descent, all reduces to race, a life
sentence for them and their issue in perpetuity. (50) To radically shift directions and speak "against race ," as Paul Gilroy (2000)
suggests, or "after race" as we attempt to do here,
is to uncompromisingly refuse to accept or legitimate any longer the

perpetual racialized demarcations of "raced" (Guinier and Torres 2002) or "problem" (Du Bois 1989) populations. Our intention is
to contest the notion that the color of a person's skin, and all it has historically come to signify within the sociological, political, or popular imagination,
should continue to function as such. We seek to shatter dubious claims that essentialize the responses of populations,
whether they exist as objects or subjects of racism; and by so doing, acknowledge the complexity of the world in
which we negotiate our daily existence today. To be clear, we are not arguing in the tradition of the color-blind conservatives or political
pundits who would have us believe that the structures and practices that have formidably embedded racism as a way of life for centuries in the United
States and around the world have been undone and that the problem of racism has been ameliorated. Our position, in fact, is diametrically opposed to
this argument. Instead, the political force of our analysis is anchored in the centrality of "race" as an ideology and racism as a powerful, structuring,
hegemonic force in the world today. We argue that we must disconnect from "race" as it has been constructed in the past, and
contend fully with the impact of "race" as ideology on the lives of all people -but most importantly on the Lives of those who
have been enslaved, colonized, or marked for genocide in the course of world history.
Specifically, they see the world in black and white: the affirmatives paradigmatic citation of the
white/black binary makes redress of the multiple intersections of oppression impossible the
affirmatives simplistic analysis of racism as predominantly an issue that affects AfricanAmericans negates the reality of other people of color.
Alcoff 3 [LINDA MARTN ALCOFF, Syracuse University Department of Philosophy, LATINO/AS, ASIAN AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK
WHITE BINARY The Journal of Ethics 7: 527 //liam]
The discourse of social justice in regard to issues involving
race has been dominated in the U.S. by what many theorists name the
"black/white paradigm," which operates to govern racial classifications and racial politics in the U.S., most clearly in the formulation of civil
rights law but also in more informal arenas of discussion. Juan Perea defines this paradigm as the conception that race in America consists, either
exclusively or primarily, of only two constituent racial groups, the Black and White ... In addition, the paradigm dictates that all other
racial identities and groups in the United States are best understood through the Black/White binary
paradigm.5 He argues that this paradigm operates even in recent anti-racist theory such as that produced by Andrew Hacker, Cornel West, and Toni
Morrison, though it is even clearer in works by liberals such as Nathan Glazer. Openly espousing this view, Mary Francis Berry, former chair of the U.S.
Civil Rights Commission, has stated that the U.S. is comprised of "three nations, one Black, one White, and one in which people strive to be something
other than Black to avoid the sting of White Supremacy."6 To understand race in this way is to assume that racial discrimination operates exclusively
through anti-black racism. Others can be affected by racism, on this view, but the dominance of the black/white paradigm works to interpret all other
effects as "collateral damage" ultimately caused by the same phenomena, in both economic and psychological terms, in which the given other, whether
Latino/a, Asian American, or something else, is placed in the category of "black" or "close to black." In other words, there is basically one
form of racism, and one continuum of racial identity, along which all groups will be placed. The black/white paradigm
can be understood either descriptively or prescriptively (or both): as making a descriptive claim about the fundamental nature of racializations and
racisms in the U.S., or as prescribing how race shall operate and thus enforcing the applicability of the black/white paradigm.7 Several Latino/a and
Asian American theorists, such as Elaine Kim, Gary Okihiro, Elizabeth Martinez, Juan Perea, Frank Wu, Dana Takagi, and community activists such as
Bong Hwan Kim have argued that the black/white paradigm is not adequate, certainly not sufficient, to explain racial realities in the U.S. They have thus
contested its claim to descriptive adequacy, and argued that the hegemony of the black/white paradigm in racial thinking has had many deleterious
effects for Latino/as and Asian Americans.8 In this paper, I will summarize and discuss what I consider the strongest of these arguments and then
develop two further arguments. It is important to stress that the black/white paradigm does have some descriptive reach, as I shall discuss, even though
it is inadequate when taken as the whole story of racism. Asian Americans and Latino/as are often categorized and treated in
ways that reflect the fact that they have been positioned as either "near black" or "near white," but this is not
nearly adequate to understanding their ideological representation or political treatment in the U.S. One might also
argue that, although the black/white paradigm is not descriptively adequate to the complexity and plurality of racialized identities, it yet operates with
prescriptive force to organize these complexities into its bipolar schema. Critics, however, have contested both the claim of descriptive adequacy as well
as prescriptive efficacy. That is, the paradigm does not operate with effective hegemony as a prescriptive force. I believe these arguments will show that
continuing to theorize race in the U.S. as operating exclusively through the
black/white paradigm is actually disadvantageous for

all people of color in the U.S., and in many respects for whites as well (or at least for white union households and the white poor).
Their view of power and white privilege as norms that are possessed ignores the process of
the constitution of identity. There is no coherent way for non-blacks to participate in their
movement because they cant just take off their knapsack of privileges. This perpetuates
exclusions and guarantees the failure of their movement.
McWhorter 5 (Ladelle McWhorter, University of Richmond, Where do white people come from? A Foucaultian critique of Whiteness Studies,
Philosophy Social Criticism 2005 31: 533 //liam )
It is true then that, as the Whiteness Studies theorists so often say, whiteness is a norm. But the assertion by itself, no matter how often repeated, does
very little to further analysis. Placing race and of course whiteness in the context of the development of biopower gives a much clearer picture of what
it means to say whiteness is a norm and indicates some important directions for further study. Once that context is supplied, the work of historians like
Allen, Roediger, and Saxton can help explain why it is whiteness (rather than Saxonness, for example) that functions as the racial norm in the USA. Like
Whiteness Studies theorists, Foucault meant for his work to have political effects, to disrupt power formations and make new configurations possible.
Looking back on the publication of Discipline and Punish, he had this to say to an interviewer: When the book came out, different readers in particular,
correctional officers, social workers, and so on delivered this peculiar judgment: The book is paralyzing. It may contain some correct observations, but
even so it has clear limits, because it impedes us; it prevents us from going on with our activity. My reply is that this very reaction proves that the work
was successful, that it functioned just as I intended. It shows that people read it as an experience that changed them, that prevented them from always
being the same or from having the same relation with things, with others, that they had before reading it. (Foucault, 2000: 2456) Unable to continue
with business as usual, people are forced to think critically and make deliberate choices. Power relays are disrupted, which at least opens the possibility
that power networks will be realigned and come to function in different ways. Effects like this are what Whiteness Studies theorists aim for as
well. They hope
their work will bring white people up short, make it difficult for them to continue to function
unthinkingly within a white supremacist social system, and make it possible for them to imagine and create
different ways of living. Whiteness Studies is less effective at this kind of political intervention than Foucaults work is, however, and far less
effective than it might yet be if it took Foucaults analytics of power and account of normalization seriously. The problem lies, I believe, in
Whiteness theorists failure to critique the conception of power that they have inherited from traditional
Western political theory. By holding on to a conception of power that insists upon the primacy of a sovereign
subject and uncritically deploys economic metaphors of possession and distribution, Whiteness Studies
impedes its own efforts to account for the political production of racial subjects and works against its own
explicitly stated agenda, i.e., dethroning white subjectivity. I will spend the rest of this essay showing how the conception of power
that Foucault critiques still operates in Whiteness Studies. As good students of Omi and Winant, Whiteness Studies theorists believe that racism operates
much of the time without the consent or to be responsible for racism; they still believe that racism originates in subjectivity, not in structures or
institutions or practices. This belief is implicit in their search for a psychological account of racisms persistence. The account offered in virtually every
Whiteness Studies theorists work can be summed up in two words: white privilege. The story goes that white people exercise power not so much by
exercising their capacity to harm non-white people but by exercising the privileges that hundreds of years of racism have put in place for them. They are
in fact deploying racist power, but they do not see it as such because to them it seems that they are simply claiming for themselves the goods to which
they are entitled, and they have a deep investment in being able to continue to do so. Across the very different social analyses that Whiteness Studies
theorists put forth and across their very pronounced disagreements over political strategy, this concept of white privilege stretches; it, like the claim that
whiteness functions as a norm, unites theorists who otherwise have very little in common. My contention is that wherever we see the concept
of white privilege operating, we can be sure the conception of power that is also operating is the traditional
juridical conception that construes power as the possession of a preexistent subject . No thorough overview of Whiteness
Studies ever omits reference to Peggy McIntoshs article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (1989). Although McIntoshs article is
tentative and limited to description at a very basic, individualistic level, it popularized the notion that white people possess (like tools in a knapsack)
something called white privilege.11 McIntosh lists 46 of these unearned assets (McIntosh, 1988: 1), including such disparate tools as: (3) If I should
need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live; (5) I can go
shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed; (21) I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial
group; (22) I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the worlds majority without feeling in my culture any
penalty for such oblivion; (33) I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing, or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race; and (41) I
can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me (McIntosh, 1988: 59). One could spend a lot of time critiquing this list
and pointing out various problems with it, but what is important here is the focus on privilege itself. McIntosh claims that racism persists because white
people use tools that non-white people have not been given. If we want to eliminate racist exercises of power, white people have to divest themselves of
those tools. Clearly this sort of analysis can never lead to an account of the production and maintenance of white subjectivities within racist regimes of
power unless all we mean by white subjectivity is a generic subject plus a knapsack full of white privileges, a knapsack that the generic subject can
jettison without seriously altering its own composition. But that is surely not what the thesis of the social construction of white identity amounts to. So
why do Whiteness theorists hang onto this terminology ? Why does the concept of white privilege appear in virtually every Whiteness
Studies book and article? Lisa Heldke and Peg OConnor are among the few writers who expend any effort at all trying to justify their use of the concept
of white privilege. According to them, the analytic value of the term privilege lies in its ability to play the opposite role to
oppression. Everyone generally agrees that there is such a thing as racial oppression and that the members of
some races are oppressed, but what of the races that are not oppressed? Heldke and OConnor write: Some will argue
that domination is the companion concept of oppression; they assert that if you are not a member of a
particular oppressed group, then you are automatically a dominator (Heldke and OConnor, 2004: 299). They dislike the term
domination, however, because it presupposes that a group or an individual exercises power over another group in very obvious and overt ways (ibid.);
in other words, it runs counter to the apparent fact that, as analyses like Omi and Winants make clear, racism does not operate in obvious and overt
ways (at least not by the lights of most white people) and many white people are not aware of its functioning at all. Heldke and OConnors analysis
continues: . . . oppression has many different faces; it is created in all kinds of social practices, structures, and institutions . In many instances of
oppression, we may not be able to point to any person or group of persons who are actively engaged in
dominating the oppressed group . . . We need a companion concept that has as many different faces as does
oppression. The concept of privilege will fill the bill; its multiple aspects allow us to describe and understand the roles that different
unoppressed groups play in the maintenance of oppressive systems. (Heldke and OConnor, 2004: 299) In sum, within racist societies there
are three kinds of people; there are oppressed people (those without much power), dominators (those with power who intend to
oppress others), and people who exercise privilege (those with power who do not intend to oppress others but do so anyway). If we hang
onto a conception of power that makes it the property of a pre-constituted subjectivity and do not posit that
third group, we cannot explain how racism can continue to exist if most people are not avowed racists . We will
need a psychological theory to explain the persistence of racism. In other words, if we hang onto a traditional juridical conception of
power, we will remain stuck where race theorists were stuck 30 years ago . I contend that the pervasiveness of the
term white privilege is testament to how deeply and profoundly stuck race theorists typically still are.
2NC O/V
The aff undermines participation in movements to break down oppression
Their vocabulary of raced populations, privilege, and oppression exclude people of
alternate backgrounds from participating in their movementthats McWhorter
A disconnect from this ideology is key- otherwise the black/white paradigm will continue to
prevent universal efforts at equality- thats Alcoff
2NC Monolithic Module

Their movement creates a static vision of whiteness
Monahan 8 [Michael J., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Marquette University, Racial Justice and the Politics of Purity, 2008,
http://www.temple.edu/isrst/Events/documents/MichaelMonahanUpdated.doc //liam ]
The abolitionist/elimitavist position demands that any legitimately anti-racist endeavor stand simultaneously as a rejection of race, or at least racialized
identity. As Alcoff and Outlaw have argued (though in different ways), this demands that one have an ahistorical sense of identity that one reject the
way in which ones interpretive horizon has been positioned by ones racial membership. Again, this is because the abolitionist ontology both
reduces whiteness to white supremacy whiteness just is purely - an affirmation of white supremacy, and offers an effectively
disembodied account of agency, such that the only way to be anti-racist is to reject whitenes s. But what I have been
trying to show is the way in which the history of white people has always been one of ambiguity and contestation over
the meaning of whiteness (and that the same is true, though in different ways, for members of all racial categories). The history is one of
different people who were white in certain important ways, but were not white in other ways , or at least were white in
ways different from other white people, engaging in a process of arbitrating the meaning and significance of that whiteness. Part of the project of
white supremacy, therefore, was not merely the domination of non whites, but the determination of the meaning
of whiteness as fixed, given, and above all, pure. It is a history of brutal conquest, genocide, chattel slavery,
torture, and Jim Crow, and by no means do I wish to suggest that we ignore or white wash that history. But it is also the history of
John Brown, Sophie Scholl, the San Patricio Brigade, and, among others, those Irish servants in Barbados who
risked their lives alongside enslaved Africans. The insistence that antiracism must reject whiteness that John
Brown, in struggling against white supremacy, was therefore not white capitulates to the politics of purity . We
must understand racial membership, therefore, not as a static and pure category of identity, but as an ongoing context for negotiating who we are (both
as individuals and as groups) and how we relate to each other. Because races, like all social categories, are historical, and this history gives them meaning
and significance, their reality is manifest both politically (in how our social structures and organizations take shape and interact) and individually (in
how we understand ourselves and our place in the world). But, and this is the crucial point for my approach, the histories themselves are histories of
contestation of meaning, and fraught with ambiguity, such that we participate in the process of shaping the meaning of race not only in the here and
now, but also its meaning and significance historically. The elimitavist ontology insists, therefore, not only on purity for racial
categories themselves (one either is or is not white), but also employs a politics of purity in its approach to
history. That is, it treats the history of whiteness purely as a history of white supremacy, and any individuals or
groups who break politically with white supremacy thereby demonstrate their non-whiteness . What I am calling
for is a rejection of purity in both of these senses. Racial memberships and the identities that go along with them never really function
as all or nothing categories (though they may pretend to do exactly that), and to ignore white struggles against white supremacy is as
much of an inadequate interpretation of history as it would be to ignore white affirmation of white supremacy .
And this is true for all racial categories and identities. They are all fraught with ambiguity, indeterminacy, and even outright contradiction, and part of
my claim is that the damage is done in large part by trying to conceive of them as purified of that ambiguity and contradiction, for it is that insistence
on purity that links racial categories to oppressive norms.

This renders all those who fall outside their identity and their movement as others that must
be sacrificed for their cause
Michaels 2k [Walter Benti, Prof English @ U Illinois-Chicago, "Political Science Fictions", New Literary History, 31.4 //liam]
In texts like Xenogenesis and Xenocide, then, the fundamental differences are between humans and aliens, and the fundamental questions are not about
how society should be organized but about whether the different species {or, alternatively and inconsequentially, different cultures) can survive. 9
indeed, one might say that the replacement of ideology by bodies and cultures makes it inevitable that the
only relevant question be the question of survival, which is why texts like Xenogenesis and Xenocide are called
Xenogenesis and Xenocide. Because the transformation of ideological differences into cultural
differences makes the differences themselves valuable, the politics of a world divided into
cultures (a world where difference is understood as cultural") must be the politics of survival
a politics, in other words, where the worst thing that can happen will be a cultured death. Victory
over the enemy on the cold war model may be understood as the victory of good over evil-this [End Page 655] is what the victory of the humans over the
insect-like aliens called "buggers" looks like at the end of Ender's Game, the first volume of Card's series. But insofar as the enemy is redescribed not as
people who disagree with us as to how society should be organized (communists) but as people who occupy different subject positions (aliens), the happy
ending of their destruction must be redescribed too. By the beginning of the second novel in the Ender series (Speaker for the Dead), the very thing that
made Ender a hero (destroying the enemy) has made him a villain (destroying an entire species). The ideological enemy has been
rewritten as the physiocultural other; all conflict has been reimagined on the model of the conflict between self
and other. And this is true whether the texts in question understand difference as essentially -physical or as
essentially cultural. It is for this reason that the essentialist/antiessentialist debate in contemporary theory is
so fundamental--not because the disagreements between the two positions are so fundamental but because
their agreement is. What they agree on is the value of difference itself, a value created bv turning disagreement
into otherness. The dispute, in other words, between essentialism and antiessentialism is only secondarily the
expression of a dispute about whether difference is physical or cultural: it is primarily the expression of a
consensus about the desirability of maintaining difference, of making sure that differences survive. If difference
is physical, then what must survive are different species: if difference is cultural then it is cultural survival that
matters. The point of both stories is that the happy end cannot be the victory of one species/culture over
another. The idea here is not merely that survival as such-whether it is the survival of this species or the
survival of the cultureis valued. What the interchangeability of species and culture makes clear is rather the
value of identities-it is identities that must survive-which is to sav that it is not death but extinction that must
be avoided. On Earth, this distinction is made vivid in contemporary imaginations of what are, in effect,
nonviolent genocides, as in, for example, the idea that current rates of intermarriage and assimilation doom
American Jewry to destruction and thus constitute a second Holocaust. Intermarriage poses no threat to the
people who intermarry, which is just to say that when someone like Alan Dershowitz worries about The
Vanishing American Jew, he is worried not about people who are Jewish but about the identity that is their
Jewishness. It is the identity, not the people, that is in danger of disappearing. 10
Nihilism/Totalizing Bad
Reject their totalizing understandings of race only by abandoning essentialism can we
construct new understandings of blackness in the world and challenge the nihilism threatening
productive movements.
bell hooks 90 [POSTMODERN BLACKNESS, Postmodern Culture vol.1
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Postmodern_Blackness_18270.html //liam]
It is sadly ironic that the contemporary discourse which talks the most about heterogeneity , the decentered subject, declaring
breakthroughs that allow recognition of otherness, still directs its critical voice primarily to a specialized audience , one that shares a
common language rooted in the very master narratives it claims to challenge . If radical postmodernist thinking is to have a transformative impact then a
critical break with the notion of "authority" as "mastery over" must not simply be a rhetorical device, it must be reflected in habits of being, including styles of writing as well as chosen subject matter. Third-world scholars, especially elites,
and white critics who passively absorb white supremacist thinking , and therefore never notice or look at black people on the streets, at their jobs, who render us
invisible with their gaze in all areas of daily life, are not likely to produce liberatory theory that will challenge racist domination, or to
promote a breakdown in traditional ways of seeing and thinking about reality, ways of constructing aesthetic
theory and practice. From a different standpoint Robert Storr makes a similar critique in the global issue of Art in America when he asserts: To be sure, much postmodernist critical
inquiry has centered precisely on the issues of "difference" and "otherness." On the purely theoretical plane the exploration of these concepts has produced some important results, but in the absence of any sustained research into what artists of
Endless second guessing about the latent imperialism of

intruding upon other cultures only compounded matters, preventing or excusing these theorists from
investigating what black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American artists were actually doing . Without adequate concrete knowledge of and
color and others outside the mainstream might be up to, such discussions become rootless instead of radical.
contact with the non-white "other," white theorists may move in discursive theoretical directions that are threatening to and potentially disruptive of that critical practice which would support radical liberation struggle. The postmodern critique
of "identity," though relevant for renewed black liberation struggle, is often posed in ways that are problematic. Given a pervasive politic of white supremacy which seeks to prevent the formation of radical black subjectivity, we cannot cavalierly
dismiss a concern with identity politics. Any critic exploring the radical potential of postmodernism as it relates to racial difference and racial domination would need to consider the implications of a critique of identity for oppressed groups.
We must engage decolonization as a critical practice if we are to have meaningful

chances of survival even as we must simultaneously cope with the loss of political grounding which made
radical activism more possible. I am thinking here about the postmodernist critique of essentialism as it pertains to the construction of "identity" as one example. Postmodern theory that is not seeking to
Many of us are struggling to find new strategies of resistance.
simply appropriate the experience of "otherness" in order to enhance its discourse or to be radically chic should not separate the "politics of difference" from the politics of racism. To take racism seriously one must consider the plight of
underclass people of color, a vast majority of whom are black. For African-Americans our collective condition prior to the advent of postmodernism and perhaps more tragically expressed under current postmodern conditions has been and is
There is increasing class division and

differentiation, creating on the one hand a significant black middle-class, highly anxiety- ridden , insecure, willing to be co-opted
and incorporated into the powers that be, concerned with racism to the degree that it poses constraints on upward social mobility ; and, on the other, a vast and growing black
underclass, an underclass that embodies a kind of walking nihilism of pervasive drug addiction, pervasive alcoholism, pervasive homicide, and an exponential rise in
suicide. Now because of the deindustrialization, we also have a devastated black industrial working class. We are talking here about tremendous hopelessness. This
hopelessness creates longing for insight and strategies for change that can renew spirits and reconstruct
grounds for collective black liberation struggle. The overall impact of the postmodern condition is that many other groups now share with
black folks a sense of deep alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of a sense of grounding, even if it is not
informed by shared circumstance. Radical postmodernism calls attention to those sensibilities which are shared across the boundaries of
class, gender, and race, and which could be fertile ground for the construction of empathy--ties that would promote recognition of common
commitments and serve as a base for solidarity and coalition. "Yearning" is the word that best describes a common
psychological state shared by many of us, cutting across boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexual practice .
Specifically in relation to the postmodernist deconstruction of "master" narratives, the yearning that wells in the
hearts and minds of those whom such narratives have silenced is the longing for critical voice . It is no accident that "rap" has usurped
characterized by continued displacement, profound alienation and despair. Writing about blacks and postmodernism, Cornel West describes our collective plight:
the primary position of R&B music among young black folks as the most desired sound, or that it began as a form of "testimony" for the underclass. It has enabled underclass black youth to develop a critical voice, as a group of young black men
The postmodern
sensibility appropriates practices as boasts that announce their own--and consequently our own--existence , like a
rap song boasting of the imaginary (or real--it makes no difference) accomplishments of the rapper. They offer forms of empowerment not only in the face of nihilism
but precisely through the forms of nihilism itself: an empowering nihilism, a moment of positivity through the
production and structuring of affective relations . Considering that it is as a subject that one comes to voice, then the postmodernist focus on the
critique of identity appears, at first glance, to threaten and close down the possibility that this discourse and
practice will allow those who have suffered the crippling effects of colonization and domination to gain or
regain a hearing. Even if this sense of threat and the fear it evokes are based on a misunderstanding of the postmodernist political project, they nevertheless shape responses . It never surprises me when black folk respond to
the critique of essentialism, especially when it denies the validity of identity politics, by saying "yeah, it's easy to give up identity, when you got one." Though an apt and oftentimes appropriate comeback, this does not really intervene in the
discourse in a way that alters and transforms. We should indeed suspicious of postmodern critiques of the "subject" when they surface at
a historical moment when many subjugated people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time . Criticisms of directions
told me, a "common literacy." Rap projects a critical voice, explaining, demanding, urging. Working with this insight in his essay "Putting the Pop Back into Postmodernism," Lawrence Grossberg comments:
in postmodern thinking should not obscure insights it may offer that open up our understanding of African-American experience. The critique of essentialism encouraged by postmodernist thought is useful for African-Americans concerned with
We have too long had imposed upon us, both from the outside and the inside, a narrow
constricting notion of blackness. Postmodern critiques of essentialism which challenge notions of universality
and static over-determined identity within mass culture and mass consciousness can open up new possibilities for the construction of
the self and the assertion of agency. Employing a critique of essentialism allows African-Americans to acknowledge the way in which class mobility has altered collective black experience so that racism
does not necessarily have the same impact on our lives. Such a critique allows us to affirm multiple black identitie s, varied black experience . It
also challenges colonial imperialist paradigms of black identity which represent blackness one-dimensionally
in ways that reinforce and sustain white supremacy. This discourse created the idea of the "primitive" and promoted the notion of an "authentic" experience, seeing as "natural" those
reformulating outmoded notions of identity.
Abandoning essentialist notions would be a serious challenge to racism .

Contemporary African- American resistance struggle must be rooted in a process of decolonization that
continually opposes reinscribing notions of "authentic" black identity . This critique should not be made synonymous with the dismissal of the struggle of
oppressed and exploited peoples to make ourselves subjects. Nor should it deny that in certain circumstances that experience affords us a privileged critical location from which to speak. This is not a reinscription
of modernist master narratives of authority which privilege some voices by denying voice to others . Part of our
struggle for radical black subjectivity is the quest to find ways to construct self and identity that are oppositional and liberatory.
The unwillingness to critique essentialism on the part of many African-Americans is rooted in the fear that it
will cause folks to lose sight of the specific history and experience of African-Americans and the unique sensibilities and culture that arise
from that experience. An adequate response to this concern is to critique essentialism while emphasizing the significance of
"the authority of experience." There is a radical difference between a repudiation of the idea that there is a black
"essence" and recognition of the way black identity has been specifically constituted in the experience of exile
and struggle. When black folks critique essentialism, we are empowered to recognize multiple experiences of black identity that are the lived conditions which make diverse cultural productions possible. When this diversity is
expressions of black life which conformed to a pre-existing pattern or stereotype.
ignored, it is easy to see black folks as falling into two categories--nationalist or assimilationist, black-identified or white-identified. Coming to terms with the impact of postmodernism for black experience, particularly as it changes our sense of
identity, means that we must and can rearticulate the basis for collective bonding. Given the various crises facing African-Americans (economic, spiritual, escalating racial violence, etc.) we are compelled by circumstance to reassess our
relationship to popular culture and resistance struggle Many of us are as reluctant to face this task as many non-black postmodern thinkers who focus theoretically on the issue of "difference" are to confront the issue of race and racism.
Ext: Monolothic
They reify whiteness- focusing the debate on whiteness makes it into a monolith, sustaining the
narcissism that elevates whiteness to a spectacle
Ahmed 4 [Sara, University of London Race and Cultural studies, "Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism,"
Borderlands, Vol 3 No 2, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/ahmed_declarations.htm //liam ]
3. Whiteness studies is after all deeply invested in producing anti-racist forms of knowledge and pedagogy . In other
words, whiteness studies seeks to make whiteness visible insofar as that visibility is seen as contesting the forms of white privilege, which rests on the
unmarked and the unremarkable fact of being white. But in reading the texts that gather together in the emergence of a field, we can detect an
anxiety about the status or function of this anti-racism. The anxiety is first an anxiety about what it means to transform whiteness
studies into a field. If whiteness becomes a field of study, then there is clearly a risk that whiteness itself will be transformed into an object. Or if
whiteness assumes integrity as an object of study, as being something that we can track or follow across time
and space, then whiteness would become a fetish, cut off from histories of production and circulation . Richard Dyer
for instance admits to being disturbed by the very idea of what he calls white studies: My blood runs cold at the thought that talking about whiteness
could lead to the development of something called White Studies (1997, 10). Or as Fine, Weis, Powell and Wong explain: we worry that in our
desire to create spaces to speak, intellectually or empirically, about whiteness, we may have reified whiteness as
a fixed category of experience; that we have allowed it to be treated as a monolith, in the singular, as an
"essential something" (1997, xi). 4. The risk of transforming whiteness into an essential something might be a necessary risk, for sure. We have
to choose whether its a risk worth taking. But the risk does not exist independently of other risks. The anxiety about transforming whiteness into an
essential something gets stuck to other anxieties about what whiteness studies might do. One of these anxieties is that whiteness studies will sustain
whiteness at the centre of intellectual inquiry, however haunted by absence, lack and emptiness. As Ruth Frankenburg asks why talk about
whiteness, given the risk that by undertaking intellectual work on whiteness one might contribute to processes
of recentering rather than decentering it, as well as reifying the term, and its "inhabitants " (1997, 1). 5. Another risk is
that in centering on whiteness, whiteness studies might become a discourse of love, which would sustain the narcissism
that elevates whiteness into a social and bodily ideal . The reading of whiteness as a form of narcissism is of course well established.
The whiteness of academic disciplines, including philosophy and anthropology has been subject to devastating critiques (see, for examples, Mills 1998;
Asad 1973). For example, a postcolonial critique of anthropology would argue that the anthropological desire to know the other functioned as a form of
narcissism: the other functioned as a mirror, a device to reflect the anthropological gaze back to itself, showing the white face of anthropology in the very
display of the colour of difference. So if disciplines are in a way already about whiteness, showing the face of the white subject, then it follows that
whiteness studies sustains the direction or orientation of this gaze, whilst removing the detour provided by the reflection of the other. Whiteness studies
could even become a spectacle of pure self-reflection, augmented by an insistence that whiteness is an identity too. Does whiteness studies function as a
narcissism in which the loved object returns us to the subject as the origin of love? We do after all get attached to our objects of study, which might mean
that whiteness studies could get stuck on whiteness, as that which gives itself to itself. Dyer talks about this risk when he admits to another fear: I
dread to think that paying attention to whiteness might lead to white people saying they need to get in touch with their whiteness (1997, 10). Whiteness
studies would here be about white people learning to love their own whiteness, by transforming it into an object that could be loved.
Otherness Bad
Converting difference into otherness produces existential violencenegation of the others
voice requires brutality and force to maintain a unified social order
Burke 7 [Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of New South Wales, 2007 War as a Way of Being: Lebanon,
2006, Theory and Event, 10:21, Muse //liam]
The conceptual template for such an image of national security state can be found in the work of Thomas Hobbes, with his influential conception of
the political community as a tight unity of sovereign and people in which their bodies meld with his own to form a 'Leviathan', and which must be
defended from enemies within and without. His image of effective security and sovereignty was one that was
intolerant of internal difference and dissent, legitimating a strong state with coercive and
exceptional powers to preserve order and sameness. This was a vision not merely of political
order but of existential identity, set off against a range of existential others who were sources of
threat, backwardness, instability or incongruity .29 It also, in a way set out with frightening clarity by the theorist Carl
Schmitt and the philosopher Georg Hegel, exchanged internal unity, identity and harmony for permanent alienation from other such communities
(states). Hegel presaged Schmitt's thought with his argument that individuality and the state are single moments of 'mind in its freedom' which 'has an
infinitely negative relation to itself, and hence its essential character from its own point of view is its singleness': Individuality is
awareness of one's existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here
in the state as a relation to other states, each of which is autonomous vis-a-vis the others...this
negative relation of the state to itself is embodied in the world as the relation of one state to
another and as if the negative were something external .30 Schmitt is important both for
understanding the way in which such alienation is seen as a definitive way of imagining and
limiting political communities, and for understanding how such a rigid delineation is linked to
the inevitability and perpetuation of war. Schmitt argued that the existence of a state
'presupposes the political', which must be understood through 'the specific political distinction...between friend
and enemy'. The enemy is 'the other, the stranger; and it sufficient for his nature that he is , in a
specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in an extreme case conflicts
with him are possible'.31 The figure of the enemy is constitutive of the state as 'the specific entity of a people'.32 Without it
society is not political and a people cannot be said to exist : Only the actual participants can correctly recognise,
understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict...to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way
of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. 33 Schmitt links this stark ontology
to war when he states that the political is only authentic 'when a fighting collectivity of people
confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that
has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to the whole nation, becomes public by virtue of
such a relationship...in its entirety the state as an organised political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction'. 34 War, in
short, is an existential condition: the entire life of a human being is a struggle and every human
being is symbolically a combatant. The friend, enemy and combat concepts receive their real
meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from
enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy .35 Schmitt claims that his theory is not biased towards war as a
choice ('It is by no means as though the political signifies nothing but devastating war and every political deed a military action...it neither favours war
nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism') but it is hard to accept his caveat at face value.36 When such a theory takes the
form of a social discourse (which it does in a general form) such an ontology can only support , as a kind of originary
ground, the basic Clausewitzian assumption that war can be a rational way of resolving political conflicts -- because
the import of Schmitt's argument is that such 'political' conflicts are ultimately expressed through the possibility of war. As he says: 'to the enemy
concept belongs the ever-present possibility of combat'.37 Where Schmitt meets Clausewitz, as I explain further below, the existential and rationalistic
ontologies of war join into a closed circle of mutual support and justification. This closed circle of existential and strategic reason generates a number of
dangers. Firstly, the emergence of conflict can generate military action almost automatically simply
because the world is conceived in terms of the distinction between friend and enemy; because
the very existence of the other constitutes an unacceptable threat, rather than a chain of
actions, judgements and decisions. (As the Israelis insisted of Hezbollah, they 'deny our right to
exist'.) This effaces agency, causality and responsibility from policy and political discourse: our
actions can be conceived as independent of the conflict or quarantined from critical enquiry, as
necessities that achieve an instrumental purpose but do not contribute to a new and
unpredictable causal chain. Similarly the Clausewitzian idea of force -- which, by transporting a Newtonian category from the natural
into the social sciences, assumes the very effect it seeks -- further encourages the resort to military violence. We ignore the complex
history of a conflict, and thus the alternative paths to its resolution that such historical analysis
might provide, by portraying conflict as fundamental and existential in nature; as possibly
containable or exploitable, but always irresolvable. Dominant portrayals of the war on terror, and the Israeli-Arab
conflict, are arguably examples of such ontologies in action.
Sole focus on racism in present times is counterproductive
McWhorter 8 [John, linguistics prof, 8Stanford. senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Nominated for an NAACP Image Award for
Outstanding Literary Work in Non-Fiction. PhD in linguistic June 5, 2008; Racism in Retreat; The Sun, http://www.nysun.com/opinion/racism-inretreat/79355/ //liam]
His victory demonstrates the main platform of my race writing. The guiding question in everything I have ever written on race is : Why do so many
people exaggerate about racism? This exaggeration is a nasty hangover from the sixties, and the place it has
taken as a purported badge of intellectual and moral gravita s is a tire-block on coherent, constructive sociopolitical discussion.
Here's a typical case for what passes as enlightenment. On my desk(top) is an article from last year's American Psychologist. The wisdom imparted? To
be a person of color these days is to withstand an endless barrage of racist "microaggressions ." Say to someone, "When I look at you, I
don't see color" and you "deny their ethnic experiences." You do the same by saying, "As a woman, I know what
you go through as a racial minority," as well as with hate speech such as "America is a melting pot ." Other
"microaggressions" include college buildings being all named after straight, white rich men (I'm not kidding about the
straight part). This sort of thing will not do. Why channel mental energy into performance art of this kind? Some may mistake me as implying that it
would be okay to stop talking about racism. But that interpretation is incorrect: I am stating that it would be okay to stop talking about
racism. We need to be talking about serious activism focused on results . Those who suppose that the main meal in the
aforementioned is to decry racism are not helping people. At this point, if racism was unattended to for 10 years, during that time it would play exactly
the same kind of role it does in America now elusive, marginal, and insignificant. Note that I did not say that there was no racism. There seems to
be an assumption that when discussing racism, it is a sign of higher wisdom to neglect the issue of its degree.
This assumption is neither logical nor productive. I reject it, and am pleased to see increasing numbers of black
people doing same. Of course there is racism. The question is whether there is enough to matter. All evidence shows that there is not.
No, the number of black men in prison is not counterevidence: black legislators were solidly behind the laws penalizing possession of crack more heavily
than powder. In any case, to insist that we are hamstrung until every vestige of racism , bias, or inequity is gone indicates a
grievous lack of confidence, which I hope any person of any history would reject. Anyone
who intones that America remains

permeated with racism is, in a word, lucky. They have not had the misfortune of living in a society riven by true
sociological conflict, such as between Sunnis and Shiites, Hutus and Tutsis or whites and blacks before the
sixties. It'd be interesting to open up a discussion with a Darfurian about "microaggressions." To state that
racism is no longer a serious problem in our country is neither ignorant nor cynical . Warnings that such a statement
invites a racist backlash are, in 2008, melodramatic. They are based on no empirical evidence. Yet every time some stupid thing happens some
comedian says a word, some sniggering blockhead hangs a little noose, some study shows that white people tend to get slightly better car loans
we
are taught that racism is still mother's milk in the U.S. of A. "Always just beneath the surface." Barack Obama's
success is the most powerful argument against this way of thinking in the entire four decades since recreational
underdoggism was mistaken as deep thought. A black man clinching the Democratic presidential nomination
and rather easily at that indicates that racism is a lot further "beneath the surface" than it used to be . And if Mr. Obama
ends up in the White House, then it might be time to admit that racism is less beneath the surface than all but fossilized.
Focus Bad
Including whiteness in their movement is key to redefine traditional notions of racism and give
white people a role in emancipatory politics
Sullivan 8 [Shannon, Penn State University Charles S. Peirce Society. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. Buffalo: 2008. Vol. 44, Iss. 2;
pg. 236, 27 //liam]
It is commonly acknowledged today, at least in academic circles, that racial essences do not exist. Racial categories, including whiteness, are historical
and political products of human activity, and for that reason the human racial landscape has changed over time and likely will continue to change in the
future. In the wake of this acknowledgement, critical race theorists and philosophers of race debate whether whiteness must be eliminated for racial
oppression to be ended. Given whiteness's history as a category of violent racial exclusion, eliminativists and "new abolitionists" have argued that it must
be abolished. If "whiteness is one pole of an unequal relationship, which can no more exist without oppression than slavery could exist without slaves,"
then as long as whiteness endures, so does racial oppression.2 In contrast, critical conservationists have claimed even though it has an oppressive past,
whiteness could entail something other than racism and oppression. Moreover, since lived existential categories like whiteness
cannot be merely or quickly eliminated, white people should work to transform whiteness into an anti-racist
category. I count myself as a critical conservationist, but I also acknowledge the force of eliminativist arguments. If whiteness necessarily involves
racist oppression, then attempting to transform whiteness into an antiracist category would be a fool's game at best, and a covert continuance of white
supremacy at worst. My goal here is not to rehearse the disagreement between new abolitionists and critical conservationists; excellent work explaining
the details of their positions already exists.3 I instead approach that disagreement by asking the pragmatic question of whether a rehabilitated version of
whiteness can be worked out concretely. What would a non-oppressive, anti-racist whiteness look like? What difference would or could it make to the
lives of white and nonwhite people? If the question of how to transform whiteness cannot be answered in some practical detail-if it's not a difference that
makes a difference-then critical conservatism would amount to a hopeful, but ultimately harmful abstraction that makes no difference in lived experience
and that damages anti-racist movements. In that case, abolitionism would appear to be the only alternative to ongoing white supremacy and privilege. I
propose turning to Josiah Royce for help with these issues, more specifically to his essay on "Provincialism."4 This turn is not as surprising as it might
initially seem given that Royce wrote explicitly about race in "Race Questions and Prejudices."5 In that essay, Royce issued an antiracist, anti-essentialist
challenge to then-current scientific studies of race, especially anthropology and ethnology, which claim to prove the superiority of white people, and he
even briefly but explicitly names whiteness a possible threat to the future of humanity. 6 I focus here on "Provincialism," however, because even though
the essay never explicitly discusses race, it can help explain the ongoing need for the category of whiteness and implicitly offers a wealth of useful
suggestions for how to transform it. "Provincialism" is an exercise in critical conservation of the concept of provincialism, and while not identical,
provincialism and whiteness share enough in common that "wise" provincialism can serve as a model for developing "wise" whiteness.7 Royce's essay
thus can be of great help to critical philosophers of race wrestling with questions of whether and how to transformatively conserve whiteness. Exploring
similarities and differences between wise provincialism and wise whiteness, I use Royce's analyses of provincialism to shed light on why whiteness
should be rehabilitated rather than discarded and how white people today might begin living whiteness as an antiracist category. Comparing Provincialism and Whiteness Race Traitor is a contemporary journal with the motto "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to
humanity," and its editor, Noel Ignatiev, makes a scathing case against the critical conservation of whiteness.8 Ignatiev argues that there is no valid
white culture to transform. Nor is there any biological rationale for whiteness. In his view, whiteness merely concerns status, privilege, and exclusion and
thus cannot form a legitimate, antiracist identity. To suggest that it can, as critical conservationists do, is to encourage white supremacists by giving their
worldview intellectual support. Even if critical conservationists do not intend to provide this support, the effect of arguing for the conservation of
whiteness is still extremely dangerous. In addition to unintentionally validating white supremacy movements, it tends to divert the energies of wellintentioned white people away from political struggle for racial justice to whiteindulgent racial sensitivity and diversity workshops. According to
Ignatiev, what anti-racist movements need is not a white identity that well-intentioned white people can feel good about, but race traitors who are willing
to defect from whiteness. The only way for white people to be loyal to the human race is for them to be disloyal to their racial identity. Like critical
conservationists regarding whiteness, Royce knows that he faces an uphill battle in convincing many of his interlocutors of the value of provincialism.
Put positively, provincialism tends to connote a healthy fondness for and pride in local traditions, interests, and customs. More negatively, it means
being restricted and limited, sticking to the narrow ideas of a given region or group and being indifferent, perhaps even violently hostile to the ways of
outsiders. What connects these different meanings is their sense of being rooted in a particular cultural-geographical place. In Royce's definition, which
emphasizes conscious awareness of this rootedness (an important point to which I will return), a province is a domain that is "sufficiently unified to have
a true consciousness of its own unity, to feel a pride in its own ideals and customs, and to possess a sense of its distinction from other[s]." And
correspondingly, provincialism is, first, the tendency for a group "to possess its own customs and ideals; secondly, the totality of these customs and ideals
themselves; and thirdly the love and pride which leads the inhabitants of a province to cherish as their own these traditions, beliefs and aspirations" (61).
Emphasizing unity, love, and pride, Royce's definitions steer away from the negative connotations of provincialism. But in Royce's day- and not much
has changed in this regard-it was the negative, or "false," form of provincialism that most often came to people's minds when they thought about the
value and effects of the concept. As Royce was writing in 1902, the false provincialism, or "sectionalism," of the United States' Civil War was a recent
memory for many of his readers. In the Civil War, stubborn commitment to one portion of the nation violently opposed it to another portion and
threatened to tear the nation apart. Provincialism, which appealed to regional values to disunite, had to be condemned in the name of patriotism, which
united in the name of a higher good. Royce's rhetorical strategy is to take the challenge of defending provincialism head-on: "My main intention is to
define the right form and the true office of provincialism-to portray what, if you please, we may call the Higher Provincialism, -to portray it, and then to
defend it, to extol it, and to counsel you to further just such provincialism" (65). Royce readily acknowledges that "against the evil forms of sectionalism
we shall always have to contend" (64). But he denies that provincialism must always be evil. Going against the grain of most post-Civil War thinking
about provincialism, Royce urges that the present state of civilization, both in the world at large, and with us, in America, is such as to define a new social
mission which the province alone, but not the nation, is able to fulfil [sic] . . . .[T]he modern world has reached a point where it needs, more than ever
before, the vigorous development of a highly organized provincial life. Such a life, if wisely guided, will not mean disloyalty to the nation. (64) Wisely
developed, provincialism need not conflict with national loyalty. The two commitments can-and must, Royce insists-flourish together. Likewise,
whiteness need not conflict with membership in humanity as a whole. The two identities can-and must-flourish together. The relationship between
provincialism and nationalism, as discussed by Royce, serves as a fruitful model for the relationship of whiteness and humanity, and critical
conservationists of whiteness should follow Royce's lead by taking head-on the challenge of critically defending whiteness. Like embracing provincialism,
embracing whiteness might seem to be a step backward for the modern world-toward limitation and insularity that breed ignorance, prejudice, and
hostility toward others who are different from oneself. Like having a national rather than provincial worldview, seeing oneself as a member of humanity
rather than of the white race seems to embody an expansive, outward orientation that is open to others. But there is a "new social mission" with respect
to racial justice that whiteness, and not humanity as a whole, can fulfill. Race relations, especially in the United States, have reached a point where
humanity needs a "highly organized" anti-racist whiteness, that is, an anti-racist whiteness that is consciously developed
and embraced. How then can we (white people, in particular) wisely guide the development of such whiteness so that it does not result in disloyalty
to other races and humanity as a whole? Before addressing this question, let me point out two important differences between whiteness and
provincialism as described by Royce. First, while Royce calls for the development of a wise form of provincialism, he is able to appeal to existing
"wholesome" forms of provincialism in his defense of the concept. He addresses himself "in the most explicit terms, to men and women who, as I hope
and presuppose, are and wish to be, in the wholesome sense, provincial," and his demand that "the man of the future . . . love his province more than he
does to-day" recognizes a nugget of wise provincialism on which to build (65, 67). The development of wise provincialism does not have to be from
scratch. In contrast, it is more difficult to pinpoint a nugget of "wholesome" whiteness to use as a starting point for its transformation. Instances of white
people who helped slaves and resisted slavery in the United States, for example, certainly can be found-the infamous John Brown is only one such
example-but such people often are seen as white race traitors who represent the abolition, not the transformation of whiteness.9 The task of critically
conserving whiteness probably will be more difficult than that of critically conserving provincialism since there is not a straightforward or obvious "right
form and true office" of whiteness to extol. Second, true to his idealism, Royce describes both provincialism and its development as explicitly conscious
phenomena. Royce notes the elasticity of the term "province"-it can designate a small geographical area in contrast with the nation, or it can designate a
large geographical, rural area in contrast with a city (57-58)-but it always includes consciousness of the province's unity and particular identity as this
place and not another. Put another way, probably every space, regardless of its size, is distinctive in some way or another. What gives members of a space
a provincial attitude is their conscious awareness of, and resulting pride in, that space as the distinctive place that it is. On Royce's model, someone who
is provincial knows that she is, at least in some loose way. The task of developing her provincialism, then, is to develop her rudimentary conscious
awareness of her province, to become "more and not less selfconscious, well-established, and earnest" in her provincial outlook (67). In contrast-and
here lies the largest difference between provincialism and whiteness-many white people today do not consciously think of themselves as members of this
(white) race and not another, not even loosely. Excepting members of white militant groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or the Creativity Movement,
contemporary white people do not tend to have a conscious sense of unity as fellow white people, nor do they consciously invoke or share special ideals,
customs, or common memories as white people. They often are perceived and perceive themselves as raceless, as members of the human species at large
rather than members of a particular racial group. This does not eliminate their whiteness or their membership in a fairly unified group. Just the
opposite: such "racelessness" is one of the marks and privileges of membership in whiteness, especially middle and upper class forms of whiteness.
White people can feel a pride in the ideals and customs of whiteness and possess a sense of distinction from people of other races without much, if any
conscious awareness of their whiteness and without consciously identifying those ideals and customs as white. To take one brief example, styles and
customs of communication in classrooms tend to be raced (as well as classed and gendered), and white styles of discussion, hand-raising, and turntaking tend to be treated as appropriate while black styles are seen as inappropriate.10 White students often learn to feel proud and validated by their
teachers as good students when they participate in these styles, and this almost always happens without either students or teachers consciously
identifying their style (or themselves) as white. Such students appear to belong and experience themselves as belonging merely to a group of smart,
orderly, responsible students, not to a racialized group. In the United States and Western world more broadly, unconscious habits of whiteness and white
privilege have tended to increase after the end of de jure racism.11 Unlike provincialism as described by Royce, whiteness tends to operate more sub- and
unconsciously than consciously. But I do not think that this fact spoils wise provincialism as a fruitful model for wise whiteness. First, and reflecting a
basic philosophical disagreement that I have with Royce's idealism, I doubt that provincialism always functions as consciously as Royce suggests it does.
The unity, pride, and love that are the hallmarks of provincialism could easily function in the form of unreflective beliefs, habits, preferences, and even
bodily comportment. In fact I would argue that many aspects of our provincial loyalties-whatever type of province is at issue-operate on sub- or
unconscious levels. In that case, provincialism and whiteness would not be as dissimilar in their operation as Royce's description implies. Second, even if
provincialism tends to consciously unify people while whiteness does not, Royce's advice that people should attempt to become more, rather than less
self-conscious in their provincialism still applies to white people with respect to their whiteness. Given whiteness's history as a racial
category of violent exclusion and oppression, one might think that white people need to focus less on their whiteness, to
distance themselves from it. But just the opposite is the case. Given that distance from racial identification tends to be the covert modus
operandi for contemporary forms of white privilege, white people who wish to fight racism need to become more intimately acquainted with their
whiteness. Rather than ignore their whiteness, which allows unconscious habits of white privilege to proliferate
unchecked, white people need to bring their whiteness to as much conscious awareness as possible (while also
realizing that complete self-transparency is never achievable) so that they can try to change what it means. But why focus on increased
awareness of whiteness simpliciter? I mentioned briefly above that raced styles of communication also tend to be gendered and classed, and even more
accurate would be to say that race, gender, class, sexuality, and other significant axes of lived experience transactionally co-constitute one another. Race,
including whiteness, is never lived in isolation from these other axes. In the United States, the way that a white person experiences and is impacted by
her whiteness likely will vary depending on his/her ethnicity, gender and class in particular, and across the globe, national differences can give whiteness
a very different meaning.12 For these reasons, one might wonder why I do not urge white people's increased consciousness of, for example, their IrishAmerican-whiteness, Southern-woman-whiteness, or lesbian-working-class-whiteness. Such forms of hyphenated whiteness might seem more likely to
be sources of consciously felt unity, shared customs, and memory than would generic whiteness. In that case, "wise whiteness" should be read as mere
shorthand for an indefinite number of forms of anti-racist whiteness. I agree that one of the functions of the term wise whiteness is to serve as an
umbrella for the infinitely rich and complicated ways that white people embody their whiteness. But I think it is important that the term not be
understood merely as a bit of convenient shorthand that could be discarded without loss. It has a more substantial function than that of an umbrella, and
treating it as mere shorthand risks letting white privilege and white supremacy off the hook too easily. Especially in the case of white ethnicities, insisting
that whiteness always be considered in connection with other axes of identity can collapse race into ethnicity and work to deflect attention away white
domination and oppression. Whiteness does mean different things for, e.g., Irish-American-whites and Italian-American-whites, and these two groups of
white people have different racial histories and therefore at least somewhat different racial presents. But its full meaning is not contained in those
different ethnicities. There is something to being white that being contemporarily Irish or Italian alone does not capture. So while whiteness is always
transactionally constituted in and through other categories of lived experience, a functional separation of race from those other categories can be and
sometimes needs to be made. In practice there is no such thing as whiteness by itself, and yet for particular purposes and because of the tendency of its
erasure, it can be useful to focus on whiteness in abstraction from other lived categories. In that pragmatic sense, with the term "wise whiteness" I speak
not only of the rehabilitation of a collection of hyphenated forms of whiteness, but also for a rehabilitated whiteness simpliciter. Royce's eloquent pleas
on the behalf of provincialism speak to my point about bringing whiteness to as much conscious awareness as possible. As Royce appeals to his readers,
he urges, "I hope and believe that you all intend to have your community live its own life, and not the life of any other community, nor yet the life of a
mere abstraction called humanity in general" (67). On the same theme, he later compares the problem of wise provincialism with the problem of any
individual activity, which admittedly can become narrow and self-centered. Acknowledging this problem, Royce counters, But on the other hand,
philanthropy that is not founded upon a personal loyalty of the individual to his own family and to his own personal duties is notoriously a worthless
abstraction. We love the world better when we cherish our own friends the more faithfully. We do not grow in grace by forgetting individual duties in
behalf of remote social enterprises. Precisely so, the province will not serve the nation best by forgetting itself, but by loyally emphasizing its own duty to
the nation . . . . (98) The disappearance of the individual does not well serve larger social enterprises. Those enterprises thrive only if the personal,
passionate energies of individuals are poured into them. Large enterprises and institutions tend to become anemic abstractions if they are not rooted in
felt individual commitments. Likewise, properly understood, the nation need not be in a competitive relationship with the various communities that it
shelters. Loyalty to and love for one's more local connections can be a powerful source of meaningful loyalty to and love for one's nation. In both cases,
the same pattern can be detected: rich ties to the smaller entity-the individual or the community-are what sustain meaningful connections to the larger
entity-the philanthropic cause or the nation. The two are not necessarily in conflict, as is often thought, and in fact the larger entity would suffer if ties to
the smaller entity were cut off. It is useful to anti-racist struggle to think of a similar relationship holding between particular races, including the white
race, and humanity at large. While it might initially seem paradoxical, the larger entity of humanity can best be served by people's ties to smaller, more
local entities such as their racial groups. A person's racial group is not the only smaller entity that provides the rich existential ties of which Royce
speaks-he rightly mentions family, and we could add entities such as one's neighborhood, one's church, mosque or synagogue, and even groups based on
one's gender or sexual orientation. But race also belongs in this list of sites of intimate connection that can and often do sustain individual lives and that
can support rather than undermine the well being of humanity. Forgetting one's duty to one's particular race in the name of working for racial justice, for
example, tends to turn that goal into a remote abstraction. "You cannot be loyal to merely an impersonal abstraction," Royce reminds us.13 Effectively
serving the goal of racial justice is more likely to occur if one concretely explores how racial justice could emerge out of loyalty to one's particular race.
This claim might not seem objectionable when considering racial groups that are not white. Loyalty to other members of their race has been an
important way for African Americans, for example, to further the larger cause of racial justice. Black slaves who helped each other escape their white
masters fought against slavery and thus helped humanity as a whole. But the history of whiteness suggests that white people's loyalty to their race not
only would not help, but in fact would undermine struggles for racial justice. How could white people serve the larger interests of the human race by
being loyal to a race that has oppressed, colonized, and brutalized other races? What possible duties or obligations to their race could white people have,
responsibilities that must be remembered if racial justice is to be a concrete, lived goal for white people to work toward? On the one hand, these
questions can seem outrageous, even dangerous. Talk of duty to the white race smacks of militarist white supremacist movements, and indeed the first of
the Creativity Movement's sixteen commandments in their "White Man's Bible" is that "it is the avowed duty and holy responsibility of each generation
to assure and secure for all time the existence of the White Race upon the face of this planet," and the sixth is that "your first loyalty belongs to the White
Race."14 Noel Ignatiev's concern about the scholarly validation of white supremacy through the critical conservation of whiteness could not be better
placed than here. Temporarily setting aside the dangerous aspect of these questions, they also can seem nonsensical if they do not refer to the goals of
white supremacist movements. What antiracist duties, we might ask with some sarcasm, do white people have that must not be forgotten? African
Americans and other non-white people might be able to combine loyalty to their racial group with loyalty to humanity, but white people cannot. Their
situations are too different to treat their relationships to their races as similar. Those relationships are asymmetrical, which means that white people's
loyalty to the human race, including racial justice for all its members, conflicts with loyalty to whiteness. Loyalty to humanity would seem to require
white people to be race traitors. On the other hand, these questions present a needed challenge to white people who care about racial justice. Rather than
rhetorically or sarcastically, the questions can be asked in the spirit of Royce's call for each "community [to] live its own life, and not the life of any other
community, nor yet the life of a mere abstraction called humanity in general" (67). For white people to fight white supremacy and
white privilege does not mean for them to attempt to shed their whiteness and become members of the human species at
large. Attempting to become raceless by living the life of an abstraction called humanity merely cultivates a white person's
ignorance of how race, including whiteness, and racism inform her habits, beliefs, desires, antipathies, and other
aspects of her life. It does not magically eliminate her white privilege for even if she succeeds in thinking of herself as a raceless
member of humanity, she likely will continue to be identified and treated as white, even if unreflectively or unconsciously, by others. By allowing
her white privilege to go unchecked in this way, a white person's living the life of abstract humanity actually tends to
increase, not reduce her racial privilege. To increase the chances of reducing her racial privilege, she must
resist the temptation to see herself as raceless and instead figure out what it could mean for her to live her own
life as a racialized person. Living as a racialized, rather than abstract person does not mean attempting to take on a different race. Attempting to
take on a different race implicitly acknowledges that whiteness is problematic, and it can seem to be an expression of respect for non-white people. But it
often is no better a response to white privilege than attempting to shed one's whiteness. This is because a white person's taking on the habits, culture,
and other aspects of another race often is an expression of ontological expansiveness, which is a habit of white privileged people to treat all spaceswhether geographical, existential, linguistic, cultural, or other-as available for them to inhabit at their choosing.15 Appropriating another race in this way
thus is closer to imperialist colonialism than a gesture of respect. For this reason, white people need to stop trying to flee the responsibilities and duties
that come with being white and figure out how to live their own racialized li fe, not the life of another race. Once they no longer ignore or
attempt to flee their whiteness, they can then ask how work for racial justice fits with their duties and
responsibilities as a white person and how they might live their own anti-racist white life. Three "Evils" Eliminated by
Wise Whiteness Royce lists three specific problems in modern American life that cannot be solved without wise provincialism. His discussion of these
"evils," as Royce calls them, also illuminates "evils" that a wise form of whiteness could help meliorate. The first evil is the neglect of and disruption to a
community when people are only loosely associated with it and do not invest in, care about, or have a significant history with it. Royce argues that this
problem is growing in frequency and significance as people are increasingly mobile, changing their residency multiple times over their lifetime and often
moving great distances from where they were born and raised. This means that communities are increasingly dealing with a large number of newcomers
who do not (yet) have an intimate, caring connection to the new place they inhabit. This is "a source of social danger, because the community needs wellknit organization" (73). Provincialism helps these newcomers care for their new home, and a wise provincialism does so without generating any hostility
toward either other provincial communities or larger social bodies such as the nation. In a similar fashion, when white people who care about racial
justice have virtually no conscious or deliberate affiliation with their whiteness, the meaning and effect of whiteness is left to happenstance or, more
likely, is determined by white supremacist groups. Royce's primary concern is the dissolution of communities through neglect, and if well intentioned
white people do not care about, invest in, or acknowledge a significant history with their whiteness, then whiteness will be neglected. But unlike
provincial communities, whiteness does not necessarily unravel or wither away because of simple neglect by anti-racist white people. Its neglect by antiracists whites instead leaves it wide open for racist white groups to develop. Like a garden, whiteness can easily grow tough weeds of
white supremacy if it is not wisely cultivated. The evil of abandoning whiteness, allowing white supremacists to
make of it whatever they will, can be mitigated by a wise form of whiteness . In practice, this means that white
people who care about racial justice need to educate newcomers to whiteness- namely, white children-to be loyal to and care
about their race. While Royce's comments about the problem of newcomers due to increased geographical mobility do not apply directly to whiteness,16
white children can be thought of as newcomers to the community of whiteness who do not (yet) have an intimate connection to their race or know how to
cultivate and care for it. Here again is an instance in which white supremacists have been allowed to corner the market on
whiteness: almost all explicit reflection and writing on how to raise white children as white has been
undertaken by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, World Church of the Creator, and Stormfront.17 The association is so tight that the
mere suggestion of educating white children in their whiteness is alarming to many people. But educating white children about their
whiteness need and should not mean educating them to be white supremacists. A wise form of whiteness would
help train the developing racial habits of white children in anti-racist ways. 18 Royce calls the second problem addressed by
provincialism that of "the leveling tendency of recent civilization" (74), but more accurate, I think, would be to characterize the problem as one of
monotonous sameness. Royce is concerned that the increase of mass communication means that people all over the nation, indeed the globe, are reading
the same news stories, sharing the same ideas, fashions, and trends, and more and more imitating one another. The rich diversity of humankind, the
independence of the small manufacturer, and distinctiveness of the individual are being absorbed into a vast, impersonal social order. A wise
provincialism is not wholly opposed to these tendencies. There is great value in large groups of people coming to understand each other across their
differences. But, Royce argues, there often also is great value to be found in their differences, and those differences ought to be allowed to thrive. A wise
provincialism helps protect the variety of different places and communities so that they are not forced to be identical with each other. In a similar way,
wise whiteness helps preserve racial differences without treating people of various races as wholly alien to each
other and thus incapable of understanding each other across their differences . As Lucius Outlaw asks, "Why is it, after
thousands of years, that human beings are not all 'light khaki' instead of exhibiting the variety of skin tones (and other features) more or less
characteristic of various populations called races?"19 The answer, according to Outlaw, is not merely that racism and invidious ethnocentrism have
worked to establish inviolable boundaries between white and non-white races. It also is that different races are "the result of bio-cultural group
attachments and practices that are conducive to human survival and well-being."20With W.E.B. Du Bois, Outlaw argues that racial differences can
enrich everyone and that even if racism disappeared tomorrow, we should want discernibly distinct races to continue to exist .21 The baby need not be
thrown out with the bathwater. The rich variety of human racial and ethnic cultures need not be eliminated to eliminate racism and invidious
ethnocentrism. A wise whiteness also would caution, however, that white people's appreciation for racial diversity and variety also can be an insidious
form of whiteness in disguise. Too often, celebrations of multiculturalism and racial diversity function as a smorgasbord of racial difference offered up
for (middle-to-upper class) white people's consumption and enjoyment. They do this by acknowledging some differences while simultaneously
concealing others. It is very easy for white people to recognize and even celebrate racial difference in the form of different food, dress, and cultural
customs. It tends to be much more difficult for them to recognize racial difference in the form of economic, educational, and political inequalities.
Royce's criticism of the leveling tendencies of modern culture does not explicitly depoliticize the issue, and he does mention that variety is needed
particularly to counter "the purely mechanical carrying-power of certain ruling social influences," an example of which is the hegemony of white culture
(76). But given the tendency of white (middle-to-upper class, in particular) people to see whiteness as
cultureless and boring and thus want to spice it up by dabbling in other, "exotic" cultures, care must be taken
that appreciation of diversity is not sanitized through an avoidance of the history and present of white
privilege. When that happens, appreciation of plurality and diversity tend to become a covert vehicle for white
ontological expansiveness. In contrast, a wise whiteness values and thus transactionally conserves different
races, as Outlaw does, without depoliticizing the meaning of those differences. The third evil discussed by Royce, the mob
spirit, occurs when all individual judgment has been given up and a person becomes totally absorbed in a large social mass. Without discriminating
individuals, the crowd or mob is psychologically vulnerable to a strong leader, idea, or even a song that enflames emotions and leads people to act in
ways they ordinarily would not act. This danger is closely related to the one of sameness for behind the two dangers lay the same phenomenon: that of
wide, inclusive human sympathy (92-93). Openness to and sharing in the lives and the feelings of others is not always a positive event, Royce cautions us.
Undiscriminating sympathy can lend support to base absurdities as easily as to noble kindness, and as such sympathy is more of a neutral base for
psychological development than an automatic good to be ubiquitously cultivated. Under certain conditions-conditions that Royce thinks are increasingly
present in the modern world-wide, inclusive sympathy for others can become not only monotonous, but also dangerous (95). Loss of the small-the
particular, the local, the individual-as it is absorbed into the large is something to resist, and a wise provincialism helps prevent that loss Royce's concern
about the mob spirit does not directly speak to problems faced by a wise whiteness.22 But in this concern we can see the streak of organic individualism
that runs through Royce's work, which can tell us something important about the relationships of white individuals to their race. Royce's legendary
concern for community does not sacrifice or dissolve the individual into the larger whole. Just as false forms of provincialism set up a false opposition
between provincialism and nationalism, false forms of individualism set up a false opposition between individualism and community or social causes.
That kind of individualism fails because of its "failure to comprehend what it is that the ethical individual needs," which is a cause greater than the
individual that she can passionately serve (38). Here is where Royce's individualism is distinctive: it insists that real individuality is found through
personal choice of a larger cause that one loyally serves, not through endless insistence that one is a single individual with personal initiative. This
insistence is empty if never acted upon, leaving the so-called autonomous individual lost and floundering. "Be an individual," Royce urges exasperatedly,
"[b]ut for Heaven's sake, set about the task."23 To be a real individual, a person needs something larger than herself to be a part of. And as communities
of meaning, racial groups historically have developed as one of those things. In Lucius Outlaw's words, racial and ethnic identification in part
"develop[ed] as responses to the need for life-sustaining and meaningful acceptable order of various kinds (conceptual, social, political)." 24 Human
beings need to create conceptual, social, political and other structures, including individual and social
identities, to give their lives meaning and purpose. While Outlaw talks about this need in terms of order and
Royce speaks of it in terms of a cause to devote one's self to, both point to an existential need that racial
identity, including whiteness, can serve and historically has served. And they both suggest that a theory of
racial justice that ignores this need will not be effective in practice.
Concept of Power Bad
Their method of holding whites responsible, calling for win a and a loss fails- no solvency
without breaking the juridical concept of power
McWhorter 5 [Ladelle, Professor of. Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Richmond, Philosophy & Social Criticism, vol 31 nos 56,
2005, pp. 533556 //liam]
In the growing body of literature that makes up what has in recent years come to be called Whiteness Studies,
observations like the following are commonplace: Whiteness has, at least within the modern era and within
Western societies, tended to be constructed as a norm, an unchanging and unproblematic location, a position
from which all other identities come to be marked by their difference (Bonnett, 1996: 146).1 According to Whiteness Studies
theorists, the white race functions not so much as a race, one among many, as, at times at least, the race the real
human race and, at other times, no race, simply the healthy, mature norm of human existence as opposed to
all those other groups of people who are somehow off-white, off-track, more or less deviant. Whiteness, the
racial norm in Western industrial societies, is at one and the same time the exemplar of human being and the
unmarked selfsame over against the racially marked other( s).2 This understanding of whiteness emerged in the late 1980s and
1990s as race scholars in the USA and the UK began to treat white identity as an epistemic object, in contrast to many earlier race theorists who studied
non-whites primarily.3 By taking whiteness as an object of study, these scholars problematized the status of the white race as an unmarked norm and
exposed the racism implicit in its having that status. Thus, it seemed, these new race theorists had discovered a potentially very powerful tool for
dismantling racism. Revealing the ways in which whiteness functions as a racial norm, they began to denaturalize it and thereby rob it of some of its
power to order thought and practice. Their scholarship was and is, deliberately and unapologetically, deeply engaged political activism. Feminist
sociologist Ruth Frankenberg articulates this confluence of theory and practice well when she writes: Naming whiteness and white people helps dislodge
the claims of both to rightful dominance (Frankenberg, 1993: 234). While readers of the work of Michel Foucault may well be struck by the deep
affinities between Foucaultian genealogy, counter-memory, and counter-attack on the one hand and Whiteness Studies denaturalization of heretofore
largely unquestioned racial categories on the other, surprisingly most writers in the Whiteness Studies movement seem all but unaware of Foucaults
analytics of biopower and his descriptions of normalization.4 Their repeated observation that whiteness functions as a norm
and their close analyses of its unmarked status come not out of an awareness of Foucaultian genealogy but rather
out of sociological studies of institutional racism like Omi and Winants Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the
1990s (1994). Their work sounds like Foucaults at times, but if they are moving toward an analysis that is like his in some ways, it is from a starting
point that is radically different. In this paper I will argue that, in part because of the limitations imposed by that different starting
point, Whiteness Studies theorists typically miss their mark both analytically and politically. Their major problem lies in
the fact that they still work within what Foucault calls a juridical conception of power, a conception that simply
does not capture the ways in which power operates in modern industrialized societies, especially in relation to
the so obviously bio-political phenomenon of racial oppression.
***Suffering K***
Identity politics fail- lead to an ethics of suffering, alienates different identities, and abandons
emancipatory politics
Brown 93- PhD in political philosophy from Princeton, prof at UC Berkeley (Wendy, Wounded
Attachments, Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Aug., 1993), pp. 390-410, JSTOR//MGD)
MANY HAVE ASKED HOW, given the totalizing regulatory and "othering" characteristics
of identity in/as language,
identity can avoid reiterating such effects in its ostensibly emancipatory mode .' I want to ask a similar question but in a
historically specific, cultural and political register not because the linguistic frame is unimportant but because it is insufficient for discerning the
character of contemporary politicized identity's problematic investments. There are two levels to this inquiry. First, given the subjec- tivizing
conditions of identity production in a late modern liberal, capitalist, and disciplinary-bureaucratic social order, how can
reiteration of these conditions be averted in identity's purportedly emancipatory project? What kind of political
recognition can identity-based claims seek-and what kind can they be counted on to want-that will not resubordinate the
subject itself historically subjugated through identity categories such as "race" or "sex," especially when these
categories operate within discourses of liberal essentialism and disciplinary normalization? Second, given the
averred interest of politicized identity in achieving emancipatory political recognition in a posthumanist discourse, what are the logics of pain
in subject formation within late modernity that might contain or subvert this aim? What are the particular
constituents-specific to our time, yet roughly generic for a diverse spectrum of identities-of identity's desire for
recognition that seem as often to breed a politics of recrimination and rancor, of culturally dispersed paralysis
and suffering, a tendency to reproach power rather than aspire to it, to disdain freedom rather than practice it?
In short, where do elements of politicized identity's investments in itself and especially in its own history of suffering come into
conflict with the need to give up these investments in the pursuit of an emancipatory democratic project?
Their performance is one of victimhood- leads to ressentiment
However, it is not only the tension between freedom and equality but the
prior presumption of the self-reliant and

self-made capacities of liberal
subjects, conjoined with their unavowed dependence on and construction by a variety of social relations and
forces, that makes all liberal subjects, and not only markedly disenfranchised ones, vulnerable to ressentiment:
it is their situatedness within power, their production by power, and liberal discourse's denial of this situatedness and production that casts the
liberal subject into failure, the failure to make itself in the context of a discourse in which its self-making is assumed, indeed, is its
assumed nature. This failure, which Nietzsche calls suffering, must find either a reason within itself (which redoubles
the failure) or a site of external blame on which to avenge its hurt and redistribute its pain. Here is Nietzsche's account of
this moment in the production of ressentiment: For every sufferer instinctively seeks a cause for his suffering,
more exactly, an agent; still more specifically a guilty agent who is susceptible to suffering-in short , some living thing upon
which he can on some pretext or other, vent his affects, actually or in effigy ... This ... constitutes the actual physiological cause of
ressentiment, vengeful- ness, and the like: a desire to deaden pain by means of affects ... to deaden, by means of a more
violent emotion of any kind, a tormenting, secret pain that is becoming unendurable, and to drive it out of
consciousness at least for the moment: for that one requires an affect, as savage an affect as possible, and, in order to excite that, any
pretext at all.18 Ressentiment in this context is a triple achievement: it produces an affect (rage, righteousness) that overwhelms the hurt, it produces a
culprit responsible for the hurt, and it produces a site of revenge to displace the hurt (a place to inflict hurt as the sufferer has been hurt). Together
these operations both ameliorate (in Nietzsche's terms, "anaesthetize") and externalize what is otherwise "unendurable."
Identity induced ressentiment makes effective change impossible

If ressentiment's "cause" is suffering, its "creative deed" is the reworking of this
pain into a negative form of

action, the "imaginary revenge" of what Nietzsche terms "natures denied the true reaction, that of deeds."22 This revenge is achieved
through the imposition of suffering "on whatever does not feel wrath and displeasure as he does "23
(accomplished especially through the production of guilt), through the establishment of suffering as the measure of
social virtue, and through casting strength and good fortune ("privilege" as we say today) as self-recriminating, as its
own indictment in a culture of suffering: "it is disgraceful to be fortunate, there is too much misery."24 But in its attempt
to displace its suffering, identity structured by ressentiment at the same time becomes invested in its own
subjection. This investment lies not only in its discovery of a site of blame for its hurt will, not only in its
acquisition of recognition through its history of subjection ( a recognition predicated on injury, now righteously revalued), but
also in the satisfac- tions of revenge that ceaselessly reenact even as they redistribute the injuries of marginalization
and subordination in a liberal discursive order that alter- nately denies the very possibility of these things or blames
those who experience them for their own condition. Identity
politics structured by ressentiment reverses without subverting

this blaming structure: it does not subject to critique the sovereign subject of accountability that liberal individualism presupposes nor the
economy of inclusion and exclusion that liberal universalism establishes. Thus politicized identity that presents itself as a selfaffirmation now appears as the opposite, as predicated on and requiring its sustained rejection by a "hostile
external world."25
Only way to solve is to transition from a culture of blame to one of aspiration- this embraces the
possibility of futurity without minimizing past exploitation
What if it were possible to incite a slight shift in the character of political expression and political claims
common to much politicized identity? What if we sought to supplant the language of "I am"-with its defensive
closure on identity, its insistence on the fixity of position, and its equation of social with moral positioning-with
the language of reflexive "wanting"? What if it were possible to rehabilitate the memory of desire within
identificatory processes, the moment in desire-either "to have" or "to be"-prior to its wounding and thus prior to the formation of identity at the
site of the wound? What if "wanting to be" or "wanting to have" were taken up as modes of political speech that could
destabilize the formulation of identity as fixed position, as entrenchment by history, and as having necessary
moral entail- ments, even as they affirm "position" and "history" as that which makes the speaking subject intelligible and locatable, as that
which contributes to a hermeneutics for adjudicating desires? If every "I am" is something of a resolution of desire into fixed
and sovereign identity, then this project might involve not only learning to speak but to read "I am" this way, as in motion, as
temporal, as not-I, as deconstructable according to a genealogy of want rather than as fixed interests or experiences. The subject
understood as an effect of a (ongoing) genealogy of desire, including the social processes constitutive of, fulfilling, or frustrating desire, is in this way
revealed as neither sovereign nor conclusive even as it is affirmed as an "I." In short, this partial dissolution of sovereignty into desire
could be that which reopens a desire for futurity where Nietzsche saw it sealed shut by festering wounds
expressed as rancor and ressentiment. "This instinct for freedom pushed back and repressed ... incarcerated within."34
2NC O/V
The affs identity performance creates a politics of subjugation which engenders ressentiment
This enacts itself in the form of scapegoating- redistributes injuries and rejects engagement
with emancipatory democratic projects because theyre perceived as part of the system
Only embracing a politics of futurity and transitioning from a culture of blame to aspiration can
recognize past oppression while moving into more productive social movements- thats Brown
T/ Effective Politics
Oppositional personal politics perpetuates suffering and leads to paralysis
Revenge as a "reaction," a substitute for the capacity to act, produces
identity as both bound to the history that

produced it and as a reproach to the present that embodies that history. The will that "took to hurting" in its
own impotence against its past becomes (in the form of an identity whose very existence is due to heightened consciousness of the
immovability of its "it was," its history of subordination) a will that makes not only a psychological but a political practice of
revenge, a practice that reiterates the existence of an identity whose present past is one of i nsistently
unredeemable injury. This past cannot be redeemed unless the identity ceases to be invested in it, and it cannot cease to be invested
in it without giving up its identity as such, thus giving up its economy of avenging and at the same time perpetuating its
hurt-"when he then stills the pain of the wound, he at the same time reinfects the wound. "32 In its emergence as a protest
against marginalization or subordination, politicized identity thus becomes attached to its own exclusion both because it is
premised on this exclusion for its very existence as identity and because the formation of identity at the site of exclusion, as exclusion, augments or
"alters the direction of the suffering" entailed in subordination or marginalization by finding a site of blame for it. But in so doing, i t installs its
pain over its unredeemed history in the very foundation of its political claim, in its demand for recognition as
identity. In locating a site of blame for its powerlessness over its past, as a past of injury, a past as a hurt will, and locating a "reason" for the
"unendurable pain" of social powerlessness in the present, i t converts this reasoning into an ethicizing politics, a politics of
recrimination that seeks to avenge the hurt even while it reaffirms it, discursively codifies it . Politicized identity
thus enunciates itself, makes claims for itself, only by entrenching, dramatizing, and inscribing its pain in politics and
can hold out no future-for itself or others-that triumphs over this pain. The loss of historical direction, and with it the loss of futurity
characteristic of the late modern age, is thus homologically refigured in the structure of desire of the dominant political
expression of the age-identity politics. In the same way, the generalized political impotence produced by the ubiquitous yet
discontinuous networks of late modern politica l and economic power is reiterated in the investments of late modern
democracy's primary oppositional political formations.
Politicizing identity creates political impotence- props up systems of exploitation
Enter politicized identity, now conceivable in part as both product
of and "reaction" to this condition, where

"reaction" acquires the meaning that Nietzsche ascribed to it, namely, as an effect of domination that reiterates
impotence, a substitute for action, for power, for self-affirmation that reinscribes incapacity, powerlessness,
and rejection. For Nietzsche, ressentiment itself is rooted in "reaction"-the substitution of reasons, norms, and
ethics for deeds-and not only moral systems but identities themselves take their bearings in this reaction. A s
Tracy Strong reads this element of Nietzsche's thought, Identity . . . does not consist of an active component, but is a reaction to something
outside; action in itself, with its inevitable self-assertive qualities, must then become something evil, since it is identified
with that against which one is reacting. The will to power of slave morality must constantly reassert that which gives
definition to the slave: the pain he suffers by being in the world . Hence any attempt to escape that pain will
merely result in the reaffirmation of painful structures.21
Rejecting an ethic of victimhood does not mean we embrace failed political movements- but
shifting the focus from ontology to antagonistic debate is k/t shape the future of political
outcomes
Such a slight shift in the character of the political discourse of identity eschews the kinds of ahistorical or utopian
turns against identity politics made by a nostalgic and broken humanist Left as well as the reactionary and
disingenuous assaults on politicized identity tendered by the Right. Rather than opposing or seeking to
transcend identity investments, the replacement - even the complex admixture-of the language of "being" with
"wanting" would seek to exploit politically a recovery of the more expansive moments in the genealogy of
identity formation. It would seek to reopen the moment prior to its own foreclosure against its want, prior to the point at which its sovereign
subjectivity is established through such foreclosure and through eternal repetition of its pain. How might democratic discourse itself be
invigorated by such a shift from ontological claims to these kinds of more expressly political ones, claims
which, rather than dispensing blame for an unlivable present, inhabited the necessarily agonistic theater of
discursively forging an alternative future?
T/ Exclusion
Identity politics replicate exclusion and are inevitably reductionist
Contemporary politicized identity contests the terms of liberal discourse insofar as it challenges liberalism's
universal "we" as a strategic fiction of historically hegemonic groups and asserts liberalism's "I" as social -both relational and
constructed by power-rather than contingent, private, or autarkic. Yet it reiterates the terms of liberal discourse insofar
as it posits a sovereign and unified "I" that is disenfranchised by an exclusive "we." Indeed, I have suggested that
politicized identity emerges and obtains its unifying coherence through the politicization of exclusion from an
ostensible universal, as a protest against exclusion, a protest premised on the fiction of an inclusive/universal
community, a protest that reinstalls the humanist ideal-and a specific white, middle-class, masculinist expression
of this ideal-insofar as it premises itself on exclusion from it. Put the other way around, politicized identities generated out of liberal,
disciplinary societies, insofar as they are premised on exclusion from a universal ideal , require that ideal, as well as their exclusion
from it, for their own perpetuity as identities.13 Politicized identity is also potentially reiterative of regulatory, disciplinary
society in its configuration of a disciplinary subject. It is both produced by and potentially accelerates the production of that aspect of
disciplinary society that "ceaselessly characterizes, classifies, and specializes," that works through "surveillance, continuous
registration, perpetual assessment, and classification," through a social machinery "that is both immense and minute."14 A recent example from the
world of local politics makes clear politicized identity's imbrication in disciplinary power, as well as the way in which, as Foucault reminds us,
disciplinary power "infiltrates" rather than replaces liberal juridical modalities.'5 Last year, the city council of my town reviewed an
ordinance, devised and promulgated by a broad coalition of identity-based political groups, w hich aimed to ban discrimination in
employment, housing, and public accommodations on the basis of"sexual orientation, transsexual- ity, age, height, weight,
personal appearance, physical characteristics, race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, marital
status, sex or gender."'6 Here is a perfect instance of the universal juridical idea of liberalism and the
normalizing principle of disciplinary regimes conjoined and taken up within the discourse of politicized identity.
This ordinance- variously called the "purple hair ordinance" or the "ugly ordinance" by national news media -aims to count every
difference as no difference, as part of a seamless whole , but also to count every potentially subversive rejection
of culturally enforced norms as themselves normal, as normaliz- able, and as normativizable through law. Indeed, through the
definitional, procedural, and remedies section of this ordinance (e.g., "sexual orientation shall mean known or assumed homosexuality, heterosexuality,
or bisexual- ity"), persons are reduced to observable social attributes and practices; these are defined empirically,
positivistically, as
if their existence were intrinsic and factual, rather than effects of discursive and institutional
power; and these positivist definitions of persons as their attributes and practices are written into law, ensuring that persons describable according to
them will now become regulated through them. Bentham couldn't have done it better. Indeed, here is a perfect instance of how the
language of unfreedom, how articulation in language, in the context of liberal and disciplinary discourse, becomes a vehicle of
subordination through individualization, normalization, and regulation, even as it strives to produce visibility and
acceptance. Here, also, is a perfect instance of the way in which differences that are the effects of social power are
neutralized through their articulation as attributes and their circulation through liberal administrative discourse: what do we
make of a document that renders as juridical equivalents the denial of employment to an African American, an
obese man, and a white middle-class youth festooned with tattoos and fuschia hair?
AT Morality
Calls for moral decisions create a culture of impotence- denies self-affirmation
Insofar as what Nietzsche calls slave morality produces identity in reaction
to power, insofar as identity rooted in this

reaction achieves its moral superiority by reproaching power and action themselves as evi l, identity structured
by this ethos becomes deeply invested in its own impotence, even while it seeks to assuage the pain of its
powerlessness through its vengeful moralizing, through its wide distribution of suffering, through its reproach of power as such.
Politicized identity, premised on exclusion and fueled by the humiliation and suffering imposed by its historically structured impotence
in the context of a discourse of sovereign individuals, is as likely to seek generalized political paralysis, to feast on generalized
political impotence, as it is to seek its own or collective liberation. Indeed it is more likely to punish and
reproach-"punishment is what revenge calls itself; with a hypocritical lie it creates a good conscience for itself'-than to find
venues of self-affirming action.26
***Cap K Components***
**IMPACTS**
Cap T/Policing
Capitalism perpetuates policing and racism to maximize profit- only reclaiming the state from
capitalism can end this cycle and lead to reform
The war with no front has two faces. The first is destruction. Any coherent logic and practice that allows for the
organization of life outside of capital, anything that allows us to identify ourselves as existing independent of capital, must be
destroyed or, what may be the same thing, reduced to the quantifiable exchangeability of the world market. Cultures, languages, histories,
memories, ideas, and dreams all must undergo this process. In this regard, struggles for control over the production and
subordination of racialized and gendered identities becomes a central battlefield. All the colors of the people of the
earth face off with the insipid color of money. For the capitalist market, the ultimate goal is to make the entire
world a desert of indifference populated only by equally indifferent and exchangeable consumers and producers. As a direct
consequence, the Empire of Money has turned much of its attention to destroying the material basis for the existence of the
nation-state, as it was through this institution that for the last century humanity was able to, even if only marginally, keep
the forces of money at bay. The second face is reorganization. Once the Empire of Money has sufficiently weakened the
nation-state, it then reinvigorates this same institution for its own ends through the introduction of schemes intended to benefit
the structure of the market itself, specifically the advent of privatization as government policy. This allows for the increasing intervention of the
state with the end of minimizing its redistributive or social capacity and using it as a mechanism for the insistent imposition of the market.
This imposition is so expansive that literally everything becomes a business opportunity, a site for speculation, or a marketable moment. What was
previously a site for community strength (i.e. a mural) is today simply a wall for corporate advertisement; what was
previously knowledge passed down to be shared socially is today the site for the latest pharmaceutical patent; what yesterday was free and
abundant today is bottled and sold. Without any social safety net and bombarded with images of an everpresent enemy, the logic of policing extends to that figure previously known as the citizen of the former
nation-state. This figure is today reconstituted as an atomistic self-policing subject, a competitor who enters (i.e. misses) all
encounters believing that the other, that which is not me, exists only to defeat me, or be defeated by me. A total war indeed. Today there is
simply no quiet corner to rest and catch ones breath.
Cap T/ Racism
Cap is the root cause of racism

Cole 9 (Mike Cole, Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK, Critical Race Theory comes to the UK : A Marxist response, Ethnicities 2009
9: 246)
While, for Marxists, it is certainly the case that there has been a continuity of racism for hundreds of years, the
concept of white supremacy does not in itself explain this continuity, since it does not need to connect to
modes of production and developments in capitalism. It is true that Mills (1997) provides a wide-ranging discussion of the history of
economic exploitation, and that Preston (2007) argues that CRT needs to be considered alongside Marxism. However, unlike Marxism, there
is no a priori need to connect with capitalist modes of production. Thus Gillborn (e.g. 2005, 2006a) is able to
make the case for CRT and white supremacy without providing a discussion of the relationship of racism to
capitalism. For me, the Marxist concept of racialization5 is most useful in articulating racism to modes of production, and I have developed these
links at length elsewhere (e.g. Cole, 2004a, 2004b). Manning Marable (2004) has used the concept of racialization to connect to modes of production in
the US. He has described the current era in the US as The New Racial Domain (NRD). This New Racial Domain, he argues, is
different from other earlier forms of racial domination, such as slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and
ghettoization, or strict residential segregation, in several critical respects. These early forms of
racialization, he goes on, were based primarily, if not exclusively, in the political economy of US
capitalism. Meaningful social reforms such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
were debated almost entirely within the context of Americas expanding, domestic economy, and a background
of Keynesian, welfare state public policies. The political economy of the New Racial Domain, on the other
hand, is driven and largely determined by the forces of transnational capitalism, and the public policies of state
neoliberalism, which rests on an unholy trinity, or deadly triad, of structural barriers to a decent life. These
oppressive structures are mass unemployment, mass incarceration and mass disfranchisement, with each
factor directly feeding and accelerating the others, creating an ever-widening circle of social disadvantage,
poverty, and civil death, touching the lives of tens of millions of US people. For Marable, adopting a Marxist perspective,
The process begins at the point of production. For decades, US corporations have been outsourcing millions of betterpaying jobs outside the country.The class warfare against unions has led to a steep decline in the percentage of
US workers. As Marable concludes: Within whole US urban neighborhoods losing virtually their entire economic
manufacturing and industrial employment, and with neoliberal social policies in place cutting job training
programs, welfare, and public housing, millions of Americans now exist in conditions that exceed the
devastation of the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 2004, in New Yorks Central Harlem community, 50
percent of all black male adults were currently unemployed. When one considers that this figure does not count
those black males who are in the military, or inside prisons, its truly amazing and depressing. Moreover, the
new jobs being generated for the most part lack the health benefits, pensions, and wages that manufacturing
and industrial employment once offered.
Cap T/ Corruption
Flaws in the state can be traced by to capitalism- rejecting it is an a priori concern
First, States: the State in the Empire of Money, as mentioned above,
is reorganized. It is now the downsized state where

any semblance of collective welfare is eliminated and replaced with the logic of individual safety, with the most
repressive apparatuses of the State, the police and the Army, unleashed to enforce this logic. This state is in no way
smaller in the daily lives of its subjects; rather, it is guaranteed that the power of this institution (collective spending) is directed purely toward new
armaments and the increasing presence of the police in daily life. Second, Armies: the Army in previous eras was assumed to exist for the protection of a
national population from foreign invasion. Today, in the structural absence of such a threat, the army is redirected to respond with
violence to manage (and yet never solve) a series of never-ending local conflicts (Atenco, Oaxaca, New Orleans) that potentially
threaten the overall stability of international markets. In other words, as the EZLN points out, these armies can no longer be
considered national in any meaningful sense; they are instead various precinct divisions of a global police force
under the direction of the Empire of Money. Third, Politics: the politics of the politicians (i.e. the actions of the legislative,
executive, and judiciary branches) has been completely eliminated as a site for public deliberation, or for the construction of the
previously existing 4 nation-state. The politics of the politicians has been redirected and its new function is that of the
implementation and administration of the local influence of transnational corporations . What was previously national politics
has been replaced with what the EZLN refers to as megapoliticsthe readjustment of local policy to global financial interests.
Thus the sites that once actually mediated among local actors are now additionally charged with the mission of creating the image that such mediation
continues to take place. It is best to be careful then and not believe that the politicians and their parties (be they right wing or progressive) are of no
use; rather, it is important to note that today their very purpose is the outright simulation of social dialogue (that is, they are of no use TO US!).
Rejection A Priori
You must reject the violence within capitalism its costs are beyond calculation
Daly 4 [Daly, Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University College, Northhampton, Conversations with Zizek p.
14-16 //liam]
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that our
ethico-political responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of todays global capitalism and its
obscene naturalization/anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it throughout the world. Against
the standardized positions of postmodern culture with all its pieties concerning multiculturalist etiquette
Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be called radically incorrect in the sense that it breaks with these
types of positions and focuses instead on the very organizing principles of todays social reality: the principles
of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has been bedeviled by an
almost fetishistic economism that has tended towards political morbidity . With the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and more
recently Laclau and Mouffe, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the transcendence of all forms of economism. In this new context,
however, Zizek argues that the problem that now presents itself is almost that of the opposite fetish. That is to say,
the prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a way of not engaging with
economic reality and as a way of implicitly accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. In an ironic
Freudian- Lacanian twist, the fear of economism can end up reinforcing a de facto economic necessity in
respect of contemporary capitalism (i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears). This is not to endorse any
kind of retrograde return to economism. Zizeks point is rather that in rejecting economism we should not lose
sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies of humanity and our very sense of the
possible. In particular we should not overlook Marxs central insight that in order to create universal global
system the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the politico- discursive violence of its construction through a
kind of gentrification of that system. What is persistently denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is that the
gentrification of global liberal capitalism is one whose universalism fundamentally reproduces and depends
upon a disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors of the worlds population. In this way, neo-liberal ideology
attempts to naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning and losing as if they were simply a
matter of chance and sound judgment in a neutral marketplace . Capitalism does indeed create a space for a
certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in
terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and
degraded life chances cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social
exclusion remains mystified and nameless (viz. the patronizing reference to the developing world). And Zizeks point is that
this mystification is magnified through capitalisms profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity:
to redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation .
Instead of Bolshevism, the tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms of consumerism and
lifestyle.
Global Destruction Mpx
Modern leftist struggles are stuck within coordinates of capitalismtheir efforts only serve to
regulate the worst excesses of capitalism without challenging its global destruction
Zizek 4 [Slavoj, Prof of Sociology at the Institute for Sociology at Ljubljana Univ, Conversations With Zizek, pg 148-9]
My position is almost classical Marxist in the sense that I would insist that anti-capitalist struggle is not simply one among other
political struggles for greater equality, cultural recognition, anti-sexism and so on. I believe in the central
structuring role of the anti-capitalist struggle. And I dont think that my position is as crazy or idiosyncratic as it
appeared maybe a couple a years ago. It is not only the so-called Seattle Movement; there are many other signals that
demonstratehow shall I put it?capitalism is becoming a problem again; that the honeymoon of globalization , which
lasted through the 1990s, is coming to an end. Its in this context that we can also understand the incredible successes of Negri and Hardts
Empire, which points out that people are again perceiving capitalism as a problem. It is no longer the old story that the ideological
battles are over and that capitalism has won. Capitalism is once more a problem. This would be my
starting point. And I am not thinking of anti-capitalist struggle just in terms of consumerist movements. This is
not enough. We need to do more than simply organize a multitude of sites of resistance against capitalism .
There is a basic necessity to translate this resistance into a more global project otherwise we will
merely be creating regulatory instances that control on the worst excesses of capitalism . GD: This also appears to be at
the base of your dispute with Ernesto Laclau in J. Butler (et al.) Contingency, Hegemony, and Universality where you seem to be arguing that the
existing political struggles are already caught up in a certain liberal capitalist ethos and that the contemporary logiics of hegemony are already
hegemonized; already configured within the capital processes themselves SJ: Yes, I agree with your formulation that hegemony itself
is hegemonized. In what sense? I think that the idea that today we no longer have a central struggle but a
multitude of struggles is a fake one, because we shouldnt forget that the group for this multitude of struggles
was created by modern global capitalism. This doesnt devaluate these struggles: I am not saying they are not
real struggles. I am saying that the passage from old-fashioned class struggle to all these post-modern struggles of
ecological, cultural, sexual etc. struggles is one that is opened up by global capitalism. The ground of these
struggles is global capitalism.
Root Cause Slavery
They misread slavery. No where is the failure of the affs paradigm more evident then in their
argument we should begin with slavery. The affs re-telling of the history of slavery omits the
central cause of the slave-trade: class. Absent an accurate understanding of historical process,
they cannot hope to redress the harms of past injustice.
Darder, and Torress, 04 [Antonia, Prof of education policy studies at U of Illinois, and Rodolfo, Associate
prof of latino studies at UC Irvine, After Race: Racism after multiculturalism, p.6-8 //liam]
Although today race is generally linked to phenotypic characteris tics, there is a strong consensus among evolutionary biologists and ge netic
anthropologists that biologically identifiable human races do not exist; Homo sapiens constitute a single species, and have been so since their evolution
in Africa and throughout their migration around the world (Lee, Mountain, and Koenig 2001, 39). This perspective is simi lar to that which existed prior
to the eighteenth century, when the notion that there were distinct populations whose differences were grounded in biology did not exist. For the Greeks,
for example, the term barbarian was tied to how civilized a people were considered to be (generally based on language rather than genetics). So how
did all this begin? George Fredrickson (2002), writing on the history of racism, identifies the anticipatory moment of
modern racism with the treatment of Jew ish converts to Christianity in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Spain. Conversos were identified and discriminated against because of the belief held by Christians that the impurity of their
blood made them incapable of experiencing a true conversio n (31). Fredrickson argues that the racism inherent in the
quasi-religious, Spanish doctrine of limpeza de sangre, referring to purity of blood, set the stage for the spread of racism to the
New World: To the extent that it was enforced represented the stigmatization of an entire ethnic group on the basis of deficiencies that allegedly
could not be eradicated by conversion or assimilation. Inherited social status was nothing new; the concept of noble blood had long meant that the off
spring of certain families were born with a claim to high status. But when the status of large numbers of people was depressed purely and simply because
of their derivation from a denigrated ethnos, a line had been crossed that gave race a new and more comprehensive significance. (33) Hence,
religious notions, steeped in an ideology of race, played a significant role in the exportation of racism into the
Americas, wheiie domination by the superior race was perceived as inevitable and de sirable, because it was thought to lead to human progress
(Castles 1996, 21). The emergence of race as ideology can also be traced to the rise of nationalism. Efforts by nation-states to extend or
deny rights of citizenship contingent on race or ethnicity were not uncommon , even within so-called democratic
republics. Here, national mythology about those with the biological unfitness for full citizenship (Fredrickson 2002, 68) served to sanction
exclusionary practices, despite the fact that all people shared the historical process of migration and intermingling (Castles 1996, 21). Herein is
contained the logic behind what Valle and Torres (2000) term the policing of race, a condition that results in official policies and practices by the
nation-state designed to exclude or curtail the rights of racialized populations. In Germany, the Nazi regime took the logic of race to
its
pinnacle, rendering Jewish and Gypsy pop ulations a threat to the state, thus rationalizing and justifying their
demise. This example disrupts the notion that racism occurs only within the context of black-white relation s.
Instead, Castles (1996) argues that economic exploitation has always been central to the emergence of racism . Whether it
incorporated slavery or indentured servitude, racial ized systems of labor were perpetrated in Europe against inunigrants,
in cluding Irish, Jewish, and Polish workers, as well as against indigenous populations around the world . In the
midst of the scientific penchant of the eighteenth century, Carolus Linneaus developed one of the first topologies to actually cate gorize human beings
into four distinct subspecies: americanus, asiaticus, africanus, and europeaeus. Linneauss classification, allegedly neutral and scientific, included not
only physical features but also behavioral charac teristics, hierarchically arranged in accordance with the prevailing social values and the politicaleconomic interests of the times. The predictable result is the current ideological configuration of race. used to both ex plain and control social behavior.
Etienne Balibars (2003) work on racism is useful in understanding the ideological justifications that historically have accompanied the exclu sion and
domination of racialized populationsa phenomenon heavily fueled by the tensions of internal migration in the Current era of global ization. [R]acism
describes in an abstract idealizing manner types of human ity, and. . . makes extensive use of classifications which allow all indi viduals and groups to
imagine answers for the most immediate existen tial questions, such as imposition of identities and the permanence of vi olence between nations, ethnic
or religious communities. (3) Balibar also points to the impact of symbolic projections and media tions (in particula; stereotypes and prejudices linked
to divine-human ity or bestial-animality) in the construction of racialized formations. Racial classification becomes associated with a
distinction between the properly human and its imaginary (animal-like) other. Such projec tions and
mediations, Balibar argues, are inscribed with modernitys ex pansionist rationalitya quasi-humanist conception that
suggests that differences and inequalities are the result of unequal access and social ex clusion from cultural,
political, or intellectual life but also implies that these differences and inequalities represent normal patterns,
given the level of humanity or animality attributed to particular populations. James Baldwin in A Talk to Teachers
(1988) links this phenomenon of racialization to the political economy and its impact on African Ameri cans .The
point of all this is that Black men were brought here as a source of cheap labor. They were indispensable to the
economy. In order to justify the fact that men were treated as though they were animals, the white re public had to brain
wash itself into believing that they were indeed ani mals and deserved to be treated like animals. (7) Lee, Mountain, and Koenig (2001) note, the
taxonomy of race has al ways been and continues to be primarily political (43). Since politics and economics actually
constitute one sphere, it is more precise to say that the ideology of race continues to be primarily about political economy. Thus, historians of
race and racism argue that the idea of immutable, biologically determined races is a direct outcome of
exploration and colonialism, which furnished the scientific justification for the eco nomic exploitation,
slavery, and even genocide of those groups perceived as subhuman.
**LINKS**
Black Subjectivity Link
Fetishizing black subjectivity makes class invisiblefailing to take into account these racist
relations in the name of economic progress
Young 6 [Robert, Asst Prof of English at Univ of Alabama, Putting Materialism Back into Race Theory,
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm //liam]
Indeed, the discourse of the subject operates as an ideological strategy for fetishizing
the black experience and ,

positions black subjectivity beyond the reach of Marxism. For example, in the Afrocentric Idea, Asante
dismisses Marxism because it is Eurocentric (8), but are the core concepts of Marxism, such as class and mode
of production, only relevant for European social formations? Are African and African-American social
histories/relations unshaped by class structures? Asante assumes that class hierarchies do not structure African or the AfricanAmerican social experiences, and this reveals the class politics of Afrocentricity: it makes class invisible. Asante's assumption,
consequently, it
which erases materialism, enables him to offer the idealist formulation that the "word creates reality" (70). The political translation of such idealism is
not surprisingly very conservative. Asante directs us away from critiquing capitalist institutions, in a manner similar to the ideological protocol of the
Million Man March, and calls for vigilance against symbolic oppression. As Asante tellingly puts it, "symbol imperialism, rather than institutional racism,
is the major social problem facing multicultural societies" (56). In the realm of African-American philosophy , Howard McGary Jr.
also deploys the discourse of the (black) subject to mark the limits of Marxism. For instance, in a recent interview, McGary
offers this humanist rejection of Marxism: "I don't think that the levels of alienation experienced by Black people are rooted primarily in economic
relations" (Interview 90). For McGary, black alienation exceeds the logic of Marxist theory and thus McGary's idealist assertion that "the sense of
alienation experienced by Black people in the US is also rooted in the whole idea of what it means to be a human being and how that has been
understood" (Interview 90). McGary confuses causes and effects and then misreads Marxism as a descriptive modality.
Marxism is not concerned as much with descriptive accounts, the effects, as much as it is with explanatory
accounts. That is, it is concerned with the cause of social alienation because such an explanatory account acts as a
guide for praxis. Social alienation is an historical effect and its explanation does not reside in the experience
itself; therefore, it needs explanation and such an explanation emerges from the transpersonal space of
concepts. In theorizing the specificity of black alienation, McGary reveals his contradictory ideological coordinates . First, he
argues that black alienation results from cultural "beliefs". Then, he suggests that these cultural "norms" and
"practices" develop from slavery and Jim Crow, which are fundamentally economic relations for the historically
specific exploitation of black people. If these cultural norms endogenously emerge from the economic systems of slavery
and Jim Crow, as McGary correctly suggests, then and contrary to McGary's expressed position, black alienation is very much rooted
in economic relations. McGary's desire to place black subjectivity beyond Marxism creates contradictions in his text. McGary asserts that the
economic structures of slavery and Jim Crow shape cultural norms. Thus in a post-slavery, post-Jim Crow era, there would still be an economic structure
maintaining contemporary oppressive normsfrom McGary's logic this must be the case. However, McGary remains silent on the
contemporary economic system structuring black alienation: capitalism. Apparently, it is legitimate to

foreground and critique the historical connection between economics and alienation but any inquiry into the
present day connection between economics and alienation is off limits . This other economic structurecapitalism
remains the unsaid in McGary's discourse, and consequently he provides ideological support for capitalism the
exploitative infrastructure which produces and maintains alienation for blacks as well as for all working people. In a very revealing moment, a moment
that confirms my reading of McGary's pro-capitalist position, he asserts that "it is possible for African-Americans to combat or overcome this form of
alienation described by recent writers without overthrowing capitalism" (20). Here, in a most lucid way, we see the ideological connection
between the superstructure (philosophy) and the base (capitalism). Philosophy provides ideological support for
capitalism, and, in this instance, we can also see how philosophy carries out class politics at the level of theory
(Althusser Lenin 18). McGary points out "that Black people have been used in ways that white people have not" (91).
His observation may be true, but it does not mean that whites have not also been "used"; yes, whites may be
"used" differently, but they are still "used" because that is the logic of exploitative regimes people are "used", that is to
say, their labor is commodified and exchanged for profit. McGary's interview signals what I call an "isolationist" view. This view disconnects
black alienation from other social relations; hence, it ultimately reifies race, and, in doing so, suppresses
materialist inquiries into the class logic of race. That is to say, the meaning of race is not to be found within its own internal dynamics
but rather in dialectical relation to and as an ideological justification of the exploitative wage-labor economy. This isolationist position finds a fuller and,
no less problematic, articulation in Charles W. Mills' The Racial Contract, a text which undermines the possibility for a transracial transformative
political project. Mills evinces the ideological assumptions and consequent politics of the isolationist view in a long endnote to chapter 1. Mills privileges
race oppression, but, in doing so, he must suppress other forms of oppression, such as gender and class. Mills acknowledges that there are gender and
class relations within the white population, but he still privileges race, as if the black community is not similarly divided along gender and class lines.
Hence, the ideological necessity for Mills to execute a double move: he must marginalize class difference within the white community and suppress it
within the black community. Consequently, Mills removes the possibility of connecting white supremacy, a political-cultural structure, to its underlying
economic base. Mills empiricist framework mystifies our understanding of race. If "white racial solidarity has overridden class and gender solidarity"
(138), as he proposes, then what is needed is an explanation of this racial formation. If race is the "identity around which whites have
usually closed ranks" (138), then why is the case? Without an explanation, it seems as if white solidarity reflects
some kind of metaphysical alliance. White racial solidarity is an historical articulation that operates to defuse
class antagonism within white society, and it is maintained and reproduced through discourses of ideology. The
race contract provides whites with an imaginary resolution of actual social contradictions, which are not caused
by blacks, but by an exploitative economic structure. The race contract enables whites to scapegoat blacks and such an ideological
operation displaces any understanding of the exploitative machinery. Hence, the race contract provides a political cover which
ensures the ideological reproduction of the conditions of exploitation , and this reproduction further deepens the social
contradictionsthe economic position of whites becomes more and more depressed by the very same economic system that they help to ideologically
reproduce.
Chain of Equivalences Link
Their politics reduces all struggles to a chain of equivalences: Their analysis of power relations
through the lens of race makes redressing injustice impossible by making capitalism just
another part of a chain of equivalences of oppression, rather than the totalizing social system
which materially underpins oppression, they derail any real political movement.
prof of latino studies at UC Irvine, After Race: Racism after multiculturalism, p. //liam]
Since the 1970s, much of the progressive literature on subordinate cul tural populations has utilized the construct of race as a central category of
analysis for interpreting social conditions of inequality and marginal ization. In turn, this literature has adhered to a perspective of race as identity.
This raced identity has received overwhelming attention in both the sociological and political arenas. Unfortunately, the unrelenting emphasis
on identity unleashed a barrage of liberal and conservative political movements that unwittingly undermined
the socialist project of emancipation in this country and abroad . Radical mass organizations that had once worked to spearhead
actions for economic democracy, human rights, and social justice were crippled by the fury. In the midst of the blinding celebratory affirmations of
identity, neoliberal efforts to seize greater dominion over international markets proliferated and globalization became the policy buzzword of U.S.
economic imperialism at the end of the twentieth century. Given this legacy, it is not surprising that many of the theories, practices, and policies that
inform the social science analysis of racialized pop ulations today are overwhelmingly rooted in a politics of identity. Consequently this approach
steeped in deeply insular perspectives of race and representationhas often ignored the imperatives of
capitalist mulation and the presence of class divisions among racialized popula tions , even though, as John Michael
(2000) reminds us, identity cate gories and groups are always [racialized] and gendered and inflected by class (29). As we have previously stated, much
of the literature on critical race theory lacks a substantive analysis of class and a critique of capitalism, and when class issues are mentioned, the
emphasis is usually on an un differentiated plurality that intersects with multiple oppressions. Unfor tunately, this new pluralism fails to grapple with
the relentless totaliz ing dimension of capitalism and its overwhelming tendency to homoge nize rather than to diversify human experience (Wood 1994).
Strongly influenced by a politics of identity, critical race theorists in corporate the intersectionality argument to refer to their examination of race, sex,
class, national origin, and sexual orientation and how the com bination of these identities plays out in various settings (Delgado and Ste fancic 2001).
This school of thought, common to progressive scholarship, generally includes a laundry list of oppressions (race, class, gender, ho mophobia, and the
like) that are to be engaged with equal weight in the course of ascribing pluralized sensibilities to any political project that proposes to theorize social
inequalities. Hence, inadvertently in the name of recognizing and celebrating difference and diversity, this analytical
construct reduces the capitalist system (or the economy) to one of many spheres in the plural and heterogeneous
complexity of modern society (Wood 1995, 242). Wood argues that the intersectionality argument represents a distorted appropriation of
Antonio Gramscis notion of civil society, which was explicitly intended to function as a weapon against capitalism by identi fying potential spaces of
freedom outside the state for autonomous, vol untary organization and plurality. However, as used by many on the left to link multiple oppressions to
specific plural identities, the concept has been stripped of its unequivocal, anticapitalist intent. Wood speaks to the danger inherent in this analytical
twist. Here, the danger lies in the fact that the totalizing logic and the coercive power of capitalism is reduced to one set of
institutions and relations among many others, on a conceptual par with households or voluntary associations .
Such a reduction is, in fact, the principal distinctive feature of civil society in its new incarnation. Its effect is to
conceptualize away the problem of capitalism, by disaggregating society into fragments , with no overarching power
structure, no totalizing unity, no systemic coercionin other words, no capitalist system, with its expansionary drive and its capacity to penetrate every
aspect of social life. (Wood 1995, 245) This denial of the totalizing force of capitalism does not simply substantiate the
existence of plural identities and relations that should be equally privileged and given weight as modes of
domination. The logic of this ar gument fails to recognize that the class relation that constitutes capital, is not , after all,
just a personal identity, nor even just a principle of stratification or inequality. It is not only a specific system of power rela
tions but also the constitutive relation of a distinctive social process , the - dynamic of accumulation and the self-expansion of
capital (Wood 1995, 246). Furthermore, such logic ignores the fact that notions of identity result from a process of identification with a particular
configuration of histor ically lived or transferred social arrangements and practices tied to mate- - rial conditions of actual or imagined survival. The
intersectionality argu ment fails to illuminate the manner in which commonly identified diverse social spheres or plural identities exist within the
determinative force of capitalism, its system of social property relations, its expansionary im peratives, its drive for accumulation, its coinmodification of
all social life, its creation of the market as a necessity, and so on (Wood 1995, 246). There is no question but that racism as an ideology is
integral to the process of capital accumulation. The failure to confront this dimension in an analysis of
contemporary society as a racialized phenomenon or to continue to treat class as merely one of a multiplicity of
(equally valid) - perspectives, which may or may not intersect with the process of racial ization, is a serious shortcoming. In addressing this
issue, we must recognize that even progressive African American and Latino scholars and ac tivists have often used identity politics, which generally
glosses over class differences and/or ignores class contradictions, in an effort to build a po litical base . Constructions of race are
objectified and mediated as truth to ignite political support, divorced from the realities of class struggle . By so
doing, race-centered scholars have unwittingly perpetuated the vacu ous and dangerous notion that politics and
economics are two separate spheres of society which function independentlya view that firmly anchors and
sustains prevailing class relations of power in society.
Critical Pedagogy Link

Critical pedagogy perpetuates capitalism- doomed to be ineffective unless it adopts a capitalcentric approach
McLaren 2k- prof at UCLA (Peter, Knowledge and power in the global economy, edited by David Gabbard, Chapter 39. Critical
Pedagogy//MGD)
Critical pedagogy has become closely allied with multicultural education (McLaren, 1995; Sleeter & McLaren, 1995). However, just
as we have
witnessed in the project of critical pedagogy an avoidance of issues related to class and the social relations of production, so
too have we witnessed in multicultural education an absence of discussions linking the practice of racism to
capitalist social relations. Consequently, both critical pedagogy and multicultural education need to address
themselves to the adaptive persistence of capitalism and to issues of capitalist imperialism and its specific manifestation of
accumulative capacities through conquest (which we know as colonialism). In other words, critical pedagogy needs to establish a project
of emancipation centered around the transformation of property relations and the creation of a j ust system of
appropriation and distribution of social wealth. The domestication of critical pedagogy has not infirmed its
revolutionary potential.
Hip Hop Link
Hip hop is dead. The affs use of hip-hop is anything but revolutionary the appeal to authentic
local practices of experiential knowledge reintrenches the fable of identity and makes a
coherent critique of capitalism impossible. Their conception that hip-hop is necessarily
transformative is just another means to covertly essentialize identity and obscure the tools of
class analysis.
prof of latino studies at UC Irvine, After Race: Racism after multiculturalism, p. 101-4 //liam]
The process of signification is at work in the emphasis that critical race theory places on experiential knowledge (Delgado 1995; Ladson BilIhSgs 1999).
Robin Barnes (1990) notes that Critical race theorists... iisirgrate their experiential knowledge, drawn from a shared history as OJer with their ongoing
struggles to transform a world deteriorating under the albatross of racial hegemony (186465). In concert with this privileging of experience, critical
race theory employs narratives and storytelling as a central method of inquiry to analyze the myths,
presuppositions, and received wisdoms that make up the common culture about race and that invariably
render blacks and other minorities one-down (Delgado 1995, xiv). The results of this storytelling method are theorized and then
utilized to draw conclusions meant to impact public policy and institutional practices. The narrative and storytelling method employed by critical race
theo rists sought to critique essentialist narratives in law, education, and the social sciences . In place of a systematic analysis of class
and capitalist relations, critical race theory constructs race-centered responses to Eu rocentrism and white
privilege. Delgado Bernal (2002) affirms the valid. icy of this position, arguing that Western modernism is a network or grid of broad assumptions
and be liefs that are deeply embedded in the way dominant Western culture constructs the nature of the world and ones experiences in it. In the United
States, the center of this grid is a Eurocentric epistemological per spective based on White privilege. (111) The narrative method based on this perspective
has become especially successful among groups committed to making the voice of the voiceless heard in the public arena (Viotti da Costa 2001, 21).
However, despite an eagerness to include the participation of historically excluded populations, scholars who
embrace the poetics of the narrative approach often fail to challenge the underlying socioeconomic, political
and cultural structures that have excluded these groups to begin with and have sus tained the illusion of choice
(Watts 1991, 652). Thus, the narrative and storytelling approach can render the scholarship antidialectical by creat ing a false dichotomy between
objectivity and subjectivity, forgetting that one is implied in the other, [while ignoring] a basic dialectical prm ciple: that men and women make history,
but not under the conditions of their own choosing (Viotti da Costa 2001, 20). We agree that cultural resources and funds of knowledge such as
myths, folk tales, dichos, consejos, kitchen talk, [and] autobiographical stories (Delgado Bernal 2002, 120) employed by critical race theory
canilluminate particular concrete manifestations of racism. However, we contend that they can also prove problematic in positing a
broader un derstanding of the fundamental macrosocial dynamics which shape the conditions that give rise to
the micro-aggressions (Solrzano 1998) of racism in the first place. In an incisive critique of the narrative approach, Emilia Viottj da
Costa (2001) argues, The new paths it opened for an investigation of the process of construc tion and articulation of multiple and often contradictory
identities (eth nic, class, gender, nationality and so on), often led to the total neglect of the concept of class as an interpretive category. . . . What started
as . . . a critique of Marxism, has frequently led to a complete subjectivism, to the denial of the possibility of knowledge and sometimes even to the
questioning of the boundaries between history and fiction, fact and fancy. (19) Robin Kelley, in his book Yo Mamas DisFUNKtional (1997), offers the
following illuminating and sobering commentary regarding the limits of personal experience and storytelling: I am not claiming absolute authority or
authenticity for having lived there. On the contrary, it is because I did not know what happened to our world, to my neighbors, my elders, my peers, our
streets, buildings, parks, our health, that I chose not to write a memoir. Indeed, if I relied on memory alone I would invariably have more to say about
devouring Good and Pleneys or melting crayons on the radiator than about eco nomic restructuring, the disappearance of jobs, and the dismantling of
the welfare state. (45) Hence, we believe the use of critical race theory in education and the social sciences in general,
despite authors intentions, can unwittingly serve purposes that are fundamentally conservative or mainstream
at best. Three additional but related concerns with the storytelling narrative method are also at issue here. One is the tendency to
romanticize the ex perience of marginalized groups, privileging the narratives and discourses of people of
coloi solely based on their experience of oppression, as if a peoples entire politics can be determined solely by
their in dividual location in history. The second is the tendency to dichotomize and overhomogenize both white
people and people of color with respect to questions of voice and political representation (Viotti da Costa 2iO1). And
the third, anticipated by C. L. R. James in 1943, is the in inevitable exaggerations excesses and ideological trends for which
the only possible name is chauvinism (McLemee 1996, 86). Unfortunately, these tendencies, whether academic or political, can
result in unintended essentialism and superficiality in our theorizing of broader social in equalities, as well as
the solutions derived from such theories. Yet, truth be told, prescribed views of humanity are seldom the reality, whatever be their source.
Human beings who share phenotypical traits seldom respond to the world within the Constraints of essentialszed ex pectations and perceptions. Hence,
any notion of racial solidarity must run up against the hard facts of political economy ... and enormous class disparities within racialized
Communities (Gates 1997, 36). This is why Gilroy (2000) warns against short-cut solidarity attitudes that assume that a persons political allegiance
can be determined by his or her race or that a shared history will guarantee an emancipatory woridview. For this reason, we argue that such
declarations, though they may sound reasonable, commonsensical, or even promising as literary contributions,
have little utility in explaining how and why power is constituted, reproduced and transformed (Viotti da Costa
2001, 22).
Link of Ommission
Failure to discuss capitalism artificially inflates other sources of exploitation- turns the case
What this suggests is that identity politics may be partly configured by a peculiarly shaped and peculiarly disguised
form of
resentment without class consciousness or class analysis. This resentment is displaced onto discourses of
injustice other than class but, like all resent- ments, retains the real or imagined holdings of its reviled subjectin this case, bourgeois male privileges-as objects of desire. From this perspective, it would appear that the articulation of
politicized identities through race, gender, and sexuality require, rather than incidentally produce, a relatively
limited identification through class. They necessarily rather than incidentally abjure a critique of class power and class
norms precisely because the injuries suffered by these identities are measured by bourgeois norms of social
acceptance, legal protection, relative material comfort, and social independence. The problem is that when not only economic
stratification but other injuries to body and psyche enacted by capitalism (alienation, commodification,
exploitation, displacement, disintegration of sustaining, albeit contradictory, social forms such as families and neighborhoods) are
discursively normalized and thus depoliticized, other markers of social difference may come to bear an
inordinate weight. Absent an articulation of capitalism in the political discourse of identity, the marked identity
bears all the weight of the sufferings produced by capitalism in addition to that bound to the explicitly
politicized marking.
resentment-class
Whiteness Focus Link

A focus on whiteness trades off with the material oppression that capitalism has caused to
produce racism.
Koshy 1 [assistant professor in the Asian American Studies Department at the University of California, 1 , Morphing Race into Ethnicity: Asian
Americans and Critical Transformations of Whiteness, Duke University Press, Project Muse //liam]
Whiteness studies has focused primarily on the historical emergence of liminal European groups (the Irish and southern and eastern Europeans) as
whites over the last century and a half and on the mutually constitutive nature of whiteness and blackness in the construction of American national
identity. Central to the project of whiteness studies in both areas has been the effort to reveal the status of whiteness as an unmarked marker and to
expose its historical contingency as a racial category.1 Other minority groups have figured only tangentially in the
historiography and sociology of whiteness, thereby entrenching the black-white binary as the defining paradigm
of racial formation in the United States. This essay focuses on how Asian Americans produced, and were in turn produced by, whiteness
frameworks of the U.S. legal system. In doing so, it opens up a new area of investigation in whiteness studies and critiques the reliance
on a black-white model of race relations, which has obscured the complex reconfigurations of racial politics
over the last century. Furthermore, the theoretical simplifications of the black-white binary have impeded the
articulation of strategies adequate to confronting the significant racial and class-based realignments of the
postcivil rights era. These recent shifts have enabled the reconstitution of white privilege as color-blind meritocracy through the consent of new
immigrant groups and model minorities, and have legitimized the retrenchment of civil rights gains in the name of the new global economy. The
rearticulation of whiteness in the era of global capitalism highlights another important paradigmatic constraint within whiteness studies, namely, the
reliance on the analytic framework of the nation-state for understanding the shifting meanings of whiteness. But the erosion of civil rights gains cannot
be fully understood apart from the emergence of a global economy under U.S. geopolitical supremacy in the 1970s, a connection that seems to have been
largely overlooked so far. Studies of whiteness that are limited to a nation-state model are unable to address the ways
in which global capital has used, modified, and infiltrated racial meanings in the contemporary context . No
materialist analysis of racial formation can afford to ignore the implications of the transatlantic and
transpacific integration of capital circuits during what Marxist critics have identified as the fourth epochal stage of capitalism, in the
progression from mercantile to industrial to monopoly to global capitalism. Asian Americans (of whom approximately 65 percent are foreignborn) have been a crucial conduit for and a site of the reconfiguration of racial identities . By offering a Foucauldian
analysis of the productivity of whiteness in shaping the meanings of Asian American identities and in creating stratifications within the Asian American
grouping and across minority groups, I hope to foreground the need for developing conceptions of agency that account for complicity and resistance
within this intermediary racial group.
**ALT**
Material Production of Race
Thus, the alternative: vote negative to refuse the affirmatives speech act. Rather than center
politics around practices of identity, we should evaluate debates based on argument only this
can open space for a transformative politics which leaves race behind to focus on the material
production of racism.
Our alternative creates a new standpoint on analysis of inequalities. Rather than beginning
with the framework of race and racism to orient our political struggle, politics should begin
with a critique of capitalism only understanding the way in which capitalism produces race in
the first place can create a truly effective politics
There is no question but that the
issues raised by critical race theorists in education, policy studies and the social
sciences are significant to our un derstanding of the conditions that plague racialized student populations in
U.S. schools today. However, one of our major concerns with the use of critical race theory to buttress educational-political
debates of racial ized oppression or racism is directly linked to the use of race as the central unit of analysi s.
Coupled with an uncompromising emphasis on race is the conspicuous absence of a systematic discussion of class and, more importantly, a substantive
critique of capitalism. Let us be more specific here. In contending with questions of race and institutional power, references are indeed made to
capitalism or 2class in some works by critical race theorists and, in particular, Latino critical race theorists, who acknowledge that attention to class
issues has a pending, but as yet underdeveloped, trajectory in the future evolution of LatCrit theory and the consolidation of LatCrit social justice
agendas (Iglesias 1999, 64). However, these efforts to explore the ways in which socioeconomic interests are expressed in
the law or education are generally vague and undertheorized . Because of this lack of a theo retically informed
account of racism and capitalist social relations, critical race theory has done little to further our understanding
of the politi cal economy of racism and racialization . In addition, much of critical race theorys approach is informed by ambiguous
ideas of institutional racism or structural racism, which, as Miles (1989) points Out, are problematic due to the danger of conceptual inflation. Our
aim here is not to dismiss this important body of work but to point out an important analytical distinction we make in our intellectual and political
project. Our analysis of racism in contemporary society be gins with the capitalist mode of production, classes,
and class struggle. The mode of production, which is the site of class relations, is the point of departure in our
interrogation of racism as an ideology of social ex clusio n. In contrast, critical race scholars attribute constitutive power to the
American legal system itself. Hence, the relative autonomy of legal institutions is invoked to stress the power of race and to set their work apart from
critical legal scholars, who could not come to grips with the continuing problems of deeply embedded racism (Guinier and Torres 2002, 34). We
maintain that the legal system (the state) is located in a given economic context and is shaped by the imperatives of capital. Our critique, then, is tied to
the continued use of the traditional language of social theory, which has always been inadequate in problematizing notions of race in both research and
popular discourse. In essence, we argue that the use of race has been elevated to a theoretical construct, despite the fact
that the concept of race itself has remained under theorized Hence to employ alternative constructs derived from legal theory to
shape arguments related to educational policy and in stitutional practices, although well meaning and eloquent, is like beating a dead horse. No matter
how much is said, it is impossible to enliven or extend the debate on educational policy with its inherent inequalities
by using the language of race. Even a brief overview of the most prominent writings in critical race theory shows how little movement there
has been in furthering our understanding of the concept or redirecting the debate. Overall, most of the work is anchored in the popular
intersectionality argument of the postructuralist and postmodernist era, which maintains that race, gender,
and class should all receive equal attention in our understanding of soci. ety and our development of
institutional policies and practices. More re. cently, Guinier and Tortes (2002), in an apparent effort to push through the limits of the
intersectionality argument, proposed to advocate for what they term racial literacy from which to identify patterns of in. justice that link race to class,
gender, and other forms of power. (29) Despite their innovative use of race, its traditional analytical use remains intact. Our concerns with critical race
theory go beyond the desire to construct intellectual abstractions. Rather, our concerns are grounded in political questions such as:
Where exactly does an antirace theory of society lead us in real political struggles for social justice, human
rights, and eco. nomic democracy? How do we launch a truly universal emancipatory po. lineal project anchored primarily upon a theory of
race? Where is a cri tique of capitalism or an explicit anticapitalist vision in a critical theory of race ? Can we
afford to overlook the inherent existence of a politics of identity in the foundational views that led to the
construction of critical race theory? We are also troubled by the confusion with respect to the, terms critical race theorists use to frame their
analysis. In this context, it is important to distinguish between how we under stand the construct of race and its
genesis. In our analysis, race, simply put, is the child of racism. That into say, racism does not exist because there is such a thing
as race. Rather notions of race are a fundamental ideological construction of racism or a racialized
interpretation of phenotypically and, may we add, regionally different human beings. The process of racialization , then, is
at work in all relations in a capitalist so ciety . Alternatively, we might say that the empire is not built on race but on an ideology of
racismthis being one of the primary categories by which human beings are sorted, controlled, and made disposable at the point of production.
**AT AFF ANSWERS**
AT Race=Emancipatory
There is no neutral pre-discursive race which pre-exists their invocation; rather, the affs
invocation of the conceptual imagery of race calls it into being the affs speech act is the
central cause in the dialectic between academic knowledge and the segmentation of society into
distinct categories. This thwarts all hope of an emancipatory politics.
prof of latino studies at UC Irvine, After Race: Racism after multiculturalism, p. 12 //liam]
While we argue against attributing explanatory or descriptive value to race, we
do not mean to suggest that races have no social

realitythey do. This fiction of race is produced in the real world, thus serving to legitimate it and give it conceptual meaning and social life. At
its core, the effort to transmute the concept of race into an objective reality is limited and , as Appiah (cited in Postal
2002) concludes, a morally dangerous proposition . Hence, there is no need for a distinct (critical) theory of race; instead, what is
required is an earnest endeavor to theorize the specious concept with its illusory Status out of existence and
renew our commitment to the interrogation of racism as an ideology of social exclusion (Miles and Brown 2003). In
other words, if race is real, it is so only because it has been rendered meaningful by the actions and beliefs of the
powerful, who retain the myth in order to protect their own political-economic interests. Race as a social construct of
resistance comes into play only later as racialized populations and their advocates embrace the concept in reverse to struggle against material conditions
of domination and exploitation. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the essentialism inherent in the original
epistemological intent of race is preserved. At its core, the effort to transmute the concept of race into an emancipatory category is a
limited and unwise undertaking. Thus, it is high time we disrupt the continued use of a dubious concept that cannot help
but render our theorizing ambiguous and problematic. In its simplest terms, this ambiguity is most visible in the inconsistent, with
which the term race is appliedsometimes meaning ethnicity, at other times referring to culture or ancestry. More often than not, terms used for
race are seldom defined and race is frequently employed in a routine and uncritical manner to represent illdefined social and cultural factors (Williams 1994). This explains why in all the w ritings on race there is so little substantive theorizing
about the construct itself. The category of race is thus suspect with respect to its analytical utility . If race is socially
constructed and its origins clearly steeped in an ideology of exclusion, domination, exploitation, even genocide,
why should we continue to make sense of peoples lives based on the legacy of a pseudoscientific distortion
from a previous era? Is not racismas an ideology that exists within a structure of class differentiation and exploitation. rather than
race, the concept that merits our attention, particularly in these perilous times of global upheaval?
AT Our Ethic O/W

The effects of the affs politics are far from benign despite the affirmatives best intentions,
they can only further entrench racism by deploying the conceptual imagery of distinct races
towards the ends of emancipation, the aff re-inforces the idea that race is real, salient, and
explanatory. Unfortunately, it is this very conception that underpins racism itself.
Having recognized the relative distinctiveness of the political and academic space in northwest Europe and then having occupied that space, one can view
those social relations defined in Britain and the United States as race relations from another point of view, for there is no public or academic reference
to the existence of race relations in contem porary France or Germany. It then becomes possible to pose questions that seem not to be posed from
within these intimately interlinked social and historical contexts. What kinds of social relations are signified as race relations?
Why is the idea of race employed in everyday life to refer only to Certain groups of people and only to certain
social Situations? And why do social scientists unquestioningly import everyday meanings into their reasoning
and theoretical frameworks in defining race and race relations as a particular field of study ? What does it
mean for an academic to claim, for example, that race is a factor in de termining the structure of social
inequality, or that race and gender are interlinked forms of oppression? What is intended and what might be the consequences of asserting as an
academic that race matters? These are the kinds of questions that Miles has been posing since the 1980s (e.g., Miles 1982, 1984, 1989), influenced in
part by the French theorist Guillaumin (1972, 1995). The answers to these questions lead to the conclusion that one should
follow the example of biological and genetic scientists and refuse to attribute analytical status to the idea of
race within the social sciences and thereby refuse to use it as a descrip tive and explanatory concept . The
reasoning can be summarized as follows (cf. Miles 1982, 2243; 1993, 4749). First, the idea of race is used to effect reification
within sociological analysis insofar as the outcome of an often complex social process is explained as the
consequence of something named race rather than of the social process itself . Consider the publication of The Bell Curve
by Richard J. Herrnsteifl and Charles Murray (1994) and the authors com mon assertion that race determines academic performance and life chances.
The assertion can be supported with statistical evidence that demonstrates that, in comparison with black people, white people are more likely to
achieve top grades in school and to enter leading universities in the United States. The determining processes are extremely complex, including among
other things parental class position and active and passive racialized stereotyping and exclusion in the classroom and beyond. The effects of these
processes are all mediated via a prior racial ized categorization into a black-white dichotomy that is employed in everyday social relations. Hence, it is
not race that determines academic performance: rather academic performance is determined by the interplay of social processes, one of which is
premised on the articulation of racism to effect and legitimate exclusion. Indeed, given the nineteenthcentury meanings of race, this form of reification
invites the possibility of explaining academic performance as the outcome of some quality within the body of those racialized as black.) 3 Second,
when academics who choose to Write about race relations seek to speak to a wider audience (an activity which we
believe to be fully justified) or
when their writings are utilized by nonacademics, their use unwittingly legitimates and
reinforces everyday beliefs that the human species is constituted by a number of different races, each of
which is characterized by a particular combination of real or imagined physical features or marks and cultural
practices. When West seeks to persuade the American public that Race Matters, there is no doubt that he himself does not believe in the existence
of biologically defined races. But he cannot control the meanings attributed to his claim on the part of those who identify differences in skin color for
example, as marks designating the existence of blacks and whites as discrete races. Unintentionally, his writing may thus come to serve as a
legitimation not only of a belief in the existence of race as a biological phenomenon but also of racism itself. He could avoid this outcome by breaking
with the race relations paradigm. Third, as a result of reification and the interplay between academic and commonsense
discourses, the use of race as an analytical concept can incorporate into the discourse of antiracism a notion
that has been central to the evolution of racism. Antiracist activities promote the idea that races really exist as biological categories of
people. Thus, while challenging the legitimation of unequal treatment and the stereotyping implicit and explicit in racism , the reproduction
within antiracist campaigns of the idea that there are real biological differences creating groups of human
beings sustains in the public consciousness the ideological pre condition for stereotyping and unequal
treatment. In other words, use of the idea of race provides one of the conditions for the reproduction of racism within the discourse and practice of
antiracism. For these reasons, the idea of race should not be employed as an analytical category within the social sciences. It follows that the object of
study should not be described as race relations. To reiterate, while we reject the race relations problematic for the analysis of
racism, we do not reject the concept of racism. Rather, we critique the race relations problematic in order to
recognize the existence of a plurality of histori cally specific racisms , not all of which explicitly employ the idea of race. In
contrast, the race relations paradigm refers exclusively to either black-white social relations or to social
relations between people of color and white people. This allows for only one racism, the racism of whites,
which has as its object and victim people of color (e.g., Essed 1991).
AT Mills
Mills theory misses the boat- millions of white people live below the poverty line
Cole 9 (Mike Cole, Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK, Critical Race Theory comes to the UK : A Marxist response, Ethnicities 2009
9: 246)
Mills (1997: 37) acknowledges that not all whites are better off than all nonwhites, but . . . as a statistical
generalization, the objective life chances of whites are significantly better. While this is, of course, true, we
should not lose sight of the life chances of millions of working-class white people. To take poverty as one
example, in the US, while it is the case that the number of black people living below the poverty line is some
three times that of whites, this still leaves over 16 million white but not Hispanic people living in poverty in
the US (US Census Bureau, 2007). This is indicative of a society predicated on racialized capitalism, rather
than indicative of a white supremacist society. While the US is witnessing the effects of the DEBATE Downloaded from NRD with
massively disproportionate effects on black people and other people of colour, white people are also affected. The outsourcing by US
corporations of millions of better-paying jobs outside the country, the class warfare against unions, which has
led to a steep decline in the percentage of US workers, affects white workers too. The loss to US urban neighbourhoods of
virtually their entire economic manufacturing and industrial employment creates unemployment for white workers as well, and neo - liberal social
policies cut the job training programmes, welfare and public housing of whites as well as blacks and other people of colour. In the UK, there are
similar indicators of a society underpinned by rampant racism, with black people currently twice as poor as
whites, and those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin over three times as poor as whites (Platt, 2007). Once
again, however, this still leaves some 12 million poor white people in the UK, who are, like their American
counterparts, on the receiving end of global neoliberal capitalism.
Focus on whiteness theory obscures non color coded racism
Cole, 9 (Mike Cole, Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK, Critical Race Theory comes to the UK : A Marxist response, Ethnicities
2009 9: 246)
Mills acknowledges that there were/are what he refers to as borderline Europeans the Irish, Slavs,
Mediterraneans, and above all, of course, Jews (Mills, 1997: 789), and that there also existed intra-European
varieties of racism (Mills, 1997: 79; see also Perea et al., 2007). However, he argues that, while there remains some recognition
of such distinctions in popular culture he gives examples of an Italian waitress in the TV series Cheers, calling a WASP character Whitey and a
discussion in a 1992 movie about whether Italians are really white (Mills, 1997: 79) he relegates such distinctions primarily to history.6 While Mills
is prepared to fuzzify racial categories with respect to shifting criteria prescribed by the evolving Racial
Contract, and to acknowledge the existence of off-white people at certain historical periods, he maintains that
his categorization white/nonwhite, person/subperson seems to me to map the essential features of the
racial polity accurately, to carve the social reality at its ontological joints (Mills, 1997: 7881). It is my view
that this does not address current reality. The characteristics signified vary historically and, although they have usually been visible
somatic features, other non-visible (alleged and real) biological features have also been signified. I would like to make a couple of amendments to Miles
position.7 First, I would want to add and cultural after, biological. Second, the common dictionary definition of
somatic is pertaining to the body, and, given the fact that people can be racialized on grounds of symbols (e.g.
the hijab), I would also want this to be recognized in any discussion of social collectivities and the construction
of racialization (Cole, 2008b). In contemporary Britain, there continues to be non-colour-coded racism
directed at the Irish (e.g. Mac an Ghaill, 2000) and at Roma Gypsy Traveller communities (e.g. Puxon, 2005).
There is also Islamophobia and xeno-racism.
***Derogratory Language K***

Derogatory language is never emancipatory- it retrenches police oppression and aggressionturns case
Spectacle is a form of camouflage. It does not conceal anything; it simply renders it unrecognizable. One looks at it
and does not see it. It appears in disguise. Harris, for example, looks at acquiescence and cannot see it. Camouflage is a relationship
between the one dissimulating their appearance and the one who is fooled, who looks and cannot see. Like racialization as a system
of meanings assigned to the body, police spectacle is itself the form of appearance of this banality. Their endless assault reflects the idea that race is a
social envelope, a system of social categorization dropped over the heads of people like clothes. Police impunity serves to distinguish between the racial
uniform itself and the elsewhere that mandates it. They constitute the distinction between those whose human being is put permanently in question and
those for whom it goes without saying. Police spectacle is not the effect of the racial uniform ; rather, it is the police uniform
that is producing re-racialization. Nothing better exemplifies this distinction than the structure of derogatory
language. Derogatory terms do not mean; they assault. Their intention is not to communicate but to harm. Thus
they are not discursive signs or linguistic statements but modes of aggression. They express a structure of power and
domination, a hierarchy that contextualizes them and gives them their force. As gestures of assault they reflect their users
status as a member of the dominant group. The derogatory term does more than speak; it silences. That ability
to silence derives from the fact that, in turning its hegemonic position to account, it turns the racialized other into
a language for whiteness itself. Those situated lower on the hierarchy have no viable means of defending
themselves. This, in effect, renders the derogation unanswerable in its own terms. The derogatory term obtrudes with
a small daily violence whose form is gratuitous, without motivation in the situation in which it is used, and w hose content is to render
that situation dominated by white supremacy. If it sits at the heart of the language of racism it is because it is
banal and everyday even while symbolizing racisms utmost violence, the verbal form of its genocidal trajectory. Those who
use derogatory terms repeatedly are putting themselves in a continual state of aggression; turning their objective
complicity with a structured relation of white supremacist dominance into an active investment or affirmation. Such
modes of assault demonstrate a specific obsession with those denigrated that characterizes the socius of white supremacy, its
demands for allegiance, its conditions of membership, its residence in viciousness. Because it is gratuitous and unanswerable, the
derogatory term grants itself impunity, reiterates of the excess at the core of each racist event without calling its ethics into
question. The prevalence of derogatory terms in US conversation goes unnoticed, seen simply on the margin of common
sense, as opposed to an index of white supremacy . It is a small matter, when set against such things as , for instance,
the legal codes of Jim Crow or the governments assassination of Fred Hampton. Yet derogation comes in many different forms as
stories, aphorisms, discourses, legal statutes, political practices, etc. The repetition of derogation becomes the performance of
white supremacist identity, over and over again. The derogatory term occupies the very center of the structure
of white supremacy.

Understanding the Harms of Structural Racism and Policing

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Notes

Racism= Structural/ Daily

profiles into murder violence without (serious) fear of

an inherent discontinuity . It stops and starts

warfare have been

the material continuities between state-formed technologies of warmaking across

Their logic of multiculturalism is paternalistic- only serves to retrench racism

Wilderson- Ontological Death

revolution that would destroy civil society, as we know it would be a

Wilderson- White Body Bad

Wilderson- AT Social Reform

were gonna be in a whole new world order.

a contemporarys struggles are conflictualthat is to say, they can be resolved because

Discussion of Race Key

AT They Exclude the Neg

subjection gets conjugated inversely so that the

the police wreak

White society re-creates itself through manipulating knowledge- claims of superficial

AT Cede the Political

a contemporarys struggles are conflictualthat is to say, they can be resolved because

progressive, fewer are radical. But each encounters

policy, civil liberties, and law, and

(Dylan, The Terms of

Hip Hop Good

Three Tier Process

-Organic Intellectuals Good

-Personal Experience Good

Inclusion of personal experience is inevitable and necessary to confront power structures,

a form of cultural imperialism founded on

-AT Our Authors Are Inclusive

revolution that would destroy civil society, as we know it would be a

were gonna be in a whole new world order.

a contemporarys struggles are conflictualthat is to say, they can be resolved because

postulated and a procedure derived that will

class of people doesnt have those questions.

I want to contribute to the world is a

text about impossibility, Blackness as a space of impossibility.

hegemony, Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat, in a word, socialism). In contrast,

Perm solves best- their colorblind approach perpetuates whiteness

*NEG METHODS ANSWERS*

General (Activism Bad)

Debate= Wrong Venue

that it overlooks the

Use of Ballot Bad

***Three Tier Process***

AT Personal Experiences Good For Debate

Personal focus on race fails

subjective personal narratives and performances of self-identity.

The alternative to expertise is nave faith- Palin prove this is disastrous

as being implicated in power relations because , for him, freedom is more

Rejecting Violence Is An Imperative For Survival

Non-Violence Is The Only Escape From Oppression

the system it seeks to transcend. "Whoever

Non-Violence Transforms The Cycle Of Violence

Experience Focus Bad- Epistemology

Their methodological dogmatism causes a prioritization of knower over knowledge, causing

As Maton argues, this

The device that welds

Experience Focus Bad- Biologism Turn

differentiation of one experience from anotherthe counterhegemonic potential of experience is predicated on

Experience Focus Bad- Non-Falsifiable

is axiomatic that experience is a

NEG METHODS ANSWERS

Three Tier Process

Social Death K (Wilderson)

1NC Fronline vs Wildersons Method

TOPICAL ACCESS TO DISCUSSING RACE

Afro Pessimism K

Agamben Exclusion K

Black/White Paradigm K